13/09/2015
10 September 2015 – For close to three decades, New Zealand has been a leading voice in global efforts to stigmatize, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons – but is the Pacific nation starting to drag its feet on disarmament? Anti-nuclear campaigners there are urging the government to end its equivocation and endorse the 115-nation Humanitarian Pledge issued last December in Vienna.
Source: ICAN
New Zealand has so far been a prominent and constructive player in the Humanitarian Initiative on nuclear disarmament.
At the United Nations session on disarmament in October 2014, it delivered a joint statement on behalf of 155 nations declaring it “in the interest of the very survival of humanity that nuclear weapons are never used again, under any circumstances”.
But the Humanitarian Pledge goes a step further, committing nations to work together “to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.
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13/09/2015
Oman relies on a large workforce from south Asia to do most manual labour, including boat workers from Bangladesh
Most of the boat workers on Masirah Island off Oman are from Bangladesh (MEE/Jerzy Wierzbicki)
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12 September 2015 (Middle East Eye) – As one of the oil-rich countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Oman is still undergoing vast and rapid development. This expansion, including the protracted construction of a major new airport in Muscat, needs a growing workforce, which is mostly drawn from poorer Asian countries.
The great majority of expat workers in the Sultanate are from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. According Omani government data for August 2015, there are 641,000 Indian, 561,000 Bangladeshis and 216,000 Pakistanis out of a total 1.631m expat workers. This compared to just 206,000 Omanis working in the private sector.
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13/09/2015
By Catherine Shakdam*
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11 September 2015 (RT) – As the Middle East continues to descend into madness, wrecked by wars and convulsed by human tragedies, America stands at the center of it all – the grand engineer of instability, the architect of a world system which cornerstone is profoundly democratic.
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**Obama stands on stage with his wife and daughters just before announcing his presidential candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, February 10, 2007 | Author: Ben Stanfield | Source: The Future First Family Waves | Wikimeida Commons
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For well over a decade now the world has been force-fed American exceptionalism; taught to believe that America knows best what the world needs, how it needs to be organized and more importantly under whose leadership countries should be allowed to function.
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13/09/2015
By Uri Avnery*
12 September 2015
Uri Avnery
I AM AFRAID.
I am not ashamed to admit it. I am afraid.
I am afraid of the Islamic State movement, alias ISIS, alias Daesh.
It is the only real danger that threatens Israel, that threatens the world, that threatens me.
Those who treat it today with equanimity, with indifference, will come to regret it.
IN THE year I was born – 1923 – a ridiculous little demagogue with a funny mustache, Adolf Hitler, staged an attempted putsch in Munich. It was put down by a handful of policemen and soon forgotten.
The world had far more serious dangers to contend with.
There was the galloping inflation in Germany.
There was the young Soviet Union.
There was the dangerous competition between the two mighty colonial powers, Great Britain and France.
There was, in 1929, the terrible economic crisis that devastated the world economy.
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13/09/2015
By Fragkiska Megaloudi and Jennifer Lazuta*
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ABUJA/DAKAR, 11 September 2015 (IRIN)* – Families driven out of villages, farmers unable to tend crops, food stocks of entire communities raided: Boko Haram’s impact on the people of Western and Central Africa lingers long after the rape and slaughter.
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**Photo: Fragkiska Megaloudi/IRIN | Many families in northeastern Nigeria are forced to survive off just one meal a day, after being displaced by Boko Haram and losing their main sources of income.
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More than 5.5 million people living in conflict areas in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad, nearly half of whom have been displaced due to ongoing attacks by the Islamist militant group, don’t have enough to eat or else lack access to nutritious foods, according to the UN’s emergency aid coordination body OCHA.
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13/09/2015
By Elizabeth Monaghan*
10 September 2015 (Greenpeace) – 24 hours per day. 7 days per week. For weeks on end. The Arctic Ocean is being blasted by deafening 259 decibel explosions. Why? To map oil deposits under the ocean floor so that Shell and other big oil companies know where to set their greedy gaze for future oil exploration.
Until now, all this was happening in near-secret, at the top of the world, far from the public eye. But 7 million people and counting have registered their concerns for the Arctic region. And the Arctic Sunrise ship is in north-east Greenland to expose how seismic blasting is disrupting and harming ocean life.
We invite you to share in this epic journey set against a breathtaking Arctic backdrop:
Credit: Christian Aslund/Greenpeace
The tour gets off to a great start in picturesque Nuuk, Greenland’s capital…
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11/09/2015
BERLIN, 7 September 2015 (IRIN)* – As 18,000 asylum seekers arrived in Munich over the weekend, local authorities scrambled to find them all beds. Sites for trade fairs, an abandoned car showroom, even railway carriages, have all been turned into emergency accommodation. But as trainloads of newcomers keep arriving, the options are dwindling and the shortage of refugee housing has reached crisis levels.
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**Photo: Gordon Welters/UNHCR | Thousands of refugees, mostly Syrians, arrived at Munich’s central train station this weekend. They all need to be found accommodation.
Germany registered 218,221 asylum applications in the first seven months of this year, already surpassing its total number of applications for 2014. It is expected to receive as many as 800,000 asylum applications by the end of 2015, according to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.
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11/09/2015
By Pepe Escobar*
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9 September 2015 (RT) – The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Well, the Russians are always coming. The Russians never stopped coming since those heady Cold War days. The Russians are “invading” Ukraine. Every day. For over a year now. Now the Russians are “invading” Syria.
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That’s just a prelude. Soon the Russians will be invading the whole Middle East, the whole of Eastern and Western Europe, the whole Arctic. And then, one day, surreptitiously, they will be back in Cuba, ready to invade Florida and then the whole homeland.
History now repeats itself under the eternal recurrence of farce. About the best illustration of the propaganda modus operandi underlying the current exceptionalist hysteria over Russia’s alleged “military incursion” in Syria was penned way back in 2011 on Counterpunch by the late, great Alex Cockburn. Enjoy:
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11/09/2015
By Alex Lantier*
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11 September 2015 (WSWS) – As hundreds of thousands of refugees flee to Europe to escape wars in the Middle East and Africa, the European powers are drawing up plans to block the flow of refugees into Europe by sinking their vessels in the Mediterranean.
Asylum-seekers and economic migrants take to the seas, waiting out the dangerous journey in the boat’s cramped cargo space. Photo: UNHCR/A. D’Amato
A group of European countries led by Britain is circulating a draft resolution at the UN Security Council that would allow European warships to board and destroy vessels carrying refugees from Libya. Those aboard the refugee ships would then be detained and taken to Italy.
Those suspected of being the vessel’s crew would face prosecution, while refugees would be processed by Italian authorities and face expulsion.
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11/09/2015
The number of people in Afghanistan resorting to selling land or turning to friends or family for help because of food insecurity has doubled in the last year, according to a joint report released on 10 September 2015 by the United Nations and partner agencies.
An Afghan farmer and his son bring in the wheat from their harvest. Photo: FAO/Giuilio Napolitano
The 2015 Seasonal Food Security Assessment in Afghanistan (SFSA), published by the country’s Food Security and Agriculture Cluster (FSAC), found that at the peak of the lean season the number of Afghans facing severe food insecurity increased from 4.7 per cent of the population 12 months ago to 5.9 per cent today.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 