Archive for December 30th, 2015

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30/12/2015

2015 and the Struggle for Europe’s Core

Human Wrongs Watch

By Cas Mudde*
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28 December 2015 (openDemocracy) – 2015 was the year that everyone could see that the European emperor is not (not any longer) wearing clothes. Worse, the emperor didn’t even deny that he was naked! 
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449px-OrbanViktor_2011-01-07

**Viktor Orbán | Author: Európa Pont | Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. | Wikimedia Commons

Devastating terrorist attacks, months of insecurity about the Eurozone, huge electoral victories for populist parties, an unprecedented refugees crisis… there is no doubt that 2015 was Europe’s annus horribilis.

Both the projects of the European Union and of European liberal democracy were challenged in ways we have not seen before.

The real question for the coming year(s) is: was 2015 just a freak year, soon to be forgotten, or a transformative year, shaping European politics for years to come?

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30/12/2015

Brazil 2015: The Year When Everything Went Wrong

Human Wrongs Watch

By Fernando J. Cardim de Carvalho*
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RIO DE JANEIRO, 30 December 2015 (IPS) – As 2015 approaches its end, Brazilians live a period of extraordinary uncertainty. The recession seems to get worse by the day. Inflation is high and shows unexpected resistance to tight monetary policies applied by the Central Bank.

800px-Brazil_topo

**Topographic map of Brazil | Author: Original uploader was Captain Blood at en.wikipedia | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. | Wikimedia Commons.

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Posted in Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples | Leave a Comment »

30/12/2015

Pre-Deciding about Violence

Human Wrongs Watch

By Elizabeth Traubman and Lionel Traubman*

28 December 2015 – TRANSCEND Media Service – As loving parents who raised two children during the era of the Vietnam War, we were inspired by the work of child psychologist Haim Ginott who observed: “Misbehavior and punishment are not opposites that cancel each other. On the contrary, they breed and reinforce each other.”

Typology_of_violence

**A graph on typology of violence, as defined by the “World report on violence and health” (WHO, 2002). | 30 January 2012 | Author: jelicavesic  | public domain | Wikimedia Commons

We asked ourselves: Is it possible that spanking – smacking, some say – has a ripple effect into our community and inter-nationally? And so we challenged two rarely-questioned, often-implemented axioms of our times:

Violence is a good way to get what you want.

You can end violence with violence.

 

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Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples, War Lords | Leave a Comment »

30/12/2015

‘Recent Unusual Weather Worldwide Calls for Urgent Preventive Action’ 

Human Wrongs Watch

Extreme tornadoes in the United States over Christmas, abnormal snowfalls in Mexico, and heavy flooding in South America and the United Kingdom show that governments must take more preventive action to reduce human and economic losses from weather-related disasters, a senior UN official on 29 December 2015 warned.

Flooding in the community of Chaco’i, 30 miles from Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, in July 2014. Photo: UNICEF/ Martin Crespo

“Prevention measures including upgrading early warning systems to deal with the new climate variability, revising building codes to ensure more resilience of critical infrastructure such as schools, hospital and roads, and more investment in flood defences are critical to protect more people against disaster impacts,” said Margareta Wahlström, head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

Posted in Africa, Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, Market Lords, Middle East, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples | Leave a Comment »

30/12/2015

‘People of African Descent Must Be Fully Included in Climate Change Decisions’

Human Wrongs Watch

People of African descent, often the poorest and most marginalized in society, are among those set to be most adversely affected by climate change, yet they barely figured in the recent Paris climate summit, a United Nations expert group on 29 December 2015 warned, calling for their full inclusion.

The impact of climate change is affecting Lesotho’s progress towards development in a number of areas, including agriculture, food security, water resources, public health and disaster risk management. Photo: FAO

“Implementation of the Paris climate change agreement and future climate talks should focus on the needs and views of those most at risk, including people of African descent, and not be based on market forces,” the Chairperson of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, Mireille Fanon Mendes-France, said in a statement in Geneva.*

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Posted in Africa, Market Lords, Mother Earth, Others-USA-Europe-etc., The Peoples | Leave a Comment »

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