09/03/2016
By Finian Cunningham*
8 March 2016 (RT) – When the Ankara government carried out a brutal media crackdown at the weekend and then saw minimal Western protest as a result, President Erdogan knew he had the upper-hand – to leverage the refugee crisis.
**Ahmet Davutoglu | Wikimedia Commons
It seems more than strange that, only three days before a high-profile summit was to take place between European Union leaders and Turkey on Europe’s refugee crisis, the Ankara authorities carried out an audacious assault on democratic rights.
The violent police seizure of Turkey’s biggest opposition newspaper, Zaman, and its immediate cowing into a tame pro-government publication represents the most brazen authoritarian move to date by the ruling AK party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkish opposition politicians denounced the full-frontal assault on independent media as tantamount to a coup d’état by Erdogan.
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09/03/2016
And that al-Assad and his government was certainly an important reason but far from the only one.
The conflict expert would have warned against at last four ways of thinking:
a) any interpretation that put all the good people on one side and all the bad people on the other – because there are no conflicts in the world with only two such parties;
b) any idea that the conflict could be solved by siding with the presumed good ones and going against the bad one(s);
c) every attempt to ‘weaponise’ the conflict and increase the level of violence, the duration of the conflict and the human suffering;
d) any and every idea that foreigners would know better than the Syrians themselves – government, opposition and citizens in civil society – what should be a solution.
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09/03/2016
GENEVA, March 8 (UNHCR)* – The United Nations Refugee Agency today distanced itself from an outline joint EU-Turkey deal to solve Europe’s refugee crisis, saying it was concerned with some aspects of the proposal although it was not yet privy to all the details.
© UNHCR/I. Prickett | Refugees wait to board buses after crossing the border from Syria into Turkey after fleeing fighting around the city of Kobani in September 2014
“As a first reaction, I am deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law,” Filippo Grandi, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said on Tuesday [8 March].
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09/03/2016
By John Wight*
7 March 2016 (RT) – The consensus among US political analysts is that Trump is an aberration, a candidate who stands in contradiction to the high morals and ideas associated not with only the White House but also the US itself. They couldn’t be more wrong if they tried.
**Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame | Author: Neelix | Public Domain : Wikimedia Commons
In truth, Trump represents not the idea but the reality of America, the ugly reality of a country and society with its mask removed.
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09/03/2016
By Johan Galtung*
7 Mar 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service – The first editorial, “50 Years of Fidel Castro” 3 March 2008, celebrated a political revolution that changed the world, and spelt the end of US-Western imperialism.
Johan Galtung
This editorial celebrates a spiritual revolution that may also change the world, spelling the end of Western materialism, and spread from there.
We are talking about processes, not events, and of structures and cultures more than of actors.
Again, Cuba played a major role, as meeting place between two major parts of Christianity, Catholic and Orthodox. In the Great Schism of 1054 they had excommunicated each other; and the Roman empire had split Catholic/Orthodox in 395.
Fidel’s Catholic brother and successor Raúl was a condition for this historic meeting for peace; so was the meeting between Putin–an Orthodox Christian–and Francis in June 2015. However, not many pairs of brothers rival the two Castros in shaping history.
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09/03/2016
The United Nations on 8 March 2016 announced a new initiative to advance efforts to end child marriage by 2030 and protect the rights of millions of the most vulnerable girls around the world.
Nafissa, 17 from Niger, was married at 16. Three months after marrying she became pregnant. She gave birth to a still born baby. Photo: UNICEF/Marieke van der Velden
The initiative by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), announced on International Women’s Day, is part of a global effort to prevent girls from marrying too young and to support those already married as girls in 12 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East where child marriage rates are high.
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09/03/2016
8 March 2016 – From economic exclusion to violence targeting women and girls, the head of the United Nations entity tasked with promoting gender equality believes such challenges make it all the more critical to push ahead with the new global development agenda, which contains many targets specifically recognizing women’s equality and empowerment.
Executive Director of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women). UN Photo/Cia Pak
“We’re asking private sector, individuals, ourselves – as the women organization – to step it up for gender equality,” Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, told the UN News Service.
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09/03/2016
ROME, 7 March 2016 (IPS) – On International Women’s Day newspapers and radio shows are filled with women’s voices. Yet too often the media’s attention is fleeting.
These are the best of times, but without a doubt also the worst of times, for journalism and journalists – especially women in the media.
According to the Global Media Monitoring Project, women still account for only 24 percent of the people “heard or read about in print, radio and television news across the world.”
Or as women’s media organisation Foreign Policy Interrupted have put it: “a woman over 65 is less likely to be cited as an expert in the media (than) a boy in the 13 to 18 age group.”
Hearing women in the media is not just about who is holding the notebook and voice recorder. Journalists also need to think about who they quote in their articles.
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07/03/2016
Former president of Ireland (1990-1997) and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
DUBLIN, 5 March 2016 (IPS) – “Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step It Up for Gender Equality” – the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day serves as a timely reminder that, despite incremental progress of recent years and the ambition of the new global development agenda, we must redouble efforts to achieve a world underpinned by gender equality.
All women must be empowered to realise their full and equal rights. But what does it actually mean to step it up for gender equality?
For me, this requires targeted approaches to ensure that all women have a voice in the formulation of decisions that impact upon their lives.
This is particularly important when it comes to facilitating the engagement of grassroots women.
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07/03/2016
By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka,
UN Women Executive Director*
This year’s celebration of International Women’s Day is the first within the new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls are confidently asserted in that Agenda as intrinsic to progress.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
The new Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals include a specific goal to achieve gender equality, which aims to end discrimination and violence against women and girls and ensure equal participation and opportunities in all spheres of life.
Important provisions for women’s empowerment are also included in most of the other goals.
In conjunction with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, more than 90 governments have answered UN Women’s call for action to “Step It Up for Gender Equality”.
Heads of State and Government have pledged concrete and measurable actions to crack some of the fundamental barriers to the achievement of gender equality in their countries.
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 
