29/12/2016
Make Russia Great Again? Aleppo and a Plea from Another World
Human Wrongs Watch
**Photo; Putin with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, 2014 | Kremlin.ru | Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
A hundred years ago, Ernst Jünger described a peculiar encounter with a frightened British officer in his account of trench warfare, Storm of Steel: “he reached into his pocket, not to pull out a weapon, but a photograph (…). I saw him on it, surrounded by numerous family (…). It was a plea from another world.”
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29/12/2016
China and Europe–Comparisons and Futures
Human Wrongs Watch
By Johan Galtung*
26 December 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service – To understand something we often compare it with something else.
Johan Galtung
A recent Harvard study found 26.7% of world car production in China and 13.3% in USA; US economy bigger but China leading in export with 8 of the 12 biggest harbors; USA end 2016 fighting 7 wars with bases all over and China with no wars or bases, investing, building the New Silk Road-Lane, the Economic Belt. How successfully, it is to be seen.
But these are global power relations. That the West is going down, the Rest is coming up, the USA is a major part of the West and China of the Rest, are decades-old truths. And the EU is also part of the West.
What does domestic China remind us of, historically, structurally? Not USA, a state since 1776, 1812. Let us compare China with present border and context to Europe from the Atlantic to–whatever the border.
One conclusion can be foretold: only recently are both of them becoming cohesive, as super-states and as super-nations. Why, and how?
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29/12/2016
Arms Trade Treaty Falling Down in Yemen
Human Wrongs Watch
A campaign in support of the Arms Trade Treaty argued that weapons were subject to fewer regulations than bananas. Credit: Coralie Tripier / IPS.
“In terms of implementation, the big disappointment is Yemen,” Anna Macdonald, Director of Control Arms, a civil society organisation dedicated to the treaty, told IPS.
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29/12/2016
US Legislators Place Atheists on Equal Footing with Faith Groups
Human Wrongs Watch
A United Nations human rights expert on freedom of religion or belief has welcomed the United States’ legislative amendments aimed at protecting non-believers and atheists.
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Religious leaders. UN Photo/Rick Bajornas
“This is an important development, as believers, atheists and non-believers must all be equally protected,” on 28 December 2016 said the newly appointed Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, Ahmed Shaheed, in a news release from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
“Many humanists and non-believers are still widely stigmatized and persecuted around the world.”
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29/12/2016
US Heads for Political Showdown with UN
Human Wrongs Watch
By Thalif Deen*
United Nations Secretariat Building
The late Republican Senator Jesse Helms, a fulltime chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a part-time UN basher, once said “providing funds to the UN was like pouring money into a rat hole.”
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 