27/03/2017
By Baher Kamal*
ROME, Mar 27 2017 (IPS) – For over 400 years, more than 15 million men, women and children were the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, one of the darkest chapters in human history. Slavery is, nevertheless, far from being just a chapter of the past—it still there, with estimated 21 million victims of forced labour and extreme exploitation around the world–nearly the equivalent to of the combined population of Scandinavian countries.
Young women in Colombia forced into sexual exploitation. Credit: UNICEF/Donna DeCesare
According to the UN report 2016 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, issued in late-December, victims of trafficking are found in 106 of 193 countries. Many of these are in conflict areas, where the crimes are not prosecuted. Women and children are among the main victims.
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25/03/2017
By Finian Cunningham*
24 Mar, 2017 (RT) – US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave notice this week that the Trump administration was stepping up its military involvement in Syria and Iraq. But the military road map he laid out is in danger of leading the US even deeper into problems.
**Photo: Rex Tillerson, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of State, at his confirmation hearing | 11 January 2017 | Office of the President-elect | Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Most problematic perhaps is the fact that US forces are deepening their alliance with Kurdish militants in northern Syria. That has grave implications for a rupture with Washington’s key NATO ally Turkey, as well as the danger of an eventual confrontation with Syrian government forces.
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25/03/2017
By Rene Wadlow*
20 March 2017 – TRANSCEND Media Service – The ever-greater use by the United States – the military and the CIA – of drone air strikes in Yemen, Somalia, Syria-Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere has focused enough attention so that there will be a start of formal international attention given to the use of “killer robots” and the possibility of autonomous artificial intelligence weapons.
Rene Wadlow
US drone strikes have become so routine and bureaucratic that they provoke only small protests within the USA, usually on the part of human rights groups protesting the killing of individuals without a trial. (1)
The possible wider use of drones or other robotic military material such as autonomous tanks and trucks are being worked on by governments, often with the cooperation of private industry.
The possibility of an “arms race” among technologically-advanced States such as the USA, Russia, China, South Korea and Israel is real, especially at a time when mutual trust is in short supply.
Contemporary armament dynamics tend to acquire a momentum of its own and to resist social control.
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25/03/2017
By Uri Avnery*
18 Mar 2017
A few days ago I happened upon an excellent British movie, “Testament of Youth”, based on the memoirs of Vera Brittain.
Uri Avnery
Vera tells her story, the story of a British girl who grew up in a bourgeois family without worries or sorrows, when World War I put an end to that paradise.
Her brother, her friends and her fiancée were killed one by one in the terrible mudscapes of France. She enlisted as a nurse near the front and dealt with hundreds of wounded and dead. The tender country girl turned into a hardened woman.
The scene which impressed me most occurs when she is posted to a hut full of wounded Germans.
A German officer, not so young, is dying. In his delirium he sees his beloved, catches the hands of Vera and whispers “Is that you, Clara?” and Vera answers in German “Ich bin hier”, I am here. With a happy smile on his lips, the German dies.
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25/03/2017
DHAKA, Mar 23 2017 (IPS) – Breaking taboos surrounding menstruation, a project to distribute sanitary napkins to girls in one district of Bangladesh has had a positive impact on school dropout rates – and should be replicated in other parts of the country, experts say.
Girls walk across an embankment in the Satkhira district of Bangladesh. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS
“In Bangladesh, girls neither get enough support from their families nor their teachers in school during this difficult time, and their problems intensify and multiply as they cannot share anything out of shame,” Dr. Safura Khatun, a consultant at Mithapukur Health Complex in Bangladesh’s northern district of Rangpur, told the IPS on the sidelines of a five-day workshop
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25/03/2017
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women on 24 March 2017 agreed on a roadmap to women’s full and equal participation in the economy as a vital step to achieving sustainable development as the body concluded its two-week session.
Women and technology – the attitude gap. Photo: UN Women/Gaganjit Singh
“This Commission has engaged strongly, comprehensively and constructively over the last two weeks in considering the most effective ways in which to bring about change for women in the world of work,” said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, formally known as the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women.*
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25/03/2017
PARIS, Mar 24 2017 (IPS) – With widespread attacks on professional journalists and the rise of a fake-news industry, media experts agree that journalism is increasingly under fire. But how can the press fight back and ensure its survival?
Journalists call for the freeing of a colleague at a UNESCO colloquium in Paris. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS
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25/03/2017
What would people who conflict have to do then? They would have to dialogue, talk, negotiate – and find creative solutions to their problems, use their brains and humanity and – eventually – build peace together.
It’s a solid law of sociology that conflicts in which violence has been introduced is way more difficult to solve than conflicts in which the parties have not used violence against each other.
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23/03/2017
Since ancient times, human existence has been recorded on murals. From cave painting to street art, people have been using walls as a means to communicate and leave a sign of their own existence. Thanks to studies of ancient cave art, we have learnt a lot about our ancestors and how they lived, as well as today, graffiti can be perceived as a mirror of our society.
Street Art in Italy | Image reproduced from Wall Street International
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23/03/2017
By Baher Kamal
ROME, Mar 22 2017 (IPS) – Climate has, once more, broken all records, with the year 2016 making history-highest-ever global temperature, exceptionally low sea ice, unabated sea level rise and ocean heat. And what is even worse– extreme and unusual trends continue in 2017.
Extreme and unusual trends continue in 2017. Credit: WMO
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HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 