By Baher Kamal & The Like
Wall Street International – President Woodrow Wilson, the academic politician, in response to the propaganda machine orbiting around WW1 said he could, “imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people . . . their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials.”
Former Brazilian presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff take part in an Apr. 29 demonstration in defence of the shipbuilding industrial hub in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, one of the oil projects in Brazil on the verge of bankruptcy, due to the crisis plaguing the state-run oil company Petrobras due to the corruption scandal and the drop in oil prices. Credit: Stuckert/Lula Institute
But recent revelations give the impression of a drastic increase in corruption, involving unprecedented amounts of money, nearly the entire political leadership of the country, and numerous state-run and private companies.
6/5/2017
I REMEMBER the first few Independence Days, just after the foundation of the State of Israel. There was spontaneous jubilation, we were all out in the streets, the celebration was real.
Uri Avnery
That was long ago. This years Independence Day, last Tuesday, was not a very happy affair. The holiday was subdued, even sad. Old-timers felt that “this is not our state anymore”, that “they” have stolen Israel”. “They” – the rightists.
One of the reasons may be that there is no real unity any more. Israeli society has fallen apart into a number of sub-societies, which have less and less in common.
There are the Ashkenazim (of European descent), the Mizrahim (Easterners, from Arab countries and Iran, often erroneously called Sephardim), the “Russians” (from the former Soviet Union, who live a separate life of their own), the Haredim (God-fearing, ultra Orthodox, non-Zionists), the National-Religious (religious Zionists (including the settlers in the occupied territories and fascist elements), and, of course, the Palestinian-Arab minority, who constitute more than 20% of the population, and who exist outside of almost everything.
Jhanmarco Flores Huamaní, a 13-year-old Quechua pond-maker in Peru’s Andean region of Ayacucho, who came to the Amazon region of his country for the first time, to take part in a youth meeting within the VIII Panamazonic Social Forum. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS
UN Photo/Martine Perret
“I am concerned about the unacceptably broad definition of terrorism and the use of Saudi Arabia’s 2014 counter-terrorism law and other national security provisions against human rights defenders, writers, bloggers, journalists and other peaceful critics,” Ben Emmerson, the Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, said in a statement summing up his five-day mission.
The United Nations population agency on 5 May 2017 urged governments and development partners to expand midwifery programmes and promote an environment where midwives can effectively serve the needs of women and their families.
In Dinajpur, Bangladesh, Selina Akter, second year midwifery student, plays the role of a mother as students practice postnatal care at the Dinajpur nursing institute. Photo: Nicolas Axelrod/Ruom for UNFPA
