Archive for August 1st, 2017

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01/08/2017

We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 14: Mahatma Gandhi

Human Wrongs Watch

By John Scales Avery* 

John Scales Avery, author of this book: We Need Their Voices Today! has generously granted Human Wrongs Watch permission to publish it in a series of chapters. This is Chapter 14: Mahatma Gandhi. The others will follow successively.

gandhi

Figure 14.1: Gandhi and Nehru at a meeting of the Congress Party. After India gained its independance, it was Nehru’s vision of an urbanized and in- dustrialized India that prevailed. Ghandi’s much more susteinable vision of India of villages” was lost. (Wikimedia Commons)

If humans are ever to achieve a stable global society in the future, they will have to become much more modest in their economic behavior and much more peaceful in their politics. For both modesty and peace, Gandhi is a useful source of ideas.

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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 »

01/08/2017

Why Not Mexican Immigrants? A History of Discrimination and Exclusion

Human Wrongs Watch

By Martha R. Bireda*

(Wall Street International)* — It should not be a mystery or come as a surprise to anyone with a faint knowledge of factual United States history as to why Mexicans and Mexican Americans are being targeted by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and deported to Mexico. Unlike other immigrant groups, Mexican immigrants and Mexican Americans are a racially stigmatized group in the U.S.

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Mexican Immigrants
Mexican Immigrants | Photo | reproduced  from Wall Street International

 

After the United States won the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded more than half of Mexican land to the U.S. Mexican citizens living on the ceded land were to retain full property rights and be granted U.S. citizenship.

However, Mexican Americans became victims of stereotyping, discrimination and exclusion in the United States.

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01/08/2017

Spiralling Violations in Philippines Including Murder, Threats against Indigenous Peoples, Summary Execution of Children

Human Wrongs Watch

31 July 2017 – A group of United Nations experts has urged the Government of the Philippines to immediately address reported human rights violations, including murder, threats against indigenous peoples and the summary execution of children.

05-02-2017Philippines

Children play outside their home at a shelter in the Philippines. Photo: UNICEF/Joshua Estey

“Attacks are spiralling against many groups in society and we are making an urgent appeal for Government action,” said a joint statement issued by Agnes Callamard, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions; Michel Forst, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; and Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children.

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01/08/2017

China Seeks to Export Its Green Finance Model to the World

Human Wrongs Watch

By Daniel Gutman*

BUENOS AIRES, Jul 26 2017 (IPS) – Hand in hand with UN Environment and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) disembarked in the Argentine capital to prompt this country to adopt and promote the agenda of so-called green finance, which supports clean or sustainable development projects and combats climate change.
Ma Jun, chief economist at the People’s Bank of China, together with Rubén Mercado, from the United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP) in Argentina. The high-ranking Chinese official promoted Beijing’s green finance while in Buenos Aires. Credit: UNDP

Ma Jun, chief economist at the People’s Bank of China, together with Rubén Mercado, from the United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP) in Argentina. The high-ranking Chinese official promoted Beijing’s green finance while in Buenos Aires. Credit: UNDP

The PBOC, which as China’s central bank regulates the country’s financial activity and monitors its monetary activity, has been particularly interested in Argentina, because next year it will preside over the Group of 20 (G20) industrialised and emerging economies.

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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 »

01/08/2017

Alcoholism Cannot Explain Russian Mortality Spike

Human Wrongs Watch

By Vladimir Popov and Jomo Kwame Sundaram*

MOSCOW and KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 25 2017 (IPS) – The steep upsurge in mortality and sudden fall in life expectancy in Russia in the early 1990s were the highest ever registered anywhere in recorded human history in the absence of catastrophes, such as wars, plague or famine. 

In Russia, the simultaneous increase in the total death rate, deaths due to external causes, and alcohol consumption were all driven by stress. Credit: Pavol Stracansky/IPS

The shock economic reforms in the former Soviet economies after 1991 precipitated this unprecedented increase in mortality, shortening life expectancy, especially among middle-aged males.

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01/08/2017

The Real Clash of Civilisations

Human Wrongs Watch

By Ian Hughes*

31 July 2017 (openDemocracy)* — The presence or absence of conscience is perhaps the deepest human division.

Credit: http://maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com. Public Domain.

Six months into the Presidency of Donald J. Trump, two speeches can serve as bookends to aid our understanding of what has been a tumultuous and deeply worrying time—his Inaugural address and his speech in Poland on July 6 2017.

What stand out from these two speeches are the images of “American carnage” from his opening statement to the nation, and the ominous warning he issued in Warsaw of a ‘clash of civilisations’—along with the corresponding need to act decisively to save ‘Western values.’

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01/08/2017

It’s World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. What Do We Need to Do Now?

Human Wrongs Watch

By William Lacy Swing*, Director General of the International Organization for Migration 
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GENEVA, Switzerland, Jul 31 2017 (IPS) – It is believed that millions are currently victims of trafficking in persons around the world. It is almost impossible to think about each one of those numbers as individual human beings and it can feel like an insurmountable problem. But it isn’t. And on this World Day Against Trafficking in Persons we must believe that not only can we make a dent but that we can make significant inroads into eliminating it.

William Lacy Swing. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS​

At the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN’s Migration Agency I head, we deal with trafficking in persons on a daily basis.

We know that trafficking involves more than kidnapping and selling of persons, people forced into jobs against their will, and victims forced to give away a kidney or other vital organs.

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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 »

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