Category Archives: human rights

» Peace

If a peaceful feeling grows in your body,you can build your life and a world with love.It is important to have peace in our lives

Sitting under the shadow of peace,we find happiness and success.

What is Peace?

Peace brings happiness in our lives. Without it, any country faces crime, war, and difficulties.

War brings a bad message with it—a message of destruction and dead ends.

Peace has a very important role. Without it, the life of every one of us is empty and ends with unhappiness.

Peace is a gift from almighty God. We must work for peace in our country.

Because of the war, we Afghans have experienced too much conflict and difficulties in our lives.

We need peace.

Almighty God has said in the Holy Quran that: ”It is Muslims who bring peace in their homes.”

Peace will help us build our country and progress. I feel sorry for my Afghanistan that we have never had a peaceful life. I think it is because of ignorance and lack of education. We must work hard to remove ignorance. We can only build our country by the power of the pen and knowledge.

I ask all my Afghan brothers to work together for peace and be united.

By Safa

Source: » Peace

The Privilege of Never Having to Say You’ll Concede | Dame Magazine

The potential of a fascist America is more real than ever. That’s not hyperbole—it’s a fact. A candidate for president from one of the two major American political parties has called for: the closing of the border between Mexico and the United States and the mass deportation of immigrants; a closing of the border to Muslim immigrants; assassinating the family members of suspected terrorists (a blatant war crime, by the way); the criminalization of women who have abortions; and the list goes on. The “Bernie or Bust” argument seems innocuous if you aren’t one of the millions of marginalized people whose health, rights, and lives depend on the November election results. To stay in a race that you mathematically cannot win against the first woman presidential candidate of either major party is privileged enough. To do it when the country is facing a very possible descent into fascism? That’s just dangerous.While Bernie Sanders claims that it is important to defeat Donald Trump, many of his supporters are not convinced. These people, many of whom are young white men who proudly label themselves the “real progressives,” are watching as the United States stares down the barrel of a fully loaded gun of racism, misogyny, and xenophobia and are shrugging. To even hint at voting for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, or claim that they are the same, is privilege personified.These are the “Bernie Bros”: white men who support Bernie Sanders but seemingly ignore the issues that affect marginalized people, who bellow and bully women and people of color for supporting Hillary Clinton, who claim ideological purity without having their rights and lives on the line. Not only that, but they have time and again berated and harassed women and people of color with whom they may disagree, in some cases threatening Democratic women like Nevada State Democratic Chairwoman Roberta Lange. Bernie Bros are relevant to this argument; they are a sexist reflection of the privilege emanating from the man they worship, a man who has done little if nothing to curb their atrocious, bigoted behavior.

Source: The Privilege of Never Having to Say You’ll Concede | Dame Magazine

Avian Flu Diary: Upcoming COCA Call: Identification and Care of Patients with Hantavirus Disease

Hantavirus infection in the United States can cause severe and life-threatening illness, requiring rapid assessment, presumptive diagnosis, and high-level supportive care of respiratory and cardiac functions. Hantavirus infection causes a cardiopulmonary syndrome, which includes rapid accumulation of pulmonary edema following a flu-like prodrome. Approximately 37% of cases end in death. Although hantavirus disease is rare, clinicians should be aware of the risk factors, clinical picture, and essential care elements. During this COCA call, clinicians will learn about the epidemiology, diagnosis, and clinical care of patients with hantavirus disease in the United States.

Source: Avian Flu Diary: Upcoming COCA Call: Identification and Care of Patients with Hantavirus Disease

CDC issues warning on multidrug-resistant yeast infection | CIDRAP – err… really not good news

cause for concern is that the testing of the C auris isolates demonstrated that nearly all exhibited varying levels of resistance to multiple classes of antifungal drugs—including azoles, echinocandins, and polyenes. That finding indicates that treatment options for C auris infections could be limited.A fungus that is resistant to the three major classes of antifungal drugs “could be a real management challenge,” Chiller noted.The other challenge is that C auris is difficult to identify. The CDC said biochemical-based tests cannot differentiate between C auris and other invasive Candida infections, so the pathogen can be misidentified and potentially treated inappropriately. Originally, Chiller said, many of the infections were identified as C haemulonii before being correctly identified as C auris. Chiller said hospitals need molecular techniques to correctly identify C auris infections.Chiller also noted that the fungal infection is emerging simultaneously on different continents. While the isolates appear to be highly related within the countries reporting infections, they are highly distinct between continents.

Source: CDC issues warning on multidrug-resistant yeast infection | CIDRAP

“We are with the EU!” Vote was taken… Live with it awhile; if wrong for Britain, then organize for a new vote – that’s democracy…

Demonstrators take part in a protest aimed at showing London’s solidarity with the European Union following the recent EU referendum, in Trafalgar Square, central London. Photo credit: REUTERS/Dylan Martinez

Source: “We are with the EU!”

Roughly half of Hispanics have experienced discrimination | Pew Research Center

Roughly six-in-ten Hispanics (58%) say race relations in the U.S. are generally bad, a similar share to blacks. But when it comes to the best approach to improving race relations, Hispanic views align more with those of whites. Among Hispanics and whites, more say people should focus on what different racial and ethnic groups have in common rather than what makes them unique. By contrast, blacks are split evenly on the issue.For Latinos, concepts of identity and race are complex and varied. About one-in-four Hispanics in the U.S. identify as Afro-Latino, and a quarter say they are of an indigenous background, according to the Pew Research Center National Survey of Latinos. At the same time, two-thirds of Latinos say their Hispanic background is a part of their racial identity. (The U.S. Census Bureau’s forms describe “Hispanic” as an ethnic origin and not a race.)An estimated 56.6 million Hispanics lived in the U.S. in 2015, a fast-growing population with diverse origins and many who are bilingual. Millions of people from Latin America have immigrated to the U.S. in recent decades, driving Hispanic population growth in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2014, there were 19.3 million Hispanic immigrants in the U.S., and this group accounts for nearly half of the nation’s immigrant population.Some Latinos have long expressed concerns over policies that target unauthorized immigrants, disapproving of deportations by the federal government as well as state laws like California’s Proposition 187 in 1994, which denied public services to unauthorized immigrants, and more recently Arizona’s SB 1070, which allows police to check the immigration status of suspected unauthorized immigrants so long as an officer is enforcing other laws.The race survey also found that many Hispanics discuss racial inequality on a regular basis with family and friends. About six-in-ten Hispanics (62%) say the topic of racial inequality comes up often or sometimes in conversations, a share similar to that of whites (59%). By comparison, 74% of blacks say the same.

Source: Roughly half of Hispanics have experienced discrimination | Pew Research Center

Charlemagne’s Empire Deja Vu?

The Social Democrat Steinmeier and the Socialist Ayrault write that to ensure “internal security,” the “operational capacity” must be enhanced at the EU level. This includes making the best use of “retention of flight passenger data (PNR)” – the “data exchange within the EU” must be “improved” – but also “making the best use of Europol and its counterterrorism centre.” “In the medium term,” there should otherwise be the “creation of a European platform for intelligence cooperation.” Last weekend, SPD Chair, Sigmar Gabriel and the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz (SPD) called for the extension of domestic repression as well as the creation of a “European FBI.”[7]

Seize the Opportunity – Just a few days ago, Foreign Minister Steinmeier declared in the US journal “Foreign Affairs” that Germany has become “a major power” and will “try its best” on the world stage “to hold as much ground as possible.”[8] With Britain, which had always adamantly opposed an integrated EU military policy, leaving the EU, Berlin sees an opportunity for reviving its efforts at restructuring the EU’s military and mobilizing as many member countries as possible for the EU’s future wars.

Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com

North Carolina’s Factory Farms Produce 15,000 Olympic Pools Worth of Waste Each Year | Civil Eats

Elsie Herring stays indoors on the days the industrial hog farm next door sprays manure from a lagoon-like holding pit across the field that ends eight feet from her kitchen window. Because a filthy mist coats her property if the wind is blowing from the west, Herring has learned to avoid activities like sitting on her porch, grilling outside, hanging laundry on the line, opening windows, and drinking water from the well. Herring lives in Duplin County, North Carolina, on a plot of land her family has owned for more than a century. Located in the eastern part of the state, Duplin contains more than 18.5 million confined animals, including 2.3 million hogs. In Herring’s part of the state, pigs outnumber people almost 40 to one. “You can smell the odor inside,” 67-year-old Herring says. “The feces, the ammonia—all that stuff—we have to breathe it in, because we have to breathe.” On top of physical symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, excessive coughing, watery eyes, and the urge to vomit, area residents often experience anxiety and depression from the sense of helplessness they feel and the lack of relief from the stench, Herring says. Last week, environmental groups including the Waterkeeper Alliance, Environmental Working Group, and North Carolina Riverkeeper organizations addressed what they see as “yawning gaps in the North Carolina state agricultural regulatory system” by releasing a collection of maps and data on the 6,500 concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)—and their accompanying waste lagoons—in the Tarheel State.

Source: North Carolina’s Factory Farms Produce 15,000 Olympic Pools Worth of Waste Each Year | Civil Eats

RNC demonstrators will be here to disrupt and get on TV, not to change minds: Ted Diadiun | cleveland.com “So why cover Trump tirades that are not aimed at changing minds but to get free coverage?”

It’s a twist on the old philosophical question: If a group of protesters chant, and there’s no TV camera there to record it, do they make a sound? They probably do, but none, blessedly, that the rest of us have to hear. That’s why, when my role was to make decisions about how to cover such “news,” I rarely sent a photographer to demonstrations and protest marches. Some people would gather in a public place with signs, and then stand around working on their counting skills (“One! Two! Three! Four! We don’t want your bloody war!”). Then a TV crew would obligingly show up and the people would become animated, and the 6 o’clock news would have its visual — a tight camera shot, of course, that masked the actual size and significance of the protest group.

Source: RNC demonstrators will be here to disrupt and get on TV, not to change minds: Ted Diadiun | cleveland.com

Pelosi Rips Into Apple CEO Tim Cook For Hosting Republican Fundraiser: SFist

Although Apple and other big tech companies have made a habit of donating money to both sides of the aisle, the fact that Tim Cook is the person in question is definitely turning heads. Cook, you surely recall, is an out gay man who has publicly come out against Republican-backed anti-LGBTQ legislation. Just last year he published an op-ed in The Washington Post condemning a host of legislation including a specific bill that “would strip the salaries and pensions of [Texas] clerks who issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.” “These bills rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear,” wrote Cook. “They go against the very principles our nation was founded on, and they have the potential to undo decades of progress toward greater equality.” This fundraiser, it should be noted, is purely personal — Cook is not doing this on behalf of Apple. This fact was not lost on Congresswoman Pelosi. “Everybody has the right to do whatever they want to do,” Pelosi told the Chronicle. “But when they say, ‘We don’t like what Trump says, but we’ll donate to his party,’ they’re either naive or they think we’re naive.” According to The Almanac, the fundraiser is taking place at an undisclosed location in Menlo Park, and some of the money raised will go to a joint fundraising committee that helps fund Republican congressional campaigns.

Source: Pelosi Rips Into Apple CEO Tim Cook For Hosting Republican Fundraiser: SFist