Category Archives: human rights

Ebola conference agrees to set up regional fund | Africa | DW.DE | 03.07.2014

However, in an interview with DW, Anja Wolz of Medecins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said the situation in Sierra Leone was still a matter of great concern. In the last two days, another 30 patients had been taken in at the treatment center where she works, she said.

According to Wolz, a major problem is that many people “are denying that Ebola exists.” People who fell sick were hiding rather than go to a doctor and could infect others. There was still a great need for public awareness campaigns, she said, as many Africans “think the white people are bringing Ebola.” MSF staff were working hard to overcome this but they could not go to every single village, Wolz said, addding that the problem was the same in Liberia and Guinea.

via Ebola conference agrees to set up regional fund | Africa | DW.DE | 03.07.2014.

I punched the man who broke into my home – it came naturally | Gia Milinovich | Commentisfree | The Guardian

Having spent most of my life feeling vulnerable to being attacked by a man, I now feel a great sense of freedom. Being strong and knowing how to punch has brought me something I wish every woman could feel: for the first time in my life I feel like a full human being. I am not a victim. I am not afraid. I am not trying to take up as little space as possible. I am not trying to keep my head down. I’m not trying to stay out of the way. I have a strong voice, a confident gait and, frankly, very sexy, strong arms. I know I have an absolute right to be wherever I am without threat and I can defend that right physically if I need to.

All women should take some sort of self-defence training. Yes, of course, it would be nice to live in a world where women weren’t assaulted and where there was no chance of waking at 5am to find a strange man in your house. But until that day, it makes sense to learn how to handle yourself in threatening situations. Self-defence training teaches not only practical skills on how to strike an attacker, but awareness, assertiveness and how to enforce your boundaries. Most importantly, it will teach you something far more valuable: it is possible to live without the fog of fear.

via I punched the man who broke into my home – it came naturally | Gia Milinovich | Commentisfree | The Guardian.

1,512 suspected cases of chikungunya in addition to 5,698 confirmed cases of dengue – Fides News Agency

According to the Ministry of Health in El Salvador (MINSAL) there are 1,512 suspected cases of chikungunya in the State of El Salvador. Most of them in the department of San Salvador, with a total of 1,365; of these, 1,035 have been located in Ayutuxtepeque, 138 in Mejicanos, 73 in Apopa and 41 in the capital of the department, and in Ciudad Delgado. San Vicente is another department where there have been 118 cases of the virus, and 88 in the municipality of San Ildefonso. MINSAL has stated that the age of the people most affected by the disease varies between 10 and 19, with 395 cases. Compared to the situation of dengue in the territory of El Salvador, the Ministry of Health reported a total of 16.937 suspected cases and 5,698 confirmed cases. Compared to the same period of 2013 there has been an increase of 101%. Of the confirmed cases, 97 were severe dengue, 56% more than last year. MINSAL reiterates its appeal to the people to work together to prevent the proliferation of the mosquito aedes aegypti, vector of chikungunya virus and dengue.

via 1,512 suspected cases of chikungunya in addition to 5,698 confirmed cases of dengue – Fides News Agency.

Mourning, And Rioting, Over Death In Jerusalem – NYTimes.com

As police tear gas wafted through his East Jerusalem neighborhood, the father of a slain 16-year-old Arab, the possible victim of a Jewish revenge attack, mourned with friends who had come to console him Wednesday on the enclosed porch of his two-story stone house. He had just spent seven hours with police investigators.

“I don’t expect any results,” the father, Hussein Abu Khdeir, 48, said of the investigation into the abduction and killing of his son Muhammad that morning.

via Mourning, And Rioting, Over Death In Jerusalem – NYTimes.com.

Israeli settlers torch Palestinian farm in ‘price tag’ attack | Maan News Agency

NABLUS (Ma’an) — Israeli settlers early Wednesday set fire to an animal farm in the northern West Bank on Wednesday, a Palestinian official said.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors settler activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that a group of settlers set fire to a sheep farm in Aqraba village south of Nablus at 3 a.m.

Palestinians managed to round up the sheep, but the steel structure surrounding the farm was destroyed by the fire, Daghlas said.

Settlers spray-painted the words “blood vengeance” and “price tag” in Hebrew on the outer walls of the farm, he added.

The farm belongs to Fadi Basim Bani Jabir.

Daghlas said the settlers came from the illegal settlement of Itamar south of Nablus.

Later, in the Bethlehem district, Israeli settlers hurled stones at Palestinian vehicles as they drove on a road near the village of Husan, locals said.

A number of vehicles were hit and sustained damages, they said.

The attacks come in the wake of the burial of three Israeli teens who were found dead in the Hebron district on Monday.

Hours after they were buried on Tuesday, around hundreds of Israelis marched through Jerusalem, stopping cars and shouting “Death to Arabs,” police and witnesses said.

via Israeli settlers torch Palestinian farm in ‘price tag’ attack | Maan News Agency.

On Netanyahu’s head for yesterday’s revenge talk! Possible Revenge Killing Adds to Tension in Israel – NYTimes.com

“The coming days, you can’t expect what will happen — the situation will get worse and worse,” said Ayed Abu Eqtaish, who works with the Palestine section of Defense for Children International. “The occupation and the cycle of violence should be ended to guarantee there is no further loss of life.”

Continue reading the main story

Mr. Netanyahu spoke before noon with Mr. Aharonovich, the internal security minister, and requested that “investigators act as quickly as possible to find out who stands behind the despicable murder,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office. Mr. Netanyahu called on all sides not to take the law into their own hands, saying, “Israel is a state of law and everybody is obligated to act according to the law.”

As news of the killing spread, the police increased their presence in Jerusalem. Clashes broke out between Palestinian youths and Israeli security forces along the main road that links the neighborhoods of Beit Hanina and Shuafat. Dozens of teenagers, some using slingshots, hurled stones at the security officers, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

Shelters at stops along Jerusalem’s light rail line, which runs through Arab and Jewish neighborhoods, were smashed, and smoke from tires set ablaze hovered over the area. The police barred Jews from entering the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City to avoid rioting.

via Possible Revenge Killing Adds to Tension in Israel – NYTimes.com.

Sell Out Nutrition Group Lobbies Against Healthier School Meals It Sought, Citing Cost – NYTimes.com

{Big corporations want profit and care not if children suffer!}

“They sold their souls to the devil,” said Stanley C. Garnett, a former Agriculture Department official who ran the agency’s child nutrition division. He was a member of the School Nutrition Association who resigned in protest of the lobbying campaign.

The devils in this case, the association’s critics say, are the dozens of food companies that have paid millions in sponsorship fees to the School Nutrition Association, covering over half of its $10.5 million annual budget.

Reacting to the association’s change of heart, the House Appropriations Committee has passed a spending bill with a provision that would allow schools to waive the nutrition standards during the school year that begins in the fall. A vote by the full House is tentatively set after the Fourth of July recess. A similar amendment was offered for Senate spending bills, but Democrats canceled the debate after disagreeing with Republicans over that and other amendments.

via Nutrition Group Lobbies Against Healthier School Meals It Sought, Citing Cost – NYTimes.com.

5 Superhuman Ways to Crush Anxiety. | Rebelle Society

It is counterintuitive to our conditioned thinking of more, more, more to believe that the most important gift we can give ourselves is to kick some things to the MF curb. What does this have to do with anxiety? Anxiety arises anytime you are not living your truth.

The second you deviate from your authenticity, you will be notified by your bodily experience and the Universe (God of your understanding). For some, this is a full-fledged panic attack. For others, face-first-diving into an entire pan of brownies. Or a bottle of tequila. Or both.

via 5 Superhuman Ways to Crush Anxiety. | Rebelle Society.

Time for the emperors-in-waiting who run Facebook to just admit they’re evil | Charlie Brooker | Commentisfree | The Guardian

In other words, the fine folk at Facebook are so hopelessly disconnected from ground-level emotional reality they have to employ a team of scientists to run clandestine experiments on hundreds of thousands of their “customers” to discover that human beings get upset when other human beings they care about are unhappy.

But wait! It doesn’t end there. They also coolly note that their fun test provides “experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks”. At least we can draw comfort from the fact that this terrifying power to sway the emotional state of millions is in the right hands: an anonymous cabal of secret experimenters who don’t know what “empathy” is.

via Time for the emperors-in-waiting who run Facebook to just admit they’re evil | Charlie Brooker | Commentisfree | The Guardian.

Israel opens gates to collective reprisals for youth murders – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Speaking to reporters, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu justified acts of revenge. “Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created; neither has vengeance for the blood of three pure youths, who were on their way home to meet their parents, who will not see them anymore. Hamas is responsible — and Hamas will pay,” Netanyahu said.

Not long after the news of the discovery of the bodies of the three Israeli teenagers, army units demolished a Palestinian suspect’s home, and ran bombing raids on Gaza.

Settlers have also taken up their own acts of revenge. On the roads, Palestinian media reported two cases of Palestinian children being run over by settler cars. The situation in Hebron was nothing short of a volcano waiting to erupt.

But some of the worst reaction to the despicable act of killing the Israeli teens has come from politicians and pundits. When the incitement comes from the very top of the government, it is no wonder how the rest of the population acts.

International humanitarian law and the basic principles of justice are based on the concept of individual responsibility. Justice is served when violators are tried in a fair court and personally punished. Holding an entire family, clan, city or a nation responsible is nothing short of barbarism. Some Israelis justify their reaction by saying that the act of the killing of the three Israeli hitchhikers was barbaric and a result of the collective responsibility of a community that created the killers.

via Israel opens gates to collective reprisals for youth murders – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.