Category Archives: human rights

Charitable? Red Cross Cites ‘Trade Secrets’ to Redact Details of Sandy Donations | News | PND

If those details were to be disclosed, it argued, “the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross’s business model for an increased competitive advantage.”

via Red Cross Cites ‘Trade Secrets’ to Redact Details of Sandy Donations | News | PND.

Taking advice from CIA Candy Makers? Israel drops anti-Hamas lollipops in the WB | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

BEIRUT: The Israeli military scattered lollipops and matchboxes with anti-Hamas messages attached in the West Bank.

Residents of Ramallah and Nablus were surprised Sunday to see large amounts of lollipops thrown all around their streets.

Attached to every candy was a small paper with an anti- Hamas message in Arabic:

“Ramadan Kareem. Here are some sweets because Hamas is making life bitter in the West Bank.”

An IDF officer told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that he knew nothing about the issue, but residents of the towns reportedly saw Israeli soldiers spreading the lollipops.

via Israel drops anti-Hamas lollipops in the WB | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

Boom Meets Bust in Texas: Atop Sea of Oil, Poverty Digs In – NYTimes.com

One day in May, Colt Ringer, 28, limped along near Ms. Vargas’s trailer wearing a dusty black cowboy hat and carrying a .22-caliber Magnum revolver and .45-caliber pistol in holsters at his hip. He was returning home empty-handed after hunting feral hogs, which he kills for sport and for food.

“All of us are poor, in our own way,” he said. “I don’t get nothing off these wells right out here, because I don’t own the land. That just goes to show the golden rule: He who has the gold makes the rule.”

via Boom Meets Bust in Texas: Atop Sea of Oil, Poverty Digs In – NYTimes.com.

Mexico Rape Victim Faces Prison Time for Self-Defense

While her various wounds were being treated, including a 14-centimetre gash on her arm, Luis Omar Anaya arrived and accused her of murdering his brother in a lovers’ quarrel, a specious argument according to her defense lawyers, since Rubio is a lesbian.

via Mexico Rape Victim Faces Prison Time for Self-Defense.

Confronting the Central American Refugee Crisis

Figueroa notes that seven of ten migrants interviewed stated they were fleeing from their countries due to death threats, extortion or the assassination of a relative by gangs or “the narcos.” Criminal groups charge for everything–to sell in the street; to operate an established business, large, medium or small; and extortion is so widespread that they even charge a “quota” of families who receive remittances from relatives in the United States. It is a common practice that the gangs try to recruit minors to act as informants or to sell drugs in the schools and if they refuse they are executed.

via Confronting the Central American Refugee Crisis.

Child Migrants and Media Half-Truths | La Prensa San Diego

So why does the mainstream press seek to place the blame on the parents and a supposed softening of immigration policy?

Because the alternative to blaming migrant families themselves is unpalatable to them.

The alternative is to accept that the Central American and North American Free Trade Agreements have left thousands of youth with no economic opportunities.

It is to accept that US security aid for drug wars has armed and aggravated violence in Mexico and Central America.

It is to understand the high cost of supporting the Honduran coup and how the Honduran people and the US population continue to pay that price, as out migration has surged over 500% in the past two years and human rights violations, instability and violence are skyrocketing.

In my travels to migrant shelters and interviews with migrants coming through Mexico I have found that, astoundingly, they do realize the risks and yet decide to make the journey anyway.

The public-awareness campaign we really need is one addressed to U.S. citizens and Congress regarding the impact of economic and security polices on their southern neighbors, and especially on the children.

Then we need a public action campaign to do something about it.

via Child Migrants and Media Half-Truths | La Prensa San Diego.

Erdogan: ‘No one should expect me to provoke ISIS’ – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Brave enough to beat and arrest Turks protesting his heavy hands but take a stand against ISIS – nooooo!

Erdogan, for his part, in Ankara on June 25 said, “No one should expect me to provoke ISIS,” while blasting the opposition and its media that accuse his government of passivity in the hostage crisis.

via Erdogan: ‘No one should expect me to provoke ISIS’ – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Banned biter Suarez returns home, loses sponsor, receives support | Sports | DW.DE | 27.06.2014

Even Chiellini, whose shoulder bore the marks of Suarez’s jaw on Tuesday night in Natal, questioned the severity of the sanction for repeat-offender Suarez, who has made the headlines for biting in the past with both Liverpool and former club Ajax Amsterdam.

“Now inside me there’s no feelings of joy, revenge or anger against Suarez for an incident that happened on the pitch and that’s done,” Chiellini said in a statement on his website. “I believe that the proposed formula is excessive.”

via Banned biter Suarez returns home, loses sponsor, receives support | Sports | DW.DE | 27.06.2014.

“The Egyptian government knew their own secret service was making a huge mistake” – Egyptian Streets

Dutch journalist Rena Netjes sounds furious over the phone. She didn’t get much sleep last night.

“There are so many lies being spread, including by the Egyptian ambassador in the Netherlands,” says Rena. “I did have permission to do my job in Egypt. I had a temporary press card that was still accurate until December 31 2014, and by then I would’ve gotten a permanent one. Those are the facts.”

Last Monday, she was one of the convicted Al Jazeera English journalists that received a ten year prison sentence in absentia for ‘working, financing and falsifying footage for Al Jazeera in order to defame the Egyptian state’.

However, Netjes has never worked for Al Jazeera English, as the organization has confirmed and the proof against her is non-existent. “The fact that the Egyptian court failed to even get my name and passport number right represents [how] the entire trial [proceeded]. A non-existing Dutch name, ‘Johanna Indinienatta,’ with a non-existing passport number is convicted of being a terrorist. The Egyptians never made a connection to me, Rena Netjes. All they knew is that this person was a member of a terrorist network,” explains Rena.

“I cannot travel to any Arab or African country anymore. Even traveling to some European countries is not possible anymore. Let alone ever going back to Egypt where I lived for four years. I am not surprised, though. Justice does not exist in Egypt, nor does freedom of press.”

via “The Egyptian government knew their own secret service was making a huge mistake” – Egyptian Streets.

McCullen: A view from a thousand feet

Of course, there is nothing theoretical about abortion for one in three women and many trans men and gender queer people. Abortion isn’t a symbol. It isn’t an idea. It’s a medical procedure they chose to undergo. And the sidewalk outside the clinic isn’t a metaphor for the American abortion debate or the polarization of public opinion, but an actual sidewalk through which their actual bodies must cross in the face of actual harassment. To treat it as an abstraction is disrespectful to those who know too well the very real impacts of impeded access — and also betrays the Court’s distance from the on-the-ground dangers it now exacerbates. In McCullen we see the Justices looking down on the sidewalks of America’s clinics from a thousand feet. From this great height, every walk through the crowds looks shorter and every death threat sounds softer. It must feel very safe up there.

via McCullen: A view from a thousand feet.