Category Archives: human rights

Eat Drink Better | Healthy recipes, good food: sustainable eats for a healthy lifestyle!

Dutch farmers actually bought in (which is amazing since the Netherlands is Europe’s biggest meat exporter). And in 2013, the ministry announced that between 2007 and 2012, the Netherlands saw a 56% decrease in antibiotic sales to farms without any significant negative impact on efficiency or financial results. Modern Farmer describes the impact on animal and human health:

So has all this attention to detail actually helped animal and human antibiotic resistance? Early data says yes. The 2013 edition of the Netherlands’ annual report on antibiotic usage in animals shows resistant bacteria declining in pigs, veal, chickens and dairy cattle. What will really prove its worth, though, is whether antibiotic-resistant infections decline in humans too.

Evidence shows that there has been no further increase in the number of human infections. But we’ll have to wait to see if the number goes down.

So the Dutch took a risk that paid off — prioritizing animal and human health by redesigning agricultural norms. Will other countries follow their example? Why shouldn’t they?

via Eat Drink Better | Healthy recipes, good food: sustainable eats for a healthy lifestyle!.

Where Killings Are Common, Death of Activist Stuns Benghazi – NYTimes.com

“My people, I beg of you, there are only three hours left,” she wrote at about 5:45 p.m., before the polls closed. She posted pictures of a group of fighters downstairs from her house, and at about 8:45 p.m., she told her sister during a telephone call that her husband was going outside to talk to the men.

Within minutes, Ms. Bugaighis, 50, was dead, having been stabbed, shot and left bleeding in her living room.

via Where Killings Are Common, Death of Activist Stuns Benghazi – NYTimes.com.

The US supreme court’s abortion buffer zone ruling protects a gauntlet of horror | Jessica Valenti | Commentisfree | The Guardian

Imagine trying to walk into a building, trying to get a medical treatment – and someone screams at you. Someone is two inches from your face – two feet from the front door – and that someone is videotaping you, calling you a whore. There’s ketchup poured in the snowbanks around you, made to look like spurted blood. You try to take a step forward, but people block your way, yelling that you’re going to be “mother to a dead baby”. They hold signs in your faces, whisper “murderer” in your ear as you pass. Maybe they shove you.

Don’t believe portrayals to the contrary – from anti-choice activists and the news media – that these kinds of protestors outside abortion clinics are not grandmas praying, or kindly “counselors” who just want to talk reasonably to women. These people wait outside clinics to shame and to harass; they are there to scare.

via The US supreme court’s abortion buffer zone ruling protects a gauntlet of horror | Jessica Valenti | Commentisfree | The Guardian.

The “Simplification” Of The Issues « The Dish

 

The “Simplification” Of The Issues « The Dish.

What Osma bin Laden wanted, it seems to me, was to bait the West into a direct fight on Muslim soil. That immediately elevated the cause of jihad, internationalized it, galvanized a generation of religious fanatics, and, even better for the radicals, broke a country in the heart of the Middle East so that sectarian violence could be exploited for further radicalization. Obama’s great achievement has been to steer the US, so far as possible, away from taking that poisoned bait. Cheney’s achievement was to fall for it, hook, line and sinker.  I say this as someone who also took the bait – with good intentions and in good faith, but blinded by trauma and ignorance. The choice we face is really between those two long-term strategies for surviving the Islamist wave. I favor Obama’s. I favor the future over the past.

The Massachusetts Buffer Zone Protected Me | National Women’s Law Center

This sense of safety hasn’t always been the norm for employees and patients of reproductive health care providers in Massachusetts. Prior to the buffer zone law, some protestors would dress up like Boston Police Department officers to deceive patients into providing their contact information. Some protestors would intentionally block the entrance to the door or stand in front of cars entering the garage. There were cases of protestors photographing or throwing literature inside of patients’ or employees’ cars. Most tragically of all, two employees were murdered at neighboring health centers in Brookline in 1994.

Part of my responsibilities as Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts’ Counseling and Referral Supervisor included overseeing the 60 volunteers who staffed our hotline, some of whom had been volunteering for Planned Parenthood since before I was born. I was often reminded by our volunteers of how lucky I was to have only known the health center after the buffer zone law was passed. When I trained new volunteers, many asked if I felt safe at the health center, and I would explain how the buffer zone worked. They were relieved to know that they would have a safe, clear path to the door every day.

Today, the Supreme Court struck down the Massachusetts buffer zone law that made me, my coworkers, and the patients feel safe and protected. It is incredibly disheartening to learn that my former coworkers and their patients won’t be protected by the same 35-feet that kept me safe. I trust that the staff at Planned Parenthood will continue to do whatever they can to help protect their patients and provide excellent, non-judgmental care, and encourage you to follow them online (find the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund on Facebook and Twitter) for ways to action to replace the buffer zone law.

via The Massachusetts Buffer Zone Protected Me | National Women’s Law Center.

Prominent female activist killed in Libya | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR

Bugaighis was shot in the head Wednesday night, just hours after casting her ballot in Libya’s parliament elections, the state news agency LANA reported. She was rushed to a hospital where she died of her wounds, it said.

Earlier in the day, she had been speaking by phone from her home on a Libyan TV channel about fighting raging near her neighborhood, sparked when militants attacked army troops that had been deploying to protest polling station.

“These are people who want to foil elections,” she told Al-Nabaa network as rattling gunfire interrupted her call. ” Benghazi has been always defiant, and always will be despite the pain and fear. It will succeed.”

In the evening, five gunmen broke into her home, the house’s guard told police, according to the Al-Wasat newspaper. They first asked about her son Wael, then shot the guard in the leg, then broke into the house. The guard said that he heard gunfire from inside.

Bugaighis’s husband, who is a member of the Benghazi municipal council and was also at home at the time, has disappeared since the attack, the paper and other Libyan media said.

Bugaighis had only just come to Benghazi from the capital, Tripoli, especially to cast her ballot in the election, a family friend Hanaa Mohammad told Libya Ahrar TV. She had fled with her family some time back to Jordan because of death threats against them.

via Prominent female activist killed in Libya | News , Middle East | THE DAILY STAR.

Israel demolishes mosque walls in Jerusalem’s Shufat camp | Maan News Agency

Israel rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. It has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes and structures since occupying the West Bank in 1967, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions.

via Israel demolishes mosque walls in Jerusalem’s Shufat camp | Maan News Agency.

vintage everyday: Vintage Photos of Foreigner Women Pose in Kimono Dress

Vintage Photos of Foreigner Women Pose in Kimono Dress – Long history of cultural appropriation. Fad, fancy, thinking its a compliment but OK to marginalize, and later intern and imprison Japanese just because they or their parents were Japanese. In the 1920’s it was walk like an Egyptian.

via vintage everyday: Vintage Photos of Foreigner Women Pose in Kimono Dress.

Looking good over stopping the outbreak!?! RABAT, Morocco: WHO reduces Ebola death toll in Sierra Leone | Health | Macon.com

The World Health Organization on Wednesday announced it was changing the way it reports fatalities from the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone at the request of the government.

Previously, probable and suspected deaths from Ebola were included in the count but from now on, only laboratory confirmed cases will be reported, reducing the death toll in Sierra Leone from 58 to 34 as of Tuesday.

via RABAT, Morocco: WHO reduces Ebola death toll in Sierra Leone | Health | Macon.com.

Peace talks can now be held in Israeli jail? 23 Palestinian members of parliament in Israeli jails | Maan News Agency

Twenty-three Palestinian lawmakers are currently being held in Israeli jails, a majority of whom have been detained in the last two weeks during the Israeli arrest campaign across the West Bank, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said on Wednesday.

Eleven of the 23 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council were detained prior to the campaign, the first of whom was Marwan Barghouthi in 2002.

The two most recently-detained lawmakers were taken on Tuesday night during a raid in Bethlehem.

More than 500 Palestinians have been detained in the last two weeks as part of an Israeli search for three Jewish teenagers who went missing from the Gush Etzion settlement in the West Bank.

Detainees who have been tried and sentenced:

1. Marwan Barghouthi, Ramallah, sentenced to five life sentences.

2. Ahmad Saadat, Ramallah, sentenced to thirty years.

3. Ahmad Atwan, Jerusalem, suspended sentence.

Administrative detainees being held without charge or trial:

1. Mahmoud al-Rimhi, Ramallah.

2. Abduljaber Fuqahaa, Ramallah.

3. Muhammad Jamal al-Natsheh, Hebron.

4. Hatem Qfish, Hebron.

5. Nizar Ramadan, Hebron.

6. Muhammad Badr, Hebron.

7. Muhammad Abu Teir, Jerusalem.

8. Yassir Mansour, Nablus.

Detained during the recent Israeli campaign, some of whom have been sentenced to administrative detention:

1. Aziz Dweik, Hebron.

2. Hassan Youssif, Ramallah.

3. Ahmad Tahtuh, Jerusalem.

4. Abdulrahman Zeidan, Tulkarem.

5. Ibrahim Abu Salem, Jerusalem.

6. Husni al-Burini, Nablus.

7. Azzam Salhab, Hebron.

8. Ahmad Mubarak, Ramallah.

9. Ahmad al-Hajj ali, Nablus.

10. Ayman Daraghmah, Tubas.

11. Khalid Tafish, Bethlehem.

12. Anwar Zboun, Bethlehem.

via 23 Palestinian members of parliament in Israeli jails | Maan News Agency.