Category Archives: human rights

Water Cut-off in Detroit Violates Human Rights, Say Activists | Inter Press Service

“This is unprecedented,” said Maude Barlow, founder of the Blue Planet Project, a group that advocates water as a human right.

“I visited the city and worked with the Detroit People’s Water Board several weeks ago and came away terribly upset,” she told IPS.

“Water bills are regressive, so low-income households pay a disproportionate amount of their income for water service.” — Mary Grant, researcher at Food & Water Watch

She pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly African Americans, are having their water ruthlessly turned off.

Families with children, the elderly and the sick, cannot bathe, flush their toilets or cook in their own homes, she added.

“This is the worst violation of the human right to water I have ever seen outside of the worst slums in the poorest countries in failed states of the global South,” said Barlow, a one-time senior advisor on water to a former President of the U.N. General Assembly.

Last March, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) announced plans to shut off water service for 1,500 to 3,000 customers every week if their water bills were not paid. And on Tuesday, the City Council approved an 8.7-percent water rate increase.

According to a DWSD document, more than 80,000 residential households – in a city of 680,000 people – are in arrears, with thousands of families without water, and thousands more expected to lose access at any moment.

via Water Cut-off in U.S. City Violates Human Rights, Say Activists | Inter Press Service.

Abbas: ‘We will find the missing settlers, get them back and punish those responsible’

The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas declared today that the Palestinian authorities are coordinating with the Israeli authorities to find the three missing Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The security coordinator is trying to protect the Palestinians from a 3rd Intifada.

He made this statement during his speech in the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers that is taking place in Saudi Arabia. He also said that the three missing settlers are humans like the rest of us, and the Palestinian authority is searching for them to take them back to their families. He added that the people responsible will be punished for this operation as the kidnapers are trying to destroy the Palestinian authority.

Abbas said that the security coordination with the Israeli authorities benefits the Palestinians, and that Palestinians should be committed to it as they committed to the Palestinian Unity government.

via Abbas: ‘We will find the missing settlers, get them back and punish those responsible’.

Oil/gas/fracking b4 land/people/animals – Text of H.R. 4866: To reverse the Department of the Interior’s listing of the lesser prairie chicken as

Totally weird – area covered is one that gas and oil developers hope to frack – guess they must think they will be done ruining the land and water by 2020?

Notwithstanding any prior action by the Secretary of the Interior, the lesser prairie chicken shall not be treated as a threatened species or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (16 U.S.C. 1531 et seq.) before January 31, 2020.

via Text of H.R. 4866: To reverse the Department of the Interior’s listing of the lesser prairie chicken as … (Introduced version) – GovTrack.us.

Both sides cry foul over prairie chicken decision – Albuquerque Business First

(

Rep. Pierce has filed a House Bill to take authority over Lesser Prairie Chickens away for USFWS. It’s all about fracking, campaign donations, and trashing the ground water needed for drinking and for crops!)

“I support Chaves County in its decision to stand up to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service against its destructive decision to list the prairie chicken,” Pearce said. “The FWS’s decision to cater to environmental groups and disregard science will devastate New Mexico’s way of life. New Mexicans will pay the price in lost jobs, industry, ranching and oil and gas production. This is a federal government that is out of control. The only way change can occur is when local citizens and their leaders, like those in Chaves County, start standing up and demanding it.”

via Both sides cry foul over prairie chicken decision – Albuquerque Business First.

Who Owns Your Womb? Women Can Get Murder Charge for Refusing C-Sections | The Women’s International Perspective

When most women become pregnant, understandably they believe the choice of how they give birth will remain theirs; whether to deliver vaginally or through cesarean surgery or where to give birth, at home or at a hospital. Decades ago, those decisions were well within the domain of pregnant patients whose reproductive liberty and autonomy interests gained constitutional recognition in the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

After all, whose body is it anyway? But what may have seemed clear-cut decades ago, is now put to the test by doctors and lower courts.

via Who Owns Your Womb? Women Can Get Murder Charge for Refusing C-Sections | The Women’s International Perspective.

Kidnappings put Netanyahu back on offense – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

The kidnapping of the three teenage boys suddenly dominated both the media and the public agenda. And it was with the same rapidity that Netanyahu regained his stature as the responsible adult in the room, and the person with the most diplomatic and security mileage in the government and Cabinet.

In an instant, the kidnapping erased any memory of one of the, politically speaking, worst weeks Netanyahu has had in his current term, if not the worst. His unfocused, emotional plotting to thwart the election of his sworn enemy Reuven Rivlin came crashing down around him, and he was forced to congratulate the newly elected president, though he did so without any show of enthusiasm.

via Kidnappings put Netanyahu back on offense – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Workers At Kum Gang San Allegedly Forced To “Volunteer” As Farm Laborers & Beg For Forgiveness: Gothamist

Kum Gang San restaurant is a mainstay in Manhattan’s Koreatown, open for business 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Its Queens location is a cornerstone of community celebrations in downtown Flushing. Throughout the weekend, weddings and baby showers crowd the banquet hall and private rooms, while diners in the main rooms can enjoy platters of meat cooked on tableside grills, unlimited plates of banchan, or Korean side dishes, and bubbling stone bowls of stew.

But for the restaurant’s waiters and kitchen workers, the hours were often brutal, sometimes extending into 18-hour shifts with 7-day work weeks, for which they received no overtime pay and sometimes not even a break, according to the lawsuit, which was filed last year by eleven former employees.

Tae Ho Kim, a tall, lanky 50-year old who waited tables at the restaurant for 15 years and one of the plaintiffs in the case, did not want to sue at first. Working at Kum Gang San was his first job in New York City, and he had risen to the position of head captain. But he said conditions at the restaurant had become unbearable. “We wanted to have a dialogue with the owner to fix some issues,” Kim said. “But instead of engaging in a conversation, his behavior got worse and worse.”

According to Kim, more than 30 waiters had originally been interested in participating in a lawsuit. But after finding out about the complaint, Kim said owner Ji Sung Yoo called all the waiters into a meeting and threatened to report them to immigration authorities and blacklist them from further employment in the Korean community if they participated. Most of the waiters withdrew. Kim testified through a translator that the owner said he would use all his influence to ensure that Kim would never work in New York again.

via Workers At Kum Gang San Allegedly Forced To “Volunteer” As Farm Laborers & Beg For Forgiveness: Gothamist.

Why not the same in Texas? With Italian migrant centres overflowing, churches open doors to just-arrived Africa migrants

Churches in Palermo have emptied out pews to make space for clean cots and community members are pitching in to cook meals and donate goods. Volunteers from the Catholic charity Caritas greet migrant boats at the port with food, clothes, doctors and even psychologists.

“We’ve substituted the altar with beds,” said the Rev. Rosario Francolino, who has been co-ordinating the reception of 700 Africans at a Palermo church since Sunday. “I think it’s the most beautiful Mass the community could celebrate.”

via With Italian migrant centres overflowing, churches open doors to just-arrived Africa migrants.

Feather in the Cap – One High School Graduate Story to Wear Eagle Feather at Graduation Commencement

The day I received confirmation, that I met all state requirements to participate in the Lemoore High commencement ceremony, I was honored with an eagle feather from my parents, John and Carol Plenty Wolf.

My name is Yareya Keiialani San Nicolas Garcia, nim inyana huyowus Ha’yali (my Taatsi name). Being both Taatsi Yokut & Chamoru Pacific islander, I have always been proud of who I am and where I come from.

Most people don’t understand what an honor it is to receive a feather.

via Feather in the Cap – One High School Graduate Story to Wear Eagle Feather at Graduation Commencement.

[India] With She-Toilets, Chennai shows way in sanitation | WNN – Women News Network

“This is also the first time Chennai Corporation has done a detailed survey and mapping of where public toilets are required and where the public oppose it,” said a senior corporation official. “Earlier the corporation would only ask the zonal engineer where to put up a toilet.” These 348 locations include bus stands, markets and open spaces.

The toilets will come as a relief to women who work outdoors all day such as vendors, construction workers and police officers. “We have to stand on the road for at least five hours while on bandobast duty,” said Leela Sri, a woman constable. “There are very few public toilets that we can use and most of them are filthy.” Leela, who has been on the job for 11 years, said she and her female colleagues are prone to urinary tract infections and fibroids. “If more of these toilets for women come up, the next generation of policewomen need not face such health problems,” she says. Kerala State Women’s Development Corporation recently introduced these toilets . . .

via [India] With She-Toilets, Chennai shows way in sanitation | WNN – Women News Network.