Tuesday, 17 January 2017
Nigerian air force kills 50 in air strike on refugee camp: MSF
Nigeria's air force killed 50 people and injured 120 in an air strike on a refugee camp in the northeast on Tuesday, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said. The military said the strike had targeted Boko Haram.
MSF said the strike occurred in Rann in Borno state, the epicenter of the jihadist group's seven-year-old bid to create an Islamic caliphate. Regional military commander General Lucky Irabor located it at Kala Balge, a district including Rann.
Irabor, who said it was too early to determine the cause of the mistake, told journalists an unknown number of civilians had been killed, adding that humanitarian workers from MSF and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were injured.
"MSF teams have seen 120 wounded and 50 dead following the bombing," said Charlotte Morris, a spokeswoman for the medical charity. "Our medical and surgical teams in Cameroon and Chad are ready to treat wounded patients. We are in close contact with our teams, who are in shock following the event."
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nigeria-security-idUSKBN1512KY
Italy sentences two former South American leaders to life in prison for Operation Condor murders
A Rome court on Tuesday handed down eight life sentences for the murder of 23 Italian citizens in a conspiracy, known as Operation Condor, in which South American dictatorships hunted down and killed thousands of dissidents in the 1970s and 1980s.
It is the first time an Italian court has ruled a conspiracy existed between the governments of Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil and Bolivia to help find and assassinate each others' political opponents.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-italy-murder-condor-idUSKBN1512XR
Tuesday, 10 January 2017
European Court of Human Rights upholds fines on Swiss Muslim parents who refused mixed swimming lessons for daughters.
The European Court of Human Rights upheld a decision of a Swiss court
backing fines on Muslim parents who refused to allow their daughters to
take part in mixed swimming lessons on the basis of their religion.
The parents, both Turkish-Swiss dual nationals, appealed to the court over a fine handed down by education authorities after they declined to send two of their daughters to mixed swimming lessons.
They said that the requirement, imposed by the school up until the age of puberty as part of its physical education curriculum, violated their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion enshrined in article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
While the court acknowledged that the requirement was an interference with the freedom of religion, it ruled that the interference represented a "legitimate aim" to protect foreign pupils from social exclusion.
It said that schools played an important role in encouraging social integration, especially regarding children of foreign origin.
It also noted that the authorities in Basel, Switzerland, had tried to reach a compromise with the parents, including allowing the girls to wear burkinis for the lessons.
The court also ruled that the fine imposed on the parents, of 350 Swiss francs ($345) each per child, totalling 1,400 francs, was proportionate to the aim.
The European Court of Human Rights was established to oversee the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted by the 47-member Council of Europe.
The court is not a European Union institution.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/european-court-swiss-muslim-girls-swim-boys-170110111956446.html
The parents, both Turkish-Swiss dual nationals, appealed to the court over a fine handed down by education authorities after they declined to send two of their daughters to mixed swimming lessons.
They said that the requirement, imposed by the school up until the age of puberty as part of its physical education curriculum, violated their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion enshrined in article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
While the court acknowledged that the requirement was an interference with the freedom of religion, it ruled that the interference represented a "legitimate aim" to protect foreign pupils from social exclusion.
It said that schools played an important role in encouraging social integration, especially regarding children of foreign origin.
It also noted that the authorities in Basel, Switzerland, had tried to reach a compromise with the parents, including allowing the girls to wear burkinis for the lessons.
The court also ruled that the fine imposed on the parents, of 350 Swiss francs ($345) each per child, totalling 1,400 francs, was proportionate to the aim.
The European Court of Human Rights was established to oversee the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted by the 47-member Council of Europe.
The court is not a European Union institution.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/european-court-swiss-muslim-girls-swim-boys-170110111956446.html
Saturday, 7 January 2017
Namibians sue Germany in U.S. over early-1900s genocide
Descendants of the Herero and Nama people from what is now Namibia are suing Germany in the United States over a genocide carried out by German colonial troops in the early 1900s, in which more than 100,000 people were killed.
According to a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Germany has excluded the plaintiffs from talks with Namibia on the matter, and has publicly said any settlement will not include reparations to victims' families, even if compensation is awarded to Namibia itself.
Some historians view what occurred as the 20th century's first genocide, and a 1985 United Nations report said the "massacre" of Hereros qualified as a genocide.
http://www.reuters.com/article/germany-namibia-genocide-lawsuit-idUSKBN14Q1P2
Thursday, 8 December 2016
Welcome to the age of anger
In the hopeful years that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in
1989, the universal triumph of liberal capitalism and democracy seemed
assured; free markets and human rights would spread around the world and
lift billions from poverty and oppression. In many ways, this dream has
come true: we live in a vast, homogenous global market, which is more
literate, interconnected and prosperous than at any other time in
history.
And yet we find ourselves in an age of anger, with authoritarian leaders manipulating the cynicism and discontent of furious majorities. What used to be called “Muslim rage”, and identified with mobs of brown-skinned men with bushy beards, is suddenly manifest globally, among saffron-robed Buddhist ethnic-cleansers in Myanmar, as well as blond white nationalists in Germany. Violent hate crimes have blighted even the oldest of parliamentary democracies, with the murder of the MP Jo Cox by a British neo-Nazi during the venomous campaign for Brexit. Suddenly, as the liberal thinker Michael Ignatieff recently wrote: “Enlightenment humanism and rationalism” can no longer adequately “explain the world we’re living in.”
The largely Anglo-American intellectual assumptions forged by the cold war and its jubilant aftermath are an unreliable guide to today’s chaos – and so we must turn to the ideas of an earlier era of volatility. It is a moment for thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, who warned in 1915 that the “primitive, savage and evil impulses of mankind have not vanished in any individual”, but are simply waiting for the opportunity to show themselves again. Certainly, the current conflagration has brought to the surface what Friedrich Nietzsche called “ressentiment” – “a whole tremulous realm of subterranean revenge, inexhaustible and insatiable in outbursts.”
Yet a mechanistic and materialist way of conceiving human actions has become entrenched, in part because economics has become the predominant means of understanding the world. A view that took shape in the 19th century – that there is “no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest” – has become orthodoxy once again in an intellectual climate that views the market as the ideal form of human interaction and venerates technological progress and the growth of GDP. All of this is part of the rigid contemporary belief that what counts is only what can be counted and that what cannot be counted – subjective emotions – therefore does not.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/08/welcome-age-anger-brexit-trump?CMP=fb_gu
And yet we find ourselves in an age of anger, with authoritarian leaders manipulating the cynicism and discontent of furious majorities. What used to be called “Muslim rage”, and identified with mobs of brown-skinned men with bushy beards, is suddenly manifest globally, among saffron-robed Buddhist ethnic-cleansers in Myanmar, as well as blond white nationalists in Germany. Violent hate crimes have blighted even the oldest of parliamentary democracies, with the murder of the MP Jo Cox by a British neo-Nazi during the venomous campaign for Brexit. Suddenly, as the liberal thinker Michael Ignatieff recently wrote: “Enlightenment humanism and rationalism” can no longer adequately “explain the world we’re living in.”
The largely Anglo-American intellectual assumptions forged by the cold war and its jubilant aftermath are an unreliable guide to today’s chaos – and so we must turn to the ideas of an earlier era of volatility. It is a moment for thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, who warned in 1915 that the “primitive, savage and evil impulses of mankind have not vanished in any individual”, but are simply waiting for the opportunity to show themselves again. Certainly, the current conflagration has brought to the surface what Friedrich Nietzsche called “ressentiment” – “a whole tremulous realm of subterranean revenge, inexhaustible and insatiable in outbursts.”
Yet a mechanistic and materialist way of conceiving human actions has become entrenched, in part because economics has become the predominant means of understanding the world. A view that took shape in the 19th century – that there is “no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest” – has become orthodoxy once again in an intellectual climate that views the market as the ideal form of human interaction and venerates technological progress and the growth of GDP. All of this is part of the rigid contemporary belief that what counts is only what can be counted and that what cannot be counted – subjective emotions – therefore does not.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/08/welcome-age-anger-brexit-trump?CMP=fb_gu
Saturday, 3 December 2016
Italy votes for new constitution
If people vote "yes", there will be a change to Italy's
bicameral parliament of two chambers, the Chamber of Deputies and the
senate. They currently have equal powers and are filled with directly
elected lawmakers.
If the reform moves forward, the senate would lose much of its power. Instead of the current 315 senators, there will be 100, and rather than being directly elected, they will be selected by regional assemblies.
The reform would dissolve Italy's 110 provinces, Italy's second-level administrative divisions - considered expensive and redundant - while municipalities, metropolitan cities and regions would remain.
The central government would take back some of the prerogatives of the regions, like managing transport and infrastructure and regulating the supply of key energy resources.
Carlo Fusaro, a prominent constitutionalist, said that, if approved, government institutions will become more efficient, legislative procedures will be streamlined and the regions will be given better representation in parliament.
As a result, the country's governability will improve, and future governments will be able to implement those economic reforms that are essential to restructure the country's battered economy.
"Italy has stopped growing; its productivity is one of the lowest in Europe and the country is highly indebted. We badly need structural and quality reforms within reasonable timeframes," he told Al Jazeera. "Italy is functioning on emergency mode with a weak government forced to act by decrees … Too many veto-players jeopardise policymaking at a time when the country needs both efficient institutions and governability."
The reform would put an end to Italy's unique anomaly of a "doubler senate", a chamber that has the same functions as the Chamber of Deputies, and often vetoes or slows down the approval of key legislation.
Today tens of legislative proposals passed by the lower chamber wait to be approved by the Senate; some take more than two years.
Supporters of the reform say such concerns are baseless.
"I can hardly see how a strong executive can be a problem in a country that had 63 governments in 70 years," said Guido Crainz, a political scientist teaching history at Teramo University, who has published extensively on the subject.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/12/italy-votes-constitution-political-turmoil-161203103657041.html
If the reform moves forward, the senate would lose much of its power. Instead of the current 315 senators, there will be 100, and rather than being directly elected, they will be selected by regional assemblies.
The reform would dissolve Italy's 110 provinces, Italy's second-level administrative divisions - considered expensive and redundant - while municipalities, metropolitan cities and regions would remain.
The central government would take back some of the prerogatives of the regions, like managing transport and infrastructure and regulating the supply of key energy resources.
Carlo Fusaro, a prominent constitutionalist, said that, if approved, government institutions will become more efficient, legislative procedures will be streamlined and the regions will be given better representation in parliament.
As a result, the country's governability will improve, and future governments will be able to implement those economic reforms that are essential to restructure the country's battered economy.
"Italy has stopped growing; its productivity is one of the lowest in Europe and the country is highly indebted. We badly need structural and quality reforms within reasonable timeframes," he told Al Jazeera. "Italy is functioning on emergency mode with a weak government forced to act by decrees … Too many veto-players jeopardise policymaking at a time when the country needs both efficient institutions and governability."
The reform would put an end to Italy's unique anomaly of a "doubler senate", a chamber that has the same functions as the Chamber of Deputies, and often vetoes or slows down the approval of key legislation.
Today tens of legislative proposals passed by the lower chamber wait to be approved by the Senate; some take more than two years.
Supporters of the reform say such concerns are baseless.
"I can hardly see how a strong executive can be a problem in a country that had 63 governments in 70 years," said Guido Crainz, a political scientist teaching history at Teramo University, who has published extensively on the subject.
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/12/italy-votes-constitution-political-turmoil-161203103657041.html
Ato Unilateral (Protesto) China lodges protest after Trump call with Taiwan president
Protesto => Ato Unilateral - China x EUA
China lodged a diplomatic protest on Saturday after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump spoke by phone with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, but blamed the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own for the "petty" move.
The 10-minute telephone call with Taiwan's leadership was the first by a U.S. president-elect or president since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of "one China".
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-taiwan-idUSKBN13R2NT
China lodged a diplomatic protest on Saturday after U.S. President-elect Donald Trump spoke by phone with President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, but blamed the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own for the "petty" move.
The 10-minute telephone call with Taiwan's leadership was the first by a U.S. president-elect or president since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of "one China".
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-taiwan-idUSKBN13R2NT
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