Human Rights

Are Housing Projects Poisoning People?

February 12, 2014 Daniel Ross, www.vice.com Educate! Environment, Food and Agriculture, Human Rights

Acevedo does get food stamps, but in order to pay for rent, electricity, extra food for her children, clothes, gas for her car, and a spreadsheet's worth of daily expenses, she turns to her friends for financial support—all her family live in Mexico. There’s no spare cash for furnishings. She’s exhausted with worry; the dark shadows haunting her face betray countless sleepless nights. But Acevedo’s concerns extend beyond the immediate. An even greater worry to her is that she has been forced to relocate somewhere that potentially poses a major health risk to her and her children. “When I came here, they never said anything about the development project or the contamination," she said. "They kept their mouths closed… and I’m worried for my kids because lead is very dangerous.”

Anti-Drone Activist Kidnapped Due To Testify In Europe

February 12, 2014 Medea Benjamin www.CodePink.org Educate! Drones, Government, Human Rights, Wars and Militarism

In October 2012, I was with a CODEPINK delegation in Pakistan meeting families impacted by US drone strikes. Kareem Khan, a journalist from the tribal area of Waziristan, told us the heartbreaking story of a drone strike that killed his son and brother. Since then, Khan has been seeking justice through the Pakistani courts and organizing other drone strike victims. On February 10, he planned to fly to Europe for meetings with German, Dutch and British parliamentarians to discuss the negative impact drones are having on Pakistan. But days before his trip, in the early hours of the morning on February 5, he was kidnapped from his home in Rawalpindi by 15-20 men in police uniform and plain clothes. He has not been seen since.

VIDEO: Another U.S. Citizen Targeted For Assassination?

February 11, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Criminal Justice and Prisons, Government, Human Rights, Wars and Militarism

Two recent stories that shed new light on how the Obama administration utilizes drones in the war on terror came to light yesterday. First, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, via their new venture First Look revealed that: “According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.” In a related story, the Associated Press reported on the “case of an American citizen and suspected member of al-Qaida who is allegedly planning attacks on U.S. targets overseas underscores the complexities of President Barack Obama's new stricter targeting guidelines for the use of deadly drones.”

Sochi’s Internal Refugees Fight For Compensation

February 11, 2014 Anna Nemtsova, www.thedailybeast.com Educate! Housing, Human Rights

In the shadow of the Winter Games in Sochi, families kicked out of their homes to make way for Olympic construction are desperate for some compensation for their lost lives. Vova’s little eyes gleamed with a mischievous light upon hearing the word “games” and the three-year-old generously offered a visitor the chance to play with his colorful toy cars. He poured heaps of them onto a bed and set about sorting the jumble of tiny vehicles. “Games” was a word that Vova understood when the adults talked in serious conversation, but nobody seemed to be interested in playing with the boy. His grandmother, Lyudmila, was actually sobbing, looking at photographs of the family’s house, which had been demolished by authorities during the recent Olympic construction boom.

911 Is A Joke

February 10, 2014 Kymone Freeman, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Health Care, Human Rights

Medric Cecil Mills, Jr died after being denied medical service by DC Firefighters. On January 25th 77-year old Medric Cecil Mills went into cardiac arrest at a shopping center in Northeast Washington, DC directly across the street from Engine Company 26. Bystanders rushed to the fire station frantically seeking help and were denied and turned away after being advised to simply call 911 by trained, emergency medical personnel on duty. After making the call for an ambulance that never came, again bystanders returned to the nearby fire station and were again denied assistance while Mr. Mills still laid dying on the sidewalk. It wasn’t until minutes later that a police officer, who happened upon the scene, was able to flag down an unassigned ambulance passing by the busy street to transport Mr. Mills to MedStar Washington Hospital Center where he was tragically and possibly avoidably pronounced dead nearly an hour after being denied emergency medical service by trained personnel.

In Illinois Prison, A Hunger Strike Against ‘Inhumanity’

February 9, 2014 Sarah Lazare, www.commondreams.org Resist! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Human Rights, solitar

About a dozen people who are incarcerated at the the state-run Menard Correctional Center are taking part in the hunger strike, which is stretching into its fourth week, amid reports of prison retaliation against the peaceful protest. This includes the beating of hunger striker Armando Velasquez, according to Staughton and Alice Lynd, who have been actively supporting the hunger strike since they were contacted by the incarcerated men. "The conditions here are inhumane & repressive," wrote an anonymous incarcerated person quoted in Solitary Watch, in a letter announcing the hunger strike before its January 15th start date. "So much that we are forced to make a stand as men in righteous indignation."

The U.S. Hypocrisy Over Russia’s Anti-Gay Laws

February 8, 2014 Ian Ayres and William Eskridge, www.washingtonpost.com Educate! Human Rights, LGBTQ

"Eight U.S. states, and several cities and counties, have some version of what we call “no promo homo” provisions. Before the United States condemns the Russian statute’s infringement of free speech and academic freedom, it should recognize that our own republican forms of government have repeatedly given rise to analogous restrictions[…]The underlying ideology of these statutes is the same: Everybody should be heterosexual, and homosexuality is per se bad. This ideology has never rested on any kind of evidence that homosexuality is a bad “choice” that the state ought to discourage. The ideology is a prejudice-laden legacy of a fading era. (In fact, the strategy is daffy: Even if homosexuality were a bad lifestyle choice, state laws are not an effective way to head off such a choice.) Putin has assured the International Olympic Committee that the law is merely symbolic. But in the United States, officially sanctioned anti-gay prejudice has contributed to classroom bullying and to the high level of suicides among gay teens."

Secret, Untested Drug Cocktails Are Leading To Botched Executions

February 8, 2014 Staff, www.democracynow.org Educate! Criminal Justice and Prisons, Death Penalty, Human Rights

"I have seen about 20 executions in Ohio, and this one started out very similar to the others. The chemicals started flowing, and Mr. McGuire turned his head away from his family and appeared to close his eyes and become unconscious. And that’s how they normally go, but this one differed in that he started gasping, as his son described. His stomach was going—compressing and then going out. He clenched his fists. Mainly, it was the deep gasping. I think the attorneys called it "air hunger," and it was almost a choking sound, a snorting sound. And keep in mind that we’re hearing this through glass, so we’re not in the same room, but we’re in the next room through glass, and they were very audible, loud gasps that he was expressing. And it appeared to be he was trying to breathe, and he was struggling in some capacity. Don’t believe he was conscious, have no idea if he was feeling pain, but it was definitely a struggle unlike anything I’d seen in all the executions I’ve witnessed."

Israel Destroying Emergency Shelters

February 8, 2014 Ali Abunimah, www.electronicintifada.net Educate! Human Rights, Israel, Palestine

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has suspended distribution of tents and shelter materials to Palestinian victims of Israeli home demolitions in the occupied West Bank’s Jordan Valley because Israeli occupation forces are habitually destroying or confiscating them. Jon Martin Larsen, ICRC spokesperson for Israel and the occupied territories, told The Electronic Intifada by telephone that his organization would continue to provide emergency supplies including hygiene kits, kitchen sets and mattresses to those made homeless by Israel. “The difference now is that we will not be able to distribute shelter materials such as tents to people affected by house demolitions in the Jordan Valley and that is because we see a pattern of obstacles and confiscations since early 2013 of these tents and materials,” Larsen explained.

Earth Day To May Day Climate Convergence

February 6, 2014 ByStaff, www.globalclimateconvergence.org Resist! Climate Change, Human Rights, Peace

The campaign will highlight the origins and recent history of May Day in the deepening global struggle for worker and immigrant rights. It will bring environmental and climate justice in to the May Day mix, pointing out that working people and immigrants pay a steep price for the economic and health impacts of environmental degradation and fossil fuels. Likewise, climate change hurts working people and the poor, who are most vulnerable to the storms, drought, floods, rising seas and greater food prices that climate change brings. In the spirit of Convergence, activists hope to strengthen both events by bringing Earth Day issues and advocates into the May Day celebration, and May Day concerns and supporters into Earth Day events.

So. Koreans Chain Necks Together, Surrounded By Police

February 2, 2014 Staff, www.revolutionnews.com Resist! Human Rights, Nuclear Energy, South Korea

Korea’s rapid economic growth demands enormous amounts of electricity, and it’s that demand that has met the fierce resistance of the farmers of Miryang, a small city 47 kilometers northwest of Busan. To these mostly elderly farmers, the most visible effect of “development” is not cell phones, flatscreen TVs, or air-conditioning. It is the high-voltage transmission towers that have sprouted along the ridges of their mountain valley. Since October protests against the 765kV Power transmission tower’s have taken place. On Jan 25th Close to three thousand people, including labor and environmental activists from cities throughout South Korea, converged on the small city of Miryang to protest the building of high-voltage power lines connected to a nuclear power plant.

Where Is Labor’s Opposition To Cuts In Food Stamps, Unemployment?

January 31, 2014 Labor Fightback, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Government, Human Rights, Jobs, Labor

On January 29, by a 251-166 margin, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut food stamp funding by $8.6 billion over a 10-year period. 89 Democrats joined 162 Republicans to bring about this result. "They are gutting a program to provide food for hungry people to pay for corporate welfare," said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger. Anti-hunger advocates like Berg say crop insurance expansion would come at the expense of millions of people who depend on food stamps. "This vote is a tragic, heartless and economically counterproductive departure from America's bipartisan history of fighting hunger," Berg said. "Members of Congress who voted for this should be ashamed."

Uzbekistan’s Thin Line Of Human Rights Defenders

January 28, 2014 Staff, www.iwpr.net Resist! Human Rights

The unregistered Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan is frequently approached by people who have run out of other options “We are often the last straw that people who have no rights can clutch at,” the alliance’s head Yelena Urlaeva said. “Human rights defenders in Uzbekistan are a bit like the partisans, for instance when they have to hide in the cotton fields with a camera to document forced labour,” she said. “Sometimes we are the victims of lawless actions ourselves. We are assaulted, arrested, put on trial and thrown in jail.”

People-Centered Human Rights Framework For Social Transformation

January 28, 2014 Ajamu Baraka, www.ajamubaraka.com/ Strategize! Human Rights

However, it is my contention that this view, historically decontextualized and cleansed of the nasty and brutish influences of power, race and ideology, grossly distorts the political character of the human rights project. What is projected as an apolitical, neutral human rights project is instead a partial and—for people suffering from global structures of oppression—politically-limited project and framework. The human rights idea and project is not innocent. It emerged in its modern expression as a contested idea at a historical moment when the assumptions, world-views and social practices of Western, liberal, white supremacist, patriarchal, colonial-capitalist states were dominant. The result was that the human rights framework and methods of practice that emerged and were projected as universal truths were informed by the very specific experiences, needs and world-views of those states and their intellectual elites.

Stealing Roe One Law At A Time

January 24, 2014 Staff, www.socialistworker.org Educate! Abortion Rights, Health Care, Human Rights, Women's Rights

"Forty-one years after Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that made abortion legal, the attacks on reproductive rights are escalating--so much so that, according to a recent study, more legislation restricting abortion has been passed in the last three years than in the decade before that. According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, over the course of 2013, 39 states enacted 141 provisions related to reproductive health and rights. Half of these provisions--70 in 22 states--restricted access to abortion services. Some 205 abortion restrictions went into effect between 2011 and 2013, compared to 189 between 2001 and 2010."

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