Afaq’s Struggles for Justice
Back on 5th November, 2007, when the Lahore High Court was stormed by the police, where hundreds of lawyers and dozens of students and faculty members from LUMS & FAST were peacefully protesting against the unconstitutional steps by then-President Pervez Musharraf, Afaq did something no sane person could have imagined.
When the Police started firing tear gas shells on the protestors (extensive baton charging not being an effective lesson), he started throwing those shells back at the police. A photographer captured the image which was to appear at the title of TIME. Seeing the image, Ralph Nader pointed out that US lawyers should learn a lesson in resistance from Pakistani lawyers.
Afaq, like hundreds of his colleagues at Lahore and thousands at other cities of the country, was detained that day and sent to a prison outside Lahore. He was released after a few days but he didn’t learn the lesson the establishment wanted him to learn.
He took part in all lawyers’ protests afterwards and was one of the ‘vigil keepers’ who were arrested from the official residence of Justice Shahid Siddiqi on 6th December. Afaq was at Aiwan-e-Adal on 10th January, 2008, when the GPO was rocked with a suicide attack. Afaq, like thousands of his colleagues from around Pakistan, participated in the boycott of the PCO judges, which meant loss of income.
Let me come to the point lest it seems that I am writing an obituary.
Afaq is an ordinary person, a mediocre being. What differentiates him from the rest of us is his belief instruggle. A struggle which is not necessarily waged in the air conditioned court rooms, or in the ivory towers of academia (or, for that matter, at the online discussion boards and email lists). He, and his fellows (students, doctors, faculty members, civil society activists) believe that protesting on roads is a question of philosophy – of asserting one’s being – and not necessarily of strategy.
The most important dividend of Afaq’s struggle (ignoring the tear gas shells and detention at prisons) is the satisfaction – that he tried his best when something blatantly wrong was being done to his country. And he, and thousands of brave and determined lawyers of Pakistan, has done us a favor that can never be forgotten.
UN to evacuate Afghanistan staff
Think of a world where rich nations did not fund what was popular but instead collaborated to solve the developing world’s most pressing health needs.
Lawrence Gostin, an Associate Dean and Professor of Global Health at the Georgetown University Law Center, dreams of such a world. He wants to see developed countries, for instance, make available to the rest of the world life-saving vaccines and technologies at affordable prices instead of "hoarding" them to the detriment of the world’s poor.
Speaking at the first International Conference on Realising the Rights to Health and Development for All, held in Hanoi from October 26 to 29, Professor Gostin argued for a new approach to meeting the world’s health needs, calling it a ‘Global Plan for Justice’. Under this scheme and consistent with humanitarian goals, developed countries would allocate 0.25 percent of their Gross National Income for this purpose.
Organised by the University of New South Wales in partnership with Vietnam’s government and Communist Party, the International Conference on Realising the Rights to Health and Development for All, brought together over 260 experts from across Asia and the Pacific, who debated subjects ranging from HIV-prevention to climate change and ethnic minority health.
In an interview with IPS, Prof Gostin, who is also an adviser to the U.S. government and the World Health Organization (WHO) on disaster management, expounded on his advocacy.
IPS: You were introduced before your speech as ‘controversial’, thanks to your approach to global health. You came under criticism after your speech by some participants for not involving human rights enough in your framework.
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Most people don’t think it’s (the Global Plan for Justice) controversial, because it resonates with the social justice agenda and is consistent with the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals]. It brings together human rights, health and development.
They [who criticise plan] don’t think it’s sufficiently connected to human rights. That’s very badly misplaced. If global social justice is inconsistent with human rights, something has gone wrong.
IPS: How does your plan differ from the current Overseas Development Aid (ODA) given by countries?
LG: Enormously. First, it requires a certain level of ODA, which counties are not meeting now. As a matter of magnitude of international development, assistance for health is far too little.
ODA at the moment is purely charity. It’s what governments want to do at their whim. Sometimes what they want to do is important, sometimes it’s a salient issue in media, or they lurch from one thing to the next—[say, from anthrax, small pox, or SARS]. Or it’s related to military political aims, like in Afghanistan. China will do it for natural resources.
Afaq’s Struggles for Justice
Back on 5th November, 2007, when the Lahore High Court was stormed by the police, where hundreds of lawyers and dozens of students and faculty members from LUMS & FAST were peacefully protesting against the unconstitutional steps by then-President Pervez Musharraf, Afaq did something no sane person could have imagined.
When the Police started firing tear gas shells on the protestors (extensive baton charging not being an effective lesson), he started throwing those shells back at the police. A photographer captured the image which was to appear at the title of TIME. Seeing the image, Ralph Nader pointed out that US lawyers should learn a lesson in resistance from Pakistani lawyers.
Afaq, like hundreds of his colleagues at Lahore and thousands at other cities of the country, was detained that day and sent to a prison outside Lahore. He was released after a few days but he didn’t learn the lesson the establishment wanted him to learn.
He took part in all lawyers’ protests afterwards and was one of the ‘vigil keepers’ who were arrested from the official residence of Justice Shahid Siddiqi on 6th December. Afaq was at Aiwan-e-Adal on 10th January, 2008, when the GPO was rocked with a suicide attack. Afaq, like thousands of his colleagues from around Pakistan, participated in the boycott of the PCO judges, which meant loss of income.
Let me come to the point lest it seems that I am writing an obituary.
Afaq is an ordinary person, a mediocre being. What differentiates him from the rest of us is his belief instruggle. A struggle which is not necessarily waged in the air conditioned court rooms, or in the ivory towers of academia (or, for that matter, at the online discussion boards and email lists). He, and his fellows (students, doctors, faculty members, civil society activists) believe that protesting on roads is a question of philosophy – of asserting one’s being – and not necessarily of strategy.
The most important dividend of Afaq’s struggle (ignoring the tear gas shells and detention at prisons) is the satisfaction – that he tried his best when something blatantly wrong was being done to his country. And he, and thousands of brave and determined lawyers of Pakistan, has done us a favor that can never be forgotten.
Lawrence Gostin, an Associate Dean and Professor of Global Health at the Georgetown University Law Center, dreams of such a world. He wants to see developed countries, for instance, make available to the rest of the world life-saving vaccines and technologies at affordable prices instead of "hoarding" them to the detriment of the world’s poor.
Speaking at the first International Conference on Realising the Rights to Health and Development for All, held in Hanoi from October 26 to 29, Professor Gostin argued for a new approach to meeting the world’s health needs, calling it a ‘Global Plan for Justice’. Under this scheme and consistent with humanitarian goals, developed countries would allocate 0.25 percent of their Gross National Income for this purpose.
Organised by the University of New South Wales in partnership with Vietnam’s government and Communist Party, the International Conference on Realising the Rights to Health and Development for All, brought together over 260 experts from across Asia and the Pacific, who debated subjects ranging from HIV-prevention to climate change and ethnic minority health.
In an interview with IPS, Prof Gostin, who is also an adviser to the U.S. government and the World Health Organization (WHO) on disaster management, expounded on his advocacy.
IPS: You were introduced before your speech as ‘controversial’, thanks to your approach to global health. You came under criticism after your speech by some participants for not involving human rights enough in your framework.
LAWRENCE GOSTIN: Most people don’t think it’s (the Global Plan for Justice) controversial, because it resonates with the social justice agenda and is consistent with the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals]. It brings together human rights, health and development.
They [who criticise plan] don’t think it’s sufficiently connected to human rights. That’s very badly misplaced. If global social justice is inconsistent with human rights, something has gone wrong.
IPS: How does your plan differ from the current Overseas Development Aid (ODA) given by countries?
LG: Enormously. First, it requires a certain level of ODA, which counties are not meeting now. As a matter of magnitude of international development, assistance for health is far too little.
ODA at the moment is purely charity. It’s what governments want to do at their whim. Sometimes what they want to do is important, sometimes it’s a salient issue in media, or they lurch from one thing to the next—[say, from anthrax, small pox, or SARS]. Or it’s related to military political aims, like in Afghanistan. China will do it for natural resources.
Tory EU stance will 'castrate' UK
The Conservatives' stance on the EU has been attacked as a "pathetic" move by a French government minister who says it will "castrate" UK influence in Europe.
France's minister for Europe Pierre Lellouche said EU leaders would not help the Tories re-negotiate treaties.
He was responding in the Guardian to David Cameron's vow that "never again" would powers be transferred from the UK to Brussels without a referendum.
He was outlining his new policy after ruling out a Lisbon Treaty referendum.
Mr Cameron said all future treaties would be put to a public vote.
He also promised a sovereignty bill if the Tories win the next election to "lock in" the supremacy of UK laws.
And the Tory leader vowed to repatriate powers on the Charter of Fundamental Rights, employment and criminal law - which would need the agreement of all 27 EU nations.
CIA agents guilty of Italy kidnap
An Italian judge has convicted 23 Americans - all but one of them CIA agents - and two Italian secret agents for the 2003 kidnap of a Muslim cleric.
The agents were accused of abducting Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from Milan and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.
The trial, which began in June 2007, is the first involving the CIA's so-called "extraordinary rendition" programme.
The Obama administration has expressed its disappointment at the convictions.
"We are disappointed by the verdicts," state department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington.
Activist group Human Rights Watch welcomed the verdict, saying it sent "a strong signal of the crimes committed by the CIA in Europe".
Spokeswoman Joanne Mariner said: "For us, this first case puts the war on terror on trial."
( Tsk. I am underwhelmed by perceived repentance : there is none. It isn't 'forward looking' to acknowledge past criminality. )
GM plans to cut 10,000 Opel jobs
General Motors (GM) has confirmed that it plans to cut 10,000 jobs across its European car unit Opel, which includes the Vauxhall brand in the UK.
The announcement comes a day after GM said it was cancelling its deal to sell Opel to Canadian car parts firm Magna.
Unions in Germany said workers would begin walk-outs from Thursday in protest at GM's decision.
The German government, which had backed the sale of Opel, demanded GM repayment of a 1.5bn euro ($2.2bn; £1.3bn) loan.
The 10,000 job cuts which GM now plans is broadly similar to the amount Magna proposed.
Jobless Numbers Loom Even As Economy Makes Gains
Battered Company Says 'No' To Job Cuts
Hypertherm saves money by doing everything in-house that it possibly can. Plus, it puts workers into training or assigns them to teams to rejigger the production line. The goal is to emerge from recession in a better position to compete.
Dick Couch, the company's founder and chief executive officer, sees no tension between looking after the interests of employees and keeping the company afloat.
"Once you have a highly skilled workforce, the last thing you want to do is lay them off," he says. "This isn't altruism. It's good business."
Couch says that if he were making T-shirts, this strategy would fail. High-end products and experienced workers go hand in hand.
Very few firms fit this mold, but Hypertherm is not alone. The granddaddy of the no-layoff companies is Lincoln Electric in Cleveland. The maker of welding systems has been around for well over 100 years. It's a global company with more than $1 billion in sales.
Lincoln Electric CEO John Stropki says people considering this model need to go into it with their eyes wide open.
Read About Other Companies With A No-Layoff Policy
"This doesn't come without additional pressures and challenges for management, and I would say, equally, it doesn't come without additional pressures and challenges for the workforce," he says.
Managers give up the flexibility to hire and fire as they please. Workers give up a guaranteed paycheck. Profit sharing is a big part of the model. When business is good, pay goes up. When it goes down, so does your pay. At Lincoln Electric, the workweek shrank to 32 hours.
Labor journalist Frank Koller just finished writing Spark, a book about no-layoff companies. Koller says this model rubs organized labor the wrong way: They prefer a guaranteed income to a guaranteed job.
"Union leaders were very, very suspicious of this," he says. "They saw this as a tool for exploitation, and there's no question that in some work environments, it probably was."
But Koller says that today, workers at these companies do well. The typical Lincoln Electric assembler can make more than $70,000 per year. Jordan Siegel, an associate professor at the Harvard Business School, says the American economy would benefit if more firms adopted this model of shared gain and shared sacrifice.
Siegel has been doing work in South Korea, where the recession had little impact on unemployment. "There has been this shared sacrifice, people sharing some reductions in compensation, in order to avoid layoffs."
If these overseas and domestic firms are so profitable, why don't more companies jump on board? Siegel says it's mainly because the idea is too different. He hopes the recession prompts more executives to take off the blinders and consider the no-layoff option.
Evidence that the US is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.
One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and to advance their private interests.
nother conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else.
Income inequality in the US is now the most extreme of all countries. The 2008 OECD report, “Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries,” concludes that the US is the country with the highest inequality and poverty rate across the OECD and that since 2000 nowhere has there been such a stark rise in income inequality as in the US. The OECD finds that in the US the distribution of wealth is even more unequal than the distribution of income.
On October 21, 2009, Business Week reported that a new report from the United Nations Development Program concluded that the US ranked third among states with the worst income inequality. As number one and number two, Hong Kong and Singapore, are both essentially city states, not countries, the US actually has the shame of being the country with the most inequality in the distribution of income.
The stark increase in US income inequality in the 21st century coincides with the offshoring of US jobs, which enriched executives with “performance bonuses” while impoverishing the middle class, and with the rapid rise of unregulated OTC derivatives, which enriched Wall Street and the financial sector at the expense of everyone else. Millions of Americans have lost their homes and half of their retirement savings while being loaded up with government debt to bail out the banksters who created the derivative crisis.
Frontline’s October 21 broadcast, “The Warning,” documents how Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt blocked Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, from performing her statutory duties and regulating OTC derivatives.
After the worst crisis in US financial history struck, just as Brooksley Born said it would, a disgraced Alan Greenspan was summoned out of retirement to explain to Congress his unequivocal assurances that no regulation of derivatives was necessary. Greenspan had even told Congress that regulation of derivatives would be harmful. A pathetic Greenspan had to admit that the free market ideology on which he had relied turned out to have a flaw.
Greenspan may have bet our country on his free market ideology, but does anyone believe that Rubin and Summers were doing anything other than protecting the enormous fraud-based profits that derivatives were bringing Wall Street? As Brooksley Born stressed, OTC derivatives are a “dark market.” There is no transparency. Regulators have no information on them and neither do purchasers.
Even after Long Term Capital Management blew up in 1998 and had to be bailed out, Greenspan, Rubin, and Summers stuck to their guns. Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, and a roped-in gullible Arthur Levitt who now regrets that he was the banksters’ dupe, succeeded in manipulating a totally ignorant Congress into blocking the CFTC from doing its mandated job. Brooksley Born, prevented by the public’s elected representatives from protecting the public, resigned. Wall Street money simply shoved facts and honest regulators aside, guaranteeing government inaction and the financial crisis that hit in 2008 and continues to plague our economy today.
Poorer countries make drugs the rich world won't
IF YOU want to do something well, do it yourself. Newly industrialised countries of the "south" are developing cheap treatments for neglected tropical diseases, filling the void left by western drug firms, which focus on diseases of the rich.
The world's poorest people suffer from tropical diseases such as rabies, hookworm and river blindness. Yet few treatments have been developed by big pharma: of 1556 drugs approved between 1975 and 2004, only 21 were for such diseases.
Now the first inventory of drugs developed by small southern companies to tackle diseases of the poor reveals a further 62 treatments for tropical diseases, with 28 already on sale, including a cholera vaccine.
Many are only sold locally, and so could be exported, says Peter Singerof the McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health in Toronto, Canada, and co-author of the inventory in Health Affairs (DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.28.6.1760). "It's a new vein of gold that hasn't been fully mined."
Singer admits that donated drugs from western companies may have helped tackle some neglected diseases, but only on an ad hoc basis. In contrast, southern companies are developing tailored and affordable products. To illustrate potential savings, Singer cites a hepatitis B vaccine developed in India, which though not strictly for a tropical disease, costs just 28 cents per shot compared with $25 in the west.
Physiologists And Microbiologists Find Link Between Sitting And Poor Health
You're probably sitting down right now. Well, by the time you're done reading this, you may see sitting in a whole new way!
"Chair time is an insidious hazard because people haven't been told it's a hazard," Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Ivanhoe.
That's right -- the time you sit in your chair could be keeping your body's fat burning in park! More than 47 million adults in the United States have metabolic syndrome, which causes obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Biomedical researchers from the say the reason so many of us have the condition is because we sit too much!
You're probably sitting down right now. Well, by the time you're done reading this, you may see sitting in a whole new way!
"Chair time is an insidious hazard because people haven't been told it's a hazard," Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., a professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, told Ivanhoe.
That's right -- the time you sit in your chair could be keeping your body's fat burning in park! More than 47 million adults in the United States have metabolic syndrome, which causes obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Biomedical researchers from the say the reason so many of us have the condition is because we sit too much!
Canadians want cellphone driving ban: new study
Research shows using hands-free devices is just as dangerous
Graydon Nicholas visits Salisbury students
Grade 6 students in teacher Debbie Melanson's French immersion class showed the province's first aboriginal Lt.-Gov. some braided sweetgrass and asked if he'd show them how and why the spiritual aide is used.
It didn't take him long to huddle the students into the school parking lot (to avoid the smoke alarms) where an impromptu sweetgrass ceremony took place, complete with lessons on why it is such a spiritual experience for natives.
"It's a great honour to be asked," Nicholas, a Maliseet from Tobique, said of the students' eagerness to learn about, and actually experience, a sweetgrass ceremony.
It was a packed two hours for Nicholas at Salisbury Middle School and JMA Armstrong High School, with recitals, gift exchanges, face-to-face visits with students in the classroom and a school assembly, where Nicholas, a former legal scholar and provincial court judge, shared some of the lessons that life has taught him.
Today's students will likely have many careers, he advised them, so be flexible and work hard because you never know where life's path will lead.
"You're looking at a guy who's tried at least six different professions -- so far," he told the assembly.
Someone saw something in him that they thought was special and helped him along, and someone similar will do the same for you, he told the students.
While touring classrooms, he stopped to quiz Grade 11 art student Kathleen Embree on the piece she was working on as well as fellow student Veronica Adams, who were both surprised and delighted that the Queen's representative in Canada would be curious about the media they were using to embellish their paintings.
The likely consequences of anti-Semitism
( In which anti-Semitism towards Palestinians [ Biblically Samaritans ] predictably gets lost in the shuffle.)
Gene Steinberg and David Biedny celebrate the life of Fortean/science-fiction writer Mac Tonnies on the November 1st, 2009 Paracast with guests Greg Bishop, Patrick Huyghe, Paul Kimball and Nick Redfern, people who were close friends or worked with Tonnies on various projects.
A very touching send-off for Tonnies.
Somehow, I have to think that in the many Universes of the Multi-verse, Mac got up that Monday morning as normal and went to work as if nothing happened, still thinking about publishing his book.
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.blubrry.com/paranormal/www.theparacast.com/podcasts/paracast_091101.mp3
___
Western militaries have been searching for a technological edge against whatever enemy-of-the-decade we happen to be fighting against for the past sixty-five years. Power supplies happen to be part of that equation since if western militaries can lower the incidences of refueling airborn and ground fighting machines, that means they can spend more time fighting the ‘enemy.’
Enter Project Kugelblitz.
A very touching send-off for Tonnies.
Somehow, I have to think that in the many Universes of the Multi-verse, Mac got up that Monday morning as normal and went to work as if nothing happened, still thinking about publishing his book.
http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/media.blubrry.com/paranormal/www.theparacast.com/podcasts/paracast_091101.mp3
___
Western militaries have been searching for a technological edge against whatever enemy-of-the-decade we happen to be fighting against for the past sixty-five years. Power supplies happen to be part of that equation since if western militaries can lower the incidences of refueling airborn and ground fighting machines, that means they can spend more time fighting the ‘enemy.’
Enter Project Kugelblitz.
The difference a few years makes to open source
Linux, for its part, struggled to get noticed in data centers back in 2003. It has since becomeessential, mission-critical infrastructure across the Global 2000 ranking of public companies
We've come a long way.
This progress reflects itself in the job market, where Linux-related jobs have seen a 6 percent rise in 2009 alone, while Windows-related jobs have plunged by 8 percent, according to data from Dice.com.
But it's also evident in enterprises' willingness--even eagerness--to discuss open-source adoption plans. Virgin America CIO Ravi Simhambhatla tells The Register that his need to do more with less drove the company to adopt open source and suggests that the open-source philosophy is a positive, disruptive force:
Our company doesn't need just another IT team, the more and more we get entrenched in the...way of doing things the less and less room we will make for ourselves to be innovative.
In 2004, when I was trying to find an IT executive to speak at OSBC, it was a lost cause. No one wanted to paint a legal bull's-eye on themselves for SCO or Microsoft. Today, company executives line up to talk up how they're differentiating through open source.
Open source has "arrived," and the signs are everywhere, from the U.S. Defense Department's efforts to boost its open-source adoption further to patent-rich Qualcomm's foray into open source.
Open source is no longer a question of "why" but rather one of "how." It's the way the industry does business, and the way it does development.
Linux, for its part, struggled to get noticed in data centers back in 2003. It has since becomeessential, mission-critical infrastructure across the Global 2000 ranking of public companies
We've come a long way.
This progress reflects itself in the job market, where Linux-related jobs have seen a 6 percent rise in 2009 alone, while Windows-related jobs have plunged by 8 percent, according to data from Dice.com.
But it's also evident in enterprises' willingness--even eagerness--to discuss open-source adoption plans. Virgin America CIO Ravi Simhambhatla tells The Register that his need to do more with less drove the company to adopt open source and suggests that the open-source philosophy is a positive, disruptive force:
Our company doesn't need just another IT team, the more and more we get entrenched in the...way of doing things the less and less room we will make for ourselves to be innovative.
In 2004, when I was trying to find an IT executive to speak at OSBC, it was a lost cause. No one wanted to paint a legal bull's-eye on themselves for SCO or Microsoft. Today, company executives line up to talk up how they're differentiating through open source.
Open source has "arrived," and the signs are everywhere, from the U.S. Defense Department's efforts to boost its open-source adoption further to patent-rich Qualcomm's foray into open source.
Open source is no longer a question of "why" but rather one of "how." It's the way the industry does business, and the way it does development.
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