French energy giant accused of profiting as new testimony gives shocking insight into junta's labour regimeThe French energy giant Total is at the centre of allegations that Burmese villagers are being used as forced labour to help support a huge gas pipeline that is earning the country's military regime hundreds of millions of dollars. Testimony from villagers and former soldiers gathered by human rights workers suggests that Burmese soldiers, who provide security for the Yadana pipeline on behalf of Total, are forcing thousands of people to work portering, carrying wood and repairing roads in the pipeline area. They have also been forced to build police stations and barracks.One villager, identified pseudonymously as Htay Win Oo, told researchers from the Thailand-based human rights group EarthRights International (ERI): "Since early 2009 I've [witnessed] Burmese soldiers ... that are stationed near our village ask our village to build a new police camp. The soldiers ordered villagers to build a new camp in late March. The land where they set up the new camp belongs to local villagers ... the soldiers ordered villagers to help build it. Villagers had to cut bamboo, wood, and leaves for the building and at the same time they had to build it."
The French energy giant Total is at the centre of allegations that Burmese villagers are being used as forced labour to help support a huge gas pipeline that is earning the country's military regime hundreds of millions of dollars.
Testimony from villagers and former soldiers gathered by human rights workers suggests that Burmese soldiers, who provide security for the Yadana pipeline on behalf of Total, are forcing thousands of people to work portering, carrying wood and repairing roads in the pipeline area. They have also been forced to build police stations and barracks.
One villager, identified pseudonymously as Htay Win Oo, told researchers from the Thailand-based human rights group EarthRights International (ERI): "Since early 2009 I've [witnessed] Burmese soldiers ... that are stationed near our village ask our village to build a new police camp. The soldiers ordered villagers to build a new camp in late March. The land where they set up the new camp belongs to local villagers ... the soldiers ordered villagers to help build it. Villagers had to cut bamboo, wood, and leaves for the building and at the same time they had to build it."
KABUL -- Off the dust-coated Kote Sangi road in the Afghan capital stands a worn beige sign on stilts with blue painted letters advertising the Women's World Market.Behind the sign, however, neither a market nor any women are to be seen. Instead, what six months ago was a darkened shopping mall with few open stores and even fewer female customers is now a bustling cement shop filled with men searching for construction supplies. The Women's World Market, which opened in 2007 to donor fanfare, was designed to give women the opportunity to own their own shops, earn income and learn about business in a secure, women-only environment. But its out-of-the-way location -- in a western Kabul district best known for selling construction materials -- meant store owners had little neighborhood foot traffic to draw upon. This problem, coupled with high prices and a shortage of distinctive products on offer, meant the mall never caught on with Afghan customers.
Behind the sign, however, neither a market nor any women are to be seen.
Instead, what six months ago was a darkened shopping mall with few open stores and even fewer female customers is now a bustling cement shop filled with men searching for construction supplies.
The Women's World Market, which opened in 2007 to donor fanfare, was designed to give women the opportunity to own their own shops, earn income and learn about business in a secure, women-only environment. But its out-of-the-way location -- in a western Kabul district best known for selling construction materials -- meant store owners had little neighborhood foot traffic to draw upon. This problem, coupled with high prices and a shortage of distinctive products on offer, meant the mall never caught on with Afghan customers.
Rehashed legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demandsAfghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work."It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.
Afghanistan has quietly passed a law permitting Shia men to deny their wives food and sustenance if they refuse to obey their husbands' sexual demands, despite international outrage over an earlier version of the legislation which President Hamid Karzai had promised to review.
The new final draft of the legislation also grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers, and requires women to get permission from their husbands to work.
"It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying 'blood money' to a girl who was injured when he raped her," the US charity Human Rights Watch said.
But we knew this already. The Taleban swept to power in the 1990's because the US/Pakistan/Saudi-supported Muyahedeen had established an oppressive islamist regime. And those warlords then became our allies the Northern Alliance. Already in 2001 when Laura Bush was trotted out to sell the Afghan invasion as a women-liberating operation we knew it was bullshit, and for exactly this reason. The peak-to-trough part of the business cycle is an outlier. Carnot would have died laughing.
"Mission Accomplished" "We've always been at war with EastAsia" "You can't make omelettes without breaking eggs" "It's definitely worth it" In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Egyptian fishermen on two boats captured four months ago by Somali pirates have escaped from their captors, officials say. Police information indicated that two Egyptian fishing boats, held off the coast in Somalia's breakaway Puntland region, broke free on Thursday after overpowering the pirates holding them. There were also unconfirmed reports that some of the pirates had been killed. Authorities in Puntland said the fishermen had been arrested, and their boats seized, by local security forces in April for illegal offshore activities. It was not clear how many people were on board the boats during Thursday's getaway, although some reports suggested the presence of at least 30 fishermen.
Egyptian fishermen on two boats captured four months ago by Somali pirates have escaped from their captors, officials say.
Police information indicated that two Egyptian fishing boats, held off the coast in Somalia's breakaway Puntland region, broke free on Thursday after overpowering the pirates holding them.
There were also unconfirmed reports that some of the pirates had been killed.
Authorities in Puntland said the fishermen had been arrested, and their boats seized, by local security forces in April for illegal offshore activities.
It was not clear how many people were on board the boats during Thursday's getaway, although some reports suggested the presence of at least 30 fishermen.
One prison was in a renovated building on a busy street in Bucharest, Romania. Another was in Morocco. A third was on the outskirts of another former Eastern bloc city.The prisoners were moved back and forth and they were kept in isolated cells, often in freezing conditions, he said.There were non slip floors and wooden walls which detainees were slammed against. They also used the waterboarding torture technique.
One prison was in a renovated building on a busy street in Bucharest, Romania. Another was in Morocco. A third was on the outskirts of another former Eastern bloc city.
The prisoners were moved back and forth and they were kept in isolated cells, often in freezing conditions, he said.
There were non slip floors and wooden walls which detainees were slammed against. They also used the waterboarding torture technique.
' Just outside the main gate to Bagram airfield, a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan, sits a series of small makeshift shops known by locals as the Bagram Bazaar. For Afghans, it is the place to buy American goods, but the stalls that make up the heart of the bazaar are also well known for what they provide American soldiers stationed at Bagram. Walking through the bazaar it takes less than 10 minutes for a vendor in his early 20s to step out and ask, "You want whiskey?" "No, heroin," I tell him. He ushers me into his store with a smile. The shop is small, 9 feet wide by 14 feet deep, and dark. The walls at the front are lined with dusty cans of soda, padlocks and miscellaneous beauty supplies. As we enter, a teenager is visible at the back, seated in a chair next to a collection of American military knives and flashlights. The shopkeeper speaks to him in Dari. The teen stands and heads for the door, where he stops and asks my Afghan driver a question. My driver translates, "He wants to know how much you want? Twenty, 30, 50 dollars' worth?" From past experience, for I have arranged this same transaction a dozen times in a dozen different Bagram Bazaar shops, I know that the $30 bag will contain enough pure to bring hundreds of dollars on the streets of any American city. Afghanistan, after all, is the source of 90 percent of the world's heroin. I say 30 and the teen jogs off. The true extent of the heroin problem among American soldiers now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is unknown. At Bagram, according to a written statement provided by a spokesperson for the base, Army Maj. Chris Belcher, the "Military Police receive few reports of alcohol or drug issues."
... A major study that the United Nations released in April, authored by leading Russian experts, projected that Russia would lose at least 11 million more people by 2025. Another U.N.-sponsored report said last year that the population could fall to as low as 100 million in 2050.That report cited a recent improvement in fertility but cautioned that, "while these favorable trends may last another five or six years, all recent forecasts . . . predict that Russia's population decline will only intensify.""There's a risk that in the most negative situation, Russia will stop existing as a state," said Olga Isupova, a senior demographic researcher at the Higher School of Economics, a leading private Russian university in Moscow. <...> The talk of alcoholism isn't confined to handwringing clergymen and small-town doctors. A study published this June examined three Russian industrial cities with typical mortality trends and found that during the 1990s, more than half of the deaths of those aged 15 to 54 were alcohol-related. The findings, authored by a blue-ribbon panel of experts including representatives of the Russian cancer research center and the University of Oxford, suggest that Russia is drinking itself to death. ...
... A major study that the United Nations released in April, authored by leading Russian experts, projected that Russia would lose at least 11 million more people by 2025. Another U.N.-sponsored report said last year that the population could fall to as low as 100 million in 2050.
That report cited a recent improvement in fertility but cautioned that, "while these favorable trends may last another five or six years, all recent forecasts . . . predict that Russia's population decline will only intensify."
"There's a risk that in the most negative situation, Russia will stop existing as a state," said Olga Isupova, a senior demographic researcher at the Higher School of Economics, a leading private Russian university in Moscow. <...>
The talk of alcoholism isn't confined to handwringing clergymen and small-town doctors. A study published this June examined three Russian industrial cities with typical mortality trends and found that during the 1990s, more than half of the deaths of those aged 15 to 54 were alcohol-related.
The findings, authored by a blue-ribbon panel of experts including representatives of the Russian cancer research center and the University of Oxford, suggest that Russia is drinking itself to death. ...
