Romney family member offers example of courage, human values

Carol Forsloff---

[caption id="attachment_22259" align="alignleft" width="264"] Mitt Romeny[/caption]

While members of the media seem to treat politicians as sterotypes and targets for derision often what is overlooked is a human factor of what they do that is good and exemplary, like a Romney family member's own example of a profile of courage.

Mitt Romney was mocked for a photo related to his adopted, African American grandson during his election campaign against Barack Obama for the Presidency.  One of the news commentators of MSNBC, Melissa Harris Perry made fun of a photo of the Romney family shown with the newest family member, an African American child. She later apologized, and Mitt Romney accepted the apology. But Harris Perry might well have been advised to know the Romney family history before casting aspersions on character.

At a time when the Mormon church struggled with its endogenous racial discrimination represented by the church interpretation of the story in the Book of Genesis of Cain`s killing of his brother Abel came that dramatic example of that Romney family courage. The church`s interpretation of God`s punishment was the black skin assigned to Cain so that people forevermore would recognize the skin color and remember it as negative, especially given the further interpretation that God also cast Cain aside and directed he be separated from his brethren. The doctrine was used to justify slavery during America`s period of slavery and segregation. But family patriarch, George Romney separated himself from the segregationist mindset in his compassion for a civil rights worker from his state who was shot and killed as she was in the South helping voter registration of African Americans.

Viola Liuzzo was a mother of several children who went on that mission to work with other civil rights workers and was murdered by Ku Klux Klan members while driving on a highway with 19-year old Lerot Moton following one of those voter registration events. The violent hilling of Liuzzo came on the heels of the famous march on Selma in 1965, where television images showed violent attacks by white citizens and police on the civil rights workers in the march.

George Romney responded passionately to the violent killing of Liuzzo by declaring a day of mourning and affirming his commitment to the rights of all people, regardless of color. This advocacy was in direct contrast to Mormon practice at the time, as he joined other political figures in reminding people of all political persuasions that the United States doctrines of equality must umbrella everyone.

So while media folk often relish poking fun at politicians in sometimes cruel ways, it might be good to remember those examples of the good they do, just as we need to shine a light on anyone who offers an example of humanitarian justice.

ACLU raises concerns about racial profiling in Arizona

[caption id="attachment_6526" align="alignleft" width="300"] Judge's tools[/caption]

Leanne Jenkins---Racial profiling continues to be an issue that plagues different parts of the country, and some law enforcement can be guilty of using stereotypes in their work, leading to arrests of innocent persons, as the ACLU claims happens far too often in Arizona.

In a press release a major law firm highlights the fact that there are those innocent persons charged with crimes merely because of the color of their skin or their nationalities. A recent case of a 64-year-old former firefighter from Surprise, Arizona who was arrested for drunk driving despite the fact that he had no alcohol in his blood. When the man was pulled over by police, he explained that the redness of his eyes was due to swimming laps at a recreational pool, but nevertheless he was taken to the police station, where he passed the drunk driving test and yet was still given a ticket for driving drunk. The man is African American.

The American Civil Liberties Union is concerned about Arizona's law, SB 1070, that requires police to ask papers requiring evidence of American citizenship or immigration status if they have suspicion that an individual may be in the country illegally. This can lead to false arrests maintains the ACLU.

Racial profiling can have significant legal consequences, where an offense can lead to lengthy prison terms. At the same time, attorneys suggest that individuals in Arizona who believe they have been falsely arrested for something like DUI should dispute the charges because even for a first offense the fines and penalties can be considerable.

Baha'is report Iran's "grim picture" of human rights abuses

[caption id="attachment_9844" align="alignleft" width="252"] Baha'i principles[/caption]

Carol Forsloff---The Baha'i Faith is a world religion with origins in Iraq and Iran, but it is not an Eastern philosophy, as it espouses views alien to Iran's dominant themes of repression.  The following news article received directly to this journalist reveals the serious problems members of this religion face in simply trying to practice the principles of freedom of religion and expression in a country where freedom is suppressed and punished.

(BWNS) – Iran's human rights record continued to display "many negative trends" last year, according to a US government spokesman.

Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, Michael H. Posner, described the current situation as "a very grim picture."

Speaking at the press briefing on the 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Mr. Posner noted – among other abuses in Iran –intolerance of dissent, restrictions on freedom of speech, unfair trials, and extensive use of the death penalty.

He also particularly highlighted the 20-year prison sentences given to each of Iran's seven former Baha'i leaders. "It is a human rights situation that is very disturbing, and we'll continue to call it out," he said.

The 2011 annual report, released last Thursday 24 May, devoted some 77 pages to the situation in Iran, detailing a continued "crack down on women's rights activists, ethnic minority rights activists, student activists, religious minorities, and environmental activists" – including members of the Baha'i Faith.

View the full report here.

One section describes, for example, how the constitution in Iran allows the government to seize property acquired "in a manner not in conformity with Islamic law" and how this law has been used to harass religious minorities, particularly Baha'is.

The annual Human Rights Reports assess each country's situation against universal human rights standards. Their findings inform U.S. policymakers and serve as a reference for other governments, international institutions, non-governmental organizations and other interested individuals.

Launching the report, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, "These reports, which the United States Government has published for nearly four decades, make clear to governments around the world: We are watching and we are holding you accountable. And they make clear to citizens and activists everywhere: You are not alone. We are standing with you."

CISPA: Another threat to the free Internet and more

Samantha Torrence -  If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That seems to be the motto of the American Congress at least no one can accuse them of being unmotivated, but is their motivation well directed? The American people seem to think not when it comes to the unending assault on Internet freedom who are saying loud and clear that they want none of it. So if the American people do not approve of the onslaught of legislation meant to regulate the Internet then who is Congress trying to impress?

CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is yet another form of internet security legislation like SOPA and PIPA. What sets CISPA apart is the fact that it is even more intrusive inside and outside of the internet. This peice of legislation should just be renamed "Big Brother" for all the information it allows the government to collect on you. Again citizens on the left and the right of the political spectrum are coming together against this budding law, and that should be enough to get the attention of American representatives who thrive on the divide and conquer tactic.

Authors of the bill defend their creation as an effort to protect government and private information systems and technology as well as research and developement from theft or destruction. Some amendments have been written to include provisions for punishments as well as permission of private parties to sue the government or private agencies that misuse information obtained by the bill. CISPA , if passed, would allow access to some of your most private information as long as it is connected to the internet in some way. That would include banking information but also medical information. Any information that is deemed useful in the name of national security to protect from a threat.
Some companies that opposed SOPA and PIPA are now on the side of CISPA, one of those companies being Facebook. The ACLU, however, has taken up arms against the legislation as well as many other groups comitted to the protection of libtery and human rights.

CISPA is just one bill in a parade of many that congress has proposed that seems to target the American public, an attitude that is argued to be Anti-American at its core. While many people express deep opposition to the bill, Rep. Mike Rogers brushes their worries aside claiming it is just a little turbulance and is pushing for a floor vote with the bill as-is.

Is Food A Human Right?

[caption id="attachment_14167" align="alignleft" width="300"] Vegetarian meal[/caption]

Bob Ewing - The past few days I have been having a dialogue via Twitter. The focus of this discussion is food as a human right. On 10 December 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the UN General Assembly.

Article 25 of the Declaration says:

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

The 144 character limit, set by Twitter, makes it quite difficult to conduct a coherent discussion of a complex matter. On the surface, food as a human right may seem a simple enough topic; people need food to live, so food must be a right. Before we proceed, it is important to define human rights.

Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.

This seems straightforward enough, human rights are inherent to all human beings, and all, are equally entitled to these rights without discrimination. Okay, however, food is an economic engine that can drive local and regional economies, and as such food is a commodity that is bought and sold in the marketplace. If food was free, who would grow it, and if no one is growing it, what do we eat?

Reread the definition of a human right; the definition does not say that rights are free, that they come without cost. It says they are inherent to all human beings and cannot be denied through discrimination.

However, in countries around the globe, North America as well, people are denied access to food on a daily basis, because they do not have the funds to purchase it in the market place. Is this a structural error, one that can be offset through policy, practice, and procedure? Can food be both a commodity and a right? Have countries failed to take the appropriate actions?

The answer to the first two questions is yes and over the next few weeks I will examine how this can be done and how a sustainable economy can be evolved while doing so. The third question will be addressed at the end of the series.

Both Twitter and Facebook are playing a growing role in my work and will continue to do so as I develop this series.

No matter who wins, Americans lose

[caption id="attachment_14147" align="alignleft" width="300"] Republican primary candidates for President[/caption]

Joel S. Hirschhorn--Why am I so sick of all the media attention to the Republican presidential primaries and all the sometimes meaningless talk about President Obama’s advantages and disadvantages for the coming election? I just cannot get excited.  My answer may also be yours: No matter who wins, our nation loses.

Come election night I would be overjoyed to see Obama lose and equally overjoyed to see the Republican candidate, whoever it is, also lose.  I cannot see how either Romney or Gingrich or even Ron Paul could possibly offer what is truly needed to fix the root causes of all the dysfunction, corruption and despair with the  US political and government system.  And Obama?  Nothing but slickness instead of results is my opinion of the President's performance to date.

Here is a central, common deficiency: No major presidential candidate has come out with strong support for any of the constitutional amendments critically needed to truly reform our system.  More than ever, after so much failed government, a whole lot of Americans are ready to support amendments that would, for example, mandate term limits for members of Congress, remove all private money from federal elections, require a balanced federal budget, and revitalize the constitutional requirement for Congress explicitly declaring war.

With one or two billion dollars spent on campaigning for this presidential election cycle the real winners will be all the media companies and army of campaign advisors and consultants getting all that money.  With the media and pundits focusing on the election the public has been robbed of real in depth news coverage of countless issues and situations worldwide that we should be far better informed about, especially to better understand exactly what public policies we should want from the president and Congress.  The mainstream media that treats the presidential campaigns like sporting events has become as superficial as the presidential candidates.

There is only one scenario that could make me enormously interested in the presidential election outcome.  With relatively little media attention to it, few Americans know about the Americans Elect national effort that will place a presidential candidate on every state ballot.  The candidates for president and vice president will result from a lengthy process conducted on the Internet involving millions of Americans that have signed up to be part of that process.  True, those two candidates that cannot have backgrounds from the same political party, but they may turn out to be somewhat familiar to us because of their past political efforts, though neither will be the same as those on the Democratic and Republican tickets.  For a fair analysis of this innovative process read what John Heilemann has said in New York Magazine.

Considering the widespread and deserved disgust among Americans with both major parties, there is a decent chance that people like me will be strongly motivated to vote for the Americans Elect alternative ticket.  It definitely will be a vote against both major parties.  If millions of Americans make this choice, then I will be overjoyed and so should you.  Why?  Because it may be the most important historic event that could motivate actions to get us genuine reforms of our political and government system.  The Americans Elect ticket does not have to win, just show the Democrats and Republicans how much they are both being rejected.

For this scenario to occur, however, people must stop thinking about the “spoiler” fear that both major parties promote. Democrats want people to fear that a vote for the Americans Elect ticket will cause the Republican ticket to win, and vice versa.  In truth, by voting for the Americans Elect ticket we the people have the most important electoral choice to fix our broken system. Think of it as an electoral revolution.  The imperative is to stick with your fundamental belief that in the end it really does not matter whether the Republican or Democratic presidential candidate wins, principally because elite rich and corporate interests will still prevail.  This means that the vast majority of Americans will continue to get screwed: The top one percent will still own and control our nation under either a Republican or Democratic president.  Keep remembering that both major party candidates have lied repeatedly, will keep lying, and will never implement whatever they have promised they will do to reform the system.

My best advice to you now: Stop wasting your time on following all the nonsense about the Republican primaries and later about the main campaign from both major party candidates.  Don’t let yourself be manipulated.  Instead, sign up at Americans Elect and join the 2.4 million Americans who have already joined the process to give Americans a true alternative to both major parties.  Note that 80 percent of people have said they are ready to support an alternative presidential ticket this year.  Will they put their votes where their words are?

At some point it will become necessary to mount a national demand that the Americans Elect candidates be allowed to participate in the pre-election national televised debates and also to demand that the mainstream media give equal time and attention to them.  If we are to convert our current delusional democracy into a genuine one, then the most patriotic and courageous thing to do is to support the Americans Elect effort.



[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn at delusionaldemocracy.com.]

Ex-ballerina has human rights infringed

Gemma Fox - While much of the press in the UK is concentrating on the phone hacking allegations and the demise of the News of the World paper it means that other stories are slipping through the net and one of those stories concerns an ex-ballerina who has been entirely stripped of her dignity by a council seeking to save money.

Elaine McDonald is a 67-year old former prima ballerina of the Scottish Ballet and was once considered the best classical ballerina in the U.K. during the 1980's.  She became a great dramatic dancer.  Elaine danced the leads in many ballets including Cinderella, Mary Queen of Scots, Gisella and Swan Lake. In 1983 Elaine's work within ballet was recognised with an OBE, something that was rare outside of the Royal Ballet.  Thousands of people watched in awe Elaine's performances over the years.

Twelve years ago, in September 1999, Elaine had a stroke which left her with severe mobility issues.  Although still able to walk short distances Ms McDonald still requires the aid of a carer to perform certain task, including using a commode during the night.  Elaine is not considered incontinent.  After her stroke she was left with a neurogenic bladder which means that she usually requires to use the bathroom 2 0r 3 times during the night.  Elaine managed this fine with the aide of her night time carer.  Now Elaine has had her night carer taken away from her by the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.

Withdrawing the services of the night time carer will apparently save the council £22,000 per year.  In place of this service the council have instead offered to provide Ms McDonald with continence pads and absorbent sheets for her bed.  What this means is rather than supply a person to help Elaine to and from the commode during the night, they want her to urinate herself throughout the night, despite the fact the she is continent.  In reality, to save money they have stripped her of her dignity.  They have stripped her of her rights as a human being.

Elaine fought her corner in the High Court and eventually ended up in the Supreme Court where her bid to have the decision over turned was ruled against by 4-1.  Her night carer will be withdrawn and she will have to suffer the indignity of urinating and defecating herself.

Charity Age UK intervened in the court case and supported Ms McDonald through.  After the judgement on Wednesday by the Supreme Court Charity Director Michelle Mitchell said, "Today’s decision is shameful.  Older people have a fundamental right to dignity and forcing someone to sleep in their own urine and faeces could not be more undignified.

"This judgement opens the door to warehousing older people in their own homes without regard to their quality of life.

"Care should not be just about keeping people safe.  It must enable them to live dignified and fulfilled lives."

The judgement by the Supreme Court paves the way for other councils to remove carers from vulnerable people at detriment to them and comes at a time when the care sector is still reeling from revelations about massive failings in care of the elderly and care of vulnerable adults.

Chipotle balances animal and human rights with food

[caption id="attachment_6032" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Chipolte"][/caption]




Carol Forsloff - The Chipotle restaurant chain set out to make a difference in the way it manages that delicate balance between animal rights activists and those who want to continue to eat their meat products while still remaining healthy, something a restaurant near Portland State University believes it has achieved.

Hope Lopez serves up her menu of Mexican items with the kind of smile that is engaging.  Her customers wait in lines for that smile that accompanies good food.  The same is true of her service staff, a group of young people on a mission to make a difference in the food industry, that helps animal rights activists and people who like to eat meat get along.

“There’s a way to achieve balance,  “ Lopez tells us.  “Our business is the way to do that, at least that is its intent.  Chipotle stresses caring for the environment, especially the environment where animals are raised.  There is cruelty in the food business in how animals are treated.  The founder of our restaurant chain has tried to end that with his practice of making sure the animals used in the food we serve are not treated cruelly.”

[caption id="attachment_6047" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Chipolte near Portland State University"][/caption]

The restaurant sits near Portland State University, where the food demands are great but the choices of fare various for students that are “city fied and fed” enough to want the best.  The fare, as tasted by a hungry journalist wandering through Portland on a Sunday afternoon, is favorable to the most discerning palates of those who wander far.  If Chipotle is seeking great taste as a leading factor in its food, the burrito bowl is a menu item that can make the most critical connoisseur stand up and cheer for that and the wholesome notion of having wholesome food and yet retaining animal rights as well.

[caption id="attachment_6046" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Chipolte motto"][/caption]

Portland is a way-station for protest, a place where the environment and the care of animals and going green is celebrated in many ways.  Food is one of those places where balance has been sought, although there is a seeming, never-ending protest about how that balance can be achieved.

Chipotle's local restaurant manager tells us balance is in the menu that stresses care for animals but the rights of humans as well, to eat right and make sure that the food that is eaten is healthy and developed in a “green” and caring way that Lopez underlines.  “We can all agree to get along if we try to find ways like my company has, to serve food right and fair.”

Response to racial atrocities in S. Africa symptom of world's humanrights neglect

Introduction by Carol Forsloff  - Across the world many people will treat today as an ordinary one, but those who can stop human rights abuses can't shrug off a day like this, or any other, when people's lives are jeopardized, as a letter reminds us.

The letter contained in this article is a world wake-up call again that sometimes problems have to reach major proportions, and violence,  before they get attention.  That's because some bureaucrat somewhere has no interest in solving them or just may not want to take the time.  It happens when a group of American soldiers, as reported on world news, kill Afghani citizens and the warning signs are reported to bureaucrats and ignored.  And it happens when a racial minority becomes the target of hatred and violent attacks on a regular basis.  

Troubling incidents that occur on what might be regarded a minor scale, or far away from one's country, can be symptoms of wider problems.   Often they are not reported in the press until the worst happens in some obvious and dramatic way.  

This letter written to a bureaucrat in South Africa reflects the issue itself of neglect, as happens all over the world, of problems that may seem remote and insignificant, but that often return in some terrible way to impact a far greater group.  It is how major conflicts begin, as mistreatment of minorities historically has shown. 

From Adriana Stuift

To Christine Storo,

Board Member, Association of Norwegian Students
Abroad;

Peace Research Institute of Oslo,
Norway (PRIO)

Dear Ms Storø

re: my criticism: your recent
xenophobia-briefing concentrating on only on black-versus-black violence in
South Africa:

I am disappointed about your routine reply
in response to my warning about the ongoing, quiet genocide of the
Afrikaner minority in South Africa - which should have received a mention in
your 'xenophobia-report' recently. One can never really describe this present
ongoing genocide of this highly-disfavoured, very visible 3-million-strong
Afrikaner minority in South Africa merely as an 'interesting read' as you did,
alas. 

Even Prof Gregory Stanton of Genocide
Watch.org admits that the Afrikaner-Boers are being endangered by genocidal
behaviour regarding the socalled 'farm-attacks' in which more than 3700
mostly-Afrikaner farmers have already been slaughtered, often in extremely
gruesome circumstances which the ANC-regime describes as 'ordinary crime'.

Perhaps from your comfortable job at ANSA
and PRIO you might not want to  make waves by raising this very
"uncomfortable issue" publicly?

However our documentation - which is now
also being prepared for a pending law-suit at the International Criminal Court
in The Hague - is well-proven and extensive and has been maintained since 1994
by a variety independent observers like myself. The genocide - a combination
of well-organised, armed attacks by youth-militias and laws created to bring the
Afrikaner minority into deliberate homelessness, unemployability and
destitution, where they are becoming internal refugees in the country of their
birth --  is deliberately created by the ruling SA
troika-government i.e. the ANC-SA Communist Party-Cosatu alliance. http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2010/08/afrikaners-are-starving-pictures.html

And we can prove it with all the facts
and documentation gathered since 1994. The SA ruling-troika has no meaningful political opposition and thus
has been able to create a vast number of Neurenberg-style laws without any
formal opposition - and which bar the
Afrikaners as the disfavoured, previously advantaged minority, from the entire
job-market, (except perhaps some specialty-jobs). The ANC even describes the
young Afrikaners born after the end of apartheid in 1994 as 'previously
advantaged' despite their very obvious homelessness and desperate poverty -
and even refusing the most destitute Afrikaners (- some 800,000 homeless
destitutes now are living in 460 internal refugee camps ) the most basic rights
to survival such as government housing, government-issued food-aid-stamps and
government unemployment; they are even denied child-benefit and disability
pensions and also are denied treatment at the vast majority of government-health
facilities despite their dire poverty. The ANC-government is also making a very
organised effort to stop them from being educated in their own language and own
cultural background: such cultural suppression forms an integral part of the
genocidal process.

South Africa thus is the only country
in the world which has actually made laws to 'protect' the
majority population from a very small minority group... whereas such laws in the
rest of the world are usually always intended to protect
minorities.  

More than 63% of all these
destitute Afrikaner inmates in the internal refugee camps around greater
Pretoria especially - are older than 60 years reports Solidarity trade union's
Helping Hand charity. The vast majority of these camp-inmates also are amongst
the best-educated people in South Africa and still badly needed in the
maintenance of the SA economy: nurses, municipal engineers, teachers, skilled
mineworkers, artisans. municipal clerks, government department clerks,
law-court officials, etc. Yet  despite the huge present shortage of
skilled workers at all levels of society in SA - forcing the government to even
import doctors, nurses, teachers etc. from Cuba and Morocco, for instance -
the ANC-regime refuses to hire even the best-educated
Afrikaners and also despite repeated appeals,  refusesto end its so-called 'black-economic-empowerment' laws which have
brought the Afrikaners into this serious situation of homelessness and
destitution. 

The ANC-regime claims that 'the top jobs
are still held by whites', however their claims are grossly inaccurate:
more than 68% of all the government jobs now are held by blacks across all
sectors: and the few top management jobs still held by 'whites' are held by
English-speakers, usually immigrants on temporary contracts. Anyone moving about
in public life in South Africa today can attest to the fact that there are very
few whites actually still seen working in for instance banks, supermarkets etc.

Meanwhile there are many tens of thousands
of public- and private-sector jobs especially in the health- and
education-sectors for which no "suitable candidates can be found' ("suitable" as
in suitable black candidates only) and thus these jobs are deliberately kept
open rather than hiring qualified Afrikaner whites languishing in the
internal-refugee camps.

The German nazis also barred Jews
from all public life between 1933-1945...

This entire process presents a very similar
picture to those many nazi-era laws made against the Jews of Europe during the
nazi-occupation of the continent now generally referred to as the 'Neurenberg
Laws'. These were designed to eradicate the ability of European Jews to survive:
and as now also occurs in South Africa, European Jews from 1933 also were barred
from public life, legal employment, home- and land-ownership, barred from access
to public education and increasingly also pushed into 'internal refugee camps
(ghettos) before their final annihilation.   As a Norwegian citizen,
you are undoubtedly familiar with the final results of the nazi-laws in Europe.

Similar increasingly desperate events are
now taking place targetting the Afrikaners - and although they are a very small,
highly visible and indeed very unfavoured minority because of their
apartheid-history  (which their pre-1994 leaders indeed recognised as
untenable) -- I still consider the ruling SA troika's behaviour towards the
Afrikaners as completely unacceptable and indeed a gross transgression of
every human rights law in the world.  Even the Unrepresented Nations
and Peoples' Organisation (UNPO) in The Hague has raised the ANC's deliberate
suppression of the Afrikaner minority: 

http://www.unpo.org/article/11177

  

I now receive near-daily reports of
newborns and especially the elderly, dying of malnutrition and preventable
diseases in the internal refugee camps for Afrikaners - mainly because they are
being denied all government-food-aid and the one private charity which still
tries to keep all 800,000 Afrikaners in these camps fed, can now only afford to
feed them one small meal a day because their funding from their private donors
is drying up: the special-skills mineworkers and Afrikaner artisans and
engineers who were still able to get contract-jobs in the private
sector and (the shrinking number of) commercial farmers still able to supply
food to the camps.

These Afrikaners are also denied most
access to the government's medical facilities -- which were mostly built from
Afrikaner taxes before 1994 -- and thus many also are dying of many infectious
diseases which could be easily cured with basic health-care and medicines. Even
when they are suffering from infectious diseases they are sent away by
government-health facilities and sent back to their camps: where infections such
as hepatitis now are spreading rapidly. They are so malnutritioned now
after some ten years of poor living conditions that many, especially the
elderly, look like walking skeletons. The Afrikaner women in these
camps also have had to resort to set up their own little maternity cottages
where, fortunately, some qualified (unemployable) midwives often still are able
to deliver their babies under dismal conditions. Some private doctors also step
in to volunteer their help in the most extreme cases, but the suffering in these
camps are becoming very severe.

This truly is a totally unacceptable and
inhumane situation - yet you said you 'read it with interest' and 'thanked me
for my time'. Forgive me for not being impressed with your shallow and in my
view, very uncaring reply.

I attack a photograph which was included in
a report to President Jacob Zuma about Afrikaner poverty in August 2010 by
Solidarity trade union's "Helping Hand' charity.  It's only one of many
showing the horrific conditions in these camps. Keep in mind that these are some
of the best-educated people on the African continent. The Dutch investigative
journalist Saskia Vredeveld also recently published a report about poverty in
two specific internal-refugee camps in Coronation park near Johannesburg on
IKON-TV in the Netherlands.

• White Poverty in the New South Africa by Saskia
  Vredeveld 


• http://nos.nl/audio/99101-white-poverty-in-the-new-south-africa.html

Regards

Adriana Stuijt

Retired SAjournalist,

Oil companies battle human and environmental rights groups over climate change

by Carol Forsloff -  In a landmark case in 2009 Shell was found complicit in the execution of author and human rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders in Nigeria in 1995, even as Greenpeace established this year oil companies have fought climate change legislation.

Evidence is revealing about how environmental rights have been targeted by Big Oil.

In the bloody oil fields of the Niger Delta men were killed.  Plaintiffs in 2009 secured a verdict against Shell Oil Company that it had financed, armed and colluded with Nigerian military forces that used deadly force and killed many Ogoni people in the Niger Delta.  Shell made a settlement out of court, which Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth declare is evidence of its complicity in crimes against Nigerian people.But ERA/FoEN Executive Director, Nnimmo Bassey insisted, after the company claimed it had made the settlement in a humanitarian gesture, “Shell’s sudden decision to settle out of court is a clear indication that the company is guilty of the atrocities alleged and much more.”

“This development signals a ray of hope for the people of the Niger Delta that Shell’s irresponsible acts which have violated their land and livelihoods in the last five decades of oil exploration in the region will not go unaccounted for. It is however sad that justice was achieved not on Nigerian soil where innocent people of the Niger Delta have been labeled criminals and vandals but in far away US.”

Bassey went on to say the Nigerian government should proceed to compel Shell Oil to begin immediate cleanup of pollution of rivers, streams and farms.

ERA reports a number of cases in The Hague, Netherlands where Shell Oil is facing a number of lawsuits for repeated oil spills.

The settlement from Shell Oil and the concerns about the oil spills caused by the major oil companies in Nigeria, has brought fresh outcry from the African continent about oil companies' disregard of human rights in the quest to make money from oil.  The protest is also that the rest of the world paid no attention to Africa's plight and the issue of oil spills, until the recent one that has occurred on the Gulf Coast of the United States.

Greenpeace also has investigated a little-known, but very wealthy, oil and gas group called Koch Industries and found them intimately involved in anti-climate change movements and proposed legislation.  Again oil and gas figures into a movement against going green, even as it has been shown complicit in the killings of people in Africa for fighting against environmental injustices.

Oil companies presently protest that the history of drilling has brought few oil spill accidents, however, the environmental damage presented by environmental groups and others on the African continent reveal that oil spills are frequent and destructive.