Qatar invites bids to reconstruct Gaza
Ma’an – 02/10/2012
GAZA CITY – The Qatari government on Tuesday invited tenders for four construction projects, in the first stage of a $254 million project to rebuild the war-torn Gaza Strip.
Qatar’s ambassador to Gaza Muhammad al-Imadi is heading a committee overseeing the work.
Consultants have been invited to submit designs for a city to be named after Sheikh Hamad Ben Khalifa al-Thani. The $30-million development will include 1,000 residential units in five-story apartment blocks, schools, stores, clinics, parks and entertainment facilities, the ambassador said in a statement.
Companies were also invited to bid for the repair of three major roads in the enclave. The 35-kilometer coastal highway al-Rashid Street will cost around $50 million to repair, and $18 million has been allocated to reconstruct the 10-kilometer al-Karama Street.
The 28-kilometer Salah Addin Street will be repaired first, at a cost of $60 million, as the plans and designs are ready, al-Imadi said.
In the coming days, consultants will be invited to bid for several agricultural projects, budgeted at $12.5 million.
Housing projects worth $32 million will also be announced this week to house needy families and to re-home those who were evicted for building on public land.
Related articles
- Hamas Asks Egypt To Transfer Qatar Fuel To Gaza (eurasiareview.com)
How to Tell When ‘Humans’ Die in a U.S. War
By Peter Hart – FAIR – 10/02/2012
ABC World News’ David Muir (9/30/12) took note of the 2,000th U.S. military death in Afghanistan this way:
Overseas now to Afghanistan, and a stark reminder tonight of the human cost of war. An attack at a checkpoint left two Americans dead, one of them a serviceman, the 2,000th U.S. military death since the war began.
That kind of language is revealing in that it presents American deaths as evidence of the “human cost of war.” But, of course, that is a human cost almost every day most wars. What they’re saying is this is primarily something we should think about when the humans in question are U.S. troops.
We don’t need to search very far to find a counter-example. On the very same show, two weeks earlier (9/16/12) , viewers were told about a NATO airstrike that killed eight Afghan women. They had been out collecting firewood.
How did ABC report these deaths? In all of one sentence, stuffed at the end of a report by correspondent Muhammad Lila about U.S. troop deaths:
And late this evening, another incident that’s causing tension here. NATO is confirming that an air strike has led to civilian casualties, reportedly including Afghan women and children.
Last year, in a very similar incident, a NATO airstrike killed nine boys. And ABC’s brief report (3/6/11) focused on Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s “harsh words for the U.S.”
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- After NATO Strike Kills 8 Afghan Women, Pundits Still Wonder: Why Do They Hate Us? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Honduras: A Second Human Rights Attorney Is Murdered
Weekly News Update on the Americas | September 30, 2012
Unidentified assailants gunned down Eduardo Manuel Díaz Mazariegos, a prosecutor with the Honduran Public Ministry, shortly before noon on Sept. 24 near his office in Choluteca, the capital of the southern department of Choluteca. Díaz Mazariegos had worked on human rights cases as well as criminal cases for the ministry. He was the seventh Honduran prosecutor murdered since 1994, and his killing came less than two full days after the similar murder of Antonio Trejo Cabrera, an activist private attorney who represented a campesino collective in a dispute over land in the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras [see Update #1145]. (La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa) 9/24/12; EFE 9/25/12 via Univision)
The Associated Press wire service reported on Sept. 24 that Trejo had written a request in June 2011 for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) in Washington, DC, to order emergency precautionary measures for his protection. “If anything happens to me, to my goods or to my family,” Trejo wrote, “I hold responsible Mr. Miguel Facussé [and two others that AP declined to name], who can attack my life through hit men, since they know that the lawsuits against them are going well and that the campesinos are going to recover the lands that [Facussé and the others] stole from them illegally.”
Cooking oil magnate Facussé is the main owner of disputed land in the Aguán; presumably Trejo also named the two other major landowners in the dispute, René Morales and Reinaldo Canales. After Trejo’s murder Facussé issued a written denial of any “direct participation of my person or of the personnel of my companies in so abominable an act,” although he added that Trejo had committed “fraudulent acts against [Facussé’s] company.” Marlene Cruz, an attorney who represents another Aguán collective, told AP that she and Trejo were scheduled to attend a hearing at the CIDH in Washington on Oct. 19. Cruz is now thought to be in danger.
Trejo, who came from a campesino family and was born in the San Isidro collective in northern Honduras, was also involved in another high-profie case: he had filed a complaint against a neoliberal project, the Special Development Regions (RED, also known as “Model Cities”), for creating privatized autonomous regions in the country. Trejo denounced the project in a television debate less than 24 hours before his assassination, saying it was backed by “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves of the government.” Michael Strong, the director of the US-based MGK Group, a leading “model cities” sponsor [see Update #1144], said he was “horrified” by the murder and that “if Trejo had lived long enough to be acquainted with us, he would have concluded that our approach is beneficial for Honduras.” (AP 9/24/12 via El Nuevo Herald (Miami))
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- Honduras: Lawyer for Aguán and “Model Cities” Struggles Is Murdered (alethonews.wordpress.com)
US waives sanctions on states using child soldiers for security interests
Press TV – October 2, 2012
The Obama administration has waived nearly all US sanctions against countries using child soldiers despite a recent executive order to fight human trafficking.
US President Barack Obama issued a presidential memorandum on Friday waiving sanctions under the Child Soldiers Protection Act of 2008 for Libya, South Sudan and Yemen that Congress legislated to halt US arms sales to countries that are “worst abusers of child soldiers in their militaries,” the US-based periodical Foreign Policy reports Tuesday.
According to the report, Obama also partially waived penalties against the Democratic Republic of the Congo in an effort to allow continued military training and arms sales to the African country.
Angered by Washington’s move, human rights activists say the waivers are damaging to the aim of using US influence to discourage nations that get American military support from using child soldiers. They also insist the measure contradicts the rhetoric Obama used in a speech he delivered on Friday when signing the executive order.
“When a little boy is kidnapped, turned into a child soldier, forced to kill or be killed — that’s slavery,” Obama claimed during his address. “It is barbaric, and it is evil, and it has no place in a civilized world. Now, as a nation, we’ve long rejected such cruelty.”
Many among the American human rights community are upset that despite such forceful oratory against the use of child soldiers, the US president has waived for the third consecutive years all penalties against states that are major abusers of the human rights violation.
“After such a strong statement against the exploitation of children, it seems bizarre that Obama would give a pass to countries using children in their armed forces and using U.S. tax money to do that,” said Jesse Eaves, the senior policy advisor for child protection at World Vision, as quoted in the report.
Eaves insists that the Obama administration wants to maintain its ties with regimes that it needs for security cooperation and that such blanket use of US waivers allows the administration to avert the objective of the law, which was supposedly to uphold internationally recognized human rights and child protection protocols when dishing out American military aid to other nations.
“The intent in this law was to use this waiver authority only in extreme circumstances, yet this has become an annual thing and this has become the default of this administration,” Eaves was quoted as saying in the report.
According to the periodical, Obama first waived the sanctions in 2010, the first year they were to go into effect. At the time, the White House failed to inform Congress of its decision in advance, triggering a strong backlash. A reported justification memo pointed to a number of security-related excuses for the waivers. Sudan was going through a fragile transition, for instance. Yemen was crucial to counterterrorism cooperation, the administration argued.
Related articles
- Obama waives sanctions on countries that use child soldiers (thecable.foreignpolicy.com)
- Obama Demands Right to Recruit Minors for Military (infowars)
- White House Says Child Soldiers Are Ok, if They Fight Terrorists (alethonews)
US: Student Rights Disappearing
Staff Writers | October 1, 2012
In the aftermath of 9/11, we’ve seen plenty of attacks on privacy and personal security, and students are not immune to this effect. From RFID tracking to mandatory drug and pregnancy testing, new laws and policies are slowly beginning to creep in and take over the privacy that students have enjoyed in the past. We’ve discovered nine troubling signs that student rights are in danger. If these can slip by, what’s coming next?
Some students are required to wear IDs:
At Northeast Mississippi Community College, students are required to keep their NEMCC ID badge in plain sight at all times or face warnings and tickets. The administration’s primary reason for the IDs is safety, but the policy raises privacy concerns for students, who cannot opt out of the program. Northeast Mississippi isn’t the only school adopting student IDs, and some are going so far as to include RFID in their IDs to assist with attendance records. Experts believe that this could become a trend in American schools, but some parents are outraged. In at least one elementary school, the push back has been so extreme that the RFID program was terminated due to privacy concerns.
Students are required to share their contact information with the Armed Forces:
High school students are automatically signed up to share their contact information with the Armed Forces, presumably for recruiting purposes. This is a part of the No Child Left Behind law, and although students can opt out, the parent or student must explicitly request otherwise. Releasing student contact information is viewed as a serious violation of student privacy.
Mandatory drug testing is becoming more prevalent:
Linn State Technical college, a small technical school with just 1,200 students, has become the first university in the country to make drug testing mandatory for enrollment. Every new student at LSTC is required to take a urine test within their first five to 10 days of the school year, or withdraw from the university. Students are also subject to random testing throughout the rest of the year. The university community has pushed back, asserting that mandatory drug testing is too much of an invasion, setting a dangerous precedent for the ability of schools to regulate students’ lives.
Pregnancy testing is also a concern:
In one Louisiana public school, female students who are suspected of being pregnant must submit to a pregnancy test. If they refuse to take the test or are found to be pregnant, they’re kicked out of school and forced to pursue homeschooling instead. This policy is in clear violation of federal law, specifically, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that mandates schools can’t exclude students based on pregnancy or related conditions. But it’s not just this one school with a problematic policy: the ACLU evidence suggests that illegal discrimination is a major contributing factor to the high dropout rate (70%) of teen girls who give birth.
Educational records can be shared with outside entities:
Schools are privy to lots of sensitive information about their students, including grades, discipline records, income, and even mental health issues. This is the sort of information that most families would prefer to keep private, but new rules allow it to be shared with entities outside the scope of education. That means student information can be placed in state databases without the consent of students and parents.
Students can be monitored via wiretaps:
The FCC has recently released a campaign that is forcing universities to comply with national wiretapping laws. This means that universities are altering their private networks and the Internet in order to allow for monitoring of Internet usage, instant messaging, and even cell phone texts. Additionally, these mandates allow universities to be subpoenaed for medical and other student records. Previously, universities were exempted from wiretapping due to their private networks, but following the 2001 terrorist attacks the Department of Justice asked the FCC to expand their reach.
Schools are blocking student access to LGBT websites:
Blocking pornographic websites is a common practice among public schools, but some are taking things a step further, blocking access to LGBT websites that are not at all pornographic. Many of the commonly used web filtering software packages block out LGBT-positive websites that share information about LGBT issues and organizations. These packages do not, however, block out anti-LGBT websites that condemn LGBT people and encourage them to change their sexual orientation. The ACLU has argued that this “viewpoint discrimination” violates students’ rights under the First Amendment.
Free speech is getting edged out:
On many college campuses, free speech is dramatically limited. Campuses typically have a “free speech zone,” but at some schools, this zone is in a low traffic area so far from the heart of campus that it’s not an ideal location to share messages. At other schools, free speech can be limited to certain days or hours, and even give administrators the right to review and approve of materials before they’re shared. For some students pursuing free speech, these restrictions can keep them from effectively sharing their message. Specifically, at Yuba College in California, students had to apply for permission to speak 14 business days in advance, register literature 48 hours prior to distribution, and are limited to the hours of 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays for public speeches, extreme measures for any student or group wanting to spread the word about their issue.
Student due process rights are being threatened:
It’s not hard to understand why many college campuses take a hard line on rape, but it’s important to remember that accused rapists have rights, too. Under the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, it was proposed that universities receiving federal funding must allow sexual assault victims to appeal the results of college disciplinary hearings. That means that students accused of sexual assault could be tried twice for the same crime, a “double jeopardy” situation that is not allowed in U.S. courts. This is troublesome and an unfortunate way for presumably innocent accused rapists to be held back from moving on with their lives.
Related articles
- Peeing to participate (economist.com)
- Hell No! Texas Students Revolt Against Mandatory RFID Tracking Chips – Video – MSM Ignores (jhaines6.wordpress.com)
- Middle Schooler Forced to Take Drug Test to Join Scrapbooking Club (reason.com)
- University Of Oregon Begins Mandatory Drug Testing for Athletes (thinkprogress.org)