Tag Archives: global

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Jews plan Global Shabbat to Protest Demolitions of Palestinian Villages


Jewish activists plan global Shabbat protest against demolitions

 

Participants will bring in Shabbat together, share a potluck dinner and take a group photo to upload to social media with the hashtag #ShabbatAgainstDemolition.

Sussiya

 

Jewish activists around the  world are preparing to take part this weekend in a “global Shabbat against demolition” of  Palestinian villages.

Event organizers say the initiative is a response to a plea by residents of four Palestinian communities – Al Arqib, Umm el-Hiran, Umm al-Khair and Sussiya – who say the demolition of their villages is imminent.

Last week, the High Court of Justice ordered Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman to issue an opinion on the demolition of Sussiya within two weeks.

People from Israel, the UK, the US, Canada and Australia are taking part in the Shabbat initiative.

“As Jews, we say emphatically that forced displacement, dislocation and demolition do not represent our values,” said a joint call to action put out by the anti-occupation collective All That’s Left, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV) and the T’ruah organization.

“These demolitions represent a continued policy of systematic discrimination. As members of a people who have experienced expulsion, persecution and dispossession, we stand with all Palestinian communities facing eviction,” their statement said.

Israeli activists are planning to spend Shabbat at Sussiya, as they did a month ago.

“It’s important for me as a member of an international anti-occupation organization to stand with them. They know [that] international pressure, Jewish and non-Jewish, is a key component of their ability to continue to thrive and exist,” Israeli organizer Erez Bleicher of All That’s Left and CJNV told The Jerusalem Post.

“This global response really represents a movement for justice that will continue to advocate non-violently for a more sustainable reality in which Palestinians can live with dignity and full rights,” Bleicher added.

The event is expected to take different forms from community to community, with some resembling more traditional demonstrations and others comprising Jewish study sessions.

In Melbourne, organizers will shape their Shabbat around the “social-justice lens of Judaism.”

Participants will bring in Shabbat together, share a potluck dinner and take a group photo to upload to social media with the hashtag #Shabbat Against Demolition.They will also hold discussions about the demolitions.

The groups involved include Hashomer Hatza’ir and the Australian Jewish Democratic Society.

Australian organizer Carly Rosenthal, who visited Sussiya and other Palestinian villages last month with CJNV, will share her experiences with the group.

“This Shabbat is all about exemplifying the values of equality, peace, justice and morality. With the Shabbat, we hope to engage the Jewish community around the demolitions happening in these Palestinian communities, and rally together as Jews against the status quo of the occupation,” Rosenthal said.

Hearings on the demolition of Sussiya were halted last year, when villagers and the Civil Administration agreed to sit down and see if they could agree on a plan for the village, either in its current location or at a nearby site. But the process was halted when Liberman took over the Defense Ministry in June, and the Civil Administration waited for him to issue an opinion on the matter.

Liberman has in the past called for the demolition of Sussiya, which has been in a land battle with the state since the 1980s.

“Thus far, the court hasn’t decided to intervene, so we want to show solidarity and that we are representatives of the international audience that is watching what’s happening,” said American-Israeli activist Shifra Sered.

Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.

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There are Jews in Israel and around the world who feel that demolishing buildings in Palestine villages is wrong. I agree. This is a non-violent act of protest and I hope that many Jews around the world will participate and that the Israeli government will take heed of the wishes of the people. Mazel Tov.

 

Namaste

Barbara

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We have used the Earth’s Resources for a Year


Humans Have Used All the Earth’s Resources for the Year

Written by

SARAH EMERSON

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

August 9, 2016 // 01:19 PM EST

This year, “Earth Overshoot Day” fell on August 8, based on measurements of each nation’s withdrawal of natural capital. From carbon sinks to fisheries, humanity has taken more from nature than it’s been able to reproduce. Quite simply, we’re in environmental debt.

Since the 1970s, our global “ecological footprint,” or impact on Earth’s ability to generate renewable resources, has widened. Without fail, the Global Footprint Network says, Earth Overshoot Day has fallen earlier every year—between one to three days, on average, over the last four decades. Last year, it coincided with August 15.

Renewable resources such as crops, forests, and fishing grounds, as infinite as they might seem, are only as productive as we allow them to be. An ecosystem’s usefulness, also known as its “biocapacity,” is fatally interconnected with our ability to curb greenhouse gas emissions. If these environments can’t absorb our carbon and waste, they’ll take longer to regenerate.

According to national footprint measurements for 2016, if the entire world behaved like Australia, it would take 5.4 Earths to meet its annual natural resource needs. Here in the United States, we’d need 4.8 planets to meet our requirements. And Brazil, which recently came under fire for its poor environmental policies, would need 1.8 Earths to fulfill its consumption demands.

Two years ago, the World Wildlife Fund calculated that humanity’s ecological footprint in 2010 topped out at 18.1 billion global hectares, which is a common unit of measurement for comparing the productivity of one ecosystem to another. That year, however, Earth’s biocapacity was only 12 billion global hectares, meaning people used nearly 50 percent more natural resources than were able to be produced.

In that same report, climate scientists estimated that by 2030, more than two planets will be needed to support all of humanity if countries don’t become more sustainable.

An ecological footprint is, at its core, a supply and demand equation, and can theoretically be solved for a person, industry, community, and country. Yet, some researchers question whether this can, and should, be quantified at all.

One critic said the equation makes arbitrary assumptions about carbon emissions, national boundaries, and production levels, and “fails to satisfy simple economic principles.” Another author argued that a calculating a country’s ecological footprintdoesn’t offer meaningful information for shaping environmental policies. It’s even been suggested that placing such a high value on an ecosystem’s biocapacityultimately encourages agricultural monoculture, or the cultivation of a single resource in a given area.

The method’s most compelling criticism, however, is that it portrays smaller, rural populations as parasitic, consuming the resources of larger communities instead of producing their own. There’s a theory that if aliens were to visit our planet, they’d characterize our species as a lowly parasite, and not its most dominant lifeform. As perspective-bending as this may seem, even David Attenborough once referred to humans as “a plague on the Earth.”

Hopefully, instead of draining Earth of its life-giving sustenance, we’ll find a way to live sustainably. New climate policies, such as those outlined in the Paris Agreement, aim to make the fight against environmental demise a global one. Because if one thing’s for sure, it’s that soon, no one will be spared the effects of global warming.

“The good news is that it is possible with current technology, and financially advantageous with overall benefits exceeding costs,” said Mathis Wackernagel, co-founder and CEO of Global Footprint Network.

“The Paris climate agreement is the strongest statement yet about the need to reduce the carbon footprint drastically. Ultimately, collapse or stability is a choice.”

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Violence Against Women in Politics


A hidden reality: Violence against women in politics

Madeleine Albright

Updated 8:28 AM ET, Tue March 8, 2016

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, women protest violence towards women, on International Women's Day in 2013.

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, women protest violence towards women, on International Women’s Day in 2013.

Tuesday May 8 at 2 p.m. ET.

(CNN)Last October, Zainab Fatuma Naigaga, a female opposition party official in Uganda, was arrested along with her male colleagues while on their way to a political rally. The men in the group were ushered aside, while Naigaga, the only woman in the convoy, was manhandled by police and ended up stripped down in public to nothing but her headscarf.

Madeleine Albright

Madeleine Albright

In Bolivia, Councilwoman Juana Quispe was pressured to resign after helping female colleagues file complaints of harassment. When she refused, other council members blocked her from attending sessions and suspended her from office. She was reinstated after a legal battle, but one month later her body was found dumped near a river in La Paz. She had been strangled. Though the case has not been solved, close observers of the region said it was clear the killing was politically motivated.

Quispe was not the only elected female leader in Bolivia to be targeted in this way. Another local councilwoman, Daguimar Rivera, was working to expose corruption when she began receiving anonymous threats. Shortly thereafter, she was found dead — shot three times in the face.

Clearly, these are not isolated incidents.

The terrible reality is that one in three women will experience violence in their lives. Of those affected, an alarming but uncounted number of women are specifically targeted because they are engaged in public life. It is a pervasive but often overlooked barrier that prevents women across the world from having their voices heard. On International Women’s Day, we must call attention to this problem.

Through the decades, female leaders have been pushed down, shoved aside and beaten up. Too many still suffer from harassment, intimidation and violence simply for being female and politically active. These horrific acts — whether directed at women running for office or those simply lining up to vote — are intentional efforts to demean and restrict the political participation of an entire gender. There are often no consequences for the aggressors in these cases. We are frequently told that such violence is cultural, but I say it is criminal and we have to stop it.

Of course, attacking anyone — male or female — for political reasons is abhorrent. But eliminating gender-based persecution is important because women in government can be counted on to raise issues that others overlook, to support ideas that others oppose, and to seek an end to abuses that others accept. And perhaps because of their growing ranks in politics, women across the world have experienced a backlash in person and online. We cannot allow violence to be the cost for women who are simply exercising their fundamental human and political rights.

While the threat of violence is far from the only barrier for women in politics, it has a deep and long-term impact. Because harassment and violence often occur in private and protected spaces, many have learned not to complain about it. If they speak up, they run the risk of appearing to be a liability, rather than an asset to party leaders. Even worse, they can sometimes subject themselves to further harassment and discrimination. In a vicious cycle, such attacks, especially on high-profile women, dampen the political aspirations of other women and girls.

Activists and leaders around the world are beginning to recognize the scale of the problem and are taking steps to address it. A few countries have introduced legislation to criminalize acts of violence against women in politics. Bolivia, for instance, finally passed a law to protect female politicians after 12 years of grass-roots activism and the killings of Quispe and Rivera.

Passage of such laws is an important step, although we must advocate for their effective and consistent enforcement. Legislation, however, is not the solution everywhere: We need to bring other strategies to bear.

To that end, the National Democratic Institute will launch a global call to action next week to stop violence against women in politics. As the chairwoman of the institute’s board, I will be convening a meeting to launch this initiative alongside the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women. It will recommend concrete actions that international and individual actors can take, many of which are basic but common sense.

For example, the United Nations does not currently have specific reporting on acts of violence against women who engage in politics. The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls should start including this kind of violence in its investigations.

Because I believe in democracy, I believe that each person should be able to go as far as her or his talents will allow. Women and girls around the world who share that belief are ready to shape the future of their countries. Integrity, dedication to public service, and hard work should be the only entry fee to politics.

I have often said that success without democracy is improbable, and democracy without women is impossible. If we fail to act on behalf of the current and future female leaders in our world, the cost to our democracies will be too high.

When a woman participates in politics, she should be putting her hopes and dreams for the future on the line, not her dignity and not her life. It is time to put an end to the scourge of violence against women in politics, and to ensure that what happened in Uganda, Bolivia and elsewhere around the world does not stop women from being heard and making change.

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waronwomen

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The War on Women is Global


Tomorrow is human rights day and there is celebration except that human rights are disappearing and unless we stop these horrid actions, they could disappear. I am bringing you a horrible story but we must understand the misogyny we are up against so that we can educate people and so that we can show how unethical behavior like this is. This story came from a Persian website LAHIG. This was a court decision.

 

 

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Jihadists want to take us back to the barberie of the Middle Ages and this is a good example why that can never happen.

 

Iranian woman to be stoned to death as world marks UN ‘Human Rights Day’

By Benjamin Weinthal

Published December 10, 2015

FoxNews.com

stoningpic

For this photo, an Iranian woman symbolically dressed up as a victim of death by stoning as part of a protest by the National Council of Resistance of Iran in Brussels. (Reuters)

As the world marks International Human Rights Day on Thursday, Iran is continuing its execution spree with the announcement that a woman has been sentenced to death by stoning.

The gruesome penalty, in which the wrongdoer is buried up to their shoulders and pelted with rocks, was first reported on the Persian-language Iranian website LAHIG. The woman, who was identified only by the initials “A.Kh,” was convicted of being complicit in her husband’s murder.

An Iranian criminal court in Rasht, the capital city of the northern province of Gilan, handed down the brutal sentence.

“The rate of executions in Iran has not decreased in the last few years, it has increased,” Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, a prominent Canadian-Iranian human rights activist based in Toronto, told FoxNews.com. “Although stoning has become more rare in Iran, such sentences are still being issued by Iranian judges. The probability of a stoning sentence to be carried out is slim due to the international sensitivity of the issue; there is a great chance her sentence may be ‘converted’ to death by hanging.”

“The rate of executions in Iran has not decreased in the last few years, it has increased.”

– Maryam Nayeb Yazdi, Iranian-Canadian activist

Iran is believed to have imposed death by stoning on at least 150 people since the Islamic Revolution in 1980, according to the International Committees against Execution and Stoning.

“We need to note that an official Iranian website released the stoning sentence news, and we should question the regime’s motives for doing so,” said Nayeb Yazdi, who runs the translation blog Persian2English and works with the international NGO Iran Human Rights. “The stoning sentence is an indication of the Iranian regime’s continued war against women in Iran. Arbitrary executions in Iran must be on top of the agenda in any dialogue between Iran and the West.”

After a widespread public-pressure campaign in the West in 2010, Iran dropped the stoning penalty against a 43-year-old Iranian woman. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani was sentenced to stoning for alleged adultery. Her case remains shrouded in judicial mystery and it is unclear if she will still be executed.

“Whether or not one supports the nuclear deal with Iran, it is astonishing that the West cultivates an ever-closer alliance with a theocratic regime widely known for its abysmal human rights record and aggressive behavior in the region,” Julie Lenarz, executive director of the UK-based Human Security Center told FoxNews.com. “They hang men for the “crime” of writing poems; or engaging in peaceful protest; or loving someone of the same sex.

“Women are stoned for being raped and Iranian law even allows for juvenile executions. Iran is averaging three hangings per day at the moment and remains a pariah state with no regard for human life,” she added. “In a despicable form of moral myopia, the gold rush for business, as the international sanctions regime begins to unravel, has made Western governments blind to the suffering of ordinary Iranians at the hands of the Ayatollahs.”

The UN’s Human Rights Day is observed every year on Dec. 10 and commemorates the day in 1948 on which the UN General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Benjamin Weinthal reports on human rights in the Middle East. He is a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Follow Benjamin on Twitter@BenWeinthal

 

Whether this woman is truly guilty or not, her basic human rights are being stripped from her and she is at the mercy of the Iranian court system. This is cruel and unusual punishment and please pray for her. She does not have the protections that American women have. SHAME ON YOU, IRAN.