2011-03-25

Discussing nuclear energy (in Lithuania and the wider Baltic region in the wake of Fukushima. Also, Sweden is dropping its traditionally neutral stance in affairs of war.

( Read more... )

Grybauskaite: EU should arouse women desire to learn to use information technologies and seek careers in this field ( Read more... ) 2009 Dalia Grybauskaite: Lithuania’s ‘Iron Lady’ ( Read more... )

COSTA RICA

Costa Rica creates 2.47 million acre marine park

( Read more... )

Women political leaders in the news continued

BRAZIL

Brazilian President Rousseff Escapes Lula's Shadow This is from Business Week, oh readers. Just so you know. ( Read more... ) And this one is from Fox News Latino News Brazilian students demonstrate, are received by president ( Read more... )

ICELAND

Iceland’s PM Violated Equality Laws ( Read more... )

Iceland’s Government Likely to Widen Coalition ( Read more... )

TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO

Doctor's protest ends at intervention of the Prime Minister ( Read more... )

Kamla, 'special' kids have fun in the rain Huh. The headline bothers me. Is that acceptable terminology? ( Read more... ) Children’s health an urgent priority—Kamla ( Read more... )

MOZAMBIQUE

Flashbacks : 2004 First female Prime Minister in Mozambique ( Read more... )

2007 ANGOLA-MOZAMBIQUE Women Face Unequal Inequality ( Read more... )

2007 Mozambique: Network of Women Ministers And Parliamentarians ( Read more... )

2009 African Success:Luisa Diogo

Born on 11/04/1958 (format : day/month/year) Biography : Luisa Diogo (b. April 11, 1958), is a Mozambican politician who became the Prime Minister of Mozambique in February 2004. ( Read more... )

Ms. Diogo's term ended in 2010.

Entry tags:

Migrant workers caught up in the Revolutions in Libya and Bahrain are not faring well.

Migrant Refugees Swept into Revolutions in Libya and Bahrain

Over the past several weeks, the images emerging from the Middle East and North Africa have shocked and awed Western audiences, who had never seen, or bothered to notice, the massive potential of people power to challenge the rule of ossified dictators. But the protest movements across the region have also shed light on less glorious struggles that pervade stratified Arab societies. If the young protesters represent the rise of civil society forces, the imported migrant laborers caught in the crossfire reflect the often-hidden economic and ethnic dimensions to the region's power struggles.MORE

Foreign Laborers Targeting throughout Bahrain

MANAMA, Mar 25, 2011 (IPS) - As protests in Bahrain continue, increasingly migrant workers are being victimised in violent hate crimes. "We expats are victims of hate crimes because we didn’t leave the country or become part of the general strike called by the opposition to keep Bahrain on hold," Nastufi Sharma, and Indian who has been working in Bahrain since 1997, told IPS. "To stop locals from going to work, roads were blocked… we were attacked."

... Eight migrant workers died and approximately 49 sustained various injuries since Mar. 17 when the government with the support of Cooperation Council of the Arab Gulf States (GCC) peninsula shield troops started cracking down on demonstrations blocking roads in Manama - the financial capital of Bahrain. The government has also declared a three-month state of emergency to be enforced by the Bahrain Defence Force. Most expats are not yet considering leaving the country, hoping for the situation to revert to normal. They fear of losing their jobs and not finding new ones back home. MORE

Revolts bypass domestic workers

The uprisings sweeping the Arab world have been provoked by long injustice, low income, police brutality, and lack of social security. While the world looks at this, the suffering of up to three million maids across the Arab world remains wrapped in silence. Victims of abuse, confinement and rape, migrant domestic workers are often invisible because they suffer in places that remain hidden to the public eye, mostly private homes. A freelance Indonesian domestic worker in Jordan says, "If you go to the Indonesian embassy in Jordan you will see hundreds of women who ran away from their employer. "I also ran away after mistreatment. I want to go back to Indonesia but the embassy has no money to send us."MORE

Bahrain protests Victim vs. victim

Migrant workers and the Shia community comprise two victimised populations in Bahrain; a new system that truly aims to be just and representative must not pitch them against each other.

“They were beating me so hard I could no longer see, there was so much blood running from my head.” These were the words of Bahraini physician Dr Sadek Al-Ikri to BBC reporters about the security forces’ crackdown on peaceful protesters in Bahrain. But this was not all. Dr Al-Ikri also told the journalists that the men beating him refused to stop even when he told them that he was a doctor and that he spoke Urdu. The role of Pakistani migrant workers in the protests in Bahrain has since been highlighted by other international news outlets too. A report in the Guardian said that Bahrainis resent the fact that many riot police and security forces do not speak Arabic and denounce them as mercenary soldiers with little empathy for the common people. The Canadian press reported that a majority of participants in pro-government demonstrations were Sunni Arabs and Pakistanis who have recently been granted citizenship in Bahrain. In the words of one regime supporter, Abdelrahman Ahmed, a 21-year-old student born in Bahrain of Pakistani parents, “We always support the government and they are always on our side.”MORE

2011-03-05 Cables: The Vulnerability of Black African Migrant Workers in Libya

A cable from December 2007 features Gaddafi Development Foundation Executive Director Dr. Yusuf Sawani discussing trans-national terrorism threats and security with US diplomats. The director talks about the fact that a million sub-Saharan African guest workers are resident in Libya and says it should be a “cause of concern.” The workers are a concern because Dr. Sawani believes any of those individuals could possibly commit an act of terrorism. In recent days, many of those guest workers have fled, as Libyans have grown suspicious and attacked a number of black Africans due to reports that Leader Muammar Gaddafi hired “black African mercenaries.”
The latest from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicates 191,000 or more have fled Libya to Egypt, Tunisia and Niger. A previous report estimated around 80,000 Pakistanis, 59,000 Sudanese, 50,000 Bangladeshis, 26,000 Filipinos, 2,000 Nepalese and other African and Asian migrant workers are hosted by the country.
OCHA reports have been tracking the risk of violence migrant workers face.MORE

Entry tags:

Tunisia Update

Art challenges Tunisian revolutionaries The Artocracy project, featuring photos of ordinary Tunisians, has proven art can be just as provocative as politics.

LE KRAM, TUNISIA — A crowd has gathered to ponder the black-and-white photographs which have been pasted across the face of building that was, until recent, the local offices of the former president's much-loathed party. "I have no idea what these photos mean. Do you know?" Meddeb Nejeb, a high school teacher, asks Al Jazeera. He might be yet to grasp the meaning of the photographs, but Nejeb wants to know more. For the artists behind what is one of the most ambitious contemporary street art projects to vibrate the Arab world, the artwork is about replacing the once all-pervasive presidential photography with mosaics of ordinary, anonymous Tunisians who rose up against their government. The group are using street art to kick-start conversations and to challenge their compatriots to see the familiar in a new, post-revolutionary, light. In the spirit of people-power, the project, titled "INSIDE OUT: Artocracy in Tunisia", features a hundred ordinary Tunisians, putting their images where only presidents once hung. The portraits were taken by six Tunisian photographers, in collaboration with the renowned French street artist known as JR and other international artists. MORE including VIDEO at link

Visiting Tunisian Union Leaders Detail Labor’s Role in Revolution, Transition to Democracy

Women workers comprise roughly 43 percent of the 450,000 labor union members in 18 local unions in Tunisia, according to Najoua Makhlouf, a medical doctor and president of UGTT's national women's committee. Union women work in five Tunisian job sectors: education, garment and textiles, health, municipal services and tourism. The majority of the women unionists are between the ages of 30 to 40. “I would like to underline working women’s role,” she said, “in the future of the country. We are being proactive to organize women so that they will be more aware of their rights and politically savvy.” A pivotal election for Tunisians is July 24, when they vote for a representative body to draft a new constitution, laws and election codes. MORE

Refugee flow into Tunisia continues

RAS JDIR, Tunisia, March 25 (UPI) -- The number of refugees fleeing to Tunisia to escape the Libyan fighting surged Friday, border authorities said. Within the past 24 hours, as many as 1,145 people reached the border post at Ras Jdir, Tunisia, the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA reported. Border security sources said Friday 3,714 people had arrived in recent days, mostly Libyans but also Americans, four Germans and four Britons. Citizens of Sudan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Chad, Somalia, Eritrea and Tunisia also have been recorded. MORE

Tunisian business faces up to murky past

Tunisia's business community is trying to come to terms with the changed circumstances and aspirations of a post-revolutionary world, even as some of its members are dogged by the legacy of the former regime. "It's not every year we have a revolution," Hichem Elloumi of the UTICA, the Tunisian employers' association, argued during a radio discussion last week. "It's not even every 10 years. We weren't prepared for this." Following the overthrow in January of Zein al-Abidine Ben Ali, president for 23 years, the Tunisian press published revelations about public and private sector corruption. The business interests of relatives of Mr Ben Ali and Leila Trabelsi, his wife, extended from car distribution and importing consumer products to retailing, cement, air transport, property, telecommunications, banking and the media. The central bank estimates that in a country of 10m people, about 180 companies were controlled by individuals either related to Mr Ben Ali or Ms Trabelsi, or close associates of their families. The Jasmin Revolution had uncovered a banana republic MORE

Entry tags:

Wisconsin GOP would like to forget this is the 100th Anniversary of a very big disaster

filkertom noted in disbelief, the Wisconsin GOP is ignoring a judicial restraining order and acting as if their union-busting "budget repair" bill is law.
When it demonstrably isn't.
http://filkertom.livejournal.com/1347554.html

There's more on updates and reporting there at Daily Kos about it.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/25/960187/-Wisconsin-GOP-to-ignore-judicial-restraining-order-and-act-as-though-budget-repair-bill-is-law

Excerpt:
...Wisconsin Republicans have decided that a judicial restraining order blocking the budget repair bill from becoming law does not actually block the budget repair bill from becoming law. They are going to ignore the courts and govern without them...

And here's the NY times reporting on the Judge's restraining order:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/us/19wisconsin.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=Wisconsin&st=cse

Excerpt:
...CHICAGO — Efforts to shrink collective bargaining rights for public workers in Wisconsin were slowed on Friday when a judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking a much-debated law from taking effect.

The decision, issued by Judge Maryann Sumi of the Dane County Circuit Court in Madison, temporarily bars the Wisconsin secretary of state from publishing the law, which limits bargaining to matters of wages. The fight over the law has drawn tens of thousands of demonstrators to the State Capitol, and the issue has become a focus of debate in numerous statehouses.

Publication of the law — a procedural requirement needed before it can take effect — had been expected next week. But Judge Sumi’s ruling could delay that until at least later in the month, when she plans to hold a full hearing on a lawsuit that accuses Republican lawmakers of violating the Wisconsin open meeting requirements to push through the bill. State officials said they were pursuing an appeal of the restraining order...
( Read more... )
Also, lest we forget what it's like having no unions, having no enforcement of safety laws or of fair labor laws, I should (like other folks on my flist) remind everybody this is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Let me also remind everybody that the Wisconsin law, above, removes the ability of unions to negotiate *anything* besides wages. The 1911 fire shows you another reason why this is a very bad idea.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Fire

Excerpt:
...The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York and resulted in the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, who either died from the fire or jumped to their deaths. Most of the victims were recent immigrant Jewish and Italian women aged sixteen to twenty-three.[1][2][3] Many of the workers could not escape the burning building because the managers had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits...

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/03/25/general-us-triangle-fire-remembered_8374564.html

Excerpt:

...The victims of the Triangle fire were mainly young immigrant women. Many of them jumped to their deaths to escape the flames.

The fire galvanized the labor movement and prompted many improvements in fire safety, such as laws mandating fire drills...

gakked thanks to

feochadn, picture and link

List of victims of the Triangle Shuirtwaist Factory Fire:
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/triangle/trianglevictims2.html