Indigenous people killed by police in protest

[la_vie_noire]

Peru cancels mine after 6 killed in clash.

Peru's government canceled a Canadian-owned silver mine in the southern highlands Friday after six people were killed and at least 30 wounded when police fired on mostly indigenous protesters opposing the project.

Protesters also attacked a police station and a state bank in a second city.

The bloodshed occured when police turned back protesters who tried to take over an airport near the city of Juliaca in Puno state, an area they have paralyzed with road blockades since May 9 in a bid to cancel the Santa Ana mine as well as a proposed hydroelectric project on the Inambari river.

The outgoing government of President Alan Garcia announced after leftist military man Ollanta Humala won the presidential election June 5 that it was scrapping the Inambari project. In April, it canceled a huge copper mining project in another southern state after three protesters died in clashes with police.

Mining accounts for two-thirds of Peru's export earnings and has been the underpinning of a decade of robust economic growth, but the rural poor have benefited little from mining and complain it contaminates their water and crops.

Dr. Percy Casaperalta, who directed the evacuation of wounded after Friday's clash at Manco Capac airport, said at least 4,000 protesters were involved. He provided the toll of six dead and at least 30 wounded by telephone from the local hospital Carlos Monge Medrano.

Gracía's government is still at it.

The International Bill of Human Rights

[the_future_modernes]

consists of : The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

In English
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In Farsi
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In Spanish, I think?
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In Icelandic
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In French?
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and...

The Covenants:

Which together form the International Bill of Human Rights.

Celebration as gay marriage passes in New York State, USA

[the_future_modernes]

Last night, the New York Senate made gay marriage legal 33-29.

at ontd_politicalis a gorgeous picture post: Pride POTD (Pictures of the Day): Special New York Edition June 24, 2011 Feast your eyes on the happy...:)



New York: Activists celebrate gay marriage victory, but the fight goes on

On the streets of the West Village in Manhattan – and especially around the gay-friendly pubs and clubs of Christopher Street, where the modern gay rights movement was born – people celebrated and danced in the streets. Crowds of gay and straight people sang and cheered as the news spread. Mayor Michael Bloomberg also welcomed the development. "Today we are stronger than we were yesterday," he said.

Gay rights activists had focused on New York as the biggest battle so far in their continuing fight to give gay couples the same rights and status as heterosexual ones in America. It became a powerful symbolic battleground for both gay people and their opponents, especially as several high-profile Republican presidential candidates are using the issue in their nascent campaigns.

New York's Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, had made gay marriage a key pledge, but activists had to get a vote through the Republican-controlled state senate. Huge efforts were put into persuading a handful of wavering Republicans to join Democrats in passing the law. One of them, Stephen Saland, had voted against gay marriage in 2009, but gave a speech outlining his change of heart. "My intellectual and emotional journey has ended here today and I have to find doing the right thing as treating all persons with equality," he said.

Another senator, Mark Grisanti, explained his motives for going back on a campaign vow to oppose the move. "I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the same rights I have with my wife," he said. The move made New York's senate the first Republican-controlled legislative body in America to vote in favour of gay marriage.MORE

How the deal was done in Albany

ALBANY - A vote of conscience has left the four Republican senators who helped legalize gay marriage already facing retribution from the Conservative Party.

Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long said the four have lost the backing of the small but influential party for what he deemed their "betrayal" of principles.

"It's absolutely a betrayal," Long said. "They accepted the Conservative Party endorsement. They knew were we stood on the issue."

But Gov. Cuomo and gay rights advocates had the backs of the four senators - Sens. James Alesi of Rochester, Roy McDonald of Saratoga Springs, Stephen Saland of Poughkeepsie, and Mark Grisanti of Buffalo - Friday night after the historic vote.

MORE

Nations rise and nations fall...

[the_future_modernes]

Once, There Was Yugoslavia

BELGRADE, Jun 24, 2011 (IPS) - For decades, the former Yugoslavia was a communist country with a human face, whose nations enjoyed high standards of living compared to other Eastern Europeans, visa-free travel abroad, and participatory government. Twenty years ago, on Jun. 25, all that ended.

It ended for a country where private property was allowed, be it homes or small business. Education and healthcare were free, jobs were secure, and Yugoslavia had a firm reputation as one of the leaders of the non-aligned movement.

On Jun. 25, 1991, the most developed republics of Croatia and Slovenia made unilateral declarations of independence. They saw the Serbian leader at the time, Slobodan Milosevic, as the incarnation of evil who wanted their nations to remain under what they saw as the iron rule of Belgrade in a world that had changed after the fall of Berlin wall in 1989.

Milosevic was acting as the protector of all Serbs, who lived outside present day Serbia in hundreds of thousands in Croatia and Bosnia. He publicly declared "the need for all Serbs to live in one country."

"Those two things set the stage for the wars of the 90s," historian Predrag Markovic tells IPS. "After the human loss of some 150,000 people and enormous economic losses, it is hard to say what the benefit of independence was for some 24 million people who lived in former Yugoslavia. Yes, they are proud of having their own countries, but the essential substance of serious states is lacking in almost all when compared to former federation."MORE

Huh. Is anyone willing to comment on that characterization of the situation?

The continuing problem of migrant worker exploitation worldwide:domestic worker abuse Saudi Arabia:

[the_future_modernes]

TRIGGER WARNING FOR MENTIONS OF RAPE, ABUSE ETC:

Saudi Arabian torment of migrant workers at mercy of abusive 'madams'

Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia send £17bn to families back home annually. But for some, the cost in physical and mental abuse is too high, writes Jason Burke

Shortly after dawn, as the sun rises over the hills behind the city, tens of thousands of women will wake in the Saudi Arabian port of Jeddah and go to work. Maybe 14 or 16 hours later, their day will be over.

They are maids, almost all from the Philippines or Indonesia, working for £100-£200 a month. There are more than 500,000 of them in Saudi Arabia, among nearly nine million foreign workers who sweep roads, clean offices, staff coffee shops, drive the cars that women are banned from driving and provide the manpower on the vast construction projects.

The story of the maids rarely receives attention, except when a new shocking incident reveals once again the problems many of them face. Last weekend a 54-year-old Indonesian maid was beheaded by sword for killing her female boss with a cleaver. Ruyati binti Sapubi had, an Islamic court heard, endured years of abuse before finally attacking her "madam", as the maids call their employers, when denied permission to return home.

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Recall the recent headline:UN's ILO (International Labour Organization) says that domestic workers...are workers Hopefully this new ruling will help to combat this kind of abuse.