Under the most right-wing government in its history, Israel has carried out large-scale invasions of Palestinian refugee camps and towns in the West Bank, killing and wounding scores of people. Armed Israeli fighters have burst into Palestinian streets and homes on an almost nightly basis, often picking children out of their beds in the middle of the night to be taken into administrative detention—acts of terror that have gone largely unreported in the Western press.
The state has accelerated its expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem and the West Bank and expanded the construction of illegal settlements. Settlers have waged weekly assaults on Palestinian villages, attacking and in some cases killing Palestinians, setting fire to their homes, and destroying their property, often under the protection of Israeli soldiers. The domestic secret police has facilitated and fomented violence against Palestinian citizens. Senior members of Israel’s government and messianic Jewish extremists have been increasingly aggressive in their provocations in and around the Noble Sanctuary Mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem. In the weeks leading to Hamas’s offensive, the state tightened the blockade on Gaza by still further restricting movement in and out.
Tareq Bacouni, a former senior analyst for the International Crisis Group. (Source)
Tag Archives: Human rights
Unpopular view: Israel is an apartheid state. The cycle of violence will never end until one side is oppressing the other.
Netizens reject Harry Roque’s nomination to ILC
Together with other bloggers and social media influencers – Concerned Online Citizens collectively, we sent a letter to the members of the UN General Assembly urging them to reject the nomination of Harry Roque to the International Law Commission.
Below is the full text of the letter:
We’ve also put up an online petition so that other concerned citizens can join and express their opposition to this mockery of international law, human rights and an embarrassment to the Philippines.
We hope that you will join and sign up as well. It may be a simple gesture but it sends a powerful message across, that we Filipinos will stand not stand for this abhorrent idea of having a disgraced lawyer and enabler of Duterte.
Instead of being elevated to such an honorable position, Roque and Duterte should be made accountable.
LIFE Hacks with Atty Chel Diokno
It’s been a tiring, busy yet very fulfilling week as together with good friends and colleagues, we’ve launched the first installment of our ‘LIFE Hacks‘ series of webinars last June 27, 2020.
Our keynote speaker is none other than the venerable human rights defender, nationalist and founding Dean of De La Salle University’s College of Law, Atty Chel Dionko in which he talked about the Anti-Terrorism Bill and the recent cyber-libel conviction against veteran journalist Maria Ressa.
The webinar series is the inaugural project for our little volunteer group Lasallian Initiative for Empowerment or LIFE. Our mission is to help our fellow Filipinos, especially the youth, to better understand current issues and take part in the national conversation.
Despite the speed bumps and misses, we were surprised that the event exceeded most of our expectations given that we only had almost a week to put it all together. It was also my first foray into moderating or hosting a webinar and the experience has been a humbling and inspiring learning experience for me.
Apart from managing the logistics of the webinar and hosting it, I also handled the technical production – learning how to use and setup OBS Studio to jazz up our zoom webinar the night before and live streaming the event on our Facebook page. All those years of tinkering with computers, sound mixers and DIY-community theater really helped a lot.
We’re now working on our next event which would be a lot smoother and better thanks to all the valuable lessons we learned from the pilot episode. I’ll be talking more about this soon in the coming days.
If you’re one of those who joined our first ‘LIFE Hacks’ thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We look forward to seeing you in the next installment soon!
Mozart, spaghetti, eclipses & zoonosis
You may be able to spot a ‘ring of fire’ eclipse this weekend link
On June 21st, at 3:45 UTC, there would be an annular solar eclipse in which the moon only partially covers the sun creating a flaming silhouette. This rare event happens once every one or two years when the moon comes in between the Earth and the sun in its farthest point in its orbit. It will be visible in northern India, southeastern Europe to northern Australia in varying degrees. Don’t forget to use the proper equipment in viewing the eclipse as looking directly at the sun could cause permanent eye damage. And no, sunglasses, x-ray films, polaroid filters, or color films won’t give you protection.
The tangled history of spaghetti bolognese link
The spaghetti that we know – pasta noodles with red sauce often referred to as spaghetti bolognese has nothing to do with the Italian town of Bologna. Its origins can be traced to when Napoleon invaded Italy in 1796 and the Italians’ embracing French cooking. American soldiers and Italian immigrants brought it to the United States at the end of World War II. The growth and global expansion of American fast-food chains then exported it to the rest of the world.
Mozart may reduce seizure frequency in people with epilepsy link
A study suggests that listening to Mozart reduces the frequency of seizures in people with epilepsy. It doesn’t say exactly what in Mozart’s music gives this benefit. Maybe music from other classical masters like Beethoven, Bach or Vivaldi would give the same positive effect. From time to time, I put on Spring from Four Seasons just to lighten up the mood and get the creative juices flowing.
People probably caught coronavirus from minks. That’s a wake-up call to study infections in animals, researchers say. link
The consensus among experts is that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 came from bats and then jumped to humans in what is called zoonosis. Now there’s a growing body of research that suggests the sources of other pathogens may be closer to home as our domesticated animals in farms and including our pets are potential reservoirs.
Even during the SARS outbreak in 2003, it has been proven that cats and raccoons played a role in the spread of the virus in Hong Kong. Back in April, minks in Dutch fur farms got sick from SARS-CoV-2 and later passed it on to humans. Aside from pet cats and dogs, lions and tigers in zoos have also caught COVID-19. So what can be done with the certainty that there would be another outbreak? Better and widened surveillance that includes animals both domestic and wild.
What we can learn from New Zealand’s successful fight against COVID-19 link
The exact opposite of what the Duterte administration did and is doing. New Zealand may have had the advantage of a smaller population and geographic isolation, however the following steps proved more decisive:
- The early shutdown of its borders
- Early ramping up of diagnostic testing
- A meticulous contact tracing system
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern did well on risk communication, explaining clearly and frequently what was happening and why. This made people feel that they were part of a communal effort to care for each other. She promoted solidarity. – Gavin Yamey, director of the Duke Center for Policy Impact in Global Health
In contrast, the Duterte government did the opposite:
Relented on imposing travel restrictions even saying that it didn’t want to offend China
Communication was all over the place: from having different officials saying one thing in the morning only to have another official contradict it later in the day.
They even had the bright idea to classify cases as “fresh” and “old” in their official reporting which only made things confusing. It didn’t hide the fact that more people are getting COVID-19 despite imposing the longest lockdown in the world, billions spent, and the available capabilities of local health experts and scientists.
Worse, Duterte’s late-night appearances on TV were laced with his signature profanities and incoherent statements were clear only one thing: threatening to jail or kill critics and naysayers.
We’re in the third month of the outbreak in the Philippines and it seems that this terrible situation will drag on for longer.