The contemporary configuration of the world into political units, nations, peoples and religious communities results from a global process of carving out empires and spheres of influence through direct military interventions and indirect political meddling in the 'internal' conflicts of states that achieved or conserved political independence from the great powers in the nineteenth century.

- John Gledhill

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
That depends a good deal on where you want to get to, said the Cat.
"I don’t much care where- " said Alice.
Then it doesn’t matter which way you go, said the Cat.
"- so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.
Oh, you’re sure to do that, said the Cat, if you only walk long enough.

Yasuni, Ecuador: Huge ecological wealth is at risk

Why so few vegetables in Sri Lanka?

Migrants have become the objects of a new, obsessive field of inquiry, like bird watching, based on research and mapping

Jeremy Harding

the triumph of violence depends upon the production of armaments

- Engels

ICG have a new report, Dynamics of Violence in Papua

The BBC, apparently.

@stavvers @mediocredave lol @ the nazis "corrupting" eugenics fucking hell

— BORG OSBOURNE (@_stux_) August 9, 2012

On a recent summer evening 11-year-old Mazlum Akay left his home in Yüregir, a predominantly Kurdish neighbourhood in the southern Turkish city of Adana, to buy sweets at the local corner shop.

Nearby, clashes had broken out between riot police and local youths demonstrating against the solitary confinement of Kurdish militant leader Abdullah Öcalan...the schoolboy was struck on the head by a police teargas cartridge. Eight days later, on 5 August, Mazlum died from his wounds and became the 501st child killed by Turkish security forces since 1988, according to Turkish human rights organisations.
here

HRW in India: The Maoists and government forces seem to have little in common except a willingness to target civil society activists

Yemen: 'multiple crises'.

The WFP reports that half of Yemen's children are chronically malnourished and that one out of ten does not live to reach the age of five.

THIS

11 yr old girl shot with rubber bullets in Madrid today. Markets perky.
— Gavan Titley (@GavanTitley) July 11, 2012

'An alarmingly high number of children under the age of five are dying in parts of Central African Republic'

'"The results show the mortality rate in the overall population is high, and almost 50 percent of the deaths during the survey period were children," says Till Kinkel, MSF’s health adviser for the Central African Republic. "This tells us that, on average, in this area, almost 200 out of every 1,000 children die before the age of five."'

here

THIS

Overspill from Frank's Café blocked a road in Peckham last night. If that had been black kids or Millwall fans imagine the police reaction.
— Robert Peter Vaughan (@vornstyle) July 1, 2012

(for background)

This piece ('What is progressive about David Cameron?') is from early 2010, but the money quote is especially relevant in a week in the UK in which Tony Blair is hawking himself around, talking up his desire to perhaps become Prime Minister again one day.


The question is how did such claims even become vaguely intelligible? How did 'progress' as a discourse become a byword for reaction? The obvious answer is that New Labour made this possible. On every theme I've mentioned above, every objectionable facet of Tory policy, there is a New Labour counterpart - not exact, and not necessarily as extreme, but very real nonetheless.

At the start of July, the refugee health care programme in Canada will change; cuts to services will affect children and adults - more here.

On Tuesday during a speech in suburban Vancouver, Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (Con, Calgary Southeast) was heckled by protestors who cried Shame at him (there are certainly Canadian doctors against him, incidentally).

Kenney labelled these hecklers "extremists".

So, anyone who disagrees with the minister is now extremist?