World Sitting On A Powder Keg - Amnesty International

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The world is sitting on a “powder keg” of social unrest, which risks exploding as human rights are eroded by the global economic slowdown, Amnesty International warned.

But its annual report — detailing abuses from China to Guantanamo Bay and from Sri Lanka to the ex-Soviet Union — said the global meltdown also offers a chance to rebuild an economic framework putting human rights at its heart.

“There are growing signs of political unrest and violence, adding to the global insecurity that already exists because of deadly conflicts which the international community seems unable or unwilling to resolve.

“In other words: we are sitting on a powder keg of inequality, injustice and insecurity, and it is about to explode,” said Amnesty chief Irene Khan.

The 400-page Amnesty Report gives an overview of abuse around the world, including well-publicised human rights hotspots such as Myanmar, Sudan’s Darfur or the Palestinian territories.

In Asia, Amnesty noted the “magnificence” of the Beijing Olympic Games, but lamented that the run-up to them was “marred by increased repression throughout the country as authorities tightened control over human rights defenders, religious practitioners, ethnic minorities, lawyers and journalists.”

In Africa there was “state-sponsored political violence” in Zimbabwe, while war-torn areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) saw “numerous human rights abuses… committed by all the parties to the conflict.”

The election of US President Barack Obama raised hopes for progress on closing down the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, but even after only a few months “the record of the new administration has been mixed,” Amnesty said.

“Early promise and initial important steps to redress violations have been followed by limited action towards ensuring detentions are brought into line with the USA’s international obligations, and a lack of accountability and remedy for past human rights violations remains entrenched,” it added.

via AFP: World sitting on ‘powder keg’: Amnesty.

Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

• Food scarcity and the resulting higher food prices are pushing poor countries into chaos.

• Such “failed states” can export disease, terrorism, illicit drugs, weapons and refugees.

• Water shortages, soil losses and rising temperatures from global warming are placing severe limits on food production.

• Without massive and rapid intervention to address these three environmental factors, the author argues, a series of government collapses could threaten the world order.

One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis.

For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos—and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too!

U.S. To Guarantee Palestinian State - Bind Next Administration

The U.S. is planning to issue a letter guaranteeing the country will back agreements reached during current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state before President Bush leaves office in January, WND has learned.

The move is intended to ensure any agreements reached by the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority, and spelled out in a joint document, will be recognized by the next U.S. administration and binding for Israel and the PA.

The information comes as Jacob Walles, the U.S. consul-general, stated in an interview with a major Palestinian newspaper yesterday that Israel and the PA agreed to negotiate Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley area leading to the Dead Sea.

In response to the report, the State Department issued a statement claiming the U.S. government has not taken a position on the borders of a future Palestinian state and denying Jerusalem is being discussed.

But Israeli and Palestinian sources intimately familiar with the current talks tell WND Jerusalem is being negotiated, with Palestinian officials claiming the talks are in advance stages.

The sources also said the U.S. recently floated a plan to divide Jerusalem.

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Large Hadron Collider - Could The World End Next Wednesday, Scientists Ask

Two nightmare scenarios, two ends of the world. In the first, there is little warning. For maybe a month there would be no sign that life was about to come to an abrupt and nasty end for all living things on Earth.

Then, earthquakes would start unexpectedly, alerting geologists that something terrible, unimaginable, was amiss.

After a few days, these seismic disturbances would reach catastrophic proportions.

Cities would be levelled, the oceans would rise and wash in a series of mega-tsunamis that would attack the world’s coasts, killing millions.

The fact that the earthquakes were striking randomly, not along well-known geological faultlines, would be proof that something devastating was afoot.

Finally, the end would come, in a disaster of Biblical scale. The Earth would literally start to crack up.

Molten lava would wash over the land and the seas would start to boil.

Mega-hurricanes would level buildings and forests the world over. Eventually, mountains would crumble as the Earth’s crust continued to disintegrate.

The fabric of the planet itself would start to disappear, trillions of tonnes of rock, water, air and life sucked into a whirlpool of unimaginable force.

From space, our blue-and-white home would appear to vanish down a plughole in a flash of light.

At least in this scenario we would have a little time, perhaps, to come to terms with the end.

However, a second doomsday scenario is even more terrifying. There would be no warning at all.

In an instant - about one-twentieth of a second - the entire Earth would simply vanish from space.

Less than two seconds later, the Moon would follow suit. Eight minutes later, the Sun would be ripped apart, followed by the rest of the planets in the solar system and onwards, a wave of destruction caused by a rent in the fabric of space itself, spreading out from our world at the speed of light.

Any extra-terrestrials out there would die too, in due course. And there would be nothing technology could do about it.

But why should we now be worrying about such possible causes of Armageddon?

The answer is a gargantuan machine - the largest, most expensive scientific experiment in history, the ‘Large Hadron Collider’, to be turned on next Wednesday.

Although it was designed to answer the fundamental questions of life, some people have claimed that it could end up destroying the entire cosmos.

This gigantic £4 billion-plus atom-smasher has been built under the Swiss-French border near Geneva, and is the most powerful device ever built for probing the secrets of the atom and the forces and particles which make up our Universe.

It is a staggering device, occupying a train-sized tunnel 18 miles long, buried 300ft underground, studded with gigantic, cathedral-sized ring-shaped detectors where collisions between packets of ‘heavy’ subatomic particles, ‘hadrons’, will take place in the hope that the innermost workings of matter and energy will be revealed.

The LHC is, arguably, the most impressive machine ever built by Mankind.

MICHAEL HANLON: Are we all going to die next Wednesday? | Mail Online

Putin Responds, “You’ll See” A Response To NATO’s Naval Buildup in Black Sea

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Russia will respond calmly to an increase in NATO ships in the Black Sea in the aftermath of the short war with Georgia, but promised that “there will be an answer.”

Meanwhile, President Dmitry Medvedev sternly warned the West that it would lose more than Moscow would if it tried to punish Russia with sanctions over the war with Georgia.

Russia has repeatedly complained that NATO has too many warships in the Black Sea. Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said Tuesday that currently there are two U.S., one Polish, one Spanish and one German ship there.

“We don’t understand what American ships are doing on the Georgian shores, but this is a question of taste, it’s a decision by our American colleagues,” Putin reportedly said. “The second question is why the humanitarian aid is being delivered on naval vessels armed with the newest rocket systems.”

Russia’s reaction to NATO ships “will be calm, without any sort of hysteria. But of course, there will be an answer,” Interfax quoted Putin as saying during a visit to Uzbekistan.

Asked by exactly what measures Russia would take in response to NATO ships in the Black Sea, Putin was quoted as answering, “You’ll see.”

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