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28 January 2014
Honduras’ new president Juan Hernandez called the US drug policy a “double standard” and urged US President Barack Obama to recognise the joint effort required to end the region’s drug scourge. “We ask the government of Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress to recognize this shared responsibility … and that we truly work together to solve this problem, which is also their problem,” Hernandez said.
Weak institutions, corruption and gang warfare have made Honduras fertile ground for cartels to expand their operations in Honduras, using the country as a basis for United States-bound cocaine.
According to Hernandez, Central America was suffering as a result of US drug consumption. He said “[i]t strikes us as a double standard that while our people die and bleed, and we’re forced to fight the gangs with our own scarce resources, in North America drugs are just a public health issue … For Honduras and the rest of our Central American brothers it’s a case of life and death.” According to the United Nations, in 2012 Honduras had a murder rate of 85.5 per 100,000 people – the world’s highest.
Source: Swissinfo | New Honduras president takes helm, criticizes U.S. drug policy
28 January 2014
Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General, and John Ashe, General Assembly President, encourage developing countries to work together to reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Mr. Ban noted that there are less than two years until the MDGs’ 2015 deadline and stated that it is important that states work together to eradicate poverty, improve social and economic well-being and plan for a sustainable future. President Ashe emphasised the importance of working together to lay the foundations for a post-2015 development plan. Furthermore, President Ashe commended the group for its commitment to working together thus far and said of the group, ‘[y]ou are an example of the might of South-South cooperation, and a harbinger of greater collaboration that is yet to come.’
Source: UN News Centre | Senior UN officials urge ‘Group of 77’ nations to work collectively on anti-poverty goals
28 January 2014
The English edition of The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916, compiled and edited by Wolfgang Gust, has been released by Berghahn Books.
The book analyses official German diplomatic documents relating to what is referred to as the Armenian genocide. At the time only Germany had the right to report day-by-day in secret code about the ongoing atrocities.
The website of the publisher quotes from the review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of the orginal German edition, as saying that ‘The documents collected here illustrate clearly the shared responsibility of the Kaiserreich, the most important ally of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.’ The Forum Wissenschaft wrote that ‘Wolfgang Gust documents in this excellent political-historical edition from contemporary German sources and the Foreign Office of the Reich government the murderous events themselves (…) as well as the political co-responsibility of the German state.’
Source: Berghahn books | The Armenian Genocide: Evidence from the German Foreign Office Archives, 1915-1916 | Compiled and Edited by Wolfgang Gust | Translated from the German | Foreword by Vahakn N. Dadrian | 820 pages | Published December 2013
27 January 2014
China’s export industry is responsible for dirty emissions that are blowing across the Pacific Ocean and contributing to smog in the United States, a new scientific study says.
Scientists in the United States, China and the United Kingdom used data from 2006 to quantify how much of the air pollution reaching the US West Coast from China is from the production of goods for export to the United States and other countries. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that about one-fifth of the pollution China emits into the atmosphere comes from producing goods for export to the United States and other countries.
The LA Times writes that while the United States has reaped some of the benefits of outsourcing – cheaper cellphones, televisions and appliances and big declines in air pollution – rising emissions in China have paralysed cities there with severe smog. One of the authors of the study is quoted as saying that US demand for cheap imports from China has a way of blowing those environmental problems back at the US: “It’s sort of a boomerang effect”.
Source: The Los Angeles Times | China's industry exporting air pollution to U.S., study says
27 January 2014
The Washington Post has provided a detailed account of the use by the United States of a secret prison near Warsaw that was used in 2003 to interrogate accused September 11 conspirators.
The report describes how the interrogation initially took place in Thailand, and that the Polish location was chosen when a better facility was needed. The CIA paid nearly 300,000 US dollars for improvement of the facility. US interrogators used in the Polish prison ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ that were formulated at the CIA and approved by Justice Department lawyers. These included slapping, sleep deprivation and waterboarding. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-declared mastermind of the attacks, was reportedly waterboarded 183 times in the Polish facility.
Source: The Washington Post | The hidden history of the CIA’s prison in Poland