Title: Child labor and prostitution

Author: Carlos Quintanilla

URL: http://www.change-links.org/Prostitution.htm

Abstract: This article focuses on the negative effects of child labor, as reported by the international and domestic organizations. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) observes that the poverty, neglect and the struggle for survival have proliferated child labor in Central America. The International Labor Organization of the Permanent Economic Commission for Latin America (CEPAL) reveals that the child labor has increased to over 15 million working in Latin American, who are living in dangerous physical, emotional and unhealthy conditions. The reports highlights that half of the children working for poor salaries are aged between 6 and 14, while the girls working as maids, end up as prostitutes after suffering from sexual abuse at the hands of their employers.

Title: Childhood Abuse Changes the Developing Brain

URL: http://nospank.net/teicher.htm

Abstract: This article reveals the results of a research on the negative affects of childhood abuse and neglect in causing permanent damage to the brain structure of growing children, which shapes their perception towards life. A researchers headed by Martin H. Teicher of the McLean Hospital, Belmont, Massachusetts, identify four abnormalities in the brain. They find that the trauma of abuse induces cascade of effects, including changes in hormones and neurotransmitters, which mediate development of vulnerable brain regions. Due to this the adults who had been abused and neglected as children are more likely to experience epileptic seizures caused by changes to the limbic system, a part of the brain that controls emotions. The emotions that accompany these seizures include sadness, embarrassment, anger, mental worry and torture behind cheerful explosive laughter, serenity, fear and even the self-destructive behavior. The difference of effects on boys and girls is also discussed.

Title: Death Made In America: Impacts of Depleted Uranium Contamination on Afghanistan’s Children: Disturbing Photographs.

Author: Dr. Mohammed Daud Miraki

URL: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=DAU20060509&articleId=2412

Abstract:
This is a photo essay illustrating the intensity of environmental damage caused by the contamination of depleted Uranium used by the American soldiers and its impact on Afghan children, via these photos of babies born deformed.

Title: The Struggle for a Jewish State

Author: Walter Laqueur

URL: http://pij.org/details.php?id=927

Abstract:
This is an extract from Part III of the book ‘A History of Zionism,’ by Walter Laqueur, a distinguished historian and director of the Institute for Contemporary History in London. It discusses the efforts by the international community to establish an independent state of Israel following the World War II. The United Nations General Assembly had established on May 15, 1947, an eleven member committee, known as the ‘United Nations Special Committee on Palestine,’ to investigate into the Palestinian question, make proposals for a settlement and to report back by September 1947. This article presents an account of the period which started with the proposals at the United Nations on May 15, 1947 and ended with the and the final creation and legitimization of Israel with the declaration of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948.

A German-born Israeli journalist, Uri Avneri has been contributing various essays on the Arab-Israeli conflict, over the years. He is a left-wing peace activist and former Knesset member, who was originally one of the members of the right-wing Revisionist Zionist movement.  The following website presents information about him and the related sites.

URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Avnery

Title: Black flags in Ramallah: of war and transfer

Author: Uri Avnery

URL: http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery03102003.html

Abstract:
The author discusses his experience of visiting Ramallah in an attempt to know from the Palestinian civic leaders about the dangers threatening the Palestinian population in case of an American attack on Iraq. He observes that there will be a prolonged closure and curfew in all the occupied territories, preventing Palestinians’ access to food, medicines and hospitals. Israel may increase the acts of ‘transfer,’ which means the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Palestine, as happened in 1948 and 1967. As all the acts constitute war crimes under the Geneva Convention and other international laws, the author calls on the Israelis to take up every step to prevent such acts from taking place, which, he believes, a patriotic duty of the highest order.

Title: Beware of Iraq’s whipping boys

Author: Nir Rosen

URL: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB19Ak02.html

Abstract: This article presents information about the Shi’ite Islam’s paradigmatic ritual commemorating its central, epic, narrative, the seventh-century martyrdom of Husain, the third imam, or leader of the Shi’ite community. It discusses the activities of a 26-year-old Najim Abdul Amir, a construction worker and a mudarib, or trainer, instructing up to 60 boys in the correct performance of Shi’ite Islam’s paradigmatic ritual. This article offers deep insight into the religious and political history of the Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq.

Title: Caste Atrocity in Khairlanji on September 29, 2006.

URL: http://www.ambedkarmission.org/news/news_item.asp?NewsID=36

Anyone with a heart will cry while reading this article. One could not expect such tragic horrid incident in a state, which gave birth to the father of Indian constitution and whose efforts helped Dalits to stand at least to themselves. How long will these atrocities against Dalits will go on.. How long the conservative, so-called ‘high castes’ go on perpetrating such heinous brutalities. Is it their sin that they have born in a low caste? or Is it the sin of the ‘Hindu’ Gods, if any, to force them born in Adhama Kula as per Dharma Sastras. Aren’t the so-called high-caste fanatics people, educated???.. Is this that their culture, morals, values, ethics and religion teach them.

Is this that their culture, morals, values, ethics and religion teach them. Don’t they think about consequences and psychological trauma, if the same thing happens to their mothers and sisters in front of their eyes?? Any religion highlights one issue, i.e. humanity. Having no humanitarian bent of mind, how these perpetrators can be termed as ‘Humans’? Is there any value for Indian Constitution and Rule of Law? or is it same as ‘Rule of Varna’ as propagated by 10th mandala of Rigveda and Manu Dharma Sastra. Oh! God where can I find the ‘aspirations, or the key subjects to be denounced’ enshrined or boasted in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution, JUSTICE: “social,” “economical” and “political,” LIBERTY EQUALITY and FRATERNITY, coming into reality.

And where can I find in this brutal world the aspirations of one of great poet coming into reality… “Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls” and “Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into dreary desert sand of dead habit.“??? Where? Where? Where?.. Please stop this. Neither religion nor the social class that comes with us at the time of our death. Death is inevitable reality. Life of a human being, whether it is of High-Caste or Low Caste, is very important. Once life has gone it can not be taken back. Please think in Humanitarian terms.

It is not the religion or caste or class ridden society that is perpetrating these kinds of crimes. It the frustration and vengeance stored inside any human being, backed by the anti-social elements, mainly political, which is manifesting in such heinous crimes among various societies across the globe.

Title: Background resource: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Author: By Yifat Susskind, the Associate Director of MADRE, a registered tax-exempt charitable organization based in New York, NY.

URL: http://www.madre.org/country_pal_bg.html

Abstract:
This article offers information about the background of the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in 1948 following the World War II. It covers issues related to the conflict, including the 1967 Israeli Occupation, signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993, the Palestinian Uprisings of 1987 and 2000, America hindering the peace process by giving military aid to Israel and by vetoing the Security Council of the United Nations to block resolutions condemning Israel for human rights abuses against Palestinians and violations of international law. This article exposes the ethnic and religious rivalry, role of Palestinian youth in confronting Israeli troops, mass media’s bias and the probabilities for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Title: A Wall In Their Heart

URL: http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/wall_yediot_eng.html

It presents a report by Meron Rappaport published in p. M16 of an Israeli newspaper Yedioth Aharonoth on May 23, 2003.

It highlights various issues related to the Israeli-West Bank barrier wall.

Worth reading and helps understand the core issues behind the ’security’ fence.