UNGA: 153 countries called on Israel to 'renounce' nuclear weapons

December 10, 2020 

The United Nations building is seen in Manhattan on the first official day of the 75th United Nations General Assembly on 22 September 2020 in New York City. 

[Spencer Platt/Getty Images]

December 10, 2020 

In a vote held on Monday, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) called on Israel to "renounce possession of nuclear weapons," news agencies reported.

A resolution entitled "The Risk of Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East" had 153 supporting votes against only six who did not support it, with 25 abstentions. The US, Israel's ally, was among the six countries that did not vote for the resolution.

The resolution was part of a large package of resolutions approved by the UNGA related to nuclear disarmament, globally and in the Middle East.

Based on the resolution, the UNGA asked Israel: "Not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons."

In addition, the UNGA called the Israeli occupation state: "To renounce possession of nuclear weapons and to place all its unsafeguarded nuclear facilities under full-scope agency safeguards as an important confidence-building measure among all states of the region and as a step towards enhancing peace and security."

Of the 193 members of the UN, 191 countries are parties of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Israel has never signed the treaty.

This resolution passed 152-6, with 24 abstentions last year.

On Monday, the UNGA also voted 174-2, with one abstention, on a resolution that called for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Only Israel and the US opposed it, with Cameroon abstaining.

Egypt state-run newspaper threatens that EIPR founder may 'vanish'

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Hossam Bahgat, founder and acting director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

December 7, 2020 

An Egyptian state-run newspaper with ties to National Security has published a disturbing article about the founder and acting director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).

"It is not unlikely for Hossam to suddenly vanish," wrote former editor Khaled Imam. "His followers would claim he was forcibly disappeared or detained. But if he does suddenly disappear then most certainly, he will have joined a terror group abroad."




An Egyptian state-run newspaper with ties to National Security has published a disturbing article about the founder and acting director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights [@hossambahgat/Twitter]

The warning comes just days after three senior members of the EIPR were released following an international outcry.

They were arrested last month after meeting with Western diplomats to discuss human rights in Egypt.

Karim Ennarah, Gasser Abdel-Razek and Mohamed Basheer were kept in pretrial detention on charges of terrorism and spreading false news.

Abdel-Razek was singled out for particularly bad treatment and was being kept in solitary confinement. Their arrest drew wide condemnation from European and US politicians and even Hollywood celebrity Scarlett Johansson.

A panel of three senior judges in a terror court froze their personal assets, despite the decision to release them.

The EIPR documents systematic violations carried out by the Egyptian regime and in November released a report on the rising number of executions being carried out by the regime.

Patrick Zaki, a researcher with the EIPR who was arrested at Cairo Airport at the beginning of this year and tortured, remains in jail and was not mentioned during the court session.

In September the Egyptian Commission for Human Rights said 2,723 Egyptians had been forcibly disappeared in five years.

Forcibly disappeared Egyptians have been extrajudicially killed and also tortured. If they are forcibly disappeared, it gives them less access to legal rights to prove they were ill-treated whilst detained.

Egypt rights group head hopes prison release 

will help other prisoners


An Egyptian police officer enters the Tora prison in the Egyptian capital Cairo on 11 February 2020 [KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images]

December 6, 2020 at 12:16 pm

The head of a leading Egyptian human rights group who was held for two weeks on terrorism charges said on Saturday he hoped that the campaign to secure his release would help others still jailed on similar allegations, reported Reuters.

Activists saw the detention last month of Gasser Abdel Razek, executive director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), and two of the group's other staff, as the latest escalation of a broad crackdown on political dissent under President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Egypt's foreign ministry had said EIPR was operating illegally, an accusation the group denies. There has been no official statement from public prosecutors since Abdel Razek's release, and officials could not be reached for comment.

The arrests, which came after EIPR hosted a briefing on human rights for 13 senior diplomats in Cairo on November 3, sparked rare public criticism from Western states and an international campaign on social media.

Abdel Razek said he was unclear why he had been held beyond the officially stated charges of belonging to a terrorist group, spreading false news and misusing social media – accusations made in the past against figures from across the political spectrum.

Read: US lawmakers call on Sisi to release EIPR leaders

Abdel Razek said it would be "business as usual" for EIPR.

"We're hitting the third decade of the 21st Century, human rights work will continue in Egypt and elsewhere," he said in an interview at his home in Cairo.

"I'm hoping that our speedy release would have some sort of effect on the hundreds of people that are going through the same situation."

While the total is unclear, rights groups say tens of thousands have been detained in a clampdown on political opposition since Sisi ousted the Muslim Brotherhood from power in 2013.

Sisi has said Egypt holds no political prisoners, that security is paramount and that the government is promoting human rights by working to provide basic needs such as jobs and housing. The president and his backers say the detentions over recent years are necessary to stabilise Egypt.

The three EIPR staff were freed on Thursday. Patrick Zaki, an EIPR researcher who was a graduate student in Italy before his arrest in February, remains in jail.

Abdel Razek said he had been very cold for the first few nights in solitary confinement in Cairo's Tora prison, but had not suffered any physical mistreatment.

"It's a great feeling to be around my kids, my wife and friends, but it's very painful to leave the people behind, so let's hope we can pressure to get them all out."

The Evangelical Association in Egypt has set up a school to "treat" homosexuality, reports the Egypt Independent.


Pastor Tony George, who works for the Evangelicals Association in Egypt and the Middle East, said that homosexuality has its roots in childhood trauma and that the school will help people on the path to change.

"Recovering from homosexuality is not impossible," he said.

In October, Human Rights Watch released a report to say that Egyptian police and security agency officers arbitrarily arrest LGBT people and keep them in inhumane conditions where they are tortured and subject to sexual violence.

In 2001, 52 men were arrested after police raided a Nile vessel called the Queen Boat.

The crackdown intensified in 2017 after the Lebanese pop band Mashrou Leila played a concert in Cairo and 56 were arrested after they raised the rainbow flag.

In June, one of these former political prisoners and the only woman who was arrested at the concert, Sarah Hegazi, committed suicide in Canada where she was living in exile.

Sarah was electrocuted in prison, forced to leave her job and eventually the country. She was accused of joining an illegal group and of promoting sexual deviancy and debauchery.

Following her release Sarah suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

In November, a young man was arrested and detained, allegedly over his sexual orientation, after attending a police station to accompany a witness of the alleged drugging and rape of a woman at the Fairmont Hotel.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said that Seif Badour was 14 and wasn't present when the rape happened, he simply wanted to accompany his female friend to the police station.

In total, three female witnesses to the gang rape were arrested and investigated for drug abuse, inciting debauchery and participating in an orgy.

They were smeared on pro-government websites who claimed they were part of a network of homosexuals in Egypt spreading AIDS.

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Gaza gets its first female taxi driver
Abu Jibba's taxi business targets only female passengers

December 6, 2020 

For Naela Abu Jibba, a mother of five who lives and works in the Gaza Strip, taking the road less travelled has become a way of life.

The 39-year-old has become the first woman taxi driver in the besieged Palestinian territory, according to Reuters.

"Some say this is a job for men, others say we [women] cause accidents, when the fact is, women are calmer and more careful drivers than men," she told Reuters. "I get lots of offensive [social media] comments, but the encouraging comments are far greater," she added.

Many of her female passengers, who must book her service in advance, feel calmer too being driven by her than by men.

"When a woman exits a hairdresser shop, going to a party dressed and wearing makeup she feels better riding with a woman," Abu Jibba said. Client Sousan Abu Ateila, 28, agreed: "We feel more comfortable."

Abu Jibba, who has a degree in community service, started her taxi business after failing to find work. Gaza's unemployment rate stands at 49 per cent, with hardship deepened by restrictions caused by the Israeli blockade imposed on the coastal enclave since 2007.

Wearing a headscarf and a COVID-19 mask, Abu Jibba drives an off-white Kia and wears a vest with her Al-Mukhtara (Chieftain) taxi service's livery. She hopes to expand her business once the pandemic, which has caused Gaza residents to cut down on their travel and social activities, ends.

The territory of two million people has reported more than 12,000 cases and 56 deaths.

"My dream is to have an Al-Mukhtara fleet," Abu Jibba said.

Putin's nuclear 'doomsday' plane broken into at Russian airfield, communications gear stolen

Russia’s so-called “doomsday” plane, a top-secret military aircraft designed to help Vladimir Putin stay in charge from the skies should a nuclear war break out, has been broken into and robbed of much of its communications gear

.

© Provided by National Post An Ilyushin Il-80, Russian military aircraft modified from the Ilyushin Il-86 airliner, known as the Doomsday Plane, is seen in Moscow region, Russia February 9, 2012. Picture taken February 9, 2012.

The Guardian reports that the plane, a military craft called the Ilyushin-80, was entered via a cargo door at a Russian airfield in the city of Taganrog. The robbery at the Taganrog Aviation Scientific and Technical Complex took place as maintenance work was being carried out, and raises questions about the security of sensitive military-related installations.

The theft first came to light earlier this week in reports by Russian media, including the REN TV channel, which said signs of a break-in had been spotted last Friday and that 39 electronic units had been removed.

The plane is meant to keep Putin and other top Russian officials safe in the worst-case scenario, and does not even have any windows for passengers, to protect their eyes from the glare of would-be atomic bombs.

It carries an antenna that it can hang out and use to make contact with submarines, and among the communications gear on board, the Guardian reports, is technology that helps its passengers stay in touch with the Russian army, to let them preside over missile forces, even while airborne for days.

But it turns out the plane wasn’t even safe itself. Police found both fingerprints and shoeprints on board, but the thieves remain at large. Police gave no details about the nature of the stolen equipment except for its estimated worth — more than 1 million roubles ($13,600).

As well as the raided plane, Russia has three more Ilyushin-80s, which are modified versions of the Ilyushin Il-86, a Soviet passenger jet. The modified jets were made during the late Cold War to serve as aerial command posts.

Russian military experts speculated that the items had been stolen because some of the units had been assembled using precious metals such as gold and platinum.

The incident comes after Putin plowed vast funds into overhauling the Russian military amid tensions with the West that are at their highest since the end of the Cold War.

The Kremlin said measures would be taken to stop such a theft occurring again.

— with files from Reuters

Wind farm and sleep disruption

New research builds on inconsistent prior studies

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

Research News

As wind power generation becomes more important, experts in Australia are examining whether wind 'farm' turbine background noise in the environmental can affect sleep and wellbeing of nearby residents.

In a review of existing literature on wind turbine noise effects on sleep, the Flinders sleep researchers have weighed up the results of five prior studies. While previous studies showed no systemic effects on common sleep markers such as time taken to fall asleep and total sleep time - they did reveal some more subtle effect on sleep such as shifts in sleep stages and less time in deep sleep. "Comparing wind turbine noise to quiet background noise conditions showed no systematic effects on the most widely used objective markers of sleep, including time taken to fall asleep, total sleep time, time spent awake during the night and time spent asleep relative to overall time in bed," lead author Tessa Liebich says of a new review paper published in the international Journal of Sleep Research.

"However, some more subtle effects on sleep in some objective studies were established including shifts in sleep stages, less time spent in deep sleep and more time spent in light sleep.

Australian NHMRC funding, the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health study at Flinders is studying sleep patterns in more than 70 volunteers in carefully controlled in-laboratory experimental study to investigate potential wind turbine noise impacts on sleep and daytime outcomes. Their final results are expected to be available around mid-2021

Senior author Dr Gorica Micic says limited knowledge and data in this area emphasises a need for further well-controlled experimental studies to provide more conclusive evidence regarding wind turbine noise effects on sleep.

"Environmental noises, such as traffic noise, are well known to impact sleep," she says. "Given wind power generation is connected with low frequency noise that can travel long distances and more readily into buildings, it is important to better understand the potential impacts of wind turbine noise on sleep."

This study aimed to comprehensively review published evidence regarding the impact of wind turbine noise on the most widely accepted objective and subjective measures of sleep time and quality.

Subjective sleep outcomes were not sufficiently uniform for combining data or comparisons between studies, researchers explain.

"Nevertheless, the available self-report data appeared to support that insomnia severity, sleep quality and daytime sleepiness can be impacted by wind turbine noise exposure in comparison to quiet background noise.

"However, firm conclusions were difficult to draw from the available studies given inconsistent study methods, variable outcome measures and limited sample sizes," researchers conclude.

###

The new research paper, A systematic review and meta-analysis of wind turbine noise effects on sleep using validated objective and subjective sleep assessments (2020) by T Liebich, L Lack, K Hansen K, B Zajamšek, N Lovato, P Catcheside and G Micic (Flinders University) has been published in the Journal of Sleep Research. DOI: 10.1111/jsr.13228

About the Flinders University Wind Farm Noise Study:

Flinders University NHMRC five-year collaborative study is looking into how the noise from wind turbines affects people's health. It also tests how much windfarm noise disturbs sleep compared to traffic noise.

THE OTHER WORKERS DEMANDING AMAZON PAY!!



Make Amazon Pay

27 November, 2020

The pandemic has exposed how Amazon places profits ahead of workers, society, and our planet. Amazon takes too much and gives back too little; it is time to Make Amazon Pay. On Black Friday, 27 November, the biggest retail sales day in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world, workers, unions, global unions and activists are taking action. Let’s make this a Bad Friday for Amazon’s bosses.

As another step of the global campaign on the textile, garment, shoe and leather sector, IndustriALL is joining the global action against Amazon together with UNI Global Union, ITUC, Oxfam, Tax Justice Network and others to call Amazon to account.

Among other things, we demand Amazon change its policies and pay workers in line with the increasing wealth of the corporation, introduce adequate break time to ensure safe work, extended paid sick leave to all workers, end union busting, respect workers’ rights to organize and immediately stop all forms of spying on workers and organizations.

IndustriALL general secretary Valter Sanches says:

“During the Covid-19 pandemic, with a sky-rocketing global growth of e-commerce, Amazon became a trillion-dollar corporation, with CEO Jeff Bezos becoming the first person in history to amass US$200 billion in personal wealth. Meanwhile, Amazon warehouse workers as essential workers and only briefly received an increase in pay.

“Together with fellow global unions, workers, activists, and citizens from across the globe, IndustriALL is joining forces to Make Amazon Pay its workers fairly, for its impact on the environment and its taxes.”

Many of us know the name Amazon and think of massive warehouses that are the centres of a sophisticated, global distribution network. It is the largest online retailer in the world and you can order nearly anything on Amazon and have it delivered the next day.

You may also be aware of Amazon’s open anti-union tactics, its appalling health and safety records in the warehouses, and of owner Jeff Bezos unimaginable personal wealth as a result of founding Amazon in 1994.

But what is less known is that Amazon Fashion is a growing brand within the global garment supply chain. The company has become the leading apparel retailer in the United States, quoted as the number one destination for apparel shoppers, beating Target and Walmart.

Amazon’s fashion offerings are varied and complex with hundreds of private label brands like Amazon Essentials, Goodthreads, Daily Ritual, Lark&Ro, Cable Stitch and Buttoned Down. It currently has over US$30 billion in sales and is actively looking to expand its market share in Europe and the rest of the world.

Amazon’s supply chain stretches across the globe with production in Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, India, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Vietnam.

Following on 4 September and 7 October, this is the third global day of action for the garment and textile sector.

Related documents
Common demands on Amazon

Related links
Make Amazon Pay

 

About IndustriALL

IndustriALL Global Union’s affiliates represent over 50 million workers in 140 countries in the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors.

We take up the fight for better working conditions and trade union rights around the world.

Who we are

What we do

Where to find us

 

Research: Millions of smart devices vulnerable to hacking

BOSTON — Researchers at a cybersecurity firm say they have identified vulnerabilities in software widely used by millions of connected devices — flaws that could be exploited by hackers to penetrate business and home computer networks and disrupt them.

There is no evidence of any intrusions that made use of these vulnerabilities. But their existence in data-communications software central to internet-connected devices prompted the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to flag the issue in an advisory.

Potentially affected devices from an estimated 150 manufacturers range from networked thermometers to “smart” plugs and printers to office routers and healthcare appliances to components of industrial control systems, the cybersecurity firm Forescout Technologies said in a report released Tuesday. Most affected are consumer devices including remote-controlled temperature sensors and cameras, it said.

In the worst case, control systems that drive "critical services to society" such as water, power and automated building management could be crippled, said Awais Rashid, a computer scientist at Bristol University in Britain who reviewed the Forescout findings.

In its advisory, CISA recommended defensive measures to minimize the risk of hacking. In particular, it said industrial control systems should not be accessible from the internet and should be isolated from corporate networks.

The discovery highlights the dangers that cybersecurity experts often find in internet-linked appliances designed without much attention to security. Sloppy programming by developers is the main issue in this case, Rashid said.

Addressing the problems, estimated to afflict millions of devices, is particularly complicated because they reside in so-called open-source software, code freely distributed for use and further modification. In this case, the issue involves fundamental internet software that manages communications via a technology called TCP/IP.

Fixing the vulnerabilities in impacted devices is particularly complicated because open-source software isn't owned by anyone, said Elisa Costante, Forescout’s vice-president of research. Such code is often maintained by volunteers. Some of the vulnerable TCP/IP code is two decades old; some of it is no longer supported, Costante added.

It is up to the device manufacturers themselves to patch the flaws and some may not bother given the time and expense required, she said. Some of the compromised code is embedded in a component from a supplier — and if no one documented that, no one may even know it's there.

“The biggest challenge comes in finding out what you’ve got,” Rashid said.

If unfixed, the vulnerabilities could leave corporate networks open to crippling denial-of-service attacks, ransomware delivery or malware that hijacks devices and enlists them in zombie botnets, the researchers said. With so many people working from home during the pandemic, home networks could be compromised and used as channels into corporate networks through remote-access connections.

Forescout notified as many vendors as it could about the vulnerabilities, which it dubbed AMNESIA:33. But it was impossible to identify all affected devices, Costante said. The company also alerted U.S., German and Japanese computer security authorities, she said.

The company discovered the vulnerabilities in what it called the largest study ever on the security of TCP/IP software, a year-long effort it called Project Memoria.

Frank Bajak, The Associated Press

Amnesty criticises Airbnb for West Bank settlement listings ahead of IPO
By Rami Ayyub

© Reuters/ISSEI KATO FILE PHOTO: 

The logos of Airbnb are displayed at an Airbnb event in Tokyo

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Amnesty International accused Airbnb of acting in bad faith towards investors ahead of its stock market debut on Thursday by failing to inform them of its politically sensitive business activities in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Airbnb did not provide comment on Amnesty's charge. A company spokesman referred Reuters to a statement it made in 2019 saying it would not take profits from its listings in the West Bank.

Amnesty, which wants Airbnb to delist rental properties in the settlements, said in a statement that the company should have mentioned them in the "Risk Factors" section of a Nov. 16 regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The San Francisco-based booking company is holding an initial public offering on Nasdaq on Thursday.

"Airbnb stock is expected to be purchased by investment and pension funds across the world, which could mean that a large number of people will indirectly hold investments in Airbnb without understanding the full ramifications," the human rights group said.

Most countries regard the settlements that Israel built on land captured in a 1967 war as illegal. Israel disputes that, citing security needs and historical and religious links to the territory, which Palestinians seek for a future state.

Airbnb has around 200 properties for rent in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Amnesty said.

Saleh Higazi, Amnesty's deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a press release that Airbnb "needs to do right by future investors and stop benefiting from illegal settlements".

Heeding calls from Palestinians and human rights activists, Airbnb in 2018 said it would remove the settlement properties. But following legal challenges in the United States, it reversed the decision in 2019 while committing to donate profits from the bookings.

"Any profits generated for Airbnb by any Airbnb host activity in the entire West Bank will be donated to non-profit organizations dedicated to humanitarian aid that serve people in different parts of the world," Airbnb said in its April 2019 statement.

Airbnb was one of 112 companies the United Nations' human rights office said have business ties to settlements, a list that also included other travel firms and a steel producer.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Aurora Ellis)

The feds are falling well short of their goal to go electric. Will 2021 be different?


Even before Justin Trudeau took office in 2015, he made some ambitious promises to hit Canada’s emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement. Big changes would come to the whole economy, he promised, and it would start at home.

The federal government, he swore, would go green, replacing its fleet of gas-powered vehicles with ones that were electric and hybrid.

Those first self-imposed targets came due in 2020: the results are decidedly a mixed bag. With 2021 upon us, and the next round of benchmarks coming in 2030, Trudeau will need to seriously double down on those efforts if he hopes to lower even the federal government’s emissions, let alone the CO₂ output of the entire country.

Before winning his first mandate, Trudeau proposed making Canada an “early adopter” of green tech by “adding electric vehicle charging stations at federal parking lots, and rapidly expanding the federal fleet of electric vehicles.” In government, even more ambitious plans were put to paper. Ottawa pledged to slash CO₂ emissions from its fleet of vehicles by 40 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, and 80 per cent by 2050. It’s no small problem: Canada’s cars, trucks, ships and aircraft are responsible for about 130 kilotons of CO₂ per year. That’s the equivalent of about 715 railcars of coal burned, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

As we head into the new year, Maclean’s kicked the tires on Ottawa’s progress, asking for government accounting and consulting the mishmash of reports and disclosures from dozens of departments and agencies. Some departments appear to be taking to the challenge of greening their fleets with gusto. More broadly, though, the Canadian government is falling well short.

From the outset, Ottawa’s promises were pretty modest. They explicitly excluded its tanks, battleships and cargo aircraft, and focused only on its 24,000 administrative and on-road vehicles, which compromise about 60 per cent of total fleet emissions and a tenth of the government’s overall footprint.

The green plan aimed to make sure that all purchases of executive cars—used to shepherd around cabinet ministers, foreign dignitaries or high-level civil servants—were low-emissions by the end of 2019. Ottawa can claim success there. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat says all purchases have been zero-emissions for the past two years, totalling 56 hybrid cars and 15 zero-emissions vehicles (ZEVs)—81 per cent of the total executive fleet.

The plan also vowed that, by the end of 2020, “75 per cent of new light-duty unmodified administrative fleet vehicle purchases . . . will be zero-emission vehicles or hybrid.” On that broader target, the Treasury Board was less than clear, writing that, in the last year, three-quarters of those purchases occurred “where available.” That caveat carries a lot of weight, given the secretariat admitted only about 15 per cent of the total fleet “could be replaced by a ZEV or hybrid model currently on the market.” As of the end of 2020, Ottawa said it owned 1,092 zero-emission or hybrid vehicles—less than five per cent of its total fleet.

Some departments have done well. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, for example, sought to hit the 75 per cent target by 2021: instead, fully 100 per cent of its purchases were for zero-emission or hybrid vehicles. Transport Canada, the department partly responsible for expanding the use of electric vehicles across the country, hit just 59 per cent as of 2019, the last year for which it reported data.

Part of the green plan was to install electric chargers at federal workplaces to encourage bureaucrats to switch to zero-emission cars for their commute. The federal government owns some 20,000 buildings across the country, yet, as of September, Public Services and Procurement Canada reports it has installed just 144 charging stations.

All this might not make Canada much of an “early adopter,” like the Prime Minister once promised, but is it bringing Canada in line with its emissions targets? The government says that, as of last year, its on-road fleet emissions have fallen by about 30 per cent below 2005 levels, “well on the way” to its 40 per cent target. But when Maclean’s crunched the numbers for the 15 departments that began reporting in 2015, it actually showed a nine per cent increase in emissions over the last five years, not a reduction.

Thus far, Ottawa has not become, like the Liberals once promised, an international leader in low-emission technologies. If they hope to start hitting targets in 2021, it might be time to take the plan in for a tune-up.