Asia

Tragically, a night before she arrived home for a brief family reunion before starting another contract as a domestic worker in Hong Kong, Florence “Dom-an” Macagne Manegdeg’s husband “Pepe” was assassinated. The perpetrator was alleged to be a military man. That was November 28, 2005, in the tobacco fields of San Esteban, Ilocos Sur, Northern Philippines.

In spite of U.S-led military invasion since 2001 to bring “enduring freedom” and democracy, about 50 women die in childbirth each day in Afghanistan; one in three is physically or sexually abused, and the average life expectancy of women is 44 year.

When you don’t acknowledge China’s stupendous achievements, what you find is a country that has little to show and still far to go. When you don’t see the political foundations of economic policies that freed the vast majority of dirt poor and backward Chinese from awesome feudal inequalities, it is taken to be the success of capitalist impulses alone.

Shek Kwu Chau is a restricted access island near Cheung Chau Island, off Hong Kong, reserved for volunteer drug rehabilitation affairs, but now figuring in a government zoning plan that would have a massive incinerator built 10 metres from its wonderful rocky shores to the destruction of its special wildlife features and in-shore fishing. Nearby islanders are protesting.

Malaysia will investigate claims of police brutality following the death of a demonstrator in a mass street protest for electoral reform, a senior minister said Monday. Riot police fired tear gas and water cannon and arrested more than 1,600 people to end a rally to demand electoral changes on Saturday, drawing intense criticism from human rights groups.

In his or her “AN OPEN LETTER TO ALL MANKIND” the web host at conspoetry.com defines the conspoetry title by telling that a ”CONSPIRACY is – a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act, etc. And, that POETRY is [also] – any communication resembling poetry in beauty or the evocation of feeling.

They do not apply the Mexican joke “I kill people for money; but you, my best friend, I will kill you for nothing!”. They are the private “warriors” who always charge for their services. Powerful militaries, key government agencies, large corporations and business and even individuals are increasingly outsourcing aspects of their security to private companies,

Demonstrators take to the street tomorrow in Malaysia calling for reforms of the electoral system to make elections clean and fair. The rally, organised by the Coalition for Clean and Fair Elections (Bersih) is supported by the three largest opposition parties in the country but deemed illegal by the government.

“How to get each one of us or as many as possible to start thinking and doing Green? As a start we have our Green Ambassador project to form people with a Green Heart to bring into birth a green culture where people can rethink everything and come to understand what being Green is all about,” Albert Oung, Green Institute Hong Kong.

The scenes that plagued Latin America through the 1980s bear a striking resemblance to those in the Arab World since Mohamed Bouazizi set himself ablaze in Tunisia nearly 30 years later. In Latin America, protests reflected the rising frustrations of the middle class, marketplaces were bombed by those angry at incumbent autocrats and citizens rallied against police brutality.