Secret detentions in Europe

A report released by the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly confirmed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has operated secret detention centres in Poland and Romania.

Victims of these secret detetions are usually subject to human rights violations, including torture or other ill-treatment. Many are feared to have been unlawfully detained.

The European Parliament have recommended measures to prevent further human rights violatons of this nature from taking place in the EU, but none of these recommendations has been implemented.

Since Portugal holds the Presidency of the EU, you can call on portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates to ensure that those recommendations are implemented.

You can visit the following link: http://web.amnesty.org/pages/eur-220607-action-eng.

There you'll find more information and a sample text you can send by email or letter. The contacts are also there.

Rui Pedro

Rui Pedro is a portuguese boy that went missing in 1998. At that time, he was 11 years old and was 1,50 m. tall. He has brown eyes. He vanished while walking home from school, in a town called Lousada.

A month later, he was sighted with a man in Disneyland Paris. Three years later, images of him being sexually abused were found in a international police operation to stop a global paedophile network, but he was never found.

If you think you have seen him or have some information about him, please contact the portuguese authorities (Polícia Judiciária), using the following contacts:

Address: Rua Assis Vaz, nº113, 4200-096 Porto

Telephone: +351 225582000, +351 225088644

Fax: +351 225023642

Email: directoria.porto@pj.pt

Million Faces

Small arms.

Do you know what it means? Small arm is any type of weapon that can be carried by a single person. Small arms includes, pistols, revolvers, shotguns, rifles, hand grenades and others.

Small arms are the cause of death of about half a million men, women and children every year.

The problem is the lack of control of the arms trade. These non-existent controls allow those arms to get to conflicts around the world, fuelling them. It's a global problem and all governments are responsible for it.

So, what can we do?

Amnesty International, Oxfam and IANSA are running a global campaing promoting an Arms Trade Treaty, which would be signed by governments. The main objective of this treaty will be to control the small arms trade, preventing, for example, small arms from being sold to countries where human rights are violated. The campaing is named Control Arms.

We can help by signing the Million Faces Petition, at http://www.controlarms.org/.

SOS Live Earth

We're almost there! The big concert for our planet takes place next Saturday all around the world. It will be a moment to remember, with more than 100 music artists performing live from Sydney, Tokyo, Johannesburg, London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Shangai and Hamburg, in a concert promoted by former Vice-President of USA, Al Gore. The main objective is to get all of us to protect our planet, in a time of climate crisis.

You all certainly hear about greenhouse gases (CO2 is the most common) and how their emission his causing our climate to change very rapidly. these gases come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, like oil and gas, used to produce the energy we all need for living. But there are other ways of producing energy, the so called green energy, or clean energy. This energy can be produced from the wind or the sea tides and it does not pollute our environment. Changing from "fossil" energy to clean energy takes time and money, and most of our companies are not willing to change, because it takes time and money.

But we all can do something to change. We can change our daily habits in order to consume less energy. If you take a minute to think about it, you will come to the conclusion that literally everything we do consumes energy. For example, at work you use the ellevator. But if you don't use it, it have not consumed energy, or have consumed less energy. So, on the other end of the chain, less fossil fuels were burned to make that ellevator work.

There are many little things like this we can do everyday. We just need to think about it and have always in mind that everything we do takes energy, which comes mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, which releases CO2 to the atmosphere, which is making our climate to change.

Here are a few ideas of what we can do:

• Plant a tree (trees absorbs C02);
• Change your light to low-energy Compact Fluorescent Light;
• Take a bath with your wife or husband. It takes less water and it might be fun;
• Don't leave you appliances on stand-by. They are consuming energy;
• Commute using trains or other electric vehicles and leave your car at home;
• Use low-pressure showers. The mix water with air, consuming less water;
• Recycle paper, plastic, metal and glass;
• Switch off yout TV if you're not watching;
• Walk whenever you can. You are consuming your shoes (which took energy to be made), but it's less than using a car or public transport.

I could give you more ideas, but each key pressed on my keyboard takes energy. So. I'll end here to help our planet.

Bye!

Madeleine McCann

You have probably heard about Madeleine McCann abduction. It took place on 03/05/2007 at Praia da Luz, in Portugal. She and her parents were spending some vacations there and, one night, she disappeared from her bedroom, while sh was sleeping.







It has been now 53 days since her disappearance and her parents and police authorities continues to search for her. Many leads have been followed, but none of them proved to be true.


If you have any information you find useful, here are some contact information:


TELEPHONE
Portuguese Police: 00351 282 405 400
International Crimestoppers: 0044 18 83 73 13 36


WEBSITES
Help Find Madeleine McCann (http://madeleine.ceopupload.com/)
British Police (http://www.leics.police.uk/)
CEOP (http://www.ceop.gov.uk/)
ACPO (http://www.acpo.police.uk/)
Crimestoppers UK (http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/)

Crisis in Darfur

A grave humanitarian crisis is happening in Darfur, a region of far western Sudan, in Africa. Since 2003, an ongoing tribal conflict has made nearly 2 million refugees. Some 200.000 of them have crossed the border into Chad, fleeing from the conflict.





In this conflict, armed militias attacked civilians, killing them, raping the women and destroying their villages. Torture also spreaded throughout this region.

Since 2004, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is helping those refugees to survive. Refugee camps have been built up. These camps are literally small villages, with shelters, latrines, water supply, schools and other basic services. A big logistics operation is on course, bringing to the region thousands of tents, blankets and other relief items. The lack of water is a big problem.

UNHCR continues to set up new camps to take in more refugees for Darfur.

You can find more information on the UNHCR's website, at http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/chad?page=home.

UNHCR need our help to continue to help these people. You can make an online donation on UNHCR's website, at http://www.unhcr.org/donate/index.htm. For just $80 they can provide a tent for a family of 5.

The Dhaka Project

Hello all!

Today I'll talk about the Dhaka Project. It's an non profit organization founded to help some of the poorest people of Bangladesh. Their primary objective is to help those people to get new sources of income, using local resources whenever it's possible. They focus mainly on children, but adults get their help too. The organization have three programmes:

CHILDREN'S EDUCATION DEVELOPMENT

Children from poor families, aged 4 and above, are provided with education and basic needs, as food, books, school materials and clothes. They also make available a learning center, a library and sports.

WOMEN'S SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Women get English training and manual skills, like tailoring, fabrication of handicrafts and others. When their courses are completed, they are transferred to awaiting job vacancies. They are also provided with a daily meal.

MEN'S SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

Men also get English training and are admitted in a driving school. The organization have a small number of Rickshaws, which the men may rent to get supplementary earnings.

This project was founded by Maria Conceição, a portuguese flight attendant who works on the Emirates Airlines. On her first trip to Bangladesh, she became aware of the extreme poverty in Dhaka and decided to found this project to help them.

To learn more about this project, visit their website at http://www.thedhakaproject.org/. There you have more information and photo galleries showing their work.

You can also help. If you live nearby, you can make donations in various places, or supply them with food or other things. Or you can make a donation via electronic transfers (all the details are on their website). Did you know that for just 5 US$ they can get them baby's food for a week? And that for 20 US$ the can get vaccination for Hepatitis B and Typhoid plus a year's health cover for a child?

Think about it!

No justice for victims of rape in Hungary

Amnesty International reported that, in Hungary, women that are victims of rape in their own homes are not getting protection from the government. Many fear reprisals and, because of that, their cases never reach court. Amnesty said that the criminal justice system does not work properly. Also, it's often said in Hungary that it is acceptable for a husband to force his wife to have sex.

Let's help all the women in Hungary. If you visit the page about this case in Amnesty International's site, at http://web.amnesty.org/actforwomen/hun-100507-action-eng, you can find more details, a video, a sample text that you can copy and the contacts of Hungary's Prime Minister. Send him an email asking to ensure protection to all women from being raped in their own home.

The Rainforest Site

This is my first post on the blog. There will be always many themes
to bring here and I'll choose one for each post.

For this one, I've chosen climate change.

We all talk about climate change. Some of us believe it's hapening.
Others don't. Unfortunately, there are a few key individuals who don't
care about it. I'm talking about our goverments leaders, who have
enough power to change things, but prefer not to, just because it will
cost them some votes for the next election (that's just my opinion).

Well, the good thing is that we can do something. It might feel that
it's not much, but then again, if we all do a small thing it will turn
into a big thing. Visit The Rainforest Site, at
http://www.therainforestsite.com and, with a single click, you'll be
helping.

The deal is this: you click on the green button and the site owner's
will buy, through their sponsors, a few square feet of rainforest
land, preserving it from destruction.

You can click once a day, saving that amount of land each day. The
more you click, the more land you save. And if you want, the site
provides other ways to contribute more.

Have a nice click!