Al Arabiaya reports that Iraq is stoning their teenagers to death.
The killing of at least 90 teenagers by religious police for having “emo” haircuts. Activists told the Cairo-based al-Akhbar daily that at least 90 Iraqi teenagers with “emo” appearances have been stoned to death by the Moral Police in the country in the past month. The violent crackdown against “emo” Iraqi teenagers came after the Iraqi interior ministry declared them as “devil worshippers.
The statement said that Iraq’s Moral Police was granted approval by the Ministry of Education to enter Baghdad schools and pinpoint students with Western appearances. [Some ministry of education--about the same sort of thing we would see in the USA if Christian religious fanatics took control of our government. No more science. By the time they were through with education our children would be taught that the earth is the center of the universe and their religion and prayers would be taught in our schools and children would be praying whether they liked it or not. Women would be sent to prison for daring to presume control over their own bodies. It's all the same ignorance.]
The activists told the newspaper that a group of armed men dressed in civilian clothing led the teenagers to secluded areas a few days ago, stoned them to death, and then disposed their bodies in garbage dumpsters across the capital, Baghdad.
“First they throw concrete blocks at the boy’s arms, then at his legs, then the final blow is to his head, and if he is not dead by then, they start all over again,” one person who managed to escape told the daily.
The exact death toll remains unclear, but Hana al-Bayaty of Brussels Tribunal, an NGO dealing with Iraqi issues, said the current figure ranges “between 90 and 100.”
Activists said that leaflets were distributed in Baghdad warning teenagers from donning the “emo” style, and in some regions, teenage homosexuals were killed by battering their heads also by concrete blocks.
A religious fanatic is a religious fanatic. It doesn’t make a damn if they are Christian or Muslim. Underneath it all they are all the same intolerant a-holes. A religious fanatic is any jackass who imposes his/her religious beliefs on another. They have no concept of the meaning of democracy. Although they talk the talk of freedom, their notion of freedom is that everyone agrees with their own narrow interpretation of God and the universe. F them all.
it’s amazing how Christian religious fanatics can’t see how much they are alike the Muslim religious fanatics and vice versa. THEY are the devils–both of them. and you can add Jewish, Hindustan and any other religious fanatic to the mix. They are all twisted human beings–despicable.
The root of their violence against those who would disagree with them is founded in ignorance. Thanks to the US invasion of Iraq and years of assault against its people–the majority of those left in Iraq are ignorant and uneducated. Those with any education or money left years ago. The few left with money and education will exploit the ignorant for their own purposes–just as many politicians do here in the USA. They put on their faces of piety and go along with the ridiculous claims regarding Obama’s birth certificates. Then, like George Bush and his administration, they mock these people behind closed doors.
Der Spiegel reports that the Assad regime is on the verge of imploding.
On Thursday, Abdo Husameddine, Syria’s deputy oil minister, reportedly became the first high-ranking official to turn on the regime and urge his compatriots to “abandon this sinking ship.” German commentators welcome the news as a signal that the days of the Assad regime may be numbered.
Abdo Husameddine, the 58-year-old deputy oil minister of Syria since 2009, announced his defection, thereby becoming the highest-ranking civilian to abandon the embattled regime of President Bashar Assad.
Husameddine made his announcement in a video posted on YouTube, in which he urged fellow Syrians to “abandon this sinking ship,” the Associated Press reported.
The daily Die Welt, also commenting on this even reported :”"In the other countries of the ‘Arab Spring,’ the collapse of ruling structures that had been in place for decades also began on the edges. First it was diplomats to break away from their rules, followed by provincial governors and then, finally, ministers and generals. Husameddine has given off a signal; he is the first and others will follow accordingly as pressure on the regime and the hopelessness of the situation grows. … The more who follow his example, the sooner the suffering of thousands in Syria can come to an end.”
Open Secrets reports that Ron Paul has more support of the military than any of the other presidential candidates for 2012. This is significant since Ron Paul is against pre-emptive wars. The other politicians should take a lesson for their own foreign policies regarding this.
The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that Bangladesh continues to uphold his horrible record for repressions of journalists.
The bodies of Golam Mustofa Sarowar and his wife, Meherun Runi, were found by their 5-year-old son on Saturday morning, news reports said. Both journalists had been hit repeatedly with sharp weapons, according to news reports. Sarowar, a news editor at the Dhaka-based Maasranga Television, had recently returned to Bangladesh from Germany, where he had worked for Deutsche Welle Runi was a senior reporter at ATN Bangia Telegram Televison also in Dhaka.
Local journalists demonstrated at the National Press Club on Saturday afternoon and again on Monday, protesting the deaths of the two journalists.
Bangladesh is among the worst nations in the world in combating deadly anti-press violence. Bangladesh ranks 11th on CPJ’s Impunity Index, which calculates unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. Twelve journalists have been murdered in reprisal for their work in Bangladesh.
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A little background on Bangladesh
Although initially Bangladesh opted for a secular nationalist ideology as embodied in its Constitution, the principle of secularism was subsequently replaced by a commitment to the Islamic way of life through a series of constitutional amendments and government proclamations between 1977 and 1988. The Constitution establishes Islam as the state religion but provides for the right to practice—subject to law, public order, and morality—the religion of one’s choice.
Voices of opposition are ever more at risk in Bangladesh, as groups who document or speak out against the actions of the government have found themselves increasingly threatened and under attack. On January 27, 2005, Shah Abu Mohamed Shamsul Kibria, former Finance Minister and senior member of the secular Bangladesh Awami League, was assassinated. This followed a 2004 attempt to assassinate the leader of the Awami League, Sheikh Hasina, in a bomb and grenade blast. She survived, but twenty-three members of her party were killed. ] Other AL members, junior and senior alike, have reported harassment and intimidation.
Reported cases of HIV/AIDS are growing at an alarming extent, with over a million AIDS sufferers in Bangladesh. Whilst this rise of AIDS is not confined to Bangladesh in particular, the government is doing nothing to prevent the spread of AIDS and is not prosecuting police who rape homosexual men.
Politically vulnerable groups at risk of HIV infection, such as sex workers and men who have sex with men, have not been educated about the risk of AIDS, nor protected by the authorities, and they have found themselves regularly assaulted, abducted, raped, gang raped, and subjected to extortion by the police and by powerful criminals. Organizations have been established to stem the development of AIDS through education, but such projects have been curbed by police brutality towards members who work on them.]
As an American, don’t want my tax dollars going to support right-wing democratization of other nations.
It looks like the Egyptians feel the same way as Egypt says that 19 Americans will be ordered to stand trial.
U.S. has threatened to suspend $1.3 billion in annual aid to Egypt’s military–a move that, while not likely welcome by the Egyptian military, would be a move that is welcomed by the majority of the people of Egypt.
State media reported judges have referred 43 people, including 19 Americans, to be prosecuted on charges of violating foreign funding laws for nongovernmental organizations working in Egypt. One of them is reported to be Sam LaHood, the Egypt director of the Washington-based International Republican Institute, or IRI, and son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.
The younger LaHood and other Americans working for IRI received haven last month at the U.S. Embassy amid fears they might be arrested after a travel ban was placed upon them. Employees at two other U.S.-based groups — Freedom House and the National Democratic Institute — are also under investigation. The charges reportedly carry a penalty of up to five years in prison.
The International Republican Institute (IRI) was founded in 1983 and is funded by the United States government. It conducts international political programs sometimes labeled “democratization programs.” It has been chaired by John McCain since January of 1993. Among its other activities, the IRI has organized right-wing political parties in Poland and has been involved in political activities in Egypt during the Arab Spring. The majority of the IRI’s funding comes from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US State Department, and the National Endowment for Democracy. As a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, it plays no part in domestic U.S. politics. However, the majority of its board, staff and consultants are drawn from the Republican Party.
Among other things, The IRI is accused of training some of the leaders of the 2004 Haitian coup d’état, as well as funding opposition groups in the country in a destabilization campaign in the months leading up the removal of democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide by a coalition of Canada, the US and France. Aristide was replaced with an unelected government.
I don’t want my tax dollars going to support right-wing democratization of other nations–Do you?
How about if we defund the IRI and use their annual budget of $79 million to create jobs and repair some of the USA infrastructure?
Big business, lobbyist groups and foundations annually donate $1.4 million to the IRI, a small fraction of the organization’s $79 million budget. Such donors to the IRI include UPS, AT&T, Anheuser-Busch, Bell-South, Lockheed Martin, Blackwater, Chevron, ExxonMobil and BP. It is worth noting that several of these donors regularly lobby regarding issues under the jurisdiction of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation where McCain is the second-highest ranked Republican. Private donations account for only $200,000, significantly less than one percent of the IRI’s total income.
There are a lot of lessons that Honduras can provide regarding the neo-liberal trade agreements that BOTH the Democrat and the Republican leadership along with the White House Support. None of these trade agreements are for the 99% of the USA or the 99% of any country.
The USA has a long tradition of supporting the illegal overthrow of governments in South and Central America followed by the installation of a ruthless dictator who is friendly to Wall Street coupled with the trade agreements that are created for Wall Street by its bought and paid for Congressional stooges. USA trade agreements result in crimes against the majority of the people in any country whose 1% leaders agree to sign such a trade agreement which amounts to a partnership with Wall Street and the 1% of the USA.
Most often these crimes consist of militarized police (often trained by the USA) driving small farmers off their land. Why? Because this benefits the 1% of the country as they can then rent large tracts of land to multinational corporations to farm. All the people of the world, even the 1% should be concerned about this neo-liberal practice because it destabilizes food security for everyone living on this planet. Greed has no sensibility and it has nothing to do with education. Many of those who support these neo-liberal anti-human practices have the best educations that money can buy–Harvard, Yale, Oxford, etc. These people are quite simply blinded by their own greed. It’s the same blindness to humanity that was demonstrated by the Goldman Sachs commodity traders in 2008 who falsely inflated the price of wheat (in the year of the largest wheat production in 100 years) and thus literally starved millions of people to death. Their sense of humanity is obliterated by their greed.
Background on the Illegal Coup in Honduras in 2009: The Obama administration and the US State Department knew that the Honduran coup was illegal and they didn’t give a damn. They still supported it and even sent a Clinton operative, Lanny Davis, to act as a PR for the thugs.
As you may remember, while directing from the sidelines and pretending neutrality, the US State Department supported the coup in Honduras that was led by racist thugs. Yes, I mean that literally. One of the current members of the Honduran government actually referred to black people as “monkeys.”
Just weeks after the coup had taken place, the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa sent a secret cable to Hillary Clinton on July 24, 2009. Published by Wikileaks, the cable declared that in the forced removal of Zelaya, “there is no doubt that the [Honduran] military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch.” Nonetheless, the Obama administration backed the coup leaders by leaving in place almost $200 million in aid programs (though it did suspend $16.5 million in military aid) and by claiming that State Department lawyers could not determine if the coup met legal requirements for U.S. action, despite the unambiguous embassy cable–this in spite of the fact that all civilized western governments condemned the coup as being illegal.
This video is evidence of the greed of the rich coming to fruition. And the leadership of BOTH US political parties supported this illegal coup. Lanny Davis, a Clinton operative serves as the official PR agent representing the illegal leadership of the coup. In October of 2009, Jim DeMint led a delegation of right-wing elected officials on a trip sponsored by the Department of Defense (DOD) at the taxpayers’ expense to Honduras to congratulate this illegal racist pro-business group of thugs. Now look what they are doing. Just more American supported intervention and thuggery in central America.
Ongoing Violence, Intimidation, and Impunity in Honduras
December 20, 2010
This 65-page report documents the state’s failure to ensure accountability for abuses committed under the country’s de facto government in 2009. The report also documents 47 cases of threats or attacks – including 18 killings – against journalists, human rights defenders, and political activists since the inauguration of President Porfirio Lobo in January 2010.
“On Jan. 9, 2012 an Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) delegation of US and Canadian citizens visited the farming community or Rigores, Honduras in the fertile Aguan Valley near the country’s Caribbean Coast. Rigores is a long-established community of farm cooperatives. The cooperative which the AfGJ helped shield from eviction was 10-years-old, a tenancy under Honduras’ Law of Agrarian Reform which should have insured them title to the land. But one of Honduras’ rich landowners wants their corn fields, bean fields, grazing land and orchards so he can expand his African Palm plantation with this tree that produces an oil that is used in the majority of food products in First World supermarkets and supplies an increasing share of the European and US biofuel market.
The visit by the group a few days ago was a far different visit than was experienced by a previous AfGJ delegation just six months earlier where nearly 20 North Americans wearing blue t-shirts reading “Observador Internacional de Derechos Humanos” (International Human Rights Observer) standing with the Honduran people won a standoff with the militarized police. What had prompted that visit is shown in the video above.
One week before the American delegation arrived for the standoff last July, the police had entered Rigores and at gunpoint burned the homes of 135 families, killed their animals, bulldozed their orchards, the school, and two churches. When the Americans arrived on July 1, the community was living in the town’s community center and a large tent provided by a Catholic charity. Their intentions that day to drive off or kill the people, breaking their tenancy and weakening their legal case of ownership on behalf of the 1%.
Police, military, and private “security guards” still drive through the community and fire their weapons. On Sept. 16 and again on Sept. 19, the military invaded and terrorized the community. The 15-year-old son of the community spokesperson and another boy were kidnapped by the military, beaten, doused with gasoline and threatened with being set on fire.
And today, what do the people of Rigores face? ”. . .they still struggle to rebuild their lives and livelihoods, they have learned from the media that an official eviction order has been signed by a judge with an eviction date of later this month. At this point the eviction order may or may not exist. It is certain that they are receiving daily threats of violent eviction from the hired thugs of a rich landowner.”
And Remember: This is the thug government that your votes and your tax dollars support–both in Honduras and in the USA.
Will you continue to accept the myth of their propaganda that we have a “two-party” system?
Will you continue to believe that a millionaire neo-liberal Republican like Jim DeMint who led the delegation sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and paid for by your tax dollar to congratulate the leaders of this illegal coup is any different from the neo-liberal Democrat-led White House and U.S State Department who, at the least, were willfully blind to what was taking place and to what continues to take place in Honduras.
The first step to facing facts is to let go the myth that a neo-liberal Wall Street suckup Republican is any different from a neo-liberal Wall Street suckup Democrat.
At least 44% of our Congress consists of multimillionaire Wall Street investors. They all must go.
Of course, if you like things as they are, if you think that what is happening in Honduras benefits the world, the go ahead and continue to vote for either a Democrat or a Republican and you’ll be sure to get more of the same.
The video above focuses on the community of La Isla de Viudas (The Isle of Widows) outside of Chichigalpa, Nicaragua, but it is a powerful introduction to a much larger global issue. Sadly, the stories shared are in no way isolated or limited to this area. Throughout the sugarcane industry in Central America child labor is rampant, widows from this disease far too common and young workers will likely not escape their fate, many will perish as their fathers have.
None of the usual causes of CKD have been linked to this new form of the disease and no adequate treatment exists for those affected making it a death sentence. Worldwide cases of CKD often correspond with hypertension and diabetes; however, research concludes that no correlation between these traditional causes has been made in this context.
Getting sick often means losing your job as companies attempt to distance themselves from responsibility by testing and then firing sick workers. With the need for labor still present workers enlist with subcontractors. When they are finally too sick to work their sons illegally work in their place. Despite the legal age being 18 for this type of work, in Nicaragua boys as young as sixteen are now coming down with the disease, their hope for a better life dashed.
This cycle of death ends futures and stymies any hope for meaningful development in the region.
There are some, according to Alan Hart, who would rephrase the question of who is not a terrorist thusly:
When is a terrorist not a terrorist in the eyes of the Obama administration (not to mention all of its predecessors), the US Congress, and the governments of the Western world?
Answer: When he or she is an Israeli Mossad agent or asset.
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In the case of the assassination of Iranian scientists, Alan Hart argues that the the Mossad’s assets are almost certainly members of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO) also known as The Peoples’ Mujahedin of Iran, which is committed to overthrowing the regime of the ruling mullahs. Many of its activists are based in Iraqi Kurdistan where Mossad has a substantial presence. It does the training there, selects the targets in Iran and provides the bombs and other weapons, and MKO members do the actual killing.
Once again I rest my case: It is the members of the US Congress who are the ones who control our foreign policies and all the important decisions that are made and laws that are written.
Administrations come and go while these people remain as permanent fixtures serving terms of 10, 20 and sometimes 30 years.
Until we deal with them and removed at least 44% of members of Congress, NOTHING of any significance will ever change for the majority in the USA and the world.
FLASH NEWS UPDATE Monday night in Pakistan from Hindustan News: Tensions eased a little.
The lower house of Parliament passed the pro-democracy resolution moved by Awami National Party (ANP) leader Asfandyar Wali, Geo News reported. Gilani congratulated the members of parliament (MPs) on passage of the resolution, while MPs belonging to the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz and Pakistan Peoples Party-Sherpao staged a walkout.
Gilani told the house he would appear before the Supreme Court as he was directed to appear personally before it on January 19.The prime minister made the offer after a meeting with Zardari. Both leaders discussed the current political situation in the country, Geo News quoted sources as saying.
The Supreme Court had ordered the government to write a letter to the Swiss authorities to reopen cases against the president and set a seven-day deadline. Zadari said the next government could write to the Swiss courts on his alleged money laundering. The NAB had in 1998 accused Zardari and the late Benazir Bhutto of awarding a pre-shipment inspection contract to the Societe Generale Surveillance (SGS). This was done in return for six percent commission on the total amount the company received from the Pakistan government, it claimed. [In August 2008, Swiss judicial authorities, acting on the request of the Pakistani government, had closed the money laundering case against Zardari and released $60 million frozen in Swiss accounts.]
Still tensions remain and Pakistan remains a powder keg.
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From this morning [January 16]
A possible military coup could await Pakistan in the coming days as the Obama Administration continue to build a justification for a pre-emptive attack on Iran
I read this morning in Al Arabiya News that Pakistan’s Supreme Court issued a contempt notice to Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani on Monday, ordering him to appear before the court over failure to prosecute government officials in long-running corruption cases.
The move could throw the country deeper into crisis.
Pakistan has been on very shaky grounds ever since bin Laden was taken out. According to rumors, an aide of President Zardari sent a memo to the U.S. military last May, seeking help in stopping a possible coup following the covert killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALs.
Tensions between civilian leaders and the army reached fever pitch last week when Prime Minister Gilani accused the military of failing to submit statements through government channels and later sacked his defense secretary who was considered close to the generals.
Over the weekend Gilani tried to calm the mounting tensions by praising the military. Al Arabiya News reported that political and defense analysts believe that the Pakistani military have no appetite for a coup and would prefer to see leaders remove by legal means.
Inviting a war criminal to your country to listen to his advice? Bashir’s visit does not say much in terms of Libya’s promise to be a new democratic nation. Al Arabiya reports this morning that Libyan officials welcomed Omar Hassan al-Bashir, President of Sudan,in a red carpet ceremony at a Tripoli airport, and Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib called him one of Libya’s friends.
Al-Bashir, the dictator of Sudan, was accepted into Libya over the weekend. Omar al-Bashir, who has been charged with crimes against humanity for atrocities committed in Darfur, was there on Saturday to provide advice on how to disarm Libya’s former rebel fighters and integrate them into the army and police forces. (After all, you can’t have dissent among the police when agencies from the West come in to pillage Libya because those in charge who will profit from this will need all the help they can get to quell the dissent in the streets that is sure to arise when the price of gas goes from 15 cents a gallon to $5, when free electricity goes to $100 monthly electric bills, when free college education goes to unaffordable for 99% of the population.)
The International Criminal court in The Hague, Netherlands, has charged Bashir with crimes against humanity for atrocities committed against civilians during the Darfur conflict.
Erwin van der Borght, the group’s Africa director, called it “cynical” of Sudan to offer to help with militia integration, given that country’s experience in arming militias like the Janjaweed, which is blamed for some of the worst abuses in Darfur.
Here are the official counts from the ICC of crimes against humanity for Omar Hassan al-Bashir
And Libyan leaders want to listen to the advice of this criminal? I guess next week they will be inviting Assad and then perhaps after that some of the U.S. military trained thugs from Hosni Mubarak’s army.
Counts
Mr Al Bashir is allegedly criminaly responsible ten counts on the basis of his individual criminal responsibility under Article 25(3)(a) of the Rome Statute as an indirect (co) perpetrator including:
five counts of crimes against humanity: murder – Article 7(1)(a);
extermination – Article 7(1)(b); forcible transfer – Article 7(1)(d); torture – Article 7(1)(f); and rape – Article 7(1)(g);
two counts of war crimes: intentionally directing attacks against a
civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking part in hostilities -Article 8(2)(e)(i); and pillaging – Article 8(2)(e)(v).
Three counts of genocide: genocide by killing (article 6-a), genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm (article 6-b) and genocide by deliberately inflicting on each target group conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction (article 6-c).
