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hussyknee · 1 year

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Arundati Roy writing in The Guardian against the Afghanistan War on October 2001

“Brutality smeared in peanut butter”

Why America must stop the war now.

By Arundhati Roy

Tue 23 Oct 2001 • 00.57 • BST •

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As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 7 2001, the US Government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamouring for new video games.

The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes. (As Madeleine Albright once said, "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition".

After conferring, they announced that it didn¹t matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed.

Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements – or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognised government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world.

Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington.

People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed.

Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments.

Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.

There is no easy way out of the spiralling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever.

Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war – these words have taken on new meaning.

Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban.

When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." America¹s favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people."

So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace.

Speaking at the FBI Headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire."

Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with – and bombed – since the Second World War: China (1945-46, 1950-53), Korea (1950-53), Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), Indonesia (1958), Cuba (1959-60), the Belgian Congo (1964), Peru (1965), Laos (1964-73), Vietnam (1961-73), Cambodia (1969-70), Grenada (1983), Libya (1986), El Salvador (1980s), Nicaragua (1980s), Panama (1989), Iraq (1991-99), Bosnia (1995), Sudan (1998), Yugoslavia (1999). And now Afghanistan.

Certainly it does not tire – this, the most free nation in the world.

What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things.

Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate usually in the service of America¹s real religion, the "free market". So when the US Government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or "Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the Third World feel more than a tremor of fear.

Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others.

The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction – chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league.

The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the Cold War. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war.

Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society.

Young boys many of them orphans – who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them.

Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people.

They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them.

With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US Government. All the beauty of human civilisation – our art, our music, our literature – lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle-class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about good vs evil or Islam vs Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural.

Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. It¹s like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open.

One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets.

"First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room.

By the third day of the strikes, the US Defence Department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?)

On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance – the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend – is making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex-communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past.

Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all.

Love is hate, north is south, peace is war.

Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes – support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the Mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy – with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?)

Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both.

As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US Government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food.

Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public-relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile.

First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race.

Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions.

After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US Government's attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description.

Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban Government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan Government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to?

Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created.

Where will it all lead?

Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another¹s freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence.

Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US Government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world.

The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the Mojahedin who, in the '80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan – America's ally in this new war – sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka – the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism.

(Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.)

It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own.

People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text – from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita – can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation.

This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be.

But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us?

At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap?

Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence – small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.)

The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom – that precious, precious thing – will be the first casualty. It's already hurt and haemorrhaging dangerously.

Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested.

The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti-terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them?

Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread.

Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury.

President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth.

Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalition's weapons manufacturers. It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group – described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management.

Carlyle invests in the defence sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending.

Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's Chairman and Managing Director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other partners include former US Secretary Of State James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper The Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel– says that former President George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets.

He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients.

Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.

Then there's that other branch of traditional family business – oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry.

Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil.

Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney – then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry – said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough.

For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in South and South-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US State Department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now.

Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration.

Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance.

In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defence deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed, whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilisations" and the "good vs evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been – a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government.

And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough?

As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders – have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty?

Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear – without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?

#if you read nothing else today read this #i wonder how many people know that Afghanistan was also an oil war #people seem to think the Afghanistan War was 'justified'#but the Iraq War wasnt #Arundati Roy was just saying what people already knew – this was a war machine sniffing after oil and guns #an industry coalition of which the Republican establishment were major stakeholders #the obscenity of dropping food packets with bombs #this is why you have no future in your country USAmerican Gen Z #this is why the entire globe adopted anti-Muslim ethnonationalism and Islamic fundamentalism for the next 20 years #this is how the global wave of fascism began #because they sold weapons to the wrong people‚ and then chose a scapegoat to sacrifice in revenge #world history #september 11 #geopolitics #us history #afghanistan war #usamerican imperialism #cold war #taliban #violence #terrorism #colonialism #capitalism #genocide #arundati roy #pacifism #anarchism #knee of huss

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autolenaphilia · 2 years

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God i'm so tired of Erdogan and the turkish government. I don't even care if Sweden gets into NATO or not, but I do care if we fuck over the kurds to join. The Kurdish left are like the most decent force in the Middle East, and they are fully justified to struggle against the turkish islamist dictatorship, whose oppression of the kurds is close to genocide. That the PKK committed terrorist atrocities is undeniably true, but the terrorism has to set in the context of the atrocities of the turkish state.

And In the end I rather live in a world influenced by Abdullah Öcalan's thoughts than those of Erdogan. The Kurdish left stands for democracy, feminism and socialism, Erdogan's Turkey stands for islamist dictatorship, it's not a difficult choice.

I was glad that Sweden gave at least some support to the Kurds, even putting a weapon embargo on Turkey over its Syrian war actions. And many members of the kurdish diaspora have found a home here.

Of course it pissed Erdogan, and now he wants to veto Sweden's NATO application and makes demands that Sweden must "stop supporting Kurdish terrorists."

And my fear is that we will give in to the dictator's demands to get our now all-important NATO membership. Seriously, fuck that. The most sickening demand is that he wants Sweden to extradite around 33 people living in Sweden to Turkey. They are mostly kurds who Erdogan accuses of terrorism. These are persons who have asylum in the country or even Swedish citizenship. If they are extradited, they will probably face appalling prison conditions and torture at best.

One specific demand for extradition that really makes me angry is the publisher and journalist Ragip Zarakolu. His horrific act of terrorism is publishing books that acknowledge the Armenian genocide and tell the truth about the horrific crimes the Turkish state have denied for over a century.

Ultimately I'm just fed up with the western world's continuing hypocrisy. Our governments condemn dictatorships that are opposed to their interests, but support those that further their interests. In the cold war days the west rightfully condemned the dictatorships of the Soviet Union and its satellite states, only to support dictatorships in South Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia and Congo-KInshasa.

And today the western world rightfully condemns Putin, only to have a permanent military alliance with Erdogan's Turkey, all because Turkey controls the strategically important Bospurus.

And now Swedish government wants to join this military alliance, supposedly to protect freedom and democracy. And to do that we have to appease a dictator. Again I don't care if we join NATO or not, but I literally want us to take as strong a stand against Erdogan as against Putin.

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

With Washington Deadlocked on Aid, States Face Dire Fiscal Crises (NYT) Alaska chopped resources for public broadcasting. New York City gutted a nascent composting program that could have kept tons of food waste out of landfills. New Jersey postponed property-tax relief payments. Prisoners in Florida will continue to swelter in their cells, because plans to air-condition its prisons are on hold. Many states have already cut planned raises for teachers. And that’s just the start. Across the nation, states and cities have made an array of fiscal maneuvers to stay solvent and are planning more in case Congress can’t agree on a fiscal relief package after the August recess. House Democrats included nearly $1 trillion in state and local aid in the relief bill they passed in May, but the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has said he doesn’t want to hand out a “blank check” to pay for what he considers fiscal mismanagement, including the enormous public-pension obligations some states have accrued. There has been little movement in that stalemate lately.

As California burns, the winds arrive and the lights go out (AP) New wildfires ravaged bone-dry California during a scorching Labor Day weekend that saw a dramatic airlift of more than 200 people trapped by flames and ended with the state’s largest utility turning off power to 172,000 customers to try to prevent its power lines and other equipment from sparking more fires. California is heading into what traditionally is the teeth of the wildfire season, and already it has set a record with 2 million acres burned this year. The previous record was set just two years ago and included the deadliest wildfire in state history—the Camp Fire that swept through the community of Paradise and killed 85 people. That fire was started by Pacific Gas & Electric power lines. Liability from billions of dollars in claims from that and other fires forced the utility to seek bankruptcy protection. To guard against new wildfires and new liability, PG&E last year began preemptive power shutoffs when conditions are exceptionally dangerous. That’s the situation now in Northern California, where high and dry winds are expected until Wednesday.

Unhealthy eating and the poor (Bloomberg) It’s no secret that the cheapest food in the western world is often the stuff that’s worst for you: fast meals and ultra-processed food, usually loaded with salt, fat and sugar. For the poorest, it’s typically what they can afford, and that’s only grown more acute during the coronavirus pandemic. Unhealthy diets are poised to worsen the obesity problem all over the world, contributing to a “global pandemic in its own right,” the UN’s Food & Agriculture Organization said in July. Healthy and nutritious food has already been out of reach for more than 3 billion people. With economies sinking and unemployment at historic highs, millions more will find themselves trying to balance their budgets with the need for vital portions of fresh fruit, vegetables and proteins.

Facial recognition failure (OneZero) A new report from the Government Accountability Office of the federal government found that the Customs and Border Patrol was doing a bad job of alerting the public when facial recognition was being used on them, hiding the clear, legible signs disclosing this and describing how to opt out behind larger signs. It’s also not entirely clear that the enormous investment put into this tech is genuinely useful, as the report also found that of the 16 million passengers arriving in the U.S. through May 2020 that the CBP scanned in airports, they resulted in stopping 7 imposters.

At Least 37 Million People Have Been Displaced by America’s War on Terror (NYT) At least 37 million people have been displaced as a direct result of the wars fought by the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, according to a new report from Brown University’s Costs of War project. That figure exceeds those displaced by conflict since 1900, the authors say, with the exception of World War II. The findings were published on Tuesday, weeks before the United States enters its 20th year of fighting the war on terror, which began with the invasion of Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001; yet, the report says it is the first time the number of people displaced by U.S. military involvement during this period has been calculated. The findings come at a time when the United States and other Western countries have become increasingly opposed to welcoming refugees, as anti-migrant fears bolster favor for closed-border policies. The report accounts for the number of people, mostly civilians, displaced in and from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya and Syria, where fighting has been the most significant, and says the figure is a conservative estimate—the real number may range from 48 million to 59 million. The calculation does not include the millions of other people who have been displaced in countries with smaller U.S. counterterrorism operations, according to the report, including those in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger.

Will the U.K. Crash Out of the EU? (Foreign Policy) U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has set a deadline of Oct. 15 for the United Kingdom’s talks with the European Union as the latest round of negotiations gets underway today to determine the post-Brexit EU-U.K. economic relationship, again raising concerns that the United Kingdom could crash out of the bloc without a deal in place. The announcement comes as the British government is working to push legislation through Parliament that would override key parts of last year’s Brexit withdrawal agreement. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the so-called internal market bill is expected to remove the legal force of the highly contentious Northern Ireland protocol, which observers have long argued is vital to preserving peace and stability in Ireland after Brexit. Economists have consistently warned that the economic impact of a no-deal Brexit could be severe. On Monday, business leaders in Britain doubled-down on those warnings, telling Johnson that securing a Brexit deal was essential for the United Kingdom’s economic recovery following the coronavirus pandemic.

‘We are in the second wave’: Europe on edge as cases spike (NBC News) Cases of the coronavirus are spiking in France, Spain and the United Kingdom even as social distancing restrictions ease, stoking concerns among doctors and policymakers about a “second wave” in countries still reeling from the pandemic’s first wave. France set a new record Friday after health authorities reported 8,975 new cases, far higher than the previous record of 7,578 the country set March 31 at the height of the pandemic. In the U.K., new infections soared to nearly 3,000 in one day—the country’s biggest jump since May. And Spain saw nearly 9,000 cases Thursday. Unlike the pandemic’s punishing first round in the spring, France’s troubling rise in new cases has yet to cause a significant surge in deaths and hospitalizations, a salutary statistic for policymakers who remain determined to press ahead with reopenings of schools and businesses.

Belarus activist resists authorities’ push to leave country (AP) A leading opposition activist in Belarus was held on the border Tuesday after she resisted authorities’ attempt to force her to leave the country. Maria Kolesnikova, a member of the Coordination Council created by the opposition to facilitate talks with longtime leader President Alexander Lukashenko on a transition of power, was detained Monday in the capital, Minsk, along with two other council members. Early Tuesday, they were driven to the Ukrainian border, where the authorities told them to cross into Ukraine. Kolesnikova refused, and remained on the Belarusian side of the border in the custody of the Belarusian authorities. The authorities have applied similar tactics to other opposition figures, seeking to end a month of demonstrations against the re-election of Lukashenko in a vote the protesters see as rigged. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition challenger to Lukashenko, left for Lithuania a day after the Aug. 9 vote, under pressure from the authorities.

Myanmar army deserters confirm atrocities against Rohingya (AP) Two soldiers who deserted from Myanmar’s army have testified on video that they were instructed by commanding officers to “shoot all that you see and that you hear” in villages where minority Rohingya Muslims lived, a human rights group said Tuesday. The comments appear to be the first public confession by soldiers of involvement in army-directed massacres, rape and other crimes against Rohingya in the Buddhist-majority country, and the group Fortify Rights suggested they could provide important evidence for an ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court. More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh since August 2017 to escape what Myanmar’s military called a clearance campaign following an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group in Rakhine state. Myanmar’s government has denied accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings and burned thousands of homes.

Australia evacuates journalists from China amid ‘national security’ probe (Reuters) Two Australian foreign correspondents were rushed out of China for their safety with the help of Australian consular officials after being questioned by China’s Ministry of State Security, their employers said on Tuesday. China correspondents for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Australian Financial Review (AFR) sought shelter in Australia’s embassy in Beijing and consulate in Shanghai as diplomats negotiated with Chinese officials to allow them to leave the country, the ABC and the AFR reported. The two journalists—the ABC’s Bill Birtles and the AFR’s Michael Smith—had been banned from leaving China until they answered questions about detained Australian citizen and television anchor Cheng Lei, the media companies reported. Both journalists were told they were “persons of interest” in an investigation into Cheng, a high-profile business anchor on Chinese state television, who was detained by authorities in August, the AFR report said. The president of Australia’s Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, Marcus Strom, said the treatment of the Australian journalists by Chinese authorities was “appalling”.

Kiwi expats (BBC) Approximately 50,000 New Zealanders have returned from abroad since the beginning of the year. Behind Ireland alone, New Zealand has the second-highest proportion of its citizens living abroad, with between 600,000 and a million New Zealanders living abroad compared to a population of 5 million people in the country itself. Many are in Australia, where they can work without a visa, but others go to other countries further off for work or school. A University of Auckland sociologist estimated 100,000 could return depending on how long the pandemic lasts

Syria wants more Russian help (Foreign Policy) Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he wants to expand his country’s economic and business ties to Russia as a way of bypassing crippling U.S. sanctions during talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday. Lavrov hinted that Russia was prepared to come to Assad’s aid, noting during a subsequent press conference that Syria needed international assistance to help rebuild its economy now that Assad is in control of most of the territory he lost during the country’s brutal civil war. The meeting was Lavrov’s first visit to the country since 2012, demonstrating Moscow’s continued interest in Syria after providing Assad with critical military support throughout the civil war.

Jordan resumes regular commercial flights after six-month halt during pandemic (Reuters) Jordan resumed regular international flights on Tuesday after being suspended for nearly six months because of the novel coronavirus epidemic, officials said. They said Queen Alia international airport would initially handle six flights a day before expanding to ensure that airport authorities can enforce strict social distancing and other health rules.

Virus puts new strain on Gaza’s overwhelmed health system (AP) Dr. Ahmed el-Rabii spent years treating Palestinians wounded by Israeli fire during wars and clashes in the Gaza Strip. Now that the coronavirus has reached the blockaded territory, the 37-year-old physician finds himself in the unfamiliar role of patient. El-Rabii is the first Gaza doctor diagnosed with COVID-19 and is among dozens of health-care workers infected during the local outbreak, which was detected late last month. The spread among front-line workers has further strained an already overburdened health-care system. Since 2007, Gaza has been under an Israeli-Egyptian blockade meant to isolate Hamas, the Islamic militant group that seized control of the territory that year from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority. Few people can move in and out of the territory, and Hamas placed anyone returning to Gaza into mandatory quarantine centers for three weeks. Before last month, the handful of Gaza’s coronavirus cases were confined to the isolation facilities. But on Aug. 24, the first cases were detected among the general population, and the numbers have multiplied since.

When will tourists return to Africa? (AP) Africa will lose between $53 billion and $120 billion in contributions to its GDP in 2020 because of the crash in tourism, the World Travel and Tourism Council estimates. Kenya expects at least a 60% drop in tourism revenue this year. South Africa a 75% drop. In South Africa, 1.2 million tourism-related jobs are already impacted, according to its Tourism Business Council. That’s not far off 10% of total jobs in Africa’s most developed economy and the total damage isn’t yet clear. “Devastation,” council CEO Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa said. South Africa’s borders, including virtually all international flights, have been closed for nearly six months and there are no signs of them reopening.

#headlines #news

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libertariantaoist · 5 years

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US News

Chelsea Manning has been subpoenaed to testify to a federal grand jury. It is suspected that the subpoena is for the sealed indictment against Julian Assange. Manning will fight the subpoena. [Link]

California police officers who tased a man to death will not face charges. The officers attempted to stop for walking against a red light. [Link]

A study finds that black and Hispanic drivers are more likely to be pulled over by police. [Link]

Mexico

A US Marine became a Mexican drug kingpin. [Link]

Mexico threatens to impose duties on American products if the US does not roll back tariffs on steel and aluminum. [Link]

Venezuela

Moon of Alabama breaks down Juan Guaido’s return to Venezuela as his claim to power is dying. [Link]

John Bolton invokes the Monroe Doctrine to defend US intervention in Venezuela. [Link] Daniel Larison explains how John Bolton misunderstands the Monroe Doctrine. [Link]

Afghanistan

The US proposes a peace plan to the Taliban that keeps several thousand US troops in Afghanistan for the next five years. [Link]

As many as 40 Afghan troops were killed in an attack by the Taliban in Helmand. [Link]

Middle East

Gareth Porter explains why Bolton and Pompeo are creating serious threats the US could end up at war with Iran. [Link]

Elijah Magnier explains why Iran’s Foreign Minister resigned then returned to work. [Link]

Friends of an Harvard educated American doctor say he was imprisoned and tortured by Saudi Arabia. He was arrested and detained in the Ritz Carlton in 2017. He remains imprisoned but the reason why is unclear. [Link]

Al-Qaeda-linked rebels now controls most of Idlib Syria. [Link]

A suicide bombing in Idlib kills seven. In response, al-Qaeda fighters kill eight suspected IS fighters. [Link]

The US is using white phosphorus near civilians in Syria. [Link]

Africa

Al-Shabaab militants kill 29 civilians in an attack on a hotel in Mogadishu. [Link]

The US claims to kill 26 al-Shabaab militants with an airstrike. [Link]

Haftar’s forces claim to control Libya’s southern border with Algeria. [Link]

Libya’s largest oil field reopens. [Link]

US Special Forces are training the Burkina Faso Army for the growing threat of terror attacks. [Link]

Doctors Without Borders suspends their work to fight Ebola in the Congo. The decision was made after attacks on two Ebola treatment centers. During the second attack, patients believed to have Ebola fled the treatment center. [Link]

#kyle anzalone #immersion news #news roundup

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ayittey1 · 5 years

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COCONUT CLASSICS

Fed up with the buffoonery and tomfoolery coming out of Africa. So I compiled a litany of the eccentricities and flat-out acts of buffoonery that I have come across in my research and work on Africa. Let me know which one you like the best. Enjoy.

In March 2017, Emmanuel Elibariki, a hip-hop artist, released a song in which he asked “is there still freedom of expression in Tanzania?” He was promptly arrested and his song banned from the airwaves. (The Economist, Oct 19, 2017; p.43).

The late president, Gen. Samuel Doe of Liberia summoned his finance minister – “only to be reminded by aides that he had already executed him” (The New York Times, Sept 13, 2003; p.A4).

In 2016, Uganda’s Parliament voted Shs68 million ($18,320) to cover the funeral expenses of each MP (Daily Monitor, Sept 15, 2016). Hand them over. I will bury them for FREE – with the Cutlass!

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda wants to ban oral sex “the mouth is for eating” https://bit.ly/2ILs3RV

"Corruption is everywhere -- in the villages, wherever", Zambia's Lands Minister Gladys Nyirango acknowledged at a major conference on graft in Africa. Hours later she was SACKED. (Sapa-AFP, March 4, 2007).

A former minister of finance was found hiding – where else? -- in a coconut tree: “Zambia’s former finance minister, Katele Kalumba, was arrested and charged with theft after the police found him hiding in a tree near his rural home. Mr. Kalumba, who had been on the run for four months, is being charged in connection with some $33 million that vanished while he was in office (The New York Times, Jan 16, 2003; p.A8).

In Zimbabwe, the anti-corruption czar, Ngonidzashe Gumbo, was himself a bandit, jailed for 10 years for defrauding the commission of $435,000 (The Herald, March 12, 2015). https://bit.ly/2UCre4b

Zambia President Edgar Lungu is buying a new Presidential Jet fitted with a cutting edge military grade anti-missile defense system which fires lasers at incoming heat-seeking missiles (Zambia Observer, Oct 12, 2018). https://bit.ly/2UyS9ho

In Feb 2019, “The First Lady of Zambia, Esther Lungu, travelled to the US with a 25-man delegation to receive four fire trucks, which the Los Angeles Fire Department, had RETIRED from service” (Punch, Feb 7, 2019). Hopefully they did not fly back with the trucks!

When two coconuts fight . . . https://on.wsj.com/2PlEVzd

RWANDA: “I have caught you supporting rebels to destabilize my government. Take that! The border is closed!” (Delivers a sharp left hook). UGANDA: “Wui! . . . No, it is you who is destabilizing my government. Take that!” (Delivers a stiff upper cut). AU (the referee) is snoring zzzzzzzzzz and awakes: “I APPEAL to both of you to end hostilities!” And goes back to sleep zzzzzzzzzzzzz https://bit.ly/2SO3Agh https://bit.ly/2UzW39K

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Two journalists were arrested and charged with publishing false information for reporting that President Bingu wa Mutharika, had moved out of a new 300-room palace because he believed it was haunted. The two, Raphael Tenthani, who works for the BBC, and Mabvuto Banda of the newspaper The Nation, were reportedly taken in raids at their homes. Malawi newspapers and radio stations carried the ghost report over the weekend, quoting a senior official. Mr. Mutharika has angrily denied the reports, saying, "I have never feared ghosts in my life." (Agence France-Presse, March 16, 2005)

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Insecurity challenges heightened in Bayelsa State following separate incidents of kidnapping of four policemen and six other persons along Nembe waterways by gunmen suspected to be sea pirates. Sunday Independent gathered that the gunmen also seized a gunboat belonging to the Nigeria Police in an incident that occurred on Friday. Sources said the gunboat was escorting a barge owned by the Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) when the bandits struck (Daily Independent, October 26, 2014).

Coconut Eccentricities

Sudan

“Colonel Ibrahim Chamsadine was Sudan’s defense minister but was arrested and imprisoned in 1995 by Omar al-Bashir for opposing him. Later, the state claimed that he died in a plane crash on June 11, 2008. But he was found in a secret prison under a mosque in the Sudanese city of Omdurmanprison https://bit.ly/2YbKT9c

Mali

In March 1991, angry Malians took to the streets to demand democratic freedom from the despotic rule of Gen. Moussa Traore. He unleashed his security forces on them, killing scores, including women and children. But pro-democracy forces were not deterred and kept up the pressure. Asked to resign on March 25, he retorted: "I will not resign, my government will not resign, because I was elected not by the opposition but by all the people of Mali." Two days later, when he tried to flee the country, he was grabbed by his own security agents and sent to jail. From there, he lamented: "My fate is now in God’s hands."

Kenya

“President Daniel arap Moi has urged Kenyans to abstain from sex for at least two years to try to curb the spread of AIDS. . .Moi was speaking after the government announced plans to import 300 million condoms to fight AIDS” (The Telegraph, July 13, 2001)

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Uganda

Uganda’s Agriculture Minister, Kibirige Ssebunya, declared that: “All the poor should be arrested because they hinder us from performing our development duties. It is hard to lead the poor, and the poor cannot lead the rich. They should be eliminated" (New Vision, Kampala, Dec 15, 2004). He advised local leaders to arrest poor people in their areas of jurisdiction.

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Soldiers teach wealth creation

BUSHENYI- Soldiers implementing the newly established operational Wealth Creation program have urged farmers to stop being afraid of working with them, saying they are not a colonial army that used to force people to do community tasks. The appeal was made at a meeting for the program’s southwestern army coordinators in Bushenyi District last week. The project replaced Naads last year. The meeting was organized by the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) aimed at harmonizing collaboration between UCDA and coordinators to improve the quality and production of coffee (Daily Monitor, Feb 24, 2015)

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No fewer than 300 Nigerian soldiers FLED to Cameroon when Boko Haram insurgents overran Mubi, the second largest city in Borno State from security forces on Oct 30, 2014 (SUNDAY PUNCH, Nov 2, 2014).

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Kibaki

In May 2005, Lucy Kibaki, one of the two wives of President Mwai Kibaki, was hopping mad. She stormed into the Nairobi office of The Daily Nation, confiscated notebooks, tape recorders and pens. Brandishing a copy of the newspaper, Mrs. Kibaki, flanked by several security officers and the Nairobi police chief, Kingori Mwangi, demanded to know the whereabouts of a reporter who had written a story headlined “Shame of First Lady” that offended her. “I am here to protest, and I’m not leaving until I find the reporter who has been writing all these lies,” a witness said. Mrs. Kibaki then camped herself for much of the night at the desk of the newspaper's editor, unleashing a fury of broadsides at the staff. When a local television crew arrived, she slapped a cameraman. The problem was that she chose the wrong newspaper to unleash her full fury. It was the rival Standard newspaper that had printed the offending article, not the Daily Nation. (The Daily Nation, May 9, 2005). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nigeria

The Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps (NSCDC) has proposed to spend N5 billion on the procurement of anti-terrorism, chemical, bio-radiation and NUCLEAR weapon equipment and other new projects. Breakdown of the budget by Daily Trust reveals that N254.2m was proposed for the procurement of NUCLEAR weapon equipment, as well as N196.6m for the purchase of two BMW 900 RT, 374 Sinoki motorcycles, 200 bikes and 30 rider kits. Daily Trust, Feb 21, 2018 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zimbabwe

Three people have appeared in court in Zimbabwe, accused of stealing a suitcase containing $150,000 (£117,600) of cash from the country's ousted president, Robert Mugabe. The suspected thieves allegedly spent the money on cars, homes and animals. A relative of the ex-president, Constantia Mugabe, is among the accused, government-owned media report. She allegedly had keys to Mr Mugabe's rural home in Zvimba, near the capital Harare, and gave the others access. The other suspects were employed as cleaners at the time of the theft, which allegedly happened some time between 1 December and early January (BBC Jan 10, 2019) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46830960 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kenya

In January 2000,Kenya’s ruling party’s (KANU’s) gang of thugs known as Jeshi la Mzee (“the old man’s army”), attacked a group of opposition leaders outside parliament who were protesting against the resumption of IMF assistance. When the police were called to restore order, “It was the protesters, not the thugs, who were arrested” (The Economist, Feb 5, 2000; p.42). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Zimbabwe

"In Zimbabwe, the thieves are in charge and their victims face prosecution" (The Economist, March 16, 2002; p.18). In 2000, Zimbabwe's Supreme Court ruled that invasions of white commercial farmlands by "war veterans" did not constitute a workable form of land redistribution -- a position, which was affirmed by a Commonwealth agreement struck in Abuja, Nigeria in Sept 2001. But President Robert Mugabe tossed the agreement aside, reconstituted the Supreme Court by packing it with pliant judges who then ruled on Dec 6 2001 that the violent land invasions were legal (The Economist, Dec 8, 2001; p.45).

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President Yoweri Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, was miffed in December 2017 when two Ugandan musicians suggested in a song that he should retire. The two were promptly arrested and charged with disturbing the peace of the president. “Singer David Mugema and music producer John Muwanguzi were accused of having composed and disseminated via the internet a tune titled “Wumula”, meaning “retire”, their lawyer Abdallah Kiwanuka told AFP” (Mail &Guardian, Dec 6, 2017).

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DR Congo frees goats from prison

A minister in the Democratic Republic of Congo has ordered a Kinshasa jail to release a dozen goats, which he said were being held there illegally. Deputy Justice Minister Claude Nyamugabo said he found the goats just in time during a routine jail visit. The beasts were due to appear in court, charged with being sold illegally by the roadside. The minister said many police had serious gaps in their knowledge and they would be sent for retraining. Mr Nyamugabo was conducting a routine visit to the prison when, he said, he was astonished to discover not only humans, but a herd of goats crammed into a prison cell in the capital. He has blamed the police for the incident.(Thank God, he didn’t blame the colonialists). It is not clear what will happen to the owners of the goats, who have also been imprisoned. BBC Africa analyst Mary Harper says that given the grim state of prisons in Congo, the goats will doubtless be relieved about being spared a trial. There was no word on what their punishment would have been, had they been found guilty.

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Traffic Drives Nigerians Nuts, but a Trip to a Shrink May Go Too Far Enforcement of One-Way Rules in Lagos Tests Motorists' Sanity; 'A Lot of Cannabis'

LAGOS, Nigeria—You'd have to be crazy to drive the wrong way down a one-way street here. At least, that's what cops in the local Anti-One-Way Squad say.

Seeking to stem an epidemic of wrong-way driving, Lagos authorities have ratcheted up the standard $160 fine. Scofflaws now also face psychiatric evaluations. Contesting the charge can jack up the fine to $1,600—and you still get sent to a shrink. The legal logic is simple, says Sina Thorpe, spokesman for the Lagos state ministry of transportation: If you violate one-way rules, "you should have your head examined." Threatening errant drivers with psychiatric exams, which locals deem more bureaucratic than medical, is a twist in the rough road of Nigerian traffic. Lagos bigwigs have long paid on-duty local cops to speed them through jams by riding shotgun with machine guns and menacing other drivers with bullwhips. Cut-price motorcycle taxis use thunderous horns that sound like 18-wheelers to frighten others out of the way. (The Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2011; p.A1

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Zambia: Zambia's Transport Minister, Nkandu Luo, acting to "improve sanity in the transportation industry" ordered all buses and taxis to be painted in same uniform color: Blue and white. The United Transport and Taxi Association (UTTA) who were not consulted on the move, claimed that the imposition of the colors "amounted to the worst form of dictatorship." "If they think it is such a good idea to have a uniform color, why don't they paint all government vehicles in the same blue and white so that they lead by example," UTTA member Mr. Bwalya Chupa complained. Passengers were not impressed either. "The buses should have been repaired before being smeared with a coat of paint," commuter Juliet Sefu opined. Rather than bring sanity to the transportation industry, most Zambians believe the Transport Minister has brought even further insanity to their already beleaguered transportation infrastructure (African Business, May 2001; p.13).

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Sierra Leone: The Sierra Leone Government is urging people to stop jeering and throwing stones at former military leader, Captain Valentine Strasser. A government statement said Captain Strasser had been embarrassed by people throwing stones at him and booing him when he ventured out on the streets of the capital, Freetown. "It is a great concern to the nation," the statement said (Daily Graphic, Accra, August 18, 2001; p.5).

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Uganda

Minister seeks to attract tourists: Uganda has sexy and curvy women . . . And coconuts too https://goo.gl/FXWsgi

Chad

The president built a moat around the capital to ward off rebel insurgency led by his relatives: “The government is digging a 10-foot-deep trench around the capital, Ndjamena, to prevent a repeat of an attack last month, when rebels in pickup trucks rolled in and fought two days of heavy battles. The ditch will all but encircle the city, slicing through neighborhoods and forcing vehicles to pass through fortified gateways, a security official said. The remaining trees that line the avenues of central Ndjamena are being felled. Residents say the rebels used trees knocked down by rocket-propelled grenades and cannon fire to block roads during the fighting” (Reuters reprinted in The New York Times, March 8, 2008). And who are the rebels? His own nephews and relatives. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zimbabwe

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has launched a space agency, hailing it a "milestone" as he campaigns ahead of elections at the end of the month. The Zimbabwe National Geospatial and Space Agency will deploy earth observation satellites, global navigation satellite systems, unmanned aerial vehicles, geospatial and space technologies for better farming, mineral exploration, wildlife conservation, infrastructure management and disease surveillance, he said in Harare https://bit.ly/2GZCq3w

Coconut Combat on Corruption

In Feb 2014 when Lamidu Sanusi, the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, reported that some $20 billion in oil revenue was missing, it was he, the governor, who was immediately sacked by ex-Pres. Goodluck Jonathan for financial recklessness and misconduct! (BBC News, Feb 20, 2014) https://bbc.in/2Kb8rsE

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Paul Biya Fights Corruption? Don’t snicker; my head it splitting already! The man is holed up in Switzerland watching over his Swiss bank accounts! Holds a cabinet meeting every 4 years. In Oct 2018 he won a 7th 7-year term without even campaigning. He has already been in power for 41 years https://bit.ly/2XWI4cG

Life in a coconut Republic

Liberia under Pres. Charles Taylor

“Wheel barrows serve as ambulances for the people. The public schools do not function; more than 70 percent of the population is illiterate. Yet, all government ministers have Ph.D.s – some even three or four – all purchased. At the University of Liberia, Charles Taylor offered 11,000 scholarships to his friends in 1997 but did not pay their tuition bills. Nor did his government pay the salaries of university professors and public school teacher . . . Liberia had a judicial system but Taylor named his friends who could not read or write to be judges and attorneys, and sentences were handed down on his orders . . . The capital has a fire building, painted bright red but its only fire truck has no tires, headlamps, or even a hose. Wires dangle from the engine. With no running water in the city, firefighters must jog or hitchhike to a creek three miles away to fetch water in buckets to put out a fire” (The Washington Post, Sep 9, 2003; p.A18). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nigeria

The late General Sani Abacha’s family thought they were smart. They hired Usman Mohammed Bello – a Sudanese from Karsala -- to look after their three children attending school in Amman, Jordan. Usman became a close confidante of Abacha with access to several coded foreign bank accounts opened by the late General. The family so trusted him that Abacha gave him diplomatic status in the Nigerian foreign office in Amman. He was also issued with both diplomatic passport number F317567 and a standard passport number A104786. Subsequently, Abacha was poisoned or died in 1998 from exhaustion from a Viagra-fueled sex orgy – depending on upon which version one believes. A short transitional government led to the election of President Olusegun Obasanjo in March 1999, who vowed to recover Abacha’s loot of about $5 billion from abroad. On October 1, 1999, Usman Bello vanished. A hysterical Abacha family appealed to Nigeria’s police and government for help in catching him! “Nigeria’s State Security Service from from (SSS) established that the Sudanese might have salted away millions of dollars entrusted to him by the Abacha family and may also be privy to other financial transactions of the family overseas, especially in the Arab world” (Weekly Insight, July 19-25, 2000; p.1). Only in a coconut republic would thieves appeal to the police to apprehend a thief! Even then, part of the Abacha loot that was recovered, was quickly re-looted! About $709 million and another ₤144 million were recovered from the loot the Abachas and his henchmen stashed abroad. But the Senate Public Accounts Committee found only $6.8 million and ₤2.8 million of the recovered booty in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) (The Post Express (July 10, 2000).

Coconut Elections

Tanzania

The losing candidate lambasted voters, not his own incompetence, for losing an election: “The candidate of the Tanzania Labour Party (TLP), Augustine Mrema, did well in 1995 with another party, NCCR-Mageuzi, and less well with TLP in 2000. This time, he blamed the voters for betraying him. Mrema, a former home affairs minister who contested the 1995 elections as leader of his own party, chastised the voters for not choosing him previously. "I wonder why you have not given me votes to become president despite my impressive record as home affairs minister," he told a rally in Dar es Salaam broadcast live on radio and television. "I worked as deputy prime minister, which means I was boss to Mkapa and Sumaye, still you chose not to elect me president. Why? Some voters are hypocrites. They proclaim to support you but vote for other people. If you do not vote for me this time, you will have to explain." (Southen African News, Dec 16, 2005) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nigeria

To return Nigeria to civilian rule, the late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, allowed only 5 political parties to be registered in 1996 and participate in the forthcoming elections. They all promptly chose HIM as their presidential candidate!

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Rwanda: On August 25, 2003, Paul Kagame, leader of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), won 95.05 percent of the vote. His challenger, Faustin Twagiramungu, found his campaign stymied at every turn by government security forces. His rallies were canceled, his workers arrested and his brochures seized. On the eve of the voting, “police arrested 12 of Twagiramungu’s provincial organizers, saying they were preparing election day violence” (The Washington Times, Aug 28, 2003; p.A19). “In Twagiramungu’s home town, soldiers reportedly looked at ballot papers and ordered those who voted the wrong way to try again” (The Economist, Aug 30, 2003; p.32). Faustin Twagiramungu, won 3.62 percent and a third candidate, Jean Nepomuscene Nayinzira, had 1.33 percent (The New York Times, Aug 26, 2003; p.A6). In the 2010 elections Kagame won 93% of the vote and in the 2017 elections he won 99.98% of the vote! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ethiopia: May 2015 election the opposition did not win a single parliamentary seat. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Ghana’s 1996 presidential election, opposition candidate, Col. Erskine did not win a single vote in his own constituency. In other words, he did not would vote for himself and neither did his wife and four children. He was livid. When he complained bitterly on a radio program, the electoral commissioner tossed six votes his way. Marriage breaker election. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Egypt

In Egypt’s March 2018 elections all of those who expressed an interest to contest either disappeared or were thrown into jail. The main challenger was arrested and his campaign manager beaten up. The only candidate allowed to run was Mousa Mostafa Mousa. He was a strong supporter of the president. In fact, his own party previously endorsed the incumbent, Abdel Fattahh al-Sisi, who won 97% of the vote. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Zimbabwe

In Zimbabwe’s July 2018 election bore all the hallmarks of the long-ruling ZANU-PF party’s usual machinations. Voters included more than 1,000 people about 100 years old and older; four were even born in the 1880s. Emmerson Mnangagwa (the incumbent) won 50.8% of votes to 44.3% for opposition leader Nelson Chamisa. He scraped through by the skin of his teeth to avoid a runoff! Yeah right! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Congo DR The Mother of all Coconut elections took place in Congo DR on Dec 30, 2018 after being twice postponed. Vote in 3 opposition areas were postponed to March 2019. Rest of the country voted on Dec 30. The Electoral Commissioner declared Felix Tshisekedi, an opposition candidate, as the winner on Jan 15. There was widespread speculation that the incumbent, Joseph Kabila, had made a secret pact with Tshisekedi. The Catholic Church disagreed with the results, giving the nod to another opposition candidate, Martin Fayulu, who declared himself president. A nasty political crisis erupted which wend its way to the Constitutional Court. Awoken out of its slumber, the African Union with indecent haste ordered the Court to hold off and wait for its high level and high profile delegation to come to Kinshasa to resolve the crisis. And the Chairman of the AU seeking to resolve an election dispute? Prez PAUL KAGAME of Rwanda who in Aug 2017 tossed his political rival, Diane Rwigara, into jail and won 99.98% of vote in presidential election https://goo.gl/URjASb The Court told the AU to butt out and mind his own business. It went ahead and confirmed Tshisekedi as the winner. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Coconut Security Forces Mauritania

State news: Mauritania's president mistakenly shot by his nation's troops

(CNN) -- Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who came under fire from his own troops just hours before, took to his country's airwaves Sunday, saying the shooting incident was an accident. "I want to reassure all citizens of my well-being after the accident committed by an army unit on an unpaved road around Touela. ... Everything is fine," he said in an interview broadcast on official Mauritanian television. Troops shot the president late Saturday in what the government is calling a case of "friendly fire" -- though others believe it may have been an assassination attempt. Aziz's convoy mistakenly came under fire as it was heading back toward the capital of Nouakchott, the official AMI news agency reported. The gunshots came from a military unit stationed alongside the road in the west African country. http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/13/world/africa/mauritania-president-shot/index.html By Amir Ahmed, CNN, October 14, 2012 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kenya

In Africa, most of the police are highway robbers and judges, crooks. Tell a police officer that you saw a minister stealing the people’s money and it is you he will arrest! Asked to investigate the brutal murders of Robert Ouko and British tourist, Julie Ward, Kenya police issued this report: “Foreign Minister Robert Ouko was presumed to have broken his own leg, shot himself in the head and set himself afire. Two years earlier, Kenyan officials suggested that a British tourist, Julie Ward, lopped off her own head and one of her legs before setting herself aflame” (The Washington Post, April 20, 2001; p. A19). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ghana

The security forces can unleash the full force of their fury on unarmed civilians with batons, tear gas, water canons and rubber bullets. But how really brave are the security forces? On 16 December 1998, Corporal C. Darko and Constable K. A. Boateng at a Police Station in Accra, Ghana, were instructed to go and arrest Samuel Quartey, who was reported to police for being involved in a theft case. "When the suspect came out brandishing a cutlass (a machete), the police officers took to their heels with the speed of lightning that could have made an enviable record had they been timed" (The Mirror, 2 Jan 1999, 1). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Soldiers on guard duties at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation no longer guard an observation post behind the TV studios because of a ghost who slaps officers who go on duty there at night. In September, 1994, an officer on guard at that sentry came running to the head of security complaining of an invincible hand which had on two occasions pulled his helmet from his head and slapped him. The senior officer, unmoved by the soldier's story, decided to prove him wrong by manning the post himself. Within an hour, the senior officer fled to the office telling a similar tale, this time the ghost allegedly smacked him four times on the face (Ghana Drum, Feb 1995; p.33). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nigeria

On July 23, 1998, Colonel Anthony Obi, Osun State's military administrator, strutted pompously to deliver a speech at a state function at Osogbo in the southwestern part of Lagos, Nigeria. As the Daily Champion (24 July 1998) reported: "Panic stricken Nigerian officials ran for safety when first a rat and then a python, apparently drawn by the smell of the rat, made a sudden appearance. The officials leapt up from their seats when the rat, described as having a "long snout and offensive smell," appeared from beneath the carpet by the high table. Colonel Anthony Obi, Osun State's military administrator, and his entourage nervously returned after security agents intervened and killed the beast. (p.1) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kenya

Ambushed by bunch of rag-tag cattle rustlers, Kenya’s elite presidential guards quickly surrendered. Johann Wandetto, a reporter for the People Daily, a newspaper in Kitale, Rift Valley province, submitted a story in the March 6, 1999 edition with the title: “Militia men rout 8 crack unit officers: Shock as Moi’s men surrender meekly.” Wandetto was immediately arrested and sentenced to 18 months in prison on what the court described as an “alarmist report” (Index on Censorship, 3/2000; p.99). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Congo DR

Nor can the security forces shoot straight. When civil war broke out in the DR Congo in 1997, Chad sent in troops to help the regime of Laurent Kabila stave off rebel attacks. What happened? “Congo rebels said 93 Chadian soldiers were killed in an ambush by Kabila government troops who mistook their identities. Chad, one of the nations allied with the Kabila regime, insisted the toll was lower” (The Wall Street Journal, Nov 12, 1998, A1). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sudan

And the mother of all security forces? When the African Union (AU) peacekeepers' base on the edge of Haskanita, a small town in southern Darfur, came under sustained rebel assault on Sept 29, 2007, they fled into the bush. “Ten were killed; at least 40 fled into the bush. The attackers looted the compound before Sudanese troops arrived to rescue the surviving peacekeepers” (The Economist, Oct 11, 2007; p.48) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hoisted by own petard

Ousted Mauritania leader in shock

The former president of the West African state of Mauritania has said he was stunned by the coup that ousted him from power. Army officers overthrew President Maaouiya Ould Sid Ahmed Taya in a bloodless revolt on Wednesday. Speaking for the first time since the coup, Mr Taya said he had been shocked to find out who was behind it. He was toppled by the former security chief and close colleague, Colonel Ely Ould Mohammed Vall. "My situation reminds me of the old adage: 'God, save me from my friends, I'll take care of my enemies'," President Taya told Radio France Internationale from Niger. "I was stunned by the coup d'etat [...] and even more so when I heard who were the authors," Mr Taya said. President Taya, who survived a number of coup attempts in his 21-year rule, was returning from the funeral of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia when the coup took place. Col Vall, 55, has been director of national security since 1987 and, after played a key role in the 1984 coup which brought Mr Taya to power. Critics accuse the government of using the US-led war on terror to crack down on his opponents. Mr Taya had also prompted widespread opposition by establishing links with Israel, making Mauritania one of only three Arab states to have done so. The following presidents were removed by members of their own security forces: Ben Ali of Tunisia in 2011, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt in 2011, Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria in April 2019 and Omar al-Bashir of Sudan in April 2019. They never learn and keep spending more and more on security forces. In the end they are booted out by members of their own security forces. Guinea

GUINEA: PRESIDENT ESCAPES ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT Guinea's leader, Lansana Conté, survived an assassination attempt, his security minister said, after unidentified men in military uniforms fired on his convoy. Mr. Conté, 70, a diabetic chain-smoker who has no obvious successor and is rarely seen in public, later appeared on state television. Military officials said his bodyguards returned fire and foiled the attack. Security Minister Moussa Sampil said that an unspecified number of people had been detained. In his television address, Mr. Conté spoke of "external manipulations" against him but added, "Personally, I only fear my close aides, who pretend they are with me while they are not sincere." (Reuters, Jan 20, 2005). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hundreds of marauding soldiers fired guns in the air in the streets of Conakry and other towns around the country on Friday, further threatening the ability of Guinea's beleaguered president Lansana Conte to govern. Banks, schools, markets and shops all closed at around 11.30am as news spread that heavily armed soldiers were marching into town, after talks between senior military officials and soldiers at a military base near the airport collapsed. "We want the leaders who stole our wages and betrayed us to step down," one of the soldiers marching in central Conakry close to the presidential palace, told IRIN on Friday afternoon. In the morning IRIN also saw presidential guards, distinguished by their red berets, in the center of the city. They were shooting in the air in what appeared to be an attempt to scare off the mutinous soldiers, but the presidential guards were outnumbered and eventually FLED! UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS 11 May 2007

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://www.punchng.com/news/mubi-battle-300-nigerian-soldiers-flee-to-cameroon-again/

Boko Haram has seized control of a Nigerian town after hundreds of soldiers stationed there reportedly FLED across the border to Cameroon, a police source said. "Boko Haram fighters moved into Ashigashya" overnight on Monday, where they slaughtered three people in front of a church, a Cameroon police source told the AFP news agency on Tuesday on condition of anonymity. “Almost 500 Nigerian soldiers FLED the Nigerian border towns of Ashigashyia and Kerawa to take refuge from Boko Haram fighters on Cameroonian territory” (Al-Jazeera, Aug 26, 2014) www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2014/08/boko-haram-seizes-town-after-soldiers-flee-2014826181311739107.html

Islamist extremist group Boko Haram seized control of a Nigerian town of Malam Fatori, near the Niger border, after soldiers FLED, an official told the AFP. . . The fighting killed dozens and wounded about 30 people in the a commercial hub known for fishing and farming, the Anfani radio station in Diffa reported. “The town of Malam Fatori was taken by Boko Haram after violent fighting with the Nigerian army overnight,” said the official in Diffa. According to the official, 315 Nigerian soldiers FLED over the border to Diffa. Thirteen who were wounded were treated in a Diffa hospital, while the others have been repatriated (Today, Nov 10, 2014) HTTP://WWW.TODAY.NG/NEWS/315-NIGERIAN-SOLDIERS-FLEE-TO-NIGER-AS-BOKO-HARAM-RAIDS-TAKES-CONTROL-OF-ANOTHER-TOWN-IN-BORNO/

“NO fewer than 480 Nigerian soldiers have FLED into Cameroon following fierce fighting with Boko Haram insurgents. The Cameroonian Army Spokesman, Lt Col Didier Badjek, who confirmed this, said the troops had already been disarmed. (Cameroon Daily, Jan 20, 2015).

HTTP://WWW.CAMEROONDAILY.NET/2014/08/480-NIGERIAN-SOLDIERS-FLEE-TO-CAMEROON.HTML

Mercifully there is the Coconut Cure

In Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, there is a place called "the magic corner," where all and sundry, including politicians, come to be relieved or cured of their problems. "Even those top leaders of the government come to that tree," said Shabuni Haruni, a private security guard. "Yes, during the election." Upon the payment of a small fee, a traditional healer ("witch doctor") would take a patient to a huge baobab tree, reputed to be the abode of ancestral spirits. Patients remove their shoes, kneel in front of the tree with their eyes closed. At one session described by The Washington Post correspondent, Karl Vick, "Rykia Selengia, a traditional healer, passed a coconut around and around the head of her kneeling client. The coconut went around the man's left arm, then the right, then each leg. When she handed the coconut to the client, Mussa Norris, he hurled it onto a stone. It shattered, releasing his problems to the winds." (The Washington Post, Nov 12, 2001; p. A21).

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rapeculturerealities · 6 years

Link

When I began conducting research in eastern Congo in 2005, it was nearly impossible to avoid conversations about rape during war. All of my interview subjects — civil society leaders, workers with nongovernmental organizations, U.N. officials — brought it up, even though it was not my topic or something I asked about. The area (which U.N. official Margot Wallstrom would call the “rape capital of the world” five years later) was racked by sexual violence, with clinics and hospitals full of women who had suffered injuries from particularly violent forms of gang rape, often involving sharp objects and weapons. And no matter where I went, I was introduced to survivors. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to who was targeted; the youngest gang-rape survivor I met was 5, and the oldest were elderly women. Survivors were of all ethnicities and had been attacked in both urban and rural environments.

The crisis would shortly thereafter begin to grab headlines, with everyone from Nick Kristof and Eve Ensler to Hillary Clinton and Oprah Winfrey trying to “help,” some more effectively than others. There was no doubt that the crisis merited that level of attention. It was bad, and given how few resources were available to those victimized by armed actors before the wave of international attention, there is no doubt that the donations that those stories and efforts generated helped.

But what no one could definitively explain was why this horrific violence was happening. And without that explanation, activists, doctors and supporters could only hope to heal the physical, psychological and spiritual wounds of rape. Stopping it before it started was far more complex.

While a number of scholars had done innovative research on the topic, there was still no explanation as to why some of Congo’s armed groups engaged in sexual violence while others did not, and we did not understand why extreme forms of gang rape were so often used to terrorize women as opposed to other forms of the violent crime. Some posited that it was because the fragility of the Congolese state and a decade of civil war had led to a breakdown of societal norms and taboos against such behavior, making wartime rape in the Congo essentially an opportunistic activity. Others argued that it was related to conceptions of masculinity and the long history of powerful people exploiting vulnerable Congolese populations. Others thought it might be done as part of an explicit military strategy. We just didn’t have a comprehensive answer.

Dara Kay Cohen’s brilliant, groundbreaking book, “Rape During Civil War,” helps provide those much-needed answers about motivations. Cohen uses a sophisticated mixed-methodology approach to argue that rape is a way that armed groups socialize combatants in hopes of making fighters who are often randomly thrown together a cohesive, effective group that is able to provide for its members during war. Participating in gang rape, an activity done as a group, helps bring these fighters together by building “bonds of loyalty and esteem from initial circumstances of fear and mistrust.”

Cohen calls this phenomenon “combatant socialization.” Using an original, cross-national data set of accounts of rape in civil wars around the world over a 32-year period, she shows that the need to build cohesion among fighters is as good an explanation or better for why some armed groups rape and others do not, compared with alternative claims such as the idea that rape is a function of ethnic hatred or societal inequality between genders. Cohen builds on these findings with three qualitative case studies based on hundreds of interviews with combatants, survivors, community leaders, and those who work in the human rights field and/or directly with survivors in Sierra Leone, El Salvador and East Timor.

Importantly, Cohen also finds that opportunism and material resources play a role in motivating armed actors to rape alongside the combatant socialization explanation, which helps explain why sexual violence in combat so often seems randomly directed, as in the Congo case.

Cohen’s findings help explain why some armed groups rape and others do not: Not every armed group needs to build social cohesion, because the members already know and trust one another, whether from previous relationships or shared ethnic or geographic identities. The fighters in those groups joined because they believed in the cause or because someone they knew persuaded them to come along. But in many armed groups (and, often, in national armies), many people don’t volunteer for service; they are forced into it. Whether through press-ganging (in which national armies force individuals to fight) or forced recruitment (such as when child soldiers are kidnapped and forced to fight with groups like Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front or Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army), combatants are fighting for a cause they may not understand or support alongside people they neither know nor trust. Gang rape, Cohen shows, is a way to build a common identity, to make fighters feel stronger in their masculinity and to tie fighters together in a way that ultimately builds a stronger fighting force.

Although beautifully written, Cohen’s book is not an easy one to read, and those who may be triggered by accounts of sexual and gender-based violence should take care. But as a researcher who has long wondered about the causes of horrors I first witnessed as a graduate student, I found myself a bit in awe of Cohen. Her ability to address this difficult subject in a way that is analytical and sensitive, and to point to clear policy prescriptions that could apply her findings to very practical solutions to the problem of wartime rape is admirable. Cohen’s approach to generating new data through innovative and careful methodologies is one that future scholars who want to study rape and other sensitive topics should follow. “Rape During Civil War” is an agenda-setting book, a model of high-quality scholarship and a must-read for anyone interested in stopping rape in conflict before it happens.

#Rape as a tool of war #books #Cohen #Rape During Civil War #studies #toxic masculinity

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implexis · 2 years

Text

2011

FEB

MAR

APR

MAY

JUN

JUL

AUG

SEP

OCT

NOV

DEC

Jan 1 World population is 6.9 billion. The US officially is around 310.5 million, 27.5 million more than ten years ago – a growth big enough for 27 more large cities. Growth rate for the Democratic Republic of the Congo is 3.17%; for Afghanistan, 2.47%; Iraq 2.45%; India 1.38%; the US 0.97%; China 0.49%; South Korea 0.26%; Japan, minus 0.24%.

Jan 1 Christians and Muslims clash in Alexandria. A bomb kills at least 27 people at a Christian church. Angry Christians attack Muslims, enter a mosque and throw books into the street. President Mubarak calls on all Egyptians to unite against terrorism.

Jan 1 In Hungary a "National Media and Communications Authority" is empowered to impose heavy fines for coverage that it considers unbalanced or offensive to human dignity or common morals. Chacellor Merkel of Germany considers the new law offensive to the dignity of the European Union. The law is supported by the conservatives now in power and very popular in Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Govenor Salman Taseer, assassinated under orders from Islamic clerics

Jan 4 Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab province, is murdered by his bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, who is said to have been influenced by clerics. They issued a decree of death against the governor for opposing the sentence of hanging given to a Christian mother of five, Asia Noreen, convicted of blasphemy. The governor was murdered for supporting, according to the BBC, "a perfectly legal idea to amend a man-made law with the name of Islam appended to it."

Jan 4 Interviewed by Spitzer and Parker on CNN, Pakistan's politician and former cricket star, Imran Kahn, repeats his charge that US bombing in Pakistan is inflaming opinion and is counter-productive. It's a war for hearts and minds he says, and the US is losing that war. Khan is distraught over the assassination of Punjab governor Salman Taseer. "Pakistan," he complains, "is imploding."

Jan 5 In Tunisia, protests against unemployment and food prices have spread despite police repressions. A few have died. Muhammad Bouazi died yesterday after having set himself on fire a few days before. Just as Tunisian students were keen in observing student protests in other countries in the region, young people in these other countries now hunger for news about the protests in Bouazizi. Twitter spread interest in the revolt within Tunisia and among young people in the region.

Jan 5 Regarding the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, a panel ordered by President Obama has, in the words of the BBC. "reviewed thousands of pages of documents, interviewed hundreds of witnesses, and in the autumn conducted a series of public hearings." The panel blames the disaster on cost-cutting decisions by the companies involved.

Jan 8 In Pakistan the assassin of Governor Taseer is celebrated by many as a hero. The US educated Pakistani analyst Dr Hasan-Askari Rizvi declares that "... the mindset that sustains militancy, that dilutes or prevents action against it – I think that has become fairly widespread. It has seeped into our educated classes, governmental institutions and the armed forces, where you can detect sympathy for militancy, and also to an extent for the Taliban."

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

Jan 8 In Tucson, Arizona, 22-year-old Jared Loughner kills six people and gravely wounds Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Loughner was targeting Giffords for assassination. He is described as having used a Glock-19 pistol.

Jan 9 According to the BBC, as many as 50,000 people have staged a protest in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi against a proposed softening of strict blasphemy laws. Demonstrators held banners in support of the assassin of Governor Taseer, Mumtaz Qadri.

Jan 10 The BBC reports that when Mumtaz Qadri emptied two magazines of a sub-machine gun at the man he was assigned to guard, 13 other policemen-guards were standing by and none of them attempted to stop Qadri.

Jan 12 The talk of global weirding in reference to weather continues. Australia is having an unusually wet summer. Queensland is having its worst floods in more than 50 years. The loss of crops is expected to produce a spike upward in food prices around the world, and damaged coal mining is expected to result in higher oil prices, especially in Asia. This comes in the wake of Pakistan having what is described as its worst flooding in history and Britain having its coldest winter in 1,000 years. Russia has also been experiencing weather extremes.

Jan 13 Unusually heavy rains, flooding and mud slides in southeastern Brazil has killed more than 420 persons. Brazilians say they have never seen anything like it.

Jan 13 Members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, are denied the right to picket the funeral for the nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green, one of six people killed Saturday in Tucson, Arizona. As the Westboro people see it, bad things happen because God is angry about sin – a common idea in ancient times and the reason Jehovah is supposed to have destroyed the world the first time. Westboro church members see sin as having caused the Tucson murders and the deaths of US servicemen, and the sin they have been protesting against is homosexuality.They apparently chose Christina's funeral for the sake of visibility.

Jan 15 In Tunisia, intensified police crackdowns have made matters worse for President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. His 23-years of rule ends as he flies off to Saudi Arabia. Muhammad Bouazizi, age-26, who set himself afire and died, has become a martyr and a symbol among other young people across the region who are frustrated.

Jan 16 In Tunisia, as a new interim leader is sworn in, people take the opportunity to loot and vent hostility against authority in general. In residential areas men with clubs join together in the street intent on protecting their property. The police are associated with the old regime and are in hiding. New elections are promised for within three months.

Jan 17 Tunisia's ousted dictator, Ben Ali, is being described as having spouted phony reform rhetoric in public, having "defended women's rights, educated his middle class" and as having "prevented the radical Islamists from coming to power." These quoted words are by columnist Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post. She further describes Ben Ali as having "created fake opposition parties and a phony parliament, set up a draconian regime that controlled the Internet and beat up the occasional dissident to keep everybody else frightened." She describes events in Tunisia as a "revolt of the frustrated young against their corrupt elders." She hopes but is not sure that the government that emerges will bring Tunisians "greater liberty and prosperity."

Jan 17 The Associated Press writes that today protesters set themselves afire in Egypt, Algeria and Mauritania "in apparent copycat self-immolation attempts inspired by the act that helped trigger a popular uprising in Tunisia."

Jan 20 Economic figures for 2010 are published. In first place in per capita GDP is Qatar, which is doing well in banking as well as oil. Liechtenstein and Luxembourg are second and third, and fourth place is Bermuda, which counts for less because it is even less populous and its residents are benefitting from its successful financial services industry. Singapore has moved from 8th to 5th place past Norway, and Norway has increased its lead over the United States from 20% higher in 2009 to 27% higher in 2010. But in per capita GDP the US is chugging along still ahead of Canada, Britain, Switzerland and most other European powers. (www.cia.gov)

Jan 24 A French cable company, Nexans, worldwide leader in the cable industry, has been awarded a contract by China's Huawei Marine Networks to lay a submarine fibre optic cable that connects Libya and Greece.

Jan 25 One week after a protester set himself afire in Egypt copying an event in Tunisia, massive protests erupt in Cairo, Alexandria and other crowded Egyptian cities. Three die on the first day. More is expected tomorrow. As a defensive move the government is blocking mobile phone and twitter communications. People are unhappy about economic conditions, what they speak of as corruption, and they focus their anger on President Mubarak, whom they see as an oppressor.

Jan 25 New economic figures have been published by the CIA Factbook. These latest figures show the United States as third largest oil producer, not far behind Russia and Saudi Arabia and as having nearly twice the production of the country in fourth place: Iran. But the US leads in oil consumption. The latest figures (for the year 2009) show US oil consumption at 18.69 million barrels per day compared to 13.68 million barrels by the more populous European Union and 8.2 million for third-place China. Russia and Saudi Arabia consume only around a fifth of what they produce. The US consumes twice as much as it produces.

Jan 25 President Obama gives his State of the Union Message. He calls for advancing the economy, including energy efficiency, by government participation in investing. Some of his critics complain that "investing" is Obama's code word for "spending." All investing they believe should be done by private enterprise.

Jan 27 Another day of protests – following Friday prayers. The course of revolution unfolds: Mobs overwhelm the police and the police change into civilian clothes and flee. The army appears on the street. President Mubarak fires his cabinet and claims that he is staying on to the protect the nation's security. It is now up to the army to support him or to side with those in the street. Monarchs usually fall at this stage, and most observers think Mubark's day are in power are few. Tomorrow will be a telling day.

Jan 30 In Egypt there is looting. People accuse Mubarak of allowing criminals out of the prisons, and Mubarak as the defender or order is winning no support. The army is in the streets with the common soldiers celebrating with the people. People are in front of the homes to defend their home with the best weapons they can get their hands on – often clubs and knives. Few if anybody is expects the military to start clearing the streets with force. Meanwhile pundits on television are vague about the economic component behing the revolution, with Fareed Zakaria describing the revolution as a product of Egypt's economic success and rising expectations. Some others disagree. Best viewing is live stream, http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

to December 2010 | to February 2011

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rightsinexile · 3 years

Text

News on Countries of Asylum

Global

A COVID “vaccine passport” may further disadvantage refugees and asylum seekers

How the aid sector marginalizes women refugees

Africa

Food rations cut by up to 60 percent for refugees in eastern Africa

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: CAR refugees being moved away from dangerous border areas in DRC

ETHIOPIA: Why Eritrean refugees choose the risky migration to Europe, rather than stay in Ethiopia

KENYA:

Kenya issues new ultimatum for closure of Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps

Rights groups, residents decry Kenyan demand to close two refugee camps

LGBT+ refugees at Kakuma call on UN to move them to a safe place after attacks

SOMALIA: Scores of refugees from Yemen arrive in Somalia

SOUTH AFRICA:

South Africa signs deal with UNHCR to deal with asylum seekers backlog

A leader of 2019/20 refugee protest in Cape Town awaiting deportation for more than 120 days, leaving three children in camp without a guardian

TANZANIA: UNHCR expresses concern for asylum seekers detained in Tanzania, who express fears for their safety upon deportation

Americas

Thousands of “metered” migrants on informal waitlists in limbo in Mexico for months

COLOMBIA:

What happens after Colombia’s announcement that all Venezuelans will receive 10-year protection status?

The implications of Colombia’s decision to grant temporary residence to Venezuelan refugees

MEXICO: Deteriorating conditions for asylum seekers at Mexico’s southern border

US:

Rising numbers of unaccompanied child asylum seekers arriving at US border

Biden keeps Title 42 in place, allowing US border officials to expel thousands of migrants, including asylum seekers, without due process

US designates Venezuela for Temporary Protected Status for 18 months

US judge likely to block Trump-era changes that limit immigration judges’ power to stay cases, reopen cases, set briefing schedules and grant extensions

US designates Myanmar for Temporary Protected Status for 18 months

Refugees scheduled for resettlement were removed from flights to the US while Biden’s refugee determination remains unsigned

New US policy allows in only minors, forcing parents to make painful decisions on the other side of the border

Complexities at the US border are lost as media, GOP paint situation as a “surge”

Asia

INDIA:

More than 1,000 Myanmar refugees seeking shelter in Mizoram state

Disagreement over coup refugees entering India: Mizoram state wants to help but central government says stop, deport

THAILAND: Thailand braces as refugees from Myanmar coup flee to border regions

Asia-Pacific

AUSTRALIA:

Australia’s skilled visa allocation to Hongkongers more than doubles after China’s crackdown

No refugee has ever been able to settle permanently in Australia through the Safe Haven Enterprise Visa (SHEV) pathway

Medevac detainees in Brisbane released with others expected to follow

Refugee Advice and Casework Service to count Australia’s stateless people as it helps those living in limbo to navigate the citizenship process

BANGLADESH:

Bangladesh moves thousands more Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char island

Rebuilding Rohingya camp after fire a race against time ahead of monsoon season

INDONESIA: Suicides rise as Indonesia’s closed borders trap refugees, asylum seekers

JAPAN: New legislation in Japan would remove the provision that suspends deportation of an asylum seeker who appeals a decision or re-applies for protection

Europe

Human rights groups face growing hostility as illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers continue at Europe’s borders

Belgium rejects UK proposal that Brussels turn back migrants who arrive in the UK from a safe European country

A Syrian asylee’s case reframes migrant abuses as enforced disappearances

Another 197 refugees transferred from Greece to Germany

Mounting allegations of illegal and violent practices by Frontex, suggest that the EU's border system is violating its own laws

Turkey eyes revision of 2016 migration deal with EU

DENMARK:

Denmark’s “zero asylum” plan means psychological torture for refugees

Denmark becomes first European nation to tell Syrian refugees to return home

GERMANY: UNHCR calls on Germany to step up its efforts for refugees

GREECE: As EU temporary shelter funding for those granted asylum in Greece ends, thousands at risk of homelessness

ITALY:

Humanitarian workers rescuing refugees charged with people smuggling in Italy

Italian prosecutors claim rescuers arranged a direct handover of refugees and migrants from smugglers’ boats, returning the boats to be reused

MALTA:

Three adolescent asylum seekers on trial for terrorism in Malta

Council of Europe calls on Malta to improve improve treatment of detained migrants

SPAIN: Spain keeps those deemed to be economic migrants in inadequate camps in the Canary Islands, allowing only potential asylum seekers to reach the mainland

UK:

Inspectors sound the alarm about UK asylum camp conditions

Child asylum seekers in the UK “falling apart” due to Home Office interview delays

The UK’s asylum support system during the pandemic: The year in review

Number of people granted asylum or protection in the UK halved in 2020

Asylum seekers threatened with homelessness in the UK for not complying with 23-hour curfew

Home Office revives controversial plan to deport non-UK rough sleepers

UK government to attempt to limit judicial review for “hopeless” asylum cases

Gibraltar, Isle of Man reject UK plans to send asylum seekers there for processing

What is actually going on at the Home Office, concerning asylum in the UK

MENA

UNRWA limps forward after years of Trump administration pressure, funding cuts

#asylum #refugee #asylum seeker

0 notes

creepingsharia · 4 years

Text

“I Don’t Like Christians”: Muslim Persecution of Christians, April 2020

The following are among the abuses Muslims inflicted on Christians throughout the month of April, 2020:

The Slaughter of Christians

Nigeria: The first two days of April opened with machete-wielding Muslim Fulani herdsmen murdering at least 13 Christians to death. “[W]e woke up to bury seven people burnt to death … from an overnight attack,” one source said. Those killed “are mostly elderly Christians who were unable to escape as members of the community ran into surrounding bushes during the attack.”

Then, on April 7, the Islamic herdsmen slaughtered a pastor and three members of his congregation, including a 10-year-old boy. The pastor, Matthew Tagwai, who was murdered in his home, is survived by a pregnant wife and two small children.

On April 10, the Fulani murdered pastor Stephen Akpor, 55. “Two herdsmen came to a branch of our church, Celestial Church … where they shot him as he was praying and counseling five members in the church,” his colleagues said. “The herdsmen shot the pastor several times and then stabbed him to death.” He is survived by five children and a wife.

On April 11, the Muslim herdsmen shot a Christian farmer dead.

On April 13, they decapitated two more Christians, in a manner that required them to be “buried without their heads.”

On April 14, Fulani butchered nine more Christians, six of whom were children, one a pregnant mother. “They were armed with machetes and AK-47 rifles as they attacked us,” a survivor recalls: “They attacked our village at about 8 p.m., and they were shouting, ‘Allahu Akbar!’ as they shot into our houses.” Thirty-three homes were set ablaze.

On April 16, they killed Sebastine Stephen, a young Christian student. “The Fulani herdsmen were over 50 carrying sophisticated guns and shooting sporadically. After they killed the young man,” a survivor reported, “they then broke into the house of Mr. Jack Nweke and abducted him with his wife, leaving behind their three children.”

On April 19, the Muslim terrorists killed four more Christians. “Thirty-eight houses with 86 rooms were also razed down, while about 87 families are affected,” a source said.

On April 20, “A Christian farmer, Titus Nyitar, was shot to death, and his head was cut off,” an area resident said. Titus was “working on his farm when he was killed by the herdsmen.” Afterwards they “proceeded to the village to burn down houses and kidnapped three villagers.”

On April 22, Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed another 12 Christians; earlier, the report notes, they kidnapped a couple as they were being married inside their church.

On April 23, the Fulani “killed two people, kidnapped another and burned down a church building that included the pastor’s home in attacks on predominantly Christian areas in north-central Nigeria.”

“What is the crime of these innocent people against Fulani herdsmen?” a local resident of one of the villages that was ravaged asked. “For how long shall we continue to experience this killing? For how long shall we continue to beg the government and the security agencies to come to the aid of our people?”

Congo: The family of Batsemire Ngulongo Yesse, a Christian pastor and father of eight, who, along with 35 other Christians, was slaughtered at the hands of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic rebel group that targets Christians, gave the details surrounding his execution in an April 9 report. According to his son,

[Islamic militia armed with machetes] came at night and knocked at the door. My father opened the door. They asked him why he had defiled their order of leaving Christianity and becoming a Muslim. He replied that he was raised in a Christian family, became a Christian and baptized in an Anglican church and he cannot convert to another religion. The Islamists threatened to kill him. He said that it is only God who knows the time of his death and if it is time for him to die then he is ready to die a Christian. Then they slaughtered him. I was in another house and I heard all that they were doing. When they had killed my father they left.

The martyr’s widow, who was hiding in the house that night, offered other details: on entering the house, “the people introduced themselves as Muslims…. They told him to convert to Islam if he wanted to live. He declined. Right there, they slew his neck and left. He died on the spot.” The man’s son believes that the same Islamic rebel group earlier kidnapped his two brothers, whose fates remain unknown; he adds that “From that time our father used to encourage us to continue serving the local church instead of leaving as many pastors left the region.” Reverend Wilson Kasereka, who knew the slain priest, elaborated on the overall situation:

The war against Christians has been escalating and people are dying daily… We have lost several pastors that have been serving Christians in Congo and we live in fear because we do not know when the ADF will come for us. We have many refugees … [who] need a lot of prayers and support.

Mozambique: On April 7, Islamic terrorists known locally as “al-Shabaab” (“the youth”) and believed to be connected to ISIS, “cruelly and diabolically,” slaughtered 52 villagers in the Christian-majority nation. Although reports do not indicate the religious affiliation of those slaughtered, Mozambique is 60 percent Christian and 19 percent Muslim. The report adds that,

Militants have stepped up attacks in recent weeks as part of a campaign to establish an Islamist caliphate in the gas-rich region, seizing government buildings, blocking roads and briefly hoisting a black-and-white flag carrying religious symbols over towns and villages across Cabo Delgado province. The flag is also used by Isis and other Islamic extremists…. The insurgents have so far mainly targeted isolated villages, killing more than 900 people… The unrest has forced hundreds of thousands of locals to flee and raised concern among big energy firms operating in the region. More than 200,000 people have fled the area hit worst by the violence, according to a local Catholic archbishop, Dom Luiz Fernando.

Attacks on Churches and Easter Day

USA: On April 14, a Muslim man with a history of anti-Christian hate crimes tried to torch a church. Osama El Hannouny, 25, tried to burn down Sacred Heart Church in Palos Hills, Illinois. Surveillance tapes indicate that he knew the church was occupied. Firefighters quickly managed to extinguish the flames. According to the report, “El Hannouny allegedly scratched, bit and spit at police when they tried to stop him,” and later “wrote a religious slur on the wall of his cell.” Earlier, in November 2019, the Muslim man slashed the tires of 19 vehicles in the parking lots of two other churches (First Baptist and Sts. Helen and Constantine). At that time, when he was arrested, he told police that he had damaged the cars because “I don’t like Christians.” He was then released on $10,000 I-bond with electronic monitoring, which did little to deter his most recent church attack.

Osama El Hannouny (in mosque t-shirt)

Denmark: Around 3:30 am on Easter Sunday, the holiest day for Christians around the world, the Vejleå Church in Ishøj was vandalized with phrases saying “We conquer Denmark,” and, in Arabic, “There is no God but Allah.” Many Danes were reportedly “stunned” by the graffiti. Police said they had surveillance pictures, but that they were not clear enough for publishing. This same church in Ishøj had been vandalized earlier, in 2015, when eight of its large windows were smashed by hurled stones. Such attacks on churches in European regions with large Muslim migrant populations have become increasingly common.

Algeria: For the first time in its history, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) added Algeria to its 2020 annual report on the worst violators of religious freedom around the world. A portion of the report follows:

In 2019, Algeria escalated its ongoing repression of religious minorities. The government systematically cracked down on the Evangelical Protestant community in particular through a string of church closures and raids, including two of the largest Protestant churches in the country. The current crackdown mirrors the scale of past waves of church closures in 2008 and 2011, and has been ongoing since November 2017 and worsened in 2019. Officials have made arbitrary demands that churches cease all religious activities, accusing them of violating safety regulations, operating illegally, or evangelizing, or giving them other justifications for sealing off their places of worship. The Algerian government forcibly closed three of the country’s largest Protestant churches in October 2019…. The government of Algeria systematically restricts non-Muslims’ ability to register, operate houses of worship, proselytize, and practice their faith in other ways…. Ordinance 06-03 also limits proselytization by prohibiting anyone from “shaking the faith of a Muslim.”… These laws are actively used to arrest and charge individuals for proselytism, or for transporting or possessing religious objects such as Bibles.

Egypt: On April 14, Egyptian security forces were involved in a gunfight with an Islamic terror cell ensconced in an apartment building in Cairo’s Amiriyah district, which is known for holding a large Christian population and several churches. Seven would-be terrorists and one police officer were killed in the shootout. Several ammunitions and automatic weapons were found and seized from their apartment. The Egyptian ministry confirmed that “the suspects were planning attacks on the country’s Coptic Christians during the Holy Week and Easter Sunday. Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christians, one the world’s oldest Christian communities, would celebrate Easter on April 19.” Attacks on churches around Easter are not uncommon in Egypt. On April 9, 2017—Palm Sunday, which initiates the holy week of Easter—two Christian churches were bombed during mass; at least 50 worshippers were killed and 130 injured and/or mutilated. Two days later, another terror attack targeting a Christian monastery was thwarted. On April 12, 2015, Easter Sunday, two explosions targeting two separate churches took place in Egypt. Similarly, on Sunday, April 5, 2015, as Christians were celebrating Palm Sunday, yet another church was attacked in Alexandria; gunmen in a vehicle opened fire on the church during the night injuring a police officer and two civilians.

Indonesia: Members of the Islamic Defenders Front raided and violently disbanded a house church meeting which consisted of about ten people. According to the report, “Video footage … showed two men bursting into a home, Sunday [April 19] in Cikarang.” One of the attackers, Ustad Muliana, was identified as a senior leader of the Islamic Defenders. The video showed the Muslims threatening the worshippers: “One of them physically attacked Christians with a piece of wood,” the report says, adding:

Sunday’s incident followed a series of attacks or threats against churches involving Islamic parties or their supporters…. [W]hile Indonesia is officially secular, there has been a rise in politicians demanding a more significant role for Islam. Some groups, such as FPI, want to turn Indonesia in a full-blown Islamic state.

Greece: Muslim migrants in the island of Chios, according to a report, set fires and attacked police beginning on Holy Saturday and into the early morning hours of Easter Sunday, April 19, for Orthodox. Although riots had erupted earlier, they were exacerbated by a false rumor that an Iraqi woman had died from COVID-19 in Chios, prompting the migrants to hurl stones at police; two cars, tents, a canteen inside of the migrant camp, and houses were burned during the riots. It was later revealed that the woman in question had never even been infected. Chios police arrested three migrants believed to be responsible for inciting the violence.

General Abuse of Christians

Syria: As occurred during the height of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, “jihadist rebels” continue to confiscate Christian properties in the name of “sharia.” According to the report,

Christians in Idlib province face the injustice of jihadist organizations and violations by Islamic factions, in terms of applying ‘Islamic Sharia law’ to members of different religious communities. Islamic factions are clamping down on them and imposing levies ‘Jizya’ in order to force them to leave their homes to regime-controlled areas.

Pakistan: In two separate incidents, Muslim men sexually assaulted very young Christian girls. First, a group of Muslims attempted to kidnap Ishrat, aged 9. According to the report,

The April 9 assault took place while Ishrat was walking in the street in Qutiba. There, a group of Muslim men approached her and asked her to convert to Islam and marry Asim, one of the men in the group. When Ishrat refused, the men beat Ishrat, made derogatory remarks against Ishrat and Christianity, and attempted to kidnap Ishrat. The kidnapping, however, was averted as local villagers intervened. According to Ishrat, another man in the group named Ijaz had been harassing her before the assault. Ishrat claims that Ijaz followed her for a long time in an attempt to develop a physical relationship. Ishrat and her family reported the assault to local police. However, after reporting the incident, a group of armed Muslims attacked Ishrat’s family home. According to Ishrat’s family, the group threatened the family with severe consequences for “creating hurdles to their mission.”

Two days later, on April 11, a Muslim man kidnapped and sexually assaulted Nadia, another Christian girl, aged 7. According to the report,

Nadia was discovered to be missing at 7pm when her father Boota Masih returned home, and he and other neighbours immediately started to look for her. Ghulam Sabir, a Muslim resident of Talwandi, heard a cry coming from a nearby wheat field. There, Sabir found Nadia, who had been beaten and sexually assaulted, and her attacker Muhammad Shoaib. He tried to escape, but he was caught and taken into police custody.

Iran: On April 21, Christian convert and human rights activist Mary Mohammadi was sentenced to three months in prison and flogging—above and beyond what she had already experienced—due to her criticism of the regime’s violations against human rights. The 21-year-old presented her side on social media: “After suffering many types of torture and 46 days in jail in the terrible conditions of Vozara detention and Qarchak Prison [which has a “reputation for various types of gender abuse”], I have been sentenced to 3 months and 1 day in prison and 10 lashes.” Mary added that she was sentenced for protesting “against the slaughter of human beings” and for displaying “sympathy for the families of those who perished on the Ukraine airline crash.” During her hearing, the judge harassed her about her conversion to Christianity even though charges against her had nothing to do with religion. In 2017, Mary spent more than six months in prison for attending an unground church meeting.

Uganda: In two separate instances, Muslims savagely beat two women—a six-month pregnant woman for converting to Christianity, and a Christian girl for evangelizing.

After converting to Christianity and attending church for six weeks, Sylvia Shamimu Nabafa, 27, was spotted by a Muslim neighbor leaving church. He told her father, Haji Juma Suleiman, who proceeded to interrogate his daughter, then six months pregnant: “I did not respond,” she recalls. “He began hitting me with kicks and blows. He then took a blunt object and hit my right leg. I started bleeding, and the next thing I knew, I found myself in the hospital bed at Palissa Health Centre.” She was discharged six weeks later. [delete?] According to local church elder, “At the moment she needs support and encouragements as she recalls the ordeal she has gone through after giving her life to Jesus Christ. At times I find her weeping. She needs food, clothes, medication and hospital check-ups.”

As for Lydia Nabirye, the 23-year-old daughter of a Church of God evangelist, problems began for her after she shared her faith with a Muslim woman who subsequently became Christian. The Muslim family of the apostate woman proceeded to threaten her life. She took refuge with Lydia’s Christian family, where six other apostates from Islam had found sanctuary. Then, on April 7, while traveling to grieve with a Muslim mother whose son died, Muslims ambushed Lydia. “They held me and started beating me up,” Lydia explained. “They slapped me, and others hit me with sticks, saying that they were out to kill me because I was changing Muslims to become Christians.” An eyewitness provides more details: “[T]he Muslims ambushed, strangled and severely beat her. When she shouted and screamed, neighbors called police, and the assailants fled when officers arrived… When I met her at her home on April 14, she was still in pain from multiple injuries – head, right eye and left hand injuries…”

Egypt: Several days after disappearing on April 22, Ranya Abd al-Masih (“servant of Christ”), 39, a Christian wife and mother appeared in a brief video, dressed in all black Islamic attire (niqab), saying that, “praise be to Allah,” she had willingly and secretly converted to Islam nine years earlier, and no longer wanted anyone—her husband, children, family—to bother about her anymore. Her family insists that such claims are for public consumption, likely being made at gunpoint and/or even under the effects of drugs. The Coptic Orthodox Christian Church added its voice in an appeal to President Sisi to intervene and “return our daughter,” whose own “three young daughters are heartbroken at her absence, as is her husband and her entire family.” According to Remon, Ranya’s brother, “She was definitely kidnapped and forced to make that video, due to threats against her or her husband and children if she refused to comply.” He said the idea that she had “secretly” embraced Islam was ludicrous, citing the fact that up until her disappearance she was regularly attending church, visiting and praying in monasteries—even fasting 55 days in the lead up to Easter. “We are sure that Ranya, our beloved sister, whom we know so well, is not the one we saw on the video; that is a woman who is being threatened and coerced.” After complaining that state security—which has been accused of complicity in similar cases—refuses to help, her brother wondered “What will we do about our Coptic mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters? We are in an era when such things should not happen.”

Raymond Ibrahim, author of the recent book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

About this Series

The persecution of Christians in the Islamic world has become endemic. Accordingly, “Muslim Persecution of Christians” was developed in 2011 to collate some—by no means all—of the instances of persecution that occur or are reported each month. It serves two purposes:

1) To document that which the mainstream media does not: the habitual, if not chronic, persecution of Christians.

2) To show that such persecution is not “random,” but systematic and interrelated—that it is rooted in a worldview inspired by Islamic Sharia.

Accordingly, whatever the anecdote of persecution, it typically fits under a specific theme, including hatred for churches and other Christian symbols; apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism laws that criminalize and sometimes punish with death those who “offend” Islam; sexual abuse of Christian women; forced conversions to Islam; theft and plunder in lieu of jizya (financial tribute expected from non-Muslims); overall expectations for Christians to behave like cowed dhimmis, or second-class, “tolerated” citizens; and simple violence and murder. Sometimes it is a combination thereof.

Because these accounts of persecution span different ethnicities, languages, and locales—from Morocco in the West, to Indonesia in the East—it should be clear that one thing alone binds them: Islam—whether the strict application of Islamic Sharia law, or the supremacist culture born of it.

Previous Reports:

#Persecution #Islam #Muslim #Jihad #Sharia #Legal #Immigration #News #Politics #travel #Media #Terror

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newstfionline · 5 years

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Headlines

Fresh Documents Keep Up Pressure on Canada’s Trudeau Over Scandal (Reuters) A former cabinet member at the heart of a crisis that could cost Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau his job on Friday released documents to back up her case that she had been pressured to help a large corporation avoid a corruption trial.

Trump blasts Russia probe, calls 2020 Democrats ‘radical’ (AP) Presenting himself as both vindicated and vindictive, a fired-up President Donald Trump turned the findings of the Russia investigation into a political weapon at a Michigan rally that was part victory lap, part 2020 campaign push.

Trump Says It Is Very Likely He’ll Close Border With Mexico (Reuters) U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday there was a very good chance he would close the border with Mexico next week as he seeks to stem a tide of illegal immigration into the United States.

Puerto Ricans Struggle to Buy Food Amid Funding Shortfall (AP) Iraida Vargas can no longer afford the two kinds of insulin her aging mother needs and has stopped buying fresh fruit and vegetables as billions of dollars in federal funds that help Puerto Ricans buy food, get medical treatment and recover from Hurricane Maria dwindle despite pleas from the U.S. territory that Congress take action.

Special Olympics receives continued funding (Reuters) President Donald Trump overrode his budget team and backed funding for the Special Olympics on Thursday after his proposed cuts to the athletic program drew heavy fire from both Republicans and Democrats. Trump’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2020, which he released earlier this month, would have zeroed out funding for the Special Olympics, which has an allocation of $17.6 million this fiscal year.

Mexican Police Nab Man Who Tried to Rob Bank With Loader (AP) Police in Mexico say they caught a man who stole a front-end loader, drove it to a local bank, knocked down a wall, chained a safe to the machine and tried to drag it off.

Nicaragua Reiterates Pledge to Release People Detained in Protests (Reuters) The Nicaraguan government reiterated its pledge on Friday to release all people arrested during protests against President Daniel Ortega, though the government remains in disagreement with opposition groups about the number of prisoners.

Protests at Chinese Copper Mine in Peru Continue After Local Leader Freed (Reuters) Peruvian police on Friday freed the leader of an indigenous community that has blocked roads to a major copper mine, but hours later arrested his second-in-command, accusing him of running over police officers while driving drunk.

Brazil’s Bolsonaro Visits Israel Amid Speculation on Embassy (AP) Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro was leaving Saturday on an official visit to Israel, where he was expected to decide whether he will move the Brazilian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

UK faces new Brexit crisis after lawmakers reject May’s deal (AP) British lawmakers on Friday rejected the government’s Brexit deal for a third time, leaving the U.K. facing the stark prospect of a chaotic departure from the European Union in just two weeks, with political leaders in turmoil and the country ill-prepared for the shock. It’s either that, or a long delay to the country’s exit from the EU. The alternatives are dwindling.

Slovakia Set to Elect Anti-Graft Lawyer as First Female President (Reuters) Riding a wave of public fury over corruption, liberal lawyer Zuzana Caputova looks set to win Slovakia’s presidential election on Saturday, bucking a trend that has seen the rise of populist, anti-European Union politicians across the continent.

Erdogan Says Turkey Will Solve Syria Issue ‘on the Field’ After Sunday’s Elections (Reuters) Turkey will solve the Syria issue “on the field” after Sunday’s local elections, President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday, as he sought to drum up support for his AK Party in the vote.

Ukraine set to elect new president (Reuters) A comedian with no political experience is tipped to win the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election on Sunday amid discontent over corruption and five years of war against pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country.

New Silk Road Critics Are ‘Prejudiced’, China’s Top Diplomat Says (Reuters) China has never forced debt upon participants of its new Silk Road project as “prejudiced” critics have suggested, the country’s top diplomat said on Saturday in a strongly worded defence of a key policy platform of President Xi Jinping

Australia to Boost National Security Funding by $400 Million: Newspaper (Reuters) Australia’s budget for the 2019/20 fiscal year will include an additional A$570 million ($404.36 million) for national security to boost counter-terrorism and anti-espionage operations, The Weekend Australian newspaper reported on Saturday.

Afghanistan Floods Kill 17, Worsen Already Desperate Situation (Reuters) Heavy rains caused flash floods in western Afghanistan that killed at least 17 people, destroying homes and sweeping through makeshift shelters that housed displaced families, a government official said on Saturday.

Israeli Fire Kills Palestinian on Gaza Border: Palestinian Health Ministry (Reuters) Israeli fire killed a Palestinian man near the Gaza border on Saturday, Palestinian Health officials said, as Israel’s forces massed at the frontier ahead of a rally to mark the first anniversary of a surge of Gaza border protests.

Protests in Algiers continue (Reuters) Thousands of protesters gathered in central Algiers, piling pressure on President Abdel Aziz Bouteflika to resign days after the country’s powerful military called for his removal. The ailing 82-year-old president, facing the biggest crisis of his 20-year-old rule, has failed to placate Algerians by reversing a decision to seek a fifth term.

Mali Warns Any Cut in UN Force Will Strengthen Militants (AP) Mali’s prime minister urged the Security Council on Friday to maintain its more than 16,000-strong peacekeeping mission in the country, warning that any reduction will end up strengthening Islamic militants and endangering the “fragile progress” toward peace.

UN Document Shows Kenya Seeking to Close Somali Refugee Camp (AP) An internal United Nations document says Kenya again seeks to close the Dadaab camp that hosts more than 200,000 refugees from neighboring Somalia and is one of the largest such camps in the world.

UN Starts Looking Toward the End of Peacekeeping in Congo (AP) The Security Council on Friday called for a strategic review of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo with a view to progressively handing over its responsibilities to the country’s newly elected government led by President Felix Tshisekedi.

Mozambique cholera cases jump to 139 a day after outbreak (AP) Cholera cases in Mozambique among survivors of a devastating cyclone have shot up to 139, officials said, as nearly 1 million vaccine doses were rushed to the region and health workers desperately tried to improvise treatment space for victims.

#headlines

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techcrunchappcom · 3 years

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/30-coins-another-host-without-consecration-by-alex-de-la-iglesia/

'30 coins', another host without consecration by Álex de la Iglesia

VOD news brings you the best premieres of the week on Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime Video … And for the third week in a row, we have a ‘Spanish’ on the cover, but not just any one and in no case derogatory: 30 coins, the latest from Álex of the Church in serial format. Otherwise, just a couple of outstanding content and, yes, the most interesting catalogs.

If it has been eight weeks since HBO that did not rise to the top of the section, and did so with the Spanish series Patria, it is doing it again now with another expected production of the country, worth the redundancy and the adjective, if you reside in these parts. We are talking about 30 coins, a series that you still cannot see … But be careful, because it is not the only thing that HBO brings for this week.

In fact, HBO arrives this week with the most powerful material of the big three of VOD… and it was about time. Of all, the highlight is undoubtedly 30 coins, the new series by Álex de la Iglesia, whose premiere is scheduled for tomorrow, so you’ll have to hold on a bit if you’re wanting to see the new of a director capable of combining the terms ‘Spanish’ – I repeat, without any derogatory connotation that is worth it- and ‘original’ in almost everything he touches, although the last qualifier goes back to his particular style. 30 coins is made up of a choral cast of which you will hear most of the faces and the story, of which I can tell you little about the obvious, it is inevitable that it does not recall a little of the magnificent The Day of the Beast due to the themes it touches . And honestly, as long as it is half as good as that one, we are going to really enjoy these 30 coins. For more information, the trailer.

Another striking HBO premiere for this week is The Flight Attendant, a series halfway between suspense and black humor that brings back Kaley Cuoco (The Big Bang Theory) in a title role. It tells the story of a flight attendant who gets froggy one night of passion… But what actually happened? Criticism is receiving it well.

And one more from HBO, this in movie format: Superintelligence, a comedy that revolves around an artificial ‘superintelligence’ crazier than usual.

More exclusive content:

Black money (Tuff Money)(T1). “Two operatives joke about manipulating traffic to dock a bank’s armored van and they end up forced to do so. All the institutions they ask for help want to carry out the theft and take a part of it. ”

New chapters:

A Teacher (T1) Murder on Middle Beach (T1) How to with John Wilson (T1) Industry (T1) Dark Matter (T2) Romulus (T1) The Spanish Princess (T2) The Undoing (T1) Valley of Tears (T1 ) Warrior (T2)

Enter catalog:

Aquaman The exchange Lego DC Super Heroes: Justice League: Gotham City Breakout The Mercenaries 3 The Penguins of Madagascar Tomorrow begins all ThunderCats Roar! (T1)

Netflix follows his and releases numerous exclusive or original content, which are not always the same, but as usual there is a lot of straw or little grain, if not none.

Of everything that premieres on Netflix this week, maybe Christmas Chronicles 2 be the highlight for being the sequel to a movie that had its success a couple of years ago. The story, the typical Christmas with Santa Claus in the middle, this time with Chris Columbus at the helm, but with Kurt Russell again at the beard. A light entertainment for all audiences, especially the youngest.

More exclusive content:

Dolly Parton: Christmas in the Square. «A ruthless woman puts an end to the Christmas spirit when she tries to sell the lands of the city where she was born. Can music, magic and memories stop her? ” Tomy’s notebook. «A woman with terminal cancer writes an extraordinary notebook on life, death and love for her son to remember. Based on a true story.” The phone. «Connected by a telephone, but separated by time. A serial killer endangers the past and the life of another woman to change her own destiny. ” Hillbilly, a rural elegy. “An urgent call takes a Yale law student to his hometown of Ohio, where he reflects on three generations of family history and his own future.” The beast. “A lone Special Forces veteran unleashes his inner beast as he pursues his daughter’s kidnappers … and becomes a suspect.” Mosul. “After being rescued by an Iraqi squad, a young policeman joins his rescuers to fight the Islamic State in a devastated Mosul.” Shawn Mendes: In Wonder. “In this documentary shot during a world tour, Shawn Mendes opens up about his success, his relationships and his musical future.” Shawn Mendes: Live in Concert. “In his hometown Toronto, Shawn Mendes indulges his ardent fans at a concert in a packed stadium.” Dance Dreams: The Chocolate Nutcracker. “This documentary focuses on Debbie Allen’s career and shows her dancers preparing for the annual ‘The Chocolate Nutcracker’ performance.” Tut Tut Cory Cars: Christmas. A stranger with a familiar face appears at Cory’s house. As he does not remember anything, the little one helps him remember the magic of Christmas, and together they save the holidays. ” A place to dream (T2). “A nurse wants to start from scratch and leaves Los Angeles to move to a remote town in Northern California, where many surprises await.” Christmas visit. “Bastian, a musician who has nowhere to fall dead and sees everything black, returns home for Christmas … where surprises that are not at all festive await him.”

Enter catalog:

Aquaman Contraband Eternally committed King Kong The shadow of power The Boleyn Sisters New Years Eve at the Magnolia One more of the Voices family

Continue with Amazon Prime Video, whose most outstanding releases for this week are in what goes into the catalog, including Aquaman (reaches all platforms) or Bohemian Rhapsody, in addition to many classics.

More exclusive content:

Everyone’s game. “These players want to be pioneers in opening the doors of this sport and making rugby” Everyone’s game. ” My uncle frank. “In 1973, when Frank Bledsoe and his 18-year-old niece Beth set out on a road trip from Manhattan to Creekville, South Carolina, to attend the funeral of the family patriarch, they were unexpectedly joined by Walid, Frank’s lover.”

New chapters:

Ladies of the (H) AMPA (T1)

Enter catalog:

Alexander the Great Alice Cooper – Live At Montreux 2005 All about the money Threatened online Aquaman Just like you are Bee movie Bohemian Rhapsody Boomerang, the prince of women Clueless Cool World Congo Special mail Things we lost in the fire Damsel Deep Purple – Machine Head (Classic Album) Dracula 3D Educating Bobby The neighborhood against me The double murder of Morgue Street The son of Saul The empire of terror The Paradine process The crazy professor The secret of Santa Vittoria Scammers of Wall Street Force of Impact Frankenstein and the monster of hell Infected (Carriers) The submerged city The island of lost souls The Other Couple (All Over the Guy) The mermaid and the dolphin The tribe of the Brady Lobster Light as Feathers The 50 are the new 30 The satanic rites of Dracula Stronger than pride Thieves market Midway Mystery at Amman Mommy We don’t like Captain Black pudding! Opening Night Red Scorpion, scheduled to destroy Redcon-1 – Zombie Apocalypse Bloody Valentine Seven Sisters No Truce The Square Lava storm An American werewolf in Paris A monster comes to see me I travel alone

And we end with Disney +, which arrives with little, but adjusted to what is expected of it … with the exception of the new season of The Simpsons, which is the owner of Fox for that.

More exclusive content:

Black beauty. “In this timeless remake of Anna Sewell’s classic novel, we will delve into the life of Black Beauty, a wild mare who was born in the wild in the western United States.” Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions. “Taylor Swift performs all the songs on her hit album ‘Folklore’ in an intimate concert, shot at the historic Long Pond Studio, a setting that evokes the nostalgic and dreamy nature of the record.”

New chapters:

One Day at Disney (T1) The Mandalorian (T2)

Enter catalog:

Far From Home The Simpsons (S31) Noelle Runaways

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