Media accounts report that long-range, nuclear-capable Tu-22M3 bombers and MiG-31K strike fighter jets carrying the latest Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles landed at the Russian air base in Syria’s coastal province of Latakia as part of the drills. Russian amphibious assault vessels docked at Tartous for refueling and maintenance before departing to the Black Sea for Ukraine-related military drills and deployment.
Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Syria. Show all posts
2020/06/06
Evil brutality and evil monstrosities
- In Buffalo, police said a 75-year-old-man—who was walking alone doing nothing when he was pushed over by a cop, hit his head on cement, started bleeding from his ears, and was ignored by a group of a dozen officers—“tripped and fell.”
Rayshard Brooks was killed following a confrontation with officers outside a fast food restaurant in Atlanta.
Police Said A Black Man Hanged Himself.
- U.N. Panel Says Russia Bombed Syrian Civilian Targets, a War Crime
Parents fear the city’s (Hong Kong) education system will become a propaganda tool for the Chinese Communist Party, preventing their children from developing free thinking. They worry about their physical safety too as police crack down hard on young dissenters.
2020/04/19
Did Syrian Generals Watch A Chemical Attack On A Hospital?
a delegation of generals visited a command post in Hama and observed strikes on al Lataminah on the March 25, 2017, the same day of the chlorine attack on the hospital. This delegation included both General Ali Abdullah Ayoub and Brigadier Suheil al Hassan. The presence of Brigadier al-Hassan is of particular interest; he is the commander of the “Tiger Forces”, who have previously been linked with the use of helicopter-borne chlorine munitions.
2020/03/13
Hounded by war, can Idlib's desperate civilians outrun final assault?
two dogs slept on the tomb of a man who had died long ago, their emaciated frames slipping easily through the rusty fence that surrounded it. Children stared vacantly from behind tombstones. Their elders beckoned to them to join them in their mud-covered tents.
There were no planes in the skies for the first time in weeks, and the road in front that stretched from Idlib’s merciless battlefields to the right, and the safety of Turkey six miles to the left, was no longer cluttered with desperate, fleeing families.
2020/01/03
Iran’s Deadly Puppet Master and the massacre of innocents
His brilliance, effectiveness, and commitment to his country have been revered by his allies and denounced by his critics in equal measure. What all seem to agree on, however, is that the humble leader’s steady hand has helped guide Iranian foreign policy for decades—and there is no denying his successes on the battlefield. Suleimani is arguably the most powerful and unconstrained actor in the Middle East today. U.S. defense officials have reported that Suleimani is running the Syrian civil war (via Iran’s local proxies) all on his own.
Suleimani has a long history of attacking U.S. service members and is responsible for the deaths of at least 600 Americans in Iraq alone, current and former officials say. O’Brien on Friday also cited Suleimani’s support for President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Syria and violent repressing of recent protests in Iran.
The downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 on Wednesday came just hours after Iran carried out missile strikes on two airbases housing US forces in Iraq. The strikes were a response to the killing of senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad on 3 January.
Suleimani has a long history of attacking U.S. service members and is responsible for the deaths of at least 600 Americans in Iraq alone, current and former officials say. O’Brien on Friday also cited Suleimani’s support for President Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime in Syria and violent repressing of recent protests in Iran.
The downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 on Wednesday came just hours after Iran carried out missile strikes on two airbases housing US forces in Iraq. The strikes were a response to the killing of senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a US drone strike in Baghdad on 3 January.
2019/12/04
“Al-Bab, the Nightmare” / “Jarablus, the Nightmare”
Rape is a crime of war that Syrian rebel groups have largely refrained from committing, but reports of rapes perpetrated by SNA fighters circulate among local Kurds and Kurdish media outlets. Disturbingly, two SNA members, Qassem and Mohsin, confirmed to me the incidence of such cases and could name specific Kurdish and Yazidi women they know who were raped by SNA fighters in Efrîn.
2019/11/12
White Phosphorous Use in Northern Syria
The Times of London implied that the OPCW chose not to investigate the use of White Phosphorus (WP) due to political expediency: “The suspicion is that the OPCW’s reluctance to investigate reflects western hesitancy to embarrass a Nato member at a time when relations with Turkey are strained.”
2019/08/23
How Assad Played the U.S., Committed Brutal War Crimes, and Won the Syrian Civil War
when Assad dropped sarin gas on a suburb of Damascus the following year, Obama did not send war planes or troops. To this day, U.S. officials who were in charge of formulating the United States’ response to those atrocities are divided over what the course of action should have been.
2018/12/11
“Depravity toward one is a sure sign of willingness to do much more harm”
whenever people feel stripped of freedom and opportunity, they instinctively challenge their government in order to reclaim control over their lives. “And if a government doesn’t value human life,” she said, “then they will do something to their people that the whole world will have to pay attention to.”
[The secret of Saudi is that they rely almost entirely on our governments -- to sell them weapons, buy their oil, and give them legitimacy. But the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi -- and the tragic death of Amal, a starving 7-year-old Yemeni girl whose picture appeared in the New York Times -- have those same governments wavering in their devoted support.]
[The secret of Saudi is that they rely almost entirely on our governments -- to sell them weapons, buy their oil, and give them legitimacy. But the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi -- and the tragic death of Amal, a starving 7-year-old Yemeni girl whose picture appeared in the New York Times -- have those same governments wavering in their devoted support.]
2018/10/12
Rather than welcoming refugees for re-settlement in Europe, governments should be investing in the long-term future of countries like Syria and Iraq
The more refugees become settled down far from their homelands, the less likely they will go back to join that vital reconstruction effort. Before the war, Syria had 31,000 doctors. Now more than half are believed to have fled, many treating patients in Europe. Iraq complains of a serious brain drain as its skilled young professionals form the vanguard of those seeking a new life in the West. Rather than welcoming refugees for re-settlement in Europe, governments should be investing in the long-term future of countries like Syria and Iraq by working for peace and security there, and increasing support for refugees camped in neighbouring countries.
2018/06/15
World Cup: Repression and War Crimes
Free speech campaigners rolled out a soccer pitch in central Paris on Wednesday with posters of jailed journalists as the players, in a demonstration about press freedom in Russia on the eve of the World Cup.
On the international stage, Russia is providing weapons, military support, and diplomatic cover to the Syrian government, despite evidence that Syrian forces have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.
2018/04/15
I hardly can believe that the war criminal Bashar al-Assad will be not arrested
Military help over the past three years from Russia and Iran, which also backs Lebanon’s Hezbollah group and Shi’ite Muslim militias in Iraq, has allowed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to crush the rebel threat to topple him.
For the parent of a murdered Syrian child, the current western focus on the exact method of murder must feel strange. As if Assad was well within his rights to slaughter innocents using regular bombs, and his only offence was to use chlorine or sarin, inflicting a death so painful the footage is unbearable to watch. So unless there’s a plan for action once guilt is established, demanding an investigation sounds a lot like an excuse to do nothing in the hope that soon we’ll all be talking about something else.
Syria will be one of the battlefields, most likely the key battlefield, in which that confrontation plays itself out. As clashes between Israel and Iran mount, it is hard to see this White House staying out of the fight.
For the parent of a murdered Syrian child, the current western focus on the exact method of murder must feel strange. As if Assad was well within his rights to slaughter innocents using regular bombs, and his only offence was to use chlorine or sarin, inflicting a death so painful the footage is unbearable to watch. So unless there’s a plan for action once guilt is established, demanding an investigation sounds a lot like an excuse to do nothing in the hope that soon we’ll all be talking about something else.
Syria will be one of the battlefields, most likely the key battlefield, in which that confrontation plays itself out. As clashes between Israel and Iran mount, it is hard to see this White House staying out of the fight.
2018/04/08
How a secret Russian airlift helps Syria's Assad
Private Russian military contractors are being sent on clandestine flights to Syria, plane-tracking data shows. And a trail of documents reveals how aircraft from the West end up in the hands of those on U.S. blacklists.
Russian authorities have angrily denied that “Novichok,” a substance blamed by the British authorities for poisoning a former Russian military intelligence officer in the United Kingdom, has ever existed. But new evidence unearthed in Russia shows not only that an entire group of substances called Novichok did indeed exist, but that some was obtained by criminals after being produced in a government lab as late as 1994 — and has since killed at least two people.
Russian authorities have angrily denied that “Novichok,” a substance blamed by the British authorities for poisoning a former Russian military intelligence officer in the United Kingdom, has ever existed. But new evidence unearthed in Russia shows not only that an entire group of substances called Novichok did indeed exist, but that some was obtained by criminals after being produced in a government lab as late as 1994 — and has since killed at least two people.
Dozens killed in suspected chemical attack on Syrian rebel enclave
Dozens of people have been killed in what local medics say was a toxic gas attack on the besieged town of Douma near Damascus. Videos and images showed bodies of dead children and other family members, some foaming at the mouth.
...
“There is no such thing as a good war and a bad war. Nothing, but nothing, can justify the use of such instruments of extermination on defenceless people and populations,” he said at the end of a Mass in St Peter’s Square.
2015/10/30
Jailed Saudi blogger awarded Europe's rights prize
Raif Badawi, the Saudi blogger jailed and lashed for allegedly insulting Islam last year, has been awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights prize.
"[The blogger is an] unusually courageous and ... exemplary man [who is facing punishment that] objectively can only be described as brutal torture," Schulz said on Thursday. Badawi, 31, was sentenced to 10 years in jail and 1,000 lashes for insulting Islam.
The Portuguese like the crooks because they do the same (when they can)
Portugal has this culture of keeping everything quiet and secret. It doesn't do to rock the boat, and so outrageous things continue to happen here and nobody does anything about them.
The latest piece of idiocy has a government minister claiming there is very little or no corruption in Portugal. That is printed in our local paper as a straight-faced piece, and no comment made. Extraordinary! Anywhere else the wretched woman would be torn to shreds for making such an outrageous statement. But not in Portugal.
This is the country where government ministers and various rich people have been using kids from the orphanages as sex toys. This is the country where EU money poured in over the border with no restrictions, and government hangers-on, and all their friends were lapping it up and turning it into speed boats, and luxury mansions in Brazil.
Monster's kingdom
When a condemned killer said the woman he and others brutally gang-raped on a New Delhi bus was responsible for what had happened to her, his comments were shocking in their callousness and lack of remorse. But the underlying view has wide acceptance in India.
Alexander Litvinenko and Karl Marx’s stepchildren
In November 2006, Litvinenko, by then a British citizen, met two other FSB officers in a London hotel, and they took tea together. Litvinenko’s tea was laced with polonium-210, an extremely rare element. He died a slow and painful death. The two agents, Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun, slipped back to Russia, where the former is a member of parliament and the latter a businessman. Owen’s report pointed the finger not just at Lugovoy and Kovtun, but at the Russian president who, Owen wrote, “probably” authorized the murder.
“We regret that a purely criminal case has been politicized and has darkened the general atmosphere of our bilateral relations,” Maria Zhakarova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said primly in response to the report.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said the reports findings were a grave matter and that further action would be taken against Russia on top of the sanctions already imposed. But, Cameron added, the UK would have to continue “some sort of relationship” with Russia. Right away, a chorus of realists – cynics, if you prefer – said, “You bet it will.”
The UK is the biggest investor in Russia – largely through the energy company BP, which has invested $16 billion in the country through its 20 percent stake in the Russian state’s oil corporation, Rosneft. It’s a troubled relationship: Igor Sechin, the head of Rosneft, is banned from travelling to the West. But Bob Dudley, head of BP, sits on the Rosneft board
2012/08/13
Rape victim’s 100 lashes sentence
A rape victim’s 100 lashes sentence in Maldives has caused international outcry, after the teen subject to the repeated rapes was accused of having consensual sex with another man aside from the rape.
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2012 goes to Iranians Nasrin Sotoudeh, an imprisoned human rights defender and lawyer, and Jafar Panahi, a film director who with his work called attention to the hardships suffered by Iran's poor.
Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.
The state’s leaders stand with saintly expressions in church, but their sins are far greater than ours. We’ve put on our political punk concerts because the Russian state system is dominated by rigidity, closedness and caste. Аnd the policies pursued serve only narrow corporate interests to the extent that even the air of Russia makes us ill.
Our protest has raised the issue of the fusion of the Russian Orthodox Church and the security services
A Two-Year Travelogue from Hell
Information is power - Aaron Swartz
The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2012 goes to Iranians Nasrin Sotoudeh, an imprisoned human rights defender and lawyer, and Jafar Panahi, a film director who with his work called attention to the hardships suffered by Iran's poor.
(Spain) Central government's move to stop schools using Catalan is insulting.
...
There has even been wild talk about mobilising the army.
(The Times, 22.12.2012)
'Republicans and Gun Lobby Complicit' in Newtown
...
There has even been wild talk about mobilising the army.
(The Times, 22.12.2012)
'Republicans and Gun Lobby Complicit' in Newtown
Another Gunman and the Gun Owners of America
The Pussy and Mafia-Putin
Apparently, it was then that he felt the need for more convincing, transcendental guarantees of his long tenure at the helm. It was here that the need arose to make use of the aesthetics of the Orthodox religion, historically associated with the heyday of Imperial Russia, where power came not from earthly manifestations such as democratic elections and civil society, but from God Himself.
The state’s leaders stand with saintly expressions in church, but their sins are far greater than ours. We’ve put on our political punk concerts because the Russian state system is dominated by rigidity, closedness and caste. Аnd the policies pursued serve only narrow corporate interests to the extent that even the air of Russia makes us ill.
Our protest has raised the issue of the fusion of the Russian Orthodox Church and the security services
Yet so far no senior French politician convicted of corruption has been jailed *
* the same as Portugal & Greece
poundzonliberalmarket (at least, in this case, they get a fine...)
* the same as Portugal & Greece
poundzonliberalmarket (at least, in this case, they get a fine...)
Release Imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo and Wife Liu Xi
A Two-Year Travelogue from Hell
before the senior Assad came into power in the wake of a military coup, the Alawites, about 10 percent of the population, were the poorest people in the country, only coming to Damascus as servants. But then Hafez Assad, after rising through the ranks of the military, finally came to power in another coup, in 1970. His son is now determined to hold on to that power at all costs -- or else, as his soldiers' slogan goes, "we will burn the country down!"
Assad's Elaborate Disinformation Campaign
Yemen constitutes another of the Saudi-Iranian battlegrounds in the region
The real enemies of the Arab world
The Arab world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people.
"Something has gone wrong inside the Muslim world," Rushdie continued. Just a few decades ago, he said, major cities in the Arab and Muslim world were outward-looking. But "in the last half century, these cultures seem to have slid backwards into medievalism and represssion. ... It is one of the great self-inflicted wounds."
Southern Arabia's holy warrior, Abraha, had taken control of large areas before long. He even attempted to free bishops being held prisoner by the Persian enemy in Nisibis (in modern-day Turkey), some 2,500 kilometers away.
Saudi celebrity preacher who 'raped and tortured' his five-year-old daughter to death is released after paying 'blood money'
Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.
2012/05/20
States Must Sacrifice Sovereignty to Save Euro
The euro can only be saved with a system of coercion. Brussels must have the power to decide on government spending in Italy, Portugal or wherever."
Not time for Eurosceptic opportunism
Britain should be doing all it can to help, not standing well back, shouting for everyone else to do something, and then threatening to cut the rope.
Who is Responsible for the Greek Tragedy?
Greece’s private creditors were more than happy to pour money into the country, only to shirk their burden-sharing responsibilities when the artificial boom could no longer be sustained. The over-lending was so widespread that at one point it drove down the yield differential between Greek and German bonds to just six basis points – a ridiculously low level for two countries that differ so fundamentally in terms of economic management and financial conditions.
Germans are seen as the hardest working and least corruptible people in the European Union, a survey of eight EU countries shows, with Chancellor Angela Merkel receiving good marks for her crisis management. Greece, which has high praise for itself, is viewed poorly by its neighbors.
Before the euro Greece had a history of debt defaults, financial contagion, inflation crises and banking crises (see Reinhart and Roggof, 2009). This was usually reflected in its higher bond yields – a risk premium for investing in its debt. The spread between Greek and German bonds was historically always high.
Ever since 1841, the market requires that US states running up questionable levels of debt pay an interest-rate premium to compensate for the default risk. By contrast, Greece and the eurozone's other heavy borrowers were able to borrow at interest rates that had fallen to virtually the same level as German bunds. (Greece...)
Spain... Portugal...
6 June 2012 9:24PM
Teenage sister watched parents suffocate 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed
Are those murders new in the UK?
Girls as young as five 'forced into marriage'
"The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said at least 943 women and girls were murdered last year for allegedly defaming their family’s honour. The statistics highlight the scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan"
Five women 'killed by tribal elders for dancing and singing with men at wedding party in remote Pakistani village'
"one Christian couple was sentenced to 25 years in 2010 after being accused of touching the Qur'an with unwashed hands"
Fifteen men and two women have been found beheaded in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Officials said the victims were killed by Taliban insurgents as punishment for attending a mixed-sex party with music and dancing.
Another 27 children's bodies were found massacred in Syria
To stop this horror, we need to cut off the flow of arms to the regime. There is one way to do it, but it's going to take all of us working together to make it happen.
India and the US are key clients to Syria’s main weapons supplier -- the state-owned Russian company Rosoboronexport. If we can get the two countries to threaten to halt all deals unless the Russians stop supporting Syria's murder machine, the arms dealers could be forced to stop their Syria sales. Both the US and India want to stop the violence in Syria, but diplomacy is failing. This is their best chance -- let's give them a massive mandate to act.
Syrian government forces and militia loyal to the Assad regime are killing and sexually abusing children and using them as human shields
Opposition fighters in Syria have hitherto been handicapped by a reliance on an old and inadequate arsenal, while the regime in Damascus has been able to rely on a supply of arms from Russia and Iran. Moscow is arming Syria with attack helicopters, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, claimed yesterday.
With Mali’s north under rebel control, fears are growing that a breakaway Islamist state could emerge, creating a local stronghold for the region’s jihadis and criminal gangs.
Salafists in German
The Salafists were waiting. By the time the violence finally came to an end, 29 police had been injured, two of them landing in the hospital with stab wounds. The pro-NRW demonstrators that the police had been protecting were unharmed.
Jiang Zemin himself has shown the way regarding corruption. In October 2007, former Minister of Finance Jin Renqing resigned unexpectedly, presumably because of the money transferred abroad by Jin and Jiang Zemin a few years before—nearly 100 billion yuan (US$15.8 billion) in misplaced funds.
Not time for Eurosceptic opportunism
Britain should be doing all it can to help, not standing well back, shouting for everyone else to do something, and then threatening to cut the rope.
Who is Responsible for the Greek Tragedy?
Greece’s private creditors were more than happy to pour money into the country, only to shirk their burden-sharing responsibilities when the artificial boom could no longer be sustained. The over-lending was so widespread that at one point it drove down the yield differential between Greek and German bonds to just six basis points – a ridiculously low level for two countries that differ so fundamentally in terms of economic management and financial conditions.
Germans are seen as the hardest working and least corruptible people in the European Union, a survey of eight EU countries shows, with Chancellor Angela Merkel receiving good marks for her crisis management. Greece, which has high praise for itself, is viewed poorly by its neighbors.
Before the euro Greece had a history of debt defaults, financial contagion, inflation crises and banking crises (see Reinhart and Roggof, 2009). This was usually reflected in its higher bond yields – a risk premium for investing in its debt. The spread between Greek and German bonds was historically always high.
Ever since 1841, the market requires that US states running up questionable levels of debt pay an interest-rate premium to compensate for the default risk. By contrast, Greece and the eurozone's other heavy borrowers were able to borrow at interest rates that had fallen to virtually the same level as German bunds. (Greece...)
Greek economic crisis isn't slowing corruption
6 June 2012 9:24PM
Surely!(since the "asian" rapists "old trading partners" are very far from UK you are definitely alright - but, please, don't forget to blame the EU if they were in UK all the time (sections of the pakistani community have been doing this for years to Sikh and Hindu girls and a Sikh gang was formed to combat this back in the 80s).
Lahore: A nine-year-old girl was in a critical condition in hospital after being raped by three men in Pakistan's Punjab province, police said.
Death penalty for rapists
Lahore: A nine-year-old girl was in a critical condition in hospital after being raped by three men in Pakistan's Punjab province, police said.
Death penalty for rapists
Teenage sister watched parents suffocate 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed
Are those murders new in the UK?
Girls as young as five 'forced into marriage'
"The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said at least 943 women and girls were murdered last year for allegedly defaming their family’s honour. The statistics highlight the scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan"
"one Christian couple was sentenced to 25 years in 2010 after being accused of touching the Qur'an with unwashed hands"
Fifteen men and two women have been found beheaded in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Officials said the victims were killed by Taliban insurgents as punishment for attending a mixed-sex party with music and dancing.
Former Pakistani dancing girl commits suicide 12 years after horrific acid attack
Pakistani parents kill 15-year-old daughter with acid
To stop this horror, we need to cut off the flow of arms to the regime. There is one way to do it, but it's going to take all of us working together to make it happen.
India and the US are key clients to Syria’s main weapons supplier -- the state-owned Russian company Rosoboronexport. If we can get the two countries to threaten to halt all deals unless the Russians stop supporting Syria's murder machine, the arms dealers could be forced to stop their Syria sales. Both the US and India want to stop the violence in Syria, but diplomacy is failing. This is their best chance -- let's give them a massive mandate to act.
Syrian government forces and militia loyal to the Assad regime are killing and sexually abusing children and using them as human shields
Opposition fighters in Syria have hitherto been handicapped by a reliance on an old and inadequate arsenal, while the regime in Damascus has been able to rely on a supply of arms from Russia and Iran. Moscow is arming Syria with attack helicopters, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, claimed yesterday.
• A United Nations investigation into the killing of more than 100 civilians in Houla last month says forces loyal to the government "may have been responsible" for many of the deaths. It said the location of government checkpoints, and the timing of bombardments of the area pointed to government complicity in the massacre
"A lot of children have been killed. My friends, my cousins."
Qatar is an autocracy and Saudi Arabia is among the most pernicious of caliphate-kingly-dictatorships in the Arab world. Rulers of both states inherit power from their families – just as Bashar has done – and Saudi Arabia is an ally of the Salafist-Wahabi rebels in Syria, just as it was the most fervent supporter of the medieval Taliban during Afghanistan's dark ages.
"A lot of children have been killed. My friends, my cousins."
Qatar is an autocracy and Saudi Arabia is among the most pernicious of caliphate-kingly-dictatorships in the Arab world. Rulers of both states inherit power from their families – just as Bashar has done – and Saudi Arabia is an ally of the Salafist-Wahabi rebels in Syria, just as it was the most fervent supporter of the medieval Taliban during Afghanistan's dark ages.
The dark side of the Arab Spring
Egypt, where Islamist militias led by the Muslim Brotherhood ousted long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak, has seen liberty for religious minorities enter a crisis. Coptic Christians — who comprise approximately 10 percent of Egypt’s population — had experienced persecution for decades from Muslim groups, but until the fall of Mubarak, the government provided the Copts with official protection.
Since Mubarak’s demise, however, the situation for Copts has deteriorated. A wave of targeted murders, rapes, mob beatings and church burnings has devastated the Coptic Christian community on an almost daily basis for the past year. Despite the brutality of these attacks, the new democratic government has shown no desire to stop the persecution. Last October, a peaceful march protesting the destruction of a Coptic Christian church was broken up by police and military forces. Over 20 people were killed and more than 300 people were injured, some of them run over by military vehicles. In a recent and typical instance, when a mob of 3,000 Muslims attacked and burned Coptic homes, churches and shops in the village of Kobry-el-Sharbat, the police waited outside the village until the mob had enough of looting and beating. SAM HOEL
So in Tunisia, once the most secular and progressive country in the Arab world, gangs of Salafist Muslim thugs now roam the streets, threatening unveiled women and firebombing shops that dare to sell alcohol. In Yemen, Al Qaeda now controls large tracts of the south of country, while in Egypt, the first round of the presidential election has resulted in a run‑off between an Islamist hardliner and a former military crony of Mubarak — hardly the victory for democracy that the Egyptian people were promised at the height of the revolution.
Salafists in German
The Salafists were waiting. By the time the violence finally came to an end, 29 police had been injured, two of them landing in the hospital with stab wounds. The pro-NRW demonstrators that the police had been protecting were unharmed.
Salafists also believe, among other anti-Western doctrines, that democracy, because it is a man-made form of government, must be destroyed.
Cologne-based rapper Najafi has drawn the wrath of Shiite Muslims after publishing a song that appeared to make fun of the 10th imam. Following a fatwa by an Iranian ayatollah, he has received death threats, and there is a $100,000 bounty on his head. Now he is under police protection but insists he will keep making music.
German neo-Nazis helped the Palestinian terrorist organisation Black September to carry out the infamous massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, intelligence files released nearly four decades after the killings revealed yesterday.
German neo-Nazis helped the Palestinian terrorist organisation Black September to carry out the infamous massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, intelligence files released nearly four decades after the killings revealed yesterday.
Jiang Zemin himself has shown the way regarding corruption. In October 2007, former Minister of Finance Jin Renqing resigned unexpectedly, presumably because of the money transferred abroad by Jin and Jiang Zemin a few years before—nearly 100 billion yuan (US$15.8 billion) in misplaced funds.
The Party’s Central Disciplinary Commission is currently investigating a major corruption case that is linked to Jiang and his son, Jiang Mianheng. The money involved in the financial fraud could reach as high as 1.2 trillion yuan (US$190 billion).
The corruption is symptomatic of the radical immorality of the persecution itself. Crimes—slander, theft, brainwashing, unimaginable tortures, rape, and murder—are not only permitted, but are also required by the persecution. The officials who enforce the persecution gain a freedom from all notions of right and wrong so that crime comes easily to them.
In China’s five thousand year history, no single dynasty or political figure has killed as many Chinese citizens as the CCP has. In a time of peace, the CCP has persecuted hundreds of millions of Chinese, causing 80 million Chinese to die from unnatural causes. This is more than is estimated to have died in World Wars One and Two combined. Evidence on Organ Harvesting in China.
A man who earned nationwide fame as a whistle-blower exposing malpractice in the mainland dairy industry is dead from injuries he sustained in a beating
Jiang Weisuo
Jiang Weisuo
A man who earned nationwide fame as a whistle-blower exposing malpractice in the mainland dairy industry is dead from injuries he sustained in a beating
2012/01/30
Hard to swallow?
How it was possible?
Perhaps the contemporary art is transformed in a mere financial product where the artist/PR count more than the "product" itself. When musiciens work hard, year after year, sometimes to achieve very little, here, in the contemporary art world, relations - artists/gallerists/curators - and the arranged image of the artist - is whats make things move further. Little surprise if Damien Hirst is "the artist" in the city of the city... It still real great artists in the world today, so we can just to compare - but the point is how it was possible to someone like Hirst get where he is now: at Tate Modern. We can just to reduce it to the british art and to the british society - where two guys were able to make a huge business with Hirst's objects and collections of objects?
Anguish in Azerbaijan
Baku, set to host the Eurovision Song Contest in just over a month, is rapidly trying to become a modern city. To do so, it is forcibly removing residents from their homes to make way for slick new skyscrapers and other development projects. Those who try to stay bear the brunt of the government's wrath.
Web freedom faces greatest threat
Threats range from governments trying to control citizens to the rise of Facebook and Apple-style 'walled gardens'.
As concerned global citizens, we urge you to immediately drop the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Our democracy and civil liberties are under threat from the excessive and unnecessary Internet surveillance powers it grants.
Google says it increasingly fields requests from government agencies trying to use their power to suppress political opinions and other material they don't like.
Rebellion in the Nuba Mountains *As concerned global citizens, we urge you to immediately drop the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Our democracy and civil liberties are under threat from the excessive and unnecessary Internet surveillance powers it grants.
Google says it increasingly fields requests from government agencies trying to use their power to suppress political opinions and other material they don't like.
Syrian regime accused
The UN has accused the Syrian regime of "crimes against humanity" – including the use of snipers against small children – and has drawn up a list of senior officials who should face investigation, reportedly including President Bashar al-Assad. guardian
Patients tortured by medical staff
A video leaked from a military hospital in the embattled Syrian city of Homs has revealed horrific images of patients receiving torture, instead of treatment, by medical staff. alarabiya
A fleeing refugee tells Channel 4 News of "total genocide" and sexual violence allegedly committed by Syrian soldiers in and around the besieged city of Jisr al-Shughour. channel4
Assad is keeping his troops in the dark. To prevent them from defecting, the soldiers are deployed to new locations every few days, primarily in the sprawling, poor northern suburbs of the capital city -- with no mobile phones and no knowledge of where they are.
Russia, a longtime Assad ally, was giving Assad diplomatic cover to intensify his crackdown
The reports from Syria of the deliberate savagery of government forces as they shell, torture and shoot civilians from areas that have dared to protest against them is unbearable to read or to watch. In the city of Homs, families just like yours or mine are trapped in a city which is being shelled from early morning until darkness falls. Buildings are being obliterated as terrified inhabitants hide in cellars. There is no water or electricity and people are running out of medicines and food.
Certainly the massacre at Houla on Friday was horrible even by the standards of this conflict: more than 100 people killed, many of them young children. They join the estimated 13,000 Syrians who have died in the past 15 months, most at the hands of the regime.
A fleeing refugee tells Channel 4 News of "total genocide" and sexual violence allegedly committed by Syrian soldiers in and around the besieged city of Jisr al-Shughour. channel4
Assad is keeping his troops in the dark. To prevent them from defecting, the soldiers are deployed to new locations every few days, primarily in the sprawling, poor northern suburbs of the capital city -- with no mobile phones and no knowledge of where they are.
Russia, a longtime Assad ally, was giving Assad diplomatic cover to intensify his crackdown
The reports from Syria of the deliberate savagery of government forces as they shell, torture and shoot civilians from areas that have dared to protest against them is unbearable to read or to watch. In the city of Homs, families just like yours or mine are trapped in a city which is being shelled from early morning until darkness falls. Buildings are being obliterated as terrified inhabitants hide in cellars. There is no water or electricity and people are running out of medicines and food.
Iran to execute five Ahwazis
Putin's Mafia State
The West must speak out against this thug - Economic growth based on gas and oil can no longer compensate for the lose of industry, education and dignity that comes from living in a mafia state. (Garry Kasparov in The Times)
Putin mingles with Berlusconi (Bunga-Bunga)
How did Vladimir Putin afford his £450,000 watch collection?
Putin's 'Luxurious Life' Set Out By Activists
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Ekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alehina – all members of the anarchic Pussy Riot punk band – have been in prison since March, held on charges of hooliganism which could eventually mean a seven-year sentence.
Ukraine Is Becoming Increasingly Authoritarian
Murder and power, Chinese style
The son of the premier Wen Jiabao, a supposed "liberal" opposed to Bo, has been linked to a dollars 100m investment fund, a story kept out of Chinese newspapers. Wen's wife is a lover of expensive jewellery. A secret US diplomatic cable, quoted by WikiLeaks, suggests influence is for sale by the Wen family.
President Hu Jintao's son has been linked to a controversial telecoms deal in Africa. When a young man died in a black Ferrari crash in Beijing last month, rumours soon had it that he was the illegitimate son of the politburo stalwart Jia Qinglin, who is said to have large property interests. And so it goes on.
Chang welcomes Bo’s downfall: “I think it’s a very good thing this guy fell because he was a huge promoter of Mao, and he did it in a very cynical way. This guy was portraying himself as an anti-corruption zealot. He was torturing people, executing people, for alleged gangsterism — true or not, these cases aren’t going through any legal process — and yet was himself very corrupt. He was one of the top guys, you can see how murky it is. Anyone who promotes the Mao era as the era most free of corruption, who knows Mao was responsible for the death of well over 70 million Chinese ... it makes my blood boil.”
Falun Gong practitioners have heard 610 Office, labor-camp, and prison staff repeat certain policies over and over: “Being beaten to death will count as suicide.” “Cremate the body immediately.” “Ruin their reputations, exhaust their finances, and destroy them physically.”
‘Partnership’ in which one partner robs the other
Joseph Stiglitz characterizes the Obama administration’s vast transfer of money and pubic debt to the banks as a “privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a ‘partnership’ in which one partner robs the other.”
Far away from funding industrial growth and development
Banking has moved so far away from funding industrial growth and economic development that it now benefits primarily at the economy’s expense in a predator and extractive way, not by making productive loans. This is now the great problem confronting our time. Banks now lend mainly to other financial institutions, hedge funds, corporate raiders, insurance companies and real estate, and engage in their own speculation in foreign currency, interest-rate arbitrage, and computer-driven trading programs. Industrial firms bypass the banking system by financing new capital investment out of their own retained earnings, and meet their liquidity needs by issuing their own commercial paper directly. Yet to keep the bank casino winning, global bankers now want governments not only to bail them out but to enable them to renew their failed business plan – and to keep the present debts in place so that creditors will not have to take a loss. Michael Hudson
New Labour imitated Mrs Thatcher in much of her rhetoric and some of her ideas. The trouble was that they learned only half the lesson. They confused the creation of wealth, of which she was a passionate advocate, with the wisdom of the wealthy, about which she was sceptical.
The Governor of the Bank of England ... launched a stinging attack on the culture of the industry he oversees, condemning bankers for high pay, immoral practices and providing shoddy service to customers.
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I'm here because I want to know why Castellón built an airport from which no aircraft has ever taken off, an airport that cost €150 million in a city that's only 65 kilometers from Valencia, which already has an airport that's much too big for the region.
An airport was built in Ciudad Real, 160 kilometers from Madrid, at a cost of €1 billion. It now serves small private aircraft.
* keeping on Portugal, just try to find out the number of awful murders there and see how the portuguese police fail all time to protect the vitims of the portuguese murders and thugs. The Portuguese Parliament and portuguese governments are too busy in managing to protect the "mafia-contracts" favouring big economical groups and banks, that led the country to the bankrupcy and the regular people to the misery, so there's no time to lost in preventing (mostly women) killings.
Since the EU is not able to stop blatant crimes and huge corruption in its territories why should the world listening to anything coming from the EU? Portugal, for example... is not "only" corrupt... (Portugal is like a Mafia State) (the strange case of the not yellow submarins. There's also the helicopters' case and many many more...)
"imagine what would have happened had the UK chosen to maintain its trade links with independent Commonwealth nations upon decolonisation, and trade freely with the rest of the world, rather than joining the EU’s customs union, thus discriminating against its old trading partners and deliberately shifting its trading patterns towards what was to become the lowest-growth, most stagnant part of the world economy?"