Thursday, April 30, 2015

Animals: The "Personhood" issue

Animals: The

A recent case in the USA concerning the personhood of chimpanzees and therefore bringing into question the legality of their detainment in a laboratory follows on from a ruling in India two years ago about the status of dolphins as "non-human persons" enjoying specific rights. To what extent should this apply to other animals?

The case of the dolphins

There are those who will say that both events are a non-issue because the Indian Government did not decree that dolphins and other cetaceans should have their rights as non-human persons enshrined in the law, but rather, should be "seen as 'non-human persons' and as such should have their own specific rights and is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose"; in the second case the wording of the legal document which covered chimpanzees with the term "writ of habeas corpus" was changed the following day.

However, the first case was a landmark first step in establishing global animal welfare rights, taken by India's Minister of the Environment and Forests, a decision which banned dolphin shows or dolphinariums. This makes it illegal to capture or confine cetacean species, which include whales and dolphins, the reasoning being that these animals are highly intelligent and sensitive.

India thus takes an important first step in establishing a universal code of animal ethics and rights. The heroine in this ruling is Puja Mitra, a leading Indian animal rights activist, whose research drive focused on, and introduced, the concept of non-human persons. Other countries to have banned the use of cetaceans for entertainment are Costa Rica, Hungary and Chile.

The work of marine scientist Lori Marino has revealed that cetaceans have large brains and complex behavior and advanced, intricate systems of communication and cognition.

For those who go to a dolphin show, just remember this question: Do you know how dolphins are captured? Most often, they are driven to waters where they cannot swim, the unmarked ones are hauled on to vessels to be carted off to dolphinariums to perform in freak shows and the others are either hacked to pieces, or left to die.

The case of the chimpanzees

The second case regarding the two chimpanzees occurred last week in New York State, USA. On April 20, NY Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe responded to a petition by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) claiming that two chimpanzees held for research purposes by Stony Brook University were being detained illegally. She signed the order requiring that the University answer the claims.

The legal issue was that the legal writ was filed under the term Writ of Habeas Corpus, which if only applied to humans, means that the chimpanzees are covered with "personhood" status and therefore enjoy the full legal rights of any human being. The following day Justice Jaffe erased the wording Writ of Habeas Corpus... but by then the case had been made, and the second question is the legality of just emending the wording of a document because a media storm has arisen.

In an interview with Nature Magazine (http://www.nature.com/news/chimpanzee-personhood-case-sows-confusion-1.17398), the Executive Director of NhRP, Natalie Prosin, stated that her organization focuses on achieving the legal recognition of the most intelligent, autonomous and self-aware animals as "persons" with specific rights, namely bodily liberty and so in this case keeping chimpanzees in captivity is unlawful.

The wider issue

True, in this case the legal system was quick not to set a complex precedent. However, the scene is set and the legal precepts are established, a basis has been formed to enshrine full rights to living beings which are not Homo sapiens sapiens. How far we extend the line remains to be seen but when doing so, let us take into account the considerable evidence provided from research that animals in general, not just dolphins and chimpanzees, have tremendous skills which we do not begin to understand and animals in general like to play and have fun.

Some of us have already taken the first step, which is not to consume or use animal products. Today it is a choice. Tomorrow, a duty.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru  

(timothy.hinchey@gmail.com)

*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. He is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights.

Source : english[dot]pravda[dot]ru
post from sitemap

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Russian secret weapon – traditional Western peoples

A Russian secret weapon – The traditional Western peoples. Russian secret weapon
Source: Pravda.Ru photo archive

by Guy Somerset 

In recent days I have frequently wondered in what condition the world would be if there were a Christian equivalent of Al-Qaeda. At one time there were the Templars and later theJesuits, but not for centuries has there been organized zealotry originating from the Occident. Yet with news the United States military has sent 300 interlopers to meddle in Ukraine comes the possibility just such an assemblage may eventually arise.

 The recklessly provocative action by Washington to insert itself where it not only does not belong but where it courts direct confrontation belies a darker question. If war comes, for whom will those estranged Westerners living in the West fight?

 Will conscripts sacrifice themselves on the altar of Multi-Cultural regimes which stretch from Los Angeles to Oslo and seethe with hostility for the "Old White People" who created the environments in which they prosper? Can we expect the disenfranchised sons and daughters of liberty, often with higher ability but lower levels of pigmentation, who seemingly have been defrauded out of their educations and occupations and birthrights to martyr themselves for nations whose leaders apparently betrayed them? How many traditional Americans will die for those Neo-Americans who barely contain a hatred for their hosts?

 My supposition - increasingly few.

 Now before embarking on our examination I feel myself compelled for the sake of those tender sensibilities among us to iterate that analysis is not advocacy. My own personal beliefs on this topic, which I keep to my person, should not be assumed any more than the climate preferences of a weatherman who puts his head out the window. This review is merely written from a perspective of the dispossessed.

 With this being said, without doubt should war come the professional soldiers will unthinkingly go wither they are told as they so often do. If there is one thing which can be counted upon it is that G.I. Joe will always fight against his own best interests. He has been doing it since at least 1863.

 Though what of the civilians? The ones who are fed up of being told they are "racists" and frequently unjustly punished for being so without a scintilla of evidence? Might not some consider a half-century of witnessing the best cities wasted upon the worst examples of humanity well-nigh enough? Just perhaps a very good many are fatigued from the endless pandering to the most base and least productive? Even that millions are ready to retake their billions of tax dollars back from the swelling barbarians?

 On the contrary I predict it is far more likely that large swaths of Western Europe and tremendous expanses of America would overnight find themselves accused as what Controlled Media would undoubtedly refer to as "Fifth Columnists."

 Armchair historians frequently cite fascist Germany's invasion of Russia as its greatest military blunder, but this is not necessarily accurate. Had Goebbels and his men adequately laid the psychological foundation that theirs was an army of liberation against international usurpers they might have found a sizeable force of Slavs waiting to assist them on their march. Instead the Germans foolishly alienated what for all intents and purposes were their brethren. Not only was Germany destroyed by such idiocy but ordinary Russians likewise suffered another fifty years under Bolshevik-inspired Communist rule.

 Today Putin would be unlikely to commit a similar error. He and his advisors are wise enough to realize conflict must be characterized in any way other than American versus Russian. The Kremlin knows many citizens of the West empathize more with his government than with their own cabinets which are seen as abusive, corrupt and intent on an eventual goal of ethnic cleansing against their historic populations.

 When the government of Norway grants asylum to literally every Syrian who can wrangle into the country, that government no longer represents the Norwegian people. When Italians are chastised by officials and an apostate "Pope" even as their sacred places and holy shrines are sullied by defecating Africans, that government is no longer an expression of the Italian populace. When United States bureaucrats dictate "diversity" training for border control agents as opposed to actively repelling millions of invaders, that government is no longer rightly called American. Why should any sentient occupant fight on behalf of such illegitimate entities?

 The choice faced by such demoralized masses would be whether it is best to nominally "fight for your countrywhich steals from youswindles youridicules you, debases your religion, insults your national heroesruthlessly suppresses social dissent, and threatens to ultimately outlaw your very existence?

 Or, whether it is the better part of valor to fight surreptitiously for a country increasingly seen as the last bastion of philosophical Westernism, in which a generally morel people still hold traditional values, where defilers of the Church are not given awards but prison sentences, whose society respects its progenitors, and perhaps more critical than all, where subjects are able to walk down a street and see others who resemble themselves.

 When the leadership of a nation excises everything (and increasingly everyone) which made it one's country to begin with, the notion of fighting for that governing body is laughable. A pathetic joke - which is exactly what America and the greater West have become in the minds of many inhabitants.

 It should be imperative any clash is assiduously described by the Kremlin not as a skirmish with America, but solely with its present administrators; an essential distinction as many Americans already feel under siege by the cabal in Washington and its bureaucratic satellites dominating satrap capitals.

 Would such an argument necessarily prompt an American insurgent force to immediately rise against the Imperial City? Hardly; most individuals are cowards, especially when being led to slaughter. However there would undoubtedly be thousands of disgruntled guerrilla resisters sick and tired of being displaced in their own homeland who would heed that call. Tens of thousands more would look the other waybecoming passive collaborators with those taking more strident action.

 Some learned counsel to ObamaMiliband and other newcomers who have prospered greatly inside once secured gates is it would not be in our best interest to make war with Russia. For if contemporary Moscow played its advantages more cleverly than historic Berlin nuanced propaganda might easily convince innumerable Westerners this would not be a war between nations but between futures; or more aptly stated, between civilization and anti-civilization.

 Under currently deteriorating conditions, that is a concept several men of the West might find worth dying for.

Guy Somerset

 Guy Somerset writes from somewhere in America. He is a lawyer by profession.                                                                                                                           

Source : english[dot]pravda[dot]ru
post from sitemap

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Why America hectically needs to destroy Russia

Why America hectically needs to destroy Russia. USA wants to destroy Russia
AP photo

By Nicolas Bonnal 

America and the West want to destroy Russia for a lot of reasons; five being - to put it clearly - eschatological:

- The spiritual reason: Russia is spiritually awake, having revivified its Orthodoxy. The decline of Catholicism in the West is thus counterbalanced by another Christian power. Remember the Masonic lemma of the nineteenth century: destroy the Cesar and the Pope. An atheist and nihilist west cannot endure the fact that a still powerful and Christian country resists; a Christian country that has too, like in the times of the tsar, an open and tolerant diplomacy.

- The sexual reason. It looks strange or unexpected, but Brzezinski en personne has insisted on it. Recently the socialist, despised and dishonoured government of France has sent a new ambassador at the Vatican. He was rejected because he was openly and pedantically gay. As we know western diplomacy is run by gays, and they cannot stand Russia and her alleged homophobia.

We shall be more specific on the following factors of western Russophobia:

America wants to rule Eurasia

- The messianic-imperialist reason: America rules Europe and it wants to rule Eurasia too. The project is to miniaturize Russia and to control the whole continent, via Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Russia. As we know it is now impossible; the insane yet perilous American strategy has reconciled China and Russia (see the analysis of professor Mearsheimer), and the Washington hawks would need a global atomic war to make these powerful challengers tolerate their foolish agenda. Yet Washington is brainwashed by its own propaganda, claiming that America is the messiah of modernity, freedom and openness, etc. Writes for instance Brzezinski, in the Technetronic Era:

Moreover, the very multinational and exceptional character of American society has made it easier for America to universalize its hegemony without letting it appear to be a strictly national one.

-  The Atlantic factor in Europe: Europe is an American intellectual colony since 1945 or even 1918 (Trotsky already quipped on that matter). One dangerous example: America has bred or conditioned near all Baltic politicians (read for instance in Wikipedia the gruesome data on President Thomas Hendricks Ilves of Estonia), American agents of influence who want to precipitate their tiny countries in a ruinous and ridiculous war against their gigantic neighbour. The Atlantic power bred a generation of European traitors, brainwashed in American universities or corrupted by American companies and foundations. This prospect has of course created a European resistance, Marine Le Pen and National Front in France, Beppe Grillo in Italy, Podemos in Spain, and the UKIP in England. Of course this local and somewhat impotent exasperation was already predicted and planned by Brzezinski:

"Today we are again witnessing the emergence of transnational elites, but now they are composed of international businessmen, scholars, professional men, and public officials. The ties of these new elites cut across national boundaries, their perspectives are not confined by national traditions, and their interests are more functional than national....The social elites of most of the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist in spirit and outlook. This, however, could create a dangerous gap between them and the politically activated masses, whose "nativism"- exploited by more nationalist political leaders-could work against the "cosmopolitan" elites.

Europe was sentenced to death by its American conquerors in 1945

As we know Europe was sentenced to death - or perennial slavery- in 1945 by her American conquerors. We will see if there is a reaction; but I am not sure of that. Merkel's Germany which has sold five nuclear submarines to Israel, submarines financed by German taxpayers and American colossal debt, paves the way to a tragic Endkampf. Let us quote on this matter Israeli historian Martin van Creveld (The Guardian, 9.21. 2003):

"We possess several hundred atomic warheads and rockets and can launch them at targets in all directions, perhaps even at Rome. Most European capitals are targets for our air force. Our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen before Israel goes under.'"

- The geopolitical reason: the American strategy reposes, like the English one, on McKinder and Spykman. I already commented these authors here (the first believes in land territory, the second in rims and highways...). The pivot area, the island of the world must be controlled at any cost. So Ukraine had to be destroyed as a country and as potential friend to Russia. Now Obama is ruling overseas a war with other naïve or dirtily humiliated countries - like Japan- to control China. American greater counsellor, polish-born Zbigniew Brzezinski (a false pole indeed, like Donald Tusk is another false pole and a pawn controlled by Washington and not polish people - look what happened to the Kaczynski brothers) wrote in his Great Chessboard that a break up of Russia was necessary -like a century ago a break up of China was to be enforced by western colonialist puissances. Let us read again Obama's mentor:

"A loosely confederated Russia-- composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic-- would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with Europe, with the new states of Central Asia, and with the Orient, which would thereby accelerate Russia's own development. Each of the three confederated entities would also be more able to tap local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand."

In the nineties, Brzezinski thus feared and rejected any Russian renaissance:

"It is also important insurance in case such a good relationship fails to develop, as it creates impediments to the re-emergence of any truly threatening Russian imperial policy."

And Brzezinski too knew the Ukrainian factor, the Ukrainian people being the poor victims of perennial and imperial western fantasy:

"The consolidation of a sovereign Ukraine, which in the meantime redefines itself as a Central European state and engages in closer integration with Central Europe, is a critically important component of such a policy..."

Nowadays anti-Americanism is considered a disease by mainstream media. Yet a great pope, when there still was a Roman Catholic agenda, Leon XIII, published a very important letter (testem benevolentiae) on heretic Americanism in January 1899, stating like Dostoyevsky in the Demons, that the source of any theological distortion, materialistic perversion and political destabilization was America -this was after the cruel and insane war waged on Spain and the conquest of Cuba and Filipinos. A malignant yet charismatic force, without of course now any reference to Christianity (American senator Dick Black acknowledges that Americans kill Christians anywhere), American chutzpah would be the last and hardest challenge of humanity.

And Russia is the main point of resistance; but not the sole.

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.

 

                         Revelations, 13, 7.

Nicolas Bonnal 


Russian SU 27 scared USA
Source : english[dot]pravda[dot]ru
post from sitemap

Why Texting and Parenting Should Never Mix

The latest research suggests texting while parenting leads to negativity and resentment.

How often do you look at your smartphone per day?

And how often do you look at it when you’re around your kids?

According to a new study from Boston Medical Center, parents who get absorbed by their smartphones while with their children, are more likely to have more negative interactions with them, as the kids feel that they’re competing with a device for their parents attention. 

The study, led by Dr. Jenny Radesky, a fellow in developmental-and-behavioural paediatrics at Boston Medical Centre, surreptitiously observed parents and children eating together at fast-food restaurants.

They recorded the interactions of 55 groups of parents and kids and paid most attention to how frequently and for how long the adults looked at their smartphones.

The data showed just how absorbed many parents were in their devices and how frustrated the kids were in response to this. In one observation, a child reached over to lift his mother’s face away from her tablet in an attempt to get her attention during the meal.

Dr. Radesky told TIME magazine, “What stood out was that in a subset of caregivers using the device almost through the entire meal, how negative their interactions could become with the kids.”

Now, before we all go into a “smartphones are bad and the world is doomed” vortex, it’s important to note the nuances within the research.

Reading between the lines of the study, it appears that the problems seem to occur when parents are absorbed in their phones for the entire meal, or when they are unresponsive to their kids when they are talking to them. But the study is not all roses either – what can be just a quick check of an email can easily escalate to absorption for longer than we think.

So what can we do? 

In the light of this research Dr. Radesky and her colleagues are working with the American Academy of Paediatrics to develop guidelines for the use of smart smartphones in front of the kids – just like the guidelines in place for use of TV and kids. In the meantime, the suggestion is to develop our own guidelines and ‘no-device’ times during family times.


Do you have your own personal ‘guidelines’ when it comes to smartphones around your kids? Do you have set no-device times?

Source : nickjrparents[dot]com[dot]au
post from sitemap

Monday, April 27, 2015

Peace has tusks

Peace has tusks. Peace has tusks

By Ralph Benko

There is an elephant in the room of American politics.  She is almost invisible, rarely reported in the media.  She represents an existential political threat to Hillary Clinton, the premier Democratic presidential candidate.  This elephant, also, may well prove a factor that makes Sen. Rand Paul far more formidable than the conventional wisdom has it.

What is this invisible elephant?  It is the fact that the most dovish of the candidates, for the past two election cycles, won the American presidency.  In 2008, the improbable Barack Obama, who had served merely two undistinguished years in the United States Senate, ran on a platform that was vague but for a clear commitment to nudge America back to a peacetime footing. 

Obama, famously, won.  He beat the far-better known, far-more-lavishly-funded, far-more-experienced - yet hawkish - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The American democratic left, exemplified by MoveOn.org, rallied behind Obama.  They flooded Obama with volunteers and a sufficiency of small denomination, yet high volume, campaign money. It was enough to propel him to victory.

Then, the dovish Obama went on to beat the very hawkish Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain. It was likely that it was McCain's martial disposition that sank the McCain campaign.  

Obama's leanings toward peace were recognized, and rewarded, soon after his election with a Nobel Peace Prize.  The elephant of peace is not invisible to everybody.

Obama clearly articulated his views on war and peace in an address before the UN General Assembly in 2011 in which he observed:

The fact is, peace is hard, but our people demand it. Over nearly seven decades, even as the United Nations helped avert a third World War, we still live in a world scarred by conflict and plagued by poverty. Even as we proclaim our love for peace and hatred of war, there are convulsions in our world that endanger us all.

I took office at a time of two wars for the United States. Moreover, the violent extremists who drew us into war in the first place - Osama bin Laden, and his al Qaeda organization - remained at large. Today, we have set a new direction.

At the end of this year, America's military operation in Iraq will be over. We will have a normal relationship with a sovereign nation that is a member of the community of nations. That equal partnership will be strengthened by our support for Iraq - for its government and Security Forces; for its people and their aspirations.

...

So let there be no doubt: the tide of war is receding.

In 2012 all the viable Republican nominees campaigned against President Obama's dovishness.  The nomination went to the relatively hawkish Mitt Romney. Obama, notwithstanding serious electoral liabilities, promptly beat Romney.

Obama, to his credit, delivered the goods.  He systematically fulfilled his promise to bring home the troops.  Last year, Obama's Secretary of Defense announced plans   to shrink the U.S. Defense Department's budget to the lowest level since World War II.

Obama fulfilling this promise was hard.  It took commitment and skill. Moving America toward a peacetime footing very likely will go down in history as Obama's signature achievement. It is a big deal.

Does the mood of the voters reflect mere war-weariness and a wish to retire from the world stage and abdicate America's role? Unlikely.  Americans, whose citizens are drawn, now or ancestrally, from all over the world, very much including Russia, inherently is cosmopolitan.  America by nature engages with the world.

The voters' mood signals, rather, discernment.  We voters, if inchoately, recognize - in a way few presidential aspirants do - that Obama is right: the tide of war is receding.  Americans are not by nature bellicose.  We prefer to make money, not war.  It is time for our candidates to adapt to the changed circumstance, peace, and embrace the political consequences of the peace.

Public intellectuals Steve Pinker and Andrew Mack noted, in Salon.com, as 2014 concluded, in The World Is Not Falling Apart: Never mind the headlines.  We've never lived in such peaceful times.

"In a historically unprecedented development, the number of interstate wars has plummeted since 1945, and the most destructive kind of war, in which great powers or developed states fight each other, has vanished altogether. ... Though the recent increase in civil wars and battle deaths is real and worrisome, it must be kept in perspective. It has undone the progress of the last dozen years, but the rates of violence are still well below those of the 1990s, and nowhere near the levels of the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s."

The electorate recognizes that the tide of war is receding.  The electorate wishes to shift America's engagement with the rest of the world to conform with the dawning of the peace.  That said, America long has been, and yearns to remain, in a world leadership role.  

Leadership is different, less glorious perhaps but no less noble, in peace than in war.  And leadership in peace respects the dignity and leadership of other nations, and world leaders, as well.

Most of our political elites do not clearly recognize the radically changing circumstance, this dawning of peace. It is not clear that most of our presidential candidates are getting the message from the voters, either.  That said, it takes only one serious candidate for the voters to propel a paladin of peace into the White House. 

Barack Obama got this.  Others surely will too.

The American campaign for the presidency began this month in earnest. U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and former Secretary of State (and former Senator and First Lady) Hillary Clinton formally have announced their candidacies. Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has assembled an impressive political operation. A host of other governors and former governors are revving their campaign engines. 

It is too early to formulate predictions as to the outcome.  There are many variables and many circumstances that can propel, or torpedo, a candidacy.  That said, even at this early stage, something interesting stands out.  The most formidable dovish declared candidate, Rand Paul, is, unusually, a Republican.  

Sen. Paul is not, by any means, an isolationist. Paul's call for "peace through strength" is a very telling slogan.  It is one borrowed from President Reagan (in whose White House I served as a deputy general counsel in an unrelated area).  Reagan was strong, not belligerent.

Rand Paul's stand looks a lot like that of the "heavily armed dove," as U.S. Representative (and cabinet secretary, and vice presidential nominee) Jack Kemp once described himself.  The signals are that Sen. Paul has the firmest grasp of the dawning of peace, and the implications, and the highest comfort level with restoring America to a comfortable superpower, rather than hyper-power, status. 

Will presenting himself as a "heavily armed" dove succeed in prying the nomination of the Republican Party for Sen. Paul from the talons of his party's far more numerous hawks?  The GOP is composed of voters generally more militant than the Democratic base. This is uncharted territory. That said, most of even the militant base voters in the GOP do not at all sound as if they lust for war.  The prevailing themes for the primary voters are of shrinking the size and scope of the federal government, not of military adventurism.

Will a substantial challenger within the Democratic Party arise to Secretary Clinton?  Nobody thought Barack Obama was viable. Yet, such is the popular yearning for peace, Obama won, and won, and won again. Will some ambitious candidate play the role, against Madam Clinton, that Sen. Eugene McCarthy played to undermine the hawkish President Lyndon Johnson, on an anti-war platform?  It is a virtual certainty.

Former Republican US Senator (and lone Senate Republican vote against the use of force in Iraq), who then became an Independent governor of Rhode Island, and now is a Democrat, already  is hinting at a run and playing the peace card.

The Peace Factor, the invisible elephant in the room, mostly is ignored in the press. (This oversight is due to insular, not sinister, reasons. Most reporters are busy listening to one other rather than keeping their eyes open and ear to the ground.  Human nature.) Still, even though almost invisible, peace is powerful.

Hawk vs. Dove recurrently is, as it should be, a very big deal in American presidential politics.  "So let there be no doubt:  The tide of war is receding." Expect America's voters to lean toward peace in preference to war, toward butter in preference to guns, and for peace to play a major, if almost invisible, role in Election 2016. 

The political elephant of peace may be nearly invisible. Yet she is not without tusks.  Welcome to American politics.

Ralph Benko

For Pravda.Ru 

Source : english[dot]pravda[dot]ru
post from sitemap

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Son of Tariq Aziz: Time is not on our side

Son of Tariq Aziz: Time is not on our side. 55017.jpeg

Tariq Aziz's Son: 24th April 2015, Twelfth Anniversary of a US Travesty of Justice: "Time is not on Our Side."

Vincent Nichols, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, is spiritual leader of the four million Catholics of England and Wales. He was also elevated to Cardinal on 22nd February 2014, receiving the Cardinal's red hat from Pope Francis in Rome's St Peter's Basilica. He has been cited as a man: "not afraid to speak out when he feels compelled to do so."

Felicity Arbuthnot

He has indeed railed against "punitive" welfare cuts, calling them a "disgrace", he has spoken in defence of Catholic masses for gay, lesbian and transgender Catholics and has come under attack for defending Irish priests and nuns who had abused children in their care, saying it took courage to "face the facts from their past."

On Nichols' elevation, his predecessor as Archbishop of Westminster, Cormac Murphy-O'Connor commented that it gave him, perhaps, "better media space" and the chance: "to speak out on things that concern the church and society." (Guardian, 18th February 2014.)

The Archbishop has just returned from a visit to Erbil in northern Iraq and spoken and written on the plight of the Christians. (Mention of the cataclysmic plight of the vast majority of Iraqis of all faiths or none, is scant - to near invisible.)

The Archbishop and Blair

It was Nichols who  - inexplicably - welcomed Tony Blair in to the Catholic Church in a ceremony at Westminster Cathedral, in spite of Blair's hand in the mistruths culminating in the Iraq assault, arguably fitting the definition of Nuremberg's "supreme international crime."

Did the Archbishop reflect on welcoming a man who had been involved in the destruction of the cradle of all he and his church's followers professed to believe? The three Abrahamic religions believed risen from Ur in southern Iraq, the Garden of Eden flourished at Qurnah, a little south, Saint Mathew is believed buried in the monastery named for him in Nineveh and belief has it that Jonah and some of the whale that swallowed him rested in his tomb in Mosul - now destroyed by ISIS.

In 2006, the year before Blair's conversion to Catholicism, the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Iraq mortality survey estimated excess deaths in the three years since the invasion at 650,000. An unrepentant Blair said repeatedly before his conversion and since, that he had no regrets and would do the same again. The excess death toll now, between the twenty plus years of embargo and invasion, is estimated at three million. (1) Genocide.

A Unique Case, Will the Archbishop Speak Out?

On confirmation of the Archbishop's Cardinal status, he was designated titular Head of a church known for housing the icon of "Our Lady of Perpetual Help." Now there is something to live up to. There is perhaps a unique cause with which to start to "speak out on things that concern the church" - or should.

Former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, a courageous Iraqi Chaldean Christian nationalist, passionate in his love for his land, has been abandoned in Iraqi jails for twelve years. He did not flee ahead of the US and British tanks, or from the "Shock and Awe" of their radioactive bombardment, but to stayed in his country. He gave himself up to the American Command - on the condition his family could leave the country in safety.

Saddam Hussein's entire government could have left Iraq prior to the inevitable invasion and lived in comfort elsewhere, as the Kuwait government did in 1991 - indeed George W. Bush's regime confirmed that they offered Saddam Hussein forty eight hours to leave Iraq. Iraq's Administration had vowed not abandon their country. None did.

Iraq in fact offered "unlimited access for 2,000" weapons inspectors with:  "a pledge that US companies would be granted first priority in securing valuable Iraqi oil and mining concessions." America, however, it seems wanted both blood and oil.

Countless "9/11s" engulfed Iraq, yet the government remained visibly there until, given they had little to nil means of defence, all was lost.

In contrast, on 11th September 2001, George W. Bush was anything but visible. The "Commander in Chief", self appointed "Leader of the Free World" was whisked away from his kindergarten reading session in Florida and taken to a secret and secure place on a military base in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Tariq Aziz was held by the Americans until 2007 before being tried in a US arranged kangaroo court. In one session, ill, being taken there in his pyjamas. The savage, shameful, primitive face of the American fashioned "New Iraq" for all to see. Even the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights referred to "the independence (of the Court being) allegedly undermined by political interference" (3) an understatement of enormity.

The charges against Tariq Aziz have thousands of column inches devoted to them, few have been devoted to the outrage of his arraignment, imprisonment, treatment, plight and finally death sentence.

Revenge Not Justice

As his son, Ziad Aziz has said: "This is about revenge, not justice. They've implicated my father in everything, in every single case you can imagine. He has been apportioned blame for issues that never even fell   within the realm of his responsibilities."

This statement would appear to be borne out by George W. Bush shortly after Aziz had given himself in to the occupiers. Bush expressed unshakable confidence that his forces would find banned weapons, implying that Tariq Aziz was key to their discovery. At a press conference in Crawford Texas with then Australian Prime Minister John Howard, he stated: "Tariq Aziz still doesn't know how to tell the truth, he didn't know how to tell the truth when in office and he doesn't know how to tell the truth as a captive." (AP 4th May 2003.) The lies of course had come from Washington and Whitehall.

Not to be forgotten is the meticulous near 12,000 pages of Iraq's accounting for what they did not have, delivered to the UN, in December 2002, as requested - and stolen by the US delegation at the UN.

Aziz has said his responsibility for he or his departmental colleagues escorting UN weapons inspectors round Iraq was largely futile: "I was trying to prove a negative."

Tareq Aziz will be seventy nine on April 28th. This is written on the 12th anniversary of his incarceration, 24th April.

Situation Critical And The Wedding Ring

Indomitable though he is, his health was poor, even before the invasion. In 2010 he was taken to an American hospital with a blood clot. He also suffers other serious conditions. The Vatican and several European governments have called for his release, but it is a stance which seems not to have been persued with any measure of vigour with the Iraqi government or the US Embassy in Iraq.

Earlier this month his wife, Violet, visited him, now moved from Baghdad to the notorious maximum security prison in Al-Nasiryah in southern Iraq, from where stories of torture and ill treatment abound. Ziad Aziz writes of his plight:

"I would like to write to you and hopefully through you to the rest of the world, to raise attention about my father's condition.

"My mother went to visit him this week in Al-Nasiryah prison where he had been transferred since August of last year. The guard brought him and his prison mates to the interview area in shackles, chains around their ankles and wrists.

"But she felt worse when she started talking to him. He was incoherent, and could barely form a sentence, and he couldn't remember his own grandchildren, he asked her about my other son, I have only one son - his namesake, Tariq.

"He has not received any medical attention, he still depends on us to  bring all his medicine to him when my mother visits him. The situation there is so bad that they don't even provide food for the inmates, let alone medical care.

"At the end, my father gave my mother his wedding ring, telling her that he feels that the end is near, he said he didn't want it to be stolen. This ring hasn't left his finger for fifty years, all the time he was married. I cannot tell you how devastated my mother felt at that moment, as am I and the whole family.

"I cannot emphasize enough how dire my father's condition is, we desperately need to raise attention to his, and his colleagues, conditions. I am afraid that the worse will happen very soon, as does he apparently.

"We would like your help to raise attention to his condition, and hopefully we can secure his release so he can spend his last days with his family."

An Anniversary And a Second Letter

Today, a further letter arrived:

"I write to you to update you on my father's situation and kindly remind you of the urgency of his health condition, and through you to all who you think can help us with our cause.

"There are rumours that they moved my father and a few of the other prisoners back to Baghdad. We don't know whether it is true or not, and we have no way of confirming it.

"He is still has not had any medical attention whatsoever. The prison officials asked us to wire them money in order to provide food and medicine for my father, we have no way of knowing if he is eating or taking the right dose of his medicine - or if he is taking any medicine at all.

"Time is not on our side, I can't stress enough the urgency of the situation and the need to for an immediate intervention. It has been 12 years today since the Americans took him and since I last saw my father, I don't know if there is another year to wait. We need to intensify our campaign to deliver this message to all our friends, allies, and the international community, and bring more pressure on the Iraqi government.

"We appreciate all the help we can get and we are very grateful to you for all your efforts.

"Thank you very much

Ziad Tariq Aziz."

Back in 2010 I wrote: 'The silence of the Pope, Archbishops, the Foreign Office (despite Foreign Secretary William Hague claiming to put human rights firmly t the centre of his policies) has been woeful. All have been approached by anti-death-penalty campaigners, including many eminent people. None has even replied to correspondence. Tariq Aziz is a symbol of the "democracy" brought to the new Iraq. His trial was condemned by Human Rights Watch - which had called for it consistently - as "fundamentally flawed" and they said that the "court should overturn the verdict". '

Letters have again, today, been sent to the relevant bodies at the UN, the EU, to the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury - and to Cardinal and Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichol.

Last year George W. Bush and Tony Blair were "unanimously" found guilty of "crimes against peace" by a distinguished legal panel at the War Crimes Tribunal in Malaysia. "The evidence showed that the drums of wars were being beaten long before the invasion. The accused in their own memoirs have admitted their own intention to invade Iraq regardless of international law", they concluded. They were found guilty on the same grounds in 2011 and guilty of war crimes in 2012. Weighty files of evidence have been lodged with the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

Perhaps, at this eleventh hour, Vincent Nichols might finally feel "compelled" to "speak out" for his Chaldean Catholic brother-in-the-church, Tariq Aziz, in some measure of atonement for welcoming an accused war criminal mired in the blood of three million Iraqis,  innumerable Afghanis and people of the Balkans. As he said, it takes "courage to face the facts from the past."

Source : english[dot]pravda[dot]ru
post from sitemap

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Tolerance and reconciliation, the keys to peace, inclusion and development

Tolerance and reconciliation, the keys to peace, inclusion and development. 55004.jpeg

Senior figures from the United Nations came together with religious leaders this week to hold high-level talks on the need to create peaceful and inclusive societies where children are born in a world free of hatred, division and exclusion. The key words were togetherness and tolerance, without which there is no reconciliation or development.

For those who update themselves on the latest news with regularity, we do not need to go into many details to see that the world we live in is far from balanced and increasingly, is a place where a growing number of us who care about spreading global values do not wish to be and have no pleasure whatsoever in living here.

Poverty and hunger continue to be a daily reality for almost one seventh of the world's population - nearly one billion people; hunger kills more children, women and men every year than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, combined. Children are not born with equal rights and opportunities but rather, their chances are defined not by merit but whether they are born on one side of an invisible line (called a frontier) or the other.

The world of the haves and the have-nots

Increasingly, the "haves" are growing wealthier and the "have-nots" are more and more excluded in intolerant, exclusive, marginalizing societies fraught with hatred and religious, racial, gender-and sexuality-based bigotry. Neither are these ills the daily reality of those living in far-flung "tropical" countries thousands of kilometers away from those reading these lines - up to one third of families in so-called "developed" countries are living near or below the poverty line, and growing numbers of children turn up at school without a meal inside them or one to go to when they get home.

Education has been turned into a business, healthcare has become a lottery, regular dental care has all but disappeared except for the rich top third of the population, getting a home and job have become a drama and a luxury, keeping the home another drama and keeping the job, a matter of how deep into slavery an employee wishes to place her/himself. Our beautiful home, which Mother Nature gave to us to enjoy, a place called Planet Earth, together with its wonderful array of flora and fauna - our brothers and sisters who we are supposed to share this place with - is increasingly uninhabitable as large swathes of pristine forest are destroyed to make way for the corporations to grow richer. Not only is the Earth being destroyed, also the subsoil, the seas and even space. Humankind has turned the entire ecosystem into a toxic waste-dump infested by the destructive parasites we have become. Even our food chain has been raped by corporate greed and a growing number of products on our supermarket shelves are nothing short of toxic and dangerous.

If someone had told me forty years ago that this would be Planet Earth, 2015 I would have predicted it was the result of nuclear Armageddon, a meteor strike or an invasion from Mars. But what I write above is the tip of the iceberg and there is nobody else to blame except the inept global political leadership, the spineless public in general and principally, the evil corporatist cliques holding the reins of policymaking below the former and ruling the latter.

The role of the media

There are solutions and to arrive at the cure we have to analyze the symptoms to diagnose the treatment. It is hardly surprising that hatred and intolerance manifest themselves increasingly among ever-younger populations since a basic survival mechanism of living beings, at least on this Planet, is to protect the status quo, which is the collective identity of who we are and how we behave. This runs through codes of behavior called religions, defining our God, what It stands for and the rituals we perform when we worship; it also runs through dress code and on another level, the cultural expression which a young person follows or the soccer team s/he supports in the quest for this mass identity. Given the existence of this social regimentation it is therefore not that difficult to motivate or contaminate whole sectors of society, whole countries or even regions.

Three hundred years ago, it was the work of the Town Crier, or Bellman, to disseminate the news and as time went on, news pamphlets appeared and developed into newspapers and in tandem with technological developments, media outlets became audio-visual as well as printed and are now also digital. They have the power to reach far and wide.

How do we expect an average child to grow up balanced if s/he has witnessed at least one hundred thousand scenes of extreme violence on these same media outlets by age twelve, when video games cater for the development of primary emotions through the manipulation of gore, shock and awe, when the average child grows up increasingly without the permanent parental guidance her/his structure as a living being needs and when the development process is interfered with by others who have from an increasingly early age fallen out of the net and become sociopaths?

Equal rights begin at birth

How can we say a child has equal rights at birth if bad governance and corruption (and here we remember the corrupted but conveniently forget that for every corrupted, there is a corruptor) neuter any initiative of goodwill or any projects for development? How can we say children have equal birthrights if the education system has become a business and whether or not you get a higher qualification depends on how much money your parents have, or have stolen?

And if we do not start at the beginning, with equal birthrights for all, girls included, then how can we begin to speak about tolerance, how can we have reconciliation or inclusion if intolerance created the problems in the first place, how can we have development when certain countries insist on deployment of troops and the destabilization of regions because they want to sell oil to China or steal Libya's resources (just look at the place today) and so how can we live together in peace?

The conclusion is that the History book does provide us with lessons; the laws of physics, at least on Planet Earth, tell us that to every action, there is a reaction and the story of socio-political activism shows us that after a string of victories, those among us who have the drive to become political players or opinion makers sit back and think their battles have been won.

I believe there are enough battles referred in these two pages to keep generations of activists busy for centuries to come. Let us remember that the work of a Politician and global Policymaker (Capital Ps) just like that of a journalist, is judged in the same manner as that of a chef: you are only as good as your last meal.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru  

(timothy.hinchey@gmail.com)

*Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey has worked as a correspondent, journalist, deputy editor, editor, chief editor, director, project manager, executive director, partner and owner of printed and online daily, weekly, monthly and yearly publications, TV stations and media groups printed, aired and distributed in Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, Mozambique and São Tomé and Principe Isles; the Russian Foreign Ministry publication Dialog and the Cuban Foreign Ministry Official Publications. He has spent the last two decades in humanitarian projects, connecting communities, working to document and catalog disappearing languages, cultures, traditions, working to network with the LGBT communities helping to set up shelters for abused or frightened victims and as Media Partner with UN Women, working to foster the UN Women project to fight against gender violence and to strive for an end to sexism, racism and homophobia. He is also a Media Partner of Humane Society International, fighting for animal rights.

Source : english[dot]pravda[dot]ru
post from sitemap

Choi Byul I Seoul Motor Show 2015

Model Choi Byul-I (최별이) at Seoul Motor Show 2015 with Porsche. She also worked with the same car company at SMS 2013.

Choi Byul I Seoul Motor Show 2015 Porsche

Choi Byul I Seoul Motor Show 2015 Porsche

Choi Byul I Seoul Motor Show 2015 Porsche

Choi Byul I Seoul Motor Show 2015 Porsche

Choi Byul I Seoul Motor Show 2015 Porsche

Choi Byul I Seoul Motor Show 2015 Porsche

Source : koreangirlshd[dot]com
post from sitemap

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

America's Sorrowful World: Dumb at Home and Dumber Abroad

America's Sorrowful World: Dumb at Home and Dumber Abroad. 54989.jpeg

"I should tell you that homosexuality in our country has been overcome once and for all but not entirely. Or entirely but not completely. Or else entirely and completely but not once and for all. What do people think about now? Nothing but homosexuality. That and the Middle East, Israel, the Golan Heights. Moshe Dayan. So, if they chase Moshe Dayan off the Golan Heights and the Arabs make peace with the Jews? Nothing but homosexuality pure and simple." (Moscow to the End of the Line, Venedikt Erofeev, 1969)

by John Stanton

"and freedom thus remains a phantom on that continent of sorrow [the United States of America] and the people, thus, have become so used to it that they almost don't notice...On every rotten face there is as much dignity expressed in a minute as would last us for our whole great Seven Year Plan. How come? I thought, and turned off Manhattan onto Fifth Avenue and answered my own question. Because of their vile self-satisfaction-nothing else. But where do they get their self-satisfaction? I froze in the middle of the Avenue in order to resolve the thought: In the world of propagandistic fictions and advertising vagaries, where do they get their self-satisfaction? I was heading into Harlem and shrugged my shoulders. Where? The playthings of monopoly's ideologues, the marionettes of the arms kings, where do they get such appetite? They gorge five times a day and always with the same endless dignity-but can a man have a real appetite in the States? (Moscow to the End of the Line, Venedikt Erofeev, 1969)

Media Stooges Analyze Three Stooges Methodology

The ghastly spectacle of presidential debates on issues overly cooked in the media for decades (Israel and sexual preference, for example) will befall Americans within the blink of an eye. Of course they are not debates but well-rehearsed professional theater with the candidates, media questioners and audiences all acting out their assigned roles, on queue. Who has the appetite for it all? It is a hollow, unreal process and a rather sickening charade unless one is on some measure of hallucinogenic drug or drunk. At the proper stage of hallucination or inebriation the show turns into a sort of Looney Tunes cartoon making the time spent on the theater that is the American presidential election process somewhat tolerable.

A few more hits or swigs are necessary to endure the post-debate commentary on Fox, CNN, CBS, PBS or ABC. Depending on the mind altering substance used, the airhead punditry takes on the persona of the Three Stooges/Tractor Pull announcers. Caked in makeup and attached by wireless earphone to assistants who tell them what to say-the talking heads try to convince the audience that what they saw/heard was not what they saw/heard: In short, they try to spin sense on the nonsense uttered by this and that candidate. The media stooges extol the glorious exceptionalism of democratic style and process of the American presidential election process-and US elections in general-as though no other nation on earth actually holds elections.

Scary Monster

Americans know (or should know) that the presidential candidates--like all US politicians-have brains made of Silly Putty. They are bent and molded by the interests that fund them and, of course, tell them how to think/vote. Yet the American voting public typically runs a fool's errand every four years with the false notion that "voting matters". Voters proudly place stickers on ties and lapels stating an in-your-face "I Voted!" as if that is some sort of intellectual badge of courage that matters. But it doesn't when the Democrats and Republicans are a sort of two-headed Grendel hungry for money and power. 

It's a well fed monster that works on behalf of those political and military leaders who designed the carnage underway in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and Afghanistan and seek more. Displaced human beings in those countries seeking a non-violent life and some measure of security to practice their faith (Christian, Sunni, and Shia) have been forced to flee their long-time homes due to war and the reprisals it brings. There are millions of displaced now. They drown at sea, are slaughtered by splinter groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda or by errant air strikes courtesy of US targeting intelligence or US military hardware sold to the likes of Saudi Arabia.

The story in the USA is dismal in its own way: Austerity, local law enforcement gunning down unarmed suspects; the Supreme Court through Citizens United opening the floodgates for corporate cash donations to political candidates; a bankruptcy judge in Detroit, Michigan claiming that clean water is not a "right"; drought in the state of California; one in three US children living in poverty; and the slashing of funding for Social Security and Medicare. These woes do not include the unemployed culled from government statistics, homelessness, or the care and cost of taking care of Americans returning from battlefields the world over. And yet some lunatics in the USA still want to go to war with Iran, Russia and China.

And go figure! The USA is a country with 243 million adults 18 and over, and is indoctrinated from an early age by its educational system to believe, nearly religiously, in an open competitive market, based on an equally competitive democratic/economic system of government. Yet in the current presidential cycle the USA can only produce two viable presidential candidates who just so happen to represent America's wealthiest and political powerful families: Hillary Clinton (Democrat) and Jeb Bush (Republican). The two families are so close that George W. Bush called Bill Clinton "the brother from another mother." Both campaigns combined will likely spend $5 billion dollars on a science fiction movie titled The 2016 Presidential Swindle.

Dumb it down for the People

So how do the policy makers, military leaders, corporate heads, pollsters, pundits and campaign managers see the American public?

Consider Michael Glennon, Tufts University Fletcher School, and author of Double Government, on the intellectual ability of the American public. Turns out the American public mind is one giant mass of Silly Putty! "...the economic and educational realities remain stark [in the USA]. Nearly fifty million Americans-more than 16% of the population and almost 20% of American children-live in poverty. A 2009 federal study estimated that thirty-two million American adults, about one in seven, are unable to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book and are unable to understand the side effects of medication listed on a pill bottle. The Council on Foreign Relations reported that the United States has 'slipped ten spots in both high school and college graduation rates over the past three decades.' One poll found that nearly 25% of Americans do not know that the United States declared its independence from Great Britain. A 2011 Newsweek survey disclosed that 80% did not know who was president during World War I; 40% did not know who the United States fought in World War II; 29% could not identify the current Vice President of the United States; 70% did not know that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land; 65% did not know what happened at the constitutional convention; 88% could not identify any of the writers of the Federalist Papers; 27% did not know that the President is in charge of the Executive Branch; 61% did not know the length of a Senate term; 81% could not name one power conferred on the federal government by the Constitution; 59% could not name the Speaker of the House; and 63% did not know how many justices are on the Supreme Court.

Far more Americans can name the Three Stooges than any member of the Supreme Court. Other polls have found that 71% of Americans believe that Iran already has nuclear weapons and that 33% believed in 2007 that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks. In 2006, at the height of U.S. military involvement in the region, 88% of American 18- to 24- year-olds could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia, and 63% could not find Iraq or Saudi Arabia on a map of the Middle East. Three quarters could not find Iran or Israel, and 70% could not find North Korea. The 'over-vote' ballots of several thousand voters-greater in number than the margin of difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore-were rejected in Florida in the 2000 presidential election because voters did not understand that they could vote for only one candidate. There is, accordingly, little need for purposeful deception to induce generalized deference...in contemporary America...President Harry Truman's Secretary of State Dean Acheson, not renowned for bluntness, let slip his own similar assessment of America's electorate. 'If you truly had a democracy and did what the people wanted,' he said, 'you'd go wrong every time.' Acheson's views were shared by other influential foreign policy experts, as well as government officials; thus emerged America's 'efficient' national security institution."

Oh well. Who cares? That's the way it is. It is what it is. It has always been this way. Nothing you can do about it.

"People don't see clearly unless they want to. Nowadays everyone quietly accepts the inevitable. Newspapers are no help, they censored themselves little by little until they perfected the art of saying absolutely nothing. Television is monitored by official censors. Even if it weren't monitored there is nothing on of interest. The news bulletins are completely innocuous...How can anyone believe a word these officials say?" (And Still the Earth, Ignacio De Loyola Brandao, 1985)

The United States is surely becoming a "continent of sorrow."

John Stanton is a writer living in Virginia. His latest book is Media Trolls, Technology Shamans and Diabolical Political, Economic and Military Leaders available at Amazon. Reach him at captainkong22@gmail.com.

 

Source : english[dot]pravda[dot]ru
post from sitemap