Category Archives: Fundamentalist terror

Purvi Patel has 20-year sentence for inducing own abortion reduced | US news | The Guardian – The world that Trump’s VP candidate is proud of – putting women in jail if they have a stillborn child

Patel’s conviction, in 2015, made her a national symbol in the debate swirling around abortion. Last week, when Donald Trump selected the Indiana governor, Mike Pence, as his partner on the Republican presidential ticket, many abortion rights groups invoked Patel’s name as a cautionary tale. Trump has said women who have illegal abortions ought to face “some form of punishment”. And activists had prevailed upon Pence to clarify the 2009 law used to convict her, without success.The ruling was not a uniform victory for Patel. The court held that the state had mounted sufficient evidence to show Patel knew the infant was born alive. Patel’s appeals team had challenged the integrity of the forensic test, the controversial “lung float test”, that prosecutors used to argue the infant was not stillborn. But the court agreed with Patel that the state did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the infant could have survived. It reduced her child neglect conviction from a class A felony to a class D.“The Indiana court of appeals … ultimately failed Purvi Patel,” Yamani Hernandez, the director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, said Friday. “People of color are bearing the brunt of unscientific laws and misplaced moral outrage against abortion, which is blurring into the territory of miscarriage, putting any pregnant person at risk of prosecution and incarceration. It needs to stop, and the decision didn’t go far enough to restore full justice for Purvi Patel.”AdvertisementA jury convicted Patel in 2015, and in May of this year, a team of volunteer attorneys appealed against her conviction.Prosecutors argued at trial that Patel gave birth to a 25-week-old live infant that could have survived if Patel had sought medical attention instead of abandoning the infant. Patel’s attorneys, who disputed the infant’s gestational age, argued the infant was stillborn, and not developed enough to survive outside the womb no matter what Patel did.Patel’s case quickly became a flashpoint in the country’s heated debate over abortion access. The prosecution painted Patel as hard-hearted and calculating. Women’s rights advocates countered that Indiana’s numerous restrictions on abortion had prevented Patel from terminating her pregnancy in a clinic, and they fingered her trial as part of a pattern of overzealous prosecutions against women who suffer miscarriages.

Source: Purvi Patel has 20-year sentence for inducing own abortion reduced | US news | The Guardian

Attacks on Dalits leave Gujarat government wounded – Times of India

Initiating the discussion, senior JD(U) member Sharad Yadav sought a ban on ‘gau rakshaks’ (cow vigilantes) operating in some parts of the country . He said it was a matter of shame that even after 70 years of Independence, atrocities against Dalits, especially women, were increasing.”Who created these ‘gau rakshaks? Why doesn’t the government ban them? What is this tamasha? We talk about Taliban … our caste system has a Taliban-like attitude, we need to discuss that,” he said. Congress and other members joined him, saying the incident only exposes the real face of the `Gujarat model’ promoted by PM Narendra Modi. Observing that youths were joining such groups because of rising unemployment, Yadav said that “in Gujarat, these gau rakshaks say 33 crore gods and goddesses live in the cow. Such superstitions are being spread in this country.”

Source: Attacks on Dalits leave Gujarat government wounded – Times of India

Trump captures GOP nomination as convention speakers focus their fire on Clinton – The Washington Post – “Focus fire? A shooter’s term – wtf. And the e-mail version headline was: “In Trump’s moment of triumph, Clinton is in the crosshairs” Who is suggesting that Hillary Clinton should be assassinated or that Trump wants her shot?” 

The Republican National Convention’s first two nights have been striking for the unusual amount of time spent demonizing Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee.

Source: Trump captures GOP nomination as convention speakers focus their fire on Clinton – The Washington Post

We killed Qandeel Baloch – The Ladies Finger

What Qandeel did was represent a changing Pakistan: a Pakistan where a viral celebrity could engage with mainstream media and thus the rest of the country, despite being provocative. We began to witness a nation that was now questioning its own conscience as a result of her growing popularity, presence in TV shows and rise to becoming a household name despite being labelled a ‘slut’.The irony of Qandeel is that she came home for just one week, before leaving for abroad (presumably Dubai) with her parents to seek safety from the death threats she was receiving. Little did she know that the biggest threat to her, as is the case with most women in Pakistan, is the threat at home. Threat from the ones you love and love you back from the ones you grew up and the ones who have known you since you were a baby and the ones who are supposed to protect and nurture you from the hate that is often found swirling around in our toxic society: Your family.Fariha Altaf, tweeted that she spoke to Qandeel the night she was killed and she sounded so happy and excited. Just like that — a woman loved by many, a human with a life of hopes and dreams, was taken away from us. She died at the hands of her brothers for living her life on her own terms.The murder of Qandeel Baloch sends a very frightening message to every woman in Pakistan: WE WILL CONTINUE TO BE KILLED. They will find a reason for all of us, one by one until we can challenge this toxic brand of masculinity and honour.

Source: We killed Qandeel Baloch – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Saudi Scapegoats | Inter Press Service

In the days since the attack Saudi authorities have been busy rounding up suspects. According to a report published by Al Jazeera, 19 people had been arrested by July 9. Of these 19, 12 are Pakistani and the remainder are Saudi citizens. In addition, Saudi authorities claim that the Jeddah bomber was also a Pakistani named Abdullah Gulzar Khan, who had been working in the kingdom for the past 12 years. The suspect was reported to have worn a suicide belt before he blew himself up.The inordinate scrutiny placed on Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia is likely to become an even larger problem. Even when criminal charges are not terrorism-based, the Saudi legal system is opaque, providing few explanations of charges or records of proceedings. Owing in part to their inferior status in the kingdom and the intractability of its legal system in general, over 2,000 Pakistanis already languish in Saudi jails with 10 or more executed every year. The 12 arrested last week will simply join their ranks, the truth of the allegations against them never properly explained, the details of trials and prosecutions never communicated to the consulates of a poor country like Pakistan.There are good reasons for the Saudi effort to pin the blame on Pakistanis. For instance, it permits Saudi Arabia to deflect the truth that in past years its propagation of an orthodox version of Islam via countless religious schools around the world has contributed to the creation of the jihadi mindset, whose pupils increasingly if not always provide cannon fodder for suicide bombers who have struck targets across the world.According to an article published last year in World Affairs Journal, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, (either officially or via private donors) has funded madressahs and religious centres that have then been used for recruitment by extremist groups. The article quotes US Vice President Joe Biden as estimating the Saudi contribution to jihadi groups as being at “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons”. Increasingly defensive about its own contribution to the very threat that is now at its doorstep, Saudi royals like King Salman have tried to deflect blame by saying that they cannot be held responsible if the money they gave for good causes is appropriated into the cause of extremism and ‘jihad’.

Source: Saudi Scapegoats | Inter Press Service

How Israel is turning anti-occupation activists into dissidents | +972 Magazine

“If you are not for the government, you are anti-Israel, scum, a mole, an outsider who should be made not a citizen

On another front, Culture Minister Miri Regev has been working for several years to curtail political dissent in the arts. Last month Regev sent questionnaires to artists asking them whether they perform in West Bank settlements, the first step in cutting funding on the basis of political conscious. A year earlier she warned, “institutions that delegitimize the State of Israel will not receive funding.”Combined with a range of other pieces of legislation, policies and actions by government officials and extra-parliamentary groups, the cumulative effect of the NGO Law is to portray those working to end the occupation, fighting for equality and liberal democratic values as dissidents subverting the State of Israel itself.Speaking at the Herzliya Conference last month, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan announced a new legislative initiative to install legal — perhaps criminal — sanctions against Israelis who actively oppose government policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians.“There’s no real price for somebody or an organization working against his country in order to isolate it in the world,” explained Erdan, whose ministerial responsibilities include Israel’s law enforcement agencies. “I’ve already established a legal team together with the Justice Ministry to create government-sponsored legislation in that context.”“We understand that there is a need to draw a line between freedom of expression and democratic values, in which we believe and want to safeguard,” Erdan continued, “but if we want to convince the world that delegitimzation is unacceptable and for which a price must be paid, then it needs to start here in Israel.”In the same speech, Erdan discussed the need to use Israel’s intelligence capabilities against individuals and organizations working to end the occupation, drawing direct parallels to the methods Israel has used to fight terrorism, including searching for tangential and indirect ties to terrorist organizations, finding financial improprieties, smearing individuals, and shutting down bank accounts.

Source: How Israel is turning anti-occupation activists into dissidents | +972 Magazine

Victims, Not Threats: The Massacred In Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Yemen Are Not Terrorists For Hateful Rhetoric

Meet Adel Al-Jaf. He also calls himself Adel Euro, so you might know him by that. He was a rapper, a dancer and a man who tried to do the best that he could with what he had in his country. Last ye…

Source: Victims, Not Threats: The Massacred In Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Yemen Are Not Terrorists For Hateful Rhetoric

Sarah Sadaka, an Arab living in the United States, was going to a Best Buy store today. She went into that store speaking on her phone in Arabic, only to be circled by a woman who made it clear that her presence, her skin, her language made her uncomfortable. No one came to Sarah’s defense: she was just another sand nigger, breathing that free American air on the fourth of July. She did not deserve to have her right as a human being not to be violated that way taken away, she is, after all, only Arab.

Sarah, today, is the living embodiment of what it is to be the victim of terrorism in the United States, except this time it’s the brand championed by the likes of Donald Trump and the people with whom his rhetoric resonates.

When Omar Mateen went to a gay night club in Orlando and killed 49 people, mainstream American media only saw his name Omar as enough reason to justify his actions. He was just another Muslim. He was just another Middle Eastern offended by “our” way of life. Except Omar Mateen did not do so in the name of Islam, he did it in the name of his own insecurities, the insecurities of a man who is afraid of his own sexuality and who is so deluded in his own belief that he’d support two politically opposed factions in Hezbollah and ISIS as vindications for his action.

Omar Mateen’s characterization, and the repercussions that follow it, are a direct result of the kind of terrorism that Arabs and Muslims have to endure at the hands of people like Donald Trump, the Far Right across the world, and the minds that listen to them.

My mother tongue has become synonymous in people’s minds with death. If I speak it on a plane, I become an automatic threat, forced to undergo security checks, apprehended by officials because the words I utter from lips only resonate with fear, even if it’s to say: peace be upon you.

Victims, not threats. The more we are silent towards our murder, our decimation, and our characterization as people who do not deserve to live, the more we perpetuate the notion that people who think of Muslims, Arabs, Middle Easterners and those that live in the area are worth nothing is true. The more we are subdued in not demanding our deaths be remembered, be proclaimed, be cared for, the more our inherent value slips even further, even less than it already is, down an abyss in which the least valuable lives on this planet are Arab lives.

I should not be living in a world where I need to convince a friend of mine not to name his son Abdul Rahman because the name is “too Muslim.” I should not be living in a world where I have to defend myself at my own funeral. I should not be living in a world where the deaths of two hundred Iraqis is considered as just another bleb on the evening news, as they are just a waste of space.

We are people too, and we are worthy of life, one in which two hundred of us do not die at a mall buying new clothes for their children. We are victims, not threats.

Islamic extremists attack Christian village in Egypt, burn 80 homes

“Under Sisi the Coptic communities get protection from the military which then fuels sectarian attacks against Copts,” he said, adding that Egypt’s Christians have also been blamed for Sisi’s military coup because of their close ties with the army.Just last month, Egypt’s Christians were victim to a similar attack condemned by President Sisi in which 300 Muslims looted and torched Christian homes in the south, and stripped a 70-year-old Christian woman naked after accusing her son of having an affair with a Muslim woman, according to Reuters.President Sisi and other Muslim leaders have also spoken out about combating religious extremist ideology leading to incitement and sectarian violence.“Under (President Hosni) Mubarak we didn’t have as many cases against Copts as we have under Sisi,” Abdelmalak said.“I don’t think Sisi is personally pushing to marginalize Copts, but he’s not helping the situation either. He is living in denial about there even being a sectarian problem.”

Source: Islamic extremists attack Christian village in Egypt, burn 80 homes

Britain sees spike in hate crimes after Brexit vote | Europe | DW.COM | 28.06.2016

On Sunday morning, staff at the Polish Social and Cultural Association (POSK) in Hammersmith, west London, woke up to an unpleasant surprise: racist graffiti daubed over the entrance of the building. This was not an isolated incident. In Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, cards saying “Leave the EU” and “No more Polish vermin” were found outside St Peter’s School. An 11-year-old Polish child told reporters that the leaflets had made him feel “really sad.” Similar leaflets were put through people’s doors in the area. “As an eastern European, I feel worried,” says Ana Petrov, a Bulgarian national who has lived in southern England for three years. “I have built my home here but now I wonder if I speak in Bulgarian on the phone in public, will someone shout at me that I should leave? Or worse?” According to initial police figures, there has been a sharp spike in hate crimes since last week’s referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU: an increase of 57 percent in reported incidents between Thursday and Sunday, compared with the same days four weeks earlier. In addition to the incidents reported to police, accounts of verbal abuse have proliferated on social media. “I suddenly feel a lot further away from home,” German national Karoline Weber, who works in London, told DW. While much of the aggression has been targeted at EU nationals, non-white Britons have also been affected. BBC journalist Sima Kotecha was called a “Paki” while reporting on the responses to the Brexit vote in her home town of Basingstoke. Channel 4 News correspondent Ciaran Jenkins heard three people shout “send them home” in the space of five minutes as he reported on the referendum in Barnsley in northern England. “The attacks are mostly on eastern European migrants – but not all,” says Liz Fekete, director of the Institute for Race Relations. “What we’re observing is Muslim women are a prime target and a lot of children as well. A lot of damage has been done to social and community cohesion. There’s a hell of a lot of work to be done to repair that.”

Source: Britain sees spike in hate crimes after Brexit vote | Europe | DW.COM | 28.06.2016

Pope denounces 1915 ‘genocide’ during visit to Armenian memorial – France 24

A sombre Pope Francis, “with pain in my heart,” paid tribute on Saturday to the 1.5 million Armenians massacred in 1915, an event that he has labelled a genocide, risking Turkey’s ire. Francis, on the second day of his trip to Armenia, made an early morning stop at the Tzitzernakaberd, the “Genocide Memorial and Museum,” a towering granite needle flanked by an eternal flame on a hillside overlooking the Armenian capital. There, visibly moved, he took part in a prayer service along with President Serzh Sarksyan and leaders of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Source: Pope denounces 1915 ‘genocide’ during visit to Armenian memorial – France 24