Category Archives: human rights

Bryan Fischer Again Falsely Claims The U.S. Banned Travel During The 2014 Ebola Crisis | Right Wing Watch – Liars and Trump Supporters do what they do best – lie!

Fischer’s analogy is total nonsense, especially when you recall that during the outbreak, he accused Obama of intentionally refusing to impose a travel ban because he wanted the disease to come to America as punishment. As we pointed out before, the United States never imposed any sort of travel ban during the Ebola crisis because doing so would have been counterproductive. Instead, the government put in place protocols requiring that anyone traveling to the U.S. from Ebola-affected nations enter through one of five specific airports where enhanced screening would take place:The Department of Homeland Security has announced that all passengers arriving from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa must go by way of a handful of U.S. airports as part of measures to control the spread of Ebola.”Today, I am announcing that all passengers arriving in the United States whose travel originates in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea will be required to fly into one of the five airports that have the enhanced screening and additional resources in place,” Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said in a statement.Starting on Wednesday, those passengers will then be subject to “secondary screening and added protocols, including having their temperature taken, before they can be admitted into the United States,” the statement said.The airports are: New York’s JFK; Newark, N.J.; Washington, D.C.’s Dulles; Atlanta; and Chicago O’Hare.

Source: Bryan Fischer Again Falsely Claims The U.S. Banned Travel During The 2014 Ebola Crisis | Right Wing Watch

The 100 best nonfiction books: No 34 – Hiroshima by John Hersey (1946) | Books | The Guardian

 

John Hersey’s Hiroshima stands at the head of this tradition. These 31,000 words of searing testimony were written and published just a year after the dropping of the first A-bomb on Japan in August 1945, a terrible act of war that killed 100,000 men, women and children and marked the beginning of a dark new chapter in human history.Hiroshima was the result of an inspired commission about an event of global significance from a renowned war correspondent by a magazine editor of genius. It was in the spring of 1946 that William Shawn, the celebrated managing editor of the New Yorker, and protege of its founder Harold Ross, invited his star reporter, John Hersey, to visit postwar Japan for an article about a country recovering from the shattering experience of the atomic bomb. The piece was intended to be a standard four-parter about Japan’s ruined cities and devastated lives nine months on from the country’s humiliating unconditional surrender.ADVERTISING Facebook Twitter Pinterest John Hersey driving a US army jeep in 1944. Photograph: APOn the Pacific sea voyage to Japan, however, Hersey chanced on a copy of Thornton Wilder’s novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey, the tale of five people who are crossing an Inca rope bridge in Peru when it collapses, for which Wilder had won a Pulitzer prize. Accordingly, Hersey decided to focus his narrative on the lives of a few chosen Hiroshima witnesses. As soon as he reached the ravaged city, he found six survivors of the bombing whose personal narratives captured the horror of the tragedy from the awful moment of the explosion. This gave Hersey his opening sentence, a unique point of view, and a narrative thread through a chaotic and overwhelming mass of material. In a style later developed and popularised by the “new journalism” of the 1960s, the opening of Hiroshima pitches the reader into the heart of the story, from the viewpoint of one of its victims:

Source: The 100 best nonfiction books: No 34 – Hiroshima by John Hersey (1946) | Books | The Guardian

‘I hope Merkel keeps us’: how Nujeen Mustafa travelled from Syria to Germany in a wheelchair | World news | The Guardian

A year ago, Nujeen completed a 3,500-mile journey from Syria to Germany in a cumbersome steel-frame wheelchair, an Odyssean adventure that involved dodging masked Isis fighters, navigating perilous Mediterranean waters and fending off packs of wild dogs. Now the wheelchair is folded up on the veranda and she sits on a faded beige sofa in the living room of the flat she shares with two sisters and four nieces, struggling with a crumbly German biscuit.Looking at this teenager, with her thick black-and-red spectacles, I cannot help thinking of her as a Harry Potter figure, exiled on a Westphalian Privet Drive. There are even some Dursley-esque neighbours who, Nujeen says, “aren’t such big fans of refugees”.When I suggest the comparison, she shakes her head. She likes the town she has ended up in, and the fact no one knows her here. “Harry Potter is such a lifeless book, there’s too little emotion and too much display of power,” she says, adding a barb that has a special sting coming from someone with her backstory: “It makes every boy in the world think they are the chosen one.”Nujeen Mustafa was born on New Year’s Day 1999 in Manbij in northern Syria, the youngest of a Kurdish family of 11 in a mostly Arab town. Though Muslim, she says her family were never “obsessed” by religion: she and her sisters and cousins were the only girls who didn’t cover their heads in their local high school.Her pride in her cultural identity as a Kurd is fierce, however, and shaped her view on her country’s descent into civil war. As the population divided into supporters and opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, “the Kurds had their own side as they couldn’t trust anyone”, as Nujeen puts it in the memoir she has co-written with Sunday Times journalist Christina Lamb, who also co-authored Malala Yousafzai’s autobiography.

Source: ‘I hope Merkel keeps us’: how Nujeen Mustafa travelled from Syria to Germany in a wheelchair | World news | The Guardian

Civil society chilled by Egypt’s asset freeze – IFEX

The re-activation of case 173 and ongoing use of the Mubarak era Law 84 are part of a larger crackdown targeting not only human rights defenders, but also the media, trade unions, and peaceful protesters. Other measures of the case have included travel bans against 12 NGO members, including Eid and Bahgat, asset freeze requests against 13 NGO members, interrogation of 5 NGO heads in connection with the case, and the interrogation of 17 human rights defenders in connection with their human rights work. The ruling on 17 September in favor of the investigative judge’s asset freeze request indicates that the five-year-old investigation into the funding and registration of independent human rights groups could soon result in criminal charges. Under Egyptian law, prosecutors could charge human rights defenders for working without official registration or accepting foreign funding without government authorization. An amendment to the Penal Code passed in September 2014 by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi provides for a sentence of up to life imprisonment, which equates to 25 years in prison in Egypt, for the latter charge. We firmly believe that the current push against Egyptian civil society is not only unconstitutional, but also fundamentally misguided. The work of civil society groups contributes to a healthy, vibrant political climate that allows for open and critical debate of important social issues where all Egyptian citizens can be freely heard.

Source: Civil society chilled by Egypt’s asset freeze – IFEX

‘Healthy Ohio’ plan not healthy for Ohio: Wendy Patton, Policy Matters Ohio (Opinion) | cleveland.com

People could be kicked out for non-payment and locked out until they pay the debt. The Ohio Hospital Association fears higher costs due to administrative complexity. The plan is so problematic that 99 percent of the 956 comments submitted to the state about “Healthy Ohio” opposed key provisions of the proposal.The largest number of comments came from Ohioans worried about their own care: people with rheumatoid arthritis or diabetes, parents with mentally ill or developmentally disabled children. The next largest group of commenters was health-care providers: doctors, dentists, psychologists, hospitals, physician groups and free clinics. Advocates for vulnerable groups – youth in foster care, domestic violence victims, people with breast cancer — submitted comments. The concern of the faith community was enormous.

Source: ‘Healthy Ohio’ plan not healthy for Ohio: Wendy Patton, Policy Matters Ohio (Opinion) | cleveland.com

The most thorough, profound and moving defense of Hillary Clinton I have ever seen.


I am no political historian, but as far as I can tell this short essay was the birth of the “Hillary is a Liar” meme. Now to be clear, most conservatives already strongly disliked her. They had been upset with her for some time because she had refused to play the traditional First Lady role. And they were horrified by her attempt to champion Universal Health coverage. But if you look for the actual reasons people didn’t like her back at that time, you won’t see ongoing accusations of her being “crooked” or a “liar”. Instead, the most common opinion seemed to be that she was a self-righteous leftist who considered anyone with other views to be morally inferior. In short, the prevailing anti-Hillary accusation was not that she was unrelentingly dishonest, but that she was just intolerably smug.After the Safire piece however, this all changed. Republicans, who learned from Nixon never to let a good propaganda opportunity pass if they could help it, repeated the accusations of mendacity non-stop to anyone who would broadcast or print them. And if you doubt the staying power of Safire’s piece, type the phrase “congenital liar” into a Google search along with “Hillary Clinton” and see what happens. To this day, that exact phrase is still proudly used by many on the right. This, even though Safire was eventually proven wrong about everything he had written. And despite the fact that he stated himself that he would have to “eat crow” if she were ever cleared, Safire never apologized or even acknowledged his many errors once that happened. Because as we all know, swift-boating means never having to say you’re sorry.

Source: The most thorough, profound and moving defense of Hillary Clinton I have ever seen.

Video: Israeli sniper shoots youth during assault on refugee camp | The Electronic Intifada

 

This video shows part of an incident in which an Israeli military sniper severely wounded 22-year-old Palestinian Muhammad al-Amsi during a massive army raid on al-Fawwar refugee camp in the southern West Bank city of Hebron in mid-August.Al-Amsi was standing on his roof talking on the telephone when the sniper shot him four times.It was filmed by Mahmoud Abu Yousef, a videographer with the Ma’an News Agency, and published on Friday by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem as part of a report into the Israeli raid in which another youth, 19-year-old Muhammad Abu Hashhash, was shot dead by Israeli forces.A separate B’Tselem investigation has found that Abu Hashhash was killed as he posed no danger to anyone.Meanwhile, two Palestinians and a Jordanian citizen – one reportedly 15 years old – were shot dead by Israeli forces on Friday in separate incidents. Another Palestinian was shot dead on Saturday morning. On Thursday, a person died from wounds he received when Israeli forces shot him during a raid on his village. Last week, a Palestinian youth was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Source: Video: Israeli sniper shoots youth during assault on refugee camp | The Electronic Intifada

Trump hints at Clinton’s assassination again after retracting ‘birther’ theory | US news | The Guardian

In a sometimes bizarre 45-minute speech on Friday night, which opened with the unfurling of a new “Les Deplorables” battlefield flag backdrop, the Republican nominee went off-script to call for his opponent’s bodyguards to “disarm immediately” – adding, “Let’s see what happens to her.” “Take their guns away!” Trump demanded to loud cheers during a section of the speech in which he said his rival wanted to “destroy your second amendment” and he accused Clinton of “arrogance and entitlement”. In a statement, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook denounced Trump’s comments: “Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, has a pattern of inciting people to violence. Whether this is done to provoke protesters at a rally or casually or even as a joke, it is an unacceptable quality in anyone seeking the job of Commander in Chief.”“But we’ve seen again and again that no amount of failed resets can change who Donald Trump is.” The call to leave the Democratic nominee protected by unarmed secret service agents, first made by Trump in May, raised eyebrows as a reversion to the undisciplined candidate of the primaries rather than the more scripted one of recent weeks. Trump also suggested in August that if Clinton was elected president, “the second amendment people” might be able to stop her from appointing judges. That statement was widely interpreted as a veiled assassination threat as well at the time.

Source: Trump hints at Clinton’s assassination again after retracting ‘birther’ theory | US news | The Guardian

Donald Trump, Interrupted. He Calls Flint Pastor Who Cut In ‘a Nervous Mess.’ – The New York Times

“Everyone plays their games, it doesn’t bother me,” Mr. Trump said, claiming Pastor Timmons was shaking when she came up to him. He added: “She was so nervous, she was like a nervous mess. I figured something was up.” Some conservatives defended Mr. Trump on Thursday, pointing to a Facebook post in which she wrote that the visit was an opportunity to educate Republican candidate as evidence that she was planning to embarrass him. While that post does not appear on her Facebook page, Pastor Timmons did address the controversy there on Wednesday night. “Had he stuck to what his camp claimed he came to do, we would not have had a problem!” she wrote.

Source: Donald Trump, Interrupted. He Calls Flint Pastor Who Cut In ‘a Nervous Mess.’ – The New York Times

Sarkozy comes out of the closet as a climate skeptic – The Local – “What he really supports is eugenics, fewer colored, non-white French and definitely no more Polish immigrants like himself?”

The former president believes the world should be concentrating on the rise in the population and movement of people rather than worrying so much about global warming. “Never has the earth experienced such a demographic shock as it is about to,

Source: Sarkozy comes out of the closet as a climate skeptic – The Local