Category Archives: human rights

Despotic Erdoğan seizes control of leading daily – Reporters Without Borders

True to form, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan today orchestrated an Istanbul court decision to place Zaman, a leading daily newspaper that supports the opposition Gülen movement, under state control. “The Turkish presidential office’s interference in the media has reached a new level,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Christophe Deloire said. “It is absolutely illegitimate and intolerable that Erdoğan has used the judicial system to take control of a great newspaper in order to eliminate the Gülen community’s political base. “This ideological and unlawful operation shows how Erdoğan is now moving from authoritarianism to all-out despotism. Not content with throwing journalists in prison for ‘supporting terrorism’ or having them sentenced to pay heavy fines for ‘insulting the ‘head of state,’ he is now going further by taking control of Turkey’s biggest opposition newspaper.” With a print run of more than 600,000, Zaman supports the religious movement led by Fethullah Gülen, who was closely allied with Erdoğan until they fell out in 2012. Since then, the authorities have been suspending the licences of pro-Gülen media outlets and have been bringing charges against their journalists.

Source: Despotic Erdoğan seizes control of leading daily – Reporters Without Borders

Video: Chicago Jew gets called Hitler for supporting Palestinian rights | The Electronic Intifada

“Unhinged” In the video at the top of this post, Deheeger, who is filming, can be heard repeatedly declaring, “I am Jewish, I support Palestinian human rights.” As Deheeger is carted out by police, camera in hand, one enraged person after another jumps out of their seat to taunt and curse at him. “You support killing Jews!” says one man. “Get the fuck out of here!” says another. Near the end, a woman shouts, “Hitler! Hitler!” “They were so unhinged,” Deheeger said. “One guy even came up and punched me in the arm.” The rage is striking given that Deheeger’s statement was hardly controversial. He was simply stating that Palestinians are people worthy of human rights. “I’m not even sure if they see us as people any more when we stand up and do this stuff,” he added, referring to the hatred for anti-Zionist Jews espoused by Zionists who remain deeply invested in Israel’s colonial project. “They see us as race traitors.” “It really just highlighted the amount of racism and violence that’s intertwined with the issue of Israel and Palestine in the Jewish community. And it’s passed down to kids,” said Deheeger, recalling his own support for Zionism when he was still in high school.

Source: Video: Chicago Jew gets called Hitler for supporting Palestinian rights | The Electronic Intifada

O.C. Teen Says He Was Stabbed For Speaking Arabic, Vacationing Cop Among 3 Arrested: LAist – Police Delusion: incident not racial or ethnic based…

The argument escalated, coaxing the three suspects to exit the car and confront Jarrah, who wound up getting stabbed. The three suspects fled in their vehicle, but were arrested relatively quickly. Jarrah was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. All of the suspects are family members. Both 27-year-old Jessica Roman and 25-year-old Martin Roman are both residents of Lake Forest. They were being visited by their brother Arthur Roman of Tinley Park, Illinois, who works as a police officer in Oak Forest, Illinois. KABC reports that Martin Roman was the suspect who allegedly stabbed Jarrah. All three were arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and battery. All three were also released on bail, according to KCBS. “He was like, ‘What’s up ‘obamabam?’ I don’t even know what that means,” Jarrah recalled to KABC. “Was it like a racial issue, like is it because we were speaking Arabic or can it be the way we look?” Despite Jarrah’s wonders, Huntington Beach Police told KCBS that this was not a racially motivated crime. Instead, HBPD says the stabbing was the result of “a spur-of-the-moment argument.”

Source: O.C. Teen Says He Was Stabbed For Speaking Arabic, Vacationing Cop Among 3 Arrested: LAist

Middle East – Gulf States declare Lebanon’s Hezbollah a terrorist group – France 24

{US and NATO needs more than a 10-foot pole to distance themselves from Saudi-led war against Shia}

Wednesday’s move against Hezbollah reflects deeper regional divisions between Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite powerhouse Iran, Hezbollah’s patron. Saudi Arabia cut diplomatic relations with Iran earlier this year after protesters angry over the kingdom’s execution of influential Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr set fire to the Saudi Embassy and another diplomatic mission inside Iran. Saudi Arabia in 2014 designated a Saudi affiliate of Hezbollah a terrorist group along with the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Yemen’s Shiite Houthis and other groups. The GCC announcement came a few hours after a televised speech by Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in which he harshly criticized Saudi Arabia for punitive measures that targeted Lebanon recently, including the halt in aid and Gulf travel warnings. He repeated his accusations that Saudi Arabia was directly responsible for some of the car bombings in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq and denounced Saudi “massacres” in Yemen. “Who gives Saudi Arabia the right to punish Lebanon and its army and Lebanese people living in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf just because Hezbollah is speaking out? We urge Riyadh to settle accounts with Hezbollah and not all the Lebanese,” he said. He also accused Saudi Arabia of seeking to cause strife between Sunnis and Shiites everywhere in the world and said its execution of al-Nimr in January came in that context.

Source: Middle East – Gulf States declare Lebanon’s Hezbollah a terrorist group – France 24

What I Learnt from Karaikal Ammaiyar and Her Closet of Adornments – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Vanity is at once discouraged and encouraged in women. Among the conflicting social messages we receive, we are told that to care too much about one’s appearance denotes shallowness of character or lack of intellectual gravitas, but that to not appear pleasing is to be lacking in social graces or emotional stability. There are women who seem to be smitten by trends; there are women who establish a more individualistic style; there are women who seem to have no clear taste; there are women who frankly seem to not have an aesthetic sense – and each of them is perceived and pegged in a different way. Our wardrobes speak volumes for us. In the long history of female silencing, the wardrobe was an instrument long before the pen, which did not find its way into the majority of our hands until rather recent centuries. Little tells us more about the power of this instrument than the moral and cultural policing of women’s attire. ‘Pleasing’ – denoting acceptable attention that puts other people at ease. In India, a sari in most contexts is ‘pleasing’. It speaks of the woman’s urge to please, to appear serious, shy, subordinate, unchallenging. So why then did I find myself lodging a complaint at a Chennai hotel a few years ago because the management had assumed I was soliciting, based entirely on the fact that I had been sitting alone in the lobby in a sari? I had been waiting for my friends for a night of partying. The sari in that context was not pleasing. It was subversive. The undertone was this: women who go clubbing don’t wear saris when they do because doing so would be to insult the garment and corrupt its inherent morality by bringing it into an immoral sphere. Their lifestyles were acceptable so long as they were compartmentalised. To not compartmentalise – to confuse the decorum of the sari with the abandon of the pub – was to be profoundly lacking in morality, i.e. a whore.

Source: What I Learnt from Karaikal Ammaiyar and Her Closet of Adornments – The Ladies FingerThe Ladies Finger

Racist hate speech has ‘become routine in France’ – The Local

Even the current Prime Minister Manuel Valls was reprimanded for his comments made in March 2013 about Roma people having “no interest in integrating in France”. French Mayor and MP Gilles Bourdouleix was also pulled up for his comments about Roma made in July

French Mayor and MP Gilles Bourdouleix was also pulled up for his comments about Roma made in July 2013, when he was recorded saying “Hitler didn’t kill enough”. National Front leader Marine Le Pen was singled out for picking on Muslims, particularly with her rants against the distribution of halal meat and comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation. And Nicolas Sarkozy’s

National Front leader Marine Le Pen was singled out for picking on Muslims, particularly with her rants against the distribution of halal meat and comparing Muslims praying in the streets to the Nazi occupation. And Nicolas Sarkozy’s

And Nicolas Sarkozy’s Republicains party were chastised for hosting its “conference on Islam” last year, which was boycotted by many Muslim groups. And there was the infamous recent case of MEP Nadine Morano repeatedly insisting “France was a country of

And there was the infamous recent case of MEP Nadine Morano repeatedly insisting “France was a country of white race.”

Source: Racist hate speech has ‘become routine in France’ – The Local

Trump sparks furore for tweeting Mussolini ‘lion’ quote – The Local

Trump’s official Twitter account retweeted a quote from an account under Mussolini’s nickname, Il Duce, which even has as its profile photo a portrait of the famously bald dictator with Trump’s wispy hair photo-shopped onto his hairless pate. The quote read: “It’s better to live one day as a lion than a thousand years as a sheep,” a saying often attributed to Mussolini, who was fond of the expression and used it in a 1922 speech.

Source: Trump sparks furore for tweeting Mussolini ‘lion’ quote – The Local

Couple Killed By Inglewood Police Were Unconscious When Officers Arrived: LAist

When will it stop?

Upon seeing the unconscious couple in the car, Inglewood Mayor James Butts explained to NBC 4 how “the officers retreated, isolated the vehicle, and spent about 45 minutes attempting to rouse the occupants and to deescalate the situation.” Originally, Inglewood police said officers opened fire on the couple after they noticed the woman had a gun. According to the department, officers ordered both people in the car to exit before taking cover and opening fire. At some point before the shooting, an officer can be heard on a police radio transmission saying the woman had a gun in her right hand. However, it’s still unclear why officers opened fire, or if the couple were even conscious at the time—the department has been mum on the subject. “Obviously at some point they were conscious because somebody felt threatened,” said Inglewood Mayor Butts told KNBC in an effort to explain on his police department’s behalf. A total of seven children survive the two victims: Michael was a single mother of three sons, and Sandlin a single father of four daughters. According to their families, the two were on a date that night.

Source: Couple Killed By Inglewood Police Were Unconscious When Officers Arrived: LAist

A disastrous end ..the story of the PA | nadiaharhash

I do believe that we are standing on a verge of a revolution as people. This time, it is inevitable, unless Israel makes a move to save the PA. While we are living under a life of daily attacks and killing, within a context that death of youngsters and corpses laid on the street bleeding is just becoming another normal scene. Like the checkpoint, the separation walls … the daily killings of alleged stabbing or whatever. It is a historical moment in the life of Palestinian people. A time when the occupation is no longer the only oppressive component in life under occupation. An oppression that is equally practiced on the people from the occupier and the guardians of that occupying power. This deterioration amid the ongoing oppression is almost impossible to believe. But yet it is happening. And like those dominoes pieces in a raw, everything is falling in a quick systematic fall. The PA managed to survive especially in the last years, within the absence of the rule of law that is basically represented by conducting elections, through the continuous oppression of the occupation. People tend to shut up infront of the bigger tragedies of life. How could we revolt against the government when Israeli forces kill our children and continue to humiliate our existence in every single manner and given opportunity?

Source: A disastrous end ..the story of the PA | nadiaharhash