Category Archives: human rights

Erdogan, Sisi and Western hypocrisy | Middle East Eye

The message sent to the people of the region is loud and clear: either a made to fit democracy tailored to our needs and likes, or a dictator, odious though he may be. We will block our noses and shake the vulgar thug’s hand. We will call on our band of hired apologists: “experts,” “commentators” and “analysts” to concoct a set of justifications and excuses for his nauseating conduct, from mythical economic development and reform to political shrewdness, and if all else fails, reach for the Kissinger-Albright dictionary and throw in some “political realism”.Ironically, while over 85 percent of eligible voters had participated in the Turkish elections, roughly the same percentage of Egyptians had chosen to collectively abstain from taking part in the recent shambolic Egyptian parliamentary polls. Thus they had denied the Field Marshal and his backers in Washington and London the fig leaf much needed to cover his dictatorial rule.While Erdogan is vilified and chastised, the red carpet is rolled out for Sisi. Yet one had placed his country on the route to democracy after five military coups and decades of absolutist army rule, while the other had put a brutal stop to his nation’s nascent democratic experiment.

Source: Erdogan, Sisi and Western hypocrisy | Middle East Eye

Humans of New York

“I’m trying to make it on my own. It’s been a tough road. I fell behind at our first apartment and we got evicted. But I went through a job program for women and now I work as a case manager with Coalition for The Homeless. We moved into a two-bedroom in Bedford-Stuyvesant. I love my job, but I’m trying to raise four kids on a single income. We don’t have much extra stuff. We don’t have cable. The kids say they need internet for school but we’d need a computer for that, so we just go to the library. I’d love to hang up nice curtains. Or paint the house. But I don’t want to make our apartment into a home because I’m afraid to get too comfortable. I’ve already come close to missing rent so many times. I feel like I can never relax. But I have the most wonderful children. They never want me to buy them new things. But I’m afraid that I’m damaging their confidence. I can’t do anything nice for them. And I don’t want them to grow up feeling like they don’t deserve nice things. But at least we’re together. And we have a home. And we’re safe. I tell the girls all the time that we should feel lucky. I think they get tired of me saying that. But I honestly feel that we’re so lucky.”

Source: Humans of New York

Drivers Keep Killing Pedestrians, So The NYPD Will Crack Down On Jaywalkers: Gothamist

A dozen pedestrians have been killed by drivers in the past twelve days. At least three of them were killed crossing the street with the right of way, and four of them were killed as they walked on the sidewalk. In response to one of those deaths, in which a hit and run casino bus driver killed a pedestrian in Flushing, the NYPD is going to start handing out more jaywalking tickets.”If you’re crossing in the middle of the street, you’re wrong, you’re endangering yourself, you’re endangering others, you’re endangering drivers,” Queens Assemblyman Michael Simanowitz said, standing next to NYPD Deputy Inspector Thomas Conforti, the commander of the 109th Precinct, according to DNAinfo.”Cross at the green, not in-between, and hopefully we will be able to reduce the number of traffic fatalities.”While the 109th Precinct is promising to issue more tickets to pedestrians, they have decreased their enforcement against drivers. In 2015, the 109th has issued 433 speeding tickets, according to the most recent data available from the department; at this time last year, they had issued 599.The number of citations the precinct has issued to drivers for failing to yield to pedestrians has also decreased from 2014 to 2015, from 665 to 621.

Source: Drivers Keep Killing Pedestrians, So The NYPD Will Crack Down On Jaywalkers: Gothamist

Military Concedes Election to Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar – The New York Times

By Wednesday evening, the commission had announced official results for 298 of the 491 seats contested in Sunday’s election. Of those, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, won 256 and the ruling party won 21.There are 664 seats in the two houses of Parliament; the military appoints 166 of them.The commission also announced that Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had been re-elected to her seat, which was expected given the almost divine reverence that she commands across the country.

Source: Military Concedes Election to Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar – The New York Times

E.U. Move to Label Israeli Settlement Goods Strains Ties – The New York Times

“The Israeli pushback is about trying to intimidate Europeans from not going further down this path,” said Daniel Levy, Middle East director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “The Israelis want this process to move as slowly as possible, because at a minimum it’s a headache, and at a maximum, ultimately, it could be devastating.”The European Union’s decision to proceed on guidelines years in the making, despite fierce lobbying by Israel and intervention by a group of United States senators, came after several of its member states, and its own Parliament, formally or symbolically recognized an independent Palestinian state. Those resolutions reflect mounting frustration in Europe over the stalemated peace process and the growing political pressure on leaders in countries with large Muslim populations sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.A spokesman for the European Commission, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, said Wednesday’s move “in no way changes” the bloc’s stance on the peace process or Israel’s special treatment in European markets, where “Made in Israel” items carry little or no tariffs. But “products coming from the settlements cannot benefit from those preferences,” the spokesman said.

Source: E.U. Move to Label Israeli Settlement Goods Strains Ties – The New York Times

(5/6) “We’d been at the shelter for just a few days when he…

(5/6) “We’d been at the shelter for just a few days when he showed up. He tracked me using the GPS on my phone. The shelter has two sets of sliding doors for security. You walk through the first door, it closes behind you, and the second door opens. He jumped inside just as the first door was closing. The kids started screaming. He pushed me to the ground. While the security was dragging him away, he was screaming that I’d stolen his children. And that everything was my fault. And it made me feel guilty. He always knew how to make me feel guilty.”

Source: (5/6) “We’d been at the shelter for just a few days when he…

Humans of New York

“One day the counselor at my daughter’s elementary school called me. She said that my daughter had spoken up in class about the abuse. She asked me to come in for a meeting. I downplayed it because I was scared. I told her: ‘Thanks for your concern. But it was nothing, really. And it’s already stopped.’ The counselor gave me a pamphlet for a place called HeartShare. HeartShare was just two blocks from my house, so I stopped in one day. I told the counselor what was happening. She discussed the option of domestic violence shelters. But I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to break up my family. Then one day he beat me so badly in the stairwell. He punched me so hard that he got blood on my children. I told the counselor what happened and she said to gather all my papers. She told me she’d be in a black car on the corner. I told my husband I was going to the grocery store. I was so nervous because he timed me every time I left the house. I still had to pick up the kids from school. And if I was gone for more than a few minutes, he’d come looking for me.”

Source: Humans of New York

US Presidential Nominee Jeb Bush on Lebanon: “If You’re A Christian, You’ll Be Beheaded” | A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

Dear Mr. Bush, my parents are not afraid of being beheaded. They’re afraid of how the long-standing repercussions of the instability your country helped incur on their region will affect their children’s stability, their job prospects, their ability to make ends meet and to live life and have it abundantly. And yes, that’s a Bible verse paraphrased in case you didn’t know.Dear Mr. Bush, my parents are not the only ones afraid in this country. Everyone is in danger. We’re all victims of a government that has no idea how to govern. We’re all victims of your own country’s blind policies that only sees the region as “Israel and Others.” We’re all victims, Muslims and Christians of being constantly lumped as those beheading and those beheaded by those who have no idea how it is to live in a country teetering at the age of chaos.Dear Mr. Bush, sometimes the best thing to do is to stay quiet. I suggest you do this sometimes and find other ways to beat Donald Trump than to let people think I’m writing this from beyond the grave.

Source: US Presidential Nominee Jeb Bush on Lebanon: “If You’re A Christian, You’ll Be Beheaded” | A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

Robert Reich: The Rigging of the American Market – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

The only way to stop them is to prevent big corporations and Wall Street banks from rigging the market.For example, Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than do the citizens of any other developed nation.That’s partly because it’s perfectly legal in the US (but not in most other nations) for the makers of branded drugs to pay the makers of generic drugs to delay introducing cheaper unbranded equivalents, after patents on the brands have expired.This costs you and me an estimated $3.5 billion a year–a hidden upward redistribution of our incomes to Pfizer, Merck, and other big proprietary drug companies, their executives, and major shareholders.We also pay more for Internet service than do the inhabitants of any other developed nation.

Source: Robert Reich: The Rigging of the American Market – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Alabama 8-Year-Old Charged With Murder in Toddler’s Beating – The New York Times – {any racism involved – charging an 8-year old with murder???}

An 8-year-old boy has been charged with murder in Birmingham, Ala., where the police said Tuesday that he had “viciously attacked” a toddler whose mother had left children alone while she visited one of the city’s nightclubs.The authorities announced their intention to prosecute the boy, who was not identified, nearly a month after the death of 1-year-old Kelci Lewis. The child was found unresponsive on Oct. 11, and a police spokesman said Tuesday that investigators believed the older boy had become violent because the toddler would not stop crying.

Source: Alabama 8-Year-Old Charged With Murder in Toddler’s Beating – The New York Times