Jim Hightower : Help Russ Feingold Reform the Patriot Act

Posted on June 19, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Rewriting Some Patriot Act Stupidity
By Jim Hightower / June 19, 2008

Empirical evidence notwithstanding, stupidity is not a requirement for membership in the U.S. Congress. Also, stupid acts by Congress do not have to be forever.

Witness the infamous, freedom-busting, Orwellian piece of legislative stupidity known as the Patriot Act. Passed by a panicked Congress right after 9/11, and reauthorized by a cowed Congress in 2006, this thing empowers the FBI to make wholesale, secrete invasions of the American people’s privacy – grossly violating one of our country’s core values.

As we’ve learned from investigative reports by the bureau’s own inspector general, concerns about intrusive and abusive actions by a bulked up FBI were not theoretical. This national police agency has been found guilty of “widespread and serious misuse” of the Patriot Act’s most invasive provisions. For example, the act opened up our private records to government agents, enabling them to write their own authorizations for poking into our personal business without having to show any reasonable cause for spying on us. Hundreds of cases of the FBI sweeping up information it has no authority to collect have now been documented.

Did no one foresee the stupidity of granting such broad unchecked power? Yes. Sen. Russ Feingold did, and he cast the one, courageous vote against the Patriot Act in 2001. Now Feingold is back with S. 2088, a bill to rein in the FBI and restore the people’s Constitutional rights. As he puts it, we’ve learned the hard way that “trust us” doesn’t cut it when it comes to preventing government snoops from abusing their power.

Congress has the responsibility to put appropriate restraints on government authorities, and that’s what Feingold’s “National Security Reform Act” does. To help put some real patriotism in the misnamed and misguided Patriot Act, contact Feingold’s office 202-224-5323.

“Powering Down the Patriot Act,” / Mother Jones / April 29, 2008.

“S. 2088 – National Security Reform Act of 2007,” / Sen. Russ Feingold / Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

Source. / Jim Hightower

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Chafed Texan in the Naked City : Too Many Boobs!

Posted on June 19, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Boobs at Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C.

Says he’ll videotape the evidence
By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts / June 16, 2008

Washington is a town filled with boobs.

They’re everywhere, from the bare-breasted ladies who decorate the fountain at Dupont Circle to the peekaboo statue in the Justice Department’s Great Hall to the countless nudes in our museums. But while those of us who live here hardly blink at the public nudity, it can shock some of our visitors. Such was the case for Robert Hurt, who last week tried to add the issue of artistic indecency in the nation’s capital to the platform of the Texas GOP.

“You don’t have nude art on your front porch,” the Dallas Morning News quoted the delegate as telling the platform committee at the state party convention. “So why is it important to have that in the common places of Washington, D.C.?”

Hurt, 54, a Kerrville, Tex., rancher and father of 14, told us in a phone interview he first came to Washington a decade ago for a gathering of the evangelical Promise Keepers on the Mall. “It was probably not much different than ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ going to Beverly Hills,” he joked. At the National Gallery, he was appalled to see statues of unclothed people. “I found it very inappropriate,” he said. Returning a few years later, he discovered Arlington Memorial Bridge, flanked by the bare-chested figures of Valor and Sacrifice.

“The Lady Godiva thing — that’s what it conjured up, and that’s not what our country’s about,” he said.

Hurt notified his elected officials of his concerns but believes nothing was done. While he said he respects free speech, “I believe art affects a country indirectly. I have been studying the decline of morals in this country. It’s sending the wrong message to children that nudity is fine, that nakedness is fine. . . . There are degrees of vulgarity, and it opens up the door for the other stuff.”

The platform committee did not adopt Hurt’s recommendation on Washington nudity (nor his proposal to extend the 22nd Amendment — presidential term limits — to spouses). But Hurt said he’ll pursue the issue, possibly with another trip here to videotape the evidence. “I’m not going to stop until I succeed. I’m prepared for a long fight.”

Source. / washingtonpost.com

Thanks to Carol Petrucci / The Rag Blog

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Will He Thank God For this Honor?

Posted on June 19, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

George Carlin will be awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts said Tuesday. Carlin, 71, will be the 11th recipient of the award, which will be presented Nov. 10, a tribute performance that will be televised by PBS. Kennedy Center Chairman Stephen Schwarzman said Carlin makes people laugh and makes them think. Past recipients of the prize include Billy Crystal, Whoopi Goldberg, Steve Martin and Neil Simon.

George Carlin – Religion is bullshit.

The Rag Blog / June 18, 2008

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Insisting on the Pursuit of Justice

Posted on June 19, 2008 by RagBlog

Lawrence Velvel

Law School to Plan Bush War Crimes Prosecution
June 17, 2008

A conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes will be held September 13-14 at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .

“This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred,” said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. “It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.”

“We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice,” Velvel said. “And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s.”

Velvel said past practice has been to allow U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Viet Nam and elsewhere to enjoy immunity from prosecution upon leaving office. “President Johnson retired to his Texas ranch and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was named to head the World Bank; Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was allowed to grow richer and richer,” Velvel said.

He noted in the years since the prosecution and punishment of German and Japanese leaders after World War Two those nation’s leaders changed their countries’ aggressor cultures. One cannot discount contributory cause and effect here, he said.

“For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders,” Velvel said.

The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, among others.

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover was established in 1988 to provide an affordable, quality legal education to minorities, immigrants and students from low-income households that might otherwise be denied the opportunity to obtain a legal education and practice law. Its founder, Dean Velvel, has been honored by the National Law Journal and cited in various publications for his contributions to the reform of legal education.

Further information Jeff Demers at demers@msl.edu 978) 681-0800; or Sherwood Ross, media consultant to MSL, at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com.

Source / Information Clearing House

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And They’re Off and Running…

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

But, of course, racism and hatred and vicious lies won’t play a major role in this election. We’re beyond all that, right?

Well, just read the next four articles for a taste of what we’re facing in this election campaign.

Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog

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At Texas Republican Convention…

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer


Vendor who sold racist Obama pin:
Just meant to be funny
By Christy Hoppe / June 18, 2008

AUSTIN – The vendor who sold a racist pin at the Texas Republican Party convention last weekend in Houston apologized today and said he had no intention of creating the firestorm that has ensued.

“It’s just been crazy,” said Jonathan Alcox, who runs republicanmarket.com and had buttons and other items for sale at the GOP gathering. “The point is we made a mistake. I realize that now. And I apologize.”

The Republican Party of Texas announced today that it will donate to charity the $1,500 it received for leasing the booth to Mr. Alcox. The offending pin stated: “If Obama is president…Will we still call it the White House?”

The Dallas Morning News wrote about the pin being sold Saturday on its Trail Blazers blog and posted a picture of the pin. The story drew attention from several national news sites and blogs Tuesday and caused a firestorm of reaction, particularly at Texas GOP headquarters.

In a telephone interview from Florida, Mr. Alcox acknowledged the controversy but said it was unintentional.

“Obviously, it’s been offensive to people. It was not meant to be that way. We’re into humor – not racism,” Mr. Alcox said.

He said that he is neither Republican nor Democrat and that “there’s no agenda here.” He also runs a site offering Democratic merchandise, democratmall.com, and sells at Democratic gatherings.

He said after the blog post, his Web site was hacked, he was threatened, and the Texas Republican Party – his biggest customer — said it would never use his services again. He received so many abusive calls that he had to disconnect his phone. It’s the strongest reaction he’s gotten in 17 years in the business, he said.

Mr. Alcox said he made 12 of the pins after seeing a comic strip where Barack Obama was standing in front of a sign saying “The White House,” with the building behind him. Mr. Obama is depicted thinking, “That’s the first thing we’ll change.”

“We just changed it around a little bit and everyone went crazy. I was shocked,” Mr. Alcox said.

He said after having a conversation with a black man who called him about the blog post, he came to understand more about the nerve he had hit.

He said the Houston convention was the first time he had offered the pins, and he intended to see how they sold before putting them up on his Web site. He sold four pins – two of them to a reporter from The News.

Texas GOP spokesman Hans Klingler said the state party is sending a letter saying in “very strong terms” that Mr. Alcox need not apply to sell items at any further state GOP events.

He said that the party, while approving the lease to the vendor, was unaware of offensive merchandise being sold there.

The GOP plans to donate the money to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund to help flood victims in the Midwest.

Mr. Klingler said he and party leaders believe the pin is distasteful and they hated that it was being sold at their event, which he said was upbeat and dedicated to unity.

Source. / Dallas Morning News

First of all, that’s a lie there in the body of the story–the party certainly does vet vendor merchandise. How would I know? We’ve tried to be a vendor at the GOP convention–just for the hell of it–three times, and three times we’ve failed in the hunt. They told us they would have to see samples of all merchandise sold and then they would check it against a manifest when we moved into the hall. Obviously, with merchandise that says “End the war in Iraq” and “Army Wrong”–we’re not going to get in any time soon.

And oh, yes, I am writing the reporter to tell her the “real story.”

Alyssa Burgin / The Rag Blog

Thanks to Leslie Cunningham / The Rag Blog

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Racist Obama Doll Lives

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

The Sock Obama doll

Creators of The Sock Obama
seek new company to produce doll
By Sheena McFarland / June 18, 2008

A stuffed sock monkey doll dressed as and named after presidential candidate Barack Obama may not be shelved just yet, despite cries of racism from around the country.

David and Elizabeth Lawson, the doll’s creators who live in West Jordan, released a lengthy statement, ending with the sentiment “We hope to meet again soon in a new venue.”

Apparently that new venue is http://sockpoliticians.com. The Web site has the same doll, description and format as the Lawsons’ previous site.

The statement said the mass production of the doll, and the upcoming Sen. John McCain take – JohnnieMcSock – are canceled. However, that comes because Binkley Toys Inc., the Canadian company originally hired to mass produce the doll, pulled out after receiving multiple e-mails pointing out the racist nature of the doll. Binkley owner Rob Bishop – who is not related to Utah Rep. Rob Bishop – called his choice to make a prototype “naive,” but apologized and refused to make the doll.

While West Jordan’s The Sock Obama is issuing refunds to those who had pre-ordered the doll from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia, the company hopes to find a new manufacturer for their doll.

The Lawsons called the outcry of racism a hypocritical double standard as “thousands of Google sites” contain depictions of President Bush as a chimpanzee.

“In the good ol’ fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism, free enterprise has been censored, and TheSockObama politically plush toy has been discriminated against in the marketplace of the United States of America,” the statement read.

The Lawsons’ statement also said the creators of the puppet are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and asked people to “kindly refrain from unkind remarks about our neighbors and friends of the Mormon faith whom we love and hold dear.”

The Lawsons pointed to “the blogging dens of resistance” that have flooded them with e-mails in protest.

“Last we heard, a posse of bloggers from back East are on their way over to conduct – how did they phrase it? – a good ol’ fashioned KKK house burning party at David and Elizabeth’s. Kinda exciting stuff, but this in America?” it stated.

The desire to continue to manufacture the doll is a shift from the Lawsons’ original statement that they did not realize that depicting a black man as a monkey would carry any implications of racism.

That the company is considering pushing ahead with the manufacturing of the doll astounds Charles Henderson, a black Kearns Democrat running for a seat in Utah’s House of Representatives.

“After you’ve been told it’s not acceptable, why do you pursue this unless it’s motivated by financial gain, notoriety or some other more malicious path that you’re trying to take?” Henderson said. “I don’t see a reason why they would go down that path. It’s not acceptable. I hope no one buys it.”

Henderson also wonders who the Lawsons are targeting as their audience after hearing from people such as Jeanetta Williams, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who calls the doll “pure racism at its extreme.”

Source. / Salt Lake Tribune

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Obama Accuser Has Long Rap Sheet

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

The Pueblo County Sheriff’s website, which pictures Sinclair under the word ‘Wanted,’ cites felony theft and forgery charges. Courtesy Politico.

Specializes in “Crimes Involving Deceit”
By Ben Smith / June 18, 2008

Larry Sinclair is wanted in Colorado, but you can catch him today (Wednesday, June 18) at the National Press Club.

Sinclair is familiar to political junkies and reporters as the source of outlandish allegations about Senator Barack Obama, tales that began with sex and drugs and moved on to murder.

The Duluth, Minn., resident is the sort of figure who appears at the margins of every presidential campaign, and both Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had their own obscure accusers with dramatic allegations. But as the old media ignores him, Sinclair has taken full advantage of the Internet, and a video in which he makes his claims that have been viewed more than 900,000 times on YouTube.

This afternoon, he’s reserved the Holeman Lounge at downtown Washington’s National Press Club to try to lend his story the legitimacy that comes with national media attention.

Sinclair’s biography, though, may get in the way of that pitch: Public records and court filings reveal that he has a 27-year criminal record, with a specialty in crimes involving deceit. The record includes forgery charges in two states, one of which drew Sinclair a 16-year jail sentence. The Pueblo County, Colo., Sheriff’s Office also has an outstanding warrant for Sinclair’s arrest for forging an acquaintance’s signature and stealing her tax refunds.

“It is what it is,” said Sinclair’s spokesman, Montgomery Blair Sibley, of his client’s criminal record. “He’s not hiding from it, he’s not denying it.”

Sinclair has, however, addressed elements of his criminal past on his own blog and in court filings punctuated by unusual spellings and capitalizations.

Addressing the Pueblo County theft charges, Sinclair swore in a 2004 affidavit that his “ALLEGED VICTIM SEEKS TO USE DEFENDANT AS SCAPE GOAT FOR HER HUSBANDS AND BROTHERS PROBLEMS WITH MEXICAN DRUG DEALERS.”

Sinclair’s affidavit, which he posted to his blog, accompanied a request to a Colorado judge to dismiss the warrant on the grounds that Sinclair was “disabled with [a] severe spine injury and nerve damage,” that returning to Colorado would put his life in danger, and that he was “terminally ill.”

Sinclair, who is still alive, is 46, stands 5’7″, and weights 168 pounds, according to arrest records. Colorado records list him with 13 aliases, including “Larye Vizcarra Avila” and “Mohammed Gahanan.” His story has generally been ignored by the mainstream media, because he’s been unable to substantiate his allegations. He has come to public attention recently, however, because his planned appearance at the National Press Club drew complaints from a wide array of prominent liberal bloggers, led by Firedoglake’s Jane Hamsher. Their petition to prevent Sinclair from renting space at the club – which bloggers feared would lend him credibility – drew more than 11,000 signatures.

Press Club President Sylvia Smith said Sinclair had rented space at the club, which doesn’t censor speakers.

“I’m not aware that we’ve ever turned anybody away for content,” she said, adding that Sinclair’s allegations “don’t seem very credible.”

Politico isn’t reprinting Sinclair’s allegations because they are unsubstantiated.

This February, the website Whitehouse.com reportedly offered Sinclair $100,000 if he could pass a polygraph test verifying his claims. He took them up on it, and the site said in a press release that the polygraph organizers said his results “indicated deception.” Sinclair then suggested the polygraph’s sponsors had been bribed to skew the results against him, an allegation his lawyer, Sibley, said he would expand on at his press conference.

Sibley is best known as the lawyer for the “D.C. Madam,” the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Earlier this year, the Florida Bar Association suspended Sibley’s license to practice law, in part for being a “vexatious litigant,” a suspension that applies in Washington, D.C., as well.

Wednesday, Whitehouse.com has scheduled a competing press conference outside the National Press Club to discuss the results of the polygraph.

Sinclair’s brushes with the government long predate his recent interest in Senator Obama. The details of his criminal record surfaced after he filed a defamation suit in federal court in Washington, D.C., against three anonymous online critics with names like TubeSockTedD who had written, among other claims, that he was living in a mental institution at the time he allegedly met Obama. Sinclair denies the claim.

In response to his suit, a lawyer for the anonymous bloggers hired local attorneys and private investigators, and dug up details of Sinclair’s criminal record from Colorado, Florida, and South Carolina. The lawyer, Paul Levy of the nonprofit Public Citizen Litigation Group, provided his client’s filings in federal court, which are publicly available, to Politico.

The records tell the story of an itinerant life of small-time crime and bad checks, punctuated by stretches of jail time in two states.

He was first arrested on a larceny charge in 1981 in Denver, according to his Colorado arrest record, as filed in federal court. In 1985, he was convicted of theft and of forging a check in Florida, and sentenced to a year in jail, according to Florida records filed in federal court.

After the Florida episode, according to the records, he returned to Colorado, where he faced check fraud and credit card charges in 1986. Then, in 1987, he was convicted in Colorado on more serious forgery charges, and sentenced to 16 years in jail.

In prison, according to state records filed in federal court, Sinclair was disciplined 97 times for infractions including assault, threats, drug possession, intimidation, and verbal abuse, most recently in
1996.

“He has not institutionalized well,” a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, Liz McDonough, told the Denver Post in 1996 after a month-long Sinclair hunger strike. She said he had served time in prisons in Buena Vista, Delta, Limon and Canon City before being transferred to the state’s maximum security penitentiary in 1993.

In the summer of 1996, according to Colorado’s state court database, he began proceedings to formally change his name from LA Rye Viz. Avila to Larry Wayne Sinclair. By 1999, according to a mention in a local newspaper, he was out of jail and living in Pueblo, Colo.

The Public Citizen investigator in Colorado stated that Sinclair’s outstanding legal troubles there appear to date from 2001, and that Sinclair’s effort to convince the judge in 2004 to dismiss those charges failed. The Pueblo County Sheriff’s website, which pictures Sinclair under the word “Wanted,” cites felony theft and forgery charges.

Sinclair was also arrested and charged with disorderly conduct in South Carolina last September, according to state records filed in federal court.

Sinclair has said that he tried to contact Obama in 2007 to discuss his claims and was ignored, forcing him to go public. On January 18, 2008, a one-minute-and-42-second video was posted to YouTube. It features Sinclair, speaking in a high voice and wearing a red shirt and blue baseball cap, reciting his allegations and addressing Obama.

“I challenge you to take a polygraph test,” he says in the video.

Since then, he’s promoted and elaborated on his claims, and engaged in intense online exchanges with infuriated Obama supporters on his blog and in federal court, where Sinclair and Sibley’s defamation claim has suffered a series of legal setbacks.

Obama’s spokesman declined to comment on any aspect of Sinclair’s story, or his appearance at the press club.

Despite the warrant for Sinclair’s arrest, he appears likely to stay out of jail, as long as he stays out of Colorado. Pueblo County Undersheriff J.R. Hall said that the warrant doesn’t allow for extradition from out of state.

“I doubt very seriously we’re going to be in that jurisdiction tomorrow,” Undersheriff Hall said of Washington, D.C.

Sinclair’s notoriety, and his scheduled press conference, however, has drawn the interest of the Colorado authorities.

“We’ve notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they will investigate,” Hall said.

[Disclosure: Public Citizen, which represents the bloggers Sinclair sued, also represents Ben Smith in an unrelated case.]

© 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC

Source. / Politico

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Baracknophobia!!!!

Posted on June 18, 2008 by Thorne Dreyer

Jon Stewart Mocks Media For Peddling
Insane Obama Rumors
June 17, 2008

On Monday night’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart mocked the media’s willingness to peddle insane rumors about Barack Obama — and their tendency to blame the rumor-mongering on internet sites. Calling it “Baracknophobia,” Stewart showed clips of anchor and pundits from all three cable networks repeating baseless rumors (Muslim, plagiarist, sexist, etc.) about Barack Obama (and his wife Michelle).

The highlight of the clip comes about 2:25 in, when Stewart says, “Oh, this is interesting. SomeguyI’veneverheardof.com is reporting presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama has lady parts. Obviously scurrilous and unfounded, we’ll examine it tonight in our special, ‘Barack Obama’s Vagina: The October Surprise In His Pants.'”

Source. / The Huffington Post

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We Love an Optimist

Posted on June 18, 2008 by RagBlog

Iraqi Parliament

Iraq’s parliament prepares to leave Green Zone
June 17, 2008

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s parliament will relocate just outside Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone compound in September for the first time since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, a sign security is improving, the first deputy speaker said on Tuesday.

Khalid al-Attiya said top parliamentary officials had approved moving to a newly renovated building.

The plan was made possible by a drop in violence to a four-year low, a parliamentary spokesman added.

“Tomorrow the committee of security in parliament will meet the minister of interior and defence to arrange security measures for the (new) building,” Attiya said in a statement.

The three-story building to be used is a few hundred metres from the Green Zone, but clear of checkpoints that make the heavily-protected area largely inaccessible to the general public. Numerous government offices and foreign embassies are inside the sprawling Green Zone.

Attiya said the long-term plan was to build a grander structure for parliament on the banks of the Tigris River.

Mohammed Abu Bakr, a parliamentary spokesman, said it had always been parliament’s intention to move but lawmakers were waiting for violence to ease.

“Moving means there is improvement in security and we are getting closer to the people. This is what parliaments all over the world need to do,” he said.

Highlighting the fragility of security improvements in Baghdad, a car bomb in the northwestern al-Hurriya district killed 11 people and wounded 42 on Tuesday, police said.

“We don’t want to say we have no security fears, but we bet more that the situation will improve,” Abu Bakr said.} (Reporting by Khalid al-Ansary, writing by Tim Cocks, Editing by Matthew Jones)

Source / Reuters

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Neglecting Our Responsibilities to Iraqis

Posted on June 18, 2008 by RagBlog

Iraqi refugees on the Syrian border

Iraq: World Governments Misleading and Failing Iraqi Refugees
By Amnesty International / June 17, 2008

The international community is evading its responsibility towards refugees from Iraq by promoting a false picture of the security situation in Iraq when the country is neither safe nor suitable for return, Amnesty International said today.

In its new report, Rhetoric and reality: the Iraqi refugee crisis, which is based on recent research and interviews with Iraqi refugees, the organization said that the world’s richest states are failing to provide the necessary assistance to Iraqi refugees, most of whom are plunged in despair and hurtling towards destitution.

“Governments have done little or nothing to help Iraqi refugees, failing in their moral, political and legal duty to share responsibility for them,” said Amnesty International. “Instead, apathy and rhetoric have been the overwhelming response to one of the worst refugee crises in the world.”

Amnesty International said that the Government of Iraq and states involved in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, in particular the USA and the UK, highlight “improved” security or “voluntary” returns to Iraq out of political expedience, to demonstrate that their military involvement has been a success.

“Rhetoric cannot hide the reality that the wider human rights situation in Iraq remains dire,” said Amnesty International.

“People are being killed every month by armed groups, the Multinational Force, Iraqi security forces and private military and security guards. Kidnappings, torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention pervade the daily lives of Iraqis. People continue to attempt to flee, something that is now very difficult with the recent imposition of visa restrictions on Iraqis by Jordan and Syria.”

According to the latest estimates of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of Iraqis who have fled their homes has now reached 4.7 million, the highest since the US-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent internal armed conflict.

While Syria and Jordan have shouldered most of the refugee influx, they have now resorted to drastic measures such as restricting entry and deporting people who may be at risk of persecution, partly due to the lack of support from the international community.

Having exhausted savings, many refugees are now living in complete destitution and facing new dangers, such as being forced into so-called “voluntary” return to Iraq and child labour — many families have been forced to send their children to work in the streets in a desperate bid to help them survive.

For some refugees, the difficulties they are facing in the host country are prompting them to make the difficult and dangerous decision to return to Iraq, either temporarily to collect a pension or food ration or for other such reasons, or more permanently because of their desperate situation, not because they feel they are no longer at risk of human rights abuses in Iraq.

They are making this decision as they feel they have no other option.

A 62-year-old retired Shi’a army officer, Majid, a widower with seven adult children all living in Baghdad, told Amnesty International in February that after attempting to find protection in Syria, with only the 50 lira (US$1) in his pocket, he had to return to Iraq. Even though he was extremely scared, he had lost hope, saying “If I die, I die.” Majid fled Iraq in February 2008 after two of his nephews, Mansour and Sami, aged 17 and 19, were beheaded by members of an armed group north of Baghdad. He exhausted his savings in Syria and was soon left with nothing. Weeping, he explained to Amnesty International that he had no alternative but to return to Iraq.

Many European countries are now attempting to deport Iraqis, sometimes to some of the most dangerous parts of Iraq such as the south and central regions. In addition to taking direct actions forcing Iraqis to return, they are using indirect methods such as cutting off basic assistance and services to rejected asylum-seekers in order to force them to “voluntarily” return to Iraq.

Sweden, which is host to the largest number of Iraqi refugees in Europe and once a positive example to its neighbours, has now changed its approach and is denying the vast majority of Iraqis protection and forcibly returning some to very dangerous areas.

Amnesty International is greatly concerned that the failure to respond to this crisis will worsen an already dire situation. Amongst other things, it is calling on the international community to:
• urgently and substantially raise sustainable financial assistance;
• end practices such as forcible returns that put lives at further risk;
• cease practices that result in coerced “voluntary” returns;
• allow individuals to seek paid employment; and
• extensively increase resettlement places for the most vulnerable refugees to start a new life in a third country.

Amnesty International is also calling on the governments of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, as well as those of other countries in the region, to allow unrestricted access to people fleeing Iraq, cease all deportations to Iraq, and grant refugees access to the labour market.

“The international community must make a true commitment to assist Iraq’s displaced people by substantially boosting sustainable financial assistance, ending forcible returns, stopping practices that result in coerced voluntary returns and offering increased numbers of resettlement places,” said Amnesty International.

Source / Information Clearing House

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Not for What We Believe, But Rather for What We Do

Posted on June 18, 2008 by RagBlog


Poll: American image remains dim in Muslim world
June 15, 2008

AMMAN — The image of the United States remains overwhelmingly negative in most of the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, a latest global poll revealed on its website.

According to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, in Jordan, one of the key regional allies of the United States, 79 percent respondents have a negative light of the world power, registering the highest unfavorable rate among the surveyed Muslim nations. Only 19 percent hold positive views.

The survey was conducted among more than 24,000 people in 24 countries between March 17 and April 21.

In Egypt, another key ally of the United States in the Middle East, 22 percent of respondents expressed a favorable view of America, while 39 percent saw the United States as an “enemy” and 19 percent as a “partner.”

Turkey, also a main ally of the United States in this region, had 12 percent of respondents expressing a favorable view of the United States, the lowest positive rate in the entire survey, with70 percent seeing America as “an enemy.”

Lebanon was the only Arab country polled where a majority of 51percent held a favorable opinion of the United States, although this sentiment was divided along sectarian lines as no Shiite respondents expressed a favorable view of the United States.

However, another major trend highlighted by the poll was that most countries held the American people in a more favorable light than the nation itself.

In Jordan, there was a gap of 17 percentage points, with 36 percent of Jordanians expressing a favorable view of the American people, compared to 19 percent of the nation.

The largest gap of favor ability ratings was found in Lebanon, where 74 percent had a favorable view of Americans, compared to 51percent of the country itself.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project, part of the Washington-based “fact tank” Pew Research Center, is a series of worldwide public opinion surveys ranging from people’s assessments of their own lives to their views about the current state of the world.

Source / China View

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