Gen McChrystal: Dialogue with Taliban Possible

WASHINGTON, July 29: As part of a new strategy, the United States and its Nato allies in Afghanistan are trying to reach out to the second tier of the Taliban leadership, while continuing to use military force to tame or eliminate the hardcore.

Gen Stanley McChrystal, the new US commander in Afghanistan, provided some insight into the new strategy in an interview published on Wednesday. Gen McChrystal, who has prepared a briefing paper for President Barack Obama on the situation in Afghanistan, disagreed with those who say that no dialogue with the Taliban was possible.

“There is significant potential to go after what I would call mid- and low-level Taliban fighters and leaders and offer them re-integration into Afghanistan under the constitution,” he said.

“Most of the fighters we see in Afghanistan are Afghans, some with foreign cadre with them. But most we don’t see are deeply ideological or even politically motivated,” he added. “Most are operating for pay; some are under a commander’s charismatic leadership; some are frustrated with local leaders.”

The general said that his briefing paper provided “a strategic assessment” of the Afghan situation and suggested “an appropriate way ahead and some specific recommendations”. He did not outline those recommendations. But diplomatic sources who spoke to Dawn in Washington, revealed that as part of the new strategy, the US and Nato troops had started “clearing the first tier of the Taliban leadership” comprising hardcore militants. US policy planners hope that doing so would not only eliminate the hardline Taliban fighters; it will also allow “the second tier” to come forward. The second tier is regarded as crucial because such local leaders control large numbers of Taliban fighters in Pashtun-dominated southern Afghanistan and appear willing to talk.

The first tier of Taliban commanders – hardliners around Mullah Omar — were disregarded because of their links to Al Qaeda and their refusal to talk.

The third tier foot soldiers with no strong commitments are not approached because US policy-makers believe that they will follow their tribal leaders.

The second tier is considered susceptible to peace overtures also because it comprises tribal leaders who joined the Taliban out of tribal loyalty and financial and political benefits and not for ideological commitment.

To achieve this target, the Americans have sent 4,000 additional troops to the provinces where the Taliban have had a strong hold. They are also urging their Nato allies to increase their troops as well.

Read the full report here.

Yemen Cracks Down on Al Jazeera

(ANHRI/IFEX) - The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) condemns the escalation of the Yemeni government's crackdown on independent media which has now extended to the targeting of satellite television stations.

Al Jazeera was the first to be targeted after a ruling party official, Mossaad Allahbi, called for the closure of the local Al Jazeera office for allegedly broadcasting news "hostile to the unity and securityof Yemen."

The demand to close the Al Jazeera office comes as part of a series of hostile actions against freedom of the press and journalists in Yemen, which has affected at least eight newspapers so far. This latest action clearly shows the Yemeni government's hostility toward freedom of expression and distaste for transparency and open debate on the issues that concern the citizens of Yemen.

ANHRI condemns the government's actions and calls for independent media to be allowed to carry out their work as "they must pass on news and information to the citizens, who definitely pay no less attention and care to the interests and security of Yemen than members of the ruling party."

ANHRI thinks the attack on Al Jazeera in Yemen, as well as the restrictions it has experienced in other Arab countries, require efforts from all individuals and institutions interested in freedom of the Arab media to support this important station, which has greatly contributed to changing the perception of the role of media in the Arab world. The station is committed to meet the needs of Arab citizens to know the news and views on different issues, rather than merely paying lip service to the governments and rulers who rarely respect democracy and peoples' rights.

For information on the Yemeni government's crackdown on the press (in Arabic only), click here:

http://www.anhri.net/press/2009/pr0531.shtmlhttp://www.anhri.net/press/2009/pr0523.shtml

http://www.ifex.org/yemen/2009/07/16/al-jazeera_closure_sought/

For more information:
Arabic Network for Human Rights Information
Cairo Egypt
info (@) anhri.net
Phone: +20 227 736177
Fax: +20 227 736177
http://www.anhri.net

Al-Qaeda Builds Forces in Yemen

Recent reports suggesting that al-Qaeda fighters are leaving Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the group has suffered serious setbacks, have renewed international concerns that Yemen is reemerging once again as a major terrorist safe haven. Although the assessments of al-Qaeda's resurgence in Yemen are accurate, the deteriorating situation is not due to U.S. successes elsewhere; rather, it is the result of waning U.S. and Yemeni attention over the past five years. Renewed cooperation between Sana and Washington in tackling al-Qaeda and addressing Yemen's systemic problems could help reduce the terrorist organization's appeal in this troubled country.

Read it all here. For other reports on how Yemen has become a terrorist safe haven, go here and here.

Obama's Birth Certificate

I'm glad that Lou Dobbs keeps asking the question "Why won't the White House simply produce President Obama's birth certificate?" And CNN wants Dobbs to pipe down.

There is no doubt that Obama was born in the USA since he wasw born in Honolulu. So why the secrecy?

Maybe the White House wants to use this issue to paint those who ask about the certificate as a lunatic fringe. But Dobbs can't be painted with that brush.

Maybe the White House isn't forthcoming because this is about the exercise of power, as Bill O'Reilly has suggested. Ask all you want, but we're in control and we don't have to show you anything.

Or maybe the certificate is being kept secret because no father is named.

Perhaps the reason has to do with religion.... if his birth record lists Obama's religion as "Muslim." But who knows?

I wonder if Americans will ever know.

Meanwhile, various certificates have surfaced, including this one.

The Truth Gap in Obamacare

The White House says "It’s time to fix our unsustainable insurance system and create a new foundation for health care security. That means guaranteeing your health care security and stability with eight basic consumer protections:

No discrimination for pre-existing conditions
No exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles or co-pays
No cost-sharing for preventive care
No dropping of coverage if you become seriously ill
No gender discrimination
No annual or lifetime caps on coverage
Extended coverage for young adults
Guaranteed insurance renewal so long as premiums are paid"

What Americans actually end up with is still unclear, but to be sure it will be very costly to the nation and according to page 16, when you leave your job for another job you will be required to take the public option. By this means it won't be long before all Americans will be on the public option... in other words "Obamacare" moves our nation to socialized medicine. Do we really want a big bureaucratic government to decide our health benefits and make life and death decisions for us?

World Record: 541,176 Saplings Planted

The Guinness Book has certified that 541,176 saplings planted in Pakistan on Wednesday July 15 have set a world record.

Guinness Book of World Records adjudicator Adil Ahmed and witnesses MNA Marvi Memon and Tahir Qureshi monitored the event organised by the ministry of environment near Keti Bandar in Thatta district and after verification of procedures adopted for planting the trees rectified the world record set by India on June 12 and 13 when 447,874 saplings were planted in Assam.

The Keti Bandar event was held in mangrove areas on coastal islands of Sindh, which are devoid of vegetation, to develop forestry through international competition.

From here.

Gates a Racist?

Pakistan Peoples Party Attacks Christians

Kotri: July 27, 2009. (Abbas Kassar reports for PCP) : Residents of Christian Colony Sikendarabad held protest demonstration here on Sunday against attack on their colony in which 4 persons were injured and forcible occupation of their colony primar by attackers and demanded protection to their community.

The demonstration was led by Dr. Emanuel Shahzad who told this scribe that more than 1200 homes of Christians were living at Christian Colony Sikendarabad near Kotri since before creation of Pakistan.

He said that land of Christian colony was donated by late MNA Malik Sikendar for residential purpose to Christians. He said that government had granted primary school and dispensary for their colony which was inaugurated by formed MPA Javed Micheal in 2005.

He said that some days back few persons Javed Shana, Wazir Khunharo, Amir Khunharo, Fida Khunharo, and other armed men who claim to be members of ruling Pakistan Peoples Party attacked the Christian Colony with iron sticks and Dandas beat the residents of colony in which 4 Christians Imdad Masih, Waris Masih, Riaz Masih and Asif Masih were brutally injured.

He said that injured were taken to Taluka hospital Kotri. He said that attack was made in presence of police who did not move to save the Christians and rather protected assailants who took control of primary school building and threw children out of it. He said they brought whole incident to notice of District Coordination Officer and District Police but they did not take any action and school still remains under the control of assailants. He said that when police failed to take action against the attackers, they have now started to threaten them of death. He said the Christians of this colony numbering more than 6000 were passing nights and days under threats and were feeling danger to their lives. He also said that whenever any Christian goes out of colony he is beaten by the Ghundas who are keeping watch on them. He said Javed Shana who is notorious with many cases against him on various police stations but police fails to take action against him. He demanded action against the assailants, recovery of primary schools from clutches of Ghundas and to providing protection to Christian community.

To a question Dr. Emanuel said that federal minister Shahbaz Bhatti who represents Christians in government cannot help them because when in past they approached to him for help his reply was that he belongs to Punjab so cannot come to their help. He said that the terrorists were roaming around Christian colony with arms and they might kidnap their women folk or kill their men.

Immigration Provision Includes Same-Sex Couples

Joan Frawley Desmond reports that Democratic senators have introduced legislation meant to address what they see as an unfair immigration provision that makes some families wait a decade or more to be reunited with family members seeking legal residence. But the “families” covered in the legislation include same-sex couples.

Read it here.

Why are American Jews Silent?

As Obama pushes for a 2-state "solution" at the cost of Israel's security, where are American Jews? That's a good question. Read more here.

Gay Lifestyle not Sanctioned by Church

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the figurative head of the Anglican Communion, has this to say about the gay/lesbian/bisexual rights agenda of The Episcopal Church:

7. In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also. A major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.

8. This is not our situation in the Communion. Thus a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole. And if this is the case, a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond; whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church's teaching sanctions, and thus it is hard to see how they can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires.

From here.

Recession Deepening?

There are widespread reports that at least some aspects of the Great Recession may be hitting bottom. Certainly if we believe Wall Street things are on the mend. The DOW is up 35% and the S&P 500 is up 40% since their lows in March. Surely this is a sign that Happy Days are at least on their way if not yet actually "Here Again."

A terrific assessment of the hoped-for end to the Recession, or is this simply a short-lived bear market rally? Read it here.

What is Illan Rua Wall Talking About?

Illan Rua Wall (Oxford Brookes University - Department of Law) has posted On Pain and The Sense of Human Rights (Australian Feminist Law Journal, Vol. 29, 2008) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Human rights law inscribes a relation between the political and suffering. This relation is twofold, it facilitates the radical aspect of human rights’ struggle against domination, but at the same time seems to reduce the human rights horizon to the short-term philantropism of humanitarianism. We will argue that this twofold structure is crucial to understanding human rights. We can begin to imagine a different, non-metaphysical, human rights through thinking a different concept of suffering with emphasis on ‘sense’ and ‘vulnerability’. This article is an attempt to think a future of human rights, a future which is not determined by possessive individualism and the closure of the subject.

Hat Tip to Legal Theory Blog

Would someone please explain to me what this woman is talking about? "Non-metaphysical thinking"? You mean cut the religious crap, Illan?

Praying and Working for Christian Unity

By Bishop David Chislett SSC

YOU only have to keep an eye on the blogs to know that uninformed speculation continues regarding the approach of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC) bishops to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) in Rome. This article is an attempt at putting some of the discussion in its proper context.

The 2007 letter signed by the bishops in Portsmouth refers to the prayer Jesus prayed on the night before he died for the unity of all who believe in him.(1) It outlines the twentieth century movement of Rome and Canterbury towards full ecclesial reunion, to which many of us have been personally committed for most of our lives. It makes reference to the historic visit of Archbishop Michael Ramsey to Pope Paul VI in March 1966 (2) and the work of the subsequent Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC). Older readers will recall how in those days Paul VI startled his own Curia by referring to the Anglican Communion as a "sister Church", a term up until then reserved for the Eastern Orthodox Churches - a term emphatically no longer used by Rome of the Anglican Communion.

I remember those heady days. Most Anglicans felt that, by the grace of God, the time was coming when, to use the phrase Paul VI borrowed from the Malines Conversations (1921-1925), the Anglican Communion would be united with but not absorbed by Rome, with due honour given to the authentic "patrimony" of Anglicanism. Even Anglicans who didn't really approve understood that the process was well and truly under way.

If it was clear that Rome and Canterbury were engaged and looked forward to a wedding, as early as the mid 1970s it was also becoming clear that on the Anglican side a rampant promiscuity was breaking out that threatened the engagement. Significant parts of the Communion were creating new obstacles to the unity longed for by so many; obstacles as inconsistent with a plain reading of Anglican formularies as they are with the Faith received from the Apostles and maintained by the wider Catholic Church.

At the most theological level was the purported ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopate, with its consequent undermining of sacramental certainty and the classical Anglican understanding both of authority and the given-ness of the Faith. More recently the growing ambivalence towards authentic Christian sacramental and iconographic teaching on gender and sexuality, upon which the ordination of women depends, has given rise to the homosexual crisis which threatens to blow the Anglican Communion apart.

Many Anglicans who (rightly) recognised that in terms of catholic sacramental life the rubicon was, in fact, the purported ordination of women, reorganized themselves in ways that would enable them to continue living according to the Gospel and the Catholic Faith. Where possible this was done "just on the inside" of the Anglican Communion, with priests and people gathering around orthodox bishops and dioceses, and - from the early 1990s - within Forward in Faith in the U.K., North America and Australia. The provision of Provincial Episcopal Visitors ("flying bishops") in England enabled a more or less sacramentally distinct regrouping of Anglican catholics "just on the inside" of the mother Church of the Communion.

In contrast, predominately liberal Anglican churches in places like North America, South Africa and Australia adopted a scorched earth policy, denying the "sacramental space" needed by the consciences of the orthodox. So, in these countries the kind of Anglicans who in England are found in parishes under the episcopal care of flying bishops have mostly had no alternative than to regroup as Continuing Anglicans "just on the outside" of the official liberal church in order to live according to the Gospel and the Catholic Faith.

Many of these Continuing Anglican churches comprise the Traditional Anglican Communion, which is the largest grouping of such communities. The TAC maintains a communion relationship with Forward in Faith, and some bishops and priests of the TAC are even licensed to officiate in orthodox parts of the Anglican Communion.

TAC leaders have had informal talks with Vatican officials for nearly twenty years. The 2007 letter from the TAC bishops to the Holy See sought a way of moving to the next level, and signified our desire to continue the ARCIC process to full ecclesial reunion where the Anglican Communion as a whole effectively left off. It stands to reason that a fairly significant regrouping of Anglicans that refuses to embrace the new obstacles to unity should be able to continue down that path.

In a statement released on 25th February 2009, the TAC's Primate, Archbishop John Hepworth, explained that the intention of the bishops was to "seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See, at once treasuring the full expression of catholic faith and treasuring our tradition within which we have come to this moment."

He went on to say,
"We remain in quiet prayer, while growing our Communion in key parts of the world. We agreed, rightly, to allow the Holy See the opportunity to respond to the difficult problems that our letter undoubtedly caused. When there is a reply, I am committed to presenting it to a full meeting of our College of Bishops, and to formal meetings of each of the general synods of our churches that voted to support this initiative." (3)

I have written before on this matter, noting that there is - as one would expect - a variety of views about us among Roman Catholic leaders in this country as well as in the Vatican. Many of our critics (including some former Anglicans!) resent the approach we have made. They insist that the only way open to Anglicans seeking full communion should be individual "conversion."

Furthermore, it is known that some Roman Catholic authorities work against us because of their friendships with liberal Anglican Communion bishops.

On the other hand, among bishops and other Roman Catholic authorities worldwide there is an increasing desire to support us, even to the extent - in some places - of routine sharing of buildings and other resources.

The publicity resulting from the article in the Perth Record led many people to conclude that what was being sought by the TAC is a "personal prelature," - a recently devised way of being Roman Catholic in which the clergy are subject, not to the diocesan bishop, but to another bishop somewhere else. Opus Dei is so far the only personal prelature.

In fact, the precise shape of what will work for us is still to be devised. As Professor Tracey Rowland points out in Ratzinger's Faith, her survey of Joseph Ratzinger's theological and philosophical thinking, "When it comes to the more practical questions about the way of moving forward toward Christian unity, Ratzinger has stated that Catholics cannot demand that all the other Churches be disbanded and their members individually incorporated into the Catholic church. However, Catholics can hope that the hour will come when 'the churches' that exist outside 'the Church' will enter into its unity. They must remain in existence as churches, with only those modifications which such a unity necessarily requires. In the meantime the Catholic Church has no right to absorb the other churches. The Church has not yet prepared for them a place of their own to which they are legitimately entitled." (4)

Professor Rowland then outlines the approach of the TAC to Rome as a possible example of such a process beginning.

Some Roman Catholics and Anglicans, emphasising the Anglican tradition's origin within the Latin Church, do in fact confine their thinking to a personal prelature kind of sub-grouping. Others of a similar mind look for a more fully developed version of The Anglican Use as it exists in the USA.

Ecumenists can be found, however, who are quite adventurous in suggesting that the so-called "uniate" Churches in full communion with Rome offer the best model for Anglicans seeking an ecclesial future in full communion. These are ritual churches "sui iuris" - in other words, churches with their own rites, cultures and canon law. And although, as Archbishop Hepworth pointed out in his statement, "most of these rites are descended from ancient churches that have never been part of the Roman or Western rite",(5) leading English theologian Fr Aidan Nichols OP has publicly supported the uniate model as a viable model for an Anglican Rite Church.

Indeed, seventeen years ago in The Panther and the Hind he explored what such an Anglican Church in full communion with Rome might look like:
"An Anglican church united with Rome . . . might be a church with a religious metaphysic drawn from the Cambridge Platonists, supplying as this would a doctrine of creation, and an account of the human being 'in the image and likeness of God', necessary to the theocentric humanism of any truly Catholic tradition; a doctrinal and sacramental ethos taken from the Restoration divines, with their stress on the inseparable inter connexion of Incarnation, Church and liturgy; and a missionary spirit borrowed from the Evangelical movement, and centred therefore on the universal significance of the Saviour's atoning work - the whole to be confirmed and, where necessary, corrected by acceptance of the framework of the Roman Catholic communion, including the latter's teaching authority to determine those many questions of faith and morals which, historically, have kept Anglicans divided. In such a way, numerous elements of the Anglican theological tradition 'classics', both as texts and persons - could find repatriation in the Western patriarchate, in peace and communion with that see with which the origins of English Christianity are for ever connected. Such an Anglican Uniate community might be relatively small in numbers, yet, provided with its own canonical structure, liturgical books, parishes, and means of priestly formation, it would enrich Roman Catholicism with its own theological patrimony, and - in the atmosphere of ecumenical detente which holds good in the West, though not, alas, the East, fulfil the role of 'bridge-Church' between Canterbury and Rome."(6)

More recently, in his paper Anglican Uniatism, Nichols says that the concept of an Anglican Church "sui iuris"
". . . would have to be presented prudently to the wider Catholic public. It can certainly be pointed out that the Second Vatican Council goes out of its way, in the Decree on Ecumenism, to give a special place to Anglicanism among the ecclesial communities that emerged from the Church crisis of the sixteenth century, and assurances that whatever is valid in the patrimony of Anglican worship, thought and spirituality, could be preserved in Catholic unity have been forthcoming, if in very general terms, from post-Conciliar popes. Places to look would be, for instance, the speeches of Paul VI at the canonisation of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales and of John Paul II on his visit to Canterbury Cathedral. St Thomas Aquinas, when speaking of the variety of Religious Orders in the Church, liked to cite the psalm which, in its Latin version, describes the Church as 'circumdata varietate', surrounded by variety. The pains and purgatories of the post-Conciliar period have taught us to treat 'variety' with some caution, since pluralism comes in two forms, the legitimate and the anarchic. But an Anglican Uniate body, defined with discernment and sensitivity, could I believe, join the ranks of the Churches sui iuris which give Catholicism an indispensable dimension of its plenary or holistic quality."(7)

It is clear that Rome is talking to a range of Anglicans at the moment. The TAC is merely the group out in front. Whatever form an "Anglican Church in full communion" might take, it will obviously need to be capable of drawing into its life waves of likeminded Anglican catholics from a variety of backgrounds and jurisdictions.

Let us continue to pray for those involved in the dialogue that they will have the gift of wisdom and insight in the consideration of what will one day be seen as a momentous and historic act of ecclesial reunion.

In the meantime, let us try to understand that at the most basic level the Catholic Church already comprises a range of "churches in communion," of various rites, and that most of the day-to-day work of the Holy Father is not in his role as pope and pastor of the Universal Church but in his patriarchal role in the Latin Church. The churches in communion (and their membership numbers in 2005) are: (8)

1. The Partiarchal Latin Rite Catholic Church (Membership: 1,070,315,000)
2. The Patriarchal Armenian Catholic Church (Membership: 368,923)
3. The Patriarchal Coptic Catholic Church (Membership: 242,513)
4. The Ethiopian Catholic Church (Membership: 196,853)
5. The Patriarchal Antiochan Syrian Maronite Catholic Church (Membership: 3,106,792)
6. The Patriarchal Chaldean Catholic Church (Membership: 382,637)
7. The Syro-Malabar Catholic Church (Membership: 3,752,434)
8. The Patriarchal Syrian Catholic Church (Membership: 123,376)
9. The Syro- Malankara Catholic Church (Membership: 404,052)
10. The Patriarchal Melkite Catholic Church (Membership: 1,340,913)
11. The Italo-Albanian Catholic Church (Membership: 60,448)
12. The Ukrainian Catholic Church (Membership: 4,321,508)
13. The Ruthenian Catholic Church (Membership: 497,704)
14. The Byzantine Catholic Church USA (Membership: 100,000)
15. The Romanian Catholic Church (Membership: 746,000)
16. The Greek Catholic Church in Greece (Membership: 2,345)
17. The Greek Catholic Church in Former Yugoslavia (Membership: 76,670)
18. The Bulgarian Catholic Church (Membership: 10,000)
19. The Slovak Catholic Church (Membership: 225,136)
20. The Hungarian Catholic Church (Membership: 268,935)
21. The Russian Catholic Church (Membership: 20 parishes worldwide)
22. The Belarusian Catholic Church (Membership: 100,000)
23. The Albanian Catholic Church (Membership: 3,000)
24. The Georgian Catholic Church (Membership: 7,000)

NOTES
1 John 17:20-21 "I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me . . ."

2 The Pope and the Archbishop affirmed their desire ". . . that all those Christians who belong to these two Communions may be animated by these same sentiments of respect esteem and fraternal love, and in order to help these develop to the full, they intend to inaugurate between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion a serious dialogue which, founded on the gospels and on the ancient common traditions, may lead to that unity in truth, for which Christ prayed." www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/angl-comm-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19660324_paul-vi-ramsey_en.html

3 See: http://www.themessenger.com.au/News/20090225.htm

4 T. Rowland, Ratzinger's Faith (Oxford University Press, 2008), 98-99.

5 Ibid.

6 A. Nichols, The Panther and the Hind (T&T Clarke, Edinburgh, 1993), 178.

7 A. Nichols, Anglican Uniatism (New Blackfriars Volume 87 Issue 1010, 2006), 337-356. This paper can be downloaded gratis from:http://www.anglicanuse.org/Anglican_Uniatism.pdf

8 The Eastern Catholic Churches by Kevin R. Yurkus in Crisis Magazine July 2005 Morley Publishing Group Inc. Washington

(Bishop David Chislett SSC is Vicar General of the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia, Regional Bishop of the Northern Apostolic District, Australia and Rector of Patmos House Community, Brisbane.)

From here.

Honduras Summary

A Closer Look at Honduras
By Rebekah Ries

If political leaders around the globe unanimously profess the same opinion, it must be true, right?

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Organization of American States Secretary-General Jose Insulza, and U.S. President Barack Obama are all calling the recent change of power in Honduras a “coup,” harkening back to the frequent overthrows of South American military regimes during the Cold War era. At first, it seems reasonable that an American president would denounce a military coup, which by definition is, after all, anti-democratic. But one by one, concerned citizens are beginning to suggest that the world was too quick to condemn the new government in Honduras.

A closer look at the situation in Honduras reveals a triumph of democracy, not tyranny.
The events of June 28 had the earmarks of a military coup — military forces seized power and exiled a democratically-elected president. But there is another side to this story, one that is not immediately apparent.

Three months prior, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya attempted to violate Honduras’ Constitution by seeking to extend his term in office by asking for an illegal referendum. When the Congress and Supreme Court of Honduras declared the President’s actions unconstitutional, the President ignored their orders and tried to go ahead with a referendum to rewrite the Constitution anyway. When the Honduran military, the body in charge of conducting elections, followed the Supreme Court’s order and refused to distribute the ballots, President Zelaya seized the ballots and fired the minister of defense. The Supreme Court ordered Zelaya to reinstate the defense minister, and Zelaya refused.

Against this backdrop of power-grabbing and defiance of the rule of law, Honduran patriots ousted Mr. Zelaya from his position as president. Thus, Mr. Zelaya was not ousted in a military coup, but by the legitimate government of his own country. Acting under the Constitution, the Supreme Court and the Attorney General ordered the minister of defense to arrest President Zelaya for his actions. The Legislature, including members of President Zelaya’s own party, voted 125-3 to accept President Zelaya’s resignation and instate Roberto Micheletti as the interim president.

The Honduran Constitution contains several unique provisions. One of these is the immutability of certain articles, including the article that imposes a one-term limit on the office of President. The only constitutional way to change this provision is to completely rewrite the Constitution. However, according to Honduran law, only the Congress — not the President — has the power to call for a referendum to rewrite the Constitution.

So when President Zelaya began distributing ballots for his referendum, he violated not only the mandate of the other co-equal branches of the Honduran government, but also the Honduran Constitution. In response, the Honduran government took advantage of its constitutional recourse.

Octavio Sanchez, a Honduran citizen, lawyer, and former presidential advisor, points out that the Constitution forbids any citizen who has previously held the office of President to hold it again. Further, it requires that any citizen who violates or proposes to reform this proposition be immediately relieved of his post and banned from holding public office for ten years. “[President Zelaya] through his own actions had stripped himself of the presidency,” Sanchez told the Christian Science Monitor on July 2.

Days after the ouster, roughly 5,000 anti-Zelaya demonstrators celebrated at a main plaza in the capital of Tegucigalpa, the Associated Press reported on June 30. Marta Lorena Casco, the newly appointed deputy foreign minister, told the crowd, “Freedom has won, peace has triumphed, Honduras has won.” She said Zelaya had planned to make the country a pawn of socialist Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. “Chavez consumed Venezuela, then Bolivia, after that Ecuador and Nicaragua, but in Honduras that didn't happen,” she said.

Interim President Roberto Micheletti told Colombia’s Caracol Radio, “We have not committed a coup d’etat, but a constitutional succession.”

But why should Americans care whether the world sees Honduras’s new government as legitimate or illegitimate? Because America, the defender of freedom and democracy, has turned a blind eye to the abuses of Manuel Zelaya. Rather than applauding those trying to preserve democracy in Honduras, President Obama demanded that Honduras reinstate a political leader who violated the Constitution and the rule of law to establish himself as a dictator.

“It took extraordinary courage for Honduran leaders to ensure it remains a country ruled by the Constitution,” stated Concerned Women for America President Wendy Wright. “Facing withering denunciations and potential punishments by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and ill-informed world leaders did not deter Hondurans from their duty and dedication to uphold the rule of law. Their example should embolden us to vigilantly guard our own Constitution from those who seek to undermine it, and humbly, yet resolutely, ignore unwarranted criticism from foreign leaders when we uphold our Constitution.”

We should all urge our leaders to critically examine the events in Honduras, and we should pray for the Honduran patriots who are standing up for democracy against the outcry of the rest of the world.

From here.

This article was based on the following sources; please consult them for further information on the situation in Honduras:
“A ‘coup’ in Honduras? Nonsense,” Christian Science Monitor, July 2, 2009.
“Honduran Attorney General: Ousted President Faces Possible 20-Year Sentence,” Associated Press, June 30, 2009 (Published on Fox News).
“Honduras Defends Its Democracy,” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2009.
Letter from GOP Senators to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, July 8, 2009.
Letter from Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to President Barack Obama, July 1, 2009.

Francis S. Collins: Science not Fiction

"The New York Times recently warned its readers about a wacky scientist in the Obama administration. But the fish wrap of record let the real nut job off the hook.

Reporting last week on the president's choice to head the National Institutes of Health, Times writer Gardiner Harris noted that praise for Dr. Francis S. Collins "was not universal or entirely enthusiastic." The geneticist is causing "unease," according to the Times, because of "his very public embrace of religion." Stomachs are apparently churning over a book Collins wrote describing his conversion to Christianity.

It's called -- gasp! -- The Language of God. Harris intoned: "Religion and genetic research have long had a fraught relationship, and some in the field complain about what they see as Dr. Collins' evangelism." And...that's it. Yes, the mere profession of Collins' faith is enough to warrant red flags and ominous declamations. A quarter of all Americans identify themselves as evangelical Christians and "publicly embrace their religion." But to the Times, Collins' open affiliation with 60 million American believers in Christ is headline news.

The rationality police in the newsroom have not, however, seen fit to print the rantings of a radical secular evangelist now serving as the White House "science czar." John Holdren, Obama's director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and co-chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, co-authored the innocuously titled Ecoscience in the 1970s with population control extremists Paul and Anne Ehrlich.

Read all of Michelle Malkin's column here. And you don't want to miss this piece!

Quote of the Week - Joseph Ratzinger

"Believing Christians should look upon themselves as such a creative minority and ... espouse once again the best of its heritage, thereby being at the service of humankind at large." --Joseph Ratzinger

African Journalists Oppose Corporate/State Pressures

Thirty-two IFEX members and partners raise concerns about proposed AU-EU Pan African Media Observatory Project

Attn: Habiba Mejri-Cheikh Spokesperson and Head of Information and Communication African Union Commission

Ian Barber Head of Unit Information and Communication Directorate General for Development and relations with African, Caribbean and Pacific States European Commission

Joint Submission On the Pan African Media Observatory Project

Introduction
The following statement is issued by the under-listed organizations following the invitation by the European Commission (EC) and the African Union (AU) for responses from organizations involved in media development to the Pan-African Media Observatory Project (PAMO). The organizations, which are signatories to this statement, are members or partners of the Network of African Freedom of Expression Organizations (NAFEO) and the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX).

The under-listed organizations welcome the intention of the European Union in partnership with the Africa Union to support and advance media development in Africa. Our support for this policy direction is based on the belief that a strong media sector is critical to Africa’s development as it can promote good governance, provide a platform for open and participatory debates on public policy and provide opportunities for governments and citizens to engage with each other.

Substantive Comments
The under-listed organizations firmly believe that the approach of the Pan-African Media Observatory Project proposed to be adopted by the EU and the AU cannot lead to the realization of the objective of advancing media development in Africa and particularly in ensuring media freedom, independence and professionalism.

Rather, we believe the idea as presently conceived contradicts or violates a number of well-established principles guaranteeing media freedom and independence and would ultimately create further problems for the media and the right of African peoples to independent sources of news and information for personal, professional and political decision-making. The key factors in our position are outlined below:

1. Project Framework Founded on an Erroneous Premise
The consultation document provides the background to the Pan-African Media Observatory in the following terms: "The context was described by the initiators of Media Observatory Global, at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre in 2002, as follows: 'real power is now held by a small group of global economic corporations and enterprises which sometimes appear to have greater influence over the world's affairs than governments and states'. As a result, it is important not to leave Africa at the mercy of one-track thinking, or standardized or imposed offering and content. In short, there is a need to ensure that African media enjoy pluralism, freedom and independence from political and economic powers and from all lobbies including professional lobbies, and that they bear the seal of creativity by developing their own original content, co-productions and thematic series." (See p. 1)

While there may be a few media organizations in Africa that are under the control of global economic corporations, this context is certainly not the dominant reality of the media in Africa. The challenges of media development on the continent are much more wide-ranging, but the real issue for the vast majority of African media players is how to overcome the over-bearing and pervasive influence of the State which invariably seeks to control the media for propaganda purposes, usually to prevent any real public scrutiny and to implement their agenda of self-perpetuation in power.

Although the project document claims subsequently that the background, motivations, needs and realities of the creation of the Pan-African Media Observatory are totally different from those of Media Observatory Global, it fails to explain how or to define a different context or background.

Rather, a significant portion of the framework elaborated in the project document appears geared towards responding to this context by enforcing "media responsibility" in a manner that would pander to the wishes of African leaders and give the Media Observatory "a fair degree of recognition and legitimacy among the Member States" of the AU. (See p. 5)

2. Project Concept Ignores Reality of Brutal Media Repression in Africa
Following from (1) above, it is our view that the project framework ignores a fundamental reality, which is the brutal repression of the media (through obnoxious laws, institutional arrangements and practices) in many countries on the continent.

In many parts of Africa, media enterprises are sometimes shut down by government or security agents while scores of journalists and media workers as well as other citizens are regularly being forced into exile, assassinated, physically assaulted, threatened with death or physical harm; arbitrarily arrested and detained; subjected to torture, inhuman and degrading treatment; harassed through oppressive criminal charges and unfair trials; and subjected to other forms of aggression for exercising their rights to free speech.

This repression, more than anything else, undermines the ability and capacity of the media in the different countries to challenge established authority. Yet, the project document completely ignores this reality in outlining the context and background to the project. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Media Observatory project contains no concrete strategy for addressing this fundamental problem.

3. Project Framework Inconsistent with Established Principle of Independence of Media from Governmental Control or Interference
The project departs from a well established principle that a free, independent and pluralistic media should ideally be free of governmental interference and control in that it seeks to subject African media organizations and media professionals to government control and interference.

By establishing the Pan-African Media Observatory as an institution or organ of the African Union while at the same time empowering it to enforce professional standards and conduct for the media and for media practitioners, whether through mediation or other means, the project is effectively subjecting the media to the control of governments and government institutions.

4. Project Ignores Previous Milestones
Although the project description claims that it is a structure to support and strengthen existing initiatives, organizations and bodies, in reality it fails to recognize or acknowledge landmark principles that have been previously established but whose effectiveness have been undermined by the failure or refusal of national governments to respect and abide by them.

Such milestones include the 1991 Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press, which was subsequently unanimously endorsed by UNESCO and the General Assembly of the United Nations; the African Charter on Broadcasting, which was adopted at an international conference organized by UNESCO in Windhoek, Namibia in 2001 in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Windhoek Declaration; and the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa, which was adopted by the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights in 2002.

Subsequent to the adoption of the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa by the African Commission, an organ of the AU, the Commission has established a monitoring mechanism for Freedom of Expression in Africa in the form of a Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa with a mandate to, among other things, monitor the compliance of member States of the AU with freedom of expression standards in general and the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in particular.

The project document gives no indication of awareness of these instruments and mechanisms. No consideration appears to have been given to their potential for advancing media freedom, independence and professionalism on the continent. There is also no indication of how the Pan-African Media Observatory might seek to reinforce them or ensure their effective implementation, for instance, by ensuring that States bring their laws and practices into conformity with the standards outlined in the documents.

5. Project Ignores Existing Initiatives
The project appears to ignore ongoing initiatives in the region in which significant and far-reaching consultations have been carried out over the last several years. Some of these initiatives include the very detailed consultation conducted under the Strengthening Africa's Media (STREAM) process, which was coordinated by the UN Economic Commission for Africa(UNECA) as well as the African Media Development Initiative (AMDI), coordinated by the BBC World Service Trust, both of which received significant support from the UK government.

The STREAM process involved extensive online consultations in different stages among various stakeholder groups across the entire continent with several hundred respondents as well as at least five sub-regional consultations in the form of physical meetings and conferences of media practitioners, media owners, media trainers and media support organizations throughout the regions of Africa. In addition, a separate consultation for Francophone countries was also held.
The AMDI process involved primary and secondary research to gather data about the media landscape, media conditions, legal and regulatory framework, etc. in 17 African countries which were then analysed and published in reports. Both processes have now merged into the African Media Initiative (AMI), which has itself conducted further consultations and research to agree on strategies for intervention under various strands of media development in Africa. AMI has now established a secretariat in Nairobi, Kenya.

Other platforms, including the Network of African Freedom of Expression Organizations (NAFEO) and its global partner, the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) as well as the Africa Forum on Media Development (AFMD) and its international umbrella network, the Global Forum for Media Development (GFMD), have been involved in these efforts and remain active in other spheres and initiatives with regard to media development in Africa. As well, the Declaration of Table Mountain, adopted in Cape Town in June 2007 at the conference of the World Association of Newspapers (including 16,000 member newspapers throughout the world) called for the elimination of all laws restricting the operations of free and independent media, including "insult'' and criminal defamation laws, which still exist and are often invoked in 48 (of the 53) countries of Africa.

It seems logical that any fresh initiative should seek to build on these previous efforts in order to avoid duplication, waste and the possibility of contradictory approaches.

Conclusion
We respectfully urge the European Commission and the African Union Commission not to implement the Pan-African Media Observatory project as presently conceived.

We are not encouraged by the apparent lack of political will on the part of many African leaders to give effect to the decisions of existing mechanisms in Africa, including the African Commission on Human and People's Rights, the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Tribunal. For this and other reasons outlined above, we donot believe that the Media Observatory, as presently proposed, represents a framework for bringing about positive changes for the media in Africa.

It is our view that the objective of ensuring media freedom, independence, pluralism and professionalism would be more likely achieved through clear recognition and respect for a more conscientious implementation and enforcement of existing documents, charters, principles and mechanisms, in addition to other internationally recognized instruments.

We therefore urge that African leaders make a clear commitment to effectively implement relevant existing African instruments and principles, including the Windhoek Declaration on Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press; the African Charter on Broadcasting; the Declaration of Principles on Freedom of Expression in Africa; as well as the relevant provisions of international instruments such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

We recommend that the EC and the AU Commission work together to strengthen the office of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information in Africa.

We further recommend that the EC and the AU Commission further support and advance media development in Africa by supporting the work of media associations and media support organizations which provide a range of services and assistance to the media sector, including in the area of training and capacity building, research and advocacy, litigation and legal support, and monitoring and campaigning.

Signed by:
Africa Free Media Trust, Kenya
Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), Egypt
Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE), Canada
Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI), U.S.A.
Center for Media Studies and Peace Building (CEMESP), Liberia
Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association (EFJA), in exile
Exiled Journalists Network (EJN), U.K.
FAMEDEV-Inter Africa Network for Women, Media, Gender and Development/LeRéseau Inter Africain Des Femmes, Médias, Genre et Développement, Senegal
Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), South Africa
Freedom House, U.S.A.
Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Ghana
Human Rights Network-Uganda (HURINET), Uganda
Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda (HRJN), Uganda
Index on Censorship, U.K.
Institute for Media and Society, Nigeria
International Press Centre (IPC), Nigeria
International Federation of Journalists - Africa Regional Office, Senegal
Journaliste en danger (Journalist in Danger, JED), Democratic Republic ofCongo
Liberia Media Center, Liberia
Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Ghana
Media Institute (MI), Kenya
Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Nigeria
Observatoire pour la liberté de presse, d'édition et de création (OLPEC),Tunisia
Radio Alternative Voice For Gambians- Radio AVG, Senegal
Somali Coalition for Freedom of Expression (SOCFEX), Somalia
South African National Editors' Forum (SANEF), South Africa
West African Journalists Association (Union des Journalistes de l'Afriquede l'Ouest, WAJA/UJAO), Senegal
World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), Kenya/Canada
World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), U.S.A.
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), France
Diallo Souleymane, Le Lynx, Conakry, Guinea
Jeanette Minnie, Zambezi FoX: (International Freedom of Expression andMedia Consultant), South Africa

Lead by:
http://www.ifex.org/africa/2009/07/15/au_eu_media_observatory/

Egypt-Germany Battle over Nefertiti

The image most commonly associated with Nefertiti is the famous swans- neck carving discovered in 1913 by Ludwig Borchardt. However, a recently discovered document in the German Oriental Institute archives now shows Borchardt was to have equally divided his dig spoils between Germany and Egypt but did not do so where the bust of Nefertiti was concerned. Infatuated with his find, he handed over an incorrect description and unflattering photo as part of his required inventory list.

The deception attempt apparently worked and officials were convinced the carving was little more than rubbish. Nefertiti was successfully smuggled out of Egypt and has remained in Germany ever since.

In 1933, Egypt began demanding her return, claiming the precious 3,400 year old carving had been deliberately stolen through Borchadt’s subterfuge, but it was too late. Adolf Hitler had fallen under her enigmatic spell and refused to even consider the idea of her return. Instead, Nefertiti was to become an integral part of his new Germania.

Fast forward to present day and it appears not much has changed since 1933.

Located in Giza, the new Grand Egyptian Museum is almost fully constructed, with an opening scheduled for 2011. In 2007, the New Zealand Herald reported Egyptian officials had requested the loan of the Nefertiti bust but that German museum officials refused, citing the carving’s overall delicacy as a detriment to travel.

Egypt’s chief archeologist, Zahi Hawass was incensed, believing the refusal to be little more than political maneuverings. "I really want it back," he told the Egyptian Parliament last week. "If Germany refuses the loan request, we will never again organize exhibitions of antiquities in Germany ... it will be a scientific war."

Read the full story here.

Australians Prepare to Defend Their Country

For most of the Cold War, America's allies did surprisingly little to defend themselves, preferring to rely on the U.S. That dependent mentality continues, especially among the populous and prosperous countries of Europe. The election of President Barack Obama notwithstanding, the Europeans have proved no more willing than before to offer additional combat support in Afghanistan.

However, Australia is breaking the mold, preparing to do much more to protect itself and its region. Washington should encourage its other friends to follow suit.

Canberra issued its previous defense white paper a decade ago. Observed Defense Minister Joel Fitzgibbon: "the biggest changes to our outlook over the period have been the rise of China, the emergence of India and the beginning of the end of the so-called unipolar moment; the almost two-decade-long period in which the pre-eminence of our principal ally, the United States, was without question."

Australia now discerns a future in which "there will be a number of other powers floating about, China and India, for example, the re-emergence of Russia," he added. Particularly important will be the People's Republic of China, which said Fitzgibbon, "will be the strongest Asian military power, by a considerable margin." Although the U.S. isn't going away anytime soon, its relative domination will shrink and its willingness to make war for its allies will diminish. Different circumstances require different policies. Explained Fitzgibbon: "We need to be able to defend our country without necessarily relying on the assistance of other nation states."

Read it all here.

Drug Patents: What's in the Pipeline?

(Required reading for Organization Management Ethics students.)

In the past decade drug companies have seen a significant decline in revenue due to the expiration of patents.

In 2001 Eli Lilly's patent on the antidepressant Prozac expired. That same year AstraZeneca's patent on Prilosec expired. Before this AstraZeneca was bringing in between $5 and $6 million a year for the 'purple pill' for heartburn.

Schering-Plough's allergy drug Claritin brought in a third of that company's revenue before the patent expired in 2002.

Bristol-Myers Squibb lost revenue when that company's patent on the diabetes drug Glucophage expired in 2000. Glucophage brought in sales of $1.7 billion.

In 2005, patents expired on about 200 drugs accounting for more than $30 billion in sales in 2000 alone.

How will drug companies compensate for the loss of revenue? The industry's answer is this: through new drugs that are being developed. The answer is progress and innovation, if we are to believe all the public relations.

Exactly how many truly new drugs are in the development pipeline? Consider this:

"Of the seventy-eight drugs approved by the FDA in 2002, only seventeen contained new active ingredients, and only seven of these were classified by the FDA as improvements over older drugs... Furthermore, of those seven, not one came from a major US drug company." (Business Ethics, McGraw Hill 2007 edition, John E. Richardson, editor, page 113).

Not very encouraging. However, there are a few glimmers of hope on the horizon, mostly involving new applications for existing drugs. For example, some prostate cancer patients have had remarkable results following influsions of the drug ipilimumab, a monoclonal antibody that stimulates the immune system. Likewise Gardasil has been shown to be effective in preventing genital warts caused by HPV strains 6, 11, 16, and 18 in males aged 16-26 years.

Meanwhile, drug companies are not keeping up with the demand for drugs in general use such as:

Technetium Tc99m Generators
Calcium Disodium Versenate Injection 200 mg/mL 5 mL ampules
Azactam 1 gram and 2 gram (aztreonam for injection)
Infed (Iron Dextran) injection
Methotrexate injection
Mitomycin for injection
Metoprolol Succinate extended release tablets

Why aren't the drug companies keeping up with demand? Perhaps the margin of profit isn't great enough?

Then there are the lurking suspicions that some drug companies may be manipulating the public. Consider the recent revelation that Merck paid the Australian branch of Elsevier, a company that publishes scholarly journals, to put together a bogus journal in which 9 of the 29 articles were about Merck's controversial Vioxx and the remaining 12 were about Merck's Fosamax; both drugs presented in the most positive way possible.

After all is said and done, the US drug companies don't seem to be making much progress in the development of new drugs or in keeping up with the demand for existing drugs. So what are they spending the profits on? Likely some on research and development and a goodly sum on promoting the myth of American innovation.

Read more here and here.

Myth-Healing the Paralysed

HYDERABAD, July 22: Parents buried paralysed children up to their necks in a muddy riverbed on Wednesday, believing that an eclipse of the sun would allow them to walk. According to superstition the solar eclipse offers special treatment to people suffering from a variety of ailments.

Two paralysed girls and a boy were buried up to their heads into the Indus River bank near here for 90 minutes.

“Whenever there’s a solar eclipse, I try to help heal suffering humanity,” said Arif Shah, a ‘spiritual healer’.

“Allah bestows powers in the paralysed parts of handicapped people during an eclipse and certainly heals them,” he claimed.

Nadeem, the father of four-year-old Palwasha whose left side is paralysed, said he had great hopes that his daughter’s health would improve.

“I don’t mind if she doesn’t recover fully but if it helps her recover to a certain extent, it will be enough to make us happy,” he said.

“Our society believes in myths. Such methods are all based on myths and have nothing to do with medical science,” said psychiatrist Syed Ali Wasif.

The longest solar eclipse of the 21st century plunged millions across Asia into temporary darkness on Wednesday, triggering scenes of religious fervour, fear and excitement particularly in India and China.

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Andrisson Manyere Files Suit

23 July 2009
Journalist sues state over illegal detention

SOURCE: Media Institute of Southern Africa

(MISA/IFEX) - On 14 July 2009, freelance photojournalist Andrisson Manyere and 15 members of the Movement for Democratic Change-T (MDC-T) filed a lawsuit with the High Court demanding compensation in the amount of US$19.2 million from the Co-Ministers of Home Affairs and State Security agents, following their alleged abduction, unlawful detention and deprivation of liberty.

In the lawsuit, each plaintiff is demanding US$1.2 million for unlawful abduction, forced disappearance, unlawful detention, unlawful arrest and unlawful deprivation of liberty. The state is also being sued for torture,pain, shock, suffering and psychological trauma, humiliating and degrading treatment, loss of amenities of life and malicious prosecution.

The 16 plaintiffs are demanding compensation from the Co-Ministers of Home Affairs, Kembo Mohadi and Giles Mutsekwa. The two are jointly cited along with Police Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri, Prisons Commissioner Paradzai Zimondi and Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) Director-general Happyton Bonyongwe.

Also being sued are Police Senior Assistant Commissioner Nyathi, Chief Superintendent Crispen Makendenge, Detective Chief Inspector Mpofu, Chief Superintendent Peter Magwenzi, Senior Assistant Commissioner of the PrisonsServices Chiobvu, Detective Chief Inspector Elliot Muchada, Superintendent Josh Shasha Tenderere, Assistant Inspector Maria Phiri, Detective Inspector Chibaya, Detective Muuya and Assistant Director of the external branch of the CIO, Asher Walter Tapfumaneyi.

BACKGROUND:
Manyere, who is presently on bail, has been charged under Section 23 (1)(a) (i) (ii) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act, Chapter 9(23) which deals with insurgency, banditry, sabotage or terrorism. He first appeared before the Harare Magistrates Court on 24 December 2008 together with Zimbabwe Peace Project director Jestina Mukoko.

Prior to that he had been reported missing after he had taken his vehicle to a garage in Norton about 40 kilometres west of Harare on 13 December 2008 until his appearance in court on 24 December 2008.

http://www.ifex.org/zimbabwe/2009/07/23/manyere_files_lawsuit/

For more information:
Media Institute of Southern Africa
21 Johann Albrecht Street
Private Bag 13386
WindhoekNamibia
misaalerts (@) gmail.com
Phone: +264 61 232975
Fax: +264 61 248016
http://www.misa.org

Where is Hillary Clinton?

Bonnie Erbe has observed, as have many of us, that Hillary Clinton seems to have gone into hiding. Here is what she writes:

"...Secretary Clinton has been all but invisible since ascending to one of the most visible cabinet posts, and one wonders whether this was done on purpose. She had to resort to carping about the length of time it's taking to get her U.S. AID lieutenant in office in order to make headlines—that after her commander in chief globe-trotted back from Africa, Italy, and other parts of the world these past couple of weeks.

Tina Brown has an interesting take at thedailybeast.com:

It's time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa.

Consider the president's Moscow trip a week ago. In a cozy scene at Vladimir Putin's dacha, the boys enjoyed traditional Russian tea and breakfast on a terrace. Sitting on Putin's right was the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. Where was Lavrov's counterpart? She was back home, left there with a broken elbow to receive a visit from the ousted Honduran president, José Manuel Zelaya.

I don't put it beyond President Obama to have purposely buried Secretary Clinton and denied her visibility."

Read it all here.

Two Americans Get 'Hard Labor' in N. Korea

A human-rights activist says North Korea is using two kidnapped American journalists as pawns in order to get more concessions from the United States.

The sister of an American journalist jailed in North Korea says the woman acknowledged breaking North Korean law during a recent phone call. Lisa Ling told KCRA-TV in Sacramento she spoke to her sister Laura Ling late Tuesday. Lisa Ling said Laura told her she and the other American journalist being held, Euna Lee, violated North Korean law and need the U.S. government's help in obtaining amnesty.

At the time they were captured, the two women were working for San Francisco-based Current TV, which former U.S. Vice President Al Gore helped found. They were sentenced last month to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and "hostile acts."


Suzanne Scholte, chairman of the North Korea Freedom Coalition, says the two women are clearly being used as pawns by the regime.

Read it all here.

Muslims Stop Construction of Church

JAKARTA, July 15 (Compass Direct News) – Members of several Muslim organizations joined a demonstration on June 27 to protest construction of a Huria Kristen Batak Protestant (HKBP) church building in Plaju, outside of Palembang, capital of South Sumatra Province.

The South Sumatra Muslim Forum (FUI Sumsel) organized the demonstration. Carrying a copy of a mayoral decree dated May 2009 ordering a halt to construction, the protestors gathered outside the building site, listened to speeches and then destroyed a bridge leading to it before demanding that the government ban the building project.

A spokesman from FUI Sumsel who goes by the single name of Umar said the group objected on grounds that the church had not secured permission from the local Interfaith Harmony Forum nor a building permit; both are required by a Joint Ministerial Decree regulating the establishment of places of worship.

On Feb. 10 a delegation of church leaders led by the Rev. Japati Napitupulu had met with Gov. Alex Noerdin, who said he had no objection to the building of the church, but church leaders acknowledged they had not completed the permit process.

Avoiding Sex-Discrimination Lawsuits

(Required reading for Organization Management Ethics students.)

In May 2005, Boeing agreed to pay $72.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by female employees who asserted that the company paid them less than male employees and promoted them less quickly.

In June 2005, Wal-Mart faced similar charges.

One month later, Morgan Stanley announced a $54 million settlement to a class-action suit alleging similar charges.

These are not stupid companies, so how did they get into this kind of trouble? All three companies had gender disparity in pay and promotions that weren't obvious but rather subtle, so it was easy for management to think there wasn't a problem.

How can a company avoid sex-discrimination lawsuits? Here are some ways to avoid vulnerability:

• Always post all job openings.
• Set up formal systems for selection of employees and their promotion.
• Define required job competencies.
• Establish guidelines for how pay is determined and raises granted.
• Require that the guidelines be applied consistently.
• Be prepared to justify situations that may appear to be discriminatory.
• Avoid what may appear to be 'secrets' when it comes to evaluation of performance.
• When an employee is fired or denied promotion, provide a reasonable explanation.

Can you think of other recommendations?

World Seeks Release of Human Right Activist Joseph Francis

Withdraw all cases and release Joseph Francis. PCCLahore: July 18, 2009. (PCP) Dr. Nazir S Bhatti, President of Pakistan Christian Congress PCC have demanded Punjab government to withdraw all cases against Joseph Francis and release him immediately from jail because there is widespread unrest among Pakistani Christian who are terming it as revenge of government.

“Joseph Francis is an asset of Pakistani Christians because he is serving persecution victims from two decades without fear under an independent human right establishment CLAAS’ said Nazir Bhatti.

Nazir Bhatti added “Joseph Francis as a head of Pakistan Christian National Party was an ally of Pakistan Peoples Party PPP since 1973, but withdrew his support for PPP during elections of 2008, on difference with leadership on which PPP government planned to punish him and his imprisonment is viewed as revenge by Pakistani Christians”

Dr. Nazir S. Bhatti appealed to Chief Justice of Lahore High Court to form a special Committee to investigate facts of FIR filed against Joseph Francis to ensure justice.

Nazir Bhatti expressed concern on silence of Christian leaders on prison of Joseph Francis who always raised voice for Christian rights and helped persecuted Christians.

The sources revealed that under fear CLAAS office in Lahore not issued any press release to inform situation of Joseph Francis to media or common Christian due to which majority of Pakistani Christian is unaware of situation.

PCC mailed a petition to President of Pakistan to intervene and withdraw cases against Joseph Francis because he was long time friend of Pakistan Peoples Party PPP which is leading partner in present collation government.

Nazir Bhatti urged Pakistan Christian Congress PCC Central Executive Council leaders to visit CLAAS offices Lahore to know facts and later to hold press conferences to invite attention of Human Right Commission of Pakistan, Civil Society leaders and Christian human right activists for campaign to release Joseph Francis.

According to Pakistan Christian Post PCP, Joseph Francis was sent to jail on July 12, 2009, after cancellation of his bail in a case filed against him in 2006, which was reported in Compass Direct, a media outlet in West.

Musharraf Tells Truth About Taliban

Internal Extremism bigger threat than India, says Musharraf

Daily Times Monitor

LAHORE: Extremism and terrorism from the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and not India, are the biggest threats to Pakistani society, General (r) Pervez Musharraf has said.

He told Karan Thapar of CNN-IBN’s Devil’s Advocate programme, however, the situation would have to be re-examined if “there are threatening noises coming from the Indian side”. The interview, recorded on Wednesday in London and being aired on Saturday and Sunday in two parts, also questioned whether Pakistan was providing official patronage to anti-India groups. Musharraf denied such reports, saying they were not being granted official patronage.

To questions on back channel talks between India and Pakistan during his tenure as president, Musharraf agreed with the comments of an American journalist that the two countries “were close to a deal”. He said both countries had been close to any agreement on all three issues: Kashmir, Siachen and Sir Creek.

End


I totally agree with the past President’s assessment that the biggest threat to Pakistani society is from home-grown Extremists, Terrorists and Talibans who follow the Al-Qaeda forces hiding in Pakistan. The government effort to flush out these Extremists must continue. Special attention must be given to training police to resist intimidation.

33 Girls Sacrificed by Ancient Incas

July 14, 2009 - National Geographic

Many of the 33 mummies uncovered near Chiclayo, Peru, were those of girls—a rarity, experts say. Their throats slit, the girls were probably killed in a bid for agricultural fertility.

Research into 33 mummies discovered in Peru has revealed most of the bodies were girls, most likely sacrificed in the belief their deaths would bring fertility to the peoples farmlands.

Utah Valley University professor Haagen Klaus is an expert in bio-archaeology and has been examining the human remains found in 2007 at the Chotuna Huaca, a site located north east of Chiclayo, Peru.

Watch the video © 2009 National Geographic (AP) here.

Swine Flu Unstoppable?

The highest body of experts advising the United Nations health agency on immunizations has determined that all countries will need to have vaccines for the influenza A(H1N1) infection, noting that the spread of the pandemic is “unstoppable.”

Just over one month ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the influenza outbreak had officially reached global pandemic levels, and raised its warning system to Phase 6 – meaning that sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus had spread beyond North America, where it was initially concentrated. As of 6 July, there were over 94,500 reported cases of the virus, including 429 deaths.

Read it all here.

South Carolina Anglicans Disavow GenCon '09

Here is a statement from the deputation of the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina:

Madam President:

South Carolina stands before you with broken hearts. By passing Resolution D025 and C056 this General Convention has overturned the clear and consistent teaching of Holy Scripture and the Christian Church. We will have repudiated the teaching and practice of the Anglican Communion. The Communion's patience and generosity toward the Episcopal Church makes our persistent refusal to heed their requests to us to honor the called for moratoria all the more devastating.

Many of us us here this morning, and in Dioceses, parishes, and pews throughout the Episcopal Church, disavow this General Convention's actions. Will will now prayerfully seek ways to be faithful to the Anglican Communion and to the mutual responsibility and interdependence to which we are called, no matter what the cost.

Read more here.

Quote to Remember - Fr. Dan Martins

Addressing the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church after it approved a resolution to develop same-sex ceremonies in the Episcopal Church, Fr. Dan Martins (you go, guy!) said:

"Madam President, if I had a dollar for every person who has come up to me during this convention and said something like, "I don't usually agree with you, but I'm sure glad you're here; we need your voice," I could finance a day at Disneyland. So...you want my voice? Here's my voice: If there was any ambiguity in D025--and I have contended that there is, at some cost to my credibility--then there is absolutely none in this resolution (C056). When we pass it, we will in that moment be undoing every shred of work that this church has done over the last four years in response to the Windsor Report. Time does not permit me to enumerate all the work that will be nullified by this action. We are utterly rejecting Windsor and the hope for life in communion that it represents. On this day my church is covering itself with shame, and I am profoundly sorrowful. What you are about to do, do quickly." ---- Fr. Dan Martins, Northern Indiana

Resolution C056 directs the creation of liturgies for same-sex blessings to be reported back to the next General Convention in 2012. The resolution passed the committee by 6-0 among bishops and 26-1 by deputies. The committees have joint membership of bishops and deputies, but then each house must vote separately. You can read the full text of the resolution HERE.

Coming Soon: One-World Currency

L'AQUILA, July 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday he had been given an example coin of a possible global currency at the G8 summit in Italy, adding that all aspects of reserve currencies were under discussion.

"We are discussing both the use of other national currencies, including the ruble, as a reserve currency, as well as supranational currencies," the Russian leader said at a news conference following the G8 summit.

Medvedev showed reporters an example of a coin of a supranational currency, which he called a "united future world currency."

"This is a symbol of our unity and our desire to settle such issues jointly," Medvedev said, adding that the coin had been made in Belgium.

He also expressed the hope that a day would come when something of the kind would be used for payment.

From here.

Russia ICBM by December '09

SOCHI, July 13 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday that Russia had successfully test-launched a strategic missile from a submarine.

"The target was hit and the pieces of the missile landed in the designated area," the president said at a meeting with Navy personnel in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.

The president said the test occurred on Monday, but did not specify the type of missile or the name of the submarine.

Last month Adm. Vladimir Vysotsky, the Russian Navy commander, said Russia would carry out the next test of a Bulava sea-launched ballistic missile in late July, one of a total of four or five launches this year.

Despite five failures in 10 trials, the last unsuccessful trial being in December 2008, Russia's Defense Ministry is planning to complete Bulava tests and put the ICBM into service by the end of 2009.

The Russian military says the Bulava, along with Topol-M ballistic missiles, will become the backbone of Russia's nuclear triad.

The triad comprises land-based ballistic missile systems, nuclear-powered submarines armed with sea-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic bombers carrying nuclear bombs and nuclear-capable cruise missiles.

Russia and US Most Religious Countries?

When U.S. President Barack Obama met the head of the Russian Orthodox Church on Tuesday, July 7 in Moscow, he praised Patriarch Kirill for his promotion of Christian unity. Persumably, Omaba had done some background reading before offering this praise.

Patriarch Kirill offered a form of praise for America when he stated, "Dialogue between our countries' Christians is very important, as the two nations should be friends," adding "Both the American and Russian nations have the same Christian system of values. We are the most religious countries."

The Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia also wished Obama success in his term as President, saying that many Russians linked him with the hope of better Russian-U.S. relations.

Pakistan to Try Murderer of Polish Hostage

WARSAW: Pakistani authorities have arrested a man wanted in connection with the murder of a Polish hostage decapitated by militants in February, Poland's foreign minister announced Thursday.

‘The Pakistani authorities yesterday captured a man who is probably one of the murderers, seen on a film of this terrible execution,’ Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told the private television station Polsat News.

‘This man, called Attaullah, was captured in Islamabad...I am happy for him to be tried in Pakistan where the death penalty exists,’ he said, adding that there is no extradition agreement between Poland and Pakistan.

Geologist Piotr Stanczak, 42, who worked for a Polish geophysical exploration company, was seized by suspected Taliban militants in Pakistan's northwest in September 2008. His kidnappers killed his driver and bodyguard.

The minister expressed the hope that the arrest would help bring about the capture of the man's accomplices.

Polish authorities reacted strongly to the filmed beheading of Stanczak, with Justice Minister Andrzej Czuma accusing the Pakistani government of aiding terrorist activities of the Taliban through its ‘inertia.’

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Unborn Babies Form Memories

Dutch researchers have discovered that unborn babies are able to form and retain memories in the womb, ABC News reports:

In a study of 100 of pregnant women in the Netherlands, researchers say they found evidence that fetuses have short-term memory of sounds by the 30th week of pregnancy, and develop a long-term memory of sound after that.

The researchers documented the memory by watching fetal movements with ultrasound while they played “vibroacoustic” sound to the growing baby. Five of the fetuses in the study did not move in reaction to the sound and were eliminated from the study.

But among the fetuses who did move, researchers repeated the sound until the fetus “habituated” to it and no longer reacted. Doctors let some time pass and then tested the memory of the fetus by playing the sound in intervals to see if the fetus “remembered” or recognized the sound and did not react.

The study found that by 30 weeks of age, a fetus could “remember” a sound for 10 minutes. By the 34th week a fetus may be able to “remember” the sound for four weeks.
The Dutch research is powerful new evidence contradicting the legal fiction that human personhood begins only after birth.

And at the conclusion of the ABC News article, in a segment subtitled “Keeping the Peace in the Womb,” Rahil Briggs, a pediatric psychologist at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York City, argues, “Beyond ensuring healthy nutrition, research of this type, along with the work of others regarding infant memory should help us understand the importance of a safe, relatively low stress environment during this very sensitive period of development.”

Read it all here.

What Can Hillary Accomplish in Asia?

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is scheduled to travel to Asia again in July to meet foreign ministers at the ASEAN Regional Forum, and to visit India. On her first Asian trip in February, she provided a welcome contrast to the past with her openness to others' views, her willingness to cooperate, and her star power. She made Asians look at America anew.

But this trip will be trickier. One challenge is that part of the plot for the US and Clinton is being written by others. North Korea will be on the agenda after its missile tests, as will Myanmar, since its generals persist in prosecuting Aung San Suu Kyi, the world's most famous political detainee, on trivial charges.

After all that has happened in recent weeks, the definition of "success" must be set low. Nothing positive will come from the US condemning these two difficult regimes unilaterally. So a key goal of Clinton's visit must be to pull together with the Asian leaders present at the ASEAN Regional Forum.

Read it all here.

Quote of the Week - Fr. Theotimos Tsalas

"There are almost fifty million non-Orthodox Christians in the Congo, who believe in Christ. They speak about repentance, about the Second Coming, but they don’t teach the fullness of Christianity. Yesterday, I was saying to myself, 'If God would illumine these people who already believe in repentance, in the Crucifixion and Resurrection, to believe in the Mother of God and the saints, it would be like a spark to a match.' The Mother of God has great power and I believe that Africa, particularly the Congo, is the future of Christianity. People may have no food to eat, but they have the word of God." -- Fr. Theotimos Tsalas, a Congolese Orthodox priest and spiritual son of Fr. Cosmas Aslanidis of Grigoriou Monastery, the “Apostle to Zaire.”

From here.

TEC: The Final Straw?

The 76th General Convention of the (Pagan) Episcopal Church has removed the final canonical obstacles to the "full inclusion" of non-celibate homosexuals. They may now be ordained as deacons and priests, they may be consecrated as bishops and their "unions" may be blessed in the churches. Of course, this has been going on for a good while in TEC so this isn't really news.

The story behind this story is the Anglican Church of Nigeria, which was blasted by a leading gay-rights activist who believes that divorce contradicts sexual ethics and because it is permitted in the Church, so should homosexuality be permitted (even 'celebrated', as Gene Robinson insists).

This leading activist is my former bishop and the man who has to sign my retirement papers in 2 weeks. He said: "It is time for the church be liberated from hypocrisy under which it has been operating about our gay brothers and sisters. Divorce contradicted sexual ethics. Our gay and lesbian members don't think much about what other Anglicans around the world think. The Nigerians are our most ardent critic. The Scribes and the Pharisees tied people up in burdens..." (Read the full report here.)

Bishop Sauls stated, "The Nigerians are our most ardent critic." Humm... Perhaps we should ask why that is?

The Nigerians know the Bible and Holy Tradition because they live in the crucible where Abraham's faith was formed. Kain and Seth married daughters of the chief of Nok (Nok is in the Jos Plateau of Nigeria.) The Jebu (Jebusites) intermarried with the descendents of Kain. The largest group of Jebusites today lives in Nigeria. Noah's homeland is Bor'nu near Lake Chad in northern Nigeria. The priestly lines, from which Joseph and Mary come, originated among the ancestors of the people (who in modern times) came to be called Yoruba. All of this has been documented and verified through linguistics, biblical studies and cultural anthropology.

So the weight of Holy Tradition is on the side of the Anglican Church of Nigeria and its Primate, Archbishop Peter Jasper Akinola, who is vehemently hated and constantly vilified by TEC pagans.

So it appears that the mask is off. The hoax is exposed. The final straw has landed on the camel's back. Here are the facts about the state of The Episcopal Church:

Last year TEC lost 19,000 members, by a conservative estimate.

According to David Virtue, "Only twenty-eight of The Episcopal Church's one hundred and ten dioceses have committed themselves to paying the full assessment, or "giving", asked by the Church. This, along with high infrastructure and mission demands, has caused a budgetary shortfall of approximately $14 million dollars.35% of domestic congregations have no full time clergy (2526 congregations)."

A third of TEC's 7,000 parishes are being served by retired or non-stipendiary priests. The fiscal crisis is taking a toll on parishes and whole dioceses, a crisis fed by on-going litigation against parishes and dioceses that aren't willing to exchange the Truth for a lie.

Gene Robinson wants everyone to 'celebrate' that TEC is now known as the 'gay church'.

TEC's Presiding Bishop rejects the biblical definition of salvation in which the individual must believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came into the world to save sinners. I guess she hasn't read these key verses:

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten SON, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16

"He that believeth on the SON hath everlasting Life…" John 3:36

"These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the SON of GOD; that ye may know that ye hath everlasting life. . ." 1 John 5:13

"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 3:11

From reports I've read coming out of Anaheim, many GenCon 2009 participants are seething about the formation of the Anglican Church of North America. David Virtue reports an undercurrent of resentment. There's another group now and it might steal some of the limelight from Gene (all about me) Robinson.

Egyptian Poet Gets Stiff Sentence

CAIRO, July 14: An Egyptian civil servant who wrote a satirical poem about veteran President Hosni Mubarak has been jailed for three years after a colleague turned the villainous verses over to the authorities.

Mounir Said Hanna Marzuq was given the maximum sentence for insulting the head of state, a judicial source said on Tuesday, in one of the poems he wrote for friends in the hope that one day they would be turned into song.

Marzuq was jailed in Maghagha, southern Egypt, in May after a colleague lodged a formal complaint about the poem deemed insulting to Mubarak, in power since 1981.

The case came to light after the penalised poet’s brother appealed to the 81-year-old Mubarak for clemency, the independent Al-Masri Al-Youm reported.

The newspaper did not publish the offending verses.

Egyptian law says that anyone insulting the president can be jailed for between 24 hours and three years.

Read it here.

Dr. Regina Benjamin Supports Access to Abortion

Catholics still don’t know definitively that Dr. Regina Benjamin, President Barack Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, is pro-abortion. But it appears increasingly likely that she is.

McClatchy Newspapers posted an article yesterday entitled “Obama’s surgeon general pick: a Catholic who backs abortion rights.” It quotes an Obama spokesman who said she “supports the president’s position on reproductive health issues.”

Abortion is a “reproductive health” issue to the Obama White House, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress in April that his administration explicitly interprets “reproductive health” to include access to abortion services.

Read it all here.

Chinese in Algeria Warned of Al Qaeda Reprisals

15 July - The Chinese government has warned its citizens in Algeria of possible reprisals from Al Qaeda after the government cracked its whip in the Muslim region of Xinjiang earlier this month.

The statement issued from the Chinese Embassy in Algeria, called on all Chinese-funded organisations and personnel to be aware of possible attacks by the group in Algeria. Algeria has been a habour for Al Qaeda in the North Africa.

The warning, which was issued on Tuesday, came after a London risk consultancy Stirling Assynt report said to its clients, that Al Qaeda might target Chinese workers in northwest Africa, following the ethnic riots in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang.

The statement further called on Chinese citizens to immediately report to embassy personnel, as the embassy tightens security for Chinese people in the north African state.

Hundreds of thousands of Chinese work in the Middle East and North Africa, including 50,000 in Algeria, the report said.

Ethnic Muslim Uighurs, have accused Chinese forces of opening fire on peaceful protests, and said the number of people killed is far higher than the official tally of around 180.

On Tuesday, the foreign ministry said it would take all necessary measures to protect its overseas interests following the report.

Reports said a number of Chinese workers on international establishments have been kidnapped or attacked, over the past few years in many parts of the world with heavy Chinese investment.

Source: Afrol News

600,000 Somalians Displaced

15 July - Humanitarian agencies operating in Somalia have appealed for $11 million to provide aid to over 200,000 people who have fled Mogadishu since fighting broke out between the government and the opposition Al-Shabab and Hisb-ul-Islam groups in early May.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that those most in need of water, sanitation and hygiene services include more than 600,000 people displaced by clashes since 2007 and who are settled in the Afgooye corridor outside Mogadishu.

According to OCHA, aid agencies in the country are currently only able to supply two to eight litres of water per person per day in that area, which the agency said was not enough to sustain a living.There is also currently one latrine for every 212 displaced people in the Afgooye corridor, the report also pointed out.

“A major concern is the effect the lack of water is having on efforts to prevent the spread of communicable diseases in overcrowded situations,” OCHA said.

According to the appeal, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) requires $3.3 million before the end of July to maintain life-saving operations for more than 1 million conflict-affected people, while current emergency funding allocated for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is likely to be exhausted within the next two months, according to OCHA.

Over $2.1 million is also needed to provide water to drought-affected communities in Puntland, Somaliland and other areas in the south-central region of the country, where more than 227,000 people are currently subsisting on 2 litres of water per day or less. Violence continues in the Horn of Africa nation despite the signing of the UN-facilitated peace accord last year, as well as the election of President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed and the formation of a new Government in February.

Source: Afrol News

Obama's Words From Accra to the World

Judith Michale, Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, told reporters today that the administration is teaming up with the State Department to combine old media and new media to create a strategy to reach the most people possible.

Before the President’s speech in Ghana last week, a SMS texting service was set up throughout Africa and they invited people to text the president in either English or French -- resulting in nearly 16,000 messages from 87 countries in Africa and beyond. The US embassy in South Africa partnered with a mobile-based social networking site and garnered an additional 200,000 questions and comments from throughout the continent.

As the president spoke on Saturday before parliament in Accra, the administration sent simultaneous SMS highlights of the speech to over 12,000 people in 80 countries in French and English and solicited their feedback via text message. These messages were posted on america.gov, the State Department's public diplomacy web site, and on whitehouse.gov.

Read it all here.

Obama's Ghana Visit

The day President and Mrs Obama arrived in Ghana on 9 July, two journalists were attacked. Here is the report:

(Media Foundation for West Africa/IFEX) - On the night of 9 July 2009, Cyrus Degraft-Johnson and Alhassan Suhuyini, journalists with two Accra-based radio stations, were assaulted by security personnel working for the city authority, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)'s correspondent reported that the incident occurred at about 9:30 p.m. (local time) in Shiashi, a suburb in the eastern part of Accra, where Degraft-Johnson, a reporter for Joy FM, had gone to cover an ongoing demolition exercise by a team of AMA guards and police officers to rid the city of illegal structures.

Degraft-Johnson told the correspondent: "I was reporting live to the station when the guards pounced on me and accused me of bringing the exercise to the public's attention so that they would disrupt it."

Degraft-Johnson said the guards seized his equipment, including his cellular phone, as well as his wallet containing a number of identity cards and approximately 50 Ghana cedis (approx. US$73). He also said that he was surprised by the attitude of the police who looked on: "One of them even pushed me around," he added.

Rowland Acquah Stevens, news editor of Radio Gold, told MFWA that Suhuyini witnessed the incident and began filing a live report to the station. When the AMA guards saw him reporting, they also started attacking him. "They slapped him and held his neck before seizing his cellular phone," Stevens said. Suhuyini was treated and later discharged from the hospital.

There has been high-level official condemnation of the attack on the journalists. On 11 July, Ghana's President, John Evans Atta-Mills, personally offered apologies to the journalists and ordered the mayor of Accra to investigate the matter and hold the perpetrators accountable.
Meanwhile, the mayor returned Degraft-Johnson's equipment to him.

http://www.ifex.org/ghana/2009/07/15/radio_journalists_harassed/

For more information:
Media Foundation for West Africa
PO Box LG 73030 Duade Street, Kokomlemle
Legon, Accra
Ghanaalerts (@) mediafound.org
Phone: +233 21 242470
Fax: +233 21 221084
http://www.mediafound.org

Kendall Harmon: YES to D025 is NO to B033

Statement of Kendall Harmon on Resolution D025

The passage of Resolution D025 by the General Convention of 2009 is a repudiation of Holy Scripture as the church has received and understood it ecumenically in the East and West. It is also a clear rejection of the mutual responsibility and interdependence to which we are called as Anglicans. That it is also a snub to the Archbishop of Canterbury this week while General Synod is occurring in York only adds insult to injury.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the BBC, the New York Times and Integrity all see what is being done here. There are now some participants in the 76th General Convention who are trying to pretend that a yes to D025 is NOT a no to B033. Jesus’ statement about letting your yes be yes and your no be no is apt here. These types of attempted obfuscations are utterly unconvincing. The Bishop of Arizona rightly noted in his blog that D025 was "a defacto repudiation of" B033.

Read it all here.

US Exit Strategy from Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, July 14: President Barack Obama said on Tuesday “all of us” wanted an effective exit strategy from Afghanistan in which Afghan authorities were able to take more responsibilities. Mr Obama made the comment after talks with Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende that centred on the current situation in Afghanistan as well as the global economy and climate change.

“All of us want to see an effective exit strategy where increasingly the Afghan army, Afghan police, Afghan courts, Afghan government are taking more responsibility for their own security,” Mr Obama said.

Around 4,000 US Marines and hundreds of Nato and Afghan forces are taking part in an offensive in various parts of Helmand province against the Taliban, the biggest by foreign troops since they ousted the Islamist militia in 2001. The operation comes ahead of next month’s presidential election, which is crucial both for Kabul and for a US administration that has identified Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan as its top foreign policy priority.

“If we can get through a successful election in September and we continue to apply the training approach to the Afghan security forces and we combine that with a much more effective approach to economic development inside Afghanistan, then my hope is that we will be able to begin transitioning into a different phase in Afghanistan,” Mr Obama said.

Read it here.

Journalists Risk Lives in Afghanistan

(IFJ/IFEX) - July 13, 2009 - The International Federation of Journalists(IFJ) is concerned that the dangers faced by Afghan journalists may be escalating rapidly as Afghanistan prepares for nation-wide elections on August 20.

According to the Afghan Independent Journalists' Association (AIJA), an IFJ affiliate, a journalist from the Al-Jazeera English news channel was kidnapped in the Pitch district of Kunar province on the morning of July 12. Sadullah Sail, a correspondent with the channel, went missing as he was travelling through the district and was later confirmed by a spokesman of the Taliban Islamic militia to be in their custody.

He was released after several hours, following the intervention of the AIJA and local tribal notables.

Bordering the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan and long a centre of militancy, Kunar has been one of the most dangerous zones for working journalists in Afghanistan.

The IFJ joins the call by AIJA president Rahimullah Samander for all armed groups to call off their attacks on journalists and desist from taking them hostage for pecuniary or political gain.

"The IFJ is concerned that the dangers for journalism in Afghanistan emanate not merely from the armed insurgent groups, but also from state agencies unprepared to respect the basic credo of the profession," IFJ General Secretary Aidan White said.

In mid-June, two journalists for Al-Jazeera's Arabic news channel were taken into custody by Afghanistan's National Security Directorate (NSD) after a report they prepared was held to be "in favour of terrorism".

The report was partly based on an interview with a Taliban militia leader in Kunduz province, who was quoted as saying that he had a number of suicide bombers at his disposal, ready to strike at any moment. The German commander of the NATO forces in the region was also interviewed in the report.

Qais Azimy and Hamdullah Shah were taken into custody on June 14 and held for three days, reportedly handcuffed to a chair and deprived of sleep.

Their interrogators reportedly accused them of broadcasting "fake" material and demanded to see all the material they had recorded in preparing their news reports.

"The IFJ calls on Afghanistan's President to retract damaging comments that he made on this case and to acknowledge publicly that independent journalism may bring home hard truths to him and the people of the country," White said.

"We advise the message be heeded, and condemn punishment of the messenger."

http://www.ifex.org/afghanistan/2009/07/15/sail_kidnapped/

For more information:
International Federation of Journalists
International Press Centre, Residence Palace
Bloc C, second floor, Rue de la Loi, 1551040
Brussels Belgium
Phone: +32 2 2352207
Fax: +32 2 2352219
http://www.ifj.org

Forward in Faith: TEC Disregards Moral Authority

Forward in Faith UK profoundly regrets the decision of the House of Bishops of The Episcopal Church to repudiate the moratorium on the consecration of bishops in same-sex relationships. It is clear from this decision, and the general stance of The Episcopal Church, that the Instruments of Unity of the Communion no longer have any moral authority in that Church.

We strongly encourage the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates’ Meeting to enter into the fullest co-operation with the Anglican Church in North America and other bodies eager fully to participate in the common life of Anglicanism world-wide.

Geoffrey Kirk
Secretary

From here.

More Journalists' Homes Destroyed in Pakistan

(IFJ/IFEX) - July 14, 2009 - The International Federation of Journalists(IFJ) is extremely concerned by acts of violence and intimidation targeting journalists in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, after the familyhomes of two journalists were bombed by militant insurgents.

According to the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), an IFJ affiliate, 50 hooded militants connected to groups linked under the banner of the Taliban approached the house of Rehman Buneri, a Voice of America Deewa Radio reporter and Karachi bureau chief of AVT Khyber Television, on July 8 and warned his family that they had been told to raze the building.
Buneri's house is located in Polad village near the border of Swat Valley and Buner districts.
A militant reportedly told Buneri's father that the instruction to destroy the property came from "high command" as punishment for an alleged smear campaign against the Taliban which was broadcast on radio by Buneri. All family members were evacuated before the attackers looted and bombed the building.

In a separate incident on July 8, GEO TV Peshawar correspondent Behroz Khan reported his ancestral house in the village of Bilo Khan, near Pir Baba, was raided by militants. They stole valuables before setting the house on fire and using explosives to blow up the building's supporting pillars.

Security officers reportedly witnessed the event but did not intervene.

Further, in early July, the home of Hafiz Wazir, one of the few journalists still living and working in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), was damaged in a bombing raid as the war in the Wana tribal area intensified.

The President of the Khyber Union of Journalists (KhUJ), Muhammad Riaz, said a delegation of the Tribal Union of Journalists (TUJ) met officials of the Federal Government in June to raise their concerns about security for media in the area, and a tribal commission has since been set up by the Government to assess damages to the homes of media personnel in FATA. The TUJ has urged the Government to pay compensation to those whose homes or property have been damaged as a result of the war.

The PFUJ, the Khyber Union of Journalists and the Peshawar Press Club all expressed concern over the increasing incidence of attacks against journalists for their reporting of the battle between militants and Pakistan's security forces.

"Over two dozen journalists have already lost their lives at the hands of the militants yet the entire society, human rights activists, political parties, media owners and the Government are playing the role of silent spectators," the PFUJ said.

The IFJ joins the PFUJ and its affiliate unions in calling on Pakistan's Government and authorities to ensure the perpetrators of violence against journalists are brought to account, and to provide every security precaution and protection measure to journalists who continue to report on the conflict at serious risk to their personal safety.

http://www.ifex.org/pakistan/2009/07/14/journalists_homes_destroyed_damaged/

For more information:
International Federation of Journalists
International Press Centre, Residence Palace
Bloc C, second floor, Rue de la Loi, 1551040
Brussels Belgium
Phone: +32 2 2352207
Fax: +32 2 2352219
http://www.ifj.org

N.T. Wright Tells Truth about Episcopal Church

"Support by US Episcopalians for homosexual clergy is contrary to Anglican faith and tradition. They are leaving the family.

In the slow-moving train crash of international Anglicanism, a decision taken in California has finally brought a large coach off the rails altogether. The House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church (TEC) in the United States has voted decisively to allow in principle the appointment, to all orders of ministry, of persons in active same-sex relationships. This marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion.

Both the bishops and deputies (lay and clergy) of TEC knew exactly what they were doing. They were telling the Archbishop of Canterbury and the other “instruments of communion” that they were ignoring their plea for a moratorium on consecrating practising homosexuals as bishops. They were rejecting the two things the Archbishop of Canterbury has named as the pathway to the future — the Windsor Report (2004) and the proposed Covenant (whose aim is to provide a modus operandi for the Anglican Communion). They were formalising the schism they initiated six years ago when they consecrated as bishop a divorced man in an active same-sex relationship, against the Primates’ unanimous statement that this would “tear the fabric of the Communion at its deepest level”. In Windsor’s language, they have chosen to “walk apart”.

Granted, the TEC resolution indicates a strong willingness to remain within the Anglican Communion. But saying “we want to stay in, but we insist on rewriting the rules” is cynical double-think. We should not be fooled.

Of course, matters didn’t begin with the consecration of Gene Robinson. The floodgates opened several years before, particularly in 1996 when a church court acquitted a bishop who had ordained active homosexuals. Many in TEC have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional.

That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined, as the shrill leader in yesterday’s Times suggests, to a few verses in St Paul. Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy. This isn’t a matter of “private response to Scripture” but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition.

The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace. The appeal also seriously misrepresents the notion of justice itself, not just in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and others, but in the wider philosophical discussion from Aristotle to John Rawls. Justice never means “treating everybody the same way”, but “treating people appropriately”, which involves making distinctions between different people and situations. Justice has never meant “the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire”.

Such a novel usage would also raise the further question of identity. It is a very recent innovation to consider sexual preferences as a marker of “identity” parallel to, say, being male or female, English or African, rich or poor. Within the “gay community” much postmodern reflection has turned away from “identity” as a modernist fiction. We simply “construct” ourselves from day to day.

We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.

The question then presses: who, in the US, is now in communion with the great majority of the Anglican world? It would be too hasty to answer, the newly formed “province” of the “Anglican Church in North America”. One can sympathise with some of the motivations of these breakaway Episcopalians. But we should not forget the Episcopalian bishops, who, doggedly loyal to their own Church, and to the expressed mind of the wider Communion, voted against the current resolution. Nor should we forget the many parishes and worshippers who take the same stance. There are many American Episcopalians, inside and outside the present TEC, who are eager to sign the proposed Covenant. That aspiration must be honoured.

Contrary to some who have recently adopted the phrase, there is already a “fellowship of confessing Anglicans”. It is called the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is now distancing itself from that fellowship. Ways must be found for all in America who want to be loyal to it, and to scripture, tradition and Jesus, to have that loyalty recognised and affirmed at the highest level."

Tom Wright is Bishop of Durham
The Times of London

H/T to Rick Lobs

Foreign Terrorists Undermining Pakistan

QUETTA, July 13: Security agencies arrested on Monday at least 13 suspected Al Qaeda militants from a place near Dera Murad Jamali.

Security personnel intercepted a bus going to Multan from Quetta after receiving information about the movement of militants and found three Turks, two Saudis, two Kuwaitis and five Afghan nationals and a Pakistani in the vehicle.

The suspects were carrying five suicide vests and an 11-kilogramme bomb in their baggage.

They were also carrying currency notes of 4,240 US dollars, 694,000 Pakistani rupees, 50,000 Iranian tumans and more than 100,000 Afghanis. Some documents were also seized.

Security officials did not announce the names of the arrested Al Qaeda suspects.

“They were going to Multan for carrying out suicide attacks in southern Punjab,” sources said.

Read it all here.

Riaz Ahman Kamboh's Seminary-House Explodes

KHANEWAL, July 13: At least 12 people, seven children among them, were killed and over 50 injured when a large quantity of explosives stored in a house-seminary exploded in a village near Mian Channu, on Monday morning.

The blast was so powerful that it left a big crater and flattened over 70 other houses, a health unit and the adjacent seminary. It was caused by explosives stored in the house-seminary owned by Riaz Ahmad Kamboh, a religious teacher and reported to be an active member of a banned militant organisation.

AFP quoted the DPO as saying that an audio-cassette, pamphlets of a previously unknown militant group, two suicide jackets, detonators, six rockets and two rocket-launchers were found in the debris of the house. He said that Riaz’s sister used to teach students in the seminary. The blast took place soon after she finished her class at about 9 am and the students were leaving the house. Nine people were killed on the spot while three others died later in the Khanewal District Headquarters Hospital and Nishtar Hospital in Multan.

Riaz Ahmad was taken into custody from Mian Channu hospital where he had been taken in injured condition. Police had arrested Riaz twice in the past but freed him after initial investigation. He is reported to have continued his “mysterious activities” in the village after the release.

The DPO said that soon after the blast, officials of the Khanewal administration rushed to the place and carried out rescue work. “We called heavy machinery and ambulances from all tehsils of the district and Multan.”

District health officer Dr Yousuf Sumra said that about 52 injured people had been brought to the Mian Channu tehsil headquarters hospital and eight of them were later shifted to the Khanewal DHQ Hospital and Multan’s Nishtar Hospital. “We have received nine bodies, seven of them of children. One injured man died in Multan hospital,” he added.

SHO Sheikh Haidar said that nine people had died on the spot and three in Multan and Khanewal hospitals. Four of them have been identified as Mohammad Abdullah, Aysha, Hajra and Ali Hassan. NGOs and civil society volunteers set up stalls outside the THQ Hospital to arrange blood for the injured.

The blast sparked protests in Mian Channu. A large number of people gathered at the place and attacked police.

“The angry mob massively pelted police with stones and bricks when they reached the place. They also manhandled Mian Channu DSP Tanveer Bhatti and broke windscreen of his car,” Nawab Farhatullah Khan, former chairman of the district council, told Dawn. He said the DPO had to hide in the damaged building of the basic health unit.

Read it all here.

Journalist's Home Destroyed. Taliban Operating Freely in Buner

13 July 2009 - Taliban militants blow up journalist's house in Buner district

(PPF/IFEX) - The home of Rahman Buneri, a correspondent for Voice of America's (VOA) Pashto-language service, Deewa Radio, was blown up on 9 July 2009 by the Pakistani Taliban in the militancy plagued Buner district of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Buneri, who is also the deputy director of news for the local Pashto-language television channel, AVT Khyber TV, works and lives in Karachi, but his parents and extended family live in his ancestral home in Buner.

Buneri told PPF that about sixty masked men with weapons entered the house in Buner at approximately 2:00 a.m. (local time) on 9 July and forced the occupants at gunpoint to vacate it. The attackers ransacked and destroyed the contents of the home. When the family, including Buneri's father, two sisters-in-law and children, vacated the house, the Taliban militants planted explosives on all sides of house and within a few moments there was an explosion. The attackers stayed until the house was reduced to rubble. No one was hurt in the attack.

Buneri said that the attackers told his father that they had been ordered to blow up the house to punish Buneri for speaking out against the Taliban.

Buneri believes the immediate cause of the attack was an interview he recently gave to VOA on the situation in Buner, in which he had said that Taliban militants were operating freely in the area.

The Karachi Union of Journalist (KUJ) and the Association of TV Journalists (ATJ) planned a protest to take place on 11 July in Karachi. Yousuf Ali, the secretary general of the Khyber Union of Journalists (KhUJ), strongly condemned the attack.

http://www.ifex.org/pakistan/2009/07/13/buneri_home_destroyed/

For more information:
Pakistan Press Foundation
Press Centre
Shahrah Kamal Ataturk
Karachi 74200 Pakistan
ppf (@) pakistanpressfoundation.org
Phone: +92 21 263 3215
Fax: +92 21 221 7069
http://www.pakistanpressfoundation.org

Obama Has Eye for Beauty

RIO DE JANEIRO: It’s one thing to turn a man’s head, but quite another when that man is the American president — and another still when the entire world gets to see the moment.

A 17-year-old Brazilian girl became an overnight celebrity back home after apparently catching the president’s eye at the G8 summit. Mayora Rodrigues Tavares was not so much the Girl from Ipanema as the Girl from Barro Vermelho (Red Clay), a rundown neighbourhood on the impoverished western outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

Tavares, a social activist, was reportedly chosen to take part in the Junior G8 summit in Italy after working on a human rights study in two notorious Rio shantytowns, among them the Complexo do Alemao, a sprawling network of favelas home to around 160,000 people.

In an interview with Brazilian television earlier this month she said that travelling to the G8 was an “inexplicable feeling”. Hundreds of readers contacted news websites to comment on the photograph. “This young lady must be phenomenally beautiful,” wrote one. “After all, even Sarkozy had to hang on to his jaw.”—Dawn/Guardian News Service

However, Tavares is not the only woman to catch the President's eye. I wonder about the beauty in the black dress?

Osama in Kunar Afghanistan

ISLAMABAD, July 12: Interior Minister Rehman Malik has described US drone attacks in tribal areas as futile and said that the Al Qaeda leadership is on the other side of the border in Afghanistan.

In an interview with the British newspaper The Sunday Times, he brushed aside CIA’s claims that drone attacks had been effective in disrupting Al Qaeda’s ability to carry out attacks.

“They’re getting mid-level people, not big fish,” he said. “And they are counter-productive because they are killing civilians and turning locals against our government. We try to win people’s hearts, then one drone attack drives them away. One attack alone last week killed 50 people.”

Osama bin Laden could not have escaped the Pakistan army if he happened to be in the country, he said. Were Osama in Pakistan, we would know it, because thousands of troops had been sent into tribal areas in recent months, private TV channels quoted Mr Malik as saying.

“According to our information, Osama is in Afghanistan, probably Kunar, as most of the activities against Pakistan are being directed from Kunar,” he said.

Mr Malik said Pakistan’s efforts to take on the Taliban on its side of the border were being hampered by the failure of American and British troops in Afghanistan to monitor their side. He said that Nato troops in Afghanistan should have first sealed the border before stepping up the fighting. “If we can’t seal it totally we should seal it as much as possible,” he said. “If we can’t have a wall, at least let’s put up barbed wire.”

“They should replicate what we’ve done,” he added. “We have 1,000 checkpoints on our side, they have only 100, of which only 60 are working. It makes no sense to both be fighting either side of the border without stopping the militants crossing.”

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Islamic Radicals Assasinate Iraqi Christian Leader

Baghdad - Aziz Rozko Hanna, director of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk's Department of Financial Control, was assassinated on Sunday, police said.

Hanna, a Christian, was driving with his daughter in Kirkuk when gunmen pulled him from the car and shot him dead, police there told the German Press Agency dpa.

His daughter witnessed her father's murder, which took place in the predominantly Christian neighbourhood of Dumiz, police added.

Read it all here.

International Outcry Over Attack on Bahmani Wala Christians

Lahore: July 10, 2009. (PCP report) Chief Justice Khawaja Mohammad Sharif of Lahore High Court took Suo-Motu notice here today of attack on Christian by Muslim mob on June 30, 2009, at village Bahmani Wala in district Kasur.

After mediation conducted by Shahbaz Bhatti, Federal Minister for Minorities for reconciliation among Muslim and Christian compensation was awarded to Christian victims but cases against Muslim culprits were not pressed by concerned PPP Christian Minister for Minorities.

There was outrage among Christian in Pakistan and Pakistani Christians settled abroad who have been demanding justice for Christians in cases against culprits.

The common Pakistani Christian was in view that compensation in cash can not be justified to the barbaric attack by Muslims who burnt homes, looted valuables and injured women and elders.

The President of Pakistan Christian Congress PCC, Dr. Nazir S Bhatti in a statement expressed grave concern on withdrawal of demand to register cases against Muslim mob by Federal Minister for Minorities and demanded CJ of SC to take Suo-Motu notice to ensure justice.

CJ of LHC took notice of attack on Christians and burning of their homes by Muslim mob and ordered DPO and SHO of area police station to appear before court with all record on Friday.

The police have already registered cases against 9 Christians in blasphemy and riots but there is no case against Muslim culprits.

Read it here.

Around 600 Muslims attached 117 homes of Christians in Bahami Wala, Pakistan on June 30, 2009. Eleven Christians were scarred by acid thrown on them as they tried to escape. Muslims firebombed their village, vandalized homes, stole valuables, and burned 48 properties. Water pumps had been sabotaged so that the fires could not be put out. The local police failed to intervene.

To read more about the incident, go here.

Dead Iranian Protestors Not to be Mourned. Families Pay for Bullets

The family of an Iranian man killed in a demonstration against the country's contested presidential election has been ordered to pay the equivalent of $3,000 for the bullets that took his life, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Kaveh Alipour, 19, was shot in the head in downtown Tehran on Saturday during one of the most violent clashes between protesters and security forces since the riots began last week. Iranian authorities later told the family they would not turn over the slain man's body for burial until they received compensation for the bullets security forces used to shoot him.

Officials finally surrendered the request after the family argued it did not have that much money in possession, but said that the man could not be buried within the city limits.

Iranian authorities, meanwhile, have found another way to combat the opposition movement demonstrating against the contested presidential elections, besides making threats and firing live rounds at protesters.

All mosques in Tehran have been prohibited from holding memorials or publicly mourning the deaths of the riot victims, it emerged on Monday. According to official count in Tehran, 17 people have been killed in more than a week of demonstrations.

Read it all here.

Homosex Legal but not Accepted in India

NEW DELHI: For India's gay community, the joy that greeted this month's court ruling legalising gay sex is tempered by the fact that, although the law now accepts them, society still does not.

For all the celebrations and talk of an historic milestone, many believe it will take more than a court decision to change public attitudes toward homosexuality, which is largely taboo in India and considered by many to be a mental illness.

Although the Delhi High Court's verdict has served as a morale booster for men and women who lived in constant fear of being criminalised, they say it is unlikely to encourage those in the closet to come out.

‘I don't think it will make a major impact,’ says Maya, 32, who runs a counselling centre for lesbians and people with gender identity issues.

‘I'm sure some people who were afraid of the legal implications are more comfortable now, but there are still so many social issues.’

‘The major issues are how you're going to tell your family — it has nothing to do with the law,’ she said.

Abhi's parents took him to a psychiatrist when he came out to them two years ago. They eventually came to terms with his sexual orientation, but the 22-year-old call centre employee believes it will take generations for India to tolerate, let alone embrace homosexuality, on a wider scale.

After several narrow escapes with police who raided community parties he attended, Abhi hopes he will be able to meet other men with the comfort of knowing he cannot be arrested.
‘I can go to a party every night. For us to express ourselves before in public it was so difficult. Now it shouldn't be an issue for us.’

Rahul, a 35-year-old who works for an outsourcing firm, says the ruling is a ‘psychological step forward’ for him, but means more to people who suffered regular harassment at the hands of police.

He and other middle-class gays generally meet men through discreet avenues such as the internet and formal groups, while others are forced to turn to public areas such as parks, where police are eager to nab suspected homosexuals.

‘The gay and lesbian community was especially fearful of cops because if you are vulnerable enough they'll try to extract money from you,’ says Rahul.

‘They wouldn't actually threaten to put you behind bars but it was implicit,’ he adds.

The government has the choice to appeal to the Supreme Court, but if the law is repealed nationwide, it means the next step in the rights movement could be a campaign to legalise gay marriage and adoption for same-sex couples.

In staunchly conservative India, where heterosexual marriage is viewed as a cornerstone of family structure, the thought of a same-sex couple raising a child once seemed unthinkable.

Read it all here.

US Spends Foreign Policy Money Yet Has no Policy

WASHINGTON, July 10: The US House of Representatives has approved a $48.8 billion spending bill to bolster US foreign policy, which includes $1.5 billion for Pakistan. The legislation, passed on Thursday, also includes $2.7 billion in foreign aid for Afghanistan and $2.2 billion for Israel.

Both chambers of the US Congress have separately approved legislation to triple US assistance to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year. The Senate version, known as the Kerry-Lugar bill, now has to be reconciled with the House version, which seeks strict conditions for providing economic and military assistance to Pakistan.

The measure approved by the House on Thursday is called functional 150, which approves State Departments’ budget for foreign assistance.

The Kerry-Lugar is an authorisation bill while Thursday’s measure is an appropriation bill. The Kerry-Lugar authorises the US president to provide assistance to Pakistan of up to $1.5 billion from 2009-10 to 2014.

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Obama Foreign Policy Neophyte

WASHINGTON -- The signing ceremony in Moscow was a grand affair. For Barack Obama, foreign policy neophyte and "reset" man, the arms reduction agreement had a Kissingerian air. A fine feather in his cap. And our president likes his plumage.

Unfortunately for the United States, the country Obama represents, the prospective treaty is useless at best, detrimental at worst.

Useless because the level of offensive nuclear weaponry, the subject of the U.S.-Russia "Joint Understanding," is an irrelevance. We could today terminate all such negotiations, invite the Russians to build as many warheads as they want, and profitably watch them spend themselves into penury, as did their Soviet predecessors, stockpiling weapons that do nothing more than, as Churchill put it, make the rubble bounce.

Obama says that his START will be a great boon, setting an example to enable us to better pressure North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear programs. That a man of Obama's intelligence can believe such nonsense is beyond comprehension.

Read it all here.

UK Euthanasia Bill Fails

Great Britain's Parliament has rejected a doctor-assisted suicide amendment.

The Falconer Amendment would have permitted physicians, under certain criteria, to help disabled and terminally ill patients commit suicide. The amendment was powerfully opposed by Baroness Sue Campbell, who suffers from spinal muscular atrophy. She told members of Parliament that approval would send the wrong signal and instill a sense of fear in those who are disabled and those who face death from illness.

In a press release, Paul Tully, general secretary for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, urged the Voluntary Euthanasia Society -- now called Dignity in Dying -- to drop its parliamentary campaign in the measure's defeat. He calls it offensive to disabled people and their caregivers.

Baroness Campbell also argued that, if passed, the Falconer Amendment would send a message of despair to terminally ill people, adding that it would majorly change the way British culture regards disabled people.

Read it all here.

A Photo Obama Wishes Would Go Away

President Barack Obama with France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy (R) take their places with junior G8 delegates for a family photo at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, July 9, 2009.

From OrthodoxNews.net, here.

President Obama Meets Patriarch Kirill

Patriarch Kirill and Barack Obama meet in Moscow.

Moscow, July 8, Interfax - Dialogue between the Christian populations of Russia and the United States is important for the development of relations between the two countries, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia said at a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in Moscow on Tuesday.

"The fact that the American and Russian people have preserved their common, Christian, system of values is increasingly important. We are the most religious countries, and it is crucial to maintain dialogue between our countries' Christians because our people need to be friends," Patriarch Kirill said.

"It is necessary to appeal to the hearts of the people in order to stem anti-American sentiments in Russia, and anti-Russian sentiments in America," he said.

Russian missionaries brought the Christian faith to the American continent, he added.

Read it all here.

Who's Afraid of Sarah Palin?

Answer: The progressive elites who run Washington (and our economy into the ground), especially 'PE' women. And liberal journalists who think they make the news. And leftists with their various agendas.

Consider these barbed statements:

"It's easy to look at the soon-to-be-former governor of Alaska as an iconic feminist, a path-breaking working mother, or noble rabble-rousing populist. But when the dust settles, the lesson may be that she was simply a woman who made no sense." -- Dahlia Lithwick (from here).

Maureen Dowd in the New York Times wrote of Palin using these derogatory terms "Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy."

Mike Murphy, writing for the New York Daily News, says of Sarah Palin that she "is the political train wreck that keeps on giving."

Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal writes, 'She makes the Republican Party look inclusive.' She makes the party look stupid, a party of the easily manipulated."

Here is what Victor David Hanson has to say (and I agree with him):

"In the End, What is Wisdom?" Euripides asked that in the Bacchae? So who is the better one to sit down across from Putin? What training is critical to size up a Chavez, or say ‘no thanks, bud’ to Iran?

Does it require brains to manage a family with five kids, live on a limited budget, get elected to local office, fish, hunt, go to sea, cook your own food, navigate in politics with no money, without an influential dad and powerbroker husband-or is real wisdom finishing prep school, doing B+ work at Yale, and writing a novel, column or short story? (A little of both, you say? That’s why I started this piece off with my suggestion she take her new time to read and digest.)

In all seriousness at last, I’ve found it was harder to calibrate an old spray rig (without getting Parquat ['liquid death' we used to call it] up your nose and Simazine down your pants), with a shot roller pump and worn nozzles. It took some skill to put one pound (and only one pound) of Parquat and Simazine per acre on a two-foot-wide vineyard berm, correcting for tractor speed, wind, leaks, pump idiosyncrasies, soil conditions-knowing that too much preemergent herbicide gives you sick vines, and too little, weeds–than it was to do an apparatus criticus of 200 lines of the Greek text of Aeschylus’s Suppliants-all things, of course, being considered.

Sorry for the ‘either/or’ reductive binary: but I saw more stupid people in graduate school and three decades in academia than I ever did who ran 100 acres without going broke-and more of the latter whom I’d trust not to bankrupt the country and let down our defenses than of the former.

While we rightly argue that the Sarahs of the world, if they are to be taken seriously as leaders, must read and study more, why do we not also suggest that the Baracks of the world could do a little more chain-sawing, run a coffee shop for a summer, or drive a Winnebago cross-country? (Who knows, he might meet a fellow woodcutter who knew there were 50 states or that it was dumb to make fun of the Special Olympics.)

After all, a lot of geniuses are now calling for a 'second stimulus' to borrow another trillion or so still, but I don’t think they come from Wasilla.

So I am afraid right now, but not of Sarah Palin."

Quote of the Week - C.S. Peirce

"Some persons fancy that bias and counter-bias are favorable to the extraction of truth--that hot and partisan debate is the way to investigate. This is the theory of our atrocious legal procedure. But Logic puts its heel upon this suggestion. It irrefragably demonstrates that knowledge can only be furthered by the real desire for it, and that the methods of obstinancy, of authority, and every mode of trying to reach a foregone conclusion, are absolutely of no value." -- Charles Sanders Peirce

Clotilde Reiss in Iranian Prison

French student held because of photographs and e-mails

SOURCE: Reporters Without Borders

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders is very worried by French graduate student Clotilde Reiss's arrest at Tehran airport as she was about to leave the country on 1 July 2009. Reiss, who was working as a teaching assistant at Isfahan University, has been accused of spying.

Relatives told Reporters Without Borders that Reiss's digital camera contained photos of demonstrations that took place in Isfahan after the announcement of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed election victory.

She had also reportedly sent emails about the demonstrations together with photos of them.

"Reiss's arrest is typical of the crackdown that the Iranian authorities have orchestrated since 12 June," Reporters Without Borders said. "The international community must urgently press for her release. Her fate is similar to that of the hundreds of Iranians who are currently being held in Iran for circulating news and information."

Reiss has been taken to Tehran's Evin prison. French consular authorities, who were notified on 2 July of her arrest, have not yet been able to visit her but they have been in regular touch by telephone.

Reiss, a political science graduate with a keen interest in Iran, had been in Isfahan since February.

http://www.ifex.org/iran/2009/07/08/french_student_held/

Aid Shipment to Gaza Detained

Two Al Jazeera journalists held by Israeli authorities

SOURCE: Reporters Without Borders

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders condemns the detention of two journalists employed by the Qatar-based satellite TV station Al Jazeera,who were aboard the "Spirit of Humanity", a ship carrying humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, when it was intercepted by the Israeli navy on 30 June 2009.

"Othman Abufalah and Mansour Al-Abi were aboard the 'Spirit of Humanity' as journalists, not for activist reasons," Reporters Without Borders said. "They must be freed at once."

The ship, which was chartered by the Free Gaza human rights group, was boarded by the Israeli navy at 3 p.m. (local time) on 30 June as it was approaching Gaza's territorial waters and was escorted to the Israeli port of Ashdod (located just to the north of the Gaza Strip). All those aboard, including the two Al Jazeera journalists, were taken to a detention centre near Ben Gurion international airport.

"We expect them to be deported in the next few days, but we want a guarantee that everything aboard the ship will be returned to us," a Free Gaza activist told Reporters Without Borders.

The "Spirit of Humanity" left Cyprus on 29 June with 21 human rights activists from 11 countries aboard. They include Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland, a co-winner of the Nobel peace prize in 1977, and former US Representative Cynthia McKinney. It was also carrying three tons of medical supplies, toys and material for the repair and rebuilding of 20 houses.

"The aim of this aid was to circumvent the blockade that Israel has imposed on the Gaza Strip since June 2007 and to symbolically help reconstruction in Gaza following the 22-day Israeli military operation in the territory," the Free Gaza activist told Reporters Without Borders.

http://www.ifex.org/israel/2009/07/08/journalists_held/

For more information:
Reporters Without Borders
47 rue Vivienne 75002 Paris France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org

Where Calvinism Errs

At the recent constitution of the Anglican Church in North America in Bedford Texas, His Beatitude, Metropolitan Jonah expressed the hope of restored Christian unity and spoke of Calvinism as a heresy that has caused division. He identified the following as essential for unity:

• Affirmation of Holy Tradition
• Recognition of the authority of the seven Ecumenical Councils
• Return to the original form of the Nicene Creed (without the filioque clause inserted at the Council of Toledo, 589 A.D.)
• Recognition of all seven Sacraments
• Rejection of 'the heresies of the Reformation' and subsequent 'isms' that resulted when Protestants rejected the authority of Holy Tradition: Calvinism, anti-sacramentalism, iconoclasm, Gnosticism, and the feminism and the egalitarianism that led to the ordination of women priests and the consecration of women as bishops.

When Metropolitan Jonah identified Calvinism as an obstacle to unity of the Church many Anglicans were surprised because Anglican clergy are required to embrace "The 39 Articles of Religion" when they make their ordination vows and these Articles are essentially Calvinist.

David Bentley Hart’s comments on Calvinism (published in an interview in Christian Century) are helpful in understanding why Orthodoxy regards much of Calvin’s thought as heretical. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

CC: Followers of Calvin have been particularly concerned to defend God's sovereignty. Do you think that tradition presents a particular problem for Christian thinking today?

DBH: Yes--and not only today. I quite explicitly admit in my writing that I think the traditional Calvinist understanding of divine sovereignty to be deeply defective, and destructively so. One cannot, as with Luther, trace out a direct genealogy from late medieval voluntarism to the Calvinist understanding of divine freedom; nevertheless, the way in which Calvin himself describes divine sovereignty is profoundly modern: it frequently seems to require an element of pure arbitrariness, of pure spontaneity, and this alone separates it from more traditional (and I would say more coherent) understandings of freedom, whether divine or human.

This idea of a God who can be called omnipotent only if his will is the direct efficient cause of every aspect of created reality immediately makes all the inept cavils of the village atheist seem profound: one still should not ask if God could create a stone he could not lift, perhaps, but one might legitimately ask if a God of infinite voluntaristic sovereignty and power could create a creature free to resist the divine will. The question is no cruder than the conception of God it is meant to mock, and the paradox thus produced merely reflects the deficiencies of that conception.

Frankly, any understanding of divine sovereignty so unsubtle that it requires the theologian to assert (as Calvin did) that God foreordained the fall of humanity so that his glory might be revealed in the predestined damnation of the derelict is obviously problematic, and probably far more blasphemous than anything represented by the heresies that the ancient ecumenical councils confronted." -- David Bentley Hart

John Calvin was trained as a lawyer and a humanist. He was not a theologian who knew Holy Tradition and his writings were of a polemical nature, set to do battle with Roman Catholicism. Calvin admits that his wisdom has nothing to do with the Holy Tradition received from the Apostles. He wrote:

Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no one can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone. In the second place, those blessings which unceasingly distil to us from heaven, are like streams conducting us to the fountain. ... Every person, therefore, on coming to the knowledge of himself, is not only urged to seek God, but is also led as by the hand to find him. -- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 1, Chapter 1, Paragraph 1

Orthodoxy holds that knowledge of God cannot be had apart from Holy Tradition. This is the error of Protestants as a whole and one which has given ground to many ideologies opposed to Holy Tradition and Scripture.

To read more on Calvin's views, go here.

Christians in Bahmani Walla Attacked by Muslim Mob

Acid attacks scar eleven Christians as 600 Muslims firebomb their village, vandalising at least 117 homes as police again fail to intervene.

On Tuesday 30 June, around 600 Muslims used petrol bombs to attack at least 117 Christian homes in Bahmani Walla, a village in Punjab, Pakistan. 117 houses were vandalised and 48 properties were damaged by fire, water pumps were sabotaged and Christians who returned home the following day found they had no electricity.

The violence was seemingly caused by an incident on Monday night, in which a Christian man driving a tractor requested that a Muslim man riding a motorcycle allow him to pass. The request was refused and a disagreement ensued. News of this was spread along with allegations of blasphemy against Islam. In the next few hours a mob of about 600 Muslims congregated in Bahmani Walla and began to attack the Christians living there.

Vehicles owned by Christians were burnt or stolen. Jewellery and cash were also taken. The following day a boycott was in force against many of the Christian businesses in Bahmani Walla.

Read it all here.

Gene Robinson: TEC Must 'Celebrate' Homosex

The Episcopal Church should proudly wear the mantle of being known as the “gay church,” Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire told a lunchtime audience at General Convention July 8.

Speaking to about 75 deputies and visitors to General Convention at an event sponsored by the Consultation, an association of progressive church-related advocacy groups, Bishop Robinson spoke to the issue of whether “LGBT Equality is a Matter of Justice?”

Answering in the affirmative, Bishop Robinson urged the deputies to follow their consciences and disavow 2006 General Convention Resolution B033 that pledged that the Episcopal Church would refrain from consecrating gay bishops or authorize public rites for the blessing of same-sex unions.

Bishop Robinson predicted that the 2009 Convention “will be one of those conventions, like 1976 and 2003, where history is made.” He urged his audience to watch how their diocesan deputies and bishops voted and see that they “stand up for what is right.”

The Anaheim Convention was a “historic moment,” he said, telling the audience they could help “give birth to this new church of ours.” Gays and lesbians who did not know Christ, or who had left the church in disagreement with its traditional teachings, are a vital mission field, he said.

During an impromptu question and answer session, Bishop Robinson urged gay and lesbian activists to “focus on the great moveable middle” at General Convention.

“They no longer hate us. They even look kindly on us,” he said, and “toleration beats abuse.”

However, toleration was not enough. “God’s love is about celebrating one another” in the fullness of their diversity, he said.

Read it all here.

Gay Episcopal Activist Charged with Molesting Adopted Son

A gay Episcopal activist who is a fan of New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson and a Duke University official has been charged in federal court with offering his 5-year-old adopted son up for sex.

Frank Lombard, associate director of the Center for Health Policy, was arrested Wednesday in Raleigh, the FBI said.

An unidentified informant, who already faces child porn charges in a different child sex case, pointed investigators to Lombard, according to court documents. The informant told investigators he met Lombard on the Internet four years ago. The informant described in graphic detail how he allegedly observed Lombard molesting an African-American child on four occasions over an Internet video chat service called ICUii.

Read it all here... if you can stomach it.

Uncertain Future for UK Catholic Adoption Agencies

A Roman Catholic adoption agency has been given the chance to appeal after losing a bid to protect its pro-marriage ethos last month.

The Leeds-based charity, Catholic Care, was told by the Charity Tribunal last month that under the new Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs) it would have to consider gay couples as potential adopters, despite its belief that children need a mother and a father.

However, the adoption agency has now been granted permission to appeal to the High Court over the matter which the Tribunal said was of “public importance” and “would be appropriate for the High Court to consider on appeal”.

Mark Wiggin, chief executive of Catholic Care, said the charity had not yet decided whether to pursue the appeal.

“We have to leave open the option,” he said.

The charity is one of several Roman Catholic adoption groups forced to choose between abandoning their beliefs on marriage, dropping out of adoption work or risking falling foul of the SORs.

Read it all here.

Attack on US Cyber Security

WASHINGTON (AP) — A widespread and unusually resilient computer attack that began July 4 knocked out the Web sites of several government agencies, including some that are responsible for fighting cyber crime, The Associated Press has learned.

The Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the holiday weekend and into this week, according to officials inside and outside the government. Some of the sites were still experiencing problems Tuesday evening. Cyber attacks on South Korea government and private sites also may be linked, officials there said.

U.S. officials refused to publicly discuss details of the cyber attack. But Amy Kudwa, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said the agency's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team issued a notice to federal departments and other partner organizations about the problems and "advised them of steps to take to help mitigate against such attacks.

"The U.S., she said, sees attacks on its networks every day, and measures have been put in place to minimize the impact on federal Web sites.

It was not clear whether other federal government sites also were attacked.

Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

Read it all here.

Riots in Western China

URUMQI, China, July 8 -- Chinese President Hu Jintao canceled plans to attend a major summit in Italy and flew home early Wednesday after reports that chaos and panic had spread throughout the capital of China's far western region of Xinjiang.

Since clashes erupted Sunday between the region's Muslim Uighur minority and the dominant Han Chinese, leaving more than 150 dead, the government has deployed police and paramilitary troops, closed mosques, instituted a curfew and rounded up at least 1,400 people. Hu's withdrawal from the Group of Eight summit, reported by state media, signaled his government's growing concern about the unrest that continued to flare across this city.

Early Tuesday, a group of several hundred Uighur protesters, most of them women in head scarves, gathered to demand that their detained husbands and brothers be released and their dead be accounted for. At midday, Uighur and Han Chinese men traded blows at the train station until riot police dispersed them with tear gas. In the late afternoon, hundreds of Han Chinese men armed with everyday items such as kitchen knives, shovels, hammers and pipes began smashing Uighur food stalls and stores, and headed to a local mosque.

Read it all here.

Baitullah Target of Recent Missles

TANK, July 7: A suspected US drone fired two missiles at a militant training centre in Laddha subdivision of South Waziristan on Tuesday, killing 16 militants and injuring 10 others. Five foreigners were among the dead, security officials said.

The camp allegedly run by militants loyal to Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud was in Chenakai area of the Shabikhels, a sub clan of Mehsud tribe. Baitullah belongs to this clan. There was no report if any high-value target had been hit in the attack carried out at about 10 am.

Sources said that a local commander of Baitullah was among the dead. (According to AFP, the missile strike pulverised a compound which a high-ranking official described as a former office of Baitullah Mehsud, who has a five-million-dollar price on his head and a bounty of $615,000 in Pakistan for allegedly masterminding multiple deadly bombings.)

US drones have intensified attacks in North and South Waziristan after security forces launched an operation against militants.

On June 23, the unmanned aircraft had attacked a militants’ hideout and a funeral ceremony of a militant commander, killing about 70 people.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Air Force jets shelled suspected positions of militants in Berwand area of South Waziristan.

Read it all here.

Pakistani Christian Murdered at Tea Stand

International Christian Voice Strongly Condemn the incident and appeal to the Government of Pakistan to take all possible actions to stop the persecution.

Christian killed for drinking tea from Muslim stall June 16, 2009

A Christian man was stoned to death in Pakistan for drinking tea from a roadside stall designated for Muslims. According to International Christian Concern (ICC) the man, Ishtiaq Masih, had ordered tea at a stall in Machharkay village, Punjab, Pakistan, after his bus stopped to allow passengers to relieve themselves. When Ishtiaq went to pay for his tea, the owner noticed that he was wearing a necklace with a cross and grabbed him, calling for his employees to bring anything available to beat him for violating a sign posted on the stall warning non-Muslims to declare their religion before being served.

Ishtiaq had not noticed the warning sign before ordering his tea, as he ordered with a group of his fellow passengers. Witnesses claim the owner and 14 of his employees beat Ishtiaq with stones, iron rods and clubs, and stabbed him multiple times with kitchen knives as Ishtiaq pleaded for mercy.

The other bus passengers intervened and took Ishtiaq to the Rural Health Center in the village. Ishtiaq died as a result of spinal, head, and chest injuries. The doctor who took Ishtiaq's case told ICC that Ishtiaq had excessive internal and external bleeding, a fractured skull, and brain injuries.

A correspondent from the ICC confirmed that he saw a warning posted outside the tea stall, which read: "All non-Muslims should introduce their faith prior to ordering tea. This tea stall serves Muslims only."

Please pray for persecuted Christians around the world, but especially in Pakistan.

Read the full report here.

Muslim Woman Stabbed 18 Times in German Courtroom

Thousands of Egyptian mourners marched behind the coffin of the "martyr of the head scarf" – a pregnant Muslim woman who was stabbed to death in a Dresden courtroom on Wednesday in front of her young son.

Many in her homeland were outraged by the attack and saw the low-key response in Germany as an example of racism and anti-Muslim sentiment.

The woman's husband was critically wounded in the attack, after he tried to intervene and was stabbed by the attacker and accidentally shot by court security.

"There is no God but God and the Germans are the enemies of God," chanted mourners for 32-year-old Marwa el-Sherbini in Alexandria, where her body was buried.

"We will avenge her killing," her brother Tarek el-Sherbini told the Associated Press by telephone from the mosque where prayers were being recited in front of his sister's coffin. "In the west, they don't recognise us. There is racism."

Sherbini, a pharmacist who was four months' pregnant and wore the Islamic head scarf, was involved in a court case against her neighbour after he called her a terrorist. She was due to testify when he stabbed her 18 times inside the courtroom in front of her three-year-old son.

Read the full report here.

US Military Flights Over Russia

MOSCOW, July 6: Russia agreed on Monday to let the United States fly troops and weapons across its territory to Afghanistan, a move hailed by Washington as a valuable contribution towards helping US forces fighting the Taliban.

The agreement, signed after a summit in the Kremlin between US President Barack Obama and Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev, allows 4,500 US military flights annually over Russia at no extra charge, a US official said.

A joint declaration also announced agreements on nuclear arms cuts and on replacing a key disarmament treaty, including figures for reduction in nuclear warheads to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years.

“This agreement will enable the United States to further diversify the crucial transportation routes used to move troops and critical equipment to re-supply international forces in Afghanistan,” the White House said in a statement about Mr Obama’s first visit to Moscow as president. “By providing access to these transit routes, the Russian Federation is enabling a substantial increase in the efficiency of our common effort to defeat the forces of violent extremism in Afghanistan and to ensure Afghanistan’s and the broader region’s security,” the statement said.

The new transit routes are important for the US as existing troop supply routes through Pakistan have been attacked by militants.

The agreement will be valid for one year with unlimited automatic extensions if both sides agree, a US official said, adding the pact required ratification by the Russian parliament.

Mr Obama and Mr Medvedev outlined other areas in which they said their countries would work together to help stabilise Afghanistan, including increasing assistance to the Afghan army and police, and training counter-narcotics personnel. A joint statement said that they welcomed increased international support for upcoming Afghan elections and that they were prepared to help Afghanistan and Pakistan work together against the “common threats of terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking”.

Read more here.

6th Journalist Shot in Mogadishu War

(NUSOJ/IFEX) - The National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) renewed its call for the immediate end of hostilities in Mogadishu as the 6th journalist was shot dead on 4 July 2009 in the capital city.

Journalist Mohamud Mohamed Yusuf, nicknamed Ninile, of Radio Holy Quran (IQK) was shot in the stomach twice at around 8:00 a.m. (local time) at the Afarta Jardin conjunction in north Mogadishu, according to Mohamed Abdi Gedi, editor-in-chief of IQK.

Yusuf, 22, died of blood loss after being on the side of the road for almost 3 hours without medical assistance, as fighters fired shots at anyone who tried to take the journalist to the hospital. Yusuf left the radio station after reading the news headlines at 7:30 a.m., according to Gedi.

"We are sending our condolences to the family and colleagues of Mohamud Mohamed Yusuf. We denounce the fighting in Mogadishu and demand an immediate end to the war," said Abdirisak Omar Ismail, chairperson of the supreme council of NUSOJ.

The late journalist was a reporter, newscaster and occasional producer for IQK. When the bullets hit him, he was covering the ongoing fighting in the neighbourhoods surrounding the radio station.

http://www.ifex.org/somalia/2009/07/06/sixth_journalist_killed/

For more information:
National Union of Somali Journalists
1st Floor, Human Rights House
Taleex Street, KM4 Area, Hodan District
Mogadishu Somalia
nusoj (@) nusoj.org
Phone: +252 1 859 944
Fax: +252 1 859 944
http://www.nusoj.org/

The Mission of the Church

An aggressive stance, however, is completely inappropriate for the Church. We should struggle with sin in all its manifestations, but first of all in ourselves and only after that in people around us. It is certainly easier to struggle with sin in others than in ourselves. We can and must help our neighbours and generally people around us, doing it in the first place through our own example and way of life.

The Church states very clearly that sin is sin. The Church is against accepting sin as a norm. But we should not be hostile to people leading sinful life, because sin, from the Christian point of view, is an illness. And we should treat such people as ill, that is, be compassionate and tolerant towards them.

We should struggle with sin but be compassionate to a sinner. Compassion does not consist in saying to a sick person that he is healthy and needs neither treatment nor medicines. On the contrary, compassion consists precisely in calling an illness and illness, in making the right diagnosis and proposing medical assistance. In this lies the mission of the Church.

-- Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk

Read more here.

Lord Carey Encourages 'Be Faithful' Gathering

Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury (1991-2002), has sent this letter to Anglicans who have gathered in London to Be Faithful.

Dear brothers and sisters,

Be assured of my prayers as you gather at Westminster Central Hall today. My visits to different parts of the world reveal the grievous hurts to our Body caused by the lamentable actions of TEC in 2003. In such a situation your witness, your courage and your commitment to the gospel are grounds for hope.

You are already facing suspicion and hostility from various quarters because of the launch of FCA in England. Nevertheless, attempt to build the strongest bonds of communion with the rest of the Anglican family.

Remain steadfast in truth, and compassionate in unity. And be prepared to go the extra mile for others.

With warmest greetings in Christ
George Carey

You may read other letters from Bishops and Clergy here.

USA Jobless at 16%

JOHN CHALLENGER, challenger, Gray and Christmas: The underemployment rate, which includes those people who are in part-time jobs but would prefer a full-time job, and those people who weren't counted as unemployed but they've been out of work and been looking in the last year, but not in the last month, pushes the rate way up.

PAUL SOLMAN: Here are the new numbers from the Labor Department's monthly survey of 60,000 households. The official number is what the government reports as U-3, 14.7 million unemployed as of June. That's 9.5 percent.

U-4 adds discouraged workers who've stopped looking. That would make unemployment 10 percent.

U-5, marginally attached workers who say they'd take a job, but haven't looked in a month. The number would then be up to 10.8 percent.

The most inclusive number, U-6, adds part-timers looking for full-time work, bringing the total to 16.5 percent.

Read the full report here.

Zelaya's Return Blocked

TEGUCIGALPA, July 5: Coup leaders in Honduras vowed on Sunday they would prevent a plane carrying deposed President Manuel Zelaya from landing, thwarting his attempt to reclaim the presidency one week after his ouster.

Amid growing tension in anticipation of Zelaya’s expected arrival, soldiers surrounded the capital’s main airport, where airlines had suspended flights, while thousands of his supporters prepared to gather there.

The Organisation of American States suspended the Central American country late Saturday, in the first such move since the exclusion of Cuba in 1962, for failing to reinstate Zelaya. Thirty-three out of 34 members of the OAS voted in favour of suspending Honduras in an extraordinary late night session.

“The de facto authorities in Tegucigalpa are not disposed to restore Zelaya,” OAS chief Jose Miguel Insulza told the assembly.

Read it all here.

For more on this story, go here.

Honest Talk about Women and Money

Lucy Kellaway has an interesting piece in Financial Times. What follows is an excerpt from "Women in the Boardroom". Lucy's honesty is so refreshing.


In the past two weeks, this link [between women and money] has been thrust down my throat twice. First, at a dinner in London last week for senior working women this link was simply stated as a fact. And then, more forcefully, it was stated in a new book called Womenomics* written by two US television presenters.

The book’s central tenet is something called the “asset-to-oestrogen” ratio – the idea that companies with more senior women are more profitable. This ratio makes me feel queasy for three reasons. First, it is yucky. Second, it is ageist as women who have come out of the menopause don’t have so much oestrogen any more. Third, and most powerfully, it is total twaddle.

“Do the math,” the authors urge. Alas, I can’t to do the math – or the maths, as we call it in Britain – as I’m not a statistician. But I’ve consulted people who can and they say it is far from clear that companies with lots of senior women outperform. To prove this, you would need a huge sample – which at the moment does not exist. You would need to adjust for sector and for a thousand other things that influence profitability. And even if you could establish such a link, the case would still not be made as it might well be that the sort of companies that promote women may also be the sort that treat all employees nicely. Or the sort that are more innovative, and these things might have a greater effect on profitability than oestrogen.

This doesn’t mean I’m not in favour of having women in senior positions – women make up half the population and it seems a shame to have them so unrepresented at the top of companies.
Another thing I’m even more strongly in favour of, though, is talking about these things honestly. The senior women at the dinner the other night were all true believers and, therefore, not open to discussion. When I dared to suggest that being female had been massively to my advantage (I wouldn’t be on the board in a million years if I was a man), they looked as if they had sucked on a lemon.

Read it all here.

Does Obama Owe Bush an Apology?

Critics in his own party and Republican opponents are attacking Barack Obama’s emerging stance on national security with equal ferocity. Many Democrats are furious that the president has broken his promise to abandon the Bush administration’s war-powers approach to fighting terrorism. Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, and other conservatives attack him for doing the opposite – for keeping his promise and emasculating the US anti-terror effort.

The left’s complaints make far more sense than Mr Cheney’s. Mr Obama is adjusting the Bush administration’s policies here and there and seeks to put them on a sounder legal footing. This recalibration is significant and wise, but it is by no means the entirely new approach that he led everybody to expect.

Mr Obama is in the right, in my view, but he owes his supporters an apology for misleading them. He also owes George W. Bush an apology for saying that the last administration’s thinking was an affront to US values, whereas his own policies would be entirely consonant with them. In office he has found that the issue is more complicated. If he was surprised, he should not have been.

The signature intellectual defect of the non-compromisers on each side of this debate is an inability to recognise conflicting ends.

Read it all here.

Obama's Naive Diplomacy Efforts

Before the Iranian election, US opinion on Barack Obama’s foreign policy divided on predictably partisan lines. Now the picture is more complicated.

Mr Obama’s supporters admired his desire to restore US standing in the world and his willingness to talk “without preconditions” to governments his predecessor despised. This would make all the difference, they believed. The new president’s conservative and neoconservative critics rolled their eyes. They attacked Mr Obama’s naive overtures to dictators, and his unwarranted apologies for supposed US sins.

Those critics see Iran as one more proof they were right. The administration spoke respectfully to Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, seeking not to humiliate but to reach an accommodation. Mr Obama’s speech in Cairo on US-Islamic relations was welcomed in much of the Muslim world and had most US liberals swooning in admiration. And see what happened. The Iranian government has hardened its stance on nuclear materials, persisted with its support for Iraqi insurgents, and stamped on its own people when they challenged a rigged election.

So much for soft power. Mr Obama’s friendly outreach to other states – be they hostile, unco-operative or even supposedly friendly – has been no more productive, say the critics. China is about as implacable, North Korea just as deranged, Europe just as feckless. Russia, which Mr Obama visits this week, bullies and bribes its near-abroad with as little finesse as usual. What a surprise: the world is not smiling back.

Read it all here.

ACLJ and ECLJ Urge Action on Iran Oppression

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) in Washington - with its international affiliate, The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) - has urged the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations to pressure Iran to comply with international human rights law. The action follows the Iranian government's violent response to citizens who are calling for freedom and the imprisonment of at least 40 journalists.

ACLJ and ECLJ chief counsel, Jay Sekulow said, "The violent, deadly actions of the repressive regime in Iran clearly violate international law and show a flagrant disregard for the basic human rights of its citizens... As the world watches this struggle for freedom unfold, we're calling on the United Nations to take action and apply pressure to Iran to comply with international human rights law. This abuse of fundamental human rights cannot be ignored. The United Nations has a responsibility to member nations who respect and cherish human rights. The Iranian government must be held accountable."

The ACLJ and ECLJ sent a letter urging action against the Iranian government to the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. The letter exhorted the body "to take all actions within your authority to pressure Iran to comply with international human rights law."

You can read the letter here: http://www.aclj.org/media/pdf/LettertoUN.pdf.

Visit the ACLJ website here to read more.

N. Korea Disrepects USA with July 4th Missiles

SEOUL, July 4: North Korea test-fired seven missiles off its east coast on Saturday, South Korean officials said, in an act of defiance apparently timed for the US Independence Day holiday.

The launches further fuelled regional tensions after the communist state’s nuclear test in May, which coincided with the US Memorial Day holiday.

They came as Washington seeks support for tough enforcement of United Nations sanctions aimed at shutting down the North’s nuclear and missile programmes. The ballistic missiles — which the North is banned from firing under UN resolutions — were launched between 8am (2300 GMT Friday) and 5:40 pm into the Sea of Japan (East Sea), Seoul military officials said.

It was the biggest salvo of ballistic weaponry since the North fired a long-range Taepodong-2 and six smaller missiles on US Independence Day in 2006. Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said they had a range of between 400 and 500 kilometres (250-310 miles) but declined to say what type they were.

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Terrorism Against Pakistani Christians

Terrorism against Christianity at village of Kasur Bamani Wala Punjab Pakistan .

Islamabad: July 2, 2009. (CPM) Christian progressive movement is a political movement of Pakistan that supports persecuted Christians in Pakistan, has come out to condemn the attack this week on a Christian village in Kasur district.

According to the fact finding team sent by the chairperson of Christian progressive movement to the village, Bamani wala, was attacked by radical Muslims on 1st of July 2009 after a local Muslim cleric accused Christians of blaspheming against Islam’s holy prophet Muhammad and encouraged local Muslims to kill them.

A mob of Muslims reportedly responded to the cleric’s call by going on the rampage in Bamani wala, home to around 300 Christian families. There they demolished and burned down around 120 houses, other houses were looted and vandalized. Jewels and other precious household items of 15 million rupees (approximately) from their houses were looted by Muslim assassins.

The attackers also assaulted many of the women and young girls in the village made to run through the village naked and raped.

Attackers also threw acid on the faces of women and young girls.

Police and some government officials have visited the village in the wake of the attack but police have still not registered a case against the men identified by the Christian villagers as the attackers.

Ms Naila J. Dayal, chairperson (CPM) said, it was imperative that the government take greater action to ensure the safety of Pakistani religious minorities. She urged the government to repeal the country’s draconian blasphemy laws which are frequently misused by Muslims to settle personal scores with Christians.

Bamani wala is not the first Christian village to be attacked. In 1997, thousands of Christian homes and several churches were burned down in the Christian village of Shanti Nagar; hundreds were injured in that attack, while Christian girls were raped and abducted. There had never been any arrest in connection with that attack.

Ms Naila J. Dayal commented in a protest in front of press club Islamabad in the presence of print and electronic media and other political and officials on 2nd of July 2009: “It is a very sad and distressing situation as Christians in Pakistan are under attack; they don’t feel secure in their own country simply because they are Christians. The government’s reaction is also very disappointing. We have made it aware of these incidents and yet it has failed to take the appropriate action. It is the government’s duty to protect its citizens and now is the time to pass legislation that will stop the misuse of the blasphemy law and prevent any further attacks on Christians.”

Further she said, “Christian Progressive Movement is a representative block of Christian community working on the agenda of voice rising of brutally treated people of Christian community by Police, Religious clerics and against religious prejudice."

It is humble request to you that please request the government of Pakistan to take strict action against these anti-Christianity elements and to ask the Government to file the case against these terrorist attackers. It is not an incident, it is a terrorist attack. Thanks.

You’re truly
Saqib Malik

Coordinator Christian Progressive Movement-Islamabad
Flat # 12, Nasir Janjwa Plaza, Iqbal Town, Islamabad Highway, P.O. Box 1341, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Ph: 051-2526165
Fax: 051-2612125
cpmpak@yahoo.com, www.cpm.org.pk

Oklahoma Gives Bush 4th of July Welcome

WOODWARD, Okla. - Former President George W. Bush was greeted by thunderous applause on the Fourth of July as he told thousands of spectators in a rural Oklahoma rodeo arena that the U.S. was "the greatest nation on the face of the earth."

Bush was given six standing ovations as he spoke on a warm, humid evening in GOP-friendly Woodward, a town of about 12,000 residents in northwest Oklahoma and the latest in a handful of out-of-the-way places Bush has visited since leaving office.

During a 30-minute speech mostly devoid of political references - he mentioned his successor, Barack Obama, just once in passing - Bush thanked members of the military, spoke about the bravery of injured soldiers he'd met and told stories of people in difficult situations helping others.

"Patriotism comes in all different kinds of forms," he said. "Freedom is beautiful, freedom is precious, freedom must always be defended."

Read it all here.

Obama: Homosex and the Civil Right Era

A conservative black pastor and former NFL linebacker says he's highly offended that President Obama would compare the plight of homosexuals to that of blacks during the Civil Rights Era.

On Monday, President Obama told a gathering of homosexuals at the White House that he is aware that many of them "don't believe progress has come fast enough," and compared their struggles to those of blacks during the Civil Rights Movement.

Ken Hutcherson, the senior pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland, Washington, says the comments are especially disturbing from an individual who is supposed to be familiar with "the black experience."

"But I guess we...have to ask, 'Even though he is black because his father was, what is his "black experience"?' He doesn't have any. He was raised by a white mother and a white grandmother, so this man has about as much black experience as my Doberman Pinscher -- and I guarantee [that] my Doberman Pinscher doesn't have any," he points out. "There is nothing, nothing that compares between what the Afro-Americans went through and what homosexuals are going through now."

Read it all here.

Unknown Fate of US-Held Iraqi Journalist

As US troops begin their withdrawal from Iraqi cities, many questionsremain about the persons still detained by US forces. Reporters WithoutBorders reiterates its call for the release of Reuters photographer IbrahimJassam, who has been held since September 2008.

"The US armed forces are now withdrawing from the main Iraqi cities aftersix years of occupation," Reporters Without Borders said. "We hope thiswill result in the release of detainees still held by the Americans, suchas Ibrahim Jassam, who was arrested 10 months ago. His detention is illegalas the Iraqi central criminal court dismissed all charges against him lastNovember. He must be freed."

One of his sisters told Reporters Without Borders by phone: "Ibrahim begana hunger strike four days ago in protest against his illegal detention. Hishealth is deteriorating. We are very worried about him." His family isallowed to visit him every two months.

Jassam was arrested by US and Iraqi soldiers in the south Baghdad districtof Mahmoudiyah on 1 September 2008. No evidence was produced against himwhen the central criminal court heard his case on 30 November and dismissedall the charges. Nonetheless, he is still being held in Buki prison inBasra, 550 km south of Baghdad.

The situation of journalists continues to be critical in Iraq and thedanger persists as the US forces pull out. Three journalists have beenkilled since the start of 2009.

http://www.ifex.org/iraq/2009/07/02/reuters_photographer_still_being_held/

For more information:
Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne 75002 Paris France
rsf (@) rsf.org
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org

Mayor of Chihuahua on Violent Police

(CEPET/IFEX) - Chihuahua municipal police officers Wenceslao Chávez González and Hugo Abraham Barriga Vega have been suspended from their duties for 21 days, without pay, after they were found to be responsible for assaulting and arbitrarily detaining "El Observador" newspaper reporters Filiberto Ortiz and Daniel García. The incident took place on 14 June 2009, when the reporters witnessed police officers assaulting residents of the Martín López neighbourhood.

Carlos Borruel Baquera, the mayor of Chihuahua, made an announcement regarding the punishment of the two officers as well as another officer, Arturo Hernández Sánchez, who was suspended for four weeks without pay after assaulting and issuing a death threat against "El Heraldo de Chihuahua" photographer Pablo Rodríguez on 20 May. Rodriguez had been covering police activities for his newspaper.

Borruel Baquera said the decision to punish the police officers was unrelated to any conclusions that might be reached by the national or state human rights commissions. He noted that if the human rights commissions come to the conclusion that the officers' actions warrant the application of more severe sanctions, their recommendations will be followed without hesitation.

Baquera also said that he met with the state's public safety secretary,Víctor Valencia, and that they had agreed to develop a protocol for how police officers should deal with the media. He added that he is looking to promote a culture of respect and collaboration between police and the media in order to avoid more incidents such as these.

The mayor dismissed the idea that instructions have been issued for actions against journalists and said he considers the recent attacks to be random acts by individuals who got carried away in the heat of the moment.

http://www.ifex.org/mexico/2009/07/02/chihuahua_police_suspended/

For more information:
Center for Journalism and Public Ethics
Calle del Puente No. 222, Col. Ejidos de Huipulco
Tlalpan, 14380 México, D.F.
Méxicocepet (@) cepet.org
Phone: +52 55 5483 2020
http://www.cepet.org

Iran Arrests More Journalists

(RSF/IFEX) - Reporters Without Borders has learned that Kambiz Norrozi, the head of the Association of Iranian Journalists' legal committee, was arrested on 28 June 2009 and that "Farhikhteghan" reporter Esmail Hagh Parast was arrested on 22 June. Mojtaba Teherani, a journalist with the website Sahamnewes (http://www.etemademelli.ir ), was arrested on the evening of 27 June as he was leaving the newspaper offices. Intelligence ministry agents searched his home the next day, confiscating his computer and CD-Rom archives.

Other journalists and Association of Iranian Journalists representatives were summoned for questioning last week by the Tehran revolutionary court or the intelligence ministry, including Badorsadat Mofidi, the association's secretary-general, and spokesperson Mashalah Shamssolvazein. Although interrogated, they were not detained.

Reporters Without Borders has learned of the release of more than 20 journalists and media workers. Alireza Behshti, who works with opposition presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, and 22 employees of the newspaper "Kalemeh Sabz", who were arrested on 22 June, were freed on 28 June. Three of the newspaper's news editors are still being detained.

Karim Arghandeh, who writes for the pro-reform newspapers "Salam" and"Vaghieh Etafaghieh" and who keeps a blog (http://www.futurama.ir/), was also released on 28 June. Until then, there had been no news of him since 14 June.

http://www.ifex.org/iran/2009/07/02/kalemeh_sabz_journalists_released/
For more information:
Reporters Without Borders
47, rue Vivienne 75002 Paris France
Phone: +33 1 44 83 84 84
Fax: +33 1 45 23 11 51
http://www.rsf.org

Obama's Plan to Engage Young Muslims

WASHINGTON, July 2: The Obama administration wants to engage the Muslims in a way that is innovative, dynamic and out of the box, says Farah Pandith, America’s first special envoy to the Muslim communities. The main objective behind the administration’s new strategy is to “know the next generation of (Muslim) thinkers. And in this role I’ll be doing that,” Ms Pandith told a briefing in Washington.

Farah Pandith is a Muslim-American, born in the Indian-occupied Kashmir. Her parents immigrated to the United States when she was an infant.

Former president George W. Bush hired Ms Pandith in early 2007 as his senior adviser for Muslim engagement in the European and Eurasian region. She has also worked for the US National Security Council and with the US Agency for International Development in Kabul.

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed her America’s first special envoy to Muslim communities around the world.

In Washington, the creation of this new position is seen as the first step towards implementing President Barack Obama’s policy of reaching out to the Muslims announced in Cairo last month.

The strategy aims at undoing the negative impact of the Bush policies -- the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the indefinite detentions at Guantanamo Bay, and the humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

The approach, however, has already annoyed American conservatives, causing a former Reagan aide to proclaim that President Obama was a closet Muslim.

Perhaps that’s why the administration made no public announcement when it created a new office of a Special Representative to Muslim Communities. News of its debut was buried in an internal State Department memo last week, and it was only after spokesman Ian Kelley was questioned by reporters that the State Department arranged a public briefing by Ms Pandith.

But this did not prevent some US commentators from questioning the need to appoint a special envoy for the Muslims while others described the move as ‘bizarre’.

So it’s no surprise that Ms Pandith, an experienced diplomat, was very careful in her first briefing. She was so careful that in an hour-long briefing she did not mention Kashmir or Palestine even once.

She did not go into specifics and instead couched her message in neutral terms, hoping to draw the attention of her co-religionists without irking others.

She was particularly careful not to annoy India where the appointment of a Kashmiri woman as a special envoy for Muslims initially caused some concerns. Later, New Delhi welcomed her appointment, pointing out that she was an Indian. “I was actually very overwhelmed with the response in India,” said Ms Pandith. “I really have to say it was really special for me as somebody of Indian heritage.”

During the briefing, Ms Pandith used words like ‘listening’ and ‘nuance’ at least 20 times while describing how she would deal with her new assignment.

“I think it is nuance, I think it’s respect, I think it’s listening, I think it’s being creative,” she said. “And I think it’s creating many different types of initiatives to be able to do that.” She also acknowledged that there was no magic bullet that could resolve all the differences between the Islamic and Western worlds overnight.

“There is not one programme that’s going to be the magic programme to engage with Muslims. It’s really listening,” she said.

Source: Pakistan Dawn

Teachers Union Set to Endorse Gay Marriage

July 2nd, 2009 Posted in Gay Marriage, News, Take Action!

The National Education Association (NEA) – the nation’s largest teachers union with more than 3 million members – could be poised to vote on a brazen endorsement of gay marriage at its annual convention in San Diego this weekend, according to sources attending the convention.

NEA members obtained a draft of a proposed business item that declares the organization’s support of legal recognition to same-sex couples, which would amount to an endorsement of gay marriage and civil unions. The draft proposal also goes so far as to openly declare support of efforts to “repeal any federal legislation." This appears to be a reference to the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents states from being forced to recognize same-sex unions performed outside their borders.

The draft version also declares that the NEA would support efforts to oppose constitutional amendments – a less-than-subtle reference to measures like Prop 8, a law in California recently upheld by the state’s highest court, defining marriage as only between a man and a woman.
NEA caucus members could vote on the issue as early as Friday.

Candi Cushman, education analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said this represents an adult, political agenda that has nothing to do with education or a child’s best interest.

"This is especially egregious when you consider that teachers in California contributed more to support the traditional, man-woman marriage amendment than they did to defeat it," she said. "If the NEA is so brazen to use its resources to push government-sanctioned same-sex unions — and oppose voter-supported traditional marriage laws — this would unnecessarily alienate a large portion of its members, not to mention contradict the viewpoints of a majority of the public whose tax money funds public schools."

Sissy Jochmann, leader of the Conservative Educators Caucus of the NEA, said this action item is not what’s best for future generations.

"Over the years, we’ve been involved in the union to be a voice for conservative values we believe in. We know that even though we’re a small group, we represent a much larger group of teachers throughout the country.

Jeralee Smith, a founder of the Conservative Educators Caucus, said the focus needs to be on education, not politics.

"I believe if the union could get out of the far left agenda … and just focus on education that it would be a great boon to society," she said. "But I believe it tears society down with some of the efforts that it extends."

TAKE ACTION Contact the NEA pressroom at 619-525-6377 and ask them to reject any proposed business items calling for legal recognition of same-sex unions.

You can also contact the NEA state affiliates.

Police Attack Journalists in Nigerian Delta

(CPJ/IFEX) - New York, June 29, 2009 - The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on national police Inspector General Mike Okiro to investigate reports that Delta state police harassed six journalists and attacked at least three of them last week.

The Nigerian Union of Journalists Delta State Chapter said police attached to the state Ministry of Land prevented the journalists from reporting on the June 23 demolition of several buildings on government land.

"Politicians have consistently used the police to attack and intimidate journalists in the southern Delta region of Nigeria," said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Tom Rhodes. "It is time the inspector general took action and ensured journalists are allowed to carry out their work without fear of police violence and harassment."

The six journalists had sought to cover the demolition of homes and buildings that were condemned after allegedly being constructed without proper permits on government property in the state capital, Asaba, localj ournalists told CPJ. The journalists were Obinna Ume from the private Africa Independent Television, Daniel Ayemere from the private broadcaster Minaj Broadcast International, Aderemi Omotoso from state Radio Nigeria, Alphonsus Agborh from the government daily Nigeria Tribune, Albert Ograka from the private regional weekly The Tide, and Nkem Nweke from state television broadcaster Delta Rainbow.

Ume presented press credentials to the police at the demolition site, local journalists said, but officers seized his identification card and pushed him into the ground. Police then forced the six journalists to lie on the ground, beating Ume and Ayemere with the butt of their guns and kicking Omotoso, the union reported. Ayemere was treated at a local hospital for his injuries, local journalists said.

Delta State Police Commissioner Yakubu Alkali told CPJ that he was unaware of the episode. The journalists union has petitioned Inspector General Mike Okiro to undertake an inquiry and has called on colleagues to impose a moratorium on police reporting until the case is investigated, said the union’s state chairman, Felix Ingekoyi. As inspector general, Okiro monitors the activities of Nigeria’s police.

Ingekoyi said the Ministry of Lands is providing 15,000 naira (US$100) to replace Ayemere’s glasses, which were damaged during the incident. Ingekoyi noted that Ayemere had additional medical bills.

http://www.ifex.org/nigeria/2009/07/01/police_harass_journalists/

For more information:
Committee to Protect Journalists
330 7th Ave., 11th Floor
New York, NY 10001USA
info (@) cpj.org
Phone: +1 212 465 1004
Fax: +1 212 465 9568
http://www.cpj.org

Quote of the Week - Cardinal Cañizares

“If we truly believe that the Eucharist is really the ‘source and summit of Christian life’ – as the Second Vatican Council reminds us — we cannot admit that it is celebrated in an unworthy manner. For many, accepting the conciliar reform has meant celebrating a Mass which in one way or another had to be ‘desacralized.’ How many priests have been called ‘backward’ or ‘anticonciliar’ because of the mere fact of celebrating in a solemn or pious manner or simply for fully obeying the rubrics! It is imperative to get out of this dialectic.” -- Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera

Pakistanis Resent USA and Taliban Equally

NEW YORK, July 1: Most Pakistanis now see the Pakistani Taliban as well as Al Qaeda as a critical threat to the country — a major shift from 18 months ago — and support the government and army in their fight in the Swat valley against the militants, according to findings of a new public opinion survey released on Wednesday. The survey also reveals that Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif is the most popular leader in Pakistan and President Asif Ali Zardari the least popular politician. But Mr Zardari’s poor ratings have not affected Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani who continues to enjoy favourable ratings as does the Chief Justice of Supreme Court Iftikhar Chaudhry.

“A sea change has occurred in Pakistani public opinion. The tactics and undemocratic bent of militant groups — in tribal areas as well as Swat — have brought widespread revulsion and turned Pakistanis against them,” comments Clay Ramsay, research director at World Public Opinion Poll. However, he adds: “It’s crucial to understand that the US is resented just as much as before, despite the US having a new president.”

An overwhelming majority think that the Taliban who seek to overthrow the Afghan government should not be allowed to have bases in Pakistan. However, this does not bring with it a shift in attitudes toward the US. A large majority continues to have an unfavourable view of the US government. Almost two-thirds say they do not have confidence in President Obama. An overwhelming majority opposes US drone attacks.

Read it all here.

Obama (and Gang) vs Honduran Congress

This week, the Honduran socialist president, seeking to eviscerate his country's constitution in a shameless power-grab, has evoked Obama's true colors, and spread them out like yellow underwear on a backyard clothesline.

Obama's response to the Honduran military removing a dictator-wannabe from office (at the behest, it must be noted, of the Supreme Court and the Honduran Congress), and escorting him to the border, was sure and fast. He declared the military action an "illegal coup" faster than you can say Fidel Castro. And just as quickly the rest of the region's socialist gang chimed in too. The real Castro brothers. Hugo Chavez. Daniel Ortega.

Birds of a feather do tend to flock together.

Read it all here.

Dave Bottoms, Anglican Priest

Read the story of this American hero here.

Heretic in Bishop's Garb

The Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori doesn't care how people get 'saved' and has stated that there are many paths to God other than Jesus Christ, God's chosen Way. She recently stated: "How people get saved is really a matter for God to figure out, not for me to figure out. My job is to figure out how to be the best follower of Jesus that I can." Sadly, she hasn't a clue
about the nature of true Christian discipleship since she lacks obedience to the Faith once delivered. For as Jesus, the Son of God, claimed concerning Himself: "I am the door.
If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved." (John 10:9)

She also refered to the ruler-priests of the Old Testament as having messy families, obviously in ignorance of the very orderly and consistent nature of their kinship pattern. She said, "In the Old Testament, there are lots of examples of what holy and blessed marriage looks like, and what unholy marriage looks like," she said, "including polygamy and concubines being normal."

What's that, Schori? You're saying that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses had unholy marriages because they all had 2 wives?

She later added, "In the 1600s ... one of the main reasons for marriage was to 'avoid fornication.' But since that word doesn't appear in the Episcopal Church prayer book (1979) Schori isn't concerned about fornication.

"That's not in our prayer book now," she said. "We say that the primary goal and good of marriage is companionship. That's different from even what the first Anglicans said. If our goal is to help people live holy lives, which I think is the church's function, maybe we could think about people of the same sex living holy lives together."

Read the whole report here.

Amazing what heresies Schori and her cohorts will resort to in order to establish The Episcopal Church as the Gay/Lesbian/Bi-sexual/Trans-sexual/Pedophile Church of America.

The Antiochian Orthodox Church 'Masked'

The Self-Ruled Antiochian Archdiocese of North America is under the rule of Metropolitan Philip (shown left) who resides in Damascus. The church is showing symptoms of unhealth. This from AntiochianInfo.org.

On Anonymity

“Man is least in himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” ~ Oscar Wilde

Orthodox Christians who disagree with Metropolitan Philip’s interpretation of the February 24 decision by nine members of the Holy Synod are regularly accused of cowardice and hiding behind masks by retaining anonymity. Although pleasant and charismatic, Metropolitan Philip has a track record of retaliating vindictively — sometimes directly and sometimes passively — against those who oppose his will. Clergy have parishes and families to provide for; laity have good clergy that they don’t want subjected to transfer. Call it cowardice or hiding or whatever else you like, but those of us who are concerned for the truth will simply call 'anonymity' the expression of wisdom.

There is also a good amount of discussion about Metropolitan Philip's leadership at various blogs. Go here to read more. Pray for this Christian body.

Shari'a Courts Conflict with British Tradition

Dozens of Islamic courts operating in the United Kingdom are "seriously out of step with trends in Western legislation," according to a report published by London think tank Civitas on Monday.

Denis MacEoin, author of the Civitas report "Shari'a Law or One Law For All?" wrote that Shari'a rulings contained great potential for controversy and could involve acts contrary to UK legal norms and human rights legislation.

According to the report, Shari'a courts should not be recognized under Britain's 1996 Arbitration Act, as they claim authority over the private lives of individuals in a way that is contrary to the British tradition.

Read it all here.

Messianic Jewish Baker Wins Court Case

A Jew for Jesus who demanded kashrut supervision from the Chief Rabbinate won a Supreme Court decision on Monday likely to spark another confrontation between the nation's highest legal arbiter and the Orthodox rabbinical establishment.

In its verdict, based on a precedent that found belly-dancing to be unrelated to kosher food, the court ruled that an Ashdod baker's belief that Jesus was the messiah did not make her baked goods unkosher.

Therefore, argued the court, the Chief Rabbinate could not demand more stringent kashrut supervision arrangements than for any other baker.

The Orthodox rabbinate reacted negatively.

Read it all here.

Iraq Withdrawal: 4 US Soldiers Killed

The US troop withdrawal that was completed on Monday was part of a US-Iraqi security pact and marks the first major step toward withdrawing all American forces from the country by Dec. 31, 2011. President Barack Obama has said all combat troops will be gone by the end of August 2010.

In the attack Monday against US forces, the military said the four soldiers who were killed served with the Multi-National Division-Baghdad but did not provide further details pending notification of their families. It said they died as a "result of combat related injuries."

It was the deadliest attack against US forces since May 21, when three soldiers were killed and nine others wounded in a roadside bombing in southern Baghdad.

Read it all here.

Maryland to Reinstate Lethal Injection

In December 2006 an appeals court in Maryland ruled that the state could not carry out executions until a legislative panel reviewed the manual's protocol for lethal injections. The Maryland Court of Appeals said the manual was never given a public hearing or properly submitted to a joint committee before the Department of Corrections adopted it.

It appears that Maryland will now reinstate execution by lethal injection. Here's the latest on this:

The manual is the first public document to lay out execution procedures since Maryland reinstated the death penalty in 1978. The biggest change is that the new regulations require medical personnel who inject the lethal combination of drugs into an inmate's veins to find an alternative to the arms if those veins are too scarred to accept a needle.

The change was prompted by a lawsuit by Vernon L. Evans Jr., who said his arms were so scarred by drug use that he would be harmed when the three lethal drugs were administered. Evans is one of five inmates on Maryland's death row.

Other changes in the manual requested by the state's public defender's office include allowing the corrections chief to grant an inmate's request for a special last meal; allowing the inmate to choose which of his attorneys he wants to witness his execution; and allowing family members to visit as late as three hours before the execution instead of four.

The procedures also prohibit the state from using a medical procedure known as a "cut down" to guide the needle to a hard-to-locate vein. A cut down allows the inmate's skin to be cut, a method used in several states that has been criticized as antiquated and as causing the prisoner pain.

Jane Henderson, executive director of Maryland Citizens Against State Executions, called the document's public release "a step" toward making executions more humane.
"In Maryland it's always been a very secretive process," she said. "Now we can see what they say they're going to do and analyze it carefully."

Read the full report here.

Americans Doubt Benefit of Climate Bill

Americans have mixed feelings about the historic climate change bill that passed the House on Friday, but 42% say it will hurt the U.S. economy.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% believe the climate change bill passed by the House on Friday will help the economy. Fifteen percent (15%) say it will have no impact, and 24% are not sure.

A majority of both Republicans (56%) and adults not affiliated with either major political party (52%) think the bill will hurt the economy. Among Democrats, however, 30% say it will help the economy, 23% that it will hurt and 21% say it will have no impact.

Forty-seven percent (47%) of investors say the bill is bad for the economy, compared to 37% of non-investors.

Read the full report here.

Uganda Becoming a Desert

A new global report on Environment has warned that Uganda could be a total dessert in 40 years if the government fails to protect the country’s forests. Uganda has reportedly lost more than 30 percent of its forest between 1990 and 2005.

The findings of the State of the Environment Report for 2008, has blamed the great loss of forest cover to human activities, which include among others agriculture, a fast growing population and rapid urbanisation.

The report said Uganda’s forest cover was at 5 million hectares in 1990 but reduced to 3.5 million hectares by 2005.

The National Environment Management Authority Executive Director, Aryamanya Mugisha, has also warned of dire environmental effects if no immediate remedial measures are put in place to reverse the trend.

Read the full report here. To watch a video on the severity of Uganda's drought, go here.

Al-Qaeda Kills 24 Algerian Policemen

At least 24 policemen have been killed by Islamist militants during an ambush near Mansoura, east of the capital, Algiers yesterday.

The police officers who were reportedly escorting Chinese construction workers near a highway building site, had to stop after militants set off two roadside bombs to block a convoy, reports said.

Reports further said the gunmen fired the police with bullets before stealing their weapons and uniforms.

However, the local official said the Chinese construction workers, who were building a segment of Algeria's east-west highway, had not yet joined the convoy when the attack by the suspected militants took place.

Earlier this month al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, also known as al-Qaeda in North Africa, killed a British man, Edwin Dyer, who they had abducted in January from Niger.

Read the full report here.

Nigerian Girls to Escape Sex Slavery

More than 10, 000 Nigerian girls held captive as sex slaves in Morocco and Libya are to be repatriated, the House of Representatives Committee on Diaspora has revealed in a statement.

The girls reportedly from Edo State, the southern part of the country, aged between 13 and 17, had been held captive by sex slave traders, the statement said.

According to the Committee statement, it is currently working with relevant authorities and Non-Governmental Organisations to ensure the safe return of the young girls.

Read the full report here.

Madoff's Shame

For some charities decimated by Madoff, things will never be the same.

The Robert I. Lappin Foundation, whose entire $8 million in assets was wiped out by Madoff’s scheme, was transformed by the loss.

It used to fund programs such as Youth to Israel, which sends kids from Massachusetts on free trips to Israel, out of its own once deep pockets; now the foundation must raise funds to survive. New programs, like one that would have sent teachers to Israel, have been put on hold, according to Deboah Coltin, the foundation’s executive director.

“If I was to sum it up, justice was served. What else is there to say?” Coltin told JTA. “The Lappin Foundation has been able to pick up and move on. We haven’t been thinking about it.”
One Madoff victim, Carla Hirschhorn, who lost her entire $7 million in savings in Madoff’s scheme, called her life a “living hell.” She said her mother is now dependent on Social Security and her daughter works two jobs to pay tuition.

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate who saw most of his fortune stolen by Madoff – and who has been stumping across the country talking about it and trying to raise money – declined to comment.

So did Yeshiva University, one of the nonprofits hit hardest by Madoff, having lost $110 million in real and imagined profits.

Read it all here.

Madoff's Sentence: 'Send a Message'

Judge Chin gave Bernie Madoff the maximum sentence. This is justified by Madoff's crime, but Judge Chin's statement in closing that he wanted to 'send a message' raises ethical concerns.

Read what lawyers are saying here.