Kenya's opposition said on Saturday it would resume protests next week over a disputed election, and five people were killed in politically-fuelled ethnic violence in the country's Great Rift Valley.
The deaths bring to at least 28 the number of people killed in the last four days, in a combination of ethnic violence and police action against three days of opposition demonstrations the government has banned.
In the latest flare-up, a group of Kalenjins raided a camp in the Rift Valley village of Kipkelion, 180 km (112 miles) northwest of Nairobi, police said. "A group of armed warriors attacked a village, leaving five people dead and property destroyed. These were refugees in a camp, people thought to have supported (President Mwai) Kibaki," Rift Valley Provincial Police Officer Everett Wasige said.
Several hundred people had taken refuge at the camp, located near a monastery, after three weeks of attacks across the Rift aimed at people seen to support Kibaki, mostly from his Kikuyu tribe and the Kisii ethnic group.
The opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) dominates the Rift, and most of the 250,000 people who fled politically-fuelled ethnic clashes came from there. Police say the Rift accounts for 70 percent of the deaths since the vote.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2008 00:00 ||
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Dozens of civilians were killed during fighting between rebels and militia in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, both sides said Saturday, with each blaming the other.
The National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) of renegade general Laurent Nkunda said the Mai-Mai militia was responsible for some 20 deaths, while the Mai-Mai Congolese Patriotic Resistance (Pareco) said at least 30 people had been killed.
Local authorities accused the CNDP, saying Nkundas fighters had massacred more than 40 villagers since Friday near Nyamitaba and Kalonge, more than 60 kilometres northwest of Goma, capital of Nord-Kivu province. No independent death toll has yet been collated.
The UN mission in the DR Congo, known by its French acronym MONUC, has sent a patrol to the area to determine what has happened, according to spokesman Major Prem Tiwari. The CNDP is killing civilians in the fields and in the bush, Nyamitaba district administrator Emmanual Munyamariba told AFP.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2008 00:00 ||
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Long piece in the IHT about how the Saoodis are spending our their money.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/20/2008 03:11 ||
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#1
The House of Saud has roots in the Negd region of the Arabian desert. The tribe had no ability whatsoever to control what is now Saudi Arabia. Anglo-American interests created the country - after the collapse of the Turkish Caliphate - as a protectorate. After the UN was formed, the Saudis proclaimed sovereignty and, while allowing trade and investment in the "kingdom" they subsidize brazen Wahabi subversion of their patrons. As for the oil, local savages had nothing to do with either its discovery or development. The House of Saud is a parasitic entity, which now includes over 8000 members, who are mostly hostile to their creators. The time has come to re-patriate the oil, and send the bedouin pretenders back to the desert with their dates and camels.
#2
Good. The more money they spend at home and on imported goods, the less they spend on jihad education and adventures. The next step being to persuade their offspring to take productive jobs instead of lording over the untermenschen...
#1
The allegations of Marxist infiltration at City Hall will embarrass Livingstone as he begins his campaign for a third term, running on a moderate, pro-business platform
No, not particularly embarrassed, is our Red Ken. Not embarrassed at all, nope, nope.
Tajikistan's education minister has extended official strictures on personal and religious freedoms with an assault on deeply ingrained practices at one of the country's major institutions of Islamic learning. Less than a year after he effectively eliminated Islamic-style head scarves in public schools, Abdujabbor Rahmonov has ordered male students at the Islamic University of Tajikistan to don suits and ties and shave their beards, and he has vowed to introduce teacher uniforms there and ban head scarves, known as hijabs.
It is the latest indication of the balancing act confronting Tajik officials who are outwardly keen to discourage unsanctioned religious practices from getting a foothold. That effort has included the closing and even bulldozing of "illegal" mosques and testing of imams to demonstrate their fitness to lead congregations.
Speaking in the Tajik capital on January 11, Rahmonov said Tajik traditional clothing -- a dress reaching below the knee, worn with pants -- is modest enough to wear at Islamic schools and during prayers, and does not violate Islamic guidelines. He then ordered male students at the Islamic University to shave their beards and wear suits and ties to classes. Rahmonov also announced that a special uniform would soon be introduced for teachers at the school.
"Of course, we understand that it is an Islamic educational institute and it has certain conditions and requirements," Rahmonov said. "However, I emphasize once again that the order and regulations in madrasahs have to be similar to the rest of the educational institutions."
Jaloliddin Alizoda, the head of the Islamic University, said he was unaware of any imminent dress guidelines for religious teachers and declined to comment on the issue.
Female students at the Islamic school mainly wear long dresses and head scarves.
Rahmonov has described the hijab as a "foreign culture for Tajiks." Likewise, he added that men at the Islamic University should not wear Middle Eastern-style hats.
Many in Tajikistan -- including madrasah students -- suggest that Rahmonov's latest "dress code for religious students and teachers" will be met with compliance despite dissatisfaction with the new regulations. But several male students at the Islamic University told RFE/RL's Tajik Service that they were stunned by the education minister's latest announcement. Some said Rahmonov's latest revision of the dress code at the Islamic school is unnecessary because the clothing of Islamic students in Tajikistan is not radically different from that in secular schools and universities.
"This is not [an important] issue at all," said one religious student, who did not want to give his name. "I choose my clothes to wear at home or in the madrasah the way I like them. No matter what kind of decree they issue, I will dress the way I want, with or without a tie."
Mahmadali Hait, a member of Tajikistan's Islamic Renaissance Party (IRP), which is the only registered Islamic political party in the region, said the minister's order will force many of the university's several hundred students to leave so that they can continue dressing the way they have been told wish.
After announcing the enforcement of a ban on the hijab last year, Rahmonov turned up personally at universities to check whether students were obeying his order. Despite a torrent of complaints from the students and often their parents, women wearing head scarves were not allowed to enter university buildings and were given a clear choice between the hijab and their education. Most of them eventually gave in to the ban and removed their head scarves.
One student, Davlatmoh Ismoilova, appealed to a Tajik court to defend her choice to wear a hijab. But she lost cases against the university and the Education Ministry.
It is not only a new dress code that might have an impact on the staff of the Islamic school. Rahmonov also announced that all religious teachers will have to take an exam, and those without diplomas or the required teaching qualifications will be expelled from the university. Similar tests were given to all imams in Dushanbe mosques in August by the mayor's office. It said that "unqualified imams have to be replaced by those who have the appropriate qualifications and knowledge."
More than 300 unregistered mosques in the capital alone were shut down by Tajik authorities in 2007. At least two improvised mosques in the capital were bulldozed amid a drive that critics -- including IRP leaders -- claimed was undue pressure on Islamic institutions and values and a crackdown against religion. The Dushanbe mayor's office said some of the former mosques will be turned into police stations, beauty salons, and community centers.
In the northern Sughd Province, the authorities warned that some 350 mosques needed to gain the proper license or they would be closed.
Government officials deny the actions represent an assault on Islam. They claim the mosque closures are simply part of an operation against unlawfully operating businesses and organizations, which include unregistered mosques.
SAN DIEGO - Rep. Duncan Hunter is dropping out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination after a poor showing in the Nevada caucus. "I ran the campaign exactly the way I wanted to, and at this point not being able to gain traction in conservative states of Nevada and South Carolina, it's time to allow our volunteers and supporters to focus on the campaigns that remain viable," Hunter said in a statement issued Saturday in advance of a speech planned later in the evening to campaign workers and other supporters.
"We thought we'd do much better in Nevada, but the numbers weren't there," said campaign spokesman Bob Bevill. "We were not able to get any traction."
In recent weeks Hunter, a California congressman, was forced at every stop to dispel rumors that the campaign was already dead and was unable to talk about the issues, Bevill said. The best showing of Hunter's campaign was in Wyoming's Jan. 5 caucuses, in which he won 8 percent of the vote, finishing third behind Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson. "The media has a 'vote someone off the island' mentality and Duncan Hunter was a casualty of that," said Bevill.
Fred Thompson's the next one to be voted off, I think.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/20/2008 03:09 ||
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#1
it is too bad. He was the best conservative candidate by far.
#2
WIth Thompson nowt showing well yesterday, it looks liek Conservatives have nobody left thats all 3 types of conservative (social, economic, defense).
Federalism is becoming extinct the the Big Government GOP of George Bush.
#3
He'll make a great VP or SecDef. He's a smart conservative and a good man. I'm in his district, and supporting his Marine Vet son to carry on the agenda
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2008 13:51 Comments ||
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#4
Hunter as SecDef, yep that would work.
I guess Fred's going to go back to Hollywood after 5 Feb. Supposedly he is staying in thru the big 5 Feb day, to try to collect delegates off partial percentages in the south and as a Favorite Son for the 55 delegates in Tenn.
One thing peopel forget, Fred has been running FIRST in Louisiana. Thats enough to throw a monkey wrench into things.
Basically if Thompson continues to run 3rd with 15% on average, and takes Tenn and La, he will end up with a couple hundred delegates, and could be a king maker at a brokered convention, or at least could push somone to adopt his policies in order to trade for the delegates support.
So no he's not going to be PResident, but for most "Fredheads" its always been about the message: truly conservative on all fronts.
If Fred can stand in and keep the hammer down, he can at least help steer McCain, Romney or Giuliani towards the right positions - and he can drag Huckabee down and out.
Playing the part of the curmudgeonly old conservative to kick the others in the butt where they are wrong is a good role for Fred.
All of them: Federalism, Global Warming.
McCain: Immigration/Border, Taxes
Giuliani: Guns, Judges, SocCon issues
Romney: Socialized medicine, guns, judges
Huckabee? I hope Fred keeps shredding the Republican Jimmy Carter + Bill Clinton chimera.
IMHO, Fred's major mistake was leaving an opening that Huckabee filled. Put Hucks one-issue morons in Fred colum and he's the runaway favorite. THats Fred's error - should have actually CAMPAIGNED starting in September in Iowa and made nice with the Evangelicals. Heck, he should have kicked his campaign off July 5th after announcing onthe 4th. He had all kinds of momentum, press on his side, tons of people lined up ready to move, tons of politicians line up ready to endorse. That was his biggest mistake: listening to whoever told him to wait.
Now he has to content himself as the elder lecturer and spoiler. I hoep he realizes the values he can bring for us conservatives in that trole to steer these partial conservatives back on the Reagan path.
#5
I don't know that Fred's running first here (Louisiana), and if so I don't know why, since there has been no campaigning. I do know that my wife and I both changed party registration so we would have the chance to vote for him I'm not even very confident he would be a good (or even decent) President, but I do like his position and his behavior. He's run his campaign just like 'everyone' says the wanted to see campaigns run, but it seems they lied.
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/20/2008 6:35 Comments ||
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#3
Ok, I don't get it. Illegal immigration is the biggest issue with republican voters. 70% of the American people don't want amnesty. SC republicans give us McCain and Huckabee for 1st and 2nd.
WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!? Are you all fucking stupid? You gave us Mcamnesty himself followed by his apprentice in training!!! I am seriously worried about the republican party with these two still in the running and winning. We are about to go over the edge of the abyss and have a Carter like president for 4 years, during a fucking world war.
If amnesty-dee and amnesty-dumb are still standing after Super Tuesday, America is in some serious fucking trouble.
#8
Quasi-closed. You have to register with one or the other party IIUC but can switch that easily. But maybe one of our regulars is more familiar with their system & can confirm/correct that statement.
#9
I for one voted for Fred, he won in my precinct at least, IIRC, if you vote in rebub you cannot vote in demo at thier primary but on election day you can vote how you want. not really 100% sure on that as i pretty much go straight ticket except for local stuff.
#10
I might add that in the 2000 election, SC was where McCain lost it with a lackluster attempt and eventually conceded the race. So I feel he went extra hard in SC I know he was the most frequent politician in the area, and had Goober Graham in his corner. Our turnout was at 24% with the local media's gloom and doom weather forcast of snow.
#12
The conservatives were hurt wiht the snow up state. The low country had higher turnout, and thats where McCains strength (moderates, non-native SC's) is.
At least Thompson may have put a nail in the Huckabee candidacy. He's supposed to win the South and didn't.
Republicans John McCain and Mike Huckabee are in a statistical dead heat as voters head to the polls in South Carolina's presidential primary, according to a Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released on Saturday. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, shaved six points off McCain's lead in the tracking poll to trail the Arizona senator by just one point, 27 percent to 26 percent, as voting began -- well within the 3.4 percent margin of error.
UPDATE: McCain Takes It...
Republican John McCain called his victory in South Carolina's presidential primary on Saturday evidence that his campaign "can carry right through" Florida into the giant round of caucuses and primaries on Feb. 5. "I know it's not easy," he told The Associated Press, "and we've got a long way to go."
South Carolina was where McCain's presidential prospects died eight years ago, and he savored the victory this time. "It just took us awhile, that's all," he said in the interview. "Eight years is not a long time. It sure was nice to have a lot of our old friends be happier that we won."
Asked if he was now the front-runner for the GOP nomination, McCain demurred. "I don't know," he said, "we like to run from behind."
Still, he expressed optimism going forward. "I'm very confident that we'll win in Florida," he said. "We showed that the first-in-the-South primary is a very important victory, and it gives us a very important progress that we can carry right through Florida and February 5th."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2008 00:00 ||
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Boggles the mind. I have a lot of friends that vote in the repub caucuses & consider themselves conservative. Some of them are McCain supporters. When I quiz them on his actual voting record they generally have no idea. Fricken scary. Has the avg GOP voter gone stupid or just shamelessly lazy? Prolly a little both, methinks. Seems that people get sucked into these television debates looking for congeniality or sex appeal but don't bother to dig past that crap and look for the tangible records.
THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets. The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agencys investigation of the network.
Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agencys Washington field office. She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.
Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an outright lie. I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations, she said.
The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.
The letter says: You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office. It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.
Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistans spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion. She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.
The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001. It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The officials warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.
The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish targets talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of operatives at the ATC.
Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed. I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders, she said, but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.
This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security. Turks and Israelis stealing US nuclear secrets to sell to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
CHENNAI: The countdown has begun at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, for the launch of Israeli satellite Polaris on Monday morning by a core-alone configuration of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
This is the second-time that a core-alone PSLV configuration will put a satellite in orbit. In April 2007, PSLV C-8 successfully put Italian satellite Agile in orbit. In normal configuration, the four-stage PSLV has strap-on boosters around its first stage. Weighing 295 tonnes and standing 44 metres tall, it can put satellites weighing up to 1,200 kg in low-earth orbit.
In a core-alone, the six strap-on booster motors are removed and the main PSLV looks like a lean and hungry vehicle. Weighing only 230 tonnes, it can deploy satellites weighing up to 600 kg in orbit. Polaris, a radar-imaging, remote-sensing satellite, was mated with the vehicle a week ago. It weighs about 300 kg. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was to launch it in September 2007, but postponed it to October. At that time, the core-alone vehicle that was assembled at the Mobile Service Tower, for some mysterious reason, was dismantled. The satellite too was boxed up in a container. Top ISRO officials then claimed that the Israelis had some technical difficulties with the satellite.
There were news reports that ISRO abandoned the launch under pressure from the United States, as it did not want ISRO to get a slice of the launch market. Gulf countries too reportedly put pressure on India not to launch the satellite. The Mission Director is George Koshy and the Vehicle Director C. Venugopal. Scientists from the Israel Space Agency are at Sriharikota. Antrix Corporation Limited, marketing agency of the Department of Space, will receive money from the Israel Space Agency for launching Polaris.
Posted by: john frum ||
01/20/2008 14:59 ||
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Three persons, including an Inter Services Intelligence agent from Pakistan, were arrested by Madhya Pradesh Special Task force for allegedly passing on sensitive information about the Indian Army, a senior officer said on Sunday.
"Mohammed. Imran Warsi, the ISI agent hailing from Karachi, was arrested in Bhopal on Saturday with sensitive information regarding deployment, unit details and important phone numbers of the Indian Army," Inspector General (STF) Sanjeev Singh told reporters in Bhopal.
On information collected from him, ...
"Ouch! Ooch! I'll talk, I'll talk! Just put those down!"
police arrested two others -- Iqbal and Akhtar -- who were acting as his local contacts and supplying him sensitive information, Singh said.
Imran had been passing on sensitive information through e-mail and phone to his "handlers" in Pakistan and Dubai, from where he received the funding through Western Union Money Transfer, Singh said. Information about the involvement of an army officer in leaking information has been collected from Imran during interrogation, but the matter was being further probed, he added.
"Hokay, Imran, now you're going to be 'probed'."
[gulp]
The ISI agent, who was staying in Bhopal with his wife and two children, had managed to procure a ration card, PAN card and permanent resident certificate from Sagar, and had applied for an Indian passport, he added.
Picked by the Pakistani intelligence agency in 1995-96, Imran was trained and sent to Delhi by air in 2003. He got married to a woman from Kolkata, and had been staying at different places, including Srinagar , Mumbai, Bangalore and Kolkata, the official said, adding teams had been sent to different cities to collect further details. To a query, he said Imran's wife was being interrogated to confirm whether she was aware of his activities.
"No, no, never once did I know what he was doing! I'm a woman in Pakistan for crying out loud, you think he told me anything?"
"Good point. Hokay, Choudray, let her go."
Posted by: john frum ||
01/20/2008 11:34 ||
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#1
Senator Muñoz told The Santiago Times that walls have no place in today's world, pointing to the fall of the Berlin Wall as proof.
The Berlin wall was to keep people in. The US border wall is to keep people out. And the US border wall has doors in it that anyone with legal intentions and a clean background can take advantage of. STFU Muñoz et. al..
UN chief Ban Ki-moon has picked Hollywood heart-throb George Clooney, a passionate advocate for an end to war and famine in Sudan's Darfur region, as the world body's latest Messenger of Peace, an official said Friday.
Ah, yes. The star of Syriana.
The Oscar-winning U.S. actor was recognized for his tireless efforts to focus public attention on key international political and social issues, said UN spokeswoman Michele Montas.
Clooney joins eight other internationally renowned individuals chosen to campaign for the UN drive to improve the lives of billions of people around the world.
Other UN peace messengers are Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, Chinese-American cellist Yo-Yo Ma, Oscar-winning U.S. actor Michael Douglas, British primatologist Jane Goodall, Princess Haya Bint Al Hussein of Jordan, Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim, Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho and Japanese violinist Midori Goto.
"You have seen first-hand the pain experienced by the victims of war and made it your personal mission to help end violence and human suffering," Ban said as he lauded Clooney's "dedication to raising awareness and mobilizing action on Darfur."
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Paul Coehlo wrote a decent book called "the alchemist" - I read it when I was in iraq the first time. I'd recommend it.
Clooney, lol. As the new UN messenger of peace I am sure he's enroute most rik-tik to bring that message to the janjaweed. Maybe he can impress them w/all that worldly knowledge he gained in that one semester he spent at Kentucky, or, I guess he could always do his rendition of Man of Constant Sorrow for the j-weeds.
#2
Hope George got a good night's sleep. He has his first official plea for assistance:
MILITANTS in Nigeria's violent oil region yesterday invited actor George Clooney to visit the area and asked for United Nations intervention in the conflict.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has designated Clooney a "messenger of peace" to promote UN activities, particularly its far-flung peacekeeping missions.
The 46-year-old actor has campaigned for an end to the war in the Darfur region of Sudan and aid for the millions caught in the conflict.
The invitation to Nigeria comes from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta.
#3
Wondered why I saw that 'Peacemaker' was on TV today. Wait, isn't that movie banned in the EU? Nevermind that he slayed vampire whores you just cannnot say 'muslim terrorist' or 'take the shot' or stand there and take 'holy rusted metal batman' without some sort of reprocusion. Period.
No, course not. That's why all the wimmin reporters at the NYT have undergone the procedure. Happens day after they're hired. Ev'ryone knows that.
When a girl is taken usually by her mother to a free circumcision event held each spring in Bandung, Indonesia, she is handed over to a small group of women who, swiftly and yet with apparent affection, cut off a small piece of her genitals.
Sponsored by the Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-services organization, circumcisions take place in a prayer center or an emptied-out elementary-school classroom where desks are pushed together and covered with sheets and a pillow to serve as makeshift beds.
The procedure takes several minutes. There is little blood involved. Afterward, the girls genital area is swabbed with the antiseptic Betadine. She is then helped back into her underwear and returned to a waiting area, where shes given a small, celebratory gift some fruit or a donated piece of clothing and offered a cup of milk for refreshment.
Fruit for mutilation.
She has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia, where, according to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an international research group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that their daughters had undergone some form of circumcision by the time they reached 14.
These photos were taken in April 2006, at the foundations annual mass circumcision, which is free and open to the public and held during the lunar month marking the birth of the prophet Muhammad. The Assalaam Foundation runs several schools and a mosque in Bandung, Indonesias third-largest city and the capital of West Java.
The photographer Stephanie Sinclair was taken to the circumcision event by a reproductive-health observer from Jakarta and allowed to spend several hours there. Over the course of that Sunday morning, more than 200 girls were circumcised, many of them appearing to be under the age of 5. Meanwhile, in a nearby building, more than 100 boys underwent a traditional circumcision as well.
According to Lukman Hakim, the foundations chairman of social services, there are three benefits to circumcising girls. One, it will stabilize her libido, he said through an interpreter. Two, it will make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband. And three, it will balance her psychology.
NYT photog and reporter swallowed all this whole.
Female genital cutting commonly identified among international human rights groups as female genital mutilation has been outlawed in 15 African countries. Many industrialized countries also have similar laws. Both France and the U.S. have prosecuted immigrant residents for performing female circumcisions.
In Indonesia, home to the worlds largest Muslim population, a debate over whether to ban female circumcision is in its early stages. The Ministry of Health has issued a decree forbidding medical personnel to practice it, but the decree which has yet to be backed by legislation does not affect traditional circumcisers and birth attendants, who are thought to do most female circumcisions. Many agree that a full ban is unlikely without strong support from the countrys religious leaders. According to the Population Council study, many Indonesians view circumcision for boys and girls as a religious duty.
Female circumcision in Indonesia is reported to be less extreme than the kind practiced in other parts of the globe Africa, particularly. Worldwide, female genital cutting affects up to 140 million women and girls in varying degrees of severity, according to estimates from the World Health Organization.
The most common form of female genital cutting, representing about 80 percent of cases around the world, includes the excision of the clitoris and the labia minora. A more extreme version of the practice, known as Pharaonic circumcision or infibulation, accounts for 15 percent of cases globally and involves the removal of all external genitalia and a stitching up of the vaginal opening.
Studies have shown that in some parts of Indonesia, female circumcision is more ritualistic a rite of passage meant to purify the genitals and bestow gender identity on a female child with a practitioner rubbing turmeric on the genitals or pricking the clitoris once with a needle to draw a symbolic drop of blood. In other instances, the procedure is more invasive, involving what WHO classifies as Type I female genital mutilation, defined as excision of the clitoral hood, called the prepuce, with or without incision of the clitoris itself. The Population Councils 2003 study said that 82 percent of Indonesian mothers who witnessed their daughters circumcision reported that it involved cutting.
The women most often identified the clitoris as the affected body part. The amount of flesh removed, if any, was alternately described by circumcisers as being the size of a quarter-grain of rice, a guava seed, a bean, the tip of a leaf, the head of a needle.
At the Assalaam Foundation, traditional circumcisers say they learn the practice from other women during several years of apprenticing. Siti Rukasitta, who has been a circumciser at the foundation for 20 years, said through an interpreter that they use a small pair of sterilized scissors to cut a piece of the clitoral prepuce about the size of a nail clipping.
Population Council observers who visited the event before the 2003 study, however, reported that they also witnessed some cases of circumcisers cutting the clitoris itself.
Any distinction between injuring the clitoris or the clitoral hood is irrelevant, says Laura Guarenti, an obstetrician and WHOs medical officer for child and maternal health in Jakarta. The fact is there is absolutely no medical value in circumcising girls, she says. It is 100 percent the wrong thing to be doing. The circumcision of boys, she adds, has demonstrated health benefits, namely reduced risk of infection and some protection against H.I.V.
Nonetheless, as Western awareness of female genital cutting has grown, anthropologists, policy makers and health officials have warned against blindly judging those who practice it, saying that progress is best made by working with local leaders and opinion-makers to gradually shift the public discussion of female circumcision from what its believed to bestow upon a girl toward what it takes away. These mothers believe they are doing something good for their children, Guarenti, a native of Italy, told me. For our culture that is not easily understandable. To judge them harshly is to isolate them. You cannot make change that way. And thus the New York Times continues to justify the abhorrent, because "That's how they do things over there."
#1
"...officials have warned against blindly judging those who practice it, saying that progress is best made by working with local leaders and opinion-makers..."
Actually, progress is best made by judging those who practice it to be barbarians.
#3
Cultural relativism is a tool of anthropological analysis, a good one.
It is not a basis for policy in the real world, which is what lefties try to make of it. Used that way, it becomes a blanket justification for literally any atrocity the morally depraved cultural left chooses to defend or discount.
A while back, I was talking to a leftist media idiot about Japanese conduct during World War 2. He took that line that we could not judge them harshly because it was just part of their culture to brutalize prisoners and occupied peoples. I said, "Fine, and it's just part of our culture to fire-bomb people who do that kind of shit."
Posted by: Gromomble Oppressor of the Iowans8916 ||
01/20/2008 17:08 Comments ||
Top||
#4
needledick NYT spin? It means "never having to say : 'was it good for you?'", cuz, of course, it wuzn't
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/20/2008 18:57 Comments ||
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#5
OK. All women at the NYT please line up. We have a little "not-so-bad" surprise for you.
As for the guys, they were told they were circumcised but actually it was a lobotomy.
Scientists are sifting through their first new views of the planet Mercury in more than three decades thanks to images beamed home by NASA's MESSENGER probe.
The car-sized spacecraft zipped past Mercury in a Monday flyby and is relaying more than 1,200 new images and other data back to eager scientists on Earth. "Now it's time for the scientific payoff," MESSENGER principal investigator Sean Solomon of the Carnegie Institution of Washington told SPACE.com after the flyby. "It's just a complete mix of results that we're going to get."
In one new image the planet's stark surface is shown peppered with small craters, each less than a mile (1.6 km) in diameter and carved into an area about 300 miles (482 km) across. MESSENGER used its narrow-angle camera to photograph the scene, which is dominated by a large, double-ringed crater dubbed Vivaldi after the Italian composer. While the crater was last seen by NASA's Mariner 10 probe, MESSENGER's camera observed it with unprecedented detail, researchers said.
Another new view reveals the first look at the half of Mercury left uncharted by Mariner 10.
"It is already clear that MESSENGER's superior camera will tell us much that could not be resolved even on the side of Mercury viewed by Mariner's vidicon camera in the mid-1970s," said MESSENGER researchers at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) in a Wednesday statement. JHUAPL engineers built MESSENGER for NASA and are managing its $446 million mission for the space agency.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/20/2008 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11133 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Huh! Going to Iran for the latest news from NASA.
#5
GLOBAL WARMING = the SUN.
PLANETARY WARMING = the SUN.
GLOBAL DHIMMITUDE > GLOBAL DIMMING? = the SUN.
versus "DAY AFTER TOMORROW" > "SOLAR OUTPUT IS NORMAL", e.g. THE WORLD IS WARMING BECUZ SOLAR OUPTPUT IS "NORMAL"?
IMO only this mission is just a PC cover for the USG-NASA to collect info on the Sun. among other methods - MERCURY IS OUR CLOSEST PLANET TO THE SUN + NASA WANTS TO KNOW HOW THE SUN = SOL IS AFFECTING IT + BY EXTENS INNER PLANETS. IOW, THE USG-NASA HAVE DOUBTS ABOUT CURR SOLAR MODELS-THEORIES AND WANT CERTAINTY.
A Border Patrol agent trying to stop a vehicle that had illegally entered the U.S. was struck and killed Saturday in southeastern California, agency officials said.
The agent was killed about 20 miles west of Yuma in the Imperial Sand Dunes Recreation Area, a spot along the border that is popular with off-road vehicle enthusiasts and frequently used by smugglers. The agent attempted to impede the vehicle's progress before he was hit, but the Border Patrol did not immediately have more information, said agent Eric Anderson, a spokesman for the agency's Yuma sector.
The name of the agent killed was not immediately released because his family had not been notified.
Witnesses told the Yuma Sun newspaper that agents were chasing a Hummer and a Ford pickup on Interstate 8 when the vehicles turned into the dunes and fled toward Mexico. The agent was trying to place spike strips in their path and was struck by the Hummer, they said.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Kenya's opposition said on Saturday it would resume protests next week over a disputed election, and five people were killed in politically-fuelled ethnic violence in the country's Great Rift Valley.
Dozens of civilians were killed during fighting between rebels and militia in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, both sides said Saturday, with each blaming the other.
Three persons, including an Inter Services Intelligence agent from Pakistan, were arrested by Madhya Pradesh Special Task force for allegedly passing on sensitive information about the Indian Army, a senior officer said on Sunday.
