Italian imam posts photo of nuns on beach to discuss burqini ban, gets FB account blocked
RT | August 20, 2016
The imam of Florence has posted a picture of habit-wearing nuns splashing along the seashore on Facebook, calling for dialogue about burqini bans… but got his account blocked instead.
The post by Izzedin Elzir got some 2,700 shares, and came in response to the French southern cities – like Cannes and Nice – prohibiting the wearing of burqinis on the beach.
The day after the imam published his post, he awoke to find his account blocked.
“It’s incomprehensible. I have to send them an ID document to reactivate it. They wanted to make sure it’s my account – it’s a very strange procedure,” the indignant imam told La Repubblica.
On Friday, his account was back in, and the imam said he hopes it wasn’t blocked because of the picture, as it urges dialogue, and “we live in a society of law and freedom.”
He also noted that the burqini had only come into fashion among Muslim women over the past few years, and he expressed regret that “some politicians in France, instead of responding to the political and economic needs of their citizens, are focusing on how Muslims dress.”
Many online commenters tended to agree with the imam, saying that “The sea is for everyone,” and describing the ban as “a psychological tool against Muslims.”
However, others disagreed, “Don’t confuse the two different situations: these are women who have CHOSEN to religious life with the rules that it imposes, the ‘others’ are FORCED to dress even on the beach,” a comment read.
It’s not the first burqini-linked scandal this week. On Thursday, Austrian politician Ahmet Demir caused uproar after publishing a photo of two nuns and joking that they were “oppressed women” in burqas. Later, he took the post down and apologized, but defended his post saying that he was attempting to convey the message that “every woman should be able to wear what they want as long as they chose the clothes themselves.”
On Tuesday, Italy’s Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told Corriere Della Serra that Italy wouldn’t follow France’s suit and ban the burqini, but will step up regulations of imams and mosques.
Two days later, Italian authorities expelled the Tunisian imam Khairredine Romdhane Ben Chedli. The 35-year-old imam was lately absolved of terrorism-related charges, but still deemed unfit to remain in his post, the ANSA news agency said.
MSM promotes dodgy docs as well as child-exploitation in drive for war
By Catte | OffGuardian | August 20, 2016
Overshadowed by the recent attempts to create a faux media storm out of an unverified video produced by the pro-terrorist “Aleppo Media Center”, a recent article in the Guardian by Patrick Wintour reminds us that, when it comes to war-propaganda, the media doesn’t just do child-exploitation to order – it also promotes dodgy documents without question or analysis.
Wintour’s piece focuses on the – as usual – uncorroborated open letter to President Obama allegedly written by a group of doctors in terrorist-controlled eastern Aleppo, calling for US “intervention” to “stop the bombardment of hospitals in the besieged city by the Russian-backed Syrian air force”, and is another shining example of spineless obedience to an intellectually bankrupt narrative.
The article doesn’t give the text of the letter in full, but here it is:
Dear President Obama,
We are 15 of the last doctors serving the remaining 300,000 citizens of eastern Aleppo. Regime troops have sought to surround and blockade the entire east of the city. Their losses have meant that a trickle of food has made its way into
eastern Aleppo for the first time in weeks. Whether we live or die seems to be dependent on the ebbs and flows of the battlefield.We have seen no effort on behalf of the United States to lift the siege or even use its influence to push the parties to protect civilians.
For five years, we have faced death from above on a daily basis. But we now face death from all around. For five years, we have borne witness as countless patients, friends and colleagues suffered violent, tormented deaths. For five years, the world has stood by and remarked how ‘complicated’ Syria is, while doing little to protect us. Recent offers of evacuation from the regime and Russia have sounded like thinly-veiled threats to residents – flee now or face annihilation ?
Last month, there were 42 attacks on medical facilities in Syria, 15 of which were hospitals in which we work. Right now, there is an attack on a medical facility every 17 hours. At this rate, our medical services in Aleppo could be completely destroyed in a month, leaving 300,000 people to die.
What pains us most, as doctors, is choosing who will live and who will die. Young children are sometimes brought into our emergency rooms so badly injured that we have to prioritize those with better chances, or simply don’t have the equipment to help them. Two weeks ago, four newborn babies gasping for air suffocated to death after a blast cut the oxygen supply to their incubators. Gasping for air, their lives ended before they had really begun.
Despite the horror, we choose to be here. We took a pledge to help those in
need.Our dedication to this pledge is absolute. Some of us were visiting our families when we heard the city was being besieged. So we rushed back – some on foot because the roads were too dangerous. Because without us even more of our friends and neighbors will die. We have a duty to remain and help.
Continued US inaction to protect the civilians of Syria means that our plight is being wilfully tolerated by those in the international corridors of power. The burden of responsibility for the crimes of the Syrian government and its Russian ally must therefore be shared by those, including the United States, who allow them to continue.
Unless a permanent lifeline to Aleppo is opened it will be only a matter of time until we are again surrounded by regime troops, hunger takes hold and hospitals’ supplies run completely dry. Death has seemed increasingly inescapable. We do not need to tell you that the systematic targeting of hospitals by Syrian regime and Russian warplanes is a war crime. We do not need to tell you that they are committing atrocities in Aleppo.
We do not need tears or sympathy or even prayers, we need your action. Prove that you are the friend of Syrians.
Yours,
1 Dr. Abu Al Baraa, Pediatrician
2 Dr. Abu Tiem, Pediatrician
3 Dr. Hamza, Manager
4 Dr. Yahya, Pediatrician and head of Nutrition Program
5 Dr. Munther, Orthopedics
6 Dr. Abu Mohammad, General Surgeon
7 Dr. Abu Abdo, General Surgeon
8 Dr. Abd Al Rahman, Urologic Resident
9 Dr. Abu Tareq, ER Doctor
10 Dr. Farida, OBGYN
11 Dr Hatem, Hospital Director
12 Dr. Usama, Pediatrician
13 Dr. Abu Zubeir, Pediatrician
Even while admitting that “it has not been possible to verify the names of all the doctors listed in the letter,” Wintour doesn’t investigate or even interrogate its authenticity. His only comment on the subject is an airy claim that “[the] account tallies with evidence given by US doctors to the UN after a working visit to Aleppo’s hospitals in the past fortnight.”
He doesn’t quite dare say this offers any kind of validation (because of course it doesn’t), he simply hopes his readers will take it that way while he turns to his real task, which is sanctifying the West’s strategic fears for the loss of a corridor to eastern Aleppo as a sudden rush of humanitarian concern for the fate of the civilians living there. His casual assumption that only Western-led forces and Western-led humanitarians will have the decency to treat civilians with respect is almost Victorian in its colonial appropriation of moral ascendancy.
Wintour doesn’t ask why a group of disinterested doctors on the ground in Aleppo would write a letter that exactly mirrors the dishonest and incomplete western narrative, and repeats discredited or unsubstantiated claims such as the “systematic targeting of hospitals by Syrian regime and Russian warplanes.” He doesn’t ask why they would dismiss the recent offer from Russia and the Syrian government for safe conduct out of the war zone as “a thinly-veiled threat” rather than welcome it as a way of saving valuable lives. He doesn’t ask why a group of humanitarians would condemn Russia and the Syrian government for “crimes” because they have been bombing Aleppo, while saying nothing about the fact the US is also bombing Aleppo.
Neither does he mention that the supposed medics’ primary demand – for a “permanent lifeline” to Aleppo – is exactly what the “rebels” (ie Al Nusra terrorists) have been fightng for in recent weeks, in order to break the “siege” of eastern Aleppo by government forces and put pressure on government-held western Aleppo. Keeping this corridor “permanently” open would make the difference between success or failure for the rebels/terrorists in this key strategic area.
So, naturally these fifteen concerned medical professional have that item at the top of their list, over and above a ceasefire, or indeed an evil Russian evacuation of civilians, or evil Russian aid drops.Wouldn’t anyone rather die than accept help from America’s ‘enemies”? Wouldn’t anyone welcome slaughter when it’s wrapped in a US flag?
Wintour doesn’t state the obvious – that this letter is pushing an agenda that has nothing to do with alleviating human suffering. He doesn’t point out that it reads like a Washington fantasy version of reality. On the contrary he’s more than happy to exist in that fantasy where US intervention is a humanitarian response to the imploring of care-ravaged doctors, and for the purposes of saving people from evil Putin and his sidekick Assad. The letter must be endorsed because it in turn endorses the delusional dreamworld of moral righteousness where most western journalists spend most of their time these days. The only place their consciences don’t trouble them.
Meanwhile, the Twitter account known as @TheLemniscat took a look at the names of the letter’s signatories and made these annotations…
https://twitter.com/theLemniscat/status/764052010404503552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The fact six of these alleged doctors have signed with only their last name is maybe slightly odd, as is the fact six others are namesakes of prominent members of ISIS and al Qaeda, and one has the same name as a well-known shop. But until the signatories can be positively identified that’s about all we can say. Then again identifying them should not be too difficult, given that several of them identify as paediatricians and, as Moon of Alabama points out, the “last pediatrician” in rebel-held Aleppo was supposed to have been killed weeks ago. If these guys are the real deal they must have turned up in the rebel-held part of Aleppo since April, and they are likely the only paediatricians working there. How hard could it be to track them down? Has anyone tried?
Regardless of the deeper realities of the letter it’s the absolute abdication of scepticism by the Western media coverage that continues to be the real issue.
Imagine if an open letter appeared calling for the Russian government to “stop US bombardment of hospitals”, signed by fifteen alleged but unverified “doctors”, six of whom refused to give a first name, another six of whom were the namesakes of prominent terrorists and one who signed himself with the Syrian equivalent of “T K Maxx”.
What would the Guardian say about that? How many column inches of scorn would Walker, Harding et al rightly pour on a document with such clear potential for being a clumsy fraud? How would Wintour’s article have read then? How many veiled or direct suggestions of Kremlin fakery would he have made? How much Twitter mileage would the MSM and its obedient pundits have gotten out of those coincidental names?
Yet about the shortcomings of this letter they have been entirely and unforgivably silent.
The Growth Industry That is Anti-Russian Propaganda
By John Wight | Sputnik | August 19, 2016
People living in the West don’t need their governments to tell them who their enemy is. Not when they have an obliging intelligentsia to do it for them.
A quick browse of the non-fiction shelves in your local UK high street bookshop offers prospective customers a banquet of anti-Russian books in which no superlative or pejorative is spared when it comes to depicting Russia as the epitome of evil and with its President, Vladimir Putin, a composite of every Bond villain the decades-long movie franchise has given us. Just consider some of the titles.
- The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
- Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No. 1 Enemy
- Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?
- The Invention of Russia: The Journey from Gorbachev’s Freedom to Putin’s War
- Winter is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must be Stopped
- 2017 War With Russia
By now you should get the idea: Russia is the contemporary bête noire of Western liberal commentators and an intelligentsia that has extended itself in parroting the views of their own governments, happily abandoning their critical faculties in the process.
While conformity may be the enemy of critical and independent thought, for such people it is a religion. Acceptance and respectability, after all, requires nothing less. How else are they to secure those newspaper columns, book deals, and invites to dinner parties and literary functions without life wouldn’t be worth living?
The history of Western colonialism and wars of conquest is replete with its cheerleaders in the form of newspaper columnists, novelists, and writers.
During the high water mark of the British Empire, Rudyard Kipling was its unofficial chronicler. His most famous poem is White Man’s Burden, which he wrote as a celebration of the takeover of the Philippines by the United States in 1898.
“Take up the White Man’s burden-
Send forth the best ye breed-
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives’ need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild-
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.”
In modern times the now departed British writer and journalist Christopher Hitchens was perhaps most prominent when it came to carrying on the tradition of providing literary and journalistic muscle for the projection of Western imperial power. From a withering critic of the West and Western foreign policy in the 70s and 80s, Hitchens underwent a slow but sure metamorphosis throughout the nineties. It reached its apogee after 9/11, when he enthusiastically embraced the wars unleashed by George W Bush.
For him, and other members of the liberal literati, US imperialism and militarism was suddenly a force for good and human progress in the world. The Stealth bombers, Abrams tanks, battleships, aircraft carriers and legions of kevlar-helmeted marines which at one time stood for death and destruction in the name of US hegemony, now constituted the vanguard of a neo-enlightenment, spreading civilization and democracy to the dark peoples of the world.
Here was Hitchens’ advice to the US and British military leaderships, published in the pages of the UK’s Daily Mirror newspaper, just before the 2003 invasion of Iraq:
“The best case scenario is a rapid attack by precision-guided weapons, striking Saddam’s communications in the first hours and preventing his deranged orders from being obeyed. Then a massive landing will bring food, medicine and laptop computers to a surging crowd of thankful and relieved Iraqis and Kurds. This could, in theory, all happen.”
After the invasion, with the resulting slaughter and carnage at its height, Hitchens had this to say this during a speech he gave at Kenyon College, Ohio in 2004 on the destruction of Fallujah, “The death toll is not nearly high enough… too many have escaped.”
As the Australian journalist and documentary makes John Pilger wrote:
“Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what George Orwell called the ‘official truth’. They simply cipher and transmit lies.”
The problem is, of course, that those lies are being told in pursuit of a very dangerous attitude when it comes to Russia and its government. Allied to the increasingly bellicose stance of NATO in Eastern Europe, we are talking the prospect of direct military conflict, the consequences of which you would think would be self-evidently too awful to contemplate. But then this assumes reasoned and rational minds, the kind clearly absent in the case of a large section of the aforementioned Western liberal intelligentsia.
It really does defy belief that Putin and Russia are being depicted as a threat to the West when there are no Russian military bases on America’s border; no troops stationed in either Mexico or Canada, no Russian navy ships patrolling the Gulf of Mexico, and no missile defense shields either. Nor are there Russian troops deployed within striking distance of the UK, France, or Germany.
Yet such details are of trifling importance compared to the more important task of raising the Russian bogeyman as a convenient catch-all when it comes to explaining everything that’s wrong with the world.
But then again, they do say that if you can’t beat them join them. So with my bank balance and the prospect of mainstream acceptance in mind, I think I should add my own offering to the list. And given that sensationalism is the order of the day, the title will be: Vladimir Putin ate my hamster.
Palestinian women prisoners to launch protests against mistreatment of family visitors
Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network – August 20, 2016
Palestinian women prisoners are declaring their intention to launch a series of protests over mistreatment of their relatives during family visits, Ma’an News reported on Thursday. In particular, Riyad al-Ashqar of the Palestinian Prisoners’ Center for Studies noted that family visits are frequently denied, cut short or delayed and visitors forced to undergo strip searches.
Lena Jarbouni, the elected representative of the 42 women held in HaSharon prison, stated that the women will protest so long as their families continue to experience lengthy waits in the sun, humiliating strip searches, repeatedly altered visitation schedules and prohibition of clothing for the prisoners and other necessary items. Several women prisoners, including Ansam Shawahneh, 19, have been completely denied family visits. There are currently approximately 60 Palestinian women held in HaSharon and Damon prisons.
On Thursday, Ofer Military Court ordered Taghreed al-Faqih, 44, from Dura near al-Khalil, imprisoned for two months and fined 5000 NIS (approximately $1100 USD) for “incitement.” Al-Faqih, the sister of Mohammed al-Faqih, extrajudicially executed by Israeli forces who bulldozed and fired a missile into his home, was arrested after her brother’s killing on 12 July 2016.
On Monday, 15 August, Randa Ahati of al-Khalil was released on bail to house imprisonment in her home in Yatta until her next court date. A former prisoner held for nearly four years in Israeli prison, she was arrested by occupation forces while traveling between Bethlehem and al-Khalil.
Sana Abdelrahman Nayef Abu Sneineh, 24, from Dura near al-Khalil, was released on 15 August after six months in administrative detention. She was arrested on 17 February by Israeli occupation soldiers invading her home in a pre-dawn raid, accusing her of posting “inciting” material on Facebook. She was ordered to three months’ administrative detention without charge or trial, which was then renewed for an additional three months.
Two women remain in administrative detention without charge or trial, among nearly 750 Palestinians in total: Sabah Feroun, imprisoned since 19 June after an invasion of her Jerusalem home by Israeli occupation forces and ordered to six months in administrative detention, and Haneen Abdelqader Amer, 39, from Tulkarem, imprisoned since 27 March and accused of “incitement” on social media but ordered imprisoned without charge or trial.
Jennifer Rubin: Hillary Must Stop Peace With Iran at All Costs!
By Daniel McAdams | Ron Paul Institute | August 18, 2016
After anxiously and incessantly angling for a hardcore neoconservative to take the Republican presidential nomination, the Washington Post’s online blogger Jennifer Rubin has made the long journey home. Rebuffed by Republican voters who selected Donald Trump as their candidate, Rubin’s gunpowder breath is now desperately seeking Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s ear.
Her message? This damned Iran deal is improving US/Iran relations and that is completely intolerable. “Hillary: Please bomb something over there,” Rubin screeches, in her latest installment of the neocon chronicles.
Why is Rubin so hot and bothered? Well, Secretary of State John Kerry has dared to encourage some business investment in Iran after the nuclear deal has begun paying dividends in more stable relations. Doing business is always preferable to sanctions and blockades because it makes war less likely. Each side has too much to lose when there are economic interests at stake so each side will act with more caution. As when a Chinese incident with a US spy plane led the damaged US plane to land in China, yet both sides realized that economic relations were sufficiently important that the potentially volatile situation needed to be carefully walked back from the brink of conflict.
War kills economic opportunities for the average people on both sides, but it also produces unique financial opportunities for the specially connected. Like the people around Jennifer Rubin.
Rubin is given a little corner of Washington’s “paper of record,” but she is either so ill-formed when it comes to the basic situation in Syria that one wonders why she has such a platform when surely there are plenty of better-informed high school students who could fill the slot… or she is purposely obfuscating from her little perch in which case the Washington Post is a witting party to her deception.
For example she writes this:
This week we have also learned that as many as 100,000 Iranian-backed militia members are fighting in Iraq…
But she does not inform her readers that these Iranian militia members are in fact fighting ISIS in Iraq. In other words, they are helping us defeat our sworn enemy. While Washington is pained to admit it, even John Kerry said not long ago that having so many additional fighters taking on ISIS in Iraq is “helpful” to America’s efforts to defeat ISIS.
Rubin would clearly prefer an ISIS victory to accepting the assistance of an Iran that also views the establishment of an anti-Iranian jihadist Caliphate in its backyard an existential threat.
Again Rubin plays fast and loose with the truth when she writes:
Russia is expanding its alliance with Iran and influence in Syria in unprecedented ways. Russian planes are now taking off directly from Iran to bomb Syrian targets…
What she does not tell us once again is that those Russian planes are bombing ISIS and al-Qaeda (those guys who attacked us on 9/11). Does anyone else wonder why she objects to the Russians bombing ISIS and al-Qaeda? Particularly as the US seems to be letting them get away at every possible opportunity.
What is to be done, in the mind of Rubin?
[R]ather than pleading with Russia, we can make clear that we will be establishing a new policy of direct action against the Assad regime, including establishment of safe havens. Vladimir Putin has had a risk-free policy of aggression up to now; that should change.
So, Rubin would have the US attack a Syrian government that has fought for five years against a foreign, radical jihadist insurgency and directly confront a Russia that has the same enemy in the process.
Who’s side is she on? Ours or the terrorists’?
Evidently we can partner with Stalin to defeat Hitler but we dare not partner with Putin to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda. The neocons are clearly high on their own vapors. Rubin is first in line for neocon bong hits.
US Withdraws Staff Dedicated for Yemen War Planning from Saudi: Report
Al-Manar | August 20, 2016
The US military has withdrawn from Saudi Arabia its personnel who were coordinating with the Saudi-led air campaign in Yemen, and sharply reduced the number of staff elsewhere who were assisting in that planning, US officials told Reuters.
Fewer than five US service people are now assigned full-time to the “Joint Combined Planning Cell,” which was established last year to coordinate U.S. support, including air-to-air refueling of coalition jets and limited intelligence-sharing, Lieutenant Ian McConnaughey, a US Navy spokesman in Bahrain, told Reuters.
That is down from a peak of about 45 staff members who were dedicated to the effort full-time in Riyadh and elsewhere, he said.
The June staff withdrawal, which US officials say followed a lull in air strikes in Yemen earlier this year, reduces Washington’s day-to-day involvement in advising a campaign that has come under increasing scrutiny for causing civilian casualties.
A Pentagon statement issued after Reuters disclosed the withdrawal acknowledged that the JCPC, as originally conceived, had been “largely shelved” and that ongoing support was limited, despite renewed fighting this summer.
“The cooperation that we’ve extended to Saudi Arabia since the conflict escalated again is modest and it is not a blank check,” Pentagon spokesman Adam Stump said in a statement.
US officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the reduced staffing was not due to the growing international outcry over civilian casualties in the 16-month civil war that has killed more than 6,500 people in Yemen, about half of them civilians.
But the Pentagon, in some of its strongest language yet, also acknowledged concerns about the conflict, which has brought Yemen close to famine and cost more than $14 billion in damage to infrastructure and economic losses.
“Even as we assist the Saudis regarding their territorial integrity, it does not mean that we will refrain from expressing our concern about the war in Yemen and how it has been waged,” Stump said.
“In our discussions with the Saudi-led coalition, we have pressed the need to minimize civilian casualties.”
Riyadh Plays down Move
A spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Asseri, declined to confirm details about the positioning of US military personnel, but played down such moves.
“The relationship between the kingdom and the US is a strategic one. If true, this move reflects something at a tactical level,” Asseri told Reuters.
“The US may move its assets, but that doesn’t have any impact on the bilateral relationship between the countries.”
Since the campaign began, the US military has conducted an average of two refueling sorties every day and provided limited intelligence support to the coalition. That assistance continues, Reuters cited officials as saying.
Senator Chris Murphy: “There’s an American Imprint on Every Civilian Life Lost in Yemen”
Al-Manar | August 19, 2016
A US Senator slammed his country’s administration over bombing civilians in Yemen, warning that Washington’s support for Riyadh’s war would have consequence for US national security.
The Saudis are the ones dropping the bombs, but “there’s an American imprint on every civilian life lost in Yemen,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday.
“If you talk to Yemenis, they will tell you, this is not perceived to be a Saudi bombing campaign. This is perceived to be a US bombing campaign. What’s happening is that we are helping to radicalize the Yemeni population against the United States.” Murphy called that “terrible for us right now.”
A Saudi air strike on Tuesday hit a hospital in Yemen, killing 19 people. The US-supported Saudi air campaign against Yemen began in March 2015.
Rights groups and UN agencies say around 9,000 people have been killed in the conflict. The fighting has intensified since peace talks in Kuwait collapsed earlier this month.
Murphy said the Saudis couldn’t fight the war without US help: “It’s our munitions, sold to the Saudis; it’s our planes that are refueling the Saudi jets; and it’s our intelligence that is helping the Saudis (with) their targeting.”
“We have made a decision to go to war in Yemen against a Houthi rebel army that poses no existential threat to the United States,” Murphy said referring to Ansarullah revolutionaries who are known as Houthis.
“It’s really wild to me that we’re not talking more about this in the United States because of the very high level of US involvement in the civil war and the consequences to US national security.”
Murphy noted that the US Congress has not authorized President Obama to “conduct this operation in Yemen.”
He also noted that the target in Yemen is not al Qaeda, the group mentioned in the 2001 war authorization. He called it “another example of a war being conducted by this administration without prior approval by Congress and therefore by the American public.”