Saudi Blogger Raif Badawi 'Can't Withstand' Second Public Flogging

The second round of public flogging of a blogger convicted of "insulting" the Saudi state has been postponed, because his wounds from the first round have not healed. Amnesty International said blogger Raif Badawi was taken to a prison clinic in the morning for a check-up and the doctor found that "he would not be able to withstand another round of lashes at this time." According to the group, the doctor recommended Badawi's flogging be postponed for a week.

Badawi's first public flogging took place last Friday before dozens of people in the Red Sea city of Jiddah. The-father-of-three was taken to a public square, his feet and hands bound, and whipped 50 times on his back before being taken back to prison.

Badawi was sentenced in May to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes for criticising Saudi Arabia's powerful clerics and ridiculing the country's morality police on a liberal blog he founded. The Jiddah Criminal Court also ordered he pay a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals - roughly £180,000. The lashes are to be administered over 20 weekly sessions, with 50 lashes each week.

More at Huff. Post

Barbaric slaughterhouses in China use the hide of pets slaughtered for food to make leather goods

Leather gloves, shoes and other goods being sold in British shops and online may be made out of dogs slaughtered in horrific factories in China, it has been claimed. Dog skin produced in the slaughterhouses are used in products, labelled real leather, destined for export to the West, according to an animal rights group.

Footage taken by People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) shows workers stood by a door at a slaughterhouse in the northern province of Hebei. As dogs are led through the door, the men kill them with a heavy stick. Sometimes it takes several blows to finish off the unwitting animals.

A pair of gloves made using dog skin. With dog meat restaurants popular in many parts of the country, several establishments later sell the animals' skin to leather producers, which likely sell to Western stores. 'Skin looks the same, whoever it comes from, and Chinese dog killers are not likely to advertise their skins honestly, so it's impossible to tell if those leather gloves or wallets are made out of dog, cow, pig, or goat skin.

'PETA is calling on British shoppers to consider the terror that dogs and other animals endure when they're mercilessly slaughtered and make the safe, vegan choice in clothing and accessories for the holidays and every day.'

Daily Mail Online - Peta

Foie Gras Cruelty

Kate Winslet narrates this shocking undercover footage of the torture that ducks and geese endure in foie gras production.

Take the pledge to boycott Harrods and Fortnum and Masons

U.N. investigator slams U.S. over “cruel” treatment of Bradley Manning

Juan Mendez, the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, has slammed the United States government for abusing accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower PFC Bradley Manning during pre-trial confinement. Mr. Mendez has repeatedly sought to conduct an unsupervised meeting with PFC Manning in order to investigate these abuses.

“I believe Bradley Manning was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the excessive and prolonged isolation he was put in during the eight months he was in Quantico,” said Mr. Mendez

Mr. Mendez commented on Bradley Manning’s conditions of confinement at a meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. He went on to say that “the explanation I was given for those eight months was not convincing for me.”

“It’s astonishing that US officials are blocking an investigation into the humiliating and degrading treatment of Bradley Manning, while the Kingdom of Bahrain has just invited Mr. Mendez to conduct a fact-finding mission into their recent abuses of political prisoners,” said Jeff Paterson, a lead organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network.

bradleymanning.org

A song by legendary singer-songwriter Graham Nash and musician James Raymond (son of David Crosby) -- is being released in support of accused U.S. Army whistleblower Bradley Manning.

Nash and Raymond composed the song "Almost Gone (The Ballad of Bradley Manning)" during this spring's US tour of Crosby-Nash, and the new recording serves as the music bed for the video; it features an impassioned lead vocal by Nash, a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted (Crosby, Stills & Nash, and The Hollies). "Bradley Manning is a hero to me," he sings, acknowledging Manning's role in making public videos and documents that shed light on such as issues as the true number and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq, human rights abuses by U.S.-funded contractors and foreign militaries, and the role that spying and bribes play in international diplomacy.

Archbishop says that it is OK to rape women who had an abortion

Javier Martinez, the archbishop of Grenada, Spain is in hot water after saying during his Christmas speech that it is OK to rape women who had an abortion. According to the Bishop, Hitler’s and Stalin’s acts against humanity are not as bad as a woman who had an abortion and that makes it perfectly alright for any man to abuse such a woman’s body without limitations because she committed sin as if she had the right to do that. The bishop stated that the church will not budge from its decision that abortions are a great sin against God’s will and should not be tolerated.

Pope Benedict XVI was asked to comment on the bishop’s statement but thus far the head of church has remained silent. No word on the church possibly taking sanctions against Archbishop Javier Martinez.

Voice from the Desert

Letter to Archbishop Javier Martinez of Granada

Chinese police 'to detain suspects without telling families'

Chinese police will gain new legal powers to detain suspects for up to six months without telling their families where or why they are held, according to a state newspaper's account of planned reforms.

Human rights activists and legal scholars warned that the change would legitimise an alarming pattern of detentions under the residential surveillance law, which was initially intended as a less punitive measure than formal detention.

Most of those who went missing in a crackdown on activists, dissidents and lawyers this year were taken to secret locations chosen by police. They were held for weeks or even months under residential surveillance. The law does not specify that relatives must be informed, presumably because it was assumed suspects would be held at their homes. In comparison, police must inform relatives within 24 hours of detention and must seek prosecutors' approval for arrest within 30 days.

More on The Guardian

Fury at BBC for offering jobs as prizes to unemployed in 'cruel' gameshow

BBC bosses were condemned today for a gameshow-style reality series which offers jobs as prizes to the unemployed. The programme, Up For Hire, plans to quiz out-of-work youngsters before telling them if they have got a job live on air.

BBC3 is scheduled to give the series - branded 'inappropriate and cruel' - a prime time evening spot. The series, which was commissioned earlier this year, will film school, college and university leavers on four-week work placements at top British companies. The youngsters will start with menial tasks like making tea before graduating to executive decisions. Bosses will then question them ahead of making their 'You've hired' decision.

More on Mail Online

5 WikiLeaks Hits of 2011 That Are Turning the World on Its Head -- And That the Media Are Ignoring

Between Collateral Murder, the Iraq War Logs, the Afghan War Diary, and Cablegate, it appeared as though 2010 would go down in history as the most shocking year in WikiLeaks revelations.

The 'worst of the worst' included children, the elderly, the mentally ill, and journalists. In April of this year, WikiLeaks released the Guantanamo Files, which included classified documents on more than 700 past and present Guantanamo detainees. These files paint a stunning picture of an oppressive detention system riddled with incoherence and cruelty at every stage.

They shed new light on the persecution of Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj, who was caged at the camp for more than six years and then abruptly released without ever being charged. His crime was working for Al Jazeera. It was also revealed that almost 100 of the inmates sent to Guantanamo were listed by their captors as having had depressive or psychotic illnesses. Many went on hunger strikes or attempted suicide. Officials in charge also found it appropriate to detain children and old men, including an 89-year-old Afghan villager suffering from senile dementia, and a 14-year-old boy who had been an innocent kidnap victim.

See 4 other revelations at AlterNet

Don't go, don't kill!

The recent repeal of the US military policy of "Don't ask, don't tell" is far from being the human rights advancement some are touting it to be. I find it intellectually dishonest, in fact, illogical on any level to associate human rights with any military, let alone one that is currently dehumanising two populations as well as numerous other victims of it's clandestine "security" policies.

Placing this major contention aside, the enactment of the bill might be an institutional step forward in the fight for "equality"; however institutions rarely reflect reality.

Do we really think that the US congress vote to repeal the act and Obama signing the bill is going to stop the current systemic harassment of gays in the military?

While I am a staunch advocate for equality of marriage and same-sex partnership, I cannot - as a peace activist - rejoice in the fact that now homosexuals can openly serve next to heterosexuals in one of the least socially responsible organisations that currently exists on earth: The US military.

Read more by Cindy Sheehan on AlJazeera

WikiLeaks Documents Detail Rape, Abuse, Murder

The New York Times, The Guardian newspaper of London, German magazine Der Spiegel and French newspaper Le Monde reported Friday that secret U.S. military documents about the war in Iraq detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.

These are the same documents - part of the largest publication of secret material in history - that Pentagon officials have been urging the website WikiLeaks and the media not to publish. They first appeared on the Arab network Al Jazeera.

Among the details from the approximately 400,000, collected from field reports sent in by American units in the field between 2004 and 2009, and leaked to the news outlets are that:

- U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

- Americans often turned a blind eye to Iraqis being tortured and abused by other Iraqis in secret prisons.

- Iran's military - to a further extent than previously known - intervened aggressively in support of Shiite combatants, offering weapons, training and sanctuary.

- A U.S. helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.

- According to one tabulation, there have been 100,000 civilian causalities - greater than the numbers previously made public, many of them killed by American troops but most of them were killed by other Iraqis.

from CBS News

See Wikileaks

The New York Times Defends The Right of US Government "to assassinate anyone it pleases"

In its main editorial Sunday, the New York Times, the major voice of what passes for liberalism in America, openly defends the right of the US government to assassinate anyone it pleases. The only restriction the Times suggests is that the president should be required to have his selection of murder victims rubber-stamped by a secret court like the one that now approves 99.99 percent of all electronic eavesdropping requests.

The apologia for killing begins with a blatant lie about the US assassination program using missiles fired from CIA-operated drone aircraft flying along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Times claims, citing official US government sources: “The drone program has been effective, killing more than 400 Al Qaeda militants this year alone, according to American officials, but fewer than 10 noncombatants.”

Actually, Pakistani government officials estimated the number of civilians killed by drone attacks in 2009 alone at more than 700, with an even higher figure this year, as the Obama administration has rained missiles and bombs on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.(See “US drone missiles slaughtered 700 Pakistani civilians in 2009” .)

A report in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn concluded, “For each Al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist killed by US drones, 140 innocent Pakistanis also had to die. Over 90 per cent of those killed in the deadly missile strikes were civilians, claim authorities.”

The Times editors cannot be unaware of these well-established figures, since their own journalists have reported a civilian death toll from US missile strikes in Pakistan of some 500 by April 2009, and 100 to 500 more through April 2010. They lie shamelessly and deliberately in order to conceal the significance of their endorsement of such widespread killing.

The editorial claims that US drone missile attacks are legal under international law as self-defense, but this is flatly rejected by human rights groups and legal experts, except those who work as paid apologists for the CIA and Pentagon. The United States is not at war with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, but US missiles have struck the territory of all these countries and annihilated their citizens.

More on globalresearch.ca

Global Warming Propaganda 10-10 No Pressure

A new climate change infomercial released by a prominent global warming activist organization depicts children being assassinated for not reducing their carbon footprint, as AGW skeptics are grotesquely blown up with innards and blood splattering everywhere, a frightening reminder of the fact that the environmental agenda is merely a veil for a hideous religion of death, and that the vehemently discredited and increasingly desperate global warming movement is in the last death throws of its existence.

Entitled “No Pressure,” the clip begins by showing a teacher brainwashing children about CO2 emissions, before blowing up two kids who do not go along with the mantra and refuse to lower their “carbon footprint”.

The video continues in the same vein, as climate skeptics are liquidated and their bodies horribly ripped apart for having the temerity to hold a different viewpoint, in scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in the most stomach-churning horror movie. - PrisonPlanet

US congressman urges whistleblower's execution

A US congressman says the US army private who is suspected of leaking military documents to a whistleblower website should be sentenced to death if found guilty in court.

Speaking to the Michigan-based radio WHMI on Monday, Republican Rep. Mike Rogers said that Private Bradley Manning, who is held at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in northern Virginia, deserves the capital punishment.

"We know for a fact that people will likely be killed because of this information being disclosed," Rogers told the local radio, Fox News reported on Tuesday. "That's pretty serious. If they don't charge him with treason, they ought to charge him with murder." Member of the House Intelligence Committee argued that the leaked documents could result in the death of US soldiers. "I argue the death penalty clearly should be considered here," he said. "He clearly aided the enemy to what may result in the death of US soldiers . . . If that is not a capital offense, I don't know what is."

From Press TV - See Execution by firing Squad on Just Sick

Go to the Bradley Manning Support Network for news about this war hero

See WikiLeaks for the Afghan War Diary and Collateral Murder Video (below)

Australia’s 'Forgotten' children to get formal apology

The Australian Federal Government will formally say sorry to the hundreds of thousands of people who were abused and neglected as children after being placed in institutions or foster care.

The Government will by the end of the year formally acknowledge and apologise to generations of so-called ''Forgotten Australians'' and child migrants who suffered physical, emotional and sexual abuse while in the care of government institutions, foster care and church organisations.

Families Minister Jenny Macklin said the level of abuse and neglect had been unacceptable and it was now time to issue a formal apology.

''Many former child migrants and other children who were in institutions, their families and the wider community have suffered from a system that did not adequately provide for, or protect, children in its care,'' Ms Macklin said.

The planned apology, which will also involve consultation with the Opposition, follows a number of Senate inquiries, all of which recorded horrific abuse and neglect of children.

The 2004 Forgotten Australians Senate report estimated that at least 500,000 children had been placed in more than 500 orphanages, homes or other forms of care during the last century - many because they were born to single mothers or were the victims of family break-ups or poverty.

The inquiry found a ''litany of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, and often criminal physical and sexual assault'' with widespread deprivation of food, education and health care.

Thousands of children were also sent from Britain to work in Australia up until the late 1960s.

The Age

North Korea 'tests weapons on children'

Is this war mongering spin?

When Im Chun-yong made his daring escape from North Korea, with a handful of his special forces men, there were many reasons why the North Korean government was intent on stopping them.

They were, after all, part of Kim Jong-il's elite commandos - privy to a wealth of military secrets and insights into the workings of the reclusive regime.

But among the accounts they carried with them is one of the most shocking yet to emerge – namely the use of humans, specifically mentally or physically handicapped children, to test North Korea's biological and chemical weapons.

"If you are born mentally or physically deficient, says Im, the government says your best contribution to society… is as a guinea pig for biological and chemical weapons testing."

Even after settling into the relative safety of South Korea, for 10 years Im held on to this secret, saying it was too horrific to recount.

But with Kim's health reportedly failing, and the country appearing increasingly unpredictable, Im felt it was time he spoke out. Al Jazeera

In video Interview: North Korea weapons threat

President Carter: Many Children Were Tortured Under Bush

President Jimmy Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon "have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse."  In "Our Endangered Values" Carter said that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons "107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old." And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody.

Journalist Seymour Hersh's (who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal) bombshell before the ACLU some years ago has been in a temporary slumber, as there is question as to whether the videotapes in possession of the Pentagon were among those claimed to be destroyed.  Destroyed or not, there is still the conscience of soldiers and agents who bore witness to contend with, as the reign of political terror against whistleblowers which characterized the Bush administration subsides.  Hersh said:

"Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

Much more on  www.uruknet.info - news from occupied Iraq

Enemies Of Reason - (Part 2)

The Irrational Health Service. Prof Richard Dawkins looks at how health has become a battleground between reason and superstition. A third of us now spend a total of over 1.6 billion a year on superstitious alternative remedies, but 80% of them have never been subjected to properly conducted trials.  Google Video

RichardDawkins.net - The Official Richard Dawkins Website

Journalist Files Charges against WHO and UN for Bioterrorism and Intent to Commit Mass Murder

As the anticipated July release date for Baxter's A/H1N1 flu pandemic vaccine approaches, an Austrian investigative journalist is warning the world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism and attempts to commit mass murder. She has also prepared an injunction against forced vaccination which is being filed in America. These actions follow her charges filed in April against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of Austria for producing contaminated bird flu vaccine, alleging this was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic.

naturalnews.com

CIA Crucified captive in Abu Ghraib Prison

The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine.

“A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given.

“No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment,” Mayer notes.

An earlier report, by John Hendren in The Los Angeles Times indicted other torture killings. And Human Rights First says nearly 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hendren reported that one Manadel Jamadi died “of blunt-force injuries” complicated by “compromised respiration” at Abu Ghraib prison “while he was with Navy SEALs and other special operations troops.” Another victim, Abdul Jaleel, died while gagged and shackled to a cell door with his hands over his head.” Yet another prisoner, Maj. Gen. Abid Mowhosh, former commander of Iraq’s air defenses, “died of asphyxiation due to smothering and chest compression” in Qaim, Iraq.

globalresearch.ca

U.N. warns of catastrophe as hungry people top one billion

High food prices have pushed another 105 million people into hunger in the first half of 2009, the head of the U.N. World Food Programme said on Friday, raising the total number of hungry people to over 1 billion.

Urging rich nations at a meeting of G8 development ministers not to cut back on aid, Josette Sheeran said the world faced a human catastrophe as more people struggle to eat a decent meal.

"This year we are clocking in on average four million new hungry people a week, urgently hungry," Sheeran told Reuters.

"For the first six months of this year, 105 million people have been added," she said, citing figures to be released by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization next week that will raise the total number of undernourished people to over 1 billion.  Reuters