Armies of Liberation

An Editorial in the Daily Star:

The Arab silence on this issue probably is not specific to Darfur or Sudan, but rather reflects a wider malaise that has long plagued our region: Arab governments tend to stay out of each other’s way when any one of them is accused of wrongdoing, and most Arab citizens have been numbed into helplessness in the face of public atrocities or criminal activity in their societies.

The modern history of the Arab world over the past 50 years has been defined by two broad trajectories that are intimately related: the concentration of economic and military power in the hands of small numbers of people who form the governing power elites, and that governing elite’s steady provision of basic services and job opportunities to the citizenry.

Read itall.

Release from US State Dept: Human trafficking takes on many forms in the 21st century with people becoming trapped into lives of servitude and misery through varied avenues and methods.

Foreigners who enter the United States legally or illegally may have to pay their “smugglers” or middle-men exorbitant fees. Some people arrive believing they’ll have a legitimate job as a housekeeper or nanny and end up as domestic slaves unable to leave their traffickers homes. Others are completely tricked and end up in forced, commercial, sexual exploitation. Some men believe they ll earn money working on a farm, but find themselves working to pay off the inflated “debt” from “travel costs” — working months and years on end while the traffickers pocket their earnings.

* We estimate that of the 600,000-800,000 people trafficked across country
borders every year, almost 70% are forced into the commercial sex industry.
Half of all victims are children. Many are forced to work in brothels,
illegitimate massage parlors, as “escorts,” or in pornography. When people
support such industries they are fueling the demand for commercial sexual
services that fuel the demand for trafficking victims.

REPORT SUSPECTED HUMAN TRAFFICKING CASES

* If you believe someone you know may be a trafficking victim, contact the
Department of Health and Human Services’ Human Trafficking Hotline at (888)
373-7888.

The site Stop Censoring Us posts thefollowing list that relates to internet usage in Iran. By these standards Michael Moore would be in jail, and so would many of us.

Publishing any material that denies or is against Islam
Disrespect towards Islamic religion or its respected legendaries
Publishing materials that are against country’s constitution or anything that threatens national unity and independence
Disrespecting supreme leader or any of the established high-ranking clerics
Humiliation of respected religious facts and established orders, treasures of Islamic revolution and bases of political ideologies of founder of the Islamic revolution (late ayatollah Khomeini)
Disrupting national unity
To make negative allegation and to cause doubts and disappointment among people on eligibility and effectiveness of the government
Advertising and distributing ideas of forbidden social and political groups
Publishing classified documents
Publishing content against moral beliefs of the society (such as pornography)
Encouraging the use of drugs
Publishing content that comprise baseless attack to government individuals or any other fellow countrymen
Revealing private relations of people and dishonoring their personal information
Distributing passwords or secrete codes of databases, software packages, e-mail accounts or introducing ways or cracking them
Illegal commercial and financial activities via internet including faking, gamble, etc.
Trading items via Internet that are illegal by law
Any activity towards hacking private networks in order to shutdown or decrease their level of service
Spying over the web and trying to illegally trace information passing through
Making any radio and/or TV station without authorization and control of Islamic Republic Broadcasting (IRIB)

IFEX: Reporters Without Borders has urged the
Syrian government to release five detained cyber-dissidents, three of whom
were sentenced last week to jail terms of up to four years for e-mailing
information to an online newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.

On 25 July 2004, the Supreme State Security Court (SSSC) in Damascus
sentenced Haytham Quteish to four years in jail. His brother, Mohammed
Quteish, was sentenced to three years, and journalist Yahia Al-Aws was
handed a two-year jail term, reports RSF. According to Amnesty
International, the individuals were convicted on charges including
“disseminating false news abroad.”

In June 2004, the SSSC sentenced Abdel Rahman Shagouri to two-and-a-half
years in prison for “publishing lies [that] harm the image and national
security” of Syria, says RSF. Shaguri had been caught e-mailing information
from the banned website www.thisissyria.net. Detained since February, he has
reportedly been tortured.

Meanwhile, Massud Hamid, a Kurdish journalism student, faces imprisonment on
charges of “belonging to an illegal organisation,” says RSF. Hamid was arrested in July 2003 for posting photos of a peaceful Kurdish demonstration in Damascus on the website www.amude.com. The Kurdish-language website is routinely blocked by Syria’s Internet service providers, all of whom are state-controlled. Hamid is being detained at Adra prison.

Mexico- our neighbor, just because it is close doesn’t mean its not corrupt. IFEX:The Organization of American States’ Special Rapporteur on Free Expression,
Eduardo Bertoni, has requested a report from the Mexican government
concerning the murder of journalist Roberto Mora García, citing
inconsistencies in the official investigation into the case.

Mora García, the editor of the daily
newspaper “El Mañana” in the northern city of Nuevo Laredo, was stabbed to
death on 19 March 2004. Mora García had written several articles about the
Gulf Cartel, a regional drug trafficking network, and accused police and
government workers of being involved.

The coalition (Comisión en Memoría de Roberto Mora García) conducted its own
inquiry into the murder and found that two suspects detained in the
investigation had been tortured while under interrogation. One of them was
later murdered in prison. The commission also revealed that a weapon found
at the home of one of the suspects was different from the one described in
the autopsy.

The International Freedom Exchange reports press freedom-an essential compnent of reform and democracy- has increased since the fall of Aristide. No surprise there.

Journalists, it seems, are able to breathe again. Press freedom has returned to the country and a “new wind of freedom” is blowing for radio stations in the capital, Port-au-Prince, says Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF).

In a report released on the heels of a fact-finding mission to Haiti from 7 to 11 June, RSF says Haiti’s new leaders have shown a willingness to solve the cases of murdered journalists…The leaders acknowledged the importance of solving the
cases and had given orders for them to be dealt with urgently.

While sounding a note of optimism about press freedom in Haiti, RSF says the country is in a fragile state. With rebel forces controlling half the country, including rural areas, journalists outside the capital work under riskier situations. Supporters of Aristide also pose a threat to journalists and if the government fails to disarm them before next year’s elections, the media may become the
target of new violence, warns RSF.

Read RSF’s report here: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=10889

From Iranian Truth:…not only had the number of police and soldiers on the street increased, but that it had been marked with the arrival of a new type of enforcement, what Iranians call the Ranger. Rangers in Iran are characterized by camefelouge clothing, fairly tall and bulky, carrying a baton on their sides. The street rumor is that most of the Rangers are Arabs, possibly Lebanese or Syrian (it was also rumored back in the day that Rafsanjani’s hoods were Iraqis; much of when Iranians don’t want to think that they themselves could commit brutalities they usually think its an Arab). Rangers began appearing about a month ago, right around when social crackdowns were also started. From what I can tell, the Ranger units seem to be more as backup. There has been considerable trouble in Tehran with policing efforts, particularly traffic cops, and most of the Rangers seem to be located in areas riddled with traffic problems and regular police forces.

In a sick reminder of the al-Shura massacre, five churches were bombed in Iraq today.

The unprecedented attacks against Iraq’s 750,000-member Christian minority seemed to confirm community members’ fears they might be targeted as suspected collaborators with American forces amid a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism….Iraqi police discovered a sixth bomb, consisting of 15 mortar rounds, outside a Baghdad church, and authorities disarmed it, the U.S. military said in a statement. The attacks did not appear to be suicide bombings, U.S. military and Iraqi officials said.

“This (attack) isn’t against Muslims or Christians, this is against Iraq,” Deputy Foreign Minister Labid Abawi told The Associated Press. Muslim clerics condemned the violence and offered condolences to the Christian community. “This is a cowardly act and targets all Iraqis,” Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told Al-Jazeera television. Mohammed Fadil al-Samara’i, an official with the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, blamed terrorist groups and others “who profit from creating civil disturbances in Iraq.”

The attacks on the churches signaled a vast change in tactics for insurgents, who have focused many previous attacks on U.S. forces, Iraqi officials and police in a drive to push coalition forces from the country, weaken the interim government and hamper reconstruction efforts… Islamic radicals have warned Christians running liquor stores to shut down their businesses and have turned their sights on fashion stores and beauty salons. But the church attacks Sunday went far beyond those threats.

The more Zarqawi tries to turn the Iraqis against each other, the more they turn against him.