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BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label Bahrain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bahrain. Show all posts
17 March 2016
DEMOCRACY NOW! DAILY DIGEST Father of Fascism Studies: Donald Trump Shows Alarming Willingness to Use Fascist Terms & Styles 15MAR16
26 February 2016
DEMOCRACY NOW! DAILY DIGEST 26FEB16
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14 February 2014
Saudi Arabia and Iran Share A Common Goal in Syria & Death March14FEB&15JAN14
THIS report from TRNN / The Real News Network lays out the manipulation of the Arab Spring movement by various regional as well as international powers attempting to protect their own power, control and the status quo in their nations and international relationships. The specific focus of this report is Syria and it's civil war. What is interesting, and extremely disturbing but actually not surprising, is the lack of concern for the welfare of the refugees in and outside Syria as well as the desire for freedom, democracy, human rights and economic rights and freedoms that have been the catalyst for the revolutions, civil wars and political unrest in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Syria. These players, manipulators seeking to protect their power and wealth at the expense of the lives of the common person, in this case the average Syrian, are no better than assad....
http://youtu.be/KFoTGL3pcYE
Hamid Dabashi: All foreign nations involved in Syria are attempting to quell the revolutionary uprisings for economic and strategic interests, but the Syrian people will ultimately decide their own future -February 14, 2014
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore.Now joining us is our guest, Hamid Dabashi. We're picking up our conversation where we left it off.Hamid is a professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University.Thanks for being with us, Hamid.HAMID DABASHI, PROF. IRANIAN STUDIES AND COMPARATIVE LIT., COLUMBIA UNIV.: Any time, Jessica.DESVARIEUX: So, Hamid, my first question is really to discuss Syria. Why is Syria of strategic importance to Iran?DABASHI:
Over the last 30 years, since the inception of Islamic Republic--in
fact, more accurately, since 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a
strategic alliance developed between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
And they called this line of connection /mo'rAb@nA/, resistance.
So Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine, they
formed a line of resistance vis-à-vis Israel and its support by United
States. This was the scenario that was operative and working, to
whatever degree a limited imagination that this kind of war of attrition
could possibly sustain, until the rise of the Arab revolutions in 2011.
That began to change the scenario radically. And if you go back and
look, immediately Hamas realized that its interests, the interests of
the Palestinians and the interests of Hamas, is actually in connection
with these revolutionary uprisings, and they began to side with the
revolution, they began to support the Egyptian revolutions, and they
decoupled themselves from Syria. This was a very important move.Hezbollah,
on the other hand, denounced the revolutionary uprising. I mean, the
social movement in Iran, the Green movement, Hassan Nasrallah dismissed
it as inspired by United States. And then, when the trouble began in
Syria, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah refused to dissociate themselves
with Bashar al-Assad. And as a result, the credibility that Hassan
Nasrallah and Hezbollah had created for itself since the war of 2006,
that they have become the hero of the Arab world, they categorically
lost it. They now have fighters inside the Syria. They have been
projected, and they are in fact as a force against the Syrian interest.So,
because of the Arab revolution, that alliance began to crumble by,
first, Hamas decoupling from it, and Hezbollah using credibility. So all
remaining was Iran and Syria. Iran has invested heavily strategically,
militarily, intelligence-wise, in every possible ways in keeping Bashar
al-Assad in power, not, as I said earlier, because they have a love
affair with Bashar al-Assad, but they just want to make sure that the
interests in the region, and particularly in Syria, are kept intact. And
as a result, what we are witnessing today, namely the scenario that
China, because of its economic interests, Russia, because of its
economic and strategic interests, and Iran, for similar reasons, are
siding with Bashar al-Assad, whereas U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and
others are against that coalition. However, that coalition
is--on both sides are very fragile. Why? Because the will of the Syrian
people, who are the majority of nonviolent people who began the
peaceful revolution two and a half years ago, are very much the people
who ultimately will decide the future of Syria. So all these
machinations that are happening at the state level, in terms of the
geopolitics of the region, are only successful to the point that they
finally come to a strategic resolution. But when they come down from
their horses and Humvees to rule, they will see that the Syrians are not
going to be the same Syrians who have been brutalized by the Assad
dynasty for half a century.DESVARIEUX: So, Hamid, I want
to go back to the point that you made about how Iran invested heavily in
keeping Assad in power. But now we're sort of seeing the weakening of
his regime in the Geneva II talks, Kerry's public statements that he's
made. I want to get your impression. Do you think that at the end of the
day, Iran is going to throw Assad under the bus?DABASHI:
Oh, absolutely. Iran, as I said, has no personal commitment to Bashar
al-Assad. Iran simply wants to make sure that it is a player in the
region. As you remember, UN initially invited Iran to join the
negotiations in Geneva II, but then they disinvited them. The fact is
that without Iran, there cannot be--Lakhdar Brahimi has repeatedly said
that without Iran, there cannot be a resolution to the Syrian crisis.
And Iran knows that fact, because Iran is on the ground. The military
intelligence apparatus of Islamic Republic is inside Syria. And they
want to use that as a leverage, not to keep Bashar al-Assad in power,
but to make sure that the regional interests are protected in the
aftermath of Bashar al-Assad.This same scenario's actually
applicable to the Russians. Russians were cheated out of the
post-Gaddafi scenario in Libya, and they don't want to see it happen in
Syria as well. Because of these revolutions, Jessica,
these uprisings, the counterrevolutionary forces that ranged from China
and Russia and comes down to Iran and Syria and Israel and Qatar and all
of these forces, they have mobilized to see how they can stabilize. The
term, for them, is stabilize the situation. So,
historically, we have to keep our eyes on the ball. What is the ball?
Masses of millions of people have risen against tyranny and against
abuse and for their civil liberties and for their ability to unionize,
to have their women's rights and similar civil liberties. And
against this we have a constellation of counterrevolutionary forces
that on the surface may appear to be at odds. Saudi Arabia may seem to
be at odds with the Islamic Republic. But ultimately they have one goal:
to quell these revolutionary uprisings for their own interest.DESVARIEUX: Alright. Hamid Dabashi, it's always a fascinating history lesson with you. Thank you.DABASHI: Absolutely. My pleasure. Any time.DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.
Last week, the United Nations said it would no longer be updating its casualty figures. "It was always a very difficult figure," a U.N. spokesman told the Associated Press. "It was always very close to the edge in terms of how much we could guarantee the source material was accurate. And it reached a point where we felt we could no longer cross that line. So for the time being, we're not updating those figures."
The last time the United Nations announced casualty figures for the Syrian civil war was when the tally surpassed the 100,000 death threshold in July 2013.
The lack of access for reporters and humanitarian agencies within Syria has only made this task more difficult. Whether an authoritative tally of casualties in Syria will ever be possible remains an open question, but one thing is clear: over the past three years, the violence has spread dramatically. From the early hotbeds of resistance in Hama and Homs, to the political and cultural hubs of Damascus and Aleppo, to the Syrian borderlands and the Kurdish northeast, the war has metastasized.
This map illustrates what that toll looks like across space and time.
It visualizes the approximately 74,000 people who died from March 2011 to November 2013. Every flare represents the death of one or more people, the most common causes being shooting, shelling, and field execution. The brighter a flare is, the more people died in that specific time and place. The data used are drawn from the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), the documentation arm of the Local Coordination Committees in Syria which has been one of the eight sources on which HRDAG has based its count. In a June 2013 report, HRDAG cited VDC as the most thorough accounting of casualties in Syria, though the dataset has been found to contain some inconsistencies. Inaccurate data that has been found in these datasets has been removed, but because of the difficulty of reporting casualties in Syria, this should not be considered a 100 percent accurate or exhaustive documentation of Syrian war deaths. Indeed, it almost certainly is affected by a selection bias that favors reporting casualties in more scrutinized areas while neglecting violence in more remote areas. The VDC has also noted that some families decline to report casualties for fear of being targeted again.
What the map demonstrates is the escalation of the conflict -- with data from March 2011 through the VDC's Nov. 21, 2013 report -- and its quick descent from being a smattering of violence to a multi-front war with militias challenging the military (and other militias) almost everywhere at once. What it can't show, of course, is the horror and destruction of this war.
Published on Feb 13, 2014
Hamid Dabashi: All foreign nations involved in Syria are attempting to quell the revolutionary uprisings for their economic and strategic interests, but the Syrian people will ultimately decide their own future watch full multipart http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?o...
Saudi Arabia and Iran Share A Common Goal in Syria
Hamid Dabashi: All foreign nations involved in Syria are attempting to quell the revolutionary uprisings for economic and strategic interests, but the Syrian people will ultimately decide their own future -
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop
Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at
Columbia University. He received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture
and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984,
followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote
his dissertation on Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority with
Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural
critic of his time. Professor Dabashi has taught and delivered lectures
in many North American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities.
Professor
Dabashi has written twenty-five books, edited four, and contributed
chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays,
articles and book reviews on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies,
medieval and modern Islam, and comparative literature to world cinema
and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). His books and articles
have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese,
German, French, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Arabic,
Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan.
Transcript
JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Jessica Desvarieux in Baltimore.Now joining us is our guest, Hamid Dabashi. We're picking up our conversation where we left it off.Hamid is a professor of Iranian studies and comparative literature at Columbia University.Thanks for being with us, Hamid.HAMID DABASHI, PROF. IRANIAN STUDIES AND COMPARATIVE LIT., COLUMBIA UNIV.: Any time, Jessica.DESVARIEUX: So, Hamid, my first question is really to discuss Syria. Why is Syria of strategic importance to Iran?DABASHI:
Over the last 30 years, since the inception of Islamic Republic--in
fact, more accurately, since 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, a
strategic alliance developed between Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas.
And they called this line of connection /mo'rAb@nA/, resistance.
So Iran, Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine, they
formed a line of resistance vis-à-vis Israel and its support by United
States. This was the scenario that was operative and working, to
whatever degree a limited imagination that this kind of war of attrition
could possibly sustain, until the rise of the Arab revolutions in 2011.
That began to change the scenario radically. And if you go back and
look, immediately Hamas realized that its interests, the interests of
the Palestinians and the interests of Hamas, is actually in connection
with these revolutionary uprisings, and they began to side with the
revolution, they began to support the Egyptian revolutions, and they
decoupled themselves from Syria. This was a very important move.Hezbollah,
on the other hand, denounced the revolutionary uprising. I mean, the
social movement in Iran, the Green movement, Hassan Nasrallah dismissed
it as inspired by United States. And then, when the trouble began in
Syria, Hassan Nasrallah and Hezbollah refused to dissociate themselves
with Bashar al-Assad. And as a result, the credibility that Hassan
Nasrallah and Hezbollah had created for itself since the war of 2006,
that they have become the hero of the Arab world, they categorically
lost it. They now have fighters inside the Syria. They have been
projected, and they are in fact as a force against the Syrian interest.So,
because of the Arab revolution, that alliance began to crumble by,
first, Hamas decoupling from it, and Hezbollah using credibility. So all
remaining was Iran and Syria. Iran has invested heavily strategically,
militarily, intelligence-wise, in every possible ways in keeping Bashar
al-Assad in power, not, as I said earlier, because they have a love
affair with Bashar al-Assad, but they just want to make sure that the
interests in the region, and particularly in Syria, are kept intact. And
as a result, what we are witnessing today, namely the scenario that
China, because of its economic interests, Russia, because of its
economic and strategic interests, and Iran, for similar reasons, are
siding with Bashar al-Assad, whereas U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia, and
others are against that coalition. However, that coalition
is--on both sides are very fragile. Why? Because the will of the Syrian
people, who are the majority of nonviolent people who began the
peaceful revolution two and a half years ago, are very much the people
who ultimately will decide the future of Syria. So all these
machinations that are happening at the state level, in terms of the
geopolitics of the region, are only successful to the point that they
finally come to a strategic resolution. But when they come down from
their horses and Humvees to rule, they will see that the Syrians are not
going to be the same Syrians who have been brutalized by the Assad
dynasty for half a century.DESVARIEUX: So, Hamid, I want
to go back to the point that you made about how Iran invested heavily in
keeping Assad in power. But now we're sort of seeing the weakening of
his regime in the Geneva II talks, Kerry's public statements that he's
made. I want to get your impression. Do you think that at the end of the
day, Iran is going to throw Assad under the bus?DABASHI:
Oh, absolutely. Iran, as I said, has no personal commitment to Bashar
al-Assad. Iran simply wants to make sure that it is a player in the
region. As you remember, UN initially invited Iran to join the
negotiations in Geneva II, but then they disinvited them. The fact is
that without Iran, there cannot be--Lakhdar Brahimi has repeatedly said
that without Iran, there cannot be a resolution to the Syrian crisis.
And Iran knows that fact, because Iran is on the ground. The military
intelligence apparatus of Islamic Republic is inside Syria. And they
want to use that as a leverage, not to keep Bashar al-Assad in power,
but to make sure that the regional interests are protected in the
aftermath of Bashar al-Assad.This same scenario's actually
applicable to the Russians. Russians were cheated out of the
post-Gaddafi scenario in Libya, and they don't want to see it happen in
Syria as well. Because of these revolutions, Jessica,
these uprisings, the counterrevolutionary forces that ranged from China
and Russia and comes down to Iran and Syria and Israel and Qatar and all
of these forces, they have mobilized to see how they can stabilize. The
term, for them, is stabilize the situation. So,
historically, we have to keep our eyes on the ball. What is the ball?
Masses of millions of people have risen against tyranny and against
abuse and for their civil liberties and for their ability to unionize,
to have their women's rights and similar civil liberties. And
against this we have a constellation of counterrevolutionary forces
that on the surface may appear to be at odds. Saudi Arabia may seem to
be at odds with the Islamic Republic. But ultimately they have one goal:
to quell these revolutionary uprisings for their own interest.DESVARIEUX: Alright. Hamid Dabashi, it's always a fascinating history lesson with you. Thank you.DABASHI: Absolutely. My pleasure. Any time.DESVARIEUX: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.End
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11469Death March
It's hard to understand the scale and spread of killing in Syria, until you see this map.
Tracking the casualties of Syria's civil war has been difficult, if not impossible, from the very start. Since March 2011, the United Nations has struggled to glean reliable information from the fog of war. The U.N. has relied on the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), a San Francisco-based non-profit "that applies rigorous science to the analysis of human rights violations around the world," to sort through data from eight different sources including independent observatories and Syrian human rights watchers. (Read Tina Rosenberg's fascinating profile of Patrick Ball and the methodology behind HRDAG's numbers, written back when the body count in Syria was estimated at less than 10,000.) Killings were counted only if the name of the victim and the date and location of death were known, making the figures provided by the United Nations and HRDAG non-exhaustive; rather, they are the minimum number of people who have died in Syria.Last week, the United Nations said it would no longer be updating its casualty figures. "It was always a very difficult figure," a U.N. spokesman told the Associated Press. "It was always very close to the edge in terms of how much we could guarantee the source material was accurate. And it reached a point where we felt we could no longer cross that line. So for the time being, we're not updating those figures."
The last time the United Nations announced casualty figures for the Syrian civil war was when the tally surpassed the 100,000 death threshold in July 2013.
The lack of access for reporters and humanitarian agencies within Syria has only made this task more difficult. Whether an authoritative tally of casualties in Syria will ever be possible remains an open question, but one thing is clear: over the past three years, the violence has spread dramatically. From the early hotbeds of resistance in Hama and Homs, to the political and cultural hubs of Damascus and Aleppo, to the Syrian borderlands and the Kurdish northeast, the war has metastasized.
This map illustrates what that toll looks like across space and time.
It visualizes the approximately 74,000 people who died from March 2011 to November 2013. Every flare represents the death of one or more people, the most common causes being shooting, shelling, and field execution. The brighter a flare is, the more people died in that specific time and place. The data used are drawn from the Violations Documentation Center (VDC), the documentation arm of the Local Coordination Committees in Syria which has been one of the eight sources on which HRDAG has based its count. In a June 2013 report, HRDAG cited VDC as the most thorough accounting of casualties in Syria, though the dataset has been found to contain some inconsistencies. Inaccurate data that has been found in these datasets has been removed, but because of the difficulty of reporting casualties in Syria, this should not be considered a 100 percent accurate or exhaustive documentation of Syrian war deaths. Indeed, it almost certainly is affected by a selection bias that favors reporting casualties in more scrutinized areas while neglecting violence in more remote areas. The VDC has also noted that some families decline to report casualties for fear of being targeted again.
What the map demonstrates is the escalation of the conflict -- with data from March 2011 through the VDC's Nov. 21, 2013 report -- and its quick descent from being a smattering of violence to a multi-front war with militias challenging the military (and other militias) almost everywhere at once. What it can't show, of course, is the horror and destruction of this war.
Jacopo Ottaviani
17 January 2013
BLUEPRINTS FOR THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IN 2013 from HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST 17JAN13
PRES Obama's first term was not a shining light for civil liberties and human rights in the US or in our foreign and military policy around the world. The government has tolerated major, continual, brutal human rights abuses in Bahrain and the prc while condemning the same violations of human rights in Cuba and Iran. And the administration has continued and even expanded the policies carried over from the bush administration that threaten the civil liberties and human rights of Americans at home and abroad, mainly warrantless wiretaps, government surveillance and extraordinary rendition. Here are the policies Human Rights First will concentrate on in regards to the Obama administration in 2013....
As more countries crack down on nongovernmental organizations, the administration should dedicate itself to a stronger and more consistent approach to supporting civil society and human rights defenders.
These blueprints for the next administration outline practical steps lawmakers and administration officials can take to address some of the most pressing human rights in the world today.
How To Close Guantanamo »
The national security imperative to close Guantanamo remains as compelling today. President Obama should recommit to closing Guantanamo in his second term.
How to Promote International Religious Freedom »
The Obama Administration should develop a preventative strategy for combating religious extremism and promoting religious freedom that is commensurate with the challenges in today’s global landscape.
How to Disrupt Enablers of Mass Atrocities»
Genocide and mass atrocities are threats to U.S. national security interests. Here are concrete steps that the Obama Administration should take to disrupt the supply chain that supports such crimes.
How to Encourage U.S. Companies to Respect Human Rights»
When U.S. companies abuse or facilitate violations of human rights abroad, they undermine U.S. national interests in advancing security, economic development, and human rights. Here are concrete steps on how the U.S. government can encourage U.S. companies to promote human rights.
How to Ensure that the U.S. Drone Program Does Not Undermine Human Rights»
To ensure that the U.S. targeted killing/drone program is not undermining human rights, the Obama Administration should prioritize transparency, legality, and oversight.
How to Integrate Human Rights into U.S.-China Relations»
The Obama Administration should prioritize human rights promotion in China and maximize the potential for progress by developing a comprehensive, integrated approach built on a strategy that advances human rights through other issues on the U.S.-China agenda.
How to Make Change in Egypt a Human Rights Success Story»
To make Egypt’s transition a human rights success story, the United States must visibly and intentionally promote rule of law, pluralistic democracy, and civil society at the center of the bilateral relationship.
How to Protect and Expand Internet Freedom»
The vision of “one Internet” requires a coordinated policy objective across all departments of the U.S. government and throughout the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector.
How to Protect LGBTI Persons around the World from Violence»
In 2011, President Obama created a clear policy framework for combating serious rights violations against LGBTI persons. Here are recommendations for the administration, for operationalizing and institutionalizing the provisions of the memorandum.
How to Repair the U.S. Asylum and Refugee Resettlement Systems»
The Obama Administration should reaffirm U.S. leadership on the protection of refugees by repairing flaws in the U.S. asylum and resettlement systems.
How to Repair the U.S. Immigration Detention System»
The Obama Administration should prioritize the transformation of detention policies and practices in its immigration reform agenda and should lead this effort from the White House.
How to Support and Engage Human Rights Defenders»
29 June 2012
Click. Boom. Why Amnesty's gone bananas; We need millions to sign the petition for a strong Arms Trade Treaty 28JUN12
BAHRAIN, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, The Democratic Rep of Congo, Uganda, The Central African Republic, Mali, Chad, Colombia, Mexico...just some of the countries being devastated by the world's rampant arms trade supplying every weapon imaginable to tyrants, despots, drug cartels and terrorist. The UN is meeting next week on this issue and Amnesty International has an ongoing campaign calling on the international community to take action to regulate and enforce restrictions on the arms trade. They face formidable opposition, here in the U.S. war is big business and the military-industrial complex often dictates our foreign and military policies, Check out the information below and sign Amnesty's petition to Pres Obama to be part of the solution, not part of the problem...
04 May 2012
Atrocities in Syria, Human Rights in China, and a Holiday in Detention from HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST 4MAI12
HRF's e mail newsletter with commentary on Chen Guangcheng and condemnation of the American govt's hypocrisy on Egypt, Bahrain and Syria (especially of continuing dealing with rosoboronexport), an update on the Apple / Foxconn in the prc and immigration. Click the links for the full articles and more information.
| HRF'S E-NEWSLETTER | May 4th, 2012 | EMAIL TO A FRIEND» | DONATE» |
| BREAKING NEWS: Chen Guangcheng's daring defiance of a brutal regime is giving courage to those in China and beyond who struggle for human rights. We commend the American diplomats who helped Mr. Chen get to the American embassy, sheltered him there, and negotiated on his behalf with Chinese authorities. It is a credit to the United States that Mr. Chen looked to American diplomats for help and protection. We now owe him our best efforts to ensure his safety.
The crisis in Syria has highlighted the importance of this approach. The Assad regime is getting weapons from Rosoboronexport, Russia's state arms dealer. Unfortunately, instead of cracking down on Rosoboronexport, the United States government is doing business with it.  Thanks to our efforts, a bipartisan group of group of 17 senators led by John Cornyn (R-TX), Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY), Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is pressing the Department of Defense to cancel its contract with Rosoboronexport. We think the U.S. government should go even further. We're urging the Obama administration to level sanctions on Rosoboronexport and the other companies providing material support to Syria. The crisis in Syria is complex, and targeting enablers alone will not stop the violence. But going after companies like Rosoboronexport will increase pressure on the Assad regime and signal to the world that the United States is serious about protecting Syrian civilians. Sincerely, Elisa Massimino President and CEO Human Rights First
Brian Dooley, who leads our work with human rights activists abroad, has reported on the human rights situation in Bahrain and, in particular, the regime's persecution of the medics. When he met Dr. Dhaif, he knew how important it would be to ensure that American officials hear directly from this articulate champion of democracy. During her visit to Washington, Dr. Dhaif urged members of Congress and the Obama administration to speak out against the monarchy's abuses and to quash a proposed $53 million U.S arms sale to Bahrain. She also appeared on WNYC's Brian Lehrer show, where she criticized the double standard in the U.S. response to the Arab Spring. "They're going really soft with the [Bahraini] government, unlike the way they're responding to Syria and Libya," she said. "Bahrain is the forgotten part in the Arab Spring." Nada Dhaif is now back in Bahrain, where she is appealing her 15 year prison sentence.
Under the agreement, Foxconn employees will work no more than 49 hours a week, and their take pay will remain the same; that is, they'll work many fewer hours for the same amount. They'll also work in improved conditions—conditions that will be monitored by FLA's team of independent inspectors. Apple has announced that it fully supports the FLA's recommendations. But other major companies, including Hewlett, Dell, Amazon, and Microsoft—also contract with Foxconn. They should follow Apple's lead.
As we explained in our testimony, asylum seekers and other non-criminal immigrants—the vast majority held in jails and jail-like facilities—often face harsh, even brutal, treatment in detention. Our 2011 report, Jails and Jumpsuits, documented the costs—in dollars and in human dignity—of this unjust system, and urged the Department of Homeland Security to switch from a penal model to one appropriate for civil detainees. In an op-ed for the D.C. newspaper The Hill, Human Rights First's Annie Sovcik took Chairman Smith to task for playing politics with this important issue. "The House Judiciary Committee should spend less time trying to sensationalize and belittle what is a difficult problem, and get down to the real business of figuring out how to implement the changes that can make immigration detention facilities safer and more humane," she wrote.
In December, Congress made funding contingent on progress in the democratic transition, as certified by the State Department. But the Obama administration, citing national security, decided to bypass the restrictions. Egypt's transitional military government has largely resisted democratic reform and continues to crack down on activists. The unconditional financial aid from the United States recalls the many years of American support for the brutal Mubarak regime. Instead, the Obama administration should have released a portion of the funds, in recognition of limited but genuine progress in Egypt, and pegged further funding to specific benchmarks: passage of a new constitution that protects the rights of all Egyptians, handover of power to elected civilian rulers, and reform of other repressive laws. We are continuing to work with our colleagues in Egypt to support their efforts to advance human rights and democracy, despite this unhelpful signal from the U.S. government. If US loses the faith of people like me, it loses the Mideast Nada Dhaif, Christian Science Monitor, May 1, 2012 Free the torture report Editorial, LA Times, April 27, 2012 Labor Audit on Foxconn Is Thorough, Experts Say Steven Greenhouse, New York Times, March 31, 2012 Obama unveils Syria, Iran technology sanctions AFP, April 24, 2012 Click here to unsubscribe
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