Cindy Crawford *SUPER BOWL AD ALERT* 27JAN18

TOO bad cindy crawford is so ignorant about the environmental and labor problems pepsi is causing in Indonesia that she did this new ad. Or maybe she is greedy and doesn't care. She can let us know if she publicly calls on pepsico to adopt and practice responsible palm oil policies. Please watch this video and sign the petition from SumOfUs......

Pepsi’s bringing back that steamy Cindy Crawford ad for the Super Bowl next week.   Old school soda machine, 90’s supermodel Cindy Crawford, retro music and drinks, this ad will show it all… well almost. One thing you won’t see in Pepsi’s Super Bowl ad is the company’s old school stance on palm oil and its ties to rainforest destruction and labor abuses.    We have a solution for that -- our very own retro ad!   To crash Pepsi’s Super Bowl party, we’re bringing back a spoof ad to get under Pepsi’s skin and force it to only use responsible palm oil.   To pressure Pepsi, we need as many people as possible watching the video before Super Bowl Sunday February 4. That’s where you come in. We need you to help us compete with the second most watched sporting event in the world. Can you watch and share the Super Bowl ad Pepsi doesn’t want you to see? Pepsi buys half a million metric tons of palm oil per year to make products that we buy like Doritos, Cheetos, Quaker Granola Bars, and Lay’s potato chips. The reality of what happens on oil palm plantations is very different to Pepsi’s fun, sexy, greenwashing advertising campaigns. Pepsi’s conflict palm oil is driving rainforest destruction and the extinction of already endangered animals like orangutans, tigers, and elephants. Workers in the palm oil industry are paid unethically low wages, and many don’t have adequate health and safety protection. With the Super Bowl around the corner, now’s the perfect time to spread the word about Pepsi’s practices, by watching the video and sharing the video with your friends, family, and colleagues. Click here to watch the video and then share it with your friends. Over the past 3 years we’ve made spoof ads together, and thanks to the SumOfUs community, the Doritos and Crystal Pepsi videos went viral, clocking around 25 million views. This helped bring PepsiCo back to the negotiating table, and forced it to come up with a new palm oil commitment.   But it’s still not good enough. Even after this week's smoke screen announcement that Pepsi would partially suspend business with IndoAgri, the snack food giant’s palm oil policy does not cover its Indonesian joint venture partner and palm oil offender, Indofood.   That’s why we have to keep up the pressure. Campaigning by the SumOfUs community has already pushed big companies like McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Kellogg’s to adopt responsible palm oil policies.   Our eyes are set on Pepsi and we know they’re watching us too. We know this tactic works -- but we need your help to make this ad a the real star of this year’s Super Bowl. Click here to watch the video and then share it with your friends. Thanks for all that you do, Fatah, Andrea, and the team at SumOfUs More information: PepsiCo Admits Connection to Ongoing Labor Abuse In First Public Statement Following Investigative Report, Rainforest Action Network, 24 January 2018 Cindy Crawford is re-creating her iconic Pepsi ad for Super Bowl LII, The Washington Post, 22 January 2018

INDONESIA'S JUNGLE & PEATLANDS BURN, CORPORATE AMERICA MAKES EMPTY PROMISES 7MAR16

pepsi, johnson & johnson, and colgate-palmolive are responsible for the continuing burning of Indonesia. The ceos and corporate boards might as well be lighting the fires themselves. +Greenpeace USA  is part of a petition campaign to force these companies to stop buying palm oil and paper products from plantations planted on recently burned land. They must follow Indonesia's plans for stopping rainforest and peatland destruction. Please click one of the links to sign the petition, share it with friends and be sure to stop buying these companies products until they stop burning Indonesia. 

The palm oil industry is the number one cause of rainforest destruction in Indonesia. Tell PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive and Johnson & Johnson and other major brands to take urgent action to stop the destruction.

One of the greatest environmental disasters of the 21st century happened last September.

What's even more unbelievable is that it's going to happen all over again in just a few months. And it will keep happening every year unless we take action now.

When enormous forest fires tore across Indonesia just six months ago, they reduced millions of acres of vibrant, living tropical rainforest and peatland to smoking ash. The scale of devastation was immense — the fires spewed out more C02 than the entire country of Japan, made hundreds of thousands of people sick, and destroyed precious orangutan habitat.

Unless we make those responsible take action, these fires are coming back to cause even more destruction.

Will you tell major brands like PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive and Johnson & Johnson to stop the destruction of forests and peatland for palm oil?.

Those fires were no natural disaster. Over several decades, huge areas of forest have been slashed and burned, and watery peatland has been drained for palm oil and paper plantations. That destruction is the root cause of the forest fires.

We can change this. When we act together, we make a real difference on the ground. Last year over 253,000 of us told the Indonesian president: Stop letting paper and palm oil companies destroy forests and peatlands.

And it worked — the president moved quickly to bring in ambitious new plans to protect Indonesian peatland. But now, the big brands that buy palm oil from Indonesia need to step up and make this change happen. 

Brands like PepsiCo, Colgate-Palmolive and Johnson & Johnson all like to talk loudly about their 'no deforestation' policies. But despite promises and pledges, more of Indonesia’s rainforest is being destroyed right now than ever before. Empty promises aren’t working, because they’re not enforced on the ground. These brands have to give us real commitments, real timelines and real action against their suppliers who destroy forests and peatlands. And you can make them do it.

A forest fire in Indonesia may seem thousands of miles away, but the everyday products that cause this suffering are in our cupboards and on our bathroom shelves. Palm oil is in everything from cosmetics and shampoo to chocolate bars and breakfast cereals. It’s hard to avoid, and sustainable alternatives are so incredibly limited.

The only answer is to change the entire industry. I hope I can count on you to be a part of protecting these last precious forests.

For the Forests,

Rolf Skar
Forests Campaign Director, Greenpeace USA

P.S. Unless we force industry to stop trashing the rainforests for this palm oil, the last home of endangered orangutans will be lost forever. Take action now!

Spider burrowed into appendix scar, crawled through WA man's body 16OKT14

JUST in time for Halloween this is so disgusting I got goosebumps all over my body when reading it. Trip to Bali now forever off my places to visit list! From the +Brisbane Times via my friend Tim, and by the by thanks so much for sending it to me, I am glad there isn't a picture of the spider......

Spider burrowed into appendix scar, crawled through WA man's body

October 16, 2014 - 3:12PM

Aleisha Orr

Reporter, WA Today

The spider resulted in a "searing sensation". Photo: Shanelle Miller

If Bali belly, dengue fever and dangerous drinks have not been enough to put you off taking a holiday to Bali - perhaps the story of "spiderman" will.
West Australian man Dylan Thomas may now be joking about whether he'll develop "superpowers" but on the weekend he was experiencing a "searing sensation" as a spider that had made its way into his abdomen through an old appendix scar, crawled underneath his skin, all the way up to his sternum.
The horrifying incident happened while the Bunbury man, now known as 'spiderman' to his friends, was holidaying on the Indonesian island.

Dylan Thomas had a spider crawl underneath his skin.

He told Radio 6PR about the experience.
"It wasn't really a tickling sensation, obviously once the venom started to affect my skin it was a really burning sensation like a searing feeling," he said.
Mr Thomas said he believed the spider had burrowed into his abdomen on Friday night as he noticed a mark on his stomach on Saturday morning that continued to worsen.

The mark the spider left on Thomas' trunk.

An initial visit to a doctor on Sunday saw him diagnosed as having been bitten by an insect and sent away with antihistamines.
Mr Thomas spent another day with the arachnid tunneling inside of him, before going to a hospital.
"Well after running tests and putting things inside my stomach they finally found out it was a tropical spider that's been living inside of me for the last 3 days, managed to get it out luckily," he told his Facebook friends.
Two doctors who initially assessed him "had no idea" what was causing the marks on Mr Thomas's skin until they called in a specialist dermatologist.
The spider was eventually removed with tweezers. It was dead when pulled out.
Mr Thomas said the experience had ruined his first trip to Bali.

Finger lickin' good news 4APR13

THIS shows that participating to calls to action, signing on line petitions, sending e mails and tweets and making phone calls does make a difference. From Greenpeace......

	Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser
Thanks to you, KFC is committing to this monumental breakthrough in rainforest conservation! Rainforests are worth a lot more than greasy napkins and chicken buckets. And finally KFC is starting to agree. Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, has officially released new policies that – if they stick – would prevent its restaurants from using throw-away paper packaging made from rainforest destruction. It is a huge shift that will affect almost 40,000 restaurants around the world. This is a big deal for the 400 Sumatran tigers left in the Indonesian rainforest. And this breakthrough is no coincidence. It was a result of your efforts. After Greenpeace showed that wood fiber from rainforest trees was ending up in chicken buckets, you and activists around the world spoke up, telling KFC and Yum! Brands executives that trashing tiger forests was not acceptable. Thank you for lending your voice to the orangutans, Sumatran tigers and other species who call the Indonesian rainforest home. You made this change possible. Only weeks ago I got to share with you that Asia Pulp & Paper, a major rainforest destroyer, had announced its commitment to end its deforestation. Now one of the world’s biggest fast food companies is taking another huge step forward to protect the world’s forests, making two big breakthroughs for the forest in this year alone. With this momentum, imagine what is possible in the years ahead. Of course, we are watching Yum! Brands closely to ensure that it really honors the commitments it has made and fills in the details of its plan. The company also has a long way to go to phase out palm oil, which is linked to rainforest destruction. Turning a blind eye to the problems with palm oil – from pushing orangutans to extinction in Indonesia to trashing rainforests and people’s rights in Africa – is not an option, especially when solutions to those problems are beginning to grow. We will continue to push Yum! Brands and other fast food restaurants to do more to end their part in deforestation. And if there is one thing that 2013 has made clear, it’s that your emails, tweets, Facebook posts and donations can help make even the biggest corporations change their tune. Thank you for all you made possible. Now let’s get back to work and do it again.  For the forests, Rolf Skar Greenpeace Forest Campaign Director

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World from THE DAILY BEAST/NEWSWEEK 6FEB12

THIS persecution has been going on for years and it is time for the American government to tell our "allies" in the Arab and Islamic worlds ENOUGH. American military and economic support of the governments that do nothing to protect their Christian minorities has to end. If these governments do nothing to protect Christians (and other religious minorities), if they do not honor and uphold the tenant of freedom of religion as established in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and in some instances if these governments continue to participate in the persecution of Christians then these governments should be denied American military and economic aid. The US Military should be withdrawn from these countries and they should not be ports of call for US Naval forces. Economic aid should be limited to communities in these countries where faiths peacefully coexist. This is a workable option. The Heifer Project mandated the Muslim and Christian communities in Ache, Indonesia work together to qualify for and aid project, and they did. Communities who would not accept peaceful coexistence did not receive assistance. That model should be applied to all American economic aid worldwide. Americans need to pressure Congress and the Obama administration to take action to address the growing and deadly issue of Christophobia in the Arab and Islamic world. From the Baily Beast/Newsweek.....

From one end of the muslim world to the other, Christians are being murdered for their faith.

We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.

The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.

The media’s reticence on the subject no doubt has several sources. One may be fear of provoking additional violence. Another is most likely the influence of lobbying groups such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation—a kind of United Nations of Islam centered in Saudi Arabia—and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. Over the past decade, these and similar groups have been remarkably successful in persuading leading public figures and journalists in the West to think of each and every example of perceived anti-Muslim discrimination as an expression of a systematic and sinister derangement called “Islamophobia”—a term that is meant to elicit the same moral disapproval as xenophobia or homophobia.

But a fair-minded assessment of recent events and trends leads to the conclusion that the scale and severity of Islamophobia pales in comparison with the bloody Christophobia currently coursing through Muslim-majority nations from one end of the globe to the other. The conspiracy of silence surrounding this violent expression of religious intolerance has to stop. Nothing less than the fate of Christianity—and ultimately of all religious minorities—in the Islamic world is at stake.

At least 24 Coptic Christians were killed in Cairo during clashes with the Egyptian Army on Oct. 9., Thomas Hartwell / Redux

From blasphemy laws to brutal murders to bombings to mutilations and the burning of holy sites, Christians in so many nations live in fear. In Nigeria many have suffered all of these forms of persecution. The nation has the largest Christian minority (40 percent) in proportion to its population (160 million) of any majority-Muslim country. For years, Muslims and Christians in Nigeria have lived on the edge of civil war. Islamist radicals provoke much if not most of the tension. The newest such organization is an outfit that calls itself Boko Haram, which means “Western education is sacrilege.” Its aim is to establish Sharia in Nigeria. To this end it has stated that it will kill all Christians in the country.

In the month of January 2012 alone, Boko Haram was responsible for 54 deaths. In 2011 its members killed at least 510 people and burned down or destroyed more than 350 churches in 10 northern states. They use guns, gasoline bombs, and even machetes, shouting “Allahu akbar” (“God is great”) while launching attacks on unsuspecting citizens. They have attacked churches, a Christmas Day gathering (killing 42 Catholics), beer parlors, a town hall, beauty salons, and banks. They have so far focused on killing Christian clerics, politicians, students, policemen, and soldiers, as well as Muslim clerics who condemn their mayhem. While they started out by using crude methods like hit-and-run assassinations from the back of motorbikes in 2009, the latest AP reports indicate that the group’s recent attacks show a new level of potency and sophistication.

The Christophobia that has plagued Sudan for years takes a very different form. The authoritarian government of the Sunni Muslim north of the country has for decades tormented Christian and animist minorities in the south. What has often been described as a civil war is in practice the Sudanese government’s sustained persecution of religious minorities. This persecution culminated in the infamous genocide in Darfur that began in 2003. Even though Sudan’s Muslim president, Omar al-Bashir, has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which charged him with three counts of genocide, and despite the euphoria that greeted the semi-independence he granted to South Sudan in July of last year, the violence has not ended. In South Kordofan, Christians are still subjected to aerial bombardment, targeted killings, the kidnap-ping of children, and other atrocities. Reports from the United Nations indicate that between 53,000 and 75,000 innocent civilians have been displaced from their residences and that houses and buildings have been looted and destroyed.

Both kinds of persecution—undertaken by extragovernmental groups as well as by agents of the state—have come together in Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. On Oct. 9 of last year in the Maspero area of Cairo, Coptic Christians (who make up roughly 11 percent of Egypt’s population of 81 million) marched in protest against a wave of attacks by Islamists—including church burnings, rapes, mutilations, and murders—that followed the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak’s dictatorship. During the protest, Egyptian security forces drove their trucks into the crowd and fired on protesters, crushing and killing at least 24 and wounding more than 300 people. By the end of the year more than 200,000 Copts had fled their homes in anticipation of more attacks. With Islamists poised to gain much greater power in the wake of recent elections, their fears appear to be justified.

Egypt is not the only Arab country that seems bent on wiping out its Christian minority. Since 2003 more than 900 Iraqi Christians (most of them Assyrians) have been killed by terrorist violence in Baghdad alone, and 70 churches have been burned, according to the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA). Thousands of Iraqi Christians have fled as a result of violence directed specifically at them, reducing the number of Christians in the country to fewer than half a million from just over a million before 2003. AINA understandably describes this as an “incipient genocide or ethnic cleansing of Assyrians in Iraq.”

The 2.8 million Christians who live in Pakistan make up only about 1.6 percent of the population of more than 170 million. As members of such a tiny minority, they live in perpetual fear not only of Islamist terrorists but also of Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws. There is, for example, the notorious case of a Christian woman who was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting the Prophet Muhammad. When international pressure persuaded Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer to explore ways of freeing her, he was killed by his bodyguard. The bodyguard was then celebrated by prominent Muslim clerics as a hero—and though he was sentenced to death late last year, the judge who imposed the sentence now lives in hiding, fearing for his life.

Such cases are not unusual in Pakistan. The nation’s blasphemy laws are routinely used by criminals and intolerant Pakistani Muslims to bully religious minorities. Simply to declare belief in the Christian Trinity is considered blasphemous, since it contradicts mainstream Muslim theological doctrines. When a Christian group is suspected of transgressing the blasphemy laws, the consequences can be brutal. Just ask the members of the Christian aid group World Vision. Its offices were attacked in the spring of 2010 by 10 gunmen armed with grenades, leaving six people dead and four wounded. A militant Muslim group claimed responsibility for the attack on the grounds that World Vision was working to subvert Islam. (In fact, it was helping the survivors of a major earthquake.)

At least 13 people were killed and 140 injured on March 8, 2011, when participants in a large Christian demonstration in a Cairo slum were attacked by residents of a surrounding neighborhood., Mohamed Omar / EPA-Landov

Not even Indonesia—often touted as the world’s most tolerant, democratic, and modern majority-Muslim nation—has been immune to the fevers of Christophobia. According to data compiled by the Christian Post, the number of violent incidents committed against religious minorities (and at 7 percent of the population, Christians are the country’s largest minority) increased by nearly 40 percent, from 198 to 276, between 2010 and 2011.

The litany of suffering could be extended. In Iran dozens of Christians have been arrested and jailed for daring to worship outside of the officially sanctioned church system. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, deserves to be placed in a category of its own. Despite the fact that more than a million Christians live in the country as foreign workers, churches and even private acts of Christian prayer are banned; to enforce these totalitarian restrictions, the religious police regularly raid the homes of Christians and bring them up on charges of blasphemy in courts where their testimony carries less legal weight than a Muslim’s. Even in Ethiopia, where Christians make up a majority of the population, church burnings by members of the Muslim minority have become a problem.

It should be clear from this catalog of atrocities that anti-Christian violence is a major and underreported problem. No, the violence isn’t centrally planned or coordinated by some international Islamist agency. In that sense the global war on Christians isn’t a traditional war at all. It is, rather, a spontaneous expression of anti-Christian animus by Muslims that transcends cultures, regions, and ethnicities.

As Nina Shea, director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, pointed out in an interview with Newsweek, Christian minorities in many majority-Muslim nations have “lost the protection of their societies.” This is especially so in countries with growing radical Islamist (Salafist) movements. In those nations, vigilantes often feel they can act with impunity—and government inaction often proves them right. The old idea of the Ottoman Turks—that non-Muslims in Muslim societies deserve protection (albeit as second-class citizens)—has all but vanished from wide swaths of the Islamic world, and increasingly the result is bloodshed and oppression.

So let us please get our priorities straight. Yes, Western governments should protect Muslim minorities from intolerance. And of course we should ensure that they can worship, live, and work freely and without fear. It is the protection of the freedom of conscience and speech that distinguishes free societies from unfree ones. But we also need to keep perspective about the scale and severity of intolerance. Cartoons, films, and writings are one thing; knives, guns, and grenades are something else entirely.

As for what the West can do to help religious minorities in Muslim-majority societies, my answer is that it needs to begin using the billions of dollars in aid it gives to the offending countries as leverage. Then there is trade and investment. Besides diplomatic pressure, these aid and trade relationships can and should be made conditional on the protection of the freedom of conscience and worship for all citizens.

Instead of falling for overblown tales of Western Islamophobia, let’s take a real stand against the Christophobia infecting the Muslim world. Tolerance is for everyone—except the intolerant.

Like The Daily Beast on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for updates all day long.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and escaped an arranged marriage by immigrating to the Netherlands in 1992. She served as a member of the Dutch parliament from 2003 to 2006 and is currently a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Her autobiography, Infidel, was a 2007 New York Times bestseller.

KEN DUMPS BARBIE OVER SUMATRAN TIGERS 7JUN11

400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild, the last of the three species of tigers that used to be in Indonesia. How much longer can they hold on? Not long if you don't participate in this campaign by Greenpeace, just click the link...

Greenpeace

Greenpeace USA

Say it isn’t so, Barbie! The packaging used for Mattel toys is having a devastating impact on tigers in Indonesia. We have to act NOW or lose the species forever. Write Mattel executives today and tell them to give Asia Pulp & Paper the boot! Ken has dumped America’s sweetheart Barbie. Why? Because of Sumatran tigers. That’s right, Mattel is using packaging linked to notorious Indonesian rainforest destroyer Asia Pulp & Paper. The rainforests on Asia Pulp & Paper's chopping block are critical for endangered Sumatran tigers as well as protectors of our shared climate. Every day, Asia Pulp & Paper is driving rainforest destruction at an alarming rate to provide the packaging for Barbie and other Mattel products - leaving the tigers with no where to go. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Mattel can act RIGHT NOW to save Sumatran tiger habitat. They have been ignoring this problem for too long -- now its time for them to hear from you. Don’t let this be the end of the Sumatran tiger. Send your letter to Mattel and urge them protect forests and dump Asia Pulp & Paper today! Just one year ago, Greenpeace estimated 9,300 acres of Indonesian forests were being destroyed every day- that’s the equivalent to 7,200 football fields!! Loss of habitat means loss of food and shelter, forcing the tigers to roam closer to villages where conflicts with humans- and the killing of tigers- happens all too often. The Sumatran tiger is found exclusively on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. And it wasn’t that long ago that the Sumatran tigers thrived in those forests, free from the threat of losing their habitat. Today there are only 400 Sumatran tigers left in the wild.  What will this look like a week from now? A month? A year? At this current rate of destruction, the forecast for these critically endangered animals isn’t looking good. Companies like Asia Pulp & Paper are driving the destruction of tiger forests, bringing the species closer to the brink of extinction every day. And they show no signs of letting up.  As Asia Pulp & Paper operations gets bigger and bigger, tiger populations grow smaller. Soon the Sumatran rainforests could be a thing of the past. And sadly, the Sumatran tigers will disappear with them. It’s not too late, Mattel can stop buying packaging from Asia Pulp & Paper and other forest destroyers. But it won’t be easy, and that’s where you come in. Help us turn up the heat on Mattel and tell them to stop wrapping toys like Barbie in forest destruction. Send your email today. Thanks for your help, Rolf Skar, Senior Forests Campaigner P.S..- Did you know at one time, there were THREE tiger species that existed in Indonesia? But not anymore. Only the Sumatran tiger remains. How much longer before they meet the same fate as the other species? We have to take a stand for tigers, and fast. Send your letter to Moe today and them to stop wrapping toys in forest destruction!

Malaysia must stop criminalizing migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers from AI 4NOV10

PLEASE participate in this action calling on the Malaysian government to protect migrant workers, who make up 25% of the Malaysian workforce. The physical, sexual, psychological and economic abuse suffered by these people is horrible, and often includes torture. Amnesty International is calling on the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia to crack down on agencies in both countries that manipulate, exploit and abuse these workers and the employers who treat these people as slaves, or worse. Think about your family members being one of these migrants and click the header to participate.

Malaysia must stop criminalizing migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers

This is the story of a 22 year old ethnic Karen man from Myanmar.  He told Amnesty International the story of his detention in Lenggeng in Malaysia.  He was later sentenced by a judge to whipping and was sent to Kajang prison.  He has since been recognised as a refugee by the UNHCR, but not by the Malaysian government.
“I left Myanmar for Malaysia because of the military regime.  Once in Malaysia, I worked in many different places—in a paper factory, planting flowers, in a restaurant, an oil palm plantation and in a car wash where I as arrested during a RELA (volunteer immigration forces) raid.  That was in May 2008.
After my arrest, I spent three hours in a police station.  Then I was sent to the Lenggeng detention camp.
In Lenggeng, there were insects that bit us all the time.  They bit me all over.  No mattresses were provided; we slept on the wooden platforms.   We were only given a blanket and a mug.
After 15 days, I was sent to court.  I did not understand what was going on because there was no translator.  A Chin from Myanmar translated for me when I was questioned by the judge.
The judge asked where I was from, to which I replied.  He did not ask whether I was registered with the UNHCR or not.  When he asked why I had come to Malaysia, I said it was because of money.  When he told me to return to my country, I said I did not have a passport or any money that would allow me to return.  The judge then asked me if what I had done was “salah” (wrong), and I said yes.  I was sentenced to a month in jail and one strike of “rotan” (caning/whipping).
On the day I was whipped, they removed all my clothing except for a small piece of cloth to cover my penis.  It was like a trouser but with the buttocks area cut off.  They tied me up.  I was hit once very hard with a cane.  It cut my skin and hurt very much.  There was blood.  I could not wear any proper clothing for five days after the caning because of the pain and because it stuck to my cut.  I still have nightmares about it.  I cannot bear thinking about it.  I am very afraid that I may be whipped again if caught.”
After he served his sentence, he was deported to the Thai border, where he was trafficked back into Malaysia after paying the traffickers 2,200 ringgit (US$600).  At the time of the interview, he was working as an undocumented migrant in Malaysia.

Thank you for participating in this action. We really appreciate your help. Your letter was sent to the Malaysian Home Minister who is in charge of immigration into the country. Please invite others to take part in this action. If you have five more minutes, may we ask you to participate in two more web actions that are on the protection of migrants in Malaysia. Please follow the two links below. Your support means a lot to our campaign and to the people whose lives are at risk. To write to the Malaysian Prime Minister and ask him to protect all migrants in his country, please go to: http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/malaysia-must-protect-migra... To write to the Indonesian Minister for Transmigration and ask him to ensure that his government ensure the protection of Indonesians working in Malaysia (they are one of the largest sending countries of migrants), please go to: http://www.amnesty.org/en/appeals-for-action/indonesian-government-must-... Again, thank you very much for your help. 

Why Obama's Indonesia trip matters to Filep from AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL 3NOV10

PRESIDENT Obama will travel to Indonesia this month, and Amnesty International is calling on House members to support Rep. Patrick Kennedy's resolution calling on the Indonesian govt. to release all prisoners of conscience, and for Pres. Obama to press Indonesia on their human rights record. Please participate by clicking the links below

	Indonesia's shameful human rights record: Censorship. Torture. Unlawful detention. Help urge just 6 more Representatives to voice their support for political prisoners in Indonesia before President Obama's trip!

		Dear Craig, President Obama's trip to Indonesia, which has been delayed twice before, has been re-scheduled for early this month - a critical time for action in Indonesia. Government censorship in Indonesia is at a boiling point - books, films and other media are being banned. A gruesome video has recently surfaced showing Indonesian military forces burning, beating and torturing a number of Papuans, one of the country's marginalized groups. Filep Karma, who was arrested 6 years ago for simply raising the Papuan flag, remains in jail. The President's re-scheduled trip to Indonesia truly couldn't come at a more crucial time, but his trip won't mean as much if our members of Congress don't back him up! Ask your Representative to condemn Indonesia's imprisonment of peaceful political activists.
		In late July, your tireless activism helped secure much-needed medical attention for Filep Karma before he was returned back to prison shortly after. Filep asked us to pass along his thanks to all Amnesty activists who made his surgery possible. House Resolution 1355 was created for people like Filep - those who are jailed because they dared to exercise their political beliefs publicly, yet peacefully. And because so many of you have already picked up the phone and sent emails and letters to champion this cause, we've already gained a tremendous amount of support in Congress. But we need just 6 more members to voice their support from the House Foreign Affairs Committee in order for the resolution to move forward! Please send your message of support now. Filep and other prisoners of conscience in Indonesia don't deserve to spend another day behind prison bars. Your message can help. In Solidarity, Michael O'Reilly Senior Campaign Director, Individuals at Risk Amnesty International USA P.S. You can continue to write letters of hope for Filep Karma by signing up to Write for Rights - Amnesty International's largest and most powerful letter-writing event!

GREENPEACE NEWSLETTER JUL 2010

monthly newsletter, July Major bank drops Sinar Mas, but fast food companies are still serving forest destruction Two weeks ago, our activists in New York and California donned orangutan suits and headed down to local branches of HSBC, the world's largest banking and financial services company, to protest the company’s investments in Sinar Mas, a notorious destroyer of Indonesia’s Paradise Forests. We’re happy to announce that, thanks to the many activists who took action, HSBC has dropped all holdings in forest destroyer Sinar Mas from its global asset management groups. The orangutans have achieved victory! This is just the latest in a long string of companies that have cut Sinar Mas out of their business. Nestle, Unilever, and Kraft have all taken steps to remove Sinar Mas from their supply chains. But, as Greenpeace reveals in a new report, many fast food companies are still serving up Sinar Mas’ rainforest destruction, including Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Pizza Hut. Take action now and tell these fast food joints to hold the forest destruction! Tell the EPA: Coal ash is hazardous! Coal ash, the highly toxic leftovers from burning coal for fuel, contains dangerous pollutants like mercury, lead, and arsenic that cause cancer and can wreak havoc on both plant and animal life. The EPA has let the coal industry dump coal ash into unlined ponds and landfills that leak into our rivers, streams, and recreation areas for far too long. On May 4, 2010, the EPA issued two very different proposals for regulating coal ash. One proposal put forth by the EPA is good and the other is very bad. The first proposal would classify coal ash as a hazardous waste, which it very much is. The other would classify coal ash as non-hazardous, which would run contrary to the EPA’s own findings and play right into the hands of big polluters. The EPA’s choice is clear: Coal ash must be regulated as a hazardous waste immediately. Now is the time to tell the EPA and Big Coal fat cats that Americans refuse to be poisoned by dirty energy any longer. Help us reach our goal of 10,000 signatures in support of tough legislation that forces coal to clean up its act.

Watch our new video: ScamWow! There’s no way to clean up an oil spill. It’s clear BP knows this all too well, and is determined to spare no expense on the cleanup... of its image. We put together a new video to highlight this sad state of affairs. Watch the video now: ScamWow! Take action and tell Congress: No Drilling. Period. Greenpeace airship takes flight Greenpeace has a new ship to announce. But, this fine ship doesn’t sail in the ocean; it flies in the sky! The A.E. Bates Thermal Airship brings a "higher" viewpoint to Greenpeace’s mission to "bear witness." Meet our new ship.

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