Articles : Miscellaneous

If you knew...

Toad smoking, Clown Army, Systematic abuse of women worldwide, Peace recruiters barred, Zimbabwe worse than Darfur, US claims right to kidnap anyone, Pakistan deports Code Pink

This week’s guests on This is Hell follows the articles

Repression during anti-militarist action in Lugano, Switzerland “Sunday 25 November, in the margin of the military parade, the police repressed violently anti-militarist activists. They protested in a peaceful and ironic way their dissent with the military fair which transformed Lugano in a true war zone!. The police intervened a first time during the military parade, where they stopped 11 people from the Clown Army. The clowns infiltrated into the parade only armed with irony.” Independent Media Center (12/1/07)

Cops: More smoke toad venom to get high “Law enforcement authorities have discovered that people are willing to go to great lengths to get high, including a troubling new method that features a frightened toad.“Toad smoking,” which is a substitute for “toad licking,” is done by extracting venom from the Sonoran Desert toad of the Colorado River. The toad’s venom – which is secreted when the toad gets angry or scared – contains a hallucinogen called bufotenine that can be dried and smoked to produce a buzz.” The Associated Press (12/3/07)

Politics-US: Peace Group Barred From Florida Schools ‘Public school districts in two Florida counties are refusing to allow members of a peace organisation to counter the presence of military recruiters by talking with high school students about options other than joining the service, according to a spokesperson for the group.” Inter Press Service (12/4/07)

2 US human Rights Activists Ordered Out of Pakistan “Pakistani authorities have ordered two U.S. human rights activists out of the country after they held a vigil to protest against the detention of an opposition lawyer, one of the activists said on Wednesday. Security officials picked up the two, Medea Benjamin and Tighe Barry, in the eastern city of Lahore on Tuesday and held them for several hours before ordering them to leave the country and releasing them.” Reuters (12/5/07) And a report from within Pakistan. US peace activists face deportation “After visiting Lahore Press Club, the activists Medea Benjamin and Tighe Barry were on their way to Khosa Law Chamber situated near the Lahore High Court along with advocate Arshad when the police vehicles rounded them up near Holiday Inn hotel. The police teams, both in uniform and plainclothes, headed by ASP Rai Ijaz and SHO Ashraf Chadhar arrested them and took them to an unknown location.” The Nation (12/5/07)

Cash Starved Forest Service Spends $600,000 to Buy Tasers “The U.S. Forest Service has bought $600,000 worth of “Electronic Control Devices” without any training program, rules for use or even a written explanation as to why the devices are needed, according to agency records posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The devices, known as Tasers, are sitting in storage and cannot be issued because the agency has yet to develop a training course. … ‘The proliferation of Tasers within federal land management agencies has all the earmarks of a mindless arms race that has eluded any thoughtful public or congressional review. As a result, in addition to the howl of the coyote and the hoot of the owl, the plaintive cry of ‘Don’t tase me, bro’ may soon echo through the forest night.’” Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (12/4/07)

Waxman, Mukasey and Ten Million Missing Emails “A government watchdog group now says ten to twenty million White House emails, which may contain information about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA status, have been destroyed by the Bush administration. In a report from April, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) detailed a massive hole in the White House email records. The report, titled “Without a Trace: The Missing White House Emails and the Violations of the Presidential Records Act,” accused the Bush administration of destroying “more than 5 million” emails and failing to attempt to recover them. According to CREW, their sources now tell them the number of missing emails is probably between ten and twenty million.” truthout (12/5/07) Another Bush administration appointee, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, Scot Bloch, called in Geeks on Call to scrub office hard drives clean. Head of Rove Inquiry in Hot Seat Himself “The head of the federal agency investigating Karl Rove’s White House political operation is facing allegations that he improperly deleted computer files during another probe, using a private computer-help company, Geeks on Call. Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch’s agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006. At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005.” Wall Street Journal (11/28/08)

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens “America has told Britain that it can ‘kidnap’ British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States. A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.” The Sunday Times (12/2/07)

Indicators of Generational Shift on Abortion Politics “Did anyone else feel the energies shift this past week, the earth move a little – if you’re watching the politics around abortion closely and you didn’t, here are some highlights indicating a moment of genuine opportunity for progressive prevention policies.” RH Reality Check (12/3/07)

“Study: Big Box Living Wage Ordinances Benefit Workers Without Hurting Shoppers“: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/69860/ “Wal-Mart could increase its minimum wage to $10 per hour and greatly boost the well-being of its low-income workers with little financial impact on most shoppers, says a study released today by the University of California at Berkeley’s Center for Labor Research and Education. Campus labor center researchers report that a “big box living wage” ordinance would provide significant and concentrated benefits to workers, mostly members of low-income families, while consumers across the income spectrum would share the costs in small increments.” AlterNet (12/6/07)

Iranian hanged after verdict stay An Iranian man has been hanged for rape despite his alleged victims withdrawing their accusations and a judicial review being ordered into the sentence. Makwan Mouloudzadeh, 20, had been found guilty of raping three teenage boys when he was 13 years old. Amnesty says five minors have been executed in Iran in 2007. So do Iranian court’s have any authority? BBC News (12/6/07)

Rape and beatings of women ‘normal’ in Niger “The news that 70 percent of women in parts of Niger find it normal that their husbands, fathers and brothers regularly beat, rape and humiliate them came as no surprise to human rights experts in Niger. ‘Women here have been indoctrinated by their families, by religious officials, by society that this is a normal phenomenon.’” IRIN (12/6/07)

Angolan soldiers accused of mass rape “Angolan soldiers routinely and repeatedly rape Congolese women who have crossed the border illegally in search of work in the diamond fields, an international aid organization said Wednesday. Reuters) – With corporate CEO pay soaring, a U.S. congressional report on Wednesday charged widespread conflicts of interest among consultants who advise companies on compensation. The Associated Press (12/5/07)

“*UN Spotlights “Massive and Systematic Abuse of Women* “Millions of women across the world are beaten, killed, bought and sold by men, yet the gruesome violence and cruel treatment they face every day rarely makes headlines in the global media. The press has ‘either underreported, ignored or underplayed’ five key issues with regard to violations of women’s human rights, says the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) in declaring its support for an ongoing international campaign against gender violence. The “underreported” stories include rampant domestic violence in Russia, sex slavery in India, self-immolation in Central Asia, gender-based violence and HIV, and “compensation” marriages in several parts of the world. … The report showed that at least 102 of the 192 U.N. member states had no specific legal provisions on domestic violence, and marital rape was not a prosecutable offence in as many as 53 countries.” Inter Press Service (11/30/07)

The horror of a stricken nation waiting to die “Over nine days spent traveling clandestinely around this beautiful, once-bountiful country, The Times found a nation where millions now struggle to survive on barely a bowl of sadza (a mealie-meal porridge) a day, the most basic services have all but collapsed and thousands die every week in a perfect storm of poverty, hunger and disease. Aids, like corruption, is rampant. We found paupers’ burials, starving children with stunted bodies, orphans left to fend for themselves in the most brutal environments. It is a country regressing from commercial farms to vegetable patches, from the light bulb to the oil lamp, from the tap to the well. Feet – often bare – are replacing the wheel as the most common form of transport. Once Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe can no longer provide its citizens with bread and water. “This is the world’s worst humanitarian disaster, worse even than Darfur,” said David Coltart, an opposition MP. “We lose more people a week to preventable illnesses than are lost in Iraq, but because there’s no blood on the streets, little attention is paid to what’s going on here.” The Times (12/1/07)

Notes
There are many more articles posted at This is Hell’s Headlines from Hell in addition those headlines are updated during the week.

Saturday, December 8th, beginning at 9 AM (central), on WNUR 89.3 FM Evanston/Chicago, This is Hell broadcasts a live new four hour show. We are also live online via WNUR’s web site under the heading, “Listen Online”

This week’s guests include:

• Maurice Carney is the Executive Director of Friends of the Congo, which “was established at the behest of Congolese human rights and grassroots institutions in 2004, to work together to bring about peaceful and lasting change in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire
• Michael Fox is a writer at Venezuelanalysis.com. He will discuss last Sunday’s vote and his most recent writing including, U.S. Companies Behind Anti-Reform Propaganda in Venezuela
• Robert Lipsyte who recently wrote the TomDispatch.com piece, Corruption 101, Gladiators and Beer: Why Bowl Games Are the Real Final Exams
• Jonathan Schell, author of the new book, “The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger (Metropolitan Books). He most recently wrote, The Old and New Shapes of Nuclear Danger in The Nation
• Carah Ong is the Iran Policy Analyst at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation Carah writes a blog on the ongoing Iran weapons controversy

This week’s irregular correspondents will be:
live from Baltimore, LaddieO.com will deliver a web and tech report from the hermetically sealed clean rooms at URL Labs
and from Seattle Dr. Krys Bigosinski MD will talk healthcare

For the most recent in rebellions, read Alfonzo Torrez’s The Rebel Communiqué news, on the labor front, read Nathan Coe’s Labor News Roundup, and, for the news from all points east, check out Isaac Oommen’s East is East.

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