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Human rights abuses found in Mali as residents face malnutrition, lack of supplies


RT.com
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:31 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo / Pascal Guyot
A boy stands next to shepherds arriving in a pirogue with their cattle on the banks of the Niger river, near Timbuktu, on February 4, 2013
As the French military steps up its offensive in northern Mali, residents aim to repair the damage that airstrikes left behind - while fighting to overcome malnutrition. It comes as an investigation reveals human rights abuses in the region.

The violence which has encompassed northern Mali has put much of the country's road traffic to a standstill, leading to a severe lack of food, medicine and fuel. The heath and food crisis is putting 18 million people at risk of malnutrition.

It's a situation that could have a devastating outcome.

"In this part of the region, in Mopti, there are about 7,000 refugees. Children suffer the most. Unless medication is brought in, the centers treating malnutrition would face tragedy," journalist Gonzalo Wancha told RT.
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Snakes in Suits

U.S. Congress to request details of foreign account holders with U.S. banks


RT.com
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:28 UTC
Image
© Reuters / Jessica Rinaldi
The US government is reportedly considering requesting details from banks of foreigners holding accounts in America. The news follows US demands for details of foreign nationals' accounts abroad.

Labeled 'part of a crackdown on tax evasion', the US will potentially have access to the details of millions of foreign customers who hold accounts with America-based branches, according to Reuters. The move is expected to face strong resistance from the banking industry.

Wealthy foreigners and financial institutions that bank in the US could have their account details given to the US government. The Obama administration is expected to make the request of Congress in a forthcoming Whitehouse budget proposal.

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) already requires overseas financial companies to identify their American customers to the Internal Revenue Service.
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Road Cone

City workers tow car after painting 'handicapped parking' markings around it

David Edwards
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:42 UTC
Image
A Tel Aviv woman says that surveillance video proves that city workers used paint to designate her car's parking spot as being reserved for disabled before having it towed.

In video posted to Facebook on Monday night, several workers are seen painting white lines around Hila Ben Baruch's car and then adding a the universal symbol of a wheelchair behind the car to denote a disabled parking spot.

Later in the video, a tow truck arrives to lift the car from its space and carries it away.

"While my car was parked in a [legal] blue-and-white spot, two municipal workers came by and signposted it as handicapped parking!" she wrote. "In a heartbeat they repainted the curb, from blue and white to gray. That's it. Simple."

"Within 5 minutes they turned me into a criminal. But who cares? The important thing is that Tel Aviv sucked some more blood."
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Stormtrooper

Border Patrol agents on trial for lewd behavior at 'Cirque Du Soleil' show

Arturo Garcia
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:15 UTC
Image
Two U.S. Border Patrol agents are on trial for what prosecutors described as a night of drunken sexual acts in full view of other spectators at a 'Cirque Du Soleil' show in San Diego.

According to KFMB-TV, prosecutors alleged on Monday that witnesses saw agent Kallie Helwig's head go down on her colleague Gerald Torello's lap during the incident, which took place during a matinee performance last May, in "a rhythmic motion, with the head going up and down, up and down."

The two agents, who were off-duty at the time, allegedly kissed and groped each other throughout the show after arriving late and drunk. One witness, Chai Wu, said that Torello gave a high-five at one point to a boy who witnessed the display.
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Bizarro Earth

Saudi cleric urges veils for baby girls to avoid sexual harassment


Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:57 UTC
Image
© AFP Photo
A Saudi cleric has said baby girls should be veiled to avoid sexual harassment, in remarks broadcast on television that sparked outrage in the conservative kingdom.

"Girls should wear the veil from the age of two," said Abdullah Daoud on Islamic television al-Majd, adding that Saudis should follow the example of South Asian countries.

"If a girl is sexually desired, her parents should cover her face and force her to wear veil," to protect her against perverts, he said.

Practicing Muslims believe that girls must begin wearing head covers such as the veil from the age of puberty.
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Handcuffs

The emerging American gulag system - when the rule of force replaces the rule of law

Dave Hodges
The Common Sense Show
Mon, 04 Feb 2013 15:07 UTC
soviet gulag
© n/a
The imposition of a brutal totalitarian system of government, in the annals of history, is far more common than it is not. Some say it was only a matter of time until America regressed into a brutal totalitarian regime similar to what has occurred in the history of our planet.

America is witnessing the Sovietization of its legal system. The similarities are striking, undeniable and should prove frightening to all Americans.

The Soviet Gulag System of Justice Consisted of Two Major Components
  • The "disappearing" of dissidents and anyone suspected of not being 100% loyal to Stalin.
  • Anyone not murdered by the Secret Police upon being secretly arrested, were exploited as slave labor in the re-education camps which would ultimately reward the state-owned corporations.
The Emerging American Gulag System of Justice Consists of Two Major Components
  • The authority of the government to "disappear" and even murder dissidents and anyone suspected of not being loyal to the ruling elite has been granted by the government, to itself.
  • Anyone not murdered by the American NDAA agents of totalitarian enforcement, upon being secretly arrested, will be forced into slave labor, which will ultimately benefit selected corporations.
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Eye 1

Southern Baptist leader: Gay ban is 'the heart and soul of scouting'

David Edwards
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:49 UTC
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Dr. Richard Land, who is in charge of addressing social, moral, and ethical concerns as president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, says that dropping the ban on gay members and LGBT leaders will be a "catastrophe" for the Boy Scouts of America because excluding homosexuals represents the "heart and soul of scouting."

"What they've said to us and to other religious leaders is, 'We're doing this under pressure and we're going to give people, basically, what amounts to a local option,'" Land explained to CNN on Tuesday. "You can't have a local option of a core conviction."

"Yes, we live in a democracy and people can make this choice, but if they do, it's going to be a catastrophe because Baptist scouts and Catholic scouts and Mormon scouts and Methodist scouts, many of them are going to vote with their feet and they're going to leave the scouts," he added. "What they're doing is to appease their left coast and right coast appendages, they're cutting out the heart and soul of scouting in the rest of the country."
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Snakes in Suits

Georgia state senator literally runs and hides from questions regarding 'mind-control' broadcasting exec

Arturo Garcia
Raw Story
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:44 UTC
Image
© via WSB-TV
A Georgia state senator ran and hid from a reporter when asked about a series of email responses dismissing thousands of voters' concerns regarding a former colleague's controversial hiring at the state public broadcasting company.

WSB-TV released footage on Monday of state Sen. Bill Heath (R) ducking down a hallway and hiding behind an office printer to avoid questions over an email response to an online petition protesting ex-state Sen. Chip Rogers' (R) new position at Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB).

Better Georgia, the progressive group behind the petition, provided The Raw Story with a copy of Heath's automated response on Tuesday. The group's executive director, Bryan Long, said his first reaction to WSB's story was to laugh, but that Heath's response struck him as sad.

"He's basically telling Georgia taxpayers that he doesn't care about what they say," Long said of Heath.
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Bad Guys

EU deploys black arts to stifle democratic rights


Express.co.uk
Tue, 05 Feb 2013 14:13 UTC
EU
© Express.co.uk
The European Parliament is using taxpayers' money to fund an assault on democratic freedom.
There is something menacing about any organisation that decides to snoop on those who oppose it and use the black arts of spin to play down the genuine fears of its critics.

When it is the European Parliament using taxpayers' money to fund such an unscrupulous assault on democratic freedom we should be doubly worried.

By trawling the internet so they can stamp on the opinions of those who disagree with the EU's masterplan, supposedly neutral civil servants will become willing participants in a disgraceful and self-serving exercise of naked political power to pervert the expression of free will in next year's European elections.

As secret documents seen by the Daily Express spell out, the trolls of Brussels will target countries where there has been "a surge in Euroscepticism".
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Vader

U.S. control is diminishing, but it still thinks it owns the world

Noam Chomsky
Guardian
Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:07 UTC
Image
© Photograph: Olivier Laban-Mattei/AFP/Getty Images
'We "stabilise" countries when we invade them and destroy them.'
The United States has long assumed the right to use violence to achieve its aims, but it is now less able to implement its policies
This piece is adapted from 'Uprisings', a chapter in Power Systems: Conversations on Global Democratic Uprisings and the New Challenges to US Empire, Noam Chomsky's new book of interviews with David Barsamian (with thanks to the publisher, Metropolitan Books). The questions are Barsamian's, the answers Chomsky's.
Does the United States still have the same level of control over the energy resources of the Middle East as it once had?

The major energy-producing countries are still firmly under the control of the western-backed dictatorships. So, actually, the progress made by the Arab spring is limited, but it's not insignificant. The western-controlled dictatorial system is being eroded. In fact, it's been being eroded for some time. So, for example, if you go back 50 years, the energy resources - the main concern of US planners - have been mostly nationalised. There are constantly attempts to reverse that, but they have not succeeded.

Take the US invasion of Iraq, for example. To everyone except a dedicated ideologue, it was pretty obvious that we invaded Iraq not because of our love of democracy but because it's maybe the second- or third-largest source of oil in the world, and is right in the middle of the major energy-producing region. You're not supposed to say this. It's considered a conspiracy theory.

Comment: Is it a deeply entrenched religious belief at the root of the American Establishment's megalomania... or is it deeply entrenched psychopathology?

From Political Ponerology by Andrew Lobaczewski:
The pathological face [of a country hellbent on ruling over everyone] must be hidden from the world somehow, since recognition of the deviant rulership by world opinion would be a catastrophe. Ideological propaganda alone would then be an inadequate disguise. Primarily in the interests of the new elite and its expansionary plans, a pathocratic state must maintain commercial relations with the countries of normal man. The pathocratic state aims to achieve international recognition as a certain kind of political structure; and it fears recognition in terms of a true clinical diagnosis. (p.197) [Emphasis in the original]


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