Friday, Nov 07th
Last update08:59:16 AM GMT
Human Rights Glance
In post-occupation Iraq being gay, or even looking gay, can be a death sentence.
It's very difficult to determine how many homosexuals have died in so called "honour killings" by their own families or in the hands of the militias. But a BBC investigation has found that law enforcement agencies are involved in ongoing, systematic and organised violence against gay people, while the government refuses to acknowledge it.
TVNL Comment: Another perk of Operation Iraq Freedom! Thanks, PNAC.
During a diplomatic visit to Calcutta, India, in May, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stopped at a shelter for young women and girls. It was not an ordinary shelter, but one with a specific mission – a mission Ms. Clinton wanted reporters to broadcast to Americans back home.
It was a shelter established to help victims of human trafficking, an international crime that Clinton and other international players have called one of the world's largest and most pressing human rights concerns. It was also, primarily, helping girls who'd been trafficked for sex.
On Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. announced that no one would be prosecuted for the brutal deaths of two prisoners held in C.I.A. custody.
One of the prisoners, a suspected militant named Gul Rahman, died in 2002 after being shackled to a concrete wall in near-freezing temperatures in a secret C.I.A. prison in Afghanistan. The other, Manadel al-Jamadi, died in C.I.A. custody in 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where his corpse was photographed wrapped in plastic.
For Palestinian farmer Esam Foqaha, agriculture is more than a profession, it's a way of life. "Farming is not only a job. It's our lifestyle and we will do it forever," Foqaha said.
Foqaha lives in Ein Al-Beida, a Palestinian agricultural village located in the West Bank's northern Jordan Valley area. With his three brothers, he cultivates about 300 dunams (0.3km) of agricultural land. Most of his produce – tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant and other vegetables – is marketed to Jenin, Nablus and other major Palestinian cities in the West Bank.
The settlers led by Florida millionaire Irving Moskowitz, who made his money from gambling, have been after two brothers from the Hamdallah family in Ras el-Amoud since 1985 to get them to leave a plot of land they have lived on for decades.
Israeli authorities have given Palestinian farmers living in Jericho, in the occupied West Bank, an order to uproot palm trees they have grown and leave agricultural lands within 45 days.
The orders came in the form of letters sent to the farmers in an area known as “Area C” and gave the farmers an October 7 deadline to vacate their lands.
US activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a moron Israeli soldier driving an earth-mover while protesting against the sickening and truly evil daily treatment of the Palestinians, but an Israeli judge has ruled that it was her own fault.
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