The state's top Catholic Friday equated efforts to legalize gay marriage to "Orwellian social engineering."
Archibishop Timothy Dolan on his blog wrote that "history, natural law, the Bible...the religions of the world, human experience, and just plain gumption tells us" marriage is between a man and a woman. "The definition of marriage is hardwired into our human reason," Dolan wrote.
Archibishop Timothy Dolan: Attempts to legalize same-sex marriage are 'Orwellian social engineering'
Democracy for a Few - Israel's Repressive New Laws
Israel's double standard.
However, on the other hand, the Israeli military law used to manage the Palestinians are similar to those deployed in most Arab countries, where there is no real separation of powers and people are in many respects without rights. Even though there has been a Palestinian Authority since the mid-1990s, there is no doubt that sovereignty still lies in Israeli hands.
One accordingly notices that in this so-called free and democratic country, there are in fact two books of laws, one liberal for its own citizenry and the other for Palestinians under its occupation. Hence, Israel looks an awful lot like apartheid or colonialism.
The Uganda Anti-Gay Bill's U.S. Evangelical Roots
As in other Sub-Saharan African countries, Uganda has long had a taboo against homosexuality. But the political scapegoating of gays and lesbians is a relatively recent phenomenon, one deliberately exported by the American right.
Uganda is a country where American-style evangelical Christianity is exploding, and there are close links between many American anti-gay preachers, politicians, and activists, and their Ugandan counterparts. As Jeff Sharlet has reported, Bahati, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s sponsor, is the secretary of the Ugandan branch of The Family, the secretive American evangelical organization whose members include Sens. James Inhofe, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn.
Israel admits it covertly canceled residency status of 140,000 Palestinians
Israel has used a covert procedure to cancel the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994, the legal advisor for the Judea and Samaria Justice Ministry's office admits, in a new document obtained by Haaretz. The document was written after the Center for the Defense of the Individual filed a request under the Freedom of Information Law.
The document states that the procedure was used on Palestinian residents of the West Bank who traveled abroad between 1967 and 1994. From the occupation of the West Bank until the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians who wished to travel abroad via Jordan were ordered to leave their ID cards at the Allenby Bridge border crossing.
Filling in the Gaping Holes in WikiLeaks' Guantanamo Detainee Files
Imagine that the more than 700 Guantanamo files released two weeks ago by WikiLeaks contained information explaining how interrogators obtained "intelligence" from "war on terror" detainees captured or sold to US forces after 9/11, such as this firsthand account:
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold.
Albinos in Tanzania murdered or raped as AIDS "cure"
Hundreds of albinos are thought to have been killed for black magic purposes in Tanzania and albino girls are being raped because of a belief they offer a cure for AIDS, a Canadian rights group said on Thursday.
At least 63 albinos, including children, are known to have been killed, mostly in the remote northwest of the country. "We believe there are hundreds and hundreds of killings in Tanzania, but only a small number are being reported to the police," Peter Ash, founder and director of Under The Same Sun (UTSS), told Reuters.
'Hundreds jailed for degrading Syria'
Human rights groups say hundreds of ordinary Syrians have been jailed for "degrading the prestige of the state" amid an intensifying crackdown on anti-government protests.
Hundreds of detainees received a three-year prison sentence on Tuesday while mass arrests continue, to pre-empt further unrest on the Muslim day of prayer on Friday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
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