Psyche, Science, and Society

Bahrain Center for Human Rights: Members of Bahraini royal family beating & torturing political prisoners

As Obama and US allies condemn the murderous regime in Syria and bomb that in Libya, they are largely silent on the horrors being perpetrated by US allies Bahrain and Saudi Arabia in repressing the majority of the population in Bahrain. These horrors include arresting, torturing, and prosecuting medical personnel for the crime of treating nonviolent protesters against this oppressive regime. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights is asking for help in response to this disturbing report.

While it isn’t clear exactly what aid they are requesting, US citizens should demand that all military and police aid to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cease until the repression in Bahrain ends and all foreign, including Saudi, troops are withdrawn. Of course, with a large US naval base in Bahrain, and the extent of dependence on Saudi oil, US support for these brutal dictatorships will likely continue irregardless of the degree of repression. The regime surely knows this. :

Some members of the Bahraini royal family beating & torturing political prisoners

Swedish Citizen tortured by Nasser Alkhalifa, son of King Hamad

16 August 2011

The BCHR expresses grave concern and is alarmed to learn that members of the Alkhalifa family have personally been involved in beating and torturing pro-democracy protesters. After the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain the Center has been receiving reports from victims that they were subjected to severe beatings and torture by people they identified as members of the Bahraini royal family. Five members of Alkhalifa have been specifically mentioned by victims, they are: Noura Alkhalifa, Khalifa Bin Ahmed Alkhalifa, Khalifa Bin Abdulla Alkhalifa and sons of the King, Khaled Bin Hamad Alkhalifa and Nasser Bin Hamad Alkhalifa. One of the victims subjected to torture by Nasser Bin Hamad Alkhalifa is Swedish citizen, Mohammed Habeeb Al-Muqdad, currently imprisoned at Al-Gurain military prison.

Detention Centers

The first victim to speak out was poet Ms Ayat Al-Qurmuzi, who was imprisoned for reading a couple of anti-government poems during the pearl roundabout peaceful protest. Ayat was arrested by masked civilians and blindfolded, after her release she spoke of being tortured by men and women. One of the women she claims tortured her was Noura Alkhalifa. Ayat gave a detailed account of what she was subjected to on the hands of Noura. Among other things Ayat said Noura cursed her, spat on her, and slapped her many times across the face. Noura threatened Ayat that her tongue would be cut off, when Ayat refused to open her mouth, Noura hit her with a broom on her mouth. Noura also spat into Ayats mouth and used electric shocks on Ayats face. As Noura Alkhaifa tortured Ayat she repeated slurs against shias and said “the people you criticize are your masters, and they will remain in power forever, whether you like it or not”.

Another victim is doctor Fatima Hajji. On the 17th of April Noura Alkhalifa and 25 masked men attacked Dr. Fatimas flat in the village of Bani Jamra and arrested her. During interrogations Noora demanded that Fatima confess, when Fatima said she had done nothing but treat patients Noura replied “If you do not confess I will have to torture you the way I tortured Doctor Ali Al-Ekri.” She added that detainees Roula Al-Saffar and Ghassan Dhaif had already confessed.

Noura started slapping and cursing Fatima continuously for about 25 minutes. Then she used a hose to beat her on her feet. When Noura Alkhalifa looked through Dr. Fatimas blackberry and saw two emails, one to Human Rights Watch about her suspension and the other about Martyr Ahmed Shams she shouted at Dr. Fatima “How dare you ruin the image of our government”, then electrocuted her on her face.

Fatima was told to confess that she had pretended to cry in front of foreign media, and that she had stolen 100 bags of blood from the blood bank and given it out to protesters to spill on themselves and pretend to be injured. She was forced to sign a confession after being threatened with rape. Fatima was also sexually harassed by men under the supervision of Noura. She was forced to stand on one leg, make animal noises, sing and dance.

Fatima Al-Bagali who is a student at the teaching college in University of Bahrain was arrested on the 9th of May 2011. She was blindfolded and taken to West Riffa detention center. Where Khalifa Bin Ahmed Alkhalifa The center director interrogated her about a speech she had given on Pearl Square, and about antigovernment comments she had made on facebook. Khalifa beat Fatima, slapping and kicking her as he said “You shia are ungrateful to your masters the Al-Khalifa”. In addition, some of the police officers threatened to rape Fatima if she dared to speak about what she had been subjected to.

Another victim also testified that he was interrogated by Khalifa Bin Ahmed AlKhalifa, who had a picture of the victim in a peaceful protest by the Ministry of Information. The victim says he was asked repeatedly about his participation in that protest, then was blindfolded, beaten and electrocuted on his genitals.

In another case, three of the activists arrested and sentenced for attempting to overthrow the regime also reported that they had been beaten by members of the royal family. The first, Abdulla Isa Al-Mahroos, said he was beaten by Nasser Bin hamad Alkhalifa, and that Nassar forced him to open his mouth then spat in his mouth. Al-Mahroos was also beaten by Head of the Security Apparatus Khalifa Bin Abdulla Alkhalifa. Who kicked him repeatedly in the stomach and ordered the prison guards to walk over his stomach which caused internal bleeding in the abdomen. Afterwhich Al-Mahroos was transferred to the military hospital where he had two surgeries.

The second is Swedish citizen Mohammed Habib Al-Muqdad, who was detained in an underground prison in the National Security Apparatus in the Fort. Al-Muqdad recalls that while being tortured suddenly everybody was silent. He heard his torturers say “your majesty” someone asked him “do you know who I am?” When Al-Muqdad said no, his blindfold was removed and the man infront of him said “I’m Prince Nasser Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa. When you protested outside our castle in Safriya, only a wall separated us”. Then Nasser asked Al-Muqdad what chants he had said that day at the protest. When Almuqdad said “Down Down Hamad” Nasser slapped Al-Muqdad who fell to the ground, then with the help of torturers beat him severely.

There is a wealth of evidence confirming that, at the very least, the government and the ruling establishment had knowledge and condoned the actions of the security forces. The most notable example of this is the actions and speeches of Nasser Al Khalifa , the son of the reigning monarch. In a public forum, on state television, Nasser Al Khalifa threatened retribution to all those involved in the protests regardless of their position in society and their profession. In a telling final statement, Nasser Al Khalifa noted that, as an island state, those involved in the protests in Bahrain had “nowhere to escape too”. If any doubt could be attributed to his unequivocal assertions, such doubt would be obliterated by the actions of the government and the personal actions of Nasser Al Khalifa. Within a few hours of this statement, the systematic targeting of athletes involved in the protests commenced. To compound this, Nasser himself became personally involved in the torture.

Mohammed Hassan Jawad (64 yrs old) was blindfolded and handcuffed when Nasser Bin Hamad asked him “do you know who I am, its Nasser with you” Then the son of the king started interrogating Mr. Jawad about the Safriya protest and accusing him of organizing the protest. To force him to confess, Nasser beat Mr. Jawad with a hose on his head until he fell to the ground. Then Nasser started kicking him mostly on his back, while swearing at shia clerics and imams.

Al-Safriya checkpoint

Different victims beaten at tha Al-Safriya checkpoint (close to the palace of the king) gave their testimonies but asked we do not share their names out of fear for their safety. The first is a bus driver who was driving high school students when he was stopped under gun point by the Bahraini army at the checkpoint. He was shocked when Nasser Bin Hamad, son of the King, came wearing a military uniform and started beating him. The victim says Nasser never used his hands but kicked him, in sensitive areas, in his head and chest, and mostly on his face until he started bleeding. When soldiers told Nasser that they would beat him, Nasser replied “No leave him to me”. After severe beating the victim was arrested for two weeks until the marks on his body faded.

The second victim was stopped at the same checkpoint, where Khaled Bin Hamad, son of King Hamad, ordered him to get out of his car and lie down on the ground. Khaled ordered that the victims car and phone get searched. When an anti government message was found on his phone, Khaled started kicking the victim. The beating continued for two hours and a half, by Khaled and other soldiers with him, until the victims nose and mouth bled. The victim was then forced to kiss Khaleds shoes. While beating the victim Khaled asked him how many times he had been to Pearl Square and swore at shia, and their leaders. This victim was detained for 2 months with no charges or trial.

In the third case at Al-Safriya checkpoint, an older man with two sons were stopped. The older man was told to put his head down in respect to the “Sheikh” (member of royal family), his sons were dragged out of the car and thrown on the ground infront of Khaled Bin Hamad Alkhalifa. Khaled was wearing a military uniform, and started beating the two boys using his gun. Khaled asked the boys about a sticker on their car which read “Sunni and Shia are brothers” he made them read it out loud then said “We are not brothers, all shia are homosexuals.” The boys said they were beaten severely by Khaled and Saudi soldiers. When a Saudi soldier called the victims “dogs”, Khaled said “These are not dogs, they’re pigs. At least our dogs are loyal”.

These are a few of the reports brought to the BCHR about torture and mistreatment by members of the royal family. Many other victims came forward but were afraid they would be targeted if they spoke out and asked us not to include their accounts in our report. Putting members of the royal family in the positions of torturers and interrogators will only lead to more mistrust and anger towards the monarchy. The BCHR also observes that most of the victims tortured or beaten by members of the royal family, were subjected to insults directed towards one sect of the population.

The BCHR demands an investigation into the crimes of the five members of the the royal family mentioned in this report and that all those responsible for mistreating and torturing prisoners be brought to justice.

 

2 comments August 19th, 2011

The British riots apparently about poverty after all

Jack Shalom calls to my attention this Guardian analysis of those arrested during the recent British riots. It demonstrates that those arrested where overwhelmingly from poor or getting poorer neighborhoods. It further shows that later riots apparently involved poor youths not destroying their communities, but going to the city centers to riot, suggesting some kind of nascent class consciousness, albeit, a consciousness not chanelled very effectively:

England rioters: young, poor and unemployed
Guardian data project reveals link between economic hardship and those taking part in last week’s riots

By Matthew Taylor, Simon Rogers and Paul Lewis

David Cameron said this week that the riots “were not about poverty”, but the Guardian’s database of court cases raises the question that there may be, at the very least, a correlation between economic hardship and those accused of taking part in last week’s violence and looting.

Based on unprecedented access to information from magistrates courts across England, the Guardian’s data project gives a new insight into the riots, shedding light on those accused of involvement, from their age and gender to the length of sentences being handed down.

The data also highlights geographical differences during last week’s unrest. In London, the evidence suggests rioters often looted shops and businesses in or near the areas where they lived. In cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, in contrast, the data appears to indicate that suspects travelled from their homes on the outskirts of the cities, or in some cases satellite towns, to riot and loot in the city centres.

One of the most striking features to emerge is the proportion of those who have appeared in court so far who come from deprived neighbourhoods.

A Liverpool University urban planning lecturer, Alex Singleton, analysed the Guardian’s preliminary data by overlaying the addresses of defendants with the poverty indicators mapped by England’s Indices of Multiple Deprivation, which breaks the country into small geographical areas.

He found that the majority of people who have appeared in court live in poor neighbourhoods, with 41% of suspects living in one of the top 10% of most deprived places in the country. The data also shows that 66% of neighbourhoods where the accused live got poorer between 2007 and 2010.

Singleton said: “Rioting is deplorable. However, if events such as this are to be mitigated in the future, the prevailing conditions and constraints affecting people living in areas must form part of the discussion. A ‘broken society’ happens somewhere, and geography matters.”

The findings are backed up by research carried out by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) published this week. The thinktank looked at the relationship between different indicators of poverty and deprivation and the boroughs where violence and looting took place.

Researchers found that in almost all of the worst-affected areas, youth unemployment and child poverty were significantly higher than the national average while education attainment was significantly lower.

“Child poverty rates in local authorities where riots flared are stubbornly high,” it stated. “While poverty is no excuse for criminality, it places additional pressure on families not only to make ends meet but also to spend time together … The political debate is likely to rage on for some time but there is also an urgent need to understand what is happening in communities where violence flared.”

The Guardian’s analysis is based on unprecedented access to court results granted by the Ministry of Justice. After a request from the Guardian it instructed all courts to provide full lists of results for all riot-related cases. These have been compiled by the individual courts and have never before been released on such a scale.

The lists give details of the inner workings of England’s lower tier courts and record each defendant’s name, age, address, charge, plea and sentence – as well as whether the case is remanded in jail or committed to the crown court for a jury trial.

The Guardian has been given detailed reports from 1,000 cases covering all the major courts dealing with riot-related offences: Westminster, Camberwell, Highbury and Croydon in London, plus Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. Reports from another 14 magistrates courts around England have also been collated by reporters.

Statistics from the MoJ show that 1,297 suspects had had an initial hearing at a magistrates court up to midday on 17 August. The majority of these hearings – 65% – were in London. The Metropolitan police reported that around half of the people who have appeared in court so far in London are under the age of 18. The MoJ says that in cases where the age of the defendant is known, 17% are under 18.

The Guardian database adds further detail to these statistics and appears to confirm that the accused are overwhelmingly young, male and often unemployed.

According to the data collected so far, 66% of those who have appeared in court are aged under 25 – with 17% aged between 11 and 17. Only a very small number in our data were aged over 30. More than 90% are male.

More than two-thirds of those in the Guardian’s data set were remanded in prison, with 39% being passed to crown courts for trial or sentencing.

Less than 10% of cases collated by the Guardian were given a sentence after their first appearance and there have only been a handful of cases where bail has been granted – mainly where the accused was under 18.

Of those who have been sent to prison the average length of sentence is four months and there have only been a few fines, mainly involving a group of 18-year-olds from Liverpool who were arrested by police for wearing face masks.

The accused have been charged mainly with theft, handling stolen goods, burglary or violent disorder. No charge of riot – which is a separate offence – has yet been identified. The Guardian plans to continue refining the analysis as more data is collected.

August 19th, 2011

Tea Partiers were right wing social conservatives years ago

The researchers David E. Campbell of Notre Dame and Robert D. Putnam of Harvard started interviewing a cohort of 3,000 Americans in 2006. Using this longitudinal data set, they explore the attitudes of Tea Party supporters years before the Tea Party existed. As they explain in a New York Times Op Ed:

Beginning in 2006 we interviewed a representative sample of 3,000 Americans as part of our continuing research into national political attitudes, and we returned to interview many of the same people again this summer. As a result, we can look at what people told us, long before there was a Tea Party, to predict who would become a Tea Party supporter five years later. We can also account for multiple influences simultaneously — isolating the impact of one factor while holding others constant.

What they found was that the Tea Party was neither a grass roots movement, nor was it people inspired by the recession. Rather, it consisted of long-term right wing Christian conservatives:

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.

What’s more, contrary to some accounts, the Tea Party is not a creature of the Great Recession. Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party. And while the public image of the Tea Party focuses on a desire to shrink government, concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters.

So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.

More important, they were disproportionately social conservatives in 2006 — opposing abortion, for example — and still are today. Next to being a Republican, the strongest predictor of being a Tea Party supporter today was a desire, back in 2006, to see religion play a prominent role in politics. And Tea Partiers continue to hold these views: they seek “deeply religious” elected officials, approve of religious leaders’ engaging in politics and want religion brought into political debates. The Tea Party’s generals may say their overriding concern is a smaller government, but not their rank and file, who are more concerned about putting God in government.

 

August 17th, 2011

Criminal charges sought against MA woman who filmed brutal police beating

Springfield, MA police don’t want you to see this video. A Springfield police officer has filed n application for a criminal complaint against the woman who filmed his buddy’s brutality. Because, in this country, the right of police to beat black people is enshrined in the Constitution and only the state can record everyone, or so the Massachusetts legislature thinks:

http://video-embed.masslive.com/services/player/bcpid634584505001?bctid=605857696001

Raw Story explains the story behind the video:

Police officer seeks criminal charges against woman who videotaped police beating

By Eric W. Dolan

A police officer from Springfield, Massachusetts has filed an application for a criminal complaint against a woman who recorded his fellow officer beating a black suspect while he stood by, according to The Republican.

In November 2009, Tyrisha Greene made a 20-minute recording of now-retired Springfield patrolman Jeffrey M. Asher repeatedly beating Melvin Jones III with a flashlight during a traffic stop. The recording shows a group of other officers standing around Jones without intervening.

Jones was partially blinded in one eye from the attack, and had bones all over his face broken. The officers claimed that Jones grabbed one of their guns as they tried to arrest him and that Asher struck Jones with his flashlight in order to “disorientate him.”

But a grand jury rejected that claim, finding no evidence that Jones behaved aggressively towards them.

Michael Sedergren was one of the four officers disciplined for the incident. He was suspended for 45 days. Sedergren claims Greene violated the state’s wiretapping laws by recording him without his consent.

“If officer Sedergren feels his rights were violated under the law then he has the opportunity to make his case in court, just like everyone else,” Sedergren’s lawyer said.

“When you start charging people who have videotaped police wrongfulness, it borders on, in my opinion, an attempt to silence people,” Democratic Rep. Benjamin Swan told The Republican.

“I think it would be dangerous if this person were to be charged with a crime,” added the Rev. Talbert W. Swan, president of the NAACP’s Springfield branch. “It would say to the public that we don’t have the right to hold law enforcement accountable for their actions.”

Jones has been charged with shoplifting, domestic battery and drug trafficking on separate occasions since 2009.

August 12th, 2011

Are the rich less empathic?

Another set of studies provides evidence that the wealthy among us have less empathy for others than the less well off.

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

An MSNBC article on these studies:

The Empathy Ceiling:
The Rich Are Different — And Not In a Good Way, Studies Suggest The ‘Haves’ show less empathy than ‘Have-nots’

By Brian Alexander

Psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class “ideology of self-interest.”

“We have now done 12 separate studies measuring empathy in every way imaginable, social behavior in every way, and some work on compassion and it’s the same story,” he said. “Lower class people just show more empathy, more prosocial behavior, more compassion, no matter how you look at it.”

In an academic version of a Depression-era Frank Capra movie, Keltner and co-authors of an article called “Social Class as Culture: The Convergence of Resources and Rank in the Social Realm,” published this week in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, argue that “upper-class rank perceptions trigger a focus away from the context toward the self….”

In other words, rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

Because the rich gloss over the ways family connections, money and education helped, they come to denigrate the role of government and vigorously oppose taxes to fund it.

“I will quote from the Tea Party hero Ayn Rand: “‘It is the morality of altruism that men have to reject,’” he said.

Whether or not Keltner is right, there certainly is a “let them cake” vibe in the air. Last week The New York Times reported on booming sales of luxury goods, with stores keeping waiting lists for $9,000 coats and the former chairman of Saks saying, “If a designer shoe goes up from $800 to $860, who notices?”

According to Gallup, Americans earning more than $90,000 per year continued to increase their consumer spending in July while middle- and lower-income Americans remained stalled, even as the upper classes argue that they can’t pay any more taxes. Meanwhile, the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us continues to grow wider, with over 80 percent of the nation’s financial wealth controlled by about 20 percent of the people.

Unlike the rich, lower class people have to depend on others for survival, Keltner argued. So they learn “prosocial behaviors.” They read people better, empathize more with others, and they give more to those in need.

That’s the moral of Capra movies like “You Can’t Take It With You,” in which a plutocrat comes to learn the value of community and family. But Keltner, author of the book “Born To Be Good: The Science of A Meaningful Life,” doesn’t rely on sentiment to make his case.

He points to his own research and that of others. For example, lower class subjects are better at deciphering the emotions of people in photographs than are rich people.

In video recordings of conversations, rich people are more likely to appear distracted, checking cell phones, doodling, avoiding eye contact, while low-income people make eye contact and nod their heads more frequently signaling engagement.

In one test, for example, Keltner and other colleagues had 115 people play the “dictator game,” a standard trial of economic behavior. “Dictators” were paired with an unseen partner, given ten “points” that represented money, and told they could share as many or as few of the points with the partner as they desired. Lower-class participants gave more even after controlling for gender, age or ethnicity.

Keltner has also studied vagus nerve activation. The vagus nerve helps the brain record and respond to emotional inputs. When subjects are exposed to pictures of starving children, for example, their vagus nerve typically becomes more active as measured by electrodes on their chests and a sensor band around their waists. In recent tests, yet to be published, Keltner has found that those from lower-class backgrounds have more intense activation.

Other studies from other researchers have not produced the clear-cut results Keltner uses to advance his argument. In surveys of charitable giving, some show that low-income people give more, but other studies show the opposite.

“The research regarding income and helping behaviors has always been little bit mixed,” explained Meredith McGinley, a professor of psychology at Pittsburgh’s Chatham University.

Then there is the problem of Tea Partiers’ own class position. While they are funded by the wealthy, many do not identify themselves as wealthy (though there is dispute on the real demographics). Still, a strong allegiance to the American Dream can lead even regular folks to overestimate their own self-reliance in the same way as rich people.

As behavioral economist Mark Wilhelm of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis pointed out, most people could quickly tell you how much they paid in taxes last year but few could put a dollar amount on how they benefited from government by, say, driving on interstate highways, taking drugs gleaned from federally funded medical research, or using inventions created by people educated in public schools.

There is one interesting piece of evidence showing that many rich people may not be selfish as much as willfully clueless, and therefore unable to make the cognitive link between need and resources. Last year, research at Duke and Harvard universities showed that regardless of political affiliation or income, Americans tended to think wealth distribution ought to be more equal.

The problem? Rich people wrongly believed it already was.

 

August 10th, 2011

London riots commentary

When riots like those in London occur, it is so hard for people to simultaneously try and understand the social causes without confusing understanding with support for the violence. Here the former editor of Race Today tries to explain the conditions in which young black men live to a BBC newscaster with no interest in understanding:

From ColorLines:

68-year-old Darcus Howe, a broadcaster and columnist, who lives in South London where riots have been taking place offered some context this morning for BBC News viewers. Howe told a BBC News anchor that political leaders had no idea what was coming but if they had taken a moment to “look at young blacks and young whites with a discerning eye and careful hearing” they would of heard messages of what to do prevent this.

The Trinidad and Tobago native who says he’s been in London for more than 50 years goes on to tell viewers about his young grandson who can’t count how many times he’s been stopped and searched by London police.

And when the news anchors asks if he condones the riots he gives her a piece of his mind. “‎Have some respect for an old West Indian negro and stop accusing me of rioting. Have some respect, I have grandchildren. You sound like an idiot.”

Howe is a notable British writer and is the former editor of the magazine Race Today.

Another video making the rounds online is an elderly woman walking around in Hackney on one of the first nights of looting. “Get real black people, get real. If we’re fighting for a cause, let’s fight for a fucking cause” she tells people in her neighborhood that are looting.

Here is the woman trying to explain that unfocused rioting will only hurt the people in the community and is not a real insurrection:

If we’re fighting for a cause, let’s fight for a fucking cause

Unfortunately, discrimination and lack of hope can breed destructiveness.

The New Yorker provides this succinct background:

Like the 1981 riots, this weekend’s riots come early in the term of a Conservative Prime Minister at a time of deep cuts to public and social services. Tottenham, which has a large African-Caribbean population, has the highest unemployment rate in London, and the eighth highest unemployment rate in the U.K. Many of the jobs in the area are dependent on public funding. In the vacuum left by vacationing senior politicians, David Lammy, the Labour M.P. for the area (“from Tottenham, for Tottenham”) was left largely alone to deal with the media over the weekend. Standing near the hulls of burned-out buildings, Lammy told reporters, “The vast majority of people in Tottenham reject what’s happened. A community that’s was already hurting has had the heart ripped out of it.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/08/london-burning.html#ixzz1UZfQtPuj

August 9th, 2011

Stephen Colbert to LGBT youth

July 22nd, 2011

Fisk: Bahrain protesters — ‘They didn’t run away’

Robert Fisk reports on the protests and the massacres in Bahrain:

‘They didn’t run away. They faced the bullets head-on’
After Egypt’s revolution, the people have lost their fear

By Robert Fisk

“Massacre – it’s a massacre,” the doctors were shouting. Three dead. Four dead. One man was carried past me on a stretcher in the emergency room, blood spurting on to the floor from a massive bullet wound in his thigh.

A few feet away, six nurses were fighting for the life of a pale-faced, bearded man with blood oozing out of his chest. “I have to take him to theatre now,” a doctor screamed. “There is no time – he’s dying!”

Others were closer to death. One poor youth – 18, 19 years old, perhaps – had a terrible head wound, a bullet hole in the leg and a bloody mess on his chest. The doctor beside him turned to me weeping, tears splashing on to his blood-stained gown. “He has a fragmented bullet in his brain and I can’t get the bits out, and the bones on the left side of his head are completely smashed. His arteries are all broken. I just can’t help him.” Blood was cascading on to the floor. It was pitiful, outrageous, shameful. These were not armed men but mourners returning from a funeral, Shia Muslims of course, shot down by their own Bahraini army yesterday afternoon.

A medical orderly was returning with thousands of other men and women from the funeral at Daih of one of the demonstrators killed at Pearl Square in the early hours of Thursday.

“We decided to walk to the hospital because we knew there was a demonstration. Some of us were carrying tree branches as a token of peace which we wanted to give to the soldiers near the square, and we were shouting ‘peace, peace. There was no provocation – nothing against the government. Then suddenly the soldiers started shooting. One was firing a machine gun from the top of a personnel carrier. There were police but they just left as the soldiers shot at us. But you know, the people in Bahrain have changed. They didn’t want to run away. They faced the bullets with their bodies.”

The demonstration at the hospital had already drawn thousands of Shia protesters – including hundreds of doctors and nurses from all over Manama, still in their white gowns – to demand the resignation of the Bahraini Minister of Health, Faisal Mohamed al-Homor, for refusing to allow ambulances to fetch the dead and injured from Thursday morning’s police attack on the Pearl Square demonstrators.

But their fury turned to near-hysteria when the first wounded were brought in yesterday. Up to 100 doctors crowded into the emergency rooms, shouting and cursing their King and their government as paramedics fought to push trolleys loaded with the latest victims through screaming crowds. One man had a thick wad of bandages stuffed into his chest but blood was already staining his torso, dripping off the trolley. “He has a live round in his chest – and now there is air and blood in his lungs,” the nurse beside him told me. “I think he is going.” Thus did the anger of Bahrain’s army – and, I suppose, the anger of the al-Khalifa family, the King included – reach the Sulmaniya medical centre.

The staff felt that they too were victims. And they were right. Five ambulances sent to the street – yesterday’s victims were shot down opposite a fire station close to Pearl Square – were stopped by the army. Moments later, the hospital discovered that all their mobile phones had been switched off. Inside the hospital was a doctor, Sadeq al-Aberi, who was himself badly hurt by the police when he went to help the wounded on Thursday morning.

Rumours burned like petrol in Bahrain yesterday and many medical staff were insisting that up to 60 corpses had been taken from Pearl Square on Thursday morning and that police were seen by crowds loading bodies into three refrigerated trucks. One man showed me a mobile phone snapshot in which the three trucks could be seen clearly, parked behind several army armoured personnel carriers. According to other demonstrators, the vehicles, which bore Saudi registration plates, were later seen on the highway to Saudi Arabia. It is easy to dismiss such ghoulish stories, but I found one man – another male nurse at the hospital who works under the umbrella of the United Nations – who told me that an American colleague, he gave his name as “Jarrod”, had videotaped the bodies being put into the trucks but was then arrested by the police and had not been seen since.

Why has the royal family of Bahrain allowed its soldiers to open fire at peaceful demonstrators? To turn on Bahraini civilians with live fire within 24 hours of the earlier killings seems like an act of lunacy.

But the heavy hand of Saudi Arabia may not be far away. The Saudis are fearful that the demonstrations in Manama and the towns of Bahrain will light equally provocative fires in the east of their kingdom, where a substantial Shia minority lives around Dhahran and other towns close to the Kuwaiti border. Their desire to see the Shia of Bahrain crushed as quickly as possible was made very clear at Thursday’s Gulf summit here, with all the sheikhs and princes agreeing that there would be no Egyptian-style revolution in a kingdom which has a Shia majority of perhaps 70 per cent and a small Sunni minority which includes the royal family.

Yet Egypt’s revolution is on everyone’s lips in Bahrain. Outside the hospital, they were shouting: “The people want to topple the minister,” a slight variation of the chant of the Egyptians who got rid of Mubarak, “The people want to topple the government.”

And many in the crowd said – as the Egyptians said – that they had lost their fear of the authorities, of the police and army.

The policemen and soldiers for whom they now express such disgust were all too evident on the streets of Manama yesterday, watching sullenly from midnight-blue armoured vehicles or perched on American-made tanks. There appeared to be no British weaponry in evidence – although these are early days and there was Russian-made armour alongside the M-60 tanks. In the past, small Shia uprisings were ruthlessly crushed in Bahrain with the help of a Jordanian torturer and a senior intelligence factotum who just happened to be a former British Special Branch officer.

And the stakes here are high. This is the first serious insurrection in the wealthy Gulf states – more dangerous to the Saudis than the Islamists who took over the centre of Mecca more than 30 years ago – and Bahrain’s al-Khalifa family realise just how fraught the coming days will be for them. A source which has always proved reliable over many years told me that late on Wednesday night, a member of the al-Khalifa family – said to be the Crown Prince – held a series of telephone conversations with a prominent Shia cleric, the Wifaq Shia party leader, Ali Salman, who was camping in Pearl Square. The Prince apparently offered a series of reforms and government changes which he thought the cleric had approved. But the demonstrators stayed in the square. They demanded the dissolution of parliament. Then came the police.

In the early afternoon yesterday, around 3,000 people held a rally in support of the al-Khalifas and there was much waving of the national flag from the windows of cars. This may make the front pages of the Bahraini press today – but it won’t end the Shia uprising. And last night’s chaos at Manama’s greatest hospital – the blood slopping off the wounded, the shouts for help from those on the stretchers, the doctors who had never before seen such gunshot wounds; one of them simply shook his head in disbelief when a woman went into a fit next to a man who was sheathed in blood – has only further embittered the Shia of this nation.

A doctor who gave his name as Hussein stopped me leaving the emergency room because he wanted to explain his anger. “The Israelis do this sort of thing to the Palestinians – but these are Arabs shooting at Arabs,” he bellowed above the din of screams and shouts of fury. “This is the Bahraini government doing this to their own people. I was in Egypt two weeks ago, working at the Qasr el-Aini hospital – but things are much more fucked up here.”

February 19th, 2011

Mormon women calls for loving others, opposes church on gay marriage

I put this video on MormonsforMarriage.com during the Prop 8 debate. At the time, speaking out via this video threatened my temple recommend and calling, and I chose to take it down to protect my standing in the church. I regret that decision and put it back up as a tribute to the legend of Valentine:http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/20…

February 17th, 2011

What country is this? Mom Sentenced to Jail For Seeking a Better Education For Her Children

And racism is dead?

An Ohio mother of two was sentenced to 10 days in jail and placed on three years probation after sending her kids to a school district in which they did not live. Kelly Williams-Bolarwas sentenced by Judge Patricia Cosgrove on Tuesday and will begin serving her sentence immediately.

The jury deliberated for seven hours and the courtroom was packed as the sentence was handed down. She was convicted on two counts of tampering with court records after registering her two girls as living with Williams Bolar’s father when they actually lived with her. The family lived in thehousing projects in Akron, Ohio, and the father’s address was in nearby Copley Township.

Additionally, Williams-Bolar’s father, Edward L. Williams, wascharged with a fourth-degree felony of grand theft, in which he and his daughter are charged with defrauding the school system for two years of educational services for their girls. The court determined that sending their children to the wrong school was worth $30,500 in tuition.

Of course, here real crime was not earning enough to live in the rich district. It is far past time to end local funding of education, which builds in vast inequalities.

January 27th, 2011