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Burma death toll jumps to 78,000

May 16th, 2008 by CD

The official death toll for Burma’s cyclone disaster has jumped to almost 78,000 people, with nearly 56,000 missing, according to state TV.

Previously, Burma was giving a toll of 43,000 dead and 28,000 missing while the Red Cross and United Nations had estimated a death toll above 100,000.

Aid agencies are frustrated at the slow progress of aid to areas worst hit.

Cyclone Nargis battered southern regions of Burma, including the Irrawaddy Delta, on 2-3 May.

A BBC reporter in the delta this week saw little sign of official help and foreign aid workers have been barred from the area.

Heavy rain has been lashing the region, compounding the misery of survivors.

The UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator, John Holmes, is due to visit Rangoon, Burma’s main city, on Sunday in a bid to persuade the military government to grant more access to UN relief workers and expand its aid effort.

Earlier, the EU’s top aid official, Louis Michel, was denied permission to visit the delta region. He said he was given no explanation why disaster emergency experts were being refused visas.

However, Burma - also known as Myanmar - has promised to take foreign diplomats on a tour of the region this weekend.

Read the rest of this entry »

Countdown Special Comment to President Bush: Shut the hell up

May 15th, 2008 by CD

Truly awesome! Shut the hell up President BUSH!

[video width="320" height="240"]http://todayshottopic.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/Countdown-SC5.15.08.wmv[/video]

Omar Ahmed Khadr

May 5th, 2008 by CD

  • D.O.B: 9/19/1986
  • Residence: Toronto, CA
  • Nationality: Pakistani
  • ISN: 766
  • Date of Arrest: July 27, 2002
  • Place of Arrest: Ab Khail, Afghanistan
  • Age at time of arrest: 15

canada_omar_khadr2.jpg

The below is from Cageprisoners:

Omar Khadr was born in 1986. He is the son of Ahmad Said Khadr, Egyptian, who came to Canada from his native Egypt in 1977, and Maha, a Palestinian-Canadian.

He has three brothers, Abdullah, Abdul-Rahman (21), Abdul-Rahim (14), and two sisters, Zaynab (23) and one who is the younger than him.

Whilst born and raised in Canada, the family moved to Afghanistan in the 1990’s, engaging in refugee work and establishing schools, to rebuild the country under the rule of the Taliban.

When the Americans began bombing Afghanistan, he went to Logar, East Afghanistan. After the Northern Alliance entered Kabul, Omar, now separated from his brother (In Kabul) and his family (who had fled to Pakistan) ended up at a suspected al-Qaeda base near Khost, Afghanistan, which was raided by American and Afghan troops in July 27, 2002. He allegedly killed an American medic with a hand grenade but was shot three times, captured and taken to Guantanamo. He lost one eye. He was 15 at the time of his arrest and has since been detained in Guantanamo Bay. There he has been denied medical treatment, due to his non-co-operation with his interrogators. He had an operation whilst in Afghanistan but remains in constant pain, without being treated with painkillers.

Abdul-Rahman, his brother, was also held at Guantanamo Bay from early 2003 until July 2003. He returned to Canada in November 2003. He admitted several months later to having been recruited into the CIA on his arrest in Afghanistan, and informing on his family, and al-Qaeda members in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Bosnia- Herzegovinia.

His father was killed in a gun battle, with the Pakistani forces, in South Waziristan in October 2003.

His younger brother, Abdul-Rahim, was shot in the firefight, in his spine, leaving him paralysed from the waist down.

His mother and sister remain in Pakistan, living off the charity of locals.

His elder brother remains in hiding in Pakistan. If he is captured it is probable that he will be sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Please take a moment to send a card to Omar. Something simple is fine. Remember he speaks and reads English, which makes it pretty easy to send something. Be sure not to write anything about current events, or it will be redacted.. Just a little note - anything at all, just to let him know that we are out here and we know he’s still stuck there. The address to write is below this one. You don’t even need an overseas stamp. If you can afford it, please consider donating a few dollars to his mother in Pakistan. Even just five US dollars can go a long way.

Write to him:Omar Khadr
Camp Delta
P. O. Box 160
Washington DC 20053
USA

To Donate to his family:
Family of Omar Khadr
c/o Cageprisoners
PO Box 45798
London
SW16 4XS

Tibetan monks

March 24th, 2008 by CD

Buddhist monasteries are among the few institutions in China which have the potential to organise resistance and opposition to the government - so the Chinese Communist Party constantly worries about them.

Are some monks secret supporters of the Dalai Lama? Could they be working towards Tibetan independence? Beijing’s fear is so great that being found with just a photograph of the Dalai Lama in your possession could land you in jail.

Government regulation of the monasteries started almost as soon as the People’s Liberation Army marched into Tibet in 1950.

The recent protests mark the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising of 1959 when anti-Chinese and anti-communist demonstrations erupted on the streets of Lhasa, and were put down by force.

Lhasa’s three major monasteries - the Sera, Drepung and Ganden, were seriously damaged by shelling. The Dalai Lama was forced to flee into exile and the Tibetan government-in-exile estimates that 86,000 Tibetans died.

Source: BBC 

Olbermann: Bush administration scandals and lies

March 11th, 2008 by CD

[video width="320" height="240"]http://www.todayshottopic.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/countdown_bushed.wmv[/video]

Afghan death toll soars to 8,000 last year

March 11th, 2008 by CD

The United Nations has delivered a grim assessment of the conflict in Afghanistan, reporting that violence increased sharply last year and resulted in the deaths of more than 8,000 people, at least 1,500 of them civilians.

In a report to the security council, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the number of violent incidents rose from an average of 425 a month in 2006 to 566 each month last year.

The number of suicide attacks rose to 160 in 2007 from 123 in 2006 — with 68 attempts thwarted in 2007 compared with 17 in 2006, he said.

Ban claimed that while the insurgency drew strength from local people, much of the violence was led from abroad. “The support of foreign-based networks in providing leadership, planning, training, funding and equipment clearly remains crucial to its viability,” he said.

Current violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since a US-led invasion in 2001 to oust Taliban rulers.

Read more 

Ahmadinejad visits Iraq

March 3rd, 2008 by CD

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hailed a new chapter in ties with Iraq and took a jab at the United States over its policies in the Middle East during a landmark visit to Baghdad on Sunday.

Ahmadinejad is the first Iranian president to go to Iraq since Saddam Hussein launched an eight-year war on Iran in 1980, in which 1 million people died. He is also the first leader from the region to visit since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

His two-day trip to a country where its long-time enemy the United States has more than 150,000 troops is as much about symbolism as about cementing economic and cultural ties between the neighbours, both run by Shi’ite majorities.

He rejected long-standing U.S. accusations, repeated by President George W. Bush on Saturday, that Iran is arming Shi’ite militias in Iraq who kill American soldiers.

“We tell Mr. Bush that accusing others will increase the problems of America in the region and will not solve them,” Ahmadinejad said in translated remarks at a news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

“The Americans have to understand the facts of the region. Iraqi people do not like America.”

 Read more of this report here

War Made Easy

February 17th, 2008 by CD

War Made Easy exposes a 50-year pattern of government deception and media spin that has dragged the United States into one war after another from Vietnam to Iraq. Narrated by actor and activist Sean Penn, the film exhumes remarkable archival footage of official distortion and exaggeration from LBJ to George W. Bush, revealing in stunning detail how the American news media have uncritically disseminated the pro-war messages of successive presidential administrations.

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8383084962209910782&hl=en[/googlevideo]

(Media Education Foundation)

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