Happy Mother’s Day! Every Mother Counts invites mothers to disappear on Mother’s Day to help raise awareness about the hundreds of thousands of women who die each year from complications during pregnancy or childbirth. Share this video to be part of the solution.
A malnourished child at Banadir Hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. More than 500,000 Somali children are verging on starvation. (Photo: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times).
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The Shabab Islamist insurgent group, which controls much of southern Somalia, is blocking starving people from fleeing the country and setting up a cantonment camp where it is imprisoning displaced people who were trying to escape Shabab territory.
The group is widely blamed for causing a famine in Somalia by forcing out many Western aid organizations, depriving drought victims of desperately needed food. The situation is growing bleaker by the day, with tens of thousands of Somalis already dead and more than 500,000 children on the brink of starvation.
Every morning, emaciated parents with emaciated children stagger into Banadir Hospital, a shell of a building with floors that stink of diesel fuel because that is all the nurses have to fight off the flies. Babies are dying because of the lack of equipment and medicine. Some get hooked up to adult-size intravenous drips — pediatric versions are hard to find — and their compromised bodies cannot handle the volume of fluid.
Most parents do not have money for medicine, so entire families sit on old-fashioned cholera beds, with basketball-size holes cut out of the middle, taking turns going to the bathroom as diarrhea streams out of them.
“This is worse than 1992,” said Dr. Lul Mohamed, Banadir’s head of pediatrics, referring to Somalia’s last famine. “Back then, at least we had some help.”
Excerpt, read: Somalis Waste Away as Insurgents Block Escape From Famine –By Jeffrey Gettleman | NYT
Related: Amid Famine, Danger Hinders Aid to Somalia -By Tyler Hicks| NYT (Gallery)
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond “Liz” Taylor, DBE (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was an English-born American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age, and one of the most famous film stars in the world. Taylor was recognized not only as a talented and award-winning actress, but also for her glamorous lifestyle and beauty, with distinctive violet eyes.
At the age of 12, National Velvet (1944) made Taylor famous. She acted in over 50 films, including such classics as Father of the Bride (1950), A Place in the Sun (1951), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). Taylor won the Academy Award for Best Actress for BUtterfield 8 (1960), and again for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) with husband Richard Burton.
Taylor’s much publicized personal life included eight marriages, several life-threatening illnesses, and decades spent as an outspoken advocate for AIDS awareness, research and cure. She was named a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and received the Presidential Citizens Medal and the Legion of Honour. The American Film Institute named Taylor seventh on its Female Legends list, and in 1993 awarded her an AFI Life Achievement Award. Taylor died of congestive heart failure at the age of 79.
Source: Wikipedia
A massive 8.9 magnitude earthquake hit the Pacific Ocean nearby Northeastern Japan at around 2:46pm on March 11 (JST) causing damage with blackouts, fire and tsunami. For updates on this unprecedented crisis or to search and/or find a missing loved one, visit Google Earthquake & Tsunami 2011 Crisis Response.
Houses are swept by water following a tsunami and earthquake in Natori City in Japan (Kyodo/Reuters)
KABUL, Afghanistan — Boys almost always look up to their elder brothers and their friends, but what if your brother is a suicide bomber or one in training — do you want to train, too?
A new and disturbing video posted on YouTube that has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times shows a group of Afghan or Pakistani Pashtun boys role-playing the last moments in the life of a suicide bomber. Whether it is meant as a rehearsal or as a form of propaganda for the Taliban is impossible to say, but the message is clear: This is something to aspire to.
The 84-second video shows a boy dressed in black with a black scarf over his face embracing other boys, probably from his religious school, or madrasa, because several are wearing the round cap typical of Pashtun madrasa students in southeastern Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas, said Afghans who had seen it.
When he finishes saying farewell, he walks resolutely toward a hatless boy in a white garment, who appears to represent an official. The boy in white holds up his hand as if to say stop, but the suicide bomber keeps going and the other boy stumbles backward.
Then the bomber kicks up a cloud of dust, to represent the explosion, and three other boys, who wear brown garments and appear to be playing members of the security forces, fall down with their arms outspread, as does the boy playing the official. The camera lingers over their faces, and in a reminder that this is playacting, one of boys is almost smiling, but then adopts a more sober look.
The music in the background is a favorite Taliban song:
My beloved is going to fight, so he has long hair
He carries his machine gun on his shoulder, which looks so fine on him.
He is going to battle, going to fight.
A Taliban spokesman said the insurgents did not make the video. And though he expressed regrets that such things had become reality even for children, he made it clear that the Taliban approved. “We are saddened that children are playing this game, but they should do it because this is a war that was imposed upon us,” said Zabiullah Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman for the northern and eastern parts of the country.
Although Mr. Mujahid said that the minimum approved age for fighters was 18 or 19, boys younger than 18 have been arrested on the battlefield. A 14-year-old would-be suicide bomber from North Waziristan was recently apprehended by the Afghan National Directorate of Intelligence.
“The positive aspect of the video is that it motivates the children for jihadi ideas,” Mr. Mujahid said. “The negative point is that it affects their lives.
“It gives them courage for this kind of work, but children should not do this kind work at this age. But they should have an idea about jihad in their mind, and they should prepare themselves for sacrifice.”
Jihadi videos featuring children are hardly a new phenomenon in Islamic extremist movements. Late in the war in Iraq, the American-led coalition captured videos showing children learning how to kidnap people.
Several Web sites have featured a portrait of a boy carrying an assault rifle and surrounded by older Taliban youths. In some measure this is propaganda that appears aimed at sending the message that no matter how many Taliban fighters are killed, there is an unlimited supply of young men who are ready to join the cause.
Officials from Afghan humanitarian organizations said they were deeply disturbed by the video, which is a reminder of the violence in the culture, they said.
“Uploading these kinds of videos on YouTube is an effort by the insurgents to brainwash the children and then use them for their own purpose,” said Mohammed Yousaf, the general director of Aschiana, a nongovernmental group that protects children in Afghanistan.
“Families buy plastic weapons for their children, and then the children form groups and start shooting at each other,” he said. “But these kind of games can create a huge problem in the future when the children are motivated to get bigger weapons and fight.”
Sharifullah Sahak and Taimoor Shah contributed reporting.
Reprint: Taliban Approve Training Boys to Die –By Alissa J. Rubin | NYT
Over a year ago, on 12 January 2010, a terrible earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti and its biggest city, the capital of Port-au-Prince.
The country was devastated, with 230,000 people killed and more than a million left homeless. Hundreds of thousands of buildings were destroyed. The government lost a third of its employees and most of its buildings.
There was an incredible worldwide response to the crisis in Haiti. Governments, businesses and individuals raised billions of dollars to help rebuild the country, one of the poorest on the planet. You may have participated in a fundraising effort yourself, since many kids were touched by the tragedy and wanted to help. KidsPost wanted to update you on the situation in Haiti a year later.
The rebuilding challenge
The simple fact, unfortunately, is that Haiti is still in very bad shape. The Haitian government was so disorganized and ineffective even before the earthquake that there were not enough schools to educate all the country’s children. Today, the job of rebuilding the country is “almost overwhelming,” according to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The government’s shortcomings have made it difficult to distribute the billions of dollars meant to provide food, medicine and clean water to the Haitian people and to help rebuild their country. For example, only 5 percent of the rubble from the crushed buildings has been cleared, so life in the capital is far from normal.
Haiti has a population of about 10 million people, but hundreds of thousands of Haitians are still living in tents that were distributed after the earthquake. These tent cities are not clean and it is hard to keep them safe, so crime is a problem. There also has been an outbreak of cholera, a deadly infection of the intestines, that has spread rapidly because of unclean conditions. The disease has killed more than 3,000 people and could affect many more.
The state of kids
Because 5,000 schools were destroyed in the earthquake, some kids are going to tent schools, but there’s still a huge need for more classrooms. One program is turning specially ventilated cargo containers, like the ones you see on the backs of tractor-trailers, into classrooms.
Education is still a challenge in Haiti. Before the earthquake, “only about 50 percent of school-age children even went to school,” said Tiffany Kuehner of Hope for Haiti, an organization that supports education, nutrition and health programs in Haiti. A year later, “most kids are not in school,” Kuehner said.
Signs of progress
Experts familiar with the rebuilding efforts in Haiti say relief work is finally speeding up under the guidance of a group called the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission. It is being run by Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive and former U.S. president Bill Clinton. The group has set a goal of removing 40 percent of the earthquake rubble by October and has approved projects such as highways, apartment buildings and 250 temporary schools for children. But even with these projects underway, rebuilding Haiti will take many years.
A Haitian boy cries while sleeping at a cholera treatment center of Medecins Sans Frontieres MSF (Doctors Without Borders) in Port-au-Prince January 10, 2011. Photo: Jorge Silva / Reuters
Reprint: Haiti Struggling to Rebuild One Year After Earthquake – By Margaret Webb Presser| Washington Post
Related Stories: Haiti: One Year Later |White House Blog
Haiti: One Year Later American Red Cross (Video)
Haiti, One Year Later | The Boston Globe (Photo Gallery)
Haiti Earthquake Relief: What You Can Do to Help – By Stephanie Williams, J.D. (Slideshare)
New and social media was one of the driving forces that kept the protests alive, giving Tunisians an effective way to coordinate/ Photo: Al Jazeera
Contrary to civil unrests in Tunisia during the last few years, the dramatic death of 26 year old university graduate Mohamed Bouazizi sparked off angry protests in many parts of the country and have attracted international media attention thanks to social media networks. The dramatic events have escalated into more riots in Bizerte, Jandouba, Gasserine, Baja, Sfax, Nabeul, Hammamet, and even in the capital Tunis, among other towns and cities.
This emergency situation has compelled the government to say that they will swiftly kick-start development projects, namely in the southern deprived areas of the country.
President Ben Ali initially pledged 5 billion Tunisian dinars for the development of Sidi Bouzid and other towns. He then promised the creation of 300,000 new jobs for the next two years. In another major step, he sacked key ministers from the cabinet in an attempt to calm down his critics and buy time to bring the country back to order.
Faced with even more growing unrest (and in a latest move) the president promised to open up freedom of expression in the media, to free up political life, to bring to justice corrupt politicians and above all free the media and remove all restrictions on the internet.
Yet all these measure came in the eleventh hour. The mounting pressure, which turned into a revolution, has forced the president to flee the country.
The Role of New Media
In light of the dramatic development of events, on a considerable scale, it has become evident that new media have been playing a key role this time around in keeping the momentum going, and bringing the voices of the disengaged Tunisian youth to the attention of world media, and hence to international public opinion.
Mobile phones, blogs, YouTube, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds have become instrumental in mediating the live coverage of protests and speeches, as well as police brutality in dispersing demonstrations.
The internet in this case has assumed the role of a very effective uncensored news agency from which every broadcaster and news corporation have been able to freely source newsfeeds, raw from the scene.
Such developments have proven very significant in changing the rules of the game, of journalism production and dissemination of information in a country where the government historically keeps tight control on the media and where almost no platform is available for opinions critical of the political elite.
Decades of State Media Control
Article 1 of the Press Code in Tunisia provides for “freedom of the press, publishing, printing, distributing and sale of books and publications”. The Tunisian constitution asserts that the “liberties of opinion, expression, the press, publication, assembly, and association are guaranteed and exercised within the conditions defined by the law”.
Yet as early as 1956, with the birth of the first republic under the leadership of President Habib Bourguiba, the ruling government gained control over the press - and later over broadcasting. As a result almost all the media outlets remained propaganda tools in the hands of Bourguiba’s government and ruling party.
Under Ben Ali (who came to power through a coup in 1987) the media and government relationship got even worse. For a short period of time a few independent newspapers appeared, but their existence was short lived.
Television and radio have remained state controlled and primarily serving the ruling government. The Tunisian Radio and Television Establishment (ERTT) is state-run and operates Tunis 7 (satellite channel), and Canal 21 (terrestrial channel). However, the audiovisual landscape witnessed the launch of the first private TV channel (Hannibal TV) headed by Larbi Nasra on February 13, 2005. The channel broadcasts via satellite and terrestrially, and is aimed at expanding the audience’s choice by producing a variety of programs.
Increase of State-Owned Radio Channels
Three ‘independent’ radio stations have also been licensed which include: Radio Mosaique FM, Jawhara FM (caters mainly for youth programs), and Zitouna FM - owned by Mohamed Sakhr Almatri - launched on September 13, 2007 and was dedicated to the recitation of the Quran, the Prophet Mohammad’s life and broadcasting tarawih prayers during Ramadan.
A fundamental role the state TV does is to promote the image of the president as a competent, successful and progressive leader. Almost half of the main evening news program on TV7 or Channel 21 report on the everyday meetings, initiatives and engagements the president takes part in.
The emergence of a couple of ‘independent’ radio and television stations during the last few years has not improved the situation as the scope of freedom of expression remains controlled by the same regimental unwritten rules: No room for opposing opinions; it is a taboo to criticize the president, cabinet ministers, or government corruption; et al.
Civil society organizations, lawyers, academics, and trade unions do not have a platform to express their critical views on state media or ‘independent’ media.
The press has also had a stormy experience with tight censorship measures placed on them during the last few decades. Major newspapers in the country have developed self-censorship rules in order to survive, and they mainly report uncritically on the government policies.
Other international newspapers (Le Monde, Liberation, Le Figaro, Al-Quds Alarabi to name a few) that attempt to expose government corruption, human rights abuses and the country’s democratic deficit get censored.
According to Reporters without Borders, “journalists and human rights activists have been the target of constant bureaucratic harassment, police violence and surveillance by the intelligence services.” The government has direct control on the servers, and “the regime has become almost obsessive about control of news and information”.
Excerpt, read article: Tunisia: A Media Revolution? – By Dr. Noureddine Miladi |AlJazeera
Related: U.N. Chief Calls Urges Efforts to Quell Tunisia Unrest –By Adam Schreck| Washington Post
The Key Players in Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution – By Dan Murphy | Christian Science Monitor
The Scent of Rage –By Anne Applebaum | Washington Post
Tunisia’s Crisis in Picture | MarketWatch Gallery
JERUSALEM – Israeli commandos rappelled down to an aid flotilla sailing to thwart a Gaza blockade on Monday, clashing with pro-Palestinian activists on the lead ship in a botched raid that left at least nine passengers dead.
Bloodied passengers sprawled on the deck and troops dived into the sea to save themselves amid hand-to-hand fighting that injured dozens of activists and six soldiers. Hundreds of activists were towed from the international waters to Israeli detention centers and hospitals.
International condemnation was swift and harsh as Israel scrambled to explain how what was meant to be a simple takeover of a civilian vessel went so badly awry
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly canceled a planned meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington to rush home. The global reaction appeared likely to increase pressure to end the embargo that has plunged Gaza’s 1.5 million residents deeper into poverty.
Most of the information about what happened on the single ship where violence broke out came from Israel, which cut off all communication to and from the activists and provided testimony and video evidence that its soldiers came under attack by activists armed with metal rods, knives, slingshots and two pistols snatched from the troops.
Excerpt, Read entire article here: Bloody Israeli Raid on Flotilla Sparks Crisis
Pictures of Global Protests Against Israeli Flotilla Raid Pictures – CBS News
A few days later, on June 5, another humanitarian ship, the MV Rachel Corrie, tried to pass the Israeli blockade to deliver aid and goods to the Gaza. Again, Israeli commandos boarded the ship and redirected it to Israeli port of Ashdod. There was no bloodshed.
The MV Rachel Corrie is named after an American student crushed to death by a bulldozer in 2003 while protesting Israeli house demolitions in Gaza. The 20 passengers, which included Nobel Peace prize winner Mairead Maguire, were questioned and their identifies were checked by Israeli officials before being deported, as happened with hundreds of people taken off the previous aid flotilla.
Source: The Sunday Times (UK)
The most dangerous body of water in the U.S. is a deep canal on the Mexican border with California where over 550 people, mostly illegal immigrants, have drowned.
Since 9/11, getting into the United States has become a good deal harder and, for some, much more dangerous. With border enforcement increasing, many illegal immigrants are now attempting to cross one of this country’s most important irrigation projects called the “All-American Canal.” The canal has become sort of a national moat on our southern border, and hundreds of people have perished in its waters. It is a carnage that has gone mostly unnoticed because many of the victims are buried without their names. Scott Pelley of CBS 60 Minutes reports.
Excerpt, read entire article here: The All-American Canal – By Scott Pelley | CBS 60 Minutes
Amnesty International called on the United Nations to put in place measures for the protection of human rights and the most vulnerable among the survivors of Tuesday’s devastating earthquake.
Amnesty International saluted the speedy and courageous efforts of UN, relief and development workers in Haiti and around the world assisting with humanitarian efforts to save lives, clear the devastation and restore basic services and the country’s crumbling infrastructure.
The organization also asked for particular attention to be provided to ensuring respect for human rights and protection of children and those left orphans as a consequence of the earthquake. Girls in particular are at higher risk of sexual abuse and attack.
“The current situation of lawlessness in Haiti and the increased vulnerability of women and children creates the perfect environment for human rights abuses and crimes such as rape and sexual abuse to take place undetected and go unpunished,” said Gerardo Ducos, Haiti researcher at Amnesty International. “Protecting vulnerable groups from sexual violence is as important as providing them with relief.”
Amnesty International made the call as thousands of Haitians are feared dead after a 7.1 earthquake struck the country on Tuesday. Thousands of people are still unaccounted for and survivors await relief efforts from international donors to provide them with access to drinkable water, food and medical care.
In the wake of the disaster, the law enforcement capacity of the Haitian National Police and the justice system are severely compromised as most of its infrastructure has collapsed and many officials remain unaccounted for.
Amnesty International has previously documented shocking levels of sexual violence against women and girls across the country.
“Before the devastating earthquake, Haiti was unable to effectively protect human rights and in particular, women and girls from sexual violence. Unless action is taken now while relief efforts are ongoing, the situation is only likely to deteriorate,” said Gerardo Ducos.
Amnesty International conveys its deepest sympathies to the families and friends of the victims and a message of solidarity to the Haitian people.
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