Posts from — February 2014

America Needs Critical Thinking and Sense of Humanity
27 January, 2014 – Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD. – Cyrano’s Journal Today

On January 16, 2014, CNN moderator Don Lemon asked Professor William Pollack (Clinical Psychologist, Harvard University), why are we witnessing daily carnage of civilian bloodbaths – shootings in schools, shopping malls, movie theatres and street grocery stores? What has gone wrong with the American Society? The answer Professor Pollack offered tells a lot and perhaps not too many morally conscientious Americans could disagree with. America lives in a “disconnect” world being unaware of the surrounding real world. An imaginary world of self- indulgence in a prevalent culture of cell phones, text messages, footballs match shouting and excluded entirely from the mainstream of human realities. Another female commentator explains: we are waging wars on ourselves by disregarding the world around us. Once the cell phone is turned off, we are not sure, how to cope with the impinging real world except taking out guns, shooting at random and killing the innocent people. One wonders if this is what America has come to absorb – fair as foul and foul is fair – the traditional American moral and intellectual psyche wants practical and remedial answers which nobody seem to articulate. Are the American moral and intellectual values been replaced with self-generated violence, hatred of others and self- survival of the fittest? Questions and answers on the news media come and go but the societal reality remains the same.

A year earlier, Finian Cunningham (“Killing Children Is the All-American Way.” Dissident Voice: 12/22/2012) raised similar concerns on the growing diasporas of the US political culture:

“Americans need to look at how their society has increasingly become a psychopathic culture of death over many decades. Americans need to realize how their hallowed capitalist ideology of the putative American Dream is in practice nothing but the destruction of communities and millions of individuals on the altar of elite profit-making. Think about the glib, common parlance used to describe the process of human destruction. Investors “make a killing”; workforces are “liquidated”; society is facing a “fiscal cliff”.

In reality, the long waited Third World War was launched by George W. Bush in March 2003 against Iraq. After its failure in Afghanistan in 2001 to come to terms with Reason, Washington- based Industrial and Military Complex prepared the US politicians including the Congress for another global savagery without any reason. From George W. Bush to Barrack Obama, the global insanity of wars has not halted in any manner. Both betrayed the trust of the American masses that elected them to foster peace and harmony across the nations of the world. America cannot exclude itself from the consequences of what it does to others. Today is the memorial day of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had he lived longer to see how his dream was sabotaged – The Vision of a New America, his moral and intellectual spirit would have been more tormented: “He said, O Lord, we ought to be, what we are not.” Agreeably, we live in God’s created One World- One Planet. All and every things that happen affect us all. At human conscientious level, words depict a picture of virtual reality, The CNN moderator was worried and horrified as to what is next – the cost of political success of the few warmongers leading America to ruthlessness and bloody degeneration? Are we in a different time span than the political affairs, action-reaction of violence and threats of aggression and what oppressed the mankind prior to the imposed human insanity of the WW2? Both World Wars were fought by man against man. Leaders and nations complacent in making the Two World Wars are again coercing the mankind to animalistic thinking and behavior without realizing the consequences of their cruelty and ambitions to dominate the world. They failed to learn from the living history. Peace never grows out of war as wars kill people. Who else should know better than the Europeans and American who orchestrated the grand scheme of things to wage wars and control and manage the global herd as part of their economic development scenarios? Immanuel Kant’s spirit of the Perpetual Peace’ must have been disturbed and crying loud when the Europeans and American leaders are talking of more wars to show perversion from their own history. This week, the disclosures of pictures of burning of the dead bodies of Iraqi soldiers re-ignited the decadent American culture of morality and humanity. …more

Detained journalists and bloggers appear in court
30 January, 2014 – Reporters without Borders

Reporters Without Borders reiterates its condemnation of the arbitrary behaviour of the Bahraini judicial system, which has postponed the trials of several detained news and information providers in the past two weeks.

The judicial authorities must abandon all the trumped-up charges they have brought against journalists just because they covered anti-government street protests, the media freedom organization said.

Reporters Without Borders also calls on the authorities to systematically order independent investigations whenever torture and mistreatment in detention is alleged. Failure to investigate violates article 12 of the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.

RWB and nine other human rights groups wrote to Frank La Rue, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, and Juan Méndez, the UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, on 15 December asking them to investigate the arrests, detention and torture of three Bahraini journalists.

Arrested for covering recent protests, the three journalists – reporter Mohamed Hassan, freelance photographer Hussain Hubail and freelance cameraman Qassim Zain AlDeen – all say they were tortured. Hassan has been released but Hubail and Deen are still held.

In the latest act of judicial foot-dragging, a judge yesterday postponed the well-known photographer Ahmed Humeidan’s trial until 26 March, when a verdict is supposed to be issued. He has been held since December 2012 on a charge of attacking a police station in Sitra in April 2012, although he was not even there at the time.

His trial began last February but the prosecution kept on postponing hearings because it had difficulty producing witnesses. His lawyer has repeatedly but unsuccessfully requested an independent investigation into his client’s allegations of torture. His requests to the prison authorities to let his client be examined by a doctor have also been unsuccessful.

On 27 January, the trial of the freelance photographer Hussain Hubail and the blogger Jassim Al-Nuaimi were postponed until 16 February for the final defence statements. …more