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Secretary General is the Custodian of Human Rights: Dr. Fai |
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Friday, 04 May 2012 15:51 |
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| Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai |
Washington, D.C. In a press release dated April 29, 2012 by the Kashmiri American Council. (but due regrettably to publisher delays is just now being published by United Progressives) Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai applauded United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon's spotlight on Kashmir. Fai said that "we would like to express our profound gratitude to the Secretary General by proposing support for peaceful method to resolve the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir. In doing so, the Secretary General as the custodian of human rights is undoubtedly championing the cause of right and justice.
"We deeply appreciate the statement of the Secretary General that the “will” of the people there must be respected while finding any solution. The people of Kashmir are, therefore profoundly grateful to the Secretary General for upholding the position of principle which the United Nations has sustained throughout the existence of the contentious issue relating to the status of Kashmir,” Fai said.
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Last Updated on Friday, 04 May 2012 16:02 |
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Presidential Candidate Anisa Abd el Fattah Says Higher Educsation Should Be Free |
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Thursday, 26 April 2012 07:21 |
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 US Presidential Candidate Anisa Abd el Fattah calls for 16 rather than 12 years of free public education for American students.
Candidate says what was considered higher education 100 years ago is basic education in today's global environment.
Today, presidential candidate Anisa Abd el Fattah in response to the ongoing debate on student loan interest rates, said that not only should young people not be burdened with debt in order to get an education, American students should receive 16 and not only 12 years of free public education. “US policy makers are still living in the past and not only do they refuse to acknowledge that we are way behind other countries in respect to educating our young people. What we are asking our students and families to pay for in respect to higher education is a rip off. What our students are being taught in our institutions of higher education, is what students in other parts of the world are being taught for free and as part of their basic education programs. Failure in our elementary schools and high schools means that much of what our colleges and universities are teaching is remedial and below the standard of what is considered in the global educational environment a “higher education.”
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Last Updated on Thursday, 26 April 2012 07:40 |
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Written by Cindy Sheehan
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Saturday, 21 April 2012 09:56 |
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 For those of you who know me and have been following my story, you know that part of my resistance to the US Empire is my refusal to pay income taxes.
This morning (April 19 th ), a new episode unfolded in my ongoing struggle with the IRS and the Empire the agency is nestled in.
I was subpoenaed to appear in the 9 th Circuit court of the US Federal Court system in Sacramento, California—my state's capitol.
For background, I have had two meetings with the IRS agent assigned to my case where I expressed to him my unwillingness, due to my principles, to participate in funding a system that commits crimes almost every second of every day. At this point, the IRS is trying to collect 105 grand that it says I owe for the tax years 2005-2006. I first became a war tax refuser in 2005.
My defense is one based on a far superior morality than one practiced by the US government and the fact that my outspokenness against this immorality, and my notoriety in doing so, has put me into a precarious position in a climate where free speech and peaceful protest is being suppressed, sometimes very violently, as we have increasingly witnessed.
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India, Pakistan, Kashmir and Arms Race |
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Friday, 04 May 2012 15:31 |
by Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai
‘The Christian Science Monitor' in its column on April 25, 2012 said it all by emphasizing that “Ritual Aggression: India and Pakistan's missile tests, following peace talks.”
We know that both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers. Both have now tested intercontinental ballistic missiles. Both are adamant against inking the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Both feature domestic constituencies that universally celebrate their muscular nuclear postures; no political party or serious private association champions nuclear controls or disarmament. India and Pakistan have warred three times since their respective births in 1947, and two occasioned on the disputed territory of Kashmir. In the best of times, India and Pakistan are no more friendlier than the Montagues and Capulets on the streets of Verona.
Two not mutually exclusive approaches are available to the United States to turn back the nuclear clock in South Asia; a region that former President Clinton has lamented is the most dangerous place on the planet. The first emphasizes restraints on nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles; the second gives primacy to eliminating the probable cause of nuclear exchanges. The US has chosen the first, and given but lip service to the second.
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Written by David Swanson
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Saturday, 21 April 2012 11:04 |
 Legal and Humane Frameworks for Opposing Torture
Cases come in by the thousands from all over the world. A man was beaten and whipped. A woman was beaten and raped. A boy was hooded with three empty sand bags in 100-degree heat all day, starved, beaten, and kept in stress positions. Alleged suicide victims had their hands tied behind their backs, had boot prints on their heads, or turned out to have been electrocuted. There are torture victims covered with cigarette burns, and torture victims with no visible injuries. They need the expert assistance of doctors and lawyers to heal, to win asylum, and to create any sort of accountability in courts of law.
I've participated in countless nonviolent protests of torture, including congressional lobbying, panels and seminars, online petition writing, bird-dogging of politicians and judges and professors. I've met victims and told their stories and reviewed their books. But I had never spent a day with a crowd of lawyers and doctors who deal with the medical and court struggles arising out of torture cases, not until I attended a conference in February at American University in Washington, DC, entitled “Forensic Evidence in the Fight Against Torture.”
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Letters from the Living to the Dead |
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Tuesday, 17 April 2012 07:04 |
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Odile Katese, author of The Book of Life
photo courtesy in2eastafrica.net
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Close to a million Rwandans were killed during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Artist Odile Katese was in exile at the time. Despite being far from the killing, she was not immune to the deadly events and their repercussions. Returning three years later, she barely recognized her country.
The tragic events there – more than 800,000 Rwandans, mostly ethnic Tutsi, were massacred by Hutu militia and government forces over a period of just 100 days – occurred despite the existence of the Genocide Convention of 1948, which makes it a crime to commit genocide. In response to this collective failure and in an effort to learn from the past, the United Nations outlined an action plan for the prevention of genocide in 2004.
In Ms. Katese's case, it led to the idea of the “The Book of Life.” The project is a collection of letters "from the living to the dead," written by widows, orphans and perpetrators to their lost loved ones and to their victims.
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Last Updated on Tuesday, 17 April 2012 07:26 |
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