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October 2013

Syrian family’s tortuous journey into the unknown

The BBC’s Matthew Price meets a family whose desperate flight from Syria has led them to Europe

Thousands of clandestine migrants have reached Europe in recent months, with increasing numbers arriving from war-torn Syria. The BBC’s Matthew Price has been following the progress of one Syrian family who sought asylum in Austria after arriving on the island of Lampedusa in Italy.

The little dark-haired boy is sitting bolt upright on a bench in a cafe just across the road from Vienna’s Meidling railway station. His puffer jacket is zipped right up to his neck. He is fast asleep.

His younger sister is also trying to sleep, face down with her head on her arms on a table by the window.

Their mother lights another cigarette, and draws on it nervously. Theirs has been the longest journey – and it is not over yet.

Continue reading the main story

Analysis

image of Matthew Price Matthew Price BBC News, Vienna

Amal’s story tells us as much about the lengths people are prepared to go to escape insecurity in their home country as it does about Europe’s immigration system.

The family entered Europe via the Italian island of Lampedusa. Under European Union law migrants should be processed in the country in which they first arrive. That is where any asylum claim should be considered.

According to Amal though, parts of the Italian system allowed them to leave, and indeed actively encouraged them to go.

The Austrian authorities have granted Amal and her family asylum but they are sending back many Syrians arriving through the Brenner Pass from Italy without the correct documents.

It is similar to what so angered the French government back in 2011 when Tunisian and Libyan migrants were being granted temporary permits that allowed them to skip across the border using the train from Ventimiglia in north-west Italy to Nice in France.

Italian officials say without more help from the EU they cannot cope with the number of migrants reaching their shores at the moment.

It is clear they are also trying to alleviate the pressure, by turning a blind eye to the rules that govern migration into the bloc.

“It’s a grey area,” an EU official says. “It may not actually break the law but it’s not within the spirit of it.”

Their train pulled in from Bologna, Italy, a few hours ago. The family huddled together in a carriage, as they had been all night –  not knowing what to expect when they arrived, not knowing whether they would arrive.

In Italy, “they gave us a choice – to stay or leave,” says the mother, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals for her relatives left behind in their native Syria. We shall call her Amal.

But “there is no way we could find work in Italy,” she adds. The economic situation there is just too tough. Like many migrants, they wanted to head north, to central and northern Europe.

Tears begin to wet her eyes. “I want a better life and stability for my children, I want them to go to school and live just like other kids.

“My children ask me: ‘Where is our house mum?’ My daughter asks me about her bed, she wants to sleep in her bed, and I don’t know what to say to her.”

The tears run down her cheeks. In the corner, her husband also starts to cry.

JailedTheir journey together had started many years earlier.

Amal married her husband, an architect, almost two decades ago. Their first child was born a few years later.

Amal is a Muslim, her husband a Christian. From the start, they say they were persecuted because of their mixed marriage. So in 2000, they decided to move to Libya.

They lived there for 11 years, until the revolution that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi started, and the country grew more and more unstable.

So they returned to Syria, where they still owned two properties. “I was arrested when we landed at the airport,” says Amal.

It was – she says – a post on a social media site, quoting an Arabic poet that drew her to the authorities’ attention.

Amal received a three-year prison sentence as punishment for “endangering the country’s security and humiliating the government”, she says.

Matthew Price first met the family on Lampedusa

Her husband sold their properties, and managed to bribe the judges on the case with $100,000 (£62,000). They reduced the sentence to eight months.

As soon as she was released, the family was on the move again, helped by the rest of the money from the sale of their houses.

‘Death trip’They flew to Egypt, and there contacted smugglers who got them back into Libya.

They hoped to stay, but after a few months they realised the country was too unstable, and they asked the smugglers to take them to Europe.

“There were 200 people in the smugglers’ house [in Libya]”. “We stayed there for eight days.”

Then they boarded the boat for Europe.

“It was like a death trip, a suicide trip.”

The children “were so scared and I regretted it. The boat was so bad. We were told the boat was big and that the trip would be comfortable. There was no way we could change our minds.”

They arrived in Lampedusa “thanks to God”, says Amal. There they were housed in the island’s small refugee centre, overflowing with new arrivals.

Bethany Bell explains how migrants try to make their way across Europe

Then, after a few days, when space became available at another centre in Foggia, southern Italy, they were transferred by plane by the Italian interior ministry.

In Foggia, “we were told: ‘You have three days to apply for asylum here or leave’.”

So they left, Amal said. “The Red Cross drove us to the train station. Someone from the refugee camp helped us book the tickets. We took the train to Bologna. Then another to Vienna.”

Under European Union law, migrants should be processed in the country in which they first arrive. That is where any asylum claim should be considered.

Boat Syrian family escaped on
Amal took photos of the her family’s journey. Here is the boat on which they escaped
Plane to southern Italy
The family was transferred by plane to another centre in southern Italy when space became available
Train journey
The family took the train north, to their final destination

According to Amal though, people in some parts of the Italian system allowed them to leave, and indeed actively encouraged them to go.

The Austrian authorities are sending back many Syrians arriving through the Brenner Pass from Italy without the correct documents.

It is similar to what so angered the French government back in 2011, when Tunisian and Libyan migrants were being granted temporary permits that allowed them to skip across the border using the train from Ventimiglia in north-west Italy to Nice in France.

Italian officials say that without more help from the EU they cannot cope with the number of migrants reaching their shores at the moment.

It is clear they are also trying to alleviate the pressure, by turning a blind eye to the rules that govern migration into the bloc.

“It’s a grey area,” an EU official says. “It may not actually break the law, but it’s not within the spirit of it.”

Seeking stabilityBefore all this, Amal says, “our life was stable.”

“We had everything. My husband’s job was very good. We lacked nothing. We could provide anything my children wanted.”

And now? “This is injustice. I don’t blame the European countries,” says Amal. “I blame the Arab countries who refuse to accept us.”

It is the Arab countries “who forced us to leave”, she continues. If they took in Syrian refugees, families like hers would not have to “follow illegal ways to get here”.

The coffee and cigarettes finished, they head outside once again, with one suitcase between them, containing all that they own now.

They take the tram out of the city, to the asylum centre.

The little boy kicks up golden autumn leaves on the pavement.

“It’s very cold,” says Amal. Her younger daughter pulls a towel tightly round her shoulders for warmth.

“I want my children to smile again,” Amal says.

The wind whips up the leaves, scattering them. The sun is low in a hazy sky.

That evening, Amal and her family formally request asylum in Austria.

Since our correspondent last met them, and less than three weeks since arriving in Italy, Amal and her family were granted asylum in Austria. They are to be housed in a hotel until proper accommodation is found for them in Vienna.

More on This Story

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Karam Saber’s Trial Set to Resume Tomorrow Over Short-story Collection ‘Where is God’

By on October 21, 2013 • ( 0 )

In May, author Karam Saber was sentenced — in absentia — to five years in prison for alleged defamation of religion in his short-story collection أين الله (Where is God). Following protests from at least 46 Arab human-rights organizations, the case appeared again in mid-September, but was deferred until an October 22 hearing:download1Photo courtesy: Arabic Network For Human Rights InformationThus tomorrow, Saber is scheduled to appear before the Court of Misdemeanors in Biba, Beni Suef, to appeal his sentence. The appeal also calls for the punishment of the sentencing judge.

The case stems from an April 12, 2011 complaint filed by citizens in Beni Suef, which accused Saber’s short-story collection, which deals with the everyday lives of farmers and peasants, of containing statements that defamed religion. The public prosecutor in Beni Suef investigated — which apparently meant asking members of the Coptic Church and a representative of al-Azhar for their opinions on the text  – and referred the case to the Misdemeanor Court, which issued the maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Some have suggested that the real story isn’t about Saber’s book at all, but — according to a report in Daily News Egypt — “a result of personal feuds by police and Ministry of Endowments representatives because of Saber’s work defending farmers’ rights.”

In any case, such a ruling is chilling. In an interview with Aswat Masriya, Saber sensibly said that a “collection of short stories is a work of literature that should not be measured using ‘religious standards,’” and that “he will continue to defend his right of expression inside and outside of the court.”

In his commentary on the case for Sampsonia Way, Egyptian novelist Hamdy al-Gazzar wrote:

By October 22, the destiny of the writer and the future of the freedom of creativity will be determined in Egypt!

More:

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information’s special section on Saber’s case

source

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Ebru Art @ American Islamic College

from the comments :

                  Yahya Guzide                                            

The art of this is called ebru its a osmanli art of drawing,, the color are with oil its oilcolor thats the reason why the color swimm on the water!! Sorry about my bad english ?!:

 

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Rebecca Sedwick Bullying Death – Parents Responsible?

[http://youtu.be/n0yr5nL7LNM?]

more and more

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Amal Hanano on Kafranbel

October 19, 2013 § Leave a Comment

kafranbel1First published at Foreign Policy, the great Syrian journalist Amal Hanano describes her visit to Kafranbel last June (I was honoured to accompany her), and the revolutionary town’s changing strategy in the face of global indifference to (or orientalist misrepresentation of) the Syrian people’s struggle. “Many activists inside and outside Syria,” she writes, “realize that there is no longer a reason to convince the world to action. No one is coming to save Syria.”

KAFRANBEL, Syria — The Syrian revolution’s heart — not yet ravished by the regime or Islamist extremists — beats on in the northern town of Kafranbel, where a group of dedicated activists has captured the world’s attention through witty posters and banners that reflect the state of the revolt since spring 2011. And even as the Syrian narrative has increasingly focused on the extremists or an international plan to dismantle the Assad regime’s chemical stockpiles, the artists of Kafranbel have been engaged in their own struggle — to win back the support of residents of their own town.

The 40-year-old Raed Faris and his partner, 33-year-old Ahmad Jalal, are the creative duo behind the banners. Faris — a tall man with a booming laugh — writes the banners, while Jalal, quiet and shy, draws the cartoons. Together, they spend their time brainstorming, researching, and connecting with others on how to display Syria’s tragedy to the world.

The banners express sophisticated geopolitical analysis in the simplest of forms. They are often inspired by iconic pop culture references: Faris and Jalal have used a Pink Floyd album cover, the Titanic movie poster, and even The Lord of the Rings to describe what is happening in Syria. No side in the crisis was spared — not the Syrian regime and its allies, not the Western powers and the United Nations, not the exiled Syrian opposition, and not even the radical jihadists who eventually came to live among the activists.

Kafranbel’s messages traveled the world. A large collection of the posters and banners was smuggled out of Syria to protect them from being destroyed, and they were displayed as exhibitions across the United States and Europe. One poignant banner — carried in front of the White House last spring on the second anniversary of the revolution — adapted and adopted Martin Luther King Jr.’s timeless words: “I have a dream, let freedom ring from Kafranbel.”

Banners like this one — along with the famous response to the Boston Marathon bombing — drove home the universal and historic nature of the Syrian struggle. Kafranbel’s artists consistently made these connections to show that Syria’s war was not an event isolated by time or geography.

What made Kafranbel’s messages unique was their relentless insistence to reach out to the world. The banners expressed empathy and solidarity: “You are not alone; we suffer with you.” But another message was always embedded: “Do not leave us alone. Do not forget about us.”

But the world read the banners, and did nothing. Eventually, Kafranbel — and by extension, Syria — were disappointed by their global audience.

***

Recently, Kafranbel has gone beyond banners to something more sophisticated: “The Syrian Revolution in 3 Minutes” is the latest video produced by the town’s activists. It’s an elaborate production set on a rocky hill. The activists are dressed up as cavemen, complete with bushy wigs and brown sacks wrapped around their waists. Each group’s affiliation is marked by flags: the Syrian people, the regime, the international community, a fat Arab sheikh in a white robe, and an American in a bright red, curly wig.

A large group comes out of the cave to protest. They don’t use words, but gesture angrily and lift a single banner drawn on a dirt-brown, ripped parchment. The regime cavemen attack with rifles. They set off a bomb. The people fall to the ground in a heap of dead bodies.

The Arab, the American, and the United Nations stand to the side watching, doing nothing.

The people emerge from the cave to protest once more. The regime men spray them. They are gassed. They die. The American bystander “tsks” in disapproval and takes away the bright yellow canister of chemicals from the regime cavemen.

The people emerge from the cave to protest for a final time. They yell and gesture. They are bombed again. They die. The regime men look timidly toward the three figures, who give a thumbs-up in approval, overlooking the heap of bodies. The message is clear: It’s only the chemical attacks that the world cares about, not the dead Syrians.

And what exactly is on this threatening poster lifted by the protesters in Stone Age Kafranbel? It shows a drawing of a cave, its opening blocked with bars. But a single bird escapes, flying away to freedom.

*

Every Thursday evening in Kafranbel, the activists meet in the media center to create the banners for the Friday protest. The “ideas” headquarters is a wide balcony overlooking olive tree orchards, lined with potted plants, cushions, and a large red carpet draped across the wall like a curtain. It is a tranquil space, divorced from the war zone surrounding it. The sound of stray missiles in the distance is collectively pushed to the back of everyone’s minds.

One Thursday in June, I visited the town to witness the creative process and participate in the Friday protest. Faris picked up our group from the Bab al-Hawa crossing at the Turkish border. The two-and-a-half-hour drive went by quickly: My eyes were glued to the window, watching my homeland’s landscape pass by. The towns were dotted with destroyed buildings and children playing on the streets. Passing by the ghost towns along our journey, I thought about the dozens of Syrians I had met the week before in the Atmeh camp along the Syrian-Turkish border who had told me they were from these very places. Now they sleep in tents while their homes remain empty.

The main square in Kafranbel is a site of destruction, a grim and sad reminder of the regime’s brutality. But unlike some of the ghost towns in the north, Kafranbel is crowded with people — a mix of residents and displaced Syrians. A man rolled out dough for bread in a tiny space between two buildings, one of which was a hollowed-out shell filled with rubble. These scenes are the new “normal” in liberated Syria.

In the media center, small groups of people huddle together over laptops. There is a tangle of wires across the floor, as a central electrical outlet powered by a generator charges smartphones and computers. The town is disconnected from electricity for days at a time and land lines have been disconnected for months — but here, notifications from Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Viber, and WhatsApp constantly chime and ring on mobile devices. Some are Googling news events for inspiration, others are researching the Sopranos logo as an idea for a poster, and still others are discussing how to criticize the Syrian National Coalition’s recent elections in Istanbul.

As dusk falls, the carpet that had shielded the balcony from the sun is pulled back, the floors are cleared and cleaned, and wide reams of white fabric are rolled out. The groups outside begin to finalize the text for the Arabic and English banners. Jalal does not work with any particular group, but concentrates on listening to the discussions. He doesn’t draw his cartoons here — instead, he goes home well past midnight to draw alone. He returns on Friday mornings with his completed posters, ready to be unveiled at the protest.

Discussions revolve around frustration: frustration with the out-of-touch political opposition, frustration with local corruption, frustration that the revolution has taken so long. Activists who started with one big idea — toppling an entrenched regime through the sheer force of the people’s will — have slowly narrowed their scope of work. The grand scheme seems to have shrunk to delivering a single food basket for a displaced family, writing an article, or drawing a banner. As both regime and extremists chipped away at the revolution’s legitimacy, the activists are left alone to recapture the Syrian people’s wavering faith and support.

As the calligraphy artists begin to transfer Faris’s messages onto the banners, the atmosphere outside relaxes. Activists and visitors lounge on pillows on the balcony. An FSA general stops by for tea. Bowls of fruit are served. Faris plays a Fairuz song on the oud and a young Syrian-American woman sings along. A muted boom sounds in the distance. Here, despite the despair, hope still seems possible. The revolution still seems alive.

***

Kafranbel’s first banner, raised in April 2011, declared: “Freedom arrived from the fingernails of the children of Daraa.” It’s a reference to the schoolboys who wrote revolutionary slogans on their school walls, igniting the regime’s rage. The security forces’ torture of the boys — which included ripping their fingernails out — sparked protests in this southern Syrian city and marked the beginning of the revolution.

Kafranbel was still occupied by the regime then, and the banners placed the activists in grave danger from security forces. At the beginning, they used to burn the banners after the protests out of fear. Sometimes, they threw them in the river.

As the popularity of Kafranbel’s posters grew, so did the protests. The witty banners became the pride of the town. People emerged by the thousands to protest during the summer of 2011 and 2012. But then something changed: As the town was continuously shelled and targeted for its open dissent — and as the revolution continued, with no end in sight — many of the residents fled to refugee and internally displaced persons camps. The number of demonstrators dwindled as well, down to a few hundred and then a few dozen this summer.

On the Friday that I visited Kafranbel, we assembled in a narrow side street, in a few tight rows. The protest had not been announced to the town and was being held before the Friday prayers instead of afterward, which was the traditional time. We chanted for about 20 minutes. We posed for photographs with each banner. Faris documented the protest for Arabic satellite channels and social media, but the entire experience felt like an act on a stage. We were defiant and well-intentioned, but we were hiding — not just from the regime’s bombs or the extremists’ watchful eyes, but from the town itself.

What we didn’t know on that carefree day in June was that this would be one of the last protests in Kafranbel for some time. For six weeks this summer, Kafranbel went silent.

The people of the town had been coming to Faris for months. They begged him to stop creating the antagonistic banners and organizing the protests that had attracted international attention. They blamed the protests for the regime’s air raids that were devastating the town.

This is the twisted logic that plagues people in Syria. Facing continuously escalating violence, many civilians have directed blame toward the revolution. Obviously, you can’t blame the Syrian regime for being vicious and relentless — that’s just what it is, and always was. It was the revolution that should have known its limits: In many Syrians’ eyes, the revolution had brought death and destruction, invited unwanted extremists, and steered the country to the point of no return. Returning to silence, they reasoned, was the way to end the nightmare that had been unleashed on their country.

Faris tried to compromise. He moved the protests to an inconspicuous side street, away from the main square. He banned children from attending the Friday protests and changed the set time of the gathering. Nothing stopped the residents’ complaints. And so after a protest on July 15 that featured a banner dedicated to Trayvon Martin’s family, he stopped.

“Without popular support, we can’t do this anymore,” Faris said. At first he was angry — especially when the air raids did not stop. On July 27, during the holy month of Ramadan, the bombs fell at sunset while the town broke its fast. Several people were killed in the now-silent town. And still the people blamed the protests.

“While I search for your mistakes and you search for mine, while we search for someone to blame, we realize that we have lost because we no longer trust each other,” Faris wrote on his Facebook page on July 31. “Our revolution needs us all. Let us search for each other, for victory is nothing but grasping each others’ hands in solidarity.”

*

After a few weeks, Faris’s anger waned. The time off had given him time to reflect. He stopped focusing on what the world wanted to hear and see. Instead, he began to listen to the town, and worked on a plan to regain his lost legitimacy.

One August evening, activists set up screens, projectors, and sound systems in five different public spaces across Kafranbel. For two hours, news was broadcast on the screens — a report from Al Jazeera, a compilation of YouTube videos, and a special local news broadcast produced by the media team. Men stopped on the street to watch. They pulled up chairs and lined the sidewalks. Some had not watched the news for months. Others had not seen the YouTube videos at all.

After two years of projecting Kafranbel to the world, Faris had brought back the world into Kafranbel.

The media team started to put together the broadcasts every day. They compiled videos of the early protests, of the banners shared around the word, and stories about Kafranbel’s martyrs. Faris and his team ignored calls from journalists who asked for new banners and cartoons. They didn’t even create artwork or organize a protest after the horrific Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack on the eastern Damascus suburbs.

After a few weeks of these outdoor events, people requested that the protests and banners return. They regained their pride in their town’s defiance. And so on Aug. 30, Kafranbel reclaimed its revolutionary role.

Isolationism — which many Syrians view as President Barack Obama’s foreign policy with regards to their home country — works both ways. Many activists inside and outside Syria realize that there is no longer a reason to convince the world to action. No one is coming to save Syria.

The collective message of Kafranbel’s body of work is the opposite of isolationism. It’s an awakening to the world after decades of neglect and forced isolation by the Assad regime. Sadly, Syrians have realized their costly awakening has come to an unwelcoming world.

Over the last two and a half years, Kafranbel’s banners projected the same message over and over: “Listen to us. Watch us. Respond.”

The message is slightly different now. Children and men alike proudly walk the streets of Kafranbel. They chant for their brave town. They are no longer hiding on side streets or standing on a stage for the world. Instead, their message is: “We are here. We are not going anywhere. Watch us if you wish.”

The simple yet powerful “Stone Age Kafranbel” video is a case in point. The scene is timeless — beyond history, geography, and language. Whether scrawled on parchment or scribbled on poster board, whether viewed on YouTube or etched onto cave walls, the call for freedom is the heart of revolution. And it now pulses through a small, once unknown Syrian town that both found and was found by its voice — Kafranbel.

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Cruz: “The Dream of Keeping Poor People from Seeing a Doctor Must Never Die”

Posted by
ted-cruz-580.jpegWASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Acknowledging that the government shutdown was coming to an end, an emotional Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took to the Senate floor today to make an impassioned speech, telling his colleagues, “The dream of keeping poor people from seeing a doctor must never die.”

His eyes welling up with tears, Sen. Cruz said, “I embarked on this crusade with a simple goal: to keep affordable health care out of the reach of ordinary, hard-working Americans. And while this battle was lost, that dream—that precious, cherished dream—will live on.”

Reflecting on the government shutdown and near-default that almost touched off a global financial apocalypse, Sen. Cruz said, “We’ll give it another try in a few weeks.”

Sen. Cruz’s closest ally, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also spoke reverently of the shutdown, calling it “the most expensive Civil War reënactment in history.”

“Unfortunately, once again, the wrong side won,” he said.

Over in the House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) congratulated his colleagues on the deal to resolve the shutdown, telling reporters, “This proves that when we work together, we can come up with a totally unsatisfactory solution to a completely unnecessary crisis.”

But the last word belonged to Sen. Cruz, who ended his emotional speech with a quiet benediction: “Goodnight stars. Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.”

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Photograph by Andrew Burton/Getty.

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Democracy Now a must listen to

and Watch what gets closed and what remains open !!

click on image

 

amy

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: The partial shutdown of the federal government has entered its 16th day, and the nation is now on the brink of a default as the government’s borrowing authority ends tomorrow.
On Tuesday, Fitch Ratings warned it could cut the U.S. government’s AAA debt rating if a deal to raise the debt limit isn’t reached. In a statement, Fitch said, quote, “The prolonged negotiations over raising the debt ceiling … risks undermining confidence in the role of the U.S. dollar as the preeminent global reserve currency, by casting doubt over the full faith and credit of the U.S.”

The Senate appears to move closer to a deal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit, but the Republican-controlled House of Representatives failed twice Tuesday to produce its own plan. This is House Speaker John Boehner.

HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Listen, we’re working with our members on a way forward and to make sure that we provide fairness to the American people.
REPORTER 1: Mr. Speaker, can you guarantee to the American people Congress will not go past the deadline and push us into default?
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: Listen, I have made clear for months and months that the idea of default is wrong, and we shouldn’t get anywhere close to it.
UNIDENTIFIED: Last question?
REPORTER 2: Mr. Speaker, will there be a vote today on the plan?
UNIDENTIFIED: Right here.
REPORTER 3: Are you going to vote today on this plan that would make some changes to the Senate bill, reopen the government [inaudible]—
HOUSE SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER: We’re—we’re talking with our members on both sides of the aisle to try to find a way to move forward today.
AMY GOODMAN: House Speaker John Boehner has refused to allow the House to vote on the Senate plan. Meanwhile, the Senate appears to be close to reaching a deal to keep the government funded through January 15th and the debt limit extended until February 7th. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid criticized House Republicans for failing to reach its own agreement.

SEN. HARRY REID: I know I speak for many of us, who have been working in good faith, when I say that we felt blindsided by the news from the House. But this isn’t the first time. Extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to torpedo the Senate’s bipartisan progress with a bill that can’t pass the Senate—can’t pass the Senate and won’t pass the Senate.
AMY GOODMAN: As lawmakers continue to debate a possible deal to reopen the government, the impact of the shutdown is being felt across the country. North Carolina has become the first state to halt its welfare program due to the shutdown. Meanwhile, nearly a hundred veterans converged at the National World War II Memorial in Washington Tuesday to protest the shutdown, saying it could put more than 5.5 million servicemembers at risk of not receiving their monthly benefits by November 1st.

To talk more about the government shutdown and the possible default, we’re joined by two guests. Robert Borosage is the founder and president of the Institute for America’s Future and co-director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future. He recently wrote a piece for Reuters called “Tea Party Zealots Hold the Public Debate Hostage.” We’re also joined by Amanda Terkel, senior political reporter and politics managing editor at The Huffington Post.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Bob Borosage, let’s begin with you. What has this shutdown meant?

ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, it’s meant a lot of pain for a lot of Americans—infants that have lost support for nutrition, children that have been thrown out of Head Start, safety measures that are not taken because the weather buoys are no longer manned. The list can go on. And the effects accumulate each day. It’s hurt the economy dramatically, and that—those effects accumulate each day. It’s undermined our credibility globally. You know, it’s been a totally contrived and unnecessary crisis which has had real-world and horrible effects that are growing every day.

AMY GOODMAN: Amanda Terkel, you wrote a really interesting piece for The Huffington Post about what gets shut down and what remains open. Can you give us some of the examples?

AMANDA TERKEL: Sure. Well, I think it’s been very frustrating to a lot of people that many Americans are feeling the effects of the shutdown while many members of Congress who caused the shutdown aren’t feeling those same effects. So, Congress, like federal agencies, is supposed to furlough its staff and keep only essential personnel, but there are at least 10 senators and dozens of House members who haven’t furloughed a single member of their staff. And some of these people are like Senator Tom Coburn, who’s always railing about how there’s all this waste in government and all this wasted taxpayer money, yet every single one of his staff is essential.

Congress has kept its gym open, the gym for members. The gym for staff has been closed, but the gym for members is open. And then even there’s a little subway in the bottom of the Capitol so that members don’t have to walk a few hundred feet to get from the Capitol to the House and Senate office buildings, and that little train takes someone to run it. That train is still running.

AMY GOODMAN: So you have people like Steve King of Iowa, one of the die-hards against any kind of—any kind of agreement, kept his entire staff. But you talk about Nobel Prize-winning scientists furloughed.

AMANDA TERKEL: Right, exactly. I think—I believe there are five Nobel Prize-winning scientists who work for the government and who have been furloughed. There’s one man who’s a physicist who said, “You know, I guess that even if you win a Nobel Prize, you’re not considered essential.” There’s the man who kind of—who developed the Mars Curiosity rover; he’s been furloughed. And 96 percent of the Environmental Protection Agency staff has been furloughed. And cleanup at—I think it’s something like over 500 toxic Superfund sites, that has stopped, yet every single member of Steve King’s staff, they’re essential.

AMY GOODMAN: So the gym remains open. Head Start was not funded, except for a private foundation gave $10 million. What about day care for congressmembers—meaning their children, of course.

AMANDA TERKEL: That’s a good question. I’m actually not sure about that, although I know for federal agencies a lot of these day cares were being shut down, which had many people worried. They—if they, for example, weren’t furloughed, they’re still having to go to work, but now they can’t get day care, because that’s not considered an essential service. And many private day cares, too, are suffering, as well, because they are used to having all of these students coming in, and now the parents are home, they’re furloughed, they don’t need the use of this day care.

And so, I think, you know, it’s important that this isn’t just affecting people who work for government or who rely on government services, which is pretty much every American, but it’s also affecting many private businesses. Businesses who rely on tourism and who are around national parks are seeing a drop—restaurants, shops, you know, if you run a canoeing service in a national park. So this is really rippling all across all sectors of society.

ROBERT BOROSAGE: You know, Amy, it’s putting a little focus—

AMY GOODMAN: Bob Borosage.

ROBERT BOROSAGE: —a little focus on the people who work for us—federal employees—because they’ve taken the biggest hit. Eight hundred thousand employees have been furloughed. That means they are sent home without pay. If you’re an essential worker, you are required to work without pay. So you pay the costs of getting to work. You pay the costs of buying your lunch or whatever you do to eat during the day, and you’re not getting pay. We’re headed into our third week of these workers forced to work in, in essence, indentured servitude, without pay. And, you know, people tend to be cynical about bureaucrats in Washington, etc., but these employees are people who work for us, they provide services that go to us, and we are abusing them. And there’s no question that the best of them are going to start looking for different jobs.

AMY GOODMAN: Bloomberg has a piece, “Troops Forage for Food While Golfers Play On in Shutdown.” “Grocery stores on Army bases in the U.S. are closed. The golf course at Andrews Air Force base is open.” Yes, so who is essential, and who isn’t? Now, the way the tea party congressmembers are talking about it is each thing that’s essential, they can vote on, if you want that particular thing to be open. This is certainly a way of, you know, shrinking the government to the size of a bathtub. Your thoughts on that, Bob Borosage, and then what it means moving from the partial shutdown to the deadline tomorrow, October 17th?

ROBERT BOROSAGE: Well, this is—this is an example of why you shouldn’t let children play with bombs. The tea party congresspeople set out to shut down the government and threaten default on America’s debts, in order to get “Obamacare” either defunded or delayed. And when the president sensibly called their bluff and said, “Look, we’re not going to negotiate with a pistol to our head,” they have gone—proceeded to go into the shutdown and celebrate it, despite the damage it’s doing to people and to the economy. And now we’re headed into what is unimaginable, which has not been done before: a potential default on America’s debts.

It’s important for people to understand, these are debts that every Republican member in the House, including the tea party members, voted for as part of their budget resolution. So we’re talking about lifting the debt ceiling to cover debts that they supported, to pay the debts that they ran up, and they’re refusing to do that. And we really don’t know what happens if America defaults on its debt. The entire global financial system depends on the security of American bonds. And if they become less secure, if interest rates spike, as they are likely to do, if investors can’t count on them as the equivalent of cash, then you’re talking not about a small slowdown, you’re talking about a multitrillion-dollar house of financial cards that is going to be shaken at its root.

full transcript here

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Cheating death in Syria

 Razan  Zeitoune

                                        September 16, 2013

                            Escaping hell: Lt. Col. Abu al-Mawt’s detention center

 

Out of all the stories and horrors documented within the course of my legal work, “Escape from hell” – with its five heroes and the monster figure of Lt. Col. Abu al-Mawt (literally, the father of death), who supervised the torture and execution of fellow detainees – is one I replay every day.

The five escapees delivered testimonies while we were preparing a report on what happened at the documentation center, and speaking about Abu al-Mawt gave them a sense of salvation. That they survived this ordeal can only be described as a miracle – Abu al-Mawt represented the brutality of the Assad regime for decades and throughout the two-and-a-half years of the Syrian revolution.

Out of all the torturers who ill-treated these five prisoners and hundreds of others at the air force intelligence prison in Harasta, Lieutenant Colonel Abu al-Mawt was a pure symbol of the hell that claimed more than 100,000 lives since the revolution first broke out.

Lieutenant Colonel Maan, known as “Abu al-Mawt,” represents Azrael, utter power, and the giver of death in the most horrendous of forms. He is the antithesis of anything that is human and has to do with life.

Abu al-Mawt used to call in those who had been detained for more than one year at the air force intelligence prison in Harasta, and tell them they would be sent to forced labor to dig trenches and build barricades for the regime’s army. When physical strength would fail them under the brunt of constant torture and hard labor, he would execute them after “entertaining” himself by torturing them a little more.

Yet, Abu al-Mawt only did this within a framework of special rituals. Detainees chosen to die next would be called in and forced to go down on their knees to kiss Abu al-Mawt’s hand before. But every time, he would close in his hand on the detainee’s throat and choke them for several minutes, exercising his authority over life that was granted to him by the Assad regime.

A survivor gives the following account of his first meeting with Abu al-Hawl: “A short, bearded officer called Maan came in. He was a lieutenant colonel known as Abu al-Mawt. He greeted us and we replied to his greeting before he said: ‘Allow me to introduce myself. I am Azrael, or, come to think of it, I am God and I am taking you to the other world. But since I am God, I shall extend your life for a few more days.’”

The five detainees managed to escape on Laylat Al-Qadr (literally the Night of Destiny, which commemorates the revelation of the Quran by Prophet Mohammad) this past Ramadan as they were doing forced labor near the prison. One former detainee said that no sane person would have tried this escape, as “guards were all around us and bullets rained down on us. But what we saw at the prison made us go mad, or else we would not have tried this.”

But aren’t all Syrian rebels like these five escapees who rebelled against Abu al-Mawt two-and-a-half years ago? No sane person would have thought to rebel against the most brutal of regimes and to go on with this rebellion even as the international community by-and-large abstained from supporting the rebels – and, therefore, disregarding the suffering of Syrian people.

Western media outlets have recently been airing images of Jihadist groups performing executions with edged weapons, the utmost expression of barbarism. However, no one provides any pictures of Lieutenant Colonel Abu al-Mawt tying a water-filled bag to one detainee’s penis while torturing him. No one has pictures of Lieutenant Colonel Abu al-Mawt emptying gunpowder from a bullet on the detainee’s chest and setting it on fire. No one has pictures of Lieutenant Colonel Abu al-Mawt setting a plastic bag on fire and allowing it to drip down on the detainee’s body. No one could ever have images capturing the stench of scorched skin as Lieutenant Colonel Abu al-Mawt emptied his Taser gun on the detainee’s body. Nor are there are pictures of the detainee begging for a sip of water shortly before his execution. All of them were executed while thirsty.

The world would rather deal with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Abu al-Mawt’s role model who gives him the authority to steal away or extend one’s life. This goes without mentioning the thousands of replicas of Lieutenant Colonel Abu al-Mawt who have been torturing and killing Syrians for two-and-a-half years. Yet, the West would then express surprise and focus most at the sight of al-Qaeda-linked groups
emboldened in some liberated areas and performing theatrical executions openly using edged weapons.

Ahmad Hamada, Louay Bellor, Fawwaz Badran, Hassane Nasrallah and Mowafaq al-Jandali managed to escape from Lieutenant Colonel Abu al-Mawt’s hell, avoiding a most certainly cruel form of death that would have eventually ensued.

And, every time I am gripped by despair, I recall the story of these five escapees and harbor the hope that we still have some time left for a miracle, which would see us collectively escaping Abu al-Mawt’s hell sometime soon.

This article is a translation from the original Arabic. 

source

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Assad: Nobel Peace prize should have been mine

      bandannie : why not ? after all there was Obama and Begin and a few other deserving criminals….

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in remarks published on Monday by Al-Akhbar newspaper that the Nobel Peace Prize should have been attributed to him.

Commenting on the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Assad said “jokingly”: “This prize should have been [given] to me.”

Assad also reiterated that he did not regret handing over his country’s chemical weapons.

“Syria has stopped producing chemical weapons since 1997, and has replaced them with traditional weapons, which are the determining factor in the battlefield,” Assad said.

However, he said that handing over the chemical weapons was a “moral and political loss” for his regime.

Assad also tackled his regime’s alliance with Russia and said that the latter is not defending Syria, but it is rather defending itself.

“With what they are doing, the Russians are not defending Syria, its people, its regime or its president; they are defending themselves. Syria’s stability and security is protected by politics more than it is by a military arsenal,” he said.

The Syrian president also slammed Hamas and accused it of abandoning the resistance.

“Hamas decided to abandon the resistance and become a part of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not the first time they betrayed us, they did it before in 2007 and 2009,” Assad said.

Asked about the possibility that he would receive Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in his palace in Syria, Assad said jokingly: “Do not be surprised to see [Progressive Socialist Party leader MP] Walid Jumblatt here.”

source

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