Via Scoop.it – Rights & Liberties
The US government has frozen the bank accounts belonging to Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian community organizer and director of a social service organization serving the Arab community in Chicago, and his wife, Naima.
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Via Scoop.it – Rights & Liberties
…a member-based service for physicians that works to restrict unflattering reviews of participating doctors. Patients who go to these doctors sign a contract that assigns, in advance, the copyright in any online review to the physician being reviewed. A doctor who doesn’t like an unflattering post can then use a copyright infringement claim to have the post removed.
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Via Scoop.it – Rights & Liberties
Since September 2008, at least 2,000 civilians have been killed and nearly 3,000 others have been abducted during attacks by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).
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Both President Bush and President Obama have reserved the right for US forces to operate lethally and unilaterally in any country across the globe in pursuit of alleged high value terrorists. The Obama administration’s expansion of US Special Operations activities globally has been authorized under a classified order dating back to the Bush administration. Originally signed in early 2004 by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, it is known as the “AQN ExOrd,“ or Al Qaeda Network Execute Order. The AQN ExOrd was intended to cut through bureaucratic and legal processes, allowing US special forces to move into denied areas or countries beyond the official battle zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus, who is poised to become director of the CIA, expanded and updated that order in late 2009. "JSOC has been more empowered more under this administration than any other in recent history,” a Special Ops source told The Nation. “No question.”
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Several Special Ops sources say that President Obama has taken concrete steps to once again integrate JSOC more fully into the broader US military strategy globally. The bin Laden operation, which was done in concert with the CIA, seems to be evidence of that. The primacy of JSOC within the Obama administration’s foreign policy–from Yemen and Somalia to Afghanistan and Pakistan–indicates that he has doubled down on the Bush-era policy of targeted assassination as a staple of US foreign policy.
Does the U.S. have a heart big enough to also mourn and reflect upon the death, destruction, incarceration, torture, and misery we’ve been inflicting on innocent people in the continuing aftermath of 9/11?
Syria: Army units exchanged fire after one refused to shoot at protesters http://bit.ly/jC23HB
The NYT article dryly noted: “Friday’s attack could further fuel antidrone sentiment among the Pakistani public”
If only the Pakistanis (and the Afghans, and the Yemenis) would learn to stop worrying and love the drone!
The “bizarre boom of plastic surgery in small-town India.”
A girl (woman?) brought in for plastic surgery by her mother-in-law:
Comments Dr Kalda (plastic surgeon), “The saas (mother-in-law) examined the girl’s naked body before marriage and brought her to me so she could be perfect for her son.”
A father makes his daughter have plastic surgery to remove a birthmark on her cheek because a prospective groom’s mother found it objectionable:
As she’s wheeled into the operation theatre she winks at her sister and says “Oh didi, dulhe ko bhi check kar lo jaa ke, us ke upar bhi daag hai toh saath surgery karwa le! (Go get the groom checked too, if he has a scar as well we can get surgery together!)” An unamused Roopam explains, “She is young. She doesn’t understand — it doesn’t matter if a man is scarred or ugly, he will still get a wife. But a woman must do all she can to make herself the ideal wife.
Commercial surrogacy is one of India’s fastest growing industries, offering an extra source of income for struggling Indian women and a cheaper option for aspiring parents abroad. But legislation to regulate the process is still pending here. Meanwhile, surrogate mothers face ostracism in Indian society.
