Trump's Alarming Ignorance About Foreign Aid

With threats to close the U.S./Mexican border - something that will cause possible severe economic damage to the USA and cause severe adverse impacts on U.S. border cities - and his cutting off of all foreign aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, Donald Trump has shown his near total ignorance on the issue of foreign aid which more often than not is driven not by U.S. generosity  but instead by the benefits the USA derives. No doubt his ignorance embracing, knuckle dragging base loves that Trump is "punishing" "those people" and is too ignorant to grasp that Trump's actions will only make matters worse and harm U.S. interests.  A piece by former Republican Michael Gerson looks at the stupidity and self-inflicted harm that Trump's petulant ignorance will bring to American interests.  Here are excerpts:

There are times when President Trump manages to be so wrong — so empirically groundless, so logically fallacious, so stridently uninformed — that it seems like a form of parody. But more often than not, this reflects an authentic and alarming ignorance. The mask of a barroom political crank turns out to be the face of the president of the United States.

Such appears to be the case in Trump’s recent threat to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assistance to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — countries known as the Northern Triangle of Central America — as punishment for their failure to stem migrant flows to the United States.

To make this action a rational one, Trump must imagine that foreign aid is nothing more than cash loaded onto cargo planes and dropped on the presidential compounds of corrupt rulers as reward for subservience to U.S. interests. So he wants to cancel the deliveries until they do what we wish.

The reality of foreign assistance is very different. It is seldom given directly to foreign governments. The work is often contracted to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that work in partnership with locals. And it is generally designed to improve conditions within foreign countries that can give rise to global threats.

This role is obvious, say, in fighting infectious diseases. It is better to deal with an Ebola outbreak as close as possible to the source, rather than waiting for the threat to arrive in Georgia or Kansas. But this is equally true when it comes to a flow of refugees.

Consider an example in Guatemala. More than a decade ago, a remarkable institution called International Justice Mission (IJM) — an NGO dedicated to the fight against modern forms of slavery — began working with local authorities to improve the prosecution of child sexual assault. This partnership improved the capacities of police, prosecutors and courts, while making the whole system less traumatizing for survivors. As a result of the initiative — supported by a grant from the State Department — successful prosecutions in Guatemala have increased by 300 percent, imposing real consequences on predators.

Imagine you had a child and lived in a country where children were raped with impunity. Wouldn’t a dangerous trek north to the United States make more sense? But this program and others like it are threatened by [Trump’s] the president’s aid cutoff. In the real world of U.S. interests, we need more of these efforts to reduce the supply side of illegal migration. And the supply side of sexual trafficking. And of criminal gangs. And of the drug trade. And of illegal arms dealing. And of radicalism and terrorism.

One of the main drivers of illegal migration has been the collapse of criminal-justice systems in Central America. And it reflects a global problem. . . . . Roughly a third of people in the world live in relatively just and stable criminal-justice systems. Another third live under the protection of private security forces — a system that turns security into a luxury good. (In Guatemala, for example, there are seven times more people involved in providing private security than public security.) And a third of people live without the effective protection of the law, experiencing what Haugen calls “everyday violence” from corrupt and exploitative officials.

If U.S. policy does not address the functional collapse of criminal-justice systems in places such as the Northern Triangle, it is not seriously addressing the problem of illegal migration. Yet the IJM program in Guatemala and similar efforts are the kind of spending now being threatened by the president’s announcement. This means that U.S. policy has become self-destructive to U.S. interests.

[T]he lack of justice leading to everyday violence has become a global problem, with consequences that spill up on many shores, including our own. It is a matter deserving policy creativity rather than Trump’s public threats.

It would make far more sense to double assistance for these programs — designed to support local reformers, not to impose American solutions — than to end them. But an absence of vision is one cost of ignorance.

American Allies on an Execution Spree

Once again we see America turning a blind eye to horrific human rights abuses under the guise of "fighting terrorism" by putative allies who have less than clean hands themselves when in comes to sponsoring the very terrorism that they claim to oppose.  Among the worse offenders?  Saudi Arabia, of course, where there is no religious freedom and a new jihad has been launched against LGBT individuals.  As noted in prior posts, Saudi Arabia is the number one funder of Islamic extremism worldwide.  Along side of Saudi Arabia is another false ally, Pakistan.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the foul regimes that America is propping up and squandering money on.  Here are excerpts:

Phony terrorism strategies employed by some of America’s key counter-terror partners are at the heart of a shocking surge in death penalty usage, which has reached its highest level in a quarter of a century.

Amnesty International recorded 1,634 state-sanctioned executions in 2015—more than 50 percent higher than in the previous year.

The regimes in both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia—where the increase has been starkest—have used false claims about fighting terrorism to justify a dramatic increase in the execution of prisoners convicted of conventional crimes. The U.S. has given Pakistan more than $13 billion in military aid since the invasion of Afghanistan but seems to exert little influence over the nation’s counter-terrorism strategy. 

“They [the U.S.] should speak out about a country like Pakistan using a counter-terrorism justification for the horrific scale of executions,” Audrey Gaughran, a director at Amnesty International, told The Daily Beast. “Very few of the executions in 2015 were for people who’d been convicted of terrorism-related offenses. The reality of who is being executed doesn’t match up with the rhetoric.”

By the end of the year, 326 people had been put to death—the highest number of executions Amnesty International has ever recorded for Pakistan, putting it third in the world behind Iran and China.

Joining them in the 2015 top five—with the U.S.—was Saudi Arabia, where there has been another huge surge in executions under the guise of a crackdown against terrorism.

Saudi Arabia executed 158 people last year almost twice the 2014 figure, and more than any other year since 1995.

“The on-going surge of executions is deeply uncomfortable for Saudi Arabia’s Western allies who collaborate so closely on intelligence and security issues,” said James Lynch, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East. “The Saudi Arabian authorities suggest that these executions are carried out to fight terror and safeguard security but it’s clear that they are also using the death penalty in the name of counter terror to settle scores and crush dissidents.”

The vast majority of those executed in Pakistan were not convicted of terrorist offenses, or had terror charges added to their cases with little or no justification. Many of those on death row had no resources to fund an adequate defense, and those executed included people with mental and physical impairments and juveniles. Under international law, executing minors is not permissible.

One of those put to death in Pakistan last year was Muhammad Afzal, who was 16 when he robbed and killed someone. In his final words before he was hanged, he said the police told his family to pay a 60,000 rupee bribe or they would add a bogus terrorism charge to his rap sheet. That is equivalent to only $600, but his family had no means to pay.

“We’re very concerned that this is happening,” said Gaughran. “The death penalty is being portrayed as a way that the government looks like it’s doing something about terrorism.”

Sadly, as it has done so often in the past, America is supporting despotic governments and making a mockery of its alleged concerns about human rights.  When these regimes fall, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the new regimes will be anti-American.

Are American Efforts on Gay Rights Backfiring in Africa?

While gay rights have made huge steps in the West, in Islamic countries and in Africa the situation remains abysmal.   In non-Islamic areas, American Christofascists have been busy exporting anti-gay animus and playing upon the ignorance of the local populations where those who seemingly know no accurate history are to stupid to grasps that anti-gay laws and discrimination were colonial imports from European powers, especially Great Britain.  Aiding them is the Roman Catholic Church which continues to vilify gays and inflict its 13th century mindset on sexuality on its flock, many of who are too poorly educated to realize that are being told lies and falsehoods.  As noted before, if one wants to see the poison spread literally across the globe by Christian missionaries, read "The Origins and Role of Same-Sex Relations in Human Societies" by James Neill.  It is a scholarly work with much research behind it and it truly underscores the ignorance and idiocy of those who claim homosexuality is a western import.  The New York Times as a lengthy piece on the sad state of affairs in Africa.  Here are excerpts:

After an anti-gay law went into effect last year, many gay Nigerians say they have been subjected to new levels of harassment, even violence.

They blame the law, the authorities and broad social intolerance for their troubles. But they also blame an unwavering supporter whose commitment to their cause has been unquestioned and overt across Africa: the United States government.

“The U.S. support is making matters worse,” said Mike, 24, a university student studying biology in Minna, a town in central Nigeria who asked that his full name not be used for safety reasons. “There’s more resistance now. It’s triggered people’s defense mechanism.”

Four years ago, the American government embarked on an ambitious campaign to expand civil rights for gay people overseas by marshaling its diplomats, directing its foreign aid and deploying President Obama to speak before hostile audiences.

America’s money and public diplomacy have opened conversations and opportunities in societies where the subject was taboo just a few years ago. But they have also made gay men and lesbians more visible — and more vulnerable to harassment and violence, people on both sides of the gay rights issue contend.

“The Nigerian law was blowback,” said Chidi Odinkalu, chairman of Nigeria’s National Human Rights Commission and the senior legal officer for the Africa Program of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which supports gay rights on the continent. “You now have situations of gay men being molested on the streets or taunted. That was all avoidable.”

Violence against gay Nigerians has increased significantly, according to the country’s National Human Rights Commission. Most are attacked in the open by groups of men, some of whom call themselves “cleansers,” rights groups say.

But victims often do not report attacks for fear of being outed. Even men infected with H.I.V. are often reluctant to seek treatment at hospitals, fearing that the authorities will be called, said Stella Iwuagwu, executive director of the Center for the Right to Health, an H.I.V. patient and rights group based in Lagos.

The United States’ role comes as longstanding foes in its culture wars continue to move their fight to Africa. Many private supporters of equal rights for gay people in the United States, after landmark successes at home, are increasing their funding of gay causes abroad, especially in Africa.

American conservative and Christian groups have also turned to Africa, where the vast majority of people still share their opposition to same-sex relations and marriage.

Gay Africans are becoming increasingly caught in the American culture battles being waged in Africa, said the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia who is a researcher at the Massachusetts-based Political Research Associates.

“When two elephants fight, the grass will suffer,” said Mr. Kaoma, who has documented the ties between American evangelicals and the anti-gay movement in Africa. “This is what’s happening in Africa. African L.G.B.T. persons are just collateral damage to U.S. politics on both ends.”

[T]ying developmental assistance to gay rights has fueled anger across the continent. After Uganda’s president signed a tough anti-gay law last year, for example, the Obama administration announced that some aid money for the Ugandan police and health agencies would be cut off or redirected.

“This is an abuse of power, and that’s why many are turning around and saying, ‘Keep your money,’ ” said Father George Ehusani, former secretary general of the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria, adding that Nigerian Catholic charities had stopped applying for American government grants that promote gay rights.

The real enemy of LGBT equality is fundamentalist religion of all stripes which, in my view, is a cancer that needs to be eradicated whether it goes under the banner of Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, or Islam.  No matter the name employed, it is a true force for evil.

Religion as an Evil: Egypt's Anus Inspector

Ridiculous cretin "Dr." Louis

One has to wonder at times why the Abrahamic religions are so obsessed with sex and the suppression of what modern science and medical knowledge have found to be normal sexual activities and sexual orientations.  An obsession with homosexuality is found across conservative Judaism, Christianity and Islam.  And none of these "godly folk" will face the fact that (i) the Old Testament was written by ignorant goat herders and (ii) nowadays, Mohammed would have been likely committed to an insane asylum.  Islam, however, seems hell bent on winning the prize for the most bizarrely obsessed with all things gays. As BuzzFeed is reporting, in Egypt the police medical examiners actually inspect the anus of anyone suspected of homosexuality.  This reality makes the bitter old queens in dresses at the Vatican almost look rational.  Here are highlights on this sick, bizarre practice:

When asked to explain what Cairo’s medical inspectors look for when they examine someone who’s been arrested for homosexuality, Dr. Maged Louis picked up a pen and started sketching an oval with sharp points on both ends. 

“The shape of the hole will change,” he said. The anus “won’t be normal any more and will look like the female vagina.”

More than 150 people have been arrested on charges of homosexuality since President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi took power just under two years ago, the largest roundup of alleged LGBT people in more than a decade in Egypt. Anal exams are a routine part of the investigation in such cases, and Louis has a role in overseeing all of them. He is the deputy director of the Justice Ministry’s Forensic Medical Authority, as well as the chief of forensic medicine for the Cairo police district.

“First we make them take the prostrate position — the position that Muslims take when they pray,” he said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. The tests are intended not just to determine whether someone has ever had anal sex, but also to detect “chronic homosexuals,” because the letter of Egyptian law only criminalizes men who engage in “habitual debauchery.” Louis said that he believed that in addition to their elongation, the anuses of “chronic homosexuals” also don’t clench when touched or don’t contract as tightly.  “A normal man’s anus can’t take more than one joint of the small finger,” he said. 

International human rights and medical experts dismissed Louis’s checklist as having “no medical basis” and being “categorically not true.” Most of those interviewed by BuzzFeed News couldn’t contain their shock before all of the criteria were listed.

“I think you heard my laugh — I think that says it all,” said Dr. Joel Palefsky, a professor at the University of California San Francisco specializing in anal cancer who is president of the International Anal Neoplasia Society. “We run a clinic where we do anal examinations of thousands of patients … Never in my 20 years of doing this have I seen an anus that looks like a vagina.”

The idea that inspectors are intentionally fabricating evidence because of their own homophobia isn’t what makes these exams so disturbing — though that does sometimes happen, according to defendants’ accounts. It’s that beliefs about homosexuality are leading doctors — some of whom have done extensive (and horrific) research into perfecting diagnostic techniques — to believe that what they are doing is science.

This insane drivel sounds like something the Nazis dreamed up about the Jews and skull size, etc.   I'm not sure where Dr. Louis got his supposed medical degree, but it needs to be revoked immediately.   The larger issue, of course, is why the USA continues to give billions of dollars to such retrograde regimes and why anyone gives any deference to the practitioners of such batshitery.

The Sad State of Gay Rights in Africa

In most countries in Africa, the term "gay rights" describes something that is almost nonexistent.  Gays face persecution in the majority of Africa's countries and Mauritania, Sudan and Nigeria have death penalties for gays.  While corrupt governments claim homosexuality is a western import, the truth is that homophobia is the true western import that was brought in by the British and fanatical Christian missionaries.  Sadly, given Africa's largely uneducated population (a prerequisite for religion to thrive), new waves of Christofascists are finding the continent to be fertile ground for their message of hate as they steadily lose the culture wars in America and the educated west. As has been the case so often in the past, religion works to prop up despotic regimes.  The Advocate looks at the abysmal state of affairs in Africa.  Read the entire piece for all the depressing details.  Here are excerpts:

Homophobia thrives in most countries in Africa, making the continent an oppressive place to live for countless LGBT people. 

Months after Uganda's Constitutional Court overturned its Anti-Homosexuality Act, which prescribed life in prison for many instances of gay sex, nearly identical legislation returned — this time in the Gambia.

In October, Chad took up a sweeping bill that calls for 20-year prison sentences for those percieved to be LGBT. 

And that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to institutionalized hatred for lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender people in Africa.

Apparently, the Chadian government didn't get the memo about the international and financial impact Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act had on that nation during the six months it was in force, before being overturned on a technicality in August by the Constitutional Court in the capital city of Kampala.

After Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni signed the act into law in February, the east African nation became the target of international criticism and saw nearly $200 million in aid donations from Europe and North America vanish. Gone in a matter of weeks were substantial portions of government aid contributions from Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Holland, and by March, the U.S., which also canceled a scheduled military exercise between U.S. and Ugandan armed forces. By summer's end, the White House announced that it would deny visas to certain Ugandan officials, that it was scuttling plans for an HIV and AIDS research program at a Ugandan university, and that the country would no longer be the location for a planned $3 million health institute in east Africa.

Now, however, with a foreign policy portfolio bulging at the seams and antigay legislation on the African continent looking more like a potential back-burner issue, those same human rights groups aren't taking any chances. Groups such as Amnesty International and Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights First are urging the president and the State Department to use the Uganda experience to similar effect in Chad.

"Following the U.S.-Africa Summit in August, where President Obama met with African heads of State to discuss strengthening economic and democratic ties between the United States and Africa, it is time that the United States make clear that the future of these bilateral relationships will be damaged by the enactment of antigay legislation," says HRF's advocacy counsel for LGBT rights, Shawn Gaylord. "We hope that the State Department will respond deliberately, as it did when Uganda passed its antigay law, with a plan to respond to the passage of these bills."

Three African nations expressly call for capital punishment for those convicted of same-sex sexual contact, often labeled a "crime against nature," "sodomy," or, in a nod to the colonial origins of such harsh antigay laws, "buggery." Those nations are Mauritania, Sudan, and Nigeria. 

A staggering 32 countries in Africa criminalize same-sex sexual contact with jail time: Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

How to Help
There are currently two bills before the U.S. Congress that aim to prioritize the protection of LGBT people worldwide as a key facet of U.S. foreign policy initiatives, explains HRF's Gaylord.

"The International Human Rights Defense Act would establish a Special Envoy on LGBT rights in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor of the State Department, ensuring global LGBT rights remain a key foreign policy priority," Gaylord tells The Advocate. "The Global Respect Act would ban foreigners who have committed or incited basic human rights violations against LGBT individuals from entering the United States."

Human Rights First recommends three ways for Americans who care about LGBT equality to pressure the government to act against homophobia in Africa:

"American LGBT people and allies can call their congressmen, congresswomen, and senators and ask them to support these two important pieces of legislation," Gaylord says. "There is also a petition online sponsored by the American Jewish World Service that asks President Obama to appoint a Special Envoy on Global LGBT Rights."

Finally, says Gaylord, "local human rights groups and LGBT community groups in Africa are always in need of additional support from the international community. People can reach out to them directly to find out the best ways to become involved."

Israeli Official/Leaders Call for Concentration Camps and Ethnic Clensing in Gaza

9-year-old Dina wounded when shrapnel pieces hit her eyes in an Israeli strike in Gaza, is treated at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza city on August 5, 2014.

I continue to be utterly shocked and dismayed by the horrible actions being undertaken by Israel in Gaza.  Worse yet are the calls for concentration camps and/or ethnic cleansing - a sanitized term for genocide - coming from Israeli figures who are not easily relegated to the category of the lunatic fringe.  What is all the more shocking is that if any ethnic/religious group ought to be sensitive to the dangers of such horrors it should be Jews who suffered so much under the Nazi "Final Solution."  Yet some like Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset, are calling for actions all too reminiscent of Nazi actions against the Jews.  Equally disturbing is the fact that individuals like Feiglin seemingly do not care or grasp that Israeli is alienating those who formerly supported Israel.  A piece in the Daily Mail looks at the disturbing situation.  Here are excerpts:

An Israeli official has called for concentration camps in Gaza and ‘the conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters’.

Moshe Feiglin, Deputy Speaker of the Israeli Knesset and member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party, posted the inflammatory message on his Facebook page at the weekend.  

He lays out a detailed plan for the destruction of Gaza -  which includes shipping its residents across the world - in a letter he addressed to the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He says another important part of his plan is the 'conquest of the entire Gaza Strip, and annihilation of all fighting forces and their supporters.' 

In the letter he expresses his desire for the IDF to find areas on the Sinai border to establish 'tent encampments...until relevant emigration destinations are determined.'

He says that the supply of electricity and water to the Gaza would be disconnected before being 'shelled with maximum fire power.'

Understandably, Andrew Sullivan is appalled as well.  Especially because Feiglin is not an isolated fringe case.  Andrew explains and vents:

What is one to make of the fact that the deputy speaker of the Knesset has called for ethnic cleansing in Gaza?

He’s not an obscure blogger for the Times of Israel. He is a luminary of the Likud – a man who got 23 percent of the vote in a contest for the Likud Party leadership. He was appointed to his current high position by Benjamin Netanyahu.

You read that right. There will be temporary “camps” where the Gaza population will be “concentrated”; they will be expelled with subsidies; basic supplies of water and electricity will be cut off for those who remain. The war-time ethics he recommends are: “Woe to the evildoer, and woe to his neighbor.” He backs the “annihiliation” of Hamas and all their supporters. His strategic goal is to “turn Gaza into Jaffa, a flourishing Israeli city with a minimum number of hostile civilians.” (Modern Jaffa, of course, was built on the ethnic cleansing of most of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948.)

The usual response to this kind of thing among the lockstep pro-Israel community is that it is a tiny fringe opinion. And I can only hope they’re right. But what concerns me is that this racist, genocidal bigot was appointed deputy speaker of the Knesset by the current prime minister. What concerns me are the statements of Ayelet Shaked, the telegenic young protege of Naftali Bennett, who is touted as a future prime minister. This is from a Facebook post she wrote the day before the gruesome lynching of an Arab teen who was forced to drink gasoline and then burned to death by Jewish extremists. Note that her call for war came before any Hamas rocket was fired:

Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

Again, she and Feiglin dispense with the distinction between civilians and militants in Gaza. So too did the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, David-Seth Kirshner, at a recent 10,000 strong rally for Israel in New York.

I suppose someone will claim that the deputy speaker of the Knesset, and the former head of the National Security Council or the former chief rabbi in Israel or the head of the largest Jewish youth group in the world are fringe figures. But I note that, so far as I have been able to find, there have been no consequences for their statements for any of them. And I have to ask a simple question: which leader of another American ally has appointed a man who favors genocide and ethnic cleansing as the deputy speaker of the legislature? Which other democracy has legitimate political parties in the governing coalition calling for permanent occupation of a neighboring state – and deliberate social engineering to create a new demographic ethnic reality in that conquered land? Putin’s Russia has not sunk that low.

And we are not merely talking about a hypothetical situation. The grotesque death toll from Gaza is a distillation of this mindset – revealing at best a chilling contempt for Arab life and at worst, with the shelling of schools and shelters, a policy of indiscriminate hatred and revenge.

I concur with Andrew.  ALL American aid to Israel needs to be halted until the barbaric murder of children and civilians in obscene numbers ceases permanently.  To Senator Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, I say, grow a spine and call for cuts to aid immediately.

 

Israel Continues to Murder Palestinian Children

One of the lucky children who wasn't killed by Israeli forces

At the risk of causing a fire storm I am going to venture some thoughts on the horrors going on between Israel and its Palestinian citizens and neighbors.  The murder of three Israeli teenagers - the spark for the current increased violence - is reprehensible, but the murder of Palestinian youths, children and families does not only serves to undermine support for Israel by decent and moral people.  Ironically, perhaps that is the goal of Hamas.  The other irony is that many Israelis are descendants of those who survived the horrors of World War II and the Nazi Final Solution, yet the leadership in Israel strikes me as being incapable of seeing the humanity of Palestinians as fellow humans.  Indeed, the mindset is akin to that of racists who cannot see the humanity of blacks and other minorities and Christofascists who view gays as less than human.  A piece in The Guardian looks at the latest sad news about the murder of four Palestinian children and the wounding of others by Israeli forces.  Here are highlights:

The first projectile hit the sea wall of Gaza City's little harbour just after four o'clock. As the smoke from the explosion thinned, four figures could be seen running, ragged silhouettes, legs pumping furiously along the wall. Even from a distance of 200 metres, it was obvious that three of them were children.

Jumping off the harbour wall, they turned on to the beach, attempting to cross the short distance to the safety of the Al-Deira hotel, base for many of the journalists covering the Gaza conflict.

They waved and shouted at the watching journalists as they passed a little collection of brightly coloured beach tents, used by bathers in peacetime.

It was there that the second shell hit the beach, those firing apparently adjusting their fire to target the fleeing survivors. As it exploded, journalists standing by the terrace wall shouted: "They are only children."

In the space of 40 seconds, four boys who had been playing hide and seek among fishermen's shacks on the wall were dead. They were aged between seven and 11; two were named Mohammad, one Zakaria and the youngest Ahed. All were members of the extended Bakr family.

Three others who were injured made it to the hotel: Hamad Bakr, aged 13, with shrapnel in his chest; his cousin Motasem, 11, injured in his head and legs, and Mohammad Abu Watfah, 21, who was hit by shrapnel in his stomach.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the incident. The Israel Defence Force told the AFP in a statement: "Based on preliminary results, the target of this strike was Hamas terrorist operatives. The reported civilian casualties from this strike are a tragic outcome."

The Islamist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, on Wednesday formally rejected Egypt's ceasefire proposal that had been accepted by Israel to end the nine-day-old conflict that has left at least 213 Palestinians and one Israeli dead.
Alongside the air strikes, Israel told tens of thousands of residents of the northern town of Beit Lahiya and the Zeitoun and Shujai'iya neighbourhoods of Gaza City– all near the Israel border – to evacuate their homes by 8am. The warnings came by automated phonecalls, texts and leaflets dropped from planes.

The Israeli military said in its message that large numbers of rockets were being launched from these areas and that Israel planned to bomb these locations.

"Whoever disregards these instructions and fails to evacuate immediately endangers their own lives, as well as those of their families," the message said.

Part of me wants to say "a pox on both their houses."  On the other hand, the continued brutality by Israel makes me want to contact my U.S. Senators and demand that they vote to cut off all aid to Israel.  Is that the emotion Israel is seeking to evoke?  I suspect not.

Anti-Gay Vigilante Campaign Begins in Uganda - Netherlands Ceases Aid

Not even a full day had passed since the heinous "Kill the Gays" anti-gay law was signed into law before a vigilante campaign was launched by a Uganda tabloid Red Pepper which has published the names, addresses and other identifying information of some 200 people that the paper says are gay.   Among those targeted are Sexual Minorities Uganda executive director Frank Mugisha, transgender rights activist Pepe Julian Onziema, and Freedom and Roam Uganda executive director Jacqueline Kasha.  But most of the others are ordinary private citizens who are salespeople, shopkeepers, and ordinary employees of businesses.  No evidence or proof of their alleged homosexuality is given.  Clearly, a rain of terror and smear campaign is underway and the goal is to destroy people's lives.  Such are the fruits of ignorance embracing religion. Candidly, Ugandans were better off under British colonial rule than they are under the current corrupt government.  Here are highlights from Box Turtle Bulletin:

Just one day after Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act, the tabloid Red Pepper has launched a massive vigilante campaign on the front page of its latest edition. Four photos appear on the front page, with additional photos on the inside pages along with names, addresses and other identifying information on 200 people that the paper says is gay. 

Two of the four front-page photos are of well-known LGBT rights activists. Sam Ganafa, executive director of Spectrum Uganda Initiatives and board chair for the Sexual Minorities Uganda coalition, had been arrested with four others by police last November and spent two weeks in jail and charged with “unnatural offenses,” which carried a potential lifetime imprisonment even without the Anti-Homosexuality act being in place. The five were finally released on bail, awaiting trial. Transgender rights activist Victor Musaka who won an important High Court case in 2008 which stemmed from his arrest and personal body examination by police seeking to determine his so-called “real” gender.

The other two photos are of popular cultural figures in Uganda, Fr. Anthony Musaala and a hip-hop performer who goes by the stage name of Keko. Fr. Anthony Musaala is a recording artist known as “the singing priest.” In 2009, in the anti-gay hysteria stirred up by the infamous conference conducted by Scott Lively and two other American Evangelicals, Musaala was named by the Ugandan organization that sponsored Lively’s talk, and later by a lacky of rival pastor Martin Ssempa. Musaala is a well-known figure and the Catholic church is seen as a rival to Uganda’s evangelical churches. 

Red Pepper has has a long history of stoking anti-gay vigilante campaigns. In April 2009, just one month after Scott Lively’s conference in Kampala, Red Pepper published a list of names, photos, occupations and other identifying information — their “killer dossier,” as they put it – of more than fifty Ugandans accused of homosexuality. Red Pepper followed in December with another so-called “exposé” of “city tycoons who bankroll Ugandan homos.”

Thankfully, at least one European nation has already stepped up and said that it will not help finance such ignorance, bigotry and anti-gay violence.  As The Bilerico Project reports,  The Netherlands has immediately ceased a portion of its aid.  Here are excerpts:

From Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, via Google translate (and slightly cleaned up):

Dutch assistance to the Ugandan government has been suspended after Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni ratified the Anti-Homosexuality Law, Minister Lilianne Ploumen (Foreign Trade) and Minister Frans Timmermans (Foreign Affairs) announced today.

[T]he law is not consistent with international human rights treaties which also Uganda has signed. Enactment of the Anti-Homosexuality Law therefore has consequences for the Dutch relationship with the Ugandan government, says Timmermans.

The Dutch government provides about 23 million (€) to Uganda. A €7 million fund for the justice sector (including human rights training for police, education for prisoners and the establishment of internal inspection) has been stopped .

 I'm sorry, but the Netherlands needs to stop ALL aid of every kind.  The United States and other modern nations need to do so as well.  Uganda and other nations enacting extreme anti-gay laws need to become an international pariahs and be left to their own devices.  If the populace suffers, then so be it.  Let them revolt and overthrow these foul and corrupt governments.