Savo Heleta's Blog, page 12
June 8, 2009
The World Cares More About Somalia's Pirates Than its People
For years now the humanitarian crisis in Somalia is the worst in Africa and probably the world.
Yet hardly anyone cares about this.
The issue of Somali piracy, however, has recently attracted global attention and military intervention.
Alex Perry writes in Time that "Australia, Bahrain, Britain, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Portugal, Russia, the Seychelles, Spain, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, the United Stat
June 5, 2009
US Government Posts Sensitive Info about Nuclear Sites on the Internet
The document was posted on the Government Printing Office Web site, and has since been removed.
A government official reassured the public that the posting included no information that compromised national security.
However, some of the pages of the 266-page document are marked "highly confidential safeguards sensitive."
Fo
June 4, 2009
2010 Soccer World Cup Stadium in Port Elizabeth, South Africa
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Truth Commission for American Torture and War Crimes
General Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of all coalition forces in Iraq, has called for a truth commission to investigate the abuses and torture which occurred in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Speaking at the Times Center in New York, General Sanchez said that "during my time in Iraq there was not one instance of actionable intelligence that came out of these interrogation techniques."
General Sanchez said that "the failures at all levels of civilian and military command led to the abuses in Iraq."
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June 2, 2009
"We Don't Want Terrorists in American Prisons!" 355 Are Already There
Barack Obama's remark that some Guantanamo detainees might be transferred to American prisons has recently prompted a storm of protest.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said that "to bring the worst terrorists inside the United States would be a cause for great danger and regret in the years to come."
Lawmakers from Kansas and Colorado said "Not In My Back Yard!"
But, as Fred Kaplan writes in Slate, "federal facilities on American soil currently house 216 international terrorists and 139 domesti
May 25, 2009
Book Review - Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia
By Marko Attila Hoare
Greater Surbiton Blog
May 25 2009
Review of Savo Heleta's Not My Turn to Die: Memoirs of a Broken Childhood in Bosnia (AMACOM, New York, 2008)
In his book, Heleta has provided a gripping, harrowing account of his family’s suffering in wartime Gorazde. He describes the intimidation, murder attempts, vandalism of property and other abuses to which he, his family and other Serb civilians were subjected at the hands of local Bosniak thugs, as well as lengthy arbitrary incarcerati
May 21, 2009
America vs Islam - Rumsfeld Briefed Bush on Iraq War with Bible Quotes
Yes, at least according to the former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
During the Iraq war, Rumsfeld used quotes from the Bible in his briefings to George Bush.
The Associated Press writes that "the daily reports prepared for President George W. Bush carried quotes from the books of Psalms and Ephesians and the epistles of Peter. At the time, the reports focused largely on the war in Iraq."
As the BBC reports, one briefing featured photos of U
Catholic Church in Ireland: Supporting Rapists and Pedophiles Since the 1930s
After a nine-year investigation, the Irish Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse recently published a 2,600-page report on decades of rapes, humiliation, and beatings at Catholic Church-run reform schools for Ireland's castaway children.
The investigation uncovered previously secret Vatican records that demonstrated church knowledge of rapists and pedophiles in their ranks all the way back to the 1930s.
"A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most
May 20, 2009
What is in the new torture photos?
What is in the new 44 photos showing abuse and torture by the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan that makes them so dangerous to publish?
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German Spiegel writes that, "apparently, the photos are horrifying, even worse than those from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, made infamous by the first batch of torture images published in 2004. Some depict US soldiers driving a tank toward shackled prisoners, leading them to believe that they are about to die. Others show soldiers standing over the corp
May 15, 2009
Outsourcing Abuse and Torture
As the German Spiegel writes, "the torture practices used in interrogations of al-Qaida prisoners were not developed by government officials in Washington, but by private security experts" contracted by the Bush administration.
The development and supervision of the interrogations and torture were outsourced to a private security firm called "Mitchell Jessen & Associates," whose personnel had no previous hands-on experience in prisoner interrogations.
The "torture manual," also called a "special
