My podiatrist, to whom I've returned after 3 years, (that's another story),
asked who I thought would be President, and I answered, "Hillary, but I'm
not happy about that". My doctor is a typical NY Jewish liberal, which means
he isn't as liberal as he thinks he is. He asked who I wanted to become
president. Rather than tell him that I doubted that it matters, I said,
"Bernie Sanders". He said, "He'll never get the nomination". I asked him if
he knows who Jill Stein is. He said that he's never heard of her. He asked
me if I listen to NPR, and I said , "sometimes, but it's too mainstream for
me". He gasped.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 11:37 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Where's the Outrage Over the Beheadings in
Saudi Arabia?
Speaking strictly for myself, I have been on Hyper Outrage for such a long
time, and on so many critical issues, that I could be consumed by my own
anger, if I allowed it.
The number of critical causes that come across my email each day are beyond
belief.
All I can do is to respond to the root causes rather than to each outrage.
My efforts to stop murder by drones, or be-headings is about as effective as
my preventing the slaughter of Elephants or whales or Polar Bears. The
Internet is ablaze with angry emails. But little changes. It appears that
people do not care, but that is not the real bottom line. Masses of People
are being herded, just as if they were cattle. They have been told so many
lies, and turned in so many different directions that they finally toss in
the towel and muddle along with the others. Little victories like the
blocking of the Keystone Pipeline, are but glitches along a road well
planned by the Controllers. Personally, I think the human race is coming to
an end.
But it will take so much else down with it. We have involved so much of the
Earth's creatures that it is no longer a case of the extinction of the Dodo
Bird or the Passenger Pigeon. When we go down we will take most everything
with us. I personally don't believe we can alter deeply ingrained beliefs,
such as our need to create a Creator, or our pretense that the wealth we
created is real. Too many people muddying along just trying to survive. No
time to think about what we are doing, just keep the nose to the grindstone
and hope for a break.
We just returned from our WCB convention. About 220 people registered.
Most of what we did was superficial. More attention was given over to
instructing us not to eat our salads at the banquet until the food had been
Blessed, than we gave to debating serious issues. On the surface the
conference gave the impression that we have an active, growing organization.
But looking just below the surface, it is hard to explain what purpose this
organization stands for, other than as a social support group.
And yet, I suspect I'll be there next year. Like the Dodo Bird, I'll be
smiling and bobbing my head along with the rest of the folks.
Carl Jarvis
On 11/10/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
cities,"
Where's the Outrage Over the Beheadings in Saudi Arabia?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/wheres_the_outrage_over_the_behead
ings_i
n_saudi_arabia_20151109/
Posted on Nov 9, 2015
By Bill Blum
King Salman of Saudi Arabia meets with President Obama at the
White House in September. (Evan Vucci / AP) By the time you read this
column, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, Dawoud Hussein al-Marhoon and Abdullah
Hasan al-Zaher may be dead.
In case you've never heard their names, they are young prisoners of
conscience currently housed in solitary confinement at the notorious
al-Ha'ir penitentiary in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They are waiting to be
beheaded. In all likelihood, as is Saudi custom, no advance public
notice of their executions will be given. We'll learn of their demise
only after the fact, via social media, or when the Saudi government
officially announces that their sentences have been carried out.
Al-Nimr, al-Marhoon and al-Zaher are Shiite Muslims who were arrested
without warrants at different times in 2012 for participating in
pro-democracy protests in the country's Eastern province during the
Arab Spring uprising of 2011-2012. Al-Nimr and al-Marhoon were 17
years old when they were apprehended; al-Zaher was 16.
Although approximately 90 percent of the Saudi population consists of
Sunni Muslims, the oil-rich Eastern province is predominantly Shiite.
Relations between the two strands of Islam have never been good in
Saudi Arabia, but tensions have reached a fever pitch in recent years.
Branded as apostates by prominent Sunni clerics, the Shiites of Saudi
Arabia are an oppressed and segregated minority, historically excluded
from access to government services, jobs and leadership positions and
often subject to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment.
Al-Nimr and his cohorts were held for more than two years in pretrial
detention without access to counsel while they were interrogated and
reportedly tortured into signing confessions. Their alleged crimes,
according to Amnesty International, included "chanting slogans against
the State with the intent of destabilizing the security of the country
and overturning its system of government, participating in the killing
of police officers by making and using Molotov cocktails to attack
them" and "carrying out an armed robbery."
Their trials were devoid of the most basic due-process protections.
Predictably, in 2014 all three were convicted and sentenced by the
nation's Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh to death by beheading.
Their convictions and sentences were subsequently upheld on appeal.
The only difference in the outcome of the three cases is that al-Nimr
won't just have his head lopped off. His body will be crucified
afterward and put on public display as a warning to other would-be
troublemakers. Al-Nimr is the nephew of a leading Shiite spiritual
figure-Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr-who is also under a death sentence
for his vocal criticism of the monarchy, the House of Saud, which has
exercised absolute rule over its people since 1932.
Saudi Arabia is one of the last nations on earth that stage public
executions. "They are carried out not just in Riyadh, but in other
Neil Hicks of Human Rights First (HRF) told me in an interview last week.practices.
"In Riyadh, they generally take place after Friday prayers in a
downtown courtyard known locally as 'Chop Square,' when crowds of men
are already gathered in the area and provide a ready audience."
Beheading is the most common method of execution, but other means,
such as firing squads, are occasionally used. Amnesty International
reports that in 2014, the Saudis executed 90 people. This year,
through Oct. 22, the number has soared to 137. Apart from China and
Iran, no other country consistently exceeds such totals.
Hicks, who formerly worked as a researcher for the Middle East
department of Amnesty International in London before becoming director
of human rights promotion at the HRF in New York, says the spike in
the Saudi death penalty is part of a general "clampdown on human
rights" that has taken place over the last three to four years
"because the regime is concerned with the impact of the Arab Spring"
and "threats to authoritarian rule." Public beheadings, he explains,
are "meant to keep order and suppress dissent."
Coerced confessions like those extracted from al-Nimr, al-Marhoon and
al-Zaher are a staple of the Saudi justice system, as are closed
trials and appeals. Equally deplorable is the fact that capital crimes
are vaguely defined, ranging from murder and drug smuggling to
adultery, apostasy, witchcraft and sorcery. From 2014 through the
middle of this year, nearly half of those sent to the sword had been
convicted of nonlethal, drug-related crimes.
The Saudi system of executing juveniles also violates international
law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child. Even the United States-which along with Japan is the last
advanced Western-style democracy that regularly implements capital
punishment-has halted the execution of juvenile offenders as a result
of a 2005 Supreme Court decision (Roper v. Simmons) declaring the
practice unconstitutional.
Women and the mentally disabled, too, are subject to the Saudi death
penalty. In one particularly loathsome case, Rizana Nafeek-a Sri
Lankan woman who had worked as a domestic servant-was beheaded in
Dawadmi, a small town 200 miles west of Riyadh, for causing the death
of a 4-month-old baby in her care. Nafeek claimed the child choked
while being bottle-fed. Once in custody, she "confessed"-without the
assistance of a lawyer or interpreter-to strangling the infant. The
opening stages of Nafeek's execution were filmed and are available for
viewing on YouTube.
In the face of such medieval barbarity, where is the outrage?
To be sure, international human rights organizations have worked hard
to expose the Saudi atrocities. Thus far, however, their pleas to
dismantle the Saudi killing machine have proved ineffective.
Most shamefully, the Obama administration has declined to speak out.
Although the president has frequently condemned the gruesome
beheadings performed by Islamic State, he has remained mum on Saudi
When White House press secretary Josh Earnest was asked by a reporterthe exact same thing for decades."
in a Sept. 23 media briefing to comment on the al-Nimr case, he
claimed not to be "familiar with the intimate details of . the
situation." Earnest quickly added, however, "that the United States,
under the leadership of this president, regularly raises our concerns
about the human rights situation inside of Saudi Arabia."
But even if the U.S. is indeed employing back channels of diplomacy to
halt at least some of the Saudi executions, such efforts are grossly
inadequate and also hypocritical. "The Saudi practices of public
beheadings," Hicks says, "are the pattern that has been followed by
[Islamic State] to terrify and subdue subject populations. This is
where [Islamic State] gets its message from. The Saudis have been doing
The U.S. refusal to condemn Saudi human rights violations is rooted,Houthi rebel groups in Yemen.
of course, in larger geopolitical machinations. Despite the recent
drop in global commodity prices, the Saudis remain a critical supplier
of crude oil to the West. Even more critically, the Saudis are viewed
as a vital American military ally-second only to Israel in the Middle
East-in the all-purpose and never-ending war on terror.
Since October 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service,
the Saudis have purchased more than $90 billion in fighter aircraft,
helicopters, missile defense systems, missiles, bombs, armored
vehicles and related equipment from such American defense
manufacturers as Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Since March of
this year, U.S.-trained Saudi military personnel have deployed such
equipment to launch a vicious air-bombardment campaign against Shiite
Although the Obama administration lacks the courage and decency tocities,"
come forward, the rest of us have no reason to be constrained.
Campaigns to free al-Nimr and his compatriots confined on Saudi
Arabia's death row are underway and deserve our active participation.
The first step in ending tyranny is to expose its existence-to let the
tyrants know that we're watching and won't turn away until they are
forced to change their ways or stand down once and for all.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/ Where's the
Outrage Over the Beheadings in Saudi Arabia?
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/wheres_the_outrage_over_the_behead
ings_i
n_saudi_arabia_20151109/
Posted on Nov 9, 2015
By Bill Blum
King Salman of Saudi Arabia meets with President Obama at the White
House in September. (Evan Vucci / AP) By the time you read this
column, Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, Dawoud Hussein al-Marhoon and Abdullah
Hasan al-Zaher may be dead.
In case you've never heard their names, they are young prisoners of
conscience currently housed in solitary confinement at the notorious
al-Ha'ir penitentiary in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. They are waiting to be
beheaded. In all likelihood, as is Saudi custom, no advance public
notice of their executions will be given. We'll learn of their demise
only after the fact, via social media, or when the Saudi government
officially announces that their sentences have been carried out.
Al-Nimr, al-Marhoon and al-Zaher are Shiite Muslims who were arrested
without warrants at different times in 2012 for participating in
pro-democracy protests in the country's Eastern province during the
Arab Spring uprising of 2011-2012. Al-Nimr and al-Marhoon were 17
years old when they were apprehended; al-Zaher was 16.
Although approximately 90 percent of the Saudi population consists of
Sunni Muslims, the oil-rich Eastern province is predominantly Shiite.
Relations between the two strands of Islam have never been good in
Saudi Arabia, but tensions have reached a fever pitch in recent years.
Branded as apostates by prominent Sunni clerics, the Shiites of Saudi
Arabia are an oppressed and segregated minority, historically excluded
from access to government services, jobs and leadership positions and
often subject to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment.
Al-Nimr and his cohorts were held for more than two years in pretrial
detention without access to counsel while they were interrogated and
reportedly tortured into signing confessions. Their alleged crimes,
according to Amnesty International, included "chanting slogans against
the State with the intent of destabilizing the security of the country
and overturning its system of government, participating in the killing
of police officers by making and using Molotov cocktails to attack
them" and "carrying out an armed robbery."
Their trials were devoid of the most basic due-process protections.
Predictably, in 2014 all three were convicted and sentenced by the
nation's Specialized Criminal Court in Riyadh to death by beheading.
Their convictions and sentences were subsequently upheld on appeal.
The only difference in the outcome of the three cases is that al-Nimr
won't just have his head lopped off. His body will be crucified
afterward and put on public display as a warning to other would-be
troublemakers. Al-Nimr is the nephew of a leading Shiite spiritual
figure-Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr-who is also under a death sentence
for his vocal criticism of the monarchy, the House of Saud, which has
exercised absolute rule over its people since 1932.
Saudi Arabia is one of the last nations on earth that stage public
executions. "They are carried out not just in Riyadh, but in other
Neil Hicks of Human Rights First (HRF) told me in an interview last week.practices.
"In Riyadh, they generally take place after Friday prayers in a
downtown courtyard known locally as 'Chop Square,' when crowds of men
are already gathered in the area and provide a ready audience."
Beheading is the most common method of execution, but other means,
such as firing squads, are occasionally used. Amnesty International
reports that in 2014, the Saudis executed 90 people. This year,
through Oct. 22, the number has soared to 137. Apart from China and
Iran, no other country consistently exceeds such totals.
Hicks, who formerly worked as a researcher for the Middle East
department of Amnesty International in London before becoming director
of human rights promotion at the HRF in New York, says the spike in
the Saudi death penalty is part of a general "clampdown on human
rights" that has taken place over the last three to four years
"because the regime is concerned with the impact of the Arab Spring"
and "threats to authoritarian rule." Public beheadings, he explains,
are "meant to keep order and suppress dissent."
Coerced confessions like those extracted from al-Nimr, al-Marhoon and
al-Zaher are a staple of the Saudi justice system, as are closed
trials and appeals. Equally deplorable is the fact that capital crimes
are vaguely defined, ranging from murder and drug smuggling to
adultery, apostasy, witchcraft and sorcery. From 2014 through the
middle of this year, nearly half of those sent to the sword had been
convicted of nonlethal, drug-related crimes.
The Saudi system of executing juveniles also violates international
law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the
Child. Even the United States-which along with Japan is the last
advanced Western-style democracy that regularly implements capital
punishment-has halted the execution of juvenile offenders as a result
of a 2005 Supreme Court decision (Roper v. Simmons) declaring the
practice unconstitutional.
Women and the mentally disabled, too, are subject to the Saudi death
penalty. In one particularly loathsome case, Rizana Nafeek-a Sri
Lankan woman who had worked as a domestic servant-was beheaded in
Dawadmi, a small town 200 miles west of Riyadh, for causing the death
of a 4-month-old baby in her care. Nafeek claimed the child choked
while being bottle-fed. Once in custody, she "confessed"-without the
assistance of a lawyer or interpreter-to strangling the infant. The
opening stages of Nafeek's execution were filmed and are available for
viewing on YouTube.
In the face of such medieval barbarity, where is the outrage?
To be sure, international human rights organizations have worked hard
to expose the Saudi atrocities. Thus far, however, their pleas to
dismantle the Saudi killing machine have proved ineffective.
Most shamefully, the Obama administration has declined to speak out.
Although the president has frequently condemned the gruesome
beheadings performed by Islamic State, he has remained mum on Saudi
When White House press secretary Josh Earnest was asked by a reporterthe exact same thing for decades."
in a Sept. 23 media briefing to comment on the al-Nimr case, he
claimed not to be "familiar with the intimate details of . the
situation." Earnest quickly added, however, "that the United States,
under the leadership of this president, regularly raises our concerns
about the human rights situation inside of Saudi Arabia."
But even if the U.S. is indeed employing back channels of diplomacy to
halt at least some of the Saudi executions, such efforts are grossly
inadequate and also hypocritical. "The Saudi practices of public
beheadings," Hicks says, "are the pattern that has been followed by
[Islamic State] to terrify and subdue subject populations. This is
where [Islamic State] gets its message from. The Saudis have been doing
The U.S. refusal to condemn Saudi human rights violations is rooted,Houthi rebel groups in Yemen.
of course, in larger geopolitical machinations. Despite the recent
drop in global commodity prices, the Saudis remain a critical supplier
of crude oil to the West. Even more critically, the Saudis are viewed
as a vital American military ally-second only to Israel in the Middle
East-in the all-purpose and never-ending war on terror.
Since October 2010, according to the Congressional Research Service,
the Saudis have purchased more than $90 billion in fighter aircraft,
helicopters, missile defense systems, missiles, bombs, armored
vehicles and related equipment from such American defense
manufacturers as Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Since March of
this year, U.S.-trained Saudi military personnel have deployed such
equipment to launch a vicious air-bombardment campaign against Shiite
Although the Obama administration lacks the courage and decency totp://www.linkedin.com/company/truthdighttp://truthdig.tumblr.com/http://www.
come forward, the rest of us have no reason to be constrained.
Campaigns to free al-Nimr and his compatriots confined on Saudi
Arabia's death row are underway and deserve our active participation.
The first step in ending tyranny is to expose its existence-to let the
tyrants know that we're watching and won't turn away until they are
forced to change their ways or stand down once and for all.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/own_a_vizio_smart_tv_its_watching_
you_20
151110/
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/own_a_vizio_smart_tv_its_watching_
you_20
151110/
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151110/
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he_red _states_20151110/ http://www.truthdig.com/
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