Released Ebola Nurse, Kaci Hickox Works for CDC; her lawyer is a White House visitor

"I Feel Like My Human Rights Were Violated"

Released Ebola Nurse, Kaci Hickox Works for CDC; her lawyer is a White House visitor 

Ebola health care worker Kaci Hickox, who was released from quarantine with the support of the White House, is a Centers For Disease Control and Prevention employee, records reveal. 

The lawyer who helped earn her release is a recent White House state dinner guest. Hickox was released from Ebola quarantine in Newark, N.J., Monday afternoon after the White House pressured New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to release the nurse that was working in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders. 

Hickox’s case for release was also bolstered by New York civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who took on Hickox’s case. “I feel like my basic human rights have been violated,” Hickox said before she was evaluated by CDC and transported back to her home in Maine. 

Here’s an overlooked factor that could have contributed to her White House-backed release: Hickox is an official CDC Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) officer who performed work for the CDC in recent months. 

Hickox’s lawyer Norman Siegel, meanwhile, was an official guest at the White House State Dinner on Feb. 11, 2014, accompanying Jackie Robinson’s widow Rachel Robinson, who supported Siegel’s failed 2009 run for New York City Public Advocate. 

Siegel is the former director of the New York affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Siegel previously partnered with Al Sharpton to fight against a New York state proposal to keep a DNA database of felons.

CULTURISM AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM

Part One – The Controversy:

The Belgian government believes that we can win the war on terror without infringing on “human rights.” In fact, they have stated that they are convinced, “that the fight against terrorism can only be waged if human rights and international humanitarian law are fully respected.” They argue that, “Terrorism cannot be battled effectively by flouting the very rights and freedoms that terrorists are intent on destroying;” if we compromise our rights, the Belgians argue, the terrorists win.[i]

In practice, the United States’ Patriot Act was touted as minimally compromising rights.  It allows roving wiretaps, but only with a warrant.[ii] But, the recent spate of revelations concerning our National Security Administration, have shown that such spying has compromised our rights more than we initially thought.[iii]  And so while the United States gives lip service to the Belgian model of not violating rights, its actions indicate that it has found this route impractical. 

PLEASE read about the importance, evidence, and conclusion to this dilemma HERE

Posts for Nov 5th: Ramala's 5-Star Hotel, Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, Sexual Harrassment in Egypt, ISAF kills Haqqani network leader, Soutudeh in danger, US Human Rights reacord scrutinized in UNHRC,

1. Ramallah gets five star luxury hotel: The hotel, a franchise of the Swiss-based Movenpick chain, has 171 rooms and suites, an outdoor pool, and a fitness center, and cost $40 million.
   
2. UK: Jihadist webmaster Abdel Hameed Shehadeh held without bail in Brooklyn Federal Court: Abdel Hameed Shehadeh, 21, of Staten Island, was arrested last week in Hawaii, where he had tried in the past to travel to Somalia, but failed because he was on a “no fly” list.
   
3. Egypt: Challenging sexual harrassment on Cairo's streets: The project, called HarassMap, aims to create a map of the ‘hotspots’ of harassment in Cairo – that is, the places where harassment most frequently occurs.
   
4. Afghanistan: fifth Haqqani network leader confirmed killed during Paktiya operation: Intelligence reports later confirmed the death of the five Haqqani leaders as well as several additional Haqqani fighters. It is assessed the security force had broken up a Haqqani leadership meeting.
   
5. Iran: Life of Jailed Human Rights Lawyer at great risk: On Sunday, 31 October, Nasrin Sotoudeh, one of Iran’s most prominent human rights lawyers went on a dry hunger strike protesting her detention and ill treatment inside Tehran’s Evin prison. Her family reported that her health is quickly deteriorating.
   
6. UN: Cuba, Venezuela, Iran top the list of countries lining up to scrutinize US Human Rights during UN review: ccording to diplomats cited Wednesday by a Geneva-based NGO, U.N. Watch, Cuban officials “took the lead last week in circulating an advance sign-up sheet.” “We are concerned that Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and other non-democracies are planning to hijack the session to score propaganda points and drum up anti-American sentiment worldwide,” said the organization’s executive director, Hillel Neuer.
   
7. UK: Al-Qaeda terrorist arrested: Talking to the Royal United Services Institute, May revealed that an associate of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was arrested earlier this year and is suspected of planning an attack on the country. This terrorist unit has been blamed for the cargo bomb plot on the US just last week, which was intercepted. The bombs were found in printer cartridge packages in Dubai and Britain and were being mailed to the US. It’s believed that Anwar al-Awlaki, a US national and al-Qaeda leader, was the mastermind behind the attack from his base in Yemen.

The People's Cube.com

Posts for Oct 28th: Omar Khadr, French riots, Geert Wilder's trial, Challenge Radio, Separation of religion and state,

T&P posts for today:

1. On GITMO detainee Omar Kadhr. Psychiatrics have claimed that his time at GITMO has radicalised him, but in 2002, three months after he was arrested, he said that he was happy he had killed a US medic with a grenade. His family has had throughout the years a very close relationship with Al-Qaeda leaders, including Bin Laden, whom he men while in Afghanistan/Pakistan with his father.
2. French author Guy de Milliére on recent French riots: "the situation has worsened (since 2005). Approximately 700 “no-go zones” pepper France: enclaves ruled by gangs, drug traffickers and imams. Firefighters and doctors venture into these places rarely and only with extreme caution, when they have no other choice. Graffiti on the walls read: “French out!” or “jihad.”"
3. Opinion: Geert Wilders' trial has backfired in any way possible: "The politically charged trial took another twist last week when one of Mr. Wilders‘ expert witnesses, the Arabist Hans Jansen, wrote on his website that a member of the judiciary had tried to influence him. He said that at a dinner party before he was supposed to testify, one of the appeals judges whose decision compelled the prosecutors to press charges tried to “convince me of the correctness of the decision to take Wilders to court.”
4. Project: Challenge Radio. A project from the author of 1386AD. As I said in T&P, this is not my endorsement, but just give some publicity to an interesting Conservative project to build a radio talk show, with an special focus on Islamic supremacism's problems in Europe.
5. "Islam not invasive" motto: "Separation of religion and state is not an option for Muslims because it requires us to abandon Allah's decree for that of a man". A very interesting article from Islamic website Islaam.
6. Hirsi Ali: "Islam is more than a religion".
7. Pakistan: Suicide bombings are ticket to heaven, Taliban school teaches. “I was told that if I disclose my relations with them, they will behead my family and me,” 16-year-old Salaam said.
8. Iran: imprisoned Human Rights Lawyer on hunger strike, another journalist imprisoned. Jailed Iranian human rights attorney Nasrine Sotoudeh defended dissidents, minorities and women who've run afoul of Iran's legal system. She is in hunger strike since Sept 17th, but his family has not been able to see her since, says her husband. On the other hand, a tribunal has condemned Jila BaniYaghoub to one year prison term and 30 years ban from journalism. She is also a prominent Iranian journalist and women’s rights activist, who signed the One Million Signature Petition against discriminatory laws for women. Her husband is currently serving a 5-year-prison term in Evin prison.
   
9. Iranian Mullahcracy to protect women's freedom? Iran, where a woman convicted of adultery has been sentenced to death by stoning, is likely to become a member of the board of the new UN agency to promote equality for women, prompting outrage from the US and human rights groups.

Iran: Multiple Reports of Secret Group Executions in Vakilabad Prison

Iran’s Judiciary should immediately institute a moratorium on all executions at Vakilabad Prison in Mashad and provide a transparent response to allegations of excessive numbers of executions at the facility, said the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran today.
The Campaign continues to receive credible reports from former Vakilabad prisoners about repeated, unannounced group executions of inmates. Reliable sources indicate that numerous executions have taken place inside Vakilabad over the last year and more than 600 inmates remain on death row.
Authorities reportedly executed ten inmates in Vakilabad as recently as Tuesday, 12 October. The numbers of executions publicly announced by the authorities are considerably lower than the actual numbers. Amnesty International reports that at least 388 executions took place in Iran in 2009.
“These reports of Mashad executions indicate that Iran is executing even more people–dramatically more– than now estimated,” said Aaron Rhodes, a spokesperson for the Campaign.
“Especially given the Iranian government’s lack of transparency concerning executions, the Judiciary needs to provide a full account of what is happening inside Vakilabad’s death row,” he added.

Source.
Nonetheless, despite this or other facts coming from Iran lately, like chopping robbers' hands, arresting or expelling journalists who don't agree with their sick theology, jailing filmmakers, bloggers and Human Rights activists and sentencing Muslims who convert to other religion to death, they are going to sponsor a conference about "Human Rights in the US". Certainly, they are not the more appropriate people to speak about any other country's record of Human Rights. Anyway, would they dare to speak about Saudi Arabia, Pakistan or Sudan's Human Rights? I guess not.
The reason is clear: condemning US, whatever the reasons, while Iranian record of Human Rights' abuses increases each day.
Cross-posted from T&P.

Iran: (another) prominent human rights campaigner, sentenced to jail

After Shiva Nazad Azari's 6 yr- prison sentence and Hossein Derakhsan aka Hoder's possible death penalty, now Emad Baghi has also been sentenced for "engaging in propaganda against the Islamic republic".

A prominent Iranian rights campaigner has been sentenced to six years in jail after he recorded an interview for the BBC's Persian language TV channel.

Emad Baghi was convicted of engaging in propaganda against the Islamic system, a statement on his website said.

The court charges referred to his BBC interview with Iran's leading reformist cleric, the late Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri.

Mr Baghi, 49, remains free, pending an appeal hearing.

The interview was broadcast after the death of Ayatollah Montazeri in December 2009. His funeral sparked a series of anti-government demonstrations across Iran.

Mr Baghi was arrested days later, then freed on bail in June.

In a separate case, he was sentenced in July to one year in prison and banned from political activities for five years, after being convicted of endangering national security in relation to his work defending prisoners' rights. An appeal court upheld the sentence on Tuesday.

....He has spent four-and-a-half years in prison over the past decade, and suffers from serious heart and kidney ailments.

Photo from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Background: 

"Democracy and Human Rights have no place in Islamic theology".

Cross-posted from T&P.

Hector Aleem needs your help

I wrote two days ago about Hector Aleem's current problems. Yesterday I received a mail from the responsible of the Free Hector Aleem group (I forgot to ask him if he could be named publicly) on Facebook to thank me for the post and to ask me to post this message:

Christian human rights activist and director of NGO Peace Worldwide, Hector Aleem, was taken into custody in January 2009 because a militant Islamic group accused him of sending a ‘blasphemous’ text message from his cell phone. If convicted, he faces the death penalty under Pakistani law.

Prior to the 55-year-old’s arrest, Aleem was threatened by Islamic groups with assassination attempts and lawsuits because he objected to the illegal destruction of a church by Islamabad’s capital development authority (CDA). Muslim leaders threatened to kill him and his sons, and to forcibly convert his daughters to Islam.

Although a heart patient, Aleem has not been allowed to consume his medication and he has been denied visitation in prison. He was denied bail because Islamic mobs filled his trial courtroom and threatened to kill the judge, Aleem, and Aleem’s lawyer.

Aleem is the recipient of a peace award by Pakistan’s Prime Minister.

A Facebook group set up for him consists of freedom-loving members, from all around the world and of all different beliefs, or lack thereof, united for Hector Aleem’s right to freedom, dignity, and fair due process. For instance, one letter received by the Aleems read "You are Christian and it is a good deed to kill you. My Allah will be very happy if I kill you." (See here and here.)

It has been over a year since Hector has been incarcerated. His family urgently needs you and your friends to raise funds for Hector as soon as possible. The breakdown for these funds are as follows:

- Because no lawyer wants to take Hector’s (locally unpopular) case, only one lawyer agreed to represent him for a relatively high price of $2,500. Unless he receives this amount by the end of this month, he will not represent Hector!

- Hector requires medication in prison. He also needs clothing and hygienic supplies. His family, living for over a year without their father’s support, are also in need for housing, hygienic, and nutritional items. They have had little to eat – not even the most basic food items you would typically have on the table. The family estimates that they would need approximately $250 to cover these expenses for Hector and themselves.

These seem like large amounts. However, please donate any amount you can, even if it’s a few dollars. Many small donations quickly add. Even a few dollars can go a long way in Pakistan!

Please donate via PayPal by following this link:https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=C2QLRGNXL46V8&lc=CA&item_name=Free%20Hector%20Aleem&currency_code=CAD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted

(If you prefer to send payments via snail mail, please contact freedom4hector@gmail.com and I will provide you with a mailing address.)

Hector’s family has agreed to make every effort to store and reproduce receipts from your generous donations.

Let’s help Hector and show the authorities that humanity will not acquiesce to their mistreatment of Hector and other religious minorities.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or any of Hector’s family members (listed as administrators of the group). While your donation is important, your trust is just as important.

Please remember to send the donation link to all your friends!

Thank you all!

 That's right, thanks to all the people who can help him.

Morocco: "Christian proselitism is terrorism", ulemas say

Image via Wikipedia

Read at El País:

7,000 Moroccan ulemas (Islamic scholars) rejected in a common message the Christian proselitism in their country and considered it even like "moral rape" and "religious terrorism" as it"tries to divert Moroccan children from their faith".

The collective text released this weekend is the last episode of the campaign by the authorities in Rabat against foreign Christians who settled in Morocco accusing them of proselytizing and trying to shake the faith of Muslims, a crime in the code Moroccan criminal.

Throughout the month of March about 70 Christians have been forced to flee the country, as calculated by the different churches, but the Moroccan Interior Ministry acknowledged only the expulsion of 16 who ran a small orphanage in Leuh Ain, in the Atlas Mountains .

The Christian victims of the decision of the Interior are all Protestants except a Franciscan who lived in Larache. It is the first Catholic ever expelled from northern Morocco, as the Archbishop of Tanger which also denies that would make proselytism. Attending to the small community of foreign Catholics in that city.

The message of the ulema expressed "full support and great pride" of those who subscribe to "the relevant historic decisions taken by the government to abort the plan hypocritical for a group of Christian proselytizing." His performance with the children, he continues, is "a moral violation, a form of religious terrorism and is equivalent to the abduction of innocent children."

"These tough decisions," the statement concluded, "reassured about the future of the national faith protected by Divine Providence that watches and on His Majesty Mohammed VI, Commander of the Faithful, as defender of the faith (...)" . The text of the scholars of Islam was spread by its highest hierarchical body, the Supreme Ulema Council chaired by the monarch.

The Archbishops of Rabat and Tangiers, the apostolic nuncio in Rabat and the official representative of Protestant churches in Morocco have demanded an explanation to the authorities on the wave of expulsions, but so far not been obtained. Some Moroccan converts to Christianity have been the victims in March, as they say, of police harassment.

At least two governments, the U.S. and the Netherlands, have criticized the measures taken by the Moroccan authorities, but not the Spanish that is currently chairing the European Union. The bulk of the expulsions were carried, however, held during the first weekend in March that was held in Granada the first summit between Morocco and the EU supported by Spain.

So, ehhm, our dear President stopped from critisizing Morocco because they were negotiating the "united economic space". Hasn't he sooo marvellous a relationship with Moroccan King? Weren't this Govt staunch defenders of Human Rights?

Oh, wait, the expelled ones were Christians...

Cross-posted at T&P.

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• In Morocco, a Crackdown on Christian Aid Workers (time.com)

Syria: 19-year-old blogger arrested

Image via Wikipedia

Arab Network for Human Rights has denounced that in Syria a 19-year-old girl who wrote a blog in the internet, has been detained for the last 3 months and without allowing her to communicate with her parents.

In a press release, the NGO explains that Tal Al Melouhi was arrested on Dec 27th, her house was searched and her computer intervened by police. "Since that moment, her family has lost all communication with her, is not allowed to visit her and hasn't been informed of where she is now", it adds.

For the Arab Net, "arresting so young a blogger, who has just completed secondary education because of a poem who is not offensive to anyone and is not against the law, shows a profoundly implacable and clearly repressive and hostile attitude to freedom of expression".

via Detienen a una bloguera de 19 años por publicar un poema en Siria - Libertad Digital.

If there is someone who knows more about this case, please leave the link in the comments' section.

Cross-posted from T&P.

technorati tags: Tal_Al_Melouhi, Syria, Arab_Network_for_Human_Rights, blogosphere, blogger, freedom_of_expression

"Islam is the final religion"

This is what Zaid Al-Hussein, vice president of the state-affiliated Saudi Human Rights Commission, said some days ago when answering to Western countries diplomats who wanted Saudi Arabia to stop executions, amputations or floggings in the kingdom. He said that "though some things could be improved, it would be difficult for non-Muslims to have houses of worship here as Islam is the final religion".
So as Islam is the final religion, some days ago, Saudi blogger Hamoud Bin Saleh was arrested because he announced his conversion to Christianity in his blog Saudi Christian, which was also blocked:

Based on information obtained by ANHRI, the Saudi authorities jailed the young blogger at the infamous Eleisha political prison in Riyadh; a prison which in 2004 witnessed the arrest of the reformists Matrouk el Falih, Ali el Domini and Eissa al Hamed.

Hmm, are they really sure that only some things could be improved?

"Discussing Sharia here is an insult to our religion"

Those were the words pronounced by the representative of Egypt in UN when the representative form IHEU tried to discuss Sharia Law to with Human Rights... in the Human Rights Commission from UN. The reason they gave is that it was a "question out of order".

IHEU has responded to claims that the “Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam” is “not an alternative” to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but “complementary” to it. In a written statement to the UN Human Rights Council, IHEU opposed any resolution that seeks to limit the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration.

On Human Rights Day, 10 December 2007, the Pakistani Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council claimed that the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, adopted in 1990 by the 56 member states of the Orgainsation of the Islamic Conference “is not an alternative” to the Universal Declaration but “complementary”. Complementary? Yet the Cairo Declaration makes no mention of the Universal Declaration and clearly states that: “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari’ah”, and “The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification to any of the articles of this Declaration.”

The video containing the moment of the intervention of IHEU (International Humanist and Ethical Union) and the statement sent to UN by this organization can be found here.