Our dear friend and regular contributor Richard Ember from Texas is very fond of ranting and raving to us that CNN is a hopelessly biased bunch of left wingers who make no more attempt to be even handed in their media coverage than, say, Faux News.
He may or may not be right. Opinions are divided.
On one thing, though, surely, we can all agree.
Their copywriting is a miracle of clarity and precision.
In a case which has shocked the world, CNN reports a Christian in Sudan has been sentenced to death for her faith; ‘I’m just praying,’ her husband says.
“I’m so frustrated. I don’t know what to do,” Daniel Wani told CNN on Thursday. “I’m just praying.”
This week a Khartoum court convicted his wife, Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, 27, of apostasy, or the renunciation of faith.
Ibrahim is Christian, her husband said. But the court considers her to be Muslim because her father was.
The court also convicted her of adultery and sentenced her to 100 lashes because her marriage to a Christian man is considered void under Sharia law.
The court gave her until Thursday to recant her Christian faith, something she refused to do, according to her lawyer.
During Thursday’s sentencing hearing, a sheikh told the court “how dangerous a crime like this is to Islam and the Islamic community,” said attorney Mohamed Jar Elnabi, who’s representing Ibrahim.
“I am a Christian,” Ibrahim fired back, “and I will remain a Christian.”
Her legal team says it plans to appeal the verdict, which drew swift condemnation from human rights organizations around the world.
In the meantime, Ibrahim, who is eight months’ pregnant, remains in prison with her 20-month-old son.
“She is very strong and very firm. She is very clear that she is a Christian and that she will get out one day,” Elnabi told CNN from Sudan.
Ibrahim was born to a Sudanese Muslim father and an Ethiopian Orthodox mother. Her father left when she was 6 years old, and Ibrahim was raised by her mother as a Christian. However, because her father was Muslim, the courts considered her to be the same, which would mean her marriage to a non-Muslim man is void.
The case, her lawyer said, started after Ibrahim’s brother filed a complaint against her, alleging that she had gone missing for several years and that her family was shocked to find she had married a Christian man.
A family divided
The court’s ruling leaves a family divided, with Ibrahim behind bars and her husband struggling to survive, Elnabi said. Police blocked Wani from entering the courtroom on Thursday, Elnabi said. Lawyers appealed to the judge, but he refused, Elnabi said. Wani uses a wheelchair and “totally depends on her for all details of his life,” Elnabi said.
“He cannot live without her,” said the lawyer.
The couple’s son is also having a difficult time in prison.
“He is very affected from being trapped inside a prison from such a young age,” Elnabi said. “He is always getting sick due to lack of hygiene and bugs.”
Ibrahim is having a difficult pregnancy, the lawyer said. A request to send her to a private hospital was denied “due to security measures.”
There also is the question of the timing of a potential execution.
In past cases involving pregnant or nursing women, the Sudanese government waited until the mother weaned her child before executing any sentence, said Christian Solidarity Worldwide spokeswoman Kiri Kankhwende.
Rights groups, governments ask for compassion
Amnesty International describes Ibrahim as a prisoner of conscience.
“The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion, is abhorrent and should never be even considered,” Manar Idriss, Amnesty International’s Sudan researcher, said in a statement. ‘Adultery’ and ‘apostasy’ are acts which should not be considered crimes at all, let alone meet the international standard of ‘most serious crimes’ in relation to the death penalty. It is a flagrant breach of international human rights law,” the researcher said.
Katherine Perks with the African Centre for Justice and Peace Studiessaid the verdict goes against Sudan’s “own Constitution and commitments made under regional and international law.”
“Meriam has been convicted solely on account of her religious convictions and personal status,” she said.
Foreign embassies in Khartoum are urging the government there to reverse course.
“We call upon the Government of Sudan to respect the right to freedom of religion, including one’s right to change one’s faith or beliefs, a right which is enshrined in international human rights law as well as in Sudan’s own 2005 Interim Constitution,” the embassies of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Netherlands said in a statement.
“We further urge Sudanese legal authorities to approach Ms. Meriam’s case with justice and compassion that is in keeping with the values of the Sudanese people,” it read.
‘Egregious violations of freedom of religion‘
Attempts to contact Sudan’s justice minister and foreign affairs minister about the Ibrahim case were unsuccessful.
Sudan is one of the most difficult countries in the world to be a Christian, according to international religious freedom monitors.
Under President Omar al-Bashir, the African nation “continues to engage in systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of freedom of religion or belief,” the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in its 2014 report.
The country imposes Sharia law on Muslims and non-Muslims alike and punishes acts of “indecency” and “immorality” by floggings and amputations, the commission said.
“Conversion from Islam is a crime punishable by death, suspected converts to Christianity face societal pressures, and government security personnel intimidate and sometimes torture those suspected of conversion,” said the commission, whose members are appointed by Congress and the president.
The Sudanese government has arrested Christians for spreading their faith, razed Christian churches and confiscated Christians’ property, the commission said.
Since 1999, the U.S. State Department has called Sudan one of the worst offenders of religious rights, counting it among eight “countries of particular concern.”
“The government at times enforced laws against blasphemy and defaming Islam,” the State Department said in its most recent report on religious freedom, from 2012.
The State Department’s other countries of concern, all of which impose strict penalties on Christians or other faiths, are: Myanmar (also known as Burma), China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan.
Among all religious groups, Christians are the most likely to be persecuted worldwide, according to a 2014 report by the Pew Research Center.
Between June 2006 and December 2012, Christians were harassed by governments in 151 countries, Pew reported. Islam was second, with 135 countries. Together, Christians and Muslims make up half of the world’s population, Pew noted.
Lawyer says he’s gotten a death threat
Elnabi says he got a death threat a day before the controversial court hearing, with an anonymous caller telling him to pull out of representing Ibrahim or risk attack.
“I feel very scared,” he said. “Since yesterday, I live in fear if I just hear a door open or a strange sound in the street.”
Still, the lawyer said he’ll continue representing Ibrahim.
“I could never leave the case. This is a matter of belief and principles,” he said. “I must help someone who is in need, even if it will cost me my life.”
As soon as we discover where people can register a protest against this barbaric judgement, Wellthisiswhatithink will post the details. If you happen to know, please tell us.
UPDATE We are indebted to Marian for providing us with this link to an Amnesty USA PDF which refers to the case and provides email addresses for the relevant Sudanese officials. We urge you to email them politely asking for the ruling to be reversed.
http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/uaa11814.pdf
Please share this story as widely as you can.
UPDATE It has been reported that Meriam has had her baby in prison, where her 22 month old is also living with her. Her husband was not allowed to attend the birth.
Erin Cox – surely the most ridiculous victim of school administration nonsense this year. So far.
When we hear about an outrageous story involving kids – and we know there is another crazy one just about every day – we often try to put myself in the shoes of the parents at the centre of the controversy. How would we have acted? What would we have wanted our daughter to do?
In the case of a teen recently punished by her school for trying to drive a drunk friend home, we find ourselves firmly siding with the girl and her parents – and wondering what on earth the idiots masquerading as school administrators were thinking.
Two weeks ago, Erin Cox, an honors high school student who lives near Boston, Massachusetts, got a call from a friend at a party who was too drunk to drive.
Cox kindly went to the party to get her friend, and minutes after she got there, police arrived and arrested a dozen kids for underage drinking, warning 15 others, including Cox, they would get a summons for drinking, according to the Boston Herald.
Even though Cox wasn’t drinking and a police officer vouched for her sobriety in a written statement, her school, North Andover High, charged that she violated its zero-tolerance policy when it comes to alcohol and drug use. Just for turning up to help her friend not risk her life and others, NOT to break the law.
Her punishment? She was demoted from her position as captain of her volleyball team and told she would be suspended for five games. The girl is apparently distraught.
All because she did the right thing, as far as this writer is concerned. We would hope any intelligent child would do what Cox did if they ever found themselves in a similar situation.
“She did what we teach our kids to do!! Friends don’t let friends drive drunk!” wrote Stevie Street, one of the thousands of commenters on CNN’s Facebook page expressing outrage and disappointment at the school’s decision.
For some, the issue is very personal.
“My daughter was killed at age 17 riding in a car with a drunk driver. How I wish she would have called us or asked a sober friend to drive her home. The girl should be rewarded, not punished, for potentially saving a life,” Karen Donahue Moses said, also on Facebook.
“I know someone … who was raped at a party after passing out drunk. Her friends had left without her,” a commenter named David wrote in an e-mail. “Looking out for your friends, making sure they get home safe, that’s the responsible thing to do. If that student had just left her friend there, she could have been assaulted, she could have driven drunk or ridden with a drunk driver.”
Administrators nil, commonsense 1. This decision should be reversed immediately and an apology issued to Erin. If you agree, let us know.
(From CNN and others)
The very brave Anton Kraskovsky: out, and out of work.
Russian television anchor Anton Krasovsky has been fired from his job after coming out on the air earlier this year.
“I’m gay, and I’m just the same person as you, my dear audience, as President Putin, as Prime Minister Medvedev and the deputies of our Duma,” he said, according to an interview with Snob.ru.
He was reportedly fired from KontrTV, a government-backed cable network that he helped launch in December, and the footage of his announcement was quickly deleted from KontrTV’s website and YouTube.
Krasovsky also spoke to CNN from Lisbon this week and said he knew he would lose his job for coming out.
“Somebody should do it,” he said. “I decided it’s time to be open for me. That’s it.”
He told Snob.ru that he felt like a hypocrite after covering the so-called gay propaganda law on a show.
“The meaning of this whole story we are discussing now is that throughout my whole life, I’ve been struggling with myself,” Krasovsky said. “And this — as you call it — coming out is just another battle with myself, with my own hypocrisy, my own lies, and my own cowardice.”
He said after making the announcement at the end of the show, Angry Guyzzz, the audience and the crew applauded. He said he then went into his dressing room and cried for 20 minutes before being fired a few hours later.
“They immediately blocked all my corporative accounts, my email. Literally immediately, overnight,” Krasovsky said. “They deleted not only my face from the website, but also all of my TV shows, as if I’d never really existed. The next day I wrote to [network head Sergey] Minaev that I was totally shocked. Because it takes them half a day to put up a banner when I ask them to, and here we had such efficiency. One could say they can when they want to. Now they’ve put everything back, but you couldn’t say why, really.”
While his firing occurred earlier this year, his story is catching the attention of international press now that Russia’s antigay law has passed and is clearly being enforced. In February, he told the Los Angeles Times that he had kept trying to persuade himself that working with the government to launch the network would keep him secure.
“I kept trying to persuade myself all the time that working for the Kremlin also gives me a better chance to combat idiots and idiocy at all levels,” he said. “But they soon found a way to show me who ran the show as I was trying to stop short of turning into a Kremlin propaganda tool.”
(As reported at TheAdvocate.com)
Individual liberty is on retreat the world over, and in Russia as rapidly as anywhere on the planet. Citizens Awake!
As you will see from the page I have linked to below, there is a growing movement in Canada and America to persuade people to stop buying crap for the sake of it. Indeed, frankly, to get out of the habit of buying stuff at all.
http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd
The campaign has received worldwide coverage on CNN, Al Jazeera and others. It is, essentially, an anti-consumption movement highlighting the deleterious global economic and ecological effects of consumerism. You can get the message by watching this little ad.
The anti-consumerist message has grown out of both the Occupy movement, which seeks to take back control of the narrative (and actions) of our society from big business and government, and also the ecological movement, the “think Green” or “think Small” thread which has been running now since about the later 60s or 70s.
Instinctively I think this is right. Which is why, on 26th November, which is “World” Buy Nothing Day, my 24th Wedding Anniversary gift to my wife will be to draw her my own greetings card, and give her nothing bought from a shop. I will, instead, dig the garden and cut her some roses, or do some extra housework, or cook her a lovely meal, or take her out for a nice long ramble somewhere we’ve never been before. And I know she will understand and approve, which is probably why we’ve managed to stay married for 24 years.
But my real problem is, I work in an industry which is dedicated to increasing consumerism, while being personally convinced that its effects are toxic. Not just to the planet, but also to people’s lives.
Is this really what we hope for ourselves and our children?
My problem is this. At one and the same time I can believe – sincerely – that advertising is a good thing because it promotes freedom of choice and informed populations, just as I simultaneously weep that it encourages us all to put value on things that are essentially unnecessary or value-less.
Stuff.
We all spend money on stuff we don’t really need, because we are encouraged relentlessly to do so. We are told, repeatedly, that the world judges us by how much stuff we have accumulated, and even though we don’t really believe it, we keep on accumulating just in case. We don’t really believe in the Joneses looking over our back fence, but we check for them from under hooded eyelids anyway.
And it’s not just a rich Western phenomenon. As soon as developing populations get wealthy enough, they enthusiastically show signs of the same sickness. It’s a combination of innate human greed and mass media manipulation, and it worries me deeply.
I don’t want consumerism to end, per se.
I am, on balance, a “growth” believer not a “no-growth” believer.
It’s easy in the West, for example, to sneer at consumerism but ignore the fact that much of the stuff we buy is now made by poorer people overseas, and if we didn’t buy it they’d be even poorer than they are. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that the rest of the world wants TV sets and air conditioning and motor cars, and transferring our wealth (accumulated over centuries of colonial exploitation) to their societies is one way to redress the imbalance of wealth in the world.
What the f*** happened? Why, WE happened, Barney. We happened.
But then as we do that, they become trapped in the same unsatisfying cycle of consumerism that has us in its thrall, and one day the whole planet will be rich consumers and then there won’t be any planet left to divvy up, and we will all sit around and look at each other confused and in mutual recrimination.
The answer, I believe, and it is a messy and slow and inadequate answer, is to prevail on private industry – through intelligent, thoughtful public pressure – and government pressure, acting as our representatives – to ensure that private business takes into account legitimate ecological fears, in particular, that they might not otherwise consider.
Just as we no longer produce lead-painted toys for children to lick, so we need to insist that those who feed our addiction to stuff do so with maximum thought about wise energy use, recyclable materials, smart technologies that have a lighter footprint on the planet, and labour and capital practices in developing countries that sees reinvestment in things they badly need, like decent housing, clean water, health care, and sustainable agriculture. And if they don’t, some sort of sanction is needed to ensure they do.
At the same time, we need to persuade consumers in the West to think more globally about the choices they make.
Hamilton Island Sailing by Jenie Yolland
We’re lucky: we’re rich. Maybe we can afford just a little more to buy a high-quality – read long-lasting – handmade item from around the corner, rather than just buy the cheapest possible item manufactured on a production line in India or China.
The result will be both to support local craftspeople and also to encourage overseas suppliers to up their game. Like, er, you could choose handmade beautiful glassware from my wife.
(Blatant plug going out to millions of Wellthisiwhatithink readers, please add that to your wedding anniversary gifts, darling.)
And we need to persuade Westerners to invest in people, rather than just in things, as ways to show our love for our folks back home. Such as giving the gift of food, books and education, technology support, medicine – or even just clean water – to overseas communities in lieu of just buying more crap every time.
Every now and then, as I wrote about a few days ago on World Toilet Day, I buy clean water for an overseas 
community and give a card with that message in to my gift recipient at home. It’s always appreciated.
And I know that my gift really is the gift that keeps on giving, to people for whom the basics of life are denied without our help.
Years ago, I was in South Africa soon after the ANC government first came to power.
As we sat drinking sundowners at our immaculately manicured whiteman’s house in a delightful English cottage garden, which required watering liberally every day, I watched a long line of Zulu women walking back along the dusty path by the house to their nearby village, singing to encourage themselves as they swung their arms in time to their song.
On their heads were red earthenware pots filled with water drawn from the nearby river.
Trust me when I tell you, these pots were so large and so heavy – empty – that you would have struggled to lift them, let alone walk along, seemingly unperturbed, with them full of gallons of precious water balanced on your head.
Their stoic dignity affected me greatly, and still does to this day.
They would perform this trek (how ironic that “trek” is a word so associated with the white Afrikaaner Boers) twice a day. Once before dawn, once before the evening meal.
The next day, I was privileged to be granted a discussion with a newly appointed ANC government official in Durban, the mother of an old family friend, and we spent much of the hour she graciously gave me talking about water.
She kindly and politely listened to my community politics experience from the UK and Australia, and then put it in the context of a society where maybe a third of the 35 million or so black people did not have access to running water.
We discussed the women with their pots and she sighed deeply. “Imagine the difference it would make”, she said to me, “imagine what it would mean as a feminist issue, if just one tap was centrally installed in their village, or one well dug”.
She made a note of the location on a pad. But she was overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the work to be completed.
“We don’t have roads to lots of these places,” she explained.
“No doctors. The homes are little more than corrugated
iron sheets, and it gets damned hot. People don’t sleep properly. Do people think black people don’t feel the heat? Preventable disease is rife. The people can’t fix things up for themselves because in some communities unemployment is 100%.”
She looked at me directly. “I am damn glad the world stood up to the apartheid regime on our behalf, but now is when we need the help. We got rid of the Nationals; where is the help we need now?
It would be such a great start, you know, if those women didn’t have to walk there and back every day.”
As I left, her exquisitely beautiful young Zulu receptionist smiled at me with a sudden flash of impossibly white teeth, and shyly said “It must be nice in Australia, eh? I’d love to be in Australia. No money here.”
Yes, yes. Yes it is. It is nice to be in Australia. It’s so nice, I really don’t need anything else to make it any nicer, except maybe another few productive years and good health, please God. And that’s why, on Monday, I’ll be giving someone else that I dont know some water to thank my wife for 24 years of support. Because an ad guy persuaded me I shouldn’t buy my wife a gift she doesn’t really want or need, and another ad guy then reminded me I need to keep giving away water.
And I’ll try and feel better about myself, and my life, and my industry. You can too. Click the link.
Make it “Buy Something That Matters Day”.
Chocolate prevents heart attacks - oh please let it be true.
http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/29/semi-sweet-news-for-chocolate-lovers/?on.cnn=1
Next week, some researcher releases news as to why excesses of cholesterol and sugar are actually good for you.
It is only a matter of time, people, trust me. Nom, nom, nom …
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