A United Nations panel looking into the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen recently concluded that there had been “widespread and systemic” attacks on civilian targets, which violated international humanitarian law. In response, investigations have been called for, lobbying groups are now pressuring the British government to stop buying weapons from the Kingdom, and the European Parliament has called for an arms embargo.
For its own part, the UK government has pledged support for a UN Human Rights Council Resolution that requires the Yemeni government to investigate the incidents, and has said, “the most effective way of conducting these kinds of investigations … is for the Saudis to start the process themselves.”
[...]From the howler at this morning's Telegraph penned by Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to Britain, titled Saudi Arabia is bombing in Yemen to bring peace and stability.
(AP - BEIRUT) — The latest on the conflict in Syria, where a fragile cease-fire has begun but scattered violence and clashes continue (all times local):
7:15 p.m.
The U.N. envoy for Syria says the situation after the first day of a U.S. and Russian-brokered cease-fire is “quite reassuring.”
Staffan de Mistura says “the first night and first day certainly gave the impression that everyone is serious in their commitment to keep on going with this cessation of hostilities.”
De Mistura said Saturday that some incidents were always expected to occur but “on the basis of five years of conflict, what I have seen so far is [quite] reassuring in comparison to what we saw in the past.”
He says cease-fire monitors will work to improve the way they verify incidents and prevent them from escalating.
[...]
3:10 p.m.
The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for a suicide truck bombing in central Syria.
The IS-affiliated Aamaq news agency says the suicide bomber targeted a military post near the town of Salamiyeh. Syrian state media said two people were killed in the blast, while an opposition group that monitors the conflict said three were killed.
The blast rocked the area hours after a cease-fire engineered by Russia and the U.S. took hold across Syria. The cease-fire excludes the Islamic State group and al-Qaida’s branch in Syria, the Nusra Front.
[...]Reuters
In straightforward prose, King tells the story of Carol Klein, the daughter of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. Her educated and artistically inclined mother and firefighting father gave her confidence in her early years. Things started to go wrong when her younger brother Richard was diagnosed as profoundly deaf and “severely retarded” in 1951 and placed in “a facility suitable for his needs”.
[...]
On Thursday evening, the Syrian Arab Army’s 103rd Brigade – backed by the Syrian Marines, Liwaa Suqour Al-Sahra (Desert Hawks Brigade), the National Defense Forces (NDF), and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) – finally reached the last peaks before the Jabal Al-Akrad (Kurdish Mountains) border-crossing into Turkey. The Syrian Armed Forces advanced to the last villages on the border, staking their positions for the final assault to seize the ‘Ayn Al-Bayda and several other sites that provide access into Turkey. Now, just 3 km south of the Turkish border with Jabal Al-Akrad, the Syrian Armed Forces prepare for what will ultimately be the final assault before completely seizing the Latakia crossings.
Doudou N'Diaye Rose often recalled this early period of his life, when he learned that the tapping of the drums was a surefire method of communication between villages. Drums were played at marriages, baptisms, naming and circumcision ceremonies and other social gatherings.
In 2010, he told the French News Agency AFP he had "never wanted to play blindly! I met the elders so that they could teach me the very precise language of the drums that everybody recognized then."
He said it was important to know "how to announce a bush fire; that a snake has bitten someone and what kind of snake; that a woman who has just got married has gone to the conjugal home and that the husband is happy with her." [1]
Whistled language of the island of La Gomera (Canary Islands), the Silbo Gomero
Description: The whistled language of La Gomera Island in the Canaries, the Silbo Gomero, replicates the islanders' habitual language (Castilian Spanish) with whistling.
Handed down over centuries from master to pupil, it is the only whistled language in the world that is fully developed and practised by a large community (more than 22,000 inhabitants).
The whistled language replaces each vowel or consonant with a whistling sound: two distinct whistles replace the five Spanish vowels, and there are four whistles for consonants.
The whistles can be distinguished according to pitch and whether they are interrupted or continuous.
With practice, whistlers can convey any message. Some local variations even point to their origin. Taught in schools since 1999, the Silbo Gomero is understood by almost all islanders and practised by the vast majority, particularly the elderly and the young. It is also used during festivities and ceremonies, including religious occasions.
To prevent it from disappearing like the other whistled languages of the Canary Islands, it is important to do more for its transmission and promote the Silbo Gomero as intangible cultural heritage cherished by the inhabitants of La Gomera and the Canary Islands as a whole.
Country(ies): Spain
© 2008 by Juan Ramón Hernandez y David Baute. Gouvernement des Canaries [2]
Americans are said to be ignorant of the world. We are, but so are people in other countries. If people in Bhutan or Bolivia misunderstand Syria, however, that has no real effect. Our ignorance is more dangerous, because we act on it. The United States has the power to decree the death of nations.
It can do so with popular support because many Americans — and many journalists — are content with the official story. In Syria, it is: “Fight Assad, Russia, and Iran! Join with our Turkish, Saudi, and Kurdish friends to support peace!” This is appallingly distant from reality. It is also likely to prolong the war and condemn more Syrians to suffering and death.I have minor quibbles with each of the three writings but none involve politics. I think it's obvious that politics prompted Sachs and Kennedy to decide to tell what they knew at this time in the presidential campaign. I don't criticize their motivations; I just wish they'd decided earlier to sing like a bird, but better late than never.
For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.I have misplaced the link and cannot recall the name of the source document, but there is another version of what happened in Aleppo. According to a report I read months ago, Turkey's military carried out the operation themselves or hired goons or mercenary fighters to loot the factories in Aleppo and truck the stolen equipment to Turkey, as well as destroy the factories.
Government-held Aleppo was under siege from jihadi forces until late last year. That was never reported. Now the areas of Aleppo held by the rebels are coming under siege. That is reported in the western press as a catastrophe, and has brought a concerned response from the British Foreign Secretary.In short it isn't only the American news media that can't tell the difference between down and up when it comes to reporting on Syria. Kinzer thinks that much of the problem comes down to money. That's a part of it, but I note that this same financially strapped international mainstream news media managed to scare up sufficient funds to provide saturation coverage of the Arab Spring in 2011.
"Our economy is really struggling, and yet some leaders come out and say things that could get us caught up in a war in Syria against Russia,” said a prominent Saudi political observer who is close to senior officials.
He was referring to Russia’s intervention late last year in the Syrian conflict to boost Assad, its ally, a move that has changed the tide of a civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced millions.
The Saudi armed forces appear bogged down in Yemen against Iranian-aligned rebels in a drawn-out war that appears to be spilling over into the kingdom. Increasingly the rebels, known as Houthis, have been mounting assaults into southern Saudi Arabia, forcing the kingdom to deploy tens of thousands of troops to defend its border.And so on in that vein. Meanwhile the International Press is going bananas reporting on Al Saud's huge increase in arms purchases ("Saudi imports up 275% in five years!"); this frenzy ahead of a vote in two days:
Growing anxiety about weapons sales to Saudi Arabia is prompting the European Parliament to consider urging a ban on arms exports to the Mideast country. European Union lawmakers are gearing up for a vote Feb. 25 on whether to call for an embargo on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia, a country with an abysmal human-rights record that faces fresh accusations of indiscriminately bombing civilians in Yemen. ...Back, briefly, to the WaPo report:
"At all levels in Saudi society, including the royal family itself, there is serious concern about our involvement in all these foreign conflicts,” said the prominent Saudi, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of concerns about retribution. “I think there’s a sense that we’ve lost an ability to look at things realistically.”
His concern reflects broader questions in some Saudi circles over the country’s 30-year-old defense minister and deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the son of King Salman and second in line to the throne.Some say MbS (well that's what he's called in KSA) wants to be first in line Pundita don't cackle. [looking at a calendar] Reportedly there's supposed to be some kind of coup this month in the kingdom, which doesn't leave much time but we'll just have to see what if anything happens next.
This is the 1953 original Broadway cast recording from the musical KISMET (composed by Robert Wright and George Forrest, based on themes by Borodin), sung here by Alfred Drake, Doretta Morrow, Richard Kiley & Henry Calvin, with orchestra conducted by Louis Adrian. This particular song is adapted from String Quartet No.2 in D major (3rd movement - Nocturne) of Alexander Borodin (1833-1887).
"We are not going to move," says one of them who refuses to tell me his name.
News that the government has offered concessions cuts little ice.
"We don't trust them. Let's get something in writing. Let them spell it out," he says.
We are on the edge of Delhi.
Much of the area around us was farmland about a decade ago. Now you can see tall buildings in some places, others are under construction.
"We are farmers," Sukhram Dhankar says. "But there is no land left for us to farm. It's taken over by developers. So we need government jobs."To call this a caste issue is to look at the uprising in Haryana in the narrowest terms. What's been happening in Haryana is mirrored in every region of the world where the megalopolis totalitarians are at work.
