BB FANS

Resolution on Syrian crackdown submitted to UN

Concerns Russia may veto draft security council resolution condemning killings and torture of pro-democracy protesters Guardian

Welcome to the violent world of Mr Hopey Changey

John Pilger www.newstatesman.com

Israel-Iran trade ties thriving www.ynetnews.com

U.S. demands answers in death of Iranian dissident
From Elise Labott, CNN State Department Producer edition.cnn.com

Revealed: the untold story of the deal that shocked the Middle East

Exclusive by Robert Fisk Independent

New bank for India's child workers BBC

Saudi Arabian Women Defy Driving Ban
Youtube

Ciudad Juarez is all our futures. This is the inevitable war of capitalism gone mad
Mexico's drug cartels are actually pioneers of the global economy in their business logic and modus operandi Guardian

Iran giving out condoms for criminals to rape us, say jailed activists
Smuggled letters allege authorities are using mass rape as a weapon inside Iran's most notorious prisons


Opposition protests in 2009: political activists have accused the intelligence ministry and revolutionary guards of harassing inmates with sexual assaults. Photograph: Reuters
Prison guards in Iran are giving condoms to criminals and encouraging them to systematically rape young opposition activists locked up with them, according to accounts from inside the country's jail system.

A series of dramatic letters written by prisoners and families of imprisoned activists allege that authorities are intentionally facilitating mass rape and using it as a form of punishment.

Mehdi Mahmoudian, an outspoken member of Iran's Participation Front, a reformist political party, is among those prisoners who have succeeded in smuggling out letters revealing the extent of rape inside some of the most notorious prisons.

Mahmoudian was arrested in the aftermath of Iran's 2009 disputed presidential election for speaking to the press about the regime's suppression of the movement and is currently in Rajaeeshahr prison in Karaj, a city 12 miles (20km) to the west of the capital, Tehran.

"In various cells inside the prison, rape has become a common act and acceptable," he wrote in a letter published on Kaleme.com, the official website of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi.

According to Mahmoudian and letters published on various opposition websites, political prisoners are locked up with some of the most dangerous criminals – murderers and ex-members of armed gangs.

Meanwhile, 26 prominent political activists who have been in jail since the 2009 election have written to an official prison monitoring body accusing the government's intelligence ministry and the revolutionary guards of harassing inmates with unlawful tactics that included sexual assaults.

Mohsen Aminzadeh, a senior deputy foreign minister, Mohsen Mirdamadi, a leader of a reformist party and Behzad Nabavi, a veteran activist are among those who put their signatures on the letter.

Speaking to Jaras, a website run by opposition activists, families of political prisoners have alleged that prison guards are failing to protect them from rape or sexual assault.

"During exercise periods, the strong ask for sex without any consideration. Criminals are repeatedly seen with condoms in hand, hunting for their victims," an unnamed family member told Jaras.

"If the inmate is not powerful enough or guards would not take care of him, he will be certainly raped. Prison guards ignore those who are seen with condoms simply because they were given out to them by the guards at first place," the family member said.

The family members say prison guards are turning a blind eye to the systematic rape and have ignored complaints made by rape victims.

Amnesty International, which has documented rape inside Iran's prisons and interviewed victims for a 2010 report, called on Iran to launch an investigation into the recent allegations.

Kristyan Benedict, Amnesty International UK's Middle East campaign manager, told the Guardian: "Rape is a terrible crime and these allegations [mentioned in the letters] should be thoroughly investigated. Amnesty International has also documented the rape of male and female detainees by security officials. Many of those detained for taking part in post-election protests were tortured and did not receive fair trials. The Iranian authorities still continue to punish and persecute those who peacefully speak up against them."

According to Mahmoudian, who has been transferred to a solitary confinement after his letter attracted attention, one young prisoner was raped seven times in a single night.

"In [Rajaeeshahr] prison, those who have pretty faces and are unable to defend themselves or cannot afford to bribe others are forcibly taken to different cells each night [to be raped]," he writes.

"The situation is such that those exposed to rape even have an owner and that owner makes money by renting him out to others and after a while selling him to someone else."

Rape victims in Iran usually stay quiet in order to protect the honour of their family but at the time when journalists based in the country are facing strict restrictions, these letters have become one of the only sources of information about the situation of hundreds of imprisoned activists.

Iranian officials have ignored the allegations and have previously denied any claims of rape inside jail.
Guardian

Alice Walker: Why I'm joining the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza
Pulitzer prize-winning American writer Alice Walker is on board an international flotilla of boats sailing to Gaza to challenge the Israeli blockade. Here she tells why Guardian

The invasion of Australia
Australia's forbidden word has been uttered at last. And with it is comes a new Aboriginal articulacy



John Pilger

A member of an Aboriginal dance group from Australia's Northern Territory looks on during an apology ceremony to the stolen generations in February. Photograph: Andrew Sheargold/Getty Images
The City of Sydney council has voted to replace the words "European arrival" in the official record with "invasion". The deputy lord mayor, Marcelle Hoff, says it is intellectually dishonest to use any other word to describe how Aboriginal Australia was dispossessed by the British. "We were invaded," said Paul Morris, an Aboriginal adviser to the council. "It is the truth and shouldn't be watered down. We wouldn't expect Jewish people to accept a watered-down version of the Holocaust, so why should we?"

In 2008, the then prime minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised to Aborigines wrenched from their families as children under a policy inspired by the crypto-fascist theories of eugenics. White Australia was said to be coming to terms with its rapacious past, and present. Was it? The Rudd government, noted a Sydney Morning Herald editorial at the time, "has moved quickly to clear away this piece of political wreckage in a way that responds to some of its supporters' emotional needs, yet it changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre."

The City of Sydney ruling is a very different gesture – different, and admirable; for it reflects not a liberal and limited "sorry campaign", seeking feel-good "reconciliation" rather than justice, but counters a cowardly movement of historical revision in which a collection of far-right politicians, journalists and minor academics claimed there was no invasion, no genocide, no stolen generations, no racism.

The platform for these holocaust deniers is the Murdoch press, which has long run its own insidious campaign against the indigenous population, presenting them as victims of each other or as noble savages requiring firm direction: the eugenicists' view. Favoured black "leaders" who tell the white elite what it wants to hear while blaming their own people for their poverty provide a PC cover for a racism that often shocks foreign visitors. Today the first Australians have one of the shortest life expectancies in the world and are incarcerated at five times the rate of black people in apartheid South Africa. Go to the outback and see the children blinded by trachoma, a biblical disease, entirely preventable. The Aboriginal people are both Australia's secret and this otherwise derivative society's most amazing distinction.

In its landmark rejection of historical propaganda, Sydney recognises black Australia's "cultural endurance" and, without saying so directly, a growing resistance to an outrage known as "the intervention". In 2007, John Howard sent the army into Aboriginal Australia to "protect the children" who, said his minister, were being abused in "unthinkable numbers". It is striking how Australia's incestuous political and media elite so often rounds on the tiny black minority with all the fervour of the guilty, unaware perhaps that the national mythology remains culpably damaged while a nationhood, once stolen, is not returned to the original inhabitants.

Journalists accepted the Howard government's reason for "intervening" and went hunting for the lurid. One national TV programme used an "anonymous youth worker" to allege "sex slavery" rings among the Mutitjulu people. He was later exposed as a federal government official. Of 7,433 Aboriginal children examined by doctors, just four were identified as possible cases of abuse. There were no "unthinkable numbers". The rate was around that of white child abuse. The difference was that no soldiers invaded the beachside suburbs; no white parents were swept aside, their wages diminished and welfare "quarantined". It was all a mighty charade, but with serious purpose.

The Labor governments that followed Howard have reinforced the new controlling powers over black homelands, the strict Julia Gillard especially – she who lectures her compatriots on the virtues of colonial wars that "make us who we are today" and imprisons refugees from those wars indefinitely, including children, on an offshore island not deemed to be Australia, which it is.

In the Northern Territory, the Gillard government is in effect driving Aboriginal communities into apartheid areas where they will be "economically viable". The unspoken reason is that the Northern Territory is the only part of Australia where Aborigines have comprehensive land rights; and here lie some of the world's biggest deposits of uranium, and other minerals.

The most powerful political force in Australia is the multibillion-dollar mining industry. Canberra wants to mine and sell, and those bloody blackfellas are in the way again. But this time they are organised, articulate, militant. They know it is a second invasion. Having finally uttered the forbidden word, white Australians should stand with them.
Guardian

Glenn Beck's Israel rally prompts Facebook protest

US broadcaster is staging a rally in Jerusalem to 'stand with the Jewish people' against a peace deal with the Palestinians


Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem - Guardian


Glenn Beck has been criticised for staging his rally close to the Western Wall and Haram al-Sharif
Glenn Beck has been criticised for staging his rally so close to the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, and the Haram al-Sharif, revered by Muslims. Photograph: Oliver Weiken/EPA

Glenn Beck, the American broadcaster whose regular talkshow was dropped by Fox News for being too rightwing, is to stage a rally on the edge of Jerusalem's Old City on Wednesday to "demonstrate to the world that Israel does not stand alone".

Beck, who is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has been in Israel for more than a week preparing for his "Restoring Courage" rally, which has prompted a "Glenn Beck Stay Home" Facebook page and the promise of protests outside the venue.

According to the organisers, every seat in the Davidson Centre, which can accommodate up to 2,000 people, is taken on an invitation-only basis, and a large outdoor screen is being erected in the centre of Jerusalem to cater for an overflow audience. The event will be broadcast live to "viewing parties" in more than 60 countries, including Belgium, and South Korea.

Beck will be supported on stage by the actor Jon Voight and mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat. The audience will be overwhelmingly comprised of American Christians who have bought package deals covering flights, accommodation and access to three Beck events in Israel this week. Many are Christian Zionists, whose ardent support of the Israeli state stems from the belief that the "ingathering" of Jews to the Holy Land is a prerequisite for the second coming of the messiah. However, their insistence that Jews must then convert to Christianity has alienated many Israelis.

Beck, who has a track record of embracing controversy, has also stoked opposition with antisemitic conspiracy theories and comments about the Holocaust.

The purpose of the rally, according to Beck's team, is "to stand with the Jewish people" against a peace deal with the Palestinians that would, he believes, put the holy sites of Jerusalem out of reach to the rest of the world.

"There are forces in this land [the USA], and forces all over the globe, that are trying to destroy us," Beck said when announcing the rally. "They are going to attack the centre of our faith, our common faith, and that is Jerusalem. And it won't be with bullets and bombs. It will be with a two-state solution that cuts off Jerusalem, the Old City, from the rest of the world."

Reinforcing his point, the rally is to be staged in the shadows of the Old City, close to both the Western Wall, the holiest site in Judaism, and the Haram al-Sharif, also known by Jews as the Temple Mount, which is revered by Muslims. The time of the rally was brought forward to avoid coinciding with Muslim prayers signalling the end of Ramadan fasting.

Some Israeli-Arab members of the Knesset have said that the choice of venue so close to the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque could provoke violence.

Meanwhile, Peace Now, a leftwing Israeli organisation, has called for a demonstration against "this terrible event" after Beck likened tens of thousands of Israeli protesters demanding social justice and a lower cost of living over the past few weeks to Soviet-style communists.

Beck told the Jerusalem Post that he expected to lose "about a million dollars" on the three Israel rallies, but said: "I do what I'm supposed to do: to show the world the courage of Israelis and the choice between good and evil and life and death, and to remind people that life is not a spectator sport."

Among the audience will be some of the 81 US Congress members who are visiting Israel this summer as guests of the American Israel Education Foundation, which is an affiliate of the pro-Israel US lobby group Aipac.

The purpose of the delegations – which comprise one-fifth of Congress members – is to "learn first hand about the evolving security situation in the Middle East, the deep challenges facing Israel, and the role the US can play in the region during this time of uncertainty," according to Democrat Steny Hoyer.

Israel is counting on support from the US against the Palestinian bid to have their state recognised by the United Nations next month. President Obama has said the US will veto such a move in the UN security council.

• This article was amended 24 August 2011. The orginal said that Glenn Beck was a born-again Christian. This has been corrected.