This isn’t the best photo of this funeral/protest in Daih, Bahrain but it best reveals the defiance & courage of the Bahrain revolution. The funeral is for Qassim Habib Marzooq, an 8-year-old child with special needs who died from respiratory problems he developed from the excessive use of tear gas by riot cops.
The treacherous duo of super-cops John Timoney & John Yates were hired by the regime to destroy the revolution by extreme violence & repression. One of the methods they employ is called “carpet gassing” in residential areas. Many have been sickened or killed as a result.
Meanwhile the lesser evil Obama regime continues to fund the Bahrain military. In 2010, they provided $20 million in military aid to a country of 500,000 people who are not under siege by other countries. In 2011 the Obama regime lobbied for $53 million in arms sales to Bahrain but was blocked by the US Congress. So instead they supplied aid in equipment & spare parts along with training the Bahrain military & riot cops. The US aid is disguised as support for the US 5th fleet occupying the region.
Human rights violations against protestors are so egregious that several conservative human rights NGOs appealed to Hillary Clinton last September to suspend US aid. Claiming that none of the equipment is used for crowd control, upfront US military aid was resumed in 2012. No US aid to Bahrain! Bring the 5th fleet home! (Photo by Mazen Mahdi/EPA)
Off topic but...
ReplyDeleteThe Torching of Timbuktu's History
"And these libraries were spectacular, containing thousands of ancient leather-bound books written in Arabic, Hebrew, African tribal languages, Turkish, and many other tongues, and covering topics like astronomy, poetry, music, politics, grammar, medicine, law, conflict resolution, and women's rights. The oldest books were from the eleventh century, when the Salt Road trading was at its peak and international traders would converge on Timbuktu. The information in these tomes was still so salient that, as the crumbling pages of the books were being preserved, people from all over the world were still trying to translate and study them to see if there was some knowledge they could use today."
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/culture/timbuktu-library-burnings-15031771?src=soc_twtr
Did you read this article, vza? The mayor was lying. From Time.com:
Delete“The manuscripts were a part not only of Mali’s heritage but the world’s heritage,” Cissé told the Guardian. “By destroying them, they threaten the world. We have to kill all of the rebels in the north.” Reporting from inside the Timbuktu building itself, Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford told viewers that the jihadists had destroyed the center’s contents. Meanwhile, Cissé was quoted on the network’s website as saying, “They torched all the important ancient manuscripts.”
That is not so, according to those who’ve worked for months to keep the documents safe.
http://world.time.com/2013/01/28/mali-timbuktu-locals-saved-some-of-their-citys-ancient-manuscripts-from-islamists/#ixzz2JP7YWVPT
"In interviews with TIME on Monday, preservationists said that in a large-scale rescue operation early last year, shortly before the militants seized control of Timbuktu, thousands of manuscripts were hauled out of the Ahmed Baba Institute to a safe house elsewhere. Realizing that the documents might be prime targets for pillaging or vindictive attacks from Islamic extremists, staff left behind just a small portion of them, perhaps out of haste, but also to conceal the fact that the center had been deliberately emptied. “The documents which had been there are safe, they were not burned,” said Mahmoud Zouber, Mali’s presidential aide on Islamic affairs, a title he retains despite the overthrow of the former President, his boss, in a military coup a year ago; preserving Timbuktu’s manuscripts was a key project of his office. By phone from Bamako on Monday night, Zouber told TIME, “They were put in a very safe place. I can guarantee you. The manuscripts are in total security.”
DeleteIn a second interview from Bamako, a preservationist who did not want to be named confirmed that the center’s collection had been hidden out of reach from the militants. Neither of those interviewed wanted the location of the manuscripts named in print, for fear that remnants of the al-Qaeda occupiers might return to destroy them."
Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/01/28/mali-timbuktu-locals-saved-some-of-their-citys-ancient-manuscripts-from-islamists/#ixzz2JP8V7hU6
Well, to be fair, the mayor may not have been actually lying. He probably just did not know. He was not in Timbuktu.
ReplyDeleteJanuary 29, 2013
Has the Great Library of Timbuktu Been Lost?
Posted by Lila Azam Zanganeh
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/01/the-libraries-of-timbuktu.html