A sample situation that subsists on this 66th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Raif Badawi is beginning his ten-year term of imprisonment at Jeddah. Each second Friday, he will be taken out to a public square and given fifty of the thousand lashes to which he has also been condemned. His crime was to start a website called Saudi Arabian Liberals.
Write a letter for Raif
http://write.amnestyusa.org/case/raif/
Thanks Hilary. It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.
It is hard to imagine living through such punishment. My thoughts and prayers are with Mr. Badawi.
Hmmm,,, how appropriately timed in the face of the untimely release of the report of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” report, following the non-indictments of the white officers killing the unarmed black suspects in Ferguson and on Staten Island. There may be a time and a place for everthing, but at this point in time I question everything. May the powers that be grant us understanding and clear skies this weekend for the Geminids.
The public humiliation of a man in such a cruel form merely for having attempted to participate as a citizen in the political life of his country has to be regard as another example of barbarism–the kind of tyranny over human life that we associate with despotic states and criminal rulers. Is this the regime that American presidents have supported and sustained through mutual defense arrangements for decades? Suggests that we in the U.S. have some thinking to do in regard to our foreign policies… Why do we so readily short-change the principles on which our country was founded?
You’re right, John, and a little of such thinking may be going on. A recent New Yorker article points out that the CIA’s efforts have not only been marred by the use of torture but have been misdirected: they have more or less turned a blind eye to Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, from which has come the support for ISIS.
Unfortunately, I don’t think our efforts have been marred by torture or misdirected; rather, I think our *goal* was to torture in order to extract false information about a non-existent link between Saddam and 9-11 in order to justify going to war. And not only have we supported or turned a blind eye to regimes that torture, we used them to do our dirty work for us by “renditions”. And some of our victims were later proven to be completely innocent. The founders would be turning over in their graves if they could know.