Tehran Iran:Students and actor amongst those arrested near Ghoba mosque Tehran 28/6/09

Nariman Mostafavi member of Islamic society of Amirkabir technology university, and Tara Sepehrifar secretary of Islamic society of Sanati Sharif university were arrested.

Mostafavi and Sepehrifar were arrested yesterday around the Ghoba mosque located at Tehran Shariati street.Also, Reza Attaran comedian actor was arrested in front of the Ghoba mosque.More than 3000 people attended yesterday’s gathering. Police attacked the protestors with tear gas and arrested some.According to some reports at least 8 people were arrested yesterday.

A group of students at the Science and Technology University of Tehran held a rally on Sunday to mourn the death of Kianoosh Asa under torture..

Read full story at Revolutionary Road

Video:Dick Morris argues that Obama and Clinton are deserting Israel resulting in a possible new holocaust

In this video Dick Morris argues cogently that Barack Obama is severing a 60 year U.S. policy of support for Israel even as the mortal threat of Iranian nuclear weapons looms and concludes that Hillary Clinton is helping to implement his Arabist policies. He claims that we may be about to see the death of the state of Israel-destroyed by Iranian nuclear weapons. He lambasts the policy of the Obama administration which has made clear that it will not support Israel in the event of a pre emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. He attacks the two state solution which he claims will give the Palestinians another base with which to attack Israel.

He argues that one Iranian nuclear strike would wipe out state of Israel and that we may be about to see another holocaust. He believes that Netanyahu may launch an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities-to forestall an Iranian nuclear strike- and that this may trigger another Middle East war. He forecasts that Obama will not support Israel in such a war.

Video:Irena Sendler Polish Catholic Nurse who saved 2500 Jewish Children from the Nazis

Oklahoma Video: Deadly Tornado struck the town of Lone Grove on 24/3/09

Video:Darfur Genocide Exposed-Four Sudanese men admit that they participated in violence and massacres

A video recently released by Aegis Trust shows the testimony of four men who state they actively participated in the violence and massacres on Darfur, and who are not afraid to call it genocide. The video was uploaded on The Hub and it is hoped that people will pass it on to others in order to spread this information:

The men - whose identities are obscured - are former members of the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed militia: one was a senior officer in the Sudan Army Finance, one a high-ranking Janjaweed commander, another a Janjaweed footsoldier, and the last a Sudanese soldier.
On the video, you can hear their testimonies of how the Sudanese government recruited the Janjaweed militias, gave them weapons and supplies and whenever they attacked villages, the government would cover it up and state that the attack had been done by the military against rebels, and not by militias attacking civilians. The video is available with German subtitles, Arabic subtitles and French subtitles.

According to Aegis Trust's press release on Human Rights First, this video could assist in the International Criminal Court's decision to issue an arrest warrant against Sudan's president, General Omar al-Bashir:
Since 2003, at least 300,000 civilians have died in Darfur and millions have been displaced from their homes, many of them at the hands of militia nicknamed the ‘Janjaweed' ('devils on horseback'). Time after time, survivors stated - and international observers confirmed - that as they murdered, raped, looted and burned village after village, the Janjaweed was backed by the Sudanese army and air force. Yet the Sudanese Government has consistently denied responsibility for atrocities in Darfur and to this day, says it has nothing to do with the Janjaweed.
However, the defectors in this film - some of them speaking publicly for the first time - tell a very different story.(Source: Global Voices)

Cuba:Fidel Castro hints that he will die soon-Could he die a Catholic?

Fidel Castro doesn't expect to be alive to witness the end of Obama's first term in office, says an article, written by the former Cuban president on an official government website."I have had the rare privilege of observing events over a long period of time. I get information and meditate carefully over these events. I don't expect to enjoy this privilege in four years, when Obama's first term in office concludes," Castro wrote.

The seven-paragraph essay discusses the inauguration and coming term of U.S. President Barack Obama, a topic he also addressed in an article published Wednesday. In Thursday's essay, Castro says that Obama "has transformed himself under the inspiration of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. to the point of becoming a living symbol of the American dream." "But despite noble intentions, there are still many questions to answer," Castro added, specifically pointing out the question of whether a capitalist system can protect the environment. (Sofia News Agency)

Presumably as a Communist Castro does not believe in a God or an after life. However in recent times there have been indications that this might be about to change.Restrictions on the Catholic religion have been eased. After Pope John Paul II's death in April 2005, Castro attended a Mass in his honour in Havana's cathedral and signed the Papal condolence book at the Vatican Embassy. As death approaches there appears to be an evolution in his thinking.
Perhaps Castro will abjure atheism and die a Catholic.

Death camps-UN negligence is killing child refugees in Kosovo (New Internationalist)

The following article has been taken fom the New Internationalist . It is highly disquieting.

There is no acceptable lead level for children,’ announced the World Health Organization in response to the recent recall of millions of lead-painted toys made in China by Mattel, America’s largest toy manufacturer. Yet the world’s worst case of lead poisoning of children – still ongoing after nine years in two UN refugee camps in northern Kosovo – has been ignored by both the media and the UN itself.
Three camps were built in November 1999 in Mitrovica to house about 500 Roma refugees whose homes had been looted and then destroyed after the war by extremist Albanians returning from exile. When concerns were raised that the camps were being built on toxic wasteland, the UN promised that they would only be used for 45 days, until new homes could be found. If homes could not be found, the UN said, it would take the Roma abroad to be resettled.
Nine years later the refugees are still living on the toxic wasteland. Since 2004 blood tests have shown that the levels of lead in several of the children in the camps were the highest recorded in medical history. To date 77 Roma have died in the camps. Many of them are small children, who are amongst the most vulnerable to lead poisoning because their immune systems are not yet fully developed. More than 50 Roma women have also suffered miscarriages because of lead poisoning.
Dr Klaus Runow, Germany’s leading expert on heavy metal poisoning, visited the camps in 2006 and took hair samples from 66 children there. He sent the hair samples to a well-known US laboratory in Chicago. Tests on the hair showed that the children were not only suffering from fatal levels of lead poisoning but that they also had dangerously high levels of 36 other toxic elements.
Later that year the UN finally decided to close two of the camps, but then only moved the refugees to another camp – called Osterode – just 50 metres away. Several months earlier the French Army had abandoned this military camp after their doctors had warned all soldiers serving there not to father a child for nine months because of the high lead levels in their blood.
German newspaper Bild arranged for a family of eight to be taken from one of the camps to Germany for treatment. Medical tests there showed all were suffering organ and brain damage from lead poisoning. Doctors revealed that one of the children, seven-year-old Denis, had the liver of a 50-year-old alcoholic and would probably die prematurely.
Although the UN does not deny that an entire generation of Roma children living in these camps could face brain damage and premature death, it still refuses to evacuate the 500 refugees to a lead-free area and to provide them with proper medical treatment. The UN says the only solution is to build homes for these refugees away from the source of poisoning. But most agree this will still take several years.
The CEO of Mattel would probably be charged with offences carrying a life sentence if American children had such high toxicity levels in their blood after playing with one of Mattel’s lead-painted toys. But in UN-administered Kosovo, officials are not even questioned.

Paul Polanksy

Ronnie Drew:Death of a colossus

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