Orthodox Network - Shining the Light of Wisdom and Truth
Moscow News June 27, 2006
The Moscow Patriarchate believes that human rights work in Russia has been compromised by the inability to discern real cases of human rights violations and the use of human rights for political purposes, Interfax news agency reports.
Christianity Today July 2006
Seeking to better her life, Irina, 18, answers a newspaper advertisement for a training course in Berlin. Using a falsified passport, she travels from her native Ukraine to Germany. There she is told the school is closed and sent to Belgium for a “job.” Upon arrival, Irina learns she owes those in charge $10,000 and must repay the debt by prostitution. Irina’s handlers take her documents, beat and rape her, and make her a prostitute. Eventually they turn her over to another pimp in Brussels’ red-light district. Watching for a chance at freedom, Irina escapes one day—only to be jailed by the police because she has no documentation.
Wall Street Opinion Journal Melanie Kirkpatrick May 12, 2006
“A North Korean like you is easier to kill than a chicken.”
Old habits die hard–especially those whose disregard could mean death. So it is understandable that the North Korean refugees with whom I met this week set strict ground rules for our interview: no names, no photographs, no indication of their location in the U.S., and no identifying details of the Southeast Asian nation whose government risked the ire of China to permit them to depart for asylum in this country after they sought refuge in the U.S. Embassy there.
Hotzone Kevin Sites Mar 20 2006
Married at the age of four, an Afghan girl was subjected to years of beatings and torture, finally escaping to discover that within all the world’s cruelty, there is also some kindness.
KABUL, Afghanistan – Eleven-year old Gulsoma lay in a heap on the ground in front of her father-in-law. He told her that if she didn’t find a missing watch by the next morning he would kill her. He almost had already.
Venezuela’s Marxist dictatorship is destroying property rights across the country. We’ve noted in the past how it’s happened in the countryside, at sugar farms, on nature reserves, among the large and small corporations, and in apartment and office buildings. But these aren’t the only places – the destruction of property rights also is happening in the poorest neighborhoods.
In an unexpectedly good article, Alex Holland, a writer at Venezuelanalysis, a Chavista propaganda organ, unwittingly describes how even poor shantytown dwellerss with desperate need for title-deed ownership are being badly affected by collectivization, which is destroying the weak property rights these urban poor once had. The writer explains the horrible dynamic with perfect clarity and honesty and then ineptly defends it, making the Marxist propaganda easy for us to gloss over. Evidently, the facts on the ground were just too big for this writer.
Article available for seven days only.
Wall Street Journal MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY December 30, 2005
“On May 27, [1966,] 166 Cubans — civilians and members of the military — were executed and submitted to medical procedures of blood extraction of an average of seven pints per person. This blood is sold to Communist Vietnam at a rate of $50 per pint with the dual purpose of obtaining hard currency and contributing to the Vietcong Communist aggression.
“A pint of blood is equivalent to half a liter. Extracting this amount of blood from a person sentenced to death produces cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. Once the blood is extracted, the person is taken by two militiamen on a stretcher to the location where the execution takes place.”
– InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, April 7, 1967
[Read more...]
The New Yorker Orhan Pamuk Posted 2005-12-12
Turkish author on trial for writing about the Turkish massacre of Armenians.
In Istanbul this Friday—in Şişli, the district where I have spent my whole life, in the courthouse directly opposite the three-story house where my grandmother lived alone for forty years—I will stand before a judge. My crime is to have “publicly denigrated Turkish identity.” The prosecutor will ask that I be imprisoned for three years. I should perhaps find it worrying that the Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was tried in the same court for the same offense, under Article 301 of the same statute, and was found guilty, but I remain optimistic. For, like my lawyer, I believe that the case against me is thin; I do not think I will end up in jail.
This makes it somewhat embarrassing to see my trial overdramatized. I am only too aware that most of the Istanbul friends from whom I have sought advice have at some point undergone much harsher interrogation and lost many years to court cases and prison sentences just because of a book, just because of something they had written. Living as I do in a country that honors its pashas, saints, and policemen at every opportunity but refuses to honor its writers until they have spent years in courts and in prisons, I cannot say I was surprised to be put on trial. I understand why friends smile and say that I am at last “a real Turkish writer.” But when I uttered the words that landed me in trouble I was not seeking that kind of honor.
WorldNetDaily.com Jon Dougherty November 29, 2005
Expert says Chinese leader’s policies led to death of 77 million countrymen
A noted expert in calculating the number of deaths caused by authoritarian regimes says the late Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung’s policies and actions led to the deaths of nearly 77 million of his countrymen, surpassing those killed by Nazi Party founder Adolf Hitler and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin.
R. J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science and a Nobel Peace Prize finalist who has published dozens of books chronicling so-called “democide,” or death by government, said the new Chinese figure – nearly double his previous estimate of about 38 million – was based on what he believes was Mao’s duplicity in China’s great famine of 1958 to 1961.
FrontPageMagazine.com Patrick Devenny June 22, 2005
The far-Left is nothing if not tenacious. Not only has Amnesty International condemned the United States in the harshest possible terms — in the middle of a war when international image is vital — but its most recent report spends more time criticizing the rogue pranks at Gitmo more harshly than the death camps run by the North Koreans.
Rather than apologizing after referring to the American detention center in Guantanamo Bay as a gulag, Amnesty International has attempted a unique maneuver to break out of its public relations death spiral. The “non-partisan” advocacy group has taken to calling actual gulag survivors and begging for their endorsement of Amnesty’s statement. In an editorial published in The Washington Post on June 18th, Soviet gulag veteran Pavel Litvinov recounted how a senior Amnesty staffer called him asking for his public support. When Litvinov suggested there was quite a difference between his own experiences and those of the terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo, the staffer responded “Sure, but after all, it attracts attention to the problem of Guantanamo detainees.”
CHELYABINSK. Father Savva from the temple in Limasol (Cyprus) arrived in Chelyabinsk on May 18. The purpose of his visit is a detective investigation: slave-trade and sex-traffic. Father Savva intends to expose several Russian slave-traffickers and to caution girls leaving for the island about danger. According to the priest, if Russian women are hired to work in Cyprus as waitresses or dancers, prostitution is inescapable.
During his trip to the South Urals, the priest is being accompanied by the father of a girl, who three ago was “hired” as an interpreter for a dance-show group in Cyprus. Oksana, the 25-year old student of S. Ural State Univ. threw herself out of the window after she refused “to service” the clients of a cabaret. It was impossible to prove: Cyprus’ law court decided that her death was an accident.
However, neither the priest nor the girl’s father intend to give up. They are searching for the woman who recruited Oksana, Olga
Osintseva, a resident of Chebarkul. Father Savva hopes for help from the the Russian Orthodox Church and the police. Incidentally, Father Sava organized a shelter for the former sex- slaves; he promises protection, material and spiritual support, legal help to all who were recruited by deceit.
Uralinformbyuro/IA Regnum/Sedmitza.Ru
It looks like UN corruption reaches into a deeper darkness than anyone thought. Nile Gardiner and Joseph Loconte write about forced prostitution, human rights abuses, and more.
There is an interesting debate on torture and interrogation on the City Journal website. Follow the links listed on the left navigation bar.
From the Heritage Foundation:
Sanctions that threaten Sudan’s regime and its oil industry could end the crisis in Darfur. It is past time, argues James Phillips, for countries to put aside their financial interests and let the Security Council act.
Sudan’s regime engineered the crisis “to suppress popular resistance to its radical Islamic agenda.”
So far, 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes, nearly 2 million need humanitarian aid that the regime hinders, and about 50,000 have died.
The U.N.’s response? A timid resolution, promising vague “additional measures” if the killing does not stop.
This foot-dragging cannot continue, concludes Phillips.
From the Heritage Foundation:
Sanctions that threaten Sudan’s regime and its oil industry could end the crisis in Darfur. It is past time, argues James Phillips, for countries to put aside their financial interests and let the Security Council act.
Sudan’s regime engineered the crisis “to suppress popular resistance to its radical Islamic agenda.”
So far, 1.2 million people have been driven from their homes, nearly 2 million need humanitarian aid that the regime hinders, and about 50,000 have died.
The U.N.’s response? A timid resolution, promising vague “additional measures” if the killing does not stop.
This foot-dragging cannot continue, concludes Phillips.
