April 3, 2011 - 10:19AM
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AFP
Catholic charity Caritas says 1000 people have been killed or 'disappeared' in the western Ivory Coast town of Duekoue, where mass graves were reported found after heavy fighting.
The town was seized by fighters supporting president-in-waiting Alassane Ouattara after fierce battles on Tuesday, and reports have emerged of a grisly massacre and discovery of mass graves.
"Caritas teams visiting Duekoue in Ivory Cost are reporting a thousand people have been killed there or 'disappeared'," the charity said in a statement on its website.
Advertisement: Story continues belowOuattara's forces were fighting to oust backers of strongman Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to step down after losing November elections.
"The massacre took place in the 'Carrefour' quarter of town, controlled by pro-Ouattara forces, during clashes on Sunday March 27 to Tuesday March 29," the statement read.
Caritas does not know who was responsible for the killing but said a proper investigation must take place to establish the truth.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday that at least 800 people were killed in one day in what appeared to be an incident of inter-ethnic violence "particularly shocking by its size and brutality".
"At least 800 people were killed in Duekoue on Tuesday," an ICRC spokeswoman in Geneva, Dorothea Krimitsas, said, adding that information on the deaths had been gathered by Red Cross representatives who visited the area on Thursday and Friday.
"There is no doubt that something on a large scale took place in this city, on which the ICRC is continuing to gather information," she said, adding that Red Cross representatives had "themselves seen a very large number of bodies".
Guillaume N'Gefa from the human rights division of the UN mission in the country said that of 330 killed in the town earlier this week, most were victims of Ouattara forces but over 100 were killed by pro-Gbagbo troops.
"330 people were killed between Monday and Wednesday ... the majority were executed by 'dozos'," said N'Gefa, referring to traditional hunters fighting in Ouattara's army.
© 2011 AFP
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Saturday, April 2, 2011
Mass graves, '1000 dead' in Ivory Coast
Gainesville Pastor in Koran Burnings Remains Unrepentant
Yet Terry Jones, the pastor who organized a mock trial that ended with the burning of a Koran and led to violence and deaths in Afghanistan, remains unrepentant. He said he was “saddened” and “moved” by the deaths, but given the chance, he would do it all over again.
“It was intended to stir the pot; if you don’t shake the boat, everyone will stay in their complacency,” Mr. Jones said in an interview at his office in the Dove World Outreach Center on Saturday. “Emotionally, it’s not all that easy. People have tried to make us responsible for the people who are killed. It’s unfair and somewhat damaging.
“Did our action provoke them,” the pastor said. “Of course. Is it a provocation that can be justified? Is it a provocation that should lead to death? When lawyers provoke me, when banks provoke me, when reporters provoke me, I can’t kill them. That would not fly.”
Mr. Jones, 59, with his white walrus moustache, craggy red face and basso profundo voice, seems like a man from a different time. Sitting at his desk in his mostly unadorned office, he keeps a Bible in a worn brown leather cover by his side and a “Braveheart” poster within sight. Both, he said, provide sustenance for the mission at hand: Spreading the word that Islam and the Koran are instruments of “violence, death and terrorism.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Jones said, he had received 300 death threats, mostly via e-mail and telephone, and had been told by the F.B.I. that there was a $2.4 million contract on his life.
For protection, his followers — the 20 to 30 who are still left — openly carry guns (they have licenses, he said) and have become more rigorous about checking their cars and the bags of visitors. The church is locked. Police protection is sometimes required when the members travel, Mr. Jones said.
Mr. Jones’s rustic church sits on 20 acres of land, up a long driveway that is dotted with Australian pines. There is a small above-ground pool, and three police cars idled nearby on Saturday.
“I don’t right now feel personally afraid,” he said. “But we are armed.”
Mr. Jones said he the decision to hold the mock trial of the Koran on March 20 was not made lightly. “We were worried,” he said. “We knew it was possible. We knew they might act with violence.”
There were similar predications last year, when Mr. Jones threatened to burn the Islamic holy book on Sept. 11. When that decision was being discussed, throngs of reporters descended on the church, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates personally called and asked him not to do it. President Obama appealed to him over the airwaves.
This time would be different — and not just because the event would be held in relative obscurity, with only a small group of sympathizers. This time, Mr. Jones said, there would be a trial, a fact that he said added heft to his decision.
He teamed up with Truth TV, a satellite channel out of California that is led by Ahmed Abaza, a former Muslim who converted to Christianity and who, Mr. Jones said, sympathizes with the church’s message.
The pastor said Truth TV reached out to him last year after he canceled his plan to burn the Koran, and a partnership of sorts has flourished since then. Mr. Abaza helped provide him with most of the witnesses and lawyers for the mock trial, Mr. Jones said.
“I was not the judge,” said Mr. Jones, who also said he has read only portions of the Koran and not the entire text.
There would be a prosecutor and a defense lawyer for the Koran, an imam from Texas. There would be witnesses — although the defense did not call any — and a jury.
Yes, he said, he knew some of the jurors, Mr. Jones said, and others came to the event after learning about it through his group’s Facebook page. (“People were afraid, so not many volunteered,” he said.) And yes, perhaps, his Facebook followers voted on the online poll that sentenced the Koran to burning.
Nevertheless, he said, “It was as fair a trial as we could have.”
Truth TV streamed the mock trial live to the Arab world in Arabic but chose not to broadcast the actual burning.
Mr. Jones’s mission is not a popular one in these parts. The Dove World Outreach Center’s membership evaporated after his preaching began to focus on what Mr. Jones said are the dangers of Islam.
“We don’t have any members,” said Mr. Jones. “It’s not something your average person wants to do.
“People want to hear the good news. But the church has a responsibility to speak about the word of God. But it also has to speak out about what is right — be it abortion or Islam. Churches and pastors are afraid.”
No longer welcome in Gainesville — which he said he considered too small and unenlightened to understand his message — he is seeking to move. A bigger city, like Los Angeles, might be more open to his message, he added.
First, though, he has to sell the church’s property, which is not easy in Florida, which is one of the nation’s foreclosure capitals. Meanwhile, as his personal stake in his mission grows deeper, his bank account is running dry.
“Things are not easy at this particular time,” said Mr. Jones, a Missouri native whose first career was as hotel manager. “This has not been a money-making venture.”
Residents in this college town, home to the University of Florida, are also less than thrilled.
“We have definitely felt pressure to move,” he added. “Gainesville will not award us keys to the city.”
Out front of the church, signs that read “Islam is of the Devil” have been edited by outsiders to say “Love All Men.” In a housing complex across the street, some of the residents said they cannot wait for Mr. Jones to leave. They said they feared for their safety and were outraged by his message.
“Why are they trying to incite hatred and anger?” asked Shawnna Kochman. “They are mean. God is meant to have loved everyone. It’s a cult.”
Exclusive: Ron Paul's $3M pot of gold - Andy Barr - POLITICO.com
Ron Paul raked in roughly $3 million during the first quarter through his various political organizations, POLITICO has learned.
Though not all of that money can be transferred to a potential presidential campaign, the big haul demonstrates Paul’s continuing force as a grassroots-powered online fundraiser.
The trials of Nunavu
Nebraska woman is mayor — and only resident — of her town | The Raw Story
KANSAS CITY, Mo (Reuters) - Elsie Eiler is the most admired person in Monowi, Neb. She is also the smartest, wealthiest, best-looking and youngest.
"And the oldest," she is quick to add.
When you are the only resident of a community, every title fits.
Eiler, 77, is the lone inhabitant of Monowi, a village in northeast Nebraska. That is unique, according to new 2010 U.S. Census data, which indicates Monowi to be the only incorporated town, village or city in the country with only one resident.
Afghan Violence Spre
Terry Jones: How fre
Afghan Violence Spreads Over Terry Jones' Quran Burning - ABC News
Nine protesters were killed today in Kandahar, where hundreds marched holding copies of the Quran when security forces shot into the air to disperse the crowd.
Zalmai Ayubi, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said it is unclear how the protestors were killed.
"Some wicked and destructive people placed themselves amongst the protesters and started rioting throughout the entire Kandahar city. The enemies of the people and country also burned down the furniture and a bus at a ladies' high school in Kandahar and destroyed some other properties," said a statement from the governor's office, according to The Associated Press.
Malcolm X Biographer Dies on Eve of a Revealing Work
The book is scheduled to be published on Monday, and Mr. Marable had been looking forward to leading a vigorous public discussion of his ideas. But on Friday Mr. Marable, 60, died in a hospital in New York as a result of medical problems he thought he had overcome. Officials at Viking, which is publishing the book, said he was able to look at it before he died. But as his health wavered, they were scrambling to delay interviews, including an appearance on the “Today” show in which his findings would have finally been aired.
The book challenges both popular and scholarly portrayals of Malcolm X, the black nationalist leader, describing a man often subject to doubts about theology, politics and other matters, quite different from the figure of unswerving moral certitude that became an enduring symbol of African-American pride.
It is particularly critical of the celebrated “Autobiography of Malcolm X,” now a staple of college reading lists, which was written with Alex Haley and which Mr. Marable described as “fictive.” Drawing on diaries, private correspondence and surveillance records to a much greater extent than previous biographies, his book also suggests that the New York City Police Department and the F.B.I. had advance knowledge of Malcolm X’s assassination but allowed it to happen and then deliberately bungled the investigation.
“This book gives us a richer, more profound, more complicated and more fully fleshed out Malcolm than we have ever had before,” Michael Eric Dyson, the author of “Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X” and a professor of sociology at Georgetown University, said on Thursday. “He’s done as thorough and exhaustive a job as has ever been done in piecing together the life and evolution of Malcolm X, rescuing him from both the hagiography of uncritical advocates and the demonization of undeterred critics.”
Over the course of a 35- year academic career, Mr. Marable wrote and edited numerous books about African-American politics and history, and remained one of the nation’s leading Marxist historians. But the biography is likely to be regarded as his magnum opus. He obtained about 6,000 pages of F.B.I. files on Malcolm X through the Freedom of Information Act, as well as records from the Central Intelligence Agency, State Department and New York district attorney’s office. He also interviewed members of Malcolm X’s inner circle and security team, as well as others who were present when Malcolm X was shot to death.
Poor health had slowed his progress, but Mr. Marable remained optimistic. “For a quarter-century I have had sarcoidosis, an illness that gradually destroyed my pulmonary functions,” he wrote in the volume’s acknowledgments. “In the last year in researching this book, I could not travel and I carried oxygen tanks in order to breathe. In July 2010, I received a double lung transplant, and following two months’ hospitalization, managed a full recovery.” (An interview with The New York Times was planned, but did not take place.)
The book’s account of the assassination of Malcolm X, then 39, on Feb. 21, 1965, is likely to be its most incendiary claim. Mr. Marable contends that although Malcolm X embraced mainstream Islam at least two years before his death, law-enforcement authorities continued to see him as a dangerous rabble-rouser.
“They had the mentality of wanting an assassination,” Gerry Fulcher, a former New York City police detective who participated in the surveillance of Malcolm X, told Mr. Marable for the book.
That is why “law-enforcement agencies acted with reticence when it came to intervening with Malcolm’s fate,” the book asserts. “Rather than investigate the threats on his life, they stood back.”
In a statement, Paul Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department, said, ”As much as conspiracy theorists may press to reach a sweeping, unsupported and untrue conclusion, the fact is the N.Y.P.D. was not complicit in Malcolm X’s assassination, and it’s gratuitously false to suggest as much.”
Based on his new material, Mr. Marable concluded that only one of the three men convicted of killing Malcolm X was involved in the assassination, and that the other two were at home that day. The real assassination squad, he writes, had four other members, with connections to the rival Nation of Islam’s Newark mosque — two of whom are still alive and have never been charged.
Since Malcolm X’s death, the posthumous “Autobiography,” along with “Malcolm X,” Spike Lee’s 1992 film drawn from it, has made a pop-culture hero out of the man who was born Malcolm Little. But the Marable book contradicts and complicates key elements of his life story.
Malcolm X himself contributed to many of the fictions, Mr. Marable argues, by exaggerating, glossing over or omitting important incidents in his life. These episodes include a criminal career far more modest than he claimed, an early homosexual relationship with a white businessman, his mother’s confinement in a mental hospital for nearly 25 years and secret meetings with leaders of groups as divergent as the Ku Klux Klan and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
“Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” shows, for instance, that at a time when Malcolm X claimed in the autobiography to have “devoted himself to increasingly violent crime” in New York, he was actually in Lansing, Mich., his hometown. Mr. Marable attributes the embroidery of “amateurish attempts at gangsterism” to Malcolm X’s wish to demonstrate that the Nation of Islam’s gospel of pride and self-respect had the power to redeem even the most depraved criminal.
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