Libyan art, from the heart;massive patriotic flags with slogans that encouraged the rebels

Art work by Libyan graffiti artist Adnan Al Gargani [Imran Khan]
Over the last four weeks I have crisscrossed what feels like the whole of Libya, but in reality is probably only half of it.

The one constant in every town I have visited is the sometimes extraordinary, sometimes awful graffiti that covers every white wall.

After the fighting (and probably during it knowing the fearless nature of Libyans), graffiti artists took to the streets and painted.They painted massive patriotic flags with slogans that encouraged the rebels.

They painted downright crude and wicked caricatures of the Gaddafi family and regime that compared them to, well, rats.It's worth remembering Gaddafi called the rebels rats.But one piece really caught my eye.

Silhouetted against the red, green and black of the Libyan flag was a scarf-wearing protester, her eyes full of the promise of revolution.

Of all the probably thousands of pieces of graffiti I had seen this one really stood out. It seemed to sum up Libyan hopes and dreams.

I had to track down the artist. We began by asking around the neighbourhood. Someone must know who painted it, surely?

After a couple of hours we gave up.In keeping with the secretive nature of graffiti art, he had simply painted and gone.

But in between the travelling and the deadline pressure of delivering news stories I never forgot those eyes.

After three weeks of fruitless calls I had given up hope of ever meeting the artist behind the mural. Then a breakthrough. A neighbour returned a phone call with a location. Twenty-eight days after first seeing the piece, I had found the person responsible.

I met Adnan Al Gargani at his home in central Tripoli. He's a quiet unassuming man and to see him, in smart shirt, blue jeans and shoes, he is as far removed from the stereotypical, hooded, paint-stricken London graffiti artist as you can imagine. I ask him how he came up with the idea for the painting.

"I saw an image of a woman protesting in a magazine. She was Libyan, but she was out on the streets fighting for freedom, and it struck me. I had to paint it"

It seems the photo had struck Adnan as much as his painting of it struck me.

I then asked him about what life, and art, were like under Gaddafi."There was nothing, no freedom of expression. I was offered lots of money to do paintings of Gaddafi, but I couldn't. I could have been rich, but no."

Adnan lives a modest life. His studio is dotted with canvas, an easel sits in the corner. On his shelves sit model planes, cars, guitars. Everything that suggests a restless and creative mind.

I watch as he patiently paints on canvas his mural I so admire.
I understand that many street art purists will balk at the idea that I had Adnan paint me his mural on canvas.

After all, the point of street art is its temporary nature. It's on a wall one day, painted over the next day.

The same fate awaits Adnan's work. I know one day that Libya's graffiti will be painted over.

The bombed wrecks of its streets will be repaired, the bullet holes filled in.

So, to have one example I can keep of this revolutionary art, a reminder of what once was, is important, to me at least - if only to remind me of my time in Libya.

When the painting is finished I offer Adnan money, after all this is his job, and I appreciate his hard work and time.

He flat out refuses. Instead, in broken English he says, "This is a gift from me."
I am both embarrassed and touched.

My friend jokes, "Libyan art… from the heart"

I laugh along, I don't know why. It's a terrible pun. But one that sums up the graffiti I have seen in the country: From the heart

Hearing on charge framing against Salauddin Quader Chowdhury starts

Dhaka Bureau: The tribunal, headed by its Chairman Justice Nizamul Huq, sunday for the first time began the hearing on charge-framing against Salahauddin Quader Chowdhury for his involvement with the crimes that he allegedly committed during the Liberation War in 1971.
The prosecution on Sunday placed 25 counts of incidents containing 77 crimes against humanity charges allegedly committed by BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury before the International Crimes Tribunal.

The charges include 15 genocide, eleven tortures, 10 confinement, nine abductions, eight murders, eight persecutions, eight “bodily harmed”, seven deportations and one rape.

Prosecutor Zead Al Malum placed the charges as the tribunal for the first time started the hearing on the charge-framing against the detained BNP leader in connection with crimes against humanity committed during the country's Liberation War in 1971.
In connection with crimes against humanity committed during the country's Liberation War
the International Crimes Tribunal is holding hearing on Sunday on the charge-framing against BNP leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury .
Earlier in the morning, detained Salauddin Quader Chy, who faces 24 counts of crimes against humanity, was produced before the three-judge tribunal.
The prosecution on November 14 last year submitted formal charges against the BNP leader, alleging that he had been directly and indirectly involved in crimes including genocide, killing, torture and abduction during the war.
The tribunal on December 19 accepted the charges against Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and fixed January 15 for starting the hearing on charge-framing against him.
Salauddin committed the crimes as an individual and also as the brigadier of collaborating force Al-Shams in Chittagong, as his father Fazlul Quader Chowdhury was the founder of that force and a loyal supporter of the Pakistan rulers, prosecutor Rana Dasgupta said.
Fazlul Quader Chowdhury, who had been a central minister of Pakistan during Ayub Khan regime, became the Speaker of Pakistan National Assembly in 1963.
He had established a torture camp at his Goods Hill residence in Raozan, where Salauddin tortured many pro-liberation people during the war for independence, the prosecutor said.
Advocate Rana Dasgupta added the prosecution had collected evidence that Salauddin was responsible for killing more than 100 people including Natun Chandra Singha, founder of Kundeshwari Oushadhalaya; Makhanlal Sharma in Madhya Bahira, and Manindra Barua, Dayal Hari and Mahesh Mahajan in Bishwaspara of Raujan,Chittagong.

Naama Margolese, the eight-year-old Israeli girl, whose routine humiliation by ultra-Orthodox Israelis

I can think of about four million Palestinians who can sympathise with Naama Margolese, the eight-year-old Israeli girl, whose routine humiliation by ultra-Orthodox Israelis on her way to school has "shocked" the nation, uniting the majority of Jewish Israelis in anger at the growing power of harshly conservative Jewish movements in the country.

But you won't be hearing from them any time soon the way this story is being presented.

Coming on the heels of the unprecedented and largely secular protests this past summer in Tel Aviv and other cities to press for affordable housing and "social justice" more broadly,and the recent attacks by extremist settlers against Israeli soldiers, this latest conflict has led many mainstream news outlets to talk of a continuing "religious war" in Israel, pitting secular and moderately religious Jews against an increasingly assertive, militant and expanding ultra-Orthodox sector.

"It doesn't matter what I look like, someone should be able to walk around in sleeveless shirts and pants, and be able to walk down the street and not be harassed," the young girl's Chicago-born mother, Hadassa, explained.

Of course, Palestinians couldn't agree more. But somehow, the vast majority of the Israeli and Western mainstream media seems unaware of the obviously parallels between the treatment of Naama Margolese and Israeli girls and women more broadly by ultra-Orthodox, and the treatment of millions of Palestinians by Israel. Even the most recent Haaretz editorial criticising the growing militarism and violence of the ultra-Orthodox did not mention Palestinians.


In fact, as unpleasant as are the images of a young Jewish girl being screamed and even spit at by Israeli Jewish Taliban, it is still preferable from the point of view of Israel's propaganda efforts to being confronted with heartrending images of Jews attacking Palestinians, never mind religious settlers attacking of young Palestinian children, which is a routine occurrence in the Occupied Territories.

It is ironic that today Jewish-on-Jewish conflict is, from a certain perspective, preferable (at least at the level of spectacle) to Jewish-Palestinian conflict, because for several decades, part of the accepted wisdom surrounding the unwillingness of Israelis to reach a viable peace agreement with Palestinians was that doing so would lead to an untenable level of conflict, and even civil war, within Jewish Israeli society.

The alternative to focusing on this story would be a focus on Israeli High Court's determination on Tuesday that Israel can continue to exploit Palestinian mines and other resources for the benefit of Israelis, even though this is a direct contravention of international law. Or to read an email about a young Palestinian boy, so frightened by Israeli soldiers who have given his family 10 minutes to get their belongings out of their house before it's to be demolished that he stood, shivering outside, wetting his pants. The list goes on and on; all of it, tragically, far worse than the already deplorable hatred and discrimination that Naama has daily faced, just for being a girl.

Sacred women

The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben has described the figure of the "homo sacer", or sacred man, who from ancient Rome to the Middle Ages, and again today, is considered completely outside the law and deprived of all rights of citizenship. He can therefore be killed with impunity, not merely by representatives of the state (the police or army, for example), but by anyone.

Jews and Roma during the Holocaust are the modern epitome of the homo sacer, as are, to a greater or lesser degree, all colonised people, including - and particularly, today, Palestinians, as the South African theorist Achille Mbembe has shown in his work on necropolitics as well as Irish human rights scholar John Reynolds.

But there is a specific manner in which what I would term the "femina sacra", or sacred woman, is also a primary object of violence, whether in Israeli, Palestinian, Egyptian or most other societies for that matter. The much publicised recent army and police violence against women in Egypt is a good example of how, once the general public loses fear of state violence, the state must press even harder by specifically attacking the repository of honour and values - female citizens - as a way of attempting to break down the resistance of society as a whole. (Of course, it rarely works).

Israeli President Shimon Peres declared solemnly that Israelis are "fighting for the soul of the nation and the essence of the state", while a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party declared that the harassment the young girl faces "have no place in sane and moderate Judaism". Excluding women from the full rights of citizenship or the realisation of their humanity - at least as that humanity has come to be nearly universally accepted and codified in international law - is, as one sign held up by a female protester in Bet Shemesh against the ultra-Orthodox put it, "my red line".

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared: "Israel is a democratic, Western, liberal state... In a Western liberal democracy, public space is open and safe for all - men and women alike - and has no room for any harassment or discrimination."

Neither western nor liberal

Of course, Netanyahu is lying. Israel is not democratic in any meaningful sense if one considers that millions of Palestinians under its control for decades have been deprived of citizenship and its attendant rights - a society in which anyway, from elderly man to young girl can become "sacred" - that is, outside the bounds of civilised law, at any moment. Nor is it Western in any meaningful sense in that it has honoured the core ideal of Western modernity largely in the breach (which, of course, only makes it a microcosm of the West writ large). And while gays might have rights - at least in Tel Aviv, for now - it cannot be considered liberal from any perspective when it so thoroughly violates the rights of millions of people.

But as long as Palestinians are absent from the conversation, as long as the focus is on Naama Margolese and the reprehensible conduct towards her, then the fiction that there is still a struggle to be had for Israel's "soul" can be maintained.

Of course, for some adult ultra-Orthodox women in Beit Shemesh, being forced to the back of buses and being prevented from walking on the same side of the street as men or being attacked for not dressing modestly enough is not a problem. "I feel uncomfortable when men look at me," one woman declared in explaining why she doesn't mind being segregated away from men.

We can debate whether the woman who isn't bothered by segregation or the back of the bus is making a free judgment, or has been so cowed by living in an extremely patriarchal and repressive community that she has internalised male dominance to the point of accepting it as both a given and a source of protection - just as so many Muslim women accept and even defend their second class status in countries across the region. But free adults at least have, in theory, a choice. Naama Margolese has clearly not been socialised into the values of this community, and feels frightened and excluded by what its members are trying to impose on her.

Recognising shared oppression

As her mother complained, "they" want to "push us out of" and "take over the city".

This is, of course, a lament which untold numbers of Palestinians can appreciate, from residents of Jaffa pushed out to make way for expensive condominiums to Bedouins whose villages remain unrecognised when their lands aren't being further expropriated to the millions of Palestinians across the Green Line and in exile.

If Israel is to have a chance at surviving as some approximation of the "Jewish democratic state" envisioned by its founders, Jewish Israelis, like Hadassa Margolese and the protesters on behalf of her daughter, or the J20 protesters this summer who took to the streets in huge numbers for "social justice", are all going to have to accept that the injustices against which they are fighting are inseparable from the injustice their society as a whole continues to inflict, far more intensely, upon Palestinians.

I won't get my hopes up for the adults accepting and acting upon this reality any time soon. But as she grows up, we can hope that Naama's firsthand experience of exclusion, oppression, bigotry and even hatred, will help her see the equal humanity of the Israeli Other - Palestinians - more fully than her parent's generation has been able to do.

If that can happen, then however unacceptable Naama Margolese's experience, it will have prepared her for the even greater struggle for full democracy for all the people, men and women, Israelis and Palestinians, living between the River and the Sea, that will soon enough be her generation's to assume.

Mark LeVine is a professor of history at UC Irvine and senior visiting researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden. His most recent books are Heavy Metal Islam (Random House) and Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (Zed Books).

Courtesy:Al Jajeera

87-year-old Chinese activist and journalist has been released

Sun Shucai, an 87-year-old Chinese activist and journalist has been released. He fled to Thailand in November 2006 and has been detained by the Thai authorities in Bangkok since December 2010 . CHINESE ARREST SOUTH KOREAN JOURNALISTS NEAR NORTH KOREAN BORDER
PUBLISHED ON SUNDAY 25 SEPTEMBER 2011.

Reporters Without Borders is worried to learn that the Chinese authorities are holding a group of journalists from the South Korean daily JoongAng Ilbo on suspicion of spying. Arrested near China’s border with North Korea on 20 September, they were reportedly travelling on tourist visas.

“We demand an explanation of this arbitrary detention of a group of journalists whose number has not been confirmed,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Press visas are hard to get and, when journalists lack them, the Chinese authorities often use this as grounds for preventing them from working in this sensitive border area. We call on the authorities to release them without delay.”

According to a report in the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo, the JoongAng Ilbo group consisted of four journalists, the head of a Seoul-based government transport research centre and a local guide. Chinese soldiers arrested them in a supposedly restricted military zone near the River Tumen, which forms the border with North Korea.

South Korean foreign ministry officials told Associated Press on 23 September that the JoongAng Ilbo journalists had been held in a hotel since their arrest near the border. Without saying exactly how many were being held, the officials said the journalists were travelling on tourist visas.

The Chinese authorities do not like foreign reporters visiting the area near the North Korean border. A South Korean freelance journalist, Seok Jae-hyun, was arrested in 2003 for filming North Korean refugees fleeing to China and was held for 14 months on a charge of “trafficking in human beings"

Amnesty accuses Libya's NTC of detainee abuse - Africa - Al Jazeera English

Amnesty accuses Libya's NTC of detainee abuse - Africa - Al Jazeera English

9,000 children have gone missing in Uganda -Where child sacrifice is a business

According to a US State Department report, Uganda has become one of the main source countries for children to be bought and smuggled to Britain.Some 9,000 children have gone missing in Uganda over the past four years, according to a US report Over the last four years, at least 400 African children have been abducted and trafficked to the UK and rescued by the British authorities, according to figures obtained by the BBC. It is unclear how they are smuggled into the country but a sinister picture is emerging of why. Whether it is through leaflets handed out in High Streets or small ads in local newspapers, witch-doctors and traditional African spiritual healers are becoming ever more prominent in Britain. The work many of them do is harmless enough, but there is evidence that some are involved in the abuse of children who have been abducted from their families in Africa, and trafficked to the UK. According to Christine Beddoe, director of the anti-trafficking charity Ecpat UK, a cultural belief in the power of human blood in so-called juju rituals is playing a part in the demand for African children. "Our experience tells us that traffickers can be anybody. They can be people with power, people with money or people involved in witchcraft," she explains. "Trafficking can involve witch-doctors and other types of professionals in the community who are using those practices." Violent and degrading Figures compiled by Ecpat, combined with those of the Metropolitan Police and Ceop, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, show that at least 400 African children have been abducted and trafficked to the UK and rescued by the British authorities. “I would have no problem to get a child officially or there is a way of doing it secretly, abduct a child” Yunus Kabul Testimonies from many of these children have revealed that once they arrive in Britain, they are exposed to violent and degrading treatments, often involving the forced extraction of their blood to be used for clients demanding blood rituals. Some of these victims agreed to share their experiences on the promise of anonymity because they still fear their abusers. One boy explained how witch-doctors took his blood to be used in such rituals: "The traffickers or witch-doctors take your hair and cut your arms, legs, heads and genitals and collect the blood. They say if you speak out I can kill you." Another victim feared for her life, saying the "witch-doctor told me that one day he would need my head. Unaware he was being recorded, Mr Kabul described to the BBC's Chris Rogers how he got hold of children for his customers. "Sometimes I would wake up and he would be standing over me with a knife, every night I was terrified that he would do it." Meanwhile, a girl from Nigeria remains convinced the spell performed on her means she can never identify her traffickers, for fear her family will die. "They told me I was evil and made bad things happen. I believed it and that this was my punishment and what my life would be." Human blood ritual Witch-doctors, or traditional spiritual healers as they prefer to be known, are becoming more prominent in Britain. Many offer "life changing rituals", involving prayer and herbs. A price tag of £350 ($547) would not be uncommon.But there are some who engage in more sinister practices.Posing as a couple with financial problems, I visited 10 witch-doctors. All offered herbal potions to end our money worries, but two also made the offer of a ritual involving human blood. Although, there is no evidence that they themselves were involved in the trafficking and abuse of children, it contributes to a disturbing picture of abduction and abuse. The ease with which a child could be procured was apparent when, posing as a British trafficker, I went looking for help in the cafes and bars in the underworld of the Ugandan capital, Kampala. For $250 (£160) a reformed criminal introduced us to Yunus Kabul, who boasted he had been abducting children for witch-doctors in Africa and abroad, for years. During our conversation he offered as many children as we required. "I have enough, a hundred, no problem. I have so many communications. I have a network across whole of Uganda." People think even talking about juju might lead to something bad happening to them” Det Ch Supt Richard Martin Metropolitan Police Mr Kabul arranged a meeting at an isolated hotel. Unaware he was being recorded, he described how he got hold of children for his customers. "It all depends how they want it done? I can take you to a family home, I would have no problem to get a child officially or there is a way of doing it secretly, abduct a child." I asked Mr Kabul if the police would cause a problem. "I have to find a house where we can take the supply, the children, in a remote area. So the police cannot find them," he explained. Mr Kabul demanded a fee of £10,000 ($15,600) per child. I withdrew from the negotiations. The head of Uganda's Anti-Human Sacrifice Police Task Force, Commissioner Bignoa Moses, admits there is a problem: "We cannot rule out that children end up abroad because as of now we don't have the capacity to monitor each individual and many simply disappear." Back in the UK, despite the testimony of so many victims, the cultural belief in the power of juju is a huge challenge for the authorities. One senior police detective says part of the problem is the silence that surrounds the matter. "While juju is widely believed, it is rarely spoken about publicly. People think even talking about juju might lead to something bad happening to them," says Det Ch Supt Richard Martin, head of the Metropolitan Police's Human Exploitation and Organised Crime Command. "This presents officers with enormous difficulties when it comes to investigating these crimes and bringing the perpetrators to justice." Courtesy BBC

Dalai Lama missing from party as South Africa's anti-apartheid icon and critic TUTU of its government turns 80

Desmond Mpilo Tutu, South Africa's retired archbishop and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has celebrated his 80th birthday.

Known as "The Arch", Tutu is a much-loved figure in his country, mostly for the role he played in ending apartheid.

Friday's birthday celebration, however, was not without controversy.

Earlier in the week he branded South Africa's government, which is led by the African National Congress party, "worse than apartheid" over suspicions that a delay in issuing a visa to Tibet’s Dalai Lama was due to pressure from China.

As a result, the Dalai Lama was unable to attend Tutu’s celebration, but still delivered a message wishing the archbishop well.

Among those in attendance were Graça Machel, Nelson Mandela's wife, and Bono, lead singer of Irish rock band U2.

Sparked debate

Al Jazeera's Tania Page, reporting from Johannesburg, said that Tutu's stinging attack on the government had sparked debate over the current government’s political direction.

Page said that the spat had highlighted "Tutu's ongoing relevance as the country's moral compass".

Susan Booysen, political analyst at the University of the Witwatersrand, said, "He has the gravitas, like no other leader, to say things and be heard.”

South Africans interviewed by Page said that the icon still symbolised perseverance and achievement for the country.

"There's still one person who still has the guts to challenge the government which we're living under, so it's a good thing what he did," said one interviewee.

Another South African interviewed said, "I hope to grow as old as him and to achieve as many things as he did in our country."

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies