“The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that government forces and the Shabbiha had committed the crimes against humanity of murder and of torture, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attack, pillaging and destruction of property,” said the 102-page report by the independent investigators led by Paulo Pinheiro.
Since the beginning of anti-government protests in March 2011, Syrian authorities have subjected tens of thousands of people to arbitrary arrests, unlawful detentions, enforced disappearances, ill-treatment, and torture using an extensive network of detention facilities, an archipelago of torture centers, scattered throughout Syria.
BackChannels experience suggests that if it’s called what it is — “war p___n” — it will attract a lot of viewers, such are the low desires of the world when it comes to deliberately seeking artless depictions of sex and violence. the above URL links to a video of a young man who wears a tire around his chest while receiving a beating.
A UN inquiry has found “massive evidence” that the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is implicated in war crimes as the latest reported death toll in the country’s civil war reached 126,000.
Navi Pillay, the UN’s human rights chief, said a commission of inquiry into human rights violations in Syria “has produced massive evidence … [of] very serious crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity” and that “the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state.”
From August 2008 to July 2009, over 4,200 Zimbabweans died in one of the worst recorded cholera outbreaks in Africa.
The high death toll – far beyond the worst case UN scenario – was the result of collapsed water and sanitation infrastructure and state health services rendered dysfunctional by political tension and hyperinflation.
” . . . rendered dysfunctional by political tension and hyperinflation.”
I would have imagined that “political tension” leads primarily to heart attacks and nasty rhetoric as opposed to interference in the delivery of basic public services. Taking down water sanitation stations, however, has to do with chemicals and some routine maintenance, which may be withheld or denied by removing their funding.
I recall the Zimbabwe’s 2008 cholera outbreak as tracing back to Mugabe’s efforts to sabotage the reputation of a district-level election opponent — and I can’t find the online source for that. This may do:
Before the ZANU-PF government nationalized municipal water authorities in 2006, water treatment and delivery systems worked. The Mugabe regime, however, politicized water for political gain and profit, policies that proved disastrous, and which have clearly contributed to the ongoing cholera epidemic. All Harare residents PHR interviewed reported that trash collection has effectively ceased. Throughout 3 Harare, and especially in the poor high-density areas outside the capital, PHR investigators saw detritus littering streets and clogging intersections. Steady streams of raw sewage flow through the refuse and merge with septic waste. A current Ministry of Health official reported to PHR: There is no decontamination of waste in the country.
While the consequences differ quite between New Jersey and its governor and Zimbabwe and its President for Life (so far), the manner of control — for the malignant among narcissists, “control” over others is what it’s all about — seems dreadfully similar.
In addition to sabotaging basic services to smear opposing district politicians, we know what goes on in President Mugabe’s invention of a state inside his head that, unfortunately, has been imposed on the Zimbabwean experience of reality.
President Mugabe, this with little thanks to the hated white man — and not only white men but people of color everywhere may be thankful for that — has led Zimbabwe on a lifelong tour into the dismal regions of widespread disease, hunger, poverty, and political subjugation.
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Apart from screwing up some east coast traffic royally, as may befit his self-concept, we don’t know what else Governor Christie may be pursuing or thinking about as regards his political enemies. What we do know — what New Jersey’s constituents may know or come to recognize — is a signal from leadership associated with venturing on to a bad track (first the poo bah slows down some traffic . . . ).
USA Today decided to have a little fun with the George Washington Bridge scandal this morning.
The newspaper offered 10 lessons Gov. Chris Christie can learn from fictional mob boss Tony Soprano in the wake of Wednesday’s news.
Damage control follows scandal. Christie’s conversation may well involve “credible denial”, and that’s far from Mugabe’s reflexive finger pointing at Great Britain for all of Zimbabwe’s failure, which is really the expression of his guarded inner state and his manner of responding to that turmoil.
Operating in so scathing an open democracy and with military and treasuries separate from the grasp of a governor, Christie’s political environment may have developed its share of corruption and dirt, but it’s not going to give him the excess of power that may channel into real trouble.
Whatever the trouble, Christie can still clean it up.
That’s more than one might say for “Bobby” Mugabe and a pretty good cast of well established dictators (with far greater powers and reach) worldwide.
Related on the Reestablishment of Cholera in Zimbabwe
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