A pastor from Sioux City, Iowa, has demanded that the city remove a newly appointed gay activist member of its Human Rights Commission who told him that he and his family deserved to “burn in hell” for opposing homosexuality. …read more
Source: The Christian Post
MINOT, NORTH DAKOTA – What a world we live in. It seems that humanity — particularly movers, shakers, and decision makers around the world — are able to create reality out of thin air, or more precisely, out of hot air.
The Australian government has declared that there are now three sexes; the third is intersex. This declaration has followed the country’s Human Rights Commission’s recommendation that the government develop national guidelines permitting individuals to have the option to select their gender as (M) male, (F) female, or (X) indeterminate/intersex/unspecified.
Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus explained the need for the new sexual identification: “We recognize individuals may identify, and be recognized within the community, as a gender other than the gender they were assigned at birth or during infancy, or as an indeterminate gender. This should be recognized and reflected in their personal records held by departments and agencies.”
Changing sexual identification requires an applicant to provide a statement from his/her/its doctor or psychologist, as well as a valid Australian passport, a state or territory birth certificate, or other document showing his/her/its gender. The Australian government has concluded that it is, for an unspecified reason, necessary to give citizens the option to unilaterally change their gender identification. It is striking the Attorney-General, of all persons, believes that gender is “assigned at birth or during infancy.” Apparently, he has also concluded that this “assignment” is changeable simply on the basis of desire. Accordingly, as of July 1, 2013, Australia now gives its citizens a choice to define themselves legally as male, female, or X.
Reasonable people know that gender is not assigned; it is determined at conception. The human species has only two genders. Even so-called sex change operations, which are unnatural, do not change sexual DNA identification. Instead, the operations simply introduce artificial physical changes; the pre- and post- “therapy” manipulates hormonal balances. These medical procedures do not change the sexual DNA of individuals.
Whether one supports, opposes, or has no opinion of individuals’ right to engage in artificial tampering with the human body in an effort to change visual and hormonal realities, no sexual change occurs. The only change is the tampering.
Everyone in the rational world understands that a human being is either male or female. Only in the make-believe world of political correctness does anyone pretend other options actually exist. Yet, the make-believe world has been forced upon us. Until recently, psychologists properly classified homosexual behavior and gender confusion as unnatural, and therefore constituting disorders. This classification was grounded in the view that such behavior is unnatural and its practice results in harm, both physical and psychological.
Cross-dressing, homosexual attractions, believing oneself to be transgender, and more are many things — but normal or natural they are not. This does not mean such activities are not practiced; many unnatural and harmful activities are undertaken. Murder, rape, and theft are examples; but they have not been defined, as have homosexuality and gender confusion, as normative — yet.
The Australian government’s declaration establishing a third sexual status not …read more
The Commission for Human Rights and Minorities of the lower house of Brazil‘s Congress has banned the presence of outsiders from its sessions to keep out protesters demanding the resignation of its president, evangelical pastor Marco Feliciano.
The decision to hold closed sessions was taken Wednesday night.
Critics say that statements made by Congressman Feliciano of the Christian Social Party show that he is homophobic and racist. Feliciano was elected to head the commission last month.
On his Twitter page, Feliciano recently said that AIDS was a “gay cancer” and that Africa has been “cursed since the times of Noah,” which explains the poverty, violence and disease afflicting that continent.
Feliciano denies being homophobic or a racist and has said he would not resign.
“I am not homophobic,” Feliciano said in a recent sermon. “I am against their promiscuity. I don’t want my daughters to go out on the streets and see men with shaved legs kissing each other. The Brazilian family must be respected.”
Avaaz, the U.S.-based group that campaigns on various issues, from promoting democracy to fighting poverty, corruption and climate change, said Feliciano should step down.
“Feliciano has proved repeatedly that he is inappropriate for this post. His last move to kick people out of the House is unprecedented. Democracy has been suspended at the Human Rights Commission and the Christian Social Party must give him marching orders now,” the group said Thursday in an email .
Celebrities have also come out against Feliciano.
On Wednesday, actor Bruno Gagliasso posted on Instagram a photo of him kissing fellow actor Matheus Nachtergaele, and on his Twitter page he wrote: “The less you know the more you judge.”
Also on Wednesday, Daniel Mercury, one of Brazil‘s most popular singers told the G1 news website that she was in a lesbian relationship with journalist Malu Vercosa and added “I am in love with Malu, with Brazil, with individual freedoms. We cannot ignore the conquests we have achieved. We cannot walk backward like the Felicianos of the world.’
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
A Sri Lankan government minister has criticized a U.N. resolution that calls on the island nation to thoroughly investigate war crimes allegedly committed during its civil war, saying it attempts to divide the country.
Dalas Alahapperuma, minister of youth affairs, said Friday that “imperialists are misusing the U.N. Human Rights Commission to implement their neo-divide-and-rule policy and Sri Lanka has been chosen as a laboratory to test that policy.”
His comments came a day after the UNHRC approved the U.S.-backed resolution. The resolution followed a U.N. report alleging Sri Lanka‘s government may be to blame for tens of thousands of civilian deaths during the military campaign to defeat the Tamil Tiger rebels.
The quarter-century civil war ended in 2009.
San Francisco leaders and the local Muslim community are slamming what they call a series of anti-Islam bus ads that contain quotes attributed to terrorists.
The ads, which began appearing on at least 10 city buses Monday, contain quotes such as one attributed to the militant Islamic group Hamas that reads: “Killing Jews is worship that brings us closer to Allah.”
“San Francisco is a city that celebrates its diversity and hateful speech and discrimination against our Arab and Muslim communities will never be tolerated,” Mayor Ed Lee said according to KTVU.
Lee, District Attorney George Gascon and other elected officials joined Arab and Muslim community leaders to publicly condemn the ads Monday, calling them racist.
“These offensive ads serve no purpose than to denigrate our city’s Arab and Muslim communities,” Gascon said.
The ads are paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative and feature Usama bin Laden, the Times Square car bomber and the alleged gunman in the Fort Hood, Texas, shootings accompanied by quotes about warfare and weapons that the group links to Islam.
The group ran similar ads in San Francisco in August and has also posted ads in New York City, including one in September that called enemies of Israel “savages.”
San Francisco‘s transit agency believes a First Amendment court decision forces it to accept the advertising. It plans to give the $5,000 used to pay for the ads to the city’s Human Rights Commission to study the impact of discrimination on San Francisco‘s Islamic communities and run its own ads against discrimination.
American Freedom Defense Initiative‘s executive director, Pamela Geller, told The Associated Press on Tuesday the purpose of the campaign is to show the “reality of jihad and root causes of terrorism, from the words of jihadists themselves.”
“City officials denounce our ads, but not the actual quotes from high-profile jihadists calling for holy war and genocide,” she said in an email.
“Our new campaign focuses on how jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Mexican officials are investigating a father’s complaint that his 7-year-old son died after a violent school bullying incident.
The governmental Human Rights Commission in the western state of Jalisco says it is also investigating hospital and school officials for possible negligence in the death of the boy, whose name has not been released.
Rights Commission Complaints Director Luis Arturo Jimenez said Tuesday that the boy died over the weekend of an acute respiratory infection.
The boy’s father told the commission that an older classmate had forcibly submerged the boy’s head in a toilet at their government-run school.
The father said he took the boy to a government hospital, but doctors there failed to detect the infection and told him it was a stomach ailment.
San Francisco leaders are denouncing a series of anti-Islamic advertisements that will appear on 10 city buses.
Several leaders joined Arab and Muslim community leaders to publicly condemn the ads as racist and offensive.
The ads are paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative and feature Osama bin Laden, the Times Square car bomber and the alleged gunman in the Fort Hood, Texas, shootings.
The city’s transit agency says it will give the $5,000 used to pay for the ads to the city’s Human Rights Commission to study the impact of discrimination on San Francisco‘s Islamic communities.
The group ran similar ads in San Francisco in August and has also posted ads in New York City, including one in September that called enemies of Israel “savages.”
Vigilantes who have taken up arms against drug cartel violence and common crime in southern Mexico announced Thursday they will bring charges ranging from organized crime to kidnapping and extortion against 50 men and three women who they have been holding prisoner at improvised jails.
Villagers armed with old hunting rifles, ancient pistols and small-bore shotguns set up armed patrols and roadblocks in the township of Ayutla almost one month ago to defend their communities against crime, saying authorities have failed to bring peace and safety to the Pacific coast state of Guerrero. So far, the state government has tolerated but not formally recognized the self-defense squads.
The growing movement toward self-policing, which has since spread to other towns in Guerrero, has sparked concern among human rights officials who say residents shouldn’t be allowed to take the law into their own hands.
“What is happening in Guerrero state is a warning sign that should alert authorities to do their duty and guarantee public safety, to avoid having these (vigilante) activities grow and outstrip the power of official institutions,” said the head of the National Human Rights Commission, Raul Plascencia. But in townships like Ayutla, it is clear the vigilante movement already has authorities cowed.
Villagers in squads of about a dozen patrol roads and search passing motorists, checking their identification against handwritten lists of “bad guys.”
On Thursday, the unbound, unsmiling detainees were marched between rows of armed, masked vigilantes in the town square of El Meson, in the township of Ayutla. While the detainees appeared to be clean and adequately fed, and bore no obvious signs of mistreatment, reporters at the scene were not allowed to speak with them.
Two weeks before, angry villagers had turned back a team of Guerrero state human rights officials who had gone to visit the detainees and ensure they were being properly treated.
Human rights officials appear to be hamstrung; Mexican law allows rights commissions to investigate only abuses by authorities, not abuses committed by civilians against other civilians.
“We are not even sure if there are any authorities involved here,” the head of the Guerrero state Human Rights Commission, Juan Alarcon Hernandez, said at the time.
Bruno Placido, the head of a community activist group and a leader of the vigilantes’ movement, said the detainees, whom the movement refers to as “people under investigation” not prisoners, would be given a trial by an assembly of villagers.
But Placido did not say what procedures would be used or what kind of defense the detainees would be allowed to mount. “All that will be decided by the assembly,” Placido said.
The trials are expected to start next week. However, the village is tightly patrolled and it remains unclear whether defense lawyers, rights officials or reporters would be allowed into the trials.
The town square of El Meson was crowded with villagers and local farmers watching the prisoner roll call Thursday; most of the detainees, who ranged from teenagers to adults, appeared to be from the same poor farmer stock as the villagers.
However, residents in Ayutla said drug gangs have been moving up from the nearby coastal resort of Acapulco, bringing cartel-style violence, kidnapping extortion with them.
Guerrero state Attorney General Martha Garzon Bernal told local media Thursday the vigilantes have no legal right to hold detainees, and said kidnapping complaints could be brought against them.
Since 1995, about 80 villages in Guerrero state have organized legally-recognized “community police” forces in which poorly armed villagers detain and prosecute people.
With their own jails, “courts” and punishments that can include forced labor for the town or re-education talks, the community police are usually recognized by state law. However, the self-defense forces in Ayutla don’t belong to that system.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The young man at the roadside checkpoint wept softly behind the red bandanna that masked his face. At his side was a relic revolver, and his feet were shod in the muddy, broken boots of a farmer.
Haltingly, he told how his cousin’s body was found in a mass grave with about 40 other victims of a drug gang. Apparently, the cousin had caught a ride with an off-duty soldier and when gunmen stopped the vehicle, they killed everyone on the car.
“There isn’t one of us who hasn’t felt the pain … of seeing them take a family member and not being able to ever get them back,” said the young civilian self-defense patrol member, who identified himself as “just another representative of the people of the mountain.”
Now he has joined hundreds of other men in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero who have taken up arms to defend their villages against drug gangs, a vigilante movement born of frustration at extortion, killings and kidnappings that local police are unable, or unwilling, to stop.
Vigilantes patrol a dozen or more towns in rural Mexico, the unauthorized but often tolerated edge of a growing movement toward armed citizen self-defense squads across the country.
“The situation Mexico is experiencing, the crime, is what has given the communities the legitimacy to say, ‘We will assume the tasks that the government has not been able to fulfill,'” said rights activist Roman Hernandez, whose group Tlachinollan has worked with the community forces.
The young man and his masked cohorts stop cars at a checkpoint along the two-lane highway that runs past mango and palm trees to Ayutla, a dusty, sun-struck town of concrete homes with red-tile roofs. Pigs, chickens and skinny dogs root in the dirt while the mountains of the Pacific Coast range loom above.
The men wear fading t-shirts, leather sandals and most are armed with old hunting rifles or ancient 20-gauge shotguns hanging from their shoulders on twine slings as they stop cars and check the IDs of passing drivers.
The reach of drug gangs based in Acapulco, about 45 miles (75 kilometers) away, had intensified to the point that they were demanding protection payments from almost anybody with any property: truck and bus drivers, cattle ranchers, store owners. In a region where farmworkers make less than $6 per day, the situation grew intolerable for everyone.
“When they extorted money from the rancher, he raised the price of beef, and the store owner raised the price of tortillas,” said a short, stocky defense-patrol commander who wore a brown ski mask and a black leather jacket. Because the patrols are not formally recognized by the courts, the law or the government — and they fear drug cartel reprisals — most members wear masks and refuse to give their full names.
An example of the danger came in late July when the city’s official police chief was found shot to death on the edge of town.
It was another attack by criminals that sparked the movement in Ayutla: In early January, gang members kidnapped a commander of an existing community police force in a nearby town.
“Maybe they wanted to intimidate us, but it backfired. They just awakened the people,” said one of the older vigilantes, a straw-hatted man without a gun.
Since then, the upstart self-defense movement has spread to other towns and villages such as Las Mesas and El Pericon. On a recent day, Associated Press journalists saw 200 to 300 masked, armed men patrolling, manning checkpoints and moving around in squad-size contingents. Some had only machetes, but most had old single-shot, bolt-action rifles.
Waving guns, they stop each vehicle, and ask for driver’s licenses or voter IDs, which they check against a handwritten list of “los malos,” or “the bad guys.” They sometimes search vehicles and frisk the drivers.
The commander of the Las Mesas vigilantes explains their motives. “We are not against those who are distributing drugs. That’s a way for them to earn a living. Let anyone who wants to poison themselves with drugs do it. What we are against is them messing with the local people.”
The movement so far seems to be well-accepted by local residents fed up with crime that plagued this stretch of mountain highway.
“In less than a month, they have done something that the army and state and federal police haven’t been able to do in years,” said local resident Lorena Morales Castro, who waited in a line of cars at a checkpoint Friday. “They are our anonymous heroes.”
One vigilante passed sheepishly down the line of waiting cars with a jar asking for donations. Some people tossed in coins or small bills.
Housewife Audifa Miranda Arismendi showed up at the vigilante checkpoint in El Pericon with a vat of chilate, a local beverage made of rice, cocoa beans and cinnamon, for the masked men. “It’s good to help out here, because this is for the good of all,” she said.
Some officials, too, have cautiously approved of the do-it-yourself police. Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre offered to supply them with uniforms so they wouldn’t be confused with masked gang members, but he also said he is trying to eliminate the need for vigilantes by beefing up official forces.
Community and indigenous rights activists often see citizen patrols as a good alternative or addition to standard rural police forces that are considered corrupt or repressive.
But clearly, the vigilante squads here present problems even in their first few weeks. The vigilantes in Guerrero are holding, by their own account, 44 people accused of crimes ranging from homicide to theft. Nobody outside the village of El Zapote, where they are being held in a makeshift jail, knows what conditions they are being held in, or what charges, if any, there are against them.
When the head of the Guerrero state Human Rights Commission, Juan Alarcon Hernandez, showed up to check on the prisoners’ condition, he was met by about 100 angry villagers who said they didn’t want anyone to visit the prisoners. “No, no, no. We want justice!” the crowd shouted.
“We wanted to see what condition these people are in, as a human rights issue and as a humanitarian issue,” said Alarcon Hernandez. Eventually, he and his aides turned around and left, unsure how to proceed, because the self-defense squads exist in legal limbo.
Still, the idea of citizen patrols is spreading in Mexico.
In 2011, townsfolk in the pine-covered-hill town of Cheran in neighboring Michoacan state began armed patrols in the face of what they said were the killings of farmers by illegal loggers in league with drug traffickers. In the northern state of Chihuahua, a community of farmers and ranchers known as Colonia Lebaron — most of whom hold dual U.S. citizenship — set up self-defense squads following the 2009 killings of two of its members.
And in the drug-plagued northern state of Sinaloa, the mayor of Concordia, Jose Elijio Medina, responded to a massacre, which forced everyone in a remote hamlet to flee, by calling for the Mexican army to revive the Rural Self Defense Corps, units of armed farmers it once helped train and supervise. While the army did not respond to requests to say how many of the units remain, local media have reported the army has been trying to wind down the few remaining units.
Since 1995, about 80 villages in Guerrero state have organized legal “community police” forces in which poorly armed villagers detain and prosecute people.
With their own jails, “courts” — actually village assemblies that can hand down verdicts — and punishments that can include forced labor for the town or re-education talks, the community police are recognized by state law, though rights activist Hernandez said there is still friction when community rules intersect with the formal legal system.
He pointed to one incident in 2012 where a judge and a detective in the Guerrero town of San Luis Acatlan arrested a community police leader for exceeding his authority. Villagers responded by arresting the judge, the detective and an assistant.
Members of the vigilante squads in Guerrero say what they want from the government is some kind of salary, not modern weapons. What counts, they say, are their ties to the community and resistance to corruption.
“When the people are united, it doesn’t matter if it’s a .22, a 16-gauge shotgun or 20-gauge. It’s that when we are united, not even bullets from an AK-47 can defeat us,” said the self-defense commander in Las Mesas. “They can’t kill us all.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The young man at the roadside checkpoint wept softly behind the red bandanna that masked his face. At his side was a relic revolver, and his feet were shod in the muddy, broken boots of a farmer.
Haltingly, he told how his cousin’s body was found in a mass grave with about 40 other victims of a drug gang. Apparently, the cousin had caught a ride with an off-duty soldier and when gunmen stopped the vehicle, they killed everyone on the car.
“There isn’t one of us who hasn’t felt the pain … of seeing them take a family member and not being able to ever get them back,” said the young civilian self-defense patrol member, who identified himself as “just another representative of the people of the mountain.”
Now he has joined hundreds of other men in the southern Mexico state of Guerrero who have taken up arms to defend their villages against drug gangs, a vigilante movement born of frustration at extortion, killings and kidnappings that local police are unable, or unwilling, to stop.
Vigilantes patrol a dozen or more towns in rural Mexico, the unauthorized but often tolerated edge of a growing movement toward armed citizen self-defense squads across the country.
“The situation Mexico is experiencing, the crime, is what has given the communities the legitimacy to say, ‘We will assume the tasks that the government has not been able to fulfill,'” said rights activist Roman Hernandez, whose group Tlachinollan has worked with the community forces.
The young man and his masked cohorts stop cars at a checkpoint along the two-lane highway that runs past mango and palm trees to Ayutla, a dusty, sun-struck town of concrete homes with red-tile roofs. Pigs, chickens and skinny dogs root in the dirt while the mountains of the Pacific Coast range loom above.
The men wear fading t-shirts, leather sandals and most are armed with old hunting rifles or ancient 20-gauge shotguns hanging from their shoulders on twine slings as they stop cars and check the IDs of passing drivers.
The reach of drug gangs based in Acapulco, about 45 miles (75 kilometers) away, had intensified to the point that they were demanding protection payments from almost anybody with any property: truck and bus drivers, cattle ranchers, store owners. In a region where farmworkers make less than $6 per day, the situation grew intolerable for everyone.
“When they extorted money from the rancher, he raised the price of beef, and the store owner raised the price of tortillas,” said a short, stocky defense-patrol commander who wore a brown ski mask and a black leather jacket. Because the patrols are not formally recognized by the courts, the law or the government — and they fear drug cartel reprisals — most members wear masks and refuse to give their full names.
An example of the danger came in late July when the city’s official police chief was found shot to death on the edge of town.
It was another attack by criminals that sparked the movement in Ayutla: In early January, gang members kidnapped a commander of an existing community police force in a nearby town.
“Maybe they wanted to intimidate us, but it backfired. They just awakened the people,” said one of the older vigilantes, a straw-hatted man without a gun.
Since then, the upstart self-defense movement has spread to other towns and villages such as Las Mesas and El Pericon. On a recent day, Associated Press journalists saw 200 to 300 masked, armed men patrolling, manning checkpoints and moving around in squad-size contingents. Some had only machetes, but most had old single-shot, bolt-action rifles.
Waving guns, they stop each vehicle, and ask for driver’s licenses or voter IDs, which they check against a handwritten list of “los malos,” or “the bad guys.” They sometimes search vehicles and frisk the drivers.
The commander of the Las Mesas vigilantes explains their motives. “We are not against those who are distributing drugs. That’s a way for them to earn a living. Let anyone who wants to poison themselves with drugs do it. What we are against is them messing with the local people.”
The movement so far seems to be well-accepted by local residents fed up with crime that plagued this stretch of mountain highway.
“In less than a month, they have done something that the army and state and federal police haven’t been able to do in years,” said local resident Lorena Morales Castro, who waited in a line of cars at a checkpoint Friday. “They are our anonymous heroes.”
One vigilante passed sheepishly down the line of waiting cars with a jar asking for donations. Some people tossed in coins or small bills.
Housewife Audifa Miranda Arismendi showed up at the vigilante checkpoint in El Pericon with a vat of chilate, a local beverage made of rice, cocoa beans and cinnamon, for the masked men. “It’s good to help out here, because this is for the good of all,” she said.
Some officials, too, have cautiously approved of the do-it-yourself police. Guerrero Gov. Angel Aguirre offered to supply them with uniforms so they wouldn’t be confused with masked gang members, but he also said he is trying to eliminate the need for vigilantes by beefing up official forces.
Community and indigenous rights activists often see citizen patrols as a good alternative or addition to standard rural police forces that are considered corrupt or repressive.
But clearly, the vigilante squads here present problems even in their first few weeks. The vigilantes in Guerrero are holding, by their own account, 44 people accused of crimes ranging from homicide to theft. Nobody outside the village of El Zapote, where they are being held in a makeshift jail, knows what conditions they are being held in, or what charges, if any, there are against them.
When the head of the Guerrero state Human Rights Commission, Juan Alarcon Hernandez, showed up to check on the prisoners’ condition, he was met by about 100 angry villagers who said they didn’t want anyone to visit the prisoners. “No, no, no. We want justice!” the crowd shouted.
“We wanted to see what condition these people are in, as a human rights issue and as a humanitarian issue,” said Alarcon Hernandez. Eventually, he and his aides turned around and left, unsure how to proceed, because the self-defense squads exist in legal limbo.
Still, the idea of citizen patrols is spreading in Mexico.
In 2011, townsfolk in the pine-covered-hill town of Cheran in neighboring Michoacan state began armed patrols in the face of what they said were the killings of farmers by illegal loggers in league with drug traffickers. In the northern state of Chihuahua, a community of farmers and ranchers known as Colonia Lebaron — most of whom hold dual U.S. citizenship — set up self-defense squads following the 2009 killings of two of its members.
And in the drug-plagued northern state of Sinaloa, the mayor of Concordia, Jose Elijio Medina, responded to a massacre, which forced everyone in a remote hamlet to flee, by calling for the Mexican army to revive the Rural Self Defense Corps, units of armed farmers it once helped train and supervise. While the army did not respond to requests to say how many of the units remain, local media have reported the army has been trying to wind down the few remaining units.
Since 1995, about 80 villages in Guerrero state have organized legal “community police” forces in which poorly armed villagers detain and prosecute people.
With their own jails, “courts” — actually village assemblies that can hand down verdicts — and punishments that can include forced labor for the town or re-education talks, the community police are recognized by state law, though rights activist Hernandez said there is still friction when community rules intersect with the formal legal system.
He pointed to one incident in 2012 where a judge and a detective in the Guerrero town of San Luis Acatlan arrested a community police leader for exceeding his authority. Villagers responded by arresting the judge, the detective and an assistant.
Members of the vigilante squads in Guerrero say what they want from the government is some kind of salary, not modern weapons. What counts, they say, are their ties to the community and resistance to corruption.
“When the people are united, it doesn’t matter if it’s a .22, a 16-gauge shotgun or 20-gauge. It’s that when we are united, not even bullets from an AK-47 can defeat us,” said the self-defense commander in Las Mesas. “They can’t kill us all.”
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
