Portrait of an Activist: Razan Ghazzawi, the Syrian Blogger Turned Exile | TIME.com

http://world.time.com/2013/04/02/portrait-of-an-activist-meet-razan-ghazzawi-the-syrian-blogger-turned-exile/

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Robby Novak alias Kid President

I didn't know about this guy until today I red an article about him....Kid President is a cute kid..very entertaining..no wonder Obama likes him...

child bride in Afganistan

A 6-year-old Afghan girl sold by her father into an impending marriage to pay off a family medical debt got a reprieve Monday: She will now get to stay with her parents, thanks to an anonymous donor who is paying off the debt of $2,500 through an American lawyer, according to a still-developing New York Times report. More on Shine: Child Bride Has Marriage Annulled. Laxmi Sargara is Our Hero of the Day. The girl, Naghma, wound up being bartered by father Taj Mohammad after he borrowed the $2,500 from a fellow refugee-camp resident over the course of a year. The money was to pay for a hospital treatment for his wife and medical care for some of his nine children, including a three-year-old who later froze to death. If he couldn't pay it off in another year, Naghma would be forced to wed the lender's 17-year-old son. More on Yahoo!: Afghan Child Bride's In-Laws Sentenced for Torture "They said, 'Pay back our money,' and I didn't have any money, so I had to give my girl," Mohammad told the New York Times. "I was thankful to them at the time, so it was my decision, but the elders also demanded that I do this." Soon after the deal was struck, the boy to whom Naghma was engaged insisted that she stop attending school, which she loves, her father said. On Monday afternoon, there was no word on who paid off the debt or how. But now that it has been paid, said a New York Times follow-up story, the girl, Naghma, will remain with her family. She will no doubt continue to live in extreme poverty in the Kabul refugee camp, and will perhaps even forced into marriage when she's older. Still, she is one of the luckier girls of Afghanistan, where half of all girls are forced to marry under age 15, according to estimates by the United Nations agency UN Women. That's despite the legal age for marriage in the country being 16 for girls.   Ending the practice remains a huge challenge in Afghanistan's patriarchal society, where it's somewhat traditional to give girls away to settle debts or pay for their relatives' crimes. Tribal customs often condone marriage once puberty is reached, or even earlier, and the government has been unable or unwilling to challenge the law effectively. Manizha Naderi, the executive director of Women for Afghan Women, a group that runs various shelters in the country, told the New York Times in a previous article that poverty is the motivation for many child marriages. That's either because a wealthy husband pays a family well for his bride, or because the father of the bride will then have one less child to support. "Most of the time they are sold," Ms. Naderi said. "And most of the time it's a case where the husband is much, much older." Stories like Naghma's come at a slow but steady clip out of Afghanistan and many other countries, including India. In 2010, two girls, ages 13 and 14, dressed as boys and fled their elderly husbands after refusing to consummate the marriages. They made it far from their remote village, but were eventually caught by police and returned home, where they were publicly, viciously flogged. Authorities did nothing, despite the flogging being caught on tape and human-rights groups' efforts to intervene. While the case may have been shocking, Fawzia Kofi, a prominent female member of Parliament, told the New York Times that, it was far from the only one. "I'm sure there are worse cases we don't even know about," she said. "Early marriage and forced marriage are the two most common forms of violent behavior against women and girls." In a more recent and widely reported case, a 15-year-old Afghanistan girl forced into marriage, Sahar Gul, was rescued from six months of torture at the hands of her in-laws. They kept her locked in a basement, ripped out her fingernails and burned her with hot irons—and, a rare instance of justice, were eventually brought to justice and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  According to a short Pulitzer Center film, "Too Young to Wed: The Secret World of Child Brides," by National Geographic photographer Stephanie Sinclair, "Child marriage occurs in more than 50 developing countries around the world, and almost always results in the girl's removal from school. What families don't realize," Sinclair explains through her narration, "is by curtailing a girl's education, they're only perpetuating the cycle of poverty.  She added, "As one Afghan police officer told me, girls are routinely seen as family burdens, while their male counterparts are seen as kings." Related: Celebrating the Strength of Women in Afghanistan in "The Dressmaker of Khair Khana" Taliban Allegedly Executes 7-Year-Old Boy for "Spying" Signs of Child Abuse (and How to Stop It) source : here

John Kerry wants the Gulf to support the Syrian rebels. But which rebels? The soft, safe ones? Or those horrible, ‘terrorist’ Islamists? By Robert Fisk

via http://counterinformation.wordpress.com/page/16/
John Kerry wants the Gulf to support the Syrian rebels. But which rebels? The soft, safe ones? Or those horrible, 'terrorist' Islamists?

By Robert Fisk

March 06, 2013 "Information Clearing House" - "The Independent" – John Kerry has had a miserable time of it in the Gulf. He has to love them all – the kings and princes and emirs – and he needs their support against Bashar al-Assad of Syria. Because, of course, they are sending cash and weapons to the rebels. But which rebels? The soft, secular safe guys of the Free Syrian Army or the horrible 'terrorist' Islamists who are also fighting Assad and who, give and take a few thousands square yards, have just captured the Syrian provincial capital of Raqa?

In Qatar yesterday, the US Secretary of State vouchsafed to tell the world that he now had "greater guarantees" that arms were being sent to "moderate" groups in Syria. Such guarantees may exist – but they are worthless. If Saudi Arabia and Qatar are sending guns to the opposition, how can they possibly label them 'Not for al-Nusra or other Islamist groups'? And since the Saudi royal family are Wahabis – like many of the Islamist fighters in Syria and, indeed, the 9/11 killers in America – why shouldn't the Saudis arm their favourite anti-Shiite militia in Syria?

Mr Kerry seemed to have no idea. "Bashar Assad has lost legitimacy," he announced – wasn't that supposed to have happened two years ago? – "and there is no way he will restore that." But if the Saudis and the Qataris are pouring weapons into Syria and the Americans cannot – let us tell the truth here – control who gets them, who will be the 'legitimate' rulers of post-Bashar Syria. All in the Gulf are agreed that Bashar is a very nasty piece of work. But do Saudi Arabia and Qatar – famed for their freedoms, parliamentary democracies and human rights – intend to install a western-style democracy in Damascus?

The Saudis have been raging about Assad's Scuds. "This cannot go on," Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud al-Feisal told Kerry of the continuing Syrian government ballistic missile attacks on Aleppo. And so say all of us. But the attacks are going on – and the Saudis and the Qataris and the Americans and, I suppose, the British, can't do anything about them. When Kerry was asked in Riyadh on Monday whether Saudi weapons supplies to the rebels were a concern, he blandly replied by talking about Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah weapons supplies to the Assad regime.

In a world which has no institutional memory, no one asked why the Hezbollah should be giving weapons to the Assad regime when the Israelis are still boasting that only last month they bombed a weapons convoy going from Assad to the Hezbollah. Confusing, isn't it?

And then there's Kerry's wonderful remark in Riyadh that "the United States will continue to work with our friends to empower the Syrian opposition to hopefully be able to bring about a peaceful revolution." Forget the split infinitive. Forget the fact that the Americans claim to be sending only money and bandages and the Brits are only planning to send 'non-lethal' armoured vehicles. Schoolchildren should be asked to parse this nonsense. 'Friends'? 'Empower'? 'Hopefully'? 'Peaceful'? No wonder Bashar al-Assad sounds so confident

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34196.htm

How Afghanistan is Beginning to Deal with Workplace Sexual Harassment | TIME.com

http://world.time.com/2013/03/29/how-afghanistan-is-beginning-to-deal-with-workplace-sexual-harassment/#ixzz2OyPxxuyP

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