The Raw Story

Sunday, 11 January 2015

Chechen leader Kadyrov 'threatens' Radio Echo, Moscow, after poll support for Charlie Hebdo

Alexei Venediktov, chief editor of Radio Echo, Moscow

An editor asks listeners if it's OK to publish Muhammad Cartoons and the Chechen responds with threats of violence. Is this how it works now?

The fallout from the murderous rampage against Charlie Hebdo spilled over the North Caucuses and Moscow on Friday. The leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, threatened Radio Echo of Moscow after it ran a poll, asking its listeners whether media, in reaction to Wednesday's murders of the Charlie Hebdo journalists, should publish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. A majority of Echo's listeners, 68 percent, said "yes," the cartoons should be published and 30 percent said "no."

Less than an hour later, Kadyrov posted on Twitter that that Echo's editor-in-chief, Aleksei Venediktov, had insulted Muslims and said, "There are those who will bring Venediktov to account."

"Venediktov has long ago converted Echo of Moscow into the main anti-Islamic horn," Kadyrov wrote next to his own portrait, which shows him pointing at the sky, muscles bulging, and rings on his fingers. If authorities did not restrict the radio that "incites animosity and hatred among people and nations," Kadyrov went on, "There will be people to make Venediktov responsible." A dangerous statement in the country where a number of journalists, including Anna Politkovskaya and Natalya Estemirova, have been assassinated by Chechen nationals.

That is not the first death threat Venediktov has received in his 25 years at Echo. One morning in 2009, the radio's editor opened the door of his apartment and saw a block of wood with an ax sticking out of it. Since then, Venediktov does not walk around without security. But who can protect Echo's more than 100 employees?

One of Russia's most shameful statistics is the number of journalists assassinated for their work. a report from the Committee to Project Journalist, described the unsolved slayings of 17 journalists in Russia since 2000. They were killed, the CPJ said, because of their work.

Venediktov and his reporters responded to Kadyrov's threat by donning white T-shirts with "Je suis Charlie," and said that Echo's reporting was balanced, professional and representative for various religious and political groups.

But clearly, balanced and professional were not the approach the Chechen leader had been using lately. Kadyrov began his Friday morning by tweeting a picture of himself in a black uniform speaking before a group of Muslims. In the caption, Kadyrov declared the former boss of Yukos Oil Company his "personal enemy" and "enemy of all Muslims" for calling on media to publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. Kadyrov said that in Europe, where Khodorkovsky currently lives, there would be people able to call the oilman to account.

Last month, also on Twitter, Kadyrov promised to burn the houses of the families of terrorists without any investigation. At his annual press conference, Putin was asked what he thought of these calls for violence. "Nobody, including the leader of Chechnya, has the right to engage in extrajudicial reprisals," Putin said about his loyal appointee, Kadyrov, also known in Chechnya as Imam Ramzan.

Cartoons mocking religious symbols are nothing unusual for Russia, where anti-religious propaganda was official policy in the Soviet Union for decades. Magazines and newspapers regularly published caricatures of Jehovah, Jesus Christ, and Allah. But things have changed in the past two decades in Russia, a country with about 20 million Muslims.

The calls to re-publish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad split the Russian journalistic community. Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of , one of the few independent newspapers left in Russia, wrote: "I have doubts that this decision (to republish) would be ethically correct. It looks like a collective punishment: a group of murderers committed a terrorist attack and we try millions of believers. I think one of the terrorists' agendas is to provoke a fateful conflict, a collision of different beliefs." Nevertheless, republished the last cover of Charlie Hebdo featuring a generic Muslim passionately kissing on the lips a man with a pencil behind his ear.

Kadyrov and other North Caucuses leaders threatening journalists in Russia should realize that they live in civic society and obey the law and "if they don't like that, they should go live in a monastery or leave for a religious state," a prominent Russian journalist, Ksenia Sobchak, said on Echo of Moscow. Meanwhile, crowds of Russians came out on a freezing day to put flowers and express their support and respect for the 12 victims of Wednesday's terrorist attack. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he would travel to Paris to join an anti-terror march on Sunday.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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Before exploring the broader issue, it should be noted that while the Paris attacks bear the hallmarks of a possible false flag, such as the ID card left in the car by one terrorist, an examination of the false flag hypothesis is excluded outright, completely ignored by the mainstream media. Moreover, one of the alleged terrorists, Cherif Kouachi told a French news outlet he had been financed by former Al Qaeda leader Anwar Al Awlaki, an American cleric who dined at the Pentagon a few months after 9/11 and «worked as a triple agent and an FBI asset well before 9/11», according to U.S. Lt.Col. Anthony Shaffer. (Kurt Nimmo, FBI Admits Pentagon Dinner Guest Al-Awlaki Worked for Them, Infowars, August 2, 2012)

Since the deadly attacks on January 7, 2015, the Western media, especially the French Canadian media, claim in a very ethnocentric manner that "the planet is mourning" the death of the French journalists. This tragic event which needs to be condemned must be examined in an appropriate context. People in countries where France has been bombing civilians, through NATO and U.S.-led military invasions, and where Western-backed terrorists kill innocent civilians (Libya, Syria) are routinely mourning the death of their own people. These deaths remain unreported. The Western world is not "the planet" and not "everyone is Charlie", contrary to what the media leads us to believe.

During the latest assault on Gaza, 13 Palestinian journalists were killed by the Israeli army.These journalists were killed to suppress the truth pertaining to Israeli atrocities. Western journalists holding signs of solidarity were nowhere to be found.

Before the James Foley and Steven Sotloff beheadings dozens of journalists were killed in Syria by terrorists armed, trained and financed by NATO countries and their antidemocratic allies such as Saudi Arabia. Hundreds of civilians had also been beheaded long before them, around 200 in one single village, according to a Human Rights Watch report. (See Julie Lévesque, The History of ISIS Beheadings: Part of the "Training Manual" of US Sponsored Syria "Pro-Democracy" Terrorists, Global Research, September 19, 2014)

The outrage and indignation, however, was reserved for the Western beheaded journalists. The war in Syria has been deadly for journalists, with 153 killed according to some estimates, thanks to NATO-sponsored terrorism. No Western journalist holding signs of compassion for Syrian journalists has been seen.

But the deadliest country in the world for journalists has been Iraq during the US occupation. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ):

The U.S.-led war in Iraq claimed the lives of a record number of journalists and challenged some commonly held perceptions about the risks of covering conflict. Far more journalists, for example, were murdered in targeted killings in Iraq than died in combat-related circumstances...

At least 150 journalists and 54 media support workers were killed in Iraq from the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 to the declared end of the war in December 2011, according to CPJ research.

Fatalities in Iraq far surpass any other documented war-time death toll for the press. CPJ, founded in 1981, recorded the deaths of 58 journalists during the Algerian civil war from 1993 through 1996, another 54 fatalities in the undeclared civil conflict in Colombia, which began in 1986; and 36 deaths in the conflict in the Balkans from 1991 to 1995....

Insurgent forces of one kind or another were responsible for the deaths of 110 journalists and 47 media workers. The actions of U.S. forces, including checkpoint shootings and airstrikes, were responsible for the deaths of 16 journalists and six media workers. (Frank Smyth, Iraq war and news media: A look inside the death toll, Committee to Protect Journalists, March 18 2013)

The BRussells tribunal numbers for Iraq are much higher:

In Iraq, at least 404 media professionals have been killed since the US invasion in 2003, among them 374 Iraqis, according to The BRussells Tribunal statistics. The impunity in Iraq is far worse than anywhere else in the world. (Dirk Adriaensens,The Killing of Journalists in Iraq, January 4, 2014)

Among the dead, two journalists - one Iraqi, Yasser Salihee, and one American, Steven Vincent - who had been investigating the US-backed death squads in Iraq.

On June 24, Yasser Salihee, an Iraqi special correspondent for the news agency Knight Ridder, was killed by a single bullet to the head as he approached a checkpoint that had been thrown up near his home in western Baghdad by US and Iraqi troops. It is believed that the shot was fired by an American sniper. According to eyewitnesses, no warning shots were fired.

The US military has announced it is conducting an investigation into Salihee's killing. Knight Ridder has already declared, however, that "there's no reason to think that the shooting had anything to do with his reporting work". In fact, his last assignment gives reason to suspect that it was.

Over the past month, Salihee had been gathering evidence that US-backed Iraqi forces have been carrying out extra-judicial killings of alleged members and supporters of the anti-occupation resistance. His investigation followed a feature in the New York Times magazine in May, detailing how the US military had modeled the Iraqi interior ministry police commandos, known as the Wolf Brigade, on the death squads unleashed in the 1980s to crush the left-wing insurgency in El Salvador. (James Cogan, Journalist killed after investigating US-backed death squads in Iraq, World Socialist Web Site, July 1, 2005 )

American journalist Steven Vincent was kidnapped and murdered August 2 in Basra, the southern Iraqi city where he had been working as a freelance writer and blogger. Suspicion for this killing, the first of an American reporter in Iraq, focuses not on Al Qaeda or Sunni-based insurgents, but on the police of the Shiite-based administration installed in Basra with the support of US and British occupation forces.(Patrick Martin, US journalist who exposed Shiite death squads murdered in Basra, August 5, 2005)

For unknown reasons the Iraqi journalist Dr Yasser Salihee, was not included in the CPJ list.

The BRussels Tribunal further reports that numerous deaths go unreported by CPJ and Reporters without Borders. The explanation reflects the opposite of what is happening with the biased and emotional coverage of the Charlie Hebdo murders, namely downplaying the Iraqi journalists deaths.

It is a well-established fact that since the invasion of 2003 the corporate media have consistently downplayed mortality figures. The killing of media professionals is no exception. It's obvious that the journalist advocacy groups in the West are reluctant to give the real casualty figures of their colleagues who lost their lives under the ruthless occupation of the US/UK, an occupation that is still ongoing. So they narrow their criteria of who should be included in their lists. This is an objectionable attitude, especially because it concerns professional colleagues....

Almost 400 dead Iraqi journalists and yet our compassionate media professionals never held signs of solidarity.

A camel trampled two people to death over the weekend at a farm in Texas, authorities said.

Peggye McNair, 72, the owner of the farm and a well-known camel breeder, was one of the victims of the attack Saturday, police told CNN affiliate KFDX.

The incident at Camel Kisses Farm in Wichita Falls happened after Mark Mere, 53, got into a pen with three camels - one male and two females.

Mere apparently went into the holding pen because the animals' water trough had frozen over.

The male camel was in rut and became very aggressive, Wichita County Sheriff David Duke said. Rut is a male animal's peak period of fertility and sexual excitement.

[embedded content]

It charged Mere and he tried to get out of the pen, according to authorities.

Owner McNair tried to close the gate, but the male camel came after both of them and trampled them to death, police said.

The sheriff said when deputies arrived at the scene, all three camels were acting aggressive toward them.

Relatives of the farm's owner gave Texas game wardens permission to kill the male camel, police said.

In a 2009 interview with the , McNair said "camels have gotten a bad rap."

The article goes on to say that "like dogs, if they are raised with cruelty, they will be dangerous. ... But, also like dogs, if they are raised with love, affection, attention, treats and companionship - as hers are - they will be tame and enjoyable."

"Of course, there are some caveats," she said.

In the interview, she said she always takes extra precautions when the animals are in rut.

She told the newspaper about two women who raised camels as pets, who were killed when a male camel knocked them down and planted his front feet on them, common mating behavior.

A pastor at the Bible Baptist Church in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey is coming under fire after his church posted a video of him claiming to have converted a "smart aleck" youth by "punching him in the chest as hard as I could."

Pastor Eric Dammann begins by saying that he met a young man in Calgary named "Ben," who was "a nice kid, but one of those - he was a real smart aleck. He was a kid, which didn't help things - made him more dangerous."

"We were outside one day at youth group," Dammann continues, "and he was just trying to push my buttons. He was just kind of not taking the Lord serious []."

"So I walked over to him and went Punched him in the chest as hard as I could. I crumpled the kid. I just crumpled him."

"Then I leaned over and said, 'Ben, when are you going to stop playing games with God?' I led that man to the Lord right there," he concludes.

According to the church's official history, Bible Baptist is a "family-focused body of multi-cultural believers...founded by a group of five ladies during the early part of the 1920′s."

Watch Dammann recount his meeting with "Ben" below via YouTube.

[embedded content]

© AP/ Wilfredo Lee

In this May 15, 2014 photo. a manatee sticks its head out of the water at Miami Seaquarium in Miami. As manatees recover in Florida, their U.S. home base, more and more seem to be showing up farther west along the Gulf of Mexico.

As manatees recover in Florida, their U.S. home base, more and more seem to be showing up farther west along the Gulf of Mexico.

A total of seven stranded manatees had been reported along the Alabama coast before 2007, when a network to report strandings and sightings was created. Since then, "we've responded to dozens" of strandings, said Ruth Carmichael, head of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab's Manatee Sighting Network for Alabama and Mississippi.

"I think things are changing, in the manatee population and in the environment," she said Tuesday. She said scientists know there are more of the big, gentle marine mammals than there used to be. "But habitat is stable or declining. Animals are being forced to do something. The natural thing would be to spread out."

In hope of gathering enough data to learn whether her impression is accurate, she's now working with people in Louisiana and Texas to expand the network - "as far as I know, the only manatee sighting network in the country" - to those states.

"We see more animals coming here, staying longer, going farther west. We want to be prepared," Carmichael said.

Louisiana has averaged seven manatee sightings a year in the past 20 years, up from about one a year over the previous two decades, according to the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries' Natural Heritage Program, which has about 80 signs in areas where they've been seen, asking people to report sightings.

Texas gets perhaps one sighting report a year, said Steve Lightfoot of the Texas Parks And Wildlife Department.

Work toward a four-state sighting network is preliminary so far but the project is important, said Suzanne Smith, marine mammal stranding coordinator at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans and one of the people working with Carmichael.

"They are an endangered species. So we need to work together to protect and conserve them," Smith said.

Manatees, also called sea cows, are vegetarians averaging about 10 feet long and about a ton in weight. Their greatest threats in the United States are habitat loss and boat propellers, which injure so many that biologists identify hundreds from their scars.

The population was estimated in the hundreds in 1967 but is now at least 4,800, the number counted in late January 2014 by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. The commission won't give total population estimates.

Florida manatees have recovered enough that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering reclassifying them from endangered to threatened. The department expects to decide by midyear but has not set a publication date, spokesman Chuck Underwood said Thursday in an email.

Sightings have gone up much faster than strandings in Mississippi and Alabama, but it's impossible to tell how much of that increase is just because more people are watching out for them and they know where to report, Carmichael said.

The 1,387 reported in Alabama from the start of 2007 through November 2014 are nearly 12 times the total ever reported in the state before 2007. In Mississippi, 25 had been reported through 2006 and 147 since then. The network also has received a total of 10 reports from Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia.

The stranding increase is more reliable, Carmichael said: "When a one-thousand-pound animal strands, people notice."

Her lab also has verified that Alabama and Mississippi are part of some manatees' home ranges. "The same animals come back year after year," she said.

Many stranded animals are young, she said. "That suggests some naiveté - they're less experienced, and don't know when to leave" for Florida's warm springs and power plant effluents, where the animals can stay warm in winter.

A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.0 struck late Saturday off San Antonio in the province of Zambales in the western Philippines, local seismologists said.

The quake occurred 43 kilometers (26.7 miles) from San Antonio at the depth of 85 kilometers (52.8 miles) under the South China Sea, according to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

There has been no tsunami warning or casualties reported, following the earthquake.

Magnitude 3 or lower earthquakes are weak or almost imperceptible, while magnitude 7 earthquakes and over potentially cause serious damage over larger areas, depending on their depth.

In October 2013, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake hit the central part of the Philippines, killing 220 people and injuring thousands. Over 13,200 houses were destroyed.

Financial investor Mike "Mish" Shedlock pointed out in a recent column that there has been an incredible surge of withdrawals from Greek banks in recent months.

In November, there was roughly €220 million withdrawals from Greek banks, but in December that number jumped all the way up to €3 billion.

Greeks are depositing much less money in the bank as well. Deposits in Greek banks have dropped by 37% since 2010.

Investment experts are warning Greeks to take their assets out before there is a run on the banks. However, politicians are urging the public to remain calm.

This week, Gikas Hardouvelis, Greece's finance minister, said in a statement that there was a "small chance" of a bank run, but did not rule out the possibility altogether.

"The probability of a bank run is very small; the public understands that deposits are safe," he said.

Greece has been teetering on the brink of economic default following a massive banker bailout from the EU and subsequent privatization of most of the country's infrastructure following the monetary crisis a few years ago.

View the chart below to see the dramatic drop in deposits experienced in recent years:

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Sunday, 11 January 2015

Chechen leader Kadyrov 'threatens' Radio Echo, Moscow, after poll support for Charlie Hebdo

While world mourns Charlie Hedbo journalists, U.S. state-sponsored terrorism remains number one killer of journalists

Camel tramples 2 people to death at Texas farm

Pastor led kid 'to the Lord' by punching him 'as hard as I could'

Manatees moving out of Florida waters west along Gulf coast

Western Philippines hit by 6.0 earthquake

Is there a bank run happening in Greece?

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