UN chief: Gaza deaths and destruction shame world

UNITED NATIONS: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says “the massive deaths and destruction in Gaza have shocked and shamed the world” and is demanding an end to “the senseless cycle of suffering” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We will build again, but this must be the last time to rebuild,” the UN chief told the General Assembly Wednesday. “This must stop now. We must go back to the negotiating table.”
Ban said the UN understands Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas rockets but “the horror that was unleashed on the people of Gaza” raises serious questions about respect for international law that requires a distinction between civilians and combatants and proportionality.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay told the assembly that “any attacks in violation of these principles .... may amount to war crimes.”

Victims of Israeli barbarity buried

GAZA: For days bodies filled the morgues. Only since guns fell silent have volunteers come to dig graves in the sand in Rafah, Gaza’s “town of martyrs,” devastated by Israeli bombardment.
For three days the strategic southern town went through hell.
“The tanks came,” says Mohammed Abu Luli, 50, who fled his home after the bombardment started.
“There were strikes from air, land and sea. The bombs rained down everywhere. I have never seen anything like it in all my life,” he added.
In neighborhoods, houses lie flattened or ripped open by shelling. Asphalt on the road has been ripped up by the weight of Israeli tanks.
Rafah experienced some of the worst fighting during the month-long war between Israel and Hamas.
Mohammed’s brother Mahmud Abu Luli was sheltering in a UN school in the center of Rafah.
“But there was an Israeli bombardment just outside the school, in the street. I saw everything, there was a pool of blood on the ground,” he said behind his bushy white beard.
“Rafah is a town of martyrs!” he adds as men standing by nod in a agreement and children collect pieces of shell and mortar from the ground.
Even morgues overflowed.
“We had to use all the places in the hospital and neighbors’ houses and rental refrigerators for vegetables and put the bodies in them. The situation was a tragedy,” said Mohammed Al-Masri, director of the small Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah.
In a cemetery just 100 meters from the Egyptian border, men dig trenches in the sand and put in cement blocks to form small tomb-like rectangles. Each body is placed in a rectangle, then the whole space covered up into a mass grave.
Thirty little anonymous mounds quickly form in the sand. Outside the cemetery a group of relatives mourn the death of Sumaya Abid Duhair, a nurse killed in an air strike on her house. “We have to keep working because other bodies will be buried here,” says Nidal Shalagel, a volunteer in his 30s. “That’s enough. We need peace. No one likes death.”
Meanwhile, Save the Children placed full-page adverts in British newspapers on Wednesday listing the names of 373 Palestinian children killed as part of the charity’s campaign for a permanent cease-fire.
The black-and-white advert in broadsheet newspapers carries the names of the children that the Palestinian Ministry of Health and United Nations have reported to have died between July 8 and Aug. 3.
Readers are invited to send text messages as part of the campaign to force a permanent cease-fire “for the children of Gaza and Israel.”
In a separate statement, Save the Children said the public health system in Gaza was close to collapse and that half a million people were displaced from their homes.
Save the Children’s David Hassell said: “For the sake of children and their families, we are hoping that this cease-fire holds.
“It is desperately needed, as essential services in Gaza have all but collapsed and we are struggling to reach the most vulnerable children caught in this conflict.”

Ted Nugent claims to be more Indian than American Indians

Blog: Ted Nugent claims to be more Indian than American Indians
TUESDAY, AUGUST 5, 2014
Filed Under: Opinion 
More on: bozos, media, racism, ted nugent

      

 

Ted Nugent on stage in a headdress. Photo from Facebook Rocker Ted Nugent again blames the media for claiming he made negative comments about Native Americans as he lists all of his "friends" in Indian Country: Ted Nugent called in to Glenn Beck’s program on Friday to defend himself after a number of his shows have been cancelled by Indian tribes because of his long history of racist remarks. Nugent told Beck that in fact “my lifestyle as a white guy — though I’m hard to accept that designation — is more in the Indian tradition than many of the Indians themselves.” In response to reports that he called protesters at one of his recent shows "unclean vermin,” Nugent told Beck, “I have a spiritual blood-brother relationship with these Indians and then the left literally creates the nastiest, hateful lie they can, put quotes around words attributed to me, Glenn, claiming that I called my red brothers ‘unclean vermin,’ which I never said in my life. They created that out of whole cloth.”

man kicks squirrel off canyon to death

INDIA ( India Searches for 15 Missing Fishing Boats with 240 Sailors )

NEW DELHI – At least 15 fishing boats with 240 sailors on board went missing late Sunday in the middle of a storm in the Bay of Bengal, an Indian official reported Monday.

Forty boats went missing in the storm, of which 22 have been found while three others capsized, Assistant Secretary of the Department of Fisheries D. Chattoraj told the PTI news agency.

Most of the crew members of the three fishing boats have been rescued, but at least eight are still missing, according to the source.

“Sometimes fishermen are unable to make radio contact with the coastal areas, which can lead to a state of panic. In this case, most of the boats were immobilized because of the storm,” Chattoraj said.

India is currently in its monsoon season, characterized by strong rains that have been especially persistent in the last few hours in some places in Bengal.

KABUL ( US Drone Kills Four Civilians in Afghanistan )

  KABUL – Four civilians, including two minors, have died in an air attack by a US drone in the western Afghan province of Herat, an official told Efe Tuesday.

“A man, a woman, a teenager and a baby died in a drone attack on Monday evening in Zawal city, located in the Shindand district of Herat”, provincial police spokesperson Abdul Raouf Ahmadi, said.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) security mission told Efe they are looking into the facts.

“We can confirm that there was a bombing in western Herat yesterday in which many insurgents died”, an ISAF spokesperson said, adding that they were still investigating if there were any victims among civilians.

The death of civilians is one of the points of friction between Afghan authorities and NATO, which in 2011 started to gradually withdraw from the Asian nation and transfer security responsibility to Afghan forces.

In February 2013, after an air attack which injured many children and women, President Hamid Karzai barred the country’s army from requesting foreign air assistance in military operations in residential areas.

In September last year, eight civilians, including three women and three children, died in a NATO attack in the Asian country.

In the first six months of 2014, violence has claimed the lives of 1,564 civilians in Afghanistan, 17 percent more than in the first half of 2013, while 3,298 people were wounded, an increase of 28 percent.

ISAF will complete its withdrawal in December this year, but the United States has announced that it will maintain around 9,800 soldiers in Afghanistan till the end of 2016.

MANAGUA ( Nicaraguan Singer Dies in Shooting )

MANAGUA – Singer-songwriter Enoc Zavalla was fatally shot in Managua’s nightclub district, Nicaragua’s National Police said on Friday.

Zavalla, 35, was a member of the group Xolo Mancontal and served as vice president of the Association of Artists and Singer-Songwriters.

The victim bled to death on a Managua street late Thursday night after being shot in the hip, municipal police chief Roger Ramirez told the media.

An investigation is under way, Ramirez said.

Zavalla, who was performing with Xolo Mancontal at a disco, left the club during a break between sets and hailed a taxi for a trip to a convenience store, media accounts said, citing his bandmates.

The singer’s colleagues in Xolo Mancontal said they suspected he was shot by the cab driver in the course of a robbery.

Though poor, Nicaragua is among the less-dangerous nations in Latin America, suffering 8.7 homicides for every 100,000 residents last year, compared with 90 murders per 100,000 people in neighboring Honduras.