Otto Warmbier 'systematically tortured' by N Korea say parents

Image copyrightREUTERS

The parents of Otto Warmbier have shared horrific details of his condition when he arrived home from North Korea.

Fred and Cindy Warmbier told Fox and Friends that the North Koreans were "terrorists" who had "systematically tortured" their son.

The US student was jailed in Pyongyang in 2016 for stealing a hotel sign.

He was released on medical grounds in June this year but arrived home seriously ill and died days later.

North Korea has always denied mistreating Mr Warmbier. They say he contracted botulism while in prison but US doctors found no trace of this.

'This was no accident'

In their first interview since his death, they told Fox news that they "felt it was time to tell the truth about the condition that Otto was in".

US doctors had previously described him as being in a state of "unresponsive wakefulness", but the Warmbiers said calling this a coma was "unfair".

Skip Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump

 Follow

Donald J. Trump 

✔@realDonaldTrump

Great interview on @foxandfriends with the parents of Otto Warmbier: 1994 - 2017. Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea.

4:14 AM - Sep 26, 2017

•  7,6937,693 Replies
 
•  11,81711,817 Retweets
 
•  46,19746,197 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Report

End of Twitter post by @realDonaldTrump

Mr Warmbier said when they saw his son he was "moving around, and jerking violently, making these howling and inhuman sounds".

His head was shaved, he was blind and deaf, his arms and legs were "totally deformed" and he had a huge scar on his foot, he said. It "looked like someone had taken a pair of pliers and rearranged his bottom teeth".

"Otto was systematically tortured and intentionally injured by Kim and his regime. This was no accident," said Mr Warmbier.

He also said his son had been abandoned by his family, his country and the world and that the government had given them no information about his death.

Mrs Warmbier said North Korea sent him home because "they didn't want him to die on their soil".

The family refused a post-mortem examination because they thought he had suffered enough and "I wasn't going to let him out of my sight," she said.

She also pleaded with people not to go to North Korea, saying it was "playing into" Pyongyang's propaganda. US citizens are now banned from travelling to North Korea.

'A great interview'

However, a local newspaper in the US has disputed the allegations made by the Warmbiers.

The Cincinnati Enquirer said it had obtained a copy of a coroner's report on Otto Warmbier, based on an external examination, which revealed several small scars but nothing which indicated torture.

The paper quoted the Hamilton County coroner as saying Mr Warmbier's teeth were "natural and in good repair" and that he appeared to have died from brain damage caused by a lack of oxygen.

US President Donald Trump, who is known to watch Fox and Friends, tweeted that it had been "a great interview", and that "Otto was tortured beyond belief by North Korea".

His comment is likely to stoke the escalating tensions between North Korea and the US, which have exchanged allegations and threats at an unprecedented rate in recent weeks.

The leaders of both countries have directly threatened the other with nuclear annihilation. The international community is appealing for all incendiary rhetoric to be toned down.

Saudi Arabia driving ban on women to be lifted - FINALLY!

Saudi Arabia driving ban on women to be lifted!!!

Image copyrightREUTERS

Saudi Arabia's King Salman has issued a decree allowing women to drive for the first time, state media say.

Government ministries are to prepare reports within 30 days and the order will be implemented by June 2018, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world to forbid women from driving.

Rights groups have campaigned for years to allow women in Saudi Arabia to drive, and some women have been imprisoned for defying the rule.

"The royal decree will implement the provisions of traffic regulations, including the issuance of driving licences for men and women alike," the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.

The move was welcomed by the US state department, which called it "a great step in the right direction".

Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul, who was detained for 73 days in 2014 for flouting the ban, tweeted "thank God" following the announcement.

Manal al-Sharif, an organiser of the Women2Drive campaign who has also been imprisoned for driving, said on Twitter that Saudi Arabia would "never be the same again".

Activist Sahar Nassif in Jeddah told the BBC she was "very, very excited - jumping up and down and laughing".

"I'm going to buy my dream car, a convertible Mustang, and it's going to be black and yellow," she said.

Skip Twitter post by @manal_alsharif

 Follow

منال مسعود الشريف 

✔@manal_alsharif

You want a statement here is one: "Saudi Arabia will never be the same again. The rain begins with a single drop" #Women2Drive 

1:03 PM - Sep 26, 2017

•  3333 Replies
 
•  535535 Retweets
 
•  574574 likes

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Report

End of Twitter post by @manal_alsharif

Only men are allowed driving licences in Saudi Arabia and women who drive in public risk being arrested and fined.

Because of the law, many families have had to employ private drivers to help transport female relatives.

Saudi website Al Arabiya said about 800,000 men, mostly from South Asia, work as drivers to Saudi women.

Saudi law enforces a strict form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism and is known for its gender segregation rules.

Women have to adhere to strict dress codes, must not associate with unrelated men, and if they want to travel, work or access healthcare they must be accompanied by - or receive written permission from - a male guardian.

The Islamic kingdom recently faced a backlash from conservatives on social media after allowing women to participate in Saturday's National Day celebrations for the first time.

The festivities included fireworks, light shows and a concert in King Fahd International Stadium in the capital, Riyadh.

A female doctor working in Germany warns the World

What percentage of this is true?  I'm wondering how accurate it is?  From whose perspective is it more accurate?

see article below:

A female doctor working in Germany warns the World

“Yesterday, at the hospital in Germany where I work,we had a meeting about how the influx of muslim immigrants from the middle east is simply unsustainable. Walk in Health Clinics cannot handle emergencies, being overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of serious health emergencies, they are starting to send everything to the hospitals.

Many muslims are refusing treatment by female staff here in Germany. The muslim men make sick, crude comments and overtures to the female staff members, because to them any non-muslim woman is a whore or a future slave. After brief exposure to these cruel, sadistic, female hating beats, we, women, are refusing to go among those animals, especially the muslim men from Africa.

Relations between the female hospital staff and muslim immigrants are going from bad to worse. Since, the assault and unreported rapes of German women last weekend migrants going to the hospitals must be accompanied by police with K-9 units.

Very high numbers of migrants have AIDS, syphilis, open TB and many exotic diseases that we, in Europe, do not know how to treat them.

If they receive a prescription in the pharmacy, when they learn they have to pay cash they become violent. They were told in the middle east that everything in Germany would be free. Everything would be handed to them on a silver platter.

Finding out that they MUST pay for certain things leads to loud, violent, outbursts, especially when it is about drugs for the children. Many of these muslim immigrants kidnapped children, so that, their social benefits would be higher once they landed in Germany.

Finding that they would have to pay for the children’s drugs, they gave up the ruse and abandoned the children with pharmacy staff with the words: “So, cure them here yourselves!”

Now, the police are not just guarding the clinics and hospitals, but also large pharmacies.

Truly we said openly: Where are all those who had welcomed in front of TV cameras, with signs at train stations?! Yes, for now, the border has been closed, but a million of them are already here and we will definitely not be able to get rid of them.

Until now, the number of unemployed in Germany was 2.2 million. Now it will be at least 3.5 million or higher. Most of these people are completely unemployable. A infinitesimal bare minimum of them have any education. What is more, their women usually do not work at all. I estimate that one in ten is pregnant with many children in tow.

Hundreds of thousands of them have brought along infants and little kids under six, many emaciated and neglected. If this continues and German re-opens its borders, I’m going home to the Czech Republic. Nobody can keep me here in this situation, not even double the salary than at home. I went to Germany, not to Africa or the Middle East.

Even the professor who heads our department told us how sad it makes him to see the cleaning woman, who for 800 Euros a month cleans every day for years. She has to pick up the refuse the muslim men discard every where they go. She has to serve the young muslim men in the hallways who stand there with their hand outstretched, demanding everything for free, and when they don’t get it they throw a fit.

They know Germany and her citizens are very civilized. Add to that the world is watching, so these vicious, lazy, muslim youths know if they scream shout, and threaten violence, the German people will cave in.

I tell you, no one who has not come in contact with them has any idea what kind of animals they are, especially the ones from Africa, and how the muslim men and women act superior to our staff who are Christian. They look down upon us, verbally deride our Christian values and then demand that their every wish be granted immediately.

If, Germans with our generous nature cannot handle this, then the rest of Europe will be total chaos.

For now, the local hospital staff has not come down with the diseases they brought here, but, with so many hundreds of patients every day – this is just a question of time.

In a hospital near the Rhine, migrants attacked the staff with knives after they had handed over an 8-month-old on the brink of death, which they had dragged across half of Europe for three months before seeking medical attention. The child died in two days, despite having received top care at one of the best pediatric clinics in Germany. The physician had to undergo surgery and two nurses are in the ICU. Nobody has been, and no one will be punished.

The local press is forbidden to write about it!

WHO Plans Global War on Cholera as Yemen Caseload Soars

WHO Plans Global War on Cholera as Yemen Caseload Soars

By Tom Miles, Reuters on September 19, 2017


GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization will next month launch a strategy to stop cholera transmission by 2030, it said on Monday, as an unprecedented outbreak in Yemen raced towards 700,000 suspected cases with little sign of slowing down.

The WHO is also trying to keep the lid on a flare-up in Nigeria while tackling many entrenched outbreaks in Africa and an epidemic in Haiti, where almost 10,000 people have died since 2010.

“Once it’s out of the box, once it has spread, it’s very, very difficult to contain and we have a huge number of cases and deaths,” said Dominique Legros, the cholera focal point at WHO’s department for pandemic and epidemic diseases.

Epidemics often arise in war zones. The WHO is sending an expert to Bangladesh to assess the risk for Rohingya Muslims fleeing from violence in Myanmar.

“The risk is probably relatively high,” Legros said.

In Yemen, the most explosive outbreak on record has caused 686,783 suspected cases and 2,090 deaths since late April. The number of deaths has slowed but the spread of disease has not: in the past week there were 40,000 suspected cases, the most for seven weeks.

Legros said it was impossible to predict how any outbreak would evolve, but Yemen’s was likely to continue for a long time. The low death rate suggested the outbreak was not severe, although there may be many uncounted deaths in the community.

The number of suspected cases in Yemen cannot be checked accurately, and many may be acute watery diarrhea, which has similar symptoms and treatment but is not caused by the cholera bacterium, which is spread by contaminated food and water.

The WHO estimates there are 2.9 million cases and 95,000 deaths globally each year, far more than officially reported.

Equipped with a vaccine stockpile that it created in 2013, it plans to launch a global strategy on Oct. 4.

“The objective of the new strategy is to stop transmission by 2030,” Legros said. “Overall, we expect reduction of mortality by 90 percent by 2030.”

The strategy will aim to use the vaccine to contain outbreaks as fast as possible, while addressing deeper problems.

In Africa, growing urbanization, climate change, conflict, displacement camps - as well as sanitation investment that is a third of what it should be - mean there is no reason to expect any improvement without deliberate action, he said.

BBC opinion piece on US future role in Afghanistan (***opinion***)

Viewpoint: Why the US should withdraw from Afghanistan

• 22 August 2017
 
• From the section

• 
  are this with Facebook
 
• Share this with Twitter
 
• Share this with Messenger
  

Image copyrightAFP

Image captionAll US troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan, says Professor Andrew Bacevich

US President Donald Trump has committed his country to an open-ended war in Afghanistan that is likely to see more troops deployed. Before becoming president, he had on several occasions advocated the withdrawal of US forces.

Many analysts believe Mr Trump made the right decision in changing his mind. But some do not. They argue the costly war is at a stalemate and American troops should come home. Andrew Bacevich, Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University, told the BBC why he thinks withdrawal is the best option.

If keeping US troops in Afghanistan could guarantee that our country would not be targeted by further terrorist attacks, I would favour making our longest war longer still.

But the terrorist threat has evolved since 9/11 and keeping US forces in Afghanistan does not "make America safe".

The opposite is true. Occupying countries in the Islamic world exacerbates the threat rather than reduces it.

Donald Trump as a candidate appeared to get that but now as president has reversed course.

He has returned to establishment views held by the generals that advise him. They insist that there is no alternative than to keep doing what we have been doing since 2001. It is an odd argument: that the most powerful country on the planet has no alternative but to persist in failure.

The argument for continuing the war in Afghanistan assumes that Afghans are incapable of managing their own affairs. It also assumes that our presence and our assistance can make Afghanistan governable.

For almost 16 years, we have tested that proposition. No evidence exists to support it, nor is there reason to think that more of the same - that is what Trump is proposing - will produce better results. Certainly half-measures will not work.

One might speculate that a major escalation - a couple of hundred thousand troops, a few trillion dollars, a decade or so of further exertions - might turn things around. But neither the American public nor Congress nor President Trump himself will support any such effort. As the president said on Monday, Americans are weary of this war.

I am not naïve. I have zero expectation that if the US and its allies withdrew that somehow the various factions in Afghanistan would get together and create a stable, liberal democratic order.

However, it is not implausible to consider the possibility of Afghanistan and its neighbours cobbling together arrangements enabling the various factions to more or less co-exist.

Can I guarantee that this would happen? No.

But if you have been pursuing one course of action for a decade and a half and it hasn't worked, maybe it's time to seriously consider alternatives.

Frankly, if Afghans could cease to fight among themselves and refuse to provide sanctuary to terrorist organisations, that would more than satisfy US interests.

Even if the Taliban regained power, would they embrace IS, al-Qaeda or other such entities? The answer is not necessarily. The last time they did they paid a heavy penalty.

The key would be to create incentives encouraging good behaviour on their part. Economic assistance could be offered as a positive incentive. Promising severe punishment - punitive air strikes, for example - in the event of misconduct might also figure.

Professor Barry Posen of MIT has suggested that a US departure from Afghanistan would energise other countries in the region, like Pakistan, Iran, India and Russia, to exert themselves to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a failed state.

I think this is an important perspective. We should not accept President Trump's absolute certainty that if we leave then Afghanistan will become a terrorist haven.

Finally, I would emphasise that the more preoccupied we are with Afghanistan, the less attention we give to far more pressing issues such as climate change and potential instability in East Asia.

The strategically prudent course of action for the US is to acknowledge our failure and leave.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41016347  

Saudi boy arrested for doing the macarena

Saudi police have released a 14-year-old boy who was arrested after footage emerged of him dancing the Macarena in the street at a busy intersection.

The footage was filmed some time ago but went viral this week, prompting police in the conservative kingdom to detain the teenager.

The interior ministry said the teen was released without charge after he and his guardian were questioned about his "improper public behaviour" by officers.

Afghanistan's president praises Trump's Afghan strategy at UN

(CNN)The President of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, used a substantial part of his speech before Tuesday's session of the United Nations General Assembly to praise President Donald Trump's recently announced strategy for Afghanistan and South Asia.

"With President Trump's recent announcement of his strategy to counter terror and stabilize South Asia, Afghanistan's enduring partnership with the United States and the international community has been renewed and redirected," Ghani told the audience at the UN headquarters in New York.

He said the strategy, which states that US military engagement in the country will be based on conditions rather than timelines, provided a certainty over US support for Afghanistan which he said the Afghan people had been seeking "for years."

"We welcome this strategy, which has now set us on a pathway to certainty," Ghani said.

Afghanistan: 16 years, thousands dead and no clear end in sight

American military commanders have similarly long sought an enduring US troop presence in Afghanistan that is based on battlefield conditions rather than an arbitrary withdrawal timeline -- seeing it as a critical component of any strategy that aims to drive the Taliban to the negotiating table and compel meaningful cooperation from Pakistan.

Ghani for his part called on "all ranks of the Taliban" to engage in dialogue with the Afghan government.

He also echoed Trump's strategy in asking Pakistan to do more to foster security and stability in the region, calling on Pakistan to join a "comprehensive dialogue" and saying that the Afghans had "proven that we are committed to peace."

Afghan and US officials have long accused Pakistan of taking insufficient military action against Taliban leadership in that country.

UN wonders if Trump's threat to 'totally destroy' North Korea is just bluster

"President Trumps' new strategy includes the disruption and denial of sanctuary to terrorists whose motives know no boundaries," Ghani said.

Ghani said Afghanistan is doing a lot more to combat corruption and promote merit over patronage, issues long prioritized by the US.

There are about 11,000 US troops currently deployed to Afghanistan. The majority of them are in supporting roles, assigned to the NATO mission to train and advise Afghan security forces alongside approximately 6,000 troops from other NATO countries. The remainder of US forces in Afghanistan carry out counterterrorism missions in the country.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that just over 3,000 additional US troops were in the process of deploying to Afghanistan in order to be part of a "stronger train, advise and assist effort."

Who are the key players in Afghanistan?

And Ghani sought to link the fight in Afghanistan to the global fight against terrorism.

"The future of Afghanistan matters because we are on the front lines of the global effort to eradicate the threat of terrorism," Ghani said.

Ghani, a former World Bank official, praised international institutions like the UN for helping to foster stability in the wake of the second world war, but he said new efforts were needed to confront the "threats we are facing to our economies, our security and our values."

"We must confront the threat of terrorism as a united force and meet it with a long-term solution that matches the long-term agenda of the terrorists themselves."

In addition to saluting Trump's new strategic direction, Ghani took time to criticize Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi, saying her "lengthy silence" on the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya "was tragic."

Ghani made the comments during the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.