Egyptian Military PR Embarrassment

Egypt is still under the military dictatorship. The military has done everything it could to suppress the people and silenced the opposition especially from the Islamic brotherhood who were formally voted in the power by a very narrow margin. Now, to legitimize their rule, the military and their backers have written a new constitution for Egypt and has publicize this “achievement” as a great victory for all. It didn’t turn out as well as they expected.

A campaign to win support for a draft of Egypt’s new constitution got off to a rocky start on Sunday, one month ahead of a referendum, when observers noticed that a banner promoting the document misspelled the word for “Egyptians” in Arabic and used stock images of foreigners to stand in for representative citizens.

Within hours of the campaign’s launch, journalists and bloggers discovered that three of the five Egyptians pictured on the banner were apparently not Egyptians at all, and suspicions grew that the makers of the poster had simply searched Google to find stock images of “a doctor,” “a businesswoman,” “a farmer,” “a man with Down syndrome” and “an Egyptian soldier.”

Image of the doctor had previously been used on the American site ehowtogetridofstretchmarks.com; the stock image of the businesswoman already graced the home page of an Irish professional networking site; and the image of the man with Down syndrome illustrated an article in an Arizona business magazine last year.

Here's a poster mocking the original banner -made up of aliens.

Reference
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/16/egyptians-mock-ads-promoting-new-constitution-with-typos-and-stock-images/?_r=1

Junior dictator from North Korea kills his uncle

Apparently the Jnr dictator from North Korea is cleaning up his circle of friends and family. After sending his old girlfriend under the firing squad; he has now sent a member of his own family, his uncle, under the same firing squad for being a ‘traitor’ (that’s the code word for I don’t like you anymore, so it’s time for you to get out of my life permanently).

It's not every day that the Kim dynasty kills one of its own, as Kim Jong Un apparently did his uncle and de facto No. 2, Jang Song Thaek. Rarer still is the fact that the official North Korean media publicized the execution and explained some the rationale behind it.[1]

"The tribunal examined Jang's crimes. All the crimes committed by the accused were proved in the course of hearing and were admitted by him," it added.[1]

Of course. Kim always gets his way.

Pyongyang issued an extraordinary announcement describing Jang as a "despicable human being" who was "worse than a dog" and saying he had been shot dead immediately after a military tribunal found him guilty of plotting to overthrow his 29-year-old nephew. [2]

Wow, this sounds very personal.

I was reading this news source. We could be expecting more interesting and exciting news from North Korea in the future.

“If Kim Jong-un was sure of his control of power, he would not have needed to execute his uncle,” said Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul. “There will be big and small bloody purges, and at a time like this, desperate extremists may lash out. Pyongyang is no longer safe.” [3]

“Although high-ranking leaders, including members of the Kim family, have been deposed before, we haven’t seen anything this public or dramatic since Kim Jong-un’s grandfather Kim Il-sung purged his last major rivals in the late 1950s,” said Prof. Charles K. Armstrong, a North Korea expert at Columbia University and the author of “Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950-1992.” [3]

“This seems to indicate the divisions within the Kim regime were more serious than previously thought,” Professor Armstrong said. [3]

reference

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10517024/Empire-of-horror-North-Korea-faces-worldwide-condemnation-for-execution.html

[2] http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/12/116_147904.html


[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/world/asia/execution-raises-doubts-about-kims-grip-on-north-korea.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0

New convert to Islam turning to violence

I was reading news about the trial of a British officer (Lee Rigby) killed by a recent convert of Islam (Michael Adebolajo). The answers in the trial from this convert are very shocking and chilling. I’m not even able to fathom how someone would start killing in the name of a new religion he just professed a few years ago. Is there a deficiency in his understanding of the Islamic faith or is violence so deeply rooted (ingrained) in the Islamic religion that it’s almost inseparable?

Here’s the court room exchange.

When he was later asked what his defence to the charge of murder was, he said: "I am a soldier. I'm a soldier of Allah".

He also told the Old Bailey he loved extremist network al-Qaeda.

Adebolajo said: "Al-Qaeda I consider to be Mujahideen. I love them, they're my brothers. I have never met them. I consider them my brothers in Islam."

He said he had been brought up as a Christian by his family and his parents had taken him to church every Sunday.

"The memory that sticks in my mind... is probably every New Year's Eve in the evening around 11 o'clock we would gather around in candlelight and read passages from the Bible," he said.

He converted to Islam in his first year as a student at Greenwich University.

Last week, CCTV footage of him running towards the police car with a meat cleaver raised was shown to the court. He said he should be ransomed back to other jihadi fighters, set free or killed if he was found guilty.

North Korea Unspeakable Horrors

I've always been fascinated with North Korea, especially in the recent time, especially after the Junior Kim took over the dictatorship from his daddy.

A lot of people don’t know much about North Korea. Mainly because North Korea is completely cut off from international community – nothing gets in the country, and nothing gets out. Most of the narrative about the country is built from testimonials of the survivors and the work done by the spy agencies (satellites, espionage..etc). Based on the narrative, there’s absolutely no doubt that North Korea is perhaps the most repressive country in the world.

If time permits, I’ll try to write more articles about North Korea. I hope you guys are as interested in this as I am. I have to warn you that most of my coverage will be extremely negative and maybe a bit graphic. So, you’re probably not going to hear about their great gymnastic program or their hardworking students.

I was recently reading news about North Korean Auschwitz-style prison camps. Lots of unspeakable horror is going on there.

Amnesty commissioned the images from DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite imagery vendor. In their release, Amnesty claims that up to 200,000 prisoners, including children, are being held "in horrific conditions in six sprawling political prison camps."

Amnesty said the camp covered an area of around 216 square miles (560 square km), or three times the size of America's capital, Washington DC.

Pyongyang denies their existence, despite satellite images and testimony from witnesses. Amnesty claims many prisoners are allegedly being held for nothing more than watching foreign soap operas or holding a particular religious belief, while others are incarcerated simply for having a family member deemed politically undesirable.

According to Mr. Lee, women were "disappeared" after being raped: "After a night of 'servicing' the officials, the women had to die because the secret could not get out. This happens at most of the political prison camps."

Kim Young-soon, a former detainee in Camp 15 in the 1980s, described a public execution she witnessed of two detainees caught attempting to escape: "They were brought to a stage after they were badly beaten. The prisoners were tied to wooden stakes and shot three times in their head, chest and feet," she recalled.

In September this year, a United Nations inquiry into human rights abuses in North Korea highlighted the "unspeakable" and "widespread" atrocities being carried out in camps that required an international response, including a mother forced to drown her own baby and a prison camp inmate compelled to eat rodents and lizards just to survive.

Most Corrupt Countries in the World

Transparency International has just released its report of the least corrupt countries to the most corrupt countries in the world.

The total score is 100. Least corrupt countries have score closer to 100. Here's how countries are ranked (this is not a complete list. Please go to Transparency International to view the complete result and download the brochure).

Least Corrupt Countries
Denmark
New Zeland
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Singapore
Switzerland
Netherlands
Australia
Canada
Luxembourg
Germany
Iceland
United Kingdom
Barbados
Belgium
Hong Kong
Japan
United States of America
Uruguay
Ireland
The Bahamas
Chile
France
Saint Lucia
Austria


Most Corrupt Countries
Somalia
North Korea
Afghanistan
Sudan
South Sudan
Libya
Iraq
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Syria
Yemen
Haiti
Guinea Bissau
EQuatorial Guinea
Chad
Venezuela
Eritrea
Cambodia
Zimbabwe
Myanmar
Burundi
Tajikistan
Congo
Angola
Paraquay
Kyrgyzstan
Guinea
Ukraine
Papua New Guinea
Nigeria
Iran

References
http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2013/
http://www.voanews.com/content/perceived-corruption-high-in-subsaharan-africa/1802447.html