War crimes

A former Iranian official accused of crimes against humanity is expected to give evidence under oath for the first time on Tuesday at a landmark case in Stockholm. Hamid Nouri, 60, is on trial over his alleged involvement in a 1988 prison massacre in Iran. He denies the charges. The killings were allegedly an act of revenge ordered by supreme leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini against members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, who supported the 1979 revolution but then turned against the new leadership and fought for Iraq under Saddam Hussein, during the Iran-Iraq war. The order came just a few days after the end of the 1980-1988 war. Human rights groups say about 5,000 people were killed in prisons across the country, but the opposition claim that the number was six times that figure. In 2018, the UN deemed the massacre a "crime against humanity". Charged with more than 100 murders and grave war crimes, Nouri is expected to give evidence that allegedly implicates … [Read more...] about Hamid Nouri: Prison massacre accused to give evidence at landmark trial in Sweden

We are now several months into the conflict with Russia. I say “we” because we are all pretending here in the West that the real war is between Russia and Ukraine but (nod nod wink wink) if we clandestinely, in some sense, provide full support to Ukraine then maybe the Russians, foolish and backward as they are won’t notice and we can simultaneously pretend that we aren’t flirting with the prospect of a long, arduous and inconceivably destructive war. I want to say at the outside that I think what Putin has done is unconscionable; God only knows what the impact will be, as all four of the horsemen of the apocalypse are on the march again. I think that the collusion of the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church is even more unforgivable. Be that as it may, I also believe that the attempt to deeply understand the motive forces for this war, as it is very difficult to set things right (let alone avoid a similar future catastrophe—or even to stop this conflict from spreading) in the … [Read more...] about PETERSON: Russia Vs. Ukraine Or Civil War In The West? | The Daily Wire

Vladimir Putin has staged drills with his road-launched Yars nuclear missiles in a forest in western Siberia. Their 7,500-mile range means they are capable of striking the UK or anywhere in Europe. The tests come amid high tension with the West over the war in Ukraine , and against the backdrop of near-daily threats by Putin’s propagandists to deploy atomic weapons. In a statement, the Russian defence ministry said: ‘Over 100 pieces of hardware are taking part in the exercise. ‘Launch vehicles of the Yars road-mobile missile systems of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces’ Novosibirsk Missile Formation have trained redeployment during a scheduled drill. ‘While performing their manoeuvres, missile units and detachments dispersed in a forest to increase concealment.’ They trained in killing mock saboteurs, reconnoitring the launch area, and in passing through ‘contaminated’ areas, said the defence ministry. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered the most … [Read more...] about Putin stages drills with Yars nuclear missiles capable of reaching UK

Published 24 March 2016 Share close Share page Copy link About sharing The killing of criminal lawyer Joseph "Pino" Acquaro in Melbourne sheds light on the hidden machinations of the 'Ndrangheta, says Australian crime writer Adam Shand. Liborio Benvenuto, who died in 1988, was the last of the old-time Australian godfathers. He understood his power but also its limits. His protege Joseph "Pino" Acquaro, who was murdered in a Melbourne street last week, was not so wise. Benvenuto became the leader of The Honoured Society, a Melbourne-based Calabrian mafia group, after a bloody internal battle in the early 1960s dubbed the Market Wars. He presided over a quarter century of relative peace until he died of natural causes in 1988. It was Benvenuto who encouraged Acquaro, the son of a prominent accountant in the Calabrian community, to become a lawyer. Violence was bad for business, so a … [Read more...] about Lawyer’s murder hints at secrets of Australia mafia

The German government is hoping to give over 130,000 migrants trapped in a legal limbo the chance to stay permanently, as part of an overhaul of Germany's immigration system. Chancellor Olaf Scholz 's government on Wednesday agreed on a package of reforms that will open the prospect of residency rights to people who have lived in Germany for more than five years with a so-called "Duldung," or tolerance status. "We are a diverse immigration country. Now we want to become a better integration country," Wrote Interior Minister Nancy Faeser from Scholz's center-left Social Democrat SPD on Twitter. "I want to actively shape migration and integration instead of reluctantly administering them as I have done for the past 16 years," she continued in reference to the previous conservative government's policies. A Duldung is normally issued to people who have been refused asylum but who can't return to their home country for various reasons: These might include the threat of war … [Read more...] about Germany to ease immigration laws

S ometime around 2010, about two-thirds of the way through his 13 years at the helm of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)—the world’s largest mental-health research institution—Tom Insel started speaking with unusual frankness about how both psychiatry and his own institute were failing to help the mentally ill. Insel, runner-trim, quietly alert, and constitutionally diplomatic, did not rant about this. It’s not in him. You won’t hear him trash-talk colleagues or critics. Listen to the audio version of this article: Feature stories, read aloud: download the Audm app for your iPhone. Yet within the bounds of his unbroken civility, Insel began voicing something between a regret and an indictment. In writings and public talks, he lamented the pharmaceutical industry’s failure to develop effective new drugs for depression, bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia; academic psychiatry’s overly cozy relationship with Big Pharma; and the paucity of treatments produced by the … [Read more...] about The Smartphone Psychiatrist

M y reaction to O. J. Simpson’s arrest for the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman was atypical. It was 1994 . I was a young black man attending a historically black university in the majority-black city of Washington, D.C., with zero sympathy for Simpson, zero understanding of the sympathy he elicited from my people, and zero appreciation for the defense team’s claim that Simpson had been targeted because he was black. O. J. Simpson wasn’t black. He came of age in the 1960s—the era of Muhammad Ali’s opposition to the Vietnam War and John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s black-power salute at the 1968 Olympics. But the O. J. Simpson I knew, and the one poignantly depicted this year in Ezra Edelman’s epic documentary, O.J.: Made in America , recognized only one struggle—the struggle to advance O. J. Simpson. When the activist Harry Edwards attempted to enlist Simpson in the Olympic boycott, Simpson rebuffed him and later claimed that organizers like … [Read more...] about What O. J. Simpson Means to Me