Tragic Accident of Metis after been assaulted by
police
sunil pant

On 10th March 2005 around 11 PM, Group of Metis (Siddhi, Sonia, Gayatri, Roshani) were returning home from a restaurant via Jamal (near valley police head quarter, Kathmandu). A police mobile van stopped once the police saw the Metis and started chasing all the Metis (remember, these days police always chase Metis whenever, wherever they see them and try to take money or have free sex with the Metis). All the Metis then rushed into a Taxi and ran a way but the police van followed and overtook and stooped the taxi before they reached Thamel in Kathmandu. Then all Metis were pulled out from the taxi. The police abused and punched, Kicked all the Metis.

After the bloody attack police left the Metis and the Taxi driver agreed to drive off them home. But their bad luck didn't end there. While driving near Ganeshwore on the way back home another Taxi Hit their Taxi. All Metis that already assaulted by police injured seriously. They have been treated at Bir Hopsital, Blue Diamond Society bared the expenses and trying to help to get the compensation for injured. Taxi Driver, Bijaya Khakda (taxi number Ba 1 Ja 7905) has runaway but the taxi has been controlled by Valley Traffic Police at Baggikhana.  The driver and the owner haven't contacted the authority yet. Police said compensation to the victims and medical expenses had to be covered by the Driver and the Taxi owner but nobody has contacted Metis and started any process. Police has done nothing further related to this tragic incident with Metis.

Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange Decry US Dismissal of Lawsuit
By  Kay Johnson / Hanoi


Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange are outraged a U.S. court has dismissed their lawsuit against the chemical's manufacturers for crimes against humanity. The U.S. military in the Vietnam War sprayed the defoliant, which Vietnamese say has caused illnesses ranging from cancer to birth defects. A federal judge in New York Thursday decided the suit had no basis in law, and the plaintiffs had failed to prove a clear link between Agent Orange and their illnesses.

M, F, E OR MORE?


There are always those who are thrown completely off-balance when faced with a form to fill. It seems that one innocent soul once wrote “Quite often, thank you” in the column marked “Sex”. Now that the choice for that space has expanded to three options instead of the traditional two on passport application forms, the innocent may be even more confused. But the expansion is extraordinarily good news for a huge community of human beings in India who find themselves at a loss when forced to identify themselves as either male or female. The new option, “E” for “eunuch”, introduced into the website version of the passport form, is the first official recognition of a different gender-option in this country. The existence of the hijra or eunuch community has never been a secret. The fact that it is made up largely of individuals whose sexual or gender identity does not fit into the two-gender division of society is precisely the reason they are perceived as outcasts, although accepted at certain rituals. To recognize them officially for the first time in 2005 is also to demonstrate their severe lack of rights. Even the exact size of the community is unknown; one estimate puts transgendered people in India at 25 to 30 million.

Poetry, terror and political narcissism
by Alyssa A. Lappen
The American Thinker


Poetry is a window on the human soul. But the politics of American poetry, in recent years have veered into more and more radical territory, as an increasing number of poets openly declare their allegiance with ‘Palestine,' and implicitly, with terror. Academics with one foot in Middle Eastern Studies and another in literature and poetry are the prime conduits of this degrading development. A few names that come to mind are Tom Paulin, a literature lecturer at Oxford University, former New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka, Marylin Hacker, and Alicia Ostriker at Rutgers University.

A prime example is Ammiel Alcalay, a tenured professor and former chair of Classical, Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures at City University of New York's Queens College. The author, editor or translator of at least nine literary, essay and poetry volumes, Alcalay has established himself as a fixture on the college speaking and poetry circuits, both realms that he vigorously exploits to disseminate sharply anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-Palestine views.

When Parentage Turns on Anatomical Sex: An Illinois Court Denies a Female-to-Male Transsexual's Claim of Fatherhood
By JOANNA GROSSMAN


Can a pre-operative female-to-male transsexual be a "father"? That was the question in In re Marriage of Simmons, a recent appellate decision in Illinois.


The Simmons case raises interesting questions about transsexual marriage and legal parenthood. It also reflects the continuing difficulties courts are having in attempting to reconcile traditional laws with nontraditional situations.

Bill would bar use of panic defense
By Josh Richman, STAFF WRITER


The sort of panic defense used in the case of a slain transgendered Newark teen last year would be barred by a bill introduced by a South Bay lawmaker.

Assembly Bill 1160 would change voluntary manslaughters legal definition so defendants cant evade full responsibility for their actions by claiming they were provoked to kill by their panic upon discovering the victims disability, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

We should not allow criminal defendants to blame their victims, said the bills author, Assemblywoman

Complaint filed against allegedly antigay Bush appointee


The head of the federal office responsible for protecting government whistle-blowers, who last year removed references to sexual orientation from the agency's Web site, is now the focus of a complaint filed Thursday by some of his own employees, who say he is undermining laws that encourage workers to expose wrongdoing. Scott Bloch, who runs the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, refuses to enforce laws that protect whistle-blowers in the federal workplace, especially gays, and is retaliating against his own staff, the employees alleged.

Deaths in isolation as prison segregation increases


The use of segregation of prisoners as punishment has been increasing recently in Australia, the US, and the UK. Segregation can be used for protection or punishment, but in both cases it results in extreme psychological stress. An indication that segregation is being over-used is the appearance of deaths in custody from suicide of those placed in segregation.

From New York: A Death in the Box. A mentally ill young woman died in the most stressful and isolating place in the New York state prison system. Jessica Roger, 21, killed herself in the "box" and many thought she didn't belong there.

Christian Right Regroups for a New Attack
by James Ridgeway


WASHINGTON, D.C.—Frustrated by slow going on the marriage amendment and confused by Bush's increasingly enigmatic stance on faith-based social welfare, the Christian Right is regrouping for a new attack.

To the outside world, things couldn't look better for religious conservatives. Yesterday's nit-picking arguments in the Supreme Court over whether and where and what parts of the Ten Commandments could be posted in public spaces were swept aside by the crisp comments of Justice Antonin Scalia, who at one point told Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (who was arguing for a Ten Commandments display in his state), "'Our laws come from God.' If you don't believe it sends that message, you're kidding yourself." At another point, Scalia declared: "It is a profoundly religious message, but it's shared by the vast majority of the people . . . It seems to me the minority has to be tolerant of the majority's view."

An Interrogator Speaks Out
By Pratap Chatterjee, AlterNet.
A former military interrogator talks about what went wrong at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.


Torin Nelson has worked in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. An expert interrogator, he was hired by the Virginia-based company CACI International Inc., to work at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at the time when prisoners there were subjected to abuse and torture.

US 'could end world poverty by 2025'
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday March 7, 2005
The Guardian


Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent US economist and a special adviser to the UN secretary general, argues in a new book that extreme poverty could be eradicated by 2025.

In The End of Poverty, he says much will depend on the choices made by Americans, who are paying a far smaller share of their income in foreign aid than they promised three years ago, and only a 30th of the "nearly $500bn [£260bn] the US will spend this year on the military".

"Currently, more than eight million people around the world die each year because they are too poor to stay alive. Yet our generation, in the US and abroad, can choose to end extreme poverty by the year 2025," he writes.

I was US target - journalist (SA)  


Rome - The Italian journalist wounded by US troops shortly after her month-long kidnap ordeal ended this weekend, on Sunday fanned a growing diplomatic rift between Rome and Washington by suggesting the US soldiers deliberately tried to kill her.

Giuliana Sgrena, wounded when the convoy taking her to safety was riddled with bullets by a US patrol near Baghdad airport on Friday, said she may have been a target because the US opposed negotiations with her kidnappers.

Hungary next for gay unions?
Ben Townley, Gay.com UK


Hungary could have a civil partnership system for lesbian and gay couples in place by 2007, according to press reports, with the government unveiling plans that will give same-sex couples legal recognition for the first time.