US warning for Philippines: Issues of terror-related travel

U.S. citizens should "exercise extreme caution" when traveling to the Philippines, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday in a statement.

"Targeted sites may be public gathering places including, but not limited to, airports, shopping malls, conference centers, and other public venues," said the statement.

The warning, which is an update from November, specifies the island of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago as particularly dangerous and at great risk of harboring terrorist activity. Manila might also be included, the statement said.

Because of election-related violence, the Philippine government declared a state of emergency in November 2009 for the Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat provinces, as well as Cotabato City in Mindanao. This state of emergency is still in effect, according to the State Department.

Travelers should be aware of heightened police and military presence in these areas and of kidnap-for-ransom gangs that are active in the Philippines and target foreigners, the department said.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Mindanao is a predominantly Muslim autonomous region, set up in the 1990s to quell armed uprisings by people seeking an independent Muslim homeland in the Philippines, a predominantly Christian country.

Read U.S. State Department's full warning

In November 2009 at least 57 people were killed when their convoy was ambushed in Maguindanao. The former mayor of the province was accused of plotting the deaths to thwart a political rival.

The State Department issued a worldwide caution to warn U.S. citizens that terrorism can happen anywhere and urges those visiting the Philippines to register with the U.S. Embassy to be notified of emergencies, the statement said.

Army move displaced await next for Jisr al-Shughour in Syria

Hundreds of Syrians have been massing on the northern border with Turkey, preparing to cross over if the army advances further into the area after seizing the town of Jisr al-Shughour.

Syrian military sources have told the BBC the army plans to move on the nearby town of Maarat al-Numan.

It says it is pursuing armed men who escaped the weekend offensive. State media said there was heavy fighting.

Turkey has already taken in thousands of refugees from northern Syria.

The government said it was trying to restore order after 120 security personnel were killed in Jisr al-Shughour last week.

Residents say they died after a mutiny and fighting between security forces.

Syria has prevented most foreign journalists from entering the country, making it difficult to independently verify reports from there.

Continue reading the main story Watching and waiting.

The BBC's Owen Bennett-Jones, who is on the Turkish side of the border with Syria, says more than 5,000 refugees have registered with officials.

However, another 5,000 have entered the country unofficially, he says, while hundreds more are massed at the border, waiting for the army's next move.

Many of them are reluctant to abandon their vehicles or livestock, our correspondent says, and will only cross if the army advances into the area. Others are waiting for relatives.

Human rights activists and residents said troops began bombarding Jisr al-Shughour early on Sunday.

Helicopter gunships were also seen hovering overhead.

But speaking to the BBC, an army general denied any shelling. The troops were only after those responsible for the killings of security personnel earlier this week, the general insisted.

The army has now taken control of the area.

A BBC Arabic correspondent embedded with the Syrian military says tanks and armoured vehicles have taken up positions inside the town. Buildings still bear the marks of clashes, and wheat fields have been burned.

Still from Syrian TV of what it described as mass grave (credit: AFP/HO/Syrian TV) Syrian TV showed images of what it described as a mass grave in Jisr al-Shughour

However, state media report that only two "armed members of terrorist gangs" were killed in the offensive, while the army says one soldier was killed and four wounded.

A military spokesman told our Arabic correspondent that armed men from Jisr al-Shughour who fled to Maarat al-Numan would be dealt with in a military operation in the next few days.

Separately, the bodies of 10 security personnel were recovered from a mass grave. Correspondents who witnessed the exhumation said four had been beheaded, and most of the bodies were riddled with bullet wounds.

There are continuing but unverifiable reports of army defections, with the latest saying an officer and 50 men had changed sides rather than fire on civilians in Jisr al-Shughour.

'Forced to flee'

US officials say the crackdown has created a humanitarian crisis, and called for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to be given access to Syria.

"No-one is aware of the real magnitude of the problem and this is a big issue, because it does not allow us to know the size of the problem and then to act accordingly," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan told the BBC.

On the Turkish side, two camps are already full of refugees and a third is filling up rapidly.

"The situation is grim. People were forced to flee with a few possessions. We are relying on the Turkish authorities for everything," Mohammed, one of those in the border area, told the BBC.

"No-one knows when it will be safe to return to our homes. When we return, people expect to find their homes destroyed and bodies unburied."

Protests against President Assad, who succeeded his father Hafez in 2000, began in mid-March and have spread across the country.

Human rights groups say more than 1,200 people have been killed in the crackdown.

Hunger strikers Issue Statement Day 3 - Iraqi and Afghan hunger-strikers appeal for help

A group of 37 Iraqi and Afghan detainees on hunger strike in Campsfield immigration prison in the UK have appealed for support from human rights groups in their battle against deportation .

Campsfield IRC hunger strike Day 3: Hunger strikers Issue Statement

[ The Home Office have confirmed that a number of detainees are refusing food in Campsfield IRC ]

Press Release from IFIR with Close Campsfield additions

37 Iraqi and Afghan detainees on hunger strike in Campsfield immigration prison have issued a statement and appealed for support from human rights groups. 23 Iraqi and 14 Afghan migrants in Camps field, Oxford shire,have been refusing food since Tuesday.

'We are 23 Iraqi and 14 Afghan detainees being held at Campsfield House. The British Government want to send us back to Iraq and Afghanistan. it is not a safe place'.

According to media reports and evidence collected by the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, many of those who have been deported to Iraq in the past are now living in hiding, in fear of the persecution they originally left Iraq to flee. Some have been assassinated. Others have committed suicide only days after being deported or have been kidnapped and killed, while others have had mental breakdowns. Many more have had to leave the country and become refugees again.

'The British government invaded and occupied both Iraq and Afghanistan, forcing millions of people to leave their homes', says Dashty Jamal, Secretary of the International Federation of Iraqi Refugees (IFIR). 'With this policy of detention and deportation, they are continuing to destroy the lives of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan people'.
In recent weeks, many Iraqis have been detained apparently in preparation for another mass deportation flight to Baghdad. Across Europe, thousands of Iraqi and Afghan people have been detained and forcibly returned in recent years. IFIR has been campaigning against this policy. IFIR demands that the Iraqi government stops accepting people forcibly returned to Baghdad Airport and that the Iraqi government compensates deportees, providing them with work or unemployment benefit and supports them to rebuild their lives in Iraq and Kurdistan. The campaign has had widespread support both inside Iraq and across Europe.

Thursday night, supporters of the hunger strikers in Campsfield held a demonstration outside the detention centre.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, permission for a similar demonstration was refused today. Dashty Jamal says 'When European governments claim that Iraq is a free and democratic country it is a lie. Today the Kurdistan Regional Government denied permission for a demonstration against their deportation policy. By not giving IFIR permission to hold a peaceful demonstration, they have shown that there is no freedom of expression, no democracy in Iraq.'

Inside Campsfield, all the Iraqi hunger strikers refused to speak with a representative of the Iraqi government who arrived to make preparations for the deportation. All of them want to remain in Britain where they have family and friends and have built their lives. They are determined to have their demands met; 'if we don't get these decisions for us as humans and for our safety we will not eat until we die, rather than to be made to return to these war torn countries'.

Bill MacKeith of the Campaign to Close Campsfield said: 'During the demonstration this evening I talked with the partners of two of the hunger strikers. They had been visiting. From the details of their cases, it is clear that the government is trampling on the rights of individual rights in order to drive forward with a ruthless and unacceptable policy of mass deportations to Iraq, a country described by the United Nations as unsafe. Both the detainees concerned, on hunger strike in Campsfield, have partners of some standing and children in the UK. Where is the right to family life in this?

This is the Scandal of Tracy Morgan Triumph for Social Media

Everyone is rightly furious at Tracy Morgan over his homohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifphobic and sexist rant at his stand-up show last weekend. But he may have just helped prove Mark Zuckerberg’s thesis that Facebook makes the world a more open place.

What’s a Tweet worth? Are your Facebook “friends” really your friends?
The relative value of social media has been a topic of debate among culturalists since it first became clear that the novel new communication tool was here to stay, but grew especially heated in the wake of Iran’s 2009 uprising and then in this winter’s Middle East protests, both of which relied heavily on social media to mobilize.

On the one hand you have Malcolm Gladwell, perhaps the most famously outspoken social media skeptic, claiminghttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif that social media adds no real value to the world.

Gladwell even discounted the role Twitter and Facebook supposedly played in Iran and Egypt by citing the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and revolutions throughout history that initiated change without the use of technology. To Gladwell, social media activism is “weak tie” activism that increases the number of your connections by digitizing them, and therefore weakening them by necessity.

On the other hand, you had those social movements’ participants praising the technology’s role in their own efforts. When asked what was next for the region, Wael Ghonim, leader of Egypt’s protest movement, said, “Ask Facebook,” by which he meant, “Ask people like us, whttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifho mobilize via Facebook.”

Gladwell claims that social media activation is not “real,” but to the Egyptians who woke one morning to find Hosni Mubarak deposed and the national military pledging loyalty to Egypt’s citizens, it the results of their ‘Facebook revolution’ no doubt felt very real.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Last week Tracy Morgan performed a stand-up routine in which he went on a sexist and homophobic tirade, insisting that if his son were gay, he would stab him, and that women should be at home making food, not out becoming CEOs.

What’s more, he attacked the anti-bullying movement that sprung up last fall after several gay teens killed themselves over peer bullying abuse.

Thanks to a Facebook post by Kevin Rogers, who was in the audience when Morgan spurted his invective, the story has blown up into one of this week’s lead news stories—perhaps second only to Weinergate, another scandal ignited by social media.
Morgan has been shamed, and rightly so, by news outlets who have unequivocally condemned his attack. Before the advent of social media, this would only have become front-page news had Morgan’s tirade been filmed or otherwise documented, as seen in Michael Richards’ racist rant.

With the increased conversational chatter in the social media age, however, and the ascent of that chatter’s cultural influence, stories like Morgan’s can propagate.
When asked what his goal is for Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg once answered “to make the world a more open place.” No matter how alienating you find social media or how thin thin the value of its communications seem to you, you have to admit that the viral Facebook and Twitter memes—be it of Anthony Weiner’s weiner, a damning story about Tracy Morgan, or a campaign to overthrow a dictator—tend to be about truth, and tend to be positive.

The viral social media forces tend towards accountability. And to those in Egypt, or those offended by social stigma like those perpetuated by Morgan, the positive results feel quite real. This is perhaps the only positive slant on Morgan’s disgusting tirade. The outrage against him is helping prove Facebook, as Zuckerberg hoped, is helping make the world a more open place.