Monthly Archives: May 2014

Special to WorldTribune.com

WASHINGTON The Palestinian Authority, despite signing international human rights conventions, has failed to hold its security forces accountable for alleged abuses, a leading human rights group said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the PA was refusing to investigate complaints of abuse by security forces in the West Bank. The report cited an assault by PA officers of four protesters in Ramallah in April.

Members of the Palestinian security forces scuffle with demonstrators in the West Bank city of Ramallah. /Reuters

Palestine should start living up to its human rights obligations by exonerating the victims and holding the police to account, HRW deputy Middle East director Joe Stork said.

On April 12, PA police detained four Palestinians at a theater in Ramallah during a performance by an Indian dance troupe. Witnesses said police attacked two of the protesters and arrested another two who tried to stop the assault. All four men, ordered to court on May 28, were charged with disturbing the peace and provoking a riot.

Its absurd that the Palestinian justice system is prosecuting the victims of police brutality rather than their attackers, Stork said.

The PA attack came 10 days after the PA joined international human rights conventions that stipulated accountability by security forces. PA police have been trained under a European Union program called EUPOL-COPPS, said to stress respect for human rights.

In a statement on May 20, HRW said the Indian performance was disrupted by those boycotting Israel. At one point, a 25-year-old boycott activist, identified as Zeid Shuaibi, urged a walkout to protest the troupes earlier performance in Israel.

After 15 minutes, several men ordered Shuaibi to leave the theater, and later he was beaten by suspected plainclothes officers. Three of Shuaibis colleagues tried to stop the police and were assaulted as well.

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Rights group hits Palestinian Authority abuses

The Far Post is a co-production of Roads & Kingdoms and Sports Illustrated. Every week until the World Cup, we'll publish a new feature on global soccer culture. For more Roads & Kingdoms coverage of food, war, and music, visit its online magazine.

By Supriya Nair, The Far Post

My grandfather, born in 1919, grew up playing football in a wooded corner of the British empire. The eldest son of a family of bright-eyed troublemakers from the southern Indian district of Palakkad, Kerala, he wore knee socks and a chip on his shoulder to the local missionary high school, where beatings from teachers quivering with rage were the chief method of keeping boys in line.

Tempers ran high on the playground. Thanks to what must have been a combination of extreme arrogance and extreme vulnerability, my grandfather's boyhood was marked by a determination to start or escalate fights. Playing "soccer," as he called it from beginning to end of his lifeEdwardian slang has a certain tenacity, as North Americans will knowhe was an aggressive and inconsistent forward, not notably destined for success on the field.

Although some of his brothers and friends would play the game for a great part of their lives, my grandfather gave it up relatively quickly. In the middle of the Second World War, he boarded a train for Bombay: a metropolis then, as now, suffocating in its love of cricket. On the churning streets of the vast city, he found himself stepping aside sometimes for trucks full of European soldiers, who were either passing through on their way to other theaters of war or enforcing imperial law in a restless city.

With his mind conflating the heroics recounted in one section of the papers with the other, he thought of the professional footballers in England who sometimes heaved the football from their booted feet into the net all the way from the halfway line. How easy the English made it look, he thought; and how easy it would be for a Tommy to raise his gun and fire at a brown man if he felt like it.

Through the smoldering rubble of the 20th century, the tread of jackboots sounded often on the chalky halfway line that divides the real world from the world of the game. In a century of war, pogroms, partitions and violent revolutions of identity, football functioned as a sharp tool, loved by dictators and warmongers as much as by dissidents and democrats. (Think of AS Romathe "Jewish club" of Rome, frequent target of anti-Semitic chants from their rivalswhich came into being in 1927 because Lazio, the great traditional Roman club, were considered insufficiently sympathetic to Mussolini at the time.)

Like other sports, football had been dubiously bequeathed to many countries in Europe's colonial endeavors, and yet sometimes it helped overturn the rules it was supposed to enforce. Just before my grandfather was born, the Calcutta team Mohun Bagan won a historic footballing victory when they became the first brown team to defeat an English side in competition in 1911.

Former Italy dictator Benito Mussolini, center, poses with the 1934 World Cup-winning team.

AFP/Getty Images

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Far Post: Dream Time at the World Cup

The Chinese character (xing) refers to a figure or an image. It also carries the meaning of likeness, resemblance, and similarity.

The character consists of two parts. On the left is (rn), the radical for a man, human being, or humankind, which suggests the meaning for (xing) as representing a figure.

On the right is (xing), which provides the sound and is a pictographic character that stands for elephant, image, resemblance, or phenomena.

The character is used in combination with other Chinese characters to enhance or refine its meanings related to figures and likeness.

As a noun indicating figures, examples include (rn xing), a portrait of a human being, where (rn) refers to a human being; (hu xing), a portrait or figure painting, where (hu) refers to a painting; (dio xing), a statue, or literally a carved image or carved figure; and (f xing), an image or statue of Buddha, or a Buddhist image or statue, where (f) stands for Buddha or Buddhist.

(t xing) or (xng xing) refers to an image in general, and (xio xing) is another term for a portrait.

Examples of the use of to indicate likeness include (xing xing) or (xing sh), which means to resemble or to be alike, and (ho xing), which means as if or to seem like.

(xing yng), or the emphatic phrase (xing m xing yng), describes something that is presentable, decent, or up to par or up to the standard, while (xing hu) expresses that something is proper, improved from before, or is more like it.

A photograph is called (xing pin), (xing pin), or (zho pin). (xing pin) literally means a sheet of likeness, where (pin) is the character for a sheet, piece, slice, or a film or movie.

(xing xing), image of a thought, refers to imagination or to the verbs to imagine, conceive of, or visualize, where (xing) means to think or believe, to wish or want, to suppose, or to miss something.

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Chinese Character for Figure, Likeness: Xing ()

WASHINGTON (AP) The Senate Finance Committee voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve Sylvia Mathews Burwell's nomination to become the nation's next health secretary and oversee implementation of the new health law.

The 21-3 vote sent her nomination to the full Senate, where it likely will come to a vote next month.

Burwell, who has served as President Barack Obama's budget chief, would replace outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who announced her departure last month just as the health law was recovering from the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov website to post stronger-than-predicted enrollment numbers.

Despite expectations that Burwell's confirmation hearings would become an election-year trial of "Obamacare," there were no fireworks as she won support from senators of both parties.

Voting against her Wednesday were Republican Sens. Pat Roberts, John Cornyn and John Thune.

Burwell, 48, seen as a competent insider, promised senators she would be more responsive to Congress than Sebelius. She will face significant challenges in sustaining the momentum of the health care law, including news she can't control in the months ahead as insurers announce premiums for next year.

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Burwell Gets Committee Approval For Health Post