Mass Graves

Andy Ostroy: Why Israel Was Right to Invade Gaza — Unlike any other nation in history, Israel was founded after millions of its brethren, Jews, were butchered in mass genocide by another nation. No people have suffered 2000+ years of brutal persecution -- including Pogroms, the Crusades, the Holocaust and Arab terrorism -- like the Jews. And no nation besides Israel has on or within its borders enemies who publicly avow its absolute and violent destruction. The mantra "Never Again" is something Jewish people live with every minute of every day, especially those living in Israel. Jews of every age, even those born after WWII, are haunted by images... [Tags: andy ostroy, border towns, concentration camps, face of the earth, foreign minister tzipi livni]

Murder, they wrote — Last month, Jersey police announced that, so far as they could establish, there was no torture and no murder at the Haut de la Garenne children's care home in Jersey. The widely reported "human remains" (actually tiny bone fragments) were mostly animals, though three were possibly humans who died at least 58 years ago, and maybe more than 500 years ago. A "skull fragment" was a coconut shell. Underground "torture chambers" were floor voids where a grown person could not stand straight. "Shackles" were bits of old metal guttering. And so on and so on.You probably saw the story, though... [Tags: abuse allegations, bone fragments, coconut shell, daily mail, evil men]

Mohsin Mohi-Ud Din: Open Trade Within Closed Civil Society? — Recently India and Pakistan formally reopened a trade route previously closed for over 60 years in the disputed territory of Kashmir. The media has been awash with public statements by officials in the region rightly noting the potential benefits of reopening the trade route now linking the two rival nuclear powers. But the hyped significance of this trade route in Kashmir has marginalized the unresolved issue of recent crackdowns on civil society by the Indian military in which over 35 unarmed protesters were murdered by state security forces and over 600 protesters were injured by gunfire and beatings by Indian... [Tags: beatings, brutal crackdown, burmese junta, global war on terror, india and pakistan]

Iraq Officials Find Mass Graves Near Syrian Border — BAGHDAD — Iraqi officials Wednesday reported finding mass graves with remains of 34 people, most believed to have been Iraqi army recruits waylaid three years ago by al-Qaida gunmen as they traveled to a training base near the Syrian border. Farmers tipped off authorities last week about the graves, located in the Euphrates River valley near Syria about 200 miles northwest of Baghdad, according to a local mayor, Farhan Fitaghan. Fitaghan told The Associated Press that two of the remains were women. Most of the victims were believed to have been army recruits from the southern Shiite city of Karbala... [Tags: al qaida in iraq, coffins, crossing the border, euphrates river, euphrates river valley]

Victims of Spanish civil war to be exhumed — A crusading judge said he would investigate the disappearance of tens of thousands of Spaniards during the civil war, in the country's first official inquiry into one of the darkest chapters of its history. Baltasar Garzon ordered the exhumations of 19 mass graves dating from the 1936-39 conflict and Francisco Franco's subsequent dictatorship, including that of the country's best loved poet, Federico Garcia Lorca.... [Tags: conflict, dictatorship, disappearance, exhumations, federico garcia lorca]

Spain: Judge to probe Franco era — Spain's leading judge agreed on Thursday to investigate the disappearances of tens thousands of people during the 1936-39 civil war and the ensuing Franco dictatorship, many of whom are believed to be buried in mass graves...... [Tags: civil war, dictatorship, disappearances, franco, mass graves]

iminplaya sends along a New Scientist article that begins: "One of the driest deserts in the world, the Saharan Tenere Desert, hosted at least two flourishing lakeside populations during the Stone Age, a discovery of the largest graveyard from the era reveals. The archaeological site in Niger [is] called Gobero... It had been used as a burial site by two very different populations during the millennia when the Sahara was lush... 'The first people who used the Gobero cemetery were Kiffian, hunter-gatherers who grew up to two meters tall,' says Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino in Italy and... [Tags: burial site, cassino, deserts in the world, elena, garcea]

Mort Rosenblum: Karadzic Told Us What He Planned; We Just Watched — Weeks before snipers sparked war at the Sarajevo Holiday Inn in 1992, I visited a psychiatrist, silver-maned and clearly loony, at his Bosnian Serb party headquarters. He jabbed a stick at a colorful grade-school map on a wall of the tiny office to show how Serbs would displace Muslims and Croats by force if all else failed. I rechecked his name -- Radovan Karadzic was not yet in the files -- and then asked how he would get away with that. You watch, he replied. The interview went across the world on Associated Press wires. Back then looming conflict was... [Tags: consciences, croats, dayton accords, europe and america, gang rape]