TV News LIES

As in other Sub-Saharan African countries, Uganda has long had a taboo against homosexuality. But the political scapegoating of gays and lesbians is a relatively recent phenomenon, one deliberately exported by the American right.

Uganda is a country where American-style evangelical Christianity is exploding, and there are close links between many American anti-gay preachers, politicians, and activists, and their Ugandan counterparts. As Jeff Sharlet has reported, Bahati, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s sponsor, is the secretary of the Ugandan branch of The Family, the secretive American evangelical organization whose members include Sens. James Inhofe, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn.

Israel has used a covert procedure to cancel the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994, the legal advisor for the Judea and Samaria Justice Ministry's office admits, in a new document obtained by Haaretz. The document was written after the Center for the Defense of the Individual filed a request under the Freedom of Information Law.

The document states that the procedure was used on Palestinian residents of the West Bank who traveled abroad between 1967 and 1994. From the occupation of the West Bank until the signing of the Oslo Accords, Palestinians who wished to travel abroad via Jordan were ordered to leave their ID cards at the Allenby Bridge border crossing.

Im­agine that the more than 700 Guan­tanamo files re­leased two weeks ago by WikiLeaks con­tained in­for­ma­tion ex­plain­ing how in­ter­rogators ob­tained "in­tel­lig­ence" from "war on ter­ror" de­tainees cap­tured or sold to US for­ces after 9/11, such as this firsthand ac­count:

"On a co­u­ple of oc­cas­ions, I en­tered in­ter­view rooms to find a de­tainee chained hand and foot in a fetal posi­tion to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they had urinated or de­fecated on them­selves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more. On one oc­cas­ion, the air con­dition­ing had been tur­ned down so far and the tem­pera­ture was so cold in the room that the barefooted de­tainee was shak­ing with cold.

Hundreds of albinos are thought to have been killed for black magic purposes in Tanzania and albino girls are being raped because of a belief they offer a cure for AIDS, a Canadian rights group said on Thursday.

At least 63 albinos, including children, are known to have been killed, mostly in the remote northwest of the country. "We believe there are hundreds and hundreds of killings in Tanzania, but only a small number are being reported to the police," Peter Ash, founder and director of Under The Same Sun (UTSS), told Reuters.

Human rights groups say hundreds of ordinary Syrians have been jailed for "degrading the prestige of the state" amid an intensifying crackdown on anti-government protests.

Hundreds of detainees received a three-year prison sentence on Tuesday while mass arrests continue, to pre-empt further unrest on the Muslim day of prayer on Friday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories says Israel has killed 1,300 Palestinian children since 2000.

Richard Falk announced the figure during a press conference in the Jordanian capital city of Amman late on Monday, the Palestinian News Network reported on its website.

In his latest report, Falk noted that in 2010, the Israeli army's gunfire and shelling of the Gaza Strip claimed the lives of 17 children.

Since his appointment in May 2008, Falk has faced hindrances by the Israeli regime, which has refused to cooperate with the rapporteur in his field missions.