Oh, Hello Everyone! -Another day, another...........?
Actually I have no idea what this day will bring. We'll have to just wait and see.
(-This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it! -Psalm 118:24)

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Here's the news:

U.S. Government Apologizes for 1940s STD Testing on Guatemalans

Published October 01, 2010

The U.S. government apologized Friday for "unethical" and "reprehensible" research conducted in Guatemala more than 60 years ago, after a professor documented how U.S. scientists intentionally infected people in the country with sexually transmitted diseases.

Susan Reverby, a women's studies professor at Wellesley College, published a paper detailing the joint research program between the U.S. and Guatemalan governments. From 1946-1948, doctors enabled men in prison to be infected with syphilis by allowing prostitutes carrying the disease to visit them. From there, they studied inoculation techniques. The tests, which also involved mental hospital patients, involved nearly 700 subjects, according to the study.

Without detailing the nature of the research, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a joint statement apologizing for the program. They said they would launch an investigation into the "specifics" of the study.

"The sexually transmitted disease inoculation study conducted from 1946-1948 in Guatemala was clearly unethical," they said. "Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health.

"We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologize to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices," they said. The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the United States, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala."

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Child bride horrors last a lifetime

October 1, 2010

Sana'a, Yemen (CNN) -- Reem al Numeri is 14-years-old and recently divorced. She was 11 when she says her father forced her to marry a cousin more than twice her age.

Reem says she has been stigmatized by her divorce and now lives the life of an outcast. Without a husband or father to support her, she cannot attend school.

Her story has echoes of Nujood Ali -- the Yemeni girl whose story sparked an international outrage that many thought would force change in the country.

But a bill to outlaw child marriages got blocked and the practice continues. On Saturday, Yemen's parliament will look again at child marriage.

Reem's desperate pleas to stay a child fell on deaf ears as her father forced her to marry a 32-year-old cousin. "He said you need to go into the room where the judge is and tell him you agree to the marriage," Reem said. "I said I won't go in there - he took out his dagger and said he'd cut me in half if I didn't go in there and agree."

For Reem, the terror and the trauma were just beginning. She said she was told to sleep with her husband, but refused. She locked herself in a bedroom every night to ensure her safety but, according to Reem, he managed to sneak in and raped her.

Reem said members of her family first ordered her to submit, then expected her to celebrate. "They chose not to buy me any bridal dresses until they were sure I'd had sex with him because they didn't want their money to go to waste," she said. "Once they were sure, they bought me the bridal clothes and threw me a party. After that, I burned the white bridal dress I was given and then I used a razor to try to kill myself." Reem's father and ex-husband did not return CNN's calls.

In Yemen, a deeply tribal society, the issue of child marriages is a complicated one.

Two years ago, 10-year-old Nujood Ali shocked the world when she took herself to court in Yemen's capital city of Sana'a and asked a judge for a divorce.

After a well publicized trial, she was granted one -- and became a heroine to those trying to shine a spotlight on the issue of child brides in Yemen, where more than half of all young girls are married before age 18, mostly to older men.

In 2009, Yemen's parliament passed legislation raising the minimum age of marriage to 17. But conservative parliamentarians argued the bill violated Sharia, or Islamic law, which does not stipulate a minimum age of marriage.

And because of a parliamentary maneuver the bill was never signed into law.

More than 100 leading religious clerics called the attempt to restrict the age of marriage "un-Islamic".

Mohammed Aboulahoum, who advises Yemen's president, said the law should be passed, but he added the fight against child marriage restrictions were a distraction -- a way for the parliament to avoid bigger, more sensitive, political issues.

"I think there should be an age limit," Aboulahoum said. "And if you sit even with the religious people and you ask them, would you let your daughter marry at the age of 12 or 13, they would tell you no. So it is something, we use it more for politics."

Reem's attorney, Shada Nasser, is one of Yemen's most well known advocates for children's rights.

Nasser has represented several child brides seeking divorce, including Ali. She doesn't even think the practice should be called marriage. "I think it is rape," she said.

But Nasser also has hope that Reem's generation will help build a new Yemen, free of child marriages.

"Who can build this Yemen?" asked Nasser. "Me? No - all these small girls -- they must build Yemen. But all these girls need a good law - a family law." Nasser begs the clerics standing in the way: "I ask them to give these girls mercy."

A prominent Yemeni human rights activist, Amal Albasha, is also outraged the practice continues. Her organization, Sisters Arab Forum, tries to intervene on behalf of child brides, to stop the marriages from taking place. Albasha added that nothing will change until people in Yemen try to fully understand the horror a child bride goes through.

"You know, just two days ago, a 9-year-old girl got married in Taiz." she said. "Just think about the pain, the fear -- just think about a 9-year-old with a 50-year-old in a closed room," said Albasha. "The experience remains until the day of death."

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Obama says people are impatient but "now's not the time to quit...it took time to free the slaves...ultimately we'll make progress."

(This is from the same article)-
What some said in response to his words:

#1) Mr. President - exactly what are you trying to achieve with these worthless remarks.
It also takes time to destroy a nation - but you are working at it - daily.
You have attacked the American free enterprise system - it took time but not too much for you to create an anti-business atmosphere in this country - for you to cause serious class division, for you to frighten and cause depression among citizens of every age, color, religion.
You do not speak to sensible, hard working Americans when you rant - and rant and rant - you have no worthwhile plans to help our country move forward otherwise you would not be dredging out ancient history which has no bearing on our current problems.

#2) GAG ME WITH A SPOON!!!!! THIS GUY IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO EQUATE THE FREEING OF SLAVES TO HIS AGENDA OF ENSLAVING FUTURE GENERATIONS OF AMERICANS. WHAT AN ARROGANT POSER....

#3) The commander-in-chief says it took time to free the slaves. What he forgot to say is "and it will take no time for me to make you slaves again".

#4) Well, he is partly right. In New York alone it took 200 years to abolish slavery. Long before the Civil War. If we keep his agenda we will return to the days of slavery but we'll all be slaves to his government.


(Well, enough of that. People are just scared. Worried about today, scared about our future. They want action, not words.
-But bickering won't help. We can make our desires for change evident at the polls in November.)

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"I can't spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead."

That's what Barack Hussein Obama, tongue firmly planted in his cheek, told NBC's Brian Williams. Of course, no one is asking Barack Hussein Obama to walk around with his birth certificate plastered on his forehead.

The American people are only asking him to SIMPLY PRODUCE HIS ACTUAL LONG-FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE and put an end to the controversy surrounding his eligibility to hold the office of President of the United States.

But he WON'T.... In fact, he has actively FOUGHT every effort to compel him to release his ACTUAL LONG-FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE. He's dug in his heels... spent millions... he arrogantly refuses to prove to the American people that he is not a FRAUD or a USURPER, while his underlings look down their noses at the American people and call these legitimate requests for him to produce an actual birth certificate... “garbage.”


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Rush charges Obama 'foreigner' in loyalties
Talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh said yesterday that
as far as loyalties go for Barack Obama, he is a "foreigner."
"Let me put it this way," Limbaugh said. "We don't need a birth certificate to know that Obama is a foreigner, in this sense: He's born in the United States, but he doesn't think like most of us think. He doesn't look at this country and its people, its history, its accomplishments the way most of us do. He doesn't look at our history with pride.

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U.N. releases 'heartbreaking' human rights report on Congo

(CNN) -- The United Nations issued a report Friday detailing human rights violations such as killings and rapes over a 10-year period in the Democratic Republic of Congo -- a massive document that a Congolese diplomat calls "detailed," "credible" and "heartbreaking."

The draft report, titled "Mapping Exercise," documents crimes against humanity throughout the Congo between 1993 and 2003.

"Tens of thousands of people were killed, and numerous others were raped, mutilated or otherwise victimized during the decade," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said.

The report, which had been previously leaked, accuses Rwandan forces of committing atrocities. It notes the involvement of at least 21 armed Congolese groups in serious human rights violations and the military operations of eight other states inside Congo.

Along with detailing the atrocities, the report is designed to find ways "to deal with the legacy of these violations, including truth, justice, reparation and reform.

"The period covered by this report is probably one of the most tragic chapters in the recent history of the DRC," the report says. "Indeed, this decade was marked by a string of major political crises, wars and multiple ethnic and regional conflicts that brought about the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people."

The report devotes attention to violence against women and children.

"Violence in the DRC was, in fact, accompanied by the apparent systematic use of rape and sexual assault allegedly by all combatant forces," it says.

"This report highlights the apparently recurrent, widespread and systematic nature of these phenomena and concludes that the majority of the incidents of sexual violence reported, could if judicially proven, constitute offences and violations under domestic law, international human rights law,and international humanitarian law."

The report says at least 30,000 children were recruited by armed forces or groups and that "children have been subjected to indescribable violence."

"If this situation is allowed to continue, there is a risk that a new generation will be created that has known nothing but violence, and violence as a means of conflict resolution, thus compromising the country's chances of achieving lasting peace," the report says.

Rwandan forces and an allied rebel group massacred ethnic Hutus in the country, the report says.

"Tens of thousands" of Hutu civilians were slaughtered with knives, bludgeoned with hammers and burned alive as the Rwandan army and the Allied Democratic Liberation Forces swept across Congo -- then called Zaire -- leading to the toppling of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

More than 1 million Rwandans fled to neighboring Congo when the Rwandan genocide ended in 1994 -- most of them Hutu. In 1996, Rwanda invaded Congo in pursuit of the genocide orchestrators, who were living amid hundreds of

thousands of other refugees.

Saying the report is flawed, Rwanda said it "reserves the right to review" its "various engagements" with the United Nations. The country has participated in U.N. peacekeeping missions, such as Sudan's Darfur region.

"We note that the U.N. also recognizes that the report omits crucial historical context, uses problematic methodology and sourcing, and the standard of proof used to justify the allegations in it is woefully inadequate," said Louise Mushikiwabo, foreign minister and government spokeswoman.

"It seems clear that no amount of tinkering can resuscitate the credibility of this fundamentally misguided process. This report is yet another attempt to distort Rwanda's history and prolong instability in the Great Lakes Region."

Ileka Atoko, Congo's ambassador to the United Nations, welcomed the publication of the report and called it "detailed," "credible," and "heartbreaking."

"The Congolese government, and I personally, are appalled at the horrific nature and scope of crimes documented in this report that the people of the Congo have suffered," Atoko said.

"Sadly, this information is not new to us. Millions of Congolese men, women and children have borne the brunt of the Congo's conflicts over the past 15 years. Far too many have died. Like nearly all Congolese, I too lost loved ones in the war.

Atoko said justice must be meted out for the crimes.

"Far too often, Congolese voices go unheeded. I truly hope that this time it is going to be different."

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Have a good day! Blessings!-Missygirl*