Iraqi police kill teen for sleeping with men

(The Advocate)

A 14-year-old Iraqi boy has been killed by Iraqi police for sleeping with men for money to support his impoverished family. According to Baghdad neighbors who witnessed the murder, Ahmed Khalil was shot at point-blank range by men wearing police uniforms, The Independent in London reports.

Neighbors also said that the boy's father was arrested two days before the execution and questioned about his son's sexual activities. The family has since fled their home in the al-Dura district of Baghdad in fear of more attacks.

"Young Ahmed was a victim of poverty," Ali Hili, the head of a London-based group of gay Iraqi exiles, told The Independent. "He was summarily executed, apparently by fundamentalist elements in the Iraqi police."

Since Iraqi Shia leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa against gays and lesbians, the country has seen a marked increase in antigay hate crimes.

Here's some GOOD news (for a change) from Cambodia. I'm very interested in this news story because I visited the Angkor Archaeological Zone in Cambodia in 2002.


Reassembling ancient Cambodian temple was huge jigsaw puzzle

Last Updated Fri, 05 May 2006 14:23:08 EDT
CBC Arts

Parts of an ancient Cambodian temple have reopened to the public after archaeologists spent years piecing it together.

The Baphuon, dating from 1050-1066 AD, is part of the huge Angkor complex, the cradle of a sophisticated Khmer kingdom that once dominated the region.
The Baphuon was a Hindu and later a Buddhist temple, erected in the shape of a huge golden mountain.

Its beautiful bas-relief carvings are scenes from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the Hindu world's most significant stories.

But the designers built it on sandy soil and it collapsed in the centuries after the decline of the old Khmer kingdom.

French archaelogists have been working on the site since the 1880s, when the temples and ruins of the ancient city near Siem Reap, Cambodia, were rediscovered.

The Ecole Française d'Extrème-Orient has been restoring temples in the Angkor area since 1908.

But in the 1970s, as the Khmer Rouge took control of Cambodia, only the first tier of the enormous Baphuon had been restored. The rest of the temple, partly dismantled so it could be reinforced, was in 300,000 numbered pieces scattered in the jungle.

The French were driven from Cambodia in 1975 and the numbering system for restoring the temple was destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, who killed thousands of people in a civil war that tore apart the country.

When archaeologists were allowed back into the country in 1995, they were faced with a huge jigsaw puzzle.

The team has been painstakingly reassembling the pieces, relying on computer models and their own judgment, ever since.

"The main difficulty with this temple was that it was abandoned and dismantled without anyone having an original photo," said Pascal Royère, the chief architect of the restoration.

About 900 photos of details of the original had been taken by architects since 1908, but the main plan was missing and the only overall image was a painting.
"The temple was closed and we can only now allow a little access to the public," he told Agence France-Presse.

Royère estimates it will be another two years before the temple is completely restored. Tourists can now observe restoration work and see part of the face of the building.

"Our objective is to slowly allow increased access for the public," he said.
The project has been funded by France and cost in excess of $37 million. Cambodia is one of Asia's poorest nations and relies on tourism revenue from visitors to Angkor.

The Baphuon was built by King Utyadityavarman II and dedicated to the god Vishnu. It had a copper roof and was shaped like a sacred mountain. In the 15th century, it was rebuilt as a Buddhist temple, before falling into disrepair.
Only Angkor Wat, built a century later, surpassed the Baphuon in beauty and size. Angkor Wat is the main attraction for the thousands of tourists who visit the region.

It's the birthday of philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, born in Copenhagen, Denmark (1813). He said, "What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music."

Here's more bad news from Cambodia:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4967610.stm

Here's some more bad news from Burma:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4969472.stm

Here are some words of wisdom from the Buddha:

"Accept my words only when you have examined them for yourselves; do not accept them simply because of the reverence you have for me. Those who only have faith in me and affection for me will not find the final freedom. But those who have faith in the truth and are determined on the path, they will find awakening."

- from "Majjhima Nikaya"

From "The Pocket Buddha Reader," edited by Anne Bancroft, 2000. Reprinted by arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Boston, www.shambhala.com .

According to Toronto GO Transit trains, "Stephen Harper Eats Babies". Thanks for posting a link to this news story on your website (www.doublecool.com), Todd!


T.O. commuters told Stephen Harper 'eats babies'
Updated Tue. May. 2 2006 11:17 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff

Bemused Toronto commuters were repeatedly informed that "Stephen Harper eats babies" after a hacker tampered with advertising signs on city trains.

The scrolling electronic signs that usually carry transit updates and advertisements on Toronto's westbound Lakeshore GO Transit trains carried the messages Thursday, Friday and Monday after the hacker used a remote-control device to re-program the wording and mock the prime minister.

The ingenious hacker made sure that suburban commuters in at least five different cars continued to get his or her subliminal message.

Commuter Gerry Nicholls said he thought he was hallucinating as he relaxed in his seat for the 35-minute GO train ride between Toronto and his Oakville home.

Every three seconds, the scrolling electronic sign read: "Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies. Stephen Harper Eats Babies," Nicholls told the Toronto Star.

"No one seemed to be reacting to it," said Nicholls, who happens to be vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, the same conservative think-tank formerly headed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"I kept waiting for the kicker,'' he said. "I thought, there's got to be something to this. It's a joke, it's an ad for baby food or something like that. It just kept going over and over again and I realized that this is something that could be pretty serious.

"I wasn't even sure when I got off the train. Was I hallucinating?"

The case of "electronic vandalism" prompted red-faced GO Transit officials to pledge the insults would never happen again.

To do so, they will have to power down all the signs on their cars and use special software that is being couriered from the United States to password protect the digital signs, a process that is expected to take three days.

"Unfortunately it's a slur, it's an offensive message," GO Transit spokesperson Ed Shea told the Star.

"We regret it happened and we're sorry if anybody was offended, including the prime minister."

However, a digital security expert told The Globe and Mail this kind of digital tampering is as easy as buying a $23.95 gadget -- and more of it should be expected.

"There's actually a whole slew of ways to hack into these signs," said Ryan Purita, a forensic examiner with Totally Connected Security Ltd. in Vancouver.

"If people don't think those things are connected to the Internet, they're wrong," Purita told The Globe.

Dimitris Soudas, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, described the hacker's actions as "inappropriate and disrespectful."

Meanwhile, when asked about his time with Harper at the National Citizens Coalition, Nicholls said: "I worked with Stephen Harper for five years and never once did he, in that time, eat a baby."

Mom Kidnapped Son, Feared Dad ' Turning Him Gay'
by Fidel Ortega, 365Gay.com Miami Bureau
May 3, 2006 - 12:01 am ET

(Miami, Florida) A woman has told a Florida court that she kidnapped her 11-year old son and fled the country because she believed her former husband was turning the boy gay.

Caren MacDonald is accused of custody interference. She took the boy from a Ft. Lauderdale school in 2001 and went to Costa Rica. They remained there for four years but was arrested by U.S. Customs agents in June 2002 in Houston as she disembarked from an airplane that had arrived from Costa Rica.

The boy is now 16 and lives in Colorado with his father.

If convicted MacDonald could face up to five years in prison.

She said that she and her husband were married in 1988. The following year she became pregnant and the couple divorced in 1997.

It was at that time he came out and began a relationship with another man. To protect the identity of the child the names of the boy, his father and partner are not being published.
MacDonald and her husband fought for custody of the boy. During the dispute a court ordered psychiatrist testified that MacDonald was unstable and a judge awarded sole custody to the father. MacDonald was ordered to have no contact with the boy.

During her testimony in the criminal case MacDonald attempted to portray her ex-husband and his partner as sexual predators.

''I didn't understand how somebody could be straight and then be gay,'' MacDonald said.

She also accused the partner of massaging the boy on his buttocks several times, an allegation she also had made at the custody hearing. But last week the boy testified that there had been no inappropriate behavior and that his mother has forced him to lie at the custody hearing about being molested.

© www.365Gay.com 2006

This is a link to an interesting article about gay history:

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/film/beefcake.html

I visited Tiananmen Square two years before the horrible events of 1989.


Beijing compensates mother of Tiananmen victim

Last Updated Sun, 30 Apr 2006 09:11:57 EDT
CBC News

Chinese authorities have for the first time paid compensation to the family of a protester killed during Beijing's Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy rallies in June 1989.

The student-led demonstrations denounced corruption and demanded more reforms. But officials characterized them as counter-revolutionary disturbances, sending in tanks and ordering troops to open fire on June 3-4, 1989, in a massacre that killed hundreds, or even thousands of protesters.

But the Chinese government has largely refused to admit any wrongdoing or blame in the massacre and subsequent crackdown, which saw thousands of people rounded up across the country and thrown into jail. It's still not known exactly how many people died.

Now a woman has been awarded 70,000 yuan ($9,700 Cdn) as "hardship assistance," 17 years after her teenage son died in police detention, says a news website run by an activist based in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province.

FROM CBC ARCHIVES: Massacre in Tiananmen Square

According to Tang Deying, her 15-year-old son, Zhou Guocong, was riding his bicycle home from work when police in Chengdu detained him.

Tang's complaint states that her son was beaten in a police cell. Photos of his corpse show bruises and cuts on his body, which was cremated soon afterwards.

Ding Zilin, a retired Beijing professor whose son was also shot dead by troops in 1989, welcomed the compensation. But she played down the significance of the move.

Ding, whose Tiananmen Mothers group has documented the victims of 1989, pointed out the payment was for "hardship assistance" and was not linked to the actual crackdown.

The group is demanding a full, open accounting of what happened immediately after the anti-government protests.