First case of people trafficking for organs uncovered in UK

The first case of an individual being trafficked to Britain in order to have  their organs harvested has been uncovered.

By Martin Evans,Crime Correspondent 

The Telegraph.co.uk

The unnamed adult female was brought to the UK by an organised gang with the  intention of removing her organs and selling them on to those desperate for a transplant.

It is unclear whether the plot was uncovered before the organ removal took place, but campaigners said it was the first such case they had seen in Britain.

It is understood the case is now the subject of a police investigation, but represents a sinister development in the already disturbing trade in human trafficking.

Details of the harrowing case emerged in a report from The Salvation Army, which provides specialist support for the adult victims of trafficking on behalf of the Ministry of Justice.

Major Anne Read, the group’s anti-trafficking response coordinator declined to say what part of the world the victim was from, but explained: “They were brought to this country for the purpose of taking organs. This is certainly the first case like this that we have had.”

She said the problem may have been in existence for some time, but had probably been “under the radar”.

According to the World Health Organisation as many as 7,000 kidneys are llegally obtained by traffickers each year around the world.

While there is a black market for organs such as hearts, lungs and livers,kidneys are the most sought after organs because one can be removed from a patient without any ill effects.

According to international experts the trade operates in three ways, firstly with the victim being forced to give up an organ, secondly where they agree   to sell and organ and finally where a vulnerable person is duped into thinking they need an operation and the organ is removed without their knowledge.

The process involves a number of people including the recruiter who identifies the victim, the person who arranges their transport, the medical professionals who perform the operation and the salesman who trades the organ.

The Salvation Army report also revealed the extent to which males were becoming the victims of people trafficking, mainly for labour exploitation.

Major Read said 41 per cent of the people they supported were men with the majority being trafficked from Eastern Europe and Africa.

 

Kuwait couple gets death for Filipina murder

A court has sentenced a Kuwaiti couple to death for beating and then murdering their Filipina domestic helper, newspapers in the Gulf state reported .

The criminal court found the disabled husband and his wife guilty of “premeditated murder” after throwing the maid from their car and driving over her, Al-Rai and Al-Anbaa dailies reported, citing the verdict.

No names were published in the reports, for the couple or the maid.

Newspapers said that based on testimony by one of the couple’s sons, the wife beat the maid for days until her health deteriorated.

The boy told interrogators that his parents had said they were taking the maid to hospital for treatment, but that he never saw her again.

According to the ruling, the couple took the maid, who was “unconscious” at the time, to a remote area in the desert where they threw her from the back seat of the car and then drove over her until she died.

About 73,000 Filipinos — 60,000 of them women working mostly as maids — live in oil-rich Kuwait, where some 600,000 domestic helpers, mostly Asians, are employed.
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King Prawn Salad

Serves 4
Ingredients

2 tbsp Sesame Oil

225g/8oz Raw King Prawns (jumbo shrimps), peeled and deveined

4 Spring Onions, thinly sliced on the diagonal

10cm/4-inches Cucumber, cut into 5cm/2-inch julienne strips

1 tbsp freshly chopped Coriander (cilantro), finely chopped

1 teasp Fish Sauce

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves

1/2 – tsp. ground cumin

2 fresh Red chillies, finely chopped

The juice of 1 Lemon

Directions
1. Heat the oil in a wok or frying pan and when very hot add the prawns and stir-fry for 3 to 4 minutes, until they turn pink.

2. Remove the prawns from the pan with a slotted spoon and cut into thin slices diagonally.

3. Place the prawn slices in a mixing bowl together with the remaining ingredients and toss to mix well. Serve immediately.

 

Greece vote for Euro

Cartoon by Tom Janssen The Netherlands

 

Roses Of The Day

The duty of happiness becomes clearer when we see how it affects others. It is the merry heart that makes the cheerful countenance, and it is the cheerful countenance that spreads cheer to make other hearts merry. The sunny soul brings sunshine everywhere. A bright and happy temperament is a great social asset, adding to the happiness of the world.
 HUGH BLACK

To be happy you must be your own sunshine.
 CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM

The idea has been transmitted from generation to generation, that happiness is one large and beautiful precious stone–a single gem, so rare that all search for it is vain, all effort for it hopeless. It is not so. Happiness is a mosaic, composed of many smaller stones. Each taken apart and viewed singly, may be of little value; but when all are grouped together and judiciously combined and set, they form a graceful whole–a costly jewel. Trample not under foot, then, the little pleasures that appear along the daily path, while you look for some great joy which may never be attained.
 T. L. HAINES & L. W. YAGGY

Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is. MAXIM GORKY

- The journey to true happiness and to happiness now is not a journey of physical distance or time; it is one of personal “self-recovery,” where we remember and reconnect consciously to an inner potential for joy–a paradise lost–waiting to be found.

- “If you think something is missing in your life, it is probably YOU…” 

“One of the big mistakes I think we make in relationships is that we don’t give our best energy to the people that matter most.” 

- “Circumstances and situations do color life, but you have been given the mind to choose what the color shall be.” 

ROBERT HOLDEN

 

WikiLeaks Reveals U.S. Funded Child Sex Slavery

By Arun Gandhi

The ‘infamous’ Wikileaks has released a cable from Afghanistan revealing U.S. government contractor DynCorp threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment. Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of “boy play” where young boys are dressed in women’s clothing, dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the highest bidder. Apparently this is the sort of “entertainment” funded by U.S. tax dollars when DynCorp is in charge of security in Afghanistan.

This isn’t the first time DynCorp has used U.S. tax dollars to support child sex trafficking. In Bosnia in 1999, Kathryn Bolkovac was fired from the company after blowing the whistle on DynCorp’s staffers pimping out girls as young as 12 from Eastern European countries.

Source: Change.org -

DynCorp is a government contractor which has been providing training for Afghan security and police forces for several years. Though the company is about as transparent as a lead-coated rock, most reports claim over 95% of their budget comes from U.S. taxpayers. That’s the same budget that DynCorp used to pay for a party in Kunduz Province for some Afghan police trainees. The entertainment for the evening was bacha bazi boys, whose pimps were paid so the boys would sing and dance for the recruits and then be raped by them afterward. That’s your tax dollars at work — fighting terrorism and extremism in Afghnistan by trafficking little boys for sex with cops-in-training.

In fact, the evidence linking DynCorp to bacha bazi was so damning, Afghan Minister of the Interior Hanif Atmar tried to quash the story. Upon hearing a journalist was investigating DynCorp and the U.S. government’s funding of the sex trafficking of young boys in Afghanistan, Atmar warned any publication of the story would “endanger lives,” and requested the U.S. suppress the story. Atmar admitted he had arrested eleven Afghans nationals as “facilitators” of the bacha bazi party. But he was only charging them with “purchasing a service from a child,” which is illegal under Sharia law and the civil code. And in this case “services” is not used as a euphemism for sex; so far, no one is being held accountable for the young boys whose rapes were paid for by the U.S. taxpayers.

As if this story couldn’t get any more outrageous, Atmar went on to say that if news of the incident got out, he was “worried about the image of foreign mentors”. In other words, why should something as piddling as the humiliation, objectification, sale, and rape of some children tarnish the good name of DynCorp and all the work (read: money) they’re doing in Afghanistan? After all, bacha bazi is growing in popularity in Afghanistan, especially in areas like Kunduz. Why shouldn’t U.S. government contractors be able to win local favor by pimping young boys?

 

Enjoy the best Desiderius Erasmus Quotes

The desire to write grows with writing.

In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king.

By burning Luther’s books you may rid your bookshelves of him, but you will not rid men’s minds of him.

Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.

By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade.

Don’t give your advice before you are called upon.

Fools are without number.

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don’t do it, and it won’t happen.

Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn’t -it’s human.

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

I am a citizen of the world, known to all and to all a stranger.

There are some people who live in a dream world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn one into the other.

Desiderius Erasmus

 

Borani Esfanaaj (Fried spinach with yoghurt)

Ingredients: (4 servings)
fresh spinach, 1 kg
yogurt, 250 grams
2 onions, thinly sliced
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped (optional)
cooking oil
salt
black pepper
Directions:
Wash spinach and cut into small pieces. Fry onions and garlic in oil until slightly golden. Add spinach and fry together over medium heat until cooked. Let it cool down completely in the refrigerator.

Add salt and pepper to yogurt to taste and beat well until the yogurt is a free-flowing liquid. Add spinach to yogurt and mix well. The mix should be thick and homogeneous. This delicious side-dish is now ready to serve.

 

The Sting of Ahmed Shafiq

presidential election in Egypt.

The Egyptians isolated Mubarak returned to them, Ahmed Shafiq, one of the members of his national sparty’s.

They threw him from the door,returned to them from the window

 

A peek at one of Gandhi’s quotes

Many of the famous quotes by Gandhi that have been extracted from his writings and speeches reveal his belief that violence could never be the way to achieve any objective.

A peek at one of Gandhi’s quotes:

Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Mahatma Ghandi

‘Hmm.. I Know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I’m not sure that what you heard is what I meant.’