Journal de bord

Iraqi activists sounded the bell over the killing of dozens of teenagers by religious police for having “emo” haircuts.

Activists told the Cairo-based al-Akhbar daily that at least 90 Iraqi teenagers with “emo” appearances have been stoned to death by the Moral Police in the country in the past month. The violent crackdown against “emo” Iraqi teenagers came after the Iraqi interior ministry declared them as “devil worshippers.”

“The ‘Emo phenomenon’ or devil worshiping is being probed by the Moral Police who have the approval to eliminate it as soon as possible since it’s detrimentally affecting the society and becoming a danger,” according to a statement by the interior ministry.

[…] The statement said that Iraq’s Moral Police was granted approval by the Ministry of Education to enter Baghdad schools and pinpoint students with Western appearances.

The activists told the newspaper that a group of armed men dressed in civilian clothing led the teenagers to secluded areas a few days ago, stoned them to death, and then disposed their bodies in garbage dumpsters across the capital, Baghdad.

“First they throw concrete blocks at the boy’s arms, then at his legs, then the final blow is to his head, and if he is not dead by then, they start all over again,” one person who managed to escape told the daily.

The exact death toll remains unclear, but Hana al-Bayaty of Brussels Tribunal, an NGO dealing with Iraqi issues, said the current figure ranges “between 90 and 100.”

Activists said that leaflets were distributed in Baghdad warning teenagers from donning the “emo” style, and in some regions, teenage homosexuals were killed by battering their heads also by concrete blocks.

Al Arabiya: “Dozens of Iraqi teenagers stoned to death for ‘emo’ haircuts”.

Building a heart that mimics nature’s lub-dub may be as comically shortsighted as Leonardo da Vinci designing a flying machine with flapping wings. Nature is not always the best designer, at least when it comes to things that humans must build and maintain. So the newest artificial heart doesn’t imitate the cardiac muscle at all. Instead, it whirs like a little propeller, pushing blood through the body at a steady rate.

Popsci, Dan Baum: “No Pulse: How Doctors Reinvented The Human Heart”.

Allegiance is an epic story of love, war and heroism set during the Japanese American internment of World War II, following the story of the Omura family in the weeks and years following Pearl Harbor, as they are relocated from their home in Salinas, California to the Heart Mountain internment camp in the wastelands of Wyoming.

Their story reflects the deep conflicts of a nation and a people divided: father Tatsuo, a successful store owner, resists their unjust internment; mother Kimiko fears for their future, quietly resigned to their fate; older son James volunteers in an all-Japanese American army regiment; and younger son Sam yearns for acceptance by and inclusion in America. The Omura’s conflicts mirror the larger rift between the Japanese American Citizens League, which urged cooperation with the internment and unwavering loyalty to America, and the resisters of the internment, who steadfastly refused to serve a country that had put them in concentration camps. This universal story sheds new light upon a dark, under-explored, and wrenching chapter of American history. Through the remembrances of Old Sam and his tutor Gloria, the painful past is revisited, and at long last, redemption and understanding begin to heal decades-old wounds.

Allegiance sheds new light upon a dark chapter of American history. With its moving score, Allegiance connects the audience with universal themes of love, family and redemption.

Allegiance.com.