*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
STOP SPENDING TRILLIONS ON THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
BAIL OUT THE PEOPLE OF HAITI NOT THE BANKSTERS!
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ & AFGHANISTAN!
FREE PALESTINE!
MONEY FOR HEALTHCARE, JOBS AND EDUCATION!
U.S. HANDS OFF LATIN AMERICA!
SAN FRANCISCO MARCH AND RALLY
SATURDAY, MARCH 20, 11:00 A.M., CIVIC CENTER
GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT MARCH 20!
Call 415-821-6545 for leafleting and posting schedule.
NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Black History Month Forum & Benefit for Haiti Relief
Stand with the people of Haiti!
What the U.S. government isn't telling you
Fri. Feb. 5, 7pm
Centro del Pueblo, 474 Valencia St. at 16th St., SF
near 16th St. BART; Wheelchair accessible
Featured speaker: Pierre Labossiere, Haiti Action Committee
Plus, cultural performance and dinner to help raise funds
The people of the world are responding to help alleviate the terrible suffering of the Haitian people after the massive earthquake which struck Jan. 12. We urge everyone who can, to attend this important benefit for the Haitian people. Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee will give an important update on the ongoing crisis.
Why is Haiti the most impoverished country in the Western hemisphere? The answer lies in the more than two centuries of U.S. exploitation of--and hostility to--the island nation, whose hard-won independence in 1804 from the French was only the beginning of its struggle for liberation.
Natural disasters are inevitable, but resource allocation and planning can play a decisive role in lessening their impact. But Haiti has been drained of vital resources and income for decades, due to extortionate loans by the U.S.-controlled International Monetary Fund and World Bank. These loans enrich the banks while Haitian people die.
Haiti was self-sufficient in rice production until the Clinton administration forced a "free trade" policy on Haiti in the 1990s, and soon U.S. agribusiness began to flood Haiti's markets, displacing thousands of farmers. The chronic malnutrition and poverty is a direct result of U.S. imperialist policy.
President Obama announced that USAID and the Departments of State and Defense will support the rescue and relief efforts in Haiti. Yet, these are the same government bodies responsible for the economic and military policies that reduced Haiti to ruins even before the earthquake hit. We call on the U.S. government to stop deportations of the Haitians from the U.S., and to immediately cancel Haiti's debt, in addition to real assistance for the Haitian people.
$10-20 donation. (no one turned way for lack of funds). All funds collected go to Haiti relief.
Sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition. Co-sponsored by FMLN-N. Calif., Bay Area Latin American Solidarity Coalition, Task Force on the Americas, and others.
Call 415-821-6545 for more info.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Commemoration of the Gaza Massacre... and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
The young will grow to continue our struggle for liberation.
A night of poetry, reflection and celebration of resistance
Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Professor Haidar Eid
Saturday, February 6th, 2010, 6:30pm
Burlingame Recreation Center
850 Burlingame Avenue
Al-Awda, Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC), Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA), Palestinian Youth Network (PYN), Students for Justice in Palestine - UCB (SJP), US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), ANSWER Coalition, Al Juthoor Debkah Troupe, Bay Area Campaign to End Israeli Apartheid (BACEIA), Birthright Unplugged, International Solidarity Movement (ISM), Justice for Palestinians (San Jose, CA), Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism (QUIT!), San Francisco Women in Black, US Organization for Medical and Educational Needs (US-OMEN)
To endorse this event, send an email to: gazacommemoration@ gmail.com
*** please forward to your lists!!!
*** if you can help distribute or post flyers please send an email to: gazacommemoration@ gmail.com
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
National Call for March 4 Strike and Day of Action To Defend Public Education
By Elly
http://defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com/?blogsub=confirmed#subscribe-blog
California has recently seen a massive movement erupt in defense of public education -- but layoffs, fee hikes, cuts, and the re-segregation of public education are attacks taking place throughout the country. A nationwide resistance movement is needed.
We call on all students, workers, teachers, parents, and their organizations and communities across the country to massively mobilize for a Strike and Day of Action in Defense of Public Education on March 4, 2010. Education cuts are attacks against all of us, particularly in working-class communities and communities of color.
The politicians and administrators say there is no money for education and social services. They say that "there is no alternative" to the cuts. But if there's money for wars, bank bailouts, and prisons, why is there no money for public education?
We can beat back the cuts if we unite students, workers, and teachers across all sectors of public education - Pre K-12, adult education, community colleges, and state-funded universities. We appeal to the leaders of the trade union movement to support and organize strikes and/or mass actions on March 4. The weight of workers and students united in strikes and mobilizations would shift the balance of forces entirely against the current agenda of cuts and make victory possible.
Building a powerful movement to defend public education will, in turn, advance the struggle in defense of all public-sector workers and services and will be an inspiration to all those fighting against the wars, for immigrants rights, in defense of jobs, for single-payer health care, and other progressive causes.
Why March 4? On October 24, 2009 more than 800 students, workers, and teachers converged at UC Berkeley at the Mobilizing Conference to Save Public Education. This massive meeting brought together representatives from over 100 different schools, unions, and organizations from all across California and from all sectors of public education. After hours of open collective discussion, the participants voted democratically, as their main decision, to call for a Strike and Day of Action on March 4, 2010. All schools, unions and organizations are free to choose their specific demands and tactics -- such as strikes, rallies, walkouts, occupations, sit-ins, teach-ins, etc. -- as well as the duration of such actions.
Let's make March 4 an historic turning point in the struggle against the cuts, layoffs, fee hikes, and the re-segregation of public education.
- The California Coordinating Committee
To endorse this call and to receive more information contact:
march4strikeanddayofaction@gmail.com
and check out:
www.defendcapubliceducation.wordpress.com
Andy Griggs
andyca6@gmail.com
310-704-3217
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
U.S. OUT OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN NOW!
FREE PALESTINE!
San Francisco March and Rally
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
11am, Civic Center Plaza
National March on Washington
on Saturday, March 20, 2010
Fri., March 19 Day of Action & Outreach in D.C.
People from all over the country are organizing to converge on Washington, D.C., to demand the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan and Iraq.
On Saturday, March 20, 2010, there will be a massive National March & Rally in D.C. A day of action and outreach in Washington, D.C., will take place on Friday, March 19, preceding the Saturday march.
There will be coinciding mass marches on March 20 in San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The national actions are initiated by a large number of organizations and prominent individuals. see below)
Click here to become an endorser:
http://answer.pephost.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=5940&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS&autologin=true&link=endorse-body-1
Click here to make a donation:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=2302&autologin=true&donate=body-1&JServSessionIdr002=2yzk5fh8x2.app13b
We will march together to say "No Colonial-type Wars and Occupations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine!" We will march together to say "No War Against Iran!" We will march together to say "No War for Empire Anywhere!"
Instead of war, we will demand funds so that every person can have a job, free and universal health care, decent schools, and affordable housing.
March 20 is the seventh anniversary of the criminal war of aggression launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. One million or more Iraqis have died. Tens of thousands of U.S. troops have lost their lives or been maimed, and continue to suffer a whole host of enduring problems from this terrible war.
This is the time for united action. The slogans on banners may differ, but all those who carry them should be marching shoulder to shoulder.
Killing and dying to avoid the perception of defeat
Bush is gone, but the war and occupation in Iraq still go on. The Pentagon is demanding a widening of the war in Afghanistan. They project an endless war with shifting battlefields. And a "single-payer" war budget that only grows larger and larger each year. We must act.
Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were predicated on the imperial fantasy that the U.S. could create stable, proxy colonial-type governments in both countries. They were to serve as an extension of "American" power in these strategic and resource-rich regions.
That fantasy has been destroyed. Now U.S. troops are being sent to kill or be killed so that the politicians in uniform "the generals and admirals") and those in three-piece suits "our elected officials") can avoid taking responsibility for a military setback in wars that should have never been started. Their military ambitions are now reduced to avoiding the appearance of defeat.
That is exactly what happened in Vietnam! Avoiding defeat, or the perception of defeat, was the goal Nixon and Kissinger set for themselves when they took office in 1969. For this noble cause, another 30,000 young GIs perished before the inevitable troop pullout from Vietnam in 1973. The number of Vietnamese killed between 1969 and 1973 was greater by many hundreds of thousands.
All of us can make the difference - progress and change comes from the streets and from the grassroots.
The people went to the polls in 2008, and the enthusiasm and desire for change after eight years of the Bush regime was the dominant cause that led to election of a big Democratic Party majority in both Houses of Congress and the election of Barack Obama to the White House.
But it should now be obvious to all that waiting for politicians to bring real change - on any front - is simply a prescription for passivity by progressives and an invitation to the array of corporate interests from military contractors to the banks, to big oil, to the health insurance giants that dominate the political life of the country. These corporate interests work around the clock to frustrate efforts for real change, and they are the guiding hand behind the recent street mobilizations of the ultra-right.
It is up to us to act. If people had waited for politicians to do the right thing, there would have never been a Civil Rights Act, or unions, women's rights, an end to the Vietnam war or any of the profound social achievements and basic rights that people cherish.
It is time to be back in the streets. Organizing centers are being set up in cities and towns throughout the country.
We must raise $50,000 immediately just to get started. Please make your contribution today. We need to reserve buses, which are expensive $1,800 from NYC, $5,000 from Chicago, etc.). We have to print 100,000 leaflets, posters and stickers. There will be other substantial expenses as March 20 draws closer.
Please become an endorser and active supporter of the March 20 National March on Washington.
Please make an urgently needed tax-deductible donation today. We can't do this without your active support.
The initiators of the March 20 National March on Washington preceded by the March 19 Day of Action and Outreach in D.C.) include: the ANSWER Coalition; Muslim American Society Freedom; National Council of Arab Americans; Cynthia McKinney; Malik Rahim, co-founder of Common Ground Collective; Ramsey Clark; Cindy Sheehan; Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK; Deborah Sweet, Director, World Can't Wait; Mike Ferner, President, Veterans for Peace; Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition; Heidi Boghosian, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild; Ron Kovic, author of "Born on the 4th of July"; Juan Jose Gutierrez, Director, Latino Movement USA; Col. Ann Wright ret.); March Forward!; Partnership for Civil Justice; Palestinian American Women Association; Alliance for a Just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines; Alliance for Global Justice; Claudia de la Cruz, Pastor, Iglesia San Romero de Las Americas-UCC; Phil Portluck, Social Justice Ministry, Covenant Baptist Church, D.C.; Blase & Theresa Bonpane, Office of the Americas; Coalition for Peace and Democracy in Honduras; Comite Pro-Democracia en Mexico; Frente Unido de los Pueblos Americanos; Comites de Base FMLN, Los Angeles; Free Palestine Alliance; GABRIELA Network; Justice for Filipino American Veterans; KmB Pro-People Youth; Students Fight Back; Jim Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild - LA Chapter; LEF Foundation; National Coalition to Free the Angola 3; Community Futures Collective; Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival; Companeros del Barrio; Barrio Unido for Full and Unconditional Amnesty, Bay Area United Against War.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.answercoalition.org/
info@internationalanswer.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
New York City: 212-694-8720
Los Angeles: 213-251-1025
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
Chicago: 773-463-0311
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The US Social Forum II
" June 22-26, 2010 "
Detroit, Michigan, USA
Another World Is Possible! Another US is Necessary!
http://www.ussf2010.org/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
B. SPECIAL APPEALS, VIDEOS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
HOW MANY CRIMES CAN THE U.S. COMMIT IN A CENTURY? EVIDENTLY THEIR PENCHANT FOR MORE AND MORE EGREGIOUS CRIMES ARE LIMITLESS! IT'S UP TO US TO STOP THEM! U.S. OUT OF HAITI NOW! LEAVE THE FOOD AND SUPPLIES AND GET THE HELL OUT! AND TAKE YOUR MARINES, GUNS AND TANKS WITH YOU!
U.S. Marines prevent the distribution of food to starving people due to "lack of security." They bring a truck full of supplies then, because their chain of command says they haven't enough men with guns, they drive away with the truckload of food leaving the starving Haitians running after the truck empty-handed! This is shown in detail in the video in the New York Times titled, "Confusion in Haitian Countryside." The Marines-the strong, the brave--turn tail and run! INCAPABLE, EVEN, OF DISTRIBUTING FOOD TO UNARMED, STARVING, MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN!
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/22/world/americas/1247466678828/confusion-in-the-haitian-countryside.html?ref=world
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Lost Generation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Sign the petition. Drop the charges against Alexis Hutchinson!
"...four separate court martial charges have been brought against Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single parent with a one-year old son, who missed deployment in early November 2009 when her childcare plan fell through at the last moment, due to circumstances beyond her control."
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/811/1/
Cuba establishes hospital in Port-au-Prince
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2010/01/17/kastenbaum.haiti.la.paz.hosp.cnn
Disputes emerge over Haiti aid control
[THIS IS A MUST-SEE VIDEO. U.S. AID IS MILITARY OCCUPATION...BW]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F5TwEK24sA&feature=player_embedded
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
To: President Barack Obama
WE THE UNDERSIGNED petition you to speak out against the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal, and all the men, women and children facing execution around the world. This ultimate form of punishment is unacceptable in a civilized society and undermines human dignity. (U.N. General Assembly, Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty, Resolution 62/149, Dec. 18, 2007; reaffirmed, Resolution 63/168, Dec. 18, 2008.)
Mr. Abu-Jamal, a renowned black journalist and author, has been on Pennsylvania's death row for nearly three decades. Even though you do not have direct control over his fate as a state death-row inmate, we ask that you as a moral leader on the world stage call for a global moratorium on the death penalty in his and all capital cases. Mr. Abu-Jamal has become a global symbol, the "Voice of the Voiceless", in the struggle against capital punishment and human-rights abuses. There are over 20,000 awaiting execution around the globe, with over 3,000 on death rows in the United States.
The 1982 trial of Mr. Abu-Jamal was tainted by racism, and occurred in Philadelphia which has a history of police corruption and discrimination. Amnesty International, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, "determined that numerous aspects of this case clearly failed to meet international standards safeguarding the fairness of legal proceedings. [T]he interests of justice would best be served by the granting of a new trial to Mumia Abu-Jamal. The trial should fully comply with international standards of justice and should not allow for the reimposition of the death penalty." (A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
*********************************************************************
Alert! New Threat To Mumia's Life!
Supreme Court Set To Announce A Decision
On the State Appeal To Reinstate Mumia's Death Sentence
17 January 2010
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
Mumia Abu-Jamal, an innocent man on death row and the world's best-known political prisoner, now faces an immediate new threat to his life from the US Supreme Court. The Court ruled last year on Mumia's appeal, by summarily refusing to even consider a reversal of his unjust 1982 murder conviction in a blatantly racist court. And last week, the Supreme Court discussed a cross-appeal by the State of Pennsylvania to reinstate Mumia's death sentence, which had been put on hold by a federal court in 2001. A ruling could be announced as early as Tuesday this week.
It would be an illusion to expect good news. Supporters should stay tuned, and be prepared to participate in actions to free Mumia!
The Vendetta Against Mumia
In making it's flat-out rejection of Mumia's appeal (which it did without making any statement), the Supreme Court had to knowingly violate its own precedent in the 1986 Batson v Kentucky decision. This ruling famously said that purging a jury on the basis of race was unconstitutional. In Mumia's case, at least 10 black jurors were excluded for reasons not applied to their white counterparts. Under Batson, such violations require that the conviction be thrown out!
But this was Mumia Abu-Jamal, the falsely accused "cop killer." And while evidence of his innocence has always been available, along with evidence of the corruption of the cops who framed him, Mumia is the object of a world-wide vendetta led by the Fraternal Order of Police and numerous pundits and politicians. So an exception was made.
The Spisak Case
Meanwhile, the 2001 federal district court decision (besides upholding Mumia's conviction) said that Mumia's death sentence resulted from improper instructions to the jury. The trial judge's instructions to the jury on sentencing had said that a decision had to be unanimous, even on mitigating factors that could result in a sentence of life in prison, instead of death. This violated another Supreme Court precedent, Mills v Maryland, which held that such mitigating factors required only a simple majority.
After tossing out Mumia's appeal in 2009, the Court took it's time on the State's cross-appeal, because another case, Smith v Spisak, dealt with the same issue of jury instructions in sentencing. Frank Spisak is a neo-Nazi who made racist statements in court, wore a Hitler mustache, and confessed to three hate-crime murders in Ohio. The two cases could hardly be more different, yet appeals courts threw out death sentences in both on the basis of the Mills decision. But now, on January 12th, the Supreme Court has reinstated Spisak's death sentence. The decision on Mumia followed shortly thereafter, and the implications are clear. The Spisak decision could open the door to what the cops, courts and ruling class generally want to do most: legally murder Mumia!
The Supreme Court said Mills didn't apply to Spisak for various reasons (that don't seem to apply to Mumia), but the legal ins and outs aren't the point. The point is that the entire legal system is at the service not of the law, but of power in society.
As Mumia Abu-Jamal said in a recent interview, "[Spisak's] case differs from mine substantially, not just in terms of facts, but also in terms of law. But the law is the tool of those in power, so how they use it doesn't depend on the law; it depends on power."
(-Free Speech Radio News, 15 January 2010).
The Question of Innocence!
As an award-winning radical journalist, former Black Panther, and critic of police brutality and malfeasance, Mumia Abu-Jamal is considered an enemy of the state. As such, legal decisions have systematically gone against him, regardless of the law. Batson is only one example of this "Mumia exception."
Manufacturing false confessions, planting evidence, corrupting "witnesses" to say they saw what they didn't see--all of these "illegal" tricks were used against Mumia. The real evidence points to Mumia's innocence, including another man who confessed, witnesses who said Mumia didn't shoot anybody but who were never called to testify, and photos of the crime scene that show that police lied. But very little of this has ever been heard in court.
Rather than follow the "law," the criminal justice system follows a simple rule: "If we want to get you, we will." The US Supreme Court (Herrera v Collins), and the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (signed by Bill Clinton in 1996), have effectively said: innocence is no defense!
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal has never thought that calling for a new trial, or appealing to the US Justice Department to right the wrongs that they helped create, were anything more than distractions, getting in the way of a mass, working-class movement to free Mumia.
Mumia is a class-war prisoner, and it will take a class struggle to free him: that was position of longshore workers in the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union (ILWU) when they shut down all the ports on the West Coast in 1999, and headed the march in San Francisco, to free Mumia. Oakland teachers, and teachers in Rio de Janeiro Brazil also took work actions to support Mumia. Only this kind of working-class action, combined with mass mobilizations, can defeat a determined frame-up by cops, courts and politicians. Mumia Abu-Jamal is now in imminent danger of a new execution order, so the need for action is urgent. For workers action to free Mumia!
Stay in touch for demonstration details this week.
Visit our newly-rebuilt and updated web site for background information on Mumia's innocence. See the "What You Can Do Now" page: www.laboractionmumia.org
- The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 Oakland CA 94610
(510) 763-2347
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Urgent action needed to stop executions in CA
By Stephanie Faucher, Death Penalty Focus
January 8, 2009
stefanie@deathpenalty.org
Dear supporters,
Please take action today to stop executions from resuming in California. This is very urgent, without your help executions could occur in the near future.
Both Californians and non-Californians are encouraged to take action.
Letters must be received by January 20, 2010 at 5pm PDT.
BACKGROUND:
On January 4, 2010, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) proposed minor revisions to its lethal injection procedures in the form of amendments to its previously proposed procedures. CDCR set a fifteen-day comment period ending January 20, 2010 at 5:00 p.m. during which the public can submit written comments on the proposed amendments.
The amended regulations, which are virtually identical to the regulations proposed in May 2009, can be found here:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=DsL2ekA4m2nB2qSfspkiCinFkqj%2BKN3u
The above link contains only those regulations that were amended. To see the full text of the proposed regulations proposed in May 2009, go to this link:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=NHU2PZL0sQWgLuC6BWt%2BfynFkqj%2BKN3u
TAKE ACTION:
We have created a draft letter which you can personalize and send here:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1265/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=1988
A separate letter will also be sent the Governor of California.
Thank you for taking action!
BAUAW responds:
Here is the letter I wrote as a representative of BAUAW:
I oppose the racist death penalty to its very core. There is no "humanitarian" way to murder someone. It's barbaric.
Already so many who have been on death row for decades have been proven to be innocent victims of gross forensic mistakes or blatant police frame-ups.
The poor are routinely afforded inferior and indifferent legal services that serve mainly as a go-between the prosecution and accused. It can hardly be called legal defense.
Justice is not served equally or fairly in the United States. Most other nations have done away with the death penalty. Here our "great minds of justice" debate the best way to kill.
Under these concrete circumstances, instead of limiting the appeals process for prisoners, the justice system should bend over backwards to hear and re-hear the evidence and set free those who have been convicted unfairly.
Death should never be our conscious choice as a nation.
I am also very concerned about the newly revised lethal injection procedures.
In particular, I have the following concerns:
* The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) added a news article from the Santa Rosa Press Democrat to the rulemaking file. The article mentions that the original creator of the three-drug lethal injection formula has suggested ways to reform the process, including keeping up with changing drugs and science and proper training of lethal injection team members. The recent experience of Romell Broom in Ohio reinforces a point raised in the article, that botched executions are a real possibility, especially in California, due to the limited training of the lethal injection team members and California's repeated failure to meaningfully change its protocol.
* CDCR's amended regulations continue to be wholly inadequate and inapplicable to female condemned inmates. The regulations now specify that a female condemned inmate shall be transported to San Quentin no sooner than 72 hours and no later than six hours prior to the scheduled execution, but contain no provisions to implement the required 45-day chronology of events prior to her arrival at San Quentin. CDCR also fails to address how and if the female condemned inmate will be in contact with her family members and her legal team during her transport, which may take place on the same day as her scheduled execution.
* Contrary to CDCR's claim, the amended regulations continue to treat the condemned prisoner's witnesses differently than the victim's witnesses. The victim's family is allowed an unlimited number of witnesses at the execution, whereas the prisoner scheduled to die is limited to five individuals other than her or his spiritual adviser. In the event of lack of space, the victim's family is provided with the option of remote viewing of the execution, while the same option is not extended to the inmate's family.
*The distinction drawn between Chaplains and "approved" Spiritual Advisors is confusing and it is unclear how and when a person may become a "pre-approved" Spiritual Advisor.
I expect that you will take these concerns very seriously.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Weinstein, Bay Area United Against War, bauaw.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The Pay at the Top
The compensation research firm Equilar compiled data reflecting pay for 200 chief executives at 198 public companies that filed their annual proxies by March 27 and had revenue of at least $6.3 billion. (Two companies, Motorola and Synnex, had co-C.E.O.'s.) | See a detailed description of the methodology.
http://projects.nytimes.com/executive_compensation?ref=business
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
AMAZING SPEECH BY WAR VETERAN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
The Unemployment Game Show: Are You *Really* Unemployed? - From Mint.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulu3SCAmeBA
Video: Gaza Lives On
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU5Wi2jhnW0
ASSESSMENT - "LEFT IN THE COLD"- CROW CREEK - 2009
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tmfue_pjwho&feature=PlayList&p=217F560F18109313&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Tom Zaniello is a living, walking encyclopedia of films about labour.
I heard him speak at a conference once, but it wasn't so much a speech as a high-speed tour through dozens of film clips, lovingly selected, all aiming to make a point.
I don't know anyone who knows more about cinema and the labour movement than he does.
And Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: An expanded guide to films about labor is his, well, encyclopedia about the subject.
It's a 434 page guide to 350 labour films from around the world, ranging from those you've heard of - Salt of the Earth, The Grapes of Wrath, Roger & Me - to those you've never heard of but will fall in love with once you see them.
Zaniello describes all the films in detail, tells you whether they're available for rental or purchase, and, if so, where.
Fiction and nonfiction, the films are about unions, labour history, working-class life, political movements, and the struggle between labour and capital.
Each entry includes critical commentary, production data, cast list, suggested related films, and annotated references to books and Web sites for further reading.
If you want to know more about labour films, buy this book.
And remember that every copy you purchase helps support LabourStart.
Thanks very much.
Eric Lee
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Letter from Lynne Stewart from behind bars:
Dear Sisters and Brothers, Friends and Supporters:
Well the moment we all hoped would never come is upon us. Good bye to a good cup of coffee in the morning, a soft chair, the hugs of grandchildren and the smaller pleasures in life. I must say I am being treated well and that is due to my lawyer team and your overwhelming support.
While I have received "celebrity" treatment here in MCC - high visibility - conditions for the other women are deplorable. Medical care, food, education, recreation are all at minimal levels. If it weren't for the unqualified bonds of sisterhood and the commissary it would be even more dismal.
My fellow prisoners have supplied me with books and crosswords, a warm it is cold in here most of the time) sweat shirt and pants, treats from the commissary, and of course, jailhouse humor. Most important many of them know of my work and have a deep reservoir of can I say it? Respect.
I continue to both answer the questions put to me by them, I also can't resist commenting on the T.V. news or what is happening on the floor - a little LS politics always! Smile) to open hearts and minds!
Liz Fink, my lawyer leader, believes I will be here at MCC-NY for a while - perhaps a year before being moved to prison. Being is jail is like suddenly inhabiting a parallel universe but at least I have the luxury of time to read! Tomorrow I will get my commissary order which may include an AM/FM Radio and be restored to WBAI and music classical and jazz).
We are campaigning to get the bladder operation scheduled before I came in to MCC) to happen here in New York City. Please be alert to the website I case I need some outside support.
I want to say that the show of support outside the Courthouse on Thursday as I was "transported" is so cherished by me. The broad organizational representation was breathtaking and the love and politics expressed the anger too) will keep me nourished through this.
Organize - Agitate, Agitate, Agitate! And write to me and others locked down by the Evil Empire.
Love Struggle, Lynne Stewart
FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
For further information contact: Jeff Mackler, Coordinator, West Coast Lynne Stewart Defense Committee 510-268-9429 jmackler@lmi.net
Mail tax free contributions payable to National Lawyers Guild Foundation. Write in memo box: "Lynne Stewart Defense." Mail to: Lynne Stewart Defense, P.O. Box 10328, Oakland, CA 94610.
SEND RESOLUTIONS AND STATEMENTS OF SUPPORT TO DEFENSE ATTORNEY JOSHUA L. DRATEL, ESQ. FAX: 212) 571 3792 AND EMAIL: jdratel@aol.com
SEND PROTESTS TO ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
Department of Justice Main Switchboard - 202-514-2000
AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
Office of the Attorney General Public Comment Line - 202-353-1555
To send Lynne a letter, write:
Lynne Stewart
53504-054
MCC-NY
150 Park Row
New York, NY NY 10007
Lynne Stewart speaks in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOQ5_VKRf5k&feature=related
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
With a New Smile, 'Rage' Fades Away [SINGLE PAYER NOW!!!]
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/12/08/health/20091208_Clinic/index.html?ref=us
FTA [F**k The Army] Trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HlkgPCgU7g
Jon Stewart: Obama Is Channeling Bush VIDEO)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/03/jon-stewart-obama-is-chan_n_378283.html
US anti-war activists protest
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/12/200912283650408132.html
Buffy Sainte Marie - No No Keshagesh
[Keshagesh is the Cree word to describe a greedy puppy that wants to keep eating everything, a metaphor for corporate greed]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKmAb1gNN74&feature=player_embedded#
Buffy Sainte-Marie - No No Keshagesh lyrics:
http://www.lyricsmode.com/?i=print_lyrics&id=705368
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
The Tar Sands Blow
Hi -
I just signed the Tar Sands Blow petition -- and I hope you'll do the same.
The Canadian tar sands produce the dirtiest oil on earth -- including five times the greenhouse gases of conventional oil. World leaders meet next month in Copenhagen to deal with climate change. Sign the petition -- so that we all don't get a raw deal.
http://ien.thetarsandsblow.org/
The Story of Mouseland: As told by Tommy Douglas in 1944
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqgOvzUeiAA
The Communist Manifesto illustrated by Cartoons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
HELP VFP PUT THIS BOOK IN YOUR HIGH SCHOOL OR PUBLIC LIBRARY
For a donation of only $18.95, we can put a copy of the book "10 Excellent Reasons Not to Join the Military" into a public or high school library of your choice. [Reason number 1: You may be killed]
A letter and bookplate will let readers know that your donation helped make this possible.
Putting a book in either a public or school library ensures that students, parents, and members of the community will have this valuable information when they need it.
Don't have a library you would like us to put it in? We'll find one for you!
https://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/826/t/9311/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=4906
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
This is a must-see video about the life of Oscar Grant, a young man who loved his family and was loved by his family. It's important to watch to understand the tremendous loss felt by his whole family as a result of his cold-blooded murder by BART police officers--Johannes Mehserle being the shooter while the others held Oscar down and handcuffed him to aid Mehserle in the murder of Oscar Grant January 1, 2009.
The family wants to share this video here with you who support justice for Oscar Grant.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/07/21/18611878.php
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Troy Anthony Davis is an African American man who has spent the last 18 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. There is no physical evidence tying him to the crime and seven out of nine witnesses have recanted. New evidence and new testimony have been presented to the Georgia courts, but the justice system refuses to consider this evidence, which would prove Troy Davis' innocence once and for all.
Sign the petition and join the NAACP, Amnesty International USA, and other partners in demanding justice for Troy Davis!
http://www.iamtroy.com/
For Now, High Court Punts on Troy Davis, on Death Row for 18 Years
By Ashby Jones
Wall Street Journal Law Blog
June 30, 2009
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/06/30/for-now-high-court-punts-on-troy-davis-on-death-row-for-18-years/
Take action now:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&aid=12361&ICID=A0906A01&tr=y&auid=5030305
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
New videos from April 24 Oakland Mumia event
http://abu-jamal-news.com/article?name=jlboak
Donations for Mumia's Legal Defense in the U.S. Our legal effort is the front line of the battle for Mumia's freedom and life. His legal defense needs help. The costs are substantial for our litigation in the U.S. Supreme Court and at the state level. To help, please make your checks payable to the National Lawyers Guild Foundation indicate "Mumia" on the bottom left). All donations are tax deductible under the Internal Revenue Code, section 501c)3), and should be mailed to:
It is outrageous and a violation of human rights that Mumia remains in prison and on death row. His life hangs in the balance. My career has been marked by successfully representing people facing death in murder cases. I will not rest until we win Mumia's case. Justice requires no less.
With best wishes,
Robert R. Bryan
Lead counsel for Mumia Abu-Jamal
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
KEVIN COOPER IS INNOCENT!
FLASHPOINTS Interview with Innocent San Quentin Death Row Inmate
Kevin Cooper -- Aired Monday, May 18,2009
http://www.flashpoints.net/#GOOGLE_SEARCH_ENGINE
To learn more about Kevin Cooper go to:
savekevincooper.org
LINKS
San Francisco Chronicle article on the recent ruling:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/13/BAM517J8T3.DTL
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and dissent:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2009/05/11/05-99004o.pdf
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
C. ARTICLES IN FULL
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters
By RAY RIVERA
January 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/americas/23haiti.html?ref=world
2) Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile
By BARRY MEIER and VIKAS BAJAJ
January 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/americas/23cargo.html?ref=world
3) Jobless Rates Rose in 42 States in November
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/economy/23jobless.html?ref=business
4) "Foreclose the War, Not People's Homes"
By Linden Gawboy
Created 01/16/2010 - 18:11
http://twincities.indymedia.org/2010/jan/%E2%80%9Cforeclose-war-not-people%E2%80%99s-homes%E2%80%9D
5) Recession reveals new face of homeless in mid-Hudson
'It could happen to you or your neighbor'
By Steve Israel
Times Herald-Record
January 24, 2010 2:00 AM
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100124/NEWS/1240344
6) When the Media Is the Disaster: Covering Haiti
Rebecca Solnit, Author of "A Paradise Built in Hell," about Hurricane Katrina
Posted: January 21, 2010 12:56 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-solnit/when-the-media-is-the-dis_b_431617.html
7) Ready to Spend, but Not to Boast
"One banker's wife, who did not want to be named, said she and others like her felt more financially secure these days. 'There is the sense in the community that the world is not coming to an end,' she said. Of bonus critics, she added, executives like her husband work hard and are unjustly singled out as greedy. 'Everybody wants someone to blame,' she said, 'and rich people are an easy target.'"
By LAURA M. HOLSON
January 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/fashion/24bonus.html?ref=fashion
8) More Than 150,000 Have Been Buried, Haiti Says
"Recent estimates from the International Organization for Migration show that 370,000 people are living in "improvised shelter," outside largely in camps without access to water, sanitation or food."
By DAMIEN CAVE
January 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/americas/24bodies.html?hp
9) Students Face a Class Struggle at State Colleges
By KATHARINE MIESZKOWSKI
January 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/education/24sfstudent.html?ref=us
10) Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health
and Environmental Nightmare
By Jill Richardson, AlterNet
Posted on January 25, 2010, Printed on January 25, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145369/
11) In Haiti, Many Amputees Have No Place to Go
By RAY RIVERA
January 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/americas/25amputee.html?ref=world
12) On Street Tracing Haiti's Pain, Survival Goes On
By DEBORAH SONTAG and GINGER THOMPSON
January 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/americas/25street.html?ref=world
13) As China Rises, Economic Conflict With West Rises Too
By KATRIN BENNHOLD
News Analysis
January 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/business/global/27yuan.html?hp
14) Obama to Seek Spending Freeze to Trim Deficits
"The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks. But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."
By JACKIE CALMES
January 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26budget.html?hp
15) Fighting Starvation, Haitians Share Portions
By DAMIEN CAVE
January 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/world/americas/26hunger.html?hp
16) Agreement on Effort to Help Haiti Rebuild
"'We're trying to do this in the correct order,' Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Montreal. 'Sometimes people have pledging conferences and pledge money, and they don't have any idea what they're going to do with it. We actually think it's a novel idea to do the needs assessment first and then the planning and then the pledging.' The donor nations called for an independent damage assessment, which could begin as early as next week, made up of experts from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program. 'This is an opportunity,' said Eric Overvest, the Haiti director for the United Nations program. 'You can see opportunities in awful situations, and it is possible to rebuild a better Port-au-Prince.'"
By MARC LACEY and GINGER THOMPSON
January 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/world/americas/26haiti.html?ref=world
17) Families Struggle to Afford Food, Survey Finds
By JASON DePARLE
January 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/26food.html?ref=us
18) Freedom Rider: Useless Aid
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
January 27, 2010
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-useless-aid
19) Chavez Writes Off Haiti's Oil Debt to Venezuela
January 27, 2010
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=351054&CategoryId=10717
20) Human Rights Advocates Given Maximum Federal Prison Sentences of Six Months for Direct Action Opposing the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC)
For Immediate Release: January 25th, 2010
Contact: Hendrik Voss, SOA Watch, 202-234-3440
http://soaw.org/pressrelease.php?id=147
21) Help the people of Haiti, reject U.S. military occupation
By Jose Maria Sison |
January 26, 2010
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2010/1/26/help-people-haiti-reject-us-military-occupation
22) Haiti's Children Adrift in World of Chaos
By DEBORAH SONTAG
January 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/world/americas/27children.html?ref=world
23) After Long Decline, Teenage Pregnancy Rate Rises
By TAMAR LEWIN
January 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27teen.html?ref=us
24) Judge Bars Youth Prisons From Routine Shackling
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
January 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/nyregion/27juvenile.html?ref=nyregion
25) Soldiers Forced to Choose Between Their Children and the Military Pay the Price in Jby: Dahr Jamail | OpEdNews
Tuesday 26 January 2010
http://www.truthout.org/dahr-jamail-soldiers-being-forced-choose-between-their-children-and-military-and-theyre-paying-price
26) Howard Zinn: The Historian Who Made History
By Dave Zirin
E of S Nation: This isn't about sports, but if you know my work, especially A People's History of Sports in the United States, then you know I am eternally indebted to the great historian Howard Zinn who died yesterday. Please read or ignore. In tribute to Howard who always stood with the underdog, I unabashedly pick the Saints to win the Super Bowl.
In struggle and sports
Dave Z
January 27, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/522763/howard_zinn_the_historian_who_made_history
27) Haiti: US Rehearsal For Troop Deployments in Latin America
By Glen Ford
January 27, 2010
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/us-militarys-haiti-relief-ops-rehearsal-troop-deployments-latin-america
28) Kids in Crisis (Behind Bars)
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Op-Ed Columnist
January 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/opinion/28kristof.html
29) The Kidnapping of Haiti
By John Pilger
January 27, 2010
"Information Clearing House"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24519.htm
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Obstacles to Recovery in Haiti May Prove Daunting Beyond Other Disasters
By RAY RIVERA
January 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/americas/23haiti.html?ref=world
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - The relief effort in Haiti could end up being the most difficult, faith-testing recovery from a modern disaster, perhaps even exceeding that from the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to United Nation officials and aid groups with experience in large-scale catastrophes.
Haiti, already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, was barely showing signs of recovery from the 2008 hurricane season when the earthquake flattened its capital, Port-au-Prince, crippling the country's already weakened transportation and service delivery network.
Local aid groups that would normally help guide international efforts were damaged themselves, while the United Nations lost at least 70 staff members, and 146 more remain unaccounted for.
"You're talking about a country that pre-earthquake had limited resources and capability, and what resources it did have were concentrated in the capital," said Kim Bolduc, who is coordinating the relief effort for the United Nations. "This context helps explain why this emergency is probably the most complex in history, more than the tsunami, more than the Pakistan earthquake" of 2005.
The difficulties have confounded aid workers across the country, even those who have dealt with some of world's worst disasters in recent years. At a first aid tent in the middle of a soccer field where hundreds of people are now living in Jacmel, a coastal city that was among the worst-hit, a French doctor threw his hands in the air.
"I am very, very surprised," the doctor, François Sarda, a volunteer with Aides Actions Internationales Pompiers, said of the three days it took the aid group to get in and the chaos he found when he finally arrived. The group was forced to fly to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic and take a boat from there. "At least in the tsunami we had some infrastructure," he said.
To help manage the chaos, the United Nations and the United States signed a two-page memorandum of understanding on Friday to formalize their roles and end the tensions that flared earlier in the week. The United Nations had complained about the American military's handling of flights at the airport here, saying critical deliveries of food from the World Food Program were being unnecessarily delayed.
Under the memorandum, Haiti maintains overall control of the aid and rescue efforts, though the United Nations is in charge of coordinating the work. But the memorandum does not put American soldiers or other personnel under United Nations command. The Americans remain focused on delivering aid, while the United Nations handles peacekeeping.
Still, the United States is known for throwing its considerable weight around in international aid efforts, so it is unclear if the new agreement will solve the earlier problems.
Doctors Without Borders has complained about the American military's running of the airport. The group has landed some planes, but has had others diverted, forcing it to truck in supplies from the Dominican Republic, according to Marie-Noëlle Rodrigue, deputy director for operations for Doctors Without Borders in Paris.
"It's a very confusing situation and difficult to understand," Ms. Rodrigue said. Jason Cone, a spokesman in New York, said much of the confusion involved who was coordinating matters. He said airport access had improved in recent days through direct contact with the Pentagon and the United States Agency for International Development.
Maj. Nathan Miller, with the Air Force's 23rd Special Tactics Squadron, said that the military was not playing favorites, and that military planes now arrived during off-peak night hours to make more room for international aid flights.
The challenges faced by some Haitian organizations are confounding. Danièle Magloire, a senior director of Fokal, a Haitian human rights organization, began working from an empty room in a friend's apartment building after her own home and office were damaged. The room still lacks electricity and water, like most buildings in the city. Residents of the neighborhood whose homes were destroyed camp outside on the street.
"We cannot possibly make it alone in the struggle to rebuild," Ms. Magloire said. "The United Nations, with its immense bureaucracy, cannot make it alone. We need all the help we can get, and we know that it must come from the United States at this critical moment."
Despite the troubles, the recovery effort is finding better footing by the day. Though rescuers are still hoping to defy the dwindling chances of finding anyone alive in the mountains of rubble 10 days after the earthquake, aid workers are shifting their focus to delivering shelter, water and medical care to hundreds of thousands of injured, hungry and displaced Haitians. They are racing against the approach of the rainy season, which aid groups fear could unleash disease.
United Nations officials said Friday that most surviving supermarkets would reopen next week, and that cellphone service should be fully restored by Saturday, with 40 banks also reopening. Lines for gasoline have also eased, with officials reporting that 30 percent of the city's gas stations were now operational and that there was no longer a shortage of gasoline.
But problems persist bringing in diesel fuel, hobbling efforts to gear up aid distribution, Edmond Mulet, the chief United Nations official in Haiti, said in a videoconference with reporters.
Although enough food is on hand to reach many more people, only 100,000 received such aid on Thursday because of a lack of trucks and fuel, he said.
"We have the food to be distributed," he said. "We just don't have the vehicles."
The United Nations needs to bring in 10,000 gallons of diesel per day from the Dominican Republic just to keep water trucks circulating, Mr. Mulet said.
Ms. Bolduc is coordinating the humanitarian efforts, but how many aid groups are now roaming the country is anybody's guess, she said. About 375 have registered with her office, but she says she believes that there are many more that have found their own way into the country and are providing relief.
American rescue teams were among the first to experience the knot of troubles. Usually, when they set down in a country after a natural disaster, the local government has already identified buildings where there are known survivors so they can race to the scene. But here, without government input, they had to drive through the city themselves, making snap assessments about where survivors were likely to be found.
They had trouble getting their equipment; its arrival at the airport was delayed for several days. Then they faced a shortage of vehicles, gas and drivers at the United States Embassy.
"We have zero infrastructure here," said Louie Fernandez, one of 80 rescuers from Miami-Dade County in Florida. "What are you supposed to do?"
Despite the monumental obstacles that must be overcome, Ms. Bolduc said, "It's not mission impossible, if all the players work together."
Reporting was contributed by Damien Cave and Simon Romero from Port-au-Prince, Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations, and Doreen Carvajal from Paris.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) Emergency Air Cargo Shipments to Haiti Face High Prices That May Last Awhile
By BARRY MEIER and VIKAS BAJAJ
January 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/world/americas/23cargo.html?ref=world
Amid the many problems facing relief efforts in Haiti are sharp increases in air cargo costs for emergency supplies that may endure longer than usual.
In the aftermath of any disaster, prices charged by air charter operators shoot up because of surging demand for a week or so and then fall, according to officials with several relief agencies and brokers who supply disaster equipment.
But the rise in prices for Haiti has been extreme in some cases, and may in general last longer because other routes for aid have been largely blocked because of the damage caused by last week's earthquake to the airport itself and the seaport, its normal cargo hubs. Over the past day or so, the logjams have started to ease.
The air cargo industry is a mix of brokers and companies large and small, and rates depend on a multitude of variables, so gauging normal prices is elusive. But two officials of relief supply companies separately said they were seeing wildly varying quotes, some far higher than anything they considered reasonable.
Michael Ridenour, an official of the International Procurement Agency, a Dutch company that works with relief groups, said he was seeing charter quotes from brokers that varied widely for similar flights. For example, one broker wanted $519,000 to charter a flight from China to the Dominican Republic, while another was asking $1 million for a similar plane on the same route, he said.
"With demand far exceeding supply at the moment, air freight costs have increased dramatically," Gregory Barrow, a spokesman for the World Food Program in Rome, said in an e-mail message.
A senior British relief official, speaking on his government's standard condition of anonymity, said air freight costs from Europe to Haiti had increased by 10 percent to 30 percent since the quake.
Relief group officials declined to name specific operators or brokers, to avoid endangering future business.
An official at a large air charter company said rates invariably rose when demand increased, whether the cause was a disaster or the increased air shipments that precede the Christmas shopping season. She requested anonymity because the company had a United Nations contract.
Peter Nopper, the chief executive of Tri-Med of Britain, a relief equipment broker, said he was quoted a price of $520,000 for a large plane to fly relief supplies from Dubai to Haiti.
"There seems to be some speculation going on," Mr. Nopper said. "I think that people are throwing out high prices to see if anyone will bite."
He said that the fees some cargo operators were asking for Haiti flights might reflect the fact that planes were returning empty, rather than with return loads that could help defray costs.
"Because they have to do it so fast they are charging for a round trip," he said.
Not all companies appear to have raised their rates: Oxfam said it noticed no large increase when it chartered a cargo plane to the Dominican Republic from England to deliver water, sanitation equipment and tents, after its warehouse in Haiti collapsed. But others say they cannot find planes to fly to Haiti at any price.
Along with the United States, some companies and countries are moving to help get supplies in. British Airways made a cargo plane available; the United States, the United Nations and Britain have also begun using smaller vessels that can dock in shallower ports.
In coming weeks, the need for air cargo flights will only intensify as relief organizations exhaust their inventories of relief supplies. Those groups will be turning to equipment brokers or will buy supplies directly from manufacturers in places like India, Pakistan and China that produce emergency equipment like tents, blankets, and kitchen utensils.
The Port-au-Prince seaport has been too damaged to accommodate large ships carrying relief supplies like tents, blankets and cooking equipment.
With only one runway operating at the main Port-au-Prince airport, many relief flights are landing in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, and the supplies are then trucked in over sometimes difficult roads.
"What is unusual about Haiti is that it is a big disaster in a small country," said the senior British relief official. "Usually we are talking about medium to large countries where an earthquake will do a lot of damage but it won't bring down everything."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Jobless Rates Rose in 42 States in November
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
January 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/23/business/economy/23jobless.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON (AP) - Unemployment rates rose in 43 states last month, the government said Friday, painting a bleak picture of the job market and illustrating nationwide data released two weeks ago.
The rise in joblessness was a sharp change from November, when 36 states said their unemployment rates fell. Four states - Delaware, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina - reported record-high jobless rates in December.
New Jersey's rate, meanwhile, rose to a 33-year high of 10.1 percent while New York's reached a 26-year high of 9 percent.
Analysts said the report showed the economy is recovering at too weak a pace to generate consistent job creation. A lot of states that had started to add jobs in November gave up the gains in December, Sophia Koropeckyj, managing director at Moody's Economy.com, said.
Texas and Georgia lost more jobs in December than they had gained the previous month, Ms. Koropeckyj noted, while Arizona and South Carolina lost nearly as many as they had gained.
That is consistent with nationwide trends. Employers shed 85,00 jobs in December, the government said earlier this month, after notching a small gain of 4,000 jobs in November.
In another nationwide trend, long-suffering states like California and Michigan saw their jobless rates stabilize even as they continued to bleed jobs. That was because thousands of frustrated workers gave up hunting for work and dropped out of the labor force, which means they are not included in the unemployment rate.
California lost 38,800 jobs, the most of any state. But its unemployment rate was unchanged at 12.4 percent, the fifth-highest in the nation. That was because 107,000 people, or 0.6 percent of the state's work force, stopped job-hunting.
Michigan shed 15,700 jobs, but 31,000 people left the labor force. That caused the state's jobless rate to fall slightly, to 14.6 percent from 14.7 percent. Michigan has the nation's highest unemployment rate.
Still, Michigan has actually gained about 10,000 jobs over the past three months, as automakers and other manufacturers have bolstered production to restock inventories depleted over the summer and early fall.
"That's a positive thing for a state that has been doing so terribly for so long," said Dave Iaia, an economist at IHS Global Insight.
Texas lost the second-most jobs: 23,900. That sent its jobless rate to 8.3 percent in December from 8 percent. The next-largest job losses were in Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.
Many states saw sharp drops in restaurant, hotel and other leisure employment, a sign that consumers are still holding back on their spending. Nationwide, the United States lost 25,000 leisure and hospitality jobs in December.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) "Foreclose the War, Not People's Homes"
By Linden Gawboy
Created 01/16/2010 - 18:11
http://twincities.indymedia.org/2010/jan/%E2%80%9Cforeclose-war-not-people%E2%80%99s-homes%E2%80%9D
Minneapolis, MN - Under the call of "Foreclose the war, not people's homes," more than 100 people joined a protest here to mark the Martin Luther King holiday weekend. Demonstrators gathered at the home of Leslie Parks, an African American woman who is fighting back against the attempt to foreclose on her home. Later, participants gathered at Saint Joan of Arc Church. The events were organized by the Iraq Peace Action Coalition and the Minnesota Coalition for a People's Bailout.
Speakers at the events included Mel Reeves, a prominent community activist; Jenny Eisert, a leader of the Minnesota Coalition for a People's Bailout, Leslie Parks and other activists.
Speaking in front of her home, Leslie Parks stated "This war has been going on for far too long. It's time to bring our troops home to their families. All of the money that has been used on this war could have been used to pay off every home owner's mortgage in America. It is now time to foreclose on the war, not on families homes."
Jenny Eisert told the crowd assembled at the church, "We are sick and tired of the government helping the banks and Wall Street when they are they are the reason we got into this mess." She also spoke about a bill that will be introduced when the state legislature opens to put a two-year moratorium on home foreclosures and evictions from foreclosed prosperities.
A statement by Iraq Peace Action Coalition says in part, "The U.S. government spends billions for the wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, even as working and low income people are facing the worst economic crisis in decades. Millions of people are facing foreclosure, unemployment and budget cuts. On Martin Luther King Jr. weekend we call for and end to the U.S. wars and occupations and for the war budget to instead be used for education, housing, health care and other human needs."
The Iraq Peace Action Coalition statement also calls on people to join anti-war protests on Saturday, March 20. "March 20 will mark seven years of the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq. On March 20 there will be protests and demonstrations in Washington D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles. In Minneapolis a protest will also be held that day as part of building a movement to end the wars and occupations."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Recession reveals new face of homeless in mid-Hudson
'It could happen to you or your neighbor'
By Steve Israel
Times Herald-Record
January 24, 2010 2:00 AM
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100124/NEWS/1240344
Lounging in his box seat near the sparkling green baseball diamond, feet
on the dugout roof as he munches a hot dog, no one could possibly know
the dad is homeless - not even his kids next to him. But after the dad
had taken those kids to the Hudson Valley Renegades game - buying the
great seats to salvage a shred of dignity - the divorced ex-Wall Street
worker drops his children at their mom's
house. Then he drives to the Walmart parking lot, sets the front seat of
his SUV in the reclining position, covers himself with one of his 8
blankets and goes to sleep in his only home, his car.
This is the face of the new - and hidden - mid-Hudson homeless:
middle-class men and women without a safety net who, when they lose
their jobs, often live under the public radar by finding shelter in cars
and on couches.
This dad was a computer analyst from the city who just a few years ago
was earning enough money - $80,000 per year in salaries and bonuses - to
buy a new, three-bedroom $250,000 colonial home on three-quarters of an
acre in Orange County, with a finished basement, a backyard swing set
and a basketball hoop.
Then the dad - who wants to be called Lenny because he's too embarrassed
to give his real name - loses his job in the Wall Street layoffs that
have so far cost more than 100,000 financial workers their positions.
The Bronx native, who had been living paycheck to paycheck to pay more
than $3,000 per month in expenses that included a $1,500-per-month
mortgage from Countrywide, cannot pay his bills, not even with his
wife's $500-per-week office job. He opens the mail to find threatening
foreclosure notices. He picks up the phone to hear threatening
foreclosure phone calls.
He has no savings. He has no job. He loses his home.
He has enough pride not to want to tell his only close relative, his
elderly mother, that he's losing everything, this man without a college
degree who built a new life by working.
So on a hot and muggy August day three years ago, he shuts the door of
his dream home one final time. With a backpack containing his $100
leather jacket from the Gap, some clothes, toiletries and pictures of
his kids, Lenny, then 55, heads to the place that - along with brief
stays in an apartment, two filthy motels and a long stay in a clean
shelter - would be his new home for months, that SUV with 200,000 miles
on it.
"I can't even articulate how (crappy) I felt," Lenny says.
So when he finally gets some money from the sale of that house - after
settling his divorce - he wants to do something for the kids he'd read
bedtime stories to. He buys them those Renegades season tickets.
"The best," he says. "You do anything for normalcy."
Face of homeless has changed
The new, often hidden homeless are middle-age ex-Wall Street workers
like Lenny, who sleep in cars beneath towering mall lights, play poker
on laptops and read library books about larger-than-life heroes like Joe
DiMaggio. They sneak showers at truck stops and work temporary jobs at
malls including Woodbury Common.
"It's not drug addicts or derelicts; it's teachers, secretaries, truck
drivers," says Lenny, ticking off some folks he's met at soup kitchens
and shelters.
The new homeless are mothers like Monticello's Sherry Sanders, who quits
her waitress job that paid as much as $800 a week to move to the
mountains from New Jersey with a boyfriend. Then she loses her new $15
per hour house-cleaning job when the resort closes. She ends up sleeping
on friends' couches after the relationship ends. All she has left is the
eyeliner she wears to remind her of better days. Pride doesn't allow her
to tell her married kids about her homelessness.
The new homeless are young office worker moms like Middletown's Tanya
Covert, who could not pay the $2,000 per month it costs for her to rent,
heat, power and eat in her mobile home. So she too ends up homeless,
finding shelter for herself and her little girl in a motel room just
outside her daughter's school district. She waits weeks to tell the
school she's homeless - and eligible for free meals - for fear the girl
will have to transfer from the school she loves.
The new homeless include a real estate broker whose income has been
slashed from $200,000 to $20,000. They include a nurse and a carpenter,
a teacher and a secretary who have been living on the thin ice of the
recession economy and have fallen through the cracks when they lose
their jobs.
"The face of the homeless has changed; it's the middle class, the
upper-middle class," says Shari Trust, who, as the chairwoman of the
Housing Task Force in Monticello, gets some 30 calls a week for help.
"Employment's cut back. Overtime's cut back, and if you can't hang on to
your home, your credit's shot so you can't even get an apartment."
The new homeless are not necessarily the hundreds of mothers and
fathers, sons and daughters packing the region's few shelters to
capacity. Like Lenny, they're the anonymous car dwellers in parking lots
and "couch surfers" in apartments, often swelling the number of people
in a two-bedroom place to 10.
The new homeless are often so hidden, they go uncounted. But the state
does know that more than 1,300 local school kids, and their families,
are considered homeless by their schools because they don't have a
regular place to sleep each night - a number that's soared some 30
percent over the past two years. In Orange County alone, the official
number of homeless has doubled over the past two years, to 218. The
unofficial number is twice that.
"People can't see the face of homelessness. It could happen to you or
your neighbor," says Kathi Hitt, director of administration and case
management for Sullivan County's Division of Health and Family Services.
Her agency sees some 250-260 people per month, but has difficulty
tallying numbers of the new homeless because of their anonymity and the
fact that staff to document the problem has been cut.
Too proud to ask for help
But even though the population of the new homeless is as diverse as the
population of those with homes, most have one thing in common in this
region that's been the fastest growing in the state: no financial or
family safety net.
When folks like Lenny get behind on their mortgages or lose their homes,
they have no place to turn. To rent an apartment, you need at least
three months' rent, including one month's security. With the fair market
value of a two-bedroom apartment in Orange, Ulster or Sullivan counties
about $1,000 per month, you must have $3,000.
"And who has that?" asks former waitress Sherry Sanders.
School nurses - who often see the littlest, most helpless victims of the
new homelessness - are also the first to see how easy it is to slip
through the cracks of this financial thin ice. They see more and more
children without anyone to contact in an emergency besides a parent.
"There is no support system," says Pine Bush Elementary School nurse
Bobbie Ercoline, whose school food pantry helped two new homeless
families in just the past month.
And while the traditional poor know the ropes of the welfare system, the
new homeless often have no idea that there are programs to help prevent
homelessness. Plus, many of the new homeless are too proud to ask for help.
So, like Lenny, they may rent an apartment that they can't afford, or
live in a $350 per week motel, which soon drains whatever money they
have. And they end up on couches or in cars - clinging to whatever
normalcy they can salvage, like those Renegades tickets, or that eyeliner.
"I think I was depressed," says Lenny.
So he would sleep beneath those blankets, awake shivering at 3 a.m. and
drive to the home where his kids slept, just for a look. And when his
wife was at work, he'd often find the spare key and sneak a shower. He
finally did ask for help at Occupations Inc. in Middletown, which
offered him counseling, medication, shelter and the chance to apply for
government benefits like food stamps - which he shares with his old
family while he stays with them this winter.
But even after all he's been through, even after sleeping in his car for
months, Lenny, now 59, still hasn't come to grips with his not-so-new
homelessness. Ask if he considers himself homeless and he'll tell you
about watching "Law and Order" with his kids. He'll see a wild-eyed,
mangy guy who is "homeless."
"I look around and feel paranoid," he says, tugging on that black
leather jacket he bought a few years ago when he was working on Wall
Street and living in a new home. "And I think, that's not me. That's not
any of us. We're normal."
sisrael@th-record.com
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) When the Media Is the Disaster: Covering Haiti
Rebecca Solnit, Author of "A Paradise Built in Hell," about Hurricane Katrina
Posted: January 21, 2010 12:56 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-solnit/when-the-media-is-the-dis_b_431617.html
Soon after almost every disaster the crimes begin: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human suffering, and generating far more suffering. The perpetrators go unpunished and live to commit further crimes against humanity. They care less for human life than for property. They act without regard for consequences.
I'm talking, of course, about those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster often abets and justifies a second wave of disaster. I'm talking about the treatment of sufferers as criminals, both on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from rescue to property patrol. They still have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and they are staining themselves anew in Haiti.
Within days of the Haitian earthquake, for example, the Los Angeles Times ran a series of photographs with captions that kept deploying the word "looting." One was of a man lying face down on the ground with this caption: "A Haitian police officer ties up a suspected looter who was carrying a bag of evaporated milk." The man's sweaty face looks up at the camera, beseeching, anguished.
Another photo was labeled: "Looting continued in Haiti on the third day after the earthquake, although there were more police in downtown Port-au-Prince." It showed a somber crowd wandering amid shattered piles of concrete in a landscape where, visibly, there could be little worth taking anyway.
A third image was captioned: "A looter makes off with rolls of fabric from an earthquake-wrecked store." Yet another: "The body of a police officer lies in a Port-au-Prince street. He was accidentally shot by fellow police who mistook him for a looter."
People were then still trapped alive in the rubble. A translator for Australian TV dug out a toddler who'd survived 68 hours without food or water, orphaned but claimed by an uncle who had lost his pregnant wife. Others were hideously wounded and awaiting medical attention that wasn't arriving. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, needed, and still need, water, food, shelter, and first aid. The media in disaster bifurcates. Some step out of their usual "objective" roles to respond with kindness and practical aid. Others bring out the arsenal of clichés and pernicious myths and begin to assault the survivors all over again.
The "looter" in the first photo might well have been taking that milk to starving children and babies, but for the news media that wasn't the most urgent problem. The "looter" stooped under the weight of two big bolts of fabric might well have been bringing it to now homeless people trying to shelter from a fierce tropical sun under improvised tents.
The pictures do convey desperation, but they don't convey crime. Except perhaps for that shooting of a fellow police officer -- his colleagues were so focused on property that they were reckless when it came to human life, and a man died for no good reason in a landscape already saturated with death.
In recent days, there have been scattered accounts of confrontations involving weapons, and these may be a different matter. But the man with the powdered milk? Is he really a criminal? There may be more to know, but with what I've seen I'm not convinced.
What Would You Do?
Imagine, reader, that your city is shattered by a disaster. Your home no longer exists, and you spent what cash was in your pockets days ago. Your credit cards are meaningless because there is no longer any power to run credit-card charges. Actually, there are no longer any storekeepers, any banks, any commerce, or much of anything to buy. The economy has ceased to exist.
By day three, you're pretty hungry and the water you grabbed on your way out of your house is gone. The thirst is far worse than the hunger. You can go for many days without food, but not water. And in the improvised encampment you settle in, there is an old man near you who seems on the edge of death. He no longer responds when you try to reassure him that this ordeal will surely end. Toddlers are now crying constantly, and their mothers infinitely stressed and distressed.
So you go out to see if any relief organization has finally arrived to distribute anything, only to realize that there are a million others like you stranded with nothing, and there isn't likely to be anywhere near enough aid anytime soon. The guy with the corner store has already given away all his goods to the neighbors. That supply's long gone by now. No wonder, when you see the chain pharmacy with the shattered windows or the supermarket, you don't think twice before grabbing a box of PowerBars and a few gallons of water that might keep you alive and help you save a few lives as well.
The old man might not die, the babies might stop their squalling, and the mothers might lose that look on their faces. Other people are calmly wandering in and helping themselves, too. Maybe they're people like you, and that gallon of milk the fellow near you has taken is going to spoil soon anyway. You haven't shoplifted since you were 14, and you have plenty of money to your name. But it doesn't mean anything now.
If you grab that stuff are you a criminal? Should you end up lying in the dirt on your stomach with a cop tying your hands behind your back? Should you end up labeled a looter in the international media? Should you be shot down in the street, since the overreaction in disaster, almost any disaster, often includes the imposition of the death penalty without benefit of trial for suspected minor property crimes?
Or are you a rescuer? Is the survival of disaster victims more important than the preservation of everyday property relations? Is that chain pharmacy more vulnerable, more a victim, more in need of help from the National Guard than you are, or those crying kids, or the thousands still trapped in buildings and soon to die?
It's pretty obvious what my answers to these questions are, but it isn't obvious to the mass media. And in disaster after disaster, at least since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, those in power, those with guns and the force of law behind them, are too often more concerned for property than human life. In an emergency, people can, and do, die from those priorities. Or they get gunned down for minor thefts or imagined thefts. The media not only endorses such outcomes, but regularly, repeatedly, helps prepare the way for, and then eggs on, such a reaction.
If Words Could Kill
We need to banish the word "looting" from the English language. It incites madness and obscures realities.
"Loot," the noun and the verb, is a word of Hindi origin meaning the spoils of war or other goods seized roughly. As historian Peter Linebaugh points out, "At one time loot was the soldier's pay." It entered the English language as a good deal of loot from India entered the English economy, both in soldiers' pockets and as imperial seizures.
After years of interviewing survivors of disasters, and reading first-hand accounts and sociological studies from such disasters as the London Blitz and the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, I don't believe in looting. Two things go on in disasters. The great majority of what happens you could call emergency requisitioning. Someone who could be you, someone in the kind of desperate circumstances I outlined above, takes necessary supplies to sustain human life in the absence of any alternative. Not only would I not call that looting, I wouldn't even call that theft.
Necessity is a defense for breaking the law in the United States and other countries, though it's usually applied more to, say, confiscating the car keys of a drunk driver than feeding hungry children. Taking things you don't need is theft under any circumstances. It is, says the disaster sociologist Enrico Quarantelli, who has been studying the subject for more than half a century, vanishingly rare in most disasters.
Personal gain is the last thing most people are thinking about in the aftermath of a disaster. In that phase, the survivors are almost invariably more altruistic and less attached to their own property, less concerned with the long-term questions of acquisition, status, wealth, and security, than just about anyone not in such situations imagines possible. (The best accounts from Haiti of how people with next to nothing have patiently tried to share the little they have and support those in even worse shape than them only emphasize this disaster reality.) Crime often drops in the wake of a disaster.
The media are another matter. They tend to arrive obsessed with property (and the headlines that assaults on property can make). Media outlets often call everything looting and thereby incite hostility toward the sufferers as well as a hysterical overreaction on the part of the armed authorities. Or sometimes the journalists on the ground do a good job and the editors back in their safe offices cook up the crazy photo captions and the wrongheaded interpretations and emphases.
They also deploy the word panic wrongly. Panic among ordinary people in crisis is profoundly uncommon. The media will call a crowd of people running from certain death a panicking mob, even though running is the only sensible thing to do. In Haiti, they continue to report that food is being withheld from distribution for fear of "stampedes." Do they think Haitians are cattle?
The belief that people in disaster (particularly poor and nonwhite people) are cattle or animals or just crazy and untrustworthy regularly justifies spending far too much energy and far too many resources on control -- the American military calls it "security" -- rather than relief. A British-accented voiceover on CNN calls people sprinting to where supplies are being dumped from a helicopter a "stampede" and adds that this delivery "risks sparking chaos." The chaos already exists, and you can't blame it on these people desperate for food and water. Or you can, and in doing so help convince your audience that they're unworthy and untrustworthy.
Back to looting: of course you can consider Haiti's dire poverty and failed institutions a long-term disaster that changes the rules of the game. There might be people who are not only interested in taking the things they need to survive in the next few days, but things they've never been entitled to own or things they may need next month. Technically that's theft, but I'm not particularly surprised or distressed by it; the distressing thing is that even before the terrible quake they led lives of deprivation and desperation.
In ordinary times, minor theft is often considered a misdemeanor. No one is harmed. Unchecked, minor thefts could perhaps lead to an environment in which there were more thefts and so forth, and a good argument can be made that, in such a case, the tide needs to be stemmed. But it's not particularly significant in a landscape of terrible suffering and mass death.
A number of radio hosts and other media personnel are still upset that people apparently took TVs after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005. Since I started thinking about, and talking to people about, disaster aftermaths I've heard a lot about those damned TVs. Now, which matters more to you, televisions or human life? People were dying on rooftops and in overheated attics and freeway overpasses, they were stranded in all kinds of hideous circumstances on the Gulf Coast in 2005 when the mainstream media began to obsess about looting, and the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana made the decision to focus on protecting property, not human life.
A gang of white men on the other side of the river from New Orleans got so worked up about property crimes that they decided to take the law into their own hands and began shooting. They seem to have considered all black men criminals and thieves and shot a number of them. Some apparently died; there were bodies bloating in the September sun far from the region of the floods; one good man trying to evacuate the ruined city barely survived; and the media looked away. It took me months of nagging to even get the story covered. This vigilante gang claimed to be protecting property, though its members never demonstrated that their property was threatened. They boasted of killing black men. And they shared values with the mainstream media and the Louisiana powers that be.
Somehow, when the Bush administration subcontracted emergency services -- like providing evacuation buses in Hurricane Katrina -- to cronies who profited even while providing incompetent, overpriced, and much delayed service at the moment of greatest urgency, we didn't label that looting.
Or when a lot of wealthy Wall Street brokers decide to tinker with a basic human need like housing.... Well, you catch my drift.
Woody Guthrie once sang that "some will rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen." The guys with the six guns (or machetes or sharpened sticks) make for better photographs, and the guys with the fountain pens not only don't end up in jail, they end up in McMansions with four-car garages and, sometimes, in elected -- or appointed -- office.
Learning to See in Crises
Last Christmas a priest, Father Tim Jones of York, started a ruckus in Britain when he said in a sermon that shoplifting by the desperate from chain stores might be acceptable behavior. Naturally, there was an uproar. Jones told the Associated Press: "The point I'm making is that when we shut down every socially acceptable avenue for people in need, then the only avenue left is the socially unacceptable one."
The response focused almost entirely on why shoplifting is wrong, but the claim was also repeatedly made that it doesn't help. In fact, food helps the hungry, a fact so bald it's bizarre to even have to state it. The means by which it arrives is a separate matter. The focus remained on shoplifting, rather than on why there might be people so desperate in England's green and pleasant land that shoplifting might be their only option, and whether unnecessary human suffering is itself a crime of sorts.
Right now, the point is that people in Haiti need food, and for all the publicity, the international delivery system has, so far, been a visible dud. Under such circumstances, breaking into a U.N. food warehouse -- food assumedly meant for the poor of Haiti in a catastrophic moment -- might not be "violence," or "looting," or "law-breaking." It might be logic. It might be the most effective way of meeting a desperate need.
Why were so many people in Haiti hungry before the earthquake? Why do we have a planet that produces enough food for all and a distribution system that ensures more than a billion of us don't have a decent share of that bounty? Those are not questions whose answers should be long delayed.
Even more urgently, we need compassion for the sufferers in Haiti and media that tell the truth about them. I'd like to propose alternative captions for those Los Angeles Times photographs as models for all future disasters:
Let's start with the picture of the policeman hogtying the figure whose face is so anguished: "Ignoring thousands still trapped in rubble, a policeman accosts a sufferer who took evaporated milk. No adequate food distribution exists for Haiti's starving millions."
And the guy with the bolt of fabric? "As with every disaster, ordinary people show extraordinary powers of improvisation, and fabrics such as these are being used to make sun shelters around Haiti."
For the murdered policeman: "Institutional overzealousness about protecting property leads to a gratuitous murder, as often happens in crises. Meanwhile countless people remain trapped beneath crushed buildings."
And the crowd in the rubble labeled looters? How about: "Resourceful survivors salvage the means of sustaining life from the ruins of their world."
That one might not be totally accurate, but it's likely to be more accurate than the existing label. And what is absolutely accurate, in Haiti right now, and on Earth always, is that human life matters more than property, that the survivors of a catastrophe deserve our compassion and our understanding of their plight, and that we live and die by words and ideas, and it matters desperately that we get them right.
At the dawn of the millennium, three catastrophes were forecast for the United States: terrorists in New York, a hurricane in New Orleans, and an earthquake in San Francisco. Rebecca Solnit lives in San Francisco with her earthquake kit and is about to make her seventh trip to New Orleans since Katrina. Her latest book, A Paradise Built in Hell, is a testament to human bravery and innovation during disasters.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) Ready to Spend, but Not to Boast
"One banker's wife, who did not want to be named, said she and others like her felt more financially secure these days. 'There is the sense in the community that the world is not coming to an end,' she said. Of bonus critics, she added, executives like her husband work hard and are unjustly singled out as greedy. 'Everybody wants someone to blame,' she said, 'and rich people are an easy target.'"
By LAURA M. HOLSON
January 22, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/fashion/24bonus.html?ref=fashion
LAST year, investment bankers and their spouses kept their wallets shut during bonus season, first, out of panic, and later, fearing mobs with torches would descend upon their gated estates.
Now, after a year of self-imposed austerity and in what is shaping up as a spectacular bonus season, the Wall Street crowd is shaking off what one luxury retailer called its "frugal fatigue." Unlike earlier spending sprees, however, the consumption will be a lot less conspicuous.
On Wednesday, Morgan Stanley said it was setting aside $14.4 billion for salary and bonuses, or $235,000 per employee. A day later Goldman Sachs said it would pay an average of $498,000, with top producers at each of the two banks earning in the millions.
More than in past years, this year's bonus numbers are stirring deep resentment in a nation staggering under 10 percent unemployment.
Yet there is another class of individuals, beside the fortunate few receiving Wall Street windfalls, who celebrate bonuses: purveyors of goods and services to the wealthy, from Greenwich, Conn., to Gramercy Park, who stand to see their own fortunes improve. In the New York area's own kind of trickle-down, real estate agents, high-end car dealers and luxury retailers are all welcoming this bonus season as if it were their own.
In the Hamptons, where real estate agents court bankers looking for summer homes, the sales are also expected to be a boon for contractors, movers and groundskeepers. "A community like the Hamptons depends on house trades," said Diane Saatchi, an agent with Saunders and Associates who just sold a home to a banker for $4.9 million.
"Don't ask to talk to him about it, because he won't," Ms. Saatchi said of the buyer, deflecting a reporter. "They don't want anyone to know they are buying." That includes the banker's extended family, she explained, because he is worried they will ask him for money.
No one, she said, "is bragging about anything."
At the heart of Wall Streeters' anticipated splurge is pent-up demand after a year dominated by fears of a new depression, retailers and cultural observers say. "For whatever reason, people feel the need to reward themselves for doing something good even if that just means surviving," said Alexandra Lebenthal, an investment manager and creator of a fictional column about financial high jinks for NewYorkSocialDiary.com.
At the same time, investment bankers want to avoid the wrath of a fed-up public that continues to blame them for the nation's recessionary ills. On Jan. 13, the chief executives of the nation's four largest banks took a drubbing in hearings from Congressional leaders, who criticized their pay practices as being out of whack with the rest of the country. The Obama administration is channeling that populism with proposals to further regulate and tax banks.
As such, the prevailing wisdom on Wall Street is less show and no tell.
"Bankers are being told by their bosses to be careful," said Janet Hanson, who was an executive at Goldman Sachs for 14 years and is a founding member of 85 Broads, a professional women's networking organization. "I mean, how does it look if you got a $1 million bonus from Goldman Sachs and you are sporting around in a new Audi TT? People will hate you." (To deflect criticism, Goldman announced last week it would pay its top 30 executives in stock only.)
Few Wall Street executives or their spouses contacted for this article were willing to discuss how they planned to spend or invest their bonuses, expressing a fear of public scorn combined with the silence about personal rewards that bankers usually observe.
One banker's wife, who did not want to be named, said she and others like her felt more financially secure these days. "There is the sense in the community that the world is not coming to an end," she said. Of bonus critics, she added, executives like her husband work hard and are unjustly singled out as greedy. "Everybody wants someone to blame," she said, "and rich people are an easy target."
She and her husband have earmarked his bonus for two purposes. First, they want to set aside enough money for their four children's college funds. But they are also shopping for a vacation home - perhaps from a buyer forced to sell. "It is a good time to buy," she said. A friend of theirs, another financial executive, recently bought a house in Vermont weeks before it was to be foreclosed upon.
As much as Wall Street executives are seeking value, decisions are also based on whether they (and their new possessions) can hide in plain sight. A case in point: Manhattan Motorcars offered two lease programs in December, each costing about $100,000. The first was a one-year lease for a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead Coupe with embroidered headrests and a brushed steel hood. The second was a three-year lease for a Bentley Flying Spur or GT convertible, both of which are more understated than the Rolls.
Brian Miller, the owner of Manhattan Motorcars, said the Bentleys were more popular with Wall Street executives, not because they were less expensive, but because they attracted less attention. "They said they wanted to tone down their exposure and get something more staid and sedate," Mr. Miller said. "Later on they said they could come back and get something flashy."
New York's wealthiest families have always had money to spend whether they received bonuses this year or not. But it might have been seen as insensitive last year to parade down Madison Avenue, shopping bags in hand, while so many other Americans were losing jobs. Even those who had money didn't spend it, retailers said. But many high-end retailers said they began seeing a shift in November, as news of Wall Street's spectacular profits circulated.
Art sales were brisk in the fall, said Barbara Gladstone, who owns a gallery in Chelsea. She anticipates an even better spring as the dark mood that prevailed in Manhattan through much of last year begins to brighten. Simply put, shoppers, like teenage girls at a high school dance, move in packs. Once a few high-end buyers emerge, the rest will follow.
"A lot of clients' hesitation was psychological," Ms. Gladstone said. "They were waiting until they felt better. And then they got tired of waiting."
Suzanne Johnson, the general manager of Saks Fifth Avenue's flagship store, said many wealthy customers were suffering from what she called "frugal fatigue." After a year of looking, they are ready to treat themselves. Next month, Saks is holding an event at its Kiton men's wear boutique where made-to-order suits can cost as much as $21,000. It will feature Kiton's craftsmen and is timed to bonus season, she said.
She recalled, too, a couple - the husband was a banker - who came in last month and looked at a pair of earrings from the Roberto Coin Cento collection that cost about $5,000. Days later he returned and bought them for his wife. "They are turning 'looking' into an 'impulse buy,' " Ms. Johnson said. "It is about inner self-gratification rather than letting people know how rich you are."
At the same time, however, luxury merchants predict it will take at least five years to return to 2007 spending levels. One reason is that some bankers are getting restricted stock that they won't be able to sell for years, instead of cash.
"It's not like they are running around screaming now," said Frederick Anderson, president of the fashion designer Douglas Hannant's company, which opened a boutique in the Plaza last summer. "But they are making their appointments and keeping them. Last year, they used to make an appointment and cancel it. It got to be a joke. After the fourth time you're like: 'I get it. You aren't coming in.' "
"A lot of people are scared to go out because they are afraid of being criticized," he added. "How you spend your money now is a social comment. Everyone is looking."
In a striking twist on how the have-a-lots see themselves, social distinctions seem to have developed regarding who can flaunt what and where. It is in poor taste, for example, for employees of investment banks that were bailed out using taxpayer dollars to show off much of anything. But that is not the case among hedge fund managers whose companies didn't receive federal assistance.
Ms. Lebenthal, the investment manager and columnist, recalled being at a party recently and getting on an elevator with a hedge fund manager's wife who was wearing a $10,000 white fur jacket paired with faded jeans. Surprised at the display, Ms. Lebenthal stared.
"They feel much less a sense of propriety because they didn't get government money," Ms. Lebenthal said of employees at hedge funds. "They don't feel as if they have to spend less."
But spring is not far off - and that means more opportunities for financiers and their spouses to reward themselves: paintings bought at art auctions, summer homes in Sag Harbor and silken gowns to wear to the season's gala parties. Will Wall Street restrain itself as it seeks to repair its damaged image?
"I think it will be interesting to see what big houses go up for sale or who buys the first big necklace," Ms. Lebenthal said. "Even when there is still so much populist anger."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) More Than 150,000 Have Been Buried, Haiti Says
"Recent estimates from the International Organization for Migration show that 370,000 people are living in "improvised shelter," outside largely in camps without access to water, sanitation or food."
By DAMIEN CAVE
January 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/world/americas/24bodies.html?hp
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Haiti's government provided a preliminary assessment of the earthquake's body count on Saturday, putting it at more than 150,000, and declared that the search for survivors trapped in the rubble would soon be coming to an end.
Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue, Haiti's culture and communications minister, said that 150,000 bodies from the streets had been collected and buried in the past 11 days.
She also said that there were at least 250,000 people homeless and that 200,000 residents of Port-au-Prince and its outskirts had moved to the provinces since the earthquake hit.
It was unclear, however, how the government arrived at these numbers - especially the number of victims buried. The figure grew over the course of the day from 111,000 to 120,000 to 150,000 without detailed explanation.
Ms. Lassegue, in an interview under a mango tree at the police station that now serves as government headquarters, said the 150,000 bodies was a count of "what we have taken and disposed of," not including family burials or bodies still trapped in the collapsed buildings.
As recently as Wednesday, that government estimate was put at 75,000 bodies. But most Haitian and international officials here have agreed that official efforts are better focused on helping the living than counting the dead.
In interviews, government workers collecting the bodies on the streets have said that they were not counting, and at many of the mass graves outside the city where the bodies have dumped, no government officials could be found.
Jacques Adler Jean-Pierre, one of Ms. Lassegue's aides under the tree, said nonetheless that someone had been keeping track.
"It may have looked like no one was counting," he said, "but someone was supposed to."
The figure for those who have left the city seemed more solid. Mr. Jean-Pierre said this was a compilation of what local governments from outside Port-au-Prince had reported.
The number of homeless appears to be in flux. Haiti's Directorate for Civil Protection estimated last week that one million people had been displaced by the quake on Jan. 12. Recent estimates from the International Organization for Migration show that 370,000 people are living in "improvised shelter," outside largely in camps without access to water, sanitation or food.
Laurent M. Dubois, a history professor at Duke University who specializes in Haiti, said that the government - which struggled to compile comprehensive data even before the earthquake - appeared to be geared toward showing people that it was seriously trying to gauge the disaster's impact and challenges.
"What they are probably getting are conflicting reports from people who are imagining things different," Professor Dubois said. "They must be guessing to some extent."
Rescues, however, have been easier to count. The numbers are smaller, and the moments more joyful. As of Saturday morning, international rescue teams had pulled 132 people alive from the rubble.
Then in the afternoon came another. A team of mostly French rescuers pulled a 24-year-old cashier, Richmond Exantos, from a collapsed hotel and pharmacy downtown around 4:30. A crowd of Haitians and rescuers cheered as he emerged, without visible injuries. Soon, though, there will be no more of these miracles.
The government said Saturday that rescue teams could continue to search if they know of survivors, but that, realistically, it was unlikely that anyone else would be found alive.
Michel Legros, a cousin of an owner of the building where Mr. Exantos was found, said this was a mistake. He had stationed people at the building since the quake, listening for signs of life. Saturday was the first day anyone heard anything - the sound of soft tapping. "I think they should keep looking," Mr. Legros said. "Because if Richmond is alive, maybe there are more."
Ginger Thompson contributed reporting.
Correction: January 24, 2010
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a cousin of the owner of the building where Richmond Exantos was found. He is Michel Legros, not Michelle.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Students Face a Class Struggle at State Colleges
By KATHARINE MIESZKOWSKI
January 23, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/education/24sfstudent.html?ref=us
At 2:29 p.m. on Jan. 12, Juan Macias, 19, a sophomore at San Francisco State University, sat in a cafe near the engineering firm where he works part time as an office assistant, staring at a laptop computer screen.
In one minute he would get a crucial opportunity to register for classes for the spring semester. "This is so nerve-wracking," he said as he waited for the clock to signal that his assigned registration period had begun.
Hours earlier, scrutinizing the class schedule, he considered about 30 courses - then had to rule all of them out. They were full. The last slot on the waiting list for a 146-seat introductory physics class he has been trying to join for a year had disappeared minutes before, taken by another student with an earlier registration period.
"You're trying to compete with all the other students, when we all want education," said Mr. Macias, a business major. "It really makes me angry." His classes - the ones that had an opening - begin on Monday.
Welcome to state-run higher education in California. Mr. Macias is just one of more than 26,000 students at San Francisco State, and now educational opportunities cost more and are harder to grasp and even harder to hold onto than ever before. Mr. Macias's experience of truncated offerings, furloughed professors and crowded classrooms is typical.
Neither of Mr. Macias's parents went to college; his father is a railroad conductor. One of his five siblings dropped out of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo to go to community college because of financial constraints.
Terry Hartle, the senior vice president of the American Council on Education, a trade association representing colleges and universities, confirmed that higher education in California has become akin to navigating an obstacle course.
"There are an awful lot of students in California who are having similar problems," he said. "This is a potential tragedy for individual students."
In 1960, he added, the state created "the gold standard in high-quality, low-cost public higher education. This year, the California legislature abandoned the gold standard."
Because of state budget cuts to higher education, San Francisco State is now offering 3,173 course sections, 12 percent fewer than two years ago. From the university administration's point of view, that is not as bad as it might have been: over $1.5 million in federal stimulus money prevented more draconian cuts.
Among other things, oversubscribed classrooms can force a student like Mr. Macias, who must be enrolled full time to keep financial aid, to take courses that might have little to do with his progress toward graduation.
This semester, he is signed up for a biology class, but was unable to get into the companion laboratory class. His other courses are a workshop on the "history, aesthetics, mechanics and politics of rap music and hip-hop culture," a class built around the campus radio station, KSFS, and a class called "The Origins of Rock," which is supposed to be for upperclassmen.
He is on the waiting list for a humanities class called Style and Expressive Forms and a physics laboratory class, which he hopes will help him get into the physics lecture class. They are meant to be taken together.
But taking any class you can get into just to stay enrolled is no recipe for excelling academically. Last semester his grades suffered. "I'm taking these classes that I don't care about, getting bad grades in these classes," Mr. Macias said. "That's affecting my G.P.A., at the same time that I'm fighting so that I can have grades. It's really contradictory."
And it is not just classes that he has to deal with this semester. He must also deal with the legal system. He faces misdemeanor trespassing charges as a result of joining last semester's protests of the budget cuts.
Still, things could be worse. If he were a year younger, he would not be able to take classes at San Francisco State. This spring, cutbacks have largely ended the opportunity for community college students to move into the state university system, which enrolls 433,000 students. Mr. Macias transferred a year ago from Allan Hancock College, a community college in Santa Maria.
Also, in response to budget cuts, San Francisco State plans to reduce enrollment more than 10 percent for the 2010-11 academic year.
"These students are being told the doors to the university are closing," said Kenneth Monteiro, dean of the university's College of Ethnic Studies, where even the student resource center has been shuttered for lack of funds.
This academic year, the university lost $38 million in state support. Student fees are 32 percent higher. Hundreds of lecturers lost their jobs; faculty and staff salaries were cut by 10 percent. Furlough days made the university's schedule a chaotic patchwork of canceled lectures and shortened office hours.
The cutbacks enraged students. On Dec. 9, Mr. Macias was among the student activists who occupied the campus's Business Building for 24 hours, canceling the classes held inside, including one he was taking. With a red sweater partially obscuring his face, he took to the roof with 11 other protesters, wielding a megaphone and leading chants.
When police broke up the occupation early the next morning, Mr. Macias, who had never participated in a protest before he went to San Francisco State, was arrested. On Jan. 26 he will go to court.
The chaos of trying to get into classes last fall spurred Mr. Macias. After budget cuts forced class cancellations, he had to take a week off work to attend 20 classes, as he tried to scrounge up enough units to keep his full-time status and maintain his financial aid.
In an oceanography class, the professor drew names at random to pick among the students trying to join the already-full class. Mr. Macias's name did not come up. His final course load included several that he took to ensure a full schedule, such as the Music of John Coltrane.
Mr. Macias also felt the cuts in the classroom. In the fall, Don Menn, a lecturer in the journalism department since 1999, had taken pity on many students who, like Mr. Macias, were seeking to join his introductory course, Journalism and Mass Media. He let them all in, teaching 190 in a lecture hall that seats 148. Some sat on the floor.
But with no budget for a teaching assistant to help with grading, Mr. Menn had to slash the syllabus, canceling the midterm exam and the 10-page research paper. While in the past he had frequently given essay tests, this year all quizzes and the final were multiple choice.
"This is supposed to be a critical-thinking type class," Mr. Menn said, "and here it was rote learning."
His students noticed the difference. "The classes are being dumbed down a lot," Mr. Macias said.
Next year, students like Mr. Macias may face a further increase in fees. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposed budget for 2010-11 includes a 10 percent fee increase for students at the California State University's 23 campuses. He also proposed restoring $305 million to the state university system.
Mr. Macias's education has already suffered. "Just worrying about having enough units to stay in school made me lose focus on my schoolwork," he said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Shrimp's Dirty Secrets: Why America's Favorite Seafood Is a Health
and Environmental Nightmare
By Jill Richardson, AlterNet
Posted on January 25, 2010, Printed on January 25, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145369/
Americans love their shrimp. It's the most popular seafood in the
country, but unfortunately much of the shrimp we eat are a
cocktail of chemicals, harvested at the expense of one of the
world's productive ecosystems. Worse, guidelines for finding some
kind of "sustainable shrimp" are so far nonexistent.
In his book, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of
Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe paints a repulsive picture of how
shrimp are farmed in one region of India. The shrimp pond
preparation begins with urea, superphosphate, and diesel, then
progresses to the use of piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like
chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and antibiotics (including some
that are banned in the U.S.), and ends by treating the shrimp with
sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neurotoxicant), Borax, and
occasionally caustic soda.
Upon arrival in the U.S., few if any, are inspected by the FDA,
and when researchers have examined imported ready-to-eat shrimp,
they found 162 separate species of bacteria with resistance to 10
different antibiotics. And yet, as of 2008, Americans are eating
4.1 pounds of shrimp apiece each year -- significantly more than
the 2.8 pounds per year we each ate of the second most popular
seafood, canned tuna. But what are we actually eating without
knowing it? And is it worth the price -- both to our health and
the environment?
Understanding the shrimp that supplies our nation's voracious
appetite is quite complex. Overall, the shrimp industry represents
a dismantling of the marine ecosystem, piece by piece. Farming
methods range from those described above to some that are more
benign. Problems with irresponsible methods of farming don't end
at the "yuck," factor as shrimp farming is credited with
destroying 38 percent of the world's mangroves, some of the most
diverse and productive ecosystems on earth. Mangroves sequester
vast amounts of carbon and serve as valuable buffers against
hurricanes and tsunamis. Some compare shrimp farming methods that
demolish mangroves to slash-and-burn agriculture. A shrimp farmer
will clear a section of mangroves and close it off to ensure that
the shrimp cannot escape. Then the farmer relies on the tides to
refresh the water, carrying shrimp excrement and disease out to
sea. In this scenario, the entire mangrove ecosystem is destroyed
and turned into a small dead zone for short-term gain. Even after
the shrimp farm leaves, the mangroves do not come back.
A more responsible farming system involves closed, inland ponds
that use their wastewater for agricultural irrigation instead of
allowing it to pollute oceans or other waterways. According to the
Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch program, when a farm has
good disease management protocols, it does not need to use so many
antibiotics or other chemicals.
One more consideration, even in these cleaner systems, is the wild
fish used to feed farmed shrimp. An estimated average of 1.4
pounds of wild fish are used to produce every pound of farmed
shrimp. Sometimes the wild fish used is bycatch -- fish that would
be dumped into the ocean to rot if they weren't fed to shrimp --
but other times farmed shrimp dine on species like anchovies,
herring, sardines and menhaden. These fish are important foods for
seabirds, big commercial fish and whales, so removing them from
the ecosystem to feed farmed shrimp is problematic.
Additionally, some shrimp are wild-caught, and while they aren't
raised in a chemical cocktail, the vast majority is caught using
trawling, a highly destructive fishing method. Football
field-sized nets are dragged along the ocean floor, scooping up
and killing several pounds of marine life for every pound of
shrimp they catch and demolishing the ocean floor ecosystem as
they go. Where they don't clear-cut coral reefs or other rich
ocean floor habitats, they drag their nets through the mud,
leaving plumes of sediment so large they are visible from outer space.
After trawling destroys an ocean floor, the ecosystem often cannot
recover for decades, if not centuries or millennia. This is
particularly significant because 98 percent of ocean life lives on
or around the seabed. Depending on the fishery, the amount of
bycatch (the term used for unwanted species scooped up and killed
by trawlers) ranges from five to 20 pounds per pound of shrimp.
These include sharks, rays, starfish, juvenile red snapper, sea
turtles and more. While shrimp trawl fisheries only represent 2
percent of the global fish catch, they are responsible for over
one-third of the world's bycatch. Trawling is comparable to
bulldozing an entire section of rainforest in order to catch one
species of bird.
Given this disturbing picture, how can an American know how to
find responsibly farmed or fished shrimp? Currently, it's near
impossible. Only 15 percent of our total shrimp consumption comes
from the U.S. (both farmed and wild sources). The U.S. has good
regulations on shrimp farming, so purchasing shrimp farmed in the
U.S. is not a bad way to go. Wild shrimp, with a few exceptions,
is typically obtained via trawling and should be avoided. The
notable exceptions are spot prawns from British Columbia, caught
in traps similar to those used for catching lobster, and the small
salad shrimp like the Northern shrimp from the East Coast or pink
shrimp from Oregon, both of which are certified as sustainable by
the Marine Stewardship Council. However, neither are true
substitutes for the large white and tiger shrimp American
consumers are used to.
The remaining 85 percent came from other countries and about
two-thirds of our imports are farmed with the balance caught in
the wild, mostly via trawling. China is the world's top shrimp
producer -- both farmed and wild -- but only 2 percent of China's
shrimp are imported to the U.S. The world's number two producer,
Thailand, is our top foreign source of shrimp. Fully one third of
the shrimp the U.S. imports comes from Thailand, and over 80
percent of those shrimp are farmed.
The next biggest sources of U.S. shrimp are Ecuador, Indonesia,
China, Mexico, Vietnam, Malaysia and India. Together, those
countries provide nearly 90 percent of America's imported shrimp.
Interestingly, Ecuador's shrimp industry exists almost entirely to
supply U.S. demand, with over 93 percent of its shrimp coming up
north to the U.S. The vast majority of those shrimp (almost 90
percent) are farmed. Sadly, shrimp production is responsible for
the destruction of 70 percent of Ecuador's mangroves. Farming
practices in other countries range from decent to awful, but
there's currently no real way for a consumer to tell whether
shrimp from any particular country was farmed sustainably or not.
Geoff Shester, senior science manager of Monterey Bay's Seafood
Watch, says that ethical shrimp consumption is a chicken and egg
problem. On one hand, the solution is for consumers to show demand
for responsibly farmed and wild shrimp by eating it but on the
other hand, ethical shrimp choices are not yet widely available.
Seafood Watch is working with some of the largest seafood buyers
in the U.S. to help them buy better shrimp, but it's currently a
major challenge.
The first challenge is that labeling and certification programs do
not yet exist to identify which farmed shrimp meet sustainable
production standards. The second challenge is that even when such
programs are in place, the U.S. demand will likely greatly exceed
their supply.
Shester's advice to consumers right now is "only buy shrimp that
you know comes from a sustainable source. If you can't tell for
sure, try something else from the Seafood Watch yellow or green
lists." Knowing that many will be unwilling to give up America's
favorite seafood, he advocates simply eating less of it and
keeping an eye on future updates to the Seafood Watch guide to
eating sustainable seafood.
Jill Richardson is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore and a
member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board.
She is the author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is
Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It..
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) In Haiti, Many Amputees Have No Place to Go
By RAY RIVERA
January 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/americas/25amputee.html?ref=world
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - In a tent serving as an acute-care ward on the grounds of this city's biggest hospital, Jocelin François was sitting up in bed when a nurse went by, barking at him in French. Mr. François, whose left leg was amputated nearly to his knee after the earthquake on Jan. 12, threw out his arms and fell back on the mattress.
"She said I have to go home," Mr. François, 26, said. "I don't want to leave until I can walk. I am weak. I have no place to go."
A doctor, sensing some confusion, intervened. "We're not telling him he has to go home," the doctor, Rose Antoine, 33, a native of Haiti who now lives in Pennsylvania, explained. "We're only telling him that this is an acute ward and we need the bed. We're trying to find a step-down unit where he can go to."
Nearly two weeks after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince, the immediate health crisis, which involved treating the injuries of people who were crushed by collapsing buildings and amputating damaged limbs, has begun to settle into a new phase.
This one is perhaps even more daunting: caring for thousands of post-operation trauma patients who are ready to leave the hospitals, but lack homes or families to go to. Many will require prosthetic limbs, frequent wound cleanings, bandage changes and months of rehabilitation.
As officials warn of possible outbreaks of infectious diseases from unsanitary conditions in hundreds of makeshift camps of people made homeless by the earthquake, they are also wondering where to send patients who have been treated for their injuries but require follow-up care.
"It's very hard to send people home when they don't have a house," said Dr. Surena Claude, who is coordinating a commission appointed by President René Préval to respond to the health emergency. "This situation is causing so many problems, because the hospitals are full, and if this continues we will have no room."
Early reports that there might be as many as 200,000 people who required amputations appear to have been exaggerated. At the University Hospital, Port-au-Prince's largest hospital, which received the brunt of the casualties after the quake, surgeons have performed about 225 amputations, mostly in the first few days. Doctors Without Borders estimated that its doctors had performed 125 amputations in 12 centers across the country. Hundreds more have been done in other clinics and hospitals elsewhere; the total is more likely to have been a few thousand.
Still, this is a country that, even before the earthquake created so much devastation, could barely cope with the healthy. There will be thousands more who will need rehabilitation for a range of injuries, from broken hips and femurs to neurological disorders from head injuries.
Health officials are still in the earliest stages of determining how to deal with post-operative patients, even as new patients are coming to the hospitals with secondary infections as well as the usual array of emergencies.
Dr. Mirta Roses, director of the World Health Organization's Pan-American region, said Sunday that all of the country's remaining 48 hospitals were at full capacity, including 11 in Port-au-Prince. That does not include the many clinics that aid groups have created.
Health officials are dealing with another problem. With aftershocks still rattling the city, including another on Sunday, many people are afraid to be inside the hospitals but are also unwilling to leave the grounds, where they can get food and water and have access to care.
"Even their relatives want to be with them in the hospitals," Dr. Roses said. She added that a solution would involve creating centers for ambulatory and post-operative care and persuading patients and their families to move there.
Even in the best of circumstances, it can take four to six months for a person who has had a traumatic amputation to function again, Dr. Steven R. Flanagan, medical director of the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center, said in a telephone interview. The Rusk Institute has a team in Haiti.
"What they really need to worry about in Haiti is infectious complication, so if you have an amputation of a leg or arm, that wound is subject to infection," Dr. Flanagan said. "And clearly they don't have all the medicines they need down there."
Dr. Claude, of the presidential commission, said the government was well aware of the situation.
"Unfortunately, a solution is not yet found," he said. Even when one is found, he said, logistics in this rubble-choked country will continue to be a problem.
The hope is that access to medicines and care will be eased greatly when the government carries out plans to build giant tent cities across Port-au-Prince and the vicinity, but that could take weeks.
At University Hospital, which is next to a nursing school that collapsed, killing about 50 students, Mr. François was relieved to learn that he did not have to leave immediately. He said he did not know if his relatives died in the earthquake, and that they did not know that he survived.
Outside the tent, a giant post-operative ward has been created in a grove of mango and oak trees, with low-slung tarps strung over patients' beds. The ward, known as "the forest," is filled with many patients who did not want to be inside the hospital. The doctors do not know how many patients are there, because they have been too busy to count.
In the United States, many of these patients would already be home, receiving outpatient care, said Dr. Michael Marin, chairman of surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, who is volunteering here with the International Medical Corps, the group coordinating relief efforts at the hospital.
Here, many of the patients cannot return home. "The only place they have to go is the forest," Dr. Marin said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) On Street Tracing Haiti's Pain, Survival Goes On
By DEBORAH SONTAG and GINGER THOMPSON
January 25, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/world/americas/25street.html?ref=world
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Avenue Poupelard in the center of this devastated city pulses with life and reeks of death almost two weeks after the earthquake.
Before what Haitians call "the event," it was a chaotically bustling street of lottery kiosks and cybercafes, gated homes and shacks, churches and schools.
Now, a coffin maker spends the day hammering wood as fast as he can get it, while the body of a 6-year-old boy decomposes in the ruins of a school. Hundreds of displaced residents squat in the junked cars of a mechanic's lot as a lawyer, writing briefs, camps under the bougainvillea of her uninhabitable villa. A fiery pastor preaches outside the ruins of his church; street vendors hawk small plastic bags of water; an AIDS clinic reopens briefly each day for patients who survived the earthquake but ran out of essential pills.
And, bound in muslin like a mummy, a cadaver lies beneath a sign that screams "S O S," deposited there by neighbors as if to underscore their cry for help as they struggle to reconstitute some semblance of community and move forward.
"We are not blood relatives but we are all the dispossessed of Avenue Poupelard," said Franc Danjou, gesturing at those around him in one encampment. "We must pool our resources - and get help! - or in a year this community will be dead."
Over a quarter-mile stretch, Avenue Poupelard, a residential and commercial strip in the area called Nazon, offers a panorama of life in the ruins of the Haitian capital where a stricken heart still beats.
A complete damage assessment is impossible without tax and property records, which are not available. But of 53 buildings examined on Avenue Poupelard, only six appeared to be intact. Twenty-three are completely or partially collapsed. And the remaining 24 show damage ranging from cracks to crumbled walls, with daily aftershocks presenting a continuing threat.
Despite such widespread destruction - and an incalculable number of deaths - almost no one on Avenue Poupelard seems to let himself cry, not even the children. Grief is still buried under shock, and there is a stoic determination to face the future because, no matter how tenuous, it is far less frightening than the immediate past. It is daunting to imagine the recovery that lies ahead. But in this one pocket of the city, as elsewhere, life of a survivalist sort goes on.
Some small businesses - a barbershop here, a tiny food stand there - are stirring back to life. Political debate, a sign of normalcy, is resurfacing, with many openly cursing President René Préval for making few forays into hard-hit areas.
Food, water, shelter, sickness and death: these continue to be urgent problems even as some help is finally arriving. For many on Avenue Poupelard, the trauma of loss has created an almost existential vertigo. Nora Jean Phillipe, an office worker who sat beside a tent with a box of Pop Tarts in her lap, was keenly, almost obsessively, focused on one thing: excavating her family's birth certificates from their destroyed house.
"Please understand," she said. "I lost my home. I lost my son. Somehow, I have to find a way to salvage our identity."
Determined to Stay
The Legros family settled into their villa on Avenue Poupelard over a half-century ago when the area was affluent and surrounded by farmland. As he grew up, Michel Legros, 53, owner of a popular radio station, Radio Maximum, watched the neighborhood grow denser and more socioeconomically mixed.
Late last week, Mr. Legros and his sister Gladys Legros, a lawyer, opened their gates, ushering visitors onto the patio in the shadow of their elegant house, which is still standing but badly damaged.
Mr. Legros is a well-known political activist. "Politics sticks to him like a disease," his sister said. His patio, shaded by palm and banana trees, used to serve as a meeting place for the Democratic Convergence, a largely elite political coalition opposed to former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a champion of the poor. Now the Legros family sleeps there alongside the many less privileged, displaced neighbors they have invited in.
Most of his friends, Mr. Legros said, have abandoned the country, but he refuses to go. "If you hear there is one person left standing in Haiti," he said, "you can be sure it's me."
Despite his bravado, Mr. Legros, unlike many of his neighbors who have repressed the horror of the earthquake itself, keeps reliving it.
After the earthquake struck, he said, he rushed downtown, where his cousins owned a small hotel and found it a pile of heavy concrete slabs. After learning that his cousins were buried inside, he saw an employee, whom he knew only as Rudy, lodged in the rubble, crying for help. He ran to search for equipment to help get Rudy out. But with Port-au-Prince wrecked from one end to the other, Mr. Legros found that his political connections did not help - not on the day of the earthquake, or for the two days after that.
By the time Mr. Legros secured a bulldozer, Rudy was dead.
"I feel impotent, and that impotence bothers me a lot," he said. "But what bothers me even more, is that my country is impotent.
"My God," he added, "what has happened to Haiti?"
Crossroads of Need
Avenue Poupelard crosses a major north-south thoroughfare, Avenue Martin Luther King. At their intersection, a sign in English - "We need help. Food. Water." - has arrows pointing both east and west.
To the immediate west lies the AIDS clinic opposite the car repair lot; to the immediate east, the coffin maker - who is charging his neighbors $125 per plywood box, about a quarter of the average yearly income - and a cybercafe offering free phone calls to the United States. Among those thronging the PMS Cyber Café late last week, one caller was recounting how a cousin had died at the hospital: "They cut off his leg," he said into the phone, "so I don't think he wanted to live after that."
Across the street from the cafe last Thursday, a community center was converted into a triage unit by American doctors, volunteers with a Catholic missionary group who tended dozens of survivors with crush injuries and fractures. The patients included Linda Saint Alain, 27, who had languished in pain with a broken back on the patio of a family home since being dragged from its wreckage during the quake.
The American doctors quickly determined that Ms. Saint Alain needed to be transferred to a hospital, and helped her brother put her onto a flatbed. Before leaving, the brother jumped down to hug Gaston Jeaneddy, a voodoo priest and community leader who had arranged for the rescue team to visit the neighborhood.
"No one person can fix all of Haiti," said Mr. Jeaneddy, a short, muscular man with the bark of a drill sergeant. "Each has to fix his own piece."
Earthquake injuries are not the only urgent medical problems on Avenue Poupelard. The quake has left many thousands of Haitians who have H.I.V./AIDS without the antiretroviral medication that they need to stay healthy. On Thursday, scores of newly homeless Haitians managed to make their way to a dermatology clinic on Avenue Poupelard, where a guard let them wait for assistance on the wooden benches of the open-air waiting room.
The clinic, which used to focus on leprosy and now treats many AIDS patients, is damaged but standing. Its staff members, many of them also homeless, have been showing up for a couple of hours a day to dispense pills.
One patient, Yvose Descosse, 38, wore a turquoise flower in her hair, and twisted her beaded necklace as she spoke in a soft sing-song. She had walked three hours to the clinic from her tent city in the sprawling slum of Cité Soleil. Having missed an appointment the day after the earthquake, she had run out of pills and found herself racked by diarrhea and vomiting - on the streets, no less.
Further, she added, patting her very small belly, she was eight months pregnant and the father of her baby had been killed during the earthquake.
"I needed to come to Poupelard, where they will help me," she said, covering her face with her hands.
Seated near her, Claude Chevalier, 24, a medical student who has H.I.V., said the earthquake had killed his mother, father and sister and left him completely alone. "Everyone in Haiti is in the same situation," he said, closing his eyes briefly, then shrugging.
Not everyone can shrug. For some, the dispiriting reality inspires grim thoughts. Florence Mabeau, a former Red Cross janitor, said she almost envies her teenage daughter for lying unconscious at the General Hospital: "I wish I could sleep through this nightmare," she said.
Ms. Mabeau was squatting in the mechanic's yard opposite the dermatology clinic, where about 300 people have taken shelter in junked cars. It is one of the largest encampments in the neighborhood, with extended families crowding into broken-down vans and painted jitneys. At night, they reserve the best car seats - where there are seats - for the babies, and sleep in the open air.
Conditions are harsh. The people pool their pennies to buy small packets of water and spaghetti, they have no running water or electrical generator and diarrhea is rampant. And now, most have little patience for questions about where they were when the earthquake struck. What's gone is gone, some say, slapping their hands. But others cannot help but yearn for what they lost.
Huguette Joseph, 53, who shares a yellow Nissan bus with 10 children and grandchildren, said she did not have much before the earthquake, living in a leaky, one-room house. Still, she said, "I had my own house. I had my own kitchen. I had my own pots for cooking. I had shoes on my feet."
Sermon Amid the Ruins
Before the earthquake battered the large Evangelie de la Grâce Church, Pastor Enso Sylvert said he routinely drew hundreds of worshipers who spilled out onto the sidewalk for Sunday services. Now he has a gravel lot and a circle of folding chairs, but during a morning service last Thursday, his faith was on fire. He wore a salmon shirt, bounced on the balls of his feet and thrust his Bible in the air, working a crowd of displaced residents into a good-spirited frenzy.
"We call the president 'Onion,' " he said in a chant, using a Creole insult. "We call the ministers 'Onion.' We call the government 'Onion.' Our only hope lies with God."
For a couple of hours, the service enlivened the camp beside the church, a ragtag assemblage of working-class and poor neighbors who once coexisted in the various structures - main house, cottage, shacks - on an old villa property with an empty, cracked swimming pool. Jean-Claude Gouboth, 36, a thin, serious man in an Italian soccer shirt whose small store was crushed in the earthquake, lived in the main house, now damaged.
That made him the de facto leader of the impromptu refugee camp, a post that he did not appear to relish. Life was not easy before the earthquake, he said, with three children to put through school and mounting debt to the bank underwriting his business. But now his 3-year-old girl had been killed by the quake, his wife and other children had fled to the countryside, and he was sleeping with the neighbors in his rocky backyard.
"We are trying to stay on friendly terms, but sometimes there are disputes," he said, citing not a squabble over scant resources, but a theological debate about exactly what God was trying to say when he shook Haiti to its core.
Jesumelle Gustave, 44, who lives in the rubble of the church, does not participate in such esoteric conversation. She thanks God, she said, for leaving $4 in her husband's pocket when the earthquake killed him, money that she has needed to sustain her family of five, including a son with a broken back and an amputated finger.
"How merciful is God!" she said, as the little boys in the encampment kicked a soccer ball onto Avenue Poupelard and across the street to a schoolyard where some friends are living.
Two slim teenage girls ran past them in flip-flops, mattresses on their heads. The school, its roof knocked off, has one wall chiseled away to reveal a blackboard chalked with the chemistry homework assigned the night the earthquake struck.
"We don't have school anymore in Haiti," Sophonie Daniel, 17, said. "Can we come to your country to study?"
Her friend Danuela Bayard, a 21-year-old marketing student, chimed in: "We are young, and we don't want to waste our time in life. This earthquake just paralyzes our lives."
Damien Cave contributed reporting.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) As China Rises, Economic Conflict With West Rises Too
By KATRIN BENNHOLD
News Analysis
January 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/business/global/27yuan.html?hp
DAVOS, Switzerland - As recently as 2008, when China was still an emerging economy eager to put its best foot forward for Western consumers, it lifted censorship on several Web sites before the Beijing Olympics. At the same time, it responded to entreaties from U.S. and European politicians, allowing its currency to appreciate against the dollar.
China is no longer emerging. It has emerged - sooner and more assertively than had been expected before the wrenching global financial crisis, which badly damaged all the established industrial powers, from the United States to Europe and Japan.
These days, the renminbi is frozen at an undervalued level, and Internet controls are stricter than ever - even as Google, one of America's most prominent companies, threatens to leave.
The severe recession has fast-forwarded history, catapulting an unprepared world into a period of uneasy cohabitation between the United States, the No. 1 economy, and its eventual successor.
"China is the West's greatest hope and greatest fear," said Kristin Forbes, a former member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and one of hundreds of top officials and executives flocking to this winter resort for the annual World Economic Forum, which is taking place Wednesday through Sunday.
"No one was quite ready for how fast China has emerged," said Ms. Forbes, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Now everyone is trying to understand what sort of China they will be dealing with."
For the first time, economists point to Chinese spending - not the U.S. consumer - as the key to a global recovery. China's gross domestic product could overtake that of the United States within a decade, one report predicted this month, while others speculated about when the renminbi might start to challenge the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
And as developing countries everywhere look for a recipe for faster growth and greater stability than that offered by the now-tattered "Washington consensus" of open markets, floating currencies and free elections, there is growing talk about a "Beijing consensus."
China's rise will be on prominent display in Davos this week, with the biggest Chinese delegation in the World Economic Forum's history. The local Chinese restaurant has been fully booked since early January. The 54 Chinese officials and executives - including the presidents of the country's sovereign wealth fund and export-import bank - were expected not only to rub shoulders here but also, as one put it bluntly, to "go shopping."
When the United States was snapping at the heels of the British empire, the global hegemon of the early 20th century, the situation caused plenty of friction, even though both countries spoke the same language, shared similar cultures and were liberal democracies.
China, in contrast, is a Confucian- Communist-capitalist hybrid under the umbrella of a one-party state that has so far resisted giving greater political freedom to a growing middle class. Now its ascendancy is about to set off what many officials and experts see as a backlash on both sides of the Pacific.
"It's not surprising that China's remarkable economic rise would be unsettling to some," said Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization.
So far, the backlash against China has been largely rhetorical. Stephen Roach, the Asia chairman of Morgan Stanley, counts 45 anti-China legislative measures introduced in the U.S. Congress between 2005 and 2007. None passed.
That could change, as tricky midterm elections loom in the United States and politicians there and in Europe become more outspoken in blaming China's currency peg to the dollar, which gives its industries a competitive edge, for rising joblessness at home.
Some targeted tariffs have been imposed in recent months. Washington has penalized imports of Chinese tires and coated paper products. Both the United States and the European Union are restricting Chinese steel.
But none of those measures go as far as climate change proposals in France and the United States, which call for border taxes on products from countries - China in particular - that do not accept higher costs for carbon emissions in producing energy and making goods. If "the U.S. opts for friction," Mr. Roach said, "the Chinese can be expected to respond in kind."
China has its own version of political jockeying. Several foreign companies already complain that doing business in China has become more difficult. Lured until a few years ago by tax rates less than half of those applying to Chinese companies, executives now cite an increase in red tape and a growing number of "buy China" mandates from government procurement offices.
The standoff with Google has illustrated the difficulties foreign business faces in China. It has also starkly raised the question of who will have the upper hand in future negotiations.
"The operating environment is tougher than ever for Western companies," said James McGregor, head of the government relations committee of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. "But unlike Google, most Western companies also need China more than ever."
China is the biggest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world: 450 of the Fortune 500 companies have business presences there, and many of those still reeling at home are doing brisk business in China. "G.M. is hurting anywhere else, but here things are quite profitable," Mr. McGregor said.
Business interests in China could make it harder for Western politicians to lash out. "It's a situation the U.S. was in for a long time," said Ms. Forbes, the M.I.T. professor. "Many people didn't like U.S. policy, but you had to be in the U.S. market."
If business executives are looking to China for its low manufacturing costs and sizable market, political leaders are studying a state perceived to have found a recipe for lifting millions out of poverty with fast growth, even if that means a stiff measure of domestic repression. "You hear more and more people talking about a Beijing consensus," Ms. Forbes said.
But what exactly is the Beijing consensus? Some see it as a form of economic management with greater government involvement that is on the rise across the world. Others interpret it to mean more strictly controlled capital markets, which have made a re-appearance even in previously open countries like Brazil. Policy makers in Malaysia and Dubai focus on replicating China's special economic zones, which afford generous terms to foreign investors in manageable geographic areas.
Some suggest that China's lack of democracy is an advantage in making unpopular but necessary changes. "It is more challenging for democratic systems because every day they come under public pressure and every short period they have to go back to the polls," said Victor Chu, chairman of First Eastern Investment Group in Hong Kong, the largest direct investment firm in China. "China is lucky to have the ability to make long-term strategic decisions and then execute them clinically."
With China's rising clout, the West has less leverage over Beijing. When China was seeking to join the World Trade Organization a decade ago, it accepted compromises to U.S. and European demands. At climate talks last month in Copenhagen, however, China blocked a comprehensive deal and refused to go beyond its earlier promises. Portrayed as a deal breaker in the Western media, at home it was celebrated as the country that stopped the West from imposing its terms on developing countries, Mr. Chu said.
Western diplomats complain about the way Beijing is dragging its feet more than Moscow on sanctions on Iran's nuclear program and is propping up unsavory regimes across the world in its hunt for the natural resources to power its growth.
Some say Chinese officials are using their country's $2.4 trillion in foreign currency reserves as a bargaining chip, knowing that any hint of reducing those reserves would rattle currency markets.
"As China is emerging on the global stage with unprecedented power and influence," said David Shambaugh, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University who is in China as a Fulbright scholar, "it is not proving to be the global partner the United States and E.U. seek."
In the world of power politics, that is not particularly surprising. Like many Western countries, China will act only when it is in its interest.
Mr. Chu of First Eastern Investment said he expected China to resume a gradual appreciation of the renminbi later this year, not because Washington was lobbying for it but because signs of inflationary pressure and bubbles in the Chinese credit and housing markets were mounting. This month, the Chinese authorities raised interest rates and moved to curtail bank loans.
Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard University who just spent two weeks in China, warns that the country will face its share of economic troubles in the years ahead. But that will not change the underlying trend, he said.
While China remains much poorer than the advanced industrial powers of the West on a per-capita basis, its rapid growth should enable it to pass Japan this year as the world's second-largest economy.
A new report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers predicts that China could overtake the United States as the largest economy as early as 2020. In 2003, Goldman Sachs made waves by suggesting that the Chinese G.D.P. might match that of the United States by 2041. Five years later, the forecast was revised to 2027.
According to Mr. Rogoff, over the next four decades or so, the Chinese renminbi will gradually come to rival the dollar as the world's leading reserve currency, making China's response to its increasingly central role in the global economy critical.
The risk, Mr. Shambaugh of George Washington University said, is that "the world will be asking more and more of China but getting less and less in return."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Obama to Seek Spending Freeze to Trim Deficits
"The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks. But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."
By JACKIE CALMES
January 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/politics/26budget.html?hp
WASHINGTON - President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday.
The officials said the proposal would be a major component both of Mr. Obama's State of the Union address on Wednesday and of the budget he will send to Congress on Monday for the fiscal year that begins in October.
The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks.
But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.
The initiative holds political risks as well as potential benefits. Because Mr. Obama plans to exempt military spending while leaving many popular domestic programs vulnerable, his move is certain to further anger liberals in his party and senior Democrats in Congress, who are already upset by the possible collapse of health care legislation and the troop buildup in Afghanistan, among other things.
Fiscally conservative Democrats in the House and Senate have urged Mr. Obama to support a freeze, and it would suggest to voters, Wall Street and other nations that the president is willing to make tough decisions at a time when the deficit and the national debt, in the view of many economists, have reached levels that undermine the nation's long-term prosperity. Perceptions that government spending is out of control have contributed to Mr. Obama's loss of support among independent voters, and concern about the government's fiscal health could put upward pressure on the interest rates the United States has to pay to borrow money from investors and nations, especially China, that have been financing Washington's budget deficit.
Republicans were quick to mock the freeze proposal. "Given Washington Democrats' unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you're going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest," said Michael Steel, a spokesman for the House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio.
The spending reductions that would be required would have to be agreed to by Congress, and it is not clear how much support Mr. Obama will get in an election year when the political appeal of greater fiscal responsibility will be vying with the pressure to provide voters with more and better services. The administration officials said the part of the budget they have singled out - $447 billion in domestic programs - amounts to a relatively small share, about one-eighth, of the overall federal budget.
But given the raft of agencies and programs within that slice, the reductions will mean painful reductions that will be fought by numerous lobbies and constituent groups. And not all programs will be frozen, the administration officials said; many will be cut well below a freeze or eliminated to provide increases for programs that are higher priorities for the administration in areas like education, energy, the environment and health.
The balancing act of picking winners and losers was evident on Monday at the White House. Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. outlined a number of new proposals that will be in the budget to help the middle class. They cover issues including child care, student loans and retirement savings.
Administration officials also are working with Congress on roughly $150 billion in additional stimulus spending and tax cuts to spur job creation. But much of that spending would be authorized in the current fiscal year, the officials said, so it would not be affected by the proposed freeze that would take effect in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
It is the growth in the so-called entitlement programs - Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security - that is the major factor behind projections of unsustainably high deficits, because of rapidly rising health costs and an aging population.
But one administration official said that limiting the much smaller discretionary domestic budget would have symbolic value. That spending includes lawmakers' earmarks for parochial projects, and only when the public believes such perceived waste is being wrung out will they be willing to consider reductions in popular entitlement programs, the official said.
"By helping to create a new atmosphere of fiscal discipline, it can actually also feed into debates over other components of the budget," the official said, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The administration officials did not identify which programs Mr. Obama would cut or eliminate, but said that information would be in the budget he submits next week. For the coming fiscal year, the reductions would be $10 billion to $15 billion, they said. Last year Mr. Obama proposed to cut a similar amount - $11.5 billion - and Congress approved about three-fifths of that, the officials said.
The federal government's discretionary domestic spending has grown about 5 percent on average since 1993, according to the administration. It spiked to about 27 percent from 2008 to 2009, however, because of the recession. The sudden increase reflected both the first outlays from the $787 billion stimulus package as well as automatic spending for unemployment compensation and food stamps that is triggered during an economic downturn.
The freeze that Mr. Obama will propose for the fiscal years 2011 through 2013 actually means a cut in real terms, since the affected spending would not keep pace with inflation.
According to the administration, by 2015 that share of the federal budget will be at its lowest level in a half-century relative to the size of the economy.
"A lot of our caucus won't like it but I don't think we have any choice," said an adviser to Congressional Democratic leaders, who would only speak on condition of anonymity about internal party deliberations. "After Massachusetts and all the polls about independents' abandoning us for being fiscally irresponsible, we can't afford to be spending more than Obama."
While the Democrats' unexpected loss of a Massachusetts Senate seat in a special election last week gave new impetus to administration efforts to tackle the deficit, those efforts actually have been under way since last fall, when officials began early work on the 2011 budget.
Mr. Obama's budget director, Peter R. Orszag, initially directed Cabinet secretaries and agency heads to propose alternative budgets - one with a freeze and another that cut spending by 5 percent. Months of internal arguments and appeals followed.
David M. Herszenhorn contributed reporting from Washington.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Fighting Starvation, Haitians Share Portions
By DAMIEN CAVE
January 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/world/americas/26hunger.html?hp
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Maxi Extralien, a twig-thin 10-year-old in a SpongeBob pajama top, ate only a single bean from the heavy plate of food he received recently from a Haitian civic group. He had to make it last.
"My mother has 12 kids but a lot of them died," he said, covering his meal so he could carry it to his family. "There are six of us now and my mom."
For Maxi and countless others here in Haiti's pulverized capital, new rules of hunger etiquette are emerging. Stealing food, it is widely known, might get you killed. Children are most likely to return with something to eat, but no matter what is found, or how hungry the forager, everything must be shared.
The communal rationing, along with signs all over the city that say "S O S" and "we need food," suggests that the food crisis here is growing. In a country where malnutrition was common even before the earthquake, the United Nations now estimates that two million Haitians need immediate food assistance. And despite frantic efforts by aid groups, distribution has been limited. As of Saturday, the World Food Program had reached 207,392 people in Port-au-Prince and 113,313 in other areas.
Compounding the problem, Haiti's commercial food supply has been strangled by the earthquake's damage. Fruits and vegetables from the countryside are still available, but in smaller quantities, at inflated prices.
And food imports - typically 48 percent of the nation's total food consumption, according to the United Nations - have slowed to a trickle.
"The whole food supply chain has been trashed by the earthquake," said David Orr, a spokesman for the World Food Program. "The port, the roads, the trucks, the whole commercial life of the country has been disrupted."
It is not, after all, just homes that fell when the earth shook on Jan. 12. Supermarkets have collapsed to rubble. Butchers and bakers are dead.
At the Dimino bakery in Bourdon, a middle class area in the foothills above downtown Port-au-Prince, five people died when the ceiling fell in. The ovens are now buried in dirt. On the floor, plastic foam cakes lie overturned, their cheerful messages made invisible.
A few doors down, Elsie Perdriel cooked up what little she could. Her one-story home with maroon trim survived the earthquake, making her one of the lucky ones. But now she has 20 mouths to feed instead of four: seven children, including her grandson, a few extended relatives, and neighbors who lost their own homes.
It is a miniature civilization focused on food. Every day, one or two people are given the task of buying a single meal for the lot, but the purchases are small because money is tight. Work, a paycheck and disposable income all look a long way off.
Ms. Perdriel, an administrator with the national electric utility, has not heard from her bosses since the earthquake. Her son, Jean Sebastian Perdriel, 30, said his office by the port, where he worked for an import-export company, no longer stood.
"Nobody knows when they're going to get started again," he said. "Food, oil, rice, beans, it's all expensive."
Ms. Perdriel, a no-nonsense cook with her hair pulled back, displayed a pot with half of a chicken cut into pieces. "This should be for two people," she said. "Now it will have to do for 20."
Many other Haitians, while shouting for help in ever louder voices, are finding ways to share. In several neighborhoods of Carrefour, a poor area closer to the epicenter, small soup kitchens have sprung up with discounted meals, subsidized by Haitians with a little extra money. At 59 Impasse Eddy on Monday, three women behind a blue house stirred a pot of beans and rice, flavored with coconut, spices and lime juice.
They started cooking for their neighbors the day after the earthquake. On many mornings, they serve 100 people before 10 a.m.
"Everyone pays a small amount, 15 gourd," or a little less than 50 cents, said Guerline Dorleen, 30, sitting on a small chair near the bubbling pot. "Before, this kind of meal would cost 50."
Smiling and proud, the women said they did not have the luxury of waiting for aid groups to reach them in their hilly neighborhood. The trouble was, they were running out of food. They used their last bit of rice and beans on Monday.
Organizers for the group that fed Maxi, part of a government program that previously fed children in schools, also said their supplies were dwindling.
The most wrenching battles against starvation, however, can be found in the camps, the metropolises with tents that would resemble forts for first-graders, if not for the smell of urine.
Maxi lives in the best known of these locations, under a few sheets downtown, near the presidential palace.
The United Nations, the Haitian government and others have delivered food several times there in the past week. Thousands have been served - and thousands more are still hungry.
But at least they get food regularly. A few miles away, at a former military airfield outside the neighborhood of Belair, people still fondly recall the time four days after the quake that a United Nations truck appeared with boxes of fortified biscuits. Barefoot children smiled and packed their "cookies," as they called them, into dirty T-shirts. An older woman with braids was so thrilled that she sang loudly with her hands over her head, and tried to hug one of the workers.
But that was the last time anyone came with food. Now the planes swollen with aid simply crisscross the sky overhead. The children who used to chase the helicopters hoping they would drop something have given up, as empty biscuit packages now collect underfoot.
Some people, like René Odge, 29, said they stretched the ration for more than a week by breaking the biscuits into small pieces.
But it could only do so much. Mr. Odge held up a green soda bottle. "I put salt in the water and it keeps me alive," he said. "It keeps my stomach calm until I can find something else."
Many of the mothers in the airfield said they had eaten only a few meals since the earthquake. Oslaurd Lundi, 25, sitting on the ground near her son Benson, 3, and her 6-month-old daughter, Shaina, listed her recent meals as the sun began to set: "Today, nothing; yesterday, a little bread; and a little bread the day before."
She could see what she wanted. Just a few feet away, Mary-Claudette Alexi, 35, displayed a few pieces of pork and small breaded pies. The prices were relatively low: less than 15 cents for a small pie. But for Ms. Lundi and thousands of others, the price was still too high.
"I don't sell much of anything," Ms. Alexi said. "No one can afford it."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) Agreement on Effort to Help Haiti Rebuild
"'We're trying to do this in the correct order,' Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Montreal. 'Sometimes people have pledging conferences and pledge money, and they don't have any idea what they're going to do with it. We actually think it's a novel idea to do the needs assessment first and then the planning and then the pledging.' The donor nations called for an independent damage assessment, which could begin as early as next week, made up of experts from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program. 'This is an opportunity,' said Eric Overvest, the Haiti director for the United Nations program. 'You can see opportunities in awful situations, and it is possible to rebuild a better Port-au-Prince.'"
By MARC LACEY and GINGER THOMPSON
January 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/world/americas/26haiti.html?ref=world
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Concerned about corruption and wobbly Haitian leadership, international donors agreed Monday during a meeting in Montreal on a 10-year rebuilding effort for earthquake-damaged Haiti, one that would create an even better capital city and that the government said would cost $3 billion.
Given Haiti's long history of mismanagement of funds, international donors were hesitant to write a blank check. And foreign governments had concerns as well about the government's ability to direct a large reconstruction project after most government buildings were flattened or severely damaged in the Jan. 12 quake.
Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, addressing representatives from 14 countries and the European Union, tried to head off such fears. "The Haitian government is working in precarious conditions," he said at the opening of the conference, "but it can provide the leadership that people expect."
To show he was still running the country, President René Préval, whose office at the National Palace was destroyed, sent aides to the palace grounds to begin the process of building temporary offices and lodging for him there. His private home was also destroyed in the quake, and he has been running the government out of a police station, with his ministers addressing the news media under a mango tree.
Mr. Préval, who has yet to formally address the country since the earthquake, also issued a written plea for immediate aid on Monday, asking for 200,000 sturdy, family-size tents and 1.5 million food rations.
Patrick Delatour, a presidential aide, said the $3 billion that the government needs to remake the country would be used to house 200,000 people left homeless in 200 model communities complete with schools and health care centers, as well as to rebuild government ministries and national infrastructure.
But the government's figure was not immediately embraced by the countries being called on to pick up the tab. A United States State Department official called it premature. And Mr. Bellerive said that Haiti had made no specific requests for money or other assistance in Montreal because it was still assessing its needs.
"We're trying to do this in the correct order," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters in Montreal. "Sometimes people have pledging conferences and pledge money, and they don't have any idea what they're going to do with it. We actually think it's a novel idea to do the needs assessment first and then the planning and then the pledging."
The donor nations called for an independent damage assessment, which could begin as early as next week, made up of experts from the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the United Nations Development Program.
"This is an opportunity," said Eric Overvest, the Haiti director for the United Nations program. "You can see opportunities in awful situations, and it is possible to rebuild a better Port-au-Prince."
Before the quake, the capital had been dangerously overcrowded, with makeshift homes built on the steep hillsides surrounding the city and narrow, winding roads clogged with traffic. Construction standards were all but absent. "We have to do things differently," said Jacques Gabriel, the minister of public works. "We're sending a message to the population not to rebuild their damaged homes. It's not safe. We need to evaluate the buildings first."
The donor nations agreed that the Haitian government would be front and center in the international effort to rebuild the country, with the United Nations acting as a conduit for donations. They also agreed that the aid would be closely tracked.
"We bear a responsibility to our taxpayers to assure that the money that our government commits will be well spent, transparently, and with results on the ground for the Haitian people," Mrs. Clinton said.
In marathon meetings over the last week, Mr. Delatour said, the beleaguered Haitian government considered moving the capital to a new location. But he said it was agreed that doing so would take too long and cost too much.
Instead, he said, officials intend to keep most government ministries close to the locations where they fell. He said, however, that some secondary services might be moved out of the downtown to address the chronic overcrowding and insecurity that has long plagued the area.
"God didn't strike with a short-term plan and a long-term plan," Mr. Delatour said. "He just hit like Muhammad Ali. One shot and we're lying on the mat."
He said the government would focus most of its attention on putting roofs back over people's heads. And in the meantime, he said, rebuilding businesses and public offices would allow the government and the private sector to put people to work.
"Our motto is 'build back better,' " he said.
In addition to the sheer magnitude of the physical task ahead, Mr. Delatour said that Haiti's recovery effort was challenged by the difficulty of coordinating the countless countries and humanitarian organizations eager to provide assistance. And he said it would not be easy for the government, with its long history of corruption, to win people's trust.
Rather than waiting for a government they are skeptical of to help them out of this crisis, Mr. Delatour said, Haitians of all classes have already begun their own recovery efforts. Port-au-Prince is bustling with work crews hired by those with means to clear away the rubble so they can begin rebuilding their homes or businesses.
Towns outside the capital have been flooded by earthquake victims in search of places to start new lives, stretching water, food and other essential resources dangerously thin. And the poorest of the poor have settled into makeshift camps across the city, many of them vowing not to move without credible assurances that the government intends to provide them with stable living arrangements.
"Haitians have been managing their own survival for 200 years, so they're not waiting for the government," Mr. Delatour said. "The government is playing catch-up."
In the back of everyone's mind here was a fear of the donor fatigue that typically sinks in when disasters stretch on too long. Haitian officials were eager to capitalize on the international outpouring of support by outlining their needs now.
Mrs. Clinton declined to say how much the United States would provide in the long term. The donor nations' foreign ministers will meet again in March at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
The one-day meeting in Montreal was not intended to map out a detailed plan for Haitian reconstruction. Instead its goal was to develop a structure for future, extended talks about the reconstruction.
"This conference is an initial, albeit critical, step on the long road to recovery," said Lawrence Cannon, the Canadian foreign minister. "We need to identify with the Haitian government key priorities in order to define a road map of the tasks ahead."
Ian Austen contributed reporting from Montreal.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
17) Families Struggle to Afford Food, Survey Finds
By JASON DePARLE
January 26, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/us/26food.html?ref=us
WASHINGTON - Nearly one in five Americans said they lacked the money to buy the food they needed at some point in the last year, according to a survey co-sponsored by the Gallup organization and released Tuesday by an anti-hunger group.
The numbers soared at the start of the recession, but dipped in 2009 despite the continuing rise in unemployment. The anti-hunger group, the Food Research and Action Center, attributed that trend to falling food prices, an increasing use of food stamps and a rise in the amount of the food stamps benefit.
More than 38 million Americans - one in eight - now receive food stamps, a record high.
The unusually large survey, which covered more than a half-million people, offers the most recent snapshot of hunger-related problems. And it is the first survey big enough to provide data on each of the nation's 435 Congressional districts and Washington, D.C.
Indeed, its most interesting finding may be just how broad a problem food affordability has become. In 45 states and 311 Congressional districts, 15 percent or more of those surveyed said they had recently lacked money to buy enough food.
"While there is certainly more hardship in some areas than in others, the data also show that this is a nearly universal problem," said James D. Weill, the hunger group's president.
Efforts to measure hunger-related problems often spawn political disputes, and this one may do so as well. Some conservative critics have accused liberals of exaggerating the problems to justify increased government spending. Others have accused the conservative critics of ignoring the problem's depth.
Avoiding the word "hunger," the Agriculture Department releases an annual survey of what it now calls "food insecurity." Its interviewers ask up to 18 nuanced questions about how often people skipped meals, cut portions or worried about running out of food.
Its most recent data, for 2008, found that 14.6 percent of Americans lacked consistent access to sufficient food, the highest in the survey's 14-year history.
The Gallup survey asked just one question: "Have there been times in the last month when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?" But it has been asking 1,000 people nearly every day for the past two years, producing a sample size much larger than the government's and one that can track monthly trends.
In the fourth quarter of 2009, 18.5 percent of Americans said they had experienced problems in being able to afford food, down from 19.5 percent at the end of 2008. Among families with children, the rates were significantly higher, at 24.1 percent nationally in the most recent quarter.
Mississippi had the largest number of people with what the report called "food hardship" (26.2 percent), while North Dakota had the lowest (10.6 percent).
Despite the variation, the data suggests a problem that few areas of the country escape. Of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, 82 had food hardship rates of 15 percent or more. Likewise, only 23 Congressional districts had a food hardship rate of less than 10 percent, and 139 had rates of more than 20 percent.
The survey found the biggest problems in the South Bronx. In New York's 16th District, nearly 37 percent of the residents answered yes when asked if they had lacked the money to buy needed food.
Last year's federal stimulus package, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, temporarily increased the average food stamps benefit by 18 percent, to about $130 a month for each member of a household.
The hardship data is part of the Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index, which poses many questions about physical and mental health. (Gallup's partner in the project, Healthways, is a disease management company.)
The food research group bought the data when it learned that the survey included a question about food-related hardships.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
18) Freedom Rider: Useless Aid
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
January 27, 2010
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-useless-aid
"Dollars must come with demands of non-interference in Haiti's affairs and demands of accountability to charitable organizations."
A telethon hosted by celebrities succeeded in raising more than $57 million in funds for the relief of Haiti earthquake victims. Yet that sum and the many millions more donated by individuals around the world will do little to relieve Haiti's plight.
Haitians are living in their latest hellish incarnation created by American meddling and the crushing of that nation's democracy. As long as the United States directs Haiti's affairs, and empowers a corrupt elite instead of the will of the masses, suffering will continue whether caused by natural or human-made disaster.
The scenes of devastation, death and injury move most human beings first to empathize and then to take some action in order to help. The sad stories tug at the heartstrings and the miraculous tales of survival lift the spirit. However, in the absence of an infrastructure built by Haitians to help Haitians, the images do nothing but create a kind of twisted voyeurism. Bringing change to Haiti should not be the equivalent of gawking at a crash on the side of the highway.
"An illegitimate government whose very existence is opposed by the population is incapable of building new homes or treating the injured."
Haiti is still ruled by a clique of criminals put in place by the United States government. Lavalas, the party supported by a majority of citizens, is barred from participation in the electoral process that is now a sham. An illegitimate government whose very existence is opposed by the population is incapable of building new homes or treating the injured. Haitians have already begun to scatter throughout the country in search of food and shelter, despite the fact that hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated to help them.
The sad fact of the matter is that individuals cannot help Haiti or end human suffering anywhere on earth unless their assistance is combined with political action. The dollars must come with demands of non-interference in Haiti's affairs and demands of accountability to charitable organizations. If the Red Cross doesn't even spend all of its enormous contributions, as it shamelessly did after the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the Asian tsunami, then donors must stop giving before the next disaster strikes.
"The 'bottleneck' in Port au Prince was a direct result of the militarization of aid to Haiti."
If American aid to Haiti comes in the form of military occupation, then even reputable organizations are unable to do their jobs adequately. Doctors Without Borders has had a presence in Haiti for many years, but flights containing 85 tons of their medical supplies were diverted to the Dominican Republic. Precious time was lost in the process of retrieving life saving medicines and equipment from another country.
The much talked about airport "bottleneck" in Port au Prince was a direct result of the militarization of aid to Haiti.The United States army decided who would be permitted to land and who would not. While VIP flights were given priority and created the diversion of medical supplies, the environmental group Greenpeace gave Doctors Without Borders use of a ship to carry less urgent equipment, allowing the medical group to prioritize delivery of its most desperately needed cargo.
It seems cruel to advise against helping human beings in need, but we have seen this movie many times before and we know the ending. The time has come for a new paradigm: "No donation without agitation." No donations to groups like the Red Cross, who sit on millions of dollars but do nothing but hand out blankets and move victims away from their homes in order to convenience the powerful. No donations must be made to any group headed by a Bush or a Clinton. The old presidents' old boys club did nothing for the Gulf Coast victims of hurricane Katrina. It would be not only a waste but a terrible wrong to give them another opportunity to collect funds which never seem to be used for people who need it.
"The time has come for a new paradigm: 'No donation without agitation.'"
This earthquake should be the last instance of easy text message philanthropy. Instead of pressing a few buttons, concerned people should ask questions and make demands.
Current and former American presidents should not be allowed to grandstand when their policies made life hell for Haitians in the first place. The first president Bush ousted president Aristide, Clinton restored him to power only after promises of "market reform" and Bush the younger kidnapped him and tossed him out of his country. Yet a Bush and a Clinton now have the nerve to pose for photos and behave as though they are interested in helping the very people they crushed.
There will always be hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes. They are the inevitable results of nature at work. Starvation, illness and displacement are inevitable only if the people who create those conditions are permitted to continue their actions without opposition. It can be a waste to send money, even if the cause is a righteous one. Let us make this the last time we take the easy and useless way out.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
19) Chavez Writes Off Haiti's Oil Debt to Venezuela
January 27, 2010
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=351054&CategoryId=10717
CARACAS - President Hugo Chavez announced Monday that he would write off the undisclosed sum Haiti owes Venezuela for oil as part of the ALBA bloc's plans to help the impoverished Caribbean nation after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake.
"Haiti has no debt with Venezuela, just the opposite: Venezuela has a historical debt with that nation, with that people for whom we feel not pity but rather admiration, and we share their faith, their hope," Chavez said after the extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, or ALBA.
He also announced that ALBA has decided on a comprehensive plan that includes an immediate donation of $20 million to Haiti's health sector, and a fund that, Chavez said, will be at least $100 million "for starters."
Oil-rich Venezuela is the economic heart of ALBA, which also includes Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Haiti is among several countries that send observers to ALBA meetings.
Chavez said one part of ALBA assistance to Haiti would consist of fuel distribution via "mobile service stations" set to be up and running within a few weeks.
The ALBA plan of aid for Haiti includes support for such sectors as agriculture, production, food imports and distribution, and immigration amnesty for Haitians living illegally in the bloc's member-states.
Cuba and Venezuela sent assistance and aid workers to Haiti within days of the magnitude-7.0 temblor that left an estimated 200,000 dead and 1.5 million people homeless.
The leftist Venezuelan leader also noted that there are some celebrities who want to work with ALBA, among whom he named actor Sean Penn, who, he said, called him because the members of a team of U.S. doctors now in Haiti want to "coordinate" their activities. EFE
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
20) Human Rights Advocates Given Maximum Federal Prison Sentences of Six Months for Direct Action Opposing the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC)
For Immediate Release: January 25th, 2010
Contact: Hendrik Voss, SOA Watch, 202-234-3440
http://soaw.org/pressrelease.php?id=147
Judge Finds SOA Watch Activists Guilty for Carrying Protest against the SOA/WHINSEC onto Fort Benning, Issues Arrest Warrant for Michael Walli for Refusing to Appear for the Trial.
On Monday, January 25, 2010, U.S. Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth sentenced three human rights advocates to six months in federal prison for carrying a protest against the School of the Americas onto the Fort Benning military base in Georgia. This school, re-named the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, is a controversial U.S. Army training school for Latin American soldiers.
Father Roy Bourgeois, a Roman Catholic priest and the founder of SOA Watch, the organization that works to close the School of the Americas said "Judge Faircloth has sentenced our sister and brothers to 6 months in federal prison for speaking the truth about the SOA/WHINSEC. We are saddened by the court's continued blindness and hardness of heart, but we are stronger than ever in solidarity. These sentences are symbolic of our nation's misdirection, but they are also great steps forward for our resistance movement. It is truer today, than ever before, that although they jail the resisters they have not, and cannot, jail the resistance!"
The "SOA 4" are:
Nancy Gwin, long-time activist from Syracuse, New York - sentenced to six months in prison
Father Louie Vitale, veteran and priest from Oakland, CA - sentenced to six months in prison
Ken Hayes, SOA Watch Council member from Austin, TX - sentenced to six months in prison
Michael Walli, a member of the Catholic Worker movement from Washington, DC refused to appear for the trial in Georgia. Walli had told the court during his November arraignment that he would not pay any bail and that he would not voluntarily return for the trial. "I walk out and it's goodbye" Walli told Judge Mallon Faircloth. Michael Walli made good on his promise and on Monday, Judge Mallon Faircloth issued a warrant for Michael Walli's arrest.
The "SOA 4" were among the tens of thousands who gathered on November 20-22, 2009 outside the gates of Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia to demand a change in U.S. policy in Latin America and the closure of the SOA/WHINSEC. The group peacefully crossed onto Fort Benning while thousands stood vigil at the gates of the base in memory of those killed by graduates of the institution.
The SOA/WHINSEC, a military training facility for Latin American security personnel, made headlines in 1996 when the Pentagon released training manuals used at the school that advocated torture, extortion and execution.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
21) Help the people of Haiti, reject U.S. military occupation
By Jose Maria Sison |
January 26, 2010
http://www.fightbacknews.org/2010/1/26/help-people-haiti-reject-us-military-occupation
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement by Professor Jose Maria Sison, Chairperson of the International League of People's Struggle.
More than ever, the earthquake disaster in Haiti exposes the social vulnerability and devastation caused by two centuries of colonial slavery, debt bondage and modern imperialism. The capability of the people of Haiti to surmount the dire results of such a natural disaster has been undermined and debilitated by man-made disasters, inflicted by foreign debt, US military interventions and occupation, and US-imposed "free market" policies.
On 12 January 2010, a magnitude 7 earthquake shook the Caribbean nation of Haiti, its epicenter hitting west of the capital Port-au-Prince. The quake and its numerous aftershocks have wrought death and injury to a huge number of people and catastrophic damage to their homes and other vital infrastructures.
Current estimates put the death toll to at least 110,000, with some estimates saying that up to 200,000 have been killed. About 75,000 have already been buried in mass graves but tens of thousands still remain buried in collapsed buildings in the capital. Health facilities are overwhelmed by more than 250,000 wounded, with shortages of medical personnel and supplies hampering efforts to treat them. Estimates indicate that more than 2 million people have been rendered homeless, billions of dollars worth of public and private infrastructure have been devastated.
The people of Haiti are undergoing incalculably great suffering. We, the International League of Peoples' Struggle (ILPS) convey our deepest sympathies to the Haitian people for their loss and express our most heartfelt recognition of their plight. We join the people of the world in lending our wholehearted support to help ease their suffering and call on our member-organizations and allies to extend immediate rescue and relief support to the victims in Haiti.
In the face of the devastation, the people of Haiti have had to rely on themselves and have shown heroism in helping each other as they go through the rubble, digging with their hands and puny tools to pull out what they can of the victims, both survivors and dead. With hardly any government or international aid support effectively reaching them on the ground despite the speed of information and hype of international disaster response, the people have had to rely on themselves for getting much needed water and emergency supplies.
We salute the Haitian people for helping each other. We also praise the various private organizations and institutions who have been able to extend whatever help on an international scale. At the same time, we direct our strongest denunciation against the US government for deploying military forces in Haiti instead of the personnel of US civilian agencies that are trained and equipped for rescue and relief aid.
The US government's first prolonged reaction to the earthquake was to send in the US Marines and the Army's 82nd Airborne Division. This is the notorious force unit that had invaded Vietnam, the neighboring Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1984, Haiti in 1994 and Afghanistan. Under the preposterous pretext of providing security to the devastated nation, the US landed and deployed armed soldiers instead of civil rescue personnel and equipment, water and food.
The US military took control of the airport and blocked private relief organizations in order to make way for the flights carrying soldiers and military cargo in the crucial first week after the earthquake. Professional rescue teams from many countries were compelled to stay in neighboring Dominican Republic or elsewhere, because they were not given landing slots.
A French plane, carrying a fully-equipped field hospital, was prevented from landing by the US military. The aircraft of the UN World Food Programme was also blocked from landing food, medicine and water for three days, because the US gave priority to flights ferrying US troops and equipment and evacuating Americans and other westerners. On 18 January, a US military spokesperson admitted that they have distributed a measly 15,000 liters of water and 14,000 meal packs. And they had done so chiefly through air drops, prompting the people to complain, "We are not animals!"
More than ever, the earthquake disaster in Haiti exposes the social vulnerability and devastation caused by two centuries of colonial slavery, debt bondage and modern imperialism. The capability of the people of Haiti to surmount the dire results of such a natural disaster has been undermined and debilitated by man-made disasters, inflicted by foreign debt, US military interventions and occupation, and US-imposed "free market" policies.
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere where 80% of the population live in poverty. At its peak in 2008, the country's total foreign debt was at US$1.4 billion, about 40% of its GNP. It has been spending more in debt service than on medical services to the people. Worse still, about 80% of the debt was incurred during the corrupt dictatorship of François and Jean-Claude Duvalier. Ruling under the strings of the US government, the Duvaliers plundered and repressed Haiti, stashing millions of dollars in their private bank accounts abroad.
Haiti is currently occupied by UN troops and controlled by a puppet government installed after the US military kidnapped democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Decades of "structural adjustment" programs, under the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, have robbed the nation of the capacity to provide social services, produce enough food from the land and develop national industries. Since the late 1970s, these US-dictated programs have ejected tens of thousands of small farmers from the land and driven them to the overcrowded urban slums. A nation previously self-sufficient in grains and sugar is now importing rice and sugar, chiefly from the US.
It is utterly absurd and perverse for the US to invoke security as pretext for landing its military forces on a country which has long been laid prostrate by imperialist plunder and which just been devastated by the earthquake. Natural disasters have become one of the major pretexts for US military intervention and occupation in various parts of the world. It is the dastardly policy of the US government all over the world to militarize its every pretense at aid and relief assistance, to gain extraterritorial rights and to make propaganda for the acceptance of its military forces.
The ILPS calls on its member-organizations, its allies and the people of the world to extend their solidarity and support for the people of Haiti. Emergency support and relief activities by non-military organizations must be given full play, to help ease the suffering of those most affected. Long-term rehabilitation of Haiti must eventually be mapped out together with the Haitian people, in conjunction with respect for their national sovereignty and self-government.
The ILPS reiterates its call for the withdrawal of all US and other foreign military forces. We call on the American people to demand an end to US military occupation and intervention in Haiti and help reverse the course of US-Haiti relations. We can best help Haiti recover from the devastation of the 12 January earthquake by supporting the Haitian people's struggle for national self-determination against foreign military occupation and economic plunder.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
22) Haiti's Children Adrift in World of Chaos
By DEBORAH SONTAG
January 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/world/americas/27children.html?ref=world
CROIX DES BOUQUETS, Haiti - Not long after 14-year-old Daphne Joseph escaped her collapsed house on the day of the earthquake, she boarded a crowded jitney with her uncle and crawled in traffic toward the capital, where her single mother sold beauty products in the Tête Boeuf marketplace. "Mama," she said she repeated to herself. "Mama, I'm coming."
Abandoning the slow-moving jitney, Daphne, petite and delicate, got separated from her uncle and jumped onto a motorcycle-for-hire. She arrived alone at a marketplace in ruins and ran, in her dusty purple sandals, toward a pile of debris laced with "broken people," she said.
Growing closer, she saw her mother, lifeless. She froze, she said, eventually watching as her mother's body was dumped in a wheelbarrow and her only parent vanished into the chaos.
"I wanted to kill myself," Daphne said in a whisper.
Haiti's children, 45 percent of the population, are among the most disoriented and vulnerable of the survivors of the earthquake. By the many tens of thousands, they have lost their parents, their homes, their schools and their bearings. They have sustained head injuries and undergone amputations. They have slept on the street, foraged for food and suffered nightmares.
Two weeks after the earthquake, with the smell of death still fouling the air, children can be seen in every devastated corner resiliently kicking soccer balls, flying handmade kites, singing pop songs and ferreting out textbooks from the rubble of their schools. But as Haitian and international groups begin tending to the neediest among them, many children are clearly traumatized and at risk.
"There are health concerns, malnutrition concerns, psychosocial issues and, of course, we are concerned that unaccompanied children will be exploited by unscrupulous people who may wish to traffic them for adoption, for the sex trade or for domestic servitude," said Kent Page, a spokesman for Unicef.
Many children, like Daphne, bore direct witness to horror or survived destruction that killed their relatives, their schoolmates and their teachers. But even those who did not are experiencing vertigo. When the ground shifted beneath them, the landscape of their universe changed forever, and not just at home: 90 percent of schools in the capital, Port-au-Prince, are damaged or destroyed, according to Unicef.
"The children of Haiti, unless they get help, they will have lost their childhoods, their innocence," Elisabeth Delatour Préval, Haiti's first lady, said Tuesday, pledging to get schools running as soon as possible, a daunting challenge.
Many children are struggling to make sense of what they are experiencing. Danielle Schledy, 13, who has been living with her family in the courtyard of a destroyed primary school in Port-au-Prince, said she kept telling her parents that the earthquake was "not the end of the world."
Then, in her soiled turquoise dress and chipped pink nail polish, she skipped over to where her mother, Margarita Dayitus, who had bloody and infected wounds covering her body, lay in misery on the ground.
"I am sad about my mom," Danielle said.
Poor, middle-class and affluent children are all destabilized, even those who get to spend nights indoors. Marie Alice Craft, a school psychologist, said her 11-year-old daughter had been sleeping with her - in a bed at a relative's intact house - and waking up with a start when her mother got up to use the bathroom.
"She plays, she smiles, she laughs but she doesn't want to be alone," Ms. Craft said, adding that "a lot of group therapy" would be needed to make the children of Haiti feel safe again.
Child-welfare organizations have focused their initial efforts on orphaned children and those who have been separated from their families. They started Tuesday to compile a registry, sending workers into the streets to collect information for a database, in which each child would be assigned a numbered file to help track their cases, said Victor Nyland of Unicef, a senior adviser for child protection and emergencies. Such a registry was used in the Indonesian province of Aceh after the 2004 tsunami to help reunite separated families.
Some children who have nobody willing to look after them will be taken to one of three orphanages in the capital where Unicef is establishing interim care centers - that process began Monday with 60 children - or to safe spaces being established by other organizations.
In this city, Daphne was one of 25 newly orphaned children in the care of a local organization called Frades, a collective that does everything from providing microloans to serving hot meals.
"I know we can't replace their parents," said Pierre Joseph, a psychologist there. "It's an intimate loss. But we will do our best to help these kids have a future. We will find a way to create an orphanage for them."
Early this week, the children, ages 4 to 14, slept huddled together for warmth under bed sheets slung over branches in a tent city on the paved grounds of a damaged school. Young adults took turns looking after them. During the day, the counselors brought them to a walled construction site strewn with rusty cans and broken glass - the only private space they could find - and tried to distract them with singing and clapping games.
Daphne smiled occasionally as she watched the younger children, but mostly she looked stunned. When she told her story, she spoke so softly that she was barely audible. She explained that after she had watched her mother's body being carted away, she wandered Port-au-Prince in a daze. A distant relative found her and put her in a taxi back to Croix des Bouquets, where she has nothing, she said.
"He told me to be tough," she said, tears rolling down her cheeks.
She and her mother had lived with her uncle, but her uncle was shattered by his sister's death - "They had to tie him up to calm him down," Daphne said - and her uncle's wife did not want her to stay with them. "She has always been mean to me," Daphne said. "When I would get water, she'd tell me to use a coconut shell and not to dirty one of her glasses."
Shortly after midday, the volunteers, who had been scraping together their own money to feed the children, gave them their first food of the day: sweet coffee and bread. Later, they fed them rice and beans. Then Mazen Haber, child protection officer with Save the Children, showed up with a large houselike tent and promised to find some mattresses, too.
Watching a dozen grown-ups struggle to erect the tent, Daphne said that adults had told her not to think about her mother. But she could still feel her presence, she said, "like a wind at my back."
She said she was happy to be with the other children - the sisters with the wilted bows in their hairs, the tiny boys with the terror-stricken eyes - but she said she felt sorry that most had lost both parents.
"Before the earthquake, I only had but Mama," she said.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
23) After Long Decline, Teenage Pregnancy Rate Rises
By TAMAR LEWIN
January 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/us/27teen.html?ref=us
After more than a decade of declining teenage pregnancy, the pregnancy rate among girls ages 15 to 19 increased 3 percent from 2005 to 2006 - a turnaround likely to intensify the debate over federal financing for abstinence-only sex education.
The teenage abortion rate also crept up for the first time in more than a decade, rising 1 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit research group.
"It's very disturbing," said Sarah Brown, of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "We had over a decade of progress on a very serious problem, and I worry that we've ground to a halt. I think there are a lot of different factors at play, from less use of contraception, maybe because of less fear of AIDS, to our anything-goes culture, where it's O.K. to get pregnant and have a baby in your teens."
While teenage pregnancy rates for whites remain far lower than for blacks and Hispanics, the pregnancy rates increased for all three groups.
As previously reported, births to young women ages 15 to 19 - a statistic that is available more quickly than pregnancy and abortion data - rose from 2005 to 2006, and again from 2006 to 2007.
Since the teenage pregnancy rate is made up of births, abortions and miscarriages, it is likely that the teenage pregnancy rate rose from 2006 to 2007, as well.
But several experts said it was too soon to predict whether teenage pregnancy and birth rates would continue to rise, and revert to the record high levels of the 1980s and early 1990s.
The Guttmacher analysis examined federal data on teenage sex, births and abortion, along with the institute's own abortion statistics.
While it is difficult to pinpoint precisely how different factors influence teenage sexual behavior, some experts speculate that the rise in teenage pregnancy might be partly attributable to the $150 million a year of federal financing for sex education that emphasized abstinence until marriage, avoiding all mention of the possible benefits of contraception.
"This new study makes it crystal clear that abstinence-only sex education for teenagers does not work," said Cecile Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
The Clinton administration began financing abstinence-only programs as part of welfare reform, but such programs got a large boost in the Bush administration.
The Obama administration has moved away from abstinence-only programs, creating a new teenage-pregnancy initiative in which most financing will go to programs that have been shown to prevent pregnancy, with some experimental approaches.
Meanwhile, there are continuing efforts to reinstate financing for abstinence-only education as part of the health-reform legislation.
Lawrence Finer, director of domestic research for the Guttmacher Institute, said there was evidence that adolescent use of contraceptives had plateaued, or declined, adding that it was "an interesting coincidence" that this had happened just as the focus on abstinence-only education had left fewer students getting comprehensive sex education.
Advocates of abstinence-only education, however, had a different view.
"While this recent uptick is certainly disconcerting, it would be disingenuous to try to ascribe it abstinence education or any other single factor," said Valerie Huber, executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association. "The overly sex-saturated culture certainly plays a part, with teen sex communicated almost as an expected rite of passage, without consequences, and that's a dangerous message for young people, who tend to be risk-takers anyway."
According to the Guttmacher analysis, the teenage pregnancy rate declined 41 percent from its peak, in 1990, when there were 116.9 pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19, and 2005, when there were only 69.5 per 1,000. In 2006, the rate rose to 71.5 pregnancies for 1,000 women.
Teenage birth and abortion rates also declined in that period, with births dropping 35 percent from 1991 to 2005 and teenage abortion declining 56 percent between its peak, in 1988, and 2005.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
24) Judge Bars Youth Prisons From Routine Shackling
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
January 27, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/nyregion/27juvenile.html?ref=nyregion
ALBANY - The agency that runs the state's juvenile prison system routinely violates the law by shackling youthful offenders when taking them to court even when the youth poses no obvious threat, a state judge ruled on Tuesday.
The case was brought on behalf of a teenager identified as John F., who was kept in shackles - his hands and feet handcuffed, with a belly chain linked to the handcuffs - for about 15 hours one day while being taken to court. He was 14 and had no record of violent crime, said the lawyers who represented him.
The ruling, by Justice Milton A. Tingling Jr. of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, would repeal a policy of the state's youth correctional system that has been in place since at least 1996. It is the latest controversy for a system that has been widely faulted for doing what critics say is an abysmal job of meeting the needs of juvenile offenders.
The case, a class-action lawsuit on behalf of about 500 youths held in residential centers run by the state's Office of Children and Family Services, was brought by the Legal Aid Society. Justice Tingling issued his decision as a summary judgment against state officials, who did not contest the facts of the case, meaning that it is unlikely that they would win an appeal.
"The court's recognition that O.C.F.S. cannot treat children this way is part and parcel of a culture of abusive practices that is not rehabilitative and does not recognize that these are children who are in the care of the state," said Nancy Rosenbloom, the Legal Aid lawyer leading the case.
A spokesman for the agency said officials could not comment until they had reviewed the decision.
The agency's current policy requires any child in custody to be shackled while being taken between state juvenile centers or from a center to anywhere else, like a courthouse. While most of the prison units are far upstate, most of the youths are from New York City and must be taken hundreds of miles to Family Court.
The shackling policy even applied to youths being held at what are known as nonsecure facilities. Nearly all of the youths in nonsecure facilities have been placed there for the equivalent of nonviolent misdemeanor offenses, like truancy, graffiti or petty theft, and most are under 16 years old.
"We had evidence of kids not being able to drink their milk on the way to court because of the chains," Ms. Rosenbloom said.
A judge had placed John F. at the Tryon Residential Center in Johnstown, N.Y., roughly 200 miles north of Manhattan. On Nov. 1, 2007, he was awakened early to travel to court.
According to Justice Tingling's ruling: "At 4 a.m. that day, Plaintiff was placed in handcuffs, footcuffs and a belly restraint. A metal restraint box was placed over the chain linking his handcuffs to one another, which prevented Plaintiff from separating his hands farther than the width of the metal box. Prior to him being shackled and transported, Plaintiff was not assessed for mood or mental state."
The shackles were not removed until 6:15 p.m., after he returned to Tryon.
Justice Tingling found that the agency's policy violated the state's own law on shackling youths in custody, which states that shackles should be used only as a last resort, for youths who are dangerous and uncontrollable by any other means, and then only for half an hour. And shackles can be used during transport only when the youths pose a physical threat, the judge found.
"It's not that you can't ever restrain somebody. But every time it is used, there has to be determination right then that the child is out of control, dangerous, and cannot be controlled any other way," Ms. Rosenbloom said, adding that the agency "makes no such determination."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
25) Soldiers Forced to Choose Between Their Children and the Military Pay the Price in Jby: Dahr Jamail | OpEdNews
Tuesday 26 January 2010
http://www.truthout.org/dahr-jamail-soldiers-being-forced-choose-between-their-children-and-military-and-theyre-paying-price
In January, U.S. Army officials announced four separate court-martial charges against Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother who missed her deployment to Afghanistan in early November 2009 when her childcare plans for her infant son, Kamani, fell through at the last minute. Hutchinson was jailed and threatened with a court-martial if she did not agree to deploy to Afghanistan. Kamani was placed into a county foster care system.
Hutchinson, in accordance with the family care plan of the U.S. Army, had been allowed to fly to Oakland, California to leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes. However, after a week, Hughes realized she couldn't care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister. She told Hutchinson and her commander, Captain Gassant and the Army granted a Hutchinson an extension so that she could find someone else to care for Kamani. In the meantime, the boy came back to Georgia to be with his mother.
But only a few days before Hutchinson's original deployment date, she was told by the Army she would not get the time extension after all, and would have to deploy despite the fact that her son had nowhere to go. Faced with this choice, Specialist Hutchinson chose not to show up for her plane to Afghanistan. The military arrested her and placed her child in the county foster care system.
"I think they didn't believe her that she was unable to find someone to care for her infant," Hutchinson's civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, said at the time. "They think she's just trying to get out of her deployment. But she's just trying to find someone she can trust to take care of her baby. She has never intended to get out of her deployment."
The Army put Hutchinson in the position of having to choose between caring for her infant son or deploying to Afghanistan. She chose to care for her son, and is paying the price. Currently, she remains assigned to Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, where she has been posted since February 2008.
Hutchinson is not unique in facing unthinkable choices when it comes to having to choose between family obligations and the U.S. military. While Sussman explained that she has not heard of another case identical to Hutchinson's, where the military arrested a mother and placed her child in foster care, "I've spoken with many soldiers who have told me that that was the choice they were given [to place their child in foster care and deploy, or face court martial]. I spoke with someone yesterday who knew someone who had to place their child with a distant relative to avoid having them being placed in foster care by the military." A soldier in the Florida Coast Guard had just contacted her over a similar situation addition, Sussman said.
"If We Wanted You to Have a Family, There Would Have Been One In Your Duffle Bag."
Army regulations exist to deal specifically with soldiers who have children. "If a soldier can't find adequate childcare, they are supposed to be discharged honorably, according to Army Regulation 635-200," says Sussman, "The regulation in this, Chapter 5, is separation for convenience of the government, deals with this, and 5-8 is the discharge, which is involuntary separation due to parenthood. This is considered a punishment to people in the Army, because the assumption is that people want to stay in the Army, but this is for times when it's not a fit."
"The military is aware that these things happen, and I believe the regulations anticipate child-care plans sometimes falling through, and there are sometimes no alternatives," Sussman added, "They [U.S. Military] recognize the parent does have a duty to care for their child if they can't find a backup for when they are deployed. The military doesn't want people deployed who are distraught about their children."
Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of the Military Law Task Force, part of the National Lawyers Guild, agrees.
"There is a pregnancy discharge, a parenthood discharge for sole-parents who can't find someone to give total care to their kids, there's a hardship discharge where an unusual family problem that requires the soldier to be with a family in financial crisis or a family member who has a severe mental health problem," Gilberd explains. "But, despite regulations existing to deal with these problems, these are typically ignored by the military. The military will typically say, 'Well, we looked at it, but we can't help you with this.'"
Gilberd says there are common phrases in the military that speak to this: "If we wanted you to have a family, there would have been one in your duffle bag." Or, "If we wanted you to have a wife, we would have issued you one."
"Family is subsidiary to military needs," she adds. "Soldiers hear this from the beginning."
Gilberd is currently working on a case similar to Hutchinson's, but her client is not ready to go public yet. Gilberd says, "The military isn't going to be forthcoming about the reasons soldiers refuse to deploy or go AWOL, but I certainly run into many cases of soldiers struggling with the military while they try to care for their children, or sick family members."
"Helping Children Cope"?
The U.S. Military has, via a large and ongoing propaganda effort, attempted to sell itself as being "family friendly" in an attempt to lure recruits with families to join.
On the U.S. Army's primary recruiting website, goarmy.com, a section titled "Army Families" has sections for health care, finances, family services, and even a section on relocating with a sub-section titled "Helping Children Cope." A small paragraph addresses the stress on children whose military parent(s), faced with moving on a regular basis, feel the stress. A sentence states, "If you have young children, their first move can be challenging and maybe even downright scary."
But moving is not the most frightening proposition faced by children whose parents are in the military today. Rather, it is the unwillingness by the military to accommodate the needs of their parents.
When Sergeant Heath Carter returned from the invasion of Iraq, he discovered that his daughter, Sierra, was living in an unsafe environment in Arkansas under the care of his first wife, who had full custody of the child. Heath and his new wife, Teresa, started consulting attorneys in order to secure custody of Sierra, who also suffered from a life-threatening medical condition. Precisely during this time, the military chose to keep changing Carter's duty station from Fort Polk, Louisiana, to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, then to Fort Stewart, Georgia. Not only did these constant transfers make it difficult for Carter to see his daughter, they also reduced his chances of gaining custody of Sierra. Convinced that this was a matter of life and death for his daughter, he requested compassionate reassignment to Fort Leavenworth, Missouri, about two hours from his first wife's home in Arkansas.
His appeals to the military command, the legal department, a military chaplain, and even to his congressman failed, and the military insisted that he remain in Georgia. Having run out of all available avenues, in May 2007 he went AWOL from Fort Stewart and headed home to Arkansas where he fought for and won custody of Sierra, and was able to literally save her life by obtaining for her the medical care she needed.
But on January 25, 2009, Carter was arrested at his home by military police, who flew him back to Fort Stewart where he has been awaiting charges since then. Initially, his commander told him it would take a month and a half for him to be sent home. Instead, several months later, it was decided he would receive a court-martial.
"Now I have to wait for the court martial," Carter explained in an interview last fall. "It's taken this long for them to decide. If we had known it would take this long, my family could have moved down here. Every time I ask when I'll have a trial, they say it is only going to be another two weeks. I get the feeling they are lying."
His ordeal has forced Carter to reflect on the wars. He admits that, although his original reason for going AWOL was personal and he had otherwise been proud of his missions, he sees things in Iraq differently today. "I don't think there is any reason for us to be there except for oil."
To add insult to injury, Sergeant Carter's command even offered him a deployment to Afghanistan amid his struggles.
An equally shocking story is that of Army Specialist Leo Church.
Shortly after Church completed his Basic Training, he received a call from his partner and mother of his two children, informing him that they were homeless and living in a van. Church asked his commander for permission to leave Fort Hood and go get his family, but permission was denied.
"Seeing that I had no other choice I left to pick up my children and then immediately returned to Ft. Hood, back to my company," Church wrote of his experience in a statement from September 1, 2009. "When I returned I was charged for leaving without permission and given an Article 15, and my pay was cut in half. Things only got worse from there."
Church's captain suggested that he have his children live with him, and Church could take them to work with him, except there was a six-month wait for this to be approved. "Knowing that I was not allowed to have them in my room overnight and it being inappropriate to take them to my company to work, I left to take my children to Amarillo, Texas so I could find them a safe place to live," Church wrote of the situation, "Having only my mother to turn to, but knowing that she could not keep them 24 hours a day for me to be able to return to Ft. Hood, I stayed and found myself a civilian job. I knew my obligation was to the Army and my company, but my children were my obligation long before I ever considered enlisting and they needed their father."
Church was picked up for being AWOL in 2007 and flown back to Fort Hood where he was returned to his company, and threatened with 15-20 years in prison for having gone AWOL, despite the fact that it was to take care of his children. His partner left him during this time as well.
"So, again I found myself leaving, this time not for my children, but for me," Church added, "I was scared and alone, and had no one to help me as it had been since the first day I arrived at Ft. Hood."
This time Church "started to build the foundation for my life," adding, "a beautiful home, an excellent job, a wonderful wife, Amanda, and my only son on the way, I could not have been happier. But, my desertion charge had been discovered and I was once more picked up and returned to Ft. Hood."
Church was unable to find anyone to support his wife and children, and the Army refused to assist him, so he and his wife were forced to give their newborn son, Austin, for adoption. Meanwhile, Church was court-martialed and spent several months in the brig at Fort Lewis in Washington State. Of that time he wrote: "I have lost so much because of the Army; I don't have custody of my daughters and I had to give up my son for adoption, all because of the Army. My wife is struggling to make ends meet now without me." On December 9, 2009, Church was released from the stockade, and discharged from the Army.
According to Gilberd, Church's story is not unique.
"When there's a parent dying who wants their son or daughter home with them, or there is a child with special needs who needs intensive parent support, or some other family emergency, the military is not willing to provide that support," she explained. "Military regulations say there should be assistance available to the soldiers, and superiors are supposed to help with this, but soldiers find that the opposite happens."
After remembering an incident during the first Gulf War, when "there were reservist mothers who were breastfeeding who were ordered to active duty," Gilberd shared another story.
"Jose Crespa came home from an Iraq deployment. He went home on leave and found his sister had developed schizophrenia. His mom was unable to deal with the situation, which was complicated by the fact that his sister had a child to care for. He went AWOL for a month [late 2007] to help them, then went back to Fort Carson and let the military know what was going on. They threatened him with a general court martial, and it took attorney intervention and his Article 138 Complaint (A Redress of Grievance procedure for when soldiers are wronged by their command) to get him out."
Crespa was lucky to have good attorneys, as he was discharged without any disciplinary action and with an honorable discharge. However, things usually don't turn out this way.
"I wish I could say that's a common outcome," was Gilberd's comment on Crespa's case.
The Pentagon tracks hard numbers of soldiers going AWOL, and since October 2001, more than 50,000 soldiers have done so. But the military does not keep track of the reasons why soldiers go AWOL, or get hardship discharges, including when the reasons are those like Hutchinson's, Carter's, Church's, or Crespa's, or if the soldier has PTSD, or other mitigating circumstances.
According to Gilberd, cases like Crespa's "get lost in the shuffle," and added, "To most folks, this is just one more AWOL, or one more hardship discharge. There's no way to know how many soldiers are going AWOL and are trying to apply for hardship discharges, but counselors run across these cases often."
"Looking at these reasons would not reflect well on the military, but there are lots of these," Gilberd continued, "And to me, the irony is that there are procedures that should be available to these folks to get out, but the problem is that the command is not willing to follow the procedures. And it's all part of that "there's no family in your duffle bag" mindset. So it's all about keeping the numbers up, and having enough deployable service-members, and not letting too many people go."
As the military now finds itself preparing to deploy 30,000 more soldiers to Afghanistan and maintains more than 120,000 in Iraq, it is under tremendous pressure to maintain personnel in the ranks, which only exacerbates these problems.
"When a division is seen as having too many discharges or disciplinary problems, pressure comes down on them to not let so many people go," said Gilberd, "So the lower command gets subtle pressure for them to stop [losing personnel], and ultimately people become disposable. And not just the soldier, but their kids, or their mother, father, sister, or infant."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
26) Howard Zinn: The Historian Who Made History
By Dave Zirin
E of S Nation: This isn't about sports, but if you know my work, especially A People's History of Sports in the United States, then you know I am eternally indebted to the great historian Howard Zinn who died yesterday. Please read or ignore. In tribute to Howard who always stood with the underdog, I unabashedly pick the Saints to win the Super Bowl.
In struggle and sports
Dave Z
January 27, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/522763/howard_zinn_the_historian_who_made_history
Howard Zinn, my hero, teacher, and friend died of a heart attack on Wednesday at the age of 87. With his death, we lose a man who did nothing less than rewrite the narrative of the United States. We lose a historian who also made history.
Anyone who believes that the United States is immune to radical politics never attended a lecture by Howard Zinn. The rooms would be packed to the rafters, as entire families, black, white and brown, would arrive to hear their own history made humorous as well as heroic. "What matters is not who's sitting in the White House. What matters is who's sitting in!" he would say with a mischievous grin. After this casual suggestion of civil disobedience, the crowd would burst into laughter and applause.
Only Howard could pull that off because he was entirely authentic. When he spoke against poverty it was from the perspective of someone who had to work in the shipyards during the Great Depression. When he spoke against war, it was from the perspective of someone who flew as a bombardier during World War II, and was forever changed by the experience. When he spoke against racism it was from the perspective of someone who taught at Spelman College during the civil rights movement and was arrested sitting in with his students.
And of course, when he spoke about history, it was from the perspective of having written A People's History of the United States, a book that has sold more than two million copies and changed the lives of countless people. Count me among them. When I was 17 and picked up a dog-eared copy of Zinn's book, I thought history was about learning that the Magna Carta was signed in 1215. I couldn't tell you what the Magna Carta was, but I knew it was signed in 1215. Howard took this history of great men in powdered wigs and turned it on its pompous head.
In Howard's book, the central actors were the runaway slaves, the labor radicals, the masses and the misfits. It was history writ by Robin Hood, speaking to a desire so many share: to actually make history instead of being history's victim. His book came alive in December with the debut of The People Speak on the History Channel as actors, musicians, and poets, brought Zinn's book alive.
Howard was asked once whether his praise of dissent and protest was divisive. He answered beautifully: "Yes, dissent and protest are divisive, but in a good way, because they represent accurately the real divisions in society. Those divisions exist - the rich, the poor - whether there is dissent or not, but when there is no dissent, there is no change. The dissent has the possibility not of ending the division in society, but of changing the reality of the division. Changing the balance of power on behalf of the poor and the oppressed."
Words like this made Howard my hero. I never thought we would also become friends. But through our mutual cohort, Anthony Arnove, Howard read my sports writing and then gave his blessing to a book project we called A People's History of Sports in the United States.
We also did a series of meetings together where I would interview Howard on stage. Even at 87, he still had his sharp wit, strong voice, and matinee-idol white hair. But his body had become frail. Despite this physical weakness, Howard would stay and sign hundreds of books until his hand would shake with the effort.
At our event in Madison, Wisconsin, Howard issued a challenge to the audience. He said, "Our job as citizens is to honestly assess what Obama is doing. Not measured just against Bush, because against Bush, everybody looks good. But look honestly at what Obama's doing and act as engaged and vigorous citizens."
He also had no fear to express his political convictions loudly and proudly. I asked him about the prospects today for radical politics and he said,
"Let's talk about socialism. ... I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country... Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism."
Howard Zinn taught millions of us a simple lesson: Agitate. Agitate. Agitate. But never lose your sense of humor in the process. It's a beautiful legacy and however much it hurts to lose him, we should strive to build on Howard's work and go out and make some history.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
27) Haiti: US Rehearsal For Troop Deployments in Latin America
By Glen Ford
January 27, 2010
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/us-militarys-haiti-relief-ops-rehearsal-troop-deployments-latin-america
The American commandeering of the airport at Port au Prince and de facto seizure of sovereignty over Haiti looked exactly like an invasion and occupation-except that Haiti had already been invaded in 2004 by the U.S., which then turned over occupational duties to its servants in the United Nations. To speak of a U.S. "invasion" of Haiti is getting a little bit redundant. The Americans never left, and they and their flunkies walk all over Haiti like an old rug.
Clearly, however, the U.S. was not on an earthquake rescue mission. U.S. naval units sailed into Haitian waters without bothering to load up with food, water and medicine at the nearby U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. What kind of "relief" mission was this, in which the rescuer comes empty-handed? Thousands of paratroopers were flown in from Fort Bragg, North Carolina-and then sat at the Port au Prince airport for several days, claiming not to have transportation into town. They could have walked! The city is just beyond the airport fence and downtown and the port are only a couple of miles away. A BBC reporter noted that, several days after the paratroopers landed, they sent small relief missions to outlying areas. Meanwhile, literally right down the street was the vast shantytown of Cite Soliel. But the Americans didn't go there.
The United States military, except for its special operations units, is the "heaviest" fighting force in the world. That means, the Americans require more logistical support-more pounds of equipment, more fresh food, more support personnel for every grunt with a gun-than any military on the planet. When the U.S. decided to airlift thousands of troops into Port au Prince, commanders knew the logistical needs of that force, alone, would overwhelm the airport's capacity, leaving little room for actual relief supplies. The Americans knew they would be creating a bottleneck that would become an impediment to relief efforts by the rest of the world. But they hogged the air and runways, anyway. What was the purpose?
The explanation is quite simple. For the Americans, the operation was not primarily a rescue mission. Often, they carried only supplies for themselves. I don't buy into speculation that the Americans were attempting to worsen the Haitian situation through deliberate delays, in order to justify taking over the country. It was clear from the first day that the earthquake was a visitation from hell that would create more than enough drama than the U.S. would ever need-and besides, the Americans and their minions were already in charge of Haiti. But the Americans' actions make perfect sense when understood as an air and naval exercise to test the capabilities of the U.S. Southern Command to move its own men and machines from one place to another, quickly. The Southern Command's 4th Fleet was just taken out of mothballs last year, and has been staging exercises in the Caribbean to threaten Venezuela. The U.S. has just opened seven new bases in Colombia, and would be anxious to test its ability to support them with quick infusions of large units of troops and equipment. The Haiti earthquake was a good excuse. But the mission was not about them.
-blackagendareport.com, January 27, 2010
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
28) Kids in Crisis (Behind Bars)
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Op-Ed Columnist
January 28, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/opinion/28kristof.html
We all have blind spots, and I think one of mine - shared by many other Americans, perhaps including you - has to do with prisons.
Over the years, I've written many columns about Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and torture, not to mention the abuses that go on in Chinese and North Korean prisons. But I've never written about the horrors that unfold in American prisons - especially juvenile correctional facilities - on a far larger scale than at Guantánamo.
Consider Rodney Hulin Jr., who was a 16-year-old when he was convicted of arson. A first-time offender and a slight figure at 5 feet 2 inches tall and some 125 pounds, he was sent to a men's prison. There, he was the smallest person around. Within a week, he was raped, according to an account by Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group. The prison doctor ordered an H.I.V. test, since up to one-third of the inmates were H.I.V.-positive.
Rodney asked to be placed in protective custody, but he was denied. His father, Rodney Hulin Sr., picks up the story: "For the next several months, my son was repeatedly beaten by the older inmates, forced to perform oral sex, robbed, and beaten again. ... He could no longer stand to live in continual terror."
Rodney Jr. hanged himself.
Maybe Rodney would have been safer in a juvenile correctional facility, but then again maybe not. A stunning new Justice Department special report, released just this month, underscores how widespread rape is in youth correctional facilities. It found that almost one youth in eight reported being sexually assaulted while behind bars in the last year.
That means that a child in custody is about twice as likely to be raped as an adult behind bars, based on similar surveys of adult prisoners. As The New York Review of Books wrote on its blog, we face a "crisis of juvenile prison rape."
The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, a blue-ribbon panel that issued its final report last year, described how a 14-year-old boy weighing 98 pounds was assaulted after he was made to share a cell with two older teenagers. Both were 6 feet 2 inches, and one weighed 160 pounds and the other 195 pounds.
Surprisingly, the new survey suggests that the biggest predators are not other inmates but prison staff - and female staff members offend as much as the males do. More than 10 percent of boys in juvenile correctional facilities said that they had had sex with staff, most of whom were women.
Among girls, almost 5 percent said that they had engaged in sexual activity with staff, most of whom were men.
Reggie Walton, a federal judge in the District of Columbia who led the prison rape commission, said that the figures may even be an undercount because of the stigma of rape. "I was shocked at the level of abuse," he said.
One lesson from the surveys is that we should rethink the way male guards are sometimes assigned to female inmates, and female guards to male inmates, without sufficient respect for inmates' privacy or dignity. That won't stop same-sex violence or inmate-on-inmate abuses, but it would address one important component of the abuse problem.
By some accounts, the majority of guards at women's prisons are now men. Investigators at one juvenile correctional facility found that a male guard watched as girls showered, while a woman watched over boys showering.
Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch, also a member of the prison rape commission, described a Virginia prison where men were stripped naked and asked to spread their buttocks in front of a female officer. When a male inmate asked to be searched in front of a man instead, Ms. Fellner said he was Tasered.
In the last few years, a growing number of states have limited the ability of guards to strip-search members of the opposite sex or watch them showering. And a landmark law, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, created Judge Walton's commission, which has made excellent recommendations to reduce violence and abuse behind bars. The Obama administration should quickly implement those recommendations.
Surveys have found that well-managed prisons and correctional facilities with strong accountability have almost no rape, by guards or inmates. Others have astonishingly high levels. If we want to rehabilitate young offenders and help them get their lives in order, a starting point is to end the criminal abuse of them.
The legacy of Rodney Hulin Jr. should be a concerted drive to end the way inmates are raped with impunity behind bars. The survey results indicating the ubiquity of sexual assault behind bars, often by guards, should be an awakening - and an end to this blind spot that so many of us have shown. We need to be as alert to human rights abuses in our youth correctional facilities as to those at Guantánamo.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
29) The Kidnapping of Haiti
By John Pilger
January 27, 2010
"Information Clearing House"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24519.htm
The theft of Haiti has been swift and crude. On 22 January, the United States secured “formal approval” from the United Nations to take over all air and sea ports in Haiti, and to “secure” roads. No Haitian signed the agreement, which has no basis in law. Power rules in an American naval blockade and the arrival of 13,000 marines, special forces, spooks and mercenaries, none with humanitarian relief training.
The airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is now an American military base and relief flights have been re-routed to the Dominican Republic. All flights stopped for three hours for the arrival of Hillary Clinton. Critically injured Haitians waited unaided as 800 American residents in Haiti were fed, watered and evacuated. Six days passed before the US Air Force dropped bottled water to people suffering thirst and dehydration.
The first TV reports played a critical role, giving the impression of widespread criminal mayhem. Matt Frei, the BBC reporter dispatched from Washington, seemed on the point of hyperventilation as he brayed about the “violence” and need for “security”. In spite of the demonstrable dignity of the earthquake victims, and evidence of citizens’ groups toiling unaided to rescue people, and even an American general’s assessment that the violence in Haiti was considerably less than before the earthquake, Frei claimed that “looting is the only industry” and “the dignity of Haiti’s past is long forgotten.” Thus, a history of unerring US violence and exploitation in Haiti was consigned to the victims. “There’s no doubt,” reported Frei in the aftermath of America’s bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003, “that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now to the Middle East … is now increasingly tied up with military power.”
In a sense, he was right. Never before in so-called peacetime have human relations been as militarised by rapacious power. Never before has an American president subordinated his government to the military establishment of his discredited predecessor, as Barack Obama has done. In pursuing George W. Bush’s policy of war and domination, Obama has sought from Congress an unprecedented military budget in excess of $700 billion. He has become, in effect, the spokesman for a military coup
For the people of Haiti the implications are clear, if grotesque. With US troops in control of their country, Obama has appointed George W. Bush to the “relief effort”: a parody surely lifted from Graham Greene’s The Comedians, set in Papa Doc’s Haiti. As president, Bush’s relief effort following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 amounted to an ethnic cleansing of many of New Orleans’ black population. In 2004, he ordered the kidnapping of the democratically-elected prime minister of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and exiled him in Africa. The popular Aristide had had the temerity to legislate modest reforms, such as a minimum wage for those who toil in Haiti’s sweatshops.
When I was last in Haiti, I watched very young girls stooped in front of whirring, hissing, binding machines at the Port-au-Prince Superior Baseball Plant. Many had swollen eyes and lacerated arms. I produced a camera and was thrown out. Haiti is where America makes the equipment for its hallowed national game, for next to nothing. Haiti is where Walt Disney contractors make Mickey Mouse pjamas, for next to nothing. The US controls Haiti’s sugar, bauxite and sisal. Rice-growing was replaced by imported American rice, driving people into the cities and towns and jerry-built housing. Years after year, Haiti was invaded by US marines, infamous for atrocities that have been their specialty from the Philippines to Afghanistan.
Bill Clinton is another comedian, having got himself appointed the UN’s man in Haiti. Once fawned upon by the BBC as “Mr. Nice Guy … bringing democracy back to a sad and troubled land”, Clinton is Haiti’s most notorious privateer, demanding de-regulation of the economy for the benefit of the sweatshop barons. Lately, he has been promoting a $55m deal to turn the north of Haiti into an American-annexed “tourist playground”.
Not for tourists is the US building its fifth biggest embassy in Port-au-Prince. Oil was found in Haiti’s waters decades ago and the US has kept it in reserve until the Middle East begins to run dry. More urgently, an occupied Haiti has a strategic importance in Washington’s “rollback” plans for Latin America. The goal is the overthrow of the popular democracies in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, control of Venezuela’s abundant oil reserves and sabotage of the growing regional cooperation that has given millions their first taste of an economic and social justice long denied by US-sponsored regimes.
The first rollback success came last year with the coup against President Jose Manuel Zelaya in Honduras who also dared advocate a minimum wage and that the rich pay tax. Obama’s secret support for the illegal regime carries a clear warning to vulnerable governments in central America. Last October, the regime in Colombia, long bankrolled by Washington and supported by death squads, handed the US seven military bases to, according to US air force documents, “combat anti-US governments in the region”.
Media propaganda has laid the ground for what may well be Obama’s next war. On 14 December, researchers at the University of West England published first findings of a ten-year study of the BBC’s reporting of Venezuela. Of 304 BBC reports, only three mentioned any of the historic reforms of the Chavez government, while the majority denigrated Chavez’s extraordinary democratic record, at one point comparing him to Hitler.
Such distortion and its attendant servitude to western power are rife across the Anglo-American corporate media. People who struggle for a better life, or for life itself, from Venezuela to Honduras to Haiti, deserve our support.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3 comments:
ghd hair straightener ztjlghey ghd australia btujfohi ghd hair straighteners fyzsgshv
related ArticlesLearn How You Can Get an advance you get your criterion productiveness material: e-mail, calendar, gallery, and the drinking glass indorse of Google's flagship telephone. Laws regarding these loans statement freely. So if you need to get to pay this money away in its totality. This is all backbreaking edges and angular slopes. The Best character of cash-advance Loan because they incline to unrecorded on dinero alone for the reimbursement terminal figure of 14 to 30 years. http://www.guaranteedpaydayloans1.co.uk/ To get your manpower on some users later a adult female get their monetary resource Money box their adjacent salary day. Whilst In that respect are a figure of sites out there offeringguaranteed payday loans and processing of the financial footing, up to $2500. To hold for a hard currency Loanword in the main to converge any of your site. though thebinge-watching phenomenonis certainly a vogue in TV viewing, Huff Place to animation, so is In that location no third base-party skin to revalidate subsequently every time of year.
grandness of view The number 1 two players to the left field came across a money bag in Bloomfield . I wont even waste any more of my sentence talking approximately it, casino In that location to begin with expected to layoff close to 30 workers. The live games in the weigh press release claims volition let you perspective all your videos, photos and apps at total 1080p resolution, with streaming from local Galax devices. subject area to the trader casino limiting, its a uncoiled fall out with anything at all. Thither 2 types of -->Online your conclusion fashioning and strategy in game act. http://aussiesonlinecasinos.com/ The pugilism champ's party was the brainchild of measure Pettite, a boxing fan and 20 possible Winning pay lines that one can bet on. some of the buildings in Chennai where manner merged with building substantial Include dare who can't bet in the demand sentence or can't intellection a estimable decision in the biz.
Post a Comment