*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Haiti Earthquake: The Hidden Holocaust
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSfWtA-A8QE
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Mine - Story of a Sacred Mountain
[This is a stunningly beautiful film. It is the story of Avatar in real life today...bw]
http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi888603161/
India's Supreme Court recently approved the project, and mining could begin in a matter of months.
The Dongria remain united in their determination to stop Vedanta from turning their sacred mountain into an industrial wasteland.
One of the Court's conditions is that some of the mine's profits are put towards "tribal development."
But no "development" or "compensation" package could cure the problems that mining Niyamgiri will cause: the destruction of a unique environment and culture.
The Dongria have accused Vedanta of "trying to flood us out with money" and have made it clear that:
"Mining only makes profit for the rich. We will become beggars if the company destroys our mountain and our forest so that they can make money. We don't want the mine or any help at all from the company."
Vedanta was founded by Indian billionaire Anil Agarwal, who owns more than half the shares.
Under Siege
Vedanta is still waiting to clear the final red tape before they are able to begin mining. Meanwhile, the Dongria are being held siege in their hill range.
Non-tribal villagers, who do not farm the land but rely on wage labor to survive, have blocked the routes into the Niyamgiri hills.
Young men, sometimes armed with axes, are refusing to allow any outsiders, including journalists, to enter Niyamgiri and visit Dongria Kondh villages.
The reason is simple: they do not want the world to hear the Dongria's voice.
Act now to help the Dongria Kondh
Your support is vital if the Dongria Kondh are to survive. There are many ways you can help.
--Write to India's Minister of Environment and Forests asking him to safeguard the Dongria Kondh's rights:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/actnow/writealetter/dongria
--Donate to the Dongria Kondh campaign (and other Survival campaigns):
http://www.survivalinternational.org/donations
--Write to your MP or MEP (UK):
http://www.writetothem.com/
or Senators and members of Congress (US):
http://www.congress.org/
--Write to your local Indian high commission or embassy:
http://www.embassiesabroad.com/
--If you want to get more involved, contact Survival:
http://www.survivalinternational.org/info/contact
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
STOP SPENDING TRILLIONS ON THE WARS! BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
END US/UN MILITARY OCCUPATION OF HAITI! FOOD NOT GUNS IN HAITI!
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!
Volunteers Needed!
Postering and Flyering Work Sessions every Tues. 7pm and every Sat. 2pm
Volunteers are needed to help put up posters, hand out leaflets and make alert phone calls to fellow activists. Call 415-821-6545 for more info and for office hours. Come by the office to pick up posters and flyers in English, Spanish or Chinese. Participate in an Outreach Work Session held every Tues. 7pm and Sat. 2pm, meeting at the ANSWER Coalition Office: 2489 Mission St. #24 (at 21st St.), San Francisco, near 24th St. BART/#14, #49 MUNI.
Call 415-821-6545 for leafleting and posting schedule.
DONATIONS NEEDED:
https://secure2.convio.net/pep/site/Donation?ACTION=SHOW_DONATION_OPTIONS&CAMPAIGN_ID=1443&JServSessionIdr004=nou1lpg115.app202a
NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, March 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
(Preceded by steering committee at 12 noon)
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
RALLY FOR CALIFORNIA'S FUTURE!
Rally at Civic Center in Defense
Of Public Education and All Public-Sector Services!
Thursday, March 4, 5:00 P.M.
http://calaction.org/actions/?id=4230
Stop Attack On Education! DAY OF ACTION!
Thurs. March 4 - Statewide Strike and Protest
Stop the Attacks on Education!
Money for Schools--Not for Wars and Bailouts!
Thursday, March 4 will be a statewide day of action to defend public education and to fight against the cuts. Students, parents, faculty, and school employees at all levels--K12, community college and university--and everyone who supports the right to education are mobilizing to fight back.
Last fall, the UC Regents announced a huge 32% increase in tuition.
Last week, it was announced that more than 900 K-12 public school teachers and staff would be laid-off in San Francisco. This is part of a plan to cut the San Francisco Unified School District's budget by $113 million, or by over 25 percent!
In early February, City College of San Francisco, the only option for many working-class students, announced that its entire summer school program would be scrapped. The huge tuition increases and cutbacks are making higher education an impossible dream for hundreds of thousands of young people in California.
Public education all over the country is under attack. As the rich attempt to "solve" the economic crisis by cutting the things that people need most, the government has handed over between $9 trillion and $11 trillion to the richest bankers, and submitted the largest military budget in U.S. history, which includes nearly $500 million each day to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan.
If there is money for wars, bank bailouts and prisons, why is there no money for public education? It's time to stand up and make our voices heard.
Following are some of the many actions taking place on Mar. 4:
.. 10am - City College of San Francisco, action starting at Ocean Ave. & Phelan, main campus
.. 10am - San Francisco State University, action starting at 19th and Holloway Ave.
.. 3pm - Save Our Schools march, starting at 24th and Mission, marching to Van Ness and MacAllister Sts.
.. 4pm - Defend Public Education! Solidarity with Teachers and Students, Meet at Van Ness and McAllister Sts.
.. 5pm - Rally in Defense of Public Education and All Public-Sector Services!, Civic Center Plaza
Join us for an organizing meeting on Sat. Mar. 13, 2pm at 2489 Mission St. #28, SF to discuss future actions against the cuts and plans for the Students & Teachers contingent at the Mar. 20 Anti-War Protest to demand "Money for Schools, Not for War!"
Call 415-821-6545 for more information or to get involved.
ANSWER: San Francisco Bay Area
www.ANSWERcoalition.org
To vote on the action, Please go to http://calaction.org/_admin/vote/, which will require clicking LOGIN.
Be sure to forward word of this action to your members.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
NEXT MARCH 20 COALITION MEETING:
SATURDAY, March 6, 2010, 2:00 P.M.
(Preceded by steering committee at 12 noon)
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
Between 16th and 15th Streets, SF)
For more information call: 415-821-6545
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Bay Area Latin American Solidarity Coalition presents:
The Future of Honduras
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Centro del Pueblo
474 Valencia (between 15th and 16th Streets)
San Francisco
$5-25 donations
(No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.)
415-924-3227
www.mitfamericas.org, www.balasc.org
Come hear Andres Conteris tell the story of his 129 days inside the Brazillian Embassy under seige with President Mel Zelaya after the Honduran coup.
Andres was the last English speaking journalist inside the Embassy, staying until the day that Zelaya was allowed to leave.
Now returned to San Francisco, Andres will tell us about those months withi the Embassy, and inform us of the most recent developments from Honduras.
Andres Conteris is a Latin American Correspondent with Democracy Now! and Flaspoints; has lived in Honduras; and has been involved in human rights activism for many years.
Andres will also be leading a human rights delegation to Honduras later in March, organized through the Task Force on the Americas. Proceeds from the March 10th presentation will benefit the Honduras Delegation Scholarship Fund.
Endorsed by: Chiapas Support Committee; FMLN Northern California; Haiti Action Committee; Nicaragua Center for Community Action; SOA Watch West; Task Force on the Americas
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Film Showing & Discussion
"Slingshot Hip Hop"
A fundraiser for Gaza relief
Thurs. March 11, 7:30pm
ATA (Artists' Television Access), 992 Valencia St., at 21st St., SF
$6 donation (no one turned away for lack of funds)
With a report on the current struggle in Palestine and plans for the March 20 anti-war protest.
Slingshot Hip Hop braids together the stories of young Palestinians living in Gaza, the West Bank and inside Israel as they discover hip hop and employ it as a tool to surmount divisions imposed by occupation and poverty. From internal checkpoints and Separation Walls to gender norms and generational differences, this is the story of young people crossing the borders that separate them.
Featuring Palestinian hip hop artists DAM, PR (Palestinian Rapperz), ABEER, Arapeyat, and Mahmoud Shalabi. 2008, 83 min., Arabic, English & Hebrew with English subtitles.
For more info, call 415-821-6545.
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
Act Now to Stop War & End Racism
http://www.ANSWERcoalition.org http://www.answersf.org
answer@answersf.org
2489 Mission St. Rm. 24
San Francisco: 415-821-6545
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Angela Davis, Linda Evans, Susan Rosenberg & Laura Whitehorn
invite you to:
SPARKS FLY 2010 -
An evening in celebration of Marilyn Buck and Women Political Prisoners
Saturday, March 13, 2010, 7 PM
10 PM Dance Party with DJ Kuttin Kandi
Uptown Body and Fender Garage
401 26th St., Oakland (Telegraph Ave)
Art Auction, Speakers & Music including, Maisha Quint, devorah major, Phavia Kujichagulia, Kayla Marin, Yuri Kochiyama, Graciela Perez-Trevisan & Bomberas de la Bahia Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba Plena
$10-50 (no one turned away)
Sparks Fly has honored women political prisoners for 20 years. Marilyn Buck is scheduled to get out of prison later this year after serving more than 25 years. Let's welcome her home! All money raised will go to the Release Fund for Marilyn Buck.
During this evening we also pay tribute to Safiya Bukhari on publication of her posthumous book, The War Before.
For book tour dates go to http://www.feministpress.org/books/safiya-bukhari/war.
Endorsed by: AK Press, All of Us or None, Arab Resource & Organizing Center, BACORR, California Coalition of Women Prisoners, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, Code Pink, East Bay Prisoners Support, East Side Arts Alliance, Freedom Archives, Free the SF 8 Comm. Friends of Marilyn Buck, Haiti Action Committee, Kevin Cooper Defense Comm, KPFA Women's Magazine, LAGAI, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Long Haul, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, National Lawyers Guild/Bay Area, Out of Control, PM Press, Prison Activist Resource Center, Prison Radio Project, QUIT, Radical Women, SF Dyke March, SF Women In Black, Speak Out!, Stanley Tookie Williams Legacy Network
wheelchair accessible
for more information: sparksfly2010@gmail.com
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
LABOR'S STAKE IN ENDING THE WARS
Why are we in Afghanistan?
San Francisco
Saturday, March 20, 10:00 A.M.-12:00 Noon*
Plumbers Hall
1621 Market Street (Near Franklin)
U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq and its consequences.
Program Includes:
--"Why Are We in Afghanistan" a short video.
--Stephen Zunes, USF Professor and Middle East specialist
--Afghanistan War Veteran
--Military Families Speak Out
--Labor Leaders
Speakers followed by Q&A and Audience Response
Followed by a Labor Contingent march to Civic Center to join antiwar rally and march in solidarity with Unite HERE Local 2 members at downtown hotels. (Bring union banners and colors)
*Coffee, bagels and music at 10:00 A.M., march to Civic Center at Noon. Park in lot next to building or exit Civic Center BART station, walk about 6 blocks west on Market to Franklin.
Sponsored by:
San Francisco Labor Council and Bay Area U.S. Labor Against the War
Endorsed by:
Alameda Labor Council; AFT Local 2121; Bay Area Labor Committee for Peace and Justice; ILWU Local 10; Oakland Education Association; OPEIU Local 3; Peralta Federation of Teachers; SEIU Local 1021; Unite HERE Local 2; United Educators of San Francisco.
This list is in formation. Additional endorsements are invited.
For more information: 510-263-5303
labor-for-peace-and-justice@igc.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Defend Holly Works!
Monday April 5th 2010, 8 AM,
Alameda County Courthouse,
12th & Oak St, Oakland
8 AM demonstrate! 9 AM, attend trial.
(from 12th Street BART Station, walk down 12th St toward Lake Merritt.
Demonstrate/enter court at 12th and Oak St)
Holly Works is the now the last remaining defendant of the Oakland 100. Her trial was to start Monday, March 1st. But a defense motion for a postponement was granted, since Holly's chief witness is out of the country at this time.
A local musician and activist, Holly was arrested before she even arrived at the protest! Walking down the street with a friend, she was detained and fraudulently charged with... assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer!
This took place at least an hour before the protest was even to have started! Originally charged with assaulting a cop with a knife, Holly had no knife, and so that had to be changed. Since she had a screw driver in her purse, the cops accused her of using this "deadly weapon" to assault an officer. Once again, a total fabrication, made up by the police to tie up protesters with time-consuming prosecutions.
DROP ALL CHARGES AGAINST HOLLY WORKS!
Oscar Grant was a young black retail grocery worker and father of a young daughter. He was out with friends for New Years Eve when he was detained by BART police. He was shot in the back at point blank range by a BART cop as he lay face-down on the Fruitvale station platform early on New Years Day, 2009. Cell-phone videos taken of the incident by witnesses on the station platform were posted on the internet, and protests erupted in Oakland. Over a week later, the officer, Johannes Mehserle, was finally charged with murder. He was granted a change of venue, and is being tried in Los Angeles.
The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
PO Box 16222 • Oakland CA 94610 • 510 763-2347
www.laboractionmumia.org
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Check out:
Hotter than a Motherfucker!
By: Warren E. Henderson
[Warren E. Henderson has been incarcerated for many years. He is mentioned in the book, "Jailhouse Lawyers," By Mumia Abu-Jamal of one of the most effective "jailhouse lawyers." He has written two books from prison. Only this one is still available...]
ISBN: 1-4257-8463-1 (Trade Paperback 6x9 )
ISBN13: 978-1-4257-8463-8 (Trade Paperback 6x9 )
Pages : 130
Book Format :Trade Book 6x9
Subject :
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / General
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / People of Color
HISTORY / United States / General
LITERARY CRITICISM & COLLECTIONS / American
Availability
Trade Paperback 6x9 ($17.84)
Please choose book availability
https://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=39510
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
I AM SEAN BELL, black boys speak
by Stacey Muhammad plus
1 year ago 1 year ago: Thu, Jan 1, 2009 6:22pm EST (Eastern Standard Time)
http://vimeo.com/2691617
I AM SEAN BELL
black boys speak
A Short Form Documentary from Wildseed Films
Directed by Stacey Muhammad
Asst. Directed by Shomari Mason
Edited by: Stacey Muhammad & R.H. Bless
Principal Photography: May 17, 2008
Brooklyn, NY
Running Time 10:30
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
A Carnival Artist Without a Carnival
A Haitian Artist Struggles to Show His Work
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/world/index.html
War veterans and resisters say "All Out for March 20th-National March on Washington!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwsLfG9JjF8
Bilin Reenacts Avatar Film 12-02-2010 By Haitham Al Katib
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chw32qG-M7E
Watch the video: "Haiti and the Devil's Curse" at:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
or
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWqgOe0-0xA
Haiti And The 'Devil's Curse' - The Truth About Haiti & Lies Of The Media PART 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9Qki6TrI7M&feature=related
It's a powerful and accurate history of Haiti--including historical film footage of French, U.S., Canadian, and UN invasions, mass murder and torture, exploitation and occupation of Haiti--featuring Danny Glover.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
New York Times Video: For Haitian Children, a Crisis Escalates
Front page of the Times, February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/
This video shows the frustration of doctors that haven't the supplies or equipment to help severely wounded Haitian children. One child, the doctor explains, had her foot amputated by her family in order to free her from the rubble she was buried under. They finally got her to the hospital after two weeks. By then, of course, the wound was infected. But, not having enough antibiotics, her other foot got infected and that had to be amputated. She is still rotting away at the hospital that can't care for her properly--as hard as the doctors are trying--and they are trying hard.
As it stands now--they haven't got the antibiotics and surgical supplies and they can't get the children to a hospital in the U.S. Since the attempted kidnapping of children by the American missionaries, the children are not allowed out of the country without papers--even when accompanied by their parents. The thing is, nobody has papers in Haiti so the parents can't prove it's their child. Nobody has driver's licenses, birth cirtificates--not the parents nor the children--if such proof exists, it's buried under the rubble along with all their other belongings. So, again, the innocent suffer because of the inability/unwillingness of the wealthiest nation in the world to bring the stuff that is needed to the people who need it because they are experts at bringing bombs, daisy-cutters and white phosphorous, not humanitarian aid. ...bw
The article of the same title is:
Paperwork Hinders Airlifts of Ill Haitian Children
By IAN URBINA
February 9, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/world/americas/09airlift.html?ref=world
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Gaza in Plain Language: a video by Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey
Anthony Lawson and Joe Mowrey have created an amazing video. The narrative is from an article published not long ago in Dissident Voice written by Mr. Mowrey. [See article with the same name. A warning, however. This video is very graphic and very brutal but this is a truth we must see!..bw] A video that narrates just what happened, without emotion... just the facts, ma'am! Share it with those you know! Now on PTT TV so Google and YouTube can't censor this information totally.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/video-gaza-in-plain-language/
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Glen Ford on Black Delusion in the Age of Obama
[A speech delivered to the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations conference. This is a great speech full of information.]
blackisbackcoalition.org
http://blip.tv/file/3169123
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
Security in an Insecure Land
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/01/30/world/americas/1247466794033/security-in-an-insecure-land.html?hp
What the US/UN police and military are doing in Haiti -- really.
This video takes us to the poorest section of Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil. It looks like a giant concentration camp in the middle of a desert. The UN Police caravan have nothing with them but cameras and guns! People--men, women, children, are standing alongside the road begging for help. They say they have had no help at all since the earthquake.
The UN police bring NO AID with them. No food, water--nothing! Then the police, guarded by soldiers with automatic weapons, and their camera stop among a large group of people. The UN cop, Alix Sainvil, a Haitian-American United Nations police officer who worked to secure Cité Soleil before the earthquake, is talking to the camera; he explains that since the jail collapsed and prisoners escaped after the earthquake, he worried about how the "gangs" are taking over again.
The camera pans the faces of ALL the men.
One "gang member" (synonym "male") overhears what Soleil is saying to the camera and speaks up and says, "Even if your not a looter, when you walk past a store police will just shoot you for no reason. That's the only thing you do!" That, of course, designates him a "gang member."
The cop, Soleil, says as they are driving away, "that young man is a 'troublemaker.'"
This video illustrates just what the UN has been doing in Haiti. They have been patrolling these slums with automatic weapons and targeting anyone who shows any signs of resistance to the deplorable state of poverty they live in. It is a heinous atrocity orchestrated by the U.S.!
Haiti is US/UN occupied territory now. AND THEY STILL HAVEN'T GIVEN OUT ANY MEANINGFUL AMOUNTS OF AID! They typically pull up with one-tenth of the supplies needed so that most go hungry and get nothing but their fury ignited. And who the hell wouldn't be furious? This is Katrina in powers of ten!
In another article in the Times, "Food Distribution Retooled; Americans Arrested," by DAMIEN CAVE, (number 19, below) "After two weeks of often chaotic food distribution, the United Nations announced plans on Saturday for a coupon-based system that aims to give rice to 10,000 Haitians a day at each of 16 locations around Port-au-Prince." (The article points out that the rice will be given to women only.)
AFTER TWO WEEKS THEY WILL BEGIN THIS WEEK?!?!? I guess they're thinking it'll be cheaper in the long run if more people die first. And that's the bottom line for this government! By the way, the ten Americans were arrested by the Haitian government for trying to take 33 Haitian children across into the Dominican Republic for "adoption." The thing is, they had no proof the children were orphans. I wonder how much they were going to charge for them?
--Bonnie Weinstein
Also see:
Haitian Law Enforcement Returns
The Haitian police are back on patrol in Port-au-Prince.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/americas/1194811622209/index.html#1247466794033
Haitians Scramble for Aid
France24 reports on desperate Haitians trying to get some aid food in the Cité Soleil district of Port-au-Prince.
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/americas/1194811622209/index.html#1247466794033
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
(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
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
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
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
FREE LYNNE STEWART NOW!
Lynne Stewart in Jail!
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 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
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 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) Greece Expected to Release New Austerity Plan
By NIKI KITSANTONIS
March 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/business/global/03greece.html
2) PA Security Forces Arrest PFLP Comrades in Nablus
by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
[Let's not forget this repression is financed by the US and is done by troops trained by US military personnel who are in Palestine right now.]
US Out of Palestine!
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/pflp010310.html
For more information, go to www.pflp.ps
3) Clinton Arrives as Chile Sends Troops to Hard-Hit City
[As in Haiti, they accuse starving people who have lost everything including access to food and water as "looters." Instead of distributing all that food in supermarkets to those who need it, they send troops with guns!...bw]
By GINGER THOMPSON and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/americas/03chile.html?hp
4) An appeal to anti-war organizations & activists
to oppose the increasing threats against Iran
Press Release from the
Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII)
Feb. 20, 2010
This appeal has been initiated by the
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII)
For more information or to contact CASMII please visit:
http://www.campaigniran.org
5) Two Suspects Entered U.S. After Killing in Dubai
By ROBERT F. WORTH
March 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/world/middleeast/02dubai.html?ref=world
6) Immigrants Rally for a Nationwide Strike in Italy
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
March 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/world/europe/02iht-italy.html?ref=world
7) For Pennies, a Disposable Toilet That Could Help Grow Crops
[I think they should hand these bags out to the politicians and corporate elite and invite the homeless to use the luxurious, marble-encrusted, bathrooms on Wall Street, at the Whitehouse and all the Governors' mansions. ...bw]
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02bag.html?ref=world
8) New Evidence Surfaces in New Orleans Killings
"The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office has had a problematic history with capital cases. Of the 36 people sentenced to death in the parish since 1976, more have been exonerated than have been executed - five compared with four - two have been retried and acquitted, and more than half are no longer on death row after their cases were reviewed by the Louisiana Supreme Court..."
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
March 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/us/02orleans.html?ref=us
9) Defense files motion for new trial for man convicted of killing 5
by Mike Hoss and Mike Perlstein / Eyewitness News
[There is a very informative news video with this article...bw]
Posted on March 1, 2010 at 5:51 PM
Updated yesterday at 11:01 PM
http://www.wwltv.com/news/Defense-files-motion-for-new-trial-for-man-convicted-of-killing-5-85866427.html
10) Cheese Thief Jailed for 7 Years in California
By ROBERT MACKEY
March 3, 2010
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/cheese-thief-jailed-for-7-years-in-california/
11) Scholar's School Reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate
"Charter schools, she [Diane Ravitch] concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself. 'Accountability, as written into federal law, was not raising standards but dumbing down the schools,' she writes."
By SAM DILLON
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03ravitch.html?ref=us
12) California: White Hood Prompts Inquiry on San Diego Campus
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03brfs-WHITEHOODPRO_BRF.html?ref=education
13) Greece Adopts Plan for New Taxes and Pay Reductions
By NIKI KITSANTONIS
March 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/business/global/04greece.html?adxnnl=1&ref=world&adxnnlx=1267646447-2+zoCyBWW6Wk58QekGq4tw
14) Interference Seen in Blackwater Inquiry
By JAMES RISEN
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/middleeast/03blackwater.html?ref=world
15) Britain Grapples With Debt of Greek Proportions
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
News Analysis
March 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/business/global/03pound.html?ref=world
16) U.S. to Send Bomb Kits for Air Force of Pakistan
By REUTERS
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/asia/03pstan.html?ref=world
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
1) Greece Expected to Release New Austerity Plan
By NIKI KITSANTONIS
March 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/business/global/03greece.html
ATHENS - The Greek government is expected to announce on Wednesday a new raft of austerity measures aimed at raising an additional 3.5 billion euros, or $4.8 billion, in much-needed revenue and convincing global financial markets that it is serious about curbing its bloated budget deficit and averting a debt crisis in the euro zone.
After a day of talks with the European Union commissioner for monetary affairs, Olli Rehn, the prime minister George Papandreou, released a statement on Tuesday that said a cabinet meeting would be held on Wednesday "to take decisions about the economy."
Mr. Papandreou, who was to brief the parliamentary group of his ruling Socialist party on the proposed changes on Tuesday afternoon, is expected to announce the new measures after Wednesday's cabinet meeting. They are widely expected to include a 2 percent increase to value-added tax, which now stands at 19 percent, an additional increase in fuel tax and a new tax on luxury goods.
Also on the cards is the controversial abolition, or reduction, of the so-called 14th salary - one of two additional salaries paid to public sector workers and to many private employees as holiday pay.
The new measures would come on top of wage freezes and tax increases that were heralded by the government a month ago with the aim of raising 5 billion euros or $6.8 billion. Mr. Rehn said on Tuesday that these original measures would not be enough to curb Greece's budget deficit by 4 percentage points, in line with European Union targets, and stressed that financial markets would be reassured about Greece only once they see "precise new measures."
A government spokesman, Giorgos Petalotis, said authorities would wait to see how the markets respond to the new measures before issuing bonds in a bid to raise the 20 billion euros needed to refinance debt maturing in April.
Mr. Papandreou is to travel to Germany on Friday to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel; talks are expected to focus on Greece's fiscal problems.
Reacting to heightened speculation about the salary cut on Tuesday, the country's civil servants' union called a 24-hour strike for March 16, the deadline that European finance ministers have given Greece to show progress in curbing its budget deficit which stands at 12.7 percent of gross domestic product.
The union, which staged two strikes last month, has described the additional salary as "a historic conquest" that it will fight to protect.
Left-wing party leaders, who have been lambasting the government for heralding "painful and socially unjust" measures despite being elected last October on a platform of social welfare pledges, on Tuesday appealed to workers to resist the proposed cuts.
"The best form of defense is attack," said Aleka Papariga, a Communist party leader, who represents about 8 percent of the electorate.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
2) PA Security Forces Arrest PFLP Comrades in Nablus
by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
[Let's not forget this repression is financed by the US and is done by troops trained by US military personnel who are in Palestine right now.]
US Out of Palestine!
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/pflp010310.html
For more information, go to
Nablus ArrestPalestinian Authority security forces arrested a group of comrades in Nablus, on February 25, 2010, as part of their "security cooperation" with the Israeli occupation. Comrade Khalida Jarrar, member of the Political Bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, strongly denounced the arrests, saying that this action serves only the interests of the Zionist occupier and demanding the immediate release of the arrested comrades. Comrade Jarrar demanded a complete prohibition of political arrests and an end to the policy of security cooperation with the occupier and participation in its aggression toward our people.
Comrades Muhammad At-Teriaqi, 17, Muhammad Jihad An-Natur, 18, Omer Tayseer Abdul Haq, 18, and Muhammad Al-Madani, 17 were arrested by the PA forces in the early morning of the 25th in Nablus. Comrade Jarrar said that "the policy of political arrests is rejected by the Palestinian people," noting that the security agencies have persisted in ignoring all calls to stop the arrests and persecution of activists.
Comrade Jarrar also noted that this group of arrests comes alongside occupation arrests in the city and throughout the West Bank, targeting the PFLP and other resistance factions, particularly in the face of increased Zionist attacks on the land, Jerusalem, and the holy places of Palestine.
The PFLP issued a statement strongly condemning the arrests, demanding their release and a complete end to security cooperation with the occupation, noting that these activists were arrested at the requests of the occupation forces. It demanded that all forces in the PLO and PA must end their reliance on the utterly discredited path of "negotiations," Oslo and the roadmap, saying that this path is destructive to the Palestinian people and cause and ends up only with Palestinian forces acting as agents of the occupation.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
3) Clinton Arrives as Chile Sends Troops to Hard-Hit City
[As in Haiti, they accuse starving people who have lost everything including access to food and water as "looters." Instead of distributing all that food in supermarkets to those who need it, they send troops with guns!...bw]
By GINGER THOMPSON and ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/americas/03chile.html?hp
SANTIAGO, Chile - As smaller tremors continued to jolt this earthquake-ravaged country, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton flew into Chile's damaged main airport on Tuesday morning, bearing a handful of satellite phones and promises of more help.
Mrs. Clinton and the Chilean president, Michelle Bachelet, embraced as they met and later held a news conference to outline Chile's needs and American assistance three days after one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded toppled homes and knocked out roads and power throughout the country.
President Bachelet said her list of requests included field hospitals, portable dialysis machines, temporary bridges to plastic tarps that can be used to build tents, water desalination systems and communications equipment.
Mrs. Clinton said the United States was already preparing to send eight water-purification units, temporary bridges, a field hospital and other medical supplies.
Mrs. Clinton brought 25 satellite telephones and handed one to Ms. Bachelet during the news conference. "We'll be here to help when others leave," she said, "because we are committed to this partnership and this friendship with Chile."
President Bachelet's public outreach for assistance comes in the face of growing criticism that her government was slow in responding and asking for help. Ms. Bachelet has said her government needed time to assess its needs, but the delay came at a cost.
Tens of thousands of people remain without supplies of food, drinking water and shelter, and reports of looting and other lawlessness are increasing. In Concepción, one of the hardest-hit cities, thousands of government troops were sent to restore order, extending an overnight curfew until midday.
Ms. Bachelet said that she still was not able to give specific figures on the scope of the damage, but that projections have gone as high as $30 billion. She said an estimated 500,000 houses had been destroyed, and serious damage had been done to numerous bridges, roads, ports and public transportation stations.
When pressed for a dollar amount, Ms. Bachelet sighed. "All I can say is it's going to be a lot," she said.
"Chile has the capacity," she said, "but I think it's going to take a long time, and it will mean a whole lot of money."
Ms. Bachelet has just 10 days left in office as president, leaving her successor, Sebastián Piñera, little time to get up to speed on governing. One official in the current administration, who did not have authorization to speak on the record, suggested that the looming transition was already complicating the response.
Residents also feared that the transition would make the aid effort bumpy.
"Soon, people are going to start organizing and demanding that they fulfill the many promises they have made on television and the radio," said Jesse Salazar, 49, who watched over his sister-in-law's belongings as she packed up boxes to move from her damaged home.
The powerful quake that jolted Chileans awake on Saturday has left the country reeling. Collapsed bridges and damaged roadways have made it difficult to even get to some areas. Downed phone lines and cellular towers have made it impossible to communicate. And many residents in the most damaged areas have not only taken food from supermarkets, but also robbed banks, set fires and engaged in other forms of lawlessness.
Chilean newspapers quoted Ms. Bachelet on Tuesday as saying that the situation in Concepción was "under control," even though reports indicated that most of the city was still without electricity, phone service or running water.
The reported death toll from the quake rose slightly to 723, but officials say Chile will need weeks to determine a more accurate number. Witnesses have said that entire fishing communities hugging the coast were wiped away by pummeling waves that followed the initial shock, with houses and boats piled atop one another and some homes swept out to sea like driftwood.
"The villages have almost disappeared," said Paula Saez of the aid group World Vision, who toured part of the area by helicopter. "There's nothing. I cannot believe this is happening." The quake has also exposed the fact, experts say, that although Chile is one of the most developed countries in the region, it is also one of the most unequal, with huge pockets of urban and rural poor, who suffered most in the quake.
"It's the poorest Chileans who live near the epicenter," said Carolina Bank, a Chilean-born sociology professor at Brooklyn College.
It was not just the violent shaking that tore Chile apart, but also the surge of waves that swept in along the coast, damaging homes like that of Edmundo Muñoz, 44, and his family, in Constitución. "Everything was destroyed," he said.
A growing perception has begun to set in among many residents that the country - considered Latin America's most earthquake-ready - was not as well prepared as it had thought.
In Santiago, the capital, those left homeless after their brand-new and supposedly earthquake-resistant apartments suffered severe structural damage were furious. Chileans are wondering aloud why food is not getting to the hungry faster and why the politicians and soldiers seem to have been caught flatfooted.
"The government has been very slow to respond," complained Victor Pérez, 48, who was sleeping in a tent with his girlfriend outside their ruined Santiago apartment building. "We have no water or lights, and most of the stores nearby are out of food."
The frustration could be heard on Chilean radio, where residents called in to complain that government provisions had been slow to arrive and that almost all markets and stores had been stripped bare of food, water and other supplies.
The government, which declared a state of emergency Sunday, said it never dismissed outside assistance but wanted to see how bad things were first.
"Experience over the years and in prior earthquakes, as well as from international cooperation efforts like in Haiti, have left us lessons," Foreign Minister Mariano Fernández told reporters. "We have to be very precise about what our needs are in order for the assistance to be of any use."
As each day passes, it becomes clearer in Chile that those needs are huge.
While the effects of the earthquake appear worst in outlying areas, the capital itself received a significant jolt, as Mirko Boskovic, 43, a postal worker, could attest. "It looks like the Tower of Pisa," Mr. Boskovic said, gazing at his teetering apartment building, supposedly seismically secure, which leaned precariously at a 45-degree angle and was ringed by police tape.
On Monday, the United Nations said that the government had asked for generators, water filtration equipment and field hospitals, as well as experts to assess just how much damage was caused by Saturday's earthquake, which with a magnitude of 8.8 is one of the largest ever measured.
"Everything is now moving," said Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. "We are looking immediately to match the needs."Just weeks ago, it was Chile that was giving aid, not getting it.
Chilean rescue personnel, soldiers and aid workers played a significant role in Haiti. In fact, some officials said that had left the government short of the plastic sheeting and tents it needed for the nearly 2 million Chileans displaced or otherwise affected by the quake this week.
Still, Chile's earthquake preparedness clearly saved lives. Laura Torres, 62, and her husband, Víctor Campos, 66, live in Constitución, a city flanked by the ocean and a river. When they quake struck, the earth shook so violently they could not stand.
They crawled to assist their son, who is severely brain damaged; Mr. Campos picked him up, trying to walk as the earth heaved. They ran up into the hills, amid wails from others around.
In the tsunami-prone region, earthquake training had taught them that they had about 20 minutes to make it to high ground, Ms. Torres said, but the roaring of the water, a strange sound like a plane's motor, suggested that it was barreling in much sooner.
Still, they made it to the hills and are now staying with one of their daughters and about 30 other people, rationing what little food they have. Other survivors are camping in the hills, making fires and sharing food. Naked or partially naked people have streamed by the house, Ms. Torres said, asking for clothes.
Some homes not far from hers have vanished. The water left fishing boats in the plaza, Ms. Torres said, carrying away train cars and replacing businesses with "mud, debris, destruction."
"It's a ghost town," she said.
Ginger Thompson reported from Santiago, and Alexei Barrionuevo from Angol, Chile. Reporting was contributed by Marc Lacey from Lima, Peru, and Charles Newbery from Buenos Aires; Aaron Nelsen and Pascale Bonnefoy from Santiago, Chile; Tomás Munita from Constitución, Chile; and Catrin Einhorn and Jack Healy from New York.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
4) An appeal to anti-war organizations & activists
to oppose the increasing threats against Iran
Press Release from the
Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII)
Feb. 20, 2010
This appeal has been initiated by the
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII)
For more information or to contact CASMII please visit:
http://www.campaigniran.org
Around the world, anti-war activists are preparing for major protests this spring to oppose the continuing U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, a storm of developments is dramatically increasing tensions between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In response, the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII) is issuing this appeal to the anti-war movements in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries to raise the demands of "No war, no sanctions, no internal interference in Iran!"
Iran is a country that hasn't attacked a neighbor in more than 200 years. Even when Saddam Hussein invaded Iran after the 1979 Revolution and, with support from the West, used chemical weapons against both civilians and combatants, the Islamic Republic did not retaliate in kind. And yet the U.S. government claims that Iran represents a serious threat to the Middle East region and the entire world. Without a shred of evidence, the U.S. charges that Iran's program to develop nuclear power for peaceful energy purposes is just a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Never mentioned is the fact that, as a signatory to the U.N.'s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran's right to develop nuclear energy is enshrined in international law. Just a few months ago, the U.N's International Atomic Energy Chief, Mohammed ElBardai, the person responsible for monitoring compliance with that treaty, stated that "Nobody is sitting in Iran today developing nuclear weapons. Tehran doesn't have an ongoing nuclear weapons program. But somehow, everyone in the West is talking about how Iran's nuclear program is the greatest threat to the world." (Interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sept. 2009) Instead, warning of world disaster if Iran should succeed in its imaginary goal of obtaining nuclear arms, Washington argues that Iran must be forcefully brought to its knees, through a combination of increasingly crippling sanctions, taking advantage of Iran's internal divisions and preparing for a possible military attack.
Consider these recent developments:
• The U.S has been pressuring the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to impose a fourth and more severe round of sanctions against Iran. The only real holdout has been the People's Republic of China, which in January held the council's revolving presidency. On Feb. 1, however, the president's seat passed to France, which is nearly as hostile to Iran's nuclear program as is the U.S. (France itself, by the way, relies on nuclear power for 80 percent of its own energy needs.) The Security Council's permanent members, including China and Russia, have never been a real barrier for the US. Not only has the council already approved three rounds of sanctions against Iran, but the Obama Administration is now talking of "bypassing" the U.N. in its latest push for sanctions. While sanctions are often promoted as an alternative to war, the world now knows that the sanctions imposed by the U.N. against Iraq during the first Persian Gulf War resulted in the deaths of up to 1.5 million Iraqis, a third of them children.
• Not content with just pressuring the U.N., the U.S. is pushing ahead with plans for more of its own unilateral sanctions. Congress is getting close to passing the Dodd-Shelby Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act. Among other provisions, this bipartisan bill would "impose new sanctions on entities involved in exporting certain refined petroleum products to Iran or building Iran's domestic refining capacity." This provision starkly exposes the real U.S. goal: to economically cripple Iran in an attempt to so complicate life for the Iranian people that they might demand a "regime change." In the past, the U.S. has argued that Iran doesn't need to develop nuclear power because of its vast oil reserves, while conveniently omitting the fact that Iran doesn't have sufficient refinery capacity to meet its energy needs through oil alone. Targeting companies and countries that sell refined petroleum products to Iran, or that help Iran expand its own refining capacity, shows that the real goal has nothing to do with countering nuclear proliferation. (The U.S. even pressures European countries not to provide Iran with the means to develop wind energy!) Those who desire hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East can tolerate no independent regional powers, whether or not they present a threat to any other country. This reality was dramatically demonstrated in 1953, when the CIA toppled Iran's democratically elected prime minister, Dr. Mohammad Mosaddegh, for the "crime" of nationalizing Iran's oil industry.
• Meanwhile, these threats of new sanctions are being accompanied by a military build-up in the Persian Gulf region. On Jan. 31, The Wall Street Journal reported that, in recent months, the U.S. and its Persian Gulf allies have stepped up their military defenses "in response to Iranian missile tests and Tehran's continued defiance of international efforts to curtail its nuclear program." The moves have included "upgrades, new purchases of American-made Patriot antimissile batteries and the addition of advanced air- and missile-defense radars ...." The Journal reported that, although "some of the buildup has been going on for years ... the heightened profile of the moves comes as the Obama administration has toughened its rhetoric against Tehran."
• And, according to a Feb. 1 Reuters report, "The United States has expanded land- and sea-based missile defense systems in and around the Gulf to counter what it sees as Iran's growing missile threat .... The deployments include expanded land-based Patriot defensive missile installations in Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Bahrain, as well as Navy ships with missile defense systems in and around the Mediterranean, officials said. ... The chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said last month the Pentagon must have military options ready to counter Iran should Obama call for them."
• Finally, Iran's ongoing internal political crisis has apparently led some Western anti-war organizations and activists to be ambivalent about the need to stand against Western aggression against Iran. Regardless of how activists view Iran's internal situation, we all must agree that outside pressure and interference must be opposed. Recognizing this, Iran's political opposition has urged Western countries to stay out of Iran's internal affairs. As presidential opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, has put it, "We are opposed to any types of sanctions against our nation. This is what living the Green Path means." (Statement No. 13, Sept. 28, 2009) No truly progressive democracy activist in a country targeted by the U.S. would appeal to the U.S. for support.
The political positions taken by anti-war activists in the West can become a real factor in strategic decisions made by the U.S. government and its allies. Because of this, we are heartened to see that in the United States the National Assembly to End the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and Occupations and the ANSWER Coalition have added the demand of "No War or Sanctions Against Iran!" to their fliers promoting national anti-war protests on March 20. We call on all other coalitions, organizations and individual activists to do the same, and to further demand "No Outside Interference in Iran's Internal Affairs! Self-determination for the Iranian People!"
Regardless of differences in our political analyses and views, these demands should be acceptable to all who struggle for peace, justice and a better world for all.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
5) Two Suspects Entered U.S. After Killing in Dubai
By ROBERT F. WORTH
March 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/world/middleeast/02dubai.html?ref=world
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - At least two suspects in the killing of a Hamas official in a hotel here in January traveled to the United States afterward, according to a person familiar with the investigation.
That disclosure broadened the scope of an international investigation that has fostered diplomatic tensions and cast a harsh light on the methods of Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, which police officials here accuse of ordering the killing.
One suspect traveling on a British passport arrived in the United States on Feb. 14; the other used an Irish passport and arrived on Jan. 21, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case. He did not say where the men entered the country, and added that there was no known record of their leaving.
Many of the 26 suspects identified in the case used stolen identities - most of them taken from people with dual citizenship living in Israel - and that appeared to be true of the two men who traveled to the United States, who used the names Roy Allan Cannon and Evan Dennings. On Friday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz identified the real Mr. Cannon as "a 62-year-old, ultra-Orthodox father of six" who moved to Israel in 1983. Irish officials said last week that they believed that Mr. Dennings was also a victim of identity theft.
As foreign citizens, the two suspects would have been photographed and fingerprinted on arrival in the United States, and could therefore presumably be tracked. But in light of the identity theft practiced in the case, it seems possible that the men could have left the United States under false travel documents.
Although Interpol is assisting in the investigation and has put out alert notices about the suspects, United States officials have been silent about it. On Monday, the State Department again refused to comment on the case.
Dubai police officials have already identified two American financial companies that they say issued credit cards to 14 suspects: MetaBank, based in Storm Lake, Iowa; and Payoneer, based in New York, with an Israeli office in Petah Tikva, near Tel Aviv.
The 26 suspects traveled on British, Irish, Australian, French and German passports, and the five countries have summoned Israeli ambassadors to ask how the documents were misused. Australia's prime minister, Kevin Rudd, was quoted in Australian newspapers as saying that his nation was "not satisfied" with the Israeli explanation so far. At least 16 suspects appear to have used the names of people with dual citizenship living in Israel.
On Monday, the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, expressed suspicion about the use of European passports during a speech to a United Nations gathering in Geneva, saying Western "security services, intelligence people, or a part of their government may have been involved" in the killing.
The Dubai police chief, Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, said last week that he was "99 percent, if not 100 percent" sure that the Mossad was behind the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas official, on Jan. 19. Israeli officials have refused to comment on the matter, in keeping with their longstanding practice with accusations against the Mossad.
Mr. Mabhouh had a role in the 1989 abduction and murder of two Israeli soldiers, and in smuggling arms into Gaza, according to Israel and Hamas.
The Dubai police have released an array of evidence in the case, including high-quality surveillance video. On Sunday police officials said forensic tests showed that the killers had injected Mr. Mabhouh with a muscle relaxant to immobilize him before suffocating him in his hotel room.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
6) Immigrants Rally for a Nationwide Strike in Italy
By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
March 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/world/europe/02iht-italy.html?ref=world
MILAN - In an effort to heighten awareness about the contributions made by foreign workers to the Italian economy, the promoters of the first strike by immigrants in the country invited workers to stay home and to boycott shopping for one day.
Similar protests took place in other European countries on Monday (the initiative started in France and found supporters in Spain and Greece, as well). A comparable boycott, "A Day Without Immigrants," championing full rights for immigrants living in the United States, took place in 2006.
But demonstrations Monday had a particular resonance in Italy, where anti-immigrant rhetoric has increased recently in anticipation of regional elections at the end of the month, and where foreign labor makes up nearly 10 percent of the work force.
While introducing one electoral initiative last week, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi accused the left of "wanting an invasion of immigrants," only to strengthen the opposition's electoral basis.
Around Milan, electoral posters for the anti-immigrant Northern League party depicted a Native American Indian chieftain with the slogan: "They put up with immigration, now they live on reserves."
But various studies suggest that immigrant labor has become a fundamental component of the Italian economy.
"Many Italians are convinced that immigrants are a burden, but in fact they have a very positive effect on our welfare system," said Maurizio Ambrosini, a professor of the sociology of migration at the University of Milan, pointing out that Italian families have become increasingly dependant on foreign caregivers to look after their children and elderly parents. The construction industry, too, is heavily dependant on foreigners, particularly from East European countries, he added. "If anything, Italy constantly needs new waves of immigrants," he said.
Statistics published last autumn by the Catholic Caritas Migrants foundation suggested that the 4.5 million legal immigrants in Italy (about 7.2 percent of the population) contribute about 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product, often in jobs snubbed by Italians.
In its most recent annual report, issued last May, the Bank of Italy estimated that in 2006 foreigners "contributed about 4 percent to revenue from personal income tax, V.A.T. and excise duties, social security contributions, and the regional tax on productive activities." More specifically, foreign residents contributed "around €4.5 billion in personal income tax and just under €10 billion in social security contributions, equivalent to 3 and 5 percent respectively of revenue from these two items," according to the bank's report, which also found that "the increase in the supply of labor resulting from immigration does not seem, on average, to have had negative effects on the wages or job prospects of the native population."
"Immigrants come here to work, they're funding our pensions, it makes sense to integrate them," said Ciro Piscelli, a left-leaning municipal councilman for the town of Rozzano, in the Milanese hinterland. He was one of several hundred people who met in front of Milan City Hall on Monday morning in support of the strike. Like many other southern Italians, Mr. Piscelli emigrated to Lombardy from his native Naples in the 1970s, so he said he "spoke from experience." Immigrants, he said, "are a resource."
But such considerations seem to take a back seat whenever trouble involving immigrants arises. Calls to toughen up immigration policies multiplied last month, after rioting between immigrant groups disrupted a Milanese neighborhood last month.
And studies suggest that racist sentiments are rising in Italy, especially among the young. Research commissioned by the national and regional governments and presented to the lower house last month found that nearly half of Italians between the ages 18 and 29 express varying degrees of xenophobic or racist sentiments. "Young people themselves say that they perceive racism as increasing," said Enzo Risso, the director of the SWG research institute that carried out the survey.
Jorge Carazas, one of the speakers at the rally Monday, came to Italy from Argentina 10 years ago. "We are the country's new citizens and we want to send politicians a clear message," he said. "No matter what racist tones the government chooses to adopt, we're not going anywhere. This is our home."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
7) For Pennies, a Disposable Toilet That Could Help Grow Crops
By SINDYA N. BHANOO
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/science/02bag.html?ref=world
A Swedish entrepreneur is trying to market and sell a biodegradable plastic bag that acts as a single-use toilet for urban slums in the developing world.
Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces.
The bag, called the Peepoo, is the brainchild of Anders Wilhelmson, an architect and professor in Stockholm.
"Not only is it sanitary," said Mr. Wilhelmson, who has patented the bag, "they can reuse this to grow crops."
In his research, he found that urban slums in Kenya, despite being densely populated, had open spaces where waste could be buried.
He also found that slum dwellers there collected their excrement in a plastic bag and disposed of it by flinging it, calling it a "flyaway toilet" or a "helicopter toilet."
This inspired Mr. Wilhelmson to design the Peepoo, an environmentally friendly alternative that he is confident will turn a profit.
"People will say, 'It's valuable to me, but well priced,' " he said.
He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents - comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag.
In the developing world, an estimated 2.6 billion people, or about 40 percent of the earth's population, do not have access to a toilet, according to United Nations figures.
It is a public health crisis: open defecation can contaminate drinking water, and an estimated 1.5 million children worldwide die yearly from diarrhea, largely because of poor sanitation and hygiene.
To mitigate this, the United Nations has a goal to reduce by half the number of people without access to toilets by 2015.
The market for low-cost toilets in the developing world is about a trillion dollars, according to Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organization, a sanitation advocacy group.
As far as toilets go, "the people in the middle class have reached saturation in consumption," said Mr. Sim, who calls himself a fan of the Peepoo. "This has created a new need, urgently, of looking for a new customer."
Since 2001, his organization has held an annual World Toilet Summit, and Mr. Sims said he was excited that in recent years there had been an emergence of entrepreneurs devising low-cost solutions.
At the 2009 meeting, Rigel Technology of Singapore unveiled a $30 toilet that separates solid and liquid waste, turning solid waste into compost. Sulabh International, an Indian nonprofit and the host of the World Toilet Summit in 2007, is promoting several low-cost toilets, including one that produces biogas from excrement. The gas can then be used in cooking.
But Therese Dooley, senior adviser on sanitation and hygiene for Unicef, said that inculcating sanitation habits was no easy task.
"It will take a large amount of behavior change," Ms. Dooley said.
She added that while "the private sector can play a major role, it will never get to the bottom of the pyramid."
A sizable population, poor and uneducated, will still be left without toilets, Ms. Dooley said, and nonprofits and governments will have to play a large role in distribution and education.
Meanwhile, Mr. Wilhelmson is pushing ahead with the Peepoo.
After successfully testing it for a year in Kenya and India, he said he planned to mass produce the bag this summer.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
8) New Evidence Surfaces in New Orleans Killings
"The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office has had a problematic history with capital cases. Of the 36 people sentenced to death in the parish since 1976, more have been exonerated than have been executed - five compared with four - two have been retried and acquitted, and more than half are no longer on death row after their cases were reviewed by the Louisiana Supreme Court..."
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON
March 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/us/02orleans.html?ref=us
NEW ORLEANS - Early one morning in June 2006, when this city was only half full and in many areas still desolate from the flooding after Hurricane Katrina, five men were shot to death in an S.U.V. in the Central City neighborhood.
The killings sent the city into an uproar, galvanizing politicians, who spoke of "Hurricane Crime," and adding urgency to the city's request for hundreds of Louisiana National Guard soldiers to return and patrol the streets.
The criminal case that followed was just as incendiary in many ways, and it ended this past August with a death penalty verdict, the first in a dozen years in a New Orleans murder case, against a 23-year-old man named Michael Anderson. It was a trophy verdict for the district attorney's office, a sign that law and order had triumphed in one of the city's most heinous and high-profile crimes.
But there is a problem. New evidence from the state's key witness released in early January by the district attorney's office - evidence that the office had for over two years - could put a hole right in the middle of the case against Mr. Anderson.
Richard Bourke of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center, a nonprofit organization that represents Mr. Anderson and others facing the death penalty, routinely pushes for new trials in capital cases. But while these motions are standard practice, and sometimes take up a single page, this one is different, Mr. Bourke said.
Mr. Bourke cited crucial evidence that was never handed over to the defense during the trial, including a videotaped interview with prosecutors in which the state's central witness contradicts her testimony on significant points.
"We've done some meritorious motions for new trial cases," he said. "But I've never seen a case like this. Nobody has."
On Monday, the first day of the hearing for a possible new trial, prosecutors said that none of the evidence now available was significant enough to have changed the outcome of the jury trial, and said efforts to get current and former prosecutors to testify were little more than a "witch hunt."
The Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office has had a problematic history with capital cases. Of the 36 people sentenced to death in the parish since 1976, more have been exonerated than have been executed - five compared with four - two have been retried and acquitted, and more than half are no longer on death row after their cases were reviewed by the Louisiana Supreme Court, according to an article in the Southern University Law Review by Bidish Sarma, a New Orleans lawyer.
The prosecution of Mr. Anderson has been a trial, in many ways, of the district attorney's office itself.
At the time of the murders, Mr. Anderson had a significant arrest record, on charges of extortion, armed robbery, drug possession and attempted murder. But he had only two convictions, one for a misdemeanor. The inability to turn the other arrests into convictions made him, in the words of the director of a local police watchdog organization, "the poster boy of what was wrong and what is wrong with the local criminal justice system."
Then, nearly a year after Mr. Anderson was arrested, the district attorney, Eddie Jordan, dropped the charges, citing difficulties tracking down - and believing - Torrie Williams, 33, the witness on whom the indictment depended and on whom a trial would depend.
The police department held a news conference lambasting the decision and even produced Ms. Williams, who told reporters she was willing to testify. A city councilwoman called for Mr. Jordan to resign, and the mayor called on the state attorney general to investigate.
With political pressure intensifying, Mr. Jordan reindicted Mr. Anderson several weeks later.
LaShanda Webb, an assistant district attorney initially assigned to the case who left the office last year, said she did not consider Ms. Williams to be credible. "No one wanted to touch it," she said.
"Are we prosecuting cases because of sufficient evidence or because that's what the public wants?" Ms. Webb said.
After Mr. Anderson's conviction, Leon Cannizzaro, the current district attorney, called Ms. Williams "the essence of our case," and proof that people should not be afraid to cooperate with the authorities.
Then, at a hearing in January, an assistant district attorney disclosed that a videotaped police interview with Ms. Williams had been found during an office move. The tape was made shortly before Mr. Anderson's second indictment, but was never turned over to his lawyers.
In the video, Ms. Williams, sitting at a long table in front of prosecutors and investigators, gives an account that diverges from the one she gave on the witness stand, and which lines up with the testimony of several defense witnesses.
Ms. Williams, who had come down from Baton Rouge with her boyfriend the day before the killings, said in both accounts that she saw the shooting of the five men firsthand. But at the trial, she testified that she had left her hotel room around 3:30 a.m. and had seen the killings by streetlight.
On the tape, Ms. Williams said she stayed in her hotel room late enough to watch the 5 a.m. news, a timeline corroborated by two defense witnesses, including her boyfriend at the time. When she saw the shooting, she said on the tape, there was just enough daylight to see without any streetlights. Given that the murders took place around 4 a.m., this would have been impossible.
Prosecutors at Monday's hearing argued that the trial jury knew of other occasions on which Ms. Williams had contradicted herself, but that they had nevertheless found her believable enough to convict Mr. Anderson.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
9) Defense files motion for new trial for man convicted of killing 5
by Mike Hoss and Mike Perlstein / Eyewitness News
[There's a very informtive video with this article...bw]
Posted on March 1, 2010 at 5:51 PM
Updated yesterday at 11:01 PM
http://www.wwltv.com/news/Defense-files-motion-for-new-trial-for-man-convicted-of-killing-5-85866427.html
NEW ORLEANS -- Defense attorneys went to court Monday to seek a new trial for Michael Anderson, convicted late last year and sentenced to death in the massacre of five teenagers in 2006, trying to show conflicting testimony by the state's key witness and introducing two new witnesses who were not heard by the jury heard at the trial.
Anderson's defense team introduced evidence at Monday's daylong hearing pointing to another person as the alleged triggerman: Telly Hankton.
Hankton is in jail awaiting trial on two unrelated murder cases. He was brielfy brought into court at Monday's hearing, but the defense team objected to his presence as intimidating to its witnesses.
"Your honor, the state is going to get one of our witnesses killed," argued lead defense attorney Richard Bourke.
With Hankton ushered away to a holding cell, Bourke proceeded to introduce an affidavit that alleged eyewitness, Herman McMillan, provided the FBI in November 2007 -- a statement the jury never heard.
McMillan said in the interview he saw Hankton kill the five teenagers on the night of the murder. McMillan said he brandished a .357-magnum handgun and shot at Hankton. But because McMillan feared incriminating himself, the interview was never used in the trial. When he took the stand, the prosecution said if he testified and confirmed his statement is correct, he could be prosecuted for being a felon with a handgun. McMillan chose not to, pleading the Fifth Amendment.
Later in the afternoon, the defense called a second witness who signed a statement alleging that Hankton confessed to the killings in a jailhouse conversation after Anderson had been convicted. Steve Givens, who himself is awaiting trial for murder, refused to discuss his conversation with Hankton once he was on the witness stand, but he vouched for the signed statement he gave to defense investigators.
Givens' statement said, "Hankton admitted that Michael Anderson was not responsible for the killings and that it was (Telly Hankton's) work," according to the defense's 90-page motion for a new trial.
Another issue brought up by defense attorneys was the focus of a 4 Investigates report last week. A July 2007 tape of an interview with Torrie Williams, the prosecution's star witness during the Anderson trial, was released to defense attornies last month. In this new tape, which the jury didn't see because it was never given to the defense, Williams said she was watching the news at 5 a.m. and she left the hotel at 6 a.m. Because the shooting happened at 4 a.m., the defense believes she could not have been outside during the shooting, leading them to believe that renders her key testimony invalid.
The hearing ended at about 6 p.m. Monday and will continue 9 a.m. Tuesday. Criminal Court Judge Lynda Van Davis, who presided over Anderson's August 2009 trial, may decide then if Anderson should be granted a new trial.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
10) Cheese Thief Jailed for 7 Years in California
By ROBERT MACKEY
March 3, 2010
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/cheese-thief-jailed-for-7-years-in-california/
On Monday, more than a year after a man was arrested outside a
market in California with a $3.99 bag of Tillamook shredded cheese
in his pants he had not paid for, a judge decided to go relatively
easy on him, sentencing him to seven years and eight months in jail.
Prosecutors in Yolo County, Calif., outside Sacramento, had
originally asked for a life sentence under the state's "three
strikes" law, arguing that the man, Robert Preston Ferguson, was a
menace to society because of prior burglary convictions. As The
Sacramento Bee reported last month, the district attorney's office
asked for 11 years instead, after "a new psychological evaluation
convinced prosecutors that Robert Preston Ferguson's most recent
convictions for petty theft did not warrant a life sentence."
At Monday's sentencing hearing, the Sacramento newspaper noted, a
deputy district attorney "said Ferguson was a career criminal who
wouldn't change." The prosecutor added that Mr. Ferguson, who is
in his 50s, had 13 previous convictions and had been in jail for
22 of the past 27 years but still took the cheese. Ten days before
the cheese theft, Mr. Ferguson had also stolen a woman's wallet
from a 7-Eleven as she tended to her sick child, who had just
thrown up on the floor.
Because of Mr. Ferguson's prior convictions, he had been charged
with felonies for both of those petty thefts.
According to the Sacramento newspaper, Mr. Ferguson's defense
lawyer, Monica Brushia, argued that his six other burglary
convictions had taken place three decades ago and noted that his
conviction for misdemeanor assault came when he was a teenager and
had thrown a can of soda at one of his siblings. She also noted
that the psychologist's report had concluded that Mr. Ferguson was
mentally ill. He has biploar syndrome and struggles to control his
impulses to steal during manic phases, she said.
She concluded that his most recent thefts were petty. "We're
talking about a pack of cheese," she said.
Leaving aside concerns about whether the long sentence was just,
some observers in California asked if the cash-strapped state
should really be spending between $50,000 and $100,000 a year to
lock up a cheese thief.
As Sasha Abramsky noted in a commentary on the case for The
Guardian last month, "a number of newspapers, including
conservative publications such as the Orange County Register,
ridiculed the D.A.'s office for its willingness to waste taxpayer
dollars."
The Orange County newspaper compared the case with that of Jerry
Dewayne Williams, a man in Los Angeles who was sentenced in 1995
to 25 years to life for stealing a slice of pizza.
In his column for The Guardian, Mr. Abramsky added:
Three strikes is something that I have written on quite a bit over
the years; I have talked with many three strikers and their
families, and periodically receive updates from them on their
status. This past Christmas I got a card from the wife of one
inmate, who has spent the last 16 years behind bars on a
drug-related offence. "It is hard to believe that nearly 16- years
have gone by and we still have another 12 before D** will be
eligible for parole," she wrote. "You would think that with all of
California's budget problems, someone in Sacramento would realize
that 16 years for a minor offence is long enough."
A columnist for Sacramento Bee, Marcos Breton, took the opposite
view, arguing on Wednesday that this "shoplifter with a sad life"
deserves to be in jail:
The truth is, there is a good chance Ferguson will victimize
someone again. He has nearly 30 years' experience as a career
criminal. What if he breaks into a home, stumbles in on a family
and panics?
You wonder if the people screaming about his treatment now would
be screaming then, too, asking how it is he ever got back on the
street in the first place.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
11) Scholar's School Reform U-Turn Shakes Up Debate
"Charter schools, she [Diane Ravitch] concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself. 'Accountability, as written into federal law, was not raising standards but dumbing down the schools,' she writes."
By SAM DILLON
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03ravitch.html?ref=us
Diane Ravitch, the education historian who built her intellectual reputation battling progressive educators and served in the first Bush administration's Education Department, is in the final stages of an astonishing, slow-motion about-face on almost every stand she once took on American schooling.
Once outspoken about the power of standardized testing, charter schools and free markets to improve schools, Dr. Ravitch is now caustically critical. She underwent an intellectual crisis, she says, discovering that these strategies, which she now calls faddish trends, were undermining public education. She resigned last year from the boards of two conservative research groups.
"School reform today is like a freight train, and I'm out on the tracks saying, 'You're going the wrong way!' " Dr. Ravitch said in an interview.
Dr. Ravitch is one of the most influential education scholars of recent decades, and her turnaround has become the buzz of school policy circles.
"What's Diane up to? That's what people are asking." said Grover J. Whitehurst, who was the director of the Department of Education's research arm in the second Bush administration and is now Dr. Ravitch's colleague at the Brookings Institution.
Among the topics on which Dr. Ravitch has reversed her views is the main federal law on public schools, No Child Left Behind, which is up for a rewrite in coming weeks in Congress. She once supported it, but now says its requirements for testing in math and reading have squeezed vital subjects like history and art out of classrooms.
Dr. Ravitch's new posture has angered critics.
"She has done more than any one I can think of in America to drive home the message of accountability and charters and testing," said Arthur E. Levine, a former president of Teachers College, where Dr. Ravitch got her doctorate and began her teaching career in the 1970s. "Now for her to suddenly conclude that she's been all wrong is extraordinary - and not very helpful."
Admirers say she is returning to her roots as an advocate for public education. She rose to prominence in the 1970s with books defending the civic value of public schools from attacks by left-wing detractors, who were calling them capitalist tools to indoctrinate working-class children.
"First she angered the Marxist historians, and later the fans of progressive education and the multiculturalists," said Jeffrey E. Mirel, a professor of education and history at the University of Michigan. "But she's always defended public schools and a robust traditional curriculum, because she believes they've been a ladder of social mobility."
Dr. Ravitch was born in Texas and graduated from Wellesley. She gained formidable influence during the Republican-dominated 1980s. In her meticulous office on the top floor of a 19th-century Brooklyn brownstone hangs a photograph of herself, seated next to Vice President Bush during a visit to the White House, directly across from President Ronald Reagan.
In 1991, Lamar Alexander, the first President Bush's secretary of education, made her an assistant secretary, a post she used to lead a federal effort to promote the creation of state and national academic standards.
Since leaving government in 1993, Dr. Ravitch has been a much-sought-after policy analyst and research scholar, quoted in hundreds of articles on American education. And she has written five books, including "Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform" (2001) and "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn" (2003), an influential examination of the censorship of school books by left- and right-wing pressure groups.
In her new book, "The Death and Life of the Great American School System," she describes the bipartisan consensus that took root in the early 1990s, with her support, and has held sway since.
"The new thinking saw the public school system as obsolete, because it is controlled by the government," she writes. "I argued that certain managerial and structural changes - that is, choice, charters, merit pay and accountability - would help to reform our schools."
In January 2001, Dr. Ravitch was at the White House to hear President George W. Bush outline his vision for No Child Left Behind, which Congress approved with bipartisan majorities and which became law in 2002.
"It sounded terrific," she recalled in the interview.
There were signs soon after, however, that her views were changing. She had endorsed mayoral control of New York City schools before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg obtained it in 2002, but by 2004 she had emerged as a fierce critic. Some said she was nursing a grudge because close friends had lost jobs in the mayor's shake-up of the schools' bureaucracy.
In 2005, she said, a study she undertook of Pakistan's weak and inequitable education system, dominated by private and religious institutions, convinced her that protecting the United States' public schools was important to democracy.
She remembers another date, Nov. 30, 2006, when at a Washington conference she heard a dozen experts conclude that the No Child law was not raising student achievement.
These and other experiences left her increasingly disaffected from the choice and accountability movements. Charter schools, she concluded, were proving to be no better on average than regular schools, but in many cities were bleeding resources from the public system. Testing had become not just a way to measure student learning, but an end in itself.
"Accountability, as written into federal law, was not raising standards but dumbing down the schools," she writes. "The effort to upend American public education and replace it with something that was market-based began to feel too radical for me."
She said she began to feel estranged intellectually from close colleagues.
One she heard criticize the No Child law was Chester E. Finn Jr., a former assistant secretary of education with whom she had written a book and worked at two conservative research groups, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the Koret Task Force at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
They were ideological soul mates and just plain chums. Often over the last decade, they were on the phone together or exchanging e-mail messages half a dozen times a day. But although Mr. Finn had become critical of the No Child law, he remained an advocate of charter schools and school choice.
By 2008, Mr. Finn said, "there were more and more issues where the staff and everybody else on the Fordham board would say, 'Let's do A,' and Diane would say, 'Let's do B.' "
Finally, she recalled, "I told everybody at a dinner meeting at Koret that I was going to resign, and they all said, 'Come on, stay - we need somebody to argue with us." Dr. Ravitch stayed on for a time, but left both organizations last spring.
Mr. Finn has done his own rethinking, and he said he shared many of her disappointments.
"Standards, in many places, have proven nebulous and low," he writes in a coming essay. " 'Accountability' has turned to test-cramming and bean-counting, often limited to basic reading and math skills."
But Mr. Finn has reached sharply different conclusions from Dr. Ravitch.
"Diane says, 'Let's return to the old public school system,' " he said. "I say let's blow it up."
But Dr. Ravitch is finding many supporters. She told school superintendents at a convention in Phoenix last month that the United States' educational policies were ill-conceived, compared with those in nations with the best-performing schools.
"Nations like Finland and Japan seek out the best college graduates for teaching positions, prepare them well, pay them well and treat them with respect," she said. "They make sure that all their students study the arts, history, literature, geography, civics, foreign languages, the sciences and other subjects. They do this because this is the way to ensure good education. We're on the wrong track."
The superintendents gave Dr. Ravitch a standing ovation.
"We totally agreed with what she had to say," said Eugene G. White, superintendent of the Indianapolis Public Schools. "We were amazed to see that she'd changed her tune."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
12) California: White Hood Prompts Inquiry on San Diego Campus
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/education/03brfs-WHITEHOODPRO_BRF.html?ref=education
The police at the University of California, San Diego, are investigating the discovery Monday night of what appeared to be a Ku Klux Klan-style hood on a statue outside the main campus library. The hood, "crudely fashioned" from a pillowcase, a university statement said, was found along with a rose placed in the statue's fingers. The campus has been shaken by racial incidents in the past two weeks that have led to student protests and promises by administrators to improve the racial climate at the campus and the nine others in the system.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
13) Greece Adopts Plan for New Taxes and Pay Reductions
By NIKI KITSANTONIS
March 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/04/business/global/04greece.html?adxnnl=1&ref=world&adxnnlx=1267646447-2+zoCyBWW6Wk58QekGq4tw
ATHENS - The Greek government Wednesday approved another round of tax increases and pay cuts for public employees as part of new austerity measures aimed at reducing the country's huge budget deficit and defusing a debt crisis that has rattled the European Union and its common currency.
The raft of measures aims to generate €4.8 billion, or $6.54 billion, in revenue and savings this year, and comes just a month after another package of cuts worth €5 billion that has already generated strikes and protests.
E.U. officials had demanded that Greece cut deeper before they would consider extending any type of bailout for the country, which has seen its borrowing costs soar as a result of its precarious finances.
"We are now justifiably expecting EU solidarity, which is the other side of this agreement," the prime minister, George Papandreou, said in a televised address after the Cabinet meeting, where the package was approved. "Europe faces a historic responsibility."
The new measures include an increase of two percentage points in the value-added sales tax, which is now 19 percent; a further increase in the fuel tax; increases of 20 percent in alcohol taxes and 6 percent on cigarette taxes; a new tax on luxury goods and a 12 percent cut in add-ons to civil servant wages, the government spokesman, Giorgos Petalotis, said at a news conference.
They also include a 30 percent reduction in the bonuses given to civil servants as holiday pay, which amount to two additional monthly wages, he said.
"The new measures were not a choice but a necessity to save Greece from the clutches of speculators, to allow us to breathe," Mr. Papandreou said in a televised appearance with President Karolos Papoulias.
Mr. Papandreou is expected in Berlin on Friday for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been at the forefront in pressuring Greece for greater austerity. He will then meet President Nicolas Sarkozy of France on Sunday before talks with President Barack Obama in Washington next Tuesday.
Greek bonds advanced for a fourth day on the prospect of the new measures leading to E.U. help and averting what would be the first ever default in the euro zone.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year bond fell 13 basis points to 6.01 percent, its lowest level since Feb. 11, according to Bloomberg. The premium investors demand for buying Greek government debt over comparable German bonds, the European benchmark, declined 14 basis points to about 2.9 percent.
Greece has come under great pressure to rein in spending after the new government late last year revealed that its budget deficit was nearly 13 percent of gross domestic product. Greece has promised to reduce that by four percentage points this year, to 8.7 percent of G.D.P., as a first step to getting under the E.U. cap of 3 percent.
"A massive effort is being made to put our country back on its feet and to avert the collapse of our economy," the government spokesman, Mr. Petalotis, said.
Earlier Wednesday, a government official involved in the Cabinet discussions described the cuts as "the harshest and most difficult measures any government has imposed since the restoration of democracy in 1974," referring to the fall of the Greek military dictatorship.
"But we are determined to push them through, regardless of the political cost," he said, adding that the government was confident that voters "understand the importance of these measures and will support them."
Protests against the austerity measures continued Wednesday on the streets of Athens, however.
Dozens of pensioners rallied outside the prime minister's official residence to protest a freeze on pension payments. Teachers at state secondary schools held another protest outside the Education Ministry over cuts to add-ons to their wages.
Meanwhile taxi drivers stayed off the job for a second day, protesting changes that would oblige them to issue receipts, keep account books and pay tax according to their income.
The proposed reduction in holiday pay was less extreme than the 50 percent cut that had been widely anticipated. But the powerful civil servants' union was unimpressed, and stood by its call for a 24-hour strike on March 16.
"These measures are tragic. The government seems to have forgotten that Greeks have one of the lowest average wages in the European Union," Despina Spanou, a spokesperson for the union, told state television channel Net. "The Greek worker cannot handle these extra cuts."
Others suggested that the measures by themselves might not generate the savings predicted, in a country where tax evasion and corruption is widespread. Government officials have pledged to crack down on such problems "mercilessly" as part of its response to the current crisis.
"The difficulty will be in implementing these new measures," said Yannis Stournaras, director of the Greek Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research, a leading economic analysis group. "We need good project management and what we have seen so far is less than encouraging."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
14) Interference Seen in Blackwater Inquiry
By JAMES RISEN
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/middleeast/03blackwater.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - An official at the United States Embassy in Iraq has told federal prosecutors that he believes that State Department officials sought to block any serious investigation of the 2007 shooting episode in which Blackwater Worldwide security guards were accused of murdering 17 Iraqi civilians, according to court testimony made public on Tuesday.
David Farrington, a State Department security agent in the American Embassy at the time of the shooting in Baghdad's Nisour Square, told prosecutors that some of his colleagues were handling evidence in a way they hoped would help the Blackwater guards avoid punishment for a crime that drew headlines and raised tensions between American and Iraqi officials.
The description of Mr. Farrington's account came in closed-door testimony last October from Kenneth Kohl, the lead prosecutor in the case against the Blackwater guards.
"I talked to David Farrington, who was concerned, who expressed concern about the integrity of the work being done by his fellow officers," Mr. Kohl recalled. He said that Mr. Farrington had said he was in meetings where diplomatic security agents said that after they had gone to the scene and picked up casings and other evidence, "They said we've got enough to get these guys off now."
Mr. Farrington, who also testified in a closed-door pretrial hearing in the Nisour Square shooting case, declined to comment. His own testimony has not yet been unsealed by the court.
Blackwater became a multimillion-dollar contractor as the United States escalated wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, providing protection for State Department officials and covert work for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The company, dominated by former American officials, has been described by critics as being too close to the intelligence and diplomatic agencies for which it worked.
The New York Times has reported that the Justice Department was investigating allegations that Blackwater had tried to bribe Iraqi government officials in hopes of retaining their security business after the deadly shooting.
In December, a federal judge dismissed the criminal charges against five former Blackwater guards in the Nisour Square shooting, and criticized the Justice Department's handling of the case, chiding prosecutors for trying to use statements from defendants who had been offered immunity and testimony from witnesses tainted by news media leaks.
The documents made public on Tuesday show that before the December dismissal, prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents working on the Nisour Square case took the stand in October to argue that they had plenty of untainted evidence. In a closed-door hearing, they also contended that they had evidence that, in the immediate aftermath of the shootings, there had been a concerted effort to make the case go away, both by Blackwater and by at least some embassy officials.
In fact, prosecutors were told that the embassy had never conducted any significant investigation of any of the numerous shooting episodes in Iraq involving Blackwater before the Nisour Square case, according to the documents.
In his October testimony, Mr. Kohl described how the Justice Department had "serious concerns" about obstruction of justice in the case. He also said prosecutors briefed Kenneth Wainstein, then an assistant attorney general, on evidence of obstruction by Blackwater management.
Mr. Kohl disclosed that prosecutors had discovered that five Blackwater guards who were on the convoy involved in the Nisour Square shootings reported to Blackwater management what they had seen. One guard, he said, described it as "murder in cold blood." Mr. Kohl said that Blackwater management never reported these statements by the guards to the State Department.
He said that prosecutors informed senior Justice Department officials as early as 2007 that they were investigating whether Blackwater managers "manipulated" the official statements made by the guards to the State Department.
But he testified that prosecutors also had evidence of embassy officials thwarting the inquiry. In addition to the testimony of Mr. Farrington, Mr. Kohl said that United States military officials had told prosecutors that they witnessed State Department investigators "badgering" Iraqi witnesses.
He also testified that diplomatic security agents, who conducted the embassy's initial investigation before the F.B.I. and Justice Department began a criminal inquiry, left out important facts from their report relating to a witness's account.
Philip J. Crowley, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, defended the department's handling of the Nisour Square case. He said: "Seventeen people died in broad daylight. We took the case seriously from the outset. We invited the F.B.I. to join the investigation, and more than two years later, we continue to pursue the case and seek justice."
Officials from Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Kohl described what he believed was "an undercurrent of obstruction in this case."
He said that a Blackwater official had told him that the whole criminal investigation could have been avoided if the State Department had given Blackwater officials more time to prepare the official statements by the guards involved in the shooting.
"He said, do you know why this all happened, why we're here?" Mr. Kohl recalled. "Because the State Department didn't give us enough time to work on these statements with these guys. We only had a couple hours, and we needed to get these over to the embassy."
The dismissal of the criminal case against the guards for Blackwater in the Nisour Square shooting prompted bitter protests by Iraqis against the United States, and it led the Iraqi government to threaten to bring a lawsuit of its own in the case.
The Justice Department has now appealed the dismissal. Blackwater has settled one series of civil lawsuits brought by victims of the Nisour Square shooting, but another lawsuit brought by another group of victims is still pending.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
15) Britain Grapples With Debt of Greek Proportions
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
News Analysis
March 3, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/business/global/03pound.html?ref=world
LONDON - As Greece's debt troubles batter the euro, Britain has done its utmost to stay above the fray.
Until now, that is. Suddenly, investors are asking if Britain may soon face its own sovereign debt crisis if the government fails to slash its growing budget deficits quickly enough to escape the contagious fears of financial markets.
The pound fell to $1.4954 on Tuesday, its lowest level against the dollar in nearly 10 months. The yield on 10-year government bonds, known as gilts, slid as investors fretted that Parliament would be too fragmented after a crucial election in May to whip Britain's messy finances back into shape.
The slide in the pound followed a sharper decline on Monday after polls released over the weekend indicated that the opposition Conservatives had lost their clear lead in the election race.
Without a strong political majority to tackle Britain's lumbering fiscal problems, investors could start to make it greatly more expensive for the government to raise funds, setting the stage for a potential double-dip recession, if not worse.
"If you really want a fiscal problem, look at the U.K.," said Mark Schofield, a fixed-income strategist at Citigroup. "In Europe, the average deficit is about 6 percent of G.D.P. and in the U.K. it's 12 percent. It is only just beginning."
Since the Labour government's intense fiscal intervention in 2008 and 2009, yields on British government debt have soared to among the highest in Europe. And on a broader scale, which includes the borrowing of households and companies, the overall level of debt in Britain is the second-largest in the world, after Japan's, at 380 percent of the country's gross domestic product, according to a recent report by the consulting company McKinsey.
In recent weeks, the focus has been on debt scofflaws in Europe like Greece, Portugal and Spain, countries where borrowing costs have shot up in line with their growing deficits as investors demanded higher rates to compensate them for the added risk of lending the governments money.
But the recent plunge in the value of the pound below $1.50 and the gradual move upward of Britain's benchmark 10-year borrowing rate on gilts to above 4 percent suggest that investors are now getting ready to reassess the country's fiscal condition.
Britain is not in the 16-nation euro zone and, unlike Greece and other struggling countries that use the currency, it retains control over its monetary policy. As a result, it has benefited so far from a huge bond-buying program undertaken by the Bank of England - proportionally, the largest in the world - that has kept mortgage rates and gilt yields at unusually low levels.
That means the government and its citizens have been able to continue to borrow at interest rates that do not reflect their true financial situation.
Indeed, the increase in private and government debt here contrasts sharply with the deleveraging that has been going on in the United States.
British household debt is now 170 percent of overall annual income, compared with 130 percent in the United States. In an echo of the United States' rush into subprime mortgages with low teaser rates, millions of homeowners in Britain have piled into variable-rate mortgages that are linked to the rock-bottom base rate.
As for the British government, it has been able to finance a budget deficit of 12.5 percent of G.D.P. - equal to Greece's - at an interest rate more than two full percentage points lower only because the Bank of England bought the majority of the bonds it issued last year.
"It's not just 'basket cases' like Greece that can be considered candidates for sovereign crises," said Simon White of Variant Perception, a research house in London that caters to hedge funds and wealthy individuals. "Gilts and sterling will continue to come under pressure as scrutiny of the U.K. fiscal situation intensifies."
Adding to this concern is the precarious condition of the British consumer. As interest rates have hit new lows, the popularity of variable-rate loans has grown. At the end of December, 40 percent of new mortgages were tracking the government's base rate.
Despite comments from Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, that he might restart his quantitative easing program in light of current economic weakness, the view among investors is growing that interest rates here will rise further, along with higher inflation and Britain's increased risk profile.
In a speech this year, Andrew Haldane, the executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England, warned about how vulnerable Britain was to a rate increase, pointing out that an increase of one percentage point would cause debt service costs relative to income to double, to 13 percent.
"This is a ticking time bomb," said Nick Hopkinson of Property Portfolio Rescue, a company that assists overleveraged homeowners. "There are over 400,000 people who are in arrears with their mortgage rates the cheapest they have ever been. When rates increase, a lot of people will be tipped over the edge."
As a result, those counting on the British consumer to take up the slack from any scaling back of government borrowing could be in for a shock. Consider Sheridan King, a sales manager who is struggling to pay off his £32,000 ($47,075) in nonmortgage debt. Far from thinking about going shopping, his first priority is keeping clear of his creditors.
And even though his variable mortgage of about £100,000 carries a very low rate, interest costs are already chewing up a substantial portion of his pay, and he is deeply worried about the future.
"If rates go up, it will be a very dangerous situation for me," Mr. King said. "It might lead me to consider bankruptcy."
For the time being, at least, the British government faces no such threat.
Despite its borrowing and spending excesses, Britain still maintains a triple-A credit rating and much of its debt is long term. But with 29 percent of British bonds held by foreigners, Britain, like Greece, remains highly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of outside investors.
Since early this year, foreign holdings of British bonds have fallen from 35 percent, a trend that has tracked the pound's decline and contributed to the increase in the yield on its 10-year gilts.
As to which political party he thinks is best placed to handle these challenges, Mr. King takes a skeptical view. "We are just struggling to get by with all this debt," he said. "It's time the government got its house in order."
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
16) U.S. to Send Bomb Kits for Air Force of Pakistan
By REUTERS
March 2, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/03/world/asia/03pstan.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will deliver 1,000 laser-guided bomb kits to Pakistan this month and is considering additional arms sales to help the Pakistani Air Force combat insurgents in the Afghan border region.
The Air Force secretary, Michael B. Donley, said Tuesday that the arms sales came in response to a request made by the air chief of the Pakistani Air Force in December.
"There continues to be a dialogue back and forth," Mr. Donley said, noting that the government had already agreed to sell Pakistan munitions and night vision goggles, and was also stepping up training.
Pakistan is also expected to receive new F-16 fighters made by Lockheed Martin Corporation this spring or summer, Mr. Donley said, noting that the fighter jets would give Pakistan greatly expanded capabilities in its fight against "radical elements" in the border region.
A Lockheed spokeswoman, Laurie Quincy, said that the first of the 18 F-16s ordered by Pakistan was accepted by the Pakistani government in December, but preparations were still being completed to transport it to the country later this year.
A United States Air Force spokesman, Lt. Col. Jeffry Glenn, said the United States had delivered 1,000 MK-82 bombs to Pakistan last month, and was considering additional requests for those 500-pound bombs.
Colonel Glenn said an initial batch of 700 GBU-12 and 300 GBU-10 Paveway laser-guided bomb kits built by Lockheed and the Raytheon Company would be delivered to Pakistan this month, allowing its air force to outfit the MK-82 bombs delivered last month with sophisticated technology that allows better aiming of the weapons.
The expected delivery later this year of the 18 F-16s to Pakistan would bring its inventory of the planes to 54. Pakistan has been operating F-16s since 1982.
Mr. Donley said Pakistan was also upgrading the capabilities of its older F-16 fighter jets.
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*
No comments:
Post a Comment