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http://www.thehindu.com/2009/05/14/stories/2009051459061000.htm
Date:14/05/2009
International
B. Muralidhar Reddy
FROM THE WAR ZONE: The Sri Lankan troops were exercising maximum restraint to avoid any civilian casualties, General Officer in-charge of 58 Division, Shavendra de Silva told The Hindu at the front on Wednesday.
“We are proceeding with extreme caution. With the humanitarian operations reaching a final stage, we believe that the LTTE would be left with no option but to let the civilians out of its grip. Our focus at the moment is on innocent citizens held hostage by the Tigers. We would target the Tiger cadres and leaders only after all the civilians are evacuated from the NSZ.”
Brig. Shavendra de Silva categorically refuted charges of shelling by the military inside the NSZ. “We have documentary evidence to prove that at least on three occasions the Tigers fired artillery within the NSZ. We are ready to share the same with the international community.”
The Brigadier said the military was also in possession of evidence to show the LTTE was destroying permanent buildings in the NSZ and setting on fire vehicles filled with properties of the civilians. “The obvious game plan of the LTTE is to put the blame on the military. Their days are numbered.”
A Multi Barrel Rocket Launcher (MBRL) used by the LTTE was found by troops of 58 Division conducting a search and clearing operation in Karyalaimullivaikkal on Wednesday morning.
“This is the first time the security forces in the Wanni liberation offensive uncovered an MBRL,” a senior military official said. Troops of 11 Sri Lanka Artillery serving under 57 Division uncovered LTTE aircraft engine and a few accessories in a search operation conducted in Thevipuram.
ICRC, the only international organisation operating inside the war zone, said an employee was killed near Mullivaikal, in the coastal area held by the LTTE.
“This is the third time in just over two months that an ICRC employee has been killed inside the conflict zone,” Paul Castella, the ICRC’s head of delegation in Colombo said. “This latest tragic incident shows how dangerous it is for everyone in the area.”
© Copyright 2000 – 2008 The Hindu
Sri Lanka Attacks Said to Kill Dozens in Hospital – NYTimes.com
May 14, 2009
By MARK McDONALD
HONG KONG — At least 50 people were killed Wednesday when a primary school in Sri Lanka that had been converted into a field hospital was shelled for the second day, news agencies reported.
The reports of the bombardment came as new satellite images were released showing the recent destruction of dozens of structures in the conflict zone where the Tamil Tiger rebels appear to be making a last stand against the government. (See full report and images here)
Compare to Google Earth image at 9°19′5.70″N, 80°46′19.33″E. Zoom in to 250 feet.
Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday that the images backed up witness accounts indicating that the government was continuing to use heavy artillery in the densely populated zone.The government has denied shelling the area where an estimated 50,000 civilians remain trapped and said the rebels were behind the shelling, a claim widely disputed by human rights groups and foreign governments.
At the United Nations, Security Council members issued a joint statement expressing concern over the mounting death toll. Previously, Russia, China, Libya and Vietnam had called the deepening crisis an internal matter, but diplomats said accounts of markedly rising casualties over the last several days helped overcome their resistance to take some action; late last month, the United Nations said an average of 70 civilians a day were being killed since late January. The joint statement was nonbinding but written to put pressure on the Sri Lankan government.
President Obama also weighed in on Wednesday, urging both sides to stop harming civilians. In remarks to reporters, he said the rebels should lay down their arms and let civilians go, adding that “their forced recruitment of civilians and their use of civilians as human shields is deplorable.” He also called on the government to stop “indiscriminate shelling,” which he said had taken hundreds of lives, including at several hospitals.
The hospital that was reported to be hit Tuesday and Wednesday is the last remaining medical center serving the civilians. Dr. Thurairaja Varatharajah, a government health official in the war zone, provided the toll by telephone to The Associated Press.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has not been able to confirm the strikes on the hospital, and journalists have been barred from the conflict zone, so it is impossible to verify what is happening there.
In the same compound on Tuesday, 49 people were said to have been killed by mortar rounds, news agencies reported.
Separately, a local Red Cross worker and his mother were killed in shelling on Wednesday, a Red Cross spokesman said.
The commercial satellite images released Wednesday were taken this month and were analyzed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They show dozens of structures that appear to have been destroyed between last Wednesday and Sunday, the preliminary analysis said, and multiple craters that appear to reflect the impact of heavy weaponry. (See full report and images here)
The association did not place blame for the possible bombardment in its report. But Lars Bromley, a project director with the association, said that although artillery could be hidden, the preliminary analysis did not show big artillery pieces in the rebel-held zone.
Sharon Otterman contributed reporting from New York, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.
Sri Lanka : Sri Lankan government to issue ID cards to IDPs
Thu, May 14, 2009, 02:34 am SL Time,
ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.May 14, Colombo: Sri Lanka government is planning to issue ID cards to the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the welfare villages in Vavuniya once the registration process is completed.
The United Nation’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said it has been informed by the Government of Sri Lanka of the plan to issue ID cards.
The ID cards will allow the IDPs to travel outside camp locations for employment, purchasing provisions and other essential activities.
According to OCHA said over 20,000 IDPs have already registered for the IDs and the process is ongoing.
At the UN press briefing on Wednesday, the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General said that due to the recent massive influx of IDPs to the camps, the military has taken over many of the camp management duties.
However, the UN is urging the Sri Lankan government to use civilians for the management of the camps.
“The United Nations continues to emphasize the need for the camps to be managed by civilians, and reiterates the need for more civilian police, including women police and police from the Tamil community,” the Spokesperson said.
In Menik Farm zone 2, around 30 percent of children under the age of five reportedly suffer from moderate malnutrition, while 20 percent suffer from acute malnutrition, the Spokesperson added.
According to OCHA over 186,000 IDPs are in camps, and some 1,700 wounded and their caregivers in hospitals. Some 50,000 or more people are still trapped in the conflict zone.
Copyright © 2000, 2009 by LankaPage.com (LLC) :
Legal Defaulters:
Sri Lanka state enterprises to get tax write-off: report
Apr 13, 2009 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s pampered state-enterprises, often overstaffed, and usually distinguished with poor customer service, are to get tax-write offs, a media report said, as the private sector is squeezed by yet new taxes.
State institutions that will qualify for the tax write-off will include public corporations, government-owned business undertakings, ministries, and departments, The Sunday Times newspaper said.
“Some of the institutions borrow money from the Treasury to pay taxes to the government as there is no law to write-off their default taxes,” the newspaper said quoting an unnamed revenue official.
Sri Lanka’s bloated government, which has become an unaffordable burden on the poor, frequently uses people’s money to make up for the mis-management of state enterprises.
Mihin Lanka, a state-run budget airline, has become the flagship white elephant in recent times attracting widespread criticism as it burned up billions of rupees and left bad debts with state banks and other entities to be re-paid by people’s money.
State enterprises are usually stuffed with political henchmen while vocal unions and a powerful political philosophy that glorifies state intervention prevent their re-structuring or privatization to reduce the burden on the people.
“State institutions dependent on government funding to meet their tax liabilities will qualify to have certain taxes in default for over two or more years written off, under new legislation to be approved by Parliament soon,” The Sunday Times newspaper said.
State-run Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation which has borrowed 150 million rupees from the Treasury will qualify for relief under the Default Taxes (Special Provisions) Bill presented to parliament this week, The Sunday Times newspaper said.
While a state broadcaster is getting Treasury handouts Sri Lanka’s private television broadcasters had been slapped with crippling new taxes in recent years on their content.
“An advisory committee, headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal or the High Court, will be appointed under the new law,” the newspaper said.
“The committee will be consulted on any tax write-off by the Commissioner General of Inland Revenue.”
The Commissioner General of Inland Revenue will also start a special default tax recovery unit. The unit is expected to come up with a report in six month identifying taxes in default.
Also getting tax-write off would be co-operative societies registered under the Co-operative Societies Law including Co-operative Rural Banks.
Sri Lanka’s consumer affairs minister Bandula Gunewardene told reporters last week that under the current economic framework a ‘true open economy’ has come to the country where state enterprises compete with the private sector.
He said LakSathosa, a state-run retailer has opened 103 shops and was operating without taxes and the co-operative movement was given new life and was also operating without paying taxes.
People in Sri Lanka rarely question why some enterprises operating with political or state backing are allowed to operate tax free with capital also given interest free by the Treasury from taxes charged from other people.
In 2008, Sri Lanka’s revenues fell 95 billion rupees below target. Excessive state expenditure is usually made up by borrowings or printed money from the central bank, which results in high inflation or loss of foreign reserves.
Though Sri Lanka is nominally a functioning democracy where everyone is equal, the salaries and pensions of state workers, including politicians, are tax free.
The pensions of even the least paid private sector worker is taxed via a state-run compulsory savings scheme, the Employees Provident Fund, which is increasingly coming under fire for its lack of independent management.
An attempt to give an amnesty to private tax payers however came under heavy fire from politicians a few years ago.
© Lanka Business Online, All Rights Reserved.
Navy check on sea cargo irks Customs of Sri Lanka
Thursday, 2 April 2009 – 8:37 AM SL Time
The Sri Lanka Customs is unhappy with a presidential directive that for security purposes the Navy too would examine all sea cargo entering the country. The presidential directive was issued solely for security purposes, Director General of Customs (DCG) Sarath Jayatillkeke said yesterday.
Customs sources are questioning whether this was a move to duplicate their duties or was solely for security reasons.
The majority of customs rank and file were unhappy with the move but were willing to train the Navy personnel on X-ray scanning of important container cargo. Unfortunately all scanners are out of order at the moment, Customs sources said.
They said the X-ray scanners were non functional for lack of funds for maintenance.
Of the four X-ray scanners available, one was given to Airport and Aviation Authority and the rest to the Port. Recently, when the non functioning of the scanners was brought to the notice of the local agents, they had requested for USD 1.5 million annually as maintenance fee and the Treasury had not responded since September last year.
The Army has told the President that all banned LTTE belongings found in Mullaitivu had been brought into the country through the ports with the connivance of some Customs officials, informed sources said.
Most of these items had been brought to Mullaitivu by the LTTE through sea routes, they said .
Sri Lankan army ranks media freedom low priority | The Australian
Amos Roberts | March 23, 2009
Article from: The Australian
THE sign on the army spokesman’s wall rang the first alarm bells.
Brigadier Udaya Nanayakkara had pinned his statement of faith to a map used to brief journalists visiting Sri Lanka: “It’s the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press,” it began. It went on to say the soldier, not politicians, “ensures our right to Life, Freedom and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
I was recently in Sri Lanka to report on the final stages of a civil war that has been raging for a quarter of a century.
As I write, 200,000 civilians are caught between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers.
Unfortunately, it became a story about the difficulty of reporting at all and, in the case of local journalists, about its perils.
For the foreign correspondent, everything in Sri Lanka begins and ends with the armed forces: where one can travel; what one can film; even to whom one can speak. And dealing with the military is like travelling through the looking glass, although a blunter analogy would be with George Orwell’s 1984.
They lie brazenly and the lies aren’t even credible.
The UN may tell you that at least 2000 civilians have been killed in fighting since January, but Sri Lanka’s Secretary of Defence, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, says there are none.
Absolutely none. “If you want to believe me, believe me, no civilian casualties.
“We have taken all the precautions to avoid civilian casualties … The world has to appreciate this, if somebody doesn’t appreciate this — bad luck,” he told me.
When I arrived in Colombo I knew it would be impossible to access the battleground, but I hadn’t appreciated how much of the country had become a no-go zone for journalists.
Without special permission from the Ministry of Defence, you can’t even visit Vavuniya, a town in the north where civilians fleeing the conflict are being brought and which has never been in rebel hands.
The army also told me I couldn’t visit wounded civilians in the eastern town of Trincomalee, “because that’s the way we want it. Simple answer.” A visiting crew from Al Jazeera complained about travelling around Sri Lanka only to film soldiers putting their hands over the camera lens.
Eventually, the army invited about 50 frustrated reporters on a day trip to one of the “welfare villages” where displaced Tamil civilians are being settled outside Vavuniya.
Although it’s surrounded by razor wire and soldiers prevent anyone from entering or leaving, the army would have you believe that no one is actually being detained. We were told we could wander freely and speak to whomever we liked.
But soldiers wandered with us and some people said they’d been instructed not to speak to the foreigners.
I did get permission to travel to Jaffna after I told the Defence Secretary I wanted to interview a government minister there. In addition to a permit from the Ministry of Defence, I required authorisation for every piece of equipment I carried, right down to my AA batteries.
It takes a full day to get there — an hour’s flying time and a seven-hour security nightmare. Air force personnel search every passenger and tear apart every piece of luggage. They were particularly suspicious of my swimming goggles. I was interviewed and photographed by what appeared to be military intelligence. I arrived in Jaffna on a bus with curtains drawn across the windows — and was reprimanded for peeking.
But if it’s difficult to report in Sri Lanka as a foreigner, it can be deadly for the locals — especially if you’re brave enough Read the rest of this entry »
Bush admin opposes Sudan divestment bill
Wed Oct 3, 2007 4:19pm EDTBy Rachelle Younglai
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bill that would allow U.S. states to divest from companies doing business in Sudan could hurt international efforts to end the violence in war-torn Darfur, Bush administration officials told a Senate panel on Wednesday.
The pending Senate bill aims to put economic pressure on Sudan to stop the violence in its western Darfur region, where an estimated 200,000 people have been killed since rebels took up arms against the government in 2003.
Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said the Bush administration was confident its sanctions were working and warned against legislative measures that might undo progress.
“We are concerned that some initiatives to increase economic pressure on Sudan will damage our relationship with our key partners rather than increase pressure in Khartoum,” Frazer told the Senate Banking Committee hearing.
But several senators voiced support for the bill and said they would work to get it passed.
Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey said he did not “understand how the State Department can come before committee and say this is inappropriate.”
Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas, a bill co-sponsor and Republican presidential candidate, said: “We have a responsibility to ensure that genocide does not continue on our watch or on our dime.”
In July, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that would protect investment managers who pull money out of key sectors in Sudan from lawsuits from disgruntled investors. It also calls on the U.S. government to list companies whose business in Sudan supports “genocidal practices.”
The companion Senate bill would allow state or local governments to adopt measures to prohibit any investment of state assets in the Sudanese government or in any company with a qualifying business relationship with Sudan.
That bill has yet to move out of the Senate Banking Committee, a crucial step in the legislative process.
DIVESTMENT
Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury’s sanctions arm, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, said a list would by nature consist of foreign companies whose activities in Sudan were most likely legal in their home countries.
“Such a list likely will be viewed by our allies as a U.S. government ‘blacklist’… and therefore as an unwelcome effort by the United States to expand the scope of our sanctions,” Szubin said in written testimony.
“Such a list seriously risks alienating the very countries whose assistance we need to maintain and increase international pressure on the Bashir regime,” he said.
U.S. companies are generally prohibited from investing in and conducting business in Sudan without a license from OFAC. Creation of a list of companies would also impose ongoing burdens on the agency that would divert resources from other activities, Szubin said.
Since 2005, 20 states have adopted Sudan divestment policies, according to the Sudan Divestment Task Force.
Activists have pressured investors to divest their holdings in companies such as PetroChina Co Ltd, whose parent company, China National Petroleum Corp, is helping Sudan drill for oil. Malaysia’s state-owned Petronas and India’s ONGC are also targets.
(Additional reporting by David Lawder)
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Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
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Blackwater Mercenaries Deploy in New Orleans
By Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo
t r u t h o u t | Report Saturday 10 September 2005
(see more on mercenaries here)
New Orleans – Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans. Some of the mercenaries say they have been “deputized” by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force. Several mercenaries we spoke with said they had served in Iraq on the personal security details of the former head of the US occupation, L. Paul Bremer and the former US ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte.
“This is a totally new thing to have guys like us working CONUS (Continental United States),” a heavily armed Blackwater mercenary told us as we stood on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. “We’re much better equipped to deal with the situation in Iraq.”
Blackwater mercenaries are some of the most feared professional killers in the world and they are accustomed to operating without worry of legal consequences. Their presence on the streets of New Orleans should be a cause for serious concern for the remaining residents of the city and raises alarming questions about why the government would allow men trained to kill with impunity in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to operate here. Some of the men now patrolling the streets of New Orleans returned from Iraq as recently as 2 weeks ago.
What is most disturbing is the claim of several Blackwater mercenaries we spoke with that they are here under contract from the federal and Louisiana state governments.
Blackwater is one of the leading private “security” firms servicing the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It has several US government contracts and has provided security for many senior US diplomats, foreign dignitaries and corporations. The company rose to international prominence after 4 of its men were killed in Fallujah and two of their charred bodies were hung from a bridge in March 2004. Those killings sparked the massive US retaliation against the civilian population of Fallujah that resulted in scores of deaths and tens of thousands of refugees.
As the threat of forced evictions now looms in New Orleans and the city confiscates even legally registered weapons from civilians, the private mercenaries of Blackwater patrol the streets openly wielding M-16s and other assault weapons. This despite Police Commissioner Eddie Compass’ claim that “Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons.”
Officially, Blackwater says its forces are in New Orleans to “join the Hurricane Relief Effort.” A statement on the company’s website, dated September 1, advertises airlift services, security services and crowd control. The company, according to news reports, has since begun taking private contracts to guard hotels, businesses and other properties. But what has not been publicly acknowledged is the claim, made to us by 2 Blackwater mercenaries, that they are actually engaged in general law enforcement activities including “securing neighborhoods” and “confronting criminals.”
That raises a key question: under what authority are Blackwater’s men operating? A spokesperson for the Homeland Security Department, Russ Knocke, told the Washington Post he knows of no federal plans to hire Blackwater or other private security. “We believe we’ve got the right mix of personnel in law enforcement for the federal government to meet the demands of public safety.” he said.
But in an hour-long conversation with several Blackwater mercenaries, we heard a different story. The men we spoke with said they are indeed on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and the Louisiana governor’s office and that some of them are sleeping in camps organized by Homeland Security in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. One of them wore a gold Louisiana state law enforcement badge and said he had been “deputized” by the governor. They told us they not only had authority to make arrests but also to use lethal force. We encountered the Blackwater forces as we walked through the streets of the largely deserted French Quarter. We were talking with 2 New York Police officers when an unmarked car without license plates sped up next to us and stopped. Inside were 3 men, dressed in khaki uniforms, flak jackets and wielding automatic weapons. “Y’all know where the Blackwater guys are?” they asked. One of the police officers responded, “There are a bunch of them around here,” and pointed down the road.
“Blackwater?” we asked. “The guys who are in Iraq?”
“Yeah,” said the officer. “They’re all over the place.”
A short while later, as we continued down Bourbon Street, we ran into the men from the car. They wore Blackwater ID badges on their arms.
“When they told me New Orleans, I said, ‘What country is that in?,’” said one of the Blackwater men. He was wearing his company ID around his neck in a carrying case with the phrase “Operation Iraqi Freedom” printed on it. After bragging about how he drives around Iraq in a “State Department issued level 5, explosion proof BMW,” he said he was “just trying to get back to Kirkuk (in the north of Iraq) where the real action is.” Later we overheard him on his cell phone complaining that Blackwater was only paying $350 a day plus per diem. That is much less than the men make serving in more dangerous conditions in Iraq. Two men we spoke with said they plan on returning to Iraq in October. But, as one mercenary said, they’ve been told they could be in New Orleans for up to 6 months. “This is a trend,” he told us. “You’re going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.”
If Blackwater’s reputation and record in Iraq are any indication of the kind of “services” the company offers, the people of New Orleans have much to fear.
—–
Jeremy Scahill, a correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, and Daniela Crespo are in New Orleans. Visit www.democracynow.org for in-depth, independent, investigative reporting on Hurricane Katrina. Email: jeremy@democracynow.org.
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From errand to fatal shot to hail of fire to 17 deaths in Iraq
International Herald Tribune
By James Glanz and Alissa J. Rubin
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
BAGHDAD: It started out as a family errand: Ahmed Haithem Ahmed was driving his mother, Mohassin, to pick up his father from the hospital where he worked as a pathologist. As they approached Nisour Square at midday on Sept. 16, they did not know that a bomb had gone off nearby or that a convoy of four armored vehicles carrying Blackwater guards armed with automatic rifles was approaching.
Moments later a bullet tore through Ahmed’s head, he slumped, and the car rolled forward. Then Blackwater guards responded with a barrage of gunfire and explosive weapons, leaving 17 dead and 24 wounded — a higher toll than previously thought, according to Iraqi investigators.
Interviews with 12 Iraqi witnesses, several Iraqi investigators and an American official familiar with an American investigation of the shootings offer new insights into the gravity of the incident in Nisour Square. And they are difficult to square with the explanation offered initially by Blackwater officials that their guards were responding proportionately to an attack on the streets around the square.
The new details include these:
- A deadly cascade of events began when a single bullet apparently fired by a Blackwater guard killed an Iraqi man whose weight probably remained on the accelerator and propelled the car forward as the passenger, the man’s mother, clutched him and screamed.
- The car continued to roll toward the convoy, which responded with an intense barrage of gunfire in several directions, striking Iraqis who were desperately trying to flee.
- Minutes after that shooting stopped, a Blackwater convoy — possibly the same one — moved north from the square and opened fire on another line of traffic a few hundred yards away, in a previously unreported separate shooting, investigators and several witnesses say.
The questions emerge from accounts of the outbreak of the shooting in the square.
The car in which the first people were killed did not begin to closely approach the Blackwater convoy until the Iraqi driver had been shot in the head and lost control of the his vehicle. Not one witness heard or saw any gunfire coming from Iraqis around the square. And following a short initial burst of bullets, the Blackwater guards unleashed an overwhelming barrage of gunfire even as Iraqis were turning their cars around and attempting to flee.
As the gunfire continued, at least one of the Blackwater guards began screaming, “No! No! No!” and gesturing to his colleagues to stop shooting, according to an Iraqi lawyer who was stuck in traffic and was soon shot in the back as he tried to flee. The account of the struggle among the Blackwater guards corroborates preliminary findings of the American investigation.
Still, while the series of events pieced together by the Iraqis may be correct, important elements could still be missing from that account, according to the American official familiar with the continuing American investigation into the shootings.
Among the questions still to be answered, the official said, is whether at any time nearby Iraqi security forces ever began firing, possibly leading the Blackwater convoy to believe they were under attack and therefore justified in returning fire. It is also possible that as the car kept rolling toward the intersection, the Blackwater guards believed it posed a threat and intensified their shooting.
Blackwater has said that its guards were fired upon and responded appropriately.
Witnesses close to the places where most of the Iraqi civilians were killed directly facing the Blackwater convoy on the southern rim of the square all give a relatively consistent picture of how events began and unfolded.
The Blackwater convoy was in the square to control traffic for a second convoy that was approaching from the south. The second convoy was bringing diplomats who had been evacuated from a meeting after a bomb went off near the compound where the meeting was taking place. That convoy had not arrived at the square by the time the shooting started.
The events in the square began with a short burst of bullets that witnesses described as unprovoked. A traffic policeman standing at the edge of the square, Sarhan Thiab, saw that a young man in a car had been hit. In the line of traffic, that car was third in line from the intersection where the convoy had positioned itself.
“We tried to help him,” Thiab said. “I saw the left side of his head was destroyed and his mother was crying out, ‘My son, my son. Help me, help me.’”
Another traffic policeman rushed to the driver’s side to try to get her son out of the car, but the car was still rolling forward because her son had lost control, according to a taxi driver close by who gave his name as Abu Mariam (”father of Mariam”).
Then Blackwater guards opened fire with a barrage of bullets, according to the police and numerous witnesses. Ahmed’s father later counted 40 bullet holes in the car. Ahmed’s mother, Mohassin Kadhim, appears to have been shot to death as she cradled her son in her arms. Moments later the car caught fire after the Blackwater guards fired a type of grenade into the vehicle.
The taxi driver was a few feet ahead of Kadhim’s car when he heard the first gunshots. He was aware of cars behind him trying to back out of the street or turn around and drive away from the square. He tried frantically to turn his car, but ran into the curb.
Unable to escape, he pulled himself over to the passenger side, which was the one not facing the square, opened the door and crawled out, flattening his body to the ground.
“The dust from the street was coming in my mouth and as I pulled myself out of the area, my left leg was shot by a bullet,” he said.
Accounts in the initial days after the event described Kadhim as holding a baby in her arms. It now appears that those accounts were based on assumptions that the charred remains of Kadhim’s son were mistaken for an infant.
By then cars were struggling to get out of the line of fire, and many people were abandoning their vehicles altogether. The scene turned hellish.
“The shooting started like rain; everyone escaped his car,” said Fareed Walid Hassan, a truck driver who hauls goods in his Hyundai minibus.
He saw a woman dragging her child. “He was around 10 or 11. He was dead. She was pulling him by one hand to get him away. She hoped that he was still alive,” he said.
As the shooting started in earnest Jabber Salman, a lawyer on his way to the Ministry of Justice for a noon meeting, described people crying and shouting. “Some people were trying to escape by crawling, some people were killed in front of me,” he said.
As Salman tried to drive away from the shooting, bullets came one after another through his rear windshield, hitting his neck, shoulders, left forearm, and lower back. “I thought ‘I’m sorry they are going to kill me and I can do nothing.’ “
Iraqi investigators believe that during the shooting Blackwater helicopters flew overhead and fired into the cars from above. They say that at least one the car roofs had bullets through them.
Minutes after the first shootings, a Blackwater convoy arrived at the other side of the square, where civilian traffic was also backed up and shot into cars, according to an Iraqi official who is a member of the investigation committee set up by the Iraqi government.
“I found three people from that incident in Khadimiya hospital, one died and two were injured,” the Iraqi official said. “Why is the private security shooting again in this area?”
Two weeks after the events that claimed the life of Kadhim and her son, her husband Haithem Ahmed, her daughter Mariam and her younger son, Haider, are still bewildered.
“My son was very gentle, very clever, he was easy to be around, ” said Ahmed, looking down at the floor of the police investigation center where he had come to give more details at the request of Iraqi investigators. “He planned to be a surgeon.”
“She is a beautiful woman,” he said of his wife, speaking as if she were still alive.
Then, he looked at a picture of his son, captured on a memorial video made by a friend and stored on Haider’s cellphone camera. Seeming to forget there were was anyone else in the room, he spoke to the video image.
“I am waiting to meet you in paradise,” he said.<
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Spielberg may quit 2008 Olympic Games role over Darfur genocide
Africa Leader
Saturday 28th July, 2007
(ANI)London, July 28 : Hollywood’s most visible film director, Steven Spielberg, is considering resigning his position as artistic adviser to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing unless China does more to distance itself from the genocide in Darfur.
Spielberg has been working for several months to help put together the opening ceremony for the Games, which are widely seen as a sort of coming-out party for China’s emergence as a world power, reports The Independent.
Speilberg is under pressure from Darfur activists, who have accused him of cosying up to China, a country most directly involved in trade with Sudan.
Spielberg’s spokesman was quoted as saying that the director intended to continue applying pressure on China to change its policies, and is ruling nothing out – including withdrawal from his unpaid position as artistic adviser.
China’s special envoy on Darfur told the official China Daily newspaper yesterday that there was no point imposing United Nations peacekeepers on an unwilling government in Khartoum because coercion “will lead us nowhere.
There was no immediate response to this from the Spielberg camp.
Spielberg has already written a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao, urging him to change his Government’s position on Sudan.
He has also donated about one million dollars to aid groups working in Darfur to protect the predominantly non-Arab civilian population, which has become prey to pro-government Arab militias. International experts say somewhere from 200,000 to 500,000 people have been killed in the conflict, and more than two million displaced.
Spielberg is one of a clutch of Hollywood celebrities who are deeply concerned about the genocide. Actor George Clooney has been perhaps the most active, travelling to the region with his journalist father and addressing the UN General Assembly.
Clooney also recruited his co-stars on Ocean’s Thirteen – Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle and Matt Damon – as well as the film’s producer, Jerry Weintraub, to help raise five million dollars for aid agencies in Darfur. hey are setting up an anti-genocide foundation, Not On Our Watch.
Actress Mia Farrow believes Spielberg is in danger of becoming a modern-day Leni Riefenstahl – a reference to the brilliant Nazi-era director who acted as Hitler’s chief celluloid propagandist.
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Guardian.co.uk
A right to know – biological origins of IVF children to be stated on birth certificates· Report urges greater access to donor registers
Ian Sample, science correspondent
Wednesday August 1, 2007
The Guardian
Children born from donated sperm or eggs will have the information marked on their birth certificates under sweeping changes to fertility laws proposed by an influential group of ministers and peers yesterday.
The move, designed to bolster childrens’ right to know their origins, is among a raft of far-reaching recommendations the government will consider ahead of its planned reforms of legislation which has been overtaken by science.
The proposals amount to a parliamentary demand for the government to tear up its draft fertility bill, published in May, in favour of a more permissive approach that would see substantial changes in ethically contentious areas, such as the creation of “saviour siblings”, the use of surplus embryos in research and the need for children conceived through IVF treatment to have a legal father figure.
The joint Commons and Lords panel was set up to scrutinise the draft human tissue bill. Over the past two months the committee has taken evidence from 46 witnesses and received more than 100 written submissions. The report from the 18-member panel, published yesterday, said there must be significant changes when the bill is included in the Queen’s Speech in November.
Under existing law, parents are not required to inform children if they are born from donated eggs and sperm. The committee concluded that while a law obliging parents to do so was unenforceable, children should be able to find out the information for themselves from their birth certificates.
“If parents want to deceive their children that’s their decision, but it is our view that the state should not be complicit in that,” said Phil Willis, chair of the committee. Informing children about their biological origins would ensure they had proper access to donor registers that would allow them to find the identity of their genetic parent, he added.
Among other proposals, the panel urged government to extend the legal limit for storing IVF embryos from five to 10 years, bringing it into line with rules for freezing sperm and eggs. With a couples’ consent, any embryos remaining in storage past the 10-year limit would be handed to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the independent regulator, instead of being destroyed, which could release them for medical research.
Dr Vivienne Nathanson, head of science and ethics at the British Medical Association, said the channelling of frozen embryos into research was likely to be welcomed by couples who have surplus embryos, but are not comfortable with donating them to an infertile woman.
Further proposals seek to relax laws on the creation of “saviour siblings”, where children are conceived to save the life of a sick brother or sister. The selection of embryos to be donors of potentially life-saving tissues is currently only permitted if the sick child has a potentially fatal illness, but would be broadened to treat children with any “serious medical condition”, possibly including autism if a cure was found in future.
The report also recommended giving the HFEA power to grant research licences to scientists wishing to fuse human and animal tissues to create hybrid or chimera embryos. The recommendation was welcomed by the head of one of the two teams of researchers that have applied to the HFEA to create human-animal embryos by fusing human cells with rabbit or cow eggs. The embryos, which would be 99.9% human, are expected to be useful sources of stem cells for research and development of future medical treatments.
Stephen Minger, head of one of the teams at King’s College, London, said: “Trying to define what is scientifically allowable based on primary legislation doesn’t make any sense. In the long term it’ll be unwieldy and people will constantly be pushing the boundaries of that and parliament will constantly have to go through this whole process again.
“I’m hopefully optimistic, but we’ve been fighting this battle now around nine months. One thing that concerns me is when will the vote in parliament take place? Will this just keep dragging on?”
The panel’s report also recommended that the government abandons its long-held plans to replace the HFEA, set up in 1990, and the two-year-old Human Tissue Authority. They are due to be superseded by an over-arching super-regulator, known as the Regulatory Authority for Tissue and Embryology. The body was intended to have wide responsibility for policing fertility clinics and embryo research, but also to regulate the storage, use and disposal of human bodies, tissues and organs.
Dr Minger said: “Merging the two bodies was always a really bad idea. Both organisations are already stretched to breaking point. If there was confidence that it would make for a better regulatory body, that would be great, but there’s a real fear this combined entity would be a lot weaker.”
IVF landmarks 1978
Louise Brown born at Oldham General, becoming the first baby conceived by in vitro fertilisation (IVF)
1982
First test tube twins born, followed in 1983 by the first birth from a frozen embryo in the US
1990
Law governing fertility clinics and embryo research introduced with establishment of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The first injection of sperm directly into an egg
1997
Diane Blood becomes the first woman in Britain to seek permission to have a baby using her dead husband’s sperm. Court of appeal rules she can use the sperm only if treated abroad
2002
Helen Perry from Shropshire becomes pregnant after having one of her own eggs frozen, stored and thawed before being fertilised. Treatment now used where fertility is at risk from aggressive cancer treatment
2004
Charlie Whitaker saved from a rare anaemia by cells from brother born after embryo selection in US. HFEA lifted its ban on “saviour” siblings
2006
A British woman becomes pregnant with the first child selected to be free of an inherited cancer gene.</blockquote
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Biofuels Pushing Up Food Aid Prices
Eli Clifton
WASHINGTON, Jul 27 (IPS) – A dramatic increase in the production of biofuels has led to rising food prices with serious implications for developing countries reliant on food aid to combat famine.
Perceived by many in Washington as a clean, renewable energy source capable of insulating the U.S. from rising oil prices and instability in the Middle East, as well as revitalising the lagging agricultural industry in the Midwestern United States, policy makers have advocated agro-fuels as an alternative to imported oil.
The increasing rate of ethanol production has predictably led to increases in the cost of corn — nearly doubling in the past year — and policymakers have warned that U.S. demand for biofuels will likely spread to South American and South East Asian sugar- and palm oil-producing regions which are capable of producing ethanol more efficiently than with the U.S. corn-based methods.
According to World Bank price indexes, worldwide basic food commodities now cost 21 percent more than in 2005 and important commodities such as grain and oil have gone up in price more than 30 percent.
United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Director Josette Sheeran pointed to the role of biofuels in driving up food prices during an interview with the Financial Times last week.
She acknowledged that rising food prices were “already having an impact on WFP operations.” “There is a realisation we are facing a new level of challenges,” she added.
Food prices have surged for other reasons over the past year, including increased demand from China and bad weather. However, the growing global demand for biofuels in the U.S. and a proposal by the European Commission stipulating that all petrol and diesel in the European Union must contain 10 percent biofuels could spell serious environmental and economic consequences.
“In the case of the developing countries where sugar cane and palm oil are efficient sources of biodiesel that means we’re going to see enormous growth in the tropics and subtropics in both ethanol and biodiesel,” Earth Policy Institute president Lester Brown told IPS. “What this is going to lead to is very rapid deforestation if no one intervenes. It is leading to a lot of land clearing in the Amazon, Indonesia and Malaysia.”
Brazil has already announced that it will ban new sugarcane fields in the Amazon region and in the vast Pantanal wetland, but the full economic and environmental impact felt by equatorial regions in their rush to produce biofuels is still of concern to analysts.
In countries such as Brazil, farm sizes are much larger than in the United States and Europe, meaning that a smaller portion of the population will benefit from price increases in food products while the majority of the people will only experience the price increases when they buy food.
“We used to have a food economy and an energy economy but now the two are merging. You can’t draw a line between the two anymore,” said Brown. “The world price of grain has moved up towards it oil price equivalent value.”
With the price of oil and food no longer separated, economic and political turmoil will have a greater effect on the price of food products worldwide.
The U.N. World Food Programme hasn’t needed to reduce any of their operations yet, but has warned that the current trend in food prices will eventually force them to cut back some of their projects if donor countries do not contribute additional funds.
“(Biofuel) is a dangerous alternative because of the effect of food prices and political instability. It could generate a degree of political instability that could disrupt global economic progress,” said Brown. “If you want to know what will happen to the price of food, look at the price of oil.”
With developing countries being both the largest recipients of food aid and increasingly the most important source of biofuels, it is likely that the greatest impacts of the biofuel industry and its resulting economic and environmental effects will be experienced in these already impoverished regions.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.<
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Published on Worldwatch Institute (http://www.worldwatch.org)
By Brian Halweil
Created Jul 23 2007 – 12:44pm
At a potluck dinner last night, in the midst of local skirt steak, Montauk scallops, a frittata made with the year’s first potatoes, and a salad made with the year’s first tomatoes, the conversation naturally turned to the origin of our foods. The guests included a farmer, two winemakers, and a fisherman, as well as a nurse, several writers, and others who don’t directly make their living from food, but were happy to speak about it.
More than ever, it seems, people are talking about where their food comes from. It must have something to do with the recent news about contaminated food imported from China and other nations whose food safety laws seem equally porous. Food scares always push people toward farmers markets and more home-cooked fare made with fresh ingredients.
In North Carolina, concerned citizens recently issued a grassroots call [1] for food labeling. Finally, there may be enough political will to fight opposition from international food makers and pass country-of-origin-labeling laws that, in the words of a recent New York Times [1] op-ed, let Americans consumers “know where their food comes from before popping it into their mouths.”
But as my dining companions made clear, knowing where your food was grown is only the beginning. At a time when our food travels farther than ever before, eating local is not just about geography—it’s about the end of “anonymous food.” It’s about asking how our food was raised, who raised it, and what impact it had on the landscape. Remember, food is still our most intimate connection to the soil and water around us.
Consider two recent—and creative—“eat local” campaigns. The first was launched by the Center for a New American Dream as part of their six-month Carbon Conscious Consumer (C3) [2] campaign. “Big changes start with small steps” is the campaign’s tagline, and this month’s goal is to buy one pound of locally grown food each week. Future months will encourage people to cold wash their clothes and dishes, reduce their junk mail, and carve out one car-free day a week.
And now, Bon Appetit restaurant company has built on its successful Eat Local Challenge to introduce a low-carbon diet [3] at its 400 cafes at universities and corporate campuses in 28 U.S. states. The chain plans to reduce its use of beef by 25 percent, to source all meat and poultry and nearly all fruits and vegetables from North America, to use seasonal local produce as a first preference and tropical fruits only as “special occasion” ingredients, and to serve only domestic bottled water and reduce waste from the plastic containers.
Perhaps the best evidence of this growing curiosity about how much energy it takes to move our food around is the fact that eating local has even invited a backlash in form of disparaging “don’t buy local” stories [3] from the New York Times and studies [4] from concerned New Zealand shepherds illustrating that, despite the long-distance haul, New Zealand lamb requires less energy to produce than American or European lamb because of the island’s balmy climate and extensive pastures.
According to Rich Pirog of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, “It’s entirely possible that under certain systems or certain constraints the local is going to be less efficient than the national or even global food system in terms of energy and greenhouse gas use.” Pirog pioneered much of the thinking on food miles [5] a few years ago, showing that the mode of conveyance makes a huge difference (potatoes shipped by rail from Idaho to New York might be less polluting than Maine potatoes delivered via 18-wheeler truck). “Food miles are a great indicator of localness, but they aren’t necessarily the best indicator of energy use,” he concludes.
But localness has other advantages even when it isn’t the most energy efficient. Eating local keeps money in the local economy, helps preserve farmland, and usually means tastier food. In the midst of food safety crises, eating local also brings a certain peace of mind because the shopper can get much more information about what they are actually buying.
For those shoppers who are most concerned about energy use, though, here are some simple rules of thumb:
* Shop nearby if you can—driving long-distance to a farmers market isn’t doing anyone any favors. Even better, try to get your local supermarket to host a farmers market in its parking lot.
* Eat whole, unprocessed foods. The energy use and greenhouse gas emissions skyrocket for canning, freezing, and other processing, and processed foods require more energy to ship.
* Eat seasonally. Your local tomato grower might have to drive love apples to market in August, but at least you won’t be getting them flown in from Holland in December.
* And, finally, ask questions. Because the more we ask, the better our food seems to get.
Source URL:
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5202
Links:
[1] http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/643477.html
[2] http://c3.newdream.org/
[3] http://www.bamco.com/PressRoom/press-pre-041707.htm
[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/06/03/nrgreen03.xml
[5] http://www.leopold.iastate.edu/pubs/staff/files/food_travel072103.pdf
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IPS Inter Press Service
Inter Press Service News Agency
Saturday, July 28, 2007 01:57 GMT
AFRICA:
Food for 12 Billion. So Why Did 854 Million Go Without?
Christi van der Westhuizen
GENEVA, Jun 29 (IPS) – “As you are suffering from over-consumption, I am suffering from under-consumption. We need to strike a balance,” said Mary Wahu Kaara from the Kenya Debt Relief Network with reference to the North and the South.
Her words were echoed by Hilkka Pietila, honorary president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations: “We are wasting food in the North. We are eating too much, burning grain as fuel, and growing grain to feed pigs to slaughter for ham.”
Their contributions were part of a heated debate over the past two days about the eradication of hunger, this at the Civil Society Development Forum. The three-day meeting is being hosted by the Conference of Non-governmental Organisations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations (CONGO) and the United Nations Millennium Campaign. It ends Saturday.
Jean Ziegler, U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, alerted the more than 500 delegates that while 854 million people went without food in the world last year, enough food was produced to feed 12 billion people. “This is why a child that dies from famine is murder,” Ziegler said.
Food is being over-produced in industrialised countries where some 349 billion dollars have been spent on agricultural subsidies for a minority of people. Only 2.5 percent of the French and 4.9 percent of the Swiss population are farmers, said Ziegler.
“You can go to the Dakar market (in Senegal) and find Spanish, French, German and Italian fruit and vegetables at half or one-third of the local prices. The African farmers work 15 hours a day but they cannot compete with subsidies. This is systematically destroying Africa’s agriculture,” he pointed out.
“Nothing is being done about the dumping policy. The Third World is feeding us (Europeans). That is what is keeping this system in place.”
Ziegler called the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the “mercenary organisation of the financial oligarchies that dominate the world”.
He gave the following example to justify his comment: Niger, the second poorest country in the world, had a national veterinary office which provided free vaccinations and other services for the 22 million head of cattle in the country.
The IMF insisted on the privatisation of the service and threatened to withdraw its funding, something Niger’s government fought without success. Since privatisation, herds have been destroyed because people could not pay for vaccinations. “The IMF has destroyed the way of life of tens of thousands of families,” Ziegler said.
According to him, the argument of those in favour of market-based policies is that any state intervention in the market is a perversion. If famine was to be ended, for instance, it would have to be through increased market-based production. However, the legal right to food is the only weapon against the daily massacre of people by famine, Ziegler concluded.
Martin Khor, director of the global non-governmental organisation Third World Network, echoed these sentiments, saying that he disagreed with the World Bank on the issue of cheap poultry from Europe being dumped in Ghana and destroying the local chicken market.
“I would say the government has the right to put up protective tariffs to save its chicken industry. But the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are urging developing states to drop their tariffs as close to zero percent as possible while rich countries continue with their agricultural subsidies,” Khor added.
“The IMF told Ghana they cannot push up tariffs. If they do it, the IMF will withdraw its loan from Ghana.”
A similar situation exists in Senegal, according to Demba Moussa Dembele, director of the Forum for African Alternatives, which is based in that country. European chickens had “invaded” Senegal, causing local farmers to lose 70 percent of market share.
Similarly, an agreement with the European Union on fisheries had seen Senegal’s fishing waters depleted of fish. “Now young migrants follow the fish to Spain in small fishing vessels,” Dembele said.
The cotton sector has also suffered. African farmers have been put out of business by subsidies to U.S. cotton farmers.
“The Group of Eight says they want to help Africa. We do not need help. We need to be allowed to live off our own resources and what we produce. We need to eliminate policies that go against this right and we need to claim food sovereignty,” Dembele argued.
Nikhil Seth, director of support and coordination at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), said a contradiction has emerged when looking at the first Millennium Development Goal, which focuses on halving hunger and poverty by 2015. While the number of poor people has dropped below one billion, increasing numbers of people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition.
He places the blame squarely on the tariff barriers and agricultural subsidies of rich countries. Land holdings are becoming fragmented and no productivity gains have been seen in poor states.
Food security, agricultural development and the role of trade and aid are interlinked issues, said Lakshmi Puri, director of international trade at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
The majority of the poor in developing countries are mostly subsistence farmers undermined by subsidised produce and dumped food. In the developing world, agriculture is frequently the engine of development. But aid to boost agriculture has been dropping since the 1980s, Puri said.
Richard Newfarmer, economic adviser on international trade at the World Bank, came to the organisation’s defence, denying that the Bank had urged all countries to reduce tariffs to as close to zero percent as possible — as alleged by Khor. In cases where the bank opted for lower tariffs, it was in order for the poor to get cheaper food.
He also insisted that when the Bank talks about property rights, it is referring not to those of big corporations, but to the property rights of the poor. If farmers are given ownership of land they can invest money in that land, he added.
However, Colm O. Cuanachain, international campaigns director at ActionAid, pointed out that while 80 percent of food is produced by women, only 10 percent of land is owned by women. This is caused by World Bank policies which undermine the ability of poor people to own and work the land, he said. Governments are not addressing this problem through their policies.
The result is that the income gap between farmers and food companies has grown tremendously and is currently at 100 billion US dollars, he said. The top 30 companies control one-third of the global grocery market.
Similarly, ActionAid’s Nancy Kachingwe said that as more arable land is being used for cash crops in Africa, more women lose access to land — which has a direct effect on nutrition in the household.
As a solution, Pietila proposed that agriculture be removed from the ambit of the World Trade Organisation because, as people have a right to food, food is not a commodity.
The U.N. agencies dealing with food and agriculture, such as the World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation, have to be welded into one organisation that should also take responsibility for trade in food products, she said.
Seth also said investment is needed in agriculture, specifically for basic economic infrastructure, seed, water and equipment.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.
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Al Jazeera English
Israel Rewrites History Textbook
MONDAY, JULY 23, 2007
9:08 MECCA TIME, 6:08 GMT
Israel rewrites history textbook
Numerous Israeli accounts of the 1948 war claim that many Palestinians left their land voluntarily [EPA]
The Israeli government has, for the first time, approved a school textbook for Arab pupils that includes the Palestinian view of the creation of Israel.The book, which will be used in the public school system in the next school year, contains one phrase that points to the Palestinian version of the events of 1948.
It reads: “The Arabs call the war the Nakba, a war of catastrophe, loss and humiliation, and the Jews call it the Independence war.”
Official Israeli accounts of the country’s creation, especially those written for schoolchildren, have focused on the heroism of Israeli forces. They hardly mention that many Palestinians were forced to leave, instead claiming that the mass exodus of 700,000 Palestinians was voluntary.
Yuli Tamir, the education minister, said that many in Israel shut their eyes to the issue.
“We have a complex history of two peoples engaged in a struggle, and it’s time to give the story of this struggle its proper treatment,” he said.
However, other Israeli politicians say they will fight the decision to introduce the book insisting that it makes Israel look as if it is apologising for its own existence.
Avigdor Lieberman, strategic affairs minister, denounced the book, blaming “the masochism and defeatism of the Israeli left, which constantly seeks to apologise, while we did what we had to”.
Benjamin Netanyahu, head of the right-wing Likud party, said that Tamir should resign for approving use of the phrase, arguing that the Jewish state’s right to exist should not be open to debate.
“Shall we inject Arab propaganda into our schools with our own hands?” he said.
Confronting history
The book is aimed at eight- to nine-year-old Arab children in Israel’s largely separate public school system.
Arab citizens make up about one-fifth of Israel’s population of seven million.
Most Israeli Jews and Arabs attend separate school systems, reflective of the two groups living in mostly segregated towns and neighbourhoods.
“It shouldn’t be that an Arab child, a citizen of Israel, won’t know about and won’t have the ability to discuss the Arab narrative as well about Israel’s existence”, Tamir said.
Zevulun Orlev, a politician with the National Union party, said that Israel risked encouraging its own Arab citizens to revolt rather than accept its rule.
“We lend legitimacy to Arabs seeing our independence as their disaster. How then can we teach the same pupil to be a loyal citizen?”
Source: Agencies
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Wednesday, June 27, 2007 19:45 GMT
G8: Much Talk, Too Few Results
Julio Godoy
… G8 leaders only paid lip services to its own commitments, and who isolated themselves from demonstrators — and the world — with costs for security alone estimated at more than 135 million dollars.
HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, Jun 8 (IPS) – This year’s summit of the G8 heads of government will likely be remembered as a “how not to” organise such an event, for the contrast between the expectations it raised and its negligible accomplishments, and for its enormous security costs.
The three-day Group of Eight summit, held in this Baltic seaside resort, ended with two vague, non-binding promises — more aid for Africa, and negotiations towards a post-Kyoto Protocol international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — and failures in numerous other items on the agenda.
This G8 failure in Heiligendamm to pass its self-imposed test of credibility will certainly mark the future of its summits.
The leaders of the G8 countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United States) said their farewells without an agreement on international trade negotiations, or on eliminating subsidies for agriculture in the industrialised world, a move that would give development a boost in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
No agreement was reached either on a new regulation of the highly speculative, and therefore risky, hedge funds, nor on the political status of the Serbian province of Kosovo.
At the same time, the only accords the G8 leaders reached in Heiligendamm — on a medium-term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and new aid for Africa — are considered as weak compromises, tailored only to avoid the impression that the summit was a total failure.
On Friday, the G8 leaders agreed to allocate 60 billion U.S. dollars “over the coming years” to finance the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and a further 500 million dollars for the “Education for All” programme in Africa.
But development and aid experts consider this new pledge as a step backwards, compared to the promises made by the G8 at the 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, to double development assistance by 2010. The Gleneagles deal would mean an annual increase of aid levels by 50 billion dollars starting in 2006.
“The whole declaration (on aid for Africa) is just cosmetic”, Ulrich Post, development expert at the German non-governmental organisation Welthungerhilfe (World Hunger Aid), one of the country’s largest aid campaigners.
Post regretted that the G8 declaration on Africa “only mentions agriculture (in Africa) with one single phrase. In the face of more than 200 million people suffering from chronic malnutrition, of which 80 percent live on rural areas, this behaviour is scandalous,” Post added.
According to the development watchdog Oxfam, the new G8 aid promise for Africa means at best “just three billion U.S. dollars extra in aid by 2010.”
Previous to the Heiligendamm summit, Oxfam had shown that the G8 countries would miss their 2010 target on aid for Africa by 30 billion dollars. “Today’s announcement may only close that gap to 27 billion dollars,” the organisation said Friday.
Other activists criticise the ambiguity of the G8 statement, which does not set a clear timetable for the allocation of the new promised assistance, nor does it define how much of the sum would truly be fresh aid.
The Irish rock musician and anti-poverty campaigner Bono described this ambiguity as “a deliberate language of obfuscation. It is deliberately misleading. I am exasperated,” the U2 frontman said.
In addition, the new pledge for targeting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria does not fulfil the target estimated by the United Nations for the G8 countries, and which foresees a spending of 15 billion dollars per year through to 2010 on the HIV/AIDS fight alone.
Instead, the new aid promised at Heiligendamm commits the G8 countries to earmark about 12 billion dollars per year for all three diseases.
The G8 deal on cutting climate-changing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is also seen as a lip service to international environmental policy.
The group’s joint statement on reducing GHG takes note of and expresses concern for “the recent IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports (which) concluded both, that global temperatures are rising, that this is caused largely by human activities and, in addition, that for increases in global average temperature, there are projected to be major changes in ecosystem structure and function with predominantly negative consequences for biodiversity and ecosystems, e.g. water and food supply.”
But U.S. President George W. Bush and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin agreed only to “seriously consider the decisions made by the European Union, Canada and Japan which include at least a halving of global emissions by 2050,” according to the statement. “We commit to achieving these goals,” the paper says.
For Christoph Bals, director of the environmental organisation Germanwatch, the agreement opens the door for an international negotiation towards a new GHG reduction regime, under the framework of the UN, and with the participation of the U.S. government. (The United States is not part of the Kyoto Protocol.)
But the statement is not binding, and further negotiations, starting at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Bali, Indonesia, scheduled for December, will be a first test of the U.S commitment, and that of the Asian giants — China and India — to join the post-Kyoto process.
The G8 leaders also failed to re-launch the negotiations on international trade in the stalled Doha Round of the World Trade Organisation, and did not advance towards eliminating its member countries farm subsidies, which constitute one of the main obstacles for development in Africa and other developing regions.
These disappointments round out the image of an expensive, futile event, where G8 leaders only paid lip services to its own commitments, and who isolated themselves from demonstrators — and the world — with costs for security alone estimated at more than 135 million dollars.
Japan is slated to host the G8 summit in 2008. (FIN/2007)
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.
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CorpWatch
This Alien Life: Privatized Prisons for Immigrants
by Deepa Fernandes, Special to CorpWatch
February 5th, 2007
The small town of Florence, Arizona, sits at an epicenter of a new boom in private prisons for immigrants. The one-lane highway from Tucson to this desert prison town runs through cacti, red rock, and occasional mountains. Then out of nowhere, a roadside sign breaks the spell: “State Prison: Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.”
Florence hosts Arizona’s state prison, two privately run prison complexes, and one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration jail.
Florence “has a prison economy and a prison consciousness,” says Victoria López, an attorney who runs the town’s only pro bono legal center that helps immigrant detainees fight their cases. “Florence is another world. Here most locals are people whose families have for generations worked in the prison system. Life revolves around the prisons.”
As the government invokes national security to sweep up and jail an unprecedented number of immigrants, the private-prison industry is booming. In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on New York, immigrants have become the fastest growing segment of the prison population in the U.S. today. In fiscal year 2005, more than 350,000 immigrants went through the courts. “A growing share of them committed no crimes while in the United States – 53 percent this year, up from 37 percent in 2001 – even though Bush administration officials repeatedly have said their priority is deporting criminals,” the Denver Post reported.
From Mining to Prisons
Many locals have family roots in the mining industry that was the lifeblood of rough and tumble town until the silver boom petered out. Around the turn of the 20th century, the territorial prison moved to town. But the town really came back to life after Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) one of the nation’s biggest prison companies, built two prisons in Florence, and the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) began renting bed space, and then built its own prison out of a town’s old World War II prisoner-of-war camp. The influx of immigrant prisoners created jobs that drove the economy and sparked construction of new housing complexes on the outskirts of town, followed by big retailers such as Wal-Mart.
In 2000, the industry was carrying more than $1 billion in debt and was violating its existing credit agreements. CCA saw its stock plummet 93 percent and Business Week noted that the correction “industry’s heyday may already be history.”
At the time, the American Prospect, a national magazine, explained the decline:
“The private-prison industry is in trouble. For close to a decade, its business boomed and its stock prices soared because state legislators across the country thought they could look both tough on crime and fiscally conservative if they contracted with private companies to handle the growing multitudes being sent to prison under the new, more severe sentencing laws. But then reality set in: accumulating press reports about gross deficiencies and abuses at private prisons; lawsuits; million-dollar fines. By last year, not a single state was soliciting new private-prison contracts. Many existing contracts were rolled back or even rescinded. The companies’ stock prices went through the floor.”
Then came the the September 11th attacks on New York in 2001. The government began to target non-citizens with mass arrests during sweeps through immigrant communities, increased prosecutions of undocumented border crossers, and the use of immigration law to hold people while looking for criminal or terrorist charges against them. The INS was subsumed into a new agency named the Department of Homeland Security.
The government claims that locking up people without legal status is the only way to ensure that they do not disappear into the country. A December 2004 DHS report from the Office of the Inspector General concluded that all the evidence proved the “importance of detention in relation to the eventual removal of an alien. Hence effective management of detention bed space can substantially contribute to immigration enforcement efforts.”
The speed and scope of the Bush administration round up and jailing of non-citizens created a dramatically increased need for immigrant detention space. And saved the flailing corrections industry.
The DHS-run Special Processing Center is a massive one-stop-shop, where immigrants can be jailed, tried in an immigration court, appealed before an immigration judge, and ordered deported—all without leaving the self-contained complex. While DHS does not refer to its facilities as jails, the Special Processing Center in Florence is ringed by concertina wire, surrounded by chain-link fences, with inmates locked into cells. They face zealous prosecution and in many cases are left to languish for weeks and months without trial or sentencing.
The complex in Florence is part of a 300-facility-strong network of immigrant incarceration facilities. The average time an immigrant is detained is 42.5 days from arrest to deportation. At $85 a day per detainee, that adds up to $3,612.50 per person. In 2003, DHS was holding 231,500 detainees, and the budget to cover this was $1.3 billion. Since 2001, the DHS budget for detention bed space has increased each fiscal year as has the number of beds. In 2003 there was more than $50 million slated for the construction of immigrant jails.
Corrections Corporation of America
Contracts for these new jails flowed to the private prison industry despite the previous history of mismanagement and scandal. Yet the problems have not been solved – today detainee advocates still decry the treatment of immigrant inmates. They accuse prison companies of cutting corners in training guards and in providing basic services. The government has done little to regulate prison administration, but has sanctioned exploitive labor practices and rip-off telephone costs for inmates.
Philippe Louis-Jean, a veteran who saw combat in Iraq detailed some of abuse. A Haitian immigrant who had lived in the U.S. since he was five, the Marine had advanced quickly though the ranks. On return from Iraq, when he attempted to have his battlefield promotions honored, his superiors looked into his past and found an old military conviction for which he was served 37 days. The government used that record to begin deportation proceedings and threw Louis-Jean into CCA-run San Diego Correctional Facility (SDCF). He was appalled by conditions and treatment.
“The guards would scream and shout at us as if we were little kids. If we would ask them to stop, they would threaten to lock us down for a few days, which would happen constantly. Three people being locked in a two-man cell, in a 12 x 7 room. This happened a lot; sometimes as punishment for the actions of one or two inmates, the other 105–115 detainees would suffer.”
“Other times, it seemed ‘just because.’ A lot of the detainees would be missing money on their accounts, which I was recently told by a detainee who keeps in contact with me was being stolen by the staff, according to [an] OIG investigation. We would get underserved during meal times. When we complained to the unit manager she would say that we were given the right amounts, which in my opinion is the appropriate portion for a ten or eleven year old. Some of the guards and staff would curse at us. They would purposely lower the televisions so we couldn’t hear them, just to mess with us. During our free time they would take their time turning on the phones so we wouldn’t be able to call our families. Just to be cruel.”
One of his guards, an ex-marine, told Louis Jean “he was taught to not really pay attention to our complaining and to treat us like second-class citizens … since we will be deported anyway.
A 2003 report by the DHS Inspector General forcefully condemned the treatment of immigrants inside various jails in it report, “The September 11 Detainees: A Review of the Treatment of Aliens Held on Immigration Charges in Connection with the Investigation of the September 11 Attacks.” Infractions included routine abuse of basic prisoner rights, mental and physical abuse, denial of health care and medical treatment, prison overcrowding, and a lack of working showers, and toilets.
Despite a long record of problems, CCA continues to promote privatization and win contracts. “The private prison industry, to increase the demand for its services, exerts whatever pressure it can to encourage state legislators to privatize state prisons,” wrote Sharon Dolovich in the Duke University Law Journal. “[T]he industry is adept at lobbying legislators and targeting campaign contributions to promote its privatization agenda.”
Indeed, some critics charge that the company’s success is related to its deep rooted ties to elected officials. In addition to CCA’s record of campaign contributions to the Republican Party since 1997, there are significant connections between executives and government officials. J. Michael Quinlan, former head of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, has been an executive at CCA for the past decade. CCA’s chief lobbyist in the state of Tennessee is married to the speaker of the house. And CCA is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative group that writes and pushes bills on policy such as sentencing guidelines.
For the second quarter of 2005, CCA announced that its revenue had increased three percent over last year, for a total of almost $300 million. CCA calculates that it expenditure of $28.89 per inmate, per day allows it to make a daily profit of $50.26 per inmate. Meanwhile, on July 1, 2005, the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded CCA contracts to continue running the 300-bed Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey and the 1,216-bed San Diego Correctional Facility. Both of these contracts are for three years with five three-year renewal options. In 2005 CCA also secured new prison contracts with the Kentucky Department of Corrections, the state of Kansas, and the Florida Department of Management Services.
Business is good for CCA and the more people it stuffs into its prisons the better it becomes. “As you know, the first 100 inmates into a facility, we lose money, and the last 100 inmates into a facility we make a lot of money ” CCA Chief Financial Officer Irving Lingo said on a 2006 company conference call.
Wackenhut
Florida-based Wackenhut, a major private security company, has also received a great boost in the years since the September 11th attacks on New York. Its poor record has not undermined its ability to reap lucrative government contracts. Before 2001, Wackenhut, like CCA, had been at the center of all manner of inmate-abuse scandals: Guards were caught having sex with underage inmates, there were routine reports of extreme mistreatment of inmates, and there was even a disproportionately high level of deaths in their facilities.
Wackenhut CEO George Zoley has been flippant about the cases of abuse. After a CBS Television report exposed the repeated rape of a 14-year-old girl at a Wackenhut juvenile jail and two guards were found guilty, Zoley said, “It’s a tough business. The people in prison are not Sunday-school children.” Still more worrying was Wackenhut’s record with inmate-on-inmate killings, which, contrary to public perception, are not very common in America’s prisons. In 1998–99 alone, Wackenhut’s New Mexico facilities had a death rate of one murder for every 400 prisoners. For the same period in all U.S. prisons, the rate was about one in 22,000.
Wackenhut’s most visible response was to change its name. Now as the GEO Group, it is still headed by George Zoley, and it continues to run the Wackenhut facilities and get new contracts. In 2005 the State of California Department of Corrections gave GEO the contract for the housing of minimum security adult male inmates at the 224-bed McFarland Community Correctional Facility estimated to generate $4.1 million in annual revenues. On August 8, 2002, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) awarded GEO a contract for the company’s Broward Transitional Center in Miami. The contract has been extended through September 2008.
Under a 2005 ICE contract GEO also manages the Queens Private Correctional Facility, where it expects to reap $10.5 million in annual revenues. The Mississippi Department of Corrections also renewed GEO’s contract for the continued management and operation of the 1,000-bed Marshall County Correctional Facility. Meanwhile, also in 2005, GEO announced a merger with Correctional Services Corporation (CSC) that will add approximately $100 million in revenue to GEO’s coffers. GEO is especially excited about the earning potential from CSC’s 1,000-bed expansion of its State Prison in Florence, Arizona.
GEO executives are overjoyed about the boom in business. In 1999, the feds farmed out less than 3 percent of beds; but seven years later, the number had reached almost one in five. “That’s a remarkable turnaround,” GEO Group CEO George Zoley told his fellow executives.”And it’s continuing to lead in that direction, that for minimum-security beds by the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) to house criminal aliens and illegal aliens by either the U.S. Marshal Service or the BOP or immigration service, they are turning to private companies.”
“I think we’re in a new era that I could never predicted, really, this scale of acceptance by the federal government. We talked about it for many, many years, but we’re finally on the verge of it… .” added Zoley.
Cost Savings
The corrections industry has routinely argued that privatizing prisons dramatically lowers costs. A 1996 U.S. General Accounting Office report concluded, however, that there was no clear evidence supporting this contention.
Prison companies do have clear advantages over other corporations: They are able to save large amounts of money on labor practices that would illegal under any other circumstances. Inmate jobs in all prisons pay a pittance, but immigrant prisons are even worse. Because DHS guidelines mandate that non-citizen prisoners cannot earn more than $1 per day, the company gets janitors, maintenance workers, cleaners, launderers, kitchen staff, sewers and grounds keepers at almost no cost.
With the increase in prison beds for immigrants comes the pressure to fill them– a scenario that has immigrant advocates extremely worried. Isabel García, attorney and human rights activist in Tucson, sees the drive to jail immigrants as fueling the same prison-industrial complex that first flourished with the war on drugs.
“The war on drugs has conveniently become a war on immigrants,” says García, “and there is a lot of money to be made in detaining immigrants.” The grown industry of incarcerating immigrants is facilitated by the tight connections between the private-prison industry and the federal government and the extent of the industry’s powerful and well-funded lobby. García worries that the profit motive behind detaining immigrants will promote the criminalization of immigrants.
In the name of national security, the Department of Homeland Security has let industry lead the way in implementing systems and procedures that purport to protect America from future terrorist attack. However, in many cases it is immigrants and non-citizens with no connections to terrorism who get tangled in the net.
Adapted from Targeted, by Deepa Fernandes (Seven Stories Press, 2007) Additional research by Terry Allen.
Immigration Prisons by the Numbers
“A record 26,500 undocumented aliens are held across the United States by federal authorities. The number will rise to 32,000 by year’s end
“A $65 million tent city in Texas holds 2,000 immigrants in windowless tents where they are locked down 23 hours a day, often with insufficient food, clothing, medical care and access to telephones.
“ Some 1.6 million undocumented immigrants are being held in some stage of immigration proceedings. “ICE holds more inmates a night than Clarion hotels have guests, operates nearly as many vehicles as Greyhound has buses and flies more people each day than do many small U.S. airlines.”
“An estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants live in the US.
“80 percent of ICE’s beds are rented at 300 local and state jails nationwide, concentrated in the South and Southwest.
“The Border Patrol made 1.1 million arrests last year. The majority were Mexicans who immediately sent back the border. A half million more entered legally and overstayed visas.
“An additional 630,000 are at large, ignoring deportation orders, and 300,000 more who entered state and local prisons for committing crimes are to be deported but will probably slip through the cracks after completing their sentences.”
Source: Washington Post, February 2, 2007
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Date:26/05/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/05/26/stories/2007052602261100.htm
Opinion – News Analysis
We should back Hugo Chavez
Colin Burgon
It’s not too late to stand against the Washington consensus on Latin America.
NEOCONSERVATIVE FORCES, via compliant media outlets and Christian Right groupings within the European Parliament, are preparing their latest attack on Hugo Chavez and the Government of Venezuela. The latest focus of the campaign is the decision of Venezuela’s broadcasting authorities not to renew the licence of the private television channel RCTV.
Washington’s outriders characterise the decision as an affront to freedom of speech, yet the facts speak in louder tones. More than 80 per cent of Venezuelan television and radio outlets are privately owned; this excludes a number of cable and satellite television networks that are widely available. Of this 80 per cent, significant sections are owned by corporate groups. According to a recent New York Times editorial, this has led to a situation in which “even the best news outlets tend to be openly ideological … so the owners’ views can permeate reporting.”
Almost all Venezuelan newspapers remain in private hands. The press is free to report, and express opinions, without government interference. Most do so with considerable brio on a daily basis. No media outlet has encountered licensing problems for the expression of political views. No journalist has been imprisoned or punished for report or comment.
In RCTV’s case, the broadcaster failed to meet basic public interest standards. The criterion for this assessment is similar to that used by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. RCTV will be free to broadcast via cable and satellite, which are available across the country.
In the United Kingdom, if a TV channel aided an attempted coup against the government that resulted in civil unrest and even death, would anyone be supporting the renewal of its licence? RCTV has lost its licence because its wealthy owners slanted news coverage to provide support to the April 2002 coup against President Chavez and the elected government. This will not be news to those who gathered in the U.K. Parliament last week to view John Pilger’s excellent documentary The War on Democracy, which shows footage of RCTV involvement.
As the coup failed and Venezuelans questioned Mr. Chavez’s “resignation,” RCTV prohibited correspondents from airing these developments.
So what hope is there for us in the U.K. that our representatives in the European Union might withstand right-wing pressure and argue against a discriminatory move against Venezuela at a meeting in Strasbourg next week? If the U.K. Foreign Office’s public strategy document “Latin America to 2020″ is anything to go by, not very much.
Lord Triesman, the document’s main author and a Foreign Office Minister, outlines an adherence to free-market liberalism and singularly defined democracy as the prerequisites for British engagement in Latin America. The document shows that the British Government remains committed to the neoliberal model as a means of tackling the highest levels of social inequality in the world. However, anyone interested in nations such as Venezuela or Bolivia can see that the “Washington consensus” trade and aid packages have failed the most desperate people of those nations.
In the document, many Latin American leaders are named and congratulated, yet Mr. Chavez receives no such recognition. The U.K. Foreign Office appears to ignore the reasons for the popularity of Mr. Chavez, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador: the failure of neoliberal policies imposed by Washington and endorsed by the EU.
It is not too late for a Labour Government in the U.K. to engage with those who wish to achieve justice for their peoples. Events in Strasbourg next week provide an opportunity for the U.K. Government to show reason and goodwill. —
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007
(Colin Burgon is a Labour MP in the British Parliament and chair of Labour Friends of Venezuela.)
© Copyright 2000 – 2006 The Hindu
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Green Left – UNITED STATES: Uncle Sam’s terrorist walks free
Stuart Munckton
17 May 2007
On October 6, 1976, two bombs ripped through Cubana Flight 455 mid-flight from Barbados to Cuba. All of the 73 civilians onboard, including Cuba’s national youth fencing team and 11 Guyanese medical students, were killed. Until the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, this was the worst terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere. On April 19, the mastermind behind this mass murder, Luis Posada Carriles, was released on bail from prison in the US, where he was being held since 2005 for violating immigration law, and allowed to return to his luxury penthouse in Miami.
On May 8, the immigration charges against Posada were completely dropped after a ruling by Texas District Judge Kathleen Cardone liberated the man once described by the US Department of Justice as “a dangerous criminal and an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots”, according to a May 15 report by the Washington DC-based Venezuela Information Office.
Despite its extradition treaties, the US government has ignored the request of three countries — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — for Posada to be extradited to face trial for crimes committed in each nation. One of the most notorious terrorists in the world, responsible for countless acts of violence against civilians in numerous nations, Posada is a former CIA agent and loyal servant of the US empire.
In violation of US and international law — to say nothing of its own rhetoric about waging a relentless “war on terror” — Washington is allowing Posada to live freely within US borders. There is little doubt that this preferential treatment to a confessed terrorist is both a reward for his past services, and a result of fears about what secrets he may reveal about US-sponsored terrorist atrocities aimed at governments and popular movements that threatened the interests of US corporations in Latin America, should he face trial for his crimes.
Declassified documents reveal that the Cuban-born Posada was first recruited as a CIA agent in 1961, according to a May 6 article published at GlobalResearch.cu. He was originally recruited to participate in the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion that year, aimed at overthrowing the revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro. Posada received training from the US military in “demolition and terrorist tactics and remained directly on the CIA payroll at least until 1967”.
From 1969 until 1974, Posada worked for Venezuela’s security forces, the DISIP. He is alleged to have overseen serious human rights abuses targeting left-wing activists. During this time, the article explained, he continued his cooperation with the CIA. A May 11 Bolivarian News Agency quoted the testimony of Venezuelan victims of torture allegedly ordered by Posada during his reign as DISIP’s director. One victim was Brenda Esquivel, who said that in 1972, her partner and children were killed by DISIP. She was eight months’ pregnant at the time and on Posada’s orders, one of her captors kicked her in the stomach, causing a misscarriage.
According to GlobalResearch.cu, just two weeks before the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, Posada was involved in a Washington DC car-bombing that killed former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his US aide. Letelier had been in exile after the left-wing government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by a US-backed military coup in 1973.
In the aftermath of the plane bombing, two Venezuelan citizens employed by Posada’s private detective agency confessed to the crime. Declassified CIA documents, available at the National Security Archive (), reveal that the agency had both evidence linking Posada to the bombing and advance warning of the attack. Posada was arrested by Venezuelan authorities for his involvement, however he escaped from prison in 1985 while awaiting trial.
Posada has been implicated in terrorist attacks against Nicaragua during the 1980s as part of the US-backed counter-revolutionary war against the left-wing Sandinista government. He was also involved in “Operation Condor”, through which South American military dictatorships conspired to physically exterminate left-wing opponents.
In 1997, Posada was implicated in a fresh wave of bombings in Cuba, killing an Italian businessperson. In an interview with the New York Times, published on July 12, 1998, Posada admitted his involvement, stating: “It is sad that someone is dead, but we can’t stop.” Posada said the US-government-funded Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), was involved in the terror campaign.
During a November 2000 visit to Panama City, Castro claimed during a press conference that Cuban security services had evidence that Posada and the CANF were planning his assassination. Subsequently, Panamanian authorities caught Posada in a hotel in the country’s capital in possession of 90 kilograms of C4 explosive. An anti-Castro activist involved with the CANF was also arrested. In 2004, Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso pardoned Posada for his role in the assassination attempt, a move widely believed to be at the behest of Washington. In response, Cuba and Venezuela temporarily broke diplomatic ties with Panama.
In 2005, a concerted international campaign highlighting the presence of Posada within US territory, eventually forced US authorities to have him arrested — not for his many terrorist acts, but for entering US territory without a visa. This would not be unlike having Osama Bin Laden arrested for jaywalking.
Venezuela, backed by Cuba, immediately demanded Posada’s extradition in order to face trial for his role in the Cubana bombing — the trial he has so far avoided as a result his 1985 prison breakout. The US government has yet to even respond to the request. Nicaragua is also calling for his extradition to face trial for crimes committed on their territory.
The May 8 decision to throw out the charges against Posada has caused international outrage. In a May 9 statement, the Cuban government called the ruling “an insult to the Cuban people and to the peoples who lost 73 of their sons and daughters” in the 1976 plane bombing. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claimed the US “war on terror” was a lie, according to a May 10 Venezuelanalysis.com report. Chavez insisted that Posada “is a murderer, a terrorist, and a torturer, and now he enjoys total freedom in the United States”.
The Prensa Latina news service reported on May 12 that Venezuela has expressed its determination to take its case for the extradition of Posada to all relevant international forums. Addressing a May 11 protest outside the US State Department in Washington DC, Jose Pertierra, a lawyer representing the Venezuelan government in its attempts to extradite Posada, said that Venezuela would seek to have Posada taken to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.
The hypocrisy of the Bush administration’s tolerance of Posada is so blatant that even sections of the usually tame US corporate media have begun to speak out. Calling the decision “perverse”, an April 20 Los Angeles Times editorial argued: “With a misguided decision upholding bail for Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has done more than free a frail old man facing unremarkable immigration charges. It has exposed Washington to legitimate charges of hypocrisy in the war on terror.”
Clearly terrified about what Posada might reveal in court, in the lead-up to the May 8 ruling the US government filed a motion seeking to gag Posada from testifying on his role as a CIA agent, according to GlobalResearch.cu.
The “war on terror” is nothing but a cover to wage wars on behalf US corporate interests. The mass murderer Posada has been a loyal servant to those same interests, which is why in the face of widespread condemnation about the blatant hypocrisy involved, he is today a free man, enjoying the protection of the US government.
However, a strong international campaign led by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela is putting enormous pressure on the Bush administration to obey international law and either charge Posada for his crimes or have him extradited. With enough pressure, the campaign has a real chance of success. This would be a serious blow to the US empire and its ability to use violence all over the world to protect its interests. To be part of this campaign, you can sign an online international petition at .
Posada must be made to face trial for his crimes. Anything less sends the message that acts of mass murder are acceptable — as long as they are committed in the interests of the powerful.
From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #710 23 May 2007.
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Keeping Civil Society on the Straight and Narrow
May 19 2007
Moyiga Nduru (IPS)
A few years ago, this IPS correspondent posed a question at a workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, about whether non-governmental organisations (NGOs) should be held more accountable for their actions. Afterwards, the key speaker at the event pulled me aside, and issued a polite rebuke for my “dangerous question”.The “dangerous question” has continued to crop up since then, however, reflecting a growing debate over standards of conduct within the humanitarian sector as it has assumed an ever more prominent role in public life. Civic groups are now being scrutinised over a range of issues — from accounting practices, to whether they are truly serving the needs of communities.
“It’s true that accountability is not being exercised to the extent that it should be. Quite a large number of civil society organisations and NGOs have no organically-evolved mandate from the citizens,” Ozias Tungwarara, director of the Johannesburg-based Open Society Institute, itself an NGO, told IPS.
Notes an anonymous posting on the website of the Southern African NGO Network: “Many NGOs are not practicing what they preach and a good example is the HIV/AIDS activists. Soon after conducting a workshop, they are already getting promiscuous. Is it the money that attracts them to the job or the need to be socialists that want to see change in the society?”
“Having worked for NGOs for almost four years, I can safely say that most of these NGOs just want funding and if not monitored, they convey it to their personal use,” added the writer.
Misunderstandings
Nicholas Mkaronda, co-ordinator of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a pressure group, takes a more positive view of the situation.
“I think there is a high level of accountability in the way civil society organisations and NGOs handle their finances and address societal issues,” he told IPS from the coalition’s office in Johannesburg.
Mkaronda said complaints about NGO conduct may sometimes stem from public misunderstanding about the roles of these groups: “For example, the Zimbabwean community in South Africa expects us to mobilise resources to sort out shelter, feeding and legal (immigration) status. Yet our role is to highlight the crisis in Zimbabwe.”
Political and economic difficulties in South Africa’s northern neighbour have prompted an exodus from the country. Briefing journalists in Johannesburg in March, Pius Ncube, the Catholic Archbishop of Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo -and an outspoken critic of the Harare government- put the number of Zimbabweans living in South Africa at over two million.
Accountability Charter
Efforts are underway to develop formal systems of accountability for international NGOs — or INGOs: last year, eleven of these groups signed the ‘INGO Accountability Charter’. The first document of its kind, the charter lays out a number of principles such groups should adhere to, to retain public trust in the non-governmental sector.
These include working “in genuine partnership” with local organisations and communities; complying with governance, accounting and reporting obligations in countries of operation; and balancing expectations of NGOs with the salaries needed to attract competent staff, when deciding on remuneration.
The charter also stipulates that INGO employees should be “enabled and encouraged” to become whistleblowers concerning activities by aid groups that are illegal, or which contradict the goals and commitments of these groups.
CIVICUS — the World Alliance for Citizen Participation — is serving as secretariat for the INGO Accountability Charter, administering processes to ensure that signatories are meeting their obligations, amongst others.
This Johannesburg-based network groups a variety of civil society organisations with the aim of strengthening civic participation in public life, particularly in areas of the world where this is under threat. The debate on civic accountability will also feature strongly during CIVICUS’s annual World Assembly in Glasgow.
Effective citizens
Demands for accountability may intensify as NGOs attempt to have their views taken into account more broadly, including in the African Union’s (AU) discussions about continental governance.
African foreign affairs ministers met in the South African port city of Durban earlier in May to discuss strategies for achieving the union’s goal of political and economic integration of its 53 member states.
To date, however, “The public have not been involved in the AU’s conversation about continental governance, or had their views listened to. We cannot have a United States of Africa without citizenship,” noted Janah Ncube, senior programme officer at the Nairobi branch of the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development, an international NGO, in a recent statement.
“Effective states require active citizens and the participation of all men and women in governance.”
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