Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Top 10 Green-Tech Breakthroughs of 2008
Green technology was hot in 2008. Barack Obama won the presidential election promising green jobs to Rust Belt workers. Investors poured $5 billion into the sector just through the first nine months of the year. And even Texas oilmen like T. Boone Pickens started pushing alternative energy as a replacement for fossil fuels like petroleum, coal and natural gas.
But there's trouble on the horizon. The economy is hovering somewhere between catatonic and hebephrenic, and funding for the big plans that green tech companies laid in 2008 might be a lot harder to come by in 2009. Recessions haven't always been the best times for environmentally friendly technologies as consumers and corporations cut discretionary spending on ethical premiums.
Still, green technology and its attendant infrastructure are probably the best bet to drag the American economy out of the doldrums. So, with the optimism endemic to the Silicon Valley region, we present you with the Top 10 Green Tech Breakthroughs of 2008, alternatively titled, The Great Green Hope.
10. THE ISLAND OF THE SOLAR
With money flowing like milk and honey in the land of solar technology, all sorts of schemers and dreamers came streaming into the area. One Swiss researcher, Thomas Hinderling, wants to build solar islands several miles across that he claims can produce hundreds of megawatts of relatively inexpensive power. Though most clean tech advocates question the workability of the scheme, earlier this year, Hinderling's company Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique received $5 million from the Ras al Khaimah emirate of the United Arab Emirates to start construction on a prototype facility, shown above, in that country.
9. NEW MATERIALS CAGE CARBON
Carbon capture and sequestration has a seductively simple appeal: We generate carbon dioxide emissions by burning geology — coal and oil — so to fix the problem, we should simply capture it and inject it back into the ground.
It turns out, however, that it's not quite so simple. Aside from finding the right kind of empty spaces in the earth's crust and the risks that the CO2 might leak, the biggest problem with the scheme is finding a material that could selectively snatch the molecule out of the hot mess of gases going up the flues of fossil fuel plants.
That's where two classes of special cage-like molecules come into play, ZIFs and amines. This year, Omar Yaghi, a chemist at UCLA, announced a slough of new CO2-capturing ZIFs and Chris Jones, a chemical engineer at Georgia Tech, reported that he'd made a new amine that seems particularly well-suited to working under real-world condition. Both materials could eventually make capturing CO2 easier -- and therefore, more cost effective.
Perhaps better still, Yaghi's lab's technique also defined a new process for quickly creating new ZIFs with the properties that scientists — and coal-plant operators — want. Some of their crystals are shown in the image above.
8. GREEN TECH LEGISLATION GETS REAL
On the federal and state levels, several historic actions put the teeth into green tech bills passed over the last few years. A review committee of the EPA effectively froze coal plant construction, a boon to alternative energy (though earlier this month the EPA ignored the committee's ruling and it is unclear how the issue will be settled). In California, the state unveiled and approved its plan to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, which could be a model for a nationwide system. Combined with the green-energy tax credits in the $700-billion bailout bill, the government did more for green tech in 2008 than in whole decades in the past.
7. THE CATALYST THAT COULD ENABLE SOLAR
In July, MIT chemist Daniel Nocera announced that he'd created a catalyst that could drop the cost of extracting the hydrogen and oxygen from water.
Combined with cheap photovoltaic solar panels (like Nanosolar's), the system could lead to inexpensive, simple systems that use water to store the energy from sunlight. In the process, the scientists may have cleared the major roadblock on the long road to fossil fuel independence: Reducing the on-again, off-again nature of many renewable power sources.
"You've made your house into a fuel station," Daniel Nocera, a chemistry professor at MIT told Wired.com. "I've gotten rid of all the goddamn grids."
The catalyst enables the electrolysis system to function efficiently at room temperature and at ordinary pressure. Like a reverse fuel cell, it splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. By recombining the molecules with a standard fuel cell, the O2 and H2 could then be used to generate energy on demand.
6. PICKENS PLAN PUSHES POWER PLAYS INTO AMERICAN MAINSTREAM
Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens might be a lot of things, but environmentalist he is not. That's why his support for a nationwide network of wind farms generated so much excitement. While his solution for transportation, natural gas vehicles, may not pan out, his Pickens Plan is the most visible alternative energy plan out there and it began to channel support from outside coastal cities for finding new sources of energy.
Of course, no one said Pickens is stupid. If his plan was adopted and major investments in transmission infrastructure were made, his wind energy investments would stand to benefit.
5. SOLAR THERMAL PLANTS RETURN TO THE DESERTS
When most people think of harnessing the sun's power, they imagine a solar photovoltatic panel, which directly converts light from the sun into electricity. But an older technology emerged as a leading city-scale power technology in 2008: solar thermal. Companies like Ausra, BrightSource, eSolar, Solel, and a host of others are using sunlight-reflecting mirrors to turn liquids into steam, which can drive a turbine in the same way that coal-fired power plants make electricity.
Two companies, BrightSource and Ausra, debuted their pilot plants. They mark the first serious solar thermal experimentation in the United States since the 1980s. BrightSource's Israeli demo plant is shown above.
4. OBAMA PICKS A GREEN TECH EXPERT TO HEAD DOE
President-elect Barack Obama ran on the promise of green jobs and an economic stimulus package that would provide support for scientific innovation. Then, Obama picked Steven Chu, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, to head the Department of Energy. Chu had been focused on turning Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory into an alternative-energy powerhouse. The green tech community rejoiced that one of their own would be in the White House.
That's because green tech is going to need some help. With the world economy falling into recession, the price of oil has dropped, even though there are serious concerns about the long-term oil supply. When energy prices drop, clean tech investments don't seem quite as attractive, and the renascent industry could be in trouble. It's happened before, after all.
Back in the '70s, geopolitical events sent the price of oil soaring, which, as it tends to, created a boom in green tech. But the early 1980s saw the worst recession since the Depression. Sound familiar? In the poor economic climate, focus and funds were shifted away from green tech. The last nail in the coffin was the election of Ronald Reagan, who immediately pulled off the solar panels Jimmy Carter had placed on the White House. The green tech industry collapsed.
History has given U.S. alternative energy research a second chance and environmental advocates hope that a different president will lead to a very different result.
3. SOLAR CELL PRODUCTION GETS BIG, GIGA(WATT)BIG
Every clean tech advocate's dream is a power-generating technology that could compete head-to-head with coal, the cheapest fossil fuel, on price alone. Nanosolar, one of a new generation of companies building solar panels out of cheap plastics, could be the first company to get there. Early this year, the company officially opened its one-gigawatt production facility, which is many times the size of most previous solar facilities.
Nanosolar, in other words, has found a process that can scale: it works as well in production as it does in the lab. That's the main reason that the company has picked up half-a-billion dollars in funding from investors like MDV's Erik Straser.
"[It's the] first time in industry a single tool with a 1GW throughput," Straser wrote in an e-mail. "It's a key part of how the company is achieving grid parity with coal."
2. PROJECT BETTER PLACE FINDS HOMES
Green technologies are dime a dozen, but a business model that could allow an entirely new, green infrastructure to be built is a rare thing.
Doing just that is the centerpiece of Sun Microsystems' SAP veteran Shai Agassi's vision for Project Better Place, a scheme that would distribute charging and swappable battery stations throughout smallish geographies like Israel, Hawaii and San Francisco. So far, there's very little steel in the ground, but in early December, the company's first charging location opened in Tel Aviv, Israel. Agassi's plan is one of several projects — like new biofuels rail terminals — that could create fundamentally new energy ecosystems.
Some of these systems, however, are actually throwbacks to earlier eras. As Peter Shulman, a historian of technology at Case Western Reserve University, likes to remind his students: in the early 20th century, before the Model T, one-third of all cars were electric.
1. CALERA'S GREEN CEMENT DEMO PLANT OPENS
Cement? With all the whiz bang technologies in green technology, cement seems like an odd pick for our top clean technology of the year. But here's the reason: making cement — and many other materials — takes a lot of heat and that heat comes from fossil fuels.
Calera's technology, like that of many green chemistry companies, works more like Jell-O setting. By employing catalysis instead of heat, it reduces the energy cost per ton of cement. And in this process, CO2 is an input, not an output. So, instead of producing a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of cement made — as is the case with old-school Portland cement — half a ton of carbon dioxide can be sequestered.
With more than 2.3 billion tons of cement produced each year, reversing the carbon-balance of the world's cement would be a solution that's the scale of the world's climate change problem.
In August, the company opened its first demonstration site next to Dynegy's Moss Landing power plant in California, pictured here.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/the-top-10-gree.html
But there's trouble on the horizon. The economy is hovering somewhere between catatonic and hebephrenic, and funding for the big plans that green tech companies laid in 2008 might be a lot harder to come by in 2009. Recessions haven't always been the best times for environmentally friendly technologies as consumers and corporations cut discretionary spending on ethical premiums.
Still, green technology and its attendant infrastructure are probably the best bet to drag the American economy out of the doldrums. So, with the optimism endemic to the Silicon Valley region, we present you with the Top 10 Green Tech Breakthroughs of 2008, alternatively titled, The Great Green Hope.
10. THE ISLAND OF THE SOLAR
With money flowing like milk and honey in the land of solar technology, all sorts of schemers and dreamers came streaming into the area. One Swiss researcher, Thomas Hinderling, wants to build solar islands several miles across that he claims can produce hundreds of megawatts of relatively inexpensive power. Though most clean tech advocates question the workability of the scheme, earlier this year, Hinderling's company Centre Suisse d'Electronique et de Microtechnique received $5 million from the Ras al Khaimah emirate of the United Arab Emirates to start construction on a prototype facility, shown above, in that country.
9. NEW MATERIALS CAGE CARBON
Carbon capture and sequestration has a seductively simple appeal: We generate carbon dioxide emissions by burning geology — coal and oil — so to fix the problem, we should simply capture it and inject it back into the ground.
It turns out, however, that it's not quite so simple. Aside from finding the right kind of empty spaces in the earth's crust and the risks that the CO2 might leak, the biggest problem with the scheme is finding a material that could selectively snatch the molecule out of the hot mess of gases going up the flues of fossil fuel plants.
That's where two classes of special cage-like molecules come into play, ZIFs and amines. This year, Omar Yaghi, a chemist at UCLA, announced a slough of new CO2-capturing ZIFs and Chris Jones, a chemical engineer at Georgia Tech, reported that he'd made a new amine that seems particularly well-suited to working under real-world condition. Both materials could eventually make capturing CO2 easier -- and therefore, more cost effective.
Perhaps better still, Yaghi's lab's technique also defined a new process for quickly creating new ZIFs with the properties that scientists — and coal-plant operators — want. Some of their crystals are shown in the image above.
8. GREEN TECH LEGISLATION GETS REAL
On the federal and state levels, several historic actions put the teeth into green tech bills passed over the last few years. A review committee of the EPA effectively froze coal plant construction, a boon to alternative energy (though earlier this month the EPA ignored the committee's ruling and it is unclear how the issue will be settled). In California, the state unveiled and approved its plan to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, which could be a model for a nationwide system. Combined with the green-energy tax credits in the $700-billion bailout bill, the government did more for green tech in 2008 than in whole decades in the past.
7. THE CATALYST THAT COULD ENABLE SOLAR
In July, MIT chemist Daniel Nocera announced that he'd created a catalyst that could drop the cost of extracting the hydrogen and oxygen from water.
Combined with cheap photovoltaic solar panels (like Nanosolar's), the system could lead to inexpensive, simple systems that use water to store the energy from sunlight. In the process, the scientists may have cleared the major roadblock on the long road to fossil fuel independence: Reducing the on-again, off-again nature of many renewable power sources.
"You've made your house into a fuel station," Daniel Nocera, a chemistry professor at MIT told Wired.com. "I've gotten rid of all the goddamn grids."
The catalyst enables the electrolysis system to function efficiently at room temperature and at ordinary pressure. Like a reverse fuel cell, it splits water into oxygen and hydrogen. By recombining the molecules with a standard fuel cell, the O2 and H2 could then be used to generate energy on demand.
6. PICKENS PLAN PUSHES POWER PLAYS INTO AMERICAN MAINSTREAM
Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens might be a lot of things, but environmentalist he is not. That's why his support for a nationwide network of wind farms generated so much excitement. While his solution for transportation, natural gas vehicles, may not pan out, his Pickens Plan is the most visible alternative energy plan out there and it began to channel support from outside coastal cities for finding new sources of energy.
Of course, no one said Pickens is stupid. If his plan was adopted and major investments in transmission infrastructure were made, his wind energy investments would stand to benefit.
5. SOLAR THERMAL PLANTS RETURN TO THE DESERTS
When most people think of harnessing the sun's power, they imagine a solar photovoltatic panel, which directly converts light from the sun into electricity. But an older technology emerged as a leading city-scale power technology in 2008: solar thermal. Companies like Ausra, BrightSource, eSolar, Solel, and a host of others are using sunlight-reflecting mirrors to turn liquids into steam, which can drive a turbine in the same way that coal-fired power plants make electricity.
Two companies, BrightSource and Ausra, debuted their pilot plants. They mark the first serious solar thermal experimentation in the United States since the 1980s. BrightSource's Israeli demo plant is shown above.
4. OBAMA PICKS A GREEN TECH EXPERT TO HEAD DOE
President-elect Barack Obama ran on the promise of green jobs and an economic stimulus package that would provide support for scientific innovation. Then, Obama picked Steven Chu, a Nobel-prize winning physicist, to head the Department of Energy. Chu had been focused on turning Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory into an alternative-energy powerhouse. The green tech community rejoiced that one of their own would be in the White House.
That's because green tech is going to need some help. With the world economy falling into recession, the price of oil has dropped, even though there are serious concerns about the long-term oil supply. When energy prices drop, clean tech investments don't seem quite as attractive, and the renascent industry could be in trouble. It's happened before, after all.
Back in the '70s, geopolitical events sent the price of oil soaring, which, as it tends to, created a boom in green tech. But the early 1980s saw the worst recession since the Depression. Sound familiar? In the poor economic climate, focus and funds were shifted away from green tech. The last nail in the coffin was the election of Ronald Reagan, who immediately pulled off the solar panels Jimmy Carter had placed on the White House. The green tech industry collapsed.
History has given U.S. alternative energy research a second chance and environmental advocates hope that a different president will lead to a very different result.
3. SOLAR CELL PRODUCTION GETS BIG, GIGA(WATT)BIG
Every clean tech advocate's dream is a power-generating technology that could compete head-to-head with coal, the cheapest fossil fuel, on price alone. Nanosolar, one of a new generation of companies building solar panels out of cheap plastics, could be the first company to get there. Early this year, the company officially opened its one-gigawatt production facility, which is many times the size of most previous solar facilities.
Nanosolar, in other words, has found a process that can scale: it works as well in production as it does in the lab. That's the main reason that the company has picked up half-a-billion dollars in funding from investors like MDV's Erik Straser.
"[It's the] first time in industry a single tool with a 1GW throughput," Straser wrote in an e-mail. "It's a key part of how the company is achieving grid parity with coal."
2. PROJECT BETTER PLACE FINDS HOMES
Green technologies are dime a dozen, but a business model that could allow an entirely new, green infrastructure to be built is a rare thing.
Doing just that is the centerpiece of Sun Microsystems' SAP veteran Shai Agassi's vision for Project Better Place, a scheme that would distribute charging and swappable battery stations throughout smallish geographies like Israel, Hawaii and San Francisco. So far, there's very little steel in the ground, but in early December, the company's first charging location opened in Tel Aviv, Israel. Agassi's plan is one of several projects — like new biofuels rail terminals — that could create fundamentally new energy ecosystems.
Some of these systems, however, are actually throwbacks to earlier eras. As Peter Shulman, a historian of technology at Case Western Reserve University, likes to remind his students: in the early 20th century, before the Model T, one-third of all cars were electric.
1. CALERA'S GREEN CEMENT DEMO PLANT OPENS
Cement? With all the whiz bang technologies in green technology, cement seems like an odd pick for our top clean technology of the year. But here's the reason: making cement — and many other materials — takes a lot of heat and that heat comes from fossil fuels.
Calera's technology, like that of many green chemistry companies, works more like Jell-O setting. By employing catalysis instead of heat, it reduces the energy cost per ton of cement. And in this process, CO2 is an input, not an output. So, instead of producing a ton of carbon dioxide per ton of cement made — as is the case with old-school Portland cement — half a ton of carbon dioxide can be sequestered.
With more than 2.3 billion tons of cement produced each year, reversing the carbon-balance of the world's cement would be a solution that's the scale of the world's climate change problem.
In August, the company opened its first demonstration site next to Dynegy's Moss Landing power plant in California, pictured here.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/12/the-top-10-gree.html
How To Make Your Own Biodiesel
NZ airline flies jetliner partly run on biofuel
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – Looking to reduce its carbon footprint and cut its fuel bill, Air New Zealand on Tuesday tested a passenger jet that was powered partially with oil from a plum-sized fruit known as jatropha.
The airline is the latest carrier to experiment with alternative fuels, partly due to the threat of rising oil prices but also to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from aviation, which are projected to rise by 90 percent by 2020.
Air New Zealand said the two-hour flight from Auckland International Airport was the first to use what are known as second generation biofuels to power an airplane. Second generation biofuels typically use a wider range of plants and release fewer emissions than traditional biofuels like ethanol.
One engine of the Boeing 747-400 airplane was powered by a 50-50 blend of oil from jatropha plants and standard A1 jet fuel.
"Today, we stand at the earliest stages of sustainable fuel development and an important moment in aviation history," Air New Zealand Chief Executive Rob Fyfe said shortly after the flight.
Along with investing in new technology to replace outdated fleets and new designs that reduce weight and air resistance, the International Air Transport Association says airlines are experimenting with a range of plant materials in an effort to find the jet fuel of the future.
The association, which represents 230 airlines, said it wants 10 percent of aviation fuel to come from biofuels by 2017 as part of a broad climate change plan. Air travel now generates only 2 percent of global carbon emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming, but the industry's high growth rate has raised concern about future emissions.
"There are very promising biojet fuels, and jatropha is one of them," association spokesman Anthony Concil said Tuesday, adding that the industry is also looking at switch grass, algae and salt-tolerant plants called halophytes.
Jatropha is a bush with round, plum-like fruit that has been found in parts of South America, Africa and Asia. Seeds from jatropha are crushed to produce a yellowish oil that is refined and mixed with diesel.
Tuesday's flight was a joint venture by Air New Zealand, airplane maker Boeing, engine maker Rolls Royce and biofuel specialist UOP Llc, a unit of Honeywell International.
In February, Boeing and Virgin Atlantic carried out a similar test flight that included a biofuel mixture of palm and coconut oil — but that was dismissed as a publicity stunt by environmentalists who said the fuel could not be produced in the quantities needed for commercial aviation.
Continental Airlines has said on Jan. 7 it will operate a test flight out of Houston using a special blend of half conventional fuel and half biofuel with ingredients derived from algae and jatropha plants.
Simon Boxer, of environmental group Greenpeace New Zealand, said it was inevitable that airlines would show greater interest in sustainable biofuels as travelers become more aware of the harm that air travel causes the environment.
But he said it wasn't clear whether jatropha was really sustainable. He questioned what the environmental impact would be if jatropha grew popular and more land and resources were needed to produce it on a commercial scale.
Ken Morton, a Boeing spokesman, said he expects more airlines will embrace biofuels as countries introduce emission taxes and emission trading schemes that will impact the industry.
"It makes a lot of commercial sense to invest in these biofuels," said Morton, who was on hand for the New Zealand flight. "Certainly, it is what the public wants."
Jatropha on first glance appears to have many of the attributes demanded from the industry.
It grows almost anywhere, so it wouldn't compete with food crops as corn-based ethanol does and has a lower freezing point than traditional biofuels like palm oil.
India appears to be most bullish on jatropha, with plans to plant 30 million acres (12 million hectares) by 2012. Already, the Indian government says it has successfully run dozens of trucks and buses on jatropha-based biodiesel and 18.5 million acres (7.4 million hectares) of jatropha saplings are growing along the country's railroad tracks.
While Air New Zealand heralded Tuesday's flight as successful, Group Manager Ed Sims cautioned that it will be at least 2013 before the company can ensure easy access to the large quantities of jatropha it would need to use the biofuel on all its flights.
"Clearly we are a long, long way from being able to source commercially quantifiable amounts of the fuel and then be able to move that amount of fuel around the world to be able to power the world's airlines," Sims told New Zealand's National Radio.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081230/ap_on_re_as/as_new_zealand_airplane_biofuel
The airline is the latest carrier to experiment with alternative fuels, partly due to the threat of rising oil prices but also to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from aviation, which are projected to rise by 90 percent by 2020.
Air New Zealand said the two-hour flight from Auckland International Airport was the first to use what are known as second generation biofuels to power an airplane. Second generation biofuels typically use a wider range of plants and release fewer emissions than traditional biofuels like ethanol.
One engine of the Boeing 747-400 airplane was powered by a 50-50 blend of oil from jatropha plants and standard A1 jet fuel.
"Today, we stand at the earliest stages of sustainable fuel development and an important moment in aviation history," Air New Zealand Chief Executive Rob Fyfe said shortly after the flight.
Along with investing in new technology to replace outdated fleets and new designs that reduce weight and air resistance, the International Air Transport Association says airlines are experimenting with a range of plant materials in an effort to find the jet fuel of the future.
The association, which represents 230 airlines, said it wants 10 percent of aviation fuel to come from biofuels by 2017 as part of a broad climate change plan. Air travel now generates only 2 percent of global carbon emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming, but the industry's high growth rate has raised concern about future emissions.
"There are very promising biojet fuels, and jatropha is one of them," association spokesman Anthony Concil said Tuesday, adding that the industry is also looking at switch grass, algae and salt-tolerant plants called halophytes.
Jatropha is a bush with round, plum-like fruit that has been found in parts of South America, Africa and Asia. Seeds from jatropha are crushed to produce a yellowish oil that is refined and mixed with diesel.
Tuesday's flight was a joint venture by Air New Zealand, airplane maker Boeing, engine maker Rolls Royce and biofuel specialist UOP Llc, a unit of Honeywell International.
In February, Boeing and Virgin Atlantic carried out a similar test flight that included a biofuel mixture of palm and coconut oil — but that was dismissed as a publicity stunt by environmentalists who said the fuel could not be produced in the quantities needed for commercial aviation.
Continental Airlines has said on Jan. 7 it will operate a test flight out of Houston using a special blend of half conventional fuel and half biofuel with ingredients derived from algae and jatropha plants.
Simon Boxer, of environmental group Greenpeace New Zealand, said it was inevitable that airlines would show greater interest in sustainable biofuels as travelers become more aware of the harm that air travel causes the environment.
But he said it wasn't clear whether jatropha was really sustainable. He questioned what the environmental impact would be if jatropha grew popular and more land and resources were needed to produce it on a commercial scale.
Ken Morton, a Boeing spokesman, said he expects more airlines will embrace biofuels as countries introduce emission taxes and emission trading schemes that will impact the industry.
"It makes a lot of commercial sense to invest in these biofuels," said Morton, who was on hand for the New Zealand flight. "Certainly, it is what the public wants."
Jatropha on first glance appears to have many of the attributes demanded from the industry.
It grows almost anywhere, so it wouldn't compete with food crops as corn-based ethanol does and has a lower freezing point than traditional biofuels like palm oil.
India appears to be most bullish on jatropha, with plans to plant 30 million acres (12 million hectares) by 2012. Already, the Indian government says it has successfully run dozens of trucks and buses on jatropha-based biodiesel and 18.5 million acres (7.4 million hectares) of jatropha saplings are growing along the country's railroad tracks.
While Air New Zealand heralded Tuesday's flight as successful, Group Manager Ed Sims cautioned that it will be at least 2013 before the company can ensure easy access to the large quantities of jatropha it would need to use the biofuel on all its flights.
"Clearly we are a long, long way from being able to source commercially quantifiable amounts of the fuel and then be able to move that amount of fuel around the world to be able to power the world's airlines," Sims told New Zealand's National Radio.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081230/ap_on_re_as/as_new_zealand_airplane_biofuel
Is Global Warming Creating New Climate Zones?
Anyone with a sense of the 4.5 billion-year history of climate and geological change on our planet knows that change is the only true global constant. Global warming is re-structuring the world's climate zones, with some estimates that by 2100 polar and mountain climates disappearing altogether and formerly unknown ones emerging in the tropics (keep in mind that the Antarctic was once a tropical life-zone).
When climate zones shift, the animals and plants that live in them will be at greater risk of extinction, said Jack Williams, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"What we've shown is these climates disappear, not just regionally, but they're disappearing from the global set of climates, and the species that live in these climates really have nowhere to go as the system changes," according to Williams.
Acclerating climate change will also lead to dramatic shifts in the behavior of nation states and the human species as a whole. I've listed recent posts on climate change and global warming.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/12/global-warming.html
When climate zones shift, the animals and plants that live in them will be at greater risk of extinction, said Jack Williams, a geographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"What we've shown is these climates disappear, not just regionally, but they're disappearing from the global set of climates, and the species that live in these climates really have nowhere to go as the system changes," according to Williams.
Acclerating climate change will also lead to dramatic shifts in the behavior of nation states and the human species as a whole. I've listed recent posts on climate change and global warming.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/12/global-warming.html
Environmentalists Detained for Photographing Tennessee Ash Spill
The major coal ash spill that occurred in eastern Tennessee on Monday covered an area of approximately 400 acres in debris from a retention lake near the Kingston Fossil Plant. The Tennessee Valley Authority, the largest utility company in the United States, assured the locals that the water was safe to drink, despite the fact that approximately one billion gallons of coal fly ash – a byproduct of burning coal – spilled into nearby rivers and polluted them severely.
Tom Kilgore, the leader of TVA, said on Sunday that the company would pay for testing the quality of water in wells around the spill site, so as to reassure some 2-300 affected residents that the spill posed no immediate danger to their health. An entire neighborhood in Harriman was flooded, and the debris made its way into the Emory River, which prompted concerns for people living in nearby Kingston.
Although it exhibits a PR-friendly facade, TVA also refuses to let independent observers take pictures and water samples from the affected area. Two photographers who tried to capture the site on film were detained by TVA police and held in custody for about an hour before being released. The two, members of the Knoxville-based United Mountain Defense, said that they wanted to take water samples of their own, to have it independently tested.
“This is an issue of national importance. People need to know if the water is safe or not,” said David Cooper, one of the photographers.
The illegal detention was widely criticized by civil rights groups, which said that the very core of American freedom was infringed upon by the actions of TVA police. They argued that people had a right to know the scale of the disaster, and also to see for themselves the devastation. There are currently no laws in place to prevent people from taking water samples out of national rivers or creeks, they added.
The danger now is that the ash spill will dry out, which would mean that a cloud of ash, similar to the one released by a volcano, will roam the region and deposit itself on everything it comes across. Emergency response teams are currently working to clear the area of potentially hazardous remains.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Environmentalists-Detained-for-Photographing-Tennessee-Ash-Spill-100941.shtml
Tom Kilgore, the leader of TVA, said on Sunday that the company would pay for testing the quality of water in wells around the spill site, so as to reassure some 2-300 affected residents that the spill posed no immediate danger to their health. An entire neighborhood in Harriman was flooded, and the debris made its way into the Emory River, which prompted concerns for people living in nearby Kingston.
Although it exhibits a PR-friendly facade, TVA also refuses to let independent observers take pictures and water samples from the affected area. Two photographers who tried to capture the site on film were detained by TVA police and held in custody for about an hour before being released. The two, members of the Knoxville-based United Mountain Defense, said that they wanted to take water samples of their own, to have it independently tested.
“This is an issue of national importance. People need to know if the water is safe or not,” said David Cooper, one of the photographers.
The illegal detention was widely criticized by civil rights groups, which said that the very core of American freedom was infringed upon by the actions of TVA police. They argued that people had a right to know the scale of the disaster, and also to see for themselves the devastation. There are currently no laws in place to prevent people from taking water samples out of national rivers or creeks, they added.
The danger now is that the ash spill will dry out, which would mean that a cloud of ash, similar to the one released by a volcano, will roam the region and deposit itself on everything it comes across. Emergency response teams are currently working to clear the area of potentially hazardous remains.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Environmentalists-Detained-for-Photographing-Tennessee-Ash-Spill-100941.shtml
The Trial of the World
Dec. 30 (Bloomberg) -- Bolivar Cevallos walks around the farm where his family once lived amid the oil fields of Ecuador’s Amazon rain forest. His boots sink ankle deep in tar. Everywhere he steps, oily muck seeps from the ground.
A gasolinelike smell hangs in the sweltering jungle air. The mess is a remnant of oil drilling in a 120-mile-long swath of the tropical jungle in northeastern Ecuador where Texaco Inc. and Ecuador’s state-run oil company, PetroEcuador, have pumped billions of barrels of crude from the ground during the past 40 years.
Cevallos, 51, whose face is tanned and creased from a life working in the tropical sun, plunges a shovel into a ditch. Grease oozes out and drains into a river his family used for drinking and bathing for more than 25 years.
About 230,000 people live in Ecuador’s northeastern rain forest side by side with oil wells and pools of drilling waste. Cevallos is no longer one of them.
Four years ago, a doctor diagnosed his daughter, Diana, with histiocytosis X, a rare blood disease that caused tumors that punched holes in her skull.
“The doctor told us to get out because the pollution would make her sicker, maybe kill her,” says Cevallos, who used to tend patches of cacao on his farm and now works as a laborer on a construction site for $6 a day. His daughter, now 5, is thin and still ailing.
As he speaks, a dog claws at trash around the family’s abandoned, windowless, one-bedroom, cement-walled home.
‘I Was Already Poor’
“I was already poor, and now I was going to get poorer,” he says.
The ruined land around Cevallos’s home is part of one of the worst environmental and human health disasters in the Amazon basin, which stretches across nine countries and, at 1.9 billion acres (800 million hectares), is about the size of Australia.
And depending on how an Ecuadorean judge rules in a lawsuit over the pollution, it may become the costliest corporate ecological catastrophe in world history.
If the judge follows the recommendation of a court- appointed panel of experts, he could order Chevron Corp., which now owns Texaco, to pay as much as $27 billion in damages.
The case, which has languished for 15 years in U.S. and Ecuadorean courts, highlights the growing human and environmental toll of the global quest for oil.
“If they have to pay out, who takes the big hit? Ultimately, the shareholders,” says Pat Doherty, director of corporate responsibility at the Office of the New York City Comptroller, which controls 6.5 million Chevron shares in public pension funds.
‘Bad Shape’
Doherty says Chevron should settle. Otherwise, if the company loses, he expects it will file appeals in Ecuador and the U.S. for years to come, leaving stockholders in limbo.
“They’re really in bad shape on this,” he says. “A settlement would make sense. The trees that last the longest are the ones that bend.”
Ecuador, which reported annual per capita income of $3,400 in 2007 and defaulted on its bonds in December for the second time in a decade, is one of two Latin American members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and depends on oil revenue to fund a third of the national budget.
Both sides in the Amazon case agree that for a quarter of a century, until 1990, Texaco discharged 16 billion gallons of wastewater that’s a byproduct of drilling.
In 1993, 76 people who lived near the wells -- including members of the indigenous Cofan and Quichua Indian tribes and people who came to the Amazon from other parts of Ecuador for jobs -- sued White Plains, New York-based Texaco in New York federal court.
Chevron Blames PetroEcuador
They claimed the pollution had ruined their livelihood as farmers and fishermen and made them and their families sick.
Chevron says Texaco had completely cleaned up its mess by 1998. PetroEcuador, which took over Texaco’s operations in 1990 -- and not Texaco -- is to blame for today’s pollution, Chevron says.
From 1990 until 2007, government-owned PetroEcuador released wastewater into the environment, says Fausto Mej a, a spokesman for PetroEcuador. He says the company has spent the past 16 years cleaning up, decreasing its dumping each year. It stopped releasing waste entirely by 2008, he says.
The case will be decided in an old concrete building in the Amazonian oil town of Lago Agrio, 37 miles (60 kilometers) north of Cevallos’s former home. With a shoe store, a T-shirt shop and a beauty salon on the street level, the building, which has no elevator, also houses a provincial courthouse.
141,000 Documents
On the fourth floor, Judge Juan Nunez oversees the lawsuit, weighing evidence and pondering whether Chevron should pay billions in damages. Nunez, 55, who wears a tan, open-necked, short-sleeved shirt, is president of the Nueva Loja Superior Court, the highest judicial body in Ecuador’s northeastern Sucumb os province.
He reviews soil tests, expert reports and requests for inspections of contaminated sites. A dark cherry desk in his office is covered with files in pink folders bound with string. The case has become a pincushion for legal and technical disputes, accumulating more than 141,000 documents.
Nunez will decide the case without a jury, as is customary in Ecuador’s legal system. In civil cases, judges gather evidence from witnesses, documents and experts before reaching a decision. A statue of Lady Justice sits on a dusty coffee table near an old sofa in Nunez’s otherwise Spartan office.
Nunez says his task is to decide what damage has been done and who is responsible. If he rules against Chevron, he’ll determine the dollar amount of the judgment. He talks about the gravity of the case. “There are people who are dying or have died,” he says.
1,401 Deaths
In November, a team of engineers, doctors and biologists submitted a court-ordered report concluding that Texaco’s pollution had caused 2,091 cases of cancer among residents and led to 1,401 deaths from 1985 to 1998.
The panel had previously concluded that Texaco polluted streams and drinking water in a 1,920-square-mile (4,972- square-kilometer) area and caused economic and social damage to people who live near the wells.
Chevron should pay as much as $27 billion in cleanup costs and compensation for families of the sick and the dead, the court-ordered study says. Nunez, a former Ecuadorean Air Force officer, says that by March, most of the evidence will be submitted, and he’ll reach a decision on the case later in 2009.
Silvia Garrigo, Chevron’s lead in-house attorney in the case, has made dozens of trips to Ecuador’s Amazon region in the past five years from her office at the company’s suburban, San Ramon, California, campus, 40 miles east of San Francisco.
Wrongly Accused
She says residents have wrongly accused Texaco of contaminating the environment and that there’s no credible evidence linking diseases to Texaco’s work.
“They have been told so many times that it’s Texaco, so everything that goes wrong in their lives, if their cow dies, it’s Texaco,” Garrigo, 47, says. “If their wife has diabetes, it’s Texaco.”
Health problems among residents of the Amazon are linked to poor sanitation and poverty, and residents of the oil region are pawns of activists and greedy attorneys, Garrigo says.
“You have people that are very needy,” she says. “They will lie. ‘My baby will have medical care, my son will get a job, if I testify.’”
If the judge follows the report’s recommendations, it could be the biggest industrial environmental judgment ever, surpassing Chevron’s 2007 profit by 50 percent. Chevron says it would appeal an adverse outcome, which could stave off paying anything for years.
Exxon Valdez
Nunez’s ruling has the potential to dwarf the $470 million in damages paid by Union Carbide Corp. over a chemical leak in Bhopal, India, that killed 3,800 people in 1984. And it could exceed the cost for the biggest oil spill ever in U.S. waters, Exxon Mobil Corp.’s nearly $4 billion in compensation and fines for the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska in 1989.
Exxon settled both civil and criminal charges to end the litigation.
In 1995, Texaco agreed with Ecuador’s Energy and Mines Ministry and PetroEcuador to clean up some of the waste dumping. Three years later, the agency approved the $40 million repair effort by Texaco. It released the company from responsibility for pollution that remained, according to a letter to the U.S. court from Ecuador’s ambassador in Washington.
Five years later, government auditors reported they had discovered pits oozing with oil and said the cleanup had been botched.
“Texaco has caused irreversible damage,” says the report by the General Controller of the State, a government agency that audits public contracts. “The environmental remediation and repair agreement goes against the country’s interest,” says the report, which was approved on April 9, 2003.
A Sham
Garrigo, Chevron’s lawyer, says the controller’s audit is a sham. It’s part of an Ecuadorean government campaign to concoct a case against the company and help the jungle residents and their lawyers reap billions of dollars of damages, she says.
“We have independent scientific analysis that refutes those findings,” Garrigo says.
Doctors at Ecuador’s top cancer hospital say oil pollution has taken a heavy toll on public health in the Amazon.
“There are enough cancer cases in the Amazon to show there is a trend, and the trend is rising,” says Rena Munoz, the doctor in charge of clinical oncology at Sociedad de Lucha Contra el Cancer, the Quito cancer hospital known as SOLCA that has treated people from the area.
Regardless of who’s to blame, oil pollution is a part of daily life in northeastern Ecuador. San Carlos is a town of 2,800 residents living in run-down wooden houses in the heart of the former Texaco oil fields.
‘We Drank This Water’
Trucks and bulldozers driven by government workers putting in the town’s first paved streets leave giant tread marks in the mud. A crude-oil processing plant run by PetroEcuador has machinery that roars like jet engines. Smokestacks spew flames and black, sooty clouds into the air.
Texaco built dozens of oil wells near San Carlos, and one is next to the Cevallos family’s abandoned home.
“We drank this water because we had to; there’s no other water,” says Cevallos, dressed in rubber boots and jeans caked with mud, sweating on the banks of the stream. “No one ever told us it was bad, so we just drank it for years. Before, we didn’t know. Now, we do.”
Cevallos says the waste pit by his old home, which is overgrown with weeds and is the size of a tennis court, has been there since he moved to the farm with an uncle in the mid-1970s. Workers contracted by Texaco used bulldozers to cover the pits with dirt, he says.
1.2 Million Oil Barrels
The well produced 144,321 barrels of wastewater and 1.2 million barrels of crude in the 18 years Texaco managed it, according to company documents in court records.
When Cevallos’s daughter, Diana, became ill in 2004, she was bathed in water from the polluted stream in her parents’ efforts to lower her fever.
Maria Barba, a doctor at Baca Ortiz Children’s Hospital in Quito, diagnosed the girl with histiocytosis X. Barba says she’s used cancer treatments to fight the disease as it flooded Diana’s body with white blood cells that attacked her bones and organs with tumors.
Barba sits at her desk at Baca Ortiz, where she runs the oncology and hematology department, reviewing Diana’s records. She says she can’t prove how Diana got the illness. Poor nutrition and sanitation, she says, make people sick in the impoverished Amazon, but pollution from oil drilling waste is a factor.
“It could be the water,” Barba says.
The Cevallos family isn’t named in the lawsuit.
No Scientific Evidence
Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson says there’s no scientific evidence linking Diana’s disease to crude oil.
In Joya de los Sachas, a town about 5 miles north of San Carlos, three boys stand on a 29-inch-wide (74-centimeter- wide) oil pipeline running down the median on the main street. They’re selling candy in the midday sun as trucks, scooters and buses speed by.
On a rutted dirt road near the pipeline in Sachas, Cevallos sits in the front room of his brother’s three-room house. His family sought refuge there four years earlier after fleeing their polluted farm to help Diana heal. To pay the medical bills, he’s had to sell two small houses he was fixing up.
Cevallos has been able to take Diana to clinics and hospitals in Ecuador’s public health system, which charges patients for medicine only. He’s had to pay for drugs and treatments, including $210 for injections every three weeks.
Next to Texaco’s old Sushufindi 38 well, farmer Manuel Salinas, 72, steps out of his family’s wooden shack and walks 50 feet, through a garbage-strewn patch of coffee trees. A pool of thick oil 50 yards (45 meters) long bakes in the sun.
Chickens in Quagmire
Salinas says the oily pool has been there since he moved to the farm in the early 1970s. He started to worry that the water wasn’t safe years ago, when his chickens would slip into the quagmire and die a slow death.
Havoc Laboratory in Quito, which analyzed soil samples for residents, found oil contamination about 20,000 percent above safe levels. Chevron spokesman Robertson says company tests found that drinking water near the pit isn’t polluted.
Both Texaco and PetroEcuador have been cited by government inspectors for repeated spills since oil production began in the 1960s. In 1994, PetroEcuador began reinjecting wastewater from drilling into the oil formations deep below the ground, PetroEcuador’s Mejia says.
Reinjection is a common practice in the U.S. For decades, Texaco put the waste into unlined pits, treated it and then discharged it into rivers and streams, a practice that was legal in Ecuador at the time, Chevron says on its Web site.
Outlawed in U.S.
As Texaco was dumping waste in Ecuador, environmental regulators in U.S. states were outlawing open-air pools.
Texas banned unlined waste pits that leaked into groundwater as far back as 1969, says Steve Seni, former assistant director of environmental studies at the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil industry.
A few miles from San Carlos, Ines Suquisupa stands by a grave in a jungle clearing with a photograph of her daughter Ana Patino. Ana, a shy girl who got good grades in school, agonized with leukemia for weeks in the wooden shack in which she was reared near an oil well outside San Carlos.
Doctors at Eugenio Espejo Hospital in Quito referred her to the Red Cross Hospital in Quito. There, Juan Sghirla, a hematologist, concluded her leukemia was so advanced that there was little he could do. That day, on June 20, 2005, Ana died. She was 18 years old.
“It was so fast that before we knew it, she was dead,” says Suquisupa, standing by her unpainted wooden home, which has uncovered openings for windows and no running water.
Shallow Water Well
Ana probably came down with the deadly disease because of the oil pollution around her home, Sghirla says. Ana, whose family settled the farm before she was born, grew up about 100 yards from an oil well and drank from a shallow water well that lay underneath rusty crude-oil pipelines.
A team from the general controller’s office that took soil tests at a well near Ana’s home found hydrocarbon contamination 5,716 times normal levels, the 2003 audit says.
Once, when neighbors tried to dig a water well a few feet away, they struck a layer of tar, says Suquisupa, 50, who makes a living tending a patch of cacao and coffee on her farm. Ana’s family isn’t among those who sued Chevron.
Chevron spokesman Robertson says soil and water tests found no chemicals known to cause leukemia.
There had been no oil production in Ecuador’s Amazon before 1964. That year, Texaco entered the region when the government gave the company the right to explore a strip of jungle in two provinces, Orellana and Sucumbios, near the Colombian border. On March 29, 1967, the search bore its first fruits.
A well called Lago Agrio, which is Spanish for Sour Lake, gushed thick, black crude. Sour Lake is also the name of a Texas town where Texaco made one of its first oil strikes, in 1903.
‘Country’s Salvation’
Jorge Viteri, an engineer who worked for one of Texaco’s contracted exploration crews, recalls dancing by the well that day as the crude rained down.
“We thought it would be our country’s salvation, bringing us out of poverty,” says Viteri, 82, who wrote a book, Oil, “Spears and Blood” (Palabra Editores, 2008), about the quest for oil in Ecuador.
Four decades later, 35 percent of Ecuadoreans live below the government’s poverty line, earning less than $720 a year. In rural areas like the northeast Amazon, the poverty ranking is nearly 60 percent, according to Ecuador’s National Institute of Statistics and Census.
Starting in 1964 and throughout Texaco’s 26-year presence in the Amazon, Texaco crews cleared roads, built bridges and river ports and hired more than 3,000 laborers. Workers also dug hundreds of pits near wells and processing stations to hold the water containing salt and chemicals that comes up with oil during drilling, court records show.
Little Threat
Chevron’s Robertson says the chemicals pose little or no threat to health. Ecuador’s Amazon gets an average of 120 inches of rain a year, and Texaco’s pits sometimes overflowed, polluting streams, according to the 2003 general controller’s audit.
The roads Texaco built helped open up a strip of the Amazon that had been inaccessible to vehicles and inhabited by small groups of Amazonian Siona-Secoya, Cofan and Quichua Indians.
A wave of poor Ecuadoreans, mainly from the southern Andean city of Loja, flocked to the area, encouraged by government settlement programs. These so-called colonists built wooden shacks on stilts and cut down the jungle next to wells and waste pits to start farms.
Nunez remembers flying over the region when he was in the air force during those years. Dark areas showed where the lush jungle had been slashed away.
“You ask yourself what happened and what caused this?” Nunez says. “You don’t have to be a technical expert to know something has happened.” He says the memories won’t influence his decision in the case.
Military Rulers
By the early 1970s, Ecuador’s military rulers began pressuring for a direct stake in the oil riches, says Alberto Acosta, a historian and former Ecuadorean energy minister.
PetroEcuador bought the majority stake of the oil venture in 1977, leaving Texaco to work the wells. The state-owned company needed Texaco then because it lacked experience in oil drilling. Texaco ran the fields until June 1990, when PetroEcuador took over. Texaco kept a 37.5 percent stake in the oil fields until 1992, when PetroEcuador bought all of it.
As management was changing hands, Miguel San Sebastian, a physician based in Spain, began to wonder how the oil pollution was affecting the health of people living in Ecuador’s Amazon. San Sebastian had worked as a traveling doctor treating Indians and colonists in the jungle where Texaco operated.
“You could see it everywhere, the spills in rivers and pits,” says San Sebastian, 42, who’s now a professor of epidemiology at Umea University in Umea, Sweden. “We started to sense that it had to have an impact on people’s health.”
Lawyers Notice
Texaco’s oil drilling in Ecuador also began to attract the attention of American lawyers. Amherst, Massachusetts, attorney Cristobal Bonifaz, a former research engineer at DuPont Co., grew interested in oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon when his son showed him a report by an environmental group.
Ecuadorean-born Bonifaz, whose grandfather, Neptali Bonifaz, was elected president of Ecuador in 1931, traveled to the region to take a look. “I saw lakes of oil,” he says.
Bonifaz contacted Harold Kohn, a Philadelphia antitrust attorney who pioneered the use of class-action, or group, lawsuits. Kohn’s son Joseph, a partner at Kohn Swift & Graf P.C. in Philadelphia, teamed up with Bonifaz.
Steven Donziger, a former journalist and Washington public defender who went to Harvard Law School with Bonifaz’s son, John, joined the case.
On Nov. 3, 1993, Bonifaz, Donziger and Kohn walked into a federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan with members of Ecuadorean Indian tribes in traditional dress and filed the lawsuit against Texaco.
Jurisdiction Battle
Lawyers for both sides fought over whether the suit should be in a U.S. court. Texaco sought dismissal, saying the U.S. courts were the wrong forum because the land and the people affected were in Ecuador.
The plaintiffs said the case should stay in the U.S. because Texaco was a U.S. company.
In the midst of the legal wrangling in New York, Texaco signed an agreement on May 4, 1995, with Ecuador’s energy ministry and PetroEcuador to clean up a portion of the oil fields. In return, Texaco would be absolved from any liability for environmental damage.
Texaco said it would clean up about a third of the waste pits because it had held a 37.5 percent interest in the oil fields for the last six years of its partnership with PetroEcuador. The state-owned company would take care of the rest.
Back in New York, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff threw the case out in 1996, saying disputes that occurred in Ecuador shouldn’t be decided in U.S. courts. He also said the case had been improperly filed because it didn’t name PetroEcuador as a defendant.
Decision Reversed
The Amazon residents appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan. The court reversed the decision and sent the case back to Rakoff, saying it should be decided in Ecuador.
Texaco then learned that Ecuadorean government environmental officials questioned the company’s cleanup.
In September 1996, the energy ministry’s environmental department issued a report saying Texaco had failed to identify more than 200 additional waste pits and hadn’t come up with a plan for treating about 50,000 barrels of crude-oil waste, according to memos cited in the 2003 controller’s audit.
In 2001, inspectors from the government controller’s office found oil seeping out of 41 Texaco waste pits and said 59 pits had been left uncovered. Texaco’s cleanup didn’t comply with Ecuador’s environmental regulations, and the government erred in certifying the cleanup as complete, the audit concluded.
$45.8 Billion Acquisition
Back in the U.S., as Texaco was facing the cleanup controversy in Ecuador, Chevron, then the second-largest U.S. oil company, acquired No. 3 Texaco in October 2001 for $45.8 billion. Chevron saw acquiring Texaco as a way to cut costs and have more capital to compete with rivals in the search for new oil reserves.
In 2003, the Ecuadoreans filed their case in Superior Court in Nueva Loja, also known as Lago Agrio, 20 miles south of the Colombian border. The suit was led by U.S. and Ecuadorean lawyers. Pablo Fajardo, a community activist and former oil worker who earned a law degree in 2004, joined the lawyers.
Bonifaz, the lawyer who started the suit in 1992, left the case. In a different case in San Francisco, a federal judge fined Bonifaz $45,000 in 2007 for filing untrue claims that three Ecuadorean families had cancer cases linked to Texaco pollution.
Bonifaz says he had relied on information from Ecuadorean lawyers not connected to the Chevron case.
Under Ecuadorean environmental rules, lawsuits over pollution are handled by chief judges, who rotate every two years.
Evaluating Pollution Data
In 2007, Judge Germn Yanez, the case’s third judge, appointed Richard Cabrera, a geological engineer in Quito with 20 years of experience, to evaluate the pollution data, assess the effects of contamination on people and the environment and recommend a cleanup plan.
Cabrera had specialized in environmental studies for mining and oil companies in Ecuador, and he put together a team of scientists, doctors and biologists.
In April 2008, Cabrera’s team concluded that Texaco’s mishandling of waste until 1990 was the main cause of the pollution. It proposed a cleanup of 916 pits and underground aquifers. The report pegged total damages at $16 billion.
The team reviewed studies by San Sebastian, the Spanish doctor, and a group of government health workers. It found that cancer rates were above those of areas of Ecuador without oil operations. Its revised report, which used studies by the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. court cases to gauge costs, increased the damage estimate to $27 billion.
Not Supported By Evidence
Chevron says the expert panel’s findings aren’t supported by the evidence. The company hired doctors, epidemiologists and other experts who refute the report.
The Chevron case is the most important environmental litigation on the planet, says Mike Brune, executive director of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, which lobbies companies to improve their practices.
“When the verdict comes in, it will force environmental ethics to go global,” he says.
Nunez says the case will have international significance.
“The Amazon gives the breath of life to humanity,” Nunez says. “That’s why this is the trial of the world.”
Cevallos says Texaco’s legacy has made his world crumble. His daughter, Diana, is a lively girl with a broad smile who likes to do homework while sitting with her mother, Sandra Gutierrez. She’s spent much of the past year taking 18-hour round trips by bus with her mother to the hospital in Quito every three weeks, for chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
Across the old Texaco fields in Ecuador’s Amazon, after 40 years of oil production, thousands are ill and hundreds have died. Most have no way out.
“People are getting sick all around here,” says Cevallos, standing by his abandoned house. “But what can you do? When you’re poor, there’s nowhere else to go.”
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A gasolinelike smell hangs in the sweltering jungle air. The mess is a remnant of oil drilling in a 120-mile-long swath of the tropical jungle in northeastern Ecuador where Texaco Inc. and Ecuador’s state-run oil company, PetroEcuador, have pumped billions of barrels of crude from the ground during the past 40 years.
Cevallos, 51, whose face is tanned and creased from a life working in the tropical sun, plunges a shovel into a ditch. Grease oozes out and drains into a river his family used for drinking and bathing for more than 25 years.
About 230,000 people live in Ecuador’s northeastern rain forest side by side with oil wells and pools of drilling waste. Cevallos is no longer one of them.
Four years ago, a doctor diagnosed his daughter, Diana, with histiocytosis X, a rare blood disease that caused tumors that punched holes in her skull.
“The doctor told us to get out because the pollution would make her sicker, maybe kill her,” says Cevallos, who used to tend patches of cacao on his farm and now works as a laborer on a construction site for $6 a day. His daughter, now 5, is thin and still ailing.
As he speaks, a dog claws at trash around the family’s abandoned, windowless, one-bedroom, cement-walled home.
‘I Was Already Poor’
“I was already poor, and now I was going to get poorer,” he says.
The ruined land around Cevallos’s home is part of one of the worst environmental and human health disasters in the Amazon basin, which stretches across nine countries and, at 1.9 billion acres (800 million hectares), is about the size of Australia.
And depending on how an Ecuadorean judge rules in a lawsuit over the pollution, it may become the costliest corporate ecological catastrophe in world history.
If the judge follows the recommendation of a court- appointed panel of experts, he could order Chevron Corp., which now owns Texaco, to pay as much as $27 billion in damages.
The case, which has languished for 15 years in U.S. and Ecuadorean courts, highlights the growing human and environmental toll of the global quest for oil.
“If they have to pay out, who takes the big hit? Ultimately, the shareholders,” says Pat Doherty, director of corporate responsibility at the Office of the New York City Comptroller, which controls 6.5 million Chevron shares in public pension funds.
‘Bad Shape’
Doherty says Chevron should settle. Otherwise, if the company loses, he expects it will file appeals in Ecuador and the U.S. for years to come, leaving stockholders in limbo.
“They’re really in bad shape on this,” he says. “A settlement would make sense. The trees that last the longest are the ones that bend.”
Ecuador, which reported annual per capita income of $3,400 in 2007 and defaulted on its bonds in December for the second time in a decade, is one of two Latin American members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and depends on oil revenue to fund a third of the national budget.
Both sides in the Amazon case agree that for a quarter of a century, until 1990, Texaco discharged 16 billion gallons of wastewater that’s a byproduct of drilling.
In 1993, 76 people who lived near the wells -- including members of the indigenous Cofan and Quichua Indian tribes and people who came to the Amazon from other parts of Ecuador for jobs -- sued White Plains, New York-based Texaco in New York federal court.
Chevron Blames PetroEcuador
They claimed the pollution had ruined their livelihood as farmers and fishermen and made them and their families sick.
Chevron says Texaco had completely cleaned up its mess by 1998. PetroEcuador, which took over Texaco’s operations in 1990 -- and not Texaco -- is to blame for today’s pollution, Chevron says.
From 1990 until 2007, government-owned PetroEcuador released wastewater into the environment, says Fausto Mej a, a spokesman for PetroEcuador. He says the company has spent the past 16 years cleaning up, decreasing its dumping each year. It stopped releasing waste entirely by 2008, he says.
The case will be decided in an old concrete building in the Amazonian oil town of Lago Agrio, 37 miles (60 kilometers) north of Cevallos’s former home. With a shoe store, a T-shirt shop and a beauty salon on the street level, the building, which has no elevator, also houses a provincial courthouse.
141,000 Documents
On the fourth floor, Judge Juan Nunez oversees the lawsuit, weighing evidence and pondering whether Chevron should pay billions in damages. Nunez, 55, who wears a tan, open-necked, short-sleeved shirt, is president of the Nueva Loja Superior Court, the highest judicial body in Ecuador’s northeastern Sucumb os province.
He reviews soil tests, expert reports and requests for inspections of contaminated sites. A dark cherry desk in his office is covered with files in pink folders bound with string. The case has become a pincushion for legal and technical disputes, accumulating more than 141,000 documents.
Nunez will decide the case without a jury, as is customary in Ecuador’s legal system. In civil cases, judges gather evidence from witnesses, documents and experts before reaching a decision. A statue of Lady Justice sits on a dusty coffee table near an old sofa in Nunez’s otherwise Spartan office.
Nunez says his task is to decide what damage has been done and who is responsible. If he rules against Chevron, he’ll determine the dollar amount of the judgment. He talks about the gravity of the case. “There are people who are dying or have died,” he says.
1,401 Deaths
In November, a team of engineers, doctors and biologists submitted a court-ordered report concluding that Texaco’s pollution had caused 2,091 cases of cancer among residents and led to 1,401 deaths from 1985 to 1998.
The panel had previously concluded that Texaco polluted streams and drinking water in a 1,920-square-mile (4,972- square-kilometer) area and caused economic and social damage to people who live near the wells.
Chevron should pay as much as $27 billion in cleanup costs and compensation for families of the sick and the dead, the court-ordered study says. Nunez, a former Ecuadorean Air Force officer, says that by March, most of the evidence will be submitted, and he’ll reach a decision on the case later in 2009.
Silvia Garrigo, Chevron’s lead in-house attorney in the case, has made dozens of trips to Ecuador’s Amazon region in the past five years from her office at the company’s suburban, San Ramon, California, campus, 40 miles east of San Francisco.
Wrongly Accused
She says residents have wrongly accused Texaco of contaminating the environment and that there’s no credible evidence linking diseases to Texaco’s work.
“They have been told so many times that it’s Texaco, so everything that goes wrong in their lives, if their cow dies, it’s Texaco,” Garrigo, 47, says. “If their wife has diabetes, it’s Texaco.”
Health problems among residents of the Amazon are linked to poor sanitation and poverty, and residents of the oil region are pawns of activists and greedy attorneys, Garrigo says.
“You have people that are very needy,” she says. “They will lie. ‘My baby will have medical care, my son will get a job, if I testify.’”
If the judge follows the report’s recommendations, it could be the biggest industrial environmental judgment ever, surpassing Chevron’s 2007 profit by 50 percent. Chevron says it would appeal an adverse outcome, which could stave off paying anything for years.
Exxon Valdez
Nunez’s ruling has the potential to dwarf the $470 million in damages paid by Union Carbide Corp. over a chemical leak in Bhopal, India, that killed 3,800 people in 1984. And it could exceed the cost for the biggest oil spill ever in U.S. waters, Exxon Mobil Corp.’s nearly $4 billion in compensation and fines for the Exxon Valdez tanker disaster in Alaska in 1989.
Exxon settled both civil and criminal charges to end the litigation.
In 1995, Texaco agreed with Ecuador’s Energy and Mines Ministry and PetroEcuador to clean up some of the waste dumping. Three years later, the agency approved the $40 million repair effort by Texaco. It released the company from responsibility for pollution that remained, according to a letter to the U.S. court from Ecuador’s ambassador in Washington.
Five years later, government auditors reported they had discovered pits oozing with oil and said the cleanup had been botched.
“Texaco has caused irreversible damage,” says the report by the General Controller of the State, a government agency that audits public contracts. “The environmental remediation and repair agreement goes against the country’s interest,” says the report, which was approved on April 9, 2003.
A Sham
Garrigo, Chevron’s lawyer, says the controller’s audit is a sham. It’s part of an Ecuadorean government campaign to concoct a case against the company and help the jungle residents and their lawyers reap billions of dollars of damages, she says.
“We have independent scientific analysis that refutes those findings,” Garrigo says.
Doctors at Ecuador’s top cancer hospital say oil pollution has taken a heavy toll on public health in the Amazon.
“There are enough cancer cases in the Amazon to show there is a trend, and the trend is rising,” says Rena Munoz, the doctor in charge of clinical oncology at Sociedad de Lucha Contra el Cancer, the Quito cancer hospital known as SOLCA that has treated people from the area.
Regardless of who’s to blame, oil pollution is a part of daily life in northeastern Ecuador. San Carlos is a town of 2,800 residents living in run-down wooden houses in the heart of the former Texaco oil fields.
‘We Drank This Water’
Trucks and bulldozers driven by government workers putting in the town’s first paved streets leave giant tread marks in the mud. A crude-oil processing plant run by PetroEcuador has machinery that roars like jet engines. Smokestacks spew flames and black, sooty clouds into the air.
Texaco built dozens of oil wells near San Carlos, and one is next to the Cevallos family’s abandoned home.
“We drank this water because we had to; there’s no other water,” says Cevallos, dressed in rubber boots and jeans caked with mud, sweating on the banks of the stream. “No one ever told us it was bad, so we just drank it for years. Before, we didn’t know. Now, we do.”
Cevallos says the waste pit by his old home, which is overgrown with weeds and is the size of a tennis court, has been there since he moved to the farm with an uncle in the mid-1970s. Workers contracted by Texaco used bulldozers to cover the pits with dirt, he says.
1.2 Million Oil Barrels
The well produced 144,321 barrels of wastewater and 1.2 million barrels of crude in the 18 years Texaco managed it, according to company documents in court records.
When Cevallos’s daughter, Diana, became ill in 2004, she was bathed in water from the polluted stream in her parents’ efforts to lower her fever.
Maria Barba, a doctor at Baca Ortiz Children’s Hospital in Quito, diagnosed the girl with histiocytosis X. Barba says she’s used cancer treatments to fight the disease as it flooded Diana’s body with white blood cells that attacked her bones and organs with tumors.
Barba sits at her desk at Baca Ortiz, where she runs the oncology and hematology department, reviewing Diana’s records. She says she can’t prove how Diana got the illness. Poor nutrition and sanitation, she says, make people sick in the impoverished Amazon, but pollution from oil drilling waste is a factor.
“It could be the water,” Barba says.
The Cevallos family isn’t named in the lawsuit.
No Scientific Evidence
Chevron spokesman Kent Robertson says there’s no scientific evidence linking Diana’s disease to crude oil.
In Joya de los Sachas, a town about 5 miles north of San Carlos, three boys stand on a 29-inch-wide (74-centimeter- wide) oil pipeline running down the median on the main street. They’re selling candy in the midday sun as trucks, scooters and buses speed by.
On a rutted dirt road near the pipeline in Sachas, Cevallos sits in the front room of his brother’s three-room house. His family sought refuge there four years earlier after fleeing their polluted farm to help Diana heal. To pay the medical bills, he’s had to sell two small houses he was fixing up.
Cevallos has been able to take Diana to clinics and hospitals in Ecuador’s public health system, which charges patients for medicine only. He’s had to pay for drugs and treatments, including $210 for injections every three weeks.
Next to Texaco’s old Sushufindi 38 well, farmer Manuel Salinas, 72, steps out of his family’s wooden shack and walks 50 feet, through a garbage-strewn patch of coffee trees. A pool of thick oil 50 yards (45 meters) long bakes in the sun.
Chickens in Quagmire
Salinas says the oily pool has been there since he moved to the farm in the early 1970s. He started to worry that the water wasn’t safe years ago, when his chickens would slip into the quagmire and die a slow death.
Havoc Laboratory in Quito, which analyzed soil samples for residents, found oil contamination about 20,000 percent above safe levels. Chevron spokesman Robertson says company tests found that drinking water near the pit isn’t polluted.
Both Texaco and PetroEcuador have been cited by government inspectors for repeated spills since oil production began in the 1960s. In 1994, PetroEcuador began reinjecting wastewater from drilling into the oil formations deep below the ground, PetroEcuador’s Mejia says.
Reinjection is a common practice in the U.S. For decades, Texaco put the waste into unlined pits, treated it and then discharged it into rivers and streams, a practice that was legal in Ecuador at the time, Chevron says on its Web site.
Outlawed in U.S.
As Texaco was dumping waste in Ecuador, environmental regulators in U.S. states were outlawing open-air pools.
Texas banned unlined waste pits that leaked into groundwater as far back as 1969, says Steve Seni, former assistant director of environmental studies at the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil industry.
A few miles from San Carlos, Ines Suquisupa stands by a grave in a jungle clearing with a photograph of her daughter Ana Patino. Ana, a shy girl who got good grades in school, agonized with leukemia for weeks in the wooden shack in which she was reared near an oil well outside San Carlos.
Doctors at Eugenio Espejo Hospital in Quito referred her to the Red Cross Hospital in Quito. There, Juan Sghirla, a hematologist, concluded her leukemia was so advanced that there was little he could do. That day, on June 20, 2005, Ana died. She was 18 years old.
“It was so fast that before we knew it, she was dead,” says Suquisupa, standing by her unpainted wooden home, which has uncovered openings for windows and no running water.
Shallow Water Well
Ana probably came down with the deadly disease because of the oil pollution around her home, Sghirla says. Ana, whose family settled the farm before she was born, grew up about 100 yards from an oil well and drank from a shallow water well that lay underneath rusty crude-oil pipelines.
A team from the general controller’s office that took soil tests at a well near Ana’s home found hydrocarbon contamination 5,716 times normal levels, the 2003 audit says.
Once, when neighbors tried to dig a water well a few feet away, they struck a layer of tar, says Suquisupa, 50, who makes a living tending a patch of cacao and coffee on her farm. Ana’s family isn’t among those who sued Chevron.
Chevron spokesman Robertson says soil and water tests found no chemicals known to cause leukemia.
There had been no oil production in Ecuador’s Amazon before 1964. That year, Texaco entered the region when the government gave the company the right to explore a strip of jungle in two provinces, Orellana and Sucumbios, near the Colombian border. On March 29, 1967, the search bore its first fruits.
A well called Lago Agrio, which is Spanish for Sour Lake, gushed thick, black crude. Sour Lake is also the name of a Texas town where Texaco made one of its first oil strikes, in 1903.
‘Country’s Salvation’
Jorge Viteri, an engineer who worked for one of Texaco’s contracted exploration crews, recalls dancing by the well that day as the crude rained down.
“We thought it would be our country’s salvation, bringing us out of poverty,” says Viteri, 82, who wrote a book, Oil, “Spears and Blood” (Palabra Editores, 2008), about the quest for oil in Ecuador.
Four decades later, 35 percent of Ecuadoreans live below the government’s poverty line, earning less than $720 a year. In rural areas like the northeast Amazon, the poverty ranking is nearly 60 percent, according to Ecuador’s National Institute of Statistics and Census.
Starting in 1964 and throughout Texaco’s 26-year presence in the Amazon, Texaco crews cleared roads, built bridges and river ports and hired more than 3,000 laborers. Workers also dug hundreds of pits near wells and processing stations to hold the water containing salt and chemicals that comes up with oil during drilling, court records show.
Little Threat
Chevron’s Robertson says the chemicals pose little or no threat to health. Ecuador’s Amazon gets an average of 120 inches of rain a year, and Texaco’s pits sometimes overflowed, polluting streams, according to the 2003 general controller’s audit.
The roads Texaco built helped open up a strip of the Amazon that had been inaccessible to vehicles and inhabited by small groups of Amazonian Siona-Secoya, Cofan and Quichua Indians.
A wave of poor Ecuadoreans, mainly from the southern Andean city of Loja, flocked to the area, encouraged by government settlement programs. These so-called colonists built wooden shacks on stilts and cut down the jungle next to wells and waste pits to start farms.
Nunez remembers flying over the region when he was in the air force during those years. Dark areas showed where the lush jungle had been slashed away.
“You ask yourself what happened and what caused this?” Nunez says. “You don’t have to be a technical expert to know something has happened.” He says the memories won’t influence his decision in the case.
Military Rulers
By the early 1970s, Ecuador’s military rulers began pressuring for a direct stake in the oil riches, says Alberto Acosta, a historian and former Ecuadorean energy minister.
PetroEcuador bought the majority stake of the oil venture in 1977, leaving Texaco to work the wells. The state-owned company needed Texaco then because it lacked experience in oil drilling. Texaco ran the fields until June 1990, when PetroEcuador took over. Texaco kept a 37.5 percent stake in the oil fields until 1992, when PetroEcuador bought all of it.
As management was changing hands, Miguel San Sebastian, a physician based in Spain, began to wonder how the oil pollution was affecting the health of people living in Ecuador’s Amazon. San Sebastian had worked as a traveling doctor treating Indians and colonists in the jungle where Texaco operated.
“You could see it everywhere, the spills in rivers and pits,” says San Sebastian, 42, who’s now a professor of epidemiology at Umea University in Umea, Sweden. “We started to sense that it had to have an impact on people’s health.”
Lawyers Notice
Texaco’s oil drilling in Ecuador also began to attract the attention of American lawyers. Amherst, Massachusetts, attorney Cristobal Bonifaz, a former research engineer at DuPont Co., grew interested in oil pollution in the Ecuadorean Amazon when his son showed him a report by an environmental group.
Ecuadorean-born Bonifaz, whose grandfather, Neptali Bonifaz, was elected president of Ecuador in 1931, traveled to the region to take a look. “I saw lakes of oil,” he says.
Bonifaz contacted Harold Kohn, a Philadelphia antitrust attorney who pioneered the use of class-action, or group, lawsuits. Kohn’s son Joseph, a partner at Kohn Swift & Graf P.C. in Philadelphia, teamed up with Bonifaz.
Steven Donziger, a former journalist and Washington public defender who went to Harvard Law School with Bonifaz’s son, John, joined the case.
On Nov. 3, 1993, Bonifaz, Donziger and Kohn walked into a federal courthouse in downtown Manhattan with members of Ecuadorean Indian tribes in traditional dress and filed the lawsuit against Texaco.
Jurisdiction Battle
Lawyers for both sides fought over whether the suit should be in a U.S. court. Texaco sought dismissal, saying the U.S. courts were the wrong forum because the land and the people affected were in Ecuador.
The plaintiffs said the case should stay in the U.S. because Texaco was a U.S. company.
In the midst of the legal wrangling in New York, Texaco signed an agreement on May 4, 1995, with Ecuador’s energy ministry and PetroEcuador to clean up a portion of the oil fields. In return, Texaco would be absolved from any liability for environmental damage.
Texaco said it would clean up about a third of the waste pits because it had held a 37.5 percent interest in the oil fields for the last six years of its partnership with PetroEcuador. The state-owned company would take care of the rest.
Back in New York, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff threw the case out in 1996, saying disputes that occurred in Ecuador shouldn’t be decided in U.S. courts. He also said the case had been improperly filed because it didn’t name PetroEcuador as a defendant.
Decision Reversed
The Amazon residents appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan. The court reversed the decision and sent the case back to Rakoff, saying it should be decided in Ecuador.
Texaco then learned that Ecuadorean government environmental officials questioned the company’s cleanup.
In September 1996, the energy ministry’s environmental department issued a report saying Texaco had failed to identify more than 200 additional waste pits and hadn’t come up with a plan for treating about 50,000 barrels of crude-oil waste, according to memos cited in the 2003 controller’s audit.
In 2001, inspectors from the government controller’s office found oil seeping out of 41 Texaco waste pits and said 59 pits had been left uncovered. Texaco’s cleanup didn’t comply with Ecuador’s environmental regulations, and the government erred in certifying the cleanup as complete, the audit concluded.
$45.8 Billion Acquisition
Back in the U.S., as Texaco was facing the cleanup controversy in Ecuador, Chevron, then the second-largest U.S. oil company, acquired No. 3 Texaco in October 2001 for $45.8 billion. Chevron saw acquiring Texaco as a way to cut costs and have more capital to compete with rivals in the search for new oil reserves.
In 2003, the Ecuadoreans filed their case in Superior Court in Nueva Loja, also known as Lago Agrio, 20 miles south of the Colombian border. The suit was led by U.S. and Ecuadorean lawyers. Pablo Fajardo, a community activist and former oil worker who earned a law degree in 2004, joined the lawyers.
Bonifaz, the lawyer who started the suit in 1992, left the case. In a different case in San Francisco, a federal judge fined Bonifaz $45,000 in 2007 for filing untrue claims that three Ecuadorean families had cancer cases linked to Texaco pollution.
Bonifaz says he had relied on information from Ecuadorean lawyers not connected to the Chevron case.
Under Ecuadorean environmental rules, lawsuits over pollution are handled by chief judges, who rotate every two years.
Evaluating Pollution Data
In 2007, Judge Germn Yanez, the case’s third judge, appointed Richard Cabrera, a geological engineer in Quito with 20 years of experience, to evaluate the pollution data, assess the effects of contamination on people and the environment and recommend a cleanup plan.
Cabrera had specialized in environmental studies for mining and oil companies in Ecuador, and he put together a team of scientists, doctors and biologists.
In April 2008, Cabrera’s team concluded that Texaco’s mishandling of waste until 1990 was the main cause of the pollution. It proposed a cleanup of 916 pits and underground aquifers. The report pegged total damages at $16 billion.
The team reviewed studies by San Sebastian, the Spanish doctor, and a group of government health workers. It found that cancer rates were above those of areas of Ecuador without oil operations. Its revised report, which used studies by the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. court cases to gauge costs, increased the damage estimate to $27 billion.
Not Supported By Evidence
Chevron says the expert panel’s findings aren’t supported by the evidence. The company hired doctors, epidemiologists and other experts who refute the report.
The Chevron case is the most important environmental litigation on the planet, says Mike Brune, executive director of the San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, which lobbies companies to improve their practices.
“When the verdict comes in, it will force environmental ethics to go global,” he says.
Nunez says the case will have international significance.
“The Amazon gives the breath of life to humanity,” Nunez says. “That’s why this is the trial of the world.”
Cevallos says Texaco’s legacy has made his world crumble. His daughter, Diana, is a lively girl with a broad smile who likes to do homework while sitting with her mother, Sandra Gutierrez. She’s spent much of the past year taking 18-hour round trips by bus with her mother to the hospital in Quito every three weeks, for chemotherapy and radiation treatments.
Across the old Texaco fields in Ecuador’s Amazon, after 40 years of oil production, thousands are ill and hundreds have died. Most have no way out.
“People are getting sick all around here,” says Cevallos, standing by his abandoned house. “But what can you do? When you’re poor, there’s nowhere else to go.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a_lJWUAmsu8c&refer=home
Revolucion elevo esperanza de vida 20 anos en oriente cubano
Los beneficios sociales garantizados por la Revolución cubana desde su triunfo en 1959 posibilitan que hoy los pobladores del oriente del país vivan dos décadas más.
Según datos revelados este lunes por la emisora Radio Angulo, hace medio siglo los naturales de la nororiental provincia de Holguín vivían como promedio 21 años menos.
La expectativa de vida entonces rondaba los 57 años, debido al atraso socio-económico que lastraba el desarrollo de esta región.
Al triunfar, la Revolución implementó un sistema nacional de salud pública que garantizó la atención médica gratuita a todos los cubanos, sin importar sexo, edad, credo o filiación política.
En ello incide además el subsidio estatal a una canasta básica familiar que satisface las normas dietéticas internacionales, pese a la crisis mundial de alimentos.
La esperanza de vida en Cuba es actualmente de 77,97 años, cinco más que el promedio en Latinoamérica y el Caribe, aunque también creció la natalidad en los últimos meses.
La Oficina Nacional de Estadística reveló el crecimiento estable de nacidos vivos este año, tendencia que había disminuido en los últimos tiempos acentuando el envejecimiento poblacional.
Pese a ello, el Parlamento aprobó el pasado sábado una nueva Ley de Seguridad Social, que extiende cinco años la edad laboral como alternativa al mencionado envejecimiento.
Las autoridades argumentan que los cubanos llegan hoy a la tercera edad con más salud física y mental que en 1963, cuando fue establecido el sistema de seguridad social vigente hasta ahora.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081230/internacionales/62216/
Según datos revelados este lunes por la emisora Radio Angulo, hace medio siglo los naturales de la nororiental provincia de Holguín vivían como promedio 21 años menos.
La expectativa de vida entonces rondaba los 57 años, debido al atraso socio-económico que lastraba el desarrollo de esta región.
Al triunfar, la Revolución implementó un sistema nacional de salud pública que garantizó la atención médica gratuita a todos los cubanos, sin importar sexo, edad, credo o filiación política.
En ello incide además el subsidio estatal a una canasta básica familiar que satisface las normas dietéticas internacionales, pese a la crisis mundial de alimentos.
La esperanza de vida en Cuba es actualmente de 77,97 años, cinco más que el promedio en Latinoamérica y el Caribe, aunque también creció la natalidad en los últimos meses.
La Oficina Nacional de Estadística reveló el crecimiento estable de nacidos vivos este año, tendencia que había disminuido en los últimos tiempos acentuando el envejecimiento poblacional.
Pese a ello, el Parlamento aprobó el pasado sábado una nueva Ley de Seguridad Social, que extiende cinco años la edad laboral como alternativa al mencionado envejecimiento.
Las autoridades argumentan que los cubanos llegan hoy a la tercera edad con más salud física y mental que en 1963, cuando fue establecido el sistema de seguridad social vigente hasta ahora.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081230/internacionales/62216/
80% de ninos migrantes viajan sin compania hacia EE.UU.
El 80 por ciento de los niños centroamericanos y nacionales que tratan de llegar a Estados Unidos para reencontrase con familiares o buscar empleo, viajan sin compañía a través de México, reveló hoy una organización humanitaria.
Estos menores de edad corren todo tipo de riesgo tales como violaciones sexuales, robo, golpizas, ser víctimas de trata de persona, explotación laboral, incluso desaparición y muerte, explicó Mónica Salazar, integrante de la agrupación Infancia Común.
Detalló que cuando son detectados por las autoridades mexicanas sufren las mismas irregularidades que los adultos en el proceso de deportación.
No le dan ninguna explicación sobre la repatriación y ni siquiera le dan tiempo a denunciar si fueron víctimas de algún tipo de abuso o violación de sus derechos, por la inmediatez con la cual son deportados, dijo Salazar.
Recordó que la carencia de un reglamento de ley para sancionar y prevenir la trata de personas hace más vulnerables a quienes utilizan el territorio nacional para llegar a Estados Unidos o quedarse aquí.
A más de un año de aprobarse y publicarse la ley para prevenir y sancionar la trata de personas, el gobierno federal aún no ha publicado quién brindará atención a las víctimas de ese ilícito, dijo.
Por su parte, Nashie Ramírez, de la Red por los Derechos de la Infancia subrayó que en este país los centroamericanos, tanto adultos como niños, padecen las mismas vejaciones que los mexicanos cuando tratan de llegar a Estados Unidos.
En ese sentido, acotó, las autoridades mexicanas deberían de cambiar sus políticas hacia los migrantes del sur delm país para exigir a los vecinos del norte mejor trato hacia sus connacionales.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081226/internacionales/62116/
Estos menores de edad corren todo tipo de riesgo tales como violaciones sexuales, robo, golpizas, ser víctimas de trata de persona, explotación laboral, incluso desaparición y muerte, explicó Mónica Salazar, integrante de la agrupación Infancia Común.
Detalló que cuando son detectados por las autoridades mexicanas sufren las mismas irregularidades que los adultos en el proceso de deportación.
No le dan ninguna explicación sobre la repatriación y ni siquiera le dan tiempo a denunciar si fueron víctimas de algún tipo de abuso o violación de sus derechos, por la inmediatez con la cual son deportados, dijo Salazar.
Recordó que la carencia de un reglamento de ley para sancionar y prevenir la trata de personas hace más vulnerables a quienes utilizan el territorio nacional para llegar a Estados Unidos o quedarse aquí.
A más de un año de aprobarse y publicarse la ley para prevenir y sancionar la trata de personas, el gobierno federal aún no ha publicado quién brindará atención a las víctimas de ese ilícito, dijo.
Por su parte, Nashie Ramírez, de la Red por los Derechos de la Infancia subrayó que en este país los centroamericanos, tanto adultos como niños, padecen las mismas vejaciones que los mexicanos cuando tratan de llegar a Estados Unidos.
En ese sentido, acotó, las autoridades mexicanas deberían de cambiar sus políticas hacia los migrantes del sur delm país para exigir a los vecinos del norte mejor trato hacia sus connacionales.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081226/internacionales/62116/
Meeting Cuba's youngest politician
As Cuba prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's revolution on 1 January, most of those in power are the same people who fought alongside him half a century ago.
Fidel's brother Raul Castro, 77, is now president and he chose 78-year-old Machado Ventura as his number two.
But there is a new generation of communists waiting in the wings.
The majority of deputies elected to the national assembly, or parliament, earlier this year were born after the revolution.
The youngest, Liaena Hernandez, is just 18 years old. A petite young woman with long black hair and an engaging smile, she has been a political activist since her early teens.
We first met during a coffee break at the last national assembly meeting.
"Having young Cubans in parliament shows that the revolution continues. It isn't just something from our history," she told me. Ms Hernandez comes from Guantanamo province at the eastern end of the island.
Her father is in the army and she has just completed her voluntary military service as a border guard in an all-female unit along the controversial US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
She was born just as Cuba's main benefactor, the Soviet Union, collapsed.
What followed was called the special period, a time of hunger and hardship. The United States also tightened the trade embargo believing it would hasten the collapse of communism.
This is the Cuba that Ms Hernandez grew up in.
Kissing babies
"I was born with the revolution. I've never known capitalism," she said. "My earliest memories are of socialism, the special period and the US blockade.
"As a family we couldn't have all the things we would have liked. For years I had to wear the same pair of shoes to school, we just had to keep mending them.
"But at least I had free health care and education. And as a nation, everyone was willing to work together to get by and move forward."
Ms Hernandez invited the BBC to visit her on a constituency visit.
She represents Manuel Tames, a small rural community nestled in the foothills of the Guantanamo's Sierra Cristal mountains.
There is little traffic on its dusty streets apart from horses and the occasional tractor.
At the heart of the town is an ageing sugar mill with its giant smokestack chimney. There is also a recently renovated health centre with nurses and beds to spare.
But solving constituency needs is not the primary role of Cuban deputies.
"Our most important mission is to explain to the people the politics of the state so that they understand what going on," she explained as we arrived.
Some two dozen constituents had gathered to greet us outside of the municipal offices.
Like all good politicians, Ms Hernandez moved comfortably amongst them, kissing babies, joking and chatting with young and old.
Better roads and housing are amongst their concerns, but food appears the number one priority.
Raul Castro has started to hand over unproductive state owned land to private farmers and co-operatives in a bid to boost production and cut food imports.
Farmers in Tames are waiting expectantly for the scheme to take off.
"Today is a different period from that of the revolution. There were some things which were needed then which are not so good now, because the context has changes," she said.
"We need to keep perfecting our economic system, that's where the country is going."
'Perfeccionamiento'
The government's priority is to try and make the state-run system work more efficiently, rather than opening up to a free market, like the Chinese have done.
You hear the word "perfeccionamiento" - perfecting the system - used a lot by officials.
There are also no signs of any political reforms. Opposition parties are not allowed.
The national assembly only meets twice a year, a few days of committee sessions followed by a single day's sitting. Critics call it a rubber stamp parliament. The next session is scheduled for 27 December.
Candidates are also selected in advance. In the elections in January there were 614 people standing for the same number of seats.
You do not have to be a member of the Communist Party to stand, but it does help.
Ms Hernandez, though, believes that the system has served Cuba well.
"History has taught us that the Communist Party is the road that Cuba needs to follow.
"We don't need to copy other countries' systems. We are satisfied with our own and we are going to keep perfecting it."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7784234.stm
6.6% caen las remesas en noviembre
Las remesas familiares enviadas a El Salvador totalizaron en noviembre pasado $264.8 millones, según información del Banco Central de Reserva (BCR). Esta cantidad es inferior en un 6.6% a la registrada durante noviembre de 2007, y se constituye en la tercera caída interanual en estos envíos que se ha dado durante 2008.
La primera baja, del 2.1%, se dio en agosto. Luego, en octubre pasado, ingresaron al país $304.3 millones, un 6% menos que los $323.8 millones del mismo mes de 2007.
Según las estadísticas del BCR, los envíos han tendido a crecer durante los últimos años (ver gráfica). De hecho, es la primera vez, desde 1999, que se da una caída interanual durante el mes de noviembre.
La última vez que hubo reducciones en los envíos que hacen los migrantes salvadoreños al país fue en 2002, año en el que la economía estadounidense reflejaba los efectos negativos de los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001.
El Ejecutivo, sin embargo, considera que este año aún cerrará con un crecimiento en las remesas. Según el BCR, el aumento anual será del 3.5%, una revisión a la baja de la proyección de mediados de año, que apuntaba a un incremento del 5%.
Ya en 2007, y con las primeras señales de una desaceleración económica en Estados Unidos, el crecimiento anual de las remesas fue de un 6.4%. Este ritmo está bastante por debajo de los crecimientos de entre el 15% y el 21% que hubo, por ejemplo, entre los años 2004 y 2006.
En Estados Unidos, la tasa de desempleo de los hispanos, tanto provenientes del extranjero o nacidos en la nación estadounidense, era del 7.9% en el tercer trimestre de 2008.
Esto representa un alza del 5.7% con relación al mismo período hace un año.
Las autoridades han reportado además que la población hispana ha perdido cerca de 156,000 trabajos del sector construcción en el último año.
http://www.laprensagrafica.com/index.php/el-salvador/lodeldia/9202.html
La primera baja, del 2.1%, se dio en agosto. Luego, en octubre pasado, ingresaron al país $304.3 millones, un 6% menos que los $323.8 millones del mismo mes de 2007.
Según las estadísticas del BCR, los envíos han tendido a crecer durante los últimos años (ver gráfica). De hecho, es la primera vez, desde 1999, que se da una caída interanual durante el mes de noviembre.
La última vez que hubo reducciones en los envíos que hacen los migrantes salvadoreños al país fue en 2002, año en el que la economía estadounidense reflejaba los efectos negativos de los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001.
El Ejecutivo, sin embargo, considera que este año aún cerrará con un crecimiento en las remesas. Según el BCR, el aumento anual será del 3.5%, una revisión a la baja de la proyección de mediados de año, que apuntaba a un incremento del 5%.
Ya en 2007, y con las primeras señales de una desaceleración económica en Estados Unidos, el crecimiento anual de las remesas fue de un 6.4%. Este ritmo está bastante por debajo de los crecimientos de entre el 15% y el 21% que hubo, por ejemplo, entre los años 2004 y 2006.
En Estados Unidos, la tasa de desempleo de los hispanos, tanto provenientes del extranjero o nacidos en la nación estadounidense, era del 7.9% en el tercer trimestre de 2008.
Esto representa un alza del 5.7% con relación al mismo período hace un año.
Las autoridades han reportado además que la población hispana ha perdido cerca de 156,000 trabajos del sector construcción en el último año.
http://www.laprensagrafica.com/index.php/el-salvador/lodeldia/9202.html
Transporte de microbuses perdio cerca de medio millon de dolares por extorsiones
ummm, los asesinatos son mucho mas, pero de todos modos...
Las cifras de homicidios y las extorsiones contra empleados del transporte público se incrementaron durante el 2008, reveló ayer la FECOATRANS de R.L.
Según las cifras, un total de 83 motoristas y cobradores fueron asesinados, y se pagó cerca de medio millón de dólares por la denominada renta, dato alarmante para el presidente de FECOATRANS, Catalino Miranda.
El presidente de la gremial aseguró que en el tema de los homicidios se disminuyó un 20%, en comparación al año pasado, cuando se cometieron 103 homicidios. Pero, los datos alarmantes se dieron en las cifras de extorsiones.
Miranda aseguró que en la zona de oriente el repunte es mucho más grave y alcanzó el 85%, mientras que en la zona occidental se alcanzó el 65%, aunque en esta zona del país es donde menos se denuncia.
Miranda explicó que en la zona oriental del país se cancelan 12 mil dólares diarios de extorsión o renta, al multiplicar esa suma las perdidas se vuelven más cuantiosas en esa zona.
El empresario de transporte de microbuses aseguró que para este 2008 se registró un repunte en los robos en las unidades. Se tiene datos que se cometen en una sola unidad cinco robos diarios, por lo que el porcentaje llegó este año al 80%.
Hace algunas semanas, el sector pidió reuniones con el Gabinete de Seguridad y Justicia para buscar una solución a la problemática.
“Hay una promesa de parte del servicio de inteligencia del Estado, el servicio de inteligencia de la Policía Nacional (de la PNC), para echarla andar la investigación en los sectores más afectados y nosotros esperamos que se cumplan”, dijo Miranda.
El empresario de microbuses aceptó que el tema de las extorsiones se ha vuelto un tema complicado de abordar, y que ha “golpeado” al sector.
Después de las peticiones se ha iniciado planes de seguridad en la zona oriental, occidental, paracentral del país, donde se han reportado más ataques en los últimos cinco meses.
“Algunos empresarios se les va quitando el temor de la denuncia, y creo que el 2009 no será fácil, pero hay que seguir luchando en el tema de las extorsiones”, agregó el empresario.
Solo la semana pasada, en vísperas del 24 de diciembre, tres empleados fueron asesinados. Dos de la ruta 79 y uno de la ruta 49 en la zona de La Libertad.
Durante el 2006, en julio y agosto se registró un reporte de las extorsiones, tanto en el sector transporte colectivo, como en los empresarios en la zona oriental.
Las estadísticas de la PNC revelan que para este año el promedio diario es de nueve homicidios diarios.
Este fin de semana, según los reportes de la PNC, se registraron quince asesinatos en diferentes partes del país. Los departamentos con más violencia este fin de semana fueron San Miguel, Sonsonate y la Libertad.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081230/nacionales/62234/
Las cifras de homicidios y las extorsiones contra empleados del transporte público se incrementaron durante el 2008, reveló ayer la FECOATRANS de R.L.
Según las cifras, un total de 83 motoristas y cobradores fueron asesinados, y se pagó cerca de medio millón de dólares por la denominada renta, dato alarmante para el presidente de FECOATRANS, Catalino Miranda.
El presidente de la gremial aseguró que en el tema de los homicidios se disminuyó un 20%, en comparación al año pasado, cuando se cometieron 103 homicidios. Pero, los datos alarmantes se dieron en las cifras de extorsiones.
Miranda aseguró que en la zona de oriente el repunte es mucho más grave y alcanzó el 85%, mientras que en la zona occidental se alcanzó el 65%, aunque en esta zona del país es donde menos se denuncia.
Miranda explicó que en la zona oriental del país se cancelan 12 mil dólares diarios de extorsión o renta, al multiplicar esa suma las perdidas se vuelven más cuantiosas en esa zona.
El empresario de transporte de microbuses aseguró que para este 2008 se registró un repunte en los robos en las unidades. Se tiene datos que se cometen en una sola unidad cinco robos diarios, por lo que el porcentaje llegó este año al 80%.
Hace algunas semanas, el sector pidió reuniones con el Gabinete de Seguridad y Justicia para buscar una solución a la problemática.
“Hay una promesa de parte del servicio de inteligencia del Estado, el servicio de inteligencia de la Policía Nacional (de la PNC), para echarla andar la investigación en los sectores más afectados y nosotros esperamos que se cumplan”, dijo Miranda.
El empresario de microbuses aceptó que el tema de las extorsiones se ha vuelto un tema complicado de abordar, y que ha “golpeado” al sector.
Después de las peticiones se ha iniciado planes de seguridad en la zona oriental, occidental, paracentral del país, donde se han reportado más ataques en los últimos cinco meses.
“Algunos empresarios se les va quitando el temor de la denuncia, y creo que el 2009 no será fácil, pero hay que seguir luchando en el tema de las extorsiones”, agregó el empresario.
Solo la semana pasada, en vísperas del 24 de diciembre, tres empleados fueron asesinados. Dos de la ruta 79 y uno de la ruta 49 en la zona de La Libertad.
Durante el 2006, en julio y agosto se registró un reporte de las extorsiones, tanto en el sector transporte colectivo, como en los empresarios en la zona oriental.
Las estadísticas de la PNC revelan que para este año el promedio diario es de nueve homicidios diarios.
Este fin de semana, según los reportes de la PNC, se registraron quince asesinatos en diferentes partes del país. Los departamentos con más violencia este fin de semana fueron San Miguel, Sonsonate y la Libertad.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081230/nacionales/62234/
Israel defence chiefs put Gaza attack on YouTube
THE Israeli military has launched its own channel on video-sharing website YouTube, posting footage of air strikes and other attacks on Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
A spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it created the channel - youtube.com/user/idfnadesk - this week to "help us bring our message to the world".
The channel currently has more than 2000 subscribers and hosts 10 videos, some of which have been viewed more than 20,000 times.
The black-and-white videos include aerial footage of Israeli Air Force attacks on what are described as rocket launching sites, weapons storage facilities, a Hamas government complex and smuggling tunnels.
One video shows what is described as a Hamas patrol boat being destroyed by a rocket fired from an Israeli naval vessel.
The IDF said that some of the videos it had posted to the channel had been removed by YouTube.
"We are saddened that YouTube has taken down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF's operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip," it said.
"As the state of Israel again faces those who would see it destroyed, it is imperative that we in the IDF show the world the inhumanity directed against us and our efforts to stop it," it said.
There was no immediate response from YouTube about whether videos had been removed and, if so, the explanation for the move.
Four days of intensive Israeli bombardment have killed several senior Hamas officials and reduced much of the Islamist movement's infrastructure in Gaza to rubble, but have failed to stop rocket fire into Israel.
Since the massive aerial attack was unleashed at least 373 Palestinians, including 39 children, have been killed and 1720 wounded, according to Gaza medics.
Palestinian militants have also fired more than 250 rockets and mortar shells, killing four people inside Israel and wounding around two dozen more.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24858919-2,00.htm
A spokesman for the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it created the channel - youtube.com/user/idfnadesk - this week to "help us bring our message to the world".
The channel currently has more than 2000 subscribers and hosts 10 videos, some of which have been viewed more than 20,000 times.
The black-and-white videos include aerial footage of Israeli Air Force attacks on what are described as rocket launching sites, weapons storage facilities, a Hamas government complex and smuggling tunnels.
One video shows what is described as a Hamas patrol boat being destroyed by a rocket fired from an Israeli naval vessel.
The IDF said that some of the videos it had posted to the channel had been removed by YouTube.
"We are saddened that YouTube has taken down some of our exclusive footage showing the IDF's operational success in operation Cast Lead against Hamas extremists in the Gaza Strip," it said.
"As the state of Israel again faces those who would see it destroyed, it is imperative that we in the IDF show the world the inhumanity directed against us and our efforts to stop it," it said.
There was no immediate response from YouTube about whether videos had been removed and, if so, the explanation for the move.
Four days of intensive Israeli bombardment have killed several senior Hamas officials and reduced much of the Islamist movement's infrastructure in Gaza to rubble, but have failed to stop rocket fire into Israel.
Since the massive aerial attack was unleashed at least 373 Palestinians, including 39 children, have been killed and 1720 wounded, according to Gaza medics.
Palestinian militants have also fired more than 250 rockets and mortar shells, killing four people inside Israel and wounding around two dozen more.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24858919-2,00.htm
Israel se prepara para semanas de combate
En el cuarto día de su ofensiva en la franja de Gaza, Israel rechazó ayer todos los llamados internacionales para declarar una tregua y en cambio se prepara para una ofensiva que estima se extenderá semanas.
Israel está dispuesta a “largas semanas de lucha”, dijo el viceministro de Defensa, Matan Vilnai. En este contexto, el primer ministro israelí, Ehud Olmert, rechazó anoche una propuesta francesa de una tregua de 48 horas.
Un portavoz indicó que el premier cree que una decisión en este sentido sería un “error”. Israel no pondrá fin a su ofensiva Plomo Fundido, iniciada el sábado antes de haber alcanzado todos sus objetivos, señaló Mark Regev. “Sería un error concederle a Hamás una pausa para que se reagrupe y se rearme”, manifestó.
Sin embargo, precisó que se trabaja con gobiernos extranjeros y organizaciones internacionales para posibilitar un “flujo constante” de ayuda hacia la franja. Independientemente de los ataques, Israel permitió el paso de 100 camiones con ayuda humanitaria para Gaza.
La cifra de palestinos muertos en los ataques aéreos israelíes contra objetivos en la franja de Gaza subió ayer a 380, mientras que los heridos son más de 1,800, informaron las autoridades sanitarias en Gaza. En tanto, el número de víctimas fatales del lado israelí desde que comenzó la ofensiva es de cuatro.
Pese al bombardeo y las numerosas muertes, el movimiento islámico Hamás tampoco dejó translucir que esté dispuesta a restablecer un cese al fuego.
Israel declaró áreas de los alrededores de la franja de Gaza como “zona militar cerrada”, citando el riesgo de los cohetes palestinos, y ordenó la salida de los periodistas que observaban a las tropas mientras recibían refuerzos.
http://www.laprensagrafica.com/index.php/internacionales/mundo/9161.html
Israel está dispuesta a “largas semanas de lucha”, dijo el viceministro de Defensa, Matan Vilnai. En este contexto, el primer ministro israelí, Ehud Olmert, rechazó anoche una propuesta francesa de una tregua de 48 horas.
Un portavoz indicó que el premier cree que una decisión en este sentido sería un “error”. Israel no pondrá fin a su ofensiva Plomo Fundido, iniciada el sábado antes de haber alcanzado todos sus objetivos, señaló Mark Regev. “Sería un error concederle a Hamás una pausa para que se reagrupe y se rearme”, manifestó.
Sin embargo, precisó que se trabaja con gobiernos extranjeros y organizaciones internacionales para posibilitar un “flujo constante” de ayuda hacia la franja. Independientemente de los ataques, Israel permitió el paso de 100 camiones con ayuda humanitaria para Gaza.
La cifra de palestinos muertos en los ataques aéreos israelíes contra objetivos en la franja de Gaza subió ayer a 380, mientras que los heridos son más de 1,800, informaron las autoridades sanitarias en Gaza. En tanto, el número de víctimas fatales del lado israelí desde que comenzó la ofensiva es de cuatro.
Pese al bombardeo y las numerosas muertes, el movimiento islámico Hamás tampoco dejó translucir que esté dispuesta a restablecer un cese al fuego.
Israel declaró áreas de los alrededores de la franja de Gaza como “zona militar cerrada”, citando el riesgo de los cohetes palestinos, y ordenó la salida de los periodistas que observaban a las tropas mientras recibían refuerzos.
http://www.laprensagrafica.com/index.php/internacionales/mundo/9161.html
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Tennessee Ash Flood Larger Than Initial Estimate
A coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States is more than three times as large as initially estimated, according to an updated survey by the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.
The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.
A test of river water near the spill showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders, said John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., which owns the electrical generating plant, one of the authority’s largest.
Mr. Moulton said Friday that the levels exceeded safety limits for drinking water, but that both metals were filtered out by water treatment processes.
Mercury and arsenic, he said, were “barely detectable” in the samples.
The ash pond was adjacent to the Emory River and near a residential area, where three houses were destroyed by the tide of muddy ash. Water sampled several miles downstream from the spill was safe to drink, but its iron and manganese content exceeded the secondary drinking water standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, which govern taste and odor but not potential health effects, Mr. Moulton said.
Neither the authority nor the E.P.A. has released the results of tests of soil or the ash itself. Authority officials have said that the ash is not harmful, and the authority has not warned residents of potential dangers, though federal studies show that coal ash can contain dangerous levels of heavy metals and carcinogens.
“You’re not going to be endangered by touching the ash material,” said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the T.V.A. “You’d have to eat it. You have to get it in your body.”
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation also released a statement saying there was no indication of risk unless the ash was ingested.
But residents like Deanna Copeland were thinking further into the future.
“Our concern is, what happens if this liquid dries out?” Ms. Copeland said. “There are huge health concerns. It’s going to get in our house. We’re going to breathe it in. It would be like walking through a dust bowl, and we don’t know what’s in the dust.”
A round-the-clock cleanup effort continued on Friday, much of it clearing roads and railway tracks that were blocked by the sludge. Several booms, or skimmers, were installed on nearby rivers to catch floating cenospheres, a valuable component of the ash used to make bowling balls and other manufactured goods. A weir, or underwater dam, that would keep settled ash from moving downstream was about one-fifth completed, T.V.A. officials said.
Some nearby residents said that the authority had done little to address their concerns.
“We’re terribly frustrated,” said Donald Smith, 58, a laboratory facilities manager who lives in the affected area. “It seems like T.V.A. is just throwing darts at the problem, and they don’t have a clue how to really fix it.
“It was nice that they came by to talk to us. They’re making an effort. But what upsets me is they didn’t have a plan in place. Why hadn’t anybody thought, ‘What happens if this thing bursts?’ ”
Residents said they were stunned by the new figure for the size of the spill.
“That’s scary to know that they can be off by that much,” said Angela Spurgeon, whose dock and yard are swamped with ash. “I don’t think it was intentional, but it upsets me to know that a number was given of what the pond could hold, and the number now is more than double.”
Authority officials offered little explanation for the discrepancy, saying the initial number was an estimate based on their information at the time.
Ms. Spurgeon said the scope of the disaster was difficult to fathom, even from photos.
“This is not a thin coating of ash,” she said. “These are boulders. There’s one in our cove that’s probably the size of our home.”
The spill has reignited a debate over whether coal ash should be federally regulated as a hazardous material.
Environmentalists have long argued that coal ash, which can contaminate groundwater and poison aquatic environments, should be stored in lined landfills. The ash ponds at Kingston were separated from the river only by earthen dikes. Coal plants around the country, most near rivers that supply the water they need to operate, store coal ash in unlined embankments and ponds, and in some areas coal ash is recycled as fill material.
The T.V.A. is still investigating the cause of the breach, but officials have suggested that unusually heavy rain and freezing temperatures may have been factors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html?_r=3&bl&ex=1230526800&en=6203116ae45cadc3&ei=5087
Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.
The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.
A test of river water near the spill showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders, said John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., which owns the electrical generating plant, one of the authority’s largest.
Mr. Moulton said Friday that the levels exceeded safety limits for drinking water, but that both metals were filtered out by water treatment processes.
Mercury and arsenic, he said, were “barely detectable” in the samples.
The ash pond was adjacent to the Emory River and near a residential area, where three houses were destroyed by the tide of muddy ash. Water sampled several miles downstream from the spill was safe to drink, but its iron and manganese content exceeded the secondary drinking water standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency, which govern taste and odor but not potential health effects, Mr. Moulton said.
Neither the authority nor the E.P.A. has released the results of tests of soil or the ash itself. Authority officials have said that the ash is not harmful, and the authority has not warned residents of potential dangers, though federal studies show that coal ash can contain dangerous levels of heavy metals and carcinogens.
“You’re not going to be endangered by touching the ash material,” said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the T.V.A. “You’d have to eat it. You have to get it in your body.”
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation also released a statement saying there was no indication of risk unless the ash was ingested.
But residents like Deanna Copeland were thinking further into the future.
“Our concern is, what happens if this liquid dries out?” Ms. Copeland said. “There are huge health concerns. It’s going to get in our house. We’re going to breathe it in. It would be like walking through a dust bowl, and we don’t know what’s in the dust.”
A round-the-clock cleanup effort continued on Friday, much of it clearing roads and railway tracks that were blocked by the sludge. Several booms, or skimmers, were installed on nearby rivers to catch floating cenospheres, a valuable component of the ash used to make bowling balls and other manufactured goods. A weir, or underwater dam, that would keep settled ash from moving downstream was about one-fifth completed, T.V.A. officials said.
Some nearby residents said that the authority had done little to address their concerns.
“We’re terribly frustrated,” said Donald Smith, 58, a laboratory facilities manager who lives in the affected area. “It seems like T.V.A. is just throwing darts at the problem, and they don’t have a clue how to really fix it.
“It was nice that they came by to talk to us. They’re making an effort. But what upsets me is they didn’t have a plan in place. Why hadn’t anybody thought, ‘What happens if this thing bursts?’ ”
Residents said they were stunned by the new figure for the size of the spill.
“That’s scary to know that they can be off by that much,” said Angela Spurgeon, whose dock and yard are swamped with ash. “I don’t think it was intentional, but it upsets me to know that a number was given of what the pond could hold, and the number now is more than double.”
Authority officials offered little explanation for the discrepancy, saying the initial number was an estimate based on their information at the time.
Ms. Spurgeon said the scope of the disaster was difficult to fathom, even from photos.
“This is not a thin coating of ash,” she said. “These are boulders. There’s one in our cove that’s probably the size of our home.”
The spill has reignited a debate over whether coal ash should be federally regulated as a hazardous material.
Environmentalists have long argued that coal ash, which can contaminate groundwater and poison aquatic environments, should be stored in lined landfills. The ash ponds at Kingston were separated from the river only by earthen dikes. Coal plants around the country, most near rivers that supply the water they need to operate, store coal ash in unlined embankments and ponds, and in some areas coal ash is recycled as fill material.
The T.V.A. is still investigating the cause of the breach, but officials have suggested that unusually heavy rain and freezing temperatures may have been factors.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html?_r=3&bl&ex=1230526800&en=6203116ae45cadc3&ei=5087
S.F. fliers may pay their way in carbon usage
Environmentally conscious travelers flying out of San Francisco International Airport will soon be able to assuage their guilt and minimize the impact of their air travel by buying certified carbon offsets at airport kiosks.
The experimental program, scheduled to start this spring, would make SFO the first airport in the nation - possibly the world - to offer fliers the opportunity to purchase carbon offsets.
"We'd like people to stop and consider the impacts of flying," said Steve McDougal, executive vice president for 3Degrees, a San Francisco firm that sells renewable-energy and carbon-reduction investments and is teaming up with the airport and the city on the project. "Obviously, people need to fly sometimes. No one expects them to stop, but they should consider taking steps to reduce their impacts."
San Francisco's Airport Commission has authorized the program, which will involve a $163,000 investment from SFO, but is still working out the details with 3Degrees. Because of that, McDougal said, he can't yet discuss specifics, such as the cost to purchase carbon offsets and what programs would benefit from travelers' purchases.
But the general idea, officials said, is that a traveler would approach a kiosk resembling the self-service check-in stations used by airlines, then punch in his or her destination. The computer would calculate the carbon footprint and the cost of an investment to offset the damage. The traveler could then swipe a credit card to help save the planet. Travelers would receive a printed receipt listing the projects benefiting from their environmental largesse.
The carbon offsets are not tax deductible, said Krista Canellakis, a 3Degrees spokeswoman.
"While the carbon offsets purchased at kiosks can't be seen or touched, they are an actual product with a specific environmental claim whose ownership is transferred at the time of purchase," she said.
Mike McCarron, airport spokesman, said the projects offered will be chosen by the mayor's office, in conjunction with 3Degrees, from a list certified by the city's Environment Department. Airport Director John Martin told the commission that projects could include renewable energy ventures in developing countries, agriculture and organic waste capture, coal mine methane capture, and sustainable forestry.
Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom, said a portion of each offset purchase would go to the San Francisco Carbon Fund, which supports local projects such as energy-efficiency programs and solar panel installations for low-income housing, as well as efforts to convert waste oils into biodiesel fuels.
The cost of offsets for SFO travelers is still being negotiated, McDougal said, but figures on the company's Web-based "carbon calculator" suggest that a two-hour trip uses about 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per person, and the cost to offset that would be about $4. Offsetting a trip to Europe would cost $36.
"It's definitely not going to double your ticket or anything," he said. "It's going to end up being a small percentage of your total airfare."
Under the agreement, the airport will provide the kiosks and 3Degrees will supply the software and the certified carbon offsets being sold and will operate the program. Kiosks will be placed throughout the airport, with locations at the customer service desk in Terminal 3 and two wings of the International Terminal. 3Degrees will get 30 percent of each purchase, with the rest going to carbon-reduction projects. The agreement calls for a one-year program, with a possible extension.
"The carbon kiosks will not only reduce global warming," Ballard said, "they will serve an educational function. It's something interesting to do while you're killing time at the airport."
Given the innovative nature of the venture, airport officials said they don't expect 3Degrees will turn a profit - at least not at the outset. McDougal said it's impossible to predict how many passengers will want to make what is essentially a voluntary contribution to compensate for the impacts of their air travel. But he hopes the program takes off.
"Hopefully, it will be successful," he said. "But if we just have a lot of people stop and read the information and think about it, that's something we've accomplished."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/24/MNIR14PSQF.DTL
The experimental program, scheduled to start this spring, would make SFO the first airport in the nation - possibly the world - to offer fliers the opportunity to purchase carbon offsets.
"We'd like people to stop and consider the impacts of flying," said Steve McDougal, executive vice president for 3Degrees, a San Francisco firm that sells renewable-energy and carbon-reduction investments and is teaming up with the airport and the city on the project. "Obviously, people need to fly sometimes. No one expects them to stop, but they should consider taking steps to reduce their impacts."
San Francisco's Airport Commission has authorized the program, which will involve a $163,000 investment from SFO, but is still working out the details with 3Degrees. Because of that, McDougal said, he can't yet discuss specifics, such as the cost to purchase carbon offsets and what programs would benefit from travelers' purchases.
But the general idea, officials said, is that a traveler would approach a kiosk resembling the self-service check-in stations used by airlines, then punch in his or her destination. The computer would calculate the carbon footprint and the cost of an investment to offset the damage. The traveler could then swipe a credit card to help save the planet. Travelers would receive a printed receipt listing the projects benefiting from their environmental largesse.
The carbon offsets are not tax deductible, said Krista Canellakis, a 3Degrees spokeswoman.
"While the carbon offsets purchased at kiosks can't be seen or touched, they are an actual product with a specific environmental claim whose ownership is transferred at the time of purchase," she said.
Mike McCarron, airport spokesman, said the projects offered will be chosen by the mayor's office, in conjunction with 3Degrees, from a list certified by the city's Environment Department. Airport Director John Martin told the commission that projects could include renewable energy ventures in developing countries, agriculture and organic waste capture, coal mine methane capture, and sustainable forestry.
Nathan Ballard, a spokesman for Mayor Gavin Newsom, said a portion of each offset purchase would go to the San Francisco Carbon Fund, which supports local projects such as energy-efficiency programs and solar panel installations for low-income housing, as well as efforts to convert waste oils into biodiesel fuels.
The cost of offsets for SFO travelers is still being negotiated, McDougal said, but figures on the company's Web-based "carbon calculator" suggest that a two-hour trip uses about 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per person, and the cost to offset that would be about $4. Offsetting a trip to Europe would cost $36.
"It's definitely not going to double your ticket or anything," he said. "It's going to end up being a small percentage of your total airfare."
Under the agreement, the airport will provide the kiosks and 3Degrees will supply the software and the certified carbon offsets being sold and will operate the program. Kiosks will be placed throughout the airport, with locations at the customer service desk in Terminal 3 and two wings of the International Terminal. 3Degrees will get 30 percent of each purchase, with the rest going to carbon-reduction projects. The agreement calls for a one-year program, with a possible extension.
"The carbon kiosks will not only reduce global warming," Ballard said, "they will serve an educational function. It's something interesting to do while you're killing time at the airport."
Given the innovative nature of the venture, airport officials said they don't expect 3Degrees will turn a profit - at least not at the outset. McDougal said it's impossible to predict how many passengers will want to make what is essentially a voluntary contribution to compensate for the impacts of their air travel. But he hopes the program takes off.
"Hopefully, it will be successful," he said. "But if we just have a lot of people stop and read the information and think about it, that's something we've accomplished."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/24/MNIR14PSQF.DTL
Nakagin Capsule Tower Looks to be From the Future, But Probably Won't Make it There
The unique Nakagin Capsule Tower in Tokyo is a futuristic-looking architectural marvel. But without local support for maintenance and preservation, it may not survive long enough for the future to see it.
Nakagin was built in the Metabolist style of the 1970s by late Japanese architect Kurokawa Kisho. The tower rises 14 floors and is composed of 140 individual capsules designed to be either apartments or business offices. PingMag has an amazing expose on the building and more on Japan's Metabolism movement.
The Metabolism movement wanted to create a new system of architecture—focused on adaptable, growing and interchangeable building designs—and is probably the forefather of things like stackable prefab housing.
Unfortunately, the complicated nature of the Nakagin building, as well as several design flaws thanks to a rushed drafting schedule, may have ensured its demise. Budgetary concerns over repairing and maintaining the building caused residents to vote that it ought to be demolished. With it goes an integral piece of Japanese architectural history.
http://gizmodo.com/5117473/nakagin-capsule-tower-looks-to-be-from-the-future-but-probably-wont-make-it-there
One Man's Bid to Aid the Environment
Tim DeChristopher is an economics student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He had just finished his last final exam before winter break. One of the exam questions was: If the oil and gas companies are the only ones who bid on public lands, are the true costs of oil and gas exploitation reflected in the prices paid?
DeChristopher was inspired. He finished the exam, threw on his red parka and went off to the controversial Bureau of Land Management land auction that the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called “the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.” Instead of joining the protest outside, he registered as a bidder, then bought 22,000 acres of public land. That is, he successfully bid on the public properties, located near the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument, and other pristine areas. The price tag: more than $1.7 million.
He told me: “Once I started buying up every parcel, they understood pretty clearly what was going on ... they stopped the auction, and some federal agents came in and took me out. I guess there was a lot of chaos, and they didn’t really know how to proceed at that point.”
Patrick Shea, a former BLM director, is representing DeChristopher. Shea told the Deseret News: “What Tim did was in the best tradition of civil disobedience, he did this without causing any physical or material harm. His purpose was to draw attention to the illegitimacy and immorality of the process.”
There is a long tradition of disrupting land development in Utah. In his memoir, “Desert Solitaire,” Edward Abbey, the writer and activist, wrote: “Wilderness. The word itself is music. ... We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.”
Abbey’s novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” inspired a generation of environmental activists to take “direct action,” disrupting “development.” As The Salt Lake Tribune reported on DeChristopher: “He didn’t pour sugar into a bulldozer’s gas tank. He didn’t spike a tree or set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder’s paddle, a University of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah national parks won’t be opened to drilling anytime soon.”
Likewise, the late Utah Phillips, folk musician, activist and longtime Utah resident, often invoked the Industrial Workers of the World adage: “Direct action gets the goods.”
More than just scenic beauty will be harmed by these BLM sales. Drilling impacts air and water quality. According to High Country News, “The BLM had not analyzed impacts on ozone levels from some 2,300 wells drilled in the area since 2004 ... nor had it predicted air impacts from the estimated 6,300 new wells approved in the plan.” ProPublica reports that the Colorado River “powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation’s crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans. Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.”
After being questioned by federal authorities, DeChristopher was released.
The U.S. attorney is currently weighing charges against the student. DeChristopher reflects: “This has really been emotional and hopeful for me to see the kind of support over the last couple of days ... for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.”
His disruption of the auction has temporarily blocked the Bush-enabled land grab by the oil and gas industries. If DeChristopher can come up with $45,000 by Dec. 29, he can make the first payment on the land, possibly avoiding any claim of fraud. If the BLM opts to re-auction the land, that can’t happen until after the Obama administration takes over.
The outcome of the sales, if they happen at all, will probably be different, thanks to the direct action of an activist, raising his voice, and his bidding paddle, in opposition.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081223_bush_and_the_monkey_wrench_guy/?ln
DeChristopher was inspired. He finished the exam, threw on his red parka and went off to the controversial Bureau of Land Management land auction that the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance called “the Bush administration’s last great gift to the oil and gas industry.” Instead of joining the protest outside, he registered as a bidder, then bought 22,000 acres of public land. That is, he successfully bid on the public properties, located near the Arches and Canyonlands National Parks and Dinosaur National Monument, and other pristine areas. The price tag: more than $1.7 million.
He told me: “Once I started buying up every parcel, they understood pretty clearly what was going on ... they stopped the auction, and some federal agents came in and took me out. I guess there was a lot of chaos, and they didn’t really know how to proceed at that point.”
Patrick Shea, a former BLM director, is representing DeChristopher. Shea told the Deseret News: “What Tim did was in the best tradition of civil disobedience, he did this without causing any physical or material harm. His purpose was to draw attention to the illegitimacy and immorality of the process.”
There is a long tradition of disrupting land development in Utah. In his memoir, “Desert Solitaire,” Edward Abbey, the writer and activist, wrote: “Wilderness. The word itself is music. ... We scarcely know what we mean by the term, though the sound of it draws all whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irreparably stunned, deadened, numbed by the caterwauling of commerce, the sweating scramble for profit and domination.”
Abbey’s novel “The Monkey Wrench Gang” inspired a generation of environmental activists to take “direct action,” disrupting “development.” As The Salt Lake Tribune reported on DeChristopher: “He didn’t pour sugar into a bulldozer’s gas tank. He didn’t spike a tree or set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder’s paddle, a University of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah national parks won’t be opened to drilling anytime soon.”
Likewise, the late Utah Phillips, folk musician, activist and longtime Utah resident, often invoked the Industrial Workers of the World adage: “Direct action gets the goods.”
More than just scenic beauty will be harmed by these BLM sales. Drilling impacts air and water quality. According to High Country News, “The BLM had not analyzed impacts on ozone levels from some 2,300 wells drilled in the area since 2004 ... nor had it predicted air impacts from the estimated 6,300 new wells approved in the plan.” ProPublica reports that the Colorado River “powers homes for 3 million people, nourishes 15 percent of the nation’s crops and provides drinking water to one in 12 Americans. Now a rush to develop domestic oil, gas and uranium deposits along the river and its tributaries threatens its future.”
After being questioned by federal authorities, DeChristopher was released.
The U.S. attorney is currently weighing charges against the student. DeChristopher reflects: “This has really been emotional and hopeful for me to see the kind of support over the last couple of days ... for all the problems that people can talk about in this country and for all the apathy and the eight years of oppression and the decades of eroding civil liberties, America is still very much the kind of place that when you stand up for what is right, you never stand alone.”
His disruption of the auction has temporarily blocked the Bush-enabled land grab by the oil and gas industries. If DeChristopher can come up with $45,000 by Dec. 29, he can make the first payment on the land, possibly avoiding any claim of fraud. If the BLM opts to re-auction the land, that can’t happen until after the Obama administration takes over.
The outcome of the sales, if they happen at all, will probably be different, thanks to the direct action of an activist, raising his voice, and his bidding paddle, in opposition.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081223_bush_and_the_monkey_wrench_guy/?ln
Sospechas de fraude en El Salvador
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Luis Álvarez
Me da mala espina. Lo que está pasando en El Salvador comienza a pasar de castaño a oscuro.
Ya no se trata de los típicos dimes y diretes de una contienda electoral. Las pasiones políticas empiezan a desbordarse y lo que se observa cada día le pone a uno la piel de gallina.
No es algo para tomárselo a la ligera. Las señales son varias y todas igualmente preocupantes.
Un grupo de connotados catedráticos de universidades estadounidenses no tuvo reparo en asegurar que el gobierno de Antonio Saca alista un fraude para las elecciones de enero y marzo próximo.
Porque no estamos hablando de Juan del Pueblo emitiendo una opinión cualquiera. Se trata de académicos de Yale, del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts y la Universidad de Nueva York, entre otros prestigiosos centros de educación.
Allí se habla de cambios al Código Electoral que podrían facilitar un fraude, de violencia política adobada con impunidad y de amenazas veladas del gobierno de Estados Unidos al país centroamericano si elige un gobierno de izquierda.
Por lo pronto, al menos el nuevo gobierno estadounidense ya comenzó a tomar cartas en el asunto al anunciar que el embajador en San Salvador, Charles Glazer, se irá del cargo al igual que todos los demás que ostentan cargos como éste y no son diplomáticos de carrera.
Glazer echó leña a la hoguera cuando aseguró que "cualquier gobierno" que tenga relación con la guerrilla colombiana de las FARC es "problemático" para su país, en alusión a los supuestos vínculos del opositor Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) con ese grupo armado.
Sujetos como éste no son el mejor ejemplo de respeto a la soberanía de las naciones.
No me imagino a embajador alguno de ningún país del mundo insinuando en Washington que el posible triunfo de tal o cual partido político disgustará a su país.
Ya de vuelta en el mundillo político salvadoreño, uno puede entender que la derecha salvadoreña se sienta realmente desesperada ante la posibilidad real de perder el poder por primera en la historia.
Pero entre esto y valerse de triquiñuelas para quedarse con el poder hay un abismo de diferencia. ¿Será que Saca y los suyos piensan que el hecho de ser incondicionales de la Casa Blanca les da licencia para hacer y deshacer a su antojo?
Ojalá que Arena no pierda la cordura en esta coyuntura crítica. Sin embargo las señales parecen indicar otra cosa.
Las nebulosas cifras de votantes inscritos parece ser mayor que el número de salvadoreños en edad de votar. Diversos sectores alegan que existe una sospechosa brecha entre el padrón electoral y el censo del 2007.
Pero eso no es todo. Ya salió a la luz un libro en que un pastor evangélico admite sin reservas que él y una treintena de pastores más pactaron con Arena los votos de la feligresía en el 2004 a cambio de "bonos" que finalmente no fueron entregados.
Cualquier parecido al uso de grupos cristianos que hizo la administración Bush en el pasado para llevar agua a sus molinos electorales, es apenas una mera coincidencia.
Hablando de Bush y Arena, precisamente el inquilinio de la Casa Blanca y el presidente Saca, tuvieron hace días la oportunidad de despedirse y elogiarse mutuamente por ser aliados y compinches de diversas causas, entre ellas la "gloriosa" guerra en Irak.
Ojalá los negros augurios sobre los comicios salvadoreños se queden sólo en eso y el país supere con creces esta prueba de fuego para su democracia.
Álvarez escribe para La Opinión de Los Ángeles.
Luis Álvarez
Me da mala espina. Lo que está pasando en El Salvador comienza a pasar de castaño a oscuro.
Ya no se trata de los típicos dimes y diretes de una contienda electoral. Las pasiones políticas empiezan a desbordarse y lo que se observa cada día le pone a uno la piel de gallina.
No es algo para tomárselo a la ligera. Las señales son varias y todas igualmente preocupantes.
Un grupo de connotados catedráticos de universidades estadounidenses no tuvo reparo en asegurar que el gobierno de Antonio Saca alista un fraude para las elecciones de enero y marzo próximo.
Porque no estamos hablando de Juan del Pueblo emitiendo una opinión cualquiera. Se trata de académicos de Yale, del Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts y la Universidad de Nueva York, entre otros prestigiosos centros de educación.
Allí se habla de cambios al Código Electoral que podrían facilitar un fraude, de violencia política adobada con impunidad y de amenazas veladas del gobierno de Estados Unidos al país centroamericano si elige un gobierno de izquierda.
Por lo pronto, al menos el nuevo gobierno estadounidense ya comenzó a tomar cartas en el asunto al anunciar que el embajador en San Salvador, Charles Glazer, se irá del cargo al igual que todos los demás que ostentan cargos como éste y no son diplomáticos de carrera.
Glazer echó leña a la hoguera cuando aseguró que "cualquier gobierno" que tenga relación con la guerrilla colombiana de las FARC es "problemático" para su país, en alusión a los supuestos vínculos del opositor Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) con ese grupo armado.
Sujetos como éste no son el mejor ejemplo de respeto a la soberanía de las naciones.
No me imagino a embajador alguno de ningún país del mundo insinuando en Washington que el posible triunfo de tal o cual partido político disgustará a su país.
Ya de vuelta en el mundillo político salvadoreño, uno puede entender que la derecha salvadoreña se sienta realmente desesperada ante la posibilidad real de perder el poder por primera en la historia.
Pero entre esto y valerse de triquiñuelas para quedarse con el poder hay un abismo de diferencia. ¿Será que Saca y los suyos piensan que el hecho de ser incondicionales de la Casa Blanca les da licencia para hacer y deshacer a su antojo?
Ojalá que Arena no pierda la cordura en esta coyuntura crítica. Sin embargo las señales parecen indicar otra cosa.
Las nebulosas cifras de votantes inscritos parece ser mayor que el número de salvadoreños en edad de votar. Diversos sectores alegan que existe una sospechosa brecha entre el padrón electoral y el censo del 2007.
Pero eso no es todo. Ya salió a la luz un libro en que un pastor evangélico admite sin reservas que él y una treintena de pastores más pactaron con Arena los votos de la feligresía en el 2004 a cambio de "bonos" que finalmente no fueron entregados.
Cualquier parecido al uso de grupos cristianos que hizo la administración Bush en el pasado para llevar agua a sus molinos electorales, es apenas una mera coincidencia.
Hablando de Bush y Arena, precisamente el inquilinio de la Casa Blanca y el presidente Saca, tuvieron hace días la oportunidad de despedirse y elogiarse mutuamente por ser aliados y compinches de diversas causas, entre ellas la "gloriosa" guerra en Irak.
Ojalá los negros augurios sobre los comicios salvadoreños se queden sólo en eso y el país supere con creces esta prueba de fuego para su democracia.
Álvarez escribe para La Opinión de Los Ángeles.
No mas tropas a Irak
Gracias una resolución del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, el Presidente de la República, Elías Antonio Saca, se vio obligado a anunciar el retiro de la tropa salvadoreña en Irak.
Y es que, las Naciones Unidas dio por concluida la resolución 1790, con la que varias naciones del mundo, incluyendo El Salvador, mantuvieron tropas invasoras en aquella nación desde el año 2003.
Obviamente, esa resolución fue un apoyo tácito a los Estados Unidos, en su invasión y ocupación de Irak.
La presencia de soldados salvadoreños en Irak no sólo fue rechazado por los diputados de izquierda, sino, por el pueblo salvadoreño en general, así quedó plasmado, una y otra vez, en sendas encuestas serias.
Pese a que los diputados de derecha en la Asamblea Legislativa habían autorizado la permanencia de tropas salvadoreñas en Irak, hasta junio del próximo año, Saca anunció su retiro definitivo.
El parlamento iraquí aprobó el martes pasado, un decreto para que su gobierno pueda suscribir convenios bilaterales con gobiernos, para mantener tropas extranjeras.
Al respecto, Saca dijo tajantemente que no suscribirían ningún convenio con Irak. La decisión, pese a que llegó tarde, es al fin y al cabo aceptable, pues, sería bochornoso que de forma bilateral El Salvador gestionara la presencia de soldados en Irak.
Además, de no haber tomada esa decisión el Presidente Saca, no sólo hubiera ido en contra de la finalización acordada por la ONU, sino, en contra de la voluntad de los y las salvadoreñas.
Por hoy, sólo podemos desear que El Salvador no se vuelva a prestar en otra aventura militar como esta, y exigir al gobierno que cumpla con los familiares de los cinco soldados que murieron en Irak.
Los soldados muertos son: Natividad Méndez Ramos, Carlos Armando Godoy, Subsargento José Miguel Perdomo, subsargento Donald Alberto Rivas, en Diwaniya, y el capitán José Argelio Soto Ochoa.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081226/editorial/62101/
Y es que, las Naciones Unidas dio por concluida la resolución 1790, con la que varias naciones del mundo, incluyendo El Salvador, mantuvieron tropas invasoras en aquella nación desde el año 2003.
Obviamente, esa resolución fue un apoyo tácito a los Estados Unidos, en su invasión y ocupación de Irak.
La presencia de soldados salvadoreños en Irak no sólo fue rechazado por los diputados de izquierda, sino, por el pueblo salvadoreño en general, así quedó plasmado, una y otra vez, en sendas encuestas serias.
Pese a que los diputados de derecha en la Asamblea Legislativa habían autorizado la permanencia de tropas salvadoreñas en Irak, hasta junio del próximo año, Saca anunció su retiro definitivo.
El parlamento iraquí aprobó el martes pasado, un decreto para que su gobierno pueda suscribir convenios bilaterales con gobiernos, para mantener tropas extranjeras.
Al respecto, Saca dijo tajantemente que no suscribirían ningún convenio con Irak. La decisión, pese a que llegó tarde, es al fin y al cabo aceptable, pues, sería bochornoso que de forma bilateral El Salvador gestionara la presencia de soldados en Irak.
Además, de no haber tomada esa decisión el Presidente Saca, no sólo hubiera ido en contra de la finalización acordada por la ONU, sino, en contra de la voluntad de los y las salvadoreñas.
Por hoy, sólo podemos desear que El Salvador no se vuelva a prestar en otra aventura militar como esta, y exigir al gobierno que cumpla con los familiares de los cinco soldados que murieron en Irak.
Los soldados muertos son: Natividad Méndez Ramos, Carlos Armando Godoy, Subsargento José Miguel Perdomo, subsargento Donald Alberto Rivas, en Diwaniya, y el capitán José Argelio Soto Ochoa.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081226/editorial/62101/
Israel kills scores in Gaza air strikes
GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli warplanes pounded the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Saturday, killing at least 229 people in one of the bloodiest days for the Palestinians in 60 years of conflict with the Jewish state.
Hamas vowed revenge including suicide bomb attacks in the "cafes and streets" of Israel, as Israeli air strikes continued late into the night. Israel said the offensive would continue as long as necessary and that it may also involve land forces.
Israel said the strikes were in response to almost daily "intolerable" rocket and mortar fire by Gaza militants, which intensified after Hamas ended a six-month ceasefire a week ago.
The rockets caused few injuries, but Israeli leaders were under pressure to stop these attacks ahead of a February 10 election which opinion polls show the right-wing opposition Likud party may win. On Saturday, one Israeli man was killed by a rocket fired after the Israeli strikes began.
"There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and now the time has come to fight," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a televised statement. He later ruled out any new truce with Hamas.
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that "it may take time, and each and every one of us must be patient so we can complete the mission."
Israel Radio said Israeli infantry and armored forces had been reinforced along the border with Gaza after the attacks.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said "Palestine has never seen an uglier massacre" and in Damascus, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called for a new Palestinian peoples' uprising against Israel.
"We will not leave our land, we will not raise white flags and we will not kneel except before God," Haniyeh said.
Black smoke billowed over Gaza City, where the dead and wounded lay on the ground after Israel bombed more than 40 security compounds, including two where Hamas was hosting graduation ceremonies for new recruits.
MORE THAN 700 WOUNDED
At the main Gaza City graduation ceremony, uniformed bodies lay in a pile and the wounded writhed in pain. Some rescue workers beat their heads and shouted "God is greatest." One badly wounded man quietly recited verses from the Koran.
More than 700 Palestinians were wounded in all, medics said.
Israel said the operation, dubbed "Solid Lead," targeted "terrorist infrastructure" following days of rocket attacks on southern Israel that caused damage but few injuries. Israeli army officials said Hamas leaders could be targeted.
A series of air strikes were launched after darkness fell. Israel telephoned some Palestinians to warn them their homes were targeted and they should leave to avoid being killed. In at least one instance a home was bombed after the occupants left.
Two Palestinians were killed when a mosque was bombed in Gaza City, Hamas officials and medics said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a leading candidate to become Israel's next prime minister, called for international support against "an extremist Islamist organization ... that is being supported by Iran," Israel's arch-foe.
Israel instructed hundreds of thousands of Israelis living up to 30 km (19 miles) from the Gaza border to remain in "safe areas" indoors in case of retaliatory rocket fire.
Backing Israel, the administration of President George W. Bush, in its final weeks in office, put the onus on Hamas to prevent a further escalation.
"The United States ... holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement. "The ceasefire should be restored immediately."
The United Nations and the European Union, in contrast, simply called for an immediate halt to all violence.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Israeli air campaign was "criminal" and urged world powers to intervene.
Egypt said it would keep trying to restore the truce.
UPRISING CALL
Saturday's death toll was the highest for a single day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948, when the Jewish state was established.
"I call upon you to carry out a third intifada (uprising)," Hamas leader Meshaal said on Al-Jazeera television. The first Palestinian intifada began in 1987 and the second in 2000 after peace talks failed.
Hamas estimated that at least 100 members of its security forces had been killed, including police chief Tawfiq Jabber and the head of Hamas's security and protection unit, along with at least 15 women and some children.
The Islamist group, which won a 2006 parliamentary election but was shunned by Western powers over its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel, said all of its security compounds in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or seriously damaged.
Aid groups said they feared the Israeli operation could fuel a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished coastal enclave, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, half of them dependent on food aid.
Gaza hospitals said they were running out of medical supplies because of the Israeli-led blockade. Israel said it would let 10 trucks into Gaza with vital medical supplies and flour on Sunday, a Palestinian official said.
Israeli analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the strike was "shock treatment ... aimed at securing a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on terms that are favorable to Israel."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081227/ts_nm/us_palestinians_israel_violence
Hamas vowed revenge including suicide bomb attacks in the "cafes and streets" of Israel, as Israeli air strikes continued late into the night. Israel said the offensive would continue as long as necessary and that it may also involve land forces.
Israel said the strikes were in response to almost daily "intolerable" rocket and mortar fire by Gaza militants, which intensified after Hamas ended a six-month ceasefire a week ago.
The rockets caused few injuries, but Israeli leaders were under pressure to stop these attacks ahead of a February 10 election which opinion polls show the right-wing opposition Likud party may win. On Saturday, one Israeli man was killed by a rocket fired after the Israeli strikes began.
"There is a time for calm and a time for fighting, and now the time has come to fight," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a televised statement. He later ruled out any new truce with Hamas.
Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned that "it may take time, and each and every one of us must be patient so we can complete the mission."
Israel Radio said Israeli infantry and armored forces had been reinforced along the border with Gaza after the attacks.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said "Palestine has never seen an uglier massacre" and in Damascus, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called for a new Palestinian peoples' uprising against Israel.
"We will not leave our land, we will not raise white flags and we will not kneel except before God," Haniyeh said.
Black smoke billowed over Gaza City, where the dead and wounded lay on the ground after Israel bombed more than 40 security compounds, including two where Hamas was hosting graduation ceremonies for new recruits.
MORE THAN 700 WOUNDED
At the main Gaza City graduation ceremony, uniformed bodies lay in a pile and the wounded writhed in pain. Some rescue workers beat their heads and shouted "God is greatest." One badly wounded man quietly recited verses from the Koran.
More than 700 Palestinians were wounded in all, medics said.
Israel said the operation, dubbed "Solid Lead," targeted "terrorist infrastructure" following days of rocket attacks on southern Israel that caused damage but few injuries. Israeli army officials said Hamas leaders could be targeted.
A series of air strikes were launched after darkness fell. Israel telephoned some Palestinians to warn them their homes were targeted and they should leave to avoid being killed. In at least one instance a home was bombed after the occupants left.
Two Palestinians were killed when a mosque was bombed in Gaza City, Hamas officials and medics said.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a leading candidate to become Israel's next prime minister, called for international support against "an extremist Islamist organization ... that is being supported by Iran," Israel's arch-foe.
Israel instructed hundreds of thousands of Israelis living up to 30 km (19 miles) from the Gaza border to remain in "safe areas" indoors in case of retaliatory rocket fire.
Backing Israel, the administration of President George W. Bush, in its final weeks in office, put the onus on Hamas to prevent a further escalation.
"The United States ... holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire and for the renewal of violence in Gaza," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement. "The ceasefire should be restored immediately."
The United Nations and the European Union, in contrast, simply called for an immediate halt to all violence.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the Israeli air campaign was "criminal" and urged world powers to intervene.
Egypt said it would keep trying to restore the truce.
UPRISING CALL
Saturday's death toll was the highest for a single day in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1948, when the Jewish state was established.
"I call upon you to carry out a third intifada (uprising)," Hamas leader Meshaal said on Al-Jazeera television. The first Palestinian intifada began in 1987 and the second in 2000 after peace talks failed.
Hamas estimated that at least 100 members of its security forces had been killed, including police chief Tawfiq Jabber and the head of Hamas's security and protection unit, along with at least 15 women and some children.
The Islamist group, which won a 2006 parliamentary election but was shunned by Western powers over its refusal to renounce violence and recognize Israel, said all of its security compounds in the Gaza Strip were destroyed or seriously damaged.
Aid groups said they feared the Israeli operation could fuel a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished coastal enclave, home to 1.5 million Palestinians, half of them dependent on food aid.
Gaza hospitals said they were running out of medical supplies because of the Israeli-led blockade. Israel said it would let 10 trucks into Gaza with vital medical supplies and flour on Sunday, a Palestinian official said.
Israeli analyst Ron Ben-Yishai said the strike was "shock treatment ... aimed at securing a long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel on terms that are favorable to Israel."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081227/ts_nm/us_palestinians_israel_violence
A child soldier or just a child?
Two days after he was pulled unconscious from the rubble of a bombed Al Qaeda compound in southern Afghanistan, 15-year-old Omar Khadr lay strapped to a gurney, his left eye blinded by shrapnel, gunshot wounds to his back still raw.
U.S. agents who conducted the first interrogation of the Canadian teen at Bagram air base near Kabul on July 29, 2002, gauged the effects of their questioning by the blood pressure meter attached to their inert subject. The injured teen could do little more than grunt.
The latest, and possibly last, sessions of the Guantanamo war crimes tribunal have revealed disturbing details about how Khadr was treated during three months at Bagram in the custody of U.S. forces who were convinced he had thrown a grenade that killed an American soldier.
Subsequent interrogations during more than six years in U.S. custody have involved snarling dogs, “stress positions” and being upended by guards and used as a human mop to clean the floor.
Khadr is one of at least a dozen juveniles captured and brought to Guantanamo in the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 war on terrorism. Among the 19 Guantanamo prisoners charged with war crimes, Khadr and Mohammed Jawad, an Afghan thought to be a year younger than the Canadian, are the only ones who were juveniles at the time of their alleged offenses.
Human rights advocates consider the prosecution of Khadr and Jawad another blot on the Guantanamo prison and tribunal. Neither was accorded the protections promised by treaties the U.S. signed.
“Under international law, adults who recruit children for combat are to be prosecuted for that offense. But the children caught up in combat are to be protected, not prosecuted,” said Diane Marie Amann, a UC Davis law professor who observed the latest hearing in Khadr’s case for the National Institute of Military Justice.
The institute joined legal scholars, parliamentarians and human rights proponents in arguing in amicus briefs that underage combatants should be treated as victims, not responsible adults who made conscious decisions to join the fight.
Khadr’s trial is set to begin Jan. 26, with pretrial hearings starting on the eve of the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, who has vowed to shut Guantanamo.
Khadr was a toddler when his father began shuttling his family between Toronto and the Islamic militant strongholds along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Now 22, Khadr has spent almost a third of his life in U.S. custody. He was raised in a militant Muslim family and was surrounded in his teen years by holy warriors. His lawyers describe him as a confused, immature and emotionally damaged young man.
Seven inches taller than when he arrived, the 6-foot-3 Khadr could be seen on a recent weekday walking alone through the laundry-strewn courtyard outside his Camp 4 bunkhouse, behind fences topped by concertina wire and under the gaze of guards in watchtowers. He perused the tattered offerings of a library cart and selected an issue of National Geographic.
The Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child hold that it is the responsibility of the state whose soldiers capture juveniles on the battlefield to work to rehabilitate and integrate them into society. Appeals for consideration of Khadr and Jawad’s age have been consistently rebuffed at the tribunal.
Army Col. Patrick Parrish has ruled that Khadr’s trial can go forward on charges of murder, attempted murder, spying, conspiracy and material support for terrorism. His predecessor as judge in the case, Army Col. Peter E. Brownback III, ruled last spring that the defendant’s age and upbringing were “interesting as a matter of policy” but irrelevant to prosecution under the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Jawad’s military judge, Army Col. Stephen R. Henley, ruled similarly on the child soldier question but excluded evidence the government was relying on to convict the Afghan of attempted murder and other charges. Henley ruled that Jawad’s confessions were coerced, a decision prosecutors have asked the Court of Military Commission Review to overturn, but it is unclear when that appeal will be decided.
“My hope is that the Obama administration, as its first action, will say, ‘We don’t want to be the first administration in history to preside over the trial of a child soldier for war crimes,’ ” said Navy Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler, Khadr’s lead defense lawyer.
Kuebler said he was troubled by the mid-December hearing before Parrish, who refused to allow him to introduce as evidence photographs taken at the scene of the July 27, 2002, firefight near Khost, Afghanistan, in which Khadr is charged with throwing the grenade that killed Army Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer.
The photographs taken by U.S. soldiers as they stormed the bombed-out compound show Khadr lying facedown in the dirt under the blasted remnants of a roof. The soldiers didn’t know he was there until one stepped on rubble and felt something underneath give way.
Kuebler said Khadr could hardly have thrown the grenade that killed Speer if he was buried and unconscious when the Delta Force soldier entered.
Guantanamo supporters defend Khadr’s treatment. The tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Army Col. Lawrence J. Morris, dismisses critics’ contentions that juveniles are prohibited from being held accountable for war crimes by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and a supplemental protocol.
“The convention is misunderstood, if not intentionally misrepresented,” Morris said. “It is not a bar to prosecution.”
Army Capt. Keith Petty, on the prosecution team in Khadr’s case, said it was up to military jurors at sentencing to consider a convict’s age at the time of the offense.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. special representative for children in armed conflict, has lodged a protest over Khadr’s prosecution, warning that it could set a precedent and undermine the protections intended by the convention.
U.N. tribunals established to prosecute alleged war criminals from Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and Rwanda have tended to treat child soldiers as victims. David Crane, a Syracuse University law professor who served as chief prosecutor in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, wrote that “no child had the mental capacity to commit mankind’s most serious crimes.”
Canadian politicians have resisted calls to bring Khadr to his homeland for trial, though Kuebler hopes the impending change of U.S. administrations will apply new pressure on Ottawa to demand the repatriation of Guantanamo’s last Western detainee.
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/dec/27/nation/na-guantanamo-kids27
Boy Scouts in fear of going out of business
It was reported today that the Boy Scouts of America finds it necessary to target Hispanic youth for membership to stay afloat. In fact, they have hired a marketing firm to do just that. As it stands now, the Boy Scouts' membership is comprised primarily of Caucasian boys.
The membership roster of the organization, which is the largest youth group in the United States, has been declining since its peak in 1972, taking its biggest hits in the ‘80s and ‘90s after they banned gay and atheist leaders. It is also said that TV and video games have added to the plummeting membership figures. They currently have approximately 2.8 million members, half of what they had in 1972.
Because Boy Scouts officials recognize that the citizenship demographics of the United States have changed, they feel the need to target the group that seems to be most underrepresented in their ranks. As it stands now, only 3% of their membership is Hispanic, while the US census reports that one in five children under the age of 18 is Hispanic. Rick Cronk, Chairman of the World Scout Committee, said that they “either are going to figure out how to make Scouting the… organization for Hispanic kids, or [they’re] going to be out of business.”
I have said it before and I’ll say it again, the Boy Scouts is a wonderful organization when it comes to promoting the idea of family and the like. I enjoyed it very much when I was involved in Scouting with my son when he was a child. I think it would be a shame if they “went out of business.”
Having said that, I must also say that, perhaps, if the Boy Scouts were to shed themselves of their bigotry toward gays and atheists, they might see an increase in their membership. Considering the fact that they receive government funding and the like, they have no right to operate as a private organization that practices exclusivity and discrimination (not that it is ever okay in my estimation).
http://www.examiner.com/x-2044-Atheism-Examiner~y2008m12d26-Boy-Scout-in-fear-of-going-out-of-business
The membership roster of the organization, which is the largest youth group in the United States, has been declining since its peak in 1972, taking its biggest hits in the ‘80s and ‘90s after they banned gay and atheist leaders. It is also said that TV and video games have added to the plummeting membership figures. They currently have approximately 2.8 million members, half of what they had in 1972.
Because Boy Scouts officials recognize that the citizenship demographics of the United States have changed, they feel the need to target the group that seems to be most underrepresented in their ranks. As it stands now, only 3% of their membership is Hispanic, while the US census reports that one in five children under the age of 18 is Hispanic. Rick Cronk, Chairman of the World Scout Committee, said that they “either are going to figure out how to make Scouting the… organization for Hispanic kids, or [they’re] going to be out of business.”
I have said it before and I’ll say it again, the Boy Scouts is a wonderful organization when it comes to promoting the idea of family and the like. I enjoyed it very much when I was involved in Scouting with my son when he was a child. I think it would be a shame if they “went out of business.”
Having said that, I must also say that, perhaps, if the Boy Scouts were to shed themselves of their bigotry toward gays and atheists, they might see an increase in their membership. Considering the fact that they receive government funding and the like, they have no right to operate as a private organization that practices exclusivity and discrimination (not that it is ever okay in my estimation).
http://www.examiner.com/x-2044-Atheism-Examiner~y2008m12d26-Boy-Scout-in-fear-of-going-out-of-business
Galveston police haven't apologized for beating 12 year-old girl
What would you do if you were a 12-year-old girl and several men jumped you, insisted you were a hooker and tried to drag you to their car? Would you submit or would you fight and scream for help? From the Houston Press:
I'll bet you already guess that the three men were police officers. They were investigating allegations of prostitution two blocks from Dymond's home. The prostitutes they sought were white and elsewhere, but the officers apparently decided that Dymond, who is African-American, would do because she was wearing tight shorts. Really.
Even though "Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries," she was arrested at school three weeks later for assaulting a public servant. With her face, I guess.
Two years later, Dymond and her family have filed a lawsuit (PDF) and expect to go into mediation in 2009.
This story is already getting plenty of buzz, but it needs more attention. Galveston Police Officers Justin Popovich, Sean Stewart and David Roark, and Sergeant Gilbert Gomez (who apparently supervised the attack) assaulted a young girl who didn't begin to match the description of the suspected prostitutes they were investigating. The women they were seeking allegedly engaged in non-violent, consensual activities of the sort that would hardly seem to justify a violent arrest anyway.
And the men were in civilian clothes in an unmarked vehicle, giving a frightened girl no reason to believe that the people attempting to kidnap her did so under color of any "legitimate" authority whatsoever.
They also, by the way, threatened to shoot her dog. What is it with cops and dogs?
This is bad enough. Once the dust settled, the Galveston Police Department would have been well-advised to issue an abject apology to the Milburn family and to, at least, pick up the tab for medical expenses. A little butt-kissing would have been in order, along with harsh discipline for the officers on the scene.
Instead, having sent a 12-year-old girl to the hospital after a severe beating by grown men, police apparently stewed for three weeks, and then compounded their error by arresting the victim at school for putting up whatever meager resistance such a girl is capable of under attack from three adults.
So the Galveston Police Department's position is that it's a criminal act for a little girl to resist being dragged into a van by strange men? If that's the lesson the police want to send to the community, then it's nothing more than an association of thugs intolerant of the slightest challenge to its authority. It's certainly not an agency for preserving the peace and defending the rights of local residents.
A police department like that shouldn't just be sued; it should be disbanded.
Hat tip to Radley Balko, a top-notch civil liberties journalist, for stirring the pot in this case.
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2008m12d19-Galveston-police-havent-apologized-for-beating-12yearold-girl
"It was a little before 8 at night when the breaker went out at Emily Milburn's home in Galveston. She was busy preparing her children for school the next day, so she asked her 12-year-old daughter, Dymond, to pop outside and turn the switch back on.
As Dymond headed toward the breaker, a blue van drove up and three men jumped out rushing toward her. One of them grabbed her saying, "You're a prostitute. You're coming with me."
Dymond grabbed onto a tree and started screaming, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy." One of the men covered her mouth. Two of the men beat her about the face and throat."
I'll bet you already guess that the three men were police officers. They were investigating allegations of prostitution two blocks from Dymond's home. The prostitutes they sought were white and elsewhere, but the officers apparently decided that Dymond, who is African-American, would do because she was wearing tight shorts. Really.
Even though "Dymond was hospitalized and suffered black eyes as well as throat and ear drum injuries," she was arrested at school three weeks later for assaulting a public servant. With her face, I guess.
Two years later, Dymond and her family have filed a lawsuit (PDF) and expect to go into mediation in 2009.
This story is already getting plenty of buzz, but it needs more attention. Galveston Police Officers Justin Popovich, Sean Stewart and David Roark, and Sergeant Gilbert Gomez (who apparently supervised the attack) assaulted a young girl who didn't begin to match the description of the suspected prostitutes they were investigating. The women they were seeking allegedly engaged in non-violent, consensual activities of the sort that would hardly seem to justify a violent arrest anyway.
And the men were in civilian clothes in an unmarked vehicle, giving a frightened girl no reason to believe that the people attempting to kidnap her did so under color of any "legitimate" authority whatsoever.
They also, by the way, threatened to shoot her dog. What is it with cops and dogs?
This is bad enough. Once the dust settled, the Galveston Police Department would have been well-advised to issue an abject apology to the Milburn family and to, at least, pick up the tab for medical expenses. A little butt-kissing would have been in order, along with harsh discipline for the officers on the scene.
Instead, having sent a 12-year-old girl to the hospital after a severe beating by grown men, police apparently stewed for three weeks, and then compounded their error by arresting the victim at school for putting up whatever meager resistance such a girl is capable of under attack from three adults.
So the Galveston Police Department's position is that it's a criminal act for a little girl to resist being dragged into a van by strange men? If that's the lesson the police want to send to the community, then it's nothing more than an association of thugs intolerant of the slightest challenge to its authority. It's certainly not an agency for preserving the peace and defending the rights of local residents.
A police department like that shouldn't just be sued; it should be disbanded.
Hat tip to Radley Balko, a top-notch civil liberties journalist, for stirring the pot in this case.
http://www.examiner.com/x-536-Civil-Liberties-Examiner~y2008m12d19-Galveston-police-havent-apologized-for-beating-12yearold-girl
Saturday, December 27, 2008
RNC candidate distributes 'Barack the Magic Negro'
RNC candidate Chip Saltsman’s Christmas greeting to committee members includes a music CD with lyrics from a song called “Barack the Magic Negro,” first played on Rush Limbaugh’s popular radio show.
Saltsman, a personal friend of conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, sent a 41-track CD along with a note to national committee members.
“I look forward to working together in the New Year,” Saltsman wrote. “Please enjoy the enclosed CD by my friend Paul Shanklin of the Rush Limbaugh Show.”
The CD, called “We Hate the USA,” lampoons liberals with such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”
Several of the track titles, including “Barack the Magic Negro,” are written in bold font.
The song, which debuted on Limbaugh’s show in late March 2007, latches onto an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times of the same title. That column, penned by cultural critic David Ehrenstein, argued that Obama could serve as a balm to whites who felt guilty about past treatment of African Americans.
Limbaugh first highlighted the column the day it ran, according to a contemporary report by Media Matters, the liberal watchdog agency. Media Matters reported Limbaugh repeated the phrase more than two dozen times the day the column ran.
The following month, Shanklin debuted his version of the song, sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and performed in Shanklin’s impression of Al Sharpton.
“See, real black men, like Snoop Dogg, or me, or Farrakhan, have talked the talk, and walked the walk, not come in late and won,” one verse in the song says.
Saltsman said he meant nothing untoward by forwarding what amounts to a joke more at Ehrenstein’s expense than at Obama’s.
“Paul Shanklin is a long-time friend, and I think that RNC members have the good humor and good sense to recognize that his songs for the Rush Limbaugh show are light-hearted political parodies,” Saltsman said.
Republicans searching for ways to attack Obama have been hesitant to embrace any reference to his race. Limbaugh presciently predicted his allusion to the column nearly two years ago would win attention from left-leaning organizations that would suggest he was using Obama’s race against him.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/rnc-candidate-distributes-controversial-obama-song-2008-12-26.html
Saltsman, a personal friend of conservative satirist Paul Shanklin, sent a 41-track CD along with a note to national committee members.
“I look forward to working together in the New Year,” Saltsman wrote. “Please enjoy the enclosed CD by my friend Paul Shanklin of the Rush Limbaugh Show.”
The CD, called “We Hate the USA,” lampoons liberals with such songs as “John Edwards’ Poverty Tour,” “Wright place, wrong pastor,” “Love Client #9,” “Ivory and Ebony” and “The Star Spanglish banner.”
Several of the track titles, including “Barack the Magic Negro,” are written in bold font.
The song, which debuted on Limbaugh’s show in late March 2007, latches onto an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times of the same title. That column, penned by cultural critic David Ehrenstein, argued that Obama could serve as a balm to whites who felt guilty about past treatment of African Americans.
Limbaugh first highlighted the column the day it ran, according to a contemporary report by Media Matters, the liberal watchdog agency. Media Matters reported Limbaugh repeated the phrase more than two dozen times the day the column ran.
The following month, Shanklin debuted his version of the song, sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon” and performed in Shanklin’s impression of Al Sharpton.
“See, real black men, like Snoop Dogg, or me, or Farrakhan, have talked the talk, and walked the walk, not come in late and won,” one verse in the song says.
Saltsman said he meant nothing untoward by forwarding what amounts to a joke more at Ehrenstein’s expense than at Obama’s.
“Paul Shanklin is a long-time friend, and I think that RNC members have the good humor and good sense to recognize that his songs for the Rush Limbaugh show are light-hearted political parodies,” Saltsman said.
Republicans searching for ways to attack Obama have been hesitant to embrace any reference to his race. Limbaugh presciently predicted his allusion to the column nearly two years ago would win attention from left-leaning organizations that would suggest he was using Obama’s race against him.
http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/rnc-candidate-distributes-controversial-obama-song-2008-12-26.html
Untangling Obama's Cabinet
There are real personnel differences between the team Obama is putting together and what a progressive administration would look like.
Following up on Chris Bower's earlier blog post on Obama retaining Bush officials to staff the Pentagon, it's worth noting that there are substantial policy differences between people on the left of the Democratic Party and those soon to be in power. Ultimately it's these policy differences that matter. Here are a few.
There are probably a lot more splits, as well as areas of alignment, but starting out with a big split on war and peace in Afghanistan isn't a small deal, with all that killing. Domestically and abroad, we just don't know what policies the Obama administration is going to put forward, and so we have to guess. This is actually by design, as Biden makes clear.
Guessing as to what's in there is inherently uncertain, but the personnel is the best heuristic we have, aside from stated policies during the campaign (many of which have become obsolete when a trillion dollar stimulus and a nasty credit crunch fully flowered). That's what Chris Bowers was doing when he noted the ideological loyalties of the Obama cabinet members. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ed Kilgore both argue that Chris is wrong. Coates suggests that leaving out White House staffers renders Chris's judgment inaccurate, and furthermore, the DLC tends to overstate its influence with officials. Kilgore, the former policy director of the DLC, credibly points out that the DLC involved a wide variety of politicians in its activities, so having associations with that group is not necessarily indicative of anything in particular. I should also add that Kilgore is one of the few former DLC officials who has really taken the time to understand our arguments, and respond to them with an intellectually curious streak rather than intense defensiveness.
Fortunately, we don't have to throw opinions at each other to settle the argument about Obama's cabinet; Nolan McCarty at Princeton compared voting records of the Cabinet members, and showed that "the evidence is pretty strong that the administration lies considerably to the right of the Democrats in the House, but is reasonably representative of Senate Democrats." Coates's point about senior White House staffers is reasonable; Melody Barnes for instance has no measurable track record equivalent to a voting record. Still, who Obama picks to his cabinet-level appointments can't mean nothing at all.
Here's what aligning with the Senate Democrats signifies in terms of policy sympathies. This is a list of controversial conservative votes from the Senate, broken out by party support.
To support the new Bush-supported FISA law:
GOP - 48-0
Dems - 12-36
To compel redeployment of troops from Iraq:
GOP - 0-49
Dems - 24-21
To confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General:
GOP - 46-0
Dems - 7-40
To confirm Leslie Southwick as Circuit Court Judge:
GOP - 49-0
Dems - 8-38
Kyl-Lieberman Resolution on Iran:
GOP - 46-2
Dems - 30-20
To condemn MoveOn.org:
GOP - 49-0
Dems - 23-25
The Protect America Act:
GOP - 44-0
Dems - 20-28
Declaring English to be the Government's official language:
GOP - 48-1
Dems - 16-33
The Military Commissions Act:
GOP - 53-0
Dems - 12-34
To renew the Patriot Act:
GOP - 54-0
Dems - 34-10
Cloture Vote on Sam Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court:
GOP - 54-0
Dems - 18-25
Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq:
GOP - 48-1
Dems - 29-22
There are real personnel differences between the administration Obama is putting together and what a left-wing progressive administration would look like. There also seem to be significant policy differences between what you would find on the left-wing of the Democratic Party (or even just House leadership) and in the Obama administration, though perhaps there isn't much daylight between the bulk of the Senate and the Obama administration. And they aren't small differences, with matters of war and peace actually meaning not whether you support 'escalation' or any other bureaucratically stultified word but whether you support state-sponsored organized killing for dubious strategic ends.
It's part of village culture to worship 'consensus', so I understand why there is such fierce reaction against criticism of Obama from the left. But the criticism isn't baseless, it comes from those who really have different ideas about how America should be governed. I know it irritates centrists to no end that we're out here, making these arguments. It isn't though that the Obama people are clever progressives trying to make 'our' agenda seem centrist and achievable. They aren't. On many issues, they simply disagree with us about what they are trying to achieve, and have picked people who will help them achieve their policy objectives.
That's fine. But it's not that Obama is incrementally trying to achieve universal health care and we're asking for single payer tomorrow. Details matter, policies matter, personnel matters, and politics matters. In many cases, incrementalism is a difference in kind, not just a different path to the same place. While antebellum politicians could pander to anti-slavery sentiment by opposing its expansion to territories or new states while supporting slavery in the South, that wasn't ultimately a sustainable political position, nor would anyone today confuse that with taking the abolition line. Compromise for compromise's sake simply avoided dealing with the problem. It's possible that today we are in a similarly polarizing position, sitting between a high trust world of localized power production and collective security and a low trust national security state with low wages and a constant race to the bottom. Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place.
http://www.alternet.org/election08/115315/untangling_obama%27s_cabinet/
Following up on Chris Bower's earlier blog post on Obama retaining Bush officials to staff the Pentagon, it's worth noting that there are substantial policy differences between people on the left of the Democratic Party and those soon to be in power. Ultimately it's these policy differences that matter. Here are a few.
* Afghanistan: Joe Biden says that withdrawing troops from Iraq is imperative so that the administration can put more troops in Afghanistan. Steve Clemons, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Vague think that we should cut deals with the local Taliban, perhaps do some economic development, and leave.
* Iraq: Obama's current plan is to leave a residual force in Iraq (which John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Joe Lieberman praise). A Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq called for no residual troops, as did Bill Richardson.
* The $700 Billion Bailout: Obama whipped House members aggressively for the Treasury to establish the TARP program. Opposition to the bailout was spread out among populists on the right and the left, without coherent form.
* Infrastructure: Biden is talking about the transportation part of the infrastructure stimulus going to roads and bridges, many of us want SUPERTRAINS and less investment in the oil-dependent sprawlconomy.
There are probably a lot more splits, as well as areas of alignment, but starting out with a big split on war and peace in Afghanistan isn't a small deal, with all that killing. Domestically and abroad, we just don't know what policies the Obama administration is going to put forward, and so we have to guess. This is actually by design, as Biden makes clear.
"You get to see what's in the package when we've completed the package, and when we've negotiated a little bit more with our colleagues in the House and Senate," Biden said. "Keep in mind that it's really important that this package when submitted to the Hill succeed and pass."
Guessing as to what's in there is inherently uncertain, but the personnel is the best heuristic we have, aside from stated policies during the campaign (many of which have become obsolete when a trillion dollar stimulus and a nasty credit crunch fully flowered). That's what Chris Bowers was doing when he noted the ideological loyalties of the Obama cabinet members. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ed Kilgore both argue that Chris is wrong. Coates suggests that leaving out White House staffers renders Chris's judgment inaccurate, and furthermore, the DLC tends to overstate its influence with officials. Kilgore, the former policy director of the DLC, credibly points out that the DLC involved a wide variety of politicians in its activities, so having associations with that group is not necessarily indicative of anything in particular. I should also add that Kilgore is one of the few former DLC officials who has really taken the time to understand our arguments, and respond to them with an intellectually curious streak rather than intense defensiveness.
Fortunately, we don't have to throw opinions at each other to settle the argument about Obama's cabinet; Nolan McCarty at Princeton compared voting records of the Cabinet members, and showed that "the evidence is pretty strong that the administration lies considerably to the right of the Democrats in the House, but is reasonably representative of Senate Democrats." Coates's point about senior White House staffers is reasonable; Melody Barnes for instance has no measurable track record equivalent to a voting record. Still, who Obama picks to his cabinet-level appointments can't mean nothing at all.
Here's what aligning with the Senate Democrats signifies in terms of policy sympathies. This is a list of controversial conservative votes from the Senate, broken out by party support.
To support the new Bush-supported FISA law:
GOP - 48-0
Dems - 12-36
To compel redeployment of troops from Iraq:
GOP - 0-49
Dems - 24-21
To confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General:
GOP - 46-0
Dems - 7-40
To confirm Leslie Southwick as Circuit Court Judge:
GOP - 49-0
Dems - 8-38
Kyl-Lieberman Resolution on Iran:
GOP - 46-2
Dems - 30-20
To condemn MoveOn.org:
GOP - 49-0
Dems - 23-25
The Protect America Act:
GOP - 44-0
Dems - 20-28
Declaring English to be the Government's official language:
GOP - 48-1
Dems - 16-33
The Military Commissions Act:
GOP - 53-0
Dems - 12-34
To renew the Patriot Act:
GOP - 54-0
Dems - 34-10
Cloture Vote on Sam Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court:
GOP - 54-0
Dems - 18-25
Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq:
GOP - 48-1
Dems - 29-22
There are real personnel differences between the administration Obama is putting together and what a left-wing progressive administration would look like. There also seem to be significant policy differences between what you would find on the left-wing of the Democratic Party (or even just House leadership) and in the Obama administration, though perhaps there isn't much daylight between the bulk of the Senate and the Obama administration. And they aren't small differences, with matters of war and peace actually meaning not whether you support 'escalation' or any other bureaucratically stultified word but whether you support state-sponsored organized killing for dubious strategic ends.
It's part of village culture to worship 'consensus', so I understand why there is such fierce reaction against criticism of Obama from the left. But the criticism isn't baseless, it comes from those who really have different ideas about how America should be governed. I know it irritates centrists to no end that we're out here, making these arguments. It isn't though that the Obama people are clever progressives trying to make 'our' agenda seem centrist and achievable. They aren't. On many issues, they simply disagree with us about what they are trying to achieve, and have picked people who will help them achieve their policy objectives.
That's fine. But it's not that Obama is incrementally trying to achieve universal health care and we're asking for single payer tomorrow. Details matter, policies matter, personnel matters, and politics matters. In many cases, incrementalism is a difference in kind, not just a different path to the same place. While antebellum politicians could pander to anti-slavery sentiment by opposing its expansion to territories or new states while supporting slavery in the South, that wasn't ultimately a sustainable political position, nor would anyone today confuse that with taking the abolition line. Compromise for compromise's sake simply avoided dealing with the problem. It's possible that today we are in a similarly polarizing position, sitting between a high trust world of localized power production and collective security and a low trust national security state with low wages and a constant race to the bottom. Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place.
http://www.alternet.org/election08/115315/untangling_obama%27s_cabinet/
Mega-orgy in Tel Aviv cancelled due to public pressure
Sex fest scheduled to be held on 'International Orgasm Day' and seeking to promote world peace called off after owner of venue meant to host event caves in to threats
After weeks of preparations for the largest sex event of its kind in Israel, organizers were forced to cancel it this week due to public pressure and threats exerted on the owner of the venue where the sex fest was to take place.
The event in question, which was scheduled to take place on "International Orgasm Day," aimed to bring together some 250 participants seeking to promote world peace through multiple orgasms reached by masturbation or sex.
The orgy was organized by the Raelian movement, a UFO religion whose followers believe humankind was created by aliens. The group's spokesman, Kobi Drori, said that the orgy was meant to include straights, gays, lesbians and bisexuals, all of them over 18.
"The purpose of the event was to try and bring world peace through mass orgasm, this by experiencing consensual sex and natural, uninterrupted pleasure. It was important to make love without feeling guilty or shy," he explained.
Drori protested the fact that nowadays the words "war," "violence" and "murder" have become more legitimate than "sex," "orgasm" and "pleasure."
"It should be the other way around. Several years ago an Iraqi boy whose limbs were amputated was shown on TV and everybody treated this as if it was okay, but when Janet Jackson exposed her breast during the Superbowl the American nation was appalled.
"We wanted to put into practice the saying 'make love, not war'."
'Society based on self-fulfillment'
According to Drori, the orgy was just the first in a series of events dedicated to promoting this objective. On January 22 the movement will hold a conference on sexuality and masturbation with experts and writers in the field.
He also vowed that the cancelation of this year's orgy would not deter the Raelians from setting up another sex fest next year.
The Raelian movement has several hundreds followers in Israel and some 70,000 members worldwide.
"We don't believe in demons, ghosts and gods," said Drori. "The group's primary goal is to inform humanity, without attempting to persuade, regarding scientific messages that deal with the origins of life on earth.
"The second goal is to expedite the establishment of a society based on the principles of non-violence, solidarity, self-fulfillment and pleasure. To establish one global currency, one global government and harness science to the service of humanity, and not against humanity," he concluded.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3642845,00.html
After weeks of preparations for the largest sex event of its kind in Israel, organizers were forced to cancel it this week due to public pressure and threats exerted on the owner of the venue where the sex fest was to take place.
The event in question, which was scheduled to take place on "International Orgasm Day," aimed to bring together some 250 participants seeking to promote world peace through multiple orgasms reached by masturbation or sex.
The orgy was organized by the Raelian movement, a UFO religion whose followers believe humankind was created by aliens. The group's spokesman, Kobi Drori, said that the orgy was meant to include straights, gays, lesbians and bisexuals, all of them over 18.
"The purpose of the event was to try and bring world peace through mass orgasm, this by experiencing consensual sex and natural, uninterrupted pleasure. It was important to make love without feeling guilty or shy," he explained.
Drori protested the fact that nowadays the words "war," "violence" and "murder" have become more legitimate than "sex," "orgasm" and "pleasure."
"It should be the other way around. Several years ago an Iraqi boy whose limbs were amputated was shown on TV and everybody treated this as if it was okay, but when Janet Jackson exposed her breast during the Superbowl the American nation was appalled.
"We wanted to put into practice the saying 'make love, not war'."
'Society based on self-fulfillment'
According to Drori, the orgy was just the first in a series of events dedicated to promoting this objective. On January 22 the movement will hold a conference on sexuality and masturbation with experts and writers in the field.
He also vowed that the cancelation of this year's orgy would not deter the Raelians from setting up another sex fest next year.
The Raelian movement has several hundreds followers in Israel and some 70,000 members worldwide.
"We don't believe in demons, ghosts and gods," said Drori. "The group's primary goal is to inform humanity, without attempting to persuade, regarding scientific messages that deal with the origins of life on earth.
"The second goal is to expedite the establishment of a society based on the principles of non-violence, solidarity, self-fulfillment and pleasure. To establish one global currency, one global government and harness science to the service of humanity, and not against humanity," he concluded.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3642845,00.html
Naked man dies after 4 taser shots
A naked man wandering around an apartment complex near Houston, Texas died after police shocked him with a taser four times.
Texas' KPRC reports, "A naked man who banged on doors and cars at a north Harris County apartment complex died after he was shocked by a Taser gun, deputies told KPRC Local 2. An autopsy will determine the cause of the man's death."
The article continues, "The deputies involved have been put on administrative duty pending the outcome of investigations by the internal affairs and homicide divisions."
The Houston Chronicle provides the police account of what transpired: "The resident 'did not know who he was,' said Lt. John Legg of the Sheriff's Office. The first deputy arrived within minutes. 'He was immediately confronted by the suspect, who ran toward his patrol car, opened the front passenger door and climbed in,' Legg said."
The Houston Chronicle story continues, "The deputy ordered the man out, but the man ignored his commands, yelling and flailing his arms, Legg said. 'He was incoherent,' the lieutenant said. 'The deputy said his eyes appeared glassed over.' The deputy's Taser had little, if any, effect, officials said. After the man got out of the patrol car and pulled out the stun gun's prongs, the deputy fired it again while struggling with the man, officials said. Another deputy arrived and ordered the naked man to back away, then used his Taser, investigators said."
Earlier this year, members of the NYPD's Emergency Unit tasered an emotionally disturbed man who was waving a fluorescent light while standing naked on a a building ledge, who then fell over ten feet to his death. The tasering "violated departmental guideline," but no charges were brought against the officers involved. Not long after, the NYPD lieutenant who ordered the tasering committed suicide.
"Torturing and killing the mentally ill with tasers is becoming commonplace," Hullabaloo's Digby blogs,"There must be a better way."
Tasers have have killed more than 400 people in the United States and Canada since 2001, according to a recent study.
"Taser International, based in Arizona, dismissed the study as flawed," Nick Juliano recently reported for Raw Story. "The company maintains that its weapons are safe."
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Naked_man_dies_after_4_taser_1226.html
Texas' KPRC reports, "A naked man who banged on doors and cars at a north Harris County apartment complex died after he was shocked by a Taser gun, deputies told KPRC Local 2. An autopsy will determine the cause of the man's death."
The article continues, "The deputies involved have been put on administrative duty pending the outcome of investigations by the internal affairs and homicide divisions."
The Houston Chronicle provides the police account of what transpired: "The resident 'did not know who he was,' said Lt. John Legg of the Sheriff's Office. The first deputy arrived within minutes. 'He was immediately confronted by the suspect, who ran toward his patrol car, opened the front passenger door and climbed in,' Legg said."
The Houston Chronicle story continues, "The deputy ordered the man out, but the man ignored his commands, yelling and flailing his arms, Legg said. 'He was incoherent,' the lieutenant said. 'The deputy said his eyes appeared glassed over.' The deputy's Taser had little, if any, effect, officials said. After the man got out of the patrol car and pulled out the stun gun's prongs, the deputy fired it again while struggling with the man, officials said. Another deputy arrived and ordered the naked man to back away, then used his Taser, investigators said."
Earlier this year, members of the NYPD's Emergency Unit tasered an emotionally disturbed man who was waving a fluorescent light while standing naked on a a building ledge, who then fell over ten feet to his death. The tasering "violated departmental guideline," but no charges were brought against the officers involved. Not long after, the NYPD lieutenant who ordered the tasering committed suicide.
"Torturing and killing the mentally ill with tasers is becoming commonplace," Hullabaloo's Digby blogs,"There must be a better way."
Tasers have have killed more than 400 people in the United States and Canada since 2001, according to a recent study.
"Taser International, based in Arizona, dismissed the study as flawed," Nick Juliano recently reported for Raw Story. "The company maintains that its weapons are safe."
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Naked_man_dies_after_4_taser_1226.html
U.S police could get 'pain beam' weapons
The research arm of the US Department of Justice is working on two portable non-lethal weapons that inflict pain from a distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting them into the hands of police to subdue suspects.
The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon’s controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person’s skin and cause pain.
‘Reduced injuries’
Like the ADS, the new portable devices will also heat the skin, but will have beams only a few centimetres across. They are designed to elicit what the Pentagon calls a “repel response” - a strong urge to escape from the beam.
A spokesperson for the National Institute for Justice likens the effect of the new devices to that of “blunt trauma” weapons such as rubber bullets, “But unlike blunt trauma devices, the injury should not be present. This research is looking to reduce the injuries to suspects,” they say.
Dazzle and burn
The NIJ’s laser weapon has been dubbed Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response - PHaSR - and resembles a bulky rifle. It was created in 2005 by a US air force agency to temporarily dazzle enemies (see image, right), but the addition of a second, infrared laser makes it able to heat skin too.
The NIJ’s portable microwave-based weapon is less developed. Currently a tabletop prototype with a range of less than a metre, a backpack-sized prototype with a range of 15 metres will be ready next year, a spokesperson says.
Torture concerns
The effect of microwave beams on humans has been investigated for years, but there is little publicly available research on the effects of PHaSR-type lasers on humans. The attraction of using a laser is that it can be less bulky than a microwave device.
Human rights groups say that equipping police with such weapons would add to the problems posed by existing “non-lethals” such as Tasers. Security expert Steve Wright at Leeds Metropolitan University describes the new weapons as “torture at the touch of a button”.
http://www.infowars.com/?p=6785
The two devices under development by the civilian National Institute of Justice both build on knowledge gained from the Pentagon’s controversial Active Denial System (ADS) - first demonstrated in public last year, which uses a 2-metre beam of short microwaves to heat up the outer layer of a person’s skin and cause pain.
‘Reduced injuries’
Like the ADS, the new portable devices will also heat the skin, but will have beams only a few centimetres across. They are designed to elicit what the Pentagon calls a “repel response” - a strong urge to escape from the beam.
A spokesperson for the National Institute for Justice likens the effect of the new devices to that of “blunt trauma” weapons such as rubber bullets, “But unlike blunt trauma devices, the injury should not be present. This research is looking to reduce the injuries to suspects,” they say.
Dazzle and burn
The NIJ’s laser weapon has been dubbed Personnel Halting and Stimulation Response - PHaSR - and resembles a bulky rifle. It was created in 2005 by a US air force agency to temporarily dazzle enemies (see image, right), but the addition of a second, infrared laser makes it able to heat skin too.
The NIJ’s portable microwave-based weapon is less developed. Currently a tabletop prototype with a range of less than a metre, a backpack-sized prototype with a range of 15 metres will be ready next year, a spokesperson says.
Torture concerns
The effect of microwave beams on humans has been investigated for years, but there is little publicly available research on the effects of PHaSR-type lasers on humans. The attraction of using a laser is that it can be less bulky than a microwave device.
Human rights groups say that equipping police with such weapons would add to the problems posed by existing “non-lethals” such as Tasers. Security expert Steve Wright at Leeds Metropolitan University describes the new weapons as “torture at the touch of a button”.
http://www.infowars.com/?p=6785
Philly man shot because family talked during movie
A South Philadelphia man enraged because a father and son were talking during a Christmas showing of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button took care of the situation when he pulled a .380-caliber gun and shot the father, police said.
James Joseph Cialella Jr., 29, of the 1900 block of Hollywood Street is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and weapons violations.
"It's truly frightening when you see something like this evolve into such violence," said police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore.
Police were called to the Riverview Theatre in the 1400 block of Columbus Boulevard about 9:30 p.m. where the gunshot victim, a Philadelphia man who was not identified, told police a man sitting near him told his family to be quiet and threw popcorn at his son.
After exchanging words, Vanore said Cialella allegedly got out of his seat to confront the family when the father got up to protect them. That's when the victim was shot once in the left arm, sending others in the theatre running to safety.
Cialella then sat down to watch the movie. Police arrived a short time later and arrested Cialella and confiscated his weapon, Vanore said.
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20081226_Phila__man_shot_because_family_talked_during_movie.html
James Joseph Cialella Jr., 29, of the 1900 block of Hollywood Street is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and weapons violations.
"It's truly frightening when you see something like this evolve into such violence," said police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore.
Police were called to the Riverview Theatre in the 1400 block of Columbus Boulevard about 9:30 p.m. where the gunshot victim, a Philadelphia man who was not identified, told police a man sitting near him told his family to be quiet and threw popcorn at his son.
After exchanging words, Vanore said Cialella allegedly got out of his seat to confront the family when the father got up to protect them. That's when the victim was shot once in the left arm, sending others in the theatre running to safety.
Cialella then sat down to watch the movie. Police arrived a short time later and arrested Cialella and confiscated his weapon, Vanore said.
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20081226_Phila__man_shot_because_family_talked_during_movie.html
Fourth grade students try to poison teacher's pet
School children have tried to poison their classmate at a primary school in Hamburg because she was too smart, daily Express reported this week.
The eight-year old girl still can’t believe what happened to her. “They wanted to poison me and wanted me to die,” she said in an interview on television broadcaster RTL’s “Punkt12” show, the paper reported on Wednesday.
Her fourth grade classmates apparently disliked the smart girl because she got the best marks and had already skipped two classes. Two boys and two girls were so jealous they plotted to poison her.
One of the boys mixed what the students thought would be a deadly cocktail of shoe polish, perfume, window and bath cleaner at home. Another boy poured the mix into the girl’s drink bottle during recess the next day at school.
When the eight-year-old came back from her break, she noticed suspicious bubbles in the liquid and took only a small sip.
“I still got a stomach ache,” she told the television show. She was taken to hospital where doctors informed poison experts from the local police unit.
Despite the fact that her four classmates confessed to the poisoning, they can’t be charged with a crime because they are under the age of legal responsibility, Express reported.
“Why do kids do things like that,” the mother of the eight-year old girl asked. “One of the girls was even her friend.”
The four mean-spirited students have been transferred to another class, but the girl’s parents are still considering a school transfer for their gifted daughter, the paper reported.
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20081218-16221.html
The eight-year old girl still can’t believe what happened to her. “They wanted to poison me and wanted me to die,” she said in an interview on television broadcaster RTL’s “Punkt12” show, the paper reported on Wednesday.
Her fourth grade classmates apparently disliked the smart girl because she got the best marks and had already skipped two classes. Two boys and two girls were so jealous they plotted to poison her.
One of the boys mixed what the students thought would be a deadly cocktail of shoe polish, perfume, window and bath cleaner at home. Another boy poured the mix into the girl’s drink bottle during recess the next day at school.
When the eight-year-old came back from her break, she noticed suspicious bubbles in the liquid and took only a small sip.
“I still got a stomach ache,” she told the television show. She was taken to hospital where doctors informed poison experts from the local police unit.
Despite the fact that her four classmates confessed to the poisoning, they can’t be charged with a crime because they are under the age of legal responsibility, Express reported.
“Why do kids do things like that,” the mother of the eight-year old girl asked. “One of the girls was even her friend.”
The four mean-spirited students have been transferred to another class, but the girl’s parents are still considering a school transfer for their gifted daughter, the paper reported.
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20081218-16221.html
Sick soldiers point finger at U.S. contractor
US soldiers have launched a lawsuit against a former company of Vice-President Dick Cheney on the grounds that it provided US troops in Iraq with unsafe water, rotten food and exposed them to toxic waste.
“I estimate that 90% of the soldiers in my unit came to see me at least once or twice with respiratory difficulties,” says Sgt. Dennis Gogel, a medic who served in Iraq from May 2005 to May 2006.
This 29-year-old US soldier served with the Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar battery at Balad base, a windswept US base north of Baghdad known for its intense heat.
Today, Gogel has joined Joshua Eller, a US computer technician and former soldier, who decided to take legal action in November 2008 against the two main Pentagon contractors, KBR and its former parent company Halliburton, a company once headed by US Vice-President Dick Cheney. In the complaint filed in Texas, they accuse the two companies of contaminating the air and providing unsafe water and rotten food to US soldiers at Balad air base – the largest US base in Iraq.
Both say they and others suffered from what people called “Iraqi crud”, a mix of respiratory and gastric ailments that they first attributed to a change of environment and weather. Today, they say they are sick due to contamination KBR could have avoided. “This company is being paid millions and millions. They are doing sub-par work and putting the lives of US soldiers in danger,” says Eller.
According to army figures quoted by Defense Industry Daily, KBR receives a total $15.4 billion in Iraq, for feeding, housing and providing fuel to US troops during its five-year contract with the Pentagon signed in 2001. Amid criticism that KBR had overcharged the US for its work in Iraq, the full contract was not renewed in 2006. They still however run services at Balad air base.
Toxic waste
“At the time, we wouldn’t think much of it; we were more worried about the mortars hitting us,” says Gogel of his stay at a camp nicknamed “Mortaritaville” because of the frequency of mortar attacks. He says he used to treat the symptoms of “Iraqi crud” without looking further. “We were trained to think it was something not to worry about,” he says.
Gogel himself says he suffered from poor appetite, constant diarrhea and was diagnosed with thickening of the intestine walls at the base clinic. During his one-year stay at Balad, he lost 60 pounds, dropping from 190 pounds to 130 pounds.
“Specialists couldn’t say what was wrong with me,” said Gogel, “but before my time in Iraq, I had never suffered from any medical problems.”
Eller says he was sick at Balad, suffered from frequent vomiting, cramps and diarrhea – ailments he still has today. During his deployment in Iraq, Eller also suffered from chronic blistering of the feet, which sometimes prevented him from walking properly.
Eller and Gogel are not the only nationals to complain about living conditions at Balad base. Army Times journalist Kelly Kennedy says that her publication received more than 100 letters from sick soldiers after she published a story about hazardous waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Soldiers wrote to complain of asthma, sleep apnea, chronic bronchitis, migraine headaches, coughs, and slower running times for their physical fitness tests. A majority of the service members were based at Balad air base. “We've also heard from several soldiers who said they were diagnosed with leukemia or lymphoma while in Balad or soon after,” she added.
The lawsuit against KBR could become a class action if other soldiers decide to sue the military contractor along with Eller and Gogel.
Wild dogs roving on burning pits
“As soon as I got out of the plane at Balad air field, I smelt the smoke. I’m used to war zones so I didn’t think much of it at first,” said Gogel. “It was only after two or three days that I saw the incinerator pit. It was smoking constantly.”
According to Eller’s complaint, KBR dug an open air burn pit at Balad and burned hazardous medical waste from a camp hospital in open air close to the lodgings of US soldiers. “The pit was less than half a mile from my lodging and even closer to the hospital,” said Gogel.
“The incinerator was out of order for seven months during my time at the base,” says Eller. “Everything was burnt in the pits.” Eller also says human remains were dumped in the pit. “I remember seeing a wild dog running around with a forearm in his mouth.” According to two surgeons contacted by the Army Times, the contractors were in charge of maintaining the incinerator on site.
In an interview with FRANCE 24, KBR press officer Heather Browne said her company refused to comment on the case, before adding that KBR was not responsible for “managing the disposal system at Camp Balad.”
Contaminated water and food
Since their return from war-torn Iraq, US service members have been worrying about a less visible danger, contamination in food and water. According to their complaint, KBR also supplied US forces with food that was expired, spoiled, or rotten.
Unsafe water in Iraq has caused quite a stir in the US. Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan has been investigating KBR practices for years now. He pressed the government to review allegations that the company supplied unsafe water to US troops in Iraq. Published in March 2008, the Department of Defense Inspector General audit revealed that KBR “failed to perform quality control testing” and “exposed US forces to unmonitored and potentially unsafe water.”
Accusations KBR has roundly rejected, saying they met all military standards of water production and treatment.
http://www.france24.com/en/20081218-sick-soldiers-point-finger-us-contractor-
“I estimate that 90% of the soldiers in my unit came to see me at least once or twice with respiratory difficulties,” says Sgt. Dennis Gogel, a medic who served in Iraq from May 2005 to May 2006.
This 29-year-old US soldier served with the Counter Rocket Artillery and Mortar battery at Balad base, a windswept US base north of Baghdad known for its intense heat.
Today, Gogel has joined Joshua Eller, a US computer technician and former soldier, who decided to take legal action in November 2008 against the two main Pentagon contractors, KBR and its former parent company Halliburton, a company once headed by US Vice-President Dick Cheney. In the complaint filed in Texas, they accuse the two companies of contaminating the air and providing unsafe water and rotten food to US soldiers at Balad air base – the largest US base in Iraq.
Both say they and others suffered from what people called “Iraqi crud”, a mix of respiratory and gastric ailments that they first attributed to a change of environment and weather. Today, they say they are sick due to contamination KBR could have avoided. “This company is being paid millions and millions. They are doing sub-par work and putting the lives of US soldiers in danger,” says Eller.
According to army figures quoted by Defense Industry Daily, KBR receives a total $15.4 billion in Iraq, for feeding, housing and providing fuel to US troops during its five-year contract with the Pentagon signed in 2001. Amid criticism that KBR had overcharged the US for its work in Iraq, the full contract was not renewed in 2006. They still however run services at Balad air base.
Toxic waste
“At the time, we wouldn’t think much of it; we were more worried about the mortars hitting us,” says Gogel of his stay at a camp nicknamed “Mortaritaville” because of the frequency of mortar attacks. He says he used to treat the symptoms of “Iraqi crud” without looking further. “We were trained to think it was something not to worry about,” he says.
Gogel himself says he suffered from poor appetite, constant diarrhea and was diagnosed with thickening of the intestine walls at the base clinic. During his one-year stay at Balad, he lost 60 pounds, dropping from 190 pounds to 130 pounds.
“Specialists couldn’t say what was wrong with me,” said Gogel, “but before my time in Iraq, I had never suffered from any medical problems.”
Eller says he was sick at Balad, suffered from frequent vomiting, cramps and diarrhea – ailments he still has today. During his deployment in Iraq, Eller also suffered from chronic blistering of the feet, which sometimes prevented him from walking properly.
Eller and Gogel are not the only nationals to complain about living conditions at Balad base. Army Times journalist Kelly Kennedy says that her publication received more than 100 letters from sick soldiers after she published a story about hazardous waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Soldiers wrote to complain of asthma, sleep apnea, chronic bronchitis, migraine headaches, coughs, and slower running times for their physical fitness tests. A majority of the service members were based at Balad air base. “We've also heard from several soldiers who said they were diagnosed with leukemia or lymphoma while in Balad or soon after,” she added.
The lawsuit against KBR could become a class action if other soldiers decide to sue the military contractor along with Eller and Gogel.
Wild dogs roving on burning pits
“As soon as I got out of the plane at Balad air field, I smelt the smoke. I’m used to war zones so I didn’t think much of it at first,” said Gogel. “It was only after two or three days that I saw the incinerator pit. It was smoking constantly.”
According to Eller’s complaint, KBR dug an open air burn pit at Balad and burned hazardous medical waste from a camp hospital in open air close to the lodgings of US soldiers. “The pit was less than half a mile from my lodging and even closer to the hospital,” said Gogel.
“The incinerator was out of order for seven months during my time at the base,” says Eller. “Everything was burnt in the pits.” Eller also says human remains were dumped in the pit. “I remember seeing a wild dog running around with a forearm in his mouth.” According to two surgeons contacted by the Army Times, the contractors were in charge of maintaining the incinerator on site.
In an interview with FRANCE 24, KBR press officer Heather Browne said her company refused to comment on the case, before adding that KBR was not responsible for “managing the disposal system at Camp Balad.”
Contaminated water and food
Since their return from war-torn Iraq, US service members have been worrying about a less visible danger, contamination in food and water. According to their complaint, KBR also supplied US forces with food that was expired, spoiled, or rotten.
Unsafe water in Iraq has caused quite a stir in the US. Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan has been investigating KBR practices for years now. He pressed the government to review allegations that the company supplied unsafe water to US troops in Iraq. Published in March 2008, the Department of Defense Inspector General audit revealed that KBR “failed to perform quality control testing” and “exposed US forces to unmonitored and potentially unsafe water.”
Accusations KBR has roundly rejected, saying they met all military standards of water production and treatment.
http://www.france24.com/en/20081218-sick-soldiers-point-finger-us-contractor-
Surgeon uses human fat to run his cars
A leading Beverly Hills plastic surgeon claims to have found an environmentally friendly way to combine two of America's great obsessions – after converting his 4x4 to run on fat removed from clients during liposuction operations.
Alan Bittner, who founded a high-profile clinic on Rodeo Drive, the Bond Street of Los Angeles, claims to be able to power both his Ford Explorer and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator on biofuel converted from excess flesh from human tums, bums and thighs. "The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel – and I have more fat than I can use," he says. "Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly, but they get to take part in saving the Earth."
Dr Bittner made his claim in a posting on the internet site lipodiesel.com, adding that he has performed roughly 7,000 liposuction operations, and that a gallon of human fat will produce roughly the same quantity of biofuel.
Scientists say there is no reason why human fat cannot be turned into biofuel, since it contains triglycerides which are no different from those found in waste animal fats that are already being used for the same purpose. However the discovery left medical regulators unimpressed. Using human medical waste to power vehicles (or indeed for any other commercial purpose) is largely illegal, and Dr Bittner's clinic has been raided by California Health Department officials. The magazine Forbes says that Dr Bittner's ability to create what he calls "lipodiesel" first came to light in lawsuits filed by several former patients, who recently accused him of allowing his girlfriend and assistant, who were both unlicensed, to carry out intricate operations.
A gallon of "lipodiesel" will give motorists roughly the same mileage as they would get from regular diesel, the magazine added. At present, most biofuel is made from a mixture of specially grown corn, and left-over beef or pork products.
Sadly, Dr Bittner is no longer around to bask in his new-found fame. His practice in Beverly Hills suddenly closed shortly after last month's raid, and he is believed to have moved to South America.
Lawyers representing several former patients are currently attempting to track him down. One of them, Andrew Besser, claims Dr Bittner's unlicensed girlfriend removed too much fat from his three clients, leaving them horribly disfigured. Dozens of other patients have complained to the State Medical Board, he added.
Dr Bittner's lawyer is yet to comment. A notice on his website claims that the doctor is currently living in Colombia.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/surgeon-uses-human-fat-to-run-his-cars-1211431.html
Alan Bittner, who founded a high-profile clinic on Rodeo Drive, the Bond Street of Los Angeles, claims to be able to power both his Ford Explorer and his girlfriend's Lincoln Navigator on biofuel converted from excess flesh from human tums, bums and thighs. "The vast majority of my patients request that I use their fat for fuel – and I have more fat than I can use," he says. "Not only do they get to lose their love handles or chubby belly, but they get to take part in saving the Earth."
Dr Bittner made his claim in a posting on the internet site lipodiesel.com, adding that he has performed roughly 7,000 liposuction operations, and that a gallon of human fat will produce roughly the same quantity of biofuel.
Scientists say there is no reason why human fat cannot be turned into biofuel, since it contains triglycerides which are no different from those found in waste animal fats that are already being used for the same purpose. However the discovery left medical regulators unimpressed. Using human medical waste to power vehicles (or indeed for any other commercial purpose) is largely illegal, and Dr Bittner's clinic has been raided by California Health Department officials. The magazine Forbes says that Dr Bittner's ability to create what he calls "lipodiesel" first came to light in lawsuits filed by several former patients, who recently accused him of allowing his girlfriend and assistant, who were both unlicensed, to carry out intricate operations.
A gallon of "lipodiesel" will give motorists roughly the same mileage as they would get from regular diesel, the magazine added. At present, most biofuel is made from a mixture of specially grown corn, and left-over beef or pork products.
Sadly, Dr Bittner is no longer around to bask in his new-found fame. His practice in Beverly Hills suddenly closed shortly after last month's raid, and he is believed to have moved to South America.
Lawyers representing several former patients are currently attempting to track him down. One of them, Andrew Besser, claims Dr Bittner's unlicensed girlfriend removed too much fat from his three clients, leaving them horribly disfigured. Dozens of other patients have complained to the State Medical Board, he added.
Dr Bittner's lawyer is yet to comment. A notice on his website claims that the doctor is currently living in Colombia.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/surgeon-uses-human-fat-to-run-his-cars-1211431.html
Seed Bombs: Walk-By Guerrilla Gardening
* Combine 2 parts mixed seeds (Maybe ones from a local solstice seed swap?) with 3 parts compost. (I bet that organic potting soil would work, as well.)
* Stir in 5 parts powdered red or brown clay.
* Moisten with water until mixture is damp enough to mold into balls.
* Pinch off a penny-sized piece of the clay mixture and roll it between the palms of your hands until it forms a tight ball (1 inch in diameter).
* Set the balls on newspaper and allow to dry for 24 - 48 hours. Store in a cool, dry place until ready to sow.
* Stir in 5 parts powdered red or brown clay.
* Moisten with water until mixture is damp enough to mold into balls.
* Pinch off a penny-sized piece of the clay mixture and roll it between the palms of your hands until it forms a tight ball (1 inch in diameter).
* Set the balls on newspaper and allow to dry for 24 - 48 hours. Store in a cool, dry place until ready to sow.
Toss them at will! Please be respectful over other folks’ property, though. It’s a lot tougher to talk to people about green space and guerrilla gardening when they’re angry.
http://ecolocalizer.com/2008/12/23/seed-bombs-walk-by-guerrilla-gardening/
Presidential Cannabis
Participants in Obama’s Open for Questions website forum selected marijuana legalization as the number one issue for the incoming president.
A total of 7,300 questions were asked by 10,000 participators who voted over 600,000 times in a twenty four hour period. In addition to being the highest voted, there was another cannabis related question in the top ten, a total of six in the top twenty, and several other high ranking questions raising issues of legalization, decriminalization, policymaking, and medical use. The persistence of these questions reflect how important the issues raised are to a number of Americans who want to address marijuana reform as a means to positive change.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/presidential_cannabis
A total of 7,300 questions were asked by 10,000 participators who voted over 600,000 times in a twenty four hour period. In addition to being the highest voted, there was another cannabis related question in the top ten, a total of six in the top twenty, and several other high ranking questions raising issues of legalization, decriminalization, policymaking, and medical use. The persistence of these questions reflect how important the issues raised are to a number of Americans who want to address marijuana reform as a means to positive change.
http://www.realitysandwich.com/presidential_cannabis
Set In Our Ways: Why Change Is So Hard
* Studies of personality development often focus on traits such as extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness to new experiences. In most people, these traits change more during young adulthood than any other period of life, including adolescence. Openness typically increases during a person’s 20s and goes into a gradual decline after that.
* This pattern of personality development seems to hold true across cultures. Although some see that as evidence that genes determine our personality, many researchers theorize that personality traits change during young adulthood because this is a time of life when people assume new roles: finding a partner, starting a family and beginning a career.
* Personality can continue to change somewhat in middle and old age, but openness to new experiences tends to decline gradually until about age 60. After that, some people become more open again, perhaps because their responsibilities for raising a family and earning a living have been lifted.
That was how 22-year-old Christopher McCandless was thinking in the summer of 1990, when he decided to leave everything behind—including his family, friends and career plans. He gave his bank balance of $24,000 to the charity Oxfam International and hitchhiked around the country, ending up in Alaska. There he survived for about four months in the wilderness before dying of starvation in August 1992. His life became the subject of writer Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book Into the Wild, which inspired the 2007 film of the same name.
Not every newly minted college graduate is as impulsive and restless as McCandless was, but studies conducted since the 1970s by personality researchers Paul Costa and Robert R. McCrae of the National Institutes of Health confirm that people tend to be open to new experiences during their teens and early 20s. Young people fantasize about becoming an adventurer like McCandless rather than following in the footsteps of a grandparent who spent decades working for the same company. But after a person’s early 20s, the fascination with novelty declines, and resistance to change increases. As Costa and McCrae found, this pattern holds true regardless of cultural background.
Although people typically lose their appetite for novelty as they age, many continue to claim a passion for it. Voters cheer on politicians who pledge change. Dieters flock to nutritional programs advertising a dream figure in only five weeks. Consumers embrace self-help books promising personal transformation. And scientists tell us that novel stimuli are good for our brains, promoting learning and memory.
Yet even as people older than 30 yearn for what is new, many find themselves unable or unwilling to make fundamental changes in their lives. Researchers say this paradox can be largely explained by the demands of adult responsibilities and that unrealistic expectations may also play a part in thwarting our best intentions. Change is rarely as easy as we think it will be.
The Age of Openness
Psychologists have long identified openness to new experiences as one of the “Big Five” personality traits, which also include extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Considerable disagreement exists about how much these personality traits change after age 30, but most research suggests that openness declines in adulthood.
“Clear age trends are observable,” says psychologist Peter Borkenau of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. “People tend to become more reliable and agreeable with age, but their openness to novelty drops at the same time.”
In a comprehensive survey of more than 130,000 participants published in 2003, psychologist Sanjay Srivastava, now at the University of Oregon, and his colleagues assessed the Big Five traits in 21- to 60-year-olds using standard psychological tests on the Internet. They found that openness increased modestly up to age 30 and then declined slowly in both men and women. The survey results suggest that men begin adulthood slightly more open to new experiences than women but decline in openness during their 30s at a faster rate than women.
Age 30 is not a magical turning point, however. Openness declines gradually over many years, often beginning in the 20s. As the years wear on, novelty becomes less and less stimulating, and the world outside someone’s own private and professional sanctums becomes increasingly less attractive.
This change happens to almost everyone, regardless of individual personality. That does not mean that everyone reaches the same level of openness in later life, however. Some toddlers love to go back to the same playground day after day, whereas others get bored after a day or two of digging in the same sandbox with the same shovel. Children who are less open to new experiences than their peers are will continue in adulthood to cleave to the conventional more than their more adventurous childhood friends will. As psychologist Richard W. Robins of the University of California, Davis, showed in a longitudinal study, those who begin life with a more open personality remain relatively more open in their later years.
Nature or Nurture?
The fact that an age-dependent pattern of decreasing openness appears around the globe and in all cultures suggests, according to biopsychologists, a genetic basis. But the jury is still out. As psychologist and personality researcher Rainer Riemann of Bielefeld University in Germany points out, it is conceivable that people all over the globe are simply confronted with similar life demands and societal expectations. Young men and women everywhere have to go out into the world and find a partner and a livelihood. Later, they have to care for their children and grandchildren. These life tasks require commitment and consistency and may serve as a catalyst for personality change.
Once a family and career are in place, novelty may no longer be as welcome. New experiences may bring innovation and awakening but also chaos and insecurity. And so most people dream of novelty but hold fast to the familiar. Over time we become creatures of habit: enjoying the same dishes when we eat out, vacationing in favorite spots and falling into daily routines.
“The brain is always trying to automate things and to create habits, which it imbues with feelings of pleasure. Holding to the tried and true gives us a feeling of security, safety, and competence while at the same time reducing our fear of the future and of failure,” writes brain researcher Gerhard Roth of the University of Bremen in Germany in his 2007 book whose title translates as Personality, Decision, and Behavior.
But even negative events may have thoroughly positive results, according to sociologist Deborah Carr of Rutgers University. For example, many widows are able to start life over again and to develop talents they never knew they had. People who have been diagnosed with cancer learn to redefine themselves as a result of the disease—and may even conquer their cancer in the process. Survivors of natural catastrophes often discover new strengths. But we should not draw sweeping conclusions from these examples, says psychologist William R. Miller of the University of New Mexico. Many older people report that they have changed little in spite of major life experiences.
In a recent experiment psychologist Kate C. McLean of the University of Toronto Mississauga asked 134 volunteers of different ages—some older than 65 and others ranging in age from late adolescence through young adulthood—to describe three self-defining memories. She found that both old and young participants reported novel experiences such as the death of a partner, an unexpected career advancement or a cross-country move. The older people ascribed different meanings to these events than the younger people did, however. For younger people, external changes were more likely to lead to internal transformation, but that was not the case for older individuals.
These very different narratives are no coincidence. Personality traits change more during young adulthood than any other period of life, according to psychologist Brent W. Roberts of the University of Illinois, who together with two colleagues analyzed 92 studies of personality development. They concluded that some personality changes occur well past the age of 30 but that typically these changes are small in magnitude compared with the changes that occur between the ages of 20 and 40.
Even major life events such as a divorce or the death of a loved one, though stressful, are unlikely to result in profound personality changes. The middle years of life are often a time of reflection and reevaluation, but few people experience a genuine “midlife crisis.”
The structure of one’s personality becomes increasingly stable until about age 60. “That means that a person who is particularly conscientious at the age of 40 will be conscientious at 60 as well,” Borkenau says. Stability decreases again, however, after the age of 60. It seems that people are only able to become more open to new experiences once they have fulfilled their life obligations—that is, after they have retired from their careers and their children have flown the nest.
False Hope Springs Eternal
Even after age 60 it is difficult to completely reframe your life. In fact, those who seek to make large changes often end up failing even to make the most minor corrections. The more an individual believes he can set his own rudder as he pleases, the more likely he is to run aground. That’s one reason why so many smokers who tell you that they can quit whenever they want are still smoking 20 years later.
In 1999 psychologists Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman of the University of Toronto Mississauga coined a term for this phenomenon: false hope syndrome. Over and over, they say, people undertake both small and large changes in their lives. Most of these attempts never get anywhere, thanks to overblown expectations [see “Picture Imperfect,” by David Dunning, Chip Heath and Jerry M. Suls; Scientific American Mind, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2005].
Take the woman who believes that if she can lose 20 pounds she will finally meet the man of her dreams and live happily ever after. This fantasy is based on the notion that one positive change—losing weight—automatically brings with it other desired changes. But the reality is that it is difficult to keep weight off over the long term, and finding an ideal life partner is often dependent on luck. Even if dieting proves successful, other goals may remain out of reach. But the false hope syndrome seduces people into trying to overhaul their entire lives all at once: the smoker and couch potato is suddenly inspired to become a nonsmoker and marathon runner, but because he attempts too much too fast, he is doomed to fail.
The cure for false hope is to set more reasonable goals and recognize that achieving even modest change will be difficult. And if you are older than 30, remember that your openness to new experiences is slowly declining, so you are better off making a new start today than postponing it until later. Perhaps most important of all, try to appreciate the person that you already are.
As the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus put it: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=set-in-our-ways
* This pattern of personality development seems to hold true across cultures. Although some see that as evidence that genes determine our personality, many researchers theorize that personality traits change during young adulthood because this is a time of life when people assume new roles: finding a partner, starting a family and beginning a career.
* Personality can continue to change somewhat in middle and old age, but openness to new experiences tends to decline gradually until about age 60. After that, some people become more open again, perhaps because their responsibilities for raising a family and earning a living have been lifted.
That was how 22-year-old Christopher McCandless was thinking in the summer of 1990, when he decided to leave everything behind—including his family, friends and career plans. He gave his bank balance of $24,000 to the charity Oxfam International and hitchhiked around the country, ending up in Alaska. There he survived for about four months in the wilderness before dying of starvation in August 1992. His life became the subject of writer Jon Krakauer’s 1996 book Into the Wild, which inspired the 2007 film of the same name.
Not every newly minted college graduate is as impulsive and restless as McCandless was, but studies conducted since the 1970s by personality researchers Paul Costa and Robert R. McCrae of the National Institutes of Health confirm that people tend to be open to new experiences during their teens and early 20s. Young people fantasize about becoming an adventurer like McCandless rather than following in the footsteps of a grandparent who spent decades working for the same company. But after a person’s early 20s, the fascination with novelty declines, and resistance to change increases. As Costa and McCrae found, this pattern holds true regardless of cultural background.
Although people typically lose their appetite for novelty as they age, many continue to claim a passion for it. Voters cheer on politicians who pledge change. Dieters flock to nutritional programs advertising a dream figure in only five weeks. Consumers embrace self-help books promising personal transformation. And scientists tell us that novel stimuli are good for our brains, promoting learning and memory.
Yet even as people older than 30 yearn for what is new, many find themselves unable or unwilling to make fundamental changes in their lives. Researchers say this paradox can be largely explained by the demands of adult responsibilities and that unrealistic expectations may also play a part in thwarting our best intentions. Change is rarely as easy as we think it will be.
The Age of Openness
Psychologists have long identified openness to new experiences as one of the “Big Five” personality traits, which also include extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism. Considerable disagreement exists about how much these personality traits change after age 30, but most research suggests that openness declines in adulthood.
“Clear age trends are observable,” says psychologist Peter Borkenau of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany. “People tend to become more reliable and agreeable with age, but their openness to novelty drops at the same time.”
In a comprehensive survey of more than 130,000 participants published in 2003, psychologist Sanjay Srivastava, now at the University of Oregon, and his colleagues assessed the Big Five traits in 21- to 60-year-olds using standard psychological tests on the Internet. They found that openness increased modestly up to age 30 and then declined slowly in both men and women. The survey results suggest that men begin adulthood slightly more open to new experiences than women but decline in openness during their 30s at a faster rate than women.
Age 30 is not a magical turning point, however. Openness declines gradually over many years, often beginning in the 20s. As the years wear on, novelty becomes less and less stimulating, and the world outside someone’s own private and professional sanctums becomes increasingly less attractive.
This change happens to almost everyone, regardless of individual personality. That does not mean that everyone reaches the same level of openness in later life, however. Some toddlers love to go back to the same playground day after day, whereas others get bored after a day or two of digging in the same sandbox with the same shovel. Children who are less open to new experiences than their peers are will continue in adulthood to cleave to the conventional more than their more adventurous childhood friends will. As psychologist Richard W. Robins of the University of California, Davis, showed in a longitudinal study, those who begin life with a more open personality remain relatively more open in their later years.
Nature or Nurture?
The fact that an age-dependent pattern of decreasing openness appears around the globe and in all cultures suggests, according to biopsychologists, a genetic basis. But the jury is still out. As psychologist and personality researcher Rainer Riemann of Bielefeld University in Germany points out, it is conceivable that people all over the globe are simply confronted with similar life demands and societal expectations. Young men and women everywhere have to go out into the world and find a partner and a livelihood. Later, they have to care for their children and grandchildren. These life tasks require commitment and consistency and may serve as a catalyst for personality change.
Once a family and career are in place, novelty may no longer be as welcome. New experiences may bring innovation and awakening but also chaos and insecurity. And so most people dream of novelty but hold fast to the familiar. Over time we become creatures of habit: enjoying the same dishes when we eat out, vacationing in favorite spots and falling into daily routines.
“The brain is always trying to automate things and to create habits, which it imbues with feelings of pleasure. Holding to the tried and true gives us a feeling of security, safety, and competence while at the same time reducing our fear of the future and of failure,” writes brain researcher Gerhard Roth of the University of Bremen in Germany in his 2007 book whose title translates as Personality, Decision, and Behavior.
But even negative events may have thoroughly positive results, according to sociologist Deborah Carr of Rutgers University. For example, many widows are able to start life over again and to develop talents they never knew they had. People who have been diagnosed with cancer learn to redefine themselves as a result of the disease—and may even conquer their cancer in the process. Survivors of natural catastrophes often discover new strengths. But we should not draw sweeping conclusions from these examples, says psychologist William R. Miller of the University of New Mexico. Many older people report that they have changed little in spite of major life experiences.
In a recent experiment psychologist Kate C. McLean of the University of Toronto Mississauga asked 134 volunteers of different ages—some older than 65 and others ranging in age from late adolescence through young adulthood—to describe three self-defining memories. She found that both old and young participants reported novel experiences such as the death of a partner, an unexpected career advancement or a cross-country move. The older people ascribed different meanings to these events than the younger people did, however. For younger people, external changes were more likely to lead to internal transformation, but that was not the case for older individuals.
These very different narratives are no coincidence. Personality traits change more during young adulthood than any other period of life, according to psychologist Brent W. Roberts of the University of Illinois, who together with two colleagues analyzed 92 studies of personality development. They concluded that some personality changes occur well past the age of 30 but that typically these changes are small in magnitude compared with the changes that occur between the ages of 20 and 40.
Even major life events such as a divorce or the death of a loved one, though stressful, are unlikely to result in profound personality changes. The middle years of life are often a time of reflection and reevaluation, but few people experience a genuine “midlife crisis.”
The structure of one’s personality becomes increasingly stable until about age 60. “That means that a person who is particularly conscientious at the age of 40 will be conscientious at 60 as well,” Borkenau says. Stability decreases again, however, after the age of 60. It seems that people are only able to become more open to new experiences once they have fulfilled their life obligations—that is, after they have retired from their careers and their children have flown the nest.
False Hope Springs Eternal
Even after age 60 it is difficult to completely reframe your life. In fact, those who seek to make large changes often end up failing even to make the most minor corrections. The more an individual believes he can set his own rudder as he pleases, the more likely he is to run aground. That’s one reason why so many smokers who tell you that they can quit whenever they want are still smoking 20 years later.
In 1999 psychologists Janet Polivy and C. Peter Herman of the University of Toronto Mississauga coined a term for this phenomenon: false hope syndrome. Over and over, they say, people undertake both small and large changes in their lives. Most of these attempts never get anywhere, thanks to overblown expectations [see “Picture Imperfect,” by David Dunning, Chip Heath and Jerry M. Suls; Scientific American Mind, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2005].
Take the woman who believes that if she can lose 20 pounds she will finally meet the man of her dreams and live happily ever after. This fantasy is based on the notion that one positive change—losing weight—automatically brings with it other desired changes. But the reality is that it is difficult to keep weight off over the long term, and finding an ideal life partner is often dependent on luck. Even if dieting proves successful, other goals may remain out of reach. But the false hope syndrome seduces people into trying to overhaul their entire lives all at once: the smoker and couch potato is suddenly inspired to become a nonsmoker and marathon runner, but because he attempts too much too fast, he is doomed to fail.
The cure for false hope is to set more reasonable goals and recognize that achieving even modest change will be difficult. And if you are older than 30, remember that your openness to new experiences is slowly declining, so you are better off making a new start today than postponing it until later. Perhaps most important of all, try to appreciate the person that you already are.
As the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus put it: “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=set-in-our-ways
The Century Of The Self, Episode 4: Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering
on Freud, psychoanalysis, consumerism, terrorism, individualism, and the controlling/manipulation of the masses...
by far one of the most important documentary series i have ever watched...
by far one of the most important documentary series i have ever watched...
The Century Of The Self, Episode 3: There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed
on Freud, psychoanalysis, consumerism, terrorism, individualism, and the controlling/manipulation of the masses...
by far one of the most important documentary series i have ever watched...
by far one of the most important documentary series i have ever watched...
The Century Of The Self, Episode 2: The Engineering of Consent
on Freud, psychoanalysis, consumerism, terrorism, individualism, and the controlling/manipulation of the masses...
by far one of the most important documentary series i have ever watched...
by far one of the most important documentary series i have ever watched...
The Century Of The Self, Episode 1: Happiness Machines
on Freud, psychoanalysis, consumerism, terrorism, individualism, and the controlling/manipulation of the masses...
by far one of the most important documentary series i have ever watched...
by far one of the most important documentary series i have ever watched...
Brazil and EU leaders hold summit
Leaders from the European Union and Brazil are expected to focus on the financial crisis and climate change at a two-day summit in Rio de Janeiro.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attend, as well as European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso.
On Tuesday, Mr Sarkozy and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are expected to sign a range of agreements.
They may include one that would help build South America's first nuclear propelled submarine.
In an interview just ahead of his arrival, Mr Sarkozy - who currently holds the EU's rotating presidency - was keen to stress the growing importance of Brazil's role in the world, words that will undoubtedly please his hosts.
He told the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo that no-one could imagine resolving problems today "without involving China, India and, of course, Brazil".
His emphasis on the need for a new system of world governance, and one that would be more open to developing countries, will also be welcome here.
It was not an option, he said, but a necessity which should be dealt with urgently.
Defence policy
As well as the financial crisis, the issue of climate change is likely to figure prominently in discussions with the European leaders.
Mr Sarkozy will also have separate meetings with President Lula on Tuesday at which the two leaders are expected to sign a range of agreements, most notably relating to defence.
Last week, Brazil unveiled a new strategy to upgrade the country's defence policy, and the government is keen to forge partnerships with nations that are willing to share technology.
According to reports in the Brazilian media, the two presidents will sign an agreement that will help build South America's first nuclear propelled submarine.
With Brazil making extensive oil finds off its coast, the government here is becoming increasingly preoccupied with defending the country's coastal waters.
Another potential agreement is said to include the transfer of French technology to help build four conventional submarines.
The meetings will take place in Rio de Janeiro's famous Copacabana Palace hotel, and there is expected to be huge media interest in the activities of the French president's wife, Carla Bruni, as she carries out a range of functions in the city.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7794890.stm
French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attend, as well as European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso.
On Tuesday, Mr Sarkozy and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva are expected to sign a range of agreements.
They may include one that would help build South America's first nuclear propelled submarine.
In an interview just ahead of his arrival, Mr Sarkozy - who currently holds the EU's rotating presidency - was keen to stress the growing importance of Brazil's role in the world, words that will undoubtedly please his hosts.
He told the newspaper Folha de Sao Paulo that no-one could imagine resolving problems today "without involving China, India and, of course, Brazil".
His emphasis on the need for a new system of world governance, and one that would be more open to developing countries, will also be welcome here.
It was not an option, he said, but a necessity which should be dealt with urgently.
Defence policy
As well as the financial crisis, the issue of climate change is likely to figure prominently in discussions with the European leaders.
Mr Sarkozy will also have separate meetings with President Lula on Tuesday at which the two leaders are expected to sign a range of agreements, most notably relating to defence.
Last week, Brazil unveiled a new strategy to upgrade the country's defence policy, and the government is keen to forge partnerships with nations that are willing to share technology.
According to reports in the Brazilian media, the two presidents will sign an agreement that will help build South America's first nuclear propelled submarine.
With Brazil making extensive oil finds off its coast, the government here is becoming increasingly preoccupied with defending the country's coastal waters.
Another potential agreement is said to include the transfer of French technology to help build four conventional submarines.
The meetings will take place in Rio de Janeiro's famous Copacabana Palace hotel, and there is expected to be huge media interest in the activities of the French president's wife, Carla Bruni, as she carries out a range of functions in the city.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7794890.stm
The 10 Greediest People of 2008
This time of year always seems to bring a never-ending barrage of "top ten" lists. The year's top ten movies, the top ten books, the top ten news stories, and on and on. Here at Too Much we've decided to join in on the action -- with our very own list of America's top ten greediest.
We probably couldn't have picked a better year than 2008 to so "honor" our most avaricious. This year's stunning economic meltdown has fixed the attention of our entire nation -- and world -- on the grasping antics of those who yearn for ever more than they could rationally ever need.
But this year also presents enormous challenges for anyone bold enough to rank the greedy. With so much greed out there, how could we possibly limit our list to a mere ten?
The latest greed explosion to hit the headlines -- the $50 billion Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme -- illustrates just how difficult a task ranking the greedy can be.
To whom in this scandal should we award the most greed points? Bernie Madoff himself, the 70-year-old who scammed his wealthy friends and charities to keep up his credentials as a Wall Street investing "genius" -- and maintain a $6 million pad in Manhattan, a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, and a weekend getaway on Long Island?
Or should those greed points go instead to the ever-so-sophisticated hedge fund "middlemen" like Walter Noel, who built a five-manse fortune by steering clients to Madoff and charging them tens of millions in "due diligence" fees for the steering.
Or should the greed points go to Madoff's investors themselves, the swells who pay $250,000 a year for the privilege of belonging to a swanky country club?
So many choices! How about James Cayne, the Bear Stearns CEO who rode toxic securities into billionairedom? Or Angelo Mozilo, who took the same ride at Countrywide Financial, spreading suffering to subprimed families all along the way?
In the end, we came to realize, the size of the fortune alone doesn't determine greed. It's the thought that counts. In that holiday spirit, we hope you find our top ten greedy list of some interest -- and greed-busting inspiration.
10: Dwight Schar
Any list of 2009's greediest has to start, of course, with the power-suits who pumped up -- and profited ever so lavishly from -- the now-burst housing bubble. In November, Wall Street Journal researchers scoured the records of firms that build and finance housing and found 15 top executives who have pocketed, "in cash compensation and proceeds from stock sales," at least $100 million over the past five years.
Among the fortunate 15: Dwight Schar, the chair of homebuilding giant NVR Inc. The 66-year-old Schar has cleared $625 million since 2002. In 2004, he spent a good chunk of that buying an ocean-facing mansion in Florida's Palm Beach for $70 million, the highest price up to then ever paid for a U.S. residential property. The seven-bedroom home came with a walk-in humidor for cigars.
Schar's legal residence, a gated estate just north of Washington, D.C., sits on 10 acres overlooking the Potomac. NVR stock has dropped over 60 percent since its housing bubble peak, but neither of Schar's two main residences figures to foreclose anytime soon.
9: Patrick Soon-Shiong
Why does health care in the United States cost so much? Maybe somebody should ask Patrick Soon-Shiong, the Los Angeles drug developer who this September saw his personal fortune -- $3 billion last year -- take a giant first step toward more than doubling.
Soon-Shiong came into 2008 as the chief executive of APP Pharmaceuticals. He stepped down as CEO in the spring, but the former surgeon still held 83 percent of the company's shares. In July, he agreed to sell APP to a German firm. The sale finalized two months later for an initial $3.7 billion cash payment.
What made APP so attractive? The company is minting money. In 2007, notes the Los Angeles Business Journal, APP scored $253 million in adjusted earnings on just $647 million of sales. The firm started this year off on an equally profitable tear when a contamination scare in China left APP the only U.S. source of a widely used blood-thinner. That drug quickly doubled in price.
8: Richard Baker
This hasn't been a great year for the hedge fund industry. The funds -- largely unregulated investment vehicles open only to deep-pocket investors -- are suffering their worst year ever, down 19 percent through November. But the industry has certainly been sweet this year to at least one lucky fellow, former Congressman Richard Baker from Louisiana.
Back in February, Baker gave up his House seat -- and his $169,300 House salary -- to become the president and CEO of the Managed Funds Association, the hedge fund industry's trade association.
What led the 60-year-old Baker, a lawmaker since the age of 23, to give up his life of public service? Maybe the private gain. As the hedge fund trade group chief, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported earlier this year, Baker would be taking home a $1 million annual salary and benefits package.
What made Baker so attractive to America's hedge fund billionaires? As the chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, the Center for Responsible Politics notes, Baker had been overseeing the very industry he would, as the hedge fund top gun, be representing.
7: James Mulva
Back last spring, with motorists turning purple with rage every time they pulled in for a fill-up, one Big Oil CEO tried to assure Americans he shared their pain. Declared ConocoPhillips chief exec Mulva: "High oil prices have not been our friend" -- because, as he explained later to reporters, higher per-barrel prices for crude have resource-rich countries demanding more control over their own oil.
On the other hand, the run-up in crude oil prices over recent years hasn't exactly left Big Oil broken-hearted. The industry's profits, the Consumer Federation of America noted this fall, have soared over 600 percent since 2002.
Few have enjoyed more rewards for that success than the 62-year-old Mulva. He reaped a $50.5 million personal payoff in 2007, according to federal Securities and Exchange Commission figures. He'll be collecting, when he retires, at least a $2.6 million annual pension.
6: Ralph Roberts
On January 1, 2008, the Comcast cable TV empire put into effect the ultimate in executive incentive pay plans: a new deal that guaranteed the company's founder and executive committee chair, Ralph Roberts, $1.85 million in basic annual salary for five years after he dies, with the after-death payout going to whoever Roberts names as his beneficiary.
In 2007, Roberts, now 88, actually pocketed $24.7 million in total compensation. His son, current Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, collected $20.8 million.
Some shareholders, in early 2008, took a bit of umbrage to all this largesse. Some even began demanding Brian's resignation. In February, under fire, the Roberts clan backed down. They agreed to ax Ralph's death benefit and drop his annual salary to $1 a year. But Comcast will continue to pay Ralph's various benefits, including his life insurance. In 2006, the premiums ran $10.5 million.
Meanwhile, in November, news reports revealed that federal and state cable TV regulators fear that Comcast, amid the consumer confusion over the transition to all-digital over-the-air broadcasts, is pushing low-income cable TV subscribers into more expensive monthly cable packages.
5: Steve Jobs
In 2008, once again, the most notable executive in America's $1-a-year CEO club remained Steve Jobs, the chief exec at Apple Computer. Jobs has been collecting a mere $1 in annual salary ever since 1997. He has, to be sure, been collecting a few other rewards as well. He entered 2008 with about 5.5 million shares of Apple stock and a net worth not too far south of $6 billion.
This past March, to gain some input into any future rewards that might come their CEO's way, Apple shareholders passed a resolution that gives them an advisory "Say on Pay" vote on executive compensation. Joked Jobs in response: "I hope 'Say on Pay' will help me with my $1 a year salary."
Apple corporate directors aren't waiting for any shareholder help. In the company's 2008 proxy statement, they noted that they're already "considering additional compensation arrangements" for Jobs, given the "critical" importance of his "continued leadership."
Jobs himself told shareholders at this year's Apple annual meeting that he "feels confident" that any number of the company's top execs "could take his place." Even so, he's probably eager to see what sort of "additional compensation" Apple's imaginative board might have in mind.
In 1999, the board gave Jobs a $90 million Gulfstream V jet -- and agreed to pay Jobs for the cost of operating it. In 2007, that cost came to $776,000.
4: Robert Stevens
Peace on earth and good will toward everybody. But not too soon. That may be the motto this holiday season for Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest military contractor. Under CEO Robert Stevens, the company's profit margins have nearly doubled, thanks in no small part to a 72 percent hike in U.S. defense outlays, after inflation, since the year 2000.
And the future looks equally bright, even with the war in Iraq winding down. Lockheed Martin, the 57-year-old Stevens noted last month, sees nothing but "continuous expansion" in its military hardware sales overseas. These sales can deliver sky-high returns, industry analysts point out, because U.S. taxpayers have already footed the bill for the hardware's R&D.
Still, Stevens isn't putting all his eggs in one basket. Lockheed Martin, he said last week, remains totally "unconstrained" by the credit crisis and is now investigating making corporate acquisitions in other fields -- like health care.
The CEO's personal financial health remains quite robust. Stevens pulled in $26 million last year. The most highly decorated general in the U.S. armed services would have to work over 130 years to make that much.
3: Larry Ellison
No state may be suffering from the bursting of the housing bubble more than California -- and no Californian may be benefiting from that bursting more than billionaire Larry Ellison, the Oracle business software chief exec who currently occupies the three-spot on the latest Forbes list of America's 400 richest.
Ellison spent nine years and $200 million building a lavish Northern California residential estate -- in the flamboyant style of a 16th century Japanese emperor. In 2005, San Mateo County officials assessed the 23-acre property at $166.3 million. Ellison balked. A more accurate appraisal, his lawyers claimed, would run about $100 million less.
Early this spring, the San Mateo assessment appeals board came down on the side of Ellison's lawyers. That decision handed Ellison a $3 million tax refund.
Local public schools are now bearing about half the burden that refund has generated. In future years, Ellison's tax discount will cost Portola Valley schools an annual $250,000 or so, the cost of hiring and supplying three teachers.
Ellison, as Oracle's top executive, takes home about that much every hour. This August, just before school started, Oracle pay filings revealed that Ellison collected $84.6 million in fiscal 2008 for his CEO labors. He also cleared another $544 million cashing in on a stash of his Oracle stock options.
2: John Thain
In high-finance circles, they called John Thain "Mr. Fix-It." In 2004, the New York Stock Exchange hired Thain, a rising star at Goldman Sachs, to clean up the mess after NYSE CEO Dick Grasso departed with a scandalous $140 million retirement package. Then, in October 2007, Merrill Lynch asked Thain to pick up the pieces after Merrill's board gave the heave-ho to CEO Stanley O'Neal, who left with $160 million.
Merrill paid fairly dearly to gain Thain's services. Mr. Fix-It came on board with a $15 million signing bonus and a bundle of lush incentives that "would be considered excessive for any industry anywhere," observed CEO pay expert Graef Crystal, "except on that tiny slice of Manhattan called Wall Street."
With subprime-spooked financial giants starting to melt down all around him, Thain went to work wheeling and dealing -- and assuring bystanders that all would be well. In July, he told investors he "felt comfortable with Merrill's capital levels." In August, Thain labeled his firm "well-positioned for the coming years."
Well, maybe not that well-positioned. In September, as Reuters later reported, Merrill would come within moments of "total extinction" -- only to be rescued, an hour before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, when Bank of America agreed to swallow Merrill whole.
Merrill Lynch, Thain apparently believed, had been fixed, and, early this December, he let it be known that he expected up to $10 million in new bonus for his efforts -- despite Merrill's $12 billion in 2008 losses and a pending layoff of as much as a fifth of the firm's workforce. On top of all that, Merrill's new sugardaddy, Bank of America, was taking $25 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars.
Thain's bonus request quickly became a public relations disaster. By mid-December, Merrill and Thain, under increasing pressure, would unrequest the bonus millions. The good news for Mr. Fix-It? He still may get a $5.2 million "change-of-control payment" for selling Merrill -- and he still has a job.
Unlike average families who lost everything when Merrill's subprime mortgage securities went sour, Thain still has a house, too. A nice one, a 14-bedroom palace north of Manhattan complete with tennis courts, swimming pools, and a fish-filled private lake.
1: Richard Gilman
The CEO of a small factory on Chicago's North Side, by Fortune 500 standards, rates as distinctly small-time. But this particular CEO, Richard Gilman, helped make headlines -- and history -- in 2008. He fully deserves this year's premier place in America's top ten greediest.
Gilman started running Republic Windows and Doors, a modest, four-decade-old plant, in 2006. Layoffs soon followed, and, eventually, only about 240 workers remained from a unionized labor force once over 500 strong.
Those workers, earlier this fall, realized something even more ominous was coming at them. Equipment at the Chicago plant had started vanishing. What the workers didn't know: Republic's "deciders" had set up a new company and bought a nonunion window and door plant in Iowa.
Two days into December, Republic gave workers the bad news. The plant would shut down three days later. The workers would lose their earned vacation time and their health insurance -- and not see any of the severance legally due them.
Just another typical assault on workers with a precarious foothold in the middle class. Or so things seemed. But the workers then did something extraordinary. Reviving memories of the Great Depression-era "sit-down" strikes, they occupied the plant -- and captured America's imagination.
The sit-down forced Gilman and his money pot, the Bank of America, to the bargaining table where a settlement soon took shape. But Gilman suddenly threw a monkey-wrench into the works -- and gained a slot for himself in this year's top ten greediest.
Gilman demanded that "any new bank loan to help the employees also cover" the lease of his Mercedes and BMW and eight weeks of his $225,000 salary.
The workers would have none of that. Gilman would drop his demand. The bank funding would come through. The workers had won. Greed had lost.
That hasn't much over the last three decades. Maybe the greedy have finally gone too far. We may have reached the end of an era. America's generation-long Great Greed Grab may soon be no more.
http://www.alternet.org/story/114782/the_10_greediest_people_of_2008/?page=entire
We probably couldn't have picked a better year than 2008 to so "honor" our most avaricious. This year's stunning economic meltdown has fixed the attention of our entire nation -- and world -- on the grasping antics of those who yearn for ever more than they could rationally ever need.
But this year also presents enormous challenges for anyone bold enough to rank the greedy. With so much greed out there, how could we possibly limit our list to a mere ten?
The latest greed explosion to hit the headlines -- the $50 billion Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme -- illustrates just how difficult a task ranking the greedy can be.
To whom in this scandal should we award the most greed points? Bernie Madoff himself, the 70-year-old who scammed his wealthy friends and charities to keep up his credentials as a Wall Street investing "genius" -- and maintain a $6 million pad in Manhattan, a waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, and a weekend getaway on Long Island?
Or should those greed points go instead to the ever-so-sophisticated hedge fund "middlemen" like Walter Noel, who built a five-manse fortune by steering clients to Madoff and charging them tens of millions in "due diligence" fees for the steering.
Or should the greed points go to Madoff's investors themselves, the swells who pay $250,000 a year for the privilege of belonging to a swanky country club?
So many choices! How about James Cayne, the Bear Stearns CEO who rode toxic securities into billionairedom? Or Angelo Mozilo, who took the same ride at Countrywide Financial, spreading suffering to subprimed families all along the way?
In the end, we came to realize, the size of the fortune alone doesn't determine greed. It's the thought that counts. In that holiday spirit, we hope you find our top ten greedy list of some interest -- and greed-busting inspiration.
10: Dwight Schar
Any list of 2009's greediest has to start, of course, with the power-suits who pumped up -- and profited ever so lavishly from -- the now-burst housing bubble. In November, Wall Street Journal researchers scoured the records of firms that build and finance housing and found 15 top executives who have pocketed, "in cash compensation and proceeds from stock sales," at least $100 million over the past five years.
Among the fortunate 15: Dwight Schar, the chair of homebuilding giant NVR Inc. The 66-year-old Schar has cleared $625 million since 2002. In 2004, he spent a good chunk of that buying an ocean-facing mansion in Florida's Palm Beach for $70 million, the highest price up to then ever paid for a U.S. residential property. The seven-bedroom home came with a walk-in humidor for cigars.
Schar's legal residence, a gated estate just north of Washington, D.C., sits on 10 acres overlooking the Potomac. NVR stock has dropped over 60 percent since its housing bubble peak, but neither of Schar's two main residences figures to foreclose anytime soon.
9: Patrick Soon-Shiong
Why does health care in the United States cost so much? Maybe somebody should ask Patrick Soon-Shiong, the Los Angeles drug developer who this September saw his personal fortune -- $3 billion last year -- take a giant first step toward more than doubling.
Soon-Shiong came into 2008 as the chief executive of APP Pharmaceuticals. He stepped down as CEO in the spring, but the former surgeon still held 83 percent of the company's shares. In July, he agreed to sell APP to a German firm. The sale finalized two months later for an initial $3.7 billion cash payment.
What made APP so attractive? The company is minting money. In 2007, notes the Los Angeles Business Journal, APP scored $253 million in adjusted earnings on just $647 million of sales. The firm started this year off on an equally profitable tear when a contamination scare in China left APP the only U.S. source of a widely used blood-thinner. That drug quickly doubled in price.
8: Richard Baker
This hasn't been a great year for the hedge fund industry. The funds -- largely unregulated investment vehicles open only to deep-pocket investors -- are suffering their worst year ever, down 19 percent through November. But the industry has certainly been sweet this year to at least one lucky fellow, former Congressman Richard Baker from Louisiana.
Back in February, Baker gave up his House seat -- and his $169,300 House salary -- to become the president and CEO of the Managed Funds Association, the hedge fund industry's trade association.
What led the 60-year-old Baker, a lawmaker since the age of 23, to give up his life of public service? Maybe the private gain. As the hedge fund trade group chief, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported earlier this year, Baker would be taking home a $1 million annual salary and benefits package.
What made Baker so attractive to America's hedge fund billionaires? As the chair of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, the Center for Responsible Politics notes, Baker had been overseeing the very industry he would, as the hedge fund top gun, be representing.
7: James Mulva
Back last spring, with motorists turning purple with rage every time they pulled in for a fill-up, one Big Oil CEO tried to assure Americans he shared their pain. Declared ConocoPhillips chief exec Mulva: "High oil prices have not been our friend" -- because, as he explained later to reporters, higher per-barrel prices for crude have resource-rich countries demanding more control over their own oil.
On the other hand, the run-up in crude oil prices over recent years hasn't exactly left Big Oil broken-hearted. The industry's profits, the Consumer Federation of America noted this fall, have soared over 600 percent since 2002.
Few have enjoyed more rewards for that success than the 62-year-old Mulva. He reaped a $50.5 million personal payoff in 2007, according to federal Securities and Exchange Commission figures. He'll be collecting, when he retires, at least a $2.6 million annual pension.
6: Ralph Roberts
On January 1, 2008, the Comcast cable TV empire put into effect the ultimate in executive incentive pay plans: a new deal that guaranteed the company's founder and executive committee chair, Ralph Roberts, $1.85 million in basic annual salary for five years after he dies, with the after-death payout going to whoever Roberts names as his beneficiary.
In 2007, Roberts, now 88, actually pocketed $24.7 million in total compensation. His son, current Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, collected $20.8 million.
Some shareholders, in early 2008, took a bit of umbrage to all this largesse. Some even began demanding Brian's resignation. In February, under fire, the Roberts clan backed down. They agreed to ax Ralph's death benefit and drop his annual salary to $1 a year. But Comcast will continue to pay Ralph's various benefits, including his life insurance. In 2006, the premiums ran $10.5 million.
Meanwhile, in November, news reports revealed that federal and state cable TV regulators fear that Comcast, amid the consumer confusion over the transition to all-digital over-the-air broadcasts, is pushing low-income cable TV subscribers into more expensive monthly cable packages.
5: Steve Jobs
In 2008, once again, the most notable executive in America's $1-a-year CEO club remained Steve Jobs, the chief exec at Apple Computer. Jobs has been collecting a mere $1 in annual salary ever since 1997. He has, to be sure, been collecting a few other rewards as well. He entered 2008 with about 5.5 million shares of Apple stock and a net worth not too far south of $6 billion.
This past March, to gain some input into any future rewards that might come their CEO's way, Apple shareholders passed a resolution that gives them an advisory "Say on Pay" vote on executive compensation. Joked Jobs in response: "I hope 'Say on Pay' will help me with my $1 a year salary."
Apple corporate directors aren't waiting for any shareholder help. In the company's 2008 proxy statement, they noted that they're already "considering additional compensation arrangements" for Jobs, given the "critical" importance of his "continued leadership."
Jobs himself told shareholders at this year's Apple annual meeting that he "feels confident" that any number of the company's top execs "could take his place." Even so, he's probably eager to see what sort of "additional compensation" Apple's imaginative board might have in mind.
In 1999, the board gave Jobs a $90 million Gulfstream V jet -- and agreed to pay Jobs for the cost of operating it. In 2007, that cost came to $776,000.
4: Robert Stevens
Peace on earth and good will toward everybody. But not too soon. That may be the motto this holiday season for Lockheed Martin, the world's biggest military contractor. Under CEO Robert Stevens, the company's profit margins have nearly doubled, thanks in no small part to a 72 percent hike in U.S. defense outlays, after inflation, since the year 2000.
And the future looks equally bright, even with the war in Iraq winding down. Lockheed Martin, the 57-year-old Stevens noted last month, sees nothing but "continuous expansion" in its military hardware sales overseas. These sales can deliver sky-high returns, industry analysts point out, because U.S. taxpayers have already footed the bill for the hardware's R&D.
Still, Stevens isn't putting all his eggs in one basket. Lockheed Martin, he said last week, remains totally "unconstrained" by the credit crisis and is now investigating making corporate acquisitions in other fields -- like health care.
The CEO's personal financial health remains quite robust. Stevens pulled in $26 million last year. The most highly decorated general in the U.S. armed services would have to work over 130 years to make that much.
3: Larry Ellison
No state may be suffering from the bursting of the housing bubble more than California -- and no Californian may be benefiting from that bursting more than billionaire Larry Ellison, the Oracle business software chief exec who currently occupies the three-spot on the latest Forbes list of America's 400 richest.
Ellison spent nine years and $200 million building a lavish Northern California residential estate -- in the flamboyant style of a 16th century Japanese emperor. In 2005, San Mateo County officials assessed the 23-acre property at $166.3 million. Ellison balked. A more accurate appraisal, his lawyers claimed, would run about $100 million less.
Early this spring, the San Mateo assessment appeals board came down on the side of Ellison's lawyers. That decision handed Ellison a $3 million tax refund.
Local public schools are now bearing about half the burden that refund has generated. In future years, Ellison's tax discount will cost Portola Valley schools an annual $250,000 or so, the cost of hiring and supplying three teachers.
Ellison, as Oracle's top executive, takes home about that much every hour. This August, just before school started, Oracle pay filings revealed that Ellison collected $84.6 million in fiscal 2008 for his CEO labors. He also cleared another $544 million cashing in on a stash of his Oracle stock options.
2: John Thain
In high-finance circles, they called John Thain "Mr. Fix-It." In 2004, the New York Stock Exchange hired Thain, a rising star at Goldman Sachs, to clean up the mess after NYSE CEO Dick Grasso departed with a scandalous $140 million retirement package. Then, in October 2007, Merrill Lynch asked Thain to pick up the pieces after Merrill's board gave the heave-ho to CEO Stanley O'Neal, who left with $160 million.
Merrill paid fairly dearly to gain Thain's services. Mr. Fix-It came on board with a $15 million signing bonus and a bundle of lush incentives that "would be considered excessive for any industry anywhere," observed CEO pay expert Graef Crystal, "except on that tiny slice of Manhattan called Wall Street."
With subprime-spooked financial giants starting to melt down all around him, Thain went to work wheeling and dealing -- and assuring bystanders that all would be well. In July, he told investors he "felt comfortable with Merrill's capital levels." In August, Thain labeled his firm "well-positioned for the coming years."
Well, maybe not that well-positioned. In September, as Reuters later reported, Merrill would come within moments of "total extinction" -- only to be rescued, an hour before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, when Bank of America agreed to swallow Merrill whole.
Merrill Lynch, Thain apparently believed, had been fixed, and, early this December, he let it be known that he expected up to $10 million in new bonus for his efforts -- despite Merrill's $12 billion in 2008 losses and a pending layoff of as much as a fifth of the firm's workforce. On top of all that, Merrill's new sugardaddy, Bank of America, was taking $25 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars.
Thain's bonus request quickly became a public relations disaster. By mid-December, Merrill and Thain, under increasing pressure, would unrequest the bonus millions. The good news for Mr. Fix-It? He still may get a $5.2 million "change-of-control payment" for selling Merrill -- and he still has a job.
Unlike average families who lost everything when Merrill's subprime mortgage securities went sour, Thain still has a house, too. A nice one, a 14-bedroom palace north of Manhattan complete with tennis courts, swimming pools, and a fish-filled private lake.
1: Richard Gilman
The CEO of a small factory on Chicago's North Side, by Fortune 500 standards, rates as distinctly small-time. But this particular CEO, Richard Gilman, helped make headlines -- and history -- in 2008. He fully deserves this year's premier place in America's top ten greediest.
Gilman started running Republic Windows and Doors, a modest, four-decade-old plant, in 2006. Layoffs soon followed, and, eventually, only about 240 workers remained from a unionized labor force once over 500 strong.
Those workers, earlier this fall, realized something even more ominous was coming at them. Equipment at the Chicago plant had started vanishing. What the workers didn't know: Republic's "deciders" had set up a new company and bought a nonunion window and door plant in Iowa.
Two days into December, Republic gave workers the bad news. The plant would shut down three days later. The workers would lose their earned vacation time and their health insurance -- and not see any of the severance legally due them.
Just another typical assault on workers with a precarious foothold in the middle class. Or so things seemed. But the workers then did something extraordinary. Reviving memories of the Great Depression-era "sit-down" strikes, they occupied the plant -- and captured America's imagination.
The sit-down forced Gilman and his money pot, the Bank of America, to the bargaining table where a settlement soon took shape. But Gilman suddenly threw a monkey-wrench into the works -- and gained a slot for himself in this year's top ten greediest.
Gilman demanded that "any new bank loan to help the employees also cover" the lease of his Mercedes and BMW and eight weeks of his $225,000 salary.
The workers would have none of that. Gilman would drop his demand. The bank funding would come through. The workers had won. Greed had lost.
That hasn't much over the last three decades. Maybe the greedy have finally gone too far. We may have reached the end of an era. America's generation-long Great Greed Grab may soon be no more.
http://www.alternet.org/story/114782/the_10_greediest_people_of_2008/?page=entire
Where's the bank bailout money?
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Banks have launched public relations campaigns to bring in customers and soothe nerves, with ads offering "peace of mind" and other promises.
But what's not public is what they are doing with the billions in federal bailout money they've received -- the money doled out through a $700 billion rescue plan so banks could start lending again.
CNN contacted the banks that were given the biggest chunks of the bailout: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
The latter received $15 billion as part of the federal Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).
Where the money went is not clear.
"We are using the TARP funds to build our capital and make every good loan that we can," Bank of America said. The bank said it expects to release more information in its fourth quarter earning report.
Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo each received $25 billion -- the largest amount given to any bank.
Wells Fargo said it can't provide any details until it releases its fourth quarter statement, though the bank said it intends to use the money to help customers avoid foreclosure.
Citigroup said it was using TARP money to help expand the flow of credit and had formed a special committee to oversee the TARP money.
JPMorgan Chase pointed out that it recently bought more than $1 billion in Illinois bonds and plans to lend $5 billion to nonprofit and health care companies.
"What the banks have said largely is that we're using the money to stimulate the economy, to get the economy moving," said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "That's far, far too general to know what ... the banks are doing with the money."
The vague responses from the banks should not come as a shock, said one U.S. House Financial Services Committee member who opposed the bailout.
"One of the fundamental problems with the Wall Street bailout was the people who had caused the problem were never called in front of Congress to explain what they had done, what needed to be done," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican.
Congress did not put conditions on the bailout money, leaving lawmakers to press the Treasury Department for transparency after the money was handed out.
Critics say Congress needs to demand conditions before the second round of bailout money is distributed.
Earlier this month, members of a key congressional committee blasted the Treasury for its handling of the bailout, saying it lacks appropriate measures to ensure the bailout is working. At a hearing held by the Financial Services Committee, chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, accused the Treasury of failing to address its obligation to address foreclosures and enforce lending obligations on banks.
he hearing served as a follow-up to two reports on how the Treasury has conducted its bailout program, including the Congressional Oversight Panel's report on TARP, as well as a GAO report delivered to lawmakers that called for more accountability and transparency.
Congressmen on both sides of the aisle used the scathing reports as a launching pad, lambasting the Treasury for a general lack of clarity about its strategy as well as a dearth of measures that ensure banks are using the bailout funds for their intended purposes.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/22/bailout.accountability/index.html
But what's not public is what they are doing with the billions in federal bailout money they've received -- the money doled out through a $700 billion rescue plan so banks could start lending again.
CNN contacted the banks that were given the biggest chunks of the bailout: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
The latter received $15 billion as part of the federal Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP).
Where the money went is not clear.
"We are using the TARP funds to build our capital and make every good loan that we can," Bank of America said. The bank said it expects to release more information in its fourth quarter earning report.
Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo each received $25 billion -- the largest amount given to any bank.
Wells Fargo said it can't provide any details until it releases its fourth quarter statement, though the bank said it intends to use the money to help customers avoid foreclosure.
Citigroup said it was using TARP money to help expand the flow of credit and had formed a special committee to oversee the TARP money.
JPMorgan Chase pointed out that it recently bought more than $1 billion in Illinois bonds and plans to lend $5 billion to nonprofit and health care companies.
"What the banks have said largely is that we're using the money to stimulate the economy, to get the economy moving," said Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "That's far, far too general to know what ... the banks are doing with the money."
The vague responses from the banks should not come as a shock, said one U.S. House Financial Services Committee member who opposed the bailout.
"One of the fundamental problems with the Wall Street bailout was the people who had caused the problem were never called in front of Congress to explain what they had done, what needed to be done," said Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, a Michigan Republican.
Congress did not put conditions on the bailout money, leaving lawmakers to press the Treasury Department for transparency after the money was handed out.
Critics say Congress needs to demand conditions before the second round of bailout money is distributed.
Earlier this month, members of a key congressional committee blasted the Treasury for its handling of the bailout, saying it lacks appropriate measures to ensure the bailout is working. At a hearing held by the Financial Services Committee, chairman Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, accused the Treasury of failing to address its obligation to address foreclosures and enforce lending obligations on banks.
he hearing served as a follow-up to two reports on how the Treasury has conducted its bailout program, including the Congressional Oversight Panel's report on TARP, as well as a GAO report delivered to lawmakers that called for more accountability and transparency.
Congressmen on both sides of the aisle used the scathing reports as a launching pad, lambasting the Treasury for a general lack of clarity about its strategy as well as a dearth of measures that ensure banks are using the bailout funds for their intended purposes.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/12/22/bailout.accountability/index.html
Los subsidios y la contaminacion
Accra / Nairobi,- El recorte de los subsidios a los hidrocarburos pudiese desempeñar un importante rol en la reducción de los gases de efecto invernadero al tiempo que se da un pequeño pero no insignificante impulso a la economía mundial, dice un nuevo informe del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente (PNUMA).
El informe cuestiona la opinión generalizada de que tales subvenciones ayudan a los pobres, aduciendo que muchos de estos sistemas de apoyo a los precios beneficia a los sectores más ricos de la sociedad en lugar de aquellos con ingresos reducidos.
Además se están desviando fondos nacionales en formas más creativas de políticas en favor de los pobres e de iniciativas que parecieran pudieren tener un impacto mucho mayor en la vida y en el sustento de los sectores más pobres de la sociedad.
A nivel mundial alrededor de $ 300 millones ó del 0,7 por ciento del PIB mundial se gasta en subvenciones a la energía en el año.
La mayor parte está siendo utilizada para bajar o reducir artificialmente el precio real de los combustibles como el petróleo, el carbón y el gas o la electricidad generada a partir de tales hidrocarburos.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20080905/ecologico/58517/
Mauricio Funes a favor de aumento al FODES
El candidato presidencial por el partido FMLN, Mauricio Funes, ve “positivo” un aumento al Fondo para el Desarrollo Municipal (FODES), pero adelantó que sería una decisión que deberá tomar la Asamblea Legislativa, porque implica una reforma a la Ley. “No me caso con una cifra en particular, pero adquiero el compromiso de aumentar la transferencia monetaria”, dijo.
El gobierno central, actualmente destina un 7% del Presupuesto de la Nación para el FODES, que para el aspirante presidencial por el FMLN “no es suficiente” para atender las necesidades de la población, que demanda mayor participación en la toma de decisiones, igualdad y justicia social.
“Nosotros vamos a gobernar para que los 262 municipios del país cuenten con esos fondos, no vamos a repetir lo que hace ARENA, que si el gobierno local no es de su partido, lo marginan.
Estamos comprometidos por aumentar el FODES, dependiendo del poder del Fisco; estamos comprometidos con gobiernos más eficientes y solidarios”, explicó.
Lo anterior fue declarado por el candidato de izquierda, durante el acto de presentación de la “Plataforma Municipal Nacional para el Cambio”, es decir, el programa de gobierno municipal para las elecciones municipales del 18 de enero.
La descentralización del poder para fortalecer el ejercicio del gobierno municipal es para Funes el compromiso de no sólo trasladar competencias, sino, recursos financieros que permitan hacer obra y ayudar a la gente.
“Le apostamos a la desburocratización del Estado, porque de otra manera no podrán los gobiernos locales alcanzar un desarrollo en municipios alejados, que no son atendidos por el gobierno central, que también, deberán dar capacitaciones a los alcaldes para que respondan a las necesidades y demandas del momento actual”, señaló.
Los ejes programáticos de acción de los gobiernos municipales del partido FMLN se orientan en el área social, económica, seguridad, democracia y servicio, desde los cuales impulsarán el desarrollo humano, la productividad municipal, la protección ciudadana y del medio ambiente, así como la modernización de la actividad municipal.
Por su parte, el candidato a la vicepresidencia, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, afirmó que el centro de la agenda de trabajo en los próximos tres años, se enfocará en los gobiernos locales y diputaciones.
“Vamos a trabajar en concertación y cooperación de todos los gobiernos locales y central, vamos a generar una planificación que nos permita el ordenamiento territorial y mejorar las perspectivas de vida de la gente y comunidades, sin olvidar la recreación deportiva y cultural. Nuestro gobierno dará prioridad a las necesidades de la gente, ese es el compromiso”, puntualizó Cerén.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081223/nacionales/62029/
El gobierno central, actualmente destina un 7% del Presupuesto de la Nación para el FODES, que para el aspirante presidencial por el FMLN “no es suficiente” para atender las necesidades de la población, que demanda mayor participación en la toma de decisiones, igualdad y justicia social.
“Nosotros vamos a gobernar para que los 262 municipios del país cuenten con esos fondos, no vamos a repetir lo que hace ARENA, que si el gobierno local no es de su partido, lo marginan.
Estamos comprometidos por aumentar el FODES, dependiendo del poder del Fisco; estamos comprometidos con gobiernos más eficientes y solidarios”, explicó.
Lo anterior fue declarado por el candidato de izquierda, durante el acto de presentación de la “Plataforma Municipal Nacional para el Cambio”, es decir, el programa de gobierno municipal para las elecciones municipales del 18 de enero.
La descentralización del poder para fortalecer el ejercicio del gobierno municipal es para Funes el compromiso de no sólo trasladar competencias, sino, recursos financieros que permitan hacer obra y ayudar a la gente.
“Le apostamos a la desburocratización del Estado, porque de otra manera no podrán los gobiernos locales alcanzar un desarrollo en municipios alejados, que no son atendidos por el gobierno central, que también, deberán dar capacitaciones a los alcaldes para que respondan a las necesidades y demandas del momento actual”, señaló.
Los ejes programáticos de acción de los gobiernos municipales del partido FMLN se orientan en el área social, económica, seguridad, democracia y servicio, desde los cuales impulsarán el desarrollo humano, la productividad municipal, la protección ciudadana y del medio ambiente, así como la modernización de la actividad municipal.
Por su parte, el candidato a la vicepresidencia, Salvador Sánchez Cerén, afirmó que el centro de la agenda de trabajo en los próximos tres años, se enfocará en los gobiernos locales y diputaciones.
“Vamos a trabajar en concertación y cooperación de todos los gobiernos locales y central, vamos a generar una planificación que nos permita el ordenamiento territorial y mejorar las perspectivas de vida de la gente y comunidades, sin olvidar la recreación deportiva y cultural. Nuestro gobierno dará prioridad a las necesidades de la gente, ese es el compromiso”, puntualizó Cerén.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081223/nacionales/62029/
Candidatos del FLMN ofrecen proteccion ambiental
Los candidatos a alcaldes del FMLN en Cabañas prometen defender el medio ambiente, amenazado por proyectos que contaminan agua, aire y suelo. “Tenemos postura firme de no permitir proyectos de muerte”, declara el profesor Pedro Pablo Escobar, aspirante a alcalde de San Isidro.
El candidato del Frente se refiere a la explotación minera, promovida por el actual edil arenero José Ignacio Bautista. “El alcalde de ARENA ha puesto en peligro la vida de la población de San Isidro y de buena parte del país, al permitir la presencia de Pacific Rim”, señala Escobar.
Pacific Rim es la empresa canadiense que amenaza al país con demandarlo si el gobierno le niega el permiso de explotación en la mina El Dorado, lo cual provoca la indignación de la Iglesia Católica y de organizaciones comunitarias de Cabañas como el Comité Ambiental, ASIC y ADES.
Esta posición es compartida por el empresario Rigoberto Hernández, candidato del FMLN en Sensuntepeque. “Desde la alcaldía protegeré el medio ambiente y defenderé la vida”, planea este miembro de ADESEN, un gremio de empresarios locales que rechaza la minería en Cabañas.
Para Hernández, la protección ambiental es condición necesaria para mejorar la vida de la población de Cabañas, un departamento con los más bajos índices de desarrollo humano, según datos gubernamentales y del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD).
Según estos informes, de los 41,342 pobladores de Sensuntepeque, 8,764 no saben leer ni escribir y 7,730 viven en extrema pobreza, es decir no pueden comprar todos los alimentos básicos como frijol, arroz, azúcar, entre otros. También 18,040 son pobres y 2,563 no tienen empleo. El candidato del Frente en Guacotecti, Francisco Soriano, también habla de proteger el medio ambiente para implementar proyectos turísticos. Esta es una de sus principales apuestas en su plan de desarrollo local que, además, incluye servicios básicos y talleres vocacionales para jóvenes. Soriano denuncia al edil pecenista Medardo Méndez por terminar el patrimonio municipal. “Perdió la piscina y lotificó una finca que sería parque ecológico”, señala.
“No hay canchas, sitios turísticos ni bachillerato. Faltan oportunidades de recreación y estudio para jóvenes”, lamenta.
“Nosotros llevaremos agua y luz eléctrica a todas las comunidades, con el gobierno de Mauricio Funes construiremos un instituto nacional y crearemos espacios de diversión sana en todas las comunidades del municipio”, promete este candidato, quien es maestro de profesión.
Escobar y Hernández también proponen proyectos de agua potable, electrificación, saneamiento, caminos vecinales, seguridad, programas de salud y educación, apoyo a la agricultura, ganadería, turismo y microempresas. “Esto demandó la población en las consultas”, sostienen.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081223/nacionales/62028/
El candidato del Frente se refiere a la explotación minera, promovida por el actual edil arenero José Ignacio Bautista. “El alcalde de ARENA ha puesto en peligro la vida de la población de San Isidro y de buena parte del país, al permitir la presencia de Pacific Rim”, señala Escobar.
Pacific Rim es la empresa canadiense que amenaza al país con demandarlo si el gobierno le niega el permiso de explotación en la mina El Dorado, lo cual provoca la indignación de la Iglesia Católica y de organizaciones comunitarias de Cabañas como el Comité Ambiental, ASIC y ADES.
Esta posición es compartida por el empresario Rigoberto Hernández, candidato del FMLN en Sensuntepeque. “Desde la alcaldía protegeré el medio ambiente y defenderé la vida”, planea este miembro de ADESEN, un gremio de empresarios locales que rechaza la minería en Cabañas.
Para Hernández, la protección ambiental es condición necesaria para mejorar la vida de la población de Cabañas, un departamento con los más bajos índices de desarrollo humano, según datos gubernamentales y del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD).
Según estos informes, de los 41,342 pobladores de Sensuntepeque, 8,764 no saben leer ni escribir y 7,730 viven en extrema pobreza, es decir no pueden comprar todos los alimentos básicos como frijol, arroz, azúcar, entre otros. También 18,040 son pobres y 2,563 no tienen empleo. El candidato del Frente en Guacotecti, Francisco Soriano, también habla de proteger el medio ambiente para implementar proyectos turísticos. Esta es una de sus principales apuestas en su plan de desarrollo local que, además, incluye servicios básicos y talleres vocacionales para jóvenes. Soriano denuncia al edil pecenista Medardo Méndez por terminar el patrimonio municipal. “Perdió la piscina y lotificó una finca que sería parque ecológico”, señala.
“No hay canchas, sitios turísticos ni bachillerato. Faltan oportunidades de recreación y estudio para jóvenes”, lamenta.
“Nosotros llevaremos agua y luz eléctrica a todas las comunidades, con el gobierno de Mauricio Funes construiremos un instituto nacional y crearemos espacios de diversión sana en todas las comunidades del municipio”, promete este candidato, quien es maestro de profesión.
Escobar y Hernández también proponen proyectos de agua potable, electrificación, saneamiento, caminos vecinales, seguridad, programas de salud y educación, apoyo a la agricultura, ganadería, turismo y microempresas. “Esto demandó la población en las consultas”, sostienen.
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081223/nacionales/62028/
Magnetic-Shield Cracks Found; Big Storms Expected
An unexpected, thick layer of solar particles inside Earth's magnetic field suggests there are huge breaches in our planet's solar defenses, scientists said.
These breaches indicate that during the next period of high solar activity, due to start in 2012, Earth will experience some of the worst solar storms seen in decades.
Solar winds—charged particles from the sun—help create auroras, the brightly colored lights that sometimes appear above the Earth's poles.
But the winds also trigger storms that can interfere with satellites' power sources, endanger spacewalkers, and even knock out power grids on Earth.
"The sequence we're expecting … is just right to put particles in and energize them to create the biggest geomagnetic storms, the brightest auroras, the biggest disturbances in Earth's radiation belts," said David Sibeck, a space-weather expert at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
"So if all of this is true, it should be that we're in for a tough time in the next 11 years."
Into the Breach
Data from NASA's THEMIS satellite showed that a 4,000-mile-thick (6,437-kilometer-thick) layer of solar particles has gathered and is rapidly growing within the outermost part of the magnetosphere, a protective bubble created by Earth's magnetic field.
Normally the magnetosphere blocks most of the solar wind, flowing outward from the sun at about a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) an hour.
"The solar wind is constantly changing, and the Earth's magnetic field is buffeted like a wind sock in gale-force winds, fluttering back and forth in response to the solar wind," Sibeck said this week during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Earth's magnetic field lines align themselves in different directions over various regions of the planet.
Near Earth's Equator, where solar winds press against the magnetosphere, the field lines point north.
Solar winds also carry magnetic field lines toward Earth, and those solar field lines point in different directions during the sun's 11-year cycle of activity.
Conventional thinking had suggested that north-pointing field lines would act like reinforcements to Earth's northward field, causing the planet to "raise shields" against solar winds.
The idea is based, in part, on the fact that auroras are brighter and space-weather hazards increase when solar winds carry southward-pointing field lines, Sibeck said.
"So it's reasonable to think that during periods when the sun's magnetic field lines point south, that's when the most particles get into Earth's magnetosphere."
THEMIS, however, showed that the opposite is true.
The satellite system "found the solar particle layer is much thicker when the two fields are pointing in the same direction," said Marit Øieroset, a THEMIS scientist based at the University of California, Berkeley, who first saw the effect.
In fact, 20 times more particles get through Earth's magnetic shield when the field lines are aligned than when they are opposed, she said.
Model Behavior
To find the mechanism behind this discovery, Oieroset and Sibeck turned to computer models that could simulate the conditions observed by THEMIS.
The models showed that the likely driver is north-facing field lines connecting with Earth's magnetosphere, said Jimmy Raeder, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire in Durham who helped build the simulations.
As a field line approaches, it latches onto the poles and wraps around the planet like an octopus using a tentacle to snare its prey, he said.
The latching, known as magnetic reconnection, tears huge cracks in the magnetosphere and allows solar plasma to leak in.
"We have other observations from other satellites that this reconnection process happens over the poles at times, but we had never appreciated what it actually does," Raeder said.
A thicker layer of solar particles, however, isn't enough by itself to create geomagnetic troubles for Earth.
Right now the planet is enjoying a period of low activity called solar minimum. But particles have been building up inside the magnetosphere as the solar wind carries northward-facing field lines to Earth.
During the next solar cycle, the winds are expected to carry southward-facing field lines, which connect with the magnetosphere in such a way that they provide extra charge to any plasma inside the shield.
"You can sort of compare [the situation] to a gas stove," Raeder said.
"If you turn on the gas and you light it right away, nothing will happen—the gas stove will go on and there will be a flame.
"But if you turn on a gas stove and you don't do anything for a while and then you throw in a match, what will happen? It will say, Boom!"
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081217-solar-breaches.html
These breaches indicate that during the next period of high solar activity, due to start in 2012, Earth will experience some of the worst solar storms seen in decades.
Solar winds—charged particles from the sun—help create auroras, the brightly colored lights that sometimes appear above the Earth's poles.
But the winds also trigger storms that can interfere with satellites' power sources, endanger spacewalkers, and even knock out power grids on Earth.
"The sequence we're expecting … is just right to put particles in and energize them to create the biggest geomagnetic storms, the brightest auroras, the biggest disturbances in Earth's radiation belts," said David Sibeck, a space-weather expert at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
"So if all of this is true, it should be that we're in for a tough time in the next 11 years."
Into the Breach
Data from NASA's THEMIS satellite showed that a 4,000-mile-thick (6,437-kilometer-thick) layer of solar particles has gathered and is rapidly growing within the outermost part of the magnetosphere, a protective bubble created by Earth's magnetic field.
Normally the magnetosphere blocks most of the solar wind, flowing outward from the sun at about a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) an hour.
"The solar wind is constantly changing, and the Earth's magnetic field is buffeted like a wind sock in gale-force winds, fluttering back and forth in response to the solar wind," Sibeck said this week during a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
Earth's magnetic field lines align themselves in different directions over various regions of the planet.
Near Earth's Equator, where solar winds press against the magnetosphere, the field lines point north.
Solar winds also carry magnetic field lines toward Earth, and those solar field lines point in different directions during the sun's 11-year cycle of activity.
Conventional thinking had suggested that north-pointing field lines would act like reinforcements to Earth's northward field, causing the planet to "raise shields" against solar winds.
The idea is based, in part, on the fact that auroras are brighter and space-weather hazards increase when solar winds carry southward-pointing field lines, Sibeck said.
"So it's reasonable to think that during periods when the sun's magnetic field lines point south, that's when the most particles get into Earth's magnetosphere."
THEMIS, however, showed that the opposite is true.
The satellite system "found the solar particle layer is much thicker when the two fields are pointing in the same direction," said Marit Øieroset, a THEMIS scientist based at the University of California, Berkeley, who first saw the effect.
In fact, 20 times more particles get through Earth's magnetic shield when the field lines are aligned than when they are opposed, she said.
Model Behavior
To find the mechanism behind this discovery, Oieroset and Sibeck turned to computer models that could simulate the conditions observed by THEMIS.
The models showed that the likely driver is north-facing field lines connecting with Earth's magnetosphere, said Jimmy Raeder, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire in Durham who helped build the simulations.
As a field line approaches, it latches onto the poles and wraps around the planet like an octopus using a tentacle to snare its prey, he said.
The latching, known as magnetic reconnection, tears huge cracks in the magnetosphere and allows solar plasma to leak in.
"We have other observations from other satellites that this reconnection process happens over the poles at times, but we had never appreciated what it actually does," Raeder said.
A thicker layer of solar particles, however, isn't enough by itself to create geomagnetic troubles for Earth.
Right now the planet is enjoying a period of low activity called solar minimum. But particles have been building up inside the magnetosphere as the solar wind carries northward-facing field lines to Earth.
During the next solar cycle, the winds are expected to carry southward-facing field lines, which connect with the magnetosphere in such a way that they provide extra charge to any plasma inside the shield.
"You can sort of compare [the situation] to a gas stove," Raeder said.
"If you turn on the gas and you light it right away, nothing will happen—the gas stove will go on and there will be a flame.
"But if you turn on a gas stove and you don't do anything for a while and then you throw in a match, what will happen? It will say, Boom!"
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081217-solar-breaches.html
Keyboards, DRM to become scarce in 2012
Step aside, keyboards, laptops, and 9-to-5 jobs. A survey of more than 1,000 Internet activists, journalists, and technologists released Sunday speculates that by 2012, those quaint relics of 20th century life will fade away.
It's not a formal survey of the sort that, say, political pollsters use. Nor are computer journalists especially known for their prognosticative abilities. Still, the Pew Internet and American Life Project hopes the effort will provide a glimpse of the best current thinking about how online life will evolve in the next decade or so.
Lee Rainie and the other Pew researchers asked their survey respondents to respond to a series of questions about 2020 future scenarios, including whether the mobile phone will be the "primary" Internet connection (most agreed), whether copy protection will flourish (most disagreed), and whether transparency "heightens individual integrity and forgiveness (evenly split).
The rough consensus was that "few lines divide professional time from personal time," and that professionals are happy with the way work and play are "seamlessly integrated in most of these workers' lives."
Another, which also met with broad agreement: "Talk and touch are common technology interfaces. People have adjusted to hearing individuals dictating information in public to their computing devices. In addition 'haptic' technologies based on touch feedback have been fully developed, so, for instance, a small handheld Internet appliance allows you to display and use a full-size virtual keyboard on any flat surface for those moments when you would prefer not to talk aloud to your networked computer."
One respondent was Google chief economist Hal Varian, who said: "The big problem with the cell phone is the (user interface), particularly on the data side. We are waiting for a breakthrough."
It's easier to read the report itself, which you can find here (PDF). This is Pew's third report in the series; further reading can be found in its 2005 first survey (PDF) and 2006 second survey (PDF).
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/cnet/20081215/tc_cnet/83011138631012289476
It's not a formal survey of the sort that, say, political pollsters use. Nor are computer journalists especially known for their prognosticative abilities. Still, the Pew Internet and American Life Project hopes the effort will provide a glimpse of the best current thinking about how online life will evolve in the next decade or so.
Lee Rainie and the other Pew researchers asked their survey respondents to respond to a series of questions about 2020 future scenarios, including whether the mobile phone will be the "primary" Internet connection (most agreed), whether copy protection will flourish (most disagreed), and whether transparency "heightens individual integrity and forgiveness (evenly split).
The rough consensus was that "few lines divide professional time from personal time," and that professionals are happy with the way work and play are "seamlessly integrated in most of these workers' lives."
Another, which also met with broad agreement: "Talk and touch are common technology interfaces. People have adjusted to hearing individuals dictating information in public to their computing devices. In addition 'haptic' technologies based on touch feedback have been fully developed, so, for instance, a small handheld Internet appliance allows you to display and use a full-size virtual keyboard on any flat surface for those moments when you would prefer not to talk aloud to your networked computer."
One respondent was Google chief economist Hal Varian, who said: "The big problem with the cell phone is the (user interface), particularly on the data side. We are waiting for a breakthrough."
It's easier to read the report itself, which you can find here (PDF). This is Pew's third report in the series; further reading can be found in its 2005 first survey (PDF) and 2006 second survey (PDF).
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/cnet/20081215/tc_cnet/83011138631012289476
2012: The Movie
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/2012/
http://sapphirelove.suddenlaunch3.com/index.cgi?board=arch&num=1144529210&action=display&start=0
i can't believe this shit...
it's amazing how "December 21, 2012" was become such a pop phenomenon. for more information you can look up nostradamus, the apocalypse, and the mayan long count calendar.
interesting stuff, but ummmm...
Controversy Over New "Conscience" Rule
Dec. 19, 2008 -- An 11th-hour ruling from the Bush administration gives health care workers, hospitals, and insurers more leeway to refuse health services for moral or religious reasons.
The rule, issued today, becomes effective in 30 days. Its main provisions widen the number of health workers and institutions that may refuse, based on "sincere religious belief or moral conviction," to provide care or referrals to patients.
"This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience," says Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt in a statement.
Previous rules allow health care workers to refuse to provide abortion or sterilization services to which they are morally opposed. The new rulings give individuals and institutions much greater leeway in refusing to provide services to which they are morally opposed.
The ruling, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, covers an estimated 571,947 "entities" including doctors' offices, pharmacies, hospitals, insurers, medical and nursing schools, diagnostic labs, nursing homes, and state governments.
Each of these entities is required to certify in writing that they will comply with the ruling. Failure to comply may be punished with loss of federal funding.
A wide number of medical groups strongly oppose the new ruling. These groups include the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and 27 state medical associations.
The focus of the new ruling is on protecting health care workers and institutions that oppose abortion and a broad interpretation of "sterilization."
"Today's regulation issued by HHS under the guise of 'protecting' the conscience of health care providers, is yet another reminder of the outgoing administration's implicit contempt for women's right to accurate and complete reproductive health information and legal medical procedures," says a statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The Catholic Health Association, representing the Catholic hospitals that care for about a sixth of U.S. patients, strongly supports the conscience ruling. The group says it's seen a number of efforts to force doctors to perform -- or make referrals -- for abortions and sterilizations.
"Ultimately, the central question is whether organizations and individuals should be required to participate in, pay for, provide coverage for, or refer for services that directly contradict their deeply held religious or moral beliefs and convictions," the Catholic Health Association noted in a Sept. 24 letter supporting the rule.
The Family Research Council, which strongly opposes abortion, also supports the ruling.
"This is a victory for the right of patients to choose doctors who decline to engage in morally objectionable practice," the FRC says in a statement.
A Sept. 24 letter signed by the AMA and many other medical groups says existing laws protect health care workers from having to participate in practices they find morally objectionable.
The rule, the letter says, "expands the range of health care institutions and individuals who may refuse to provide services, and broadens the scope ... beyond the actual provision of health care services to information and counseling about health services as well as referrals."
The letter suggests that the new protections are so broad, receptionists could refuse to schedule patients for medically necessary services, and people who "clean or maintain equipment or rooms" could interrupt patient care.
The incoming Obama administration could repeal the rule, but that would be a lengthy process. Congress could pass a law repealing the rule -- and such a bill has already been introduced by Senators Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Patty Murray, D-Wash. Clinton and Murray led a group of 28 Senators that unsuccessfully urged Leavitt to halt the rule.
http://www.webmd.com/news/20081219/new-conscience-rule-controversy
The rule, issued today, becomes effective in 30 days. Its main provisions widen the number of health workers and institutions that may refuse, based on "sincere religious belief or moral conviction," to provide care or referrals to patients.
"This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience," says Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt in a statement.
Previous rules allow health care workers to refuse to provide abortion or sterilization services to which they are morally opposed. The new rulings give individuals and institutions much greater leeway in refusing to provide services to which they are morally opposed.
The ruling, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, covers an estimated 571,947 "entities" including doctors' offices, pharmacies, hospitals, insurers, medical and nursing schools, diagnostic labs, nursing homes, and state governments.
Each of these entities is required to certify in writing that they will comply with the ruling. Failure to comply may be punished with loss of federal funding.
A wide number of medical groups strongly oppose the new ruling. These groups include the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Nurses Association, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and 27 state medical associations.
The focus of the new ruling is on protecting health care workers and institutions that oppose abortion and a broad interpretation of "sterilization."
"Today's regulation issued by HHS under the guise of 'protecting' the conscience of health care providers, is yet another reminder of the outgoing administration's implicit contempt for women's right to accurate and complete reproductive health information and legal medical procedures," says a statement from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The Catholic Health Association, representing the Catholic hospitals that care for about a sixth of U.S. patients, strongly supports the conscience ruling. The group says it's seen a number of efforts to force doctors to perform -- or make referrals -- for abortions and sterilizations.
"Ultimately, the central question is whether organizations and individuals should be required to participate in, pay for, provide coverage for, or refer for services that directly contradict their deeply held religious or moral beliefs and convictions," the Catholic Health Association noted in a Sept. 24 letter supporting the rule.
The Family Research Council, which strongly opposes abortion, also supports the ruling.
"This is a victory for the right of patients to choose doctors who decline to engage in morally objectionable practice," the FRC says in a statement.
A Sept. 24 letter signed by the AMA and many other medical groups says existing laws protect health care workers from having to participate in practices they find morally objectionable.
The rule, the letter says, "expands the range of health care institutions and individuals who may refuse to provide services, and broadens the scope ... beyond the actual provision of health care services to information and counseling about health services as well as referrals."
The letter suggests that the new protections are so broad, receptionists could refuse to schedule patients for medically necessary services, and people who "clean or maintain equipment or rooms" could interrupt patient care.
The incoming Obama administration could repeal the rule, but that would be a lengthy process. Congress could pass a law repealing the rule -- and such a bill has already been introduced by Senators Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and Patty Murray, D-Wash. Clinton and Murray led a group of 28 Senators that unsuccessfully urged Leavitt to halt the rule.
http://www.webmd.com/news/20081219/new-conscience-rule-controversy
California Broke?
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — With Republicans on the sidelines, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders met Tuesday to fashion a midyear fix for California's swelling budget deficit.
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg emerged from the initial round of discussions and told reporters the talks had been positive. Less than a week ago, Schwarzenegger had threatened to veto the Democratic budget plan that is the basis for the current discussions.
"We're all very committed to making an $18 billion dent into this problem before the end of the year," said Steinberg, D-Sacramento. "That's our obligation."
Steinberg said he hoped leaders could reach a deal by the end of the week and planned to resume talks Friday, likely by teleconference because the governor had left California for the Christmas holiday. He said a legislative vote on a compromise could come next week.
The Democratic plan would begin to address the deficit with $9.3 billion in tax and fee increases, $7.3 billion in cuts and another $1.5 billion in labor concessions, court rollbacks and other moves.
Republicans oppose it because of the tax increases. Last week, Schwarzenegger said he would veto it because it failed to include sufficient measures to stimulate the state's economy.
But California's ballooning deficit _ projected to hit $42 billion over the next 18 months _ is leading to severe consequences that have forced Schwarzenegger and Democrats to act quickly.
On Monday, the state controller warned that California will run out of cash within 70 days if lawmakers don't act quickly to bridge the growing divide between revenue and spending.
Steinberg said he and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, were willing to give Schwarzenegger more of what he wanted. That could include making concessions on labor rules and environmental regulations to accelerate work on infrastructure projects, agreeing to build more toll roads in the state and expanding help to homeowners facing foreclosure.
The Democratic leaders said they also were trying to accommodate the governor's demands for additional spending cuts, including eliminating two of 14 paid state holidays. Doing so would save an estimated $114 million during this fiscal year and the next one, mostly in overtime costs.
Republicans did not participate in Tuesday's budget negotiations.
Senate Minority Leader Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, said Republicans would return to the Capitol if a deal were to be reached but said his caucus remained opposed to the package. He and other Republicans believe it is illegal because it contains tax increases yet was passed without a two-thirds vote in the Legislature.
"There's nothing for us to talk about today," said Cogdill, strolling through the Capitol in jeans and a leather jacket.
Anti-tax groups have vowed to sue if Schwarzenegger signs the plan, challenging its legality. Proposition 13, passed by voters 30 years ago, requires a two-thirds vote by lawmakers to raise taxes.
Democrats say they have found a way to get around the two-thirds requirement by claiming their $18 billion plan does not technically increase the amount of taxes on Californians.
Instead, they say it eliminates gas taxes and replaces them with a variety of other charges, including raising the state sales tax by three-quarters of a percentage point, boosting personal income taxes by 2.5 percent, taxing companies that extract oil from California and collecting taxes from independent contractors upfront.
It then replaces the gas taxes with what Democrats call a gasoline fee that would go solely to transportation projects. Because the fee is dedicated to a single purpose, it does not require a two-thirds vote, Democrats say.
Schwarzenegger has said it is necessary to raise taxes, but his opinion about the method contained in the Democratic plan is uncertain. Last week, he called the Democrats' proposal a "terrible budget" that would "punish the people of California." And in a meeting with local leaders in the Central Valley last week, he said their plan included "illegal taxes."
It was not clear Tuesday why the governor had decided to negotiate on a plan that only days ago he said contained provisions that were not legal. His spokesman, Aaron McLear, said Schwarzenegger would not sign anything that is illegal.
After meeting with the Democratic leaders, Schwarzenegger was asked whether he would sign a budget plan that contained tax increases but was passed only by a simple-majority vote.
"I prefer having my Republican friends at the table, and I prefer to get a two-thirds vote. But we do need revenue increases," he said. "To save California, I'm forced to negotiate just with the Democrats. This is the situation I am forced in because of lack of participation by the Republicans."
Schwarzenegger said he would let others debate the plan's legality, ultimately deciding "what is a fee and what is a tax?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/23/california-broke-state-co_n_153022.html
Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg emerged from the initial round of discussions and told reporters the talks had been positive. Less than a week ago, Schwarzenegger had threatened to veto the Democratic budget plan that is the basis for the current discussions.
"We're all very committed to making an $18 billion dent into this problem before the end of the year," said Steinberg, D-Sacramento. "That's our obligation."
Steinberg said he hoped leaders could reach a deal by the end of the week and planned to resume talks Friday, likely by teleconference because the governor had left California for the Christmas holiday. He said a legislative vote on a compromise could come next week.
The Democratic plan would begin to address the deficit with $9.3 billion in tax and fee increases, $7.3 billion in cuts and another $1.5 billion in labor concessions, court rollbacks and other moves.
Republicans oppose it because of the tax increases. Last week, Schwarzenegger said he would veto it because it failed to include sufficient measures to stimulate the state's economy.
But California's ballooning deficit _ projected to hit $42 billion over the next 18 months _ is leading to severe consequences that have forced Schwarzenegger and Democrats to act quickly.
On Monday, the state controller warned that California will run out of cash within 70 days if lawmakers don't act quickly to bridge the growing divide between revenue and spending.
Steinberg said he and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, were willing to give Schwarzenegger more of what he wanted. That could include making concessions on labor rules and environmental regulations to accelerate work on infrastructure projects, agreeing to build more toll roads in the state and expanding help to homeowners facing foreclosure.
The Democratic leaders said they also were trying to accommodate the governor's demands for additional spending cuts, including eliminating two of 14 paid state holidays. Doing so would save an estimated $114 million during this fiscal year and the next one, mostly in overtime costs.
Republicans did not participate in Tuesday's budget negotiations.
Senate Minority Leader Dave Cogdill, R-Modesto, said Republicans would return to the Capitol if a deal were to be reached but said his caucus remained opposed to the package. He and other Republicans believe it is illegal because it contains tax increases yet was passed without a two-thirds vote in the Legislature.
"There's nothing for us to talk about today," said Cogdill, strolling through the Capitol in jeans and a leather jacket.
Anti-tax groups have vowed to sue if Schwarzenegger signs the plan, challenging its legality. Proposition 13, passed by voters 30 years ago, requires a two-thirds vote by lawmakers to raise taxes.
Democrats say they have found a way to get around the two-thirds requirement by claiming their $18 billion plan does not technically increase the amount of taxes on Californians.
Instead, they say it eliminates gas taxes and replaces them with a variety of other charges, including raising the state sales tax by three-quarters of a percentage point, boosting personal income taxes by 2.5 percent, taxing companies that extract oil from California and collecting taxes from independent contractors upfront.
It then replaces the gas taxes with what Democrats call a gasoline fee that would go solely to transportation projects. Because the fee is dedicated to a single purpose, it does not require a two-thirds vote, Democrats say.
Schwarzenegger has said it is necessary to raise taxes, but his opinion about the method contained in the Democratic plan is uncertain. Last week, he called the Democrats' proposal a "terrible budget" that would "punish the people of California." And in a meeting with local leaders in the Central Valley last week, he said their plan included "illegal taxes."
It was not clear Tuesday why the governor had decided to negotiate on a plan that only days ago he said contained provisions that were not legal. His spokesman, Aaron McLear, said Schwarzenegger would not sign anything that is illegal.
After meeting with the Democratic leaders, Schwarzenegger was asked whether he would sign a budget plan that contained tax increases but was passed only by a simple-majority vote.
"I prefer having my Republican friends at the table, and I prefer to get a two-thirds vote. But we do need revenue increases," he said. "To save California, I'm forced to negotiate just with the Democrats. This is the situation I am forced in because of lack of participation by the Republicans."
Schwarzenegger said he would let others debate the plan's legality, ultimately deciding "what is a fee and what is a tax?"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/23/california-broke-state-co_n_153022.html
50% chance of depression in U.S.
San Francisco: The US economy has a 50 per cent chance of falling into a depression during the next three years, said Roger Farmer, a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research's economic fluctuations and growth programme.
"There's a significant probability things will get worse," Farmer, 53, said during a phone interview Friday. "We're certainly not at the end of the recession and things are getting worse."
A drop in the Conference Board's index of leading indicators, released Thursday, underscores econo-mists' expectations that the recession will be the longest in the postwar era as banks restrict credit, home and stock values plunge, and job losses mount. Farmer said he is predicting the US recession will last at least another year.
"Everything depends on business confidence, and what I see is declining confidence," said Farmer, who is also graduate vice-chair of the Economics Department of the University of California at Los Angeles.
The loss of confidence is leading households and companies to undervalue assets, which is hurting consumer spending and investment, he said. A government fiscal stimulus programme will have a "questionable" immediate effect on consumption and financial markets, Farmer said.
Instead, he said he supports the idea of letting the Federal Reserve or government step into the stock market by buying indexed securities such as those linked to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.
Left to itself
"I don't think anything from historic episodes suggests that, left to itself, the economy is going to magically recover and come back to full employment," he said.
Employers cut 533,000 jobs from payrolls in November for a total loss so far this year of 1.9 million, which more than erases the 2007 gain of 1.1 million. The unemployment rate, now at 6.7 per cent, may go above 10 per cent, Farmer said.
Farmer's views on the likelihood of a US depression contrast with those of other economists, such as New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, who told Bloomberg Television last week that he sees a severe recession and not a depression.
http://gulfnews.com/business/Economy/10268818.html
"There's a significant probability things will get worse," Farmer, 53, said during a phone interview Friday. "We're certainly not at the end of the recession and things are getting worse."
A drop in the Conference Board's index of leading indicators, released Thursday, underscores econo-mists' expectations that the recession will be the longest in the postwar era as banks restrict credit, home and stock values plunge, and job losses mount. Farmer said he is predicting the US recession will last at least another year.
"Everything depends on business confidence, and what I see is declining confidence," said Farmer, who is also graduate vice-chair of the Economics Department of the University of California at Los Angeles.
The loss of confidence is leading households and companies to undervalue assets, which is hurting consumer spending and investment, he said. A government fiscal stimulus programme will have a "questionable" immediate effect on consumption and financial markets, Farmer said.
Instead, he said he supports the idea of letting the Federal Reserve or government step into the stock market by buying indexed securities such as those linked to the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.
Left to itself
"I don't think anything from historic episodes suggests that, left to itself, the economy is going to magically recover and come back to full employment," he said.
Employers cut 533,000 jobs from payrolls in November for a total loss so far this year of 1.9 million, which more than erases the 2007 gain of 1.1 million. The unemployment rate, now at 6.7 per cent, may go above 10 per cent, Farmer said.
Farmer's views on the likelihood of a US depression contrast with those of other economists, such as New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, who told Bloomberg Television last week that he sees a severe recession and not a depression.
http://gulfnews.com/business/Economy/10268818.html
Decapitated soldiers new blow in Mexico in drug war
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Felipe Calderon vowed on Monday not to back down from the fight against powerful drug cartels who decapitated eight soldiers in the most serious blow to the army in a 2-year-old offensive.
Police found the beheaded and tortured bodies tied up in the city of Chilpancingo, about an hour north of Acapulco, during the weekend.
The heads were stuffed in a black plastic bag and tossed outside a shopping center with a note saying, "For every one of us you kill, we are going to kill 10," Mexican media reported.
An ex-police commander, also without a head, was found with the soldiers.
The gruesome attack was the worst against the army since Calderon deployed some 45,000 troops to take on drug gangs after coming to office in 2006.
"We are committed to this fight with all of its consequences," Calderon said at an event honoring a military hero. "We will not stand down and there will be no truce with enemies of the state," he said.
Calderon's assault against drug gangs has netted several major smugglers wanted in the United States, but violence in Mexico has worsened. More than 5,300 people have died this year, over twice as many as in 2007, as traffickers fight each other and the government over drug smuggling routes.
Washington, which has promised Mexico hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to buy equipment and provide security training, now sees Mexican cartels as its No. 1 drug threat.
It was not clear which faction was behind the beheadings. The main drug gangs are the Gulf cartel from northeastern Mexico and a federation of smugglers run out of the northwestern state of Sinaloa by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.
The violence threatens to scare away investors and hit Mexico's economy, already shaky from the global financial crisis.
Mexican cartels are increasingly taking the place of the Colombian organizations who once ruled the international cocaine trade. Colombians have ceded many traditional trafficking routes to the United States to the Mexican gangs, preferring lower profile roles or focusing on Europe.
"There are no drug trafficking organizations left in Colombia that think they can go toe-to-toe with the nation-state; the cartels up in Mexico actually think that they can," a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official based in Colombia told Reuters.
Calderon deployed the soldiers to fight organized crime in part because they are seen as less corrupt than police.
But military men from generals to foot soldiers have said they too are being offered thousands of dollars to turn a blind eye to shipments or call off anti-drugs operations.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUKTRE4BL46220081222
Police found the beheaded and tortured bodies tied up in the city of Chilpancingo, about an hour north of Acapulco, during the weekend.
The heads were stuffed in a black plastic bag and tossed outside a shopping center with a note saying, "For every one of us you kill, we are going to kill 10," Mexican media reported.
An ex-police commander, also without a head, was found with the soldiers.
The gruesome attack was the worst against the army since Calderon deployed some 45,000 troops to take on drug gangs after coming to office in 2006.
"We are committed to this fight with all of its consequences," Calderon said at an event honoring a military hero. "We will not stand down and there will be no truce with enemies of the state," he said.
Calderon's assault against drug gangs has netted several major smugglers wanted in the United States, but violence in Mexico has worsened. More than 5,300 people have died this year, over twice as many as in 2007, as traffickers fight each other and the government over drug smuggling routes.
Washington, which has promised Mexico hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to buy equipment and provide security training, now sees Mexican cartels as its No. 1 drug threat.
It was not clear which faction was behind the beheadings. The main drug gangs are the Gulf cartel from northeastern Mexico and a federation of smugglers run out of the northwestern state of Sinaloa by Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.
The violence threatens to scare away investors and hit Mexico's economy, already shaky from the global financial crisis.
Mexican cartels are increasingly taking the place of the Colombian organizations who once ruled the international cocaine trade. Colombians have ceded many traditional trafficking routes to the United States to the Mexican gangs, preferring lower profile roles or focusing on Europe.
"There are no drug trafficking organizations left in Colombia that think they can go toe-to-toe with the nation-state; the cartels up in Mexico actually think that they can," a senior Drug Enforcement Administration official based in Colombia told Reuters.
Calderon deployed the soldiers to fight organized crime in part because they are seen as less corrupt than police.
But military men from generals to foot soldiers have said they too are being offered thousands of dollars to turn a blind eye to shipments or call off anti-drugs operations.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUKTRE4BL46220081222
China navy set for Somalia mission
Three Chinese warships will leave port later this week to join a growing international anti-piracy force off the coast of Somalia, Chinese officials have said.
Two destroyers and an accompanying supply vessel will set sail on Friday from their base on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, Huang Xueping, a defence ministry spokesman, told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.
He said the deployment would help to protect Chinese ships transiting the area, but also that the Chinese navy was willing to work with others battling pirates in the region, including warships the US, Russia and the European Union.
Piracy off the Horn of Africa has taken an increasing toll on international shipping, especially in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest sea lanes.
This year more than 40 vessels have been hijacked off the Somali coast, with pirates taking an estimated $30m in ransom payments.
Last week Chinese foreign ministry officials said about 20 per cent of Chinese ships travelling through the area had come under attack.
International security
Although China has a huge global commercial maritime presence, the deployment of the three warships will be China's first major naval operation abroad.
Until now the Chinese navy has primarily focused on defending the country's coastline, limiting operations abroad to port calls, goodwill visits and exercises with other navies.
But with China's growing global clout there have been calls for Beijing to take a greater role in international security affairs.
However, a senior Chinese military official played down the significance of the Somalia mission, saying the deployment did not show any major shift in policy.
"This is only an escorting operation to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters," Senior Captain Ma Luping, director of the Navy Bureau of the General Staff Headquarters Operations Department, said.
"It does not indicate any change in the strategy of the Chinese military."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2008/12/2008122352047615474.html
Two destroyers and an accompanying supply vessel will set sail on Friday from their base on the southern Chinese island of Hainan, Huang Xueping, a defence ministry spokesman, told reporters in Beijing on Tuesday.
He said the deployment would help to protect Chinese ships transiting the area, but also that the Chinese navy was willing to work with others battling pirates in the region, including warships the US, Russia and the European Union.
Piracy off the Horn of Africa has taken an increasing toll on international shipping, especially in the Gulf of Aden, one of the world's busiest sea lanes.
This year more than 40 vessels have been hijacked off the Somali coast, with pirates taking an estimated $30m in ransom payments.
Last week Chinese foreign ministry officials said about 20 per cent of Chinese ships travelling through the area had come under attack.
International security
Although China has a huge global commercial maritime presence, the deployment of the three warships will be China's first major naval operation abroad.
Until now the Chinese navy has primarily focused on defending the country's coastline, limiting operations abroad to port calls, goodwill visits and exercises with other navies.
But with China's growing global clout there have been calls for Beijing to take a greater role in international security affairs.
However, a senior Chinese military official played down the significance of the Somalia mission, saying the deployment did not show any major shift in policy.
"This is only an escorting operation to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters," Senior Captain Ma Luping, director of the Navy Bureau of the General Staff Headquarters Operations Department, said.
"It does not indicate any change in the strategy of the Chinese military."
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2008/12/2008122352047615474.html
Britain gets ready for urgent Iraq pullout
British commanders have been forced to plan for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq after the country’s parliament failed to vote on a resolution that would allow British troops to stay beyond the end of the year.
The Speaker of the Iraqi parliament suspended moves to approve the resolution after a group of MPs called for his resignation. The resolution failed to pass for a second time on Sunday and its passage after a third reading is now in doubt.
With nine days to go before British troops become an illegal presence in Iraq, sources say that lawyers are working on an alternative that would bypass Parliament and give Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, a free hand. But this, too, needs parliamentary approval and Western officials are concerned that it may not work.
“The Government is trying to get authority to approve the agreement without parliamentary ratification, but if that were so easy then one wonders why they didn’t do it in the first place,” a military source said. “It all gets very interesting.”
The process is further complicated by the uncertainty over when parliament will resume. No session is scheduled until January 7. If the agreement is not passed before a UN mandate expires on December 31, all nonUS troops lose their legal status in Iraq. The US struck a deal with the Iraqi Government a month ago, extending its troop presence by three years.
Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the Speaker of the Iraqi parliament, called for a delay yesterday, after a group of MPs demanded his resignation on an unrelated issue. They said that they were boycotting the session until their demands were met.
Mr al-Mashhadani threatened to resign last week after he failed to control a shouting match among MPs over an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoe at President Bush.
The first reading of the Status of Forces Bill failed last Wednesday after the shoe-throwing incident.
Asked what would happen if no agreement were in place by December 31, John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, said: “That would be a very serious situation and obviously we couldn’t let it happen, but I don’t think it will happen. We have contingency plans.
“The safety of our guys out there is our top priority. There will have to be an agreement, a proper agreement, before our guys are out on the streets.”
The ethnic slaughter and insurgent violence that began after the 2003 invasion have dropped significantly over recent months although suicide and car bombs remain common. From next year Iraqi police and soldiers will take the lead in security matters.
US combat forces will have to leave Iraqi cities and villages by the end of June and will not be able to conduct operations without Iraqi permission. Most British forces are due to withdraw in May, with the last troops to leave in July.
British commanders will remain part of the US military leadership structure in Baghdad.
The commander of the USled military in Iraq said yesterday that US forces would be deployed to southern Iraq to replace the British troops.
“It is important that we provide some forces to lend oversight in southern Iraq,” General Raymond Odierno said, without giving details on the number to be deployed or a timetable.
“Clearly, the Iraqi security forces are playing the major role in security for the area. We want to maintain ongoing training and continuity of communications with the Iraqi security forces to ensure that we can respond to their requests for assistance.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article5385750.ece
The Speaker of the Iraqi parliament suspended moves to approve the resolution after a group of MPs called for his resignation. The resolution failed to pass for a second time on Sunday and its passage after a third reading is now in doubt.
With nine days to go before British troops become an illegal presence in Iraq, sources say that lawyers are working on an alternative that would bypass Parliament and give Nouri al-Maliki, the Prime Minister, a free hand. But this, too, needs parliamentary approval and Western officials are concerned that it may not work.
“The Government is trying to get authority to approve the agreement without parliamentary ratification, but if that were so easy then one wonders why they didn’t do it in the first place,” a military source said. “It all gets very interesting.”
The process is further complicated by the uncertainty over when parliament will resume. No session is scheduled until January 7. If the agreement is not passed before a UN mandate expires on December 31, all nonUS troops lose their legal status in Iraq. The US struck a deal with the Iraqi Government a month ago, extending its troop presence by three years.
Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the Speaker of the Iraqi parliament, called for a delay yesterday, after a group of MPs demanded his resignation on an unrelated issue. They said that they were boycotting the session until their demands were met.
Mr al-Mashhadani threatened to resign last week after he failed to control a shouting match among MPs over an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoe at President Bush.
The first reading of the Status of Forces Bill failed last Wednesday after the shoe-throwing incident.
Asked what would happen if no agreement were in place by December 31, John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, said: “That would be a very serious situation and obviously we couldn’t let it happen, but I don’t think it will happen. We have contingency plans.
“The safety of our guys out there is our top priority. There will have to be an agreement, a proper agreement, before our guys are out on the streets.”
The ethnic slaughter and insurgent violence that began after the 2003 invasion have dropped significantly over recent months although suicide and car bombs remain common. From next year Iraqi police and soldiers will take the lead in security matters.
US combat forces will have to leave Iraqi cities and villages by the end of June and will not be able to conduct operations without Iraqi permission. Most British forces are due to withdraw in May, with the last troops to leave in July.
British commanders will remain part of the US military leadership structure in Baghdad.
The commander of the USled military in Iraq said yesterday that US forces would be deployed to southern Iraq to replace the British troops.
“It is important that we provide some forces to lend oversight in southern Iraq,” General Raymond Odierno said, without giving details on the number to be deployed or a timetable.
“Clearly, the Iraqi security forces are playing the major role in security for the area. We want to maintain ongoing training and continuity of communications with the Iraqi security forces to ensure that we can respond to their requests for assistance.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article5385750.ece
Troop pullout vote delayed in Iraq
Approval of a measure that would allow foreign troops to stay in Iraq has been delayed after a row in Iraq's parliament.
Parliament was suspended on Monday after deputies demanded the parliamentary speaker stand down.
More than 50 MPs called for a special session to replace Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker, after claims that he had insulted them last week.
Members of parliament had been due to approve a law that would allow forces from the UK, Australia and other nations to stay after a UN mandate expires at the end of the year.
The fracas raised doubts over whether Iraq would be able to approve the measure in time to allow Britain to keep its 4,100 troops in Iraq until the end of July.
The draft also covers troops from Australia, Estonia, El Salvador, Romania and Nato.
Contingency plans
Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister, said last week that British troops would end their mission in Iraq by the end of May.
All but 400 soldiers will have left Iraq by the end of July, he said.
John Hutton, Britain's defence secretary, said that he expected the Iraqi parliament to have a deal in place by the end the year and said a strategy is in place if no bill is passed.
"We have contingency plans. The safety of our guys out there is our top priority. There will have to be an agreement, a proper agreement, before our guys are out on the streets."
At least 178 British soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began, including 136 in hostile incidents.
Expiry date
The presence of foreign troops in Iraq is authorised by a UN mandate which expires at the end of December.
On Saturday, lawmakers rejected a draft law that would have permitted their continued presence, arguing that foreign relations required not legislation but treaties or agreements with individual countries.
Some politicians said that due to the lack of time, parliament was not likely to pass an interim resolution, a law, or even a memo allowing the forces to remain in Iraq until proper treaties or agreements were signed.
Under the draft law defeated last week, foreign forces would have to cease combat operations at the end of May and withdraw completely by the end of July, more than six years after the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president.
Lawmakers who rejected the bill did not appear to be opposed to the terms or the timetable established in the law, only to the format in which the withdrawal deal was framed.
They said they wanted a format similar to that in a US-Iraq bilateral security pact that allows 140,000 or so US troops in Iraq to stay for three more years.
Growing control
As violence subsides, the deal highlights Iraq's growing control over its own security and the apparent reduced need for foreign troops.
From next year, Iraqi police and soldiers will take the lead in ensuring security in the country.
The US and Iraq have already signed a Status of Forces Agreement, which mandates the presence of US combat troops in Iraq until the end of 2011.
Parliament is set to reconvene on Tuesday.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/12/2008122217234839476.html
Parliament was suspended on Monday after deputies demanded the parliamentary speaker stand down.
More than 50 MPs called for a special session to replace Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker, after claims that he had insulted them last week.
Members of parliament had been due to approve a law that would allow forces from the UK, Australia and other nations to stay after a UN mandate expires at the end of the year.
The fracas raised doubts over whether Iraq would be able to approve the measure in time to allow Britain to keep its 4,100 troops in Iraq until the end of July.
The draft also covers troops from Australia, Estonia, El Salvador, Romania and Nato.
Contingency plans
Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister, said last week that British troops would end their mission in Iraq by the end of May.
All but 400 soldiers will have left Iraq by the end of July, he said.
John Hutton, Britain's defence secretary, said that he expected the Iraqi parliament to have a deal in place by the end the year and said a strategy is in place if no bill is passed.
"We have contingency plans. The safety of our guys out there is our top priority. There will have to be an agreement, a proper agreement, before our guys are out on the streets."
At least 178 British soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began, including 136 in hostile incidents.
Expiry date
The presence of foreign troops in Iraq is authorised by a UN mandate which expires at the end of December.
On Saturday, lawmakers rejected a draft law that would have permitted their continued presence, arguing that foreign relations required not legislation but treaties or agreements with individual countries.
Some politicians said that due to the lack of time, parliament was not likely to pass an interim resolution, a law, or even a memo allowing the forces to remain in Iraq until proper treaties or agreements were signed.
Under the draft law defeated last week, foreign forces would have to cease combat operations at the end of May and withdraw completely by the end of July, more than six years after the US-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president.
Lawmakers who rejected the bill did not appear to be opposed to the terms or the timetable established in the law, only to the format in which the withdrawal deal was framed.
They said they wanted a format similar to that in a US-Iraq bilateral security pact that allows 140,000 or so US troops in Iraq to stay for three more years.
Growing control
As violence subsides, the deal highlights Iraq's growing control over its own security and the apparent reduced need for foreign troops.
From next year, Iraqi police and soldiers will take the lead in ensuring security in the country.
The US and Iraq have already signed a Status of Forces Agreement, which mandates the presence of US combat troops in Iraq until the end of 2011.
Parliament is set to reconvene on Tuesday.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2008/12/2008122217234839476.html
4 recruiter suicides lead to Army probe
HENDERSON, Texas - Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Henderson, a strapping Iraq combat veteran, spent the last, miserable months of his life as an Army recruiter, cold-calling dozens of people a day from his strip-mall office and sitting in strangers' living rooms, trying to sign up their sons and daughters for an unpopular war.
He put in 13-hour days, six days a week, often encountering abuse from young people or their parents. When he and other recruiters would gripe about the pressure to meet their quotas, their superiors would snarl that they ought to be grateful they were not in Iraq, according to his widow.
Less than a year into the job, Henderson — afflicted by flashbacks and sleeplessness after his tour of battle in Iraq — went into his backyard shed, slid the chain lock in place, and hanged himself with a dog chain.
He became, at age 35, the fourth member of the Army's Houston Recruiting Battalion to commit suicide in the past three years — something Henderson's widow and others blame on the psychological scars of combat, combined with the pressure-cooker job of trying to sell the war.
"Over there in Iraq, you're doing this high-intensive job you are recognized for. Then, you come back here, and one month you're a hero, one month you're a loser because you didn't put anyone in," said Staff Sgt. Amanda Henderson, herself an Iraq veteran and a former recruiter in the battalion.
The Army has 38 recruiting battalions in the United States. Patrick Henderson's is the only one to report more than one suicide in the past six years.
Senator pushed for inquiry
The Army began an investigation after being prodded by Amanda Henderson and Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Cornyn, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he will press for Senate hearings.
"We need to get to the bottom of this as soon as we can," he said.
The all-volunteer military is under heavy pressure to sign up recruits and retain soldiers while it wages two wars.
Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command, acknowledged that recruiting is a demanding job but said counseling and other support are available.
"I don't have an answer to why these suicides in Houston Recruiting Battalion occurred, but perhaps the investigation that is under way may shed some light on that question," he said.
In all, 15 of the Army's 8,400 recruiters have committed suicide since 2003. During that period, more than 540 of the Army's half-million active-duty soldiers killed themselves.
The 266-member Houston battalion covers a huge swath of East Texas, from Houston to the Arkansas line. Henderson committed suicide Sept. 20. Another battalion member, Staff Sgt. Larry Flores Jr., hanged himself in August at age 26; Sgt. Nils "Aron" Andersson, 25, shot himself to death in March 2007; and in 2005, a captain at battalion headquarters took his life, though the military has not disclosed any details. All served combat tours before their recruiting assignments.
Charlotte Porter, Andersson's mother, said her son — who served two tours in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne and earned a Bronze Star — couldn't lie to recruits about the war and felt an enormous burden to ensure they could become the kind of soldiers he would want watching his back.
"He wasn't a complainer. He just said it really sucked," said his 51-year-old mother, who is from Eugene, Ore. "He felt like a failure."
Cold calls were part of job
Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said recruiting these days "is arguably the toughest job in the military."
"They're under incredible stress. You can see it on their faces," he said.
In Iraq, Henderson helped lead other infantrymen on risky "snatch-and-grab" missions and saw several buddies die.
He had been stationed in Germany before going to Iraq. After his tour was up, he was assigned to recruiting. He didn't particularly want to leave the infantry, but going to recruiting allowed him to move back to the U.S., his widow said.
Like most recruiters, he began his day with paperwork, followed by cold calls to high school graduates and college students. He spent lunches trying to chat up high schoolers outside the cafeteria, and then, more phone calls — often 150 a day, according to his widow.
He spent evenings on the living room sofas or at the dining room tables of the few interested young people, trying to sell them and their families on the Army's opportunities while easing their fears. Some recruits' parents were hostile.
"They are completely outright nasty to you. That's stressful to you right then and there because you have some mother or father just ripping you apart," Amanda Henderson said.
Pressure from above alleged
She said her husband also found himself under crushing pressure from above. He and other recruiters in the battalion were required to account for every minute of every day in planners and logs, his widow said.
When Henderson took some time to recover from knee surgery, his bosses acted as if he was lazy and threatened to have him thrown out of recruiting and reassigned far from his wife, Amanda Henderson said.
He lived in constant fear of failing to sign up enough people, something that can result in an all-day audit by a recruiter's superiors and thwart a soldier's chances of a promotion, Amanda Henderson said.
As much as Henderson hated recruiting, he did the job well, his widow said. But Flores, who killed himself a few weeks before Henderson, "was getting chewed up one side and down the other" at work in the days before he died, Amanda Henderson said. Flores was her boss.
Smith, the Army spokesman, would not comment on Henderson's job performance. Asked about the demands put on recruiters by their superiors, he said recruiting duty "often does entail long hours during the week and on weekends." But he added: "There are other duty assignments in the Army that entail long hours, such as being deployed."
Most recruiters are assigned
Some recruiters volunteer for the job, but most are assigned. They must have a recent evaluation showing no record of mental instability. But Amanda Henderson said her husband, like other combat veterans, rushed through his assessment, insisting he was fine.
Patrick Henderson had been out of Iraq a little less than a year when he began recruiting, and after several months on the job, his sleeplessness and flashbacks became evident, according to his wife. She said she stayed up one night watching him apparently flash between nightmares of combat and of illegally signing up a recruit.
He suffered a breakdown in the weeks before his suicide, his wife said. Because he was hundreds of miles from the nearest Army post, he went to a local counselor recommended by the military after an initial visit with an Army doctor. But the counselor had never worked with a combat veteran and couldn't decipher the military jargon in his medical records, Amanda Henderson said.
One morning in September, she woke up alone, panicked and went out to look for her husband. The chain was on the door to the shed, but she could see him inside. She pried the window open, and screamed. "He was gone," she said, her voice breaking.
"I don't want anybody to feel this pain that I have," she said, her eyes welling with tears. "It's too much for one person. They need help."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28354659/
He put in 13-hour days, six days a week, often encountering abuse from young people or their parents. When he and other recruiters would gripe about the pressure to meet their quotas, their superiors would snarl that they ought to be grateful they were not in Iraq, according to his widow.
Less than a year into the job, Henderson — afflicted by flashbacks and sleeplessness after his tour of battle in Iraq — went into his backyard shed, slid the chain lock in place, and hanged himself with a dog chain.
He became, at age 35, the fourth member of the Army's Houston Recruiting Battalion to commit suicide in the past three years — something Henderson's widow and others blame on the psychological scars of combat, combined with the pressure-cooker job of trying to sell the war.
"Over there in Iraq, you're doing this high-intensive job you are recognized for. Then, you come back here, and one month you're a hero, one month you're a loser because you didn't put anyone in," said Staff Sgt. Amanda Henderson, herself an Iraq veteran and a former recruiter in the battalion.
The Army has 38 recruiting battalions in the United States. Patrick Henderson's is the only one to report more than one suicide in the past six years.
Senator pushed for inquiry
The Army began an investigation after being prodded by Amanda Henderson and Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Cornyn, a Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said he will press for Senate hearings.
"We need to get to the bottom of this as soon as we can," he said.
The all-volunteer military is under heavy pressure to sign up recruits and retain soldiers while it wages two wars.
Douglas Smith, a spokesman for the Army Recruiting Command, acknowledged that recruiting is a demanding job but said counseling and other support are available.
"I don't have an answer to why these suicides in Houston Recruiting Battalion occurred, but perhaps the investigation that is under way may shed some light on that question," he said.
In all, 15 of the Army's 8,400 recruiters have committed suicide since 2003. During that period, more than 540 of the Army's half-million active-duty soldiers killed themselves.
The 266-member Houston battalion covers a huge swath of East Texas, from Houston to the Arkansas line. Henderson committed suicide Sept. 20. Another battalion member, Staff Sgt. Larry Flores Jr., hanged himself in August at age 26; Sgt. Nils "Aron" Andersson, 25, shot himself to death in March 2007; and in 2005, a captain at battalion headquarters took his life, though the military has not disclosed any details. All served combat tours before their recruiting assignments.
Charlotte Porter, Andersson's mother, said her son — who served two tours in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne and earned a Bronze Star — couldn't lie to recruits about the war and felt an enormous burden to ensure they could become the kind of soldiers he would want watching his back.
"He wasn't a complainer. He just said it really sucked," said his 51-year-old mother, who is from Eugene, Ore. "He felt like a failure."
Cold calls were part of job
Paul Rieckhoff, founder of the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said recruiting these days "is arguably the toughest job in the military."
"They're under incredible stress. You can see it on their faces," he said.
In Iraq, Henderson helped lead other infantrymen on risky "snatch-and-grab" missions and saw several buddies die.
He had been stationed in Germany before going to Iraq. After his tour was up, he was assigned to recruiting. He didn't particularly want to leave the infantry, but going to recruiting allowed him to move back to the U.S., his widow said.
Like most recruiters, he began his day with paperwork, followed by cold calls to high school graduates and college students. He spent lunches trying to chat up high schoolers outside the cafeteria, and then, more phone calls — often 150 a day, according to his widow.
He spent evenings on the living room sofas or at the dining room tables of the few interested young people, trying to sell them and their families on the Army's opportunities while easing their fears. Some recruits' parents were hostile.
"They are completely outright nasty to you. That's stressful to you right then and there because you have some mother or father just ripping you apart," Amanda Henderson said.
Pressure from above alleged
She said her husband also found himself under crushing pressure from above. He and other recruiters in the battalion were required to account for every minute of every day in planners and logs, his widow said.
When Henderson took some time to recover from knee surgery, his bosses acted as if he was lazy and threatened to have him thrown out of recruiting and reassigned far from his wife, Amanda Henderson said.
He lived in constant fear of failing to sign up enough people, something that can result in an all-day audit by a recruiter's superiors and thwart a soldier's chances of a promotion, Amanda Henderson said.
As much as Henderson hated recruiting, he did the job well, his widow said. But Flores, who killed himself a few weeks before Henderson, "was getting chewed up one side and down the other" at work in the days before he died, Amanda Henderson said. Flores was her boss.
Smith, the Army spokesman, would not comment on Henderson's job performance. Asked about the demands put on recruiters by their superiors, he said recruiting duty "often does entail long hours during the week and on weekends." But he added: "There are other duty assignments in the Army that entail long hours, such as being deployed."
Most recruiters are assigned
Some recruiters volunteer for the job, but most are assigned. They must have a recent evaluation showing no record of mental instability. But Amanda Henderson said her husband, like other combat veterans, rushed through his assessment, insisting he was fine.
Patrick Henderson had been out of Iraq a little less than a year when he began recruiting, and after several months on the job, his sleeplessness and flashbacks became evident, according to his wife. She said she stayed up one night watching him apparently flash between nightmares of combat and of illegally signing up a recruit.
He suffered a breakdown in the weeks before his suicide, his wife said. Because he was hundreds of miles from the nearest Army post, he went to a local counselor recommended by the military after an initial visit with an Army doctor. But the counselor had never worked with a combat veteran and couldn't decipher the military jargon in his medical records, Amanda Henderson said.
One morning in September, she woke up alone, panicked and went out to look for her husband. The chain was on the door to the shed, but she could see him inside. She pried the window open, and screamed. "He was gone," she said, her voice breaking.
"I don't want anybody to feel this pain that I have," she said, her eyes welling with tears. "It's too much for one person. They need help."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28354659/
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
If Obama Is Pro-Science and Honest, He'll Put the Kibosh on the Drug War
One of the many things that made Barack Obama such a refreshing candidate was his frank and unapologetic admission of drug use. True, Anderson Cooper extracted curt "yeses" from some 2004 Democratic candidates when he asked them point-blank if they had ever smoked pot. But Obama has written openly and without prompting about his experiences, not only with marijuana, but cocaine, a "hard" drug. On the campaign trail he even joked about inhaling deeply -- "that was the point," he said more than once. Unlike George W. Bush, Obama didn't hide behind evasive murmurs about "irresponsible behavior," or turn his drug experiences into a setup for some maudlin born-again conversion story.
As recounted in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama was a normal American kid. Which is to say he used drugs, had fun and survived. The book doesn't romanticize the president-elect's days of smoking pot and snorting "a little blow when [he] could afford it," but it's easy to take what details he provides and imagine him with his basketball buddies on some Oahu beach blazing bowls of Maui Wowie, alternately laughing until his guts hurt and sitting in quiet wonder before a magnificent pink-and-yellow Pacific sunset. Obama has even written about his pursuit of heroin's moon-shot high. As a teenager, he went so far as to ask a junkie friend for an assisted first hit, but recoiled when presented in a deli freezer with the surgical tools of the mainliner's trade: rubber tubing and second-hand syringe.
Partly because Obama was so reasonable and matter-of-fact about his own All-American experiences getting high, drug-policy reformers were among those most excited by his candidacy. If any aspect of America needs change, it is the country's prohibitionist and punitive approach to drugs and drug use. Obama, it seemed, was the right politician to take an executive hammer to the cracked marble pillars of America's disastrous war on drugs. Throughout the primaries and general election, Obama gently encouraged these hopes by advocating commonsense drug-policy reforms. He criticized federal paramilitary raids on state-sanctioned greenhouses and called for ending racist discrepancies in cocaine sentencing laws. (As a little-mentioned footnote to the first of these positions, Obama's mother died from cancer five years before the Hawaii legislature legalized medical marijuana.)
Nobody expected Obama to tap Tommy Chong to run the Office of National Drug Control Policy. But maybe, just maybe, Obama would have the political courage to publicly acknowledge what an emerging majority of Americans now grasps: that the war on drugs is a failure, that it is unjust, and that it is an epic waste of law-enforcement time and resources.
Still a month before inauguration, the hopes of drug-policy-reform advocates have had their wings clipped several times, beginning with the announcement of the Democratic ticket.
"The pick of Joe Biden was my first sign of digestive tumult," says Keith Stroup, founder and legal advisor of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "Rather than oppose the Reagan-inspired War on Some Drugs, Biden became an enthusiastic supporter and legislative booster. He was at the center of creating the ONDCP [in 1988], mandatory minimum sentencing, civil forfeiture laws, the Rave Act, funding for DARE in public schools and the ad campaigns for the Partnership for a Drug Free America."
NORML board member Dominic Holden says: "Biden is the drug war embodied."
The selection of the emblematic Democratic drug warrior of the 1980s was followed by the selection of his 1990s counterpart, Rahm Emanuel. As President Bill Clinton's liaison with the ONDCP, the incoming chief of staff advised on and defended that administration's tough-on-crime punitive approach to drugs and its cowardly opposition to medical-marijuana initiatives and needle-exchange programs. While Clinton has since expressed regret over some of these positions, the tightly wound Emanuel has not.
Obama's pick for attorney general, meanwhile, has a mixed record on drug policy reform that will hopefully be clarified during the expected Senate dogfight over his nomination. But the record is not encouraging. As D.C. attorney general in the 1990s, Eric Holder supported mandatory sentences of 18 months to six years for selling a range of drugs that included marijuana. He is also on record supporting the "broken windows" theory of neighborhood policing most closely associated with Mayor Rudy Giuliani's NYPD and the conservative Manhattan Institute. Holder's iron-fist drug politics find a public health counterpart in the confused mind of Obama's Transition Team point man on the ONDCP, Don Vereen, who as recently as November explained his opposition to medical marijuana by saying, "[It] sends the wrong message to children."
Which takes us to the drug czar throne. Here the rumors are worse than most would have DARE'd imagine. The Obama transition team has done nothing to dispel talk that Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., is a leading candidate to run ONDCP or the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In either position, Ramstad's nomination would make a joke of Obama's pledge that his policy decisions will be made "based on facts," not ideology and caveman politics. Earlier this month, hundreds of leading substance-abuse health professionals signed a letter to Obama expressing concern over Ramstad's opposition to evidence-based HIV/AIDS-reduction practices such as methadone and needle-exchange programs, as well as his support for arresting medical marijuana patients and failure to co-sponsor any of the three bills put forward by the last Congress to eliminate the cocaine-sentencing disparity. But it gets worse. As Maia Szalavitz first reported on The Huffington Post, Ramstad funneled almost a quarter of a million dollars in federal money to an abusive church-run addiction program that sees drug addiction not as a health issue requiring medication and counseling, but as a "sin" that needs cleansing through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as lord and savior. Ramstad is such a Bush-league freak show that concern over his possible nomination has spilled beyond the small world of drug-policy-reform professionals. Last week, the Boston Globe editorialized strongly against his candidacy.
Of course, it's possible that the views of people like Holder, Emanuel, Biden and Ramstad are no longer what they were. But reformers are concerned that there's no way of knowing. "Because they haven't spoken on these issues in so long, we have to go back to what they said in the '90s," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML. "We hope they have evolved, or that at least Obama doesn't listen to them if they haven't. After all, the president sets the policy."
Sound familiar?
Regardless of where Obama's appointees stand and how much, if any, political capital he is willing to spend on drug-policy reform, the need to turn his campaign slogan into reality has never been greater. Last week, the Justice Department released numbers showing that 1 in every 100 Americans is now in prison, and 1 in every 31 is either behind bars, on parole or on probation. For this grotesquerie we can thank the war on drugs. More than half of federal prisoners (95,000 people) are behind bars for drug-law violations -- a record. Nationally, around half a million people are in prison on nonviolent drug charges. The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that this is a tenfold increase since 1980, totaling more than the entire prison population of Western Europe.
Reform advocates are realistic about the possibilities for progress in the coming years. Everyone agrees that a radical overhaul of U.S. drug laws, including ending the prohibition of marijuana, remains years if not decades away. But the major groups have clear goals for the first administration and are guardedly optimistic about meeting them.
The Drug Policy Alliance, the nation's largest drug-policy-reform advocacy group, seeks the repeal of the federal syringe-exchange-program ban and an end to racist federal cocaine sentencing laws, which continue to punish low-level crack offenders 100 times more severely than powder cocaine offenders.
"Obama talked about his opposition to the syringe ban on the campaign trail and mentioned it again in his AIDS Day statement," says Bill Piper, DPA's director of national affairs. "And both Obama and Biden are strong supporters of reforming cocaine-sentencing laws. Even if Congress doesn't pass a [crack cocaine] bill, the administration could instruct federal attorneys to ignore the law. We hope he'll do so."
Another law that reform advocates hope will be ignored is the blanket federal prohibition of marijuana, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled trumps states' rights to legally grow and distribute marijuana for medical purposes. Obama has criticized federal raids on state-sanction dispensaries as a poor use of federal resources, a popular position. The electoral politics of medical marijuana also favor progress on this front.
"One in four Americans now lives in a medical marijuana state," Aaron Houston, director of government relations at the Marijuana Policy Project, explained to Reason magazine. "And medical marijuana outpolled Obama in Michigan by six points. Medical marijuana states, including Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, were essential to Obama's victory, and continuing a federal war against a quarter of the country would make no sense."
NORML, America's pot-reform spearhead, will push for the establishment of a National Marijuana Commission, modeled on congressional commissions formed in 1970 and 1972 to study pot prohibition. Both prior commissions concluded in favor of decriminalization, and activists think it is high time to throw another national spotlight on the law that last year resulted in 870,000 marijuana arrests.
"Any serious commission today would come to same conclusion [in favor of decriminalization]. We're willing to sit tight for a couple of years as Congress studies it," says NORML's Keith Stroup. "But we want high-profile hearings in the judiciary committees. We want to get our experts up there."
Meanwhile, NORML will push Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to reintroduce his decriminalization bill, HR5843, also known as the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act. Co-sponsored by former presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, the bill would in effect decriminalize possession of up to an ounce. When introduced last year, it became the first bill to take aim at prohibition since 1982.
Advocates may have their best ally not in the White House or in Congress, but in the economy. As state budgets shrink across the country, legislatures are often forced to choose between education and prison budgets. This phenomenon is most stark in California, where a budget shortfall and massive overcrowding has Gov.Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about letting people go and the legislature discussing sentencing reform.
"During the last recession, we saw an enormous number of states enact reform," says DPA's Piper. "This is the silver lining of an economic downturn. After the recession recedes, the reforms tend to stick, when the states realize they are saving money."
If the economy ends up being the prime mover behind drug reform under Obama and the incoming Congress, it will be better than nothing, but still a sad commentary on the Democratic Party and American democracy in general. Polls and state ballot initiatives continue to show the public widening its lead ahead of their elected leaders on drug policy, who more often than not remain stuck in the 1980s, if not the 1920s. While the job of changing the law ultimately falls upon Congress, Obama could help take his party and the country into the new century by using the bully pulpit to question the premises and effects of the drug war. If he chooses to do so, he is certainly surrounded by enough veteran drug warriors to provide political cover. Who knows? If it took a Cold Warrior like President Richard Nixon to go to China, maybe Joe Biden & Co. can help Obama make the shorter but equally historic trip down Main Street to the local head shop.
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/114728/if_obama_is_pro-science_and_honest%2C_he%27ll_put_the_kibosh_on_the_drug_war/?page=entire
As recounted in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, Obama was a normal American kid. Which is to say he used drugs, had fun and survived. The book doesn't romanticize the president-elect's days of smoking pot and snorting "a little blow when [he] could afford it," but it's easy to take what details he provides and imagine him with his basketball buddies on some Oahu beach blazing bowls of Maui Wowie, alternately laughing until his guts hurt and sitting in quiet wonder before a magnificent pink-and-yellow Pacific sunset. Obama has even written about his pursuit of heroin's moon-shot high. As a teenager, he went so far as to ask a junkie friend for an assisted first hit, but recoiled when presented in a deli freezer with the surgical tools of the mainliner's trade: rubber tubing and second-hand syringe.
Partly because Obama was so reasonable and matter-of-fact about his own All-American experiences getting high, drug-policy reformers were among those most excited by his candidacy. If any aspect of America needs change, it is the country's prohibitionist and punitive approach to drugs and drug use. Obama, it seemed, was the right politician to take an executive hammer to the cracked marble pillars of America's disastrous war on drugs. Throughout the primaries and general election, Obama gently encouraged these hopes by advocating commonsense drug-policy reforms. He criticized federal paramilitary raids on state-sanctioned greenhouses and called for ending racist discrepancies in cocaine sentencing laws. (As a little-mentioned footnote to the first of these positions, Obama's mother died from cancer five years before the Hawaii legislature legalized medical marijuana.)
Nobody expected Obama to tap Tommy Chong to run the Office of National Drug Control Policy. But maybe, just maybe, Obama would have the political courage to publicly acknowledge what an emerging majority of Americans now grasps: that the war on drugs is a failure, that it is unjust, and that it is an epic waste of law-enforcement time and resources.
Still a month before inauguration, the hopes of drug-policy-reform advocates have had their wings clipped several times, beginning with the announcement of the Democratic ticket.
"The pick of Joe Biden was my first sign of digestive tumult," says Keith Stroup, founder and legal advisor of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). "Rather than oppose the Reagan-inspired War on Some Drugs, Biden became an enthusiastic supporter and legislative booster. He was at the center of creating the ONDCP [in 1988], mandatory minimum sentencing, civil forfeiture laws, the Rave Act, funding for DARE in public schools and the ad campaigns for the Partnership for a Drug Free America."
NORML board member Dominic Holden says: "Biden is the drug war embodied."
The selection of the emblematic Democratic drug warrior of the 1980s was followed by the selection of his 1990s counterpart, Rahm Emanuel. As President Bill Clinton's liaison with the ONDCP, the incoming chief of staff advised on and defended that administration's tough-on-crime punitive approach to drugs and its cowardly opposition to medical-marijuana initiatives and needle-exchange programs. While Clinton has since expressed regret over some of these positions, the tightly wound Emanuel has not.
Obama's pick for attorney general, meanwhile, has a mixed record on drug policy reform that will hopefully be clarified during the expected Senate dogfight over his nomination. But the record is not encouraging. As D.C. attorney general in the 1990s, Eric Holder supported mandatory sentences of 18 months to six years for selling a range of drugs that included marijuana. He is also on record supporting the "broken windows" theory of neighborhood policing most closely associated with Mayor Rudy Giuliani's NYPD and the conservative Manhattan Institute. Holder's iron-fist drug politics find a public health counterpart in the confused mind of Obama's Transition Team point man on the ONDCP, Don Vereen, who as recently as November explained his opposition to medical marijuana by saying, "[It] sends the wrong message to children."
Which takes us to the drug czar throne. Here the rumors are worse than most would have DARE'd imagine. The Obama transition team has done nothing to dispel talk that Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., is a leading candidate to run ONDCP or the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. In either position, Ramstad's nomination would make a joke of Obama's pledge that his policy decisions will be made "based on facts," not ideology and caveman politics. Earlier this month, hundreds of leading substance-abuse health professionals signed a letter to Obama expressing concern over Ramstad's opposition to evidence-based HIV/AIDS-reduction practices such as methadone and needle-exchange programs, as well as his support for arresting medical marijuana patients and failure to co-sponsor any of the three bills put forward by the last Congress to eliminate the cocaine-sentencing disparity. But it gets worse. As Maia Szalavitz first reported on The Huffington Post, Ramstad funneled almost a quarter of a million dollars in federal money to an abusive church-run addiction program that sees drug addiction not as a health issue requiring medication and counseling, but as a "sin" that needs cleansing through the acceptance of Jesus Christ as lord and savior. Ramstad is such a Bush-league freak show that concern over his possible nomination has spilled beyond the small world of drug-policy-reform professionals. Last week, the Boston Globe editorialized strongly against his candidacy.
Of course, it's possible that the views of people like Holder, Emanuel, Biden and Ramstad are no longer what they were. But reformers are concerned that there's no way of knowing. "Because they haven't spoken on these issues in so long, we have to go back to what they said in the '90s," says Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML. "We hope they have evolved, or that at least Obama doesn't listen to them if they haven't. After all, the president sets the policy."
Sound familiar?
Regardless of where Obama's appointees stand and how much, if any, political capital he is willing to spend on drug-policy reform, the need to turn his campaign slogan into reality has never been greater. Last week, the Justice Department released numbers showing that 1 in every 100 Americans is now in prison, and 1 in every 31 is either behind bars, on parole or on probation. For this grotesquerie we can thank the war on drugs. More than half of federal prisoners (95,000 people) are behind bars for drug-law violations -- a record. Nationally, around half a million people are in prison on nonviolent drug charges. The Drug Policy Alliance estimates that this is a tenfold increase since 1980, totaling more than the entire prison population of Western Europe.
Reform advocates are realistic about the possibilities for progress in the coming years. Everyone agrees that a radical overhaul of U.S. drug laws, including ending the prohibition of marijuana, remains years if not decades away. But the major groups have clear goals for the first administration and are guardedly optimistic about meeting them.
The Drug Policy Alliance, the nation's largest drug-policy-reform advocacy group, seeks the repeal of the federal syringe-exchange-program ban and an end to racist federal cocaine sentencing laws, which continue to punish low-level crack offenders 100 times more severely than powder cocaine offenders.
"Obama talked about his opposition to the syringe ban on the campaign trail and mentioned it again in his AIDS Day statement," says Bill Piper, DPA's director of national affairs. "And both Obama and Biden are strong supporters of reforming cocaine-sentencing laws. Even if Congress doesn't pass a [crack cocaine] bill, the administration could instruct federal attorneys to ignore the law. We hope he'll do so."
Another law that reform advocates hope will be ignored is the blanket federal prohibition of marijuana, which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled trumps states' rights to legally grow and distribute marijuana for medical purposes. Obama has criticized federal raids on state-sanction dispensaries as a poor use of federal resources, a popular position. The electoral politics of medical marijuana also favor progress on this front.
"One in four Americans now lives in a medical marijuana state," Aaron Houston, director of government relations at the Marijuana Policy Project, explained to Reason magazine. "And medical marijuana outpolled Obama in Michigan by six points. Medical marijuana states, including Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, were essential to Obama's victory, and continuing a federal war against a quarter of the country would make no sense."
NORML, America's pot-reform spearhead, will push for the establishment of a National Marijuana Commission, modeled on congressional commissions formed in 1970 and 1972 to study pot prohibition. Both prior commissions concluded in favor of decriminalization, and activists think it is high time to throw another national spotlight on the law that last year resulted in 870,000 marijuana arrests.
"Any serious commission today would come to same conclusion [in favor of decriminalization]. We're willing to sit tight for a couple of years as Congress studies it," says NORML's Keith Stroup. "But we want high-profile hearings in the judiciary committees. We want to get our experts up there."
Meanwhile, NORML will push Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., to reintroduce his decriminalization bill, HR5843, also known as the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act. Co-sponsored by former presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, the bill would in effect decriminalize possession of up to an ounce. When introduced last year, it became the first bill to take aim at prohibition since 1982.
Advocates may have their best ally not in the White House or in Congress, but in the economy. As state budgets shrink across the country, legislatures are often forced to choose between education and prison budgets. This phenomenon is most stark in California, where a budget shortfall and massive overcrowding has Gov.Arnold Schwarzenegger talking about letting people go and the legislature discussing sentencing reform.
"During the last recession, we saw an enormous number of states enact reform," says DPA's Piper. "This is the silver lining of an economic downturn. After the recession recedes, the reforms tend to stick, when the states realize they are saving money."
If the economy ends up being the prime mover behind drug reform under Obama and the incoming Congress, it will be better than nothing, but still a sad commentary on the Democratic Party and American democracy in general. Polls and state ballot initiatives continue to show the public widening its lead ahead of their elected leaders on drug policy, who more often than not remain stuck in the 1980s, if not the 1920s. While the job of changing the law ultimately falls upon Congress, Obama could help take his party and the country into the new century by using the bully pulpit to question the premises and effects of the drug war. If he chooses to do so, he is certainly surrounded by enough veteran drug warriors to provide political cover. Who knows? If it took a Cold Warrior like President Richard Nixon to go to China, maybe Joe Biden & Co. can help Obama make the shorter but equally historic trip down Main Street to the local head shop.
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/114728/if_obama_is_pro-science_and_honest%2C_he%27ll_put_the_kibosh_on_the_drug_war/?page=entire
The Homicides You Didn't Hear About in Hurricane Katrina
What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? While the national and international media were working themselves and much of the public into a frenzy about imaginary hordes of murderers, rapists, snipers, marauders, and general rampagers among the stranded crowds of mostly poor, mostly black people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a group of white men went on a shooting spree across the river.
Their criminal acts were no secret but they never became part of the official story. The media demonized the city's black population for crimes that turned out not to have happened, and the retractions were, as always, too little too late. At one point FEMA sent a refrigerated 18-wheeler to pick up what a colonel in the National Guard expected to be 200 bodies in New Orleans's Superdome, only to find six, including four who died naturally and a suicide. Meanwhile, the media never paid attention to the real rampage that took place openly across the river, even though there were corpses lying in unflooded streets and testimony everywhere you looked -- or I looked, anyway.
The widely reported violent crimes in the Superdome turned out to be little more than hysterical rumor, but they painted African-Americans as out-of-control savages at a critical moment. The result was to shift institutional responses from disaster relief to law enforcement, a decision that resulted in further deaths among the thirsty, hot, stranded multitude. Governor Kathleen Blanco announced, "I have one message for these hoodlums: These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will." So would the white vigilantes, and though their exact body count remains unknown, at least 11 black men were apparently shot, some fatally.
The parish of Orleans includes both the city of New Orleans on one side of the Mississippi and a community on the other side called Algiers that can be reached via a bridge called the Crescent City Connection. That bridge comes down in another town called Gretna, and the sheriff of Gretna and a lot of his henchmen turned many of the stranded in New Orleans back at gunpoint from that bridge, trapping them in the squalor of a destroyed city, another heinous crime that was largely overlooked. On the Gretna/Algiers side of the river, the levees held and nothing flooded. Next door to Gretna, Algiers is a mostly black community, but one corner of it down by the river, Algiers Point, is a white enclave, a neighborhood of pretty little, well-kept-up wooden houses -- and of killers.
What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? By my second visit to New Orleans almost a year and a half after the hurricane that devastated the place, I had more than enough information to know that something very wrong had happened in Algiers Point. In a report on New Orleans for TomDispatch in March of 2007, I wrote:
I found that journalist in my friend A.C. Thompson who, backed by the Nation magazine, launched an investigation just concluded this week, 21 months after I first approached him. His courageous and meticulous investigation tracked down victims and persecutors, clarified what happened on those days of mayhem in Algiers Point, sued to gain access to, and sifted through, the coroner's records that mentioned some bulllet-riddled bodies, and dug up some previously unreported police crimes. His stunning report in the Nation, "Katrina's Hidden Race War," suggests that there's still more there to find.
A lot of the pieces of the Algiers Point killing spree were out in the open. Several weeks after Hurricane Katrina, community organizer and former Black Panther Malik Rahim had told Amy Goodman on her nationally syndicated program Democracy Now!, "During the aftermath, directly after the flooding, in New Orleans hunting season began on young African American men. In Algiers, I believe, approximately around 18 African American males were killed. No one really know[s] what's the overall count."
Rahim's count seems high, but the real toll remains unknown. The young medics who staffed the Common Ground Clinic, co-founded by Rahim, also knew that there had been a spate of killings: like everyone else who came in, the killers and their associates had felt the need to tell their stories, as well as get their tetanus shots or blood pressure meds. The medics, whom Rahim credits with defusing a potential race war in Algiers by reaching out to everyone equally, told me they'd heard murder confessions from the vigilantes and their cohorts (but respected their confidentiality by not passing along names or identifying information).
CNN and the Times Picayune, New Orleans's paper of record, both published a photograph of a member of the "self-appointed posse" in Algiers Point napping next to five shotguns, an AK-47 assault rifle, and a pistol, but they never got around to asking if the band of white guys had actually used the guns. As it happened, not only did they use the guns, but they confessed -- or boasted -- on videotape to their shootings and killings, tape that ended up in a little-seen documentary called "Welcome to New Orleans." I passed along what I knew to A.C., but a lot of it hadn't been a secret, just easily visible dots no one was connecting. None was more visible than the attempted murder of Donnell Herrington.
What It's Like to Be Murdered
One balmy September afternoon, under the shade of the broad-armed oaks of New Orleans's City Park, Donnell Herrington told us what it's like to be murdered -- for the men who attacked him shortly after Hurricane Katrina drowned his city intended to kill him and nearly succeeded. Donnell is a soft-spoken guy now in his early thirties and he worries the question of why they shot him, of what they thought they were doing. On what possible grounds could you blast away with a shotgun at a guy walking down a public street who hadn't even seen you, let alone threatened you?
He knows they consider themselves justified, and he wrestles with the question, but each time it comes up he finally concludes it was a hate crime. It was because he was black.
The close-up shotgun blast had punctured his jugular vein and he had only a little time to get help before he bled to death. He told his friend and cousin to run, found his way to his feet, only to be shot in the back yet again. He fell down again, got up again -- a former athlete, Herrington is many kinds of strong -- and stumbled away, one hand to the blood spurting from his neck.
Herrington had been desperate to get out of the ravaged city where, two days earlier, he'd seen his grandparents' neighborhood flood, rescued them and a lot of neighbors by boat, left them to be evacuated from the elevated Interstate, walked across the Crescent City Connection to his home in Algiers on the other side of the Mississippi, found its roof crushed by a huge bough, and decided there was nothing left to do but get out himself. On September 1st, day three of the catastrophe, he had set out with his teenage cousin and a friend for the ferry landing in Algiers Point. There, they had been told, you could actually be evacuated when so many people were stranded in the heat and chaos of a drowned city. Not long into that flight they ran into the white men with guns.
On the one-year anniversary of the catastrophe, millions of Americans watched Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts on HBO. Most of the film is made up of people talking straight into the camera about their Katrina, and one of the talkers is a sweet-voiced, brown-skinned guy: Herrington. He tells the camera:
In the film, Herrington pulls up his shirt and shows his torso, peppered with lumps from the buckshot. And then he gestures at the long, twisting, raised scar wound around his neck like a centipede or a snake: "And this is the incision from the surgery from the buckshots that penetrated my neck and hit my jugular vein."
A victim of a horrific attempted murder told his story in a national television special and, though I'm sure lots of viewers wanted to do something, those who really could have done something did nothing. Lee's film cut away to then governor Kathleen Blanco vowing more law and order against the supposedly rampaging African-American menace of New Orleans.
Herrington is a kind man; one of the first things he said to us was, "I asked God to forgive those guys that done this thing to me. It was kind of hard to even bring myself to that but I know it's the right thing to do, but at the same time those guys have gotta answer for their actions."
He was a Brink's truck driver at the time of Katrina, a man with a clean record routinely in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and he attempted to evacuate Katrina with a pocketful of his own cash -- which only underscores how preposterous it was for his prospective murderers to see him as a thief. He nearly bled to death before a local couple drove him to the nearest medical center, where his throat was sewn up. More than three years later, it's clear that the trauma is still with him.
His friend and cousin were chased down, threatened with pistols, called "nigger," but finally allowed to go, traumatized by their own brush with men who made it clear they'd be happy to kill them.
"Like Pheasant Season in South Dakota"
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a light-skinned black man, was arrested in New Orleans for riding a streetcar then reserved for whites only. A precursor of Rosa Parks, he pursued a landmark lawsuit that went all the way to a racist Supreme Court, which issued the infamous "separate but equal" doctrine that stood until the civil rights battles of the postwar era.
That same year Charles Allan Gilbert drew a picture of a beautiful woman sitting in darkness at her dressing table, her head with mounded hair and its reflection arranged so that if you look at the celebrated drawing another way you see a grinning skull whose teeth are the rows of bottles of perfume and powder. For a year or more -- Katrina was one of the biggest news stories of the past century -- journalists swarmed like ants over New Orleans. The national and international news media, left, right, and center, big and small, print and radio, television and film, saw the beautiful woman and saw as well bogeymen in the shadows of their own lurid imaginations. And they declined to see the big white skull laughing at them.
That death grin can, however, be caught on the faces of the tipsy white people who confess on camera to murdering their neighbors. Separate but equal may have been abolished in the courts, but these people were gunning down African-American men just for walking in the streets in the aftermath of the storm -- segregation by bullet -- gunning them down on the grounds that no black man had the right to be there and any of them was a menace.
On one of my visits to New Orleans after Katrina, I met with Rahim, a solid older man with long dreadlocks who told me in his rumbling voice of the bodies he'd seen in the streets of Algiers and gave me a copy of the documentary Welcome to New Orleans. It showed one of the corpses rotting, in plain sight, under a sheet of corrugated sheet metal. It also showed white vigilantes whooping it up and talking openly about what they had done. At a barbeque shortly after Katrina struck, a stocky white guy with receding white hair and a Key West t-shirt chortles, "I never thought eleven months ago I'd be walking down the streets of New Orleans with two .38s and a shotgun over my shoulder. It was great. It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it."
A tough woman with short hair and chubby arms adds, "That's not a pheasant and we're not in South Dakota. What's wrong with this picture?"
The man responds happily, "Seemed like it at the time."
A second white-haired guy explains, "You had to do what you had to do, if you had to shoot somebody, you had to shoot. It's that simple."
A third says simply, "We shot ‘em."
I vowed to Rahim then that I would get the murders investigated. After all, it wasn't just rumors; it was a survivor telling his story on national television and apparent murderers telling theirs in a documentary. Despite the solid evidence, no one was following up -- not the Pulitzer-winning journalists I contacted through friends, nor the filmmaker who captured Herrington, nor the national radio host Rahim spoke to of mass murder, nor the coroners who had some very interesting corpses on their hands, nor the New Orleans police who talked to Herrington in the hospital and whom he approached afterward, no one until the Nation provided A.C. the resources to do it right.
The worst crimes in disasters are usually committed by institutional authorities and those aligned with them. They fear an unpoliced public and believe private property so sacred a right that they're willing to kill to defend it, or in this case, just on the off-chance that a passerby might fancy their television set. This is the conclusion of the sociologists who have been studying disasters for decades, many of whom I've spoken with in the past few years. And this is the pattern of disasters, like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, in which the public behaved well but the military -- which essentially became a hostile occupying army -- terrorized the public in the name of preventing looting, shot many innocents, and may have killed scores overall. (In some outrageous incidents, New Orleans police evidently gunned down unarmed African-Americans themselves in the wake of Katrina.)
Looting is a term that should be abolished. In major disasters, when the monetary economy evaporates and needs are desperate, taking water, or food, or diapers, or medicine from shuttered stores -- which is what much of the so-called looting consisted of -- is largely legitimate requisitioning. The rest is theft, and in the days after Katrina there was also some theft -- by the New Orleans police, for example, who cleaned out a Cadillac dealership and helped themselves to goods in a WalMart, as well as by stranded citizens who figured they'd been abandoned or imprisoned in the ruined city and that all rules were gone.
Looting is an incendiary, inexact word, suggesting mayhem far beyond the acquisition of commodities. One Algiers Point vigilante claimed to fear that they would come for his elderly mother, but most of the flooded-out evacuees were looking for food, water, information about family members, and a way out of the wreckage. Another vigilante told A.C. that they could tell the three black men they blasted with a shotgun were looters because they were carrying sports apparel with them. That the victims might be evacuating with their own clothing did not occur to these homicidal fabulists, nor did they seem to think that shooting men who might possibly have taken something of modest value from elsewhere was an overreaction.
The vigilantes of Algiers Point seem to have killed, by their own admissions -- or boasts -- several African-American men. A.C. was able to get first-hand accounts of eleven shootings, and my initial sources had told me they heard admissions of about seven killings. One militia member shot a black man dead at close range as he attempted to break into a corner store, another member told A.C., the only time one of the shootings seems tied in any way to a potential property crime. The police and coroner produced almost no record of what went on there and then.
The vigilantes of Algiers Point were classic white-flight people. They had spent decades regarding the central city with terror and resentment, and so saw Katrina not as a tragedy that happened to the neighbors, but as a moment when the dangers confined to the other side of the river were swarming across it. Because the riot was already in their heads, they became the crazed murderers they claimed to fear -- though fear may not have been the driving motive for all of them.
A.C. was told that they turned themselves into an informal militia after one of their number was brutally carjacked by a black man, but another source told me that her relatives were gleeful about the chance to fight a race war against African-Americans and encouraged to do so by law enforcement. Like Rahim, she calls what went on "hunting" and spoke of a photograph she was sent of a vigilante posing like a big-game hunter next to a black murder victim. Which suggests the catastrophe of Katrina was just cover for getting away with a Klan-style killing spree.
"Look Away, Look Away, Look Away, Dixie Land"
Why couldn't anyone in the mainstream see the story of vigilantes on a rampage? Why didn't anyone want to see it?
Racism is the obvious answer, the racism that made the killings invisible to some and made others think they weren't an issue. The racism and corruption of the New Orleans law enforcement system is old news, and it's not surprising, though it is shameful, that stories like Herrington's didn't even trigger police reports, let alone investigations. But the whole world was watching New Orleans and, at one point or another, every major news outlet in the country had someone on the ground there. Maybe a deeper racism made these crimes unimaginable, even when enough evidence was there, even when the skull was laughing out loud. Certainly the murderers have, until now, lived with a strange sense of impunity that has made them cocky and candid about what went down in Algiers Point in the wake of the storm.
These were the people who broke down in the aftermath of Katrina, who reverted to savagery, not the crowds stranded in the Superdome, or the Convention Center, or on the elevated freeways, or in schools and other inadequate refuges from the flooding that overtook New Orleans. It's important to keep in mind, despite the false stories the media spread in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, and this grim, true story three years later, that the response to Katrina was mostly about altruism, courage, and generosity. That was the case whether you are considering people like Herrington, who stayed behind to take care of others, or the "Cajun Navy" of white guys with boats, who headed into the city immediately after the storm to rescue the stranded, or the many who took in evacuees or otherwise tried to help, or what, by now, must be hundreds of thousands of volunteers who arrived in the months and years after the storm to cook and build and organize to bring New Orleans back.
It's also important to keep in mind that, while the small minority who became a freelance militia murdered casually, the catastrophic loss of life in Louisiana -- about 1,500 people, disproportionately elderly -- was largely due to decisions made by another small minority: elected and appointed government authorities, from Mayor Ray Nagin, who hesitated to call a mandatory evacuation and never provided the resources for the most destitute and frail to evacuate, to FEMA director Michael Brown, who posed and dithered while tens of thousands suffered, to New Orleans's police chief and Louisiana's governor, both of whom chose to regard a drowned and overheated city as a law-enforcement crisis rather than a humanitarian relief challenge.
In many, many cases, supplies and rescuers were kept out of the city, hospitals were prevented from evacuating the dying, and the ability of civil society to do what the government would not -- save the stranded, succor the sick -- was hindered at every turn. But this story we know. Now, it's time to know the other half, the grinning skull, the version that turns everything we were told in the first days upside-down and inside out, the story of murders in plain sight almost no one wanted to see. Look at them. Now, may some measure of justice be done.
http://www.alternet.org/katrina/114545/the_homicides_you_didn%27t_hear_about_in_hurricane_katrina/?page=entire
Their criminal acts were no secret but they never became part of the official story. The media demonized the city's black population for crimes that turned out not to have happened, and the retractions were, as always, too little too late. At one point FEMA sent a refrigerated 18-wheeler to pick up what a colonel in the National Guard expected to be 200 bodies in New Orleans's Superdome, only to find six, including four who died naturally and a suicide. Meanwhile, the media never paid attention to the real rampage that took place openly across the river, even though there were corpses lying in unflooded streets and testimony everywhere you looked -- or I looked, anyway.
The widely reported violent crimes in the Superdome turned out to be little more than hysterical rumor, but they painted African-Americans as out-of-control savages at a critical moment. The result was to shift institutional responses from disaster relief to law enforcement, a decision that resulted in further deaths among the thirsty, hot, stranded multitude. Governor Kathleen Blanco announced, "I have one message for these hoodlums: These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so if necessary, and I expect they will." So would the white vigilantes, and though their exact body count remains unknown, at least 11 black men were apparently shot, some fatally.
The parish of Orleans includes both the city of New Orleans on one side of the Mississippi and a community on the other side called Algiers that can be reached via a bridge called the Crescent City Connection. That bridge comes down in another town called Gretna, and the sheriff of Gretna and a lot of his henchmen turned many of the stranded in New Orleans back at gunpoint from that bridge, trapping them in the squalor of a destroyed city, another heinous crime that was largely overlooked. On the Gretna/Algiers side of the river, the levees held and nothing flooded. Next door to Gretna, Algiers is a mostly black community, but one corner of it down by the river, Algiers Point, is a white enclave, a neighborhood of pretty little, well-kept-up wooden houses -- and of killers.
What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? By my second visit to New Orleans almost a year and a half after the hurricane that devastated the place, I had more than enough information to know that something very wrong had happened in Algiers Point. In a report on New Orleans for TomDispatch in March of 2007, I wrote:
"During my trips to the still half-ruined city, some inhabitants have told me that they, in turn, were told by white vigilantes of widespread murders of black men in the chaos of the storm and flood. These accounts suggest that, someday, an intrepid investigative journalist may stand on its head the media hysteria of the time (later quietly recanted) about African-American violence and menace in flooded New Orleans."
I found that journalist in my friend A.C. Thompson who, backed by the Nation magazine, launched an investigation just concluded this week, 21 months after I first approached him. His courageous and meticulous investigation tracked down victims and persecutors, clarified what happened on those days of mayhem in Algiers Point, sued to gain access to, and sifted through, the coroner's records that mentioned some bulllet-riddled bodies, and dug up some previously unreported police crimes. His stunning report in the Nation, "Katrina's Hidden Race War," suggests that there's still more there to find.
A lot of the pieces of the Algiers Point killing spree were out in the open. Several weeks after Hurricane Katrina, community organizer and former Black Panther Malik Rahim had told Amy Goodman on her nationally syndicated program Democracy Now!, "During the aftermath, directly after the flooding, in New Orleans hunting season began on young African American men. In Algiers, I believe, approximately around 18 African American males were killed. No one really know[s] what's the overall count."
Rahim's count seems high, but the real toll remains unknown. The young medics who staffed the Common Ground Clinic, co-founded by Rahim, also knew that there had been a spate of killings: like everyone else who came in, the killers and their associates had felt the need to tell their stories, as well as get their tetanus shots or blood pressure meds. The medics, whom Rahim credits with defusing a potential race war in Algiers by reaching out to everyone equally, told me they'd heard murder confessions from the vigilantes and their cohorts (but respected their confidentiality by not passing along names or identifying information).
CNN and the Times Picayune, New Orleans's paper of record, both published a photograph of a member of the "self-appointed posse" in Algiers Point napping next to five shotguns, an AK-47 assault rifle, and a pistol, but they never got around to asking if the band of white guys had actually used the guns. As it happened, not only did they use the guns, but they confessed -- or boasted -- on videotape to their shootings and killings, tape that ended up in a little-seen documentary called "Welcome to New Orleans." I passed along what I knew to A.C., but a lot of it hadn't been a secret, just easily visible dots no one was connecting. None was more visible than the attempted murder of Donnell Herrington.
What It's Like to Be Murdered
One balmy September afternoon, under the shade of the broad-armed oaks of New Orleans's City Park, Donnell Herrington told us what it's like to be murdered -- for the men who attacked him shortly after Hurricane Katrina drowned his city intended to kill him and nearly succeeded. Donnell is a soft-spoken guy now in his early thirties and he worries the question of why they shot him, of what they thought they were doing. On what possible grounds could you blast away with a shotgun at a guy walking down a public street who hadn't even seen you, let alone threatened you?
He knows they consider themselves justified, and he wrestles with the question, but each time it comes up he finally concludes it was a hate crime. It was because he was black.
"I didn't approach these guys in any way possible for them to react the way they did. It wasn't a reaction at all it. It was just a hate crime, because a reaction is when somebody try to bring bodily harm on you and you react in self-defense. When the guy actually stepped out and pulled the trigger, I didn't see him, I didn't even know what happened to me. The only thing I can remember is feeling a lot of pressure hit my neck and it literally knocked me off my feet."
The close-up shotgun blast had punctured his jugular vein and he had only a little time to get help before he bled to death. He told his friend and cousin to run, found his way to his feet, only to be shot in the back yet again. He fell down again, got up again -- a former athlete, Herrington is many kinds of strong -- and stumbled away, one hand to the blood spurting from his neck.
Herrington had been desperate to get out of the ravaged city where, two days earlier, he'd seen his grandparents' neighborhood flood, rescued them and a lot of neighbors by boat, left them to be evacuated from the elevated Interstate, walked across the Crescent City Connection to his home in Algiers on the other side of the Mississippi, found its roof crushed by a huge bough, and decided there was nothing left to do but get out himself. On September 1st, day three of the catastrophe, he had set out with his teenage cousin and a friend for the ferry landing in Algiers Point. There, they had been told, you could actually be evacuated when so many people were stranded in the heat and chaos of a drowned city. Not long into that flight they ran into the white men with guns.
On the one-year anniversary of the catastrophe, millions of Americans watched Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts on HBO. Most of the film is made up of people talking straight into the camera about their Katrina, and one of the talkers is a sweet-voiced, brown-skinned guy: Herrington. He tells the camera:
"We walking down the street, which was in Algiers and I'm talking to my cousin. I had a bottle of water in my hand, and I'm talking to him, we're talking about different things and before you know it, I heard a boom, a blast. My body lifted up in the air, and I hit the ground, and, you know, my cousin was standing over me and he was howling and he hollering my name and asking if I was okay, and he was hysterical at this time, and looking at the blood on my shirt and my arms.
"And I looked up and saw a white guy with a white t-shirt in his hands coming toward me, so I managed to get up by the grace of God. I managed to get up, and they had some debris in the street, and so when I turned away from the guy he turned toward me with the shotgun, looked like he was trying to reload. So as I turned away from him I jumped over the debris and I heard another bang. Some of the buckshots hit me in the back, and I hit the ground again."
In the film, Herrington pulls up his shirt and shows his torso, peppered with lumps from the buckshot. And then he gestures at the long, twisting, raised scar wound around his neck like a centipede or a snake: "And this is the incision from the surgery from the buckshots that penetrated my neck and hit my jugular vein."
A victim of a horrific attempted murder told his story in a national television special and, though I'm sure lots of viewers wanted to do something, those who really could have done something did nothing. Lee's film cut away to then governor Kathleen Blanco vowing more law and order against the supposedly rampaging African-American menace of New Orleans.
Herrington is a kind man; one of the first things he said to us was, "I asked God to forgive those guys that done this thing to me. It was kind of hard to even bring myself to that but I know it's the right thing to do, but at the same time those guys have gotta answer for their actions."
He was a Brink's truck driver at the time of Katrina, a man with a clean record routinely in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and he attempted to evacuate Katrina with a pocketful of his own cash -- which only underscores how preposterous it was for his prospective murderers to see him as a thief. He nearly bled to death before a local couple drove him to the nearest medical center, where his throat was sewn up. More than three years later, it's clear that the trauma is still with him.
His friend and cousin were chased down, threatened with pistols, called "nigger," but finally allowed to go, traumatized by their own brush with men who made it clear they'd be happy to kill them.
"Like Pheasant Season in South Dakota"
In 1892, Homer Plessy, a light-skinned black man, was arrested in New Orleans for riding a streetcar then reserved for whites only. A precursor of Rosa Parks, he pursued a landmark lawsuit that went all the way to a racist Supreme Court, which issued the infamous "separate but equal" doctrine that stood until the civil rights battles of the postwar era.
That same year Charles Allan Gilbert drew a picture of a beautiful woman sitting in darkness at her dressing table, her head with mounded hair and its reflection arranged so that if you look at the celebrated drawing another way you see a grinning skull whose teeth are the rows of bottles of perfume and powder. For a year or more -- Katrina was one of the biggest news stories of the past century -- journalists swarmed like ants over New Orleans. The national and international news media, left, right, and center, big and small, print and radio, television and film, saw the beautiful woman and saw as well bogeymen in the shadows of their own lurid imaginations. And they declined to see the big white skull laughing at them.
That death grin can, however, be caught on the faces of the tipsy white people who confess on camera to murdering their neighbors. Separate but equal may have been abolished in the courts, but these people were gunning down African-American men just for walking in the streets in the aftermath of the storm -- segregation by bullet -- gunning them down on the grounds that no black man had the right to be there and any of them was a menace.
On one of my visits to New Orleans after Katrina, I met with Rahim, a solid older man with long dreadlocks who told me in his rumbling voice of the bodies he'd seen in the streets of Algiers and gave me a copy of the documentary Welcome to New Orleans. It showed one of the corpses rotting, in plain sight, under a sheet of corrugated sheet metal. It also showed white vigilantes whooping it up and talking openly about what they had done. At a barbeque shortly after Katrina struck, a stocky white guy with receding white hair and a Key West t-shirt chortles, "I never thought eleven months ago I'd be walking down the streets of New Orleans with two .38s and a shotgun over my shoulder. It was great. It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it."
A tough woman with short hair and chubby arms adds, "That's not a pheasant and we're not in South Dakota. What's wrong with this picture?"
The man responds happily, "Seemed like it at the time."
A second white-haired guy explains, "You had to do what you had to do, if you had to shoot somebody, you had to shoot. It's that simple."
A third says simply, "We shot ‘em."
I vowed to Rahim then that I would get the murders investigated. After all, it wasn't just rumors; it was a survivor telling his story on national television and apparent murderers telling theirs in a documentary. Despite the solid evidence, no one was following up -- not the Pulitzer-winning journalists I contacted through friends, nor the filmmaker who captured Herrington, nor the national radio host Rahim spoke to of mass murder, nor the coroners who had some very interesting corpses on their hands, nor the New Orleans police who talked to Herrington in the hospital and whom he approached afterward, no one until the Nation provided A.C. the resources to do it right.
The worst crimes in disasters are usually committed by institutional authorities and those aligned with them. They fear an unpoliced public and believe private property so sacred a right that they're willing to kill to defend it, or in this case, just on the off-chance that a passerby might fancy their television set. This is the conclusion of the sociologists who have been studying disasters for decades, many of whom I've spoken with in the past few years. And this is the pattern of disasters, like the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, in which the public behaved well but the military -- which essentially became a hostile occupying army -- terrorized the public in the name of preventing looting, shot many innocents, and may have killed scores overall. (In some outrageous incidents, New Orleans police evidently gunned down unarmed African-Americans themselves in the wake of Katrina.)
Looting is a term that should be abolished. In major disasters, when the monetary economy evaporates and needs are desperate, taking water, or food, or diapers, or medicine from shuttered stores -- which is what much of the so-called looting consisted of -- is largely legitimate requisitioning. The rest is theft, and in the days after Katrina there was also some theft -- by the New Orleans police, for example, who cleaned out a Cadillac dealership and helped themselves to goods in a WalMart, as well as by stranded citizens who figured they'd been abandoned or imprisoned in the ruined city and that all rules were gone.
Looting is an incendiary, inexact word, suggesting mayhem far beyond the acquisition of commodities. One Algiers Point vigilante claimed to fear that they would come for his elderly mother, but most of the flooded-out evacuees were looking for food, water, information about family members, and a way out of the wreckage. Another vigilante told A.C. that they could tell the three black men they blasted with a shotgun were looters because they were carrying sports apparel with them. That the victims might be evacuating with their own clothing did not occur to these homicidal fabulists, nor did they seem to think that shooting men who might possibly have taken something of modest value from elsewhere was an overreaction.
The vigilantes of Algiers Point seem to have killed, by their own admissions -- or boasts -- several African-American men. A.C. was able to get first-hand accounts of eleven shootings, and my initial sources had told me they heard admissions of about seven killings. One militia member shot a black man dead at close range as he attempted to break into a corner store, another member told A.C., the only time one of the shootings seems tied in any way to a potential property crime. The police and coroner produced almost no record of what went on there and then.
The vigilantes of Algiers Point were classic white-flight people. They had spent decades regarding the central city with terror and resentment, and so saw Katrina not as a tragedy that happened to the neighbors, but as a moment when the dangers confined to the other side of the river were swarming across it. Because the riot was already in their heads, they became the crazed murderers they claimed to fear -- though fear may not have been the driving motive for all of them.
A.C. was told that they turned themselves into an informal militia after one of their number was brutally carjacked by a black man, but another source told me that her relatives were gleeful about the chance to fight a race war against African-Americans and encouraged to do so by law enforcement. Like Rahim, she calls what went on "hunting" and spoke of a photograph she was sent of a vigilante posing like a big-game hunter next to a black murder victim. Which suggests the catastrophe of Katrina was just cover for getting away with a Klan-style killing spree.
"Look Away, Look Away, Look Away, Dixie Land"
Why couldn't anyone in the mainstream see the story of vigilantes on a rampage? Why didn't anyone want to see it?
Racism is the obvious answer, the racism that made the killings invisible to some and made others think they weren't an issue. The racism and corruption of the New Orleans law enforcement system is old news, and it's not surprising, though it is shameful, that stories like Herrington's didn't even trigger police reports, let alone investigations. But the whole world was watching New Orleans and, at one point or another, every major news outlet in the country had someone on the ground there. Maybe a deeper racism made these crimes unimaginable, even when enough evidence was there, even when the skull was laughing out loud. Certainly the murderers have, until now, lived with a strange sense of impunity that has made them cocky and candid about what went down in Algiers Point in the wake of the storm.
These were the people who broke down in the aftermath of Katrina, who reverted to savagery, not the crowds stranded in the Superdome, or the Convention Center, or on the elevated freeways, or in schools and other inadequate refuges from the flooding that overtook New Orleans. It's important to keep in mind, despite the false stories the media spread in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, and this grim, true story three years later, that the response to Katrina was mostly about altruism, courage, and generosity. That was the case whether you are considering people like Herrington, who stayed behind to take care of others, or the "Cajun Navy" of white guys with boats, who headed into the city immediately after the storm to rescue the stranded, or the many who took in evacuees or otherwise tried to help, or what, by now, must be hundreds of thousands of volunteers who arrived in the months and years after the storm to cook and build and organize to bring New Orleans back.
It's also important to keep in mind that, while the small minority who became a freelance militia murdered casually, the catastrophic loss of life in Louisiana -- about 1,500 people, disproportionately elderly -- was largely due to decisions made by another small minority: elected and appointed government authorities, from Mayor Ray Nagin, who hesitated to call a mandatory evacuation and never provided the resources for the most destitute and frail to evacuate, to FEMA director Michael Brown, who posed and dithered while tens of thousands suffered, to New Orleans's police chief and Louisiana's governor, both of whom chose to regard a drowned and overheated city as a law-enforcement crisis rather than a humanitarian relief challenge.
In many, many cases, supplies and rescuers were kept out of the city, hospitals were prevented from evacuating the dying, and the ability of civil society to do what the government would not -- save the stranded, succor the sick -- was hindered at every turn. But this story we know. Now, it's time to know the other half, the grinning skull, the version that turns everything we were told in the first days upside-down and inside out, the story of murders in plain sight almost no one wanted to see. Look at them. Now, may some measure of justice be done.
http://www.alternet.org/katrina/114545/the_homicides_you_didn%27t_hear_about_in_hurricane_katrina/?page=entire
Black/Brown Coalition Fueled Big Union Win
When workers at Smithfield Foods' North Carolina packing house voted in the union on Dec. 11, 2008 the longest, most bitter anti-union campaign in modern labor history went down to defeat. Sixteen years ago workers there began organizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers. The successful union strategy relied on organizing resistance to immigration-related firings, and uniting a diverse workforce of African Americans, Puerto Ricans and immigrant Mexicans.
In 1994 and 1997 the union was defeated in elections later thrown out by federal authorities, because the company created an atmosphere of violence and terror in the plant. In 1997 one worker was beaten after the vote count. Company guards were given the ability to arrest workers, who were held in a detention center in the plant that they called the company jail. Many workers were fired for union activity. And in recent years, immigration raids swept the plant in the middle of the union drive, adding to the climate of intimidation.
It was no surprise, then, that the pro-union vote (2,041 to 1,879) set off celebrations in house trailers and ramshackle homes in Tar Heel, Red Springs, Santa Paula, and all the tiny working-class towns spread from Fayetteville down to the South Carolina border. Union membership in North Carolina is the lowest in the country. But Smithfield workers were not just celebrating a vote count. Their victory was the culmination of an organizing strategy that accomplished what many have said U.S. unions can no longer do -- organize a multi-racial membership in huge, privately-owned factories.
Five thousand people work in the world's largest pork slaughterhouse, where they kill and cut apart 32,000 hogs every day. Efforts by the modern U.S. labor movement to organize factories the size of the Tar Heel plant have not been very successful for the last two decades. In fact, private-sector unionization has fallen below 8 percent of the workforce. The giant electronics plants of California’s Silicon Valley have an anti-union strategy so intimidating that unions haven't even tried to organize them for years. Japanese car manufacturers that built assembly plants in the South have successfully kept workers from organizing, in spite of efforts by the auto union.
The price for labor's failure to organize Japanese plants became clear in December's Congressional debate over the auto bailout proposal. Southern Republican Senators demanded that the United Auto Workers agree to gut its union contracts to match the non-union wages and conditions at Nissan, Honda and BMW. The presence of the non-union plants threatens to destroy the union, and the same dilemma exists in industry after industry.
Unions are pinning their hopes on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). This proposal would require a company like Smithfield to negotiate a union contract if a majority of workers sign union cards. It would avoid the kind of union election that took place at Smithfield in 1997, where workers voted in an atmosphere of violence and terror. EFCA would also put penalties on employers who fire workers for union activity.
At Smithfield, the company rehired in 2006 workers it had fired for union activity in 1994. But it was only obliged to pay the fired workers for their lost wages, and even was allowed to deduct any money they'd earned during the decade that their cases wound through the legal system. EFCA would substantially restrict the kind of anti-union campaign Smithfield mounted for 15 years.
But EFCA by itself will not build strong unions, which workers can use not just to win elections but to make substantial changes in the workplace. The union at Smithfield wasn't created on election day. Workers had already organized it in the battles that preceded the vote. They did much more than sign union cards. They had to lose their fear, and show open support for the demands they'd chosen themselves -- like lower line speed to reduce injuries, rehiring workers fired because of their immigration status, or giving workers a paid holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.
Packinghouse laborers then had to learn to make management listen to those demands by circulating petitions and forming delegations to demand changes.
In 2007 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and company managers cooperated in two immigration raids that produced a climate of terror that organizer Eduardo Peña likened to "a nuclear bomb." Immigrant workers left the plant in droves. The Smithfield raids were two of many in recent years, used to punish workers when they've tried to improve conditions.
The plant's U.S. citizen-workers felt the effects along with the immigrants. For months afterwards, the organizing campaign was effectively dead, with many leaders deported and union activity halted by fear. It was only when African-American workers who'd fought to win the King holiday became the core of a new generation of leaders that the struggle to build the union could continue.
If black and Latino immigrant workers hadn't found a way to work together, the union drive would have ended with the raids. And if the company and ICE had succeeded in convincing half the plant that the other half really had no right to work because they lacked legal immigration status, workers would have been unwilling and unable to defend each other.
In the end, both groups found a common interest in better wages and working conditions. But they also had to agree to defend the right of each worker to her or his job, and treat any unfair firing as an attack on the union -- whether the victim was black, Mexican, or Puerto Rican.
The Smithfield firings were made possible by employer sanctions, the federal law that prohibits employers from hiring undocumented workers. The law makes working a crime for people without papers, and became the pretext for firing immigrant union leaders. That's why the AFL-CIO voted in 1999 to call for the law's repeal. The Smithfield raids show that changing immigration law is as necessary for organizing unions as passing reforms like EFCA.
Outside the Tar Heel plant, the union grew roots in working-class communities, and became part of workers' lives. They took English classes in its office and marched in demonstrations for civil rights. That coalition turned the company's anti-labor actions against it, exposing its record in the place where Smithfield was most vulnerable – in the eyes of its consumers. When store customers discovered the conditions in the plant and the company's history of fighting its workers' efforts to organize, many lost their appetite for Smithfield meats.
The election result was the product of a long-term organizing effort. With a similar commitment, other unions can do the same, no matter how big the plant or how anti-union the employer. But it takes a strategy based on building a real union in the workplace and community. That's what workers did at Smithfield.
And with changes in labor and immigration law, workers won't have to fight a 15-year war to accomplish the same goal.
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/114298/black_brown_coalition_fueled_big_union_win/?page=entire
In 1994 and 1997 the union was defeated in elections later thrown out by federal authorities, because the company created an atmosphere of violence and terror in the plant. In 1997 one worker was beaten after the vote count. Company guards were given the ability to arrest workers, who were held in a detention center in the plant that they called the company jail. Many workers were fired for union activity. And in recent years, immigration raids swept the plant in the middle of the union drive, adding to the climate of intimidation.
It was no surprise, then, that the pro-union vote (2,041 to 1,879) set off celebrations in house trailers and ramshackle homes in Tar Heel, Red Springs, Santa Paula, and all the tiny working-class towns spread from Fayetteville down to the South Carolina border. Union membership in North Carolina is the lowest in the country. But Smithfield workers were not just celebrating a vote count. Their victory was the culmination of an organizing strategy that accomplished what many have said U.S. unions can no longer do -- organize a multi-racial membership in huge, privately-owned factories.
Five thousand people work in the world's largest pork slaughterhouse, where they kill and cut apart 32,000 hogs every day. Efforts by the modern U.S. labor movement to organize factories the size of the Tar Heel plant have not been very successful for the last two decades. In fact, private-sector unionization has fallen below 8 percent of the workforce. The giant electronics plants of California’s Silicon Valley have an anti-union strategy so intimidating that unions haven't even tried to organize them for years. Japanese car manufacturers that built assembly plants in the South have successfully kept workers from organizing, in spite of efforts by the auto union.
The price for labor's failure to organize Japanese plants became clear in December's Congressional debate over the auto bailout proposal. Southern Republican Senators demanded that the United Auto Workers agree to gut its union contracts to match the non-union wages and conditions at Nissan, Honda and BMW. The presence of the non-union plants threatens to destroy the union, and the same dilemma exists in industry after industry.
Unions are pinning their hopes on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). This proposal would require a company like Smithfield to negotiate a union contract if a majority of workers sign union cards. It would avoid the kind of union election that took place at Smithfield in 1997, where workers voted in an atmosphere of violence and terror. EFCA would also put penalties on employers who fire workers for union activity.
At Smithfield, the company rehired in 2006 workers it had fired for union activity in 1994. But it was only obliged to pay the fired workers for their lost wages, and even was allowed to deduct any money they'd earned during the decade that their cases wound through the legal system. EFCA would substantially restrict the kind of anti-union campaign Smithfield mounted for 15 years.
But EFCA by itself will not build strong unions, which workers can use not just to win elections but to make substantial changes in the workplace. The union at Smithfield wasn't created on election day. Workers had already organized it in the battles that preceded the vote. They did much more than sign union cards. They had to lose their fear, and show open support for the demands they'd chosen themselves -- like lower line speed to reduce injuries, rehiring workers fired because of their immigration status, or giving workers a paid holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.
Packinghouse laborers then had to learn to make management listen to those demands by circulating petitions and forming delegations to demand changes.
In 2007 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and company managers cooperated in two immigration raids that produced a climate of terror that organizer Eduardo Peña likened to "a nuclear bomb." Immigrant workers left the plant in droves. The Smithfield raids were two of many in recent years, used to punish workers when they've tried to improve conditions.
The plant's U.S. citizen-workers felt the effects along with the immigrants. For months afterwards, the organizing campaign was effectively dead, with many leaders deported and union activity halted by fear. It was only when African-American workers who'd fought to win the King holiday became the core of a new generation of leaders that the struggle to build the union could continue.
If black and Latino immigrant workers hadn't found a way to work together, the union drive would have ended with the raids. And if the company and ICE had succeeded in convincing half the plant that the other half really had no right to work because they lacked legal immigration status, workers would have been unwilling and unable to defend each other.
In the end, both groups found a common interest in better wages and working conditions. But they also had to agree to defend the right of each worker to her or his job, and treat any unfair firing as an attack on the union -- whether the victim was black, Mexican, or Puerto Rican.
The Smithfield firings were made possible by employer sanctions, the federal law that prohibits employers from hiring undocumented workers. The law makes working a crime for people without papers, and became the pretext for firing immigrant union leaders. That's why the AFL-CIO voted in 1999 to call for the law's repeal. The Smithfield raids show that changing immigration law is as necessary for organizing unions as passing reforms like EFCA.
Outside the Tar Heel plant, the union grew roots in working-class communities, and became part of workers' lives. They took English classes in its office and marched in demonstrations for civil rights. That coalition turned the company's anti-labor actions against it, exposing its record in the place where Smithfield was most vulnerable – in the eyes of its consumers. When store customers discovered the conditions in the plant and the company's history of fighting its workers' efforts to organize, many lost their appetite for Smithfield meats.
The election result was the product of a long-term organizing effort. With a similar commitment, other unions can do the same, no matter how big the plant or how anti-union the employer. But it takes a strategy based on building a real union in the workplace and community. That's what workers did at Smithfield.
And with changes in labor and immigration law, workers won't have to fight a 15-year war to accomplish the same goal.
http://www.alternet.org/immigration/114298/black_brown_coalition_fueled_big_union_win/?page=entire
What We Can Learn from the Social Struggle in South America
People in the U.S. seeking ways to confront the economic crisis could follow the lead of South American social movements. From Argentina to Venezuela, many movements have won victories against the same systems of corporate greed and political corruption that produce economic strife across the hemisphere. These movements also have experience holding politicians' feet to the flames once they are elected, a tactic that will be essential once Barack Obama takes office.
A recent connection between activist strategies in the north and south emerged earlier this month when over 200 laid-off workers from Chicago's Republic Windows and Doors factory occupied their plant, demanding the severance and vacation pay owed to them.
The occupation in Chicago echoed the worker occupations of factories and businesses in Argentina during that country's 2001 economic crisis, and is now looking even more like the movement in Argentina: the Republic workers are currently seeking ways to re-open their factory and potentially operate it as a worker-run cooperative.
"This is a place that should've stayed open," Republic union organizer Leah Fried told reporter Meg White. The factory could be very successful in the long run as it produces heating-efficient windows and doors. "The goal is to reopen the plant and create employment," Fried said.
In Argentina, hundreds of worker coops were formed after the occupations under the slogan, "Occupy, Resist, Produce." During the occupation of the factory in Chicago, workers and supporters chanted, "You got bailed out, we got sold out," referring to the fact that Bank of America -- a lender to Republic – received $25 billion of the $700 billion government bailout, only to cut off credit to Republic, leading to the closure of the factory. But after six days of the occupation, Bank of America and other lenders relented, agreeing to pay the workers approximately $2 million in severance and vacation pay plus health insurance.
A foundation created by the Republic workers called the "Window of Opportunity Fund," made up in part from the donations received from around the U.S. and the world to support the workers during the occupation, will be utilized to seek ways to restart the factory.
The similarities between the workers' actions in Chicago and Argentina show that labor strategies to fight economic crises can be applied as internationally as the free market policies that contributed to these problems in the first place.
One international gathering that embodies the philosophy of cross-border organizing and solidarity is the annual World Social Forum which began in Brazil in 2001 to encourage collaboration and education between social movements from across the world. In 2004 I interviewed Michael Hardt, the co-author, with Antonio Negri, of Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, about the role the World Social Forums and similar encounters can have in globalizing social justice.
"I was at two of the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre, Brazil," Hardt explained. "At one of them, there was this sort of counter forum going on at the youth camp where there were groups from various places. I was at one meeting where we had Italians, piqueteros from Argentina and a group from a movement in South Africa that is against these electricity and water cut offs in Durban and Johannesburg. It was great having three of them talk to each other, because even in a straight forward, tactical way they are experiencing the same thing, the same kinds of police repression and the same kinds of struggles. And it was not really learning from each other, but recognizing a kind of commonality that then creates new relationships… It is that kind of thing that has to happen on a much larger scale."
As the economic crisis in the U.S. worsens, and the need to pressure the Obama administration looms, movements in the U.S. could seek such commonality with movements in South America. Of the countless examples of recent social movement victories in South America, here are a few that could suggest potential blueprints for social change in the U.S..
In the early 1990s, participatory budgeting was implemented by the Workers' Party in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This process, still in operation, involves thousands of residents gathering to decide how government funding should be used for city projects and development. Popular participation in this process prevents corruption, and expands the conception of democracy beyond simply voting every few years for a different political representative.
During the Cochabamba Water War in Bolivia in 2000, residents of that city expanded the meaning of democracy even further when they united against the Bechtel Corporation's privatization of their water. The privatization put everything from communally-built wells and rain cisterns under the corporation's thumb, and led to exorbitant rates few could afford. In response, people from across economic lines joined together in protests and road blockades and were successful in kicking the company out of town and putting the water back into public hands.
In 2003, when former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada tried to export Bolivian gas to the U.S. for a low price, working class residents of the city of El Alto rose up against the president and his plan. Citizens took shifts at street barricades, distributing food, spreading messages via bicycle and working together with meager resources to fight the police and military, eventually toppling the repressive Sanchez de Lozada government. That revolt paved the way to the election of indigenous president Evo Morales, and the partial nationalization of the gas industry. In his office in El Alto, Bolivian sociologist Pablo Mamani spoke of this rebellion, "During the uprising, the state was broken, it stopped existing, it died in El Alto."
Other Bolivian social movements point to potential strategies for social change as well. Much of South America's fertile land is in the hands of a few rich land owners. Landless Farmer Movements (MSTs) across region regularly occupy unused land to work it for their survival. The Bolivian Landless Movement has been instrumental in pressuring the Morales government to implement much-needed land reform. Silvestre Saisari, a bearded leader in Bolivia's MST, explained his organization's relationship to the government in this way: "Our democracy depends on us as social movements."
One story from the neighborhood of El 23 de Enero in Caracas, Venezuela is emblematic of the progressive changes taking place in that country. Juan Contreras, a radio producer and resident of the neighborhood, talked about how he and his compañeros took over the local police station -- for decades an outpost for crackdowns on leftist organizing -- and transformed it into a community radio station and cultural center.
"This place was a symbol of repression," Contreras explained to me in the studio, which still smelled like fresh paint from the recent conversion. "So we took that symbol and made it into a new one." In words that reflect the spirit of the worker occupations in Chicago and Argentina, and the need for a broad grassroots response to the U.S. crisis, he continued, "It is evidence of the revolution made by us, the citizens. We can't hang around waiting for the revolution to be made for us; we have to make the changes."
http://www.alternet.org/audits/114799/what_we_can_learn_from_social_struggle_in_south_america/
A recent connection between activist strategies in the north and south emerged earlier this month when over 200 laid-off workers from Chicago's Republic Windows and Doors factory occupied their plant, demanding the severance and vacation pay owed to them.
The occupation in Chicago echoed the worker occupations of factories and businesses in Argentina during that country's 2001 economic crisis, and is now looking even more like the movement in Argentina: the Republic workers are currently seeking ways to re-open their factory and potentially operate it as a worker-run cooperative.
"This is a place that should've stayed open," Republic union organizer Leah Fried told reporter Meg White. The factory could be very successful in the long run as it produces heating-efficient windows and doors. "The goal is to reopen the plant and create employment," Fried said.
In Argentina, hundreds of worker coops were formed after the occupations under the slogan, "Occupy, Resist, Produce." During the occupation of the factory in Chicago, workers and supporters chanted, "You got bailed out, we got sold out," referring to the fact that Bank of America -- a lender to Republic – received $25 billion of the $700 billion government bailout, only to cut off credit to Republic, leading to the closure of the factory. But after six days of the occupation, Bank of America and other lenders relented, agreeing to pay the workers approximately $2 million in severance and vacation pay plus health insurance.
A foundation created by the Republic workers called the "Window of Opportunity Fund," made up in part from the donations received from around the U.S. and the world to support the workers during the occupation, will be utilized to seek ways to restart the factory.
The similarities between the workers' actions in Chicago and Argentina show that labor strategies to fight economic crises can be applied as internationally as the free market policies that contributed to these problems in the first place.
One international gathering that embodies the philosophy of cross-border organizing and solidarity is the annual World Social Forum which began in Brazil in 2001 to encourage collaboration and education between social movements from across the world. In 2004 I interviewed Michael Hardt, the co-author, with Antonio Negri, of Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, about the role the World Social Forums and similar encounters can have in globalizing social justice.
"I was at two of the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre, Brazil," Hardt explained. "At one of them, there was this sort of counter forum going on at the youth camp where there were groups from various places. I was at one meeting where we had Italians, piqueteros from Argentina and a group from a movement in South Africa that is against these electricity and water cut offs in Durban and Johannesburg. It was great having three of them talk to each other, because even in a straight forward, tactical way they are experiencing the same thing, the same kinds of police repression and the same kinds of struggles. And it was not really learning from each other, but recognizing a kind of commonality that then creates new relationships… It is that kind of thing that has to happen on a much larger scale."
As the economic crisis in the U.S. worsens, and the need to pressure the Obama administration looms, movements in the U.S. could seek such commonality with movements in South America. Of the countless examples of recent social movement victories in South America, here are a few that could suggest potential blueprints for social change in the U.S..
In the early 1990s, participatory budgeting was implemented by the Workers' Party in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This process, still in operation, involves thousands of residents gathering to decide how government funding should be used for city projects and development. Popular participation in this process prevents corruption, and expands the conception of democracy beyond simply voting every few years for a different political representative.
During the Cochabamba Water War in Bolivia in 2000, residents of that city expanded the meaning of democracy even further when they united against the Bechtel Corporation's privatization of their water. The privatization put everything from communally-built wells and rain cisterns under the corporation's thumb, and led to exorbitant rates few could afford. In response, people from across economic lines joined together in protests and road blockades and were successful in kicking the company out of town and putting the water back into public hands.
In 2003, when former president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada tried to export Bolivian gas to the U.S. for a low price, working class residents of the city of El Alto rose up against the president and his plan. Citizens took shifts at street barricades, distributing food, spreading messages via bicycle and working together with meager resources to fight the police and military, eventually toppling the repressive Sanchez de Lozada government. That revolt paved the way to the election of indigenous president Evo Morales, and the partial nationalization of the gas industry. In his office in El Alto, Bolivian sociologist Pablo Mamani spoke of this rebellion, "During the uprising, the state was broken, it stopped existing, it died in El Alto."
Other Bolivian social movements point to potential strategies for social change as well. Much of South America's fertile land is in the hands of a few rich land owners. Landless Farmer Movements (MSTs) across region regularly occupy unused land to work it for their survival. The Bolivian Landless Movement has been instrumental in pressuring the Morales government to implement much-needed land reform. Silvestre Saisari, a bearded leader in Bolivia's MST, explained his organization's relationship to the government in this way: "Our democracy depends on us as social movements."
One story from the neighborhood of El 23 de Enero in Caracas, Venezuela is emblematic of the progressive changes taking place in that country. Juan Contreras, a radio producer and resident of the neighborhood, talked about how he and his compañeros took over the local police station -- for decades an outpost for crackdowns on leftist organizing -- and transformed it into a community radio station and cultural center.
"This place was a symbol of repression," Contreras explained to me in the studio, which still smelled like fresh paint from the recent conversion. "So we took that symbol and made it into a new one." In words that reflect the spirit of the worker occupations in Chicago and Argentina, and the need for a broad grassroots response to the U.S. crisis, he continued, "It is evidence of the revolution made by us, the citizens. We can't hang around waiting for the revolution to be made for us; we have to make the changes."
http://www.alternet.org/audits/114799/what_we_can_learn_from_social_struggle_in_south_america/
Presidente Chavez revela plan de magnicidio contra su Morales
El presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez reveló este domingo que el presidente boliviano Evo Morales le informó, mediante una conversación telefónica, que en su país se ha descubierto un nuevo plan de magnicidio.
Chávez hizo el anuncio desde su acostumbrado programa de radio y televisión ¡Aló Presidente!, donde afirmó que el Presidente Morales "me dijo que descubrieron un plan de magnicidio contra él. No voy a abundar en detalles porque ya será el Gobierno de Bolivia el que los facilite",
Chávez indicó que la llamada de Morales tuvo por objeto agradecer al Gobierno y al pueblo venezolanos la ayuda prestada para que Bolivia fuese declarada este sábado territorio libre de analfabetismo.
El gobernante venezolano explicó que el plan contra Morales es consecuencia de los "éxitos" del Gobierno boliviano y de la imposibilidad de la oposición de lograr el poder por medios democráticos.
"En la medida en que la oposición boliviana no puede ganar por medio de elecciones, ni por el referendo, ni por el golpe de Estado, buscan el magnicidio. ¡Cuidate!, le dije", relató el gobernante venezolano.
"Le dije a Evo que eso es por los éxitos de su Gobierno, Bolivia derrotó un golpe que estaba en marcha, la extrema derecha fascista quedó muy mal con la masacre de los indígenas y un ex gobernador está preso".
"Ahora Evo se encamina a otra victoria con la nueva constitución, y por eso surge el plan para matarlo, porque no tienen otra opción", planteó el Presidente venezolano.
Chávez dijo que frente a una eventualidad como la denunciada por Morales, él ha optado por vivir como "un preso", que trabaja e inmediatamente regresa al Palacio de Miraflores, sede de Gobierno.
"En la medida en que la oposición se va dando cuenta de que no puede ir contra el proceso ni con elecciones, ni con golpes de Estado, entonces planifica magnicidios", enfatizó Chávez .
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081222/internacionales/61994/
Chávez hizo el anuncio desde su acostumbrado programa de radio y televisión ¡Aló Presidente!, donde afirmó que el Presidente Morales "me dijo que descubrieron un plan de magnicidio contra él. No voy a abundar en detalles porque ya será el Gobierno de Bolivia el que los facilite",
Chávez indicó que la llamada de Morales tuvo por objeto agradecer al Gobierno y al pueblo venezolanos la ayuda prestada para que Bolivia fuese declarada este sábado territorio libre de analfabetismo.
El gobernante venezolano explicó que el plan contra Morales es consecuencia de los "éxitos" del Gobierno boliviano y de la imposibilidad de la oposición de lograr el poder por medios democráticos.
"En la medida en que la oposición boliviana no puede ganar por medio de elecciones, ni por el referendo, ni por el golpe de Estado, buscan el magnicidio. ¡Cuidate!, le dije", relató el gobernante venezolano.
"Le dije a Evo que eso es por los éxitos de su Gobierno, Bolivia derrotó un golpe que estaba en marcha, la extrema derecha fascista quedó muy mal con la masacre de los indígenas y un ex gobernador está preso".
"Ahora Evo se encamina a otra victoria con la nueva constitución, y por eso surge el plan para matarlo, porque no tienen otra opción", planteó el Presidente venezolano.
Chávez dijo que frente a una eventualidad como la denunciada por Morales, él ha optado por vivir como "un preso", que trabaja e inmediatamente regresa al Palacio de Miraflores, sede de Gobierno.
"En la medida en que la oposición se va dando cuenta de que no puede ir contra el proceso ni con elecciones, ni con golpes de Estado, entonces planifica magnicidios", enfatizó Chávez .
http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20081222/internacionales/61994/
Bolivia declares literacy success
A 30-month campaign to teach thousands of poor Bolivians to read and write has made the country "illiteracy free", President Evo Morales has declared.
The "Yes I can" campaign, designed by Cuba and paid for by Venezuela, has helped more than 800,000 Bolivians.
Under Unesco standards, a country can be declared free of illiteracy if 96% of its population over the age of 15 can read and write.
In 2001, a census found nearly 14% of Bolivians were illiterate.
Cuba was declared illiteracy-free in 1961 and Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, reached the standard in 2005.
It is the first time Bolivia has become "illiteracy free".
But political opponents of President Morales, who came to power in January 2006 as the country's first indigenous leader, dismissed the announcement as a political propaganda.
Many in the oil and gas-rich east say Mr Morales is a puppet of Venezuela's President Chavez, who is trying to impose his brand of indigenous socialism on them.
The country, which correspondents say is deeply divided between rich and poor, between indigenous and non-indigenous, between east and west, will vote on a new constitution in January that Mr Morales says will empower the indigenous majority.
Spread the word
Thousands of poor people of Andean origin turned out in the central city of Cochabamba to hear the president's announcement.
"I would like to thank, in the name of the Bolivian people, of the national government, and personally, every Bolivian, Cuban and Venezuelan brother who made the effort to declare Bolivia, the third country in Latin America free of illiteracy," Mr Morales said.
Most of the literacy classes were in Spanish, but there were also successes teaching people to read and write Aymara and Quechua.
Classes were open to people of all ages.
Freddy Mollo, 43, said that "not knowing how to read and write was like having a disability, it was like being blind".
Daria Calpa, 62, of Potosi, said: "I couldn't even draw a line. I had never been to school. Now I have learned to read and write in Quechua and I feel like a real person. Before I didn't."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7794293.stm
The "Yes I can" campaign, designed by Cuba and paid for by Venezuela, has helped more than 800,000 Bolivians.
Under Unesco standards, a country can be declared free of illiteracy if 96% of its population over the age of 15 can read and write.
In 2001, a census found nearly 14% of Bolivians were illiterate.
Cuba was declared illiteracy-free in 1961 and Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, reached the standard in 2005.
It is the first time Bolivia has become "illiteracy free".
But political opponents of President Morales, who came to power in January 2006 as the country's first indigenous leader, dismissed the announcement as a political propaganda.
Many in the oil and gas-rich east say Mr Morales is a puppet of Venezuela's President Chavez, who is trying to impose his brand of indigenous socialism on them.
The country, which correspondents say is deeply divided between rich and poor, between indigenous and non-indigenous, between east and west, will vote on a new constitution in January that Mr Morales says will empower the indigenous majority.
Spread the word
Thousands of poor people of Andean origin turned out in the central city of Cochabamba to hear the president's announcement.
"I would like to thank, in the name of the Bolivian people, of the national government, and personally, every Bolivian, Cuban and Venezuelan brother who made the effort to declare Bolivia, the third country in Latin America free of illiteracy," Mr Morales said.
Most of the literacy classes were in Spanish, but there were also successes teaching people to read and write Aymara and Quechua.
Classes were open to people of all ages.
Freddy Mollo, 43, said that "not knowing how to read and write was like having a disability, it was like being blind".
Daria Calpa, 62, of Potosi, said: "I couldn't even draw a line. I had never been to school. Now I have learned to read and write in Quechua and I feel like a real person. Before I didn't."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7794293.stm
Brazil's farms see quiet revolution
On the family farm run by Joao Baggio Neto in the southern Brazilian state of Parana, you get some sense of the determination and competitive spirit that motivates Brazil's farmers.
Blessed with what often seems like endless amounts of land and a good climate, Brazil has grown in recent years to become an agricultural superpower.
Joao Baggio says the most important improvement in his part of the country in the past decade has been the increase in productivity.
"We came from a situation where we produced 5,000 kg of corn by hectare, while today it is 10 to 12,000 kg per hectare of corn," he says. "So we have doubled productivity in 10 years."
So it is no surprise that the government launched its latest agricultural plan in the state of Parana, famous for its grain-producing potential.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told farmers that concerns about food prices and shortages around the world offered them an exceptional opportunity.
"We have more Chinese people eating, we have more Indians eating, we have more Africans eating and we have a lot more Brazilians eating.
"All this, which is treated by the press as if it were a crisis and is sold to the world as if it were a crisis," he said.
"Without any arrogance or self-importance, we Brazilians need to confront what for others is a crisis, as an extraordinary opportunity to truly transform ourselves into the granary of the world, as many people have long predicted."
Huge potential
Joao Baggio is not a fan of government policy, but he does not disagree with the president's aspiration.
"Without any doubt, there is potential to produce if the government doesn't get in the way," he says.
"We are not even going to say help - if they don't get in the way a lot, year by year the producer is generally increasing production.
"If you talk about central Brazil, there are still a lot of areas to be exploited, so I don't have much doubt."
In fact, of the 350 million hectares of land available for agriculture across Brazil, analysts say only 70 to 80 million hectares are being used, and the potential for growth is enormous.
But there is also a consensus that the country has to deal with some key weaknesses, such as poor infrastructure - mainly in its ports and roads - and a high level of dependence on expensive imported fertilisers.
But for Professor Marcos Fava Neves of the University of Sao Paulo, the president is right to think on a grand scale, based on the country's recent achievements.
"What we have seen in the last 10 years is a quiet revolution happening in our country, mostly in agribusiness production," he says.
"We came from being an irrelevant international market participant to be one of the world's major food and biofuel suppliers today.
"So if you look at what happened to our agriculture in terms of beef exports, poultry exports - again we were irrelevant, and now we have the position of largest exporter in the world in major food crops."
Booming harvests
It is no surprise, then, that there was a confident opening for the annual gathering of Brazil's major agricultural producers in Sao Paulo.
The video presentation boasted of a record harvest - while the prediction for this year is that external sales of agricultural products could amount to $74bn, an increase of 26% on last year.
Outside the conference hall, the main point of discussion was a new report suggesting climate change could cause a significant drop in Brazil's food exports - perhaps as much as a quarter for soya over the next 12 years.
However, Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes was adamant this concern over climate change could be addressed.
"The impact will start to emerge with more intensity within 20 to 30 years, and until then, we should be preparing for this," he said.
"The perspective for the moment for future harvests is highly productive. So Brazil has the potential to continue growing around 5% to 6% a year in terms of increasing harvests. We are going to effectively maintain this rhythm in the coming years without any problem."
Brazil's major producers also insist they can achieve growth in a sustainable way, even though activities such as cattle-ranching have been widely blamed for deforestation in the Amazon.
Investment drive
Watching the conference proceedings was Paulo Adario, campaigns director for Greenpeace, who says Brazil must meet its ambitions while protecting the environment at the same time.
"Greenpeace is not against food," he told the BBC. "We are not against expanding the Brazilian capacity for producing food, and helping Brazil to develop this country.
"You can increase the food capacity through technology, through better practices, through occupying areas that are already degraded, to investing in better crops.
"But you can not increase your productivity at the expense of the environment, because the global market doesn't accept this price any more."
Prof Neves says even by staying away from sensitive areas such as the Amazon, a huge amount can be achieved.
"If we have the right investments coming on for logistics, for infrastructure and for technology and land development, the country can multiply by two-and-a-half, three times the actual production in the next 10 years."
Prof Neves sees Brazil as being well placed to help bring worldwide food inflation down by increasing its productivity.
"Of course we have increases that could come from Europe, from the USA, from Canada, from Argentina," he says.
"But where you see the best conditions in order to give the world society the best rate of return in terms of investment is in Brazil.
"If you talk about the next five years, we are now producing 130 million tonnes of grains. We can easily go to 250 million tonnes.
"We are now producing seven million hectares of sugar cane. This can go to 20 million hectares, helping to supply ethanol to the world. We are only exporting $400m of fruits; we can go to $3bn of fruits."
Rising demand
It is not only in Brazil that Prof Neves sees potential.
"Next up is Africa. I think for Africa, this could be a redemption, in terms of inclusion of people in production systems and making Africa produce food and biofuels for the world."
Not so long ago, the Brazilian government's major social policy was the battle to ensure Zero Hunger among its own people. Yet now, its president says his country can be the food basket of the world.
A major family income support programme reaching 11 million of Brazil's least well off families undoubtedly helped, but recent research suggests rising prices are affecting some important basic food products.
In one city in the north-east of the country, Brazil's poorest region, an officially-monitored basic selection of food items has gone up by 50% over the last 12 months.
And given the scale of demand across the world, critics point out it is too much to expect Brazil to become its granary.
"World demand for food today is one billion tonnes, and Brazil produces 150 million tonnes," columnist Ariosto Teixeira of the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper told Brazil's TV Globo.
"Brazil produces 150 million tonnes and the plan launched by the government for more food will produce six million more, which is going to leave one million for export. How is Brazil going to be the granary of food production?" he asked.
Despite this, Brazil undoubtedly exudes the sense of a country growing in confidence over its place as an agricultural producer, even allowing for the latest failure to reach agreement in world trade talks.
And along with other developing countries, the government remains optimistic that when it comes to the world's concerns over food, Brazil can make a difference.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7567778.stm
Blessed with what often seems like endless amounts of land and a good climate, Brazil has grown in recent years to become an agricultural superpower.
Joao Baggio says the most important improvement in his part of the country in the past decade has been the increase in productivity.
"We came from a situation where we produced 5,000 kg of corn by hectare, while today it is 10 to 12,000 kg per hectare of corn," he says. "So we have doubled productivity in 10 years."
So it is no surprise that the government launched its latest agricultural plan in the state of Parana, famous for its grain-producing potential.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told farmers that concerns about food prices and shortages around the world offered them an exceptional opportunity.
"We have more Chinese people eating, we have more Indians eating, we have more Africans eating and we have a lot more Brazilians eating.
"All this, which is treated by the press as if it were a crisis and is sold to the world as if it were a crisis," he said.
"Without any arrogance or self-importance, we Brazilians need to confront what for others is a crisis, as an extraordinary opportunity to truly transform ourselves into the granary of the world, as many people have long predicted."
Huge potential
Joao Baggio is not a fan of government policy, but he does not disagree with the president's aspiration.
"Without any doubt, there is potential to produce if the government doesn't get in the way," he says.
"We are not even going to say help - if they don't get in the way a lot, year by year the producer is generally increasing production.
"If you talk about central Brazil, there are still a lot of areas to be exploited, so I don't have much doubt."
In fact, of the 350 million hectares of land available for agriculture across Brazil, analysts say only 70 to 80 million hectares are being used, and the potential for growth is enormous.
But there is also a consensus that the country has to deal with some key weaknesses, such as poor infrastructure - mainly in its ports and roads - and a high level of dependence on expensive imported fertilisers.
But for Professor Marcos Fava Neves of the University of Sao Paulo, the president is right to think on a grand scale, based on the country's recent achievements.
"What we have seen in the last 10 years is a quiet revolution happening in our country, mostly in agribusiness production," he says.
"We came from being an irrelevant international market participant to be one of the world's major food and biofuel suppliers today.
"So if you look at what happened to our agriculture in terms of beef exports, poultry exports - again we were irrelevant, and now we have the position of largest exporter in the world in major food crops."
Booming harvests
It is no surprise, then, that there was a confident opening for the annual gathering of Brazil's major agricultural producers in Sao Paulo.
The video presentation boasted of a record harvest - while the prediction for this year is that external sales of agricultural products could amount to $74bn, an increase of 26% on last year.
Outside the conference hall, the main point of discussion was a new report suggesting climate change could cause a significant drop in Brazil's food exports - perhaps as much as a quarter for soya over the next 12 years.
However, Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes was adamant this concern over climate change could be addressed.
"The impact will start to emerge with more intensity within 20 to 30 years, and until then, we should be preparing for this," he said.
"The perspective for the moment for future harvests is highly productive. So Brazil has the potential to continue growing around 5% to 6% a year in terms of increasing harvests. We are going to effectively maintain this rhythm in the coming years without any problem."
Brazil's major producers also insist they can achieve growth in a sustainable way, even though activities such as cattle-ranching have been widely blamed for deforestation in the Amazon.
Investment drive
Watching the conference proceedings was Paulo Adario, campaigns director for Greenpeace, who says Brazil must meet its ambitions while protecting the environment at the same time.
"Greenpeace is not against food," he told the BBC. "We are not against expanding the Brazilian capacity for producing food, and helping Brazil to develop this country.
"You can increase the food capacity through technology, through better practices, through occupying areas that are already degraded, to investing in better crops.
"But you can not increase your productivity at the expense of the environment, because the global market doesn't accept this price any more."
Prof Neves says even by staying away from sensitive areas such as the Amazon, a huge amount can be achieved.
"If we have the right investments coming on for logistics, for infrastructure and for technology and land development, the country can multiply by two-and-a-half, three times the actual production in the next 10 years."
Prof Neves sees Brazil as being well placed to help bring worldwide food inflation down by increasing its productivity.
"Of course we have increases that could come from Europe, from the USA, from Canada, from Argentina," he says.
"But where you see the best conditions in order to give the world society the best rate of return in terms of investment is in Brazil.
"If you talk about the next five years, we are now producing 130 million tonnes of grains. We can easily go to 250 million tonnes.
"We are now producing seven million hectares of sugar cane. This can go to 20 million hectares, helping to supply ethanol to the world. We are only exporting $400m of fruits; we can go to $3bn of fruits."
Rising demand
It is not only in Brazil that Prof Neves sees potential.
"Next up is Africa. I think for Africa, this could be a redemption, in terms of inclusion of people in production systems and making Africa produce food and biofuels for the world."
Not so long ago, the Brazilian government's major social policy was the battle to ensure Zero Hunger among its own people. Yet now, its president says his country can be the food basket of the world.
A major family income support programme reaching 11 million of Brazil's least well off families undoubtedly helped, but recent research suggests rising prices are affecting some important basic food products.
In one city in the north-east of the country, Brazil's poorest region, an officially-monitored basic selection of food items has gone up by 50% over the last 12 months.
And given the scale of demand across the world, critics point out it is too much to expect Brazil to become its granary.
"World demand for food today is one billion tonnes, and Brazil produces 150 million tonnes," columnist Ariosto Teixeira of the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper told Brazil's TV Globo.
"Brazil produces 150 million tonnes and the plan launched by the government for more food will produce six million more, which is going to leave one million for export. How is Brazil going to be the granary of food production?" he asked.
Despite this, Brazil undoubtedly exudes the sense of a country growing in confidence over its place as an agricultural producer, even allowing for the latest failure to reach agreement in world trade talks.
And along with other developing countries, the government remains optimistic that when it comes to the world's concerns over food, Brazil can make a difference.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7567778.stm
The life and legacy of Chico Mendesz
Twenty years ago Amazon environmentalist Chico Mendes was shot dead in front of his home in the remote Brazilian state of Acre. He had campaigned for years to stop the slashing and burning of the rainforest.
Brazil specialist Sue Branford, who met him, reflects on his life and legacy:
I will never forget the death of Chico Mendes. A friend in Brazil phoned early in the morning to tell me that he had been shot dead outside his home.
I felt not surprise but anger and sadness that the Amazon forest, already in 1988 under serious threat from loggers and farmers, had lost such a powerful ally.
I had met Chico some two years earlier, on a visit to his home town of Xapuri in the state of Acre in the west of the Amazon basin.
Sitting on a bench in the town's square, he told me that his parents, like hundreds of others, had been brought from the dry, impoverished north-east of Brazil to Acre so they could collect rubber for the Allies during the World War II.
Social justice
When the war ended, demand for natural rubber plummeted but few of the families could afford the journey back home of some 2,000 miles (3,200 km).
Most had stayed in Acre, scratching out a living in the forest. Chico himself had been collecting rubber since he was 11 years old and he had only learned to read and write when he was 20.
When I met him Chico was already a legend, at least in the Amazon basin.
In the 1970s, cattle ranchers had begun to move in from southern Brazil and were slashing and burning the forest.
Faced with eviction and loss of livelihood, the rubber-tappers had organised themselves.
Gathering in large groups, they had confronted the teams of men sent in to fell the forest and had persuaded them to lay down their chain-saws.
As mad about football as other Brazilians, the rubber-tappers had dubbed this tactic the "empate", the equaliser.
By the time I met Chico, they had already used empates to prevent hundreds of acres of land from being cut down.
I had expected someone tough and militant but Chico was surprisingly modest and unpretentious. Yet it was also clear that he was passionate in his political beliefs, driven by a burning sense of social justice.
Indeed, he was an active trade unionist and had helped set up the Amazon branch of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the left-wing political party created in the early 1980s by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (now the country's president) and other urban trade unionists.
Chico had a profound love of the tropical forest. As we walked at a fast pace through the trees to visit a community of rubber-tappers, he was constantly pointing out with delight parrots and other birds, though generally all I managed to see was a flash of colour.
Powerful alliance
Politically astute, he had realised that he could form a potentially powerful alliance with environmental activists throughout the world.
When I met him, Chico was already receiving death threats from cattle ranchers.
Whenever we were in a bar, he sat with his back to the wall so he could keep a constant eye on people coming in.
He complained of stomach ulcers and said that his wife wanted him to pull out of the struggle because of his responsibility to her and their two small children.
Yet this was one sacrifice that Chico could not make. He carried on with his work and the threats increased.
Chico realised that he was going to be killed. Shortly before his assassination, he wrote a letter in which he said:
"My dream is to see this entire forest conserved because we know it can guarantee the future of all the people who live in it...If a messenger from heaven came down and guaranteed that my death would help to strengthen the struggle, it could even be worth it. But experience teaches us the opposite... I want to live."
But it was not to be. In the event, Chico's murder caused a furore at home and abroad.
Partly as a result, 20 reserves were eventually created for rubber-tappers and other local communities.
Yet the relentless destruction of virgin Amazon forest has continued.
One cannot help but share Chico's belief that perhaps he would have achieved more alive than dead.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7795175.stm
Brazil specialist Sue Branford, who met him, reflects on his life and legacy:
I will never forget the death of Chico Mendes. A friend in Brazil phoned early in the morning to tell me that he had been shot dead outside his home.
I felt not surprise but anger and sadness that the Amazon forest, already in 1988 under serious threat from loggers and farmers, had lost such a powerful ally.
I had met Chico some two years earlier, on a visit to his home town of Xapuri in the state of Acre in the west of the Amazon basin.
Sitting on a bench in the town's square, he told me that his parents, like hundreds of others, had been brought from the dry, impoverished north-east of Brazil to Acre so they could collect rubber for the Allies during the World War II.
Social justice
When the war ended, demand for natural rubber plummeted but few of the families could afford the journey back home of some 2,000 miles (3,200 km).
Most had stayed in Acre, scratching out a living in the forest. Chico himself had been collecting rubber since he was 11 years old and he had only learned to read and write when he was 20.
When I met him Chico was already a legend, at least in the Amazon basin.
In the 1970s, cattle ranchers had begun to move in from southern Brazil and were slashing and burning the forest.
Faced with eviction and loss of livelihood, the rubber-tappers had organised themselves.
Gathering in large groups, they had confronted the teams of men sent in to fell the forest and had persuaded them to lay down their chain-saws.
As mad about football as other Brazilians, the rubber-tappers had dubbed this tactic the "empate", the equaliser.
By the time I met Chico, they had already used empates to prevent hundreds of acres of land from being cut down.
I had expected someone tough and militant but Chico was surprisingly modest and unpretentious. Yet it was also clear that he was passionate in his political beliefs, driven by a burning sense of social justice.
Indeed, he was an active trade unionist and had helped set up the Amazon branch of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the left-wing political party created in the early 1980s by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (now the country's president) and other urban trade unionists.
Chico had a profound love of the tropical forest. As we walked at a fast pace through the trees to visit a community of rubber-tappers, he was constantly pointing out with delight parrots and other birds, though generally all I managed to see was a flash of colour.
Powerful alliance
Politically astute, he had realised that he could form a potentially powerful alliance with environmental activists throughout the world.
When I met him, Chico was already receiving death threats from cattle ranchers.
Whenever we were in a bar, he sat with his back to the wall so he could keep a constant eye on people coming in.
He complained of stomach ulcers and said that his wife wanted him to pull out of the struggle because of his responsibility to her and their two small children.
Yet this was one sacrifice that Chico could not make. He carried on with his work and the threats increased.
Chico realised that he was going to be killed. Shortly before his assassination, he wrote a letter in which he said:
"My dream is to see this entire forest conserved because we know it can guarantee the future of all the people who live in it...If a messenger from heaven came down and guaranteed that my death would help to strengthen the struggle, it could even be worth it. But experience teaches us the opposite... I want to live."
But it was not to be. In the event, Chico's murder caused a furore at home and abroad.
Partly as a result, 20 reserves were eventually created for rubber-tappers and other local communities.
Yet the relentless destruction of virgin Amazon forest has continued.
One cannot help but share Chico's belief that perhaps he would have achieved more alive than dead.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7795175.stm
Ganar o morir en el rio Bravo
La semana pasada, el río Bravo devolvió otros dos cadáveres. Nadie sabe cuántos días los había arrastrado. Aparecieron enganchados a dos piedras cercanas entre sí, en una zona conocida como El resbaladero. Un pescador los encontró. Hinchados, con la carne reblandecida y blanquecina. Amarrada con un mecate a la cintura de uno de los cuerpos iba una bolsa de plástico, dentro de la cual había varias otras. Era hondureño. Eso decía en su pasaporte. Era migrante. Se ahogó en el intento.
Aquellos cadáveres salieron a flote en el sitio exacto donde ya han salido muchos más. Justo atrás del albergue para migrantes de Nuevo Laredo, esta ciudad fronteriza con Laredo, Estados Unidos. Cuando se habla de cruzar el río Bravo se habla de Nuevo Laredo. Si bien el cauce ocupa 1,455 kilómetros de los 3,100 que dividen a los dos países, esta es la ciudad referente para los migrantes. Aquí sí se enfrentan al río. El cauce es profundo y alberga fuertes corrientes y remolinos de agua verdosa. Aquí, el río ya funciona como frontera natural de los dos países. Funciona como obstáculo letal: muchos de los que no lo logran aparecen hinchados, reblandecidos y blanquecinos, como el hondureño de la semana pasada.
En Nuevo Laredo, la diferencia entre saber y no saber es para un migrante un factor contundente. La diferencia entre amarrarse una bolsa y lanzarse al río a patalear en cualquier lugar o conocer, ubicar una zona de pocos remolinos y poca profundidad, es lo que decidirá si el viajero va a seguir su rumbo dentro de Estados Unidos o se va a convertir en una masa de carne deformada por el efecto del agua.
Son las 5 de la tarde de este día de noviembre, y los migrantes están volviendo al albergue instalado por los sacerdotes scalabrinianos. Vienen de trabajar rellenando camiones con arena, levantando muros o vendiendo periódicos en las calles. Las reglas del albergue solo les permiten estar en la casa de 4 de la tarde a 7 de la mañana.
Hay unos 60 migrantes en el albergue. La mayoría son hondureños, seguidos en número por los guatemaltecos y salvadoreños. El muchacho negro y esquelético que está sentado lejos de los demás, con sus hombros inclinados hacia adelante y la cabeza oculta entre sus piernas recogidas, es el único dominicano en la casa. Entre burlas, los demás me recomiendan hablar con él. “Ayer lo intentó a lo pendejo, y casi se lo lleva el río”, me dice, entre risas, un hondureño joven.
El dominicano se llama Roberto, tiene 32 años, tres hijos (de ocho, cinco y tres años) y una mujer que, a dieta estricta de frijoles, lo esperan a él o a los dólares en su isla. Era busero antes de, hace un mes, salir de su tierra. Ganaba 4 mil pesos dominicanos, unos 114 dólares al mes. Es, de todos los que están aquí, el que más ha viajado para llegar. Pidió prestado a varios amigos y pagó un vuelo de República Dominicana hasta ciudad de Guatemala, donde no necesitaba visa para entrar. A partir de ahí, empezó a migrar como todos los centroamericanos: en autobuses de tercera, a pie y en el lomo de varios trenes, hasta llegar a Nuevo Laredo, luego de haber sido asaltado seis veces, cinco de ellas por algún policía mexicano. Su viaje casi termina ayer, cuando el sol se estaba ocultando y él escupía bocanadas de agua y luchaba con la fuerte corriente del río hasta tocar de nuevo la ribera mexicana.
Lo paradójico es que Roberto está aquí porque la opción de migrar a Puerto Rico -su país vecino y considerablemente más próspero- la descartó porque no quería ahogarse cruzando los 128 kilómetros del Canal de la Mona, en el Océano Atlántico, que separa a ambas naciones.
“¿Te fracasó tu plan de ayer?”, pregunto. Y él se suelta a contar su simple método de cruce: “Qué diablos, vale, si yo no tenía ningún plan. Yo es solo que ya llevo tres días aquí, y ya estoy harto de vender periódicos de 7 de la mañana a 3 de la tarde para ganarme seis pesos (menos de un dólar) al día, y ayer me lancé. Me bajé con otras 13 personas por la parte de atrás del albergue, y llegamos al río. Eran como las 5 de la tarde. Ahí estuvimos viendo para el otro lado un rato. Hasta que yo me puse a rezar y me tiré a nadar. Los demás se vinieron atrás. Pues nada, vale, que la corriente me arrastró varios metros, pero logré llegar con esfuerzo al otro lado, pero cuando veo para arriba, uno de esos policías enciende su luz, y nos ilumina, y yo me echo para atrás, pero ya iba cansado, y casi me ahogo en ese regreso. Sentía que no iba a poder llegar. Había tragado mucha agua”.
Rezar y nadar. Esa fue su estrategia para intentar entrar a Estados Unidos.
-¿Y qué le pasó a los demás que venían contigo?
-Unos tres siguieron para adelante. Los habrán agarrado. A los demás la corriente los arrastró más que a mí, y no los volví a encontrar en la orilla ni han vuelto para aquí.
No sería raro que en los próximos días el río Bravo devuelva algunos cadáveres más.
Según el Centro de Estudios Fronterizos y de Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, ubicado en Reynosa, donde aún corre el río Bravo, cada año, al menos desde 2005, han aparecido más de 70 cadáveres de migrantes en diferentes puntos del camino líquido. Los voceros del centro reconocen que estas son cifras parciales, y no creen que se acerquen a las reales. El río tiene muchos kilómetros de ribera deshabitada donde ocultar un cuerpo entre la maleza.
El albergue de Nuevo Laredo tiene, como todos los de México, ese punto en el que parece un campo de guerra tras una escaramuza. Un mexicano joven camina por el salón vendado de la cabeza y con el ojo morado. Es un deportado de Estados Unidos, que al intentar ir a cobrar el dinero que sus familiares le depositaron para que se regresara a su natal estado, fue atacado por los asaltantes que le quitaron los 17 mil pesos (mil 600 dólares) y le reventaron la cabeza con el mango de una pistola.
Otro salvadoreño de 44 años, se aplica ungüento para aliviar el dolor muscular causado por la torcedura de tobillo que se provocó hoy a orillas del río. A la par de él, Julio César fuma un cigarro, y dos de sus hijos corretean alrededor.
La primera vez que encontramos a Julio César fue en Ixtepec, al sur de México, a 2 mil kilómetros de Nuevo Laredo. Fue hace un mes y medio, y pensamos que no lograría ni llegar cerca de la frontera con Estados Unidos. Él, albañil de 25 años, no viaja solo. Le acompañan Jéssica, su esposa de 22 años, y sus tres hijos: Jarvin Josué (7), César Fernando (5) y Jazmín Joana. Jazmín es la más pequeña de los tres. Tiene dos meses de haber nacido. Nació en el camino, mientras migraban, y casi muere en la primera aventura de su vida, cuando se le zafó de los brazos a su madre que viajaba en el techo de un tren de carga, como polizón, para avanzar en el camino, como hace la mayoría de indocumentados centroamericanos en este país. Por suerte, Julio logró atraparla. Y ahora, aquí están todos juntos.
Cuenta Julio César que desde Ixtepec empezaron a viajar exclusivamente en autobuses. “No iba a arriesgar otra vez a la niña”, explica. Tomaron unos 15 autobuses para llegar a Nuevo Laredo. Hicieron varios tramos cortos, para evitar carreteras principales y posibles retenes. Es un hombre previsor. Hace mapas, anota rutas, pregunta y sabe esperar.
Nos asegura que está estudiando “la pasada del río”. Él ya lo hizo dos veces por Nuevo Laredo. En 2005, lo intentó solo, como el dominicano, y la patrulla fronteriza lo detuvo al solo pisar suelo estadounidense y lo deportó. En medio de la maleza de la ribera de Estados Unidos, los patrulleros de aquel país se esconden para que los migrantes que intentan cruzar el río no aborten su intento. Prefieren atraparlos de una vez antes que evitar que se lancen, porque saben que si no, de todas formas lo intentarán luego, quizá por otro sitio donde no haya un patrullero esperando o una cámara que los detecte.
En su segundo intento, Julio César pagó mil 200 dólares, con la ayuda de un amigo en Estados Unidos, y un coyote le enseñó una ruta alejada del centro urbano de la ciudad, por donde pasó y logró trabajar un año en aquel país, hasta ser deportado tras una redada en la obra que estaba construyendo en San Antonio, Texas.
Ahora, no tiene dinero para un coyote, y va a hacerlo por su cuenta, con sus recuerdos. “Quiero ir a inspeccionar la zona por la que él me llevó en 2005, y ver cómo está la corriente y si hay vigilancia, porque en enero me voy a tirar yo solo, para juntar dinero y mandar a traer a Jéssica y los niños”, explica su plan.
Esa es la diferencia de Nuevo Laredo. Es lo que diferencia a Julio de Roberto, el esquelético dominicano. Uno se lanzó en la parte más crecida del río, porque era la más cercana al albergue. Se lanzó en la parte más vigilada y casi muere en el intento. Julio lo hará hasta enero, luego de ir a estudiar un punto del río que, explica, “suele estar menos crecido”. La diferencia entre saber y no saber.
Antes de irnos, acordamos con Julio que le acompañaremos en su expedición, y decidimos hacerlo pasado mañana.
Afuera del albergue, hay siete vendedores de droga que también funcionan como enganchadores de El Abuelo. Se comunican con radio, hablan con los agentes de las patrullas de la policía municipal que pasan por la zona, y se despiden de ellos chocando palmas y puños.
El Abuelo es el señor de los polleros que suben por la ruta cercana al Atlántico, la que recorre los estados de Tabasco, Veracruz y llega a Reynosa y Nuevo Laredo. La ruta de los secuestros. Aquella donde los coyotes que no pagan se arriesgan a que Los Zetas, el grupo de narcotraficantes más sanguinario de México, según los Estados Unidos, les quiten a su grupo de indocumentados, para pedir rescate por ellos: entre 300 y 500 dólares por cabeza. Secuestros exprés les llaman. El Abuelo y sus empleados no corren con ese problema. Él, desde Nuevo Laredo, ciudad base de varios líderes zetas, acuerda el paso de sus coyotes pagando 10 mil dólares mensuales. Si es un grupo de El Abuelo, no tendrá problema para llegar hasta esta ciudad bordeada por el río Bravo.
Hace un mes y medio, un coyote guatemalteco que había sido secuestrado por Los Zetas me explicó en el sur de México cómo funcionaba la red de El Abuelo: “Paga 10 mil dólares al mes, y tiene que avisar cuando tú vas que trabajas para él, y cuántos pollos llevas. Entonces, no te hacen nada Los Zetas. Si no reporta que tú vas a pasar por ahí, y que eres de los de él, Los Zetas te secuestran a la gente que llevas, y te pegan una gran madriza a ti. Así es desde el año pasado. Han matado a varios polleros”. A él, lo torturaron apagándole cigarros en la espalda.
Un nuevo día ha pasado, y la rutina del albergue sigue igual. Dan las 4 de la tarde, y los migrantes empiezan a amontonarse en la acera de enfrente de la casa de acogida.
Ahí está Armando, un salvadoreño de 25 años. Es uno de esos viciosos del camino a los que cuesta entender. Él lleva desde los 12 años vagando por México, llegando hasta su frontera con Estados Unidos, trabajando en lo que sale, y regresando a su país cada vez que se le antoja. Su motivación la resume con una palabra: “vacil”. Dice que se aburre de estar en un solo lugar, y que de niño subió intentando cruzar y poco a poco se fue enganchando de esta vida errante. Se envició de un camino de asaltos, violaciones, mutilaciones y secuestros. A esta clase de migrantes cuesta entenderlos. Hay varias historias similares. Conocen a la perfección los riesgos del trayecto, pero hay algo en su perversión que les resulta atractivo, y que los hace adictos a sus dosis de adrenalina.
Asegura que hace apenas un mes vio un cadáver mientras inspeccionaba el río. “Flotaba allá por el parque Viveros -explica-, y eso les pasa porque la mayoría de los que se avientan aquí lo hacen a la loca, sin buscarle mucho. Y una de dos, o solo a caer enfrente de los de la migra van o se ahogan. Yo sé por dónde cruzarme, dónde no es tan hondo, pero no quiero ir a Estados Unidos”. La letal diferencia entre saber y no saber.
En los 14 kilómetros de río que dividen a Nuevo Laredo de Laredo, su ciudad estadounidense espejo, hay dos lanchas que patrullan el río, tres cámaras de vigilancia de largo alcance y con capacidad infrarroja para la noche, unos 20 reflectores y varios sensores de movimiento ocultos. Por eso, lanzarse en un punto u otro marca la diferencia entre llegar a los brazos de un agente o probar suerte por una zona fuera del casco urbano, menos vigilada. Este último es el plan de Julio César, el hondureño.
La conversación con el salvadoreño se ve interrumpida por el jefe de la pandilla de vendedores de droga y empleados de El Abuelo, un tipo de unos 25 años, con el tatuaje de un dragón en su cuello. “Ey, ¿para qué es esa cámara?”, pregunta al fotógrafo, que le explica que es para sacar imágenes de los migrantes. Luego, le dejamos claro que lo que él haga en esa esquina no nos interesa, y fotografiarlo mucho menos. “Un 28”, dice por su radio, y se va.
Seguimos hablando con Armando, el salvadoreño, y otros tres migrantes que se han sentado a nuestro lado, pero de un momento a otro, estamos rodeados por el del dragón en el cuello y otros dos de su grupo. “Ey, qué chingona esa cámara, préstamela”, dice uno al fotógrafo, que se niega a entregarla. En ese momento, un coche rojo se estaciona atrás y termina de cercarnos a nosotros y a los tres migrantes. “¡No les estés preguntando, súbelos!”, ordena el gordo que va al volante, y los cuatro tripulantes del carro se bajan. Nos ponemos de pie y nos alistamos a correr, pero el jefe del grupo suelta una risotada, y nos dice: “Tranquilos, tranquilos, no los vamos a secuestrar”. Solo querían advertirnos que estábamos en su zona. Darnos un susto para que supiéramos lo que puede ocurrir.
Después de eso, se separan y empiezan a mezclarse entre los cerca de 30 migrantes que ya se han ubicado en la acera. Van pregonando a grito limpio su oferta: “¡Con El Abuelo, con El Abuelo, mil 800 hasta Houston! Te damos comida, agua, zapatos y te pasamos en lancha. Vengan los que se quieren ir seguros”. A uno de los migrantes que estaba con nosotros le vuelve el color al rostro: “Pensé que nos iban a secuestrar”, susurra.
El caso es que el secuestro es una realidad cada vez más presente en esta ruta que sube cercana al Atlántico, y mucho de lo que ocurre más al sur se maneja desde dos ciudades fronterizas: Nuevo Laredo y Reynosa, a 250 kilómetros. El caso es que en estas zonas por donde miles de migrantes se mueven cada mes, los criminales son los dueños del terreno, las autoridades sus cómplices en muchos casos, y sus actividades, lejos de hacerse a hurtadillas, se gritan por las calles como si de vender tomates se tratara.
El 83% de las denuncias recabadas por el Centro de Derechos Humanos del albergue, en el rubro de autoridades corruptas, acusan a los agentes del departamento de Seguridad Ciudadana de Nuevo Laredo. Esto es lo recogido por el centro en solo tres meses, de junio a agosto de este año. Es lo que 477 migrantes relataron. Golpes, detenciones arbitrarias, secuestros y robo. El 83% de esos migrantes eran de Honduras, Guatemala y El Salvador.
“Esta era una zona tranquila antes de que el albergue fuera construido. Cuando se construyó se convirtió en una zona de narcomenudeo y de tráfico de personas. Se vive una situación muy fuerte. La policía está coludida con los polleros y los narcotraficantes. Aquí en esta zona opera El Abuelo, que cruza centroamericanos. Él hace un buen trabajo, ilícito, pero a quien le paga le da alguna garantía de que lo cruzará. Hemos mandado cuatro oficios a la municipalidad, solicitando mayor vigilancia alrededor de la casa”, explica José Luis Manso, encargado del centro.
Tres oficios nunca fueron contestados. Al cuarto, les contestaron con una promesa desde la Secretaría de Seguridad Ciudadana (esa que los migrantes identifican como su principal enemiga entre las autoridades neolaredenses). Hasta ahora, “ninguna medida se ha cumplido”, asegura Manso.
El albergue sigue enclavado en una zona de alto riesgo. Para describirla, Manso relata un hecho ocurrido hace cuatro días. Un asesinato: “Fue atrás del albergue. De repente, llegó la policía ministerial a tocar la puerta por la noche, de forma muy violenta. Querían información, porque les habían informado de que hubo una riña entre pandillas, entre una de mexicanos y otra de centroamericanos que se dedica al atraco de migrantes. Murieron dos centroamericanos, y otros dos están heridos de gravedad en el hospital. Lo curioso es que si hubo dos pandillas involucradas, solo hubo detenidos de una, lo que me hace pensar es que los centroamericanos muertos y los heridos, eran más bien migrantes que se resistieron a ser asaltados”.
Entre una colonia de narcomenudistas y una de las zonas ribereñas más peligrosas del río, la ubicada en el parque Viveros, a un costado del albergue, esta casa está ubicada en un área de verdad conflictiva.
Sobre el cruce del río, Manso asegura que la mayoría de los centroamericanos lo intentan por su cuenta, sin ayuda de ningún pollero: “Se cruzan nadando o pagan por un neumático para cruzarse. Por falta de dinero se cruzan por su cuenta, y es cuando ponen en riesgo su vida”.
Escojo a un migrante al azar dentro del albergue. Tiene 41 años y es guatemalteco. Le pregunto si contratará coyote. “No hay dinero”, responde. Le pregunto si conoce el río. “No”, contesta. Le pido que me explique cómo piensa cruzarse. “A la buena de Dios”, resume.
Antes de salir del albergue, acordamos con Julio César que mañana nos veremos temprano en el céntrico parque Hidalgo para iniciar la expedición. Los maleantes siguen ahí, en su esquina, esperando clientes. Nos vamos hacia el parque Viveros, donde la semana pasada aparecieron los dos cadáveres hinchados. Hay dos hombres pescando. El río es hondo en esta parte, y la corriente arrastra con fuerza el agua fría que se mueve entre las riberas igual de enmontañadas. Una en Estados Unidos, la otra en México.
El río no pertenece a ninguno de los dos países. Por convenio, cada país puede utilizar una cantidad de su agua. A estas alturas, la corriente arrastraría varios metros hasta a un experto nadador. Cuando atraviesa Nuevo Laredo, el Bravo ya ha sido alimentado por sus tres afluentes: el Pecos, en Estados Unidos, y el Conchos y el Sabinas, en México. Y no hablamos de pequeños ríos. Solo el Pecos, que nace en las montañas de Nuevo México, tiene mil 450 kilómetros.
Uno de los pescadores nos lanza una advertencia mientras saca bagres del río: “Cuando empiece a oscurecer, váyanse. Esos montes de ahí (atrás de él) los ocupan los que venden drogas para hacer sus transacciones en la noche, y los malandros para esperar a algún migrante que venga a intentar pasar”. Le hacemos caso y nos vamos a esperar que amanezca para buscar a Julio César.
Tal como dijo, son las 8 en punto de la mañana, y él está sentado en la plaza. “Vamos, hay que tomar un autobús”, nos explica. La zona que él quiere inspeccionar está en las afueras de la ciudad, en un área periférica conocida como El Carrizo.
El autobús cuesta 10 pesos y tarda en partir. Esperamos 40 minutos antes de que el empleado de la estación anuncie la salida de la unidad que va hacia el kilómetro 18.
Recorremos 30 minutos ya en la periferia de la ciudad, por la carretera que desciende desde Nuevo Laredo hasta Monterrey. Ahí, saliendo de una colonia sin terminar, con calles de tierra y casas construidas con molde, exactamente iguales, el autobús se detiene en plena autopista, y Julio César indica que es momento de bajar.
Del otro lado de la carretera hay dos calles de tierra paralelas, que forman una T con la autopista. Julio César señala la de la derecha, la más pequeña, la menos transitable para un vehículo. “Por ahí -indica-. Por la otra suelen pasar patrullas del ejército”.
No hace falta preguntar la razón de por qué andan los militares por ahí. Las matemáticas de estas zonas resultan siempre en lo mismo: frontera, caminos recónditos y patrullaje del ejército indican que se transita por una ruta del tráfico de drogas.
Llevamos 30 minutos de caminata por en medio de esta brecha abandonada. El sol calcina, a pesar de que la temperatura en este invierno no supera los 27 grados centígrados. Alrededor del sendero, solo hay breña seca y mozotes que se adhieren a la ropa.
Julio César camina mientras intenta recordar. “Sí, sí, de ese ranchito me acuerdo, ahí nos regalaron agua cuando me pasé en 2005”, logra traer de vuelta algunas escenas. Poco a poco nos vamos enterando de por qué conoce tan bien Nuevo Laredo. La diferencia entre saber y no saber es algo que se gana a cuota de paciencia y trabajo.
Cuando en su primer intento de 2005 Julio César fracasó en manos de la Patrulla Fronteriza, se dio cuenta de que tenía que encontrar un sitio menos vigilado, para que el coyote no pudiera engañarlo, y lo llevara por un lugar donde la captura sería lo más seguro. Entonces, decidió ponerse a trabajar con El Veracruzano.
El Veracruzano es un personaje conocido en la ribera mexicana del río. Cerca del parque Viveros este hombre de treinta y tantos años vive en una pequeña choza de lámina, repleta de neumáticos. Cobra 200 pesos a cada migrante por pasarle el Bravo. Julio César se convirtió en su mano derecha. Él se pasaba el río asido a una soga que mantenían atada en un árbol del lado estadounidense. Al llegar allá, empezaba a tirar del neumático donde iba el migrante, hasta dejarlo en la ribera de los dólares. El Veracruzano y Julio César se dividían los 200 pesos a mitad, y su servicio era un seguro contra ahogamiento, pero no contra la detención por parte de los agentes que patrullan ese sector. El mismo Julio César asegura que él no intentaría pasar por los dominios del veracruzano, porque una cosa es tocar la otra orilla y otra muy diferente llegar hasta San Antonio, Texas, la ciudad a la que se dirige la mayoría de los que hacen el intento por Nuevo Laredo.
Poco a poco, el hondureño se fue ganando la confianza de El Veracruzano, y juntando dinero para pagar al coyote. “Nunca pasábamos a menos de 15 a la semana”, explica Julio César. Eso es al menos mil 500 pesos semanales (unos $140). Y fue entonces cuando El Veracruzano empezó a hablarle de zonas en la periferia de la ciudad por donde había menos vigilancia y el río se partía en dos por pequeñas islas que hacían que la profundidad disminuyera. Esto es algo que El Veracruzano guarda con recelo, porque de hacerse muy famoso acabaría con su negocio de neumáticos y lazos. Fue entonces cuando Julio César se enteró de El Carrizo, y supo que le diría a su coyote que por ahí quería pasar.
Ha pasado otra media hora, y hemos abandonado la senda de polvo, para descender por entre unos matorrales y meternos en algunos ranchos privados, en medio de la maleza. Llegamos a la puerta de uno de esos ranchos, donde un señor, el primer ser humano que vemos en el camino, escucha música a todo volumen. Le hacemos señas, y se acerca amable a responder nuestra pregunta. “¿Vamos bien para el río?” “Sí, sigan por esa senda de la derecha, pero vayan con cuidado. La semana pasada, los asaltantes mataron a un migrante y su pollero por ese lado”.
Esta es ruta de los que saben, ruta de coyotes y migrantes pacientes, pero también es un camino alejado de la ciudad, inserto en una espesura café. Un sitio perfecto para asaltar. En 2005, cuando iba con su coyote, Julio César fue asaltado por dos enmascarados que actuaron como actúan los asaltantes de La Arrocera, un pueblito al sur de México, famoso por el método de sus delincuentes, que desnudan al migrante para buscarle el dinero hasta en los pliegues de los calzoncillos.
Al poco tiempo, Julio César entra en otro rancho. Quiere pedir agua. No se dio cuenta de que en esa casa hay ocho militares con sus fusiles de asalto AR-15 que, como a cualquiera que transite por estas calles, nos ven con recelo. Lo registran de pies a cabeza y le ordenan que nos llame. Nos piden los documentos y nos revisan las mochilas. Saben que Julio César es indocumentado, pero también que nosotros somos periodistas, y un militar no está facultado en este país para detener a un migrante.
“Perdón, pero buscamos droga. Mucha pasa por aquí”, nos dice uno de los soldados. Y se despide con una advertencia: “No se acerquen a la margen del río, ahí asaltan”.
Tras otra media hora de caminata entre monte y más monte, el sonido del agua empieza a escucharse. Bajamos por una pendiente más inhóspita que el resto del camino, hasta llegar a las lodosas márgenes del Bravo. “Por aquí”, dice Julio César, con una sonrisa en los labios. Lo logró. Su paciencia, su espera, sus consultas dieron resultado. Ha encontrado el lugar donde en 2005 pasó con su coyote.
Se sienta y observa un mapa que él mismo ha trazado en un papel, y paseando la larga uña de su meñique sobre la hoja, comienza a dar cátedra de migración: “La onda aquí es pasar de noche. Ya del otro lado, tendrás que caminar siete horas hasta Laredo (la ciudad vecina de Nuevo Laredo). De ahí, tenés que ponerte una muda de ropa limpia, para parecer una persona decente. Y tenés dos opciones. Una es meterte rodeando carreteras, pasando por Cotula (un pequeño poblado de Texas) a pedir agua y comida porque tendrás que caminar entre cinco y siete noches hasta San Antonio. La otra opción es meterte en los vagones del tren de carga que viaja del otro lado. Ese va derechito de Laredo hasta San Antonio, y en unas horas llega, pero pasa por retenes donde tienen perros para que te huelan. Si te arriesgás de esa forma, tenés que ponerte mucho ajo o pimienta para espantar al perro, porque el policía no se sube a los vagones, solo va guiando con la voz al perro. Ya en San Antonio, la hiciste.
Pero su expedición aún no está completa. Hay que saber si el caudal no cubre a Julio César, porque con la fuerza de la corriente a esta altura del río sería muy difícil nadar.
El agua está fría. En medio del río, un desnivel de tierra divide en dos el caudal, y permite descansar en el medio. Es curioso. Este es el famoso río Bravo, el que tantas vidas se ha cobrado, y cruzarlo nos toma solo unos minutos, sin dejar nunca de tocar fondo. Sin duda, Julio César sabe lo que hace. En la parte más profunda, el agua nos llega abajo del cuello, y solo en esos puntos es complicado avanzar debido al empuje de la corriente. Nos detenemos un rato en las plantas de maíz que están del lado estadounidense, para descansar un momento. Luego volvemos a la ribera mexicana.
“Por aquí me voy a aventar”, dice, sin rastro de dudas, mientras subimos la pendiente para llegar hasta el único rancho que divisamos por este lado. Queremos agua.
Nos saluda un granjero que lucha para reparar una máquina de segar. Le pregunto si desde su propiedad -que por su elevación es como un mirador hacia el río- no le ha tocado ver a muchos migrantes morir. “Morir, no. Ya muertos, sí”.
Julio César se empina la botella de agua para aliviar la resequedad de la garganta que nos provocará la caminata de regreso. Le pregunto al granjero a qué se refiere. Contesta: “Es que aquí no se mueren, aquí no es muy profundo el río, salvo en época de lluvias”. Julio César tiene pensado pasar en enero. Las primeras lluvias riegan Nuevo Laredo allá por abril.
-Pero ha visto muertos -le insisto.
-A cada rato -explica.
-¿Qué tan seguido?
-He visto dos en estos dos meses. Se quedan trabados en la islita de tierra que hay en medio del río, pero es gente que intentó pasar allá por la ciudad, y a los que el río arrastra hasta aquí. La semana pasada la lancha de la policía sacó el último de esos dos cadáveres. Estaba todo hinchado ahí en la playita esa.
Julio César indica que es hora de irnos, antes de que oscurezca. Su expedición ha terminado. Así es en Nuevo Laredo la diferencia entre saber y no saber.
http://www.elfaro.net/secciones/migracion/default.php?nota=noticias019
Aquellos cadáveres salieron a flote en el sitio exacto donde ya han salido muchos más. Justo atrás del albergue para migrantes de Nuevo Laredo, esta ciudad fronteriza con Laredo, Estados Unidos. Cuando se habla de cruzar el río Bravo se habla de Nuevo Laredo. Si bien el cauce ocupa 1,455 kilómetros de los 3,100 que dividen a los dos países, esta es la ciudad referente para los migrantes. Aquí sí se enfrentan al río. El cauce es profundo y alberga fuertes corrientes y remolinos de agua verdosa. Aquí, el río ya funciona como frontera natural de los dos países. Funciona como obstáculo letal: muchos de los que no lo logran aparecen hinchados, reblandecidos y blanquecinos, como el hondureño de la semana pasada.
En Nuevo Laredo, la diferencia entre saber y no saber es para un migrante un factor contundente. La diferencia entre amarrarse una bolsa y lanzarse al río a patalear en cualquier lugar o conocer, ubicar una zona de pocos remolinos y poca profundidad, es lo que decidirá si el viajero va a seguir su rumbo dentro de Estados Unidos o se va a convertir en una masa de carne deformada por el efecto del agua.
Son las 5 de la tarde de este día de noviembre, y los migrantes están volviendo al albergue instalado por los sacerdotes scalabrinianos. Vienen de trabajar rellenando camiones con arena, levantando muros o vendiendo periódicos en las calles. Las reglas del albergue solo les permiten estar en la casa de 4 de la tarde a 7 de la mañana.
Hay unos 60 migrantes en el albergue. La mayoría son hondureños, seguidos en número por los guatemaltecos y salvadoreños. El muchacho negro y esquelético que está sentado lejos de los demás, con sus hombros inclinados hacia adelante y la cabeza oculta entre sus piernas recogidas, es el único dominicano en la casa. Entre burlas, los demás me recomiendan hablar con él. “Ayer lo intentó a lo pendejo, y casi se lo lleva el río”, me dice, entre risas, un hondureño joven.
El dominicano se llama Roberto, tiene 32 años, tres hijos (de ocho, cinco y tres años) y una mujer que, a dieta estricta de frijoles, lo esperan a él o a los dólares en su isla. Era busero antes de, hace un mes, salir de su tierra. Ganaba 4 mil pesos dominicanos, unos 114 dólares al mes. Es, de todos los que están aquí, el que más ha viajado para llegar. Pidió prestado a varios amigos y pagó un vuelo de República Dominicana hasta ciudad de Guatemala, donde no necesitaba visa para entrar. A partir de ahí, empezó a migrar como todos los centroamericanos: en autobuses de tercera, a pie y en el lomo de varios trenes, hasta llegar a Nuevo Laredo, luego de haber sido asaltado seis veces, cinco de ellas por algún policía mexicano. Su viaje casi termina ayer, cuando el sol se estaba ocultando y él escupía bocanadas de agua y luchaba con la fuerte corriente del río hasta tocar de nuevo la ribera mexicana.
Lo paradójico es que Roberto está aquí porque la opción de migrar a Puerto Rico -su país vecino y considerablemente más próspero- la descartó porque no quería ahogarse cruzando los 128 kilómetros del Canal de la Mona, en el Océano Atlántico, que separa a ambas naciones.
“¿Te fracasó tu plan de ayer?”, pregunto. Y él se suelta a contar su simple método de cruce: “Qué diablos, vale, si yo no tenía ningún plan. Yo es solo que ya llevo tres días aquí, y ya estoy harto de vender periódicos de 7 de la mañana a 3 de la tarde para ganarme seis pesos (menos de un dólar) al día, y ayer me lancé. Me bajé con otras 13 personas por la parte de atrás del albergue, y llegamos al río. Eran como las 5 de la tarde. Ahí estuvimos viendo para el otro lado un rato. Hasta que yo me puse a rezar y me tiré a nadar. Los demás se vinieron atrás. Pues nada, vale, que la corriente me arrastró varios metros, pero logré llegar con esfuerzo al otro lado, pero cuando veo para arriba, uno de esos policías enciende su luz, y nos ilumina, y yo me echo para atrás, pero ya iba cansado, y casi me ahogo en ese regreso. Sentía que no iba a poder llegar. Había tragado mucha agua”.
Rezar y nadar. Esa fue su estrategia para intentar entrar a Estados Unidos.
-¿Y qué le pasó a los demás que venían contigo?
-Unos tres siguieron para adelante. Los habrán agarrado. A los demás la corriente los arrastró más que a mí, y no los volví a encontrar en la orilla ni han vuelto para aquí.
No sería raro que en los próximos días el río Bravo devuelva algunos cadáveres más.
Según el Centro de Estudios Fronterizos y de Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, ubicado en Reynosa, donde aún corre el río Bravo, cada año, al menos desde 2005, han aparecido más de 70 cadáveres de migrantes en diferentes puntos del camino líquido. Los voceros del centro reconocen que estas son cifras parciales, y no creen que se acerquen a las reales. El río tiene muchos kilómetros de ribera deshabitada donde ocultar un cuerpo entre la maleza.
El albergue de Nuevo Laredo tiene, como todos los de México, ese punto en el que parece un campo de guerra tras una escaramuza. Un mexicano joven camina por el salón vendado de la cabeza y con el ojo morado. Es un deportado de Estados Unidos, que al intentar ir a cobrar el dinero que sus familiares le depositaron para que se regresara a su natal estado, fue atacado por los asaltantes que le quitaron los 17 mil pesos (mil 600 dólares) y le reventaron la cabeza con el mango de una pistola.
Otro salvadoreño de 44 años, se aplica ungüento para aliviar el dolor muscular causado por la torcedura de tobillo que se provocó hoy a orillas del río. A la par de él, Julio César fuma un cigarro, y dos de sus hijos corretean alrededor.
La primera vez que encontramos a Julio César fue en Ixtepec, al sur de México, a 2 mil kilómetros de Nuevo Laredo. Fue hace un mes y medio, y pensamos que no lograría ni llegar cerca de la frontera con Estados Unidos. Él, albañil de 25 años, no viaja solo. Le acompañan Jéssica, su esposa de 22 años, y sus tres hijos: Jarvin Josué (7), César Fernando (5) y Jazmín Joana. Jazmín es la más pequeña de los tres. Tiene dos meses de haber nacido. Nació en el camino, mientras migraban, y casi muere en la primera aventura de su vida, cuando se le zafó de los brazos a su madre que viajaba en el techo de un tren de carga, como polizón, para avanzar en el camino, como hace la mayoría de indocumentados centroamericanos en este país. Por suerte, Julio logró atraparla. Y ahora, aquí están todos juntos.
Cuenta Julio César que desde Ixtepec empezaron a viajar exclusivamente en autobuses. “No iba a arriesgar otra vez a la niña”, explica. Tomaron unos 15 autobuses para llegar a Nuevo Laredo. Hicieron varios tramos cortos, para evitar carreteras principales y posibles retenes. Es un hombre previsor. Hace mapas, anota rutas, pregunta y sabe esperar.
Nos asegura que está estudiando “la pasada del río”. Él ya lo hizo dos veces por Nuevo Laredo. En 2005, lo intentó solo, como el dominicano, y la patrulla fronteriza lo detuvo al solo pisar suelo estadounidense y lo deportó. En medio de la maleza de la ribera de Estados Unidos, los patrulleros de aquel país se esconden para que los migrantes que intentan cruzar el río no aborten su intento. Prefieren atraparlos de una vez antes que evitar que se lancen, porque saben que si no, de todas formas lo intentarán luego, quizá por otro sitio donde no haya un patrullero esperando o una cámara que los detecte.
En su segundo intento, Julio César pagó mil 200 dólares, con la ayuda de un amigo en Estados Unidos, y un coyote le enseñó una ruta alejada del centro urbano de la ciudad, por donde pasó y logró trabajar un año en aquel país, hasta ser deportado tras una redada en la obra que estaba construyendo en San Antonio, Texas.
Ahora, no tiene dinero para un coyote, y va a hacerlo por su cuenta, con sus recuerdos. “Quiero ir a inspeccionar la zona por la que él me llevó en 2005, y ver cómo está la corriente y si hay vigilancia, porque en enero me voy a tirar yo solo, para juntar dinero y mandar a traer a Jéssica y los niños”, explica su plan.
Esa es la diferencia de Nuevo Laredo. Es lo que diferencia a Julio de Roberto, el esquelético dominicano. Uno se lanzó en la parte más crecida del río, porque era la más cercana al albergue. Se lanzó en la parte más vigilada y casi muere en el intento. Julio lo hará hasta enero, luego de ir a estudiar un punto del río que, explica, “suele estar menos crecido”. La diferencia entre saber y no saber.
Antes de irnos, acordamos con Julio que le acompañaremos en su expedición, y decidimos hacerlo pasado mañana.
Afuera del albergue, hay siete vendedores de droga que también funcionan como enganchadores de El Abuelo. Se comunican con radio, hablan con los agentes de las patrullas de la policía municipal que pasan por la zona, y se despiden de ellos chocando palmas y puños.
El Abuelo es el señor de los polleros que suben por la ruta cercana al Atlántico, la que recorre los estados de Tabasco, Veracruz y llega a Reynosa y Nuevo Laredo. La ruta de los secuestros. Aquella donde los coyotes que no pagan se arriesgan a que Los Zetas, el grupo de narcotraficantes más sanguinario de México, según los Estados Unidos, les quiten a su grupo de indocumentados, para pedir rescate por ellos: entre 300 y 500 dólares por cabeza. Secuestros exprés les llaman. El Abuelo y sus empleados no corren con ese problema. Él, desde Nuevo Laredo, ciudad base de varios líderes zetas, acuerda el paso de sus coyotes pagando 10 mil dólares mensuales. Si es un grupo de El Abuelo, no tendrá problema para llegar hasta esta ciudad bordeada por el río Bravo.
Hace un mes y medio, un coyote guatemalteco que había sido secuestrado por Los Zetas me explicó en el sur de México cómo funcionaba la red de El Abuelo: “Paga 10 mil dólares al mes, y tiene que avisar cuando tú vas que trabajas para él, y cuántos pollos llevas. Entonces, no te hacen nada Los Zetas. Si no reporta que tú vas a pasar por ahí, y que eres de los de él, Los Zetas te secuestran a la gente que llevas, y te pegan una gran madriza a ti. Así es desde el año pasado. Han matado a varios polleros”. A él, lo torturaron apagándole cigarros en la espalda.
Un nuevo día ha pasado, y la rutina del albergue sigue igual. Dan las 4 de la tarde, y los migrantes empiezan a amontonarse en la acera de enfrente de la casa de acogida.
Ahí está Armando, un salvadoreño de 25 años. Es uno de esos viciosos del camino a los que cuesta entender. Él lleva desde los 12 años vagando por México, llegando hasta su frontera con Estados Unidos, trabajando en lo que sale, y regresando a su país cada vez que se le antoja. Su motivación la resume con una palabra: “vacil”. Dice que se aburre de estar en un solo lugar, y que de niño subió intentando cruzar y poco a poco se fue enganchando de esta vida errante. Se envició de un camino de asaltos, violaciones, mutilaciones y secuestros. A esta clase de migrantes cuesta entenderlos. Hay varias historias similares. Conocen a la perfección los riesgos del trayecto, pero hay algo en su perversión que les resulta atractivo, y que los hace adictos a sus dosis de adrenalina.
Asegura que hace apenas un mes vio un cadáver mientras inspeccionaba el río. “Flotaba allá por el parque Viveros -explica-, y eso les pasa porque la mayoría de los que se avientan aquí lo hacen a la loca, sin buscarle mucho. Y una de dos, o solo a caer enfrente de los de la migra van o se ahogan. Yo sé por dónde cruzarme, dónde no es tan hondo, pero no quiero ir a Estados Unidos”. La letal diferencia entre saber y no saber.
En los 14 kilómetros de río que dividen a Nuevo Laredo de Laredo, su ciudad estadounidense espejo, hay dos lanchas que patrullan el río, tres cámaras de vigilancia de largo alcance y con capacidad infrarroja para la noche, unos 20 reflectores y varios sensores de movimiento ocultos. Por eso, lanzarse en un punto u otro marca la diferencia entre llegar a los brazos de un agente o probar suerte por una zona fuera del casco urbano, menos vigilada. Este último es el plan de Julio César, el hondureño.
La conversación con el salvadoreño se ve interrumpida por el jefe de la pandilla de vendedores de droga y empleados de El Abuelo, un tipo de unos 25 años, con el tatuaje de un dragón en su cuello. “Ey, ¿para qué es esa cámara?”, pregunta al fotógrafo, que le explica que es para sacar imágenes de los migrantes. Luego, le dejamos claro que lo que él haga en esa esquina no nos interesa, y fotografiarlo mucho menos. “Un 28”, dice por su radio, y se va.
Seguimos hablando con Armando, el salvadoreño, y otros tres migrantes que se han sentado a nuestro lado, pero de un momento a otro, estamos rodeados por el del dragón en el cuello y otros dos de su grupo. “Ey, qué chingona esa cámara, préstamela”, dice uno al fotógrafo, que se niega a entregarla. En ese momento, un coche rojo se estaciona atrás y termina de cercarnos a nosotros y a los tres migrantes. “¡No les estés preguntando, súbelos!”, ordena el gordo que va al volante, y los cuatro tripulantes del carro se bajan. Nos ponemos de pie y nos alistamos a correr, pero el jefe del grupo suelta una risotada, y nos dice: “Tranquilos, tranquilos, no los vamos a secuestrar”. Solo querían advertirnos que estábamos en su zona. Darnos un susto para que supiéramos lo que puede ocurrir.
Después de eso, se separan y empiezan a mezclarse entre los cerca de 30 migrantes que ya se han ubicado en la acera. Van pregonando a grito limpio su oferta: “¡Con El Abuelo, con El Abuelo, mil 800 hasta Houston! Te damos comida, agua, zapatos y te pasamos en lancha. Vengan los que se quieren ir seguros”. A uno de los migrantes que estaba con nosotros le vuelve el color al rostro: “Pensé que nos iban a secuestrar”, susurra.
El caso es que el secuestro es una realidad cada vez más presente en esta ruta que sube cercana al Atlántico, y mucho de lo que ocurre más al sur se maneja desde dos ciudades fronterizas: Nuevo Laredo y Reynosa, a 250 kilómetros. El caso es que en estas zonas por donde miles de migrantes se mueven cada mes, los criminales son los dueños del terreno, las autoridades sus cómplices en muchos casos, y sus actividades, lejos de hacerse a hurtadillas, se gritan por las calles como si de vender tomates se tratara.
El 83% de las denuncias recabadas por el Centro de Derechos Humanos del albergue, en el rubro de autoridades corruptas, acusan a los agentes del departamento de Seguridad Ciudadana de Nuevo Laredo. Esto es lo recogido por el centro en solo tres meses, de junio a agosto de este año. Es lo que 477 migrantes relataron. Golpes, detenciones arbitrarias, secuestros y robo. El 83% de esos migrantes eran de Honduras, Guatemala y El Salvador.
“Esta era una zona tranquila antes de que el albergue fuera construido. Cuando se construyó se convirtió en una zona de narcomenudeo y de tráfico de personas. Se vive una situación muy fuerte. La policía está coludida con los polleros y los narcotraficantes. Aquí en esta zona opera El Abuelo, que cruza centroamericanos. Él hace un buen trabajo, ilícito, pero a quien le paga le da alguna garantía de que lo cruzará. Hemos mandado cuatro oficios a la municipalidad, solicitando mayor vigilancia alrededor de la casa”, explica José Luis Manso, encargado del centro.
Tres oficios nunca fueron contestados. Al cuarto, les contestaron con una promesa desde la Secretaría de Seguridad Ciudadana (esa que los migrantes identifican como su principal enemiga entre las autoridades neolaredenses). Hasta ahora, “ninguna medida se ha cumplido”, asegura Manso.
El albergue sigue enclavado en una zona de alto riesgo. Para describirla, Manso relata un hecho ocurrido hace cuatro días. Un asesinato: “Fue atrás del albergue. De repente, llegó la policía ministerial a tocar la puerta por la noche, de forma muy violenta. Querían información, porque les habían informado de que hubo una riña entre pandillas, entre una de mexicanos y otra de centroamericanos que se dedica al atraco de migrantes. Murieron dos centroamericanos, y otros dos están heridos de gravedad en el hospital. Lo curioso es que si hubo dos pandillas involucradas, solo hubo detenidos de una, lo que me hace pensar es que los centroamericanos muertos y los heridos, eran más bien migrantes que se resistieron a ser asaltados”.
Entre una colonia de narcomenudistas y una de las zonas ribereñas más peligrosas del río, la ubicada en el parque Viveros, a un costado del albergue, esta casa está ubicada en un área de verdad conflictiva.
Sobre el cruce del río, Manso asegura que la mayoría de los centroamericanos lo intentan por su cuenta, sin ayuda de ningún pollero: “Se cruzan nadando o pagan por un neumático para cruzarse. Por falta de dinero se cruzan por su cuenta, y es cuando ponen en riesgo su vida”.
Escojo a un migrante al azar dentro del albergue. Tiene 41 años y es guatemalteco. Le pregunto si contratará coyote. “No hay dinero”, responde. Le pregunto si conoce el río. “No”, contesta. Le pido que me explique cómo piensa cruzarse. “A la buena de Dios”, resume.
Antes de salir del albergue, acordamos con Julio César que mañana nos veremos temprano en el céntrico parque Hidalgo para iniciar la expedición. Los maleantes siguen ahí, en su esquina, esperando clientes. Nos vamos hacia el parque Viveros, donde la semana pasada aparecieron los dos cadáveres hinchados. Hay dos hombres pescando. El río es hondo en esta parte, y la corriente arrastra con fuerza el agua fría que se mueve entre las riberas igual de enmontañadas. Una en Estados Unidos, la otra en México.
El río no pertenece a ninguno de los dos países. Por convenio, cada país puede utilizar una cantidad de su agua. A estas alturas, la corriente arrastraría varios metros hasta a un experto nadador. Cuando atraviesa Nuevo Laredo, el Bravo ya ha sido alimentado por sus tres afluentes: el Pecos, en Estados Unidos, y el Conchos y el Sabinas, en México. Y no hablamos de pequeños ríos. Solo el Pecos, que nace en las montañas de Nuevo México, tiene mil 450 kilómetros.
Uno de los pescadores nos lanza una advertencia mientras saca bagres del río: “Cuando empiece a oscurecer, váyanse. Esos montes de ahí (atrás de él) los ocupan los que venden drogas para hacer sus transacciones en la noche, y los malandros para esperar a algún migrante que venga a intentar pasar”. Le hacemos caso y nos vamos a esperar que amanezca para buscar a Julio César.
Tal como dijo, son las 8 en punto de la mañana, y él está sentado en la plaza. “Vamos, hay que tomar un autobús”, nos explica. La zona que él quiere inspeccionar está en las afueras de la ciudad, en un área periférica conocida como El Carrizo.
El autobús cuesta 10 pesos y tarda en partir. Esperamos 40 minutos antes de que el empleado de la estación anuncie la salida de la unidad que va hacia el kilómetro 18.
Recorremos 30 minutos ya en la periferia de la ciudad, por la carretera que desciende desde Nuevo Laredo hasta Monterrey. Ahí, saliendo de una colonia sin terminar, con calles de tierra y casas construidas con molde, exactamente iguales, el autobús se detiene en plena autopista, y Julio César indica que es momento de bajar.
Del otro lado de la carretera hay dos calles de tierra paralelas, que forman una T con la autopista. Julio César señala la de la derecha, la más pequeña, la menos transitable para un vehículo. “Por ahí -indica-. Por la otra suelen pasar patrullas del ejército”.
No hace falta preguntar la razón de por qué andan los militares por ahí. Las matemáticas de estas zonas resultan siempre en lo mismo: frontera, caminos recónditos y patrullaje del ejército indican que se transita por una ruta del tráfico de drogas.
Llevamos 30 minutos de caminata por en medio de esta brecha abandonada. El sol calcina, a pesar de que la temperatura en este invierno no supera los 27 grados centígrados. Alrededor del sendero, solo hay breña seca y mozotes que se adhieren a la ropa.
Julio César camina mientras intenta recordar. “Sí, sí, de ese ranchito me acuerdo, ahí nos regalaron agua cuando me pasé en 2005”, logra traer de vuelta algunas escenas. Poco a poco nos vamos enterando de por qué conoce tan bien Nuevo Laredo. La diferencia entre saber y no saber es algo que se gana a cuota de paciencia y trabajo.
Cuando en su primer intento de 2005 Julio César fracasó en manos de la Patrulla Fronteriza, se dio cuenta de que tenía que encontrar un sitio menos vigilado, para que el coyote no pudiera engañarlo, y lo llevara por un lugar donde la captura sería lo más seguro. Entonces, decidió ponerse a trabajar con El Veracruzano.
El Veracruzano es un personaje conocido en la ribera mexicana del río. Cerca del parque Viveros este hombre de treinta y tantos años vive en una pequeña choza de lámina, repleta de neumáticos. Cobra 200 pesos a cada migrante por pasarle el Bravo. Julio César se convirtió en su mano derecha. Él se pasaba el río asido a una soga que mantenían atada en un árbol del lado estadounidense. Al llegar allá, empezaba a tirar del neumático donde iba el migrante, hasta dejarlo en la ribera de los dólares. El Veracruzano y Julio César se dividían los 200 pesos a mitad, y su servicio era un seguro contra ahogamiento, pero no contra la detención por parte de los agentes que patrullan ese sector. El mismo Julio César asegura que él no intentaría pasar por los dominios del veracruzano, porque una cosa es tocar la otra orilla y otra muy diferente llegar hasta San Antonio, Texas, la ciudad a la que se dirige la mayoría de los que hacen el intento por Nuevo Laredo.
Poco a poco, el hondureño se fue ganando la confianza de El Veracruzano, y juntando dinero para pagar al coyote. “Nunca pasábamos a menos de 15 a la semana”, explica Julio César. Eso es al menos mil 500 pesos semanales (unos $140). Y fue entonces cuando El Veracruzano empezó a hablarle de zonas en la periferia de la ciudad por donde había menos vigilancia y el río se partía en dos por pequeñas islas que hacían que la profundidad disminuyera. Esto es algo que El Veracruzano guarda con recelo, porque de hacerse muy famoso acabaría con su negocio de neumáticos y lazos. Fue entonces cuando Julio César se enteró de El Carrizo, y supo que le diría a su coyote que por ahí quería pasar.
Ha pasado otra media hora, y hemos abandonado la senda de polvo, para descender por entre unos matorrales y meternos en algunos ranchos privados, en medio de la maleza. Llegamos a la puerta de uno de esos ranchos, donde un señor, el primer ser humano que vemos en el camino, escucha música a todo volumen. Le hacemos señas, y se acerca amable a responder nuestra pregunta. “¿Vamos bien para el río?” “Sí, sigan por esa senda de la derecha, pero vayan con cuidado. La semana pasada, los asaltantes mataron a un migrante y su pollero por ese lado”.
Esta es ruta de los que saben, ruta de coyotes y migrantes pacientes, pero también es un camino alejado de la ciudad, inserto en una espesura café. Un sitio perfecto para asaltar. En 2005, cuando iba con su coyote, Julio César fue asaltado por dos enmascarados que actuaron como actúan los asaltantes de La Arrocera, un pueblito al sur de México, famoso por el método de sus delincuentes, que desnudan al migrante para buscarle el dinero hasta en los pliegues de los calzoncillos.
Al poco tiempo, Julio César entra en otro rancho. Quiere pedir agua. No se dio cuenta de que en esa casa hay ocho militares con sus fusiles de asalto AR-15 que, como a cualquiera que transite por estas calles, nos ven con recelo. Lo registran de pies a cabeza y le ordenan que nos llame. Nos piden los documentos y nos revisan las mochilas. Saben que Julio César es indocumentado, pero también que nosotros somos periodistas, y un militar no está facultado en este país para detener a un migrante.
“Perdón, pero buscamos droga. Mucha pasa por aquí”, nos dice uno de los soldados. Y se despide con una advertencia: “No se acerquen a la margen del río, ahí asaltan”.
Tras otra media hora de caminata entre monte y más monte, el sonido del agua empieza a escucharse. Bajamos por una pendiente más inhóspita que el resto del camino, hasta llegar a las lodosas márgenes del Bravo. “Por aquí”, dice Julio César, con una sonrisa en los labios. Lo logró. Su paciencia, su espera, sus consultas dieron resultado. Ha encontrado el lugar donde en 2005 pasó con su coyote.
Se sienta y observa un mapa que él mismo ha trazado en un papel, y paseando la larga uña de su meñique sobre la hoja, comienza a dar cátedra de migración: “La onda aquí es pasar de noche. Ya del otro lado, tendrás que caminar siete horas hasta Laredo (la ciudad vecina de Nuevo Laredo). De ahí, tenés que ponerte una muda de ropa limpia, para parecer una persona decente. Y tenés dos opciones. Una es meterte rodeando carreteras, pasando por Cotula (un pequeño poblado de Texas) a pedir agua y comida porque tendrás que caminar entre cinco y siete noches hasta San Antonio. La otra opción es meterte en los vagones del tren de carga que viaja del otro lado. Ese va derechito de Laredo hasta San Antonio, y en unas horas llega, pero pasa por retenes donde tienen perros para que te huelan. Si te arriesgás de esa forma, tenés que ponerte mucho ajo o pimienta para espantar al perro, porque el policía no se sube a los vagones, solo va guiando con la voz al perro. Ya en San Antonio, la hiciste.
Pero su expedición aún no está completa. Hay que saber si el caudal no cubre a Julio César, porque con la fuerza de la corriente a esta altura del río sería muy difícil nadar.
El agua está fría. En medio del río, un desnivel de tierra divide en dos el caudal, y permite descansar en el medio. Es curioso. Este es el famoso río Bravo, el que tantas vidas se ha cobrado, y cruzarlo nos toma solo unos minutos, sin dejar nunca de tocar fondo. Sin duda, Julio César sabe lo que hace. En la parte más profunda, el agua nos llega abajo del cuello, y solo en esos puntos es complicado avanzar debido al empuje de la corriente. Nos detenemos un rato en las plantas de maíz que están del lado estadounidense, para descansar un momento. Luego volvemos a la ribera mexicana.
“Por aquí me voy a aventar”, dice, sin rastro de dudas, mientras subimos la pendiente para llegar hasta el único rancho que divisamos por este lado. Queremos agua.
Nos saluda un granjero que lucha para reparar una máquina de segar. Le pregunto si desde su propiedad -que por su elevación es como un mirador hacia el río- no le ha tocado ver a muchos migrantes morir. “Morir, no. Ya muertos, sí”.
Julio César se empina la botella de agua para aliviar la resequedad de la garganta que nos provocará la caminata de regreso. Le pregunto al granjero a qué se refiere. Contesta: “Es que aquí no se mueren, aquí no es muy profundo el río, salvo en época de lluvias”. Julio César tiene pensado pasar en enero. Las primeras lluvias riegan Nuevo Laredo allá por abril.
-Pero ha visto muertos -le insisto.
-A cada rato -explica.
-¿Qué tan seguido?
-He visto dos en estos dos meses. Se quedan trabados en la islita de tierra que hay en medio del río, pero es gente que intentó pasar allá por la ciudad, y a los que el río arrastra hasta aquí. La semana pasada la lancha de la policía sacó el último de esos dos cadáveres. Estaba todo hinchado ahí en la playita esa.
Julio César indica que es hora de irnos, antes de que oscurezca. Su expedición ha terminado. Así es en Nuevo Laredo la diferencia entre saber y no saber.
http://www.elfaro.net/secciones/migracion/default.php?nota=noticias019
L.A. to pay nearly $13 million over May Day melee
The city of Los Angeles would pay nearly $13 million to immigration protesters and bystanders injured by Los Angeles police officers during a melee at MacArthur Park last year, according to sources familiar with a tentative settlement reached by both sides.
If approved, it would mark one of the largest payouts ever made to resolve LAPD misconduct. Further payouts are likely to journalists who also sued, charging that they were roughed up by the LAPD while covering the event.
A settlement in the case would go a long way toward closing an embarrassing and damaging chapter in the LAPD's recent history, department observers said. The proposed agreement still must be approved by the City Council, the mayor and the judge overseeing the claims against the city.
Longtime LAPD observer Merrick Bobb, executive director of the Police Assessment Resource Center, said a settlement, following the punishment of officers and changes in LAPD procedures, is a necessary last step for the department.
"It allows the LAPD . . . to move forward having learned its lessons and tied up the loose ends it opened," Bobb said.
Sources familiar with the deal declined to provide details and spoke on condition that their names not be used because the terms of the agreement were confidential pending the council's approval. Several of the sources, however, confirmed the size of the proposed deal at $12.85 million.
The council was scheduled to discuss the settlement in private Wednesday, but emerged without voting on whether to approve it. The council is expected to take up the matter again in the near future.
City Council members, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton all declined to comment. Representatives from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a major Latino advocacy group that has been involved in the settlement talks, also declined to comment.
Last year, as a May Day pro-immigration march was concluding in the park west of downtown, lines of police in riot gear moved in to clear the area. Reacting to what authorities described as a pocket of agitators throwing bottles and other objects, officers from the LAPD's elite Metr
If approved, it would mark one of the largest payouts ever made to resolve LAPD misconduct. Further payouts are likely to journalists who also sued, charging that they were roughed up by the LAPD while covering the event.
A settlement in the case would go a long way toward closing an embarrassing and damaging chapter in the LAPD's recent history, department observers said. The proposed agreement still must be approved by the City Council, the mayor and the judge overseeing the claims against the city.
Longtime LAPD observer Merrick Bobb, executive director of the Police Assessment Resource Center, said a settlement, following the punishment of officers and changes in LAPD procedures, is a necessary last step for the department.
"It allows the LAPD . . . to move forward having learned its lessons and tied up the loose ends it opened," Bobb said.
Sources familiar with the deal declined to provide details and spoke on condition that their names not be used because the terms of the agreement were confidential pending the council's approval. Several of the sources, however, confirmed the size of the proposed deal at $12.85 million.
The council was scheduled to discuss the settlement in private Wednesday, but emerged without voting on whether to approve it. The council is expected to take up the matter again in the near future.
City Council members, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief William J. Bratton all declined to comment. Representatives from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a major Latino advocacy group that has been involved in the settlement talks, also declined to comment.
Last year, as a May Day pro-immigration march was concluding in the park west of downtown, lines of police in riot gear moved in to clear the area. Reacting to what authorities described as a pocket of agitators throwing bottles and other objects, officers from the LAPD's elite Metr