Jono's Blog...

Site Update - "Live Chat" Now Available !!

2006-11-23T19:05:00.000-05:00

Hey Everyone,This is just a brief note to inform everyone that we have now created a new chat room (a special thanks to Gav !!) which we hope you will all use ... For those of you who are unfamilar with chat rooms, it is a great way to meet people from around the world by having a "real time" conversation with them... You can talk about all sorts of various subjects or simpy view the online discussion... I would like to invite all of you to use this feature which I believe is a great way to connect with people from around the world...Thanks again to Gav as this would not have been possible without his hard work and dedication...Sincerely,JonoThe Mittelholzer Foundationhttp://www.mittelholzer.org

The child that moved some to tears

2006-06-07T01:45:00.000-04:00

Editorial

The child that moved some to tears

The photograph on the front page of the Monday issue of the Kaieteur News was as harrowing as anything could get. There was this child so emaciated that he could very well have been some child in the throes of starvation in one of the drought-affected African countries.

The reports state that the police had been searching for two missing children and having failed to find them, moved on. Then they got another lead about the children and returned to the area. Instead of finding the children, some neighbour directed them to the house in which this emaciated boy was found tied to some object to prevent him from leaving the premises. Further, whoever tied him up also bound his feet.

The report stated that those who found him were moved to tears. Anyone would have been. In fact, all over the city yesterday, the talk was about the cruel parents who could have done such a thing to the child.

One fellow simply could not eat because as he said, every time he looked at his meal he saw this child who was so close to death's door for the want of food and water.

The child might have been too young to pray for death but his agony cannot be experienced by the rest of us who have never had to go for more than a few hours without a meal. We certainly had access to water as we desired. But this child knew both hunger and unbearable thirst.

The police, up to when last we checked, had made no arrest but they were able to ascertain the identity of the child's parents. They have learnt that the mother is running from the father because she fears for her life. There are two other children and it is believed the two children for whom the police mounted a search may have come from that very house. They too are missing.

Further, we have learnt that because of the mother's flight the father may have vented his spleen on this hapless child whose photograph appeared on the front page of the newspaper.

From time immemorial people have been saying that children are our future. There is a song to that effect and indeed, it is the children who will be tomorrow's leaders. To torture a child is nothing more than reducing one potential leader from the future society.

That being said, we need to look at the cruelty that exists in the society. We have spoken about the father who dunked his son's hand into boiling water causing the child to lose all his fingers; the mother who poisoned her two children; the father who gave poison to four of his children before he killed himself and his wife; and those parents who literally beat their small children to death.

The woman who poisoned her children was duly informed by the late President Cheddi Jagan that her crime, while serious, was not serious enough to have her face the ultimate sanction. This, to many, was some sort of tacit support for a vicious killer. It mattered not the situation that drove the woman to such extremes.

We also had the woman who watched her child killed because her paramour did not like the child since he was fathered by another man. What animal could have resorted to such an action? As is the case of the incident reported earlier, we are not aware of the sanction being prepared by the state.

Most people rush to help the unfortunate child, some to the point of seeking police help. We are aware of some adults in society who seek the help of the administration to improve the lot of the children on the streets; we get angry when we see children abused, sometimes to the point of physically attacking the abuser; we cherish our children and we sometimes go without so that they could get.

Many of us try to live our lives through our children and so we take pride when they do well at the various examinations. But each day we are coming to the realisation that some of us are worse than the basest animal and treat our children as though they are something to be discarded.

None of us knows what the mental state of this child would be but we hope that the society deals condignly with the person who tortured him. The decent among us would wish the law to take its course; the others would seek to exact Moses Law.

Kaieteur News

Child tied up in house, left to die

2006-06-06T00:38:00.000-04:00

Child tied up in house, left to die

• rescuers moved to tears

Police on the East Coast Demerara saved the life of a little boy, who was found tied to the wall of an A Field Sophia shack on Saturday night.

The child, who was visibly malnourished, might have been left without food for more than a week.

Kaieteur news understands that medical personnel at the Georgetown Public Hospital said that had the child not been rescued by yesterday midday, he would have succumbed from starvation.

The police stumbled on the bizarre incident while searching for two children, who were reportedly stolen from an orphanage in the city.

A source told this newspaper that on Saturday, the police were told that a father had taken two of his children from an orphanage without consent, and had locked them in a house in Sophia.

A party of policemen went to the area and searched unsuccessfully for two hours for the children before giving up.

A few hours later, the police received a call from a Sophia resident who had seen them earlier in the area.

“She said, ‘Y'all looking fuh de child wha tie up in de house?' And she gave us a direction,” a police source told Kaieteur News.

The police returned to the community and located a shack which was in complete darkness.

Convinced that they were at the right place, the ranks proceeded to kick open the door. Using flashlights, they soon discovered the child stark naked and tied to a wall.

Kaieteur News understands that some of the ranks were moved to tears at the sight of the malnourished child. Both feet were also tied together.

“He had marks of violence on his body and his head had a (swelling). We took a duster from the line in the yard and wrapped him up and took him away,” the source said.

Persons attempted to feed the child but were advised not to do so.

At the hospital, the child was immediately placed on intravenous drips.

Up to late last night, police were still trying to locate the parents of the child. They could face charges of neglect.

“Neighbours were tight-lipped. You know how people are nowadays,” a source said.

Kaieteur News

Drivers License Search

2006-06-05T00:47:00.000-04:00

National Motor Vehicle License Bureau web site - offering a free searchable database of over 121 million U.S. driver's license photos and license information. Search using the box below.

Under the Motor Vehicle Operator License Identification Act (MOLIA - enacted on July 9, 2005), all US states are required to digitally store a copy of every valid driver's license. License data must be made retrievable by The National Motor Vehicle License Bureau in order to form a consolidated and centralized database of U.S. driver's licenses. On August 3rd, 2005 Congress enacted an amendment to the Freedom of Information Act, providing public access to motor vehicle driver's information in an electronic format.

http://www.license.shorturl.com/

Bruins introduce new GM

2006-05-31T14:51:00.000-04:00

BOSTON (AP) -- Peter Chiarelli, introduced Wednesday as the new general manager of the Boston Bruins, said he wants to introduce "a new fresh culture" to the struggling organization.

"I want players to want to play here," Chiarelli said Wednesday at his first news conference since being hired Friday. "I want players to want to stay here."

Chiarelli, who spent the past two years as assistant general manager of the Ottawa Senators, succeeds Mike O'Connell, who was fired March 25 with the Bruins on their way to their third non-playoff season in the past six years.

Under an agreement with Ottawa and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, Chiarelli officially takes over as GM on July 15 but he is permitted to have input into Bruins' decisions in the meantime.

Bruins executive vice-president Charlie Jacobs has said Chiarelli will determine whether coach Mike Sullivan remains for a third season. Chiarelli said his first priority is to meet with Sullivan.

"I don't know Mike. I've heard good things about him," Chiarelli said.

Chiarelli, a former captain of the Harvard hockey team, signed a four-year contract.

To get Chiarelli, the Bruins agreed to send the Senators a conditional pick in the 2007 draft or beyond.

The 41-year-old Chiarelli takes over a Boston team that has one playoff series victory in 10 seasons and this season traded its top scorer, Joe Thornton, and most exciting player, Sergei Samsonov.

Chiarelli, a native of Ottawa, was a player agent before joining the Senators in 1999 as director of legal relations. He had 21 goals and 49 points in 109 games at Harvard, then played one year in Europe.

http://www.sportsnet.ca/

Canadians healthier, have better access to health-care than Americans: study

2006-05-31T13:01:00.000-04:00

By Helen Branswell

(CP) - A new study comparing the health and health-care access of Canadians and Americans suggests that Canadians are in general healthier and have better access to health care than their neighbours to the south.

Sure, Canadian wait times are bad, one of the authors admits. But the inherent inequity in the U.S. system and its failure to cover a huge swath of the American populace is worse, says Dr. David Himmelstein, of Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Health Alliance.

"I think what our data . . . clearly shows that for any given level of expenditure, you get far more and far better care from a Canadian method of going about financing it (health care) than from the U.S. method," said Himmelstein, a specialist in primary care internal medicine.

"You (in Canada) spend at a very low level. And get very good value for care."

All the extra money Americans spend don't seem to be buying them better health. The study - based on identical large surveys conducted on both sides of the border - showed Americans are more likely to be obese (20.7 per cent versus 15.3 per cent), more likely to suffer from diabetes (6.7 per cent vs. 4.7 per cent) and are more likely to have high blood pressure (18.3 per cent vs. 13.9 per cent) than Canadians.

Americans are also more likely to live an entirely sedentary lifestyle; 13.6 per cent reported they had taken no physical exercise in the three months prior to the study, versus 6.5 per cent of Canadians.

Surprisingly, Canadian respondents smoked more than their American cousins. Nineteen per cent of Canadians reported being a daily smoker versus 16.8 per cent of Americans.

But for reasons that aren't clear, rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease - a condition closely linked to smoking - were almost double among American respondents as compared to the Canadians.

"Canadians look a tad healthier on a number of measures, I guess most importantly diabetes and hypertension," said Himmelstein.

"And (they) also report generally that they get care a bit more easily than Americans, despite spending so much less than we do."

Himmelstein and his co-authors analysed data from the Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health, which compared health status, access to care and health-care utilization in the two countries.

The data were collected through phone surveys conducted by Statistics Canada and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics between November 2002 and March 2003, with 3,500 Canadians and 5,200 Americans asked the same questions about their health and health-care usage.

The study was published Tuesday in the American Journal of Public Health.

Though many Canadians report having trouble finding a family doctor, the survey suggests Americans have a bigger problem on this front. Nearly 85 per cent of Canadians reported having a family doctor, versus just under 80 per cent in the U.S.

And only 5.1 per cent of Canadians reported being unable to pay for needed medication; the rate in the U.S. was virtually double.

Overall, 13.2 per cent of Americans said they had unmet health needs, compared to 10.7 per cent of Canadians. Himmelstein said the Canadian problem related to waiting times for care, but in the U.S. it was inability to get care at all because of cost barriers.

"Once you fall ill in the United States, your fundamental barrier to access - if indeed you have one - is your ability to pay. Whereas our fundamental barrier to access here is you get stuck on a long waiting list," said Dr. Tom Noseworthy, director of the University of Calgary's Center for Health and Policy Studies and a founding member of the new group Canadian Doctors for Medicare.

"But when you look at the end service - Do the people with low income have a better shot at getting service? Do our immigrants and non-whites have a better shot at getting service? - we're doing better," he noted.

"So it would suggest that a universal coverage system is acting to ameliorate some of the discrepancies that are otherwise found in our society."

There was one area where Americans fared better than Canadians. Despite being less healthy and having less access to a vastly more expensive health-care system, Americans are happier with their care than Canadians are.

Bruins Hire Chiarelli

2006-05-27T01:09:00.000-04:00

		Bruins Hire Chiarelli
		by James Murphy

For a team that’s not in the playoffs, the Bruins were in the headlines quite a bit this past week. Unfortunately, for them and their fans it was for all the wrong reasons. On Friday, Boston finally ended their search for a new General Manager, officially announcing the hiring of Peter Chiarelli, who is the current Assistant General Manager for the Ottawa Senators.

But the hiring came after a turbulent week that saw the team miss out on another candidate, quite possibly because of the power issues that have plagued them for so long and led to their recent demise.

In their quest to find a new General Manager and turn their fortunes around, Boston once again left many in the hockey world scratching their heads when they couldn’t come to terms with Ray Shero, who according to multiple sources, was ready to take the reigns as the Bruins’ seventh GM. Shero ended up changing his mind, and on Thursday he took the same job with the Pittsburgh Penguins, leaving many to ask, “what happened?”

According to one source, the talks with Shero fell apart when Bruins Executive Vice President Charlie Jacobs, who has headed the GM search, insisted that current interim GM Jeff Gorton, be kept on as the new GM’s assistant. Shero apparently couldn’t make that promise, telling Jacobs that he might need to “bring in his own men.”

The Bruins apparently didn’t waste anytime crying over losing out on Shero, however, as Thursday night Boston.com reported that the Bruins had hired Chiarelli and on Friday, the team made an official announcement. Ottawa and Boston agreed on a deal that would send either a second or third round draft pick, in either 2007, 2008, or 2009 to the Senators in exchange for Chiarelli. Also as part of the agreement, Chiarelli will remain with the Senators until July 15.

But as the aforementioned source pointed out last night, though Chiarelli is coming to Boston and he is a “terrific” hire, there still may be bumps in the road ahead. By no means, is this the fresh start the team had hoped for, in an effort to bring the organization back to respectability within the league, with media and with their fans.

“Don’t be surprised if he runs into the power struggle Shero didn’t want to take the chance of running into,” the source told INSIDE HOCKEY.

“The bottom-line here is that the Jacobs still want to control everything and have a final say on signings and trades. They couldn’t give the power to Shero, so why all of a sudden will they give it to Chiarelli?

Chiarelli is a very good choice but he will want to run the show like Shero did, so that may create a problem. If not now, probably later when things go sour again like they did with [Mike] O’Connell.”

Owner Jeremy Jacobs told Boston.com Friday that contrary to reports like the aforementioned claims by this source, that part of any deal with the new GM, was retaining Gorton, the Bruins simply told both Shero and Chiarelli that they hoped Gorton could be kept on “in some valuable capacity”. But this source claims that was not entirely true and that Charlie Jacobs, has maintained a stance that Gorton remain throughout negotiations with “not only Shero and Chiarelli, but with other candidates too.”

If this source’s claims and assessments are accurate, and there’s no reason to believe they’re not, then the team that has fallen below irrelevance on the Boston sports landscape, has an even steeper hill to climb. From the sounds of it, the Jacobs regime is maintaining a good deal of autonomy with regards to player and coaching personnel decisions and unless Chiarelli is truly content with that, there will be power struggles ahead for the Bruins.

Of course, by no means can anyone guarantee such struggles but based on the way the team basically threw O’Connell under the bus, what makes one think they won’t do the same with Chiarelli when times get tough?

The insistence that the new GM keep Gorton on board as his Assistant GM is also extremely baffling. As this source pointed out:

“If they’re so hell-bent on keeping him, then why not hire him as GM in the first place?”

But instead the Bruins lost out on Shero and possibly others, surrender a draft pick and can’t have their new guy in place until after the draft and free agency starts. Obviously, the Bruins think highly enough of Gorton that they would allow all of this to happen. So how did all of this make sense?

For those familiar with the Bruins, this whole week somehow makes too much sense. For them, “It’s called Bruins”!

http://www.insidehockey.com/

Bruins name Ottawa's Chiarelli general manager

2006-05-26T19:45:00.000-04:00

BOSTON -- Peter Chiarelli was hired by the sagging Boston Bruins as general manager on Friday, getting a four-year contract two decades after serving as captain of the Harvard hockey team.

Phillip MacCallum/Getty Images

Chiarelli will cost the Bruins a conditional draft pick in 2007.

"I know from my college days the passion that the fans in this area have for hockey and the Bruins and I share that excitement," he said.

Chiarelli had spent the past two years as assistant general manager of the Ottawa Senators. He succeeds Mike O'Connell, fired March 25 with the Bruins headed toward a last-place finish and their third non-playoff season in the last six. Boston will give Ottawa a 2007 conditional draft pick as compensation.

The Bruins picked Chiarelli, a leading candidate during the job search, after Nashville assistant GM Ray Shero was hired Thursday as general manager of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Shero had been interviewed in Boston and appeared to be the team's choice earlier this week, but compensation and authority issues may have bothered him. Bruins executive vice president Charlie Jacobs -- and son of the team owner -- is a big supporter of interim general manager Jeff Gorton and has said the new GM will determine whether Sullivan returns for a third season as coach.

The Bruins plan a news conference for next Wednesday to formally introduce Chiarelli.

Chiarelli's first year as Ottawa's assistant general manager covered the labor dispute that produced a lockout and forced the cancellation of the 2004-05 season.

The 41-year-old Chiarelli takes over a Boston team that has one playoff series victory in 10 seasons and traded its top scorer, Joe Thornton, and most exciting player, Sergei Samsonov, during the current season.

"Peter Chiarelli is the right man to guide this team," Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs said. "We considered and talked to many qualified candidates, looking for someone with knowledge of today's game and its players, a forward thinker with ideas, someone who has worked in the new financial landscape of the NHL and a person who has gained the respect of his peers."

Chiarelli captained the Harvard team before graduating in 1987 with a degree in economics.

He is the seventh general manager in team history and breaks a string of five who had served previously in the organization as a player, assistant coach or coach.

Charlie Jacobs had said the Bruins wanted to conduct a thorough search and were in no rush to hire a successor to O'Connell, a former defenseman and assistant coach with the team who became general manager on Nov. 1, 2000.

Chiarelli has "a great passion for and knowledge of the game and he is very respectful of the great hockey tradition in this city with an Original Six franchise," Charlie Jacobs said.

Team president Harry Sinden, a former coach and general manager of the Bruins, said Chiarelli "has played at a high level, he understands the business from both sides of the desk having been a player agent for several years and he helped develop the Ottawa franchise into a consistently winning team."

The Senators had at least 94 points in each of his six seasons with the team. They had the most points this season in the Eastern Conference but were eliminated in a five-game playoff series by Buffalo. The Bruins had 94 points twice in six seasons and only 74 this season.

Charlie Jacobs said early this month he wanted a general manager who would build for the long term while retaining hope of immediate success.

"The intention," he said, "is to find somebody who embodies that understanding, that maybe victory isn't tomorrow, but it's the process and the road that ultimately will pay the best bottom line dividends for the fans of Boston."

Chiarelli, a native of Ottawa, was a player agent before joining the Senators in 1999 as director of legal relations. He had 21 goals and 49 points in 109 games at Harvard and then played one year in Europe.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GUYANA !!!!

2006-05-26T02:46:00.000-04:00

A Happy 40th Independence anniversary to one and all! Long Live Guyana

Blacks were also Victims of Nazi Germany

2006-05-25T17:28:00.000-04:00

Afrikan descendents of WWII Germany are denied any mention during the European Holocaust

By Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D.
OW Contributor

For years we have been exposed to several important news stories, documentaries, books and films about the tragedy committed against the Gypsies and Jews of Europe during World War II, with good cause. Any story of human genocide is at the lower ebb of human existence. The European story compares with the genocide conducted on the indigenous Americans (mistakenly called “Indians” because Columbus thought he was in India when reaching this part of the world), who lost more millions than can be counted. The mid-1990s’ genocide of almost one million Tutsi in Rwanda, East Central Afrika, reminds us that it can still happen.
The pinnacle of human tragedy was the Afrikan Holocaust that devastated an entire continent, lined millions of human bodies on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, from Afrika to the Americas, and enslaved tens of millions for almost three centuries. Sadly, it still continues with the enslavement of Afrikans by Arabs in northern Afrika. The continent has yet to recover from the European and Jewish slave trade of Afrikans.
The descendants of those who were enslaved are still feeling the effects. People of Afrikan descent generally cannot trace family genealogies beyond five generations. The struggle continues in overcoming a collective low self-esteem. A new word, post-traumatic stress, related to slavery, is just now being studied. A reversal of gender roles, perpetuated during slavery, still haunts many families. Color prejudice still exists which started with the sexual imposition of white men on Afrikan women from slave ships to slave plantations. Lighter skinned Afrikans were favored over the darker skinned, the majority, causing and allowing intra-color prejudice to grow as a controlling strategy on the plantation, and continues today; not to mention the accompanying decades of racial oppression.
These are all horrendous events in world history. But as much as Afrikan world history has been hidden, omitted or distorted, nothing comes more of a surprise than the discovery that people of Afrikan descent were victims of the European Holocaust, and that some of them survived the Nazi death camps.
According to Theodor Wonja Michael, a black survivor in a Washington Post story, “One must remember that the Damocles’ sword of sterilization always dangled above us blacks. Escape was not possible, certainly not if you looked like me. Those who tried to get away were caught and put straight in a concentration camp. Usually they didn’t survive.”
Adolf Hitler established the philosophy in his book Mein Kampf, in the chapter “Bastarde am Rhein” stating, “It was and it is the Jews who bring the Negroes into the Rhineland, always with the same secret thought and clear aim of ruining the hated white race by necessarily resulting bastardisation…”
Bringing this philosophy into a practice of eradication of Afrikans started with the German Nazi physician, Dr. Eugene Fisher, who conducted racial genetic research in then Southwest Afrika (present day Namibia). His conclusion was that race mixing, Afrikans and Germans, caused fatal genetic dangers, which was his scientific reasoning for the separation of the two, and/or extermination of Afrikans.
Germany, during the colonial period, intended to establish an apartheid-type settlement in Southwest Afrika, confiscating land owned by Afrikans, which also served as the proto-type for the apartheid system in South Afrika. In 1937, when the Afrikans revolted against this policy, the Nazi’s committed genocide on approximately 80% of the local population through gunshots, poisoning and lynching. The first use of the words ‘concentration camps’ began with the German imprisonment and extermination of the Herero people in Namibia. What the Germans did in Afrika set the stage for the holocaust in Europe.
A special Commission No. 3 was established in Germany to continue this practice against thousands of German Afrikans in Germany through sterilization or placement in the death camps. Thousands upon thousands of Afrikans born in Germany considered Germany their home and remained there during the Nazi period, even today.
These were the descendents of Afrikan soldiers brought to Germany from the German colonies in Afrika during World War I, and later by the French and Belgium. Afrikan men and German women created thousands of offspring Hitler called “bastard mulatto children.” Elimination of these people was the ultimate goal, except where they worked in war-supported industries or were used in propaganda films promoting Hitler’s program of establishing a pure Aryan Germany.
Hans J. Massaquoi, in his book Destined to Witness: Growing Up Black in Nazi Germany, writes in splendid detail about growing up as a black boy in Third Reich Nazi Germany. “Except for my mother, I had no genuine allies with whom I could share my secret fears of living in a state whose avowed goal was to destroy me and my kind.” He was brave enough to talk about his admiration for Hitler as a naïve child before he knew what was really going on; Hitler was promoted as a god. He mentioned the trials and tribulations he and his mother had to endure, the racial taunts, the German friends he made, the inside story of the beginning of WWII, his trip to Afrika to see his father and many other events. “Unlike African-Americans, I did not have the benefit of inherited survival techniques created and perfected by countless ancestors and passed down from generation to generation of oppressed people. Instead, I was forced to traverse a minefield of potential disasters and to develop my own instincts to tell me how best to survive physically and psychologically in a country consumed by racial arrogance and racial hatred and openly committed to the destruction of all ‘non-Aryans.’”
Because of his isolated racial identity, he mentally attached himself to Joe Louis, who defeated Hitler’s German symbol of Aryan superiority, boxer Max Schmeling, and the exceptional feats of Jesse Owens at the Berlin Olympics. They gave him a sense of identity and racial pride. It caused him to become obsessed with coming to the United States, where he ultimately became managing editor of Ebony magazine and ironically experienced an even greater level of racism. As a result of these startling revelations, no longer can the European Holocaust be restricted to one or two groups. The discussion must now include people of Afrikan descent.
Dr. Kwaku’s acclaimed 90-minute film, Afrikan World Civilizations, is available at Eso Won Books. E-mail: DrKwaku@hotmail.com. Website: www.drkwaku.com.

http://www.ourweekly.com/

Iraq Has Not Reached A Turning Point

2006-05-25T17:26:00.000-04:00

By Congresswoman Maxine Waters
OW Contributor

This weekend’s announcement of a new, permanent Iraqi government should not be greeted with the fanfare given to it by the President.
On May 20, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was inaugurated. In addition, Maliki announced his nominations to lead the various ministries which would help him govern Iraq, which the Iraqi Parliament accepted. However, Prime Minister Maliki did not name anyone for the ministry of Interior or Defense which are considered to be two of the most powerful posts in the Cabinet.
Not surprisingly, President Bush declared that the announcement was great news. Since the beginning of the war, he has been searching vainly for something that would reverse the violence in Iraq and permit US soldiers to return home. The seating of a permanent government will not achieve those goals.
On Sunday, President Bush said, “the formation of the unity government in Iraq begins a new chapter in our relationship with Iraq.” He made similar remarks on Monday.
If the President announcing a fresh start in Iraq sounds familiar, it should. At least five times since the beginning of the Iraq war, President Bush has declared that Iraq has reached a positive turning point. He even said it on the one-year anniversary of the Iraq war. On March 19, 2004, the President said, “...as Iraqis join the free peoples of that world, we mark a turning point for the Middle East and a crucial advance for human liberty.”
We heard similar comments from Vice-President Cheney on several occasions.
Time and again, these supposed turning points have fallen flat. After each ‘milestone’ was achieved, violence in Iraq grew progressively worse and more US soldiers have died or have been injured.
Despite the Administration’s consistent public expressions of approval as to certain events that have occurred in the Iraq war, the facts on the ground speak differently: over the weekend, while the Prime Minister was announcing his Cabinet, more than 40 Iraqis were killed and 74 were wounded in attacks across Iraq; over the past three years, the war has caused significant death and destruction in Iraq. Throughout the country, there have been more than 700 bombings which claimed at least 6,281 Iraqi lives including 70 car bombings in April 2006 alone; according to conservative estimates, 30,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the war began in March 2003 and as many as 40,000 additional Iraqis have been killed by crime as a result of lawlessness in Iraq.
It appears that ordinary Iraqis do not have much faith in the new government. An LA Times article reports that disappointment with the new government crosses religious lines -- it quotes a Sunni Muslim saying, “I don’t have much faith that this new government will achieve democracy and security” and a Shiite saying, “I don’t trust the new government. I don’t expect anything from them.”
Further, the article reported, “many Iraqis said they were worried that the new government, with its ministries distributed among sectarian parties, would only reinforce animosities between the factions, infusing this fragile society with even deeper tensions.”
March 19, 2006 marked the third anniversary of the Iraq war. As of May 22nd, 2,457 US soldiers have died and 18,088 have been injured -- 2,318 of these deaths have occurred since May 1, 2003 when the President declared “mission accomplished” while standing on a US aircraft carrier. The war has cost US taxpayers more than $260 billion so far -- almost $11 million per hour! We have endured these costs despite not finding any weapons of mass destruction or any links to Al Qaeda - contrary to the confident reassurances given by the President and his Administration.
This war has limited our ability to meet our commitments here at home and has diminished our reputation throughout the world. We must conclude our involvement in Iraq and refocus our efforts on strengthening our homeland through investment in our schools, provision of healthcare for the 45 million Americans without it, and creation of good paying jobs here at home.
It is time to bring our soldiers home.
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters is the Founder and Chair of the 72-member ‘Out of Iraq’ Congressional Caucus. The Caucus was formed in June 2005 to pressure the Administration to conclude the war in Iraq as soon as possible.

http://www.ourweekly.com/

Source: Shero balks at Bruins' deal

2006-05-24T18:07:00.000-04:00

Sportsnet.ca -- Talks between the Boston Bruins and Ray Shero, the man expected to be named the new general manager, have abruptly broken off, sources have told Sportsnet.ca.

It was believed the Bruins made an offer on the weekend, which Shero took home and has now rejected.

Shero was the party responsible for breaking off talks on Wednesday, a move sources have told Sportsnet was not based only on monetary disagreements, but also on autonomy. The issue of autonomy likely revolves around the day-to-day meddlings of notorious Bruins' owner Jeremy Jacobs and club president Harry Sinden.

While the deal is not officially dead, the Bruins are now contemplating other candidates.

As for Shero, the end of talks in Boston means he is once again a viable option for the vacant GM position in Pittsburgh. Shero's career included time as an assistant with both Ottawa and Nashville.

Former New York Rangers GM Neil Smith is also considered to be a strong candidate for the Pens' job.

http://www.sportsnet.ca/

'Whites-only' money for SA town

2006-05-24T16:25:00.000-04:00

A whites-only enclave is launching its own currency just two days after South Africa celebrated the 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid.
Orania is a small town in the northern Cape populated by white Afrikaners, including the grandson of Henrik Vorwoerd, the architect of apartheid.
The currency will be known as the ora and is available in four denominations.

A spokesman said the currency could only be spent within the town and would be worthless if stolen by outsiders.

"The whole idea is that we are actually working towards the idea of a community that is self-sufficient," said spokeswoman Eleanor Lombard.

"The symbols on the ora 10 note showed the Afrikaner's history, the ora 20 note his art, the ora 50 note his culture and the ora 100 note depicted Orania," she said.

A spokesperson for South Africa's Reserve Bank said the voucher or currency must not resemble any of the South African bank notes. An Oranian spokesman told the BBC that the new notes had been designed by a local artist and the celebrations in the town hall would be preceded by songs and on-stage sketches.

The BBC's correspondent in South Africa, Barnaby Phillips, says the ANC government is ideologically opposed to the concept of a whites-only homeland but instead of confronting Orania, has tended to ignore it.

'Fruit salad'

Ms Lombard rejected suggestions that the new currency was a sign that the community had rejected a multi-racial South Africa.

"South African society is like a fruit salad - if I am allowed to be whatever I am - a banana, an apple or whatever - I can add to the flavour," she told Reuters news agency.

"If I am all squashed up, I cannot contribute."

Many of Orania's 600 residents say they have come here to escape the violence and crime prevalent in the rest of South Africa.

Their main industry is agriculture

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3670441.stm

Official calls Hempstead mayor racist

2006-05-24T16:23:00.000-04:00

BY WILLIAM MURPHY
Newsday Staff Writer

May 19, 2006

A veteran member of the state Assembly said Thursday that Village of Hempstead Mayor Wayne Hall told her last year: "I am not meeting with you. I am Caribbean."

Assemb. Earlene Hooper (D-Hempstead), who is African-American, said in an interview that Hall was "a racist" and had made the statement to her in a telephone conversation in December 2005.Hall, a registered Democrat who was elected on the Working Families Party line, denied ever making the statement. "I never said that. That would be crazy -- for lack of a better word," Hall said in an interview.

"I'm not even Caribbean. My parents are. I'm African-American," he said. Hall was born in the United States and is the son of Jamaican immigrants.

The rift between Hooper and Hall, two of the most prominent African-American elected officials on Long Island, became public Tuesday night at a meeting of the village Board of Trustees.

Thursday, both Hooper and Hall disclosed that the alleged Caribbean remark was the source of the disagreement, although Hooper said she had no direct evidence of the December conversation, other than her word that it took place.

In a letter to Hall Thursday that she released to Newsday, Hooper said: "As a black elected official, it is amazing that you do not know that the only difference between Caribbeans and African-Americans is where the slave ship deposited its human cargo. ... I am ashamed of your culturally divisive spirit." Hooper said she was sending a copy of her letter to the state Division of Human Rights.

Hall said he had an earlier, unrelated dispute with Hooper that went back about five years, but he thought that was behind them.

Although Hall denied making the Caribbean remark, Hooper said the mayor had admitted to village Trustee Perry Pettus that he had made the statement.

Pettus said Thursday that he had a private meeting with Hall in the mayor's office a couple of months ago and the mayor admitted he made the statement. "He said, 'Perry, it wasn't meant to come out that way,'" Pettus said.

Told of Pettus' recollections, Hall Thursday repeated his denial. He called Pettus a Hooper ally who "will do anything to hurt me."

Tenant leader Dolores Watson told Hall and the other trustees at their biweekly meeting on Tuesday that the village was losing out on state funding because of the dispute.

Three of the five trustees, Pettus, Don Ryan and Lenora Long, then revealed that they had held meetings with Hooper at her offices in Albany and Hempstead in an effort to settle the dispute and to get state aid for the village, which has an accumulated budget deficit of $7 million.

Newsday

An Open Letter To All Guyanese Politicians

2006-05-22T02:22:00.000-04:00

An Open Letter To All Guyanese Politicians

While we are aware of the obvious demands of your time associated with your position, it is out of a sense of frustration and desperation that we address this letter to all political leaders/activists in Guyana in the hope that you may work together towards some form of national reconciliation.

We will not make any claims or assertions of being experts on Guyanese politics, however it remains obvious to the Diaspora that we have not received the proper leadership from our elected representatives who frequently appear more interested in attributing blame for past injustices and acts of indiscretion than they are in solving the rampant crime and abject poverty within our country.

It is not often that history provides people with an opportunity to do what is fair and just, however we put it to each of you that now is such a time and urge you to use this rare occasion to ensure your legacy not as a divider of a country that has been in turmoil for several generations, but as healer of a fractured state that so desperately looks to you now to provide us with guidance which will deliver Guyana from these abysmal times.

We understand and are fully aware of the complexities that a program of national reconciliation will require however, there is no doubt that such a project is possible provides you have the courage and determination to do what is right for the entire country. We know that there are several ideological differences that may appear too problematic to overcome. As such, there are many of us who offer whatever resources you require freely and without hesitation in support of this effort because we want to contribute to the betterment rather than to the detriment of our country. Surely if we, the Diaspora can reconcile whatever differences we may have, you, our elected representatives can follow our modest yet honest efforts and at least, initiate dialogue between one another in an effort to unite our fractured country.

It is under the spirit of cooperation and national reconciliation that we strongly encourage each and every one of you to put aside whatever political ambitions and personal desires you may have for the sake of our country. At this period in time, we are not interested in blaming each other for past acts of injustice and indiscretion. We are more concerned with the abject poverty and rampant crime that plagues our communities leaving us feeling unsafe even in our own homes.

This is not the Guyana that our forefathers had fought and struggled so hard for. This has become a wasteland filled with garbage, intolerance, crime and corruption which has made us become a third world country after we had once been the intellectual and cultural center of the entire Caribbean. It is now that we are forced to ask our elected representatives how much more damage can be done to us and our country as we become buried by your ideological differences and politics?

In closing, let us thank you for taking the time to learn more about our concerns and we sincerely hope to receive replies from some, if not all of you. We are not naive enough to expect miracles, nor do we believe that such an arduous undertaking will be accomplished immediately.

We simply urge you to reconsider whatever philosophical issues and cultural difference keep you apart in order to achieve national reconciliation. If we, the Diaspora can come together and find the courage within our hearts to promote unity and peace for the sake of our country and our children, can you not also be gracious enough to do the same?

Sincerely,

Concerned Citizens Of Guyana

http://www.guyanagazette.net

Hardbeat News

http://hardbeatnews.com/editor/RTE/my_documents/my_files/details.asp?newsid=6604&title=Op%20Ed

2006-05-22T01:57:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to thank everyone on the Guyana Gazette Forum for all of your support and contributions to the letter... we finally got the thing published today's Guyana Chronicle... I hope and pray that this will be but one step in the path we will take to change Guyana together..

An Open Letter To All Guyanese Politicians:
WHILE we are aware of the obvious demands of your time associated with your position, it is out of a sense of frustration and desperation that we address this letter to all political leaders/activists in Guyana in the hope that you may work together towards some form of national reconciliation. We will not make any claims or assertions of being experts on Guyanese politics, however, it remains obvious to the Diaspora that we have not received the proper leadership from our elected representatives who frequently appear more interested in attributing blame for past injustices and acts of indiscretion than they are in solving the rampant crime and abject poverty within our country. It is not often that history provides people with an opportunity to do what is fair and just, however, we put it to each of you that now is such a time and urge you to use this rare occasion to ensure your legacy not as a divider of a country that has been in turmoil for several generations, but as healer of a fractured state that so desperately looks to you now to provide us with guidance which will deliver Guyana from these abysmal times.

We understand and are fully aware of the complexities that a programme of national reconciliation will require, however, there is no doubt that such a project is possible providing you have the courage and determination to do what is right for the entire country. We know that there are several ideological differences that may appear too problematic to overcome. As such, there are many of us who offer whatever resources you require freely and without hesitation in support of this effort because we want to contribute to the betterment rather than to the detriment of our country. Surely if we, the Diaspora can reconcile whatever differences we may have, you, our elected representatives, can follow our modest yet honest efforts and at least, initiate dialogue between one another in an effort to unite our fractured country.

It is under the spirit of cooperation and national reconciliation that we strongly encourage each and every one of you to put aside whatever political ambitions and personal desires you may have for the sake of our country. At this period in time, we are not interested in blaming each other for past acts of injustice and indiscretion. We are more concerned with the abject poverty and rampant crime that plague our communities leaving us feeling unsafe even in our own homes. This is not the Guyana that our forefathers had fought and struggled so hard for. This has become a wasteland filled with garbage, intolerance, crime and corruption which has made us become a third world country after we had once been the intellectual and cultural centre of the entire Caribbean. It is now that we are forced to ask our elected representatives how much more damage can be done to us and our country as we become buried by your ideological differences and politics?

In closing, let us thank you for taking the time to learn more about our concerns and we sincerely hope to receive replies from some, if not all of you. We are not naive enough to expect miracles, nor do we believe that such an arduous undertaking will be accomplished immediately. We simply urge you to reconsider whatever philosophical issues and cultural difference that keep you apart in order to achieve national reconciliation. If we, the Diaspora can come together and find the courage within our hearts to promote unity and peace for the sake of our country and our children, can you not also be gracious enough to do the same?

Sincerely,

Concerned Citizens Of Guyana
http://www.guyanagazette.net

May 22, 2006
Guyana Chronicle

http://www.guyanachronicle.com/letters.html

AFC in the Bronx !!

2006-05-18T02:19:00.000-04:00

Come and ask all your questions and erase all your doubts at the fund raising event in the Bronx for the AFC !!

Upcoming Events:
2006-6-3
Fundraising Dinner & Dance
on Saturday, June 3rd, 2006
from 8:30pm to 1:00am @
Wembley Athletic Club
550 East 239th Street
Bronx, NY 10470

Donation: $40 per Ticket
Ticket Info: 646-316-8449
(Dinner & Drinks Inclusive)

156 killed in wave of police vs. gang violence

2006-05-18T01:51:00.000-04:00

Human rights groups criticize Brazilian police response

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- The toll of dead rose in eerie silence Wednesday in South America's largest city as police who lost 40 comrades in gang attacks killed 22 more suspected criminals, but said little about how they are doing it -- generating criticism from human rights groups.

The overnight killings boosted the overall death toll to 155 since a wave of violence enveloped Sao Paulo last Friday, and came after officers shot 33 presumed gang members dead only a day earlier.

Authorities did not identify any of those that they killed, say where they were killed or in what circumstances, Sao Paulo's leading newspapers reported Wednesday.

Human rights activists said they feared innocent people may have been hurt in the strikes by police enraged by a notorious gang's attacks on officers on the streets, at their stations, in their homes and at after work hangouts.

"The climate of terror can't be turned into carte blanche to kill," said Ariel de Castro Alves, coordinator of Brazil's National Human Rights Movement.

But in an interview with Brazil's Globo TV, the commander of Sao Paulo's state police said officers are now convinced they have stopped the gang attacks because most of the latest overnight shootings happened outside of metropolitan Sao Paulo and none were the work of the First Capital Command gang.

Police claimed earlier they had gained the upper hand in their fight against the gang, known here as the PCC, accused of ordering the attacks on authorities after eight gang leaders were transferred to a lockup hundreds of kilometers (miles) from Sao Paulo.

In contrast to earlier killings of police suspects, Col. Elizeu Eclair told Globo TV that the confrontations Tuesday night and Wednesday morning were sparked by smaller scale criminals seeking clashes with authorities.

"We're seeing that this had nothing to do with organized crime," he said.

The overall six-day death toll included 93 suspected criminals, 40 police and prison guards, 18 prison inmates killed in riots and four civilians, according to a statement from the state police's press office. Eclair said authorities were still trying to identify 40 of the dead criminal suspects.

Critics said police were using public sympathy to justify systematic killings that may end up with the deaths of innocent people.

"It's likely that the police are taking advantage of the general public outrage about the heinous crimes committed by the PCC to take brutal action against suspects," said James Cavallaro, a Harvard Law School professor who is also vice president of Rio de Janeiro's Global Justice Center.

Despite the easing of gang attacks, Sao Paulo residents said they were still scared, and many supported the police's aggressive response.

"Now the gang members are going to be scared. Police already died anyway, and it will make the gangs have a little more respect for the police," said Walter Lahoz, a 58-year-old taxi driver.

Fernanda Lopes, a 19-year-old college student majoring in public relations, conceded that innocent people would probably die but said there's no other way to take strong action against the PCC, which has at least 10,000 members and dominates Sao Paulo's lucrative drug trade.

"They all need to die," she said. "It may not be the best solution, but it's the only solution."

Brazilian lawmakers decided to vote later this week on 30 measures to beef up security and reduce the influence of gang leaders who control their troops from behind bars.

The bills would let authorities keep gang leaders in solitary confinement for as long as two years -- up from the current one year.

It would also fund a nationwide prison intelligence agency and would require cellular telephone service providers to block cell phone signals inside prisons. Imprisoned gang leaders reportedly used smuggled cell phones to order the attacks.

But the administration of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Congress should not rush into legislation.

Lawmakers "should not succumb to the temptation of panic legislation, legislation made in a moment of crisis that could deform and distort" current law, Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos told Brazil's Agencia Estado news agency.

Silva said Brazil didn't spend enough on education from the 1960s through the 1990s, condemning men in their 20's and 30's now to lives of crime instead of giving them a future. He said he prefers to spend more on schools than on prisons.

"Either we give hope to these youths or organized crime will do it for us. I prefer that people work, earning their pay day to day with their sweat to win this battle against organized crime."

But many Sao Paulo residents say the gang problems are the result of corrupt and poorly paid police, a judicial system that doesn't mete out harsh punishment and decades of failure by politicians to deal with the problem.

Hardened criminals created the PCC in 1993 to pressure for improved prison conditions and the group quickly expanded into drug dealing and extortion operations on the outside.

Maria Jose Belo, a 50-year-old secretary, said the cycle of violence will simply continue if nothing is changed.

"From violence only comes violence," she said. "I think this is just revenge. Now the police have an excuse to kill gang members."

Stabroek News

An Open Letter To All Guyanese Politicians:

2006-05-15T15:43:00.000-04:00

Everyone,

Please circulate to as many people possible...

Thanks !

An Open Letter To All Guyanese Politicians:

While we are aware of the obvious demands of your time associated with your position, it is out of a sense of frustration and desperation that we address this letter to all political leaders/activists in Guyana in the hope that you may work together towards some form of national reconciliation. We will not make any claims or assertions of being experts on Guyanese politics, however it remains obvious to the Diaspora that we have not received the proper leadership from our elected representatives who frequently appear more interested in attributing blame for past injustices and acts of indiscretion than they are in solving the rampant crime and abject poverty within our country. It is not often that history provides people with an opportunity to do what is fair and just, however we put it to each of you that now is such a time and urge you to use this rare occasion to ensure your legacy not as a divider of a country that has been in turmoil for several generations, but as healer of a fractured state that so desperately looks to you now to provide us with guidance which will deliver Guyana from these abysmal times.

We understand and are fully aware of the complexities that a programme of national reconciliation will require however, there is no doubt that such a project is possible provides you have the courage and determination to do what is right for the entire country. We know that there are several ideological differences that may appear too problematic to overcome. As such, there are many of us who offer whatever resources you require freely and without hesitation in support of this effort because we want to contribute to the betterment rather than to the detriment of our country. Surely if we, the Diaspora can reconcile whatever differences we may have, you, our elected representives can follow our modest yet honest efforts and at least, initiate dialogue between one another in an effort to unite our fractured country.

It is under the spirit of cooperation and national reconciliation that we strongly encourage each and every one of you to put aside whatever political ambitions and personal desires you may have for the sake of our country. At this period in time, we are not interested in blaming each other for past acts of injustice and indiscretion. We are more concerned with the abject poverty and rampant crime that plagues our communities leaving us feeling unsafe even in our own homes. This is not the Guyana that our forefathers had fought and struggled so hard for. This has become a wasteland filled with garbage, intolerance, crime and corruption which has made us become a third world country after we had once been the intellectual and cultural center of the entire Caribbean. It is now that we are forced to ask our elected representatives how much more damage can be done to us and our country as we become buried by your ideological differences and politics ?

In closing, let us thank you for taking the time to learn more about our concerns and we sincerely hope to receive replies from some, if not all of you. We are not naive enough to expect miracles, nor do we believe that such an arduous undertaking will be accomplished immediately. We simply urge you to reconsider whatever philosophical issues and cultural difference that keep you apart in order to achieve national reconciliation. If we, the Diaspora can come together and find the courage within our hearts to promote unity and peace for the sake of our country and our children, can you not also be gracious enough to do the same ?

Sincerely,

Concerned Citizens Of Guyana

http://www.guyanagazette.net

New kit photos

2006-05-15T11:02:00.000-04:00

http://tottenhamhotspur.rivals.net/

b-day...

2006-05-14T14:30:00.000-04:00

Just a brief note to say thank-you for all the birthday wishes send to me... I appreciate all of your kindness and concern very, very much...

simple joys,

jono

For all the MOMS...

2006-05-14T02:57:00.000-04:00

This is for the mothers who have sat up all night with sick toddlers in their arms, wiping up barf laced with Oscar Mayer wieners and cherry Kool-Aid saying, "It's okay honey, Mommy's here." Who have sat in rocking chairs for hours on end soothing crying babies who can't be comforted. This is for all the mothers who show up at work with spit-up in their hair and milk stains on their blouses and diapers in their purse. For all the mothers who run carpools and make cookies and sew Halloween costumes. And all the mothers who DON'T.

This is for the mothers who gave birth to babies they'll never see. And the mothers who took those babies and gave them homes.

This is for the mothers whose priceless art collections are hanging on their refrigerator doors. And for all the mothers who froze their buns on metal bleachers at football or soccer games instead of watching from the warmth of their cars, so that when their kids asked, "Did you see me, Mom?" they could say, "Of course, I wouldn't have missed it for the world," and mean it.

This is for all the mothers who yell at their kids in the grocery store and swat them in despair when they stomp their feet and scream for ice cream before dinner. And for all the mothers who count to ten instead, but realize how child abuse happens.

This is for all the mothers who sat down with their children and explained all about making babies. And for all the (grand) mothers who wanted to, but just couldn't find the words.

This is for all the mothers who go hungry, so their children can eat. For all the mothers who read "Goodnight, Moon" twice a night for a year. And then read it again. "Just one more time."

This is for all the mothers who taught their children to tie their shoelaces before they started school. And for all the mothers who opted for Velcro instead.

This is for all the mothers who teach their sons to cook and their daughters to sink a jump shot.

This is for every mother whose head turns automatically when a little voice calls "Mom?" in a crowd, even though they know their own offspring are at home -- or even away at college.

This is for all the mothers who sent their kids to school with stomach aches assuring them they'd be just FINE once they got there, only to get calls from the school nurse an hour later asking them to please pick them up. Right away.

This is for mothers whose children have gone astray, who can't find the words to reach them.

This is for all the step-mothers who raised another woman's child or children, and gave their time, attention, and love... sometimes totally unappreciated!

For all the mothers who bite their lips until they bleed when their 14-year-olds dye their hair green.

For all the mothers of the victims of recent school shootings, and the mothers of those who did the shooting.

For the mothers of the survivors, and the mothers who sat in front of theirTVs in horror, hugging their child who just came home from school, safely.

This is for all the mothers who taught their children to be peaceful, and now pray they come home safely from a war.

What makes a good Mother anyway? Is it patience? Compassion? Broad hips? The ability to nurse a baby, cook dinner, and sew a button on a shirt, all at the same time? Or is it in her heart? Is it the ache you feel when you watch your son or daughter disappear down the street, walking to school alone for the very first time? The jolt that takes you from sleep to dread, from bed to crib at 2 A.M. to put your hand on the back of a sleeping baby? The panic, years later, that comes again at 2 A.M. when you just want to hear their key in the door and know they are safe again in your home? Or the need to flee from wherever you are and hug your child when you hear news of a fire, a car accident, a child dying?

The emotions of motherhood are universal and so our thoughts are for young mothers stumbling through diaper changes and sleep deprivation...and mature mothers learning to let go. For working mothers and stay-at-home mothers.

Single mothers and married mothers. Mothers with money, mothers without.

This is for you all. For all of us.

Hang in there. In the end we can only do the best we can. Tell them every day that we love them. And pray.

"Home is what catches you when you fall - and we all fall."

African Guyanese Marginalization is a result of a Disproportionality of poverty

2006-05-13T22:51:00.000-04:00

To The Editor

Stabroek New

Dear Editor

African Guyanese Marginalization is a result of a Disproportionality of poverty

Two recent letters have sought to refute the claim of African Guyanese marginalization, Prof. Randy Persuad’s letter, titled, “The Argument that African Guyanese have been marginalized in Guyana cannot be sustained”, dated 05/09/06, and Mr. Latchman Sharma’s letter, titled, “I would like to see the data for Dr. Hinds proposition that African Guyanese are more disadvantaged than other groups”, dated, 05/10/06.

I would like to begin by pointing out that both letters have somewhat mischaracterized Dr. Hinds’ argument which was a response to your editorial, especially Mr. Sharma’s letter. The argument is not a question of who is more disadvantage, rather it is a question of being disadvantaged and marginalized. Marginalization is not ethnically specific, or is it a case of, if one group is marginalized other groups are not, or whether people within other ethnic groups are not disadvantaged or marginalized. There is no argument against the reality of the marginalization of our indigenous population, and I agree that all Guyanese should be more vocal about this issue. However, what is constantly denied by supporters of the government is African Guyanese marginalization. I think when we speak of African Guyanese marginalization we are speaking in terms of a disproportionality of poverty resulting from unequal access to resources. Whenever the question of African Guyanese marginalization occupies discourse, their predominant occupation of the civil services, discipline services and the 28 years of political rule by African Guyanese political elites are pointed to as evidence that African Guyanese are not marginalized. Those who make this argument are not only disingenuous but show little understanding for the relationship between income inequality, unequal resource distribution, poverty and marginalization. In fact, the sectors that African Guyanese occupy are cause for their impoverishment and marginalization, due to the fact that wages are kept miserably low in those sectors. Some may argue, as your editorial did, that this is a consequence of structural adjustment programs, prescribed by international financial institutions, whose policies the government pursues. Regardless of this fact, African Guyanese are impacted disproportionately more, (excluding indigenous people) because of their occupation of those sectors that are hardest hit.

In addition, the Guyana’s economy is based largely on small business economic activities that are controlled largely by a cultural collective, which discriminates in their employment practices; so that outside of the public service which offers some job security for African Guyanese, the private sector has an extremely narrow opening for them. The wage disparity between the public sector and the private sector is very stark, notwithstanding, the fact that the inability of the present administration to attract new investment to absorb the available labor force, is responsible for the large unemployment rate in Guyana and thus poverty, but the disproportionately large unemploy,emt rate among African Guyanese is partly because of the discriminatory practices employed in the private sector.

The economic marginalization of African Guyanese is also realized in the lending policies of local financial institutions. The Strict Collateralized loan policies preferred by banks keep African Guyanese from obtaining most loans thus contributing to their inability to sustain new and emerging economic ventures, and as a result keep them out of the growth process. It is not that African Guyanese are not represented in the economic sector - the pavements of Guyana are liter with micro enterprises owned by African Guyanese - it is more a question of the ability to access collateralized loans to encourage growth in those economic ventures.

The government’s discrimination in terms of inequitable resource distribution is well known. In Guyana, budgetary allocation is constituency driven. Regions where PPP supporters live receive disproportionately larger budgetary allocations on a per capita basis than other regions of non-supporters. Because of this pattern and practice African Guyanese communities are increasingly sinking into severe economic depression and this is partly responsible for the increasing crime rate among African Guyanese youths, notwithstanding the drug activities that make these youths vulnerable. And it is public knowledge that the government supporters received more governmental contracts than any other group.

Contrary to Prof. Randy Persaud’s belief and most other supporters of the government, whose first instinct is to fall into the pit of revisionist history, no serious African Guyanese academic has argued the case that Indian Guyanese are responsible for African Guyanese impoverishment. Prof. Persaud declaratively states that Indian Guyanese never enslaved Africans. I have no idea what this means, but African Guyanese marginalization is not an argument against Indian Guyanese as a Group. In fact I and others including Dr. Hinds have acknowledged the period of PNC authoritarian rule and mismanagement as responsible for the improvishment of a vast number of African Guyanese. So I agree with Dr. Persaud that Indian Guyanese do not owe African Guyanese anything. Dr. Persaud and many PPP sympathizers must learn that an indictment of the PPP regime is not by extension an indictment of Indian Guyanese as an ethnic group. Governments have a responsibility to ensure fair and equitable distribution measures. The Jagdeo administration has and continues to do nothing to address the situation of African Guyanese poverty and by their practice of exclusionary politics has marginalized African Guyanese and African Guyanese communities. Prof. Persuad by his own admission is a majoritarian and therefore is not concerned with promoting the politics of inclusion. I wonder what would be Dr. Persaud’s position if the shoe was on the other foot. One of the traits of a good academic is social compassion and intellectual honesty.

No group in Guyana should be making claims of marginalization if the emphasis is on promoting social and economic cohesion and ethnic peace in Guyana.

“The state has a fundamental role to play in guaranteeing a degree of social and economic cohesion. It can change the way public money is spent to achieve greater redistribution and repair holes in the social fabric (i.e. exclusion). It can also promote social cohesion by focusing on delivering higher levels of social protection for all. Measures to foster participatory democracy are also a crucial part of strengthening social cohesion. It is essential that, alongside representative democracy, all groups are involved in decision-making.” United Nations.2005 Human Development Report.

This is what we should all struggle for, not the domination of one ethnic group by the other, be it African, Indian Amerindian or Portuguese. Guyana desperately needs cohesion to move forward and the government must be held accountable for this.

Yours Faithfully

Dennis Wiggins

Special Thanks to OV for this insightful piece !!

Please Keep Smilin' People !!

2006-05-13T02:50:00.000-04:00

AFC's Action Plan for Crime

2006-05-10T14:33:00.000-04:00

I recently came across this on their website and must admit that I wholeheartedly support most of these initiatives... I believe that one of the biggest problems that the AFC has is that they are not getting their message out to the people and as such, we need help promote them and get people at least talking about their plans for crime... I will do what I can to post this on various other Guyanese sites but I believe that if we are all motivated by a common desire to see change in Guyana that we can come up with more ideas on how to "unofficially" work with the AFC...

The AFC believes that Guyana has sufficient ranks within the police force for Guyana's population size to deal with crime (I take this to mean that they will not seek to bring in outside assistance such as in Trinidad - something that I believe should be considered because of the severity of the situation in Guyana).

The AFC suggests that most of the police force are "bogged down" performing administrative duties that could be contracted out to independent agencies through a series of transparent bidding or transferred to other Government Agencies which will free police officers to fight crime and the drug trade...

The AFC proposes to increase the salary for police and military personal by 50% over a three year period starting with 20% in year 1 (2006) and 30% by July 2009. (this is a great idea since I have been informed that the police in Guyana do not earn sufficient wages and as such, some have been easily tempted to take bribes !!)

The AFC supports the development of an amnesty programme for the surrender of illegal weapons which will be backed by "buy-back" and similar schemes, and the introduction of draconian legislation denying bail to persons found in possession of illegal firearms, and increasing the term of imprisonment from 1 year to 3 years mandatory upon conviction. In addition, licensing procedures will be responsible, transparent and open...(I am all for tougher sentences and harsher penalties to combat crime in Guyana).

Appointment of a Special Crime Unit (SCU) comprising of GDF and GPF personnel and to be headed by a GDF officer on secondment and based in Camp Ayangana.

Appointment of a Drug Enforcement Chief to coordinate and execute drug enforcement policy and programme only and to implement in tandem with the assistance of the DEA and other supporting securty forces.

The AFC proposes to furnish police with the tools to fight crimes including weapons, mobile communications, transportation, a forensic labortatory, fingerprint / criminal behavioral database, weaponry and other necessary material.

International support to police and law enforcement in investigating homicides, narco-trafficking, gun smuggling, and other serious crimes. International agencies wil provide technical assistance and training in 21rst century crime fighting techniques including intelligence gathering and prosecution, and training to deal with the victims of crimes involving violence againist women and children (very important and often overlooked in my opinion !!).

The AFC wants to introdcuce legislation to legitimise and regulate Community Policing and the formation of Citizens Protection Units (CPU's) in keeping with the best practices in North America and Europe.

The AFC wants to appoint Special Prosecutors and Magistrates for selected categories and offences (I agree with this too !!).

The AFC plans to complete the implementation of recommendations of the Disciplined Forces Commission, Symonds Group Report and CARICOM Task Force on Crime & Security Report

The AFC wants to construct a modern prison within 3 years of taking office and laso new appropriate and humane facilities for women and children, and re-designate the Camp Street jail as a remand centre.

I hope that helps clarify some of their positions on crime and the drug trade in Guyana... I support most of their ideas and the only real concern that I have is how they will pay for such programs but at least, they have proven to be rather forward-thinking in their approach and I do believe that Guyana does have the resources available to offset some of the costs...

AFC's consultant Dick Morris to launch party's poll today

2006-05-10T12:24:00.000-04:00

Great news and we need to do all we can to suppor Mr. Morris and the AFC !!

Wednesday, May 10th 2006

Dick Morris

In its bid for political office the Alliance For Change (AFC) has brought on board American political consultant Dick Morris who is expected to reveal today details of a poll commissioned by the party in which it is showing 25% support from the electorate.

Morris, who is credited with piloting former Ameri-can President, Bill Clinton to a comeback re-election victory in 1996 after the he had lost Congress to the Republicans two years before, was expected in the country last night and is expected to hold a press conference at Le Meridien Pegasus this afternoon.

AFC Presidential Candidate Raphael Trotman told Stabroek News on Monday that Morris has been working with the party since January. Describing him as a specialist in detecting electoral fraud, who would no doubt be able to detect it and root it out if and when he finds it, Trotman said this was one of the reasons why the AFC had welcomed him.

Morris's association with Clinton began in 1977 when he handled his successful campaign to become the Governor of Arkansas and the youngest in the nation. He did not work on his campaign for re-election in 1980 when he was defeated but oversaw his comeback victory in 1982 and his re-election in 1984, 1986 and 1990.He has worked with other senators and governors and for Mexican President Vicente Fox. Speaking briefly about the most recent poll conducted on the AFC's behalf which is some 300 pages long, the party's leader Khemraj Ramjattan said that it was the third the AFC had commissioned and it showed an increase in support for the party for the upcoming general and regional elections.

While he noted that the previous poll showed 17% support for the AFC he did not say what were the results of the first poll commissioned. However, he did indicate that the support base is mainly in the younger age group but said that Mr Morris would reveal who had done the poll and answer questions on it at today's press conference. This, Ramjattan said, would also set the party in campaign mode for the elections. The party's campaign manager is Clayton Hall.

The AFC has also begun the production of its official organ, The Key, which is published every two months and so far is being circulated free of cost.

Stabroek News

Too many cars -- too little space across Caribbean

2006-05-09T22:55:00.000-04:00

A flood of cheap imported cars is overwhelming the 18th century roads of the Caribbean.

BY JOE MOZINGO

jmozingo@MiamiHerald.com

ROSEAU, Dominica - Twice a day, thousands of commuters hurtle and lurch in and out of this capital city along bending, bobbing one-lane roads.

They careen into the dirt when startled by oncoming cars. Margins of error are inches wide, and side mirrors are a common casualty of misjudgment.

In Dominica and across the Caribbean in recent years, used Japanese cars, increasingly available on the Internet, have flooded islands in no way prepared to accommodate them.

In strife-racked Haiti, a Kafkaesque gridlock of taxis and ever-stopping jitneys known as tap taps is relieved only on days of heavy gunfire. In Trinidad, the original source of the world's asphalt, the government is building its first major overpass at an intersection south of Port of Spain where traffic regularly backs up for miles.

In Barbados, commuters traversing the island don't follow efficient highways but a quaint network of switch-backing rural lanes. In Nassau, the traffic circles are bottlenecks of bumper-car rage at rush hour. And from Guyana to Grenada, St. Kitts to Jamaica, once-quiet country roads are clogged with cars long considered too expensive for a region largely populated by farmers, fishermen and cane-cutters.

While the influx of used Japanese vehicles doesn't generally affect the secluded resort areas favored by foreign tourists, it is transforming the workaday hubs of the Leeward and Windward islands -- bringing strip malls, roadside KFCs and brand-new bedroom communities.

MORE AFFORDABLE

''These vehicles are affordable to the average man,'' said Raymond Charles, head of the civil engineering department at the University of the West Indies, on the St. Augustine, Trinidad, campus. And with the Internet, buyers can cut out the middleman and purchase directly from dealerships in Japan.

The Japanese rarely drive a vehicle for more than several years, in part because the country has stringent registration rules -- called Shaken; owners must keep their cars in near-perfect condition, going through an expensive inspection from the tires up every two years. Often, the cost to comply outstrips the cost of a new car.

In the Caribbean, the crush of vehicles comes as the sugar cane and banana industries are collapsing, and people are migrating closer to the cities for work -- concentrating the strain of traffic on 18th century roads and intersections in already tight quarters, often with no room to expand.

''Congestion is a whole-day affair in many places, particularly roads going into capital cities,'' said Charles, who has worked extensively on Trinidad's road network and studied traffic congestion throughout the eastern Caribbean. ``All the territories are grappling with improving their road networks. A lot of the infrastructure we have, we have inherited from the [British] colonial era.''

Even on this lush island of 68,000 people, sleepy even by Caribbean standards, the term ''road rage'' is entering the lexicon.

In 1986, there were 1,900 registered vehicles in Dominica. In 1996, there were 7,299. Today, there are 17,329 -- a 900 percent jump in 20 years.

As in many other colonial-era cities, cars here must navigate and park on alley-like streets designed for the late 1700s -- old British mews petrified into place by stone-walled buildings and overhanging verandas that defy planners' attempts to widen them.

`NO ROOM TO EXPAND'

''Parking is becoming a very critical matter,'' said Ainsworth C. Irish, the acting assistant superintendent of police, in charge of the traffic department. ``The city of Roseau has no room to expand. But everyone wants to drive to the city.''

And as cruise ships increasingly come to port in Roseau, a cottage industry of bus drivers converges at the docks to catch the tourists. There is little space to walk anymore. ''Prior to motor cars, people used to walk on the streets,'' said Lennox Honychurch, an anthropologist and local historian. ``Now they have these one-foot sidewalks.''

The open highway is little better, often just a 10-foot ribbon of pavement clinging to mountainsides. On this, the 34-seat tour buses race to the interior -- to the waterfalls, cloud forests and geothermal boiling lakes that are this nation's biggest attractions.

GOUGED, SIDESWIPED

Even the main road between Dominica's two main cities, Roseau and Portsmouth, narrows through a gauntlet of old stone houses. In the village of Massacre, it takes a tight turn within inches of Crystal's Beauty Palace -- its facade gouged by sideswipes, the edge of its tin roof chewed up by trucks.

Across the road at Decima Nicholas' little convenience shop, a downshifting driver can send a hefty dose of diesel exhaust right over her front counter. ''Fumes, dust, blowing horns, brakes squealing, that's what you have to deal with now,'' she said.

Irish said most accidents on Dominica are minor, with driver's-side mirrors the first to go. But the number of fatalities for the number of registered vehicles in Dominica is very high.

In the United States, there is an average of 14 fatalities per 100,000 registered vehicles, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Dominica last year had eight deaths, which would be a rate of 46 per 100,000 vehicles.

http://www.miami.com/

Looking for WILBERT GRANT

2006-05-09T00:35:00.000-04:00

shamanta hunt
Subject: looking for WILBERT GRANT

Hello my good country people. I am looking for my dad, his name is Wilbert Grant he left Guyana in 1969.He made four of us two boys and two girls and we are trying to find him,we pray every day that he is alive.We are all big men and women now we would just love for him to see his grand children and his in-laws,my name is Andrea Grant I am now living in america.My mom said that he have a cousin by the name of Leyland Forde also my grandmother was a Forde my father was born 26th March 1943 please any body that knows him or his cousin please please give them this e-mail address. My father we know that you love us,we love you too,we have been trying to find you for so long .I pray that by the power of god that some body know you or Leyland. Have a bless day my internet friends. Thank you all.

Additional Information:

My father from what Ii learnt was born and grew up on the railway embankment in georgetown, he was born on the 26/03/1943. my mother only knew his mother never knew anything about his father. you see he was raised by his aunt who only past away about six months ago. she had moved and was living in linden for a number of years but her daughter would sometimes come and visit us from time to time. she died at the age of 85, but his mother died about 16 or 17 years ago. he use work at guyana water authority which was also known back then by water works. my youngst brother was only two weeks old when he left for the states and that was 1969 december.

Another thing my mom say's to ask your mon if she knows of one Leyland Forde which is the brother of Michael Forde. the same Michael that was killed in a bomb attact during the late 50's probably early 60's my mon cannot remmber clearly, he was a PPP ACTIVIST. but anyhow Leyland was my father's uncle nephew too, brenda father, Mr. forde who had raised him along with brenda and her brother lennox. so you see how my father had adopted the name forde but subsequently it (the name) had changed to Grant which my mon said was supposed to be his father's name. so his and her married name was Grant. anyhow Leyand went to the states some time in the 70's. my mon say that if your mother could remember him. he probably might be one of the clues to in finding him. that would be if he had ever seen him which my mon thinks he probly did.

My father first address my mother say's when he went up was 308 sterling place brooklyn 11216. that was from where he corresponded then went in to seclusion.

4-year-old boy runs 65 km

2006-05-08T22:39:00.000-04:00

BHUBANESWAR, India—Cheered by thousands, a 4-year-old boy dubbed "India's Forrest Gump" ran 65 kilometres yesterday in setting what his coach said was most likely a world record.

Budhia Singh, a slum resident from the eastern state of Orissa whose talent was discovered by the local sports coach, was escorted by doctors and 300 cadets of the Central Reserve Police Force, which plans to pay for his upbringing. Budhia had planned to run 70 kilometres, but doctors stopped him after 65 kilometres when he showed signs of extreme exhaustion.

Officials of Limca Book of Records, India's best-known record book, witnessed the run and said it would be included in its 2007 edition. The boy completed the run in seven hours and two minutes — an Indian record and "perhaps a world record too," said coach Biranchi Das.

Budhia prayed before dawn at Jagannath Temple, a Hindu shrine in Puri town, and then began his run to Bhubaneswar, the state capital, on a highway lined with palm trees. Thousands stood along the road, cheering him on.

Das said the boy would have completed the 70 kilometres if he hadn't been interrupted frequently by enthusiastic supporters and television reporters after entering Bhubaneswar.

Budhia's father is dead and his mother, unable to support him, was about to sell him to another villager two years ago when he was rescued by the coach.

Budhia has gained swift popularity in India. He is being likened by the news media to Forrest Gump, the fictional book and movie character who is ridiculed by peers for using leg braces, but overcomes his disability when he discovers he can "run like the wind blows."

"I loved running today. I can run as much as I want," Budhia told reporters after the run.

Then he sucked his thumb.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

A CULT

2006-05-07T17:00:00.000-04:00

Peter R. Ramsaroop, MBA

Over the past five years, we have seen a significant shift in the way the Jagdeo administration conducts business. These alterations are evident in every level of the way the ruling government operates, including the areas of public relations, legislation and even its approach to education.

The Jagdeo administration has taken huge strides away from the policies of Dr. Cheddi Jagan and the PPP party today does not look at all like the party Dr. Jagan built. Many PPP supporters are disappointed at the party and its policies.

In fact, I had one PPP supporter, a very poor person, crying because her house lot was taken away by the Housing Minister because she could not come up with the $58,000 payment needed to build a house within the allotted time period.

Many PPP supporters live in poverty and have no electricity. Many still cook on a fireside and do not even have running water. These PPP loyalists are often destined to cut sugar cane for the rest of their lives while they continue to live on promises.

As such, logical reasoning would surmise that the PPP is more of a cult than a political party. Its members unite together on the rancid doctrine of racism preached to them on a daily basis. However, apart from this treacherous solitary factor, they have very little else in common with the agenda of today's PPP.

After listening to recent pronouncements by the President, the cabinet secretary and top advisors, one cannot help but recall the last major cult in Guyana that was led by self-appointed saviour, Jim Jones.

Jones' trusting supporters allowed him to twist their reasoning and common sense to the point that they willingly drank poisoned kool-aid. They ignored any warning signs of imbalance or impropriety to be a part of a group that claimed to be ordained of God and to have the keys to an eternal paradise. They allowed themselves to be brainwashed with destructive ideologies.

It is easy to stand on the outside of that cultish environment and pronounce judgement on those naïve followers because we were not foolish enough to fall prey to the smooth words of a twisted, charismatic leader.

However, twisted leaders are not exclusive to religious groups alone. They can be found in every segment of society, including the political realm.

In Guyana today, we find a different, yet just as dangerous, type of cultish environment. PPP supporters have been programmed through constant propaganda and empty promises from trusted leaders to believe they will one day soon have the promised electricity, running water and a Berbice Bridge .

It would seem that stark logic and good reason would prove these promises to be nothing more than a manipulative ploy to maintain the loyalty of the party faithful. But cultic behaviour defies all logic and will often defend the constant failures and misdeed of its leaders – even to death if necessary.

It is indeed a precarious situation when a democratic nation finds a majority of its citizens to be the pawns of a manipulative political party since these are the same individuals who decide who will lead the country. Blind allegiance to any leader will eventually lead to a tragic outcome.

We are called upon to use our reason and good sense when choosing leaders. If a leader cannot be trusted, then good sense demands the expulsion of such a leader. Yet in Guyana , we pledge our loyalty to unscrupulous leaders merely because they are a certain race – as if race has anything whatsoever to do with integrity or trustworthiness.

Followers of the PPP cult will dogmatically assert that their party is bringing progress and economic reform to the country in the face of very little national development and abject poverty. They defend the inappropriate actions of their leaders and regurgitate the propaganda fed to them even though in their hearts they know none of it is true.

In the quest to be part of an elite group, even if the group is wrong, followers of a cult would rather die in their error than admit their group is a failure. Such is the state of Guyana today. As crime overtakes our streets and our educational system falls into a state of utter disrepair, the Jagdeo administration continues to proclaim that we live in a paradise.

The empty promises of today's PPP will not provide jobs for their supporters or make them prosperous; yet still the followers are happy to settle for a fake paradise rather than shake the cult that has indoctrinated them and never delivered.

Freddie Kissoon, the renowned professor and columnist, made a profound discovery when he showed that none of the leaders practice what they preach. He cited the example of Dr. Luncheon's recent illness when he went to the great United States instead of Cuba where he sends his supporters for, as the President describes, the best medical care.

When Dr. Jagan was ill, the US Air Force sent a plane to pick him up and took him to Walter Reed Military hospital. I helped with that mission. It was well known that the same man had no love for the US . In fact, he and his wife spent decades demonising America and its social policies, yet on his dying bed he realised that this is where the best medical care was, not communist Soviet Union at the time.

The Passport Office is filled everyday with Guyanese who are primarily PPP supporters. So it is obvious that although they verbally remain loyal to their cultish party, they still know the party has failed them. While they do not have the strength to leave the party on Guyana 's shores because of a fear of their family and friends, they flee to other countries in search of prosperity.

The PPP leaders demonstrated their dictatorial methods, a component of this cult, once again this week when they rushed through an amendment on the election process. This is especially callous considering the fact that the elections are about all the political parties and all the people – not just the PPP. They have once again totally disregarded others' views and proven what the next five years will look like if we allow this cult to get stronger. Even a so-called ex-PPP executive seemed still tied to the party by supporting his beloved cult by his recent vote on the amendment.

If Guyana does not wake up to the reality of this cultic political situation, we are likely to die a slow death just like the followers of Jim Jones. Reason and logic should take precedence over any allegiance to leaders who promise the world, but deliver fear and poverty.

Kaieteur News

Clinton 's campaign manager tohead AFC elections charge

2006-05-05T14:01:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone,

Sorry to bother you as I am sure you are all busy however I came across this important news item in the Kaieteur News and wanted to forward this message to as many people as possible and I hope that you will also feel the need to so do. Although I am not an authority on Guyanese politics there is little doubt that the country has suffered enough because of the racial politics that are continually being practiced by the PPP and PNC. It is for this reason, that the people of Guyana have been and continue to be subjected to the constant threat of violence and criminal activity as the political officials have done little to improve the quality of life for the average Guyanese citizen. It is time for all Guyanese people to take back their country from the corrupt politicians and inept government that seeks only to maintain the status quo which is essentially to keep the people as uniformed as possible so that they can maintain the status quo and retain their political power. If the people of Guyana were better informed about the current political practices and policies in place, they would no doubt expect and demand better from their elected officials who, in my honest opinion, have done little to help improve the country. It is for this reason, that I make this public plea to everyone to at least think changing their vote from one that is based solely on race and ethnicity, to one that is based upon the idea of change. There is no doubt that all Guyanese people deserve and I firmly believe that the AFC represents a legitimate opportunity for Guyana to have a prosperous future. If there is any confusion or hesitation to vote for change, then consider voting for the AFC as a means of protest which will send a message to the powers that be that you are tired of the existing racial politics that so divides and hinders the economic and social development of the country. It is time for every Guyanese citizen to take back their country and to assert their power by casting a vote for the AFC.

People do have the power to change the world in which they live in... I encourage you all to please forward this message to all of your Guyanese friends and family and to do all you can to help the AFC win this election either through a donation or by talking with friends and family about the idea that it is time for change, it is time for the AFC lead Guyana toward the bright future our ancestors had envisioned and struggled to achieve.

Thank-you for your time and I although I do not have any affiliation with the AFC, there is no doubt in my mind that they represent the best hope for Guyana.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Bratt

jonathanbratt@rogers.com

A former campaign manager of US President Bill Clinton will be in Guyana next week under the auspices of the Alliance For Change (AFC). The AFC intends to recruit him to head the party's campaign for the 2006 general elections.

When contacted yesterday, AFC Chairman Raphael Trotman confirmed that Dick Morris will head the AFC's campaign team.

Trotman did not elaborate but said Morris worked with Mexico 's President Vincente Fox, and also in the United Kingdom , Argentina and Japan .

Morris will now be bringing his skills to the AFC in an effort to boost the party's chances at the elections slated to be held no later than September 3, 2006.

Trotman said that Morris will hold a press conference during his visit to Guyana to give a more detailed outlook on how he intends to work with the AFC.

According to the Wikipedia Encyclopedia, Morris was born in New York City and is a political author and commentator who was once a successful pollster and campaign consultant.

Morris is best known for managing Bill Clinton's successful 1996 bid for re-election to the office of President of the United States . Morris has since turned his focus to media commentary.

He now writes a weekly column for the New York Post and appears regularly on the Fox News Channel.

The Wikipedia Encyclopedia said Morris has emerged as a harsh critic of the Clintons and has written several books that criticize them, including Rewriting History — a rebuttal to Senator Hillary Clinton's Living History. Morris first worked with Bill and Hillary Clinton during Bill Clinton's successful 1978 bid for Governor of Arkansas.

Though he did not work on Bill Clinton's unsuccessful re-election campaign in 1980, Morris helped him win back the governor's office in 1982 and continued to work with him in subsequent campaigns.

Morris did not have a role in Clinton 's successful 1992 presidential campaign, which instead was headed by James Carville and Paul Begala.

After the 1994 mid-term election where Republicans took control of both houses of Congress and gained considerable power in the states, Clinton once again sought Morris's help to prepare for the 1996 presidential election.

It was Morris who proposed a strategy of “triangulation”, where Bill Clinton would appeal to a diverse group of voters by distancing himself from both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Kaieteur News

Amnesty: Torture 'widespread' in U.S. custody

2006-05-03T22:43:00.000-04:00

GENEVA, Switzerland (Reuters) -- Torture and inhumane treatment are "widespread" in U.S.-run detention centers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Cuba and elsewhere despite Washington's denials, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

In a report for the United Nations' Committee against Torture, the London, England-based human rights group also alleged abuses within the U.S. domestic law enforcement system, including use of excessive force by police and degrading conditions of isolation for inmates in high-security prisons.

"Evidence continues to emerge of widespread torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees held in U.S. custody," Amnesty said in its 47-page report.

It said that while Washington has sought to blame abuses that have recently come to light on "aberrant soldiers and lack of oversight," much ill-treatment stemmed from officially sanctioned interrogation procedures and techniques.

"The U.S. government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture, it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish," said Amnesty International USA Senior Deputy Director-General Curt Goering.

The U.N. committee, whose experts carry out periodic reviews of countries that have signed on to the U.N. Convention against Torture, is scheduled to begin consideration of the United States on Friday. The last U.S. review was in 2000.

It said in November it was seeking U.S. answers to questions including whether Washington operated secret detention centers abroad and whether President Bush had the power to absolve anyone from criminal responsibility in torture cases.

The committee also wanted to know whether a December 2004 memorandum from the U.S. attorney general's office, reserving the designation of torture as "extreme" acts of cruelty, was compatible with the global convention barring all forms of cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.
'Until the end'

In its own submission to the committee, published late last year, Washington justified the holding of thousands of foreign terrorism suspects in detention centers abroad, including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, on the grounds that it was fighting a war that was still not over.

"Like other wars, when they start, we do not know when they will end. Still, we may detain combatants until the end of the war," it said.

The U.S. human rights image has taken a battering abroad over a string of scandals involving the sexual and physical abuse of detainees held by American forces in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

In its submission, Washington did not mention alleged secret detention centers.

Amnesty listed a series of incidents in recent years involving torture of detainees in U.S. custody, noting the heaviest sentence given to perpetrators was five months in jail.

This was the same punishment you could get for stealing a bicycle in the United States, it added.

"Although the U.S. government continues to assert its condemnation of torture and ill-treatment, these statements contradict what is happening in practice," said Goering, referring to the testimony of alleged torture victims in the report.

CNN

Woman beheads husband who wanted 4th wife

2006-05-03T13:08:00.000-04:00

May 03, 2006, 11:30

A Pakistani woman beheaded her husband, chopped up his body and dumped the dismembered parts in a sewerage drain after he announced plans to take a fourth wife.

Police said Majeeda Khatoon killed her husband, a well-off building contractor, while he was asleep, and cut his body into seven pieces with the help of two male relatives in Gulshan-e-Hadeed, a township on the outskirts of the southern city of Karachi.

Khatoon (45) was arrested late last week and has been remanded in custody while the police frame charges against her. Khatoon said her 55-year-old husband had taken other wives and flaunted his infidelity, but she was pushed over the edge when he announced plans to take a fourth wife, according to the police officer.

Islam permits men to take up to four wives, and while polygamy is not the norm in Pakistan, it is not rare either. - Reuters

http://www.sabcnews.com/

2006-05-03T00:13:00.000-04:00

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592-225-0452/0455
alliance4changegy@yahoo.com

Or For Electronic Funds Transfer

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Alliance For Change Inc. check/cheque account at Demerara Bank for Donors in London and New York are as follows:

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Pregnant Guyanese strip-searched at Barbados airport

2006-05-02T01:29:00.000-04:00

…had gone there to holiday with New York-based husband

It was their first visit to Barbados and they have vowed never to return. Desmond Clarke and his wife Mabali, travelled to Barbados on April 27 and 28 respectively, for a romantic rendezvous and to celebrate Mabali's 30th birthday.

However they claim their trip was tainted when Mabali, who is four months pregnant, was allegedly strip-searched at the Grantley Adams International Airport .

The couple is Guyanese but Desmond came directly from New York where he works in construction.

“I came from Guyana to meet my husband here. A police officer asked me what was my purpose here and I said ‘visiting'. He asked me where I was from and I said “ Guyana ” and he said ‘ Guyana ; you are f——ing thieves and you bring drugs to this country'”, Mabali recounted.

“He carried me to a Customs officer and they searched everything I had, from my bag to my sneakers .Then the officer called two female Customs officers and told them to take me in a room and search me.”

She said she was asked to strip literally from head to toe and told to squat in her condition. The Customs officers came out and told the police officer they found nothing.

“He told them to take me back in and search me again,” she said, visibly upset.

After the searches turned up empty once more, Mabali said the officer told her he would give her the benefit of the doubt and he let her go.

However, she said the whole incident was embarrassing and left a bad taste in her mouth about Barbados .

“I was the third person to come off the plane at 10:10.a m and I never got out of the airport until 12.15pm. I'll never come back to Barbados ever again,” she said.

Up to press time the police could not comment on the allegations made by the visitors.

Kaieteur News

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/04/26/eu.ciaflights.ap/index.html

2006-04-30T16:36:00.000-04:00

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has conducted more than 1,000 secret flights over European territory since 2001, some to transfer terror suspects, European Parliament investigators said Wednesday.

Lawmakers investigating alleged illegal CIA activities in Europe also said incidents when terror suspects secretly were handed over to U.S. agents did not appear to be isolated.

They said the suspects often were transported around Europe on the same planes -- by agents whose names repeatedly came up in the investigation -- which suggested a pattern of operations.

EU parliamentarians presented a first preliminary report on their investigation, working off data provided by Eurocontrol, the EU's air safety agency, and information gathered during three months of hearings and more than 50 hours of testimony by individuals who said they were kidnapped and tortured by U.S. agents, as well as EU officials and rights groups.

"After 9/11, within the framework of the fight against terrorism, the violation of human and fundamental rights was not isolated or an excessive measure confined to a short period of time, but rather a widespread regular practice in which the majority of European countries were involved," said Italian lawmaker Giovanni Claudio Fava, who drafted the report.

Data showed that CIA planes made numerous secret stopovers on European territory, violating an international air treaty that requires airlines to declare the route and stopovers for planes with a police mission, he said.

The routes for some of these flights seem to be quite suspect. ... They are rather strange routes for flights to take. It is hard to imagine ... those stopovers were simply for providing fuel," he said.

He cited the alleged transfer of an Egyptian cleric abducted from a Milan street in 2003; a German who claimed he was transferred from Macedonia to Afghanistan, and the transfer of a Canadian citizen from New York to Syria, among other suspect flights.

For example, documents provided by Eurocontrol showed Khalid al-Masri, the German, was transferred to Afghanistan in 2004 by a plane that originated in Algeria and flew via Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Skopje, Macedonia, and Baghdad, Iraq before landing in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Al-Masri, who was born in Kuwait, had told the European Parliament committee earlier this year he was arrested by U.S. intelligence agents on the Macedonian border while on vacation, taken to a hotel in Skopje, and then imprisoned there for several weeks before being flown to Kabul and imprisoned for five months. He said he was flown back to Europe in May 2004 and released in Albania.

Fava also noted that the same agents often showed up on flights, and called it unlikely that certain EU governments, such as Italy, Bosnia and Sweden, knew nothing about CIA operations.

The United States has not made any public comment on the allegations of secret renditions, and the official line by EU governments and senior EU officials is that there has been no irrefutable proof of such renditions.

"We have no comment. We will wait for the investigation to finish," said Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini.

Clandestine detention centers, secret stopovers in Europe en route countries where suspects could face torture, or extraordinary renditions all would breach the continent's human rights treaties.

The parliament inquiry started in January, following media reports that U.S. intelligence officers interrogated al Qaeda suspects at secret prisons in eastern Europe and transported some on secret flights that passed through Europe following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

The focus of the inquiry soon changed from secret prisons in Europe to rendition flights as people who said they were abducted by U.S. agents gave detailed accounts of transfers to what they called secret detention centers in the Middle East, Asia and northern Africa.

Few of those who testified touched upon the alleged secret prisons in eastern Europe first reported by The Washington Post in November. New York-based Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible hosts of secret U.S.-run detention facilities, although both countries have denied involvement.

Fava provided no evidence of secret CIA prisons on EU territory, saying the committee would turn their attention to alleged detention centers later and may go to Poland and Romania in September.

He said the committee plans to travel next month to Washington to discuss the allegations of renditions and secret prisons with lawmakers from U.S. Congress, top officials from U.S. President George W. Bush's administration and representatives of non-governmental organizations.

Update of the Four Girls Who Faced Hanging

2006-04-30T16:30:00.000-04:00

World Organization Against Torture (Geneva)
PRESS RELEASE
April 27, 2006
Posted to the web April 27, 2006

The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by the Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT), a member of the OMCT network, of the release of Ms. Fayza Ismail Abaker (16), Ms. Houda Ismail Abdel Rahman (17) and Ms. Zahra Adam Abdella (17) on 5 April 2006.

According to the information received, Ms. Fayza Ismail Abaker, Ms. Houda Ismail Abdel Rahman and Ms. Zahra Adam Abdella were released after SOAT’s network of lawyers in Nyala submitted an application before the Attorney General in Nyala for the dismissal of the case because of lack of evidence.

It is reported that Ms. Amouna Mohamed Ahmed (17), remains in detention and is awaiting trial for murder.

OMCT expresses its grave concerns over these events and would like to recall Sudan as a state party of the Convention on the Rights of the Child stating that under article 37 (a) "Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age" and under article 37 (c), "every child deprived of liberty shall be treated with humanity and respect for the inherent dignity of the human person, and in a manner which takes into account the needs of persons of his or her age. In particular, every child deprived of liberty shall be separated from adults unless it is considered in the child's best interest not to do so and shall have the right to maintain contact with his or her family through correspondence and visits, save in exceptional circumstances".

Brief reminder of the situation

According to the information received, Ms. Amouna Mohamed Ahmed, Ms. Fayza Ismail Abaker, Ms. Houda Ismail Abdel Rahman and Ms. Zahra Adam Abdella were arrested on 7 March 2006, by police forces in Seraif IDP camp, Hay AlGeer, West Nyala, Southern Dafur. All four girls are IDP’s, who live in Seraif IDP camp and are from the Fur tribe.

It was reported that the four girls were attacked by two armed militias in uniform whilst collecting firewood outside the camp on 7 March 2006, around 11:30am. During the attack, one of the men assaulted one of the girls and attempted to rape her. When the girl resisted, the man began to beat her. In defence, she grabbed the knife she had been using to cut the firewood and stabbed the attacker in the stomach. The four girls then managed to escape and returned to Seraif camp.

Allegedly the girls reported the incident to police officers inside the camp who refused to file the case. In the afternoon of the same day, police officers inside the camp were informed of the death of a stabbing victim. It is reported that this person is the man who was stabbed by the girl. Following this news, the police officers immediately arrested the four girls on suspicion of murder. The girls were initially taken to Nyala Shamal police station, where they were detained for five days and charged with murder under article 190 of the 1991 Penal Code. On 11 March 2006, they were transferred to Nyaka Wasat (Central) police station, headquarters of the police in Nyala, where they are currently being detained. If convicted, the girls may face death by hanging.

Texans reach contract agreement with Williams

2006-04-28T20:37:00.000-04:00

The Texans have told ESPN's Rachel Nichols that they have reached an agreement with Mario Williams, making him the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft

http://sports.espn.go.com/

Ironic Sign

2006-04-27T22:06:00.000-04:00

Specter threatens to block money for NSA domestic wiretapping

2006-04-27T22:02:00.000-04:00

LAURIE KELLMAN

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said Thursday he is considering legislation to cut off funding for the Bush administration's secret domestic wiretapping program until he gets satisfactory answers about it from the White House.

"Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress at the moment," Specter, R-Pa., told the panel. "If we are to maintain our institutional prerogative, that may be the only way we can do it."

Specter said he had informed President Bush about his intention and that he has attracted several potential co-sponsors. He said he's become increasingly frustrated in trying to elicit information about the program from senior White House officials at several public hearings.

The amendment amounted to a warning to the White House from a powerful but frustrated Senate chairman.

"I'm not prepared to vote for it myself," Specter told reporters.

According to a copy of the amendment obtained by The Associated Press, it would enact a "prohibition on use of funds for domestic electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes unless Congress is kept fully and currently informed."

The move got the White House's attention, but not its immediate cooperation. Bush has insisted that the program falls within his authority and has staunchly refused to allow administration officials to answer many of Specter's questions.

"The appropriate members of Congress have been and continue to be informed with respect to the Terrorist Surveillance Program," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "The Administration remains confident that a majority of members of Congress continue to recognize the importance of protecting Americans through lawful intelligence activities directed at terrorists."

http://www.centredaily.com/

Students Tell Paper About Getting Drunk With GOP Congressman At Frat Party...

2006-04-27T21:59:00.000-04:00

From The Concordiensis

From The Union College Newspaper Concordiensis

Congressman John Sweeney, a Republican from the 20th district of New York State, appeared at a registered party at Alpha Delta Phi on Friday, April 22. The Congressman came from Geppetto's Bar and was described by witnesses as being inquisitive and engaging, while also acting openly intoxicated. Longtime friend and owner of Geppetto's Paulie Lichorat accompanied Rep. Sweeney. Lichorat was unavailable for comment regarding this issue.

The New York politician was barraged with a multitude of political questions and lighthearted comments from Union students when he arrived at the party. His attitude was described as cordial, and Sweeney was observed joking around with the students, sometimes even using profanity. It was reported that one student approached the Congressman with drug paraphernalia and asked to take a picture. The Congressman refused.

Melissa Carlson, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Rep. Sweeney, wrote the Concordiensis a statement that the Congressman was in Schenectady attending the wake of a close friend earlier that day. The name of the friend was not released.

"As a committed representative of the people throughout the area where he lives and works, he enjoyed the discussion he shared with the students from Union College," wrote Carlson. "[The congressman] was impressed with the energy and enthusiasm the students displayed - particularly on a Friday evening. Where better to receive feedback than on their own tuff at the college itself?"

Yet witnesses affirm that Mr. Sweeney appeared to have been under the influence of alcohol at the party. One student saw the representative drinking a Keystone Light beer. "He was clearly not in the normal state of mind. He had definitely been drinking, there is no question about it," commented sophomore Kenneth Falcon, who attended the party. Falcon also managed to capture photographs and video footage of the congressman of his digital camera and cellular telephone.

Junior Rebecca Winnick, who spoke to Sweeney at the fraternity house said, "I told him I had worked for Congressman McNulty (D- Green Island), and [Sweeney] was very rude. He said, 'Oh, that's too bad for you, I'm a Republican'."

When asked about her feelings towards Congressman Sweeney's appearance at the party, Winnick commented, "I think it was really inappropriate and probably a poor political decision."

President James Underwood disagrees, arguing the Congressman could have been sober, even though he appeared drank to many students.

"Showing up at a fraternity party is not inappropriate," explained Underwood. "It sounds like he was just socializing. It's not horrible as long as he didn't behave in an inappropriate way"

Sweeney's reputation for running politically parallel to President George W. Bush has made him a future Republican candidate for higher office positions. According to a Post Star article on April 20, 2006, the congressman's record indicates he votes on 80% of all the President's issues. As a result the Democratic National Committee labeled him as the "Rubber Stamp of the Week."

However, the Congressman famously broke away from the Republican Party in December by voting against the renewal, of the USA Patriot Act. He claimed that the government was wasting money and neglecting to provide sufficient funds to high-risk areas like New York City.

The Huffington Post

Leaders visit; front-line troops say, 'Yeah, so?'

2006-04-27T21:57:00.000-04:00

By Arwa Damon
CNN

BALAD, Iraq (CNN) -- As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made their surprise visits to Baghdad on Wednesday, many of the troops stationed north of Baghdad, in Balad and Dujail, say either they didn't know about it or didn't care.

"I'd ask him for a plane ticket home to see my wife. I have barely seen her in the last two years," said a young sergeant, who did not want to be identified. Like many of the soldiers with the 4th Infantry Division, he is on his second deployment to Iraq.

Some joked that whenever VIP's come to visit they just go to the main bases and meet the "fobbits," the nickname given to troops who do not go outside the barbed wire.

"They have to get out to see the people that are doing the jobs they are making them do. If they didn't they would not be very good leaders," said Maj. Michael Humphreys, one of the few soldiers here willing to tell journalists some of his opinions on senior leadership.

At the time he was asked, he didn't know Rumsfeld and Rice were visiting. He was too preoccupied with his mission -- trying to set up a local paper for the Tribal Council in Dujail.

Rumsfeld and Rice were visiting to show support for Iraq's movement toward a new government. And for many of the troops with the 3rd Battalion, 29th Field Artillery Regiment and 4th Infantry Division stationed in Balad and Dujail, they might just as well not have visited at all.

As we discussed the visit, a tip came through -- a suspected leader of a cell dedicated to making "IED's," or improvised explosive devices -- military-speak for homemade bombs -- would be at a certain location at 1400 hours.

The chase was on.

CNN

May 1 immigrant boycott aims to "close" US cities

2006-04-27T21:48:00.000-04:00

By Dan Whitcomb 1 hour, 24 minutes ago

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pro-immigration activists say a national boycott and marches planned for May 1 will flood America's streets with millions of Latinos to demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform.

Such a massive turnout could make for the largest protests since the civil rights era of the 1960s, though not all Latinos were comfortable with such militancy, fearing a backlash in Middle America.

"There will be 2 to 3 million people hitting the streets in Los Angeles alone. We're going to close down Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Tucson, Phoenix, Fresno," said Jorge Rodriguez, a union official who helped organize earlier rallies credited with rattling Congress as it weighs the issue.

Immigration has split Congress, the Republican Party and public opinion. Conservatives want the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants returned to Mexico and a fence built along the border.

Yahoo News

Novel by Harvard Author Pulled From Stores

2006-04-27T21:46:00.000-04:00

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

NEW YORK - A teen novel containing admittedly borrowed material has been pulled from the market. Author Kaavya Viswanathan, a Harvard University sophomore, had acknowledged that numerous passages in "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life" were lifted from another writer.

Publisher Little, Brown and Company, which had signed Viswanathan to a reported six-figure deal, said in a statement Thursday that it had notified retail and wholesale outlets to stop selling copies of the book, and to return unsold copies to the publisher.

Viswanathan has apologized repeatedly for lifting material from Megan McCafferty, whose books include "Sloppy Firsts" and "Second Helpings," saying she had read McCafferty's books voraciously in high school and unintentionally mimicked them.

But McCafferty's publisher, the Crown Publishing Group, labeled Viswanathan's actions "literary identity theft" and had urged Little, Brown, which initially said her novel would remain on sale, to withdraw the book.

Yahoo News

Guyana 40th Anniversary Independence Festival

2006-04-27T16:33:00.000-04:00

In Cuba, Chernobyl kids get special care, and hope

2006-04-27T01:52:00.000-04:00

Thursday, April 27, 2006

by Isabel Sanchez

TARARA, Cuba (AFP): Far from his native Ukraine, Mikhail -- his frail body tanned, a sea breeze caressing his hairless head -- is one of many in Cuba fighting after-effects of the Chernobyl disaster's fallout, in the biggest such program of its kind.

Ukrainian children Yulia Adienko (8) late
victim of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant
accident, under medical treatment at Tarara
Hospital, east from Havana, awaits 26 April,
2006 with other children the beginning of a
commemoration ceremony for the 20th the
anniversary of the catastrophic radiation
leak. The blasts at the Soviet-era plant
created a cloud of radioactive dust that
drifted over a large swathe of Europe and
still haunts millions of people in Ukraine
and its neighbours. AFP PHOTO/
Adalberto ROQUE

He is one of 22,000 people -- including 18,546 children from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia -- treated for radiation-related pathologies since March 29, 1990 at the Tarara Pediatric Hospital just outside Havana.

"All of my hair fell out, and it hasn't come back. I am in Cuba trying to get it to grow again," the 12-year-old explains matter-of-factly on the doorstep of his simple home near the beach.

Every morning since he arrived in Cuba December 9, he has put his bare head under a lamp that delivers infrared rays to his scalp, slicked with pilotrophine, a Cuban product derived from placenta used in alopecia treatments.

Dimitri, 14, explains how his treatment, for vitiligo, includes melagenine -- also placenta-derived -- as well as a long daily dose of sun, sand and sea.

http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/

Cuban woman dissident, 60, beaten en route to meet US diplomat

2006-04-27T01:51:00.000-04:00

Thursday, April 27, 2006

by Carlos Batista

HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cuba's most prominent female dissident, ailing economist Marta Beatriz Roque, said Wednesday she was brutally beaten at her home by a pro-government mob of people who knew she was heading to a meeting at the home of the top US diplomat in Havana.

Cuban dissident Marta Beatriz Roque, talks
on the phone with foreign journalist in her
house in Havana, January 31, 2005.
AFP FILE PHOTO/Adalberto ROQUE

"I see it as a (government) message to the opposition," Roque, 60, told AFP at her home, where she showed injuries to her eye, knee and elbow which she said were from the assault a day earlier.

Roque, who opposes the Americas' only one-party communist government, leads the Assembly for Promoting Civil Society.

She was released from prison in July 2004 due to her failing health after she had been convicted and sentenced to 20 years behind bars along with 74 other dissidents following the government's 2003 crackdown, which was the largest in years.

She said she recognized some of the people who beginning at 2130 GMT Tuesday shouted insults at her and beat her outside and later inside her home in the Havana neighborhood of Santos Suarez.

http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/

Klan Plans Rally at Antietam Battlefield

2006-04-26T20:14:00.000-04:00

SHARPSBURG, Md. - A Ku Klux Klan group plans to hold a rally June 10 on the grounds of the Antietam National Battlefield, site of the bloodiest one-day clash of the Civil War, an organizer and a park official said.

Battlefield Superintendent John W. Howard said Tuesday the National Park Service approved the white supremacist group's application for a permit to use the park to exercise its free speech rights.

"It would be very difficult to find a reason why a First Amendment permit would be denied," Howard said.

Gordon Young, Imperial Wizard of the World Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, estimated in his application that about 100 people would attend the rally at the nearly 3,300-acre park.

Yahoo News

Witness recalls bizarre, 'ritualistic' crime scene where nun was slain

2006-04-26T20:11:00.000-04:00

Witness recalls bizarre, 'ritualistic' crime scene where nun was slain

By Harriet Ryan, Court TV Mon Apr 24, 6:00 PM ET

TOLEDO, Ohio (Court TV) — The first witness in the trial of a priest accused of killing a nun 26 years ago testified Monday that the murder in a hospital chapel over Easter weekend was striking for the "ritualistic nature" of the crime scene

The witness, a nun and registered nurse who was among the first at the scene, said the careful arranging of Sr. Margaret Ann Pahl's body and clothing had a "weirdness," which she noted to detectives.

"I was the one who told them it was ritualistic," Sr. Phyllis Ann Gerold told jurors Monday.

Although the murder has been widely described in press reports as ritualistic, the prosecution at the trial of Rev. Gerald Robinson has shied away from the term. A prosecutor told jurors last week that the victim was stabbed in the shape of an inverted cross, but that he will not attempt to prove any particular motive for the killing.

Gerold said that when she discussed her observations with a police detective shortly after the April 5, 1980, murder, he told her he thought she was wrong.

Robinson, who was the chaplain at the hospital at the time, is facing a possible life sentence. The 68-year-old priest, now retired, maintains his innocence.

Yahoo News

JAMAICA: Former UWI Professor Conspired To Kill Wife – Police

2006-04-24T16:19:00.000-04:00

Hardbeatnews, KINGSTON, Jamaica, Mon. Apr. 24, 2006: An 86-year-old U.S.-born botanist and former University of the West Indies professor, is set to appear in court here today, charged with plotting to have his chauffeur kill his wife.

George Proctor, according to Jamaican police, allegedly conspired with his driver, Glenford Flemmington, to kill his 66-year-old wife. Cops say he apparently paid Flemmington US$90,000 for the hit.

The Boston-born Proctor, who is a called one of "Four Horsemen" of West Indian taxonomy, was arrested Thursday at the Norman Manley International Airport as he was about to board a plane to the U.S. Both him and Flemmington are scheduled for a bail hearing today. Proctor faces conspiracy to murder and one count of incitement to murder charges.

He claims to be a descendant of the original Mayflower people, including the John Proctor of "The Crucible.” Approximately 28 plants have been named for Proctor, including species from the Bahamas, Belize, Cayman Islands, Guatemala, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, and St. Lucia. Among them is the palm Coccothrinax proctorii Read (1980), the national tree of the Cayman Islands. – Hardbeatnews.com

Canada: MP To Pay Up For “Racist” Comments On Haitians, Arabs

2006-04-24T16:13:00.000-04:00

MP Andre Arthur

Hardbeatnews, MONTREAL, Canada, Mon. Apr. 24, 2006: A Quebec Superior Court judge has determined that a Canadian independent member of parliament should shell out $220,000 plus costs for “racist and defamatory” comments made against Haitian and Arab cabbies.

MP Andre Arthur, who hosted a show on the now-defunct radio station CKVL, said publicly in November of 1998, that the Montreal taxi drivers speak only Creole and Arabic, in a city that is French and English, according to Canada Press reports.

He apparently added that he could not understand them because he doesn't speak "nigger."

"If you don't speak Arabic or Creole in Montreal, you can't drive a taxi," he said. "The taxi has really become a Third World form of public transit in Montreal."

Arthur also slammed the driving of the migrants, shrewdly claiming they obtained their permits through bribes and adding that all the cabs of Arabs and Haitians were dirty and foul smelling.

Arthur, 62, considered a shock jock on Quebec City radio, surprisingly won a seat in Parliament this January with almost 40 per cent of the vote. His outspoken style had spawned many lawsuits, including legal actions by former Quebec premiers Lucien Bouchard and Daniel Johnson. His radio career ended just before Christmas last year, after his employer decided not to renew his contract.

Arthur’s shocking diatribe once included a comment that African students at Laval University were the children of dictators and cannibals. That remark, among others, caused the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission to strip Quebec City radio station CHOI-FM of its license in 2004.

Meanwhile, Metromedia CMR, which owned CKVL at the time, will have to pay more than $300,000 including interest and costs to the drivers. The case was brought against the two by the city’s taxi association, on behalf of 1,100 Arab and Haitian drivers. – Hardbeatnews.com

The Left Needs More Socialism

2006-04-24T00:16:00.000-04:00

Ronald Aronson

It's time to break a taboo and place the word "socialism" across the top of the page in a major American progressive magazine. Time for the left to stop repressing the side of ourselves that the right finds most objectionable. Until we thumb our noses at the Democratic pols who have been calling the shots and reassert the very ideas they say are unthinkable, we will keep stumbling around in the dark corners of American politics, wondering how we lost our souls--and how to find them again.

I can hear tongues clucking the conventional wisdom that the "S" word is the kiss of death for any American political initiative. Since the collapse of Communism, hasn't "socialism"--even the democratic kind--reeked of everything obsolete and discredited? Isn't it sheer absurdity to ask today's mainstream to pay attention to this nineteenth-century idea? Didn't Tony Blair reshape "New Labour" into a force capable of winning an unprecedented string of victories in Britain only by first defeating socialism and socialists in his party? And for a generation haven't we on the American left declared socialist ideology irrelevant time and again in the process of shaping our feminist, antiwar, progay, antiracist, multicultural, ecological and community-oriented identities?

http://www.thenation.com/

Observations...

2006-04-23T19:49:00.000-04:00

I justed wanted to discuss a few observations from the meeting yesterday which was extremely well-organized and helpful to many concerned Guyanese such as myself who want to know exactly what is occuring in Guyana during these difficult times. Of course, the event was marked by the tragic news of the assassination of Minister Satyadeow Sawh and his brother and sister which I believe led a certain level of urgency to the discussion.

I want to thank everyone who took time away from their busy schedules to attend what I believe is a most important event which will lay the foundation for what Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine described as "national reconciliation" and I know that most of the people who attended yesterday are ready to take some form of action to help out their brothers and sisters in Guyana who are subjected to incompetence, apathy, rampant corrupion and criminal activity on a daily basis. In addition, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the organizers of the meeting (Sr.Hazel Campayne, Jai Parasram, Alissa Trotz, Derek
Kowlessar and of course Dr. Roopnariane) who performed a tremendous service to us all by answering addressing all of our questions and concerns about what is happening in Guyana...

To begin with, Dr. Roopnaraine's sharp wit, firm grasp of the political structure within Guyana were extremely informative as I found him to be extremely articulate and sensitive to the needs of all Guyanese. It was not a meeting designed to discuss the flaws within the system but moreso, a forum which I believe helped us to find some common ground as we Guyanese abroad begin to organize assert our own pressence within the Diaspora...

To begin the process of reconcialation will no doubt be a difficult challenge especially since the powers that be in Guyana do not appear interested in coming to the table and working with all political parties for the collective good of the country... As a result, it is necessary that Guyanese abroad take action to put pressure on not only our local political officials but also, we must put aside our own differences (we are collectively a fractured entity comprised of several different sub-groups and cliques) and work together towards commmon or shared objectives...

To that end, I believe there needs to be ONE clear organization formed that must concenrate on some of the following:

1)We must talk to each newspaper work on an acceptable deal whereby we place an advertisement in ALL three media outlets condemning the recent violence and lingering apathy of current political administration... I believe that Guyanese abroad do have a great deal of political power when you consider the resources available to us and the fact that we are not forced to live under the same environment as our brothers and sisters in Guyana...

2)There must be efforts made to educate the youth in Guyana about the harm they are doing in voting along the same lines as their parents and grandparents as they are institionalizing racial politics and sealing their fate and the fate of their children... It was mentioned in the discussion that the youth of Guyana who hold the future of Guyana within their grasp, have not learned from archaic voting methods of previous generations...They must be educated and told their future and the future of Guyana is very much interwoven and as a result, they are only doing themselves harm by simply voting by race and not by issues such as education, employment and foreign investment...Currently, the Guyanese youth that I talk to on a regular basis are filled with a sense of hopelessness that pervades their lives like a dark cloud... We must take steps to remove this veil that hinders their vision...

3) We must apply presure through ads, letters, emails to reform the political system within Guyana... I am not intelligent enough to offer a blueprint that can used as a step-by-step method however, I will say that perhaps it is time to form a committee with the endorsement of all the political parties within Guyana that examines issues of constitutional reform... The fact that we are sitting on a potential time bomb with the dissolution of parliament (May ??)before the electorial process can begin (August) only reaffirms the idea that Guyana is still living in the past when it comes to such things...

4)We must put pressure in the form of ads, letters, emails ... for the current administration to seek outside help to solve the crime and drug problem within Guyana... I am by no means an expert on who are criminals or where they are located but, as discussed in the meeting, drug business appears to be flourishing while all other legit enterprises struggle to survive... We do not have the resources to stop or even put a serious dent into the narcotics business and so, we must swallow our pride and ask for foreign intervention of some kind... I am sure that people such as Bush would have more of a keen ear to listen to our problems when someone reminds him how close we are to Chavez...

I suppose that concludes my rant except that I am most grateful to all who attended the meeting and I must simply say, that the time for action is upon us if we want to save our Guyana which now appears teetering on the precipice...

My advice for immediate action against the dark forces that have arisen to display their power is for all of us to make a concerted effort to not only discuss ideas and strategies but to take an ad in all three papers renouncing such criminal activity and publicly calling out the government and political parties to seek outside intervention to deal with the situation before it becomes unsolvable...

me !!

2006-04-22T00:21:00.000-04:00

yeah yeah I know... pretty scary... however, I am receiving alot of requests to meet at the Canada-Guyana discussion tomorrow so I thought I would post my pic so you will know what I look like ... I am very excited about the tomorrow and am looking forward to attaching some faces to all the wonderful emails that I have received...

Simple Joys,

jono

Brazil's former coach Tele Santana dies at 74

2006-04-22T00:03:00.000-04:00

SAO PAULO, Brazil, (Reuters) - Tele Santana, 74, one of Brazil's greatest soccer coaches, died yesterday in a Belo Horizonte hospital where he had been in intensive care for an intestinal infection since March 25, the hospital said.

Santana, who led Brazil at the 1982 and 1986 World Cups, was forced to retire in 1996 following a stroke.

Three years ago, Santana had his left leg amputated below the knee after developing ischemia -- a decrease in blood supply caused by blockage of the blood vessels.

Santana believed in attacking football throughout his career and the 1982 World Cup team, featuring players such as Zico, Socrates, Falcao, Junior and Eder, took the game to new heights.

Brazil were surprisingly knocked out in the second round group stage following a 3-2 defeat by Italy in one of the most memorable games in the sport's history.

Santana returned to lead Brazil again four years later in Mexico where they were beaten by France in a penalty shoot-out in the quarter-finals.

Santana went on to coach a memorable Sao Paulo team in the early 1990s, winning the South American Libertadores Cup in successive years and the World Club Cup on each occasion.

He was in charge of Atletico Mineiro when they won the inaugural Brazilian championship in 1971 - the only time Belo Horizonte's most popular club have been Brazilian champions - and also coached top clubs Fluminense, Flamengo, Palmeiras and Gremio.

Guyana Chronicle

Second dancer supports Duke accuser's details

2006-04-21T22:51:00.000-04:00

DURHAM, N.C. -- At first, an exotic dancer who performed at a Duke University lacrosse team party doubted the story of a colleague who told police she was dragged into a bathroom and raped.

Now, Kim Roberts isn't so sure.

"I was not in the bathroom when it happened, so I can't say a rape occurred -- and I never will," Roberts told The Associated Press on Thursday in her first on-the-record interview.

After watching defense attorneys release photos of the accuser, and upset by the leaking of both dancers' criminal pasts, she said she has to "wonder about their character."

"In all honesty, I think they're guilty," she said. "And I can't say which ones are guilty ... but somebody did something besides underage drinking. That's my honest-to-God impression."

Attorneys for the 46 players have aggressively proclaimed the players' innocence, citing DNA tests during a public campaign that has included describing and releasing photos from the party.

Those photos, the defense maintains, show the accuser was both injured and impaired when she arrived, and also support the claim that one of the two players who has been indicted would not have had enough time to participate in any assault before he left the party. The district attorney has said he also hopes to charge a third suspect in the case.

http://sports.espn.go.com

Staffing problems at University of Guyana

2006-04-21T16:45:00.000-04:00

DEAR EDITOR,

In the July, 28th, 2005 press release, Mr A. Creighton, DVC, on behalf of the UG Administration was reported by the Guyana Chronicle to be saying that in acknowledging the shortfalls as it relates to the quality of lecturers, there is a misconception that UG has unqualified lecturers.

He said that because of salaries offered to lecturers, UG could not compete with other universities and agencies that offer better payments. There is a need for more senior academics and lecturers with doctorates, but he noted that there is a core of qualified and competent staff.

Unfortunately, these are the same misconceptions that have been stated before by this same UG's Admin. We have shown these to be false before, and this situation has not changed!

Where is the core of well-qualified staff in Science e.g. Biochemistry, Biotechnology, and Microbiology? Where are these fundamental programmes? (There are no qualified staff and/or labs for these essential programmes – also essential in Agriculture, Forestry, and Health Sciences (including medicine).) This was painfully obvious in the aftermath of the last 2005 floods.

The President of Guyana, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo was seeing first hand the effects of his government's continued misplaced trust and support of the Administration of UG – no UG microbiologists could even advise on the safety of campus (with regards to the presence and spread of bacterial /viral infestations) during the crisis. Where was the bio-safety and bio-hazardous materials UG official?

The UG Admin had previously misled the President and people of Guyana that their programmes are functional, and are now doing it again. Whether one agrees with the President or not, UG officials should not deliberately mislead the Head of State. It seems really strange that UG officials can do this publicly and get away with it. This is (in my view) total disrespect for the democratically elected Head of State. The University officials (or any other public officials) should be honest with the legitimate government, opposition, and the people.

UG microbiologists even cannot grow nor do any test for bacteria on UG's campus. There are simply no laboratory facilities for basic microbiology laboratory training on UG's campus.

This glaring deficiency is permitted despite the cross department's relevance and essential components to other core programmes – Biochemistry, Biology, Agriculture, Forestry, Fishery, and Health Sciences (medicine). How can anyone expect industry to provide fundamental training in basic microbiology?

That is not the job of industry with its own respective specialised application of a particular field. It seems rather strange that the Prime Minister and Ministers responsible for Health, Forestry, Agriculture, Fisheries, and Science would not be appalled. These personnel have or are expected to have an interest in science and technology, since these are important aspects of any developmental initiatives.

Why does the UG Admin continue to mislead the public again and again without penalty? Maybe because they know that this is what their political masters (PNC and PPP) desire for their own political purposes; in addition, the UG's Admin have been rewarded (renewed contracts) for their numerous misleading, bungling, and questionable actions/inactions! It is no secret that the public has little or no respect for this institution, where the leadership lacks any semblance of respectability and credibility?

During my tenure (2001-2002) at UG, I found that even UG faculty/staff was saying that the Cyril Potter's College of Education was better managed. The politicians (PPP and PNC) and others (business) know about the failing/falling educational standards that exist at UG and do not believe the UG Admin.'s claims; they send their children overseas, for example to the USA or Canada, but certainly not Cuba.

As mentioned before by me, any University (or College, or Institute, or High School) that has confidence in itself would post its staff and their credentials on its website. This is a standard practice. The University of Guyana cannot list its staff because turnover is so rapid, that before they can list their faculty, the personnel have long gone. (UG has only just removed the picture of a flooded campus from its website, that we had used to point out it should have flood preparation plans.)

I was told that some just hired faculty, on arriving took one look at the campus, turned around and headed for the airport. They decided to cut the losses after being so shocked and disillusioned. Word gets around personnel would not come here. Even when they come they are treated so horribly (e.g. the VSOs - their mistreatment was simply against the traditional hospitality of the nation) that they leave with bad experiences.

Imaginative leadership and vision are lacking by this current UG's Admin. They publicly complain that they cannot find qualified and senior academics, yet they allow scarce qualified personnel to retire at age 55! In a situation where there is a chronic shortage and desperate need of qualified personnel, how could you let such a well-qualified person go?

The retirement at age 55 is probably a relic of Guyana 's colonial past, whereby colonial employees could return to mother Britain and enjoy their pensions after their tour of overseas duties. In addition, the lifespan is much longer now. The historians in the UG's Admin should be aware of our history.

Just recently, the University of British Columbia (one of the top ranked 25 Universities in the world) scored a coup by attracting a Nobel Prize winner (Dr. Wieman) from a US University. The age of the scientist was 54, considered very young. He would not even be considered by UG for recruitment!

The retirement age for University personnel is about 65 years in North America . Most of the scientists do their best work in the late forties, fifties, and sixties.

Just look at the average age of the work cited for the award of Nobel Prize. It usually takes a very long time to be a superstar in your field. I do not know of any North American University that requires qualified personnel to retire at age 55.

The superstars (after retirement if they so desire) are kept on to do research or contract teaching. (This is when they begin to pursue patents.) These superstars add to the prestige of the University.

(Check out Harvard and Yale, the Nobel Laureates are given facilities to continue their work - this also attract other faculty, Post doctoral fellows, and graduate students). These very senior staff mentor the younger ones in their own quest for stardom and continued prestige of the University.

Instead of lamenting, why not change the mandatory retirement age to 65. After 65, the exceptional or needed people can be employed on a yearly or bi-annual contract. At 55, retirement may be optional.

(They can be kept on for research or the teaching of their speciality.) Even, if the retirement age is moved to 60 or just beyond it would still alleviate the current qualified staff crisis.

Let us look at what it takes to be a PhD in science. After one finishes high school, A' level (two additional years) may be done. Some work for a year or two to accumulate some money or take a break from studies.

The degree programme takes another three to five years. Some work again (two to three years) to save up some money for graduate school. In North America, it takes two years to complete a Master's degree.

After your Master's degree, one can spend three to six years to do a PhD (length depends on programme (courses and comprehensive exams) and research projects). In Britain there are usually no course requirements and comprehensive exams. That is why the North American PhD is better trained. The North American programmes are more broad-based.

After, your PhD in most scientific fields, one does two to three years of Post Doctoral studies. Some do a second or even a third stint of Post Doctoral studies. After all this training, one is not likely to take any nonsense from anyone - a right that has been earned.

So why does the UG Admin think highly qualified personnel will put up with their irregularities?

Do they really think that these people will calmly submit to the low standards, unpleasant experiences, non-academic and degrading treatment meted out by the UG Admin? Even the patient and dedicated Scientists (I can name a few) had reached their breaking points in their dealings with the UG's Administration. The UG Admin yet again hastened the departure of these well-qualified personnel. So who yet again is also contributing to the staffing problems at UG?

The salary scale for scientists and engineering professionals are naturally higher in keeping with market place demand.

Therefore, if you want to attract well-qualified personnel, pay them. It takes a long time to produce a well-trained scientist. Qualified scientists may be attracted with higher pay packages, research facilities, and conducive university environments.

The price of ignorance and defective training are even higher, and what we have now is not taking us anywhere. It is therefore time for new directions with new people at the helm of the educational forefront of Guyana .

Seelochan Beharry

http://www.kaieteurnewsgy.com/

THE CANADA-GUYANA FORUM

2006-04-21T14:13:00.000-04:00

THE CANADA-GUYANA FORUM

INVITES YOU TO A PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION:

Guyana in Crisis: Crime, Security and the Elections of 2006"

WHEN: Saturday 22nd April

WHERE: WEST END: From 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm at Connections - 5835

Dixie Rd & Shawson. Directions: 1 Block North of HWY 401 Beside the

Best Western

AND

EAST END: From 3:30 PM to 5:30 pm at Scarborough Village RC,

3600 Kingston Rd. For directions contact: 416- 396 - 4048

If you are planning to attend the lunch meeting, please e-mail Derek

Kowlessar (derek@humanitylink.org) or Alissa Trotz (da.trotz@utoronto.ca)

For information contact: Sr. Hazel Campayne (416-920-0132); Jai Parasram

(416-289-1346); Alissa Trotz (416-978-8286)

PLEASE COME OUT AND JOIN US AT ONE OF THESE GATHERINGS FOR A LONG OVERDUE

DISCUSSION!!

I pray that someday there will be peace on Earth.
OUR FIGHT IS WITH IGNORANCE, NOT WITH EACH OTHER! - Jai Parsram

For those of you who have asked to meet with me, I will attending the second meeting in Scarborough from 3:30 - 5:30 and I am looking forward to hearing from all of you !!

Widow, 84, Wins Record $10M Slot Jackpot

2006-04-20T19:56:00.000-04:00

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. - For 84-year-old Josephine Crawford, the golden years just got a lot more golden. About to call it quits after a night playing slot machines, the Galloway Township widow hit a $10 million jackpot late Tuesday, the biggest in the history of casino gambling here.

The retired waitress knew when the nickel slot machine's bells went off that she'd won something but didn't know what. When a slot attendant at Harrah's Atlantic City casino told her it was $10,010,113.48, she didn't believe him.

"I said, 'Oh, come on.' But he just stood there and I figured, why is he staying there?" she said Wednesday.

(AP)

An Announcement...

2006-04-20T16:54:00.000-04:00

Having spent the past several months researching the idea of a creating think-tank designed to help make positive changes in the lives of Guyanese people everywhere I am pleased and I guess somewhat proud to announce that after this weekend's meeting in Scarborough, that I will launch the "Illumination Foundation" which will begin as an internet forum so as to be more accessible to people throughout the world...

I hope that once the forum/or message board is organized that we can post things such as jobs, advice, commentary and any other such resources that can be used by all Guyanese people... In short, I hope that it will be a network of people looking to help in any way they can... One of the immediate problems that I foresee is that many in Guyana do not have easy access to a computer so they may not be able to post or view various messages, an area that I would appreciate any input on... I want them to feel free to share their problems, concerns, questions and even fears with those of us who have perhaps a better perspective on things...

In addition, I am also pleased to announce that I have been working with the Mitteholzer family in an attempt to republish his works in time for our fortieth Independence Celebrations... I do not think that it will happen by then, however, we do plan on working with a publisher (most likely Peepal Tree Press) to publish and distribute his works throughout his native Guyana... Presently, the books are quite scarce and as a result expensive...

I deliberately selected Mittelholzer because it is a name that is easily recognizable and, arguably he is our greatest novelist who was the first Caribbean author to make a living solely based upon his writing...The fact that he does not receive more recognition is primarily based on the circumstances of his death (suicide)and the period in which he lived however, there is little doubt of his overall importance in world literature...

Once the books are published, the main objective will be to make them available throughout Guyana to all Guyanese people including school children... I believe it is crucial that they learn to celebrate their own artists who will hopefully serve as a form of inspiration... I would like to say that, once this has been achieved, that a certain percentage (if not all) of the profits will be used to the betterment of our people... This will be an area which I hope to rely on many of you (such as MT) who have firsthand knowledge of the problems faced by the people down there...

I can tell you that the Mittelholzer family and myself are leaning more towards helping children (perhaps by way of creating or updating a childrens hospital) as they are our hope for the future and also in preserving our literary history as I have informed that many works by authors such as Denis Willams, A.J. and Elma Seymour, etc etc are either impossible or in the possession of private collectors whose sole purpose is to make an obscene profit upon their sale... It upsets me when I hear that some of their descendents have no copies of their works and several members of the Mittelholzer family do possess any of his works or private papers...

I may be somewhat premature with my announcement as my enthusiasm gets the better of me but I remain an ardent believer that humanity has the unique ability to adapt and change ... To that end, I know that we have the necessary determination, work-ethic and ambition to work together and improve the lives of the people who are most in need...

Thanks again to everyone for your support and encouragement and I am also appreciative to those of you with dissenting points of view as I completely respect your right to express them and I am always, always willing to listen and learn about differing views since that is the only way we can truly deal with any particular issue...

If anyone has any comments, suggestions or even criticism, by all means, please do not hesitate from contacting me at the listed email address...

jono
jonathanbratt@rogers.com

Black and Jobless

2006-04-20T02:49:00.000-04:00

African-American unemployment rate continues to climb

By Cynthia E. Griffin

OW Staff Writer

While President George W. Bush is touting the 4.7 percent national unemployment rate in March and the increase in non-farm payroll employment by more than 211,000 jobs (and a total of 5.1 million jobs for the last 31 months), African Americans continue to struggle under a jobless rate of almost double the national numbers.

The unemployment rate for blacks in March was 9.3 percent, the same as it was in December 2005, and February. It is slightly lower than the 10.3 percent rate of last year at the same time.
The rate for African-American teens 16 to 19 remained in double digits at 33.1 percent. This is up from the previous month’s figure of 30.8 percent and an almost seven percentage point increase over December 2005.

While the president is spotlighting the numbers, the Department of Labor says that the percentage of people age 16 and older with jobs was little changed at 63 percent. Further there were some 4 million people in March working part time, many of whom wanted full time work but could not find such jobs.

In addition, there were nearly 1.5 million persons (not seasonally adjusted) who were marginally attached to the labor force in March, which is just slightly less than a year earlier. These individuals wanted and were available for work and had looked for a job within the last 12 months, but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched in the four weeks preceding the survey. Of that total, about 451,000 were considered discouraged workers because they were not currently look for work, because they believed no jobs were available for them.

According to the Department of Labor, the March employment increase was concentrated in the service-providing sector with the largest increase (52,000) coming in the professional and business services category.

http://www.ourweekly.com/

California Kicks Off Black Caucus Week

2006-04-20T02:47:00.000-04:00

By Kennedy Johnson
OW Contributor
California’s Black lawmakers Assemblymembers Karen Bass, Mervyn M. Dymally, Jerome Horton, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Senators Kevin Murray and Edward Vincent will kick off Black Caucus Week in California on April 24.

The brainchild of veteran politician Assemblyman Mervyn M. Dymally, Black Caucus Week is sponsored by the Legislative Black Caucus Foundation, a non-partisan, non-profit, public policy, research and educational institute with a vision of being a mirror image of its counterpart on the East coast, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Inc. The Foundation serves as a catalyst for educating future leaders and promoting collaboration amongst legislators, business leaders, minority-focused organizational leaders, and organized labor to effect positive and sustainable change throughout California.

The theme for this year’s conference is “Celebrating the Past, Honoring the Present, and Shaping the Future.” It is expected to be attended by more than 10,000 individuals from across the State. The annual conference is widely recognized for providing a statewide forum for examining strategies and viable solutions to public policy issues facing African Americans.

http://www.ourweekly.com/

Sex Abuse Scandals Cost Boston Catholic Church Over $150 Million...

2006-04-20T02:42:00.000-04:00

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston opened its books on Wednesday, releasing what experts and church officials say is the most detailed financial accounting any diocese has made available.

The reports show that the archdiocese has a $46 million deficit, the largest any diocese has ever had, according to two national experts on church finances.

New York Times

Rove Relinquishes Some Control in Shake-Up

2006-04-20T02:33:00.000-04:00

By TERENCE HUNT, AP White House Correspondent Wed Apr 19, 6:40 PM ET

WASHINGTON - White House political mastermind Karl Rove surrendered a key policy role Wednesday and press secretary Scott McClellan resigned in an escalation of a Bush administration shake-up driven by Republican anxieties.

Rove gave up his responsibilities as chief policy coordinator, a position he assumed just over a year ago that strengthened his influence over matters ranging from homeland security and domestic policy to the economy and national security. The promotion had left him stretched too thin in the eyes of some officials, as the White House grappled with mounting problems.

With Wednesday's change, Rove will be able to focus more on politics, fundraising and big-picture thinking with the approach of the November congressional elections, officials said

AP

Chernobyl Toll May One Day Surpass 90K

2006-04-19T02:27:00.000-04:00

(AP) Greenpeace said Tuesday in a new report that more than 90,000 people were likely to die of cancers caused by radiation from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, countering a United Nations report that predicted the death toll would be around 4,000.

The differing conclusions underline the contentious uncertainty that remains about the health effects of the world's worst nuclear accident as its 20th anniversary approaches.

A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded on April 26, 1986, spewing radioactive clouds over much of Europe. The fallout was particularly severe in northern reaches of Ukraine, western Russia and Belarus.

Areas immediately around the now-inoperative plant remain off-limits, but people in other areas that received significant fallout are anxious about their health.

A report by the Chernobyl Forum _ a group comprising the International Atomic Energy Agency and several other U.N. groups _ last year said fewer than 50 deaths could be confirmed as being connected to Chernobyl. It also said the number of radiation-related deaths among the 600,000 people who helped deal with the aftermath of the accident would ultimately be around 4,000.

The increase in cancer deaths among the 5 million people exposed to lower levels of radiation would be so low as to be statistically difficult to identify, the report's authors said, estimating it could be around 5,000.

CBS News

The New Miss Mash International Is...

2006-04-19T00:55:00.000-04:00

Miss Guyana - Alana Wilson !!

Congrats !!

2 duke players charged with rape..

2006-04-18T18:11:00.000-04:00

DURHAM, North Carolina (CNN) -- Two members of the Duke University lacrosse team were arrested and charged early Tuesday with raping a woman hired as a dancer at a team party, jail officials said.

Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty, both sophomores, have been charged with first-degree rape, first-degree forcible rape and kidnapping, officials said. Bond was set for $400,000 for each man.

Both men are set to appear in court on May 15.

District Attorney Mike Nifong said authorities were trying to determine the identity of a third suspect.

"It had been my hope to be able to charge all three of the assailants at the same time, but the evidence available to me at this moment does not permit that," Nifong said.

"It is important that we not only bring the assailants to justice but also that we lift the cloud of suspicion from those team members who were not involved in the assault."

Kirk Osborn, one of Seligmann's attorneys, said lawyers arranged the surrender of the two men early Tuesday.

"It's hard to put in words the unfairness and injustice," Osborn said. "We look forward [to] showing he is absolutely innocent as soon as we can."

Deputies brought Seligmann, 20, and Finnerty, 19, to Durham County jail just before 5 a.m. ET., and they were fingerprinted and photographed.

Seligmann posted bond, and in doing so he waived his right to appear in court Tuesday. Finnerty has not posted bond yet. (Watch CNN's Jeffrey Toobin explain the legal options -- 2:15)

Upon leaving jail, Seligmann ran with another man to a Ford Explorer with New Jersey license plates, The (Raleigh) News & Observer reported. The vehicle then ran a red light, according to the paper.

The newspaper identified Seligmann's hometown as Essex Falls, New Jersey, and Finnerty's as Garden City, New York.

In November, Finnerty was arrested on assault charges in Washington, according to the paper. Citing his attorney, the paper said Finnerty had been ordered to perform community service and the charges would be dropped if he performs the service and avoids new arrests.

A grand jury in North Carolina returned sealed indictments Monday against Seligmann and Finnerty. Sealed indictments often are used when authorities believe the person charged is a flight risk.

A 27-year-old student at North Carolina Central University told police three men raped and beat her March 13 at an off-campus party thrown by Duke lacrosse players.

She and another woman were hired to perform as dancers there. The case has inflamed racial and economic divisions in Durham, which is home to both the accuser's historically black public university and the elite Duke. She is African-American; the accused are white.

The allegations have resulted in the cancellation of the lacrosse season, the resignation of the team's coach, Mike Pressler, and public scrutiny of what Duke President Richard Brodhead called the "history of boorish behavior and underage drinking" among players.

Court documents filed in the case have said a medical examination of the accuser showed signs consistent with sexual assault. DNA samples from the players failed to match material collected by investigators, defense attorneys hired by some of the players said last week.

The defense lawyers also said photos taken at the party show the woman was injured before she arrived.

The best workplaces in Canada: at a glance

2006-04-18T17:42:00.000-04:00

1. Vancity
Vancouver | financial | 2,000 employees

2. Back in Motion Rehab Inc.
Surrey, BC | health care | 57 employees

3. AdFarm
Calgary, with three satellites | advertising | 81 employees

4. Urban Systems Ltd.
Kamloops, BC | consulting in engineering, planning and landscape architecture | 227 employees

5. Trico Homes Inc.
Calgary | construction and real estate | 76 employees

6. Edward Jones Canada
Canada wide | Financial services and investment advice | 1,768 employees

While many of Canada's Best Workplaces made the grade because of their extensive human-resources policies and procedures, people like to work at investment-advice firm Edward Jones Canada precisely because not many of its programs are set in stone. Workers appreciate how the company avoids excessive formality and hierarchy, and is a lot more adaptable to different people's circumstances. A particularly popular scheme, however, is the $5,000 in assistance that employees receive when they adopt a child, along with full medical benefits for the new family member.

7. John G. Hofland Ltd.
Mississauga, Ont., with one satellite office | Industry wholesale | 120 employees

At John G. Hofland, a family-owned business that has been wholesaling fresh cut flowers, plants, greens and floral supply products since 1956, the Outstanding Employee of the Month program is a big deal. Staff members nominate each other for the recognition, which averages nine candidates every time. The winner, picked by a selection committee made up of their peers, gets a jacket embroidered with the Hofland logo, month-long rights to a prime parking spot, and his or her name entered into the annual President's Award competition (complete with a cheque for $1,000). Employee recognition takes other forms, too. Last year, gift certificates worth more than $6,000 were distributed to workers for tasks especially well done. And every other week, each employee is presented with a bouquet of flowers to take home (poinsettias at Christmas, an Easter lily in the spring, and roses around Valentine's Day). "Our employees make us who we are," says president Glenn Hofland. "Anyway we can recognize them is important."

8. Softchoice Corp.
Toronto | Information technology | 343 employees

Aside from allowing employees to bring their dogs to work, Softchoice believes focusing on its workers' strengths is better than dwelling on their weaknesses. Managers and high-potential employees devote two of their 12 annual training days to a program based on Marcus Buckingham's 2001 book Now, Discover Your Strengths. They learn what their strengths are, and how they can manage and build a team around those skills. Says Nick Foster, vice-president of human resources: "It's not about what you do, it's about how you do it."

9. IT/Net
Ottawa | Information technology/consulting | 99 employees

Ever wanted to be a fly on the wall at an important boardroom meeting but missed out on the all-important invite? At IT/Net, which offers IT consulting services to its growing roster of public, private and not-for-profit clients, staff are invited to attend any meeting they wish, whether it's a gathering of the top brass or a more informal brainstorming session. "We want to make sure employees know the information is there, that we're not hiding anything from them," says HR director Connie Deschamps.

10. Fuller Landau LLP
Toronto | Financial services (accounting) | 84 Employees

Employees at Fuller Landau are expected to challenge management. And they have the tools to do it. For instance, says human-resources manager Jennifer King, the firm holds "Fridays with Michael," a monthly meeting where employees anonymously pose questions to managing partner Michael Epstein. Then there are annual staff evaluations of directors and managers. In return, staff members have regular peer reviews that determine bonuses. Says King: "Everyone here helps define the work environment."

11. Keller Williams Ottawa Realty
Ottawa | real estate | 175 employees

12. Sapient
Toronto | information-technology consulting firm | 117 employees

13. Ernst & Young LLP
Toronto, with 13 other locations | Professional Services (financial) | 3,242 Employees

A job with professional financial services provider Ernst & Young can be tough to snag: less than 5% of job applicants are ultimately hired. One reason a position with E&Y is so highly coveted is the training opportunities it provides. The firm pays for all fees associated with external courses, examination registration and pre-exam preparation for the chartered accountant, chartered financial accountant and chartered professional accountant designations. Nearly half of all employees take advantage of this offer, at a cost to the company of $3,500 to $5,000 per person. E&Y also runs a formal mentoring program, supports a five-day off-site Assurance and Advisory Business Services (AABS) Auditing 101 program to prepare staff for their first year as an auditor and, in 2004, launched the E&Y Tax University for its tax professionals. Some lucky Canadians even get to attend E&Y's International Intern Leadership Conference, a three-day event that takes place every summer in various locations in the U.S. and gives 1,500 E&Yers from around the world a chance to interact.

14. Ceridian Canada Ltd.
Markham, Ont., with nine satellite offices | Professional Services (Human Resources) | 1,439 Employees

Moving up the pay scale usually means becoming a manager. But at Ceridian, says director Heather Turnbull-Smith, "if you're the best tactical doer, it makes sense to keep you in that role if that's what you want to do." There are only seven salary grades between an entry-level position and the president's job, so "great contributors" can make as much as or even more than senior managers. Says Turnbull-Smith: "We don't want employees to feel the only way they can be rewarded financially is by moving into management."

15. TD Bank Financial Group
Toronto | financial services | 54,995 employees

16. Banff Caribou Properties Ltd.
Banff, Alta. | Hospitality | 352 employees

In a tight labour market like Alberta's, companies have to offer innovative perks and support to attract and retain employees. This small hospitality firm, which runs seven hotels in the Banff area, has one of the best programs going. Full-time employees with three years' service qualify to receive a 10-year interest-free loan in the form of a second mortgage matching their down payment of up to $20,000 on a home in Banff. The company also matches employee RRSP contributions up to 1% of their earnings after one year of employment, and 3% after three years. That might keep staff members from straying to the competition, but the company says it's really more about keeping everyone enthusiastic and more attentive to guests.

17. Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
Toronto | Hospitality | 10,411 employees

Wouldn't it be great if every employee knew exactly how their company treated its customers? Well, that's how things work at Fairmont, where every new worker, from CEO to room attendant, at the chain's 21 Canadian hotels gets to walk in the client's shoes for at least two days as part of their standard orientation. They experience the same service — and may even receive a spa treatment, a welcome reception or an overnight's stay to get the full guest experience.

18. Intuit Canada
Edmonton | Information technology/Software | 385 employees

In a business where creativity is king, it's nice when the workplace helps drive innovation, too. That's why software IT and other staff at Intuit — a developer of tax, accounting and other financial software — are treated to fireplace reading rooms, foosball tables, nap rooms, an outdoor horseshoe pitch and a multi-purpose gym in order to get the creative juices flowing. Meeting-free Thursdays and no dress code also help promote an informal, bottom-up approach to getting things done.

19. NewHeights Software Corp.
Ottawa (and Victoria, B.C.) | Communications software | 53 employees

Software firms aren't exactly known for being family-friendly, but NewHeights, a maker of telecommunications software designed to integrate complex communication tools into one simple interface, breaks the mould. "A lot of companies preach things like flexible working hours, but if it's formalized and codified where and when you can use them, that's not flexible," chief operating and financial officer Cec Primeau says. At NewHeights, employees get an extra week of paid vacation after they get married, and the company encourages them to bring kids into work when necessary. As Primeau puts it: "Where else does the CEO have a drawer full of kids' toys in his desk?"

Read a recent Canadian Business interview with NewHeights CEO Owen Matthews here.

20. S. C. Johnson and Son Ltd.
Brantford, ON | manufacturing, personal and household goods | 463 employees

21. GT Hiring Solutions Inc.
Kelowna, B.C., with 28 satellites throughout the province | Professional services (human resources with a focus on the aboriginal community) | 92 employees

When operations are so spread out geographically — with many offices staffed by just one person — you need one heck of a team-building experience. So GT Hiring's annual January conference provides both the professional development and recreational fun to let staff bond. "The ties that are made have huge value," says chief operating officer Christine Stoneman. "People leave ready to tackle the world."

22. Globalive Communications Corp.
Toronto | Telecommunications | 61 employees

Most companies offer incentives for training courses, but niche telecom services provider Globalive, whose diverse product line and services include discount long-distance, VoIP and video-conferencing, offers its employees professional one-on-one coaching. New York City-based career coach Malcolm Cullen helps staff members — 30% of whom are visible minorities — with everything from how to take initiative to how to integrate with their team. Best of all, coaching is available for all employees, not just those in top jobs or on a management trajectory. "We are taking a risk that people will stick with us long-term, because it's a very sizable investment on a per-person basis," says Anthony Lacavera, CEO and founder of Globalive, one of the fastest-growing companies in Canada. "But I'd rather invest in someone to grow within our organization than invest in a recruiter to replace that person."

23. Hilti (Canada) Corp.
Mississauga, ON | construction equipment | 274 employees

24. Deloitte & Touche LLP
Locations across the country | Professional tax, audit and financial services | 6,041 employees

"We don't have a factory that makes tin cans," says Larry Scott, Deloitte & Touche's chief strategist and human-resources officer. "All we have is our people, so we take good care of them." Sometimes, that can mean a companywide fitness challenge, which mirrors the training efforts of one Deloitte employee who recently climbed Mount Everest. But where healthy living falls short, Deloitte's generous medical benefits package is there to fill in the gaps. (Everything from speech therapy to acupuncture and nutritional planning is covered from Day 1 on the job.) It may seem odd that a company whose core business is so focused on the bottom line would be so generous with its employees, but Scott says it makes sound financial sense; since recruitment and training costs are so large, losing employees because they're not engaged is simply wasting resources. As he puts it, "When you forgo a whole career with a talented person, the cost is immeasurable."

25. Carswell
Toronto | Information services provider | 683 employees

Research and information-services provider Carswell tells its employees that balance is essential, and it lives up to the maxim by listening to their needs. When management wanted to institute a peer-recognition program, they scaled back more formal proposals because staffers said they wanted something low-key. In the resulting Very Important Peer program, colleagues recognize each other's accomplishments with simple notes and gifts. The inexpensive initiative has proven wildly popular, with more than 1,000 awards handed out in 2005 alone. In addition, senior leaders actively ensure that all employees use their allowed vacation time, showing that work-life balance is a way of life at Carswell.

26. Canadian Health Services Research Foundation
Ottawa | Health care | 50 employees

This non-profit group has made a business for itself providing top-notch policy advice to Canada's leading health-care and nursing decision-makers. So it's no surprise that it knows a thing or two about keeping its employees healthy and happy, too. In addition to vacation and sick time, staff are given extra "wellness" days, as manager of employee support Michelle Rathwell puts it, to "help recharge their batteries."

27. Saint Elizabeth Health Care
Markham, Ont. | Health-care services | 3,633 employees

Taking care of sick or disabled people in 21 different regions across Ontario is what this not-for-profit does best. But when most of your front-line staff work off-site — Saint Elizabeth averages three million home-care visits each year — it can be difficult for employees to come together and share ideas. That's where Saint Elizabeth's "School of Thought" comes in: a high-tech meeting space with virtual capabilities where health workers come up with new ways to deliver the best care in the field. For example, some home-care nurses now use digital photography to transmit images to wound specialists who can offer up more timely advice.

28. SaskTel
Regina | telecommunications | 4,146 employees

29. Business Objects
Vancouver | Information technology; software | 1,245 Employees

At global software company Business Objects, which offers reporting and analytical software, the intranet, named "Mountains of Information Logically Organized," or MILO for short, is key to internal communication. But it's not the only way information is shared. Business Objects' management listened to the staff when a companywide vote made it clear that relocating to the suburbs was not an attractive option. Instead, Business Objects renovated its downtown building in Vancouver's Yaletown, and what was once a warehouse is now an environmentally friendly, interior-design-award-winning office with a glass atrium, fireplace lounge, book exchange area and several cappuccino machines. One thing the space doesn't have, however, is a cafeteria. Business Objects encourages employees to leave the building at lunch time, in order to help revitalize the neighbourhood. It also gives each employee one paid day off per year to volunteer in the community. The company supports a wide variety of other philanthropic efforts, which means employees often get invites to various charity-related events.

30. John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd.
Toronto | Publishing | 127 employees

Flexible hours, job sharing, work-at-home schedules and cross-border job-shadowing opportunities are all part of what make this company "the place to be"-part of John Wiley's corporate mantra. Don't take our word for it, either. Staff turnover at this professional, trade and educational publishing company is at an all-time low-since acquiring a smaller publisher in 2002, only one of its new employees has left voluntarily.

Canadian Business Online

"DREAMS" by Langston Hughes

2006-04-18T02:24:00.000-04:00

"DREAMS"
by Langston Hughes

Hold onto dreams
For if dreams die
Life is like a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Ford Says Replace Rumsfeld With Powell

2006-04-18T01:46:00.000-04:00

U.S. Senate candidate Harold Ford, Jr. today asked his Republican opponents to join him in calling for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and supporting Colin Powell for the post. In a statement, Ford said:

"For the sake of our country and the safety of our troops, we need new leadership at the Pentagon. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has lost the confidence of his military commanders, Iraqi leadership, Congress and the thousands of American service men and women who bravely and selflessly serve this country.

"When we ask our armed forces to make the commitment and sacrifice necessary to advance our interests and defend or freedoms, our leaders must share the responsibility and accountability. There is no more sacred obligation than to give our troops a strategy and plan to win. Secretary Rumsfeld has failed this test and it is time for him to step down.

"The nation's military and political efforts in Iraq and the Middle East would be significantly improved with the appointment of General Colin Powell as Secretary of Defense. The General possesses the institutional knowledge of the flawed pre-war planning and execution, and the expertise to know how to correct those mistakes. More importantly, he commands credibility, standing and stature in the eyes of war fighters, military leaders and allies -around the globe. The President should give General Powell veto power over every strategic and major military decision made in Iraq and Afghanistan, except for his of course.

"In addition, General Powell's experience resolving complicated and sensitive national security challenges is needed now more than ever. He will bring a respect for our military, a willingness to listen, a capacity to admit and correct mistakes, and an attention to detail that is absent now in the top job at the Pentagon.

"I stand with Generals Zinni, Eaton, Batiste, Swannack and Riggs - all of whom served in Iraq - in the call for new leadership at the Pentagon. Ed Bryant, Bob Corker and Van Hilleary should do the same."

http://www.chattanoogan.com/

Boarding school to teach 'happiness lessons'

2006-04-18T01:20:00.000-04:00

Boarding school to teach 'happiness lessons'

Pupils at an English boarding school are to be given classes on how to acheive happiness, the headmaster has said.

Teachers coached in positive psychology are to tutor well-being at Wellington College in Crowthorne, Berks.

Head Anthony Seldon said: "We are introducing classes on happiness. We have been focusing too much on academics and missing something far more important.

"To me, the most important job of any school is to turn out young men and women who are happy and secure - more important than the latest bulletin from the Department for Education about whatever."

He said Nick Baylis, a psychologist at Cambridge University, will oversee the piloting of the school's happiness lessons at the start of the next academic year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

Thieves' crime doesn't pay, but it sure could have A $1.7 million device is stolen from a Lynnwood doorstep, then pawned for $300.

2006-04-16T22:34:00.000-04:00

Thieves' crime doesn't pay, but it sure could have
A $1.7 million device is stolen from a Lynnwood doorstep, then pawned for $300.

By Diana Hefley
Herald Writer

LYNNWOOD - A man who walked into a pawnshop with a stolen piece of equipment last week got $300 for it.

As it turns out, he should have held out for a bit more.

The item he sold was actually worth $1.7 million, say police, who happened to come in to retrieve the electronic device while the man was in the shop.

Police believe a ring of suspected thieves and drug users had no idea how much a package was worth when they took it from a front porch, then sold it last week.

"This wasn't an underground conspiracy for this type of equipment. They had no idea of the value of this thing," Lynnwood police spokeswoman Shannon Sessions said.

Neither did police until they talked to the owner.

The Lynnwood woman is a distributor for a German company that specializes in high-tech equipment. The stolen equipment is a universal protocol tester that measures radio frequencies. It is generally used by cell phone companies, police said.

A delivery truck dropped it off on her porch last week. It appears the thieves followed the truck to the house and scooped up the 70-pound box before the woman even knew it had arrived.

She first assumed that it hadn't been delivered, but reported it stolen after the company tracked the delivery, Sessions said.

Detectives investigated some leads and found it at a Highway 99 pawnshop. As they were picking it up, the man who pawned it came back to the shop to get more money for the equipment, Sessions said.

He was booked into the Snohomish County Jail April 7 for investigation of trafficking in stolen property, and released two days later.

The equipment was returned to the company, Sessions said.

A second suspect was arrested this week in connection with the theft. Police believe the Everett man, 36, stole the equipment from a drug dealer before giving it to the man who pawned it .

Police say they are seeing more thieves follow delivery trucks and make off with packages left on porches and doorsteps.

"Mail thieves are becoming more resourceful," Sessions said.

Detectives continue to investigate the theft, looking for the person who originally stole the package from the front porch and other people who may have been involved.

"We think it was passed around by more than the two people arrested," Sessions said. "None of them seemed to know what they had stumbled on."

Serbian prisoner sews lips and tongue to avoid court hearing in robbery case

2006-04-16T22:31:00.000-04:00

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) - A Serbian prisoner using needle, thread and safety pins stitched his lips and tongue together to avoid a scheduled court hearing in his robbery case, the Blic newspaper reported Saturday.

Zoran Raskovic, 27, in custody at Belgrade's central prison, is one of six people charged with a 2003 bank heist in the central Serbian town of Mladenovac, when the group allegedly made away with the equivalent of about $153,000 Cdn.

A prison guard discovered Raskovic on Friday morning after he had apparently sewed his mouth together overnight. The needle and the safety pins were likely smuggled into the prison, Blic said.

A prison surgeon was called in and removed the self-inflicted stitches, but Raskovic, who had lost some blood, subsequently was too weak to appear in court Friday.

Raskovic's lawyer, Sanja Radenkovic, told Blic she was "in shock" as her client had never been a "psychologically unstable" person.

"He likely wanted to protest the unfair length of his imprisonment pending trial," she was quoted as saying.

What Is A Think Tank?

2006-04-16T04:03:00.000-04:00

What Is A Think Tank?

December 20, 2005

by John C. Goodman ¹

What is a think tank? What do think tanks do? Why are they important? These questions are more pertinent than ever in today's public policy environment.

Think Tanks as Idea Factories. A think tank is an organization that sponsors research on specific problems, encourages the discovery of solutions to those problems, and facilitates interaction among scientists and intellectuals in pursuit of these goals. A public policy think tank explicitly focuses on government policies, usually for the purpose of improving those policies or creating viable alternatives.

By their very nature, public policy think tanks are involved with the academic and scholarly world. In fact, the most important sources of political change are not politicians, political parties or financial contributions. Rather, they are ideas generated on college campuses, in think tanks and in other research organizations around the country.

Ideas That Cause Change. As a wise man once said, "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come." Almost all important political change starts with an idea. And the idea inevitably originates with people who spend a great deal of their lives thinking. Indeed, it's hard to point to any major public policy in the modern era that did not originate in the academic world. Here are some examples:

When Chile became the first country to privatize its Social Security system, the architects were U.S.-trained economists who looked to Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his colleagues at the University of Chicago for guidance. Since then, more than 30 countries have followed Chile 's lead.
When Margaret Thatcher set out to privatize the British economy, she relied on the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs for key ideas that were later promoted in the United States by the Reason Foundation and others. ²
The idea of the flat tax, which has been adopted in Russia , in many Eastern European countries and elsewhere around the world, was originally proposed by Milton Friedman ³ and subsequently promoted by the Hoover Institution. ⁴
Ronald Reagan's supply side economics came from Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell and was popularized by economist Art Laffer and Wall Street Journal columnist Jude Wanninski. ⁵
School vouchers, another idea rapidly spreading around the world, was originally a Milton Friedman proposal. ⁶
Welfare reform, perhaps the most successful public policy reform of the last quarter-century, almost single-handedly flowed from Charles Murray's Losing Ground, ⁷ sponsored by the Manhattan Institute.
Many of the Bush administration's attempts to use market forces to solve environmental problems stem directly from free market environmentalism spawned by the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) and the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE).
Health Savings Accounts and Roth IRAs are only two of the numerous ideas generated by the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Before the collapse of Communism, underground copies of Milton Friedman's book Free to Choose were smuggled into Eastern Europe, where they introduced a generation of students and political dissidents to classical liberal economic ideas. This and other Western publications played a decisive role in bringing about the collapse of Communism and later served as a foundation for countries' post-Communist economic policies.

Origin of the Idea of a Think Tank. Ideas come from think tanks. But where did the idea of a think tank come from? It may well have come from Thomas Clarkson, an Englishman who founded the Society for the Abolition of The African Slave Trade in 1782. By meticulously describing the condition of the slave trade, supplying diagrams of slave ships, and combining factual inquiry with moral argument, Clarkson engaged in a war of ideas.

"Powered by an evangelical zeal, Clarkson's committee would become what might be described as the world's first think tank," writes Lawrence Reed. "Noble ideas and unassailable facts would be its weapons." ⁸

Think tanks figured prominently in the 20 th Century. The Manhattan Project was a very focused think tank of sorts. The RAND Corporation, the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute are other organizations that left their mark. Of special interest are organizations that sprang up in the latter part of the 20 th Century, often for the explicit purpose of defeating collectivism, much as Clarkson sought to end slavery. Among these were the Hoover Institution, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute.

No single person was more important in encouraging the spread of think thanks than Sir Antony Fisher. An RAF pilot in World War II who went on to become successful in business, Fisher sought advice from Nobel Laureate Fredrich Hayek on how to stop the spread of collectivism and encourage a resurgence of 19 th century classical liberal ideas. Don't go into politics, Hayek advised. Focus instead on the world of ideas. ⁹

Fisher started the Institute of Economic Affairs in London , which later became Margaret Thatcher's think tank. Following that success, he helped start the Fraser Institute in Canada; the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru; and the Manhattan Institute as well as the National Center for Policy Analysis in the United States. His Atlas Foundation supplied modest seed money for these efforts and convened an annual think tank conference. By the time he died, Fisher had helped start more than three dozen think tanks around the world.

How Ideas Cause Change. Ideas tend to filter through a hierarchy. They start in the realm of intellectuals. Through conferences, speeches, briefings and reports written for lay readers, the audience expands. The ideas begin to appear in newspaper editorials. Special interests may find an idea to their liking and help it along. Gradually, more and more people become aware of it. Politicians are often the last to climb on board. Still, it's a process that has been repeated again and again.

From the Republican Contract with America to Bill Clinton's highly successful welfare reform, from Ronald Reagan's supply side economics to George W. Bush's plan to reform Social Security – all of these ideas came from think tanks. For that matter, so did Medicare, Medicaid and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. For good or evil, ideas are powerful engines of change.

Why do so many people view think tanks as impotent – producing papers and reports that collect dust on bookshelves? The answer is: impatience. Ideas take time to cause change. Their impact occurs with a lag:

It took 20 years from the time Clarkson started his think tank until Britain passed the first anti-slavery law and 26 more years after that until slavery was finally abolished throughout the realm.
It took more than 30 years after Milton Friedman first proposed the idea of school vouchers and the idea of a flat tax for them to emerge as part of the national debate.
More than 20 years elapsed before George W. Bush campaigned on Social Security reform – an idea that the Cato Institute, the NCPA and other think tanks originally proposed.
More than 15 years elapsed between the time the NCPA first proposed health savings accounts and the time they became available to most people.
Even such popular ideas as the Roth IRA and repealing the Social Security earning penalty took a decade.

Bottom line: people who want important public policy changes need to be willing to make long-term investments.

How Think Tanks Function. In general, think tanks that were formed before the emergence of the Internet tend to follow the "one roof" model. The idea was to bring a diverse group of scholars together in one place, so they could interact face to face. One reason for this was communication. Forty or fifty years ago, the costs of communication from campus to campus were quite high, relative to what we experience today.

For think tanks formed in the classical liberal tradition, there was also another reason. When I was a graduate student at Columbia University in the early 1970s, the Reason Foundation attempted to compile a list of all of the liberal arts faculty in the entire country who believed in free markets and personal liberty. The actual criteria were quite loose. They basically included everyone who was not a socialist or a Hubert Humphrey liberal. The list was also very short. As I recall, there were only 15 or 20 names.

In those days, if you were a classical liberal teaching at a university, you were probably the only one on your campus. There was literally no one else to talk to who was like-minded. So places like the Hoover Institution (where as a young Ph.D. economist I was employed) served a valuable function. They brought people together who would otherwise be quite intellectually isolated.

Today, things are different. The academic world is teeming with scholars (especially economists) who believe that markets work and that they are powerful engines of social change. In addition, the Internet has made communication cheap, easy and immediate. As a result, almost all younger think tanks are based on a different model: they are organizations without walls. At the NCPA, our tax specialist is in Boston; our Medicaid expert is in Cleveland; the scholars who model Social Security and Medicare are in College Station, Texas; our Center for European Studies is in Washington, DC; and our administrative personnel are in Dallas.

Think tanks without walls typically have no endowments and are less well-funded than older organizations that try to assemble everyone under one roof. To make smaller budgets stretch further, they economize by contracting with scholars at other institutions rather than employing them. This means that the university pays all the overhead and the think tank pays only the marginal cost of the research it wants. Against these greater efficiencies, the think tank may suffer an identity problem, however. A news story about a scholarly study may mention only the professor/author's name and perhaps the name of the university that employs him – omitting the name of the think tank that actually funded the research.

Marketing Ideas. The notion that ideas can be marketed like products is a fairly new concept. When the NCPA was started in 1983, the typical think tank report did not make use of bolded headings, bullet points for emphasis, call out sentences or visually pleasing graphics. Executive summaries were virtually nonexistent. Annual reports were in black and white and the photos were typically of amateur quality. No think tank had a promotional video at that time, either. The NCPA introduced all of these techniques and today they are commonplace. But the techniques were not original with us. We simply copied them from the world of business. What was original was the insight that ideas can be marketed like products and think tanks could market themselves like a business enterprise.

Intellectual Entrepreneurs. Antony Fisher thought of me as an intellectual entrepreneur, by which he meant someone who applies entrepreneurial skills often found in the business world to the world of ideas. I was not alone. Over the past 25 years, the think tank community has been highly entrepreneurial. Under the leadership of Michael Walker, the Fraser Institute in Canada pioneered techniques for measuring waiting times for medical care in Canada – evidence that was used by Canada's Supreme Court to strike barriers to private care in Quebec.¹⁰ Hernando de Soto measured how long it took to get approval to start a new business in Lima – a technique that has been repeated in less developed countries around the world.¹¹ At the NCPA, we calculated the differential Social Security benefits expected by black and white workers (even though all pay the same tax rate), showing that pay-as-you-go elderly entitlement programs discriminate against blacks and other minorities.¹²

Think Tanks as Businesses. The NCPA is a nonprofit institution – but it is run as a business. We invest in new programs and judge our success by the return on those investments. In 2004, we spent 82% of our donations on programs, with the remaining 9% going to fundraising costs and 9% to administration costs. We have a five-year plan. We have a succession plan, including key-man insurance. Other successful think tanks are also run like businesses, applying business techniques to the world of ideas.

When the NCPA was formed in 1983, there were older, larger think tanks already in existence. Our job was to find a market niche. Ronald Reagan was president and the existing right-of-center think tanks tended to focus on the President's agenda. The niche for the NCPA was all of the items that were not on Reagan's agenda: Social Security, health care, employee benefits and other "social insurance" issues. As it turns out, these are the hardest areas to reform, not only in our country, but all over the world. However, by investing in these especially-hard-to-solve issues, the NCPA built up expertise and institutional memory that could be brought to bear in later years when the body politic was ready to address them.

The Location of Think Tanks. In recent years, there has been a tendency for all organizations interested in pubic policy to move to Washington, D.C. – if they were not already there in the first place. In my opinion, this is a mistake. There is enormous pressure on everyone within the Beltway to concentrate on what Congress and the Administration are focused on. To fail to do so is to risk being characterized as irrelevant. It is in this way that the DC environment stifles creative thought.

My view is: If you want to think about what Congress is not thinking about (and is unlikely to think about any time soon), you need to do your thinking away from Washington . That, in any event, was the strategy followed by the NCPA, which opened a Washington office only when it was clear that Congress was ready to focus on some key NCPA proposals. The year was 1994, and the core tax ideas in the Republican Contract with America came directly from a pro-growth proposal generated by the NCPA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. ¹³

We continue to have an active Washington government affairs office, but its objective is narrow and focused: to provide Congress and the administration with NCPA's scholars'research, testimony and advice and to conduct conferences and briefings on issues of direct interest on Capitol Hill.

Think Tanks vs. Universities. Like think tanks, colleges and universities hire scholars, encourage research and provide a forum for scholarly interaction. So how are these academic institutions different from think tanks? Part of the difference is that the research of tenured professors is unmanaged and undirected. The object of research is up to the whim of the professor. The goal may or may not be to solve an important social problem. Think tanks, by contrast, tend to be very goal-oriented. They employ or contract with scholars to research specific topics and encourage solutions to well-defined problems. Universities tend to be graded based on the academic prestige of their faculty members. Think tanks tend to be graded based on their success in solving real world problems.

Think Tanks vs. Advocacy Groups. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of groups who openly advocate public policy changes (usually on a single issue). These groups, however, are not incubators of new ideas. They are better thought of as lobbyists for ideas. Often they receive financial backing from special interests. They may be very helpful in promoting needed public policy changes, but they are not staffed or led by intellectuals. In fact, they are typically anti-intellectual – resisting ways of thinking that are different from the narrow goals of their financial backers.

The Role of Ideology. To what degree do ideological preferences influence the output of think tanks? Among first-rate research organizations, ideology has no effect on findings of fact. If the economists at the NCPA, Urban Institute, Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute calculate the government's unfunded liabilities under Social Security and Medicare, they are all likely to arrive at similar numbers. Where ideology matters is in deciding what problems to research and what solutions to investigate.

The Brookings Institution is more likely to investigate unmet needs and ask what government programs could solve the problem. The NCPA is more likely to investigate how government policies are causing the problem in the first place and ask how the private sector can be utilized to solve it. Of course, occasionally we see eye-to-eye on problems and solutions. ¹⁴

Conservatism vs. Classical Liberalism. The NCPA is often called "conservative" by the national news media. I have never been comfortable with that term; and I avoid it whenever possible.

William F. Buckley once described conservatives as people who "stand athwart history, yelling 'stop.'" That may be an apt description of many people, but it is not a very good description of what most right-of-center think tanks do. For this and other reasons, Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek avoided the term altogether and called themselves "classical liberals." [See my essay What Is Classical Liberalism?] Nineteenth century liberals were not trying to conserve institutions. They were trying to reform them.

The NCPA is in the classical liberal tradition. We are animated by the same desire to reform institutions that motivated Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and other historical figures who worked to empower people and unleash the energy, creativity and innovative ability of individuals pursuing their own interests in competitive markets.

The Future of Think Tanks. I believe that the NCPA, at 22 years of age, is the youngest national think tank on the center right of the ideological spectrum. By that I mean that ours was the last organization to successfully enter the think tank marketplace and address a wide array of public policy issues at the federal level. All of the organizations that have formed since that time have been state think tanks or organizations that focus on a narrow range of issues. I do not expect that to change. Today, our best think tanks are well-managed and so alert to market opportunities that potential entrants into the market are unlikely to find much opportunity.

Although I do not expect to see an increase in the number of organizations, I do believe the national think tanks are on the cusp of a virtual explosion of intellectual activity.

There is enormous untapped potential in the academic and scholarly world. As think tanks grow in terms of budget, skills and expertise, their ability to tap that potential will grow exponentially. The successes we have seen so far are not aberrations. They are the beginning of an intellectual revolution that will set the stage for the policy debates of the 21 st Century.

John C. Goodman is president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Madsen Pirie, Dismantling the State (Dallas, TX: National Center for Policy Analysis, 1985).
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka, Flat Tax , 2 nd ed. (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1995).
Jude Wanninski, The Way the World Works (New York: Basic Books, 1978).
Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom.
Charles Murray, Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 , 10 th anniv. ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1995).
Lawrence Reed, “A Student's Essay That Changed the World,” Mackinac Center for Public Policy, 2005.
Gerald Frost, Antony Fisher: Champion of Liberty ( London , Profile Books, 2002).
Nadeem Esmail and Michael Walker, “Waiting Your Turn, Hospital Waiting Lists in Canada (15 th ed.) Fraser Institute, Critical Issues Bulletin, October 2005.
Hernando de Soto , The Other Path (New York: Basic Books, 1989).
“The Effect of the Social Security Reforms on Black Americans,” National Center for Policy Analysis, Study No. 104, June 1983.
“A Strategy for Growth,” National Center for Policy Analysis and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, January 1992.
John C. Goodman and Peter R. Orszag, “Retirement Savings Reforms on which the Left and the Right Can Agree,” National Center for Policy Analysis, Brief Analysis No. 495, December 1, 2004.

http://www.ncpa.org/

Awesome Concept Cars from the NY Auto Show !!!!

2006-04-15T23:13:00.000-04:00

Please all the pics from the show please visit http://idimin.blogspot.com !!!!

SILENCE

2006-04-15T18:19:00.000-04:00

In the silence of my inner being. In the stillness of my home of peace,
I ponder the greatness of my existence, and the
truly endless love and power I have within me...

Free Minds and Hearts at Work by Jackie Robinson...

2006-04-15T18:14:00.000-04:00

NPR.org, April 4, 2005 · This essay aired circa 1952.

At the beginning of the World Series of 1947, I experienced a completely new emotion, when the National Anthem was played. This time, I thought, it is being played for me, as much as for anyone else. This is organized major league baseball, and I am standing here with all the others; and everything that takes place includes me.

About a year later, I went to Atlanta, Georgia, to play in an exhibition game. On the field, for the first time in Atlanta, there were Negroes and whites. Other Negroes, besides me. And I thought: What I have always believed has come to be.

And what is it that I have always believed? First, that imperfections are human. But that wherever human beings were given room to breathe and time to think, those imperfections would disappear, no matter how slowly. I do not believe that we have found or even approached perfection. That is not necessarily in the scheme of human events. Handicaps, stumbling blocks, prejudices -- all of these are imperfect. Yet, they have to be reckoned with because they are in the scheme of human events.

Whatever obstacles I found made me fight all the harder. But it would have been impossible for me to fight at all, except that I was sustained by the personal and deep-rooted belief that my fight had a chance. It had a chance because it took place in a free society. Not once was I forced to face and fight an immovable object. Not once was the situation so cast-iron rigid that I had no chance at all. Free minds and human hearts were at work all around me; and so there was the probability of improvement. I look at my children now, and know that I must still prepare them to meet obstacles and prejudices.

But I can tell them, too, that they will never face some of these prejudices because other people have gone before them. And to myself I can say that, because progress is unalterable, many of today's dogmas will have vanished by the time they grow into adults. I can say to my children: There is a chance for you. No guarantee, but a chance.

And this chance has come to be, because there is nothing static with free people. There is no Middle Ages logic so strong that it can stop the human tide from flowing forward. I do not believe that every person, in every walk of life, can succeed in spite of any handicap. That would be perfection. But I do believe -- and with every fiber in me -- that what I was able to attain came to be because we put behind us (no matter how slowly) the dogmas of the past: to discover the truth of today; and perhaps find the greatness of tomorrow.

I believe in the human race. I believe in the warm heart. I believe in man's integrity. I believe in the goodness of a free society. And I believe that the society can remain good only as long as we are willing to fight for it -- and to fight against whatever imperfections may exist.

My fight was against the barriers that kept Negroes out of baseball. This was the area where I found imperfection, and where I was best able to fight. And I fought because I knew it was not doomed to be a losing fight. It couldn't be a losing fight-not when it took place in a free society.

And in the largest sense, I believe that what I did was done for me -- that it was my faith in God that sustained me in my fight. And that what was done for me must and will be done for others.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4536142

Jackie Robinson Day througout the Majors !!!!

2006-04-15T17:41:00.000-04:00

more info here:

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/events/jrd/index.jsp?year=04

Breast implants linked to suicide

2006-04-15T16:32:00.000-04:00

Breast implants linked to suicide

NewScientist.com news service

Women with cosmetic breast implants are significantly more likely to commit suicide than those without them, according to a new study.

The researchers, motivated by the debate over the health risks of breast implants, analysed the medical records of 3500 Swedish women who had had breast implants. They considered only cosmetic operations, excluding women who received implants after breast cancer surgery.

The 3500 women ranged in age from teenagers to pensioners and had the implant operation between 1965 and 1993. In an average group of the same size and age, 59 deaths would be expected, but the researchers found that 85 women had died.

Fifteen had taken their own lives, three times the number expected, and a higher number of deaths from smoking-related diseases like lung cancer were also seen.

"Women who ask for breast implants may have low self-esteem," suggests Veronica Koot at the University Medical Centre, Utrecht, Netherlands, who led the study. "Similarly, women who smoke may also have low self-esteem."

Body conscious

Michael Beary, a consultant psychiatrist at the Priory Hospital, London agrees that women with low-self esteem are more body conscious and more likely to have breast implants.

"Quite a lot of women who become depressed will seek plastic surgery as a treatment for depression," he says. "However, quite often operations go wrong, leading to unsightly scarring, unequal breasts or numb areas, and this can make the depression worse. I have certainly seen suicide attempts in women after surgery who were depressed beforehand." Similarly, Beary says teenage girls with low-self esteem about their bodies can take up smoking believing it will help them lose weight, making it more likely that women who have breast implants are also smokers.

more info at: http://www.youngagain.com/breastimplants.html

yikes !!!!

2006-04-15T00:35:00.000-04:00

Another example that one shouldn't always accept what they read as "the truth" !!

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=53901

US Special Forces train rebels in Guyana for incursions into eastern Venezuela

Madson Blog: As US and NATO descend upon the Caribbean in two exercises ... 'Operation Tradewinds' and 'Partnership for the Americas' ... designed to intimidate populist and progressive governments and political movements in Latin America (particularly the Hugo Chavez government in Venezuela) comes word from US intelligence sources that US Special Forces are training Guyanese rebels in Guyana for cross-border incursions into the eastern part of Venezuela.

It is clear that with the arming and support of secessionist forces in Zulia state in western Venezuela, the Bush regime has decided to also foment problems in Venezuela's east.

The Guyanese-Venezuelan border has a history of irredentist problems among the tribal peoples who live in the region. US missionaries tied to US intelligence activities have been active among Amerindian tribal peoples of Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil and Guyana ... especially those living in the border regions of Venezuela.

It now appears that President Hugo Chavez was correct when he accused US missionaries -- particularly the New Tribes Mission -- of being linked to the CIA.

Suspiciously, New Tribes Mission is based in Jeb Bush's Florida, which has become a newly-invigorated base for CIA-funded right-wing Cuban, Venezuelan, Bolivian and other Latin American paramilitaries and terrorist groups.

The camouflaged armed bands on the Guyanese-Venezuelan border are not tropical bird watchers.

They represent the "Eastern Front" of the Bush regime against Hugo Chavez.

The Zulia state secessionists are key players in the "Western Front."

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=53901

Bobby Orr memorabilia auction

2006-04-14T20:33:00.000-04:00

For what it's worth, the Inside Track in today's Herald has this story about an upcoming Bobby Orr memorabilia auction featuring items that Orr himself says he can't vouch for...

http://thetrack.bostonherald.com/mo...rticleid=135022

The Lelands Bobby Orr catalog:

http://www.lelands.com/itemlist.asp...4&auctionid=603

(White) Male Privilege, Black Respectability, & Black Women

2006-04-14T18:46:00.000-04:00

(White) Male Privilege, Black Respectability, & Black Women

A Great Article !!!! "As a black female, you go to a party, you're expected to dance, you're expected to be sexually provocative. You [are expected to] want to be touched, to be grabbed, to be fondled... As if they're re-enacting a rap video or something. As if we're there to be their video ho, basically. We can't just be regular students here. We can't just go to a party and enjoy ourselves." — Audrey Christopher and Danielle Terrazas Williams (The Independent Weekly, "Not your video ho", 29 March 06) "Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated." — Kimberle Crenshaw, "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex" When a young black women was allegedly raped, sodomized, robbed and beaten by members of the Duke University Lacrosse team on 13 March of this year, it was initially treated as little more than another case of "(privileged) boys gone wild". As word began to spread about the specifics of the case, various communities mobilized to lay claim to its significance. These groups include Durham, North Carolina residents with long-standing grievances against the University, activists rightfully protesting yet another incident of alleged sexual violence related to a college campus, members of various black communities who wanted to highlight the racist implications of the alleged assault, and of course, those who felt that too many people were rushing to judgment about the alleged rapists, well before the true facts of the case were established. At the center of all of these claims and allegiances is the body of a young black woman, who in many ways has been continually assaulted since 13 March. This time the assaults, arising from various narratives surrounding the case, to, the inability of the take serious the realities of racialized sexual violence against women of color. In spite of all the discussion, to date no charges have been filed in the so called "Duke lacrosse rape case". The results of a DNA analysis taken after the alleged attack suggest that the members of the Duke lacrosse team were not involved in the attack, though the local district attorney will continue to pursue the case. As such, I am less interested in trafficking through declarations of guilt and innocence in the case, but rather, I am interested in illuminating the various perceptions that have been and will continue to be projected onto the body of the black woman who is the focal point of this case. more of this insightful article here: http://kykoveral.blogspot.com/2006/04/white-male-privilege-black.html

Brit was dead for 3 yrs., with the TV on

2006-04-14T16:17:00.000-04:00

LONDON - A woman's skeleton was discovered in her apartment, surrounded by Christmas presents and with the TV on, three years after she is believed to have died, a British newspaper reported yesterday.
Joyce Vincent, 40, probably died of natural causes in early 2003, police said at an inquest this week, based on mail and prescriptions found in the apartment, the Daily Telegraph said.

But her remains were only found in January this year, when housing officials finally decided to hunt her down to pay the back rent.

When officials broke into her apartment, they discovered the woman's "largely skeletal" remains on the floor surrounded by Christmas presents. The television was on, as it apparently had been for three years, the paper said.

The 40-year-old's body was so decomposed that the only way to identify her was to compare dental records with a holiday photograph.

Several of Vincent's sisters attended the inquest, but there was no explanation for why they never checked on her over the years.

In another sad twist, it was disclosed that Vincent had moved into the apartment after becoming a victim of domestic violence.

Calls for Rumsfeld's Resignation Grow !!

2006-04-14T13:02:00.000-04:00

Stories relating U.S. Generals hating Rumsfeld are popping up all over the internet.

Check out this story from BBC News.

Or this story from Christian Science Monitor.

And Reuters: Generals Demand Rumsfeld Resignation

car pool ...

2006-04-14T12:47:00.000-04:00

Report Raises New Questions on Bush, WMDs

2006-04-12T19:50:00.000-04:00

By NEDRA PICKLER

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House faced new questions Wednesday about President Bush's contention three years ago that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

The Washington Post reported that a Pentagon-sponsored team of experts determined in May 2003 that two small trailers were not used to make biological weapons. Yet two days after the team sent its findings to Washington in a classified report, Bush declared just the opposite.

``We have found the weapons of mass destruction,'' Bush said in an interview with a Polish TV station. ``We found biological laboratories.''

Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday that Bush was relying on information from the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency when he said the trailers seized after the 2003 invasion were mobile biological laboratories. That information was later discredited by the Iraq Survey Group in its 2004 report.

The CIA and DIA publicly issued an assessment one day after the Pentagon team's report arrived in Washington that said U.S. officials were confident that the trailers were used to produce biological weapons. The assessment said the mobile facilities represented ``the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.''

McClellan said it was unclear whether officials at the White House were aware of the contradictory field report when Bush repeated the claim in the television interview.

``If and when the White House became aware of this particular issue, I'm looking into that matter,'' McClellan said. ``The White House has asked the CIA and the DIA to go and look into that issue.''

The Post did not say that Bush knew what he was saying was false. But ABC News did during a report on ``Good Morning America,'' and McClellan demanded an apology and an on-air retraction. ABC News said later in a clarification on its Web site that Charles Gibson had erred. McClellan said he had received an apology.

``This is nothing more than rehashing an old issue that was resolved long ago,'' McClellan said. ``I cannot count how many times the president has said the intelligence was wrong.''

``The intelligence community makes the assessment,'' he said. ``The White House is not the intelligence-gathering agency.''

Navy Cmdr. Greg Hicks, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a written statement that the report from the expert team was sent to the DIA on May 27, 2003, but he said the findings were not vetted until over the summer. The statement did not say whether the information was immediately shared with the White House.

``This further analysis led to the conclusion of the ISG that the mobile units were impractical for biological agent production and almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen,'' Hicks' statement said.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Dyck declined to speak specifically about the classified field report but said in general that producing a finished intelligence report takes time, coordination, debate and vetting.

``This is not a fast process, especially when dealing with complex issues,'' she said. ``It is not typically something that happens in a matter of hours.''

The trailers - along with aluminum tubes acquired by Iraq for what was believed to be a nuclear weapons program - were primary pieces of evidence offered by the Bush administration before the war to support its contention that Iraq was making weapons of mass destruction.

Intelligence officials and the White House have repeatedly denied claims that intelligence was exaggerated or manipulated in the months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The Iraq Survey Group concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991.

Death of India Film Star Sparks Riots

2006-04-12T18:39:00.000-04:00

Indian film actor Raj Kumar poses in this undated file photo. Kumar, a onetime child actor who became one of south India's most beloved movie stars and later was kidnapped by a notorious bandit, died Wednesday, OApril 12, 2006, at age 77.(AP Photo)

Casablanca tops Screenwriters' list

2006-04-12T02:34:00.000-04:00

Casablanca tops Screenwriters' list

Monday, April 10, 2006

The Writers Guild of America has named Casablanca as No 1 on its first list of the '101 Greatest Screenplays.'
The screenplay for the wartime tale of courage and cynicism starring Humphrey Bogart was written by Howard Koch and brothers Julius and Philip Epstein.

It was followed on the list by the screenplay for The Godfather, written by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola; Chinatown, written by Robert Towne; Citizen Kane, by Herman Mankiewicz and Orson Welles; and All About Eve by Joseph Mankiewicz.

Rounding out the top 10 were Annie Hall, by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman; Sunset Boulevard by the writing team of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder and D.M. Marshman Jr.; Paddy Chayefsky's Network; Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond's Some Like It Hot; and Coppola and Puzo's The Godfather Part II.

Three writers - Allen, Coppola and Wilder -had four films on the list, while three others had three: William Goldman, John Huston and Charlie Kaufman.

The list was announced by the Writers Guild on Thursday night.
The list was chosen by Guild members from more than 1,400 nominated screenplays.

Top 25 Things Republicans Believe

2006-04-11T21:49:00.000-04:00

You're probably a bonafide Republican if you believe any of the following...

( 01 ) Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you are millionaire conservative radio jock, which makes it an "illness" and needs our prayers for your "recovery."

( 02 ) You believe that those privileged from birth achieve success all on their own.

( 03 ) You believe that the US should get out of the UN, and that our highest national priority is enforcing UN resolutions against Iraq.

( 04 )You believe that government should stay out of people's lives but it needs to punish anyone caught having private sex with the "wrong" gender.

( 05 )You believe that pollution is OK, so long as it makes a profit.

( 06 )"Standing Tall for America" means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

( 07 )You believe that a woman cannot be trusted with decisions about her own body, but that large multinational corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind with no regulation whatsoever.

( 08 )You believe that you love Jesus and Jesus loves you, and that Jesus shares your hatred of AIDS patients, homosexuals, and Hillary Clinton.

( 09 )You hate the ACLU for representing convicted felons, but they owed it to the country to bail out Oliver North.

( 10 )You believe that the best way to encourage military morale is to praise the troops overseas while cutting their VA benefits at home.

( 11 )You believe that group sex and drug use are degenerate sins that can only be purged by running for governor of California as a Republican.

( 12 )You believe it is wise to keep condoms out of schools, because we all know if teenagers don't have condoms they won't have sex.

( 13 )You believe that the best way to fight terrorism is to alienate our allies and then demand their cooperation and money.

( 14 )You believe that government medicine is wrong and that HMOs and insurance companies only have your best interests at heart.

( 15 )You believe that providing health care to all Iraqis is sound government policy but providing health care to all Americans is socialism personified.

( 16 )You believe that tobacco's link to cancer and global warming are "junk science," but Creationism should be taught in schools.

( 17 )You believe that waging war with no exit strategy was wrong in Vietnam but right in Iraq.

( 18 )You believe that Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney was doing business with him, and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" election diversion.

( 19 )You believe that government should restrict itself to just the powers named in the Constitution, which includes banning gay marriages and censoring the internet.

( 20 )You believe that the public has a right to know about the adulterous affairs of Democrats, while those of Republicans are a "private matter."

( 21 )You believe that the public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades but that Bush was right to censor those 28 pages from the Congressional 9/11 report because you just can't handle the truth.

( 22 )You support state rights, which means Ashcroft telling states what locally passed voter initiatives he will allow them to have and which he will revoke personally.

( 23 )You believe that what Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest but what Bush did decades later is "stale news" and "irrelevant."

( 24 )You believe that trade with Cuba is wrong because it is communist, but trading with China and Vietnam is just dandy.

( 25 )You believe there is absolutely no coincidence between Deep South voting Republican in every election sine 1964 (except for Jimmy Carter in 1976) and the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Laundry Betrays Reputed No. 1 Mafia Boss

2006-04-11T19:33:00.000-04:00

By LUCA BRUNO and FRANCES D'EMILIO, Associated Press Writers 2 hours, 29 minutes ago

PALERMO, Sicily - Italy's No. 1 fugitive and reputed Mafia "boss of bosses" practically thumbed his nose at authorities for more than 40 years.

He counted on Sicilians' centuries-old mistrust of the state to help him on the run, sleeping in islanders' homes, having his children born at local hospitals, even sending the public health care system a bill for prostate treatment abroad under a false name.

But police finally caught up with Bernardo "The Tractor" Provenzano on Tuesday in a farmhouse outside his power base, Corleone — the town that inspired the family name in "The Godfather."

In the end, Provenzano was done in not by an informer or a rival gangster, but by a delivery of clean laundry. Police tracked the package to his hideout and closed in when they saw his hand peek out of the door to take it.

Provenzano had escaped capture so often since going into hiding in 1963 that he earned a place in the Italian imagination as "The Phantom of Corleone." He got his nickname "The Tractor" for the determination he displayed in a mob career that began as a hitman.

He is believed to have taken over leadership of the Sicilian Mafia following the 1993 arrest of former boss Salvatore "Toto" Riina. During his years on the run, Provenzano was convicted in absentia and given life sentences for more than a dozen murders of mobsters and investigators.

"Bastard! Murderer!" a crowd shouted at the 73-year-old Provenzano as black-hooded policemen took him out of a sedan and rushed him into the courtyard of a police building in Palermo after driving him from the countryside.

Wearing tinted glasses and a wind-breaker, the gray-haired Provenzano held up his handcuffed hands as he was hustled away but made no audible comment.

Investigators described an extensive operation to track down the mobster. They said cameras that can see up to a mile were trained on suspected accomplices as well as the Corleone home where Provenzano's wife and children live.

A few days ago, police noticed a package leave the wife's house, then get delivered by car to a series of other homes. On Tuesday morning, the package left Corleone and was driven to the farmhouse where Provenzano was found staying with a shepherd who doubled as a housekeeper.

"This morning he reached out with a hand to grab the package and that's when we decided to move in," said Nicola Cavaliere, a top police official in Rome.

Italy's national anti-Mafia prosecutor, Piero Grasso, told reporters in Rome that Provenzano was "impassive" and "didn't say a word" when arrested, but later acknowledged his identity.

The last photos that investigators had of the mobster showed him as a young man, but police gave the fugitive a "new face" last year — issuing a composite picture drawn with help from a Mafia turncoat in 2001 that depicted him with white hair and hollow cheeks.

That effort also was helped by descriptions from personnel at a clinic in Marseilles, France, where investigators say Provenzano sought treatment for a prostate tumor two years ago.

Turncoats had told investigators that Provenzano slept in different farmhouses every few nights across Sicily, an island where organized crime has held sway for decades.

He allegedly gave orders with written notes — not trusting cell phone conversations for fear of being monitored by police. Grasso said investigators were studying notes found at the farmhouse, along with a typewriter Provenzano apparently used for writing them.

After taking over the top leadership, Provenzano helped the Mafia spread its tentacles into the lucrative world of public works contracts in Sicily, turning the mob into more of a white-collar industry of illegal activity — with less dependance on traditional operations like drug trafficking and extortion, investigators have said.

During the years when Riina was the Mafia chieftain, murders bloodied Sicily. Mob rivals, police, prosecutors and their bodyguards, and sometimes bystanders, were cut down by bombings and drive-by shootings.

Then the bomb assassinations in Sicily of Italy's two top anti-Mafia fighters, magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two months apart in 1992 galvanized many Sicilians against the mob, helping chip away at the centuries-old "omerta" — the island's code of silence and mistrust of authorities.

Provenzano was among the Mafia bosses convicted of ordering Falcone's slaying, but as mob boss he allowed fewer sensational killings and ordered more infiltration of seemingly respectable people into real estate and financial markets, Grasso has said.

While on Provenzano's trail, investigators uncovered a network of "businessmen, technical experts, professionals and even politicians" who helped the mobster, said Grasso, a Sicilian who as former chief Palermo prosecutor led the hunt for the fugitive in the last few years.

But in the end, Grasso said, increasing heat from police drove Provenzano to stay "in the safest places, that is, ones closest to Corleone," a bleak town rising out of a rocky outcrop about 40 miles from Palermo.

With Provenzano's capture, investigators now must figure out who might replace him as boss.

"As soon as the summit is decapitated, the structure feels the blow," Grasso said — but "the vacuum will be filled."

The World of Nat King Cole

2006-04-11T12:17:00.000-04:00

The World of Nat King Cole, PBS American Masters, May 17, 2006

Hello all,

My name is Floyd Webb and I am a Chicago-based producer and I worked on The World of Nat King Cole. It is a project we are all very proud of and we encourage you to watch it May 17 on American Masters and/or purchase it at Amazon.com
You can buy it by clicking here

To supplement my income between films I have started a partnership, 3:1 Studios, LLC.
Our website now online: http://3to1studios.com/

3to1 Studios is a world-class production company of young, energetic professionals. Professionals who value experience, yet harbor ambitious aspirations. Ambitious because our diverse group of specialists can work each aspect of a project, from pre-production through post-production, from storyboarding to sound design and further, establishing the project online and in print. To each step of the process, our specialists will bring the focus and experience that your project deserves. From conception to development to production to product, we get the job done and do it well.

Prior to the company's formation, our specialists were already making waves working in their respective fields. With the establishment of 3to1 Studios in 2005, a diverse and exceptionally talented collection of production specialists came together under a united vision: comprehensive production from conception through completion. Though we are still a young company, our satisfied clients have included some of Chicagoland’s prominent organizations

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Downloadable movies gets easier...

2006-04-11T12:10:00.000-04:00

Firm squeezes films into a download
News could be bane or boom for movies
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | April 10, 2006

A Concord company called Euclid Discoveries says it has invented a video-compression technology that could spawn a lucrative new market for Hollywood or a major new crisis.

The firm says its EuclidVision system can compress digital images to make them much smaller than today's most common compression technologies, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4,which were created by the Motion Picture Experts Group. MPEG-2 is the compression system used on today's DVD movie disks. MPEG-4 is a next-generation system that can reduce the size of a movie even further.

But EuclidVision promises to squeeze video files more than ever before. Euclid Discoveries chief executive Richard Wingard said EuclidVision will let movie companies shrink a video so small that it becomes easy to distribute films over the Internet. He said that his company has filed 15 US patents on its compression system and is in discussions with a number of companies to bring it to market.

That could be good news for Hollywood, which launched new services last week to sell downloadable copies of recent films. Reducing the size of these downloads could boost Internet movie sales. But it could also popularize Internet movie piracy, just as MP3 music compression caused a global boom in illiicit music downloads.

EuclidVision uses ''object-based compression," which identifies individual objects shown in a video, then calculates the optimum level of compression for each of them. The current generation of EuclidVision is designed for videoconferencing over telephone lines with limited bandwidth. Euclid Discoveries says its scientists compressed a 25-megabyte conference video to just over 8,000 bytes using MPEG-4, but EuclidVision did four times better, shrinking the file to about 1,800 bytes.

Wingard thinks his system will work even better with full-length movies. ''We believe that because it's object based, the longer the video . . . the better we'll do," he said. That's because the compression system can remember objects that appear frequently in the video, such as an actor's face, and can store such images in memory after reading them from the disk just once. Thus, many objects need to be recorded just once in the digital file, instead of every time they appear in the film.

As a result, Euclid Discoveries says a full-length movie that requires 700 megabytes of storage when compressed using MPEG-4 would use just 50 megabytes when compressed with EuclidVision. At that size, 14 movies could fit on a standard CD-ROM disk. As for video downloading, it would take an hour for someone with a 1.5 megabit-per-second broadband connection to download a 700-megabyte file. But 50 megabytes would take less than five minutes.

''It would solve a big bottleneck," said Christopher Chute, senior research analyst at IDC Corp. in Framingham. ''One of the reasons video has always been cumbersome . . . is it requires so much storage space."

Patti Reali, research director in the communications group at Gartner Inc. in Philadelphia, said that EuclidVision could also have major effects on the television industry. ''It would change dynamics in the satellite industry," she said. ''It would change what would happen in cable."

For example, cable providers are struggling with limited capacity, which prevents them from carrying all their programs in a high-definition format. Better compression could solve that problem, helping cable compete against satellite television.

Smaller movie files could be a boon to major Hollywood studios, which have begun to embrace Internet movie downloads. Last week, two online companies, MovieLink and CinemaNow, began selling downloadable copies of popular films. Downloads can take as long as two hours. EuclidVision could make the process far faster.

''I think we look at this as opportunities to deliver content," said Kori Bernards, spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America.

But making movies easier to download could inspire piracy. Asked if Hollywood was worried, Bernards was noncommittal.

''We have no reason currently to believe that Euclid seeks to facilitate copyright theft," she said. ''We continue to look at Internet piracy and figure out how to fight it at all levels."

A Los Angeles County sheriff inspects the wreckage of an Enzo Ferrari that crashed on the Pacific Coast Highway in this Feb. 21, 2006, file photo take

2006-04-11T02:42:00.000-04:00

A Los Angeles County sheriff inspects the wreckage of an Enzo Ferrari that crashed on the Pacific Coast Highway in this Feb. 21, 2006, file photo taken in Malibu, Calif. The Swedish video game entrepreneur, Stefan Eriksson, 44, involved in the 162-mph crash was arrested Saturday, April 8, 2006, accused of grand theft for an unauthorized collection of exotic cars, authorities said. (AP Photo/Hans Laetz)

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Apr 11, 2006 (AP)— A Malaysian man said he nearly fainted when he recieved a $218 trillion phone bill and was ordered to pay up

2006-04-11T02:28:00.000-04:00

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Apr 11, 2006 (AP)— A Malaysian man said he nearly fainted when he recieved a $218 trillion phone bill and was ordered to pay up within 10 days or face prosecution, a newspaper reported Monday.

Yahaya Wahab said he disconnected his late father's phone line in January after he died and settled the $23 bill, the New Straits Times reported.

But Telekom Malaysia later sent him a $218 trillion bill for recent telephone calls along with orders to settle within 10 days or face legal proceedings, the newspaper reported.

It wasn't clear whether the bill was a mistake, or if Yahaya's father's phone line was used illegally after after his death.

"If the company wants to seek legal action as mentioned in the letter, I'm ready to face it," the paper quoted Yahaya as saying. "In fact, I can't wait to face it," he said.

Yahaya, from northern Kedah state, received a notice from the company's debt-collection agency in early April, the paper said. Yahaya said he nearly fainted when he saw the new bill.

Government-linked Telekom Malaysia Bhd. is the country's largest telecommunications company.

A company official, who declined to be identified as she was not authorized to speak to the media, said Telekom Malaysia was aware of Yahaya's case and would address it. She did not provide further details.

Huge Crowds March for Immigration Rights

2006-04-11T02:24:00.000-04:00

Staff and agencies
10 April, 2006

By DEEPTI HAJELA, 15 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Hundreds of thousands of people demanding U.S. citizenship for illegal immigrants took to the streets in dozens of cities from New York to San Diego on Monday in some of the most widespread demonstrations since the mass protests began around the country last month.

Demonstrators in New York City held signs with slogans such as "We Are America," "Immigrant Values are Family Values," and "Legalize Don‘t Criminalize." One sign said: "Bush Step Down."

The protesters have been urging lawmakers to help an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants settle legally in the United States. A bill passed by the House would crack down on illegal immigrants and strengthen the nation‘s border with Mexico. A broader overhaul of immigration law stalled in the Senate last week.

In the nation‘s capital, thousands of immigrants, their families and supporters marched Monday from Hispanic neighborhoods past the White House, then converged on the National Mall.

In Atlanta, many in white T-shirts, waving American flags, joined a two-mile march from a largely immigrant neighborhood.

"People of the world, we have come to say this is our moment," Orange said.

Thick crowds gathered in New York‘s Washington Square Park before marching to City Hall. Many waved flags, both American and of countries of their origin. Korean-Americans beat drums nearby. Another group marched from Chinatown, and a third demonstration took place in Brooklyn.

One of the Korean drummers, Grace Nam, 35, who is an American citizen, said: "We just need to make our voices heard. You want to live in a place where people are treated with dignity."

"Illegal is illegal, and they break our laws to come here," Lanteri said by telephone. "We want the illegal immigration stopped and the borders secured."

In Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger Mahony led a prayer calling on Congress to hear their pleas, before the crowd, estimated by police at 3,500, began an evening march. Thousands of other protesters also gathered in Fresno, San Francisco, Oakland and Sacramento.

In Phoenix, police and organizers estimated that about 100,000 people marched from the state fairgrounds to the Capitol for a rally. Exit ramps were closed and traffic on freeways through downtown was backed up for miles. At one point, the crowd stretched more than two miles.

In Houston, event organizers estimated that 50,000 people gathered at a park in a largely Hispanic area of town as they rallied to march toward the spot where the city‘s founders first arrived.

At least 2,000 people gathered in front of the federal courthouse in Kansas City, Mo., according to rough estimates from organizers.

Maria Santiago, 53, an outreach coordinator for nonprofit health clinic in Harrisburg, Pa., said she sees many illegal immigrants seeking access to health care.

"These are people that are willing to take any job, clean bathrooms, scrub floors for a measly penny so that they have an opportunity to live in this country ... and yet we want to send them back because they want a better life?" Santiago said.

http://www.localnewsleader.com/

52 Million Reasons to Smile

2006-04-10T22:08:00.000-04:00

52 Million Reasons to Smile

(Boston Globe Staff Photo / Bill Greene)

Big Payday
Ortiz Agrees to 4-Year Extension for About $52 Million

more of 24 !!!!

2006-04-10T17:12:00.000-04:00

Cast member Kiefer Sutherland arrives at the Fox television show '24' 100th episode and 5th season premiere party in Hollywood on January 7, 2006. Sutherland has inked a multifaceted deal with 20th Century Fox Television. The rich pact calls for the actor to continue on the hit Fox drama for three more years and includes a two-year development deal for Sutherland's soon-to-be-launched production banner. (Mario Anzuoni/Reuters)

cool gadgets

2006-04-09T12:48:00.000-04:00

some of these are amazing especially the outdoor beer fridge...

check it out:

fridge - http://idimin.blogspot.com/2006/04/outdoor-beer-fridge.html

washable keyboard and mouse - http://idimin.blogspot.com/2006/04/unotrons-washable-keyboards-and-mice.html

electric cycle - http://idimin.blogspot.com/2006/04/electric-cyclery.html

mood shelf light - http://idimin.blogspot.com/2006/04/mood-light-shelf.html

record your vinyl on cd - http://idimin.blogspot.com/2006/04/teac-phono-cd-recorder.html

Canada Police: 8 Slain Men Knew Each Other

2006-04-09T12:23:00.000-04:00

GREGORY BONNELL

SHEDDEN, Ont. (CP) - The bodies of eight unidentified men discovered inside several abandoned vehicles were awaiting autopsies Sunday after they were removed overnight from a farmer's field that's now the scene of the worst mass killing in Ontario history

None of the victims have yet been identified, but they were all known to each other and all came from the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario police Det.-Supt. Ross Bingley told a news conference.

"Obviously, we're not used to having eight people at one homicide scene," Bingley said.

"(In) 27 years of policing, I don't recall that number of people at any one location, so obviously it's fairly significan

Bingley refused to speculate about the possible cause of death.

The eight men were found dead Saturday inside four vehicles on a tract of southwestern Ontario farmland in Shedden, a tiny farming village of about 800 people southwest of London and south of heavily travelled Highway 401.

The vehicles - a grey Pontiac Grand Prix, a silver Infiniti SUV and a green Chevrolet Silverado tow truck, with a silver Volkswagen Golf attached to the hitch - were taken to provincial police headquarters in Orillia, Ont., north of Toronto.

Police have so far refused to discuss any possible links to organized crime, although surrounding Elgin County has a history of biker activity; several motorcycle clubs have been known to populate the area, including the Loners, the Bandidos and the Hells Angels.

"The Hells are present in Ontario; everybody knows that," Bingley said.

"But as far as me discussing the Hells or anybody else, we're working on this murder case, and we're not talking about the Hells."

Police have been stopping cars to ask drivers what they have seen.

On Saturday, an aerial view showed the vehicles parked within 200 metres of each other, the bodies still inside. One body was clearly visible, lying curled on its side in the trunk of the SUV. Photos of the body were on the front pages of several Canadian newspapers Sunday.

The SUV was found in a field about 20 metres off a dirt road. About 100 metres away, the tow truck bearing a Superior Towing logo on the side was found parked on the shoulder, the Volkswagen hooked to the back.

A dispatch operator at Superior Towing and Storage in west Toronto refused Sunday to confirm or deny whether the company was missing a truck or a driver.

"I know nothing of the sort right now," he said.

Greg Crone, a spokesman for Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant, said the ministry was not being apprised of the day-to-day progress of the investigation.

"We don't get briefed on police investigations, and we don't comment on police investigations," Crone said.

"When it becomes a court case, that's when the attorney general will get involved."

Police escorted members of the media beyond the barricades for a closer look at the area where the cars were found, but there was little left to see.

The scene will remain off-limits for at least another several days as investigators continue their search for clues - "clothing, identification, any evidence that may help us ascertain who they are," said police Const. Doug Graham.

"We wouldn't want the farm owner to encounter (evidence), or anyone from the public," Graham said. "We want to gather any other evidence and want to make sure there are not other victims we haven't found yet."

It's not the first time that the hallmarks of violent crime have been discovered in the isolated area.

In separate incidents in 1994 and 1998, the bodies of a man and a woman were found dumped in county fields. Both had been beaten to death and neither of the murders were ever solved.

In October 1999, there was a shootout on Highway 401, apparently the result of a rift inside one of the gangs.

But residents whose homes border the crime scene said they were unaware of any biker activity, although most found it too unbelievable that such a large-scale killing could have been at the hands of anyone they knew.

Mayor James McIntyre said police have assured the village's 800 residents that they're not in any danger.

Mom Dies After Boy's 911 Call Considered Prank

2006-04-09T03:38:00.000-04:00

Detroit Police Investigate

UPDATED: 3:18 pm EDT April 7, 2006

DETROIT -- A 6-year-old boy's 911 call for help was thought to be a prank, but the call was real and the boy's mother died, according to WDIV-TV in Detroit.

Robert Turner called 911 to get help for his mother, Sherel Turner, 46, whom he found lying unconscious on the kitchen floor of their Detroit apartment in February, the station reported.

"Then I had felt her tummy. She wasn't breathing. Then I had called 911," said Robert. "I told them to send an emergency truck right now."

911 Operator: "911. What's the problem?"

Robert: "My mom has passed out."

The 911 operator, however, did not take him seriously and told him to stop playing on the phone, the station reported.

911 Operator: "Where's the grownups at?"

Robert: (Inaudible)

911 Operator: "Let me speak to her before I send the police over there."

"I tried to tell them she wouldn't talk," said Robert.

Robert: (Inaudible)

911 Operator: "I don't care. You shouldn't be playing on the phone. Now put her on the phone before I send the police out there to knock on the door and you gonna be in trouble."

Robert: "Ugh!" (Hangs up.)

Kimberly Harris, the union president of AFSCME Local 1023, said more than a quarter of phone calls received by 911 operators are prank calls. She also said that everybody does not express their pain or emergencies the same way.

"That operator could have had five prank calls. Kids calling in prior to that call. And please, don't think that I am trying to make an excuse. That was a tragedy," said Harris.

Officials said the 911 operator will be disciplined, but because of her years of service she will not be fired.

"I know that operator. I know that she is a very good operator," said Harris. "She is very thorough."

Robert said every time someone talks about his mother, he starts crying.

Police continue to investigate.