NYTr Digest, Vol 35, Issue 8
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NYTr Digest, Vol 35, Issue 8
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Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Today's Topics:
1. Cuban Media: The Thawed Cuban Films (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
2. Cuban Radar Newsbriefs - Apr 5, 2007 (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
3. Cuba, Spain in Dialogue on Human Rights
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
4. Cuba: When Justice Doesn't Address Impunity
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
5. It's Baseball vs. Soaps in Cuba (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
6. Brit Closed Circuit TV Snoops and Scolds
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
7. English rates first in Latino families
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
8. USA's Segregated Sunni-Shiite Strategic Hamlets
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
9. Pity the Sick of Iraq (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
10. Herbert: Our Crumbling Foundation (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
11. Biggest Chemical Attack by Iraqi Resistance
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
12. Pentagon report: "no link" btwn Saddam and Al-Qaeda
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
13. Cheney Insists AGAIN on al Qaeda-Saddam Link!
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
14. No sign of compromise on Iraq by Bush, Democrats
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
15. Bush Lies: Hussein's Prewar Ties to Al-Qaeda Discounted
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
16. A Surge of Trouble for Army: Bush Orders 12,000 More Troops
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
17. 8 US, 4 Brit Troops Die in Scattered Iraq Attacks
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
18. Iraq: Deadly days for British, US forces
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
19. Republican Lawmaker Meets Syria's Assad
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
20. Afghanistan: Karzai admits meetings with Taliban
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
21. Bush's Bluster on Iran Was Cover for Direct Talks
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
22. Pakistan faces suicide bomb call (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
23. Taliban seize southern Afghanistan district
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
24. Wolfowitz Accused of Nepotism at World Bank
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
25. Booming Economy: The New Suburban Poverty
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
26. UN panel issues stark climate change warning
(ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
27. Pet food adulterated deliberately? (ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com)
- ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 15:45:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Cuban Media: The Thawed Cuban Films
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704061945....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Progreso Weekly - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Ramy&otherweek=1175749200
Dateline Havana
The Thawed Cuban Films:
A comment on a letter to Alejandro Armengol's blog
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
In Cuban Radar of March 29, Progreso Semanal published -- under the
headline "Positive Effects of the Colloquium on the Gray Quinquennium" --
the news that two Cuban films "that broach subjects dealing with the social
reality on the island" had been shown on Cuban national TV, over
Educational Channel One.
The movies -- "Pages from Mauricio's Diary" (March 17) and "Suite Havana"
(March 24) -- were shown at 8:30 p.m. during the program "The Critical
Spectator." The news item ended by saying that "it seems that the freezer
is open and that other forbidden films will be aired."
Obviously, the news item linked the telecasting of both films to the
colloquiums and forums about the Gray Quinquennium that have been held in
Cuba since Jan. 30. It was a positive evaluation of those forums.
In Alejandro Armengol's blog -- which I read daily because of his quality
as a journalist and his sharp analyses, even if I don't agree with some of
them -- published March 29 under the headline of "Cuban Film and TV," I
found a brief commentary about a letter from a Mr. Julio Laó that questions
the effectiveness of those telecasts.
Laó's dismissal (echoed by Armengol) is that "both films were shown on the
Educational Channel during a program ['The Critical Spectator'] that airs
Saturdays at 8:30 p.m., exactly at the time the whole of Cuba is watching
the telenovela being shown by the main channel [Cubavisión] ..."
One issue at a time. First, let me stress that the movies were shown for
the first time on TV and during prime time. Second, it seems to me an
exaggeration to say that, at that time, "the whole of Cuba [was] watching
the telenovela" shown by Cubavisión.
Even when voicing a criticism, Mr. Laó should refrain from the habit of
false unanimity and total complacency that is so abused by the media on the
island. To express it graphically, it would be like saying that "the whole
of Cuba watched the Round Table yesterday."
There's not only exaggeration but also concealment. The soap opera in
question -- "Passion and Prejudice" -- was a rebroadcast (not even a
remake) of a film first shown in 1993. The segment of the population that
didn't watch it at that time is a generation that today is barely 14 years
old. Is this the usual viewership of the telenovelas, especially of shows
made in Cuba?
As Mr. Laó must know, this segment of the population would rather watch the
reality shown by the other two films, until now banned from TV. Forbidden
fruit has a tremendous seductiveness, particularly to young people. It
seems Mr. Laó leaped from infancy to adulthood.
The reader ends by saying (according to Mr. Armengol) that "It is very
clear that it is as if the measure didn't exist [...] because it's the
equivalent of saying that almost no one has seen the films on TV.
Therefore, indifference reigns among TV viewers ..."
In any country in the world, the number of phone calls to the stations or
written reaction to journalists' commentaries is always far below the
actual number of TV viewers or readers of a specific space or column. But
it is a very important factor. Does Mr. Laó have any idea of how many
viewers did see the films? Or how many phone calls from extremists were
received by the ICRT [Cuban Institute of Radio and Television] because it
showed the films?
According to a source close to the ICRT, the number of calls congratulating
the institute for showing "Havana Suite" exceeded 278. I don't have a
figure for the calls that criticized the presentation, but such calls were
made at the time and will be made again, because conservatism defends its
spaces.
But I must point out that the effect of the films was such that
Cubavisión's "Third Show Saturday" -- a program that every Saturday
rebroadcasts whatever movie is most requested by viewers -- on March 31
again aired "Havana Suite."
I understand that critic and essayist Frank Padrón expressed his
displeasure because his weekly program "From Our America" was unable to
show the two Cuban films, which had spent a long time on the shelf. They
are films appropriate for his program profile: Latin American cinema.
I have also been told that he was angered because the selection of another
program and another host for the presentation of those films would brand
him as "politically incorrect."
In my opinion, nothing is farther from the truth. Padrón has practiced his
profession for 30 years in the official media and nobody who is
"suspicious" would spend all that time expressing his opinion. He's far
from being an amateur.
In the Cuban media, as anywhere else, there is a drive and a quest for
backing to be the first to air or print news that have impact. It's called
a "scoop." Could that have happened? Frank Padrón could supply the answer;
and he could also talk about the support that (I am told) he got from his
advisers and work team.
In essence, starting from the undeniable presentation on TV of two films
never before shown on TV, Mr. Laó attempts to diminish their impact and to
downplay the fact that the showings were the consequence of the so-called
war of e-mails that preceded the forums and debates held about the
Quinquennium.
In effect, Mr. Laó performs a task that aids a certain bureaucratic group
that is eager to minimize the surprising but vigorous reaction of Cuba's
cultural and intellectual circles.
Now I'd like to share with you some information conveyed to me by people in
Cuba's television industry, whose names I shall omit.
According to my sources, the ICRT is now engaged in a process of analysis
with a view to a restructuring, based on the repeated realization that its
target audience is not homogeneous but has dissimilar interests, tastes and
preferences. It would be a more personalized television, in line with the
nation's pluralistic and diverse reality; an outlook different from the old
notion of "the whole of Cuba" expressed by Mr. Laó. This new vision would
affect the four national channels.
The current structure, which involves departments according to the profile
of the programs (drama, children's shows, musicals, newscasts, etc.) and is
centralized in the Institute's headquarters, would be replaced by work
groups in each channel that will take over a specific task so they can give
each channel its own profile and identity.
Thus, TeleRebelde would continue to specialize on sports and even expand
its sports coverage. Cubavisión, the leading channel, would cover a broader
spectrum, devoting its daytime hours to programs aimed at elderly viewers,
retirees and night workers. Educational programs and classes would be shown
on the two Educational channels.
If this setup is instituted, programs of all types will be shown at all
times, except during the early dawn.
An acceptance of the diversity of interests and the existence of population
segments with specific preferences would also be reflected in Educational
channels One and Two. They would give priority to an audience of teenagers
and children and would broadcast series and dramatized shows such as those
available from The History Channel, The Discovery Channel, and other
international networks.
As to Havana Channel (which, in my opinion has the best image and served
as trial balloon for the study), it will remain the same, because it has
proved to be successful. It does a professional job with a team of young
and dynamic creators who establish an active dialogue with the viewers.
This 4-year-old channel has distinguished itself for its original use of
graphics, its unusual use of cameras, and an imaginative presentation of
spots and commercials. My sources also tell me that the ICRT is considering
surveying the preferences and interests of televiewers.
It is clear that the restructuring of the governing institution in Cuban
radio and TV -- a change long demanded by cultural circles and the public
- -- has been spurred by the forums and colloquiums about the Gray
Quinquennium, as well as the unrestricted arrival to Cuba of foreign
television programs. For that reason, according to sources, the ICRT is
ready to respond with major improvements in nationwide programming.
If that happens (and I am not as categorical as Mr. Laó), let us welcome
confrontation. We Cubans would benefit from television with better quality,
primarily aimed at satisfying the diversity of tastes and interests.
[Manuel Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa
and editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso
Weekly.]
- ------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 15:50:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Cuban Radar Newsbriefs - Apr 5, 2007
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704061950....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Progreso Weekly - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Cuban_Radar&otherweek=1175749200
Cuban Radar Newsbriefs - Apr 5, 2007
A service of Radio Progreso Alternativa's Havana Bureau
* New article by Fidel Castro
* US, Cuban Church Officials Favor End of Travel Blockade
* Cuba-Vietnam Joint Production Projects
* Cuba-Vietnam Joint Production Projects
* Cuba Signs Construction Agreements Worth $70 million
* The GNP Not on Cuban Tables
* New article by Fidel Castro
In what seems to be another installment of a series of commentaries, Cuban
leader Fidel Castro published on Wednesday, April 4, another article in the
Cuban daily Granma under titled "The Internazionalition of Genocide," where
he openly criticizes the production of ethanol at the expense of necessary
food crops.
Castro, who over the past years has become an ardent champion of the
environment and always has warned about hunger -- caused among other
reasons by the excessive thirst for profits on the part of the wealthy
countries -- writes on the results and consequences of the recent Camp
David meeting between the U.S. and Brazilian presidents.
Both countries seem headed for an alliance in the production of ethanol, a
practice that Fidel criticizes and classifies as "a colossal waste of
cereals for producing fuel." According to the Cuban president, ethanol
"would only serve to save the rich countries less than 15 percent of the
yearly consumption of their voracious automobiles."
But that enormous increase of ethanol production, declared Loek Boonekamp,
Head of the Trade and Markets Division of the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD), would cause higher and more unstable
prices of the grains that at present are used as food.
"Where would the Third World's poor countries find the minimum of resources
in order to survive?" concludes in his article Fidel Castro.
* US, Cuban Church Officials Favor End of Travel Blockade
Three important church dignitaries in Cuba and the U.S. declared their
support for the lifting of travel restrictions to Cuba.
The Spanish newspaper El País published an interview on April 1 with
Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, Archbishop of Havana. In the interview,
Ortega described the 10 U.S. lawmakers that visited Cuba last December,
headed by Rep. Bill Delahunt and Rep. Jeff Flake, as "very pragmatic
politicians with a realistic vision."
Both Congressmen have sponsored two different bills for a change of policy
towards the island, particularly in relation to travel of Cubans to their
country of origin.
According to Cardinal Ortega, "that road of easing of tensions with the
U.S. could bring a greater good for the Cuban people, both for those who
live outside Cuba and want to visit their relatives or send them
assistance, and those who live here and expect to receive it."
A few weeks ago, Bishop Thomas G. Wenski, of Orlando, Florida, Chairman of
the Committee on International Policy of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops, declared his support of legislation like the ones sponsored by
Delahunt, Flake and also Rep. Charles Rangel.
In Havana, designated bishop of the Episcopalian Church of Cuba Rev. Nerva
Cot Aguilera, in an interview with Radio Progreso Alternativa, also gave
her favorable opinion on the issue of travel to the island by Cubans who
reside in the US.
* Cuba-Vietnam Joint Production Projects
Prensa Latina reports that Minister of Computing and Communications Ramiro
Valdés Menéndez declare on finishing his visit to Vietnam that there is a
process in development for joint production of electronic equipment and
electrical home appliances in Cuba by both countries.
Products would be both for satisfying Cuban demand as well as for exporting
to the Caribbean and Latin American markets.
Valdés, one of the three historical Commanders of the Revolution, left for
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a country with which Cuba wants to increase its
already very good relations.
* Cuba Signs Construction Agreements Worth $70 million
During the recently held Construction Fair (FECONS 2007) in Havana, Cuban
authorities signed agreements worth approximately $70 million.
The Spanish company Global United and Coresma signed for the construction
of approximately 3,000 housing units based on the Spanish technology
BARCONS.
According to the business magazine Opciones, the new technology consists of
on site casting of different building parts, which reduces time of
execution, work force, materials and costs.
* The GNP Not on Cuban Tables
The Internet newspaper Insurgente in its April 4 edition published an
article by Ariel Terrero, who is also head of national information at the
Cuban magazine Bohemia and an analyst on economic issues for Cuban TV.
In the article, Terrero writes that the accelerated growth of the Gross
National Product (GNP) "has not caused the enthusiasm it deserves in the
common citizen," because the GNP is not on the tables of Cubans.
"Production of vegetables and edible roots decreased by 20 percent in 2005
and by 10 percent in 2006," Terrero says, and adds that Cuba, in 2006,
imported $948 million worth of food.
The price increase of basic food products is dramatic. Based on data from
the National Office of Statistics, Terrero wrote that "from 2002 to 2005
the volume of imported rice grew by 36 percent, but the cost in dollars
increased by 105 percent; the volume of wheat grew by 21 percent, while
payments climbed 60 percent. And of the blessed soy, Cuba imported 75
percent more, but the expense was 145 percent more."
The solution, according to Terrero, is to "increase production and
productivity in agriculture, for depending on fickle international markets
is ruinous."
- ------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 15:55:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Cuba, Spain in Dialogue on Human Rights
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704061955....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Progrso Weekly - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=acuerdo&otherweek=1175749200
Agreement on political discussion and dialogue over human rights
Editor's Note:
A Spanish news agency EFE release (April 4, 2007) demonstrates a diversity
of critical reactions from some exile sectors as a result of the visit by
the Spanish Foreign Relations Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, to Cuba. As
a result of conversations held the governments of Cuba and Spain signed
three agreements (see Ramy's progreso blog entries for April 2 and 3). One
of the agreements discussed is reproduced below.
We would like our readers to note several key points of this agreement,
especially one in letter b of number 2: Objectives; we would also point out
b in number 3: Modalities, which we have highlighted in bold face.
In our opinion it is obvious that both reflect that issues so widely
discussed by certain sectors of the exile community have been touched upon
and discussed and that they will both have continuation in the process.
***
AGREEMENT FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS, INCLUDING A
DIALOGUE IN MATTERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS BETWEEN THE SPANISH KINGDOM AND THE
REPUBLIC OF CUBA
The Spanish Kingdom and the Republic of Cuba,
Decide to establish a bilateral mechanism for political discussions,
including a dialogue in matters of human rights, with plans for permanency
over the following foundations:
1. Principles:
a) Open respect for the national sovereignty of both parties, to
the equal sovereignty of both States, to their jurisdictional framework and
constitutional order, and the non interference in their internal dealings.
b) A commitment of dialogue and negotiations as the way to solve
differences between the States and with the use of multilaterism.
2. Objectives:
a) Political discussions will result in a climate of mutual trust
by way of the interchange of points of views and the identification of
points of collaboration over issues dealing with the international agenda.
b) The dialogue on matters of human rights will have as its
objective to push forward the promotion and protections of all human rights
for all, as well as contribute to an efficient treatment, constructive and
non discriminatory of the issue in international forums in such a way as to
protect the legitimate interests of the parts. Both parts will contribute
in the realization of the goals.
3. Modalities:
a) The discussions as well as dialogue will evolve in strict equal
terms between the parts and with plans for an ongoing permanency and
effectiveness.
b) No issue or matter will be excluded a priori from this process
of discussions and dialogue.
c) A formal session of discussions and another of human rights
dialogue will be held annually.
d) The date and level will be agreed upon by appropriate diplomatic
sources. The meetings will be held as a minimum at the level of General
Director or the equivalent.
e) There can be held, as previously agreed upon by the parts,
seminars or meeting over particular aspects, at any level, from
functionaries to academics or others.
f) The concrete agenda of the political discussions and the
dialogue on human rights will be agreed upon by both parts before every
meeting or encounter.
g) In each session of political discussion and human rights
dialogue, attainment (or not) of agreements reached in previous sessions
will be analyzed.
h) A public presentation of the discussions and agreements will be
held before both parts accept and in agreement to the modalities that both
decide and agree upon.
For the Kingdom of Spain For the Republic of Cuba
Miguel Angel Moratinos Felipe Pérez Roque
Minister of Foreign Relations Minister of Foreign Relations
and Cooperation
- ------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:00:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Cuba: When Justice Doesn't Address Impunity
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062000....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Cuba: When Justice Doesn't Address Impunit
Juventud Rebelde - Apr 2, 2007
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/columnists/2007-04-02/gathering-the-moldiness-of-impunity/
Gathering the Moldiness of Impunity
By Jose Alejandro Rodriguez
Justice is a blindfolded woman holding a well-calibrated balance. She is
usually presented this way as a representation of impartiality and balanced
attachment to the spirit of the law. But some uncomfortable letters I have
received lately could change that image to one of a woman with one hand
tied behind her back, and on the verge of a stroke - seeing how her
judgements can be diverted along the path of their application.
This is not alarmism or anything like that. But it is quite worrisome that
the verdicts issued in our courts, including those of the Supreme Court of
the Republic of Cuba, remain unknown and are never enforced. I insist on
this because I have received the testimonies of several people who, despite
being protected by the resolutions of quite venerable judges, cannot find
the institutional will to have them implemented; something like an old,
archived letter gathering the mouldiness of impunity.
The most common examples are in the field of housing, that controversial
and problematic issue in Cuba. When it comes to a roof and shelter, people
who are sometimes linked by blood ties, and always spurred by necessity,
often decide to find a solution using force to claim their rights to the
ownership of a building. Walls are raised overnight, and neighbor's
properties are seized. There are a whole range of acts of indiscipline and
illegalities that usually end in the courts, though they sometimes never
find a solution in the end. The problem is that while justice can be
dictated, it also needs to be implemented.
I have received letters about cases that go beyond our imagination. Like
that of a person with a disability who was given a room due to his physical
condition. After years of paperwork and waiting, when he thought his
problem was settled, some desperate irate people took over the building and
the victim was left in the street. Then he began the long and winding road
to make the law prevail.
After expending significant resources, the victim finally received the
green light from the Supreme Court. Yet then there came the thorny affair
of implementing the verdict. The victim spent years going from one place to
another seeing institutions and authorities involved. Each, in turn, passed
along the man's case as if it were a hot potato. Meanwhile, the land
grabbers continue to live in his property with impunity.
But it is not only housing. There have been cases of institutions which
have expelled a worker arbitrarily. And the worker, in exercising their
constitutional rights, begins to make complaints through the Organization
of Labor Rights. Their case can even reach the Supreme Court and the
verdict can be in favour of the worker. But then, as if it were ruled by
extraterrestrial laws, the board of the institution defies the whole
structure of justice. They do not give the job back to that worker.
Even though these cases are not the majority, these examples warn us of the
perils brought about by impunity. When the transgressors get their way by
force, law loses its strength in the consciousness of the citizenship, and
the inner order and social discipline weaken. And even worse: the trust of
honest and respectful citizens in the State representing them wanes,
affecting the revolutionary representation built in our sense of belonging,
of people who one day took the power to put the country together and
distribute social justice.
The woman with the balance will always need to be blindfolded, but
executive institutions cannot be impartial in the face of disorder and
apathy. They need to have their eyes wide open to make justice prevail. It
is the right of everyone on which the balance of the nation rests.
© Copyright Juventud Rebelde
- ------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:02:38 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] It's Baseball vs. Soaps in Cuba
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062002....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Circles Robinson Online - Apr 4, 2007
http://circlesonline.blogspot.com/2007/04/its-baseball-vs-soaps-in-cuba.html
It's Baseball vs. Soaps in Cuba
By Circles Robinson
It's that time again. Most Cubans live in one TV households and when the
baseball playoffs come each year the battle is set: Will it be the nightly
chapter of the soap operas or the baseball game?
More Cuban women than men watch the soap operas, but plenty of men join in
too, especially in rural communities. With baseball, it's the other way
around.
The soaps, or novelas, are a passion throughout Latin America and generally
come to a happy ending after several months or nearly a year of episodes.
The ones shown in Cuba usually have a historical and/or social content.
The programs currently being aired nationally on alternating nights are
"Cabocla" from Brazil and the Cuban series "Passion and Prejudice."
The first deals with life in rural Brazil in the 1930s and the battle
between two wealthy families of hacienda owners. It replays the classic
Romeo and Juliet theme with the son and daughter of the feuding families
falling in love.
The Cuban soap recreates society at the beginning of the 20th century, both
in the capital Havana and the countryside. It focuses on a period when the
newly independent island was called a "republic", although it was actually
under the boot of the United States. The series also centers on a love
story.
DOWN TO THE FINAL FOUR
Meanwhile, the 2006-2007 Cuban Baseball Season is down to the final four
teams about to begin the best-of-seven semifinal playoff match-ups.
In the Western Division, Industriales opens at home on Friday in the
capital's Latinoamericano Stadium against Havana, the team that upset Pinar
del Rio in the quarter finals. In the East, Santiago de Cuba plays host
Saturday to Villa Clara, which eliminated upstart Las Tunas on Tuesday for
the final semifinal slot.
Despite their name, Havana hails from the province that surrounds the
capital, with its home in the municipality of San Jose de las Lajas. Villa
Clara is in the center of the country and Santiago, on the other end of the
island, more than 500 miles east of Havana.
When they can, and transportation permitting, many fans escape the TV
battle altogether and head out to the stadium. The cost of a ticket to a
Cuban baseball game at the packed stadiums is 4 to 12 cents US, the same
price as during the regular season.
With seats on a first come first served basis, many fans show up at the
stadiums right after work on weekdays, long before the action starts at
8:00 p.m. On the weekends, it's not unusual to have the best seats taken by
mid-afternoon.
Whether live, on TV or on the radio, non-commercial Cuban baseball is quite
a different experience for the few US baseball lovers that brave
Washington's travel ban on Cuba to see the games.
There is no advertising, no blackouts on home games, no paid TV, and no
stadium organ players. However, there are plenty of Conga drums, cow bells
and horns that play throughout the night, building to a crescendo with fans
of all ages not only clapping but moving their hips as the tension mounts.
Alcoholic beverages are not sold at the stadiums but there are roasted
peanuts and popcorn, sandwiches and other snacks and soft drinks.
Most Cuban cities also have their "baseball peña", groups of fans who know
the players and stats like the palm of their hands. In high-pitched public
discussions, they debate and predict outcomes. In the capital, Central Park
has an area that serves as a day-in-day-out peña where baseball theories
are put forth, sustained or shot down without mercy. During the playoffs
the peñas also take up shop at the stadiums.
So who will win out during the postseason, the soaps or the playoffs? In
many homes, a compromise is worked out. During the regular season, the
soaps get their hour and the end of the baseball game gets switched on
afterwards. During the playoffs, the national sport takes precedence in
most.
HOW THEY GOT THERE
The Western Division quarterfinals ended Monday, April 2. Havana blew an
early 7-2 lead but still won the tie-breaker of its best-of five-series 8-7
over favored Pinar del Rio, in a dramatic ten inning game.
Pinar del Rio's veteran right-hander Pedro Luis Lazo, star pitcher of the
Cuban national team, had a rare off night and gave up seven runs, six
earned, before getting the hook with nobody out in the second.
Three of the hard fought games between Havana and Pinar went extra innings.
Industriales, the defending league champions, split at home 6-4 and 4-6
against Sancti Spiritus and then won twice on the road 11-0 in game three
and 4-3 in the fourth match up to win the series.
Timely hitting and a superb five-inning relief performance from
right-hander Yadel Marti led Industriales to their final victory. The team
managed only five hits but which included a two-run homer from Alexander
Mayeta in the first inning. Alden Mesa and Raiko Oliveres drove in the
other runs.
Santiago de Cuba suffered a brief slip up in game two, but last year's
runner-ups out classed Camaguey winning its quarterfinal series 5-2, 1-6,
9-1 and 6-4. In the fourth and final game Camaguey jumped off to a 3-0 lead
and was cruising behind league leading pitcher Elier Sanchez who had struck
out 10 in five innings.
However, Sanchez gave up two hits in the sixth before leaving the game.
Reliever Vladimir Perez allowed both runners to score putting the game at
3-3. Later, with the game tied at four, Santiago got two runs in the top of
the tenth to win on a double by Rolando Meriño off reliever Luis Campillo.
After winning its opening game 4-2 against Las Tunas, Villa Clara was
pulverized by a 12-run inning in game two and lost 16-0. Still seeing stars
by game three, they went down 5-1. In the fourth match-up, reliever Yolexis
Ulacia held the Las Tunas bats in check during the final three innings to
give Villa Clara a 5-2 win to tie the series.
The final game was a seesaw battle that saw the score tied at one, two and
three runs. Villa Clara was led by all-star catcher Ariel Pestano, whose
solo homer in the sixth tied the game and his sacrifice fly in the eighth
brought in the winning run. Once again, Ulacia made the big pitches in
relief going 4.2 innings and striking out the side in the pressure packed
ninth inning.
PLAYOFF MAGIC POINTS TO INDUSTRIALES AND SANTIAGO
Last year Industriales took the finals four games to two over Santiago de
Cuba after defeating Sancti Spiritus 4-3 in the semifinals. Santiago made
it to the finals last year by sweeping its four series with Granma.
This season's team statistics make Industriales and Santiago de Cuba the
favorites to once again reach the finals.
Industriales hit .285 (fifth best) and finished second in pitching with a
3.06 ERA. Santiago led the league in batting with a whopping .303 average
and was seventh in pitching with a 3.59 team ERA. Havana was fifth in
pitching with a team 3.49 ERA and thirteenth in hitting with a .261
average. Villa Clara was tied for last in the league in batting with a .255
team average and fourth in pitching with a 3.20 ERA.
Of the four teams playing in the semifinals Industriales committed 88
errors during the season, Villa Clara 89, Santiago de Cuba 95 and Havana
114. Santiago had the most homeruns with 64 to Villa Clara with 44;
Industriales had 38 and Havana 34.
Over the last 15 years five teams have taken the Cuban Baseball League
title. Industriales in 1992, 96, 2003, 2004 and 2006; Santiago de Cuba in
1999, 2000, 2001 and 2005; Villa Clara 1993, 1994 and 1995; Pinar del Rio
1997, 1998; and Holguin in 2002.
To keep up on the action, Granma daily newspaper's English link will have
the day-by-day highlights and results:
http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/index.html
- ------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:05:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Brit Closed Circuit TV Snoops and Scolds
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062005....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
BC News - Apr 4, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/england/6524495.stm
'Talking' CCTV Scolds Offenders
"Talking" CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing
anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.
They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be
told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.
About £500,000 will be spent adding speaker facilities to existing cameras.
Shadow home affairs minister James Brokenshire said the government should
be "very careful" over the cameras.
Home Secretary John Reid told BBC News there would be some people, "in the
minority who will be more concerned about what they claim are civil
liberties intrusions".
"But the vast majority of people find that their life is more upset by
people who make their life a misery in the inner cities because they can't
go out and feel safe and secure in a healthy, clean environment because of
a minority of people," he added.
"What really upsets people is their night out being destroyed or their
environment being destroyed by a fairly small minority of people"
John Reid
The talking cameras did not constitute "secret surveillance", he said.
"It's very public, it's interactive."
Competitions would also be held at schools in many of the areas for
children to become the voice of the cameras, Mr Reid said.
Downing Street's "respect tsar", Louise Casey, said the cameras "nipped
problems in the bud" and reduced bureaucracy.
"It gets across the message, 'please don't litter our streets because
someone else will have to pay to pick up that litter again'," she told BBC
News.
"Half a billion pounds a year is spent picking up litter."
'Scarecrow policing'
Mr Brokenshire told the BBC he had a number of concerns about the use of
the talking cameras.
"Whether this is moving down a track of almost 'scarecrow' policing rather
than real policing - actually insuring that we have more bobbies on the
beat - I think that's what we really want to see, albeit that an initiative
like this may be an effective tool in certain circumstances.
"We need to be very careful about applying this more generally."
The talking cameras will be installed in Southwark, Barking and Dagenham,
in London, Reading, Harlow, Norwich, Ipswich, Plymouth, Gloucester, Derby,
Northampton, Mansfield, Nottingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Wirral, Blackpool,
Salford, South Tyneside and Darlington.
In Middlesbrough, staff in a control centre monitor pictures from 12
talking cameras and can communicate directly with people on the street.
Local councillor Barry Coppinger says the scheme has prevented fights and
criminal damage and cut litter levels.
"Generally, I think it has raised awareness that the town centre is a safe
place to visit and also that we are keeping an eye open to make sure it is
safe," he said.
But opponent and campaigner Steve Hills said: "Apart from being absurd, I
think it's rather sad that we should have faceless cameras barking at us on
orders from who? Who sets these cameras up?"
There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain.
A recent study by the government's privacy watchdog, the Information
Commissioner, warned that Britain was becoming a "surveillance society".
- ------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:07:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] English rates first in Latino families
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062007....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
USA Today via Yahoo - A[r 6, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070406/cm_usatoday/englishratesfirstinlatinofamilies
Opinion
English rates first in Latino families
by Raul Reyes
When I was growing up, there was a subject around home that made everyone
uncomfortable. My Aunt Lola used to call it the shame of our family. It was
a dark secret that my relatives didn't like to talk about, although it
affected many Mexican-American families just like ours. The source of this
embarrassment was the fact that my brothers and I didn't speak Spanish.
Worse, we didn't care about speaking Spanish.
My older brother's interest in Spanish began and ended with curse words. I
only learned enough to get good grades in my high school courses, and my
younger brother didn't learn it at all. To this day, I'm the only one who
is proficient, not fluent, en espanol.
As it turns out, most families who are descended from Latino immigrants
share our experience. A study published last year in the journal Population
and Development Review found that, within a few generations of families
moving to the USA, Spanish dies out and English becomes the dominant
language. Among third-generation Chicanos, 96% prefer to speak English in
their homes. Even in border areas, the study found, "Spanish appears to be
well on the way to a natural death by the third generation of U.S.
residence."
Given this reality, it's xenophobic to view the Spanish language as a
threat to American society. Even so, just last weekend Newt Gingrich
denounced bilingual education by saying, "People (should) learn the common
language of the country ... the language of prosperity, not the language of
living in a ghetto."
His comments are as offensive as they are misguided. According to a 2006
survey by the Pew Center, 57% of Hispanics believe that immigrants have to
speak English to be part of American society, while 41% did not. Pew also
found that an overwhelming 92% of Latinos thought it was "very important"
for the children of immigrants to be taught English.
When my grandpa arrived from Mexico in 1914, he immediately set about
learning the English language so he could find work. While my mother grew
up in a bilingual barrio household, she and her sisters preferred English.
One generation later, my mom was suggesting that I watch the
Spanish-language news on TV, to broaden my vocabulary. Back then, I could
not have cared less. It was only as an adult that I came to appreciate the
beauty of the Spanish language.
Gingrich should know better than to demean the native tongue of Cervantes,
Lorca and Marquez. It isn't constructive to promote English by insulting
Spanish, for one language does not have to come at the expense of the
other. As millions of Latinos already know, speaking Spanish has never
taken away from our proud American experience. It has only enriched it.
[Raul Reyes is an attorney in New York and a member of USA TODAY's board of
contributors.]
Copyright © 2007 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
- ------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:10:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] USA's Segregated Sunni-Shiite Strategic Hamlets
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062010....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
sent by Andy Pollack
Wall Street Journal - Apr 5, 2007
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117570845554759869.html
GREAT DIVIDE
In Iraq, an Officer's Answer to Violence: Build a Wall
Col. Peterson Creates A Gated Community; Body Count Declines
By GREG JAFFE
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The lower-middle-class neighborhoods that Lt. Col.
Jeff Peterson's troops patrol have been the epicenter of Iraq's civil
war for most of the past year. "Every issue facing Baghdad writ large
is in our area," he says.
In recent weeks, Col. Peterson has tried a controversial approach to
calming his sector. As Sunnis and Shiites have separated into their own
neighborhoods, he has resisted the urge to encourage reconciliation or
even dialogue. Instead, he has erected massive concrete barriers
between the sects.
His vision is for a series of small, homogenous, gated communities,
each consisting of a two-block square. Each would be built around a
market, a mosque and a generator. "The goal is to provide the
neighborhoods with a chance to protect themselves, without having to
rely on coalition forces, the Iraqi government or the militias," he says.
How he got to that point -- after months of bloodshed and failed
experiments -- illustrates a lot about both the possibilities and
limitations of the U.S. vision for Iraq.
Currently, the U.S. strategy for stabilizing Iraq is built around
getting Iraqis to reconcile and support the democratically elected,
Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. It's a classic approach to
fighting an insurgency, in which an outside power works to strengthen a
friendly, albeit weak, government. The hope is that with help, the
government will eventually win the backing of the people by providing
security and meeting essential needs. Once insurgents are cut off from
support among the population, they will be relatively easy to crush.
That's the premise of President Bush's surge strategy, built around
bolstering support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government.
The problem, say some commanders, is that they aren't fighting an
insurgency in Iraq anymore. Today, they are trying to stop a civil war
between feuding Sunnis and Shiites. "At times I have been tempted to
call it a counter-civil war or counter-sectarian fight," Col. Peterson
says.
This isn't just an academic point. In a civil war, building up the
government and its security forces may be counterproductive, serving
only to ratchet up the killing. Defusing a civil war depends on
stopping everyone from fighting.
"If you are given the mission to stop hatred, how do you do that?" asks
Brig. Gen. John Campbell, an assistant commander overseeing all U.S.
forces in Baghdad.
The difficult mission has led military officials to try some unusual
tactics. In an effort to reduce retaliatory attacks on locals, some
U.S. commanders say they will hold off raiding a Sunni insurgent cell
until they have intelligence on a Shiite cell of equal size in an
adjoining neighborhood. U.S. commanders have even coined a new term for
this tactic: "balanced targeting."
Success Story
Senior military officials in Iraq give mid-level commanders, like Col.
Peterson, wide latitude in their sectors. They point to Col. Peterson
as one of their success stories. "Gating off a Sunni neighborhood is
not our idea of a free society," Gen. Campbell says. But in some
neighborhoods it may be the only way to stop the killing, he concedes.
Col. Peterson, the 42-year-old son of an Army chaplain, has a shy,
almost bemused grin, and an informal manner with his troops. He was
working on finishing his doctoral thesis and getting ready to take over
the economics department at West Point when he was chosen to command a
battalion headed to Iraq.
When Col. Peterson's 500-soldier squadron arrived in Iraq last summer,
he was told his top priority was to assist Iraqi troops in restoring order.
His squadron was based in southern Baghdad, where the U.S. military had
little presence. In the weeks before his arrival, a radical Sunni group
known as the Omar Brigade and the Shiite Mahdi militia had begun to
battle for territory, targeting locals. In the typical sectarian
murder, masked assassins would speed into a neighborhood, grab a
resident, shoot him in the head, and then dump the body in a
residential street. "The murders were designed to send a message about
which side was dominating and which side was safe in a particular
area," Col. Peterson says.
Col. Peterson's unit was partnered with an all-Shiite battalion of
about 400 national police commandos. Their area, consisting of about
415,000 residents, is dominated by a large Sunni neighborhood and a
densely packed Shiite enclave called Abu Dasheer.
It quickly became clear, he says, that one of his biggest problems was
his partner, the national police. Sunni residents "feared the national
police," Col. Peterson says. In some cases, he even believed that rogue
police troops were helping the radical Shiite Mahdi militia target his
unit and local Sunnis.
The animosity between Sunnis and Shiites dates to a seventh-century
leadership struggle following the death of the Prophet Muhammad. More
recently, the Sunnis, who are a minority in Iraq, dominated the top
positions in Saddam Hussein's brutal dictatorship. Today, many Shiites
are determined to exact revenge for decades of Sunni oppression.
In early October, the national police began to get into gun battles at
the local Sunni mosques. They called for help from the U.S. troops, who
initially joined the fight. But the police commanders could never
clearly explain how or why the fights started, says Col. Peterson. "The
battles were always with a Sunni mosque; never a Shiite mosque," he
says. They always began when U.S. forces weren't around.
Drastic Action
"What have I gotten myself into?" he recalls thinking. "I felt as
though I had been co-opted into their sectarian agenda."
After the third such battle, Col. Peterson decided to take drastic action.
On Oct. 8, he used massive concrete barriers to wall off dozens of
streets in the Sunni district, home to about 120,000 people, so there
were only two entrances. Col. Peterson then told the national police
troops -- whom he was supposed to be mentoring -- that they weren't
allowed into the area unless they were accompanied by his soldiers.
"It was a pretty big step backwards in terms of cooperation," he says.
After a few days, violence began to drop. In October, his troops
discovered 54 dead bodies in their sector. In November, the number was
43. Locked out of the big Sunni neighborhood, the national police
concentrated on patrolling the largely Shiite district of Abu Dasheer
- -- where they were welcomed by the people as an alternative to the
radical Shiite militias that had been providing security. Col. Peterson
concentrated his forces inside the Sunni isolation zone.
The lesson: "Self segregation might be a necessary interim step to
reducing sectarian killing," he says.
The U.S. strategy for dealing with sectarian tension is focused on
reconciliation and sharing power. Last month, Mr. Maliki, the Iraqi
prime minister, encouraged Sunnis and Shiites who had been driven from
their neighborhoods by sectarian bloodletting to go back to their
homes. He is promising cash payments and support from the largely
Shiite Iraqi army and police forces to speed the resettlement.
Shortly after Mr. Maliki's televised address, Col. Peterson saw how
disruptive such a policy might be in his area. He met with leaders of
the now almost exclusively Shiite district of Abu Dasheer. The area had
once been home to a sizable number of Sunnis, but most have been driven
out by Shiite militias issuing death threats.
At the meeting, Sheikh Sattar, a Shiite leader of the neighborhood
council, insisted that only three Sunni families had been driven from
Abu Dasheer. His voice brimming with anger, he said that the three
families were responsible for the deaths of 400 Shiites, including his
son. The other Sunnis left willingly, selling their homes and stores to
Shiites, he said.
"They all say that no Sunnis left Abu Dasheer" against their will, Col.
Peterson says. "It is a denial of reality. But it is the party line."
After the meeting, Col. Peterson said prospects for any real
reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites were dim because of so much
mistrust and hatred. Overcoming differences is probably a "generational
undertaking," he said.
Little Faith
There is also little faith among the people in the Iraqi government,
which in 2006 spent only $29 billion of its $40 billion annual budget.
Most of that went to salaries instead of services, say senior U.S.
officials. In Col. Peterson's area, various groups -- including
mosques, militias and insurgents -- have rushed to fill the void,
offering security or even food and fuel. These groups don't have to do
much to win support. "They just have to do better than the government.
Anything above zero is a better alternative," Col. Peterson says.
By January, Col. Peterson concluded he couldn't wait for the Iraqi
government to provide basic services. Nor was it realistic to think
local residents would reconcile and share power any time soon. He began
to search for a different approach, relying as much on his education as
an economist as his training as a military commander.
"How do we give people control over their neighborhoods so they take
responsibility for what happens there?" he recalls thinking.
About the same time, some Shiites asked one of his lieutenants if they
could form a neighborhood-watch group to protect themselves. The group
members weren't allowed to carry guns. But they did wear badges and
when they spotted outsiders in their area, they could notify U.S. or
Iraqi forces using cellphones.
At first, the neighborhood watch seemed to work. Then, leadership of
the group was taken over by the radical Shiite Mahdi militia. "If we
were not sitting in the area, there would be gunfire from sunup to
sundown," says Capt. Adam Grim, the company commander in that area. In
February, Col. Peterson detained eight of the watch members and charged
them with participating in the murder and intimidation of Sunnis.
Analyzing the Failure
After the arrest, Col. Peterson analyzed why the watch had failed. He
concluded that the neighborhood they were overseeing was too big. He
hadn't controlled access to the area. Most important, he felt he hadn't
given the neighborhood anything worth defending, such as a better
quality of life.
The failure helped give birth to a new approach. He began to refurbish
a market in the Sunni district he had blocked off. He noticed that as
soon as he installed concrete barriers around the market to prevent car
bombs, people flocked to the once-deserted stores. He then walled off a
two-block-by- two-block-square area of homes around the market so there
was only one way in and out of the neighborhood.
"That seemed to be about the right size that allowed the community to
handle its own security and quickly spot outsiders," he says.
Finally, he bought the market manager a 450-kilowatt generator --
enough to power the 29 stores in the market and about 100 houses.
Today, the Sunni manager, Khalid Ishmael, sells power to the stores and
the houses in the gated community. The Americans help him buy fuel. He
handles the maintenance and sets his own rates -- enough to turn a
small profit. He has nothing but contempt for the Iraqi government and
the national police in the area. "They will kill us without the
American forces to stop them," he says.
Many residents feel the same way. But the area is fairly free of
insurgent and militia groups, according to Col. Peterson and locals. In
contrast to most Iraqi neighborhoods, where trash is piled on median
strips, neighbors in the gated community collect their refuse and burn
it in an abandoned lot. Mr. Ishmael keeps a handwritten log of his
power customers in a small notebook. He and his staff of two take turns
sleeping nights on a filthy cot next to the generator, to protect it
from thieves. The streets and the market bustle with women and children.
"I want to get to the point where people say, 'When are you going to
build one of those gated communities for me?'" says Col. Peterson.
"When we leave here, I'd like to have a string of them."
Although life has improved for many Iraqis in Col. Peterson's sector,
it is far from safe or stable. In February, his unit discovered 25
bodies, down from 39 in January. In many areas, more than half the
houses are abandoned. Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods exchange mortar
and rocket fire on an almost daily basis, often wounding and killing
innocent locals.
On a recent morning, Capt. Douglas Graham, one of Col. Peterson's
company commanders, was heading out on a foot patrol through the gated
community when he heard an explosion of gunfire. A national police unit
was traveling on the nearby main highway when an insurgent sniper
opened fire on them from a neighborhood to the north. The police
stopped traffic in both directions, and, for the next hour, blasted
away at that neighborhood, as well as Col. Peterson's gated community.
Capt. Graham tried to tell the Iraqi troops to cease fire. When that
failed, he had his interpreter call the brigade commander. "Nothing is
going to be solved by taking potshots into the neighborhood," he said.
The next day, Sgt. First Class Roger Hunceker led a patrol of about 20
soldiers through the gated community. They were met by Mr. Ishmael, the
market manager, who said the gunfire had wounded a woman in the leg and
left his home pockmarked with bullet holes. He was convinced the police
were targeting the neighborhood on purpose. "They do not want us to
succeed. Anything positive that happens in the Sunni areas they will
try to destroy it," he said through an interpreter.
Sgt. Hunceker tried to reassure him, telling him that the police who
opened fire were from a different area, and that the national police in
his neighborhood were improving. But locals can't distinguish one
police commando unit from the other. They all wear the same green
camouflage uniforms and for the most part, are all feared by Sunnis.
"We cannot leave our neighborhood. If we try to pass through one of
their checkpoints, they will kill us," Mr. Ishmael said. However, he
says he has no plans to turn to the Omar Brigade, the Sunni-based
militia force that operates in the area. "We have accepted all this
help. The Omar Brigade will kill us for cooperating with the
Americans," he said.
For Col. Peterson, the market manager's remarks were encouraging. The
gated community offers "an alternative to the militia and it's an
alternative he has some control over," he says.
In late March, Col. Peterson's squadron was transferred from southern
Baghdad to the Haifa Street area of the capital, the site of a massive
gun battle between Sunnis and U.S. forces earlier this year. Senior
U.S. officials say they moved the squadron to the area, which has been
a persistent problem for U.S. forces, in the hope it will be able to
replicate some of the success it has had in southern Baghdad. A new
U.S. battalion has been assigned to that area.
"We'll have a fresh start to continue these techniques," Col. Peterson
wrote in an email. "Hopefully it won't take as long to get started this
time."
Copyright 2007 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
- ------------------------------
Message: 9
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:16:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Pity the Sick of Iraq
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062016....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
sent by Michel Collon - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.michelcollon.info/mailinglist_en.php
Al Ahram - Apr 5, 2007
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/
Pity the sick of Iraq
by Bert De Belder
After repeatedly topping the Arab health index, Iraq's health record is now
worse than ever because of the US-led occupation. The general effect on the
Iraqi population amounts to a massive war crime
by Bert De Belder
In March, the deadliest month witnessed by Iraqis recently, some 67 lives
on the average were lost daily, as a result of bombings and acts of
violence. An elderly man mourns his relative at the entrance of a local
hospital in Baghdad's impoverished district of Sadr City. Political violence
has conspired with the occupation to wreak havoc not only with lives, but,
as well, the infrastructure needed to safeguard the health of millions of
Iraqis Health standards in Iraq plummet because of the United States
occupation of the country: Iraqi medics treat a wounded child at a hospital
in the oil rich city of Kirkuk (left); and Iraqi women rush to the site
where a car bomb exploded in Baghdad's impoverished district of Sadr City
Iraq's health status, four years into the occupation, is nothing short of
disastrous. Iraq's health index has deteriorated to a level not seen since
the 1950s, says Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations
Population Division and an Iraq specialist. People's health status is
determined by social, economic and environmental factors much more than by
the availability of healthcare. Not surprisingly, all these factors have
deteriorated in the course of the occupation.
A recent UNDP-backed study reveals that one-third of Iraqis live in
poverty, with more than five per cent living in abject poverty. The UN
agency observes that this contrasts starkly with the country's thriving
middle- income economy of the 1970s and 1980s. But these figures may well be
a grave underestimation, as other reports speak of eight million out of 28
million Iraqis living in extreme poverty on incomes of less than $1 per day.
More than 500,000 Baghdad residents get water for only a few hours a day.
And the majority of Iraqis get three hours of electricity a day, in contrast
to pre-war levels of about 20 hours.
THE DEVASTATED HEALTH OF IRAQI CHILDREN: The combination of sanctions, war
and occupation has resulted in Iraq showing the world's worst evolution in
child mortality: from an under-five mortality rate of 50 per 1000 live
births in 1990, to 125 in 2005. That means an annual deterioration of 6.1
per cent -- a world record, well behind very poor and AIDS- affected
Botswana. At the outset of the 2003 war, the US administration pledged to
cut Iraq's child mortality rate in half by 2005. But the rate has continued
to worsen, to 130 in 2006, according to Iraqi Health Ministry figures.
Nutrition is, of course, vital to health. According to the United Nations
Children's Agency (UNICEF), about one in 10 Iraqi children under five are
underweight (acutely malnourished) and one in five are short for their age
(chronically malnourished). But this is only the tip of the iceberg,
according to Claire Hajaj, communications officer at the UNICEF Iraq Support
Centre in Amman. "Many Iraqi children may also be suffering from 'hidden
hunger' -- deficiencies in critical vitamins and minerals that are the
building blocks for children's physical and intellectual development," Hajaj
says. "These deficiencies are hard to measure, but they make children much
more vulnerable to illness and less likely to thrive at school." Hayder
Hussainy, a senior official at the Iraqi Ministry of Health, states that
approximately 50 per cent of Iraqi children suffer from some form of
malnourishment.
Also important is the psychological impact of war and occupation. In a
study entitled "The Psychological Effects of War on Iraqis", the Association
of Iraqi Psychologists (AIP) reports that out of 2,000 people interviewed in
all 18 Iraqi provinces, 92 per cent said they feared being killed in an
explosion. Some 60 per cent of those interviewed said the level of violence
had caused them to have panic attacks, which prevented them from going out
because they feared they would be the next victims. The AIP also surveyed
over 1,000 children across Iraq and found that 92 per cent of children
examined had learning impediments, largely attributable to the current
climate of fear and insecurity. "The only thing they have on their minds are
guns, bullets, death and a fear of the US occupation," says the AIP's Marwan
Abdullah.
HOSPITALS AND CLINICS FACED WITH A CRITICAL LACK OF RESOURCES: On 19
January 2007, a group of some 100 eminent UK doctors signed a letter to
British Prime Minister Tony Blair to voice their grave concern over the fate
of Iraq's children. The statement read: "We are concerned that children are
dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment. Sick or injured children, who
could otherwise be treated by simple means, are left to die in their
hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other
resources. Children who have lost hands, feet, and limbs are left without
prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated."
The Iraq Medical Association reports that 90 per cent of the almost 180
hospitals in Iraq lack essential equipment. At Yarmouk Hospital, one of the
busiest hospitals in Baghdad, five people die on average every day because
medics and nurses don't have the equipment to treat common ills and
accidents, according to Yarmouk doctor Hussam Abboud. That translates to
more than 1,800 preventable deaths in a year in that hospital alone.
Hassan Abdallah, a senior health official in the Basra Governorate, says
that information suggests that from January to July 2006, about 90 children
died in Basra as result of the lack of medicine, a worse figure than for the
same period last year, when some 40 children died for similar reasons. Marie
Fernandez, a spokeswoman for the Vienna-based aid agency Saving Children
from War, deplores the lack of essential supplies, especially intravenous
infusions and blood bags. "Children are dying because there are no blood
bags available," says Fernandez.
HOSPITALS SUBJECT TO MILITARY ATTACKS AND OCCUPATION: "The Geneva
Conventions state that hospitals are and should remain neutral and
accessible to everybody, particularly civilians. Yet, when it's occupied by
armed groups or official forces, people don't have this free and
humanitarian access," says Cedric Turlan, information officer for the
Coordinating Committee in Iraq (NCCI) NGO. His observation is corroborated
by numerous reports and sources.
In the first week of November 2006, in Ramadi, some 115 kilometres west of
Baghdad, 13 civilians entering the hospital to get treatment were killed by
snipers. Less than 10 per cent of the hospital's staff was still working
there when US-led forces burst into the hospital many times day and night,
looking for snipers on the hospital's roof. "The multinational forces were
outside, surrounding the hospital, but they intruded into the hospital on a
daily basis," Turlan said. "Now people rarely go to the hospital because
they fear being shot or arrested."
For several months now, patients have refrained from using the hospital for
fear of being shot by snipers or by US-led forces. According to other
reports received by NCCI, military forces have also occupied Mosul Hospital,
and ambulances have been attacked regularly in Najaf, Fallujah and other
parts of Anbar.
On 7 December 2006, there was yet another US military raid at the Fallujah
General Hospital that had suffered similar attacks during various US siege
operations in the city in April and November 2004. Eyewitnesses said US
soldiers raided the hospital "as if it were a military target". Doctors and
medical staff were arrested, insulted and called terrorists. A hospital
employee said that it was already the third time he was handcuffed by US
soldiers, and alleged that "they have been more vicious with medical staff
than with others because they consider us the first supporters of those they
call terrorists." US Lt Col Bryan Salas, spokesperson of Multinational
Forces-Iraq, had quite a different explanation: "Coalition forces searched
the hospital to ensure that it continues to be a safe place for the citizens
of Fallujah to receive the medical treatment they deserve." After the US
military raid, the hospital remained closed for several days.
GOVERNMENT COMPLICITY IN ATTACKS AND FAILING HEALTH: With current Minister
of Health Ali Al-Shimari belonging to the political movement of Moqtada
Al-Sadr, the latter's military arm, the Mahdi Army, is acting inside
hospitals with impunity. Sick and wounded patients have been abducted from
public hospitals and later killed. As a consequence, more and more Iraqis
are avoiding hospitals. "We would prefer to die instead of going to the
hospital," says Abu Nasr, a resident of a Baghdad suburb. "The hospitals
have become killing fields."
The ministry also appears to discriminate in the provision of supplies.
Tariq Hiali, a health official in Baqouba (60 kilometres northeast of
Baghdad), laments that "the Ministry of Health is not providing us with
medications and medical equipment -- they consider us to be terrorists." An
employee at Baqouba's blood bank, Jamal Qadoori, says: "Ambulances we send
to Baghdad are being intercepted by the Mahdi Army."
The emergency unit in the Basra Teaching Hospital was closed for five
months after unidentified assailants killed a number of doctors working
there. Now many doctors and nurses refuse to go to work, fearing for their
lives. Likewise, clinics have shut down in Ramadi, Hit, Haditha and
Fallujah. The Institute for War and Peace Reporting states that in Baghdad,
those doctors still practicing have moved their clinics into residential
areas or inside medical compounds for safety reasons. They only open in the
morning, because of curfews and poor security.
HEALTH WORKERS HARASSED, ARRESTED AND ASSASSINATED: Under the Fourth Geneva
Convention, Article 18 reads: "Civilian hospitals organised to care for the
wounded and sick, infirm and maternity cases, may in no circumstances be the
object of attack, but shall at all times be respected and protected by the
Parties to the conflict." On-the-ground reality in Iraq today is quite
different.
"A major problem affecting Iraq's health sector is the country's desperate
security situation," says Nada Doumani, a spokeswoman for the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). "Armed men storm operating theatres
forcing doctors to treat the patients they bring as a priority. Some
patients insist on keeping their weapons and masks while being treated. This
creates a traumatising situation for the doctors," she says.
Examples abound. Dr Washdi Mahmoud works in the Ibn Al-Nafees Hospital, the
largest cardiovascular centre in Baghdad. Via telephone from Baghdad on 27
February 2006, he said: "Yesterday morning, we were threatened by the
relatives of patients. They even pointed a gun at one doctor's head! The
hospital's security guards didn't bother to intervene, so we decided to go
on strike."
Dr Salam Ismael of the Doctors for Iraq society explains: "We are harassed
by militias of certain political parties. The government is not acting on
them. They enter the patient's rooms with their weapons, they shout at the
doctors, they threaten to kill them."
Doctors for Iraq received reports that armed gunmen had entered Tel Afar
Hospital in the northwest of Iraq on 9 May 2006 and threatened and attacked
staff and patients waiting to be treated. A doctor described how one of the
armed men put a gun to his head demanding that he stop treating a wounded
child and instead attend to a man with a minor shell wound in his leg. The
armed group started vandalising and breaking hospital equipment and then
attacked an ambulance driver, breaking his arm with a rifle butt. Another
ambulance driver was punched in the face, and three armed men attacked the
hospital pharmacist, taking turns in hitting and kicking him. One of the
armed men fired bullets above a doctor's head, missing him narrowly and
causing fear and hysteria in the hospital.
On 28 September 2006, doctors at Baghdad's Yarmouk Hospital went on strike
after Iraqi police burst into the facility and forced doctors to treat a
wounded colleague, while brandishing their guns. The doctors called on the
Interior Ministry to enforce a complete weapons ban in the hospital. Early
November 2006, Dr Ibrahim Abdel-Sattar, a cardiologist in Baghdad, reported:
"My colleague was killed while he was attending one of his patients two
weeks ago. The armed gang broke into his clinic, shot him dead and left
without explanation."
HEALTH WORKERS KIDNAPPED AND HELD FOR RANSOM
As if the daily violence was not enough, in the chaos and disorder that
reign in occupied Iraq, health professionals are also prone to getting
kidnapped for ransom.
On 9 November, men reportedly wearing blue police uniforms kidnapped the
head of Iraqi Red Crescent Society (IRCS) administration, Dr Anas Al-Azawi,
in front of his house. The price for his freedom was set at $750,000, but he
was released after a lesser ransom was paid. On 17 December, armed men
allegedly wearing Iraqi Army uniforms stormed the office of the IRCS in
Baghdad and abducted 42 people. 26 IRCS employees, both Shia and Sunni, were
later released.
Peter Kandela, an Iraqi doctor working in the United Kingdom, interviewed
Iraqi medical staff that had fled to Jordan and Syria. He recounts the story
of a kidney surgeon seized by a group of armed men whose first act was to go
through his address book to look for other potential victims. "They had the
audacity to suggest that in return for receiving better treatment in
captivity, I should recommend others for kidnapping," the surgeon said. He
was released after his wife paid a ransom of $250,000.
Dr Kandela also explained that "in the new Iraq, there is a price tag
linked to your position and status. Those doctors who have stayed in the
country know what they are worth in kidnapping terms, and ensure their
relatives have easy access to the necessary funds to secure their speedy
release if they are taken."
MASSIVE FLIGHT OF HEALTH PROFESSIONALS: In March 2006, the British NGO
Medact said that 18,000 out of Iraq's 34,000 physicians had left the country
since the onset of the war, according to official figures from the Iraq
Medical Association (IMA). Farouk Naji, a clinician and senior member of
IMA, declares: "About 2,000 physicians have been killed since 2003. The
violence has increased and everyday we are losing the best professionals in
Iraq." In some cases, ambulances picking up the injured after explosions are
without paramedics or nurses, Naji says. "There are not enough professionals
and the ones available are in hospitals, trying to figure out how to treat
patients in improvised operating theatres," he adds.
Dr Omer, a cardiovascular surgeon, left his job in Baghdad and is now
working as a general practitioner in a primary health care clinic in Syria.
"What could I do?" he asks, "I was threatened by armed militias inside the
hospital. Three surgeons had been killed already and there were only three
of us left. I couldn't be the next target as I have a child to raise." Dr
Omer was forced to flee Iraq. He added: "I am not happy with what I am doing
here in Syria. I was a specialist doctor and now I am working as a junior
doctor. It is as if you were asking an officer to work as a soldier."
A shortage of doctors and nurses has also been reported in Basra. According
to health official Hassan Abdullah, there are no reliable statistics on how
many doctors, dentists, pharmacists and nurses have left the area, but
unofficial data suggests that at least 200 health professionals have left
since January alone. Some of them try to get more secure employment
elsewhere in Iraq. Rezan Sayda, a senior official in the Kurdistan Regional
Government's Health Ministry, said last December that her ministry had
employed 600 doctors who had fled insecure parts of the country, and that
another 320 were on the waiting list for employment.
The lack of health personnel has disastrous consequences for the health of
local patients. Writing in The British Medical Journal, Dr Bassim
Al-Sheibani and two colleagues from the Diwaniyah College of Medicine in
Iraq report that, "medical staff admit that more than half of those who died
could have been saved if trained and experienced staff were available."
RECONSTRUCTION UNDER OCCUPATION: A DISMAL FAILURE : Four years into the US-
led war on Iraq, the country's healthcare system is in a shambles. Most
hospitals lack basis supplies, dozens of clinics remain incompletely
constructed, and costly high-technology equipment lies idle in warehouses.
Since 2003, US agencies may have spent up to $1 billion of Iraqi
reconstruction funds on healthcare, but no new hospitals and only a few
local clinics have been built. Even the pet project of First Lady Laura Bush
- -- a $50 million state-of-the-art children's hospital in Basra -- is running
far behind schedule and over budget.
According to Amar Al-Saffar, an official in charge of construction at the
Iraqi Health Ministry, not a single hospital has been built in Iraq since
Al-Khadimiyah Hospital opened in 1986 in Baghdad. A $200 million
reconstruction project for building 142 primary healthcare centres ran out
of cash in early 2006, with just 20 centres on course to be completed, an
outcome the World Health Organisation described as "shocking".
In a damaging report, CorpWatch harshly criticises the US-led
reconstruction of Iraq's health infrastructure, demonstrating how US
companies such as Parsons Global, Abt Associates and Bechtel did little more
than take the money and run. Those companies were awarded huge
reconstruction contracts -- a $70 million contract for Parsons, $43 million
for Abt Associates and $50 million for Bechtel -- while effectively
sidelining experienced UN agencies as UNICEF and WHO.
In April 2006, the US Army Corps of Engineers that was supposed to
construct 150 primary healthcare centres decided to cancel the construction
of 130 of them. The construction had been contracted out to Parsons Global
and by the time the US Army Corps cancelled Parsons' contract only six
clinics had been completed. Meanwhile, 150 sets of medical equipment had
already been ordered and warehoused at Abu Ghraib. Thus, 130 sets are
intended for clinics that will never see the light of day.
Abt Associates was contracted to repair existing Iraqi hospitals but handed
the job over to local sub-contractors who were inexperienced or corrupt.
When, in April 2004, the security situation in Iraq turned from bad to
worse, Abt Associates staff left the country. $20.7 million of US taxpayers'
money had already been paid to Abt Associates through USAID.
Laura Bush's showcase children's hospital in Basra, a project awarded to
Bechtel, went much the same way. The hospital was slated to feature 94 beds,
private cancer suits, CAT scans and other high-tech equipment necessary to
treat childhood cancer in a region highly affected by depleted uranium
following the 1991 Gulf War. The price tag rose from $50 million to $170
million and in July 2006 Bechtel was asked to withdraw from the project. It
remains on hold.
CRIMINAL NEGLECT: THE OCCUPATION MUST END: Four years after its onset, it
has become clearer than ever that the US-led war and occupation of Iraq have
resulted in a massive public health disaster for Iraqis. Reversing the
current trend of ever-deteriorating health conditions requires first and
foremost the end of the occupation.
[The writer is coordinator for Medical Aid for the Third World, Belgium,
and member of the Brussels Tribunal (http://brusselstribunal.org).]
- ------------------------------
Message: 10
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:19:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Herbert: Our Crumbling Foundation
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062019....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
sent by Ed Pearl
The New York Times - Apr 5, 2007
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/opinion/05herbert.html
Our Crumbling Foundation
By BOB HERBERT
Fifty-nine years ago this week - on April 3, 1948 - President Truman signed
the legislation establishing the Marshall Plan, which contributed so much to
the rebuilding of postwar Europe. Now, more than half a century later, the
U.S. can't even rebuild New Orleans.
It doesn't seem able to build much of anything, really. According to the
American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. infrastructure is in sad
shape, and it would take more than a trillion and a half dollars over a
five-year period to bring it back to a reasonably adequate condition.
If there's a less sexy story floating around, I can't find it. It certainly
can't compete with the Sanjaya Malakar saga, or with the claim by Keith
Richards that he snorted his dad's ashes with "a little bit of blow."
But, as we learned with New Orleans, there are consequences to neglecting
the infrastructure. Just a little over a year ago, a dam in Hawaii gave way,
unleashing a wave 70 feet high and 200 yards wide. It swept away virtually
everything in its path, including cars, houses and trees. Seven people
drowned.
On the day after Christmas in Portland, Ore., a sinkhole opened up like
something from a science fiction movie and swallowed a 25-ton sewer- repair
truck. Authorities blamed the sinkhole on the collapse of aging underground
pipes.
Blackouts, school buildings in advanced states of disrepair, decrepit
highway and railroad bridges - the American infrastructure is growing
increasingly old and obsolete. In addition to being an invitation to
tragedy, this is a problem that is putting Americans at a disadvantage in
the ever more competitive global economy.
Felix Rohatyn, the investment banker who helped save New York City from
bankruptcy in the 1970s, has been prominent among those trying to sound the
infrastructure alarm. Along with former Senator Warren Rudman, he has been
criticizing the government's unwillingness to invest adequately in public
transportation systems, water projects, dams, schools, the electrical grid,
and so on.
He recently told a House committee that Congress should begin a major effort
to rebuild the American infrastructure "before it is too late."
"Since the beginning of the republic," he said, "transportation,
infrastructure and education have played a central role in advancing the
American economy, whether it was the canals in upstate New York, or the
railroads that linked our heartland to our industrial centers; whether it
was the opening of education to average Americans by land grant colleges and
the G.I. bill, making education basic to American life; or whether it was
the interstate highway system that ultimately connected all regions of the
nation.
"This did not happen by chance, but was the result of major investments
financed by the federal and state governments over the last century and a
half. ... We need to make similar investments now."
Politics and ideology are the main reasons that government has turned away
from public investment over the past several years. Zealots marching under
the banner of small government have been remarkably effective in thwarting
efforts to raise taxes or borrow substantial sums for the kind of public
investment that has always been essential to a dynamic economy.
That this is counterproductive in a post-20th-century world should be as
obvious as the sun rising in the morning. There is a reason why countries
like China and India are racing like mad to develop their infrastructure and
educational capacity.
"A modern economy needs a modern platform, and that's the infrastructure,"
Mr. Rohatyn said in an interview. "It has been shown that the productivity
of an economy is related to the quality of its infrastructure. For example,
if you don't have enough schools to teach your kids, or your kids are taught
in schools that have holes in the ceilings, that are dilapidated, they're
not going to be as educated and as competitive in a world economy as they
need to be."
Mr. Rohatyn and Mr. Rudman are co-chairmen of the Commission on Public
Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. They
believe that failing to move quickly to address the nation's infrastructure
needs - through the establishment of a national trust fund, for example, or
a federal capital budget - could lead to long-term disaster.
But words like trust fund and long-term and infrastructure find it very
difficult to elbow their way into the nation's consciousness. We may have to
wait for another New Orleans before beginning to take this seriously.
- ------------------------------
Message: 11
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:20:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Biggest Chemical Attack by Iraqi Resistance
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062020....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
AFP - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070406154159.lxk8xkqa.html
Chlorine bomb kills 27 as PM woos Saddam's officers
RAMADI, Iraq (AFP) - A suicide bomber targeting a police station
exploded his truck full of chlorine gas in a residential area on
Friday, killing 27 people in the biggest chemical attack by insurgents
in Iraq since the invasion.
Amid the continuing violence, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered
that jobs and pensions be offered to former officers of executed
president Saddam Hussein's military, many of whom had joined the Sunni
insurgency against US forces.
The chemical attack took place in the western city of Ramadi. First
reports said that 20 people had been killed, but the toll was later
amended by police.
"At least 27 people, many of them women and children, have been killed
in the attack," said a local police officer, specifying that another 30
were wounded.
He said the bomber was targeting the police station but blew himself up
"200 metres (yards) away from it near the residental area of Al-Tamim."
The explosion occurred next to a market and residential buildings, he
said.
"The truck contained many tonnes of chlorine and TNT which were covered
by sacks full of fertilisers," he said.
Earlier, police Colonel Tareq al-Dualiami told AFP that two of the dead
were policemen, adding that at least another two police officers were
wounded.
Ramadi, the provincial capital of the Sunni Anbar province, is a
stronghold of Sunni insurgents and a prime base of Al-Qaeda operators.
The province has witnessed increased insurgent attacks in recent months
after a group of Sunni tribes joined with Iraqi government forces to
battle Al-Qaeda militants.
Last month 350 civilians were hospitalised after three chlorine bombs
exploded near Ramadi and Fallujah, a former rebel bastion town.
The support of Sunni Arab tribes is expected to get a boost after
Maliki's decision to offer jobs or pensions to members of the former
army.
All former officers with the rank of lieutenant colonel or above will
be offered a pension, Maliki's office said in a statement.
Those ranked major or lower can be absorbed into a new army being built
up by US-led coalition forces, while lower-grade officers with
specialised skills such as medicine or engineering will be absorbed in
government ministries.
Soon after the March 2003 American-led invasion to topple Saddam, the
then US administrator for Iraq, Paul Bremer, dismantled the former
military that once employed more than 300,000 people.
Many of them -- Sunni Arabs -- later joined the anti-US insurgency.
On Friday, clashes were reported from the central city of Diwaniyah
where Iraqi and US soldiers launched a major crackdown against
militiamen, imposing a curfew and sealing off city approaches.
"Iraqi Army troops swept into the city in the early morning hours April
6 to disrupt militia activity and return security and stability here
back to the government of Iraq," the US military said in a statement.
"Soldiers of the 8th Iraqi army division supported by soldiers and
paratroopers from multi-national division Baghdad began Operation Black
Eagle at approximately 6:30 am (0230 GMT)," it added.
Iraq two days ago announced that a massive crackdown launched in
Baghdad eight weeks ago was being extended to other flashpoint areas.
One person was killed and 19 were wounded in the Diwaniyah clashes on
Friday, said Hamid Gaati, head of the local department of health, and a
security official.
An official in the local office of the movement of radical Shiite
cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who controls the Mahdi Army milita, confirmed
that its fighters and US troops were clashing around Salim Street and
Al-Askari.
"Most of the clashes are in northern Diwaniyah and are because of the
raids and arrests done by occupation forces against the Mahdi
followers," he said, adding that top members of Sadr's movement were to
meet in the city on Saturday.
An 8th Iraqi army division source said that 25 suspected militiamen had
been detained in an operation that he said would continue for several
days.
"The Iraqi police are being infiltrated by militia and now the Iraqi
army and the US military control all the police stations, and
checkpoints and the streets," he said on condition of anonymity.
Polish aircraft dropped leaflets over the city ordering local police
officers to stay home, warning that anyone who went out with a weapon
will be considered a target, a military spokesman confirmed.
At least 1,400 Iraqi soldiers were drafted in from neighbouring towns
such as Kut, Babel and Najaf to raid gunmen's hideouts in Al-Askari,
Al-Jumhuri and Al-Iskan in the northern parts of Diwaniyah, an Iraqi
military officer said.
- ------------------------------
Message: 12
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:21:10 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Pentagon report: "no link" btwn Saddam and Al-Qaeda
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062021....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
AFP - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070406153757.0tqao5yv.html
Pentagon report says no link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Interrogations of Saddam Hussein and seized
documents confirmed the former Iraqi regime had no links with Al-Qaeda,
a Pentagon report said Friday, contradicting the US case for the 2003
invasion.
A two-page resume of the report was published in February, but on
Friday the Pentagon declassified the whole 120-page document.
According to the inspector general of the US Defense Department,
information obtained after Saddam's fall confirmed the prewar position
of the Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon intelligence that the
Iraqi government had had no substantial contacts with Al-Qaeda.
This position was shored up by interrogations of Saddam, the former
Iraqi president and other top officials captured by the US-led
coalition forces in Iraq, the report said.
It contradicts a strong argument for the invasion made by the
administration of President George W. Bush that Baghdad had a working
relationship with Al-Qaeda.
The network, based in Afghanisation and led by Osama bin Laden, was
behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States in which
almost 3,000 people were killed.
The report noted that the office of then-undersecretary of defense
Douglas Feith, one of the foremost advocates for invading Iraq after
the 2001 attacks, had ignored the CIA's position.
He characterized the supposed Al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship as "mature"
and "symbiotic" in a September 2002 briefing to the chief of staff of
Vice President Dick Cheney.
The Feith briefing alleged that the two cooperated in 10 areas,
including training, financing and logistics.
But the new report says the US intelligence community had concluded at
the time there were "no conclusive signs" of links between Iraq and
Al-Qaeda, and that "direct cooperation ... has not been established"
between the two.
Prior to the war there was little public dispute inside the United
States over the Bush administration's assertions linking Iraq and bin
Laden's group.
But since the invasion, a number of intelligence officials have alleged
the White House and its backers ignored their intelligence and "cherry
picked" information to support their arguments for a war.
In a radio interview Wednesday Cheney insisted on a prewar link between
Iraq and Al-Qaeda, saying the group was working in Iraq "before we even
arrived on the scene."
"As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq," Cheney told
conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh.
- ------------------------------
Message: 13
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:22:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Cheney Insists AGAIN on al Qaeda-Saddam Link!
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062022....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
APvia MSNBC -Apr 6, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17975678/
Cheney reasserts al-Qaida-Saddam link
Vice president's words come as latest Pentagon report again dismisses link
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his assertions of
al-Qaida links to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq on Thursday as the Defense
Department released a report citing more evidence that the prewar
government did not cooperate with the terrorist group.
Cheney contended that al-Qaida was operating in Iraq before the March
2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida. Others in al-Qaida
planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq,
organized the al-Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on
the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed
him last June,†Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an
interview. “As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.â€
However, a declassified Pentagon report released Thursday said that
interrogations of the deposed Iraqi leader and two of his former aides
as well as seized Iraqi documents confirmed that the terrorist
organization and the Saddam government were not working together before
the invasion.
The Sept. 11 Commission’s 2004 report also found no evidence of a
collaborative relationship between Saddam and Osama bin Laden’s
al-Qaida network during that period.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, had requested that the Pentagon declassify the report
prepared by acting Defense Department Inspector General Thomas F.
Gimble. In a statement Thursday, Levin said the declassified document
showed why a Defense Department investigation had concluded that some
Pentagon prewar intelligence work was inappropriate.
The report, which had been released in summary form in February, said
that former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith had acted
inappropriately but not illegally in reviewing prewar intelligence.
Levin has claimed that Feith’s intelligence assessment was wrong and
distorted but nevertheless formed part of the basis on which President
Bush took the country to war.
Although Feith’s assessment in mid-2002 offered several examples of
cooperation between Saddam’s government and al-Qaida, the report said,
the CIA had concluded months earlier that no evidence supported the
existence of significant or long-term relationships.
© 2007 The Associated Press.
- ------------------------------
Message: 14
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:22:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] No sign of compromise on Iraq by Bush, Democrats
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062022....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Reuters - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSKRA57108220070406?feedType=RSS
No sign of compromise on Iraq by Bush, Democrats
By Steve Holland
CRAWFORD, Texas (Reuters) - President George W. Bush and Democrats who
control the U.S. Congress are on a collision course over Iraq war
funding with neither side yet showing a willingness to back down.
The festering feud is the most dramatic example of political
brinkmanship since a 1995 budget dispute between then-Democratic
President Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans led to a
government shutdown.
Back then, Americans perceived Clinton as the voice of reason and saw
Republicans as over-reaching in their drive to cut the federal budget.
But in this case, the outcome is not so clear. Democrats were elected
to control of Congress last November on a platform to scale back U.S.
involvement in Iraq, and are trying to do that by attaching a
withdrawal timetable to Bush's request for $100 billion to pay for wars
in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Although polls shows strong support for the Democrats' position, White
House officials believe Americans will ultimately agree with Bush that
even though the Iraq war is unpopular and people are weary of it, in
the end the troops must be funded.
For all the talk last January of bipartisan cooperation between the
Bush White House and the new Democratic majority in Congress, partisan
battles are again the norm in Washington.
The White House is singling out Democrats every day for criticism on
the Iraq funding bill, warning troop tours of duty in Iraq will be
extended if the money is not there to rotate them out. On Thursday, it
was Vice President Dick Cheney's turn to lead the attack.
"I do believe that a significant portion of the Democrats, including, I
think, (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi, are adamantly opposed to the war
and prepared to pack it in and come home in defeat, rather than put in
place or support a policy that will lead to victory," Cheney told
conservative talk show radio host Rush Limbaugh.
Democrats have yet to submit their timetable legislation to Bush for
his expected veto. They have to first work out differences between the
House bill, which has a mandatory September 1, 2008 deadline for
pulling out combat troops, and the Senate version that mandates the
withdrawal to begin sooner, but sets next March 31 as a goal for them
to be out.
Democrats are confident they will be able to resolve their differences
and get a bill to Bush when they return from Easter recess, and they
want Bush to be willing to talk to Congress about it as a co-equal
branch of government.
"He should sit down and talk to us, we're reasonable," Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid told Fox News affiliate KVVU in Las Vegas on
Wednesday. "We've compromised on issues before. He hasn't, because he's
had Congress give him everything he wants. We're not going to do that
anymore. We don't have to do that anymore."
Former Secretary of State James Baker, a Bush family friend who chaired
a bipartisan commission known as the Iraq Study Group that late last
year came up with 79 recommendations for Iraq policy changes, offered a
possible compromise.
Bush was seen as largely ignoring many of the key recommendations of
the report, such as direct engagement with Iran and Syria.
Baker wrote in an opinion article on Thursday for The Washington Post
that Bush should embrace all the report's recommendations and call on
Democrats to join him and that if they did not, "the burden of
rejecting a unified bipartisan approach would fall on them."
"Moving forward this way, which would require compromise by both sides,
would be far better than continuing a political dogfight that can only
undermine U.S. foreign policy goals in Iraq and the Middle East," Baker
wrote.
© Reuters 2006.
- ------------------------------
Message: 15
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:24:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Bush Lies: Hussein's Prewar Ties to Al-Qaeda
Discounted
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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The Washington Post - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/05/AR2007040502263_pf.html
Hussein's Prewar Ties to Al-Qaeda Discounted
Pentagon Report Says Contacts Were Limited
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam
Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was
not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of
Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released
yesterday.
The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General
Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence
community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda
figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports
of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The
report had been released in summary form in February.
The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney,
appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation
that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the
war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed
last June.
"This is al-Qaeda operating in Iraq," Cheney told Limbaugh's listeners
about Zarqawi, who he said had "led the charge for Iraq." Cheney cited
the alleged history to illustrate his argument that withdrawing U.S.
forces from Iraq would "play right into the hands of al-Qaeda."
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who
requested the report's declassification, said in a written statement
that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector
general concluded that a key Pentagon office -- run by
then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately
written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion
alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S.
intelligence consensus disputed.
The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office
had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in
September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was
"mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by
cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and
logistics.
Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there
were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi
officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term
relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.
"Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on
specific terrorist operations," that CIA report said, adding that
discussions on the issue were "necessarily speculative."
The CIA had separately concluded that reports of Iraqi training on
weapons of mass destruction were "episodic, sketchy, or not
corroborated in other channels," the inspector general's report said.
It quoted an August 2002 CIA report describing the relationship as more
closely resembling "two organizations trying to feel out or exploit
each other" rather than cooperating operationally.
The CIA was not alone, the defense report emphasized. The Defense
Intelligence Agency (DIA) had concluded that year that "available
reporting is not firm enough to demonstrate an ongoing relationship"
between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, it said.
But the contrary conclusions reached by Feith's office -- and leaked to
the conservative Weekly Standard magazine before the war -- were
publicly praised by Cheney as the best source of information on the
topic, a circumstance the Pentagon report cites in documenting the
impact of what it described as "inappropriate" work.
Feith has vigorously defended his work, accusing Gimble of "giving bad
advice based on incomplete fact-finding and poor logic," and charging
that the acting inspector general has been "cheered on by the chairmen
of the Senate intelligence and armed services committees." In January,
Feith's successor at the Pentagon, Eric S. Edelman, wrote a 52-page
rebuttal to the inspector general's report that disputed its analysis
and its recommendations for Pentagon reform.
Cheney's public statements before and after the war about the risks
posed by Iraq have closely tracked the briefing Feith's office
presented to the vice president's then-chief of staff, I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby. That includes the briefing's depiction of an alleged
2001 meeting in Prague between an Iraqi intelligence official and one
of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers as one of eight "Known Iraq-Al Qaida
Contacts."
The defense report states that at the time, "the intelligence community
disagreed with the briefing's assessment that the alleged meeting
constituted a 'known contact' " -- a circumstance that the report said
was known to Feith's office. But his office had bluntly concluded in a
July 2002 critique of a CIA report on Iraq's relationship with al-Qaeda
that the CIA's interpretation of the facts it cited "ought to be
ignored."
The briefing to Libby was also presented with slight variations to
then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, then-CIA Director George J.
Tenet and then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley. It
was prepared in part by someone whom the defense report described as a
"junior Naval Reservist" intelligence analyst detailed to Feith's
office from the DIA. The person is not named in the report, but Edelman
wrote that she was requested by Feith's office.
The briefing, a copy of which was declassified and released yesterday
by Levin, goes so far as to state that "Fragmentary reporting points to
possible Iraqi involvement not only in 9/11 but also in previous al
Qaida attacks." That idea was dismissed in 2004 by a presidential
commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, noting that "no credible
evidence" existed to support it.
When a senior intelligence analyst working for the government's
counterterrorism task force obtained an early account of the
conclusions by Feith's office -- titled "Iraq and al-Qaida: Making the
Case" -- the analyst prepared a detailed rebuttal calling it of "no
intelligence value" and taking issue with 15 of 26 key conclusions, the
report states. The analyst's rebuttal was shared with intelligence
officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but evidently not with others.
Edelman complained in his own account of the incident that a senior
Joint Chiefs analyst -- in responding to a suggestion by the DIA
analyst that the "Making the Case" account be widely circulated -- told
its author that "putting it out there would be playing into the hands
of people" such as then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, and
belittled the author for trying to support "some agenda of people in
the building."
But the inspector general's report, in a footnote, commented that it is
"noteworthy... that post-war debriefs of Sadaam Hussein, [former
Iraqi foreign minister] Tariq Aziz, [former Iraqi intelligence minister
Mani al-Rashid] al Tikriti, and [senior al-Qaeda operative Ibn
al-Shaykh] al-Libi, as well as document exploitation by DIA all
confirmed that the Intelligence Community was correct: Iraq and
al-Qaida did not cooperate in all categories" alleged by Feith's office.
From these sources, the report added, "the terms the Intelligence
Community used to describe the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida
were validated, [namely] 'no conclusive signs,' and 'direct
cooperation... has not been established.' "
Zarqawi, whom Cheney depicted yesterday as an agent of al-Qaeda in Iraq
before the war, was not then an al-Qaeda member but was the leader of
an unaffiliated terrorist group who occasionally associated with
al-Qaeda adherents, according to several intelligence analysts. He
publicly allied himself with al-Qaeda in early 2004, after the U.S.
invasion.
Staff writer Dafna Linzer and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed
to this report.
© 2007 The Washington Post
- ------------------------------
Message: 16
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:26:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] A Surge of Trouble for Army: Bush Orders 12,000 More
Troops
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062026....@viola.tamara-b.org>
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NBC News - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17971410/
12,000 more Guard may go to Iraq
Deployment order planned to lessen surge's strain on stretched-thin Army
By Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News and Alex Johnson of msnbc.com.
WASHINGTON - Coming on the heels of a controversial “surge†of 21,000
U.S. troops that has stretched the Army thin, the Defense Department is
preparing to send an additional 12,000 National Guard combat forces to
Iraq and Afghanistan, defense officials told NBC News on Thursday.
The troops will come from four Guard combat brigades in different
states, the officials told NBC News’ chief Pentagon correspondent, Jim
Miklaszewski. They said papers ordering the deployment, which would run
for one year beginning in early 2008, were awaiting Defense Secretary
Robert Gates’ signature.
The deployment is sure to ignite a firestorm on Capitol Hill, where
Democrats in Congress are maneuvering to scale back the U.S. commitment
in Iraq. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is pushing a
proposal to end most spending on the war in 2008, limiting it to
targeted operations against al-Qaida, training for Iraqi troops and
protection for U.S. forces.
“I think this was all concealed until we got through the election,â€
said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, a military analyst for NBC
News. “There’s no way to sustain the current rate of deployments
without calling up probably nine National Guard brigades in the coming
year for involuntary second tours.â€
Gates did not mention the Guard deployment in a news conference
Thursday at the Pentagon. Earlier this year, he revised Pentagon
regulations to authorize more frequent Guard deployments to take some
of the burden off the Army.
Surge timetable could be extended
Gates indicated Thursday that defense planners expected the U.S.
military commitment to last well beyond the timetable of early next
year that was put forth in the Pentagon’s arguments to send more than
20,000 regular Army troops to help quiet sectarian violence. That
so-called surge of troops created intense opposition among Democrats
and some Republicans in Congress early in the year.
“The truth is, I think people don’t know right now how long this will
last,†he said. “The thinking of those involved in the process was that
it would be a period of months, not a period of years or a year and a
half or something like that."
In a radio interview Wednesday, Gates warned that limiting the
administration could lead to “ethnic cleansing.â€
“What we do know is if Baghdad is in flames and the whole city is
engulfed in violence, the prospects for a political solution are almost
non-existent,†he said in an interview with syndicated radio host Laura
Ingraham.
Army under heavy pressure
The grinding pace of the war is clearly wearing down the Army.
Three Army combat brigades have just been ordered back into Iraq less
than a year after they left, and two brigades that were headed for Iraq
were unable to take their customary four weeks of desert training at
Fort Irwin, Calif.
Defense officials said the quick turnaround could hurt overall
readiness by leaving those troops unprepared for other missions.
“When you only have one year or less between deployments, instead of
the two that you would like to have, you then do not train to what we
call full spectrum,†said Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff.
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive
© 2007 MSNBC.com
- ------------------------------
Message: 17
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:27:41 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] 8 US, 4 Brit Troops Die in Scattered Iraq Attacks
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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The Washington Post - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/05/AR2007040500251_pf.html
Eight U.S., Four British Soldiers Die in Scattered Attacks in Iraq
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
BAGHDAD, April 5 -- Eight U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq in
shootings and bombings over the past three days, and four British
soldiers and an interpreter died in an attack Thursday in the southern
city of Basra, according to American and British officials.
Also Thursday, a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter carrying nine people
made a hard landing south of Baghdad. Four of the passengers were
injured, including two treated for minor smoke inhalation, said Lt.
Col. Josslyn Aberle, a U.S. military spokeswoman in Iraq. An
investigation had not determined whether the Black Hawk had been shot
at or experienced other difficulties, she said.
The U.S. military deaths, from roadside bombs and small-arms fire, were
scattered in and around Baghdad. One U.S. soldier was shot to death
Tuesday while patrolling in eastern Baghdad, parts of which are
strongholds for Shiite militiamen. Another soldier was killed and a
third was wounded that day in small-arms fire while on foot patrol in
the southern outskirts of Baghdad.
Four soldiers were killed and four others were wounded Wednesday in two
roadside bomb attacks, one in Baghdad and one on the northern outskirts
of the city, the military said. Another soldier died from gunfire while
on a reconnaissance patrol in eastern Baghdad.
An eighth soldier was killed and two were injured when a roadside bomb
exploded near their vehicle in Diyala province, north of Baghdad.
The rate at which U.S. service members are dying in Iraq has remained
fairly constant in recent months, even with heightened security
measures imposed by the Baghdad security plan and an influx of
thousands of troops to the capital. At least 80 U.S. troops were killed
in each of the first three months of this year, while 18 Americans were
killed in the first four days of April, according to Iraq Coalition
Casualty Count, an independent Web site.
The British soldiers killed Thursday were traveling in a Warrior
infantry vehicle at 2:20 a.m. in a rural area west of Basra, in
southern Iraq, when their patrol was hit by a roadside bomb,
rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, said Lt. Col. Kevin
Stratford-Wright, a British military spokesman. The unit had fought off
an earlier attack, probably killing at least one gunman, he said.
Five of the eight people in the vehicle were killed in the bombing, he
said, and one was seriously injured. British authorities were trying to
determine the nationality of the slain interpreter.
Two other British soldiers were shot to death earlier this week,
raising to 140 the number of British soldiers who have died in Iraq
since the March 2003 invasion.
"Clearly we're all very upset and grieving four of our soldiers,"
Stratford-Wright said. "But whatever we might feel and grieve as
individuals, we just have to get on with the job we have been given."
The night mission was a routine patrol intended to disrupt the activity
of the Shiite militiamen who "plague our existence and indeed the
existence of the Basra residents," Stratford-Wright said. "We're
constantly after these people."
In the restive province of Anbar in western Iraq, U.S.-led troops
killed three civilians -- a child, a man and a woman -- while
responding to an attack in the violent provincial capital of Ramadi
late Tuesday night, said 1st Lt. Shawn Mercer, a U.S. military
spokesman.
After U.S. troops came under fire, American aircraft attacked five
buildings with "precision guided munitions," he said. In addition to
the three deaths, one person identified as an "enemy fighter" was
wounded and captured, Mercer said.
Across Baghdad, police found the bodies of 10 people. All were
handcuffed and had been shot in the head and the chest, according to
Brig. Sultan Salman Sultan of the Interior Ministry.
Also Thursday, the body of Khamail Khalaf, an Iraqi journalist for
Radio Free Iraq, was found in western Baghdad, according to a statement
from her employer, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Khalaf, who
disappeared Tuesday, had been shot in the head, officials said. The
mother of three girls had worked for Radio Free Iraq since 2004,
reporting on social and cultural life in the country, the statement
said.
At least 97 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the start of the
war; 76 were Iraqi citizens, according to the Committee to Protect
Journalists.
[Other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.]
© 2007 The Washington Post
- ------------------------------
Message: 18
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:28:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Iraq: Deadly days for British, US forces
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062028....@viola.tamara-b.org>
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LosAngeles Times via San Francisco Chronicle - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/06/MNGJOP41SL1.DTL
Deadly days for British, U.S. forces
by Alexandra Zavis
Los Angeles Times
(04-06) 04:00 PDT Baghdad -- Four British soldiers and a civilian
translator were killed in an ambush Thursday and the U.S. military
announced the deaths of eight of its soldiers in an unusually bloody 48
hours for Western forces in Iraq.
At least 38 Iraqis also were found slain Thursday in bomb blasts,
shellings, gunfire and execution-style killings. They included two
television journalists and a 3-year-old boy felled by a sniper's bullet
as he sat in his grandfather's lap, police said.
A U.S. helicopter, meanwhile, crashed south of Baghdad, injuring four
of the nine people aboard, the military said. The cause of the incident
and type of aircraft were not immediately announced.
The British troops were searching for a weapons cache in downtown Basra
before dawn Thursday when they were attacked with rocket-propelled
grenades and small-arms fire, said Lt. Col. Kevin Stratford-Wright, a
spokesman in the southern port city.
The troops repelled the attack and believed at least one of their
assailants was killed, he said.
As they returned to base, the troops were hit by the blast from a
roadside bomb and came under fire on the western side of the city. The
bomb ripped through a Warrior fighting vehicle, killing five occupants
and seriously injuring a sixth, Stratford-Wright said.
It was the deadliest assault on British forces since Nov. 12, when four
military personnel were killed on a patrol boat on the Shatt al-Arab
waterway.
Most of the U.S. casualties in recent days occurred in Baghdad. Four
U.S. soldiers were killed and four injured in two separate bombings
Wednesday in Baghdad, the military said. Another was shot and killed
during a reconnaissance mission that day. And two were killed Tuesday
by small-arms fire while patrolling different parts of the city.
On Thursday, a U.S. soldier was killed when a roadside bomb hit his
vehicle in Diyala province, east of Baghdad, the military said.
In Thursday's worst attack, gunmen overran a remote Iraqi army post
near Badush prison, killing all 10 soldiers at the site near the
northern city of Mosul.
A suicide bomber drove a trash truck packed with explosives into a
blast wall blocking the Baghdad street Thursday where a military
intelligence building and a television station belonging to a major
Sunni political party are located, police said. At least three people
were killed.
- ------------------------------
Message: 19
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:29:33 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Republican Lawmaker Meets Syria's Assad
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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Reuters - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSOWE55472320070406?feedType=RSS
Republican lawmaker meets Syria's Assad
DAMASCUS (Reuters) - President Bashar al-Assad met a Republican member
of the U.S. Congress on Thursday, a day after Democrat House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi ended a visit to Syria that was criticized by the White
House.
The official news agency said the meeting between Assad and Darrell
Issa, a member of the House Committee on Intelligence, discussed ways
to improve relations between Washington and Damascus.
"It is difficult to isolate Syria which is pivotal to finding solutions
to all issues in the region," the Syrian agency quoted Assad as saying.
Issa, who is of Lebanese descent, also met Syrian Foreign Minister
Walid al-Moualem.
More than a dozen U.S. lawmakers have visited Damascus in the last four
months and met Assad after the Iraq Study Group recommended to
Republican President George W. Bush engaging with Damascus and Iran to
help stabilize Iraq.
Pelosi urged Assad on Wednesday to end alleged Syrian support to rebels
in Iraq and to use its influence with the Palestinian group Hamas.
Pelosi said holding a dialogue with the secular Syrian leader, whom the
Bush administration has been trying to isolate, was in the U.S.
interests.
The United States imposed sanctions on Syria in 2004, mainly for its
support for Lebanon's Hezbollah and Hamas. Syria says the two groups
are legitimate movements with broad domestic support resisting Israeli
occupation.
Relations between Damascus and Washington further worsened after the
2005 assassination of former Lebanese premier Rafik al-Hariri in
Beirut. A United Nations inquiry implicated Lebanese and Syrian
security officials in the assassination.
Damascus denies involvement.
© Reuters 2006.
- ------------------------------
Message: 20
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:30:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Afghanistan: Karzai admits meetings with Taliban
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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AP via MSNBC - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17980166/
Karzai admits meetings with Taliban
In talks, he urged militants to lay down weapons and join government
The Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai said Friday
he met with Taliban militants in attempts to bring peace to the country
and urged supporters of the fundamentalist militia to lay down their
weapons.
"We have had representatives from the Taliban meeting with different
bodies of Afghan government for a long time," Karzai told a news
conference in Kabul. "I have had some Taliban coming to speak to me as
well," he said.
Karzai did not disclose any details of these meetings, or indicate if
they included talks with senior militant leaders.
Afghan Taliban ‘sons of soil’
Hundreds of former members of the hardline Taliban regime have
reconciled with the government since they were ousted from power in the
U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
But senior rebels leaders have refused to hold talks, and thousands
more fighters have picked up guns and joined a bloody insurgency,
particularly in the country's south and east, which last year alone
left some 4,000 people, mainly militants, dead.
Karzai urged Afghan Taliban to lay down weapons and join his
government, but ruled out any deals with foreign militants.
"Afghan Taliban are always welcome, they belong to this country ...
they are the sons of this soil," Karzai said. "As they repent, as they
regret, as they want to come back to their own country, they are
welcome."
But the foreign militants — an apparent reference to militants from
neighboring countries such as Pakistan — "should be destroyed," he said.
"They are destroying our lives, killing our people, they are not
welcome and there will be no talks with them, " Karzai said.
The Afghan leader often accuses Pakistan of not only providing
sanctuary for the Taliban, but guiding the rebels in an attempt to
wield influence over Afghanistan — charges denied by Pakistani
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in its war on terror.
Defends controversial prisoner swap
Karzai defended last month's release by Afghan authorities of five
Taliban militants in exchange for a kidnapped Italian journalist,
saying the case was threatening Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi's
government.
However, he ruled out further prisoner swaps.
Daniele Mastrogiacomo, of Italian daily La Repubblica, along with an
Afghan translator and a driver, were kidnapped in southern Helmand
province on March 5. The driver was beheaded and the translator, Ajmal
Nashqbandi, is still being held.
"The Italian prime minister called me several times and asked for
cooperation from our side," Karzai said. "The Italian government was
facing collapse," Karzai said.
"For (the sake) of all the help from the Italian people, even though we
knew what this action will cause, we had to do it," Karzai said of the
exchange.
Italy has some 1,800 troops in western Afghanistan as part of the
NATO-led security force, and is also funding construction of a key road
road to link the central province of Bamiyan with Kabul.
The prisoner swap that secured Mastrogiacomo's March 19 release has
been criticised by Afghan lawmakers and foreigners working in
Afghanistan as an incentive for more militant kidnappings.
Karzai ruled out another swap to secure the freedom of two French
workers with the aid group Terre d'Enfance and three Afghans who were
abducted in southwestern Afghanistan on Tuesday
"No, that is not possible," he said.
© 2007 The Associated Press.
- ------------------------------
Message: 21
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:31:20 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Bush's Bluster on Iran Was Cover for Direct Talks
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062031....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
IPS via Electronic Iraq - Apr 6, 2007
http://electroniciraq.net/news/printer2975.shtml
Bush's Bluster on Iran Was Cover for Direct Talks
by Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON (IPS) - When the George W. Bush administration launched a
high-profile campaign in January and February accusing Iran of
exporting armor-piercing bombs to Shiite militias in Iraq, seizing
Iranian officials in Iraq, threatening cross-border raids against Iran
and sending a second carrier battle group into the Gulf, it seemed that
it was entering a much more aggressive phase of Middle East policy.
A few weeks later, however, it is apparent that the administration's
earlier bluster was primarily for domestic political purposes -- to
reduce the sense that the administration had lost control over Iraq and
the Middle East and to provide political cover for a move to open
direct talks with Iran.
The Bush administration sought such direct talks with Iran because its
need for Iranian cooperation to help resolve the Sunni-Shiite civil war
in Iraq had become increasingly acute.
The shift toward talking with Iran began in late February, when the
Bush administration reversed its earlier position of refusing to
participate in any talks with Iran until it agreed to suspend its
uranium enrichment program. It agreed to participate in a regional
security conference organized by the Iraqi government in which Iran
would also participate.
After that decision was announced, an unnamed "senior administration
official" told the New York Times that the State Department was pushing
for "ways to talk to Iran and Syria" but that the administration "did
not want to appear to be talking to either country from a position of
weakness".
In the past two weeks, the Bush administration has signaled its keen
interest in talks with Iran by its failure to make an issue of the
Iranian seizure of 15 British sailors and marines in what the British
said was Iraqi territorial waters on Mar. 21. In contrast to its
seemingly confrontational approach to Iran in January and February, the
administration chose not to exploit the incident to increase tensions.
On Mar. 27, Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave a speech on Middle East
policy that failed to make any reference to the issue but did hint
strongly at a desire for talks with Iran.
In the speech, Gates, called the regional security talks in Baghdad "a
good start toward improved cooperation," and added that the United
States is "open to higher level exchanges."
In what appeared to be a rationale for diplomatic engagement with Iran
on Iraq, Gates insisted that Iran, like other neighboring countries, is
"invested and involved to some degree or another" in Iraq. He said Iran
and Syria needed to "play a constructive role going forward, even if
they haven't done so in the past" and referred in particular to
"encouraging political reconciliation and a reduction in violence
within Iraq."
Gates not only didn't bring up the Iranian detention of British
military personnel, but also failed to mention the issue of alleged
Iranian supply of weapons to Shiite militias. A month earlier, State
Department spokesman Sean McCormack had said those weapons would be
"certainly be at the top of our list" in any meetings attended by Iran.
The Bush White House exercised similar restraint on the British-Iranian
conflict in the Gulf for 10 days. The White House did not comment on
the issue until Bush responded to a question from reporters at Camp
David on Mar. 31 by calling for the immediate and unconditional release
of the British sailors and marines.
But Bush refused to suggest what the British should do about it, much
less what he would do if it were U.S. military personnel captured by
the Iranians. And the administration continued to avoid any statement
that could be interpreted as raising tensions with Iran right up to the
time the sailors were released.
The new interest in talks with Iran stands in stark contrast with the
administration's public attitude of dismissal of the value of such
talks with Iran in late 2006 and early 2007. In an interview with the
Washington Post editorial board on Dec. 14, Rice suggested that talks
with Iran would make no difference to Iranian policy toward Iraq.
"[I]f Iran and Syria... have decided that it's in their interest to
have an Iraq that is more stable than the one now, " she said, "I
assume they'll act. I assume they'll do it. And that we aren't the ones
who have to tell them to do it."
Rice further argued that the price of getting Iranian help on Iraq
through negotiations would be "an Iranian nuclear weapon", and
insisted, "That's not a price that is worth paying."
Administration officials have suggested that the shift was made
possible because of a new bargaining situation created by Washington's
tough policies introduced in January. That was the line that Defense
Secretary Gates took in January when he asserted that the United States
had to strike a more aggressive posture in order to have successful
talks with Iran.
In talking with reporters Jan. 17 on a trip to the Middle East, he
explained that without that leverage gained through such a posture, the
administration would be the "supplicant" asking Iran to "stop doing x,
y and z."
That was also the explanation provided by the anonymous official to the
Times last month. "By ratcheting up the confrontational rhetoric in
recent weeks," the official was reported to have argued, "the United
States appears to be more in control."
As applied to Iranian leaders, that argument makes little sense. It is
difficult to imagine that Bush administration policymakers believed
that its new tough line, even with the arrival of a second aircraft
carrier, would suddenly cause Iran's leaders to see the United States
as "in control" of the U.S.-Iran relationship.
If "Bush" is substituted for "the United States", however, the
explanation does make sense. By adopting the confrontational stance of
January and February, Bush apparently hoped to create the appearance at
home that he was more in control of the issue of Iraq.
The White House also calculated that a round of tough talk would make
it politically easier to enter into talks with Iran later on. The main
audience for the accusations and ostentatious threats against Tehran,
therefore, was not the Iranians but domestic opinion.
It is not clear that the White House is prepared yet for serious
diplomatic give and take with Iran. Administration officials hope the
two U.S. carrier battle groups in the Gulf, along with accompanying
moves preparing for war, will intimidate the Iranians, and that the
financial squeeze will also exert pressure on Tehran.
Nevertheless, Bush's blustering on Iran now looks much more like a
cover for a decision to reverse his earlier policy of disdaining the
need for an understanding with Iran. The combination of bluster and
quiet acceptance of moves toward agreement recalls Richard Nixon's
Christmas bombing of Hanoi in 1972, which was presented to the U.S.
public as a great victory over the North Vietnamese, even as Nixon and
Henry Kissinger were preparing to make the key concessions demanded by
Hanoi in the final round of peace negotiations.
According to a report last December by Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan
Landay of McClatchy newspapers, Bush met several times with Kissinger
in the months before raising tensions with Tehran in January. He hoped
to approximate Nixon's feat of maintaining an image of being "in
control" even as he makes a move toward diplomatic agreement with Iran.
All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2007).
- ------------------------------
Message: 22
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:32:22 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Pakistan faces suicide bomb call
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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BBC News - Apr 6, 2007
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6532825.stm
Islamabad faces suicide bomb call
The head of a radical mosque in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, has
threatened to use suicide bomb attacks against the government.
Maulana Abdul Aziz made his defiant call to thousands of followers
during Friday prayers.
The government is facing calls to clamp down on the activites of
students in two madrassas attached to the mosque.
If the government does take action, "our last resort will be suicide
bombings", Mr Aziz declared.
He also demanded that the government close down Islamabad's video shops
and brothels within one month.
The Taleban-style activity of Mr Aziz's followers in the capital has
caused outrage among human rights activists.
Last week female students from a madrassa that is part of Mr Aziz's Lal
Masjid (red mosque) complex abducted a woman they accused of running a
brothel, holding her captive for two days.
Some of the students are also staging an armed occupation of a
children's library in the capital.
The government says it hopes to resolve its differences by peaceful
means.
'Last resort'
"If the government says it will launch an operation against us as a
last resort, our last resort will be suicide bombings," Mr Aziz told
his supporters.
"What is our way?" he asked them, the Associated Press news agency
reports.
The students called back, "Jihad, jihad (holy war)".
"I give a deadline of one month to the government to close brothels and
video shops," Mr Aziz said.
"If the government fails we will take action."
Outside the mosque, a group of supporters set fire to a pile of videos
and CDs.
Mr Aziz also said he had set up a Sharia law court at the mosque, made
up of 10 clerics.
'Bigoted forces'
On Thursday hundreds of human rights activists staged a protest calling
for action against activities of the two madrassas - one for men, one
for women - attached to the mosque.
They said the madrassa students were "harassing and terrorising
ordinary citizens of Pakistan in the name of Islam".
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and a dozen non-governmental
organisations urged people to "rise against these extremist religious
bigoted forces and secure the future of the present and future
generations".
The mosque has long been a problem for the capital city administration
and Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf.
It has often criticised his policies in the "war on terror" and called
for Islamic law to be enforced in Pakistan.
© BBC MMVII
- ------------------------------
Message: 23
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:32:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Taliban seize southern Afghanistan district
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062032....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
AFP - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070406174703.kxd1s1x3.html
Taliban seize southern Afghan district
KABUL (AFP) - Taliban rebels seized control of a district in the south
of Afghanistan Friday, officials said, as more than 1,000 ISAF and
Afghan soldiers attacked a Taliban stronghold.
The Taliban move came as a suicide bomber in a taxi killed six people
near the national parliament in Kabul.
President Hamid Karzai meanwhile said he had met with members of the
Taliban movement -- which is leading a deadly insurgency five years
after being toppled by US-led forces -- to bring reconciliation to his
country.
Karzai said Taliban representatives had been regularly meeting with
government bodies, adding: "I've had some Taliban coming to speak to me
as well, so this process has been there for a long time."
But he ruled out talks with Taliban supremo Mullah Mohammad Omar, a
close ally of Al-Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, or with foreign militants.
Hours before he spoke, 100 Taliban militants overran Khak Afghan
district in the troubled Zabul province, the latest of several rebel
attempts to exert control in parts of southern and western Afghanistan.
Police made a "tactical" withdrawal after insurgents attacked the
headquarters of the mountainous district from several directions at
once, said Ghulam Shah Alikhil, a spokesmen for the provincial governor.
There were no immediate plans in place to retake the area, he said.
The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has
tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan, including US and Romanian
soldiers in Zabul, said it was checking the information.
The Taliban have also occupied other districts in Afghanistan this
year. In most cases, the rebels have been driven out after a short time.
As part of the ISAF "Operation Achilles" to root out Taliban in the
south of Afghanistan, mainly Helmand, more than a 1,000 British,
American, Dutch, Canadian, Danish, Estonian and Afghan troops launched
an assault on positions close the district of Sangin Wednesday,
according to an ISAF statement Friday.
"Over the course of the last two days, we have reduced the enemy's
ability to destabilise the government of Afghanistan," said Dutch Major
General Ton van Loon.
"By doing so we are one step closer to creating a secure, stable and
prosperous environment in which reconstruction and development can take
place."
In Kabul, a suicide bomber struck a few hundred metres (yards) from the
parliament building killing five people including a policeman, the
city's criminal investigation police chief General Alishah Paktiawal
told AFP.
"It was a suicide bombing... The bomber was driving a yellow and white
taxi," Paktiawal said. He said it was unclear if the attacker was
targeting parliament but added that the device may have exploded
prematurely.
The powerful blast was the third suicide attack in the heavily-secured
capital this year. Such bombings have become common in insurgency-hit
southern Afghanistan but have previously been rare in Kabul.
Police also said they were still searching for two missing French aid
workers and their three Afghan colleagues after the Taliban said its
fighters had kidnapped them on Tuesday in southwestern Nimroz province.
The two French nationals are from the organisation Terre d'Enfance (A
World for Our Children).
Karzai however pledged to make no more hostage deals, saying that one
he made last month to free an Italian journalist was because the
Italian government -- which has 1,800 troops in Afghanistan -- could
have collapsed.
Karzai ordered the release of five Taliban prisoners, including some
high-profile figures, in March in the controversial trade which
resulted in the freedom of kidnapped Italian reporter Daniele
Mastrogiacomo.
"It was an extraordinary situation and won't be repeated again," he
said. "No more deals with no one and with no other country."
Separately on Friday the Taliban killed five security guards in an
attack on a construction company working on a highway near Qalat, the
capital of Zabul province, officials said.
- ------------------------------
Message: 24
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:33:29 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Wolfowitz Accused of Nepotism at World Bank
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062033....@viola.tamara-b.org>
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InterPress Service - Apr 5, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37241
Wolfowitz Accused of Nepotism at World Bank
by Emad Mekay
WASHINGTON, Apr 5 (IPS) - A controversial raise for a World Bank
employee who has been romantically involved with the Bank's President
Paul Wolfowitz was not the work of the Bank's Ethics Committee, as
originally alleged by Wolfowitz's office, according to the watchdog
group that leaked the information.
Members of the Ethics Committee of the Board, the relevant body that
would have approved the raise, which has triggered allegations of
nepotism at the Bank's highest levels, say that they knew nothing of
the salary hike, according to the Washington-based Government
Accountability Project, a whistleblower protection organisation.
The new revelation appears to be at odds with the line maintained by
officials in Wolfowitz's office, who have in interviews with the
Washington Post and the Financial Times, two newspapers that reported
on the issue, claimed that the raise was approved by the board.
"Inside sources from the Bank have stated unequivocally that this was
not the case, that board members only learned of the raise from news
reports, and that the members are furious," said GAP.
"There's a question of fact here," Beatrice Edwards of GAP told IPS.
"It was a personnel action that was taken without a consultation with
the board."
So far, the Bank's management has been unable to clarify who proposed
and approved the irregular promotion and subsequent raise for Shaha
Riza, a Bank employee in the external relations department, and
Wolfowitz's long-time girlfriend.
Wolfowitz's office referred IPS queries to the Bank's media department,
which did not return phone calls for comment on Thursday.
The controversy has sent ripples through the institution's Washington
headquarters, where some staff have long been discontented with how
Wolfowitz, a former U.S. deputy secretary of defence and a central
advocate of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, has managed the Bank since he
came to office in July 2005.
News of the pay raise was first broken last year by Ward Harkavy, who
blogs for the Village Voice newspaper in New York, but the story only
gained traction last week after the Washington Post used information
from GAP to report on the raise.
Payroll data obtained from the World Bank and made public Thursday by
GAP show that Riza, a communications officer in the Bank's Middle East
Office, who is currently working in an external assignment at the U.S.
State Department, received a 47,300 dollar, or 35.5 percent, raise to
180,000 dollars after Wolfowitz arrived.
This raise was followed last year by another 13,590 dollar raise, or
about 7.5 percent, to a total salary of 193,590 dollars.
"If World Bank staff rules had been respected, she was not to receive
percentage increases greater than 12 percent and 3.7 percent,
respectively. Her current salary of 193,590 dollars is about seven
thousand dollars more than what [U.S.] Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice earns," GAP said in the statement Thursday.
An email obtained by GAP and seen by IPS indicates that the Bank's
staff is not pleased with the news.
"This case sends the message to staff that the rules apply to everyone
except those associated with the most senior levels of management,"
said the email, sent from the Staff Association to all employees on
Tuesday. It went on to appeal to senior management and the Board to
probe the controversy and "clarify what appear to be violations of
staff rules in favour of a staff member closely associated with the
president."
The Staff Association says it has not been able to determine who drew
up and approved the terms of the external assignment but has
established that "they are grossly out of line with the staff rules."
"We call upon senior management and the Board to address this issue:
explain how/why the staff rules were bent in this case, take steps to
ensure compliance with the staff rules with regard to Ms. Riza and set
in place a system that will ensure (and allow verification) that staff
rules are consistently applied," it said.
The episode is particularly embarrassing because Wolfowitz has
championed the cause of fighting corruption at the Bank and within its
projects.
"It's ironic that Mr. Wolfowitz lectures developing countries about
good governance and fighting corruption, while winking at an irregular
promotion and overly generous pay increases to a partner," said
Edwards, who is GAP's international director.
A source at the Bank says that many staff members are also doubly upset
by how Wolfowitz has reacted to the situation.
"Wolfowitz is much, much more concerned about who leaked the
information than about how to rectify the situation. He's just
furious," said the source inside the Bank who wished to remain
unidentified.
(END/2007)
- ------------------------------
Message: 25
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:34:26 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Booming Economy: The New Suburban Poverty
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
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The Nation - Apr 23, 2007 issue
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20070423&s=press
The New Suburban Poverty
by EYAL PRESS
Rockingham County, North Carolina, has never been known for its
opulence, but until recently most residents would not have hesitated to
describe it as comfortably middle class. For several decades the
county, a rectangular block of land in the north central part of the
state, owed its prosperity to textile mills and tobacco plants,
industries that weren't always friendly to unions but that nevertheless
furnished the local workforce with jobs that paid enough to raise a
family and buy a nice house somewhere.
Among those to do so was Johnny Price, a 44-year-old African-American
who lives in a ranch house with green shutters on a street called
Sparrow in a leafy residential subdivision on the outskirts of the town
of Eden. Two towering oak trees dominate Price's front lawn. In his
driveway sits a navy blue station wagon. By the standards of some newly
built suburbs, the setup is modest, but for Price, the youngest of ten
children whose father died when he was 6 and whose mother worked as a
domestic servant, it's a testament to the rewards of hard work and
perseverance, values he's tried to instill in his teenage son and
daughter, who have lived with him since he and his wife divorced.
Lately this has gotten more challenging. A year ago Price lost the job
he'd held for nineteen years in company-wide layoffs at Unified, a
textile manufacturer. He's now struggling to make do on $1,168 in
monthly unemployment benefits and, like many people in Rockingham
County, which has been ravaged by plant closings in recent years,
wondering how long he'll be able to continue paying his mortgage.
Stories of downward mobility in America's suburbs have not exactly
cluttered the headlines over the past decade. Gated communities of
dream homes, mansions ringed by man-made lakes and glass-cube office
parks: These are the images typically evoked by the posh, supersized
subdivisions built during the 1990s technology boom. Low-wage jobs,
houses under foreclosure, families unable to afford food and medical
care are not. But venture beyond the city limits of any major
metropolitan area today, and you will encounter these things, in forms
less concentrated--and therefore less visible--than in the more
blighted pockets of our cities perhaps, but with growing frequency all
the same. In the three counties surrounding Greensboro, North Carolina,
the city half an hour south of where Johnny Price lives, the poverty
rate has surged in recent years. It now stands at 14.4 percent, only
slightly below the level in New Orleans.
Greensboro, it turns out, is not alone. Last December the Brookings
Institution published a report showing that from Las Vegas to Boise to
Houston, suburban poverty has been growing over the past seven years,
in some places slowly, in others by as much as 33 percent. "The
enduring social and fiscal challenges for cities that stem from high
poverty are increasingly shared by their suburbs," the report
concludes. It's a problem some may assume is confined to the ragged
fringes of so-called "inner ring" suburbs that directly border cities,
places where the housing stock is older and from which many wealthier
residents long ago departed. But this isn't the case. "Overall...first
suburbs did not bear the brunt of increasing suburban poverty in the
early 2000s," notes the Brookings report, which found that economic
distress has spread to "second-tier suburbs and 'exurbs'" as well.
The result is a historic milestone that has gone strangely ignored: For
the first time ever, more poor Americans live in the suburbs than in
all our cities combined.
One reason this shift may not have sunk into public consciousness is
that for as long as suburbs have existed, Americans have tended to
envision them as pristine sanctuaries where people go to escape
brushing shoulders with the poor. The most familiar historical
example--much lamented by a generation of progressives who came to
associate the migration to suburbs with racial backlash and urban
decline--is the mass exodus of middle-class white ethnics from the
nation's central cities, which accelerated in the wake of the riots and
social unrest of the 1960s. In more recent years, it's often assumed,
the forces fueling the growth of suburbs have only made things
worse--the social landscape more segregated, the sprawl more extreme,
the gap increasingly vast between people who rarely set foot in cities
and those who rarely leave them.
In fact, however, the gentrification of many urban neighborhoods, from
Brooklyn to San Francisco to Washington, has forced many working-class
residents out. In a reversal of the classic migration story, many of
these displaced residents have fled to the suburbs, lured in part by
the growing pool of mostly low-wage jobs there--cleaning homes, mowing
lawns, staffing restaurants, strip malls and office plazas. Alan
Berube, co-author of the Brookings Institution study, says the
"decentralization of low-wage employment" is one of the main factors
driving suburban poverty rates up.
In some counties, a lot of those jobs are falling to immigrants, who
are increasingly heading straight to the suburbs rather than to cities
in search of employment. In his 2004 book On Paradise Drive, David
Brooks presents a sunny portrait of the gorgeous mosaic that the influx
of foreigners into formerly lily-white subdivisions has wrought. "Now
you'll see little Taiwanese girls in the figure-skating clinics,
Ukrainian boys learning to pitch," he writes.
What you'll also see are people like the day laborers who gather every
morning in the parking lots of the Home Depots in Nassau County, Long
Island, where the median family income is $87,558 and the overall
poverty rate is fairly low, but where the demand for food stamps has
increased by 40 percent since 2003. Although the median hourly wage for
the roofing and construction jobs that day laborers land is $10 an
hour, many don't see a penny of this: A study last year by researchers
at UCLA found that nearly half experience wage theft. A worker from
Mexico I spoke with on a frigid day in February said he was owed $400
for some plumbing he'd done recently. Like most of the other men around
him, he wore a hooded sweatshirt rather than a coat and cupped his
fingers around his mouth to warm his bare hands, proper winter apparel
evidently being an unaffordable luxury. Because the work is seasonal
and sporadic, few day laborers earn more than $15,000 a year. More than
half of those injured on the job don't receive the medical care they
need.
Other immigrants on Long Island ply trades whose wages and hours call
to mind certain features of urban sweatshops, save that the
exploitation, like so much else in suburbia, is more hidden and
dispersed. "We did a survey of domestic workers here and found that
people were working seventy-hour weeks and getting, on average, $4.03
an hour," said Nadia Marin-Molina, director of an immigrants' rights
organization called the Workplace Project, in Nassau County. Not long
ago, three workers dropped by her office from a nearby restaurant to
report they'd been getting $20 for twelve-hour shifts, well below the
minimum wage even after factoring in tips. At a deli in the town center
of Garden City, an affluent enclave of sprawling homes and fancy shops
just down the road from the Workplace Project's modest headquarters,
several others were fired simply for demanding to be paid on the books.
Last year, the Workplace Project helped immigrants in Nassau County
recuperate $143,849 in back wages, some from contractors who paid them
with checks that bounced, others from companies like Popeyes and
D'Angelo Pizzeria that didn't compensate them for overtime.
That landing a service job hardly guarantees earning an adequate income
would not come as news to former factory workers in North Carolina.
Johnny Price is currently enrolled in courses at Rockingham Community
College, funded under the Trade Adjustment Act, in the hope of becoming
an accountant. He told me there's no way he could keep up with his $700
mortgage payments and support his kids working as a clerk in a place
like Wal-Mart, a major employer with two new stores in the area.
Price used to make $15 an hour, with health benefits and vacation days.
What he's hoping to avoid is the fate of people like Jodi Wilmouth,
whom I met at the Rockingham County Red Cross, which opened a food
pantry several years ago in a low-slung brick building in Eden.
Wilmouth earns $6.25 an hour as a cashier at a local department store
called Belk, which she said is not enough to cover her basic expenses.
On the day she dropped by, President Bush was visiting a Caterpillar
plant in Peoria, Illinois. He later said that in today's economy
"workers are making more money."
Ada Wells, who works at the food pantry, offered a different view.
"What we have are the working poor," said Wells, another former textile
employee. "When I left my factory in 1999, the lowest-paid workers made
$9 an hour, with insurance and vacation days. Now we have people who
can't pay their electricity bills on the wages they earn."
There are certain comparative advantages to being poor in a place other
than inner-city Cleveland or Detroit. Whatever else he may fear, Price
doesn't have to worry about his children growing up on a street strewn
with crack vials and gang graffiti--the one he lives on has manicured
lawns and driveways with basketball hoops. The peculiar toxicity of
urban poverty, many scholars believe, rests in its intense
concentration, the welter of enmeshed problems that fuel crime,
spiraling dropout rates and an air of hopelessness that leeches into
every aspect of neighborhood life.
But the suburbs also have their disadvantages, among them the fact that
getting anywhere generally requires a car. There's no public
transportation system in most outlying suburban areas, which is why the
people who show up at the food pantry at the Red Cross in Rockingham
County often carpool to get there, cramming one person each from four
or five families into a single vehicle to save gas. Then, too, the
newness of suburban poverty means in many towns there's a dearth of
social service agencies to offer help. Nearly 7,000 people showed up at
the food pantry last year, a sevenfold increase from 2000. "It's
overwhelming," said Janna Nowell, the facility's director. The day
before I visited, the pantry ran out of food, a problem that's become
familiar in many suburban locales. "There's a growing spatial gap
between the providers and the people in need," says Alan Berube.
"Public hospitals, nutrition assistance programs--most of these things
are still overwhelmingly urban. You see small-scale operations in
suburbs getting inundated. They just can't deal with the demand."
An even more vexing challenge is finding an affordable place to live,
since most of the low-income, subsidized housing in America was built
in cities. Where do indigent people in the suburbs go? In North
Carolina, among the few options are places like the slate-gray trailer
that 62-year-old Barbara Hall now calls home. She used to live in a
four-bedroom ranch house with her husband and kids. That was before she
got divorced and lost her job. "It's humiliating," says Hall, who has
long silver hair, clear blue eyes and a chronic bad back that requires
her to take medication she can't currently afford.
There are, of course, more fortunate people in the suburbs whose houses
have doubled and tripled in size in recent years--tech workers in the
booming area surrounding North Carolina's research triangle, for
example. But since 1998, housing foreclosures in North Carolina have
nearly tripled.
The trend extends beyond the South--there were 1.2 million foreclosures
across the country in 2006, a 42 percent increase from the previous
year--and is among the indications that the number of people under
economic duress in many suburbs far exceeds the percentage that is
officially poor.
Compared with Barbara Hall, who is unemployed and surviving on
disability checks, Rosa Melara, who lives in Montgomery County,
Maryland, a suburban area adjacent to Washington, is doing well. Melara
works in a nail salon and earned $28,000 last year. She also lives in a
county with more low-income housing than most suburbs, thanks to
inclusionary zoning policies that for decades have required affordable
units to be built in large-scale developments. Yet Melara rents a
converted garage without heating because most of the apartments and
houses in Montgomery County are still well beyond her means. About half
the parishioners in the church she attends in suburban Bethesda are
facing similar problems, she told me.
I met Melara at another church in neighboring Howard County, also in
the Washington-Baltimore corridor and for several years among the
wealthiest counties in the United States. Last year a task force on
affordable housing appointed by County Executive James Robey warned
that "an undeniable gap" exists between the need for low-income housing
and its availability in the area, and not only for the poor. Seventy
percent of the jobs in the county, including those of entry-level
teachers in its celebrated public school system, cops who patrol the
streets and firemen who respond to emergencies, pay less than $50,000 a
year. Meanwhile, the average single-family house sold for nearly ten
times that amount, $485,500, and rents have crept ever higher. The
result is that a growing share of the population--public servants,
couples starting families, retirees, recent college graduates--can't
find affordable places to live, according to the task force: "These are
the children and parents of County residents," its report stated,
"County teachers and police officers, the waiters and waitresses who
serve meals, the Mall workers, the hospital workers, the people who
contribute to the quality of life in Howard County in countless ways."
The dilemma is far worse, of course, for the truly indigent, not least
because a lot of suburbanites who might be willing to hire them as
nannies or to be served by them at restaurants don't necessarily want
them as neighbors. In June 2005 authorities in the town of Brookhaven,
in Suffolk County, Long Island, launched a series of raids to shut down
overcrowded homes in which immigrants lacking other affordable options
were renting rooms. County Executive Steve Levy, a Democrat, declared
that the evictions were necessary to "preserve suburbia as we know it."
At 196 Berkshire Drive, a powder-blue clapboard house that was raided,
immigrants protested by setting up tents in the backyard and sleeping
outside. Others who were evicted wound up sleeping in the woods on
plastic sheets, their belongings stowed under bushes. In a special
report on housing on Long Island, Newsday likened the packed, often
filthy quarters where many immigrants live--a dozen boarders crammed
into a basement flooded with sewage, adults sleeping in the closets of
houses on tree-lined streets in nice neighborhoods--to
"turn-of-the-century tenements."
Other counties have introduced anti-soliciting laws to drive away day
laborers like the ones I met outside the Home Depot in neighboring
Nassau County, another sign that being poor in the suburbs comes with
the added burden of being made to feel you don't belong. Several of the
workers I met told me they've been called "parasites." Some day
laborers have had rocks thrown at them. At one point, the Mexican man I
spoke with motioned toward a red car that circled by, driven, he said,
by a security guard from Staples who patrols the area to make sure he
and his fellow laborers stay on the edge of the parking lot, so
customers won't be disturbed. In September 2000 two immigrants were
picked up by what they thought were contractors, taken to an abandoned
warehouse and nearly killed. (They survived by dashing onto the Long
Island Expressway.)
Such incidents may be viewed as a product of racism or of something
else: a sense of anxiety about the future that extends far beyond the
ranks of the poor. "I do think middle-class people here feel squeezed,
and if leaders don't offer solutions, they'll look for people to
blame," says Workplace Project's Marin-Molina. As in Howard County,
evidence of this insecurity is not hard to come by. In 2004 more than
40 percent of Long Island homeowners spent more than one-third of their
income (the conventional definition of a "cost burden") on housing, a
report published last year by Adelphi University found. In recent years
the typical starting job in the region has paid $24,000, far short of
the $60,780 the Economic Policy Institute has estimated a family of
four would need to cover basic living expenses.
Unravel the thread linking suburbs to prosperity and something else
begins to come undone: the story Republicans have told about how people
living there, particularly those in the fastest-growing,
furthest-outlying communities, are their natural constituents.
"Democrats stink in the exurbs" is how conservative columnist Brooks
put it some years ago, pointing to the strip-mall zones around Orlando,
strong Jeb Bush territory, and to Mesa, Arizona, a booming area east of
Phoenix. In these rapidly expanding communities, places where the
parking lots of megachurches fill up every Sunday with SUVs, liberals
just don't have a clue what matters to people, Brooks implied. In the
2004 election, it appeared he was right: Republicans swept such areas,
carrying a startling ninety-seven of the 100 fastest-growing counties
in the country. In Democratic circles, panic ensued.
It turned out the panic was premature. In last year's midterm elections
the GOP's advantage in the exurbs narrowed considerably. Democrats won
60 percent of the vote in inner suburbs, 55 percent in the next ring
and a majority of the overall suburban vote. They would not control
either the House or Senate today were it not for these gains.
In part, the shift reflects widespread disillusionment with the war in
Iraq. But it may also be a sign that Republicans have become the
clueless ones when it comes to decoding the concerns of suburbanites.
The GOP's presumed edge with these voters rested on the assumption that
new suburban growth centers were filling up with prosperous
middle-class professionals who care most about low taxes and being left
alone to raise their kids. A lot of suburbs now appear to be filling up
with a different social type: stressed-out parents worried about
healthcare, college tuition and paying their mortgage. Political
scientist Jacob Hacker has referred to such people as "office-park
populists," folks who "aren't necessarily buying smash-the-system rants
against free trade and immigration...[but] are skeptical of corporate
promises and concerned about their security."
Addressing the concerns of such people is, of course, not necessarily
synonymous with tackling the predicament of the suburban poor. (As the
raids on immigrants in Nassau County show, suburban populism can cut
two ways.) Nor is the party affiliation of low-income suburbanites
necessarily so easy to predict. In North Carolina I met numerous people
who fumed about the scandalously low minimum wage or about NAFTA--and
then told me they were Republicans. Others complained about the
exorbitant cost of healthcare--and about how the government is giving
it away free to undocumented Mexicans. But still others nodded when
asked about John Edwards's assertion that there are two Americas today.
"We do have two Americas," said Ada Wells of Rockingham County, "and
they don't understand each other." Many suburbanites I spoke with
seemed interested in issues--affordable housing, a higher minimum wage,
universal health insurance--that progressive Democrats have long argued
should be at the center of the party's agenda, and that both Hacker's
"office-park populists" and the people who clean those offices for a
living have a stake in. Granted, the affluent software engineers
flocking to emerging suburbs might still care more about lower taxes.
But more than half the people in emerging suburbs don't have a
four-year college degree. The African-American population in such
places surged by 50 percent in the 1990s. "If you look at emerging
suburbs, they're becoming rapidly more diverse," says the Democratic
pollster Ruy Teixeira. "And they're full of people who don't make a lot
of money."
Beyond altering voting patterns, the dispersal of poverty to the
suburbs has the potential to upend a larger idea: that the interests of
suburbanites and city dwellers are diametrically opposed. This has been
the guiding--if often unspoken--premise driving regional development
for decades, one that has played no small part in fueling residential
segregation and sprawl. But if cities and suburbs increasingly face
many of the same problems, wouldn't it make sense for them to work
together?
One proponent of this view is David Rusk, former mayor of Albuquerque
and a longtime advocate of more equitable regional development. "In
order to deal with the problems of poverty and economic decline
reaching across cities into many suburbs, you have to get states to lay
down some strong directives with regard to balanced regional housing
development and some form of regional tax-base sharing," he says. To
illustrate why, Rusk cites the case of southern New Jersey, in
particular the area surrounding Camden. "This is an area of roughly
1.75 million people, and the ten fastest-growing municipalities, in
terms of job creation, are all third-ring suburbs," he says. "They saw
the creation of about 42,000 jobs in the 1990s, but the construction of
only 1,200 low-income housing units. Meanwhile, the ten areas that were
the biggest employment losers saw 25,000 jobs disappear, but 16,000
price-controlled housing units built. It's a mirror opposite of what's
needed--where the job supply is growing, there's no affordable
workforce housing. Where it's vanishing, it's all piled in."
Rusk has coined a motto that a growing number of advocacy groups and
regional leaders are coming to embrace: "If you're good enough to work
here, you're good enough to live here." It is with this principle in
mind that New Jersey reformers are rallying behind the idea of
repealing an unsavory practice known as a Regional Contribution
Agreement, or RCA, an innocuous-sounding term for the Machiavellian
deals that enable one municipality--typically an affluent, high-growth
suburb--to circumvent its obligation to build low-income housing within
its boundaries by paying another municipality--typically a poor city
desperate for money--to construct the units instead. The not-so-subtle
purpose is to enable suburbs to prevent the "wrong" kind of people from
moving in. New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has said he thinks RCAs are
detrimental, but he has yet to endorse legislation introduced in the
State Senate that would abolish them.
Even if Corzine comes around, it's perhaps naïve to imagine that such
practices will altogether cease: The suburbs were created, after all,
precisely to erect spatial barriers between rich and poor. This is
surely part of the reason new ones keep springing up in ever more
remote areas, away from the crime and squalor (read: poor brown and
black folk) in urban locales. But it is also a fact that less affluent
people are slowly but surely finding their way into suburbs anyway.
Jonathan Lange, an organizer with the Industrial Areas Foundation,
works in two of the wealthiest areas in the country: Maryland's Howard
and Montgomery counties. The poverty in both places is "discreet, hard
to get your hands on and extremely difficult to organize," he says.
Nevertheless, it's there. Not long ago, a pastor Lange knows discovered
that there are scores of homeless kids at Oakland Mills, a Howard
County high school. Some of the kids sleep in cars, others in cheap
motels, the pastor was told, an experience unimaginable to many of
their classmates, perhaps, but increasingly emblematic of the suburban
population these days.
- ------------------------------
Message: 26
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:34:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] UN panel issues stark climate change warning
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062034....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
Reuters - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL052735320070406?feedType=RSS
UN panel issues stark climate change warning
By Jeff Mason
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Climate experts issued their starkest warning yet
about the impact of global warming, ranging from hunger in Africa to a
fast thaw in the Himalayas, in a report on Friday that increased
pressure on governments to act.
More than 100 nations in the U.N. climate panel agreed a final text
after all-night talks during which some scientists accused governments
of watering down conclusions that climate change was already under way
and damaging nature.
The report said warming, widely blamed on human emissions of greenhouse
gases from burning fossil fuels, would cause desertification, droughts
and rising seas and would hit hard in the tropics, from sub-Saharan
Africa to Pacific islands.
"It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor
people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst
hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC).
"This does become a global responsibility in my view."
The IPCC, which groups 2,500 scientists and is the world authority on
climate change, said all regions of the planet would suffer from a
sharp warming.
Its findings are approved unanimously by governments and will guide
policy on issues such as extending the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol, the main
U.N. plan for capping greenhouse gas emissions, beyond 2012.
In Washington, the Bush administration indicated the United States,
which pulled out of Kyoto in 2001, still planned to tackle limiting
carbon dioxide emissions on its own rather than support global
mandatory caps.
"Each nation sort of defines their regulatory objectives in different
ways to achieve the greenhouse reduction outcome that they seek," Jim
Connaughton, chairman of the White House council on environmental
quality, told reporters.
RISE TO THE CHALLENGE
But a senior Democratic lawmaker said the report was further evidence
that the U.S. had to act quickly on global warming.
"This Congress must rise to the challenge of transitioning from energy
sources that threaten the planet and preparing for the damage we can no
longer avoid," said Rep. Edward Markey, who heads a special committee
on energy independence and global warming in the Democrat-controlled
House of Representatives.
Friday's study said climate change could cause hunger for millions with
a sharp fall in crop yields in Africa. It could also rapidly thaw
Himalayan glaciers that feed rivers from India to China and bring
heatwaves for Europe and North America.
"This further underlines both how urgent it is to reach global
agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and how important it is
for us all to adapt to the climate change that is already under way,"
said European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.
"The urgency of this report...should be matched with an equally urgent
response by governments," said Hans Verolme of the WWF conservation
group.
Scientists said China, Russia and Saudi Arabia raised most objections
overnight and sought to tone down the findings, including those about
the likely pace of extinctions.
Other participants said the United States, which cited high costs when
it pulled out of Kyoto, had opposed a suggested text that said parts of
North America could suffer "severe economic damage" from climate change.
China, the second largest source of greenhouse gases after the United
States, insisted on cutting a reference to "very high confidence" that
climate change was already affecting "many natural systems, on all
continents and in some oceans".
But delegates sharpened other sections, including adding a warning that
some African nations might have to spend 5 to 10 percent of gross
domestic product on adapting to climate change.
Overall, the report was the strongest U.N. assessment yet of the threat
of climate change, predicting water shortages that could affect
billions of people and a rise in ocean levels that could go on for
centuries.
Its review of the regional impact of change built on an IPCC report in
February saying that human greenhouse gas emissions were more than 90
percent sure to have stoked recent warming.
(With additional reporting by David Lawsky in Brussels and Jeremy
Pelofsky in Washington)
© Reuters 2006.
- ------------------------------
Message: 27
Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 16:35:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com
Subject: [NYTr] Pet food adulterated deliberately?
To: ny...@olm.blythe-systems.com (NY Transfer List)
Message-ID: <200704062035....@viola.tamara-b.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=DISPLAY
CNN - Apr 6, 2007
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/06/pet.deaths/index.html?eref=rss_latest
Pet food adulterated on purpose?
(CNN) -- Contaminants that led to a massive recall of pet food could
have been added intentionally, according to one theory being considered
by the Food and Drug Administration.
"Somebody may have added melamine to the wheat gluten in order to
increase what appears to be the protein level," the FDA's Stephen
Sundlof told CNN on Friday.
"Wheat gluten is a high-protein substance and by trying to artificially
inflate the protein level, it could command a higher price. But that's
just one theory at this point." (Watch theory about why anyone would
deliberately adulterate pet food Video)
Sundlof said the agency is virtually sure the animal deaths linked to
tainted pet food were caused by something that contaminated the wheat
gluten, a normal ingredient of the food.
The FDA has found melamine, a component of fertilizers and plastic
utensils, in the gluten, but that may not be the culprit, said Sundlof,
director of the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine.
"Melamine is not very toxic as a chemical, so we're wondering why we
are seeing the kinds of serious conditions, especially the kidney
failure, that we're seeing in cats and dogs," he said.
"We are focusing on the melamine right now because we believe that,
even if melamine is not the causative agent, it is somehow associated
with the causative agent, so it serves as a marker," Sundlof said
Thursday.
The recalled food has been linked to kidney failure in an undetermined
number of dogs and cats. (Watch people whose pets died describe what
happened Video)
The Senate's second-ranking Democrat announced Thursday the Senate will
hold hearings on the FDA's handling of the recall.
"The FDA's response to this situation has been tragically slow," Senate
Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, told reporters in Chicago. "Pet
owners deserve answers. The uncertainty about what is safe to feed
their pets has gone on far too long." (Watch Durbin call response to
pet food recall 'a failure' Video)
Responding on Friday, Sundlof said, "We learned of the pet food recall
from the company, Menu Foods, on the evening of March 15. We were in
the plant on the morning of March 16, and since then we have had more
than 400 people working on this issue virtually around the clock ...
identifying the one company in China that produced this material."
The original recall included more than 60 million cans of "cuts and
gravy-style" wet cat food and dog food made by Menu Foods.
Since then, the recall has broadened to include some pet foods produced
by Nestlé Purina PetCare Co., Del Monte Pet Products and Hill's Pet
Nutrition.
And on Thursday, Sunshine Mills in Red Bay, Alabama, said 20 types of
large dog biscuits are contaminated with potentially toxic wheat gluten
from China. The dog-treat maker said it has received no reports of
death or illness related to the products.
Company spokesman Conrad Pitts told CNN it purchased the tainted wheat
gluten from The Scoular Co. of Minneapolis. Scoular officials said they
bought the product from ChemNutra Inc. in Las Vegas, which recalled the
tainted wheat gluten on Monday.
ChemNutra obtained it from Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology
Development Co. Ltd., a Chinese company. (Watch how the toxic food was
traced to China Video)
The FDA has embargoed further imports of the Chinese company's wheat
gluten, which it has determined was contaminated with melamine. Xuzhou
Anying Biologic said it was astonished by the report but that it would
cooperate with the U.S. investigation.
"We have never exported to the U.S. -- we are a trading company. We
don't even know how we became implicated in this matter," Mao Lijun,
the company's general manager, said Friday.
Asked if the company sold wheat gluten to another Chinese company that
could have exported it to America, Lijun said he could not comment
since the company was going through records to establish that.
The original recall announcement for Menu Foods covered products
manufactured between December 3 and March 6. But on Thursday, the
Ontario-based company widened it to include products dated back to
November 8. (Details on recall)
Although no new brands were added on Thursday's amended list, Menu
Foods added 20 varieties of pet food to the recall in response to
ChemNutra's recall announcement. About 1 percent of the U.S. pet food
market has been affected by the various recalls, the FDA said. Official
figure of 16 deaths expected to grow
Sundlof acknowledged that the official count of 16 pet deaths linked to
the food will increase.
"We know that there have been a lot more animals affected by this, made
ill and have died," he said. "Trying to put an estimate to it at this
time is just not something we can do."
He said the agency is in the process of defining how to confirm suspect
cases. The FDA has received 12,000 complaints during the three weeks
since the recall was announced -- a number it would typically get over
two years.
"Right now, our priority is still ensuring that all contaminated
product is identified and removed from store shelves," Sundlof said.
The FDA said it has no evidence that any of the questionable wheat
gluten has entered the human food supply.
[CNN's Katy Byron, Susie Xu and Miriam Falco contributed to this report.]
- ------------------------------
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