HAITI: Activists Urge World Bank to Erase Crippling Debt

October 31, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Friday, October 31, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Nergui Manalsuren

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 31 (IPS) – On a recent visit to the hurricane-ravaged island of Haiti, World Bank President Robert Zoellick declared that 500 million dollars of Haiti’s 1.7-billion-dollar foreign debt had been cancelled, and the rest would be soon be written off as well.

However, Haitian and international civil society groups say that his comments were misleading. None of the debt has actually been forgiven yet, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and bank just this month delayed Haiti’s entrance into the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative (HIPC) — a condition for debt relief — by six months.

Dan Beeton, an analyst at the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), said that he hopes that Haiti’s debt cancellation will be expedited, and that the World Bank and IMF, along with creditors France and the U.S., will cancel the debt without requiring Haiti to ”jump through more hoops”.

”However,” he said, ”the institution that has really power to make this happen is the U.S. Treasury Department.”
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Americas, Debt Crisis, Development, News

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Extrajudicial Killings Under Scrutiny

October 30, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 30, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Oct 30 (IPS) – The dismissal of 20 officers and seven noncommissioned officers for extrajudicial executions of civilians presented as battlefield casualties ”is a triumph for human rights organisations and for Colombian society as a whole,” said Reynaldo Villalba of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective.

Villalba urged the Attorney General’s Office to carry out an in-depth investigation, ”not only of the fired officers but especially of those who were not fired, who remain hidden and are responsible for these policies.”

The three generals, 11 colonels, four majors, one captain, one lieutenant, six sergeants and one corporal who were sacked were posted in the northern departments (provinces) of Santander, Norte de Santander, Arauca and Antioquia.

The second and seventh army divisions both lost their commanders, Generals
José Joaquín Cortés (Santander, Norte de Santander and Arauca) and Roberto Pico (Antioquia).

The third general who was cashiered is Paulino Coronado, commander of the 30th Brigade. The scandal was triggered by the discovery of bodies of missing men in the remote district of Ocaña in Norte de Santander, which is in his jurisdiction.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Human Rights, Justice, Latin America, Report, Security

US PREDATOR STRIKES IN FATA STEPPED UP

October 29, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global Intel Net
Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR–PAPER NO.462

B.RAMAN

“The reported US assurances to respect Pakistani sovereignty in its territory did not apply to air strikes, which could continue as before. In fact, the Pakistan Army itself had agreed to these air strikes when Musharraf was the President and the COAS. Kayani was a party to that decision and he could not now object to such air strikes unless the Army wanted the permission for air strikes accorded by Musharraf to be withdrawn. However, Musharraf had consistently refused to agree to unilateral ground strikes by the US special forces. The present Government cannot give the impression that it had gone even further than Musharraf in its co-operation with the US forces in their operations against Al Qaeda and the Taliban .”—- from my article of September 20,2008, titled “US STRIKES IN FATA: Change In Continuity” at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers29/paper2851.html

——————————————————–

The “New York Times” reported on its web site on October 26,2008, as follows: The United States is refraining from using its special forces on the Pakistani territory following a raid nearly two months ago that resulted in civilian casualties and vehement protests from Islamabad. Following the attack, National Security Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani made an unannounced visit to Washington and expressed his country’s anger in person to top White House officials, including National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.But while the ground raids have stopped, attacks by remotely-piloted Predator aircraft, which are operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, have increased sharply in the past three months.There were at least 18 Predator strikes since the beginning of August, some deep inside the tribal areas, as compared with the five strikes during the first seven months of 2008.
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Filed Under: Conflict, Report, United States

POLITICS: U.S. Cutoff Threat Unlikely to Save Iraq Troop Pact

October 29, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Wednesday, October 29, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Oct 29 (IPS) – The threat by the George W. Bush administration last week to withdraw all economic and military support from the Iraqi government if it does not accept the U.S.-Iraq status of forces agreement has raised the stakes in the political-diplomatic struggle over the issue.

However, most Iraqi politicians are now so averse to any formal legitimisation of the U.S. military presence — and particularly of extraterritorial legal rights over U.S. troops in the country — that even that threat is unlikely to save the pact.

For most Iraqis the agreement is all too reminiscent of the unequal security agreement that gave military rights to British imperialism in Iraq from 1930 to 1958. The symbolism of foreign domination inherent in that historical parallel makes it risky for political party leaders and members of parliament to be seen as going along with any agreement that provides special privileges to the United States.

In a move reflecting a new sense of desperation that has overtaken U.S. officials, Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, warned Iraqi officials that they would lose a total of 16 billion dollars in assistance for the economy and Iraqi security forces unless the agreement is approved by parliament, according to a story by McClatchy newspapers reporter Leil Fadel Sunday.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Analysis, Conflict, Politics, United States

POLITICS-US: Analysts Question Timing of Syria Raid

October 28, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, October 28, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, Oct 28 (IPS) – A cross-border raid into Syria by U.S. forces in Iraq, and a subsequent stonewalling by U.S. officials unwilling to divulge details, has led to rampant speculation among U.S. analysts about the origins and meaning of the attack.

”So the question is: Why?” wrote geo-strategic analyst and journalist Helena Cobban on her blog, wondering if the raid could have been pulled off without explicit permission from the highest levels of the President George W. Bush administration.

”So why now at the end of the Bush administration, with Washington trying to play nice with Damascus and tensions easing throughout the region, would U.S. forces stage such a gambit?” echoed Borzou Daragahi on the Babylon and Beyond blog at the Los Angeles Times website.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Middle East, Politics, Report, United States

US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS: WAITING FOR OBL

October 28, 2008 By

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO 461

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global Intel Net
Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Copyright © B. Raman – South Asia Analysis Group
www.southasiaanalysis.org

B.RAMAN

It is just one week before the US Presidential elections. We all know all that we want to know about the two candidates Senators John McCain of the Republican Party and Senator Barrack Obama of the Democratic Party. We also know what the American people think of them and their ideas for the future through the public opinion polls which, without an exception, predict voter approval for Obama and his ideas—-whether relating to the economy, the so-called war against terrorism or Iran’s nuclear programme.

2.But there is still a missing gap in our knowledge—what Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda think of the two candidates and their proposed policies. On the eve of the Presidential elections of 2004 (on October29,2004), Osama entered the pre-poll scene in the US with a video message to the American people, which poured scorn over American claims regarding the war. Commenting on his message, I wrote:
“As the date of the polls approached, there was feverish speculation as to whether Bush, helped by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, would produce OBL before the American people like a magician producing a rabbit out of his hat and thereby make Kerry look silly and win a thumping victory. Instead of Bush producing OBL and embarrassing Kerry, it is OBL’s spin-masters who have produced him before the voters, making Bush, Kerry and everybody else in the US look silly and confused.” (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers12/paper1155.html)

3. Is OBL planning a similar entry into the poll scene before the Americans vote? It will be out of keeping with him if he does not. Watch out during the days to come. Will he pour scorn over McCain and Bush just as Al Qaeda web sites are already doing? What will he say about the statements of Obama about his determination to hunt for OBL, even if he has to send the US troops into Pakistani territory to catch him—provided he has precise intelligence? Will he talk of what the jihadis in Pakistan and Afghanistan describe as the newly opened third front in the war—- in the Wall Street?

4. Or will the expected message fail to materialise? If it fails to come, that will be more significant than his message if it does come. Failure to materialise would mean that there is something wrong somewhere in the Pashtun belt from where OBL is stated to be operating. The US and the Asif Ali Zardari Government in Pakistan—-while pretending to criticise in open each other’s counter-terrorism policies—- have been secretly co-operating and co-ordinating their operations even more closely than was the case under Pervez Musharraf—- the US from the air through repeated air strikes by pilotless drones in the two Waziristans and through aerial surveillance and the Pakistan Army and the Frontier Corps on the ground in the Bajaur Agency and the Swat Valley.

5. It is apparent that the stepped up operations both by the Americans and the Pakistanis are not unrelated to the Presidential polls. If the Americans can get a high-value target such as OBL or his No.2 Ayman al-Zawahiri before the polls, it will not only redound to the credit of Bush before he leaves office, but could also benefit McCain, who is desperately trying to avert a seeming rout in the elections.

6. Al Qaeda’s foreign volunteers are on the run from village to village, from mosque to mosque and from madrasa to madrasa to protect themselves from the air strikes of the US and Pakistan. The war against terrorism has seen intense air strikes in Afghan territory from the beginning. Since Zardari’s meeting with Bush in New York in September, it has been seeing an intense wave of air strikes in Pakistani territory. US planes have been flying across Pakistani air space over the tribal belt as if they are flying in US air space without worrying about the proforma criticism from Pakistani leaders and officials and repeatedly attacking suspected Al Qaeda hide-outs. They have killed many, but not the ones that matter.

7. What stands between the US and OBL or Zawahiri is just luck and a little bit of advance intelligence. Both have eluded the US so far. For air strikes, the US has to be lucky only once. OBL and Zawahiri have to be lucky every time.

8. OBL must be constantly moving to deny that one stroke of luck to the US. How serious is the ground position for him? One will get an answer either way—whether his pre-poll message materialises or does not. (28-10-08)

(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com )

Filed Under: Elections, Featured, Politics, Terrorism, United States

U.S.: A Week Out, Obama and Democrats Poised for Victory

October 27, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Oct 27 (IPS) – With only one week before the Nov. 4 elections, Democrats are increasingly hopeful that they will emerge next Wednesday with control of the White House and substantially increased majorities in both houses of Congress.

Their presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, has sustained a solid lead ranging of between five and 12 percentage points over Republican Sen. John McCain among nationwide public opinion polls for most of the past two weeks.

He also enjoys statistically significant leads in key ”battleground” states — so-called swing states that were regarded as toss-ups as recently as one month ago, such as Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, Florida and Nevada. These states were won by Pres. George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and McCain needs them in order to wrest victory in the all-important Electoral College.

Obama even leads, according to some polls, in North Carolina, a southern state that was considered solidly in the McCain column just last month.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Analysis, Elections, Politics, United States

POLITICS-US: Plumbing the Depths of Spin

October 27, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Analysis by Peter Costantini

LOS ANGELES, Oct 27 (IPS) – In the waning days of an interminable United States presidential campaign, a plumber and would-be small businessman bestrides the narrow race like a colossus with a tool belt.

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher was wrenched into the limelight on Oct. 15 during the third presidential debate by Senator John McCain, who dubbed him ”Joe the Plumber”. McCain repeatedly touted him as an exemplar of the hard-working, plain-spoken Middle American who would be helped by his tax plan — but hurt by Democratic candidate Barack Obama’s.

Morphing overnight from ordinary Joe into American idol, Wurzelbacher has galvanised the Republican presidential campaign of McCain and Governor Sarah Palin. The idea of the working-class hero as Republican vice-presidential candidate in 2012 would strain credibility only slightly more than Palin did this year.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Commentary, Elections, Politics, United States

RIGHTS-US: New Davis Reprieve Raises Hopes of Retrial

October 27, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Monday, October 27, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Jonathan Springston

ATLANTA, Georgia, Oct 27 (IPS) – A federal appeals court in Atlanta has stayed the execution of Georgia death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis scheduled for Monday — the third time he has been pulled back from the death chamber in just over a year.

Davis had fulfilled the requirements required for ”a provisional stay of execution”, the court ruled on Friday. The stay gives time for Davis’s lawyers to apply for a new appeal.

Two days earlier, Davis’s lawyers had argued that Davis was innocent and his execution would be a violation of the eighth and fourteenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution.

Davis, who was set to die on Monday, Oct. 27 for the 1989 murder of Savannah police officer Mark Allen MacPhail, had appeared to have exhausted all his legal avenues to prevent his execution.

On Oct. 14, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would not take up his appeal, three weeks after granting him a stay of execution just two hours before a scheduled execution.

Since Davis’s 1991 conviction, seven of the nine eyewitnesses called by the prosecution have changed or recanted their testimonies in sworn affidavits.

Attorneys for Davis have argued that these recantations, coupled with the fact that the prosecution never produced a murder weapon or physical evidence linking Davis to the crime, left too much doubt to carry out an execution.

Davis has gone through a gruelling series of appeals, trying desperately to get any court to hear new evidence and possibly grant a new hearing or trial.

”It’s a first step toward what we’ve been asking for a decade, which is getting our evidence heard before a judge,” Jason Ewart, lead attorney for Davis, told IPS after the court announcement of the latest stay of execution.

Davis’s attorneys have 15 days to file their legal arguments justifying an appeal. The Georgia attorney general’s office will then have 10 days to file a response. The appeals court will then decide whether to grant Davis permission to pursue more appeals.

The Davis case represents an overall problem about how eyewitness testimony was collected, rights activists said.

”Faulty eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, accounting for 75 percent of wrongful convictions in over 200 DNA exonerations,” Sara Totonchi, chair of Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (GFADP), told IPS.

”Eyewitness identification is notoriously unreliable, but it was the basis for the conviction against Troy Davis,” she added.

Stephanie Benfield, a state lawmaker, attempted earlier this year to introduce legislation that would have significantly overhauled eyewitness identification procedures. But the bill never came up for a vote.

Benfield told IPS she was planning to reintroduce such legislation when the Georgia General Assembly reconvenes in January.

The Davis case also represents the problem of getting new evidence before a court.

”As a result of procedural bars, new evidence of innocence in the Troy Davis case has never been given a fair hearing in a court of law,” Totonchi said.

”The witnesses who changed or recanted their testimonies never had their credibility tested and confirmed in a court of law,” she continued. ”Had Mr. Davis been given a hearing, any doubts about the credibility of the affidavits could have been resolved through meaningful adversarial testing of the new evidence.”

Davis’s supporters also allege class bias, racial bias, geographical bias, and prosecutorial misconduct, as well as problems with proper legal representation.

”When people who are poor cannot have adequate legal representation…that is an issue,” said Laura Moye, deputy director of Amnesty International USA’s (AIUSA) southern regional office.

Supporters expressed joy and relief over Friday’s decision.

”It’s like beyond words,” Martina Correia, Davis’s sister, told IPS. ”It was just amazing. All I could do was think of my brother who has faced death three times. It has to be a traumatic experience. I’m ecstatic and I’m praying that this gives us time.”

Amnesty said it is ”heartened” by the news.

”Until this point, the compelling issues in this case have been virtually ignored, leaving Georgia vulnerable to the possibility of killing an innocent man,” Larry Cox, executive director of AIUSA, said in a statement.

Hours before the announcement of the temporary reprieve, supporters turned out in Atlanta in driving rain to participate in a mock funeral procession, marching to the parole board with a casket containing 140,000 petitions asking for clemency for Davis.

The crowd then delivered two letters signed by clergy from across Georgia and around the world to governor Sonny Perdue’s office.

Groups like AIUSA and GFADP have helped bring international attention to the case. Pope Benedict XVI, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Rev Al Sharpton, and former president Jimmy Carter were among the many prominent people who appealed for clemency.

The European Union issued a statement Oct. 22 denouncing the scheduled execution. Correia told IPS she received a phone call on Friday from the French ambassador expressing support for her brother on behalf of the EU.

Filed Under: Human Rights, Justice, Politics, Report, United States

CHILE: Achievements in AIDS Fight Marred by Irregularities

October 23, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Thursday, October 23, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Oct 23 (IPS) – Irregularities like delays in notifying 25 people that they were HIV-positive, which led to the deaths of at least two of them, have cast a shadow on Chile’s exemplary image in the field of AIDS prevention and treatment.

A local TV station reported earlier this month that 25 people who tested positive for HIV in 2004 were not immediately notified by the city hospital in Iquique, in the northern Tarapacá region.

Shortly after the broadcast, the La Tercera newspaper put the number of people who tested positive for HIV but were not notified at once as high as 100.

The facts came to light with the Jul. 10 death of 34-year-old Dearnny Aguilar from pneumonia. Since she had not been promptly informed that she was HIV-positive, she never received the antiretroviral treatment that might have saved her life. On Oct. 9 her 35-year-old husband, Juan Sarabia, also died of AIDS-related complications.

Out of the 25 people, four have yet to be advised of their HIV status: a mentally ill man, a person living on the streets, and two foreigners who have left the country.

The Health Ministry has only confirmed the deaths of the married couple among those who were not notified of their test results, but press reports say that three or even four persons from that list have died. Other complaints about similar cases have also arisen in Iquique and several other regions around the country.

The government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet said this was ”a mistake that must not be repeated,” and promised to identify and take measures against those responsible and improve notification methods.

The Attorney General’s Office has opened a formal investigation, and rightwing opposition lawmakers are considering impeachment proceedings against Health Minister María Soledad Barría.

Barría announced on Oct. 18 that the head of medical services, the head nurse and the head of the blood bank at Iquique Hospital had been temporarily suspended.

She sent a special team to Iquique, headed by Undersecretary of Public Health Jeanette Vega, to oversee the internal investigation on the spot, and to report back on Friday. She also promised to give the Health Committee in the lower house of Congress a report on the status of notifications nationwide.

The Committee is discussing the need to improve the 2001 AIDS Law, according to which HIV tests must be ”voluntary” and ”confidential.”

In Chile, after counselling, the ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) technique is used. If the result is positive, a second test is performed and the identity of the patient is double-checked. If the diagnosis is confirmed, the patient is personally informed.

The scandal at Iquique revealed that many people who have been tested fail to return to the hospital to find out the result, and they tend to give incorrect personal information, probably for fear of being stigmatised, which makes notification difficult.

But Aguilar went to the hospital a number of times, suffering from the opportunistic infections that characterise AIDS patients, without medical staff realising that she had been diagnosed HIV-positive.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like Vivo Positivo and the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (MOVILH) are concerned about the direction taken by public debate on the issue.

Activists fear that in order to ”guarantee public health,” there may be a retreat from voluntary, confidential testing and notification, stipulated in the AIDS Law in order to avoid stigma and encourage the public to come forward for testing.

The controversy at Iquique ”has shown us the less-than-friendly side of certain groups or associations that are seeking scapegoats. They do not hesitate to cancel individual rights in the name of ‘public health matters,’ and are even in favour of using uniformed police officers to notify HIV-positive people,” activist Leonardo Arenas, of the AKI organisation, which works on HIV/AIDS issues in prisons, told IPS.

This attitude is steering the country away from the fundamental issue of prevention, which involves those living with the virus as much as those who are not, activists say.

Instead of reinforcing the message that no one is ”immune” to HIV/AIDS, so that taking preventive measures is always necessary, public attention has focused on the possibility that HIV-positive people who have not been notified of their status may be ”infecting” — considered to be a discriminatory term — other people with whom they have sex.

”There is no real concern about prevention in Chile,” the national coordinator of the Assembly of Social Organisations and NGOs working on HIV/AIDS (ASOSIDA) and the head of Acción Gay, Marco Becerra, told IPS.

Becerra and Arenas said an ongoing prevention campaign is needed, not just a once a year effort. They also called for ”sex education based on evidence, not beliefs,” and faster HIV testing to reduce notification errors.

Between 1984 and 2006, 18,552 people were notified that they were living with HIV, and 5,710 people died of AIDS-related illnesses. In Chile, the epidemic mostly affects men who have sex with men, and the AIDS virus is mainly sexually transmitted.

Up to a year ago, Chile prided itself on providing universal antiretroviral treatment, counselling programmes and an integrated approach, with prevention strategies and close collaboration between the government and civil society.

”It has not been a good year for those of us who participate in work on HIV,” Arenas said.

In 2007, irregularities were detected in the handling of funds granted to Chile by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the period 2003-2008.

The reports of misappropriation of funds were investigated by the justice system, which prosecuted two executives at Consejo de las Américas (CDLA), one of the organisations awarded the contract to administer 39 million dollars donated by the Global Fund.

Although the government and civil society were cleared of any wrongdoing, the ongoing investigation delayed the final disbursement from the Global Fund.

As the funds have not been released, the National AIDS Commission (CONASIDA) had to dismiss 14 professional workers and postpone its annual prevention campaign until November. Social organisations that receive government funding will also be affected.

Provision of antiretroviral treatment, which does not depend on the Global Fund, has not suffered cutbacks. Universal access to these drugs has been guaranteed since 2005, in the private health system as well as in the public system, which treats 80 percent of patients.

But the dismantling of CONASIDA led ASOSIDA and Vivo Positivo to file an appeal against Minister Barría, which has been declared admissible. All this happened before the Iquique scandal came to light.

”We have gone from being a Latin American example of how to deal with a complex epidemic, with civil society having an influence on and cooperating with the state, to a country that is an example of how opportunities can be wasted, when those opportunities are unlikely to be repeated,” Arenas concluded.

Filed Under: Latin America, News
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