You want to know how deep and long standing the hatred goes?

Oh, yes, this is from today's "Gulf News." This hatred will not abate anytime soon. This is resentment from a year ago against neutral countries. I am not saying an apology is not in order, but, A YEAR AGO !!

Palestine has a real ax to grind.

Israel needs to arm itself and close it's borders.

Here we go again !!!

Gaza gunmen warn Danes

Agencies

Gaza: Palestinian gunmen on Monday warned that Danish and Norwegian visitors in Gaza risk attack unless their governments apologise for published cartoons of Prophet Mohammed.
Danish paper Jyllands-Posten published "blasphemous" cartoons of Prophet Mohammed last year, sparking outrage and calls for boycott of Danish products across the Muslim world.The Danish government had issued an internet statement on Sunday, asking its citizens to be cautious in Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Iran, Syria and Israel.
"In the present situation, where the Jyllands-Posten daily's drawings of the Prophet Muhammad has caused strong negative feelings among Muslims, Danes should show extra vigilance," the statement read.

Ten armed Palestinians rallied outside the European Union headquarters in Gaza City, firing in the air and demanding an apology from the Danish and Norwegian governments.
"We warn the citizens of the above-mentioned governments against not taking this warning seriously because our groups are ready to implement it across the Gaza Strip," one of the gunmen said, reading from a prepared statement.

The Danish government has defended the cartoons, saying that Jyllands-Posten is an independent newspaper that utilised its right of free speech.

Egypt downplays Hamas win, urges EU not to cut aid

January 30, 2006.

From the "Jordan Times." The Arab Nations are completely sympathic. I am quite confident Former Prime Minister Sharon would not be surprised.

A Palestinian police officer on Sunday stands guard on top of the Preventive Security building in Gaza City during a police demonstration, supporting Fateh strongman Mohammad Dahlan and protesting against the Hamas' landslide victory in the legislative elections last week (AP photo by Emilio Morenatti)

Rice Admits U.S. Underestimated Hamas Strength

Palestinian Elections

The 'confession' by Rice is at least honest. However, it only reflects the true incompetency that defines this administraiton and presidency. I have watched this 'process' for nearly a decade. The problem with Palestine during Clinton/Albright years was obviously Arafat. His best friend was the 'Sheik.'

Then Abbas, also know as Abu Mazen, came on board in elections where he CATERED to Hamas after Arafat's death in order to be an elected. Rice states this is a surprise? To her maybe? But not to me. This is simply more of the same. Did Bush/Powell/Rice actually expect Hamas to have control at the local level forever? Are they for real? They were killing each other after the elections before this as if they could and that was all part of being the victor. It's hideous and now the 'champions' of war against Israel want to keep their funding?

Amazing.

Impeach the Bush White House before he blows up the Middle East.

Hamas Asks Nations Not to Cut Aid

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:24 a.m. ET
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- A Hamas leader asked the international community on Monday not to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority, insisting the money would go toward helping the Palestinian people and Hamas was willing to have its spending monitored.
Ismail Haniyeh, a Hamas leader in Gaza, also said the Islamic militant group is ready to negotiate the terms of continued foreign aid with donor countries.
He spoke ahead of Monday's meeting of the so-called Quartet of Mideast mediators -- the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia -- to discuss the repercussions of Hamas' election victory. The United States and European nations have said they will cut off aid to a Hamas-led government unless the group recognizes Israel, renounces violence and adheres to interim peace deals with Israel.
Hamas shocked Western observers by winning a majority of seats in last week's parliamentary elections, giving it the right to form the next Palestinian government. The U.S., Europe and Israel list Hamas as a terrorist organization.
Western donors funneled about $900 million into the Palestinian Authority in 2005 -- including $400 million from the United States -- to pay salaries and finance desperately needed infrastructure projects. Failure to pay the 137,000 people on the Palestinian Authority payroll could lead to massive layoffs and ignite violence in an area bristling with guns.
Some Palestinian officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the volatile situation, have cautioned that the Palestinian Authority could collapse if the outside support were to dry up.
On Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice ruled out any U.S. financial aid to a Hamas government. But she indicated the Bush administration would follow through on aid promised to the current, U.S.-backed Palestinian government led by President Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected separately last year.
At the beginning of a short visit to Israel, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday that she would be watching what Hamas does. ''If Hamas does not change its positions, it would be unthinkable for the EU or Germany, bilaterally, to support the autonomy government with money, as we do today.'' Merkel visits the West Bank on Monday.
Haniyeh urged the West to reconsider cutting off aid, saying it must recognize the result of the Palestinian election. He also said the money would be spent to help the Palestinian people in their daily lives and that Hamas was willing to discuss means of keeping the spending transparent.
''We in Hamas are ready to meet and have an open dialogue with the Quartet,'' he told a news conference in Gaza City. ''We assure you that all the money will be spent under your supervision.''
A senior Hamas official in Lebanon, however, brushed aside warnings that Western aid to the Palestinians could dry up. ''Cutting off funds now will be a punishment of the Palestinian people, not of Hamas,'' said Mohammed Nazzal, member of Hamas' decision-making political bureau, which is based in Syria.
''If the European Union countries and the American administration see this as a means that could lead to a change in Hamas' strategic position then they are dreaming and are mistaken. Hamas will never accept that,'' he said in an interview with Al-Arabiya TV.

Morning Papers - continued ...

Michael Moore Today

Lawmakers Urge Bush to Make Abramoff Information Public
By Brian Knowlton / International Herald Tribune
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — Republican legislators urged President Bush today to make public photographs and information about contacts that he or his top aides had with the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has pleaded guilty to felony charges of conspiracy and fraud in an influence-peddling scandal.
Speaking on the Sunday morning television programs, the lawmakers also called for greater White House cooperation with a Senate inquiry into the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.
"Get it out, get it out," Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, said of the Abramoff material. He suggested on ABC television that photos of Mr. Abramoff with Mr. Bush were likely to emerge anyway and that "disclosure is the best and most effective way to deal with all of these things."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5688


White House Official Warned Abramoff
By Pete Yost / Associated Press
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration's former chief procurement official tipped off lobbyist Jack Abramoff that the government was about to suspend the federal contracts of an Abramoff client, newly filed court papers say.
David Safavian provided "sensitive and confidential information" about four subsidiaries of Tyco International to Abramoff regarding internal deliberations at the General Services Administration, say the court papers filed Friday in a criminal case against Safavian.
Abramoff has pleaded guilty to conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud in a burgeoning bribery probe centered on Capitol Hill but also involving the Interior Department.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5687


The Republican Party is Corrupt;
The scandal is "a big problem, a broadening problem." -- Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich)
Corruption Scandals Cast Shadow on GOP Leadership Race
By Jonathan Weisman / Washington Post
In eight concise paragraphs, two moderate and two conservative House Republicans put into writing last week what they say many of their colleagues quietly fear: the GOP's plunging poll numbers, rising public support for a Congress controlled by Democrats and the increasing belief among voters that the Republican Party is corrupt.
House Republicans will gather Thursday to elect a successor to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) as majority leader, and the perceptions of corruption, though "neither fair nor accurate . . . are reality," Reps. Jim Kolbe (Ariz.), Charles Bass (N.H.), Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Tom Feeney (Fla.) wrote in a letter to their colleagues, imploring them to vote for change. "We must realize that the Majority we have all worked so hard for is in jeopardy."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5686


Bush Support Weak, New Direction Favored, Poll Finds
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush will address a nation next week that has soured on the direction of the country and his leadership on issues ranging from health care to the economy to Iraq.
A Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll taken this week as Bush prepares to deliver his annual State of the Union speech shows that the president wins the approval of only 43 percent of the public, a 7-point drop from a year ago. Three out of five say America is seriously off course, and by 62 to 31 percent those surveyed want to move in a different direction than the one Bush has set forth.
The president has lost public support across a broad swath of issues, including most of the ones that especially concern Americans, as well as on matters of personal trust and leadership, according to the survey.
``Presidents who lose their credibility, who lose the ability to persuade people that they're leading the country in the right direction, have a tremendous political burden to overcome, and that's where he's at,'' said Robert Dallek, a retired Boston University professor who has written nine books on presidential and diplomatic history. He said the modest goals Bush is likely to set forth in his speech next week reflect the fact that ``he's not any longer at the top of his game. His political capital has been expended.''

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5666


Bush Reasserts Presidential Prerogatives
Eavesdropping, Katrina Probe Cited as Concerns
By Jim VandeHei / Washington Post
President Bush set limits yesterday on White House cooperation in three political disputes, saying he is determined to assert presidential prerogatives on such matters as domestic eavesdropping and congressional inquiries into Hurricane Katrina.
In a mid-morning news conference, Bush told reporters he is skeptical of a proposed law imposing new oversights on his use of the National Security Agency to listen in on electronic communications. He also said that he will block White House aides from testifying about the slow federal response to Hurricane Katrina, and that he will not release official White House photos of himself with former Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5664


Taking the People's Demand to Capitol Hill
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2006-01-26 17:07. Activism Impeachment
Starting Tuesday, a huge truck with this billboard on the side will begin driving around the U.S. Capitol.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/7174


Plattsburgh Councilman Asks For Bush's Impeachment In Meeting
Local Politicians, Residents Differ On Place For National Debates
NewsChannel 5
PLATTSBURGH, NY -- A city councilman asked for President George W. Bush's impeachement during a city council meeting on Thursday.
Democrat Bill Provost also called for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney.
Provost said he's disappointed with how the administration handled some major issues, including the war in Iraq.
"It's just time for some accountability in Washington D.C., and we don't have that," said Provost. "The impeachment process is how we get accountability."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5663


Fax to Filibuster!
This is it! Senator John Kerry today called on his Senate colleagues to help him defeat the Alito nomination with a filibuster. If Sen. Kerry’s effort fails, Alito will be confirmed and help shape our laws for decades.
We’ve identified key senators who could provide critical support to the filibuster effort – and they all need to hear the same message from you:
“FILIBUSTER ALITO!”

http://www.savethecourt.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=mwK0JbNTJrF&b=1387741&action=5400&template=x.ascx


A New World is Possible
By Cindy Sheehan
And necessary! This is the theme for the World Social Forum that I (and tens of thousands of people from all over the world) am attending in Caracas this week. I know the idea of a world where everyone lives in peace and with justice is very "subversive" but the theme is very close to my heart and soul.
We need a new world. This one is broken.
Before my son, Casey, was killed in Iraq on April 04, 2004, I never traveled much to speak of. I had gone to Israel and Mexico and that was about it. I had a barely used passport.
Since I began to speak out against the dishonesty and deception that led to this illegal and morally reprehensible occupation of Iraq, I have journeyed all over the United States and now am starting to fill my passport with stamps.
Our world is so beautiful and the people who inhabit it are, for the most part loving, and all they want is a good life for themselves and their children. They just want to feel safe and secure in their communities. They want to be warm and fed. They want clean drinking water and they want to dance and laugh when appropriate. They want to live long lives with their families and they want their children to bury them at the end of their time here. In short, the people of the world want what we Americans want.
It is our governments who want to demonize and marginalize other cultures, religions, races and ethnic groups. George Bush and his coldhearted cronies and his easily misled and willingly blind followers want to "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here!" Who are these "thems" that we are fighting over there? Are they the babies lying in their cribs when a bomb (chemical or conventional) is dropped on their house? Is it the mother who has gone shopping for her family's daily food who is killed by a car bomber who never even thought to commit such a heinous act until his country was occupied by a foreign invader? Is it the grandmas and grandpas who are too old, or too stubborn, to leave their lifelong homes when the coalition troops are illegally carpet bombing civilian centers?
We as citizens of the United States of America must stop allowing our leaders to give the orders to kill innocent people. I almost said: we must stop allowing our leaders to "kill" innocent people. But we all know the cowards don't fight their own fantasy battles or send their own children to fight in the causes that they idiotically and diabolically iterate are "noble." No, they order our children to go over and do their dishonest and destructive dirty work! Our soldiers are taught that "Hajis," the brown skinned people of Iraq who clean their toilets, showers, and wash their clothes are less than people...which enables them to be killed more easily. The dehumanization of the Iraqi people is also dehumanizing our soldiers. Our children.
I got a hate email from a "patriotic American" once who told me that when we see the mothers and fathers of Iraq screaming because their babies have been killed, that they "are just acting for the cameras. They are animals who don't care about their children because they know they can produce another." This is the mentality of General Sherman when he said "the only good Indian is a dead Indian." This wicked rhetoric is the rhetoric that dehumanizes us all.
A new world is necessary and it can only be possible if we believe and live the belief that every human being is inherently the same as we are. They feel pain when they are hurt. They have hunger pains when they haven't eaten. Their mouths go dry when they are thirsty. They mourn when they experience a loss. They shiver when they are cold. They laugh when they are happy. How can we condone, or even allow, are leaders to kill our brothers and sisters like this?
A new world is necessary and it can only be possible if we rein in the depraved corporations that thrive off of the flesh and blood of our neighbors all over the world and here in America. War profiteers like Halliburton, Bechtel and General Electric who are racking up obscene profits and increasing the bottom line of their shareholders while they are running roughshod over this planet. Malevolent companies such as Dow who dump chemicals and other pollutants into the water and atmosphere that kill people, our environment and our future! Companies like Wal-Mart that exploit workers in the U.S. and abroad to enrich a family that already has more than enough money to fund healthcare and a living wage for all of its employees and have a little extra left over to pay their country club fees.
A new world is necessary and it can only be possible if we decrease our dependency on oil and use some of the money that we are pouring into the desert sands and sewers of Iraq to expand research on renewable energy sources and expound and promote the renewable sources we already have such as bio-diesel. I have talked to many citizens of Venezuela who are understandably nervous about a U.S. invasion and they know that it is not about the idea that President Chavez is a "dictator" which he is not, he is a democratically elected leader who is very popular in his country. The people of Venezuela are very savvy and they know that if the U.S. invades their country that it won't be because we are spreading "freedom and democracy" to them. They know they already have it.
A new world is necessary but not possible until we Americans get over the arrogant idea that we can solve the Iraq issue and the human rights violations problems alone. We have to reach out to fellow members of the human race all over the world to forge the bonds that are crucial to protecting innocent members of humankind who are impoverished or killed by our government and corporatism that has gone wild and is largely unchecked.
Peace and justice are intimately connected and the world can't have one without the other. True and lasting peace can only occur when we the people force out leadership that is dependent on the war machine for their jobs and for their lives and demand justice for the crimes against humanity that are perpetrated on the world on a daily basis by such "leaders."
A new world is possible and it is attainable. For this new world to become a reality it is necessary for us to take into our beings what Martin Luther King, Jr. said of his own eulogy, but more importantly, the way he lived his life:
"I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody. I want you to say that day, that I tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked. I want you to say, on that day, that I did try, in my life, to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness."


http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=592


Exclusive: Direct Talks—U.S. Officials and Iraqi Insurgents
Newsweek
Feb. 6, 2006 issue - American officials in Iraq are in face-to-face talks with high-level Iraqi Sunni insurgents, NEWSWEEK has learned. Americans are sitting down with "senior members of the leadership" of the Iraqi insurgency, according to Americans and Iraqis with knowledge of the talks (who did not want to be identified when discussing a sensitive and ongoing matter). The talks are taking place at U.S. military bases in Anbar province, as well as in Jordan and Syria. "Now we have won over the Sunni political leadership," says U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. "The next step is to win over the insurgents." The groups include Baathist cells and religious Islamic factions, as well as former Special Republican Guards and intelligence agents, according to a U.S. official with knowledge of the talks. Iraq's insurgent groups are reaching back. "We want things from the U.S. side, stopping misconduct by U.S. forces, preventing Iranian intervention," said one prominent insurgent leader from a group called the Army of the Mujahedin, who refused to be named because of the delicacy of the discussions. "We can't achieve that without actual meetings."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5690


For a Former Panther, Solidarity After the Storm
By Michelle Garcia / Washington Post
NEW ORLEANS -- Malik Rahim, a granddaddy with a broad face and long gray dreadlocks, leans across his wooden kitchen table and with a low Nawlins growl lets you know what he thinks local pols did for racial harmony.
"I'm far from being a Republican, but I got to call it the way it is," he says. "They had a shoot-to-kill order on African Americans in this city with an African American mayor."
He catches himself.
"Let me rephrase that: A so-called African American mayor and a so-called African American police chief. They sat here and allowed this governor to declare martial law on African Americans ."
In the days after Katrina drowned the city, Rahim, 58, sat on his front porch in Algiers, a working-class district of bungalows, churches and smokestacks that lies across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans, and watched mostly white militias patrol the streets with rifles and pistols. Then came the National Guard, carrying their M-16s, and Gov. Kathleen Blanco's order to "shoot and kill" the "hoodlums."
This is New Orleans, he says, where the fabric of history is woven with the likes of Jim Crow and the Dixiecrats. "Here's that plantation mentality," he roars. "New Orleans was a city that was ran by old money, old plantation money, so they never gave a damn about blacks."
But, a visitor across the table asks, what about the plans for rebuilding? The promises from New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Blanco to help folks, poor folks, reclaim their lives?
"You can't [urinate] down my back and tell me it's rain," he says, a chuckle ripping through his thick chest. "That's what they're doing and they think that people won't understand what they're doing. No, you ain't [urinating] on me."
Some people might dismiss Rahim as another angry black man in New Orleans. Or conclude he's just another aging former Black Panther with an abundance of Southern gumption. You might even acknowledge some truth in the reasoning offered up by Blanco's spokesman, Denise Bottcher, who notes that although a lot of the reports of violence turned out to be overblown, "there was lawlessness," and "at the time and place you have to respond to protect people's lives." Race, she says, played no part in the governor's actions.
The stone-cold reality for Rahim is that his spare bedrooms and the parlor are now stuffed with about a dozen portable generators and trailer-size tents cover his back yard to house a slew of idealistic, mostly white, young people.
Rahim, a Green Party candidate for City Council in 2002, is the nucleus of Common Ground Collective, a grass-roots recovery effort of volunteers parachuting into the city from points across the nation. Rahim's late mother's home, which survived the storms intact, has become the epicenter of the effort to deliver water, food, ice and medical care to the city's poorest.
Common Ground volunteers in search of a bare-knuckles approach and a movement to inspire them meet up with those who have lost patience waiting for officialdom to help them. More than 300 volunteers have cycled through the house. Before Thanksgiving, caravans with even more volunteers set out for the South to participate in a massive holiday rebuilding effort.
Doctors from New York, San Francisco and Indonesia canvass the neighborhoods, some on bicycles, offering front-porch medicine for those who can't make it to the 24-hour clinic the group runs at a mosque. Labor crews hammer blue tarps onto the roofs, the post-Katrina emblem of survival. Volunteers live and work at food distribution centers in some of the poorest sections of New Orleans.
Jonathan Arend, 32, a medical resident at Montifiore Hospital in the Bronx, rushed back to his hometown two days before Hurricane Rita doled out even more punishment. Arend recalled that locals such as Swampwater Jack, who lives across the street from the clinic, stayed away from the medical centers with National Guardsmen stationed out front and instead preferred to have his asthma checked at home, where he could show off photos of the gators he had shot down in the bayou.
"There was so many bizarre sets of circumstances and unnatural and outlandish things that were going on," says Arend. "The fact that you see a white guy riding a bicycle in a white coat and stethoscope was just part of the mix."
Sam Zellman doesn't mention race as he pours lighter fluid into his Zippo and flips it shut inches away from his blond Mohawk. A burly man, Zellman ditched his job at a restaurant in Paw Paw, Mich., to haul refrigerators and trash from damaged houses.
"Sitting at work making food for yuppies and listening to it on NPR -- after a couple of days of this I'm like, I gotta come down," says Zellman, who spent a month at the collective after he gave up on being deployed by the Red Cross. "Some of us want a better world, and this is kinda pushing on the rock together. If it's us, or anarchists or the church folks, we have common goals, common short-term goals."
Inside the kitchen, Rahim traces this mobilization to an era of resistance and rebellion.
"I was trained for this," says Rahim, his eyes intent. "I'm not doing nothing but what we were doing in the party," he says. "The mold abatement I had done with the pest control program. Our feeding program. It was part of our breakfast program."
When Rahim was in his early twenties and still went by the name Donald Guyton, he returned from Vietnam and joined the Black Panthers, a national militant liberation movement dedicated to battling racism and not averse to using violence. The FBI deemed the Panthers a threat to domestic security and put the group under surveillance.
In New Orleans in 1970, the Panthers set up operations in a house next to the bleak, sprawling public housing complex named Desire. Throughout the Lower Ninth Ward, pocked with poverty, neglect and thugs, the young men and women in their berets earned the admiration of many by chasing away the drug dealers. They offered social services -- free breakfasts and tutoring programs.
"They really started doing what the establishment was not," says Bob Tucker, then a young aide to Mayor Moon Landrieu who now owns an engineering firm. "When you look at what the Ninth Ward was, you have urban renewal, which was really urban removal, and Hurricane Betsy," a Category 4 storm that had ravaged the area five years before.
But there were tensions and suspicions. Local police eyed the militants warily.
On Sept. 14, 1970, the Panthers unmasked two undercover cops. The police claimed they were beaten. The next day, when police descended on the Panthers' headquarters, a 30-minute gun battle broke out. One bystander, shot by police, died.
Police arrested Rahim, then the chapter's defense minister, and 13 other Panthers. Most were charged with attempted murder.
As Rahim and other Panthers sat in jail on $1.5 million bond, their comrades squared off with police in what became known as the Showdown in Desire. A bloody denouement loomed -- until hundreds of public housing residents filed out of their homes and stood between the police and the Panthers, forming a human shield. A court later acquitted Rahim and the Panthers.
With the Panther Party dissolving in New Orleans, he bolted to San Francisco, served five years in prison for armed robbery and devoted three decades to prisoner and poverty rights causes, converting to Islam in 1989. Just a few years ago, he returned to the South to care for his mother before she passed away.
Within some circles Rahim is revered as a voice of consciousness, if not some good old rabble-rousing, says Tucker, who became chairman of the city's transit system. Beneath the provocative rhetoric, Rahim is a man driven by "a heart the size of New Orleans," says Tucker, who organized an anti-violence effort with him a few years ago.
"He talks about race because race is alive and well in the city and the country; he doesn't talk about it from the standpoint of a victim," Tucker says.
After New Orleans rumbled with unrest in the chaotic days after Katrina, Rahim unleashed his outrage in an essay in the San Francisco Bay View, an African American online weekly. "This is criminal," he began, and concluded with "You don't want to see black people live." The editors circulated his fiery words among community radio programs and activist groups. Within days volunteers began appearing at Rahim's door.
And this time, says Rahim, the solidarity that defused rising racial tensions was white. "If it wasn't for the work the courageous young men and women are doing here in New Orleans, we would be in it," he says, scanning the volunteers lounging in his back yard. "Because that's what stopped it, when they start seeing young whites sitting on my porch protecting me."
Rahim strolls across the front porch on a sultry evening looking for a meeting of his lieutenants, laughing and joking. Instead he runs into a newlywed couple from the neighborhood who dropped by to say goodbye before a young soldier ships off to Iraq. There are bear hugs for everyone. A long-haired young man follows Rahim while blowing a Pan-like wooden pipe.
Rahim has decided to run for mayor. There are too many poor people, too many African Americans too easily forgotten, he says; his long-shot campaign is about them.
Rahim then considers his battalion of mostly white volunteers and his racial critique. Might this be a paradox? To which, he cues up another rap.
"Right now America is drunk on prosperity. What we're showing is these conditions do exist. The demonization of young African Americans is unjust and we can make a change," he says, then pauses, considers his words and adds: "Not one that is based upon overthrowing anything."

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/covington.php



Post-Katrina Promises Unfulfilled
On the Gulf Coast, Federal Recovery Effort Makes Halting Progress
By Spencer S. Hsu / Washington Post
Nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, President Bush's lofty promises to rebuild the Gulf Coast have been frustrated by bureaucratic failures and competing priorities, a review of events since the hurricane shows.
While the administration can claim some clear progress, Bush's ringing call from New Orleans's Jackson Square on Sept. 15 to "do what it takes" to make the city rise from the waters has not been matched by action, critics at multiple levels of government say, resulting in a record that is largely incomplete as Bush heads into next week's State of the Union address.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/index.php?id=5680



Body of Secrets : Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (Paperback)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385499086/qid=1124276929/sr=2-2/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_2/102-8324782-0336969?n=283155


In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond

http://www.americanempireproject.com/bookpage.asp?ISBN=0805079696


America's Military Today: The Challenge of Militarism (Hardcover)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565848837/qid=1113506509/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/102-8324782-0336969?n=507846&s=books&v=glance


The Iron Triangle: Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group (Hardcover)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471281085/ref=ase_dogeatdogfilms/102-8324782-0336969?n=283155&tagActionCode=dogeatdogfilms


The Halliburton Agenda : The Politics of Oil and Money (Hardcover)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471638609/ref=ase_dogeatdogfilms/102-8324782-0336969?n=283155&tagActionCode=dogeatdogfilms


Hollywood's shifting winds
By Neal Gabler - Variety
It has been scarcely eight months since rumpled provocateur Michael Moore took the podium at the Oscarcast to accept his trophy for documentary feature and then proceeded to excoriate President Bush for dragging the country ever closer to war with Iraq.
Attendees were clearly flummoxed that night. Despite the industry's liberal proclivities, they were in no mood to attack what promised to be a popular war, and Moore's rant got a surprisingly cool reception.
Even by Hollywood standards, Moore had gone too far. He was out of the mainstream. The impending war, after all, was supposed to be good, simple and quick --- a payback for 9/11.
What a difference a year makes!

http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/articles/


The Miami Herald

Chaos, coverups, boredom and death: ‘This place is a powder keg ready to explode'
By Jason Grotto
jgrotto@MiamiHerald.com
ARCADIA -- For six years, Florida taxpayers have pumped more than $100 million into the Florida Civil Commitment Center, a facility set up to treat the mental disorders of the state's most dangerous sexual predators.
What taxpayers got: a place where child pornography arrived in the mail, stashed inside transistor radios. Bags of marijuana came in care packages, stuffed in the guts of peanut butter jars, and men brewed gallons of homemade alcohol under the noses of a shoestring staff.
The cornerstone of a program named after a slain 9-year-old boy, the center eroded into a place where boredom, violence and the fog of drugs and alcohol became as common as group therapy sessions -- with one man dying after a fight over a bag of Cheetos.

http://www.miami.com/multimedia/miami/news/archive/sexpred/part2/1.html


Florida's worst sex offenders aren't getting the treatment the state has promised
By Jason Grotto
jgrotto@MiamiHerald.com
The day Douglas Gray was set to leave prison, authorities slapped shackles on him and shipped him to a secure treatment center in a desolate corner of Florida -- where the state's worst sexual offenders are held even after serving their time.

http://www.miami.com/multimedia/miami/news/archive/sexpred/part1/1.html


Court handles repeat felons
Two new courts will process repeat offenders in an effort to streamline criminal justice.
BY SUSANNAH A. NESMITH
snesmith@MiamiHerald.com
They are the worst of the county's criminals, the handful of men and women who have been arrested over and over again and convicted repeatedly for murders, robberies and rapes.
Some believe they are unreformable, and statistics show they account for a disproportionate number of the crimes committed countywide.
But legally, on this day, in this court, on this charge, they are innocent until proven guilty.
And there's the rub. Critics of Miami-Dade's new Repeat Offender Court, which started last week, worry it will stigmatize some defendants as hardened thugs. Prosecutors, judges and law enforcement insist that won't be the case. And they hail the new court as the best way to move cases along faster.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13738533.htm


Attorney says more victims of priest will surface soon
The lawyer who represents a man allegedly sexually abused by a Catholic priest says additional victims will step forward next month.
By ROBERTO SANTIAGO, JAY WEAVER AND WANDA DEMARZO
rsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
Father Neil Doherty would slip something into his victims' drinks to make them sleepy. Then, when they were unconscious, the Catholic priest would assault them, according to documents released Friday.
The Archdiocese of Miami was aware of the priest's history, but instead of removing him, it moved him around -- to different parishes or Catholic agencies, according to attorney Jeffrey Herman, who has filed a $25-million lawsuit on behalf of a Margate man, and is preparing lawsuits for other victims, he said.
''They were also victims of [Rev.] Neil Doherty,'' said Herman, of Miami.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13732200.htm


Ailing priest is back in jail
Former Miami Haitian activist and influential Catholic priest the Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste is back in jail after being unable to be admitted to a Port-au-Prince hospital.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com
A pale and sickly Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, who reportedly is suffering from leukemia, was transferred to a private hospital Saturday only to be returned hours later to his Port-au-Prince prison after doctors failed to examine him.
William Quigley, a U.S. lawyer and friend of the former Miami Haitian activist, said an ailing Jean-Juste waited for two hours at Canape Vert Hospital for two Haitian oncologists who never showed up.
''No one could find the oncologists and no other doctors there wanted to admit him as a cancer patient,'' Quigley told The Miami Herald in a telephone interview.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13738597.htm


Jailed Haitian leader Rev. Jean-Juste arrives in Miami, taken to JMH
By JACQUELINE CHARLES AND TRENTON DANIEL
jcharles@MiamiHerald.com
Rev. Gérard Jean-Juste, a former Miami Haitian activist who is reportedly suffering from leukemia, arrived in Miami today to seek medical treatment according to his supporters, the Miami Herald has learned.
Jean-Juste set to arrive at 1:22 p.m. Sunday on an American Airlines flight from Port-au-Prince.
Jean-Juste arrived at Jackson Memorial Hospital hospital at 2:40 p.m. and was greeted by several doctors, among them Paul Farmer, who had examined him in Haiti. Jean-Juste will undergo testing at the hospital.
His provisional release, which requires him to return to the Caribbean nation after treatment to face criminal charges still pending against him, comes six months after his second arrest by Haitian authorities.
An investigative Haitian judge recently dropped murder and government conspiracy charges against him, but indicted him on a lesser illegal weapons charge.
On Saturday, Jean-Juste went to a private hospital for treatment, but had to return to prison after no doctors showed up to admit him.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13743802.htm


TV crime shows aiding real life murderers
JOE MILICIA
Associated Press
When Tammy Klein began investigating crime scenes eight years ago, it was virtually unheard of for a killer to use bleach to clean up a bloody mess. Today, the use of bleach, which destroys DNA, is not unusual in a planned homicide, said the senior criminalist from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
Klein and other experts attribute such sophistication to television crime dramas like "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," which give criminals helpful tips on how to cover up evidence.
Prosecutors have complained for years about "the CSI effect" on juries - an expectation in every trial for the type of high-tech forensic evidence the show's investigators uncover. It also appears the popular show and its two spinoffs could be affecting how some crimes are committed.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13740947.htm


DNA testing -- 92 years lost, and counting
By CARL HIAASEN
The cost of justice is too high for some Florida lawmakers, who'd rather let innocent persons rot in prison than allow DNA testing that would exonerate them.
A staff report to the state House of Representatives estimates that it might cost $2 million annually for crime-lab analysis in cases where genetic evidence would be used to review a criminal conviction.
Apparently some lawmakers and staff members think that's too much to spend in pursuit of the truth. They'd rather blow the extra dough they've got lying around this year on other things -- say, a multimillion-dollar sales-tax holiday for voters.
The fact that not everybody in prison is guilty seems hard to swallow for some of the tough talkers in Tallahassee. Traditionally, the Legislature has been disgracefully reluctant to compensate wrongly convicted citizens for time lost behind bars.
Last year, after an embarrassing hesitation, lawmakers awarded $2 million to Wilton Dedge, who spent 22 years locked up for a rape he didn't commit. Brevard prosecutors had fought doggedly to thwart the DNA testing that ultimately proved Dedge's innocence -- and even afterward they worked to block the undisputed test results from being admitted in court.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13729046.htm


The end of South Florida's free ride on Everglades water
OUR OPINION: STATE'S TOUGH NEW LAWS SET RIGHT PRIORITY
Miami-Dade County commissioners and managers got a stern message from the state and the South Florida Water Management District last week: The days of business as usual are over. The message was both timely and necessary.
Business as usual means siphoning more and more water from the Everglades to slake the thirst of a growing population. The message wasn't just for Miami-Dade. It applies to Broward, Monroe and Palm Beach counties, too. To their everlasting credit, Gov Jeb Bush and the Legislature last year turned off the one-way spigot with two bills that strengthen the state's water-supply policy.
The bills link water supplies with permits for new development and protect the state and federal governments' $8 billion investment in Everglades restoration by ensuring that growth will not drain the Everglades. From now on, counties and cities must find alternative sources of drinking water to support growth.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13729055.htm



Gangs active near air base
Yards from a secure Air Reserve runway, investigators have found what appears to be a meeting place for street gangs from around the country.
Authorities believe members of nationally recognized street gangs turned two largely abandoned warehouses in South Miami-Dade into a sprawling meeting place that included rooms designated for sex, beatings, interrogations and even gun target practice.
Investigators are particularly vexed because the warehouses sit just yards from the secured runway of the Homestead Air Reserve Base.
Inside one warehouse, investigators found wall after wall adorned with colorful graffiti associated with gangs more typically found in Chicago and New York.
Hardly any of the graffiti in either warehouse appears painted over by rivals -- a sign investigators worry may show members meeting for some sort of unity conference.
Sources close to the investigation say the discovery was first made on Jan. 17 when military police reported a fire at a warehouse situated on Miami-Dade County property just north of the air base's runway.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13744510.htm



Journalism at Risk

Clarence Page
These are risky times for hard news and views
Published November 27, 2005
NEW YORK CITY -- After this year's International Press Freedom Awards dinner, an ex-reporter remarked to me that the honorees' inspiring stories made her "think about getting back into real journalism again," with her accent on "real."
"Me too," I responded spontaneously, feeling unusually humbled by the realities of many of our overseas colleagues. It has been a rough year for American journalists. But things could be worse; we could be trying to work in China, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan or rural Brazil.
Those are the countries where death, jail, beatings, exile or intimidation color the daily working conditions of this year's recipients of the Press Freedom Awards, given out by the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, of which I am a board member.
This year, the tributes seemed to have a new edge. The hardship and sacrifices of journalists in societies that are less free remind us not only of how much we take for granted in the U.S., but also how often our own press freedoms seem to be under siege.
For refusing to reveal news sources, we've seen one American reporter, Judith Miller, jailed while working as a reporter for The New York Times this year, and another, Rhode Island television reporter Jim Taricani, put under house arrest with an ankle bracelet in 2004. Dozens of reporters have been similarly threatened with subpoenas or jail this year as Congress drags its heels on whether to pass a federal shield law that would protect journalists from having to divulge their confidential sources.
As our own government fights for increasing secrecy in the name of the war on terrorism, more tyrannical regimes increasingly borrow such homeland-security rhetoric to cover up their own abuses.
And as our international trade grows, American companies increasingly ignore human-rights abuses to win favors from tyrannical regimes.
One of this year's Committee to Protect Journalists honorees, for example, was jailed in China, a perennial leader for jailing journalists, with the help of Yahoo, the American Internet giant. Shi Tao, 37, a Chinese journalist, is serving a 10-year sentence for "leaking state secrets abroad." Translation: He posted on the Internet a Propaganda Department memo that instructed Chinese journalists on the government-approved way to cover the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.
If you follow the news, you also may know that his arrest resulted from a troubling cooperation between China's repressive police and Yahoo, which has refused to discuss the affair, except for brief press statements about cooperating with host countries' laws.
Another honoree, Brazilian editor Lucio Flavio Pinto, 56, was too tangled up in harassing lawsuits to leave his Amazonian hometown to receive his award in person. Investigating corruption and deforestation has made him the enemy of powerful, well-connected people in big business, one who punched him in a restaurant--on camera! Missing even one of his almost daily court appearances could land him in jail, said his daughter, Juliana da Chuna Pinto, who accepted the award on her father's behalf.
One honoree could not return to her home country and another is about to do so with great courage.
Galima Bukharbaeva, 31, cannot return to Uzbekistan for fear of imprisonment or other reprisals stemming from her reporting on police torture, repression of Islamic activists and other state-sponsored abuses in the former Soviet republic. While reporting on a May 13 massacre of civilians in the city of Andijan, a bullet tore through her backpack, piercing her notebook and press pass, when troops opened fire on demonstrators.
Zimbabwean lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, 47, is the first non-journalist to be honored by the Committee to Protect Journalists. She has been followed, arrested and beaten for her work on behalf of journalists, foreign and domestic, who have dared to operate independently of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's dictator-president. Because almost all of the country's independent journalists and correspondents have been driven out, there is little press freedom left in Zimbabwe to protect. The result, as Mtetwa pointed out, is a growing freedom for Mugabe and his cronies to do whatever they want, unexposed by the light of journalists.
We take freedom of the press for granted in the United States.
Press freedoms here are facing new questions, sometimes with good reason. Journalists who abuse those freedoms need to be taken to task. But that doesn't make the freedoms any less valuable.
----------
E-mail: cptime@aol.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-0511270484nov27,1,7399771.column?coll=chi-news-col&ctrack=1&cset=true



Readers teach their newspaper valuable lessons
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Lessons: You have right to know about officials' lives
As the public editor, I've learned that readers make the newspaper's journalism better.
The key for me is to discern broader lessons from readers' criticisms, whether they are lamenting the loss of a favorite comic or claiming bias in coverage of the war. From among thousands and thousands of phone calls, e-mails and letters in 2005, these are among the top lessons that readers reinforced for the coming year:
Play the role of watchdog. Readers praised investigative stories that helped them as concerned citizens. Among those were reports on the Portland police and fire disability fund, the Portland Development Commission, widespread tax breaks, the lack of oversight of home construction, legislative nepotism, Oregon State Hospital conditions and meth abuse. But while applauding, they want the newspaper to be even more relentless.
Look beyond bias complaint for education. The most common complaint continues to be allegations of political bias -- both from the left and the right. Journalists understandably find the assumptions of motive in bias complaints to be grating. But they need to be less defensive and dismissive, and listen more carefully. Complaints of bias shouldn't prick or paralyze journalists, but should spur them to more complete and complex reporting that conveys a range of perspectives. The criticisms should propel them to ask questions that they otherwise might not have asked.
Use anonymous or unnamed sources, but use them sparingly and wisely. Across the nation this year, a controversial reporter was jailed for refusing to reveal a source, several other reporters faced the threat of jail time, and the identity of the best-known anonymous source, Deep Throat, became known. When asked to comment on the use of such sources, more than 100 readers of The Oregonian responded with passionate defenses of the use of unnamed sources for important stories as well as support for a federal shield law to protect reporters. But they also chastised journalists for using them cavalierly.
Readers have become editors and demand and deserve better work. No story generates more comment than the Iraq war, and readers regularly complain that the newspaper has not consistently given enough prominence to it. Many argued that the deaths of soldiers -- particularly those from Oregon -- should always be on the front page. But they also complain that they want a better sense of the overall conditions in Iraq -- and that they are finding it elsewhere. With a growing number of news sources available online, readers can knowledgeably question choices by the newspaper's editors, particularly relating to national and international affairs. Whether involving complaints about slowness to cover a critical Downing Street memo about the war or the lack of reports on Iraqi civilian deaths, the complaints should spur improvements to what the newspaper offers from the world.
Readers deserve light shed on public officials. Readers believe they deserve to know key information about public officials, even if it might involve their private lives. The year was filled with stories of allegations of missteps in private lives, from accusations of meth possession to past domestic abuse, while more accusations of sexual misconduct involving community leaders emerged. The newspaper needs to cover those cases aggressively so readers can decide whether the person involved is fit for leadership.
Share difficult photos to show difficult truths. From the beginning of the year with tsunami photos through the fall with Hurricane Katrina and throughout the Iraq war, readers have surprised me in their reaction to photos. Newspaper editors understandably are cautious about graphic images, not only because children will see the newspaper, but also because unlike those on television, the images are lasting. But readers seem to accept seeing the grim truth when the magnitude commands it.
A newspaper belongs to its readers. When The Oregonian overhauled the Sunday newspaper, it initially jolted readers. They rightfully asked, "What have you done to MY Oregonian?" That sense of ownership is gratifying. After three months and attempts to address some of the concerns, more and more readers are applauding the retooling of the Sunday paper. But complaints continue to trickle in, particularly about the new O! and Opinion sections. Readers deserve to be heeded, and the tweaking should continue.
Everyone defines "local news" differently. The newspaper tried to save resources while also addressing a long-running concern about local news coverage by reducing the amount of news that is customized for individual parts of the metro area. What that has meant for readers is that you now can learn more about what's occurring in other Portland-area communities. But you also will learn slightly less about your own backyard. While many readers favored the change, many others continue to want more news from closer to home.
Never underestimate the reach of the newspaper and the generosity of readers. A scrap of information in the newspaper can mean lines at a restaurant, crowds at an otherwise small event and a run on produce highlighted in a recipe. Most important, the newspaper can be a powerful force for good in the community and world, thanks to readers. People's response to coverage of people in need -- from the tsunami to Hurricane Katrina to the Season of Sharing -- demonstrated that the good will of readers has no limits.
Look to readers for inspiration.
The most inspiring reader reaction of the year was sparked by my request for comments about the First Amendment. More than 900 readers responded with eloquent letters and e-mails extolling the importance of a free press in a democracy. They ranged from high school students to elderly refugees from Nazi Germany, from mechanics to retired attorneys, from civics teachers to inmates.
While they spoke of the importance of the amendment, they pushed journalists to be better, to rise to the promise of the Constitution: Don't be timid. Don't be trivial. Seek the truth.
They reminded journalists that the role they play should not be taken for granted, but cherished. It is a calling that should serve readers every day of the year.
Michael Arrieta-Walden: 503-221-8221 or toll-free from outside the 503 area at 1-877-238-8221; publiceditor@news.oregonian.com; 1320 S.W. Broadway, Portland OR 97201. Web log: www.oregonlive.com/weblogs/publiceditor

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/public_editor/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1135968910257400.xml&coll=7



Dancing with the Dragon
As the West prospers from China’s economic boom, companies stand accused of putting profit before principle. By Jenifer Johnston
IN the 19th century, Britain ruled the world as the industrial revolution sent steam trains, machinery and textiles all around the globe. For the last 100 years, America has prospered on fast food, cars, and the Hollywood dream, becoming the global super-power trading in weapons, pharmaceuticals and farming.
But now China is at the fore – this is its century to dominate. British consumers enjoy cut-price T-shirts and TVs built on the back of cheap labour, our companies set up shop in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong every day, determined to make a killing in the Chinese domestic market. Selling a $1 product to the 1.3 billion people in China – 24% of them under 14 – would make you not just rich, but mega-rich.

http://www.sundayherald.com/53800



Group Presses US Military on Jailed Journalists
NEW YORK - The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday called for the U.S. military to free two journalists, one held without charge in Iraq and the other, the media rights group said, detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The New York-based group also demanded an explanation from the U.S. military for holding a Reuters TV cameraman for eight months without charges until his release on Sunday.
Samir Mohammed Noor, a 30-year-old Iraqi freelancer, was freed from military custody after being held in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison and then at Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.
"Samir Mohammed Noor should not have been jailed for eight months without charge, explanation, or due process," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said in a statement.
"The military owes an explanation for this open-ended and unsubstantiated detention," she said. "U.S. officials should also credibly explain the basis for the other detentions or release those journalists immediately," Cooper said.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0124-04.htm



China condemned over jailing of journalist
International media rights groups condemned China on Friday over the jailing of journalist Li Changqing for three years on charges of providing "alarmist information" to an overseas website.
Li was sentenced on Tuesday by a court in Fuzhou in the southeastern province of Fujian for publishing an article about a local dengue fever outbreak on Boxun (www.boxun.com), a United States-based news website banned in China.
He was accused of "spreading false and alarmist information", said his lawyer, Mo Shaoping.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=262514&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/



Followers of jailed Filipino muslim leader pledge not to attack U.S. soldiers during humanitarian mission
Followers of jailed Filipino muslim leader Nur Misuari have pledged not to attack U.S. soldiers participating in a month-long humanitarian mission in Balikatan province.
The mission will begin Feb. 6.
In the early 1970s, Misuari was the founder of the Muslim separatist Moro National Liberation Front, or MNLF.
Under a 1996 peace agreement, Misuari became governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, but in November 2001 staged a failed rebellion on Jolo island when he was not endorsed for a second term and fled to Malaysia. More than 100 people died in the fighting. Misuari was deported back to the Philippines in January 2002 and jailed.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/intelandterror/article_1089435.php/Followers_of_jailed_Filipino_muslim_leader_pledge_not_to_attack_U.S._soldiers_during_humanitarian_mission_



VIETNAM: One Internet journalist freed; two others still jailed
New York, January 26, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the release of freelance Internet journalist Nguyen Khac Toan but deplores the continued imprisonment of two other online reporters in Vietnam. Authorities in Hanoi freed Toan on Tuesday, according to Doan Viet Hoat, a prominent U.S.-based dissident, and international news reports.
Toan had been sentenced to 12 years in prison on December 20, 2002, after a one-day trial. He was arrested for reporting on demonstrations outside the National Assembly in December 2001 and January 2002 during which peasants demanded compensation for land seized by the government for redevelopment.
In an interview with the BBC, Toan said he was released for good behavior but faces three years of travel and political restrictions.
"We're pleased that Nguyen Khac Toan has been freed after being unjustly jailed for more than three years," CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. "But the continued detention of Nguyen Vu Binh and Pham Hong Son, online writers who are serving sentences of seven years and five years, shows that Vietnam has not relaxed its efforts to restrict journalists and curtail freedom of speech."

http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/asia/vietnam26jan06na.html



ABC Anchor and Cameraman Seriously Wounded in Iraq
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
and JACQUES STEINBERG
Published: January 29, 2006
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 29 — The new co-anchor of ABC's "World New Tonight," Bob Woodruff, and a network cameraman were seriously wounded today when a large roadside bomb struck the Iraqi military vehicle carrying them near Taji, a restive area north of the capital.
Mr. Woodruff and the cameraman, Doug Vogt, sustained head wounds from shrapnel and underwent surgery at an American military hospital in Balad, a major American base north of Baghdad, ABC News reported. Mr. Vogt also suffered a broken shoulder.
"We have learned from the U.S. military and from our producer on the scene that Bob and Doug are out of surgery and are both in stable condition," the president of ABC News, David Westin, said in a statement this afternoon. "We take this as good news, but the next few days will be critical." He said the military planned to fly the two men to an Army hospital in Landstuhl, Germany.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/international/middleeast/29cnd-abc.html?hp&ex=1138597200&en=48e78a3cea9f2b9d&ei=5094&partner=homepage


Imprisoned for libel, a Polish journalist is released
New York, January 26, 2006—A Polish journalist convicted in a rare criminal libel prosecution has been freed two days into his prison term after the country's top constitutional court ordered the suspension of his sentence, according to news reports.
Andrzej Marek, editor-in-chief of the weekly Wiesci Polickie in the town of Police, was released from a municipal prison in the northwestern city of Szczecin on January 18. The criminal libel charge stemmed from two February 2001 articles alleging that Piotr Misilo, speaker of the promotion and information unit of the Police City Council, had obtained his post through blackmail and used the position to promote his private advertising business.
As he entered prison, Marek professed his innocence and said that he would "wait for clemency until my last day in this prison," The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse reported. He was due to serve a three-month term.

http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/europe/poland26jan06na.html



Prime minister drops criminal defamation charges against three journalists
Country/Topic: Cambodia
Date: 26 January 2006
Source: Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Person(s): Mom Sonando, Kem Sokha, Pa Guon Tieng, Rong Chhun
Target(s): journalist(s)
Type(s) of violation(s):
Urgency: Bulletin
(CPJ/IFEX) - The following is a 24 January 2006 CPJ press release:
Hun Sen drops criminal defamation charges against three Cambodian journalists
New York, January 24, 2006 - The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed the decision by Prime Minister Hun Sen Tuesday to drop criminal defamation charges against journalists Mom Sonando, Kem Sokha, and Pa Guon Tieng. The three were released on bail on January 18 after being jailed for criticizing a new border treaty with Vietnam. Similar charges were also dropped against union leader Rong Chhun.

http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/71852/



The USA is detaining journalists.
Group presses US military on jailed journalists
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060124/ts_nm/iraq_jo [...]
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Committee to Protect Journalists on Monday called for the U.S. military to free two journalists, one held without charge in Iraq and the other, the media rights group said, detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/washington/presidentbushssecondterm/index.html?type=write


In print and on Internet, China's crackdown continues
Influential weekly closed; Google launches self-censored search engine
New York, January 25, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a continuing crackdown on free expression in China. The Communist Party management of the Beijing-based China Youth Daily scrapped the paper's influential supplement, Bing Dian (Freezing Point), on Tuesday amid a dispute with editors known for challenging free-expression boundaries. And the U.S.-based Internet company Google said today that it agreed to comply with China's free-speech restrictions by censoring results on its new Chinese search engine.
Officials ordered the closure of Bing Dian after accusing it of "viciously attacking the socialist system" and condemning an article criticizing history textbooks used in Chinese classrooms, according to The Washington Post. It is unclear whether the supplement, which was closed for "rectification," will be allowed to re-open.

http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/asia/china25jan06na.html



Cambodian Prime Minister to drop defamation charges against his four critics
25 January 2006
Source: Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
Southeast Asian Press Alliance today welcomes a decision made by Prime Minister Hun Sen on 24 January to drop defamation charges against a journalist and three human rights defenders who criticised him of mishandling border agreement with Vietnam.
SEAPA said the decision was an indication of a change in the attitude of the leader toward more democratic way to resolve internal conflict besetting the country. “The removal of the defamation charges against these four individuals and hopefully, other critics in the near future will set stage for Cambodia to move towards improving its human rights and free expression record that have been tarnished over the past year by threats of defamation,” according to SEAPA statement.

http://www.seapabkk.org/newdesign/alertsdetail.php?No=428



24 NOVEMBER 2004 : INTERNATIONAL JAILED JOURNALISTS SUPPORT DAY
Six countries are holding over 80% of the world’s imprisoned journalists
Reporters Without Borders dedicates its 15th annual Jailed Journalists Support Day to the two kidnapped French journalists in Iraq. It is campaigning to release and notes that, in all, 198 men and women are in prison around the world for doing their job of trying to keep us informed. Nine others are missing. A canvas several square metres in area was displayed on the facade of the Paris city hall this morning, underneath the gigantic photographs of the two French journalists held hostage in Iraq. The canvas shows a man reading a newspaper in silhouette, consisting of the names of the 207 people who are paying too great a price for press freedom.
Of this record number, 128 are journalists and 70 are cyber-dissidents (see details at www.rsf.org). The biggest prisons are China (26 journalists and 62 cyber-dissidents), Cuba (26 journalists), Iran (15), Eritrea (14), Nepal (12) and Burma (11). These six countries account for more than 80% of the total.
Plenty of topics are banned there - corruption in China, lack of freedom in Cuba, the reformist-hardliner struggle for power in Iran, the dispute with Ethiopia in Eritrea, the Maoist guerrillas in Nepal and the ideas of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma.
More than 200 media worldwide have each adopted an unjustly imprisoned journalist and are publicising their plight today to ensure they do not languish in another prison - the jail of being forgotten. Along with well-known prisoners such as Raúl Rivero (Cuba) and Win Tin (Burma), lesser-known figures need our support too.
The families of the nine journalists who have gone missing since 2000 are fighting as well to see their loved ones are not forgotten. They include the relatives of Frédéric Nérac (France), who vanished in Iraq in March 2003, and his compatriot Guy-André Kieffer, who disappeared in Côte d’Ivoire in April this year.
Key press freedom figures :
47 journalists and 14 media assistants have been killed so far this year
46 journalists and media assistants have been killed in Iraq since the fighting began there in March 2003
More than 350 media have been censored worldwide so far this year
Other country-prisons for journalists and cyber-dissidents are Algeria (4 journalists), Vietnam (3 journalists, 4 cyber-dissidents), Turkey (3 journalists), the Maldives (3 cyber-dissidents), Rwanda (2 journalists), Uzbekistan (2), Azerbaijan (1), North Korea (1), Egypt (1), Laos (1), Libya (1), Morocco (1), Pakistan (1), Sierra Leone (1), Syria (1 cyber-dissident), Tunisia (1 journalist) and Yemen (1 journalist).
To finance its activities, Reporters Without Borders is offering a book of photographs, "Jean Dieuzaide for press freedom," on sale everywhere in France for 8 euros.
Reporters Without Borders thanks Paris City Hall for its support.


CAMBODIA:
Hun Sen drops criminal defamation charges against three journalists
New York, January 24, 2006— The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomed the decision by Prime Minister Hun Sen Tuesday to drop criminal defamation charges against journalists Mom Sonando, Kem Sokha, and Pa Guon Tieng. The three were released on bail on January 18 after being jailed for criticizing a new border treaty with Vietnam. Similar charges were also dropped against union leader Rong Chhun.
At the time of their release on bail Hun Sen said the journalists would still face trial, but on Tuesday he told reporters he had dropped the charges after the journalists apologized.
CPJ called on the prime minister to ensure that Cambodia eradicated all criminal defamation laws and released others held under them.

http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/asia/cambodia24jan06na.html



Competing shield laws to be heard in committees
By RACHEL LA CORTE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- Debate over legal protection for journalists begins this week as the Legislature considers competing bills on whether and when a judge should be allowed to require them to turn over their notes.
Republican Attorney General Rob McKenna and state Rep. Brendan Williams, D-Olympia, have introduced measures that would give professional journalists absolute privilege on protecting confidential sources, the same exemption from testifying in court that is granted to spouses, attorneys, clergy and police officers. But their bills differ significantly once it comes to whether reporters should be forced to turn over their unpublished notes.
Under McKenna's bill, the media could be forced to disclose information under certain circumstances, including when a judge finds the information is necessary in a criminal or civil case and cannot be obtained elsewhere.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WA_XGR_Shield_Law.html



El Khabar provincial correspondent jailed in continuing crackdown on press
Reporters Without Borders today called for the immediate release of Bachir El Arabi, the correspondent of the Arabic-language daily El Khabar in El Bayadh (southwest of Algiers), who was arrested on 21 January and transferred to Ain Safra prison in execution of a one-month prison sentence for libel that was issued by a court in his absence on 29 September.
“This imprisonment seems aimed at silencing provincial correspondents who pay a high price for exposing corruption among local officials and personalities,” the press freedom organisation said. “We call on the authorities to stop harassing journalists and to free El Arabi at once.”
Reporters Without Borders added : “This case proves that the authorities are still implementing criminal code provisions allowing journalists to be given prison sentences, contrary to the frequent claims of Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia, who has said they just have a formal role. We once again call for the decriminalization of press offences as requested by the UN special rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression.”

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=16260



Norman Solomon: Other Shoe Dropping on Classified Leaks and Journalists
Norman Solomon Mon Jan 23, 5:50 PM ET
Ever since the disclosure of
Valerie Plame's identity as an undercover CIA operative in July 2003, prominent Democrats have denounced that leak -- often with some kind of rhetoric about the sanctity of classified information. But reverence for keeping such information secret is dangerous. And so is the claim that sometimes the government should put journalists in jail to ferret out leakers.
With the vice president's former top aide Lewis Libby under indictment and Karl Rove still in the special counsel's sights, the Bush administration is eager to go on the offensive about classified leaks. Loyal Republicans now claim higher moral ground as they decry the leak of classified information about the National Security Agency's domestic spying that surfaced on the New York Times front page in mid-December.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20060123/cm_huffpost/014320;_ylt=A86.I2A9adVD0AUA8AX9wxIF;_ylu=X3oDMTBjMHVqMTQ4BHNlYwN5bnN1YmNhdA--


ETHIOPIA: CPJ condemns expulsion of leading foreign journalist
New York, January 23, 2006—The Committee to Protect Journalists is outraged at the Ethiopian government's weekend expulsion of The Associated Press correspondent in the country. Anthony Mitchell, who reported news on Friday of renewed clashes between police and protesters in the capital, Addis Ababa, left on Sunday after government officials gave him 24 hours to depart.
"Anthony Mitchell is a respected and experienced reporter, and he should not be expelled for doing his job," said CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper. "The Ethiopian government, which has imprisoned 16 journalists since November, is demonstrating yet again that it is bent on silencing independent reporting."
The state-owned Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) said Saturday that the government had decided to expel Mitchell for "tarnishing the image of the nation repeatedly, contravening journalism ethics" and "disseminating information far from the truth about Ethiopia." It did not provide any details.
AP Managing Editor Mike Silverman said in a statement that Mitchell is an "aggressive and fair journalist" who worked in Ethiopia for more than five years. Mitchell, a British citizen, also worked for the U.N. news agency IRIN. His departure is seen as a serious blow to the foreign press corps in Ethiopia.
The government has imprisoned dozens of opposition leaders, civil society activists, and journalists in the wake of clashes between opposition protesters and security forces in November. Fourteen detained journalists are among a group charged with treason and genocide, which carry a possible death penalty. Two more local journalists have been jailed after convictions on so-called press offenses.
The November clashes followed similar protests in June against election results that the opposition says were rigged. Last Friday, police again opened fire on stone-throwing protesters as annual religious processions were turned into political protests for a second straight day, Mitchell reported for the AP. At least two people were killed and 40 injured in two days of clashes, according to Agence France-Presse.

http://www.cpj.org/news/2006/africa/ethiopia23jan06na.html



'Freedom of expression is at stake'
By GEOFFREY BEW
HUMAN rights activists and journalists are lining up against a revised Press law, which they say could restrict freedom of expression.
It is expected to be submitted to parliament's services committee for discussion next month.
But opponents say the bill is ambiguous and could be interpreted in a way that stifles Press freedom.
Shura Council member and journalist Ebrahim Bashmi, who spearheaded an alternative law that was rejected by the government, has called on journalists to fight for the survival of their professional integrity.
"Their job is to search for the truth and sometimes maybe they make a mistake, but they are not stealing or selling drugs to children and their punishment should not be the same as those people," said the newspaper editor.
"I have been working in this industry for around 35 years.
"This law is the journalists' responsibility and now they must fight for their freedom.

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=133431&Sn=BNEW&IssueID=28310



The Miami Herald
Mob attacks on Castro's critics are increasing
Cuban dissidents are increasingly being set upon by violent groups that support President Fidel Castro, a tactic first used during the Mariel boatlift of 1980.
By Frances Robles. frobles@MiamiHerald.com. Posted on Sun, Jan. 22, 2006.
Dozens of angry Cubans shouting insults and pounding their fists in the air surrounded dissident Guillermo Fariñas one recent afternoon, demanding to know: Did he have the nerve to denounce Fidel Castro in front of them?
Outnumbered and his heart thumping with fear, the psychologist and dissident journalist said, he dropped to his knees on a street in his hometown of Santa Clara in central Cuba.

http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y06/jan06/23e6.htm



FEATURE - Africa’s rebels take their battles online
Monday 16 January 2006 00:03.
By Emily Wax
Jan 14, 2006 (NAIROBI) — The leaders of the main rebel movement in Sudan’s Darfur region were once brothers in arms. But last year, the two powerful men had a falling out, and each proclaimed he was the rightful president of the Sudanese Liberation Army. Things got ugly.
But not a single shot was fired. Instead, the feuding insurgents battled as bloggers over the Internet.
"I got his e-mails and read those bitter diaries," said Mohamed al-Nur, a founder of the rebel group, at a conference held here late last year by the United States to try to bring the two sides together.
"That’s the only place we hear from you — on that Internet!" hooted Saif Haroun, a spokesman for Minni Arko Minnawi, the newly proclaimed leader. "You run your rebellion from a computer?"

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=13565



Blind, Crippled -- and a Model for Journalists
Vatican Official Hails Example of Manuel Lozano Garrido
ROME, JAN. 24, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A writer who was blind and long confined to a wheelchair was extolled by a Vatican official as a model of life for journalists.
Archbishop John Foley, the president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, praised the life of Manuel Lozano Garrido at a press conference today.
Lozano, better known as "Lolo," is in the process the beatification. The blind Spanish communicator, who died in 1971, dictated nine books in the last 10 years of his life.
Archbishop Foley presided at the press conference, in the Foreign Press Room of Rome, to present the biography in Italian entitled "La Gioia Vissuta," published by St. Paul's.
The presentation took place on the feast of St. Francis of Sales, patron of journalists, and the day in which Benedict XVI published his message for World Communications Day.
Lozano was a member of Catholic Action, and worked for numerous Spanish Catholic periodicals. In 1969 he won the prestigious Bravo journalism award.
Heroic
"He was a skilled and dedicated professional who lived in very difficult times and who was heroic in seeking to publish the truth as he was able to perceive it," said Archbishop Foley at the press conference.
Lozano was born in Linares, Spain, in 1920. He began his professional work as a journalist in religious media and in the Associated Press. He founded Sinai, a magazine for the sick.
In 1942 he contracted spondylitis, an inflammation of the vertebrae, which deformed his body and left him an invalid. For the next 28 years he was confined to a wheelchair. He was blind his last 10 years. He died Nov. 3, 1971.
He was imprisoned at age 17 for distributing Communion clandestinely, in times of religious persecution. In his city at the time, only one priest remained; the others had been jailed.
Later, after the Spanish Civil War, Francisco Franco's regime marginalized him because of his social claims. Lozano died in poverty. His journalist friends bought him a wheelchair, as he had no money to pay for one.
"In all of that time, he maintained a spirit of joy and peace," recalled Archbishop Foley. "I personally have no doubt that he is worthy to be considered a saint."
Would be a first Antonio Pelayo, president of the Association of Foreign Journalists in Rome, also spoke at the press conference, stating that until now no lay professional journalist has been beatified.
For his part, Jesús Colina, director of the ZENIT news agency, talked about the reasons why more than 200 journalists in September 2002 asked Pope John Paul II for the beatification of Lozano.
Sources reported that Lozano's cause is in an advanced state at the Congregation for Sainthood Causes.
If a panel of theologians and cardinals declares his "heroic virtues," a scientific commission will study an existing miracle attributed to his intercession.
The postulator's office reports that studies have already been made of the inexplicable cure in 1974 of a 2-year-old Spanish boy, who today is an international tennis umpire.

http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=83335

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=11908


Georgia: Government Under Fire Over Journalists’ Beatings
Unidentified attackers yesterday beat up a Georgian journalist working for a private television channel. Colleagues and opposition leaders claim authorities are behind that and another, similar incident that also involved an independent reporter. The government denies foul play and has vowed to bring the culprits to justice.
Prague, 8 September 2005 (RFE/RL) – On 6 September, a local reporter working for the Tbilisi-based “Akhali Versia” (New Version) independent newspaper was physically assaulted in the central Georgian town of Gori.

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/09/d5a62584-1edb-4b0f-9a34-e7c5a118f287.html



RSF to seek Chadian journalists` release
Paris, France, 09/08 - Reporters Without Borders (RSF) will dispatch a delegation to Ndjamena, Chad on 20 September to seek the release of Chadian journalists jailed for alleged violation of media laws, an official of the NGO said here Wednesday.
"We are going to collect the views of the government and journalists and propose quick solutions to the crisis between the officials and the press," Leonard Vincent, head of RSF Africa Bureau, told PANA.
"Even though the justice system should continue its job, we call for the release of the journalists so that they appear in court freely," he added.
The delegation will stay in Chad until 27 September, he said.
It has obtained an `accord of principle` from Chadian officials and President Idriss Deby will receive them in audience on 22 September.
Four Chadian journalists were in July and August given sentences ranging from three months to four years in prison for libel and incitement to hatred.
They are editorial director of L`Observateur, Sy Koumbo Singa Gali, the co-ordinator of the editorial staff of the same paper, Samory Ngaradoumbe, independent journalist Garonde Djarma and the director of the weekly Le Temps, Michael Didama, all jailed in the civil prison of Ndjamena.

http://www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=372535



CHINA: Imprisoned Internet journalist on hunger strike
New York, September 6, 2005 ­ The Committee to Protect Journalists is deeply concerned about the health of journalist Zhang Lin, who has been hospitalized since beginning a hunger strike last week to protest his imprisonment, local sources said.
Zhang's lawyer Mo Shaoping told CPJ that he would visit Zhang this week in Bengbu, in the southeast province of Anhui, where the dissident freelancer is being held. Zhang was sentenced to five years in prison on July 28 for "inciting subversion."

http://www.cpj.org/news/2005/China06sept05na.html



Chhattisgarh government adopts law that could put journalists in prison
Reporters Without Borders voiced deep concern at the likely damage to press freedom of a ban on all Maoists groups adopted by the Chhattisgarh State government in central India under which journalists could be jailed for up to three years for covering their rebellion.
The state government adopted the special people’s security ordinance on 5 September 2005 that bans the Communist Party of India - Maoist (CPI-M), fighting a guerrilla war since 1980, and 32 other pro-Maoist groups. The full list has yet been published but it could include media.
The draft order now goes to the state governor, Sushil Kumar Shinde, then to the President of the Indian Union, for ratification. It comes a few days after a landmine blast in which 23 Indian police officers died.

http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=14900



Yahoo accused of informing on jailed Hong Kong journalist
Hong Kong (AsiaNews/SCMP) – Reporters Without Borders has accused Yahoo! Hong Kong of helping the Chinese government trace a journalist’s e-mail. Mr Shi Tao, the author of the e-mail ‘offence’, was arrested on charges of illegally providing state secrets to foreigners and sentenced to ten years in prison.
Yahoo! Hong Kong has defended itself against accusations it betrayed the journalist, saying it had to abide by the laws of each country it operates in.
“Just like any other global company, Yahoo! must ensure that its local country sites must operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the country in which they are based,” Yahoo! spokeswoman Mary Osako said in a read statement. No where does she directly mention the Shi Tao case.

http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=4083



Clinton urged to help dissident exposed by Yahoo!
Michael Sheridan, Far East Correspondent
THE former US president Bill Clinton has been urged to raise the case of a Chinese journalist jailed for 10 years for “disclosing state secrets” after the internet giant Yahoo! handed details of his e-mail account to the authorities.
Campaigners for press freedom were using Clinton’s scheduled presence at an internet conference in China this weekend — at which Yahoo! founder Jerry Yang was also expected — to highlight the plight of Shi Tao, a 37-year-old financial journalist.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1774284,00.html



3 December : Anniversary commemoration of the death of Brignol Lindor (Haiti)
Brignol Lindor, the former news director of Radio Echo 2000, a private radio station based in the city of Petit-Goâve, was stoned and hacked to death by machetes on 3 December 2001. The journalist had received numerous death threats from local authorities of the incumbent party for inviting several members of the opposition coalition to participate in his “Dialogue” radio programme. Despite their confession, his murderers-who enjoy close ties to government leaders-have not been arrested. Reporters Without Borders expects to monitor this case until such time as the case is resolved.


Protests over jailed journalists
International press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres has launched a petition calling for the release of the journalists held in Bangladesh.
By Guardian Newspapers, 12/3/2002
International press watchdog Reporters Sans Frontieres has launched a petition calling for the release of the journalists held in Bangladesh.
RSF is asking journalists the world over, as well as human rights campaigners and the public, to sign the petition being sent to the Bangladeshi prime minister, Begum Khaleda Zia.
The petition, which can be signed on RSF's website, calls for the immediate release of RSF's Bangladeshi correspondent, Saleem Samad, who was arrested in connection with helping a Channel 4 crew.
It says Samad "appears to have been simply doing his job, a right guaranteed by article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights".
British journalist Zaiba Malik and Italian cameraman Bruno Sorrentino, who were making a documentary for Channel 4, have had their applications for bail rejected by a court hearing at which neither they nor their lawyers were present.
Freelance Bangladeshi journalist Priscila Raz is also being held. The crew's driver Mujib is also believed to be in custody.
The journalists have been moved from police custody to Dhaka central prison, accused of sedition, which can carry the death penalty.
The Bangladesh government said Malik and Sorrentino arrived from London in early November on tourist visas and identified themselves as teachers.
It claims two films made by the foreign journalists falsely depict the country as a nest of terrorists.
But RSF said journalists, even if they work without special visas, can "under no circumstances" be considered as people engaged in "underground" and "dangerous anti-state activities".
And the organisation pointed out that Bangladesh had ratified the international covenant on civil and political rights, article 19 of which guarantees press freedom.
Dozens of Bangladeshi journalists today formed a human chain around Dhaka's National Press Club demanding the release of the TV crew.
And the US government has joined those calling for the journalists' release, saying a free press is essential to democracy.

http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/12-3-2002-31504.asp



Press club race supports jailed reporter
WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- The National Press Club is asking participants in its annual 5K race to honor jailed New York Times reporter Judith Miller by wearing her prisoner number.
'By wearing Judy Miller`s prisoner number, reporters and other participants in the race will show solidarity with our colleague who is unable to participate along with us,' NPC President Rick Dunham said in a statement.
Miller has been held in federal prison in Alexandria, Va., for more than two months for refusing to disclose confidential sources to federal prosecutors investigating the disclosure of the name of a CIA agent.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/northamerica/article_1047230.php/Press_club_race_supports_jailed_reporter

Police in Haiti Arrest Two Journalists
Staff and agencies
10 September, 2005
By ALFRED de MONTESQUIOU, Fri Sep 9,11:53 PM ET
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - A Haitian and American journalist were detained Friday by police searching the church of a jailed priest who is considered a potential presidential candidate.
Both men were taken to the police station, where Judge Jean Peres Paul ordered them held on suspicion of "disrespect to a magistrate" and resisting arrest.
Peres Paul said Pina struck him as officers tried to remove the reporter from the church. The journalist denies striking the judge.
The two journalists and a few others went to the St. Claire church in Cazeau, a poor neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, the capital after learning that police were searching the building. Officials refused to disclose reason for the operation, but police at the scene said they were looking for weapons.
The Roman Catholic priest is considered a possible presidential candidate for Aristide‘s Lavalas Family party in Nov. 20 elections.

http://www.leadingthecharge.com/stories/news-0070498.html


War on the Media: “Don’t Bomb Us”
Submitted by editor on November 27, 2005 - 10:36pm.
By Danny Schechter
Source: MediaChannel.org
For some time, Mediachannel.org and other outlets have been reporting on the Bush Administration’s contempt for the media and its attempts to manage and spin coverage.
Writing in this week’s Nation, John Nichols and Robert McChesney catalogue the various strategies that have been deployed, charging, “with its unprecedented campaign to undermine and, where possible, eliminate independent journalism, the Bush Administration has demonstrated astonishing contempt for the Constitution and considerable fear of an informed public.”
But would it actually attempt to “take-out” media institutions and kill or otherwise silence journalists? Would it bomb a TV station? How far will this government go?

http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/2054


Ebadi protests Iran human rights violations
Sunday, January 01, 2006 - ©2005 IranMania.com
LONDON, January 1 (IranMania) - The rights group of Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi protested at "numerous" human rights violations in Iran, including arbitrary arrests and the detention of activists and journalists, AFP reported.
"It must regrettably be said that in the past three months numerous incidents have happened which are obvious examples of violating human rights," said the quarterly report from Ebadi's Defenders of Human Rights Centre.
"Students in Arak (central-western Iran), Tehran... have seen their friends being interrogated and jailed despite judicial authorities' promises that they would not be summoned," it said.
The report referred to the students Mojtaba Saminejad and Afshin Zareh, who were arrested after making political statements on their Internet blogs, AFP added.
"Prosecution of activists and journalists in incompetent courts has not stopped and but increased, leading to very long jail sentences in Tehran and Kurdistan," complained the report.
It quoted the names of activists arrested in Iran's western Kurdish province, home to a number of ethnic clashes in 2005.
It went on to protest at the situation of Iran's high profile jailed journalist Akbar Ganji, "who is banned from meeting his family", as well as the prolonged detention of human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, AFP stated.
"Extending Soltani's detention despite his lawyers' protest is a blatant violation of the constitution and the declaration of human rights," it said.
"The Defenders of Human Rights Center repeats its protest and demands his immediate release."
Arrested in June, Soltani, a member of Ebadi's centre, represents Ganji and the family of the murdered Canadian photographer Zahra Kazemi as well as some persons suspected of spying on Iran's nuclear programme for the United States and Israel, AFP noted.
Ebadi's organization also hit out at the Islamic regime for banning political and women's rights Internet sites.
Earlier in December the European Union condemned Iran for continued human rights abuses and said greater respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms was essential to improve relations between the EU and the Islamic republic.
Iran has written off the EU rights resolutions as "politically motivated" and said it would halt its human rights dialogue with the European Union, AFP added.

http://www.iranmania.com/News/ArticleView/Default.asp?NewsCode=39235&NewsKind=Current%20Affairs



YEMEN: Draft press law debated amid criticism
04 Dec 2005 15:38:38 GMT
Source: IRIN
SANA, 4 December (IRIN) - Yemen's Shura Council, or upper chamber of parliament, has begun reviewing a draft press law amid demands by journalists for legislation granting them greater rights and protection.
"The issue isn't just the imprisonment of journalists," said Said Thabet, deputy chairman of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate (YJS ). "We want a law that can liberate the media from the dominance of the government."
The proposed legislation reportedly stipulates that the Ministry of Information cannot prevent a publication from being distributed except by a court verdict. The draft is also said to contain an article abolishing prison sentences against journalists, a longstanding demand of the syndicate.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/IRIN/722e175566f91feafe18045b818f3756.htm

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