Archive for August, 2004

EQUATORIAL GUINEA:The Dictator’s Achilles’ Heel

Saturday, August 21st, 2004

IPS News
Legal action in Spain and the United States taking aim at secret bank accounts of President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea could become a weapon to help put an end to his 25-year dictatorship, say opposition leaders and activists from the West African nation.

MADRID, Jul 21 (IPS) – Legal action in Spain and the United States taking aim at secret bank accounts of President Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea could become a weapon to help put an end to his 25-year dictatorship, say opposition leaders and activists from the West African nation.

The trials could mark the beginning of the end for a dictatorship ”which has turned the country into one enormous prison,” Celestino Okenve, head of the Madrid-based non-governmental group Equatorial Guinea Solidarity Forum (FSGE), which will be lodging a lawsuit in the Spanish courts, told IPS. full article

Well this ‘non-governmental group’ is clearly working in concert with the Spanish government and the oil giant who tried to pull off a coup in E.G. a few weeks ago. Watch those ‘NGO’s’… Dictators are unacceptable to the US only when they’re horning in on oil and gas profits.

Scramble for Resources in DRC Leads to Massive Deaths, But Scant Attention

Saturday, August 21st, 2004

allafrica.com
With an estimated 3.5 million Congolese dead over the last six years due to war, starvation and disease, the eastern region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the world’s worst long-running humanitarian disasters. About 3.3 million people are out of reach of relief organizations. full article

Antidepressant Study Seen to Back Expert

Saturday, August 21st, 2004

New York Times
A top government scientist who concluded last year that most antidepressants are too dangerous for children because of a suicide risk wrote in a memo this week that a new study confirms his findings.

The official, Dr. Andrew D. Mosholder, a senior epidemiologist at the Food and Drug Administration who assesses the safety of medicines, found last year that 22 studies showed that children given antidepressants were nearly twice as likely to become suicidal as those given placebos.

His bosses, however, strongly disagreed with his findings, kept his recommendations secret and initiated a new analysis.

In his memo, dated Monday, Dr. Mosholder said that the results of the new analysis, undertaken in part at Columbia University, matched his own. Though the two studies used different methods and different numbers, they came to similar conclusions, Dr. Mosholder wrote in the internal memo. A copy of the memo was made available to The New York Times.

In the new analysis, Paxil, which is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline, and Effexor, made by Wyeth, have been found to be even more likely to lead children to become suicidal than Dr. Mosholder’s original analysis found, his memo says.

The findings add to the debate over whether the government should ban prescribing the pills to children. full article

Voting While Black

Friday, August 20th, 2004

by Bob Herbert New York Times
The smell of voter suppression coming out of Florida is getting stronger. It turns out that a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation, in which state troopers have gone into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando in a bizarre hunt for evidence of election fraud, is being conducted despite a finding by the department last May “that there was no basis to support the allegations of election fraud.” full article

Back with a VengeanceThe Return of Racial Profiling

Friday, August 20th, 2004

by Greg Bates counterpunch.org
Racial profiling is back. Not that it ever left. But for a time it was unacceptable for commentators to argue that law enforcement should target suspects based on skin color. Today, it’s the edgy thing to advocate. This isn’t racism, the claim goes, but expediency in the post-911 world…

…Because racial profiling happens not only to be convenient and cost effective but also based on statistical data, we tend to see it not as racist, but as scientific. That’s exactly the trap that scientists of earlier days fell into when measuring brain sizes of the various races. Far from being reassuring, the support that science seems to lend to racism ought to raise that age old caveat: is this deal too good to be true? Do we really see the data clearly, or are our cultural values playing tricks on us? full article

Texas politician seeks custody to ‘save’ African child

Friday, August 20th, 2004

by Gary Younge Guardian UK
A white Texan politician is trying to win custody of the 20-month-old son of his African former maid, claiming that he and his wife want to help the boy because of “the terrible problem that black male children have growing into manhood without being in prison”.

State representative Talmadge Heflin and his wife Jan ice made their case to a family court in Houston this week, accusing Mariam Katamba and her partner, Fidel Odimara, of not caring for their son or providing him with adequate medical care.

Ms Katamba, who is from Uganda, and Mr Odimara, who is from Nigeria, say they love their child, have never abused him, and are being threatened by the Heflins be cause they are illegal immigrants. full article

Colombia’s oil pipeline is paid for in blood and dollars

Friday, August 20th, 2004

by Isabel Hilton Guardian UK
Trade unionists are the prime target of the US-funded 18th Brigade

If peace ever comes to Colombia after decades of civil war, it will come too late for three citizens of the oil-rich north-east region of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela. They were murdered by the army on August 5. The men were all trade unionists, and their killings bring to 30 the number of unionists killed in Arauca so far this year.

I met the men on a recent visit to Saravena, a town in Arauca at the epicentre of the government’s security policies. Armed soldiers stood on every street corner. At a packed meeting, they and other trade unionists described the conditions they had struggled with after the President Alvaro Uribe designated their area a special security zone. Armoured cars cruised past the building, as though warning those inside that we were all being watched.

The stories they told were of mass arrests, kidnappings, intimidation and murder. full article

Congo Pulls Diplomats Out of Burundi

Friday, August 20th, 2004

New York Times
KINSHASA (Reuters) – The Democratic Republic of Congo has pulled all of its diplomats out of neighboring Burundi following the slaughter of Congolese Tutsi refugees there last week, its foreign minister said on Friday.

The decision was taken after Congolese Tutsis held violent protests outside Congo’s embassy in Bujumbura earlier in the week, breaking windows and tearing its flag to shreds, he said. full article

New Overtime Rules Take Effect Monday

Thursday, August 19th, 2004

npr.org
Aug. 19, 2004 — Americans spend more time on the job than workers in any other industrialized country. Most who put in more than 40 hours per week are supposed to be paid overtime — time and a half.

Some labor studies indicate that as many as 30 percent of employees are working off the clock. But complaints filed with the Labor Department are increasing; back pay awards jumped 30 percent last year.

The Bush administration’s new rules on overtime will take effect Aug. 23. Proponents say the changes will decrease litigation by closely defining who is eligible for overtime and who isn’t.

Critics charge that millions more will loose out, as the fraction of the workforce that’s not entitled to overtime pay could climb from 15 percent to as much as 40 percent.

more mean-spiritedness

In the Minds of the Rich, the Venezuela Poor Aren’t Even Members of Society…Guess Who’s Laughing Now

Thursday, August 19th, 2004

by Diane Barahona counterpunch.org
I never left Caracas during my 7 day trip, and residents always urged me to get out and see the natural wonders of the country. But Caracas is interesting enough for a newcomer — built in a valley surrounded by green hills, and continuing on the other side of more hills which you traverse through a tunnel on the way north to the airport on the coast.

Everywhere you go you feel the presence of the oil economy; the boom of fancy buildings of concrete, marble, and modern elevators, the bust of crumbling concrete, leaky plumbing, dirty carpets. The most impressive feature of Caracas is a clean, modern subway system which is being expanded there and replicated in other cities.

Then there is the wonder of the red brick shantytowns clinging precariously to the hillsides in and around Caracas. They say that Chavez gave the people the bricks to solidify these improvised homes, which sprang up as people from around the country gave up on the impoverishment of rural life and migrated to the big city looking for work. Chavez granted land titles to these people, who make up a large part of the 6 million inhabitants of Caracas — nearly 25% of the population of the country. He also gave them paved roads, free running water, telephone lines, and electricity at about $1.00 a month. I know because I went to one of these neighborhoods and asked them.

The elites are terrified of these folks, and extremely put out that the shanty dwellers would not only be taken into account by the government, but that they represent a permanent army encamped around the city, ready to march down from the hills at any time and defend their revolution. I truly believe that this is the primal source of the violent, irrational hatred that the opposition has for Chavez — his widespread support among the poor who, in the minds of the rich, are not even members of society and should not be playing any role except that of the silent worker or servant. full article