Police and prosecutors concerned with a spate of killings in the city begged the public Monday for more help identifying murderers.

District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham vowed that her office will protect witnesses, even if it means sending a moving van to their home to take them to safety the day they come forward.

“We cannot only move you out of the city, we can move you out of the state; we can move you across the country,” Abraham said.

Within the past eight days there have been 21 homicides in Philadelphia, including three in the late-night and early morning hours after the prosecutor made her appeal Monday.

Now, CBS 3’s Walt Hunter reports that Mayor Street said under certain circumstances he would consider help from the Pennsylvania State Police and even the National Guard.

Street has declared the violence throughout the city a crisis and as a result has ordered the full review of police department policies and has suggested a full moratorium on the issuing of gun permits.

In addition, Street has requested a meeting with Governor Ed Rendell to talk about possible new gun legislation.
Full Article: kyw.com/news

As he made his way to the cafeteria, Malcolm Cotton spotted the Army recruiters passing out video games and making their pitches from a long table they had set up in a hallway at his school.

The recruiters made joining sound oh so terribly good – a $20,000 bonus for enlisting, $9,000 more if enlistees shipped out in the next 30 days and even better, $70,000 for college.

Cotton, 18, a senior at Gateway High School, just walked on by without pausing, almost with disdain.

“I love this country and I will defend this country if someone is really attacking us,” he said. “But I don’t agree with this war. I believe it’s really nonsense. It’s about power and taking oil. I really don’t think we need to be over there fighting.”

Increasingly, young African-Americans have been turning away from the Army, many for the same reasons as Cotton, the military says. They don’t agree with the war. They dislike President George W. Bush’s handling of the military and foreign policies, and they are not willing to fight and possibly die for a cause they don’t believe in.

The number of African-American recruits, a cornerstone of the Army in recent years, has plummeted, the military says. And the Army is struggling to maintain a force large enough to wage a war on two fronts, Afghanistan and Iraq.

For years, African-Americans have made up nearly 25 percent of the Army, more than twice their representation in the general population. The military, especially the Army, has had a long history of providing opportunities for African-Americans.

But since 2000, according to the Department of Defense, African-American representation among Army recruits has fallen sharply.

In 2000, 23.5 percent of Army recruits and 26.5 percent of Army Reserve recruits were African-American. Last year, African-Americans represented just 15.9 percent of Army recruits and 20.2 percent of Army Reserve recruits. As of the end of last month, those numbers had fallen even further – to 13.9 percent of Army recruits and 18.4 percent of Army Reserve recruits.

Full Article: commondreams.org

Scratching her swollen and shoeless feet after digging up her potato field, Roberta Centeño looks exhausted but says she has plenty of energy for the struggle ahead.

“We blocked roads before and we will do it again,” says the Aymara Indian mother of 12. “It is the only way the government ever listens, they want to just think about the rich.”

Sitting on the kerb with his family, their feet in sewage, unemployed mechanic Estanislao Mamani says he, too, believes it is the right time to demand more. “We will paralyse the country when the order comes,” he says.

Ms Centeño lives in a hamlet on Bolivia’s vast highland plain, 4,000 metres (13,000ft) above sea level, which also houses the sprawling working-class city of El Alto.

From the potato fields to the slums, South America’s poorest country is a political time bomb which, analysts say, could explode at any moment.

In recent weeks, a wave of street protests by indigenous and labour groups opposing the government’s economic policies have almost crippled the country. Trade unions have called a 48-hour strike starting today.

Roadblocks of stones and tree trunks have cut off one region in the centre of the country for weeks, with long lines of trucks filled with rotting produce unable to move and reports of shortages in some towns. Meanwhile, the political leaders of Bolivia’s poor, primarily indigenous majority are poised to extend the protests nationwide from tomorrow unless the government gives in to their demands.

Their central demand is 50% royalty payments on exports of Bolivia’s natural gas, which are bought by foreign companies, most notably Petrobras in Brazil, Repsol in Spain and BP.

The government and the private sector say this would turn the country into a no-go area for foreign investment. “Fifty per cent is like saying to foreign investors in so many words, don’t come here,” says Eduardo Bracamonte, head of the national exporters’ association. “The image of Bolivia has seriously deteriorated already. The perception of the risk of doing business has gone up enormously and we all suffer because of that.”

There are other tensions between the people and the government, ranging from pressure to kick out the French water company which is running the services in El Alto to the prices of bus tickets.

Today, human rights officials had been expected to bring together the major players to seek a compromise on the royalties issue, but plans for the meeting fell apart when the president, Carlos Mesa, decided not to attend.

Last week, the centrist President Mesa seemed to strengthen his chances of bringing the situation under control when his offer to resign was unanimously rejected by parliament. But pressure on the president from the middle and upper classes to crack down on the protests is growing, prompting rumours that he will declare a state of siege.

Since Bolivia’s revolution of 1952 petered out, the country has suffered bloody dictatorships and corrupt democratic governments interspersed by political turmoil which one analyst, Alvaro Garcia, describes as power struggles between those at the top. What is different now, he says, is that groups representing the poor indigenous majority have begun to challenge the traditional elite, mostly of European origin and US-educated.
guardian.co.uk

The indigenous people of the Andes have been challenging their white invaders since Pizzarro showed up on the Inca altiplano in 1532, and they were not poor then.

by Stan Cox
It’s enough to make your hair stand on end and your eyes bug out. Not only is the Earth in peril, but some people who hold sway over the fate of the planet believe that soon the whole place is going to go up in a blaze of brimstone anyway — and they can’t wait to watch it happen!

Bill Moyers, in the March 24 issue of the New York Review of Books, paints a scary picture indeed. With a greeting of “Welcome to the Rapture!”, Moyers writes about the vast numbers of Americans who believe that an imminent end of the world is predicted in the Book of Revelation and about their energetic support for the Bush administration. He draws this conclusion:

A powerful current connects the administration’s multinational corporate cronies who regard the environment as ripe for the picking and a hard-core constituency of fundamentalists who regard the environment as fuel for the fire that is coming. Once again, populist religion winds up serving the interests of economic elites.

Moyers is right: It “sends a shiver down the spine.” But the Earth was headed down a highway to hell long before Bush was elected or the Armageddon Clock started up. Triumphant capitalism, performing precisely to specifications, is showing itself fully capable of pulling off an ecological apocalypse, with or without the help of superstitious scripture-twisters.

When it comes to shining a light on some of the most alarming outgrowths of capitalism, Moyers is a master. But in going after the Bush administration’s scorched-Earth environmental policies, its “multinational corporate cronies”, and those hallucinatory crackpots brandishing their biblical licenses to plunder, he missed the root cause of the problem:capitalism’s addiction to perpetual growth.
Full Article:counterpunch.org

by Kurt Nimmo
If there were any doubts the New World Order is galloping along towards the fulfillment of the fascist dystopia warned against for so long, today’s tidbits from Iyad Allawi’s Iraq should dispel them entirely.

Iyad Allawi’s occupational government has launched a new TV show, sort of an Iraqi version of reality television. “Terrorists in the Hands of Justice” runs several times a day in Iraq and features the confessions of beaten up “insurgents” who admit to terrible crimes, for instance serial murder.

“One man said he stalked 10 college girls who were translators for the U.S. Army, then raped and murdered them. Another said he beheaded 10 people after first practicing on animals,” reports NBC News.

It is said the show is “wildly popular” but obviously this claim has to be taken with a grain of salt. Most Iraqis are desperately poor and it is fair to say many do not own televisions and even if they did much of the time there is no electricity. It is also fair to say millions of Iraqis, even if they had televisions and consistent electricity, would refuse to believe anything broadcast by Allawi’s occupational government.

“The program’s goals are to convince people the security forces are defeating insurgents, and lift the police’s own morale. Police wanted to televise the confessions to inspire people to give tips, but they’ve had the unexpected effect of turning public opinion here against Syria,” writes Richard Engel for NBC.

Even here in the United States, thousands of miles away from Iraq, with a barrage of corporate media propaganda and a seemingly endless stream of pro-Bush pundits, it is obvious the “security forces” are not “defeating insurgents.” In Iraq this reality is even more obvious. Blaming Syria and portraying the resistance as a gaggle of serial murderers and animal torturers will not put an end to the violence against “security forces” and foreign occupation troops.

More than anything, it would seem, “Terrorists in the Hands of Justice” is an idea devised for American consumers, although the show is not run in the United States. But then it doesn’t need to be. A sound-bite sized chunk of video broadcast on NBC is more than enough, especially if the video contains content Americans are familiar with-violent young men and confessions given to police by ruthless serial murderers preying on young women.
Full Article:rense.com

WASHINGTON, March 9 – In what has seemed a daily ritual, the Senate in the last two weeks has defeated the most modest attempts by Democrats to curb bankruptcy abuses by corrupt or troubled corporations and their senior executives.

The votes illustrate a new reality and a sharp swing of the pendulum in the Senate, which has nearly completed its work on the legislation that everyone expects will soon become law.

Just two and a half years ago, in the midst of plunging stock markets and widening business scandals that left many thousands of workers unemployed and without their retirement savings, fearful lawmakers rushed by a vote of 97 to 0 to adopt the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It was the most aggressive federal anticorruption law Congress had adopted in decades. On the day of the Senate vote, the Dow Jones industrial average was down as much as 440 points. Days earlier, WorldCom executives disclosed the first details of the largest accounting fraud in history.

Now, as business scandals occupy a less prominent place in newspapers and the stock market is well above 2002 lows, the politics of financial regulation have sharply shifted.

The new mood has emboldened corporate lobbyists to ask for and receive more from lawmakers, who no longer seem to be concerned about recrimination at the polls. At the same time, business interests have picked up new allies in the Senate, giving them significantly more influence over its proceedings.

“How quickly things change,” said Ann Yerger, executive director of the Council of Institutional Investors, a group of major shareholders that sought tough corporate governance and accounting rules. “It’s been stunning. In the past few months alone, there has been a clear push back from the corporate community, and it has resonated. Folks have short memories, and there is a perception that the Enrons are behind us.

“We now spend much of our time trying to hold onto the reforms we had won,” she added.

During the recent debate on tightening the bankruptcy code, the lawmakers rejected a proposal to prohibit corrupt companies from issuing huge payouts to senior executives shortly before entering bankruptcy. They blocked consideration of a measure that would have curtailed the ability of companies like Enron and WorldCom to shop for the most favorable bankruptcy courts; such actions have had the effect of disenfranchising employees and retired workers from the process.

They defeated a proposal to protect those employees and retired workers when their companies go bankrupt. They refused to close the “millionaire’s loophole” that permits wealthy individuals to shelter their assets from lenders by creating special asset-protection trusts.

And on Wednesday, they rejected a proposal to put a nationwide limit on the homestead exemption, a provision that has enabled corporate executives to buy expensive homes in states like Florida and Texas to shelter their assets from creditors.
Full Article: nytimes.com

WASHINGTON – Crowded schools, traffic-choked roads and transit cutbacks are eroding the quality of American life, according to an analysis by civil engineers that gave the nation’s infrastructure an overall grade of D.

A report by the American Society of Civil Engineers released Wednesday assessed the four-year trend in the condition of 12 categories of infrastructure.

The overall grade slipped from the D+ given in 2001 and 2003. Overall conditions remained the same for bridges, dams and solid waste, the group said, and worsened in roads, drinking water, transit, wastewater, hazard waste, navigable waterways and energy.

“The condition of our nation’s roads, bridges, drinking water systems and other public works have shown little to no improvement since they were graded an overall D+ in 2001, with some areas sliding toward failing grades,” the society said.
Full Article: msn.com

by Naomi Klein
It started off as a joke and has now become vaguely serious: the idea that Bono might be named president of the World Bank. US Treasury Secretary John Snow recently described Bono as “a rock star of the development world,” adding, “He’s somebody I admire.”

The job will almost certainly go to a US citizen, one with even weaker credentials, like Paul Wolfowitz. But there is a reason Bono is so admired in the Administration that the White House might just choose an Irishman. As frontman of one of the world’s most enduring rock brands, Bono talks to Republicans as they like to see themselves: not as administrators of a diminishing public sphere they despise but as CEOs of a powerful private corporation called America. “Brand USA is in trouble…it’s a problem for business,” Bono warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The solution is “to re-describe ourselves to a world that is unsure of our values.”

The Bush Administration wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by the orgy of redescription that now passes for American foreign policy. Faced with an Arab world enraged by its occupation of Iraq and its blind support for Israel, the US solution is not to change these brutal policies; it is, in the pseudo-academic language of corporate branding, to “change the story.”

Brand USA’s latest story was launched on January 30, the day of the Iraqi elections, complete with a catchy tag line (“purple power”), instantly iconic imagery (purple fingers) and, of course, a new narrative about America’s role in the world, helpfully told and retold by the White House’s unofficial brand manager, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. “Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi ‘insurgents’ trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi ‘stooges’ to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with U.S. help, against the wishes of Iraqi Baathist-fascists and jihadists.” This new story is so contagious, we are told, that it has set off a domino effect akin to the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of Communism. (Although in the “Arabian Spring,” the only wall in sight–Israel’s apartheid wall–pointedly stays up.)

As with all branding campaigns, the power is in the repetition, not in the details. Obvious non sequiturs (is Bush taking credit for Arafat’s death?) and screeching hypocrisies (occupiers against occupation!) just mean it’s time to tell the story again, only louder and more slowly, obnoxious tourist-style. Even so, with Bush now claiming that “Iran and other nations have an example in Iraq,” it seems worth focusing at least briefly on the reality of the Iraqi example. The state of emergency was just renewed for its fifth month, and the United Iraqi Alliance, despite winning a clear majority, still can’t form a government. The problem is not that Iraqis have lost faith in the democracy for which they risked their lives on January 30; it’s that the electoral system imposed on them by Washington is profoundly undemocratic.
Full Article: commondreams.org

The Paramilitaries Burned Wayuu Children Alive and Killed Others With Chainsaws

By James J. Brittain
Colombia’s civil war is a conflict between two ­ and only two ­ principle groups; the people struggling or change and the Colombian state. No greater example of this can be realized than the recent massacre of several inhabitants of the Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó (Peace Community of San José in the Apartadó municipality of the Antioquia department).

The Comunidad de Paz was established as the first organically constructed and established peace community within Colombia that sought the existence of an alternative autonomous society surrounded by a raging four decade old war. San José’s goal was to be a progressive community independent from violence existing apart from the armed activities and actors presented throughout the country. One of the principal founders of the historically significant community was a man named Luis Eduardo Guerra. Guerra, like all too many social justice-minded personalities within the Andean country, was brutally murdered on February 21st. His remains were found alongside Deyanira Areiza Guzman (Guerra’s partner), Deiner Andres Guerra, (Guerra’s son), Luis Eduardo Guerra, (Guerra’s half-brother), Alfonso Bolivar Tuberquia Graciano (a leader/member of the Peace Council of the Mulatos humanitarian zone), Sandra Milena Munoz Pozo (Graciano’s partner), Santiago Tuberquia Munoz and Natalia Andrea Tuberquia Munoz (Graciano and Munoz’s children). The murderers, according to several eye-witnesses, were members belonging to the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army.

It should be noted however that this article does not seek to expound the atrocious events carried out by the coercive arm of the Colombian ruling-class but rather seeks to illustrate how, as according to Father Javier Giraldo, “there is no place for neutrality” within Colombia. As the Catholic priest states, “peasants who live where there are guerrillas are killed or displaced”. On March 8th the Comunidad de Paz released a statement which stated that the community had been the recipients of “many attacks” such as “harassments, threats, beatings, bombings, murders” and now, “massacres”. Nevertheless, the people of San José presented that “the will of the community is firm” and they are determined to maintain their “position of pacifist coexistence”.

While many may applaud such a position, what in actuality does this moral outlook mean? As Giraldo (a devout non-violent liberation theologian who has been struggling on the front lines within Colombia for decades) stated, Colombians live in a black and white world, a society which is not blurred with grey undertones of reality. He imparts that there are two truths for people living alongside the guerrilla; death or displacement. In the March 8th release, the Comunidad de Paz argued that “we are not going to coexist with our victims”; therefore, subtracting death from the categorical realm of possibilities, thus leaving only one outcome according to Giraldo’s premise; displacement. The Comunidad de Paz recently wrote that if the state imposes its militarized forces against them than they “are determined to move on” with their ideals in hand, thus giving rise to the latter of Giraldo’s bilateral outcomes. However, is this all that is left? Is this all that the people in Colombia seeking social justice can do? Merely run or die?

Since 2001, the 2nd Brigade of the Colombian army (and members of the AUC) organized numerous devastating attacks, similar to that which took place in San José de Apartadó, against members of the Wayuu indigenous nation. On April 18th, 2004 paramilitaries (and soldiers) entered into the village of Bahía de Portete where a large majority of Wayuu peoples inhabited. On this date the state forces systematically “burned two children alive and killed others with chain saws”. Jhony Valetta (“Wayuu Indians go to war against Colombian government: May 27, 2004 On-Line http://www.anncol.org/side/587) wrote of one Wayuu father’s experience.

“You can not imagine how it is to have to escape on the run so that they won’t kill you, and then hear the cries of the kids, of my two little sons who they burned alive with out me being able to do anything. . . . They burned them alive inside my pick up. Also, they beheaded my mother and cut my nephews to pieces. They didn’t shoot them, they tortured them so we would hear their screams, and they cut them up alive with a chain saw.”

…As the Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó tries to cope with their tremendous loss and regain some sense of peace and positive memory they must decide if death or displacement is all they have to look forward to. Are they going to stay ‘vigilant’ in their morals and run every time the state instills its military prowess or will they head the words that are only too prevalent and truthful within Colombia; “there is no place for neutrality”. In order to do more than merely subsist, the people of San José must respond to their oppression with more than immaterial ideals.They must abide by their morality and know that they can materially respond to oppression and, like the Wayuu, defend their morality through objective justice.
Full Article: counterpunch.org

ISRAEL has drawn up secret plans for a combined air and ground attack on targets in Iran if diplomacy fails to halt the Iranian nuclear programme.

The inner cabinet of Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, gave “initial authorisation” for an attack at a private meeting last month on his ranch in the Negev desert.

Israeli forces have used a mock-up of Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant in the desert to practise destroying it. Their tactics include raids by Israel’s elite Shaldag (Kingfisher) commando unit and airstrikes by F-15 jets from 69 Squadron, using bunker-busting bombs to penetrate underground facilities.

The plans have been discussed with American officials who are said to have indicated provisionally that they would not stand in Israel’s way if all international efforts to halt Iranian nuclear projects failed.
Full Article:timesonline.co.uk