A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror suspects held at Guant‡namo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of concern among United States officials that the prisoners may not be treated humanely by their own governments, officials said.
nytimes.com

o…my…goodness

Guantanamo Bay prisoners plant seeds of hope in secret garden
With their bare hands and the most basic of tools, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have fashioned a secret garden where they have grown plants from seeds recovered from their meals. For some of the detainees – held without charge for more than four years and who the US say are now cleared for release – the garden apparently offers a diversion from the monotony and injustice of their imprisonment.

Using water to soften soil baked hard by the Caribbean sun and then scratching away with plastic spoons, a handful of prisoners have reportedly produced sufficient earth to grow watermelon, peppers, garlic, cantaloupe and even a tiny lemon plant, no more than two inches high.

LOS ANGELES: The US government secretly supplied weapons for an attempt to overthrow Cuban President Fidel Castro, which were seized from the home of a Cuban-American arrested for illegal arms sales, the man told The Los Angeles Times in an interview published Friday. Robert Ferro was arrested last week for illegal arms sales.

Police say he had 1,571 firearms and some hand grenades in secret compartments and hidden rooms in his estate, the report says.

In an interview (in jail) Thursday, Ferro, 61, contended that some of the high-powered weapons, including assault rifles, silencer-equipped handguns and Uzis, were supplied to him by the US government.

He said the weapons were supposed to be used in an attempt to oust Castro that would have coincided with US navy operations being conducted in the Caribbean Sea, the report said.

Obviously, now it will not take place, Ferro was quoted as saying. Those guns I had were very sophisticated weapons. It was for a fight. I was just trying to mimic what President Bush has done in Iraq, bring freedom to the country, Ferro was quoted as saying. I was born (in Cuba). I want to free them. I love freedom. I love (the US), and I want the same thing for my country, he added in the report.
thenews.com

Oh oh…the first of many copycat crimes…

HAVANA – Bolivia’s new left-leaning president signed a pact with Cuba and Venezuela on Saturday rejecting U.S.-backed free trade and promising a socialist version of regional commerce and cooperation.

Cuban authorities did not release copies of the so-called Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas signed by Bolivia’s Evo Morales, so its contents were unclear.

Local media reported that it had the same language as the declaration signed last year by Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, which contained much leftist rhetoric, and few specifics, but was followed by closer economic ties between the two vehemently anti-U.S. leaders.

The agreement was “a clever mixture of politics and economics, weighted toward the politics,” said Gary Hufbauer, an economist at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.

Venezuela-Cuba trade is expected to reach more than $3.5 billion this year about 40 percent higher than in 2005. Among other measures, the deal signed between Chavez and Castro has Venezuela the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter and a major supplier to the United States selling 90,000 barrels a day of crude to the communist-run island at international market prices, but in exchange for services and agricultural products instead of cash.

Later Saturday, the three presidents signed a second document with more concrete proposals.

Cuba promised to send Bolivia doctors and teachers. Venezuela will send gasoline to the Andean nation and set up a $100 million fund for development programs and a $30 million fund for other social projects.

Cuba and Venezuela also agreed to buy all of Bolivia’s soybeans, recently left without a market after Colombia signed a free trade pact with the United States.
news.yahoo.com

April 28 (Bloomberg) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, escalated his dispute over trade agreements between Andean countries and the U.S., saying he would cut diplomatic ties with Peru in the event that Alan Garcia wins the Peruvian presidency.

Garcia is “corrupt” and a “thief,” Chavez said in a televised speech in Caracas, after Garcia called Chavez a scoundrel yesterday. Garcia, who was Peru’s president between 1985 and 1990, is also the candidate of the country’s oligarchy, Chavez said.

Garcia, 56, this week criticized Chavez’s decision to withdraw Venezuela from the Andean free trade association over Peru and Colombia signing free trade agreements with the U.S. The Peruvian candidate said Chavez is a hypocrite to question the trade accords when the U.S. is Venezuela’s largest trade partner.
bloomberg.com

(AP) MEXICO CITY Mexico’s Congress approved a bill Friday decriminalizing possession of small quantities of marijuana, ecstasy, cocaine and even heroin for personal use.

The final step for the measure is the signature of Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Aides say Fox plans to sign it.

Mexican officials hope the law will help police focus on large-scale trafficking operations, rather than minor drug busts.

The bill also stiffens penalties for trafficking and possession of drugs — even small quantities — by government employees or near schools, and maintains criminal penalties for drug sales.

U.S. officials had no immediate reaction on the potential impact on the war on drugs — or the vast numbers of vacationing students who visit Mexico.
cbs2.com

The former head of the Nicaraguan resistance said in Washington yesterday that he fears U.S. policies toward Nicaragua are paving the way for a return to power by left-wing Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega in the November elections.

Adolfo Calero, feted by the Reagan administration during the Cold War struggles in Central America, also said former allies in the U.S. government were not returning his calls.

A State Department official said he had never heard of Mr. Calero and could not comment on his statements.
Mr. Calero and colleague Rafael Aguirre-Sacasa said U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua Paul A. Trivelli was actively encouraging the emergence of a third party for the November elections, which threatened to split the conservative vote.

A third party could act as a spoiler, presenting a “very serious danger” that Mr. Ortega’s far-left party could retake the presidency through the ballot box, they warned.

Nicaragua’s past left-wing and right-wing governments have been unable to change the country’s status as one of the poorest in the Western Hemisphere — and one of the most corrupt.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on April 18 that Mr. Trivelli had met with representatives of the governing Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC), and that the United States was engaging with all parties in Nicaragua that are interested in transparent, democratic elections.
washingtontimes.com

One hundred and forty years after the end of legalized slavery and 40 years after the passage of civil rights legislation, the legacy of slavery persists. In employment, education, healthcare, and criminal justice, African-Americans suffer from institutionalized racism. The movement to secure reparations for slavery has gained new traction with recent successes of Holocaust litigants. But it remains an elusive goal, due, in large part, to common misconceptions about what reparations would really mean.

Last month, Congressman John Conyers and scholars from around the country participated in an historic gathering to address the myriad issues arising from the debate over reparations. Held at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, the two-day conference focused on slavery and reparations as well as other instances of mass injustice in relation to the themes of justice, causation, group responsibility, moral culpability, racism and forgiveness.

Thomas Jefferson School of Law professor Kaimipono Wenger described reparations as an acknowledgement of the displacement of the rule of law under slavery. He noted that Blacks were denied civil and political rights even after slavery ended. Not only are reparations consistent with the rule of law, he said. They are in fact a product of the rule of law.

Conyers told the conference, After slavery ended, a new form of subjugation kicked in. There is a continuing, traceable, uninterrupted connection of racial subjugation that explains why there are ghettos today.
jurist.law.pitt.edu

On Monday, April 17, 2006, two bodies were found buried beneath what used to be a home in the Lower Ninth Ward. Their discovery raised to 17 the number of Hurricane Katrina fatalities that have been discovered in New Orleans in the past month and a half. Katrina is now directly blamed for the deaths of 1,282 Louisiana residents. Eight months after Katrina, the state reports 987 people are still missing.

Chief Steve Glynn, who oversees the New Orleans Fire Department search effort that found the latest two bodies, told CNN: “You want to put it to rest at some point. You want to feel like it’s over, and it’s just not yet.”

Eight months after Katrina, there are still nearly 300,000 people who have not returned to New Orleans. While we can hope that our community is nearing the end of finding bodies, the struggle for justice for the hundreds of thousands of displaced people continues.
sfbayview.com

When I was the Southern Region Coordinator for Critical Resistance I once spoke at an event in New Orleans entitled What Now: War, Occupation, and the Peace Movement. I was asked specifically to address why more people most adversely affected by systems of oppression were not involved in local antiwar work. Many of the white attendees were very concerned about how to bring Blacks into antiwar organizing work.

One white attendee from a local organizing project told a story of his organizations commitment to connecting the war abroad to the war at home. The demonstration of that desire to connect with Blacks was to make the march route cut through one of the housing projects in New Orleans. I suggested this was a faulty strategy, since the march would draw additional police presence in an already overly policed community, in a city infamous for police brutality against Blacks.

This forum was not the first time I had heard this conversation, and nearly two years later, it has not been the last. In many organizations and activist circles, people can be found lamenting the same problem. More often than not, most affected means Blacks (and sometimes Latinos or immigrants, depending on the issue at hand). Even when the issue itself disproportionately affects Blacks, Blacks are not likely to be found in much of what the Left considers to be valid forms of resistance meetings, rallies, public forums, demonstrations, and the like.

The question that often underlies the discussion about getting people most affected involved is: Why are Blacks these days so complacent or unwilling to stick their necks out for a good cause? Does their lack of involvement mean Blacks aren’t doing their part to end the war in Iraq? What does their ambivalence about antiwar activism say about the Left?
warresisters.org

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel’s next cabinet has committed itself to leaving parts of the West Bank in order to redraw the borders of the Jewish state, following on the heels of last year’s unilateral pullout from Gaza.

A coalition deal signed by prime minister designate Ehud Olmert’s Kadima party and the centre-left Labour after weeks of fraught talks has enshrined his priority to separate from the Palestinians with or without their agreement.

The draft programme of the new administration, widely quoted in the Israeli media on Friday, vowed “to shape the permanent borders of the state as a Jewish state with a democratic majority”.

“Israel’s territories, whose borders will be determined by the government, will entail reducing the areas of Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria (the occupied West Bank).”

Olmert made the March 28 election a de facto referendum on his determination to fix the permanent borders of Israel during his four-year term of office.

Labour, like all potential coalition partners, has had to accept the outline of his plan that could see around 70,000 Jews uprooted from the occupied West Bank but the largest settlement blocs built on Arab territory retained.

The government’s draft pledged to work to shape the borders “through negotiation” with the Palestinians on the basis of mutual recognition, signed agreements, an end to violence and the disarmament of armed factions.

Should the Palestinians not measure up, however, Israel would be compelled to take action on the basis of a “national agreement” and consent with foreign allies, chiefly Washington, it said.
news.yahoo.com