"STRENGTHEN OURSELVES"

"CARE FOR OURSELVES" 

"FEED OURSELVES"

"GROW FOR OURSELVES"

FEATURED HEALERS

African Press Organization (Dakar)

3 MAY 2012

PRESS RELEASE

manufacturing vehicles. (Photo Courtesy Media Club)

Johannesburg, South-Africa — Growing optimism and confidence among international and African investors has lead to significant inward investment into Africa over the last decade according toErnst & Young's second African Attractiveness Survey.

The report combines an annual analysis of investment into Africa since 2003, with a survey of 505 global executives on their views about how and where investment will take place in the next decade and predicts that Africa is poised to enter the premier league of investment destinations.

There was strong growth in the number of new foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in Africa in 2011 with project numbers almost up to levels last seen in 2008. In the last decade Africa has seen an increase in inward investment from 339 new projects to the continent in 2003 to 857 in 2011 (an increase of 153%). Investment has come from across the world, with strong growth in project numbers from rapid-growth markets and developed markets alike with projects from the former increasing from 99 to 319 and developed markets projects from 240 to 538 since 2003. Intra-African investment has also been a key driver of this growth.

Among rapid growth markets, India has led the way as the fourth largest FDI investor by number of projects since 2003 with annual compound growth of 46% since 2007. China and the UAE remain prominent too, but there is high growth in investment from an increasingly diverse range of other rapid growth markets, with South Korea, Saudi Arabia and Turkey among those at the forefront.

At the same time, and despite the challenges they face, there has also been robust growth in investment into Africa from many developed markets. In the period from 2007 to 2011 UK project numbers have been up 27%, with the US and Germany also both increasing by 21%.

Mark Otty, Area Managing Partner Ernst & Young Europe, Middle East, India and Africa says, "With rapid-growth markets not only dominating investor attention and capital flows, but also playing an increasingly strategic role in defining the global economic agenda, the competition for global FDI is intensifying. African countries must position themselves appropriately in this shifting landscape to attract a greater proportion of the investment that will accelerate growth and development."

Perception versus reality

Overall this year's survey paints a positive picture reflecting growing confidence in Africa's prospects. Sixty percent of survey respondents say that their perception of Africa as a place to do business has improved over the past three years. Looking forward 73% of respondents anticipate that Africa's attractiveness will improve over the next three years, while only 4% believe it will deteriorate.

Of those who believe that Africa's growth prospects in the near term are significantly positive, half have a dedicated Africa strategy in place, and 92% have an active business presence on the continent.

The survey results do, however, also highlight that there is stark difference in perception between those who already have a business presence in Africa and those who do not.

This perception gap is reflected in the fact that, despite the positive African growth story, and Ernst & Young forecasting that growth in the region will remain at a robust rate of four and five percent per annum in the next decade and that FDI into Africa to reach US$150b by 2015, the continent still only attracted 5.5% of global FDI projects in 2011.

While this is up from 4.5% last year and is, in fact, the highest proportion of global FDI that Africa has ever received, reservations remain amongst those who have not yet invested into the continent.

Ajen Sita, Managing Partner: Africa at Ernst & Young comments "Despite high optimism, high growth and high returns, the perception gap still exists and the African continent as a whole still attracts fewer FDI projects than India and far fewer than China. There is still clearly work to be done by Africans - government and private sector alike - to better articulate and "sell" the growth story and investment opportunity for foreign investors."

Intra-African investment leads the way

A key theme highlighted in the report is the growing confidence, self-belief and commitment by Africans to move Africa forward, reflected in the substantial growth of intra-African investment. Between 2003 and 2011, there has been 23% annual compound growth in intra-African investment into new FDI projects. This growth has been accelerating, with the growth rate up by 42% since 2007.

Over a period in which the annual number of FDI projects into Africa has more than doubled - from 339 in 2003 to 857 in 2011 - intra-African investment has grown exponentially with project numbers increasing from 27 in 2003 to 145 in 2011. As a result, in 2011, intra-African investment accounted for 17% of all new FDI projects on the continent.

The growth in intra-African investment is being led by the respective regional powerhouses of Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. All three of these African economies are ranked among the top 20 investors into the rest of the continent between 2003 and 20011, and since 2007 the growth rate in investment from Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa has been 78%, 73% and 65% respectively.

Ajen comments, "There has been a radical shift in mindset and positioning over the last decade, with Africans themselves increasingly leading from the front by providing African solutions to Africa's challenges. Clearly work still remains to be done, but pushing ahead with key initiatives such as regional integration and investment in infrastructure will ensure that Africa remains on a sustainable growth curve."

Moving beyond dependence on commodities

Last year's African Attractiveness Survey highlighted the growing diversification of FDI as a key trend. This has continued this year with even greater levels of investment into less capital intensive sectors, resulting in a growing number of FDI projects in manufacturing, business services and sales, marketing and support highlighting the shift away from extractive activities on which Africa has historically been dependent.

Looking ahead

Africa remains high on the agenda of those looking to invest in foreign markets but despite the growth and progress a perception gap still remains. However, significant improvements in trade agreements, regional integration and an increased investment in infrastructure will push Africa into the top league of investment destinations.

Ajen comments, "In the midst of a global economy that is being reshaped, with growth and capital flows shifting from north to south and west to east, Africans have a unique opportunity to break the structural constraints that have marginalized the continent for decades, if not centuries."

Distributed by African Press Organization on behalf of Ernst & Young.

African Press Organization. (2012). FDI into continent accelerates as investor perceptions begin to shift. African Press Organization (Dakar). Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201205031069.html

BY SIMON NDONGA, 4 MAY 2012

Nairobi, Kenya — Police Commissioner Mathew Iteere now says Sunday's grenade attack at a church in Ngara was carried out by a known Al Shabaab terrorist.

Iteere says the attacker who goes by the alias 'Amar' was in Kismayu, Somalia, last year but returned to Kenya early this year.

Police are now circulating his photo and urging Kenyans to volunteer information that may lead to his arrest.

"We are therefore appealing to anyone with information regarding his whereabouts to present it to the police. It is important to note that he is dangerous and believed to be armed with a pistol and may be in possession of explosives," Iteere said.

"It is instructive to note that Al-Shabaab through one of their leaders Sheikh Ismael Ali while addressing some members of the group within Kismayu claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to dispatch more suicide bombers to Kenya."

One man was killed on the spot in the attack at the God's House of Miracles International Church in Nairobi's Ngara neighbourhood and 15 other people injured.

Nairobi has been hit by a series of attacks since late 2011.

The deadliest blast on March 10, was at a bus terminal in which nine people were killed and 60 others injured.

Police have blamed the strikes on Somalia's Al-Qaeda-linked Al Shabaab Islamists or their sympathisers, claiming the attacks are a response to the Kenyan army's invasion of Somalia, launched in October last year.

The operation aimed to curb the Al Shabaab influence in Somalia, where they control much of the south and central region in a country that has lacked a stable government for two decades.

The Ngara incident also came a week after the American Embassy in Nairobi warned of an impending terrorist attack in the capital city.

The mission had warned of an attack on government buildings and hotels, and cautioned its nationals to be extra vigilant.

Kenya sent its troops into neighbouring Somalia following a spate of kidnappings in the northern frontier and the coastal strip, which it blamed on the Islamists.

Ndonga, S. (2012). Church grenade attacker 'a known terrorist'. Capital FM (Nairobi). Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201205070024.html

Editor's Opinion:  How convenient it is for the United Nations to discuss the plight of indigenous africans under the torment of Arab settlers after the damage has been done.  Does this not exemplify a classic case of speaking with a forked tongue?  Some would say indeed it does.

1 MAY 2012

Tripoli — Six months after an uprising brought down Muammar Gaddafi's government, thousands of displaced Libyans are still living in abandoned construction sites, empty student dormitories or with host families, too afraid to return to their homes.

"We want to go back but cannot," said Abdul Aziz al-Irwi, who lives in Sidi Slim camp in the capital, Tripoli. "Some people from another camp tried to return about two months ago, but about seven of them were captured by forces from Zintan and imprisoned."

Al-Irwi is from the Mshashiya community, an ethnic group from the Nefusa Mountains in Western Libya who were targeted during the uprising by opposition fighters from Zintan, allegedly for being allied with pro-Gaddafi forces. Zintan is a small city also located in the Nefusa Mountains area.

"I am here because Gaddafi's forces came to the town of Mshashya, so we had to leave," he told IRIN. "They used our town to bomb other areas. We went to Gharyan, and then came to Tripoli."

Records from the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, show that an estimated 14,500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) were living in Tripoli as of March. Across Libya, the total number of those still displaced is estimated at 70,000.

Apart from the Mshashiya, others included the Qawalish, also from the Nefusa Mountains, the Tawergha, a group of Touareg families from the west, and those perceived as being loyal to the previous regime from al-Zawiya, Bani Walid and Sirte.

A sizeable group of the displaced living in Tripoli and Benghazi cities were Tawergha. They were accused of participating in Gaddafi's assault on Misrata, murdering and raping thousands of people. Reprisal attacks ensued, forcing their entire town of more than 30,000 to flee their homes. Today, the Tawergha-Misrata case remains a particularly sensitive one in post-Gaddafi Libya.

Until recently, the dark-skinned Tawergha minority - former slaves brought to Libya in the 18th and 19th centuries - lived in a coastal town of the same name 250km east of Tripoli. With the rise to power of the rebels, the Tawergha are now on the defensive. The sign leading to their city has been changed to New Misrata and its population told not to return.

Needs and security

According to UNHCR, an estimated 100-150,000 people were displaced in October 2011, but that number has reduced progressively with many returning to their communities, including in Bani Walid and Sirte.

Camp managers at Sidi Slim say conditions are difficult, and the monthly supply of food delivered by agencies and Libaid, the humanitarian arm of the Libyan government, is not enough for each family.

"In our opinion, food is not a problem," Muftah M Etwilb, the Chief Executive Officer of Libaid, told IRIN. "There are other needs like education, health and protection. Health is free of charge for all Libyans, but still some people in the camp need immediate services from a dispensary. The other issue is proper housing. We are trying to get the government to provide alternative housing since some of these camps are owned by international companies."

We are trying to get people out of prison, but we are not able to do much for people who killed, raped or stole. The more serious issues will have to go to the justice system.

Providing protection for the displaced communities, particularly from armed militias still roaming the main cities, remains one of the biggest challenges to date for the transitional government.

"Since August 2011, we have been subjected to arbitrary attacks and detention," Abdelrahman Mahmoud, head of the Local Council of the Tawergha in Tripoli, told IRIN. "If Tripoli is safe, then the camps are safe, but if it is not, then we are not safe,"

In February, militias raided the Marine Academy where about 2,000 Tawergha had taken shelter, killing seven people and abducting three men. Witnesses claim the militias were from Misrata.

"The guards from the Marine Academy didn't have any weapons. When the Misrata brigades came in with weapons, they just moved aside," Emmanuel Gignac, UNHCR head of mission told IRIN. "What you see now is individual cases inside or outside camps, for instance the Tawergha, including kidnapping for ransom. You can attack people from Tawergha and there is total impunity."

Amnesty International and other groups have also documented testimonies from among the Mshashiya and Qawalish in Tripoli, who say they were detained and tortured by militias.

Responsibility

A common refrain heard among agencies and ordinary Libyans is that the government needs to assume responsibility for a host of problems, and internal displacement is no exception. To address the humanitarian needs of IDPs across the country, Libaid is organizing a national conference in May involving government ministries, agencies and representatives of the displaced.

"It is not exactly a neglected issue, but it's not the number one priority in Libya. People also have to deal with security, and with the upcoming elections," said Etwilb. "But we want to make the IDP issue visible on the day-to-day agenda of the government."

Contacted for comment, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Social Affairs said: "We have made available a fund of 400 dinar [US$ 320] a month for people who wish to rent a house outside the camps," Naima Etaher said. "Concerning the non-Tawergha people, a lot of their houses were not destroyed, and it's safe to go back, but they just stay in these camps to take advantage of the government."

But families in Sidi Slim camp saw things differently.

In the sweltering heat of a room occupied by a Mshashiya family, people gather to look at footage on a mobile phone which they claim is of destroyed buildings in their home town. "I want to go back. We have been in Mshashiya for over 1,200 years," said Khalifa Saad Mabrouk, tracing on the floor with his finger what his farm looks like. "I have my trees there, and my houses, my land."

When asked if remaining in Tripoli or moving elsewhere would be a solution, Mabrouk and his family were unequivocal. "Absolutely not. Even if conditions here are okay, we want to go home."

Reconciliation

What has still not been addressed, and will determine when people might return to their abandoned homes, are the underlying political tensions fueling animosity between different groups and deterring reconciliation, say observers.

The upcoming conference organized by Libaid is aimed at dealing with the short-term humanitarian needs of displaced populations, but not the political issues. "We try not to politicize the conference," said Etwilb. "There is a risk if we just make it very open."

Likewise, the "Reconciliation committees", set up by recently by the government to restore relations between different communities, can only deal with minor disputes. "We are trying to get people out of prison, but we are not able to do much for people who killed, raped or stole," Naji Regebi, a member of one of the committees, told IRIN. "The more serious issues will have to go to the justice system."

Some Tawergha like Ismael Shaaban, an elder in Fallah Ladco camp in Tripoli, believe both sides should go to court. "We will hand over anyone who is guilty to the Libyan government, but we also want people torturing and abusing Tawerghans to be brought to justice," he said.

Others like Khadija Absalaam (not real name), whose three sons she claims were detained in Misrata, are more skeptical. "We don't want peace with the Misratans, we just want a wall between our two cities," she said. "We can live without communicating."

The Misratan Local Council, in response to concerns raised by Human Rights Watch about widespread torture and crimes committed in detention centres and toward the Tawergha, denied responsibility saying: "Treatment in the city's prisons is good....many accusations have been wrongly and falsely attributed to Misrata revolutionaries."

For the Tawergha and Misratans, long-term reconciliation will need a fully functional formal justice process. But, given that the government is still "settling down" in the words of one official, that is not likely to occur until after the elections, scheduled to take place in June. And even then, true reconciliation on the ground is likely to take time.

"Even if the humanitarian issues are dealt with by organisations, it is not enough," said Gignac. "It is about coming to terms with the past and it is going to be a long process."

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

The Integrated Regional Information Networks. (2012). Thousands still afraid to return home. The Integrated Regional Information Networks. Retrieved from http://www.irinnews.org/Report/95389/LIBYA-Thousands-still-afraid-to-return-home

BY OSCAR KIMANUKA, 28 APRIL 2012

ANALYSIS

A boat carrying sub-Saharan African migrant workers arrives in Lampedusa from Tripoli. (Photo Courtesy Kate Thomas/IRIN)

As we celebrate the International Labour Day next week, on May 1, we should appreciate that one of the most serious challenges facing our continent is the problem of brain drain.

Brain drain refers to the current phenomenon of human capital flight which involves thousands of highly skilled professionals leaving their countries every year for opportunities in the developed world.

The effect of this is that while the African countries lose their best human capital they also at the same time spend precious money on educating and training replacements, sometimes paying huge sums of money to expatriates. Clearly there is utmost need to reverse this problem as well as build and effectively utilise capacities if the African continent is not to be marginalised further than it has already been.

The continent of Africa with a population of nearly 850 million people, according to International Organisation for Migration (IOM), has only 20,000 scientists and Engineers which comes to about 3.6 per cent of the world's scientific population. At least, according to IOM, one-third of science and technology professionals from developing countries are currently working in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Australia.

According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), there are more than 30,000 Nigerian doctors practicing in the US alone, while Nigeria's health system suffers from an acute lack of medical personnel. For neighboring Ghana about 60 per cent of doctors trained locally in the 1980s had left the country. According to IOM, there are more African scientists and engineers working in the US than there are in Africa.

In monetary terms, according to Dr Dejene Aredo from Ethiopia, Africa is losing as much as US$ 4 billion a year through top professionals seeking better jobs abroad.

He says that in Ethiopia alone there is only one full Professor in economics while in the US there are 100. He says that for every 100 professionals sent abroad for further training between 1982 and 1997, 35 failed to return to Africa and that there are more than 32,000 PhD holders living outside Africa as academic refugees.

It is not only PHD holders fleeing the African continent; African teachers are currently working in the United Kingdom where there is an acute shortage of qualified teachers.

For instance, according to Richard Lucas, head teacher of Essex primary school in East London, his school is dependent on overseas teachers including those from Africa. A few years ago, 150 potential recruits were interviewed from Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg in South Africa.

But why the brain drain? There is no doubt that those leaving are the very people that African countries need desperately to develop their economies and once they are gone, there is no likelihood of passing on their invaluable skills to the next generation of Africans. This is a double cost to the world's poorest continent.

The highly skilled professionals do not leave simply to earn more money. The first major factor, according to Dr Sibry Tapsoba, is the value attached to the contribution of these professionals and the persecution these people get in their countries.

He is of the view that facilitation of their return and the assurance from their governments that everybody who has a PhD is not an opponent is important.

Although southern African economies are relatively better than many in sub-Saharan Africa and these countries, therefore, act as magnets for skills in Africa, South Africa is experiencing a brain drain of its own particularly since the end of the white dominated apartheid era, according to the World Markets Research Centre. These highly skilled people from South Africa are moving to the more developed English-speaking countries.

In South Africa reasons advanced for departure of professionals include crime, low salaries, limited prospects for career advancement and a deteriorating medical infrastructure.

Consequently South Africa is already criticising the UK for poaching the country's skilled manpower. The criticism is mainly leveled against the UK based recruiters who have gone as far as recruiting primary school teachers and now the figure for recruited teachers stand at more than 8,000.

For Eritrea, a bold step has already been taken to forestall the flight of the country's top professionals. Out of those that are sent abroad from Eritrea to study, a high percentage does not return home to serve their country.

Consequently, the country has proposed a controversial bond of US$ 15,000, the equivalent cost of two years post-graduate study as a guarantee for their return. This is viewed by critics as extortionate for a country with less than US$ 250 as income per capita.

Other measures being used include withholding of academic papers until the return of students and sending students to countries that are 'less attractive' as opposed to 'more desirable' countries like western Europe and the US.

The public sector should be made more attractive particularly to young graduates in the form of better remunerations and incentives, increased prospects for further studies and more room for innovativeness and initiative.

While it is difficult to pay western type and size of packages for the highly skilled professionals in Africa, African governments can at least ensure that there are some minimum conditions to attract the badly needed skilled professionals.

Otherwise the view that Africa is the biggest contributor to brain drain and thus only contributing to the development of richer nations will continue to prevail.

Kimanuka, O. (2012). Why african govts should halt brain drain. The New Times. Retrieved from http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?a=53025&i=14976

BY BERNARD MOMANYI, 30 APRIL 2012

Nairobi — One person was killed and fifteen others wounded after a grenade was hurled inside a church in Nairobi's Ngara area on Sunday morning.

Police said the incident occurred at about 9 am shortly after the Sunday service kicked off at the God's House of Miracles International Church.

Witnesses interviewed told Capital FM News they heard a loud blast before they saw smoke billowing out of the church that is located near Ngara Girls High School.

“I was in my kiosk then I heard a loud blast and smoke coming out of the church. I rushed there immediately and found people screaming for help,” Samuel Kimani who runs a kiosk near the church said.

He said his children attend a church service there but they had not arrived at the time of the attack.

“What came in my mind immediately is my children because they go to church there, but when I arrived there I didn’t find them but there were other people who had been injured and we started helping them out,” he said.

Those wounded are people who had gone for the first service that starts at 7 am and runs up to 9 am.

Worshippers interviewed said they saw a man walk in and sat in their midst.

“He clearly appeared a stranger to me and most of us because the people who attend the morning service are known to each other, but we had no reason to suspect him,” one worshipper who identified himself as Kim said.

Moments later, he said, the man walked out and came back that is when he threw the grenade and ran out.

Some of the people who attempted to pursue him said he whipped out a pistol and pointed it at them.

“He ran very first and kept brandishing a pistol to scare away people, no one could go closer to him,” Elijah Mwangi, who was part of the people who chased the attacker said.

Those injured were admitted to the Guru Nanak and Kenyatta National Hospitals, some with critical injuries.

Nairobi Deputy Police chief Moses Nyakwama said they were working closely with crucial witnesses and church members to get the proper description of the attacker.

“We are confident he will be found, the public is assisting us,” Nyakwama told journalists at the scene.

Momanyi, B. (2012). One killed, 15 injured in Nairobi grenade attack. Capital FM. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204300966.html

A powerful explosion rocked the Old Campus of the Bayero University, Kano (BUK), Sunday morning.

Although details are still sketchy, reports indicate that the explosion occurred in the vicinity of the campus Christian students hold their services on Sundays.

The blast is coming barely 48 hours after an explosion hit the Senate building of the Gombe State University and three days after bombers attacked Thisday offices in Abuja and Kaduna, claiming nine lives.

Shuaibu, I. (2012). Explosion rocks Bayero Varsity, Kano. This Day. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/201204290185.html

27 APRIL 2012

Abuja — The terrorist campaign rocking Northern Nigeria, yesterday, turned fatal towards the Nigerian media with simultaneous bomb attacks on Thisday Newspapers in Abuja and Kaduna, as well as The Sun and The Moment offices.

The apparently synchronized attacks left in its trail four casualties in Abuja, including the suicide car bomber. In Kaduna, a drama of sorts played out after the suicide bomber apparently changed his mind or was unable to drive into the commercial property housing Thisday, Sun and The Moment and alerted passersby of the presence of a bomb in his crashed Honda vehicle.

Forced to hurl out his deadly cargo by an irate crowd he threw the bomb towards some onlookers leading to the death of three of them.

Thisday reacts

Managing Director of Thisday Mr. Eniola Bello in a statement last night said:

"At about 11.05 am today, (Thursday) a suicide bomber drove an SUV into the premises of our Abuja office, rammed his vehicle into the building housing our printing presses, igniting a massive explosion and fueling speculations it was a suicide bomber. About the same time our Abuja office was under siege, the building housing our office, along with two other newspapers in Kaduna, came under another bomb attack.

"In Abuja, we can confirm the death of one security man by name, Christopher Sadiq. Three passers-by and the suicide bomber also died. Eight of our staff, who sustained injuries, are receiving treatment at the National Hospital. The roof of the building was blown off, the power generator burnt, the printing plant damaged.

"We regard the coordinated bombings as an attack on journalism and free speech. However, we want to assure our readers and advertisers that we remain committed to the fundamental principles on which the newspaper is founded: democracy, free enterprise and social justice. We will not be deterred in our pursuit of truth and reason. No amount of threat or intimidation will weaken our resolve."

The Sun management reacts

Sun newspapers in a statement by its Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief, Mr Tony Onyima said: "At about 11.30 am today, Thursday, April 26, 2012 an explosion occurred at the premises of our North West Zonal headquarters in Kaduna, Kaduna State. The property located along Kontagora Road equally houses the state offices of two other media organisations, namely THISDAY newspaper and The Moment newspaper.

"The explosion occurred when a suspected suicide bomber, driving a gold coloured Honda Academy, with registration number AL 306 MKA rammed into the building.

"However, the bomb-laden vehicle failed to explode on impact with the building. But when the driver of the car jumped out and began to shout that there were bombs inside the vehicle and that they would explode any moment, angry residents and onlookers seized him and forced him to begin to dispose of the bombs. In the process one of them exploded killing three people and injuring several others.

"The angry youths then turned on the driver, and would have lynched him, but for the timely intervention of the policemen who had by then been invited to the scene by our North West Bureau Chief.

"Although there were casualties, no staff of The Sun died or suffered any physical injury.

The police and other security agencies have since moved in to investigate the matter. The security operatives have also taken custody of the driver and suspected suicide bomber.

"Despite this seeming set back, The Sun Publishing Limited, remains undeterred and refuses to be intimidated in its quest for a better and safer Nigeria. We will continue to report without fear or favour and with utmost sense of responsibility and patriotism".

The attack on the Thisday newspaper in Abuja also affected neighbouring buildings including the commercial property housing the Abuja office of Nigerian Tribune leaving glasses of buildings and parked cars shattered. Mr. Soji Fagbemi a journalist with Nigerian Tribune was partially bruised.

In Kaduna, a twist of fate saved workers and visitors to the offices of the Thisday, Sun and The Moment when their jointly rented property on Block A9, Kontagora Road was saved from a suicide bomb attack. The driver in the bomb-laden Honda car reportedly crashed his vehicle against the wall of the building sometime around 11.20 a.m. yesterday but the bomb did not detonate.

After coming under severe pressure, the bomber opened the bonnet of the car took out one of the Improvised Explosive Devices (EIDs) and flung it over the gate of the complex where it landed and exploded on curious onlookers killing three of them and injuring eight others according to eyewitnesses who spoke to Vanguard in Kaduna.

The Police in Kaduna, however, admitted only one fatality.

The Police also confirmed the arrest of the bomber, saying he was under their custody and taking treatment for injuries he sustained, ostensibly from the battering he got from the mob that first apprehended him.

Mr. Ismail Omipidan, North West Bureau Chief of The Sun told reporters about his experience when he arrived for work yesterday morning:

"I was driving to the office. Normally, I come through Katsina Road Roundabout, through the back, but this very day I just decided that I should park by the road side at the Ahmadu Bello Way because I was heading somewhere. In fact I was actually travelling out of town, so when I came into the office premises, I saw a young man being beaten. And I saw my circulation man beckoning on me. I also saw my landlord. I knew it had something to do with my office. The suspected bomber drove a Honda car into the premises according to the people I asked. The man even came out of the car and was shouting that a bomb will explode any moment, and the people held him and told him to go and remove the bomb. It was at this point I called the Police Public Relation Officer (PPRO), DSP Aminu Lawan, and immediately after I called him, I took motorcycle to Magaji Garin police station. I told the police that people are beating a young man close to my office who is suspected to be a bomb carrier, and that they should go there on time so the people should not kill the man. So as I was coming with the police to the scene, the man was forced by the people to remove one of the bombs from the car, and as soon as he removed it, he threw it on the ground and it exploded immediately and three people died on the spot, in that process, the bomber disappeared, the people started looking for him."

"After sometime, some people went through the back door and they were able to get him, and police came and took him away. When police took him away, some youths started stoning the office. I don't know what their quarrel was, but I heard one of them saying that we refused to call the police on time. So out of anger, one of them decided to set ablaze the bomber's vehicle. But before the vehicle was set ablaze we told the police that we are suspecting that there are more bombs in the vehicle, but the police did not go near the vehicle until when that young man went in and set the car ablaze. While the car was burning, we saw two gas cylinders and by the time we moved away from there, one of the cylinders exploded. So it was one of the youths that set the car ablaze."

Jamil Abubakar, 22, drycleaner who witnessed the incident said:

"I came here to visit a friend when this thing happened. A man drove a Honda car vey dangerously into the office complex. I was coming from the other end. I saw it. He crashed on the wall. He came out of the car and started chanting, "laila inlala u..." . He started shouting, 'bomb! Bomb! Bomb!. People ran at him and grabbed him. They started beating him. They said he had to show them the bomb. He was well beaten. He was taken to the car. He opened the bonnet of the car and quickly took what looked like a bomb to me. It looked like it was manufactured. I was a bit far. But I saw when he flung the bomb over the gate of the complex and it fell on some of the people waiting outside to see what was happening. It exploded with a loud bang. I ran away. Fire started because some cars and motor bike caught fire. I came back and saw three corpses. I counted them they were three. That you cannot doubt it. But there were some people that were injured. Some of them were badly hurt. Maybe eight of them."

"In the commotion that ensued. The man that came with the car, escaped and hid in some part of the complex. But angry youth combed the place and found him."

He's not from here; he is taking treatment under our custody

Kaduna State Police Commissioner, Mohammed Jinjiri arrived the scene of the carnage 12:35 pm. He inspected the scene and later fielded questions from the Press.

Said Jinjiri: "It is rather an unfortunate incident and we will want to first appreciate members of the public for their vigilance and for their prompt action. It is based on their vigilance and prompt action that really helped the situation and helped us get the principal suspect that is now with us receiving treatment at the Police clinic.

"Their action really helped to prevent devastation in this environment. So, I want to appreciate the members of the public and I want to call on them, to continue to be vigilant in order to help the situation. You can see that this is business centre and this is a point which is difficult for every agent to reach. But because members of the public are vigilant, we have been able to get a moderate situation. Some are injured and by our calculation, we have gotten only one that is late for now. But investigation is in progress.

The Public Relations Officer of Saint Gerald Catholic Hospital, Kaduna, Mr Sunday John Ali told Vanguard on phone that three injured people were brought to the Hospital.

"One of victims stomach was opened and his intestine was out. It is a very severe injury. He has been referred to the Ahmadu Bello University Referral Hospital, Chika, near Zaria. Two of the injured are with us and receiving treatment", he said.

Vanguard learnt last night that the Honda car used for the bombing was wired with 12 gas cylinders. A source said that if the IED had exploded in the car, it could have brought down the entire structure, and incurred a higher casualty figure.

How I survived the blast --Thisday Staff

A Thisday security man at the scene of the blast in Abuja said he escaped death by the whiskers because he had barely left the gate on patrol to another part of the building when the bomber arrived.

"I was with my men at the gate and just five minutes before the blast I decided to go on patrol to the other (main) gate which we had locked for security reasons only for me to hear a loud bang and I fell to the floor unconscious. I don't know how to thank God for sparing my life. Some of my colleagues are dead and injured," he moaned.

On what transpired before the blast, the security man continued: "I was told when I could recollect myself by one of the people around that the suicide bomber came in a black Jeep and was stopped by two of my security men at the gate but before they could check him properly he forced himself into the building and then the bomb exploded."

Vanguard learnt from another eyewitness that even artisans who plied their trade in the surroundings outside the Thisday fence were severely injured from the impact of the blast.

"Some of our friends who do small businesses around were badly injured including one mechanic who almost lost his hand from the impact of the blast despite being outside the premises."

It was like rapture

Mr. Soji Eze a Senior Correspondent with the Tribune newspaper in the adjoining building to the Abuja Thisday office who was present at the time of the bombing said yesterday that "it was like the biblical rapture as those of us in the office suddenly found ourselves in the air. "

"Immediately we landed we dashed out of the office and the first thing we saw was the hand of a man in gloves that must have been flung from the Thisday Complex."

He said another pathetic sight was a 12 year old boy who was totally naked but survived the blast but blood was still gushing out of his body.

Eze stressed further that "when we got to the outer part of Thisday Complex we saw the black CRV SUV that the suicide bomber used but we lost courage we could not go in. "

He said the mechanic workshop behind the Complex was a gory sight as most of the technicians there died only one was seen beckoning on us to come and help him."

Eze who had earlier told Vanguard that he simply went to the office to drop a few things before dashing to his beat at the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC said he had barely sat down when he heard the blast."

Rumours of other blasts a distraction, FCT CP

FCT police commissioner, Adenrele Shinaba, was quick to reassure Abuja residents yesterday as he quickly dismissed rummours of a another explosion at the Leadership Newspaper premises also in Jabi as a possible distraction by the unknown terrorists.

"We heard of another attack at Leadership just as we were here now but I think that is a distraction to move us out of this place because a very senior staff of Leadership was with me and called his people on phone if they are under attack and they confirmed to him that they were not under attack."

Scuffle between Police and SSS

Vanguard witnessed a scuffle between the police and the SSS over who should take charge at the scene of the blast inside the Thisday premises yesterday.

Another blast claims two in Kaduna

Five hours after a bomb exploded and left at least three persons dead on Kontagora Road, Kaduna, another one went off severely injuring two people carrying it on a motor bike, said Kaduna State Police Commissioner, Mohammed Jinjiri.

Confirming the incident on telephone yesterday, Jinjiri said:

"It is true that a bomb exploded at Unguwan Mauzu, an exclusive Hausa area of Kaduna metropolis this evening. Two people were carrying it to a yet to be identified target. But it detonated and severely wounded the two people. We got them and took them to the 44 Army Referral Hospital, Kaduna".

Vanguard. (2012). ThisDay , Sun, the Moment Bombed. Vanguard. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204270611.html

United States Department of State (Washington, D.C.)

DOCUMENT

Nigerians listen for the latest election news on their radios in Kano, northern Nigeria, 19 April 2007. (Photo Courtesy Tugela Ridley/IRIN)

Washington, DC — Excerpts from theUnited States Department of State daily press briefing:

Nigeria

QUESTION: Different topic? On Nigeria.

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION: There was a bombing today at the Abuja office of This Day, a prominent newspaper. I was wondering if the United States has anything to say about that or any information in who may be responsible.

MS. NULAND: Well, obviously, we strongly condemn yesterday's attacks on the two offices of the newspaper This Day, both in Abuja and Kaduna.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the loved ones and those who were killed or injured. This is an attack not only on innocent people but on free speech itself in Nigeria, and we call for a full investigation in holding those responsible to account.

QUESTION: There's been some speculation it might have been the work of Boko Haram. I don't know if you'd consider that premature, but if it were, would that affect the U.S. determination of whether it's a terrorist group?

MS. NULAND: Well, we are continuing to look at Boko Haram in this context. We haven't made any decisions yet. Frankly, we're not in a position from here to evaluate responsibility. I think we will, obviously, offer any support to the Nigerians that they may require.

But that said, we share the concerns about the threat that Boko Haram poses, and this is among the reasons that we cooperate so strongly with Nigeria in terms of not only security support but also political and economic support in the north so that the vulnerable populations in the north of Nigeria can't be sort of attracted and coerced by Boko Haram.

Please.

QUESTION: New topic?

MS. NULAND: Yeah. Go ahead.

Sudan

QUESTION: On Sudan, the Sudanese foreign ministry says that conditions for negotiations are for Juba to end its proxy war against Khartoum.

That's sort of the latest line they're coming out with. I wondered if you had an update on efforts to bring the two parties together and if this is the kind of language that's really helpful in this situation.

MS. NULAND: Well, it's obviously not the kind of language that's helpful. That said, I have a small glimmer of better news with regard to Sudan and South Sudan. We're now in our second day of no new attacks by either side. And this follows the African Union proposal of an immediate ceasefire withdrawal and getting the parties back to the table.

So while we do not yet have either side formally announcing that they have signed up to the ceasefire, this gives us a small glimmer of hope, and it's an important step. So we call on both sides - Sudan, South Sudan - both to now formalize this ceasefire by so announcing it, to withdraw their forces from disputed areas, and to get back into the AUHIP dialogue process.

Please.

Egypt

QUESTION: I asked a couple of days ago about whether State had any comment on Egypt refusing to register various American NGOs.

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION: I'm wondering if you have anything new.

MS. NULAND: I have to say that when we dug into this yesterday, our Embassy in Cairo reports that they think it was bad reporting, that in fact, no decisions have been made by the Egyptians.

QUESTION: Okay.

MS. NULAND: Okay?

QUESTION: Thanks.

QUESTION: Just briefly --

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

Liberia

QUESTION: I know you sent out a note about this this morning, but just for the sake of the cameras, can you tell us about your reaction to the Charles Taylor conviction?

MS. NULAND: Yeah. I have it somewhere, if I can find it. It must be in the front here.

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

MS. NULAND: (Laughter.) Exactly. So as we said in our statement earlier today, the United States welcomes the issuance of the judgment by the Special Court for Sierra Leone convicting Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The court found Taylor criminally responsible for aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes and planning attacks on Freetown in 1998 and 1999.

We understand that there were huge and joyous crowds celebrating in Freetown of people who were very relieved to see Taylor convicted. And today's judgment is very important step towards delivering justice and accountability, not only for victims of this set of atrocities but also for setting an example for those who would commit them in the future.

QUESTION: And does the U.S. support of this extend - will it extend at all to support of the ICC and the Rome Statute?

MS. NULAND: Well, our policy with regard to the ICC hasn't changed.

This was, as you know, a special tribunal, which we also supported not only politically but financially.

Please.

U.S. Department of State. (2012). U.S. Dept. of State Daily Briefing - Nigeria, Sudan, Egypt & Liberia. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204261457.html

BY RICHARD WALKER, 26 APRIL 2012

The Hague — In a tense courtroom in The Hague today, Charles Taylor became the first former president to be convicted by a modern international tribunal. He will be sentenced on 30 May.

Dressed in a dark business suit and sunglasses, Taylor sat pensively as he listened to a summary of the judgement against him at the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL).

Presiding judge Richard Lussick found him guilty of aiding and abetting murder, acts of violent sexual abuse and using child soldiers in the Sierra Leone conflict of 1996-2002.

He was paid in "blood diamonds" in return for his help in planning and providing the infrastructure for the rebel RUF fighters to wage war and commit atrocities.

Some 120,000 people were killed and thousands more were mutilated during the country's ten-year civil war.

No command and control

But this was not the verdict thousands of victims had been hoping for. Taylor was found not guilty of being ultimately responsible for directing the murderous RUF militia.

Judges said the prosecution had not proved beyond reasonable doubt that the former president had command and control over the group.

Taylor's testimony

The former Liberian president's defence had rested on a long retelling of West African history in which he painted himself as a statesman and a peacemaker.

But prosecutor Brenda Hollis called that testimony, and much of the defence's evidence, "unreliable and full of inconsistencies".

"This judgement brings some measure of justice to the many thousands of victims," she said.

The three-year trial has been beset by controversy and frayed tempers. Instead of making closing arguments for his client in January 2011, chief defence counsel Courtenay Griffiths walked out of proceedings describing them as a "farce".

Today Griffiths was equally indignant, complaining there was dissenting opinion among the judges which we were not allowed to hear.

Terrorizing civilians

Despite these misgivings, the Sierra Leone tribunal judges said they were satisfied with the finding that Taylor helped plan war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by rebel RUF fighters in Sierra Leone.

Judge Lussick described gruesome acts of violence.

"The severed heads of victims were put on spikes and human intestines removed from bodies and stretched across a road for use as a checkpoint. These were acts designed to terrorise the population," Lussick said.

Taylor's proxy militia and Liberian soldiers carried out horrific crimes to forcibly control the people and territory of Sierra Leone and to pillage its resources, particularly its diamonds.

According to today's judgement there were killings on a mass scale, public amputations, mass rapes, enslavement in diamond mines and children conscripted to fight.

The guilty and the dead

When Taylor faces sentencing on 30 May he will become the ninth perpetrator to be convicted by the court. The SCSL's other four indictees are dead. Those it has convicted are all serving long sentences. No one involved in today's judgement expects the 60-year-old Taylor to see freedom again.

Taylor's lawyers will appeal the decision.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to interrupt the broadcast, because right now we have just gotten a call from Mumia Abu-Jamal from prison in Pennsylvania. Mumia Abu-Jamal is speaking to us for the first time no longer on death row.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, can you tell us where you are? Welcome to Democracy Now!

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Good morning, Amy. And good morning to Democracy Now!I am in the open room, the block out area of SCI Mahanoy, a prison in Schuylkill County in northeastern Pennsylvania.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Mumia Abu-Jamal, can you say how the conditions there are different from the prison from which you were moved?

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Well, in many ways, they’re similar. But in only in kind of dimension are they different. That is to say, everything is bigger. For nearly three decades, I was in what could be called a dog run or a small dog cage with one other fellow from death row. The difference between that and going to a cage, a yard that is about a mile wide with about 400 or 500 other men, is pretty profound.

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal, can you talk about what your reaction is to be taken off of death row, to no longer have death hanging over you, but to be in jail for a life sentence without parole?

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Well, you’ve kind of answered the question with your question. That is to say—

OPERATOR: This call is from the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy and is subject to monitoring and recording.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: You’ve probably heard me refer to life as "slow death row." It sounds a little dramatic, but it is really more truth to it than hyperbole. And that’s because, you know, in Pennsylvania, it has the highest population, or one of the highest populations, in the state, of lifers—in fact, juveniles with life sentences. And in Pennsylvania, there’s no gradation: you know, all lifers are lifers, and that’s for their whole life. So, and I guess, in that sense, too, it’s bigger. I mean, it’s bigger in terms of the time differential, but it’s slow death row, to be sure.

And when you see, as I’ve seen, going to chow or going to a meal and seeing what I call the "million man wheelchair march," it makes an impact on you. You know, you look up in the morning, and there are 30 or 40 guys going through the handicap line, and they’re in wheelchairs. And although some are young, most are quite old. And so, you know, life means life in Pennsylvania.

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal, there was a protest at the Justice Department yesterday, Occupy the DOJ, A24, for your birthday, April 24th, as people there called for—called for the Department of Justice, the attorney general, to open a probe into your case. What do you want to happen in your case?

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Well, as I said to our people there in Washington the other day, yesterday, frankly, we want freedom. I mean, I was thinking this morning, as I was being told that, you know, we could possibly talk to you, about a case that’s in the federal law books called U.S. v. Brown. The person is perhaps known better as Rap Brown or Gerold Brown. Imam Jamil is his name today. This is an old case, I think from the '70s, perhaps. But in this case, a federal case, the judge referred to Brother Jamil, at a golf course with other people around, as: "I'm going to help get rid of this nigger."

Think about that in the context of Judge Albert F. Sabo of the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia, not saying it on a golf course among friends, but saying this in his chambers in the courthouse during a trial. "I’m going to help them fry the nigger." This was heard by a court reporter—a member of the court staff, a court employee, and a person that is perhaps the best listener you could ever have for any conversation, because that’s her job. She takes notes during trials for a living. Now, we didn’t know about it until years later, but when we put this into our papers, our filings, it has been essentially ignored by every court it’s come in front of. How is that possible? And so, I mean, that’s certainly one indication, as you can see, one example of an unfair system.

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal, Danny Glover is here also to talk about your case.

DANNY GLOVER: Hello, Mumia.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Yes, Brother Danny. How are you?

DANNY GLOVER: How are you doing, brother?

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Good, good, good, good. Good to hear your voice.

DANNY GLOVER: It’s good to hear you, as always. And I certainly would be—feel a lot better, be a lot better, if you were out of jail, not simply just off of death row.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Me and you both.

DANNY GLOVER: But certainly, I just want to tell you that—and I’m really emotional because I didn’t expect to hear your voice this morning—that we continue to struggle and will continue to struggle to fight for your release. We sent a letter to the attorney general, Holder, that we convene a meeting and the federal government use its own authority to investigate your case. And certainly, we—people are out here, and we love you, brother.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Thank you so much. I assure you I did not expect to hear your voice, either, and I’m pretty emotional about that. You are a hero, for the acting community and the arts community and the drama community and, of course, the black community, and, beyond that, the international community, for the work you’ve done in the arts. And I am as pleased as punch and thrilled to hear you there. Thank you. Thank you very much.

DANNY GLOVER: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia, I think it’s interesting that you are talking to Danny Glover, who is currently playing Thurgood Marshall—that’s going to be coming out in an HBO series on Muhammad Ali—the Supreme Court justice.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: I think—I think Thurgood himself would get a real chuckle out of that. That’s wonderful. I mean, so—

DANNY GLOVER: Good, good.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: This is—you know, you’re—

DANNY GLOVER: Well, I’m looking forward to seeing you soon. All right, brother?

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: We shall make that happen.

DANNY GLOVER: We will make that happen, OK. All right.

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal, your access, outside of death row right now, to people, to the media, to the phone? You have had so much trouble reaching out over the years, though you have managed.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Well, if you recall, it’s been—it’s maybe 15 years, I think, since I last called your show. I was in conversation with you, perhaps 1996 or thereabouts, and the phone went dead. And I looked out of my cell, and I saw a guard come up and literally pull the wire out of the wall that connected the phone. And I remember saying, "Hello? Hello? Hello? Hello?" And it was dead because there was no wire to connect us. So, as you can see, the wires are a little tighter now. But—

AMY GOODMAN: Well, you sued—you sued the Pennsylvania prison authorities over them pulling out the phone from the wall when we were speaking onDemocracy Now!

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Indeed, I did. And thanks to the efforts of some really brave and conscientious lawyers and judges, I won—at least most of the issues in that suit. Abu-Jamal v. Price I think was the name of the case.

OPERATOR: This call is from the State Correctional Institution at Mahanoy and is subject to monitoring and recording.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: And thanks to that case, I was able to write and continue to, you know, be in contact with our people. So, I’m real glad he pulled that wire out the wall. That was very helpful.

AMY GOODMAN: Danny Glover, what do you think Thurgood Marshall would do in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal?

DANNY GLOVER: Well, surprisingly—no, not surprisingly, I think Thurgood Marshall would have been one of the few justices who would perhaps hear the case, would argue to hear the case, even though there were moments during the civil rights movement that Thurgood Marshall had even trouble with Martin Luther King and disagreed a great deal. But I think—I feel that he would be one who would want to hear the case. Thurgood Marshall—for nothing else, during those dark years in the ’30s and ’40s, Thurgood Marshall was there, before Brown v. Board of Education, fighting cases all the time of men who on death row who were about to have—for murder or for rape, all over the South, you know. We often know Thurgood Marshall from his work on Brown v. Board of Education, but clearly his work around inmates, around prisoners, around those who have been accused, accused falsely, and fighting for them was something he did all over the country.

AMY GOODMAN: I’m afraid we’re going to lose Mumia Abu-Jamal in a moment. Mumia Abu-Jamal, your thoughts on what Danny Glover just said about the Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall, and also if you could comment on the Trayvon Martin case and the Occupy movement?

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Well, I would concur largely with, not surprisingly, Danny Glover’s remarks, because, you know, from what I’ve read and what I’ve heard, Justice Thurgood Marshall was not just a brilliant legal mind and not just a brilliant judge or jurist, he was an incredible lawyer who fought for people who were poor, who were dispossessed, who were powerless, in the apartheid South. And also because he was a black lawyer, his experiences in the South were such that not only were his clients endangered, but he himself was endangered. And many times he would be told that he had to leave town before nightfall, or he would face death. I mean, this was the American South in the middle 20th century.

The good thing about that, if there can be a good thing about such an experience, is that when he came to the Supreme Court, those experiences of being a defense lawyer of the poor and the dispossessed and those facing death, he was able to share with his fellow justices, because these were people, largely, who, let’s say, came from a completely different background. And I don’t mean racially; I mean class, and I also mean that many of them—most of them were not defense lawyers. They were either lower court judges, or some were legislators, and, you know, mostly they were prosecutors and so forth. So, he was able to expand their perspective of what the law really meant in the real world and—through his own life experiences. Now, I think he had a profound impact, if you really check it, on the former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. If you look at her early jurisprudence and then look at her later jurisprudence, I think it’s a direct effect of the influence of Thurgood Marshall.

As for Trayvon, the little boy who could have been the son of the President of the United States, when we look at what happened in that case, and in my—my real view is that, in a matter of weeks or months, or months, we may see an immunity hearing that will wipe out the charges completely, and Mr. Zimmerman will never see the inside of a prison.

As for the Occupy movement, I think it’s one of the greatest advances in the democracy movement in our modern period. And it’s pushed because of the economic crisis—

OPERATOR: You have 60 seconds remaining.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: It’s pushed because of the economic crisis that’s facing the United States and especially young people who have come out of college and have no hope for a job, have no hope for a future, have no hope for a life without terrifying, crippling loans over their heads. I think they did something wonderful, but it’s a first step. They have something else to do, something more important to do, and that’s to connect with other people’s movements around the country and—

OPERATOR: You have 30 seconds remaining.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: —and build a kind of resistance that can transform this country. I thank you all for these brief moments. I really do. Thank you very much.

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal, happy birthday. Happy 58th birthday.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Amy.

DANNY GLOVER: Happy birthday, Mumia.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Thank you, Danny.

DANNY GLOVER: OK.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: All the best. On a move.

DANNY GLOVER: See you soon.

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: All right, brother.

DANNY GLOVER: All right.

AMY GOODMAN: Mumia Abu-Jamal, speaking to us from SCI Mahanoy, the prison in Pennsylvania where he is no longer on death row. Are you still there, Mumia? His phone has been cut off at this point. Danny Glover, your thoughts right now as you sit down and hear Mumia Abu-Jamal speaking to you, no longer from death row?

DANNY GLOVER: Well, it’s a beginning, as he says. As he mentioned in terms of the Occupy movement, it’s a beginning. We have to find, by—as someone would say, by any means necessary, legally, to free—and collectively, as a community, not only in this country, but around the world, to free and to bring him home.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Danny Glover, your thoughts on Trayvon Martin and Mumia Abu-Jamal? We’ve just spoken to. Is the criminal justice system very different now than it was when Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted?

DANNY GLOVER: Certainly, it’s framed now in a different way. It is simply still the place. I know those places, and I visit those places Mumia talks about, where there is a wheelchair caravan of men who are serving life sentences. You take, for instance, Soledad State Prison in California. Forty percent of the prisoners there are on death—excuse me, on life sentences. And you take Vacaville, two places that I visited last year. Also 40 percent of the prisoners are life—lifers, as they’ve been calling them, lifers. So, the reality is that that has not changed. The course, from prisons to—from high school to communities to prison, is still the same course that has happened.

What is essentially—and we must be reminded that at the point that Mumia was charged with this crime—and certainly, there were a number of activities, theCOINTEL program and other programs, to incite and not only to dismantle those movements and to dissuade young people from becoming progressive and radicalized in different ways within the community. So, here’s a journalist. And that’s what Mumia is first—

AMY GOODMAN: We have five seconds.

DANNY GLOVER: —is a journalist.

AMY GOODMAN: And then we’ll continue off air.

DANNY GLOVER: He’s the person who is attacked—a journalist now, first—who’s attacked in here because of what he has to say.

AMY GOODMAN: Danny Glover, we want to thank you very much for being with us. We’re going to continue this conversation and post it online in a web exclusive at democracynow.org.

Goodman, A. (2012). Exclusive: Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks from prison on life after death row and his quest for freedom. Democracy Now. Retrieved from http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/25/exclusive_mumia_abu_jamal_speaks_from

Editor's Note:  If it ain't clear to you by now, you ain't eva goin' get it!  The picture to the left along with the following article paints a clear picture of how serious genetic survival is to those that inherently defend it.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Dear dj fourth wurld,

Last week, after receiving hundreds of requests to address the Zimmerman versus Martin incident and express an opinion, I posted a video from George Zimmerman's former attorney because I doubted it received much air time on the national networks and it summed up my personal thoughts pretty well.

If you missed it, you can see it below.

This week, I have a very interesting security camera video as a follow-up to the Trayvon Martin versus George Zimmerman incident which was sent to Front Sight by one of the people actually in the video!

The man in the video, wearing the purple shirt, sent us this video and thanked me for last week's blog because he said that after seeing my blog post, it helped him set his head straight.

So here is what I recommend you do to make this week's blog post the best learning tool possible.

First, watch LAST week's video below, if you missed it, and see my comments that follow.

Second, watch THIS week's video and decide what you would do if in the same situation and then see my comments that follow, and the shocking revelation that the man in the purple shirt shared with us.

Third, see your final chance to secure a Bonus Patriot Lifetime Membership and take advantage of it immediately because I will not be able to keep the offer open for another day.

Here is LAST WEEK's video...

Click To Play Video

Here are my comments on LAST WEEK's video...

I think the man in the video does a very good job of expressing himself.

What you should consider in looking at the Zimmerman versus Martin incident as described in this video, is whether you would have acted in the same manner under the same circumstances?

If so, and if the "peers" of George Zimmerman who eventually will be selected to hear and see all the facts of the case, would have also done the same thing, then Zimmerman will be found to have acted in a reasonable manner.

As we explain in our classroom lectures Problems 2 and 3, Criminal and Civil Liability Following a Shooting, even when justified, there is a very high price to be paid any time you shoot another human being.

The Zimmerman versus Martin incident is a very good example, although grossly amplified by the media and people who should know better, of what can happen to YOU should you ever press the trigger in defense of your life.

Still, solving Problem 1 (saving your own life or the lives of others around you) only to face Problems 2 and 3 is still FAR BETTER than failing to solve Problem 1.

Keep that in mind as you make your decisions as to whether Zimmerman acted in a reasonable manner to defend himself from serious bodily injury or death.

Also keep in mind that this incident confirms why we say you should only shoot if you have NO OTHER CHOICE but to shoot to save your life or the lives of those around you.

Here is THIS WEEK's video sent to us by the man in the purple shirt...

Click To Play Video

Here are my comments on THIS WEEK's video...

This video is a classic teaching tool, demonstrating a number of flagrant errors on the part of both the good guys and the bad guy that should have resulted in someone getting seriously hurt or killed, but remarkably nobody was injured.

Believe it or not, the revelation the man in the purple shirt shared with us is that both he and the shirtless man have .25 caliber automatic pocket pistols in their back pockets! If you look closely you can see the guns in their pockets.

Comment number 1: Decide ahead of time what you are willing to shoot, kill, or die for.

Unless you are truly willing to kill or die for property, don't step up to confront an armed man or try stop him from stealing a motorcycle because you will likely be dealing with a criminal who HAS made the decision to shoot, kill or die for a motorcycle and he WILL try to kill you.

Comment number 2: Don't carry a gun unless you are mentally ready, willing and able to use it.

In order to be mentally ready to use a gun, you must have combat mindset training, and you must know when you are in a situation where your opponent has the ability, opportunity and intent to seriously injure or kill you.

At that moment when you recognize that your opponent is close enough to use what he has at his disposal to seriously injure or kill you and is demonstrating he has the intent to do so, you need to be willing to shoot to defend yourself. You must have the skills to quickly present your weapon and deliver accurate fire to the area of your target, appropriate to the caliber of your weapon, that will immediately stop your attacker.

If carrying a 9mm or larger, shoot two rounds to the thoracic cavity of your opponent and then be ready to immediately deliver a shot to the cranio-ocular cavity (between eyebrows and moustache) should the two rounds to the chest fail to stop the attack.

If carrying a .380, .32, .25, or .22, then you should not count on two rounds to the chest to stop a dedicated opponent. Your standard response when carrying a pocket pistol is two to three rounds to the cranio-ocular cavity. Yes, this is harder to accomplish. If you are going to carry a pocket pistol, then you must train MORE than if you carry a larger gun.

In this video, the moment the bad guy points his long barreled revolver at the two good guys, the bad guy has demonstrated the ability, opportunity, and intent to immediately injure or kill. THE BAD GUY SHOULD HAVE BEEN SHOT BY THE GOOD GUYS, WITHOUT HESITATION. Both men carrying .25 caliber automatic pocket pistols should have already been behind cover, presented their weapons and fired. Instead they hesitated, and it would have cost them their lives had the bad guy had any gun handling skills, or used any sight alignment or trigger control.

Why did they hesitate? Are you ready for this... Because they say, the criminal was black and wearing a hoodie! They feared they would be subjected to the same media abuse as George Zimmerman!

Even after the bad guy shoots at the shirtless man, yanking the trigger so badly that the shot literally hits the ground- which causes a rock, not a bullet, to strike the shirtless man- both good guys carrying weapons hesitate to shoot the bad guy, due to fear of another Trayvon Martin fiasco. Don't YOU ever make the same mistake. You may not be as lucky as the two men in this video!

Comment number 3: Solving Problem 1 (saving your own life or the lives of others around you) only to face Problems 2 and 3 (potential criminal and civil liability or media hysteria) is still FAR BETTER than failing to solve Problem 1.

The saddest part of the good guys' hesitation is that their black, hooded opponent left NO DOUBT in anyone's mind (except the minds of the two good guys) that he is a criminal, bent on seriously injuring or killing innocent people to steal a motorcycle. THERE IS NO COMPARISON between this incident and the Trayvon Martin incident, yet these two Good Samaritans almost lost their lives from fear that they would be subjected to the lynch mob fervor that has been fanned irresponsibly by the media, gun grabbers, racists, and political opportunists.

So go back and read Comment Number 1 again. Determine for yourself, in advance, what you are willing to shoot, kill or die for because when you are faced with a lethal encounter, you won't have the time to debate the situation in your mind. It all happens too fast.

You will act, based on the decisions you have already made and the level of training you have received. Unfortunately, you will only be half as smart and half as good as you were on your best training day simply from the stress of the situation. This is why you must train regularly and properly. If you hesitate for any reason, when you should be shooting, it can cost you your life.

Comment number 4: Not all bad guys are as incompetent as this motorcycle thief.

Our two good guys were simply lucky that their opponent did not know to use his sights and evidently had never heard of pressing the trigger for a clean, crisp surprise trigger break. The bad guy certainly had the time to shoot accurately, but clearly did not know how. DON'T BET YOUR LIFE ON DUMB LUCK. Learn from this video and get trained!

Comment number 5: Once the threat ends, don't shoot!

Near the end of the video well after the bad guy has driven away, now the shirtless man decides to present his gun and fire at the fleeing felon. Yes, in some jurisdictions this may be legal, but it is bad choice in any jurisdiction from a civil liability standpoint. You will never convince a jury AFTER your opponent left your immediate presence, with his back to you, that you were in any danger of immediate, serious bodily injury or death. SO WHEN THE THREAT LEAVES, SO DOES YOUR JUSTIFICATION TO SHOOT.

What is even worse is the fact that you are responsible for wherever those shots may end up, whether they be in your neighbor's car, house or in your neighbor!

Comment number 6: I have a free, Front Sight Four Day Defensive Handgun Course waiting for the man in the purple shirt and his shirtless friend, so they can be trained to levels that exceed law enforcement and military standards.

After our training, if they are ever faced with a lethal encounter again, they will know when it is appropriate to shoot, when not to shoot, and if shooting, they will have the ability to hit their opponent to stop the lethal attack.

Comment number 7: For the rest of you, I have a Front Sight Patriot Lifetime Membership... and if you act fast, you can secure a BONUS Membership to transfer to a family member or friend to recoup all your costs.

Here are the details... Just don't hesitate! You won't get shot in this offer for hesitating to act immediately, but you will kick yourself forever for missing your this opportunity to grab a lifetime of the world's best firearms training for next to nothing!

Our Life Members Recently Upgraded by Trading In Their $4,900 Memberships.

YOU Can Get One of Their Trade-In Memberships for next to nothing and a Free Bonus Membership is Still Available IF You Respond TODAY...

Get YOUR Bonus Lifetime Membership...

(And have fun with the shooting game I sent you below!)

I want to make sure you get it and have every opportunity to benefit from an amazing opportunity, a reward for your loyalty, that I am going to drop in your lap.

But first, let me explain the important reason for this e-mail...

The reason I am sending you this personally is because I have been working on some spectacular news for over 2 years and it looks like everything is coming into place to make the brilliant announcement.

There have been numerous delays, obstacles and false starts along the way. These delays had nothing to do with Front Sight's abilities to make things go right, but rather the entities and people we had to rely on through the process.

One thing is for sure, no matter what the obstacles or delays, Front Sight just keeps moving forward, keeps growing and keeps creating amazing opportunities for our loyal and trusted students.

The Spectacular News is about to be released and I want to make sure you position yourself to benefit the MOST from it.

Grab a lifetime membership BEFORE I release the spectacular news.

Believe me, you will want to be a Front Sight Lifetime Member when I am finally able to release the spectacular news... and if you are not a Front Sight Lifetime Member, you will truly be kicking yourself FOREVER for missing out on this opportunity.

So let me make it unbelievably easy for you to become a Front Sight Lifetime Member and position yourself to not only train now and for the rest of your life at Front Sight, but also benefit from all that our spectacular news will hold for you in the future.

HOWEVER, please allow me to warn you that you only have one shot at this. I am going to make it so incredibly easy for you while I still can (before making the spectacular announcement ) that if you do not take advantage of grabbing a Lifetime Membership, there is just NO WAY I could ever make it easier. And once I release the spectacular news, there is NO WAY I could ever offer this again.

So please, take advantage of this special opportunity NOW.

HOW DID THIS SPECIAL OFFER COME ABOUT?

Well, I recently gave all our lifetime members the opportunity to upgrade to the highest level, Diamond Membership, by trading in their current memberships.

The response was dramatic and I now have their trade-in memberships in my possession.

I could simply re-release the trade-in memberships at their regular prices, but since they have already been paid for once, I am going to reward you for your loyalty to Front Sight's mission by passing the trade-in memberships on to you at a price that you simply cannot ignore and would be crazy not to jump on immediately, plus the special bonus I have added will knock your socks off!

So here is what I have for you...

It really will blow you away and take away ANY reason for not becoming a Front Sight Lifetime Member.

And the Special Bonus I am going to throw in will make it unbelievable easy for you grab Lifetime Memberships for every member of your family and all your friends too!

So, it is time for YOU to become a Front Sight Patriot, LIFETIME MEMBER!

Here is What You Get With Your Front Sight Patriot Lifetime Membership...

• ATTEND THE FOLLOWING, MOST POPULAR COURSES HELD AT FRONT SIGHT, AS MANY TIMES AS YOU WISH FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
  • Two Day Defensive Handgun
  • Two Day Tactical Shotgun
  • Two Day Practical Rifle
  • Four Day Defensive Handgun
  • Four Day Tactical Shotgun
  • Four Day Practical Rifle
• Guaranteed Placement in Your Courses with Two Weeks Advance Enrollment... No worries about whether you can "get into a course." As a member your spot is guaranteed. Just fax or e-mail your Application for Training within two weeks of the course date and you are in! Like everything else we offer, no other school can offer you such flexibility with your scheduling!
• Invitation to Annual July 4th Lifetime Members' Reunion Celebration... So you and your family can celebrate July 4th each year in a manner that makes our Founding Fathers proud!
• Name etched in First Family Monument... So generations from now, your grandkids will know you were part of the patriotic group who built Front Sight!
• Password to access exclusive and restricted First Family areas of web site and e-mail forum... Now you can positively converse with all of our like-minded First Family members!
• First Family Card and Hat... Identifying you to all students and staff as a loyal and supportive patriot assisting us in positively changing the image of gun ownership in our lifetime!

The value of attending just ONE, Front Sight Four Day course is $2,000 and the value of a Two Day course is $1,000. I am giving you the unbelievable opportunity to secure a Patriot Lifetime Membership that will allow you to attend our 6 most popular courses as many times as you wish for the rest of your life!

If you attend each course under your Patriot Lifetime Membership just once, the value is $9,000. Attending all your Patriot courses multiple times over your lifetime pushes the lifetime value of your membership to $20,000, $30,000 or more!

I created Front Sight and the Lifetime Membership so you, your family and your fellow Americans would have a world class facility, top notch instructors, a vast curriculum of courses that meet or exceed law enforcement and military standards, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, offered in a financial manner that anyone who truly wants the Comfort of Skill at Arms can obtain.

I have kept pure and uncompromising Front Sight's purpose to positively change the image of gun ownership in our lifetimes by training responsible citizens to levels that exceed law enforcement and military standards and I WANT YOU TO BE A Front Sight PATRIOT LIFETIME MEMBER so when the Spectacular News is released you can benefit most from it!

So what's the cost for you to become a special, Patriot Lifetime Member?

Choose ONE Payment Plan:

____ 60 monthly credit card payments of $30 for a total cost of $1,800

OR

____ 36 monthly credit card payments of $40 for a total cost of $1,440 (You Save $360)

OR

____ Single payment of $500 (You Save $1,300)

That's Right! As little as $30 per month or a single payment of only $500.

At these prices, you can sit back, smiling and relaxed as a Front Sight Lifetime Member, knowing that you can take advantage of your membership at any time for the rest of your life, and after JUST YOUR FIRST CLASS, you have already received MORE than the value that what you paid for your lifetime membership.

IT GETS EVEN BETTER...

Here's a SPECIAL BONUS for the NEXT 500 Who Purchase With a Single Payment!

When you purchase this special Patriot Lifetime Membership offer by making a single payment of $500, I will give you a SECOND Patriot Lifetime Membership that you can sell or transfer to anyone who is not yet a lifetime member! (Yep, this is a way for you to recoup ALL your costs NOW while bringing us another great member just like you!)

But you must act fast because this Special Bonus is only good for the NEXT 500 who take advantage of my personal efforts to help you become a special, Patriot Lifetime Member before I release the Spectacular News...

WHY am I doing this? As I explained above, I am rewarding you for your loyalty and know that you will return my generosity to you, TEN FOLD to Front Sight with all the great citizens you refer to us over your lifetime.

HOW can I do this? As I explained above, I have already been paid in full for these memberships. They are trade-ins. I am simply passing them on to you at a great savings, in exchange for your loyalty and future referrals of all your shooting buddies, friends, colleagues, and co-workers. You will save us millions of dollars in marketing costs to reach your circle of influence in your home town. Saving us millions is just like making us millions, so we pass it on to you in this amazing offer, and thank you for helping spread the great word about Front Sight!

So how do you take advantage of this special, Patriot Lifetime Membership?

The easiest way to upgrade is to simply use our Secure Online Rapid Enrollment Form.

OR CALL MY ASSISTANTS Jon, Mac, Phil, Robert, Rachel, Doug, or Bob IMMEDIATELY at 1.800.987.7719 to Secure YOUR Special, Patriot Lifetime Membership!

My assistants are available from 8:00am to 6:00pm PST so give them a call at 1.800.987.7719 and tell them you want to become a special, Patriot Lifetime Member by taking advantage of the offer I personally sent you.

NOTE: With an offer like this you may experience busy phones when you try to call to enroll so please use this Secure Online Rapid Enrollment Form if you find that you can't get through on any of our 8 phone lines.

And here it a fun shooting game you can play on your computer I thought you would enjoy...

http://www.cci-ammunition.com/game/default.htm

And here is a great video we recently created so you can share it with your family and friends:

Click To Play Video

I highly recommend you view it in 720 (a selection you can make at the bottom of the video window)...so you can see all the awesome detail.

I will be posting a different article on this blog each Monday so I look forward to your visit every week.

If you have an interesting photo, story or tip about a relevant topic of interest to gun ownership, firearms training or Second Amendment issues, please feel free to send it to me at:

info@frontsight.com

Sincerely,

Dr. Ignatius Piazza
Founder and Director
Front Sight Firearms Training Institute
7975 Cameron Drive, #900
Windsor, CA 95492 
http://www.frontsight.com
info@frontsight.com
1.800.987.7719

Piazza, I. (2012). Worrying about Trayvon Martin will get you killed. Front Sight. Retrieved from http://www.ignatius-piazza-front-sight.com/2012/04/23/front-sights-monday-blog-worrying-about-trayvon-martin-will-get-you-killed/#video

East Africa: Obama Extends U.S. Search for LRA's Kony

25 APRIL 2012

U.S. President Barack Obama has announced that American advisers helping with the mission to capture Joseph Kony will remain in East Africa to "bring this madman to justice.".

USA Today reports that Obama made the remarks at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum during a speech on efforts to prevent human atrocities.

Videos on Kony and his crimes, including child kidnapping, rape and mutilation, have gone viral, putting more pressure on Obama and other governments to capture him, the report says.

Obama deployed about 100 U.S. special forces to help Uganda and other regional governments eliminate the threats of Kony and the LRA, whose crimes include child kidnapping and rape.

"It is part of our regional strategy to end the scourge that is the LRA, and help realize a future where no African child is stolen from their family and no girl is raped and no boy is turned into a child soldier," Obama said in his speech.

AFP reports that none of the US troops have been out in the bush with soldiers searching for the LRA leader.

But, the AFP reporter was told "they communicate regularly with surveillance planes they say are flown - sometimes at night - by Americans and have seen their supplies and morale boosted in recent months".

All Africa. (2012). Obama Extends U.S. Search for LRA's Kony. All Africa. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/201204250430.html

BY TESFA-ALEM TEKLE, 23 APRIL 2012

Addis Ababa — The Eritrean government on Monday dismissed allegations that its president, Isaias Afewerki, is fatally ill; claiming it is a smear campaign orchestrated by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Recently Eritrean opposition groups have been alleging that the former rebel leader's health has deteriorated due to liver disease and has sought medical treatment in Qatar.

However, in a statement released on Monday, the Eritrean ministry of information said the president is "in robust health, and by all means of medical standard, he is at the peak of his health".

Eritrea accused the CIA of being the "rumour monger" which fomented the allegation.

In the Ethiopian capital, an Eritrean opposition official, Nesredin Ahmed of the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organization (RSADO) told Sudan Tribune that his organisation is waiting for reliable information on the President's from its sources in Asmara, which will be disclosed soon.

Afewerki has been the president of the former Ethiopian province since it gained independence in 1993.

Asmara's relationship with the US has long been fraught; it often accuses the US of siding with arch-enemy, Ethiopia.

The Eritrean leader recently accused the US of being behind last month's cross-border raids by the Ethiopian army.

Addis Ababa targeted bases which it accused of harbouring rebels who carried out raids in Ethiopia, with Eritrea's backing.

Following the attack, on state television Afewerki said the attacks - which were Ethiopia's first military incursion into Eritrea since the two neighbours ended the 1998-2000 border war - were plotted by Washington, with the aim of diverting attention from implementing the boundary commission's decision.

The Hague-based boundary commission awarded the Badme region to Eritrea in 2002, but it remains under Ethiopian control.

According to a leaked cable from the US embassy in Asmara, the former US ambassador, Ronald McMullen, said Afewerki feared the US would try to kill him by firing a missile on his residence in the coastal city of Massawa. McMullen also descried Afewerki as an "unhinged dictator".

Eritrea, which is under growing global diplomatic pressure, is facing UN-imposed sanctions for arming and financially supporting al-Qaeda-linked militants fighting to overthrow the weak, UN-backed government of Somalia.

Eritrea is widely accused of being a destabilising force in the region.

S.H.I invites you and friends to...

Listen to Mother Nature with a Molotov

Stahhr produces more classic music with her new project Mother Nature with a Molotov: Molotov Season.

For Immediate Release: April 23, 2012

The project was birthed out of the dire need for humanity to catalyze transformation, rebirth and balance through the powerful vibration of music. Over 14 tracks, staHHr bobs and weaves expertly through a variety of production styles with clever word play, molotov mantras, natural law and metaphysics balanced with the essence of the golden era. Album features include hip hop legend Del, C-Rayz Walz, John Robinson, Eagle Nebula, Nomadic Poet, Boog Brown and Ekundayo. Stahhr also enlisted an array of producers for this venture, reaching from Georgia (Floyd tha Locsmif), the Bronx (Lex Boogie), Brooklyn (Sid V), France (Astronote) and Iceland (Fonetik Simbol). This album is the follow up to her 2008 release Almost Neva Was. No gimmicks, just the authentic, unadulterated hip hop that you grew up on continually metamorphosing into the standard for the now and the golden era future. Molotovs!

Bandcamp Store: http://stahhr.bandcamp.com/album/mother-nature-with-a-molotov-molotov-season 
TuneCube Store (download only): http://www.tunecube.com/profile/staHHr

Listen to Mother Nature with a Molotov

 

When Georgia Republicans passed an anti-immigration law last year, Hispanic farm workers fled the state in droves, leaving farmers with no one left to pick the crops. Republicans said that they were creating new jobs for Americans by clearing out undocumented workers, but as it turns out, the law also scared many legal workers away as well and Americans aren’t crazy about working in the fields all day picking crops for little money. As a result, crops rotted, costing farm owners millions of dollars. Georgia Republicans then had an idea. Replace the field workers with dirt cheap prison labor.

According to 11 Alive News in Georgia, the state “is using transitional prison inmates to work in south Georgia’s Vidalia onion industry this spring. The program is an update of a failed program introduced in 2011, in which the state sent probationers into vegetable fields to help ease a labor shortage that followed the passage of a tough new immigration law.  Growers complained that probationers were unreliable and slow compared to migrant workers who have historically worked in vegetable fields.”

Since the law passed in 2011, growers have complained about worker shortages and as a result of that shortage, crops have rotted. Rotting crops have caused strain on the food supply, causing some prices to rise. So while Republicans wage their race war against Hispanics, crucial fruits and vegetables are left to rot in the fields instead of being used to feed families who need them. And their idea to use prison labor is also a bad move. Republicans across the South are considering similar moves to replace union workers so that businesses can use cheap labor to make products and thus steal jobs held by Americans who earn good wages. Prison labor is a way for big business to find cheap labor here in the United States, and since the prison population is disproportionately African-American, it would basically be a return to slavery. And as the demand for cheap prison labor rises, Republicans will be pressured to keep the prison population high. That means more people will be sent to prison unnecessarily. It also means more Americans will lose their jobs. Why pay someone a fair living wage when businesses can pay pennies to a prisoner to do the same work? This is what we can expect if Republicans continue to be elected to office.

Addicting Info. (2012). Georgia to use cheap prison labor to harvest crops for second year in a row. Addicting Info. Retrieved from http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/04/20/georgia-to-use-cheap-prison-labor-to-harvest-crops-for-second-year-in-a-row/

20 APRIL 2012

The Federal Government is opening a secret detention center to hold and interrogate suspected high-level members of the Boko Haram sect which has been blamed for hundreds of killings, the Associated Press news agency reported, quoting unnamed security sources.

While the facility raises concerns about its possible use for torture and illegal detentions, it could create a more cohesive effort among disparate and sometimes feuding security agencies to combat the sect.

The prison is in Lagos, far from the violence plaguing the North, where Boko Haram carries out frequent bombings and shootings, said the security official, who is directly involved in the project. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to discuss the facility with journalists.

"All suspects arrested will be taken to the center and would be interrogated by a security group," the official said.

He declined to say exactly where it is or how many inmates it can hold. He said authorities are arranging to transport suspects to Lagos.

The detention center was created at the orders of the National Security Adviser Gen. Andrew Owoye Azazi, the official said.

Azazi's telephone number is unlisted and the AP was unable to contact him for comment.

Ekpeyong Ita, the director-general of the State Security Service, declined to comment yesterday when the AP asked him about the prison.

Minutes later, spokeswoman for the State Security Service, Marilyn Ogar, called an AP journalist and said anyone with information about the purported prison should go to the courts instead of talking to journalists.

"Whatever we do, we're running a democratic system that respects the rule of law," she said.

Ogar appeared later yesterday on the Nigerian Television Authority before the AP published its story. In an interview, she said that a "group of disgruntled people have gone to the foreign media to say that Nigeria has now produced another Guantanamo Bay," referring to the U.S. military detention camp in Cuba.

She said there was no such detention facility and no plans to set it up.

It was not immediately clear why the government would open the detention center in secret. However, Boko Haram has carried out high-profile attacks on federal prisons in the country in the past that has seen hundreds of inmates escape.

Boko Haram, whose name means "Western education is prohibited" in the Hausa language, is blamed for the wave of sophisticated bombings and gun attacks in the North.

The sect carried out a suicide bombing in August at United Nations' office in Abuja that killed 25 people and wounded more than 100 others, as well as a coordinated assault this January in Kano that killed at least 185 people.

Nigeria's security forces have notorious human rights records, with a documented history of abusing and even killing prisoners.

Police officers shot and killed Boko Haram's former leader Mohammed Yusuf in 2009 while he was in their custody, underscoring the lack of respect for human rights among the security forces. Security agencies have been unable to find and arrest the sect's current leader Sheik Abubakar Shekau, who posts taunting videos on the Internet promising more violence.

"The problem we have is lack of synergy among the security agencies," the security official told AP. Those agencies include the police, the military and intelligence agencies like the State Security Service.

Relations between the agencies are testy at times as each fights for its own budgetary allotments. There also are suspicions that some have been influenced by ethnic or religious factors in this nation of more than 160 million people with two dominant religions and more than 250 ethnic groups.

Intelligence agencies allegedly released a suspected Islamic radical in 2007 who later masterminded Boko Haram's suicide car bombing of the U.N. headquarters. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cable also show U.S. officials complained in 2008 about Nigeria's government quietly releasing other suspects into the custody of Islamic leaders as part of a program it called "Perception Management."

Suspected sect members have been arrested and kept locked up for months without being charged. Authorities also routinely arrest women and children related to suspected Boko Haram members in attempts to draw them out. Amnesty International has said some Boko Haram suspects have been "subject to enforced disappearances."

This record leads to fears among human rights groups that the secret detention center could see more suspects disappear, deprived of the right to challenge their detentions in the courts.

"Attacks by armed groups do not absolve the Nigerian government of the responsibility to conduct security operations in a manner that complies with national and international law," Amnesty International said in a statement yesterday. "Widespread unlawful, incommunicado detention must cease immediately."

It is unclear whether any foreign governments have offered Nigeria advice or assistance in opening the detention center. U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria Terence P. McCulley, speaking to journalists April 4, said the U.S. is "working with the Nigerian government to help them develop a counter-terrorism strategy that includes perhaps a center even to better coordinate information and intelligence that they receive."

But Deb MacLean, a U.S. Embassy spokeswoman, told the AP that she was unaware of the new detention center and said that the U.S. had no role in it.

Daily Trust. (2012). FG opens prison for Boko Haram - Report. Daily Trust. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204200379.html

BY MATTHEW ONAH AND MICHAEL OLUGBODE, 18 APRIL 2012

The State Security Service (SSS) Tuesday, aborted what could have been a bloody attack on the Yola metropolis in Adamawa State, by members of Boko Haram, when the SSS raided the sect's safe house in the area, seizing huge quantities of Improvised Explosive Devises (IED), and other materials the sect used in manufacturing bombs.

This also coincided with another feat by the Joint Task Force (JTF), which killed four suspected armed robbers in Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.

But Adamawa State Director of the SSS, Mr. Olugbenga Jayeoba, who told journalists in Yola, after they raided the safe house, said the SSS had mounted surveillance on suspected members of the sect for the past two weeks before finally raiding the safe house to abort the attack before it was carried out.

Jayeoba said one of the suspected members of the sect, Abubakar Yola, was trailed to his house located at Wuro-Jabbe in the Yola metropolis, where the SSS recovered about 20 bombs, huge cache of equipment used in making bombs and over 50 kilogrammes of ammonium nitrate, and 20 wraps of phosphorous.

Other equipments seized from the safe house included sophisticated electronic devices and electrical appliances, used in manufacturing bombs.

He stated that although the suspect escaped leaving behind his wife and son, the SSS was on his trail and assured that the suspect would soon be tracked down and arrested.

Jayeoba said with the quantity of bombs recovered from the safe house of the sect, Yola metropolis would have been devastated if not for the preventive measures of the security agencies and appealed to the public to avail security agencies more information and cooperation to enable them operate more efficiently.

The sources further revealed that the sect had targeted Yola metropolis for an attack on Friday, before the security agencies raided one of their safe houses early Tuesday.

When contacted, the leader of the Police Bomb Disposal Squad, Mr. Philip Izegbe, an assistant superintendent of police (ASP), who was called by the SSS to render the bombs safe, said he was surprised by the sophistication of the materials used in manufacturing the bombs.

Meanwhile, Spokesman of the JTF in Borno State, Lt. Col. Sagir Musa, revealed in a press statement.

He said: "Following a tip off, the JTF raided a hideout of suspected Boko Haram sect at Pompomari, Maiduguri metropolis."

He said during the clampdown, a suspected member of the Boko Haram sect member was killed and an AK 47 rifle and some IED materials were recovered. He disclosed that the incident happened at about 5:30 am.

The task force spokesman equally revealed that about 3:30am Tuesday during a cordon and search of Wulari area, another part of the town, 13 suspected sect members were arrested.

Musa said the task force has resumed investigations on the arrested suspected sect members to determine their level of involvement in act of terrorism.

In a similar development, Musa said at about 0218 hours, the task force responded to distressed calls from Gomari area of the town, during which they engaged some robbers in shootout that led to the killing of three robbers. He said recovered from them include a locally made pistol, a Dane gun and three machetes.

Onah, M. & Olugbode, M. (2012). State security services uncovers another bomb factory. This Day. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204180512.html

BY TOKUNBO ADEDOJA, 19 APRIL 2012

The United States government has said that the warning issued to its citizens in Nigeria that Boko Haram planned to attack hotels frequently visited by Westerners in Abuja was credible and non-counterable.

At the daily press briefing of the State Department in Washington DC on Wednesday, Deputy Spokesperson of the department, Mark Toner, who was asked to explain the basis for the warning issued by the US embassy in Nigeria, said such emergency messages are issued, "when we deem a threat to any US citizen - safety - rather a threat to a US citizen's safety or security to be specific, credible, and non-counterable".

Clarifying what he meant by non-counterable, Toner said it meant that US could not find any evidence to refute or dispute information on the planned attack.

The US official, while declining to comment on the source of the information, also said US did not have any additional information regarding the timing of the planned attack.

When his attention was drawn to the fact that the Nigerian government had condemned the warning on the ground that it could cause panic, Toner said issuing such emergency message was in line with what he called the, "department's no double standard policy".

On whether Nigerian authorities were informed before the warning was issued, Toner said he could not say if that was done, but added, "I don't know that we would be obliged to do so."

US mission in Nigeria had on Tuesday issued an emergency message for all US citizens warning that it had received information that Boko Haram, a deadly religious sect, may be planning attacks in Abuja, including against hotels frequently visited by Westerners.

The embassy, however, said that the Nigerian government was aware of the threat and was actively implementing security measures.

The Federal Government has, however, frowned at the message, warning embassies and foreign organisations working in Nigeria to stop spreading panic through recycling of old security issues as if they were new.

Adedoja, T. (2012). U.S stands by Boko Haram attack warning. This Day. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204200635.html

BY ELVIS BASUDDE, 22 APRIL 2012

A Ugandan man believed to have fathered the highest number of children in the country has died, The New Vision has learned. He was 103.

A World War veteran, Lieutenant Jack Kigongo of Kateera village, Kiboga district had 158 children by the time of his death in November 2011.

He fathered the children from 20 wives but by the time of his death he had 11 wives, according his son Patrick Bulira Kigongo. He left behind about 500 grandchildren.

New Vision found three of Kigongo's widows and a number of his children and grand-children still staying at his dilapidated mansion.

Bulira said the family is going through a hard time, following the death of their father. He said a number of Kigongo's children are vending fruits in Kateera trading centre.

According to Bulira, the once prosperous family was impoverished by the five-year bush-war that brought the NRM/NRA to power.

He says their father had a coffee factory, two lorries, a big herd of cattle and all these were either looted or destroyed during the war.

The scars of the bush war are still visible on the family's main house. The walls have bullet holes.

New Vision first published a story about Kigongo's jumbosize family in 1997 when he had about 150 children. At the time, Kigongo had just married an 18-year old girl.

Kigongo with his youngest wife aged 18, and his children and grandchildren in 1997

According to Bulira, his father had two homes in Kateera. The mansion was the main home where 12 of his wives stayed while eight lived in his second home.

Kigongo married his youngest wife, who was 18, when he was 80 years old. Strangely, she also died early this year.

Kigongo's oldest son is 60 years and has a home and family in the same village while the youngest is 15.

Bulira said some of the surviving widows are staying with their grown-up children.

In 1939, Kigongo was recruited to fight in the Second World War where he won himself the rank of lieutenant in Burma. He returned in 1944 and became one of the wealthy Ugandans in the area.

Upon his return, he bought 60 acres of land and established coffee factories and a number of businesses.

Bulira said in the 1980s, the Obote II regime persecuted his father, prompting him to enlist some of his children to join the NRA.

"Obote had called my father a rebel and wanted to arrest him. When he (my father) realised that he was being persecuted, he mobilised 50 of my brothers and trained them in the Bokomero bushes," says Bulira.

He said his brothers fought in the NRA bush war and 22 of them were killed in the struggle.

"Three of my brothers are in the army- a captain, a sergeant and a lieutenant," he said.

New Vision could not verify Bulira's claim that 50 of his brothers fought in the NRA bush war. When he was prosperous, Kigongo put up his own primary school and a church for his children and grandchildren.

At one time, 80 out of a school population of 130 were his children.

Basudde, E. (2012). Uganda: Father of 158 passes on, leaving behind 500 grandchildren. The New Vision. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204230064.html

WEDNESDAY, APR 11, 2012 5:41 PM UTC

John McNeil killed a white man who assaulted him on his property.  But, unlike George Zimmerman, he's serving life.

By Rania Khalek

George Zimmerman and John McNeil  (Credit: AP)

Trayvon Martin's tragic murder has brought much-needed scrutiny to "Stand Your Ground" laws. If you read or hear about a local "Stand Your Ground" case that isn't getting much national press, blog about it on Open Salon.

As the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the failure of authorities to arrest his killer, George Zimmerman, continues to grab headlines, many conservatives and gun rights advocates insist that race has nothing to do with it. Some have also rallied to the defense of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, the self-defense legislation under which Zimmerman was able to avoid arrest. Yet not all stand your ground claims are so successful. Not too far from Sanford, Fla., a black man named John McNeil is serving a life sentence for shooting Brian Epp, a white man who trespassed and attacked him at his home in Georgia, another stand your ground state.

It all began in early 2005, when McNeil and his wife, Anita, hired Brian Epp’s construction company to build a new house in Cobb County, Ga. The McNeils testified that Epp was difficult to work with, which led to heated confrontations. They eventually decided to close on the house early to rid their lives of Epp, whom they found increasingly threatening. At the closing, both parties agreed that Epp would have 10 days to complete the work, after which he would stay away from the property, but he failed to keep up his end of the bargain.

On Dec. 6, 2005, John McNeil’s 15-year-old son, La’Ron, notified his dad over the phone that a man he didn’t recognize was lurking in the backyard. When La’Ron told the man to leave, an argument broke out. McNeil was still on the phone and immediately recognized Epp’s voice. According to La’Ron’s testimony, Epp pointed a folding utility knife at La’Ron’s face and said, “[w]hy don’t you make me leave?” at which point McNeil told his son to go inside and wait while he called 911 and headed home.

According to McNeil’s testimony, when he pulled up to his house, Epp was next door grabbing something from his truck and stuffing it in his pocket. McNeil quickly grabbed his gun from the glove compartment in plain view of Epp who was coming at him “fast.” McNeil jumped out of the car and fired a warning shot at the ground insisting that Epp back off. Instead of retreating, Epp charged at McNeil while reaching for his pocket, so McNeil fired again, this time fatally striking Epp in the head. (Epp was found to have a folding knife in his pocket, although it was shut.)

The McNeils weren’t the only ones who felt threatened by Epp. David Samson and Libby Jones, a white couple who hired Epp to build their home in 2004, testified that they carried a gun as a “precaution” around Epp because of his threatening behavior. According to Jones, Epp nearly hit her when she expressed dissatisfaction with his work at a weekly meeting. The couple even had a lawyer write a letter warning Epp to stay away from their property. Samson testified that after they fired him, Epp would park his car across the street and watch their house, saying “it got to the point where my wife and I were in total fear of this man.”

After a neighbor across the street who witnessed the encounter corroborated McNeil’s account, police determined that it was a case of self-defense and did not charge him in the death. Nevertheless, almost a year later Cobb County District Attorney Patrick Head decided to prosecute McNeil for murder. In 2006, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

McNeil’s attorney Mark Yurachek told Salon that “DAs throughout the country enjoy that kind of flexibility of deciding who to prosecute, but it’s curious that he took a year to do it.” While he said there’s no way to know what swayed the DA to prosecute, Yurachek revealed that letters, which he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, were written to the DA’s office demanding that McNeil be charged. “They were mostly emails from people cajoling prosecutors to investigate,” says Yurachek. “One was from Epp’s widow. Others were written anonymously.”

In 2008, McNeil appealed his case to the Georgia Supreme Court with all but one of the seven justices upholding his conviction. The sole dissent came from Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears who argued, “the State failed to disprove John McNeil’s claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.” She went on to write:

Even viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence was overwhelming in showing that a reasonable person in McNeil’s shoes would have believed that he was subject to an imminent physical attack by an aggressor possessing a knife and that it was necessary to use deadly force to protect himself from serious bodily injury or a forcible felony. Under the facts of this case, it would be unreasonable to require McNeil to wait until Epp succeeded in attacking him, thereby potentially disarming him, getting control of the gun, or stabbing him before he could legally employ deadly force to defend himself.  This is not what Georgia law requires.

As a leading gun rights state, Georgia has both a stand your ground law that permits citizens to use deadly force “only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury,” as well as a Castle Doctrine law, which justifies the use of deadly force in defense of one’s home.

Thus far, gun rights advocates such as the NRA and former Cobb County congressional Rep. Newt Gingrich have been silent on McNeil’s conviction, though it’s unclear whether they are aware of the case. The NRA did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Still, Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP State Conference, argues, “The NRA would be screaming about the injustice of his conviction if John had been white and shot a black assailant that came at him on his property armed with a knife.” (McNeil grew up in North Carolina, where the local NAACP chapter, led by Barber, was the first to pick up on his case in Georgia.)

Barber was clear that the NAACP remains firmly against stand your ground laws because “they give cover to those who may engage in racial profiling and racialized violence,” adding that “There is a history and legacy of discriminatory application of the law” that continues to this day. “African-Americans are caught in curious position. On one hand, we fight against stand your ground laws, but once the laws are on the books they aren’t applied to us.”

Civil rights activist Markel Hutchins agrees and has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s stand your ground law because the law is not applied equally to African-Americans. He accuses the courts of accepting “the race of a victim as evidence to establish the reasonableness of an individual’s fear in cases of justifiable homicide.”

Meanwhile, Barber argues that McNeil’s treatment stands in stark contrast to that of George Zimmerman, who has been afforded the benefit of the doubt despite his victim being unarmed. “America’s always had a difficult issue dealing with race, so rather than face it when it’s exposed, the tendency by some is to try and dismiss it. But the reality is you do not see this kind of miscarriage of justice when it comes to whites.” He adds,  “John’s whole life has been taken away from him. His wife is very ill with cancer and she has lost a husband, his sons have lost a father and society has lost a man that was contributing to his community.”

Khalek, R. (2012). When “stand your ground” fails. Salon. Retrieved from http://www.salon.com/2012/04/11/when_stand_your_ground_fails/singleton

AKOBEN INSTITUTE' S SUMMER SCHOOL PROGRAM

Akoben Institute is offering a full-time, part-time and/or afterschool African centered summer school program. Tutoring is available for math, language arts (reading, vocabulary, grammar, composition), African-American studies and chess.

The program begins June 4, 2012 and ends July 27, 2012 and is open to Students from the 4th grade through 12th grades.

The weekly fee is $50, excluding after school.

For more information, contact us at (404) 753-7237 [please leave a message] or e-mail us at mwalimubaruti@yahoo.com or yaabaruti@yahoo.com.

Credit: The Charlotte Observer

Charlotte teen Jasmine Thar was shot dead in Chadbourn as she walked to a truck to go on a shopping trip. Three months later, the family is upset no charges have been filed.

by Fred Clasen-Kelly / The Charlotte Observer

CHADBOURN, N.C. -- Four months after a mysterious shooting killed a Charlotte teenager in Eastern North Carolina, the FBI’s civil rights unit has joined an investigation into whether the incident was a tragic accident or a crime.

Jasmine Thar, 16, an outgoing Ardrey Kell High School sophomore, was shot Dec. 23 as she stood in the front yard of a Columbus County home with a friend and her godmother, whom she was visiting.

About 11 a.m., as they were walking toward a vehicle for a Myrtle Beach shopping trip, a single bullet fired from across the street struck all three of them, killing Thar and wounding the others.

The bullet came from inside a bungalow across East Third Avenue in a quiet neighborhood in this town of 2,200 people about 140 miles east of Charlotte.

One witness said James Anthony Blackwell, 23, burst from the bungalow about 100 feet away and began shouting “No! No! No!” as he fell to his knees.

When Chadbourn Police Officer Scott Rockwell arrived minutes later, Blackwell told the officer he had taken a Remington Model 700 rifle from a case, and it fired without him pulling the trigger. The officer found the rifle 4 feet from a window with a broken pane, the report said.

No charges

Rockwell handcuffed Blackwell and took him to the police station, but he was not arrested and was later released.

On Feb. 14, Columbus County District Attorney Jon David met with Thar’s family, who had grown concerned that Blackwell had not been charged.

Two family members who attended said David, Assistant District Attorney Chris Gentry and two representatives from the State Bureau of Investigation indicated they were leaning toward ruling the shooting accidental and not filing criminal charges.

Questions lingered about the rifle. Roughly 75 lawsuits have been filed against the Madison, N.C.-based Remington Arms Co. claiming its 700-series rifles have fired without a trigger pull. The company disputes those claims.

The family members recall that David said he had asked the FBI to join the probe because investigators were concerned about evidence [(a Confederate Flag and Nazi literature)] they had found in the home of Blackwell, who is white.

Thar and the other victims, her godmother Treka McMillian, 42, an assistant basketball coach at Western Carolina University, and Jah-mesha McMillian, 17, are African-American.

Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for the State Bureau of Investigation, confirmed this week that the FBI’s civil rights unit is aiding the investigation.

Frantic scene

It was two days before Christmas when Thar and her family prepared to leave for Myrtle Beach.

Six family members had just walked out of a small ranch house where they were visiting Treka McMillian’s family. Thar’s mother had driven from Charlotte to Chadbourn to take them shopping.

Thar’s mother and younger brother Jay, along with a 7-year-old girl, were already in the vehicle waiting for the others.

As Thar, Jah-mesha McMillian and Treka McMillian were walking in a line to the SUV, two witnesses said, a loud bang rang out. The bullet struck all three.

Frantic family members and neighbors rushed to them.

Jay, 15, used towels to put pressure on his sister’s chest wound until help arrived. His mother said he begged Thar “not to leave him.”

Neighbor Billie Bright heard the gunshot and ran to Thar, held her hand and told her, “Everything’s going to be OK.”

Bright also saw Blackwell crying out in front of his house. “I’ve never seen anyone’s face so twisted with anguish,” she said.

When Rockwell entered Blackwell’s house, he saw the rifle on the floor and a pistol on a nightstand beside the bed, his police report said.

Rockwell questioned Blackwell’s father, who was at the house. The father, according to the report, told the officer that he ran into Blackwell’s room when heard the gunshot. He said he found Blackwell standing in the room and the rifle was on the floor in front of his son.

The officer wrote in his report that when he asked Blackwell what happened, Blackwell said “that he had went to his closet to take his rifle out, and when he pulled it out of the case, the rifle went off. Anthony said that he did not know that the gun was loaded.”

Investigation questioned

Family members knew Thar as outgoing and ambitious. A basketball player, a track and field sprinter and cheerleader, she was once voted most popular by her classmates at Smith Language Academy.

Relatives said she planned to enroll at East Carolina University, where her sister graduated, and then attend law school.

She was especially close to her younger brother, Jay. Both went to Ardrey Kell High School and rode the school bus together.

Relatives said they are upset because they do not believe Chadbourn police and the SBI thoroughly investigated the case.

They ask why Chadbourn police did not arrest Blackwell the day of the shooting.

Rockwell handcuffed Blackwell and took him to the police station, but wrote in his report he was simply “letting him calm down away from the scene.”

“He said it was an accident, and that’s what they believed,” said Carletta McNeil, Thar’smother. “They’re sending the message that you can shoot someone and walk away and say it’s an accident. That can’t be the world we live in.”

The family plans to meet with the district attorney April 26 in Chadbourn for an update on the case.

They have also launched an online petition at SignOn.org, which has garnered nearly 9,000 signatures.

“We want to make sure the case isn’t swept under the rug,” Treka McMillian said. “It’s time for people to stand up and say people should be held accountable.”

Chadbourn Police Chief Steven Shaw defended his department’s decision not to arrest Blackwell on the day of the shooting, saying prosecutors “felt like there needed to be more investigation.”

David did not return phone calls from the Observer. He released a statement Friday that said he could not comment about “specific facts and details at this juncture.”

“The public should have every confidence that our final determination will be based on the facts and the law,” the statement said.

Rifle at issue

Three criminal justice experts who testify in court about law enforcement practices said investigators need time to sort out the facts. Ballistics testing can take as long as eight months since many states have backlogged cases.

They said police and prosecutors would need evidence showing that criminal intent or recklessness led to the shooting to bring charges.

“It seems quite unusual a gun would discharge as he takes it out of a case,” said Robert Pusins, a former police major with the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police department. “Certainly he bears some responsibility because you have a responsibility to handle it properly.”

But Richard Hough, a criminal justice professor at the University of West Florida and a former police officer, disagreed.

“I’m surprised they didn’t just discharge it as accidental,” Hough said.

Experts said the history of the rifle model involved in the shooting would make it more difficult to win a conviction.

The gun that killed Thar was a .308 Remington Model 700, one of the most popular bolt-action rifles.

The rifle has been linked to previous deaths, including the 2000 killing of Gus Barber, 9, of Montana. His family says his mother’s Remington 700 discharged while she was unloading it. She said her hand did not touch the trigger.

Remington Arms Co. did not return phone calls seeking comment. The company has previously denied the rifles have a defect.

Emotional toll

Little is known about Blackwell in Chadbourn. One neighbor said he had lived in his house for two to three months before the shooting. Treka McMillian’s family had never met him despite living across the street. He moved away a few days later, she said.

Shaw, who has served as police chief since 2004, said he knows most of the town’s residents by name. He said he went to high school with one of the shooting victims, Treka McMillian.

Shaw said he did not know Blackwell, who has no criminal record. Shaw said Blackwell is a military veteran, but he did not know in what branch he served.

Blackwell could not be reached for comment. Relatives did not return phone calls. A woman in front of the house where Blackwell lived said the family refuses to speak publicly on the advice of an attorney.

Thar’s family said they only recently gained the strength to talk about the shooting.

McMillian said bullet fragments struck her in her back. She still has nightmares.

Jah-mesha McMillian, who was shot in the chest and critically injured, still has physical scars from the shooting and remains “emotionally traumatized,” Treka McMillian said.

Thar’s mother, Carletta McNeil, said the shooting has devastated her family. She and her son are both getting counseling.

McNeil recalled how she kissed her daughter and told her “I love you” just prior to the shooting.

“No one will ever understand the pain I feel,” she said as she started to cry.

McNeil said she is speaking out because she feels her daughter would want her to take a stand.

“One thing I promise you is that I will get justice for her,” she said, “if I have to march the streets of Chadbourn by myself. She didn’t deserve that.”

Clasen-Kelly, F. (2012). Questions remain in Charlotte teenager’s death. WCNC. Retrieved from http://www.wcnc.com/news/crime/Questions-remain-in-Charlotte-teenagers-death-147931795.html#

It's almost two years since BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, scientists say they have found deformities among seafood and a great decline in the numbers of marine life. Dahr Jamail reports from New Orleans.

Dahr, J. (2012). Gulf seafood deformities alarm scientists. AlJazeeraEnglish. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_VVyPiV5xdY#!

Matt Kazee
4.12.12.
Truthmovement.com

I found out today my friend, my mentor, my hero Steve Cokely died on April 11, 2012. I have confirmed that this is true. It saddens me completely. I was suppose to do a radio interview with Steve on April 11, 2012. We had spoken a few times in the past week. We always checked up on each other he called a few times because I had been sick over the weekend and he wanted to see if I was ok. Sunday and later Sunday night we talked and he said he was thinking about going to have his stomach drained at the hospital.

We laughed and joked and talked about life. He told me not to worry that his health was good and he was ready to do the show later this week Monday or Wednesday. He was excited and said he was going to “break some powerful information” on the broadcast. He kept saying he was going to “name the names.” He also voiced concern about going to the hospital because of several people who recently died in mysterious circumstances “while under healthcare”. He mentioned 3 or 4 names that I can’t remember all were black community leaders.

Monday we talked again and he told me the interview would probably be on Wednesday because going to the hospital to get the fluid drained. He said he was going to go with a friend to the hospital to make sure they didn’t try and keep him “or pull anything funny”. He said he was calling me to make sure I knew what was going and again told me not to worry… he said that his health was strong and he was just going to have some fluid drained and he would be out in a matter of hours. He said he would call me when he got out and that if he felt up to it maybe we would to a show later that night. He never called back. I called Tuesday and the phone rang and rang then to voice mail. I wanted to leave a message but his voice mail was full. I called a few times that day and that night but it just rang and went to voice mail. I called Wednesday and the phone was turned off. I am very sad to lose my friend, my teacher and my colleague Brother Steve Cokely. I will miss him the rest of my days. I will always remember his voice saying to me “I have some powerful information, man… when we do that show I am going to name the names.”

I find it odd that Steve was telling me he was worried they might try to kill him in the hospital and he had “powerful information”. Steve died on 4 11. The very day that we were going to record the radio show. I am in no way saying that Steve was murdered or trying to spread conspiracy theories about his death. The last time I talked to him, Monday night he sounded strong as assured me their was nothing to worry about. Steve’s health had been failing him for quite some time but he never let it stop his work and was working all the way up til his death. His work must continue on in hands of new researchers who dedicate their time to expose the Core of Negativity.

I was checking my voice mail today to see if I got any messages from Steve that I might have missed and I found this message I had saved that was recorded January 17 2012. This is the last message I have from Brother Steve. May he guide us all from the other side.

Kazee, M. (2012). Steve Cokely gone but never forgotten. DeadlineLive. Retrieved from http://deadlinelive.info/2012/04/13/steve-cokely-gone-but-never-forgotten/

• 

South African Press Association. (2012). Malema to continue as ANCYL President. South African Press Association. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204160215.html

BY TOBI SONIYI, 16 APRIL 2012

Abuja — President Goodluck Jonathan has told an Abuja High Court that even though he is currently doing his first term of four years in office as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as provided by the 1999 Constitution he has not indicated or announced anywhere that he would be contesting for the presidential elections in 2015.

A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Mr. Cyriacus Njoku, had on March 20 filed a suit before an Abuja High Court asking it to stop Jonathan from contesting the 2015 presidential election on the ground that he was already in his second term in office.

The suit followed a declaration by the president in the first week of March this year that he was serving his first term in office.

The applicant is, however, claiming that Jonathan is running a second term in office and cannot be a candidate in 2015.

He also said the president cannot swear to an Oath of Office thrice in the light of Section 137(1) (b) of the 1999 Constitution.

Those joined in the matter are the president (first respondent), the PDP (second respondent) and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the third respondent.

But in a 15-paragraph counter affidavit deposed to by a counsel, Osahon Okeaya-Inneh, in the law firm of Jonathan's lawyer, Mr. Ade Okeaya-Inneh (SAN), he described the suit as frivolous and vexatious that failed to disclose reasonable cause of action.

The deponent said: "I am a counsel in the law firm of Ade Okeaya-Inneh and Co. counsel to the 1st defendant in this suit, by virtue of which I am conversant with the facts of this case.

"I have the consent and authority of the 1st defendant/respondent to depose to this affidavit.

"When my law firm was briefed by the 1st defendant to represent him in his action, I, together with Mr. Matthew Aikhionbare (Senior Special Assistant to the President) and Dr. Reuben Abati (Special Adviser on Media and Publicity to the President) meticulously went through the 11-paragraph affidavit of the plaintiff in support of his originating summons.

"The 1st defendant is currently doing his first term of four years in office as the president of Nigeria as provided by the 1999 Constitution as amended.

"The 1st defendant's status and position is formidably backed by the 1999 Constitution.

"The Constitution of Nigeria only makes provisions for a President to contest for not more than two terms of four years each.

"The Constitution recognises the Executive President's tenure of office to be four years.

"I was informed by Dr. Reuben Abati on April 4, 2012 at about 5.30pm in his office and I verily believe that. The 1st defendant has not indicated or announced anywhere whether in words or in writing that he will contesting for the presidential elections to be conducted in 2015.

"The late President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua contested and won the presidential election conducted in 2007 for a one term of four years. He was the President from May 29, 2007 until sometime in May 2010 when he passed on.

"Yar'Adua's four years (were) to end in 2011."

Jonathan stated further that on May 6, 2010, he was sworn in as the president after the demise of Yar'Adua thereby completing Yar'Adua's 12 months of the four-year tenure.

He stated that this was the first time he became the president of Nigeria through a conducted election wherein he was voted as the presidential candidate of his party, PDP.

The president told the court that the plaintiff did not attach copies of his recent tax clearance certificate from Federal Inland Revenue Service and his PDP membership card as proof of who he claimed to be.

Consequently, he asked the court to discountenance the suit as it was meant to make the court labour in futility because the suit was purely an academic exercise.

The plaintiff, in his originating summons, raised two questions for determination by the court.

These are:

"Whether Section 135(2) of the Constitution which specifies a period of four years in office for the President is only available or applicable to a person elected on the basis of an actual election or includes one in which a person assumes the position of President by operation of law as in the case of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan

"Whether Section 137(1) (b) of the 1999 Constitution which provides that a person shall not be qualified for election to the Office of President if he has been elected to such office at any two previous elections applies to the 1st Defendant who first took an Oath of Office as substantive President on May 6, 2010 and took a second Oath of Office as President on May 29, last year."

The trial judge, Justice Mudashiru Onyangi, has fixed April 18 to hear Jonathan's application for an extension of time within which his lawyer could file his memorandum of appearance and counter-affidavit in response to the plaintiff's suit dated March 20.

This is the second time Njoku will take the president to court.

He had in August 2010 attempted to stop PDP from allowing Jonathan to participate in the PDP presidential primaries of January 2011.

Njoku, who is from Zuba Ward in Gwagwalada Area Council and with PDP registration number 1622735, had urged the court to ask the PDP to respect its principle on zoning formula in line with Article 7. 2(c) of the party's constitution.

He said the declaration of Jonathan (third defendant) to contest for the presidency on the PDP platform was contrary to Article7.2(c) of the PDP 2009 Constitution (as amended).

But the Chief Judge of the FCT High Court, Justice Lawan Gummi, dismissed the zoning suit.

Soniyi, T. (2012). Jonathan - I haven't declared interest in 2015 Presidential poll. This Day. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204160617.html

Integrated Regional Information Networks. (2012). Zimbabwe: Sewage-fed vegetables give pause for thought. Integrated Regional Information Networks. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204161136.html

PRESS RELEASE

Nigeria's Finance Minister Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. (Photo CourtesyLeadership)

Washington, DC — The Executive Directors met today to select a new President of the World Bank Group. The Board expressed its deep gratitude for Mr. Robert B. Zoellick's outstanding leadership and his dedication to reducing poverty in its member countries, the core mandate of the World Bank Group.

The Executive Directors followed the new selection process agreed in 2011 which, for the first time in the Bank's history, yielded multiple nominees. This process included an open nomination where any national of the Bank's membership could be proposed by any Executive Director or Governor, publication of the names of the candidates, interviews of the candidates by the Executive Directors, and final selection of the President.

The Executive Directors selected Dr. Jim Yong Kim as President for a five-year term beginning on July 1, 2012. The President is Chair of the Boards of Directors of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Development Association (IDA). The President is also ex officio Chair of the Boards of Directors of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and the Administrative Council of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

We, the Executive Directors, wish to express our deep appreciation to all the nominees, Jim Yong Kim, José Antonio Ocampo and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. Their candidacies enriched the discussion of the role of the President and of the World Bank Group's future direction. The final nominees received support from different member countries, which reflected the high caliber of the candidates. We all look forward to working with Dr. Kim when he assumes his responsibilities.Dr. Jim Yong Kim is currently President of Dartmouth College. A U.S. national, Dr. Kim is a co-founder of Partners in Health (PIH) and a former director of the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization (WHO). Before assuming the Dartmouth presidency, Dr. Kim held professorships at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. He also served as chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and director of the François Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Dr. Kim was awarded a MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship (2003), was named one of America's "25 Best Leaders" by US News & World Report (2005), and was selected as one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" (2006). He was elected in 2004 to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences—one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine—for his professional achievements and commitment to service. He has published widely over the past two decades, authoring or co-authoring articles for leading academic and scientific journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and Science.

Born in 1959 in Seoul, South Korea, Dr. Kim moved with his family to the United States at the age of five and grew up in Muscatine, Iowa. Dr. Kim graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1982. He earned a medical doctorate from Harvard Medical School in 1991 and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University in 1993. He is married to Dr. Younsook Lim, a pediatrician. The couple has two young sons.

World Bank. (2012). Africa: World Bank's executive directors select Dr. Jim Yong Kim 12th President of the World Bank Group. World Bank (Washington, D.C.). Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201204161643.html

Published on The Root (http://www.theroot.com)

Browne, J. (2012). When temper tantrums become criminal. The Root. Retrieved from http://www.theroot.com/views/when-temper-tantrums-become-criminal

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Bruce Reilly  

Louisiana’s House Appropriations Committee held a hearing today on HB 850, regarding the sale of Avoyelles Correctional Center, and the authorization to sell every prison built after 1989.  This would follow the direction of Arizona and Florida, and possibly lead to The GEO Group, Inc. having a third prison in the most incarcerated state in the world.  To understand this proposal, it is important to know the players, a bit of history, and a bit of economics.  For an excellently detailed overview of the proposal, see Ryan West’s “Penny Wise, Pound Foolish” at Louisiana Progress.

Today’s hearing was action-packed, to say the least, with nearly 200 people in the room.  Over 50 wore matching t-shirts; but rather than your typical grassroots activists demanding humane treatment for prisoners, the people were prison employees and spouses standing in solidarity.  After all, prisons in America are primarily protected and supported as jobsprograms rather than as a societal need.  Avoyelles prison was built because a judge ordered Louisiana to stop overcrowding, and it was unenthusiastically accepted in the parish as a way to employ locals.  Unemployment at that time, according to former Avoyelles Rep. Raymond Laborde, was 12-14%.

I walked in late, due to testifying on behalf of V.O.T.E.’s bill, HB 295, to end licensing discrimination for people with criminal records.  (More on that later.)  But when I did arrive, the grilling of DOC Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc and Governor Jindahl’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Kristy Nichols, was in full swing.  I was wondering if anyone had pointed out that Jindahl received $28,500 from the for-profit prisons over the years.  Rep. James Armes moved that this hearing be presented to the full House, rather than just the Appropriations Committee, as this is the first time the state was authorizing something so serious as selling a multi-million dollar asset.  It was defeated, 11-10 (Voting in favor: Armes, Brossett, Burrell, Geymann, James, Leger, Montoucet, Moreno, Smith, Thierry.)

Nichols claimed that we have the right of first refusal when the 20 years is up, to buy the prison back, and there is a reversionary clause in case the corporation went bankrupt or performance measures were not met.  I was curious what those performance measures were.  As was pointed out later, none of that language is in the statute and we have no contract to look at; furthermore, Avoyelles Parish District Attorney Charles Riddle later countered Nichols, saying that such a statute won’t overrule a federal bankruptcy court.

If It Ain’t Broke, Why Fix It?

Rep. Roy Burrell elicited the statement from Secretary LeBlanc that our prison system was “not broken.”  He wanted to know why we were trying to fix it, and at the cost of driving all the prison employees into poverty level wages?  His inquiry, along with others, made it clear that the Governor and LeBlanc put little, if any, value on Louisianans earning a living wage.  All of the savings were admittedly coming through shifting union jobs into WalMart level jobs starting at $8 an hour, climbing to $10 after three years.

Where will the money go?  This was Rep. Brett Geymann’s chief concern, and he moved for an amendment that they be mandated into the Budget Stabilization Fund, rather than the Rainy Day Fund which can be spent in a single day.  After an objection by Appropriations Chairman Jim Fannin (who has received at least $4000 from for-profit prisons, and represents the district where CCA operates Winn prison), the vote went forward and lost via tie, 12-12.  The yeas were nearly the same as those supporting the other amendment.  As this bill came up last year, clearly most legislators already have a position.

A long list of malfeasance and criminality was listed at the Allen and Winn prisons, run by GEO and CCA, respectively.  It was a rap sheet that easily could have been lifted from Private Corrections Working Group, known for watchdogging GEO, CCA and others.  Somehow, nobody mentioned similar conduct by homegrown for-profit prison corporation, LCS Corrections Service, run by Michael LeBlanc.  LCS changed their name from Premier Enterprise Services after an ethics scandal, and was founded by the late Patrick LeBlanc.  LCS owns four prisons in Louisiana, a consistent donor, and presumably would also be in position to bid on Avoyelles.

Former U.S. Representative Jimmy Hayes had the line of the day, when referring to the need for the best prison possible: “When released they don’t go to Ex-Con Land, they move next to me and you.”  (Considering that I’m headed for a degree from his alma mater, he may be righter than he thinks.)  It sounded like the politicians were starting to get the larger prison picture, a trend happening throughout the country.  Hayes pushed back on another bit of misinformation by Nichols: this bill applies to the sale of all prisons built after 1989, not only Avoyelles.  I managed to scratch off yet another of my long list of notes.

Convict Lease Labor and Bursting the System

Senator Rick Gallot’s scathing indictment of the entire concept had the entire chamber on edge.  Like the financial gurus of Gwinnett County, Georgia, Gallot also pointed out that the parishes are getting free labor from prisoners across the state.  A point amplified by Alexandria Mayor Jacque Roy, that for GEO or CCA to rent out their prisoners to the highest bidder is a return to “a form of peonage; we haven’t done that in many years.”  He made a valid point about this not saving money, in so many ways it doesn’t, but I couldn’t help rolling my eyes in hearing such a thing, in a state with a prison famously known as “The Farm,” where guards on horseback oversee what looks exactly like a plantation.

“If we’re going to be so tough on crime, there is a price to pay for it,” Gallot said.  I went into the room wanting to say one fundamental thing: the private prison corporations create growth by growing, and bursting, the entire system.  Considerable talk throughout the nation has focused on what influence private industry can have on society by owning the prisons, and owning a profit-motive for more prisoners.  Since 2001, GEO, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), and Cornell Corrections have spent $22 million on lobbying Congress alone.  With the help of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), GEO and CCA have employed nearly 300 lobbyists in seventeen states over the past decade.  These corporations have also given over $10 million to political campaigns over the past decade, including $1.9 million in 2010 alone.  What do they ask for?

GEO Board of Executives

“In particular, the demand for our correctional and detention facilities and services could be adversely affected by changes in existing criminal or immigration laws, crime rates in jurisdictions in which we operate, the relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction, sentencing or deportation practices, and the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws or the loosening of immigration laws.  For example, any changes with respect to the decriminalization of drugs and controlled substances could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, sentenced and incarcerated, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Similarly, reductions in crime rates could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities.  Immigration reform laws which are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state and local level also could materially adversely impact us.”  GEO Group, 2007 Annual Report, Financials p.20.

Clearly, all those lobbyists are fighting to stop the decriminalization of marijuana, to lengthen sentences, eliminate Good Time credits, curtail parole, incarcerate immigrants, maintain mandatory minimums, and increase Three Strikes laws.  An incisive report about this “Unholy Alliance,” is worth the read.  This goes against the popular sentiment across the nation, whether for humanitarian or financial reasons, as mass incarceration has had no useful effect on our communities.  As suspected, California has responded to the Supreme Court’s order to reduce their cruel and unusual overcrowding by increasing capacity rather than decreasing prisoners.

The number of prisoners has more than doubled since 1990, when private prisons began to ramp up their game; their number of caged humans went up 1664% between 1990 and 2009.  CCA and GEO are both billion dollar companies, with their CEO’s Damon Hininger and Jay Zoley earning $3.3 and $3.5 million per year, respectively.  The largest shareholder in CCA, Wellington Management, is also the third-largest shareholder in GEO.  Top holders are the likes of Fidelity, Vanguard, and Wells Fargo.  Each of these owners all have their own interest in advancing their investments.  From my perspective as a prison reformer, I always said, “That’s okay, keep locking folks up.  You’ll see.”  In 2002, the National Institute on Money in State Politics tried raising this already problematic issue, with “Contributing Influence: Private Prison Giving In The South”  (But who reads these things?)  GEO and CCA are confounding the Burst The System strategy, however, as it clouds the People from truly recognizing the basic mathematics of this equation.  As Senator Neil Riser (Chairman of the Finance Committee) said, “We have one of the highest incarceration rates in the world.  This ain’t going away.  Right or wrong, we believe in locking people up in Louisiana.”

This Deal Is A “Stupid” Reverse Mortgage

Senator Eric LaFleur was perhaps the bluntest of the bunch.  As a man with three private prisons in his district, he had to stick up for one of his prime voter constituencies: the Avoyelles prison guards and families.  However, as a public finance attorney, the man checks the fine print.  GEO and CCA may be wishing they had back the $6000 (likely more) they have given him over the years, as he called this deal nothing more than a “Reverse Mortgage.”  He bypassed the jobs argument and focused on the “stupid” concept of us selling a state-owned asset and then paying to use it.  “Why not sell it all?”  Chico State Park, Sycamore Point, Superdome, state police… “Won’t we be better off?”  LaFleur accused them of hiding behind this deal because they aren’t signing the note, and they should all vote “No” because this could happen in their district next for the same wrong reasons.

One thing completely off my radar: securing the mineral rights under Avoyelles’ 1200 acres, in a county where oil leasing has been on the rise.  District Attorney Riddle brought the committee to math class: The proposal does not factor in the cost of financing or overseeing the contract, and the numbers are based on only ONE of the seven Requests For Information (RFI) last year.  The $31.50 per diem that is touted as a savings is only guaranteed for the first three years [there is the fine print I was looking for], and many of the politicians, including Jindahl, will be long gone when the piper comes to collect.  The privatization, unlike health care where patients have a choice, comes with an unheard of guarantee that it is 96% full.  I wanted to shout out one of my other key points: CCA and GEO will screen out the unhealthy prisoners, thereby jacking up costs on the public prisons- just like charter schools do with special education.  But Riddle was rolling, and I didn’t feel like being kicked out on my first day in the legislature.

Riddle exclaimed that the closing of Forcht-Wade drug rehab prison was a “horrible answer” as it reduces recidivism.  Along the same prison growth mantra, former Rep. Laborde sharply criticized the recent moves to increase Avoyelles capacity and to spend $800,000 on new windows, all to impress their potential buyers.  Someone mentioned that the most important part of the attached fiscal note is at the very end: “until the facilities and operations are bid, the potential savings to the state is indeterminable.”  That pretty much took away the bulk of my testimony… except for this nice list of people overtly receiving money from the private prison companies.  Keep in mind that the large party donations can be filtered to whomever they wish, and this does not include the many employees and shareholders of these corporations.

Nationally, GEO and CCA have spent nearly $20 million on lobbying in the past eight years.

REGISTERED LOBBYISTS IN LOUISIANA- 2011

Randy Haynie, Corrections Corp. of America

Duane Cowart, The GEO Group

Linda, Mathew, & Thomas Spradley, The GEO Group

Jack Whitehead, The GEO Group

*American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) (See: Composition of ALEC Committees)

Campaign Contributions

CCA, GEO, and LCS have given over $295,500 to Louisiana politicians since 1990.  (Data for GEO dates to 1999.  LCS was formerly known as Premier Enterprise Services, until a Texas ethics scandal.)

§  Ø In 2010, over $2.4 million was spent on state politics by GEO and CCA, nationwide.

§  Ø Private Prisons benefit by bursting the state system.

CAMPAIGN DONATIONS: For-Profit Prison Corporations (1990-2011, Partial Listing)

DOLLARS

RECIPIENT

SELECT POSITIONS

$49,500

LOUISIANA REPUBLICAN PARTY

28500

Bobby Jindal (R)

Governor

22500

SENATE DEM. CAMPAIGN CMTE LA

15750

David Vitter (R)

U.S. Senate

14000

REPUB. LEG. DELEG. CMPGN CMTE LA

13400

Mary L Landrieu (D)

U.S. Senate

19000

BLANCO, KATHLEEN BABINEAUX

Former Governor

11750

Rodney Alexander (R)

U.S. House D-5, District of-Winn, LaSalle, Pine Prairie, Caldwell Parish, J.B. Evans, Avoyelles Prisons

8000

CAIN, JAMES DAVID

Ret. Senate

7500

TUCKER, JIM

Frmr. Speaker of House

6000

HOUSE DEM. CMPGN CMTE OF LA

6000

LAFLEUR, ERIC

S Jud. B / Finance, D-Allen, Pine Prairie, South Louisiana, Avoyelles Prisons

5500

MARTINY, DANIEL R (DANNY)

S Parliamentarian / Judiciary A

4000

FANNIN, JIM

H Appropriations (Chair), D-Winn Prison

3500

HILL, DOROTHY SUE

D- Allen Prison

3500

IEYOUB, RICHARD

Fmr. A.G. of LA

3000

CHANDLER, BILLY

3000

Townsend, T Taylor

3000

LONG, GERALD

S Finance D- Winn Prison

2500

HILL, HERMAN RAY

2500

Smith, Kenneth Mike

2500

MICHOT, MIKE

2500

FIELDS, WILSON

2000

ALARIO JR, JOHN A

Senate President

2000

ELLINGTON, NOBLE E

2000

MARIONNEAUX, ROBERT (ROB)

2000

MURRAY, EDWIN

S Judiciary A / Finance

2000

RISER, NEIL

S Revenue (Chair) / Homeland Security, D- LaSalle/Caldwell Parish Prisons

2000

KENNEDY, JOHN N

2000

MELANCON, CHARLES

U.S. House, fmr.

2000

DUNCAN, KEN

1700

FOTI JR, CHARLES

Fmr. A.G. of LA

1500

Nowlin, Rick

1500

DONAHUE, JACK

S Judiciary A / Finance (Chair)

1500

Cravins, Donald

1500

Hines, Donald

1500

DECUIR, JASON M

1250

LAMBERT, EDDIE J

H Homeland Security

1250

MORRIS, JAMES H (JIM)

H Appropriations

1250

ROBIDEAUX, JOEL C

H Ways and Means (Chair)

1000

CALDWELL, BUDDY

Attorney General

1000

CORTEZ, PAGE

1000

CROWE, A G

S Labor (Chair)

1000

Kostelka, Robert W (Bob)

S Judiciary C (Chair)

1000

DUPLESSIS, ANN

1000

HEITMEIER, DAVID

S Health & Welfare (Chair)

1000

Terrell, Suzanne

1000

John Fleming (R)

U.S. House D-4, D- Allen Prison

1000

MCPHERSON, JOE (PSC)

1000

PINAC, GIL

1000

SCALISE, STEPHEN J

U.S. House D-1

1000

THOMPSON, FRANCIS

S Finance, D- J.B. Evans Prison

1000

LeBlanc, Jerry

750

CONNICK, PATRICK

H Appropriations / Judiciary

750

HARRISON, JOSEPH (JOE)

H Appropriations / Judiciary

750

LABRUZZO, JOHN

550

LOUISIANA DEMOCRATIC PARTY

500

Adley, Robert

S Judiciary C

500

Armes III, James K

H Appropriations

500

Buffington, Sherri Smith

S Homeland Security (Chair) / Finance

500

Downs, Hollis

500

Jackson, Lydia

500

Katz, Kay

500

McVea Thomas

500

Ritchie, Harold

500

Salter, Joe

500

Tucker, Jim

500

Walsworth, Mike

S Finance

500

St. Germain, Karen

H Transportation, Public Works(Chair)

500

Montgomery, Billy Wayne

500

Heitmeir, Francis

500

WOOTON, ERNEST DURHAM

500

CARTER, STEVE

500

DARDENNE, JAY

500

HUDSON, CHARLES

500

LANDRY, JEFF

400

ODOM, BOB

300

NUNGESSER, BILLY

250

GEYMANN, BRETT

H Appropriations

250

GUILLORY, MICKEY J

H Criminal Justice, D- S. Louisiana Prison

250

HAZEL, CHRIS

H Criminal Justice

250

LEBAS, H BERNARD

D- Pine Prairie Prison

250

LEGER III, WALT

H Speaker Pro Tempore

250

LIGI, ANTHONY V (TONY)

H Appropriations

250

PEARSON, KEVIN

250

SCHRODER, JOHN M

H Appropriations

250

SMITH JR, GARY L

S Judiciary B

250

SMITH, PATRICIA H

H Appropriations

250

WHITE JR, MACK (BODI)

S Judiciary C / Finance

200

HOLDEN, MELVIN L (KIP)

200

JOHNSON, TIM

TOTAL

$295,500

Source: Open Secrets.org, FollowTheMoney

Reilly, B. (2012). Bursting the system: Louisiana holds a hearing to sell state prisons. Unprison. Retrieved from http://unprison.com/2012/04/11/bursting-the-system-louisiana-holds-a-hearing-to-sell-state-prisons/

http://www.therealgeorgezimmerman.com/

Editors note:  The school that Brooke Harris worked for is ironically located at 196 César Chávez Ave., Pontiac, Michigan 48343.  César Chávez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers, a notable organization in the American Labor Movement.  Notice that Superintendent Jacqueline Cassell, a woman of African descent, makes a statement about Harris' behavior that contradicts the very legacy that Chávez left behind.

The Huffington Post  |  By Kate Abbey-Lambertz Posted: 04/10/2012 12:06 pm Updated: 04/10/2012 12:10 pm

Teacher Brooke Harris was let go from her position at Pontiac Academy for Excellence in Pontiac, Mich. in March, 2012. She claims her firing resulted from attempting to help students organize a fundraiser for the family of Trayvon Martin, a teenager who was killed in Florida in February.

A Michigan teacher who attempted to help her students organize a fundraiser for the family of Trayvon Martin claims the incident prompted her firing in late March.

Brooke Harris, who taught journalism and literature at the Pontiac Academy for Excellence in Pontiac, Mich., said she was approached by students about the fundraiser, which would have allowed students to pay $1 to wear a hoodie for a day, rather than their school uniform.

The story of 17-year-old Martin, who wasshot and killed in February by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., has drawn national attention. Martin was wearing a hoodie when he was killed, and the article of clothing has become a potent symbol in protests over his slaying and shows of support for the teen and his family.

Responding to students' interest in the case, Harris created reading and writing assignments about Martin, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that is now advocating for Harris.

Maureen Costello, director of the SPLC's Teaching Tolerance program, said Harris followed teaching standards and educational advice by making Martin's case a teaching exercise. "What she did with engage her students in a real world issue," Costello told The Huffington Post.

According to SPLC, Pontiac Academy for Excellence Superintendent Jacqueline Cassell did not approve the fundraiser, and Harris was put on a two-day suspension for asking for students to be allowed to make their case for the event. When Harris came to school during the suspension to drop off prizes for a literacy fair, she was given a longer suspension. Harris alleges she was then fired after she asked Cassell for further explanation.

Cassell, insists the hoodie fundraiser was not the cause of Harris' firing, telling the Detroit Free Press, "I lived the civil rights movement ... I certainly would not use this issue as a reason to terminate anybody."

She told the Associated Press that teachers should focus on learning, not activism, and that there are consequences for violating workplace rules.

But Costello says Harris was fired without due process. "We're calling for the [school's] board to step in and at least have a hearing," she said.

More than 8,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org calling for the school to reinstate Harris, and organizers have planned a rally to show support at King Solomon Baptist Church in Detroit on Tuesday at 6 p.m.

Lambertz, K.A. (2012). Brooke Harris, Michigan teacher, fired for helping student fundraiser for Trayvon Martin. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/10/brooke-harris-michigan-teacher-fired-trayvon-martin-fundraiser_n_1414870.html

By Chastity Pratt Dawsey

Detroit Free Press Education Writer

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About 50 high school students at Frederick Douglass Academy in Detroit were suspended today after walking out of classes to protest a lack of consistent teachers, the removal of the principal and a host of other administrative problems at the all-boys school.

The students were chanting “We want education!”

Parents organized the walkout because they fear for the school’s future. This year, as recently as last month, students spent weeks passing time in the gym due to a lack of teachers, parents said.

Worries escalated after district offices moved into part of the building in January and the school was not listed as an application school for next year’s directory. In addition, the school’s founding principal, Sean Vann, was reassigned on Wednesday after a three-month sick leave.

Parents said Detroit needs a school to address the achievement gap concerning African-American men but fear this school’s future is in jeopardy.

“They’re failing these young black men,” said parent Sharise Smith.

Smith said her son got an A in geometry first semester without taking a final exam. “It was by default, just for showing up. It wasn’t because he earned an A.”

Hundreds of students who staged a protest earlier this month about administrative changes at Denby High were not suspended. Smith called the suspensions unfair and an indication that nothing will change at Douglass.

“What are they teaching them by suspending them – that they’re in a communist country and can’t protest injustice?”

Some students at Douglass Academy spent most of their time for in February in the gym, or the cafeteria or the library. That’s because about half of the teachers at Douglass Academy called in sick for several days.

Douglass Academy enrolls about 200 students in grades six to 12 and is the only all-boys public school in the state. High school students say they’re months behind the syllabus for classes, especially math. Students have had several math teachers come and go.

“We’ve been wronged and disrespected and lied to and cheated,” said Tevin Hill, a senior, who made the announcement to start the walkout. “They didn’t listen to us when we complained to the administration. They didn’t listen to the parents when they complained to the administration, so I guess this is the only way to get things solved.”

Senior Eric Rodgers agreed. “We’re not learning anything. We are just here for attendance.”

Parents are circulating a petition to take to the district to demand enforcement of the “abuse of sick time” policy to reduce teacher absenteeism. They have accumulated a thick stack of complaints e-mailed since September to Roy Roberts, the Detroit Public Schools emergency manager, and Karen Ridgeway, the superintendent.

This comes months after Roberts said the district’s problems with assigning enough teachers to cover classes had been resolved. Roberts visited Douglass last month on a surprise visit and found the school in order. If there are problems at the school, the issues are being addressed, he told the Free Press.

Reverend David Murray, a member of the DPS school board, attended the protest saying “the children need to take a stand” because school officials are failing to ensure that the boys receive an adequate education.

“They’re not involved in academic learning – just taking a seat, occupying a space — and some of these children are near graduation,” Murray said.

It’s not the first time Douglass has had problems this year. Detroit Lions star Ndamukong Suh and local businesses stepped in to replace football gear when a theft threatened to end the team’s season in the fall.

Dawsey, C.P. (2012). In Detroit, 50 Black young men who wanted to improve their education are suspended. Black Star Journal. Retrieved from http://blackstarjournal.org/?p=654

Join us for The Organization 101: Political Education Series! Each solution-based session will focus on advancing the Political Education of not only organizers, but also the masses of the people. There will be guest facilitators dealing with an array of topics pertaining to community organizing. The classes will address everything from coalition building to knowing your rights. Classes are free and open to the public.

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC: "Trayvon Martin, Rekia Boyd, Kathryn Johnston: A Few of Many"

We will discuss why there is no justice and what can be done about it...

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Julius Malema at a rally (file photo). (Photo Courtesy Phillip de Wet/DailyMaverick)

Don't bring a knife to a gunfight, the saying goes. The ANC opted for the other extreme on Tuesday afternoon, rolling out its six big cannons to blast the rampant succession debate to smithereens. Pity, then, that it was way too much, and way too late.

For people the world over, the footage that emerged from North Korea after the death of Kim Jong-il was truly fascinating. That is, how masses of people were forced to show intense grief to lament the death of their leader.

They couldn't just be sad or wipe away tears; it had to demonstrable mourning through loud and continuous wailing so the rest of the world could see just how much North Koreans loved their leader.

It turns out that forcing people to sit together and smile to show how much they love their leader and each other isn't any less painful. You couldn't help feel sorry for ANC deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe and treasurer Mathews Phosa during the highly anticipated and extraordinary press conference by the ANC's six national officials on Tuesday.

Sure they stuck to the script and delivered the right sound bites, but there was no possible way their participation in that press conference was something they would have chosen to do or enjoyed, despite secretary-general Gwede Mantashe's re-assurance that "all six of us are loyal to the decision" to hold the briefing.

Motlanthe and Phosa have the enfant terrible Julius Malema to thank for the pleasure of being wheeled out to demonstrate unity at the ANC's highest level. He really did push the boat out too far with his "dictatorship under the presidency of Jacob Zuma" comment on Saturday, and of course the ANC was justified in responding strongly to such an offensive attack on the organisation by one of its own. Well, still one of its own, until Cyril Ramaphosa and his disciplinary appeals committee finally cut the umbilical cord.

Since his rise to prominence and subsequent election as ANC Youth League president, Malema has played havoc with the ANC's disciplinary rulebook and tormented the party leaders - first Thabo Mbeki and then Zuma. But nothing he said about Zuma during a centenary event at Wits University last Friday night - in the presence of Phosa - was worse than what he said about Mbeki - in the presence of Zuma and Mantashe.

It is now a matter of public record that Malema's fiery comments disparaging Mbeki's leadership outside the Pietermaritzburg High Court, after Judge Chris Nicholson struck Zuma's corruption case off the roll in 2008, was the impetus behind Mbeki's recall a week later. Malema did not face any rebuke from the ANC for this and many other ad hominem attacks against ANC leaders and other high-profile public figures.

So it's not as if Malema had a sudden bout of outrageous behaviour to prompt the dramatic show of force by the ANC's top six officials. The "shockingly crude, disrespectful and un-ANC remarks" which they said necessitated the media briefing has been around for years, the difference being that it was previously useful to the incumbent leadership to goad and batter their opponents.

Now the problem is that a perception has been created that the national officials of the ANC are "at odds with each other and divided over a whole range of issues". "These remarks are also meant to portray the national officials as disunited as well as competing against each other for positions within the organisation," Mantashe read from the officials' written statement.

Malema has been taunting Zuma and Mantashe for some time, particularly after the disciplinary procedures against him began. The difference in the past two weeks is that he has been needling the ANC in the presence first of Motlanthe and then Phosa - and neither called him to order.

This then provided the ideal opportunity for Zuma and Mantashe to put the lid on the succession debate. In other words, the progressing campaign to kick them out of their positions. It would have been really difficult for the two people most at risk in the succession battle to get up and say what they really want to: "Shut up and stop campaigning against us!"

Under the banner of discipline and party unity, it was much easier to force their challengers into a ceasefire. By parading all six officials and locking them into a public declaration of "no campaigning in our names", Zuma and Mantashe have effectively neutralised Motlanthe and Phosa - as well as the for now silent agitator Fikile Mbalula - whose names feature on various slates proposing new leadership combinations in the ANC's top six.

If in future Motlanthe and Phosa appear on any platform where the succession issue arises or comments critical to Zuma and Mantashe are made, they would look like hypocrites if they do not immediately condemn them. Furthermore, every time stories appear in the media about their possible candidacy for election, they are going to have to distance themselves from such talk.

So on the face of it, Zuma and Mantashe have outsmarted their opponents and won the day. However, ANC leaders contesting leadership positions never do their own bidding - it's their minions who do. When the leadership battle was raging in the run-up to the ANC's Polokwane conference, Zuma never muddied his hands by campaigning for the ANC presidency: he had the coalition of the wounded to champion the challenge against Mbeki.

That is why attempts by Mbeki to lock him into a similar farce didn't work and in fact had the opposite effect. In a bizarre twist at the time, Mbeki and Zuma issued a joint statement declaring there were no divisions between them and that people should stop using their names to campaign. The statement went down like a lead balloon: their respective factions laughed and pursued their relentless campaigns right until the Polokwane showdown.

If anything, the staged parade of a united front by the ANC's senior officials shows a level of desperation by Zuma to retain power in the face of a serious onslaught against his presidency. If he was really confident of his support and that the voting numbers to the Mangaung conference sway in his favour, there would be no need to trundle out his would-be competitors and make a public show of getting them to back off.

Mantashe could have issued the statement on behalf of the officials and explained their disapproval of breaches in discipline. But Zuma knows the level of discontent in the ANC is building, and this could easily translate into a rebellion at Mangaung. And six pairs of hands is much more useful than two to force the succession genie back in the bottle.

For nowat you). If Kenya is to benefit from its new discovery; if that big grin on the president's face is to be justified, it needs to be the counter-example.

Munusamy, R. (2012). Six Ways to Put the ANC Succession Genie Back in the Bottle. Daily Maverick. Retrieved from http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-04-04-analysis-six-ways-to-put-the-anc-succession-genie-back-in-the-bottle

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Kathryn Johnston

In November 2006, 92-year old Kathryn Johnston was shot at 39 times and then left to die after the police blasted into the wrong house in an Atlanta Afrikan community. The three cops who killed Johnston had secured a “no-knock” drug warrant based on deliberately false information.

A cover-up of the brutal murder was carried out on all levels. Before leaving the scene, the mortally wounded elderly Johnston was handcuffed by the police, who then planted drugs in her basement. For weeks, according to one account, the cops “continued to lie to investigators with elaborate details of how they had observed drugs being bought at Ms. Johnston’shouse.”

The Atlanta police hierarchy denied knowledge of the routine use of lies to get warrants to break down doors and the frequent planting of drugs on the scene to boost arrest and conviction rates. One of the officers was later convicted of lying during an investigation, but not for the murder of Ms. Johnston. (Workers World, “Atlanta cop convicted in Kathryn Johnston’s death ” May 29, 2008)

Trayvon Martin

On February 26, our son Trayvon Martin was shot and killed as he walked to a family member’s home from a convenience store where he had just bought some candy. He was only 17 years-old.

Trayvon’s killer, George Zimmerman, admitted to police that he shot Trayvon in the chest. Zimmerman, the community’s self appointed “neighborhood watch leader,” called the police to report a suspicious person when he saw Travyon, a young black man, walking from the store. But Zimmerman still hasn’t been charged for murdering our son.

Trayvon was our hero. At the age 9, Trayvon pulled his father from a burning kitchen, saving his life. He loved sports and horseback riding. At only 17 he had a bright future ahead of him with dreams of attending college and becoming an aviation mechanic. Now that’s all gone.
When Zimmerman reported Trayvon to the police, they told him not to confront him. But he did anyway. All we know about what happened next is that our 17 year-old son, who was completely unarmed, was shot and killed.

*From his parents (courtesy of change.org)

Rekia Boyd

On March 22nd, 2012, An Off-Duty Chicago detective responding to noise in his neighborhood approached a group of people gathered near Douglas Park to ask them to quiet down. He spotted 39-year-old Antonio Cross who was talking on a cell phone and fired shots. One shot hit Antonio in the hand and another hit 22-year-old Rekia Boyd, an innocent bystander in the head, killing her. The officer claimed he thought Antonio’s cell phone was a gun. Instead of apologizing to Antonio, the officer charged him with misdemeanor aggravated assault.

Nanjala Nyabola 
Nanjala Nyabola, a writer and political analyst, is currently a graduate student at Harvard Law School.

All 28 people indicted by the International Criminal Court so far are from Africa.

Last Modified:  28 Mar 2012 11:33

I

Cambridge, MA - When the Lubanga verdict was handed down at the International Criminal Court, rather than a chorus of celebration, there was qualified applause from pundits and publicists. Almost all the opinion pieces that examined the potential impact of the Lubanga verdict highlighted the oft-cited fact that all of the 28 people that have so far been indicted by the court have been Africans.

Does the ICC have an Africa problem? If it does, it is perhaps not the problem that analysts seem to be focusing on. Although the numbers on the surface imply that the ICC is going after African warlords disproportionately, it is important to recall that the African continent has also subscribed to the Court's Rome Statute "disproportionately".

There are 120 countries currently party to the Rome Statute and 33 African states comprise nearly 30 per cent of the court's membership, or over 60 per cent of the continent's states. By the numbers alone, assuming that conflicts occur with similar frequency in each inhabited continent, a national of a member state found to be in violation of the provisions of the statute is statistically more likely to be from Africa than from any other continent.

 Inside Story - Can the ICC deter other despots?

More importantly, consider the reasons for which warrants have been issued thus far. These are not newly emerging crises that have just been brought to the world's attention. Rather, with the notable exception of Kenya, these are intractable crises that the international community has struggled to resolve in a just and timely manner.

ICC warrants in these cases can be conceptualised as the next phase of international engagement and perhaps, no more invasive than the Security Council continuing to renew peace-keeping missions in the Congo, or the World Bank attaching democracy-based conditions to financial assistance.

In the Kenyan case, it is arguable that the ICC is to some extent playing into local politics in its decisions to charge certain individuals and not others. But no one who has ever studied the law will argue that it is anything but political.

The question for both domestic and international law is whether process sanitises the political to the point where it is predictable or internally consistent. The aspiration is to build a transparent procedural base, which contemplates human dignity and equitable access and treatment before the system, and is therefore just, if not always fair.

For Kenya, that means a system through which those who have been implicated in the darkest events of the 2007/8 post-election violence are asked to account for their actions in a space that is necessarily divorced from the inevitable heat of the upcoming election.

An equitable court?

Which recalls another point and it is that no informed person believes that the majority of the 28 indicted individuals are not at least presumptively blameworthy. Joseph Kony in Uganda hardly deserves the kind of protection that some African leaders are hoping to provide by shielding Africans from prosecution at the ICC.

In fact, he is emblematic of what was hoped to be a dying breed - the unrepentant mercenary who periodically pillages remote villages in central Africa and recruits children to his ranks using the most brutal methods available. Judicial processes are affording the likes of Kony far more dignity and procedural protection than he has offered any of his victims or hostage-soldiers, which is reflective of the aforementioned aspiration to a just, if not absolutely fair, system.

All of which is not to deny that the ICC may have an Africa problem, but the problem is that its largest constituency seems to have little or no confidence in the ability of the court to deliver the kind of protections it was designed to deliver, in an equitable way. I would posit that the efficacy of a judicial system lies in the confidence that those potentially judged by it have in the system's ability to mete out justice.

In the US, despite an extensive history of judicial decisions that have upheld racial or sexual inequalities (for example, the Dred Scott decision) or seemingly endorsed campaign financing corruption (Citizens United), people continue to believe that the judiciary works and continue to bring their disputes before the system for arbitration.

"The answer may lie in investing universal jurisdiction in various African supreme or high courts."

The ICC may never have had the total confidence of its members, primarily because every nation-state at the Rome Conference had a wildly different image of whom the court would go after and for what.

This lack of confidence or concordance plays out in the way that Western nations balk at the prospect of holding US citizens accountable at the court while African nations cheer, or when the West overtly uses the ICC to advance its goals in Sudan through the Bashir indictment, which Africa vehemently rejects.

The ICC may therefore never be able to solve its Africa problem. It is nearly impossible to build consensus on the nature of the court's jurisdiction so far, after leaders of various regional groups seem to have concretised their positions.

An alternative forum may be the best way out of this problem - but given the rate at which people continue to die in central Africa and Sudan, not to mention the delicate balances in Cote d'Ivoire and Kenya, there isn't time to wait for the formation of an African Criminal Court.

The answer may lie in investing universal jurisdiction in various African supreme or high courts, simply by passing statutes that give these courts authority to try cases related to the most egregious violations of human rights on the continent.

Using the judiciaries of smaller states in Africa that have succeeded in earning the confidence of their people provides an alternative that takes alleged offenders out of the immediate context of the crimes but still respects the idea of "African solutions for African problems". Mauritius, Namibia, Botswana, Ghana - these are all nations with the capacity (albeit with significant assistance) to set up special chambers akin to those in Cambodia to try such cases.

Would it be a diplomatic, logistical and pragmatic nightmare? Absolutely. But no more painful to witness than hearing people criticise a court that holds a man accountable for incorporating children into a brutal conflict - rather than celebrate that something is finally happening to help end one of Africa's most brutal conflicts.

Nanjala Nyabola, a writer and political analyst, is currently a graduate student at Harvard Law School.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Nyabola, N. (2012). Does the ICC have an Africa problem?. Al Jazeera. Retrieved March 29, 2012 from http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/20123278226218587.html

WE like to think we live in the information age, when daily or even second-by-second statistics on such fare as stock prices and the annual number of homicides are at our fingertips. For all the careful accounting, however, there are two figures Americans don't have: the precise number of people killed by the police, and the number of times police use excessive force.

Despite widespread public interest and a provision in the 1994 Crime Control Act requiring the Attorney General to collect the data and publish an annual report on them, statistics on police shootings and use of nondeadly force continue to be piecemeal products of spotty collection, and are dependent on the cooperation of local police departments. No comprehensive accounting for all of the nation's 17,000 police department exists.

The lack of good data is a national scandal.

Geoffrey Alpert
University of South Carolina

This lack of accurate statistics makes it virtually impossible, experts say, to draw meaningful, big-picture conclusions about deadly encounters between the police and the civilian population, including the fatal shooting earlier this month of an unarmed black man in Cincinnati, an incident that incited days of violent protests and vandalism. Without a national barometer, there is no conclusive way to determine whether this or other incidents around the country � like those involving Amadou Diallo in New York and Rodney King in Los Angeles � represent racially based police misconduct, or any kind of trend at all.

The major reasons for the vacuum, the experts agree, are twofold. The lack of information on police shootings is attributable to the failure of police departments in many cities to keep and report accurate figures that distinguish between what the police see as "justifiable" shootings � those in which the suspect posed a serious threat � and incidents where an officer may have unlawfully fired at an unarmed civilian.

The International Chiefs of Police, a police organization, tried in the 1980's to collect such information, but "the figures were very embarrassing to a lot of police departments," said James Fyfe, a professor of criminal justice at Temple University who is a former New York City police lieutenant. The results, he said, varied wildly. New Orleans had 10 times as many shootings per 100 officers as Newark. Long Beach had twice as many as neighboring Los Angeles, which in turn had three times more than New York.

Some cities did not provide data at all, Professor Fyfe said, but the results, such as they were, showed that "the rates of deadly force are all over the lot," meaning that some cities appear to be much better and some much worse at managing their police forces.

As for the lack of figures on the use of nondeadly force, the situation is even murkier because there are no uniform definitions of force and no standard reporting requirements from one police department to another.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics, the statistical arm of the Justice Department, has tried to fill in some of the blanks on police behavior, issuing a number of surveys and reports on the topic. Most recently, the bureau quietly released a report, "Policing and Homicide, 1976- 1998." But the report itself underscores the continued problems in knowing what is really happening.

On its cover, for example, the report refers to all the victims of police shootings as "felons justifiably killed by police," a categorization that Samuel Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, termed "deeply offensive and legally incorrect." In fact, a Justice Department official said the bureau was so embarrassed by the term, and the lack of distinction between justifiable police shootings and murders, that it did not send out its usual promotional material announcing the report.

BUT, the official said, the bureau was trapped because it depends on local police departments to report their figures on police shootings to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and "felons" is the term that police departments insist on using when they do so.

Making matters worse, some police departments fail to report their shootings at all, and for some years, figures from entire states are missing. Although the 1994 crime act ordered the Justice Department to collect such data, there is no law requiring local police departments to provide it, Janet Reno, the former attorney general, acknowledged in a 1999 speech.

Based on the data available, this most recent report suggests that the number of "justifiable" police killings has not increased since 1976, averaging 373 a year, despite a growth in both the population and the number of police officers. And while the rate at which blacks are killed by the police still far surpasses the rate at which whites are shot and killed, it has dropped to four times the white rate in 1998 compared to eight times in 1976.

But the report also acknowledges its own limitations. "One statistic that is impossible to obtain" from the Justice Department's database, it said, "or from any other currently existing database, is the number of murders by police," because in reporting their shooting figures, the police don't distinguish between justified and unjustified killings. The report also fails to break down the number of police shootings by city, unlike other Justice Department reports on crime, making it impossible to compare police performance.

Viewed on a case-by-case basis, things do appear to be improving in some cities. Minneapolis, Boston, Miami-Dade County, Tampa, Phoenix, Seattle and Portland, Ore., are among cities that have implemented improved systems to report all use of force and shootings by officers, better systems for keeping track of civilian complaints and a program police departments are calling an early warning system.

"The early warning systems collect data on citizen complaints and look for patterns by computer to flag officers with problems," Professor Walker said, adding that this "creates more accountability."

Still, the efforts of individual cities often get lost amid the drumbeat and drama of each new instance in which a police officer shoots a civilian, partly because there is no national store of numbers to provide a sense of proportion. And until more comprehensive data are collected, those looking for the national trends behind each local incident are likely to be frustrated.

The lack of good data "is a national scandal," said Geoffrey Alpert, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of South Carolina and a leading authority on police use of force. "It's a scandal in the sense that these are public servants who work for us and are paid to protect us."

Butterfield, F. (2001). When the police shoot, who's counting?. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/headlines01/0429-02.htm

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Published on : 26 March 2012 - 2:32pm | By Bram Posthumus (Photo: AFP)

Posthumus, B. (2012). A New Generation Takes Over. Radio Netherlands Worldwide. Retrieved from http://www.rnw.nl/africa/article/a-new-generation-takes-over

Prison Radio presents a new commentary from Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Ehigiator, K. (2012). Threat to ban Virgin, BA - Britain warns Nigeria. Vanguard. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201203270252.html

Ben Bradley

March 22, 2012 (CHICAGO) (WLS) -- A woman shot by an off-duty Chicago police officer on Wednesday morning died Thursday. Family members say she was an innocent bystander and are calling for an investigation into her death.

"How could this be justified? They took my sister away from me," said Martinez Sutton, the brother of 22-year-old Rekia Boyd.

The suburban man is grieving the loss of his sister, who died Thursday at Mount Sinai Hospital after being shot in the head by an off-duty Chicago police officer.

Boyd and a man were both shot early Wednesday morning by an off-duty detective on the city's West Side.

Family and friends who were at Boyd's side when she passed away Thursday are calling for a federal investigation into her death.

Boyd's family insists she was an innocent bystander.

"This young beautiful girl dead in the streets. Why?" said Sutton.

Boyd's family brought two photos of her Thursday to the hospital. In the first, she is a smiling, happy 22-year-old woman. The second photo was snapped shortly before she died.

"All we want to know is what happened?" said Sutton.

Just after 1 a.m. Wednesday morning, the police union says, an off-duty detective rolled down his car window and asked a group of people gathered near Douglas Park to quiet down. In response, police say, a 39-year-old man pointed a gun at the officer, who drew his own weapon and fired. The bullets hit the alleged gunman in the hand and Rekia Boyd in the head as she stood nearby.

"They said the shooting is justified, but how is it justified when you got a young girl up there with a bullet hole in her head? What kind of justice is that?" said Sutton.

Witnesses told ABC 7 Wednesday that no one pulled a gun on the off-duty officer. And prosecutors only charged the man who police say had a gun with aggravated assault, a misdemeanor.

"There were 60-70 people in the park and no one had a gun. Everyone was just out there to hang out, that's it," said witness Leo Coleman on Wednesday. Coleman is the alleged gunman's cousin.

Boyd's large family from south suburban Dolton sees similarities between what happened to her and the case of the unarmed Florida teen shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

"First you got Trayvon, now you got Rekia," Sutton said. "Senseless, senseless violence. It didn't have to happen."

The Independent Police Review Authority is investigating the shooting.

Late Thursday afternoon, the Chicago Police Department told ABC 7 that CPD had been in contact with Boyd's family and would like to express sincere condolences.

Bradley, B. (2012). Woman shot by off-duty officer dies. ABC. Retrieved from http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=8591349

Sanford, Florida (CNN) -- Current and former neighbors call George Zimmerman caring, passionate and polite, a regular guy they enjoyed being around.

But critics of the investigation into the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin at the hands of the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer have portrayed Zimmerman in other terms. They say he recklessly pursued Martin and possibly engaged in racial profiling.

They're demanding that Zimmerman, 28, be arrested in the death of Martin, who was shot last month while walking to the house of his father's fiancee after a trip to a Sanford convenience store.

Zimmerman has said he acted in self-defense.

The debate that has riveted the nation in the past few days has largely been framed in racial terms.

Who is George Zimmerman?

Gingrich: Trayvon Martin case a tragedy

A police report describes Zimmerman as white; his family says he is Hispanic and he has wrongly been described as a racist. Martin was African-American.

On Wednesday, Martin's father, Tracy, said race played a role in the police investigation.

"Had Trayvon been a white kid ... Zimmerman would have been arrested," he said.

Critics have accused the Sanford Police Department of mishandling the case. Police Chief Bill Lee announced Thursday he is stepping down "temporarily" because he was becoming a distraction to the investigation.

The president of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous, said Lee failed to do his job. "The reality is that this chief had probable cause to lock up a man who shot a boy in cold blood -- because he shot a boy in cold blood -- and he failed to do that," Jealous said.

Gov. Rick Scott announced Thursday that he was appointing Angela B. Corey of the 4th Judicial Circuit as state attorney in the investigation.

Members of Martin's family were among demonstrators Wednesday in New York for a "Million Hoodie March," a reference to the attire the 17-year-old was wearing when he was shot.

"A black person in a hoodie isn't automatically suspicious," an online protest page said. "Let's put an end to racial profiling."

A former high school classmate painted a different picture of Zimmerman.

"A race thing? That is definitely not the case," Eric Gross of Greenville, South Carolina, said on Thursday. "He is by far not anywhere near a racist. I wasn't there, but he was a good guy."

The two attended Osbourn High School in Manassas, Virginia.

Zimmerman attended a four-month law-enforcement program in 2008 at the sheriff's office, said Kim Cannaday, spokeswoman for the Seminole County sheriff's office.

In his application for the course, Zimmerman wrote: "I hold law enforcement officers in the highest regard and I hope to one day become one."

Zimmerman has remained quiet over the shooting. His father said Zimmerman moved out of his home after receiving death threats. CNN has made numerous attempts to contact him, but has been unsuccessful.

The paths of Trayvon Martin and Zimmerman intersected on February 26.

The watch volunteer saw the youth and called 911 to report a suspicious man, authorities said.

"Something's wrong with him. Yep. He's coming to check me out," Zimmerman told a police dispatcher in a 911 call released Monday. "He's got something in his hands. I don't know what his deal is. Send officers over here."

The teen started to run, Zimmerman reported. When he said he was following, the dispatcher told him, "We don't need you to do that."

Shortly afterward, neighbors began calling 911 to report a fight, then a gunshot. By the time police arrived, Trayvon Martin was dead. Martin was unarmed.

In a police report, Officer Timothy Smith said Zimmerman stated he was "yelling for someone to help me," but the victim's family said it was the teen asking for help.

The death has sparked allegations that Zimmerman took Florida's "stand your ground" law too far by chasing after the teen. Police added that while it was suggested Zimmerman not chase him, it is "not a lawful order that Mr. Zimmerman would be required to follow."

"Mr. Zimmerman was not acting outside the legal boundaries of Florida Statute by carrying his weapon when this incident occurred," Lee said recently. "He was in fact on a personal errand in his vehicle when he observed Mr. Martin in the community and called the Sanford Police Department."

Lee added that Zimmerman had a permit for the weapon.

Zimmerman's family has denied that race played a role, saying he has many minority relatives and friends.

"The portrayal of George Zimmerman in the media, as well as the series of events that led to the tragic shooting, are false and extremely misleading," his father, a retired magistrate judge, wrote in a letter published in the Orlando Sentinel. "Unfortunately, some individuals and organizations have used this tragedy to further their own causes and agendas."

"George is a Spanish-speaking minority with many black family members and friends," Robert Zimmerman wrote. "He would be the last to discriminate for any reason whatsoever."

Frank Taaffe, a neighbor in Florida, told CNN's John Zarrella that Zimmerman "had a passion for the safety of our neighborhood and he demonstrated to the rest of us that one person could make a difference. And he was an average guy, just like me."

Zimmerman was a student at Seminole State College, but the college said Thursday that it had "taken the unusual but necessary step this week to withdraw" him from enrollment. It cited the high-profile nature of the controversy and said the decision was based on concern for the safety of Zimmerman and the students on campus.

Heated debate has erupted over whether Zimmerman used a racial slur during the 911 call, a recording of which was released this week.

"We didn't hear it. However, I am not sure what was said," said Sgt. David Morgenstern of the Sanford Police Department.

"I have listened to the tapes, and I have not heard them use a racial slur," concurred City Manager Norton Bonaparte.

A top CNN audio engineer enhanced the sound of the 911 call, and several members of CNN's editorial staff repeatedly reviewed the tape but could reach no consensus on whether Zimmerman used a racial slur.

Whether Zimmerman used such language before shooting Martin is key, according to CNN Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

"It's extremely, extremely significant because the federal government is not allowed to prosecute just your ordinary, everyday murder," he said. "Two people fighting on the street is not a federal crime. However, if one person shoots another based on racial hostility, racial animus, that does become a federal crime."

Toobin said that if "very shortly before" the shooting, "Zimmerman used this racial epithet to refer to the person he openly shot, that very much puts it within the FBI's and the Justice Department's ambit of a case that they could prosecute."

Police say they have not charged Zimmerman because they have no evidence to contradict his story that he shot in self-defense.

Taaffe told HLN's Jane Velez-Mitchell that his friend was only inquiring about why Martin was in the area, considering there had been documented incidents involving young black men in the neighborhood committing crimes. But he said that in no way did Zimmerman target Martin.

"Zimmerman is not a racist," he told Velez-Mitchell. "George Zimmerman is a caring man."

In Manassas, Virginia, former neighbor George Hall recalled Zimmerman as being a polite young man. Hall wrote a positive recommendation for Zimmerman, who he said wanted to attend a police academy.

Hall called the Zimmermans good neighbors.

"They were all good. Helpful, friendly, cheerful. I never saw anything negative in any of them," he told CNN's Brian Todd. "I just never did. I'm floored. I really am."

CNN Wire Staff. (2012). Neighbors describe watch leader at center of Florida investigation. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/22/justice/florida-teen-zimmerman/index.html?eref=igoogledmn_topstories

Vanguard. (2012).  Africa Backs Okonjo-Iweala for World Bank Presidency. Vanguard. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/201203230514.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okonjo-Iweala to run for World Bank top job

PRETORIA (AFP) – Nigeria’s finance minister will run for the World Bank top job, her South African counterpart announced on Friday, the deadline for nominations to succeed Robert Zoellick.

“We are proud to confirm that the Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will be a candidate,” Pravin Gordhan told reporters at a press conference, standing alongside her.

Okonjo-Iweala had been rumoured as a possible candidate with emerging economies pushing for a representative at the 187-nation development lender whose top job had traditionally been held by an American since its founding nearly 70 years ago.

Days after her spokesman denied she was pursuing the job, Okonjo-Iweala said she was “absolutely” confident of her bid.

“I have long experience in the World Bank, in government and in diplomacy and I look forward to giving you my vision at the appropriate time,” she said.

Okonjo-Iweala is a respected former World Bank managing director who joined Nigeria’s government as finance minister in August.

“I share the World Bank vision of fighting poverty with passion. The issue is in what direction one must take this to make this the most beneficial,” she said.

Nominations are due Friday with Zoellick stepping down at the end of his term in June.

Vanguard. (2012). Okonjo-Iweala to run for World Bank top job. Vanguard. Retrieved from http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/03/okonjo-iweala-to-run-for-world-bank-top-job/

22 MARCH 2012

• 

Radio France Internationale. (2012). Mali: France suspends co-operation after coup topples Amadou Toumani Touré. Radio France Internationale. Retrieved from http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20120322-france-suspends-co-operation-mali-after-coup-wants-amadou-toumani-toure-spared

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 11:52 AM EDT

By Melanie Jones

Jones, M. (2012). George Zimmerman: 7 things to know about Trayvon Martin Florida shooting. Business & Law. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/316817/20120320/george-zimmerman-trayvon-martin-florida-shooting.htm

BY ALISON COLE | 15 MARCH 2012

Thomas Lubanga at ICC

Cole, A. (2012). Landmark decision for international justice. Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. Retrieved from http://www.osisa.org/law/blog/landmark-decision-international-justice

BY RICHARD LEE, 19 MARCH 2012

PRESS RELEASE

Thousands of Malawians took to the streets to protest against the government (file photo). (Photo Courtesy Mathews Malata/RNW)

Just a week after State House in Malawi issued a shocking statement threatening the media and civil society for 'insulting' the President, the police have arrested one of the government's foremost critics, John Kapito - the respected Chairperson of the Malawi Human Rights Commission.

Kapito was detained on Friday by eight policemen who accused him of possessing guns, holding seditious meetings and printing seditious T-shirts, which insulted President Bingu wa Mutharika. His house and car were thoroughly ransacked but nothing was found. After lengthy questioning, he was officially charged with being in possession of 'materials with seditious words' and 'forex without documentation' - and released on police bail.

"John Kapito was arrested because he has criticised the president and taken the government to task - and to court - over some of its more undemocratic and unconstitutional measures," said Sisonke Msimang, Executive Director of the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA).

"The authorities have been trying to silence Kapito for months with public threats and intimidation but he has continued to exercise his constitutional duties and speak out - and so they have now had him arrested on these trumped up charges."

Kapito was booked to fly out of Malawi on the weekend to attend today's opening of the International Coordinating Committee of National Human Rights Institutions in Geneva - a trip that was sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). He was ordered to appear at Police Headquarters today.

"The timing of his arrest was not a coincidence - the government did not want Kapito to be able to discuss the deteriorating human rights situation in Malawi on such an influential international platform," said Msimang.

The arbitrary arrest of John Kapito follows the recent detention of the renowned lawyer and former Attorney General, Ralph Kasambara, on equally spurious charges - as well as the threatening statement from the presidency ordering the media and civil society to stop 'insulting' the president or face the consequences.

According to the statement, 'State House wishes to make it blatantly clear that it will not standby and condone this impudence'. The statement also tells the media and civil society that demeaning the president 'MUST stop forthwith', stresses that 'insulting' the president carries the possibility of two years in prison and says that criticism of the president is not only unwarranted but also undermining Malawi's image internationally.

Kapito's arrest also comes just days after civil society groups called on the president to resign or hold a referendum within 90 days.

Lee, R. (2012). Human rights commissioner arrested. Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201203191433.html

Guarnieri, M. (2012). New threat looms over refugees. Inter Press Service. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/201203190880.html

Click "play" to hear the entire 30-minutes of recordings of 911 calls placed on the night of Trayvon Martin's murder by George Zimmerman in Sanford, FL.

Also, click the "download" link to save the recording to your computer for future listening. Last, click the "send to friends" link to tell others about this recording.

 

Tracy Martin, left, and Sybrina Fulton, parents of shooting victim Trayvon Martin speak out, Friday, March 16, 2012, during a news conference in Orlando, Florida. Tracy Martin, father of slain teenager Trayvon, told reporters that he feels his family has been "betrayed" by the police investigating his son's death.

Photograph by: Red Huber, Orlando Sentinel/MCT

ORLANDO, Fla. — The Sanford neighborhood watch volunteer who shot and killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, did not instigate the encounter, but has received death threats and moved out of his home, his father told The Orlando Sentinel Thursday.

George Zimmerman, 28, has not been arrested, something that has put him and the Sanford Police Department at the center of a firestorm. Critics say Trayvon, who was visiting family from his home in Miami, was a victim of racial profiling.

Zimmerman’s father, 64-year-old Robert Zimmerman of Lake Mary, delivered a one-page letter to the Sentinel Thursday, saying that the depiction of his son in the media has been cruel and misleading.

George Zimmerman is Latino and has grown up in a multi-racial family, the statement says.

“The media portrayal of George as a racist could not be further from the truth,” the letter says. “He would be the last to discriminate for any reason whatsoever.”

The letter does not provide details about what happened Feb. 26 on a walkway in the gated community where George Zimmerman lives and where Trayvon was visiting. But it does challenge one basic assumption: that Zimmerman got out of his SUV to confront Trayvon after calling police to report a suspicious person.

“At no time did George follow or confront Mr. Martin. When the true details of the event became public, and I hope that will be soon, the letter said, “everyone should be outraged by the treatment of George Zimmerman in the media.”

 

PHOTO GALLERY: IMAGES FROM THE TRAYVON MARTIN CASE

 

Police have released little information about what happened that night and no details about how Trayvon and Zimmerman came to be face to face.

What is known, though, is that Zimmerman called police from his SUV then left it and encountered Trayvon on foot as the teenager returned from a 7-Eleven candy run.

Before an officer arrived, Trayvon and Zimmerman got into a fight, according to police, witnesses heard one or both calling for help, and Zimmerman shot Trayvon once with a 9mm handgun.

Zimmerman told police he acted in self defense. Police found blood on his face and the back of his head as well as grass on the back of his shirt.

That jibes with what Cheryl Brown’s teenage son witnessed while walking his dog that night. Thirteen-year-old Austin stepped out his front door and heard people fighting, he told The Orlando Sentinel on Thursday.

“I heard screaming and crying for help,” he said. “I heard, ‘Help me.’”

It was dark, and the boy did not see how the fight started, in fact, he only saw one person, a man in a red shirt — Zimmerman — who was on the ground.

The boy said he is not sure who called for help. After a moment, his dog escaped, he turned to catch it and a few seconds later heard a gunshot, he said.

“When I heard the shot, the screaming stopped,” he said.

He then rushed inside and told his sister to call police.

In his letter, Robert Zimmerman wrote that what happened that night was “tragic ... and very sad for all concerned. The Martin family, our family and the entire community have been forever changed.”

George Zimmerman has not talked publicly about what happened, his father said, because that’s the advice police gave him. Both Zimmerman families have moved out of their homes, at least temporarily, Robert Zimmerman said, because they’ve received death threats.

Police on Tuesday turned the case over to the state attorney’s office, saying they did not have evidence to justify George Zimmerman’s arrest on a charge of manslaughter.

Prosecutors will now likely spend several weeks studying the case before making a decision on whether to charge Zimmerman.

Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee Jr. told the Sentinel Thursday night that he has invited the U.S. Department of Justice and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to review the investigation.

“It’s an open book,” Lee said. “If they want to look at what we did and how we did it and what information we have, they’re welcome to it.”

The FDLE is waiting for a formal letter from the state attorney’s office, said spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger.

Sanford police on Thursday also challenged a WFTV-Channel 9 report in which Mary Cutcher said police largely ignored her even though she told them, “I know this was not self-defense. There was no punching, no hitting going on at the time, no wrestling.”

Police said they twice tried to interview her without success, that the third time she wrote a very short sworn statement for her roommate and that it was consistent with Zimmerman’s account.

More than 400 people gathered Wednesday at a Sanford church, where black community leaders and Baltimore evangelist Jamal Bryant again demanded that Zimmerman be arrested.

Some of Trayvon’s family members are expected to be at a news conference Friday morning called by Orlando attorney Natalie Jackson, who is representing the family.

Another rally is scheduled for Monday outside the Seminole County Courthouse. And a call has been issued for people to rally on March 26 during the Sanford City Council meeting.

Stutzman, R. (2012). Trayvon Martin's alleged shooter moves out of Florida neighbourhood. The Province. Retrieved from http://www.theprovince.com/news/Trayvon+Martin+alleged+shooter+moves+Florida+neighbourhood/6325385/story.html

SANFORD, Fla. -- Austin McLendon hasn't been the same since that night three Sundays ago when Trayvon Martin was killed.

His mother says he's been arguing with his siblings more than usual. His 8th grade teachers have called home saying that he's become angry and lax in his schoolwork. He seems stressed out, distracted and consumed, they say.

Austin was standing less than 20 yards away from Martin when he was shot on the night of February 26. He didn't see much that night, but says he can't shake the screams for help that he heard or the thunderclap of gunfire that nearly shook him from his shoes.

The screams rattle around in his daydreams, so loud at night that sleep hasn't come easily. And he can't stop asking himself a thousand what-ifs: What if he could have stopped it? What if he had looked "suspicious" that night, and not Martin?

"I picture myself back over where I saw it, and it sticks in the back of my mind," McLendon told HuffPost Black Voices on Saturday afternoon at his family's home. "Sometimes I'll, like, not be listening to the teacher, and I'll daydream or just think off about it. I've been feeling bad for him and his family."

According to police, George Zimmerman, 28, the self-appointed captain of the Retreat at Twin Lakes neighborhood watch, has admitted that he shot and killed Martin, 17, who Zimmerman described as "suspicious" in a 911 call made shortly before the shooting. He told the police that he shot the teen, who had come up from Miami a week or so earlier to visit his father, in self-defense. The police said he was licensed to carry the 9mm pistol he was carrying the night of the shooting. Zimmerman has not been arrested or charged in the killing.

"They still haven't arrested him yet," Austin said, his chin tucked low. "That's pretty much the main thing that's upsetting me."

Few of his friends at school understand why he's so upset.

"Not many middle school kids watch the news," he said.

Meanwhile, Martin's family and a growing legion of supporters across the country have taken to national television news programs, Facebook and Twitter and organized petition drives, rallies and protests calling for Zimmerman's arrest. More than 285,220 people have signed one petition on the Change.org website. Some say the handling of the case comes on the heels of a string of racially charged incidents that have further strained relations between the black community and the police.

Austin's mother, Sheryl Brown, said that the trauma from the night has not been limited to what her son witnessed. It also includes the way she says that the police and some media have twisted his account of the night to fit a self-defense theory, to say that a 13-year-old witness has claimed Zimmerman, and not Martin, was screaming for help. Both Austin and his mother are adamant that the teen could not see who was screaming, but they believe now that it was Martin.

Brown said in hindsight she feels the police investigator on the case attempted to lead her son to provide information that he didn't have. The investigator, she said, would nod yes when asking if it was the man in the T-shirt, who turned out to be Zimmerman, and not the one in the hooded sweatshirt, Martin, who was screaming out for help. And while the police have said that they don't have any evidence to refute Zimmerman's claims of self-defense, the investigators had a different story when they visited her family about a week after the shooting, Brown said.

"That investigator said flat out that we don't think it was self-defense," Brown said, recalling the day the police came to interview Austin. "Several times he said, 'I have kids, and I'm going to tell you something that I don't tell many people.' He looked at me and said, 'You have to read between the lines. There's some stereotyping going on.'"

She continued: "He stood here in my family room telling me that this guy [Zimmerman] is not right and it wasn't self-defense and that they have to prove that it wasn't. He was adamant about that. I don't know if that was to make me less uncomfortable or to make us feel that he was on our side."

In recent days, other witnesses have come forward to say that the police attempted to twist their testimony to support Zimmerman's claims of self-defense or ignored them entirely, including two witnesses who joined the Martin family during a press conference on Friday.

A police spokesman could not be reached immediately for comment. The Sanford Police have said in the past that there is little evidence to refute Zimmerman's claims. But the department has also publicly stated that some witnesses have since contradicted their initial statements to police, which supported the self-defense theory.

Last night the Sanford Police, pushed by city officials, released 911 recordings made the night of the shooting. And Martin's lawyers say that all the evidence to contradict Zimmerman's claims can be heard on the tape. In the background one can hear what seem to be screams or pleas for help. Then a gunshot and silence. Neighbors can be heard sobbing, telling the dispatcher what they heard or saw: mostly the screams, the cries for help and the gunshot that ended it all.

Austin and his sister were among that chorus.

"My brother said someone got shot behind our house," McLendon's older sister told a 911 dispatcher. "I heard something and then my brother ran into the house," she said.

"Is your brother there?" the dispatcher asks.

"He's next to me," she says.

"Okay, can you give him the phone?"

Austin comes on the line: "I saw a man laying on the ground that needed help, that was screaming and then I was going to go over there to try and help him, but my dog got off the leash, so I went and got my dog, and then I heard a loud sound and then the screaming stopped."

The dispatcher asks: "Did you see the person get shot? Did you know the person that was shot, or did you see the person that had the gun?"

"No, I just heard a loud sound and then the screaming stopped," Austin replied.

Not long before the call, about 7 p.m., Austin, per usual, was late for his scheduled dog-walking duty.

His mother was headed out the door and then called out to Austin, "Don't forget to walk the dog!"

He said he grabbed the leash and the dog and headed out of the front door. As he started down the sidewalk, he heard yelling from behind the house. He said that he turned down the side-yard to see what was going on.

It was a rainy night, and the clouds hung low, muting the moonlight. For some reason, many of the neighbors had turned off their back porch lights. So he didn't see much, just someone lying on the ground and screaming.

On Saturday afternoon, Austin walked back to the spot just behind his house, pointing a dozen or so yards away from where Martin was killed. He bears a striking resemblance to the dead teenager: about the same height, give or take a few inches, and weighs about 15 to 20 pounds less.

"It's really hard to walk the dog by where it happened," he said. He wondered aloud what could have happened if he had been walking the dog just a little later, or behind the house instead of in front. But most of all he wondered what if he had been the one who piqued Zimmerman's interest. What if he looked suspicious?

"If I was like two years older, that could have happened to me," he said.

By Judd Legum on Mar 18, 2012 at 6:19 pm

Legum, J. (2012). What everyone should know about Trayvon Martin (1995-2012). Think Progress. Retrieved from http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/18/446768/what-everyone-should-know-about-about-trayvon-martin-1995-2012/?mobile=nc

By Adam Weinstein | Sun Mar. 18, 2012 10:42 AM PDT

"This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something," Zimmerman told the dispatcher. "It's raining, and he's just walking around looking about." The man tried to explain where he was. "Now he's coming towards me. He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male...Something's wrong with him. Yup, he's coming to check me out. He's got something in his hands. I don't know what his deal is...These assholes, they always get away."

After discussing his location with the dispatcher, Zimmerman exclaimed, "Shit he's running," and the following sounds suggest he left his vehicle to run after Martin.

"Are you following him?" the dispatcher asked. Zimmerman replied: "Yep."

"Okay, we don't need you to do that," the dispatcher warned.

Several minutes later, according to other callers to 911 in the neighborhood, Zimmerman and Martin got into a wrestling match on the ground. One of the pair could be heard screaming for help. Then a single shot rang out, and Martin lay dead.

Are the 911 recordings available to the public?

Yes. After public pressure, the city of Sanford played the tapes for Martin's family, then released the audio recordings.

Weinstein, A. (2012). The Trayvon Martin killing, explained. Mother Jones. Retrieved from http://motherjones.com/print/168136

By Anthony Gucciardi

Gucciardi, A. (2012). USDA to give Monsanto’s new GMO crops special ‘Speed Approval’. Nation of Change. Retrieved from http://www.nationofchange.org/usda-give-monsanto-s-new-gmo-crops-special-speed-approval-1330267848

By Cassandra Anderson

Anderson, C. (2012). Monsanto pays 93 million to victims in settlement. Nation of Change. Retrieved from http://www.nationofchange.org/monsanto-pays-93-million-victims-settlement-1330446939

Updated 3/9/2012
The Jobs Calculator calculates the net employment change needed to achieve a target unemployment rate after a specified number of months. The user can adjust the target unemployment rate, the number of months, and the assumed labor force growth. Read more about the surveys and statistics behind the Jobs Calculator.

Target and Time Frame:

Results:

Change the Assumptions

Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. (2012). Jobs Calculator. Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Retrieved from http://www.frbatlanta.org/chcs/calculator/index.cfm

Consulate General of

THE REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA

Liberia and U.S. Business Summit: A Rising Star in the Emerging Market  on Friday, March 30, 2012, in Atlanta, Georgia from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center, 111 James P. Brawley Dr., SW, Atlanta, Georgia, co-hosted by Clark Atlanta University.

A stellar array of invited guests and presenters will provide an economic development framework and opportunities for U.S. businesses in the fields of commerce and industry, petroleum refinery, municipal water and waste management, investment opportunities and investment incentives and to learn about starting and growing a business in Liberia.

 Liberia imports from the U.S. has grown by 346% since 2008

 Liberia exports to the U.S. has grown by 291% over the same period

 Chevron has committed to a $1.6 billion investment in oil production

 Through USAID, the federal government will provide approximately $218 million in foreign assistance next fiscal year

Liberian Government officials in attendance will include: H. E. Joseph Nyuma Boakai, Vice President, Republic of Liberia, Hon. William V. S. Bull, Liberian Ambassador to the U. S., Hon. Cynthia Blandford Nash, Honorary Consul General, Republic of Liberia (Georgia), Hon. Miata Beysolow, Minister of Commerce & Industry, the Hon. Natty B. Davis, Chairman, National Investment Commission, Hon. T. Nelson Williams, Managing Director, Liberian Petroleum Refinery Company, the Hon. Mary Broh, Acting Mayor of the City of Monrovia & the Liberian Chamber of Commerce.

The Vice President will also be hosting a Town Hall meeting at the International Christian Fellowship Church on March 29

th and will be the keynote speaker at the Liberian Association of Metro Atlanta Inauguration event on March 30th. For more information about tickets and sponsorship, please go tohttp://www.lama-atlanta.com/.

Summit Events:

Flashpoints interviews former president Aristide's attorney, Ira Kurzban, about recent "revelations" in the press linking him to drug probes, assassinations and corruption. Joining the discussion is Burt Wides, an expert on US intelligence operations in Haiti.

To hear the interview visit the following:

http://haitiinformationproject.blogspot.com/2012/03/aristide-whats-driving-campaign-to.html

Haiti Information Project. (2012). Aristide: Who's behind the campaign to discredit Haiti's first democratically elected president?. Haiti Information Project. Retrieved from http://haitiinformationproject.blogspot.com/2012/03/aristide-whats-driving-campaign-to.html

BY DAVID NJAGI, 16 MARCH 2012

Tharaka-Nithi, Kenya — A chorus of ululations pierces the dawn at Pius Nyaga's homestead in eastern Kenya, marking the end of a brief ritual near the family cowshed. Nyaga's son, Antony Mwiti, has just completed the rite of passage into manhood - the traditional way.

An elder quickly wraps Mwiti in a white sheet as another leads him to the freshly built seclusion shed, where he will nurse his circumcision wound for the next few weeks. There he will also learn some of the cultural secrets reserved for fresh initiates.

In previous years, only those who have themselves faced "the knife" the traditional way would be allowed to visit an initiate. But today Mwiti's father has hired a clinical nurse to attend to the teenager, who will join high school in nearby Kiereni village once his wounds heal.

"It has become necessary for parents to reach out to modern medicine during these rites, even if we still value the cultural way," Nyaga says. "The reality of HIV and Aids, as well as the possibility of the wound worsening due to an unhygienic operation, is the reason for this."

New research says male medical circumcision reduces HIV infection by up to 60 percent during heterosexual intercourse. This fact is likely to give medically supported traditional circumcision a significant boost.

Coming from a region that has steadfastly guarded the traditional male circumcision ritual, it is remarkable that Nyaga would dare to blend traditional practices with modern medicine. In pre-colonial times, if Nyaga had allowed an outsider to tend his son's wounds he would not have earned a place as an elder. And his son would have been denied the chance to become a custodian of clan doctrines.

But in his 64 years of living near the foothills of Mt. Kenya, Nyaga has felt the pain of mothers who have lost sons to fatal infections after the use of crude tools during circumcision rituals. Nyaga says he also believes a growing number of young men have contracted HIV from the unsterilized knives and razor blades used on youths who are circumcised at the same time. Health officials say these cases are seldom reported due to stigma and restrictive cultural bonds. HIV prevalence among circumcised men is estimated at 2.6 percent in eastern Kenya, according to the 2007 Kenya Aids Indicator Survey (KAIS).

The head of strategy at the National Aids Control Council (NACC), Regina Ombam, says the government does not have programs targeting traditional male circumcision, nor has much data been collected related to the practice.

"But, we are encouraging communities to make use of the government-led male medical circumcision option, which is showing great progress in reducing HIV infections," says Ombam.

The NACC does not link HIV infections exclusively to traditional male circumcision, but some reports suggests that HIV is spread through this rite of passage in some parts of Kenya. Health advocates hope that if the National Aids and STD Control Programme (NASCOP) task force conducts research on traditional male circumcision, the possible link with HIV could become clearer.

Even more troubling, according to a World Health Organisation (WHO) report, is the practice in some African communities where young men are encouraged to have sex shortly after circumcision, a time when the wound is not fully healed. The WHO is also concerned that other groups circumcise an initiate-in-waiting after he has had sex for the first time, a situation that could have already exposed them to a range of sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV.

Elders in some African societies believe that group circumcision rites are important for creating strong bonds among age mates in preparation for future duties, such as ensuring the community's security.

"Cultural practices such as mass circumcisions with one cutting instrument for all participating boys are common," says Domenic Micheni Ngaruni, the clinical nurse practicing in Tharaka Nithi county and who is attending to Nyaga's son. "It is a source of pride for the boy to be circumcised with the same knife as his peers."

Ngaruni, who has seen some of the tools tucked in dirty goatskin pouches, explains that the traditional circumcisers perform as many rites as possible due to the prestige that goes with the practice. This is why Gitari Magorwe is in a hurry to leave Nyaga's home after successfully initiating his son into manhood. He wipes the bloody knife with a banana leaf, but surprisingly, also pulls a bottle of antiseptic from his pocket, which he sprays on the tools.

Magorwe says he learned this practice from an official of the USAID-funded Aids, Population and Health Integrated Assistance (APHIA II) Project, which has been working with traditional circumcisers to make the practice safer.

"There was a time when I almost lost the confidence of the elders after a boy I had operated on took four months to heal," says Magorwe. "But it is the threat of HIV that is making people like us listen to health officers."

Amos Murerwa of the APHIA II project in eastern Kenya says traditional circumcisers also receive training on how to reduce the adverse effects of circumcision, which WHO says can lead to severe bleeding, permanent damage to the penis, persistent swelling, erectile dysfunction and even death.

"We also reach out to community elders to educate them about the harmful effects of female genital cutting and gender violence," says Murerwa. He says they encourage the elders to pass on these values of respect to the youths.

With time, it is possible for traditional circumcision to be medically guided and to reach relatively safe levels, officials say.

Kenya aims to circumcise more than one million men by 2013 in medical facilities. The country's male circumcision campaign is the most successful in eastern and southern Africa, officials say, but health facilities struggle to keep up with the demand.

"Circumcision of boys is very expensive in public hospitals, and that is why some communities prefer the traditional way," says Nderitu Njoka, chairman of Maendeleo Ya Wanaume, or "Development of Men", a group that lobbies for men's rights in Kenya. "The government of Kenya should subsidise it to make the process free of charge."

Njagi, D. (2012). Traditional male circumcision with a modern edge. All Africa. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201203161497.html

Written by Farooq Kperogi Saturday, 18 February 2012 05:00

This week’s ruminations are a continuation of my celebration of America’s Black History Month. Throughout this month, I will explore different facets of the relationship between continental Africans and Americans of African heritage.

Are there any Black Americans who have taken residence in Nigeria either as a result of marriage or voluntary geographic displacement? That’s a persistent question that many of my African-American students and friends have asked me.

When a student first asked me this question 2005, I knew of only one Black American woman who called Nigeria home. By 2006, I learned of another Black American man who married a Nigerian woman and lived with her in Benin City for many years. And just late last year, I learned of a fascinating Black American woman who has lived in New Bussa (which used to be my local government headquarters until it was ceded to Niger State in 1992) for nearly 40 years. So who are they?

The first “Black-American Nigerian” I know or heard of is Mrs. Dianne Oputa, the charming and vivacious wife of maverick Nigerian music star Charles “Charlie Boy” Oputa. She has been married to her husband for over 30 years. The first time I heard her speak on Nigerian national television in the early 1990s, I had not the dimmest clue that she was American; she’d lost all her American accent.

Then in 2006 I subscribed to a Nigerian-centered Internet discussion group where I encountered a Black American man by the name of Larry Ukali Johnson-Redd who said he’d had cause to relocate to Nigeria for many years after getting married to a Nigerian lady. While in Nigeria, he taught government at Eghosa Grammar School in Benin City, the Edo State capital. Unfortunately, his wife took ill and died.  So he returned to the United States, but he still periodically visits Nigeria. (You can watch a YouTube video of him talking about his experience living in Nigeria on my blog).

I don’t know if Mr. Johnson-Redd has a Nigerian citizenship, but my understanding is that the Nigerian constitution grants him citizenship on account of his marriage to a Nigerian.

The most recent “black-American Nigerian” I discovered is a certain enamoring woman called Mrs. Cecilia Crump Erinne who has been living in Nigeria for nearly 40 years. She is married to a Nigerian engineer by the name of Mr. Edwin Erinne with whom she has six children, one whom is a Ph.D. student at Kennesaw State University where I am an Assistant Professor.

Unlike the two “black-American Nigerians” I mentioned earlier, Mrs. Erinne, originally from the Southern U.S. state of Mississippi, lives in rural Nigeria. It must take exceptional love and dedication to make the transition from America to rural Nigeria.

When I got a chance to speak with her here in America in December last year, she sounded nothing like an American. Her accent and mannerisms were decidedly Nigerian. It turned out that she was a colleague of my dad’s immediate younger, the late J.B. Kperogi, at Borgu Secondary School, one of the oldest secondary schools in my part of Nigeria.

My uncle taught English for many years at the school and was the school’s Vice Principal before he retired to join politics in the late 1970s. Mrs. Erinne taught math and science to generations of Nigerians at the same school and became the school’s principal before she retired. I had a surreal sensation when I discovered that this delightful “Black-American Nigerian” knew a member of my family.

There are certainly more Black-American Nigerians than the three I’ve mentioned here. But they can’t be that many. There are more Black Americans in other West African countries than there are in Nigeria. When I lived in Louisiana, for instance, I met many Black Americans who had homes in Ghana, the Gambia, Senegal, and Benin Republic. They visited their adopted families in these countries during summers. By contrast, the only Black Americans I know or heard of came to our country by way of marriage.

This is strange. By several accounts, the African ancestral roots of more than 40 percent of American Blacks are traceable to what is now Nigeria. You would expect that the search for “authenticity” and ancestral rootedness, which has historically been a big deal in middle-class Black America, would attract them to Nigeria.

After all, between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, scores of Black Americans immigrated to Ghana both in a symbolic search for identity and in solidarity with Ghana’s independence from British colonialism in 1957. In fact, celebrated Black American scholar WEB Dubois renounced his American citizenship and died a Ghanaian in 1963.

So why do American Blacks shun Nigeria? There are at least two reasons for this. First, “Slave trade tourism,” which draws large swaths of Black Americans to Ghana, the Gambia, Senegal and Benin Republic, is almost absent in Nigeria. This is a shame because Nigeria has more historic claims to the ancestral provenance of African Americans than the countries that have been cashing in on “slave trade tourism.” Blame it on Nigeria’s backward and shortsighted leadership since independence.

Second, Nigeria’s emergent postcolonial leaders were so beholden to the power structure in Washington that they deliberately avoided any associations with Black-American leaders in the 1960s. For instance, at the instance of the American government, Abubakar Tafawa-Balewa shunned Malcolm X when he visited Nigeria in the early 1960s; the Ghanaian government, on the other hand, gave him a red-carpet reception.

Again this is a shame because Nnamdi Azikiwe, Nigeria’s first ceremonial president, was one of the first Africans, if not the first African, to be educated at a Historically Black College and University in America. Azikiwe graduated from Lincoln University, an all-black university in Pennsylvania, in 1930. In fact, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah wrote in his autobiography that it was Azikiwe that inspired—and recommended— him to study at Lincoln University. A measure of the regard Azikiwe had in Black America was evident in the fact that WEB Dubois personally attended Azikiwe’s inauguration as Nigeria’s first Governor-General in 1960.

But because Ghana had a more progressive and independent-minded leadership, it was to it that many African Americans migrated in the 1960s. Successive Ghanaian governments consciously court and cultivate the friendship of our kith across the Atlantic. Not so in Nigeria.

In 2003, I met the younger brother of Alex Haley (the famous author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X) who became America’s ambassador to the Gambia. He told me the frustration he had when he tried to persuade Olusegun Obasanjo to grant dual citizenship to African Americans in the late 1970s in order to foster a greater bond between Nigeria and Black America. He said instead of giving a thought to his suggestions, Obasanjo peremptorily granted him an honorary Nigerian citizenship and shot down any further discussion on the issue.

This makes me sad.

One of the names Malcolm X cherished intensely till his death was the name he was given by students of the University of Ibadan when he visited Nigeria in May 1964. The name was “Omowale,” Yoruba for “the son has returned home.” When will Nigeria officially open its doors and welcome home its estranged children?

Kperogi, F. (2012). Black Americans in Nigeria. Weekly Trust. Retrieved from http://weeklytrust.com.ng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8465:black-americans-in-nigeria&catid=50:notes-from-atlanta&Itemid=146

Written by Femi Akinola & Mohammed Shosanya, Lagos Saturday, 17 March 2012 05:04

Cremation, the use of high temperature to reduce bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and dry bone fragments, serves as funeral or post-funeral rites in many countries, including Japan, India, China, Australia, United Kingdom and the US, to mention a few.Weekly Trust findings show that the two notable religions, Islam and Christianity frown at cremation. Islam categorically disapproves of cremation because the religion has specific rites for the treatment of the body after death. Usually, a Muslim corpse is usually wrapped with a single piece of cloth for the burial and the body will be buried without a casket. In Christian countries and cultures, cremation has historically been discouraged, but today in many denominations, cremation is accepted. However, in Nigeria and the southwest zone in particular, Yoruba are known for jealously guarding their tradition and culture. Fond of giving their dead a befitting burial through internment, the y consider cremation unheard of. Sometime during the first tenure of Governor Babatunde Fashola, an Executive Bill that sought to make a law for cremation of corpses in Lagos State was sponsored and debated at the State House of Assembly. It generated great noise particularly during its public hearing. The Assembly complex was jam-packed by Muslim faithful that unanimously condemned the move.

The assembly backed down from pursuing the bill and it was not raised anymore until recently.   Last week at the Lagos State House of Assembly, a bill to voluntarily cremate corpses in the state scaled through the second reading at the floor. Titled “A Bill for a Law to Provide for Voluntary Cremation of Corpses and Unclaimed Corpses within Lagos State,” when it comes into effect will make cremation of corpses legal in  Lagos, especially unclaimed corpses that filled morgues at state-owned hospitals.

The Chairman of the House Committee on Health Services, Suuru Avoseh who initiated and sponsored the bill said the document has become inevitable due to the challenges being faced in the mortuaries across the state just as he disclosed that mortuary facilities in the state are overstretched. Avoseh, a Christian, representing Badagry Constituency II at the House argued at the floor of the House that hundreds of decomposing and unclaimed bodies had piled up in Isolo General Hospital Mortuary and something urgent has to be done to forestall an epidemic in the state. The lawmaker who moved the motion during plenary session stated that passing the bill would be an alternative to take care of the dead in Lagos adding, “It is a humane way to take care of the unclaimed corpses, though it is strange and new in Nigeria.’’

Avoseh explained that the mortuary was an eyesore when the committee visited Isolo General Hospital where many unclaimed corpses were piled up, making the morgue congested. He maintained that health official have been facing the problem of availability of land for giving the corpses mass burials. Avoseh told Weekly Trust that his committee representing the House in its findings following complaints by residents within Isolo neighbourhood discovered that failure of relatives to claim corpses is contributing to the present situation of the mortuaries.

On the bill, he said it was set to take care of some issues relating to the management of the mortuaries and would lead to the establishment of a crematorium for mostly unclaimed corpses as well as voluntary cremation of corpses. “The law would also solve the problem associated with getting land for mass burial; decongest the mortuaries battling with cases of unidentified and unclaimed corpses,” he noted. Additional findings revealed that Section 6 of the bill seeks to permit a child or children of the deceased, a close relative of the deceased, an undertaker and an agent or legal representative to cremate upon formal application.

Also, section 8 of the bill authorizes the Medical Director of the state hospitals to order for the cremation of unclaimed bodies in their respective mortuaries after six weeks of deposition, with the consent and approval of the Commissioner for Health. Under Section 10 of the bill, the cremator-in-charge of a crematorium must not dispose the ashes after a cremation except in accordance with written instructions of the applicant. Before burying the ashes, the cremator-in-charge must give the applicant at least 28 days written notice of intention to bury the ashes. The notice must be sent to the applicant’s address for service on the permission to cremate.”

But reacting to the move by the State House of Assembly, Professor Is’haq Akintola, and the Director Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) advised all Muslim members of the Assembly not to support passage of the bill into law. According to him, “It’s un-Islamic. It’s against Yoruba culture; it’s unheard of in this part of the world. I’m calling on all identified Muslims at the House not to encourage this move. It is against the directive of Allah.”

Abdul-Rasheed Salami, an Islamic cleric, frowned at the move by the State House of Assembly to legalize cremation, saying the government did not know what next to do. He said, “The Creator of mankind did not support cremation. It’s absurd and against the teachings of Islam. No sane lawmaker will have his hand in the move by the House. Those who are clamouring for such idea may incur the wrath of the people. They are now claiming there is no land to continue mass burial but forgetting that this same government has not failed to get hectares of land whenever it desire to start building expensive housing schemes across the five zones of the state. Cremation is not part of our culture, we don’t want it.”

Pastor Yomi Adigun also condemned the move by the House. He admitted few Christians of various denominations may tactically support the idea but argued the idea is alien to this part of the world.

Confused over  the submission of members of the House on the issue during plenary, Speaker of the House, Adeyemi Ikuforiji, a Muslim, asked the House Committee on Healthcare Services headed by Avoseh to work  on the details of the bill and focus more on making the idea attractive  to members of the public. The committee was given a timeline of four weeks to report back to the House on latest work done on the bill.

Meanwhile, a crop of psychologists who spoke on the issue described the move as variance with the culture and beliefs of the people. Respondents say such decision, apart from being alien to Nigerian culture, contrives the rule of nature. A Clinical Psychologist, Mr. Peter Kanyin, told Weekly Trust that the decision of the legislators to bring about cremation is at variance with the self-concept theory which emphasises that human beings tend to appreciate personality more if they can trace them to where they are buried. He said the late Gani Fawehinmi’s example shows that people appreciate what he stood for because they could trace his burial place. He added that the idea of cremation can also build fear and trepidation.

Mr. Taiwo Hassan of the Department of Communication, Lagos State University, said cremation is an anathema to human beings and called on the legislators to jettison the idea.

Cremated remains which do not constitute a health risk may be buried or interred in memorial sites or cemeteries, or they may be legally retained by relatives and dispersed in various ways. In countries where cremation is legalized, it is usually done in a crematorium but some countries prefer different methods, such as open-air cremation.

Akinola, F. & Shosanya, M. (2012). Lagos may legalize cremation of corpses soon …Bill splits Lagos House of Assembly. Weekly Trust. Retrieved from http://weeklytrust.com.ng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=8803:lagos-may-legalize-cremation-of-corpses-soon-bill-splits-lagos-house-of-assembly&catid=40:cover-stories&Itemid=26

The Federal Government and the Boko Haram sect have opened peace talks with an indirect contact made between the two sides over the past week through two senior clerics, sources privy to the discussions told Daily Trust last night.

A deal is being worked out for a three-month ceasefire during which there would be no attack by the sect and there would also be no "harassment" from the government, one of the sources said.

"Boko Haram wants the release of arrested members as a condition for ceasefire. Then discussions will follow," a source told one of our reporters.

Earlier yesterday, Reuters news agency also reported that "mediated" talks have started.

One of the sources who spoke to Daily Trust last night said the two clerics involved in the negotiations have close contacts in the Boko Haram sect, and they have been shuttling between the sect's self-proclaimed leader Abubakar Shekau and government officials.

The two clerics were in the Supreme Council for Sharia in Nigeria together with the late Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf, whose death in police custody in July 2009 triggered a widespread violent uprising by the sect.

But one source said the talks were being threatened by leakages in the media.

"The problem is that Boko Haram has intended for this to be confidential. But the issue has already leaked to the media. So now, Boko Haram is threatening to back out though the mediators are trying to persuade the sect to stay on," he said.

There was no immediate comment from the Presidency over the story yesterday. Boko Haram, which makes sporadic tele-conferences through Maiduguri-based journalists, also did not react to the report.

The senior cleric mentioned as the leading mediator did not answer calls made to seek his comments on Wednesday and yesterday.

When our reporter called the other cleric in the talks last night, he pleaded not be named because he said they had agreed ab initio to make these talks secret.

A third source spoken to yesterday said one of the mediators had confided in him that the discussions were going on and there were indications of success. He said the major target for now was to agree to a three-month ceasefire, during which Boko Haram will not launch any attack while security forces will not attempt to arrest any sect member.

The source said if the ceasefire is achieved, then discussions on ending the whole campaign of violence will start.

In its own report, Reuters quoted a source saying that "BH (Boko Haram) has mentioned a conditional ceasefire but it wants all its members released from prison. The government sees this as unacceptable but is willing to release foot soldiers."

It said a traditional leader and a civil rights activist, whose names were not given, were also involved in the talks.

"It is the first time a ceasefire has been mentioned, so it is a massive positive, but given the lack of trust a resolution is still a way off," the Reuters source added.

National Security Adviser, General Owoye Andrew Azazi, was quoted to have said in January that the government was considering making contact with moderate members of Boko Haram via "back channels."

President Jonathan has also said in January that the government was open to dialogue but said sect members were hidden and therefore direct talks were unlikely.

The military's efforts to stem the sect's insurgency have had mixed results in the past, with human rights groups saying heavy-handed tactics have worsened resentment of authorities.

But more recently there have been arrests of senior figures including Abul Qaqa and Kabiru Sokoto, while some have died in clashes with security forces.

The group has not managed to launch a widescale, coordinated attack since one in Kano that killed 186 people in January, reverting to crude bomb attacks and drive by shootings.

Pindiga, H.I. & Saidu, I. (2012). As talks Bbegin - FG, Boko Haram consider ceasefire. Daily Trust. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201203160438.html

The International Criminal Court's conviction of former rebel leader Thomas Lubanga for using child soldiers has other Congolese fighters worried. Now they want assurances they won't be prosecuted.

Al Jazeera English. (2012). Congolese fighters want amnesty. Al Jazeera English. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yksGy3XfPY&feature=player_embedded

Ethiopia's government has embarked on a massive dam-building project, which it hopes will generate alternative sources of power and also help to turn the country's economy around.

But the idea is not without controversy, and critics have said the endeavour will be an environmental disaster.

Nazanine Moshiri reports from the Gibe III dam site in Oromia, in western Ethiopia.

Al Jazeera English. (2012). Ethiopia pursues controversial dam project. Al Jazeera English. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLyohxqfq9M&feature=player_embedded

Press play to learn more, and visit the following link to see the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZdRWNP-6SY&feature=player_embedded#!

Whitehead, E. (2012). The Dodd Frank Effect. This Is Africa. Retrieved from http://www.thisisafricaonline.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/394/The_Dodd_Frank_effect.html

BY RICHMORE TERA, 9 MARCH 2012

AUDITIONS to select radio presenters, news readers and DJs for the soon-to-be-opened Zimpapers Talk Radio held at Alexandra Sports Club in Harare on Wednesday attracted a cross-section of people including media professionals and members of the public who harboured aspirations working for the radio station.

Some people arrived at the sports club as early as 6am for the auditions that were scheduled to start three hours later and those who arrived later were surprised to witness a long winding queue already snaking its way into Prince Edward Street.

The comospolitan crowd looked like casts to a talent search with people from all walks of life trying to make a statement inasfar as fashion, language, natural talent, professional and academic qualifications were concerned.

The aspirants braved the chilly weather that was also promising to unleash rain, and patiently waited for their turn to be auditioned to come.

Also noteworthy about the auditions was that some people used their personal cars to attend the auditions, some walked all the way from the Central Business District to Alexandra Sports Club, while others hired taxis or hitchhiked to the venue.

There were journalists, musicians, comedians, security guards, the unemployed and college students, who were hoping to make it through during the auditions.

"I think these auditions will have to be held over a two-day period because the turnout is massive," observed one aspirant, who was last in the queue.

Come audition time and the majority of the people who were being auditioned sent people into stitches with their presentations.

"Here is the news being read by . . . ," announced one aspiring newsreader sending the crowd into uproarious laughter.

One security guard clad in his uniform had the crowd in stitches with his soccer commentary.

"Uyu anga achidzvinyirirwa kubasa kwaanga ari (this one really belongs to the radio and not the kind of work he has been doing)," noted one observer.

Young Problem Masau, a trainee journalist who was once attached to The Herald, left the crowd in stitches as he sought opinions from fellow journalists of a funeral announcement he wanted to read as part of his auditions.

He had come up with the idea of "Zviziviso Zverufu", but the truth of it was that he was just trying to draw laughter from his colleagues before he made his actual presentation.

"Hezvinei zviziviso zverufu zvichiverengwa naProblem Masau. Hama dzekwa Nhingi dzinoda kuzivisa vose vekwa Nhingi kuti mwana wavo akashaika . . . (The So and so family would like to inform all relatives that their beloved has died...)!"

Tera, R. (2012). The Lighter Side of Zimpapers Talk Radio Auditions. The Herald. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201203090174.html

FREE WORKSHOPS

BAZI SUCCESS STRATEGIES   

Saturday, March 10th   11am-12:30pm

Cost: Free

Workshop based on Ra Un Nefer Amen's new book. This book enable one to gain control over the life force (Qi). Without technical astrology kow how, you will be able to map out your ENTIRE LIFE success strategy within one to tow days of reading this book. It is accompanied by a guided meditation CD with special healing sounds that are used in qi gong for guiding life force for accomplishing yoru goals. the system is based on scheduling your life activities at the time of the availablity of the energy that are specific to carrying them out.

BAZI SUCCESS WITH QI GONG WORKSHOP   

 ANATOMY OF THE LIFE FORCE WORKSHOP

Sunday, March 18th

1pm-2:30pm

Cost: Free

This workshop will provide extraordinary. practical insight into the 5 organ system which serves as the basis for all healing sciences and Bazi astrology. the 5-organ system offers a fundamental framework for understanding your life force and how to manipulate it to promote health, happiness, and success in all endeavors of life.

This special workshop will be taught by Tepraim Saa, a highly regarded practitioner from Washington, DC with over 30 years of experience. He specializes in Traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy, and nutritional supplementation.

Class Location  

1107 Ralph D. Abernathy in Atlanta  

Also, Our bookstore will be open from 11am-3pm during the Workshops.

You can shop and  pickup the lecture CD.

We will be happy to assist you with your selections!

Here's how to order - Click one of the links below:

Bazi 2012 Report.  It shows the areas of life that are energized each month to enable you to prepare in advance through strategizing, meditations and Qi gong exercises and meditations.  20.00 No shipping as the Report will be emailed to you.

http://www.taui.biz/Products/661-bazi-2012-events-report.aspx

 
Bundle #1:  2012 Calendar and the Bazi 2012 Report.  $40 less $5 bundle discount, thus $35.00 plus shipping and handling (for the Calendar).

http://www.taui.biz/Products/655-bazi-success-bundle-1.aspx
 
Bundle #2:  Bazi Success Strategies Book, plus 2012 Calendar.  $40 less $5 bundle discount, thus $35.00 plus shipping and handling

http://www.taui.biz/Products/656-bazi-success-bundle-2.aspx
 
Bundle #3:  Bazi Success Strategies Book, plus 2012 Calendar, plus 2012 Report.  $60 less $10 bundle discount, thus $50.00 plus shipping and handling

http://www.taui.biz/Products/657-bazi-success-bundle-3.aspx
 
Bundle #4:  Bazi Chart without a report plus 2012 Calendar plus 2012 Report plus Bazi Success Strategies Book.  $80 less $15 bundle discount, thus $65.00 plus shipping and handling

http://www.taui.biz/Products/658-bazi-success-bundle-4.aspx
 
Bundle #5:  Bazi Chart with Personality Report ($50 value) + 2012 Calendar + Bazi Success Strategies Book + 2012 Report.  $110 less $15 bundle discount, thus $95.00 plus shipping and handling

http://www.taui.biz/Products/659-bazi-success-bundle-5.aspx  

     
The Ausar Auset Society is a Pan African religious organization dedicated to the spiritual development of people of African descent. Teachings are based on the ancient Kamitic (Egyptian) systems of spiritual cultivation.

Ausar Auset Society Atlanta and Taui University offer classes, workshops and spiritual readings to the community  (most workshops are free). If you want a spiritual reading and/or your destiny reading for 2012, see our counselors at the end of our workshops. If you have questions, concerns or special request contact us at...

Contact Information

Phone: 678-701-8011

Online: www.aasatlanta.org

Email: aasatlanta@gmail.com

 Join our mailing list

 Heru

We are now in the Heru Cycle-February 21st - March 21st 

Metu Neter Vol.1, Pg. 227-229

Community Spot Light & Links:

The Black Vegetarian Society of Georgia

The African Community Centers

WRFG 

Opare Integrative Healthcare

Healthful Essence Caribbean Vegetarian Restaurant
The Forgotten Foods........Remembered

Tassili Raw Reality

Amadi, O. (2012). Why Don Jazzy and d'Banj separated. Vanguard. Retrieved from http://www.vanguardngr.com/2012/03/why-don-jazzy-and-dbanj-separated/

 

The bad-blood flowing between top Nigerian female singer, Asa and former label, Questionmark Entertainment has taken a new dimension.

Going by the latest development, Asa has alleged death threats on her by some people.

Asa took to twitter yesterday to make this known. According her tweet, "I am passionate about my music, I have received death threats from these people, I have kept my head up and focused on giving my best always."

Tweeting further, the international artiste tweeted, "I do not have any NEW ALBUM selling in Nigeria called DOWN ON ME. Please do not purchase it!

She further pointed out the perpetrators behind the illegal sale of fake CDs.

According to her, "unfortunately, we blame it on Alaba Market but it's not from them but from Question Mark Entertainment. Please pass on this message. 

Asa then further hinted on plans to take a legal action on Question Mark Entertainment with this tweet,"we will inform you of any LEGAL releases when there is.

You will recall that Asa fell apart with Question Mark Entertainment some years ago. It was speculated that her former label boss, Kelvin once pointed a gun at her, which led to the birth of the track, Jailer.

Erin, B. (2012). Asa receives death threats, Question Mark feud gets messier. Nollywood One. Retrieved from http://nollywoodone.com/latest-additions/5652-asa-recieves-death-threats-questionmark-feud-gets-messier.html

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Movie to be viewed

" Before They Die"  

Intimate Cafe

2001 Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive

First Floor, Suite 106

Atlanta, GA 30310

(404)564-6484

myintimatecafe.com 

Doors open at 5:30pm
Dinner is served at 6:00pm  

Space is extremely limited!

Advance ticket purchase is not required but is strongly encouraged to guarantee your spot.
CLICK HERE to purchase in advance or RSVP

Feel free to share with your lists!

CALLING ALL VENDORS!

Intimate Cafe will be hosting  

MARKETPLACE MONDAYS

every Monday

11:am - 4m

starting April 1st 

$$$ Cash in on the lunch crowd $$$

Meet with your customer at Intimate Cafe! 

Booth Rental is only $10 for the months of April and May only

2001 Martin Luther King, Jr Drive, SW

First Floor, Suite 106

Atlanta, GA 30310

(404)564-6484

www.myintimatecafe.com

Monday - Friday 10:am - 6m

Saturday 10:am - 3m

SOUPS, SALADS, SANDWICHES, BAKED GOODS &  

COFFEE PREPARE FRESH DAILY

 7pm Thursday March 15th
 Visual Arts Exhibition: Gallery Talk
with LeiSha Starchia, Shanequa Gay and Bukky Akinsanmi

3rd Floor, Auburn Avenue Research  Library on African American Culture & History | 101 Auburn Avenue, Atlanta 30303
Meet and greet with the artsits as they talk about their creative inspirations and processes... Read More



7pm Friday March 16th | Opening Night Film
The Atlanta Premiere of "The Education of Auma Obama" 
Director: Branwen Okpako, 2011 Germany/Kenya   79 minutes

Walter C. Hill Auditorium, High Museum of Arts, 1280 Peachtree Street, Atlanta 30309

A feature documentary on the life and times of Auma Obama told from her homestead in Kenya during the run up to the 2008 US Presidential elections that brought her brother 

Barack Obama to power.... Read More

Black Male Teachers needed. Do you know any Black Males who are seniors in high school who want to go to college out of state for FREE? The CALL ME MISTER program is offered by 4 historically black colleges in SouthCarolina - Benedict College, Chaflin University, Morris College and South Carolina State University - visit thewww.callmemister.clemson.edu/index.htl for details and the online application or call 1-800-640-2657

Written by: admin | 26 Feb 2012 12:52 AM | Comments: 0

AddisTunes. (2012). Tribute to the life of Christopher Kato - a ballroom wizard. AddisTunes. Retrieved from http://www.addistunes.com/ranking.php?mode=blog&message_id=269&row_template=news_page.tpl

Written by: admin | 26 Feb 2012 01:21 AM | Comments: 0

AddisTunes. (2012). Secrets revealed - How to make a platinum record. AddisTunes. Retrieved from http://www.addistunes.com/ranking.php?mode=blog&message_id=270&row_template=news_page.tpl

PURCHASE THE   BLACK TO OUR ROOTS FILM & SUPPORT YOUTH TRAVEL TO AFRICA!

Black To Our Roots is the inspirational story of the journey a group of inner-city youth take to Ghana, West Africa in exploration of their ancestral and cultural homeland. The cost of the film is $25, which includes priority shipping.

Email info@habeshainc.org to make an order.

MAKE A DONATION TO BLACK TO OUR ROOTS

We are grateful to everyone who have supported us over the years.  Your contributions have a great impact on those served by HABESHA.

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION

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10 FEBRUARY 2012

Africa Focus. (2012). Counting the costs of brain drain. Africa Focus. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201202101407.html

Hirondelle News Agency. (2012). Aisha Gaddafi requests full investigation on her father's death. Hirondelle News Agency. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201202100658.html

BY KITSEPILE NYATHI, 10 FEBRUARY 2012

Nyathi, K. (2012). Law bars Mugabe from polls. Daily Nation. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201202101411.html

Nigerian power lines. (Photo Courtesy Vanguard)

Washington — The United States is sending an energy trade mission to Mozambique, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana to look at potential investment projects with the aim of enhancing the countries' ability to generate electric power, a senior State Department official says.

"The basic objective of the trade mission is to make significant progress on increasing U.S. private-sector investment in power infrastructure projects that have the potential to increase overall development in these countries by significantly reducing the cost of doing business," Jim Wilson, senior coordinator for trade promotion and commercial policy in the department's Bureau of African Affairs, said in a recent interview.

The trade mission specifically hopes to determine "if U.S. power developers would be able to invest in generating facilities and fuel supply that help address the needs in Africa for reliable, affordable electricity," Wilson said.

The February 6-17 trade mission is being led by Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson. The trip will include a brief stop in Kenya. The Corporate Council on Africa is co-sponsoring the mission.

Wilson said that a trade mission of this type is important because of the huge "constraints that the lack of reliable electricity place on African development. It's almost like a tax that is paid where companies in Nigeria or Mozambique either can't get reliable power or have to pay a very high price with backup generators and expensive diesel fuel to be able to have security of supply."

If African businesses could have access to power as companies in the United States and Britain do, they could produce products that would be more affordable for local markets and for export abroad, he said.

Each country selected for this trade mission presents significant opportunities for investment in electric power. The four governments have all been taking measures to make the regulatory and legal environments in their nations more attractive to private investors, Wilson said.

"It's not easy for a private company to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in a project that is going to have a 20-year-plus life cycle," Wilson said. "And there are political sensitivities everywhere to prices for basic public services like electricity, for example."

Past impediments to energy-infrastructure development by the private sector in Africa have included uncertain legal and regulatory regimes, inconsistent support of production costs that was reflected in mandated electricity prices, and the insufficient availability of long-term financing from U.S. banks.

This trade mission aims to bring companies "to take a look again at the changing environment in Africa, see the improvements, see what's now possible to do that might not have been possible to do two years ago or five years ago," Wilson said.

Wilson said the State Department established specific criteria for participation by potential private investors: "The companies needed to be in a position to move forward with investments in energy infrastructure in Africa, whether they be investments in the power-generation sector, which most of the companies are, or fuel supply, which is another important requirement for meeting the challenge of providing reliable, affordable electricity for Africa."

Wilson added that there are several other African nations that the delegation would like to have included on this mission, but there is insufficient time.

Joining Carson in the U.S. delegation are representatives of Anadarko Petroleum, Caterpillar, Chevron, Energy International, General Electric, Pike Enterprises, Strategic Urban Development Alliance LLC, Symbion and Zanbato Group.

In addition, Wanda Felton, vice chair of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and representatives from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the State Department's Bureau of Energy Resources will participate in the mission.

Kellerhars, Jr., M.D. (2012). U.S. energy trade mission to visit four nations. United States Department of State. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201202020756.html

Join the Journey

Theresa Charles

CEO/Founder

Cultural Compass

Call: 678-699-3357