The response to Hurricane Katrina was “a national failure” and “an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare”, according to details from the first of three anticipated reports into the disaster, published yesterday.

The report, by a committee of Republicans in the House of Representatives, declared that “all the little pigs built houses of straw”.

The report, entitled A Failure of Initiative, is due to be published on Wednesday. It criticises the homeland security chief, Michael Chertoff, saying his detachment from events led him to implement federal emergency response measures “late, ineffectively or not at all”.

It finds that President George Bush was the one person who could have cut through the bureaucratic paralysis crippling the federal response to last summer’s hurricane. “Earlier presidential involvement could have speeded the response,” it says.

It adds that the White House did not “substantiate, analyse and act on the information at its disposal”. It also questions why the “untrained” Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) chief, Michael Brown, was selected to lead the response to the disaster, noting that he and the US military set up rival chains of command.
guardian.co.uk

Mainstream press left out the role played by black communities

“They are focusing on how many slaves the Church owned, what properties the Church owned and how many slaves it owned, reducing the role of Christianity in the chattel enslavement of Africans
Dr William Lez Henry, Sociologist and Cultural Historian”

Reports last week in the mainstream press made quite a meal of the Church of England (C of E) apology over its participation in what Europeans refer to as ‘The Transatlantic Slave Trade.’

Using emotional quotes from Archbishop Rowan Williams referring to “the shame and the sinfulness of our predecessors” and its “repentance and apology” not being “words alone”; once again the British establishment has tried to claim the moral high ground on the issue of ‘The African Holocaust.’

Nowhere in any of the news reports the mainstream media offered up was there any mention of the involvement of reparations movements, campaign groups and church leaders from the black communities.

Black Britain learnt from Kofi Mawuli Klu, joint co-ordinator of Rendezvous of Victory (ROV) an anti-slavery, African led abolitionist heritage organisation, of the events that led to the C of E’s apology.

He explained that after the ROV’s People’s University of Lifelong Learning launch in 2004, (the year that the United Nations designated as the International Year for the Commemoration of the Struggle against Slavery) supported by Home Office Minister Fiona Mc Taggart; the C of E invited ROV to be part of a working group for its 2007 project.

Mawuli Klu then became part of the Executive of the Working Committee established by representatives of church groups. Anti-Slavery International (ASI) was also brought on board. He told black Britain:

“ROV was there as an African led community organisation so that the views of black communities could be fed into the discussions and debates.”

According to Mawuli Klu, the first meetings revealed that: “The only people the Church of England seemed to know about were: William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, John Newton and all the white abolitionists.”
blackbritain.co.uk

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – U.S. missionaries accused by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of espionage have been forced from their remote outposts among jungle tribes by a government order, the final pair leaving Thursday after years of evangelical work.

The New Tribes Mission flew those two out of the rain forest to regroup with other missionaries in the eastern city of Puerto Ordaz. There they will decide what to do next: leave the country or continue with a legal battle seeking to overturn the government’s order to expel them from indigenous areas by Sunday.

Most of the group’s missionaries are Americans.
guardian.co.uk

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, promised to strengthen military ties with north Africa yesterday in a visit that highlighted the growing importance of the region in Washington’s battle against radical Islamists.

Mr Rumsfeld told authorities in Algiers that he wanted to increase military and counter-terrorism cooperation with them. Pentagon officials admitted that arms sales were a possibility.

“We look forward to strengthening our military-to-military relationship and our cooperation in counter-terrorism,” Mr Rumsfeld said during a joint appearance with Algeria’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika. In what officials said was the first ever visit by a US defence secretary to Algeria, Mr Rumsfeld avoided saying whether future cooperation was dependent on political reforms.
guardian.co.uk

Thawra Youssef is familiar with this aspect of Iraqi history. She grew up in a Basra neighborhood called Hakaka, where many of the dark-skinned people lived at the time of the rebellion. Her mother, who worked as a maid in the homes of one of the wealthiest lightskinned families in Basra, told her that her family came from Kenya and that their family had arrived in Iraq through slavery.

“Our whole family used to talk about how our roots are from Africa,” says Youssef, who straightens her tightly curled hair and wears it in a soft bouffant. Sometimes she will drape a see through black scarf over her head when she steps out into town.

Youssef, a graduate student at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts, is writing a dissertation about African-inspired healing ceremonies that she says are held exclusively within the Black community where she grew up.

For the past two years she has researched the ceremonies, which were orally passed down and are held to cure the sick, the shtanga, and one called Nouba, which takes its name from the Nubian region in the Sudan. There are also ceremonies for happy occasions, such as weddings, and to remember the dead.
24hourscholar.com

…How many citizens have any real idea of what the Enlightenment really was? French philosophers did take humanity forward by recognising no external authority of any kind, but there was a darker side. Voltaire: “Blacks are inferior to Europeans, but superior to apes.” Hume: “The black might develop certain attributes of human beings, the way the parrot manages to speak a few words.” There is much more in a similar vein from their colleagues. It is this aspect of the Enlightenment that appears to be more in tune with some of the generalised anti-Muslim ravings in the media.

What I find interesting is that these demonstrations and embassy-burnings are a response to a tasteless cartoon. Did the Danish imam who travelled round the Muslim world pleading for this show the same anger at Danish troops being sent to Iraq? The occupation of Iraq has costs tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Where is the response to that or the tortures in Abu Ghraib? Or the rapes of Iraqi women by occupying soldiers? Where is the response to the daily deaths of Palestinians? These are the issues that anger me. Last year Afghans protested after a US marine in Guantánamo had urinated on the Qur’an. It was a vile act and there was an official inquiry. The marine in question explained that he had been urinating on a prisoner and a few drops had fallen accidentally on the Qur’an – as if pissing on a prisoner (an old imperial habit) was somehow more acceptable.

Yesterday, footage of British soldiers brutalising and abusing civilians in Iraq – beating teenagers with batons until they pass out, posing for the camera as they kick corpses – was made public. No one can seriously imagine these are the isolated incidents the Ministry of Defence claims; they are of course the norm under colonial occupations. Who will protest now – the media pundits defending the Enlightenment or Muslim clerics frothing over the cartoons?
guardian.co.uk

…Mr Gil-Robles said he was “shocked by the lamentable state” of certain police cells where “detainees even sleep on the floor and are not given any mattress or bed linen”. He said it was a “sad fact” that chronic overcrowding and a lack of money in French prisons “deprived a large number of detainees from exercising their basic rights” and made their incarceration a “double punishment”.

…Le Parisien said the council’s report also criticised the fact that prisoners who misbehaved could be placed in punishment cells for up to 45 days.

…Mr Gil-Robles told France-Info radio: “For me the most important thing is that the prison route is not a route of vengeance but a route to obtain justice – to give criminals a punishment and afterwards allow them to be reintegrated into society … In France that is not possible.”

Mr Gil-Robles had harsh words for France’s immigration policy and the announcement last year by the French interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, of a 50% rise in expulsions of illegal immigrants.

“The very fact of announcing quotas is a shocking practice,” Mr Gil-Robles said.
guardian.co.uk

A United Nations inquiry has called for the immediate closure of America’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre and the prosecution of officers and politicians “up to the highest level” who are accused of torturing detainees.

The UN Human Rights Commission report, due to be published this week, concludes that Washington should put the 520 detainees on trial or release them.

The Red Cross monitors the centre at Guantanamo monthly
It calls for the United States to halt all “practices amounting to torture”, including the force-feeding of inmates who go on hunger strike.

The report wants the Bush administration to ensure that all allegations of torture are investigated by US criminal courts, and that “all perpetrators up to the highest level of military and political command are brought to justice”.
telegraph.co.uk

JERUSALEM – Hamas derided the United States and Israel on Tuesday following reports they were exploring ways to topple the militants’ incoming government.

Israeli security officials said they were looking at ways to force Hamas from power, and were focusing on an economic squeeze that would prompt Palestinians to clamor for the return of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ ousted Fatah Party. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

But Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said, “There is no such plan.”

The New York Times, citing anonymous U.S. and Israeli officials, reported Tuesday that the United States and Israel were considering a campaign to starve the Palestinian Authority of cash so Palestinians would grow disillusioned with Hamas and bring down a Hamas government.
news.yahoo.com

While the international community busied itself with the disengagement from the Gaza Strip last summer, Israel completed another cut-off process, which went unnoticed; In 2005, Israel completed a process of sealing off the eastern sector of the West Bank, including the Jordan Rift Valley, from the remainder of the West Bank.

Some 2,000,000 Palestinians, residents of the West Bank, are prohibited from entering the area, which constitutes around one-third of the West Bank, and includes the Jordan Rift, the area of the Dead Sea shoreline and the eastern slopes of the West Bank mountains.

Military sources told Haaretz that the moves have been “security measures” adopted by the Israel Defense Forces and have no connection to any political intentions whatsoever.

Restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley were imposed at the start of the intifada and were gradually expanded. But the sweeping prohibition regarding entry into the area by Palestinians was imposed after security responsibility in Jericho was given back to the Palestinians on March 16, 2005.
haaretz.com