Two hundred years after Anglican reformers helped to abolish the slave trade, the Church of England has apologised for profiting from it.

Last night the General Synod acknowledged complicity in the trade after hearing that the Church had run a slave plantation in the West Indies and that individual bishops had owned hundreds of slaves.

It voted unanimously to apologise to the descendents of the slaves after an emotional debate in which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, urged the Church to share the “shame and sinfulness of our predecessors”.

The Church’s missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Foreign Parts, owned the Codrington plantation in Barbados and slaves had the word “Society” branded on their chests with red-hot irons.
telegraph.co.uk

Israel’s Shin Bet security service chief has said his country may come to regret the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, because strong dictatorship is preferable to the present chaos in Iraq. Yuval Diskin, who was secretly recorded talking to teenage Jewish settlers preparing for military service, also said Israel’s judicial system discriminates against Arabs.
guardian.co.uk

Skeletons are being removed from the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to make way for a $150m (£86m) “museum of tolerance” being built for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre.

Palestinians have launched a legal battle to stop the work at what was the city’s main Muslim cemetery. The work is to prepare for the construction of a museum which seeks the promotion of “unity and respect among Jews and between people of all faiths”.
independent.co.uk

U.S. Jews block conference set to include anti-Israel professors
Pressure exerted by Jewish organizations in the United States has succeeded in preventing an American Association of University Professors (AAUP) conference, in which a number of supporters of an academic boycott on Israel were scheduled to take part.

The AAUP announced Thursday that it was indefinitely postponing the conference, which was scheduled to take place in Italy next week.

Some twenty professors were invited to take part in the conference, less than half of whom openly oppose an academic boycott of Israel.

yup. tolerance

Church of England Takes a Position Against Israel
(IsraelNN.com) The Church of England voted earlier this week to divest from all holdings which the Church deems support Israel’s presence in Yesha areas.

The resolution is to “heed the call from our sister church, the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, for morally responsible investment in the Palestinian occupied territories and, in particular, to disinvest from companies profiting from the illegal occupation, such as Caterpillar Inc., until they change their policies.”
bulldozers like the one that crushed Rachel Corrie and doubtless many others

The US government is developing a massive computer system that can collect huge amounts of data and, by linking far-flung information from blogs and e-mail to government records and intelligence reports, search for patterns of terrorist activity.

The system – parts of which are operational, parts of which are still under development – is already credited with helping to foil some plots. It is the federal government’s latest attempt to use broad data-collection and powerful analysis in the fight against terrorism. But by delving deeply into the digital minutiae of American life, the program is also raising concerns that the government is intruding too deeply into citizens’ privacy.
csmonitor.com

LOS ANGELES – Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said Thursday he was blindsided by President Bush’s announcement of new details on a purported 2002 hijacking plot aimed at a downtown skyscraper, and described communication with the White House as “nonexistent.”

“I’m amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels,” the mayor told The Associated Press. “I don’t expect a call from the president — but somebody.”
yahoo.com

9/11 Special – Dutch Television Documentary
“Was 9/11 more than just an attack? Could the Bush administration have had anything to gain from the attack? Two prominent European politicians, Michael Meacher and Andreas von Bülow, express their serious doubts about the official version of the 9/11 story.”
Two former Government Ministers have grave doubts about what Americans call “the war on terrorism”

Michael Meacher – MP – Former UK Government Minister. “The war on terror is bogus”

Andreas Von Bulow, Former German Secretary Of Defense “The official story is so inadequate and far fetched that there must be a different one”

…On its two-month, 7,000-mile journey around Italy, it has been booed and jeered. Attempts have even been made to block its path, wrestle it from torchbearers and extinguish it.

Since it arrived from Athens on December 8, it has become the focus of protest by anti-globalisation groups, those angry at a planned high-speed train link, and people bitter about the games’ commercialisation. What should have been a symbol of celebration has become a sign of controversy. Even by Italian standards, with a strong anarchic tradition, the furore has been unusual.
guardian.co.uk

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – A spokesman for former Haitian President Rene Preval said Wednesday that unconfirmed early results showed him with a wide lead in the country’s presidential race — even though many ballots were still being carried in from remote polling places by plane, truck and mule.

The claim from Preval’s team could not be verified, and the first official results were not expected to be released until Thursday, said Jacques Bernard, director general of Haiti’s electoral council. Final results could come on Friday or Saturday, he said.

Tuesday’s elections were the first since the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a bloody revolt two years ago, and officials said collecting and tabulating the results would take several days.

But some polling stations posted unconfirmed local results outside. These showed strong early support for Preval, a shy and soft-spoken 63-year-old agronomist widely supported by Haiti’s poor masses.

At a large polling center near the huge slum of Cite Soleil, unconfirmed results taped to large columns inside showed Preval winning about 90 percent of the votes cast there.

Across the capital in Petionville, home to many of Haiti’s wealthiest citizens as well the poor Haitians who serve them, Preval took slightly more than 70 percent of the vote at another polling station, according to posted results.

Preval’s political adviser, Bob Manuel, said preliminary calculations show the former president having won 67 percent of the nationwide vote, with 16 percent of votes counted.

Preval himself was in his rural hometown of Marmelade and wasn’t speaking to reporters. He emerged from his family home once, briefly dancing along to a band playing outside and waving to supporters.

Bernard said only a small percentage of balloting results had reached the capital, slowing the vote count. “By Friday night or Saturday noon, we will have a clear idea of the results of the election,” he told reporters

Haitians eagerly awaited the first returns Wednesday as scores of U.N. peacekeepers patrolled quiet streets in the capital, Port-au-Prince. Tuesday’s voting, guarded by a 9,000-strong U.N. force, was fraught with early delays but largely free of the violence that has plagued the capital since Aristide fled.

The leading contender among the 33 presidential candidates was Preval, the only elected leader in Haitian history to finish his term. He is also a former ally of Aristide, who remains in exile in South Africa.
yahoo.com

Going to Great Lengths to Vote in Haiti
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Haitians wearied by spiraling unrest and gang violence turned out in huge numbers Tuesday to choose a new president and parliament and perhaps put their impoverished Caribbean homeland on the path to some prosperity and peace.

Clutching her newly printed voter identification card, Marie Vincent, 20, a resident of Cite Soleil, the Haitian capital’s most notorious slum, arrived at her polling station at 3:30 a.m., 2 1/2 hours before it was scheduled to open. Late in the morning, she was still waiting.

“I’m ready to spend the entire day here,” Vincent said. “Because we want change in the country.”

“We have tens of thousands of people outside some polling stations. Huge numbers,” said David Wimhurst, a spokesman for the United Nations, which provided security and technical aid for the election.

With the State Department’s unwarranted recent expulsion of Venezuelan diplomat Jeny Figueredo from her post as second-in-command of that country’s Washington’s embassy, its conflict with Caracas has reached its most stressful phase yet. Building on a diplomatic tug of war over a widening range of issues, including Washington’s efforts to frustrate the Chávez government’s desire to purchase upgraded military equipment for its modestly equipped armed forces, the quid-pro-quo expulsion of the Venezuelan official was just one more instance where the Bush administration calculatedly poured salt on the deepening wound affecting the two nations’ relations. This step followed Venezuela’s public accusation that U.S. naval attaché John Correa was engaged in espionage, which led to his ejection from the country (Venezuela had no reason to invent this claim and Washington, every reason to deny it). The scorched earth diplomacy with which Washington responded, made certain that Washington’s strategy was more that just one more hostile sortie against an admittedly abrasive Chávez. Hemispheric public opinion now deserves to be sharply focused on the expulsion issue as an example of using diplomacy to worsen, rather than improve, relations between the two growing antagonists.
coha.org

BOGOTA, Colombia — A founder of Colombia’s anti-rebel paramilitary movement laid down his weapon Tuesday, ending nearly three decades of outlawed jungle warfare.

Ramon Isaza was joined by 990 fighters from his Medio Magdalena bloc of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC, handing over 754 weapons, 15 vehicles and abundant munitions.

The ceremony in Puerto Triunfo, 90 miles northwest of Bogota, brings to more than 22,000 the number of right-wing fighters to demobilize under a peace deal between the AUC and the government, Peace Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo said in a statement.

In exchange for promising to never again take up arms, each rank-and-file fighter will receive a monthly stipend of about $180 and amnesty from prosecution for rebellion and other crimes. AUC leaders such as Isaza will serve a maximum of eight years in jail if found guilty of any heinous crimes, including massacres.
latimes.com

t the World Bank, they are sometimes referred to as “the entourage,” “the palace guard,” or “the circle of trust,” because of their close relationship with bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz. They are Americans with ties to the Bush administration, and the immense clout they wield has sparked a furor in the ranks of the giant development leader.

Their roles have rekindled fears among the staff that Wolfowitz, the former U.S. deputy defense secretary, is bent on imposing a conservative agenda on the bank. Wolfowitz has repeatedly sought to dispel such concerns since he became bank president in June. He has pledged his commitment to the bank’s mission of alleviating poverty, and his unassuming manner has charmed many staffers who were averse to his role as a chief strategist of the U.S.-Iraq war.

But after months of seeming tranquillity, the bank is stewing with discontent over Wolfowitz’s choice of several confidantes with administration or Republican connections to serve in key bank posts. The most influential is Robin Cleveland, who worked closely with Wolfowitz when she was a senior official at the Office of Management and Budget and is now his top adviser. Two others are Kevin S. Kellems, a former spokesman for Vice President Cheney who last month became the bank’s chief communications strategist; and Suzanne Rich Folsom, a former Republican activist named last month to head the Department of Institutional Integrity, the bank’s internal watchdog unit. Kellems also holds the title of senior adviser to the president, and Folsom has the title of counselor to the president.
washingtonpost.com