VIENNA, Nov. 24 – The International Atomic Energy Agency delayed taking any action on Iran’s nuclear program on Thursday, even as the British delegate, speaking for Europe, said that a process described in documents offered to Iran, which came to light last week, “has no other application other than the production of nuclear warheads.”

The widely anticipated move to delay consideration of sending Iran’s case to the United Nations Security Council was aimed at reopening negotiations on a Russian proposal for a compromise which would allow Iran to enrich uranium, but only in Russia and under strict controls.

The charges made by Peter Jenkins, the British delegate to the atomic energy agency, refer to a report issued last week by the agency’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, indicating that Iran recently turned over documents showing that in 1987 a Pakistani nuclear expert offered it equipment for machining enriched uranium into a hemispherical form normally used in nuclear weapons.
nytimes.com

1987? OFFERED equipment?

Gingrich sees Iran threat to U.S. like Nazi Germany
WASHINGTON – The threat posed to the national security of the United States by Iran was likened only to the one posed by Nazi Germany in the 1930s, by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who suggested Tehran could be planning for a pre-emptive nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack on America that would turn a third or more of the country “back to a 19th century level of development.”

Gingrich made the stunning statements, which echo warning of other congressional leaders and national security experts, in testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee last week.

The law office of Douglas R. Beaty sits in a small business park near the city’s more prosperous suburbs. Nothing on the front door says anything about the CIA or airplanes.

But Beaty’s law office figures in an investigation into whether the CIA is secretly flying terrorism suspects to third countries for questioning and perhaps torture.

Spanish investigators say at least two planes that may have been used for such flights and made stopovers on the island of Mallorca were operated by Stevens Express Leasing Inc.

Tennessee state records show that Stevens Express Leasing has the same business address as Beaty’s law office. And Beaty is listed as a registered agent and assistant secretary for Stevens Express Leasing.

In a recent report on the CIA’s use of “extraordinary rendition,” as the practice of moving suspects to third countries is called, The New York Times identified Stevens Express Leasing as one of several companies believed to be fronts for the agency’s air operations.
sfgate.com

AFRICAN intellectuals meeting in the coastal city of Vargas, Venezuela have vowed to defend the country’s Bolivarian Revolution, stating that the revolution is also a patrimony of Africa and the rest of the world.

In their final declaration after five days of discussions around the geopolitical relations between Africa and Latin America, the more than 50 intellectuals from different African countries stated that they believed that the most vital task at hand was to defend the Bolivarian Revolution, led by President Hugo Chavez.

They stated their support was in view of the revolution’s broad social and humanistic scope and its relevance to the integration and to create conditions necessary to provide opportunities for all Venezuelans.

“The very nature of the Bolivarian Revolution and its genuiness has given rise to hatred and to the resulting threat from the government of the United States of America,” the declaration stated. “In view of the above, we, the intellectuals of Africa, have determined and indeed, shall make every effort to disseminate information on the social achievements of the Bolivarian Revolution and shall condemn the threat of any possible attack by the United States against Venezuela and attempt to assassinate its leader, Hugo Chavez.”
allafrica.com

Elliot Adams of Veterans For Peace appeared on The Alex Jones Show today and passed on some positive news in the light of today’s attack on the First Amendment where peaceful protesters were arrested in Crawford Texas.

Adams said that as the protesters were being taken away many police officers gave them the peace sign as a show of solidarity.

Also, when protesters were previously arrested and fingerprinted in Washington DC, police made it clear that they support the cause of the protesters.
prisonplanet.com

CHINCHA, Peru – There is a saying in Peru that everyone has a bit of either “Inga” or “Mandinga” in them, meaning that all Peruvians have some indigenous (Inca) or African blood.

But the descendants of the tens of thousands of black slaves brought by ship to this coastal city south of Lima in the 16th and 17th centuries point out that this oft-quoted proverb is not reflected in the country’s political and social life.

“If it’s true that we all have some Inga or Mandinga in us, then why has there never been an Afro-descendant president in Peru in the 184 years since it became an independent republic? Why has someone of our color never been the head of the navy? Why are there no television programs made by descendants of the Mandingas and aimed at them exclusively?” asked the director of Peru’s Centre for Ethnic Development, Osvaldo Bilbao.
blackcommentator.com

The most effective weapon of the Native American historian and activist Vine Deloria, who has died aged 72, was the scathing and sardonic humour in his accounts of white treachery towards his people. He also knew that its novelty helped him to destroy myths, a major objective.
Widely regarded as the 20th century’s most important scholar and political voice in Native American affairs, Deloria was at his most formidable when demolishing cliches and stereotypes, and their associated thinking. Anthropologists were an important, and unexpected, enemy, and they suffered such an onslaught in Deloria’s first book – for alleged laziness and limited thinking – that, in later references to their own scholarship, they would ask jokingly if it was AD, or after Deloria.

An equal target were Christian missionaries, whom Deloria attacked from a secure position, having undergone four years at a seminary and taken a degree in theology – and later, in law. He once said missionaries had “fallen on their knees and prayed for the Indians” before rising to “fall on the Indians and prey on their land”.
The book that made his name was Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969), described by one scholar as “the single most influential book ever written on Indian affairs”. Part of its success was because of Deloria’s views. He wrote: “We have brought the white man a long way in 500 years … from a childish search for mythical cities of gold and fountains of youth to the simple recognition that lands are essential for human existence.”

In his next book, We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf (1970), he claimed that the destruction wrought by corporate values and its technology was so damaging that a return to Native American tribal standards and culture could be viewed as salvation.

His hatred of General George Custer, until then the white American hero and martyr of the Little Big Horn battle – his “last stand” – led Deloria to more provocative language still. He described the officer as the “Adolf Eichmann of the plains”, whose soldiers were tools “not defending civilisation; they were crushing another society”.

Deloria wrote 20 books, edited others, and published his memoirs and a two-volume set of US-Native American treaties, all of which make devastating reading because of how many agreements were broken by lies and cheating. He also opposed the anthropological theory that Native Americans only arrived on the American continent from Asia via the Bering Straits – a critique gaining in credibility – and argued that, unlike African Americans, Native Americans did not seek to be equals in US society. They wanted no part of it.

Among his most important works were: Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence (1974); A Better Day for Indians (1976); The Metaphysics of Modern Existence (1979); A Brief History of the Federal Responsibility to the American Indian (1979); American Indians, American Justice (1983); The Nations Within: The Past and Future of American Indian Sovereignty (1984); American Indian Policy in the Twentieth Century (1985); God is Red: A Native View of Religion (1994); Red Earth, White Lies (1995); and For This Land: Writings on Religion in America (1999).

Deloria was born into a distinguished Sioux family, the son of an Episcopalian clergyman in one of America’s poorest areas, then and now, the town of Martin, South Dakota, near the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux reservation. After a spell in the US marine corps, he got a master’s degree from the Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago, in 1963, before taking a law degree from the University of Colorado in 1970. He taught at the University of Arizona from 1978 until 1990, when he returned to Colorado to teach history, political science, law and ethnic and religious studies.

From 1964 to 1967, Deloria was an executive officer of the National Conference of American Indians, where, before the Custer book made him famous, he was a leading spokesman on native affairs in Washington. He often testified before the US Congress at times when civil rights and ethnic identity movements were causing volatile dissension and change in America.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and a daughter.
guardian.co.uk

Abuse payout for native Canadians
Canada has offered to pay more than C$2bn (US$1.7bn) compensation to indigenous people who were abused at government-funded residential schools.

Some 80,000 people who attended the schools over decades are eligible.

About 15,000 of them have begun legal claims against the government and Church, which ran the schools – to be dropped if they accept the deal.

The draft package must still be agreed by the courts but has been welcomed by indigenous leaders.

Thousands of former pupils at the 130 boarding schools have made allegations of physical and sexual abuse spanning seven decades.

Beijing says 70% of China’s rivers and lakes are polluted – and more than 100 cities suffer from extreme water shortages.

The Qingshuixi provides a classic example of what China’s authorities are up against.

…”Sixteen million tones of domestic waste water and one million tonnes of industrial waste water flow from the Qingshuixi into the Jialing River annually, ” said Wu Dengming, president of Chongqing’s Green Volunteer League.

Further downstream, just 3km from the source, the Qingshuixi weaves around Shangqiao, where Chongqing’s industry begins.

It is easy to see the oils, acids and electrolytes of the local mechanical engineering companies. Unofficial tests indicate high levels of coliform bacteria.

“This is the first big contamination,” explained Wu Dengming. “It’s so easy to see the pollution. Qingshuixi used to be called the clear stream – not any more.”

By the time it reaches the Jialing, when the main river level is high, the Qingshuixi’s outlet is a bubbling, putrid pool of defecation and chemicals.
bbc.co.uk

A new study on domestic violence reveals that it is the most common form of violence in women’s lives – much more so than assault or rape.
The study by the World Health Organization surveyed 24,000 women in 10 countries, among them Japan and Brazil, Ethiopia and New Zealand.

It reveals that domestic violence is widespread but hidden, and that it has a serious impact on women’s health.

It also reveals just how common domestic violence is.

Wherever you live in the world, if you are a woman and you are attacked, the most likely perpetrator is your partner.

The World Health Organization hopes this study will put domestic violence in the spotlight so that it can be treated for what it is – a major threat to women’s health.

Levels of violence vary widely around the world. In Japan, 13%of women surveyed reported abuse; in Ethiopia, that figure rose to 50%.
bbc.co.uk

No end to women murders in Mexico
Mexico’s human rights ombudsman, Jose Luis Soberanes, said that 28 women had been murdered so far in 2005.

He called for a co-ordinated and tough effort by all levels of government to prevent more deaths in the city.

More than 300 women have been murdered in Ciudad Juarez. There is no generally accepted motive for the killings.

They have been variously attributed to serial killers, drug cartels and domestic violence. Some are believed to have been sexually motivated.

Many of the victims were poor working mothers employed in factories in the industrial city on the border with Texas.

Liberian leader ‘to boost women’
Liberia’s president-elect has pledged to make women across the world “proud”, after becoming Africa’s first elected female head of state.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf said her election victory had “shattered the glass ceiling theory”.

Nepal’s wife-sharing custom fades
…Almost every household here is polyandrous – meaning that the family’s sons have jointly married a sole woman.

Tsering Yeshi is a farmer, while Pema Tsering has a government job. Their wife says polyandry works well in this beautiful but harsh land.

“My husbands can take it in turns to go out for business, so I’m happy,” she says. “If there were only one, he’d be under pressure to go out and trade, and there’d be no one to help at home.”

They have three children between them. As in most polyandrous households, although they know who belongs to which father, the distinction matters little.

Once a C-Section, Always a C-Section?
Around the country, pregnant women are facing similar problems as an increasing number of hospitals refuse to let women try labor after an earlier C-section, citing concerns about safety and being sued if something goes wrong.

The trend is helping push the Caesarean rate to record highs, according to data released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly one-third of births are now C-sections, up 40 percent from 1996. The rise is driven by a number of factors, including more women opting for surgical deliveries of their first babies. But another reason is the 67 percent drop since then in the number of women attempting labor for subsequent pregnancies.

sick

…European Union ministers are discussing proposals to slash subsidies for sugar exports from African, Caribbean and Pacific states by 39%.

The move follows a World Trade Organisation ruling that the above-market prices paid to European sugar producers – and to those in former colonies which have special access to EU markets – constituted unfair trade.

But the 18 sugar producers among the 79-strong group of ACP countries – including Mauritius, Swaziland, Fiji, Mozambique, Barbados and Kenya – say their developing economies are ill-equipped to deal with the cuts and are warning of social upheaval if the proposed reforms go ahead.

“We want a reform that is just and fair and not a reform which is going to have such a violent disruption to our economies,” says Arvin Boolell, Mauritius’ agriculture minister and spokesperson for ACP sugar-producing countries.

We have never gone around with a bowl in our hands… and yet we are now being penalised for our efforts
Navin Ramgoolam, Mauritius Prime Minister

“The effect of the price cut is going to be so devastating that we are talking of massive poverty and social upheaval,” he says, adding that many ACP countries are net food importers who will not be able to provide basic staples and medicine if the reforms go ahead.
bbc.co.uk

Ah the wonders of ‘free trade.’

…Former police ombudsman Professor Julita Lemgruber has told BBC World Service’s Assignment programme that, in the state of Rio alone, the police killed 983 people last year. The figure is similar for Sao Paulo.

…The authorities in Rio dismiss these allegations. They say most people killed by the police are criminals, shot in military-style raids.

…But executions by death squads appear to be a traditional feature of Rio policing. While the authorities no longer give them official backing, evidence from the city morgues suggests they continue.

“Around 60% of the bodies of people that were killed by the police had more than six shots,” explains Professor Lemgruber.

“Most of them [were shot] in the head and in the back – mostly executions.”

Brazil is a deeply religious nation. Leaders of the Catholic Church have spoken out against corruption in politics and in the police force.

And among the congregations in the favelas, there is growing anger. They are determined to fight for change.

“You see children playing in the streets, and the people all happy – but when the cops come here – pop pop pop – some people are killed,” says one resident, Paolo Cesar.

“They kill everybody. They got bad cops – bad cops.”
bbc.co.uk