Birth Pools Seized by FDA in Portland, OR

According to Barbara Harper, author of Gentle Birth Choices and founder of Waterbirth International, the FDA has seized a shipping container of AquaBorn birthing pools at a dock in Portland, Oregon, and have ordered agents to “inspect and destroy.”

“They claim they are unregistered medical equipment, but they are not providing a way or means to get them registered. In other words, if the medical authorities can’t stop waterbirth, then just have the FDA take away the birth pools,” she explains in a lengthy discussion that began yesterday.

While birth pools are imported to Canada under the category “paddling pools” and some are imported here in the U.S. under the category “sitz baths,” they have no legal standing as medical equipment at this time.

But why would they? They are often purchased or rented for personal use in private homes. Barbara’s conversation with an FDA official may shed some light on this as a clash of perspectives. She explains that she was told, “Pregnancy is an illness and birth is a medical event. Therefore, a pool that a woman gives birth in should be classified as medical equipment.” So what about our toilets, our bathtubs, our showers? Kiddie pools, horse troughs, hot tubs? Oh, and what about the fact that pregnancy is *not* an illness?

What the FDA Wants

Martha Blackmore Althouse, owner and manager of Waterbirth Solutions in Beaverton, Oregon, has been interacting with attorneys and the FDA on the issue. She explains:

The FDA is requiring a 510(k) – PreMarket Authorization – to be turned in for each Inflatable Birth Pool. The problem is that there is no Pre-existing Medical Device – “Predicate” – already approved by the FDA. Hence, potential of years of clinical trials and legal fees that can cost up to a million or more. Obviously not feasible.

One potential loop hole is a “PreAmendment Status” product. If there was anyone in the US using birth pools (yes, troughs, tubs of any kind) prior to May 1978, we can get “Birth Pools” grandfathered in to the FDA as an approved Medical Device. Waterbirth would have permanent legitimacy and could not be questioned any further.

So it seems that there could be a solution to this, but not before enduring a long process full of red tape and bureaucracy.

FDA Returns Birth Pools, Warns ‘We’ll be back’ 

Two of the four major U.S. distributors of birth tubs have recently received warning letters from the FDA, thus halting their sales and shipments. A shipping container of birth tubs was temporarily held at U.S. Customs in Portland, OR earlier this week, and underwent FDA inspection before being released to the distributors.

But Barbara says the FDA made it clear that even though the distributors were allowed to take their shipments to their own warehouses, the FDA is still in control of the property. She says their attitude was, ‘We own it. You can’t sell it, you can’t ship it.’ They came in, inspected and counted the birth tubs, and left with a ‘We’ll be back.’

An Attack on Birth Choices?

The public response to this story seems to have been either along the lines of ‘This is one more battle in the government’s war on water birth and birth choices in general,’ or ‘The FDA is just doing their jobs trying to protect birthing women from harm.’ Perhaps the reality is somewhere in the middle.

“If there is an effort to take away water birth,” Barbara explains, “We have to enlist the hospital midwives and obstetricians. It’s not just about home birth,” since many hospitals are allowing water births these days, with some even using portable, inflatable birthing tubs such as the ones seized in this FDA fiasco.

Scientists discover ‘blizzard’ silting oil on bottom of Gulf

A mixture of oil and dead organic particles may still be falling to the deep bottom of the northern Gulf of Mexico, potentially harming the base of a food web that supports all kinds of sea life, from giant whales and blue-fin tuna to grouper and snapper.

In water thousands of feet deep, scientists have discovered a “dirty blizzard” that deposited more than three inches oil mixed with decayed plant and animal material near the site of the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout last year. A quarter to half of the oil that spewed from the blown wellhead – between 186 million to 227 million gallons – is still unaccounted for and thought to be lingering in the deep sea, said Benjamin Flower, a geological oceanographer with the University of South Florida.”The key is that it is not out-of-sight, out-of-mind. It’s a case where it can affect the base of the food chain,” Flower said.

Flower’s research team took core samples from sediments 1,300 to 3,600 feet deep. Each core was nearly 20 inches thick, representing about 1,000 years of accumulation. More than three inches accumulated in a period of three months, more than three times the rate of normal sedimentation.”This is a unique sedimentation event. It hasn’t happened before in this area,” Flower said.

Scientists concluded the debris accumulated in the months after the spill by examining stable elements within the material. Additionally, the cores — the last was taken in February — captured a small amount of seawater to make sure that the top layer of sediment did not get disturbed.

Scientists have yet to determine how the layers of dead matter formed, but analysis continues. Flower is working in conjunction with five other scientists from FSU and Eckerd College. His project is one of more than a dozen funded by the Florida Institute of Oceanography, which received a $10 million grant from BP last summer for long-term oil spill research.

via Scientists discover ‘blizzard’ silting oil on bottom of Gulf | HeraldTribune.com.

Fukushima water cooling pumps fail at reactor 5, crippled reactors unprepared for storms

Seawater cooling pumps for reactor five at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant have failed, operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepcs) said Sunday, according to the Jiji pressagency.

units 1 - 4 are to the left, unit 5 is identified as "spent fuel dry storage facility" and unit six is "power plant" on the right

The seawater pump was itself an emergency measure, installed after the March earthquake and tsunami that wrecked the nuclear power plant. The cooling system failed late Saturday, although the problem was not made public until Sunday. The government in Tokyo was informed of the problem immediately, however.

Repair crews managed to install a back up pump on Sunday, Tepco said. The cause of the seawater pump failure was not immediately known, but likely to be due to fouling of parts by the seawater, Tepco spokesman Junichi Matsumoto said. Temperatures at the rector core had risen to 93.6 degrees, from 68 degress the previous day. A saafety limit of 100 degrees is needed to maintiain cold shutdown status. Meanwhile, Tepco has admitted that the stricken plant is not sufficiently protected against the oncoming typhoon which has already hit land at Okinawa. There are fears that strong winds and rain could shift radioactive materials further inland from the stricken Fukushima plant.

via Fukushima water cooling pumps fail at reactor 5 – Monsters and Critics.

Storm sparks nuclear fears in Japan 

Typhoon Songda churned northeast along Pacific coasts in southern Japan yesterday, bringing heavy rains and staying on course to hit Tokyo as it weakened.

It was expected to be downgraded to a depression today but could still dump torrential rain on the northeast coast, which was devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

The typhoon, packing winds of up to 160km/h, was about 100km off the southwestern tip of Shikoku island last night, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

It was not clear if it would directly hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant, 200km northeast of the capital.

The typhoon has brought heavy rain to Fukushima, prompting fears that run-off water may wash away radioactive materials into the Pacific. Plant operator Tepco has been pouring synthetic resins over the complex to prevent radioactive deposits from being swept away.

- AFP, new zealand herald

the storm appears to have taken a more southernly course, headed directly towards tokyo. heavy rains were expected at fukushima.

Haitian Mayor’s Office Vows to Destroy All Refugee Camps, Launches Violent Campaign

by: Beverly Bell, Other Worlds

On May 23 and 25, police in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince de­stroyed camps which sheltered people who were otherwise homeless since the earthquake. Police and other municipal workers beat and ar­rested residents, and physically threatened the lives of a human rights lawyer and an advocate who had come to investigate. The mayor of De­lmas announced that this is part of a new campaign to evict internally dis­placed persons [IDPs] from public spaces.

Those whose lodging was destroyed were amongst the million-plus peo­ple who have lived for 16 months under tents, lean-to’s of shredded tarps, or whatever repurposed materials they could scrounge, from blan­kets to tin. Neither the Haitian government nor the international commun­ity has offered any large-scale resettlement options.

Camps Destroyed

On the morning of May 23, two truckloads of police from Delmas, a self-governed district within the metropolitan capital, plus other armed men wearing T-shirts reading “the Delmas mayor’s office in action,” ar­rived at three camps rimming the intersection of Delmas Road and Air­port Road. The security forces and two bulldozers smashed the tents and all the the belongings of an estimated 100 to 200 families, leaving heaps of detritus. Trucks from the mayor’s office hauled away the remains of the survivors’ only possessions.

During the offensive, the Delmas employees arrested three camp re­sidents and beat three community activists who tried to protect the tents, according to eyewitnesses.

On May 25, police turned out at two other IDP camps on Delmas routes 3 and 5 and destroyed tents and belongings there.

Immediately after the destruction, Patrice Florvilus, an attorney with the non-profit group Defenders of the Oppressed, and Reyneld Sanon, an or­ganizer with the right-to-housing coalition Force for Reflection and Ac­tion on Housing [FRAKKA] and with the U.S.-based economic justice group Other Worlds, held a press conference on the scene. Delmas police and workers from the district’s garbage collection office came at the two men with shovels, machetes, and knives. Camp residents formed a security cordon and successfully protected Florvilus and Sanon.

Mayoral Offensive to “Clean” Public Spaces

In an interview with the newspaper Le Nouvelliste after the May 23 op­eration, Mayor Wilson Jeudi of Delmas said, “This is a public place… It can’t remain privatized by a group of people.” In the context of a hyper-concentrated city, much of it still uninhabitable due to rubble from the earthquake, with desperate survivors lodging themselves in virtually any open space, Jeudi offered a new definition of “privatize.” He went on to announce that all public spaces are going to be emptied of residents, leav­ing them “clean.”

Jeudi called the camps “disorderly” and claimed that many of those in the tents did not actually live there. “They just come to do their commer­cial activities [thievery and prostitution] and go back to their homes in the evening.”

The mayor said that no compensation would be offered to those ousted from their temporary shelter. “We were all victims of the earthquake,” he added.

Protest over Illegal Evictions Grows

In Washington on May 25, four U.S. representatives expressed alarm at the illegal expulsions. “Facing hostile conditions, including adverse weather, violence, and disease, shelter and work are the priorities for every displaced Haitian and must not be compromised,” said a statement by Representatives Donald M. Payne, Yvette Clark, Fredericka Wilson, and Maxine Waters.

In Haiti, grassroots organizations and camp committees are sponsoring a week of actions to support IDP’s right to permanent housing and to pro­tection from eviction. The coalition will sponsor a sit-in in front of the national parliament today, May 27, to denounce Mayor Jeudi. On May 30, they will hold a press conference, and on May 31 they will file a legal complaint against the expulsions with the Ministry of Justice. On June 1, the group will hold a demonstration to demand rights for those li­ving in temporary shelter.

Two days before the Delmas camp demolitions began, several hundred displaced people rallied against evictions in Camp Caradeux. The event was part of the International Forum on the Crisis of Housing, held May 19 – 21 and attended by hundreds from at least 35 camp committees and 40 grassroots and non-governmental organizations,from throughout the capital region and five other towns. In the first broad-based gathering led by impacted people since last year’s disaster, Haitians stategized with each other and with activists from housing and land rights movements in Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and the U.S. The objective was how to win the guaranteed right to housing.

Sanon, from the forum’s primary convening group FRAKKA, said in the opening address, “The right to housing is a debt that the government has toward the poor for the responsibility it never took on housing that caused so many people to die.” The toll from the earthquake, an es­timated 225,000 to 300,000, was in large part this high because so many inferior quality houses collapsed.

The final declaration of the forum read in part, “We ask: [1] for the aut­horities to stop the violence that is accompanying evictions…; [2] for the authorities to arrest and bring to justice all those engaged in violence against those living in camps; [and 3] for them to take all measures to help people find permanent housing so they can relocate out of camps.”

Marie Hélène René, a participant of the forum who lost her home in the earthquake and now lives in a camp, said, “We’re so vulnerable. We don’t have anything to stop the flooding now [that the rainy season has arrived]. We don’t know what to do. We congratulate all those who are looking for housing, because we’re really desperate.”

Protection from Eviction a Legal Right

Displaced persons are protected by both Haitian and international law. Article 22 of the 1987 Haitian constitution guarantees “decent housing” for everyone. Article 25 of the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees every individual a “standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including… hous­ing.” Many sections of theGuiding Principles on Internal Displacement of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs declare protection from displacement, notably for victims of disasters. In a ruling last November, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights direc­ted the Haitian government to stop evicting IDPs unless it provided them safe alternative shelter.

Interviewed by phone on May 26, attorney Florvilus said, “The president [Michel Martelly] who just came to power must take up his historic re­sponsibility. He promised people [in his inaugural address] he would take them out of the tents in the camps in six months. He must now clar­ify if this was the formula he had in mind for accomplishing that end. Was the mayor the only one behind this attack?”

Florvilus said, “This destruction of people’s property is a violation of the penal code. The government will have to face the nation and the justice system, if not today, then tomorrow.”

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell resister, gay activist Lt. Dan Choi arrested at pride parade in Moscow

Famed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell resister and gay activist Lt. Dan Choi was arrested at a pride parade in Moscow while the U.S. slept Friday night, along with 30 other people, The Boston Globe reports. In an unusual move, Choi and other arrested people were allowed to keep their cell phones with them while imprisoned. Choi used the opportunity to live-tweet his arrest, and explain what happened.

According to the Globe, the crowd was arrested because they were demonstrating in favor of gay rights. According to Choi’s Twitter feed, however, six people were arrested “for being shirtless” and another was arrested simply “because she beautiful Russian woman.”

While officers led Choi away to the paddywagon, they held a hand over his mouth so he could not be heard. From the paddywagon, Choi tweeted that he was experiencing “right ear ringing small bleeding.”

According to Choi’s Twitter feed, he has been released, and is waiting at the jail until those arrested with him are freed as well.

Video of the arrest has surfaced. Choi, wearing a white shirt, was walking quietly, Chicago activist Andy Thayer, blonde, is seen with him. Suddenly, Russian police swarm them. Watch video of Choi’s arrest below (h/t AmericaBlog) embedded via YouTube.

 

TEPCO officials continue to lie about radiation leaks

As a team from the International Atomic Energy Agency visits Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s crippled nuclear plant today, academics warn the company has failed to disclose the scale of radiation leaks and faces a “massive problem” with contaminated water.

The utility known as Tepco has been pumping cooling water into the three reactors that melted down after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. By May 18, almost 100,000 tons of radioactive water had leaked into basements and other areas of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant. The volume of radiated water may double by the end of December and will cost 42 billion yen ($518 million) to decontaminate, according to Tepco’s estimates.

“Contaminated water is increasing and this is a massive problem,” Tetsuo Iguchi, a specialist in isotope analysis and radiation detection at Nagoya University, said by phone. “They need to find a place to store the contaminated water and they need to guarantee it won’t go into the soil.”

The 18-member IAEA team, led by the U.K.’s head nuclear safety inspector, Mike Weightman, is visiting the Fukushima reactors to investigate the accident and the response. Tepco and Japan’s nuclear regulators haven’t updated the total radiation leakage from the plant since April 12. Tepco has been withholding data on radiation from Dai-Ichi, Goshi Hosono, an adviser to Japan’s prime minister, said at a press briefing today. Hosono said he ordered the utility to check for any data it hasn’t disclosed and release the material as soon as possible.

‘Public Distrust’

“This kind of repetition will invite public distrust,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters today when asked whether the perception that the government has withheld data since the accident is eroding public trust. “This is a grave situation for the entire nuclear energy administration as much as the accident itself is.”

Japan’s nuclear safety agency estimated in April the radiation released from Dai-Ichi to be around 10 percent of that from the accident at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union in 1986, while a Tepco official said at the time the amount may eventually exceed it.

“Tepco knows more than they’ve said about the amount of radiation leaking from the plant,” Jan van de Putte, a specialist in radiation safety trained at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, said yesterday in Tokyo. “What we need is a full disclosure, a full inventory of radiation released including the exact isotopes.”

Leakage

Radiation leakage from Fukushima was raised at a hearing of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee this week. U.S. regulations may need to be changed after the Fukushima meltdown, William Ostendorff, a member of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. The Japanese utility is trying to put the reactors into a cold shutdown, where core temperatures fall below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), within six to nine months. Ostendorff rated the chance of Tepco achieving that goal at six or seven out of 10.

Tepco took more than two months to confirm the meltdowns in three reactors and this week reported the breaches in the containment chambers. The delay in releasing information has led to criticism of Prime Minister Naoto Kan for not doing more to ensure Tepco is keeping the public informed.

‘Fundamentally Incorrect’

“What I told the public was fundamentally incorrect,” Kan said in parliament on May 20, referring to assessments from the government and Tokyo that reactors were stable and the situation was contained not long after March 11. “The government failed to respond to Tepco’s mistaken assumptions and I am deeply sorry.”

Public disagreements emerged this week between Tepco and the government over whether orders were given to halt seawater injection into reactors to cool them the day after the tsunami. Tepco is considering whether to discipline the manager of the Fukushima plant, Masao Yoshida, after he ignored an order to stop pumping seawater, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the company, said yesterday. He was commenting after Kyodo News cited Tepco Vice- President Sakae Muto saying Yoshida will be removed for disobeying the order. Hosono said Yoshida is needed at the plant to contain the crisis.

Blackout

The earthquake and tsunami knocked out power in the Fukushima plant, depriving reactor cooling systems of electricity. Fuel rods overheated, causing fires, explosions and radiation leaks in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl. Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency on April 12 raised the severity rating of the Fukushima accident to 7, the highest on the global scale and the same as Chernobyl. The partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 is rated 5.

The government needs to investigate the total amount of radiation leaked from the plant to ascertain damage to the ocean from contaminated water, said van de Putte, also a nuclear specialist at environmental group Greenpeace International. The group found seaweed and fish contaminated to more than 50 times the 2,000 becquerel per kilogram legal limit for radioactive iodine-131 off the coast of Fukushima during a survey between May 3 and 9. Mol, Belgium-based Nuclear Research Centre and Herouville- Saint-Clair, France-based Association pour le Controle de la Radioactivite dans l’Ouest confirmed they conducted analysis of the samples supplied by Greenpeace.

Radiation Readings

Ascertaining the cumulative volume of radiation emitted by the plant is possible, van de Putte said. “Perhaps the government will speak about this matter after the detailed accident analysis,” the University of Nagoya’s Iguchi said. “It’s possible to calculate this with the time- series plant data recorded in the control room. The most important thing we need to know is the amount of fuel left in the reactor core.”

Tepco is planning to treat the contaminated water at Dai- Ichi with a unit supplied by Areva SA (CEI) from mid-June. The decontamination equipment can process 1,200 tons of water a day, Tepco said. The company had little choice in pouring water on the reactors because the risk of contamination was outweighed by the risk of leaving fuel rods exposed, Peter Burns, a nuclear physicist with 40 years of radiation safety experience, said in an interview.

Burns, the former representative for Australia on the United Nations’ scientific committee on atomic radiation, added pumping in the water “was a desperate measure for desperate times.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at sbiggs3@bloomberg.net; Yuriy Humber in Tokyo at yhumber@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Langan at plangan@bloomberg.net

bradley manning is not guilty

evidence of american war crime unearthed in vietnam

War-era mass grave of North Vietnam soldiers found

HANOI (Vietnam) – AUTHORITIES have found a mass grave of 17 North Vietnamese soldiers killed during the Vietnam War more than 40 years ago.

Nguyen Thanh Minh, a village chief in central Thua Thien Hue province, says the soldiers are believed to have died during an attack by American forces in May 1967.

He said on Thursday that it took authorities nearly two weeks to dig up the remains of the soldiers, none of whom were identified. Excavators also found some personal effects such as rubber sandals, belts and rain coats, as well as knives and grenades.

About 58,000 US troops and 3 million Vietnamese died in the war, which ended in 1975 after North Vietnam’s communist forces overran Saigon, the capital of US-backed South Vietnam. — AP

via War-era mass grave of North Vietnam soldiers found.

Yemen Tribe Seizes Army Camp, Prompting Airstrikes

Fighting that rocked Sanaa for the past five days spread beyond the capital on Friday as Yemeni tribesmen opposed to the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh seized a Republican Guard military camp in battles that left dozens dead and prompted airstrikes by government warplanes, according to a tribal leader.

At least 109 people have been killed by this week’s street battles in Sanaa between security forces loyal to Saleh and fighters from Yemen’s most powerful tribal confederation, the Hashid, which has joined the popular uprising against the longtime ruler. The fighting has hiked fears the country could be thrown into civil war as Saleh clings to power in the face of months of peaceful protests demanding his ouster.

The violence poses a major new threat to Saleh because of the enormous strength of tribal loyalties among Yemenis. The Hashid group’s northern-based tribes number hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, giving the Hashid’s leaders enormous power. It includes Saleh’s own tribe, the Sanhan, and the confederation’s influence is strong enough that around half the Sanhan have abandoned the president since the Hashid leadership announced it was joining the opposition weeks ago.

Friday’s assault on the base in the el-Fardha Nehem region was the most significant escalation yet outside the capital. Tribal fighters stormed the camp, 50 miles northeast of Sanaa, and killed tens of troops including the base commander in the fighting, said Sheik Ali Saif, a leader from the Hashid confederation.

After the Hashid fighters captured the camp, government airplanes bombed them and other forces clashed with them on the ground, he said. At least 12 tribesmen were killed, Saif said.

When two military helicopters landed about 2 miles from the camp to unload reinforcements, tribal fighters assaulted them, capturing the helicopters and a number of troops, and the fighters shot down a third helicopter, Saif said. There was no immediate government comment on the fighting.

Saif said the tribe attacked the base to prevent soldiers there from moving in Sanaa to reinforce government troops there. The Republican Guard is one of the best trained and best equipped forces in Yemen, commanded by one of Saleh’s sons, and has remained loyal to the president even as other military units have joined the movement against his rule.

Yemeni state TV on Friday warned residents in Sanaa neighborhoods that have been engulfed in fighting to evacuate in expectation of further fighting. Fighting spilled into new districts around Sanaa on Thursday, with government forces using artillery and mortars to blast tribesmen as frightened residents fled or cowered in basements. The head of the Hashid tribe, Sheik Sadeq al-Ahmar, demanded on Thursday that Saleh step down or else be held accountable for “dragging the country to a civil war.”

The battles broke out Monday after an attempt by government forces to storm al-Ahmar’s compound in the heart of Sanaa. By Thursday, the clashes had widened to include areas around Sanaa’s airport, and other tribes had joined in alongside al-Ahmar. The fighting could open a new chapter in Yemen’s turmoil. Until now, Saleh’s opponents have stuck to peaceful protests massing hundreds of thousands around the country. Several military units, along with tribal powerhouses like the Hashid, have joined the opposition, but they have avoided any violent confrontation with Saleh’s loyalists. But Saleh has managed to cling to power for three months despite defections, protests and pressure from Arab neighbors and Western powers to leave office.

Efforts to mediate an exit for Saleh collapsed last week when the president refused to sign a deal providing for him to step down in 30 days. Saleh has retained the loyalty of the regime’s most elite military units all commanded by close relatives. But the escalation with the tribes could threaten that hold.

Under Yemen’s ancient codes, tribal leaders can declare that members follow their orders above all others potentially forcing soldiers in pro-Saleh units to choose between their clan and military loyalties. So far, there have been no apparent signals of mass defections from the pro-Saleh units since the fighting with the Hashid began.

Most of Yemen’s tribes boast heavily armed militias loyal to their chiefs. The tribes of the Hashid confederation hold powerful business and the government interests. Yemen’s other main tribal confederation, the southern-based Bakeel, is larger but has less political and economic power and, with many more tribes, is less cohesive. Most Bakeel tribes have turned against Saleh. The escalating violence prompted the State Department to order nonessential U.S. diplomats and their families to leave the country. Britain said it would scale back its embassy staff, while Germany and other countries issued travel warnings.

El Salvadoran Government & Social Movements Say No to Monsanto

Usulután has often been referred to as the country’s bread basket for its fertile soil and capacity for agricultural production, making it one of the most strategic and violent battleground zones during El Salvador’s twelve year civil war between the US-supported government and the FMLN guerrilla movement.

Once again, Usulután has entered the spotlight for its agricultural reputation. The FMLN, which initially formed around an ideology of national liberation from US hegemony, has now adopted the goal of “food sovereignty,” the idea that countries hold the right to define their own agricultural policies, rather than being subject to the whims of international market forces. On Friday, officials representing the Ministry of Agriculture and the local governorship accompanied President Funes in inaugurating a new plan aimed at reactivating the country’s historically ignored rural economy and reversing El Salvador’s growing dependence on imported grains.

The opening ceremony for the new plan was hosted by the Mangrove Association, a non-governmental organization established by members of a grassroots social movement called La Coordinadora del Bajo Lempa y Bahia de Jiquilisco (known locally as La Coordinadora), which has been supporting initiatives for food security and environmental sustainability in Usulután for over 15 years. Over the last three months, the Ministry of Agriculture has been working closely with the Mangrove Association and other campesino organizations to develop what may represent the new program’s greatest break from past governments’ agricultural policies: a goal that by 2014 all corn and bean seed needed for agriculture be produced by Salvadoran farmers, rather than purchased from multinational seed companies, namely Monsanto, as has been the case in recent years.

With ongoing support from the U.S.-based NGO EcoViva, La Coordinadora and the Mangrove Association have been working since the mid-1990s to promote diversified, sustainable agriculture for small family farmers in Usulután as a means for reducing hunger and building a strong rural economy. According to official figures, almost 95% of fruit and vegetables consumed in El Salvador are imported from abroad, along with 30% of all its beans and 40% of corn. Meanwhile, non-commercial small family farmers are said to produce up to 70% of the basic grains that are cultivated domestically, mostly for their own family’s consumption, making them particularly important for El Salvador’s food security.

via El Salvadoran Government & Social Movements Say No to Monsanto.

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

“We’re getting to a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the American government secretly thinks the law says,” Wyden tells Danger Room in an interview in his Senate office. “When you’ve got that kind of a gap, you’re going to have a problem on your hands.”

What exactly does Wyden mean by that? As a member of the intelligence committee, he laments that he can’t precisely explain without disclosing classified information. But one component of the Patriot Act in particular gives him immense pause: the so-called “business-records provision,” which empowers the FBI to get businesses, medical offices, banks and other organizations to turn over any “tangible things” it deems relevant to a security investigation.

“It is fair to say that the business-records provision is a part of the Patriot Act that I am extremely interested in reforming,” Wyden says. “I know a fair amount about how it’s interpreted, and I am going to keep pushing, as I have, to get more information about how the Patriot Act is being interpreted declassified. I think the public has a right to public debate about it.”

That’s why Wyden and his colleague Sen. Mark Udall offered an amendment on Tuesday to the Patriot Act reauthorization.

The amendment, first reported by Marcy Wheeler, blasts the administration for “secretly reinterpret[ing] public laws and statutes.” It would compel the Attorney General to “publicly disclose the United States Government’s official interpretation of the USA Patriot Act.” And, intriguingly, it refers to “intelligence-collection authorities” embedded in the Patriot Act that the administration briefed the Senate about in February.

via There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says | Danger Room | Wired.com.

Report: Over Two Thousand Six Hundred Activists Arrested in US Protests so far, by obama regime

Since President Obama was inaugurated, there have been over two thousand six hundred arrests of activists protesting in the US.   Research shows over 670 people have been arrested in protests inside the US already in 2011, over 1290 were arrested in 2010, and 665 arrested in 2009.   These figures are certainly underestimate the number actually arrested as arrests in US protests are rarely covered by the mainstream media outlets which focus so intently on arrests of protestors in other countries.

Arrests at protest have been increasing each year since 2009.  Those arrested include people protesting US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Guantanamo, strip mining, home foreclosures, nuclear weapons, immigration policies, police brutality, mistreatment of hotel workers, budget cutbacks, Blackwater, the mistreatment of Bradley Manning, and right wing efforts to cut back collective bargaining.

These arrests illustrate that resistance to the injustices in and committed by the US is alive and well.  Certainly there could and should be more, but it is important to recognize that people are fighting back against injustice.

via Activist Post: Report: Over Two Thousand Six Hundred Activists Arrested in US Protests.

Zapatista March and the Drug War in Mexico

from UpsideDownWorld

On the morning of May 7, CIDECI-University de la Tierra of San Cristóbal de Las Casa (Chiapas) was filled withpeople. The palpable excitement in the air settled to a lull as they began to organize themselves in an orderly fashion: in the front, the EZLN Command and support base, faces covered with balaclavas or paliacates [traditional Mexican scarves]. In the back, communities taking part in the Other Campaign, collectives, human rights organizations, internationalists. Without any slogans or chants, they have been marching in silence towards the center of the city: their banners and placarads alone crying out, “No more blood on Mexican soil”, “Stop Calderón’s war”, “We’ve had it”.

Heeding the call to silence that poet and journalist Javier Sicilia, still grieving for his murdered son, dubbed a ‘March for Peace with Justice and Dignity’, this is the first step in the birth of a national movement against Calderón’s drug war and government impunity. Many have answered Sicilia’s call. Among them is the EZLN, which summoned Zapatistas and the Other Campaign to mobilize in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, resulting in more than 15,000 people assembling in silence, meant to express the impossibility of describing such profound pain. “We have to name the victims of the War on Narco-trafficking, to dignify them”, said Sicilia—and indeed, those names moved in procession among the colorful, low houses of this colonial Chiapan city, written on crosses carried by members of the Sociedad Civil Las Abejas de Acteal. The Sociedad Civil Las Abejas de Acteal has fallen victim to the kind of impunity that rules Mexico: paramilitary forces jailed for the murder of 45 congregants gathered in prayer in Acteal (1997) are now progressively being released.

The long march arrived at the Plaza de la Catedral—the very same one occupied by Zapatistas on January 1st, 1994. This time, 30 EZLN commanders awaited the crowd. Comandante David read a message from Subcomandante Marcos: “We are gathered here for the families of the dead, injured, mutilated, disappeared, kidnapped, and jailed having committed no crime. Because their only fault was to be born, or to live, in a country mismanaged by legal and illegal groups thirsty for war, death, and destruction. The government tells them that it will continue with its plan—the main objective of which is death, impunity. To fear in people’s every word, to see in every critique, every doubt, question, every call, the intent to overthrow this order is something quite appropriate to dictatorships and tyrants. Knowing how to listen with humility and attention what the people say is the virtue of a good government. We are here today to tell those good people who walk in silence, quite simply, that they are not alone”.

The EZLN’s participation was a big surprise: Zapatistas have not shown themselves in public like this for five years now. The long media silence was only broken in January of this year, with the communiqué published in response to the death of Don Samuel Ruíz, and the epistolary exchange concerning ethics and politics that Marcos has been having with the Mexican intellectual Luís Villoro. Re-reading these exchanges, one begins to realize that Marcos has had Sicilia on his mind for quite some time. He wrote to Villoro: “As I begin writing these lines, Javier Sicilia’s pain and anger—physically far away but close in ideals for some time—make echoes that reverberate in these mountains of ours. It is to be hoped that his legendary tenacity, which now summons our words and action, manages to express and bring together that anger and pain that is spreading everywhere on Mexican soil”. In his correspondence with Villoro, Marcos also mentioned the Chiapan governor Juan Sabines Guerrero who, he says, “persecutes and represses those who do not chime in with the false chorus of praise for his lies made into government policy, which persecutes defenders of human rights in the Coast and the Highlands of Chiapas and the indigenous people of San Sebastián Bachajón who refuse to prostitute their land, and which encourages paramilitary groups against indigenous Zapatista communities”.

In later communiqués sent out by the EZLN Command in the context of the march, references to repression in Chiapas (like those on marchers’ posters) have all but disappeared. In any case, it is important to remember what is happening in a State in which militarization, already very advanced, is going to intensify. The announcement of two new military bases on the border with Guatemala and the deployment of the Border Police—an entity whose creation was anticipated by the Migration Law designed to ‘protect’ Central American migrants in Mexico—are two examples. Of course, the real objective of such policing bodies and the army in Chiapas is not to protect citizens from narco-traffickers, but rather the interests of State companies, and to repress any expression of dissent.

In Mitzitón, for example, a stone’s throw away from the Rancho Nuevo military barracks, participants in the Other Campaign resist the construction of the San Cristóbal de Las Casas-Palenque highway, which would rip right through their community. In defense of the project, the government is supporting the Ejército de Dios paramilitary group, which continues to harrass members of the Other Campaign: in 2010, one participant was killed, and this May 7th, while the Zapatista march made its way through the streets of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, paramilitary forces fired on two women tending to sheep. Adherents of the Other Campaign from Bachajón, in the jungle, fight against the same mega-project, which aims to build a great tourist attraction in the waterfalls of Agua Azul. In Bachajón, the people live under the continued threat of OPDDIC [Organization for the Defense of Indigenous Rights 1] paramilitaries: in Feburary, at the entrance to the Agua Azul waterfalls, more than a hundred members of the Other Campaign—five of whom are still in prison—were arrested in a fiersome police operation. As always, in Feburary 19 people were detained on the Chiapas Coast, after a peaceful demonstration for the liberation of political prisoners. Among them were three lawyers for the Human Rights Center – Digna Ochoa. A few days after the march of silence, the father of one of the lawyers and member of the Autonomous Council of the Chiapas Coast, who participated in the Zapatista mobilization, was arrested as well.

The march on May 7th was an important demonstration of power for the EZLN, but the road to ‘Peace with Justice and Dignity’ in Chiapas is still very far.

1. The name is misleading. “The Organization for the Defense of Indigenous Rights (OPDDIC), considered a paramilitary group for years by the indigenous communities of the Selva Lacandona and recently reactivated, is emerging as principal threat to the coexistence of indigenous communities, with the open support of the PRD government of Juan Sabines Gutie’rrez.” See “En;Jornada,OPPDIC: counterinsurgency group in Chiapas, Feb 13”, http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.zapatista.chiapas95/922. See also “OPDDIC Leader Pedro Chulín Offers His ‘Total Support’ to Governor Juan Sabines”, http://www.narconews.com/Issue45/article2560.html.

Chaos in Yemen’s capital, government buildings aflame

Yemenis fled the capital on Wednesday to escape gunbattles between loyalists and opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who said he would make no more concessions to those seeking his ouster.

Sporadic machinegun fire rang out for the third day in the sandbagged streets around the mansion of an influential tribal leader who has backed protesters seeking to overthrow the longtime ruler after repeated international mediation failed.

Black smoke rose from the compound of Sadiq al-Ahmar, at the center of the clashes that have killed more than 40 people since Monday, when his guards first exchanged fire with loyalist forces they accused of stockpiling weapons at a nearby school.

Authorities closed Sanaa airport and flights were being diverted after clashes broke out with tribesmen loyal to Ahmar, a security official told Reuters, adding that some airlines had begun cancelling flights to Yemen on Tuesday.

“What happened was a provocative act to drag us into civil war, but it is limited to the Ahmar sons. They bear responsibility for shedding the blood of innocent civilians,” Saleh told selected media including Reuters.

“Until this second, they are attacking the Interior Ministry. But we don’t want to widen the confrontation,” he said. “They have chosen this and they made the wrong decision to confront the state with this kind of violence.”

Four people were killed and 11 wounded, the defense ministry said, blaming Ahmar’s men. Witnesses and officials said Ahmar’s backers took over several ministry buildings near his compound.

The fighting, the most sustained clashes in Sanaa since protests against Saleh’s rule began in February, erupted on Monday, a day after the president refused at the last minute to sign a Gulf-brokered deal that would ease him out of power.

Saleh has backed out twice before, but Sunday’s turnabout, after loyalist gunmen trapped Western and Arab diplomats in the United Arab Emirates embassy for hours, appeared to have sparked a major reaction.

General Ali al-Mohsen, a regional army commander who has sided with protesters, called on the armed forces to defy Saleh.

“Beware of following this madman who is thirsty for more bloodshed,” Mohsen said in a statement.

Both sides blamed each other for the violence, which the opposition said could start a civil war. The bloodshed dimmed prospects for a political solution to a popular revolt inspired by protests that swept aside the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.

“I think there’s a real risk that violence can escalate, and we see a move toward low intensity civil war,” said Shadi Hamid, analyst at the Brookings Doha Center.

“There’s a real loss of faith in the political process after Saleh refused to sign a deal several times. That really cast doubt on whether Saleh has any real commitment to letting go of power voluntarily,” he added.

CONTROL OF MINISTRIES

Saleh said the deal remained on the table, despite his repeated failure to sign: “I am ready to sign within a national dialogue and a clear mechanism. If the mechanism is sound, we will sign the transition of power deal and we will give up power.”

“No more concessions after today,” he said.

In the capital Sanaa, fighters in civilian clothes roamed the streets in some districts and sporadic bursts of machinegun fire punctuated the air.

Long lines of cars snaked out of the city, bags piled high on their roofs, even as gunmen blocked entrances to prevent tribesmen from bringing in reinforcements, witnesses said.

The situation calmed slightly in the afternoon as mediators tried to seal a truce. Yet in the neighborhoods close to the fighting, men fled with suitcases and women carried their babies in the streets, seeking safety elsewhere.

“It’s no longer possible to stay in Sanaa. The confrontations will reach all parts of the city,” said Murad Abdullah as he left by car. “I am afraid for my life. I will go to my village in Ibb. The situation there is safe.”

The United States and Saudi Arabia, both targets of foiled attacks by a wing of al Qaeda based in Yemen, have tried to defuse the crisis and avert any spread of anarchy that could give the global militant network more room to operate.

U.N. Secretary Genera Ban Ki-moon’s spokesman Martin Nesirky said Ban was deeply troubled by the clashes in Sanaa and called for further peace efforts and an immediate end to the fighting, while Britain reiterated calls on Saleh to sign the exit deal.

But a peaceful outcome looked ever less likely.

Witnesses and officials said supporters of Ahmar, head of the Hashed tribal federation to which Saleh’s Sanhan tribe also belongs, were controlling several ministry buildings near the Ahmar compound including trade and tourism, as well as the offices of the state news agency Saba.

Ahmar’s fighters had also attacked the headquarters of the interior ministry, the courtyard of which came under fire from rocket-propelled grenades, witnesses said.

Televised images of the Ahmar compound showed tribesmen rushing through opulent but dusty halls, their floors spattered with blood, as they helped colleagues wounded in the fighting.

“This is an attempt to drag the revolution from its peaceful path,” opposition politician Hamid al-Ahmar, brother to Sadiq al-Ahmar, said on Al Jazeera television.

“But this is understood, and it won’t affect the path of the revolution. The popular revolution.”

TEPCO finally admits to multiple nuclear core meltdowns

the operators of the fukushima nuclear power complex have dishonored their ancestrors and families for all time by trying to cover their asses, rather than admit to their inability to understand or operate a nuclear power facility. more disgracefully still, they have not offered their lives in apology. they shame their ancestors.

what else are they and the japanese governemnt lying about?

Meltdowns confirmed at Fukushima reactors 

The operator of the nuclear power plant at the centre of a radiation scare after being disabled by Japan’s earthquake and tsunami has confirmed that there had been meltdowns of fuel rods at three of its reactors.

Tokyo Electric Power Co said overnight (NZ time) meltdowns of fuel rods at three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant occurred early in the crisis triggered by the March 11 disaster.

The government and outside experts had said previously that fuel rods at three of the plant’s six reactors had likely melted early in the crisis, but the utility, also known as Tepco, had only confirmed a meltdown at the No.1 reactor.

Tepco officials said a review since early May of data from the plant concluded the same happened to reactors No.2 and 3.

The preliminary finding, which was reported to Japan’s nuclear safety agency, represents part of an initial effort to explain how events at Fukushima spiralled out of control early in the crisis.

Also overnight, the government appointed Yotaro Hatamura, a Tokyo University professor of engineering who has studied how complex systems and designs fail, to head a committee that will investigate the cause and handling of the nuclear crisis.

The moves came as a team of investigators from the International Atomic Energy Agency began a two-week visit to Japan to prepare a report on the accident to be submitted to the United Nations agency in June.

Some analysts said the delay in confirming the meltdowns at Fukushima suggested the utility feared touching off a panic by disclosing the severity of the accident earlier.

“Now people are used to the situation. Nothing is resolved, but normal business has resumed in places like Tokyo,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University.

Nakano said that by confirming the meltdowns now, Tepco may be hoping the news will have less impact. The word “meltdown” has such a strong connotation that when the situation was more uncertain more people would likely have fled Tokyo, he said.

Engineers are battling to plug radiation leaks and bring the plant 240km northeast of Tokyo under control more than two months after the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and deadly tsunami that devastated a vast swathe of Japan’s northeast coastline and tipped the economy into recession.

The disaster has triggered a drop of more than 80 percent in Tepco’s share price and forced the company to seek government aid as it faces compensation liabilities that some analysts say could top $100 billion (62 billion pounds).

Japanese trade minister Banri Kaieda said the government would approve the formation of a committee later on Tuesday that will make sure Tepco follows through with restructuring plans.

Tepco officials said damage to the No.2 reactor fuel rods had begun three days after the quake, with much of the fuel rods eventually melting and collecting at the bottom of the pressure vessel containing them.

Fuel rods in the No.3 reactor were damaged by the afternoon of March 13, they said.

Japanese samurai preferred to die with honour, voluntarily plunging a sword into the abdomen and moving it left to right in a slicing motion

Syria’s Secret police are raiding hospitals to round up people who were injured during anti-government protests.

Fawaz al-Haraki had only minutes to live.

As the shots rang out, Abu Haidar and the other protesters ran for cover, grimly familiar with what to do when the mukhabberat (secret police) attacked.

But Fawaz fell, the blood soaking his trousers where the bullet from a Syrian secret policeman had torn into his leg.

It was Friday April 22 in the industrial city of Homs, famous for being the nation’s main producer of jokes and cement.

Few are laughing for Homs or its dirty factory these days. Last Friday, 11-year-old Aiham al-Ahmad became the latest among dozens of people killed in Homs since the city rose up in some of the largest numbers yet seen to call for freedom and an end to the Assad family’s 41-year-old dictatorship.

As the bullets sparked off the street around them, Abu Haidar and two other protesters hauled 42-year-old Fawaz into a car, desperate to get him to a doctor before his time ran out.

But Fawaz, growing pale under a blanket in the backseat of Abu Haider’s car, was already a dead man: Killed not only by a bullet, but by the regime’s decision – appearing, increasingly, to be systematic – to prevent injured protestors from receiving medical care.

From the moment he was shot until the moment he was buried in the ground, Fawaz’s fate was not in the hands of the doctors, friends and family who wished to save him, but in the hands of secret policemen whose actions ensured that he died, and that as few people knew about it as possible.

Nowhere to go

“They have checkpoints everywhere and we knew they could stop the car at any moment, even if we were acting normally,” said Abu Haidar, who has been a consistently reliable source for Al Jazeera’s reporting from Homs since the uprising began.

He had good reason to be worried.

On that same Friday, three other cars ferrying wounded protestors from Homs disappeared after approaching a security checkpoint. One of the drivers, Raed Mehran, had been on the phone with Wissam Tarif, director of Insan, a Syrian human rights organisation, hanging up saying he was approaching a checkpoint.

Several weeks later, Tarif received news that four of the men in the cars had died while the others had been imprisoned.

“It is beyond arbitrary detention. It is people being kidnapped. In many cases injured people are being kidnapped and we do not know if any medical attention is provided or not,” said Tarif.

In Jabla, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, the injured from an attack on April 24 couldn’t even be bundled into a car, pinned down inside the Hamwi Mosque by snipers shooting anyone who moved outside.

“We can’t even get to the pharmacy to get medicine because of the snipers on the roofs,” said Dr Zakariya al-Akkad. “All I can do is try and stop the bleeding.” He couldn’t, and 17-year-old Ali Halabi, along with several others, died.

Abu Haidar and his team had managed to avoid the checkpoints, but didn’t spot the plain clothes security men pulling up to them in the car behind. The security men opened fire.

“We were driving really fast and trying to keep our heads down. There were bullets all around. We were risking our lives but also the life of Fawaz because when you are injured like that every moment is important,” he said.

The car swerved down a back alley to escape the mukhabberat.

“It was complete chaos but we know the neighbourhood much better than the security so we managed to escape with our lives,” said Abu Haidar.

Not so for the man they were trying to help: “Because we were forced to make that long journey, Fawaz bled to death.”

Al Jazeera has also reported that security forces, including snipers on rooftops, prevented residents from assisting the dead and dying during the siege of Deraa.