CRAZY CHRISTIANS PROTEST "DAY OF SILENCE"

Mount Si High School leaders were hoping the national Day of Silence last Friday in support of gay and lesbian students would be a low key, calm affair.

It wasn't.

Instead, the high school located in Snoqualmie, WA was the scene of protests and counter protests. There were about 250 people confronting each other Friday about the Day of Silence inside in support of gay students.

Police kept the peace. There were no arrests. But, the disruptions caused about 500 students, about a third of the school, to stay home.

Inside the school, students wore t-shirts and arm bands expressing their views about the National Day of Silence in support of gay and lesbian students

The school principal estimated roughly 10 percent of the student population may be gay. He reports no serious harassment issues in the last several months and calls the demonstration a form of expression which does not violate school policy against protests.

Enter Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in Redmond, who invited anti-gay residents of the area to join his protest. The Reverend said, "It's time for moral people to be unashamed and take a stand."

The Seattle Times reported the controversy at Mount Si began with the school's invitation to Hutcherson to speak at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day assembly. The pastor had agreed to talk only about his experiences as a black man growing up in Alabama and about King's legacy. Hutcherson's daughter, a student at the school, helped plan the assembly.

But Hutcherson's prominence as an activist against gay rights led one teacher to boo his appearance and another to ask if it wasn't hypocritical for him to support civil rights for African Americans but not for gays and lesbians.

Nationwide some group called the Alliance Defense Fund called a "Day of Truth" yesterday in portest of Friday's Day of Silence.

It's the fourth year of the Day of Truth, which was established, the group says, to "counter the promotion of the homosexual agenda and express an opposing viewpoint from a Christian perspective."

Gay news group, GoodasYou.org described that events failure, "The so-called "Day of Truth" went by yesterday with less than a whimper."

Goodasyou.org says:

"The Alliance Defense Fund has many connections with Christian ex-gay organizations that claim that LGBT persons can change to heterosexuality through prayer, intervention and psychological counselling."

The Alliance Defense Fund receives funding from Focus on the Family, a group that also funds Exodus Ministries. ADF also lists Exodus as an allied organization on their webpage."

Resources for the group’s ‘Day of Truth’ event were prepared by Exodus Ministries, which claims to be able to help LGBT persons become heterosexual, included in their 'Homosexuality FAQ Sheet.'"

At its own website the Alliance Defense Fund says it, "... is humbled to have dedicated women and men serving on the 'front lines' in this war, fighting for religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and traditional family values."

I'm humbled to know that they are humbled in their homophobic agenda.

The following is from the SnoValley Star (Washington).

Protests hit Day of Silence

About 660 students were absent from class April 25 as protestors and counter-protestors gathered near the Mount Si High School tennis courts to support or contest the Day of Silence.

The Rev. Ken Hutcherson led a group of about 100 people from the Antioch Bible Church and other groups to protest the school’s third-annual Day of Silence, an event started in 1996 at the University of Virginia that has spread across the nation. Students participating, about 200 of them from Mount Si High School, remain mute to promote tolerance and draw attention to harassment gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people face.

Earlier in the day, a group of about 40 parents came to show their silent support. The majority of the protestors and about 30 counter-protestors arrived by 10 a.m., staying for an hour and waving signs with slogans like, “I believe in separation of church and hate,” and “Educate not indoctrinate.”

Both sides had messages for one another, but shouting took precedence over any sort of dialogue.

“It should not be going on while children are in school,” said Henrese Bruce of Everett.

“I don’t have a child in school here, but my pastor’s children go here and a lot of people at our church - their kids go here. Our teachers should not be teaching our children homosexuality.”

The total number of students absent reflects those who missed only one period. School policy, however, dictates absences for those students who miss four or more classes. Of those, there were 480 on Friday.

Jeffrey Lommel, who attended Mount Si High School for two years and now lives in Redmond, said that he found it hard to be a young gay man in the Valley.

“There is always a fear of people calling you names in the hallways. It was a scary time to be at Mount Si,” said Lommel. “Not only do the kids have to be afraid of each other, they have to be afraid of the parents as well.”

“There is nothing wrong with Ken Hutcherson because of his beliefs,” said Mount Si sophomore Max Rosentreter. “But he is out here putting other people down. I don’t see why they have to come over here and disrupt our school telling us that they don’t like gay people.”

Dave Caldeira, Youth Pastor at Calvary Chapel on the Eastside, graduated from Mount Si High School in 1994. He doesn’t support the Day of Silence being held during school hours, but he questioned the effectiveness of the protests.

“They’re passionate what they believe in and I’m passionate what I believe in, but we shouldn’t be spewing hatred,” Caldeira said.

Five Snoqualmie police officers kept protesters and counter-protestors out of the street but reported no incidents or arrests.

Across Washington state, 255 middle and high schools participated in the Day of Silence. Daryl Presgraves, media relations manager for the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), said that out of 7,600 schools that participated nationwide, he only heard of a handful of protests.

The Snoqualmie Library held a panel following the protests hosted by GLSEN. About 20 people attended, listening and questioning parents, religious leaders and former students about issues faced by people with different sexualities and gender identities.

Despite all of the controversy, the high school maintained its closed campus and held classes as usual. Students participating in the Day of Silence wore tie-dyed bracelets. If a teacher called on them during class, they were required to speak.

“Our utmost priority is the safety of the students,” said Carolyn Malcolm, the school district’s public information officer. “We were very proud of the students inside the school. It was a quiet, productive day.”

On an average school day, about nine percent of the student body is absent, which is equal to the number of students absent last year during the Day of Silence. This year, 63 student athletes received waivers allowing them to attend after-school sports, despite missing school.

“It was unfortunate students choose not to come,” said Mount Si Junior Caitlin Donnelly, Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) student officer and student coordinator for the Day of Silence. She added that the “extra quiet classrooms made for a more productive day.”

While some students stayed home due to personal beliefs, Malcolm reported that some parents were uneasy with sending their children to school because of the protests.

“I know administrators plan to step back and look at the day and all factors that may have contributed to the absences,” Malcolm said.

The Coalition to Defend Education, a Valley group of 145 parents who do not support the Day of Silence, did not participate in the protest.

More attention has been paid to the Day of Silence this year after Hutcherson spoke at the high school’s Martin Luther King Day assembly and was booed by one teacher and questioned about gay rights by another.

Hutcherson began campaigning against the Day of Silence, but the school administrators maintained that the GSA had the right to sponsor the event under the Federal Equal Access Act and the First Ammendment.

“We simply ask, if you want the Day of Silence, make it before or after school like other clubs,” said Hutcherson. Although he targeted Mount Si High School, Hutcherson said he hoped to set an example for parents at other high schools who disagree with the Day of Silence.

Summer Nikolaisen, a senior at Mount Si High School, said she felt a little bit of pressure about whether she would attend school on Friday, but once she arrived, said it was a day like any other.

“It was just less people than normal, that’s all,” Nikolaisen said. “There were some protesters in the morning, but I didn’t really see them.”

Donnelly saw the protests as beyond the GSA’s control.

“None of those disruptions were caused by GSA,” Donnelly said. “Hopefully, in years to come, it will happen with less controversy and less opposition.”

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS AIM FIRE AT "CLAIMS CONFERENCE"

What follows is a rather sad but on going story about Holocaust survivors who feel they are getting ripped off by one of the main groupings which is supposed to be helping them. I'm talking here about the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany - better known as the Claims Conference.

Some survivors say money that could be used helping them is instead going to build museums and other Jewish causes. Isi Leibler, a frequent critic of the CC says, "Previous grants have generated controversy because, despite representing deserving causes, some appear to lack any genuine relationship with the Holocaust: e.g., the Tel Aviv Yiddish Theater, sprinklers in Israeli nursing homes, Jewish cultural centers in St. Petersburg, Hatzolah volunteer ambulance services in Brooklyn, Bnei Brak women's organizations and birthright Israel."

The Claims Conference own treasurer, Roman Kent, a Holocaust survivor, told London's Jewish Chronicle: "Survivors are suffering. Our only priority should be the survivors, and everything else should be secondary. We are spending money for thousands of projects, but the health of the survivors can't wait. They are dying daily...I'm not saying that these are bad programmes, but they can wait - or else they should be the responsibility of the world Jewish community, not the Claims Conference

There have been increasing demands for greater transparency from the management of the Claims Conference (CC) in a Jerusalem Report article.

The Israeli Insider reported last year about this time the central issue was the allegation that whereas the Claims Conference does disclose allocations, it lacks transparency in the manner by which it allocates funds. Critics insisted that it functioned more like an old boys club than a representative body, and that the Board was merely a rubber stamp endorsing the decisions of a few machers who make decisions amongst themselves and only consult their key constituents. This, The Insider said was confirmed by the fact that the board never meaningfully challenges allocations submitted by the selection committee.

The CC's reputation is not helped by the fact it pays high salaries to a small group of senior staff, with the conference's director earning over $400,000 after benefits.

The most passionate complaint is that as a consequence of years of delayed processing and neglect, despite being one of the wealthiest foundations in the world, many aged survivors in poor health will not live to receive their restitution entitlements.

And that is deplorable.

Also of concern is, as reported by Jewish Currents, that despite occasional media reference to the Claims Conference as a “survivor group,” it has never been one either constitutionally or functionally. Only four of its forty-eight voting board seats are apportioned to survivor organizations, and these were added only in 1989.

A new documentary, set to be screened on TV in Isreal soon, will update the critique of the CC.

The new film, "The Morality of Payments - the Battle Continues," accuses the conference's leadership of "self-dealing," the practice of misusing one's public position to benefit one's private self reports the Jerusalem Post. It further accuses the conference of withholding funds from elderly, sick Holocaust survivors in order to ensure its own existence after those survivors have passed away.

The documentary claims that 60 percent of the survivor claims filed to the Hardship Fund of the Claims Conference are denied, and only 40% approved. According to conference records, however, 319,000 claims were approved out of 433,000 that were submitted, an approval rate of some 74%. The CC adds the criteria for disbursing survivors' benefits are set by the German government, not the conference.

As it always has the Claims Conference rejects all the complaints against it. The CC doesn't want the documentary shown at all.

The Post says a letter from the Tel Aviv law office M. Seligman & Co., which represents the conference, to the Israeli companies that produced the film, Ananey Tikshoret and Shamayim Hafakot, and to the channels that will be screening it claims: "Instead of producing a movie that reflects the conference's activities, criticizes where criticism is deserved while presenting a complete and fair picture, the makers of the movie chose to give a false presentation, regardless of the consequences."

The following is from AP via WTOP News (DC).

Survivors angry with reparations group on Holocaust Day

Israel's official memorial day for the Holocaust, which begins at sundown Wednesday, finds many elderly survivors of the Nazi genocide turning their anger on a group that is meant to help them.

For more than five decades, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany _ better known as the Claims Conference _ has been the central channel for billions of dollars in restitution and reparations payments from Germany to Jewish victims of the Third Reich.

Sixty-three years after Allied troops freed emaciated prisoners from the Nazi death camps, the group has become the target of increasingly strident criticism. Some survivors charge it with amassing excessive wealth in their name while forgetting the very people it is designed to serve, many of whom are growing old in poverty.

More than anything, critics say far too much money is going to projects like Holocaust museums and broader Jewish causes instead of to making survivors' lives better in the time they have left.

"Open your pocketbooks now. Don't worry about monuments. You'll have plenty left for monuments when the survivors are gone," said Jack Rubin, 79, of Boynton Beach, Fla.

Rubin is a retired Connecticut furrier born in what was then Czechoslovakia. In 1944, when he was 15, the Nazis sent him and his family to the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the train arrived, he was separated from his parents and grandparents and never saw them again. U.S. troops freed him in the spring of the following year.

"There is nothing more important than the Holocaust survivors, and in the few years they have left they should live in dignity. That is all I ask of the Claims Conference," Rubin said.

About 6 million Jews were killed by German Nazis and their collaborators in World War II. Today, there are an estimated 500,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide, roughly half in Israel and the rest mainly in the U.S. and countries of the former Soviet Union.

Tens of thousands of them, at least, are poor. For these people, the Claims Conference is the primary _ and sometimes the only _ address for aid.

The current dispute involves money that the group received from selling unclaimed Jewish properties in the former East Germany, which it inherited by law after Germany was reunited.

The Claims Conference says it distributes around $120 million a year from that money. Eighty percent goes to survivors and institutions that help them, and the rest goes to Holocaust education and memorials like Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial authority.

Responding to critics of how the money is spent, Claims Conference official Reuven Merhav said educating the world about the Holocaust is no less urgent than providing direct aid to survivors. And it must be done while survivors are still around to tell their story, he said.

"The money spent on education and commemoration makes a great impact, and would not make much of a difference to anyone if it were split among tens of thousands of survivors," said Merhav, a retired Israeli Mossad agent and diplomat who is an unpaid top official with the group.

Merhav said it is a myth the Claims Conference has great wealth. It has reserves of around $350 million, enough to last only three or four years at the rate the funds are being disbursed, he said.

According to the Claims Conference, it has negotiated more than $70 billion in German reparations since 1950 for people who were imprisoned in concentration camps, confined to ghettos, forced into slave labor and medical experiments, or forced out of their homes by the Nazis.

In doing so, the organization played a key role in helping victims rebuild their lives, while allowing Germany to regain a place in the community of civilized nations after the Holocaust.

But it has been dogged by controversy. It has been the subject of numerous journalistic investigations criticizing a lack of accountability and transparency and a refusal in some cases to turn over properties it controls to legitimate heirs of the original owners.

One such critique is "In the Name of the Victims," a video-activist documentary that first aired in Germany last year.

The film, directed by Ilan Ziv, drew emotional reactions when it was screened last month for survivors at Israel's parliament. "Criminals. That's our money," one woman muttered.

The Claims Conference, headquartered in New York, says it has greatly benefited hundreds of thousands around the world.

In Ziv's movie, the group's executive vice president, Gideon Taylor, calls the work "an impossible task."

"You are taking the greatest moral challenge that the Jewish people faced in our history, the Shoah, and translating it into financial terms," Taylor said, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

"The only thing that the Claims Conference is trying to do is to try to balance the different perspectives _ the rights, the wrongs _ with some Solomonic solution. That's all that we can do," he said.

THE LAWSON FILE: BAD FOOD, BAD WORKING CONDITIONS, ONE COMPANY, MANY COMPLAINTS

According to the New Haven Independent New Haven’s public schools are moving toward managing their own kitchens...and getting the giant corporation Aramark out of the kitchen.

The surprise announcement came during a briefing by Chief Operating Officer Will Clark at the Board of Education’s (BOE) monthly meeting Monday.

Students, parents and union members have repeatedly criticized Aramark for poor quality food, unwise purchasing, and lack of openness about its budget (pictured here are a tray of moldy apples Aramark passed off to a self-contained classroom of special education students at Gateway Institute of Technology in St. Louis).

Remember lunch at school? I kinda do. In grade school I lived so close by that I actually went home for lunch (probably aren't allowed to do that anymore). Also, my mom packed me a lunch to save money and to see that I ate something worthwhile. In High School, I was really for the first time introduced to school lunch. Believe it or not I actually liked the stuff. Probably because it was crap, I don't know. Also, believe it or not it was at school that I was first introduced to pizza.

Well, since those days you'd think the quality of lunch for the nation's kids prepared at their schools would have greatly improved.

I guess not.

And now it seems, at least I never knew, that private companies are involved in the business. Not at all surprisingly quality of food is of little concern to these companies. It is about the money, stupid. It is so much about money that many of these "food service" companies are also in the custodial business at school, too.

About 200 protesters – members of Connecticut Council 4 and their supporters – demanded at an April 14 rally that the New Haven school system stop contracting out work that has been outsourced to privateer Aramark for the last 12 years. AFSCME Pres. Gerald W. McEntee told the crowd that day, “We want to tell all the aldermen, and we want to tell the mayor … that it is their job to fire Aramark and get them the hell out of town.”

“Aramark is a publicly traded company looking to make large amounts of money at the expense of the students,” said Larry Dorman, public affairs coordinator for Council 4.

According to Montouri, the union claims Aramark supervisors lack custodial experience, leading to ill-advised choices in purchasing and management. They also allege Aramark fostered a hostile work environment and failed to fill vacant positions.

“We all know what to do, (and) we know what our job is, as long as they let us do it,” Montouri said. “They’re not allowing us to do our job correctly. A child or teacher comes in, and sees a carpet that hasn’t been vacuumed. They think we’re bums. They don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes.”

So in some places like New Haven everyone is getting tired of that act.

Cheryl Barbara is one of those people. Cheryl has been a cook in New Haven schools for 20 years. Cheryl packs a lunch from home for her child because she doesn’t approve of the public schools’ lunches.

Cheryl blames Aramark, the company that manages school food service in New Haven. She was among a group of parents and union employees from the Local 217 of the hotel and restaurant workers’ union who voiced their opinions about Aramark way last November to the school district.

The group complained that Aramark, which took over food service management four years ago, has lowered the quality of school food by placing their emphasis on making money rather than making good lunches. “They took away all the home cooking. It’s all about packaging now,” Cheryl told the Independent, noting an increased use of packaged foods under Aramark’s management.

Along with decreased food quality, speakers asked the school board to hold a public hearing to talk about food service in the schools and to find out why, according to the group, Aramark has driven the NHPS food service program $1 million over budget.

Cheryl said her union requested a copy of Aramark’s contract with the city, but that so much was whited-out on the documents that they received that they were unable to make use of them. “Huge amounts of the report were redacted, ” said Cheryl. “They said it was because they were confidential trade secrets of Aramark. But it’s run on our tax dollars.”

If the cook doesn't trust the food, should parents?

I don't think so.

They don't.

The parents in New Haven say in a petition to the mayor that Aramark is not giving their children sufficient fresh and nutritious food and that the amount of produce is too limited. Additionally, they believe Aramark’s portion sizes are too small for growing high school students.

Maybe the folks in New Haven are just picky.

Nope, google the company and you'll find them under attack by parents, students and workers hither and yon.

By the way, it isn't just schools and students who are being short changed. It's jails and inmates, too.

Out in Oakland, California earlier this year People's World reports union members gathered across from Alameda County’s Glenn Dyer Detention Facility to demand that the county put its contract for food services at county jail facilities out to bid, rather than rubber-stamping a five-year extension of its contract with Aramark Correctional Services.

Union leaders and Aramark workers pointed to the international corporation’s dismal record in fulfilling food service contracts with correctional facilities and schools elsewhere in the country, citing problems including quality of food and provision of “phantom” meals.

Bruce Raynor, UNITE HERE general president pointed out, for example, at the Oakland rally, “This company Aramak, whether it’s in dining halls, in stadiums, does two things from one end of North America to the other, they abuse their workers and they abuse their clients.”

Auditors at Florida’s Department of Corrections found that Aramark had billed $5 million worth of “phantom” meals at state prison facilities, Raynor said. “The state of Florida is investigating Aramark, and Alameda County ought to do the same,” he added.

Citing quality and fulfillment problems experienced by Texas jails, and by public schools in Philadelphia, Detroit and New Haven, Conn., Raynor said workers who have tried to blow the whistle on Aramark’s practices have been harassed and punished.

I don't know but I'd bet if I kept looking I'd find this company feeding elderly in nursing homes as well. I'd be right.

Besides schools and jails, Aramark says it provides "service" to universities, hospitals, nursing homes, stadiums, convention centers, recreational venues, and private.

Aramark operates all over the world and all over the world its workers are an unhappy lot.

At Seneca College, just outside Toronto, cafeteria and janitorial staff began a strike, demanding improvements in wages and benefits. The workers, employed by the multi-national food service giant Aramark, earn just above minimum wage, and receive little in benefits while facing "abusive behaviour by supervisors." The strike followed Aramark’s offer of a raise of ten cents per hour, which workers have called "ridiculous." "We voted – 100 per cent – to take strike action, because these poor working conditions can't go on," said Andy Chui, a janitor at Seneca's Markham campus and member of UNITE HERE’s Aramark bargaining committee. "This company makes a lot of money (ed. note - total sales amounted to $12.4 billion last year) and we're simply asking for a living wage and to be treated with dignity and respect."

Aramark employees with similar grievance protested in Dublin, Ireland earlier this month.

Uh, something isn't kosher here.

UNITE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union) merged on July 8, 2004 forming UNITE HERE. The union represents more than 450,000 active members and more than 400,000 retirees throughout North America. Unite Here is at the forefront of worker of the battle between Aramark and its workers.

The following is from WVIT (Connecticut).

New Haven To Hold Hearing Tuesday On School Lunches

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- The battle over school lunches in New Haven continues Tuesday night and parents will have the opportunity to tell town officials what they think.

The board of alderman will hold a hearing at city hall Tuesday at 5:30 p.m.

Aramark has provided food to school in cafeterias across New Haven and some students and parents said they wanted that to end because they aren't happy with what's being served.

Dozens of protesters gathered on the steps of city hall in March to protest the company that supplies food to the schools.

The school district put out a new bid for food service contracts and three firms, including Aramark, submitted bids.

A committee has been appointed to look at those bids.

“They will come back to the board with a recommendation about what (they) think we should do in terms of awarding the contract or taking on the service in-house,” Brian Perkins of New Haven’s board of education said.

Parents will have the opportunity Tuesday night to voice either concern or praise for Aramark.

MASSACRE IN SOMALIA - SOMEONE MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE

Amnesty International on Friday called on Ethiopia to investigate allegations that its troops killed at least 21 people, including 11 unarmed civilians, in a mosque in the Somali capital.

The rights group cited several sources which said Ethiopian troops carried out the killings on April 19. The Ethiopian government has rejected the claims.

At least 10 other people were killed by Ethiopian forces near the Al-Hidaya mosque in northern Mogadishu, bringing the death toll to 31, an Amnesty statement said.

"Deliberately killing civilians is a war crime," said Amnesty. "We call on the Ethiopian government to ensure an independent investigation is carried out into the raid on the mosque and the subsequent treatment of those detained by its forces."

"Seven of the 21 killed at the mosque were reported to have had their throats cut, a form of illegal execution practised by Ethiopian troops in Somalia," Amnesty said.

The report is based on several cross-checked, independent sources such as family members of victims, testimonies gathered at the location, including individuals present in the mosque while the killings took place, and local Amnesty International contacts.

While Mogadishu residents and witnesses said Ethiopian forces carried out the mosque killings, the Ethiopia foreign ministry accused Islamist militants.

The Somali government also took issue with eye witness and Amnesty accounts.

Somali Interior Minister Muse Nur Amin told reporters that insurgents first attacked Ethiopian and Somali troops to trigger the weekend's deadly violence, which killed upwards of 80 people according to a local human rights organization.

"I personally do not believe that someone praying at a mosque was pulled out and killed, but I want to make clear that the [Transitional] Federal Government is investigating," the Interior Minister said in Mogadishu.

President Abdullahi Yusuf told the VOA Somali Service, "What is being said [about the mosque massacre] is completely untrue..The [Ethiopian and Somali] troops will defend themselves when attacked...but there is no incident where soldiers entered a mosque and slaughtered the people inside."

A witness named Omar disagreed. He told Garowe Online that he was inside al Hidaya Mosque in Huriwa district when Ethiopian soldiers stormed inside on Sunday.

"The first person they [Ethiopian soldiers] killed was Sheikh Said Yahya, the Imam [prayer leader]," Omar said, adding that the late Imam opened the mosque door after the soldiers knocked.

"I stood above 11 dead bodies, some with their throat slit and others shot to death," said the witness describing the gruesome scene. Of the 11 dead victims, nine were regular congregants at the mosque and reportedly were part of the Tabliiq wing of Sunni Islam.

Witness Sheikh Mohamed Muse said the Ethiopian troops also arrested 21 boys who had taken refuge in the mosque during the fighting. “What they did was a gross humanitarian violation. They shot innocent clerics inside the house of Allah, I’m sure God will punish them,” Muse said.

Amnesty International also called on the Ethiopian military to release some 41 children held after the mosque massacre.

"The safety and welfare of the children, some as young as nine years old, must be paramount for all parties," said Amnesty International.

The attack on the Al Hidya mosque occurred during two days of fighting between the Ethiopian military and TFG against armed groups opposed to them, in which the Elman Human Rights Organisation documented 81 deaths and more than one hundred injured. It is not known how many of these were civilians. The attack also followed increasing attacks by armed groups opposed to the TFG on towns in southern and central Somalia, including an attack on Beledweyne by Al-Shabab militia on 13 April, where local residents reported that militia members killed four teachers. An Al-Shabab leader has claimed the teachers were shot in crossfire.

Also, last week the United Nations independent human rights expert for Somalia denounced the killing of civilians amid the fresh escalation of fighting in the war-stricken east African country. Ghanim Alnajjar, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Somalia, called for an immediate ceasefire between Ethiopian-backed government troops and Islamist insurgents. "The use of heavy weaponry in areas where civilians are concentrated left reportedly 81 civilians dead and more than 100 wounded," he said in a statement.

And Muslim leaders yesterday accused the African Union and the UN of failing to take action as innocent citizens are being killed in the Horn of Africa nation.

The East African Standard reports National Muslims Leaders Forum Chairman, Abdulahi Abdi, also said foreign troops held captive 40 Somali citizens whom they were torturing.

In a signed statement, the officials, who had called a press conference at Nairobi's Jamia Mosque, accused the Ethiopian army of abusing the rights of Somali Muslims by bombing and storming mosques.

The attack on the Mosque was not the only action specifically denounced at the press conference.
"The soldiers also stormed a hospital and killed patients before looting drugs and other medical equipment. They further ambushed a madrassa and abducted 40 children." said Abdi.

The leaders demanded the immediate withdrawal of the Ethiopian troops from Somalia to give room for dialogue between the warring communities and political forces.

He said the Somali people should be given an opportunity to determine how best they wanted to govern themselves.

Abdi said the "killers" should be arrested and charged in The Hague.

The following is from MISNA.

MOSQUE MASSACRE: INVESTIGATIONS PROCEED DESPITE RELEASE OF CHILDREN

“We have not had a chance to speak to those seized at the al Hidaya mosque, but we are conducting investigations to reconstruct the entire episode”, said to MISNA Zahir Ali of the ‘Sean Devereux’ aid agency a few days from the massacre in the northern Mogadishu mosque, in which some twenty people were killed and 41 students – many children – were abducted and released after six days of questioning at the headquarters of Ethiopian troops deployed in the country in support of the Somali transitional federal government (TFG). “What occurred is unclear, given that the government excludes that the Ethiopian troops entered the mosque and killed the twenty faithful and Imam. What we are certain of is the discovery of the lifeless bodies and eyewitnesses speak of a cold blood execution”, added Ali. According to the source, “the children were detained because believed to be young militants of anti-government groups, which used the mosque as a recruiting centre, and released after the military failed to link them to any criminal activities”. According to the local press, at least 10 members of the Alliance for the Re-Liberation of Somalia, which groups different exiled opposition movements, have arrived in the southern Middle Shabelle region for consultations with local groups ahead of the first meeting on May 10 in Djibouti between the transitional government of Nur Hassan Hussein Adde and Asmara-based opposition. The appointment is part of reconciliation efforts launched by the prime minister and supported by the UN secretary general’s special representative, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah.

PHILI STUDENTS DEMAND SCOOL BUDGET TRANSPARENCY

The Philadelphia Student Union (PSU) which says it exists "to build the power of young people to demand a high quality education in the Philadelphia public school system." is a youth led organization dedicated to making "positive changes in the short term by learning how to organize to build power."

Right now the group wants transparency in the school districts budget practices and has the audacity to think that student voices should be heard.

Here are some of the concerns they have about next year's budget, transparency and accountability:

*We need money in the budget for proven incentives to attract and keep teachers at hard to staff schools. Only 68% of teachers in Corrective Action II schools are considered to be 'highly qualified'.

*We need money in the budget for high school reform, specifically to support work on smallschools and other proven reform methods for neighborhood schools.

*We question the $10.8 million that is budgeted next year for Educational Management Organizations, when the process of accountability for failing EMO's is still unclear.

*We question the almost $50 million that is going to private disciplinary providers, the $1.6 million budgeted for Aramark (after their contract was supposedly cut for overcharging the district) and the $3.5 million budgeted for the School Reform Commission itself, an all-volunteer body!!

The group came up with a colorful way to make their concerns known. Members of the PSU say they want to see more of what's going on in the district's budget, so with squeegees in hand they headed out to wash the windows of the school headquarters building at 440 North Broad Street last week.

Nijmie Dzurinko is an organizer with the PSU told KYW in Philadelphia, "We need to see the contracts the district has with vendors. We need to know how much money is going to those things. And we need to understand the budget priorities. We need to understand what the cuts are in the budget before decisions are made."

Philadelphia students, parents and education activists are demanding an end to what they called "sweetheart deals" between the school district and school management organizations.

"We have to stop dealing [with companies] and try to put the students first. Try to put my school and all of the other [academically struggling] schools first, because we really need it," West Philadelphia High senior Lawrence Jones-Mahoney told the the Philadelphia Daily News early this year.

A leaflet for the "window washing" demo states:

"During this past school year, along with our allies, we have worked hard to build power around proven educational reforms and public accountability for the school district, while simultaneously working to ensure greater state funding that will benefit all our schools. We've seen changes, and greater openness in the district. That doesn't mean we can rest! We are still in danger of being marginalized as a 'small but vocal group'. We must continue to show the District that parents, students and workers are becoming empowered every day to speak up and speak out about what our schools need and how our money is being spent."

More than a dozen of the districts 70 schools are managed by outside groups including Edison Schools Inc., Victory Schools, Foundations Inc., Universal Companies, the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University.

The following is from the Philadelphia Weekly.

View to an Ill

Normally, the Philadelphia School District would welcome a free window washing. But on this day, service comes with a healthy dose of youthful indignation.

Gathering last Thursday on the steps of the School District of Philadelphia headquarters on North Broad Street, a mob of youth activists demands transparency in the budgetary practices of the school board. The group’s demands include student involvement in choosing outside school contracts and educational oversight groups.

To represent their cause, protesters are dressed in head–to–toe white jump suits. Donning rubber gloves, they wash the building’s windows in staged protest.

Leading the charge is the Philadelphia Student Union (PSU), a student–led activist group focused on educational reform. With their stomps and chants reverberating down North Broad, the students are determined to stay until someone is willing to listen to their complaints.

”All we want is transparency,” PSU spokesperson Marcus Mundy says. ”If the district’s budgetary actions affect us, we feel we should have a say. We’re the ones that have to live with it.”

Mundy is a chapter leader and 10th grader at Masterman High. ”We noticed a lot of extracurricular activities being cut, but the public budgetary hearings are basic and non–discretionary.”

A little background: EMOs, or educational management organizations—private companies brought in to help increase low test scores—have been contracted to the tune of $107 million since 2002, making Philadelphia the nation’s largest experiment in the private management of public schools.

A 2007 study conducted by the Rand Corporation sought to determine the effects of EMOs. Upon inspecting the Rand study, a state–sponsored panel found ”limited evidence to support the claim that private management as implemented in Philadelphia can turn around Philadelphia’s low–performing schools.”

As the board reconvenes later this year to renegotiate EMO contracts, PSU had asked to be made privy to the discussion. Their plea was rejected.

”Half of the EMO schools are still under corrective action,” PSU Assistant Director Erica Almiron says, ”so where is the extra money going?”

”Home Ec was cancelled,” adds protestor Zakia Royster, a 10th grader at Sayre. ”We barely have any sports teams at all.”

Eleventh grader Candace Carter isn’t confident the group’s demands are being heard. ”We see how schools are funded,” she says. ”We go and talk to [the school board], and they listen … Well, at least they act like they listen. But I’ve seen no change.”

The board recently elected a new CEO, San Francisco reformer Dr. Arlene Ackerman, to work on fixing broken Philadelphia schools.

Ackerman, who had a budget meeting planned at the School District’s headquarters, stops to address the crowd. While many consider her presence a sign that their voices are being heard, some call attention to a recent Daily News article that reported Ackerman’s spending of $100,000 to convene a panel of educational experts to again research the effects of privatization.

”We are not trying to do another study,” Ackerman told the Daily News. ”We are trying to listen to more voices.”

Dr. Ackerman’s announcement that $100,000 is ”not a lot of money” was not well received by students who’ve seen their activities and educational budgets drained as a result.

”Dr. Ackerman needs to acknowledge she’s not in San Francisco anymore,” Temple student Thomas Robinson shouts into a mike set up at the protest. ”She’s in the city of Philadelphia, where every dollar counts.”

Reemerging from the district headquarters, the CEO dances with students to Outkast’s ”So Fresh So Clean” as the window washing continues. The din of chants and cheers subsides as she saunters to the mike to give her first public address to students since taking office.

”I looked at your list of demands,” Ackerman says, ”and all of them are worth considering, and more than that, some just need to be done. Nike has a slogan: Just do it. So we are going to just do it.”

She goes on to promise monthly meetings with students and to congratulate them for being proactive, adding, ”I come from a time when we took to the streets when we wanted to change something.”

As her remarks conclude, the jubilant students burst into another fit of chants and stomps. ”Ain’t no power like the power of the people ’cause the power of the people don’t stop!” they shout.

”We shouldn’t underestimate these kids,” Ackerman says after her address. ”We can’t pretend like they don’t understand because clearly they have real concerns and real input.

”Regardless of the parent organizations,” she continues, ”we need to find a way to make the schools work for all students.”

As the students disperse, their chants and stomps continue down Broad Street, echoing off the freshly washed windows of the district headquarters.

BATTLING FOR THE "MORNING AFTER PILL" IN CHILE

The Chilean feminist organization Mujeres Publicas (Public Women) reported on Monday that roughly 500 Chilean men and women are planning to apostatize from the Catholic Church in order to protest that institution's stance on emergency contraception. Officials said that interest in this act has gained steam since Chile's Constitutional Court ruled earlier this month to limit the pill's availability.

“About two months ago . . . we began to consider means other than marches through which we could communicate our opinions about the Church's stance on public health policies,” Mujeres Publicas spokesperson Lorena Etchberry told the Santiago Times. “We knew that other people had apostatized from the Church in a form of protest in Colombia and Spain and that those protests had been successful. Consequently, we started to communicate via e-mail and internet.”

Tuesday at least 15,000 took to the streets of the capital to show their outrage at the Chilean Constitutional Court ruling that banned the free delivery of the "morning after pill" to women in the country.

In addition about 80 percent of public health workers walked off their jobs Tuesday to protest the high court ruling, sources in the sector told AFP.

Chile’s Constitutional Court reversed legislation mandating the distribution of the pill in public health clinics.

The ruling comes in response to a case brought by 36 socially conservative legislators in March, 2006, who argued that emergency contraception is abortive in nature and that, consequently, it violates the right to life enshrined in Chile’s constitution. Chilean law bars abortion in all circumstances, even in cases of rape or when the woman's life is in danger.

The decision, taken in early April but formalized Friday, put a stop to a program started by President Michelle Bachelet, the first female president of the socially conservative country and a former pediatrician, aimed at making contraception more widely available to low-income women.

No sooner had President Bachelet's program started opposition from the powerful Catholic Church was announced. Archbishop of Santiago Francisco Javier Errázuriz (pictured here) said the decision by the government was a blow to marriage, the birth rate, and the Chilean family.

The president of the Chilean Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Alejandro Goic, lamented this week that some mayors together with the Ministry of Health are looking for ways to disregard the ruling by the Constitutional Court that ordered the suspension of distribution of the morning-after pill.

Old men always think they know what's best for women.

The morning after pill, as it is commonly known, will still be available at pharmacies with a doctor's prescription. The problem is that in a country where abortion remains illegal and underground illegal abortion clinics abound, women in Chile, especially poor women in Chile who do not have regular medical care, will be pushed further underground when it comes to their sexual health.

And more of them will die.

Former Santiago Times’ writer Cynthia McMurry reminds us, "It took an epidemic of maternal deaths from clandestine abortions to create the political will to provide contraception in Chile. During the 1960s, there were 18.6 registered abortions for every 100 live births. Half of hospitals’ blood supply was being used to treat women whose abortions had gone awry, and half of maternal mortalities occurred as the result of abortions. Public hospitals were so overcrowded with post-abortion patients that two women were sometimes required to share one bed; only one third of those female patients made it out alive."

But that sort of thing doesn't really bother the old men of the Catholic Church.

The following is from IPS.

CHILE: Thousands Protest Ban on "Morning-After" Pill
By Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Apr 23 (IPS) - More than 15,000 people marched in the Chilean capital Tuesday evening to protest a Constitutional Court ruling that banned the free distribution of the "morning-after" pill by the public health system.

"This is a demonstration by the country in demand of freedom," Gloria Maira, of the Movement for the Defence of Birth Control, told IPS. "We don't want any more moral dictatorships. We want to make the decisions in our beds, we want to decide on our own uterus, we want to decide how many children we will have. We do not accept the Constitutional Court decision."

Participants in the march down the main avenue in the capital, which was authorised by the Santiago city government, included women’s rights activists, university students, members of parliament from the centre-left governing coalition, and several local show business personalities.

"I think people are waking up," parliamentary Deputy María Antonieta Saa of the co-governing Party for Democracy commented to IPS. "People are indignant over what the Constitutional Court is trying to impose. We have to work to prevent the Court from turning into a dictatorship."

At the head of the march, protesters carried a huge banner reading "for the right to choose".

"The demonstration was a complete success. Thousands of people took to the streets -- human rights and feminist activists, students, professional associations, all of them saying that the Constitutional Court ruling is unfair and undermines women’s freedom to make family planning decisions," Mireya García, a member of the Group of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared (AFDD), told IPS.

Some of the demonstrators carried signs with the images of the 36 lawmakers of the right-wing opposition alliance who filed a lawsuit in March 2007 before the Constitutional Court, challenging the national family planning guidelines issued by socialist President Michelle Bachelet in September 2006.

Although the opposition legislators objected to several of the guidelines, the Constitutional Court only struck down the one that ordered the free distribution of emergency contraception, popularly known as the morning-after pill, by government health centres to all girls and women over the age of 14 who requested it.

Before the guideline was adopted, the morning-after pill was only sold in private pharmacies and provided in public health centres to victims of rape.

The high court ruling does not apply to sales of emergency contraception in pharmacies, which means women who can afford the pill still have access to it.

"It is unfair that people have to go to a pharmacy to buy the pill, because in some cases they can’t afford it," 19-year-old Yocelyn told IPS. "I wouldn't want to drop out of school or stop working because of an unwanted pregnancy."

Emergency contraception can be taken up to five days (120 hours) after unprotected intercourse. The pill works by providing high levels of synthetic hormones, which interfere with ovulation or disrupt the ability of sperm and egg to meet in the Fallopian tubes, significantly reducing the likelihood of pregnancy.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has established that emergency contraception is "not effective once the process of implantation has begun, and will not cause abortion."

But the opposition lawmakers who brought the lawsuit argued that intrauterine devices (IUDs) and the morning-after pill, both of which use Levonorgestrel as the active ingredient, are abortifacients, and that the Bachelet administration’s family planning guidelines thus violate the right to life.

The Constitutional Court ruling was announced on Apr. 4 and formalised on Apr. 18. The magistrates who declared the free distribution of the pill by the public health system unconstitutional asserted that scientific research has not conclusively proven that the pill does not prevent an already fertilised egg from implanting, by making the uterine lining less receptive.

Although the government has said that it will comply with the ruling, which the Catholic Church commended, some mayors are considering the possibility of making the morning-after pill available in their districts through non-governmental organisations.

In the midst of the debate, the question was raised as to whether the Constitutional Court had the authority to reach decisions on such far-reaching health matters, since its verdicts cannot be appealed.

Demonstrations both in favour of and against the controversial court verdict were held Tuesday, in the capital and in other cities. In the southern city of Concepción, 12 people taking part in a demonstration against the ruling were arrested.

Early Tuesday, public health workers brought the health services to a halt by walking off the job, to protest the ban on the free distribution of the pill.

In front of the Health Ministry in downtown Santiago, a shouting match broke out between the protesters and secondary and university students from Catholic schools making up the Pro Life Network, who were celebrating the Constitutional Court decision.

The students urged the government to respect "the spirit of the ruling," and not only stop distributing the pill in the public health system but also ban its sale in pharmacies.

"I am here because (the ban) is a national problem and I have to get involved," Roberto Flores, 17, told IPS during the march.

"I never imagined so many people would show up. I believe that the people here represent the majority of the population, who think very differently from the Constitutional Court," 26-year-old Patricio, who was taking part in the march with his girlfriend, told IPS.

"I hope this will provide momentum, so that once and for all decisions of public interest in this country emerge from the people, since this is a secular state, and not one ruled by minorities like the Catholic Church, (the conservative prelature of) Opus Dei, and the right," he said.

"I believe that, just as we did with the trials for human rights violations (committed during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet), our only option now in this case is to turn to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights," said the AFDD’s García.

Maira, with the Movement for the Defence of Birth Control, told IPS that the protests against the Constitutional Court ruling would continue, and that the activists would definitely take their case to the Inter-American Court.

THE LAWSON FILE: MR. LAWSON ON THE BUS SOMEWHERE IN JAMAICA

Getting around the island has become a wee bit of an issue in Jamaica lately.

In St. Andrew residents pissed off over an increase in bus fares have taken their anger to the streets (see article below).

Meanwhile, just yesterday scores of commuters were left stranded in sections of St Catherine as taxi operators withdrew their services, protesting bad road conditions and a hike in the road licence fees. The Church Pen main road in St Catherine was blocked by fallen trees.

The cry on the lips of taxi operators were that the bad road conditions have yet to be addressed despite a recent protest against this. The police later cleared the road.

Those fees were increased by the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) from $9,000 to $64,000.

Whoa.

Transport Minister Mike Henry rolled back the hike after the protests.

But not everyone can take a taxi.

So how about the bus riders?

Especially school kids.

In Jamaica where school absenteeism is a big problem a recent study found there are three main factors responsible for absenteeism. There are no money for lunch, no money for bus fares, and a category known as 'running errands.'

Now Mr. Lawson wasn't usually out blocking roads with boulders when I knew him but he'd have probably understood those Jamaicans who are doing that today...although he'd be worried about the stranded kids.

Mr. Lawson would also probably understand the thousands who risk death riding the islands many minibuses (one of which is pictured above) dodging around on the highways and biways (I remember the fun I had on them in Grenada a few years back). The minibuses while more dangerous are cheaper and show up more often then the regular buses.

One Jamaican recently put it this way in the Jamaica Gleaner:

"A vicious cycle. That's the only way to describe our country's public transportation system, as a ride on one of the many illegal minibuses that crowd the streets is almost always a near-death experience. However, the long wait and fatigue that one has to suffer before getting a Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) bus going your way, is just as frustrating."

Another said the big buses were becoming just as dangerous anyway:

"...(drivers) chatting on their cellphones with one hand on the steering wheel, bullying their way through the traffic, but most sadly, repeatedly blatantly breaking red lights at serious, serious risk - and for what?"

Hey, good luck out there.

The following is from Radio Jamaica.

Bus fare too much

Irate residents of Mavis Bank in St. Andrew Wednesday morning mounted massive road blocks in the community protesting a hike in fares by bus and taxi operators servicing the area.

The protesters reportedly used boulders, trees and other debris to cut off the main access road into the community stranding dozens of children trying to get school.

Callers to the RJR News Centre reported that people had parked their cars and started to walk.

The roadblocks were remounted as soon as they were cleared by the police.

Residents told our news centre that the bus fare has increased from $30 for children to $50 and from $70 to $100 for adults.

They argue that this is outside of regulation fares.

COLORADO STATE REPRESENTATIVE IS A BIG FAT PIG

Rep. Douglas Bruce's (pictured here enjoying the Colorado snow) branding Mexican farm workers "illiterate peasants" has drawn international rebukes and calls from Colorado Latino leaders for his ouster.

"I don't think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado," said Bruce, drawing gasps from fellow lawmakers.

Anti-Defamation League Regional Director Bruce DeBoskey said, "Bruce's comments reflect the bigotry and xenophobia that lay just below the surface of the debate on immigration in this country." DeBoskey added, "Bruce's rhetoric feeds the hateful, dehumanizing hysteria surrounding the presence of foreign workers in our country."

The Fort Collins Coloradoan wrote, "Criticism of Bruce's bigoted comments must go beyond moral outrage. Rather, the question has to be asked if Bruce can reasonably form laws when he so clearly devalues those who will be affected by such policies."

Bruce was gaveled to silence after his remarks by the floor chairwoman, Rep. Kathleen Curry, D-Gunnison, who barred him from speaking further on the bill.

Curry now reports receiving threats for her action. “The hate mail is off the charts, and there’s issues with people in terms of this response,” Curry said. “It has really bothered me.”

She said hundreds of threatening, acerbic messages have clogged her cell phone’s voicemail and her e-mail inbox.

Curry said she filed a report with the Colorado State Patrol. She declined to elaborate on the threats, saying "I don't need more threats."

Butch Montoya, director of the Latino Faith-Based Initiative, said that if the Legislature did not move to censure, discipline or expel Bruce soon, he would organize rallies at the Capitol until Hispanics' voices are heard.

"I think a lot of people are just flabbergasted and offended that that kind of comment can be made in 2008," Montoya said.

Colorado State Representative Bruce is a well known ass who has already been censored once. This followed an incident when during a prayer Bruce kicked a photographer who was snapping a photo.

A little while later, he refused to co-sponsor a bill honoring military veterans and was booted from the State Veterans and Military Affairs Committee.

The following is from CBS4 in Denver.

Migrant Workers Protest Bruce's 'Peasant' Comments

Migrant workers and community activists rallied in Denver Wednesday morning to protest controversial comments made Monday by state Rep. Douglas Bruce, R-Colorado Springs.

"I would like to have the opportunity to state at the microphone why I don't think we need 5,000 more illiterate peasants in Colorado," Bruce said Monday during a debate on a bill to help Mexican migrant workers get temporary visas to work on Colorado farms.

The protestors called the comments racist during their news event outside El Centro Humanitario north of downtown. They added that Bruce's statements should not be tolerated, that he should be punished and apologize.

"This is a wake up call to us to say that this is not the Colorado that we believe in, this is not the Colorado we want for our children," said Gabriela Flora of the American Friends' Service Committee.

Bruce attacked the bill Monday, saying it was about "having more aliens coming into Colorado" from Mexico.

His comment drew an audible gasp from the House.

Bruce said Wednesday he has received about 900 e-mails from across the country about his comment. He said about 95 percent were positive and none were threatening.

He said they included subject lines such as "You are my hero" and "Tell it like it is."

THE LAWSON FILE: WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AROUND HERE?

Rick Coddington, whomever he may be, believes something is very wrong.

I agree with Rick.

He may be a right wing libertarian nut, but he is still on to something here.

Rick writes about a world gone mad in his small town newspaper column.

If you read the daily papers and you don't think we're losing our bearings, well, then I don't know what to tell you.

Rick in his opinion piece, which you can read below, cites some things which he thinks demonstrate the insanity around us.

Now Rick and I would no doubt disagree, for example, on the issue of abortion and a whole lot of other things he writes about, but still...Rick I hear ya'.

Rick, I guess, can't really cover everything and he fails to mention some stuff that, well, leaves me with my eyes twirling.

Rick leaves out what I would consider the insanity of a war where thousands die in order to, at best, establish an Iranian style theocracy in Iraq. That strikes me as absurd. Does it strike you that way, Rick?

Or how about the law that allows a judge to take away the home of the PARENTS of a drug dealer even though no one can show they knew anything about their kid's nefarious activities? I read about that just today.

Or what about the Kansas legislature passing a bill this week to insure that those who pass a background check can own a machine gun...a machine gun? It's not even like the laws in Kansas didn't already allow that, but the legislature just wanted to make sure. You can't be too safe.

And how come those women in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints down in Texas, on top of everything, else wear those,uh, dresses? And how about that wild hair style they sport? What's up with that, Prophet Jessup?

It's a bizarre world in which we live.

Maybe that's why Bush and those like him seem to be doing all they can to insure the advance of global climate change. Maybe they just can't stand all the craziness and theirs is really a clever plan to end it...once and for all.

Who can say?

The following is from the Mountain Mail (down in New Mexico).

We Are Desensitized To The Absurdities
The Right Side

By Rick Coddington
special to Mountain Mail

SOCORRO, New Mexico (STPNS) -- The world is nuts. Look at the things that are happening around us; it’s chaos.

Here are a few headlines to illustrate my point – Philadelphia (the city of brotherly love): “Police say a 64-year-old woman found dead in her home Friday was killed by her roommate over ‘the proper way to wash a glass.’” Proper?!

From Denver: “Parents argue over which gang their four-year-old son should join. A fight about the decision led to a public disturbance with the father’s arrest. Joseph Manzanares went to the video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her and knocked over several video displays. The girlfriend, who is black, is a member of the Crips, while Manzanares, who is Hispanic, belongs to the Westside Ballers.”

From Jacksonville, Fla.: “Man arrested for selling fake crack to nursing home residents. ‘22-year-old was arrested on Thursday after phony crack cocaine was sold to residents at the Golden Retreat Shelter Care Center.” (Crack to nursing home residents?!)

And then there’s the Wisconsin alderman in jail for shaking down business owners for bribes in exchange for city licenses, for buying votes and for conspiring to have a man beaten. Taxpayers have paid him more than $67,000 while he has been in jail because since he has not been convicted, he rem ains on the city payroll as an alderman. That’s insane.

Or how about the New Yorker who has now been arrested 53 times for molesting women on the subways? Authorities say, “It is a fairly common crime on subways in New York.” (53 times???) But the story that takes the cake is the one that claims the first man is now going to give birth. That one really confused me, since the necessary plumbing for the project just doesn’t exist in a man.

If you look behind that headline you find that the ‘man’ is a man only in the politically correct definition of the word, being in fact a woman who has undergone medical procedures to “become” a “man.” Of course, we have been indoctrinated with the mantra that people are now being “born into the wrong body” and that we shouldn’t bat an eye about such things for fear of being labeled “intolerant.” Instead, we are commanded to think that such people, after a life of being thus wronged by birth, are just made to be their true selves by surgery. Without going into that, my question of this “man” would be: If you think you should have been a man, and after having suffered from being born a woman and the surgeries to change that, why did you now have yourself artificially impregnated? That is definitely not a “man thing,” uh, dude?

Maybe these things prey on my mind more than they should, but I find myself living in this crazy world and all joking aside, I believe these are indicators of much deeper and very serious problems. Some may say these things are of no great significance. So what if a woman is murdered over glass washing, or if a four-year-old is condemned to become a gang banger, or if molestation is “fairly common” in New York subways, or if politicians get paid while being in jail, or even about the woman/man/woman thing? What’s the big deal?

Here’s what: We as a nation have become desensitized to the point that we just take everything in stride. How much are we to tolerate? Even huge tragedies fade quickly into the mire of the daily rat race. Last week we looked at the fact that 10 million American black babies have been aborted – 35 percent of their population.

How can such things be ignored? America has totally lost its way. We have become callous from the daily chaos of the last 50 years. We have been indoctrinated to believe that politically correct newspeak is a sign of intelligence. If we are upset by things, we are ignorant or intolerant. According to Barack Obama, (we) “get bitter, … cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like (us) or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain (our) frustrations.” So if we don’t like the way things are going, we are deficient in the eyes of the elitists? So what is my point in all this? In the upcoming columns I’m going to suggest to you where America went wrong so that maybe we can change things. Stay tuned.


Rick Coddington is a third-generation native New Mexican. He attended UNM and studied political science. He has lived in Socorro since 1974. His opinions do not necessarily represent the Mountain Mail.

THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR DRUGGING OF "DETAINEES" SHOULD BE DETAINED

Over 20 people say they were given drugs or witnessed such acts during interrogations by US authorities at the Guantanamo prison, USA Today reported Tuesday.

"I felt a shot and then was very sleepy, I was completely gone. I said, Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will," said Saudi Arabian Adel al-Nusairi, a former prisoner at the facility in Cuban territory against the will of the people and authorities.

According to Al-Nusairi, after hours of questions and under the effects of some substance, he decided to talk to please his captors.

Other former detainees at Guantanamo and secret jails worldwide narrated experiences similar to Al-Nusairi's and explained those affected describes symptoms ranging from drowsiness and hallucinations.

The Washington Post says the Defense Department and the CIA, the two agencies responsible for detaining terrorism suspects, both deny using drugs as an enhancement for interrogations, and suggest that the stories from Nusairi and others like him are either fabrications or mistaken interpretations of routine medical treatment.

Yet the allegations have resurfaced because of the release this month of a 2003 Justice Department memo that explicitly condoned the use of drugs on detainees.

On April 9, ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburgh broke an exclusive story on World News Tonight that provided new details surrounding how top Bush administration officials signed off on the use of harsh interrogation tactics in the "war on terror."

"Indeed, vice president Dick Cheney, secretary of state Colin Powell, attorney general John Ashcroft, CIA director George Tenet, and national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, grouped in the National Security Council's Principals Committee, gave the U.S. military and the CIA a green light to torture suspected al-Qaeda operatives and other "enemy combatants."'

The LA Chronicle points out that in October 2006, lawyers for Jose Padilla, who was found guilty in 2007 of supporting terrorism overseas, claimed in court papers that U.S. authorities gave him "drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations." Rather than directly denying Padilla's claim, the Defense Department simply claimed that it does not torture and "it has always been our policy to treat all detainees humanely."

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is calling for Congressional and criminal investigations into the allegations.

The use of drugs on detainees would be a clear violation of the Helsinki Declaration and the Nuremberg Code.

Not that Bush Administration stooges gives a hoot about either.

Maybe they would care if they were "detained."

The following is a press release from Physicians for Human Rights.

Allegations of Drugging in US Interrogations

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) urgently called on Congress and the Department of Justice, with the involvement of the FBI, to each immediately investigate allegations by detainees that they were forcibly drugged while in US custody. These claims, reported today by the Washington Post, also raise new and deeply troubling questions about what role health professionals may have played in violating detainees' human rights, domestic and international law, and codes of medical ethics established since World War II. The report claims that forced medication may have been used for a number of purposes including as a chemical restraint, as a facilitator of interrogation, and possibly for therapeutic purposes in the absence of informed consent. Any use in interrogation of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to profoundly disrupt the senses or personality is criminal under US law, including the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Statute.

"The forced medication of detainees without their consent, either for interrogation or as a chemical restraint, is an affront to the very foundations of medical ethics," stated Leonard Rubenstein, President of PHR and a legal expert on scientific and medical ethics [SEE BIO BELOW]. "Even if used for purportedly therapeutic purposes, absent very exceptional circumstances, detainees have a right to consent to modes of treatment, just as others do, and the Department of Defense has indeed recognized this right."

Simultaneous Congressional and criminal investigations are necessary, according to PHR, to determine whether medical expertise and personnel were used to drug detainees for purposes of interrogation, sedate them for transport, and to medicate them without their consent for other non-therapeutic purposes. PHR also called on the Department of Defense to investigate whether military physicians and other health professionals have violated their professional ethical standards and detainee rights, including in denying detainees informed consent for therapeutic use of medication.

"There is no acceptable use for mind-altering drugs in interrogation, so any use of medication to aid in interrogation of detainees in US custody would be experimental. As such, it would be a clear violation of international codes and domestic law in place since the doctors' trials at Nuremberg," said Dr. Scott A. Allen, MD, a medical advisor to PHR and Co-Director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University [SEE BIO BELOW]. "Additionally, use of medication as a restraint is unethical. Even therapeutic use of forced medication under US military regulations is not ethically permissible in the absence of informed consent except for the rarest of cases, such as treatment for a highly infectious disease like tuberculosis."

The Helsinki Declaration and the Nuremberg Code establish standards for the protection of individual rights in human experimentation, which are largely codified in US law. They absolutely prohibit human experimentation without the consent of the subject. These ethical rules, the Nuremberg Code in particular, were created in response to human experiments conducted by German health professionals on prisoners during World War II. The doctors involved in those human rights abuses were later convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Since 2005, PHR has documented the systematic use of psychological torture by the US during its interrogations of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and elsewhere in its groundbreaking report Break Them Down. The organization has repeatedly called for an end to the use of the SERE tactics by US personnel, the dismantling of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCT) teams, and a full Congressional investigation of the use of psychological torture by the US Government, among other recommendations. Additionally, PHR has worked to mobilize the health professional community, particularly the professional associations, such as the American Medical Association, to adopt strong ethical prohibitions against direct participation in interrogations.

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Leonard S. Rubenstein, JD is the President of PHR, an organization that mobilizes the health professions to advance human rights. He has been a leader in the effort to end health professional involvement and the use of torture in US national security interrogations since the events of 9/11. Additionally, he has written on issues of medical ethics, including illegal medical experimentation, in Apartheid-era South Africa, the US, including past instances of human experimentation by the CIA, and elsewhere. Mr. Rubenstein has conducted human rights investigations throughout the world and has published widely, from academic journals to the op-ed pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times. He has received numerous awards, including the Health Care Hero Award from the Congressional Minority Caucuses.

Scott A. Allen, MD is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine at Alpert Medical School, Brown University. He is co-founder and co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at the Miriam Hospital. He is a former state prison medical director and has experience as a researcher in prison settings. He is the lead medical author of the joint report from Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality and currently serves as an advisor to PHR.

STOP THE PRIVATIZATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES

The following announcement is from La Via Campesina.

Sustainable family farming keeps diversity alive and cools down the earth! Stop the privatisation of natural resources!

Faced with climate change, the destruction of biodiversity and an energy crisis, transnational companies pretend they have the magic solutions to permit business as usual. They promote many « miracle-technologies » – GM plants and trees, synthetic germoplasm, nanotechnologies, Terminator, Transcontainer, agrofuels, « carbon traps » - that they claim will tackle the environmental crisis.

Hidden behind their paternalistis claims, however, is their wish to privatise all Earth’s resources: land, fresh water, germoplasm, oceans, knowledge and, soon, even the air that we breathe. In the name of the environment, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and other international treaties concerning the environment provide, in fact, legal legitimacy for this global robbery. For example, the only practical use for GMOs, Terminator and other hybrid seeds is to enforce intellectual property rights on resources, seeds, that have been bred, kept and improved during millenia by indigenous and farmers’ communities. These communities have never improved seeds as goods for sale.

As soon as they are developed by the industry, these technologies destroy land, biodiversity and farmers. By promoting industrial agriculture and the erosion of all natural ressources, industry and industries’ technologies impound social and environmental crisis.

As opposed to this devastating model, Vía Campesina insists that the world’s farmers, men and women, are themselves able to deal with environmental challenges: by fixing carbon in the soils sustainable family farming cools down the earth, farm seed needs less carbon-greedy inputs and can adapt to climate change, local markets eliminate the need for long distance transport and thus reduce CO2 emissions and save fossil energy.

Thus, the destruction of rural communities must be stopped immediately, whilst food sovereignty and farmers’ rights be respected. The priorities are an immediate end to privatisation of those resources need for farming and their redistribution and market regulation.

We call to mobilize from the 17th to the 19th May in Bonn, Germany, to stop the pirates. We will defend the diversity of our cultures and our collective rights to use natural resources against private appropriation with colour and music.

IS YEMEN THE FACE OF THINGS TO COME???

Want a job? If you're a young person in south Yemen about your only hope is to join the army and even that isn't as easy as you might think.

Poverty and unemployment is fuelling discontent in southern Yemen.

ISN reports with a fragile peace process with northern rebels on the verge of collapse, President Ali Abdullah Saleh's government faces renewed pressure in southern Yemen in the wake of the widespread disturbances earlier this month.
Joining the southern Yemeni youths, in recent months, protests spearheaded by former soldiers demanding pension rights have occurred. These former soldiers have met a tough response from the security forces, with several people killed or wounded.

Former members of the South Yemen military claim systematic discrimination in the payment of post-demobilization stipends and subsequent employment of southerners in the military and police, following the 1990 unification of the country and 1994 southern secessionist rebellion.

The government was forced to send troops and armored personnel carriers (APCs) into the worst affected towns in a bid to quell the protests, establishing checkpoints on the road linking the capital Sana'a to the former South Yemen seat of government, Aden, in an apparent bid to prevent the expansion of the protests.

Referring to the post-unification status quo in the south, Nicole Stracke from the Gulf Research Center in Dubai told ISN Security Watch, "There was discrimination in terms of jobs, money, infrastructure and investments.

"Saleh would put in key positions people who are affiliated [with] him. And given that 70 percent of Yemen government revenue comes from oil, and that south Yemen has the oil, they feel [a sense of] injustice," she said.

One analyst who requested anonymity explained that, "What is sparking them [the protests] is part of a much larger grievance against the regime. And what you are starting to see now is an increasingly common narrative between what is going on in the south and what's going on in the north [al-Houthi rebellion].

"At their heart, these demonstrations are about the inability of the government to provide basic services that include most of the people in the decision-making," she said, adding that the wave of southern protests is "building" and looks set to increase in "seriousness."

The Yemini Socialist Party (YSP), the former ruling party in south Yemen, has accused the government of seeking to "terrorise leaders of the peaceful protest movement."

The party's secretary general Yassin Noman, said the arrests of protesters and YSP party members was aimed at "thwarting ... the nationalist democratic movement in Yemen."

The south is home to only a fifth of Yemen's 22 million people, but it generates much of the country's revenue. Up to 80 percent of oil production now comes from the south, which also has fisheries and Aden's port and refinery.

Adding to the growing crisis in Yemen is the fact that more than six percent of Yemenis have dropped below the poverty line due to rising staple food prices, joining the 40 percent of Yemenis already living on less than $2 per day. This according to Yemen’s country director for the World Food Program.

The Yemen Times says there are few viable methods available to the average Yemeni family to help cope with the recent increased risk of starvation.

“Coping mechanisms are limited to skipping essential needs, so it either affects the food basket or health and education,” said Mohamed El-Kouhene, Yemen’s WFP country director, adding, “If we don’t do something now, Millennium Development Goals will be set back 70 years.”

Over a hundred people were arrested for protesting against food prices in Yemen last week.

And that ain't all folks.

Yemen suffers from grave water shortages, specialists and officials keep on warning that the country’s water supply relies on limited groundwater. Only 125 cubic meters are available annually per capita, and the groundwater has been polluted and heavily over exploited for more than two decades, according to a German Technological Cooperation (GTZ) document.

Anwar Abdulaziz, head of the Climate Change Unit in the General Authority of Environment Preservation says, “The climate changes during the last few years and especially this year is a real concern for Yemen, particularly if the frequency of precipitation events diminish, putting rainfall and agriculture in peril and lead to a catastrophic drought."

"Every year the rain season starts at the beginning of March, and now Yemen is in the end of April and there is still no rain. This means that Yemen is truly affected by the climate changes," said Abdulaziz.

According to the Yemen Observer most Yemenis have stopped drawing water (see picture) from the many wells which have recently dried up. "The water crisis in Yemen makes people worried, even children, who are the ones mostly responsible for bringing water from springs and wells," the newspaper writes.

The following is from N News Yemen.

Many protesters still in prisons: YOHR

The Sana’a-based Yemeni Observatory for Human Rights (YOHR) revealed in a press released on Tuesday that many detainees whom security authorities have arrested in the aftermath of protests in south Yemen are still in custody in prisons, some of them are unknown.

It said that five people are kept in a prison in Hadramout, nine in Aden and 32 in Lahj. It added that security authorities also detained seven students on Monday and put took them to secret prisons.

The press release accused security authorities of disallowing the observatory team to visit prisoners in known detentions, calling for disclosing prisons where students and other prisoners are held.

THE LAWSON FILE: GOOD OLD AMERICANS TAKE ON THE MAINE TURNPIKE AUTHORITY

Some Maine locals are not happy with a plan to relocate and upgrade a toll plaza which they think will mess up the neighborhood.

Residents opposed to the plan by the Maine Turnpike Authority (MTA) to "relocate and improve" the 39-year-old York Toll Plaza took their message to the streets (see picture).

Around 100 protesters rallied along U.S. 1 on Sunday to urge turnpike officials to reconsider the plan to replace the existing toll plaza with a $35 million facility supposedly designed to be more motorist-friendly and accommodate new technology.

Four potential locations were proposed for the new plaza, each of which would require the loss of at least one home.

In this day and age where losing homes is an easy thing to do, me thinks we don't need to add another one more way to take people's homes from them.

Amongst those mounting the protest Sunday was Vicki Muscarello, 46, of York, Maine. Muscarello and her Parents, Carol and Lou Potvin, who have lived in town for 45 years, held placards urging turnpike officials to ''take tolls, not homes and land.''

Communists no doubt.

In fact the whole town of York seems to be under commie influence.

At a public meeting the first week of April at York Middle School, nearly a thousand residents showed up to tell highway officials they need to come up with a new plan that better serves the York community.

Last week, selectmen voted 5-0 to place on the May ballot a non-binding resolution stating the town's opposition to the project. A clearly irate Board of Selectmen told the Maine Turnpike Authority in no uncertain terms that it and the town's residents have been hoodwinked, and it is demanding a meeting with the MTA board.

"We feel the MTA administration ... has not been honest with us ... as to why the project has to be as gigantic and destructive and take as much land," they stated in a resolution sent to the MTA.

Even the anarchist Greater York Region Chamber of Commerce recently has joined the signed on and announced its opposition to the MTA's plans.

Marshall Jarvis, a York Harbor resident says, "Every (proposed alternative) site has huge problems. We would like (the MTA) to do what they have to do at the current site."

Jarvis, who is with the grass roots group Think Again which was formed to fight the plan, added, "They need to look at the facts and listen to people. They are just charging ahead like a bull in a china shop and are going to do what they want to do regardless. That's why we've had the letters and the public outcry."

It's hard to imagine the MTA actually proceeding with a project which seems so despised by so many.

And in one of the thirteen original colonies no less.

But then there was that King George fellow back when who didn't take area residents protests seriously either.

Anyway at yesterday's rally protesters wrote letters to the MTA, donated money to Think Again for T-shirts and buttons and waved homemade and official signs with slogans like "Don't move your damn toll gate" and "MTA: Take tolls, not homes and land."

Greater York Region Chamber of Commerce (the anarchist group mentioned earlier) President Cathy Goodwin spoke at the rally of residents losing homes and property and said the potential for further traffic gridlock in the Interstate 95 corridor was very real.

"We're not going to take it on the chin," Goodwin said.

It's plain stupid to mess with these Mainers (Mainees...Mainites???).

Randy Small, one of the founders of the group Think Again, speaking about a public meeting held in early April with the evil MTA said, "This is just a dog-and-pony show."

At that meeting Dan Paradee, public affairs manager for the Turnpike Authority was the target of boos and his lengthy talk was interrupted on several occasion. Paradee obviously angry or perhaps frightened by the crowds response to him told them, "I don't want this to get out of hand. If we're not able to carry on with the presentation, eventually we're just going to have to pick up and go."

During the public presentation period of that meet Katherine Prichard, of Chases Pond Road, worried about the impression the new toll plaza would have on tourists.

"This monstrosity of a (structure) will change the face of York forever," she said.

"This is not what we want for the gateway to the state of Maine." (Note: the plaza is near the border with the great state of New Hampshire.

The following is from WCAX (Vermont).

Maine residents protest toll plaza plan

About 75 Maine residents have taken to the streets to protest the relocation and improvement of a toll plaza near the New Hampshire border.

Members of Think Again, the opposition group, say relocating the York Toll Plaza will destroy a neighborhood. They suggest renovating the existing plaza.

They protested the plan yesterday.

Turnpike Authority officials say the current toll plaza was built on wetlands. It was only meant to last 25 years and is sinking an inch a year.

It cannot accommodate technology allowing EZ Pass users to pay tolls while driving at highway speed.

The new $35 million facility is designed to be more motorist-friendly.

Think Again members have convinced the town to schedule a nonbinding referendum on the issue May 17.

CHINESE PEOPLE DEMONSTRATE IN CHINA AND AROUND THE WORLD ABOUT TIBET, WESTERN MEDIA COVERAGE, AND THE DALAI LAMA

Hundreds of protesters (pictured here) gathered outside the University of Michigan Crisler Arena Sunday in support of the Beijing Olympics waving flags and chanting "Dalai Liar," "CNN Liar" and "We love Tibet. We love China."

Chinese students from Michigan State University, Central Michigan University and Michigan Technical University came in chartered buses to join the protest. Cars drove past honking and waving Chinese flags in support.

Diane Brown, public-safety spokeswoman for the university, said the crowd of demonstrators was estimated at about 600 to 700 people. Many wore T-shirts that read "Support Beijing 2008," a reference to the upcoming summer Olympics.

"We overseas Chinese students were infuriated by the violence in Tibet on March 14 and the interruption on the Olympic torch relay wire-pulled by the Dalai clique, so we decided to stage this protest to make our voice heard," said Chen Jinhui, a student at the University of Michigan and one of the organizers.

On their placards the protesters displayed pictures, diagrams and historical records, which were collected from the Internet, foreign media reports and books written by Chinese and Western scholars, on the facts of Tibet's history and development, as well as the Chinese view of what has been going on in Tibet since this March 14, and information concerning protests against the Olympic Torch relay.

Protesters also spoke with passerbys and local media about China's policy on Tibet and its contributions to the improvement of the living standard of the Tibetan people.

The protest led to heated verbal exchanges between pro-Chinese and pro-Tibetan demonstrators. They traded shouts of "One China" with "Open the door! Let's see what's happening inside Tibet."

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader spoke before more than 7,000 at the school.

American Chinese and Chinese students across the United States have been staging peaceful protests against the Dalai Lama's "separatist activities" as he tours the the United States.

In Rochester, Minnesota, several hundred Chinese protesters turned out.

Hundreds more were on hand during the Dalai Lama's stop in Seattle earlier.

"Wherever Dalai goes, he will always meet protests from Chinese people and all peace-loving folks," Ge Yan, a Chinese student studying in Minnesota, told Xinhua on Friday.

Meanwhile, AFP reports several thousand Chinese also rallied Saturday in Paris, Britain, Berlin and Los Angeles in support of their country and against allegedly biased media coverage of the Olympic torch relay and unrest in Tibet.

In Paris Saturday, up to 4,000 Chinese students and other expatriates gathered in the Place de la Republique wearing T-shirts daubed with the slogan "One China, One family" and brandishing signs critical of the western media, police said.

More than 1,000 people, mainly students, also gathered outside the BBC's offices in Manchester, north-west England, while around 300 staged a demonstration outside the Houses of Parliament in London.

Several hundred pro-Chinese activists also demonstrated in Berlin's Potsdamer Platz in the business district gripping banners with messages like "Media = untruths," and "China Olympia, one world, one dream."

In Los Angeles, police said up to 5,000 people gathered outside the Hollywood offices of broadcaster CNN in protest against one of the channel's commentators, Jack Cafferty, who described China as a "bunch of goons and thugs."

The channel has since apologized and said the April 9 remarks referred "only" to the Chinese government, not the people, but the row only added to the anger felt by many Chinese worldwide following protests during the Olympic torch relay.

In China itself fresh protests broke out on Sunday in reaction to the Western media's coverage of China's handling of Tibet.

The latest demonstrations came after thousands of Chinese rallied Saturday in support of their country, with branches of the French retailer Carrefour targeted.

People gathered in front of Carrefour stores across the country, chanting slogans of "Oppose Tibet independence" and "Oppose CNN's anti-China statements," the official Xinhua news agency said.

For example, more than 1,000 people assembled in front of a Carrefour store in the northwestern city of Xian holding protest banners.

Media coverage of the demonstrations in China show the majority of the people who participated are Chinese youths below the age of 30.

The blog Awakening China says:
"...on the many Chinese forums and bulletins across China used by most educated young netizens, in which the Western governments and its people were unable to understand the extent of it because of the language barrier, were filled with anti-Western sentiments, some bordering on deep anger and hatred which may take one or two generations to nullify these negative effects."

The following is from CCTV International (China).

Overseas Chinese hold demonstrations to support Beijing Olympics

Overseas Chinese held peaceful demonstrations on Saturday in the US, France, Britain and Germany over distorted reports about China in western media. Their rallies were also aimed at showing support for the Beijing Olympics.

Sweltering weather didn't dampen their enthusiasm at the rally on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Participants say inaccurate coverage by some western media about events in Tibet has triggered anger among overseas Chinese.

Even some Americans are expressing concern over the reports.

Lawyer Robert Fabrikant said, "I've been to the Tibet region and certainly the Chinese government has done a lot for the Tibet people. And I think many Americans are worried that they can't get the true stories from their own media here."

In London, demonstrators covered their mouths with masks in a silent protest against the reporting on Tibet in the British media. To help clear up misinformation, photographs taken during the Tibet riots were shown beside pictures with distorted information that some western media presented to the world.

In France, incensed by disruptions of the Olympic torch relay in Paris, and an attack on disabled Chinese torchbearer Jin Jing, demonstrators sang and cheered for the Beijing Olympics.

In Germany, about 3,000 Chinese students gathered in Berlin to protest biased news coverage by some German media and to support Beijing Olympics.

An overseas Chinese said, "Most Chinese trust Germans. But I also think most Germans are not very familiar with a lot of information, particularly about the history of Tibet."

Those who took part in the protests say they hope their actions help local media and local people better understand China and the Beijing Olympics.