TO BE A WOMEN IN PRISON IN AFGHANISTAN TODAY

The following was reported earlier this year in an article in the New York Times on the current lot of women in Afghanistan.

"Homa is a typical young woman born and raised in rural Afghanistan. At 16 she was married and gave birth to a baby boy. After her husband was killed in the wars racking her country, Homa chose to remain a widow. The years rolled by uneventfully until a cousin, whose marriage offer she had rejected, found her home alone and raped her. She didn't dare report the assault -- rape is not against the law in Afghanistan, and women are commonly arrested for sex crimes if they speak out. However, the next time her cousin came, Homa was prepared. She defended herself with kerosene and a match, sending the man to the hospital."

"The man's father was sympathetic. At first he believed that Homa was acting in self-defense, but when his son died of complications, he demanded recompense. If Homa's father would give him several sheep, and Homa's two younger sisters, all would be forgiven. The court hearing the case stood poised to approve the agreement, but Homa refused. The judge was perplexed by Homa's disregard for social harmony and sentenced her to 15 years in prison."

The Times didn't report anything about what Homa's life was like after that.

Below you'll get an idea.

The following is from IRIN.

AFGHANISTAN: Misery for female prisoners

MAZAR-E SHARIF, 1 May (IRIN) - Lailoma, 10, has been living in squalid conditions with her imprisoned mother in a provincial jail in Mazar-e Sharif, capital of the northern Afghan province of Balkh, for years. "I cannot live without my mother, brothers and sister who have been here with me for a long time," grinned Lailoma.

Nisar Ahmad, 8, Lailoma's brother, has no idea about life outside the prison as he has been living in a poorly ventilated, dark room with a tiny window and small yard most of his life. "How can I go outside when the door is always locked and my mother is here?" he asked.

Although Lailoma and Nisar Ahmad have not been charged with any crime, they have become prisoners along with their mother, 35-year-old Tordai, charged with the killing of her husband. With nowhere to go, they stay with their convicted mother - the only parent - in the dilapidated facility.

"My four children have been living with me here in jail for nearly five years. This has become another headache for my miserable life with daily quarrelling and arguing," said the emaciated mother, sitting on a small plastic sheet in her prison cell.

"They [the children] have the same conditions as we do here in the jail," Tordai complained. "They have become illiterate … with no means of learning and studying here."

Shafiqa, 20, another female inmate, charged with adultery, complained about poor conditions in the detention facility. "There are no doctors, no medicine and not enough food to eat for us here," she said. The young women escaped from home two years ago after she was married to a man against her will.

Tordai and Shafiqa - along with other 12 female inmates and their 15 children - share the facility with 236 male prisoners in a mud-built compound, which was originally the city's traffic police department. The building has only two small yards and just nine cells for both male and female convicts.

The lack of space means those awaiting trial languish with the convicted in the same cells, Col Abdulrub, in charge of the prison, said.

"In addition to a lack of proper medicine and health care here, the issue of very old and overcrowded rooms is another trouble for prisoners living in this compound," Abdulrub explained, adding that up to 30 prisoners were living in a room originally built for 10 inmates.

Prison authorities in Mazar also complained about a lack of foodstuffs, proper medicine and education facilities for children living alongside their mothers in the prison.

"The government is only providing less then US $1 for each inmate per day, which cannot even buy their dry bread," the prison official said.

Rights bodies have expressed concern over poor prison conditions in the destitute central Asian state.

There are 34 prisons across the country and many lack separate buildings for female prisoners, many of whom are kept in cells in prisons originally built for male inmates.

"Some 90 children are living with their mothers, who have been charged with different crimes, without any kindergartens and other facilities for their development in all the prisons of the country," Azizi claimed.

"Prison conditions in Afghanistan remain extremely poor and prisoners generally have to rely on relatives for their food and other expenditures," the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) said in its annual report for 2005.

"Prisons and their staff are severely under-resourced and no training is provided to them about caring for prisoners or their duties with regards to the human rights of prisoners," the report read.

According to the report, the rights body had helped secure the release of 1,386 illegally detained persons and removed 27 children from adult prison cells in 2005.

TODAY AT TILDENVILLE ELEMENTARY

Everyone will have big stories today about the boycots and marches. I decided instead to bring you a small one.

This comes from the Orlando Sentinel.

Tildenville Elementary absences blamed on demonstration

More than 40 percent of Tildenville Elementary's children failed to show up for class today, a phenomenon school officials attribute to today's demonstrations.

Tildenville is an old farming community served by a high-poverty, high-minority school. Hispanic children make up more than two-thirds of its enrollment. Yet nearly all 265 absent today are Hispanic, said Carmen Martinez, the school's dual-language program coordinator.

"We have children from everywhere -- Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Puerto Rico," she said, and their parents largely work in farming and the service industries.

It's not clear whether families kept the children home in silent demonstrations or brought them to Orlando to participate in rallies, she said. In the meantime, the school will remain open and it will be up to teachers to decide later whether to incorporate Monday's events into future lessons

OMAHA TO MAKE SCHOOL SEGREGATION THE LAW

Under a bill swiftly signed this month by Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, the Omaha school district in 2008 would be carved into three new districts: one mostly white, one mostly black and one largely Hispanic. The law doesn't say that outright, but its mapping requirements make such an outcome inevitable, given the city's housing patterns.

The proposal was introduced to the legislature by Nebaraska's only black state senator, Ernie Chambers. Chambers has been described by some as the angriest black man in Nebraska.

Chambers is far and away the legislature's most liberal member and is a long time advocate on behalf of the downtrodden. He is not your typical state politician. He wears sweatshirts and jeans on the floor of the senate. Every year at the start of the session he introduces legislation to abolish the death penalty. He fought against an amendment to the state constitution to protect the right to hunt.

According to Mother Jones magazine, "He cajoled his colleagues into abolishing corporal punishment in schools, correcting the state pension system so that women would be treated equally with men, and back[ed] a switch from at-large municipal elections to district-based voting so that nonwhites would have a chance to serve. Under his sway, Nebraska led the nation in the 1980s in divesting in companies that did business with apartheid-era South Africa."

So what with his proposal which most see as an ugly throw back to Jim Crow days.

Chambers says the schools are already segregated in realtiy. He says that Omaha is already divided economically, socially and racially. The de facto segregation, he says, has resulted in an inequitable distribution of resources that leaves minority students on the short end of the stick. Minority students are receiving a poor quality education as a result. He argues, the change in the district lines would allow each minority group to control its own schools. That would give them the ability to allocate resources in a way that would give minority students a chance at a better education.

Segregation has always been here and always will be here, so ... how can you mitigate the harm it does to our children?" Chambers told Knight Ridder Newspapers. "The only chance they've got is if parents control the schools. ... It's as American as apple pie."

Rush Limbaugh seemed to agree when he commented on a recent show, "You know, I also remember, I've had a couple -- well, a lot more than that -- I've had a lot of discussions with Dr. Sowell, Dr. Thomas Sowell who is also black and he grew up in Harlem and a lot of other places. I'll never forget one time he told me that when he grew up in Harlem before Harlem became what it is today, he said it was black, but you had black professionals, including teachers, and they were educated. They had values. They were all oriented around the church. The culture was intact, it was superb, and they held their own in academic contests with kids from white schools around New York and so forth, and once the integration came along, all that just disintegrated for some reason, and apparently what's happening is that they've finally owned up to the problem in Omaha, and so they're going to go back and try to fix it by turning back the hands of time."

However, the proposal did not sit well with most black leaders in Omaha.

"This is a disaster," Ben Gray, a television news producer and co-chairman of the African-American Achievement Council said in the New York Times. "Throughout our time in America, we've had people who continuously fought for equality, and from Brown vs. Board of Education, we know that separate is not equal. We cannot go back to segregating our schools."

The following is taken from the Afro-American Newspapers.

Black leaders silent on Omaha school plan
By James Wright
AFRO Staff Writer

The leaders of Black and civil rights organizations have yet to comment on the controversy regarding the Nebraska legislature dividing Omaha's school system into three districts, Black, White and Latino. The NAACP is the only organization that has issued a statement regarding the matter.

"We strongly oppose the Nebraska law that divides the Omaha public schools along racial lines," Bruce Gordon, CEO and president, said. "The Supreme Court ruled those 52 years ago that separate but equal schools result in inequality and poor education for minority children. We will use every advocacy tool, including legal, at our disposal to fight this unconstitutional law."

Gordon noted that in 1976, a federal court, ordered the 45,000-student Omaha school system desegregated. The city ran a mandatory busing program from 1976 to 1999.

"To think that in 2006, after all that has been done to desegregate schools, a state legislative body would pass, and a governor sign into law, a bill that intentionally segregates students based on their race or ethnicity is unconscionable," said Gordon.

Sen. Ernie Chambers (D-Omaha) introduced the legislation. In a previous edition of the AFRO, Chambers said the schools in his city were already segregated and his plan is a way for Black parents to have more control over their children's education.

A spokesperson for the Congressional Black Caucus said that Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.), chairman of the group, has not made a statement regarding the controversy. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund said they were still studying its options.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has not had time to study the matter, but will be doing so soon, said a spokesperson for the Rainbow-Push Coalition. When the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was asked for comment, a spokesperson referred to the NAACP statement.

The National Education Association, led by Reg Weaver, did not comment on the controversy.

"We have decided to let our affiliate in Nebraska handle this matter," said Ramona Parks, senior spokesperson for the association.

University of Maryland political scientist Dr. Ronald Walters said that Chambers is trying to remedy public policy that says that Black children are not important.

Omaha's plan will be implemented July 2008 unless the legislature makes changes, Chambers said.

ANTI-IMMIGRATION LEADER URGED NAZIS TO TAKE ON UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS

Laine Lawless is thrilled to death organizing against immigrants. As a leader of Border Guardians--an organization which has recently been grabbing headlines with members' festive burning of the Mexican flag--she's been inviting people down to her Arizona ranch to stand against the "invading hordes." Lawless is a former Minutemen who started her own group, she says, to keep tabs on what she calls "the open border lobby."

Lawless recently told KVOA in Tuscon, "“They (undocumented immigrants) have no right to protest. They have no right at all. They have the right to be deported.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama reported earlier this month it has an e-mail (see below) proving that Laine Lawless is trying to promote violence against illegal immigrants.

She says the e-mail is a fake.

You be the judge.

The following article and related e-mail comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Going Lawless
Border Guardians leader calls for violence
By Susy Buchanan and David Holthouse

A prominent anti-immigration leader has secretly urged the nation’s largest neo-Nazi group to launch a campaign of violence and harassment against undocumented workers in the United States.

Laine Lawless, who started a group called Border Guardians last year, sent an April 3 e-mail to Mark Martin, "SS commander" of the Western Ohio unit of the National Socialist Movement, which has 59 chapters in 30 states. It was titled, "How to GET RID OF THEM!"

The e-mail from Lawless, who was also an original member of Chris Simcox’s vigilante militia before it morphed into the Minuteman Project in early 2005, detailed 11 suggestions for ways to harass and terrorize undocumented immigrants, including robbery and "beating up illegals" as they leave their workplace.

"Maybe some of your warriors for the race would be the kind of people willing to implement some of these ideas," Lawless wrote. "I’m not ready to come out on this. ... Please don’t use my name. THANKS."

At the request of Lawless, who declined to respond to questions from the Intelligence Report, Martin posted her suggestions to a number of neo-Nazi bulletin boards. Those suggestions included:

"Steal the money from any illegal walking into a bank or check cashing place."

"Make every illegal alien feel the heat of being a person without status. ... I hear the rednecks in the South are beating up illegals as the textile mills have closed. Use your imagination."

"Discourage Spanish-speaking children from going to school. Be creative."

"Create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning that any further illegal immigrants will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up upon crossing the border. This should be fairly easy to do, considering the hysteria of the Spanish language press, and how they view the Minutemen as ‘racists & vigilantes.’"
The Report contacted Lawless for comment, sending her copies of her own e-mails that included their original headers, as she requested. But after receiving the copies, Lawless refused to talk.

Lawless, the former high priestess of Sisterhood of the Moon, a lesbian pagan organization, has been heavily involved in anti-immigration extremism since 2004, when she joined Simcox's Civil Homeland Defense outfit, as it was then called. That same year, she invited militia members to her private ranch in Cochise County, Ariz. "I coordinate with Chris [Simcox], so anyone who wants to come is welcome," she wrote in a post to an online user group, "Border War" which was reposted on sites such as "A Well Regulated Militia."

Lawless was featured in numerous media reports on the first Minuteman Project campaign in April 2005, and has patrolled side-by-side with Minuteman vice-president Carmen Mercer. Lawless also traveled to Texas to join the Texas Minutemen in October, when she was quoted in The Austin Chronicle saying she gets an "intellectual and political orgasm" from spying on pro-immigration groups. In that interview, she accused one pro-immigration activist of inserting chants of "White Power!" into an audiotape of Minuteman rallies to discredit the movement.

This March 29 and 30, Lawless was quoted on CNN attacking a humanitarian group that leaves food and water for people crossing the Sonora Desert to illegally enter the United States.

In April, just six days after Lawless e-mailed her suggestions to neo-Nazi Mark Martin, Border Guardians made national news when Lawless and other members burned a Mexican flag in front of the Mexican Consulate in Tucson, where Lawless’ group is based. Before the flag was set aflame, Lawless held a press conference.

"As always, Border Guardians remains committed to only lawful actions to combat illegal immigration," she said. "We are committed to practice only peaceful, lawful action in defense of our country."

Her e-mail the prior week to the National Socialist Movement, however, clearly revealed a darker agenda. "There are several tactics, some legal and some not-so," she wrote. "Sabotage the things they like: entertainment, food, beer... . BRAVO to the person who cut down the Spanish language radio station towers just North of Phoenix! Now that sends a message!"

That April 3 E-mail was not the only contact between Lawless and the NSM. In that e-mail, she writes of leaving a voicemail message on the NSM’s hotline. And, in an earlier e-mail to NSM commander Martin dated March 6, she congratulated the NSM on provoking a riot in Toledo, Ohio, in October 2005. "I still think those riots were wonderful!" Lawless wrote.

The contact between Lawless and the NSM is not the first evidence to emerge of overlapping Minuteman and neo-Nazi membership. A few members of the National Alliance and Aryan Nations signed up with the original Minuteman Project in April 2005, and at least two frequent contributors to the white supremacist website Stormfront volunteered for Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist’s failed Congressional campaign.

Like Lawless, Martin would not comment for this story. But he did offer this tagline when he forwarded Lawless’ suggested tactics to other neo-Nazis: "The information contained in this email is Racially and Religiously privileged and confidential. It is intended for specific Aryan recipients only."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The text of the e-mail from Border Guardians leader Laine Lawless to "SS commander" Mark Martin.

Mon, Apr 10, 2006 1:29 AM
Page 1 of 3
Subject: [Wasp] Digest Number 233
Date: Monday, April 3, 2006 5:48 PM
From: wasp14@yahoogroups.com
Reply-To: wasp14@yahoogroups.com
To: "wasp14@yahoogroups.com"
Conversation: [Wasp] Digest Number 233


Message: 7

Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 14:41:08 -0700 (PDT)

From: Frank Furter

Subject: Fwd: How to GET RID OF THEM!





laine lawless wrote: Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 08:32:32 -0700 (PDT)

From: laine lawless

Subject: How to GET RID OF THEM!

To: Frank Furter



Would you do me a favor and send this onto your lists?

I'm not ready to come out on this, but I think my

ideas are good and should be shared. I posted this on

a small list on yahoo called remove illegals, but

that's as far as it's gone. Maybe some of your

warriors for the race would be the kind of ppl willing

to implement some of these ideas. Please don't use my

name. THANKS.

BTW, I did call your virtual number and leave a

message a few wks ago. Did you hear my message?

Laine



So far, it seems we have discussed everything but how

to GET RID OF THEM. There are several tactics, some

legal and some not-so:



1. As has been discussed, once the economic

incentives are removed, they will self-deport. In

order to do this, we need to intimidate employers into

NOT hiring them, as it seems the fedgov is doing a

lousy job of this.



2. Police departments need to be held accountable for

just giving a "get out of jail free" card to

unlicensed, uninsured drivers of unlicensed cars when

they are caught. No more sanctuary or Special Order

40. Citizens need to get together and pressure

mayors, city councils, and the police departments to

turn these people over to the CBP and ICE EVERY TIME

they are caught.



3. Make every illegal alien feel the heat of being a

fugitive and a person without proper status. I'm sure

there are many creative ways to do this. I hear the

rednecks in the South are beating up illegals as the

textile mills have closed. Use your imagination...



4. Sabotage the things that they like: entertainment,

Page 2 of 3
food, beer, overpopulation, wife-beating, drunk

driving, treating American women with disrespect, etc.

Put them in their place. BRAVO to the person who cut

down the Spanish language radio station towers just

North of Phoenix! Now that sends a message!



5. Do the best you can to scare the bejeezuz out of

them if you encounter them crossing the border. This

doesn't have to be harmful; some good psy-ops would

do.



6. Send native agents provocateurs and disinfo

specialists into Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala (the

largest emigration nations) to discourage and sabotage

immigrants and their smugglers from coming to the US.



7. Deprive illegals of the smuggling money they pay.

Steal the money from any illegal walking into a bank

or check cashing place. Steal the money from the

smugglers. Expose slavery and prostitution rings run

by smugglers.



8. Create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning

that any further illegal immigrants coming here will

be shot, maimed, or seriously messed-up upon crossing

the border. This should be fairly easy to do,

considering the hysteria of the Spanish language

press, and how they view the Minutemen as "racists &

vigilantes." I say, if it bleeds, it leads, and why

not work on their fears? Create a totally false news

story and circulate it on the internet about how some

illegals were killed by vigilantes after crossing the

border.



9. Discourage Spanish-speaking school children from

going to public school. Be creative.



10. Stand in front of public voting places and ask

everyone who comes to vote if they speak English.



11. Lobby Congress or your local state legislature to

drop all ESL and classes conducted only in Spanish.



OK now, let's get going!




Confidentiality Notice: The information contained in this e-mail and any attachments is
Racially and Religiously privileged and confidential. It is intended for specific Aryan
recipients only and Brothers and Sisters of their choosing. If you are a jew, you can
only be in possession through deceit, treachery, guile, cunning, dissimulation and
chicanery, and such possession of this e-mail is contrary to law. You are hereby notified
that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If
you have received this e-mail through the error of someone else, you must notify the
sender and permanently delete this e-mail and any attachments immediately. You should
neither retain, nor copy nor use this e-mail or any attachment for any purpose.
Disclosure of all or any part of the contents to any other jew is a punishable offense.



WWW.NSM88.COM WWW.NUKEISRAEL.COM

CITIZENS SAY NO TO NUCLEAR POWER PLANT IN SINOP, TURKEY

Sinop is one of the most beautiful natural harbors on the Black Sea coast of Turkey. It is here that the government has decided to build a nuclear power plant. And it is here where the people are saying "no."

On a grass roots web site maintined by Sinopbizim Platform it states, "We shall declare repeatedly how the so-called peaceful nuclear energy creates a death cycle starting from the moment uranium is mined. Every phase of the process with radioactive materials involves a high risk to the environment and public health. Unseen, unheard, and odorless, radioactivity can only be detected with sensitive instruments. Every year, tons of radioactive nuclear waste is transferred to almost forever deadly waste storage sites; nuclear energy cycle in every inch paves the way to unheard of human disasters."

Greenpeace, which also opposes the plant, recalling the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986, points to that explosion's lingering effects in Turkey. Recent research carried out by the Turkish Doctors Union on the effects of Chernobyl revealed that over the last three years, 48 percent of deaths in the Black-Sea town of Hopa, close to the Turkey's border with Georgia, are due to cancer.

The first article beow comes from Hurriyet (Turkey). The second piece is from BIA News Center.

Anti-nuclear demonstration in Sinop

Thousands of anti-nuclear activists and environmentalists alike gathered in Sinop on Saturday for a peaceful demonstration against the planned nuclear power plant that the government say will be built on the Ince peninsula.

Up to 10,000 people marched through the Black Sea fishing village of Sinop in protest of the government's plans to build the plant not far from the town. The rally marched through the streets and congregated in the town square shouting anti-nuclear slogans and sang environmentalists songs. Members of the CHP were present, although no representative of the ruling Justice and development Party (AKP) were present.

Residents joined Turks, who had traveled from all over Turkey, and marched through the streets in protest of the government's nuclear plans. Buses traveled from Istanbul and Ankara carrying many NGOs such as "The Greens" and "Anti-Nuclear Platform". The trip was organised by the Chamber of Electric Engineers (EMO). The event was a peaceful event with a low police presence on the ground.

Following a meeting on April 14, of Turkey's top energy officials and representatives of 14 firms, statements circulated in the Turkish media that the government had confirmed Sinop as the site of where the new nuclear plant is to be built. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted by the Turkish media on April 14 as saying the Black Sea coastal town of Sinop was "the one".

It is the second of such plans for Turkey. Nuclear ambitions were first initiated in the 1960s. A previous attempt to build a power plant at Akkuyu on the Mediterranean coast also had to be abandoned after strong protests from locals and environmentalists.

A second rally is planned for June, but the location is not yet known.
==============================================================================

Amid Protests Ankara Heads for Nuclear Energy

BİA (Istanbul) - Turkey's Black Sea port city of Sinop has been chosen as the site for the country's first nuclear power station, according to an official announcement made this week.

Turkish Atomic Energy Authority (TAEK) chairman Okay Cakiroglu said Wednesday that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had personally chosen Sinop from among eight alternative locations identified by 43 separate criteria, ranging from temperature of sea water, to local climate, wind and air conditions.

Energy Minister Hilmi Guler has already held talks with 10 Turkish companies and a model has been decided on for the nuclear power.

"What we want to do," Guler said Thursday, "is to build these with the skills of the private sector. They have expressed a desire to do this according to a model where the state will also contribute."

Guler said the model would involve the private sector working together with the public sector in nuclear power and added, "we see this as the sharing of risk. It does not have a Treasury guarantee from the beginning. There will be a model on the sales of the electricity that will be produced. If sales fall below this, the public sector will meet the rest."

According to the Minister, this is referred to as the Ireland Model and has already been put into practice by the Ministry of Transport at airports and terminals.

TTB concerned of cancer threat

The nuclear power station announcement comes simultaneous to the results of a Turkish Physicians Union (TTB) research on "Cancer in Turkey After the Chernobil Accident" that was disclosed Wednesday at the Istanbul Chamber of Doctors (ITO). The research showed the rate of cancer in the Black Sea town of Hopa close to the border as being higher than the Turkish average.

Although the research is not conclusive that the escalated ratio of victims is directly related to Chernobil due to lack of official data, it was stressed that this possible connection needed further investigation.

Reaction to nuke power mounts

A day after the disclosure that nuclear power would be hosted at what once was the legendary Amazon capital on the Black Sea and is regarded by part of its population as a promising tourism resort, reactions to the decision as well as the government's overall nuclear power policy started building up.

Dr. Uyar: It's dangerous

Marmara University Faculty of Engineering Energy Sciences Division Chairman and Turkish Environment Platform (TURCEP) Coordinator Assistant Professor Dr. Tanay Sidki Uyar blasted the decision saying that it was dangerous and whatever was claimed about energy production, since the primary purpose of nuclear power stations was to build atomic weapons, Turkey should look to natural resources.

"What is even more dangerous than the power station itself is the mentality of let's build a power station and we can also build the storage system" Ural said, criticizing the government for "choosing something good not for itself but for other countries at a time nuclear energy is a system that is being abandoned everywhere."

He added that since 1978 there had been no nuclear power station orders throughout the world and that 100 such orders had been cancelled.

"A nuclear power station that cannot be sold in Europe is being proposed for Turkey" he said, arguing that nuclear power is the most expensive, most pollutant, and most useless form of energy. Uyar said Turkey was a country rich with renewable energy resources and emphasized that both wind and solar energy could meet energy demands in far more economical and cleaner ways.

Nuclear power comes with hidden costs

Turkish Environment Platform (TURCEP) Coordinator Uyar also believes that the hidden costs of nuclear energy makes it a long term burden on a country's economy. Pointing out that the cost of a nuclear power station is not just about setting it up but involves also the security infrastructure, the licensing cost, operational cost and even the cost of closing it down.

"To country's like Turkey where the security infrastructure cost is too high, the World Bank does not give credit for such investments," he said. "Also, the competent commissions and ministries of countries, just like in the USA and Canada, have to issue a new license for plants that have operated for 20 years."

Uyar pointed out that the operational cost needed to include the uranium as well as the cost of those to be employed from abroad but noted that largest cost being that of discarding such plants.

Ozerdem: Truly too expensive

Mechanical Engineers Chamber Izmir Branch Acting Chairman lecturer Dr. Baris Ozerdem meanwhile, pointed out in a written statement on the issue that "since 1997 a nuclear power station has not been built in the United States of America."

"The reason for this", he added, "is that it is expensive, other than the environmental effects of nuclear energy. It is an energy which is dependent on abroad both in way of technology and fuel in country's such as Turkey which have an underdeveloped nuclear technology."

Ozerdem also argued that Turkey's electricity power needs should be met through renewable resources and said "electricity production particularly from hydrological, wind based and geothermal renewable resources should be encouraged." According to him, one priority before Turkey should be to renew the energy transport lines to avoid a loss reaching approximately 22 percent of total production and to minimize electricity piracy.

"It should be recognized that the cleanest and the cheapest energy is energy that is saved and importance should be given to the productive use of energy and in saving it" he said. "Expensive, risk-full and foreign dependent nuclear energy should be abandoned."

Sinopbizim: Touristic sinop vs. radioactive Sinop

The Sinopbizim Platform , which has been campaigning against nuclear energy in Sinop, is preparing a variety of activities that it will increase throughout April and has dedicated a Turkish and English language site to this controversial issue.

A signature campaign by the platform challenging the nuclear power decision is underway and will remain open until the end of the month while the platform will be active in various areas of Turkey.

A statement issued by the Platform and open to signature says "We reject the idea of bringing dangerous and outdated nuclear technologies into our country with excessive loans. To fulfill the Law for 'Procedures to Generate Electrical Energy Using Renewable Energy Resources' that was passed on 10.05.2005, we demand the government to give priority to rich alternative energy sources, and make a serious start to build the necessary infrastructure for the production of renewable energy."

GOVERNMENT FEARS MAY 1ST MOBILIZATION IN EL SALVADORE

Thousands of workers are expected to march in El Salvador on May 1st in a resurgence of a strong social movement. William Huezo, Public Employees Association director says International Workers´ Day will mark an important milestone as all the nation´s unions will march together through the principal cities of the country. This signals a reuniting of Salvadoran progressive forces in the social struggles against poverty, economic and social problems, corruption and the deterioration of the environment, Huezo said.

The following reports comes from Prensa Latina.

Fear Campaign Denounced in El Salvador

San Salvador, Apr 28 (Prensa Latina) Salvadorian progressive leaders denounced Friday that security officials are conducting a "fear campaign" to prevent the success of the national mobilization scheduled for May Day.

"The International Workers' Day march will be a massive demonstration of the people´s power, and the rightwing does not like that," said Robert Lorenzana, FMLN leader (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front).

He emphasized that the political mobilizations on May Day are a global tradition and said he could not recall any violent acts committed in previous marches.

Lorenzana ratified the attendance of his organization to protests on Sunday when they will go to the Los Ilustres Cementery where FMLN leader, Schafik Handal, is buried, but said local FMLN elected officials would not attend because they will be sworn-in that day.

Minister of Interior Rene Figueroa contradicted Lorenzana's statements, saying he recalled criminal acts committed in 2005 in San Salvador.

Figueroa said "If private property or the rights of other people are violated, we will apply the law," referring to the marches planned by all unions of the nation in every major city on Monday.

WATER CRISIS

More then one billion people in the world lack access to clean water, and things are getting worse. Over the next two decades, the average supply of water per person will drop by a third, possibly condemning millions of people to an avoidable premature death.

This interview I grabbed off the Water Conservation Portal.

Not a drop to drink
Source: Copyright 2006, Salon
Byline: Katharine Mieszkowski

Leave the tap running while brushing your teeth, and you're dumping four and a half gallons of water down the drain, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

That's the kind of shiny stat trotted out to inspire profligate water-wasters to conserve. Just shut off the tap, save water. It's easy! Huzzah! Yet, as British science journalist Fred Pearce makes crystal clear in "When the Rivers Run Dry," the water we consume -- and waste -- in everyday life is hardly limited to what comes out of our own faucets.

Pearce, a longtime editor for New Scientist, who is now an environmental consultant for the magazine, calculates that it takes 40 gallons of water to grow the ingredients for the bread in a single sandwich, not to mention 265 gallons to produce a glass of milk and 800 gallons for a hamburger. And that's just what's for lunch. Don't get him started on what you wear to this water-rich feast. Even a simple cotton T-shirt bearing some hopeful green slogan like "Save the Bay" is a huge water user. Pearce figures it takes 25 bathtubs-full of water to grow the scant 9 ounces of cotton for such a shirt.

Water is the ultimate renewable resource, literally falling from the sky back to earth after it evaporates. And since it's so heavy and cumbersome to move great distances, it's also a local resource. Yet, start quantifying the water embedded in foods and goods, the "virtual water" as economists call it, and water is fast becoming a global commodity like oil. There's Brazilian water in the coffee beans grown for an American latte; there's Pakistani water in the cotton in that T-shirt.

In "When the Rivers Run Dry," Pearce finds a growing strain on many local water resources around the globe, as the world's population grows. As he visits dozens of countries, he sees rivers that have been so diverted, depleted and dried out, such as the Rio Grande, that they no longer conform to their original map locations. Pearce reports that the fallout from the competition for water resources is enormous, exacerbating tensions between Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank and even accidentally poisoning villagers by the millions in India and Bangladesh.

Yet, Pearce also finds hope in the way some communities around the world are harvesting and using water. Salon spoke with the writer by phone from England about why he thinks we need a "blue revolution."

If there are 650 gallons of water in a pound of cheddar cheese, is it futile to make small gestures like turning off the water when you brush your teeth in the name of saving it?

It helps with water bills, so it makes sense in that way. And it may make sense with local water resources, which may be constrained, just within a small town, or even a community.

At the global scale, no, it doesn't make much difference. Most of the water that each one of us uses comes from the water used to irrigate the crops that we consume. That's principally food, but not only. Cotton for our clothing is a major user of water around the world.

We don't really know as we pick up the food from the store whether our purchases are responsible for making some local crisis elsewhere worse, but it is often the case. Many countries are facing serious water shortages; often their rivers are running dry, or their water tables falling very fast, and in many cases much of that water is being exported by those countries in the form of goods. Yet, when we pay market price for those goods, that price doesn't usually include any estimate of the cost to the water resources. We still think of water as an unlimited resource rather like the air we breathe.

Now some countries are entirely dependent on water from elsewhere to feed their people, on this "virtual water."

Many countries have run out of water for growing their own crops and are now importing water in the form of food. Egypt really, for instance, lost the ability to feed itself perhaps 30 years ago. It now imports a large amount of water in the form of food. That is the only way it can do it. Water is pretty heavy stuff to move, but the trade in products produced with water is huge, and in many ways can be seen as a trade in water.

What are some of the rivers around the world that have run dry, or are most in danger of it?

There are two rivers in a bad way in the U.S., one of which is the Colorado. There's a U.S. treaty with Mexico to deliver water over the border, and the U.S. has considerable difficulty in providing any water over the border to meet its minimum treaty requirement, because all the water is used up essentially by farmers and increasingly by cities along the Colorado.

The water goes off to Southern California, Phoenix, Tucson [Ariz.]. By the time the river crosses the border into Mexico, which is close to its delta, it is really very dry. There's not a lot of water left.

The Rio Grande is another interesting example. It essentially dries up about a thousand kilometers from the sea near El Paso [Texas]. The riverbed is virtually dry for 300 kilometers before some more water comes back in from tributaries coming in from Mexico.

So, whatever it looks like on the map, really the Rio Grande is two rivers. There's a river that gives out at El Paso, and there's the tributary that comes in and replenishes the last run to the Gulf of Mexico. There are very serious economic repercussions from the drying up of the Rio Grande. I met farmers who simply no longer have water to irrigate their crops, and that's on both sides of the border, on the Mexican side and on the Texas side.

If you look around the world, virtually no water flows from the Nile into the Mediterranean; very little water flows from the Indus through Pakistan into the Arabian Sea; the Yellow River in Northern China, one of the world's longest rivers, is essentially dry for much of the year. A little flow goes down to the sea, but very little. So, this is close to becoming a global phenomenon, some of the world's largest rivers, and longest rivers, simply not reaching the sea.

One response to rivers running dry is to move water enormous distances, at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. What do you make of such grand projects?

There are plans now for huge transfers of water across some of the world's biggest, most densely populated countries in order to provide water for the new mega-cities, and for farming. China's got one of the largest, and that's going to take a large amount of water out of the River Yangtze, which runs through the south of the country, and deliver it into the northern plains, to the Yellow River, which has essentially run dry for much of its course.

Essentially, the Yangtze is going to replenish the waters of the north of China. This project is already underway. Two of the three branches that are planned are already under construction. China hopes to be delivering water from the Yangtze to Beijing in time for the Olympics in 2008. This project will probably cost something like $60 billion. It's a major enterprise in order to keep northern China from running dry. India has talked about something even larger.

Yet, in these vast projects to move water around, aren't incredible amounts of the water lost through evaporation or seepage from canals?

Many large engineering projects suffer from a huge range of inefficiencies, which is why -- in general -- I'm not in favor of them. It's much better to do things locally, because you can control the water more. One thing that surprised me greatly was discovering that with Lake Nasser behind the Aswan High Dam in Egypt -- one of the world's kind of totemic dams -- that the evaporation from the reservoir behind that dam annually amounts to, in metric, 15 cubic kilometers of water [3.6 cubic miles], if you can imagine a vast amount like that.

That is roughly the amount of water that is used by the whole of the United Kingdom in a year. In other words, you could fill every tap, meet every water demand in the U.K., a country of more than 50 million people, simply by the water that evaporates from the surface behind the Aswan Dam.

Now, that's an amazing statistic, but there are other reservoirs that lose similar amounts of water, especially in the hot tropical regions. That can't make much sense, if you have a country which is desperately short of water, and desperately trying to collect it up to deliver it to farmers. There are also huge evaporation rates from some of the distribution canals. Also, seepage from beneath distribution canals can be a major loss of water.

What's the solution?

With seepage, often, farmers, being rather practical people, simply sink some drilling rigs into the ground, and stick a pump in and pump that water up again. So, they tend to recycle it. But evaporation is a real loss. I'm not quite sure what you do about it other than manage water more locally. One of the most heartening trends I've seen traveling around the world -- and I've seen it in China and India and in other places -- is the effort by farmers and villagers to harvest the rain as it falls. They don't let the water go into the rivers and run away to perhaps a large dam, or run away to the sea. They simply capture it locally, and even pour it back down their wells, creating a storage system so that they can pump it up later in the year. So, particularly in India where most of the rain falls in 100 hours over 100 days, you simply have to capture that and store it locally in ponds, or even underground in wells. That's a rather efficient way for a local community to manage its water supply. It's being very effectively applied in thousands of villages across India.

Are you optimistic that there will be a kind of "blue revolution" of innovative ways to conserve and capture water?

I'm an optimist, not a pessimist. I'm a pessimist in the sense that we use water so inefficiently and so carelessly now that it makes you despair, but I'm an optimist also because there is so much potential for doing things better. When you find that irrigation systems waste 60 or 70 percent of their water it does make you despair, but you realize that there is a huge potential to do things better. I find that given the chance farmers and local communities, and even towns and countries, will and can do a lot of things better.

Still, conserving water in one location can mean just donating it to someone else to squander.

Unlike many of the resources that we rely on, water does move -- down rivers and between countries -- in ways that we can't do much about. When water gets short, the conflicts that arise over water do get very complicated.

On the West Bank, for instance, the Israelis and the Palestinians are almost as much in conflict over water as they are over land. The Palestinians are very angry that they are not allowed to sink more wells and drill more boreholes on the West Bank region, because the Israelis say that the water is already fully used, when most of that water is in fact used by Israelis not only in their settlements, but also in Israel proper.

While we often see water as a kind of free resource, provided by nature, once it gets in short supply the powerful do have an ability to grab hold and keep water -- whether behind dams, or by sticking pumps into the ground. We haven't quite reached the situation where water wars are breaking out, but we're getting quite close in some parts of the world.

Where do you see potential for future water wars?

The River Nile is one, which is often talked about. The Egyptian government has said in the past that if a war is likely to be fought in their region, in North East Africa, it is almost certainly going to be about the River Nile. Egypt is absolutely and totally dependent on the Nile water to survive. The Nile flows through 10 countries before it reaches Egypt, which is very concerned that a country upstream, like Ethiopia, might start to build large dams, which would interrupt the flow of water down the Nile to Egypt.

People have also rattled their sabers over the Tigris and the Euphrates, both of which flow out of Turkey through Iraq on their way to the sea. In fact, during the first Gulf War, Turkey threatened to stop the flow of water down into Iraq as an act of war, using the dams it was building. It never did it, but it threatened to, and that caused a great deal of unease in that region.

India and Pakistan have a treaty over the River Indus, which flows through India. In fact, it collects most of its water in India, and then flows on into Pakistan, which is heavily dependent on that river for its survival. There is an agreement about who can have what water from that river, but if that treaty would break down then that again could be the basis for a very nasty water war. Of course, now you're talking about two countries that are both nuclear powers.

Is the American lifestyle more consumptive of water than other counties, as it is of energy resources, like oil and natural gas? And do you think the U.S. might end up importing water from Canada in the future?

It's an issue that keeps coming up. Canada has a great deal of water, particularly in the West, and America has quite a lot of demand for water, particularly in the West. So, you can imagine circumstances under which the U.S. would like to get its hands on Canadian water. Canadians are adamantly opposed to this, and I think that you'd have a great deal of difficulty getting any water out of them. They are prepared to use their rivers to generate hydroelectricity to sell electricity to the U.S., but they're not prepared to sell their water.

Domestically, American users are among the highest water users in the world, but you [Americans] stabilized your water consumption in recent years, principally by having more efficient toilets that use much less water in the flush. Canadians have not changed their toilets in the same way. They are probably now the No. 1 domestic users of water in individual homes. But neither the U.S. nor Canada reaches anything like the per capita water consumption of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

Both of those use absolutely vast amounts of water to irrigate their cotton crops. It's a system set up by the Soviet Union, which has been carried on through today. They produce huge amounts of cotton grown using water taken out of the rivers in what is in many ways an arid region. The main consequence of that huge use of water is that they've dried up the Aral Sea, which was once the fourth biggest inland sea. It's sitting in Central Asia not far from the Caspian Sea, which is even bigger. They dried up the rivers that fed that sea, virtually no water reaches the sea anymore, and the sea has retreated fantastically.

I have been to see it, and you stand on the shoreline or what was the shoreline of the Aral Sea, and look out towards what once were waters where fishing boats got good catches, and all there is is desert. The water is over the horizon 60 miles away. It's one of the most extraordinary sights you'll see in the world -- how the Aral Sea has disappeared. People call it one of the great ecological catastrophes in the world, and I really think that's true. It has happened entirely as a result of misuse of water to pour the contents of what were large rivers onto fields to grow cotton, and it destroyed a sea in the process.

[Editor's note: A recent report in the New York Times found that the Aral Sea is being brought back in some places.]

Aside from rivers and seas, how is water disappearing that we can't so readily see, underground water?

As rivers are running dry, in many countries of the world, and I've seen this especially in India, farmers are beginning to rely more and more on pumping out underground water reserves. There is usually a lot of water underground one way or another, some of it recent from rainfall, some of it essentially fossil water that's been there for thousands of years. Farmers are pumping this water out, which is lowering the water table.

That is causing an emerging water crisis in a number of Asian countries, but India is probably the worst example. They call it a creeping anarchy because nobody has any control over what the farmers do. They simply get a private drilling rig. They drill down, and they stick a pump into the ground, and start pumping the water up.

In some parts of India where they're relying more and more on underground water, they're bringing up unexpected poisons, perfectly natural poisons, but ones which have lain in the rock beneath them undisturbed for hundreds of thousands of years. The two big examples are fluoride and arsenic. Both of these turn out to be absorbed by underground water. Because there is no great tradition of using underground water, until recent years, nobody really knew. But as farmers and people start pumping this water up, they're finding that there are huge rates of poisoning -- especially in Bangladesh and in West Bengal in India.

What are some of the effects of those poisons?

Well, they kill ultimately. They're slow-acting poisons, so you can drink the water for a number of years and then you slowly start having effects. Scientists from the World Health Organization have said that they believe this is one of the world's worst poisoning epidemics ever seen, because it involves tens of millions of people in both Bangladesh and parts of eastern India.

What impact will climate change likely have on water supplies around the world?

Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen to rainfall under global warming. We're fairly certain that climate change will make most of the world warmer. There are uncertainties about how weather systems are going to change, but the bottom line probably is that the wet places will get wetter, and the places that are dry will get still drier.

Originally posted at: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/04/25/pearce/

AN INTERVIEW WITH BLACK PANTHER RICHARD BROWN

Often times, out of the blue, I think that for the luck of the draw (or jury pool) I could be sitting in prison today enduring, say, my 35th year behind bars. I'm not and I'm thankful. However, some of those who fought the same battles way back when are locked up right now. Those of us who were active then and those of you (and us) who are active today must never forget about these folks. We must never forget the line which runs directly from COINTELPRO to the Patriot Act. Same struggle, same fight!

Oh, and by the way, Leonard Peltier just lost another appeal.

Anyway, read the inteview below.

The following interview comes from the San Francisco Bay View.

Still being hunted: an interview with Black Panther Richard Brown

by POCC Minister of Information JR and West Coast Chairwoman Ra’shida

On our radio show, POCC Radio: The Block Report, our guest was Richard Brown, a Bay Area resident and one of five Black Panthers who were incarcerated in September 2005 during a secret Homeland Security initiated grand jury investigation of a 34-year-old police murder.

This has been a trend around the country in regards to freedom fighters. Kamau Sadiki, the father of political exile and freedom fighter Assata Shakur’s daughter was locked up on some trumped up charges a few years back in Atlanta and given a life sentence. Imam Jamil Al-Amin was convicted in ‘01 for a police murder that he didn’t commit.

As people who benefit in society from these souljahs’ sacrifices, we owe it to them to aid them in any and all ways, as well as to teach our young people about the war this government is waging on us and the history of the warriors who fought back. As we saw in Haiti during their 200th anniversary of independence, the white power structure doesn’t want us to know anything abut our people’s history of resistance.

The year 2006 marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party. We have to realize that this is a protracted war and that this is the same government that enslaved us and today either wants to exploit us or destroy us. Check out the words of Black Panther Richard Brown.

JR: You were recently locked up from September to October 2005. Can you tell us about this grand jury that had you and your four co-defendants locked up?

RB: The secret grand jury investigation was investigating an incident – a crime that was committed in 1971. A couple of police stations were attacked. I understand that a police officer lost his life and a couple of people was shot. And this incident, our grand jury questioned us in 2005 … Along the way, though, in 1973, in New Orleans, three of the five people – it was Harold Taylor, John Bowman and Ruben Scott – were arrested. These people were tortured in New Orleans for five days.

They were brutally treated and mistreated, and all kind of criminal acts were committed against them. And they were forced actually to confess to crimes that they knew nothing about and implicate people like myself, Hank Jones and Ray Boudreaux. And all of this extends from way back then. The grand jury investigation was asking us questions about the so-called incident that happened in 1971.

R: Can you talk about the torture you all endured while in the concentration camps in 1971?

RB: During the five-day period in New Orleans, they systematically went about torturing people. They would use three brothers. … They utilized beatings of course. They would have them blindfolded and handcuffed, shove them into walls and local furniture. They used cattle prods, they used electrical instruments on their genitals, they scalded them with hot water – they did the whole gambit.

At the same time you have to remember that they had one man’s wife and his children, and another man’s children, and they were threatening to do the same to their families if they did not confess. This is the type of torture that they had to endure for five days.

JR: I understand that the same officers that interrogated and terrorized you over 34 years ago are the same ones that came to pick you and your co-defendants up, and are the ones that are working on your case currently.

RB: That’s correct. Frank McCoy and Ed Erdelatz: These were two San Francisco police officers who left San Francisco and went to New Orleans and conducted and participated in the torturous treatment of my friends. They would come into the room, ask questions. If they weren’t answered in the manner that they wanted them answered, or they couldn’t get the information, they would leave out the room.

New Orleans police would come in and do their brutal tactics, and when they left, the officers would come back in. And this was repeated over and over for days, until the men cooperated.

These same men, Frank and Ed, who had retired, they came out of retirement, joined Homeland Security and were the same officers that knocked on our doors and served a subpoena for the secret grand jury investigation. The first words out their mouths were, “Do you remember me?” So, yeah, it’s the same people all over again.

R: How is Cointelpro involved and today’s Patriot Act affecting those cases and the struggle today?

RB: Cointelpro is the main runner of the Homeland Security, and I find it ironic that this government, once they target you, they will bring about an agency like a Counter Intelligence Program, which is Cointelpro. They will release these people on you; they will violate your rights, kill you. Cointelpro was found guilty of over 300 criminal activities.

They’ve also by Senate investigation been determined to be unconstitutional after they destroyed Black Panther Party … after they had committed assassinations and jailed people with trumped up charges. They did all this for over three years, and then they were unconstitutional. So now we have the same people who were in Cointelpro coming out of retirement, helping and assisting Homeland Security to do the same thing to us all over again.

JR: Would Black Panther political prisoners Mumia Abu Jamal, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, Marshall Eddie Conway, the New York 3, Seth Hayes, Abdul Majid, the list goes on and on, do you think that Cointelpro should be investigated?

RB: It was investigated. It was condemned. They were accused of like I said committing over 300 criminal acts themselves. It was documented by Congress, and they were a rude constitutional agency and disbanded.

JR: If they closed the book on it, why weren’t those political prisoners released? All of those political prisoners I named including Leonard Peltier and a number of other ones are still on what we call death row because they are trying to make them die in prison. Do you think that it should be reinvestigated? Do you think that these cases should be opened, in terms of looking at the innocence that is there, in all of those cases that I just named?

RB: That’s one of the reasons that the five of us – and when I say five, I mean myself, John Bowman, Ray Boudreaux, Harold Taylor and Hank Jones – it’s one of the things we wanted to do; we’ve been enduring this for over 30 years. They have attacked us several times; 2005 was just the latest. We continue to endure these attacks and allow them to keep it secret. Well, we can’t afford to do that anymore. We wanna try to bring it to the attention of the Amerikkkan people.

And we wanna try to do something and show them that the Homeland Security is just an extension of Cointelpro and that the Patriot Act is just a legal way of going about doing what was illegal at that particular time. Perhaps, the best thing in the world that we would be able to do would be to focus enough attention and to get an investigation so that all blows up and we could revisit people’s case and it be shown that they were framed.

JR: With you being a member of the Black Panther Party specifically, what do you think particularly about the case of political exile Assata Shakur, who’s also a member of the BPP, who the government on May 2 of ‘05 put a $1 million dollar bounty on her head?

RB: Her and all the other political prisoners ... you know once Cointelpro, once they target you, once they put you on the list, then they can label you. They labeled us as terrorists. They labeled us as criminals. They labeled us as hoodlums. (They labeled us as) any negative thing they could label us as in order for them to get away with the illegal treatment that they forced upon us at that particular time. So that the Amerikkkan public would be able to accept it, everything was done in the name of the Amerikkkan people for national security.

You have to remember that with Nixon’s approval, J. Edgar Hoover labeled the Black Panther Party the biggest threat to national security in Amerikkka, period. At that time, that’s when they unleashed the dogs on us. And all the illegal facts that we’ve been talking about, it’s been happening to every Black Panther, male and female. And their job was to undermine and destroy the Panther Party by any means necessary; so (that means) framing people, driving people out of the country.

You know when you attack someone, and they know for a fact that they’re not going to have a fair trial, you know, you leave them no choice; they have to leave. In order to keep from being locked up for the rest of their lives for crimes that they did not commit, people leave. And, you know, that’s what’s happening with a lot of prisoners who are in exile, or people who are in exile.

R: Do you have any further comments?

RB: What I would like to get out is to the Amerikkkan people. You have to open your eyes and understand what’s going on in Amerikkka today. I believe that a majority of Amerikkkans are decent people who believe in justice and equality. We’re divided by all kinds of barriers. It’s the “divide and conquer” game.

I want the people to understand what Bush is doing when he asks for unlimited power, when he asks for the Patriot Act to be reinstalled, when he wants the ability to do anything and everything whenever he gets ready, however he gets ready, and doesn’t have to be held accountable to Congress or the Amerikkkan people. We no longer have democracy or a president; we have a dictator. And that’s what I want to get out.

Email JR at blockreportradio@yahoo.com.

WINNIPEG PROTESTERS SHOW SUPPORT FOR SIX NATIONS

Following last weeks police raid on the Six Nations camp at Douglas Creek in Canada, support poured in from around the world. (see http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2006/04/we-shall-not-be-moved.html
and http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/2006/04/six-nations-arent-going-to-back-down.html for earlier articles).

The International Indian Treaty Council filed a notice with the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

E-mails and Web blogs provided intense coverage, as did Canadian national newspapers. Opposition parties raised questions in provincial and federal parliaments.

This morning supporters slowed traffic in Winnipeg.

The following article comes from First Perspective.

Caledonia protesters delay Winnipeg downtown traffic
by FP/Drum Staff

WINNIPEG -- Four-dozen demonstrators showed their support for Six Nations Mohawks on Friday morning by partially closing a Winnipeg bridge prior to police intervention.

They closed off the right hand lane on the Midtown bridge for a very short period of time ­ likely less than a minute or two ­ before police, who were stationed nearby, moved in and ordered the demonstrators off the roadway portion of the bridge.

"Nobody got arrested and nobody got hurt, so we will live to fight another day," said Peter Kulchyski, who was carried off the traffic portion of the bridge by three members of the Winnipeg police.

"I think it went pretty good considering people were not trained properly," said Kulchyski, an Aboriginal studies professor who is on sabbatical and was acting as picket captain.

He was a veteran of protests dating back to the 1970s, but many of the demonstrators were new to this type of activity. With more experience, they could have held up traffic a while longer, he explained afterward.

The evening before, when planning strategy, they decided their goal would be to slow traffic but leave one lane open while pamphlets were passed to drivers and passengers in other lanes. During the demonstration, police ordered the picketers onto the sidewalks and walkways, saying loudly that they were doing this to keep demonstrators from being hit by vehicles.

After the police intervened, the demonstrators mostly confined themselves to the sidewalks and meridians, although occasionally they walked into the traffic lanes to hand out pamphlets while cars were stopped by red traffic lights. Close to a dozen cops watched.

The demonstration began around 8 a.m. and lasted about a half hour. Some motorists opened their car windows to take the pamphlets that were being handed out, but other drivers in the morning rush either refused to open windows or yelled at the demonstrators. Most of the verbal hostility occurred before police cleared the bridge.

"Some people did not want any information, but those who took it were supportive," said Shelagh Pizey-Allen, who estimated that 30-50 motorists took her pamphlets.

When the demonstrators returned to their drum circle on grass near the foot of the bridge there was general discussion of participation in future events. Heather Lightning, one of the organizers, said the extent of future actions would largely depend on what happens at the Caledonia camp site near Hamilton.

Lightning said the First Nations organizations in Manitoba haven't been active on the issue. That is why individual citizens ­ both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal ­ decided to act. "The chiefs' organizations in the province haven't done anything," she said.

The only chief at the demonstration was Chief Terry Nelson of the Roseau River First Nation. Speaking prior to the demonstration, he said that it was a mistake for First Nations organizations, like Union of Ontario Indians, to tell people to stay away from the Caledonia site saying that they didn't want people going into an area that could be unsafe.

UOI had called for cooler heads to prevail, but Nelson said the Native people who were standing up for their rights were not responsible for cranking up tensions. "They should be condemning the police and courts."

He also said that people across the country would respond with railway blockades if the police or military move against the Six Nations camp at Caledonia and kill people.

The demonstration held Friday morning (April 29) is among a series of events being held across the country to show solidarity with the Six Nations and to deter governments and police from using force to evict demonstrators at a sub-division construction site at the town of Caledonia.

WHEN A TERRORIST ISN'T A TERRORIST A LA KING GEORGE

The AP is reporting that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called his U.S. counterpart, George W. Bush, "a terrorist" on Friday, and criticized Washington's decision to free two dissident Venezuelan military officers accused of playing roles in two Caracas bombings.

Chavez told a crowd: "We have requested extradition because it's been demonstrated that it was these two terrorists, manipulated and paid by the gringos and by the Venezuelan coup-plotting, terrorist opposition, were the ones that placed the bombs."

Former Army Lts. Jose Antonio Colina and German Rodolfo Varela were both freed Friday in Houston. They have denied any involvement in the Feb. 25, 2003, bombings at the Spanish Embassy and Colombian Consulate that left four injured. They said Chavez accused them because they belonged to a group of officers who occupied a Caracas plaza in 2002 and futilely called for rebellion against his government.

They had been detained by U.S. immigration officials since 2003 after they requested asylum in Miami. Neither were granted that request, but they instead will be placed under supervision requiring weekly telephone calls and monthly meetings with U.S. immigration agents, their lawyers said.

This, however, isn't the only case where the War Against Terror seems limited only to certain terrorists.

There is the pesky case of Luis Posada Carrile and Orlando Bosch who worked together to blow a Cuban passenger plane out of the sky. Last week Miami's Channel 41 provided a unique glimpse into the mind of a terrorist when it interviewd Bosh about the plane bomging.

Here are some excerpts from the television interview:

Juan Manuel Cao: Did you down that plane in 1976?



Orlando Bosch: If I tell you that I was involved, I will be inculpating myself . . . . and if I tell you that did not participate in that action, you would say that I am lying. I am therefore not going to answer one thing or the other.



Juan Manuel Cao: In that action 76 persons were killed (the correct figure is 73, including a pregnant passenger)?



Orlando Bosch: No chico, in a war such as us cubans who love liberty wage against the tyrant, you have to down planes, you have to sink ships, you have to be prepared to attack anything that is within your reach.



Juan Manuel Cao: But don´t you feel a little bit for those who were killed there, for their families?



Orlando Bosch: . . . Who was on board that plane? Four members of the Communist Party, five north Koreans, five Guyanese, (JP: there were really 11 Guyanese passengers) . . . concho chico, four member of the Communist Party chico!!! Who was there? Our enemies . . ..



Juan Manuel Cao: ¿And the fencers? The young people on board?



Orlando Bosch: I was in Caracas. I saw the young girls on television. There were six of them. After the end of the competition, the leader of the six dedicated their triumph to the tyrant etc etc. She gave a speech filled with praise for the tyrant. We had already agreed in Santo Domingo, that every one who comes from Cuba to glorify the tyrant had to run the same risks as those men and women that fight alongside the tyranny.



Juan Manuel Cao: If you ran into the family members who were killed in that plane, wouldn't you think it difficult . . . ?



Orlando Bosch: No, because in the end those who were there had to know that they were cooperating with the tyranny in Cuba.

Bush refuses to extradite any of these terrorists. Some "War on Terror."

The following comes from VHeadlines

So, why isn't Bush extraditing Posada Carriles back to Venezuela to face justice?

VHeadline.com commentarist Mary MacElveen writes: This past Tuesday at the Tribeca Film Festival, located in New York City, the special airing of Flight 93 occurred and, by all accounts, it was met with many different emotions. Jan Snyder who lost her daughter, Christine, on that fateful flight had this to say: ''It's time for this. The public needs to know, they need to remember and know what the families have gone through.'' She even stated that she sees these visions in her head everyday.

I can fully understand that since a child is not supposed to die before their parent.

According to the AP: "the screen went dark after the stomach-turning sequence showing the plane's nosedive. The theater was silent except for the gut-wrenching sobs and wails from the loge, where the relatives were seated together." That must have been so hard for those left behind to see what it was like just minutes before their loved ones died at the hands of terrorists.

When someone says "try walking in my shoes" in order to understand any loss they have gone through ... this one I cannot. While I have lost children, it was by an act of God, not at the hands of hateful people.

Ken Nacke whose brother Louis died on that flight had found himself "rooting for a different outcome." That is a very natural feeling to have especially as one live on going through the different levels of grief. It can take years to go through each and every stage, only to find through viewing a movie of how your loved one died, going through all the stages yet again.

I do not know how the psyche of the American people will fair once this movie is shown to a much wider audience on A&E (Arts and Entertainment) network here in the United States. Each person's reaction will be different since psychology can not state exactly how each and everyone of us will react.

But, I am of the opinion that all family members left behind of those killed on Flight 93 want some form of justice and so far the Bush administration has not delivered it by capturing Osama bin Laden. That is the most important thing we have to remember. Isn't his capture still important to the American people? If his capture means nothing to you, then you really need your head examined.

If we as Americans still want justice done for anyone who dies at the hands of terrorists, we do have a terrorist residing here in the United States and his name is Luis Posada Carriles.

In October, 1976, the midair explosion of Cubana Airlines plane flying out of Barbados killed all 73 people aboard.

He (Carriles) was later implicated in this bombing by two Venezuelans, Herman Ricardo and Freddy Lugo. Ricardo worked for Carriles security firm where he stated that it was Carriles who masterminded this bombing.

Sound familiar? When Luis Posada Carriles was arrested he was found with a map of Washington showing the daily route of to work of Orlando Letelier, the former Chilean Foreign Minister, who had been assassinated on 21st September, 1976. In 1985 Carriles escaped a Venezuelan prison with the help of Jorge Mas Canosa, the head of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), an organization created under Ronald Reagan.

Carriles is to Venezuela and Cuba what Osama bin Laden is to us.

While Bush has stated in the past of bin Laden: "I do not know where he is" those family members who lost loved ones thirty years ago and still go through their stages of grief know where their terrorist is. He (Carriles) is in Miami, Florida.

So, why isn't Bush extraditing him back to Venezuela to face justice?

The Sun-Sentinal reported: "In September, an immigration judge ruled that Posada should be deported, but said that the aging militant could not be sent to Cuba, where he was born, or Venezuela, where he is a naturalized citizen, because of the potential that he would be tortured."

So, here we are the United States whose pledge of allegiance states: "With liberty and justice for all" ... yet we also tortured alleged terrorists in Abu Graib and at Guantanamo Bay.

I first find that hypocritical to be worried if he will be tortured and he is a proven terrorist. Where is the justice for those who died on Cubana Airlines? I am sorry, but this does not make sense, but maybe it does and I am about to go out on a limb here. Are these American lives more precious than the lives of those on Cubana Airlines?

Answer that in your heart.

The Sun-Sentinal also reported of Carriles that he "was set to be interviewed Wednesday by immigration officials after he applied to become a U.S. citizen, his lawyer said."

Why are immigration officials even entertaining letting him apply for citizenship?

Why are they even meeting with him in the first place?
Bush once said after 9/11: "You are either with us or with the terrorists" and this action by the United States immigration department clearly shows that we are on the side of terrorists.

With the full airing of Flight 93: Will it bring forth our anger at terrorists?

If it does, the productive thing for all of us to do is to demand of our elected officials that Luis Posada Carriles is extradited back to Venezuela. We must also demand that Osama bin Laden be captured once and for all to bring justice for those on Flight 93.

Both Carriles and bin Laden took the lives of innocent human beings.

If this piece finds its way into the hands of anyone who lost a loved one on September 11th, 2001, you will see that you are connected with those who died on Cubana Airlines. I am asking you as a fellow American to use your voice to demand justice for those on Cubana Airlines. You are the voices that people in power will most likely listen to ... you are after all kindred spirits.

The thing that separates both groups of victims is that we know where Carriles is ... he is evading justice at the hands of the United States government.

The commonality is what Jan Snyder said: "they need to remember and know what the families have gone through.''
We must state in a united voice that this terrorist Carriles be sent back to Venezuela to face the justice he has evaded. Let that be our reaction when Flight 93 airs.

Mary MacElveen
mary@vheadline.com

MAY DAY AND IMMIGRATION RIGHTS

The Great American Boycott 2006, A Day Without An Immigrant” calls for a nationwide general immigration strike on May 1 to protest the current anti-immigration bill.

While there are debates about the exact nature of how the actions on May 1 should go, there is little doubt something is blowing in the wind.

This ought to be a May Day unlike any seen for a long time in the USA.

The following article comes from the New Standard.

Support Builds for Immigration Protests, Boycott
As May 1 action looms, undocumented workers discuss their power, solidarity
by Kari Lydersen

Chicago; Apr. 28 – In the 2004 independent film A Day Without a Mexican, Californians woke up and all the Mexicans had disappeared. Lawns went untended, hotel rooms sat uncleaned, and countless other jobs performed by low-paid immigrants were left undone.

Immigrant-rights groups have frequently mentioned this film and the larger concept behind it during the past six weeks of massive pro-immigrant marches. In Chicago, where the first of the large demonstrations took place, a central theme has been waking the American public up to the economic importance of immigrants. Organizers say they want to show how much immigrants, including close to 12 million undocumented ones, contribute with their labor and with their buying power.

At the March 10 Chicago demonstration, during which more than 100,000 immigrants and their supporters hit the streets, a group handed out flyers for a hastily organized boycott of Miller beer. Demonstrators targeted Miller Brewing Co. because the company's PAC had donated $2,000 to Wisconsin Republican Congressman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., sponsor of the harshly anti-immigrant bill that passed the House of Representatives last year.

Merchants on 26th Street, Chicago's main Mexican commercial drag in the Little Village neighborhood, said that by evening customers were refusing to buy Miller. The message reached beer distributors quickly, and by the following week officials from the company's Milwaukee headquarters had met with coalition organizers and put out a statement opposing the House's legislation.

"A lot of immigrants are not eligible to vote, but we have the purchasing power," said Salvador Cervantes, a member of the Chicago organizing coalition.

The idea amplified on April 10, when immigrant marchers in scores of cities and towns across the country pledged to refrain from shopping, working or going to school, wearing white T-shirts to symbolize their unity in creating a "day without immigrants."

A boycott on May Day has likewise been called in many cities across the country as part of pro-immigrant demonstrations. Called a paro in Spanish, the term is generally understood to mean both refusing to buy and refusing to work or go to school.

But the plan for a paro is not universally endorsed by all immigrant-rights groups. In Chicago, the organizing coalition known as the Movimiento 10 de Marzo, or the March 10 Movement, decided not to call for a boycott or general strike in the city, largely because of the involvement of labor unions that said they could not legally endorse such an action because their contracts prohibit them.

The question of whether to participate in nationwide calls for a May 1 boycott was hashed out at a contentious April 22 meeting, where the local coalition decided to support calls for boycotts in other cities, but refrain from a boycott in Chicago.

"We consider it a matter of wording," said Jorge Mujica, Illinois secretary general for the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), a Mexican political party and one of the central coalition organizers. "If people are marching all day, they're not working, buying things or going to school. But since we have the unions, we can't call a boycott or a strike. We'd rather have labor on our side than call for a boycott. As for the national and international boycott, we think it's beautiful."

But some organizers described this as caving in to unions and politicians that were pushing for a more moderate stance.

"I wish the unions had stayed out of it and let people celebrate May Day the way they wanted," said Rafael Cervantes, an activist from Monterrey, Mexico who has lived in Chicago for decades. "The boycott was a symbol for people, an icon, a way to say we matter, we are an important cog in this machine, we produce and we consume. It's ironic that the unions are saying they could not support it because it would be illegal, but the whole reason we're marching is that people are here 'illegally.'"

Tom Hansen, founder and director of the Mexico Solidarity Network, a grassroots organization working for social change on both sides of the US-Mexico border, said the boycott is only one example of the larger ideological battle that is going on in the immigrant-rights movement. "The reformists want to 'manage' the movement with a lot of US flags and a discourse about family values, et cetera," Hansen told The NewStandard. "The more progressive elements want to move the discussion to one about exploitation, labor rights and the meaning of citizenship."

On April 24 union leaders held a press conference supporting the march and framing it as not only about immigration but about rights for all workers. They said a boycott was beside the point for the labor issues they wanted to highlight.

"We're not even putting it into the equation," said Moises Zavala, a Chicago organizer for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). "This is the day to recognize our labor history and bring it full circle. In Chicago we're not endorsing a boycott; we're out to march to show our numbers and recognize the importance of May Day."

Teamsters organizers said that rather than discussing a strike or boycott, they were trying to get employers on workers' side; helping employees petition their employers for time off or paid holidays to attend the demonstrations.

In Los Angeles, where other mass protests are planned, some groups will be carrying out work stoppages and boycotts and attending a daytime downtown march. Others who plan to go to work and school will attend a separate demonstration in the late afternoon.

Thousands of truck drivers working out of the Port of Los Angeles and cab drivers who serve Los Angeles International Airport are expected to strike for the day or possibly the week.

"If truckers aren't trucking, the port isn't working," said Los Angeles attorney and organizer Jim DeMaegt. "If cab drivers don't drive, LAX will be shut down. Nobody knows precisely what will happen, but there is a lot of support."

DeMaegt thinks a massive strike would force policy change faster than some other types of actions. "We say a day without shopping is good; going to speeches, going marches is good," he told TNS. "But stopping work – a day without workers will close the country. A day without goods going in and out of the ports and airports of the US, and we'll have a policy change within a week."

The truckers and cab drivers are organized but are not members of official labor unions, giving them the freedom to strike without worrying about legal issues binding unions.

The truckers and cab drivers are protesting against rising fuel prices and low pay, along with calling for immigration reform.

DeMaegt said local Teamsters officials are not supporting a work stoppage but support the overall mobilization.

Aquilina Soriano-Versoza, executive director of the Pilipino Workers' Center, noted that many of their members are home-healthcare workers, so they don't want to endanger their clients by skipping work; but they will support the mobilization nonetheless.

"They can't leave their patients, but they're in solidarity," Soriano-Versoza said. "There are a whole range of ways people can participate."

She noted that many employers, particularly in the Koreatown garment industry, have given their workers the day off thanks to organizing by community groups and employees.

Alexis Lanza, an activist with the Chicago group La Voz de los de Abajo (The Voice of Those Below) and an immigrant from Honduras, said he supported the call for a one-day boycott. "I think it would have been good if the US united on that," he said. "But there are lots of interests, unions and different groups, and it's not easy to balance those things."

Lanza would prefer long-term boycotts of products from companies that donate to anti-immigrant politicians or promote policies that hurt Latin Americans through international trade or employment policies. The Chicago committee discussed proposals for a long-term boycott of Coca-Cola, with its notorious human-rights record, and a local Mexican cheese company that buys from Rep. Sensenbrenner's state, Wisconsin. But those proposals were not adopted.

"Calling a boycott for just one day strategically doesn't have that big an impact; it's symbolic," said Lanza. "The next day you'll be buying the same products again."

Lanza thinks even without an official boycott, the demonstrations will make immigrants' economic power clear. "If you're calling on people to close their businesses during the march, that's like a boycott, except you're not calling it that," Lanza said.

Some groups in other cities have not endorsed the boycott out of fear there will be a backlash against immigrants or that workers will lose their jobs for skipping work. But in Chicago, where many workers fired for participating in the March 10 demonstrations were reinstated after immigrant organizers threatened to protest workplaces, advocates say they are not that worried.

"I really feel this time around nobody is going to get fired," said Mujica. "We have prepared this so well with the letters for employees to give to their employers." He noted the group is distributing letters in several languages for workers to download and use to explain their cause while formally requesting time off.

In Arizona, the coalition that organized a 100,000-strong protest on April 10 in Phoenix waffled about supporting a boycott. Last week, the Somos America (We are America) coalition announced it was supporting demonstrations and other forms of protest, but not endorsing the boycott due to fear of a backlash and concern for immigrants' job security.

But, according to the group's chairman, Roberto Reveles, who spoke to the Arizona Republic, the recent arrests of 1,187 undocumented immigrants in federal raids on pallet maker IFCO Systems locations in 26 states including Arizona, spurred the group to change its mind.

Reveles told the Republic that his group wanted "to make a statement against the latest raids," which came "at a time when they should be working toward immigration reform rather than instilling additional fear in the lives of undocumented workers and their families."

The success of the boycott, according to Hansen of the Mexico Solidarity Network, will depend "on how many people participate, what the impacts are and, most importantly, the kind of political consciousness that accompanies the tactic."

"The idea is to change hearts and minds," he said, "and to give immigrants a sense of their power. This is particularly important for a group that has been repressed and exploited for so long, on both sides of the border. A change in the collective appreciation of what is possible is the real goal of the boycott."


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TRANSPLANT TOURISM

Wealthy Westerners who don't want to wait for an organ donor are travelling to poorer countries to find the organ they need.

Every day, 17 Americans die of organ failure. In Canada, a patient can wait seven years for an organ transplant. In Israel, the average wait for a kidney transplant is four years.

As a result, many are travelling to countries like the Philippines where they can buy a kidney and have the transplant done in a modern hospital. These people are called "transplant tourists".

The illegal trade in organs is growing.

For some time the practice of luring poor people with money to sell their organs, especially kidneys, has been associated with India along with other Asian countries and Brazil.

But no more.

Egypt is a regional hub for the human organs trade. Wonder why? There are no official statistics, but this is a country where social inequality is high and a quarter of the population is believed to live under the poverty line.

The "liberation" of Iraq has opened a new market. With unemployment in Iraq at about 60 per cent, the chance to earn money by touting body parts is a more calculated risk than, say, becoming a $150-a-month rookie policeman at the mercy of suicide attackers.

While most donors who sell their organs are poor and hoping (against hope) for a better life, authorities think that not all are volunteers but are merely victims of an elaborate extortion rings that capture and forcefully remove organs which they sell to wealthy buyers.

And even considering the sacrifice, most of those who willingly sell their organs get paid peanuts while the doctors and brokers get the lion share.

Bill Berkowitz takes a look at what is the hell is going on.

The following piece appeared originally at Inter Press Service.

"Transplant Tourism" Flourishes in Developing World
Bill Berkowitz, Inter Press Service

OAKLAND, California, Apr 27 (IPS) - While stories about the illegal trade in body parts -- often obtained by traffickers for measly sums paid to the donor or for nothing at all -- may seem better suited for the big screen, episodic television or science fiction novels, they are occurring in the real world with disturbing frequency.

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of medical anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, knows this all too well. She is the co-founder and director of Organs Watch, a project that originated in widespread rumours of body snatching and organ theft in the urban shantytowns of Brazil in the mid-1980s.

In a new essay published in the March/April 2006 edition of the Nacla Report on the Americas, titled "Biopiracy and the Global Quest for Human Organs", Scheper-Hughes says that, "U.S. or Japanese medical agents working for large hospitals abroad... abducted bodies", harvested the parts they wanted, especially eyes, kidneys, hearts, and livers, and then unceremoniously dumped the remains "on the sides of country roads or in hospital dumpsters".

Although medical professionals denied this was happening, in 1997 Scheper-Hughes began following the trail of rumours about the grim trade. Over the years, she has traveled to 12 countries and visited more than 50 scenes of illicit organs and tissues procurement.

Legislation has been passed in several countries to crack down on the trade in body parts, but Scheper-Hughes told IPS that "things are still quite unstable".

"China is preparing a new law making transplant tourism illegal. There will be no payment for organs and no foreign transplant patients," she said.

"It's too early to say whether it will stick or give rise to a shadow transplant economy. A new law was passed in Israel, making it illegal for Israeli transplant patients to be reimbursed by their national health insurance carriers for illegal transplants."

"Despite all this legislative activity, transplant tourism grows stealthily on the margins, as patients are 'voting with their legs' to solve their problems. Eventually, I see paid kidney donors becoming routine and eventually legal so that the trade will occur nationally rather than transnationally. That would be a sad outcome, but perhaps it is inevitable now that the cat is out of the bag," she concluded.

One of her more shocking realisations was that the underground body parts industry had gone from being something that "evoked shock and revulsion bordering on nausea" to becoming a "fait accompli -- an accepted medical fact defended on pragmatic grounds".

As a member of the panel on Ethics, Access and Safety in Tissue and Organ Transplant at a 2003 World Heath Organisation meeting, Scheper-Hughes witnessed an official from a private eye bank "defend the 'necessary' commercialisation of tissue banks in the developing world".

Without government support for "subsidised tissue banking", the argument went, poor countries had to resort to international trading/selling of body parts that were not being used locally and that could be transported through informal agreements to the developed world, where they are in great demand for orthopedic and other high-tech surgeries.

And, in what on the face of it appears to be a win-win situation, "In exchange, the poor donor-institutions could receive a steady supply of scarce corneas."

Organs Watch discovered a "large, unregulated, multi-million-dollar business in human tissues, taken without consent or procured from the naïve family members of brain-dead donors who believe their 'gifts' would be used altruistically to save lives and reduce human suffering".

Instead, these "gifts" were turned into commodities that were bought and sold, processed and transported, picking up additional value as they moved toward the market. Organs Watch found that bone and skin grafts were sold and processed by private biotech firms in the U.S. and turned into expensive commercial products for dentists, orthopedics and plastic surgery.

In South Africa, official documentation revealed that "human heart valves [had been] taken without consent from the bodies of poor blacks in the local police mortuary and shipped for 'handling costs' to medical centres in Germany and Austria", the group says.

In 2002, Scheper-Hughes apprised the South African Ministry of Health of a scheme originating at a national tissue bank that involved "the transfer of hundreds of Achilles tendons that were removed without consent from the bodies of the victims of township violence and shipped by the director of the tissues bank to a corrupt U.S. businessman who paid 200 dollars for each tendon".

Shipped to the U.S. via South Korea, they were ultimately repackaged and sold locally and abroad to private medical and biotech firms for 1,200 dollars each.

As is most often the case, everyone, except the poor people from whom these tendons came, benefited handsomely from the deal.

The rise in "illegal transplant tourism" -- a term coined by Scheper-Hughes -- was "developed to meet an insatiable demand for organ transplants that rises exponentially against a flat supply of organs donated through traditional and regulated means," she writes in the essay.

While donations have remained flat -- increasing only 33 percent over the past decade or so -- the number of patients on national waiting lists has increased by 236 percent.

With the increased need, poor people are recruited or entrapped into donating their body parts to satisfy the demand from rich patients who can afford to travel abroad and, Scheper-Hughes says, to break national laws and international medical regulations to get the organs and medical procedures they need.

Scheper-Hughes told IPS that she continues to be very active with Organs Watch, and is currently working with the World Health Organisation on several "black spots" in illegal transplant tourism -- China, Pakistan -- as well as with the ministry of health and the federal police in South Africa and Brazil with respect to arrests and trials of "transplant surgeon outlaws".