Mekong in the Bronx: Southeast Asians Make a New Community in New York
In 1980 - as tens of thousands of refugees fled violence in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos - President Jimmy Carter signed the Refugee Resettlement Act. He declared that the United States would finally take responsibility for the devastating effects of its policies in the region.
Within ten years, more than one million refugees arrived to American cities. But over two decades later, America's promise remains unfulfilled.
In New York, refugees in the Bronx are organizing. And now, a new generation has emerged as leaders in a community that is still facing the legacy of war and violence. Dorian Merina brings us this exclusive documentary from New York.
- US military launches operations in Afghanistans Helmand province (Special Exended Version)
- US military launches operations in Afghanistans Helmand province (Newscast Version)
- Senate committee reveals crucial components of health reform bill
- US job losses increase in June
- Argentinas capital declares Swine Flu emergency
- African Union meets in Libya
- Mumia Commentary; Michael Jackson master entertainer
- River of protesters enter Honduran capital despite martial law
- Indian court decriminalizes gay sex
- Comorans protest poor airline conditions outside the EU
- Spilled coal ash from TVA breach cleared for deposited in Alabama landfill
The FBI has declassified documents on Saddam Hussein, in which Iraqs former dictator said he had serious concerns about Iran. In an interview with the FBI before his execution, Hussein explained he didnt refute US claims about weapons of mass destruction, because he didn't want to appear weak to neighboring Iran. He also denied any connection to Osama Bin Laden.
Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the US has launched a new military operation against Taliban militants, with some 4,000 Marines landing in Helmand province under the cover of darkness early Thursday. Operation Khanjar which means strike of the sword seeks to re-establish the Afghanistan governments control over areas of Helmand which are dominated by Taliban insurgents.
Military analyst and columnist Conn Halinnan writes about national security issues for Foreign Policy in Focus. He spoke with FSRN about operation Khanjar and its possible outcomes.
The FBI has declassified documents on Saddam Hussein, in which Iraqs former dictator said he had serious concerns about Iran. In an interview with the FBI before his execution, Hussein explained he didnt refute US claims about weapons of mass destruction, because he didn't want to appear weak to neighboring Iran. He also denied any connection to Osama Bin Laden.
BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition
The Obama administration will proceed with a Bush-era plan to use National Security Agency assistance in screening government computer traffic on private-sector networks, with AT&T as the likely test site, according to three current and former government officials.
President Obama said in May that government efforts to protect computer systems from attack would not involve "monitoring private-sector networks or Internet traffic," and Department of Homeland Security officials say the new program will scrutinize only data going to or from government systems.
BAGHDAD - A fiery protest marked the start on Friday of US Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Iraq, with supporters of the Shiite anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr burning the Stars and Stripes.
Biden met General Ray Odierno, the top US officer in Iraq, and Christopher Hill, Washington's ambassador in Baghdad, who briefed him on the military and political situation, three days after a major US troop pullback.
LOS ANGELES - Los Angeles will eliminate the use of electricity made from coal by 2020, replacing it with power from cleaner renewable energy sources, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said.
Consumers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the largest city-owned utility in the United States with 1.45 million electricity customers, will see higher power bills in the fight against climate change, he added in his inaugural speech for his second four-year term as mayor on Wednesday.
MIAMI - The world's seagrass meadows, a critical habitat for marine life and profit-maker for the fishing industry, are in decline due to coastal development and the losses are accelerating, according to a new study.
Billed as the first comprehensive global assessment of seagrass losses, the study found 58 percent of seagrass meadows are declining and the rate of annual loss has accelerated from about 1 percent per year before 1940 to 7 percent per year since 1990.
A politician who has been described as "the bravest woman in Afghanistan" says that military intervention is not the way to find democracy in the war-torn county.
Malalai Joya gained international attention for standing before Afghanistan's constitutional grand assembly and accusing her country's leaders of war crimes, human rights violations and supporting the Taliban.
She spent most of her childhood in refugee camps and as a young woman she worked as a women's rights activist under the Taliban.
</td></tr></table>GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) - "They told us 'go west or we will shoot you,'" says Ashraf Sadallah. "Initially, we refused, so they began shooting very close all around our boat." At 6am on 16 June, Sadallah and his brother Abdel Hadi Sadallah, in their early twenties, went roughly 400 meters out to sea off the coast of Sudaniya in Gaza's northwest. "We wanted to bring in nets we had left out the night before," says Sadallah.
</td></tr></table>The US-sponsored "security coordination" program headed by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, which was launched by the Bush Administration in 2005 to allegedly help the Palestinians reform their security services, has done more harm than good. US President Barack Obama would do well to fire Dayton and put an end to US intrusion into internal Palestinian affairs. Mohammed J. Herzallah comments for The Electronic Intifada.
</td></tr></table>RAMALLAH, occupied West Bank (IPS) - Twenty-one international peace activists were seized by Israeli naval frigates in international waters Tuesday as their boat The Spirit of Humanity tried to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza. The activists, including former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Irish Nobel Peace laureate Mairead Maguire, and nationals from 11 other countries were part of the Free Gaza Movement (FGM) efforts to break Israel's naval and border blockade of Gaza.
</td></tr></table>The play Oh Well Never Mind Bye is set in the busy newsroom of an unnamed London-based newspaper -- probably a right-wing tabloid -- in the days before and after London police shot dead a Brazilian immigrant on an underground train. But in a genuinely brave piece of playwriting, Steven Lally has drawn on wider themes, including the "churnalism" that has turned much of the journalistic profession into a regurgitation of celebrity press releases, the way in which Palestine and related issues are reported in the mainstream media and the influence of the Zionist lobby on news coverage. Sarah Irving reviews for The Electronic Intifada.
</td></tr></table>The below photographs are a selection of images from the month of June 2009. "The month in pictures" is an ongoing feature by The Electronic Intifada. If you have images documenting Palestine, Palestinian life, politics and culture, or of solidarity with Palestine, please email images and captions to photos A T electronicintifada D O T net.
Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories
Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. and the other members of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee have proven time and again their dedication to the cause of our people, nationally and throughout the world through work, not just talking. I wanted to catch up with the chairman so that we could talk about a recent POCC protest in Chicago at the Black radio station WVON, where the POCC was protesting Black radio host Charles Butler, who called Black youth urban terrorists on the air.
This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip, said Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. Congresswoman and presidential candidate, as she and 20 human rights workers and journalists from 11 countries on a boat attempting to break the blockade of Gaza were abducted and being dragged by an Israeli gunship to jail in Israel.
The basic cause of most of the trouble in the Congo right now is the intervention of outsiders the fighting that is going on over the mineral wealth of the Congo and over the strategic position that the Congo represents on the African continent. And in order to justify it, they are doing it at the expense of the Congolese, by trying to make it appear that the people are savages. And I think, as one of the gentlemen mentioned earlier, if there are savages in the Congo, then there are worse savages in Mississippi, Alabama and New York City, and probably some in Washington, D.C., too. Malcolm X on radio station WMCA Nov. 28, 1964
Most successful Black entrepreneurs that I know would never publish themselves in the so-called Black Enterprise Top 100 Black Businesses. To many it is perceived as a target list for the IRS, large competitors and others with bad intentions. Allow me to discuss a few of the horror stories that successful Black entrepreneurs have experienced.
Democracy Now!
World news and comment from the Guardian | guardian.co.uk
Republicans disagree on wisdom of move
Former McCain running mate hints at political ambition
Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential candidate who electrified her party's campaign last year, has resigned as Alaska's governor in a dramatic decision that has fuelled speculation she is positioning herself to run for president.
But after an at times rambling speech in which she compared herself to battle wounded American soldiers in Kosovo and said only dead fish go with the flow, Palin's critics accused her of a "flaky" decision and walking away from her post.
Palin, who built strong support among conservative Republicans as John McCain's running mate last year, said she will step down in three weeks because she can contribute more away from politics.
"We know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time on another scale and actually make a difference for our priorities," she said.
But Palin also hinted at continuing political ambitions when she repeated a quote she attributed to general Douglas MacArthur: "We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction."
For someone who is supposedly stepping back from politics, Palin's resignation speech was weighty with policy specifics which prompted speculation that she is positioning herself for a 2012 presidential bid or seeking another office which would move her from distant Alaska to the heart of Washington politics.
But the timing, coming during one of the biggest American holidays of the year, independence day, raised questions among some of Republicans who accused her of attempting to escape falling poll numbers in Alaska as a series of economic problems and ethics investigations take their toll.
A prominent Republican strategist, Ed Rollins, who directed Ronald Reagan's election campaign, said Palin had made a serious mistake.
"She was a shooting star who dimmed in recent months and now she's crashed," he said.
Another Republican strategist, Tony Blankley, disagreed and said Palin appeared to have made a smart move to position herself for a run for president.
"It looks like she's moving down a path toward it," he said. "It frees her up. The normal rules don't seem to apply to her. She's a fascinating character who seems to do things her own way."
Blankley said that it makes sense for Palin to resign as governor if she is seeking higher office.
"This is going to be a pretty tough time for incumbents the next couple of years in America with everything going to tell and this may be a pretty good time not to be in office," he said.
Blankley also said that Palin faced particular difficulties trying to juggle a national campaign with being government of Alaska.
The geography is bad for her because it is several time zones and the better part of a day's travel from Washington. That limits her ability to maintain her profile by dropping in on important campaign states for short visits to whip up backing for a run for president. Quitting as governor will give her an opportunity to travel and court the Republican base among which she retains considerable support. Palin will also need to spend time in the capital developing relationships with key Republican strategists.
Palin remains a front runner among Republicans nationwide as a potential presidential candidate.
But other Republicans were more critical including John Weaver, a long-time confidant of McCain.
"We've seen a lot of nutty behaviour from governors and Republican leaders in the last three months, but this one is at the top of that," Weaver told the Washington Post.
Palin's resignation was swiftly criticised as "flaky" by her Democratic opponents who said it was part of a pattern of "bizarre" behaviour.
The Democratic National Committee said she is "leaving the people of Alaska high and dry ... or she simply can't handle the job now".
The timing of the announcement on the eve of independence day led some critics to accuse her of trying to bury the news of her resignation. But given that almost nothing else was going on it might have been a move to dominate the news bulletins as it forced Michael Jackson's death from the top slot.
"Some are going to question the timing of this, and let me say this decision has been in the works for quite a while," Palin said.
Palin addressed the numerous ethics investigations launched in to her alleged misuse of office by saying that taxpayer money was being wasted and deriding them as part of the "superficial political blood sport" against her since she shot to prominence as McCain's running mate.
Palin will hand power to her deputy, lieutenant governor Sean Parnell. The next election for Alaska governor is in 2010.
A British embassy employee is to stand trial in Tehran for "acting against national security" a dramatic escalation in Iran's campaign to blame Britain for protests against disputed election results.
The man, a 44-year-old Iranian who is the British embassy's chief political analyst, was arrested on Saturday and has been formally charged at Tehran's Evin Prison, his lawyer, Abdolsamad Khorramshahi, said. "Apparently he will be put on trial. We have prepared and submitted the defence documents and I have to see the judge next week."
It was is not clear whether any other embassy staff will face prosecution. A senior cleric claimed that some had "confessed" to playing a role in the protest movement. The staging of political trials is likely to lead to a breach in relations not only with Britain, but also with the European Union. Iranian ambassadors were summoned to foreign ministries in capitals across Europe in a coordinated rebuke .
The analyst is one of two Iranian staff of the British embassy still being held for allegedly playing a role in the protests that followed the official victory in last month's presidential elections of President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad. Seven other staff members have been released from detention in recent days but warned they could face further legal proceedings. Earlier in the day Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of a highly influential body of clerics, the Guardian Council, claimed that some embassy employees had "confessed" to playing a role in post-election demonstrations, and would be prosecuted.
The cleric is close to Iran's Supreme Leader but he is not in charge of the judiciary, so British officials insistthat trials were still not inevitable despite the fact charges had been laid.
"Acting against national security" is a vague charge often brought against political activists and is not known to carry any fixed sentence. The charge was levelled against three US-Iranian academics detained in 2007 while visiting Iran. All three were subsequently released.
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, said: "We are confident that our staff have not engaged in any improper or illegal behaviour." Miliband added that Britain was "deeply concerned" about the fate of the two embassy staff. However, their plight presents British officials with a dilemma. If they provide too much overt help it will strengthen Tehran's depiction of them as "foreign agents".
Britain withdrew a request for European states to pull ambassadors from Tehran after the Iranian government released some embassy staff on Wednesday, but London is likely to look for stronger action if the trials proceed. European officials at meetings at Stockholm and Brussels said the option of withdrawing ambassadors remained on the table. The Europeans also discussed the possible penalty of blacklisting regime officials by temporarily blocking visa applications to travel to the EU.
"We view this not just as an attack on Britain, but as an attack on the entire European Union," said a European official.
Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden which took over the EU presidency this week, said it was not acceptable to file charges against British embassy staff. But the threat of charges being pressed against embassy employees, followed by trials, looked calculated to call Europe's bluff and to gauge how the EU might respond.
"Our solidarity is total. Now it is up to the British to tell us what they need," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "France has always wanted to strengthen the sanctions so that the Iranian leaders really understand that the path they have chosen will be a dead end."
France has taken a tough line on the nuclear dispute with Iran over the last six years, while Germany and Italy, with billions of euros in trade at stake with Iran, have been less keen on sanctions.
Today's meeting in Brussels agreed on a common protest to the ambassadors. Officials said the crisis could be taken to a summit of G8 leaders in Italy next week, although the Italians are seen as the least supportive of strong action against Iran.
Staples Centre has a capacity for 20,000 at most
11,000 tickets to be distributed free
Los Angeles police and city officials will be scrambling through the weekend to prepare for a memorial for Michael Jackson on Tuesday in an attempt to prevent the scenes of chaos and confusion that have marked the eight days since his death.
With the family finally settled on a Tuesday morning event at the Staples Centre in downtown LA, the city now is now bracing itself for the gathering of what is expected to be an enormous crowd of Jackson fans. The Staples Centre has a capacity for up to 20,000 at most, which most involved in the organisation agree is wildly inadequate.
The event will be opened to the public, with 11,000 tickets distributed free and the remaining 9,000 seats presumably being offered to friends of the family and music industry representatives.
But that will still leave a massive over-spill. Dennis Zine, an LA city council representative, said: "If you can imagine 100,000 people show up and you have 20,000 capacity, there is not sufficient room. Now you have a crowd-control problem."
Jackson's brother, Jermaine, added to the apprehension when he told CNN: "There's no place even big enough. There are twenties of thousands just from the UK. We worked with the city authorities and they're trying their best with the time-frame we have and we're hoping that everybody's safe and that things are going to be locked down pretty much."
Much of the past week has been dominated by speculation over the memorial. A report that the singer's 2,500-acre ranch Neverland would be the site of a public viewing of Jackson's coffin sent thousands of fans scurrying north of LA; all hotels in the area of the ranch were booked within minutes.
Jermaine Jackson said it was still his preferred wish for his brother to be buried at Neverland, but in the end the funeral will almost certainly take place at the Forest Lawn cemetery in LA where the star's grandmother rests.
After a small private ceremony there, there will be a procession to the Staple's Centre where the memorial will take place. The venue is deemed appropriate, despite its limited capacity, because it is owned by AEG Live, the promoter of the London performances.
The auditorium was also where Jackson rehearsed his London comeback show This Is It! the night before he died.
A snippet of Jackson rehearsing on the Staple's stage was released yesterday. It shows him singing and dancing to a background soundtrack of Martin Luther King speaking.
The video gives little away about Jackson's condition. Though his singing sounds strong and he moves across the stage, his dancing lacks the technical wizardry that added to his fame in the 1980s.
Up to 100 hours of footage of rehearsals is thought to exist, and the promoters of the stricken London tour are confident that from that they can extract at least two albums'-worth of material with which they can help to make up some of their multi-million dollar losses.
The entertainment website, TMZ, which broke the original story about Jackson falling ill on June 25, reported yesterday that AEG Live had invested up to $30m in advance costs related to the London shows at the O2 Arena. Some of that money will be recouped, according to TMZ, through a $17.5m insurance policy with Lloyd's of London which included coverage in the event of a Jackson overdose.
Paradoxically, the insurance policy did not make any provision for the possibility of Jackson dying by natural causes, TMZ said.
After success with China, US targets Russia in strategy to reach separate agreements with world's biggest polluters
Barack Obama will move to seal a deal with Russia for joint action on climate change during his summit in Moscow next week, the Guardian has learned.
Obama arrives in Moscow on Monday at the start of a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana that will focus heavily on energy and climate change. From Moscow, Obama travels on to Italy for a meeting of the G8 and a gathering of the major polluting countries.
Administration officials are still working out the broad outlines of an agreement that would see the US offer its expertise and technical support to Russian efforts to make its industries more energy efficient. In return Moscow would sign on to international efforts to scale back the emissions that cause global warming at a crucial UN summit in Copenhagen in December.
The overture to Russia the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after America and China furthers the strategy adopted by the Obama administration to enter into separate deals for action on climate change with each of the world's biggest polluters.
The administration sees such deals as crucial groundwork ahead of the Copenhagen meeting. They dismiss suggestions that the US is trying to undermine the UN process.
The separate negotiations policy began taking shape in May, as the US climate change envoy, Todd Stern, pursued a deal with China, the world's biggest polluter.
Next on the list is Russa. After that, it could well be Japan or Brazil. "You can definitely say we are looking for other partners," an administration official said.
In the case of China, as well as Russia, US officials have steered clear of trying to press for binding targets for emissions reductions.
Major environmental organisations support the Obama administration approach. David Doniger, the director of climate policy at the Natural Resources Defence Council, argues that Obama and other high-level members of his team have far greater flexibility to try to reach a deal in such bilateral talks than officials working through routine diplomatic channels.
"If you are trying to put together a baseball team you have to sign contracts with 30 players. You don't work them out in one big meeting," he said. "It's very difficult in the multilateral setting. It is just not the place where it is very easy to get countries to make new moves."
It is uncertain whether Obama will make a formal announcement of a new energy pact between the US and Russia. Instead, the president is expected to set out his ideas for a partnership with Russia on climate change and energy in a speech at the end of the summit. "They won't have the full road map for what they are going to do but want to launch a stepped up partnership," said Jake Schmidt, the international climate change director of the NRDC.
Another scenario envisaged is the establishment of a separate US-Russian working group on global warming to be overseen by Todd Stern, the State Department envoy on climate change.
The US and Russia have long-standing co-operation on energy, but the Obama administration would like to ratchet up that involvement.
There have also been recent signs of movement from Russia, which is beginning to engage with climate change far more seriously than before, said Andrew Kuchins of the Russia programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. In April, Moscow unveiled a new doctrine on climate change. "I think there is a much more realistic appraisal about the potential pros and cons of climate change. It is hard for them to ignore what is happening in the Arctic [which is warming rapidly]," said Kuchins.
In recent weeks, the White House, State Department and National Security Council have also been studying a report from the Centre for American Progress, an influential think tank, that called for looking at climate change as an economic issue, and for demonstrating clear benefits to Russia of action. "What is most crucial is engaging them on energy efficiency. We think that it is important to frame climate change as an economic issue and one where Russia stands to benefit by first undergoing significant energy efficiency [improvements]."
Russian industry is very inefficient, using three times more energy per unit of gross domestic product as the European Union and twice as much as the US, Light notes in the paper. He argues there would be great interest in Russia in collaborating with US experts on technologies to improve its use of energy.
The economic potential is huge. A World Bank report last year found that Russia, with reasonable investment, would be able to cut its energy consumption by about 50%or the equivalent of 60 biliion barrels a day of oil over the next three years.
92 video tapes may have been illegally destroyed
London station chief included in inquiry
Senior Central Intelligence Agency officials, including the London station chief, have been brought before a grand jury in Virginia investigating the potentially illegal destruction of 92 video tapes recording the torture and interrogation of al-Qaida detainees.
A special prosecutor, John Durham, has called the CIA officials as part of an 18-month-long criminal probe in to the destruction of evidence of the agency's interrogators using waterboarding and other forms of torture against Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri who are described by the Americans as "high value" detainees now held at Guantnamo Bay.
Those ordered to testify include the former CIA chief, Porter J Gross. Another is a woman who is not publicly named who heads the agency's London station. She previously worked as the chief of staff for the head of the CIA's clandestine branch, Jose Rodriguez, who is the focus of the investigation.
The New York Times reports that former CIA officers have identified the woman as having helped carry out Rodriguez's order to destroy the tapes which had been kept in a safe in at the agency's station in Thailand where the torture and interrogations were carried out.
Rodriquez is reported to have been concerned that agents might have been identified and endangered if the tapes leaked.
But the CIA will also have been concerned that some of its agents may have been open to prosecution under domestic and international laws against torture besides the enormous damage to its already battered reputation if video were made public of the extended torture and brutal techniques used against the captives. The impact is likely to have been much greater than the outcry caused by the pictures of abuse by US soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison.
President Obama has since pledged not to prosecute individual agents for their part in torture and interrogations because they were assured by the Bush administration that their actions were legal.
The investigation was launched because the destruction of the tapes may amount to a criminal offense because it was evidence that could have been used in any prosecutions for torture. Robriquez has told colleagues that he received legal guidance from CIA lawyers who told him he had the authority to order the destruction of the tapes.
However it remains open to question whether anyone will be brought to trial for that or other alleged offenses given the Obama administration's desire to reassure CIA agents that they will not be pursued over past crimes.
The existence of the tapes was only made public after they were destroyed.
On Thursday, the Obama administration said it will delay until the end of next month the release of a 2004 CIA report detailing the torture and other abuse of prisoners held in clandestine prisons oversees.
IPS Inter Press Service
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