Al-Jazeera explores the Bolivia dynamic and I think this one piece does more to describe what is going on in Bolivia than everything else that has come out in the media for the past few years.
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From Denver Post:
A sergeant and five officers were pulled from street duty Wednesday as city officials investigated television footage showing police kicking and punching three suspects during a traffic stop.
More than a dozen officers were involved, but Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said investigators were having the videotape enhanced to determine how many of them were hitting suspects.
Results will go to prosecutors to determine whether charges are warranted.
“We certainly are concerned about what we saw on the tape,” Ramsey said at a news conference. “The behavior that at least was exhibited on the tape is unacceptable.”
Police stopped the suspects’ car while investigating a triple shooting Monday night. No weapons were found in the car or on the suspects, Ramsey said, but officers said they had seen them shoot three people on a drug corner moments earlier.
The WTXF-TV video, shot from a helicopter, showed police hauling three men from a car, then kicking and hitting them repeatedly.
The suspects, Dwayne Dyches, Brian Hall and Pete Hopkins, were each charged with attempted murder in the shooting, police said.
“I’m horrified to see that our city cops would beat some human being like they did, like a gang-style fight,” Leomia Dyches said, a suspect’s mother.
From Sunday’s New York Times
The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance. But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs.
Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be - often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.
With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline.
“It just keeps eating into people’s income,” said James Corbin, a former union official who works for the local utility in Tucson.
Mr. Corbin said that under their employer’s health plan, he and his co-workers are now obliged to pay up to $4,000 of their families’ annual medical bills, on top of about $1,600 a year in premiums. Five years ago, they paid no premiums and were responsible for only about $2,000 of their families’ medical bills.
“That’s a big jump,” Mr. Corbin said. “You’ve just lost a month’s pay.”
Already, many doctors say, the soft economy is making some insured people hesitant to get care they need, reluctant to spend a $50 co-payment for an office visit. Parents “are waiting longer to bring in their children,” said Dr. Richard Lander, a pediatrician in Livingston, N.J. “They say, ‘The kid isn’t that sick; her temperature is only 102.’ “
The problem of affording health care is most acute for people with no insurance, a group expected to soon exceed 48 million, but those with insurance say they too are feeling the pain.
(AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
Sami Al-Haj, an Al-Jazeera cameraman who spent 6 years in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay, has just been released. I wrote about Sami’s detention a week ago (here) and he is now a free man!!! After 6 grueling years, he finally gets to see his son Muhammad.
From the Associate Press.
KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) - An Al-Jazeera cameraman was released from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and returned home to Sudan early Friday after six years of imprisonment that drew worldwide protests.
Sami al-Haj, who had been on a hunger strike for 16 months, grimaced as he was carried off a U.S. military plane by American personnel in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. He was put on a stretcher and taken straight to a hospital.
Al-Jazeera showed footage of al-Haj being carried into the hospital, looking feeble and with his eyes closed, but smiling. Some of the men surrounding his stretcher were kissing him on the cheek.
“Thank God … for being free again,” he told Al-Jazeera from his hospital bed. “Our eyes have the right to shed tears after we have spent all those years in prison. … But our joy is not going to be complete until our brothers in Guantanamo Bay are freed,” he added.
“The situation is very bad and getting worse day after day,” he said of conditions in Guantanamo. He claimed guards prevent Muslims from practicing their religion and reading the Quran.
“Some of our brothers live without clothing,” he said.
The U.S. military says it goes to great lengths to respect the religion of detainees, issuing them Qurans, enforcing quiet among guard staff during prayer calls throughout the day. All cells in Guantanamo have an arrow that points toward the holy city of Mecca.
The Washington Post is doing a magnificent job covering the food crisis. In fact, they have devoted an entire section of their website on the crisis. This article from tomorrow’s paper discusses the Bush administration’s recent moves to assuage some of problems. One can hope that this is not too late…although, no amount of aid is going to be sufficient if the underlying problems with the system are not corrected,
President Bush asked Congress yesterday to approve $770 million in new global food aid for the coming fiscal year, the centerpiece of an evolving administration response to a crisis that has sparked increased violence and hunger around the world.
Overall, he said, the United States is on track to spend nearly $5 billion on foreign food assistance in 2008 and 2009. “With the new international funding I’m announcing today, we’re sending a clear message to the world that America will lead the fight against hunger for years to come,” Bush said at the White House.
The president said he is asking Congress to include the money in a broader Iraq war funding bill for fiscal 2009 that the administration sent to Capitol Hill yesterday.
The proposal came under immediate criticism from some congressional Democrats and outside experts, who said additional money would do little to alleviate the current crisis if it is not available until the 2009 budget year, which starts in October. Bush has also requested $350 million in additional food aid as part of the 2008 supplemental Iraq war budget, an amount that top Democrats say is too little.
On May 4th 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued the Inter Caestera Divinae, a papal bull which gave Spanish kingdoms jurisdiction of nearly all of the ‘New World’. Upon the suggestion of Columbus, the pope declared that Spain’s demarcation would be one hundred leagues west of any of the Cape Verde Islands or of the Azores. No doubt, Portugal was upset with this announcement and protested that Spain had been given too much land.
On June 7, 1494, the two great powers came together to sign the Treaty of Tordesillas which renegotiated the demarcation and drew a new line 1300 miles west of the Azores. All lands west of the line were granted to Spain and all lands east of the line were to belong to Portugal (If you have ever wondered why most Latin Americans speaks Spanish while Brazilians speaks Portuguese, the Treaty of Tordesillas is your answer).
This agreement between the two nations would have terrible consequences in Latin America and since that time, the continents white minority have ruled with impunity and ferocity. For more than 500 years, the whole of Latin America has been controlled by the ancestors of the Spanish and Portuguese, to the detriment of millions of indigenous and Africans, the latter brought over as slaves. One should not be surprised that these elite are not willing to relinquish their power.
Unfortunately, democracy has somewhat limited the ability to treat the countries of Latin America as their own personal possessions and the 2005 election of Aymara Indian Evo Morales is a wake up call to the whites that the indigenous are prepared to reclaim what was once theirs. Rather than accepting this outcome, the elite in Bolivia are seeking autonomy for their Departments. Their autonomy referendum is slated for May 4th, and much like Inter Caestera Divinae in 1493, they seek to keep as much as possible in the hands of the Spanish as possible. They will not accept the fact that the Morales government wants to redistribute land to the landless, land which is in the hands of a small minority.
I will be watching the wires closely on May 4th and while no international organizations will accept the May 4th referendum (here) it is important to see how things will develop in this long neglected country. Al-Jazeera does a full report on the autonomy issue. I just hope what I wrote gives the issue a bit more context!
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