THE RASTAFARI COLLECTIVE--APRIL 2004 ARCHIVES

TO THE RASTAFARIAN COMMUNITY,

WHOM IS CONCERNED

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Conflict and unrest drive African brain drain

Addis Ababa - African experts blamed civil unrest and conflict for driving people from their home countries, saying on Monday that governments should encourage skilled migrants to return and stop Africa's "brain drain".

"Continued migration is expected to get worse as demands in developed countries grows for skilled manpower and African governments will have to take more effective management policies to arrest the exodus," said the experts, meeting in Ethiopia under the auspices of the African Union.

The two-day meeting is intended to draft a policy framework that would help in reducing the numbers leaving African states, including encouraging countries to adopting favourable employment policies to attract skilled people.

About 175 million people, or three percent of the world's population, live outside the country where they were born, while migrant workers repatriate about $88-billion per year in earnings, according to recent United Nations data.

The African Union aims to address development on a continent scarred by conflict in many of its states, including Liberia, Burundi, Sudan, Somalia, Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Prison drug testing might soon change

 WPMI-TV

Updated: 6:33 p.m. ET April  04, 2004

 April 04, 2004 - Prisons chief reviews drug testing of inmates.

(MONTGOMERY, Ala.( (AP) - Numerous complaints about the accuracy of prison drug testing have led Corrections Commissioner Donal Campbell to review the entire process. "There's definitely a need to determine whether or not this system is effective because of the number of complaints I'm getting," Campbell said.

Inmates complain flawed results could threaten the granting of paroles.

University of Alabama at Birmingham forensic science professor Fred Smith, who specializes in drug testing, said he has found one potential problem in the system - the screens used to test prisoners produce a small percentage of false positives. He said errors occur because the second tests don't use a different method for confirmation. "That's why the government requires labs testing employees to jump through another hoop before they accuse people of using drugs," Smith told The Birmingham News for a story Sunday. Campbell said his evaluation will look at drug testing throughout the system.

With Alabama's budget crisis and overcrowded prisons, he said he doesn't want anyone to stay in prison longer than the law requires. "I want to look at it to see if we've been effective in what we've done, and could we lend any more discretion to what were doing," he said.

Alabama prisons impose a more rigid drug testing policy on prisoners than is allowed by the federal government on employees. Prison policies also are stricter than those followed by the Alabama Department of Pardons and Paroles in testing parolees. Cold medicines, prescription drugs and other substances can cause false positives in urine tests. While other agencies allow for possibility of errors, and re-test using a different method, DOC does not. Also, some labs and employers require a medical review of test results. DOC does not.

Some of the inmate complaints came from the Birmingham Work Release Center, where lawyers representing Alabama's female inmates have raised concerns about the accuracy and reliability of DOC drug tests. A positive result can hurt an inmate's chance for parole, force an inmate to lose a work-release job, cost him or her good time and possibly result in return to a more secure prison.

The prison system also makes prisoners pay fees after a positive test. "To me, it's unconscionable not to stop the program, identify the problem and figure out a way to fix it," said Tamara Serwer Caldas, an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights, which represents female prisoners in a class action lawsuit against the state.

Since the Atlanta-based center has been looking into the drug- testing issue, she has heard from former inmates who raised these issues years ago, but were ignored.

The prison system's 1.8 percent positive test rate for drugs was one of the lowest in the country, said Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett.

Last fiscal year, the prison system performed 121,066 drug tests on prisoners and staff. Of those, 2,141 tested positive for illegal drugs or alcohol. That's down from 3,769 positives last year, according to figures provided by Corbett. He cited an "aggressive drug treatment program" for the drop.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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Angola bans GM food aid

Rory Carroll in Johannesburg
Wednesday March 31, 2004
The Guardian

Almost 2 million Angolans could go hungry because their government has banned genetically modified food aid, the UN's food agency warned yesterday.

A shipment of 19,000 tonnes of maize from the US may have to turn back because the southern African state has become concerned about the environmental risks of biotechnology.

Rations for some 1.9 million people dependent on food aid are likely to be cut in the short term while the UN world food programme adjusts to the new policy, according to Mike Sackett, the agency's regional director for southern Africa.

Angola's council of ministers decided this month to follow five other southern African countries in rejecting unmilled GM seeds which could be planted and cross-pollinate local maize crops.

No Angolan is expected to starve because of the ban but it nevertheless revived a controversy over poor countries' food shortages and GM technology, which has divided the US and Europe.

The US has accused African leaders of irresponsibility in disrupting food aid but European environmentalists have lauded the bans as prudent and urged reform of the UN's system of food aid.

Most of the 400,000 tonnes of food aid the WFP planned to distribute in Angola over the next two years was to come from US farms which produce big surpluses of GM maize.

The civil war has ended but hundreds of thousands of displaced families face poverty as they return to towns and villages in ruins. There is no famine but in places food is scarce and expensive.

The rulers of what is in effect a one-party state did not elaborate when announcing the ban. It has not yet been formally implemented and it was not clear what would happen to the 19,000-tonne shipment due to unload today. The agriculture ministry in Luanda, which is believed to have pushed for the ban, was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Mr Sackett said the suddenness of the decision was unfortunate but that the WFP accepted it. "We respect the sovereign right of a government to decide what goes into the country."

Angola has joined Zimbabwe, Malawi, Mozambique and Lesotho, which decided last year to ban unmilled seeds. Zambia went further and banned even milled seeds, citing concerns that they could be harmful to human health. Zambia was vilified for doing so near the peak of a food shortage but warnings that millions might starve proved unfounded and it ended up producing a 120,000-tonne surplus.

There was no immediate public response to Angola's decision from the US but the White House will be dismayed at another setback for what President George Bush has touted as a tool to end hunger in Africa. The US Senate and House of Representatives wants overseas funds to fight HIV/Aids and malaria conditional on the acceptance of GM crops and food.

"There is a constant drip of pressure from the US government and biotech industry to make sure Africa is softened up for GM," said Charlie Kronick, of the environmental group Greenpeace. "Europe is closed to them and they need a market for it."

The EU has imposed a moratorium on growing or importing GM food because of fears about environmental and heath risks.

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Haitians return to poverty after bloody revolt

Normal is deprivation, devastation in once-lush nation in Caribbean

By Henry Chu / Los Angeles Times

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Life is slowly creeping back to normal after weeks of violent turmoil in this Caribbean capital.

This is normal in the teeming slum of Cite Soleil: heaps of refuse in the street. Open gullies for sewers. Ramshackle homes built from a flimsy patchwork of metal and plywood.

This is normal for Maryse Blain Bruno: hawking drinking glasses and teacups on the sidewalk. Fending off loan collectors from the bank. Struggling to feed three children on her own, her husband killed by thugs 2 1/2 years ago.

It is a measure of just how bad things have gotten in Haiti, just how abject the misery has become, that “normal” here is a harsh reality of unrelenting poverty and squalor — and that residents long to return to it.

A new set of leaders — led by Prime Minister Gerard Latortue — has taken over the government after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced into exile Feb. 29 by an armed revolt.

All that many Haitians ask for is a semblance of stability, the freedom to get on with their lives — as hard and, in many cases, short as they are.

“I’ve always had to fight to eat, and that will remain the same. But at least I can speak out,” said Bruno, 40, who lives in Port-au-Prince’s depressed Bas Peu de Choses neighborhood. “As long as there’s security, things are good.”

That’s a modest ambition and a tall order in a land that has witnessed coup after coup and strongman after strongman in its 200-year history as the world’s first independent black nation.

The new government, billed as a coalition of national unity, is counting on its team of technocrats to set aside divisive ideology and emphasize competence in rebuilding ravaged institutions and putting the state back on its feet.

At least in the near term, Haiti’s efforts to restore public order will rely heavily on international troops, the majority of them from the United States. A durable peace, however, could prove elusive given the number of guns in circulation, many of them in the hands of street toughs willing to push their political views with violence.

Only after a dependable calm has returned will many residents allow themselves something more extravagant than mere survival: hope.

Rosemene Louis indulged in it a dozen years ago, when Aristide was first elected on a wave of popular support as a fierce champion of the downtrodden in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

This is a place where life expectancy is lower than in Sudan, only half the population can read or write, diseases such as typhoid and malaria are rampant, and hunger rates are topped only by those of Somalia and Afghanistan, according to the United Nations.

Haitians counted on Aristide to make things better. But for many, they grew worse.

Ten years ago, a small packet of rice cost about 25 cents. Now it’s twice that, which many can’t afford. The price of cooking oil has gone up as well.

With industry laid to waste, thousands of people are out of work, including Louis’ husband.

“At that time, I had hope. But I don’t now,” said Louis, an ample 32-year-old swathed in a dress the color of the tropical sky. “Sometimes you feel like screaming, things are so hard. ... We can’t live this way anymore.”

Louis was peddling yucca crackers on a street corner a few steps from her home. Home for Louis, her husband and their seven children is a dark two-room concrete hut in Cite Soleil, the biggest slum in Port-au-Prince, acre upon acre of degradation and want.

Electricity is scarce; the lightbulb in Louis’ anteroom burns for about an hour a day. Rotting garbage gets dumped and set ablaze in the narrow, unpaved streets. Flies alight on everything and everyone.

Running water doesn’t exist, forcing residents to send their kids to buy fresh water in big plastic buckets, which they balance carefully on their heads to take home. Every drop is precious when each bucketful costs about 20 cents.

Underfed children slink around like wraiths, many of them rarely setting foot in school, which is supposed to be free but, like so many other public services, is not.

The story is similar in other slums in Port-au-Prince. In the Haitian countryside, hunger, illiteracy, infection and mortality rates are even higher, and existence is a daily battle amid startling scenes of environmental devastation. Once-lush hillsides are denuded of trees, which are turned into charcoal.

Whether the freshly installed, relatively nonpartisan government can reverse two centuries of instability, incompetence and inequality is an open question.

Many Haitians are guarded in their reactions to the new leadership, too accustomed to a repeating cycle of broken promises and sudden reversals to harbor much optimism.

“It’s not what I’m looking for yet,” said Bruno, the teacup vendor. She prefers to wait until the next round of elections before deciding whether hope is advisable, whether there is any chance that “normal” here can mean something better than an endless struggle against malnutrition, filth, deprivation and upheaval.

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Wireless called key to global development

Last modified: April 2, 2004, 3:51 PM PST

By Ed Frauenheim
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

 

BERKELEY, Calif.--The bridge across the global digital divide is likely to be a wireless one.

At a conference here on using technology to solve social and economic problems in developing nations, a number of speakers emphasized the role of wireless communications.

A. Richard Newton, dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, said the most important technological step to take in developing countries is to build out communications networks with wireless capabilities.

He said it is conceivable to put solar-powered antennae towers that support voice and data communications in villages for about $750 apiece. Newton also proposed a mobile phone with a much simpler interface, one he claimed was economically feasible. The phone would display images of people who called, so a user reviewing voice mail could press on the image of the person whose message he wanted to hear. "I can build that phone for less than $5 today," he said.

Newton was among the many scholars, public officials and business leaders participating in the "Bridging the Divide" conference organized by UC Berkeley's Management of Technology Program along with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. The three-day event, held at the university's Haas School of Business, examined topics including health care technology, building environmentally sustainable industry, and technology essentials for economic development.

Maggie Wilderotter, Microsoft's senior vice president in charge of the public sector worldwide, began a keynote speech Friday by painting a picture of a starkly divided world. She said 2.5 billion of the world's 6 billion people live on less than $1 a day. She also highlighted the importance of education. "What good is a laptop with broadband access if you can't read or write?" she asked.

Still, technology can play a vital role in helping people's well-being, she argued. Microsoft has a number of projects around the world designed to increase technology access, with wireless as one focus. In Africa, Wilderotter said, Microsoft is helping nomadic people stay connected via satellite. "The school computer lab actually moves with them," she said.

With many high-tech jobs moving from the United States to lower-wage countries such as India and China, some observers call for more attention to workers and technology at home. But concerns about "offshoring" should not mean ignoring the plight of the world's poor, suggested John Gage, chief researcher at Sun Microsystems. It's a question of "who is 'us'--we are all 'us,'" Gage said. "It's just part of being a citizen of the world."

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Last Update: Saturday, April 3, 2004. 8:50am (AEST)

US violates human rights at Guantanamo: Spanish judge

The US military prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, violates the human rights of the nearly 600 prisoners detained there who have no access to lawyers, leading Spanish judge Baltazar Garzon said on Friday.

"None of the fundamental human rights that the prisoners should have is respected," said the judge whose extradition request kept Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet under house arrest in London for 503 days.

"These persons must be placed at the disposal of civilian judges immediately," he said during a lecture given at the invitation of Costa Rica's Supreme Court.

The United States calls the Guantanamo detainees "illegal combatants" suspected of fighting for Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

Mr Garzon also criticised the US reaction after September 11, 2001, which was to pass repressive anti-terror legislation.

"It restricts fundamental freedoms in the broadest sense, contrary to the US tradition."

The United States "has gone overboard, become intolerant and deprived people of their fundamental liberties," he said.

The police and judicial systems are critical to the battle against terrorism, he said, but they cannot use the same weapons as terrorists.

-- AFP

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A justice for 'the oppressed'
Man who broke courts' color barrier aims to safeguard all Georgians' rights

By BILL RANKIN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 04/03/04

When the Georgia Supreme Court heard its first cases in 1846 near Cartersville, Robert Benham's great-grandparents were being held as slaves a mile away.
 

 

Benham, now a justice on the state's highest court, has wondered what his shackled forebears may have been doing as the justices gaveled the court to order more than 150 years ago.
 
"Not far from where the court was talking about doing justice, there were fellow human beings being held as slaves just because of the color of their skin," Benham said.
 
Since he was a child, when he was the first black to get a card from the local library, the Cartersville native has broken color barriers. Twenty years ago Saturday, he became the first African-American to serve on the Georgia Court of Appeals. Five years later, he was the first appointed to the state Supreme Court, and later served as chief justice, a position that rotates among court members.
 
The court's second African-American, Justice Leah Ward Sears, described Benham as a courageous statesman.
 
"His shoes are really big," Sears said of her 5-foot-3 colleague. "He's a near-perfect role model who is always looking ahead and is always willing to bring people along with him."
 
Benham, 57, never considered life on the court until a Bartow County judge called him up to the bench one day in 1984 and said Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Arnold Shulman was retiring.
 
"I think it would be good for all of us if you put your name in," Judge Jere White said, Benham recalled in a recent interview.
 
Benham, a UGA law school graduate, was then president of the Cartersville Bar Association. A fierce litigator, he had represented death penalty defendants, filed employment discrimination lawsuits and engaged in equal accommodation litigation so blacks could gain access to a Cobb County bowling alley.
 
When the bar rallied behind him, Benham put in his name. Gov. Joe Frank Harris soon made the historic appointment.
 
Harris, a fellow Cartersville native, administered the oath of office as more than 200 of Benham's relatives and friends looked on. After being sworn in, Benham turned to his father, who had recently celebrated his 57th birthday, and said, "This is your happy birthday present, Daddy."
 
Tricked into staying
 
Although Benham has remained grounded to his Cartersville roots, that was never his intention. With a chuckle, Benham said, he kept close to home only through "contrivance and manipulation."
 
After graduating from law school in 1970, Benham was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve and worked for Atlanta Legal Aid. He had planned to finish his military commitment and then go practice law in California.
 
But one day in Cartersville, Chief Superior Court Judge Jefferson L. Davis asked Benham to consider practicing in his hometown.
 
After Benham politely refused, Davis insisted that Benham at least enter his name on the court's log of local lawyers. Thinking nothing of it, Benham walked over to the clerk's office and signed his name.
 
The next morning, Davis called to tell him he had just been appointed to represent a criminal defendant back up in Bartow County. By signing the log, the judge revealed, Benham had joined the pool of attorneys to be appointed for criminal cases. Benham's name was next in line.
 
Benham protested mightily. But Davis issued an ultimatum: Either be here by 10 o'clock the next morning or expect to be in jail by noon.
 
Back in Cartersville the next day, Benham learned he had been appointed to represent a middle-aged white man charged with burglary. As he waited to meet his client at the jail, Benham could hear the defendant arguing with the sheriff about being provided a black lawyer.
 
Benham won the case. Afterward, Davis again urged Benham to come back home. Davis acknowleged that justice may be rare in North Georgia, but he assured the young lawyer that he could find it in his courtroom.
 
Benham finally accepted. But that was only the beginning of the judge's grand plan. After Benham opened his office, members of the bar poured in to greet him. A Municipal Court judge called him over for a game of pool with a standing offer to use his law library. The clerk of court dropped by, handing Benham the key to the courthouse. Lawyer meetings once held at the segregated country club were moved elsewhere.
 
The sting of racism
 
Harold Murphy, now a federal judge in Rome who was a State Court judge at that time, noted Benham was the only African-American lawyer practicing in North Georgia at that time. "I'm sure it took a bit of courage on his part," Murphy said.
 
Even though Benham was embraced by the all-white Cartersville bar in the 1970s, he had felt the demoralizing sting of racial bigotry as a youth.
 
As a 10-year-old, Benham and his fellow Cub Scouts raised enough money to go to a new carnival in Cobb County, and three carloads of kids made the trip.
 
After Benham raced forward and plopped his three dollars on the counter, the woman handing out tickets pushed his money back. She said blacks were not allowed.
 
Benham's father, then an insurance company manager and later vice mayor of Cartersville, stepped forward. He told her the TV ads said nothing about blacks not being allowed.
 
"When they were born black, they should have known they were not allowed," Benham recalls the woman replying.
 
Clarence Benham packed his son and the other Scouts back into their cars and quietly drove back to Cartersville. Benham said he will never forget the look of pain on the face of his father, who when he arrived home went into a bedroom and shut the door.
 
Fairness for 'powerless'
 
As a justice, Benham said, his goal has been to ensure fundamental fairness for all. "I've always tried to make sure that the powerless, the downtrodden, the put-upon and the oppressed are eligible for the same kind of discretion as the landed aristocracy."
 
In his initial years on the court, Benham's most notable opinions often were issued as dissents.
 
In 1995, Benham initially had molded a 4-3 majority against a state law that gave prosecutors the discretion to seek life sentences for second-time drug dealers. When the case went before the court, more than 98 percent of all those serving life terms for their second offenses were African-Americans, many for drug sales of less than $50.
 
The court ruled district attorneys had to prove they were not racially motivated before seeking the life sentences. But after prosecutors howled in protest, the court took the highly unusual step of voting on the case again. This time, the court upheld the law and Benham found himself in a 5-2 minority.
 
Benham wrote forcefully in dissent that the court was missing an opportunity to issue a "watershed" decision that would have allowed defendants to challenge the imposition of life sentences in a racially discriminatory fashion.
 
"The statistics offered in this case show an enormous potential for injustice," he wrote, "and those statistics are just like the tip of an iceberg, with the bulk lying below the surface, yet to be realized."
 
A year later, the General Assembly wiped the law off the books.
 
Head goes here
 
In recent years, Benham has found himself more often in the majority on contentious issues.
 
In 1998, he authored the court's landmark ruling overturning a 165-year-old anti-sodomy law, saying it violated the state constitution's protection of the right to privacy.
 
Benham said he finds satisfaction that his decision, while controversial at the time, came five years before the U.S. Supreme Court found the Texas sodomy law unconstitutional.
 
As a judge, Benham said, he has a healthy respect for tradition and precedent.
 
"But I also see the law as having a life, and that life changes from time to time," he said. This means that "sometimes you have to be a little more creative and innovative, giving deference to the legislative intent of a statute, but trying to look at the big picture."
 
Benham is happy to be celebrating his 20th anniversary on the bench in more ways than one — he almost didn't make it there.
 
Over Labor Day weekend last year, he suffered a heart attack outside his home. Fortunately, his wife was nearby and called an ambulance
 
"I did not have that big a window," Benham said. "They only had 15 minutes to save my life."
 
After angioplasty surgery, Benham returned to work. But in March, while sitting on the bench hearing arguments, Benham felt his heart racing, excused himself and returned to his chambers. He was rushed across the street to the Capitol, where a doctor sent him to the hospital again.
 
Since a second angioplasty, Benham said, he has slowed down a bit more.
 
"I don't plan on leaving the Earth soon, and I have no desire to retire at this time," he said, noting his health is improving.
 
But he acknowledged that his two close calls have given him time for reflection.
 
"It has made me appreciate the benefits I've enjoyed, the family and friends that I have, the work that I do," he said. "Before a crisis comes, you feel like you have forever to do what needs to be done. After a crisis, you realize you have a finite amount of time. Not that I see some urgency in my life. I now see with a clearer depth the things that need to be done."

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