"Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2007

Doctors Without Borders Releases Tenth Annual "Top Ten" Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2007

New York, December 20, 2007 — People struggling to survive violence, forced displacement, and disease in the Central African Republic (CAR), Somalia, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere often went underreported in the news this year and much of the past decade, according to the 10th annual list of the “Top Ten” Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories, released today by the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

The 2007 list also highlights the plight of people living through other forgotten crises, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Colombia, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, and Chechnya, where the displacement by war of millions continues. It also focuses on the ongoing toll of medical catastrophes like tuberculosis (TB) and childhood malnutrition.

The complete text of the list is available at www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/reports/topten/

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According to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the online media-tracking journal, “The Tyndall Report,” the countries and contexts highlighted by MSF on this year’s list accounted for just 18 minutes of coverage on the three major U.S. television networks’ nightly newscasts from January through November 2007. This figure does not include coverage of Myanmar or tuberculosis; both generated significant media attention, but very little of it focused on the medical humanitarian aspects of either context.

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TOP TEN UNDERREPORTED HUMANITARIAN STORIES – 2007

• Displaced Fleeing War in Somalia Face Humanitarian Crisis
• Political and Economic Turmoil Sparks Health-Care Crisis in Zimbabwe
• Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis Spreads As New Drugs Go Untested
• Expanded Use of Nutrient Dense Ready-to-Use Foods Crucial for Reducing Childhood Malnutrition
• Civilians Increasingly Under Fire in Sri Lankan Conflict
• Conditions Worsen in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
• Living Precariously in Colombia’s Conflict Zones
• Humanitarian Aid Restricted in Myanmar
• Civilians Caught Between Armed Groups in Central African Republic
• As Chechen Conflict Ebbs, Critical Humanitarian Needs Still Remain

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/pr/release.cfm?id=2263

Queen Elizabeth II Will Leave Behind Long Legacy Of Waving

Queen Elizabeth II Will Leave Behind Long Legacy Of Waving

The top 10 stories you missed in 2007

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/top10-2007/index.html

"an assault on the poor"

A loss for privacy rights

28 Nov 2007

The Constitution of the United States protects individuals against unreasonable searches, but for this protection to have practical meaning, the courts must enforce it. This week, the Supreme Court let stand a disturbing ruling out of California that allows law enforcement to barge into people's homes without a warrant. The case has not prompted much outrage, perhaps because the people whose privacy is being invaded are welfare recipients, but it is a serious setback for privacy rights.

San Diego County's district attorney has a program called Project 100 Percent that is intended to reduce welfare fraud. Applicants for welfare benefits are visited by law enforcement agents, who show up unannounced and examine the family's home - including the insides of cabinets and closets. Applicants who refuse to let the agents in are generally denied benefits.

The program does not meet the standards set out by the Fourth Amendment, which rejects unreasonable searches. For a search to be reasonable, there generally must be some kind of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. These searches are done in the homes of people who have merely applied for welfare and have done nothing to arouse suspicion.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, rejected a challenge brought by welfare recipients. In ruling that the program does not violate the Constitution, the majority made the bizarre assertion that the home visits are not "searches."

The Supreme Court has long held that when the government intrudes on a person's reasonable expectation of privacy, it is a search for the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. It is a fun-house mirrors version of constitutional analysis for a court to say that government agents are not conducting a search when they show up unannounced in a person's home and rifle through the bedroom dresser.

Judge Harry Pregerson, writing for himself and six other Ninth Circuit judges who voted to reconsider the case, got it right. The majority decision upholding Project 100 Percent, Pregerson wrote, "strikes an unprecedented blow at the core of Fourth Amendment protections." These dissenters rightly dismissed the majority's assertion that the home visits were voluntary, noting that welfare applicants were not told they could withhold consent, and that they risked dire consequences if they resisted.

The dissenting judges called the case "an assault on the poor," which it is. It would be a mistake, however, to take consolation in the fact that only poor people's privacy rights were at stake. When the government is allowed to show up unannounced without a warrant and search people's homes, it is bad news for all of us.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/28/opinion/edprivacy.php

'some EU officials have criticized Greece for its contacts with Russia'

Excerpts from 'Press Statement and Answers to Journalists’ Questions Following the Talks between Russia and Greece':

" ... QUESTION: Today, you have been saying that relations between Russia and Greece are developing successfully on almost all fronts. At the same time, some EU officials have criticized Greece for its contacts with Russia, considering them to be too close. In this regard, how do you see the development of further contacts between your two countries?

VLADIMIR  PUTIN: Recently, I have been involved with the government’s attempts to balance the budget for 2008, 2009, and 2010, with social problems, with pensions. And somehow I have not had the opportunity to acquaint myself with the views of these particular officials, even the distinguished ones who work in Brussels, and do not intend to comment on them.

On the whole our relations with the European Union are developing reasonably well. We are satisfied with them. I hope that soon we will be able to sign the agreement on long-term cooperation that Russia wants. We are hoping for the understanding and support of our European partners. Europe, too, is interested in this. With regard to bilateral relations between Greece and Russia, we are pleased with our relationship and the nature and pace of its development. It yields tangible results for our economies and our citizens. Not to mention energy: Greece will be able to satisfy its needs in the energy sector in large measure by drawing on our energy resources.

But there are other very important and promising directions. And in this sense both Russia and Greece can play a very important role in Europe by supporting the stability of the European energy market. And if we implement major infrastructure projects in this area, then it should be quite clear that we are working not only for our countries but also for the benefit of all of Europe. I think that we can ignore those who have not properly understood the nature of our cooperation and not bother trying to make sense of their concerns.

KONSTANTINOS KARAMANLIS: Greece is a European country which operates within the framework of European policy. However, bilateral relations are conducted on the basis our country’s national interests. Having a particularly good relationship with Russia is good for our country, and I would like to believe that it is good for Russia and useful for all of Europe. Thus, Greece is one of the countries that has actively worked to realize the benefits of closer cooperation between Russia and the European Union. ... "

~ Link ~

 

Hoover had plan for mass arrests

WASHINGTON - Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a plan to suspend the rules against illegal detention and arrest up to 12,000 Americans he suspected of being disloyal, according to a newly declassified document.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, less than two weeks after the Korean War began. But there is no evidence to suggest that President Truman or any subsequent president approved any part of Hoover's proposal to house suspect Americans in military and federal prisons.

Hoover had wanted Truman to declare the mass arrests necessary to "protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage," The New York Times reported Saturday in a story posted on its Web site.

The plan called for the FBI to apprehend all potentially dangerous individuals whose names were on a list Hoover had been compiling for years.

"The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven percent are citizens of the United States," Hoover wrote in the now-declassified document. "In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the writ of habeas corpus."

Habeas corpus is the right to seek relief from illegal detention, and is a bedrock legal principle.

All apprehended individuals eventually would have had the right to a hearing under Hoover's plan, but hearing boards comprised of one judge and two citizens would not have been bound by the rules of evidence.

The details of Hoover's plan was among a collection of Cold War-era documents related to intelligence issues from 1950-1955. The State Department declassified the documents on Friday.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071222/ap_on_go_ot/hoover_mass_arrests

'A Brave New Vision'

From 'Open Letters to George W. Bush from his ardent admirer,Belacqua Jones':

 

" ... The biblical prophets roared; today’s prophits whisper. The ancient prophets spoke poetry; our prophets speak in sterile words sucked dry of passion. The early prophets liberated; today’s prophets enslave. Old prophets raged against authority; contemporary prophets serve it.

And we do have a gaggle of prophets busily at work like a swarm of termites gnawing away at democracy’s support beams.

All prophets, both old and new, foresaw the eminent collapse of a way of life. The prophets of the Bible saw the fall of Israel because she had strayed from God. Our prophets see the collapse of the United States because of corporatism’s multiple excesses. Where old prophets demanded change, our demand that we stay the course.

Our prophets whispered in 1974, and nobody heard. That was when the SRI Center for the Study of Social Policy issued their report, Changing Images of Man. The document was spurred by the knowledge among our elite that our economic system was headed for an eventual collapse. Warnings about peak oil had surfaced, we were busily making enemies around the world by funding coups, death squads and torture chambers, and capital’s need to consolidate and increase its wealth was beginning to widen the gap between rich and poor.

The report was grounded on the fallacy that makes the term “social science” one of history’s great oxymorons: that man is a passive lump of soft clay that can be molded into any shape that best serves the elite.

 

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And what will the new man be? Our prophets envision a passive drone that counts his every misery as a blessing and who bows and pulls at his forelock whenever one of the corporatist elites enters the room. It will truly be a brave new world. The thought of it really turns me on. ... "

 

 

 

'Veep Apologizes for Accidental Inferno'

Attempting to Destroy CIA Tapes, Cheney Burns Down White House

The White House, one of the most historic structures in the nation’s capital, burnt to the ground today after Vice President Dick Cheney attempted to incinerate a cache of CIA interrogation tapes in his office.

According to White House aides, the blaze started shortly after twelve noon, minutes after Mr. Cheney slipped out of a cabinet meeting, saying that he had to “hit the head.”

But rather than using the bathroom as he had stated, the vice president instead went to his office and put a blowtorch to a pile of CIA interrogation tapes which the White House had feared might be subpoenaed in the near future.

“I started burning those things and boom, they went up like a rocket,” an apologetic Mr. Cheney later told reporters.

The accidental blaze quickly spread from the videotapes to a nearby stack of transcripts of phone conversations involving Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and singer Barbra Streisand that Mr. Cheney had obtained via a warantless wiretap.

“Once those transcripts caught on fire, I knew the building was a goner,” Mr. Cheney said. “There were literally thousands and thousands of pages of that stuff.”

Speaking in front of the charred remains of the historic building, administration spokesperson Dana Perino said that the White House might have been saved had it not been for an unfortunate bureaucratic mix-up: “Instead of calling the fire department, President Bush called FEMA.”

http://www.borowitzreport.com/