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Source: ThisIs50.Com
By Ed Helmore
The stripping away of its trees for fuel has left Haiti vulnerable to floods, landslides and severe storm damage. Now aid agencies are launching efforts to protect the land with a new blanket of greenery. Ed Helmore in Port-au-Prince reports
On the bare mountains outside Port-au-Prince one of the few remaining trees has been cut into to feed charcoal cooking fires. When the trunk falls, the wood is used for building. Photograph: Daniel Morel/AP
Deep gashes in the steep mountains around Gonaïves are the claw marks of the disasters that strike this north-western coastal city with deadly regularity. They are also Haiti’s stigmata: the wounds of a nation caused by the near-complete deforestation of a land that was once a rich tropical habitat.
But after a hurricane season in which this, the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, was struck by four intense storms triggering flash floods and landslides that took hundreds of lives and created tens of thousands of refugees, richer nations are again being asked to help a country often described as beyond hope. So far, the call for aid has fallen on mainly deaf ears. The UN appealed for $108m in emergency aid after Gonaïves and another town, Cabaret, were buried under millions of tons of mud, sewage and rock after being hit by storms from mid-August to mid-September. But so far only 40 per cent of that target has been met.
After a relative lull in the disasters afflicting the country – it is more than three weeks since a poorly built school on the outskirts of the capital, Port-au-Prince, collapsed killing 94 pupils and visitors, and more than six months since Prime Minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis was removed after riots over the rising price of food – there are reports of widespread malnutrition in rural areas, as well as two dozen cases of child starvation in the Baie d’Orange region along the south-east coast.
By Yves A. Isidor
CAMBRIDGE, MA, – Given the magnitude and gravity of today’s fast growing economic crisis in the United States, as the collapse of financial markets also affirms, no one should doubt that the quality of life of the vast majority of citizens will, in the near future, further change, in the negative terms.
But for at least five Haitian nationals, all more than full-time conductors (some of them use a large portion of their hard earnings to help their children pay for college) of taxis, in the City of Boston, the cause of their lives being marked by great sadness, with a lasting multiplying effect, will soon surely be more, and extremely so, than the economic downturn, which already has also meant the lost of 2.5 million jobs, and it may not be long before it further means, but this time, the lost of additional employment opportunities as more business enterprises become insolvent, forcing more than 20 million people to use federal workforce services, up from 14 million in 2005, by year end.
Hackney Carriage, a unit of the Boston Police Department that is responsible for regulating all taxis, sight-seeing automobiles and horse- carriages in the city of Boston, according to a source who spoke, by way of a telephone, to wehaitians.com on the customary condition of anonymity because the person in question was not authorized to, in part or in full, speak to this publication and others, will soon indefinitely revoke the taxi driver’s licenses (their livelihoods) of at least five Haitian nationals, a few weeks after a recent investigation revealed that they were illiterate (this is also ample proof of Haiti’s governments gross incompetence) and as a result they were all considered to be threats to public safety.
Monument commemorating the battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution. In this battle General Jean-Jacques Dessalines delivered the final bow against the the French troops commanded by Rochambeau.
The French came to Saint-Domingue (Haiti) to re-establish slavery and brought the greatest armada ever launched out of Europe; supposedly against sub-humans. Napoleon sent his brother-in-law General Leclerc to Saint-Domingue with thirty-five thousand men and ninety-six ships in 1802. The decisive battle of the Haitian Revolution, the Battle of Vertières was on November 18, 1803–General Jean-Jacques Dessalines defeated Rochambeau’s forces. The revolution which began in 1791, ended when Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Haiti and its new name on January 1, 1804.
The French, lead by Generals Leclerc and Rochambeau were considered at the time the greatest army of Europe. Their war exploits are immortalized in the history books and their skills were praised as an art. They had conquered most of Europe, including Austria, Italy, Poland, Spain, Holland and Westphalia (now part of Germany). However, they were given a lesson in humility by an army comprised mostly of former slaves.
Michel Sanon celebrates November 18th, the anniversary of the Battle of Vertières, the defining battle of the Haitian revolution in his piece Haiti the Rebel.
I was alone when in Vertières
I rose to face the Devil
When hell broke loose
Unleashing its fire storm
With waves of flame rushing
To engulf me whole…
Read the rest of this entry »
By Kelly Hearn
A mile and a half (two and a half kilometers) underwater, a remote control submersible’s camera has captured an eerie surprise: an alien-like, long-armed, and—strangest of all—”elbowed” Magnapinna squid.
In a brief video from the dive recently obtained by National Geographic News, one of the rarely seen squid loiters above the seafloor in the Gulf of Mexico on November 11, 2007.
The clip—from a Shell oil company ROV (remotely operated vehicle)—arrived after a long, circuitous trip through oil-industry in-boxes and other email accounts.
“Perdido ROV Visitor, What Is It?” the email’s subject line read—Perdido being the name of a Shell-owned drilling site. Located about 200 miles (320 kilometers) off Houston, Texas (Gulf of Mexico map), Perdido is one of the world’s deepest oil and gas developments.
The video clip shows the screen of the ROV’s guidance monitor framed with pulsing inputs of time and positioning data.
By DeNeen L. Brown and Richard Leiby, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama emerged from a black limousine that pulled up at the White House the other day. She stood in a bold red dress that followed her lines. She smoothed her hair and moved between her man — the president-elect — and the first lady. Tall in shiny red pumps, she seemed to tower over them all.
As she stood there, many black women on this side of the White House gate saw something else in Michelle Obama that sunny afternoon: bits and pieces of themselves.
They saw their family in hers, or the family they dreamed of having. Saw a woman whose husband seemed to adore her, giving her hugs and pecks on the lips as if the whole world were not watching.
Women watched Michelle Obama until she disappeared into the White House. Then they began talking.
“I like the way she carries herself,” says Liz Nolan, 65.
“I like the fact that she walks with him,” says Shenee McRae, 31, “not behind him or in front of him.”
“For black women, she is visible proof that you can be anything you want to be,” says Greer Jones, 37.
These particular women were at A Natural Motion, Nolan’s beauty salon about a mile from the White House. Elsewhere, in offices, in kitchens, on the radio, over the telephone, in churches, on blogs, women are talking and whispering a chorus of amens. Not just black women — all women. They comment on what they see, or don’t see. They opine about Michelle Obama’s intellect, her style. Fascinated by Michelle — first-name basis already.
The penalty is the largest award yet under the 2003 Can-Spam Act.
By Thomas Claburn
Facebook on Friday won $873 million in damages from a spammer, the largest award to date under the 2003 Can-Spam Act.
The penalty for illegal spamming appears to be rising. Facebook’s award tops the $234 million judgment won by MySpace in May against Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines. It also exceeds the $177,500 fine and $1.1 million ill-gotten-gain forfeiture that Jeffrey Kilbride and James Schaffer were ordered to pay in October 2007 for the pair’s porn spam operation.
“We’ve all experienced spam — those unwanted and, sometimes, inappropriate marketing messages,” said Facebook director of security Max Kelly and deputy general counsel Mark Howitson in an e-mailed statement. “The bad guys behind those messages are always looking to find new ways to annoy people and Facebook’s users have been among those targeted. We don’t take this affront to our users lying down.”
U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel handed down the award last week following four months of litigation. In addition to the monetary judgment, the ruling prohibits the defendants, Adam Guerbuez and his company, Atlantis Blue Capital, from accessing Facebook for any reason or assisting others in doing so.
By Maria Miranda Sierra
Anibal Acevedo Vila, governor of Puerto Rico. Photo: Bloomberg News
CAGUAS, Puerto Rico: Outgoing Puerto Rico Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá participated Saturday in a fund raising event aimed at raising sufficient funds to pay off the debt he owes his defence team, as he is facing 24 federal charges for alleged irregularities in his 2004 gubernatorial campaign finances.
Last week, Acevedo Vilá’s attorneys said that they might drop the case if the governor doesn’t pay a debt of over $1 million by November 30.
During Saturday’s fund raising event in the town of Caguas, over $316,000 were raised, that is in addition to the money that has already been paid off.
Last week, Popular Democratic Party President (PPD) Victoria Muñoz said that almost half of the debt has already been paid off to Acevedo Vilá’s battery of attorney’s, headed by white collar crime specialist Thomas Green.
Former PDP Secretary General Aníbal José Torres said that in addition to the money raised during Saturday’s activity some $26,000 were also raised by people calling a telephone call center, through which money can be donated to pay off the governor’s legal fees.
Several months ago, a bank account was opened so that Puerto Ricans could donate funds for the governor’s defence team; however last week the account balance rounded up between $50,000 and $100,000.
Source: Think Progress
By Nick Juliano
Two members of Congress are demanding answers following revelations that taxpayers are paying up to $24,000 per month to foot former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s legal bills.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), who chair the Judiciary committees in their respective chambers, wrote to Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Monday demanding to know the details of the arrangement.
At issue is a lawsuit filed against Gonzales alleging that he oversaw discrimination in two Justice Department programs aimed at recruiting law students into federal service. During his time in office, department officials systematically denied entry to liberal applicants and only admitted Republican supporters.
Administration of the Department of Justice Honor Program and Summer Law Intern Program were two of the many areas in which Gonzales is alleged to have politicized the Department. The politicization scandal, best known for the firing of nine US Attorneys who refused to pursue partisan charges, contributed to Gonzales’s resignation in disgrace last year.
Several law students who were denied entry to the honors and intern programs are suing Gonzales, alleging they were unfairly disqualified. The Justice Department is paying Gonzales’s bills.
