Self-Proclaimed Business Mogul Mitt Romney Says He’s Part of the Middle-Class
September 22, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Millionaire Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Wednesday that he was seeking better tax policies for people in the middle-class like himself. “I think it’s a real problem when you have half of Americans — almost half of Americans that are not paying income tax,” the candidate told a group of supporters at a town hall event in Florida. “My own view with regards to tax policy is that we ought to provide help to the people that have been hurt most by the Obama economy, and that’s the middle class.” “It’s not those at the low end and it’s certainly not for those at the very high end. It’s for the great middle-class, the 80 to 90 percent of us in this country.” Earlier at the same event, he had promised not to pander or be “phony.” In June, Romney told another group of unemployed Floridians that he was “also unemployed.” The former Massachusetts governor has a net worth estimated at up to $250 million . Earlier this month, a supporter in Tampa thanked him for creating jobs by quadrupling the size of his $12 million California beachfront mansion. Romney and his wife Ann also own homes in Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire and Boston, Massachusetts. They recently sold two other homes in Belmont, Massachusetts and near Park City, Utah for about $8.75 million.
Continue reading …
Fury as Iranian president refers to ‘mysterious September 11 incident’ and accuses Nato of sanctioning drug trafficking Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has launched a stinging attack at the United Nations on the US and other major powers as militarist, imperialist and unfit to dominate global governance. Ahmadinejad’s verbal assault on the west and Israel promoted walkouts by diplomatic delegations. US diplomats were the first to leave, when Ahmadinejad referred to the “mysterious September 11 incident” as a pretext to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. Later, he criticised the US for killing Osama bin Laden and burying his body at sea, saying the al-Qaida leader should have been brought to trial. Other delegations, including those from the UK and France, walked out later when the Iranian leader said that if European countries were still paying a “fine or ransom to the Zionists” because of the Holocaust, they should also pay reparations for slavery. In other parts of his speech he spoke of Zionists being responsible for “mass murder and terror against the Palestinians”, and said the US and west “view Zionism as a sacred notion and ideology”. The Israeli delegation had decided not to attend. Ahmadinejad, apparently in an attempt to strengthen his political position in Iran, dedicated much of what is likely to be judged as one of his most controversial speeches to asking rhetorical questions about who was responsible for slavery, colonialism and wars over the generations. He also asked which countries’ economies relied on military spending; who provoked Saddam Hussein to attack Iran; and “who used the atomic bomb against defenceless people?” Ahmadinejad accused Nato of occupying Afghanistan and of sanctioning drug trafficking, claiming that narcotics production has risen since the US-led invasion a decade ago. Later, he accused the US and its allies of targeting Iran, which is under sanction over its nuclear programme, because it has challenged orthodoxy. “By using their imperialistic media network which is under the influence of colonialism, they threaten anyone who questions the Holocaust and the September 11 event with sanctions and military actions,” he said. The Iranian leader said this made the US and its allies unfit to dominate the international system, and called for change to the structure of the UN security council. But he made no direct reference to the issue that has dominated diplomatic wrangling in New York this week – the Palestinian request for statehood to the security council. The Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is expected to lay out his case for going to the security council in a speech to the UN on Friday, while insisting it is not meant as an alternative to negotiations. Abbas is also expected to say that the move is not a threat to Israel. That is not how the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, sees it. He may use his speech, later in the day on Friday, to repeat his assertion that the security council move is destabilising, could result in false expectations and violence, and undermines the negotiating process. The tone of the two leaders’ speeches will be set in part by Barack Obama’s address on Wednesday, which was strongly praised by Israel but has been met with widespread criticism among UN delegations, many of whom regard it as a piece of electioneering as the US president seeks to defuse Republican criticism that he has not backed Israel strongly enough. Critics said the tone of the American president’s remarks, and his failure to speak directly about occupation or mention the continued construction of Jewish settlements, added weight to a call by the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, for an end to US domination of mediation in the conflict. Abbas is expected to submit the request to the security council after his speech, but the Palestinians have backed away from pressing for an immediate vote, under intense pressure – particularly from Europe – to avoid forcing the US to carry out a threat to veto the move and to give a breathing space to try and relaunch peace negotiations. The Palestinians also have reason to pause, because it is not certain that they have enough votes to win in the security council whether or not the US vetoes the request. Abbas needs the support of nine of the 15 members, but not all have publicly declared their position. Some of those thought to be sympathetic to the Palestinian position – notably Bosnia and Gabon – are under intense pressure from the US to abstain. However, while Netanyahu received strong backing from the White House, the Israeli prime minister was warned by his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, that he is facing his last chance to make peace, and he should not be wasting political capital opposing the Palestinian request to the security council. “As tensions grow, I cannot but feel that we in the region are on the verge of missing an opportunity – one that we cannot afford to miss,” Olmert wrote in an article for the New York Times . “The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared publicly that he believes in the two-state solution, but he is expending all of his political effort to block Mr Abbas’s bid for statehood by rallying domestic support and appealing to other countries. This is not the wisest step Mr Netanyahu can take.” Olmert said the Arab spring is changing the political dynamic in the Middle East, and that it is important for Israel to cement existing peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, as well as reaching a deal with the Palestinians. “We Israelis simply do not have the luxury of spending more time postponing a solution. A further delay will only help extremists on both sides who seek to sabotage any prospect of a peaceful, negotiated two-state solution,” Olmert said. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran United States United Nations Middle East Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Click here to view this media Brian Tashman at RightWingWatch.org has the details on this whackjob. Pam Olsen heads the Tallahassee branch of the International House of Prayer (IHOP, for you sinners out there). Before heading to this week’s Presidency 5 conference in Orlando, Rick Perry named two Religious Right leaders to his Florida Presidency 5 campaign leadership team: John Stemberger and Pam Olsen. While Stemberger’s anti-choice, anti-gay and anti-Muslim activism is well known, Olsen is a far more obscure figure, but no less extreme. Olsen has said that same-sex marriage will lead to God’s judgment, preached Seven Mountains dominionism, and even claims that she, as a prophet, will have the power to raise the dead in the End Times. Olsen heads the Tallahassee branch of the International House of Prayer, whose members helped organize and preached at Perry’s The Response prayer rally in August. The Response emcee Mike Bickle, who once claimed that Oprah is the harbinger of the Antichrist and that gay marriage is “rooted in the depths of hell,” is the founder and director of IHOP. As reported by Sarah Posner, Olsen was inspired to found IHOP Tallahassee after extremist self-proclaimed prophet Cindy Jacobs prophesied over her. In July, Olsen warned that God’s increasingly severe judgments will come on the church and America for legalizing same-sex marriage in the form of natural disasters. From the video: We are under judgment. Do you know how many of the denominations now are suddenly saying, ‘Oh ok we think it’s ok now to have gay marriage, we think it’s ok to have gay preachers, we think it’s ok.’ Whole denominations! The Episcopalians fell off the planet, they think it’s ok to have gay priests. We’ve got other groups, one of the Presbyterians, they’re looking at voting, we’ve got other ones, they’re all of the sudden going, ‘Oh in the name of tolerance,’ and they’re forgetting God’s word completely in whole denominations. You know what, God is not one that’s gonna wink at sin, He will come and shake at everything that can be shaken. God is a God of judgment, He is. If we think we’re not gonna be judged…He judged Israel? Are we better than that? And sometimes I think we think we are, but we’re not. And God is shaking. If anybody looks at the news and has just seen what’s been happening recently with the floods, the fires, the tornadoes, God is shaking. Yeah I think you have God shaking, sure you have the Enemy shaking, you have both and I don’t want to say oh that’s the judgment of God or that’s the Enemy. But the reality is God is judging us, and I think it’s going to get worse.
Continue reading …
US student and ex-boyfriend hope unreliable DNA evidence will see their conviction for Meredith Kercher’s murder overturned The answer could be complex. But the question before the court as the appeal by Amanda Knox and her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito enters its closing stages on Friday is simple enough: what, if anything, remains of the prosecution case that they murdered the British student Meredith Kercher ? A third person, Rudy Guede, a small-time drugs trafficker from Ivory Coast, has been convicted of murdering Kercher . Evidence of his presence at the murder scene in Perugia four years ago was discovered only after the American student, then 20, and the Italian Sollecito, then 23, had been arrested. The sole forensic evidence directly linking either of the appellants to the bedroom in which Kercher, 21, was found dead was a trace of DNA, identified as Sollecito’s, on the British student’s bra clip. The other crucial support for the prosecution’s claim that Kercher died resisting a four-way sex game was a trace of the victim’s DNA on a knife in Sollecito’s kitchen that had also been handled by his girlfriend. But in June, two independent court-appointed experts dismissed both pieces of evidence as unreliable. The bra clip DNA, overlooked by police for more than six weeks, could have come from contamination, while the knife trace might not have been Kercher’s. Knox’s stepfather, Chris Mellas, said: “She’s starting to think, maybe, this time she can actually do it; actually get out. She’s allowing herself just a little bit of hope.” Barbie Latza Nadeau, the author of Angel Face: The True Story of Student Killer Amanda Knox, agrees that “too many mistakes were made for this to be a clean conviction”. But she thinks the appellants’ tentative optimism may be misplaced. “Knox and Sollecito were convicted with more than 400 pages of reasoning [by the judges], of which less than 25% was devoted to DNA.” Steve Moore, a retired FBI agent who is one of Knox’s most impassioned supporters, counters that “My heart accounts for less than 5% of my body. But it’s the part without which I cannot live. Nothing [in the trial verdict] makes sense if the DNA doesn’t hold up.” Sending Knox and Sollecito for trial in 2008, judge Paolo Micheli acknowledged the improbability of a murder agreed in a matter of hours between three people, two of whom – Guede and Sollecito – were not even known to have met. But, in a crucial passage, he added that if the forensic evidence put them all in the room “it is not essential to find the telephone call with which an appointment was fixed with Guede … nor the witness who remembered or photographed their meeting”. By the same reckoning, without Knox and Sollecito at the crime scene, no amount of circumstantial evidence can uphold their conviction. In its efforts to put them back there, Mellas believes, the prosecution may return to the question of the “bloodied” footprints. Using luminol , a chemical that glows blue when it encounters an oxidant such as the iron in haemoglobin, forensic experts believed that in the corridor outside Kercher’s room they had found footprints belonging to Knox which showed she had stepped in the victim’s blood. But Luminol also reacts to bleach and, says Mellas, a more precise test came back negative: “All you can say is that they found some footprints on the floor of the house where she lived.” Knox testified that, the morning after the killing, she returned from Sollecito’s flat and, unaware Kercher was lying dead just metres away, took a shower before leaving. “She probably rehydrated some floor cleaner after her shower,” says her stepfather. Latza Nadeau argues that non-forensic evidence could still weigh heavily with the two professional and six lay judges. Top of her list is the statement Knox made to police which led to her arrest: she said she was in the house, that she heard Kercher’s screams and named the killer as Patrick Lumumba, a man who ran a local bar and was later cleared of any involvement. Her statement, which she immediately withdrew, claiming it had been made under duress, was ruled inadmissible. Yet it was cited at the trial because it was central to an action for damages by Lumumba, and, since he is also joined to the appeal proceedings, could feature again in the closing arguments that begin on Friday. An equally contentious issue is the evidence of a break-in at the flat. The appellants say it is genuine and bears out their explanation: that Guede was burgling the house when he was surprised by Kercher; that he tried to rape her and, when she resisted, killed her. The prosecutors claim the evidence was faked. They point to the fact that nothing was stolen and that one of Knox and Kercher’s Italian flatmates testified that she found shattered glass on top of her rumpled bedclothes, suggesting her room was ransacked before the window was smashed. Finally, there is the allegedly suspicious behaviour of Knox and Sollecito after the crime. On the night of the murder they both switched off their mobiles (Knox for the first time since buying an Italian sim card) and switched them on again the following morning at around 6.30am, though they said they slept late. Not even Moore has an answer for it. But he says: “Anything could explain that. That is not murder evidence.” Amanda Knox Meredith Kercher Italy United States Meredith Case John Hooper guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi is most senior member of ousted Libyan regime captured since rebel takeover Muammar Gaddafi’s last prime minister has been arrested in Tunisia, becoming the most senior member of the former Libyan regime to be detained since the government’s overthrow by Nato-backed rebels a month ago, it emerged on Thursday. Al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi was caught near the border with Algeria and jailed for six months for illegal entry, though he is likely to be handed over to Libya to face investigation, since the government in Tunis recognises the new ruling national transitional council (NTC) in Tripoli. Gaddafi himself and his sons Seif al-Islam and Mutasim are thought to be still on the run or hiding inside Libya, while other family members have fled to Algeria and Niger. Other prominent Gaddafi supporters escaped to Niger after the fall of the key southern town Sebha on Wednesday, an NTC military spokesman said. The NTC also confirmed that banned chemical weapons had been found in the newly-captured area. Al-Mahmoudi remained prime minister until the fall of Tripoli, when he crossed into Tunisia. He later appeared to try to create the impression that he had in fact defected when he told an Arabic TV channel he supported the rebels. But most Libyans are likely to see him as a man who stayed loyal to Gaddafi almost to the end. Viewed as a technocrat, he also served as chairman of the Libyan Investment Authority, the country’s sovereign wealth fund. In May he put out feelers towards the rebels – prompting speculation that he was trying to circumvent Gaddafi – but nothing came of the initiative. News of his detention came on the day the US formally re-established its diplomatic presence in Tripoli after the end of fighting in most of the country. Its ambassador, Gene Cretz, was forced to leave last November because of what he called a “visceral” reaction to his unflattering descriptions of Gaddafi’s personality, habits and regime that were exposed in documents released by WikiLeaks. The diplomat said he had been “physically threatened” and had to return to the US immediately. In a short ceremony at which the stars and stripes was raised and Libya’s new national anthem played by a brass band, Cretz said he believed it was only “a matter of time” before the Gaddafi forces were defeated. Britain’s diplomats, led by John Jenkins, previously based in the rebel capital of Benghazi, are still living and working under stringent security in a Tripoli hotel after the main embassy building was ransacked and burned out. In another diplomatic advance, Algeria said on Thursday it was now ready to recognise the NTC – having previously conspicuously refrained from doing so. Libya’s acceptance at the UN this week seems to have persuaded remaining waverers to follow most of the rest of the world and accept that the Gaddafi era is finally over. The chemical weapons stocks were reportedly found in the Jufra area, 435 miles south of Tripoli. Libya was supposed to have destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical weapons in early 2004 as part of a British-engineered rapprochement with the west. It also abandoned a rudimentary nuclear programme. But the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had stated it believed that Libya had kept 9.5 tonnes of mustard gas at a secret location: it is that which appears to have now been seized and secured. The latest rebel advances in the south have not been matched by parallel progress on two other fronts. Loyalists are still holding out in Gaddafi’s birthplace of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast, though there have been signs a new offensive is looming there. The capture of Sirte would clear the way for an unbroken link between Tripoli and Benghazi. Libya Muammar Gaddafi Arab and Middle East unrest Tunisia Middle East Africa Ian Black guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
DoH assessment contradicts health secretary’s warning about the number of hospitals ‘at risk of collapse’ due to PFI debt Andrew Lansley’s claim that 22 hospital trusts are at risk of collapse over their private finance initiative (PFI) debts has been laid open to question by NHS performance data rating most of them as financially sound. The health secretary said on Wednesday 22 trusts in England were “on the brink of financial collapse” because they had been “landed with PFI deals they simply cannot afford” by the Labour government. But the Department of Health’s own latest quarterly assessment of the NHS’s performance rated 17 of them as “performing” financially between January and March 2011. Only four were deemed “underperforming”, while the performance of one, South London Healthcare, is “under review”. Lord Crisp, the chief executive of the NHS when many of the PFI deals were agreed under Labour, also cast doubt on Lansley’s dramatic warning by pointing out that the cost of repayments under those contracts amounted to only about 1% of the entire service’s annual budget of more than £100bn. Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the influential King’s Fund health thinktank , said it was wrong to argue that the NHS’s financial problems were caused by such deals. “To simply blame PFI is simply misleading at best,” he said. Shadow health secretary John Healey accused Lansley of “trying to offload blame for the present problems his policies are causing in the NHS”. Lansley, who said some trusts had told him that they could not afford their PFI repayments, was forced to partially retract the claim when an aide conceded that “we’re not pretending PFI is the only problem they [hospitals] face”. The DoH later insisted its assessment of trusts’ financial stability was unrelated to Lansley’s list. “The list of 22 trusts is 100% accurate and is based on returns from NHS trusts to the DoH setting out the main issues that need to be addressed for organisations to achieve financial stability. The 22 listed are those that specified [in April] that their PFI was one of the issues affecting them,” said a spokesman. But one of the 22, the North Bristol NHS Trust , voiced “puzzlement” that it was on Lansley’s list. The £374m PFI deal it had struck to build the new Southmead Hospital would not interfere with its ongoing application to become a semi-independent foundation trust hospital, a spokesman said, adding: “The PFI deal equates to yearly repayments of less than 7% of our overall annual turnover. Repayments have been factored into our long-term financial plans, so we know they are affordable.” Mike Farrar, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, which represents hospitals, said: “We are pleased that the government has been upfront with the fact that PFI is a problem for many hospitals. But PFI is not the principal cause of the NHS’s financial problems. “Repayments on PFI debt is likely to be £1.5bn this year, yet by 2014-15 the NHS needs to find savings of £20bn. To address this we need to start looking at the NHS’s big-ticket costs, such as how we deliver care and where. We need pragmatism and leadership to do this as it will involve some extremely difficult decisions. A political blame game is a waste of time.” Health policy NHS Private finance initiative Health Andrew Lansley Public services policy Polly Curtis Denis Campbell guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
American commander asked Pakistan’s army chief to halt truck bomb two days before an explosion wounded 77 in Kabul The American Nato commander in Afghanistan personally asked Pakistan’s army chief to halt an insurgent truck bomb headed for his troops during a meeting in Islamabad earlier this month, two days before a huge explosion that wounded 77 US soldiers at a base near Kabul. In reply General Ashfaq Kayani offered to “make a phone call” to stop the assault on the US base in Wardak province. But his failure to use the American intelligence to prevent the attack has fuelled a blazing row between the US and Pakistan. Furious American officials blame the Taliban-inspired group the Haqqanis – and, by extension, Pakistani intelligence — for the September 10 bombing and an even more audacious guerrilla assault on the US embassy in Kabul three days later that killed 20 people and lasted over 20 hours. The US military chief, Admiral Mike Mullen, described the Haqqanis as “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence [spy] agency”; he earlier accused the ISI of fighting a “proxy war” in Afghanistan through the group. Pakistan’s defence minister Ahmed Mukhtar rejected the American accusations of Haqqani patronage as “baseless”. “No one can threaten Pakistan as we are an independent state,” he said. The angry accusations lift the veil on sensitive conversations that have heretofore largely taken place behind closed doors. On September 8 General John Allen, the Nato commander in Afghanistan, raised intelligence reports of the impending truck bomb during a meeting with the Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani in Islamabad . Kayani promised Allen he would “make a phone call” to try to stop the attack, according to a western official with close knowledge of the meeting. “The offer raised eyebrows,” the official said. But two days later, just after Allen’s return to Kabul, an explosives-rigged truck ploughed into the gates of the US base in Wardak , 50 miles southwest of Kabul, injuring 77 US soldiers and killing two Afghan civilians. Afterwards the US ambassador to Kabul, Ryan Crocker, blamed the Haqqanis . “They enjoy safe havens in North Waziristan,” he said, referring to the Haqqani main base in the tribal belt. General Allen’s spokesman said Nato “routinely shares intelligence with the Pakistanis regarding insurgent activities” but he refused to confirm the details of the conversation with Kayani. The Pakistani military spokesman, General Athar Abbas, said: “Let’s suppose it was the case. The main question is how did this truck travel to Wardak and explode without being checked by Nato?” he said. “This is just a blame game”. US allegations of ISI links to Haqqani attacks stretch back to July 2008, when the CIA deputy director Stephen Kappes flew to Islamabad with intercept evidence that linked the ISI to an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. But American disquiet has never been so uncompromisingly expressed as in recent days. The issue dominated three hours of talks between secretary of state Hillary Clinton and the Pakistani foreign minister, Hina Rabbani Khar . On Tuesday Mullen said he had asked Kayani to “disconnect” the ISI from the Haqqanis . In Washington the CIA chief, David Petraeus, delivered a similar message in private to the ISI chief General Shuja Pasha. Even the soft-spoken US ambassador to Islamabad, Cameron Munter, has joined the chorus of condemnation, delivered a hard-hitting message through an interview on Pakistani state radio. “We’ve changed our message in private too,” one US official said. “Before we used to make polite demands about the Haqqanis. Now we are saying ‘this has to stop’.” The new mood is driven by a combination of climbing casualties and brazen attacks. The Haqqanis were also blamed for a recent assault on the InterContinental Hotel, while August was the deadliest month for US forces in Afghanistan with 71 deaths. Now Nato is now investigating whether the Haqqanis had a hand in Tuesday’s assassination of Berhanuddin Rabbani, President Hamid Karzai’s peace envoy to the Taliban. Rabbani was killed at his home by a suicide bomber wearing an explosives-packed turban. The killer gained access to the former president by playing down the insurgency’s links to Pakistan. A blood-stained four-page letter he was carrying at the time of the attack, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, insisted that “Pakistan is not our boss.” American officials have vowed to act unilaterally if Pakistan fails to comply with their demands over the Haqqanis. But it remains unclear how far they are willing to go against Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation that still provides vital counter-terrorism support. There was some hope of resuscitated fragile relations between the Pakistani and American intelligence services, which were buffeted by the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2. Officials from both countries hailed an August 28 joint operation to arrest Younis al Mauritani, a senior al Qaida operative, in the western city of Quetta. On September 5 the Pakistani military issued a press release that highlighted Pakistan-American cooperation ; some viewed the raid as a possible turning point in relations. [ But the flurry of Haqqani attacks over the past two weeks seemed to have washed away whatever goodwill was generated by the arrest. US officials say debate is raging inside US policy circles about what to do next. The Defence Secretary, Leon Panetta, is said to have private advocated US military incursions into the Haqqani stronghold of Waziristan – a risky gambit other officials reject as dangerous folly, citing the historical record of failure of western armies in the tribal belt. Other US officials say Washington could slash non-military aid such as the $7.5bn five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman package, which was approved in 2009. There is also debate about the exact nature of the ISI’s relationship with the Haqqanis. One western official said it was not a puppet-master scenario. “It’s not like they have a chain of command, with the Pakistanis handing down XOs (executive orders),” he said. Neither are the Pakistanis necessarily providing logistical support, he added: “It’s murkier than that.” But, the official added, the US believes Pakistan is ‘actively tolerating’ the Haqqanis. And the ISI could, if it wanted to, seriously disrupt the groups’ activities. He warned that Pakistan was headed towards international isolation. “If it keeps going like this, it could end up like Syria – before the Arab spring”. Pakistan Afghanistan US military United States Nato Declan Walsh Jon Boone guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Barcelona’s intricate temple to God to be ready for centenary of architect Antoni Gaudí’s death … or thereabouts Barcelona’s emblematic Sagrada Família church finally has a completion date — 2026 or 2028, more than 140 years after it was started. Joan Rigol, president of the committee charged with finishing the building by Antoni Gaudí, said it should be finished in time for the centenary for the architect’s death – or, if not, two years later. Five huge towers are being added to the eccentric building, which is among Spain’s most-visited tourist attractions. Gaudí died in 1926 after being runover by the city’s No 30 tram. He had been living on the Sagrada Familía building site and looked so impoverished that it took several hours for doctors to realise who he was. The tram driver thought he had hit a drunken tramp. Originally paid for by subscription, the church was always set to take a long time to build. “My client is in no hurry,” Gaudí once said, referring to God. The building was at one stage popularly known as “the cathedral of the poor” and Gaudi himself was known to go begging for contributions – which currently amount to around €500,000 (£440,000) a year. An influx of tourists, along with modern masonry techniques, has seen work speed up considerably over the past two decades. Some three million fee-paying tourists are expected to visit this year alone, contributing €30m. With a roof finally in place, Pope Benedict was able to consecrate it as a basilica last year. But a setback came when a man set fire to the basilica’s sacristy in April, with repair work still under way. “The damage is worse than we had thought,” said the building’s chief architect, Jordi Bonet. Authorities are now considering installing metal detectors at the entrance. “Our new objective is to complete the six central towers, of which five have already been started,” said Rigol. The sixth tower will measure 170 metres and contain a lift to carry tourists to the top. Rigol added that a high-speed rail tunnel to be built nearby, which has been approved by the courts, may still damage the buildings foundations. Bonet did not seem so sure about the finish date. “I’m not saying that it is wrong, I hope it is not, but it is not that simple. This is a very complex work and needs a lot of investigation,” the architect told the RAC1 radio station. “Everyone has the best will, but I cannot give any assurances.” Spain Architecture Europe Catholicism Religion Christianity Giles Tremlett guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Troy Davis campaigners vow to fight ‘inhumane and inflexible’ death penalty
September 22, 2011 No Comment
Relatives and activists say execution in Georgia should act as a wake-up call to US politicians to abolish the death penalty In statistical terms, it may have been just another execution, a convicted murderer dispatched by prison medics with clinical efficiency. But, on the morning after the death by lethal injection of Troy Davis, there was no sign that the controversy over the case would be buried with him. Davis was sent to his death despite a mass of evidence casting his 1991 conviction in doubt, including recantations from seven of the nine key witnesses at his trial for the murder of a police officer. The execution has provoked an extraordinary outpouring of protest in Georgia, at the supreme court and White House in Washington, and in cities around the world. Davis’s case has become even more charged by the manner of his death: he was reprieved three times before Wednesday night and an intervention by the supreme court delayed the execution by four hours. Relatives of Davis and civil rights leaders across the south vowed to fight on with the campaign to have the death penalty abolished. Richard Dieter, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said it was a clear wake-up call to politicians across the US. He said: “They weren’t expecting such passion from people in opposition to the death penalty. There’s a widely-held perception that all Americans are united in favour of executions, but this message came across loud and clear that many people are not happy with it.” Brian Evans of Amnesty, which led the campaign to spare Davis’s life, said that there was a groundswell in America of people “who are tired of a justice system that is inhumane and inflexible and allows executions where there is clear doubts about guilt”. He predicted the debate would now be conducted with renewed energy. Martina Correia, Davis’s sister, who kept vigil at the prison until the end, said that a movement had been formed that would transcend her brother’s death. Sitting in a wheelchair as she battles cancer, she said: “If you can get millions of people to stand up against this, we can end the death penalty.” The case has attracted high-profile backers, and the #RIPTroyDavis hashtag was trending on Twitter on Wednesday. Protesters with placards gathered outside the White House. But so far, national politicians have refrained from entering the debate. Before the execution, White House press secretary Jay Carney said: “It is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases like this one, which is a state prosecution.” Rick Perry, the leading contender for the Republican nomination and a strong supporter of the death penalty, has made no public statement on the Davis case. His presence in the Republican race guarantees that the issue of capital punishment will remain in the spotlight in a way it hasn’t for years. At a TV debate earlier this month, the audience cheered when the host noted Texas had executed 234 death row inmates during Perry’s time as governor. In Jackson, Georgia on Wednesday night, there were dramatic scenes outside the Diagnostic and Classification Prison, where Davis was pronounced dead at 11.08pm. About 500 protesters, most of them African-American, lined up on the other side of the road to the entrance of the prison which was barricaded by a cordon of Swat police dressed in full riot gear and brandishing tear gas rifles. Davis was executed for the 1989 murder of Mark MacPhail, who was working off duty as a security guard when he intervened to help a homeless person being attacked. Davis was implicated by another man, Sylvester Coles, present at the time. But since the trial seven of the key witnesses have come forward to say their evidence was wrong, and others have testified under oath that Coles was the killer. As he lay on the gurney, Davis once again declared his innocence, telling the family of MacPhail lined up behind a glass screen in front of him that the wrong person was about to die. Raphael Warnock, the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta, where Martin Luther King had his ministry, said that though Davis’s final hours were distressing, “through this, America is being transformed. This is one of those watershed moments when a human evil and injustice that is part of the norm suddenly becomes questioned and challenged.” Attention is now focusing on the American south. Though 34 of the 50 states still have the death penalty, only 12 states carried out executions last year, and now 80% of all executions take place in the south. The south’s history of racial segregation has also highlighted claims of racial bigotry. One of Davis’s lawyers, Thomas Ruffin, has called his death a “legal lynching”, pointing out that while black males make up 15% of the population of Georgia they fill almost half the cells on its death row. The civil rights group the NAACP said it would step up its campaign to persuade states, particularly in the south, to abolish the death penalty. “States like Georgia have an ugly history of state-sanctioned executions like that of Troy Davis, and in our view they are reminiscent of the lynchings that happened in the deep south,” said the NAACP’s Steve Hawkins. A further area of concern raised by the case is reliance on uncorroborated eyewitness accounts. Davis was convicted without any DNA or other forensic evidence, and the murder weapon was never found. False witness evidence has been found to be a crucial factor in three-quarters of the cases where convicted prisoners were found to be innocent and were then exonerated. Al Sharpton, who attended the protests in Jackson, said he would be pressing for new legislation to ban death penalties in cases relying only on witness statements. But it is unlikely that a new law overturning the practice could be passed in Washington. It is convention that individual states have control over death penalty rules, and the federal government can only lead by example in its own execution practices; it does not generally have the power to tell states like Georgia what to do. Troy Davis State of Georgia Capital punishment United States US supreme court Human rights Ed Pilkington guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Yes, Troy Davis has been killed , after a roller coaster ride through the end stages of an execution. But he left a message behind , which said this, in part: This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country. I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing, “I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!” I want to take him at his word, and as it turns out, right after I wrote my final post about Troy’s execution, someone suggested I look at Reginald Clemons’ case, pending in Missouri. The more I look at it, the more I’m gobsmacked by the idea of this man ending up on Death Row when he was never convicted of the crime committed — the rape and murder of two white teenagers. Under the prosecutor’s theory of the case, Clemons was an accomplice. It is a case with a lot of twists and turns in it, but there are facts which have been clearly established. The fact sheet with the entire story is here . I suggest you read it before going further. Here’s some of what you will learn: At the time of the crime, Reggie Clemons had a clean record, was in school studying to become a mechanic. There does not appear to be any common link between the victims, Clemons, or his friends. The original suspect was a cousin of the victims, Thomas Cummins, who eventually implicated himself in the crime after his initial story came up short. Charges against Cummins were dropped and charges brought against the three African-American teenagers who were in the area that night. Clemons was one. Police beat Clemons, denied him an attorney after he asked for one, and coerced a statement from him, admitting to rape of the girls but not pushing them off the bridge. Thomas Cummins retracted his confession, claiming it had been beaten out of him. He settled his police brutality complaint and prosecutors dropped all charges. They ignored Clemons and his co-defendants’ claims of police brutality, dropped the rape charges, and charged them all with capital murder. Clemons charges stemmed from their theory of the case; namely, that he was an accessory to murder by virtue of being in the same location. Reggie Clemons had extraordinarily ineffective attorneys. One of them was practicing tax law in California while returning to Missouri for court appearances. The prosecutor improperly excluded African-American jurors from the panel. It was so egregious he was later sanctioned for it. One of his co-defendants, Marlin Gray, was executed in 2009. There’s more. But this gives you a flavor of what this case is about. As if all of that isn’t bad enough, there’s this nugget, discovered after 8th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed his execution: There is a rape kit from one of the victims in the police evidence room that has never been tested and was never brought forth at trial. A rape kit! Something that would have proven or disproven Reggie Clemons’ coerced confession. KDSK.com, in March, 2010: The latest twist happened last week, when the man who prosecuted the suspects told the Missouri Attorney General’s office that evidence in the case was at police headquarters. Nels Moss was the assistant circuit attorney in the case, who is now in private practice. He’s not returning phone calls. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster says the newly discovered evidence is a so-called rape kit, which is a swab of material that could hold DNA. Also included are several laboratory reports. For some reason, the evidence was never revealed during requests for evidence during four separate trials. Redditt Hudson is the program manager at the St. Louis office of the American Civil Liberties Union. He says it was beyond belief that this has happened. He also accused Moss of further misconduct. Moss has been under fire for years for being “too aggressive” as a prosecutor. Others say it borders on misconduct. For some reason? Can we imagine what that reason might be? Can we possibly imagine what would possess a prosecutor to bury a rape kit and lab reports in an evidence room at the police station when rape was one of the original charges? Reginald Clemons was supposed to have his case reviewed by a Special Master — a judge appointed by the appellate court to review the evidence in his case. The original review date was May, 2010, but after discovery of the lab evidence and rape kit it was pushed to September 19th, and now to November 7, 2011 . The Special Master can recommend anything from moving ahead with the execution to a recommendation that he be released. It’s bad enough that one defendant has already been executed in this case when there are clearly problems with the jury selection and now, the physical evidence. But it’s incredible to imagine that this rape kit, which should have been produced as part of the defense request for all physical evidence recovered from the victim’s body, wouldn’t change the entire landscape of things. If DNA tests exclude Reggie Clemons, there is no physical evidence tying him to the crime. The only evidence left is a coerced confession, which likely should not have been admitted in the first place. To those of you reading this and thinking to yourselves that the man was convicted by a jury of his peers, I would remind you that the jury was not his peers because of unlawful exclusions, and there is clearly a racial element in play here. If we learn anything from the Troy Davis case, it should be this: The time to make noise is while there’s still time left, not at the eleventh hour. There should be pressure on anyone connected with this case to give it a fair, public hearing and arrive at a fair, just conclusion. I’m putting solid money on Reginald Clemons’ innocence. The railroad tracks are large and dark on this one, and if there’s any good to come from Troy Davis’ execution, let it be Reginald Clemons’ freedom. And from that, let an avalanche of light fall on these cases where it may. Let that light expose the guilty from the innocent, the discrimination from the justice, and perhaps we’ll finally come to a place where this country can understand that we are not humanly capable of choosing to rob another human of their life without error. For more information about action items, this case, and others like it, please visit Amnesty International . There is a vast archive of information about Reginald Clemons’ case at Justice For Reggie .
Continue reading …