Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalWhy Obama Should Remove Cuba From the Terror List: The Cuban Opportunity
April 06, 2015
Why Obama Should Remove Cuba From the Terror List
The Cuban Opportunity
by BENJAMIN WILLIS
After the announcement of a framework to a “deal” with Iran concerning their nuclear program, President Obama turns his attention to the Summit of the Americas transpiring April 9-11 in Panama. The fortuitous timing of this announcement allows Obama to address the Summit without the distraction of ongoing negotiations. Coincidentally, poll results published the day before the Iran announcement should give Obama even more swagger because his decision to reestablish diplomatic ties and move towards normalization with Cuba is playing very well with Cuban Americans everywhere.
Indeed, the upcoming Summit had been threatened by boycott from a majority of the thirty-five Heads of State if the United States did not allow Cuba to participate. The position was clear: no Cuba, no Summit. Obama learned in the last Summit in 2012 that the rest of the hemisphere was not going to let this slide anymore and, to his credit, Obama has listened and moved on this.
The historic announcements on December 17th, 2014 that put in motion an opening between the two estranged nations have been well received throughout the international community and across a wide spectrum of American society including business leaders, NGOs, and curious Americans who have flocked to Cuba since the traveling licenses were streamlined.
According to a poll by Bendixen & Amandi International released Wednesday, April 1st during a summit of business leaders and Cuba experts in New York the idea of normalizing relations with Cuba is gaining steam with Cuban Americans both residing in Miami and throughout the U.S. A reported 51% supported Obama’s moves as opposed to 44% in December when he announced. As has been the trend with Cuban American polls the generation and geographical gaps are glaring and growing. 69% of people 18 to 29 years old are in favor of normalizing whereas 38% of people aged 65 and over support normalization. 41% of Cuban Americans living in Florida agree, 49% disagree, and 10% don’t know (Don’t know?!? ) while those living throughout the U.S. are 69% in favor of the measures. 66% of Cuban Americans born in the U.S. agree with Obama’s actions. Of those Cuban American citizens who were born in Cuba 45% agree, 46% don’t, and again 8% either don’t know or won’t answer. Those who arrived before 1980 are 32% in agreement and 60% disagree while, inversely, those who have arrived after 1980 have 56% in agreement and 35% who aren’t in favor of normalizing relations.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/06/the-cuban-opportunity/
Bolivia’s indigenous Aymara go from rags to riches
Bolivia’s indigenous Aymara go from rags to riches
Saturday April 4, 201511:47 PM GMT+8
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Picture of the function room of a building built in neo-Andean baroque architecture known as Cholet style (combination of
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LA PAZ, April 4 ― Splashed in bright colours, sporting swank ballrooms and lavish apartments, new mansions are popping up in poor neighbourhoods in the Bolivian highlands, built by the booming nouveau riche of the indigenous Aymara.
Locals call them “cholets,” a blend of chalet and “cholo,” a sometimes derogatory word for Bolivians of indigenous origin. But their growing prevalence is a sign of the changing times in Bolivia, where indigenous people have gone from being a silent majority long marginalised from the worlds of politics and business ― to major players on the national scene.
The cholets have sprung up in tandem with an economic boom presided over by Evo Morales, who took office as Bolivia's first indigenous president in 2006.
He swore in for a new term in January after presiding over average economic growth of more than five percent a year during his first two terms. During Morales's presidency, increasing numbers of his fellow Aymara have accumulated fortunes in industries such as mining, retail and transport that they are now using to build sumptuous mansions that are reshaping the country's architecture.
More:
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/features/article/bolivias-indigenous-aymara-go-from-rags-to-riches#sthash.Fv2tEQmX.dpuf
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Will Puerto Rico Become The New Cuba In Florida In The 2016 Election?
Will Puerto Rico Become The New Cuba In Florida In The 2016 Election?
Puerto Ricans will pass Cubans as the largest Latino group in Florida in the coming years. But will the issue of the island becoming the 51st state mobilize Puerto Ricans in the key swing state in 2016?
Adrian Carrasquillo
posted on April 3, 2015, at 12:45 p.m.
When President Obama became the first sitting president to visit Puerto Rico since John F. Kennedy in the midst of the 2012 cycle, it wasn’t because the island is a pivotal swing state. Residents of Puerto Rico can’t vote for president, even though they’re U.S. citizens.
That is not the case in Florida, however, where the Puerto Rican population is booming. Between 2010 and 2013, nearly 150,000 more people left Puerto Rico than settled there, according to Pew. Puerto Ricans, in fact, are poised to pass Cubans as the largest Latino group in the state in the coming years. Obama would go on to win Florida by less than 1%, with internal campaign numbers showing they won 86% of the Puerto Rican vote.
The question of what appeals to Puerto Rican voters — what will bring them out to the polls — will increasingly play in the Democratic calculus for the critical state. The answer is less than clear. But some donors and activists are already pushing hard for Puerto Rican statehood as a campaign promise from Hillary Clinton or for granting Puerto Rico residents the right to vote.
“The island is collapsing under the weight of an ancient territorial infrastructure,” said Puerto Rican lawyer Andrés W. López, co-chair of the Futuro Fund, which raised $32 million for Obama’s re-election. “Absolutely, she needs to clarify. That’s how the Cuba issue became salient. You had to take a position on what the policy ought to be on the island.”
More:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/adriancarrasquillo/will-puerto-rico-become-the-new-cuba-in-florida-in-the-2016?utm_term=4ldqpia#.lfAP2AroX
Mexico: Police filmed throwing rocks at bus carrying missing trainee teachers' schoolmates
Mexico: Police filmed throwing rocks at bus carrying missing trainee teachers' schoolmates
By Umberto Bacchi April 4, 2015 17:58 BST
Mexican police officers were captured on camera throwing rocks at a bus carrying student protesters from the institute attended by 43 trainee teachers who went missing last autumn.
The incident happened last weekend in Chilpancingo a district of the violence-ridden southern state of Guerrero.
Riot police halted a coach carrying about 50 trainee teachers from the Rural Normal School of Ayotzinapa, as it was travelling on a federal road connecting Chilpancingo to Iguala, a city that became infamous worldwide as the site of the disappearance and murder of 43 students from the same school.
Local media reported the bus initially failed to stop at a checkpoint set up over the alleged theft of a gas pipe. Footage recorded by the local Guerrero News Agency shows the officers in riot gear surrounding the vehicle and attempting to force the students out.
More:
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mexico-police-filmed-throwing-rocks-bus-carrying-missing-trainee-teachers-schoolmates-1494980
Reuters: Venezuelan 'resistance' movement struggles to bruise Maduro
Thu Apr 2, 2015 12:06pm EDT
Venezuelan 'resistance' movement struggles to bruise Maduro
VALENCIA/MERIDA, Venezuela | By Andrew Cawthorne and Girish Gupta
(Reuters) - Housewives stash bottles and fuel for Molotov cocktails. Activists run a network of safe houses. Masked youths block roads. A rifle-wielding dissident general makes a call to arms.
From clandestine meetings to guerrilla-style broadcasts, an amorphous and quixotic "resistance" movement has emerged across Venezuela aspiring to force President Nicolas Maduro from power and end 16 years of socialist rule in the OPEC nation. The most hardcore still sporadically barricade streets with burning trash and pelt security forces with stones, or occasionally torch a government vehicle, especially in the western Andean regions they nickname "the Wild West".
Some admit trying to connect with active and retired soldiers in the hope of a coup against Maduro.
"We want to bring down the government. There's no other way out," said one housewife in her fifties who helps coordinate the self-styled resistance in the central city of Valencia, a hotbed of protests last year that led to 43 deaths nationwide.
She hurled stones at police, ferried students around and stored materials to make petrol bombs and spiked tubes known as "Miguelitos" that are laid on roads to puncture police vehicles. Upset at the failure of those protests, she tries to help keep the movement alive by organizing secret meetings and forging contacts with former military officials.
More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/02/us-venezuela-radicals-insight-idUSKBN0MT1P520150402
U.S. Should Cut Mexico Security Aid Over Atrocious Human Rights Record, Activists Say
U.S. Should Cut Mexico Security Aid Over Atrocious Human Rights Record, Activists Say
Posted: 04/02/2015 5:20 pm EDT Updated: 4 hours ago
Felipe de la Cruz received a call from his son, Angel Neri, the night of Sept. 26, saying he and fellow college students were being attacked by police after stealing buses. De la Cruz urged his son to stay calm, thinking the cops would simply detain him. Instead, police in the city of Iguala killed three of Angel Neri de la Cruz’s classmates from a teachers' college in the nearby town of Ayotzinapa, and abducted 43. Angel Neri survived the attack. The remains of only one of his missing classmates have been identified.
The Mexico attorney general’s office says police handed the abducted students over to a drug gang, which killed them and incinerated the corpses. But families of the victims say the government has mishandled the investigation and doubt all of those responsible for the attack have been arrested. The mass abduction prompted nationwide protests, sinking Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto’s popularity to the lowest level for the presidency since the aftermath of the 1994 peso crash.
But Felipe de la Cruz isn’t just looking to Mexico for accountability. On the six-month anniversary of the attack last week, he was in Washington at a State Department demonstration, where he and other activists demanded the U.S. rethink a $2.3 billion aid program called the Mérida Initiative, implemented in 2007 to help Mexico fight drug cartels.
“The Mérida Initiative is being used the wrong way,” de la Cruz told The Huffington Post. Instead of stopping organized crime, he argued, the security assistance has helped Mexican officials perpetuate human rights violations. “It’s being used to kill ordinary people."
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/merida-initiative-human-rights_n_6988228.html
Johns Hopkins faces $1B lawsuit by research subjects who were infected with STDs decades ago
Source: Baltimore Business Journal
Johns Hopkins faces $1B lawsuit by research subjects who were infected with STDs decades ago
Apr 1, 2015, 6:11pm EDT Updated: Apr 2, 2015, 9:43am EDT
Sarah Gantz Reporter-
Baltimore Business Journal
See correction at end of article.
Johns Hopkins will vigorously oppose a $1 billion lawsuit filed Wednesday by more than 700 family members and research subjects who were infected by sexually transmitted diseases during 1940s and 1950s government experiments in Guatemala.
The lawsuit filed in Baltimore City Circuit Court alleges that Hopkins, as a leading authority on venereal disease at the time, played a key role in a government study of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases in Guatemala.
The suit, filed by Baltimore law firm Salsbury, Clements, Bekman, Marder & Adkins LLC on behalf of 774 plaintiffs, names Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins University, the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health and Johns Hopkins Health System. It also names the Rockefeller Foundation and Bristol-Meyers Squibb Co., a New York pharmaceutical company.
Hopkins officials reject the suit’s claims and say the institution did not conduct or pay for the government study. Hopkins doctors served on a government committee that oversaw funding for the study, officials said. Robert Mathias, a lawyer with DLA Piper and Hopkins’ lead counsel, described the suit as baseless and said he will likely move to dismiss the case on statute of limitations.
Read more: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2015/04/01/johns-hopkins-faces-1b-class-action-suit-by.html
Anti-Drone Ads Ask Pilots Not to Fly the Unmanned Aircraft
Anti-Drone Ads Ask Pilots Not to Fly the Unmanned Aircraft
by Tasbeeh Herwees
What may be the first anti-drone advocacy commercials to run in the U.S. are set to air in April on television sets all over the country. The ads feature footage from the republic of Waziristan while a voiceover commands, “Drone pilots, please refuse to fly.” On-screen text also quotes the late Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez, a bishop of the Catholic Church in El Salvador, who said, “No one has to obey an immoral law.”
The U.S. armed forces veterans who are spearheading the campaign say the ads will be targeted to areas near Air Force bases. The activists comprise a Sacramento-based organization called KnowDrones.com, which, according to their site, “provides drone replicas and educational materials to support citizen action to achieve an international ban on weaponized drones and surveillance drones—war drones.” Local Sacramento veterans’ groups are also sponsoring the ads.
“We felt that the president and the Congress had been totally unwilling not only to stop the killing, but to provide any information to the public on the scope of these attacks since they began,” Nick Mottern, a KnowDrones.com organizer, told the Guardian.
More:
http://magazine.good.is/articles/anti-drone-ads-to-air-near-air-force-abases
Rosewood massacre activist dies at 72
Source: Associated Press
Rosewood massacre activist dies at 72
| March 27, 2015 | Updated: March 27, 2015 8:11pm
SPRING HILL, Fla. (AP) — Arnett Doctor, a key figure responsible for securing reparations for victims of the Rosewood massacre, has died in the Tampa Bay area following a long illness. He was 72.
A St. Petersburg funeral home says Doctor was found dead in his Spring Hill home Monday.
The 1923 massacre started in the north Florida town after a married white woman accused a black man of beating her, prompting angry whites to burn nearly every building in Rosewood. At least six blacks and two whites were killed, although some descendants say there were dozens more.
The Tampa Bay Times (http://tinyurl.com/p6eguvs) reports of Doctor helping a reporter in 1982 expose the story.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Rosewood-massacre-activist-dies-at-72-6164373.php
Agency: 4,000 fishermen stranded on some Indonesian islands
Source: Associated Press
Agency: 4,000 fishermen stranded on some Indonesian islands
By MARGIE MASON, Associated Press | March 27, 2015 | Updated: March 27, 2015 4:43am
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — An estimated 4,000 foreign fishermen are stranded on a number of remote islands in eastern Indonesia, including men revealed in an Associated Press investigation to have been enslaved, an aid group said.
Many of the migrant workers were abandoned by their boat captains following a government moratorium on foreign fishing that has docked vessels to crack down on illegal operators, said Steve Hamilton, deputy chief of mission at the International Organization for Migration in Indonesia.
"It is reasonable to expect many are victims of trafficking, if not outright slavery," he said, adding the group has been working for years with Indonesian authorities to repatriate trafficked fishermen.
~ snip ~
They described horrendous working conditions while at sea, saying they were forced to drink unclean water and work 20- to 22-hour shifts with no days off. Almost all said they were kicked, whipped with toxic stingray tails or otherwise beaten if they complained or tried to rest. They were paid little or nothing..
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Agency-4-000-fishermen-stranded-on-some-6162341.php
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