People!
Calling out all our brothers and sisters to join in this struggle. In the struggle to have a free and sovereign Latin America.
Le hacemos un llamado a todos/as nuestros/as hermanos/as a que se nos unan en esta lucha. La lucha por una America Latina libre y soverana.
SAY NO TO A COUP D' ETAT IN ECUADOR. We cannot allow another 9/11/1973 as what happened in Chile! We cannot allow another coup d' etat as happened in Honduras on 6/28/2009. SAY NO TO U.S. INTERVENTION in LATIN AMERICA!!!
DIGAMOS NO A UN GOLPE DE ESTADO EN ECUADOR. No podemos permitir otro 11 de septiembre de 1973 como lo que paso en Chile! No podemos permitir un golpe de estado como paso en Honduras el 28 de Junio de 2009. DIGAMOS NO A LA INTERVENCION DE ESTADOS UNIDOS EN AMERICA LATINA!!!
On Thursday September 29 there was an attempt of a Coup D' Etat against President Correa and the Citizen's Revolution in Ecuador.
The Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of New York is putting a call out to support the constitutional President of Ecuador Rafael Correa and "La Revolucion Ciudadana".
There will be a press conference tomorrow Friday October 1st at 11am. at the Ecuadorian Consulate of New York City.
The General Consul of Ecuador in NYC Jorge Lopez Amaya will be addressing the media and the public about this Coup D' Etat attempt in Ecuador.
As the general consul addresses the media and the public, we will be rallying outside the Consulate in support of the Citizens' Revolution of Ecuador and their Constitutional President Rafael Correa.
All Out for Ecuador! Que viva La Revolucion Ciudadana!
We will gather Friday, October 1st at 11am
In front of the Ecuadorian Consulate in NYC
800 2nd Ave. New York, NY (bet. 42nd and 43rd Sts.)
Mi gente!
El jueves 29 de septiembre hubo un intento de golpe de estado en contra del Presidente Rafael Correa y La Revolucion Ciudadana en Ecuador.
El Circulo Bolivariano Alberto Lovera de New York hace un llamado a apoyar al Presidente Constitucional de Ecuador Rafael Correa y La Revolucion Ciudadana.
Mañana viernes 1ro de Octubre a las 11am se estara llevando a cabo una conferencia de prensa en el consulado ecuatoriano de la ciudad de Nueva York en donde el consul general de Ecuador en NY Jorge Lopez Amaya se estara dirigiendo a los medios de comunicacion y al publico sobre la situacion de Ecuador en estos momentos.
Mientras el consul general se dirige a los medios, nosotros estaremos manifestandonos frente al consulado en apoyo a La Revolucion Ciudadana de Ecuador y su Presidente Constitucional Rafael Correa.
Tod@s con Ecuador! Que viva La Revolucion Ciudadana
Nos reuniremos mañana viernes 1ro de Octubre a las 11am
En frente del consulado Ecuatoriano en NYC
800 2nd Ave. New York, NY (entre las calles 42 y 43)
For more info: Para mas informacion
cbalbertolovera@gmail.com
or call the consulate general of Ecuador in NY
WelcomeTo My World
Thursday, 30 September 2010
IMPORTANT DAY FOR MUMIA AND ALL THOSE FACING THE DEATH PENALTY
WORLD DAY AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY: USA
Philadelphia
Saturday, October 9
9 AM RALLY AT BROAD & SPRING GARDEN, FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE HEADQUARTERS
We demonstrate at the FOP because of their long-term, vicious commitment to executions, even in cases of innocence, and their terrorist attacks against those who fight for justice.
10 AM MARCH BEGINS
11:30 AM INDOOR RALLY La Familia, 1310 North Broad Street
WE DEMAND 100% ABOLITION NOW! NO EXCEPTIONS (INCLUDING MUMIA!)!
Total Death Row Prisoners: 3,000+
122+ Exonerated Death Row Prisoners
How Many More Are Innocent?
Several key members of US anti-death penalty organizations have recently made a move to exclude Mumia Abu-Jamal from the movement to abolish the death penalty, arguing that Mumia's inclusion alienated potential law enforcement supporters of the abolition movement! This position caused an international uproar.
October 9 will be a reaffirmation of a real and unifying abolition movement:
100% ABOLITION! NO EXCEPTIONS!
Scheduled Participants:
WELFARE POETS
CECIL GUTZMORE, Pan-African scholar and activist based in United Kingdom and Jamaica, involved in political and community work and activism within the African community, one of the editors of the celebrated black theoretical and discussion journal, The Black Liberator and has published in such journals as Marxism Today, Race and Class, and Jamaica Journal ANournal as well as being a columnist on the Jamaica Daily Gleaner and a contributor to the Jamaica Observer. lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, and the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University); engaged in research and writing on Caribbean folk/popular culture, Creolisation, Pan-Africanism, the history of race and racism, the debate generated by Eric Williams¹ Capitalism and Slavery and the historical-legal basis of the case for Euro-American reparations for the Atlantic 'trade' in and enslavement of Africans, facilitator and founding member of the growing international campaign Reparations! Haiti First! Haiti Now!
PROFESSOR CLAUDE GUILLAUMAUD-PUJOL, Coordinator, French Mumia Abu-Jamal Collective: Member, Steering Committee of World Coalition Against the Death Penalty; Author of the French biography of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
JOURNALIST LINN WASHINGTON, JR., investigative reporter who has researched and written about race/class based inequities embedded in the U.S. criminal justice system for over twenty-five years. He is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune and is a founding member of the online progressive newspaper This Can't Be Happening.
Former Death Row Prisoners
Sponsors: Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Texas Moratorium Network, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, International Action Center, Witness to Innocence (Philadelphia), Exonorees from Death Row.
NYC bus info: to buy a ticket call, 212-330-8029 ($15)
Buses leave at 6:30 from 33rd Street and 8th Avenue
Philadelphia
Saturday, October 9
9 AM RALLY AT BROAD & SPRING GARDEN, FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE HEADQUARTERS
We demonstrate at the FOP because of their long-term, vicious commitment to executions, even in cases of innocence, and their terrorist attacks against those who fight for justice.
10 AM MARCH BEGINS
11:30 AM INDOOR RALLY La Familia, 1310 North Broad Street
WE DEMAND 100% ABOLITION NOW! NO EXCEPTIONS (INCLUDING MUMIA!)!
Total Death Row Prisoners: 3,000+
122+ Exonerated Death Row Prisoners
How Many More Are Innocent?
Several key members of US anti-death penalty organizations have recently made a move to exclude Mumia Abu-Jamal from the movement to abolish the death penalty, arguing that Mumia's inclusion alienated potential law enforcement supporters of the abolition movement! This position caused an international uproar.
October 9 will be a reaffirmation of a real and unifying abolition movement:
100% ABOLITION! NO EXCEPTIONS!
Scheduled Participants:
WELFARE POETS
CECIL GUTZMORE, Pan-African scholar and activist based in United Kingdom and Jamaica, involved in political and community work and activism within the African community, one of the editors of the celebrated black theoretical and discussion journal, The Black Liberator and has published in such journals as Marxism Today, Race and Class, and Jamaica Journal ANournal as well as being a columnist on the Jamaica Daily Gleaner and a contributor to the Jamaica Observer. lecturer at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, and the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University); engaged in research and writing on Caribbean folk/popular culture, Creolisation, Pan-Africanism, the history of race and racism, the debate generated by Eric Williams¹ Capitalism and Slavery and the historical-legal basis of the case for Euro-American reparations for the Atlantic 'trade' in and enslavement of Africans, facilitator and founding member of the growing international campaign Reparations! Haiti First! Haiti Now!
PROFESSOR CLAUDE GUILLAUMAUD-PUJOL, Coordinator, French Mumia Abu-Jamal Collective: Member, Steering Committee of World Coalition Against the Death Penalty; Author of the French biography of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
JOURNALIST LINN WASHINGTON, JR., investigative reporter who has researched and written about race/class based inequities embedded in the U.S. criminal justice system for over twenty-five years. He is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune and is a founding member of the online progressive newspaper This Can't Be Happening.
Former Death Row Prisoners
Sponsors: Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Texas Moratorium Network, Campaign to End the Death Penalty, International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, International Action Center, Witness to Innocence (Philadelphia), Exonorees from Death Row.
NYC bus info: to buy a ticket call, 212-330-8029 ($15)
Buses leave at 6:30 from 33rd Street and 8th Avenue
--
A revolution now cannot be confined to the place or people where it may commence, but flashes with lightning speed from heart to heart, from land to land, til it has traversed the globe ...
--Frederick Douglass
Free All Political Prisoners!
nycjericho@gmail.com • www.jerichony.org
Wednesday, 29 September 2010
Honor Homicide Victims-Oppose Death Penalty
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/29/EDC41FL28G.DTL
Honor homicide victims - oppose death penalty
Judy Kerr
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
When someone you love is murdered, life as you know it changes. Your world changes. You change.
I would know; my brother, Bob Kerr, was murdered in 2003. Suddenly, I joined countless victims learning to navigate their way through the criminal justice system on their own.
A stay was issued Tuesday to halt the state of California's scheduled execution of Albert Brown at 9 p.m. on Thursday. As the legal issues may not be resolved until the last minute, the victim's family silently waits, not knowing what lies ahead.
This isn't Brown's first execution date; the family has already gone through the rigmarole of awaiting an execution, only to have it canceled. That's the thing about the death penalty: although it's touted by proponents as being "for the victims," the victims are barely an afterthought.
Unlike the family in this case, my foray into the justice system only went as far as the investigation because my brother's murder remains unsolved. This means that I don't know the name of my brother's killer, whether the killer is alive or dead, behind bars or roaming the streets, or if he has been rehabilitated or has taken more lives.
Sadly, unsolved homicides are very common. In California, 1,000 new murders each year go unsolved. While counties already struggle to solve even half of their homicides, California's budget crisis makes the situation worse. Los Angeles County can't afford overtime for homicide investigators, while Oakland had to lay off police officers.
Families like mine are told there's not enough money for criminal investigations, yet we watch the state pour money into California's death penalty, pursuing executions for 700 inmates who are already safely behind bars on Death Row.
Despite a $19 billion deficit and no budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "borrowed" $64 million from the general fund last month for a down payment to begin construction on a new Death Row housing facility at San Quentin State Prison. In the end, the new facility will cost $400 million or more.
To even seek a death sentence costs counties $1.1 million more than seeking permanent imprisonment. After the trial, the cost for the entire death penalty system - paid by the state's general fund - grows. The annual cost of California's death penalty totals $126 million per year.
After the math is done, we learn that replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment would save $1 billion over the next five years. That's $1 billion that could be spent hiring police officers, homicide investigators and DNA lab technicians to solve more murders and to fund services that all victims could use, such as grief counseling.
I will never defend Albert Brown nor do I condone the horrific crime for which he is convicted. However, in honor of my brother and with sincere respect for the families of all murder victims, I speak out against the false notion that the death penalty is needed "for the victims."
Victims' families are not prepared to handle a murder, and most are never supported adequately in the aftermath. The focus should be on providing victims with resources to cope with their loss rather than revictimizing them for decades to come.
But as long as the death penalty remains, the state will continue on its misguided path to "justice," leaving victims behind to fend for themselves.
Judy Kerr is the Northern California outreach coordinator for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Honor homicide victims - oppose death penalty
Judy Kerr
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
When someone you love is murdered, life as you know it changes. Your world changes. You change.
I would know; my brother, Bob Kerr, was murdered in 2003. Suddenly, I joined countless victims learning to navigate their way through the criminal justice system on their own.
A stay was issued Tuesday to halt the state of California's scheduled execution of Albert Brown at 9 p.m. on Thursday. As the legal issues may not be resolved until the last minute, the victim's family silently waits, not knowing what lies ahead.
This isn't Brown's first execution date; the family has already gone through the rigmarole of awaiting an execution, only to have it canceled. That's the thing about the death penalty: although it's touted by proponents as being "for the victims," the victims are barely an afterthought.
Unlike the family in this case, my foray into the justice system only went as far as the investigation because my brother's murder remains unsolved. This means that I don't know the name of my brother's killer, whether the killer is alive or dead, behind bars or roaming the streets, or if he has been rehabilitated or has taken more lives.
Sadly, unsolved homicides are very common. In California, 1,000 new murders each year go unsolved. While counties already struggle to solve even half of their homicides, California's budget crisis makes the situation worse. Los Angeles County can't afford overtime for homicide investigators, while Oakland had to lay off police officers.
Families like mine are told there's not enough money for criminal investigations, yet we watch the state pour money into California's death penalty, pursuing executions for 700 inmates who are already safely behind bars on Death Row.
Despite a $19 billion deficit and no budget, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger "borrowed" $64 million from the general fund last month for a down payment to begin construction on a new Death Row housing facility at San Quentin State Prison. In the end, the new facility will cost $400 million or more.
To even seek a death sentence costs counties $1.1 million more than seeking permanent imprisonment. After the trial, the cost for the entire death penalty system - paid by the state's general fund - grows. The annual cost of California's death penalty totals $126 million per year.
After the math is done, we learn that replacing the death penalty with permanent imprisonment would save $1 billion over the next five years. That's $1 billion that could be spent hiring police officers, homicide investigators and DNA lab technicians to solve more murders and to fund services that all victims could use, such as grief counseling.
I will never defend Albert Brown nor do I condone the horrific crime for which he is convicted. However, in honor of my brother and with sincere respect for the families of all murder victims, I speak out against the false notion that the death penalty is needed "for the victims."
Victims' families are not prepared to handle a murder, and most are never supported adequately in the aftermath. The focus should be on providing victims with resources to cope with their loss rather than revictimizing them for decades to come.
But as long as the death penalty remains, the state will continue on its misguided path to "justice," leaving victims behind to fend for themselves.
Judy Kerr is the Northern California outreach coordinator for California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Woman Charged With Murder Campaigns for Innocence
Here's another Texas case of faulty science that led to an arson conviction. Texas is notorious for its bad crime labs and crooked medical examiners also.
Woman Charged With Murder Campaigns for Innocence
by Brandi Grissom
September 29, 2010
When Sonia Cacy walked out of prison after serving six years of a 99-year sentence for murder, she told reporters that those were just her first steps toward freedom. To be truly free, she told the San Antonio Express-News in 1998, she wanted her name cleared. She wanted to be exonerated of a crime that many experts say she did not commit.
Twelve years later, Cacy is still not free despite multiple expert reports concluding that she did not douse her uncle with gasoline and light a fire that killed him and destroyed the small Fort Stockton home they shared. Now 63, she lives in Fort Worth and is on parole. “I have faith,” she says. “I held on through prison, and I’ve still got it. It’s still there.”
Today, at a news conference in Dallas, the Innocence Project of Texas will ask the Texas Forensic Science Commission to begin a process the nonprofit organization hopes will lead to Cacy’s exoneration — and, potentially, to an overhaul in the use of forensic science in criminal cases. “We’re starting on a serious long-term campaign to end the use of junk science in Texas courtrooms,” says Jeff Blackburn, the organization's chief counsel. Cacy’s case is one of several the Innocence Project plans to file with the commission and in Texas courts to challenge the use of arson investigation techniques, dog scent lineups and blood-spatter analysis that it believes have led to many wrongful convictions.
The Innocence Project’s complaint in the Cacy case comes just over a week after the commission decided to extend its investigation into the science used in another high-profile arson case: that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted of lighting the house fire that killed his three daughters and was executed in 2004. Reports issued before and after Willingham’s death suggest he did not start the blaze and that investigators used outdated forensic techniques. Just as it appeared the commission would approve a report backed by the commission's chairman, John Bradley, that cleared investigators of wrongdoing, other commissioners demanded more information. “When we saw the level of interest in Willingham’s case that was on display, we decided it would be worthwhile to take this case to them, because we think it represents a much bigger cross-section of junk science used across this state,” Blackburn says.
“People think Cameron Todd Willingham is just about whether Texas executed an innocent man, but for us it’s a lot deeper,” he says. “We’ve got hundreds of people in prison, if not thousands, for crimes they didn’t commit. They need to come out.”
Bradley would not comment about the complaint in the Cacy case and whether the commission might review the evidence, saying via e-mail that the commission's policy is to “avoid commenting on cases until resolved.” Asked about Blackburn’s assertion that an untold number of inmates could have been wrongly convicted, Bradley wrote, “That's a fairly broad, unsubstantiated claim that is not capable of rational reply on such short notice. Sounds to me like they are using you as their fundraising arm.”
Murder or tragic accident?
Cacy was convicted in 1993 after prosecutors told the jury she drunkenly tip-toed into the room where her uncle Bill Richardson was sleeping, poured gasoline on him and lit a match. Her motive, they said, was to get the money he left to her in his will. At the trial, the Bexar County medical examiner’s toxicologist told jurors that he found an accelerant like gasoline on Richardson’s clothes. Prosecutors alleged that Cacy paraded around in a short nightgown to distract firefighters and that she tried to hinder police and firefighters on the scene.
After the conviction, arson expert Gerald Hurst reviewed the evidence that landed Cacy in prison. In 1998, he issued a report that summarized three years of investigative work he did with other experts. They concluded that there was no gasoline on Richardson’s clothing. “The analysis has been reviewed by numerous independent experts in arson debris analysis who concur that the State’s purported analyst erred in finding gasoline,” Hurst wrote. The investigators discovered that Richardson had little or no money and that he and Cacy had a long and healthy relationship. In a will scrawled out on a piece of paper shortly before his death, Richardson wrote: “I love my Sonia she has helped me out for many years.” Richardson, in his late 70s when he died, had heart problems, suffered from dementia and had repeatedly been careless with fire and with the cigarettes he smoked at a rate of two to three packs per day. And Hurst concluded in his report that Cacy was not running around in a nightie to distract officers. “She put on a red Mexican house dress provided by a neighbor as soon as possible,” he wrote.
When Austin attorney Eric Rabbanian presented Hurst’s report to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, the board released Cacy on parole after she had served just six years of a 99-year sentence. Despite the conflicting reports, both Pecos County District Attorney Albert Valadez and the Bexar County medical examiner's office in 1998 stood by the original investigation results, according to the Express-News report on Cacy's release. In addition to Hurst’s investigation, national media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, ABC News and NBC’s Dateline — which hired its own experts — also looked into the case. Again and again, the finding was that the medical examiner’s office got it wrong: There was no gasoline on Richardson’s clothing.
Still, Cacy remains on parole — unable to visit her daughter and grandchildren in Colorado without permission from her parole officer, unable to lead a normal life. She remains a convicted murderer, charged with killing an uncle who she says was like a father to her. “We were like soul mates,” Cacy says. “If I needed anybody to go talk to, it was going to be Uncle Bill.”
A purpose in life
The Innocence Project will request today that the Forensic Science Commission review the scientific testimony that was used to convict Cacy and decide whether the medical examiner committed professional negligence or misconduct. It’s the same question that the commission seeks to answer about investigators in the Willingham case, and it’s a question that Blackburn says needs to be answered in others cases in which Texans are serving time for arson. The group also plans to file complaints with the commission that challenge cases in which investigators used blood-spatter evidence. And, Blackburn says, the group will seek court intervention in cases in which prosecutors used dogs to sniff out evidence. It plans to use those cases during the 2011 legislative session to promote new laws that would prevent the use of questionable forensic science in the courtroom.
The Innocence Project will also offer its services to government law enforcement agencies, Blackburn says, hoping to help entities ranging from the governor’s office to local district attorneys' offices investigate cases they identify as potential innocence claims. “We’re a bunch of volunteer students working in a crummy office in Lubbock,” he says. “They know where these cases are … and it’s their responsibility to identify these cases and investigate them, and we’re willing help.”
Cacy, who is disabled from a stroke, says she knows she likely faces many more years of parole ahead as she waits for the criminal justice system to review her case — and that it may not conclude while she’s alive. There's no guarantee that the commission will take action, and even if it does, it doesn't decide guilt or innocence. If the commission concluded the science used to convict Cacy was faulty, she would still have to seek exoneration from the governor or go back to the courts.
“There’s lots of people that need this,” she says, “and if what we’re doing helps someone else, it gives my life purpose.”
Woman Charged With Murder Campaigns for Innocence
by Brandi Grissom
September 29, 2010
When Sonia Cacy walked out of prison after serving six years of a 99-year sentence for murder, she told reporters that those were just her first steps toward freedom. To be truly free, she told the San Antonio Express-News in 1998, she wanted her name cleared. She wanted to be exonerated of a crime that many experts say she did not commit.
Twelve years later, Cacy is still not free despite multiple expert reports concluding that she did not douse her uncle with gasoline and light a fire that killed him and destroyed the small Fort Stockton home they shared. Now 63, she lives in Fort Worth and is on parole. “I have faith,” she says. “I held on through prison, and I’ve still got it. It’s still there.”
Today, at a news conference in Dallas, the Innocence Project of Texas will ask the Texas Forensic Science Commission to begin a process the nonprofit organization hopes will lead to Cacy’s exoneration — and, potentially, to an overhaul in the use of forensic science in criminal cases. “We’re starting on a serious long-term campaign to end the use of junk science in Texas courtrooms,” says Jeff Blackburn, the organization's chief counsel. Cacy’s case is one of several the Innocence Project plans to file with the commission and in Texas courts to challenge the use of arson investigation techniques, dog scent lineups and blood-spatter analysis that it believes have led to many wrongful convictions.
The Innocence Project’s complaint in the Cacy case comes just over a week after the commission decided to extend its investigation into the science used in another high-profile arson case: that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was convicted of lighting the house fire that killed his three daughters and was executed in 2004. Reports issued before and after Willingham’s death suggest he did not start the blaze and that investigators used outdated forensic techniques. Just as it appeared the commission would approve a report backed by the commission's chairman, John Bradley, that cleared investigators of wrongdoing, other commissioners demanded more information. “When we saw the level of interest in Willingham’s case that was on display, we decided it would be worthwhile to take this case to them, because we think it represents a much bigger cross-section of junk science used across this state,” Blackburn says.
“People think Cameron Todd Willingham is just about whether Texas executed an innocent man, but for us it’s a lot deeper,” he says. “We’ve got hundreds of people in prison, if not thousands, for crimes they didn’t commit. They need to come out.”
Bradley would not comment about the complaint in the Cacy case and whether the commission might review the evidence, saying via e-mail that the commission's policy is to “avoid commenting on cases until resolved.” Asked about Blackburn’s assertion that an untold number of inmates could have been wrongly convicted, Bradley wrote, “That's a fairly broad, unsubstantiated claim that is not capable of rational reply on such short notice. Sounds to me like they are using you as their fundraising arm.”
Murder or tragic accident?
Cacy was convicted in 1993 after prosecutors told the jury she drunkenly tip-toed into the room where her uncle Bill Richardson was sleeping, poured gasoline on him and lit a match. Her motive, they said, was to get the money he left to her in his will. At the trial, the Bexar County medical examiner’s toxicologist told jurors that he found an accelerant like gasoline on Richardson’s clothes. Prosecutors alleged that Cacy paraded around in a short nightgown to distract firefighters and that she tried to hinder police and firefighters on the scene.
After the conviction, arson expert Gerald Hurst reviewed the evidence that landed Cacy in prison. In 1998, he issued a report that summarized three years of investigative work he did with other experts. They concluded that there was no gasoline on Richardson’s clothing. “The analysis has been reviewed by numerous independent experts in arson debris analysis who concur that the State’s purported analyst erred in finding gasoline,” Hurst wrote. The investigators discovered that Richardson had little or no money and that he and Cacy had a long and healthy relationship. In a will scrawled out on a piece of paper shortly before his death, Richardson wrote: “I love my Sonia she has helped me out for many years.” Richardson, in his late 70s when he died, had heart problems, suffered from dementia and had repeatedly been careless with fire and with the cigarettes he smoked at a rate of two to three packs per day. And Hurst concluded in his report that Cacy was not running around in a nightie to distract officers. “She put on a red Mexican house dress provided by a neighbor as soon as possible,” he wrote.
When Austin attorney Eric Rabbanian presented Hurst’s report to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, the board released Cacy on parole after she had served just six years of a 99-year sentence. Despite the conflicting reports, both Pecos County District Attorney Albert Valadez and the Bexar County medical examiner's office in 1998 stood by the original investigation results, according to the Express-News report on Cacy's release. In addition to Hurst’s investigation, national media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, ABC News and NBC’s Dateline — which hired its own experts — also looked into the case. Again and again, the finding was that the medical examiner’s office got it wrong: There was no gasoline on Richardson’s clothing.
Still, Cacy remains on parole — unable to visit her daughter and grandchildren in Colorado without permission from her parole officer, unable to lead a normal life. She remains a convicted murderer, charged with killing an uncle who she says was like a father to her. “We were like soul mates,” Cacy says. “If I needed anybody to go talk to, it was going to be Uncle Bill.”
A purpose in life
The Innocence Project will request today that the Forensic Science Commission review the scientific testimony that was used to convict Cacy and decide whether the medical examiner committed professional negligence or misconduct. It’s the same question that the commission seeks to answer about investigators in the Willingham case, and it’s a question that Blackburn says needs to be answered in others cases in which Texans are serving time for arson. The group also plans to file complaints with the commission that challenge cases in which investigators used blood-spatter evidence. And, Blackburn says, the group will seek court intervention in cases in which prosecutors used dogs to sniff out evidence. It plans to use those cases during the 2011 legislative session to promote new laws that would prevent the use of questionable forensic science in the courtroom.
The Innocence Project will also offer its services to government law enforcement agencies, Blackburn says, hoping to help entities ranging from the governor’s office to local district attorneys' offices investigate cases they identify as potential innocence claims. “We’re a bunch of volunteer students working in a crummy office in Lubbock,” he says. “They know where these cases are … and it’s their responsibility to identify these cases and investigate them, and we’re willing help.”
Cacy, who is disabled from a stroke, says she knows she likely faces many more years of parole ahead as she waits for the criminal justice system to review her case — and that it may not conclude while she’s alive. There's no guarantee that the commission will take action, and even if it does, it doesn't decide guilt or innocence. If the commission concluded the science used to convict Cacy was faulty, she would still have to seek exoneration from the governor or go back to the courts.
“There’s lots of people that need this,” she says, “and if what we’re doing helps someone else, it gives my life purpose.”
THE N-WORD: THE INDOCTRINATION PROCESS AND OVERCOMING POST TRAUMATIC STRESS SYNDROME
By H. Lewis Smith
Plantation owners, overseers, merchants, bankers - all of those who were benefactors of the American enslavement of black people - had a huge stake in eliminating the true identity of the newly-arrived Africans. These benefactors knew that in order for their scheme to be completely effective, they would have to maintain complete control over the captives; the slaves would have to be resolutely obedient and loyal. They also realized that the slaves must be dependent on the master for guidance, knowledge, and anything else that they needed so that slaves would never think to rise up, revolt, and take back their God-given liberties. This objective could only be achieved if Africans were detached from their roots in every way and forced to live in an environment that would birth a warped mentality, and thus, the required obedience, loyalty, and helplessness.
Subsequently, slaves were stripped of their identities, given new names, and forced or coerced into believing that they and their African heritage was meaningless, inferior and barbaric. Slaves were taught that all that - was good, significant, superior, and civil - was of European descent. As a result, they eventually became completely dependent on and accepting of their masters’ teachings. Slaves began to voluntarily accept European values, traditions, and habits, unknowingly contributing to a total disintegration of the African culture.
Even though African Americans are no longer [physically] enslaved, this same notion of helplessness, inferiority, and disintegration has been passed down from generation to generation through lack of cultural dignity, cultural awareness and appreciation, as well as the accepted and continual use of the n-word.
History has proven that even though blacks did begin to adopt European values and ways of life for the most part, many blacks continued to fight hard against the idea of being some insignificant sub-human unfit for descent living and entitlement to self-thought, self-fulfillment. For over three centuries, blacks were chastised, beaten, and tortured to accept a self-hating, self-destructing, self-abasing and self-abnegating image of self. Slaves’ front teeth oftentimes were ripped out or broken off so that they may be easily detected if they ran away; they were frequently beaten severely and then had red pepper rubbed into their lacerated flesh, and hot brine and spirits of turpentine poured over the gashes to increase the torture. They were often stripped naked, their backs and limbs cut with knives, and bruised and mangled by scores and hundreds of blows with a paddle and/or whip. Slaves were terribly torn by the claws of cats drawn over them by their tormentors, hunted with blood hounds and shot down like beasts, or torn to pieces by dogs.
The slaves were often suspended in air by meat hooks, whipped and beaten until they fainted only to be revived to be beaten again until they fainted once again and sometimes died. Their ears were often cut off, eyes gouged out, bones broken, flesh branded with red hot irons. They were maimed, mutilated and slowly burned to death over dawdling fires, serving as examples and a reminder to others to know and stay in their [appointed] PLACE. All of the cruel acts were often carried out with the ranting of "n**ger, n**ger" ringing in their ears. And tormentors believed their acts were justified. They had convinced themselves that in the eyesight of God, black slaves were sub-humans (3/5 a person), and, therefore, any inhumane acts perpetrated upon them were acceptable.
Interestingly enough, even at the end of WWII after black soldiers had shed blood and given their lives for a land that they built but returned them no appreciation, they were greeted home with chants of "don’t forget your place, n**ger."
During the 60’s civil rights struggles, southern whites saw blacks not staying in their so-called place of being n**gers with the nerve to think they were real humans (and not 3/5 a person). Law officers would stop young blacks to harass them. These officials would beat the innocent young people while simultaneously asking them "What is your name?" They would not stop beating them until the words "I am a n**ger" flowed from their bloody and swollen lips.
Hurling the epithet n**ger at civil rights demonstrators wasn’t done solely to insult. It was a twisted way for biased whites to justify to themselves the pointless beatings, releasing of police dogs and use of high pressure fire hoses on the black protesters, and the fondling of black women who had been jailed for their participation in the civil rights demonstrations. To the racist protesters, blacks were sub-humans, inhuman; and as such, their unconscionable acts were deemed acceptable to them.
This same distorted perspective led to the heinous murder of a 14-year-old black male named Emmitt Till. During the 50’s, Emmitt, a Chicagoan, was on vacation in Mississippi. He made the dreadful mistake of allegedly whistling at a white woman. As far as the locals were concerned, Emmitt stepped out of his place of being a n**ger. So to remind him and every other black person of their inferior and unsafe position in society, Emmett was kidnapped from his quarters in the dead of the night, taken to the woods - brutally beaten and tortured to death - having an eye gouged out before he was shot in the head, and then dropped into the Tallahatchie River. There is no question that throughout the entire ordeal he was hearing the jeers of n**ger, n**ger, n**ger. In the warped minds of the killers, Emmitt was just a n**ger, something less than a human being, and, thus, it was fair game to bludgeon the young black man to death.
Masquerading the n-word as a term of endearment is a sign of an on-going disability to break away from an instilled and eventually cultivated self-hatred. Use of the idiom serves as a psychological conduit to negatively manipulate and shape the minds and collective perceptions of America’s Black population to perceiving an unfavorable and false perception of self. Descendants of slavery suffer from such severe psychological scars of slavery - which have been blindly passed down through generations via enslaved mentalities, that they have become immune to the idea of debasing themselves and think nothing wrong of defining themselves with a word that is drenched in carnage and bloodshed of their victimized ascendants. One hundred and forty-five years have passed since the abolishment of slavery; however, the needed healing process for blacks - as a group - never took place. This condition is referred to by The Osiris Group, a group of black psychologist, as Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder. Black psychologist Dr. Joy DeGruy refers to it as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). Dr. DeGruy believes that,"The real recovery from the ongoing trauma of slavery and racism has to start from within."
Black America, though liberated from physical enslavement, has never been [mentally] liberated from the word n**ga and the self-hate, indignity, and inferior mindset in which the word strongly connotes. Continual acceptance and use of the n-word amounts to nothing less than a [self-imposed] cultural genocide. Perhaps as a step in the right direction, the black community should give strong consideration to a national day of liberation from the n-word. In New Orleans fashion, a celebration of the burial of the n-word could take place Juneteenth 2011. Blacks as a collective and united group are accustomed to locking arms to fight racial injustices - holding all accountable for their actions - we need to expand such efforts to include black public figures that use the n-word. We must NOW, at this very moment, come together to fight a common foe from within. The n-word has no good in it - never has - never will. Time has come to ban together, hold one another ACCOUNTABLE, and stop the self-abnegating, self-defeating use of the n-word and all other related mentalities and lifestyles associated with "staying in our place."
Initiating the healing process and ending PTSS starts now. The black community holds the key and is the only group who can truly help the black community. Change must commence on the inside, from within - first inside of each individual person and then within the community collectively. Blacks were taught to perceive themselves in a way that was not beneficial to a healthy individual self-development. Today, the entire black community must accept the fact that they’ve been "mis-educated", and now must seek and secure their truth, dignity, and respect.
The following videos are no joking matter; they prove that there is much work to be done, however, the task at hand is not impossible to overcome, but work must start now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqSFqnUFOns and www.vimeo.com/3658572
H. Lewis Smith is the founder and president of UVCC, the United Voices for a Common Cause, Inc. (www.theunitedvoices.com); a writer for the New England Informer Online; and author of "Bury that Sucka: A Scandalous Love Affair with the N-Word". Follow H. Lewis Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thescoop1
-END-
Plantation owners, overseers, merchants, bankers - all of those who were benefactors of the American enslavement of black people - had a huge stake in eliminating the true identity of the newly-arrived Africans. These benefactors knew that in order for their scheme to be completely effective, they would have to maintain complete control over the captives; the slaves would have to be resolutely obedient and loyal. They also realized that the slaves must be dependent on the master for guidance, knowledge, and anything else that they needed so that slaves would never think to rise up, revolt, and take back their God-given liberties. This objective could only be achieved if Africans were detached from their roots in every way and forced to live in an environment that would birth a warped mentality, and thus, the required obedience, loyalty, and helplessness.
Subsequently, slaves were stripped of their identities, given new names, and forced or coerced into believing that they and their African heritage was meaningless, inferior and barbaric. Slaves were taught that all that - was good, significant, superior, and civil - was of European descent. As a result, they eventually became completely dependent on and accepting of their masters’ teachings. Slaves began to voluntarily accept European values, traditions, and habits, unknowingly contributing to a total disintegration of the African culture.
Even though African Americans are no longer [physically] enslaved, this same notion of helplessness, inferiority, and disintegration has been passed down from generation to generation through lack of cultural dignity, cultural awareness and appreciation, as well as the accepted and continual use of the n-word.
History has proven that even though blacks did begin to adopt European values and ways of life for the most part, many blacks continued to fight hard against the idea of being some insignificant sub-human unfit for descent living and entitlement to self-thought, self-fulfillment. For over three centuries, blacks were chastised, beaten, and tortured to accept a self-hating, self-destructing, self-abasing and self-abnegating image of self. Slaves’ front teeth oftentimes were ripped out or broken off so that they may be easily detected if they ran away; they were frequently beaten severely and then had red pepper rubbed into their lacerated flesh, and hot brine and spirits of turpentine poured over the gashes to increase the torture. They were often stripped naked, their backs and limbs cut with knives, and bruised and mangled by scores and hundreds of blows with a paddle and/or whip. Slaves were terribly torn by the claws of cats drawn over them by their tormentors, hunted with blood hounds and shot down like beasts, or torn to pieces by dogs.
The slaves were often suspended in air by meat hooks, whipped and beaten until they fainted only to be revived to be beaten again until they fainted once again and sometimes died. Their ears were often cut off, eyes gouged out, bones broken, flesh branded with red hot irons. They were maimed, mutilated and slowly burned to death over dawdling fires, serving as examples and a reminder to others to know and stay in their [appointed] PLACE. All of the cruel acts were often carried out with the ranting of "n**ger, n**ger" ringing in their ears. And tormentors believed their acts were justified. They had convinced themselves that in the eyesight of God, black slaves were sub-humans (3/5 a person), and, therefore, any inhumane acts perpetrated upon them were acceptable.
Interestingly enough, even at the end of WWII after black soldiers had shed blood and given their lives for a land that they built but returned them no appreciation, they were greeted home with chants of "don’t forget your place, n**ger."
During the 60’s civil rights struggles, southern whites saw blacks not staying in their so-called place of being n**gers with the nerve to think they were real humans (and not 3/5 a person). Law officers would stop young blacks to harass them. These officials would beat the innocent young people while simultaneously asking them "What is your name?" They would not stop beating them until the words "I am a n**ger" flowed from their bloody and swollen lips.
Hurling the epithet n**ger at civil rights demonstrators wasn’t done solely to insult. It was a twisted way for biased whites to justify to themselves the pointless beatings, releasing of police dogs and use of high pressure fire hoses on the black protesters, and the fondling of black women who had been jailed for their participation in the civil rights demonstrations. To the racist protesters, blacks were sub-humans, inhuman; and as such, their unconscionable acts were deemed acceptable to them.
This same distorted perspective led to the heinous murder of a 14-year-old black male named Emmitt Till. During the 50’s, Emmitt, a Chicagoan, was on vacation in Mississippi. He made the dreadful mistake of allegedly whistling at a white woman. As far as the locals were concerned, Emmitt stepped out of his place of being a n**ger. So to remind him and every other black person of their inferior and unsafe position in society, Emmett was kidnapped from his quarters in the dead of the night, taken to the woods - brutally beaten and tortured to death - having an eye gouged out before he was shot in the head, and then dropped into the Tallahatchie River. There is no question that throughout the entire ordeal he was hearing the jeers of n**ger, n**ger, n**ger. In the warped minds of the killers, Emmitt was just a n**ger, something less than a human being, and, thus, it was fair game to bludgeon the young black man to death.
Masquerading the n-word as a term of endearment is a sign of an on-going disability to break away from an instilled and eventually cultivated self-hatred. Use of the idiom serves as a psychological conduit to negatively manipulate and shape the minds and collective perceptions of America’s Black population to perceiving an unfavorable and false perception of self. Descendants of slavery suffer from such severe psychological scars of slavery - which have been blindly passed down through generations via enslaved mentalities, that they have become immune to the idea of debasing themselves and think nothing wrong of defining themselves with a word that is drenched in carnage and bloodshed of their victimized ascendants. One hundred and forty-five years have passed since the abolishment of slavery; however, the needed healing process for blacks - as a group - never took place. This condition is referred to by The Osiris Group, a group of black psychologist, as Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder. Black psychologist Dr. Joy DeGruy refers to it as Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome (PTSS). Dr. DeGruy believes that,"The real recovery from the ongoing trauma of slavery and racism has to start from within."
Black America, though liberated from physical enslavement, has never been [mentally] liberated from the word n**ga and the self-hate, indignity, and inferior mindset in which the word strongly connotes. Continual acceptance and use of the n-word amounts to nothing less than a [self-imposed] cultural genocide. Perhaps as a step in the right direction, the black community should give strong consideration to a national day of liberation from the n-word. In New Orleans fashion, a celebration of the burial of the n-word could take place Juneteenth 2011. Blacks as a collective and united group are accustomed to locking arms to fight racial injustices - holding all accountable for their actions - we need to expand such efforts to include black public figures that use the n-word. We must NOW, at this very moment, come together to fight a common foe from within. The n-word has no good in it - never has - never will. Time has come to ban together, hold one another ACCOUNTABLE, and stop the self-abnegating, self-defeating use of the n-word and all other related mentalities and lifestyles associated with "staying in our place."
Initiating the healing process and ending PTSS starts now. The black community holds the key and is the only group who can truly help the black community. Change must commence on the inside, from within - first inside of each individual person and then within the community collectively. Blacks were taught to perceive themselves in a way that was not beneficial to a healthy individual self-development. Today, the entire black community must accept the fact that they’ve been "mis-educated", and now must seek and secure their truth, dignity, and respect.
The following videos are no joking matter; they prove that there is much work to be done, however, the task at hand is not impossible to overcome, but work must start now: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqSFqnUFOns and www.vimeo.com/3658572
H. Lewis Smith is the founder and president of UVCC, the United Voices for a Common Cause, Inc. (www.theunitedvoices.com); a writer for the New England Informer Online; and author of "Bury that Sucka: A Scandalous Love Affair with the N-Word". Follow H. Lewis Smith on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thescoop1
-END-
Tuesday, 28 September 2010
Drug shortage threatens executions, but not in Texas
An earlier story we posted about California talks about how the state has only enough of one of the drugs used in to
carry out one more execution, the one they have planned for this week. Both that article and this article point to the
fact that the one company in the U.S. that makes the drug is objecting to it's use in executions. This is a refreshing
position for a drug company to take, and adds to the growing chorus of anti-death penalty sentiment in this country.
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/drug-shortage-threatens-executions-but-not-in-texas-940916.html?
srcTrk=RTR_729919
Drug shortage threatens executions, but not in Texas
By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 8:19 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, 2010
Post a Comment E-mail Print Share Larger Type
Though some executions in the United States have been put on hold because of a shortage of one of the drugs used
in lethal injections, Texas officials said Monday they have no such plans.
"We have three executions scheduled through the end of this year, and we have an ample supply to carry those out,"
said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville. "At the present, we are
unaffected by the shortage."
The Associated Press reported Monday that several of the 35 states that rely on sodium thiopental — an anesthetic that
renders condemned convicts unconscious so they can be overdosed on two other drugs — are having trouble finding
the drug after the sole U.S. manufacturer delayed shipment until January at the earliest because of manufacturing
problems.
Some states have delayed executions. Other states are struggling to find a supplier for executions slated later this year.
On Monday, California announced it will halt all executions after Sept. 30 because of the shortage.
Dan Rosenberg, a spokesman for Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill., said the company is "working to get it back onto the
market for our customers as soon as possible." The company has told several states that it lost its supplier of the active
ingredient in sodium thiopental, according to AP.
But because the firm earlier this year sent letters to several states objecting to use of its product in executions,
questions have been raised about whether the supply slowdown may be intentional. Hospira also makes two other
drugs used in executions, officials in several sates told AP.
Texas prison officials on Monday refused to detail how much sodium thiopental they have on hand and how many
executions it will cover. Lyons said that if the supply does not resume, Texas might have to examine alternatives.
"If, at some point, our supply dwindles, we would have to reassess our protocol," she said.
Lyons said officials were not revealing additional details about their supply of the state's execution drugs for security
reasons. She and other officials did not specify their security concerns, but the agency has released such information in
the past. Lyons said that the agency has asked Attorney General Greg Abbott to allow officials to withhold the
information.
A barbiturate, sodium thiopental is used primarily to anesthetize patients for surgery and induce medical comas. It is
also used to euthanize animals and has been used to help terminally ill people commit suicide, people familiar with the
drug have said previously.
Since it started executing criminals by lethal injection in 1982, Texas has used a three-drug combination developed by
Oklahoma — and now used by most of the 33 states that execute by a three-drug combination.
Two states — Ohio and Washington —use a single, extra-large dose of sodium thiopental to execute prisoners.
In Texas, 3 grams of sodium thiopental is administered in an intravenous solution to render the convict unconscious,
followed by 100 milligrams of pancuronium bromide to paralyze muscles and 140 milliequivalents of potassium
chloride to stop the heart.
The drugs are generally administered over a five-minute period. Texas officials have said the combination creates no
substantial risk of pain.
As for the possibility of obtaining sodium thiopental elsewhere, the Food and Drug Administration said there are no
FDA-approved manufacturers of the drug overseas. Most U.S. hospitals do not stock the drug, and medical ethics
policies would likely prevent its purchase for use in executions.
If sodium thiopental does not become available again soon, states, including Texas, might find it difficult legally to
switch to another drug. They have adopted the current three-drug cocktail after lengthy court challenges, and
changing to another drug would likely trigger new lawsuits and appeals.
According to news reports, an Oklahoma judge last month delayed one execution when the state tried to switch
anesthetics after running out of its regular supply. While enough sodium thiopental was finally obtained from another
state, the court-ordered delay remains in effect.
In Kentucky, Gov. Steve Beshear several weeks ago held off signing death warrants to allow executions to proceed for
two convicts because the state is almost out of sodium thiopental. The state's lone dose hits its expiration date Oct. 1,
and officials have said they so far have been unsuccessful in purchasing additional doses.
In Arizona, officials initially said the state did not have the drug and were not optimistic about obtaining it in time for
an Oct. 26 execution. But they have since said they placed an order and expect to have it by next week.
Virginia on Thursday executed the first woman put to death in the United States since 2005. But officials have since
suggested that the state could have a problem after that, though it has no further executions scheduled.
Missouri has enough sodium thiopental for an October execution, officials said, but its supply expires in January. Ohio
ran out of the amount of sodium thiopental that state procedures call for just three days before a May 13 execution.
The state obtained enough in time but won't say where, according to AP.
mward@statesman.com
Additional material from The Associated Press.
carry out one more execution, the one they have planned for this week. Both that article and this article point to the
fact that the one company in the U.S. that makes the drug is objecting to it's use in executions. This is a refreshing
position for a drug company to take, and adds to the growing chorus of anti-death penalty sentiment in this country.
http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/drug-shortage-threatens-executions-but-not-in-texas-940916.html?
srcTrk=RTR_729919
Drug shortage threatens executions, but not in Texas
By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Published: 8:19 p.m. Monday, Sept. 27, 2010
Post a Comment E-mail Print Share Larger Type
Though some executions in the United States have been put on hold because of a shortage of one of the drugs used
in lethal injections, Texas officials said Monday they have no such plans.
"We have three executions scheduled through the end of this year, and we have an ample supply to carry those out,"
said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville. "At the present, we are
unaffected by the shortage."
The Associated Press reported Monday that several of the 35 states that rely on sodium thiopental — an anesthetic that
renders condemned convicts unconscious so they can be overdosed on two other drugs — are having trouble finding
the drug after the sole U.S. manufacturer delayed shipment until January at the earliest because of manufacturing
problems.
Some states have delayed executions. Other states are struggling to find a supplier for executions slated later this year.
On Monday, California announced it will halt all executions after Sept. 30 because of the shortage.
Dan Rosenberg, a spokesman for Hospira Inc. of Lake Forest, Ill., said the company is "working to get it back onto the
market for our customers as soon as possible." The company has told several states that it lost its supplier of the active
ingredient in sodium thiopental, according to AP.
But because the firm earlier this year sent letters to several states objecting to use of its product in executions,
questions have been raised about whether the supply slowdown may be intentional. Hospira also makes two other
drugs used in executions, officials in several sates told AP.
Texas prison officials on Monday refused to detail how much sodium thiopental they have on hand and how many
executions it will cover. Lyons said that if the supply does not resume, Texas might have to examine alternatives.
"If, at some point, our supply dwindles, we would have to reassess our protocol," she said.
Lyons said officials were not revealing additional details about their supply of the state's execution drugs for security
reasons. She and other officials did not specify their security concerns, but the agency has released such information in
the past. Lyons said that the agency has asked Attorney General Greg Abbott to allow officials to withhold the
information.
A barbiturate, sodium thiopental is used primarily to anesthetize patients for surgery and induce medical comas. It is
also used to euthanize animals and has been used to help terminally ill people commit suicide, people familiar with the
drug have said previously.
Since it started executing criminals by lethal injection in 1982, Texas has used a three-drug combination developed by
Oklahoma — and now used by most of the 33 states that execute by a three-drug combination.
Two states — Ohio and Washington —use a single, extra-large dose of sodium thiopental to execute prisoners.
In Texas, 3 grams of sodium thiopental is administered in an intravenous solution to render the convict unconscious,
followed by 100 milligrams of pancuronium bromide to paralyze muscles and 140 milliequivalents of potassium
chloride to stop the heart.
The drugs are generally administered over a five-minute period. Texas officials have said the combination creates no
substantial risk of pain.
As for the possibility of obtaining sodium thiopental elsewhere, the Food and Drug Administration said there are no
FDA-approved manufacturers of the drug overseas. Most U.S. hospitals do not stock the drug, and medical ethics
policies would likely prevent its purchase for use in executions.
If sodium thiopental does not become available again soon, states, including Texas, might find it difficult legally to
switch to another drug. They have adopted the current three-drug cocktail after lengthy court challenges, and
changing to another drug would likely trigger new lawsuits and appeals.
According to news reports, an Oklahoma judge last month delayed one execution when the state tried to switch
anesthetics after running out of its regular supply. While enough sodium thiopental was finally obtained from another
state, the court-ordered delay remains in effect.
In Kentucky, Gov. Steve Beshear several weeks ago held off signing death warrants to allow executions to proceed for
two convicts because the state is almost out of sodium thiopental. The state's lone dose hits its expiration date Oct. 1,
and officials have said they so far have been unsuccessful in purchasing additional doses.
In Arizona, officials initially said the state did not have the drug and were not optimistic about obtaining it in time for
an Oct. 26 execution. But they have since said they placed an order and expect to have it by next week.
Virginia on Thursday executed the first woman put to death in the United States since 2005. But officials have since
suggested that the state could have a problem after that, though it has no further executions scheduled.
Missouri has enough sodium thiopental for an October execution, officials said, but its supply expires in January. Ohio
ran out of the amount of sodium thiopental that state procedures call for just three days before a May 13 execution.
The state obtained enough in time but won't say where, according to AP.
mward@statesman.com
Additional material from The Associated Press.
"THE NEW JIM CROW" BOOK REVIEW BY MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
"The New Jim Crow"
[Book Review: 6/30/10] (c) '10 Mumia Abu-Jamal
{Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. (NY: The New Press, 2010, pp.290)
The book, The New Jim Crow, offers an unflinching look at the US addiction to imprisonment, and comes up with a startling diagnosis; American corporate greed, political opportunism and the exploitation of age old hatred and fears have congealed to create a monstrous explosion in the world's largest prison industrial complex. Further, the author, a law professor at Ohio State University's Moritz College of Law, Michelle Alexander, digs deep into US history, and deeper still into US criminal law and practice to conclude that the barbarous system of repression and control known commonly as Jim Crow, had a rebirth in this era. That's why she calls it: The New Jim Crow.
This system of legal discrimination came into being much as the first one did. After the rout of the South by the Civil War, millions of newly freed Africans exercised these new rights under Reconstruction. Black men became senators and legislators across the South. But this period was short lived, and as soon as possible, states passed harsh laws known as Black Codes, which denied rights and criminalized behavior by Blacks, and exposed them to the repression of southern prisons, where convicts were leased out to labor for others; it was the rebirth of slavery by other means.
This present era began at the height of the US Civil Rights Movement, when millions of Blacks fought for their rights denied for more than a century.
Alexander concludes that this new system, this new coalescence of economic and political interests, targeted Blacks, especially those engaged in the drug industry, as the human capital with which to provide massive construction, huge prison staffs, and the other appendages of the apparatus of state repression.
But perhaps Alexander's most salient point is her finding that America's Black population constitutes a 'racial caste' that feeds and perpetuates mass incarceration [195]
Indeed, every other societal structure supports this superstructure, from broken schools, to de-industrialization, to population concentration in isolated urban ghettoes, to the violence of police, and the silence of the Black Middle class.
One might argue that such a claim seems unsustainable when we see a Black president, hundreds of black political figures and those in entertainment and sports. But Alexander explains that every system allows exceptions, for they serve to legitimize the system and mask its ugliness and its gross effects upon the majority of Blacks.
For example, while it's well-known that apartheid was an overtly racist system, it allowed Asian and even African American diplomats to live and work in such a regime, by the political expediency of identifying them as "honorary whites" in their official papers.
When comparing both systems, Alexander argues that the US imprisons more Blacks both in raw number and per capita than South Africa at the height of apartheid!
The New Jim Crow - indeed!
--(c) '10 maj
================
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
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Mumia Abu-Jamal's new book -- JAILHOUSE LAWYERS: PRISONERS DEFENDING PRISONERS V. THE USA, featuring an introduction by Angela Y. Davis -- has been released! It is available from City Lights Books: http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100448090
Please make a contribution to help free Mumia. Donations to the grassroots work will go to both INTERNATIONAL CONCERNED FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL and the FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL COALITION (NYC).
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California Execution Postponed!
Calif. Governor Postpones Execution
By JESSE McKINLEY and MALIA WOLLAN
Inmate Asks Court to Halt His Execution (September 27, 2010)
Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican in the final weeks of his administration, announced late Monday that he would postpone the execution of Albert G. Brown Jr. — who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday — until Thursday to allow time for legal appeals to be exhausted. The state Department of Corrections has rescheduled the execution for Thursday evening, the governor’s office said.
Mr. Brown, 56, was convicted in 1982 of raping and strangling a 15-year-old girl in Riverside, Calif.
The postponement came after a whirlwind day in which Mr. Brown’s fortunes seemed to rise and fall with each passing hour. Earlier Monday, Mr. Brown had been denied a stay from a state judge, Verna A. Adams, in Marin County, where San Quentin State Prison is located.
Shortly after that denial state officials also made a surprise announcement that the execution would be the last in the state until the one of the drugs proposed for his execution — sodium thiopental, a barbiturate — could be restocked by the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Moreover, Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the department, said its supply of sodium thiopental was good only until Friday. That expiration date is now just hours after Mr. Brown’s planned execution on Thursday.
Ms. Thornton said her department was continuing with preparations for Mr. Brown’s execution and had enough sodium thiopental to stop Mr. Brown’s heart. She added that the state was “actively seeking supplies of the drug for future executions.”
How exactly sodium thiopental became scarce is unclear. The Food and Drug Administration reported shortages in March, citing production issues with Hospira, an Illinois-based company that is the sole American manufacturer.
A company spokesman, Dan Rosenberg, said that the drug was unavailable because of a lack of supply of an active pharmaceutical ingredient and that Hospira was working to get the drug back on the market by early next year. But Mr. Rosenberg also expressed displeasure that the drug — meant to be used as an anesthetic — had found its way into death chambers.
“Hospira manufactures this product because it improves or saves lives, and the company markets it solely for use as indicated on the product labeling,” Mr. Rosenberg said in a statement. “The drug is not indicated for capital punishment, and Hospira does not support its use in this procedure.”
He added that the company had made that opinion clear to corrections departments nationwide.
Mr. Brown’s execution was cleared on Friday by a federal district judge, Jeremy D. Fogel, who had effectively halted executions in the state in 2006 after expressing concern about a three-drug cocktail commonly used in lethal injection procedures and various deficiencies in the state’s methods, including the training of execution teams, antiquated facilities and the preparation of execution drugs.
Since then, however, California has drafted detailed new regulations — approved earlier this year — to guide executions and built a new death chamber at San Quentin, north of San Francisco.
Those developments had apparently quelled Judge Fogel’s worries enough to allow Mr. Brown’s execution to proceed.
Mr. Brown is still seeking a stay from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His lawyer, John R. Grele, said Judge Fogel’s decision was “neither a legal nor rational response” to his client’s efforts to avoid execution or undue pain.
By JESSE McKINLEY and MALIA WOLLAN
Inmate Asks Court to Halt His Execution (September 27, 2010)
Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican in the final weeks of his administration, announced late Monday that he would postpone the execution of Albert G. Brown Jr. — who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday — until Thursday to allow time for legal appeals to be exhausted. The state Department of Corrections has rescheduled the execution for Thursday evening, the governor’s office said.
Mr. Brown, 56, was convicted in 1982 of raping and strangling a 15-year-old girl in Riverside, Calif.
The postponement came after a whirlwind day in which Mr. Brown’s fortunes seemed to rise and fall with each passing hour. Earlier Monday, Mr. Brown had been denied a stay from a state judge, Verna A. Adams, in Marin County, where San Quentin State Prison is located.
Shortly after that denial state officials also made a surprise announcement that the execution would be the last in the state until the one of the drugs proposed for his execution — sodium thiopental, a barbiturate — could be restocked by the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Moreover, Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the department, said its supply of sodium thiopental was good only until Friday. That expiration date is now just hours after Mr. Brown’s planned execution on Thursday.
Ms. Thornton said her department was continuing with preparations for Mr. Brown’s execution and had enough sodium thiopental to stop Mr. Brown’s heart. She added that the state was “actively seeking supplies of the drug for future executions.”
How exactly sodium thiopental became scarce is unclear. The Food and Drug Administration reported shortages in March, citing production issues with Hospira, an Illinois-based company that is the sole American manufacturer.
A company spokesman, Dan Rosenberg, said that the drug was unavailable because of a lack of supply of an active pharmaceutical ingredient and that Hospira was working to get the drug back on the market by early next year. But Mr. Rosenberg also expressed displeasure that the drug — meant to be used as an anesthetic — had found its way into death chambers.
“Hospira manufactures this product because it improves or saves lives, and the company markets it solely for use as indicated on the product labeling,” Mr. Rosenberg said in a statement. “The drug is not indicated for capital punishment, and Hospira does not support its use in this procedure.”
He added that the company had made that opinion clear to corrections departments nationwide.
Mr. Brown’s execution was cleared on Friday by a federal district judge, Jeremy D. Fogel, who had effectively halted executions in the state in 2006 after expressing concern about a three-drug cocktail commonly used in lethal injection procedures and various deficiencies in the state’s methods, including the training of execution teams, antiquated facilities and the preparation of execution drugs.
Since then, however, California has drafted detailed new regulations — approved earlier this year — to guide executions and built a new death chamber at San Quentin, north of San Francisco.
Those developments had apparently quelled Judge Fogel’s worries enough to allow Mr. Brown’s execution to proceed.
Mr. Brown is still seeking a stay from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His lawyer, John R. Grele, said Judge Fogel’s decision was “neither a legal nor rational response” to his client’s efforts to avoid execution or undue pain.
OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham • Black Boys and Single Mother Parenting : The Perils of Manhood Training October 2, 2010
OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham
OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER and OURSELVES
TALKING RACE in HOPE and with COURAGE
Call-in Number: (347) 838-9852
Saturday, October 2, 2010 • 10pm ET
SAVE THE DATE
Dr. Raymond Winbush, author, scholar and leading reseacher on the issue of raising Black boys in urban environents
Ms. Goldie Taylor, the author of a The Goldie Taylor Project, which included last week a very interesting and popular commentary on the Long allegations and complaint entitled, "A (not so) Super Hero: The Rise and Fall of Eddie Long"
Sexual abuse happens when an older teen or adult forces or coerces a boy to engage in sexual activity. Most boys are sexually abused between the ages of seven and nine. Boys are sexually abused by their mothers, fathers, adult or teen caregivers, other relatives or strangers. A sexual predator may start a “career” of abuse when he is a teenager and continue hurting children until he is in his forties – damaging many lives.
Some predators use money or gifts to attract boys, and for some boys just having some positive male attention is enough. The abuser gains the boy’s trust and begins to touch the boy in a nonsexual way. Slowly, as the relationship deepens, the abuser escalates to sexual touching or rape. In addition to feelings of great shame, victims often cannot overcome the feeling of betrayal.</SPAN>
Though the abuse field in general has gained credibility, we must never forget that it is an emotionally and politically charged area of interest, a point victims and advocates forget at their peril. Reasoned discussion can be difficult, research evidence is frequently dismissed or ignored in the interest of politics, and many people in the public and professions alike still don't believe that something like child sexual abuse is a widespread and serious social problem. For example, as recently as the mid 1970's, the predominant view of incest in the psychiatry profession was that it was extraordinarily rare (Freedman, Kaplan, and Sadock, 1975).
For male victims, the situation is even more precarious. Many cultural and other barriers must be crossed by boys, teen males, the professional community, and the public even to be able to acknowledge male victimization experiences as abuse. For example, gay males have to "come out" to disclose their abuse, and so typically remain silent. Stated simply, if we do not go looking for male victims we will not find them. If we do not explore issues of abuse with males they will not tell us their stories. Consequently, and all too typically, the first time a teen or adult male offender obtains any help with his victimization is when he has come to the attention of the legal system because of his offences (Sepler, 1990).
Source: The Sexual Abuse of Boys is Under-reported http://www.suite101.com/content/the-sexual-abuse-of-boys-a272035#ixzz10knondg9
Violence toward males is so normalized in our society that it has become invisible to the average person as have the images reinforcing harmful stereotypes about males and masculinity. For example, we expect males to be physically strong and capable or "rough and tumble", thus we ridicule in comics and comedy films the short, skinny, or sensitive male. Unfortunately, young men who try to live up to the impossible standards set by bodybuilders are starting to kill themselves through the use of steroids.
Our insensitivity to male victims can be viewed in the depiction of male abuse in popular media images, commercials, comedy films and television programs, and the "funnies" or comic sections in any Canadian newspaper (Mathews, 1994). Watch America's Funniest Home Videos for a few weeks and you will inevitably see some male being injured in the testicles through a sports activity, boisterous animal, energetic child, or some other mishap. A commercial for an American fast food company, shows one of the characters from the sitcom, Seinfeld, being hit in the testicles with a hockey puck.
So we miss the signs, we ignore it and then we point the finger in the face of real evidence and testimony. WE BLAME THE SINGLE-MOTHER AND PORTRAY HER AS INCAPABLE OF KEEPING IT TOGETHER and an effective parent.
At OUR COMMON GROUND, we host a discussion of the realities of the blame game, and how we have missed the mark.
OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham
This Weeks Broadcast Schedule
Saturday, October 2, 2010
The ALFO Show 3pm ET
www.blogtalkradio.com/ALFO
The Mo’ ALFO Show 4 pm ET
www.blogtalkradio.comTruthWorks
OUR COMMON GROUND – 10 pm ET
www.blogtalkradio.com/OCG
TALK THAT MATTERS . . . OUR COMMON GROUND
The Best in "pushback talk radio . . .
Common Sense Perspective
Push Back Political Talk
The ALFO Show
Saturday 3 pm ET
http:/www.blogtalkradio.com/ALFO
TruthWorks Radio Network
THE ALFO SHOW
Every Saturday, 4 pm ET
LISTEN LIVE CALL IN
Catch The ALFO SHOW Satuday, 3 PM ET at
The ALFO SHOW on TruthWorks Network Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Truthworks
"Speaking Truth to Power and Ourselves"
Our Common Ground with Janice Graham
URBAN PROGRESSIVE TALK RADIO
ALTERNATIVE ~ ACTIVIST ~ EMPOWERMENT TALK RADIO
"Transforming Truth to POWER one show at a time"
Visit OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham at:
http://www.ourcommonground-talk.ning.com/
Contact us :OCGInfo@ourcommonground.com
OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham
SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER and OURSELVES
TALKING RACE in HOPE and with COURAGE
Call-in Number: (347) 838-9852
Saturday, October 2, 2010 • 10pm ET
Black Boys and Single Mother Parenting : The Perils of Manhood Training
The sexual abuse of boys is a crime that is often ignored and under reported. There are a number of resources for adult male survivors of abuse.According to the latest statistics offered by the National Center for Victims of Crime, 1 in 6 boys is a victim of childhood sexual abuse. These statistics are conservative, because most boys never report the crime. Cultural definitions of masculinity often make it difficult for boys (and adult male survivors) to reach out for help.
Why the Allegations against Mega-Church Leader Eddie Long Matters Part II
Part 1: OCG Archives September 25, 2010: Listen On-DemandAt OUR COMMON GROUND last Saturday, we hosted a discussion of the sexual stalking, coercion and molestation of young Black boys by the Senior Pastor of the megachurch, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, GA,. A caller from area code 201 raised the question of how single Black mothers are challenged with the issues of bringing male models into the lives of their sons and at the same time protecting them from sexual predators in what is generally considered to be "safe zones"- church, school and community activities and individuals. We promised that we would dedicate the next show to a discussion on the issues faced by this parenting question.
More times than we want to admit, the anger, violence, attention deficit, school failure and a-social behavior among young Black males and Black adult are individuals working through trauma from being victimized by abuse, sexual coercion, molestation and rape. They can't tell us because of the barrier of shame created by the image of macho and other values we buy into; our unwillingness to face the probability of sexual predatory behavior and our fear and ignorance all around that somehow it is about "homosexuality". The fact is, that it is not about an individual's sexuality at all, unit is about predatory criminal behavior, power, control and pedophilia. It is about our need to hide, our shame and our secrets too . . . encouraged through generations of lessons that justice will not prevail for us, that secrets are protective measures and time heals. It is about the lack of sanctuary for our children who are victims.
So we miss the signs, we ignore them and then we point the finger in the face of real evidence and testimony. WE BLAME THE SINGLE-MOTHER AND PORTRAY HER AS INCAPABLE OF KEEPING IT TOGETHER and an effective parent.
At OUR COMMON GROUND, we host a discussion of the realities of the blame game, and how we have missed the mark. If nothing else, note that each of the complainants in the Long suits were sons from a single Mother home. It is time for our serious consideration of how we really care for our children. Pedophilia and sexual predators in our community, churches and schools must be faced. Our children will never discover personal power if our message is that POWER WINS and they have none. We must talke, engage and affirm. So, we shall, on OUR COMMON GROUND.
OUR GUESTS
Dr. Raymond Winbush, author, scholar and leading reseacher on the issue of raising Black boys in urban environents
Raymond A. Winbush, Ph.D. is the Director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. He received his undergraduate degree in psychology from Oakwood College in Alabama and received a fellowship to attend the University of Chicago, where he earned both his master's degree and Ph.D. in psychology. He has taught at Oakwood College, Alabama A&M, Vanderbilt University, and Fisk University. He is the recipient of numerous grants, including one from the Kellogg Foundation to establish a "National Dialogue on Race." He is the author of The Warrior Method: A Parents' Guide to Rearing Healthy Black Boys, the former treasurer and executive board member of the National Council of Black Studies, and is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Black Studies. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland. http://rwinbush.webs.com/aboutraywinbush.htm
Ms. Goldie Taylor, the author of a The Goldie Taylor Project, which included last week a very interesting and popular commentary on the Long allegations and complaint entitled, "A (not so) Super Hero: The Rise and Fall of Eddie Long"
Goldie Taylor the managing director and chief creative officer of Atlanta-based Goldie Taylor Advertising and Public Relations.
The author of “A Woman’s Worth”, an essay featured on this blog and on EbonyJet.com that gained national attention during the 2008 presidential election cycle, Taylor has been featured in Marie Claire, Black Enterprise and Jezebel magazines, among other publications. She has been a guest columnist for the Atlanta Journal, Atlanta Tribune, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Atlanta Voice, Ebony Magazine and Creative Loafing. She is is CEO of Goldie Taylor Brand Communications and president of GIFT—the Global Initiative for the Testing and Prevention of HIV.
A bestselling author, Taylor penned In My Father’s House (Wheatmark Press, 2005) and The January Girl (Warner Books/ Hachette, 2007). She is currently working on her third novel, The Lives of Others, and The Devil and Missouri Daniel, a family memoir.
Goldie is the mother of five incredible children, and is thus whooly convinced that God has a sense of humor. http://goldietaylor.wordpress.com/about-goldie-taylor/
Sexual abuse happens when an older teen or adult forces or coerces a boy to engage in sexual activity. Most boys are sexually abused between the ages of seven and nine. Boys are sexually abused by their mothers, fathers, adult or teen caregivers, other relatives or strangers. A sexual predator may start a “career” of abuse when he is a teenager and continue hurting children until he is in his forties – damaging many lives.
Some predators use money or gifts to attract boys, and for some boys just having some positive male attention is enough. The abuser gains the boy’s trust and begins to touch the boy in a nonsexual way. Slowly, as the relationship deepens, the abuser escalates to sexual touching or rape. In addition to feelings of great shame, victims often cannot overcome the feeling of betrayal.</SPAN>
Though the abuse field in general has gained credibility, we must never forget that it is an emotionally and politically charged area of interest, a point victims and advocates forget at their peril. Reasoned discussion can be difficult, research evidence is frequently dismissed or ignored in the interest of politics, and many people in the public and professions alike still don't believe that something like child sexual abuse is a widespread and serious social problem. For example, as recently as the mid 1970's, the predominant view of incest in the psychiatry profession was that it was extraordinarily rare (Freedman, Kaplan, and Sadock, 1975).
For male victims, the situation is even more precarious. Many cultural and other barriers must be crossed by boys, teen males, the professional community, and the public even to be able to acknowledge male victimization experiences as abuse. For example, gay males have to "come out" to disclose their abuse, and so typically remain silent. Stated simply, if we do not go looking for male victims we will not find them. If we do not explore issues of abuse with males they will not tell us their stories. Consequently, and all too typically, the first time a teen or adult male offender obtains any help with his victimization is when he has come to the attention of the legal system because of his offences (Sepler, 1990).
Source: The Sexual Abuse of Boys is Under-reported http://www.suite101.com/content/the-sexual-abuse-of-boys-a272035#ixzz10knondg9
Violence toward males is so normalized in our society that it has become invisible to the average person as have the images reinforcing harmful stereotypes about males and masculinity. For example, we expect males to be physically strong and capable or "rough and tumble", thus we ridicule in comics and comedy films the short, skinny, or sensitive male. Unfortunately, young men who try to live up to the impossible standards set by bodybuilders are starting to kill themselves through the use of steroids.
Our insensitivity to male victims can be viewed in the depiction of male abuse in popular media images, commercials, comedy films and television programs, and the "funnies" or comic sections in any Canadian newspaper (Mathews, 1994). Watch America's Funniest Home Videos for a few weeks and you will inevitably see some male being injured in the testicles through a sports activity, boisterous animal, energetic child, or some other mishap. A commercial for an American fast food company, shows one of the characters from the sitcom, Seinfeld, being hit in the testicles with a hockey puck.
At OUR COMMON GROUND, we host a discussion of the realities of the blame game, and how we have missed the mark.
OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham
“Speaking Truth to Power and Ourselves”
This Weeks Broadcast Schedule
Saturday, October 2, 2010
The ALFO Show 3pm ET
www.blogtalkradio.com/ALFO
The Mo’ ALFO Show 4 pm ET
www.blogtalkradio.comTruthWorks
OUR COMMON GROUND – 10 pm ET
www.blogtalkradio.com/OCG
TALK THAT MATTERS . . . OUR COMMON GROUND
TruthWorks is ALWAYS proud to present . . .
TruthWork NetworkThe ALFO Show
The Best in "pushback talk radio . . .TruthWork Network
Common Sense Perspective
Push Back Political Talk
The ALFO Show
Saturday 3 pm ET
http:/www.blogtalkradio.com/ALFO
TruthWorks Radio Network
THE ALFO SHOW
Every Saturday, 4 pm ET
LISTEN LIVE CALL IN
Catch The ALFO SHOW Satuday, 3 PM ET at
The ALFO SHOW on TruthWorks Network Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Truthworks
"Speaking Truth to Power and Ourselves"
Our Common Ground with Janice Graham
URBAN PROGRESSIVE TALK RADIO
ALTERNATIVE ~ ACTIVIST ~ EMPOWERMENT TALK RADIO
"Transforming Truth to POWER one show at a time"
Visit OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham at:
http://www.ourcommonground-talk.ning.com/
Contact us :OCGInfo@ourcommonground.com
FREE THE SCOTT SISTERS
More Information About the Scott Sisters
Witness and Wisdom: A a fierce form of RESISTANCE.
Support The Gray-Haired Witnesses for JUSTICE
More Information About the Gray-Haired Witnesses
SCOTT SISTERS ACTION ALERT! by Sis Marpessa
SCOTT SISTERS ACTION ALERT!
by Sis Marpessa on Tuesday, 28 September 2010 at 03:47
MESSAGE FROM MRS. RASCO:
Thanks to all of the supporters that have helped with Jamie and Gladys' case. It is because of all of you that it has came down to what it has. You all have worked hard to help to free Jamie and Gladys and I feel like now we are on the final step to freedom.
I am asking that everyone Call, Write and Fax all the Parole Board members to ask for justice for Jamie and Gladys. They need all of your help, the ones that can tweet it, please do. Jamie and Gladys' life depends on you all so that another injustice won't be done to them. Let the Parole Board know that the world is looking at this injustice.
Shannon Warnock - Chairman
Bobbie Thomas - Board Member
Clarence Brown - Board Member
Betty Lou Jones - Board Member
Danny Guice - Board Member
State of Mississippi Parole Board
660 North Street
Suite 100A
Jackson, MS 39202
Phone: (601) 576-3520
Fax: (601) 576-3528
Please contact these Board Members and keep doing it until Jamie and Gladys are free. Love to every one of you.
Evelyn Rasco
==============
Visit and LINK to: http://www.freethescottsisters.blogspot.com/
Thanks to all of the supporters that have helped with Jamie and Gladys' case. It is because of all of you that it has came down to what it has. You all have worked hard to help to free Jamie and Gladys and I feel like now we are on the final step to freedom.
I am asking that everyone Call, Write and Fax all the Parole Board members to ask for justice for Jamie and Gladys. They need all of your help, the ones that can tweet it, please do. Jamie and Gladys' life depends on you all so that another injustice won't be done to them. Let the Parole Board know that the world is looking at this injustice.
Shannon Warnock - Chairman
Bobbie Thomas - Board Member
Clarence Brown - Board Member
Betty Lou Jones - Board Member
Danny Guice - Board Member
State of Mississippi Parole Board
660 North Street
Suite 100A
Jackson, MS 39202
Phone: (601) 576-3520
Fax: (601) 576-3528
Please contact these Board Members and keep doing it until Jamie and Gladys are free. Love to every one of you.
Evelyn Rasco
==============
Visit and LINK to: http://www.freethescottsisters.blogspot.com/
Monday, 27 September 2010
"LA RUTA DEL TERROR"
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PLANS AGAINST VENEZUELA & CUBA EXPOSED
​CUBA​
Continuation of Terrorist Plans from the US
24 SEPTIEMBRE 2010
The statements of Francisco Chávez Abarca and the plans against Venezuela expose the continuation of the terrorist actions against Cuba and raise new questions on the complicity of the CIA, CANF, Posada Carriles and the anti-Cuban members of Congress.
As news were published that Luis Posada Carriles and various extremist organizations based in the US intend to carry on their plans of violent and paramilitary actions against Cuba, international terrorist Francisco Antonio Chávez Abarca was arrested in Venezuela last July 1st.
He is one of the main links of the Central American connection employed in violent actions against Cuba by the notorious criminal, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and some of its former members that currently make up the Council for the Liberation of Cuba (CLC).
Posada Carriles, a fugitive of the Venezuelan legal system, remains active and devising anti-Cuban schemes inside and out of the US territory, collecting debts and favors from politicians, officials and local or Central American agents as if he did not remember, mind or care about the hearing to set the date of the trial -or mock trial-he should face early next year, under a minor migratory charge.
Cuba, that has never permitted -and never will-the use of its territory for planning, funding or executing terrorist actions against any other state, has watched for over five decades how its neighbor to the North, and particularly Miami city, has provided safe haven to notorious terrorists, from before and after the triumph of the Revolution; funds are raised and provided, and bank accounts operated to finance their actions and those who sponsor, plan and carry out criminal actions against our country, many of them formerly or currently in the CIA and FBI payrolls, are allowed to use the territory.
Is terrorism no longer fashionable?
Chávez Abarca admits that as of September 2005, there are plans to murder the Venezuelan President.
As a "guest of honor" of the terrorist organization Alpha `66 Annual Congress, held on February 27-28, 2010, Posada proposed to take up the plans of violent and paramilitary actions against Cuba.
Although the leaders of the group indicated that as part of a strategy they should pretend to transform into a political, civilian and peaceful party, they have ratified that terrorism is their main line of action and instrument to destroy the Revolution.
Likewise, they recommended raising funds for purchasing new boats and equipping them with machine guns either to land in Cuba or to attack our coasts.
Coincidentally, on March 22, a few days after that congress, the residence of the Cuban ambassador in Guatemala was attacked with explosive bullets shot with grenade launchers causing material damages.
In this context, Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart makes news again.
He is the number one cheerleader of the worst actions against our people, from the promotion in Capitol Hill of a military aggression on Cuba and the assassination of the Commander in Chief, to the kidnapping of the child Elián González or the encouragement of hunger strikes as a method of struggle of the mercenaries.
About to relinquish his legislative position, Díaz-Balart re-launched at the end of May 2010 the terrorist organization known as La Rosa Blanca, created by his father a few days after the revolutionary victory, and of which he now claims to be President, with the objective of becoming the main boss of the Miami Mafia.
La Rosa Blanca was the first counterrevolutionary organization established in the US by henchmen of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship who fled Cuba running away from their abuses and crimes.
As of 1959, it bonded with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo to organize an uprising in the Escambray Mountains.
It is remembered for burning down schools, farmers' houses, sugarcane fields and textile factories wounding and maiming a number of people and causing large economic damage.
Why is a US Congressman reactivating such an organization in the 21st century?
What for?
Díaz-Balart's new chicanery can't obscure his intention to receive and channel part of the funds worth millions allocated by the US government for subversion, a booty they all want seize, including other notorious terrorists like Roberto Martín Pérez and his fellow descendants of torturers under Batista's dictatorship who also took part in the re-founding of La Rosa Blanca.
His colleague Ileana Ros-Lethinen, who won the nickname of `the Ferocious She-Wolf' for her shameful role in the kidnapping of Elián González, is accountable for having done more than anyone else during her 1988 political campaign for the release of Orlando Bosch, a close friend of Enrique Ros, the legislator's father.
Bosch and Posada Carriles were the masterminds behind the action against a Cuban airliner that took the lives of 73 people.
In 1991, under the Administration of George Bush, senior, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lethinen interceded with the President to have three US Air Force type 0-2 planes –the military version of the Cessna used in exploration missions-delivered to the Brothers to the Rescue group headed by José Basulto, a Playa Giron ex-mercenary, a terrorist and CIA agent.
On July 19, 1992, as the air operations started, the press for the first time published pictures of the aircraft handed over to that counterrevolutionary group, with the USAF (US Air Force) insignia clearly visible in a report by the editor of the Miami Herald, who made a flight with them.
Incited by members of Congress Ileana Ros and Lincoln Díaz-Balart as well as by other counterrevolutionary organizations in Miami, Brothers to the Rescue staged provocations on Cuban territory to damage the favorable process of talks initiated by the United States and Cuba after the Migratory Accords of 1994 and 1995.
Sponsored by the Miami Mafia, this counterrevolutionary group concentrated every effort in provoking an incident and violated Cuban airspace 25 times in 20 months, including flights over Havana City dropping various objects and leading to the events of February 24, 1996 and the downing of the aircraft. Again, this provocation strained the Cuban-American relations and encouraged the adoption of the Helms-Burton Act, whose content makes it more difficult to find solutions in the future to the two countries feud, as it turned into law all of the measures related to the US economic, commercial and financial blockade.
In 2008, Ileana Ros headed another effort, this time for the presidential pardon of terrorist Eduardo Arocena, the intellectual author of the murder of United Nations Cuban diplomat Felix García Rodríguez in 1980 and the bomb blasts in US public places.
More recently, Ros-Lethinen has played a major role raising funds to pay for Posada Carriles defense attorneys. "The CANF goals are my own," she said. This was her early commitment in 1989 with the terrorist organization that put up her candidacy and used all of its economic and political power to ensure her a seat in the US Congress.
"I approve the possibility of someone murdering Fidel Castro," she said to a British BBC documentary maker in March 2006, while she sat peacefully in her Washington office. Various analysts have addressed the concern and expectations in the US arising from the arrest of Chávez Abarca, particularly among members of Congress and officials whose political careers are very closely linked to Posada, the CIA and CANF.
There are rumors that some of the most anxious are anti-Cuban New Jersey Congressmen Bob Menéndez and Albio Sires. The former has usually sponsored terrorists, from the days when his "adviser" for the community was Alfredo Chumaceiro Anillo who, on July 24, 1976, tried to blow up the Lincoln Center Theater during the performance of a troupe of Cuban artists. Menéndez was a close friend and son-in-law of the late CANF director Arnaldo Monzón Plasencia, who not only made donations to his election campaigns but also contributed $25,000 to partly pay for the terrorist actions of 1997. His personal assistant for the planning and murder of said Cuban diplomat was José Manuel Alvarez, a.k.a. "The Bear." Others involved in that assassination were the convict Arocena, ex chieftain of Omega 7, and hired assassin Pedro Remón Rodríguez who shot our official.
This crime, as many others, is still unpunished. Another revealing link is attorney Guillermo Hernández, one of the most active among Menéndez's consultants. He is now acting as an independent council to Posada Carriles to prevent his extradition to Venezuela and to help him face other charges that might be brought against him. One of Congressman Albio Sires' closest staff is Angel Manuel Alfonso Alemán, a.k.a. "La Cota", a member of the terrorist commando detained in Puerto Rico in 1997 on board a CANF vessel on its way to Margarita Island, Venezuela, with the intention of murdering Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, with high power rifles, during the 7th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State. Alfonso Alemán is one of his main contacts with Posada Carriles and the Miami Mafia.
It doesn't come as a surprise either that the notorious Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which for a long time sponsored a great number of terrorist groups bent on damaging our interests, both inside and outside of the national territory, is now offering the public -just like the others- an image of moderation, while it funds and supplies resources for the provocative actions of the so-called "Ladies in White" and tries to promote domestic discontent, which they pay for with their own money and that allocated by US entities. Targeting the Venezuelan elections If terrorism was no longer fashionable, what was the purpose of Chávez Abarca's trip to Venezuela? What was he doing during his suspicious movements around Central America? Who are behind his actions? What have the US officials done to prevent them from bringing their terrorist plans to fruition in Miami, El Salvador, Guatemala or Cuba? How effective were the measures adopted by the previous Salvadoran government to restrain their freedom to kill? The detainee has already admitted the destabilizing plans he would have carried out in that sister nation, attempting to kill leaders of the Bolivarian process or hurt their image in light of the forthcoming elections on September 26. Chávez Abarca has said that it was his purpose "to burn tires, promote street disturbances, and attack a political party to blame the other." He has revealed that one of the most important of Posada Carriles current plans is to try to sink ships taking oil from Venezuela to Havana. He also said that CANF has destined nearly $100 million to plans against Venezuela, as it feels that the South American country is the "financial backbone" of Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia and Guatemala. According to his statements, at the end of September 2005 they had plans to murder President Hugo Chávez. To that end, Posada instructed to use a .50 Barret rifle. Ever since that mercenary left prison on September 2007, after serving a sentence for trafficking in stolen cars, he started working in coordination with Posada to act violently against Cuba and other ALBA nations, including attempts on the life of President Chávez in exchange for money. At the time of his detention, and in order to ensure such objectives, he had instructions from his bosses in Florida to undertake intelligence actions in Venezuelan territory leading to the creation of the necessary logistics to implement covert operations. This mercenary, who has operated with Posada's support, had taken refuge in Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador. During the preliminary investigation into the case, the detainee has admitted that he was recruited as a mercenary and trained by Posada Carriles himself, who gave him firsthand instructions and paid $2,000 for every bomb blast in Cuba. He received the instructions during meetings in hotels and other places in El Salvador, Costa Rica and Guatemala where he met the terrorists of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) Arnaldo Monzón Plasencia, Pedro Remón Rodríguez, Guillermo Novo Sampol and Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo. "All of them clearly said that they belong to the Foundation and that Posada is a member of CANF in Miami," said Chávez Abarca. With the acquiescence of CIA and friendly presidents He added that Posada boasted of asking for CIA consent every time he was to carry out one of his violent actions against Cuba, and that on one occasion he had said that the man who had interrupted the conversation was a CIA officer, his handler, who had called him on the phone. He also said that it was easy for him to evade the very few inquiries into his actions conducted by the FBI and the State Intelligence Office in El Salvador. As to Posada's personal connections in El Salvador, he said that he had excellent relations with almost every rightwing president before the current government. He mentioned Calderón Sol, Cristiani and Francisco Flores, with whom he used to go fishing. He also mentioned his friend Rodrigo Avila who was police Commissioner twice. "They all visited the Foundation people in Miami," he added. Chávez Abarca related that in 1997, when the Cuban TV broadcast a program showing Salvadoran terrorist Raúl Ernesto Cruz León exposing his connection to Posada Carriles and CANF, the former instructed him to kill the members of the man's family; thus he now fears for the fate of his wife and children.
Chávez Abarca not only recruited and trained other Central American mercenaries previously arrested in Cuba -one Salvadoran and three Guatemalans-but he also set up bombs at the Aché disco and in the 15th floor of the Meliá Cohíba hotel, on April 12 and 30, 1997, respectively, and another one at the Comodoro hotel, as an International Chess Tournament was taking place with over 40 children.
Some of these children could have been killed as they unknowingly played with the bag where the explosive device was camouflaged. The bomb detected on the eve of May 1st, 1997, in the 15th floor of the Meliá Cohíba hotel contained 1.5 kilograms of the highly-destructive military plastic explosive C-4, capable of razing buildings, bridges and vessels. In that period, the terrorist ring led by Posada Carriles and the CANF brought into the country over 30 explosive devices -18 of them in less than a year-11 of which blew up in various tourist facilities, including the one that caused the death of young Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo, injuries to others and large material damage. Still, there could have been thousands of fatalities if they had materialized plans on usually crowded recreational and tourist centers like the Tropicana cabaret, discothèques, hotels and monuments, all of them frustrated by the Cuban Sate Security with the people's collaboration. The CANF and those that from the US government incited and permitted this kind of actions had some obvious objectives: to build the perception that these actions had been executed by domestic opposition groups; to trigger panic and instability; to deal a strong blow to tourism; and, to make the national economy succumb to chaos.
Between 1990 and the first years of the current decade, coinciding with these violent actions, the Miami Mafia implemented more than 25 terrorist actions in the US territory, which included bomb blasts, aggressions with fire weapons, verbal threats and provocations against Cuban interests, immigrants, travel agencies, personalities and organizations supportive of Cuba, and even death threats against President William Clinton and his Secretary of Justice Janet Reno for their decision to return the child Elián González...
[To continue reading click on the link below...]
Continuation of Terrorist Plans from the US | Cubadebate
http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2010/09/24/continuation-of-terrorist-plans-from-the-us/
Continuation of Terrorist Plans from the US
24 SEPTIEMBRE 2010
The statements of Francisco Chávez Abarca and the plans against Venezuela expose the continuation of the terrorist actions against Cuba and raise new questions on the complicity of the CIA, CANF, Posada Carriles and the anti-Cuban members of Congress.
As news were published that Luis Posada Carriles and various extremist organizations based in the US intend to carry on their plans of violent and paramilitary actions against Cuba, international terrorist Francisco Antonio Chávez Abarca was arrested in Venezuela last July 1st.
He is one of the main links of the Central American connection employed in violent actions against Cuba by the notorious criminal, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) and some of its former members that currently make up the Council for the Liberation of Cuba (CLC).
Posada Carriles, a fugitive of the Venezuelan legal system, remains active and devising anti-Cuban schemes inside and out of the US territory, collecting debts and favors from politicians, officials and local or Central American agents as if he did not remember, mind or care about the hearing to set the date of the trial -or mock trial-he should face early next year, under a minor migratory charge.
Cuba, that has never permitted -and never will-the use of its territory for planning, funding or executing terrorist actions against any other state, has watched for over five decades how its neighbor to the North, and particularly Miami city, has provided safe haven to notorious terrorists, from before and after the triumph of the Revolution; funds are raised and provided, and bank accounts operated to finance their actions and those who sponsor, plan and carry out criminal actions against our country, many of them formerly or currently in the CIA and FBI payrolls, are allowed to use the territory.
Is terrorism no longer fashionable?
Chávez Abarca admits that as of September 2005, there are plans to murder the Venezuelan President.
As a "guest of honor" of the terrorist organization Alpha `66 Annual Congress, held on February 27-28, 2010, Posada proposed to take up the plans of violent and paramilitary actions against Cuba.
Although the leaders of the group indicated that as part of a strategy they should pretend to transform into a political, civilian and peaceful party, they have ratified that terrorism is their main line of action and instrument to destroy the Revolution.
Likewise, they recommended raising funds for purchasing new boats and equipping them with machine guns either to land in Cuba or to attack our coasts.
Coincidentally, on March 22, a few days after that congress, the residence of the Cuban ambassador in Guatemala was attacked with explosive bullets shot with grenade launchers causing material damages.
In this context, Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart makes news again.
He is the number one cheerleader of the worst actions against our people, from the promotion in Capitol Hill of a military aggression on Cuba and the assassination of the Commander in Chief, to the kidnapping of the child Elián González or the encouragement of hunger strikes as a method of struggle of the mercenaries.
About to relinquish his legislative position, Díaz-Balart re-launched at the end of May 2010 the terrorist organization known as La Rosa Blanca, created by his father a few days after the revolutionary victory, and of which he now claims to be President, with the objective of becoming the main boss of the Miami Mafia.
La Rosa Blanca was the first counterrevolutionary organization established in the US by henchmen of Fulgencio Batista's dictatorship who fled Cuba running away from their abuses and crimes.
As of 1959, it bonded with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo to organize an uprising in the Escambray Mountains.
It is remembered for burning down schools, farmers' houses, sugarcane fields and textile factories wounding and maiming a number of people and causing large economic damage.
Why is a US Congressman reactivating such an organization in the 21st century?
What for?
Díaz-Balart's new chicanery can't obscure his intention to receive and channel part of the funds worth millions allocated by the US government for subversion, a booty they all want seize, including other notorious terrorists like Roberto Martín Pérez and his fellow descendants of torturers under Batista's dictatorship who also took part in the re-founding of La Rosa Blanca.
His colleague Ileana Ros-Lethinen, who won the nickname of `the Ferocious She-Wolf' for her shameful role in the kidnapping of Elián González, is accountable for having done more than anyone else during her 1988 political campaign for the release of Orlando Bosch, a close friend of Enrique Ros, the legislator's father.
Bosch and Posada Carriles were the masterminds behind the action against a Cuban airliner that took the lives of 73 people.
In 1991, under the Administration of George Bush, senior, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lethinen interceded with the President to have three US Air Force type 0-2 planes –the military version of the Cessna used in exploration missions-delivered to the Brothers to the Rescue group headed by José Basulto, a Playa Giron ex-mercenary, a terrorist and CIA agent.
On July 19, 1992, as the air operations started, the press for the first time published pictures of the aircraft handed over to that counterrevolutionary group, with the USAF (US Air Force) insignia clearly visible in a report by the editor of the Miami Herald, who made a flight with them.
Incited by members of Congress Ileana Ros and Lincoln Díaz-Balart as well as by other counterrevolutionary organizations in Miami, Brothers to the Rescue staged provocations on Cuban territory to damage the favorable process of talks initiated by the United States and Cuba after the Migratory Accords of 1994 and 1995.
Sponsored by the Miami Mafia, this counterrevolutionary group concentrated every effort in provoking an incident and violated Cuban airspace 25 times in 20 months, including flights over Havana City dropping various objects and leading to the events of February 24, 1996 and the downing of the aircraft. Again, this provocation strained the Cuban-American relations and encouraged the adoption of the Helms-Burton Act, whose content makes it more difficult to find solutions in the future to the two countries feud, as it turned into law all of the measures related to the US economic, commercial and financial blockade.
In 2008, Ileana Ros headed another effort, this time for the presidential pardon of terrorist Eduardo Arocena, the intellectual author of the murder of United Nations Cuban diplomat Felix García Rodríguez in 1980 and the bomb blasts in US public places.
More recently, Ros-Lethinen has played a major role raising funds to pay for Posada Carriles defense attorneys. "The CANF goals are my own," she said. This was her early commitment in 1989 with the terrorist organization that put up her candidacy and used all of its economic and political power to ensure her a seat in the US Congress.
"I approve the possibility of someone murdering Fidel Castro," she said to a British BBC documentary maker in March 2006, while she sat peacefully in her Washington office. Various analysts have addressed the concern and expectations in the US arising from the arrest of Chávez Abarca, particularly among members of Congress and officials whose political careers are very closely linked to Posada, the CIA and CANF.
There are rumors that some of the most anxious are anti-Cuban New Jersey Congressmen Bob Menéndez and Albio Sires. The former has usually sponsored terrorists, from the days when his "adviser" for the community was Alfredo Chumaceiro Anillo who, on July 24, 1976, tried to blow up the Lincoln Center Theater during the performance of a troupe of Cuban artists. Menéndez was a close friend and son-in-law of the late CANF director Arnaldo Monzón Plasencia, who not only made donations to his election campaigns but also contributed $25,000 to partly pay for the terrorist actions of 1997. His personal assistant for the planning and murder of said Cuban diplomat was José Manuel Alvarez, a.k.a. "The Bear." Others involved in that assassination were the convict Arocena, ex chieftain of Omega 7, and hired assassin Pedro Remón Rodríguez who shot our official.
This crime, as many others, is still unpunished. Another revealing link is attorney Guillermo Hernández, one of the most active among Menéndez's consultants. He is now acting as an independent council to Posada Carriles to prevent his extradition to Venezuela and to help him face other charges that might be brought against him. One of Congressman Albio Sires' closest staff is Angel Manuel Alfonso Alemán, a.k.a. "La Cota", a member of the terrorist commando detained in Puerto Rico in 1997 on board a CANF vessel on its way to Margarita Island, Venezuela, with the intention of murdering Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, with high power rifles, during the 7th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State. Alfonso Alemán is one of his main contacts with Posada Carriles and the Miami Mafia.
It doesn't come as a surprise either that the notorious Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which for a long time sponsored a great number of terrorist groups bent on damaging our interests, both inside and outside of the national territory, is now offering the public -just like the others- an image of moderation, while it funds and supplies resources for the provocative actions of the so-called "Ladies in White" and tries to promote domestic discontent, which they pay for with their own money and that allocated by US entities. Targeting the Venezuelan elections If terrorism was no longer fashionable, what was the purpose of Chávez Abarca's trip to Venezuela? What was he doing during his suspicious movements around Central America? Who are behind his actions? What have the US officials done to prevent them from bringing their terrorist plans to fruition in Miami, El Salvador, Guatemala or Cuba? How effective were the measures adopted by the previous Salvadoran government to restrain their freedom to kill? The detainee has already admitted the destabilizing plans he would have carried out in that sister nation, attempting to kill leaders of the Bolivarian process or hurt their image in light of the forthcoming elections on September 26. Chávez Abarca has said that it was his purpose "to burn tires, promote street disturbances, and attack a political party to blame the other." He has revealed that one of the most important of Posada Carriles current plans is to try to sink ships taking oil from Venezuela to Havana. He also said that CANF has destined nearly $100 million to plans against Venezuela, as it feels that the South American country is the "financial backbone" of Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia and Guatemala. According to his statements, at the end of September 2005 they had plans to murder President Hugo Chávez. To that end, Posada instructed to use a .50 Barret rifle. Ever since that mercenary left prison on September 2007, after serving a sentence for trafficking in stolen cars, he started working in coordination with Posada to act violently against Cuba and other ALBA nations, including attempts on the life of President Chávez in exchange for money. At the time of his detention, and in order to ensure such objectives, he had instructions from his bosses in Florida to undertake intelligence actions in Venezuelan territory leading to the creation of the necessary logistics to implement covert operations. This mercenary, who has operated with Posada's support, had taken refuge in Costa Rica, Guatemala and El Salvador. During the preliminary investigation into the case, the detainee has admitted that he was recruited as a mercenary and trained by Posada Carriles himself, who gave him firsthand instructions and paid $2,000 for every bomb blast in Cuba. He received the instructions during meetings in hotels and other places in El Salvador, Costa Rica and Guatemala where he met the terrorists of the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) Arnaldo Monzón Plasencia, Pedro Remón Rodríguez, Guillermo Novo Sampol and Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo. "All of them clearly said that they belong to the Foundation and that Posada is a member of CANF in Miami," said Chávez Abarca. With the acquiescence of CIA and friendly presidents He added that Posada boasted of asking for CIA consent every time he was to carry out one of his violent actions against Cuba, and that on one occasion he had said that the man who had interrupted the conversation was a CIA officer, his handler, who had called him on the phone. He also said that it was easy for him to evade the very few inquiries into his actions conducted by the FBI and the State Intelligence Office in El Salvador. As to Posada's personal connections in El Salvador, he said that he had excellent relations with almost every rightwing president before the current government. He mentioned Calderón Sol, Cristiani and Francisco Flores, with whom he used to go fishing. He also mentioned his friend Rodrigo Avila who was police Commissioner twice. "They all visited the Foundation people in Miami," he added. Chávez Abarca related that in 1997, when the Cuban TV broadcast a program showing Salvadoran terrorist Raúl Ernesto Cruz León exposing his connection to Posada Carriles and CANF, the former instructed him to kill the members of the man's family; thus he now fears for the fate of his wife and children.
Chávez Abarca not only recruited and trained other Central American mercenaries previously arrested in Cuba -one Salvadoran and three Guatemalans-but he also set up bombs at the Aché disco and in the 15th floor of the Meliá Cohíba hotel, on April 12 and 30, 1997, respectively, and another one at the Comodoro hotel, as an International Chess Tournament was taking place with over 40 children.
Some of these children could have been killed as they unknowingly played with the bag where the explosive device was camouflaged. The bomb detected on the eve of May 1st, 1997, in the 15th floor of the Meliá Cohíba hotel contained 1.5 kilograms of the highly-destructive military plastic explosive C-4, capable of razing buildings, bridges and vessels. In that period, the terrorist ring led by Posada Carriles and the CANF brought into the country over 30 explosive devices -18 of them in less than a year-11 of which blew up in various tourist facilities, including the one that caused the death of young Italian tourist Fabio Di Celmo, injuries to others and large material damage. Still, there could have been thousands of fatalities if they had materialized plans on usually crowded recreational and tourist centers like the Tropicana cabaret, discothèques, hotels and monuments, all of them frustrated by the Cuban Sate Security with the people's collaboration. The CANF and those that from the US government incited and permitted this kind of actions had some obvious objectives: to build the perception that these actions had been executed by domestic opposition groups; to trigger panic and instability; to deal a strong blow to tourism; and, to make the national economy succumb to chaos.
Between 1990 and the first years of the current decade, coinciding with these violent actions, the Miami Mafia implemented more than 25 terrorist actions in the US territory, which included bomb blasts, aggressions with fire weapons, verbal threats and provocations against Cuban interests, immigrants, travel agencies, personalities and organizations supportive of Cuba, and even death threats against President William Clinton and his Secretary of Justice Janet Reno for their decision to return the child Elián González...
[To continue reading click on the link below...]
Continuation of Terrorist Plans from the US | Cubadebate
http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2010/09/24/continuation-of-terrorist-plans-from-the-us/
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