Oaxaca Assembly Defining Actions
Mexico, Nov 11 (Prensa Latina) The congress of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) continues analyzing future resistance actions Saturday, aimed to achieve the resignation of local governor Ulises Ruiz.
After the APPO provisional leadership was dissolved in the meeting s inaugural session Friday, its members will delineate the statutes, the declaration of principles, and action program of the organization today.
About 600 delegates from different popular organizations and local leaders, as well as members forming the APPO barricades since June 17 are attending the forum.
Since then, the APPO has focused on the demanded resignation of Ruiz, Governor of Oaxaca, who is accused of instigating violent repression against the Oaxaca social movement.
Last week, two protesters and an independent American journalist and activist, Brad Will, who came here to support the teachers' strike were killed by gunfire. The shootings prompted Mexican President Vicente Fox to send in 4,500 federal police officers, who were met by a hail of rocks as they smashed through barricades and drove demonstrators out of the city square on Sunday. Protestors have maintained control of the rest of the city.Former CIA Director is proposed to take over as Defense Secretary
Robert Gates, President Bush's nominee to become the new U.S. Defense Secretary, is a former CIA Director with decades of experience in the national security field. He has also served as the president of a major university in Mr. Bush's home state of Texas.
Gates has been a member of the board of directors for corporations and financial institutions, including NACCO Industries, Inc., Brinker International, Inc., Parker Drilling Company, Science Applications International Corporation, and VoteHere, a technology company which seeks to provide cryptography and computer software security for the electronic election industry.
Gates had initially been proposed by Ronald Reagan to become director of the CIA in 1987, but his alleged involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal caused him to remove himself from the senate hearings. He called the election of Marxist leader Daniel Ortega an“unacceptable” course, arguing that the U.S. should do everything “in its power short of invasion to put that regime out.” Gates was appointed Director of the CIA in November of 1991. Gates still needs to be confirmed by the Senate to become Secretary of Defense.
Ortega confirmed as president of Nicaragua
MANAGUA, November 7 — Daniel Ortega was confirmed as president-elect of Nicaragua after 91.48% of the ballots had been counted by the Electoral Supreme Court (CSE).
Ortega obtained 38.7% of the 2,244,215 valid votes counted as of that announcement, and was showing a lead of nine percentage points over his closest rival, which is why his victory was declared irreversible, PL reported.
Former banker Eduardo Montealegre, of the Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance (ALN) received 29% of the vote, while José Rizo of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (PLC) was in third place with 26.21%.
After the announcement following the fifth and last vote count by the CSE, Montealegre conceded defeat and congratulated the victor.
Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, a former Marxist revolutionary who fought a U.S.-backed insurgency in the 1980s, returned to the presidency calling for reconciliation, stability and a renewed effort to pull Nicaragua out of poverty.
(From Human Rights Watch)
U.S.: Congress Should Reject Detainee Bill-
Denies Right of Habeas Corpus, Defines Enemy Combatant Too Broadly
The U.S. Congress should vote down the draft military commissions and detainee treatment bill, Human Rights Watch said today. In denying the fundamental right of habeas corpus to detainees held abroad, defining “unlawful enemy combatants” in a dangerously broad manner, and limiting protections against detainee mistreatment, the bill would undermine the rule of law and America’s ability to protect its own citizens from unjust treatment at the hands of other governments.
In its immediate practical impact, the most damaging of the bill’s provisions is clearly its “court-stripping” provision, which would bar detainees in U.S. custody anywhere around the world from challenging the legality of their detention or their treatment via habeas corpus actions, even if they have been subjected to torture. Innocent people could be locked up forever, without ever having the facts of their case reviewed by an independent court.
If held to be constitutional, the court-stripping provision would result in more than 200 pending cases being ejected from the courts, including the case that resulted in the Supreme Court’s landmark detainee ruling in June.
The bill has other dangerous provisions as well. The latest version of the legislation includes an extremely dangerous expansion in the bill’s definition of “unlawful enemy combatant” – a phrase used by the administration to justify holding a combatant outside of the usual protections given to combatants by the Geneva Conventions. It now explicitly deems persons who have “purposefully and materially supported” hostilities against the United States to be combatants, an unprecedented redefinition of “combatant” that could potentially cover a range of innocent people. Financing and support for terrorist activities are already criminal offenses in the civilian justice system. This definition would pervert any reasonable concept of what a combatant is.
Moreover, the provision also gives carte blanche to the Pentagon to call anyone an “unlawful enemy combatant.” All it requires is that the person be deemed an unlawful combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal (the administrative bodies used at Guantánamo) or “another competent tribunal” established under presidential or military authority.
The bill does, however, narrow the scope of the War Crimes Act; it bars the Geneva Conventions from being invoked in any suit against the U.S. government, gives the president power to interpret “the meaning and application” of the Geneva Conventions, and prohibits the courts from relying on foreign or international law sources in deciding cases involving certain violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
The bill’s court-stripping provisions have drawn critical congressional scrutiny. At Senate hearings on Monday, former diplomats and others underscored the damaging implications of such rules for the treatment of U.S. soldiers who are captured abroad. If the U.S. supports stripping captives of all legal protections, they emphasized, so might other countries.
WASHINGTON -- The Senate unanimously approved $70 billion more for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan Friday as part of a record Pentagon budget.
The bill, now on its way to the White House for President Bush's signature, totals $448 billion. It was passed by a 100-0 vote after minimal debate.
The bill passed on Friday night brings the amount spent by the US on wars and other military operations to $507 billion since September 11, 2001. Total defense spending has reached over $2.19 trillion dollars in the past 5 years, plus over $137 billion on homeland security. In the Federal budget, there are plans to cut over $7 billion dollars from education spending over the next 4 years.
Legislation to convene military trials to prosecute terror suspects was also passed by the house. However, a program validating a warrantless wiretapping program has been postponed until after the mid-term elections.
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