EN LA RED - IN THE NET ..3a semana de abril

ESPAÑOL
DESDE SEMLAC: Un servicio trimestral para periodistas y comunicadores/as del Servicio de Noticias de la Mujer de Latinoamérica y el Caribe - El Servicio de Noticias de la Mujer de Latinoamérica y el Caribe (SEMlac) comparte con usted, de manera gratuita, los documentos de sus archivos digitales en constante actualización. Si desea reproducir total o parcialmente cualquier artículo de nuestro archivo, sólo tiene que enviarnos un correo electrónico a: semlac@redsemlac.net indicando el nombre de la publicación y el campo en el que se desenvuelve. Ve a: http://www.redsemlac.net/Archivos.htm

Red Internacional de Periodistas con Visión de Género – Un nuevo paso
Objetivos de la RIPVG

Equipo editorial (redpergenero@gmail.com)

El último encuentro de la Red Internacional de Periodistas con Visión de Género (RIPVG) se realizó entre el 16 y el 18 de noviembre de 2007, en Oviedo, Asturias (España). En tal encuentro, se estableció que la coordinación de la red está a cargo de un grupo colegiado integrado por representantes de redes consolidadas: la Red Nacional de Mexico; PAR (Periodistas de Argentina en Red por un Periodismo no sexista); y la Red del Estado Español. Algunos de los objetivos: promover la sistematización de la aplicación de la visión de género, ejercer el periodismo con igualdad de representación en los medios, ampliar el conocimiento de las redes, promover la capacitación, abrir más medios de comunicación con perspectiva de género, crear alianzas estrechas con movimiento de mujeres y organizaciones afines.
El blog de la RIPVG: http://redintperiodistasconvisiondegenero.blogspot.com/

ADEMAS:

-Observatorios - Violencia y Comunicación
Un monitoreo necesario desde SEMlac-Cuba
-Género y Comunicación – Nuevo Informe Internacional
La mujer en los medios
-Del lenguaje
Diversidad sexual

REPORTAJES ESPECIALES
- Cuba: Nuevos espacios y debates a favor de la diversidad
- Colombia: La trata de personas, mucho más que prostitución
OTRAS INFORMACIONES
Argentina: La tragedia del dengue
Bolivia: Primera condena contra un sacerdote violador
Perú: Campaña busca disminuir cáncer de cuello uterino

TODO EN http://www.redsemlac.net/

DESDE MujeresNet:

Vigilancia extrema del EMP a reporteros de Megamedia
Nicaragua: magistrados favorecen restitución de aborto terapéutico
Elaboran Norma para empresas que incluye equidad de género
Representación política de las mujeres, lejos de la paridad
Violencia, maltrato y explotación vulneran a la infancia: Parlamento Infantil
Mujeres de AL excluidas de las prácticas periodísticas
Lo que México omitió en Cairo+15 sobre las mujeres
CNDH incumple principios de CEDAW: AMDH
Delitos contra periodistas son, desde hoy, competencia federal
Feministas europeas buscan escaño en Parlamento Europeo

MEXICO:

Hallan puerto seguro antiguas prostitutas
> Deambularon por años en las calles; ahora, en la tercera edad, reciben refugio en Casa Xochiquetzal
Rosa Elvira Vargas, para La Jornada , abril 10 2009 - Ésta es una casa de puertas abiertas. Quienes la ocupan tuvieron sólo la calle por hogar durante casi toda su vida; por eso, la mera posibilidad de restringirlas con horarios o permisos representaría en muchos casos cortarles el impulso vital que las mantiene.
Ellas deambularon solas por vías interminables. Y al final de los años, las enfermedades y la pobreza, de la que nunca pudieron salir, las dejaron en un inmenso, inabarcable abandono.

Retrocesos en salud reproductiva - Gabriela Rodríguez para La Jornada , abril 10 2009 - En materia de política de población los indicadores demuestran que México perdió el rumbo y el liderazgo internacional en la última década a consecuencia de las políticas neoliberales y el debilitamiento del Estado laico. Desde el año 2000 se estancó una política de Estado que había logrado amortiguar el rápido crecimiento de la población al extender la educación sexual escolar y la planificación familiar en los centros de salud, y que en los 90 empezó a superar la visión demografista para enfocarse en la salud sexual y los derechos reproductivos, así como en la lucha contra las desigualdades sociales y de género, visión que se impulsó hace 15 años con la Conferencia Internacional de Población y Desarrollo realizada en El Cairo.
A principios del presente mes, en la 42 sesión de la Comisión de Población y Desarrollo, convocada para evaluar los compromisos de El Cairo, el gobierno de México presentó un informe sesgado y, por primera vez, no fueron invitadas las organizaciones de la sociedad civil (OSC) para suscribirlo conjuntamente. Así que al lado del reporte oficial se presentó un Informe alterno que acusa importantes retrocesos y que firman más de 50 organizaciones mexicanas y redes de la sociedad civil.

La censura travesti

> El Canal Once huele a podrido /I, – por Fernando del Paso para La Jornada abril 14 de 2009. - Como ciudadano y como escritor, como amante de la cultura, me siento calificado para dar una opinión sobre los cambios que ha sufrido –sufrido es la palabra exacta– el canal que durante 50 años se llamó Canal Once, y hoy Once TV México. Pero hay algo más que me autoriza: durante 14 años trabajé en agencias de publicidad, en las cuales no sólo aprendí cómo se manipula la conciencia del consumidor: también los secretos y trucos de la mercadotecnia y, con ella, de las estrategias mediáticas de la radio y la televisión. Durante dos de esos años fui uno de los tres escritores de un programa que producía la agencia Walter Thompson para el Servicio de Información de la embajada de Estados Unidos, llamado El mundo en marcha, que se transmitía todos los sábados a las ocho de la noche por la XEW. Fue entonces que también aprendí cómo se manipulan las noticias.

ENGLISH:

BOOKS - How abortion changed the world
>From a sketchy underground doctor to the American fight against communism, a look at the unlikely forces that helped spread global family planning.
Editor's note: The following is excerpted with permission from "The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power and the Future of the World" (2009, the Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group USA Inc.)

By Michelle Goldberg - April 10, 2009 | In the 1950s, before he became notorious, Harvey Karman was a psychology student at UCLA, attending on the GI bill. Writing a paper on the emotional impact of abortion led him into the abortion underground, where he helped a number of desperate coeds find ways to terminate their pregnancies. "It seemed like every guy who got a girlfriend pregnant, everyone who had remotely heard about me, said, 'This guy knows about abortion,'" he told Ms. magazine in 1975. Often he'd help young women make their way to Mexico to end their pregnancies. Some of them came through the procedures fine, but some came home sick or injured, and Karman would take them to the school's medical center for treatment. Frustrated with this system, he eventually started performing abortions himself.

Women and development - By Nicholas Kristof , for On the Ground (NYT blogs) , April 12, 2009, - There’s a tendency to see women’s rights in developing countries as worthy but minor, as secondary in a world facing so many vast challenges of war, terrorism and environmental degradation. My wife and I, in our forthcoming book on this topic, try to argue that in fact you can’t address these larger issues of poverty, environment or security unless you also address the rights and status of women in these countries, and I just finished reading a new book that makes this case particularly eloquently. The book is Michelle Goldberg’s “The means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World.”

Faith Groups Increasingly Lose Gay Rights Fight
By Jacqueline L. Salmon. Washington Post, April 10, 2009 - Faith organizations and individuals who view homosexuality as sinful and refuse to provide services to gay people are losing a growing number of legal battles that they say are costing them their religious freedom.
The lawsuits have resulted from states and communities that have banned discrimination based on sexual orientation. Those laws have created a clash between the right to be free from discrimination and the right to freedom of religion, religious groups said, with faith losing.

How Gays Won a Marriage Victory

> For 7 Years, Activists Eyed a Seemingly Unlikely Target: Iowa. By Keith B. Richburg for Washington Post , April 15, 2009 - New York -- For most of the country, the unanimous decision this month by the Iowa Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage was an unexpected and seemingly random victory for a movement that has long drawn its deepest support from major cities in liberal coastal states.

The gay marriage apocalypse is coming! By Abigail Kramer for Salon.com, April 14, 2009 - Just in case the subtle imagery and delicately layered messaging of last week's anti-gay-marriage apocalypse ad went over your head, the helpful folks at Morality in Media have endeavored to set the record straight. The Christian advocacy group sent out a press release with the mission of "Connecting the Dots: The Line Between Gay Marriage and Mass Murders."

Vatican Justice: Pedophiles Stay in the Church, While Priests Who Ordain Women Are Excommunicated - By Bill Frogameni, for Ms. Magazine. Posted at Alternet.org on April 9, 2009 - What happens if a Catholic priest molests children?
Usually, he's protected by the Church hierarchy. Maybe he'll eventually have his parish or diocese taken away, or be switched to another one -- often after years of serial abuse. But there's a good chance he'll stay in the Church.

So what happens if a Catholic priest publicly supports ordaining women? Well, then he's excommunicated on the double.

"Nearly 5,000 Catholic priests [in the U.S.] have sexually abused over 12,000 Catholic children…but they were not excommunicated," says Father Roy Bourgeois, who faced the latter scenario after helping celebrate what the Vatican considers to be an illegitimate ordination mass in August 2008. Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran with a Purple Heart who became a prominent peace activist, stood with the trailblazers of the female ordination movement in Lexington, Ky., to make Janice Sevre-Duszynska a Catholic priest.

How Can We Stop the Epidemic of Killing Women and Children By Returning Soldiers
By Ann Jones *, Tomdispatch.com. Posted at Alternet.org on April 6, 2009.

> No society that sends its men abroad for war can expect them to come home and be at peace, as returning Iraqi vets are proving in alarming numbers.

Wake up, America. The boys are coming home, and they're not the boys who went away.
On New Year's Day, the New York Times welcomed the advent of 2009 by reporting that, since returning from Iraq, nine members of the Fort Carson, Colorado, Fourth Brigade Combat team had been charged with homicide. Five of the murders they were responsible for took place in 2008 when, in addition, "charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault" at the base rose sharply. Some of the murder victims were chosen at random; four were fellow soldiers -- all men. Three were wives or girlfriends.

*Ann Jones is a journalist and the author of a groundbreaking series of books on violence against women, including Next Time She'll Be Dead, on battering, and Women Who Kill, a contemporary classic to be reissued this fall by the Feminist Press, with a new introduction from which this post is adapted. She serves as a gender advisor to the UN.

Targeted Killing of Women's Rights Activist Shocks Afghans
by Jessica Leeder, Published on April 13, 2009 by The Globe and Mail (Canada) - Kandahar, Afghanistan - In the hour before her killers pulled up beside the rickshaw and shot her at close range, Sitara Achakzai turned to a female politician riding beside her with a strange look.
"I'm not afraid of death," said Ms. Achakzai, a well-known women's rights advocate and one of three elected women sitting on Kandahar's provincial council. "I can go and get killed and it's no big deal."
Ms. Achakzai's friend, a provincial councillor who narrowly escaped death in a bombing at council headquarters less than two weeks ago, was so stunned by the comment, made just before the rickshaw pulled up to her stop, she got out without asking what prompted the revelation. Not long after, news came yesterday that she would never have another chance.
Ms. Achakzai, a dual Afghan and German citizen who returned to help rebuild her country in 2004, was shot at close range by gunmen on motorbikes before her rickshaw could finish the slow crawl back to her home.

A Voice of Hope for Afghanistan's Women - by Frud Bezhan, Published on April 15, 2009 by The Age (Australia), posted at Common Dreams - For the women of Afghanistan, it is yet another brutal message - that death awaits those who choose a public life.
Sitara Achakzai - a women's rights campaigner - was gunned down in the streets of Kandahar on Sunday.
She is among several high-profile women assassinated the Taliban have in recent years. But it is merely the most public example of the extreme violence women face in this embattled country, where rape and murder are widespread.
Malalai Joya [1] understands better than most the oppression of Afghan women - and the danger of speaking out. The women's rights activist and member of Afghanistan's national parliament has lived in hiding for five years and never spends more than 24 hours at the same house. Her only contact with the world is by infrequent phone calls and, if there is electricity, the internet. She sleeps, eats and breathes in the shadow of six heavily armed bodyguards and wears a burqa to conceal her identity.

Afghan Law Ignites Debate on Religion, Sex
>Cabinet Members, Other Leaders Protest Constraints on Minority Shiite Women

By Pamela Constable,for Washington Post , April 11, 2009 - Kabul, April 10 -- When Afghanistan's government quietly enacted a sweeping law last month restricting the rights of minority Shiite women, few Afghans were aware of what it said. But since the law's contents became known here just over a week ago, it has provoked an extraordinary public debate on the once-taboo topic of religion and sex in this conservative Muslim nation and spurred an unprecedented protest by senior officials.

The law, which was approved by parliament and signed by President Hamid Karzai, codifies proper behavior for Shiite couples and families in the most intimate detail. It requires women to seek their husband's permission to leave home, except for "culturally legitimate" purposes such as work or weddings, and to submit to their sexual demands unless ill or menstruating.

Afghan Women to Obama: We Must Be at the Table!

> The author, a global affairs professor who has worked extensively in Afghanistan, talks to Dr. Masooda Jalal, a political leader and the subject of a new documentary. Her message: women must be involved in peace making; the Taliban and warlords are “only powerful because we allow them to be.”
by Patricia DeGennaro for the Women Media Center, April 2, 2009 - United States President Barak Obama unveiled his new strategy for Afghanistan last week. In it he pledged both military and civil support to Afghanistan. “And,” he went out of his way to say, “we will continue to support the basic human rights of all Afghans—including women and girls.” Despite this, Afghan women continue to be absent from the discussion when it comes to their futures and the future of Afghanistan.

As I write this, Brussels is hosting the largest international conference to date on Afghanistan and Afghan women are conspicuously missing. It seems that international rhetoric for women does not translate into any vigorous action.

Ironically, while leaders sit and plan her future, Dr. Masooda Jalal, the only woman who ran for the Afghan presidency, tours the United States discussing a new documentary, FRONTRUNNER, a film that brilliantly illustrates the challenges she faced running for top office.

Afghan Women Protest New Law on Home Life - By Dexter Filkins, for New York Times, April 16, 2009 - Kabul, Afghanistan — The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street when they were spotted by a mob of men.

“Get out of here, you whores!” the men shouted. “Get out!”

The women scattered as the men moved in.

“We want our rights!” one of the women shouted, turning to face them. “We want equality!”

Pakistan: women's quest for entitlement

Pippa Virdee * 9 - 04 – 2009 for Open Democracy

> A generation of Pakistani women striving to affirm their rights in the public sphere can draw on a rich history to which education is central, says Pippa Virdee.

The emancipation of women is often linked to the progress of a society in transformation from a feudal society to a modern state. The story of women in the country that became Pakistan can indeed be told in such terms: as part of a struggle for advancement with education at its centre, and linked at critical moments to wider goals of national emancipation and social reform.
During the past thirty years, however, the quest for women's rights in the context of such reform has been under increasing pressure from a trend toward state-sponsored Islamisation. This trend, which began under the authoritarian rule of Zia ul-Haq (who seized power in a military coup in 1977), is symbolised by the punitive flogging of a young woman in the newly Talibanised region of Swat. The fighting ground, it appears, is always women's space.

• Pippa Virdee is senior research fellow in south Asian history at De Montfort University. Her research interests include the history of the Punjab, Muslim women's experience of partition, and the south Asian diaspora in Britain. She is the convenor of the Punjab Research Group

Women Erased in Israel, Flogged in Pakistan and Restricted in Afghanistan (text and video) - By Robert Mackey AND Sharon Otterman for The Lede (NYT blogs) April 3, 2009 - Update | April 6 A related post was added to this blog on Monday: “New Afghan Law on Women on Hold.”

Updated | 7:42 p.m. The news this week has been bad for supporters of women’s rights in at least three parts of the world. On Friday, The Associated Press reported that Israeli newspapers “aimed at ultra-Orthodox Jewish readers” digitally manipulated a photograph of the new Israeli government, to remove two female cabinet ministers, Limor Livnat and Sofa Landver. The photograph was taken at an official ceremony welcoming the new Israeli leadership on Wednesday at the residence of the president of Israel, Shimon Peres.

Film about Gay Muslims Wins GLAAD Award

Editor’s Note: For over five years, director Parvez Sharma traveled through Iran, Egypt, Turkey and India, 12 countries in all, filming gay Muslim men and women, who try to embrace both their faith and their sexuality. “A Jihad for Love” has won numerous awards, most recently as Best Documentary in the GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) awards in March. Sandip Roy, host of “New America Now,” interviewed Sharma when his film came out in 2007.
for New America Media, , Q&A, Parvez Sharma & Sandip Roy, Apr 12, 2009

When you started making "A Jihad For Love,” I heard that you were filming stories of Muslims in America, but you decided against that. Why?
There is a difference in your life when you actually wake up to the call to prayer you know, and you hear it over loud speakers five times a day. I realized during the making of the film that the Muslim experience of living in a Muslim country, or in an intensely Muslim community like in South Africa, is in many ways much more complicated than the diasporic Muslim experience, which is complicated in different ways, but makes for a way different film I think.

The Emerging Secrets of Guatemala's Disappeared

By Anne-Marie O'Connor, Special to The Washington Post , April 11, 2009 - Guatemala City -- For years the national police dumped millions of old files in a onetime munitions depot inhabited by bats.

About two weeks ago, authorities opened the door to the warehouse, stacked floor to ceiling with musty papers. Now Guatemalans are using the documents to search for information about loved ones murdered or disappeared in the long dirty war against critics of security forces.

"For 25 years we knew absolutely nothing," said Alejandra García Montenegro, 26, who was a baby when her father, labor leader Fernando García, left for a meeting in February 1984 -- when Guatemala was under military rule -- and never came home.

"It was as if the earth had swallowed up my father and he had never existed," she said. "Then a paper turns up that confirms our suspicion that he had been captured by state security."

The files were hidden by the national police and their protectors until 2005, when civil authorities accidentally discovered the warehouse. Some of the logs date to the 1880s, but the most significant archives were amassed during Guatemala's civil war, when an estimated 200,000 people died and 40,000 disappeared between 1960 and 1996.
Guatemalan human rights advocates describe the files as the largest such archive ever released in Latin America. Archivists believe there are more than 80 million documents. Many pages are in chaotic, unsorted piles, green and yellow with mold. Others are stacked neatly.

Sarah Palin Suffers Massive Political Fallout from Her Latest Nutcase Nominee -By Max Blumenthal, The Daily Beast, Posted on April 14, 2009 in Alternet.com - While priming her political machine for a likely 2012 presidential primary run, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has fomented a scandal that threatens to further erode her reputation in the Last Frontier.

In March, Palin nominated Wayne Anthony Ross for attorney general. Ross, a colorful far-right lawyer and longtime Palin ally who sports his initials, W.A.R., on his Hummer’s vanity plates, was once considered a shoo-in for confirmation. However, his nomination was thrown into grave peril when his opponents presented evidence that he called homosexuals “degenerates,” hailed the “courage” of a student who lionized the Ku Klux Klan, vowed to undermine the sovereignty of Native American tribes, and allegedly defended men who rape their wives. According to two sources close to the confirmation hearings, Palin may ask Ross to withdraw before his appointment comes to a vote.

For Gov. Palin, a Rough Return to the Day Job - By William Yardley for the New York Times, published on April 15, 2009 - Juneau, Alaska — Before Tina Fey and “Drill, baby, drill,” there was mud season here in the Alaskan capital. This soggy, socked-in spring has been no exception, but it sure has been different in other ways. For Gov. Sarah Palin, Republican meteor, getting back to governing has not been easy.

A Possible Step Toward Setting the Biological Clock , By Rob Stein, The Washington Post, April, 13, 2009 - Scientists have produced strong new evidence challenging one of the most fundamental assumptions in biology: that female mammals, including women, are born with all the eggs they will ever have. In a provocative set of experiments involving mice, Chinese researchers have shown for the first time that an adult mammal can harbor primitive cells in her ovaries that can become new eggs and produce healthy offspring, they reported yesterday.

Female Vets Struggling to Get Treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - Published on Monday, April 13, 2009 by NBC News - The war in Iraq has been now been raging for six years.
It's the first war where women in the U.S. military are in combat roles.
Even years after serving in Iraq, female veterans are still adjusting to civilian life.
At a women's veterans art show in San Francisco vets say the six year anniversary of the war brings back painful memories.
"The 6 year anniversary has me thinking about the friends that I lost. And the friends that I still have who have been forever scared by the war," said Iraq war veteran Lindsey Rousseau-Burnett.

The woman who made it good to be bad
>Is Helen Gurley Brown's legacy more than just sex quizzes and cleavage? A new biography of Cosmo's founder proclaims her a pioneer of today's raunchy, unapologetic brand of feminism.

By Laura Miller, for Salon.com, , April 12, 2009 | The long, fabulous life of Helen Gurley Brown has stretched between the heydays of two iconic blondes: Lorelei Lee (the gold-digging flapper created by Anita Loos and best known for declaring that diamonds are a girl's best friend) and Carrie Bradshaw, the shoe-worshiping sex columnist and everygirl heroine of "Sex and the City." Jennifer Scanlon, a professor of gender and women's studies at Bowdoin College and the author of the first full-length biography of Brown, "Bad Girls Go Everywhere," astutely compares her subject to these two figures in the first pages of her book, undeterred by the fact that both Lorelei and Carrie are fictional. In a way, so is Helen Gurley Brown -- and not just because Natalie Wood played a completely fabricated version of her in the 1964 film ostensibly based on Brown's bestselling book "Sex and the Single Girl." Like all self-created women (or men), Brown is part real person, part mythical creature.

HBO declares "Women's Studies" major - By Judy Berman for Salon.com, April 15, 2009 - Here's one to file under "TV shows we never saw coming": Reuters is reporting that HBO and "Daily Show"/"Colbert Report" executive producer Ben Karlin is developing a new comedy series called "Women's Studies." Julie White will likely star as "a onetime famous author who, after a tumultuous period as a feminist It Girl, is now a professor at a small liberal arts college in the Northeast." White is also on board as a co-writer and producer.

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates - by Johann Hari, Published on Monday, April 13, 2009 by Huffington Post – Who imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.

Related article by The Progress Report:
AN INTERNATIONAL PROBLEM: University of Kentucky assistant professor Robert Farley, while noting thatthe actual financial and economic impact of piracy is extremely small writes that "the industrial nations of Europe, Asia and North America are the primary beneficiaries of free ocean transit. ... The navies of these states have a responsibility to keep the seas free, and this means concerted, multilateral action against Somali pirates." Axe also writes that "a wholesale revamping of American strategy for defeating pirates" is needed. "The U.S. must push for improved cooperation by all the nations with a stake in the conflict. The Alabama incident should generate the political capital to make such change possible." In Somalia, as in Afghanistan, security threats are generated by a lack of governance, a larger and more complex problem that cannot simply be solved by resolute shows of force. Somalia has had no effective government since 1991. With no coast guard or military to defend its territorial waters, Somalis, many of whose livelihoods depended on fishing, "could only watch as foreign trawlers emptied the seas of fish. To survive, many took up piracy instead." Somali government spokesman Abdi Haji Gobdoon told the Christian Science Monitor, "At the moment, we have no ability to protect the waters or defend against the pirates." The current government controls only a small portion of the capital, and little of its 1,879 miles of coastline. "No one wants to help us with this. I don't know why, because it is a problem for everyone now," Gobdoon said, noting that concerned nations "send ships, but we need stability on land."

The Progress Report :SIX BUSH OFFICIALS TO BE INDICTED BY SPANISH PROSECUTORS: Human Rights lawyer and Daily Beast contributor Scott Horton reports that Spanish prosecutors will announce today that they are moving forward with the indictment of six top Bush officials who are charged with providing legal cover for torture.The investigation deals specifically with the case of five Spanish citizens who were detained at Guantanamo Bay and allegedly tortured there.The Bush 6, as Horton calls them, are former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes. The State Department has been in constant contact with the Spanish government since the case was initially filed on March 17. During a meeting at the American embassy in Madrid, "Spanish prosecutors advised the Americans that they would suspend their investigation if at any point the United States were to undertake an investigation of its own into these matters." Horton reports, however, that when "pressed to know whether any such investigation was pending," they received no answer. Still, Obama faces the ongoing issue of Republicans "promising to 'go nuclear' and filibuster" his legal appointments if he authorizes the Justice Department to release the torture memos written by the Bush 6.

The Progress Report OBAMA ADMINISTRATION DEFENDS ABILITY TO IMPRISON DETAINEES INDEFINITELY:Early this month, a federal judge ruled that "some prisoners held by the United States military in Afghanistan have a right to challenge their imprisonment," citing the legal right to habeas corpus that the U.S. Supreme Court granted to detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison. However, on Friday, the Obama administration said it would appeal the ruling, signaling that it "was not backing down on its efforts to maintain a the power to imprison terrorism suspects for extended periods without judicial oversight." In an editorial slamming the Obama administration's position, the New York Times today wrote, "In the absence of a fair review process that complies with international and military law, there is no reason to feel confident that everyone detained at Bagram deserves to be there." Salon's Glenn Greenwald remarked on Obama's evolution on the issue, noting that when the Supreme Court granted habeas rights to Guantanamo prisoners last fall, Obama praised the Court's "rejection of the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo." In fact, speaking on the Senate floor in 2006, Obama declared, "But restricting somebody's right to challenge their imprisonment indefinitely is not going to make us safer. In fact, recent evidence shows it is probably making us less safe."

What We Do And Don't Know About US Medical Personnel and Interrogations
by Sheri Fink, Published on April 10, 2009 by Pro Publica- This week's posting of a confidential International Committee of the Red Cross report [1] [1] (PDF) about the treatment of 14 "high value detainees" held in secret CIA prisons has again raised a nettlesome question [2] [2]: In exactly what ways were medical personnel [3] [3] involved in abusive detainee interrogations?
The report, put online [1] [1] by The New York Review of Books in connection with articles [4] [4] written [5] [5] by Mark Danner, was based on interviews [6] [6] with the detainees who had been kept isolated from each other. ICRC media delegate Bernard Barrett confirmed in an e-mail that the report was authentic. "We have publicly deplored that this confidential material was made public as that was never our intent." (The ICRC provides this explanation of its role [6] [6].)
The detainees reported that health personnel generally provided them with high-quality medical care, but also said that some health workers oversaw or participated in "ill-treatment" such as beatings and waterboarding.

CODEPINK Calls on Congress to Reject Obama Request for $83 Billion for Wars

> Urges rapid withdrawal, diplomacy, investment in American needs
Washington - April 10 - Representing the voice of millions of Americans and those worldwide, CODEPINK calls on Congress to reject President Obama's outrageous request for an additional $83.4 billion to be spent on ineffectual, destabilizing, immoral wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Sorceresses, the first feminists - By Mirta Rodríguez - Santo Domingo, March for SEMlac.– Sorceresses became the first feminists when they began to struggle for their rights, lessened human pain, faced oppression, refused to subdue, healed mind and body, developed an ancestral wisdom, exhibited intuition, a sixth sense, a hunch or talent to feed our feminist vocation, and managed to survive the Inquisition.

It Pays to Invest in the Undocumented - by Pramila Jayapal *, for New America Media, Apr 11, 2009 - America is again at a turning point. In our current economic crisis, we now have a choice: to cast blame on the vulnerable, as we have done in the past, or to find the “better angels of our nature” and look to evidence-based ideas to provide the foundation for common-sense solutions.
Some states in the country have chosen to respond to the nation’s financial crisis, threats to national security and need for reductions in public expenditures by imposing harsh anti-immigrant laws and policies. Washington state offers a different possibility, where last year, Gov. Chris Gregoire established through Executive Order a New Americans Policy Council to offer recommendations to the Governor on how the state can better support immigrants as they their build lives. As one of the states with an immigrant population that is exceeding the national average, Washington is a microcosm of the demographic and workforce trends taking place in many parts of the country.
A new report titled, “Building Washington’s Future: Immigrant Workers’ Contributions to State’s Economy” released April 8, shows how immigrants help the state thrive -- by paying taxes, creating a healthy consumer base and filling key roles in important industries. The report, authored by Seattle-based immigrant advocacy organization OneAmerica, examines the reality of immigrant contributions versus the rhetoric. It builds on and reinforces similar results found in previous reports issued in states as diverse as Nevada, Colorado, Nebraska and New York.

• Pramila Jayapal is Executive Director of OneAmerica (formerly Hate Free Zone), a Seattle-based nonprofit organization committed to advancing democracy and justice.

Restoring Accountability to U.S. Immigration Enforcement

Editor’s Note: In response to the civil rights abuses being documented under the government’s immigration enforcement programs, the National Week of Action (April 8 to 15) spotlights the need for greater accountability at the Department of Homeland Security, write Jacqueline Esposito of Detention Watch Network and Jumana Musa of the Rights Working Group. Immigration Matters regularly features the views of immigration experts and advocates.
by Jacqueline Esposito and Jumana Musa for New America Media, Apr 14, 2009 - This year, more than 440,000 people will be held in immigration detention. There is a common misperception surrounding those who are held in immigration custody. The reality is that the United States government detains women, children, the elderly, asylum seekers, victims of torture, long-time lawful permanent residents and, in far too many instances, American citizens.
These detainees are held for months, or even years, while they await a final determination on their immigration status. Frequently, individuals are detained without a judicial hearing, or even access to an attorney. Because the government has ruled that immigrants in removal proceedings have no Sixth Amendment right to counsel --under the theory that immigration law is civil in nature while the Sixth Amendment applies to criminal proceedings -- more than 84 percent of people in immigration detention are not represented by a lawyer. In a nation that prides itself on the rule of law and due process protections, this is a startling and disturbing fact.

Related article: Citizens Held As Immigrants msnbc.msn.com — In a drive to crack down on illegal immigrants, the United States has locked up or thrown out dozens, probably many more, of its own citizens over the past eight years. An investigation has documented 55 such cases. These citizens are detained for anything from a day to five years. It is illegal to deport U.S. citizens or detain them for immigration violations. Yet citizens still end up in detention because the system is overwhelmed. The result is the detention of citizens with the fewest resources: the mentally ill, minorities, the poor, children and those with outstanding criminal warrants, ranging from unpaid traffic tickets to failure to show up for probation hearings. Most at risk are Hispanics, who made up the majority of the cases.

Report: 75% of immigrants deported for crimes committed non-violent crimes (From The Progress Report) :A report by Human Rights Watch finds that "the U.S. government's stepped-up enforcement in recent years has led to the deportation of hundreds of thousands of immigrants convicted of nonviolent crimes," despite the government's claims that it is prioritizing violent criminals. According to the report, nearly 75 percent of the 897,000 immigrants deported between 1997 and 2007 after serving criminal sentences were nonviolent offenders, and one-fifth were legal permanent residents. "The top reasons for deportation during the 10-year period were entering the U.S. illegally, driving while under the influence of alcohol, assault and immigration crimes, such as selling false citizenship papers." The report comes just days after the AP released an investigation showing the the U.S. has imprisoned or even deported "dozens, probably many more" of legal U.S. citizens. "A monthslong AP investigation has documented 55 such cases, on the basis of interviews, lawsuits and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. These citizens are detained for anything from a day to five years. Immigration lawyers say there are actually hundreds of such cases." Last week, Obama administration officials said the White House's push to enact comprehensive immigration reform could come as early as this year.

Noam Chomsky on the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, US Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire *
> Part II of our conversation with MIT professor and author Noam Chomsky on the global economic crisis, healthcare, the media, US foreign policy, the expanding wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, resistance to American empire, and more.
"As far as policy is concerned, unless [Obama] is under a lot of pressure from activist sectors, he's not going to go beyond what he's presented himself as in actual policy statements or cabinet choices and so on: a centrist Democrat [who's] going to basically continue Bush's polices, maybe in a more modulated way," says Chomsky.
Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/13/noam_chomsky_on_the_global_economic