The 411
The SeeingBlack.com 411
By the Red-Eye Crew, Compiled with Dispatches from DemocracyNow.org
May 2, 2008, 13:16

“Robocalls” Discourage African American Votes in North Carolina
In North Carolina, voter suppression is being feared over a new round of automated phone calls targeting black households. The unidentified robocall features an African American voice falsely telling voters they must first send in a “registration packet” before they’re allowed to vote.
Robocall Voice: “Hello. This is Lamont Williams. In the next few days, you will receive a voter registration packet in the mail. All you need to do is fill it out, sign it, date and return your application. Then you will be able to vote and make your voice heard. Please return your registration form when it arrives. Thank you."
Similar robocalls were used before the Ohio and Virginia primaries earlier this year. North Carolina voting rights advocates are calling for an investigation.


Rev. Jesse Jackson Calls for Emergency Food Aid to Haiti, Devastated by Longtime US-Led Interference, Subversion
Reverend Jesse Jackson has just returned from Haiti, where the World Food Program is warning of a “major crisis” if international donors fail to help feed Haiti’s poor. Prices of rice, beans and cooking oil have doubled in the past few months. The soaring food prices have had a devastating effect: two-thirds of Haitians live on less than a dollar a day, and 47 percent are undernourished.

REV. JESSE JACKSON: It is amazing, the relationship between the May Day protests. Where our trade policies drove Mexican farmers out of business, they’re now coming across the border to survive. American trade policy has driven the rice and sugar farmers out of business in Haiti, so they are starving. And so, the need for some comprehensive, fair trade policy and immigration policy must apply to Haitians, as well as others around the globe who are fighting for their basic human rights.

We’re calling for emergency assistance for Haiti. I mean, 60 percent of the people make a dollar a day or less, and the price of rice has doubled in the last two months. And so, they are literally starving. ...I talked with President Preval. They want for this year 360,000 tons of rice, 180,000 tons of wheat, and then cooking oil, so they can survive until they can get their farmland moving again, because we dropped our subsidized rice on them. Not only did we drop subsidized rice on them, they had to buy rice from us, as it were. And so, they took a double hit. But they really are capable of being an exporter of rice, an exporter of sugar. So they now need, beside the emergency food and water and medicine, they now need tractors and irrigation system, and they can begin to come back again. And we, I think, can do no less.


Protests Mark 5 Years Since “Mission Accomplished”
Meanwhile, in Washington, hundreds of peace activists gathered outside the White House Thursday to mark the fifth anniversary of President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech. On May 1, 2003, Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and declared an end to major combat operations in Iraq. Jeremy Funk of Americans United for Change said the death toll since makes it a tragic anniversary.

Jeremy Funk: “Well, we’re here to note a very tragic anniversary. Five years ago today, President Bush arrogantly boarded the USS Abraham Lincoln, strutted across the deck and declared mission accomplished and all major combat operations were over. Well, here we are five years later, and since that day nearly 4,000 more American troops have died, nearly 30,000 more have been wounded.”
A group of Congress members also marked the anniversary. Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg said the “mission accomplished” speech underscores President Bush’s incompetence.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg: “Five years ago today, President Bush made an outrageous claim, a claim that has become the symbol of his incompetence and the failure in Iraq. After landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln like a conquering hero, he even put on the dress. He stood out under a banner reading ‘Mission Accomplished’ and declared, quote, ‘Major combat operations in Iraq have ended.’ Like almost everything the President has done on Iraq, his claim was flat-out wrong.


Exxon Posts $10.89B Quarterly Profit
Another huge quarterly profit for the oil giant Exxon Mobil is sparking calls for increased congressional regulation of the energy industry. On Thursday, Exxon reported first quarter earnings of $10.89 billion, up 17 percent from last year. In a statement, Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said, “Oil companies are racking up obscene profits left and right while American families are stretched to the limit by skyrocketing gas prices. It’s high time for Big Oil to pay its fair share.”


Agricultural Firms Post Record Quarterly Profits
The rise in food prices has been linked to several factors, including bad weather, the higher price of oil and the diversion of crops to produce biofuels for cars. The growing unrest over food security comes as major agricultural companies are posting record profits. This week, the grain-processing giant Archer Daniels Midland announced a 42 percent rise in third-quarter profits. Revenues from the distribution of grains including wheat and corn were up 700 percent. According to the Wall Street Journal, other major firms, including Monsanto, Deere and Mosaic, have all reported similar windfalls.


Scandal-Linked GSA Head Resigns
The embattled head of the General Services Administration has resigned following a lengthy controversy over her time in office. Lurita Alexis Doan was found to have violated federal law by instructing employees to help Republicans win the upcoming November elections. Doan is said to have asked employees how they could “help our candidates.” The US Office of Special Counsel ruled Doan violated the Hatch Act, which bars top officials from using their positions for political motives. Doan has also been under scrutiny for awarding a no-bid contract to a firm run by a close friend last year. Doan says the White House asked her to step down this week.


Al Jazeera Cameraman Sami al-Haj Freed From Guantanamo

Sami al-Haj spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantanamo without charge or trial.

The Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj has been released from Guantanamo Bay. Arrested in Pakistan in December 2001, al-Haj has spent nearly six-and-a-half years at Guantanamo without charge or trial. He had been on a more than a year-long hunger strike to protest his imprisonment. Earlier today, al-Haj landed in his hometown of Khartoum, Sudan, where he was immediately rushed to a hospital. After a tearful reunion with his family, al-Haj said he worried for the prisoners he left behind at Guantanamo.

Sami al-Haj: "I’m very happy to be in Sudan, but I’m very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantanamo. Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad, and they get worse by the day. Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values. In Guantanamo, you have animals that are called iguanas, rats that are treated with more humanity.”

Sami al-Haj was flown into Sudan on a US military aircraft along with two other Guantanamo prisoners. They told Al Jazeera they were blindfolded, handcuffed and chained to their seats during the flight home. According to Al Jazeera Director General Wadah Khanfar, the US military tried to coerce al-Haj into spying on his employers at the network.
The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders issued a statement Thursday saying Sami al-Haj had been tortured while at Guantanamo and subjected to 200 interrogation sessions. He’s lost forty pounds, is suffering from intestinal problems and bouts of paranoia, according to his lawyer Clive Stafford Smith. Asim al-Haj, who is Sami al-Haj’s younger brother, told Al Jazeera he doesn’t recognize his thirty-nine-year-old brother, because he now looks like a man in his eighties.


Barrick Gold Sues Canadian Publisher over Book Alleging Abuses
The world’s largest gold miner, Barrick Gold, has filed suit against a small Canadian book publisher over a new book detailing abuses tied to Canadian-owned businesses in Africa. Black Canada: Plunder, Corruption and Crime in Africa links Barrick Gold to the deaths of fifty-two Tanzanian miners buried alive in 1996. The mine was owned at that time by Vancouver-based Sutton and sold to Barrick in 1999. The authors of the book suggest Barrick acted with Sutton to prepare the deposit for large-scale development. Barrick Gold is seeking $6 million in damages from the book’s publisher, Ecosociety, and an injunction against its distribution.


Tens of Thousands Rally for Immigrant Rights
Tens of thousands of people marched across the nation Thursday in what has become an annual May Day protest for immigrant rights. Although smaller than previous years, large marches were held in New York, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles and Milwaukee. This year’s protests focused on the recent spike in deportations, which rose 44 percent last year to 280,000.


Dockworkers Shut Down Ports in Antiwar Protest
May Day also saw a major antiwar action at the nation’s ports. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union says more than 25,000 dockworkers stayed off the job Thursday in protest of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Twenty-nine West Coast ports were affected. The action came despite an arbitration ruling ordering the dockworkers to report to work.


Bush Admin Forces Out EPA Regulator Who Sought Regulation of Dow
A top federal environmental regulator says the Bush administration has forced her to step down over her attempts to regulate pollution caused by the industrial giant Dow Chemical. Mary Gade was the Environmental Protection Agency’s top official in the Midwest until she resigned on Thursday. Last year, Gade used emergency powers to force Dow to clean up four areas contaminated with the cancer-causing Dioxin chemical near Dow’s Michigan headquarters. One of the areas had one of the largest amounts of Dioxin ever recorded in the United States. Gade says she resigned after she was stripped of her powers and told to quit or be fired by June 1st. Democratic Congressmember Rahm Emanuel of Illinois said, “I’m surprised if anybody is surprised by this. This administration, from day one, has always chosen polluters over the environment.”


More International News
Nicaraguan President Accuses US of Destabilization
In Nicaragua, President Daniel Ortega is accusing the Bush administration of financing opponents in an attempt to overthrow his government. On Thursday, Ortega said the US embassy is helping organize protests to bring Nicaragua to a standstill.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega: “At some point, we will name those members of the Yankee embassy who are putting forward millions in financing for false union leaders and fake political leaders to organize protests against the revolutionary government. They are worried, because the country will not go to the streets against the revolutionary government. They want to do the same that they did to Salvador Allende.”

Ortega was elected in 2006 in defiance of US threats to impose economic sanctions and withdraw aid if he won. Ortega headed the Sandinista government in the 1980s that was a repeated target of Reagan administration subversion and economic warfare.


New Zealand Activists Damage US-Linked Spy Base
And in New Zealand, three peace activists have been arrested for damaging a spy dish dome in protest of the so-called war on terror. Calling themselves the ANZAC Ploughshares, the three said they broke into the base because it plays a part of the Bush administration’s international eavesdropping network. New Zealand police say the break-in caused more than $1 million in damages.


10 Killed in US Airstrikes on Somalia
In Somalia, the US military is claiming to have killed ten Islamist militants in an overnight strike. A military commander of the militant group Al-Shabab was reportedly among the dead. This marks at least the fifth US attack on Somalia since US-backed Ethiopian troops invaded in December 2006.


Iran Complains to UN over Clinton Comments
Iran has lodged an official complaint to the UN over recent threatening comments from Senator Hillary Clinton. In an interview with ABC News last week, Clinton said as president she would “‘totally obliterate” Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. The Iranian government called the remarks “a flagrant violation” of the UN Charter, which bars threats on member nations.


Venezuela Marks May Day with Min. Wage Hike
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez marked the eve of May Day by announcing a raise to the national minimum wage.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez: “Venezuela’s minimum wage, which was in second place in Latin America, moves to first place with $372 a month. It’s necessary that we all know this: the minimum wage in Venezuela is the highest in Latin America."

Chavez also said he had signed a decree to nationalize Venezuela’s steel industry.




Read and search hundreds of news stories on SeeingBlack.com's 411 Channel.

Click here to view all our blogs and discussion groups, where you can comment on any news stories or post your own news.

© Copyright by SeeingBlack.com