Wednesday, January 13, 2010
By Dan Majors and Sadie Gurman, Pittsburgh Post-GazetteIn the first hours after the devastating earthquake in Haiti,
while news reports of damage and death were still sketchy, three men huddled on the North Side last night to plan local
relief efforts.

“The first thing you do is share the pain,” said Luke Hingson, president of Brother’s Brother Foundation. “Then you share
the work.

“You talk to each other, and if you know anybody who has been affected, you feel sad about it. The next thing is ‘How
do we help?’ “

Mr. Hingson was meeting with Dr. Leon Pamphile, a native Haitian and executive director of Functional Literacy Ministries
of Haiti, and Russell Bynum, the organization’s chairman, to discuss what aid can be rendered now as well as what will
have to be done later.

“There is a strong connection between the people of Pittsburgh and Haiti,” said Dr. Pamphile, who founded Functional
Literacy Ministries, a Christian nonprofit organization, in 1983. “There is a strong desire to help in education, health
care and to provide hope for those who are hopeless.”

There are more than 100 Haitians living in Pittsburgh, many of them in East Liberty and Point Breeze. That number does
not include the students at universities, Dr. Pamphile said.

Many of those residents, he said, were calling him last night, desperate for any news from the island nation, which is
about the size of the state of Maryland, with a population of more than 9 million. News, however, was scarce as lines
of communication were disrupted by the quake.

“The phone has been ringing nonstop,” Dr. Pamphile said. “People are concerned, and they’re unable to get through.”

“Right now, we’re just hearing anecdotal stories about buildings being destroyed,” Mr. Hingson said.

The effort to help didn’t take long to get started, mostly because it was already in place. Churches and community
groups in Pittsburgh have been contributing educational and medical aid to Haiti for decades.

“We’ve been active in the country for 40 years,” said Mr. Hingson, whose charitable group has been headquartered in
Pittsburgh for 50 years. “We work with a number of groups in Haiti. We send medical supplies and other things through
Christian ministries. There is an enormous number of mission groups and medical teams that go to Haiti each year.”

Brother’s Brother has provided more than $3.4 billion in medical supplies, textbooks, food, seeds and other humanitarian
supplies to people around the world in more than 140 countries. It sent more than 50 medical shipments to Haiti last
year, Mr. Hingson said, and had already been planning to send another shipment before yesterday’s earthquake.

“There will be Pittsburgh hands on the ground in Haiti in about a week,” Mr. Hingson said. “These are people whose lives
have been damaged, and we have to help them. And then you have a rebuilding process. We’re talking about need, not
just today, but need four months from now, maybe years from now.

“We can deliver, because we have. But we don’t have the same personal connections that some other people do. People
who live in Pittsburgh who are from Haiti or have family there and have day-in, day-out connections there. There are
groups that have a daily interest in Haiti.”

Functional Literacy Ministries is one such group.

“We have had a medical and educational mission in Haiti for about 26 years now,” Mr. Bynum said. “We have about 70
reading centers there. We have a clinic that we just built in Thomazeau, in the mountains outside Port-au-Prince, in July.
And we already were in the process of getting a group to go to Haiti to convene with doctors there to do some medical
mission work.

“The doctors and teachers we bring in are native Haitians, so this is really hitting us very deeply. Because we know the
people.”

Another organization with local ties, the Friends of Hopital Albert Schweitzer Haiti, a nonprofit based in Point Breeze, was
working to help earthquake victims. The organization focuses on cultural awareness, as well as the health and economic
needs of people in central Haiti’s Artibonite valley.

Hopital Albert Schweitzer’s main campus is more than two hours from Port-au-Prince, near where the earthquake struck.
The hospital employs more than 500 people and has 120 beds.

Friends president Lucy Rawson said her husband, Ian, the managing director of the hospital, was driving home from a
village near the hospital when he felt his car wavering on the road. He was able to e-mail her about 6:30 p.m. Eastern
time, she said, but she had not heard from him since.

“He said his car was going from side to side on the road, and he ended up in a ditch,” Mrs. Rawson said. “He got out to
see what was wrong with the car, and all these people were screaming and shouting. He thought they were worried about
him. Then he realized they were worried about something else.”

Their homes and cars were shaking around them.

“He said, ‘We’re all OK,’ ” she said. ” ‘Surprised and shaken, but OK.’ “

Numerous charities are accepting donations to aid relief efforts in Haiti. Donations may be made to:

• Brother’s Brother Foundation - Haiti, 1200 Galveston Ave., Pittsburgh 15233, call 412-321-3160, or visit
www.brothersbrother.org.

• Functional Literacy Ministry of Haiti, 1064 Premier St., Pittsburgh 15201, call 412-784-0342, or visit the Web site at
www.flmhaiti.org.

• UNICEF also is helping with relief efforts. Call 1-800-4UNICEF or go to www.unicefusa.org/haitiquake

December 17th(today) is the international day to end violence against sex workers.

To check out gatherings today in/near your city, click here

Stopping the Terror: A Day to End Violence Against Prostitutes
by Annie Sprinkle

In 2003 “Green River Killer” Gary Ridgeway confessed to having strangled ninety women to death and having “sex” with
their dead bodies.

He stated, “I picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed. I knew they would
not be reported missing right away and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought
I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

Sadly, some Seattle area prostitutes, their boyfriends or pimps, knew the Green River Killer was Gary Ridgeway for years.
But they were either afraid to come forward for fear of being arrested themselves, or when they did come forward the
police didn’t believe them over the “upstanding family man” Gary Ridageway. It seemed as though the police weren’t
working very hard to find the Green River Killer. If the victims had been teachers, nurses or secretaries or other
women, I suspect–as Ridgeway did– that the killer would have been caught much sooner. Ridgeway remained at
large for twenty years.

From working as a prostitute myself for two decades I know that violent crimes against sex workers often go unreported,
unaddressed and unpunished. There are people who really don’t care when prostitutes are victims of hate crimes, beaten,
raped and murdered. They will say:

“They got what they deserved.”
“They were trash.”
“They asked for it”
“What do they expect?”
“The world is better off without those whores.”

No matter how people feel about sex workers and the politics surrounding them, sex workers are a part of our
neighborhoods, communities and our families and always will be. Sex workers are women, trans people and men of all shapes,
sizes, colors, ages, classes and backgrounds who are working in the sex industry for a wide range of reasons.
Many of us are out and proud, and spend a lot of time trying to explain to the public that we freely choose our
work and we are not “victims.” But the truth is, some of us have been, or will become, real victims of rape, robbery and horrendous crimes.

When Ridgeway got a plea bargain in 2003, he received a life sentence in exchange for revealing where his victims’
bodies were thrown or buried. As the names of the (mostly 17- to 19-year old) victims, were disclosed, I felt a need to
remember and honor them. I cared, and I knew other people cared, too.

So I contacted Robyn Few, the founder of the Sex Worker Outreach Project (SWOP) based in San Francisco and we
made December 17th as the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. We invited people everywhere to
conduct memorials and vigils in their countries and cities. Robyn co-produced an open-mike vigil on the lawn of San Francisco’s City Hall.

Since 2003, each year hundreds of people in dozens of cities around the world have participated in this day to end
violence– from Montreal where people marched with red umbrellas, to protests against police brutaility in Hong Kong,
a candlelight vigil in Vancouver, a memorial ritual in Sydney, a dance to overcome pain and traum in East Godavery,
India. More events are planned for 2008, the sixth year of the event.

The concept for the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers is simple. Anyone can choose a place and
time to gather, invite others to gather and share their stories, writings, thoughts, poems, and memories of victims,
related news and performances. Or people can do something personal, alone at home, such as lighting a candle or
taking a ritual memorial bath. We encourage discussions among friends, by email, on blogs. People are encouraged to
list their events at the SWOP website so others can attend them, and to share the power of their actions. People can
also participate by making a donation to a group that helps sex workers by teaching them about dangers and how to best
survive. Two such non-profits are St. James Infirmary and AIM Healthcare.

Access to Life is a collaboration between the Global Fund and Magnum Photos–eight photographers shoot 30 people in 9
different countries before & after antiretroviral treatment for AIDS.

Massaman Keïta, 31 and Fatoumata Camara, 20 (Farmers)
Read more about their story here

Igor Tereshenko, 24 (construction worker), St. Petersburg, Russia

Like many among the “lost generation” of young Russians cast adrift into an insecure future after the collapse
of the Soviet Union, Igor, former construction worker, was a heroin addict. He knew he had been infected by a dirty needle,
but wasn’t sure when, and found out that he was HIV-positive in 2003, while in prison serving a three-year term for
stabbing one of two men who had attacked his wife on the street. (In a sad postscript, his wife was murdered the day
before Igor was released from prison.) Igor remained healthy for years after his diagnosis but contracted pneumonia
in early 2007. Then, in the summer of 2007, he became paralyzed from the waist down after injecting heroin. At the St.
Petersburg Municipal AIDS Center, doctors told him he had suffered a spinal injury of some sort (Igor claimed the ambulance
team had beaten him up). The condition forced him to lie motionless, leading to the development of massive bed sores.
In fact, doctors discovered he was suffering from a cancerous tumor. Igor’s parents were both strongly supportive. His
mother became a cleaner at the hospital, which enabled her to sleep in his room at night and provide constant care.

Igor has begun antiretroviral therapy four months before his death on March 18, 2008, from cancer. Although he had made
excellent progress with relatively high CD4 count (his immune system had strengthened) and an undetectable viral load, his
doctors decided to discontinue his ARV treatment when they realized that he would soon die from his inoperable spinal tumor.

View more photos from the collection and read individual stories here.
Select individual countries to watch a narrated photo essay for every location. Extremely powerful stuff.

Salon.com has a section about combat stress, PTSD, and the army’s neglect. They list various personal accounts from Feb. to July of this year. Soldiers who come home but never really return–soldiers that do not receive the proper aftercare that they deserve after such traumatic exposure & experiences.

From their brief archives(I say brief because there are countless cases of PTSD among returning soldiers…this is just a few of them). Excerpts from article written by Mark Benjamin & Michael de Yoanna

On Oc. 30, 2008, Army Pvt. Adam Lieberman attempted to kill himself via prescription drug overdose at Fort Carson, Colo. After swallowing the pills, he painted a suicide note on the wall of his barracks that read, “I FACED THE ENEMY AND LIVED! IT WAS THE DEATH DEALERS THAT TOOK MY LIFE!”

Lieberman survived the attempt. Five days later, his mother, Heidi, arrived in Colorado and was told that her son would be charged with defacing government property for scrawling his suicide note on the barracks wall. Heidi Lieberman told her son’s commanding officer that she would repaint the wall herself to “make this stupidity go away.” The officer took her up on her offer.

Heidi Lieberman painted over the note, documenting both the note and the paint job photographically.

Below: a mock Army document produced by an unknown person in Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team (which is not Lieberman’s unit), apparently to poke fun at troops who seek medical attention. Stacks of the “Hurt Feelings Report” were found near a sheet where soldiers sign out to see a doctor.

(more…)

via afp/salon.com…

Indian media hail court verdict ruling gay sex legal

NEW DELHI (AFP) — The Indian media hailed a court ruling to decriminalise gay sex and urged the government to respond by striking a colonial-era ban on homosexuality from the statute books.

“Gay and finally legal” ran the headline of the Mail Today paper which like other dailies was awash with articles and pictures of India’s largely ostracised gay and transgender communities celebrating Thursday’s Delhi High Court ruling.

“Its ok to be gay” read the banner headline of the Hindustan Times while the Asian Age welcomed what it called a “Sexual Revolution in India”.

Homosexuality had been illegal in India since 1860 under a statute introduced by British colonial rulers that banned “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.”

Conviction carried a fine and maximum 10-year jail sentence.

The High Court ruled that the statute violated basic individual rights guaranteed by the constitution.

The Times of India, which titled its main piece “India’s Gay Day”, declared in its editorial that by legalising same-sex relations, the court had “restored the personal freedom and rights of homosexuals.”

Often harassed by the police, India’s gay community has largely remained in the closet.

The ruling should “act as a catalyst, encouraging our legislators to shed their blinkers and take a more progressive view on the issue,” the Times said in its editorial titled “Victory for Choice.”

“In 21st century India, it is perverse to penalise adults for their sexual choices,” it added.

Applauding the ruling, an editorial in the Indian Express urged the government to read the decision and learn from its “enlightened constitutionalism.”

“Liberty is an incremental accomplishment and a grand step has just been taken,” the Express said.

The Hindustan Times argued that, prior to the introduction of the 1860 statute, India had a traditionally “non-intrusive and blase” attitude towards homosexuality.

“It took 150 years for us in India … to figure out that we didn’t have a problem with same-sex relationships,” it said.

“Not only does homophobia run counter to Indian mores but more importantly nobody cares much about it.”

from the salon.com broadsheet…

The baby’s a…we’re not telling!
A Swedish couple believe so strongly that gender is a social construction that they do not reveal whether their 2.5-year-old is a boy or a girl.

Only those who have changed the toddler’s diapers know if “Pop,” which is not the child’s real name, is male or female. “We want Pop to grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mold from the outset,” the tot’s 24-year-old mother told the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. “It’s cruel to bring a child into the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead.”

Pop’s wardrobe includes both pants and dresses, and the child usually gets to decide what to wear. “Although Pop knows that there are physical differences between a boy and a girl, Pop’s parents never use personal pronouns when referring to the child — they just say Pop,” according to the English-language Swedish site the Local.

Not surprisingly, the pundits are split on the effect this flouting of convention will have on Pop. “Child-rearing should not be about providing an opportunity to prove an ideological point, but about responding to each child’s needs as an individual,” Susan Pinker, a psychologist who is the author of a book about sex differences in the workplace, told the Local. “I don’t think that trying to keep a child’s sex a secret will fool anyone, nor do I think it’s wise or ethical. As with any family secret, when we try to keep an elemental truth from children, it usually blows up in the parents’ face, via psychosomatic illness or rebellious behavior.”

Yet, Kristina Henkel, Swedish gender equality consultant, says Pop’s parents’ experiment could help the child develop as an individual without being boxed in by gender-role stereotyping from birth. “If the child is dressed up as a girl or boy, it affects them because people see and treat them in a more gender-typical way,” Henkel explains. “Girls are told they are cute in their dresses, and boys are told they are cool with their car toys. But if you give them no gender they will be seen more as a human or not a stereotype as a boy or girl.”

Pop’s parents say that they will reveal the child’s gender when Pop thinks it is time to do so. In any case, he or she will soon have more company. The family is expecting another child, and with the next bundle of joy, the parents plan to continue playing the “what’s it to you?” gender card.

― Katharine Mieszkowski

via al jazeera.net - i feel like more people should be talking about this…

US forces pull out of Iraq’s cities

Iraqi forces have assumed formal control of the capital, Baghdad, and other cities, six years after US-led coalition forces invaded Iraq.

US troops began withdrawing from the country’s major cities and towns as the midnight deadline passed on Tuesday for troops to hand over security to Iraqi forces.

“The withdrawal of American troops is completed now from all cities, after everything they sacrificed for the sake of security,” Sadiq al-Rikabi, a senior adviser to Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, said.

He told the Associated Press news agency on Tuesday that Iraq is “now celebrating the restoration of sovereignty”. The Pentagon did not comment.

Al-Maliki described the US withdrawal as a “turning point” for the country and declared Tuesday the country’s National Sovereignty Day and a public holiday.
(more…)

School of Americas graduate is coup leader

A military coup has taken place in Honduras this morning (Sunday, June 28), led by SOA graduate Romeo Vasquez. In the early hours of the day, members of the Honduran military surrounded the presidential palace and forced the democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, into custody. He was immediately flown to Costa Rica.

A national vote had been scheduled to take place today in Honduras to consult the electorate on a proposal of holding a Constitutional Assembly in November. General Vasquez had refused to comply with this vote and was deposed by the president, only to later be reinstated by the Congress and Supreme Court.

The Honduran state television was taken off the air. The electricity supply to the capital Tegucigalpa, as well telephone and cellphone lines were cut. Government institutions were taken over by the military. While the traditional political parties, Catholic church and military have not issued any statements, the people of Honduras are going into the streets, in spite of the fact that the streets are militarized. From Costa Rica, President Zelaya has called for a non-violent response from the people of Honduras, and for international solidarity for the Honduran democracy.

While the European Union and several Latin American governments just came out in support of President Zelaya and spoke out against the coup, a statement that was just issued by Barack Obama fell short of calling for the reinstatement of Zelaya as the legitimate president.
Call the State Department and the White House
Demand that they call for the immediate reinstatement of Honduran President Zelaya.

State Department: 202-647-4000 or 1-800-877-8339
White House: Comments: 202-456-1111, Switchboard: 202-456-1414

and

Chaos erupts after Honduras coup
By Mica Rosenberg Mica Rosenberg
Mon Jun 29, 1:50 am ET

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Shots were fired near the presidential palace in Honduras where protests erupted after the army ousted and exiled leftist President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday in Central America’s first military coup since the Cold War.

Hundreds of pro-Zelaya protesters, some masked and wielding sticks, set up barricades of chain link fences and downed billboards in the center of the capital, Tegucigalpa, and blocked roads to the presidential palace.

Reuters witnesses heard shots outside the presidential palace that apparently came after a truck arrived at the protest, and an ambulance also appeared. It was not clear who fired the shots. One witness said shots were fired only in the air and there were no initial reports of injuries.

In neighboring Nicaragua, leftist leaders from the region led by Zelaya’s ally Venezuelan Hugo Chavez gathered in the capital Managua for late night talks on the crisis.

Zelaya, in office since 2006, was ousted in a dawn coup after he angered the judiciary, Congress and the army by seeking constitutional changes that would allow presidents to seek re-election beyond a four-year term.

The Honduran Congress named an interim president, Roberto Micheletti, who announced a curfew for Sunday and Monday nights. The country’s Supreme Court said it had ordered the army to remove Zelaya.

The coup was strongly condemned by Chavez — who has long championed the left in Latin America. Chavez put his army on alert on Sunday in case Honduran troops moved against his embassy or envoy there.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, the European Union and a string of other foreign governments also voiced backing for Zelaya, who was snatched by troops from his residence and whisked away by plane to Costa Rica.

The Organization of American States demanded Zelaya’s immediate and unconditional return to office.

Honduras, an impoverished coffee, textile and banana exporter with a population of 7 million, had been politically stable since the end of military rule in the early 1980s.

But Zelaya has moved the country further left since taking power and struck up a close alliance with Chavez, upsetting the army and the traditionally conservative rich elite.

In central Tegucigalpa, groups of men, some holding metal pipes and chains and their faces covered with T-shirts, threw rocks at cars trying to enter the area late on Sunday. Remnants of burned tires and a charred newsstand selling papers seen supporting the coup lay smoldering in the street.

Troops in full fatigues with automatic weapons lined the inside of the fenced-off presidential palace, some covering their faces with riot gear shields as protesters taunted them.

“For the country to have peace in the future, there will have to be deaths, injuries. We are willing to fight to the death,” said Cristhian Rodriguez, a 24-year-old plumber, who had set up an improvised tent in front of the palace.

Honduras is a big coffee producer but there was no immediate sign the unrest would affect output.

Honduras torn between ousted leader, replacement
By WILL WEISSERT and FREDDY CUEVAS

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) - Honduras is now torn between two presidents: one legally recognized by world bodies after he was deposed and forced from the country by his own soldiers, and another supported by the Central American nation’s congress, courts and military.

Presidents from around Latin America were gathering in Nicaragua for meetings Monday to resolve the first military overthrow of a Central American government in 16 years, and once again Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took center stage, casting the dispute as a rebellion by the region’s poor.

“If the oligarchies break the rules of the game as they have done, the people have the right to resistance and combat, and we are with them,” Chavez said in the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.

There is a deep rift between the outside world - which is clamoring for the return of democratically elected, but largely unpopular and soon-to-leave-office President Manuel Zelaya - and congressionally designated successor Roberto Micheletti.

Micheletti rejected any outside interference and declared a two-night curfew, while Chavez vowed that “we will overthrow (Micheletti).”

Zelaya was seized by soldiers and hustled aboard a plane to Costa Rica early Sunday, just hours before a rogue referendum Zelaya had called in defiance of the courts and Congress, and which his opponents said was an attempt to remain in power after his term ends Jan. 27.

The Honduran constitution limits presidents to a single 4-year term, and Zelaya’s opponents feared he would use the referendum results to try to run again, just as Chavez reformed his country’s constitution to be able to seek re-election repeatedly.

Micheletti said the army acted on orders from the courts, and the ouster was carried out “to defend respect for the law and the principles of democracy.” But he threatened to jail Zelaya and put him on trial if he returned. Micheletti also hit back at Chavez, saying “nobody, not Barack Obama and much less Hugo Chavez, has any right to threaten this country.”

Earlier, Obama said in a statement he was “deeply concerned” about the events, and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Zelaya’s arrest should be condemned.

“I call on all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter,” Obama’s statement read.

For those conditions to be met, Zelaya must be returned to power, U.S. officials said.

Two senior Obama administration officials told reporters that U.S. diplomats were working to ensure Zelaya’s safe return.

The officials said the Obama administration in recent days had warned Honduran power players, including the armed forces, that the U.S. would not support a coup, but Honduran military leaders stopped taking their calls.

Zelaya said soldiers seized him in his pajamas at gunpoint in what he called a “coup” and a “kidnapping.” The United Nations, the Organization of American States and governments throughout Latin America called for Zelaya to be allowed to resume office.

click here to read the rest of the article

Michael Jackson died.

Since I’m in shock, I’ll do this:

and one of my favorite videos of all time: