Israel, US snub UN; more attacks

A Palestinian boy rides his bicycle near an Israeli armored personnel carrier stationed in the West Bank town of Ramallah, May 1, 2002. AFP Photo via Newscom

Compiled by Shawn Gaynor
and Sean Marquis

May 1— Less than a day after agreeing to a US and British plan meant as the first step towards restoring calm, Israel dispatched its army into another West Bank town, leaving a trail of dead and wounded. On Monday, Israeli tanks and troops swept into Hebron where some 400 militant Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves among 120,000 Palestinians. Nine people were killed during the attack, six of them civilians, according to Palestinians, and several dozen more were injured.

Troops ransacked homes, smashing equipment and emptying cupboards, amid loudspeaker warnings that a curfew was in force.

All this, only hours after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s cabinet had agreed to a US-British initiative under which Yassir Arafat would be released from confinement in his compound and allowed to travel abroad.

In the center of the town, scores of Palestinian males were lined up against a wall, handcuffed and blindfolded. Several knelt on the pavement, guarded by Israeli troops, awaiting interrogation, facing the possibility of joining thousands of other Palestinians now being held in detention centers without charge.

This was followed by an eruption of retribution, in which Palestinians executed three suspected collaborators in the street.

Trouble had been simmering for several days in Hebron. A week ago, Israel assassinated Marwan Zalloum, the commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade militia in Hebron, by firing from a helicopter into his car.

This weekend Hamas gunmen penetrated a nearby Jewish settlement, killing four people including a five-year-old girl.

Making matters worse, Shimon Peres, Israel’s foreign minister, has confirmed a report that Sharon wants to annex up to half of the West Bank. But he said he does not see this as a permanent solution to the crisis in the Middle East.

In an Apr. 21 interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Peres was asked about the accuracy of a report in the London Sunday Telegraph, also published in The Washington Times, that Sharon has a plan calling for Israel to annex 50 percent of land in the West Bank.

“It’s accurate for awhile, because that’s what Sharon suggests as an interim agreement,” Mr. Peres said. “My judgment is they know this is not a solution” and that this is an “unofficial proposal.”

Further land grabs by Israel is counter to any peace proposal the Palestinians would accept.

US–Israel backroom deal

This weekend’s US-brokered deal to lift the confinement of Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat was made possible by US President George Bush pledging American aid in managing a United Nations (UN) investigation of the Jenin assault.

Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice were able to break the logjam by promising to support Israel in the Jenin matter while enlisting Britain to provide monitors who will work beside American counterparts in overseeing the future imprisonment of six Palestinian militants who are among a group of people besieged with Arafat in his compound in Ramallah.

Reports in the Israeli media and statements by Israeli cabinet officials made clear that a quid pro quo had been struck.

Sources in Sharon’s office said that Rice and Sharon foreign policy adviser Danny Ayalon had been in “constant connection” during Sunday’s all-day session of the Israeli Cabinet, many of whose members opposed giving Arafat freedom of movement.

After Ayalon apprised Rice of the resistance, the Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported, Rice ultimately asked him to convey a personal message from Bush to Sharon that the United States “will be with you the entire way.”

“We have to do this because Bush has offered help with the Jenin fact-finding team affair,” Sharon told the Cabinet at one point, finally winning them over on a 17-to-9 vote.

In an eight-day assault that ended Apr. 11, the center of the Jenin refugee camp was devastated by Israeli bulldozers and tanks. Palestinians and human rights groups have charged that Israeli soldiers massacred hundreds of civilians – some buried in mass graves, but Israel claims that the Palestinian deaths were in the dozens, and most of them were gunmen or bombers. Israel lost 23 soldiers in the battle.

The UN, under international pressure, is half-heartedly attempting to send an investigative team to Jenin and so far has been cowed by Israel’s blocking of the mission.

Information and infrastructure: Victims of invading army

During its three-week occupation of Ramallah, the Israeli army destroyed or removed the files and records of many Palestinian ministries and institutions, ranging from high-level financial documents to the records of school graduations.

The damage is estimated at tens of millions of dollars. Some said it would take years to rebuild the information that was stolen and taken to Israel. In many cases, the data has gone forever.

The Palestinians claim that Israel set out to destroy the infrastructure of their emerging state. The Israeli army insists its aim was purely to destroy the “infrastructure of terror.”

But the army’s interpretation of what constitutes the “infrastructure of terror” has turned out to be a broad one: the soldiers trashed schools, banks, hospitals, cultural centers, stores, human rights offices and radio and television stations, including one called Peace and Love.

Some of the wreckage was wanton and spiteful, carried out by bored soldiers billeted in Palestinian buildings.

The looting was small-scale. But the worst of the damage was systematic.

Police stations were wrecked and all the Palestinian Authority’s ministries, except the ministry of planning and the ministry of sport, were ransacked. The main target was computers, whose hard drives were removed and taken to Israel.

At Mattin human rights group, Salwa Daibis, returning to his ruined office, said: “I couldn’t find my computer. I found a [computer] shell. I think it is mine. The hard disk is gone. Some monitors are missing. This is 20 years of work. My whole life is there. This is an assault against an entire population to damage the fabric of society.”

The land registry office holds the deeds to land records on the West Bank. Najiba Suhal, 30, the assistant director, said: “The army destroyed the entrance to the office and took computers. We are trying to establish what has been taken. Some of these records go back to the Turkish era.”

Soldiers took so much material from the Education ministry that they needed a van to carry it away.

Salah Sobani, a ministry employee, said that when the Israelis arrived, “I opened all the doors I had keys for and they blasted the rest.”

Computers were piled in the middle of one floor after being stripped of hard disks containing a host of information, from instructions to teachers through to graduation lists. Peace and Love radio station had been broadcasting since 1995 to a target audience of young people. Its founder, Mutazb Seiso, 36, said that the station’s transmitter, tapes, mini-disks, mixers and all the other equipment needed to broadcast had been destroyed. He estimated the cost of the damage at more than $250,000 and said it would take months to get back on air.

Sources: Associated Press, Gaurdian (UK), Independant (UK), Washington Times, San Francisco Chronicle

Homophobia kills in Brazil

By Mario Osava

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Apr. 25 (IPS)— The murder of 2,092 homosexuals from 1980 to 2001 makes Brazil the world’s most dangerous country for this minority, according to a new book, Causa Mortis: Homophobia.

The non-governmental Gay Group of Bahia (GGB), which for years has conducted studies of extreme intolerance against those who exercise non-mainstream sexual lifestyles, decided to combine the data to create a comprehensive report, which was presented this week in Brasilia.

The true number of victims is probably even higher, according to Marcelo Cerqueira, one of the report’s authors. He said that many of their cases, and the homophobic motives behind them, are not covered by the communications media, the principal source of the statistics.

Barely 10 percent of the murderers are sent to prison, demonstrating the impunity of these crimes, which generally are perpetrated by youths under 21 who are poor, uneducated, and unemployed.

Furthermore, the researchers for the report were unable to obtain this specific data from eight of Brazil’s 27 states. The verified cases are “just the tip of the iceberg,” said Cerqueira, professor of history and defender of homosexuals’ human rights.

GGB, based in Salvador, capital of the northeastern state of Bahia, maintains that Brazil suffers this type of violence more than any other country.

The annual average of murders of homosexuals in Brazil is 100; three times that of Mexico, and four times the rate in the United States -- two countries where this crime phenomenon is well documented.

“It’s a paradox” for a country whose image is one of sexual freedom and tolerance, where many men dress up as women, and transvestites are applauded during Brazil’s famous Carnival, said Cerqueira. But the cultural reality is something else. Many men, say psychologists, turn to violence to prove they are different and to assert their virility.

This is particularly insidious because most of those who kill homosexuals are poor and marginalized from society -- just like their victims -- but “do not accept that sort of equality of status, and seek to differentiate themselves by force,” he said.

Last year in Brazil there were 132 murders of gays reported, according to “Causa Mortis: Homophobia,” surpassing the 130 of 2000, and far above the annual average of the last two decades. This could be an indication of growing intolerance, or of improved reporting of such crimes, acknowledge the authors.

The rise in murders of gays follows the increase in violence throughout Brazilian society in general, particularly in the big cities. But it does not coincide with local crime rates because it reflects specific conditions, according to the report.

The book was presented in Brasilia because in the capital city 11 homosexuals were murdered last year, the largest proportion with respect to total population, said GGB president, Luiz Mott, co-author of the report.

However, the Federal District, the jurisdiction in which Brasilia is located, has an overall homicide rate that is much lower than other big cities, like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

Human rights activists are also concerned about the Brazilian northeast, where a full one-third of the murders of gays, lesbians and transvestites occur, a portion far greater than the region’s share of the national population, and much larger than its share of the country’s total crime.

Last year’s murders of homosexuals confirm a trend that has been developing over recent years. Most occurred early Sunday mornings or Fridays. December has been the month with most such killings, reaching 15 in 2001.

Of the 132 murders last year, 60 victims were persons categorized as “without profession or unemployed” and most were between the ages of 31 and 40.

Three murders that made headlines in the last few years reflect the cruelty and violence engendered by extreme prejudice. One of the victims was a transvestite who was beaten to death by a racist youth gang in Santo André, near Sao Paulo.

Four years ago, two transvestites were thrown into the ocean by three military police in Salvador and one drowned. The police were sentenced to prison in that case.

Last month, another murder shocked the country: a gay man was stoned to death in the small northeastern state of Alagoas.

To halt -- or at least reduce -- violence against this “vulnerable” sector of the population, who many people consider “inferior, second class,” it is essential to launch a far-reaching campaign against prejudice, said Cerqueira.

In particular, the press must change its derogatory vocabulary and its “crude treatment” when it comes to covering issues involving homosexuals, he added.

The movement also demands the creation of government bodies, similar to those that defend the rights of women, Afro-Brazilians or Indians, as well as participation in the National Education Council, so that schools “combat discrimination against homosexuals,” instead of promoting it as they do currently, Cerqueira said.

Mercenary company runs social services in three NC counties

By Jordan Green

What do child support services in North Carolina have to do with child prostitution in Bosnia? One company, DynCorp, is at the center of both controversies.

An affiliate of that private global security contractor, DynTek, has taken over child support services in three North Carolina counties, covering Jacksonville, Wilmington, and Washington. Based in Reston, Va., the corporate sire DynCorp provides military peace-keepers in Bosnia, flies aerial fumigation raids spraying the herbicide Roundup Ultra on coca crops in Colombia, services military aircraft at air force bases across the south, coordinates shipments of war material from Shaw Airforce Base in South Carolina, and stockpiles vaccines for the Department of Defense.

Mandated to track down deadbeat dads in New Hanover, Onslow, and Beaufort counties, DynTek was created as a merger of DynCorp Management Resources and TekInsight last November. Though listed as an independent concern, the 40% interest retained by DynCorp ensures that the new company remains a close member of the family. Dyntek is also contracted to provide child support services in California and Kansas, while the Arkansas Department of Heath and Human Services is contracting it to implement its welfare-to-work program.

For DynTek, the reward for tracking down derelict child support payments in North Carolina is a 14% take on the collection. Social services officials in New Brunswick County have lauded its performance since DynCorp Management Resources took over the contract a year ago, reporting that the company exceeded its collection goal by as much as $58,000.

“We’re very pleased with their performance,” said Karen Vincent, Assistant Director for Income Maintenance at Social Services in Wilmington.

But the human services privatization has a troubling history of uneven client treatment and questionable financial accounting. DynTek’s foray into social services has a precedent in the contract grab by defense giant Lockheed Martin during the major privatization wave catalyzed by Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America.” Holly Ploog, senior vice president of corporate development at DynTek, brings earlier experience from Lockheed Martin Famly and Child Services. In 1998, the state of California severed a contract with Lockheed Martin to develop an automated child support tracking database after the project’s budget ballooned $245 million over budget.

“One county office said that 60,000 documents were blown away in the system, just disappeared,” reported Edwina Young, Director of the San Francisco Family Support Bureau.

The rush to privatize public services during the 1990’s raised alarms with many social justice observers who saw a distinct conflict of interest in corporations whose first priority is enhancing their profits suddenly proposing to address the human needs of the most vulnerable of society. In 2000 the institute for Southern Studies, with whom this writer is employed, reported that privatization resulted in breakdown of public accountability, uneven treatment of clients, and a failure to meet community needs.

Perhaps even more disturbing than the legacy of privatization in the south are the activities of its corporate sire DynCorp abroad. The company has recently been named as a defendant in a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Ecuadorian farmers suffering from it spraying of defoliants in the Colombian Drug War.

In response to a letter warning against legal action, Bishop Jesse DeWitt of the International Labor Rights Fund wrote to Dyncorp’s CEO Paul V. Lombardi: “Imagine the scene for a moment -- you are an Ecuadorian farmer, and suddenly without notice or warning, a large helicopter approaches, and the frightening noise of the chopper blades invades the quiet. The helicopter comes closer, and sprays a toxic poison on you, your children, your livestock, and your food crops. You see your children get sick, your crops die. Mr. Lombardi, we at the International Labor rights fund, and most civilized people, consider such an attack on innocent people as terrorism.”

Meanwhile, a Texas employee of DynCorp Technical Services who services US military aircraft in Bosnia has filed a lawsuit alleging that supervisors and other employees were buying and selling adolescent girls as personal sex slaves. Despite the scandal attached to DynCorp, the company continues to reap a windfall of federal contracts, including a $298 million award to provide base support for Maxwell Airforce Base in Montgomery, Alabama.

With many of its employees recruited from the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department, DynCorp has demonstrated an adroit ability to take on the covert task of the US military’s counterinsurgency operations. And with George W. Bush’s announcement this month of the formation of a shadow government, the application of military solutions to domestic social problems is ever more evident.

In North Carolina, the wars of global security control are never far away. In Dare County, navy fighter jets periodically strafe wooden targets along the coast, mirroring the bombing exercises on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. While soldiers at Fort Bragg train for counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and the Philippines, an ongoing operation called “Rob and Sage” has been taking place across a 15-county area in the Piedmont, in which local residents play the enemy in a war game where clandestine Special Forces units work with guerrilla elements to overthrow the unsavory of a fictitious country known as “Pinelands.” On Feb. 24, a Special Forces soldier was fatally shot by the Deputy Sherriff of Moore County, who had not been alerted that he was considered an actor in the mock exercise.

In a state with such close relationship to the armed services, a privatized military offshoot like DynTek collecting child support has more than a good chance of flying under the radar of public comment.

Source: Triangle Free Press: www.trianglepress.com