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Washington funds false sex lessons
By Gary Younge
New York, New York, Dec. 3 — The Bush administration is
funding sexual health projects that teach children that HIV can be contracted
through sweat and tears, touching genitals can result in pregnancy,
and that a 43-day-old fetus is a thinking person.
A congressional analysis of more than a dozen federally funded “abstinence-only
programs” unveiled a litany of “false, misleading, and distorted
information” in teaching materials after reviewing curriculums
designed to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.
There are more than 100 abstinence programs, involving several million
children aged nine to 18, and running in 25 states since 1999. They
are funded by the federal government to the tune of $170 million, twice
the amount when George W. Bush came to power.
The money goes to religious, civic and medical organizations as grants.
To qualify they may only talk about types of contraception in terms
of their failure rates, not about how to use them, or the possible benefits.
The survey was conducted by the staff of congressman Henry Waxman of
California, a long-standing Democratic critic of the Republican administration’s
approach to sex education. His team concentrated on the 13 programs
that are most widely used, and found only two of them were accurate.
“It is absolutely vital that the health education provided to America’s
youth be scientifically and medically accurate,” Waxman said. “The
abstinence-only programs reviewed in this report fail to meet this standard.”
Other “facts” include that abortion can lead to sterility
and suicide, half the gay male teenagers in the US have tested positive
for HIV, and condoms fail to prevent transmission of HIV in 31 percent
of incidences of heterosexual intercourse. US government figures contradict
all of these assertions.
AC Green’s Game Plan -- a program named after a basketball player
who said he would not have sex before marriage -- teaches: “The
popular claim that condoms help prevent the spread of STDs is not supported
by the data.”
Waxman told the Washington Post: “I don’t think we ought to
lie to our children about science. Something is seriously wrong when
federal tax dollars are being used to mislead kids about basic health
facts.”
But government officials said Waxman’s report rehashed old anti-abstinence
prejudices for political purposes. Alma Golden, the deputy assistant
health and human services secretary for population affairs, said it
took statements out of context to present programs in the worst possible
light.
“These issues have been raised before and discredited,” Golden
said. “One thing is very clear for our children: abstaining from
sex is the most effective means of preventing the sexual transmission
of HIV, STDs, and preventing pregnancy.”
Waxman also criticized some programs for reinforcing sexist stereotypes
to children. One -- entitled Why Know -- says: “Women gauge their
happiness and judge their success by their relationships. Men’s
happiness and success hinge on their accomplishments.”
Another program, Wait Training, says: “Just as a woman needs to
feel a man’s devotion to her, a man has a primary need to feel
a woman’s admiration. To admire a man is to regard him with wonder,
delight, and approval. A man feels admired when his unique characteristics
and talents happily amaze her.”
Source: Guardian (UK)
Outrage over death in US detention of
Haitian pastor
By Jim Lobe
Washington, DC, Nov. 26 (IPS) — Human rights and humanitarian
groups are calling for a full-scale investigation regarding the Nov.
3 death in a South Florida detention facility of an 81-year-old Haitian
pastor four days after he had flown to the United States and asked for
political asylum.
Church World Service (CWS), the relief arm of 36 Protestant, Orthodox,
and Anglican US denominations, called the death of Rev. Joseph Dantica,
who held a valid US multiple-entry visa, “outrageous” and
appealed for an end to the discriminatory treatment accorded to Haitians
seeking refuge from the political violence that persists in their homeland.
“Maybe, just maybe, this is an event that will finally wake people
and spur Congress to act fairly in its treatment of Haitian asylum seekers,”
said CWS director Rev. John L. McCullough.
It should help that Dantica was the uncle of the award-winning Haitian-American
novelist and author, Edwidge Danticat, who wrote a blistering column
in the New York Times Nov. 24 noting that her uncle’s case “is
not unusual in terms of his tragic confrontation with Haiti’s current
political turmoil and the Homeland Security Department’s dismissive
treatment of Haitian asylum seekers.”
“Like the claims from Cubans, Haitian asylum claims should be considered
fairly and humanely so that calamities like my uncle’s flight and
eventual death in the custody of the Homeland Security Department are
never repeated,” she wrote.
Unlike Cubans claiming political asylum, who, once they reach US territory,
are routinely released to friends or family, Haitians are automatically
detained pending a final decision by the immigration authorities on
their asylum claims under a December 2001 regulation issued by the administration
of President George W. Bush.
More than 90 percent of such claims have been rejected, a percentage
that has not substantially changed over the last three years despite
the increase in political turmoil and violence. Individuals whose claims
are rejected are returned to Haiti.
Dantica, who had worked in Bel-Air, one of Port-au-Prince’s poorest
districts, for some 50 years, flew to Miami with his son, Maxo, on Oct.
29, after hiding for several days from members of an armed gang who
had threatened to kill him if he did not pay for the burials of friends
who had been killed in a shoot-out with UN forces and Haitian police.
Unable to find him, the gang ransacked his home and church and burned
down one of the schools he directed.
On arriving at the Miami International Airport with his passport in
which the multiple-entry visa was stamped, Dantica was asked how long
he intended to remain in the United States. Unable to give a definite
date, Dantica and his son said they feared they would be killed if they
returned and asked for political asylum.
At that point, both Dantica and his son were arrested and held overnight
at the airport before being sent to the Krome Detention Center in Miami
the following day. On entering Krome, the medicine he brought with him
– according to Edwidge Danticat, a combination of both herbal and
prescription medicines for an inflamed prostate and high blood pressure
– was confiscated. The father and son were also separated from
each other.
On Nov. 3, Dantica died of inflammation of the pancreas at a nearby
hospital, where he was reportedly denied visits by members of his family.
“With a valid visa, even though Rev. Dantica had this time requested
asylum, immigration authorities had discretionary authority to release
him,” said McCullough. “To have denied an 81-year-old man
needed medication on top of detention is appalling and sadly does nothing
more but further damage the image that our country is already suffering
in the world community.”
“The circumstances surrounding his death are outrageous and cannot
be allowed to pass by as if they did not happen,” he noted, calling
for a federal investigation into the matter and an immediate halt to
pending deportations of Haitian asylum seekers given the continuing
violence.
His appeal was joined by Human Rights First (HRF), previously known
as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. In a letter to the DHS Secretary
Tom Ridge, HRF director Michael Posner called on the Department to immediately
“terminate nationality-based detention policies aimed at Haitian
asylum seekers,” give all Haitian asylum seekers the chance to
have their cases heard by an immigration judge, and put the official
parole criteria for asylum seekers into formal regulations.
Jocelyn McCalla, director of the New York-based National Coalition for
Haitian Rights said Dantica had been “going in and out of the US
for several years, as recently as August and had not issues at the border.
His only mistake, this,” he said, “was that he requested asylum.”
McCalla and other refugee advocates have argued that Haitians should
also be eligible to receive Temporary Protective Status (TPS), which
is given to non-immigrants from foreign countries where political violence
or natural disasters would make it dangerous or particularly difficult
for them to be sent home.
So far, the administration has ignored appeals from the US-installed
Haitian government, as well as refugee and human-rights groups, to grant
the 20,000 Haitians living here the same status until the country recovers
from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Jean and the political violence
that led to the ouster of former President Jean Bertrand Aristide. The
violence has continued despite the efforts of the undermanned UN peacekeeping
force that took over from an interim US-led force last summer.
Groups probe FBI spying in ‘war
on terror’
By William Fisher
New York, New York, Dec. 3 (IPS) — US civil rights groups
have filed multiple freedom of information requests around the country
to uncover evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
and local police are spying on political, environmental, and faith-based
groups in the name of fighting terrorism.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests were filed in 10 states
and the District of Columbia (DC) seeking details on the FBI’s
use of Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) and local police to engage
in political surveillance.
JTTFs are legal partnerships between the FBI and local police, in
which police officers are “deputized” as federal agents
and work with the agency to identify and monitor individuals and groups.
Filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the FOIAs seek FBI files of groups
and individuals targeted for speaking out or practicing their faith,
as well as information on how the practices and funding structure
of the JTTFs are encouraging rampant and unwarranted spying.
“Our goal in this is to learn to the greatest extent possible
how much the FBI is using JTTFs and their guidelines to infiltrate
these groups,” ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told IPS.
One of the FOIA requests names organizations such as the anti-war
group United for Peace and Justice, Greenpeace, Code Pink, a women-initiated
peace and justice group, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination
Committee, which might have been monitored by the task forces.
According to Wizner, after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001
sparked the Bush administration’s “war on terrorism,”
Attorney General John Ashcroft scrapped an FBI guideline — enacted
after the agency infiltrated numerous groups during the 1960s and
1970s civil rights movement — that blocked its agents from spying
on groups and individuals unless they were investigating a crime.
By scrapping that policy Ashcroft was, “essentially encouraging
FBI agents to do fishing expeditions to spy in mosques, in anti-war
meetings... without any reasonable suspicion that a crime was being
committed,” added Wizner.
ADC President Mary Rose Oakar said her group “supports all efforts
to keep our country safe and we want law enforcement to protect us
from real terrorists and criminals. However, targeting Arabs and Muslims
on the basis of national origin and religion, sending undercover agents
to anti-war meetings, and infiltrating student groups is not making
us any safer.”
“The FBI should not be wasting its time and our tax dollars spying
on groups that are critical of certain government actions,” added
the leader of the Washington, DC-based non-profit group, in a statement.
Earlier this year reports emerged that JTTFs had visited activists
around the country to ask about their plans for August’s meeting
of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in New York.
Since the 9/11 attacks, the FBI — part of the US Department of
Justice (DOJ) — has vastly stepped up its monitoring and surveillance
of individuals and groups it considers suspicious. It and other law
enforcement agencies have also been given greatly increased authority
under the USA Patriot Act, which was hurriedly enacted and signed
into law soon after the attacks.
The law permits agencies to conduct “sneak and peak” wiretaps
and other forms of surveillance without immediate notification to
the target.
The JTTFs, however, existed prior to 9/11.
Groups representing Arab and Muslim-Americans are confused by what
appear to be conflicting signals from the Bush administration.
The government claims to be making serious efforts to “build
bridges” to the constituencies, but simultaneously continues
to practice discrimination and harassment. The US Civil Rights Commission,
a bi-partisan government agency, recently reported widespread evidence
of racial profiling against Arab and Muslim-Americans by the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS) and other law enforcement agencies.
These bodies respond that they are not conducting round-ups in any
community and are “not profiling based on race or religious affiliation
(or) instituting a blanket detention policy.” But since 9/11,
some 5,000 members of the groups have been arrested and detained —
some for long periods without legal counsel — but none have been
convicted for terror-related crimes.
The ADC and 15 other human and civil rights groups have filed suits
against the DOJ demanding release of information about people arrested
and detained since Sep. 11, 2001.
The ACLU/ADC requests on Dec. 2 “point to many documented examples
of JTTF involvement in the investigation of environmental activists,
anti-war protesters and others who are clearly neither terrorists
nor involved in terrorist activities.”
Their actions include: “aggressively questioning Muslims and
Arabs on the basis of religion or national origin rather than suspicion
of wrongdoing; tracking down parents of student peace activists; downloading
anti-war action alerts from Catholic Peace Ministries; infiltrating
student groups, and sending undercover agents to National Lawyers
Guild meetings,” the documents allege.
Requests were also filed on behalf of numerous individuals, including
an organizer for the Service Employees International Union, a former
Catholic priest and student activists.
“They will say that a group whose means may include engaging
in a sit-in to block traffic or who in the past might have had a member
who threw a brick through a window is legitimately investigated by
a joint terrorism task force,” said Wizner. “The question
is: do we want that kind of civil disobedience labeled and investigated
as terrorism?”
Additional reporting by Marty Logan in
Montreal
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