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José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 203
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Neoliberalism
called target of Friday march
By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The general strike that is planned for Friday is taking a decidedly ideological turn. The organization coordinating the strike said in a statement Tuesday that the action was against the neoliberal model. That comes from the Bloque Unitario Sindical y Social Costarricense. The organization also says that it opposes the neoliberal tax reforms and taxes on salaries and the proposed value-added tax. Neoliberalism generally means economic liberalism. The strike organization also is calling for renationalization of telecommunications. Under the free trade treaty with the United States, the state Instituto Costarricense de Electricidad surrendered its monopoly on telecommunications and a host of cell telephone companies sprung up as competition. Presumably, the strike organizers want to have the country drop out of the trade treaty. The organization also is calling for taxes on corporations that have located production facilities in free trade zones. The organization said that between 8 and 10 a.m. Friday strikers will gather at either Parque Central on Avenida Segunda or at the Fuente de Hispanidad in front of Mall San Pedro. Either gathering will block traffic on Avenida Central. The route of the march will be to Casa Presidencial in Zapote. The Bloque Unitario Sindical may have as many as 80 separate unions associated with it. The organization also said that private neoliberal interests were undermining the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social, what it called the bastion of the public's social security. An announcement deplored what it said was the permanent attacks by the privatization of medical services. Of great concern for the public employee unions involved are changes in the salary rules that may reduce their income. The government is deeply in debt, and some plans have been advanced to reduce the salaries of its employees. Nicoya ferry ends trips early tonight By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Puntarenas ferry will not make two trips to Paquera tonight or one return trip. The ferry schedule in the Gulf of Nicoya is being changed just for today because transport officials are making a study of the sea floor at the Paquera terminal. The usual 5:30 and 8:30 p.m. trips have been canceled as well as the 8 p.m. trip from Paquera to Puntarenas, said the División Marítimo Portuaria of the Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes. Costa Rica defeats U.S. in soccer By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Costa Rican national soccer team defeated the U.S. team 1-0 Tuesday night at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey. Joel Campbell made the sole score at the 70th minute of the game. The U.S. team posted its third loss in a row. The game was a so-called friendly match. Qualifiers are beginning next month for the 2018 World Cup. Repeating aloud increases verbal memory By the University of Montreal news staff
Repeating aloud boosts verbal memory, especially when done while addressing another person, says Victor Boucher of the University of Montreal's Department of Linguistics and Translation. His findings are the result of a study that will be published in the next edition of Consciousness and Cognition. "We knew that repeating aloud was good for memory, but this is the first study to show that if it is done in a context of communication, the effect is greater in terms of information recall,” Boucher said. To demonstrate this, Boucher and Alexis Lafleur asked 44 French-speaking university students to read a series of lexemes on a screen. A lexeme is a word such as it is found in a dictionary. During the task, the participants wore headphones that emitted white noise to mask their own voices and eliminate auditory feedback. The subjects were submitted to four experimental conditions: repeating in their head, repeating silently while moving their lips, repeating aloud while looking at the screen, and finally, repeating aloud while addressing someone. After a distraction task, they were asked to identify the lexemes they recalled having said from a list that included lexemes not used in the test. The results show a clear difference when the exercise was performed aloud in the presence of someone else, even though the participants had heard absolutely nothing. Repeating in one's head without gesturing was the least effective way to recall information. “The simple fact of articulating without making a sound creates a sensorimotor link that increases our ability to remember, but if it is related to the functionality of speech, we remember even more,” Boucher said. Previous studies conducted at Boucher's laboratory have shown that when persons articulate a sound, they create a sensory and motor reference in the brain, by moving the mouth and feeling vocal chords vibrate. “The production of one or more sensory aspects allows for more efficient recall of the verbal element. But the added effect of talking to someone shows that in addition to the sensorimotor aspects related to verbal expression, the brain refers to the multisensory information associated with the communication episode,” Boucher explained. “The result is that the information is better retained in memory.” Sweden on track to be first cashless nation By The Royal Institute of Technology news
staff
Sweden is on its way to becoming the world's first cashless society, thanks to the country's embrace of technology, as well as a crackdown on organized crime and terror, according to a study from Stockholm's KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Niklas Arvidsson, an industrial technology and management researcher at KTH, says that the widespread and growing embrace of the mobile payment system, Swish, is helping hasten the day when Sweden replaces cash altogether. "Cash is still an important means of payment in many countries' markets, but that no longer applies here in Sweden," Arvidsson says. "Our use of cash is small, and it's decreasing rapidly." In a country where bank cards are routinely used for even the smallest purchases, there are less than 80 billion Swedish crowns in circulation, a sharp decline from just six years ago, when the total in circulation was 106 billion. "And out of that amount, only somewhere between 40 and 60 percent is actually in regular circulation," he says. The rest is socked away in people's homes and bank deposit boxes, or can be found circulating in the underground economy. The result of collaboration between major Swedish and Danish banks, Swish is a direct payment app that is used for transactions between individuals, in real time. The service's direct collaboration with Bankgiro and Sweden's national bank, Riksbanken, is a critical factor in its success. But if Swish starts to be used on a larger scale and grow to include retail transactions and e-commerce, Arvidsson says it is likely the country's entire payment system infrastructure will have to be revamped. That may not be as prohibitive an idea as it sounds. Arvidsson says Swish is already revolutionizing the banking system, which itself is no stranger to bold digital projects. With digital systems, early electronic payment services and other advances in online financial services, Swedish banks have been early adopters of advanced IT systems, he says. "Combined with a strong IT sector, this has led to more competitive financial services in Sweden. The success also depends on the Swedish consumer tradition of welcoming electronic payment services." Besides simplicity and lower costs, digital payments also add transparency to the nation's payment system. Several banks in Sweden already have 100 percent digitalized branches that will simply not accept cash. "At the offices which do handle banknotes and coins, the customer must explain where the cash comes from, according to the regulations aimed at money laundering and terrorist financing," he says. Bank staff are required to file police reports in response to suspicious cash transactions. In spite of its popularity, Sweden will still have to ensure that all people are able to participate in the new payment system, Arvidsson says. The transformation would present serious challenges for those who are unfamiliar with computers and mobile phones — mainly older people living in rural areas. |
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| What we published this week: | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Earlier |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 203 | |
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| Legislation being planned over street harassment of women |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
A coalition of women's groups plan to present a proposed law to the legislature within three months to make illegal such street activities as whistling, flattering comments, obscene gestures, statements about the human figure or even clothing. The goal is to define what is being called street harassment as violence against women. The coalition includes Acción Respeto, Proyecto Lyra, Piropos o Acoso CR, Colectivo Furia Rosa, Este es mi cuerpo-CR, independent female activists and other organizations such as El Tío Hugo, the coalition said in an announcement. The proposal for a law came on the same day that the Defensoría de los Habitantes, the governmental Instituto Nacional de las Mujeres and other organizations relaunched a campaign called El Acoso Callejero no es cosa de hombre. That phrase in Spanish also is the name of a non-profit organization involved in the campaign. That announcement said that the simple act of going into the streets is a nightmare for thousands of women. It blamed this on a patriarchal society. It cited a statistic from 2011 that said there were 7,321 complaints of harassment that year. The Defensoría announcement described violence as whistling, piropos or flattering comments, obscene gestures, sexual comments, photos, capturing images of women's bodies, entrapment and exhibitionism and other actions exercised in the public space. The definition goes far beyond that contained in a 1994 hemispheric treaty, the Interamerican convention to prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women. The treaty, which has been approved by most of the countries in the Americas, including Costa Rica, is also known after the town where it was approved, Belem do Pará in Brazil. Article 1 of the treaty says violence against women shall be understood as any act or conduct, based on gender, which causes death or physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, whether in the public or the private sphere. Psychological harm generally is considered as some chronic abuse or traumatic event. The local definition also goes beyond what the World Health Organization considers violence: The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation. The treaty further defines violence as rape, sexual abuse, torture, trafficking in persons, forced prostitution, kidnapping and sexual harassment in the workplace, as well as in educational institutions, health facilities or any other place. Eventually the Inter-American Court of Human Rights may be called upon to establish firm definitions, as provided in the treaty. The feminist coalition contends that any form of street harassment is violence and socially unacceptable. Piropos, the flattering comments uttered by males toward attractive |
 The image is the logo of Colectivo Furia Rosa, which says it has as members lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and other persons who might be called queer. But heterosexuals also are welcome, it says. women, are a long Latin tradition, and attempts elsewhere to curb that behavior have been unsuccessful. The renewed interest in campaign against street harassment followed the stabbing Wednesday of a young man who had taken a photo of a second man also taking a photo but of the legs and rear of a woman walking on the downtown pedestrian mall. The stabbing took place after the young man went public with an account of how he confronted the other man which was posted along with the photo to the social sites. As an example of how legislation in this area will be difficult, Canal 6, Repretel, aired Monday nearly the identical video of women's legs and backsides from a low angle to illustrate an unrelated story. The local television stations also make candidate videos of overweight Costa Ricans for use with news stories on that subject. The proposals for the legislation and the campaign make no mention of women making comments to or harassing men on the street. The Organization of American States said Tuesday that Alejandra Mora Mora, the executive president of the women's institute, would be involved in a discussion of political violence and harassment in the Americas Thursday and Friday in Lima, Perú. The event is organized by the Inter-American Commission of Women of which Ms. Mora is chairwoman. The groups making proposals Tuesday generally agreed that enforcement of street harassment has been lax. The women's coalition noted that such activity does not even rise to the level of what would be considered a felony under Costa Rican law. The proposal to submit a law includes changes to the criminal code, the group said without giving more details. The Defensoría announcement urged the changing of cultural patterns and promoting street violence into the political agenda. The Acoso Callejero organization has prepared two campaign videos that describe those participating in street harassment as cowards. They are HERE and HERE. |
| Glyphosate found in field test to be not harmful to honey bees | |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto Corp's Roundup herbicide, seems to be bee friendly. The U.S. Department of Agriculture' and Missisipppi State University reported this week that a test of 42 common pesticides and similar chemicals were field tested to determine their toxicity level. The results are of interest here because of the controversy over genetically modified crops, mainly corn. The corn is modified to defend against glyphosate as the chemical kills |
weeds,
but some opponents are fearful of the unintended effects of the
chemical. The department's Agricultural Research Service and the university set up an experiment that exposed bees to sprays of chemicals as if they were unintentionally sprayed in the field. Glyphosate was one of seven pesticides that killed nearly no bees in the test, the department said. Some pesticides killed all the bees The article was published in the Journal of Economic Entomology. |
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| A.M. Costa Rica's Fourth News page | |||||
| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 203 | |||||
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| Film director tries to answer what influences formed Malala
Yousafsai |
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By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Davis Guggenheim remembers how he first met Malala Yousafsai. It was, he recalls, remarkably mundane. And then the questions started coming. “I took a taxi cab to her house in Birmingham, and I rang the doorbell, and I didn't know who I was gonna meet," said the renowned American director. "I am from Los Angeles, I am half Jewish, half Episcopalian, I've never really known a Muslim family very well, and Malala answered the door. "I realized they are just like my family, and I thought how did this amazing girl happen? How this father and this girl did something so extraordinary? I made a movie about that. I made a very personal movie,” said Guggenheim. The result was his September 2014 release, "He Named Me Malala," an 87-minute documentary that tries to answer his own questions and probes the life of 18-year-old Malala Yousafsai, the Nobel-Prize-winning Pakistani teenager who, in 2012, was shot in the head by the Taliban for standing up for her right to an education in Pakistan's Swat Valley. The film shows how Malala has since become a symbol not of brutal violence but advocacy for girls’ education throughout the world, her role producing a kind of global resonance that, for Guggenheim, struck a deeply personal chord. Prosperity, gender and social equality around the world, he believes, starts with good schooling, especially in countries where women are second-class citizens. Starting with her slow, painful recovery from the October 2012 attack, Guggenheim shows how her close-knit ties to her two brothers and parents brought her back from the brink. Malala shares a strong bond with the dad, Ziauddin Yousafzai, a school teacher and an activist himself. "When she was very small, many friends used to come to our home," we see her father say. "We used to talk about politics, we used to talk about the basic rights and she would sit with us.” Guggenheim said Malala’s life was almost prescribed from the moment her father, himself an activist, named her after a 19th century Afghan folk heroine. “She was named after Malalai of Maiwand, a girl who spoke out for what she believed. She rallied the Afghan troops to defeat the British. She spoke out and she was killed for speaking out. She was inspired by that girl and she believes that she is on this earth to do something good." The film also shows that after Malala was shot, her father was devastated not only because the life of his daughter was hanging by a thread, but also because he felt responsible for raising her with ideas that endangered her life. But Malala said she thinks otherwise. “My father only gave me the name Malala. He didn’t make me Malala," she said. So, the film raises the question: What formed Malala into the person she is today? When a British reporter asks her “who would you have been if you were an ordinary girl from the Swat valley?” She replies “I am still an ordinary girl. But if I had an ordinary father, and an ordinary mother and a conservative family, then, I would have two children now.” Her answer points to gender inequality and lack of opportunities for women in developing countries. Malala, said Guggenheim, is aware of the unutilized talent of girls around the world and is trying to help bring change by advocating for their rights and their education. “We were in Nigeria when the girls were kidnapped by Boko |
 'He
Named Me Malala" graphic
Malala YousafsaiHaram for a long time and she insisted sitting down with President Goodluck Jonathan, and she said, ‘What are you doing about these girls? It is your job to get them released.’… You know she met President Obama and asked him about drone strikes,” said Guggenheim. Her fearlessness, and her message, earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. “She has things to teach the world,” said Guggeneheim, “Not just because she was the girl who was shot in the school bus. Not just because of her advocacy group but because she is a very, very deep soul. She is a very spiritual person, and I think she has a strong voice that speaks to a lot for people who are voiceless.” Girls around the world treat her like a rock star but she is very down to earth, said Guggenheim. “Her family went through a lot. She knows what is like to be a refugee. She knows what is like to be removed from your school and your home. So, she identifies very intimately with these girls," he said. "And in fact, on her 18th birthday, instead of being at home with her family celebrating with a birthday cake, she went to Jordan to celebrate her birthday with a girl she had met the year before in a refugee camp.” Her birthdays since her attack, said Guggenheim, have acquired a special meaning to her and her family. “I've never met of anyone who is so free of bitterness and anger. She is very grateful to be alive and she doesn't live in fear. She believes she's been given a new life," he said. "In fact, her mother on her birthday said 'this is your third birthday.’” Guggenheim feels that Malala is not only a symbol to underprivileged kids, but she also is a symbol to people like him in the western world. “I have two daughters. And even though my daughters' school is safe, I worry about them. And I struggle to be a good father," he said. "I struggle to help make them believe that they can do anything. It is easy to say 'you can do anything.' But do they believe it? "And I still feel that even here in the west and in the rest of the world society still favors boys. And I want my daughters to feel that they can be Malala. That they can say anything they want, they can stand up for what they believe because I'm drawn to strong women. I think strong women make the world a better place and they equalize things.” |
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A.M. Costa Rica's Fifth news page |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 203 | |||||||
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| Australia begins selection of 12,000 displaced Syrians By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Australia has begun the task of selecting for resettlement 12,000 refugees from the crisis in Syria with the first group expected to arrive before late December. Sydney’s Lakemba district is one of Australia’s most multicultural areas. It has become a haven for a family from the Syrian city Homs, which fled to Lebanon before arriving as refugees in Australia at the start of the year. Youssef al-Kasseh lives with his wife, Hala, and their three children, along with his mother in a small rented house. Speaking through a translator, he said the horrors of what they left behind are always in their thoughts. “Life in Homs is very, very bad, and no matter how hard I try to explain, it is very hard," said Youssef. "There is killing all the time, people getting taken away, while they have been taken away, they have been killed.” Youssef said he was detained and tortured by government officials. “I was taken away and suffered a lot, hit a lot, and suffered not only physically, but also the mental trauma. I have a lot of family and friends that have died,” he said. His wife, Hala, is happy to be in Australia, but she also worries about those left behind. “I have a lot of friends and family in Syria, and I am very, very afraid of how they are living. They have no food, no electricity. Life is very, very hard, and I am constantly worried,” she said. Rallies urging Australia to take in more of those fleeing the conflict in Syria have been held across the country. More than half of the 12,000 refugees will be resettled in New South Wales, the nation’s most populous state. Displaced women, children and families living in camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey will be given priority. Coordinating plans for their arrival is Peter Shergold, an academic and businessman. “It's possible that, compared to many refugee groups accepted in the past, these newcomers may have spent less time in refugee camps," said Shergold. "They may be more likely, I think, to be educated, have trade and professional skills, have had experience in small business, be more likely to have at least rudimentary English," he said. "And of course, therefore, the challenge. And the vital challenge is how can we harness that education, those skills, so that they can contribute back to Australian society.” Russian missile manufacturer contradicts Dutch report By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The Russian state arms manufacturer of the missile system believed to be behind the downing of Malaysian Air flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine last year says its own investigation into the crash contradicts findings from a Dutch probe into the tragedy. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, Almaz-Antey's CEO Yan Novikov said evidence showed the plane was indeed hit by one of its BUK missile systems, as Western nations have alleged, but that the weapon was an older Soviet model no longer used by the Russian military. Novikov also said his company's analysis also indicated the rocket was fired from territory that Russia says was under Ukrainian government control at the time of the crash. "Today we can say for sure that the Malaysian Boeing was shot down by a BUK missile 9M38 from direction Zaroshenskoye," said Novikov, referring to the area that was allegedly held by Ukrainian forces. The Malaysia Airlines flight was downed over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014. All 298 people aboard were killed. The Almaz-Antey presentation came just hours before the Dutch Safety Board issued its own long-anticipated report on the downing of flight MH17. Alexander Golts, a defense analyst in Moscow, says the timing of the Russian presentation spoke volumes. "This Moscow presentation appeared only because this report appeared in Holland. It's no doubt that the main point was to spoil the results" of the Dutch probe, said Golts. "We all knew the conclusions of the Moscow report months ago." While the Dutch investigation does not for now seek to assign blame for the incident, Russia has chafed at evidence the Russian-made rocket was fired from rebel-held territory. Still more incendiary have been suggestions of direct Russian culpability with Russia's military itself perhaps having provided the BUK missile. The U.S., Ukraine's government and other allies have repeatedly accused Russian military forces of fighting alongside the rebels in eastern Ukraine, a charge Moscow denies. Moscow insists Russian fighters in Ukraine are volunteers and has provided various explanations that blame Ukraine for the MH17 crash. Fyodor Krasheninnikov, a political analyst based in Yekaterinburg, says the Kremlin is unlikely to admit to any role in the downing of MH17, much the same way the Soviet authorities long refused to take responsibility for the Katyn massacre of Polish soldiers during World War II. "They will deny it until the end. To do otherwise, would be admit to Russians they'd been lying to them all along," said Krasheninnikov. Kremlin officials and state media have repeatedly suggested the Dutch MH17 investigation is biased, a message that Almaz-Antey officials underscored again today. Almaz-Antey CEO Novikov noted that the Russians had submitted their findings to the Dutch safety board only to have their data ignored. "You can ignore our findings, but you can't ignore our facts," said Novikov. The conclusions reached by Almaz-Antey officials are based primarily on two primary points. First, they argue that the butterfly-shaped shards and puncture marks found on MH17 match those of older, Soviet-era BUK 9M38 missiles since decommissioned by the Russian military. Second, they say the point of impact and shrapnel patterns on the plane's front cockpit and left wing suggested the missile was fired from territory controlled by the Ukrainian army. To make their case, Almaz-Antey officials unveiled a dizzying array of charts, tables, and graphs. They also showed a series of video recreations of the moment of impact with part of an Ilyushin-86 airliner serving as a stunt double for MH17, which was a Boeing 777. U.S. religious freedom effort draws some mixed responses By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The U.S. State Department today will release its annual International Religious Freedom report, a country-by-country catalog of the treatment of religious groups around the globe. Congress mandated the report in a 1998 law that made religious freedom a priority of American foreign policy and created a bureaucracy to promote it. Nearly two decades later, the underlying aims and the effectiveness of the International Religious Freedom Act are being vigorously debated. While proponents say the report has given hope to persecuted peoples, critics allege the advocacy of religious freedom by U.S. diplomats has become an exercise in neocolonialism. “Religious freedom has become the civilizing discourse of our time,” said Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, a professor of politics at Northwestern University. She noted that Canada set up an Office of Religious Freedom two years ago, while the European Union is also making it a policy priority. In the United States, the 1998 law also created a special ambassador-at-large position and a bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom with the possibility of sanctions for violators. The result has been numerous congressional hearings and a proliferation of nongovernmental groups, many tied to religious organizations. “It’s been incredibly supportive and inspiring to beleaguered religious communities across the globe,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, appointed last year as the first non-Christian religious freedom ambassador. He said diplomatic pressure has been placed on governments to ease restrictions such as blasphemy laws. And, he said, it has forced U.S. diplomats to forge relationships with myriad religious communities, especially small, persecuted ones. Every U.S. embassy must have a person on its staff writing its country’s section of the International Religious Freedom report, he said. “Before the report, it was the overlooked piece of the busy lives of staff people at embassies,” Saperstein said in an interview in his office in the State Department. “This forced them to engage seriously. So as I traveled the world in these last 15 years, time and again I heard, ‘What a difference this structure made.'” Katrina Lantos Swett, chairwoman of the Commission on International Religious Freedom, which puts out its own annual survey of countries, said, "There’s a lot of evidence out there, from many credible sources, that societies that do a good job protecting this fundamental human right ... also tend to be more peaceful. They tend to be more economically prosperous.” Professor Hurd, who recently led a seminar on religious freedom efforts at the Transatlantic Academy in Washington, said the efforts often distort foreign policy. By exaggerating the importance of religious identity, they sometimes go so far as to have a Taliban-baiting effect, directing the attention of extremists to vulnerable religious groups. “When they’re singled out for protection on the basis of religion, that actually can make things more difficult for them paradoxically,” she said, citing exclusionary policies toward Christians in Pakistan and Muslims in Myanmar. She said she thought the civil war in Syria had been turned into a religious conflict, in part, by Western advocacy groups and by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad itself, which has used the threat of sectarian anarchy to justify its own rule. Even supporters concede that the results of the American religious freedom effort have been mixed. Thomas Farr, former director of the State Department’s Office of International Religious Freedom and now a Georgetown University professor, testified before Congress in 2013: “It would be difficult to name a single country in the world over the past 15 years where American religious freedom policy has helped to reduce religious persecution or to increase religious freedom in any substantial or sustained way.” The Commission on International Religious Freedom chairwoman herself admitted that after 17 years of international religious freedom advocacy in U.S. diplomacy, success is hard to pin down. “If I were to give a grade, the grade I would give is an incomplete,” Ms. Lantos Swett told a conference of the Religion Newswriters Association last year. Ms. Hurd, the political science professor, said the very premise of the effort is based on a double standard. “We see ourselves as having achieved religious freedom, it’s something that we have,” she said. “But when it comes to other people, we need to manage it, we need to teach them to be tolerant, we need to reform them — which is something that the government, paradoxically, would never do at home.” That’s because the U.S. Constitution prohibits government from meddling in the religious practice of citizens. The difficulty, some say impossibility, of achieving absolute religious freedom for everyone came into sharp relief recently with the controversy over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It’s the domestic precursor of the international act, adopted as a federal law in 1993, and has since been adopted by many states. With same-sex marriage now legal in the United States after a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, conservative Christian florists and caterers have sought to use state religious freedom laws to opt out of providing services for gay and lesbian weddings, triggering protests from gay rights groups. And with regard to foreign policy, some critics of the international religious freedom effort say there’s an ulterior motive: to make the world safe for Christian missionaries. “The U.S. campaign for international religious freedom is very much a religious campaign,” Belgian political scientist Jakob de Roover wrote several months ago on firstpost.com, an Indian news Web site. “It seeks to spread Protestant-Christian values across the world but does so under the guise of promoting and protecting human rights that are universally held sacred.” De Roover wrote his article in response to the designation of India as a “country of concern” in this year’s report because of anti-conversion laws in six states and increasing incidents of religiously motivated and communal violence. He maintained that the Commission on International Religious Freedom is motivated by historical Protestant views of Hinduism as a false religion and a desire to make sure Indians have the right to convert. ACLU files lawsuit aimed at CIA-linked psychiatrists By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The American Civil Liberties Union is suing two former U.S. Air Force psychologists who designed the Central Intelligence Agency's harsh interrogation program aimed at forcing suspected terrorists to divulge information about possible attacks against the United States. The program was carried out during the administration of former President George W. Bush, but President Barack Obama said much of it amounted to torture, and he abandoned its use after his inauguration. The civil liberties group accused the psychologists of developing an interrogation program that relied on beating, sleep deprivation, starvation, waterboarding and other extreme methods that caused physical and psychological harm to prisoners held by the CIA. The claims in the lawsuit mirror allegations made last year in a U.S. Senate report condemning the CIA's interrogation techniques. The ACLU filed the lawsuit Tuesday in the state of Washington against James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the two psychologists who were paid $81 million by the U.S. government to devise the interrogation program that was used by the CIA in the years after al-Qaida launched the 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S. that killed nearly 3,000 people. The ACLU said Mitchell and Jessen "personally took part in torture sessions and oversaw the program's implementation for the CIA. They claimed their program was scientifically based, safe and proven, when in fact it was none of those things. The program was unlawful and its methods barbaric." When the Senate report was released, Mitchell defended the interrogation techniques as useful in producing otherwise unobtainable intelligence for the U.S. Jessen has not spoken publicly about his alleged role. The suit seeks unspecified damages for three suspected terrorists captured by the United States, none of whom was ever charged with a crime. One of the suspects, Gul Rahman, was interrogated in a dungeon-like Afghanistan prison called the Salt Pit. The suit said he was subjected to lengthy spells of isolation, darkness and extreme cold water, and was later found dead of hypothermia. The other two men were eventually freed, with Suleiman Abdullah Salim now living in Tanzania and Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud in Libya. |
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| San José, Costa Rica, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2015, Vol. 16, No. 203 | |||||||||
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Sanders, Mrs.
Clinton dominate debate
By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
Ex-secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders dominated the Democratic Party's first presidential debate of the 2016 campaign, largely preserving their status as the party's frontrunners, according to some analysts. Mrs. Clinton and Sanders, who were joined by three lesser known candidates during the two-hour debate at a Las Vegas casino Tuesday, clashed over issues including gun control, economic policy, and the role of the U.S. military overseas. But early on in the debate the rivals were able to find unexpected common ground over Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server during her time as secretary of State, an issue that has become a persistent distraction for her campaign. "Let me say something that may not be great politics," Sanders said. "But I think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails." Mrs. Clinton, who has apologized for the matter, again acknowledged that using private email wasn't the best choice. But she also attempted to portray the congressional committee investigating the matter as partisan. "This committee is basically an arm of the Republican National Committee," said Mrs. Clinton. "It is a partisan vehicle, as admitted by the House Republican majority leader, Mr. McCarthy, to drive down my poll numbers." The two frontrunners sparred over gun control, an issue that has again come to the forefront of political discussion following several recent mass shootings. When asked if she thought Sanders has been tough enough on guns, Mrs. Clinton responded, "No, not at all," noting Sanders' congressional votes against federal background checks for gun purchasers. Sanders defended his record, saying he supports tougher background checks and better mental health services, and pointing out that he received D-minus voting record from the National Rifle Association, the powerful gun rights lobbying group. The issue of gun control in recent weeks has appeared to emerge as an area of political vulnerability for Sanders, who has otherwise attempted to run to the left of Clinton, in an effort to appeal to the more liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Pressed by the moderators on whether his liberal views make him too extreme to win a general election, Sanders responded with his usual rant against growing economic inequality and what he sees as the outsized influence of the wealthy elite. He also pointed to Scandinavian countries, specifically, their universal health care and generous worker benefits, as a model for government practices he would like to see. "I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people," he said. Mrs. Clinton replied that while the U.S. sometimes "needs to save capitalism from itself," America is much different from Scandinavia. "I think what Senator Sanders is saying certainly makes sense in the terms of the inequality that we have. But we are not Denmark. "I love Denmark. We are the United States of America. And it's our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism so that it doesn't run amok and doesn't cause the kind of inequities we're seeing in our economic system," she said. |
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| From Page 7: Two beer giants move toward merger By the A.M. Costa Rica wire services
The world’s two largest brewers have agreed in principle on a $106 billion merger that will combine long-time American brewers, Anheuser Busch and Miller, among many other global brands. Miller’s parent company, the British-owned SABMiller, said it would combine with Belgian-Brazilian Anheuser Busch InBev, or AB InBev, to create a company that controls around 31 percent of the global beer market. To put that in perspective, the next largest beer company, Heineken, controls 9 percent of the market. It was the sixth time AB InBev had made an offer for SABMiller in the past weeks. AB InBev has until Oct. 28 to present a formal offer that values each SABMiller share at $67. Because of the size of the merger, regulators in the United States and China may raise concerns about the impact on consumer choice. Early trading in London saw shares of SABMiller jump by nearly 9 percent, a sign traders believe the deal will go through, analysts said. The combined company would be worth around $73.3 billion, according to analysts. AB InBev owns six of the largest global brewers. In addition to Budweiser, it controls Stella Artois and Beck’s. SABMiller boasts Miller Genuine Draft as well as Peroni and Milwaukee’s Best. Analysts say the deal would offer AB InBev more access to African and Australian markets. A merger among these two brewing giants would be a continuation of market consolidation in the beer industry, which has been gaining momentum for the past decade. |
