A sudden whiff of optimism amid the CO2 in the air

Charles Clover

The circus is coming. Seventy days to go and already all the hotel rooms in Copenhagen are taken for December’s climate change conference. People are even planning to stay in Malmo, Sweden, and travel in by train. The conference organisers are wondering how they can handle a record 540 applications for side events. Meanwhile, the world’s airlines’ fuel use is about to revert to pre-recession levels to get thousands of delegates to the festivities — which are, ironically, all about cutting carbon dioxide emissions.
It seems an apt time to consider what progress the human race is making towards safeguarding its habitat from dangerous changes brought on by its own activities. Between the signing of the United Nations climate treaty by George Bush Sr in 1992 and Copenhagen, many lungfuls of hot air have been expended on the need to tackle climate change. The reality is, as Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, put it last week: “The world’s glaciers are melting faster than human progress to protect them — or us.”
If you were a cynic, you would conclude that the best efforts of politicians to date have been far too little to avert degradation of the planet. Although rivers, nationally, can improve, as we saw from an Environment Agency report last week, when it comes to the global commons — the air, the seas and often the forests, which aren’t really owned by anyone — there always seems to be a reason to back the vested interests while claiming to be doing the green thing.
Last week’s most galling example of green cynicism was offered by Nicolas Sarkozy, who told us in July he could not stand by and allow Europe’s most endangered fish, the bluefin tuna, to become extinct. Yet last Monday France sided with the European Union’s Mediterranean nations and blocked a ban on the tuna trade. Sarkozy’s volte-face seems uniquely snake-like because it happened so soon after the president had promised the opposite. But one should not forget other brazen examples of duplicity. A prime one is our own government’s admission that it could not meet its manifesto commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 20% by 2010, because the steps it would have to take might damage its chances of re-election.
Cynicism in politics is contagious and has haunted climate politics since the United States repudiated the Kyoto climate treaty in 2001. But optimism can be contagious, too, and this looks like the best time for optimism for at least a decade. The statement by Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, that China will curb the growth in its emissions could be the first sign that the tectonic plates of the post-Kyoto political world are shifting.
Because China is a developing country, Hu only has to promise to curb the rate of growth of carbon emissions, rather than cut the existing total, to be seen as a player in these negotiations. Those are the rules and that is what he has done. The United States has always tied its participation in a climate treaty to parallel action by its competitors, the Chinese. The good news is that now, at last, the conditions under which America could sign a post-Kyoto treaty are being met.
Other encouraging signs are the number of senior people who are going to Copenhagen. Tony Blair stayed at home and sent John Prescott to Kyoto. Bill Clinton did the same, dispatching Al Gore. But this December Gordon Brown is booked to go to Copenhagen and while Barack Obama hasn’t yet mentioned attendance, at least that means there is a chance he will be there. Even more encouragingly, Obama’s negotiators are up to speed with a complex plot, when many feared they would not be.
Another reason for hoping there might be a sensible outcome at Copenhagen is that an astonishing level of consensus exists across the world on the structure of a long-overdue agreement to avert the destruction of the tropical forests. If the United States enters the global carbon trading system in Copenhagen, there will be massive sums of money available to buy up areas of forest to prevent deforestation. Just imagine what would happen if every company in the US economy had to buy carbon credits on a global market as a matter of course. That’s some pot of money.
Could the world be slouching towards a time when its politicians will no longer be cynics over saving the environment? Certainly there is still a way to go. The proposed cuts in emissions thought possible in Copenhagen are way below the levels needed to prevent a “dangerous” 2C rise in global temperature.
If a global deal was done, who knows what might happen? All sorts of breakthroughs, technological and financial, would ensue. What matters most at Copenhagen is the inclusion once again of the United States in a global effort to tackle climate change — and it is there to be grasped. If that were to happen, we could all afford to be a little more optimistic.

10:10 climate campaign gathers momentum

Actors, councils and big business sign up to movement to cut carbon emissions by 10%
Damian Carrington and David Adam
The Observer, Sunday 27 September 2009
The mobile phone giant O2, Manchester city council and In the Loop actor Peter Capaldi have become the latest big names to sign up to the 10:10 climate change campaign.
The campaign, supported by the Observer and the Guardian, requires participants to cut their carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010 and has grown rapidly since it was launched on 1 September at London’s Tate Modern. It now has 20,000 individuals signed up, along with almost 1,000 businesses, 500 other bodies such as schools and hospitals, and Gordon Brown and his entire government and the shadow cabinet.
The 10:10 organisers hope that, by demonstrating that so many people want action on global warming, they can pressure Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, into committing the whole country to a big emissions cut and to deliver a strong global treaty at UN talks in Copenhagen in December.
Film-maker Franny Armstrong, who founded 10:10 and directed the eco-documentary The Age of Stupid, said: “We couldn’t be more delighted that 10:10 has been so enthusiastically taken up across every sector of UK society. It’s also looking like it will soon go global, as we’re getting inundated with groups wanting to set up 10:10 Australia and 10:10 USA and everywhere in between.
“I think everyone can see that the time for talking is over and that, by joining 10:10, they are joining forces with everyone else who is ready to start getting on with actually solving the problem.”
Ronan Dunne, O2’s chief executive, said: “Joining 10:10 both underlines our commitment to reducing our carbon footprint even further and gives us access to a wealth of advice on how to help us achieve this. We urge other UK businesses to join.” O2, which has 20 million customers and 11,000 employees, is also undertaking annual green audits by environmentalist Jonathon Porritt and will aim to improve the energy efficiency of its transmitter network, which accounts for 80% of its energy use.
Other new business recruits include two FTSE-100 heavyweights, the insurance company Aviva and the commercial property company Land Securities, as well as estate agents Knight Frank, pollsters Ipsos MORI and consulting engineers Atkins.
Manchester City Council is the biggest local authority to join 10:10. It follows 27 others, including Oxford, Coventry, Wirral and five London boroughs. Richard Leese, Manchester city council’s leader, said: “Cutting our emissions by 10% in one year is a bold target, but we are confident we can achieve this, sending a message to other organisations that it is possible to make substantial reductions.”
The new recruits to 10:10 join a formidable array of politicians, including Ed Miliband and 120 other MPs. Other notable supporters include the Royal Mail, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, the Cheshire police force and celebrities such as designer Stella McCartney.
What you can do
■ Pledge to cut your own emissions at www.1010uk.org.
■ If you run a company, sign it up. If you work for a company, write to your bosses and ask them to join.
■ Help 10:10 spread its message by offering financial support at 1010uk.org/donate.
■ Read more on the 10:10 campaign, the huge response so far and how to sign up at guardian.co.uk/1010.

Greenhouse effects: E-Cloth

Tony Juniper
Over recent decades, the amount of chemical pollution discharged into the air, sea and rivers from industry has been cut dramatically. At the same time, however, the quantity and variety of chemicals used in our homes has mushroomed — much of it in the form of cleaning products.
These can find their way into the environment by various means: via the drains, or what is left on packaging when it is sent to landfill. Manufacturing them also requires energy and natural resources. In addition, our increased exposure to chemicals (and modern superclean homes) may at least partly explain the recent rise in allergies.
One product that could cut down the need for cleaning products is the E-cloth, which works without detergent. The general-purpose cloth will remove dirt, grease and bacteria from all hard surfaces, including stainless steel, glass, marble, ceramic, granite, chrome, wood and plastic. All you have to do is moisten it with water and, when you’ve finished, wash it out and use it again. The manufacturer guarantees it for 300 washes; a separate polishing cloth is used to remove any smears and is especially good on glass.
We find it particularly good on the stainless-steel panel at the back of the cooker, and for removing limescale from various surfaces in the bathroom — including the glass shower screen.
A variety of E-cloths are available, depending on the job at hand. There are packs designed for kitchens and bathrooms, and packs for windows.
The manufacturers say that every square centimetre of E-cloth has nearly half a million fibres, each of which is 1% of the width of a human hair. The edges of these break down and pick up the dirt and grease.
The multipurpose E-cloth costs £4.88 (£13.69 for a pack of four).
If, as the manufacturers suggest, you cut cleaning-product use by 90%, this could save you up to £100 a year. Even if it’s less than that, it means fewer chemical products being made and less chemical residue discharged into the sewers — which has to be a good thing.
e-cloth.com
Tony Juniper is an environmental campaigner and former director of Friends of the Earth; tonyjuniper.com
greenhouse@sunday-times.co.uk

Everest “memento” for Obama to show climate change impact

Nepal’s sherpa community is sending a piece of rock from Mount Everest to U.S. President Barack Obama to underscore the impact of global warming on the Himalayas.

Environmental group WWF said Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had promised to carry the “memento” and give it to Obama when world leaders meet in New York as “a symbol of the melting Himalayas in the wake of climate change.”

Heads of state will attend a U.N. General Assembly meeting as well as hold talks on climate change in New York.

The rock was collected from the 8,850 meter (29,035 feet) Mount Everest by Apa Sherpa, who climbed the mountain for a record 19th time in May.

Sherpas, mainly living in Nepal’s Solukhumbhu district, home to the world’s tallest peak, are known for their climbing skills.

A WWF-Nepal statement said more than 200,000 youth had also signed a petition to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (left)demanding action on global warming ahead of crucial climate talks in Copenhagen.

Negotiations on an accord to replace the Kyoto Protocol are scheduled to conclude at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in the Danish capital in December.

Experts say mountainous Nepal, home to eight of the world’s 14 tallest peaks, including Mount Everest, is vulnerable to climate change despite being responsible for only 0.025 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, among the world’s lowest.

Average global temperatures are rising faster in the Himalayas compared to most other parts of the world, according to the Kathmandu-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

Source:
Reuters, “Everest “memento” for Obama to show climate change impact“, accessed September 24, 2009

US Supported Ethiopian Government Levels Threats Against SomalianResistance Forces

Extremists hijacking Somalia, Ethiopia warns

September 26, 2009
Peter James Spielmann
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Somalia is being hijacked by Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists who are better organized and more highly motivated than the ineffectual government in Mogadishu, and Sudan could be the next nation to fall under their influence, Ethiopia warned Saturday.

“It is time that we abandon the fiction that this is a war just among Somalis. It is not,” Ethiopian Foreign Minister Ato Seyoum Mesfin said in a pessimistic speech before the General Assembly.

“Somalia is being hijacked by foreign fighters who have no inhibition in proclaiming that their agenda has nothing to do with Somalia. Theirs is an ambition that goes well beyond Somalia, and they say it out loud and clear,” said Mesfin.

“Today in Somalia, there is greater co-ordination and co-operation among those who assist the extremists than among those who profess support for the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia,” Mesfin said.

Last week, two stolen UN vehicles packed with explosives blew up at an African Union peacekeeping base in Somalia, killing 21 people, including 17 Burundian and Ugandan peacekeepers. Markings on the cars meant they were not subject to the usual security checks.

Al-Shabab, a local Islamic militia with foreign fighters in its ranks, said the Sept. 17 bombing was in retaliation for a U.S. commando raid on Sept. 14 that killed Al Qaeda operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in southern Somalia. It has released a video pledging allegiance to Al Qaeda and showing foreign trainers moving among its fighters.

“As the latest horrific suicide attack … has shown, those destroying Somalia are being emboldened, and their supporters rewarded,” Mesfin said.

On the other hand, “The international community is being stingy even with symbolic steps to show resolve against extremists and spoilers in Somalia,” he said.

“It is critical that the international community wakes up before the hijacking of Somalia by extremism is fully consummated,” Mesfin said, lamenting that “it appears, the Council does not consider Somalia is a priority.”

“What is missing is the political will. No one who knows Somalia well believes that Al-Shabab is popular in Somalia. Whatever gains they have made is a function of their brutality and the support they have from without.”

Mesfin warned Sudan could be the next domino.

“The Horn of Africa cannot afford the consequence of failure in the Sudan peace process. We are very close to both parties in the Sudan, an asset which we want to use wisely,” Mesfin said.

11:25, September 27, 2009

Somali PM optimistic about dialogue with Islamist rebels

By Abdurrahman Warsameh

Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdurashid Ali Sharmarke, on Saturday said the Somali government is in dialogue with “key” individuals in the opposition and he expected positive results from the talks.

The Somali government is fighting deadly insurgency with Islamist rebels since it returned to the capital early this year following a UN-sponsored talks in Djibouti late 2008 which culminated with the election of the current president and the formation of the government of national unity led by Sharmarke.

The prime minister, who was speaking in an exclusive interview with Xinhua, said there were both “direct and indirect” dialogues going on between the government and the opposition.

“We will continue to engage the opposition. We try to discuss directly or indirectly and I think there have been a lot of progress in our talk. I hope the results may be seen later on but we continue to have a meaningful dialogue,” said the prime minister.

Sharmarke acknowledged that there are difficulties in the talks with the opposition groups who are basically two main Islamist factions of Al-Shabaab and the Hezbul Islam.

The prime minister said there will always be going to be “elements” within the opposition that as he put it “will not agree to anything”, but he stated that as a government it was their responsibility to reach out to those who were “still out of the (peace) process of Djibouti”.

The Somali prime minister was hopeful that the opposition groups would come to terms with the fact that the only way out was to join hands and move forward.

The official also talked about the current security situation, African Union peacekeeping Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the bilateral relations between China and Somalia, and the unfulfilled pledged funds from the international community.

Sharmarke, whose beleaguered government is confined to parts of Mogadishu and fights off daily attacks from insurgent groups poised to topple it, said his government was doing all it could to improve security in Mogadishu.

He acknowledged that the latest deadly twin suicide car bombings against AMISOM headquarters in Mogadishu was a “setback” and nothing could be done to prevent such attacks.

“I think you can hardly prevent such suicide bombings. I think you can only minimize the effects of such things. When one decides to blow himself up, I think very little can be done,” the prime minister told Xinhua.

The suicide attacks which killed nearly 21 people, mostly peacekeepers, and wounded as many as 40 others, was claimed by Al-Shabaab Islamist rebels who along with the Hezbul Islam faction, control much of southern and central Somalia.

Meanwhile, the Somali prime minister praised what he called “the long and historic ties” between the Somali and Chinese peoples and governments and urged the further strengthening of the ties between the two nations.

He sent congratulation to the government and people of China as they celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

“I would urge people and government of China to continue to do their own progress to continue to grow their economy. I think growth in China is a growth for the entire world,” he told Xinhua.

He, however, described as unfortunate the international community’s inability to deliver its pledged funds to support the Somali government and AU peacekeeping forces.

The official hoped that the 8,000-strong African Union peacekeeping forces, of which nearly 5,000 are currently on the ground in Mogadishu, would soon be fully deployed and that their mandate, which is now limited, would be strengthened to enable them to fight Islamist rebels.

Source: Xinhua

Uganda hosts talks on AU Somalia force

AFP

Defence ministers from Uganda, Burundi and Somalia met last Friday in Kampala over the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia after last week’s suicide attack on the force, an official said.

The ministers alongside military chiefs of staff from the three countries began discussions last Thursday at an undisclosed location and continued last Friday.

“Somalia security is top on the agenda of this meeting,” Ugandan army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Felix Kulayigye said late last Thursday.

Last Thursday, radical Somali Islamist rebels carried out deadly twin suicide attacks on the AU force headquarters in Mogadishu, killing 21 people including 17 peacekeepers as well as the force’s deputy comander.

Since that attack the insurgents have called for fresh attacks against the African peacekeeping force, which comes under fire almost on a daily basis on the streets of the Somali capital. Burundi and Uganda are the only countries that contribute troops to Amisom. The force currently counts 5 000 men, well short of the 8 000 promised when the force was deployed in March 2007. Bujumbura and Kampala, as well as the AU, are asking for the force’s mandate to be beefed up.

Meanwhile One of several suicide bombers who killed 21 people, including 17 African Union peacekeepers, at a base in the Somali capital Mogadishu on September 17 was American, a Somali-language website has claimed.

Militants from Islamist insurgent group alShabaab which the US says has close links with alQaeda entered the base in vehicles stolen from the United Nations and detonated explosive charges as a meeting between Somali officials and peacekeepers was taking place.

Somali-language website Dayniile.com, without revealing its sources, reported that one of the bombers was Omar Mohamed Mahmoud, a Somali-American who lived in the United States until 2007.

The site is run by members of the Mursade a subclan of the large Hawiye clan which has provided a significant number of fighters to alShabaab.

Gaffel Nkolokosa, a Nairobi-based spokesperson for the AU peacekeeping mission in Somalia (Amisom), said investigations, including DNA analysis of remains, were ongoing and that the identity of the bombers had not yet been confirmed.

The US Embassy in Nairobi declined to comment. No one from al Shabaab was immediately contactable.

Should the report prove to be true, it will be the second verified case of an American citizen turning suicide bomber in Somalia.

Shirwa Ahmed became the first known naturalised US citizen to become a suicide bomber when he blew himself up in the selfdeclared autonomous Somali region of Puntland last October, killing dozens.

FBI director Robert Mueller said that Ahmed was radicalized in the US state of Minnesota, which has a sizable Somali community.

The FBI believes that over a dozen Somali-American youths have left Minneapolis to join alShabaab over the last two years.

Jamal Bana, 20, and Burhan Hassan, 17, both former residents of Minneapolis, were shot dead while fighting for alShabaab.

The JFP Interview With Chokwe Lumumba

The JFP Interview with Chokwe Lumumba

Kristin Brenemen

by Adam Lynch
September 23, 2009

Chokwe Lumumba was one child among seven in Detroit’s West side public housing projects. His birth name is Edwin Taliaferro, though he abandoned what he considers his slave name in favor of his current, more nationalistic, equivalent.

He first made a name for himself as vice president and co-founder of the Republic of New Afrika in the 1970s, an organization of black nationalists that demand freedom from an oppressive American government.

Lumumba’s history as a lawyer has been equally colorful. In 1976 he joined the staff of the Detroit Public Defenders Office. He set up his own law firm in 1978, dedicated to defending the oppressed. He even sued his old university for allegedly abandoning an affirmative action program for African Americans.

He has locked antlers with bar associations in Michigan and Mississippi. In Michigan he refused to give authorities information about a client, and in 2000, the Mississippi Bar Association reprimanded him for describing Hinds County Circuit Judge Swan Yerger as a racist.

In 1996, Leake County Circuit Court convicted Lumumba’s client, Henry Payton, of bank robbery and arson. The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the decision and sent the trial back to Judge Marcus Gordon for a second round.

The court found Payton guilty again, though Lumumba said Gordon was openly hostile to Payton. In 2001, Lumumba filed a motion for a new trial, based on some jurors’ opinion that they had compromised due to Gordon’s instructions to continue deliberating until they had a decision. At the hearing Gordon cut off Lumumba’s selection of potential jurors. The judge also allowed Payton to be led to the court in chains, possibly coloring jury opinion against Payton, and he interrupted Lumumba during his opening statements.

Lumumba told Clarion-Ledger reporter Jimmie Gates that Gordon “had the judicial demeanor of a barbarian.” Gordon held him in contempt for Lumumba’s claim of Gordon’s unfair handling of the case, which began a chain of events culminating with Lumumba being removed from the courtroom amid challenges from Lumumba that he was proud to be rid of Gordon’s presence. He was jailed for three days and fined a combined $800.

In 2003 a bar complaint tribunal decided to reprimand Lumumba, though the bar appealed the tribunal’s decision to the Mississippi Supreme Court, requesting a one-year suspension of the attorney. The Supreme Court agreed to a six-month suspension. The Mississippi Supreme Court reinstated Lumumba in 2007 with an 8 to 1 decision.

More recently, Lumumba represented the owners of a Jackson nightclub, the Upper Level, after the city’s formerMayor Frank Melton vowed to close the business down as “a public nuisance.” Hinds County Chancery Court sided with the city in 2008 and imposed expensive new requirements from the club, such as increased security, a more expensive insurance plan and better record-keeping of employees. Club owners were unable to afford the expensive new requirements, and the club remains closed to this day.

Earlier this year, Lumumba campaigned for and won a seat on the Jackson City Council, after incumbent Ward 2 Councilman Leslie McLemore decided to retire from the post. He spoke to the JFP in his office on Mill Street.

Is it true you were brought up in a Catholic school?
My father was born in Coffeeville, Kansas, but they moved to Detroit. Me and all my brothers were baptized Catholic, and my mother, that was a major move for her because she had been a Baptist all her life from Alabama. My Grandmother let her get away with it, and that’s how we were raised. My Dad was like a West Indian: He was always doing three or four jobs. Not only did he have a lot of work to earn a living, but he was always volunteering with the Catholic church, which put us in a position to have major discounts for tuition at the school.

What was your first encounter with racism?
I recall going to Dearborn, Michigan. That’s the place that was built for white workers. I can recall my dad with a whole car full of kids pulling into a drive-in, like a Sonic, only they didn’t have Sonics at the time, and they literally let us sit there for three hours (before serving us). He was smoldering. Fortunately, my grandmother was in the car at the time, and she held him back, because he had a temper. But I also remember him getting stopped on the road. Officers said he was driving in front of them. I don’t know where else he was supposed to drive—they could have gone around him. And he was almost arrested. I think what stopped him from getting arrested was the fact that there were so many kids in the car, and my mother didn’t really know how to drive. I remember those experiences, and I remember police officers beating black people down in the streets. Right in the street?

I was probably about 9 or 10, coming back from the movie, and this drunk man, clearly intoxicated, was on the corner, and the police were talking to him. He wasn’t really doing anything. Just drunk. And the patrolman started slapping him around. But then the Big Four pulled up. This was a Chrysler, which had two uniformed cops and two detectives in it. I figured, “Oh, they’re going to stop this guy from messing with him,” but that’s not what happened. I literally ran home that day, because I thought I was watching a man get killed.

Then my brother was arrested, because back in those days teenagers were wearing leather jackets. It was a kind of uniform, really. He went and got him one. He had to have one, so he got one, but apparently this white lady’s purse was snatched by someone who had a leather jacket like that. Of course, half the neighborhood had leather jackets like that. He wound up getting arrested, and they beat him around at the police station. He was at home at the time of the snatching.

Was there any indication of racism at the church?
My brother encountered racism in the Catholic institution because he was one of the first blacks to be at the predominantly white Catholic church. We had started out at an all-black Catholic school. The nuns there considered our school a mission school. It was in the northeast side of Detroit. To be honest with you, blacks out there lived in the projects. But the blacks in the general area, particularly the ones that went to Catholic schools, were pretty well off. This was an area outside of the projects itself, but we were still considered a mission.

It was an extremely good education. It was the roughest school I ever went to, even compared to law school. I went there for two years before we transferred to St. Theresa, and when we got there it was changing to a black school. That’s when the racism came in. The nuns snatched (my brother) off the dance floor once for dancing with a white girl.

I don’t suppose they did that with the white kids, too, did they?
It was the kind of racism we had to deal with. But it wasn’t everywhere. The coach, for instance, wouldn’t tolerate racial division. He was Jewish. He was trying to win games, I suspect, but he also seemed to have a sense of social consciousness. In my class, blacks were the strength of that class, both athletic and academic. If you messed with us, you were messing with the core success of the school, so we were treated a lot better. That wasn’t necessarily so with the girls. They caught a lot of hell when their dresses were too short, or something like that. And I saw things coming up through grade school that I cannot say weren’t racially motivated. I heard the word n*gger used by some of the students. …

I think the nuns resented that their school was getting black. They felt the school was going downhill, and they acted out on that by slapping some kids inappropriately and using divisive language.

The neighborhood was changing, too?
Yeah, prior to those years, the realtors were working to keep blacks out, and covenants had not been stricken down, but there was no legal segregation.

In 1969, at Wayne State University, in Detroit, where you went to law school, 18 of the 24 black students in your class failed due to a discriminatory grading system. I read that you and other black students took over the law school administration building demanding reinstatement of the students and fair grading practices.
We’re the first ones that I know of, that instituted a change in the grading system because of that incident. We protested and seized the building until the students were allowed back in.

There were a lot of statements at the time that you can’t expect a lot from black kids, that they can’t do well in these types of environments: “Law school is too much for you.” There were actually teachers saying that; this was the behavior and failure they expected form black students.

Secondly, there was systematic, cultural deprivation among the failed students because some of the schools students were coming from inner-city Detroit, where the schools probably didn’t teach the writing skills necessary in law school. Your writing skills mean a lot in law school. So we had the protest. Everybody got back in, and everybody but two people finished and became lawyers. Some of them became top-notch, well-respected lawyers. One of them is one of the best communication lawyers in the country. He was the one that had the lowest grade.

What were the improvements at the school that made this possible?
They were given more time to acclimate themselves to the writing style that was necessary, so they just did a whole lot better. Our problem was never that we could not understand the law once it was explained. We had the analytical prowess, but the writing necessities, which require you to write major tests on paper within a very short time, was a problem.

I’ve heard some JSU teachers say they have to teach skills to their freshman students that should have gotten into their heads in high school.
I’m not surprised. Inner-city schools are not all where they need to be. I think I was a little better prepared going into Wayne. When I went into college, I was confronted with a teacher who gave me Fs every time I turned around. I cursed her all kinds of ways, though it wasn’t racially motivated. She wasn’t satisfied with what I was putting on my paper. She told me to stop writing about roses and flowers and write about something I was really interested in. So I wrote about Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, and I began to learn to improve. … I started changing my writing style in terms of transition words, so by the time I got to law school, I was a pretty decent writer, though law school requires plenty more than just being able to write an essay.

In the 1970s, you became vice president of the Republic of New Afrika, right?
Yeah.

I’ve read that the RNA formed to coordinate the efforts of activists, grass-roots groups and black nationalists. Does that sound accurate?
There were probably some grass roots involved, but Provisional Government of the Republic of Afrika is the more appropriate name. Our position was that America was showing no sensitivity toward the condition of itself or serious involvement of blacks in the body politic. You have to differentiate between the idea of racial separation and the idea of independent government. It’s interesting that the U.S., which started as a government that based itself upon independence, can’t make that distinction. Never was the Republic of Afrika in favor of racial separation. White people were not restricted from the organization. The argument was that black folks needed black power in state government. They had to be able to control their own state, which is not a new phenomenon. In our nation’s earliest history, the slave rebels—that’s the John Browns—had formed a provisional government consisting of Frederick Douglass. Later the Communist Party picked up on the idea, but right after the Civil War, we had people advocating for the migration to places like Kansas or Oklahoma to form black states, basically in reaction to racism.

But we were never about separating the races. We wanted to separate from an oppressive government. The idea, as I see it, is human rights for human beings. If you’re a human being, and you’re with a group of human beings who are mistreating you, then you have a right to self-determination. Yes, it did involve a lot of activism and grass roots, and was really a who’s who of activists in the 1960s and the 1970s.

Was it anti-capitalist or “anti-corporatist”?
Actually, neither. There were people in it who were anti-capitalist, just as there were people in the movement who were aspiring capitalists. Neither one of them defined the movement. Most of us, I believe, learned toward socialism, which can be defined in many forms. We don’t believe in the unchecked advance of individualistic capitalism. One provision of government that we most ascribed to was Ujamaa, which means cooperative economics. It comes out of Tanzania. Villages were trying to build self-contained institutions, hospitals and so forth, so they could take care of people in that community.

Does your dual participation in the Republic of New Afrika and Jackson city government say anything about the local city government?
My view is that we’re still entitled to self-determination, but right now I’m in a coalition with a number of people who want to make Jackson better. I want to make it better. My view is long range, and it may have fleeting relevance at the moment that if we don’t get anything done then nobody will be happy. I believe that we have to empower the population of Jackson in order to feed, clothe and house people, and give people a sense of growth and a sense of destiny. As long as black folks are on the floor economically, with big segments of unemployment and underemployment, then the whole of human society in America can’t advance, because they’re all economically tied together. That’s where I’m at right now.

The struggle I was in was never just to go off and form some black state for black people. The idea was to change the whole body politic of North America. Our view is that when you begin to raise the bottom, you raise everybody else. So I’m very supportive of workers rights. I don’t care who the worker is. I’m very supportive of the struggle against all forms of discrimination, be it sexual orientation or whatever it is.

Speaking on the pay-raise attempt this last week, do you think the administration could have actually delivered a sustainable pay raise that would not have been so painful to fund?
I voted for the pay raise because I think it should happen, because you can’t have different results if you keep doing the same thing. I think, in defense of the administration and the other council members, we just got here. There’s a lot of things that could happen in four years. I think Johnson was trying to say, “I need time to get my feet on the ground, and if I have time to look at things perhaps we can (make this raise possible).” If that’s what he’s saying, then I’ll back his point. But if he’s saying somehow or another he is going to do the same thing they’ve always been doing and squeeze out pay raises, well, it ain’t gonna happen.

I’ve got four years to pursue some new approaches. The public sector has to put more money in peoples’ hands. If they put more money in, then people will spend more. If they spend more, you create more income for the city as a whole.

Going back to the RNA—it’s so damn tantalizing—in 1972 the RNA purchased land near Jackson, Miss. Is it true the land was road-blocked by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies?
Yes, they blocked it temporarily.

What was their legal justification?
They were saying, “You’re trying to come in and take over Mississippi.”

That was their legal argument?
No, that was their public stance. There was no legal standing.

They didn’t try to claim you were stealing water from the city or anything like that?
In March of 1971, we purchased the land. The owner of the land was very much behind us. He started getting a lot of pressure from the FBI and everybody else to dump the deal. That was in March. Later on, during the roadblock, we were totally within our rights. They had set up a roadblock, headed by Lloyd Jones. We called him “Goon” Jones, because he was one of the people involved in shooting those Jackson State students (in 1970). He was with the Mississippi Highway Patrol. Jones set up a block. And we said, “Look, we come in peace, but we come prepared. And we’re going to our land.”

We went toward the land, and they decided to back down and open up the roadblock, and we went through.

What would’ve happened if they hadn’t backed down?
I don’t know. We had our instructions that we were going to provide for all lawful restraints, like if somebody wanted to check our license and tickets, but we weren’t going to get jumped on. They certainly weren’t going to do what they’d done to the Jackson State students, because if they had, we would have had to defend ourselves. What may have contributed to the peaceful conclusion was the FBI. An FBI car pulled in front of our caravan, and we stopped, and I went up to the car and asked them what the problem was. They said, “It was an accident,” that they didn’t mean to pull up in front of our car.

Just to get an image here, what kind of people were sitting in your vehicle? I have the image of a van filled to brimming with angry stares and people with lots of leather and guns.
It was a caravan full of people from age 2 up to 80. This was men, women and children. We had security, but these were regular people. So when the FBI stopped us and drove away that may have influenced Jones’ people. We kind of felt like the Red Sea had parted. We drove onto the land and were exhilarated, feeling like we had accomplished a mission.

Tell me about the Brinks Case. In 1981, New York Judge Irving Ben Cooper barred you from representing Fulani Sunni Ali (Cynthia Boston) on charges arising from an armored car robbery incident. What were the grounds for Cooper’s decision?
Hey, you got the name right. You’re good. (Cooper) said I was a nationalist attorney and thought I might try to break Fulani out of jail. At the time I said, “I don’t have to do that. All I have to do is walk her out of the front.” I was a good enough lawyer to win the case, and I was, and she did walk free. Her husband was found not guilty. They never convicted anybody for (that robbery) except for Mutulu Shakur, but that was in a much later trial.

Tupac’s Dad?
Tupac’s step-dad. I think he was the only one convicted of robbing it. Not that he had robbed it, but that he had helped plan the robbery. Everybody in the case I worked with, all six or seven clients were found not guilty.

He got convicted for the breaking out of Assata Shakur, who was considered by many blacks in the northeast as the Harriet Tubman of the northeast. She was involved in the Black Panther’s many food programs. They had accused her originally of being involved in the suppression of drug houses—they would throw the drugs down the toilet and take the weapons (to undermine police). That originally was why they were looking for her. When they arrested her, they shot her in the process, but while they were shooting her, some of her comrades shot back and an officer got killed.

You argue she never did any shooting?
Clearly it wasn’t her because she was paralyzed in her arm. They took her to trial, and she got found not guilty eight different times on different charges. What she got convicted of was being an accomplice in the shooting incident with the police officer—felony murder. She was involved in the shooting, an all-white jury said. The medical testimony bore out that she didn’t do it, but the all-white jury didn’t care.

The New York press was just rough. In every magazine, I’d see myself as a nationalist lawyer. I had to be very careful.

You were held in contempt by the district judge for your comments to the press at the time, weren’t you?What were those comments?
I didn’t say it to the press. I said it to the judge. I told him he was handling the case like a racist. This wasn’t Cooper. I had never been held in contempt before. The Judge, Kevin Duffy, started out the trial with an anonymous jury, sending a message that these (defendants) were dangerous people. They told them they were protecting them from the press, but The New York Times said, “bull-crap,” the judge thinks these are dangerous people. A couple of jurors came in and said, “What about that article in the New York Times? Everybody in the jury room is talking about these being dangerous people.”

I said, “Judge, you can’t be the only one asking the jury questions. We get to ask questions, too.”

“No,” he said.

“Well, judge, you’ve got to ask the jurists, every one of them, if they’ve been violated by that article.”

“No,” he said.

“Judge, what are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.”

Was he trying to alienate you from the jury?
It was clear that he was trying to divorce us from any real contact with the jurors, and as a criminal defense lawyer, you know that you have to humanize not only yourself, but your clients. And if you can’t really talk to the jurors, then you have a problem. His thing was you couldn’t talk to (the jury) before the trial, and even when you got to the trial, if you had an objection, he’d put buttons under the table. You had to push either a green or red button for him to know you were objecting. Now how he was supposed to know what you were objecting to was impossible to tell.

These were the restrictions. The whole case was going to go down the tubes without a fair trial if we accepted that arrangement. So what I did was I challenged the judge at every opportunity I got—mostly when the jury wasn’t there, because I wasn’t trying to distance myself from the jurists. I challenged him, and challenged him, and what he did, in turn, was restrict my cross-examination, and hold me to standards he held nobody else to, and finally he was calling me the village idiot and other stuff. So, based upon his comments, I said this trial is very racist, and things of that nature.

Mind you, he didn’t hold me in contempt then. He said, “We’ll deal with you later.” We got all the way to the end of the trial, and at the end, six months later, the judge, in my opinion, was of the attitude that he was ready to forget what I’d said. He wasn’t going to say anything about our encounter. His whole thing was that Lumumba’s crazy. His clients will get convicted, and they’re going away for a long time, and that’ll be satisfying enough for him.

That’s not what happened, was it?
He had to hear them read off eight counts of “not guilty” for each one of them. I wasn’t there, because the judge had let me go home to Detroit. But he didn’t call me back, he just took the jury verdict, and my co-counsel said that every time someone said, “not guilty,” his head would go down a little bit. By the time the got to the last “not guilty,” his head was down to the desk. He then immediately said, “Where’s Lumumba? He should be here. I’m holding him in contempt.”

Then all the lawyers jumped up and said, “You can’t hold him in contempt. You told him he could go home.”

He issued a contempt order for my statement after the trial. He initially held me in contempt and sentenced me himself, but the court of appeals reversed that and cited case law saying he could not do that on his own. If he had given me some kind of consequence at the time I’d called him racist, he could’ve sentenced me, but since he waited for the end of the trial, that showed he did not have to take action to vindicate the authority of the court.

Your reputation preceded you. I read that you had to wait three years for your application to practice law in Mississippi to be granted. Is that unusual? What was the hold-up? What did the Bar tell you?
That was for two reasons. They used the New York thing, but that was just a hook. They basically didn’t want me in because I believed in the peaceful overthrow of the U.S. government. First of all, I’m not sure that’s illegal. We weren’t calling for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. We were calling for giving people in a given region the chance to vote. That’s legal, certainly under international law and through U.S. law. There’s nothing wrong with taking a vote and changing government. They never explained that charge, but it was my connection to the cause. They had also neglected to check to see that I had come here to represent people from St. Louis who had been beat up while driving through Jackson back when Dale Danks was mayor.

The Mississippi Bar publicly reprimanded you for speaking out against Hinds County Circuit Judge Swan Yerger after Yerger dismissed a lawsuit one of your clients brought against a white police officer. Do you still feel Yerger’s dismissal was discriminatory?
No question about it. Yerger had a terrible record. (I believe) it’s spurred by his racial beliefs and his conservative connection to the institutional defense of insurance companies. Every plaintiff who is black, in his view is his enemy, in my opinion. Here’s his track record: I represented a case where a young man was suing Trustmark Bank, and the first case went to Yerger. (The defense) had forgotten to file an answer to the complaint. My predecessor had filed a complaint, and because they had not filed an answer to the complaint he was subject to default. Yerger wouldn’t even consider it.

Second, I represented the Jackson Advocate in a case where they were suing the city of Jackson because they had awarded the Mississippi Link the right to publish the city’s legal ads. Yerger refused to give it to the black-owned Jackson Advocate, which could have been reasonable, but then he took it from the Mississippi Link, which is also black-owned, and gave it to The Northside Sun. That was his resolution.

Anything else?
There were three other incidents. I can’t recall everything about them. My client was suing the police department because a white police officer had come on the scene when this white couple had run him off the road and caused him to have an accident. The white police officer, according to another officer in the national guard, who was a white guy, a captain, testified that he saw the white police officer come on the scene after my client had been run off the road and went over and talked to the people who ran him off the road. It wasn’t like he didn’t know them, okay, but my guy was suing because the white cop refused to produce the information as to who the couple was, even though he talked to them.

We went to trial, (which ended) with a hung jury. We prepared for a retrial. Judge Graves recused himself and it got bounced around. The city attorney’s office had its own problems because of the high turn-over rate of that position, so the case got delay after delay. So a new city attorney filed a motion to dismiss because of a failure to prosecute. … Heck, the city attorney didn’t really expect it to be granted, I bet. But then Yerger comes in there and says, “Dismissed.”

My interpretation was that it was racist. If you go into any witness room, or conference room with attorneys sitting around and talking, if there’s 10 of them, nine would say they think Yerger is either racist or so biased for insurance companies that his decision-making can not be relied upon.

Then when I made the statement, there’s no telling how many attorneys walked up and agreed with me. Even old-timers, who I thought would be a part of the old boys’ network, agreed with me.

There is an oppressive culture in the state courtrooms that goes beyond race. It oppresses lawyers, because they are the ones identified with trying to protect the rights of the disenfranchised. In my view, there is a lot of legitimate sentiment out here.

Just to give you a hint: When the bar, in an unprecedented move, sent an invitation to all the lawyers over the state to voice comment on my being reinstated over the Judge Gordon thing, I got 85 lawyers who said I should be reinstated and only three that said I shouldn’t.

Do you still stand by your opinion on Gordon?
I think that Gordon had a very oppressive demeanor when he dealt with attorneys in the courtroom, not just clients. Since that incident, he has been much different with me. In my opinion, I get as much respect or more than just about every other attorney who comes in there. We understand each other. He understands that I’m not going to be pushed around, and I understand that there was a different way I could have said some things I said. Now, I don’t take anything back from what I said in the New York case. But in Gordon’s case I could have said other things that would have made the same point.

Given that, I make sure that when I approach him that I’m still zealous, but there are more ways to say things than through accusations. I’ve been up before Gordon a few times since with success. One of the cases I’ve got pending is one where he made a ruling that I appealed to the Supreme Court. We’ll see how it comes out. I think he’s wrong in the ruling, but at least he was civil about it. He didn’t get mad at me for raising it.

But Gordon passes through a cultural prism. So do I, frankly, but his is quite different from mine. He comes from a different side of the fence and a different side of the white supremacy argument. And when I say the white supremacy argument I don’t mean Klansmen who run around calling people the n-word. I mean people who really believe that white people should be in control and that black people’s participation should be at the behest of that control.

Look at the way he handled the (Edger Ray) Killen case. He did give him the maximum manslaughter sentence, but he let him out on bond. My man was just there for robbery. He didn’t kill anybody, and he has never been out on bond, not pre-trial, post-trial or appeal. Then here’s Killen out on bond. He’s 72 or 73. Chances are he was going to die before he served his sentence. The way I view it, through the cultural prism, is that that qualified as racist behavior. But as a person, I don’t really have a problem with Gordon anymore. We come from two different worlds.

You said just before the run-off election that you planned to form your own political party. How’s that going? And why is it necessary?
You guys saw a YouTube thing that I would have to see again, right? I have never intended to form my own political party, but I have definitely been involved with groups that have talked about it and probably will. Coming out of the New Orleans experience with Katrina, there was discussion about a Reconstruction Party, something that represented New Orleans fighting for its rebirth.

My platform proves that I’m more democratic than most anybody else up there, but let me say this, too: I’m a creature of the Movement. I have a high degree of suspicion against established parties who have been very detrimental to people. The Mississippi Democratic Party, in contrast to the national party, is somewhat unique because of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party. In some ways, the Mississippi Democratic Party has been reconstructed. Remember, they challenged the party by going up there to the convention and refusing to leave. By 1972, because of the challenge, the Mississippi Democratic Party has reformed into a party that requires half of its population of its party delegates to be women, and half to be black. So that probably is the most inclusive party in the country. I guess that’s why most of the whites left.

That, and good ole Lyndon Johnson.
(Laughter) Now, in Mississippi, the party is, to a large extent, a black party. They have some whites in it, but it’s mostly black. So, I feel I’m much more comfortable being in the Democratic Party in Mississippi over the national party. I still have some problems with the national party.

Barack Obama is the president. He’s still in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are things that the national Democratic Party does that still buy into corporate control. The reason I think they’re over there is because of oil. I think Obama’s stuck there trying to figure a way out. I hope.

The Mississippi Democratic Party has experienced a transition that I’ve personally witnessed. If a decision is made that I decide to participate in, it’s because we feel it’s the best decision for the people. That, and the local party is likable, and I’ll try to take them with me wherever I go.

You had pushed for a “Jackson First” type policy during the campaign for hiring and contracts with the city, basically privileging Jackson residents. How feasible is that?
The routes to it have been prescribed by prior council and mayoral decisions, but I don’t think they always follow them. There’s a minority set-aside, maybe 20 percent, but I’ve seen contracts with much greater involvement than 20 percent that Harvey (Johnson) has put up. Minority set-asides are great for Jackson. Secondly, with Jackson First, I’m looking at blacks, and then people who are closer by, in terms of these contracts. This doesn’t mean that a guy from New York can’t have a contract, but I will demand you do something to show how this is benefiting us. You can’t just come in and make a lot of money. I think it will help the racial disparity and help the Jackson economy.

I’ll turn the question around. If Ridgeland, Madison, Flowood, Pearl, Brandon and Clinton can do it, why can’t we? I’m sure the people in this city are at least as smart as the people there, so why not.

What’s the status of the Upper Level lawsuit?
The city put restrictions upon the club, with the decision of Chancery Court Judge Dewayne Thomas, that were largely unaffordable (by the club owners). I would challenge any club in the city to bear those same restrictions and be able to afford them. You’d close down 80 percent of the clubs in Jackson with those restrictions. The case is still in court. They’re going back to chancery court in October, and they might work out something to get them back in business before then, but I’m not on the case anymore.

I blame the mayor at the time (Frank Melton), and the city attorney (Sarah O’Reily-Evans), and to the extent of their insistence to stand on the case, I blame them right now.

… I’ve heard people say there are many neighborhoods where you’d have a hard time not finding crack or marijuana or some form of drug sold out of it.

If you’re looking for a little weed, the college duplexes in Belhaven are the place to go, and then there’s a number of clubs on State Street where you’ll sniff that familiar smell. Frank had something against the Upper Level. I won’t put a rumor out there, but after his election it became a part of his demagoguery that he would close this place down, and he stuck with it. That’s what led to the whole incident. Any lawyer who’s touched it knows Frank was wrong, and that’s why I have little sympathy for any lawyer who’s still trying to defend it.

Who’s handling the suit of the Upper Level manager who allegedly got beat up by people traveling with the mayor?
My office-mate Imhotep Alkebu-Lan, and attorney Sharon Gipson might still be on it. I think the suit will have an impact on getting the club reopened up, but I don’t know the details, and they’re trying to get that worked out.

Do you still defend your vote to delay naming the library after Charles Tisdale?
My vote was exactly right, and the Jackson Advocates’ response was exactly wrong. I can understand it from an emotional point of view, but their person in charge of the paper didn’t have that reaction on the day the vote was made. Hopefully, we can get beyond this and move on.

Are things smoother between you and the Advocate these days?
I don’t know. I’ll have to ask one of my experts.

How would you describe the city council these days, compared the council of three years ago?
We’ve had a magic moment in the history of the city.

We have a good group of people on the council who really care for the city. I don’t mind people asking me about my background. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, but we don’t need to lose focus. There are certain people who will disagree with my bent. There are people in my campaign who didn’t agree with me, but we need to come together to benefit everybody in this city, which benefits the whole state.

Let’s make the most of the moment. Let’s seize the time and do it right. I’m going to get along with everybody who wants to do that, and I’ll likely battle with people who don’t.

Can you see yourself running again in about four years?
I think I’ll take the fifth on that.

Zimbabwe News Update: President Mugabe Tells West to Lift Sanctions

‘Support us or leave us alone’

Herald Reporters

President Mugabe yesterday said countries that have imposed illegal sanctions on Zimbabwe have an agenda to destroy the inclusive Government and warned them to leave the country alone if they cannot support the arrangement.

Addressing the 64th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, President Mugabe queried the motives behind the sustenance of the economic embargo.

“In the Global Political Agreement, we have defined our priorities as the maintenance of conditions of peace and stability, economic recovery, development, promotion of human rights and improvement of the condition of women and children.

“Regrettably, while countries in the Sadc region have made huge sacrifices and given Zimbabwe financial and other support at a time when they too are reeling from the effects of the global economic crisis, the Western countries, the United States and the European Union, who imposed the sanctions against Zimbabwe have, to our surprise and that of Sadc and the rest of Africa, refused to remove them.

“What are their motives? Indeed, some of them are working strenuously to divide the parties in the inclusive Government.

“If they will not assist the inclusive Government in rehabilitating our economy, could they please stop their filthy clandestine divisive antics.

“Where stand their humanitarian principles when their illegal sanctions are ruining the lives of our children?” he asked.

President Mugabe also called for the removal of American sanctions on Cuba.

“We similarly call for an immediate end to the coercive, illegal and unjustified 50-year economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba which is estimated to have cost Cuba so far a total of US$96 billion, causing untold suffering on that country and its people,” he said.

The General Assembly has for nearly two decades now overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling for the immediate lifting of the sanctions on Cuba.

Zimbabwe, he said, joined the Non-Aligned Movement in condemning the use of “unilateral coercive measures” in violation of international law and the principles of the UN Charter.

The Zimbabwean Head of State and Government — who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces — called for multilateralism in promoting global peace and development.

“It is our hope that through our unity, solidarity, co-operation and commitment, the challenges facing the international community could be addressed,” he said adding that Zimbabwe was ready and willing to play its part.

“Our unchanging conviction is that all international institutions should abide by the universal principle, which underline multilateral processes of decision-making, particularly, the principle of equality among states and the right to development,” he said.

President Mugabe said Zimbabwe supports the revitalisation of the General Assembly to make it more effective.

“As the pre-eminent deliberative and policy-making body of the United Nations, the General Assembly should play a more active role in mobilising action against such challenges today as peace and security, the financial and economic crises, economic and social development and climatic change.

“Accordingly, the encroachment of other UN organs upon the work of the General Assembly is of great concerns to us. We therefore reiterate that any process of revitalisation should strengthen the principle of accountability of all principal and subsidiary organs of the United Nations to the General Assembly,” he said.

He once again called for the reform of the Security Council, saying: “The fact that Africa, a major geographical region, remains under-represented and without a permanent seat on the Security Council is not only a serious and antiquated anomaly whose time for address is overdue.

“It is also clearly untenable violation of the principle and practice of democracy. The reform of the Security Council should urgently take full notice of the African position which demands two permanent seats, with complete veto power, plus two additional non-permanent seats,” he said.

President Mugabe reiterated his position that there was urgent need for a substantial increase in investment in agriculture in developing countries.

“The need to ensure global food security has been raised and re-stated at many international forums. It is critical that provisions of agricultural inputs, seeds, fertilizers and chemicals be put in place for small scale farmers, particularly women.

“To achieve this, there is need to channel more support towards agriculture, which has dwindled over the last few decades.

“In addition, we call upon the developed countries to remove or reduce their agricultural subsidies and to open up their markets for agricultural products from developing countries,” he said.

In the area of health, President Mugabe said efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality, combating HIV and Aids, malaria and tuberculosis still fell short of agreed targets despite commitments made at national and international level.

He noted that Zimbabwe had made huge strides in the fight against HIV and Aids, notwithstanding limited resources.

“However, the country still faces a major challenge in increasing the availability of affordable antiretroviral drugs.

“We, therefore, continue to urge the international community, in co-operation with pharmaceutical companies to assist in increasing access to affordable essential drugs, particularly for people in Africa.”

On the global financial crisis, he said the devastating effects of the meltdown had exposed the folly of leaving management of the global economy in the hands of self-appointed countries and groups.

To this end, he welcomed the reservation of three seats on the executive board of the World Bank for African countries.

“We, therefore, welcome the recent decision by the World Bank to establish three seats for Africa on its executive board.

“We are similarly pleased that, earlier this month, the IMF finalised the re-allocation of Special Drawing Rights on the basis of the US$250 billion pledged by the G20 at its meeting in April 2009.

“Regrettably, only a mere US$18 billion of this money was allocated to low-income countries, while the developed countries, which caused the crisis, got the lion’s share.”

From New York, President Mugabe is scheduled to attend the Africa-Latin America Summit in Venezuela.

Former Canadian PM Meets President Mugabe

From Obi Egbuna in New York

President Mugabe met former Canadian Prime Minister Mr Jean Chretien who paid a courtesy call on him on Thursday.

After the short meeting, Mr Chretien was questioned about the potential of playing a role in normalising relations between the West and Zimbabwe similar to the one former US president Jimmy Carter has played in connection to Israel and Palestine also the US and Cuba.

In response, Mr Chretien said he would only consider a task of that magnitude if officially asked by the current European Unions leaders.

The former Canadian PM said throughout his involvement in politics, handling matters with extreme complexities required an intimate understanding of the issues and at the moment he did not have first hand knowledge of the dynamics of Zimbabwe re-engaging the west.

Mr Chretien said it would be beneficial to all parties involved if the US government and the EU normalise relations with Zimbabwe.

He said the normalisation of relations would have a positive and immediate impact on the economy.

Govt to release more 99-year leases

Herald Reporter

Government will soon release more 99-year leases ahead of the forthcoming summer agricultural season to ensure security of tenure for resettled farmers.

Speaking to journalists in Harare recently, Lands and Rural Resettlement Minister Herbert Murerwa said the move would ensure that farmers concentrated on boosting agriculture production.

He said parties to the GPA had agreed that land reform was irreversible but there was need to ensure productivity on the farms.

“There is, however, need to empower the people so that they start producing on the pieces of land they acquired and they need security of tenure.

“Government will soon release 99 year leases for the farmers so that they feel secure on the farms and they concentrate on increasing production,” he said.

Minister Murerwa, however, expressed displeasure at reports of disputes between resettled farmers and former white commercial farmers.

“We have heard reports and it is quiet disheartening but we need to check on these reports and get the true facts on the ground,” he said.

Government, Minister Murerwa said, was concerned since such reports affected production on the farms.

“We are trying to create an environment that will make land available to all Zimbabweans but there is currently a problem of farmers with offer letters failing to access their land because of litigation.

“There are also problems of boundaries and infrastructure found on the farms and we are working hard to find ways of resolving the problems,” he said.

Minister Murerwa said Government would also launch a land audit to determine production levels on the farms.

The programme will also include land survey and land valuations so that farmers are able to use the farms as collateral.

Government has also urged farmers to use the 99-year leases as collateral when they apply for inputs under the 2009/10 Government Input Support Scheme.

Government, in November 2006 issued the 99-year leases to resettled farmers in a bid to boost agriculture production in the country.

The leases — a demonstration of Government’s commitment to empower beneficiaries of the land reform programme — were issued to provide farmers with security to access loans to procure inputs.

Pittsburgh Emerges From G-20 With Hardly a Scratch

Pittsburgh emerges from G-20 with hardly a scratch

By Mike Wereschagin, Jeremy Boren, Jill Greenwood Sunday, September 27, 2009

After 48 hours as one of the biggest targets in the world, Pittsburgh emerged Saturday morning looking no worse than it does after a Steelers Super Bowl victory.

The masses didn’t storm the gates. Terrorists didn’t strike. The city didn’t burn. Police arrested 193 people during protests associated with the Group of 20 economic summit. A few minor fires were reported. After the Steelers’ Super Bowl victory in February, 120 were arrested and 134 fires were set. At the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, 1,700 were arrested.

“We were able to deliver the safest international event in this country, if not the world. It shows anything is possible in Pittsburgh,” Mayor Luke Ravenstahl said Friday.

Had it gone badly, blame likely would have fallen on city Public Safety Director Mike Huss, a former firefighter whose heavy-lidded eyes yesterday bespoke of one of the longest weeks of his life. While the Secret Service ran security for the main event at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Huss coordinated a deployment of law enforcement officers who pulled off what other cities couldn’t: a bloodless G-20.

A lower-than-expected influx of protesters meant police had the guns and the numbers. About 6,000 officers deployed throughout the city, compared to 5,000 protesters.

Police and federal agents monitored activists’ preparations throughout the spring and summer. On Web sites and Twitter feeds, activists threatened greater damage than they delivered. More than 10,000 protested the London G-20 summit in April. Why the Pittsburgh Summit drew perhaps half as many remains a happy mystery for Huss.

“I don’t know why they stayed away,” he said.

Months of planning preceded the brief summit. Since President Obama’s May announcement that Pittsburgh would host the gathering, security planners worked to strike a delicate balance. They had to be ready for high-probability, low-consequence events such as protests and low-probability, high-consequence events such as terrorist attacks.

“I didn’t want any hiccups,” Huss said.

A team assembled to rethink the city’s policing needs. One of its recommendations resulted in a $200,000 purchase of four Long Range Acoustic Devices. The so-called sound cannons are loud enough to disrupt a person’s vision. They were designed to combat high-seas threats such as Somali pirates and have been deployed at military bases in Iraq.

One was used Thursday against U.S. civilians during a protest for what is believed to be the first time.

As the week began, months of planning gave way to a flurry of last-minute action, decisions and changes.

“We were literally getting insurance right up until Friday, Monday or Tuesday of (last) week,” Huss said. Lexington Insurance Company — which specializes in “catastrophic liability,” according to its Web site — was the only company willing to insure the city’s police during the summit.

Only six officers suffered injuries during the week, and they were minor — dehydration, a dislocated shoulder and a lacerated finger, Huss said. Paramedics did not transport any protesters to hospitals, he said.

Wednesday night, officers from around the country attended a four-hour training session and were deputized by the mayor. They were deployed the next morning in an unfamiliar city to confront an unknown crowd.

Where to deploy the officers, who came from 65 law enforcement agencies, wasn’t decided until the last minute, Huss said.

Decisions were informed by covert intelligence gathered by other agencies operating within the city, Huss said. He declined to give specifics.

“A lot of that is things I can’t speak for,” Huss said.

False reports streamed in.

An Internet video appearing to show soldiers abducting a protester sparked outrage, though it turned out to be state police snatching the protester police accused of being the week’s most destructive. A gunshot victim found during a security sweep of a motorcade route led to rumors the Secret Service killed someone. Police talked over the radio about a person climbing the One Mellon Center building and protesters who breached the security barrier around the convention center, neither of which happened.

Some plans failed outright, such as the city’s rental of a Strip District lot as a venue for protesters.

“We spent $28,000 to rent that lot for 15 people from Tibet,” Huss said.

Other aspects went almost impossibly well. Thousands of police cars — many driven by out-of-towners — whizzed through Pittsburgh’s labyrinthine streets, and none got into an accident.

Wednesday brought the week’s most audacious protest when Greenpeace activists hung a climate change banner from the West End Bridge and were stopped before doing the same on the Fort Pitt Bridge.

“I expected banners from somewhere,” Huss said.

Thursday afternoon, protesters marched illegally, and several of the crowds turned ugly. As one large group, wielding signs and wearing black bandanas over their faces, marched into Bloomfield, police got the sort of backup that doesn’t come in most other cities.

People came out of their homes, businesses and bars along Liberty Avenue, carrying baseball bats and pickaxes, screaming at the protesters to leave and telling them they “aren’t going to mess up Bloomfield,” police on the scene said.

Huss said yesterday those were some of his favorite reports of the week.

“I love it,” Huss said. “We’ve had a lot of those reports. ‘This is our house.’ That’s how I classify those residents. ‘This is our house, and you don’t come into our house and do this.’ It was with great pride that we saw those residents.”

Crime was “way, way down” during the summit, he said.

Perhaps, Huss mused, “the folks we usually deal with were on our side on this one.” The huge police presence, Humvees rumbling through the streets and black-clad men standing on rooftops with binoculars probably didn’t hurt either.

“It wasn’t the time to break the law,” Huss said.

Even medical calls dropped sharply. There were times when every ambulance in the city sat idle, Huss said.

Friday morning, as motorcades prepared to rush heads of state to the convention center, security forces changed their communications plan, altering frequencies and limiting the number of people who could have radios on at one time, Huss said. Microphones got stuck on police radios the night before, clogging airwaves and hampering communication, he said.

The greatest potential for tragedy occurred Friday, when several thousand marchers walked for miles through militarized streets, often inches away from baton-wielding police encased in body armor.

Not a pane of glass was broken.

“I got to tell you,” Huss said, “to have a parade from Oakland to the North Side like we did, and not have any damage is a credit to the protesters and those that were in that march, and our police agencies.”

Venezuelan, Libyan Leaders Push Africa-South America Unity

Chavez, Gaddafi push Africa-South America unity

Sun Sep 27, 2009 12:07am GMT
By Frank Jack Daniel and Fabian Cambero

PORLAMAR, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi urged African and South American leaders on Saturday to strive for a new world order countering Western economic dominance.

They spoke on the first day of a 28-nation summit that was long on idealistic speeches but short on concrete steps beyond an agreement to set up a development bank for South America with an intended $20 billion ($12.5 billion pounds) start-up.

“This is the beginning of the salvation of our people,” Chavez said in a speech welcoming his guests to the Caribbean island of Margarita.

He said the meeting, coming just after the U.N. General Assembly in New York and the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, would help the mainly poor nations rely less on Europe and the United States.

“The 21st century won’t be a bipolar world, it won’t be unipolar. It will be multipolar. Africa will be an important geographic, economic and social pole. And South America will be too,” Chavez said.

The leftist leader has governed for more than 10 years and says he wants to remain in office for decades more to turn the OPEC nation into a socialist state. He casts himself as at the front of a global, “anti-imperialist” movement.

‘BUILD OUR OWN POWER’

Gaddafi, who is celebrating four decades in office and had a white limousine flown to Venezuela to meet him at the airport, echoed his host’s message.

“The world isn’t the five countries on the U.N. Security Council,” he said. “The world’s powers want to continue to hold on to their power. When they had the chance to help us, they treated us like animals, destroyed our land. Now we have to fight to build our own power.”

Other leaders, from influential developing nations like Brazil and South Africa, also gave sweeping, critical summaries of global problems, though in less radical terms.

Analysts say Brazil and South Africa’s model of business-friendly economics mixed with a focus on helping the poor is more popular among many African countries than Chavez’s revolutionary approach.

The leaders are expected to sign a document on Sunday urging global bodies like the United Nations and World Bank to give poor countries more clout.

Chavez, hoping for the creation of an alternative to multilateral lenders like the International Monetary Fund, said South American countries had agreed to start the regional development bank, Banco del Sur, with $20 billion.

“Lula, now we need to find the money!” he joked to Brazilian leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

NUCLEAR STIR

On the eve of the summit, Venezuela caused a stir by saying it was working with ally Iran to find uranium in the South American nation.

A Chavez aide, Jesse Chacon, who is minister of light industry, sought to play down the issue on Saturday. He told reporters on Margarita that Venezuela was investigating its mineral deposits with a variety of nations.

“We want nuclear energy for medicine and peaceful purposes,” Chacon said. Analysts say Venezuela is more than a decade away from developing nuclear power.

Chavez says he opposes nuclear weapons but insists the developed world does not have the right to stop other countries from developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Venezuela’s opposition called Chavez irresponsible for reaching out to what it said were unsavoury regimes around the globe.

“Venezuela’s dangerous friendship with autocratic and totalitarian governments like Belarus, Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe, show Chavez’s irresponsibility in seeking ties and alliances at any cost, without regard to the pariah state of these regimes,” opposition group Mesa Unitaria said in a statement.

(Additional reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta in Porlamar, Enrique Andres Pretel in Caracas; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Kevin Gray; Editing by Xavier Briand)

Report on the ANC National Executive Committee Meeting

Report on the ANC National Executive Committee meeting

The ANC NEC held its regular meeting on 18 - 20 September 2009.

On the ANC National Spokesperson:

The NEC has appointed Jackson Mthembu as the ANC National Spokesperson to succeed Jessie Duarte who has since joined The Presidency as Chief Operations Officer.

On the resignation of Comrade Bheki Cele from the NEC:

It also considered and accepted Bheki Cele’s resignation as an NEC member following his appointment as the National Commissioner of Police, and in accordance with police regulation. The NEC accepted and applauded this move.

On the Organisation Renewal:

The NEC dedicated much time on President Jacob Zuma’s political overview, which focused largely on the renewal of the ANC and implementation of our election manifesto by government. It reaffirmed the Polokwane resolutions, to restore power back to the ANC branches.

It highlighted some of the issues and took the following decisions:

a Political education program will soon be outlined, and will be conducted in a manner that is accessible to all our members.
a proactive ANC involved in mass campaigns on key ANC priorities such as education, health, and rural development.
On the Local Government:

The NEC expressed concern on the violence accompanying “service delivery” protests. It said, “The unprecedented lawlessness that characterizes some of these current protests cannot be allowed to continue and must be taken serious.” The ANC will take a broader view in dealing with these struggles, by addressing the historic spatial planning problems and also resolving genuine problems facing communities

The ANC will convene a Local Government Summit next year in order to address a range of issues raised by the NEC, as part of its preparation for Local Government Elections and the Manifesto. The NEC will continue with its visit to all the regions to give it the necessary understanding and insight on the local government issues.

The NEC welcomed the official launch of the BRT and expressed that it should not only be viewed as a means of transport but also as means of integrating townships with nearest cities - thus contributing to nation-building. The BRT will also relieve the financial burden from the majority of our people and will close the gaps created by apartheid spatial planning.

Recent Protest by Members of the SA Defence Force:

The recent public protest by some members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) made the NEC realize the error of allowing unionisation of the military. The interpretation of the Court Order that a forum for engagement and negotiations need to be created for soldiers means unionisation should be revisited and the process of de-unionisation should begin, while a formal structure for engagement is being created in the SANDF. The appointment of the Commission to pay attention and correct the historic neglect under which soldiers work will be part of this complex process

On Alliance Relations:

The NEC agreed that an urgent Alliance Secretariat, followed by an Alliance Summit, need to be convened urgently in order to take forward progress made since the 52nd ANC National Conference. The NEC acknowledged that long time lapses between Alliance Summits create unnecessary misunderstandings and negative perceptions amongst alliance partners.

The NEC further agreed that the ANC delegation attending the COSATU National Congress should provide leadership and contribute to the building of a strong federation.

On the 2012 ANC National Conference:

The NEC noted the premature public succession debate for the 2012 National Conference. It agreed that the debate is a distraction and should be discontinued. All ANC structures were directed to disengage from this debate and focus on the implementation of the National Conference Resolutions and the 2009 Manifesto commitments.

On the National Question:

The NEC reaffirmed that the ANC is a non-racial organisation defined to lead our country to a united, non-racial, and non-sexist democratic and prosperous South Africa. Our ethnic, cultural and religious diversity should serves to further unite us. Part of the ANC political education work will involve educating our members on the principles of non-racialism. This is the essence of the National Democratic Revolution.

On Zimbabwe:

The NEC expressed satisfaction on the progress made in the attempts to resolve the Zimbabwe question. The recent visit by President Zuma crystallized and entrenched the South African position in this matter. The NEC expressed commitment to continue engaging all the parties in Zimbabwe to make the Global Political Agreement work.

On the National Planning:

The NEC welcomed the publication of the Green paper on the National Planning Commission and the Monitoring and Evaluation. It invited all South Africans to contribute in shaping these two important policy initiatives.

On the Presidential hotline:

The NEC welcomed the Presidential hotline as a positive development in bringing government closer to the people. The hotline responds to the ANC call to ensure that government interacts directly with the masses, in order to be responsive to challenges our communities experience on a daily basis.

On Caster Semenya:

The ANC expressed its disgust at the manner in which the International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) and Athletics South Africa (ASA) have handled the Caster Semenya issue. The NEC’s view is that Caster has been victimized and subjected to unnecessary public scrutiny, thus denying her dignity. It decided to support her politically.

The next NEC meeting will take place on 06th to 08th November 2009.