Letter of Accreditation
Letter of Accreditation
Regarding Barry Fockler (Fil.kand.).
Please note:
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION - THE NETHERLANDS
Confirmation - Date: August 1st - 2004
Chairman/editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
Correspondence-email: fpf@chello.nl
ACCREDITATION LETTER
To whom it may concern: The undersigned, Henk J.J.M. RUYSSENAARS, Chairman of the Foreign Press Foundation, herewith confirms, that this Letter of Accreditation has been issued to:
Mr. BARRY FOCKLER
The Board of the Foreign Press Foundation, kindly requests all authorities and other organisations, to render full support and assistance to the bearer of this letter, in his journalistic capacity.
This letter has been issued by the Foreign Press Foundation in The Netherlands to Mr. BARRY FOCKLER, after the presentation of his credentials to the FPF Board.
For the Board:Henk J.J.M. RuyssenaarsEditor and Chairman of the Foreign Press Foundation THE NETHERLANDS http://tinyurl.com/oc10 Correspondence: fpf@chello.nl
The Foreign Press Foundation is an independent news agency of foreign correspondents, based in The Netherlands, affiliated to the Foreign Correspondents Exchange Network in Latin America, and the news agency for L-America in Venezuela: http://tinyurl.com/2skbf
Revealed: The Plight of Prisoners Caught Up in US Rendition
Published on Wednesday, April 5, 2006 by the Independent / UK
by Andrew Buncombe
The three men, none of whom was ever charged with any terrorism-related offence, were seized in 2003 and then held in four secret locations by "black-masked ninja" US operatives who made considerable efforts to ensure the prisoners did not know where they were being held. They were eventually released about a month ago.
While it remains unclear where exactly the men were held, human rights campaigners who interviewed them believe they were held in Djibouti, Afghanistan and somewhere in eastern Europe. It was alleged last year that the CIA had been operating covert "black site" prisons in Romania and Poland.
The three men - Muhammad Bashmilah, Salah Qaru and Muhammad al-Assad - are now struggling to rebuild their lives. Mr Assad told Amnesty International, which today publishes the men's testimony in a new report: "For me now, it has to be a new life, because I will never recover the old one."
Mr Bashmilah and Mr Qaru were arrested in Jordan in October 2003 and handed over to the US authorities. Mr Assad was arrested in Tanzania the same year. They were returned in May 2005 to the Yemeni authorities, who charged them with obtaining false travel documents. The men pleaded guilty but were released after the judge decided their time held by the US was sufficient time served.
The Amnesty report details how the men's US guards removed all labels from the food and clothing they were given to make it difficult for them to know where they were. Campaigners narrowed down the likely location of their internment based on the length of their rendition flights, the changing position of the sun when the men were allowed outside to pray, and the winter temperature.
"Labels were usually removed from their clothes and their bottles of water. They had some blankets and T-shirts made in Mexico, while their water cups, although made in China, had the name and telephone number of a US company embossed on the bottom," says the report.
Controversy over the rendition of suspects has been growing since it emerged last year that the CIA has been regularly seizing prisoners and flying them to third countries for interrogation. Sometimes the interrogations are carried out by foreign security personnel, sometimes by US operatives. Suspects' families cannot find out what is going on. Some prisoners said they were tortured while in custody.
Britain and other European countries have been accused of complicity in rendition by allowing the CIA to use their airports to refuel and land. Human Rights Watch claimed last year that since the 11 September attacks, planes operated by the CIA for the transfer of prisoners had made at least 300 stops in European countries. Amnesty says the planes have made at least 185 landings at UK airports, including British facilities in the Caribbean. Where the US holds its prisoners, especially those considered "high value" targets, is unknown though a number of possible locations have been identified by campaigners, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Morocco. The British government has persistently denied reports that prisoners have been held on the Indian Ocean islands of Diego Garcia, home to a US air base.
Kate Allen, director of Amnesty International UK, said: "With mounting evidence of illegal CIA rendition flights through European airspace - and multiple landings and take-offs of CIA planes at UK airports - there must be an independent inquiry into all aspects of UK involvement in these sinister practices."
A spokeswoman for the CIA yesterday refused to comment.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
The Slums in the World's Teeming Cities Need an Urgent Solution
Published on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
by Jennifer RowellRapid urbanization has led to an even more rapid growth in global poverty
Every second, someone in the world moves into a slum. Over the next 30 years, the world's slum population will, on average, increase by 100,000 each day. Globally, we are seeing a shift from rural areas to cities and, before the year is out, a higher proportion of people will be living in cities than ever before.
Jonathan Watts's article about the growth of a megalopolis in China rightly illustrates some of the startling effects of rapid urbanization (Invisible city, March 15). Watts's picture of a teeming city, smothered in dense pollution and crowded with tower blocks and shopping malls incongruously overlooking slum huts mirrors what I saw on a recent trip to Dhaka, in Bangladesh - and what I have seen in many cities around the world, from Luanda to Mumbai, and Puerto Suarez in Bolivia.
But there is a deeper reality that Watts does not report: in these rapidly growing cities, the proportion of people living in poverty grows at the greatest rate. The population trend to urbanization is important not just because of the numbers, but because of governments' inability to deal with its rate of growth, and this has an impact on every other aspect of life for the poor.
Overcrowding is the most visible problem, but the sheer number of people is just the beginning. In slums across Asia, such as in Mumbai or Dhaka, around 1,000 people live together in each acre of land, without proper sanitation. The result is a massive amount of human and solid waste that even the most willing government would struggle to deal with. The atrocious conditions cause sickness, so people can't work or go to school. Often people cannot find, or hold on to, jobs; and barely anyone has security of land tenure. The narrow lanes between the one-room wooden shacks stop ambulances and fire engines from getting through; people are effectively living in a tinderbox waiting to be set alight.
In Lima, because the government makes no other land available, thousands of people build their homes on top of each other on enormous mountains of gravel and rock. In one of the world's most earthquake-prone zones, this is a disaster waiting to happen; one small tremor would send thousands of homes tumbling down to the sea. Africa is the most rapidly urbanizing continent, and in Kumasi, Ghana, because of a lack of proper sanitation, people in slums use a method known as "flying toilets" - essentially, disposing of their waste in plastic bags and discarding them in the streets. With waste collections irregular, it can stay there for months.
We know from our work in cities around the world that the massive impact of rapid urbanization can only be dealt with when we address the disenfranchisement of the urban poor and generate the political will from city leaders to put resources into poor areas.
Over the past decade, poverty in cities has grown into one of the biggest issues we have to face. People in many slums are treated as though they have no rights to education, to clean water, or to fight eviction. But those rights are theirs. And, as their numbers grow, so too does the need for urgent solutions.
Jennifer Rowell is the urban adviser for Care International.
© 2006 Guardian Newspapers Limited
More violence feared on 'Black Tuesday' job protests
Agence France Presse - 27 March 2006
PARIS, March 27, 2006 (AFP) - France is bracing for a "black Tuesday" of strikes and demonstrations against Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's contested youth jobs contract, amid fears that street protests could once again degenerate into violence.
Police promised to provide extra protection at the day's main event — an afternoon march through Paris expected to draw tens of thousands — in order to prevent the muggings and car-burnings that marred the last day of action in the capital on Thursday.
Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy has warned that students taking part in demonstrations could be at risk from gangs operating out of the high-immigration city suburbs hit by last year's riots.
Police and transport authorities were planning heightened surveillance of trains and buses from the Paris outskirts Tuesday, and extra forces were to be deployed in side-streets off the route of the march.
However unions opposed police requests to place plain-clothes officers amid the cortege in order to facilitate arrests.
The fifth day of nationwide protests against the government's First Employment Contract (CPE) is expected to bring much of the country to a standstill, as transport and public sector workers answer union calls for strikes.
Villepin says he's ready to talk, but not to repeal CPE
Violence, vandalism move to heart of Paris
Hundreds in Paris demand universities re-open
One metro in two will be running in the capital, as well as half of suburban rail links, Paris transport officials said. Nationwide the state-owned SNCF rail company said two out of three TGV fast trains will operate, and bus services will be down in more than 70 towns and cities.
The civil aviation authority DGAC warned passengers to expect delays and cancellations.
No newspapers will be published Tuesday and disruption is predicted on state-run radio and television. Schools, post-offices, government offices, unemployment bureaus and some banks could also be hit.
In an increasingly bitter three-week struggle, the government has refused to cede to opposition demands to scrap the CPE, a contract for under 26 year-olds that can be terminated without explanation during a two-year trial period.
Villepin, 52, has staked his political career on winning the showdown with unions, student groups and the political left, who have mounted an escalating campaign of street protests.
According to the government the contract is a vital tool for fighting youth unemployment, which can reach more than 50 percent in the poor city suburbs, but opponents say it is a breach of hard-won labour rights and will make it more difficult than ever for young people to find long-term jobs.
"This is a real crisis now, a social crisis. Everyone can see that if we accept the CPE today, tomorrow the whole our labour code will be up for grabs. It has become the symbol of insecurity," said Jean-Claude Mailly of the Workers' Force (FO) union.
An Ipsos poll for Le Monde newspaper Monday showed that 63 percent of the population disapprove of Villepin's decision to stand by the CPE, and 59 percent said he was mainly responsible for the situation.
Some 60 out of 84 universities remained partially or totally shut, with predictions that exams normally due in May or June may have to be postponed. Many high school students are expected to join Tuesday's protests.
In Thursday's violence gangs of masked youths operating on the fringes of the Paris march attacked property, set fire to cars and mugged passers-by and demonstrating students on the Invalides esplanade. Police made more than 140 arrests.
A union member who was caught in a police baton-charge in a demonstration the previous Saturday remains in a coma.
Copyright AFP
Walker loses weight and finds soul
Last Updated: Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 01:21 GMT
By Matthew Davis
BBC News, Washington
It began as an unheralded coast-to-coast walk designed to help morbidly obese Steve Vaught lose weight.
But some 2,300 miles (3,700 km) into his journey, the former US Marine now has a book deal, a 700,000-hits-a-month website and has been interviewed by Oprah.
Steve Vaught's three miles-per-hour journey through the back roads of this vast and varied country began last April in Southern California, when he weighed almost 30 stone.
He couldn't walk the length of a supermarket aisle without losing breath and he realised he was on the way to an early death.
So the happily-married father-of-two took the decision to reinvent himself for the sake of his children, to literally walk off the weight by trekking America.
Today Steve has lost 114lbs and has less than 600 miles - about six weeks - to reach his goal, Rockerfeller Plaza in New York City.
But what began as exercise in weight-loss, has turned into a journey of self-discovery - and one that is attracting growing attention from all over America.
Steve has had 80,000 emails from ordinary people with something to say about what he is doing, and has changed email accounts four times to cope with the influx.
Dozens of newspapers, television and radio stations have taken up his story, and in every town he comes across there is usually someone who knows his name.
"Most people see themselves in what I am doing - they wish they could do something similar to get over their own personal plateau, whether is overeating, smoking or just finding a way to live a better life," he told the BBC.
"But the more I have gone on, the weight loss has become secondary, and the more I have seen the value in the journey."
Steve, who grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, was once a fit, fighting man. He spent two years in Cornwall, England, as part of his military service.
But after leaving the Marines he was involved in a car crash in which two people died, and this helped send him into a spiral of depression and overeating.
Counter-culture icon
Steve's online diary is full of reflective musings, both on weight loss and the quest to live a better life in car-dependent society where in many areas junk food has become almost a staple diet.
When he left San Diego last April, he passed 21 fast food restaurants in a four-and-a-half mile stretch of road.
"I thought when I got out into the country I'd leave all that behind," he said.
"But I've walked through the Mid West, the breadbasket, and it is one of the most unhealthy places on earth.
"You have all these rolling acres of farmland, and you can't even buy fresh fruit and veg. The last apple I ate came from South America - and it looked like it had rolled here."
In some ways, Steve's story is a particularly American tale of self-transformation. But it has also made him a counter-culture icon, to some.
His new-found profile has seen him inundated with commercial offers - including a reported $5m to advertise a weight-loss pill, and offers to endorse shampoo, vitamins and smoking patches.
But he says he is unwilling to compromise his integrity by endorsing products he doesn't use.
"I'm not trying to be a hero or an icon to anyone," he says. "I am just an ordinary guy, trying to take control of my life and figure out where it went awry."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4818036.stm
Latin America and Asia Are at Last Breaking Free of Washington's Grip
Published on Wednesday, March 15, 2006 by the Guardian / UK
by Noam ChomskyThe US-dominated world order is being challenged by a new spirit of independence in the global south
The prospect that Europe and Asia might move towards greater independence has troubled US planners since the second world war. The concerns have only risen as the "tripolar order" - Europe, North America and Asia - has continued to evolve.
Every day Latin America, too, is becoming more independent. Now Asia and the Americas are strengthening their ties while the reigning superpower, the odd man out, consumes itself in misadventures in the Middle East.
Regional integration in Asia and Latin America is a crucial and increasingly important issue that, from Washington's perspective, betokens a defiant world gone out of control. Energy, of course, remains a defining factor - the object of contention - everywhere.
China, unlike Europe, refuses to be intimidated by Washington, a primary reason for the fear of China by US planners, which presents a dilemma: steps toward confrontation are inhibited by US corporate reliance on China as an export platform and growing market, as well as by China's financial reserves - reported to be approaching Japan's in scale.
In January, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah visited Beijing, which is expected to lead to a Sino-Saudi memorandum of understanding calling for "increased cooperation and investment between the two countries in oil, natural gas and investment", the Wall Street Journal reports.
Already much of Iran's oil goes to China, and China is providing Iran with weapons that both states presumably regard as deterrent to US designs. India also has options. India may choose to be a US client, or it may prefer to join the more independent Asian bloc that is taking shape, with ever more ties to Middle East oil producers. Siddharth Varadarjan, the deputy editor of the Hindu, observes that "if the 21st century is to be an 'Asian century,' Asia's passivity in the energy sector has to end."
The key is India-China cooperation. In January, an agreement signed in Beijing "cleared the way for India and China to collaborate not only in technology but also in hydrocarbon exploration and production, a partnership that could eventually alter fundamental equations in the world's oil and natural gas sector," Varadarjan points out.
An additional step, already being contemplated, is an Asian oil market trading in euros. The impact on the international financial system and the balance of global power could be significant. It should be no surprise that President Bush paid a recent visit to try to keep India in the fold, offering nuclear cooperation and other inducements as a lure.
Meanwhile, in Latin America left-center governments prevail from Venezuela to Argentina. The indigenous populations have become much more active and influential, particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador, where they either want oil and gas to be domestically controlled or, in some cases, oppose production altogether.
Many indigenous people apparently do not see any reason why their lives, societies and cultures should be disrupted or destroyed so that New Yorkers can sit in their SUVs in traffic gridlock.
Venezuela, the leading oil exporter in the hemisphere, has forged probably the closest relations with China of any Latin American country, and is planning to sell increasing amounts of oil to China as part of its effort to reduce dependence on the openly hostile US government.
Venezuela has joined Mercosur, the South American customs union - a move described by Nestor Kirchner, the Argentinian president, as "a milestone" in the development of this trading bloc, and welcomed as a "new chapter in our integration" by Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president.
Venezuela, apart from supplying Argentina with fuel oil, bought almost a third of Argentinian debt issued in 2005, one element of a region-wide effort to free the countries from the controls of the IMF after two decades of disastrous conformity to the rules imposed by the US-dominated international financial institutions.
Steps toward Southern Cone [the southern states of South America] integration advanced further in December with the election in Bolivia of Evo Morales, the country's first indigenous president. Morales moved quickly to reach a series of energy accords with Venezuela. The Financial Times reported that these "are expected to underpin forthcoming radical reforms to Bolivia's economy and energy sector" with its huge gas reserves, second only to Venezuela's in South America.
Cuba-Venezuela relations are becoming ever closer, each relying on its comparative advantage. Venezuela is providing low-cost oil, while in return Cuba organizes literacy and health programs, sending thousands of highly skilled professionals, teachers, and doctors, who work in the poorest and most neglected areas, as they do elsewhere in the third world.
Cuban medical assistance is also being welcomed elsewhere. One of the most horrendous tragedies of recent years was the earthquake in Pakistan last October. Besides the huge death toll, unknown numbers of survivors have to face brutal winter weather with little shelter, food, or medical assistance.
"Cuba has provided the largest contingent of doctors and paramedics to Pakistan," paying all the costs (perhaps with Venezuelan funding), writes John Cherian in India's Frontline magazine, citing Dawn, a leading Pakistan daily.
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan expressed his "deep gratitude" to Fidel Castro for the "spirit and compassion" of the Cuban medical teams - reported to comprise more than 1,000 trained personnel, 44% of them women, who remained to work in remote mountain villages, "living in tents in freezing weather and in an alien culture," after western aid teams had been withdrawn.
Growing popular movements, primarily in the south but with increasing participation in the rich industrial countries, are serving as the bases for many of these developments towards more independence and concern for the needs of the great majority of the population.
Noam Chomsky, the author, most recently, of "Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World," is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
www.chomsky.info
© 2006 Noam Chomsky
NEW WEBSITE! (Just click)
Canada: Afghan War Isn't Ours
Published on Sunday, March 12, 2006 by The Toronto Sun (Canada)
by Eric MargolisCanada has absolutely no strategic, commercial, cultural or emotional interests in Afghanistan
PARIS -- Scattered across South Africa's windswept veldt are the forgotten graves of 266 Canadian soldiers killed from 1899-1902 fighting to impose British Imperial rule on fiercely resisting Boer farmers.
A century later, Canadian troops have again been sent to fight as auxiliaries in another remote war -- this time Afghanistan.
Since time immemorial, when great emperors went to war, they summoned contingents of their vassals and tributaries to their standards. So it was in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, when the U.S. decided to invade those nations and demand its allies join the so-called "war on terrorism."
Under irresistible pressure from Washington to aid its highly unpopular military expeditions in either Iraq or Afghanistan, America's allies and NATO partners opted for the lesser evil, Afghanistan.
That is why 2,100 Canadian troops have ended up in a nation in which Canada has absolutely no strategic, commercial, cultural or emotional interests.
Now, as the number of Canadian military casualties rises, the dismayed public rightly asks, "What are we doing there? We thought it was another peacekeeping mission."
Thank Ottawa and Canada's media for misinforming the public. There was no significant debate in Parliament. The media indulged in flag-waving instead of warning Canadians they were walking into a small, but real, war.
Canadians are not peacekeeping in Kandahar: There is no peace to keep. They are there to help impose U.S. rule over Afghanistan, and safeguard routes for planned oil pipelines.
Canadian soldiers are on a war-fighting mission, auxiliaries in the U.S.-led military occupation of Afghanistan. In the southern heartland of the nation's largest tribe, the famously warlike and xenophobic Pashtun, U.S. forces and their allies are seen as foreign occupiers and enemies of Islam. Pashtun are slow to act but ferocious, and they never forget a wrong.
For some reason, Ottawa agreed to put its little garrison into Afghanistan's most dangerous area, Kandahar, in the centre of Pushtun territory and the heartland of the Taliban. Afghans do not differentiate between Americans and Canadians.
Fierce tribes
Afghan tribes are taking up arms against their foreign occupiers. I saw this happen during the 1980s, when growing hatred of Soviet occupation forces ignited a national uprising.
Today, in the eyes of many Afghans, the U.S. has merely replaced the Soviets. All past occupiers, starting with Alexander the Great, were driven out by the fierce Afghan tribes.
Canucks are prime targets. They lack effective liaison with circling U.S. warplanes that normally bomb and rocket any attackers within 2-3 minutes of an assault. Such deadly instant response by U.S. air power forced the resistance to resort to roadside explosives and car bombs, as in Iraq.
National resistance is growing. The U.S.-installed Karzai regime in Kabul would not last a day without foreign bayonets.
The former Taliban regime almost totally suppressed the heroin trade. Today, Afghanistan is a narcostate. It supplies 90% of the world's heroin -- the economy runs on drug money. This is the "democratic" regime Canadian troops are defending with their lives.
Parliament, media, and all Canadians have got to begin debating what their soldiers are doing in this war that lacks any foreseeable political resolution. Forget all the cheery propaganda fed to the gullible press: Afghanistan is a dangerous mess and Canadians are right in the middle of it.
When more body bags come home from Kandahar, as they likely will, Canada's politicians are going to have to start explaining to the public what, exactly, its soldiers are dying for in Afghanistan.
margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com
© 2006 The Toronto Sun
