WASHINGTON — The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.
Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is poised to play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism—aside from Predator missile strikes—for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.
The European Parliament condemned renditions as an “illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S. is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.
“Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing legal reasoning behind the decision. “The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”
One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”
Obama’s decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human-rights groups. Leaders of such organizations said that reflects a sense, even among advocates, that the United States and other nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.
“Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “What I heard loud and clear from the president’s order was that they want to design a system that doesn’t result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured.”
In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to re-examine renditions to make sure that they “do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture” or otherwise circumvent human-rights laws and treaties.
ADDIS ABABA (SAPA) – The defense ministers of South Africa and Ethiopia’s tribalist dictatorship signed a memorandum of understanding in Addis Ababa on Friday, South Africa’s defense spokesman Sam Mkhwanazi said. [The current South Africa regime is as full of scumbags as the apartheid regime.]
Defense Minister Charles Nqakula and his Ethiopian counterpart Arto Siraj Fegesa agreed that both countries would work towards developing procedures for military co-operation including the exchange and training of military personnel, instructors and observers and promoting technical co-operation.
Co-operating in the field of military medical services, knowledge and training would also be on the agenda.
The agreement was motivated by their commitment to support peace efforts on the continent under the auspices of the African Union, which has its headquarters in the northern African country.
Nqakula said co-operation between the two countries would benefit their respective populations who were “yearning for peace, stability and development on the African continent”.
This was in line with Freedom Charter principles that there should be peace and friendship on the African continent and beyond, said Mkhwanazi, relaying the essence of the meeting by telephone.
The agreement between the militaries of the two countries would serve as a springboard to ensure that they do whatever is necessary to ensure that conflict is eradicated on the African continent, added Mkhwanazi.
(The Guardian) – AHEAD of a proposal for the proclamation of the United States of Africa by 2017, continental leaders will by January next year establish an Authority of the Africa Union to work out the details of the plan.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who announced the two dates in Dakar yesterday, said that an extraordinary AU meeting would be held to adopt the recommendations of the organisation’s last summit early this month in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The summit reached a consensus on the establishment of the AU Authority to coordinate efforts geared towards establishing the United States of Africa.
Opening a two-day international symposium on the Great Green Wall (GGW), President Wade said after this meeting, the countries were expected to adopt the new texts, before promulgating them.
Pan-African News Agency reports quoted Wade as saying that “the United States of Africa will be proclaimed in 2017, to allow for the time needed to work out the different African institutions,” he said.
He said at the just-ended AU summit, a “Group of 20 African countries were ready to go their own way and set up a Federal Union. We primarily had the idea of establishing a Federal Union. Eventually, we agreed to the resolutions of the summit providing for the establishment of an Authority.”
Also, Libyan leader and AU Chairman, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, yesterday said he would like a United States of Africa to include “Caribbean islands with African populations”.
Speaking in Tripoli as AU new chief, Gaddafi hinted that this could include Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
He sympathised with Somali pirates, describing their actions as self-defence.
Last week, he said that multi-party democracy was not right for Africa.
Gaddafi’s critics believe he is too erratic to be chairman of the 53-nation AU.
Celebrating his new role at his compound in Tripoli on Tuesday, Gaddafi suggested Caribbean islands should join the AU and become a bridge between Africa and Latin America.
He told the gathering of about 400 guests that Somali pirates were only hitting back against other countries stealing marine wealth from the region’s waters.
Gaddafi said the United Nations (UN) should protect Somali waters from the piracy of other countries.
He also said he would use his 12 months at the helm of the AU to try to resolve Africa’s conflicts, including Darfur and Somalia.
When Nick Semine and Drucilla Roberts returned to the United States from the town of Adwa in Ethiopia, where they had gone to meet the two little girls they adopted in 2004, they came back with a new family and a new connection to their daughters’ birthplace.
Since then, they have become increasingly involved in efforts to bring aid to one of the poorest regions of Africa. Through Wide Horizons for Children, the Waltham-based adoption agency they used, they have participated in the funding of a medical clinic in Adwa, in northern Ethiopia.
Throughout their journey from hopeful parents to dedicated humanitarians, their accomplishments would not have been possible without the help and support of friends and their community, they say. One teenager, the daughter of a friend, has helped raise $500 through her school in Framingham.
Semine and Roberts, both doctors from Holliston, didn’t really expect to be parents. But when they finally considered having children, they immediately thought of adoption.
“If you want to be a parent, there are a lot of kids that need parents,” said Roberts. During a visit to Africa with her niece, Roberts was profoundly affected by the poverty she witnessed there, she said, and decided that if she and her husband were going to adopt, “we’re going to do it through Africa.”
Working through Wide Horizons, the only agency the couple could find at the time that offered adoptions from an African country, Semine and Roberts flew to Adwa, where they met sisters Simret and Simenesh, who are now 12 and 10.
After the girls had become part of the family and they all started settling into their Holliston home, Semine and Roberts decided it was time to expand on their involvement with Ethiopia. Although they had been sponsoring children there through a Wide Horizons program, they decided it wasn’t enough.
“I went and called the adoption agency and said my husband and I have the resources, we’d like to do something more,” said Roberts, 53, a pathologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. “They were thinking about this clinic. They just needed start-up money and someone to push them to do it.”
The only hospital in the Adwa area is around 80 years old with no X-ray machine, laundry services, or even reliable electricity, Roberts said. Women often give birth in hallways, and doctors regularly see upwards of 300 patients a day.
A fully functioning medical clinic would make healthcare roughly 70 percent more accessible to around a million men, women, and children, organizers say.
Wide Horizons needed about $250,000 to get the project off the ground. Roberts and Semine initially contributed around $25,000, a figure that has quickly been supplemented through the generosity of friends.
Kenneth Kaplan, a family friend who teaches in New York, ended up raising more than $1,500 from his school community.
Pat Mangan, a close friend of Roberts, and her daughter Siobhan were motivated to help too.
“When she found out about this, she said, ‘I don’t have the money to help, but I have a lot of energy and a lot of ideas. Let me get the schools involved in this,’ ” said Roberts.
Siobhan immediately suggested fund-raising ideas for the clinic to her outreach group at Marian High School in Framingham. Sibohan said that although it was “awkward and kind of difficult at first” to propose yet another thing to a committee already inundated with projects, her classmates enthusiastically hopped on board.
“They knew that it was something really close to me . . . close to my heart,” she said. The Marian students raised around $500 for the clinic, a huge accomplishment for something that began with one student and spread to the rest of the Catholic school’s community.
Jack Langerman is another young student who was so inspired by the clinic project that he wanted to contribute his own skills to the cause. A junior at the Meeting School in Rindge, N.H., Langerman knows the family through his mother, a college friend of Roberts. After hearing about the project, he volunteered to create and maintain a website for them.
“It’s nice to be able to do something that I really love doing and have it be productive and for a good cause,” said Langerman, who estimated that he has put well over 50 hours into the website.
All the fund-raising efforts have made a difference. Construction started in July and the clinic is taking shape, said Semine, 52, a radiologist at Norwood Hospital. It is expected to be finished by the summer, according to Wide Horizons.
Semine visited Adwa in September and was excited to see progress. The clinic is being built by local contractors, with the aid of local residents, who have promised to finance 10 percent of the project with free labor and materials. The local health bureau has committed to providing physicians to staff the clinic, and Wide Horizons remains the chief financial backer.
Semine’s excitement is tempered with realism.
“We have had to adjust our expectations,” he said, as he described the struggle to establish a functioning health clinic while working with the basic, often inadequate, resources in the area. “That’s the challenge.”
Semine and Roberts are still seeking support for their efforts to obtain equipment and provide for the new clinic’s maintenance.
More information is available at the project’s website, www.adwaclinic.info.
World marathon record holder, Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia, will be in Lagos for the Glo-Lagos International Half Marathon but he will not be competing with other runners for the $50,000 top prize.
The Ethiopian legend, who set the world marathon record of 2.03.59 in Berlin last year, had been billed to be the major attraction for the February 21 event. But the change in the race’s original December 2008 date has apparently led to his withdrawal.
He is however committed to be involved in the race and he will now be in Lagos on the eve of the event to conduct a clinic.
A top Globacom official, Modele Sharafa-Yusuf, explained in Lagos on Thursday the role Gabresselaisse would be playing.
She said, “Haile will arrive in Lagos on Thursday, February 20 and conduct a clinic for Nigerian runners the following day at the AstroTurf, Ikoyi. We want Nigerian athletes to be competing for the top prizes in long-distance races and who better to train them than the world’s best.
“He won’t be running but he’ll still be here in Lagos to make a positive impact on the Glo-Lagos Half Marathon.”
The 35-year-old Ethiopian will be assisted during the clinic by another world champion, Holland‘s Lornah Kiplagat.
The 34-year-old Kenyan-born women‘s world half marathon champion will, however, also run in the race along with conducting the clinic.
Kiplagat, who gained Dutch citizenship in 2003 after marrying Pieter Langerhorst, will be the headline act of the race surrounded by a strong field.
Kenya’s Luke Kibet, the reigning world marathon champion and the winner of the Singapore Marathon in December; Ethiopia’s Tsegay Kebede, who won the Beijing 2008 marathon bronze; and South African Hendrick Ramaala, a three-time winner of the Great North Run, are also expected in Lagos.
At the 51st Grammy music award last Sunday, the best of the industry were recognized for their achievements. The highlight of the televised event featured, nine months pregnant rapper M.I.A, who took center stage to perform her hit song “swagga like us”.
This song brought together what entertainer Queen Latifa called “a rap pack” — featuring Kanye West, T.I., Jay-Z, and Lil Wayne.
But this night was not only about the big shot artists. It also gave recognition to young and emerging talents.She did not win. But for African artist Wayna Wondossen, just being nominated for a Grammy was a big achievement. She was in South Africa when she found out that her song “Lovin’ U” had been nominated.
“I knew I wouldn’t be able to see the actual announcements because we were in a remote area of Cape Town [South Africa] and we probably wouldn’t get the broadcast there. So early in the morning the next day, I got up early and ran downstairs to the hotel business center. I went straight to the Grammy pages to search for my name and it popped-up and I just screamed,” she said.
The winner of the category in the category Best Urban/Alternative Performance was “be ok” by Chrisette Michele, featuring will.i.am. But for Wayna, it has been a good year anyway, and the nomination alone was an honor.
Since giving up her work as a presidential speechwriter in the Clinton administration, she had been struggling to make it in the highly competitive music industry with soul music, which doesn’t sell very well these days.
So what does Wayna have over Beyonce, Shakira, Madonna and Janet Jackson? Seven weeks straight on the music industry’s top charts. Billboard magazine publishes the sales numbers and radio airplay rankings of news albums and singles. Wayna’s single release “Moonlight Rendezvous” hit the “Hot 100 Soul Singles,” topping all four of the other pop divas.
“This was just so surreal. It just made me feel like, wow, I am really doing this. It helped me be a little bit more confident.”
Wayna’s success in billboard magazine and her nomination for the Grammys was an ice breaker but has not yet led to sustained commercial success. Prospects? Yes! Satisfaction? You bet! Money? Not yet. But she is happy about it. I caught up with her before she hit the stage to perform at a club on U Street, the old center of African-American culture in Washington, DC.
“I feel like I probably have done as well financially as I did when I had a regular job. But that, of course, is not my goal. We are taking extra steps to make the product more accessible. We put it on I-Tunes, My Space, and YouTube. There are more opportunities for independent artists to build their brand with the internet. So, we are trying to take advantage of that and move on.”
Writing political speeches did not satisfy Wayna. It appealed to her intellect, but did not reflect her dreams. She longed to write something uplifting — something people would want to hear over and over again.
The 34-year-old, who has been married for six years, has two CD albums, “Moments of Clarity” and “Higher Grounds.” She says they’re her babies, at least for now.
Either at back stage rehearsals or on her CD performances, having fun with her music is the greatest gift for her.
Back in the U Street club, Wayna’s wearing a body-skimming skirt and sparkly top. She took center stage with her backup singers. Illuminated by the stage lights, she came close to the mic, cupping it in her hands. A sweet long hum wooed the audience, and Wayna introduced a song dedicated to her love of music and life.
“Loving you
is easy Coz you are beautiful.
Making love with you,
is all I want to do…
And everything that I do,
is out of loving you.”
Wayna Wondossen knows the road ahead is tough. But she believes that the ride is worthwhile.
By Henok Semaegzer Fente | VOA