Juridics: Canada: Prime Minister breaks precedent, honours Canadian Charter of R+ts, while Lib-dominated law writers and judiciary elite self-praise

Canadian media published an orgy of self-praise from an array of lawyers, law journalists, and judiciary elites on the occasion of the 25th Anniversary of the Canadian Charter of R+ts and Freedoms (Apr17,2k7). Meanwhile, Prime Minister Stephen Harper laid low, disagreeing with at least two major courses of judgment chosen by the Supreme Court and lesser jurisdictions, pathways to injustice that arbitarily read into the Charter the elite crowd's own fanciful low-calibre decisions that had emanated from its monocultural philosophy of law, representing an uncritical but dominant worldview in that field. When the hullabaloo of self-praise for monominded Charter jurisprudence and the accompanying hen-pecking at Harper by politicos and press had subsided, the Prime Minister made his move to break precedent and establish a federal Canadian Museum of Human R+ts in Winnipeg, Manitoba, by covering the operating costs year by year, as the Libs had failed to do year by year when they were in power.

Also, the Lib policy of funding only Museums in Ottawa, the national capital city, killed Winnipeg's chances for many years. The Feds now will also pay part of the construction costs to get the Museum functioniing by 2010-2011. The operating costs will include transportation of 20,000 schoool children from other locations in Canada.

The new institution, brain-child of Lib contributor Izzy Asper (now deceased) who funded the concept and was strongly supported by Manitoba Premier Gary Doer and the City of Winnipeg (which will finance building expenses by $40 million and $20 million respectively, is bound to foster a more critical law-history and philosophizing of law plurally in Canada than the present practioners of boosterism for the seriously-flawed r+ts decision-makers, could ever produce. Here's an overview of some CLN sources:

From Canadian Lawyer, Jim Middlemiss contributes "Charter angst" (Jan4,2k7). Editor, Canadian Lawyer.

Canada has now had a quarter-century of living under a Constitutional democracy governed by an entrenched Charter of Rights and Freedoms. After 25 years, the groundwork has been laid, but the real fight over rights and freedoms has just begun.

The Criminal Code aside, no single piece of legislation has impacted the practice of law like the Constitution Act,T 1982, which introduced the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But the Canadian Charter of Rights has done more than that — much more. In 25 short years, it has changed the face of the nation.

On April 17, 1982, with the stroke of a pen then prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the Queen repatriated the Constitution and entrenched the Charter as the supreme law of the land. It changed the nature of our judicial system and ushered Canada into the forefront of constitutional change and human rights law, giving rights the teeth that the [older] Canadian Bill of Rights couldn’t [when Canada was still a juridical colony - L].

This month Canadians celebrate the Charter, which has been studied as a model for nations around the world. ...

If it was change people wanted, that’s certainly what they got. During a quarter-decade — a blink in the continuum of time — Canada’s Supreme Court has been called on to interpret the Charter on everything from same-sex marriage to Sunday shopping, abortion, private health care, and criminal law issues. The Charter has left virtually no policy stone unturned, and dug right at the heart of the values, principles, and social policies that drive this nation.

“It’s definitely shaped society,” says Eugene Meehan, an Ottawa litigator at Lang Michener LLP who practises before the Supreme Court. ... ” ... [But don't get the idea that the Charter is atheist.] Meehan, for example, notes that the Charter’s preamble says it was founded upon the supremacy of God and the rule of law — words that have yet to be interpreted. Just whose God is not clear. ...

From Law Times, by Eddie Goldenburg "People power instrumental in new Charter" (Apr9,2k7). A partner at Stikeman Elliott LLP. Mr Greenburg was a constitutional advisor to the minister of justice from 1980 to 1982, and from 1993 to 2003 was senior policy advisor to then prime minister Jean Chrétien, and in 2003 was chief of staff to the prime minister.

From September 1980 to February 1981, we found that Canadians saw through the political process arguments of elites, who at the time were focussing their attention on the issue of unilateralism rather than on substance. Canadians did not want a weak Charter.

Aboriginal Canadians, women’s groups, representatives of people with disabilities, survivors of Japanese-Canadian Second World War relocation camps, members of multicultural groups, and many others made powerful and often emotional representations that resulted in a strong draft of the Charter that emerged from the committee, and which Trudeau eventually accepted.

One of the most important clauses that came from the committee hearings became s. 15 or the “equality” section of the current Charter.

The constitutional deal of 1981 was therefore made possible not only because of the negotiating skills of Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, Roy McMurtry, Roy Romanow, Bill Davis, and Peter Lougheed during the first ministers meeting of November 1981. It was possible because the Canadian public was ready and wanted a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

While the ultimate constitutional agreement required the insertion of the famous “notwithstanding clause,” the massive support of Canadians for an entrenched Charter that was so evident in the early 1980s has remained so strong that no government today would risk the electoral consequences that the use of the notwithstanding clause would bring. The clause itself is a victim of the popularity of the Charter with Canadians.

From Law Times, by Don Stuart "Criminal justice is better balanced under the Charter" (Apr9,2k7). Stuart is a criminal law professor at Queen’s University Faculty of Law

Our criminal justice system is no longer just about whether guilt has been proved. Courts also insist on maintaining fundamental Charter standards of fairness respecting policing, prosecution, trials, sentencing, and release from custody.

The judicial assertion of entrenched Charter standards since 1982 has constituted the only real check against the lure of law-and-order politics by politicians of all stripes and the consequent unremittingly legislative trend to toughen the criminal law. There are no votes in being soft on crime. Politicians fall over each other to be tough even though criminologists have made it very clear that toughening penalties in the United States and elsewhere has had no effect on reducing crime.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms has helped ensure that we have a balanced criminal justice system of which Canadians can be proud. The Charter protects minority rights against the tyranny of the majority. This includes rights of those accused of crimes, which tend to be unpopular until the moment we ourselves get charged.

Especially through the work of the Supreme Court of Canada, important and minimum standards have been put in place. Accused cannot be punished without a finding of fault. This is even so for most provincial offences. An accused can no longer be sent to jail for life under constructive murder provisions under which a killing during the commission of certain listed crimes was automatically murder even though the killing was accidental or even by someone other than the accused. There is no evidence that this has affected the murder.

Can you imagine a minister of justice ever saying it would be just to be softer on murderers? ...

From Law Times, by Lorraine Weinrib "Second Opinion: the Charter's next quarter-century" (Apr9,2k7). Weinrib is a professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto and the regular Law Times columnist on constitutional affairs.

It is difficult to imagine our legal system without the Charter. It has reconstructed the working of courts, legislatures, and the executive.

It has transformed the content of our laws, altered our election processes, reconfigured basic features of our educational institutions, and restructured many features of our daily lives. It shapes public deliberation on the widest array of issues.

The early Charter challenges brought forward “patently unjust laws,” in the words of my colleague, Michael Code. Parliament had neglected much needed reforms in criminal law. All legislatures had failed to respond to the increasing diversity and secularization of Canadian society. The courts had repudiated the Canadian Bill of Rights.

The Supreme Court’s early case law was remarkable, but perhaps the cases were too easy. The court could lay down its methodology in clear and forceful terms.
Government departments and legislatures learned how to Charter-proof. An era of better law making arose. The clear and forceful approaches of the first methodological formulations have now been contextualized. The court is more deferential to laws and practices that our political representatives have deemed consistent with the Charter. ...

Many new issues seem poised for litigation. My colleague, Sujit Choudhry, anticipates litigation working out questions based on minority identity. Such cases might call for the determination of the precise accommodations available to religious minorities, both groups and their members. In addition, we can anticipate cases addressing charges of state discrimination based on race or national or ethnic origin, e.g., racial profiling. The heavier weighting of rural votes against more diverse city voters also raises Charter concerns. ...

Oddly enough, the likelihood of a steady stream of Charter cases may depend on the fortunes of the Conservative party. A Conservative majority after the next election might well find itself defending various elements of its law-and-order agenda in the Supreme Court of Canada.

From Canadian Lawyer, by Ezra Levant " 'Jurocracy' skewers Charter's intent" (Apr4,2k7)

Forgive the interruption to the non-stop celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There’s nothing interesting there — of course lawyers love it. The Charter made lawyers, law professors, and judges the new political class in Canada, but without the accountability hassles of a legislature. Who needs question period or elections to pass controversial legislation? Just become a judge.

So rather than go to the Charter’s loving chorus in the bar associations and the law schools, let’s do something different. Let’s ask the men who actually wrote and approved the Charter what they think of their creation, 25 years later. It’s an impossible inquiry in the United States, the last of whose constitution’s framers died more than 150 years ago. But in Canada, many of our Charter’s authors are still alive.


And they don’t like what has been done to their baby one bit.

From Canadian Lawyer, by Jennifer McPhee "The Charter and the Workplace" (Apr4,2k7). Publisher, Western Standard

Labour and employment law is one area that has seen some of the most frequent attempts to use the Charter to advance a client’s cause, like discrimination and picketing, but what lies ahead?


In the famous trilogy of labour cases addressing freedom of association under Charter s. 2(d), the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1980s ruled that the right to associate did not protect the right to strike or to bargaining collectively. However, a recent case on reserve at the Supreme Court — Health Services and Support-Facilities Subsector Bargaining Association, et al v. British Columbia — could change that and freedom of association may once again become a live issue for unions.


It’s part of a slow erosion of the original trilogy of cases which have been criticized by many legal commentators and unions.

[Weinrib also discusses manadatory retirment, aboriginal law, and privacy r+ts.]

From Canadian Lawyer, Jim Middlemiss "The Charter turns 25" (Jan8,2k7). Editor, Canadian Lawyer.

Now, almost a full generation of lawyers has lived and practised law under the Charter. It’s permeated the fabric of our society and changed the face of our nation, but has it made it better? Or has it simply driven a wedge deeper into a fractured country?


For more than 200 years, Americans have rallied around their constitution and Bill of Rights and looked upon it as a unifying event. Yet, since passing the Constitution Act, 1982, Canada has never been closer to disintegration, following referendum votes in the 1990s.


And there are no signs of that separation anxiety going away anytime soon, as the Bloc Québécois remains strong federally and the separation mandate remains part of the Parti Québécois’ platform provincially. Shouldn’t a Constitution and Charter draw a nation closer together? (The fact Quebec was left out at the end of the day is a historical tragedy, but that’s another editorial.)


The Charter has also come at a great price and great societal expense. The costs to the criminal justice system are likely into the hundreds of millions of dollars, as police forces and Crown law offices respond to court decisions such as Askov and Stinchcombe.


Corporations, too, paid the price with a rise in rights related to the workplace and now drown in human resource policies and red tape. The Charter set the standard for provincial human rights legislation and workplace accommodation now threatens productivity in industries such as manufacturing.


The Charter has also led to a much sharper-toned debate and growing row over the role judges play in society, which, rhetoric aside, is probably a good thing. While judges didn’t have much say in the changes foisted upon the judiciary by the Charter, the fact is that they have been appointed arbiters of constitutionality and with it the responsibility to uphold or strike down the work of elected Parliamentarians. It’s a big responsibility.


Some argue the judiciary has become more interventionist — a charge that judges find offensive. But the reality is their job is to intervene on a greater scale than they could pre-Charter.

By clicking-up these articles and reading them in full you can give your self an education in how the Charter has been ripped from its original purpose, how its been used for good and ill in these last 25 years. And, if you're sensitive to the bias boiling often unstated, you may get a glimpse of the tragic lack of truly critical law philosophy, able to cope with what should be its own plurality of schools of jurdical thawt and jurisprudential practise.

Economics: Business Formation: Barclays seeks to become world's leading financial-services commercial mega-bank

A massive buyout is reported by MSNBC, "Barclays to buy ABN Amro for $91 billion--Biggest-ever deal in bank sector; ABN selling its U.S. unit LaSalle" (Apr23,2k7). I've covered this story earlier on my own blogs, BizMix and BizMixture for USE (the latter to provide those readers with a specific instructional example for my business-category or "bizcat" of the financial and accounting sector). Those versions originated from an earlier MSNBC/FinancialTimes article and MarketWatch email newsletter, respectively; while today's here originates from AP and includes a richer layer of detail regarding this world-historical business-formation in the sector, and potentially in the "global economic order" (to use Dr Bob Goudzwaard's expression).

Amsterdam, the Netherlands - Barclays PLC said Monday it will acquire ABN Amro NV for $91.16 billion in the largest takeover in financial services, capping a month of negotiations to create a global banking giant and to prevent the splintering of the Netherlands' biggest bank.

A splinter movement, like sharks circling their mutual prey, has launched a bidding war--not just to dismember ABN among themselves, but also to block Barclays from expanding worldwide and particularly in Asia and even more particularly in China and India. The latter two countries have both state-initiated projects and private-enterprise projects, often engaging in joint ventures with non-Asian and Japanese corporations--all of them hungry for cash from mega-lenders.

Under the arrangement, ABN's USA holding, LaSalle, would be sold off to Bank of America.

The splinter movement consists of a consortium of Royal Bank of Scotland, Santander (Spain and 39 other countries), and Fortis (Belgo-Dutch).

Ethnicity: Iraq: Black Iraqi refugees, refugees driven into Jordan and Syria

After running yesterday's blog-entry with the historical background on the Black people of Iraq, today I received in my email, a newsletter from Christian Aid entitled "Missions Insider" (there is a website, but the search engine does not yield any online articles resulting from my search terms). It contained the picture and text below, which illuminates and updates yesterday's historical material.

Every day thousands of Iraqis flee their country due to the continuing sectarian violence, poverty, lack of basic infrastructure, unemployment, and civil unrest. Nearly 20% of Iraqis are living below the poverty line.

Most Iraqi refugees take shelter in the Arabic-speaking countries of Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Many of them have never heard the gospel. One Christian Aid-supported ministry, covertly working in the Middle East, has found that these refugees are often open to the gospel. Christians have a multitude of opportunities to reach out to these refugees, who are left without the aid of the government.

Once away from their family, friends and culture, refugees frequently question their native religions. Despite the great challenge, ministries in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon are taking this important opportunity to share the gospel with Iraqis.

Jordan: Approximately 700,000 Iraqi refugees are living in Jordan with limited legal status. While wealthy Iraqis fled to Amman and live very well, most suffer from poverty and lack basic necessities. Often they have left behind all of their belongings. The flow of refugees continuously increases, yet international aid has decreased. Indigenous ministries tackle the basic yet increasing needs in Jordan by providing food parcels to the refugees. One ministry, which has started many churches throughout the country, is distributing these parcels containing sugar, rice, tomato paste, canned meat and oil.

Syria: Indigenous ministries continue to facilitate the distribution of food parcels and Bibles to needy Iraqi families in Syria. These ministries also support a medical clinic to provide needy patients with free medical prescriptions. Now that more than 1 million Iraqi refugees live in Syria, representing more than 5% of the country's population, Syria has decided to prohibit Iraqis from entering the country. Since 2003, with the high influx of refugees, food and housing prices have skyrocketed. Children comprise 48% of the Iraqi refugee population in Syria. Although permitted to attend school, Iraqi children are discriminated against. Education provided by Christians is always welcomed and appreciated by this marginalized group. Two Christian Aid-supported ministries in particular have opened schools for Iraqi children. Because Syria does not issue work permits to Iraqi refugees, most adults are either unemployed or working illegally. Syrian ministries are providing vocational training for jobs that refugees can legally perform.

Now I'm finding additional attention to Iraq's history of enslaving Blacks and the Black communities that survived even thru Saddam Hussein's day, but of whom many are now among the flood Iraqi refugees in surrounding Arab countries. I've seen no new info yet on whther these people tend to be Sunnis or Shi'ites or both.

More Info:

'Black Iraqis' and African Heritage in an Islamic State [audio, NPR, Tony Cox]

News & Notes, January 6, 2005 · NPR's Tony Cox talks with Theola Labbe of The Washington Post about so-called "black Iraqis" -- Iraqis of African descent -- and how they identify race, class and culture in an Islamic state.

Richard Prince's Journal-isms (Jan19,2k4)

Blacks Are an Intrinsic Part of Iraqi Society

The black presence in Iraq became the subject of the second piece in a major newspaper in a week's time. On Saturday, the Los Angeles Times devoted its "Column One" space to a report by black journalist Ann M. Simmons.

"Blacks are an intrinsic part of Iraqi society, and generally are treated as such. Some have ascended to significant positions in academia, trade and other professions. Like other Iraqis, they speak Arabic, and most are Muslims belonging to the country's Shiite majority or the Sunni minority," she wrote.

Simmons said that, "For now, the demise of the former system has left government agencies and administrative departments in disarray, making access to statistical information on the ethnic breakdown of Iraq's population of 23 million difficult to obtain. Still, some academics put the number of Iraqis of African decent at about 1%, though others believe that figure could be as high as 5%."

The previous Sunday, the Washington Post ran a piece by Theola Labb�, "A Legacy Hidden in Plain Sight," that focused more on the cultural connections between black Iraqis and Africa.

Ethnicity: Iraq: Today's Black population of Iraq's after centuries of slavery and slave rebellions

Alternet carried a history article back in 2k3 entitled "The hidden black Iraq" by William Jelani Cobb (Africana.com). More recently, Africafile digitally republished the article with this intro: "Professor Cobb documents a fascinating story: Basra, Iraq's oil industry centre, he says, is also the center of a centuries-old history of African influence? Black studies have shed light on the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade between the continent, Europe and the colonies of the 'new world.' Less attention has been paid, though, to the millennium-long slave trade that scattered African slaves throughout present-day Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan and India. This story sheds light on that well-hidden, millennium-long slave trade. B.T. About the article's author: William Jelani Cobb is a professor of history at Spelman College and editor of The Harold Cruse Reader.

The hidden black Iraq

Basra's more than the center of Iraq's oil industry; it's the center of a centuries-old history of African influence. Enter the words "black," "city" and "fuel" into the search engine of the American psyche and you'll conjure up the image of a Chevron station in Detroit. But add a historical element into the equation and you come up with Basra, Iraq. In the three-card hustle of American foreign policy, the port-city of Basra is the elusive Queen. (The other two bluff cards say "Saddam Hussein" and "War on Terrorism.") Recently, Iraq's delegation to OPEC gleefully reported that 2.1 million barrels of crude oil were flowing from the Basra wells daily. The city's contemporary significance centers around its oil production; historically, though, the city was a commercial and governmental center that rivaled Baghdad for wealth and influence. It is also home to the little-discussed populations of black Iraqis.

Thirty years of black and Diaspora studies have shed light on the scale, intensity and impact of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade - the 400-year traffic of Africans between the continent, Europe and the colonies of the alleged new world. Less attention has been paid, though, to the millennium-long slave trade that scattered African slaves throughout present-day Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan and India.

Emerging European capitalism and the labor requirements of cash crops like sugar, cotton and tobacco drove the Trans-Atlantic trade; the Trans-Saharan trade, which flourished from the eighth century AD through the 1840s, brought African labor to the hazardous enterprises of pearl diving, date farming and the raw, brutal work of clearing Iraqi salt marshes. African boys were commonly castrated to serve as eunuch guards of royal harems. Unlike those who were enslaved in the West, however, blacks enslaved in the Arabic-speaking world also served as guards, sailors and high-ranking soldiers. In the 19th century, Basra was one of the most profitable slave ports in the region, commonly offering slave traders as much as 50% returns upon their "investments."

There has been a black presence in Basra - present-day Southern Iraq - as early as the 7th century, when Abu Bakra, an Ethiopian soldier who had been manumitted by the prophet Muhammad himself, settled in the city. His descendants became prominent members of Basran society. A century later, the writer Jahiz of Basra wrote an impassioned defence of black Africans - referred to in Arabic as the Zanj - against accusations of inferiority which had begun to take root even then.

The Zanj, who were primarily persons of East African descent, were to have a significant impact upon Iraqi history. They had been traded from ports along the African coast (Zanzibar, which is derived from the term "Zanj," was a major slave exporting center during the era) to clear salt marshes. Laboring in miserable, humid conditions, the Zanj workers dug up layers of topsoil and dragged away tons of earth to plant labor-intensive crops like sugarcane on the less saline soil below. Fed scant portions of flour, semolina and dates, they were constantly in conflict with the Iraqi slave system. Between the 7th and 9th centuries, the Zanj staged three rebellions, the largest of which occurred between 868 and 883 AD.

Led by an Iraqi poet named Ali Ibn Muhammad, the Zanj uprising of 868 galvanized thousands of black slaves who laid siege to and eventually overran the city of Basra. In short order, black soldiers in the army of the ruling Abbasid emperors based in Baghdad began to desert and swelled the ranks of the rebellion. Similar to later rebellions that created liberated "maroon" communities throughout the new world, the 15-year conflict, known as "The Revolt of the Zanj," led to the establishment of an independent Zanj capital city, minting of currency and the decade-long control of Basra - one of the most important trade ports in the Abbasid empire. At their zenith, the Zanj armies marched upon Baghdad and got within 70 miles of the city.

The Zanj uprising was crushed in 883 by the Abbasids, but doing so required vast amounts of the empire's extensive resources. African slavery in Iraq continued to exist throughout both the Ottoman and British empires which incorporated the region into their holdings. In the mid-19th century, decades after the Trans-Atlantic trade had been (technically) outlawed, the Arab trade persisted. As historian Joseph Harris writes in his African Presence in Asia: From Kuwait, slave parties were dispatched in small groups on land and sea to Zubair and Basra, where brokers sold slaves in their homes. The surplus was marched along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to Baghdad.

British officials during the era noted how widespread slave ownership was among the Iraqi families. The descendants of the Zanj exist in the region today in (often self-contained) communities with names like "Zanjiabad, Iran" that hint at the history of the peoples living there. The status of these black Iraqis is little discussed - though Iranians have written of persistent racism and stereotypes directed at the Zanj in their country. One can only wonder, though, what the addition of hundreds of oilmen will do for a black minority community living in Basra - because word-association for the terms "oil" "money" and "slavery" yields the following results: Texas; see also: Presidential Politics.

Economics: Enviro USA: American businesses stampede to greener standards

MSNBC carries a report by Senior Writer Allison Linn, "Corporations find business case for going green -- Global giants, from Wal-Mart to HP, see cost savings, other benefits" (Apr18,2k7).

Companies ranging from retailing titan Wal-Mart to investment firm Goldman Sachs are jumping on the green bandwagon and pledging to make tangible changes that go beyond the public relations-oriented “greenwashing” of years past.

In another major shift, some big companies are even asking that they be regulated on greenhouse gas emissions, arguing that it is the only way for them to plan for how to deal with the rising threat of global warming. A coalition of businesses and environmental groups earlier this year formed a partnership called the U.S. Climate Action Partnership aimed at doing just that.

Are corporations experiencing a sudden rash of social consciousness? Not exactly. Instead, companies are increasingly realizing that going green could be a new way for companies to save — or even make — more green, as in money.

“The strategies that are being ... implemented by some of the leading-edge companies are done to maximize profits and to mitigate risk,” said Fred Wellington, senior financial analyst for the environmental group World Resources Institute.

Still, the big surprise isn’t so much that companies are getting involved in environmental issues, but what companies are doing it. People expect companies like Whole Foods, Patagonia and REI to have environmental initiatives; not only is it key to their public relations efforts, it also makes good business sense for them to preserve resources.

But DuPont? BP? Wal-Mart? These are companies that still raise the hackles of environmentalists for some of their practices, yet are also taking serious steps toward promoting things like solar power and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What exactly do they have to gain?

The answer, as always, resides in the bottom line.

Do click-up Ms Linn's long article to read in its entirety. With the online article comes a message board on which to "Speak Out" on the surround of issues -- Going green: social consciousness or profits? (note how "consciousness" has replaced "conscience"--so the issue is not the fostering of a wide ethos of compassion as in Christianity and Buddhism; here what is functioning is not an ethos of compassion but business strategy based distinctly in corporate purposes. The frontier of litigation here will turn on whether a business corporation can go expensively green to the (temporary) lessened-profitability to shareholders who bawt stocks on the market in order to maximize their own individuals profits based on stock ownership. It will be quite interesting to she what Prof Bainbridge, authority on corporate governance, will have to say on these interesting matters.

Hat Tip: ChristianBusinessDaily.com (Apr19,2k7).

Juridics: USA: Supreme Court ban partial-birth abortions 5-4

A reporter for Washington Times [WaTi], Stephen Dinan, gives a succinct yet detailed report on the Supreme Court of the USA [SCOTUS] decision yesterday ending partial-birth abortions practised by some abortionists and defended apparently by the entire elite of pro-abortion organizations and the medical profession involved.

The Supreme Court yesterday upheld a federal law prohibiting partial-birth abortion, marking the first time a specific abortion procedure has been successfully outlawed.

The 5-4 ruling, which reversed the justices' decision in a Nebraska case seven years ago, is the first major shift since Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired from the court and was replaced by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Yesterday he provided the key fifth vote, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony M. Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion ruling that the government can ban a particular medical procedure if there are other options available and if the state has a reason to be concerned.

"When standard medical options are available, mere convenience does not suffice to displace them; and if some procedures have different risks than others, it does not follow that the state is altogether barred from imposing reasonable regulations," Justice Kennedy wrote. "The act is not invalid on its face where there is uncertainty over whether the barred procedure is ever necessary to preserve a woman's health, given the availability of other abortion procedures that are considered to be safe alternatives."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing for the minority, said the ruling was "an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court." She was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.

"Today's decision is alarming," Justice Ginsburg wrote. "It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists."

.In another WaTi article, Amy Fagan reports how the SCOTUS "Ruling opens abortion debate for '08" (Apr19,2k7):

The Supreme Court decision upholding a federal ban on partial-birth abortion predictably pleased the Republican presidential contenders and disappointed Democratic candidates.

To the Republicans it was "a step forward" and "correct"; to the Democrats it was "alarming" and a "dramatic departure." But partisans on both sides agreed the decision is the beginning, not the end, of the abortion debate in the 2008 campaign.

"This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose and recognized the importance of women's health," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat and the perceived front-runner for Democrats' presidential nomination.

She had "warned of precisely this erosion of our constitutional rights" when she voted against both of President Bush's Supreme Court nominees, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

The Republicans, all of whom have said they would nominate judges like Justices Alito and Roberts, called the decision a victory for pro-life advocates.

So, the whole victory is politicized immediately. However, there's a pre-political dimension which has to do with carrying your baby to term, or getting your abortion much earlier in your pregnancy so that your kid isn't half-born when you have it removed, instead of hacked to pieces. There's an ethical relationship at stake here between the mother and her offspring, that she must deal with earlier than a last-minute infanticide. The Supreme Court decided to ban only a narrow segment of abortion cases, abortions obtained by particularly irresponsible mothers and abortionist doctors. The rest of the industry remains intact--lobbyists, govt funding, Planned Parenthood, and political opportunists (speaking in the name of an assertedly absolute r+t of a woman to an abortion whenever and however she wants it or is compelled by others to seek it), like Hillary Clinton.

Whether all the Justices voting against this kind of abortion would find legislation constitutional that outlawed all abortions of every kind and for whatever reason they otherwise may take place (rape, incest, death of the mother if baby brawt to term, etc) remains to be seen. I would never support legislation that outlawed all abortions for any reason whatseover--which is what many of the Republicans and lobbyists of the fanatical r+twing want. "Pro-life" has a lot of injustice up its own sleeve.

But, thank God for the wisdom of this SCOTUS with Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito on board, and for the "swing Justice" Kennedy too. And let the partisan absolutist politicians rant and rave and foam at the mouth, but don't let them determine the law.

Politics: Canada: First elected Senator in Canada's history to take seat in Ottawa

In a burst of Conservative political and policy creativity, Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper is appointing to the country's all-appointees Senate a man who was first elected by the voters of the Province of Alberta to represent them in that body. Already in previous legislation tagged Bill C-43, the government had introduced draft legislation for an elected Senate. Because his is a minority govt facing 3 opposition parties, the Liberals being the largest opposing block in the Commons, the legislation has not done well. Except educationally. The Libs have a vice grip on the Upper Chamber, all appointees for life, but now this stacked "Red Chamber" will be welcoming a man apppointed because he had been elected to that august vestige of pride, privilege, and patronage. Here's the govt's press statement (Apr18,2k7):

Prime Minister Harper announces intention to appoint Alberta Senator-in-waiting Bert Brown

18 April 2007
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced that in keeping with the principles of Bill C-43, the proposed law that would enable Canadians to vote for Senators, Canada’s New Government intends to appoint Alberta Senator-in-waiting Bert Brown to replace retiring Alberta Senator Dan Hays.

“The retirement of Senator Hays, after nearly a quarter-century of service to Canada, creates the first opportunity for our government to appoint a Senator who has been endorsed by Canadian voters,” Prime Minister Harper said. “No Canadian has done as much to advance the cause of Senate reform as Bert Brown. He has been a tireless advocate for democratization of the Upper House for over two decades. He ran in three Alberta Senate elections and is the only Canadian to be elected twice as a Senator-in-waiting. In short, he is a perfect role model for elected Senators, and today’s announcement demonstrates that our Government is serious about moving forward on Senate reform.”

Mr. Brown, 69, is a Calgary-area zoning and property development consultant. Over 300,000 Albertans voted for him in the province’s 2004 Senate election, when he ran under the banner of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party.

Prime Minister Harper reiterated that his government’s long-term goal is to see all Canadian Senators elected. “I call on the Opposition parties to join us in democratizing the Red Chamber by passing Bill C-43,” the Prime Minister said. “Canadians recognize that the time is long overdue for the Senate to attain democratic legitimacy.”

Update/Corrections:
To correct my headline and opening paragraph above, I quote (with a few stylistic changes and interspersed comment) from Maisonneuve email newsletter (Apr19,2k7):

CBC's National, CTV News, Globe and Mail, Toronto's Star (not available online), the National Post (not available online), and Ottawa's Citizen all go inside [ie, deny frontpage coverage to] with Stephen Harper’s latest gesture aimed at changing the Senate. This time, he’s taking another page from the Brian Mulroney playbook and appointing Albertan Bert Brown to the Senate. Brown has run in three Alberta senate contests, which are of uncertain legitimacy—the five newspapers among the Big Seven each put the term “elected” in scare quotes in this context. [I note that Montreal's Le Devoir also uses scare quotes around the French word "elu" ("elected")--which latter usages are not cases of scare quotes, but instead a semantic-indicator for dictionary-like citation of a word or a concept. - P] The province has included a senatorial ballot in every provincial election since 1989, in an attempt to goad successive prime ministers into tempering their unilateral ability to appoint senators, with some kind of public consultation. Only Progressive Conservatives and independents have offered themselves as candidates, which doesn’t exactly reinforce the democratic bona fides of the exercise. The quaint term “senators-in-waiting” is typically applied to the winners of these plebiscites, which suggests that they spend their time tittering coquettishly behind fans and feeding chocolates to the Queen before being called to the Red Chamber.

No titterer, Brown came to prominence in the early 1980s after plowing “EEE SENATE—OR ELSE!” into a neighbour’s barley field to demonstrate his support for an “elected, effective, and equal” upper chamber—a popular position in western provinces during the constitutional debates of the time. He is the first senator-in-waiting to actually be appointed since 1990, the last being Reform Party stalwart Stan Waters. Appointed by Mulroney, Waters spent a year in the upper house before dying in office. The Globe reports that members of the opposition and other provincial premiers are wary of this kind of improvised half-measure, which has lead to the curious spectacle of a Liberal leader of the opposition intoning his commitment to Senate reform while a Conservative Prime Minister appoints an old friend and political ally."

Maisonneuve's all-too-typical snobbish sneering aside (contrarily, I would praise the Albertans for the humour in their phrase "Senator-in-waiting") etc, I do stand corrected on mistakenly claiming Bert Brown was the first. So, Brown's appointment was not unprecedented after all. The Harper action is thus less creative but more legitimated, and further legitimates former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's action. The fact that other parties didn't put up candidates shows their extreme partisanship and regressive visions for Canadian democracy, it doesn't de-legitimate a precedent-setting (Mulroney) and a precedent-confirming (Harper) recognition of Alberta's constituitonally legitimate law and election of Senators-in-waiting. If and when a second province follows suit to greater democracy, a broader constituency of Canadians will start hailing the need for a triple E Senate. But an even wider reform is also in the making: proportional representation. A Senator should be voted into offfice by the electors of his province on the basis of proportional representation (with perhaps two rounds of voting).

Yes, we can even learn on occasion something from an Oscar-Wilde sneering style of journalism.

Economics: Housing: Big lenders detail their slack that caused mass foreclosures of home-owners' mortgages

At last, I'm getting an angle on the structure of the so-called subprime housing industry, the portion of the housing industry that subsists on subprime interest rates tagged to mortgages on homes, especially in the case of first-time home buyers.
What we see, thru testimony before Congress, is the role of greed in investors who buy shares in the lending companies that finance the bulk of these mortgages. That greed is currently protected by law in the USA, requiring bank and other mortgage holders to foreclose on the home-owners who can't make their monthly payments as the amounts "balloon."

Anyone who tampers with that law will scare off the investors who make the dollars available to the lenders, and subprime housing will dry up, no matter what market there mite be otherwise for new homes.

Apparently, however, there is no law preventing or incriminating investors who finance lending to mortage-buyers (home-buyers on the low-end) who actuarily are known to have extremely low probabilities of making their payments some months down the road from initial purchase. In other words, the structure of this unethical kind of investment is designed to draw people into mortgage arrangements regarding which they can't fulfill their obligations. It's fraud on the investors and lenders party in that they are not really financing a purchase, rather they are engaging in rentals that last a short period, exhaust the wannabe buyers finanicially, and are papered over with the fiction of investing and lending for purchase.

Caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware indeed!

Washington Times's Patrice Hill, "House hears of mortgage fixes; foreclosures inevitable for many" (Apr18,2k7).

Housing finance agencies told legislators yesterday they are trying to arrange safe mortgages for millions of people who could lose their homes because of ballooning loan payments, but legal constraints may prevent them from stopping foreclosure on many homes.

At the same time, bank regulators warned against trying to rewrite mortgage finance laws in ways that hurt investors and dry up funding that supports the housing market, although they said investors who made risky loans possible in the first place should be forced to bear some of the losses from today's rash of defaults.

The testimony before the House banking committee came amid a doubling of home foreclosures since last year, and calls from some in Congress for a moratorium on foreclosures as well as taxpayer-financed bailouts for vulnerable borrowers like minorities and people in states like Ohio where manufacturing job losses have contributed to delinquencies.

Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and the Federal Housing Administration testified that they are preparing to offer more lenient loan terms for hard-pressed borrowers who would like to refinance into safer, long-term mortgages with fixed interest rates. But they cautioned that there is little they can do to help those who used fraudulent means or extremely lax lending standards to buy homes they could ill afford in the first place.

Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), said many of the loans now failing not only featured ballooning mortgage payments that borrowers cannot afford after an introductory period, but had other high-risk characteristics like second liens and a lack of equity that should have been red flags to borrowers, lenders and investors alike.

"It was clear to investors there was huge risk, so I think everybody needs to share the pain now," she said. "We did not have good market discipline with investors buying all these mortgages."

Ms. Bair told reporters that many times it is in the interest of investors as well as borrowers to work out new loan arrangements to avoid foreclosure because the cost of seizing and reselling the homes is high. She suggested that some investors may allow borrowers to maintain low "starter" interest rates to prevent defaults when the rates suddenly adjust to higher market rates.

"I don't think they really will be harmed if the starter rate is just continued." she said. "What's the alternative? Foreclosure, and then they face much bigger losses."

The FDIC and other U.S. bank regulators issued a joint statement yesterday encouraging mortgage lenders to "work constructively with residential borrowers" who may be in danger of missing payments on their loans.

Regulators "encourage financial institutions to consider prudent workout arrangements that increase the potential for financially stressed residential borrowers to keep their homes," the regulators said, as long as such arrangements are "feasible or appropriate."

However, Ms. Bair testified that workout arrangements may not be possible in many cases because of legal constraints contained in the loan contracts and because most mortgages in recent years were securitized in loan pools and sold to investors -- creating an inflexible legal situation that makes it difficult to rework loans in favor of the borrowers.

The loan-servicing agencies that funnel mortgage payments each month to investors usually have contracts charging them with maintaining the best interests of investors -- not the borrowers -- which can lead to early foreclosures in some cases, regulators said.

"The entire housing finance system rests on the integrity and dependability of mortgage contracts between borrowers and lenders," said Richard F. Syron, chairman of Freddie Mac. While foreclosure is an "undesirable outcome for both parties" in most cases, he said, "at the end of the day, the ability to enforce a mortgage contract, including the use of foreclosure, is critical to continued investors confidence in the U.S. housing market."

George Miller, executive director of the American Securitization Forum, warned lawmakers that "well-intentioned" efforts to help borrowers in distress can have unintended consequences. He said investors are being much more cautious about what securities they buy these days.

Any regulatory overkill that forces investors to suffer undue losses could cause them to "shun the market altogether and cut off mortgage credit for worthy subprime borrowers," he said.

Harry C. Alford, co-founder of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, also cautioned against bailing out borrowers who took on more than they could handle, contending that will make it harder for more worthy borrowers to get the loans they need.

My stance may not be a direct deducation from Mr Hill's report, but the reader can imagine what points I seized on as more significant. For instance, I don't credit Freddie Mac chairman Richard F. Syron's statement much at all. It's self-serving, seeking as it does to place his agency in a better lite than what the public record of the last year has shown regarding financial scandals of its own, and also of Fannie Mae.

In closing, during the recent stock market near-collapse, tho triggered by the Shanghai Flu, also was co-triggered by the epidemic of foreclosures on residential housing brawt on by the afore-discussed suckering of wannabe home-owners by the investors, their securitizing pools, the contracting lenders, and the banks and agencies who exploit the subprime interest rates for what are really rentals, not actuarily sound sales to home purchasers.

More Info:

Regulators call on lenders to work with borrowers to avoid mortgage foreclosure

Mortgage Giants May Help Borrowers

Foreclosure Problem Too Complex for One Solution

Foreclosure's Shadow Falls Across Diverse Set of Homeowners

110th Congress no cakewalk for financial-services lobbyists

Congress targets subprime lending

Enviro: Pollution: Climate-changers overlook pollution

I just saw a roundtable discussion show on a Christian TV channel on a specifically Christian programme (in Canada our Christian TV channels by law carry shows originating from other kinds of religious commitments as well, or from common-ground themes, or from presumably neutral ones). The subject tonite was "Climate Change." The show featured an international/local panel of 3 PhDs (Matt Khandekar, Olev Trass, Andrew Roberts--I hope I've spelled correctly), one journalist (Lorrie Goldstein who's written critically and extensively on the subject matter at hand), plus the host who supplies the name for the Michael Coren show.

I learned that I have not been wrong in my self-education on enviro (environometics) in trying more and more carefully to distinguish these often conflated concepts: 1.) climate change; 2.) global warming; and 3.) pollution.

Climate change is the area where the public is being stampeded into the arms of a vast propaganda machine, but where the sciences directly involved (like climatology, a young science) keep reducing their forecasts of doom (like the reduction from a hysterical 17-feet increase in world ocean-levels to the current prediction of a 1-foot rise). Climate change is real, but not what it is presented to be by stampeding science-cattle. That's most of us, cattle who gobble doomsdaying fodder by cowboy "science."

Global warming relates to climate change, but is not the same thing. Indeed, global warming is accompanied by global cooling, when we look at the locations and weather events that are involved in the two sorts of phenomena. We should always speak of globaly warming/cooling, neither without the other. But more than that, global warming is tied to the upper-atmosphere physics of "greenhouse gases," which in places and occasions of cooling, even freezing, are not heated into a greenhouse effect burning us alive, but do become a cloud cover that protects us from the more dreadful activities of the sun, while we continue to benefit (as now we do) from the ben+n solar activities. Climate change includes both warming and cooling, and is currently undergoing huge relocations and unanticipated events of both kinds. Not incidentally, the sustained overall temperature of the earth and its oceans have been decreasing since 1998. On average. Per square mile/hectare.

Meanwhile, there's the very different phenom of particulate matter in the air since the Industrial Age (in ancient Rome some neibourhoods were polluted by lead, poisonous to humans). Particulate matter these days, refers to those particles of alloys (not "pure chemicals" but mixed) that heat up and cool down but do not rise into the upper atmosphere as gases. Instead particulate matter remains behind with us mortals who breathe them into our lungs from our polluted air. This is a major element of pollution. Another is the more chemically-singular sulphuric acid which comes from burning coal (for instance), the burn-off of which rises into the forming clouds, and descends back to earth to poison habitats, as acid rain, capable of killing forests of trees. Then there's mercury poisoning that comes from over-usage of a particular element to be found on the Periodic Table of Elements where all chemicals are classified in their hypothetical pure states as constructed by chemistry according to standards of purity the science sets (Michael Polanyi). Other chemicals, elements and alloys are identified/created over time--so the Periodic Table to changes.

Pollution results in dirty air and dirty water. Not every single life-form is threatened by the known pollutants (there are ancient microbial life-forms still on earth that thrive in h+ temperature acidic water which to the contrary you and I mite consider toxic; so there are significant variations in what pollutants in relation to what life-forms/species are life-threatening, according to the various species affected negatively).

The big confusion I entertained was that between CO2 (carbon dioxide from oxidized carbon) which is a greenhouse gas and rises into the upper atmosphere, and the particulate matter that can be seen close to the ground on the horizon in a smog-filled cityscape in summer (and sometimes in other times of year).

The International Panel on Climate Change--a h+ly politicized body that selected out the participation of scientists who hold views out of step with the conjured consensus--does not deal with pollution. It does not deal with what we breathe and drink. That's the first lesson on these questions that we must distinguish from others. Yet, there are other lessons as well.

Climate change, too, must be dealt with, but there's no need to make it appear as a human responsibility in regard to which "deniers" (a labelling that exploits the Holocaust for mere metaphorical utliity) and "perpetrators" (usually the major pollutors like auto users and various manufacturers (but not major climate-changers like the sun, moving magnetic poles, etc) are constructed as enemies of humanity, haters of living creatures, of the biosphere, and of creation as a whole. The ideologists obsessed with climate change put the whole world's solar givens on the shoulders of ordinary people (de kleine luyden, then these blamers who are also, all too often, Christians within the climate-changist elites go about guilt-tripping ordinary Christians for not being the Atlas of mythology.

Politics: Nigeria: Africa's most populous country goes to the polls

Christian Science Monitor carries a valuable 3-page story on the impending election in Nigeria, a flawed democracy criss-crossed by tensions that too often become political and/or violent--involving Muslims, Christians, and African Old Religionists. Sarah Simpson "Nigeria's soft-spoken top candidate Umaru Musa Yar'Adua is the ruling party's candidate in Sunday's presidential election." (Apr16,2k7)

Katsina, Nigeria - Umaru Musa Yar'Adua's face now gazes from election posters nationwide as Africa's most populous country gets set to do what it has never done before: pass rule from one civilian to another.

Until Mr. Yar'Adua emerged as the ruling party presidential candidate, few had noticed the soft-spoken Muslim governor of Katsina, one of Nigeria's most remote states. Many say he's a pawn of President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Yar'Adua has completed 8 years as governor of his state of Katsina. His father was in the first Fed cabinet after independence from Britain. The candidate himself is regarded as the most conducting the most transparent style of govt of all 36 of Nigeria's states. He plans to lead a strong anti-corruption campaign. Altho, as mentioned, some say he is only a pawn of outgoing President Obosanjo, the necessity of a massive anti-corruption move is a keynote the two men hold in common and is the motive of Obosanjo's support.

If Sunday's vote goes smoothly, the fifth-largest supplier of crude oil to the United States will soon have a new president.

But that's a big if. Hundreds of people have died in pre-election violence and more than 21 people were killed in state and local government elections this Saturday.

With just days to go before the presidential vote, it is still not clear if Vice President Atiku Abubakar will be able to run or not. The electoral commission decided recently to ban him from the race based on corruption charges that he denies. The Supreme Court is set to decide Monday whether he may run on behalf of the opposition Action Congress Party. Some worry the decision could trigger more violence. ...

A devout Muslim, Yar'Adua is one of 12 northern governors to have implemented Islamic law in his state. He met with Anglican Archbishop Peter Akinola last month to give assurances that, if he became president, he would protect religious freedom for all of Nigeria's 140 million people, who are split evenly between the Muslim and Christian faiths.

Inter ethno-religious peaces in a federalist framework, where some state's have enshrined Sharia law, is quite important. But not at the expense of the r+ts of Christians and Old Religionists.

Education: USA: Vouchers for alternative schooling achieve gains, suffer setbacks

At Stateline, news source for the 50 US states, Pauline Vu reports "Vouchers see mixed success this session" (Apr10,2k7), with the graphic tag "StA+es debate school choice."

This year the school choice movement reached a milestone – Utah became the first state to sign a universal voucher law. Unlike other voucher programs, Utah’s would allow every child – regardless of income or geography – to receive public money to attend private school.

But a drive is under way to dismantle that plan before it can get off the ground this fall. Utahns for Public Schools, a coalition including the state’s teachers union and school boards association, is trying to take the voucher decision out of lawmakers’ hands and give it to voters.

“This is something that the voter ought to have the right to give his opinion on,” said Marilyn Kofford, the education commissioner of the state Parent Teacher Association, part of the coalition.

Midway through the legislative season, school choice proponents, who say vouchers can give disadvantaged public school students a chance to attend better schools, have had mixed [political] results.

Rarely does the voucher system produce bad educational results; rather, noticeably good educational results is the main trend for students living in poverty. The results referred to, are distinctly political in character, because of all the vested interests in admin, teacher, and union incompetence combined with a penchant within these forces for promoting educational inequality to favour govt-determined schooling. Thee forces hover to scuttle the vouchers and other programs toward educational equality as slowly these alternatives to govt ed keep on arising across the USA.

Enviro: Carbon: American govt tries to quantify, regulate, legislate use of carbon and its emissions into our atmosphere?

Christian Science Monitor in a difficult article by Mark Clayton
"Key climate question: What's the cost of carbon? Current offset prices vary from 50 cents to $30 a ton. But the US Congress will have to find the optimum rate." (Apr12,2k7). Disregard the 'climate' rhetoric, and any 'warming' verbiage, and just concentrate on pollution for a moment. Along that line, years back, economist Bob Goudzwaard wrote his doctoral dissertation in Dutch on Unpriced Scarcity. Now in North America, our leadership is trying to determine how to price an unpriced super-surplus of carbon emissions (carbon dioxide, CO2) coming into our North American atmosphere from many sources (in San Fransisco, for instance, some of it comes on the wind across the Pacific from China's over-heated industrialization).

Now, the economics of it all is apparently going to be determined in dollars and nonsense by the politics of it all. Various schemes are being devised, but what price is / will be fair? It seems to me that before we try to price CO2 and determine who's got to pay for it? How quotas can be set, the exceeding of which means a company (for instance) has to buy a credit from a non-emitter (like a farmer who's not plowing his acres and thus not releasing emission from the soil), that are fair to all and actually do make a difference for the better, is the technical pricing question for the economic aspect of our society/ies

North America > Economics/Enviro

But before that question is addressed, it's important to focus on the pre-monetary economics where an endangering exchange goes on massively between sources and our common air, water, and dynamics of the entire atmosphere (it isn't raining rain, you know, it's raining sulphuric acid). You've got the idea. So from Clayton's article I've selected just one item for quotation, the pre-price pre-monetary optimatics of carbon and CO2 exchange as such and in the raw. I do so hoping you'll click-up and read his entire article:

Who's the emitter? Producers of oil, gas, and coal are considered upstream sources of carbon emissions. Downstream sources include buildings [including your workplace, your place of worship, your home-E], automobiles [including your car, but don't forget your lawnmower, motorboat, skidoo, etc-E], electric utilities, and refineries to name a few. Choosing whom to regulate is a critical question that could mean billions of dollars in costs to the industries [car-owners, and home-owners] affected. Power companies are the focal point of some legislation, while most economists argue the focus should be on the entire economy to spread the cost around.

The prospect of political fury arising from all quarters at once seems very much on the agenda as the apparently-necessary process of pricing takes place. It doesn't put politicans, companies, home-owners, or car-owners in an enviable position, to be sure.

War: Sri Lanka: The civil war drives thousands out of their homes

The left Anarchist Christian email newsletter Ekklesia reports "Sri Lanka conflict forces thousands to flee their homes" (Apr13,2k7)

Christian Aid partners are working to help displaced people in Sri Lanka after renewed fighting has forced more than 155,000 civilians to flee their homes in recent weeks.

A surge in violence in Batticaloa district in the east of the country has driven people from their towns and villages either into camps for displaced people or to stay with friends and relatives in safer areas.

There are around 292,000 people displaced in Sri Lanka due to the conflict, according to the latest United Nations figure from March 2007.

Christian Aid partner organisations have been working in some of the camps in Batticaloa and in Trincomalee districts. Partners say that many of these camps are no longer entirely safe as some were recently targeted by shelling and others are being visited by armed groups.

There have been cases of people being arrested, or threatened, while families fear their children could be forcibly recruited by paramilitary groups.

In March, a group of people from Trincomalee who had fled to the camps in Batticaloa, were forced by the authorities to return to their homes in Muttur without adequate provision being made for their safety and welfare, according to Christian Aid partner OfERR, which works with refugees and tsunami survivors.

A group of international agencies including Christian Aid together with a local partner is due to assess the situation in Muttur town in April in order to give help to returnees and those families that remained throughout the clashes.

This is not always possible in places like Sampor in Trincomalee district, as militarisation, mining and unexploded ordnance make it difficult for civilians to return home.

South Asia > Sri Lanka

Jaffna in the north of the island has been virtually cut off since August last year when the main road connecting it with the rest of the island was closed after a stand off between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). There have been food shortages and a rise in the price of basic essentials. Education is also being affected as schools and universities have to close down.

The fighting is destroying basic infrastructure such as schools, places of worship, roads and houses including those built for and by tsunami survivors, while electricity supplies are unreliable in many locations. In many eastern and northern districts boats are not allowed to go to sea as they are seen as a security risk, making life difficult in coastal areas where fishing is the backbone of the economy.

"There is no alternative to a negotiated agreement," said Laurent Viot, Christian Aid’s representative in Sri Lanka. "In the meantime we need to remind parties to the conflict of their moral and legal responsibilities towards civilians in war zones and offer as much physical and psychological support to the safe and voluntary return of displaced people and more generally to all civilians affected by this conflict".

In 2002 the government and the Tamil Tigers signed a ceasefire to end Sri Lanka’s 20-year civil war which had cost 65,000 lives. Despite the truce still being in place on paper, more than 4,000 people have been killed in the past 15 months, according to European ceasefire monitors.

The article fails to mention that the Tamil Tigers are a terrorist organization and that most of the misery they cause is against their own people, doing so in the name of a special brand of Hindu-Marxism. They want an apartheid separation of Tamils from the other peoples of Sri Lanka, where a self-serving Theravada Buddhist leadership has proved historically to be permanently intractable to Tamil r+ts and needs. I don't fawlt Ekklesia for self-sensoring on this theme because having given a picture from a Christian Aid point of view, it becomes necessary to hold back on crucial facts in order not to render Christian Aid itself a special target of the terrorists.

More info:

Bishop cites Sri Lanka's cricket team as model of unity

UPDATE:

Amnesty International delivers a "politically-correct" slap at Sri Lankan bishop who cited inter-ethnocreligious cooperation among cricket players [Le journal chretien (Apr14,2k7)].

Politics: Diplomacy: BBC reports on agenda of China/Japan negotiations

BBC reports "Japan and China aim to thaw ties" (Apr11,1k7) in the visit of China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, to Tokyo. Already there's news that "The two men issued a joint statement promising to look frankly at their historical disputes, and signed accords on energy and the environment." Further issues, including the history agenda, are:

*History: Japan's neighbours often think it has not done enough to atone for wartime atrocities
*Trade: Bilateral trade is growing strongly
*North Korea: Japan often takes a tougher stance than China over the nuclear issue
*East China Sea: Beijing and Tokyo disagree over the boundary between their exclusive economic zones
*Security: Japan wants to revise is pacifist constitution, which concerns China. China's military expansion concerns Japan

Here's the start of the main text of the article, an article recording what could well turn out to be of world-historical importance.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has met his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, at the start of a summit hailed as a sign of improved relations.

Asia > Japan, China

The two men issued a joint statement promising to look frankly at their historical disputes, and signed accords on energy and the environment.

"Our talks will be a big step toward building strategically and mutually beneficial relations," Mr Abe said.

Mr Wen is the first Chinese prime minister to visit Japan in seven years.

The meeting followed a trip by Mr Abe to China in October - the first sign of a thaw in ongoing tensions between the two countries.

A valuable analysis of these then-prospective developments may be found at the Open Democracy website in a short essay by Andrew Joyce, "China and Japan: between past and future " (Apr10,2k7).

Enviro: China: Visit to Japan by Chinese premier opens hope of enviro concern in world's largest country

Today's CSM brings word, in an article by Jason Miks "Chinese premier's visit to Japan marks major thaw--Wen Jiabao will address Japan's Diet, discuss trade, and even play baseball" (Apr11,2k7) that maybe China is becoming consciousness of its tragic overdose of pollution. Japan suffers from what the wind carries from continental China to the Japanese islands.

Despite the extended tensions in political relations, economic ties between the two countries have been thriving. China's trade with Japan in 2006 jumped 12.4 percent from a year earlier, to $207.36 billion – more than double the $101.91 billion recorded in 2002, according to Chinese government figures.

A further sign of the improving economic and political climate was China's decision in January to, in principle, to resume imports of Japanese rice. Imports were suspended in 2003, ostensibly over insects being found in the rice, though the decision was widely viewed as having a political element.

However, though economics have helped drive China-Japan relations forward, China's rapidly growing economy presents its own problems.

This Sino-Japanese trade bonanza includes the nasty enviro consequences that puts China on a projectile to surpass all countries in pollution this year. Not only does this pollution problem infect China's own life and population, it has wider implications as the smog moves on the winds to Japan and across the Pacific to North America. Much of San Fransisco's smog originates in China. Japan is not unaffected. But just as Japan is stressing politeness to the Chinese at the moment (this being a big anniversary of Japan's slawter of Chinese in Nanjing decades ago), so China's premier Wen is stressing politeness since anti-Japan nationalism has previously stirred uncontrollable crowd violence against Japan.

Altho China was exempted from the Kyoto Protocols on the environment (Canada agreed to China's exemption and signed too, the USA refused to exempt China and did not sign), China now wants to give Japan the impression that it will join the worldwide anti-pollution movement. But, while Japan has fostered the manufacture and sale of non-polluting alterntively-fuelled cars, China has simply upped its auto production and the machines are all polluters. Meanwhile, China has made huge deals for the import of oil without alternative fuels appearing on its production schedules. So we may be forgiven when we greet with disbelief, reporter Mik's mention of the Chinese diplomcacy with Japan regarding the environment.

Indeed, an expected joint statement during Wen's visit on tackling global warming suggests that China sees improved relations with Japan as an opportunity to try to burnish its credentials as a good global citizen. China is said to be ready to enter post-Kyoto negotiations on a future framework and also to agree to work with Japan on a number of projects including water purification and reforestation.

Glosserman says that one motivation for the recent shift is China's determination to make Wen's visit a success. "Improving relations with Japan makes China look like a responsible stakeholder," he explains.

The sad truth is that China had a unique opportunity to introduce anti-pollution measures much earlier in its rapid-industrialization process. It could have devoted itself to the manufacture of alternatively-fuelled vehicles, providing first-time auto buyers non-pulluters to start with. No such luck, says the fortune cookie.

Civil War: Sri Lanka: Tamil Tigers go airborne, strike govt military airbase

A week and a half ago, BBC reported the bizarrely ironic story that "Sri Lankan rebels launch air raid" (Mar26,2k7), resulting in 3 deaths and 16 injured in that initial count. Not a huge kill score, as the world turns these days. But almost incomprehensible in Sri Lankan terms. Yet, the LTTE [Tamil Tigers], as the separatist military organization is called, has been confounding the govt's presumptions of its capablities over decades now. Not so long ago they gook on the govt forces from the sea, with a Tiger Navy, so to speak.

What's most crazy is that the movement has broked no dissent among the broader Tamil population, all of whom have also to contend with the largely Sinhalese majority, who have an anciently-rooted Buddhist cultural tradition (while the Tamils main roots are in Hinduism, the Tigers having concocted their own warrior-glorifying version based on a LTTE reading of Mahabratra. Now an airforce!

Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers have carried out their first aerial attack, bombing a military base by the international airport north of the capital, Colombo.

Three air force personnel were killed, officials say, and 16 people injured when the bombs hit a parking area for planes and helicopter gunships.

The international airport - which was not damaged - was closed briefly.

Tiger rebels attacked the airport and base in 2001, killing 18 and wiping out half of the national airline fleet.

The Katunayake airbase and the civilian airport share the same runway.

The Tigers said that goverment planes retaliated on Monday, carrying out four raids in the north of the island. They said civilian areas were hit, but there were no casualties.

'More to come'

A statement from the Tamil Tigers, carried by the pro-rebel Tamilnet website, claimed responsibility for the attack on the military base, which is 30km (20 miles) north of Colombo.

The government said one plane was used. The rebels said two aircraft took part and that both planes returned to rebel-held territory safely.

"It is a measure to protect Tamil civilians from the genocidal aerial bombardments by Sri Lankan armed forces. More attacks of the same nature will follow," said the rebels' military spokesman, Rasiah Ilanthirayan.

Air force officials said no planes were hit, damage to the military facility was "minor" and that a search operation was under way.

The BBC's Roland Buerk in Colombo says the confirmation that the rebels now have an air capability confirms government suspicions that they had been smuggling in aircraft parts to be assembled in areas of the island they control.

South Asia > Sri Lanka

One international airline, Cathay Pacific, announced that it was suspending flights to Colombo.

The authorities have set up an investigation into how the Tigers could have flown planes for more than 200 kms (125 miles) undetected.

The Tigers have released photos of planes and personnel they said took part in the raid.

"No terrorist group in this part of the world has any air capability," government minister Jeyaraj Fernandopulle told journalists in Colombo.

"This is a clear threat to the security of the whole region."

Panic

The raid on the air force base took place at about 0045 on Monday (1915 GMT Sunday).

The wounded air force personnel were treated at Negombo military hospital

Flights in and out of the civilian airport were cancelled and roads cordoned off but no civilians were wounded and the runway was not damaged.

Neil Butler, a British passenger at the airport, was inside the terminal building when the attack happened.

"I heard a large thud and we all went to the window. There was a long silence and then several more explosions followed by machine gun fire," he told the BBC News website.

"The staff ran for the exit followed by the passengers. When I arrived downstairs in the check-in area a large crowd was running in a panic from the entrance where there had been more machine gun fire."

He said: "I saw what looked like kind of fireworks in the sky, like a series of red flashes. But I didn't see any aircraft going over."

Independent homeland

The air force base, which adjoins the country's only international passenger airport, houses some of the aircraft used in recent air strikes against Tiger rebel bases in the north.

Air force officials said damage to the military facility was "minor"

Despite a ceasefire still being in place on paper, Sri Lanka has been sliding back towards civil war, with more than 4,000 people killed in the past 15 months, our correspondent says.

The rebels have been fighting the armed forces of the predominantly Sinhalese government for much of the past 20 years.

They want to establish an independent homeland for the minority Tamils in the north and east of the country, to be called Tamil Eelam.

About 65,000 people have been killed and one million displaced by the fighting.

The geopolitics of the territories that the Tigers want to hold, having seized them off and on over the years, are simply not viable as an independent state, in my opinion. In the north, including the peninsula where the main concentration of Tamils occurs in the city of Jaffna, could conceivably have an existence distinct from the Sinhala-dominated main body of the rest of the country, hubbing out from the great city of Colombo. But the viability of Jaffna would depend upon support of ethnoreligiusly-related Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India, thos support from India for a Jaffna state offshore the subcontinent's southernmost tip, on the Lankan island, would become a perfect point of contest among the squabbling factions of Hindus, Christians, and Marxists that (de)compose Tamil Nadu society itself, ideologically.

In Sri Lanka, the ethnoreligious communities are the Tamil Hindus, the Sinhala Buddhists, and the Arab Muslims (the smallest of these three, who often seem the sanest). The Christian minority crosses all these communities, as something of a melting pot exists, making the Christian existence more viable, but there is also a backlash against the aggressive missionizing and church planting of some Christian groups. Additionally, educated people from all backgrounds often move to some personal version of secular Humanism (aside from rabidly ideological Marxist Hinduism, as prevails in the LTTE).

But more than faith and ideological factors are present on the island. One such is signified by the number of intermarriages that take mixed couples to the cosmopolitan capital city of Colombo.

I've known people (some directly, others by reputation) who have hoped for peace for the bullied and battered Tamil population, only to be disappointed by one side or the other, over and over again. I doubt there will be lasting peace on the island in the next twenty years.

Disaster: Tsunami: 1,000-islands chain in SouthWest Pacific recovers slowly, miraculously from natural event

ReliefWeb's Amy Bennett reports "Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea reeling from recent tsunami" (Apr5,2k7):

New York, USA – A strong undersea earthquake that struck the South Pacific this week left the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea directly in the path of a deadly tsunami, which swept through coastal villages killing at least 34 and leaving many more homeless.

More than 900 homes were destroyed and reports tell of entire villages being washed away. Aerial surveillance revealed flattened homes and people wandering along the coast. Roads were clogged with debris and boats that had been hurled ashore.

UNICEF and its partners responded within hours of the 8.1 earthquake and tsunami with pre-positioned emergency medical supplies for up to 10,000 people.

UNICEF is working to distribute medical kits including emergency drugs, to provide immunisation against measles for children aged six to 59 months, as well as Vitamin A supplementation. Water tanks and food sources have been destroyed so meeting the basic needs of many of the displaced will be a challenge.

With some 5,500 people displaced, families will be vulnerable to hunger and the spread of disease. Lack of access to safe water is a serious concern. Standing water is an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes and malaria is endemic in the area.

In collaboration with partners and the authorities, UNICEF will assess the damage to water and sanitation infrastructure and coordinate the distribution of water purification tablets, jerry cans and water tanks, and hygiene kits as well as the establishment of latrines and water points as necessary.

Aid workers in some areas have pointed out that relief efforts are lacking in resources while the risks to health and human life are mounting.

In any disaster, it is children who suffer most. Of the estimated 50,000 people affected by this crisis, approximately nearly 30,000 are children, and 15,000 are under the age of five. Vulnerable to hunger, disease and trauma, children and women in the affected areas require urgent life-saving assistance to survive.

Three days later,AP via International Herald Tribune describes the damage in the Solomon Islands's main center Gizo, "Among Solomon Islands' debris, an open-air maternity ward continues to operate" (Apr8,2k7). The reporter interlaces a family's personal ordeal amidst a fact-filled overview of the situation which resulted in at least 28 deaths, but not the wipe-out many feared.

GIZO, Solomon Islands: As flies buzzed around a basket of bloody gauze, Moana Saito nursed her newborn daughter, delivered in an open-air maternity ward near the center of the Solomon Islands' earthquake and tsunami disaster.

"It's lucky it's not raining," said the attending nurse, Vaelin Gagahe, who delivered Saito's baby on Saturday. The nurse has delivered three babies in two days in the makeshift network of tarpaulins and tents that has sprung up to replace Gizo's hospital, partially destroyed by the tsunami last Monday.

Health officials warn that without proper sanitation, the number of child deaths in the disaster zone could rise significantly. Unhygienic conditions and a lack of clean water have contributed to isolated cases of diarrhea and dysentery in some refugee camps. International aid workers were scrambling to dig latrines and set up water purifiers.

Last week, the United Nations warned that up to 30,000 children could be affected by the disaster, including 15,000 under the age of five.

"These children are highly vulnerable to hunger, disease and the disruption of their normal lives and protective social systems, and require urgent lifesaving assistance to survive," the UN said in a statement.

SW Pacific > Solomons & Papua NG

Saito's husband, a ship captain, was helping to unload relief supplies from a boat that arrived in Gizo early Saturday and had not yet seen his daughter, the couple's first surviving child. They had a boy in 2004, but he died shortly after birth.

The 23-year-old mother went into labor just before dawn in the hillside camp where she and hundreds of others have taken refuge away from their low-lying homes, many of which were badly damaged by the 8.1 magnitude quake and the killer waves that followed.

Saito's home was only partially damaged, but like many others, she has been afraid to return because of the many aftershocks - including several registering magnitude 6 or higher - that have shook the region since last Monday.

She and her husband have no tent, and have been sleeping in the open air. She is not sure whether they will return home now that their baby daughter has arrived.

According to the UN, an average of 20 children die per 1,000 live births in the Solomons - a rate that exceeds many South Pacific nations, but is well below that of neighboring Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu.

There were no official estimates of the number of diarrhea and dysentery cases. Stefan Knollmeyer of an Australian aid group, AusAID, said he was optimistic that basic sanitation measures - like pit toilets, water purification tablets and soap - could contain the problem.

The United Nations has set the death toll from the disaster last Monday at 34 people, while the Solomons' official toll is 28. However, many villagers have been burying the dead as they find them, and some deaths may never be reported to officials.

Knollmeyer said the current estimates seemed accurate based on AusAID's survey so far.

He said that up to 7,000 people had been left homeless by the disaster, far fewer than originally feared. Last week, the premier of Western Province, Alex Lokopio, said that as many as 40,000 of the region's 90,000 people may have lost their homes.

Meanwhile, aid continued to flow into the region after days of delays caused by transport bottlenecks and government bureaucracy.

Two large boats docked in Gizo early Saturday carrying supplies and about two dozen troops from Australia and New Zealand, including five medics and six sanitation experts.

More than 2,500 tarpaulins and 1.2 tons of rice have been distributed to the camps around Gizo and some of the surrounding islands, with more supplies on the way.

Relief has been slow to reach the region's outlying islands, however, and villagers have complained that they are running low on food, shelter and other emergency supplies.

At least one island was raised out of its seabed by the underwater earthquake, reports The Times of India (Apr8,2k7):

RANONGGA, SOLOMON ISLANDS: The seismic jolt that unleashed the deadly Solomons tsunami this week lifted an entire island metres out of the sea, destroying some of the world's most pristine coral reefs.

In an instant, the grinding of the Earth's tectonic plates in the 8.0 magnitude earthquake Monday forced the island of Ranongga up three metres (10 feet).

Submerged reefs that once attracted scuba divers from around the globe lay exposed and dying after the quake raised the mountainous landmass, which is 32-kilometres (20-miles) long and 8-kilometres (5-miles) wide.

Corals that used to form an underwater wonderland of iridescent blues, greens and reds now bleach under the sun, transforming into a barren moonscape surrounding the island.

After the havoc wreaked in recent years affecting many nations, principallly Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Aceh, Indonesia, and more recetnly Japan, the word "tsunami" has come to signify massive numbers of deaths as a result of earthquakes, tidal waves, and floods. It seems the Solomons and Papua New Guinea have been spared the worst, but bad is bad enuff.

Terrorism: SouthWest Pacific: Indonesia and Australia avert a massive 2nd Bali

I mentioned in an earlier post a brief item I had located in a Christian Science Monitor email newsletter (Apr4,2k7) regarding an impressive Indonesia/Australia joint anti-terrorist action--the joint action by the security forces of Indonesia and Australia averted an action plan by jihadists of an extreme Muslim grouping that intended in recent days to double perhaps the kill rate of vacationing Aussies and other foreign tourists in Bali 2002. I accidentally deleted the email, and have been googling for it, then using CSM's search feature, but have not found the precise story I wanted.

Instead I found on Radio Australia's website an audio of Rob Sharp interviewing John Lawler, Australian Federal Police Commissioner, regarding "Indonesia: Police raid gives possible JI leads" (Apr4,2k7): "Australian and Indonesian police now believe they may have a better understanding of the make-up of terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah, after a raid last month in which in number of photocopied charts were seized." I did more searching and I finally found the info I was seeking--of all the world's news media!-- on AlJazeera English, "Indonesia terror plot 'foiled'" (Apr4,2k7).

Indonesian police say they have foiled a bombing plot potentially bigger than the Bali nightclub attacks in 2002 [where mainly Aussies and other Westerners tourists congregate - P], which killed at least 202 people.

Authorities captured seven suspected members of the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group during raids in the city of Yogyakarta and central Java last week.

JI is blamed for carrying out the Bali bombings as well as a string of other attacks across Indonesia, including the bombing of the Australian embassy in 2004.

During the raids police also seized a cache of weapons and explosives, including bombs, detonators and ammunition.

The arrests were carried out in a joint operation with Australian police.

"We also found documents which indicate that military wings of Jemaah Islamiyah still exist in Indonesia", Suryadarma Salim, the head of Indonesia's anti-terrorism task force, said.

Officials said the explosives were enough to make a bomb much larger than the ones used in the Bali attacks.

John Lawler, the deputy commissioner of the Australian Federal Police said the raids were a "significant milestone" for efforts to contain and counter the threat posed by terrorists.

Interrogation

The seven suspects have now been flown amid tight security to Jakarta for interrogation.

SouthWest Pacific > Indonesia/Australia

One other suspect was shot dead during the police raids.

"We're bringing them to Jakarta so we can interrogate them further," General Sutanto, Indonesia's police chief, told reporters.

"We want to learn everything we can about this network."

Indonesian and Western intelligence officials say the JI group has close links to al-Qaeda and is seeking to create by force an Islamic state across South-East Asia.

Despite hundreds of arrests in recent years, authorities say JI still has the ability to carry out attacks.

Abu Dujana, the group's alleged current leader who learned bomb-making skills in Afghanistan, remains at large, as does Noordin Top, JI's alleged operations chief.

Source: Agencies. Bolds added by Politicarp.

This anti-terrorism development underlines the difficulties Indonesians have with Australia. Unfortunately, a majority of Indonesians accept the idea of a "clash of civilizations" with many of that slim Muslim majority believing in second-class status for non-Muslims, especially the Christian minority which is widely hated.

Likewise, the Australia public has a majority which is h+ly suspicious of Indonesian Islamic(ist) desires to subjugate the SouthWest Pacific; there is considerable Aussie sentimaent for limiting the further immigration and r+ts of Muslims, mainly arriving from Indonesia. Diplomacy between the two countries has long been quite dicey, especially after Australia's support for the independence of the former Portuguese-colony of East Timor, which Indonesia wanted to take over for itself (after 5 years of govt collapse, the Timorese are conducting an historic vote today; a leading candidate wants Aust. peacekeeping troops to stay on).

Papua is also another grievance point between Indonesia and the Aussies (who dominate the neiboring Papua New Guinea. Papuans in the past escaped Indonesian control (2006) in their country as refugees seeking asylum (2007) in Australia. Map.

Asia Times Online in a thoro article by Duncan Graham, "Tricky Treaty for Indonesia and Australia (Apr4,2k7), illuminates some of the diplomatic niceties that contextualize the recent anti-terrorist cooperation.

Calendar: Easter Joy: Easter greetings to all refWrite regular readers, and occsional visitors too!

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Happy

Easter!

Joining all those who pray for the peace of the world, and in the midst of all people of good will naming and glorifying our Lord Jesus Christ as the Prince of Peace ... praying for food, shelter, clean air, and clean water for those displaced, for refugees everywhere, for migrants seeking work and income ... praying for reproductive knowledge and behavioural changes among the poor whose demographics are everywhere so dismal ... praying that the messengers of the Gospel may be received thru-out all nations, and that a worldwide framework of religious freedom with the r+t to convert from any religion to any religion freely chosen, for all these changes, O Lord, please hear our prayers.

Terrorism: SouthWest Pacific: Indonesia and Australia avert a massive 2nd Bali, Solomon Islands disaster, Tamil separatists 'airforce"

Here are three brief items from Christian Science Monitor email newsletter (Apr4,2k7):

Indonesia/Australia joint anti-terrorist action:

Joint action by the security forces of Indonesia and Australia averted an action plan by jihadists of an extreme Muslim grouping to double the kill rate of vacationing Aussies and other foreign tourists in Bali in recent days.

Solomon Islands disaster lacks relief due to aftershocks:

The first emergency teams arrived in the Solomon Islands to help survivors of the earthquake and tsunami that battered the South Pacific archipelago Monday. The first priorities, officials said, would be to restore communications, then treat the injured and distribute food and supplies. At least 27 aftershocks were reported, forcing thousands of residents to remain on high ground for safety and causing authorities to warn of additional tsunamis. [CSM, Apr3,2k7] A second report a day later stresses that relief is not getting thru yet, and that victims of the flooding caused by the tsunami lack shelter, drinkable water, and food.

Sri Lanka's separatist Tamil Tigers go airborne:

LTTE, the organizational name for the ruthless separatist movement in Tamil areas of Sri Lanka have put an airplane in the sky to bomb forces of the national Sri Lankan military.