From London daily News Line:
Saturday, 28 January 2006
BASRA TENSIONS FLARE!
Basra governor Mohammed al-Waili yesterday warned the British occupiers he will break off all relations and called on Iraqis to demonstrate outside the British consulate in the southern Iraqi port city tomorrow.
The bust-up between the puppet governor and the UK occupying authorities has erupted amidst mounting tensions over the arrest and detention of five Iraqi policemen as suspected insurgents by UK troops.
Announcing tomorrow’s demonstration, an enraged Al-Waili said Basra’s provincial council and all government offices ‘will suspend all kinds of dealings with the forces at all levels if they don’t release the detainees’.
The row first erupted on Tuesday following an operation by UK and Danish troops.
Fourteen men were arrested following an increase in roadside bombings in what British officials described as a drive ‘to root out corruption in the Iraqi police service’.
Nine men were later released but five are still being detained.
In a bid to ease tensions, British army officials claimed the puppet Iraqi Interior Ministry had ordered the arrests and local officials were aware of the British-led operation.
But this has had no effect, and tensions in the city are reaching boiling point.
Several hundred angry Basra citizens demonstrated outside governor al-Waili’s office last Wednesday to demand the detainees’ release.
Last October, al-Waili said UK forces had destabilised security following the arrest of 12 Iraqis over alleged attacks against UK troops.
A month earlier, he had accused the British army of ‘aggression’ after it used tanks to rescue two British SAS soldiers held by militias.
Update, May 2006:
here.
By Samuel Davidson and Jerry Isaacs:
27 January 2006
David Dye, the acting director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), walked out halfway through a two-hour Senate hearing Monday on the Sago Mine disaster, refusing to answer questions about his agency’s failure to enforce safety regulations that might have saved 14 West Virginia miners who were killed in two separate accidents this month.
Dye rejected a direct request of US Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee that oversees the mine safety agency, to stay for the full hearing and respond to issues that might arise from the testimony of other witnesses.
Dye claimed the hearing had “diverted” him and other MSHA officials from more pressing matters, including a mine fire in Colorado, which, he conveniently did not mention, had been burning since November.
The actions by the Bush appointee underscore the utter contempt the White House has for the welfare and safety of the coal miners.
If this is how the head of the agency charged with protecting miners’ lives responds to US senators, it is obvious what kind of treatment miners receive when they risk victimization and ask MSHA officials to investigate deadly conditions in the coal mines.
Dye’s walkout also highlights the well-known fact that the White House considers itself unaccountable to the US Congress or anyone else, aside from corporate America.
The same arrogance and obstruction has been shown in regard to the investigation of the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina and the incompetence and negligence of its political cronies at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Dye announced his departure after Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, asked him whether MSHA and the coal industry have become too close under the Bush administration.
See for an update
here.
Mine (un)safety in Australia: here.
African films released on DVD: Ousmane Sembène’s Borom Sarret and Black Girl
By Joanne Laurier
17 January 2006
Ousmane Sembène, Senegalese author, scenarist and film director, has been making films for over 40 years.
New Yorker Video has recently released two of Sembène’s earliest and most remarkable cinematic works on DVD: one short film, Borom Sarret (1963), and Black Girl (1966), which also holds the distinction of being Africa’s first feature film.
Born in 1923 in southern Senegal, Sembène, the son of a Muslim fisherman, migrated as a stowaway to France in 1947 to escape the ravages of a war-torn colonial economy.
Having joined the French Communist Party in 1950 and the anti-racist movement MOURAP in 1951, he was working as a dock worker in Marseilles in 1960, the year Senegal declared its independence.
Within a few years, Sembène had established himself as a novelist and short story writer in France.
On a trip back to Senegal, Sembène was struck by or reminded of the high levels of illiteracy.
This convinced him to turn to film rather than literature as a means of communicating with wide layers of the population.
In 1962, he enrolled at the Moscow film school, studying under veteran Soviet director Mark Donskoy, and then worked at Gorki film studies under the tutelage of Sergei Gerasimov.
An unusual personality, at this point in his life Sembène combined profound opposition to capitalism and colonialism with a deep feeling for artistic work.
He immersed himself in world literature, including the work of left-wing (or former left-wing) writers like Americans Richard Wright, John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway, the Chilean poet Pablo Néruda, the Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, the Jamaican-born, African-American writer Claude McKay and others.
He also became involved with the left-wing theater Le Theâtre Rouge.
Read whole article here.
