Re BOOK ALERT: 
Welcome
....to JusticeGhana Group
JusticeGhana is a Non-Governmental [and-not-for- profit] Organization (NGO) with a strong belief in Justice, Security and Progress....” More Details
JFK tried to make me have an abortion: How President Kennedy forced a teenage intern to take drugs and feared he'd made her pregnant
- Details
- Category: DateLines
- Created on Thursday, 30 August 2012 00:00
- Hits: 7940
13 February 2012
JFK tried to make me have an abortion: How President Kennedy forced a teenage intern to take drugs and feared he'd made her pregnant
As a 19-year-old intern in the Kennedy White House, I didn’t appreciate that it was unhealthy to be at the perpetual beck and call of a married man. I was having fun, living in the moment — and I was blinded by President Kennedy’s power and charisma.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Yet even at the height of our 18-month affair, I knew he wasn’t in love with me. Of course not: he was the leader of the free world. The married leader of the free world. And I wasn’t even old enough to vote.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}Since the fourth day of my internship in the White House press office, when the president had tipped me on to his wife’s bed and taken my virginity, our relationship had been sexual, intimate and passionate. But there was always a layer of reserve between us, which may explain why we never once kissed. Not once — not even to say hello or goodbye.
I knew my role and played it well. It was to be young, full of energy and willing to play along with whatever he wanted. So we’d joke about members of the press office staff and who was saying what about whom in the press corps.
Indeed, the president adored gossip, the juicier the better, and he loved to laugh. One day, he surprised me by asking if I knew any school songs from my days at Miss Porter’s, the exclusive boarding school that his wife Jackie had also attended. It was an odd request, but I obliged.
As I began to sing one, he started chuckling with delight. I immediately understood why: he just couldn’t resist an upper-class girl.
Soon, he was asking me to travel with him — invitations that were usually delivered with the casual air of asking if I wanted to go the movies. Once, I flew in Airforce One, but usually I’d be in the back-up plane, along with other staff, and no one ever asked what a mere intern was doing there.
On our first trip — to Yosemite National Park — a pattern started. I came to think of it as the Waiting Game. ‘Stay put,’ JFK’s special assistant Dave Powers told me when we arrived. ‘I’ll call you when the President wants you.’
So that’s what I did. As daylight faded, I sat in a chair and just stared out of the window of my hotel room, waiting for the call.
‘I don’t recall feeling self-pity; I was thrilled to be part of the presidential entourage, and excited at the prospect of our first night together out of the White House.
I’d also been seduced by the sultanic style of Presidential travel, with its motorcades and special planes. But, unfortunately, my days as an intern were already numbered.
Having paid the fees in advance, my parents insisted that I return to Wheaton — an all-girls college in Massachusetts — to complete my second year. When I told the President, he promised to call me often, saying he’d use the pseudonym Michael Carter.
It felt as though I was abandoning him, he teased. Then he played me Nat King Cole’s version of Autumn Leaves, making me pay close attention to the line: ‘But I miss you most of all, my darling, when autumn leaves start to fall.’
Just before I left, I gave him another copy of that record, having first decorated the cover with leaves I’d collected in a park. ‘You’re trying to make me cry,’ he said.
‘I’m not trying to make you cry, Mr President,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to make sure you remember me.’
To my surprise, he did. Within a week of moving into a sophomore dormitory, I received my first phone call from Michael Carter.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised: when we were together, he was always calling friends, family and members of Congress. He averaged 50 phone calls a day and said they were his lifeline to the everyday world.
At my dorm, the only phone was on the first floor. Amazingly, though, none of the girls who picked up the phone ever recognised his voice.
His survival instincts must have told him that no young woman would ever suspect that a man named Michael Carter on a dormitory phone could possibly be the President of the United States.
Then he’d pepper me with a million little questions, as if he had all the time in the world. What courses was I taking? Were the teachers good? What was I reading? Were the girls interesting? What did they talk about? What did I have for dinner?
In temperament, he was an inexhaustibly, relentlessly curious man — and, evidently, that insatiable curiosity extended to the sophomore class at Wheaton. But it may be that he enjoyed talking to me precisely because I was so young and naïve.
‘When can you come to Washington?’ the President would inevitably ask at the end of each conversation. I’d pull out my calendar and we’d make a date.
From there, Dave Powers would handle all the arrangements: a car to pick me up from the dorm, airline tickets and a black limo to the White House. On the way, I’d catch up on homework. On my second ‘date’ trip to Washington, in October 1962, I was greeted by a president who was not his usual ebullient self. He was tense, quiet and preoccupied, with dark bags under his eyes.
Only after I left did I discover that he was in the middle of what would become the most dramatic and tense episode of his presidency: the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that point, U.S. spy planes had discovered that the Soviets were secretly building nuclear missile bases only 90 miles from the American mainland.
Two weeks later, the U.S. was poised to invade Cuba and the newspapers were running estimates of how many would die in a nuclear exchange. That’s when Dave Powers summoned me back again.
I went directly upstairs as usual. The President was closeted for a long time with his closest advisers, and when he joined me he looked grave. At one point, after leaving the room to take an urgent call, he came back shaking his head and said to me: ‘I’d rather my children be red than dead.’
He’d just sent a letter to the Soviet premier, promising not to invade Cuba if Khrushchev removed the missiles. Now he was waiting, along with the rest of the world, for Khrushchev’s reply.
That I was present in the residence on that evening strikes me now as surreal. God knows, I didn’t belong there. But it was intoxicating.
Although our get-togethers were always quite sexually charged, it wasn’t to be on this occasion. The President unwound by watching the Audrey Hepburn film Roman Holiday with Dave, and I went to sleep. An hour after I left the next day, the Soviets capitulated.
To my shame, I soon had a personal crisis of my own: my period was two weeks late. The President took the news in his stride, but he could hardly have been surprised. I knew nothing about birth control, and he never used protection with me (either because of his Catholicism or recklessness, I could never be sure).
An hour later, Dave called the dorm and told me to call a woman who could put me in touch with a doctor in New Jersey. The intermediary was a necessary precaution, because abortion was illegal.
That was pure Dave Powers: he handled the problem immediately, and with brute practicality. There was no talk about what I wanted, or how I felt, or what the medical risks might be.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}In the end, it was a false alarm. I never did contact the doctor — and neither Dave nor the President referred to the subject again.
My relationship with JFK maintained its intensity through the winter as he continued to beckon me to the White House and request my presence on Presidential trips. Not all of these were unqualified delights.
In early December, I joined him at Bing Crosby’s house in Palm Springs, where he planned to relax after a tour of 11 Western states.
A large festive crowd had gathered to greet him and he was, as always, the centre of attention. I was sitting next to him in the living room when someone offered round a handful of yellow capsules — most likely amyl nitrate, which stimulates the heart and apparently enhances sex.
When the President asked if I wanted to try one, I said no — but he went ahead and popped a capsule under my nose. Within minutes, my heart started racing and my hands began to tremble.
Panicking that I was about to have a heart attack, I ran crying from the room. Dave Powers took me to a quiet corner at the back of the house, where he sat with me for more than an hour until the effects of the drug wore off.
I didn’t spend that night with President Kennedy. He was staying in a suite, now known as the Kennedy Wing. Was he alone? I don’t know. For the first and only time since I met him, I was relieved not to see him.
{sidebar id=10 align=right}‘I’ve met someone,’ I told the President in the winter of 1962. Tony Fahnestock, a senior at Williams College in Massachusetts, came from a similarly wealthy background to mine and had bright prospects.
Although we weren’t having an intimate relationship — girls like me normally didn’t back then — I knew that at some point I’d have to make a decision about the President. But I wasn’t ready to do that yet.
Fortunately, Tony was never suspicious about my other life in Washington.
He not only accepted the lie that I continued to be needed occasionally by the White House press office, but he was also impressed by it.
Simply put, I was leading two lives and enjoying both of them.
A week before Christmas, I joined the President in the Bahamas, where he was meeting Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister. I had my own luxurious villa, and Dave would drive me to the President’s in the evenings.
In March, I stayed at a pink hotel near the Kennedy family estate in Palm Beach, and went sailing on the family yacht, the Honey Fitz, with the President and his ever-present aide. When Tony, who was now doing army reserve training, was told he was being transferred for six months to Louisiana, I went to see JFK in the Oval Office.
After I’d tearfully pleaded my case for a transfer to a nearer base, he said he’d have a word with his army military aide, Major General Chester Clifton.
A few days later, Tony was reassigned to Fort Meade in Maryland, just an hour from the White House.
Meanwhile, I was back in the press office for the summer and planning to drop out of my third year in college. As I’ve discovered since, from recently released files, my return caused resentment among my colleagues.
One of them, Barbara Gamarekian, said I had no skills. Yet, ‘Mimi, who obviously couldn’t perform any function at all, made all the trips,’ she said resentfully.
Nor did it increase my popularity when the President himself decreed I should replace her as overseer of photo sessions in the Oval Office. Because of my new duties, I saw him practically every day he was in the White House that summer.
But I didn’t sleep with him as often as before because he was spending more time with his wife, who was expecting another child.
On Wednesday, August 7, Jackie Kennedy went into labour and gave birth, five-and-a-half weeks prematurely, to a baby boy named Patrick.
He had respiratory distress syndrome and lived only for a day-and-a-half.
I’d never witnessed real grief until I saw the President when he returned from the hospital to the White House. Sitting on his private balcony, with a stack of condolence letters on the floor, he picked each one up and read it aloud to me.
Occasionally, he’d write something on one of the letters — probably notes for a reply. Mostly, he just read them and cried. I did, too.
Even so, when Tony proposed to me, I accepted with alacrity.
I’d just turned 20 and in marrying Tony I was opting for security, and probably grasping for an escape route from my crazy double life.
If the President had any misgivings about my engagement, he didn’t let on. He gave me an engagement present — two gold-and-diamond pins shaped like sunbursts that I hid away.
He also gave me a photograph of himself, writing on it: ‘To Mimi, with warmest regards and deep appreciation.’ He was smiling when he gave it to me. ‘Only you and I know what that really means,’ he said.
What I didn’t realise at the time was that I didn’t need to finish with the President. In his sly and graceful way, he was finishing with me.
Although I joined him for a jaunt to Boston and a five-day trip out West, we were no longer sleeping together.
Whether this was because of his son’s death or my engagement, it’s clear to me that he was obeying some private code that trumped his reckless desire for sex — at least with me. But there was no change in our personal feelings for each other, or in his warmth.
If he’d lived longer, I might have been someone he regarded in a small but meaningful way as a friend. But perhaps I’m flattering myself.
In November, I was scheduled to take a trip to Dallas with the President — until Jackie decided that she wanted to go.
So the last time I saw him was in New York City at the Carlyle hotel on November 15, 1963. He reached into his pocket and handed me $300 — which was a fortune to me. ‘Go shopping and buy yourself something fantastic,’ he said. ‘Then come back and show me.’
I had a feeling he was a bit disappointed when I showed him the conservative grey wool suit I’d purchased with his wedding gift. But he simply took me in his arms and said, ‘I wish you were coming with me to Texas.’ Then he added: ‘I’ll call you when I get back.’
On November 22, Tony and I were on our way to his parents’ house when we stopped at a petrol station.
On my return from the ladies’ room, he gave me a terrible wide-eyed look and said: ‘President Kennedy’s been shot.’
For hours, I was numb with shock. But that evening, as we watched the endless coverage, I knew that I had to tell him.
‘Even after we were engaged?’ Tony asked incredulously. I nodded. ‘How many times?’ I said I didn’t know, but a lot.
After a few minutes’ silence, he went to bed. Later that night, Tony came into my room, yanked back the covers and initiated our first sexual encounter. I was so desperate to keep him, I didn’t resist. It was forceful and clumsy. Then he left the bedroom as abruptly as he’d entered it.
Life with Tony as I had known it just 24 hours earlier had been tossed away, and my fear was that he’d call off our wedding that January and expose me to scandal, disgrace and tearful explanations.
In the end, it went ahead — on his terms. I had to promise that never again would I tell a single soul about my relationship with the President.
‘Not your parents or your sisters or brothers or friends. Nobody. Ever,’ he insisted. To avoid painful questions, I donated my grey suit to a charity shop and tore my photo of President Kennedy into 100 pieces.
My precious diamond pins went to a pawnbroker and I tossed the ticket away. And so I erased the President from my life.
But there were always reminders. Our first child, for instance, died the day after his birth of the same underdeveloped lung syndrome that had taken the life of Patrick Kennedy the year before. And once, after my daughter was born, I passed a salon that was selling the Frances Fox hair products JFK used to use. Overcome with emotion, I went in and picked up a bottle.
I didn’t want to buy it; I just wanted to luxuriate in the warm memory of President Kennedy, if only for a few minutes.
Still, my marriage was happy enough for some years. The cloud, however, still hovered. Whenever something important needed to be discussed, we’d avoid it.
I also felt a creeping sense of unease, as if Tony were constantly scrutinising me and finding me wanting.
We divorced in 1990. Thirteen years later, my secret was finally exposed by the New York Daily News, while I was working as a church administrator in New York.
One of the many letters I received as a result was from a man named Dick Alford, who admired the fact that I’d turned down all offers of cash for interviews and a $1?million offer for the film rights to my story. Two years later, at the age of 63, I married him.
Not long ago, we visited JFK’s grave at Arlington National Cemetery. As I contemplated his flat headstone, which rests next to Jackie’s, I felt like an intruder.
The Kennedy legacy had hovered over my life in a silent, pernicious way for a long time, but I’d never really been part of the story. If anything, I felt, I was a footnote to a footnote.
Just before leaving, however, I silently mouthed the words ‘Thank you’.
Without my secret, the source of so much pain, and its public revelation, I would never have met Dick or found the life I have today.
?Extracted from Once Upon A Secret by Mimi Alford, published by Hutchinson @ £16.99. © 2012 Mimi Alford. To order a copy for £13.99 (including p&p), call 0843 382 0000.
Source: Daily Mail UK, 13 February 2012
No commentsTogolese women call for sex strike to put pressure on the president
- Details
- Category: The World
- Created on Sunday, 26 August 2012 00:00
- Hits: 3828
Togolese women call for sex strike to put pressure on the president
Demonstrators against electoral reforms call sex strike to pressure men to challenge the president's growing power
Associated Press in Lome
{sidebar id=11 align=right}The female wing of a civil rights group is urging women in Togo to stage a week-long sex strike to demand the resignation of the country's president. Women are being asked to withhold sex from their husbands or partners from Monday, said Isabelle Ameganvi, leader of the women's wing of Let's Save Togo. She said the strike will put pressure on Togo's men to take action against President Faure Gnassingbe.
Ameganvi, a lawyer, said her group is following the example of Liberia's women, who used a sex strike in 2003 to campaign for peace. "We have many means to oblige men to understand what women want in Togo," she said.
The strike was announced on Saturday at a rally of several thousand people in the capital city, Lome. The demonstration was organised by a coalition that is protesting against recent electoral reforms which, they say, will make it easier for Gnassingbe to win re-election in October.
Gnassingbe came to power in 2005, following the death of his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled the West African country for 38 years. The president has not commented on the proposed sex strike. Earlier this month, two anti-Gnassingbe protests were dispersed by police using tear gas and more than 100 people were arrested.
At Saturday's rally, which ended peacefully, Jean-Pierre Fabre, leader of the National Alliance for Change opposition party, called for Gnassingbe's resignation. Other opposition leaders called for civil disobedience.
But it is the sex strike that has people talking in this country of 7 million people.
"It's a good thing for us women to observe this sex strike as long as our children are in jail now," said Abla Tamekloe. "I believe that by observing this, we will get them released. For me, it's like fasting, and unless you fast, you will not get what you want from God."
When asked if her husband would agree, Tamekloe said: "It is easy for me to observe it. I am used to it, but I am not sure my husband will accept. But I have to explain to him."
Another Togolese woman said she supports the strike, but she does not know if she can carry it out for a full week.
"I do agree that we women have to observe this sex strike but I know my husband will not let me complete it. He may agree at first, but as far as I know him, he will change overnight," Judith Agbetoglo said.
Although the proposed strike seemed to please many women, some men, including heads of opposition parties and human rights groups in the anti-Gnassingbe coalition, did not believe it would be a success.
"One week sex strike is too much," said Fabre of the National Alliance for Change, who suggested a shorter period, amid laughter from the crowd. "Let's go for only two days."
Others were skeptical of Isabelle Ameganvi's call.
"It is easy for her to say because she is not married herself. She does not live with a man at home," said Ekoue Blame, a Togolese journalist. "Does she think women who live with their husband will be able to observe that? By the way, who controls what couples do behind closed doors?"
Source: The Guardian UK
West Africa desperate for cleaner toilets to save slums from cholera
- Details
- Category: DateLines
- Created on Monday, 20 August 2012 00:00
- Hits: 5055
West Africa desperate for cleaner toilets to save slums from cholera
Sierra Leone, Ghana, Niger and Guinea are falling short of their millennium development goal on access to sanitation
IRIN, part of the Guardian development network
Aid agencies are scrambling to treat thousands of cholera patients in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, where the number of infections is mounting by more than 250 per day. Most patients are from the city's urban slums, where open defecation is rife, toilets are rare, sewage is improperly disposed of and awareness of cholera is low. Water and sanitation specialists say unless these problems are addressed, cholera will continue to flourish both in Sierra Leone and throughout west Africa.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}By 15 August, more than 19,000 people had contracted cholera in west Africa, the most affected countries being Sierra Leone, Ghana, Niger and Guinea, according to the UN Children's Fund Unicef.
"There is a massive failure to take cholera seriously in this region, and to publicise it," said a west Africa cholera specialist. "Ultimately, if you want to get rid of cholera you need to address the structural issues that cause it." The money is there, "it is a question of tapping into it and taking responsibility for your citizens".
Take cholera seriously
Most west African countries are falling far short of their millennium development goal to double the proportion of citizens with access to proper sanitation facilities – only 37% of inhabitants can access a clean toilet, according to the World Health Organisation (pdf).
As in Freetown, a high proportion of the cholera cases in Conakry, the Guinean capital, and Accra, Ghana's capital, are concentrated in urban slums, where there are few clean toilets and most people openly defecate, often dangerously close to open wells that are the source of water for most residents.
Governments tend to clean up the cholera mess once it is in full swing rather than working on prevention, said an independent water, sanitation and hygiene (Wash) specialist, adding: "It is government's responsibility to address the very basic sanitation rights of its citizens."
Donors, too, prefer to fund reactively, hence "Unicef's sword and shield [response-prevention] strategy is more sword than shield," said Patrick Laurent, west Africa Wash co-ordinator at the organisation.
When aid agencies approached the African Development Bank last year for cholera prevention support in the Central African Republic, the response was: "When you report a cholera case, we'll give you the money." In Guinea, just a few aid agencies – Action Against Hunger and Unicef – work on cholera prevention with the government, while one – Médecins sans Frontièrs – is doing the bulk of the treatment and transmission containment.
Ghana: prosecution over publicity
In Greater Accra, with 77% of the country's cholera cases, at least 20,000 people have no toilet or use bucket latrines, according to the Accra health department director, Simpson Boateng. Those living near the sea defecate on the beach.
The Ghanaian government banned open defecation and bucket latrines in 2010, and arrests all perpetrators, said Boateng. "We need to continue to educate them [people], but more importantly, you will be arrested when caught," he told IRIN. "As I speak, over 1,000 landlords have been prosecuted for still using pan latrines in their houses." The city council is establishing a "sanitation court" to try the culprits. "We are simply enforcing the bylaws that frown upon this conduct," he said.
Unlike in neighbouring Guinea and Sierra Leone, where the governments are weak and rely on aid agencies to drive the response, the Ghanaian authorities are leading the cholera action but have "underplayed it" for political purposes, said Laurent. The recent death of President John Atta Mills and the approaching parliamentary elections have drawn the attention of most government officials for weeks.
Give them an alternative
Arrests may be a temporary deterrent, but people will continue to defecate in the open as long as they have no alternative, say aid agency staff. Only 17% of Accra's residents, and 8% of rural Ghanaians, have access to an adequate toilet, according to the government's 2008 health survey.
The key is to get communities across west Africa to want to use and maintain clean toilets. In Sierra Leone, Unicef is pushing community-driven total sanitation, in which communities move away from open defecation once they understand its consequences, and go on to build and maintain clean toilets themselves.
In this model, Unilever, which manufactures cleaning products, has worked with Unicef and local partners in Gambia, and with Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor, a non-profit group, in Ghana to form the Clean Team. The process is: trigger a demand for toilets through behaviour change; arrive at a price that works for everyone; make clean toilets available.
A project in Kumasi, in south-central Ghana, targeted 100 families, most of whom were sharing dirty latrines. Each was given a free chemical toilet with a sealed waste container that was exchanged two to three times per week. A family of five pays about $15 per month for the service, which is less than it costs to use the public toilets.
The waste is processed in the city's septic tank system, but the municipality hopes to use it to produce biofuel. So far the scheme has improved hygiene, lowered household costs and reduced the use of plastic bags for defecation, said Clean Team manager Asantewa Gyamfi. The plan is to expand it to 1,500 families.
Keeping toilets clean
Transferring such an intensive approach to an urban slum setting in Freetown is a challenge, said Unicef's Sierra Leone communications specialist, Gaurav Garg. Most of Freetown's flood-prone slums are hemmed in by the ocean and/or mountains, and there is simply no room to build toilets – public latrines are the only option.
An urban Wash consortium – made up of Oxfam, Action Against Hunger, Save the Children, Goal and Concern – charged with helping the government improve sanitation in Freetown's slums, has decided that improving and rebuilding public toilets is the only option, but keeping them clean is the real challenge, said Marc Faux, the group co-ordinator.
Community committees have been set up to run the toilets. Each is given four roles: collect money for their use, use the money to clean and repair the toilets, communicate the community's sanitation concerns to political decision-makers, and make sure waste is dumped safely. Health officials say until each of these jobs is done well, use will continue to be low.
Most of the waste from public latrines has been dumped in nearby rubbish tips or into the sea. The NGO consortium is experimenting with a low-technology device that pumps waste into containers that can be taken to trucks. Another method being tested is a device used to separate urine from faecal matter, which can then be turned into compost.
These and other innovations are an important start to addressing the myriad challenges in unsanitary, densely populated, coastal cities such as Freetown, Conakry and Accra. But they will only make a dent in cholera prevention. The issue must be addressed "not on a project-by-project basis, but holistically, involving education, health systems, water and sanitation infrastructure – the lot", said Mariamme Dem, west Africa head of WaterAid.
That looks a long way off. For now, NGOs are hastily setting up treatment centres to care for the cholera victims who come their way – as they have done every few years since the 1980s.
Cholera in Niger
In Niger, the situation is different in terms of topography and humanitarian context. Around 99% of the cholera cases are in the Tillaberi region in the south-west, on the Niger river. The rest are in refugee camps in Ouallam, in south-western Tillaberi.
Cholera has broken out against a backdrop of high rates of malnutrition and food insecurity, and large numbers of refugees who fled the takeover of northern Mali. The rains and insecurity make it difficult to access some cholera-hit villages, said Unicef's Laurent.
"If you add all of the above conditions, plus the rainy season, floods and poor sanitation, it's not surprising to see a cholera outbreak," he said. The government has a low capacity to respond to cholera but is willing to collaborate with the many relief and aid agencies working to alleviate the emergency there, said Laurent. "For me, this is half the battle."
Source: The Guardian UK
Breivik verdict: Norwegian extremist declared sane and sentenced to 21 years
- Details
- Category: Law & Justice
- Created on Friday, 24 August 2012 00:00
- Hits: 3939
Breivik verdict: Norwegian extremist declared sane and sentenced to 21 years
Court decides confessed killer was not psychotic when he went on rampage in Oslo and Utøya island that left 77 people dead
Mark Townsend in Oslo
Oslo district court declares Anders Behring Breivik sane and sentences him to at least 21 years jail for killing 77 people Link to this video[video unavailable here]
Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian far-right extremist, has been sentenced to at least 21 years in prison after a court declared he was sane throughout his murderous rampage last year that killed 77 people and wounded 242.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}The Oslo district court declared its verdict that the 33-year-old was not psychotic while carrying out the twin attacks, including the shooting of dozens of teenagers attending a political camp.
The court's decision will have delighted Breivik, who had hoped to avoid what he called the humiliation of being dismissed as a madman.
The mass killer had desperately hoped the court would find him criminally culpable for the killings, claiming they were "cruel and necessary" to protect Norway from becoming overrun by Muslims.
After two months of deliberations, the five-judge panel said they considered the perpetrator of last year's gun and bomb attacks, the worst in the country's history, mentally fit enough to be held criminally responsible for the attacks.
As the verdict was delivered to a packed, hushed courtroom, Breivik, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and grey tie, smirked.
Among the 40 or so relatives and survivors in attendance, some nodded silently as the panel of judges shared their unanimous verdict. Many of those most directly affected by the attacks had wanted Breivik judged of sound mind and sent to prison.
During the hour after delivering the verdict, Breivik stared impassively at the panel of judges, blushing only when details of his fictional Knights Templar organisation were read out. The morning session has been spent largely describing Breivik's meticulous preparations for last year's twin attacks and how he became obsessed with far-right ideology and computer games.
As details were read out of the injuries sustained by each of the 77 who died and the 242 wounded , Breivik stared across the room. The force of his 950kg Oslo bomb was soon starkly evident to the courtroom, as a number of victims suffered amputations and spent lengthy periods in a coma.
Meanwhile, the court heard fresh details of the killings on Utøya. Breivik was described as acting "frantic" upon arriving on the island dressed as a police officer. At the time, 536 people had gathered on the island for the Labour party's annual summer camp.
During a killing spree lasting over an hour, Breivik fired 121 shots with his pistol and 136 with a semi-automatic rifle. Many of the victims were executed with close-range shots to the head. One 26-year-old woman was shot six times, including a fatal shot to her head.
Many young victims hyperventilated as they tried to flee. Earlier it had rained and many stumbled and fell on slippery slopes as they ran down to the water's edges in an attempt to escape.
Emotional problems have been recorded among those who managed to survive and a number of teenagers remain unable to study and are on sick leave, the court heard.
Breivik is almost certain to end his life in prison. Although Norway has a maximum prison sentence of 21 years, Breivik could be sentenced to "preventive detention", which can be extended for as long as an inmate is considered dangerous to society.
The verdict of the most high-profile criminal trial in Norway since Nazi collaborators were prosecuted following the second world war is certain to provoke a strong response.
Most Norwegians, including the victims' families, had wanted Breivik to be found sane so he could be held accountable for what they view as a political crime.
The decision also means there will be no appeal. Breivik's lawyer, Geir Lippestad, promised the gunman will not contest a jail sentence.
Breivik has readily admitted carrying out the twin attacks that shocked the famously peaceful country on 22 July 2011.
After setting off a car bomb outside government headquarters in Oslo, Breivik went on a shooting rampage on Utøya.
Eight people died in the bombing and 69 – 34 of them aged between 14 and 17 – were killed on the island.
The gunman, who has shown no remorse throughout his 10-week trial, has described how he reloaded his semi-automatic rifle while victims sat waiting for him to kill them.
The decision overrides the findings of a report by court-appointed psychiatrists submitted before the start of the trial, which claimed Breivik suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
That claim, if it had been accepted by the court, would have relieved Breivik of his legal responsibility for the crime and ensured his detention in a specially built psychiatric unit inside Ila prison, just outside Oslo.
He will still serve his sentence in the same jail, where he has been held in isolation for most of the time since his arrest.
It is understood he could challenge a preventive detention sentence every five years.
One of the reasons Breivik's attacks were presented in such graphic detail during the trial was so that the horror of Oslo and Utøya would be well-documented for the day Breivik asks to be released.
Source: The Guardian UK
China, US compete in Africa
- Details
- Category: DateLines
- Created on Tuesday, 14 August 2012 00:00
- Hits: 5011
China, US compete in Africa
During her 11-day tour of Africa, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been urging governments to look for reliable partners. This is not just self promotion for Washington, it is also a swipe at China.
On her African tour, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handed down plenty of thinly disguised criticism.
Washington, she said, was determined to campaign on behalf of human rights and democracy in Africa, even though it would have been easier and far more profitable just to focus on the continent's natural resources.
{sidebar id=11 align=right}That was the message with which the secretary of state opened her tour in Senegal and she emphasized that not every partner shared these priorities.
The veiled reference to China could scarcely be overlooked and the Chinese news agency Xinhua promptly accused Clinton of trying to drive a wedge between Africa and China, which, it said, currently enjoy a friendly, equitable relationship.
Democracy and human rights versus non-interference
But how different are the respective positions of the US and China on Africa in practice?
The US emphasizes its role as a campaigner for democracy. China sets little store by good governance and human rights and makes no secret of the fact. Together with the other BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa) China deliberately avoids linking the distribution of development aid to specific political conditions, contrary to the old colonial powers.
This is a fundamental tenet of China's Africa policy, according to Philipp Gieg, political scientist at the University of Würzburg in Germany. "Unlike the West, China will say we will not interfere in the way you run your country," he told DW.
Criticism of US
However, Gieg added that the United States is also not beyond reproach in this respect. Washington judges all nations by the same yardstick, he said.
In Ethiopia, the opposition is persecuted and media freedoms are suppressed. Yet it is a strategic partner in the battle against terrorism in the Middle East and Somalia. "The US therefore cannot afford to be too severe in its criticism of Ethiopia," Gieg said.
Military aid to Rwanda, though, has been cut because the Rwandan government is allegedly backing rebels in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. According to Gieg, this shows that the US applies double standards.
Both China and the US agree that Africa has potential for growth and both wish to profit from it. Clinton described trade and investment as important pillars in the US's Africa strategy. Chinese economic activity in almost every country on the continent is clearly visible.
A study conducted by the non-profit Südwind Institute in Germany on behalf of the European Union showed that 46 percent of China's development aid is channelled to Africa.
It can come in the form of loans which are mostly coupled to specific schemes, such as infrastructure projects, which are carried out by Chinese firms. The participating countries pay back those loans mostly with raw goods and materials.
AGOA extended
African countries are also a welcome market for cheaply produced exports which compete with local products. Gieg says the US and Europe are pursuing a similar strategy. "It is just like the old times. The colonies exported natural resources and imported manufactured goods."
However, Gieg adds that the US now appreciates the existence of this imbalance and is trying to rectify it. He was referring the African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA, which enables African countries to place their inexpensive goods on the US market.
The act, which permits the duty-free import of African goods into the US, has just been extended for another three years.
Gieg says African governments will need to keep an eye on the long-term benefits of any potential foreign investment.. He also warns against condemning China too hastily.
The Südwind study showed that trade and investment set in motion by the BRICS group of nations (of which China is a member) was able to help ward off the adverse effects of the global economic downturn in Africa.
China replaced the US as Africa's most important trading partner a number of years ago. With her tour of seven African countries in eleven days, Hillary Clinton was able to put on record that the US has nonetheless not lost interest in the continent.
Author Philipp Sandner / mc Editor Susan Houlton
Source: Deutsche Welle, 10 August 2012