I puritani (Bellini): “A te, o cara…” (Alfredo Kraus)
Se o compositor Vincenzo Bellini non morrese tan novo (1801 – 1835) seguramente rivalizaría con Verdi durante boa parte do século. Hoxe traio un fragmento da ópera I puritani (1835), un grande éxito en París a pesar dun libretto mediocre. Disque o propio Bellini comentou que, se o texto carecía de calidade, tanto tiña, xa que poucos espectadores de París entenderían o italiano. Considerábase capaz de emocionar ó público co único recurso da súa música… e non se equivocaba.
Aquí temos unha lección de técnica aplicada á arte do canto: Alfredo Kraus cantando “A te, o cara”.
Jordi Adell: “Actividades didácticas para el desarrollo de la competencia digital”
Hoxe escoitei unha disertación que o profesor Jordi Adell pronunciou nunhas xornadas en abril do 2008. É unha hora e pico de vídeo pero a min non se me fixo longa, máis ben ó contrario. Fala da educación en xeral, dos novos currículos, das competencias e da “web 2.0″… Chegoume a través do Blog do coordinador TIC, elaborado polo infatigable Alberto Armada.
Esta é a anotación, titulada igual que a conferencia: “Actividades didácticas para el desarrollo de la competencia digital”.
Entre as cousas que me gustaron da conferencia está que Jordi Adell non intenta vender nada. Desmitifica as innovacións tecnolóxicas aclarando que algunhas supoñen avances polas súas aplicacións didácticas mentras que outras non supoñen millora ningunha para a educación.
Nos últimos minutos do vídeo alguén do público pregunta como un docente pode encontrar tempo para “estar ó día” tecnoloxicamente falando. A resposta de Jordi Adell é lúcida como o conxunto do seu discurso e quizá sorprenda polo seu humanismo radical:
[...] Yo no me agobiaría. Dedícale tiempo a ser feliz. Los profesores felices enseñan mejor. Transmiten felicidad. [...]
Algúns experimentarán unha disonancia cognitiva tan grande que racionalizarán estas palabras como producto da ironía. Son os mesmos sorprendidos cando Daniel Pennac nos di que os bos profesores son os que dormen ben, ou cando nos fala do amor.
¿Non son “felicidade” e “amor” palabras tabú para un científico, un filósofo, un revolucionario? Son, e ben o sabían, por exemplo, Paulo Freire ou Ernesto Guevara.
No, we can’t: Bagram detainees without habeas corpus
Several informations can be found on this shameful issue. I have picked a few…
‘No US rights’ for Bagram inmates (BBC News, 21 – II – 2009)
Detainees being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan cannot use US courts to challenge their detention, the US says.
The justice department ruled that some 600 so-called enemy combatants at Bagram have no constitutional rights. Most have been arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of waging a terrorist war against the US.
The move has disappointed human rights lawyers who had hoped the Obama administration would take a different line to that of George W Bush.
Prof Barbara Olshansky, the lead counsel in a legal challenge on behalf of four Bagram detainees, told the BBC the justice department’s decision not to reform the rules was both surprising and “enormously disappointing”.
The BBC’s Kevin Connolly in Washington says the move has angered human rights lawyers, with one saying the new White House was endorsing the view of the old one, that prisons could be created and run outside the law.
It is certainly evidence that having set the tone for his administration by announcing plans to close Guantanamo Bay, Mr Obama intends to adopt a much more cautious approach to the problem of detainees held elsewhere by the US military, our correspondent says.
‘Homicides admitted’
Last year, the US Supreme Court gave suspects held at the US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention. Following that ruling, petitions were filed at a Washington district court on behalf of four detainees at Bagram. The judge then gave the new administration an opportunity to refine the rules on appeals.
In a two-sentence filing, justice department lawyers said the new administration had decided not to change the government’s position. “Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position,” said acting assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz in papers filed at the court.
The US justice department argues that Bagram differs from Guantanamo Bay because it is in an overseas war zone and prisoners there are being held as part of ongoing military action.
Prof Olshansky said the conditions at the Bagram facility, which is near the Afghan capital, Kabul, were worse than those at Guantanamo Bay, adding that there was a lack of due process available to detainees.
“The situation in Bagram is so far from anything like meeting the laws of war or the human rights treaties that we’re bound to,” she told the BBC. “There are no military hearings where the detainees can present evidence,” she added. “Torture has led to homicides there that have been admitted by the US.”
“It’s quite a severe situation, and yet the US is planning a $60m new prison to hold 1,100 more people there.”
The US military considers Bagram detainees unlawful combatants who can be detained for as long as they are deemed a threat to Afghan national security.
Obama draws fire for ‘terror’ detainee moves (France 24, 22 – II – 2009)
by Lucile MALANDAIN
Despite President Barack Obama’s moves to ban torture and close Guantanamo Bay, human rights advocates are angry some policies toward “terror” detainees do not depart enough from those of the previous administration.
Three announcements on Friday had rights advocates and lawyers questioning whether the Obama administration was continuing the policies of George W. Bush, which provoked outrage around the world.
A Pentagon report on the Guantanamo detention camp, which was ordered by Obama, drew a hail of fire for claiming that conditions for inmates are in line with Geneva Conventions and other legal obligations.
The report’s conclusion contrasted sharply with claims made by lawyers who regularly visit detainees at the remote prison at a US Naval base in Cuba.
Even before the report’s release, the American Civil Liberties Union criticized it as a “whitewash” of alleged abuses of detainees under Bush.
“Candidate Obama himself acknowledged that Guantanamo was a violation of domestic and international law. That’s why the reported review, sweeping the abusive Bush policies under the rug, is so troubling,” said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero.
Amnesty International also questioned the report’s accuracy. Director Tom Parker said in a statement that it “comes as no surprise” because the review was not done by an independent monitoring body.
In another policy declaration Friday that one detainee advocate described as “deeply disappointing,” Obama backed Bush positions on prisoner rights at Bagram — a Afghan detention facility.
The ruling followed a hearing for four Bagram inmates by a US District Court in Washington last month, seeking the same rights accorded to prisoners at Guantanamo, leading to a flood of appeals in Washington courts from Guantanamo inmates challenging their detentions.
US District Court judge John Bates gave the Obama administration a February 20 deadline to indicate whether it intended to “refine” the positions of the Bush administration on the Bagram detainee cases and “to provide input regarding the definition of ‘enemy combatant.’”
In a two-sentence statement from the Justice Department, Obama’s administration said “the government adheres to its previously articulated position” ensures the facility’s estimated 600 prisoners would not be able to challenge their detention in US courts.
Attorneys representing the detainees reacted with dismay at the news.
“The decision by the Obama administration to adhere to a position that has contributed to making our country a pariah around the world for its flagrant disregard of people’s human rights is deeply disappointing,” Barbara Olshansky, lead counsel for three of the four detainees, told AFP.
“We are trying to remain hopeful that the message being conveyed is that the new administration is still working on its position regarding the applicability of the laws of war, the Geneva Conventions and international human rights treaties that apply to everyone in detention there.”
Obama has not indicated what he plans to do about Bagram detainees or whether he would go forward with a planned 60-million-dollar expansion of the prison.
Obama’s appointment, meanwhile, of former Bush Justice Department official Matthew Olsen to head a “Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force” received a lukewarm reception.
The task force will help determine the fate of the camp’s more than 240 remaining prisoners; whether they can be transferred or released, or prosecuted. The difficult third category holds those prisoners deemed too dangerous to be let go, but for whom the government may claim to be impossible to prosecute.
In 2006, Olsen became head of the Department’s National Security Division, and has a long career as a federal prosecutor, including for the Bush administration.
Olsen’s appointment “may bode well for a fair review” of detainee cases, Fordham law professor Martha Rayner told AFP Saturday.
Hopefully, Rayner said, Olsen “will not accept the myth that there are men at Guantanamo who are too dangerous to be released, but cannot be prosecuted because there is insufficient evidence.”
Very Bad News: Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base Will Be Obama’s Guantanamo (AlterNet, 22 – II – 2009)
By Stephen Foley, The Independent
The Afghan air base is to undergo a $60 million expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as remain at Gitmo.
Less than a month after signing an executive order to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, President Barack Obama has quietly agreed to keep denying the right to trial to hundreds more terror suspects held at a makeshift camp in Afghanistan that human rights lawyers have dubbed “Obama’s Guantanamo.”
In a single-sentence answer filed with a Washington court, the administration dashed hopes that it would immediately rip up Bush-era policies that have kept more than 600 prisoners in legal limbo and in rudimentary conditions at the Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
Now, human rights groups say they are becoming increasingly concerned that the use of extra-judicial methods in Afghanistan could be extended rather than curtailed under the new U.S. administration. The air base is about to undergo a $60 million expansion that will double its size, meaning it can house five times as many prisoners as remain at Guantanamo.
Apart from staff at the International Red Cross, human rights groups and journalists have been barred from Bagram, where former prisoners say they were tortured by being shackled to the ceiling of isolation cells and deprived of sleep.
The base became notorious when two Afghan inmates died after the use of such techniques in 2002, and although treatment and conditions have been improved since then, the Red Cross issued a formal complaint to the U.S. government in 2007 about harsh treatment of some prisoners held in isolation for months.
While the majority of the estimated 600 prisoners are believed to be Afghan, an unknown number — perhaps several dozen — have been picked up from other countries.
One of the detainees who passed through the Afghan prison was Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who is expected to return to the UK this week after his release from Guantanamo Bay. Mr. Mohamed’s lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, head of a legal charity called Reprieve, called President Obama’s strategy “the Bagram bait and switch,” where the administration was trumpeting the closure of a camp housing 242 prisoners, while scaling up the Bagram base to house 1,100 more.
“Guantanamo Bay was a diversionary tactic in the ‘War on Terror’,” said the lawyer. “Totting up the prisoners around the world — held by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Djibouti, the prison ships and Diego Garcia, or held by U.S. proxies in Jordan, Egypt and Morocco — the numbers dwarf Guantanamo. There are still perhaps as many as 18,000 people in legal black holes. Mr. Obama should perhaps be offered more than a month to get the American house in order. However, this early sally from the administration underlines another message: it is far too early for human rights advocates to stand on the USS Abraham Lincoln and announce, ‘Mission Accomplished.’”
Four non-Afghan detainees at Bagram are fighting a legal case in Washington to be given the same access to the U.S. court system that was granted to the inmates of Guantanamo Bay by a controversial Supreme Court decision last year. The Bush administration was fighting their claim.
Two days into his presidency, Mr. Obama promised to shut Guantanamo within a year in an effort to restore America’s moral standing in the world and to prosecute the struggle against terrorism “in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals.” But on the same day, the judge in the Bagram case said that the order “indicated significant changes to the government’s approach to the detention, and review of detention, of individuals currently held at Guantanamo Bay” and that “a different approach could impact the court’s analysis of certain issues central to the resolution” of the Bagram cases as well. Judge John Bates asked the new administration if it wanted to “refine” its stance.
The response, filed by the Department of Justice late on Friday, came as a crushing blow to human rights campaigners. “Having considered the matter, the government adheres to its previously articulated position,” it said.
Tina Foster, executive director of the International Justice Network, the New York human rights organisation representing the detainees, warned last night that “by leaving Bagram open, the administration turns the closure of Guantanamo into essentially a hollow and symbolic gesture.”
She said: “Without reconsidering the underlying policy, which has led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib and the indefinite detention of hundreds of people all these years, then we are simply returning to the status quo. The exact same thing that had the world up in arms has been going on at Bagram since even before Guantanamo.
“People have been tortured to the point that they have died; it is a rallying cry for those who oppose the U.S. actions in Afghanistan; it is not strategic for the U.S.; and, more importantly, holding people indefinitely, regardless of who they are and regardless of the facts, is completely inconsistent with everything we stand for as a country.”
The Department of Justice would only say that the legal briefs in the Washington case “speak for themselves.” It says Bagram is a special case because, unlike Guantanamo, it is sited within a theatre of war.
Mr. Obama has pushed out the wider questions about the U.S. policy on detaining terror suspects and supporters of the Taliban in Afghanistan until the summer, ordering a review that will take six months to complete.
The administration is weighing the likely increase in prisoners from an expanded fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, against the international perception that it is embedding extra-judicial detention into its policies for years to come.
Estados Unidos: outra execución tras xuízo sen garantías
Segundo informa Amnistía Internacional, esta semana executouse nos Estados Unidos a pena de morte imposta a Edward Nathaniel Bell. Este home foi condenado nun xuízo por asasinato no cal a “proba” principal foi o testemuño doutro preso a quen as autoridades prometeron unha reducción de condena… Copio a información publicada por AI poucos días antes da execución (a negrita é miña):
PUBLIC AI Index: AMR 51/019/2009
UA 37/09 Death penalty / Legal concern
10 February 2009USA (Virginia) Edward Nathaniel Bell (m), Jamaican national, black, aged 44
Edward Bell is due to be executed in Virginia at 9pm local time on 19 February. He was sentenced to death in 2001 for the murder of a police officer in 1999. Edward Bell, who was convicted on largely circumstantial evidence, has consistently maintained his innocence of the murder. There are serious questions about the quality of his legal representation at trial, and his appeal lawyers argue that he may have mental retardation.
On the evening of 29 October 1999, Sergeant Richard Timbrook, a 32-year-old white officer, was working with two probation and parole officers in the city of Winchester in north Virginia. An incident arose in which Sgt Timbrook chased a man who had fled from the officers when they approached, and the Sergeant was shot in the head as he was climbing a fence between two houses. The next morning, police found Edward Bell hiding in the basement of a house near the scene of the shooting. He told the police that he had fled when people he did not realize were law enforcement officers had got out of their car and started running towards him. He denied shooting Sgt Timbrook, saying instead that he had hidden when he heard the gunshot. The following day, a gun was found under the porch of the house where Bell had been found. Forensic testing established that this was the gun that had fired the bullet that killed the officer. DNA recovered from the gun was a mixture from at least three people, and neither excluded nor identified Bell.
Edward Bell’s clemency petition presents Governor Timothy Kaine with doubts about the reliability of Bell’s conviction. An officer who caught sight of the person who shot Sergeant Timbrook saw a person who was dressed in black, but when Edward Bell was arrested he was wearing a jacket with reflective stripes on its sleeves that “lit up like a Christmas tree” according to police who saw him running away from Sgt Timbrook. After Bell was arrested, dozens of officers had conducted a meticulous day-long search for the murder weapon, but none was found. The crime scene was then left unsecured for several hours, after which police returned and, according to the clemency petition, “were able to find the gun in a most obvious location lying near a bush several feet from where Bell was found hiding”. The clemency petition also draws attention to evidence that there was another person seeking to evade police in the area at the time of the shooting who was never investigated.
The prosecution’s final witness had been in jail with Edward Bell before the trial. This witness, Terry Johnson, testified (not under oath) that Bell had confessed the murder to him and that he, Johnson, had not been offered anything by the state in return for his testimony. He has since signed an affidavit under oath that when originally approached by the authorities, he had told them repeatedly that he had no information on the case. His affidavit states that the prosecutor promised a reduction in his own prison sentence, as well as relocation to a more favourable prison, and contact visits with his family and girlfriend.
The failure of Bell’s trial lawyers to investigate and present mitigating evidence at the sentencing phase of the trial left the jury ill-informed to make their life-or-death decision. The lawyer who was primarily responsible for developing the mitigation case had never handled a capital case before. A mitigation investigator with experience in over 200 cases who was hired to work on the case later described it as “the most disorganized case” she had ever attempted to work on. The trial lawyers consistently failed to respond to her efforts to carry out her work.
The mitigation case presented at the trial consisted of two witnesses, the defendant’s sister and father, whose testimony amounted to less than seven pages of transcript. Moreover, a federal District Court judge noted that the defence lawyers “did not ask Bell’s sister or father a single question about Bell’s background, his relationships with his family, his children, or any other potentially mitigating factors.” Indeed, the prosecutor emphasised in his closing argument that the defence had not “produced one shred of evidence of mitigation”. Bell’s clemency lawyers have presented to Governor Kaine an array of character witnesses from whom the jurors never heard, and who “would have provided a much more accurate and balanced understanding of Bell’s life”. One of the jurors later signed an affidavit in which she said: “It was very important for me to hear about Eddie Bell’s background. I was undecided at sentencing and I wanted to hear something, anything about Eddie Bell… We were looking from something mitigating, some reason not to sentence him to death, but we were given nothing by his lawyers and we felt his lawyers did him a disservice”. After an evidentiary hearing, the US District Court concluded in 2006 that Bell had received deficient representation and that the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling to the contrary was unreasonable. However, under the restrictive standards of US law on this issue, the judge upheld the state Supreme Court’s conclusion that Bell had not been prejudiced by his trial counsel’s performance.
Edward Bell’s clemency petition also presents evidence that he may have mental retardation. If so, his execution would violate US constitutional law, under the 2002 US Supreme Court ruling Atkins v. Virginia. The Virginia Supreme Court dismissed Bell’s mental retardation claim as “frivolous”. His lawyers have since obtained further expert opinions that Bell’s records indicate that he may have mental retardation. However, the courts have denied him a hearing on this issue.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive, diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. It not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly, to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms. It has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way, on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It promotes simplistic responses to complex human problems, rather than pursuing explanations that could inform positive strategies. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim’s family, and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. It is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. It is an affront to human dignity. It should be abolished.
There have been 1,145 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977, 102 of them in Virginia. There have been nine executions in the USA so far in 2009, none in Virginia.
Enlaces relacionados:
Indonesia: abuse and exploitation of child domestic workers
Human Rights Watch publicou esta semana un informe de setenta páxinas sobre Indonesia, centrado na explotación laboral de nenas e mozas no servizo doméstico. O informe leva por título “Workers in the Shadows: Abuse and Exploitation of Child Domestic Workers in Indonesia”. Copio un extracto da súa introducción. Ollo ós argumentos das autoridades indonesias, porque aquí, salvando as distancias, as clases medias e obreiras padecemos unha propaganda semellante. A negrita é miña:
The Indonesian government is failing to protect some of the nation’s youngest workers from abuse and exploitation. Hundreds of thousands of girls in Indonesia, some as young as 11, are employed as domestic workers in other people’s households, performing tasks such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, child care, and sometimes working at their employers’ businesses. These girls live and work in the shadows of society: hidden behind the locked doors of their employers’ homes, isolated from their family and peers, and with little regulatory oversight by the government. Indeed, many Indonesian government officials deny that these children are even really workers.
In 2005 Human Rights Watch released “Always on Call”, a 74-page report documenting the endemic exploitation and abuse of child domestic workers in Indonesia. Girls described being lured with false promises of higher wages in cities without full details about the tasks they would perform, the hours they would be expected to work, or their inability to attend school. Most girls said they typically worked 14 to 18 hours a day seven days a week, with no day off. Many told us that their employers forbade them from leaving the house where they worked, isolating them from the outside world and thus placing them at higher risk of abuse with fewer options for finding help.
We also documented how many employers withheld paying any salary until the child returned home – and that many employers failed to pay the children at all or pay less than what they promised. The tactic of withholding the salary deters child domestic workers living far from their homes from leaving exploitative situations. In the worst cases, we found that girls were physically, psychologically, and sexually abused by their employers or their employers’ family members, in addition to being exploited for their labor.
In 2008 Human Rights Watch returned to Indonesia to assess developments since the original research. Three years on, the situation for child domestic workers remains deeply disturbing. They continue to endure the wide range of abuses documented extensively in 2005.
The main focus of our research, however, was the policies and actions of the national and local governments. Despite some limited progress in a few areas -for example, the creation by the police of dedicated women’s and children’s units at provincial and some district levels and the passage of an Anti-Trafficking Act by the legislature- the overall official response remains seriously lacking in substance, coherence, and urgency. The failure to implement effective protection means that national and local governments are responsible for allowing child domestic workers to be exposed to abuse and exploitation.
A fundamental problem in officialdom is a pervasive attitude of denial. Despite the widespread nature of abuses, during our research we found that many government officials consistently denied that child domestic workers are exploited or abused. Most officials attempted to refute examples of abuse that we presented to them by claiming that there were only a handful of extreme cases that therefore did not require fundamental changes in the government approach.
Our research demonstrates that many assertions commonly made by government officials to justify their inaction with regard to enacting better protections for child domestic workers do not stand up to scrutiny, and are simply myths. In Chapter V of this report we use our research to tackle some of the most enduring myths head-on.
For example, many officials insisted that children engaged in these activities were not even workers, but merely “helpers”. Yet our research shows that child domestic workers do indeed carry out activities that are taxing, productive, and deserving of being recognized as work, not just “help”. Indeed, long days of demanding labor can be such hard work that it makes some child domestic workers physically ill.
Other officials insisted that child domestic workers were treated “like family” by their employers. But our research demonstrates that employers frequently recruit child domestic workers through commercial recruitment and placement agencies, or rely on local vendors who draw upon their own personal connections. In this way, any kind of familial or personal connection or affiliation between the employer and the child domestic worker is lost. In the vast majority of cases the primary concern of employers is the maintenance of their households, not the personal development of their employee, so the relationship between employer and child domestic worker is commercial, not familial or personal. Moreover, the motivation of an employer who recruits a child rather than an adult is often to find someone who will work for less, who will complain less, who is easier to order around, and who has fewer social connections. These factors are also likely to make the domestic worker more vulnerable to abuse and exploitation and less able to protect herself.
Some government officials claimed that the work conditions of domestic workers simply cannot be feasibly monitored or regulated, and therefore there was little more that the government could do. However, it is not that inspections and monitoring are impossible to implement – rather it is that the government simply chooses not to prioritize the protection of these young workers. For example, our research revealed that even basic telephone hotlines that children could use to report abuse and seek assistance are not answered or adequately staffed.
Officials also tended to prefer to favor employers’ convenience and luxury over recognizing child domestic workers’ rights. It was suggested, for example, that child domestic workers could not be given a minimum wage like other workers because it was more important that a greater number of employers be able to afford to hire a domestic worker. Yet such arguments ignore that the government is obliged to protect all individuals from exploitation and abuse. To the extent that policymakers believe that more families should be able to access assistance with domestic work or child care, then the government should instead consider pursuing alternative policies -such as affordable community child care, making workplaces more flexible for working parents, or more generous maternity and paternity leave- that do not depend on the exploitation and under payment of child workers.
We were also told that encouraging the provision of written contracts might intimidate employers to such an extent that they would not even hire a domestic worker. But the negotiation and conclusion of written contracts detailing the rights and obligations of both employer and employee can be beneficial to both parties, as the process helps clearly define the relationship in advance and can serve as an important point of reference. The creation of a standard “model” contract could help alleviate anxieties over the use of written agreements.
Government officials also attempted to argue that restrictions on the maximum number of hours that someone can be required to work -as guaranteed to other workers- could not be extended to child domestic workers because domestic work was exceptional in not being a “nine-to-five” kind of job. It was similarly suggested that child domestic workers did not need days off. Indeed, it was questioned whether domestic workers would even know what to do if granted one day off a week like other formal workers. These arguments ignore the fact that regulating maximum work hours and a weekly day of rest allow governments to meet their obligation to protect workers’ rights to just and favorable work, health, and rest. No employee can be required to be constantly at the beck and call of his or her employer. If an employer genuinely requires around-the-clock assistance, then a second or third shift should be hired to cover. Excessive work hours and lack of rest days directly affect the health and growth of children. Children also require time to contact and connect with their own families, so as to prevent feelings of isolation and resulting psychological problems. A day off for domestic workers is also an issue of safety for employers and their families, as everyone performs better and with more care when given adequate rest. [...]
