Truthdig
Crazed and distraught with grief, the father went into his garage and took out five gallons of gasoline and a propane torch. He walked past the three Marines in their dress blues and began to smash the windows of the government van with a hammer.
T.L. Caswell, a Truthdig journalist who worked at the L.A. Times with cartoonist Paul Conrad (above), the three-time Pulitzer winner who died Saturday, remembers a man who always arrived in a blast of smoke and sound.
The plight of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, is resonating in Italy, a country that does a lot of business with Iran. The story has gained enough notoriety that the Vatican has indicated it might intervene diplomatically.
BBC:
The Vatican said it was “following this affair with attention and commitment,” spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement.
“The Church’s position against the death penalty is well known and stoning is a particularly brutal form of it,” he said.
Fr Lombardi said the Vatican could use diplomatic channels to try to save Ms. Ashtiani, but he told the Associated Press news agency that no formal request to intervene had been made.
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Remembering the labor movement’s heroic battles is bittersweet on a Labor Day when so many Americans are unemployed, when wages are stagnant or dropping, and when the labor movement itself is in stark decline.
I met one of the few remaining 20th century radicals, a man whom Time magazine called “an acid-penned liberal” in 1960, and had a conversation with him that was not particularly radical or even humorous and was barely political, but why should it have been?
Weeks of unrelenting rains triggered a series of landslides in the Guatemalan town of Alaska on the Pan-American Highway, burying as many as 300 people. President Alvaro Colom warned that thousands more people are at risk as the government runs out of money to deal with the crisis. —JCL
Al-Jazeera English:
An overnight landslide caused by flooding may have buried up to 300 people along a highway near the small ... Guatemalan town of Alaska, the town’s mayor has reportedly said.
The government, meanwhile, estimates that up to 150 were buried.
Al Jazeera’s Martin Asturias, reporting from the city of Chimaltenango, said the people were buried in the last of three landslides that have hit the Inter-American Highway in the past 24 hours.
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A leaked IMF report shows that there is growing international backing for a tax on bank profits, part of what has been dubbed a “Robin Hood tax” that, if ultimately agreed upon, would raise money to help those pushed deeper into poverty by the global financial crisis and to restore public services.
Similar to the Tobin tax on foreign currency transactions, a Robin Hood tax would levy a fee on stock, bond and futures trading by banks and hedge funds and shuttle that revenue to local and international aid groups. —JCL
The Guardian:
European Union finance ministers will step up talks on raising extra money from banks this week amid signs that the International Monetary Fund is softening its opposition to a “Robin Hood tax” on financial transactions.
Treasury sources said the chancellor, George Osborne, was prepared to back a financial activities tax on bank profits and pay at the Brussels meeting provided it was universally introduced, but was wary of a broader Robin Hood tax. Campaigners said last night, however, that a leaked IMF report showed growing international backing for a broader tax and urged Osborne to look at the revenue-raising potential of a levy of transactions.
David Hillman, a Robin Hood Campaign spokesman, said: “The rug has been pulled from under critics who claim that a Robin Hood tax would damage the wider economy or is unworkable. The IMF, EC and Leading Group of 60 nations have all said it is feasible. The main losers would be those who make lots of money from socially useless trades but the winners would be millions of people at home and abroad pushed into poverty by the economic crisis or whose public services are under threat.”
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American soldiers reportedly were called in to help Iraqi forces repel an attack by insurgents on an army base in Baghdad, just five days after the much-ballyhooed official end of U.S. combat operations in the country.
Seven people died in the attack and more than 20 were wounded as a group of suicide bombers invaded the compound. —JCL
BBC:
US forces have helped repel an attack on an army base in Baghdad in which seven people died, security officials have told the BBC.
If confirmed, it would mark the first such use of American troops since the official end of US combat operations five days ago.
Under a deal, US forces remaining in Iraq can only participate in operations at the request of Iraqi authorities.
The US military said it could not confirm or deny it had been involved.
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While it may be a move aimed at disguising the organization’s weakness, the armed Basque separatist group ETA has declared a cease-fire with the Spanish government and said it wants to pursue a “democratic solution to the conflict.”
Government officials in Madrid reacted cautiously to the development, however, with one calling it “ambiguous” and “insufficient.” —JCL
The BBC:
Armed Basque separatist group Eta says it will not “carry out armed actions” in its campaign for independence.
In a video obtained exclusively by the BBC, the group said it took the decision several months ago “to put in motion a democratic process”.
The Basque interior minister called the statement “insufficient”. Madrid has previously insisted that Eta renounce violence and disarm before any talks.
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By Mr. Fish
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