Archive - Jan 22, 2010

• Aid slow to reach Haiti as shelter becomes priority for survivors of quake
• Radio stations in Port Au Prince operate despite damaged communication system
• Activists push to abolish ‘corporate personhood’ in wake of Supreme Court decision
• Lawyers suing to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage wrap up arguments in federal trial
• New evidence of abuse at Guantanamo as Obama's deadline for closing facility passes
• US claims that former Guantanamo detainees turn to terrorism based on questionable data

• Air America to go silent Monday
• Conflicting eyewitness accounts in trial of Aria Siddiqui
• Sri Lanka election lead-up marred by violence
• Palestinians tell Mitchell Israeli settlement freeze necessary
• Roe v. Wade anniversary: Trial of abortion provider’s alleged murderer begins

A 4.4 magnitude earthquake shook Port-au-Prince this morning as rescue workers start to wind down their efforts to search for trapped survivors. Meanwhile, aid continues to trickle in to the makeshift tent cities housing hundreds of thousands of survivors. An estimated 200,000 Port-au-Prince residents have fled to other parts of Haiti, according to the US Agency for International Development.

FSRN spoke to Oxfam International's incoming country director for Haiti, Claude St-Pierre, yesterday evening in Port Au Prince. He said he had just visited several hospitals where Oxfam delivered bottled water and supplies. The organization is working at seven sites across the capital.

St-Pierre said shelter is a primary concern for the country's more than 1.5 million left homeless by the quake.

"So our approach to shelter so far in these immediate circumstances is to try to provide people with something to cover them. We had rain a few nights ago, we were very concerned that people did not have, for example, plastic sheeting, like simple means, a bit of a roof overhead. That goes as much for these people in these who have lost completely their houses as well as with the people who have not lost completely their houses but are feeling insecure with their houses and stay in the yard or, in some cases, in the streets in front of their houses."

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling on corporations’ rights to finance elections has already inspired a protest movement. Activists launched the Campaign to Legalize Democracy just hours after the decision came down. Their goal is nothing less than the abolition of corporate personhood – the idea that corporations have the same constitutional protections as human beings. Tanya Snyder has the story.

Meanwhile, the communications infrastructure of Port au Prince remains unreliable. Telephone service is spotty and Internet access is extremely limited. This has made coordinating a response to the disaster especially challenging for relief organizations. But for the city's residents, it's also been hard to get information or connect with loved ones. Many are tuning into the radio for information. Ansel Herz reports from Port-au-Prince.

Plaintiffs suing to overturn California's ban on same-sex marriage close their case today, ending two weeks of testimony that included academic experts, lesbian and gay witnesses speaking about the effects of anti-gay discrimination, .and even a proponent of the Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage. Judge Vaughn Walker is hearing the "Perry vs. Schwarzenegger" trial in a federal district court in San Francisco. Christopher Martinez files this report.

Shortly after taking office in 2009, President Obama signed executive orders laying out a timetable to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within the year. The deadline was set for today, but the facility remains open. The Obama Administration has also announced that around 50 of the nearly 200 remaining detainees may be held indefinitely without trial.

Documented use of torture and religious abuse have taken place at the facility in the course of its 8 years of operation. This week, Harpers Magazine reports that the deaths of 3 detainees in 2006, may have occurred due to torture and interrogation. The US government had previously called the deaths suicides.

We're joined by journalist Andy Worthington, author of the book, The Guantanamo Files, and a co-director of the film, Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo.

Link to "The Guantánamo 'Suicides': A Camp Delta sergeant blows the whistle" by Scott Horton: http://harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368

Link to Andy Worthington: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/