Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/299131704?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Monday, April 15, 2013
Venezuela's choice: Chavez heir or fresh start
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? Voters who kept Hugo Chavez in office for 14 years were deciding Sunday whether to elect the devoted lieutenant he chose to carry on the revolution that endeared him to the poor but that many Venezuelans believe is ruining the nation.
Across Caracas, trucks blaring bugle calls awoke Venezuelans long before dawn in the ruling socialists' traditional election day get-out-the-vote tactic. This time, they also boomed Chavez's voice singing the national anthem.
Nicolas Maduro was seeking to ride Chavez's endorsement to victory with a campaign nearly bereft of promises but freighted with personal attacks that was otherwise little more than an unflagging tribute to the polarizing leader who died of cancer March 5.
The 50-year-old longtime Chavez foreign minister pinned his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of a socialist government's largesse and the heft of a state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.
The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn, get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed a pervasive state media apparatus as part of a near monopoly on institutional power.
Challenger Henrique Capriles' aides accused Chavista loyalists in the judiciary of putting them at glaring disadvantage. Prosecutors and state regulators impoverished the campaign and opposition broadcast media by targeting them with unwarranted fines and prosecutions, they said
Capriles' main campaign weapon was thus jujutsu: To simply point out "the incompetence of the state," as he put it to reporters in a news conference Saturday night.
Maduro was still favored, but his early big lead in opinion polls halved over the past two weeks in a country struggling with the legacy of Chavez's management of the world's largest oil reserves. Many Venezuelans believe his confederates not only squandered but plundered much of the $1 trillion in oil revenues during his time in office.
People are fed up with chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages and rampant crime that has given Venezuela among the world's highest homicide and kidnapping rates.
"We can't continue to believe in messiahs," said Jose Romero, a 48-year-old industrial engineer voting in the central city of Valencia. "This country has learned a lot and today we know that one person can't fix everything."
Capriles is a 40-year-old state governor who lost to Chavez in October's presidential election by a nearly 11-point margin, the best showing ever by a challenger to the longtime president. He showed for Maduro none of the respect he accorded Chavez. Maduro hit back hard, at one point calling Capriles' backers "heirs of Hitler." It was an odd accusation considering that Capriles is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Poland.
"Capriles ran a remarkable campaign that shows he has creativity, tenacity and disposition to play political hardball," said David Smilde, an analyst with the Washington Office on Latin America think tank.
At his campaign rallies, Capriles would read out a list of unfinished road, bridge and rail projects. Then he asked people what goods were scarce on store shelves. The opposition contends Chavez emptied the treasury last year to buy re-election with government largesse.
Maduro, a former union activist and bus driver with close ties to Cuba's leaders, constantly alleged that Capriles was conspiring with U.S. putschists to destabilize Venezuela and even suggested Washington had somehow infected Chavez with the cancer that killed him.
But mainly he focused his campaign message on the simple theme of his mentor's October campaign: "I am Chavez. We are all Chavez."
Maduro promised to expand anti-poverty programs, but without explaining how he'd pay for them.
On Saturday evening, Maduro met with members of Venezuela's 125,000-strong citizen militias outside the museum that holds Chavez's remains to mark a poignant anniversary: Eleven years since Chavez was triumphantly restored to power after a failed coup initially recognized by the U.S. government.
Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank said Maduro campaigned "ineptly," trying too hard to "replay the Chavez script" and alienating moderate Chavistas.
Whoever wins Sunday will face no end of hard choices.
Many Venezuelan factories operate at half capacity because strict currency controls make it hard for them to pay for imported parts and materials. Business leaders say some companies are on verging on bankruptcy because they are unable to extend lines of credit with foreign suppliers.
Chavez imposed currency controls a decade ago trying to stem capital flight as his government expropriated large land parcels and dozens of businesses. Now, dollars sell on the black market at three times the official exchange rate and Maduro has had to devalue Venezuela's currency, the bolivar, twice this year.
Meanwhile, consumers grumble that stores are short of milk, butter, corn flour and other food staples. The government blames hoarding, while the opposition points at the price controls imposed by Chavez in an attempt to bring down double-digit inflation.
Capriles said he will reverse land expropriations, which he says have ruined many farms and forced Venezuela to import food after previously being a net exporter of beef, rice, coffee and other foods. But even Capriles said currency and price controls cannot be immediately scrapped without triggering a disastrous run on the bolivar.
High international oil prices remain a boon for Venezuela, underpinning its economy. Chavez spent $500 billion to bolster social programs, trimming the poverty rate from 50 percent to about 30 percent.
But critics say the government has misused the oil industry, ordering the state oil company PDVSA into food distribution and financing of social programs while neglecting needed investment that has caused production and refining to drop.
Venezuela's oil revenue is down from $5.6 billion five years ago to $3.8 billion in 2012, and PDVSA's debt climbed to $40 billion last year. The country even imports 100,000 barrels a day of gasoline from the United States.
___
Alexandra Olson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Alexolson99
Frank Bajak on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbajak
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/venezuelas-choice-chavez-heir-fresh-start-060843388.html
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Who's really behind 'I'm in love with Margaret Thatcher'?
Thatcher opponents have driven the song 'Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead' to the top of Britain's pop charts. Was the 'retaliatory' promotion of a 1979 punk song fanned by fans - or a good capitalist moment?
Two songs are battling to the top of the British music charts in memory of Margret Thatcher. One is, her supporters say, in bad taste, but the one adopted by fans of the late Conservative prime minister isn't quite what it seems, either.
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Opponents of Thatcher have campaigned successfully to have "Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead", a song from the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz" composed by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, to reach the top spot Britain's official charts.
The response from Conservative Party supporters was swift, with newspapers including The Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph demanding that the BBC refuse to play the song. The BBC has said it will play a five-second clip of the song along with a news item explaining why during its official chart rundown on Radio One, Sunday.
Equally irritated, though less outraged, Tories had another plan: counter Ding Dong with a song of their own. They chose the little-known 1979 punk number "I'm in Love with Margaret Thatcher" by the Notsensibles.
The British press loved it ? and why not? It's a good story, in a silly sort of way: a bit of political argy-bargy in a fun and digestible package.
The media didn't exactly work hard to uncover the truth of the story, such as it is. A phone call to the band's former frontman, Michael Hargreaves, was all it took to discover that the campaign predated the Tories' adoption of it.
Hargreaves himself started the campaign with a Facebook page on Wednesday that soon garnered 8,000 likes. Surprisingly, though, by Friday it had been adopted by Conservative Party supporters as a counter to "Ding Dong." Facebook, Twitter and Tory blogs lit-up with requests that people buy the song in order to keep the anti-Thatcher song from reaching the top spot in the hit parade.
Former Conservative lawmaker Louise Mensch, now based in New York, was among those who urged her Twitter followers to buy the song twice: once from Amazon and once from Apple's iTunes.
Would Maggie be proud?
In some press interviews, Hargreaves has implied, rather unconvincingly, that he is a supporter of Mrs. Thatcher. But if the song is a hit, the royalty checks may represent some private enterprise Margaret Thatcher would approve of.
Hargreaves, an ex-punk rocker who now works with adults with learning disabilities, is an unlikely figure for adoption by Conservative Party members, though he did say "Ding Dong" was disrespectful. (Read a in-depth profile of Margaret Thatcher here.)
"My grandfather was [both] a Christian and a communist. I'm a fat, 50-year-old punk. You make your mind up about my political sensibilities," he says.
Hargreaves, who is due to perform with his old band on BBC television news in Manchester on Monday, says he doesn't really mind how high the song charts in the end, but that the experience has been fun.?"We dunked a pebble in the lake and there seems to be a few ripples."
Eighty-five seconds of the song were previously featured in the 2011 biopic movie "The Iron Lady," starring Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher.
"I find it hilarious that Tories have adopted it," he says. "The song is a sort-of tribute and sort-of not."
The official chart will be announced on Sunday afternoon, but by today it had already reached No. 6 in the iTunes chart.
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Sunday, April 14, 2013
Cyprus says rise in bailout costs won't affect banks or depositors
By Karolina Tagaris and Michele Kambas
NICOSIA (Reuters) - Cyprus said on Friday that an increase in the cost of its total bailout package to about 23 billion euros would not lead to more money being taken from depositors in the country's banks.
Cyprus has been thrown into economic turmoil. The terms of its bailout have forced massive losses on depositors at two of its biggest banks - one of which will be wound down altogether. The government is also piling pressure on the central bank governor to quit.
The euro zone member says its financing needs under its EU/IMF bailout have risen to around 23 billion euros from an original 17.5 billion euros, because its deteriorating economy will depress its revenues.
The island looks set to receive 9 billion euros from the euro zone's bailout fund and 1 billion euros from the IMF, and it will raise the remaining 13 billion euros itself.
Projections from last November, however, when the previous communist-led administration concluded a draft memorandum of understanding on a bailout, had estimated the island would only need 17.5 billion euros in total.
"This (increase) in no way means new recapitalizations of the banks are planned, nor an additional burden on depositors," government spokesman Christos Stylianides said.
He said a "rapidly deteriorating" banking sector and public finances meant the country's financial need had increased since November.
"It was an irresponsible, cowardly and indecisive failure to sign the memorandum at that time," said Stylianides, a spokesman for the center-right government which took office on February 28.
Cyprus and the European Union have agreed in principle on how it will provide its 13 billion euro contribution to the bailout package.
Cyprus is winding down its second-largest lender, Popular Bank, and transferring some of its assets to Bank of Cyprus, whose own depositors will suffer heavy losses from a restructuring and recapitalization of the sector.
The country's contribution also includes selling 0.4 billion euros worth of gold - most of its reserves, and 1.4 billion euros in privatizations.
UNDER PRESSURE
An investigation into the demise of the two biggest banks has increased the friction between the government and Central Bank Governor Panicos Demetriades, appointed by Cyprus's former communist administration in May 2012.
On Wednesday, parliament said it would launch an inquiry into whether Demetriades withheld information from legislators in an investigation into the island's now-collapsed banking system.
That decision drew a scathing response from ECB President Mario Draghi, who in a letter to the Cypriot president said it was effectively a procedure to sack the governor, just days after the government withdrew the appointment of his deputy and right-hand man, Spyros Stavrinakis.
In the latest sign of tension between the two bodies, two central bank board members, Andreas Matsis and Harris Achiniotis, have stepped down, a spokeswoman for the bank said on Friday, without giving reasons for their resignation.
A source close to the matter said a third member had also handed in his resignation, reducing the six-person board to two, including Demetriades.
Executive power on the central bank board rests with the governor, so the resignations are not expected to affect decision-making at the bank, although they add to the pressure on Demetriades himself to quit.
(Editing by Hugh Lawson)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/cyprus-says-higher-financing-needs-wont-affect-banks-135026059.html
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Ponder What Isn't Mocked as Racially Unenlightened in America (Atlantic Politics Channel)
Monday, April 8, 2013
Obama apologizes to Calif. AG for comment on looks
FILE - This Nov. 16,2012 file photo shows California Attorney General Kamala Harris speaking during a news conference in Los Angeles. President Barack Obama praised Harris for more than her smarts and toughness at a Democratic Party event Thursday, April 4, 2013. The president also commended Harris for being "the best-looking attorney general" during a Democratic fundraising lunch in the Silicon Valley.(AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)
FILE - This Nov. 16,2012 file photo shows California Attorney General Kamala Harris speaking during a news conference in Los Angeles. President Barack Obama praised Harris for more than her smarts and toughness at a Democratic Party event Thursday, April 4, 2013. The president also commended Harris for being "the best-looking attorney general" during a Democratic fundraising lunch in the Silicon Valley.(AP Photo/Richard Vogel,File)
FILE -- in this Feb. 16, 2012 file photo President Barack Obama walks with California Attorney General Kamala Harris, center, and California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, after arriving at San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco. Obama praised California's attorney general for more than her smarts and toughness at a Democratic Party event Thursday, April 4, 2013. The president also commended Harris for being "the best-looking attorney general" during a Democratic fundraising lunch in the Silicon Valley. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama has apologized to California Attorney General Kamala Harris for causing a stir when he called her "the best-looking attorney general" at a Democratic fundraiser they attended together this week.
A spokesman for Harris said she had a great conversation with Obama and strongly supports him but would not say whether she had accepted the president's apology.
Obama apologized to Harris by telephone Thursday night after returning from two days of fundraising in California, White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
At a fundraiser in Silicon Valley earlier that day, Obama raised eyebrows when he said Harris "happens to be, by far, the best-looking attorney general in the country. It's true! C'mon." He prefaced the remark by saying she is "brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you'd want in anybody who is administering the law."
Harris was present and had addressed the crowd before the president spoke.
The "best-looking" comment instantly lit up news blogs and websites, with some highlighting it as an example of the hurdles working women still face.
Carney and Harris' spokesman, Gil Duran, both noted that Obama and Harris are longtime friends.
"He called her to apologize for the distraction created by his comments," Carney told reporters Friday. "He did not want in any way to diminish the attorney general's professional accomplishments and her capabilities."
He noted that Obama also commented on Harris' smarts.
Carney went on to say that Obama "fully recognizes the challenge women continue to face in the workplace and that they should not be judged based on appearance."
In an emailed statement, Duran noted the longstanding ties between Obama and Harris.
"They had a great conversation yesterday, and she strongly supports him," he said.
Duran later said he would not comment beyond the statement. He declined to say whether Harris had accepted the president's apology or whether she was offended by his comment.
Harris had scheduled no public appearances Friday and was not expected to comment herself.
Harris and Obama have campaigned for each other in prior elections. Some pundits also have described her as a female version of Obama because of her stage presence and because, like the president, she is of mixed race.
___
Associated Press writer Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this report.
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Mood tense on 20th anniversary of Ohio prison riot
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) ? It's been two decades this month since the longest deadly prison riot in U.S. history broke out in southern Ohio and there's trepidation in the air.
A prisons chief in Colorado and a district attorney in Texas and his wife have been slain.
The ratio of inmates to guards inside Ohio's prisons has crept up again after a dip that followed the 11-day siege at Lucasville's Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in 1993.
Double-bunking inmates, a trigger in the uprising that left one corrections officer and nine inmates dead, is back in use at a prison in Toledo. Serious assaults requiring outside medical attention have jumped from an average of three per year to 16 last year, and gang membership, while down slightly, stands at 16 percent.
Paul Goldberg, past executive director of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, which represents unionized corrections officers, said "the red flags are there" that existed in 1993 but were ignored.
"It wasn't until we actually had the death of (Corrections Officer) Bobby Vallandingham and the riot in Lucasville that people understood that we'd been serious and what we'd been saying was real," Goldberg said. "I fear the same circumstances are emerging today."
Vallandingham was among 12 staff members taken hostage on April 11, 1993, when inmates overtook the prison that sits 10 miles north of the Ohio River. They were exiting the recreation yard on an Easter Sunday when it happened. Vallandingham was killed on the fourth day of the occupation, after his inmate captors had flown a bed sheet out the windows threatening to kill a hostage if certain demands weren't met.
Rioting inmates wanted to have single cells rather than be doubled up and wanted more classes and visitation. Muslim prisoners wanted an exemption from a mandatory tuberculosis test that they said violated their religion and an end to forced racial integration.
Historian-lawyers Staughton and Alice Lynd, a husband-and-wife team who have spent the past 20 years investigating circumstances surrounding the riot, are marking the anniversary with lectures around the state focusing on the five inmates sentenced to death for their roles in the riot.
Media access has never been allowed to the "Lucasville Five": Siddique Abdullah Hasan (formerly Carlos Sanders), Jason Robb, George Skatzes, Namir Abdul Mateen (formerly James Were) and Keith LaMar. The Associated Press' request to speak to them ahead of the Lucasville anniversary was denied.
Staughton Lynd, who has written a book asserting none of the five is Vallandingham's killer, said the state has yet to accept its share of the responsibility in the uprising so that justice can be served and conditions improved.
The Lynds arranged for LaMar to speak by phone to about 60 participants at an April 3 event at Youngstown State University revisiting the riot. LaMar, who was convicted of having a role in the slaying of prisoner informants during the riot, discussed being held in solitary confinement for 17 years, Lynd said.
Ohio prisons director Gary Mohr authored a voluminous report on the causes of the Lucasville riot as director of then-Gov. George Voinovich's Office of Criminal Justice. He said there's no question safety and security have improved since then.
Mohr can tick off a laundry list of targeted programs, legislative efforts and infrastructure upgrades in the past 20 years ? and even the past two ? that are making prison conditions better and guards safer.
He said all maximum-security inmates are housed in single cells. Through technology, staff are in better communication and are able to manage inmates with minimal physical contact that can bring violence, he said. The state has installed 4,000 new security cameras and assembled special-response teams across the state trained to handle disturbances.
And the administration plans a bill stepping up sanctions against inmates who throw bodily fluids at guards, Mohr said.
Christopher Knecht, a former inmate at Lucasville who served time both during the riot and some years afterward, said the two eras can't compare.
"The conditions now are nothing like they were," he said. "The only complaints now would be issues dealing with guard-prisoner relationship, classification, property, food, visits and things of that nature ? typical complaints found at all prisons."
Yet the anniversary arrives as the national mood within the corrections profession is apprehensive.
Mohr considered slain Colorado prisons director Tom Clements a professional and personal friend. The two had talked a day before Clements was shot at his front door last month.
"Worrying is a sin, but I still worry," said Mohr, who's headed the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction since January 2011. "I think every director in this country is concerned about the safety and operations of the staff. We need to be. Just since I've been director, there have been seven corrections employees around the country that have lost their lives in the line of duty."
Luke Van Sickle, president of the prison guards' union at Lucasville, said the shadow of the riot is always present at the 1,625-acre prison, where 1,365 inmates are housed. That's down about 500 inmates from 1993.
"You'll constantly hear comments of 'Well, we're going to repeat '93.' They'll whisper that as they go down the hallway and pass you," he said. "As far as security, it's business as usual (for the anniversary). But everyone's on edge."
Van Sickle said the deaths of Clements and North Texas District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, are combining this year with memories of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut that left 28 dead to raise tensions.
"That just proves that you're not safe from inmates in a prison, and you're no longer safe outside a prison," he said.
He mentioned reduced staffing ? including in Lucasville guard towers ? and tougher qualifications for staff retirement as strains on the system. There's also concern over a proposal to privatize Ohio's prison food service and potentially cut back the volume or quality of meals.
Mohr said the Lucasville riot has taught him ? and corrections officials across the U.S. ? that prisons must combine tough sanctions against violence with opportunities for inmates to change. He said Ohio has added 526 beds for prisoners who commit violent acts as well as reintegration units that provide activities and education for those who display good behavior.
"We have to believe people can change," he said. "We have to provide systems to provide positive reinforcement for positive change because, ultimately, 97 percent of the people are going to come back out and live in these communities, and we cannot return a more bitter, hostile, unprepared population to be citizens in Ohio."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mood-tense-20th-anniversary-ohio-prison-riot-162737553.html
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