@Google: “Hippy Gourmet”

If you haven’t seen PBS cookshows on Saturdays- I HIGHLY recommend it, especially the hippy gourmet and lydia’s kitchen. The following is from Google explaining SO MUCH about the show and its vision. Its really really awesome!!!

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The hit PBS show The Hippy Gourmet takes viewers around the globe to explore local, healthy cuisines. The show is a global sensation, airing across the U.S. and in-flight international airlines such as Lufthansa and Swiss Air. Now in a cookbook packed with over 150 recipes, the Hippy Gourmet shows how you can make these easy, delicious dishes using freshly-grown ingredients, in your own home. These vegan, vegetarian, and pescatarian meals will transform your eating experience–and change the world for the better, one meal at a time.

Before co-creating the Hippy Gourmet show, James Ehrlich founded his own successful media and technology company. James has produced television segments for major networks and has also dedicated a great deal of his creative energy towards documentaries that are especially focused on wildlife and endangered habitats.
Hippy Gourmet homepage: www.HippyGourmet.com

This event took place on May 6, 2008, as a part of the Authors@Google series.

Did You Know Waste Veg Oil Can Run Cars?

Well its diesel engines that can use the Waste Vegetable Oil and this oil is what restaurants use to fry food.  Yeah its possible and 2 guys (one who’s total motivation stems from the Iraq invasion) in Oakland have open a shop that will upgrade your diesel engine into a lean, mean Waste Veg Oil running machine.  They been doing for 3 years.  Below are 2 videos describing the whole process.  Yeah I’m really considering doing this if possible myself not only to stop paying high price petro oil (see here) but really to stop being part of this insane system with my money.

http://www.i-maginemedia.com/vegrev7bm.mov

DN!: On Nigeria Oil Struggle

The following report is on the new documentary from Sandy Cioffi titled “Sweet Crude”. Not surprising oil companies like Shell have used the Nigerian government to supress any of the profits from going to the people of Nigeria. The documentary goes into detail of the ongoing crisis and even in the current news today this struggle is consider to be very bad for business. Why aren’t the people - the workers of Nigeria considered when speaking of this struggle? It appears that the US media are only interested in securing the oil to the US and could care less how that happens.

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May 09, 2008

Free from Nigerian Military Custody, “Sweet Crude” Director Sandy Cioffi on Oil Politics in the Niger Delta

The Nigerian government, along with foreign oil companies, have reaped enormous profits over the years from the sale of oil and gas reserves, while the residents of the Niger Delta live in abject poverty. We speak to Sandy Cioffi, director of the the upcoming documentary Sweet Crude. She was recently arrested by the Nigerian military and held for a week before being released following international pressure.

Guest:

Sandra Cioffi, documentary filmmaker. She was arrested in April by the Nigerian military in the Niger Delta. She was working with her film crew on finishing work on the documentary Sweet Crude. The film is slated for completion this summer.

Related Links

• Sweet Crude

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Related Democracy Now! Stories

• Transcript of Drilling and Killing Documentary (7/11/2003)
• Legendary Nigerian Writer Wole Soyinka on Oil in the Niger Delta, the Effect of Iraq on Africa and His New Memoir (4/19/2006)

AMY GOODMAN: In Nigeria, militants are calling for former US President Jimmy Carter to mediate talks between rebels and the government to end hostilities in the oil-rich Niger Delta. A statement reportedly from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, says the group has offered to stop attacks on oil production facilities if Carter intervenes. Carter said he would consider stepping in if he was also invited by the federal government to do so.

MEND has claimed responsibility for attacks on oil installations in Nigeria this past week. The group emerged in 2006, when they kidnapped oil workers and emailed pictures to news desks to bring attention to the plight of the inhabitants of the Niger Delta.

The Nigerian government, along with foreign oil companies, have reaped enormous profits over the years from the sale of Nigeria’s oil and gas reserves, while the residents of the Niger Delta live in abject poverty. The region is plagued by high unemployment, environmental degradation due to oil and gas extraction, and a lack of basic resources such as fresh water and electricity. Nigeria is Africa’s number one oil producer, accounting for more than a million barrels a day.

This is an excerpt from the upcoming documentary Sweet Crude that highlights the plight of the people of the Niger Delta.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 1: The one thing that people need to know is that for every barrel of oil that comes out of the ground in the Niger Delta, 60 percent goes to the federal government, 40 percent goes to the corporations. And the understanding was that, OK, the federal government will, out of the 60 percent, plant some back into the region. But that is not happening.

UNIDENTIFIED: 90 percent of the resources that sustain Nigeria are being tapped for majorly oil and gas. No medical attention. No food commodities. No housing. No roads. No electricity. Nothing at all you can talk about, when we’re talking about the inhabitants. There is absolutely nothing. It’s a hundred percent zero.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 2: If they leave, it will not affect us, in any form. Fine, we’ll feel the impact of their presence, as the environment will become normal again.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 3: Yes. If they leave, the better. If they leave—

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 2: If they leave, we will feel the impact of their absence, in the sense that our environment will become normal again gradually.

NIGER DELTA ACTIVIST: We should be given the right to control our resources, because resource control is our right. We are not beggars. It’s not a privilege. It’s our right to control our resources.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 3: This environment existed for generations, yet all gone. When the generations come, they will miss something on the ground.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 1: Over time, the activities of the oil companies are not helping the people of the Niger Delta. And if this situation is not changed, the future generation will be wiped out.

CHEVRON WORKER: Yeah, I care. And, I mean, it’s a passion I have. And I appreciate that you are giving me this opportunity to express that passion.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 4: Close to thirty years ago, it was not like this.

AMERICAN: If you’re driving around the States, you go into Costco, and you sort of stop thinking about, you know, what you just saw in the Delta. And then you look at your children, and you say, my god, you know, this is—these are things that my children are growing up in this wonderful sort of American environment, and they’re great, but—and then you look at the children in the Delta, you say, they are—but for the grace of God, could have been my children.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 3: Right now, we are borrowing from our grandchildren. I don’t even know what we are going to live.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 2: It is our concern. Where are we going to go? Where do we go?

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 3: Where do we go?

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 2: Any kind of flood now, you see everybody here being swept out.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 4: If they can have the means of actually having money to train the children, then to have a better livelihood, I would be very happy.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 5: There is no school. Even the schools that are there, there are no teachers to protect these people.

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 1: The motivation to even go to school is not even there. Even if you go to school, you won’t get a job, because the companies are not employing locals.

CHEVRON WORKER: We—given the institution we’re in, imagine if I was a totally different kind of fisherman, [inaudible].

NIGER DELTA RESIDENT 4: I’d like the American people and people all over the world to realize there’s a segment of humanity that’s here in the Niger Delta suffering as a result of oil production—ordinary men, women, children. They should think about them and not think simply of energy and all that. But think of them as people. That’s more important than anything.

AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from the upcoming documentary Sweet Crude, directed by filmmaker Sandy Cioffi. She was in the Niger Delta last month, finishing work on the film, was arrested by the Nigerian military, along with her crew, held for a week before being released following international pressure. Her film is slated for completion this summer.

Sandy Cioffi joins us here in the firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

SANDRA CIOFFI: Good morning.

AMY GOODMAN: Who arrested you? Who detained you?

SANDRA CIOFFI: Originally, we were arrested by the JTF, which stands for Joint Task Force. But after one day of the JTF holding us, our custody was switched to what’s called the SSS, or State Security Services, which is very disconcerting, because that’s sort of the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security all rolled into one.

AMY GOODMAN: Where were you?

SANDRA CIOFFI: We were originally just north of what’s called Wari Nigeria, and that’s the creeks area of exactly where the oil is produced. And we were plucked from there, taken to an army headquarters in Wari, and then driven eight-and-a-half hours to Abuja.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they know who you were?

SANDRA CIOFFI: Not when they first took us. I think it might have been garden-variety harassment, which local people deal with on a daily basis. I think it’s important to say that even though Nigeria was officially a democracy as of 1999, in the Niger Delta it feels like an occupied land. So, for regular people on the waterways fishing, etc., they face daily harassment. We were just plucked, I think, probably for money, for some kind of—it’s possible that the JTF also stopped us because they might have had activities up in the waterway that they didn’t want us to see.

But after they Googled us, when they had us in detention, and they saw the title of the film and my name and they looked online and saw some things, including actually a Democracy Now! piece from a couple of years ago, they made it very clear that they didn’t appreciate the perspective in the film.

AMY GOODMAN: And why did they release you?

SANDRA CIOFFI: Actually, I think we were very fortunate, I mean, when you consider that we were detained for one week, when most Nigerian journalists face brutality that’s at a whole other level. I think we were released because we had a lot of international pressure. I’d been working with some members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, trying to push them toward international mediation. And because they were aware of what we were doing and who we were, we actually had fourteen lawmakers sign onto a letter to the president of the country.

I really feel incredibly lucky. I mean, there are journalists detained, as you know—I know you’re working on that—all over the world right now, including some by the US. So this is, you know, a very dangerous time to be someone working in a place where there’s a story that people don’t want told. So I’m not only fortunate that these lawmakers stepped up, I’d like to convert what they did into a net positive relative to the question of the human rights abuses of journalists.

AMY GOODMAN: Sandy Cioffi, can you talk about this demand of MEND, Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta? Explain who they are and why they’re calling on Jimmy Carter to intervene.

SANDRA CIOFFI: Yeah. I think it has to be a fantastic twist to see a militant organization in a third world country that has been almost begging for international mediation. They were floating the idea that Barack Obama might intervene. Then they’ve been floating the idea that George Clooney would intervene, once he was named the UN ambassador for peace, and now Jimmy Carter.

MEND is considered the sort of pan-Delta umbrella movement, almost an open-source militant movement, if you will. There’s been some controversy about whether MEND is mostly a criminal, corrupt gang of thugs or a legitimate political resistance. I would urge everyone to consider that it’s not a spectator sport, how this will play out. There are, like in any situation where there’s so much abuse and so much cash, there are criminal and political elements. But if there is credible international mediation, then the criminal elements will be marginalized, and the political elements will be more legitimized inside Nigeria. I think it’s not entirely unlike the Northern Ireland situation in 1997, ’98, where you had eleven splinter groups of the IRA, but when the Good Friday Peace Agreement came in, Sinn Fein elements of the IRA were able to win out. So I think if the Carter Center, Jimmy Carter, many of the other parties that have been called upon were to intervene, I think the federal government of Nigeria might be held to task for real legitimate mediation.

AMY GOODMAN: Did they also call on Barack Obama to intervene?

SANDRA CIOFFI: They suggested that he did. They float these ideas. They send a press release out, and they say, “Barack Obama is interested in intervening.” Barack Obama hadn’t initiated that, but my understanding is that he said, well, if it were an Obama administration, certainly the Niger Delta and other preventive diplomacy would be a part of that administration.

AMY GOODMAN: Sandy Cioffi, you have on your website an interview between ABC’s Brian Ross and a MEND leader. Explain why that’s there.

SANDRA CIOFFI: Because in December of 2006, when I was going back to interview one of the heads of MEND—MEND really has five heads, and everyone on the ground, including regular women and children, know this, but people in the international press seem to glom onto one leader, and it was a pseudonym name, it was an email name, “Jomo Gbomo,” and all the attention was going to Jomo Gbomo. And it struck me as suspicious that the person who was writing the most incendiary language that could be used for a narrative that MEND is simply a terrorist organization was getting all the international attention.

So when I went there as a freelance person doing the documentary, I was also there shooting for ABC News. The original agreement was that I would be in a hotel room in Wari, Brian Ross would be in New York on the phone and interview him. This was the first person in MEND, unmasked, to identify himself on international television and say, “I am MEND.” It was very brave, and it was a very difficult thing for him to do. ABC chose to leave that footage on the floor. And the story they went with instead was simply an email chat with Jomo Gbomo calling for blowing up car bombs and pipes, etc., when—and the reason I placed the interview on the website is you can see that Brian is asking this guy, who’s name is Paul, over and over again, “Do you have hostages? Where do you get your guns? Are you going to blow anything up? Might you consider doing that tomorrow?” I mean, it almost seems like a Saturday Night Live skit. It’s quite surreal.

So, I mean, I wouldn’t purport that Brian has a particular agenda in the Niger Delta. I just think it was a classic example of the mainstream media going towards the sensational rather than the complexity of a place that is quite literally hanging in the balance, and how these stories are told will impact how they turn out.

AMY GOODMAN: The Bush administration has been pushing to establish AFRICOM forces in Africa. Explain how that fits into the oil-rich Niger Delta.

SANDRA CIOFFI: Oh, it fits in very much. It’s a very important story. The Gulf of Guinea is the water that’s right off the coast of Nigeria, where there is, by some estimates, more than ten times the untapped oil that’s in Saudi Arabia, and the AFRICOM base is proposed for Nigeria. So, what I think, part of the narrative that we have to be very careful about right now is this idea that MEND and the corruption mean this place is just an intractable mess, and without some greater level of US Pentagon intervention we won’t have the kind of stability there we need.

I’d also like to point out that oil production is down by 30 percent in the last two years. Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News are naming now the Niger Delta militants as typically a number one or two reason for the increase in the price of oil. I think that the sad truth is that MEND has known this, and that’s why their tactics have been violent, because it’s the first and only time in a decade they’ve gotten any kind of attention for the story.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the companies that are there? When Democracy Now! then-producer Jeremy Scahill and I went to the Niger Delta in 1998, we focused on Chevron and did this documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship. Ken Saro-Wiwa, the well-known Nigerian Ogoni activist, died taking on Shell in his area of the Niger Delta, in Ogoniland. What are the companies now?

SANDRA CIOFFI: Well, some of the very same suspects. Shell is the largest oil company in the Niger Delta, but Chevron is substantial, and it’s an American-held company. And I think that, for this audience, that makes it really significant.

I’ll say that I actually think this is a unique moment with the oil companies. It’s not to say they are not culpable in large part for where we are, and it’s bizarre to listen to oil company executives portray their situation as if they’re powerless. They talk about this moment in the Niger Delta as if they’re on the other end of something horrible happening to them. That said, because of the instability and because of this current moment—and when I say “current moment,” I mean the escalation in both the real violence and the potential violence—they’re actually at least indicating an interest in being brought to the table as one of the stakeholders in real mediation. I think they would like the appearance of being forced into doing that.

And not that I necessarily trust Chevron to be a great player in the future, but I do think that they would be a better player than some of the other oil companies, particularly from China, for example, that have already indicated that they’d love to come in, and they have no concern about the human rights abuses in the Delta.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, these oil companies posting record profits right now, compared to the level of poverty for the people of the Niger Delta.

SANDRA CIOFFI: It’s unforgivable, and it’s unconscionable. I don’t know how we can deal with it any longer. When we were released from detention after a week and I read the price of oil at that time had hit the all-time high of $119 a barrel, I had the realization that for the first time in my life I had paid the actual price of oil: that kind of denial of humanity that I only tasted that the people there live with every day. It’s unforgivable. And I do think that there is a solution. I think that it is possible that this is the time that both the oil companies and the Nigerian government can be held accountable to pay for what they’ve been pulling out of the ground all these years.

AMY GOODMAN: Sandy Cioffi, I want to thank you for being with us. Her film, Sweet Crude, will be out this summer.

Aljazeera: “US gets Grameen micro-credit bank”

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/657EBCBE-DF5F-4C1D-9A23-C7D7A13F8112.htm

US gets Grameen micro-credit bank

http://www.grameenfoundation.org/where_we_work/united_states/

The bank is in one of America’s most ethnically-diverse neighbourhoods Grameen Bank, the micro-credit financier initially set up to help the poorest in Bangladesh, has opened its first branch in the United States.

The Bangladesh-based outfit known as the poor people’s bank plans to hand out loans to the less well-off in one of the most ethnically-diverse neighbourhoods in the US.

Muhammad Yunus, who founded the bank in 1976, said the branch in Queens, New York City, was to cater to thousands of new immigrants without access to basic banking services.

“People consider this audacious,” he told Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey.

“They think ‘What you come from Bangladesh to do banking in NYC? That sounds so ridiculous. This is [the] city where [the] whole world learnt banking from’.”

But the Nobel laureate said New York also had its share of poor people just like any other city “so we are actually working in [a] third world” environment.

“If this one works it will change the whole future of banking … in the whole world”

Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank founder
The bank and its founder earned the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for helping thousands of poor Bangladeshis start their own businesses by offering them small loans.

Grameen America is targeting millions without a bank account and those with limited access to financial institutions, particularly women, to put them on the road to self-sufficiency.

To qualify for a Grameen loan, borrowers must be part of a group that meets weekly on financial management, pay back a certain percentage plus interest and set aside some savings.

A default by one member will result in the whole group being cut off from future borrowings.

Wendy Brown, who started a cleaning business with her sister a year ago, stands to benefit from a small loan as she plans to expand her enterprise.

“It means a lot to me in terms of buying supplies and being able to operate my business. I bought a laptop,” she told Al Jazeera.

“You get to network with a lot of women who aspire to do a lot of great things, a lot of ideas, you can feed from that as well.”

Muhammad Yunus said every person possessed an enormous capacity and gifts “but they never have the opportunity to unpack that gift”.

He added: “If this one works it will change the whole future of banking … in the whole world.”

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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/BA794CBC-CE0D-40ED-83C3-61FF7BD1FFFB.htm

Mixing principles with profit
By Alex Sehmer

The IMF has estimated the “credit crunch” will cost the global economy one trillion dollars. But a quieter fallout has been the drying-up of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes, as businesses reduce their commitments to boost their profits. It would appear to be a difficult time to begin fundraising. But Sheetal Mehta and Olivia Donnelly, the women behind Shivia, a grassroots finance organisation, are looking to raise £3.5m ($6.9m) for a microfinance initiative that will make low interest loans available to poor communities in western Nepal, as well as Gujarat and West Bengal, in India. One of the projects supported by Shivia: a womens’ savings group in Western Nepal [Shivia] “The reason we’ve gone into this is because people with money have encouraged us to do this - people who want to give back to their communities,” says Donnelly. “That gives me a lot of confidence that we’re not going to be running around fundraising and instead we will be able to concentrate on the work.” Both Mehta and Donnelly are from corporate backgrounds. Mehta worked as director for venture capital relations at Microsoft and Donnelly was with the World Bank. Conversation is littered with references to business plans, “rolling out” and “scaling up”. But both have also had longstanding involvement with development work. They say their finance backgrounds, combined with their contacts among London’s financial high-flyers and in the local communities in which Shivia works, is allowing them to bring the village to the city, and vice versa. “We’ve been working with communities on the ground for the last ten years but also with donors in London,” says Donnelly. “There’s a lot of trust - the donors know what projects their money is going into and we know the communities are going to spend the money on what they’ve said they want.” Social conscience The two have been outlining their ideas at Qatar’s annual conference on democracy, development and free trade - made famous this year for an appearance by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister. Over breakfast at the Sheraton hotel, Mehta, who Success Magazine named as one of their top ten most successful Asian women in the UK, outlines their most recent project. “It’s going to be a donation-based business,” she says. “The returns they [the investors] are going to get are in terms of social conscience - that they are really getting their money to a grassroots project. There will be a return, but we’ll be putting it back into the charity.” Shivia, which Mehta and Donnelly set up in January, works with local partners in West Bengal and in Gujarat, in India, as well as in Western Nepal where they support classes teaching adults to read and helping them gain skills that could make them more employable. Microfinance institutions, made famous by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh started by Muhammad Yunus, Nobel laureate and microfinance champion, and the Banco Sol in Bolivia, have proliferated in recent years. The institutions provide small sums of money to those who fall outside the financial system to finance their businesses. “Conventional” financial institutions lend money against security, typically a borrower’s property. But in many developing countries there is no formal system of property rights, leaving the poor outside of the financial system. Collateral Microfinance does not require traditional security in order to lend money, yet microfinance lenders have mostly found their loans are paid back. Some projects teach adults skills that could make them more employable [Shivia] “In the communities we are working with, the collateral they have is their reputation,” says Mehta. “And because their reputation is so important within their community they would never do anything to jeopardise that.” Microfinance institutions also take a more “customer-centred” approach to structuring repayments and have proved extremely popular, leading the UN to declare 2005 the “year of microcredit”. Since then microfinance has gained even more supporters. By 2007, it was estimated there were over 3,000 lenders, with 113.3 million people estimated to have received credit from them. Loans from microfinance institutions had totaled over $25bn. But microfinance has come in for its share of criticism too. Some analysts say it avoids tackling the main causes of poverty and the proliferation of organisations and ‘middlemen’ working in the industry can mean high interest rates and turn lenders into loan sharks. More recently, the industry’s success has prompted the big financial players to get involved. Standard Chartered bank, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank have all become large corporate players in the microfinance world. A 2007 report by Deutche Bank spoke excitedly of the sector: “Microfinance constitutes an emerging investment opportunity for institutionals and individuals alike. Investors have barely started to explore its full potential.” Credit fears The banks’ new-found concern for the poor is welcome but for many in the development community it is an uneasy relationship. Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus has become the hero of microfinance [GALLO/GETTY] “The banks see the poor as a commercial entity. They see that lots and lots of small loans and lots and lots of people means big money,” Donnelly says. Microfinance, though, is distinguished by the smallness of the amounts of money involved. In fact, because loans can often be - as Donnelly points out wryly - “the cost of our breakfast”, it means individuals can make a big difference. It has started to change the nature of giving, and prompted the start up of websites such as Kiva, which allows individuals to make microfinance loans to projects they choose online and receive updates on the project’s progress. But as the economy experiences the credit crunch, will things change? Richard Harrison, research director at the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in the UK, says that recessions tend to have only a minor impact on charitable giving by individuals. Research by CAF shows that around the periods 1980-81 and 1992-93, when the UK went through economic recessions, charitable giving was only slightly affected. “The evidence we have points to charitable giving not being largely affected by recessionary periods. It may be slightly dented, but only temporarily,” says Harrison. The CAF research will be welcomed by Mehta and Donnelly, who launched their new donor-only fund at the World Economic Summit on Social Enterprise in Thailand and last month secured a commitment of £250,000 (about $500,000) from a single donor.

Al-Jazeera: Sami al-Hajj Transfered Out of Guantanamo

Sami al-Hajj hits out at US captors

Sami al-Hajj was taken to hospital immediately after arriving in Sudan Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj has hit out at the treatment of detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison where he was held for nearly six and a half years.

He said that “rats are treated with more humanity”, than the inmates, whose “human dignity was violated”.

Al-Hajj, who arrived in Sudan early on Friday, was carried off a US air force jet on a stretcher and immediately taken to hospital.

Later, he had an emotional reunion with his wife and son.

His brother, Asim al-Hajj, said that he did not recognise the cameraman because he looked like a man in his 80s.

Sami al-Hajj: Freed after six years in Guantanamo
Still, al-Hajj said: “I was lucky because God allowed that I be released.”

But his attention soon turned to the 275 inmates he left behind in the US military prison.

‘Dignity violated’

“I’m very happy to be in Sudan, but I’m very sad because of the situation of our brothers who remain in Guantanamo. Conditions in Guantanamo are very, very bad and they get worse by the day,” he said from his hospital bed.

“Our human condition, our human dignity was violated, and the American administration went beyond all human values, all moral values, all religious values.

“In Guantanamo … rats are treated with more humanity. But we have people from more than 50 countries that are completely deprived of all rights and privileges.

“And they will not give them the rights that they give animals,” he said.

Al-Hajj complained that “for more than seven years, [inmates] did not get a chance to be brought before a civil court to defend their just case”.

Free man

The US embassy in Khartoum issued a brief statement confirming that a “detainee transfer” to Sudan had taken place and saying it appreciated Sudan’s co-operation.

Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, visited al-Hajj in hospital.

A senior US defence official in Washington speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Reuters news agency that al-Hajj was “not being released [but] being transferred to the Sudanese government”.

But Sudan’s justice minister told Al Jazeera that al-Hajj was a free man and would not be arrested or face any charges.

Two other Sudanese inmates at Guantanamo, Amir Yacoub al-Amir and Walid Ali, were freed along with al-Hajj.

The two said they were blindfolded, handcuffed and chained to their seats during the flight home.

The Reprieve organisation that represents some Guantanamo inmates said Moroccan detainee Said Boujaadia was also released and flown home on the same aircraft as the three Sudanese.

According to a US defence department statement, five detainees were “transferred” to Afghanistan as well. It said that all those detainees, nine in total, had been “determined to be eligible for transfer following a comprehensive series of review proccesses”.

Al-Hajj was the only journalist from a major international news organisation held at Guantanamo and many of his supporters saw his detention as punishment for the network’s broadcasts.

Seized in 2001

He was seized by Pakistani intelligence officers while travelling near the Afghan border in December 2001.

Despite holding a legitimate visa to work for Al Jazeera’s Arabic channel in Afghanistan, he was handed to the US military in January 2002 and sent to Guantanamo Bay.

Al-Hajj, who is originally from Sudan, was held as an “enemy combatant” without ever facing trial or charges.

Al-Hajj was never prosecuted at Guantanamo so the US did not make public its full allegations against him.

But in a hearing that determined that he was an enemy combatant, US officials alleged that in the 1990s, al-Hajj was an executive assistant at a Qatar-based beverage company that provided support to Muslim fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya.

The US claimed he also travelled to Azerbaijan at least eight times to carry money on behalf of his employer to the al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, a now defunct charity that US authorities say funded armed groups.

The US also clamed he met Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, allegedly a senior lieutenant to Osama bin Laden who was arrested in Germany in 1998 and extradited to the United States.

His lawyers have always denied the allegations.

‘Element of racism’

Al-Hajj had been on hunger strike since January 7, 2007.

David Remes, a lawyer for 17 detainees at Guantanamo Bay, told Al Jazeera that the treatment al-Hajj received “was more horrific than most” and that there was “an element of racism” in the way he was treated.

He said he had been in contact with the lawyer representing al-Hajj and it appeared the cameraman had been “psychologically damaged”.

“The Europeans would never receive this treatment,” Remes said.

About 275 detainees remain at Guantanamo and the lawyer said European detainees had all been returned to their country, leaving nationalities such as Yemenis - who now constitute one third of the inmate population.

Remes said al-Hajj had been released because the Bush administration “wants to flush as many men out of Guantanamo as quickly as possible … as Guantanamo has become such an international badge of shame”.

“Once the Supreme Court said the men could have lawyers the pressure increased [on the US] and condemnation isolated the US administration. Guantanamo was a PR disaster,” he said.

“Unfortunately Americans appreciate violations of rights but they have no sympathy for men held at Guantanamo as the [Bush] administration has done such a good job in portraying them as the worst of the worst and as evil doers.

“I’ve met many prisoners, gotten to appreciate their suffering … we know them as humans not as worst of worst, we’ve met their families.

“I’ve been to Guantanamo and the human dimension of Guantanamo is a story yet to be told,” Remes said.

Al Jazeera concerns

Al Jazeera had been campaigning for al-Hajj’s release since his capture nearly six and a half years ago.

But he criticised the US military for urging al-Hajj to spy on his employers.

“We are concerned about the way the Americans dealt with Sami, and we are concerned about the way they could deal with others as well,” he said.

“Sami will continue with Al Jazeera, he will continue as a professional person who has done great jobs during his work with Al Jazeera.

“We congratulate his family and all those who knew Sami and loved Sami and worked for this moment.”

In Depth

Profile: Sami al-Hajj Focus: Inside Guantanamo Bay Focus: US secret prisons ‘bigger issue’

On the US International Trade & Balance

Notice the decline in both Ex & Imp but especially notice the ~$57 Billion Trade Deficit.  Here’s what Mr. Buffet said awhile on this matter.

There’s been much talk recently of sovereign wealth funds and how they are buying large pieces
of American businesses. This is our doing, not some nefarious plot by foreign governments. Our trade equation guarantees massive foreign investment in the U.S. When we force-feed $2 billion daily to the rest of the world, they must invest in something here. Why should we complain when they choose stocks over bonds?

Our country’s weakening currency is not the fault of OPEC, China, etc. Other developed
countries rely on imported oil and compete against Chinese imports just as we do. In developing a sensible trade policy, the U.S. should not single out countries to punish or industries to protect. Nor should we take actions likely to evoke retaliatory behavior that will reduce America’s exports, true trade that benefits both our country and the rest of the world.

Our legislators should recognize, however, that the current imbalances are unsustainable and
should therefore adopt policies that will materially reduce them sooner rather than later. Otherwise our $2 billion daily of force-fed dollars to the rest of the world may produce global indigestion of an unpleasant sort. (For other comments about the unsustainability of our trade deficits, see Alan Greenspan’s comments on November 19, 2004, the Federal Open Market Committee’s minutes of June 29, 2004, and Ben Bernanke’s statement on September 11, 2007.)

–Pg. 16

Oil’s New High $126

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aO7MgwpypNwU&refer=home

Oil Climbs Above $126 to Record as Dollar Weakens Against Euro

By Mark Shenk

May 9 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil rose above $126 a barrel in New York to a record as the dollar weakened against the euro and yen, prompting investors to buy commodities as a hedge against the currency’s decline.

B: Our Emotions Dictate Our Morality per CIT Research

I really doubt that our reason doesn’t have a bigger role in this decision but that’s just my assumption; after all you do need some logic to determine that things ain’t fair.  I think we determine quickly in our heads the reason why things are unfair and this immediately triggers hard-wire emotions such empathy and love to alleviate our discomfort of such illogical distribution.  Well at least that’s why I get so angry in seeing the current state of affairs in the world.

What do you think (feel) ?

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=a1fMh5wX3P5Q&refer=home
Emotions, Moral Choice Linked in Study Watching Brain Activity

By Elizabeth Lopatto

May 8 (Bloomberg) — Brain activity in a region tied to human emotion may help prompt people to be fair rather than efficient in handing out rewards and burdens, say researchers aiming to understand the inspiration behind moral actions.

U.S. scientists used imaging technology to measure the brain activity of 26 adults asked to make decisions about how