Open Letter to Republican National Committee (RNC) – 2011

By Rev. Lainie Dowell

Greetings and Happy New Year 2011 to All at RNC!

Thanks for the reminder. Regretably, last minute change of schedule makes it not possible to attend debate. I will try to watch that all-important event on January 3, 2011, 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. EST via the RNC Debate Website. Please keep me on the mailing list for updates.

INPUT FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

I am greatly concerned RNC would consider ousting Michael Steele who delivered on the promise to “FIRE” Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), (now former House Majority Leader). It is ludacrous that he might be replaced while she remains in her same political role. We need to defeat Obama now (if possible) and certainly in 2012. Many of the men now seeking the RNC position were among those who disparaged Steele’s efforts and worked to scatter the financial and administrative authority of that position. Further, they publicly blamed Steele for being “too public.” Yet, he plowed on to victory. He is a winner and a man who genuinely relates to all of the people. He is a proven people person who gives no thought to acquiring selfish gain for himself.

Barack Obama and the DEMS are Progressives, Socialists, Marxists, Communists, Trotskyites, Islamists, and everything that stands for destruction of America. We need the RNC leader who will be honest, tough, and neither politically correct nor cajoiled into being taken in by the master manipulator, Obama, and his divisive tactics.

The RNC also needs to not be taken in by the Obama Administration and DEMS who have already begun their openly public, negative propaganda campaign machine rolling against this RNC party. DEMS seek only to rule in the court of public opinion. They have severely damaged our national foundation on purpose. And they have gotten away with it by operating under Obama’s skillful Alinskyesque community organizing tactics and his gift of gab to project onto others what, in fact, are their own destructive ways. And the public buys into it.

INVESTIGATE FOR YOURSELVES

If the RNC has not already done so: Obama is now sending taxpayer billions to his homeland (KENYA, Africa) and other third-world nations. His purpose is to “redistribute America’s wealth and resources globally; and the plan also is to allow Kenyans, Asians, Muslims (Shariah), Blacks, Hispanics, Dictators, to overcome and to take over America. Obama’s plan (blueprint) is massive and it will take strong patriots to see it, address it, correct it, and to set America back on course to remain exceptional and as leader of the free world.

If I had been there to vote, my full support would’ve been behind Michael Steele to remain in that position; and, as well, to encourage this party to get behind him to help get that job done. If not, then just as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said recently, “(The DEMS) ‘ate our lunch.’” Playtime is over! Give DEMS no more ground. RNC has to hit the ground running and not let up. For God and country, our constitutional Republic still stands strong.

Keep your eyes open for Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and also for Rep. Hansen Hashim Clark(e)(?) (aka Abdul Malik and by other names) (D-MI). They are unvetted. Do not underestimate their documented common purpose.

Obama is a Muslim son of Kenya and Indonesia masquerading as Christian. And his African and Indonesian relatives now reap the benefit of his American political position(s). As a State Senator (D-IL), he travelled to Kenya in 2006, to aid his cousin, Raila Odinga, with his election. The outcome resulted in many violent deaths of Kenyans of all ages. Yet, I have not heard one American political figure condemn Obama for that illegal political action.

Ellison is a Muslim advocate/supporter of Shariah and CAIR and close friend to Obama. He works to train Muslims and encourage them to fill USA political seats (i.e., community-local, state, national) to gain Shariah strength here.

Hashim (Clark(e) is a Muslim parading as Roman Catholic. He travelled to Bangladesh in 2007 as a State Senator and told an audience that “When Michigan voted for (him) they also voted (him) as their Senator to represent them, too.”) He also told them he was their son and brother. And Clark(e) called the Bangladesh President “Our President.” As a State Senator, at that moment he was rejecting his oath of office. Still no American political outcry was heard. Now Clark(e) is an incoming U.S. freshman Congressman who is following the same path as Obama.

Another suggestion. Get people to increase reliable realtime communication between public and RNC so as to not frustrate Republican’s efforts to help. We need to be able to get through to RNC with timely, substantial, and documented information to inform. One-way communiques are grossly insufficient, when Obama has already taken over all of the social networks and technological advances to help increase his own unconstitutional and illegal shadow government global movement. It is mind numbing to see Obama’s many national and global “partnerships” in operation even on paper and on the worldwide web. It makes me know he has to be ousted-impeached-tried and imprisoned for sedition – treason – and other deliberate acts against the general welfare and defense of America.

The Obama machine has never stopped electioneering. In 2008, they were already moving towards the 2012 election. Now they have set their political sights on 2016. Steele has hindsight, insight, second sight, and foresight. Please do not throw him overboard or under Obama’s bus now. To do so would only signal how little you care about what happens to America. And the Republicans waiting for strong national leadership will pick up on it and give up when it counts the most. What is there to debate??!! Stick with a winner in Steele.

Prayerfully sent for God’s great blessings today and every day,
Rev. LED Dowell, Five-Fold Minister
A Republican since Ronald Reagan’s election

END

HEALTH: Sickle cell disease still feared and deadly

Photo: IRIN

Some 200,000 babies are born every year in sub-Saharan Africa with sickle cell disease

BANGKOK, 30 December 2010 (IRIN) – A century after the drawing of an anaemic patient’s sickle-shaped red blood cells came out of Chicago in the USA – a sketch that officially placed this still pervasive genetic disorder into medical books – confusion, discrimination and lack of treatment continue to surround sickle cell disease (SCD), especially in Africa where more than 200,000 babies are born every year with the disease.

“Sickle cell is a true public health problem with medical, human and social dimensions,” Oumar Ibrahima Touré, Mali’s health minister until earlier this month, told IRIN.

Despite advances in treatment and research over the past century, SCD is still largely undiagnosed in the world’s most affected areas where the problem is too complex for any quick-fix solutions, researchers say.

And without treatment there is a 50 percent chance a sickle cell patient will die before the age of five, most commonly of a blood infection.

For its impact on lives and livelihoods, SCD has been deemed a “threat to the economic and social development of Africa” by the West Africa-based Federation of Associations Combating Sickle Cell Disorder in Africa (FALDA).

Still misunderstood

“People still don’t know about this sickness and there’s a lot of judgment, forcing sick people to hide,” said Dramane Banao, president of a national initiative to fight SCD and mother of a 19-year-old woman with SCD in the West African country of Burkina Faso.

Sickle cell disease is inherited and present at birth, but can show no symptoms for the first four months of life.

Characterized by irregular haemoglobin (iron-rich, oxygen-transporting protein in red blood cells), the disease causes red blood cells to morph into a sickle-shape (crescent) instead of a disc, which leads to clumping and blocked blood vessels.

This clumping can cause pain, infection and, in some cases, organ damage.

When sickle-shaped cells die, sickle cell anaemia, the most common form of SCD, takes hold.

Anti-cancer drugs and bone marrow transplants have extended the life expectancy of sickle cell patients into their 50s.

“Life expectancy has increased, which is a huge accomplishment in the fight against the disease,” Dapa Diallo, director-general of the Centre for Sickle Cell Disease in Mali, said. “Sickle cell cannot be cured, but with proper care [the health of a patient] can be improved.”

But life expectancy for a person with SCD in Africa, where a proper diagnosis is scarce, is still less than 20 years on average.

“They didn’t know at all what the sickness was and treated me for malaria,” Abdoul Karim Ouedraogo, a 42-year-old sickle cell patient, said. At first, he was thought to be cursed, and now walks with crutches when SCD, prior to his diagnosis, damaged his hip.

Discrimination

Up to one in four adults in sub-Saharan African countries like Nigeria carry the sickle cell trait, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Though carriers do not necessarily experience symptoms, testing is recommended for genetic counselling. A man and woman, if both are carriers, have a 25 percent chance of having a child with SCD.

But the development of genetic testing, which has resulted in improved prenatal diagnosis in some parts of the world, is underutilized in the most heavily affected parts of West Africa, and has even led to discrimination and fear.

Finding a marriage partner can prove difficult for carriers of the trait: Carriers can be perceived as being sentenced to having a very sick child.

“We see ourselves as burdens on our families,” Moussa Soulale, diagnosed at 13 and now 25, said from Mali where she is a teacher who has learned to live with her illness.

Screening, education, prenatal diagnosis and treatment have proven effective in fighting the disease among smaller populations, such as in the eastern Mediterranean country of Cyprus.

But affected countries in Africa – where some populations have up to a 45 percent carrier rate, according to WHO – pose other challenges.

“The level of care and quality of management of the crisis are not well studied in Africa,” said Brahima Soumaoro, a Mali-based medical researcher.

There is an urgent need to put in place training for health workers “based on standards of proven efficacy,” he said, in the hope of containing SCD as it has been contained in the USA and Europe.

TIMELINE:

1910: James Herrick, a doctor in Chicago in the USA notices “peculiar elongated and sickle shaped” blood cells in Walter Clement Noel, a dental student from Grenada suffering from anaemia. Sickle cell disease, though known for years in Africa, was then formally reported in the US medical journal, Archives of Internal Medicine.

1917: The genetic basis for sickle cell is first suggested by Victor Emmel, an American anatomist, in the US medical journal, Archives of Internal Medicine.

1922: Three more cases are reported in the USA and the disease is formally named.

1923: Doctors at the Maryland-based Johns Hopkins University conclude sickle cell disease is an “autosomal recessive characteristic” – two copies of the gene must be present for it to be expressed.

1927: It is discovered that “sickling” happens because of a lack of oxygen.

1940: The connection is made between abnormal haemoglobin and the tendency of red blood cells to sickle.

1949: It is determined that carrying the sickle cell trait can be symptomless.

1954: Anthony Allison hypothesizes that the sickle cell trait offered protection against malaria. As more research was done, it is discovered that those with the sickle cell trait, not the disease, are protected against malaria. But those with sickle cell disease either die from the blood disorder or die after coming into contact with malaria because of a weakened immune system. Subsequent research has called into question the sickle cell trait’s ability to protect against malaria.

1970s: Forced testing for black people proliferates when sickle cell screening programmes began in the USA.

1979: Calculations suggest the sickle cell gene developed 70,000-150,000 years ago.

1994: It is recognized that all of the areas where sickle cell disease originated have been, or are now, endemic locations of malarial infestation.

1995: Hydroxyurea, an anti-cancer drug, is found to be an effective therapy in reducing complications from SCD.

1996: Bone marrow transplants are now used to treat sickle cell disease in children.

1996: The Federation of Associations Combating Sickle Cell Disorder in Africa (FALDA) is formed.

2000: The introduction of pneumococcal vaccine greatly reduces child mortality in the USA as those with SCD were at high risk of developing pneumococcal meningitis.

2003: Hydroxyurea increases life expectancy for sickle cell patients.

2010: Mali President Amadou Toumani Touré opens a research centre to promote SCD research, training and genetic counselling for medical follow-up, with the ambition of creating globally influential advancements. Touré calls the centre part of the fight against poverty.

nb/pt/cb

source http://www.irinnews.org

CENTRAL AFRICA: “Command responsibility” underpins allegations against Bemba at ICC

Photo: MONUC/Myiram Asmani/IRIN

Jean-Pierre Bemba is accused of failing to control his troops who were fighting in the CAR

LONDON, 30 December 2010 (IRIN) – It was systematic rape to assert dominance and shatter resistance. That is how Luis Moreno-Ocampo described the campaign of terror allegedly committed seven years ago by a Congolese militia group against civilians from the Central African Republic (CAR).

The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said soldiers from the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) under the command of Jean-Pierre Bemba invaded houses in groups of three and four. He said they stole all they could carry and raped the occupants – women, children and men alike. The crimes were “unspeakable”, Moreno-Ocampo said, as he began the prosecution case against Bemba last month at the ICC.

But none of the soldiers who committed the alleged crimes were in the dock in The Hague on 22 November. Nor was anyone charged with ordering them to rape, pillage and kill.

Instead, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Bemba stands accused of failing to control his troops who were fighting in CAR from 26 October 2002 to 15 March 2003. It is the ICC’s first-ever case dealing with the doctrine of command responsibility, the idea that leaders both military and civilian are responsible for the acts of their subordinates.

“This is actually criminal liability by omission. If you unleash the dogs of war you have to put in place various control mechanisms to prevent the dogs of war getting out of control,” said lawyer Steven Kay who helped defend former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic against similar charges.

The MLC were invited into the CAR by the then-president Ange-Felix Patassé to help put down a coup. The coup leader, former army chief Francois Bozizé, overthrew Patassé and in 2004 called in the ICC to investigate.

Prosecutors allege that Bemba is responsible for two crimes against humanity and three war crimes allegedly carried out by the MLC, the militia group which he created and ran.

The concept of commanders being held responsible for crimes committed by others is nothing new in international law.

Sun Tzu’s the Art of War from the sixth century said that commanders should ensure their soldiers behave in a civilized manner. At the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals following World War II, German and Japanese officials were also charged under the doctrine. One of the best known cases was the trial of Tomoyuki Yamashita, a Japanese general convicted of commanding troops responsible for atrocities in the Philippines.

After a long hiatus, the UN tribunals tasked with prosecuting those responsible for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda continued the tradition, charging numerous leaders – military and civilian – with failing to control those under their command.

Lawyer Guénaël Mettraux has successfully defended commanders including Sefer Halilovic and Ljube Boskoski whose subordinates were alleged by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to have committed war crimes.

“Tricky”

Mettraux says command responsibility cases can be difficult to prove.

“They are quite tricky to establish, because basically what you have to show is there was a chain of command linking the people who committed the crimes and the accused, and through that chain of command he could have controlled them,” said Mettraux.

Specifically, prosecutors must first establish that crimes actually occurred. Then they must prove that those committing them were subordinates and that the commander knew and constantly failed to act or punish those responsible.

“What you see in many cases is that there are ambiguities in the chain of command,” said Mettraux. “If you take the beginning of the [Bosnian] war, you did not have an army that was there to be taken over in Bosnia. You had to create it through slow centralization of bodies into one. There were periods of time where there were questions about what chain of command was functioning and under whose authority.”

Halilovic was acquitted of the charges that his soldiers from the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina committed murder in Bosnia in 1993. Boskoski, the former minister of interior of Macedonia, was found not guilty of commanding police officers who committed war crimes against ethnic Albanians in Macedonia in 2001.

Due diligence

Bemba, a vice-president in the DRC transitional government which followed the 1998-2003 war, has pleaded not guilty. He was arrested in Belgium after fleeing the DRC in 2006 following his unsuccessful presidential campaign and subsequent battles between his bodyguards and soldiers loyal to President Joseph Kabila.

It’s just like if I am driving a car, and I get it serviced every three months, and someone tampers with it and the brakes fail, I’m not responsible if someone got killed as a result, because I can demonstrate that I exercised due diligence. Bemba will have to do that

His lawyers are expected to argue that the MLC soldiers were under Patassé’s command in CAR and obeyed his orders, not those of Bemba, who remained largely in the DRC during the campaign. They will also say his troops were trained on human rights law, were aware of the MLC’s code of conduct and were disciplined if they committed crimes.

Legal experts say that showing reasonable measures have been taken to prevent crimes is one common defence in such cases.

“Bemba can say he disciplined soldiers, that he told them not to do it,” said William Schabas, director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland, Galway, where he also holds the chair in human rights law.

“It’s just like if I am driving a car, and I get it serviced every three months, and someone tampers with it and the brakes fail, I’m not responsible if someone got killed as a result, because I can demonstrate that I exercised due diligence. Bemba will have to do that.”

Schabas says that those convicted on the basis of command responsibility typically get lighter sentences than those giving the orders to commit crimes. “If you can’t prove the person gave the order and only that they were negligent, it’s not as serious,” he said.

Command responsibility

Nonetheless, the founding prosecutor of the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, David Crane, believes the command responsibility doctrine is vital when seeking justice for war crimes, particularly as prosecuting individual culprits is difficult.

Crane indicted and prosecuted commanders from the three warring factions in Sierra Leone’s civil war, as well as Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia. Many were in leadership positions but not physically present when atrocities occurred.

“Most of these cases take place years after the crimes,” said Crane. “That’s a real challenge. You’d never find these individuals. They are dead. There are very few records. It’s almost impossible. We could not conduct a lot of international criminal law without command responsibility.”

Moreno-Ocampo said in his opening statement that the case against Bemba would influence the behaviour of military commanders on the ground and warned that the ICC would continue to hold them responsible for crimes committed by their soldiers.

But legal observers are concerned that the prosecutor’s message does not to apply to everyone.

They point out the court’s legal tentacles have so far reached no further than African countries of little political importance, despite numerous allegations of unlawful activity by leaders from powerful Western nations.

“Soft targets”?

“The ICC is going after soft targets,” said Schabas. “It is operating in the comfort zone of the foreign policies of the US, Britain and the big European states. It has so far stayed away from getting into waters where it might feel uncomfortable like Gaza, like Iraq, Afghanistan.

Most recently, the ICC warned North Korea that it was conducting a preliminary examination of the recent attacks on Yeonpyeong Island in South Korea and the sinking earlier this year of a South Korean warship.

“In Africa they are looking around and saying is this court just about the good guys in the north preaching to us about how to behave?” said Schabas. “Are you all so innocent? Why doesn’t this court deal with the stuff that you are doing? Americans are allowing torture authorized by their own leaders to go unpunished.”

Crane, also a professor at the Syracuse University College of Law, says the legal case against the American leadership as the result of the invasion of Iraq is solid but agrees that politics will prevent any prosecutions.

“I don’t see anything happening,” he said. “President Obama has said we need to let the past be the past and move forward. I remember Charles Taylor making the same comment after I indicted him – that we need to stop resurrecting the past and move forward.”

He believes this is cause for concern. “Are we deciding to develop a double standard?” said Crane. “As soon as the law is unfairly applied, and perceived to be unfairly applied, then the law itself is in jeopardy.”

lc/am/cb

source http://www.irinnews.org

SUDAN: Visceral leishmaniasis outbreak adds to returnees’ woes

Photo: David Gough/IRIN

A young boy winces in pain as he receives an injection for Kala azar (file photo)

NAIROBI, 30 December 2010 (IRIN) – The influx of returnees from the north to Southern Sudan ahead of an independence referendum scheduled for 9 January 2011 is raising fears of a more widespread outbreak of visceral leishmaniasis, a disease which can be lethal and is endemic in parts of the greater Upper Nile region, says a World Health Organization (WHO) official in Southern Sudan.

Leishmaniasis comes in several forms and usually manifests itself in skin sores. Visceral leishmaniasis, a severe form of the disease in which parasites have migrated to the vital organs, is also known as kala-azar.

“The returnees may negatively impact the ongoing kala-azar outbreak… as they don’t have immunity. This may exacerbate the outbreak and extend the duration,” Abdinasir Abubakar, a medical officer with the WHO communicable disease surveillance and response team in Southern Sudan, told IRIN.

At least 95,000 southerners have returned from northern Sudan since October – and thousands more are expected before the referendum and in the following months.

The ongoing visceral leishmaniasis outbreak, which was first reported in September 2009, has especially affected remote and insecure parts of Jonglei and Upper Nile states, said Abubakar. By the end of November, some 9,885 new cases with 384 deaths had been reported from 17 treatment centres in four states, with most cases being children under 17. Some 6,363 cases and 303 deaths had been reported by early October.

Displacement and malnutrition due to insecurity and failed harvests, as well as flooding, are among factors fuelling the disease. Despite an improved food security situation compared to 2009, there are fears the gains could be reversed by a huge returnee arrival in a short space of time, says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The Ministry of Health and partners are working to extend the reach of treatment services. The delivery of medical supplies to areas such as Old Fangak (Jonglei State) remains challenging, with the only means of access being either by boat or plane, added Abubakar.

New cases of visceral leishmaniasis doubled in August, September and October 2010 compared to the same period in 2009. Of the new cases, 70 percent were recorded in treatment centres in Ayod, Old Fangak and Khorfulus counties in Jonglei State.

Visceral leishmaniasis is transmitted by the bite of an infected female sand fly. The vector thrives in the cracks and crevices of mud-plastered houses, cow dung heaps, rat burrows and bushes. A person with the disease suffers from lowered immunity. Left untreated it can kill.

aw/cb

source http://www.irinnews.org