Monday, December 26, 2005

In Russia’s second largest city, St. Petersburg, four gas attacks left more than 70 people ill. Devices with wires, timers, and glass vials of a gas determined on scene to be methyl mercaptan were found in outlets of Makisdom, a home improvement chain store. The chemical is both naturally occurring and manufactured and is used as an oderant for detection of propane or natural gas leaks.

Store officials have said that they had received threats that sales would be disrupted before New Year’s. Russians traditionally give gifts on the holiday. Police officials said they believed a commercial dispute or a prank not terrorism.

The local emergency hospital was overflowed from the influx of ill people from the attacks. Valentina Matviyenko, Governer of St. Petersburg, said that those who sought medical help were not suffering any further medical problems.

A custodian at one of the stores found the devices and alerted police. The devices were found at another store with their vials broken. The devices in the two other stores were carried outside by employees and covered with buckets. The police explosives experts defused them.

• Interfax. “Gas Attack in Russian Store Poisons Dozens of Shoppers, Workers” — Bloomberg, December 26, 2005

• “Russia gas attack sickens scores; commercial dispute suspected” — Jerusalem Post, December 26, 2005

• Irina Titova (ap). “Gas Attack at Russia Store Sickens Dozens” — Washington Post, December 26, 2005

Monday, July 18, 2005

Utah Senator Chris Buttars has decided not to introduce a bill requiring the teaching of “divine design” in Utah schools, at least for this year. Buttars withdrew after State Board of Education director Patti Harrington assured him that Utah public school curriculum does not teach that man descended from apes.

Buttars had hoped his divine design proposal would escape the controversy of creationism or intelligent design. “The only people who will be upset about this are atheists,” he stated on June 6 when he announced his intention to run the bill.

Utah is home to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints also known as the Mormon Church. On the surface it would seem Utah would be a likely scene of intense religious pressure in public schools over the teaching of evolution. But unlike states with a strong Christian conservative presence, Utah’s LDS leaders have avoided some of the more contentious separation state and church battles.

On the topic of divine design, official LDS church spokesmen have been largely silent at least in public. But with more than 90% of the legislature made up of members of the LDS faith, few in Utah would deny the influence of the church on public policy.

Groups on both sides of the issue are gearing up for what many consider an inevitable fight. The ACLU of Utah has posted a paper on divine design on its web site (http://www.acluutah.org). The Eagle Forum which wields significant policital power in Utah has expressed its support for Buttars proposed legislation.

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

The director-general of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Pascal Lamy, suspended negotiations in the Doha round of trade talks on Monday, after a meeting of six “core” negotiators India, Brazil, the United States, European Union, Japan, and Australia in Geneva failed to make any headway in reconciling differences over agricultural trade liberalisation. The US wanted cuts in import tariffs for farm products, which were rejected by EU, Japan and India, who asked for cuts in agricultural subsidies.

Peter Mandelson, the EU trade commissioner, told the Financial Times: “If the US continues to demand dollar-for-dollar compensation in market access [cutting tariffs] for reducing domestic support, no one in the developing world will ever buy that and the EU will not either.” Brazil also identified the US stand on subsidies as the reason the talks failed.

Susan Schwab, the US trade representative, said that the other countries sought exemptions from tariff cuts for a wide range of goods and that such exemptions would defeat the object of the talks – to expand trade. “As we went through the layers of loopholes . . . we discovered that a couple of our trading partners were more interested in loopholes than market access,” she said.

The Indian Commerce and Industries Minister, Kamal Nath said that developing countries could not allow their subsistence farmers to lose their livelihood and food security to provide market access to agricultural products from developed countries.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Oakland, California —A developer’s recent glossy sales brochure hails the Coliseum Gardens housing development in East Oakland as the most comprehensive development to date for one of Oakland’s largest nonprofit housing developers, but close scrutiny of the project reveals that only 4 out of the 178 low-income public housing families displaced by the development actually managed to return to the newly rebuilt housing complex that was recently christened as Lion Creek Crossings.

Phase 1 of the 20 acre project at the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek Crossings mixed income housing development was completed in June of 2006, with phase 4 of the development expected to be completed by December 2008.

Documents reveal that as an effort to reduce violence and drug trafficking within and around the Coliseum and Lockwood communities of Oakland, the HOPE VI program enabled the Oakland Housing Authority (OHA) to use nearly $61 million in federal funding to displace Oakland’s low-income communities from the above mentioned locations.

These projects are only a small part of what is known as the Oakland Coliseum Redevelopment Area, which is approximately 11 square miles in size, extending from 22nd Ave., all the way to the San Leandro City limits, and is located between E. 14th St., and the Oakland Estuary/Airport.

The OHA’s Board of Commissioners approved the selection of the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), the Related Companies of California (Related Companies), and Chambers General Construction as co-developers of the Coliseum Gardens public housing site during its board meeting on October 21, 2002. As partners in the development project, the OHA owns the land, and the developers own the buildings.

As a result of the OHA approval, local nonprofit housing developer EBALDC and Related Companies, LLC., out of New York City, created Creekside Housing Partners, L.P., to take control of Oakland’s public housing property at the Coliseum Gardens site.

After the eviction of 178 families and the demolition of their 178 public housing units during 2004, Creekside Housing Partners (CHP) moved as quickly as possible to rebuild and finish off “phase 1,” of their project. Phase 1 of the development is managed by Related Companies, the tenants pay their rents to the New York based firm, and during the past 6 months the developers have moved people into 115 newly rebuilt housing units at the development.

Twima Early works at the management office of Related Companies located at Lion Creek Crossings and was eager to help shed some light on whats been going on at the newly privatized public housing site in East Oakland.

In an October 18 interview, Twima Early said, “During the past 6 months, we have completed phase 1 of our project and moved people into 115 housing units at our new development. Out of the 178 families who were originally displaced by our project, the OHA sent us a list of 13 families who were eligible to move back into this location, and only 4 of those families actually moved into our new development.”

“It seemed odd that the Housing Authority would only allow 13 families to move back into this location, and I can’t explain why so few were allowed to return,” said Early.

When Randy Shaw of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic learned how few of the original public housing tenants that were actually allowed to move back into the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek housing development, he said, “The Hope VI program has once again proved to be the major cause of the displacement of low-income people. I’ve never heard of numbers so skewed before in regards to the displacement of families who were promised that the Hope VI project would be beneficial to them.”

Since 1994, Oakland officials and the Federal Government have targeted Oakland’s poor with nearly $84 million in federal funding through the Hope VI program.

The privatization of Oakland’s public housing units have been occurring at a rapid pace. When wealthy billionaire Stephen M. Ross, CEO of Related Companies, teamed up with local nonprofit housing developer EBALDC to re-develop the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek housing complex, it became apparent that the developers made out much better than the displaced families did.

Carlos Castellanos of EBALDC is involved in the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek development, and when I asked how did this project benefit the families who used to reside there or how is the City of Oakland benefitting from the displacement of so many families, Castellanos said, “These are loaded questions and not something that I want to talk about. I think that a lot of those tenants did not really want to move back, and I think that you really need to talk to the Housing Authority to find out what happened to all of those families.”

Vivian Haine resided in a public housing unit near the Coliseum Gardens site, and said, “About a year ago, Kim Boyd the site manager where I resided at, told me that I’m lucky to be living here even if there is no money for repairs at this building, because they didn’t have enough funding to finish off the project at Coliseum Gardens, and most of the evicted tenants had no where to go. I believe that many of the families displaced from the Coliseum Gardens development couldn’t find any housing to move into and may have become homeless,” Haine said.

Records show that on June 24, 2006, the OHA’s Board of Commissioners approved the use of market rate rents in its Project-Based Section 8 program at the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek development, to cover a $600,000 funding shortfall after the EBALDC/Related Companies claimed that they needed more money to complete phase 3 of the project.

A Sept. 19, 2006, OHA memo mentions that EBALDC/Related Companies are co-developing the rental portion at Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek Crossings site, which will include 157 units of public housing. The total number of rental units, including public housing, now planned is approximately 440 units, plus another 28 units of for-sale housing which are planned to be developed by Chambers Construction Company.

With the demolition of 178 public housing units by the developers, and only 157 public housing units being rebuilt at the Coliseum Gardens/Lion Creek Crossings housing site, theres been a net loss of 21 public housing units at this location.

The OHA and City of Oakland continue to funnel millions of dollars to the EBALDC/Related Companies partnership, in an effort to privatize part of Oakland’s public housing program in East Oakland.

Since its inception, the Hope VI program has resulted in the demolition of more than 120,000 public housing units across the nation, only to be replaced by 40,000 mixed income units, and less than 12% of the displaced families have managed to gain entry back into the locations they were originally evicted from. In order to make way for the new housing projects being developed that resulted in the privatization of the nation’s public housing properties, around 30% of the displaced families are given Section 8 vouchers, 49% are moved into other public housing units, and most of the rest of the tenants often end up losing their rental assistance.