Por quatro votos a três, TRE cassa mandato de Arruda

Lilian Tahan

Por 4 votos a 3, acaba de ser decretada a perda do cargo de José Roberto Arruda (sem partido) como governador do Distrito Federal, em decisão da Corte do Tribunal Regional Eleitoral (TRE-DF).

Nos votos dos ministros, aconteceu um empate por 3 x 3. O presidente interino, Lecir Manoel da Luz, prosseguiu com o voto de minerva a favor da ação do Ministério Público Federal, por conta de infidelidade partidária de Arruda.

Segundo o TRE, a medida é imediata, mas só é efetivada após ser comunicada à Câmara Legislativa do DF. Agora que Arruda não é mais governador do DF, fica a dúvida se ele vai ou não continuar na Superintendência da Polícia Federal, onde está preso desde 11 de fevereiro. 

O político perdeu o foro privilegiado, mas à decisão de perda de mandato cabe recurso no Tribunal Superior Eleitoral. Ainda não se sabe, caso a defesa entre com pedido de liminar, se ele poderá permanecer na carceragem da PF ou terá de ser transferido para a Papuda.

Correio Braziliense

Defamation suit against Oprah Winfrey headed for trial

Ministry of Gossip

THE GOSPEL ON CELEBRITY AND POP CULTURE

Did Oprah Winfrey defame the headmistress of her Leadership Academy for Girls back in 2007? A judge has decided that a jury needs to get in on the action before that question is answered. 

At issue are comments Winfrey made in a meeting with parents and at a press conference after allegations of abuse by a dorm matron at the South African school for girls began to surface toward the end of 2007. Rather thandismiss the case, as Winfrey's lawyers requested in 2008, Judge Eduardo C. Robreno has decided there's enough evidence for former headmistress Nomvuyo Mzamane to proceed with her defamation suit. For specifics on what the judge wrote, click here.

The school opened in January 2007 in Johannesburg for 150-plus live-in students selected by Winfrey, who donated $40 million toward the effort. It was christened with a celebration attended by Nelson Mandela, Sidney Poitier,Spike Lee, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey and other celebs. Currently about 300 girls attend the free school in grades 7 to 10,, and plans are to add grades 11 and 12 by next year.

Winfrey visited Johannesburg in late 2007 with private detectives after the allegations surfaced;according to Time magazine, all dorm matrons were dismissed and the police were notified. Tiny Virginia Makopo was accused of indecently assaulting six girls at the school; her trial is ongoing. Mzamane, who was recruited by Winfrey from a private school in Philadelphia, said at the time the suit was filed that she'd been unable to find comparable work since losing her position at the Leadership Academy.

Mzamane also filed a defamation suit in October 2008 against the Huffington Post, its ownerArianna Huffington and blogger and PR professional Joan Stewart, regarding blog posts that incorrectly stated Mzamane had been charged with a crime. A settlement was reached a few months later, with apologies and retractions published.

The defamation trial against Winfrey is scheduled to start March 29 in Philadelphia.

-- Christie D'Zurilla

Photo: Oprah Winfrey at the Academy Awards on March 7. Credit: Gabriel Bouys / AFP / Getty Images

Los Angeles Times

Popular Passion play bad for Bavarian barbers

Once every 10 years, the Bavarian village of Oberammergau crucifies Jesus all over again and local hairdressers nearly go out of business.

That's because nearly half the 5,300-strong village lets their hair and beards grow for over a year to better resemble the Jews they will interpret in the Passion play which has been running there for nearly 375 years.

The tradition goes back to 1633 when the plague struck the Alpine village and locals vowed, if they were spared, to put on a play about the crucifixion and reincarnation of Jesus once every 10 years - forever.

"A lot of people, including some 600 children, stop having their hair cut from Ash Wednesday (February 25) 2009 to October 3, 2010" when the play packs up for nine years, says Doris Renner, 51, who runs one of the village's three salons.

"That means a tremendous loss of business and shorter working hours for some employees," she adds.

But "Jesus," for his part, is working overtime.

Frederik Mayet, 30, a marketing student, is both "Jesus" and spokesman for the play.

To take part in the play, "you have to be born in the village, have lived here for 20 years, or be married to someone from the village for over 10 years," he says.

The "Passion" is the "social event of the decade," says director Christian Stückl.

"Some want to take part because it's a tradition. Others for religious reasons. Still others, who aren't at all religious, just don't want to miss out," said the village native who usually runs the Munich Volkstheater.

Villagers give up a lot of time to take part.

They will be playing to packed audiences in a specially made 5,000-seat theatre for five hours a day, five times a week, from May 15 to October 3 - and that does not include rehearsals.

Nearly 1,000 villagers have acting roles - for crowd scenes up to 900 at a time can gather on stage - while others play in the orchestra, sing in the choir, sew costumes, or work backstage.

Donkeys, camels, sheep, goats, and doves will also be on hand.

Political edge to the Passion

The Passion "is very important for tourism and economy" of the village, saysMayor Arno Nunn, a former police officer who has only lived here for 12 years and is therefore excluded from the play.

"In 2000 we earned some €25 million, and we hope for much the same this year," he said, adding that he hopes for half a million spectators despite a slump in reservations because of the economic downturn.

"Ordinary tickets are sold out, but only 75 percent of tickets sold in combination with hotel bookings have gone to date so we're hoping for a pick-up in last minute reservations," Nunn said, pointing to the importance of the foreign market because half of visitors are from Britain or the United States.

Actors are chosen at Easter the year before the play, with names written up on a large board for all to see.

"Of course, sometimes people are disappointed they haven't got the role they wanted," Nunn said. 

Town councillors used to choose the actors, but this year director Stückl made all the casting decisions and the town hall, which had a veto right for the top roles, went along with them.

"I was euphoric when it was announced I would be Jesus," said actor Mayet, a Catholic. "Everyone in the village came to clap me on the back to congratulate me. It's a great honour".

But there has always been a political edge to the Passion.

Married people only won the right to take part in 1990 after going to court, while non-Christians, including Muslims, have only been included since 2000.

And big decisions regarding the play are still taken by village referendums.

"In the Middle Ages, such Passion plays often fanned anti-Jewish propaganda and there's been a lot of discussion about anti-Semitism in the play in the wake of the Third Reich," Stückl said.

Last year rabbis from the US Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee came to discuss the production with Stückl and Catholic experts.

"Such exchanges are important and help improve the play" which is spoken in German, says Stückl.

Rabbi Eric Greenberg of the Anti-Defamation League welcomes changes away from "ancient negative stereotypes of Judaism and Jews," but still has concerns about some of the visual images in the play and over how responsibility for crucifying Jesus is shared out between Pontius Pilate and the Jewish High Priests.

As for "Judas," he'll be played this year by a Protestant, Carsten Lück, 40, who normally works on stage construction for television and theatres.

"Of course one feels a little more religious when one takes part in the play because we spend a lot of time reading up on theology and the Bible," he says.

"The worst part is growing the beard. I'll be rid of it as soon as the play is over," he says.

Renner's hairdressing shop plans to open late Sunday on October 3.

"They'll be coming in droves and we'll be working flat out from 10 am to 10 pm for days," she says with relish.

AFP 

The Local | Germany

Holding corporations accountable for apartheid crimes

A landmark class action case is under way in a New York federal court, with victims of apartheid in South Africa suing corporations that they say helped the pre-1994 regime. Among the multinational corporations are IBM, Fujitsu, Ford, GM and banking giants UBS and Barclays, writes Amy Goodman.

The lawsuit accuses the corporations of “knowing participation in and/or aiding and abetting of the crimes of apartheid; extrajudicial killing; torture; prolonged unlawful detention; and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”.

Attorneys are seeking up to $400 billion in damages.

The late anti-apartheid activist Dennis Brutus, who died just weeks ago, is a listed plaintiff. Back in 2008, he told me that “for [the corporations], apartheid was a very good system, and it was a very profitable system”.

As the U.S. recently observed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, marks the first anniversary in office of the first African-American president and pondered the exposure of a racial gaffe spoken by Senator Harry Reid, the issue of race is front and center, making this case timely and compelling.

The Alien Tort Statute dates from the U.S. Revolutionary War era and allows people from outside the United States to bring a civil suit against another party for alleged crimes committed outside the United States.

Cases have been brought in recent years to address forced labor on an oil pipeline in Burma, the killing of labor organizers in Colombia and the killing of activists in the Niger delta.

This suit alleges that the apartheid regime could not have succeeded in its violent oppression of millions of people without the active support of the foreign corporations.

Ford and General Motors built manufacturing centers in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where Dennis Brutus grew up.

He told me, “They were using ... very cheap black labor, because there was a law in South Africa which said blacks are not allowed to join trade unions, and they’re not allowed to strike, so that they were forced to accept whatever wages they were given. They lived in ghettos ...  actually in the boxes in which the parts had been shipped from the U.S. to be assembled in South Africa. So you had a whole township called Kwaford, meaning ‘the place of Ford’”.

Likewise with IBM and Fujitsu. The complaint states, “The South African security forces used computers supplied by ... IBM and Fujitsu ... to restrict Black people’s movements within the country, to track non-whites and political dissidents, and to target individuals for the purpose of repressing the Black population and perpetuating the apartheid system”.

Black South Africans were issued passbooks, which the apartheid regime used to restrict movement and track millions of people, and to enable politically motivated arrests and disappearances over decades.

UBS and Barclays, the suit alleges, “directly financed the South African security forces that carried out the most brutal aspects of apartheid”.

The United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid stated, in 1979, that “we learn today that more than $5.4 billion has been loaned in a six-year period to bolster a regime which is responsible for some of the most heinous crimes ever committed against humanity”.

Banks (including UBS) were punished for helping the Nazis during World War II, so precedent exists for reparations in the case of apartheid.

One of the plaintiff’s attorneys, Michael Hausfeld, told me: “Who is a corporation and what are its responsibilities? If companies can affect lives in ways that make those lives worse, so that people are suppressed or terrorized ... you are basically ascribing to eternity the fact that companies can act with both impunity and immunity”.

South Africa went through a historic process after apartheid, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), led by Nobel Peace laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Thousands of people took responsibility for their actions, along with scores of South African corporations.

Not one multinational company accepted the invitation to speak at the TRC. The case, says Marjorie Jobson, national director of the Khulumani Support Group, which is filing the lawsuit, “takes forward the unfinished business of the TRC”.

The election of Barack Obama, the son of an African, was a historic moment in the fight against racism. But unless U.S. courts are open to addressing wrongs, past and present, corporations will still feel free to go abroad and profit from racist and repressive policies.

Amy Goodman is the host of Democracy Now! - a daily international TV/radio news hour. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

Image: A ghetto in Soweto, a legacy of South African apartheid

The Scavenger

Holbrooke hails Marja operation, relationship with Pakistan

By Jordan Reimer, American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON (March 15, 2010) -- The ongoing U.S.-Afghan operation in Marja, Afghanistan, probably is the greatest in the history of counterinsurgency, the United States special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan said in a weekend television interview.

The United States made a concerted effort to introduce combined units from the U.S. and Afghan militaries, the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and Afghan government officials to the area as part of its "clear, hold, build, and transfer" policy, Richard C. Holbrooke told CNN's "GPS" host Fareed Zakaria.

"We are in a better position today than we were 12 months ago today, and that's the bottom line for me," Holbrooke said about the situation in Afghanistan.

He commended Afghan President Hamid Karzai's efforts to engage with local Afghans in Marja, pointing out that Karzai was the first Afghan head of state ever to visit the region.

"He spoke in the local language. ... He had a local shura, a council. He listened to the people. They yelled at him. They told him they didn't like corruption," Holbrooke told Zakaria.

Based on his numerous meetings with village elders across the country, Holbrooke said, corruption, the need for services, and girls' education are foremost on Afghans' minds. The Taliban's refusal to allow girls to go to school is particularly abhorrent to many Afghans, he noted.

Holbrooke also discussed the state of al-Qaida today and the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. An increase in missile strikes has led to about a dozen - more than half - of al-Qaida's top leadership being killed, he said, reducing the terrorist organization's ability to operate as it used to.

"It looks like they are less an organization that plans operations now than an organization that summons people to aspirational jihad," Holbrooke said. And al-Qaida's recent attacks on Muslims have weakened its ability to inspire people, he added, noting that a backlash has formed against the organization in the Arab and Muslim world.

Turning to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, Holbrooke said a stronger sense of cooperation and collaboration has grown between the two countries.

"There has been a significant improvement across the board in the relationship between our government and the government of Pakistan," he told Zakaria.

Pakistan has increased its efforts in tackling both the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban factions, Holbrooke said. Although he acknowledged that the Pakistani military hasn't yet engaged in North Waziristan, he said that he was impressed with its dedication so far.

Holbrooke said Pakistan moved more than 100,000 troops from its border with India in the east to the western front, where al-Qaida and the Taliban are located. It also has several divisions in the Swat region and in South Waziristan.

The envoy said this improvement is due in large part to personal ties formed between the two countries' leaders. He cited the high-profile visits of several top administration officials, including Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and National Security Advisor James L. Jones Jr., among others. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen has developed a close working relationship with Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

"We feel, clearly, that we're working more closely together with them, and I think that's a very big step forward," Holbrooke said. "No government on Earth has received more high-level attention".

U.S. Army