A correspondent for a major United States daily newspaper, who just returned from Haiti, wrote me this letter today:

I'm glad to see you've opened the forum on the question of whether Aristide resigned. Well done!

Click "links/comments" to read more...

As most of us focus on the latest Narcocoup in Haiti, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez asserts his legitimacy and warns the US away from futher intervention.

Having more reason, than time to focus on the myriad of feelings that comes with civil service and corruption, my brother's prison sentence lends me time to ponder, with 14 seemingly endless years and counting . . .

A common emotion rolls through each never-ending session; roars up, entwining with crushing force; surfaces again. It is absolutely underlying, cloying, persistent throughout. I find it in people and circumstance that still, years later, I'm forced to consider. It is the hardest issue to confront, reason enough to start notebooks, diaries or blogs, no doubt, the stuff made of madness throughout. It's an emotion, and also a human act.

According to Agence France Press:

A man who said he was a caretaker for the now exiled president told France's RTL radio station the troops forced Aristide out.

"The American army came to take him away at two in the morning," the man said.

"The Americans forced him out with weapons.

"It was American soldiers. They came with a helicopter and they took the security guards.

"(Aristide) was not happy. He did not want to be taken away. He did not want to leave. He was not able to fight against the Americans..."

First newspaper to run with this is in Australia.

Now, his own foreign minister was on CNN earlier today confirming the resignation. But, come to think of it, we haven't seen any resignation letter, we haven't seen or heard audio or video from Aristide since he supposedly "resigned" and...

...that's exactly what happened two years ago in the first hours of the Venezuela coup. The press said the president had resigned, when he had been kidnapped.

(Thanks to Dennis Bernstien of KPFA Flashpoints Radio in San Francisco for alerting us to this report.)

Developing...

The Jamaica Observer
reports today:

The parliamentary committee that was given the job of reviewing the report of the National Commission on Ganja has recommended the acceptance of its proposal that the personal use of small amounts of marijuana be decriminalised...

We... sense that the mood in Jamaica is tolerant towards the proposed change... In this regard we expect that amendments to reflect the changes in the law will come to the House early in the new session, which starts in April...

The fact... is that to maintain the laws on ganja use as they currently are, would be to keep legislation out of step with popular sentiment and the society's instinct for justice and fair play.

The point is that Jamaicans, of all social classes, hardly view marijuana as a "drug" in the way they perceive cocaine or some other narcotic. Small amounts of ganja are culturally acceptable...

And that's the official editorial position of the newspaper.

Dear Friends of Authentic Journalism:

We're at a very unique and special time in the history of our planet: Voices of marginalized peoples are now on the same level of those called on by the establishment media, thanks to the Internet.

With that in mind, I hope you will carefully consider a donation to the Fund for Authentic Journalism...

The District Attorney of one of the largest cities in the world, Bernardo Batíz of Mexico City, continued this week his public education efforts to explain why decriminalizing drug users would make for a safer city, more room in prison for violent criminals, and more effective law enforcement.

According to a report last night on the national Channel 11 News, Batíz lectured a city judge about overcrowding in the city's jails and prisons:

"There are places that are overpopulated by 100, 200 or 300 percent, where you put three or four times as many people as there should be per meter, and this harms security," Batíz warned Judge Luis Rodríguez Manzanera...

He also insisted that drug consumption should be legalized: "That can be a path to end the mafias. It is the path, also, to succeed in the rehabilitation or cure of those who are addicts, it would make that possible," he said.

Months ago, when Batíz, of the Center-Left Democratic Revolution Party, called for decriminalization, some beautiful losers claimed he wasn't serious (and they confused him with national prosecutors of a competing political party). But Batíz keeps up the fight!

The federal judge hearing a class-action discrimination case filed by a group of Hispanic U.S. Customs agents has handed down a ruling that is a major victory for the agents, according to their attorney, Ron Schmidt.

Customs was seeking to have the agents’ case dismissed upfront -- on summary judgment -- before legal discovery and a trial. The judge's ruling stopped that effort in its tracks.

The class-action lawsuit, which was filed in May 2002 on behalf of some 400 active and former Hispanic special agents, alleges that Customs has engaged in a pattern of discrimination. That discrimination, the lawsuit claims, dates back to the 1970s.

In addition to back-pay and compensatory damages, the Hispanic agents are asking the court to order Customs to cease its “illegal and discriminatory conduct," the lawsuit states.

In its pleadings for summary judgment, Customs claims that the Hispanic agents failed to exhaust the administrative remedies available to them outside of federal court. Customs also argues that the agents failed to meet the legal threshold for demonstrating discrimination.

According to the El Ciudadano newspaper, City Councilor Ricardo Barrera, of the Socialist Party in Rosario, Argentina, "wants the Council to approve a declaration to discuss changes in the current law…"

I've translated some excerpts for your reading pleasure…

This year's full session of The School of Authentic Journalism promises to be better than ever.  An absolutely astounding faculty of gifted and renowned journalism professionals is being put together for this intensive ten-day program, and this year's campus has the space for a significantly larger student body. This can mean more journalism students than ever before and more Authentic Journalists, trained in the skills, ethics, and issues of reporting on the drug war and democracy from Latin America, who will be challenging mass media distortions in the years to come.  

The Narco News School of Authentic Journalism has offered one scholarship slot to The Fund for Authentic Journalism as a special incentive to help us to recruit good writers in our fundraising campaign on behalf of Narco News.  This scholarship provides the ability for somebody to attend the ten-day session, tuition free, with room and board included.  Narco News already has a rigorous application process for finding the most promising scholarship applicants. Duplicating it didn't seem to make sense. Since the art of good writing and the art of successful fundraising are so entwined, here is what we're going to do:

Announcing:  The Authentic Letter Scholarship Contest

MORE

Given all the recent media hype over the CIA's lack of good intelligence on Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion of that country, it's easy to backburner the fact that this nation's intelligence agencies also were accused of dropping the ball with respect to the 9/11 terrorists.

Now CIA Director George Tenet and Defense Intelligence Agency top gun Lowell Jacoby are all over the news telling us that, beyond Al Qaeda, we face an even greater threat from as-yet-unknown terrorists groups who are being spurred on in the wake of rising anti-Americanism.

Gee, I wonder why we're ticking so many people off? In any event, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to connect the dots and predict that because there's a rising tide of rage against the United States, there is likely more fuel being thrown on the fire of terrorism.

But what isn't being asked often enough in the media is what the current administration was focusing on prior to 9/11 in terms of perceived terrorist threats. A little-notice report prepared for the Department of Energy (DOE) some five months prior to 9/11 offers some clues.

It seems, according to that report, that some elements of the Bush administration were concerned about a potential rise in "left wing" terrorism. The title of the report says it all: Left-Wing Extremism: The Current Threat.

Bill Conroy's, Borderline Security has prompted me to begin this notebook, blog, or diary. http://www.narconews.com/Issue32/article893.html

Why do we have warlords or whistleblowers, and fewer civil servants in between the extremes? The topic begs for discussion, and I have some personal thoughts of my own to share.

My father was a combat veteran of World War II, my mother a suburban pioneer with a lifetime of hurt behind her -- or thinking so when I came along in 1953. Growing up on white bread and thousands of bloody war stories, my oral history was punctuated by fantastic tales of survival in the 'hardest times there were.' The Great Depression and World War II were as steady a stream in our home as tea, coffee and old friends. I was raised under the shadow of remarkable events.

I was never sure if I was supposed to be grateful for growing up in cold war peace, and shopping ample aisles of grocery stores, or to feel guilty that I was. So I did both.

My public education included 'duck and cover' exercises in school.  People who love peace, having lots of enemies -- a tired line, revived today -- was literally drilled into me as a child.

"How is that supposed to keep us alive if the A-bomb hits?" I would ask my teacher, after we pulled our terrified bodies from under our desks. Furthermore, how do you study after a near death experience?

Colleagues and Copublishers,

Now that 80 of our 118 original copublishers are in the door, a critical mass has begun commenting, and there are starting to be more comments, we've turned on the "comments rating system" which allows you, the copublishers, to "vote" on which comments get linked on both page one of Narco News, and the front page of this Narcosphere.

That means that YOU, the copublishers, collectively decide which comments get page one placement. This is the main way that we assure that comments, corrections, enhancements, and additional information - especially regarding those news stories reported on Narco News - that the copublishers feel are important get prominent billing for the wider and massive universe of readers. In this, as publisher, I'm surrendering a significant amount of control to you.

Here, below, is how the ratings system works...

Hard Number Time.

$7,023.  That's the grand total raised for Narco News through The Fund for Authentic Journalism since we started over New Year's.  Much of that money, along with funds raised for Narco News last year via the (now defunct) LiveArt1st, allowed us to qualify for that first $10,000 installment of our matching grant from Tides.  

$3,443.  That's the total raised since February 5th.  That's everything we can be certain counts toward the next $10,000 batch of matching funds.  That's just over one third of the way there.  

$129.69  That's the average per day of what we've raised this year.  That's a handful of people.  Sometimes even one person.  But always someone.  One person at a time, putting their money where their beliefs are, who wont let mass media distortions go by unchallenged.  

1   Minute.  That's all it takes to contribute, right now.  Please, go to http://www.authenticjournalism.org and use the PayPal buttons to make a contribution today.  Thank you.  

Last week's vicious smear and libel campaign against Brazilian drug policy reform leader Fábio Mesquita (read about his timely exoneration here) was an atrocity. The perpetrator, Phil Smith of DRCNet, instead of admitting that he was wrong by posting a correction and offering the apology that any professional journalist would offer, hides in his bunker.

Narco News has obtained the texts of four "private" emails that are now published here, below. They demonstrate grossly unethical journalism on the part of Smith. We didn't hack anybody's email account: Smith sent them, by accident, last week to a public mailing list. He later posted a message to that list confessing: "This was supposed to be a private message."

The emails reveal:

1. Prior intent, by Smith, to smear Fábio Mesquita.
2. That Smith reported information he knew to be untrue in his newsletter.
3. Dishonesty, by Smith, to his sources regarding the subject of his article.
6. The suggestion that Smith unethically shared his text, in advance, with one side of the conflict.
7. The fundamental unfairness of conducting interviews in English with native Spanish and Portuguese speakers.
8. The presence of the legal definition of "malice" in Smith's reporting.

If you don't like to read someone's emails that were intended to be private, nobody's forcing you to click to read more. But for those of us who care about journalism and ethics, this is a textbook case on how not to do it.