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Meftih The Life Line of Eritrean Community Award Winning Independent Monthly Newspaperwww.meftih.ca email: [email protected]
Volum 8 Issue 8 May 2013 መጀመርታ ዓርቢ ናይ ነፍስ-ወከፍ ወርሒ ትሕተም ወርሓዊት ጋዜጣ Printed the first Friday of every month Tel: 416-824-8124 Fax: 416-783-7850
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Meftih May 2013 Volume 8 Issue 8: page 8
Editors: Grace CherianPhotographer: Mulugeta Zergaber Contributors: Mohamed Edris Naza HasebenebiMedhin Ghebreslasie, Amleset Tesfay, Bode Odetoy-inbo, Mimi Chandy, Ken NtiamoaSubscription Costs in Canada $39 for a year and $59 for two years. In USA, it costs $45 for a year and $69 for two years.Articles appearing in assorted columns of Meftih newspaper are intended to generate civil & informed public discussions. You don’t have to agree with opinions expressed by the writers. However, that should push you to express your own views. Through that way we generate lively & civil discussions in the community. Rejoinders are not forums for personal insults & we want readers to adhere to these principles.
ALMOST EVERY MORNING, staffers at Greater Boston Legal Services arrive at work to find a line of people waiting on the street outside their offices. These people are there because they need help: some because they’re being evicted, others because they’re chasing down child support payments, still others because they’re filing for divorce.
Lawyers are expensive, and for millions of low-income people across the United States, non-profits like Greater Bos-ton Legal Services offer the best—perhaps the only—chance at profes-sional help. Staffed by civic-minded attorneys and paid for with pub-lic money and private donations, these orga-nizations represent our society’s primary mech-anism for making sure that when it comes to civil proceedings, all people, including the very poor, are treated equally before the law.
For decades, it has been an article of faith among those who have devoted their lives to the cause of legal aid that if only the system had more funding, it could do more good and help more people. But lately, a difficult new question is being asked of the legal services commu-nity: What evidence do they have that the help
they’re offering even makes a difference—and that they’re allocating their scarce resources as effectively as pos-sible?
That is the challenge being laid down by a group of critics led by James Greiner, a pro-fessor at Harvard Law School. Greiner be-lieves passionately in providing free legal as-sistance to the poor, but he is dismayed by what he sees as a lack of data on how it’s de-livered and how it af-fects people’s lives. For all the good they think they’re doing, Greiner argues, the fact is that legal services provid-ers are working off un-tested assumptions and operating largely in the dark.
Given the noble inten-tions and tireless dedi-cation of the individuals who staff legal clinics around the country, it feels almost indecent to question the effective-ness of the help they’re providing. But from where Greiner sits, the sanctity of these ef-forts—and the fact that the system provides for just two attorneys per 10,000 low-income people—is precisely why it matters. In particu-lar, as he sees it, we know very little about how legal service pro-viders ought to deter-mine which clients to take and which to turn down; in many cases, he argues, they may be
wasting precious time and money on cases where they’re unlikely to have an impact.
“Most folks have con-cluded that we’re never going to be able to give a full attorney-client re-lationship to every per-son who has a legal problem,” Greiner said last week. “The funding is just never going to be there. So you have to take steps short of that, in an attempt to meet the need.”
For Greiner, the solu-tion is one that has already revolutionized other fields, most nota-bly medicine. He is part of a budding movement that wants to introduce randomized experiments and put hard numbers to what have tradition-ally been treated as unquantifiable social problems. In medicine, he and his allies point out, such tests have revealed that once-common treatments—hormone replacement therapy, for instance—were not only ineffec-tive but harmful. “The mission,” Greiner said, “is to make law more evidence-based, more rational and scientific.”
Among those who labor in the legal services world, this insistence on randomized testing has been met with skepti-cism, even defensive-ness—particularly after Greiner’s first study on the topic found that one group of people who were offered represen-
tation by law students working at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau were no more likely to pre-vail in their court cases than people who were not.
Those results came as a jarring surprise to some on the bureau’s staff, and the study sparked consternation among le-gal aid workers all over the country. Some wor-ried that Greiner’s find-ings would be used as justification to defund legal aid, while others raised an ethical objec-tion to the very idea of collecting the kind of data he’d like to see: It amounts to experi-menting with vulnerable people’s lives.
***
RANDOMIZED TRIALS are the gold standard in the world of science, and for good reason: Done right, they can generate highly precise insights about how the world works. To deter-mine the effectiveness of a new drug, researchers give it to some patients and not others; if the people in the first group fare significantly better than the control group, that sends a clear sig-nal about the efficacy of the medicine.
So far, these types of controlled experiments have proven difficult to run on social problems. For Greiner, a soft-spo-ken man who favors turtleneck sweaters and loves Harry Potter, find-
ing ways to bring the power of quantitative analysis to bear on the legal system has been a calling since 2002, when he decided, after working as a litigator, to get a doctorate in statistics. But it was not until a few years ago that the recently tenured professor turned his at-tention to legal ser-vices, having become convinced that in order for our democracy to truly work, all people—not just those who can afford it—must have “ac-cess to justice.”What Greiner found when he began study-ing legal services was a complex, decentral-ized, and woefully un-derfunded endeavor that was helping only a fraction of the people in need. Across the coun-try, hundreds of orga-nizations worked more or less separately, with-out sharing information in any systematic way about the kinds of peo-ple who were coming to them for help and what exactly they need-ed. Most importantly, Greiner noted, no one had ever done any rig-orous tests to see how much good these orga-nizations were actually doing.
When he first ap-proached the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau, an organization staffed by law students, Greiner made his pitch this way: Given that the number of people who come to HLAB looking for help
Free legal advice—but does it work?
By Leon Neyfakh
Meftih May 2013 Volume 8 Issue 8: page 15
Meftih May 2013 Volume 8 Issue 8: page 16
Many men generally have a problem. I do not know whether it is a matter of pride, fear, foolishness or all of the above, we men keep our financial problems from our better halves for as long as possi-ble. We hope against hope that the financial problems will go away before our wives ever found out.
If you are an employee and you lose your job, that’s not so bad be-cause it is immediately obvious that if you don’t find a replacement job soon, your family will face financial difficul-ties sooner or later. The problem is when you are self-employed and the business is not going so well. Rather than telling your wife how bad business is, you tend to try to be a “man” and keep it to yourself hoping for the big break which never seems to come.
It is a good idea to let your spouse know as soon as you see signs of a down-turn in your business ventures and ask for support., finan-cially, if she can. Some smart women can even offer suggestions that you may not have thought about because you are so engulfed in your predicament. If you pretend that things are well with you when in fact, they are not, then it becomes diffi-cult to tell your wife when the mortgage is three months behind.
Your wife will eventu-ally know, anyway, so why don’t you tell her right from the onset?I don’t blame some of the men though, because some of the women flip on such news. The first person they call is their tele-phone friend seeking advice on how to di-vorce you before you lose all the money.
DEBT WORRIES CAN MAKE YOU IMPOTENT
Financial problems can cause you sleepless nights. When at night, every part of your body is wide awake except your vital body-part which is deep asleep and your wife is think-ing that you are not doing your duty be-cause you are hav-ing an affair when you know you are not, it can become very frus-trating for you.
So, tell her now, before you see divorce signs on the wall. She may even surprise you and be more understanding and accommodating than you ever thought she would.
If you are having debt problems, call me at 416-398-1877 ext 201. I will help you face them squarely and re-solve them.
Ken Ntiamoa, MBABIA Insolvency Coun-
sellor Mortgage Broker
far exceeds the num-ber they can offer rep-resentation, why not randomize the sorting process, create a con-trol group, and try to learn something about the organization’s im-pact? Initially, Greiner proposed running the study using either do-mestic abuse cases or eviction cases.
The answer from HLAB’s leaders was a firm no. “We pret-ty quickly decided we weren’t willing to do that,” said faculty di-rector David Gross-man, explaining that the student volunteers simply had too much confidence that their sorting methods were working to jettison them in favor of a ran-dom number generator. These methods, which took into account not only the likelihood that HLAB could make a difference in a particu-lar case, but also the urgency of the case and the number of people affected by its outcome, were based on years of experi-ence and institutional knowledge. Given the high stakes in eviction and domestic abuse cases, Grossman said, “randomizing away” clients HLAB would take under normal cir-cumstances felt deeply immoral.
HLAB’s reluctance pointed to one of the main hurdles Greiner is facing as he looks
for more legal services providers to work with on experiments: For an organization to do what he’s asking in-volves an admission that what they do nor-mally might be inef-fective. “Given our ex-perience, we feel like we can pick the cases where we can make a difference,” said Great-er Boston Legal Ser-vices executive director Jacquelynne Bowman. “But if it’s randomized, then we may miss out on providing represen-tation to someone who truly needs it.”
Convincing profession-als to doubt their meth-ods is never easy, said Greiner, but it might be especially hard in the world of legal services. “Is it surprising that not every single legal aid attorney possesses the kind of self-doubt that might cause her to desire to undergo a rigorous evaluation of her...activities?” he asked. Nevertheless, Greiner believes this kind of self-doubt is important, precisely because people in the trenches can’t always look objectively at what they’re doing. “I don’t deny that...experiential observation is worth-while,” he said. “But my job is to question and test it, because it turns out that human beings sometimes stink at fig-uring out what works and what doesn’t from day-to-day observa-tions.”
Free legal advice. . From page 14
Meftih May 2013 Volume 8 Issue 8: page 17
* Instant Tax Refund* Personal, Business & Corporate Tax Returns* Financial, Taxation Advice* Canadian & US Tax Returns* Mortgage Financing* Year Round Tax Services
• Roast the walnuts slightly in a skillet or oven and crush it. Then sprinkle them over your breakfast porridge.• Make a healthy breakfast by sprinkling roasted and crushed walnuts over a cup of fresh yogurt and hon-ey.• Sprinkle crushed walnuts over your sal-ads to give them a crunchy texture.• Sprinkle them over sautéed veggies.• Make a dip by grinding together some walnuts, herbs and boiled lentils.• Walnut butter could be a great spread
for sandwiches and pita bread.• Add the nuts in a mixture for making gra-nola for your kids.• Baked recipes get a makeover with the addition of chopped and crushed walnuts. Bread, cakes, muffins and walnut cookies are a delicacy.• Just a tablespoon of crushed walnuts over your favourite ice cream or dessert can make it taste heavenly.Sources:http://litebite.in/walnuts-health-benefits/http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12865291
Walnuts are the . . .From page 18
Meftih May 2013 Volume 8 Issue 8: page 18
Please see page 24
By Grace Cherian
Scientists from the University of Scran-ton in Pennsylva-nia say walnuts are the healthiest of all nuts. And should be eaten more as part of a healthy diet. Scientists say walnuts contain the highest level of an-tioxidants compared to other nuts. Dr Joe Vinson analy-sed the antioxidant levels of nine dif-ferent types of nuts and discovered a handful of walnuts contained twice as many antioxidants as a handful of any other commonly eaten nut.Here are some of the benefits of eat-ing walnuts:
1. Walnuts are
packed with nu-trients including protein, poly- and monounsaturated fats, vitamins such as E, A and B, minerals such as potassium, iron and calcium, and fibre.2. They are an excellent source of omega-3 fats, which are essen-tial for normal brain function.3. Walnuts are rich in antioxidants, particularly a com-pound called ellag-ic acid, which helps support the im-mune system and has anti-cancerous properties.4. Walnut oil helps reduce blood pressure, decrease stress and im-prove cardiovascu-lar health. Walnuts are a rich source of alpha-linolenic
acid (ALA), which is known to help lower “bad” choles-terol and reduce in-flammation and oxi-dative stress.
5. Walnuts also contain a form of melatonin. This a hormone produced by the pineal gland to regulate and in-duce sleep. Main-taining a healthy level of melatonin is important, es-pecially for people over the age of 40, when melatonin production decreas-es.
Reap the health benefits of walnuts by doing the follow-ing:• Eat them straight out of the shell.
Walnuts are the healthiest of all
nuts
Please see page 17
Labeled “clumsy” for his part in one of soccer’s biggest corruption scandals, FIFA President Sepp Blatter was cleared of any criminal or ethical wrongdoing in a case involving millions of dollars in bribes for World Cup con-tracts.
Blatter’s predecessor as FIFA president, Joao Havelange, was forced to step down as honorary president because of his involvement in the case. FIFA made the announcement Tuesday, saying the 96-year-old Brazilian, who led soccer from 1974-98, had resigned on April 18.
A report issued Tuesday by FIFA ethics court judge Joachim Eckert said Have-lange’s conduct had been “morally and ethically re-proachable” for accepting bribes from the sport’s mar-keting company ISL from 1992-2000, along with his former son-in-law, Ricardo Teixeira, and Nicolas Leoz, the president of South Amer-ica’s governing body since 1986.
FIFA has banned a leading Asian member of its execu-
tive committee from all foot-ball activities for eight years after he was found guilty of violating the governing body’s code of ethics.
FIFA said Tuesday that Ver-non Manilal Fernando of Sri Lanka, who had been a close ally of disgraced former pres-idential candidate Mohamed bin Hammam, was prohibited “from taking part in any kind of football-related activity at national and international level.”The ban is effective retro-actively from March 11 this year, when he was suspended to prevent him from interfer-ing with FIFA’s investiga-tion.
FIFA has not specified the charges against Fernando, who joined the executive committee under bin Ham-mam’s patronage. Bin Ham-mam was banned for life by FIFA after a bribery scandal during his failed bid to oust President Sepp Blatter.
Blatter, who took over from Havelange in 1998 and served as general secretary before that, got off more lightly de-
FIFA president Sepp Blatter cleared of
criminal wrongdoing in report
Meftih May 2013 Volume 8 Issue 8: page 19DUFFERIN CUSTOM
UPHOLSTREY & DECORATIONWe do new custom made:- Sofa, Chair, Headboard,
Slip Cover & Window Seats.For your old furniture we do:- Re upholstery, Restyle, Restoration & Replace foam cushion
Editors: Grace CherianPhotographer: Mulugeta Zergaber Contributors: Mohamed Edris Naza HasebenebiMedhin Ghebreslasie, Amleset Tesfay, Bode Odetoy-inbo, Mimi Chandy, Ken NtiamoaSubscription Costs in Canada $39 for a year and $59 for two years. In USA, it costs $45 for a year and $69 for two years.Articles appearing in assorted columns of Meftih newspaper are intended to generate civil & informed public discussions. You don’t have to agree with opinions expressed by the writers. However, that should push you to express your own views. Through that way we generate lively & civil discussions in the community. Rejoinders are not forums for personal insults & we want readers to adhere to these principles.
mer, culminating with a dash into space targeted to-ward the end of the year.
SpaceShipTwo is a prototype com-mercial version of Spa c eSh i pOne , which in 2004 be-came the first pri-vately developed manned rocket to reach space. Since the historic flight, more than 500 as-piring space tourists have paid $200,000 or plunked down deposits, patiently waiting for a chance to float in weight-lessness and view the Earth’s curva-ture from 62 miles up.
Branson initially predicted commer-cial flights would begin in 2007, but a deadly explo-sion during ground testing and longer-than-expected test flights pushed the deadline back.
What about other space tourism des-tinations? Here are your options.
No date has been set for the first com-mercial flight from a custom-designed spaceport in New Mexico, but Virgin Galactic executives have said it will come after testing is complete and it secures approval from the govern-
SpaceShipTwo makes . . .
ment. Branson pre-viously said the maiden passenger flight will carry his family.
SpaceShipTwo was built by Mojave-based aerospace research company Scaled Composites LLC, which was founded by cutting-edge aviation de-signer Burt Rutan. His SpaceShipOne, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Al-len, made three suborbital flights into space — reach-ing altitudes of 62 miles (100 kilome-tres) or greater— and won the $10 million Ansari X Prize.
From page 22
* Susan was having a tough day and after re-turning home she started complainingShe said to her husband, “Nobody loves me….nobody cares for me..the whole world hates me!”Her husband, watching TV said casually: “That’s not true dear. You are not that famous that whole world hates you.Some people don’t even know you.
*************
A mild-mannered man was tired of being bossed around by his wife so he went to a psychiatrist.The psychiatrist said he needed to build his self-esteem, and so gave him a book on assertiveness, which he read on the way home.He had finished the book by the time he reached his house.The man stormed into the house and walked up to his wife.Pointing a finger in her face, he said, “From now on, I want you to know that I am the man of this house, and my word is law! I want you to prepare me a gourmet meal tonight, and when I’m finished eating my meal, I expect a sumptuous dessert afterward. Then, after dinner, you’re going to draw me my bath so I can relax. And when I’m finished with my bath, guess who’s going to dress me and comb my hair?”“The funeral director,” said his wife.
****************
A woman’s husband had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, yet she stayed by his bedside every single day. When he came to, he motioned for her to come nearer.As she sat by him, he said, “You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you were by my side. When we lost the house, you gave me support. When my health started failing, you were still by my side… You know what?”“What dear?” She asked gently.“I think you bring me bad luck.”
****************
There were 11 people – ten men and one woman – hang-ing onto a rope that came down from a helicopter.They all decided that one person should get off, because if they didn’t, the rope would break and everyone would die.No one could decide who should go, so finally, the woman gave a really touching speech saying how she would give up her life to save the others, because women were used to giving up things for their husbands and children, giving in to men, and not receiving anything in return.When she finished speaking, all the men started clapping.
QUEEN’S PARK – Following a recent re-port from People for Education that high-lighted the continuing use of ‘streaming’ in Ontario high schools, NDP Education Critic Peter Tabuns called on Education Minis-ter Liz Sandals to ex-plain Ontario’s use of the widely-discredited practice. “Students at low-in-come schools are six times more likely to be placed in applied math classes compared to high-income schools,” said Tabuns. “Stu-dents in applied math are half as likely to meet provincial math and literacy standards and are less likely to graduate. Does the minister accept the continued streaming of students in Ontario and the barriers to success it presents?” The report shows that students at high schools in lower in-
come neighbourhoods are more likely to be placed in “applied” rather than “academic” courses in municipali-ties across the prov-ince, including Toron-to, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo, and Ottawa. “Streaming has been discredited. It limits the opportunities of dis-advantaged children, yet it continues,” said Tabuns. “Wealthy chil-dren are more likely to take academic courses. Low-income, immigrant
and aboriginal children are more likely to take applied courses.” Tabuns urged the Min-ister to take action. “Will the Minister inves-tigate why low-income children are overrep-resented in applied courses and why ap-plied students are less likely to succeed, so that all students have a fair chance for suc-cess?” asked the To-ronto-Danforth MPP.
NDP: Low-income students re-stricted by outdated streaming
The paperwork was seriously deficient in more than 165,000 cases. That means, on average, election officers made more than 500 serious procedural errors in each of Canada’s 308 ridings.
The same kinds of mistakes were found to have occurred in Etobicoke Cen-tre, and last spring an Ontario Superior Court judge over-turned the results in
that riding. However, the Supreme Court of Canada reversed that decision, ruling that the constitutional right to vote trumps almost all procedural errors.
Nevertheless, the re-port concludes that the procedures for verifying voters must be simplified and election officials must be better trained.
As reported by the Canadian Press,
Mayrand has accept-ed the report’s con-clusions and recom-mendations.
The budget cuts Elections Canada are facing mean it’s also trimming its in-ternational vote mon-itoring program, and will move its Ottawa office to Gatineau, Que.
Source: Leslie MacK-innon CBC News
From page 23
Elections Canada drops . . .
Virgin Galactic’s S p a c e S h i p T w o made its first pow-ered flight Monday, breaking the sound barrier in a test over the Mojave Desert that moves the company closer to its goal of flying paying passengers on brief hops into space.
“It couldn’t have gone more smooth-ly,” said Sir Rich-ard Branson, who owns the spaceline with Aabar Invest-ments PJC of Abu Dhabi.
A special twin-fu-selage jet carrying SpaceShipTwo took off at about 7:00 a.m. PT, spent 45 minutes climbing to an altitude of 48,000 feet (14,630 me-tres) and released the spaceship. Pilot Mark Stucky and co-pilot Mike Als-bury then triggered SpaceShipTwo’s rocket engine.
A Toronto travel agency recently started selling tick-ets for suborbital flights run by Virgin Galactic’s competi-tor, Space Expe-dition Corporation. Read more about their package.The engine burned for 16 seconds, propelling the spaceship to an
altitude of 55,000 feet (16,764 me-tres) and a velocity of Mach 1.2, sur-passing the speed of sound. Space-ShipTwo then glid-ed to a safe land-ing at Mojave Air and Space Port in the desert north of Los Angeles, said George Whitesides, Virgin Galactic’s CEO.
The 10-minute test flight was consid-ered a major step for the program.
‘A long way toward getting into space’“Having spaceship and rocket perform together in the air is a long way toward getting into space,” said Branson, who watched from the ground.
“A few more test flights with slightly bigger burns every time, and then we’ll all be back here to watch it go into space.”
Not into sub-orbital flights? Read about other Zero G expe-riences.Until Monday, SpaceShipTwo had only performed unpowered glide flights. Several powered flights are planned this sum-
SpaceShipTwo makes powered test flight
Please see page 20
Meftih May 2013 Volume 8 Issue 8: page 23
Please see page 22
Prime Minister Harp-er congratulates the new Italian Prime Minister/
“On behalf of the Government of Can-ada, I wish to con-gratulate Enrico Let-ta on the formation of a new governing coalition. “Canada and Italy share a strong bilat-eral relationship and have been partners in a range of multilat-eral institutions such as the G-8, G-20, United Nations, and NATO. “I look forward to working with the new administration on ad-dressing issues of mutual importance to our two countries and
to further strength-ening the ties we share. This includes working together to further enhance our trade and investment partnership through a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the Eu-ropean Union which will create jobs and prosperity in both our countries. “I would also like to thank outgoing Prime Minister Mario Monti for his contributions to a close work-ing relationship with Canada.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper Congratulates The New Italian Prime
MinisterElections Canada has abandoned plans to experiment with an online voting pi-lot project before the 2015 general election due to budget cuts.
Elections Canada also has concerns about the security of online voting, but a new report indicates that voting irregulari-ties happen frequent-ly at polling stations on voting day even when paper ballots are used.
A spokesperson for Elections Canada said Tuesday that experiments with on-line voting are post-poned “for the long term,” and the rea-sons for the delay are due to an eight per cent budget cut that took effect this year, translating into a loss of $7.5 million per year.
A plan to try out on-line voting in a fed-eral byelection some-time before 2015 has been quashed.
During the last gen-eral election in 2011, Mark Mayrand, the chief electoral officer of Elections Canada, told CBC that online voting is “the way of the future”. The plan was to eventually incorporate internet balloting into general elections, although Mayrand estimated that voting by laptop
or smart phone as a permanent feature was at least “three general elections away.”
In August 2011, May-rand told a parlia-mentary committee, “Elections Canada has been examining internet voting as a complementary and convenient way to cast a ballot. The chief electoral offi-cer is committed to seeking approval for a test of Internet vot-ing in a byelection held after 2013.”
However, in a recent report to parliament, Mayrand said, “Elec-tions Canada is scal-ing back its efforts on internet voting and will delay con-ducting an I-voting pilot project until af-ter the next general election.”
Some municipalities have experimented successfully with online voting, par-ticularly Markham, Ont., and Halifax. In Markham’s 2006 mu-nicipal election, voter turnout increased by 10 per cent, likely because online vot-ing was offered as an option. No prov-ince has ever tried online voting.
Online voting was never meant to sub-stitute for voting the old-fashioned way, in person with a paper
ballot.
Still plenty of prob-lems with paper vot-ingHowever, a report released Tuesday by Elections Canada shows that there are plenty of problems with paper voting.
The report says of-ficials at polling sta-tions across Canada committed a raft of serious procedural er-rors during the 2011 federal election.
The report was com-missioned by Elec-tions Canada after a court case about voting irregularities in the Toronto riding of Etobicoke Centre revealed dozens of instances of missing paperwork on polling day May 2, 2011.
The report says the same kinds of mis-takes happened right across the country. It includes a na-tional audit of the paperwork filled out by elections officials who are supposed to ensure voters whose names don’t appear on the list are eligi-ble to cast a ballot.
The audit found more than half the docu-ments contained er-rors of the type that courts have found se-rious enough to con-tribute to overturn-ing election results.
Elections Canada drops plan for online voting due to cuts
Meftih May 2013 Volume 8 Issue 8: page 24
spite questions of whether he should have known about the bribes.
“The conduct of President Blatter may have been clum-sy because there could be an internal need for clarification, but this does not lead to any criminal or ethical miscon-duct,” the report said.
According to the judgment, then-FIFA general secretary Blatter forwarded to Have-lange in May 1997 a 1.5 million Swiss franc (then $574,000 US) payment from ISL that mistakenly was sent to a FIFA account.
Leoz resigned from FIFA’s executive committee last week, citing health reasons, while Teixeira resigned last year from the executive com-mittee and his position as head of the local organiz-ing committee for the 2014 World Cup.
Eckert said their conduct pre-dated FIFA’s current ethics
code, which came into force last year and was not relevant to the case. And because both Havelange and Leoz have stepped down from FIFA, he noted that “any further steps or suggestions are superflu-ous.”
“However, it is clear that Havelange and Teixeira, as football officials, should not have accepted any bribe money, and should have had to pay it back since the mon-ey was in connection with the exploitation of media rights,” the judgment said.
Blatter said he received the verdict on his own role “with satisfaction,” but acknowl-edged the case has “caused untold damage to the reputa-tion of our institution.”
“There are ... no indications whatsoever that President Blatter was responsible for a cash flow to Havelange, Teixeira or Leoz, or that that he himself received any pay-ments from the ISL Group, even in the form of hidden
kickback payments,” the rul-ing said. “It must be ques-tioned, however, whether President Blatter knew or should have known over the years before the bankruptcy of ISL that ISL had made payments [bribes] to other FIFA officials.”
Sylvia Schenk, senior advisor for sports for the anti-corrup-tion watchdog Transparency International, said she was amazed that Blatter allowed the scandal to occur.
“He can’t be so stupid to think, ‘This has nothing to do with me,’’ Schenk said. “He should have thought there was something wrong ... and looked into the details.”
Eckert based his judgments on a 4,000-page investiga-tion report submitted by FIFA ethics prosecutor Michael J. Garcia.
Havelange and Teixeira were formally identified last July for taking bribes, when Swit-
zerland’s Supreme Court ruled that a Swiss criminal prosecutor’s report on the case should be made public. FIFA, Havelange and Teix-eira had tried to suppress it.
Havelange resigned in 2011 as a member of the Interna-tional OIympic Committee to avoid sanctions stemming from his role in the ISL case.
ISL was created in the 1970s, helped fuel the boom in sports marketing and worked closely with the IOC.
Swiss prosecutor Thomas Hildbrand wrote in a case dossier that the agency fun-neled money through Liech-tenstein to pay commissions to officials “favored in order to promote sports policies and economic goals.”
Six former ISL executives stood trial in 2008 and were cleared of charges relating to fraud.
The most prominent ISL ex-ecutive, Jean-Marie Weber, still is listed as a marketing
adviser to the Confederation of African Football on its website. CAF President Issa Hayatou, a FIFA vice presi-dent, was reprimanded by the IOC in 2011 for accepting $20,000 in cash from ISL in 1995. He said the money was for an event to celebrate a CAF anniversary.
In court evidence, Leoz was identified as having received two ISL payments totaling $130,000 in 2000. The BBC later reported that he received further payments of at least $600,000. Leoz claimed that all of the money he received from ISL was donated by him to a school project, but only in January 2008 — eight years after he received it.
Payments attributed to ac-counts connected to Have-lange and Teixeira totaled almost $22 million from 1992-2000.
Source: AP
FIFA president Sepp Blatter cleared . . .From page 18
“I don’t know what to do,” said Mohmud Shiekhai, an Eritrean man who is on the brink of deportation. “I know I will end up in jail or dead if I am forced to go back to Eritrea. How come the Canadian government doesn’t understand that?” He is frustrated, angry and worried too much about the future of his four children aged two, four, six and eight.
Mahmoud Yassin Shiekhai, 65, left Eritrea to Sudan and then to Saudi Arabia and finally made it to Can-ada in 2011 after having lived in different parts of the world.
His story is a common Eri-trean story. His brother has been in jail for more than 10 years, and no one knows his whereabouts. He could have been next had he not
left right after his brother’s arrest and the confiscation of his company. Since then, he has been in search a safe haven where he might raise his and his brother’s chil-dren. Now, Canada has dashed his dreams by send-ing him a deportation let-ter.
Has the Canadian govern-ment forgotten the horrific administration of the Eri-trean regime?
Eritrea is a living hell. There is no freedom of speech, religion, move-ment or any sort of basic rights. The country is run without a constitution. The president remains above the law. The parliament has never met since 2002. The government has nev-er tabled a budget since 2001. There are more prison camps than schools.
There are more people in prison than those who go to school. In the name of national service, more than 200,000 youths are kept in the army for an indefinite period and forced to work for companies owned by the ruling party.
There is a sense of lawless-ness that is deliberately created by the regime. Se-curity agents can arrest, torture or kill anyone at will. They play God in the daily life of the Eritrean people; they take life they give life. The government does not prosecute or pun-ish the officials.
Abhorring the regime, about 3000 Eritreans leave the country every month according to a UNHCR re-port. They cross the desert, sail the sea and take ev-ery risk to save their lives.
Some are lucky to obtain refuge, but few unfortunate hundred were not. They were deported from Libya (2004), Egypt (2008-2012) and Sudan (2004 – 2013). All of them without excep-tion were arrested as soon as they landed in Eritrean port. Many of them are already dead and no one knows about the rest.
This going to be the fate of Mahmoud, his wife and his four children if they are deported to Eritrea. There is no gray area. He will be killed the day he arrives or a few days later. One way or another, his fate is certain death if he is sent back.
Let’s be clear, we are trying to send him to Eritrea, also known as the North Ko-rea of Africa.’ I truly hope there has been some mis-take, and that the Canadian
government will withdraw the deportation letter. Mahmoud’s deportation would not reflect Canadian values.
We are a caring and well informed nation. We know what is going on in Eritrea and that is why we have granted asylum to more than 99% of asylum seek-ers. We have been a safe haven, and has never be-fore sent back any Eritrean. We are known by the com-fort we offer to those who need it, not by the misery we cause the undeserving.
The Government of Canada should take action that does not contradict with the Ca-nadian values. The world is watching. We always have a choice, whereas Mah-moud does not.
Oh, Canada! The world is watching!By Aaron Berhane