text:
A. General Consideration
1. Whereas 1974 Nicaraguan Constitution made provision for the death penalty under certain circumstances, [2]/ the 1977 Penal Code, although apparently retaining death as the maximum punishment, [3]/ in reality eliminated it, by establishing imprisonment as the punishment for such crimes as patricide, genocide and high treason; [4]/ thereby effectively establishing imprisonment, as the maximum penalty.
2. The new government, which repealed the Constitution, but retained the Penal Code, decided no to reinstate the death penalty against the accused Somocistas. At a press conference held on July 28, 1979, in the city of Managua, Commander Tomás Borge explained this decision as follows:
They (the former National Guardsmen) will be judged under the present criminal laws of Nicaragua, which do not make provision for the death penalty. It does not matter what new penal laws are decreed, laws which will be established to punish crimes against the revolution and common crimes; these laws will not provide for the death penalty either. The death penalty has been buried forever in Nicaragua. It is important that the entire world be aware of this decision taken by the FSLN. Those who attempt to take justice into their own hands will be violating the law. No one can take justice into his own hands. Justice will be the responsibility of the government of National Reconstruction, through the judicial apparatus-because there will not even be military tribunals--, to judge the war criminals who have been the cause of so much injury, so much bloodshed and so much pain to this country.
3. The death penalty was officially abolished in Article 5 of the Statute of the Rights and Guarantees of Nicaraguans, which provides:
The right to life is inviolable and inherent to the human person. The death penalty does not exist in Nicaragua.
4. The Commission is of the view that the new regime did not have, and does not now have, a policy of violating the right to life of political enemies, including among the latter the former guardsmen of the Government of General Somoza, whom a large sector of the population of Nicaragua held responsible for serious human rights violations during the former regime; proof of the foregoing is the abolition of the death penalty and the high number of former guardsmen who were prisoners and brought to trial for crimes that constituted violations of human rights.
It is important to point out that almost all of the cases concerning violations of the right to life concern events which took place during the month of July 1979, within days of the change of Government, when there was still fighting in certain parts of the country and when there were still armed groups apparently acting under the command of the Sandinista National Liberation Front who in fact did not acknowledge any central authority. [5]/
5. The violations of the right to life basically occurred in the form of illegal executions. Of these, the Commission feels that the most serious are those that took place at "La Pólvora" prison in Granada; hence, the following section will be devoted to describing those executions.
B. The case if the prisoners at the "La Pólvora" prison, Granada
1. Before and during its visit to Nicaragua, the Commission received denunciations on the alleged illegal execution of individuals who had been detained at the prison known as "La Pólvora," a garrison in the city of Granada, Nicaragua, during the final days of July 1979. The information received alleged that an indeterminate number of prisoners were taken from the jail, executed and buried in common ditches. These sites were inspected by relatives of the prisoners, representatives of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights and judicial authorities of the city of Granada.
2. As an example, some of the communications received by the Commission are as follows:
Case 4566: Dr. César Rivas Guillén [6]/
The Commission received the following denunciation concerning the disappearance of the gynecologist Dr. César Rivas, of Granada. This was the first of a number of communications that concerned the events at "La Pólvora," and was received in October 1979.
That on July 22, 1979, CESAR RIVAS GUILLEN, a married adult, and a physician, domiciled in Granada, was apprehended in that city by a group of militiamen in service at the "La Pólvora" Command Post in Granada.
The argument against him was that be belonged to the organization known as "Mano Blanca." He remained approximately seven days in the Granada jails, where he was visited and sent food. However, on the 29th of July, we realized that he was going to remain there, because he sent us a paper. Since that day we know nothing further of this whereabouts, although a "Compa" said that he had been taken to Managua in the middle of the night. W4e had reports to the effect that early that morning there was a number of executions of guardsmen in those jails. Subsequent to these events, those in charge of the Granada Command post were changed and they are now prisoners and are under investigation.
However, because of these events I ear for his physical safety, as I do not know where he is. Because of this uncertainty, I have brought this case to the attention of Commanders Hugo Torres and Walter Ferreti. They have full knowledge of the case but have not yet replied, even though they learned of the matter a month ago. I have also brought this case to the attention of the Ambassador of Spain, since Dr. Rivas's wife is Spanish.
I must add that I have good reason to believe that his arrest was the result of malicious information by unscrupulous individuals who, out of personal rancor and envy, have always tried to injure him. This is evident inasmuch as those who were his colleagues before his arrest have now taken over his medical equipment, and personally urged him (when he was in La Pólvora) to admit to being a member of the "Mano Blanca", which was false, since he was not found guilty of anything, but no one will tell me where he is.
Because of the gravity of the facts set forth, and because of the statements made by the Commanders of the Revolution to the effect that they will report truthfully as to the whereabouts of the prisoners who have disappeared, I request that you take whatever measures, you deem appropriate, to determine whether or not he is alive, since at the present time, his mother, who is an old woman, is suffering from cancer, and her condition has deteriorated as a result of this situation.
Almost simultaneously with the original denunciation, the Commission received a number of telegrams indicating that the life of Dr. Rivas was in danger and requesting the Commission's urgent intervention; upon receiving these denunciations, the Commission immediately requested information form the Government.
On November 30, 1979, the Commission was informed by the government of Nicaragua that the appropriate authorities had been instructed to provide information on the case, which would be transmitted to the Commission as soon as possible.
On May 5, 1980, the Commission received the following reply form the Government of Nicaragua with respect to the whereabouts of Dr. Rivas:
As to Dr. César Rivas Guillén, unconfirmed reports indicate that he died in the last days of the war to liberate our country, or in the days subsequent to the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution; it has not been possible to establish the circumstances of his death.
3. The second complaint the Commission received in connection with the events at La Pólvora concerned the case of Dr. Francisco Mayorga Ramírez, an attorney.
In a communication dated October 17, 1979, the following facts were presented to the Commission.
Case 7057: Dr. Francisco Mayorga Ramírez
Francisco Mayorga Ramírez, 42 years of age, an attorney domiciled in Granada, was notified on Sunday, July 22, 1979, that he was to appear at the Military Police Headquarters of Granada; at 1:00 p.m., he presented himself at the Military Police Station of Granada where he was arrested. Later, he was taken to the Command Post known as "La Pólvora" where he was held until July 26; he was then released with the respective safe-conduct.
When Francisco returned to his home after having been detained, he reported that the charges leveled against him w3re that he had been a civil and criminal judge approximately ten years ago.
On July 28, 1979, Francisco was at a home in the vicinity of the Criminal Court of the District of Granada, approximately thirty years from the lake, on Real street in Granada, At a meeting of lawyers which was planning a visit to the General staff of Granada and to the local Government Junta, to ask them to determine the field of action in which attorneys could now exercise their profession.
During that meeting, two members of the Sandinista people's Army appeared. They arrested Francisco again, without respecting the safe-conduct, which he carried with him. They took him to La Pólvora prison again.
The next day, Sunday July 29, when a member of the family appeared at La Pólvora command Post to bring Francisco his breakfast, the person who passed on the food that day informed the relative that Francisco had been taken to Managua.
Sensing something fatal, I met some friends who told me not to worry, that they would go to La Pólvora to inquire as to Francisco's whereabouts. At the Command Post, they were seen by the Military officer in charge, Comrade Marvin González Ruiz, known as "Wilmer," who told then that Francisco 2had been taken to the International Red cross and that if they wanted to see him they should hurry, since he would be taken to Guatemala that same Sunday."
With that news, I went immediately to Managua where I realize that I had been the victim of a joke, since the International red Cross was closed and a member of that institution told me that no prisoner had been brought there for that purpose.
That same day, July 29, at about 5:00 p.m., certain individuals unknown to me, farm workers by appearance, came to the house and said that they knew Francisco and had seen his corpse in grazing land on the Santa Ana Hacienda, on the Los Malacaos road. These individuals also said that there were approximately fifty (50) more bodies, whose hands were tied behind them.
Various individuals and institutions have been approached in an effort to exhume the corpse of Francisco and give him a Christian burial, but thus far this has been impossible.
These are the reasons why the death of Dr. Francisco Mayorga Ramírez is being denounced. As yet no one knows why his life was taken, since no authority has assumed responsibility for this death. While it was true that he was a member of the Liberal Party, a family tradition, he never hurt anyone; to the contrary, all those who knew him held him in high esteem. Moreover, the death penalty is not known to exist in Nicaragua.
The exhumation of the corpse of Francisco is requested so that in keeping with our religious principles he may be given a Christian burial.
On April 24, 1980, the pertinent parts of this communication were transmitted to the Government of Nicaragua, which was asked to provide information on the case.
Later, the Commission received the following information from the Permanent Commission on Human Rights: [7]/
On Tuesday October 3, 1979, at the request of Doña Marlene Taleno de Mayorga, we conducted the first inspection of the site known as La Montañita de Santa Ana. This is a mountainous terrain some three blocks in area, located on the Los Malacaos road, some four kilometers northeast of the city of Granada.
Thirty meters beyond the barbed-wire fence, we observed tracks of heavy vehicle. These were tracks left by a steam shovel that was there to dig a ditch of regular proportions.
A little further on, we found a depression some 6 meters in length and 3 meters in width. At ground level were a skull, bones and shoes. The ground was loose over the entire surrounding area.
At Doña Marlene's instance, which stated that the corpse of her husband, Dr. Francisco Mayorga Ramírez, had been seen at the top of a pile of bodies, we removed a small amount of earth.
Only 2 or 3 cm. had to be dug: worms and decomposing human remains appeared. Doña Marlene recognized the pants of her husband and began to sob inconsolably.
We then recovered the human remains and returned to the city of Granada, where we spoke with relatives of other victims who had gone to the site of the massacre, alerted by farmers from the area, and who had even seen where part of the pile of bodies had been consumed by flames, s they had been drenched in diesel fuel. Witnesses confirmed that some of the bodies had their hands tied behind their backs.
Mrs. Mayorga tried to obtain the exhumation of her husband's body to give him a Christian burial. In an effort to obtain a legal disposition of the case, she brought the matter to the attention of Judge Agustín Cruz:
On October 9, Doña Marlene Taleno de Mayorga appeared before Dr. Agustín Cruz Pérez, Judge of the Criminal District of Granada, to present a brief denouncing the death of her husband, Dr. Francisco Mayorga Ramírez, and to request the exhumation of his body.
On Saturday, October 13, Judge Cruz Pérez, in the company of his Secretary, conducted the eyewitness inspection requested, and drew up the corresponding report. In addition to noting what the people form the CIDH had seen on their first inspection, the judge inspected he entire site and succeeded in identifying at least two other places where there human scattered at ground level, along with shoes and pieces of clothing. He also found a number of deep holes that seemed to indicate that the relatives of the victims had been coming to exhume the bodies of their loved ones under the protection of darkness.
In a new brief presented to the same Judge of the Criminal District of Granada, Dr. Agustín Cruz Pérez, Mrs. Marlene Mayorga persisted in her request to exhume the remains of her husband, and also claimed that some of the individuals apparently responsible for the acts denounced, were attempting to flee the country to escape justice.
The Court handed down the following ruling with respect to the request of Mrs. Mayorga:
Court of the Criminal District.
Granada, the second day of November of nineteen hundred seventy-nine.
At 10:05 in the morning.
4. In a communication dated October 17, 1979, a 29-year-old chauffeur with the rank of sergeant in the defunct National Guard denounced the execution of Roger Alfonso González Ibarra. The claimant narrated the events as follows:
Case 7056: Roger Alfonso González Ibarra
Roger Alfonso González Ibarra, an adult, and a former member of the military, was seized in Malacatoya, jurisdiction of Granada, on July 19, 1979, and was held four days more in the women's prison in that city.
On July 23, he was taken to La Pólvora, the officer-in-charge being Commander "Wilmer," whose name is Marvin González. He allowed be to speak with Roger on July 26, at 6:00 p.m. roger said that if he was not there the next day, not to continue to look for him.
I was astonished to learn that he had been taken from the La Pólvora jail at midnight, July 27, along with 50 other individuals, all of whom were executed without any order whatever, without any prior investigation, and without respect for human life. A copy of the death certificate is attached and you may be assured that the General Staff of the city of Granada is aware of these facts.
It is requested that an order for exhumation be granted, so as to give him a Christian burial; his body is near the Los Malacos road, outside Granada and I can show them the exact spot where the body is to be found.
Subsequently, the claimant submitted the following additional information:
…on July 26, I managed to speak with him in the prison, where I went after having read a message he had sent to me that morning. It was as follows: "That he urged me to speak with the Judge of the Criminal District of Granada, Agustín Cruz Pérez, because the previous night they had bound and taken away twenty individuals; they had told him that they were going to send him to Panamá, and in parentheses he added, …or is it a trick to kill me?" He urged me to speak with that official and to plead for his life. When I went there that afternoon together with the Criminal Judge for that district, they let only me and […] enter. We spoke with him and he told us that if he was not there the next day, not to go on looking for him. The next day, I went to the prison to bring him his breakfast and his clothes. The clothing was returned to me and the guerrillas, Commander "Wilmer" among them, said that they had taken him to Managua, but did not mention where in Managua he had been taken.
…I turn, therefore, to this Commission in an effort to establish his whereabouts…
Further in a report that appeared in "La Prensa," on September 13, 1979, it came out or that Commander "Wilmer" is now being held in "La Pólvora" in Granada; however, there was no information as to the grounds for his arrest.
On April 24, 1980, the pertinent parts of this communication were submitted to the Government of Nicaragua for comments.
In a document received later by the Commission, the Granada Civil Records showed the cause of death to be as follows:
…at three in the morning on July 29, 1979, ROGER ALFONSO GONZALEZ IBARRA, a married adult, and a resident of Granada, died from a bullet wound, without medical attention, at the age of 29…
The Government of Nicaragua has not responded to the request from the IACHR on this case.
5. A communication of October 17, 1979, denounced the execution of Exequiel Zavala Jiménez, as follows:
Case 7064: Exequiel Zavala Jiménez
On July 22, 1979, Exequiel Zavala Jiménez, of Granada, a married businessman, was apprehended for the third time, by a group of militiamen accompanied by Comrade "Marcelo". Exequiel Zavala Jiménez was taken away to "La Pólvora." When I demanded that these individuals show me some identification, they told me that they were Sandinista Military Police, whose commanding officer was Commander "Marcos".
I must point out that he had been taken on two previous occasions, allegedly because he was a friend of the guardsman known as "Gato Colindres;" and that he had been released after having been found innocent of the charges presented against him.
But when last seized, he remained five days in La Pólvora prison, where he was questioned by Commander "Wilmer." On Thursday, July 26, he told us that he was about to be released but that he had not yet been released because there was no one to prepare the memorandum.
The next day I went to see the Commander and was told that Exequiel was no longer there, that he had been taken to the Bunker in Managua. Since that date, he has been the object of an unrelenting search of all the jails. A complaint was filed with the Office of Complaints of the Ministry of the Interior to obtain their assistance in locating Exequiel.
However, on Thursday, October 11, 1979, Comrade Gloria Bolaños, the official in charge of the Complaints Department of the Ministry of the Interior, told me that she had heard that they had executed Exequiel. She said that because they had executed a number of prisoners, the Granada Commanders had been arrested and had been dismissed from the army. She also said that among all those executed, there were at most two or three who were innocent victims. She said she could not lie to member of the family because she did not want to see us wear ourselves out. She told me that a number of arbitrary acts had been committed in Granada at that time and that she could do nothing.
It is because of the foregoing that I turn to you to denounce formally the disappearance and presumed execution of Exequiel Zavala Jiménez so that you may make the case public and investigate those responsible for the presumed murder.
On April 24, 1980, the pertinent parts of this denunciation were sent to the Government of Nicaragua for its observations.
On May 28, 1980, the Commission received a reply from the Government of Nicaragua acknowledging receipt of this case as well as Case 7056, mentioned earlier. The Government told the Commission that the jurisdictional authorities for the case had been asked to provide the information. To date, no information has been received.
6. Before conducting its on-site observation in Nicaragua, the Commission also received the following cases concerning the executions at La Pólvora. These cases too have been presented to the Government of Nicaragua, and again, no reply has been received.
Case 7063: Gabino Velásquez Meza
On July 23, 1979, Gabino Velásquez Meza, a single adult and former private in the defunct National Guard, turned himself in to La Pólvora Command Post in the city of Granada, since he had been told that "Los Muchachos" (the FSLN) were searching for him; it was his understanding that his physical safety would be guaranteed by turning himself in to the new authorities and thus he decided to appear, accompanied by his wife and small children.
In the days that followed we were able to send him food. He sent us papers, which proved to us that he was there. However, by the third day of his stay in La Pólvora, a militiaman stationed at the command Post told us that he had been taken to the Modelo Prison, information that a commander by the name of Lang. Who was one of those in charge of that prison facility, confirmed for us.
Since that date, we have conducted an intense and relentless search for Gabino, not only at the Modelo prison but also in other penitentiaries; thus far we have found nothing.
It is because of the above that I run to you for aid in taking steps to establish his whereabouts and to determine whether or not he is alive, since there are rumors that executions were carried out at that Command Post.
Jorge Villalobos Toruño, 45 years of age, married and a chauffeur, was apprehended on July 26, 1979, in the city of Granada, and taken to the La Pólvora jail, form whence he disappeared on July 29. Commander "Wilmer," according to relatives of the prisoner, told them that there had apparently been an order for his execution. However, later other individuals stated that hey had seen him in the Modelo Prison and that he was being held incommunicado.
On July 24, 1979, Private Gustavo Adolfo Marín Guzmán, and adult domiciled in Granada, turned himself in to the authorities of the FSLN. He was confined in the cells of La Pólvora. The officer in charge was Commander Marvin González Ruis, known by the pseudonym "Wilmer," who later gave the order for execution. Neighbors in the vicinity of the Santa Ana hacienda, on the Los Malacos road, Department of Granada, said that they saw the body of this individual together with the remains of Dr. Francisco Mayorga.
On July 25, 1979, Mr. Luis Martínez Mercado, an adult domiciled in Granada, and former National Guard aid, was confined in the cells of La Pólvora. He was then taken away, destination unknown, on orders form Commander Marvin González Ruis, known by the pseudonym "Wilmer." The reports are that there were massive executions that day. Nothing of his whereabouts in known and he is presumed to be Dead.
Cristóbal Vargas Rocha, 24 years of age, single, a custodian and resident of Granada, was appended on Sunday, July 24, 1979. The reason for this capture is not known. Through a militiaman stationed at La Pólvora (a Granada Prison) it was learned that on July 26, 1979, at 11:00 p.m., some 50 prisoners were taken away and brought to an area near the shore of Lake Granada, where they dug their own graves.
The officer in charge of the command post was the so-called "Wilmer," whose name is Marvin González Ruis. He is the direct author of these mass executions.
With respect to the case of Cristóbal Vargas Rocha, the Commission received the following information:
7. On March 17, 1980, the relatives went to the place specified, which is on the way to the "El Diamante" rice plantation, in the Asese zone, approximately 500 meters beyond the San Roberto Hacienda. Aided by local farmers, who provided shovels and even by certain members of the Sandinista Army who had been informed of the purpose of the visit, the relatives discovered various human remains: two skulls, a number of ribs, pelvic bones that still had pieces of cloth stuck to them, such as a pair of red pants and a red and blue striped shirts.
8. The next day, March 18, the relatives, on the advice of an attorney, submitted a denunciation of what they had discovered to the Criminal Judge of the District of Granada, Dr. Agustín Cruz Pérez, and requested an investigation of another site where other bodies were alleged to be.
The relatives also sent a letter to the Attorney General, Dr. Ernesto Castillo Martínez, requesting a careful investigation into the events and the individuals responsible. A copy of this letter was submitted to the Commission during its on-site observation. It reads as follows:
We are relatives of the prisoners who disappeared from the La Pólvora prison in Granada in the last days of July 1979. The individual in charge of the Command Post at that time was Mr. Marvin González, whose pseudonym, is "Wilmer." Through a number of inquiries with various state agencies, we have learned of executions of prisoners being held at La Pólvora, executions that took place at the time in question. According to a number of witnesses, those executions were carried out at three or four different sites outside of Granada. The military at La Pólvora referred to those sites as Panamá, México, Guatemala and Red Cross, as they had told the prisoners that they were going to be transferred to those countries or to the Red Cross in Managua. Two of those fatal sites have already been located. One is at the place known as "La Montañita," on the Santa Ana Hacienda, on the Los Malacos road northeast of the city of Granada; the other is at the site known as "La Arocera" on the road to "El Diamante" Hacienda, in the vicinity of the Port of Asese south of Granada. However, despite our many efforts and efforts made at our request by attorneys and officials of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights of Nicaragua (CPDH), the facts have not been thoroughly investigated and the few official reports are partial and contradictory. This has caused us, our children and relatives, anxiety and constant pain. We are trapped in uncertainty, and face the possibility that our relatives are still alive in some prison, without any physical, moral and legal assistance. Our personal lives and the lives of our families are seriously affected; we go back and forth, between hope and pain constantly. A considerable number of us have suffered serious breakdowns or have eve died as a result of such prolonged suffering. In view of the fact that the number of prisoners who disappeared from La Pólvora prison is high, and may be as many as several hundred, and taking into consideration the unclear circumstances surrounding the case, we hereby submit a formal denunciation of these events to you, inasmuch s the law has delegated to the Ministry in your charge the responsibility for locating the prisoners who disappeared, and establishing any guilt there may be. Thus, we demand a thorough and complete investigation into the military authorities who were part of the General Staff of the city of Granada at that time, those persons responsible for the custody of the prisoners, who drove the vehicle which took the prisoners to the aforementioned places and other individuals who participated and who can testify to the events that took palace. We ask that you inform us when the specific inquiries will be made, so that we ourselves can cooperate with you by contributing documents or new information on these cases. We expressly request that this denunciation as well as the measures which you or your delegates conduct be well publicized so that other families in similar circumstances who, out of ignorance of fear, have not dared to present their cases, may present them to you as soon as possible. It is our belief that in the new Nicaragua, effective respect of human rights must be guaranteed, especially the right to life and to personal freedom, without discrimination, as provided by law and set forth in the international conventions signed by Nicaragua and solemnly ratified by the Junta of the government of national Reconstruction. In the hope that justice will be done and in the name of the blood of our countrymen that has already been shed, we demand that a diligent investigation be conducted and that those found to be responsible for criminal acts be punished with exemplary rigor since once the crimes committed against the prisoners at La Pólvora have been established, they will assuredly constitute a clear case of genocide, described in our Penal Code as a crime against the international order. We have requested the assistance and guidance of the Permanent Commission of Human Rights of Nicaragua (CPDH) which, as a humanitarian and impartial body, has taken up our cases out of fraternal interest and has studied them objectively and calmly. It is precisely as a result of a suggestion made by this humanitarian organization that we turn to you today in one more effort to clarify the facts, to establish the whereabouts of our relatives who are still alive and to achieve the for immediate release of those found to be free of any responsibility for the crimes for which they were arrested. We are confident that our request will be heard and processed, with the urgency that the gravity of the situation requires that you will put into operation all the mechanisms at your reach. And that you will use the staff and resources that the law assigns for the proper exercise of justice. We place our faith in god and our trust in the authorities of our Government of National Reconstruction. Any information should be forwarded to the Office of the Permanent Commission of Human Rights of Nicaragua (CPDH), Montoya District, 2 blocks to the lake; in this capital city.
10. Relatives of the 24 prisoners who were taken to La Pólvora and who are presumed to have been executed signed the letter. The names of these individuals are as follows:
Máximiliano Jaime López, 47 years old
Vicente Cuadra Chamorro, 31 years old
Alberto Varillas Chamorro, 45 years old
Luis Rey López Cajina, 24 years old
Hernaldo López Cajina, 20 years old
Amado López Cajina, 22 years old
David Salvador Argüello Pasos, 40 years old
Bismark Rodríguez Salazar, 41 years old
Julio César Urbina Vargas, 48 years old
Gustavo Adolfo Marín Guzmán, 23 years old
Julio Morales Carache, 41 years old
Iván Alfonso Molina Mercado, 21 years old
Luis Martínez Mercado, 42 years old
Diego Carrillo Cruz, 45 years old
Armando Mercado Muñoz, 20 years old
Armando Mercado Mora, 54 years old
Antonio Pérez Sequeira, 36 years old
José Mercedes Alonso Pasos, 36 years old
Juan Alfredo Rojas Silva, 22 years old
Jorge Villalobos Toruño, 42 years old
Exequiel Zavala Jiménez, 49 years old
Roberto José Marenco Ramírez, 18years old
Modesto Orlando Mayorga Ricera, 47 years old
Ignacio Muñoz Espinoza, 25 years old
11. During its visit to Nicaragua, the Commission received denunciations that the following prisoners disappeared from La Pólvora prison in July 1979, and are presumed to have been executed:
José Antonio Arroliga Ríos, 16 years old
Víctor Manuel Murillo Hurtado, 24 years old
José Octavio Vásquez Miranda, 37 years old
José Vicente López Morales, 22 years old
Juan Francisco Mayorga Rivas, 45 years old
William José Vargas Alaniz, 24 years old
12. Later, the Government of Nicaragua informed the Commission that the Supreme Court, by means of an official letter dated May 18, 1981, ordered the Examining Judge to continue the proceedings and to report the findings to the Supreme Court. To date, the Commission has received no further information.
C. Other Denunciations Concerning Illegal Executions
1. The IACHR has received complaints of executions throughout Nicaragua. The reported executions occurred primarily during the month of July 1979, although there are some cases of later executions. By way of example, the following complaints are cited:
In León:
Case 7735: Juan José Vallejos Jarquin
This person was 22 years of age, single, and a salesman living in León. He was picked up in Leon's Coyolar neighborhood on July 20, 1979. He was then taken to the Providence Command Post in that city and later sent to Pochote, where the individual in charge was a militiaman known by the pseudonym "Eliseo." They said that he was on El Cardón Island in Corinto, but presumably he was executed on July 23, 1979, by militiaman known as "Alesio" and "Bill," and then supposedly buried in El Pochote prison.
In Rama:
Twenty-two years of age, single, a farmer with domicile in Managua. This person was picked up on July 28, 1979 in Rama by Comrade "Andrés." His two brothers were also picked up. He has not been found in any prison since then and is presumed dead. A man by the name of Doming, who lives near the place where they killed them, told their mother that they had been executed and that he (Domingo) had buried them; he showed her the place only in order for her to obtain an order to exhume the bodies. It seems that they were buried on the El Guarumo Bridge, on the road to Rama.
In Estelí:
A 19 years old student in his 4th year of high school at the Military Academy of Nicaragua. Mauricio was handed over by Monsignor Barni, a representative of the Matagalpa Red Cross at that time, to the Estelí Red Cross, where the individual in charge is Dr. Orlando Moncada Z. Mauricio's name, along with the names of other refugees, appears on the for July 19, 1979 list. The militiamen came to take him away and he was held prisoner at Nuestra Señora del Rosario School and the Calvario Church in Estelí. When I appeared, they told me that he was not there; but I was able to obtain information from a prisoner, who told me that one night they had taken Mauricio and another group away to kill them. The individuals in charge at that Command Post were Germán, Francisco Rivera, Dumas, José María, and Claudio. Claudio was the one who had come to take him away. They told me that if Mauricio did not turn up, to say an "our father," because he was flying; they laughed sarcastically and it was impossible to get any information about him. At this point; I have spent 15 months in Agony, not knowing what they did to Mauricio.
A former private in the National Guard, Roberto was apprehended on July 24 of last year, in the city of San Isidro, Department of Matagalpa. He was taken to on eof the Command Posts in that area, the person in charge was Comrade "Rito." Later he was taken to the Command Post at the Baptist church in the city of Estelí. A prisoner at that Command post told me that Roberto had been brutally tortured and that one night they had taken him away to question him and that he had not returned to the prison. Since that time we have had no information about him.
In the process of making inquiries, I went to the Palacio de la Revolución, to the Office of Complaints, which is part of the Ministry of the Interior, to denounce Roberto's case. At the Ministry of the Interior, a woman who works there told me that they has executed Roberto and that they had cut off his head.
A worker, 22 years old, Juan Castrillo Dávila was taken to the Sébaco Command Post on July 19, 1979, since Comrade Antonio Soza had ordered his arrest. It should be added that a sister and a brother were taken prisoner for wanting to ascertain his whereabouts.
At the office of the Attorney General of the Sandinista People's Army, comrade "Noel" reported that they had executed him, but said nothing as to what they had done with the body.
Yalagüina – Somoto:
7061: Antonio Cruz Vallecillo
Sixty years of age, a farmer living in Yalagüina. He was taken to the Palacagüina Command Post by militiaman Rafael Molina Benavidez, and turned over to the individual in charge, whose pseudonym was "Efraín." The day after his detention, Efraín was asked about Antonio's whereabouts and answered that they had taken him to Somoto. We immediately went to the Somoto Command Post and the individual in charge assured me that no prisoner from Palacagüina had arrived there and to bring him proof of arrest. I arrived in Palacagüina four days later; they searched through the files and told me that his name was not there. Since that time, I have searched for Antonio in all the prisons in the country, but without success.
I have strong suspicious that they killed him because a combatant who came in August to drill the militiamen in Yalagüina told his wife that "they sent Antonio Cruz to Panamá." And when that expression is used, it means that they have already killed him.
In Matagalpa:
A married adult, and former bill collector for the Office of the Mayor of Matagalpa.
This person turned himself in at the Lupe Moreno Central Command Post in Matagalpa, on August 9, 1979. He remained there for twenty days and was released when proven innocent. He was given a safe-conduct.
On October 2, two members of the Sandinista People's Army stationed al "El Complejo" came to his home to pick him up again, although he was released on condition that he appear the following day. He showed them his order of release, which had been given to him earlier, but they said that it was invalid.
On October 4, 1979, at 8:00 a.m., he appeared at the "compound;" his wife accompanied him. He was turned over to comrade "Charol," and was taken to the Totolate Command Post, where he remained until October 15. Then he was taken away, destination unknown. Since that time no one knows of his whereabouts.
Mr. Juan José Mungia Medina was picked up on July 24, 1979, in the city of Chinandega, and taken to the Command Post located in the Hotel Cosigüina, the individual in charge being Comrade Hernán and his assistance, Comrade Carolina. He remained there 5 days, and was then taken away, destination unknown.
In Masatepe:
7243: Rufino Marcial Jarquín Lovo
Rufino Marcial Jarquín Lovo and adult and former private in the National Guard was picked up on August 16, in the town of San José de Monte Redondo, Department of Masatepe. He was taken to the Command Post there, and then to the Masaya Command Post. His relatives were unable to obtain information as to his whereabouts at that Command Post. In a subsequent inquiry at that Command Post, they said that Rufino Marcial Jarquín Lovo was at the Managua Modelo prison. Everything that had been said earlier was false. Since, according to statements made by Comrade Manuel, a member of the Sandinista People's Army stationed at that Command Post, he had been executed and he and a number of other militiamen at the Masatepe Command Post had taken part in that action. His body was allegedly to be found near the Health Office in that town. The Army Attorney's Office had information on the case, but has not made any statement of the facts to date. Efforts to have his body exhumed have been unsuccessful.
Mr. Manuel Montenegro Salazar was detained on August 18, 1979, at the Command Post at the Masaya Social Club, where the individual in charge was Comrade Alvaro González (Antollín), who said that Mr. Montenegro had been executed.
The individual indicated as a suspect is Narciso Calero (Bosuergues), since at the time of his capture, Narciso Calero told Mr. Montenegro that "he had debts and was going to pay them"
Nueva Guinea:
On July 20, 1979 Zacarías Montoya Ponce. 27 years of age and married, who had been forced to serve as watch for the National Guard, turned himself in at Nueva Guinea, Department of Zelaya. Later they said that they had transferred him to Tipitapa, and then that he was in Modelo prison; but all of that is a lie, since up until now his relatives have learned nothing of his whereabouts. However, neighbors in the area said that they had seen him and 20 other prisoners taken out of Nueva Guinea for execution. Supposedly, the individual responsible for this act is Remigio Estrada, who was in charge of the Nueva Guinea Command Post. At the present time his relatives are being harassed in the sense that the Agrarian Reform Institute wants to confiscate their property.
2. Convincing evidence has been presented to the IACHR that a number of executions took place in various parts of Nicaragua during the period immediately following the fall of the government of General Somoza, however, for no city the information as detailed as in the case of Grenada.
3. During its visit to Nicaragua, the Commission also received evidence that summary executions had occurred during the first days of the new Government. During his meeting with the Commission, Commander Borge, Minister of the Interior, acknowledged that some executions had in fact, occurred. He stated the following:
In a historical step, the revolution decided not to execute anyone; these were the guidelines we followed even during the war. There is proof of that. I remember when I was tortured brutally, beaten, I told them: When we are in power, our vengeance will be to spare your lives. Let us suppose, Mr. Chairman, that they kill you wife, your sister and your son; it may be that the leaders have the moral stature of forgive this, but not the enormous mass of people who have suffered all the horrors of the dictatorship. The natural reaction would be to execute all of them once the revolution triumphed; however, it was an insignificant minority that was executed. When I came to the Ministry, they gave me two million cordobas, I began to turn the money over, without even asking for receipt. I don't know where the money is now. We punished many people. We expelled a soldier whom I found to be committing abuses; we sent comrades who were committing abuses to prison. There was no control over anything in the first months of the revolution. When we founded the Ministry, there were no judges, there were no courts, there was no Supreme Court; all that we could do was to keep them form executing the people held at the Red Cross. We asked the Church for assistance to help control the enraged masses; we have asked for its assistance to improve the conditions in the prisons, where we have serious limitations, overcrowding, and lack of food. This is a country that was destroyed, reduced to rubble, one must not forget that.
4. During its meeting with the members of the Junta, the Commission again expressed its concern with respect to allegations of executions of Somocists prisoners in July 1979. Dr. Córdova Rivas replied that in the period between July 19 and the end of that month, the Government did not have full control over the law into their own hands and the government recognizes that excesses occurred, which it does not try to justify. For his part, Dr. Hassan added that many individuals took their own revenge; they felt wounded and hurt because they lost relatives in the war or had relatives murdered by the Somocists Guardsmen. The government could not accept responsibility or reply, precisely because this was a question of the people's revenge.
5. During the Commission's meeting with members of the Political Directorate of the FSLN, commander Arce made the following observations: one must not forget that he Nicaraguan people lived under a dictatorship for 45 years and endured 18 years of an armed struggle that cost more than 100,000 lives. Despite this very high cost, the Revolutionary Government has avoided institutionalizing the death penalty and has avoided the concept of revenge by eliminating torture. But, of course, there are problems. The FSLN spent years in the mountains, in underground, there were no police. Today there is a serious problem in dealing with delinquency. The FSLN taught people how to carry out attacks and even how to kill, they cannot be re-socialized overnight. This explains the initial excesses.
6. In the Commission's view, while the government of Nicaragua clearly intended to respect the lives of all those defeated in the civil war. During the weeks immediately subsequent to the Revolutionary triumph, when the government was not in effective control, illegal executions took place which violated the right to life, and these acts have not been investigated and the persons responsible have not been punished.
[1] The American Convention on Human Rights states the following: I) Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life. Ii) In countries that have not abolished the death penalty, it may be imposed only for the most serious crimes and pursuant to a final judgment rendered by a competent court in accordance with the law establishing such punishment, enacted prior to the commission of the crime. The application of such punishment, prior to the commission of the crime. The application of such punishment shall not be extended to crimes to which it does not presently apply. Iii) The death penalty shall not be reestablished in States that have abolished it. Iv) In no case shall capital punishment be inflicted of political offenses or related common crimes. V) Capital punishment shall not be imposed upon persons who, at the time the crime was committed, were under 18 years of age or over 70 years of age; nor shall it be applied to pregnant women. Vi) Every person condemned to death shall have the right to apply for amnesty, pardon or commutation of sentence, which may be granted in all cases. Capital punishment shall not be imposed while such a petition is pending decision by the competent authority.
[2] Article 38 of the Constitution of Nicaragua of 1974 allowed the death penalty as punishment for the following crimes: high treason committed in a foreign war; serious crimes of purely military nature, and the crimes of homicide, patricide, arson or theft followed by death, under circumstances classified as serious under the law.
[3] Article 53 (i) of the 1977 penal Code.
[4] Article 126 establishes a punishment of 10 to 15 years imprisonment for the crime of patricide; Article 149 establishes a penalty of 15 to 20 years imprisonment for the crimes of genocide, while Article 529 establishes a penalty of 10 to 20 years imprisonment for treason. Article 92 establishes 30 years imprisonment as the maximum penalty permissible under the law.
[5] After concluding its discussion of this Report but before giving it its final approval, the Commission was informed that on the night of Saturday, June 27, and in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 28, 1981, Sandinista soldiers killed 16 prisoners in the "Heroes y Mártires de Nueva Guinea" prison near Managua, when putting down a prison riot. The Commission is now investigating these facts, in accordance with its regulations.
[6] The paragraph quotes in this case are the pertinent parts of the communication presented.
[7] CPDH: "The La Pólvora prisoners. What happened to them?", June 6, 1980.


text:
Monday Drop In for Seniors 55+
Monday Drop In for Seniors 55+ or Adults 18+ with Physical/Mental Challenges
We offer a workshop/presentation on various topics that is of interest to our clients and those looking for ways to help remain independent in their homes while offering a Hot Nutritious Lunch (by Donation, donation is to cover cost of food). If you have any dietary restrictions we can accommodate lunch, just call our office at 613-332-4700 ext 4 the week before and advise our staff.
Get Connected, Stay Connected within your community!
Stay for FREE VON SMART Exercises from 3-4pm, Exercises for all Mobility levels, come have fun with us!
Upcoming events:
Monday January 15, 2018: Lets Talk about Funeral Planning by Daly Funeral Homes : Lunch is Chinese Food ( Honey Garlic Pork with Vegetable Stir Fry and Spring Rolls)
Monday January 22, 2018: Lets talk about hearing by The Canadian Hearing Society: Lunch is Various Soups and a Roll
Monday January 29, 2018: Lets talk about Budgeting by North Hastings Budget Services Heather Johns: Lunch is Meatloaf with Mushroom Gravy

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Dreams of Obama
Transformational president or another disappointment? That's up to us.
Barack Obama, it is true, is a transformational leader.
But he needs a transformational movement to become a transformational president.
He is transformational not only by his charisma and brilliance, but by embodying the possibility of an African-American being chosen president in the generation following the civil-rights movement. Whether he wins or loses, the vast movement inspired by Obama will become the next generation of American social activists.
For many Americans, the possibility of Obama is a deeply personal one. I mean here the mythic Obama who exists in our imaginations, not the literal Obama whose centrist positions will disappoint many progressives.
My wife and I have an adopted an 8-year-old "biracial" boy whose roots are African-American. My adult son is married to an African-American woman with roots in Jamaica and Costa Rica. Our family is part of the globalized generation Obama represents. What is at stake for our kids' future is real, palpable, not only political. Their future will very much be shaped by the outcome of this election. Millions of people in this country—and around the world—feel similarly affected.
Myths are all-important, as Obama writes in his Dreams From My Father. Fifty years ago, the mythic Obama existed only as an aspiration, an ideal, in a country where interracial love was taboo and interracial marriage was largely banned. In 1960, in my liberal community of Ann Arbor, Mich., our student newspaper exposed the University of Michigan's dean of women for secretly spying on white coeds seen having coffee with black men in the campus Union and notifying their parents. In those days, too, the vision of an African-American as president was preserved only in a dream state. As Obama himself declared on the night of the Iowa primary, "Some said this night would never come."
The early civil-rights movement, the jazz musicians and the Beat poets dreamed up this mythic Obama before the literal Obama could materialize. His African father and white countercultural mother dared to dream and love him into existence, incarnate him, at the creative moment of the historic march on Washington. Only the overthrow of Jim Crow segregation then opened space for the dream to rise politically. This collapse was not an engineering feat, like a bridge falling, but the consequence of suffering and martyrdom along with countless invisible feats of organization in the American South.
If this sounds unscientific or, as some would say, cultish, think about it. None of the supposedly expert people in the political, media or intellectual establishments saw this day coming. I didn't expect it myself, the news was carried to me by a new generation, including my own grown-up children. It was dreamed up and built "beyond the radar" or "outside the box" by experienced dreamers with long histories in community organizing, social movements and not a few lost causes. They were sustained by the stones the builders left out, the movement, "calloused hand by calloused hand," that Obama refers to.
In one of his best oratorical moments, Obama summons the spirit of social movements that were built from the bottom up, from the Revolutionary War to the abolitionist crusade to the women's suffrage cause to the eight-hour day and the rights of labor, ending with the time of his birth when the walls came down in Selma and Montgomery, Ala., and Delano, Calif. As he repeats this mantra of movements thousands of times to millions of Americans, a new cultural understanding becomes possible. This is the foundation of a new American story that is badly needed, one that attributes whatever is great about this country to the ghosts of those who came before, in social movements from the margins. Though Howard Zinn may not agree, Obama to a large degree has appropriated Zinn's "people's history" model of America as against the conservative narrative that glorifies wars against alien savages as necessary to forge a new democracy in the wilderness, the unbroken story of American exceptionalism, from the colonial forests to the Iraqi deserts, from Custer to McCain. Obama's emerging narrative also includes but supercedes the other major explanation of American specialness, the narrative of the "melting pot," by noting that whatever "melting" did occur was always in the face of massive and entrenched opposition from the privileged.
I have met John McCain, and I happen to like him as an earthy sort of guy. But I am constantly aware that he bombed Vietnam at least 25 times before being shot down in a war that never should have been fought, in a defeat that still cannot say its name. He wants to continue the unwinnable Iraq war, costing 10 billion dollars per month, until every suspect Iraqi is dead, wounded or detained, even though our military tactics keep causing more young Iraqis to hate us than ever before. As if fighting the war on terrorism until the end of terrorism isn't enough for him, McCain wants to reignite the Cold War until the Russians are forever broken and humiliated. The vanguard for the anti-Russian offensive has been Georgia, a stronghold of the neoconservative lobby and, incidentally, a cash cow for McCain's own foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, who made hundreds of thousands of dollars working as a lobbyist for the country before joining McCain's campaign team.
By supporting Georgia's impractical attempts to seize the breakaway areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, McCain has abetted another unnecessary war he cannot win.
This inability to limit the adventurist appetite for war is the most dangerous element of the McCain and Republican worldview. It is paralleled, of course, by their inability to limit the corporate appetite for an unregulated market economy. In combination, the brew is an economy directed to the needs of the country-club rich, the oil companies and military contractors. A form of crony capitalism slouches forward in place of either competitive markets or state regulation. The McCain future will be one of circling the wagons around the 5 percent who own 40 percent of the planet's resources against the 95 percent who live vulnerable lives under our web of empire. To nail down this future, McCain has pledged to nominate Supreme Court candidates approved by the far right.
And yet McCain has a good chance, the best chance among Republicans, of winning in November. He has Gen. Eisenhower's war-hero persona. It is a dangerous world out there. He appeals to those whose idea of the future is more of the past, buying time against the inevitable. And McCain is running against Barack Obama, who threatens our institutions and culture simply by representing the unexpected and unauthorized future.
My prediction: If he continues on course, Obama will win the popular vote by a few percentage points in November, but is at serious risk in the Electoral College. The institution rooted in the original slavery compromise may be a barrier too great to overcome.
The priority for Obama supporters has to be mobilization of new, undecided and independent voters in up-for-grabs states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, while expanding the Electoral College delegates in places like New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and possibly Virginia. Unlike the nadir of 2000, when Al Gore and the institutional Democrats seemed unable to mount a resistance, another Electoral College loss should trigger an unrelenting and forceful democracy movement against the Electoral College and other institutional chains on the right to know, vote and participate.
There are many outside the Obama movement who assert that the candidate is "not progressive enough," that Obama will be co-opted as a new face for American interventionism, that in any event real change cannot be achieved from the top down.
These criticisms are correct. But in the end, they miss the larger point.
The network www.progressivesforobama.blogspot.com is the site to visit for those who want to share and explore these concerns in depth, while still wanting to help the Obama movement win.
Most of us want President Obama to withdraw troops from Iraq more rapidly than in 16 months. But it is important that Obama's position is shared by Iraq's prime minister and the vast majority of both our people. The Iraqi regime, pressured by its own people, has rejected the White House and McCain's refusal to adopt a timetable.
The real problem with Obama's position on Iraq is his adherence to the outmoded Baker-Hamilton proposal to leave thousands of American troops behind for training, advising and ill-defined "counterterrorism" operations. Obama should be pressured to reconsider this recipe for a low-visibility counterinsurgency quagmire.
On Iran, Obama has usefully emphasized diplomacy as the only path to manage the bilateral crisis and assure the possibility of orderly withdrawal from Iraq. He should be pressed to resist any escalation.
On Afghanistan, Obama has proposed transferring 10,000 American combat troops from Iraq, which means out of the frying pan, into the fire. A July 28 Time magazine cover story by Rory Stewart rejects such thinking: "A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining." Obama should accept this advice.
Pakistan, and the possibility of a ground invasion by Afghan and U.S. troops, could be Obama's Bay of Pigs, a debacle. On Israel-Palestine, he will pursue diplomacy more aggressively, but little more. Altogether, the counterinsurgencies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are likely to become a spreading global quagmire and a human-rights nightmare, nullifying the funding prospects for health-care reform or other domestic initiatives.
In Latin America, Obama supports the Colombian military, riddled with drug lords, against the Columbia guerrillas, with ties of their own to narco trafficking. Beyond that, he has been out of step and out of touch with the winds of democratic change sweeping Latin America. His commitment to fulfilling the United Nations anti-poverty goals, or to eradicating sweatshops through a global living wage, is underwhelming and—given his anti-terrorism wars—will be underfinanced.
And so on. The man will disappoint as well as inspire.
Once again, then, why support him by knocking on doors, sending money, monitoring polling places, getting our hopes up? There are three reasons that stand out in my mind. First, American progressives, radicals and populists need to be part of the vast Obama coalition, not perceived as negative do-nothings in the minds of the young people and African-Americans at the center of the organized campaign. It is not a "lesser evil" for anyone of my generation's background to send an African-American Democrat to the White House. Pressure from supporters of Obama is more effective than pressure from critics who don't care much if he wins and won't lift a finger to help him. Second, his court appointments will keep us from a right-wing lock on social, economic and civil-liberties issues during our lifetime. Third, we all can chew gum and walk at the same time; that is, it should be no problem to vote for Obama and picket his White House when justified.
Obama himself says he has solid progressive roots but that he intends to campaign and govern from the center. (He has said he is neither a "Scoop" Jackson Democrat nor a Tom Hayden Democrat.) That is a challenge to rise up, organize and reshape the center, and building a climate of public opinion so intense that it becomes necessary to redeploy from military quagmires, take on the unregulated corporations and uncontrolled global warming and devote resources to domestic priorities like health care, the green economy and inner-city jobs for youth.
What is missing in the current equation is not a capable and enlightened centrist but a progressive social movement on a scale like those of the past.
The refrain is familiar. Without the militant abolitionists, including the Underground Railroad and John Brown, there would have been no pressure on President Lincoln and no black troops for the South. Without the radicals of the 1930s, there would have been no pressure on President Franklin Roosevelt, no New Deal, no Wagner Act, no Social Security. Without the civil-rights and peace movements pressuring President John F. Kennedy, there would have been no march on Washington and no proposal to reverse the nuclear-arms race.
It is true that these radical reforms were limited and gradually weakened, but there is no evidence to suggest that if radicals had abstained from mainstream electoral politics that deeper reforms or revolution would have resulted.
The creative tension between large social movements and enlightened Machiavellian leaders is the historical model that has produced the most important reforms in the course of American history.
Mainstream political leaders will not move to the left of their own base. There are no shortcuts to radical change without a powerful and effective constituency organized from the bottom up. The next chapter in Obama's new American story remains to be written, perhaps by the most visionary of his own supporters.
His own movement will have to pull him towards full withdrawal from Iraq, or the regulation of the great financial power centers, instead of waiting for him to lead. Already among his elite caste of fund-raisers, there is more interest in his position on the capital-gains tax than holding Halliburton accountable. And his "cast of 300" national security advisers, according to The New York Times, "fall well within centrist Democratic foreign policy thinking."
Progressives need to unite for Barack Obama but also unite—organically at least, not in a top-down way—on issues like peace, the environment, the economy, media reform, campaign finance and equality like never before. The growing conflict today is between democracy and empire, and the battlefronts are many and often confusing. Even the Bush years have failed to unite American progressives as effectively as occurred during Vietnam. There is no reason to expect a President McCain to unify anything more than our manic depression.
But there is the improbable hope that the movement set ablaze by the Obama campaign will be enough to elect Obama and a more progressive Congress in November, creating an explosion of rising expectations for social movements—here and around the world—that President Obama will be compelled to meet in 2009.
That is a moment to live and fight for.


text:
The Roots of Cardel
When we built the first Cardel home in 1973, we didn't imagine that we'd become international leaders in new home construction. But while our ambition was modest – to build one home for one family – our sense of responsibility was as real as that first nail.
Today, some four decades later, Cardel has built thousands of homes throughout North America. We take our role as community stewards to heart, and we're committed to enriching and preserving the neighborhoods where we build for generations.
In Colorado, Florida, Alberta and Ontario, Cardel homes don't just exceed standards – they set benchmarks. Our dedication to homebuilding excellence is stronger than ever, and the thousands of families who come home to a Cardel every day can take comfort in decades of building innovation.
Really Well Built.
Cardel is proud to bring families home to great communities with our award-winning products and services. Our really well-built single-family homes. Our modern townhomes and condos. Our top-notch designs and renos team. Our financial services experts. And beyond bricks and mortar, our charitable division, Cardel Foundations, which is deeply involved in initiatives that enrich communities.
We even have our own state-of-the-art theatre, which is offered to community groups and non-profit organizations in exchange for a donation to local food banks. The Cardel Theatre collects approximately 6,500 kg of food annually to help people in need.
Our community spirit shines throughout the entire Cardel organization. From our hand-selected tradespeople and knowledgeable sales associates to our design experts, our success is a product of the people and partners who have helped us grow from a family business into an internationally respected builder. And yet, despite our booming growth and expansion, Cardel retains the best attributes of a family-run business: quick reflexes, a tight-knit management team and an ironclad commitment to quality and community.
It's just how we've always done things, and it's made us what we are today.
Cardel Culture.
Cardel is full of talented individuals who are very good at what they do. It's easy to find someone who's been with us for 5, 10, 20 years or even longer. That's because we treat our people well and create an atmosphere where they can thrive. It's nice to feel good about coming to work.
Some of the ways we foster a dynamic company culture are through events. From charity races and golf tournaments to movie days and holiday parties, there's a full calendar of events to participate in each year.


text:
NORRISTOWN, Pa. (AP) — His Hollywood career and good-guy image in ruins, Bill Cosby was led away to prison in handcuffs Tuesday at age 81, sentenced to three to 10 years behind bars for drugging and sexually assaulting a woman at his gated estate.
The punishment made him the first celebrity of the #MeToo era to be sent to prison and all but completed the dizzying, late-in-life fall from grace for the comedian, TV star and breaker of racial barriers.
"It is time for justice. Mr. Cosby, this has all circled back to you. The time has come," Montgomery County Judge Steven O'Neill said. He quoted from victim Andrea Constand's statement to the court, in which she said Cosby took her "beautiful, young spirit and crushed it."
Cosby declined the opportunity to speak before the sentence came down, and afterward sat laughing and chatting with his defense team. His wife of 54 years, Camille, was not in court. Constand smiled broadly upon hearing the punishment and was hugged by others in the courtroom.
In a blistering statement, Cosby spokesman Andrew Wyatt said the comic was subjected to "most racist and sexist trial in the history of the United States."
Among other things, Wyatt said all three of the psychologists who testified against Cosby were "white women who make money off of accusing black men of being sexual predators," and he accused prosecutors of using a doctored recording of a telephone conversation between Constand's mother and Cosby.
Cosby's lawyers asked that he be allowed to remain free on bail while he appeals his conviction, but the judge appeared incredulous over the request and ordered him locked up immediately, saying that "he could quite possibly be a danger to the community."
The comedian — who is legally blind and uses a cane — removed his watch, tie and jacket and walked out in a white dress shirt and red suspenders, his hands cuffed in front of him. He must serve the minimum of three years before becoming eligible for parole.
"For decades, the defendant has been able to hide his true self and hide his crimes using his fame and fortune. He's hidden behind a character created, Dr. Cliff Huxtable," Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said at a news conference, referring to Cosby's best-known role. But "now, finally, Bill Cosby has been unmasked, and we have seen the real man as he is headed off to prison."
Constand stood at Steele's side but shook her head to say she had no comment.
Former model Janice Dickinson, who was among the 60 or so women who have come forward to accuse Cosby of drugging and violating them over the past five decades, looked at him in the courtroom and said: "Here's the last laugh, pal."
Another accuser in the courtroom, Lili Bernard, said: "There is solace, absolutely. It is his fame and his fortune and his phony philanthropy that has allowed him to get away with impunity. Maybe this will send a message to other powerful perpetrators that they will be caught and punished."
The punishment, which also included a $25,000 fine, came at the end of a two-day hearing at which the judge declared Cosby a "sexually violent predator" — a modern-day scarlet letter that subjects him to monthly counseling for the rest of his life and requires that neighbors and schools be notified of his whereabouts.
The comic once known as America's Dad for his role on the top-rated "Cosby Show" in the 1980s was convicted in April of violating Constand, Temple University women's basketball administrator, at his suburban Philadelphia mansion in 2004. It was the first celebrity trial of the #MeToo era.
Constand testified that Cosby gave her what she thought were herbal pills to ease stress, then penetrated her with his fingers as she lay immobilized on a couch. Cosby claimed the encounter was consensual, and his lawyers branded her a "con artist" who framed the comedian to get a big payday — a $3.4 million settlement she received over a decade ago.
Five other accusers took the stand at the trial as part of an effort by prosecutors to portray him as a predator.
Cosby faced anywhere from probation to 10 years in prison. His lawyers asked for house arrest, saying Cosby is too old and vulnerable to do time in prison. Prosecutors asked for five to 10 years behind bars, saying he could still pose a threat to women.
The sentencing came as another extraordinary #MeToo drama unfolded on Capitol Hill, where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh stands accused of sexual misconduct more than three decades ago.
Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization for Women of New York, credited Cosby's accusers with helping pave the way for the #MeToo movement.
"Bill Cosby seeing the inside of a prison cell sends a strong message that predators — no matter who they are, from Hollywood to Wall Street to the Supreme Court — can no longer be protected at the expense of victims," she said.
The judge ruled on Cosby's "sexually violent predator" status after a psychologist for the state testified that the entertainer appears to have a mental disorder that gives him an uncontrollable urge to have sex with women without their consent.
Steele said Cosby could be sent to Laurel Highlands, a state prison for lower-risk inmates on the other side of the state, about 70 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It serves inmates with special needs and has separate housing units for geriatric prisoners and programs for sex offenders.
In a statement submitted to the court and released Tuesday, Constand, 45, said that she has had to cope with years of anxiety and self-doubt. She said she now lives alone with her two dogs and has trouble trusting people.
"When the sexual assault happened, I was a young woman brimming with confidence and looking forward to a future bright with possibilities," she wrote in her five-page statement. "Now, almost 15 years later, I'm a middle-aged woman who's been stuck in a holding pattern for most of her adult life, unable to heal fully or to move forward."
She also wrote of Cosby: "We may never know the full extent of his double life as a sexual predator, but his decades-long reign of terror as a serial rapist is over."
The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly, which Constand and other accusers have done.
Constand went to police a year after waking up in a fog at Cosby's estate, her clothes askew, only to have the district attorney pass on the case. Another DA reopened the file a decade later and charged the TV star after stand-up comic Hannibal Buress' riff about Cosby being a rapist prompted other women to come forward and after a federal judge, acting on a request from The Associated Press, unsealed some of Cosby's startling, decade-old testimony in Constand's related civil suit.
In his testimony, Cosby described sexual encounters with a string of actresses, models and other young women and talked about obtaining quaaludes to give to those he wanted to sleep with.
Cosby's first trial in 2017 ended with a hung jury. He was convicted at a retrial that opened months after the #MeToo movement had taken down such figures as Hollywood studio boss Harvey Weinstein, NBC's Matt Lauer, actor Kevin Spacey and Sen. Al Franken.
Cosby, whose estimated fortune once topped $400 million, broke barriers in the 1960s as the first black actor to star in a network show, "I Spy." He went on to superstardom as wise and understanding Dr. Cliff Huxtable on "The Cosby Show," a sitcom that showed America a new kind of black TV family: a warm and loving household led by two professionals, one a lawyer, the other a doctor.
He also found success with his Saturday morning cartoon "Fat Albert," appeared in commercials for Jello-O pudding and became a public moralist, lecturing the black community about young people stealing things and wearing baggy pants. He won a Presidential Medal of Freedom and countless Emmys, Golden Globes and Grammy awards.
As the allegations mounted, his career all but collapsed, "Cosby Show" reruns were taken off the air, and one college after another stripped him of his honorary degrees.
Associated Press writer Claudia Lauer contributed to this report.
Shannon Sharpe Loses His Mind & Chugs Liquor After Brittany Renner Reveals Her Body Count, Social Media Reacts
Anthony Anderson Ordered To Pay Ex-Wife $20K A Month In Spousal Support, Social Media Chimes In
Krayzie Bone 'Fighting For His Life' In LA Hospital, Per Report
Can't We All Just Get Along? Black Sitcom Feuds That Broke Up Our Favorite TV Families
Rest In Power: Notable Black Folks Who We've Lost In 2023
Who Is Kayla Nicole? Travis Kelce's Beautiful Black Ex-Girlfriend
Violent White Folks Who Were Taken Into Custody With Loving Care By Police
These Celebs Endorse Copper-Colored Hair For The Fall Season


text:
Installing an Artifact in a Museum That Hasn't Even Been Built Yet
This weekend, two objects are being installed in the National Museum of African American History and Culture—more than a year before it's set to open
For many, the most poignant symbols of segregation during the Jim Crow era are the four men who refused to leave a Greensboro lunch counter or the arrest of Rosa Parks after she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery City bus.
But segregation, says Spencer Crew, a curator for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, was everywhere—even airplanes and train cars. After 1900, all southbound trains were divided into sections for whites and blacks, the former with more room for men's and women's lounges, luggage and hat racks, and spacious restrooms.
The train car provides a vivid backdrop for the inaugural exhibition on segregation that the museum will open with in 2015. The only problem: the nine-decade-old, 44-seat Southern Railway car, donated by railway executive Pete Claussen and his company Gulf & Ohio Railways, won't be able to fit through the door once construction is finished.
So on Sunday, the 153,900-pound passenger car, No. 1200, will dangle above the scaffold-ridden Washington skyline, lifted by cranes and then lowered onto the construction site on Constitution Avenue between 14th and 15th Streets—the first of two major artifacts that will be installed before the museum is built around it.
It's the first time (as far as we can tell) artifacts have been installed into a Smithsonian museum before the building, or at least its shell, takes shape.
The George Washington in a toga statue by Horatio Greenough and the 1926 Pacific steam locomotive at the National Museum of American History and the Skylab at the National Air and Space Museum were put in place before construction was completed, Smithsonian curators say. But at American History, some walls had already been built around the artifacts, and at Air and Space, the roof was already up, making Sunday's installation at the African American History Museum all the more unusual.
Crews on Sunday will also install a more than 21-foot guard tower from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, one of the largest maximum-security prisons in the country nicknamed "Angola" for the 19th-century plantation that once stood on its land.
After final touches are put on the artifacts next week, the rail car and tower will be covered by protective structures so construction can continue around them.
The event, which is open to the public, will close roads for six hours (see details below), but it's a milestone five years in the making.
Pete Claussen and Gulf & Ohio Railways donated the railway car—first built in 1918 as an open-window coach—to the museum in 2009.
In 1940, it was renovated to create separate seating, lounges and restrooms for black and white passengers. But the car was not simply divided in half: to accommodate the larger luxuries in the white seating section, nearly two-thirds of the train was dedicated to white passengers, leaving only a third of car for the "colored section."
Segregation on trains isn't documented as it was in schools or at water fountains, visuals that endure as one of the practice's most common symbols, said Spencer Crew, a curator for the National Museum of African American History and Culture, who noted Frederick Douglass was among those kicked off of trains for refusing to sit in the black passenger car.
"The ability, or inability, to travel is a critical issue," Crew says, one he plans to explore in the museum's first exhibit that will tell the story segregation between the years 1876 and 1968.
The train car was in storage at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, before it was acquired by the museum. Renovations began in 2012 in Stearns, Kentucky, in preparation of this year's arrival in Washington, a process that required 20 different tradesman, from electricians to metalworkers and painters.
The car was in fairly good condition when work began, said John E. Rimmasch, the CEO of Wasatch Railroad Contractors, who was charged with restoring the artifact. After the structural elements had been secured, workers went through the car and restored everything from the hat racks to the paint colors.
Once the car is installed in the museum, visitors will pass through it as they move through the exhibit—giving them a chance to "internalize and feel what that was to walk from the white section of the car to the colored section of the car," Rimmasch said.
The interior of the prison tower won't be accessible to the public once the museum opens, but Crew says it will help drive home the exploration of white power and black incarceration in the mid-20th century, which he'll also feature in the exhibit.
Before the Louisiana State Penitentiary was handed over to the state, the land was used as a plantation that drew its workers from prisoners leased by the state. As a prison, Angola earned a reputation for the corruption that ran rampant behind closed walls, "the nearest kin to slavery that could legally exist," Patricia Cohen once wrote in the New York Times.
From the more than 21-foot tower, wardens kept constant watch over the mostly-black prisoners at the facility, "a reminder that there was a constant effort to control their lives," Crew said.
"The tower—and its role in the penal system—are important to the story I'm telling about the power of the tower and trying to keep African Americans under the control of others," Crew said.
The Louisiana State Penitentiary donated the tower and a prisoner cell to the museum in 2012. This past July, the tower was taken down from the prison's "Camp H" and transported to Stearns, to join the rail car.
Together, they made a three-day journey in a seven-vehicle convoy to Washington, DC,where they will serve as rare reminders of what segregation actually felt like for much of the 20th-century, Claussen says.
"You learn that separate but equal was certainly separate but it wasn't really equal and that's one of the things this demonstrates," he says. "There are very few tangible pieces of segregation left. . .there are so few things you can actually experience what segregation was like and this was one of them," he says.
The tower and rail car are scheduled to arrive around 7 a.m. Sunday. Both objects will be lifted from trucks on Constitution Avenue with cranes and placed into the museum site. Constitution Avenue between 14th and 15th streets will be closed to pedestrians and vehicles throughout the event, which is expected to last from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. For those who want to watch the installation take place, the objects will be visible from Madison Drive, between 14th and 15th streets.


text:
A podcast that mines folklore for material for tabletop roleplaying games, particularly Ars Magica 5th edition.
Creature statistics and transcripts are available from the blog which accompanies the podcast.
May 27, 2023
May 17, 2023
May 10, 2023
May 3, 2023
A podcast mixing historical trivia and tabletop roleplaying games.
Having trouble logging in?


text: Im selling my 5'6,18 1/4,2 1/16 Fred Rubble from Channel Islands. Used only a handful of times. Great board just lookng for something else as i need to thin out my quiver a bit. selling it for $450(OBO)Really great board dont pass this up! Pm me if interested. also selling a set of Future WCT Techflex fins for $70(OBO) Board and fins on craigslist as well: http://cnj.craigslist.org/spo/3635070087.html THANKS!


text:
- Home
- Departments
- Public Works & Mobility
- Wastewater
- Treatment
- Treatment Facility
Treatment Facility
What is Wastewater?
Below the City of Missoula, there is a system of underground pipes that collect the water we use in our daily existence. This used water comes from sinks, drains, and toilets throughout the City. It contains a variety of organic and inorganic pollutants. As it leaves our homes and businesses, it becomes known as wastewater, which is treated in the City of Missoula's Wastewater Treatment Facility. After treatment, it is returned to the Clark Fork River where it can safely be reused.
About the Missoula Wastewater Treatment Facility
The Facility utilizes physical, biological, and chemical treatment methods to treat 6-9 million gallons of wastewater each day prior to reintroducing it to the Clark Fork River.
Purpose of the Facility
The Facility's purpose is to make the water as clean as it can possibly be before it is released back into the environment. This means that essentially all of the pollution must be removed. Pollutants come in many shapes and sizes, including objects as large as a basketball and things which were dissolved or too small to be seen by the marked eye.
As we remove pollutants, we are able to produce at least three beneficial products or results, which are treated water, biosolids that are made into compost, and methane gas that is used as fuel.
Methods to Remove Pollutants
Primary / Physical Treatment
The natural sinking process is called sedimentation. This process allows solids to accumulate on the bottom of the clarifier tanks where they can be removed in a concentrated form. These solids are mostly organic and ultimately become usable as fuel gas and/or compost.
Biological Treatment
In secondary treatment, microorganisms convert the remaining dissolved and suspended pollutants into forms that are more easily removed from the wastewater. One of the two biological systems uses aerobic or air-breathing organisms. These organisms use free oxygen to help break down the pollutants.
The other use anaerobic or non-air-breathing organisms. Anaerobic digestion is used to stabilize the sludge which is removed from the wastewater. These organisms convert some solids to methane gas, which is then used as fuel at the Facility. The biological systems, whether aerobic or anaerobic, are truly alive and are highly susceptible to changes in their environment.
Chemical Treatment
Finally, the treated wastewater is disinfected using chlorine to kill disease-causing organisms. Other harmless chemicals are also sometimes utilized to enhance treatment.
History of the Facility
The facility began treating wastewater in 1962 utilizing only physical or primary treatment. In 1974, secondary treatment utilizing a biological process called activated sludge was added to further improve the quality of the treated wastewater. In 1982, a new solids handling facility, a new digester, and a new headworks building were constructed to further improve the treatment process.
Although Missoula has a very reasonable wastewater user rate, the city has continued to make substantial wastewater treatment improvements to provide the highest levels of pollution abatement possible.


text:
'Nothing To Hide' as counting war dead begins
Sri Lanka said it has "nothing to hide" as it began compiling a death toll from its war against Tamil separatists after allegations of mass killings of civilians.
While rights activists have expressed scepticism at the project, organisers say it will reveal the true cost of one of Asia's bloodiest conflicts, which ended when troops routed the Tamil Tiger rebels in May 2009.
The start of the six-month "census" comes after the dispute over the scale of the killings in the final phases of the conflict dominated a Commonwealth summit hosted by Sri Lanka earlier this month.
The UN says more than 100,000 people were killed during the course of the war, with as many as 40,000 in the final weeks alone.
President Mahinda Rajapakse and his mainly ethnic Sinhalese regime have repeatedly rejected that claim and said there is no need for a separate international investigation.
A top civil servant, P.B Abeykoon, who will supervise the census, says the government has nothing to hide.
"A lot of people have come out with various accusations with their own figures. We will come out with the real facts," he said.
D.C.A Gunawardena, the head of the census department, says his teams will try to determine the numbers of dead, missing, or maimed by the conflict as well as the extent of property damage.
"The public will be asked to substantiate the claims of deaths, missing and property damage," he said.
The president announced the start of the census on his website in a brief statement on Wednesday evening.
The six-month census will see some 16,000 officials fan out across the island to conduct the survey in more than 14,000 villages, including in the mainly Tamil north of the island.
International pressure
International pressure has been steadily building on the Sri Lankan government, and Mr Rajapakse was embarrassed when the leaders of Canada, India and Mauritius all boycotted the Commonwealth summit in protest against the country's rights record.
British prime minister David Cameron did attend, but infuriated Mr Rajapakse by paying an historic visit to the war-torn Jaffna region.
After meeting survivors and relatives who had lost loved ones during the war, Mr Cameron warned he would lead a push for an international probe, unless Sri Lanka produces credible results of its own by March.
Mr Abeykoon says the census shows the government's determination to seek the truth, when asked about the claims of 40,000 civilian deaths.
"Why should we go for a census if we have anything to hide? We are trying to get a clear picture for ourselves," he said.
The director of the New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights, Suhas Chakma, says Sri Lanka has set up several investigations in the past into deaths and disappearances but has not released the findings.
"A number of government inquiries have already been established and there has never been any kind of accountability, so a new one holds no weight whatsoever," he said.
Mr Chakma says the survey will not have credibility unless it allowed it to determine whether international laws relating to war crimes had been broken.
"If they are seeking to assuage the sentiments of the international community and the local people, they need to determine whether war crimes have been committed," he said.
At the Colombo summit, Mr Rajapakse said Sri Lanka needed more time to conduct its own investigations, urging his peers "to trust us".
The census was one of the recommendations of a government-appointed panel that submitted a report last year.(AFP)


text:
This article is more than 1 year old
Big demand for pay by phone tech, claims Nokia
The sole manufacturer of NFC handsets
Nokia is championing the success of its UK NFC trial, claiming that almost 80 per cent of users want contactless payment systems on their mobile phone - a happy coincidence for Nokia, since no one else is making NFC handsets as yet.
The trial - the largest in Europe - saw 500 punters equipped with NFC-capable handsets loaded with applications for Transport for London's Oyster and Barclays payWave system, along with some credit to play with between November '07 and May '08.
The Oyster application enabled trial participants to travel on tubes, buses and trains, by waving the phone near the reader, while payWave was used for small-scale purchases (under a tenner) in a range of shops, including Threshers off-licences.
Nokia reckons the trial was a huge success, with 89 per cent of users liking the Oyster integration, while two-thirds were interested in hanging on to their payWave functionality. Apparently 22 per cent of triallists increased their use of public transport too, but that could be thanks to the £60 credit they were all given at the start of the trial - or the £200 that 225 of them received.
The entire phone industry along with Nokia itself is constantly searching for more technology to put into handsets, and NFC fits the bill well. The applications don't draw on the phone battery in normal use, and the phone interface is just used to interrogate the apps to see the remaining credit and suchlike - so the apps continue to work if the phone is switched off, and the integration is quite simple.
Nokia also maintains control of application distribution, excepting a few special handsets that used the SIM to host apps as a sop to O2 - all of which suits the Finns well.
Nokia isn't commenting on how many of the trialists used their payWave functionality, which is the more interesting figure - replacing an Oyster card with a phone handset is a pretty obvious evolution, but replacing cash with such a system is more of a leap of faith. ®