Police shooting has racial tensions at boiling point
By Josh Getlin, Los Angeles Times
NEW YORK _ On a cool winter
night, Amadou Diallo took a walk
outside his Bronx apartment and
returned after 12:45 p.m. This is all
that is known of his last moments,
except that he was suddenly cut down
by a hail of police gunfire, 41 shots
in all, as he stood in the hallway.
Seconds later, the four police
gunmen, who said they were
investigating a serial rapist in the area,
discovered that the 22-year-old West
African immigrant was unarmed. As
they hurridly radioed for assistance,
several of the officers appeared dazed
and stunned, according to police
sources and onlookers who gathered
at the scene last week.
Although few details have emerged
since then, the story has shocked New
Yorkers and triggered national
protests. There have been furious
street demonstrations by black leaders
and bitter criticisms of Mayor
Rudolph Giuliani, who has been
accused of running a police
department that routinely brutalizes
and mistreats blacks and other
So far, Brazilian economic crisis having limited global impact
By Paul Blustein,
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON _ Well, maybe it
doesn’t matter that much if the eighth
largest economy in the world goes
down the chute. That’s the verdict
global financial markets appear to be
rendering on Brazil’s economic crisis,
which so far, at least has had a
remarkably mild impact on other
countries and regions.
Exactly one month has passed since
Brazil was forced to devalue its
currency, the real, and Brazil’s
outlook has gone from bad to
wretched since then, with interest
rates soaring, the real tumbling and
the nation’s economy predicted to
contract by as much as 6 percent this
year.
Yet in marked contrast with the
worldwide upheaval in stock, bond
and currency markets that followed
the crises in Russia in August and
A*sia in the months before that,
Russian
insists
must finish term
By David Hoffman,
The Washington Post
MOSCOW _ Prime Minister
Yevgeny Primakov, facing Russia’s
restive political and financial elite,
insisted Saturday that ailing
President Boris Yeltsin be allowed to
complete his term despite
widespread criticism that he is no
longer able to lead.
Yeltsin’s second term runs until
summer 2000, but his long absences
because of illness in recent months
have set off an intense scramble
among his would-be successors and
renewed calls for Yeltsin to step
down to make way for early
elections. If Yeltsin resigned,
Primakov would become acting
president under the constitution and
elections would be held within three
months.
“I oppose the idea that the
president should step down before
his constitutional term expires,
Primakov told reporters at a meeting
of the influential Council on Foreign
and Defense Policy, a private, elite
group of politicians, analysts,
scholars and businessmen. Yeltsin
should remain in office “for the sake
of stability in Russia, for
the normal running of the elections,
so that all the conditions can be
created for the elections,” Primakov
said.
His comments were significant
because some council members
prepared a discussion paper, to be
debated behind closed doors,
suggesting that Yeltsin’s leadership
has become so weak that he is
dragging down the Russian state.
The paper was drafted by a working
group coordinated by Sergei
Karaganov, deputy director of the
Institute of Europe, and chairman of
the council.
Among other things, the
discussion paper concludes that the
minorities. In recent days, the story
has blown impeachment off the front
pages of the city’s tabloids,
dominating local television and radio
coverage.
Indeed, it has become a New York
media circus and a defining moment
in Giuliani’s administration: Diallo’s
family have embraced the Rev. A 1
Sharpton as their spokesman, and
retained O.J. Simpson attorneys
Johnnie Cochran and Barry Scheck to
represent them. Calling for the four
officers’ arrest, Sharpton told a rally
that the shooting “was not a police
action, it was a police execution. ...
His (Diallo’s) body was riddled with
bullets. Not from hoodlums, not from
thugs, but from people we pay to
protect us.”
For his part, Giuliani has tried to
keep a cool profile, vowing a prompt
investigation and calling for public
calm until more facts are known. He
has expressed remorse for the
apparently senseless shooting of a
man who had no criminal record. But
the 19 bullets that hit Amadou Diallo,
a softspoken street vendor from
Guinea, have cast a shadow over the
markets have quickly shrugged off
their initial jitters over Brazil’s
collapsing economy.
The Dow Jones industrial average
is hovering close to the same level as
it was right before Brazil’s
devaluation, and in some Latin
American countries that were believed
vulnerable to Brazil’s “samba effect,”
stock prices have rebounded, an
example being Mexico, where the
main stock index is up 18.5 percent
over the past month. The Argentine
and Mexican governments were even
able to raise foreign funds on
international bond markets in recent
days.
“We’ve had a 35 percent
devaluation of the currency of a big
economy, something we were very
frightened about last fall, and now
from a global point of view it seems
to be something of a nonevent,” said
Desmond Lachman, managing
director of emerging markets research
at Salomon Smith'Barney Inc. in New
premier
Yeltsin
power of the Kremlin is waning
rapidly and says Yeltsin is to blame.
The paper calls for Yeltsin to step
down for health reasons, followed by
early elections. It suggests that
Primakov lead a coalition including
another major presidential contender,
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.
However, Karaganov said later that
the council had not adopted this
approach in its closed debate, the
Interfax news service reported.
Primakov also told the council that
he was optimistic about reaching
agreement with the International
Monetary Fund. Russia owes the fund
about $4.5 billion this year from
earlie r loans that it cannot afford to
repay. After recent talks on a new
program-which would basically
involve loans to Russia large enough
to allow it to pay back the debt due
this year-a delegation from the fund
left Russia without a return date.
“I think we will reach agreement
with the IMF,” Primakov said. “The
IMF and we will arrive at the
conclusion that we are doing what we
can but will not do what we cannot,”
he added. For example, Primakov
said Russia cannot meet the IMF’s
demands for a bigger budget surplus.
Primakov, who has been running
the government and meeting foreign
visitors while Yeltsin is recovering
from a bleeding ulcer, recently
floated a plan for a political truce
between the executive branch of the
Russian government and the
opposition-dominated lower house of
parliament, the State Duma. The
document was viewed by some
analysts as an irritant to Yeltsin. But
Primakov denied that there was a rift
with the president.
World and Nation
record of a Republican mayor who
has won national plaudits for greatly
reducing crime in the nation’s largest
city, and who harbors ambition for
higher office.
“I feel terrible about what
happened,” Giuliani told reporters at
a City Hall news conference last
week. “We’re working very, very hard
to assist the family and everyone in
the community to understand it. But I
am not going to subscribe to a notion
that the police officers in New York
City as some general matter are acting
improperly.”
Seeking to quell rising criticism, the
mayor unveiled new statistics
showing the number of police
shootings in New York are down; city
officers fired 856 shots in 1998,
compared to 1,040 the year before, he
said, and the 19 fatal shootings last
year was the lowest since 1985.
“There is a tendency of some people
in our society to blame the police in
broad strokes that is just as vicious a
prejudice as any other prejudice,” the
mayor added, defending the
department’s overall record.
Yet critics are not convinced,
All of which is prompting
economists, policymakers and market
analysts to ask some tantalizing
questions: Is the Brazilian flu less
contagious than the Asian or Russian
strain? Has the global financial crisis
finally reached a more stable phase
in which turmoil no longer spreads
across borders and oceans with such
frightening speed?
Or, alternatively, are investors
simply in denial over the implications
of events in Brazil? Will markets and
economies eventually succumb to
Brazil’s gravitational pull with a sort
of delayed reaction, as they have on
some other occasions during the
global crisis? For example, two weeks
after the crisis started in July 1997
with the devaluation of the Thai baht,
the Hong Kong stock market soared
to a record high before crashing three
months later.
It’s not that Brazil’s neighbors have
escaped unscathed. Much of Latin
Actor Will Smith, Michael Jordan
honored at NAACP Awards
By John L. Mitchell,
Los Angeles Times
PASADENA, Calif. _ Actor Will
Smith was named Entertainer of the
Year and former Chicago Bulls star
Michael Jordan was honored with the
Jackie Robinson Sports Award at the
30th annual NAACP Image Awards
Sunday evening at the Pasadena Civic
Auditorium.
A collection of some of the most
famous African Americans in the
entertainment industry turned out for
the star-studded gala hosted by the
nation’s oldest and largest civil rights
organization, which celebrates its
90th birthday this year.
The Tinky Winky stink
continues
By Lisa de Moraes,
The Washington Post
Jerry Falwell is making babies cry,
and the mayor of West Hollywood,
Calif., is hopping mad. Mayor Steven
Martin, whose city council has a
homosexual majority, is angry about
Falwell’s assertion that Tinky Winky,
a character in PBS’s “Teletubbies”
show, is gay.
Martin said Falwell “has single
handedly crushed the hearts of many
children by viciously casting Tinky
Winky into a sexual controversy. It’s
embarrassing that Falwell is so
obsessed with gay issues that he
forced the discussion of Tinky
Winky’s sexuality upon parents and
their children.” But Falwell seems to
think keeping children from their
favorite TV character is a small price
to pay for spreading the gospel.
“Who would ever have predicted
that the little parental warning in the
February issue of the (National
Liberty) Journal would open such a
world of opportunity to share the
eternal Hope of Christ?” the religious
right leader said in his “Falwell
Confidential,” a weekly briefing for
pastors and Christian leaders.
suggesting that Giuliani has turned a
deaf ear to minorities. From 1993 to
1997, critics noted, new charges of
police misconduct rose 45 percent,
from 1,567 to 2,266 incidents, and
they said the mayor’s refusal to
address this issue shows he has not
built sufficient bridges to blacks,
Latinos and other minorities.
“I certainly am not blaming Mayor
Giuliani or Police Commissioner
(Howard) Safir for the tragedy that
took place,” said Manhattan Borough
President Virginia Fields, who is
black. “But there is the sad reality that
that the police department treats some
communities in this city with more
respect and consideration than others
we need City Hall to listen more
As the investigation continues, the
four officers involved in the shooting
have been reassigned to desk jobs,
which is customary police procedure.
Although they have not spoken to any
local law enforcement officials yet,
or to members of the U.S. Attorneys
Office and the FBI, which are also
probing the case, the policemen are
expected to testify before a Bronx
grand jury sometime this week.
America is expected to fall into
recession this year, and Brazil’s woes
are significantly adding to the
region’s troubles.
Large corporations in countries
such as Argentina and Mexico, unlike
their governments, are shut out from
raising international money unless
they are willing to pay punishingly
high interest rates. Moreover, the
slump in demand from Brazil, an
important market for many Latin
firms, is hitting some exporters hard.
But the financial impact has been far
less severe than the panic that ensued
last fall when Russia abruptly
devalued the ruble and effectively
defaulted on much of its debt.
Following the Russian debacle,
worldwide bond markets almost
ceased to function. One key
barometer of investor nervousness
roughly doubled the "spread" in
emerging market bond yields above
U.S. Treasury bond yields, which
reflects lenders’ reluctance to put their
Founded in 1909 in New York City
by a group of African American and
white citizens committed to righting
social injustice, the organization
started the Image Awards to honor
outstanding achievements and
positive portrayals by African
Americans in film, TV, music and
literature. The award also was meant
to encourage the entertainment
industry to do a belter job of creating
opportunities for African Americans.
The first NAACP Image Awards
were presented by the Beverly Hills/
Hollywood branch in the 19605.
Besides Jordan, who announced
his retirement from professional
basketball this year, honorees
Thanks to the controversy he has
stirred up over the purple purse
toting Tubby, Falwell boasts that he
has been able to share "the gospel of
Christ” on all of the network morning
shows and many cable news
broadcasts.
He adopts a less jubilant approach
on his Web site: “While I’d like to
laugh along with those who are
encouraging concerned parents and
critics to ‘lighten up’ about childreh’s
programming in general and
‘Teletubbies’ in particular, I find this
issue far too important to the future
and well-being of our children.”
Messages communicated to children
through TV should not be left “in the
hands of others whose motives may
be questionable,” Falwell said.
PBS says it has no intention of
taking the show off its lineup. “We
think it’s a very positive show.
Viewers and parents have embraced
it, and we’re proud to have it on our
air,” a PBS spokesman said.
Designed for 1- to 4-year-olds,
“Teletubbies” debuted in Britain in
1997 and on the national
programming service here last
spring.
page 7 - The Behrend College Beacon - Thursday, Feburary 18, 1999
Sources close to the officers suggest
they may have fired in the belief that
Diallo was reaching for a gun and did
not respond to police orders.
The controversy is especially acute
because the four officers are part of
an elite, 380-member Street Crime
Unit, which has been in the forelront
of New York's battle to reduce crime.
Roaming high-crime areas in
unmarked vehicles, the plainclothes
officers have been credited with major
arrests; they have also been criticized
as brutal enforcers.
Sean Carroll, one of the four, told
The New York Daily News : "I’m just
deeply sorry for everything that’s
occurred. We’re going to cooperate
100 percent.” But those comments
seemed to inflame the situation even
more. Giuliani has been rebuffed
twice in his eltorts to meet with
Diallo’s parents, who flew here from
Africa to bring their son home and are
constantly at Sharpton’s side. Mindful
of public perceptions, the mayor
canceled a fund-raising trip this
weekend to Texas, where he was
supposed to be the guest of Gov.
George W. Bush.
money into such risky investments.
By contrast, in the month since
Brazil’s devaluation, the spread,
though still very wide by historical
standards, has eased, from more than
15 percentage points above U.S.
Treasuries to about 12 percentage
points.
The explanation that many analysts
give offers hope that the global crisis
may be abating rather than merely
taking a brief respite. In the months
after the Russian default, experts say,
international investment firms have
sharply cut back their borrowing,
which has made the entire financial
system much less susceptible to panic
selling. That’s a major change from
last summer, when many firms were
borrowing heavily, “leveraging”
themselves, in Wall Street jargon, to
invest in Russian bonds, which
offered extremely attractive interest
rates. Those investors were effectively
betting that the International
Monetary Fund and the Clinton
included entertainer Harry Belafonte,
who received the Chairman’s Award,
selected by the chairman of the
NAACP National Board of Directors,
to recognize special achievement.
Opera singer Kathleen Battle and
blues legend 8.8. King both received
the Hall of Fame Award, and
Grammy-nominated singer Lauryn
Hill was given the Presidential
Award. NAACP President Kweisi
Mfume described Hill as "a hiphop
humanitarian who has used her own
success to uplift the lives of others.”
One of the evening’s highlights
included a musical tribute to King by
guitarists Eric Clapton and George
Benson in which King picked up his
Painting of
displayed in
banned
By Matthew Mosk,
Xbc Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE _ The painting that
was pulled from the walls of the
Maryland House office building in
Annapolis was a classical depiction
of a male nude, legs crossed
discreetly, eyes in contemplation. But
it did draw some protests from the
more easily offended. So they took
it down.
The decision was viewed as benign
in the corridors of the Lowe House
Office Building, where virtually all
of the art depicts sailboats,
landscapes, birds and other
innocuous scenery. But, as often
happens when decisions about art are
made in government circles,
controversy tagged along.
Melissa Shatto, the 28-year-old
Harford County artist who painted
the offending canvas, feels the
artwork’s abrupt removal was not
only rash, but an act unbecoming
freedom of expression. “I’m
completely aghast at this whole
situation,” Shatto said. "Heaven
None of this has quieted a rising
chorus of protest. On Friday, Giuliani
was heckled as he attended a memorial
service for Diallo at a mosque in
Hailein; activists plan more
demonstrations in coming days. "I
have no patience for that
megalomaniac Giuliani,” said a
visibly angry Carol Taylor, at Diallo’s
memorial service. "He is sitting at the
head of an organization which is
systematically engaging in a slaughter
of black African males. The mayor
can burn in hell.”
The Diallo case is only the most
recent protest over police brutality in
New York. Last year, the city was
rocked by the story of Abner Louima,
a Haitian immigrant who was
allegedly sodomized by police with a
toilet plunger in a Brooklyn precinct
station. The trial of those officers on
civil rights charges begins next month.
As the city braces for another week
of tension, some have said the larger
problem lies with white New York
officials and residents, who have not
generally been part of the protest.
administration would never let Russia
run out of cash to pay its debts.
It proved to be a shockingly wrong
bet, and the firms’ huge losses sparked
a massive scramble to liquidate all
sorts of stocks and bonds to raise cash
and pay off loans.
Some economists offer another
explanation for the relatively benign
aftermath to the turbulence in Brazil:
The decline in the real won’t hurt other
countries’ economies as much as the
fall in Asian currencies did.
But while the drop in Brazil’s
currency hurts competing
manufacturers in other Latin nations,
the impact won’t be as large,
according to a recent analysis by
Bridgewater Associates Inc., a
Connecticut-based research firm.
That’s because Brazil’s manufactured
exports; footwear, auto parts and steel
being the biggest categories, don’t
overlap much with the exports of most
other Latin American countries.
guitar and joined in the number.
Meanwhile, across the street from
the celebration, a dozen picketers led
by Najee Ali of Project Islamic Hope
protested the Image Awards. They
objected to the awards’ long
relationship with Fox-TV, which is
home to “The PJs,” a new animated
satire co-created by actor-comedian
Eddie Murphy. Some African
Americans have accused the show of
stereotyping members of their
community with a character who is a
crack addict and scenes showing men
guzzling 40-ounce bottles of beer.
nude man
legislature
forbid you glorify the human form.
It's like we’re heading back to
Victorian times.”
Far from a provocateur, the young
mother was once the butt of criticism
at the Maryland Institute, College of
Art for not including enough social
commentary in her work. This
particular painting, called “The
Evolution of Leif’ (the model’s
name), shows a nude man seated on
some rocks, leaning on his right
elbow, with a misty meadow and a
river in the background.
“You don’t even see his navel,”
Shatto protested. Whatever. In place
of “Leif’ now hangs a giant, acrylic
bovine portrait, simply titled “Cow."
It’s also naked.