Sloopo.com

By Kristin Roberts

ABOARD THE USNS COMFORT (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy hospital ship finished a four-month humanitarian mission on Saturday that offered a glimpse of the Pentagon’s plan to play a greater public diplomacy role in Latin America and Africa.

The USNS Comfort made stops in a dozen countries, treated more than 97,000 people and performed nearly 380,000 medical treatments and procedures on a mission aimed at building goodwill for the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“This is part of the evolving mission of the Southern Command,” U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, using the name of the U.S. military unit responsible for operations in Latin America. The Pentagon organizes its military operations into geographic commands.

“These are the kinds of missions that we have in mind in connection with our new command, the Africa Command, to focus on building partnerships and increasing the capabilities of individual countries in being able to deal with these challenges,” he told reporters after a visit to the ship now anchored off Suriname’s coast.

The U.S. military has conducted humanitarian missions for years, responding to natural disasters in the United States and abroad, for example. But the Pentagon has begun to view humanitarian missions as critical to its operations in some areas, especially where poor health, poverty and crime are seen as major security problems.

The Comfort, in addition to treating patients, trained medical professionals and fixed about 1,000 pieces of equipment at local medical facilities. While helping the U.S. image, the effort also enhanced those countries’ ability to provide care, defense officials and members of the ship’s crew said.

“Historically, combatant commands have been set up to deal with primarily the military threats in their region. They’ve been focused on the hard side of military matters,” said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. “What is happening particularly in SouthCom is an attempt to complement the hard side with more humanitarian assistance, the soft side.”

VENEZUELAN INFLUENCE?  Continued…

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. man was sentenced to five months in jail after he and a friend, acting on wounded pride, gunned down an ostrich that had kicked them as their female companions laughed, a newspaper reported on Saturday.

“This whole thing is about male pride,” prosecutor Steve Wagstaffe said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The powerful flightless bird, named Gaylord, kicked Timothy McKevitt, 19, and Jonathon Porter, 21, last October when they trespassed on an ostrich ranch south of San Francisco after a night of drinking, the paper cited attorneys as saying.

As the startled bird attacked, the women began to laugh, prosecutors said. McKevitt was kicked in the ribs and knocked over, while Porter suffered scrapes and bruises.

The two men returned with a rifle and shotgun seeking revenge, the Chronicle said. They fired at least seven shots at Gaylord, according to a police report.

McKevitt, free on bail, was ordered to turn himself in on November 3. Porter was sentenced in March to seven months in jail after pleading no contest in the ostrich killing, the paper reported.

By Keith Coffman

DENVER (Reuters) - About 75 protesters, including American Indian activist Russell Means, were arrested on Saturday after blocking Denver’s downtown parade honoring the Italian-born discoverer Christopher Columbus, an event they denounced as “a celebration of genocide.”

Police loaded protesters onto buses after they refused orders to disperse. Most will be charged with obstruction of a roadway or disrupting a lawful assembly, Denver Police Lt. Ron Saunier said.

Police delayed the parade’s start for more than an hour as they tried to head off confrontations.

American Indian groups and their supporters have disrupted the city’s annual Columbus Day parade every year for nearly two decades, leading to clashes with Colorado’s Italian-American community over the century-old celebration, the longest-running such commemoration in the United States.

Columbus Day, marked this year on October 8, is an official holiday for most U.S. federal government workers, many public schools, state and local agencies and the U.S. bond market. It recalls the October 12, 1492, landing of Columbus in the Americas on his search for a naval route to India, an event that spawned an era of European interest in the New World.

Means, talking to Reuters before his arrest, said Columbus was the “first trans-Atlantic slave trader” after landing in the Americas in 1492. He said Columbus started centuries of oppression of native peoples.

“By all accounts, Christopher Columbus was personally responsible for thousands of deaths of the original inhabitants of this hemisphere,” Means said.

Parade organizer George Vendegnia of the Sons of Italy said his group would honor Columbus’ legacy until the U.S. Congress changed the holiday’s name. Some cities including Berkeley, California, have already changed the name to “Indigenous People’s Day.”  Continued…