Civil Rights Leader James Forman Dies

Joe Holley, Washington Post

James Forman, 76, who as executive secretary of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the early 1960s dispatched cadres of organizers, demonstrators and Freedom Riders into the most dangerous redoubts of the Deep South, died Jan. 10 of colon cancer at Washington House, a local hospice.

At the height of the civil rights movement, Mr. Forman hammered out a role for SNCC among the so-called Big Five, the established civil rights organizations that included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Congress of Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. SNCC in those years was the edgier, more aggressive organization, pushing the South specifically and the nation generally toward change.

Venezuela Mayor Orders Private Land Seized

Fabiola Sanchez, Associated Press

The mayor of Venezuela's second-largest city ordered the government to
seize two swaths of abandoned private lands Tuesday, saying the property
would be used for projects to benefit the entire population.

Giancarlo Di Martino, Maracaibo mayor and staunch supporter of President
Hugo Chavez, told The Associated Press the lands include 62 acres within
the city and an abandoned industrial zone running along the shore of
lake Maracaibo about 20 miles to the southeast.

Robert S. Finnegan writes:

"Beginning of the End?
U.S. Army Sergeant May Refuse Re-Deployment to Iraq"
Robert S. Finnegan, Southeast Asia News

Ft. Stewart Georgia, “Rock of the Marne” — This morning Sergeant Kevin Benderman, U.S. Army awoke to face what will probably be one of the most important decisions of his life: whether or not to accept or refuse re-deployment to Iraq to participate in a war that has been increasingly questioned by the American public, and the world. A war that has been ruled illegal by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and has come under increasing fire from both Republicans and Democrats alike who share the same concerns as Sergeant Benderman and the U.N. Secretary General.