Indiana Republican apologizes for slavery remark

INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana’s Republican secretary of state asked forgiveness Monday for using a slavery reference to describe black voting trends, a remark that drew criticism from several black lawmakers.

During an April 12 speech at a GOP event, Todd Rokita said 90 percent of blacks vote Democrat.

“How can that be?” Rokita said. “Ninety to 10. Who’s the master and who’s the slave in that relationship? How can that be healthy?”

State Rep. William Crawford, who is black, said Rokita’s statement suggested blacks are ignorant and uninformed.

“We don’t intimidate. We don’t buy votes. He needs to apologize to the people he offended,” Crawford said, adding that the comment insulted “90 percent of those African Americans who choose to vote their level of interest as they define it for Democrats.”

On Monday, Rokita said his comments were intended to encourage the Republican Party to continue efforts to diversify, in part by continuing to reach out to blacks.

However, he said: “The word choice that I used in one part of those remarks was poor, and if I offended anyone then I ask their forgiveness for what was an insensitive metaphor.”

Brazilian landless protest river project

SAO PAULO, Brazil — Thousands of landless workers invaded government property in Brazil’s arid northeast to try to stop a controversial river-diversion project, a spokeswoman for the group said Sunday.

Critics claim the project will hinder agrarian reform and lavish benefits on agribusiness.

On April 14, about 7,500 people invaded plots of government-owned land near Petrolina, 1,360 miles north of Sao Paulo in Pernambuco state, said Cassia Bechara, a spokeswoman for the Landless Rural Workers Movement, known by its Portuguese acronym of MST.

While the MST said 2,000 families took part, Pernambuco state authorities told local media only 800 families were camped out following the land invasions.

The MST said in a statement that the protest was launched as thousands of rural workers were forced to leave their lands because of the diversion project on the Sao Francisco River, Brazil’s fourth largest. The MST also said the project gives agribusiness companies the best land, while poor rural workers will be left with unproductive areas.

The project is meant to benefit some 12 million poor people in one of Brazil’s most destitute regions by irrigating large areas that are now nearly as dry as a desert. It has also generated fierce opposition from environmentalists, who say the diversion could dry up the river for part of the year.

Brazil’s environmental protection agency Ibama last month approved the $2 billion project to shift the river’s course. Congress still must approve funding for parts of the project.

The project, first proposed as far back as 1886, would create a new channel for the 1,600-mile-long river, which could speed its flow toward the ocean and cause it to dry up during parts of the year, critics say.

In 2005, Roman Catholic Bishop Luiz Flavio Cappio held an 11-day hunger strike in an attempt to stop the project. He called it off after the federal government agreed to open the project to further discussions.

German defense ministry terms video incident “absolutely unacceptable”

BERLIN — The Germany defense ministry said Monday that an incident in which a German soldier was told to imagine blacks in the Bronx while firing a machine gun was “absolutely unacceptable.”

“This behavior is absolutely unacceptable and contradicts the training standards of the German army,” defense ministry spokesman Thomas Raabe said.

He said the army was investigating the incident, which was recorded in a video made available on the Internet, but cannot say when the probe would be completed.

A video of the army instructor telling the soldier to shoot and yell obscenities while thinking of African Americans in the Bronx aired on German national television last weekend and prompted calls for an apology by the New York City borough’s president.

The video shows an instructor and a soldier in camouflage uniforms in a forest. The instructor tells the soldier, “You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother in the worst ways. … Act.”

The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English. The instructor then tells the soldier to curse even louder.

The German Defense Ministry said the video was shot in July 2006 at barracks in the northern town of Rendsburg and that the army has been aware of it since January.

In New York, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. has called for whoever was responsible for the video to be disciplined.

“The German government obviously has work to do to correct something that is insidious. … Clearly these folks don’t know anything about African Americans or the Bronx,” he said.

The video was taken down from the German myvideo.de Web site but reappeared on youtube.com.

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