A PBS “Frontline” production, “Outlawed in Pakistan” deals with the alleged gang rape of a young girl, and the devastating consequences on her and her family.

Written and directed by Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann, “Outlawed” chronicles the story of Kainat Soomro, who claims to have been kidnapped and repeatedly raped by four men at the age of 13. Instead of outlawing her or putting her to death, her family stands behind her, in a culture where the woman is blamed and labeled “impure” simply for leveling such charges. That's because in Pakistan, women and girls who allege rape are often more strongly condemned than their alleged rapists

However, the evidence is...well, none was collected, and there’s no DNA testing to prove Kainat’s case in the face of denials from the accused. Yet as her lawyer puts it, given the stigma associated with such claims by young women -- we’re told matter-of-factly Kainat will never be able to marry -- “Why would this girl lie?”

What follows is both maddening and heartbreaking, told with sensitivity and restraints and almost exclusively through subtitled first-person accounts and interviews. “All I want is justice for you,” Kainat’s mother tells her, but during the course of legal proceedings that the producers covered for nearly four years, the prospect of “justice” seem increasingly elusive.

After enduring a traumatic childhood and two years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, Tom Faunce made an oath to spend the rest of his life helping those in need. Four decades later, he discovers a mysterious man in Southeast Asia claiming to be an American Special Forces soldier listed as 'Killed In Action.' Working against government forces trying to cover up the story, Tom struggles to prove the lost soldier's identity and reunite him with his family.

A new documentary called Unclaimed claims to introduce the world to former Army Sergeant John Robertson, lost over Vietnam in 1968 and left behind for over four decades.

The Toronto Star reports:

Special Forces Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson had forgotten how to speak English over the 44 years since he was left behind in the Vietnam War. But he never forgot that he was a father, husband and an American soldier, born in Alabama, shot down over Laos in a 1968 classified mission.

Had Hollywood told the story of the discovery of a long-forgotten soldier, found miraculously still alive in Vietnam after surviving a horrific helicopter attack and crash, it would have involved a dramatic and dangerous jungle rescue followed by a homecoming parade.

Instead, in Emmy-winning Edmonton filmmaker Michael Jorgensen’s documentary Unclaimed, we meet a slightly stooped, wiry 76-year-old man living in a remote village in south-central Vietnam who trembles with frustration or pounds his forehead when he is unable to remember his birthday or his American children’s names. He is only able to speak Vietnamese.

Unclaimed has its world premiere at Toronto’s 20th Hot Docs festival on April 30.

Robertson says he was confined to a bamboo cage in the jungle by North Vietnamese captors and, accused of being a CIA spy, was tortured for a year. Confused and badly injured, he was released and married the Vietnamese nurse who helped care for him. He assumed the name of her dead husband. They had children.

The filmmaker struggled with roadblocks along the way from the military -- especially when it came to contacting Robertson’s family -- to be convinced that, as one high-placed government source told him, “It’s not that the Vietnamese won’t let him (Robertson) go; it’s that our government doesn’t want him.”

There is also a video interview with Michael Jorgensen on the Toronto Star's website, here,

By Charles Ornstein, ProPublica

This story was co-published with The Washington Post.

My father, sister and I sat in the near-empty Chinese restaurant, picking at our plates, unable to avoid the question that we'd gathered to discuss: When was it time to let Mom die?

It had been a grueling day at the hospital, watching — praying — for any sign that my mother would emerge from her coma. Three days earlier she'd been admitted for nausea; she had a nasty cough and was having trouble keeping food down. But while a nurse tried to insert a nasogastric tube, her heart stopped. She required CPR for nine minutes. Even before I flew into town, a ventilator was breathing for her, and intravenous medication was keeping her blood pressure steady. Hour after hour, my father, my sister and I tried talking to her, playing her favorite songs, encouraging her to squeeze our hands or open her eyes.

Doctors couldn't tell us exactly what had gone wrong, but the prognosis was grim, and they suggested that we consider removing her from the breathing machine. And so, that January evening, we drove to a nearby restaurant in suburban Detroit for an inevitable family meeting.

My father and sister looked to me for my thoughts. In our family, after all, I'm the go-to guy for all things medical. I've been a health-care reporter for 15 years: at the Dallas Morning News, the Los Angeles Times and now ProPublica. And since I have a relatively good grasp on America's complex health-care system, I was the one to help my parents sign up for their Medicare drug plans, research new diagnoses and question doctors about their recommended treatments.

In this situation, like so many before, I was expected to have some answers. Yet none of my years of reporting had prepared me for this moment, this decision. In fact, I began to question some of my assumptions about the health-care system.

I've long observed, and sometimes chronicled, the nasty policy battles surrounding end-of-life care. And like many health journalists, I rolled my eyes when I heard the phrase "death panels" used to describe a 2009 congressional proposal that would have allowed Medicare to reimburse physicians who provided counseling to patients about living wills and advance directives. The frenzy, whipped up by conservative politicians and talk show hosts, forced the authors of the Affordable Care Act to strip out that provision before the bill became law.

Continue reading »

On August 31, 2010 President Barack Obama announced the end of combat operations in Iraq, keeping his promise to end the Iraq War responsibly.

Via:

Transcript:

From the Debtor's Jungle:

We are the Invisible Army of Defaulters. We are your neighbors. We are your family, your friends. We are millions. We are everywhere. We are going to bring the system to its knees. We can, because we wield the one power that all the armies of the world can never defeat: The power of refusal. This power has destroyed the mightest empires. The same fate awaits the current system of mafia capitalism in America, an economic system driven by Wall Street CEOs who produce nothing, contribute nothing, who have bought our government and reduced it into a criminal enterprise whose main purpose is to support loan-sharking, gambling, extortion, and the slow reduction of American citizens into debt peons. Every dollar we take from a subprime mortgage speculator, every dollar we save from a collection agency is a tiny piece of our own lives and freedom that we can give back to our communities. To be able to take care of our children, our friends, our families is a value that no accountant can ever measure, that no government, loan administrator, or hedge fund manager can ever have the right to take away from us. We are an army of lovers who cannot be defeated. We are laying the groundwork for another world. Strike debt.

Resist. Insist. Stand together. Build. Never give up. #S17.

"On Tuesday, June 19, the sheriff posted a 24-hour eviction notice on the front door I have come home to for the last 17 years. I have nowhere to go. I am standing up for myself, my family and community. Although American Indians make up 1% of the population in Minnesota, 11% of homeless adults are American Indian. I can afford to pay for my house."

"All that I am asking is for Woodlands National Bank to sit down and negotiate with me, so I can stay in my community. They are an Indian bank that serves Native people, and right now homelessness is revenging our community. With the support of my neighbors and community, I know Woodlands bank will negotiate witth me, and become part of the solution to the housing crisis we face."

So begins yet another foreclosure story in post-Occupy America. Anita Reyes is working with her neighbors, community, and Occupy Homes MN to stop her foreclosure. Here she tells some stories about the home she has owned for seventeen years, shares thoughts about her personal feelings related to her foreclosure and places a demand on the bank to keep her in her home.

"I'm not moving," she says in the film. "I'm 52 years old - too old to start over."

Please sign Anita's Petition to stay in her home.

"I know I’m just a kid, but I have no future, and it freaks me out. I’m sorry if it looks like I’m just spoiled and petulant."

[Via WeAreThe99Percent]

Thousands will be marching on the California State Capitol in in Sacramento on June 25th to ask the Legislature and governor to impose an immediate three-year foreclosure moratorium for California. Family Friendly-children encouraged to participate! We encourage everyone to make signs and banners that tell how foreclosure has affected you.

10 AM
RALLY on the Capitol grounds. Speakers include homeowners, activists, union leaders, clergy, and others. Guest MC/musician: Michelle Shocked, Singer (Occupy Fights Foreclosure Activist).

11 AM
MARCH in downtown Sacramento. Route to be announced.

1 PM

LOBBYING TEACH-IN AND LOBBYING. We will lobby legislators and the Governor to stop the hemorrhaging of California home ownership.

TEACH-INS will be held throughout the afternoon.

————————————————–

The banks are foreclosing on families while at the same time promising loan modifications. We cannot trust the banks to do the right thing. The governor, attorney-general and Legislature must become involved. The San Francisco County Recorder’s Office has audited a sampling of foreclosures and found that 84 percent involved one or more clear violations – proof of illegal foreclosures is housed in recorder’s offices in every county.

We must halt foreclosures with a moratorium to allow for an audit of ALL home loan and foreclosure records. NO MORE THROWING FAMILIES OUT OF THEIR HOMES. We also demand investigation and prosecution of those who unfairly took advantage of homeowners. We call for cooperation between county recorder’s offices, district attorneys and the state to track down all those who illegally profited from stealing the homes of thousands of families, putting many more in precarious situations and wrecking the U.S. economy for years, if not decades to come.

Are you in foreclosure? Know someone in foreclosure?

Angry about predatory lending and dual tracking?

Angry about how the banks have sucked up our money and stolen our homes?

Angry about their refusal to reduce homeowner debt to current values instead of foreclosing and selling
to “investors” for even less?

Angry about how the banks are killing the proposed California Homeowner Bill of Rights legislation?

Want to ask your state assembly member and senator why?

STOP FORECLOSURE FRAUD! DO NOT ALLOW THE BANKS TO STEAL YOUR HOME! COME OUT TO SHOW YOUR RESISTANCE TO THE BANKS! DEMAND THE GOVERNOR AND LEGISLATURE IMPOSE AN IMMEDIATE FORECLOSURE MORATORIUM TO STOP THE BLEEDING!

More information at RallyforHomes.com

Originally posted to ProPublica by Marian Wang: A few months after he buried his son, Francisco Reynoso began getting notices in the mail. Then the debt collectors came calling.

"They would say, 'We don't care what happened with your son, you have to pay us,'" recalled Reynoso, a gardener from Palmdale, Calif.

Reynoso's son, Freddy, had been the pride of his family and the first to go to college. In 2005, after Freddy was accepted to Boston's Berklee College of Music, his father co-signed on his hefty private student loans, making him fully liable should Freddy be unwilling or unable to repay them. It was no small decision for a man who made just over $21,000 in 2011, according to his tax returns.

"As a father, you'll do anything for your child,” Reynoso, an American citizen originally from Mexico, said through a translator.

Now, he's suffering a Kafkaesque ordeal in which he's hounded to repay loans that funded an education his son will never get to use — loans that he has little hope of ever paying off. While Reynoso's wife, Sylvia, is studying to be a beautician, his gardening is currently the sole source of income for the family, which includes his 18-year-old daughter Evelyn.

And the loans are maddeningly opaque. Despite the help of a lawyer, Reynoso has not been able to determine exactly how much he owes, or even what company holds his loans. Just as happened with home mortgages in the boom years before the 2008 financial crash, his son's student loans have been sold and resold, and at least one was likely bundled into a complex Wall Street security. But the trail of those transactions ends at a wall of corporate silence from companies that include two household names: banking giant UBS and Xerox, which owns the loan servicer handling the bulk of his loans. Left without answers is a bereaved father.

The risk of cosigning on Freddy's loans seemed to have been worth it when he graduated in May 2008 and began looking for a job in the music industry. He was on the way back from a job interview on the evening of Sept. 4 when he lost control of his car and it rolled over. Freddy's family learned of his death the next morning.

The grief was relentless; the debt collectors, ruthless. By law, debt collectors must go through a debtor's attorney if one has been hired, but even after Reynoso hired an attorney, he said they continued to call him every day, several times a day, for about a year and a half: "I would tell them to call the lawyer. And they would still say, 'The lawyer doesn't owe us. You're the one who owes us. You're the one who has to pay us.'"

Meanwhile, Reynoso was still reeling: "I was crying for him every day,” he said.

The question of to whom Reynoso's debts are actually owed — and who has the authority to forgive them — is a mystery that thus far neither Reynoso nor his lawyer has been able to solve.

One of Freddy's student loans was cancelled after his death without a problem: his federal loan. That's because the government cancels student loans if a student dies.

But the bulk of Freddy's loans were private student loans, which typically offer less favorable interest rates and fewer consumer protections. Only a few private student lenders offer debt discharges in the event of the borrower's death, though public outcry over specific cases has swayed lenders to grant occasional death discharges.

But for the Reynosos, just figuring out whom to appeal to has been an exercise in futility. Working with a law firm, Francisco Reynoso sent copies of Freddy's death certificate to any company that sent paperwork about the loans. He remembers being told by at least one company that they'd call him to work out a solution. But no one ever did, he said, and the bills kept coming — each time larger than the last with more interest, more late fees.

"We sent out death certificates to all of them," said Dolores Orozco-Serrano, a legal administrator with Borowitz & Clark, the bankruptcy law firm handling the Reynosos' case. Only the federal loan was discharged. "Everyone else was not cooperative at all."

Freddy Reynoso's private loans were originated by two companies — Bank of America and Education Finance Partners. Neither company still holds onto them. ProPublica tried to find out who did.

First, the Bank of America loan: Almost as soon as Bank of America originated it, the loan was sold to a Boston-based company called First Marblehead, once one of the biggest securitizers of student loans. But nowhere in the paperwork sent to the Reynosos and reviewed by ProPublica does the name First Marblehead appear. Instead, the Reynosos have received paperwork emblazoned with the logo of National Collegiate Trust. That's the name First Marblehead gave to bundles of loans that it turned into Wall Street securities and sold to investors. Was Freddy's loan bundled into a security? And if so, who owns it now? First Marblehead has not returned repeated requests for comment.

Freddy Reynoso's other loans followed an even more complicated path — and one tainted by scandal. Education Finance Partners, the private student loan company that originated the largest portion of Freddy's student debts, reached a $2.5 million settlement agreement with the New York Attorney General's Office in 2007 to settle charges that it had paid colleges across the country to steer students toward its high-interest loans. And Berklee College of Music, Freddy's alma mater, was one of the schools singled out in that investigation for accepting the improper payments. Berklee College of Music spokesman Allen Bush acknowledged in a statement to ProPublica that the school accepted a total of $23,000 from Education Finance Partners between 2005 and 2007, but said that "all of these funds were deposited into a financial aid account and disbursed through a need-based grant system to current Berklee students."

Education Finance Partners, Freddy's lender, never admitted any wrongdoing. A year after the settlement, the company declared bankruptcy.

But who holds Freddy's loans now remains a mystery. The company's archives — now kept by a company called Loan Science — show that his loans were scooped up by the Swiss bank UBS in October 2008. But the entire portfolio changed hands again in 2009. "That 2009 sale was private, it was bound by a confidentiality agreement and, therefore, we're not in a position to disclose the identity of the purchaser," wrote a UBS spokesman in an email.

One possibility: Freddy's loan may have been among those acquired by the Swiss National Bank, Switzerland's equivalent of the U.S. Federal Reserve, when it bailed out UBS. (See our sidebar.)

Reynoso and his lawyer don't even know exactly how much he now owes, but it appears to be well into the six figures. The loan that Bank of America originated is clear: At the end of March, the balance was around $7,400, according to Mike Reiber, a spokesman for PHEAA, a company that once serviced that loan. (With the loan in default, it now resides with First Marblehead, Reiber said.) But the other, much larger portion of Reynoso's debt remains murky. A 2009 lending disclosure document indicates that through Education Finance Partners, UBS extended nearly $160,000 in credit to Freddy Reynoso, and projected that if he made all payments as scheduled, the loan for his music education would end up costing him $279,000.

Seemingly the only party who knows — and is obligated to tell Reynoso — about this debt is the servicer, ACS Education Services.

Citing privacy reasons, ACS declined to disclose any specifics about the loans to ProPublica, even with Reynoso's full consent. Three weeks ago, Francisco Reynoso himself sent a letter to ACS asking who currently holds the loans, but he has received no response.

ACS is a subsidiary of Xerox, so ProPublica put in several calls there. Given more than a full week to respond, Xerox's corporate communications team has yet to provide a response to queries about when Reynoso can expect basic information about his son's loans, including the amount he owes and the name of the company that now owns the debt.

Even with the help of a lawyer, Reynoso's options are limited. Unlike most kinds of debt, private student loans are not dischargeable through bankruptcy, though Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., is leading an effort to change that. So for the time being, Reynoso's hope hinges on a narrow provision in the bankruptcy code called a hardship discharge. The bar for proving "undue hardship" is high, but Reynoso still hopes for the best as he waits for a ruling from the bankruptcy judge. As he puts it: "I'm in the hands of God."

I was literally just about to write an update on a widow from Atlanta who would soon be facing eviction from her home after being turned down for a home loan modification recently, when the above livestream went "live." If you've never attended an "Occupy our Homes" action, or done any sort of community outreach work that put you in contact with a family about to go through an eviction - or faced eviction yourself - get yourself a box of kleenex before you get too comfortable.

But don't be too upset, I've got something that you can do to help the very people you're about to see kicked out of a home that has been in their family for four generations.

How you can help:

“Mrs. Christine Frazer, a 62 yr old widow, and four generations of the Frazer family are being kicked out of the place they have called home since 1994. Mrs. Frazer refinanced her home in 2001; but after losing her husband in 2002, taking in her elderly mother in 2003, losing her job in 2009 due to a “no-fault, one-minute-late tardy policy,” and being denied unemployment after two appeals, she was left with no way to pay her mortgage. Her attempts to re-modify her loan due to excessive financial hardship outside of her control were outright denied by the lender. Mrs. Frazer’s home was foreclosed on in October of 2011 after faithfully paying her mortgage for over 15 years! Investors One Corporation sent her a statement claiming she had to pay $176,000 on a house that the very same document stated is only worth $40,000. The very same crumbling economy that caused the value of Chris’ home to depreciate left her hopeless in today’s highly competitive job market. Upon further investigation of all the mortgage paperwork it was discovered that Investors One Corporation never had the power to foreclose on this home and definitely doesn't have the power to evict this family. A lawsuit is currently being filed against all parties that took part in the fraudulent actions that took place with this property. We need your help to try and cover the costs of serving these lawsuits which cost about $50 per individual. It's going to amount to $350. Whatever you can contribute is greatly appreciated and is going to bring us closer to our goal.”

I can see the donations are already streaming into wepay, so it's looking as if Mrs. Frazer will get the legal help that she needs. Anything above that goal may help her with alternate living arrangements through this crisis. It may be one home saved at a time, but it's a family's life that will be spared a life on the streets and searching for shelter.