Philly neighborhood scars unhealed from 1985 bomb

When this tragedy unfolded I lived in an upscale neighborhood in South Jersey. I was so young I didn’t understand the desperate, suffocating plight and grinding poverty the black community existed in day after day. As the images flashed across the television screen any viewer would think surely he was watching a crime program...it was that unreal. But, it wasn’t a television crime drama. It was real life. And real children and real grown-ups died that day.
 
By Kathy Matheson

Philadelphia (AP) -- Gerri Bostic lost all her material possessions 25 years ago when police dropped a bomb on her block, killing five children and six adult members of the militant group MOVE and incinerating 61 row homes.

Perhaps her biggest losses were her peace of mind and sense of community.

Her West Philadelphia neighborhood -- now nearly vacant and eerily quiet -- never recovered from the city's horrific botched attempt to arrest the MOVE members on May 13, 1985. The violent confrontation was a rare bombing of American citizens by civilian authorities in the United States.

Today, after spending more than $43 million on redevelopment, the city has two blocks of boarded-up eyesores to show for its efforts. The homes built to replace those lost in the bomb-ignited inferno were so shoddy that officials stopped making repairs and offered buyouts.

"There's nothing nice about this block anymore," said Bostic, 89. "All the people are gone."

And now that a long-running lawsuit over the replacement houses has ended, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell says the city needs to put the past to rest on Osage Avenue and Pine Street.

"It's time to make peace with it all and fix up the properties," Blackwell said.

It won't be easy; Philadelphia has many blighted areas competing for attention. And developers of these blocks will have the added challenge of winning support from embittered residents whose American Dream of home ownership has been a nightmare.

"We've been victimized twice," Osage resident Milton Williams said.

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Some might say Williams and his neighbors have been victimized three times -- the first being when MOVE arrived around 1981.

The revolutionary back-to-nature group came to the city's Cobbs Creek section after a 1978 shootout with police at its previous home. One officer died in the firefight; nine MOVE members went to prison, and others moved to Osage Avenue.

They soon turned their middle-class row house into a fortified compound, with a bunker on the roof and wooden slats over the windows. Reeking garbage attracted vermin, and loudspeakers blared obscene daily rants against authorities for jailing their peers.

"You really couldn't get any rest," said Connie Renfrow, who still lives on Osage. "The kids couldn't do their studies."

Her husband, Gerald Renfrow, said neighbors at first tried to address the problems directly with MOVE members, all of whom used the surname Africa. When talking failed, residents called authorities - but to no avail.

"They just let it fester," he said.

Police decided to move on MOVE in mid-May 1985, obtaining arrest and search warrants on the belief the group's house contained illegal weapons and explosives. Authorities evacuated the block on May 12, telling residents there would be a police action the next day.

When they were refused entry to serve the warrants on May 13, police began an hours-long siege using water cannons, tear gas and bullets. A state police helicopter flew overhead carrying Philadelphia officers and a canvas satchel loaded with explosives.

The bomb ignited a gasoline-fueled conflagration that killed the MOVE militants and children and obliterated two blocks of homes. Ramona Africa, then 29, and Birdie Africa, then 13, escaped with major burns.

Residents, who had been told to take just a change of clothes with them, came home to find ruins.

"Nothing but brick and rubble," recalled Gerald Renfrow, 64.

After more than a year in temporary housing, residents returned to their rebuilt homes in the fall of 1986. That winter, the roofs started leaking.

Next came discoveries of defective plumbing and wiring, bad flooring, nails popping out of walls, burst pipes, flooded basements and backyards and broken appliances. Replacement trees have since uprooted parts of the sidewalk and are strangling pipes.

Milton Williams, 61, has had five stoves, four roofs and two living room ceilings. Today, his front and back windows look out on boarded-up homes.

"It's embarrassing to invite people over here," he said.

10 Big Businesses That Have Moved Their Headquarters Abroad to Pay Less U.S. Taxes

by HR World Editors

Some call the practice of moving a company abroad to avoid taxes "corporate inversion," while others deem these businesses “expatriate corporations.” Whichever term you prefer, the fact is that several successful American companies have moved their headquarters overseas in recent years to avoid hefty U.S. taxes.

   1. Halliburton: Houston-based Halliburton, which offers a broad array of oil-field technologies and services to upstream oil and gas customers worldwide, announced the opening of a corporate headquarters in the United Arab Emirates city of Dubai on March 12, 2007. The company, which was once led by U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, said that its relocation was part of a strategy that it announced in mid-2006 to concentrate its efforts in the Middle East in order to attract business.

   2. Accenture: Consulting company Accenture is the Bermuda-based arm of the former Big Five accounting firm Arthur Andersen LLP, which is known for its involvement in the Enron Corp. scandal. Accenture has done pretty well for itself, garnering $662 million in contracts between Oct. 1, 2001 and Sept. 30, 2002. The company has argued that its operations should not be called corporate inversion because while Arthur Andersen was based in the U.S., Accenture never was.

   3. Foster Wheeler Ltd.: The engineering firm Foster Wheeler moved its corporate headquarters to Bermuda in 2001, when the company was headed toward bankruptcy. Nearly 70 percent of Foster Wheeler's business comes from its international operations, and the move to Bermuda enabled the company to avoid paying taxes on income that it earned outside of the U.S. Most of the company's main offices remain in New Jersey.

   4. Ingersoll-Rand Co. Ltd.: This New Jersey-based company, which manufactures Thermo King refrigerated trucks, also moved to Bermuda in 2001. In 2007, the company faced an IRS (Internal Revenue Service) audit over the way it classified some debt in its reincorporation in Bermuda in 2002.

   5. Tyco International Ltd.: Manufacturers and providers of services in health care, flow control, security, telecommunications and electronics, Tyco International reincorporated in Bermuda in 1997. In 2002, Tyco International's chairman and CEO, L. Dennis Kozlowski, was indicted on charges that he had evaded more than $1 million in New York sales taxes.

   6. Cooper Industries Inc.: Cooper Industries, a company that makes electrical products and tools such as Halo and Lumière brand light fixtures, moved from Houston to Bermuda in 2002 and subsequently garnered $3.6 million in government contracts.

      “We felt that American companies, based upon the tax laws that are written today, are clearly put at an economic disadvantage to foreign companies," said Victoria Guennewig, a spokeswoman for Cooper Industries, in defense of the company’s relocation.

   7. Noble Drilling Services Inc.: Noble, the fourth-largest U.S. offshore oil and natural-gas driller, calls the Cayman Islands home but operates out of Sugar Land, Texas. In 2002, the U.S. started a campaign to remove Noble and nine other American companies with offshore headquarters from the Standard & Poor's 500 index. Bermuda's Finance Minister, Eugene Cox, was outraged.

   8. Global Crossing: Global Crossing provides telecommunications solutions over the world's first integrated global IP-based network. The company is legally based in Bermuda, although its administrative headquarters are in New Jersey.

   9. Seagate Technology LLC: The California designer, manufacturer and marketer of rigid disk drives is run from the Cayman Islands. In December 2006, Seagate's Barracuda 750GB hard drive ranked No. 9 in PC World's "The 20 Most Innovative Products of the Year."

  10. Nabors Industries Ltd.: Nabors Industries, the world's biggest onshore oil and gas-drilling contractor, moved from Texas to Bermuda and Barbados in 2002. Nabors Industries apparently reported $428.4 million in profit in the U.S. in 2005 and would have paid $86 million in taxes on that money.

U.S. companies will surely continue to seek tax shelter in other countries, but only time will tell if they’ll be able to get away with this scheme.

The original source of this article is HRWorld.com , part of the Focus network of sites.

Editor's Note: Whenever or wherever the name Halliburton appears, there is NOTHING good or American that follows! Don't believe me? Google its miserable history!