The state-oriented media celebrated the failure of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)-organised mid-day protests on Wednesday 13 September 2006 describing it as a "damp squib". More sympathetic media were more restrained in their reactions. The alleged reasons for the "damp squib" varied widely and wildly. This is neither the first nor the last time such "damp squibs" will be witnessed in crisis-riddled Zimbabwe.
Why did Zimbabwean workers, in their admittedly dwindling thousands, not heed the call to participate actively in the protest action in the various 34 urban centres? Fear of the coercive instruments of the state? Maybe.
If anything, the last ten years have demonstrated that the governing elite in Zimbabwe is a risk-taking elite. Some may even say it's a reckless elite. Whatever characterisation one uses, the reality is that President Robert Mugabe and who ever advises him, are willing and prepared to take bold decisions irrespective of the consequences.
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Ugandan rebels accused the government on Saturday of violating a truce by "besieging" its fighters and threatened to pull out of peace talks widely seen as the best chance to end one of Africa's longest conflicts. Representatives of the notorious Lords Resistance Army (LRA) rebels said Ugandan army forces had surrounded an LRA assembly point in Owiny-Ki-Bul on the Sudan-Uganda border, where insurgents were meant to gather under a truce signed last month.
"The LRA delegation cannot continue to negotiate while its troops risk imminent attack," Krispus Ayena Odongo, a senior member of the delegation, told reporters in southern Sudan's capital Juba where talks are being held. "As a precondition to resume peace negotiations, LRA demands an immediate withdrawal of (Ugandan army) troops that have besieged our troops," he added. Odongo said clarification from the chief mediator of talks on this "massive redeployment" of Ugandan soldiers into neighboring southern Sudan was "a matter of absolute urgency".
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2006 00:00 ||
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A new cemetery is to have all its graves aligned with Mecca - making it the first council graveyard in the country to bury the dead in Islamic tradition, regardless of their religion.
Headstones in the new £2.5million High Wood Cemetery in Nottingham will face north-east - as Muslims believe the dead look over their shoulder towards Mecca. This is the way in which all followers of Islam in the UK are buried.
But the move has upset the Church and led to complaints that the policy discriminates against the city's majority Christian population. The traditional direction of burial for Christians is facing east.
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Venezuela's foreign minister said he was illegally detained for 90 minutes by officials at a New York airport and accused them of treating him abusively by trying to frisk and handcuff him. heh heh
U.S. officials called Saturday's incident regrettable and said they had apologized to Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro. Maduro called that insufficient and said Venezuela would seek a legal challenge through the U.N. to what he called a "flagrant violation of international law" and his diplomatic immunity. 20,000 passports "lost". Your diplomatic process seems broken. We just wanted to make sure you weren't a terrorist travelling under a Venezuelan passport. I'm sure we'll see enough of those.
"We were detained for an hour and a half, threatened by police with being beaten," Maduro told reporters at Venezuela's mission to the U.N. "We hold the U.S. government responsible." sounds like the treatment you give opposition Venezuelans
A U.N. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said Maduro's trip was delayed because he had showed up late without a ticket, prompting extra screening.
Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke denied that Maduro was mistreated at John F. Kennedy International Airport when he was selected for an added security check.
"He began to articulate his frustration with secondary screening right after he went through," a metal detector, Knocke said. "Port Authority officials confronted him when the situation became a ruckus." "shutup and drop them drawers, Pal"
Maduro said when one official ordered him to go to another room for a strip-search, he refused. He told CNN en Espanol that the official pushed him and yelled at him. and called him a two-bit punk, too? They musta set off the detector. What were they carrying? Bet they were armed
He told reporters the situation only worsened when he explained he was the Venezuelan foreign minister and showed his diplomatic passport. heh
Maduro said authorities at one point ordered him and other officials to spread their arms and legs and be frisked, but he said they forcefully refused. He said officers also threatened to handcuff him.
"We responded with the dignity of Venezuelan revolutionaries ... with strength," Maduro told reporters at Venezuela's mission to the U.N. "It's a Nazi government, a racist government.""we cried like little girls"
If this is how U.S. authorities treat a foreign minister, he said, "what won't they do to Arab people for wearing a turban?"
He said his passport and ticket were seized and eventually returned, but the incident prevented him from flying home Saturday.
U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey said it was a "regrettable incident" for which "the U.S. government has apologized." *snicker*
The two countries' relations - strained for several years - took a particularly confrontational turn this week, when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the annual U.N. General Assembly, called President Bush "the devil." U.S. officials often call Chavez a threat to democracy.
Maduro told reporters that the treatment of him and other Venezuelan officials seemed in part to be an "attempt to provoke us."
He said about an hour and 20 minutes into his detention, he received a call from U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, who apologized and said State Department officials were on their way to resolve the matter.
Five minutes later, State Department officials arrived and ordered Maduro and the others to spread their arms and legs to be frisked by police, he said. 5 minutes later, huh? They musta been watching :-)
Maduro said Venezuela has lodged a protest with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and that the incident should be investigated so that those responsible are punished. He said those who detained him did not make any particular accusations.
Earlier Saturday, Chavez said on Venezuelan television that U.S. officials had detained Maduro after linking him to a failed coup that Chavez led in 1992.
"They have held him accusing him of participating in terrorist acts," Chavez said in Venezuela. "He didn't even participate in that patriotic rebellion." it was....um...somebody else
Chavez also said Bush may be seeking to kill him for calling him "the devil" at the U.N.
Venezuela is among the top five suppliers of crude to the U.S., but relations soured in 2002 after the Bush administration swiftly recognized leaders who briefly ousted Chavez in a coup.
they have an abundance of crude, see: Chavez, Hugo. I think a message was sent. I'd tighten up our embassy security. This is in response to previous rough handling of our embassy staff
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2006 11:29 ||
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#1
Bitch slap number 1 for ya , Hugo. This fool was raving like a madman. Anyone see it on Fox ?
Posted by: Frank G ||
09/24/2006 12:16 Comments ||
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#4
"State Department officials arrived and ordered Maduro and the others to spread their arms and legs to be frisked by police"
The fact that he had to be "ordered" by a State Department official suggests to me that it's time to refuse him visas. Personna non grata. One way trip home.
#5
(Cause)
The two countries' relations - strained for several years - took a particularly confrontational turn this week, when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the annual U.N. General Assembly, called President Bush "the devil."
(Effect)
he went through," a metal detector (Which must have gone off)
Maduro said when one official ordered him to go to another room for a strip-search, he refused.(I don't have to obey the laws, I'm a legislator, I make them for the lesser Peons to obey) He told CNN en Espanol that the official pushed him and yelled at him.
(Result)
CAUTION Sharp learning curve ahead. Picking on the Bigger, Stronger, Meaner Guy is very poor snarts.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/24/2006 14:21 Comments ||
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#6
Dammit "SMARTS"
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/24/2006 14:23 Comments ||
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#7
I wish the security folks had ruffed him, cuffed him, and tasered him twice for good measure. I mean beat his ass good with the stick and the sap. Maybe take a few teeth out. Then slap the punk on the next plane to Caracas--no medical treatment allowed beforehand--and tell Chavez that if he doesn't like what his FM just got, that's just too damned bad. Lesson: don't screw around with the security folks in a foreign country and you won't have anywhere near the problem you'll have if you do.
Posted by: mac ||
09/24/2006 18:40 Comments ||
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Author Noam Chomsky, whose three-year-old book shot to the top of the Amazon.com bestseller list after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez touted it at the United Nations, says he would like to meet Chavez, The New York Times reported Friday. "I would be happy to meet him," said Chomsky.
The leftist author told the Times he is 'quite interested' in Chavez's policies and finds many of them 'quite constructive.'
The American author told the Times he received "10,000 e-mails" after Chavez recommended his 2003 book "Hegemony or Survival" in remarks before the United Nations General Assembly.
Chomsky told the newspaper he would not use the same words - "alcoholic," "sick man" and "tyrant" - that Chavez used to describe President George W Bush. But he said he understood where the Venezuelan president was coming from. "The Bush administration backed a coup to overthrow his government," Chomsky said. "Suppose Venezuela supported a military coup that overthrew the government of the United States? Would we think it was a joke?" The leftist author told the Times he is "quite interested" in Chavez's policies and finds many of them "quite constructive."
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2006 09:11 ||
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#1
Commies. I hate commies.
100 million dead from the 20th Century and still counting.
#4
Never trust a communist who owns a holiday home plus several cars and yachts.
There - fixed that for ya', SC9540.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/24/2006 13:50 Comments ||
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Chomsky is intrigued by Chavez's creation of the Dry-Erase Board Constitution. He thinks it would make it easier to accelerate social revolution through American courts if the Constitution was rewritten weekly in a Generalissimo's staff meeting.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/24/2006 14:10 Comments ||
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#6
"Chomsky eager to meet Chavez"
Let the lovefest begin. BTW: WTF post a picture of the Chomskymeister when he was about 32? He's 77 now, with another B-Day coming on December 7!
"Two worst things to happen to US? Pearl Harbor and Chomsky's birth." -- Christopher Hitchens
#7
77 going on 78?
He won't be a problem much longer.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/24/2006 14:24 Comments ||
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#8
100 million dead from the 20th Century and still counting.
Between Stalin and Mao alone it is more than 100 million, add in the other players and it's even more.
He won't be a problem much longer.
He should have been dealt with a long time ago. It seems to me that if anything is going to change, it will have to be done at the citizen level in an extra-judicial manner. Just sayin'!
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez accused his American counterpart George W. Bush overnight of ordering his assassination for calling the US leader the devil during his speech at the United Nations this week. You just can't make this stuff up. I'm sorry USA that you have this raving loon near your nether regions
"The devil appears very sulphurous, and a few people say that he has given the order to kill me," Chavez said during a speech before scientists in western Venezuela. "Many concerned friends have called me, (saying) that because I said 'devil' over there (at the UN), they have sentenced me to die. They will not kill me, I have much faith in life," Mr Chavez added. The brave man waving words at people he knows actually won't kill him. If he really thought that he'd be in hiding
The leftist Venezuelan leader called Mr Bush "the devil", "a liar" and a "tyrant" during his speech at the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, one day after the US President spoke from the same podium. it's good to wave your sword at people who won't strike back, makes you look strong
Mr Chavez again showed a copy of Hegemony or Survival overnight, a book by US academic Noam Chomsky that he had first held up during his address to the UN assembly. Now see the damage done by the fifth column
He said he had to wash the book "with holy water because I put it in the same place that the devil put his papers." Oh please this ia an international statesman? What do Venezuelans think of this git? Are they this backward?
A fair number of them are afraid.
AoS note: put the source URL in the source box, not embedded in the text.
#2
Tell Hugo to stop listening to Al Gore. He's not credible.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/24/2006 1:21 Comments ||
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The smell you smell mr shithead is adminijihad. If you read chomsky, your mind is already lost. You are an idiot leader. It is amazing how childish you all act. Hopefully Americans have seen what the President has to deal with on a daily basis.What a stupified world. God should wipe you all out just for having such stupid kings. Everyone in the UN is more stupid for listening and laughing at what you said Bendiego. Poopeyhead.
#7
Nobody is pointing out the obvious here. Chomsky's prose is hard to follow and make sense of for someone like me, a reasonably literate native English speaker.
Chavez speaks limited english. Ergo he has never read the book he is waving.
#12
Look on the bright side. A few more episodes like this at the UN funhouse, and it's pack up your suitcases and head off to Vienna, Austria, you UN thugs and clowns.
#14
Chomsky's prose is hard to follow and make sense of for someone like me, a reasonably literate native English speaker.
Chomsky's prose is gibberish, presented to the gullible as high intellect. I cannot imagine his spewings being any more understandable in Spanish.
The woman is obviously trying to keep from laughing out loud at this twit waving the book around.
What in hell is happening in the world? It is as if there has been the release of some contagion that causes insanity. Isn't there some brave soul in Venezuela willing to stick a blade between this guys ribs?
In a way, this really is the very essence of the War on Islamofascism.
Workers in the Ulyanovsk, Russia, received an unusual order from the area's governor: Go home to your loved one, relax and let nature take its course. It was the most direct attempt yet to reverse the country's downward population trend, The Telegraph of London said Friday. Russian officials have been coming up with ways to help reverse what President Vladimir Putin called the country's biggest threat.
... the Center for Demography said Russia's 142-million population is dropping faster than any other on the planet...
Sergey Morozov, governor of the Russian province, offered goodies for workers who took him up on his offer, The Telegraph said. His "Give Birth to a Patriot" campaign offered couples who give birth next year on June 12 -- Russia's Independence Day -- incentives ranging from appliances to a four-wheel-drive vehicle, depending on how many children the couple already has.
But the governor's incentives don't match the Kremlin's. During a speech in May, Putin promised to give nearly $9,599 to every mother who gives birth to a second child, the newspaper said. With 793,000 more deaths than births in 2004, the Center for Demography said Russia's 142-million population is dropping faster than any other on the planet, The Telegraph reported.
Early projections indicate the vote has been carried.
Swiss voters are going to the polls to decide whether the country should impose more restrictive asylum laws. The laws include demands for valid identity papers and cuts on welfare for asylum seekers and the detention of rejected applicants until deportation. The Swiss government says the changes will reduce abuse of its asylum system.
The UN says that the measures under consideration in the nationwide referendum could lead to breaches of the Geneva Convention on Refugees.
#1
Wasn't Switzerland a popular for refugees mostly because it was centrally located neutral ground during European wars? I guess it would still be attractive to refugees interested in alpine sports.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
09/24/2006 12:54 Comments ||
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#2
"And opponents say the introduction of up to two years detention for those awaiting deportation, including minors, could violate the UN convention on the rights of the child."
Then let the UN assholes personally take those minors into their own homes.
Don't talk the talk if you won't walk the walk.
And we know which one the Useless Nitwits excells at.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/24/2006 13:55 Comments ||
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#3
After Switzerlands shameful role in WWII, they should be the last country able to deny the entry of immigrants. Sadly, the Muslim threat is even worse than that.
We really don't want anyone from the UN taking a minor into his house.
Posted by: Eric Jablow ||
09/24/2006 15:05 Comments ||
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#6
Switzerland was the bastion of Freedom in the Nazi Sea during WWII. It took in more refugees including jews on a per capita basis than any other nation on the Earth. It was prepared to fight to the death if Hitler had invaded. The local militia had standing orders to execute all Nazi sympathizers upon an invasion. All this while preserving basic freedoms.
Posted by: Red River ||
09/24/2006 22:52 Comments ||
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I think the only thing you got right was their willingness to fight to the death for their country. They were not alone in that. Several million other Europeans felt the same way. The difference was that the Swiss provided valuable services to the Nazis and had very advantageous terrain from a defensive standpoint. Other than that, they would have gotten hammered hard like the rest of Europe.
Tens of thousands of people poured into Budapest's parliament square on Saturday in the biggest rally so far against Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany over his admission that he lied to the electorate. More demonstrators were still arriving in the late afternoon to join at least 30,000 already in the large square in front of the huge neo-Gothic parliament building, where protests have been held for the past week.
The demonstrations have widened the bitter division between the governing left and the rightist opposition, each accusing the other of fomenting violence to win ground ahead of local elections on October 1. Some of the protesters were from far-right groups and there was concern about possible violence as local soccer team Ferencvaros, some of whose supporters are known for hooliganism and hatred of the government, were playing a home game.
Thousands of supporters of Fidesz, the main opposition party which canceled its own rally because of fears of violence, were among those gathering in the square, and party leaders reiterated earlier calls for Gyurcsany to quit. Fidesz Deputy President Pal Schmitt, in a brief speech outside parliament, asked the crowd to wear white clothes and white armbands to show they reject violence, and about half the crowd were wearing some white clothing. Fidesz leader Viktor Orban told private InfoRadio that Gyurcsany had broken the law. "We are dealing with a chronic liar, that's clear," he said, referring to Gyurcsany's remarks, on a tape leaked to media, that his party had lied "in the morning and in the evening" to win re-election in April.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/24/2006 00:00 ||
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NEW DELHI, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Indian and British air forces will hold a joint exercise in Agra of north India's Uttar Pradesh and Gwalior of central India's Madhya Pradesh from Oct. 13 to 20. India had conducted similar joint exercises with U.S. Air Forcein Agra two years ago.
Indo-Asian News Service quoted the military source as saying that 100 Indian Air Force (IAF) officers and 100 officers of Royal Air Force (RAF) of Britain will take part the exercise named "Indradhanush." Eight Tornado aircraft, accompanied by a VC-10 aerial tanker, will participate in the exercise. Pilots of the two countries will also fly in each other's aircraft as co-pilots. The IAF will use the Mirage 2000 aircraft while other aircraft like the Su-30, the Jaguar and IL-78 mid-air refuellers will fly in the exercise.
Gwalior is one of India's leading training and operational centers and the home base of IAF's two Mirage 2000 squadrons. Agra has the best training facilities and the only Para Training School in India.
Posted by: john ||
09/24/2006 09:58 ||
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#1
Perhaps the early stage of an inevitable, coordinated Allied effort to dismantle the soon-to-be Islamicized, nuke-armed Pakistan (remember folks, one bullet or car-bombing away!).
Buwahaahaahaa
Attention Body Snatchers and Ghouls Scientists turn dead cells into live tissue
Scientists working at a British laboratory have achieved one of the most controversial breakthroughs ever made in the field of stem cell science by taking cells from dead embryos and turning them into living tissue.
Stojkovic's experiments were carried out while he was working at the Centre for Stem Cell Biology at Newcastle last year. In a paper, published last week online on the website of the journal Stem Cells, Stojkovic reveals he and his colleagues took 13 embryos, created by IVF. All 13 had stopped developing a few days after conception. 'They were in a very early stage of development,' said Stojkovic, now head of Sintocell, the Serbian medical research centre.
The team then waited 24 hours to check that the embryos were no longer dividing before beginning their experiments. 'These were all deemed to be arrested embryos,' said Stojkovic. 'In other words, they were dead. [But] they had the capacity to develop any different type of cell you could think of, including kidney cells, liver cells, and skin cells.' "Honey, Lets go dig up Grand Pa".
#6
Since there is no way on this planet that those dead stem cells could possibly have turned into a living, breathing being, it seems to me that any criticisms about using them for experimental stuff just evaporated with them being declared "dead". Right?
#7
"These samples aren't dead. There's still cellular activity." Fuchs - John Carpenter's The Thing, 1982
I'm not buying it. If there's anything that certain it's cell death.
The article seems to indicate that there was still some cellular activity at some level and that the cells were not truly dead, but merely in some form of suspended animation.
(2006-09-23) United Nations authorities are probing a possible link between reports that al Qaeda leader Usama Bin Laden died recently and the peculiar sulfur smell which Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he detected while speaking to the U.N. General Assembly this week.
Mr. Chavez attributed the aroma to the recent appearance at the podium of the devil, a term of endearment for U.S. President George Bush, but chemical experts at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it now seems more likely that someone split Hell wide open recently, permitting the noxious fumes to escape.
A French publication, LEst Republicain, today quoted a leaked secret service memo dated September 21 which indicated that Saudi sources believe Mr. Bin Laden died in Pakistan on August 23 of typhoid fever.
An unnamed journalism expert said the fact that the Bin Laden death report was leaked should provide sufficient evidence of its reliability, but the involvement of France and Saudi Arabia makes it a slam dunk.
As the rumor that Usama Bin Laden is dead spread worldwide, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) began gearing up to provide massive disaster relief in the so-called blue states where FEMA expects members of the Democrat party will be hardest hit.
#1
It comes back to the old adage, "He who first smelt it, dealt it". Whether UBL is DOA makes no difference but let me know where the grave is so that one day I can book passage and piss on it. That is, once the radiation levels have dropped to a safer level.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The state-oriented media celebrated the failure of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)-organised mid-day protests on Wednesday 13 September 2006 describing it as a "damp squib". More sympathetic media were more restrained in their reactions. The alleged reasons for the "damp squib" varied widely and wildly. This is neither the first nor the last time such "damp squibs" will be witnessed in crisis-riddled Zimbabwe.
Author Noam Chomsky, whose three-year-old book shot to the top of the Amazon.com bestseller list after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez touted it at the United Nations, says he would like to meet Chavez, The New York Times reported Friday. "I would be happy to meet him," said Chomsky. 
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez accused his American counterpart George W. Bush overnight of ordering his assassination for calling the US leader the devil during his speech at the United Nations this week.
