What follows is my "PDB" from my
blog, which is similar to what George Bush gets every day, except mine is all from public sources and is a bit longer than one double-spaced page.
I believe that the best electorate is an informed electorate, and that must include a knowledge of what's going on around the world. It is for this reason that I post the PDB on DailyKos.
I read approximately 50 newspapers every morning and report what I find there, with an emphasis on foreign or international events. You will however not find information about Iraq or the Israeli/Palestinian situation, the first because it is amply reported elsewhere and the latter because it is too contentious.
Events that I feel are well-covered elsewhere are not included for brevity.
Ok, let's see what the world has been up to in the last 24 hours :)
Just in English today as I'm running late and I want to get some more blogging in!
In English
I had to put a picture of Lynndie England on here today in memory of all the victims of my country at Abu Ghraib and detention centers around the world and to state once again they did not act in my name.
As I mentioned yesterday, there is an important summit going on in New York about nuclear weapons. Now I see that "Cuppa" Kofi Annan, the UN SecGen, has is warning of a nuclear catastrophe:
Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, warned the 188 parties to the treaty that a nuclear catastrophe would have global consequences. But he also reminded the five nuclear-armed states that are signatories of their duty to make progress in reducing their arsenals.
Check out what Jimmy Carter had to say yesterday:
"Until recently, all American presidents since Dwight Eisenhower had striven to restrict and reduce nuclear arsenals - some more than others. As far as I know, there are no present efforts by any of the nuclear powers to accomplish these crucial goals.
"The US is the major culprit in this erosion of the NPT. While claiming to be protecting the world from proliferation threats in Iraq, Libya, Iran and North Korea, American leaders not only have abandoned existing treaty restraints but also have asserted plans to test and develop new weapons, including antiballistic missiles, the earth-penetrating 'bunker buster' and perhaps some new 'small' bombs. They also have abandoned past pledges and now threaten first use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states."
There are two publications, both British, whom I trust on economic issues. One is the Financial Times and the other is the Economist. And both are issuing warnings about the American economy:
IN CERTAIN quarters in America, a dreadful word is once again being whispered. "Stagflation", that puzzling combination of high inflation and economic stagnation, was once thought impossible. The 1970s disproved that painfully, but most thought the phenomenon had been banished when the government got a firmer grip on fiscal and monetary policy. Now, however, all the economic data indicate that America has hit another economic soft patch, even as resurgent inflation begins to nibble at purchasing power and push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.
And from the FT:
Data released on Monday showed that manufacturing activity slowed further in April, with the Institute for Supply Management index sliding more steeply than expected from 55.2 to 53.3.
The index has fallen in eight of the nine previous releases and is creeping perilously close to the 50 mark that separates expansion from contraction. Particularly worrying was a sharp fall in the new orders component of the index to 53.7 from 57.1, which may point to weaker production in coming months.
A major setback for women in US-ally Kuwait as a bill to give them the right to vote failed to garner enough votes in parliament. While some say that pro-Islamist MPs were behind the failure of the bill, I remind my readers that several Islamic countries not only give women the right to vote but have had female heads of state including Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
In the ongoing scandal over the report investigating the death of Italian intelligence officer Nicola Calipari in Iraq, it looks like the Italian government will now release its own report of what happened:
On Saturday, the US military released its report, contending the car did not slow down at the checkpoint and that the US soldiers did not do anything wrong.
But the two Italian experts who participated in the joint US-Italian probe - a diplomat and a military intelligence general - refused to accept US findings.
For more details and a good analysis of what the Italian papers have been saying, I recommend you read gilgamesh's article on the subject.
As expected, the court in Oman convicted all 31 people accused of belonging to a "banned" organization. Let me tell you that the completely undemocratic governments in UAE, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, all rich mini oil states with majority Muslim populations are absolutely scared to death that radical Islamic movements are going to get a foothold in their countries. Because of this they are cracking down extremely harshly on anyone even suspected of being "radical" as well as paying off the most influential preachers. It's what we call a short-term strategy and it won't work in the long run so long as anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment continues to grow:
The group's lawyers had said their clients were innocent and that they had merely sought to promote the setting up of Islamic clerical rule in Oman.
Yesterday I reported the country had been downgraded from a "Somewhat Free" press to a "Not Free" press, now I see that poverty in Kenya has risen to 60% of the population. The poverty line is measured as less than $1 income per day:
"This figure represents the proportion of Kenyans who cannot afford a decent meal, shelter, access to basic healthcare and education for their children," he said.
"The situation is made worse by the fact that 3.8 million out of the country's labour force of 14 million are either unemployed or under-employed," he said.
Even more ominously, it looks like President Kibaki's wife Lucy is increasingly letting power get to her head, which is extremely disappointing after the decades that Kenyans had to suffer under strongman Daniel arap Moi. Read the entire story to see what I'm referring to.
More bad news out of Togo as the UN is reporting that more than 16,500 people have fled the country because of post-election violence:
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that more than 9,000 refugees had been registered in Benin and around 7,500 in Ghana. Many of the most recent arrivals were from Be [a pro-opposition neighborhood in Togo's capital Lome], said Rafik Saidi, the agency's regional representative.
Many of the refugees claimed they were harassed by security forces in Togo and some were suffering from bullet wounds.
The government last week put the casualty toll at 22 but a spokesman for the six-party opposition coalition, Yawovi Agboyibo, said this weekend that 106 people had died and hundreds had been injured.
At the offices of Togo's Human Rights League, one man told IRIN that his brother had been shot dead at 10 p.m. on Sunday "by men in fatigues". His wife and four children were beaten up so badly that one daughter was in hospital and his 14-year-old son could no longer see.
"We don't know why, they said nothing. They just stormed into the house. Now my brother is in the morgue," said the resident of the Lome suburb of Baguida, who did not want to be identified.
The first wave of refugees into Benin last week said they had fled Togo after being shot or being beaten up by security forces, UNHCR spokesman Marcel van Maastrigt told IRIN by telephone from the southern border town of Hilakondji.
Meanwhile newly elected President Faure Gnassingbe was in Libya to powwow with jolly old Colonel Muammar Qaddafi.
Equally dismal news out of Cote D'Ivoire as inter-ethnic clashes in Duekoue have mushroomed, leaving at least 15 human beings dead and 4,000 people have fled the area. The central issue in Cote D'Ivoire is who exactly is an Ivorian and who is not, with particularly the Guere (sometimes spelled Gur) tribe, which backs President Laurent Gbagbo "Baggins", believing that the country belongs only to them.
Slightly better news as UN SecGen "Cuppa" Kofi Annan has appointed former Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano as his special envoy to deeply troubled Guinea-Bissau, which is holding presidential elections on June 19. Although 21 people are running for the office, the key issue here is that 2 of them are former presidents deposed in coups, Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira and Kumba "Ya" Yala.
Now for a few stories from Nigeria:
- The Daily Trust is reporting that 60,000 barrels of oil are "bunkered" or stolen per day. At $50 a barrel that's a loss of 3 million dollars per day. It's also 22 million barrels per year. Who do you think is buying all that oil?
- The Daily Champion is reporting that inter-ethnic violence in Delta State between the Igbo and Urhobo tribes has left 2 people dead and 40 houses burned to the ground. The military had to intervened to prevent further bloodshed.
- And the Vanguard is reporting that officials in Delta State have stolen N22 out of the N30 million paid as compensation by the Shell Oil Company
Dissention in the ranks as someone in the American State Department met with the Saudi paper the Arab News:
The real reason why John Bolton, President George W. Bush's appointee as US ambassador to the United Nations, is intensely disliked by State Department officials has nothing to do with the way he treats his subordinates, but rather with the way he distorts intelligence information for his political motives, a State Department official told Arab News yesterday, while expressing disappointment that the US media has paid little attention to this, the real issue.
This news corroborated what former intelligence officials have reported, that Bolton repeatedly clashed with American intelligence officials in 2002 and 2003 as he sought to deliver warnings about Syrian and Cuban efforts to acquire unconventional weapons which the CIA and other experts rejected as exaggerated.
Bolton is so batty he probably sees Cubans hiding under his bed with machetes... read the entire linked article.
Some fairly good news out of Sudan for a change as a northern (not southern!) rebel group, the NDA, is close to signing a peace deal with the central government.
The June 17 presidential elections in Iran could not be more important for the future of that country. I see that Ahmad "Ravioli" Tavakoli has withdrawn his candidacy so that the hardliners can unite behind a single candidate (Ali Larijani) to defeat the more moderate former President, "Admiral" Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
An old arms cache in Afghanistan blew up for unknown reasons, injuring several people. Check out the UN's statement about the country:
That program as well as the disposal activities of US and NATO troops, who report the discovery of weapons caches almost daily, have rounded up thousands of tons of weapons, many left over from the resistance against occupying Soviet forces during the 1980s.
That means the good old American taxpayer paid for much of that weaponry. And guess whose hands all that firepower is in now? The Invincible Taliban and the hundreds of militiamen and warlords still roaming around the country, that's who!
Just a reminder, George Bush will be in the Republic of Georgia on May 10.
There is a preliminary report just in that the United States has lost two F/A-18 fighter jets over Iraq.
It looks like Brazil is backing Argentina's protest against Great Britain trying to include the Falkland (Malvinas) Islands as its territory in the European Union constitution.
Over 1,000 brave journalists have marched in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, to demand the lifting of severe restrictions on reporting. At least 400 independent journalists have been imprisoned or questioned by state security forces since the King dismissed the government in February.
Extremely bad news as health officials have reported the first case of polio in Indonesia. Previously the disease had been limited to Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger, Nigeria and Pakistan.
There's a growing crisis in Sweden as hundreds of refugee children facing deportation have fallen ill, have stopped eating, talking or even moving:
Under Swedish law, refugee children suffering from life-threatening illness cannot be deported. As a result, calls have been voiced for these children and their families to be granted permanent residency status for humanitarian reasons.
In early April, the Swedish parliament rejected a motion to give permanent residency to all 163 apathetic asylum-seeking children currently under treatment, insisting that their cases needed to be reviewed individually.
But after the publication of the report, the Swedish Migration Board on Friday decided to freeze all deportations pending further guidelines from the government on how to handle their cases.
Some good news for Pakistan's restless Balochistan province as the parliament is close to passing a bill that would increase gas royalties, a key demand of the tribal leaders. Still to be worked out is how much autonomy the province will have.
In other news, Pakistan's Prime Minister, Shaukat "Citibank" Aziz, tomorrow will begin a series of state visits to Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore and Thailand.
And buried in an article from the Hindustan Times (an Indian paper), look what I found:
Meanwhile, Pakistan's Defence spokesman Maj-Gen Shaukat Sultan has confirmed US media reports that Pakistan Army is holding joint exercises with US forces along the Afghan borders.
In fun-loving China, the government has prevented the journalist who broke the SARS story from receiving a UN press freedom award. The brave ma's name is Cheng Yizhong and was to receive the $25,000 award in Senegal.
The Daily Star (Lebanon) is reporting that women are increasingly joining militant groups in Egypt, always a symptom that public unrest is growing:
"Unemployment, corruption, regional tensions in Iraq and in Palestine, combined with the Egyptian authorities' unwillingness to oppose Israeli and U.S. policies all favor the multiplication of such groups.
"Violence against foreigners is the translation of a desire of revenge against everything that is Western," he added.
Frustration at Mubarak's unchallenged rule has been growing in recent months.
A new Kurdish group called the "Freedom Falcons" has claimed responsibility for a bombing in Turkey last weekend that killed one person.
Some fairly good news out of Israel as the government has come to an agreement on some of the key points concerning the mass relocation of Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.
In other news, the man George Bush finds so inspirational, Natan Sharansky, has resigned his post in the government in protest at the Gaza relocation plan.
The United States continues to look impotent in the stand-off with North Korea:
The United States has "significant deterrent capability" to thwart North Korea's nuclear ambitions, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned on Monday.
After talks with French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier, she said: "The United States maintains significant, I want to underline significant, deterrent capability of all kinds in the Asia-Pacific region.
"So I don't think there should be any doubt about our ability to deter whatever the North Koreans are up to," Rice said as the White House on Monday called Pyongyang's weekend missile test a "provocative" act.
Really? What deterrence is that? They don't receive any economic or trade help from the United States... what's left, a military attack? Isn't that exactly what Kim "Jiggy" Jong Il wants? To prove to his people that their starvation and suffering to build up the military against an invasion by the United States was right?
After Great Britain cut off foreign aid to Uganda, the increasingly dictatorial President Yoweri Museveni is now blaming "meddling" by foreign donors for the 19 years of civil war against the indefatigably ghastly Lord's Resistance Army.
Viktor Yushchenko has now been the president of Ukraine for 100 days, and he spoke about his accomplishments:
Among the first achievements of the first 100 days, the president listed "freedom of speech and independence of the mass media as well as revival of justice: court hearings will be instituted against all who killed reporters and politicians, who wanted to split the country, forged election results and smeared themselves with embezzlement of state funds and corruption". Yushchenko called the started withdrawal of the Ukrainian contingent from Iraq and reduction in the active military service to 12 months the next item of his victories.
Meanwhile the Moscow Times has their own take on the first 100 days.
Today, the Ukrainian opposition can run through a laundry list of accusations strikingly similar to those that Western governments hold against Moscow: imprisoning political opponents; spooking businesses with threats of renationalization; forcefully asserting the state's role in the business sphere; and making policy without carefully considering the consequences. Many of the government's biggest problems have come in the economic field, as authorities have scrambled to fill a gaping budget deficit and stamp out inflation.
I should mention that Operation Cobra Gold is underway, a joint military exercise with Thailand, Japan and the United States participating.
It looks like Saudi Arabia is angry with Hungary after PM Ferenc Gyurcsany called the Saudi football (soccer) team "Arab terrorists".
Spanish newspaper El Pais is reporting that the U.S. wants to concentrate its special forces at its base in Rota, Spain. As a reminder, Spanish Defense Minister Jose Bono is in the U.S. this week meeting with Donald Rumsfeld today.
Some better news out of China as the gov't has lifted restrictions on tourists visiting Taiwan and has offered a pair of giant pandas as a goodwill gesture.
It looks like former Haitian PM Yvon Neptune, jailed for more than a year without being charged, has refused to be flown to the Dominican Republic. He is on a hunger strike and says he will allow himself to die unless the government drops all accusations against him:
"Mr. Neptune said he would accept to be evacuated only if all the charges brought against him were lifted," Mike Joseph, a spokesman for interim Prime Minister Gerard Latortue, said in a statement late Sunday. "Such demands are absolutely unacceptable."
Doctors from the United Nations' peacekeeping contingent in Haiti said on Saturday that Neptune's vital functions were seriously threatened and he was near death.
Increasing power shortages and blackouts in Maharastra State, India (which includes Mumbai) have led to citizens attacking the State Electricity Board:
Chief engineer of the Nagpur urban circle P V Borde was gheraoed and locked up in his office for three hours by angry volunteers of an organisation called Youth Force. Reports of growing disquiet and protests against MSEB officials poured in from several parts of Vidarbha, including Akola and Amravati districts, for the second week running.
Angry activists of Samajwadi Party detained the Mumbai-bound Vidarbha Express for half an hour just after it left the Ajni railway station on the outskirts of Nagpur city.
And last but not least, it looks like the power of disgruntled scientists blogging at the Los Alamos research facility may threaten the end of its director, Peter Nanos, highlighting many bad decision he has made. To jump directly to the blog, click here.
Pax