Good morning/evening, here is my
World Roundup for
January 2, 2004
Legend:
fr = French language
it = Italian language
ro = Romanian/Moldovan language
es = Spanish language
de = German language
pt = Portuguese language
is = Icelandic language
su = Suomi language (Finnish)
nl = Dutch language
Everything else in English language
Note: That which you can see on your evening news will (usually) not be covered here.
The UN organization UNICEF has listed the top 5 concerns for children worldwide:
Survival - 11 million children die before their fifth birthday from preventable diseases and malnutrition.
HIV/AIDS - 14 million children are orphaned because of AIDS
War - 2 million children have died in the last 10 years as a direct result of armed conflicts worldwide. Additionally, approximately 300,000 children are used as soldiers at any given time.
Exploitation - 246 million children work worldwide, 171 million of which in hazardous occupations. 1.2 million children, per year, are sold for money worldwide, mostly for sex.
Insufficient investment in children - Mainly the complete lack of investment in education and health resources for children worldwide.
Time for a review of the political situations in Africa:
Liberia: UN-led peacekeepers seem determined to bring peace to this war-torn country after 14 years of civil war. The road ahead is very, very shaky but the prospectus seems promising.
Cote D'Ivoire: The rebels in the north have agreed to join the government and French and other peacekeepers are on hand to maintain the transition.
Guinea: Long-time dictator Lonsana Conte was "re-elected" again on December 21, 2003 and there is widespread fear that the 69-year-old tyrant will die without naming a successor.
Mauritania: Ould Taya, current dictator, managed to stymie a comeback from the former dictator, Ould Haidallah, by arresting him and then getting a judge to declare him guilty of plotting a coup. Ould Haidallah received a suspended sentence but it will prevent him from running in any elections for the next five years.
Guinea-Bisseau: Although there was a fresh coup in 2003, the overthrown dictator, Kumba Ya(la), was so tyrannical that the population is grateful and there are hopes that the March 2004 parliamentary elections will be more or less fair and democratic.
Sao Tome & Principe: A recent discovery of oil led to a one-week long coup in November 2003 but now the old tyrant, Fradique de Menezes, is back after Nigeria threatened the tiny nation with military force.
Nigeria: Long-standing oil-fueled feuds led to more death, strife and inter-ethnic bloodshed. Tensions also still loom between Nigeria and Cameroon over the Lake Chad area, currently being disputed by international mediators.
Chad: The only positive has been the recent signing of a peace deal between the government and rebels, but with fighting spreading into Chad from the Darfur region of the Sudan plus regional tensions, especially in the CAR, and the beginning of oil exportation, are all leading this nation into a bushel of trouble.
Sierra Leone: After years of fighting, it seems that the UN troops have managed to install a fairly stable peace. Assuming the UN and others can keep the LURD out of the country, look to a positive note in 2004 for this nation.
Angola: After suffering from the worst fighting in Africa, and that's saying something, Angola seems on its way to peace and democracy as the UNITA rebels are being incorporated into a political party and new constitutional changes should lead to fair elections in 2004.
Zimbabwe: In what has to be almost the worst nation on earth to live in, Zimbabwe has had crippling inflation, embargos and sanctions from western nations, famine and wide-spread hunger and ever degenerating political freedom.
Comoros: A multinational group, led by South African President Mbeki, brokered a peace deal in this island nation, preventing a threatened secession by two of the four islands. Let's hope the federalization plan just approved keeps the peace.
Other nations will be covered below, but that's a wrap-up from some of the hotspots in the continent. Tyranny, dictatorship and repression continue to be the status quo in: Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Western Sahara, Mali, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Niger, Congo-Brazzaville, Congo-Kinshasa, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia and the CAR.
The nation of France will send money and electoral monitors to assist a transition to peace and democracy in the Central African Republic.
According to the initial electoral calendar, a constitutional referendum is scheduled for mid-2004, to be followed by the presidential election and finally municipal and legislative elections.
In July, [French foreign minister] De Villepin said France would train and equip three army battalions and thirty gendarmerie units, to be deployed across the country. Currently, French instructors are training CAR forces in Kasai military barracks in Bangui, and in Bouar, 454 km northwest of Bangui.
"In France we have reopened the doors of military academies to CAR army officers," [French defense minister] Alliot-Marie said, adding that the French troops in the CAR would never "substitute for the CAR army".
65 people barely escaped with their lives after a bus blew up in Zambia.
The 75-seater luxury coach developed an electrical fault shortly after starting off from Livingstone but the driver could not identify the problem until a computer signal warned of the fire.
The signal was flashing on the dashboard prompting the driver to park and alert passengers to disembark.
All the passengers aboard escaped unhurt and managed to off-load their luggage before the bus burst into an inferno which reduced it to a shell.
Bus driver John Tembo said he ordered the passengers out of the bus when the computer indicated that there was a fire. The passengers and crew hastily removed the luggage to safety.
"The fire extinguisher was too small for us to put out the flames. We all watched helplessly as the bus was burnt to skeleton," Tembo said.
Well, you will be happy to learn that President Musharraf of Pakistan is, for the first time, actually the President. What?
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf [on] Thursday won [a] vote of confidence in the federal and provincial parliaments, which has made him a "legal" president and will end a one-year long power struggle in the country.
His new powers allow him to dismiss the prime minister and the parliament any time he wishes. Before this vote, Musharraf was called the president but he was "only" the head of the armed forces. Now he's got what political pundits call the "whole package".
Forgotten wars: Troops in Bangladesh fought tribal gunmen and seized landmines near the border with Myanmar. The Shanti Bahini rebels have been trying to gain political autonomy for more than 25 years.
In the nation of Thailand, 537 people were killed and 26,000 others injured in road accidents in the last week of 2003. This nation of 65 million people has the highest rate of traffic accident fatalities worldwide. 20,000 of the 26,000 injured involved accidents with motorcycles.
Last week's deadly earthquake in Iran also claimed the life of one American.
Tobb Dell'Oro, 41, was visiting the city 600 miles south of Tehran with his fiancée, 39-year-old Adele Freedman when the quake struck, according to Associated Press reports that quoted Freedman's mother, Annamae Freedman.
Freedman survived hours under the rubble and was taken to a hospital in Tehran.
10 people were killed and 45 injured when a bomb exploded during a concert in the separatist province of Aceh in Indonesia. Government officials are blaming the GAM separatist group but the GAM denied any involvement.
A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Ahmad Yani Basuki, said it was a powerful bomb and that no one but the rebels could have carried it out. But a spokesman for the Free Aceh Movement, Sofyan Dawood, denied that the rebels were responsible, saying, "We have never staged an attack to kill our own people."
In her annual New Year's Eve speech, shortly before the bombing, President Megawati Sukarnoputri declared the offensive against the rebels successful.
"We have succeeded in calming down many upheavals and conflicts among ethnic groups," she said in the broadcast on the official television station TVRI.
In what was apparently a reference to Aceh, Mrs. Megawati said, "Even if it is painful, we had to take harsh measures and we have successfully curtailed the movement, which is trying to separate from Indonesia."
Approximately 100,000 people marched in Hong Kong to ask the Beijing government for "full democracy". The head politician in Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, is very unpopular and many protestors wanted his dismissal as well.
US-installed tyrant Jean Bertrande Aristide of Haiti led an independence celebration despite recent violent crackdowns by police on protestors unhappy with the state of affairs in the nation.
In other news, a South African helicopter, surveying the country in preparation for SA President Mbeki's visit to the island nation, came under fire from unknown individuals. The chopper did not return fire but Mbeki did cancel a planned visit to the town of Gonaives.
Forgotten wars: All is fair in love and war? Not in the Phillippines when New People's Army rebels killed a government soldier despite a temporary ceasefire being in place.
An American missionary was killed in Kenya during a home invasion robbery.
Paul A. Ritchey, 62, was staying at the guesthouse of a Baptist pastor in Malaba, near the Ugandan border, when intruders entered the home and demanded money. Ritchey refused and was shot, local police said.
A couple of odd stories, one more odd than the other from Norway:
The annual New Year's address by crown prince Haakon of Norway included quotes from Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. Is there a honey shortage in this Scandinavian nation? Stay tuned for more!
And even more bizarre, a 24-hour gas station was robbed by a dog.
The cameras picked him up sniffing around the candy shelves, poking his nose into the containers of sweets sold by loose weight, and snubbing all of these treats in search of his personal favorite, chocolate covered rice crisp. Here he stopped and devoured the contents of the container.
"When he was finished he let out this enormous burp," said Elisabeth Roel, who had the night shift at the station.
Pictures from the security cam of the perfidious thief are included in the link.
Talks to bring peace to the wartorn nation of The Sudan have stalled despite intense pressure from the United States. The US had pushed mightily for a December 31, 2003 deadline on signing the peace agreement between the north and the south, but talks are bogging down, this time over three other separatist regions: Blue Nile, Abyei and the Nuba Mountains.
Meanwhile the fighting in the western Darfur region has intensified. The link goes to an excellent analysis of the region if you're interested.
The United States has committed ever more taxpayer dollars, this time to building a bridge in Tajikstan over the river Pianj that separates it from Afghanistan. Construction of the bridge is expected to cost 12 million US dollars.
Speaking of Afghanistan, you will be pleased to know that US puppet president Hamid Karzai released 48 high ranking Taliban officials in exchange for two Indian hostages captured on December 6, 2003.
The puppet regime of Hamid Karzai of course has once again denied that they negotiated with Taliban. Recently in an effort to cover their tracks and prevent this information from reaching the public, government officials even told reporters that it was unlikely the engineers were taken by the Taliban but rather were most likely taken by warlords by mistake. This is pure myth. Not only did the Taliban claim responsibility for this hostage taking but there have been numerous incidents when Taliban officials were released in return for captives including when the Taliban captured employees of the Afghanistan government and when they captured soldiers from the National army.
The European nation of Spain has stepped up naval patrols in the waters off the coast to prevent Moroccan designs on the enclave in Ceuta.
Forgotten wars: 12 rebels entered a Russian police officer's home in Chechnya and stole his weapons, including a submachine gun. Elsewhere, rebels attacked a checkpoint in Jokhar, Chechnya and wounded 3 Russian troops. A car was also attacked nearby, wounding a Russian lieutenant colonel.
<Forgotten wars</b>: 2 soldiers and 2 rebels were killed in a gunbattle in the disputed province of Kashmir. Pakistani media reports that 138 people were killed and 2,823 were injured by Indian forces in Kashmir in 2003.
Meanwhile in Srinigar, a homemade bomb killed 1 person and injured 20.
Official sources said that an IED, planted on a bicycle near the masjid, went off around 0910 hours when a large number of people, mostly office-goers, were waiting at the bus-stop.
The World Update award for irony goes to the bloodthirsty dictator of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, after he declared 2004 to be the year of "Kindness and Mercy".
The Uzbek president expressed confidence that during the "Year of Kindness and Mercy" the Uzbek people will once again prove to the world that an industrious nation for whom the main and prime goal is peace, stability and calmness on Earth is living in the blessed Uzbek land.
All this despite 2003 being a tragic example of routine human rights abuses.
In one case, documented by Human Rights Watch in July, the wife of a religious prisoner came to Tashkent from another region of Uzbekistan at the end of May to request permission from the central prison authorities to visit with her husband. When she arrived at the government office during their reception hours, she found other relatives of religious prisoners protesting the conditions in which the prisoners were held. She became involved in the protest and was detained along with the other women. The police released her later that day. About three days later in the early morning, two police officers came to her house and demanded that she go with them. They took her to the office of the deputy head of the regional police station. He began to shout at her for having attended the protest in Tashkent. He pulled off her headscarf, began to strangle her with his hands and then beat her with a baton. He threatened to send police officers to her house to rape her at night, and then, pulling off his trousers threatened to rape her in the office. He then put her in the mid-day summer sun, where he made her stand for approximately thirteen hours with nothing to drink or eat. He warned her to stay at home, not to go to Tashkent or attend protests, and then released her. Witnesses reported that she was bruised, had severe neck injuries and was unable to talk for several days after the attack.
The government in Mali is making the first tentative steps to curb the common practice of female genital mutilation. Approximately 92% of all women in this country have had their clitoris removed, sometimes in very unhygienic surgical conditions.
The nation of Ethiopia, rapidly becoming a staunch US ally, is reportedly "pleased" with the appointment of a new UN envoy, Canadian Lloyd Axworthy, to broker their border disputes with Eritrea. This despite the fact that the UN has repeatedly stated that the key town of Badme belongs to Eritrea and not Ethiopia.
Authorities in Cameroon have shut down 12 independent television and radio stations ahead of upcoming presidential elections.
The authorities added that the broadcast media sector is "too sensitive not to be controlled".
Many independent newspapers condemned the move, saying it damages news and information diversity in the country. "This is returning us step by step to a near monopoly for Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV)," said the independent daily "Mutations".
Apparently a young man was beaten to death with shovels in Banbridge by 4 men and 2 women.
Moroccan authorities have put the hammer on a boat about to set sail from Al Ayoun, Western Sahara, trying to make it to the nearby Canary Islands, which belong to the nation of Spain. The 20 Gambians, 15 Malians, 11 Senegalese, two Nigerians, one Liberian, one Ghanaian and one Guinean who were arrested were trying to gain asylum by reaching the shores of Spanish territory.
In an odd move, the President of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, has officially "quit" his position as head of the armed forces. This comes despite Museveni's recent claim that the government has "decisively defeated" the Lord's Resistance Army despite all evidence to the contrary.
"The Kony terror in the northeast has been defeated decisively," said Museveni in his New Year address to the nation.
"Given the improved equipment of the UPDF (Ugandan army), it is only a matter of time before the UPDF kills (rebel leaders) Vincent Otti and Kony just as we killed many of the bandit leaders," said Museveni.
The LRA took up arms against Museveni's government in 1988, ostensibly in a bid to replace it with an administration that would enforce the biblical Ten Commandments.
The group is infamous for its atrocities against civilians and abductions of thousands of children, and has been condemned by human rights groups and United Nations aid agencies.
And Soros and American-financed Mikhail Saakashvili is strongly predicted to win upcoming presidential elections in The Republic of Georgia on January 4. Under heavy pressure from US ambassador Dick Miles, the breakaway republic of Adzharia will not boycott the elections, which is critical because at least 50% of voters must turn out to make the elections valid.
Russia and her allies will also be keeping an eye on elections to make sure they are fair.
And my man Willie Nelson has just released a new song called Whatever Happened to Peace on Earth?:
Here's so many things going on in the world
Babies dying
Mothers crying
How much oil is one human life worth
And what ever happened to peace on earth?
We believe everything that they tell us
They're gonna' kill us
So we gotta' kill them first
But I remember a commandment
Thou shall not kill
How much is that soldier's life worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth?
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liars word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth?
So I guess it's just
Do unto others before they do it to you
Let's just kill em' all and let God sort em' out
Is this what God wants us to do?
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liars word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth?
Now you probably won't hear this on your radio
Probably not on your local TV
But if there's a time, and if you're ever so inclined
You can always hear it from me
How much is one picker's word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth?
But don't confuse caring for weakness
You can't put that label on me
The truth is my weapon of mass protection
And I believe truth sets you free
And the bewildered herd is still believing
Everything we've been told from our birth
Hell they won't lie to me
Not on my own damn TV
But how much is a liars word worth
And whatever happened to peace on earth?
Peace on Earth indeed!