The Bono® and Bob Geldoff are in the running for the Nobel peace prize. I see Sweden nominated John Bolton surprise, surprise.
A violent American. I thought he was going to be so bad for the U.N.?
Ok, I seem to remember a conversation some months back about some dude’s qualifications for something where it was determined there are no “nominees” for Nobel prizes.
I am wondering if it was that dr we were seeing in Florida that saw Terry Schiavo. He was nominated by someone who can’t nominate people for the Nobel prize.
Good point though. I am wondering who can nominate people for it.
i’m teaching my kids to play “one” on their tambourines. they really let loose when they reach the song’s coda. The Bono would be so proud. it all so cosmic, too cuz check this out.
On stage, [the] Oasis are the antithesis of Jet’s desperate activity level. [The] Liam projects effortless, near-motionless Charisma as He belts out “Rock ‘N’ Roll Star,” wearing His tambourine as a crown during the song’s coda.
in the meantime, you’d think those plain old euros with their 60+ days vacation, free healthcare, retirement-at-50, etc. would find the time and means to admonish this:
When you read something like that, doesn’t it bother you Jabba? As a parent, I mean.
It makes me feel really helpless.
it breaks my heart. i recall nonchalantly stepping over the bodies of (dead) nigerians to get to work, whilst the locals nonchalantly watched us do it. some of us heard about and occasionally threw money at a particularly bad or simply well-presented sob story but that process certainly didn’t help, which is why i fail to see how and why bono is up for high-falutin’ prizes.
but not even if every rich white person percentually matched their contributions with the Bonos’ would things lastinlgy change, because these people have to learn to budget money too.
moneys thrown at it, religions are thrown at it, posters are made up, clothes are collected and shipped. the Bono needs to go there and tell them to stop the killing. he needs to get in their faces and tell them to stop the abuse. thats what a messiah would do. he won’t do it because money is supposed to calm this savage beast. it will not.
i also remember sitting in my moldy room in the german boonies back in ‘79, freezing while puttering with my model train and repariing an ancient typewriter as i heard rumors about some african dude named idi amin eating people
Rumors abound in Kampala that Idi Amin is a born-again Christian now, which is ironic in that he is considered to have killed 250,000 people between 1971 and 1979 in his plan to Islamicize a country that is less than 10 percent Muslim.
His method of choice for murder was the knife and the hammer. The torture chamber Idi Amin’s soldiers used to slice and pound so many of his political opponents still stands in downtown Kampala, nestled betweenthe French embassy and the presidential palace. It is now headquarters to Uganda’s intelligence service.
The people in an open-air market in Bwaise still remember Idi Amin. Onewoman joked, “You are a foreign journalist. He liked foreign journalists, he only killed two.”
Another woman complained about the lack of medicine and infrastructure. “Idi Amin let the children teach the children in our schools because all of the educated people were forced to leave or were killed.”
By the end of his rein in 1979, Idi Amin had given himself the title “President for Life.” But when the official newspaper wrote about him they had to write the following paragraph-long title: His excellency, Field Marshall, Al-Haji, Dr. Idi Amin Dada, Life President of Uganda, conqueror of the British Empire, distinguished service order of the Military Cross, Victoria Cross and Professor of Geography.” In 1979 when Idi and Ramadan were forced to leave their homeland, Idi fled at first to Libya and then Saudi Arabia. But Ramadan went to neighboring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), ruled at the time by Mobuto Sese Seku. He said he was able to live well in Zaire because its leader “took care of me.”
things went south from there, as they say. typical - all the good people were at demos protesting all things american getting their green party together to better the world.
what were the Bono and geldof up to? why, writing about evil ireland - “banana republic” (1981) and “sunday bloody sunday” (in 1983, about a 1972 incident) finally getting together to feed ethiopia in ‘85 with live aid.
of course, as a critical thinker perusing amin’s life you tend to sift out items like: “born again christian, eh” and “those dirty amin-hosts the oily saudis are US allies” and feel nothing but lefteous indgination. hey, wasn’t 1980 about the time johnny wakelin’s aging song “in zaire” become a euro hit? (a song somehow about muhammad ali, no less). the zaire, that housed and fed the deposed amin until 1989?
mostly forgotten:
Amin had strong links to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). The Israeli embassy was offered to them as headquarters; and Flight 139, the Air France Airbus hijacked from Athens on June 27, 1976, was invited by Amin to stop at Entebbe International Airport in the city of Entebbe, 32 km from Kampala. The hijackers demanded the release of 53 PLO and Red Army Faction prisoners in return for the 256 hostages, and were assisted by Amin’s troops.
Amin visited the hostages more than once
it was all a sad misunderstanding as amin was a lover, not a fighter: amin died in SA in 2003, possibly from the effects of neurosyphillis
sad too was the failure of the russkis to spread their loving distribution of grain to the People (coined ”kornprolyo”) beyond the east bloc nations. leaving uganda and most of africa to fend for itself. whenever a country attempted to kornprolyo itself the belligerent imperialist war machine stepped right in and out a heavy boot to it, effectively shucking the corn.
the list goes on - libya, nicaragua, panama, burma, north korea, sudan, algeria, burundi, colombia, congo (sometimes involving rwanda, uganda and burundi, angola, zimbabwe, and namibia), sri lanka, kashmir. what the hey, heres a nice tally of goodwill consistently gone awry, courtesy of the RWB of GWB:
KINDU, Democratic Republic of Congo (AP)—Top United Nations officials appealed for more aid for hundreds of thousands of Congolese refugees, saying this Central African nation’s plight had been forgotten by donors.
The heads of three U.N. agencies are touring Congo and neighboring countries in an effort to bring attention to the crisis. Congo is struggling to recover from a 1998-2002 war and huge tracts of the east remain lawless despite the presence of 16,000 U.N. peacekeepers.
“It is sad to say that DRC is among the major humanitarian crises in the world, it is the most forgotten,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres told The Associated Press, using the acronym for the Democratic Republic of Congo
All three U.N. agencies said they were short on cash and underfunded. Guterres said the U.N. refugee agency had appealed for $24 million for programs to help repatriate refugees, but had only received $16 million.
“It’s a continued mistake to not solve the refugee problem,” Guterres said, adding that keeping refugees in camps cost more than bringing them back home.
The agencies hope the visit will raise money for cash-strapped aid programs helping civilians rebuild their lives after nearly a decade of debilitating regional conflict.
you’d think that after all the decades of strife and war their AK-47 munitions would’ve somehow run out by now, beings how nobody at least in overseas supports their wars.
even with UN peacekeepers offering to get shot at and play the evil foreign infidel police bastards for free, what say the locals? “first things first”:
“Today, we must talk about reforming our armed forces, because the recent history of our country led to the decimation of all the divisions within the force during the period of 1991 to 1997, then again from 1997 to 1999,” Sassou-Nguesso said in a speech on 31 December.
According to government officials, military fatigues have been assimilated into everyday wear since the end of the country’s civil war in 2003. Adoua said the men in uniform were not known for being good citizens and often took advantage of their uniforms to scare and coerce citizens.
“They refuse to pay transport fare or for their drinks in pubs,” he said.
“In reality, one must reform the minds of men in uniform, as well as teach them ethics and the meaning of their job,” Sassou-Nguesso said.
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters)—Thousands of Congo government soldiers and hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers battled ethnic militia fighters on Tuesday for control of an eastern town, killing some government troops, the United Nations said.
Long accused of doing little to stop fighting in Congo despite peace deals that officially ended a five-year war in 2003, the U.N. has adopted a more robust approach in recent months, aiming to cut militia activity ahead of polls starting in June.
badass. i bet the krauts initiated that. just watch they don’t get too cocky.
From gold and diamonds to timber, Congo’s huge natural wealth has been a fueling factor in a decade of war which at one point drew in the armies of six nearby countries.
KAMPALA, Uganda (CNN)—Uganda’s longtime incumbent leader Yoweri Museveni has won the country’s presidential race, but the closest runner-up says he plans to challenge the results.
you count the votes, the UN will then count the bodies that recounted them
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP)—The deputy agriculture minister forecast bleak food harvests this year in Zimbabwe, and blamed fertilizers shortages and technical ignorance among black farmers resettled on formerly white-owned land, a state-run newspaper reported Monday.
President Robert Mugabe has insisted his land redistribution program, begun in 2000, was intended to correct colonial era imbalances in ownership.
Critics say, however, that prime farms were allocated to ruling party cronies, judges, city business owners, government supporters and law-enforcement officials with no farming experience.
Last year Zimbabwe, once a regional breadbasket, produced about 800,000 tons of corn, the staple food. The country consumes around 1.8 million tons a year. Before the chaotic and often violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms began in 2000, food surpluses were exported.
Last week, the state-run Tobacco Industry Marketing Board predicted a 50-percent drop in production estimates for the main, hard currency-earning crops this year, citing late and inadequate loans to growers and shortages of fertilizer, chemicals and gasoline.
Official inflation in the crumbling economy soared last month to 613 percent, one of the highest rates in the world, as the United Nations food agency distributed emergency food aid to more than 3 million people facing acute hard currency and food shortages.
wheres a heartlfelt ballad when you need it? who cares, the white devils are gone and thats half the rent right there. the other half is due next week…
Natty trash it in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Mash it up in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Set it up in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Natty dub it in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe).
Set it up in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Every man got a right to decide his own destiny.
How time flies. I wrote the above comment two years ago; Zimbabwe has existed for all of 28 years, and today the white man has finally succeeded in ruining the country of Zimbabwe.
On Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council will convene in New York for a special session chaired by South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki. They are meeting to discuss ways of improving co-operation between the African Union and the United Nations. The issue has never been more timely.
South Africa’s president has been the point-man for the region’s, and the world’s, diplomatic efforts to resolve Zimbabwe’s increasingly desperate crisis. He has also staked his legacy on success in Zimbabwe. He argues that the rest of the world should butt out and let Africans resolve the problems in an African way. Western finger-wagging, he says, simply does not help.
By contrast, Mugabe points a finger and its all good. Or else.
The US said it had “credible reports of violence and intimidation” against opposition supporters and called on the government to end the attacks. Zimbabwe is an easy target for Western governments. The image of Robert Mugabe as an arrogant dictator is straightforward and easy to condemn. Doing so polishes politicians’ credentials as democrats defending human rights, without having to worry about losing things like oil. But the bitter lesson of the past decade has been that in being openly critical, the West has done more harm than good in Zimbabwe
Cue Bob Marley
Every man gotta right to decide his own destiny,
And in this judgement there is no partiality.
So arm in arms, with arms, we’ll fight this little struggle,
‘Cause that’s the only way we can overcome our little trouble.
To divide and rule could only tear us apart;
In everyman chest, mm - there beats a heart.
So soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionaries;
And I don’t want my people to be tricked by mercenaries.
No more internal power struggle;
We come together to overcome the little trouble.
Soon we’ll find out who is the real revolutionary,
‘Cause I don’t want my people to be contrary.
Natty Dread it in-a (Zimbabwe);
Set it up in (Zimbabwe);
Mash it up-a in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate (Zimbabwe), yeah.
And, brother, you’re right, you’re right,
You’re right, you’re right, you’re so right!
We’ll ‘ave to fight (we gon’ fight), we gonna fight (we gon’ fight)
We’ll ‘ave to fight (we gon’ fight), fighting for our rights!
Mash it up in-a (Zimbabwe);
Natty trash it in-a (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
I’n’I a-liberate Zimbabwe.
Set it up in-a Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Africans a-liberate Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe);
Every man got a right to decide his own destiny.
Its natty trashed, all right, if nothing else. Whats left to do?
More than half of Zimbabwe’s remaining white farmers have seen their land invaded by mobs loyal to President Robert Mugabe since the bitterly disputed election, it emerged yesterday.
Robert Mugabe stole Zimbabwe election, Gordon Brown tells UN
Of the roughly 200 white commercial farmers who still survive in Zimbabwe, about 120 have had their land occupied, either in whole or in part. About 28 have been evicted, while the rest are either clinging on inside their homesteads or coming and going as the situation allows.
Stock theft carries a possible 20-year prison sentence, but the police response had been mixed, he said, and Zimbabwe’s abysmal phone networks were slowing the flow of information to the CFU.
Murder won’t get you 20 years in Germany. But the Man getting what he deserves.
How time flies. I wrote the above comment two years ago; Zimbabwe has existed for all of 28 years, and today the white man has finally succeeded in ruining the country of Zimbabwe.
Hey, You can’t fool me. Jabba said that, and your screen name is clearly not Jabba.
:)
