KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) - Torrential downpours and flash floods across Africa have submerged whole towns and washed away bridges, farms and schools. This summer's rains have killed at least 150 people, displaced hundreds of thousands and prompted the U.N. to warn Saturday of a rising risk of disease outbreaks.
In eastern Uganda, nine people have been reported killed and 150,000 have been made homeless since early August. Another 400,000 - mainly subsistence farmers - have lost their livelihoods after their fields were flooded or roads washed away and the rains are forecast to worsen in the next month. "The problem is getting worse by the hour," said Uganda's Minister for Relief and Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru, who spent Saturday viewing the affected areas by plane. "Access to some communities is almost impossible. We will need boats and helicopters to deliver emergency interventions," he added. "In some places, the water is the same color as the earth so when you look at it you think it is a field then you realize it's water," Ecweru said.
On the other side of the continent, Ghana in west Africa has also been heavily hit. Three regions in the north, the country's traditional breadbasket, have been declared an official disaster zone after whole towns and villages were submerged. Torrential rains between July and August killed at least 18 persons and displaced a quarter of a million, Information Minister Oboshie-Sai Cofie said Saturday. "It is a humanitarian disaster. People have nowhere to go. Some of them are just hanging out there waiting for help to come at a point," Cofie said. The Ghanian government had received considerable aid, she said.
More than a million people across at least 17 countries have been affected, said Elisabeth Byrs of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/17/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
See SPACEWAR - TERRA DAILY for assorted artickles, e.g. INDIA may lose 40% of agri crops due to GW flooding.
#3
LIVESCIENCE > MODEL PREDICTS [GLOBAL?]OUTBREAKS OF ETHNIC-BASED STRIFES AND WARS. The World As based on Africa's [and Iraq's] history - FEAR NOT, AMERIKA + MSM, ITS STILL DUBYA'S AND GLOBAL WARMINGS'S FAULT.
#6
The only good news that can come from this is that Zim-Bob has reduced the likelihood of any productive farmland washing away. His ability to see into the future averted this natural disaster.......I think a Nobel Prize is in his future.
Jeddah, 17 Sept. (AKI) - A group of Saudi women plan to petition the government on 23 September to lift a ban that prevents women from driving vehicles in Saudi Arabia.
The newly-formed group known as the Society of Demanders of Women's Right to Drive Cars in Saudi Arabia includes human rights activists and social workers, according to a report in the Dubai-based Khaleej Times. "We demand that the right of women to drive is given back to us. Its a right that was enjoyed by our mothers and grandmothers in complete freedom to (utilise) the means of transportation in those times," says the petition.
The report said that Saudi government officials had made statements last year stating that the decision of women driving is up to society and not the repeal of any law. The ban reportedly comes from a strict interpretation of the womans need to be with a legal guardian (a mahram) while in public.
Conservatives argue that if women in Saudi Arabia are allowed to drive they might interact with unrelated men, such as police officers or men who come to assist them if their cars break down.
"Women are in urgent need of driving. Its a basic need," one of the petition's organisers, Fawzeyah Al Oyouni, was quoted as saying. Al Oyouni is a human rights activist and one of the founders of the society. Other members include human rights activist Wajeha Al Huwaidar and social worker Haifa Osrah.
The petition will be presented to the government on 23 September which is the Saudi National Day.
#3
We should start shipping the girls big honkin' crew-cab trucks with the optional off-road package--the better to run over the religious police with.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/17/2007 12:38 Comments ||
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Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif met Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz on Sunday for the first time since being deported from Pakistan. The meeting was held at the royal palace in Jeddah, a newspaper reported. The paper did not give details of the meeting but said that it was held in a cordial atmosphere and various matters were discussed.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2007 00:00 ||
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With Nawaz in place Saudi would be running Pakistan more than they do now and Sharia/Taleban law would be in control funded by Saudi!!!
Posted by: Paul ||
09/17/2007 7:55 Comments ||
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The government has said it will guarantee all deposits with the Northern Rock bank. More than £2bn has been withdrawn by customers since the bank applied for emergency funding from the Bank of England last week. Banks in the UK are already covered by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme - but normally those with savings of more than £2,000 stand to risk a slice of their savings if a bank goes bust. I think this would be like the FDIC guaranteeing all deposits (no matter how large) in a US bank undergoing a run on its deposits. See this stunning graph of shares in Northern Rock The chancellor of the exchequer was on BBC radio this morning saying: If people want to get their money out of Northern Rock, they can. The money is there and it is backed by the Bank of England so they can get it. The problem at the moment is not that there isnt money in the system, because the banks do have a lot of money. It is the fact that they have been reluctant to lend to each other whilst they work out what the extent of their risk is following on the difficulties in the American market.
There's a whooole lot of whignin whining going on. Quite a comment section, from which the following is excerpted.
I visited Texas last year and I remember that those of us arriving from EEC member countries had to form a long queue, and most had some problems ironing out incorrectly filled out forms. I hadn't filled mine out at all, because I didn't know the address of where I was staying. I called over an official, who was perhaps initially a little hostile, but when I informed him that I was there to bury a Texan pal whom I had been working with in Iraq, and only had his mum's mobile number, he scribbled the address of the Marriot Hotel on my form and smiled, "Welcome to Texas son, God bless you." I was quietly ushered to the front of the queue with my still valid DoD card in my hand.
Contrast that with Britain. Upon my return I was stood passport in hand behind swathes of foreigners in the same queue. It's my bloody country I thought, yet now everyone in Europe has the same right of access to it as me!
Good luck to the yanks. They look after their own and long may they continue to do so!
So what if it is hard for most people to get into the U.S.? It is not as if we own the place anymore! Maybe they perceive that they have enough anti-establishment drug-smoking musicians already.
Posted by Ex-Marine on September 17, 2007 11:54 AM
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened on Monday to close or take over any private school that refuses to submit to the oversight of his socialist government as it develops a new curriculum and textbooks.
"Society cannot allow the private sector to do whatever it wants," said Chavez, speaking on the first day of classes.
Sounds pretty blunt. Echoes Hillary a little ...
All schools, public and private, must admit state inspectors and submit to the government's new educational system, or be closed and nationalized, with the state taking responsibility for the education of their children, Chavez said.
A new curriculum will be ready by the end of this school year, and new textbooks are being developed to help educate "the new citizen," said Chavez's brother and education minister Adan Chavez, who joined him a televised ceremony at the opening of a public school in the eastern town of El Tigre.
The president's opponents accuse him of aiming to indoctrinate young Venezuelans with socialist ideology. But the education minister said the aim is to develop "critical thinking," not to impose a single way of thought.
Sounds like the preamble to most American universities today, unfortunately ...
#3
Critical thinking, now where I did hear that before...right... critical to right deviation, critical to left deviation (hard to believe, but there may be even nuttier "istas"), and critical to anything but Chavez' soshalism. Same ol', same ol'.
Politicians and artists have condemned a German archbishop who described modern art as degenerate, the term used by the Nazis in their persecution of artists. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, said art which had no link to religion was entartete Kunst, a term that in German has strong connotations linked to the Third Reich and its ban on paintings and other culture. When culture becomes disconnected from religion, from the worship of God, religion becomes ritualism and the culture becomes degenerate, Cardinal Meisner said in a sermon in Cologne Cathedral on Friday. Meisner, 73, was commenting on the opening of an exhibition of medieval and medieval and modern art from the dioceses art collection. To use the word degenerate in relation to art, as Cardinal Meisner did, is a serious faux pas, Richter told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Other politicians in North Rhine-Westphalia were appalled by the cardinals words. The Nazis removed or banned an estimated 20,000 works of art, especially Expressionist art, from German museums after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Painters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Edvard Munch were persecuted and stigmatised.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2007 00:00 ||
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Painters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Edvard Munch
I'm almost sure he means the other modern "art", like crucifix in piss or Virgin May made of dung and such, not Kandinsky, Klee and Munch.
#3
Sad thing is they would loisten to what is said, instead of shrieking NAZI about what they IMAGINE the connotations are, the Cardinal is correct. The aforemetnioned Piss Christ comes to mind, as do many other pieces of modern so-called "art".
#4
In an age when a supposedly prominent composer like John Cage can pawn off four minutes and thirty seconds of total silence as a written work of piano musicand then have his estate go on to successfully prevail in court for copyright infringement against a composer who did essentially the same thingthe word "art" no longer carries the connotations of beauty, skill, mastery or a refined sense of esthetics. Instead we are treated to obtuse slackers whose gratuitously offensive, provocative or titillating hogwash receives critical praise rivaled only by that given the emperor's new clothes.
Here is some background on the "4:33" copyright case:
(Try not to laugh or cry too hard.)
"4'33" consists of a musician (or musicians), not playing their instruments for four minutes and 33 seconds, and was intended as an ambient experience rather than four minutes and 33 seconds of silence - the music is the shuffling and coughing of the musician(s) and the audience and the background hum of the performance venue - the instructions are about the conducting of silence and the demeanor of the musician(s). "This is a deeply personal music," says moron critic Peter Gutmann, "which each witness creates to his/her own reactions to life. Concerts and records standardize our responses, but no two people will ever hear 4'33" the same way. It's the ultimate sing-along: the audience (and the world) becomes the performer."
But there is a copyright on the score - or rather, the several versions of the score that Cage produced over the years - because, of course, silence is never absolute nor complete, and every period of silence has different qualities of background noise. Like music, a song or instrumental piece, each silence is played differently at each performance and these variations are hard to quantify. Like software, the sound of silence is better when subjected to version control, and John Cage, or rather his music publishers, Peters Edition, now own the copyright to silence - or, at least, four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
None of this would have mattered, but in 2002 a group known as The Planets (consisting of eight musicians, though there were then said to be nine planets - Pluto has since fallen out of planetary orbit and is now an arbitrary rock floating in space), led by Mike Batt, whose claims to fame as a composer include the music of The Wombles, and the song Bright Eyes from the film Watership Down, topped the UK classical charts with an album called Classical Graffiti, which included a track called A One Minute Silence. The track, which is silent, is credited to Batt/Cage, which Mike Batt admitted was intended as a "tongue-in-cheek dig at the John Cage piece", although he later claimed that the credits referred to his previously unknown pseudonymous alter ego, Clint Cage.
This didn't escape the notice of Peters Edition who, acting on behalf of the Cage Estate, contacted Batt and claimed infringement of copyright. Peters Edition asked for a quarter of the royalties, presumably on the grounds that the duration of A One Minute Silence approximates to a quarter of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.
The case of Peters Edition was supported by the Mechanical Copyright Protection Society who demanded that Batt cough up for the use of Cage's original work. Batt, however, claimed that his piece was qualitatively different because the recorded silence consists of the absence of noise, rather than the presence of ambient silence.
"I certainly wasn't quoting his silence. I claim my silence is original silence... Our's is better silence", he said, "it's digital. Their's is only analogue."
The scores were also different. According to another moron critic named Steven Poole, writing in The Guardian, Cage's score consisted "merely of vertical ruled lines marked with timings, whereas Batt's piece is written in the key of G major (or E minor), and is more structurally complex, finishing with a flourish of metre-switching from five-eight to three-eight four-four. These are obviously quite different pieces of music", a distinction that would have amused Cage himself.
The Planets' album was a bestseller, which may have influenced the decision of Peters Edition and the Cage estate. As Batt pointed out: "This is not an angry dispute - it's a gentlemanly dispute. But there is money involved."
The obvious conclusion to be drawn was that the motive for the case may have been publicity, with some advantage to all parties. But this appears not to have been the case because the bizarre legal wrangle ended with a six-figure out-of-court settlement.
And there you have it: Silence masquerading as music. Shit parading as art. A mass produced urinal or a bed strewn with condoms and empty liquor bottles are passed off as sculpture.
Remember that Duchamp's "Fountain" is valued at $3,600,000 and Emin's "My Bed" sold for a mere $225,000. The foregoing and gangsta rap's international popularity all stand as bleak testimony to how thoroughly demagnetized this world's artistic compass is.
#6
Missing the point, people (excepting twobyfour). The Cardinal could have criticized contemporary art without using Nazi terminology. He might as well have talked about a "final solution" to problems of immigration or suggested arabs need more "living room" in Israel. But then the Catholic church has recurring blind spot with these things (queue outrage).
#7
Cardinal Meisner said in a sermon in Cologne Cathedral on Friday. Meisner, 73, was commenting on the opening of an exhibition of medieval and medieval and modern art from the dioceses art collection. (emphasis added)
He criticized the "wrong kind" of modern art, so the Left had no choice but to slime the Cardinal as a Nazi boot-licker. It never ceases to amaze me how public secularists incessantly demand the complete separation of Church and State; that believers should keep their faith private - in their places of worship or in their homes. Yet here is a cleric preaching a homily in his church, and his words - twisted, distorted, and fantisized- are wrought into something howled in a Nuremburg Rally.
What is it about Judeo-Christian beliefs that drives the Left completely insane?
#9
My wife's nephew hosted us for a visit to the Metropolitan Museum in NY. He was patient for as long as he could be while we admired the Old Masters and the Impressionists. Finally he just had to take us to the modern gallery to see his favorites. One was interesting, but I don't remember the artist. The other was by Jackson Pollock. I started to laugh, and the nephew took serious offense. I told him that it wasn't great art if I could do it.
ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Greece's governing conservatives were winning parliamentary elections Sunday with just over 40 percent of the vote counted, official results showed.
Prime Minister Costa Karamanlis' New Democracy party was ahead with 43.7 percent, while the opposition socialist PASOK party had 38.5 percent. A beaming Karamanlis emerged onto the balcony of his party headquarters in central Athens and waved to cheering crowds of supporters below, but did not make any statements.
Perhaps more competition? Maybe the HMOs will have to get more flexible to survive? Might drive down some costs to help offset the additional expense? [Such as ER care as an only option, and increased competition from the government?] Might also be able to tax it instead of calling it a business loss. I'll bet that's why hospitals charge exhorbitant amounts for everything - so they end up with huge write-offs.
Better make sure medium and large employers don't offer crappy plans so that people flee to the government plan and the taxpayer ends up picking up the tab. Perhaps charge them more than a decent plan if it looks like they are flaking out?
I think this should be a plan of last resort, but one that is humane if one has to fall back on it.
For months, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised a plan to bring health care to every American.
She was to make good on that pledge Monday, unveiling a sweeping proposal requiring everyone to carry health insurance and offering federal subsidies to help reduce the cost of coverage.
With a price tag of about $110 billion per year, Clinton's "American Health Choices Plan" represents her first major effort to achieve universal health coverage since 1994, when the plan she authored during her husband's first term collapsed.
The former first lady says she has learned from that experience, which almost derailed Bill Clinton's presidency and helped put Republicans in control of Congress for years to come. Aides say she has jettisoned the complexity and uncertainty of the last effort in favor of a plan that stresses simplicity, cost control and consumer choice.
The centerpiece of Clinton's plan is the so-called "individual mandate," requiring everyone to have health insurance just as most states require drivers to purchase auto insurance. Rival John Edwards has also offered a plan that includes an individual mandate, while the proposal outlined by Barack Obama does not.
"It puts the consumer in the driver's seat by offering more choices and lowering costs," Neera Tanden, Clinton's top policy adviser, told The Associated Press. "If you like the plan you have, you keep it. If you're one of tens of millions of Americans without coverage or don't like the coverage you have, you will have a choice of plans to pick from and you'll get tax credits to help pay for it."
Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, has already laid out proposals to improve health care quality and reduce costs. She was to release her universal health care plan in Iowa, the first voting state.
With 47 million Americans currently uninsured, the Democratic presidential contenders have been united in advocating universal coverage. They have parted ways on certain specifics, including the individual mandate, which has detractors from both ends of the political spectrum.
Republican skeptics say it would be too invasive and would restrict personal freedom and choice. Liberal Democrats have expressed concern that such a mandate would be too financially budensome for lower-income individuals and families a concern shared by Obama, who has said individuals cannot be forced to purchase insurance until the cost of coverage is substantially reduced.
Aides said Clinton believes that an individual mandate is the only way to achieve health care for all. A key component of her plan would be a federal tax subsidy to help individuals pay for coverage.
Clinton's plan builds on the existing employer-based system of coverage. People who receive insurance through the workplace could continue to do so; businesses, in turn, would be required to offer insurance to employees, or contribute to a government-run pool that would help pay for those not covered. Clinton would also offer a tax subsidy to small businesses to help them afford the cost of providing coverage to their workers.
For individuals and families who are not covered by employers or whose employer-based coverage is inadequate, Clinton would offer expanded versions of two existing government programs: Medicare, and the health insurance plan currently offered to federal employees. Consumers could choose between either government-run program, but aides stress that no new federal bureaucracy would be created under the Clinton plan.
Aides said Clinton will propose several specific measures to pay for her plan, including an end to some of the Bush-era tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 per year. Edwards has vowed to completely repeal the tax cuts for high earners to pay for the cost of his plan, estimated at $90 billion-$120 billion per year, while Obama would pay for his plan in part by letting the tax cuts expire in 2010.
Clinton is also expected to stress several cost-saving measures to help pay for universal coverage. She's already recommended several such proposals, such computerized medical record-keeping and a reduction in federal overpayments to hospitals and health maintenance organizations. She would also promote wellness and disease prevention as a way to reduce costs.
Clinton is sure to court danger from the health insurance industry by proposing several industry reforms. Among other things, she would require insurance companies to provide coverage to all consumers regardless of pre-existing conditions.
The insurance industry helped kill Clinton's earlier attempt at health care reform through a multibillion-dollar media and lobbying campaign.
While Clinton is expected to lay out a concrete vision for health care reform, she will probably steer clear of delving too deeply into policy specifics, at least for now.
Her 1994 effort was 1,300 pages long and so detailed it offered little room for any maneuvering or compromise. And after seven years in the Senate, Clinton has said she's developed a greater appreciation of the need to compromise.
#1
Nothing beats a fight between the trial lawyers and the medicos. This is an extra-large popcorn duel to the death.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
09/17/2007 10:01 Comments ||
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#2
...Okay, everybody HAS to have medical insurance, and they'll get tax credits to cover it. I can buy that. Two questions though: First, what's the cost to the taxpayer going to be on those credits? I once worked for a Fortune 100 company whose health insurance benefit cost me nearly $400/month for my family. The Feds are going to give out $4800/yr in tax credits to millions of people?
Secondly, I have health insurance through CHAMPUS(military retiree). Will I have to purchase a private policy?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
09/17/2007 10:45 Comments ||
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#3
When they can make the VA, TRICARE, and the Health Services of the Bureau of Indian Affairs a model that others want to copy, then come and talk to me. Otherwise, its just another blackhole to suck the vitality out of the system in the name of the Poor(tm) and Children(tm). Sale your guilt trip elsewhere.
Posted by: dan ||
09/17/2007 12:25 Comments ||
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#5
I read Shrillary's last health care plan. OMFG ...
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/17/2007 13:46 Comments ||
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#6
Look on the bright side, if we end up with Edward's plan, police will bust down your door and force you to go for your prostate exams.
Posted by: Titus Hayes ||
09/17/2007 14:10 Comments ||
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#7
> so i HAVE TO have health insurance...
If you have a large amount of cash on hand to use for an excess, you should be able to get very cheap insurance. There does seem to be a problem that people who have NO insurance eventually demand and get treatment at others expense. These sort of free-rider problems are what governments are supposed to solve.
Hey, at least an American NHS isn't proposed so count your lucky stars!
P.S. The tax credit amount should be fixed at the rate for a HEALTHY individual scaled to age and sex, otherwise the government will subsidise and encourage poor health choices.
President George W. Bush has settled on Michael B. Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York, to replace Alberto Gonzales as attorney general and will announce his selection Monday, a person familiar with the president's decision said. Mukasey, who has handled terrorist cases in the US legal system for more than a decade, would become the top US law enforcement officer if confirmed by the Senate. Mukasey has the support of some key Democrats, and it appeared Bush was trying to avoid a bruising confirmation battle.
Rudy Giuliani's son is a partner in Mukasey's law firm...
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2007 00:00 ||
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Also, Mukasey was the judge that sentance the blind Sheikh to life in prison. Good guy. Could have been a better guy if he had sentanced him to death but it wasn't in the guidlines.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
09/17/2007 10:02 Comments ||
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#2
The fact that Schumer speaks highly of him is enough to make him suspect in my book.
Jamat-e-Islami leader and Union Council Punjpao Nazim Siyar Bacha and Mubarik Shah have joined the PPP-S along with scores of supporters.
Pakistan Peoples Party-Sherpao Chairman and Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao, while recollecting services of the Siyar Bacha family, said their long association with the PPP in the past and their re-entry into the party was a good omen for the areas people. He said the PPP-S was genuinely working for the protection of the peoples rights, adding that it would succeed in the next elections on the strength of its performance. On the occasion, the delegation apprised the minister about their problems, which he assured would be solved immediately.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/17/2007 00:00 ||
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H/T The Corner
TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Enriched uranium fuel is ready to be shipped from Russia to Iran's first nuclear power plant, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said here Saturday.
The announcement comes after talks in Moscow between Mottaki and Russian nuclear chief Sergei Kiriyenko to address delays in completing the $1 billion joint Iranian-Russian Bushehr power plant. "Nuclear fuel for this power plant, inspected and sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, is ready," he said. "We do see the trend of cooperation between Iran and Russia moving ahead for the Bushehr power plant."
The project, Iran's first nuclear power plant, has been beset by repeated delays due to payment problems on the Iranian side, according to the Russians. Tehran, however, maintains it is because Moscow has been caving into Western pressure to halt the project.
Russian officials say the plant cannot open until six months after fuel is delivered.
Posted by: Oztralian ||
09/17/2007 06:26 ||
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#1
Accusing French President Nicolas Sarkozy of taking on "an American skin", it said that "the French people will never forget the era when a non-European moved into the Elysee."
C'mon, Nutjob. Don't you ever just say something straight up?
#2
"We have decided that while negotiations are continuing ... to prepare eventual sanctions outside the ambit of UN sanctions. Our good friends, the Germans, suggested that,'' he said.
Wow! Go ahead muzrats, keep 'slamming' those Krauts and Frenchmen.
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.
Politicians and artists have condemned a German archbishop who described modern art as degenerate, the term used by the Nazis in their persecution of artists. Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, said art which had no link to religion was entartete Kunst, a term that in German has strong connotations linked to the Third Reich and its ban on paintings and other culture. When culture becomes disconnected from religion, from the worship of God, religion becomes ritualism and the culture becomes degenerate, Cardinal Meisner said in a sermon in Cologne Cathedral on Friday. Meisner, 73, was commenting on the opening of an exhibition of medieval and medieval and modern art from the dioceses art collection. To use the word degenerate in relation to art, as Cardinal Meisner did, is a serious faux pas, Richter told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Other politicians in North Rhine-Westphalia were appalled by the cardinals words. The Nazis removed or banned an estimated 20,000 works of art, especially Expressionist art, from German museums after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Painters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Edvard Munch were persecuted and stigmatised.
