President George W. Bush on Monday authorized the immediate use of US aircrafts to transport supplies to the international peacekeeping force in Darfur, the White House said.
Bush signed a memo saying that aiding the joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping troops in Darfur through "the airlift of equipment for peacekeeping in Darfur" was "important to the security interests of the United States."
The US president's authorization meant that air support should be provided without delay, given the critical situation in war-torn western Sudan, the White House said.
The struggling AU-UN force, known as UNAMID, was authorized in July 2007 by the Security Council to grow into the largest UN peacekeeping force in the world at an estimated strength of 26,000. However, the United Nations has said only about half of the mission was deployed at the end of 2008, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said in a report last month that the Darfur force continues to face "enormous challenges."
"Violence and displacement continue, humanitarian operations are at risk (and) clashes between the parties occur with regrettable regularity," Ban said.
Zimbabwean rights campaigner Jestina Mukoko, who is to appear in court on Monday on charges of plotting to overthrow President Robert Mugabe, is being poisoned and tortured in custody, the Sunday Independent reported.
According to the paper, Mukoko, who is in solitary confinement at the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security prison, is being force fed drugs by prison personnel. It said her lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa has called for a toxicology report to support the allegations.
"Mukoko is psychologically traumatised, it is not certain that she has told the full story because, every time she speaks to a doctor or a lawyer, a state official is present," said Mtetwa.
Mukoko was seized from her home on December 3 by armed men who identified themselves as police. Last week she made a first court appearance after being detained at an unknown location for weeks. A high court on Friday refused an application by her lawyers that she be taken to hospital for treatment after alleged torture.
She is accused together with 28 members of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party of recruiting or goading other people to undergo military training in neighbouring Botswana aimed at toppling Mugabe's government.
Mukoko's detention raised particular alarm among international rights groups and western nations, which have accused Mugabe's government of intimidation and harassment.
Posted by: Fred ||
01/05/2009 00:00 ||
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The ministers of defence of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) on Monday met in the western border town of Gisenyi in an effort to eliminate negative forces from the DR Congo.
General Marcel Gasintzi the defence minister represented Rwanda while Charles Mwando Simba represented the DR Congo. The meeting was also attended by high level security delegations from both countries including their two army chiefs. They discussed the implementation of their earlier reported joint military operation plan.
This is the latest in the many meetings that have been held by officials from both countries in efforts to find lasting peace in the region. Several bi-lateral meetings have been held to try and find a lasting solution to the security situation especially dealing with the genocidaire Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/05/2009 00:00 ||
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Kigali -- Unknown assailants on Sunday made two simultaneous grenade attacks in the city. The attacks injured six people. According to press reports, the attacks occurred at the Kinamba two-junction on the way to the Genocide memorial site at Gisozi.
The second attack was made at a bar around a kilometer away from the first attack. Two suspects were arrested in connection with the two simultaneous grenade attacks.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/05/2009 00:00 ||
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#3
If the Euros start bottling their cow farts, they can prevent global warmingglobal cooling climate change and make progress on energy independence too.
The nation's top selling conservative author has been banned from appearing on NBC, insiders tell the DRUDGE REPORT.
Banned for life!
"We are just not going to have her on any more, it's over," a top network source explains.
NBC's TODAY show abruptly cut Ann Coulter from its planned Tuesday broadcast, claiming the schedule was overbooked.
Coulter was set to unveil her new book, GUILTY.
But one network insider claims it was the book's theme -- a brutal examination of liberal bias in the new era -- that got executives to dis-invite the controversialist. And in so doing proves the book's claims
"We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," a TODAY insider reveals. "It's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either." Yeah! All the criticism gets in the way of our echo chamber.
For the book, Coulter reportedly received the most-lucrative advance ever paid to a conservative author.
The TODAY show eagerly invited the author months ago, for her first network interview on GUILTY. Lets home Fox News picks it up.
The exclusive was to air during the show's 7 AM hour. The cut came Monday afternoon.
Executives at NBC TODAY replaced Coulter with showbiz reporter Perez Hilton, who recently offered $1,000 to anyone who would throw a pie at Ann Coulter. I guess he's more eager to put on the kneepads. How is NBC's market share doing?
#5
They just validated the premise of her book! Awesome! NBC can dish it out but they just can't accept any criticism. Better not let the story get any "oxygen" else people will believe it.
#6
I don't like Coulter, but this is going to earn her a book sale to Yours Truly.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
01/05/2009 19:14 Comments ||
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#7
##!*!!
Can I get banned from NBC for life, too? I have a book to flog, and the publicity would be HUGE!
I'm a small-c conservative, although I am not bottle-blond and slinky (maybe that is my problem...)
Is there a place that I can go to sign up to be banned by the Today Show? Sales are a titch down for "The Adelsverein Trilogy" so I could use a post-holiday season boost!
#11
Dunno if any of you ever heard of Perez Hilton but he is a despicable little degenerate creep. He has a web site that lampoons celebrities. Some people might find it funny but it's really sick, kind of a web version of TMZ. The fact that NBC would give this slime ball air time is even more revealing than the fact that they won't give it to Ann Coulter. It shows they will stoop to any low because Perez Hilton is about as low as it gets.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
01/05/2009 21:07 Comments ||
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Call this one of the newest and innovative the ways your government has come up with to battle greenhouse gas emissions. I call it just another way to shaft Consumers and Business.
Indirectly it could be considered a cheeseburger tax, but one of the suggestions offered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in its Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) for regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act is to levy a tax on livestock. The ANPR, released early this year, would give the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gas for not only greenhouse gas from manmade sources like transportation and industry, but also "stationary" sources which would include livestock. Livestock, stationary? They don't get out much, do they?
The New York Farm Bureau assigned a price tag to the cost of greenhouse gas regulation by the EPA in a release last month. "The tax for dairy cows could be $175 per cow, and $87.50 per head of beef cattle. The tax on hogs would upwards of $20 per hog," the release said. "Any operation with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs would have to obtain permits."
Kate Galbraith, correspondent for The New York Times, noted on the Times' "Green Inc." blog that such a "proposal is far from being enacted" and that the "hysteria may be premature." Hysteria over the enactment of such a stupid idea or hysteria over trying to curb CO2?
But Rick Krause, senior director of congressional relations for the American Farm Bureau, warned it's certainly feasible -- especially based on the rhetoric of President-elect Barack Obama and the use of the EPA to combat global warming. Such action by an Obama administration would take an act of Congress for livestock to be exempt.
"The new president has been on record as saying that he really supports regulating greenhouse gases out of the Clean Air Act," Krause said to the Business & Media Institute. "So, we really have to keep an eye on it. Legislation would really be the only way to exempt it at this point -- the cow tax." Jeebus, Cripes, what's next? The cost of meat products, already high, would be unafordable to low income people. These people have all the sense of a bucket of hair.
Krause said it is difficult to quantify the cost that might be passed directly to the consumer by farmers from the legislation, but predicted it would mean higher costs for dairy production. "It's hard to figure what it would do to consumer prices since farmers, unlike other industries, really can't pass their cost along directly like utilities and things do," "About the only thing we could realistically come up, in terms of any of this stuff -- it would add between 7 and 8 cents per gallon of milk costs to farmers. So it would cost them 7 or 8 cents more to produce a gallon of milk."
Even the Department of Agriculture warned the EPA that smaller farms and ranches would have difficulty with limits as much as 100 tons annually on emissions: "If GHG emissions from agricultural sources are regulated under the CAA, numerous farming operations that currently are not subject to the costly and time-consuming Title V permitting process would, for the first time, become covered entities. Even very small agricultural operations would meet a 100-tons-per-year emissions threshold. For example, dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn may need to get a Title V permit. It is neither efficient nor practical to require permitting and reporting of GHG emissions from farms of this size. Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved."
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
01/05/2009 12:26 ||
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#1
The government wants a tax revolt against them, don't they?
The more they tax, the more I want to stock up on guns and ammo.
#4
It's more than that. The animal rights / eco activists have had a huge influence on state and federal agencies. They have discussed this sort of tax in the past as a way to penalize and eventually force livestock raisers out of business.
Posted by: Tom- Pa ||
01/05/2009 14:50 Comments ||
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#6
Jeebus, Cripes, what's next? The cost of meat products, already high, would be unafordable to low income people. These people have all the sense of a bucket of hair cow farts.
#15
Just so y'all know, the cattle ranchers out here are taking it seriously and I'd believe them over Green Inc. which would benefit from you all not knowing or caring. The ranchers, however, are only concerned about the short term drop in sales and will recover - you will be the ones paying for the increase.
"Well I don't eat cheeseburgers often so what do I care?" Well its a silly name for a serious pieces of tax legislation which will affect everyone. As far as I know, the biggest consumer of milk is schools. Want a hamburger pizza? Well that is meat and cheese. Jello? You bet its a cattle product. New baseball glove - you can still find made in the USA ballgloves but good luck after this, leather seats, cheese burrito, all cheese, hot dogs, bacon, doggy snacks, bbq ribs, beef broth soups, alfredo sauce, yogurt, so on.
$0.08 per gallon is at the manufacturers site, wait till it shows up at your store or in your meal. 50 Beef Cattle out here is nothin, so then what a larger farm subsidy to save USA's #1 export, more tax money for schools to buy lunch then you get it again. Add that to a proposed gas tax.
This is not Farmer Flyover's problem, this is your problem. Like any industry, tax the producer and the consumer pays for it. It is best to fight stupid acts of legislation before it gets started so it can't be 'premature'.
#23
There are two additional problems not mentioned in these comments: the EPA can impose these rules WITHOUT ANY ADDITIONAL LEGISLATION. They've been given the "authority" to "regulate" greenhouse gasses, any way they want. Secondly, they've ruled that CO2 is a "pollutant", which means that every one of us is a polluter (animals breathe in air, remove oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide). This is stupid, because CO2 is ESSENTIAL for plants to grow, and secondly to replentish the oxygen supply.
The only solution is to restore the Constitution, which would eliminate the EPA - its formation was unconstitutional in the first place. It removed from Congress the regulation of businesses and governments that are the sole responsibility of CONGRESS and gave it to a bureaucracy unaccountable to the American people. There are still a few people in Congress that helped birth this abortion, and they need to hang for it.
As more and more information becomes available that "greenhouse gasses" other than water vapor have little or no control of the environment, the work of the EPA will look more and more stupid. Don't expect anyone to bring it to their attention, especially not from Congress.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
01/05/2009 20:33 Comments ||
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#24
Let's dump Education and HHS while we're restoring the Constitution, OP.
There is NO authorization for either anywhere in the Constitution.
And for those who don't give a rat's behind about the Constitution, education, health, and welfare in this country have gone downhill since those departments' invention, even as the costs of same have soared through the roof.
Anytime the gummint gets its fingers in a pie, the cost of the pie skyrockets and the quality of the pie plummets. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/05/2009 20:49 Comments ||
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Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
01/05/2009 21:28 Comments ||
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#28
There better not be a tax on popcorn, or you will have a necktie party on yer hands.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/05/2009 21:36 Comments ||
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#29
Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved."
And you can bet that the agribusiness lobby hacks (aka the 'farm' lobby) are licking their chops and doing what they can to support this. Instrumentation and paperwork - right up their alley.
The U.S. Air Force has finally found a commercial (PC based) flight simulator that works for them. That's because the game, X-Plane, provides sufficient editing capabilities for aviation engineers to use classified flight characteristics to create simulated warplanes that are realistic enough to allow military pilots to get useful training while using them. That's a big deal.
Please keep my flight sim addiction at bay, I overcame it years ago and now this comes out. Don't let me go out and by pedls, a stick and throttle, multiple monitors and even a switchpanel and throttle quadrant.
#3
ION CHINA, STRATEGYPAGE > CHINA BUILDS A PAIR [aircraft carriers].
* WORLD MIL FORUM > SINGAPORE MEDIAS: OUT OF ASIA - CHINESE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY AMBITIONS IS REFLECTED IN ITS DESIRE TO BUILD AIRCRAFT CARRIERS.
SAME > RUSSIAN MEDIAS: UNWILLING TO GIVE UP ITS GLOBAL HEGEMONY NOR ABLE TO PAYOFF ITS MASSIVE FOREIGN DEBTS, NEWLY BANKRUPT USA IN 2009 COULD BEGIN USING "MILITARY LEVERS" TO INITIATE NEW ROUND/ERA OF IMPERIALISM.
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.
