There are many who believe that when the government steps up its land reform programme next year there will be... "a Zimbabwe in SA". The British media, in particular, routinely view developments south of the Limpopo from a perspective heavily influenced by the Zimbabwean experience. Which was why they were invited to a briefing at SA House last week on the pace and progress of land reform - and another fine lunch.
Land and Agricultural Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza and high-ranking officials in her department were there to inform them that they should forget about Harare's "land reform programme", and bear in mind that absolutely nothing of the sort was going to happen in South Africa when the government comes for the land, as the government must.
But the journalists would not let the matter lie, and pressed Didiza on "Zimbabwe". Yes, the minister said, the South African government "understands" the widespread criticism that it is reluctant to put pressure on Zimbabwe over President Robert Mugabe's controversial land policies but, no, it does not regard such criticism as "justifiable".
Didiza and her delegation were at pains to stress that whatever the form of land restitution, it would be "fair and equitable" and would take place with due regard to the rule of law. In other words, no Zimbabwe in South Africa.
As the land summit in July revealed, progress has been slow - in 11 years, a mere 2.9% of white-owned farm land has been transferred to blacks through government programmes, raising doubts as to whether the "non-negotiable" target of 30% in black hands by 2014 - regarded by some as unrealistic - would be met.
Recent comments by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka that the government was abandoning the "willing seller, willing buyer" principle has unsettled some. This, according to commercial farmers, was a vital tenet of the land market, but, as Didiza said, the "willing seller, willing buyer" principle had also underpinned land reform in Zimbabwe - and look at where it got them.
Add to this a peasant clamour for wholesale expropriation, and for a rewriting of the Constitution to protect the right of the landless to invade vacant land, and it seemed, to the pessimists at least, that the rapid decline into Zimbabwe-style chaos was all but upon us.
Not on her watch, Didiza stressed once more. "One of the advantages that we have had as a country is that we have never dodged our own issues. Neither have we dodged other issues that have happened on the continent and in the world. Whether that has been a feelgood for others or a little irritating, unfortunately, that is how we are seen, and I think that having faced those issues squarely, particularly for our own country, has helped us to move forward.
"Obviously, the approach that South Africa took with regard to Zimbabwe was that we were going to engage with Zimbabweans, firstly to understand from themselves as to why they undertook to move the route that they moved." Didiza accepted that her government had failed to support and train agricultural land reform recipients.
Whether this was an effective PR exercise or brief or spin session, who could say... Certainly, when it ended, talk among the journalists drifted back to the fare before them, a table groaning with the fruits of the land, as it were.
Bottles of fine wine were opened, but remained largely untouched. A pity. Fortification may be needed to weather the coming storm.
Four Pakistani expatriates in Kuwait were hanged in public in Naif Palace, Kuwait City, on Saturday. Kuwaiti police had arrested them on drug peddling charges, which is punishable by death in Kuwait. The Pakistanis had appealed against their death sentence, but the higher courts, including the Amirâs Apex Court, upheld the death sentence.
"This ain't Peshawar. We're civilized folk in Kuwait. String 'em up!"
The Pakistanis were Syed Mudassar Shah from Charsadda, Muhammad Ahmad Khan from Bara, Faiz Muhammad Umar from Charsadda and Abdul Basar Umar from Swabi. They were publicly hanged at 9am in front of thousands of people.
"Hurry, ma! You'll miss the tumbrels!"
Posted by: Fred ||
12/04/2005 00:00 ||
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#1
Hurry, ma! You'll miss the tumbrels
gee, my Ma loves the post drop spasmodical twitches an awful lot.
#2
Public hangings are a good thing, and I condemn the United States for declaring it "cruel and unusual punishment". Cruel crimes - aggravated rape, murder, etc. - deserve "cruel" punishment. It would sure do a lot more for deterrence than lethal injection hidden away deep in some prison. Public humiliation in the death of unrepentent criminals would go a long way toward curbing crime. Adding drug pushers and illegal-alien "coyotes" to the list would also help with another of our problems.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
12/04/2005 22:39 Comments ||
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The people of Kazakhstan have been voting in an election widely expected to return President Nursultan Nazarbayev for another seven-year term. Mr Nazarbayev has headed the Central Asian republic since independence. The other four contenders - all men - include the main opposition candidate, former governing party member Zharmakhan Tuyakbai.
International observers have criticised previous elections in Kazakhstan as neither free nor fair. A survey by the US-based Intermedia Survey Institute suggested Mr Nazarbayev enjoyed 71% support, with none of his challengers getting above 2%. However, an opposition-ordered opinion poll claimed that Mr Nazarbayev was only narrowly ahead of Mr Tuyakbai - leading by 41.2% to 40.3%, the Associated Press news agency reported.
The election is being seen as an important test of whether this vast oil-rich country is moving towards greater political openness, says the BBC's Ian MacWilliam in the capital, Astana. Hundreds of international observers have arrived to monitor the poll. Parliamentary elections last year were widely seen as rigged.
Mr Tuyakbai, a former prosecutor general and parliamentary speaker, has said he expects the results of Sunday's election to be "fraudulent". The opposition has warned of street protests if the voting is unfair.
However, analysts say Mr Nazarbayev is genuinely popular among voters. "He managed three things: real economic growth, inter-ethnic and inter-religious peace, and successful foreign policy," Dosym Satpayev, director of the Risk Assessment Group think tank, told the AFP news agency.
Voters are in a more upbeat mood than they have been in many years, our correspondent says, as after more than a decade of post-Soviet drabness and depression, Kazakhstan is suddenly on the edge of a relative boom. Economic reforms and foreign investment in the country's huge oil reserves have brought a new prosperity which was almost unthinkable a few years ago, and while corruption is widespread, life is definitely getting better for many people, our correspondent adds.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/04/2005 00:00 ||
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'Cos Kimmie kicked all the food-handing-out-NGO's and UN staffers out of Paradise...
The Bush administration has canceled a planned shipment of 25,000 tons of food aid to North Korea later this month, citing concerns that the food will not reach those who need it. "We still think there are serious humanitarian needs in North Korea, but we cannot continue to supply food if we cannot even minimally assure that it will reach its intended recipients," the State Department said yesterday.
The U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which distributes foreign aid, has been ordered by the North Koreans to cut most of its staff there by the end of December, a move that will substantially reduce its ability to disburse and monitor aid shipments. Washington sent the first half of a 50,000-ton pledge for 2005 in the spring and had planned to deliver the rest, until Pyongyang's recent decision to expel the majority of the WFP personnel. "We have not procured the 25,000 tons originally scheduled to have been shipped later this month, due to uncertainties about whether the [WFP] emergency feeding operation, to which it was to be delivered, would still be in place to receive it and monitor its distribution," the State Department said.
When Pyongyang announced its decision to expel most of the staff of international organizations in the North, it said that the humanitarian situation in the country has improved dramatically and aid is no longer needed in its present quantity. The WFP said this week that its negotiations with the North Korean government to switch from food aid to development-focused programs and maintain most of its presence have made no progress. "Consultations with major donors are also being held to come up with a solution which is suitable to all stake-holders," the WFP said. The Bush administration's decision to withhold the food aid comes during a recess of six-nation negotiations to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons programs, which are expected to resume in January.
#2
all we would be doing is feeding the troops, secret police, and party hacks. The starving people wouldn't see any of this food before it passed at least one person's colon
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/04/2005 18:05 Comments ||
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#3
Ole Kimmie-boy-the-brave-baby-killer doesn't seem to have missed many meals.
ANKARA - In a fresh test of Turkeyâs human rights record and its bid to join the EU, a state prosecutor has filed charges against five journalists for comments they made on a conference about World War One massacres of Armenians.
How is that EU membership thing working out, anyway?
The five respected newspaper columnists face between six months and 10 years in jail if found guilty of the charges of âtrying to influence the judicial processâ and âinsulting state judicial organsâ, Turkish media reported on Saturday.
Four of the five columnists are being charged under the controversial Article 301 of Turkeyâs penal code -- the same used against the countryâs most famous novelist, Orhan Pamuk, whose trial begins on Dec. 16, and many other journalists. The article makes it a crime to insult state institutions or âTurkishnessâ.
I don't see why the EU socialists would object to that, they'd all like to be able to use the same kind of law against their opponents ...
The trial of the columnists is scheduled to start on Feb. 7, 2006. Four of them work for the liberal Radikal newspaper and the fifth for the centrist Milliyet daily.
The journalists had all criticised efforts by prosecutors and nationalist lawyers to ban a September academic conference at two universities in Istanbul dedicated to the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish forces 90 years ago. Although a court blocked the conference at the prosecutorsâ request -- much to the embarrassment of Turkeyâs pro-EU government -- organisers circumvented the ban at the last minute by moving the venue to a third university in Istanbul.
In their columns, the five journalists had branded the court ruling an attack on academic freedom and a travesty of justice.
Busted for telling the truth? That's novel.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/04/2005 00:00 ||
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A VIETNAMESE doctor who has treated dozens of victims of avian flu claims the drug being stockpiled around the world to combat a pandemic is âuselessâ against the virus.
Dr Nguyen Tuong Van runs the intensive care unit at the Centre for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi and has treated 41 victims of H5N1. Van followed World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines and gave her patients Tamiflu, but concluded it had no effect. âWe place no importance on using this drug on our patients,â she said. âTamiflu is really only meant for treating ordinary type A flu. It was not designed to combat H5N1 . . . [Tamiflu] is useless.â
Tamiflu wasn't designed to treat influenza B (H5N1, etc). It was meant to reduce the amount of viral shedding, and it does that. It seems to shorten the duration of symptoms, and, importantly, lowers the risk of secondary problems (e.g., pneumonia).
Her verdict casts doubt on the pandemic flu policy put in place by the British government. Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer, has ordered 15m doses to âprotectâ a quarter of the population against the flu pandemic he believes âis only a matter of timeâ.
Van, who has also treated patients with Sars, the respiratory condition linked to birds, said avian flu had a frightening effect on its victims and the only way to keep patients alive was to âsupportâ all their vital organs, including the liver and kidneys, with modern technology like ventilators and dialysis machines. Van would not criticise governments for stockpiling Tamiflu but said doctors had to explain its limitations.
Roche has sold stockpiles of Tamiflu to 40 countries and insists there is clear evidence it will protect against a future flu virus. However, it stresses the drug must be given within 48 hours to be effective.
The WHO admitted Tamiflu had not been âwidely successful in human patientsâ. âHowever, we believe in many Asian countries it hasnât been used until late in the illness,â a spokesman said.
A Department of Health spokesman said: âWhile there is some anecdotal evidence of the build-up of resistance to antiviral drugs such as Tamiflu, at present the experience is that these drugs do work.â
UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan has decided to fire the highly regarded chief of the U.N. office that promotes free elections around the world for harassing staff and management failures, a U.N. official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because an official announcement is not expected until Monday, said Carina Perelli was being dismissed from the United Nations.
In August, the United Nations formally accused Perelli of harassing her staff after a four-month review into the claims of an abusive and sexually offensive environment in her division. She was given the opportunity to respond, but her reply was delayed because she was involved in parliamentary elections in Afghanistan in September and Iraq's constitutional referendum in October.
Perelli, a Uruguayan, won wide praise for her work in helping organize elections in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian territories and had been considered one of the young rising stars at the United Nations. But she had been under investigation since April, after a U.N.-commissioned management review quoted staff as saying ``sexual innuendo is part of the `fabric''' of the Electoral Assistance Division which she headed.
The review never named Perelli or anyone else in her office in specific allegations of sexual or professional harassment. But it said staff claimed they were subject to shouting and screaming by superiors, while some junior staff were saddled with work they were not qualified to do.
Sounds like a fair number of offices across the Western world.
The Swiss-based management consulting firm Mannet S.A.R.L., which conducted the review, said many staff members reported that they ``suffered emotionally as a result of the director's behavior in the office environment.'' Many staffers also said their experiences have been ``nothing short of devastating and that the work environment of the division is abusive,'' according to the firm's report.
Leaving for another job, of course, never occurred to any of them.
It called for an investigation of what some staffers believed to be unjustified travel, especially to Latin America, using money intended for one country for purposes unrelated to that country, and using U.N. money to finance a university degree for one staff member.
Ah, there's the line that shouldn't be crossed.
Perelli can appeal her dismissal, initially to the U.N.'s Joint Disciplinary Committee and then to the Administrative Tribunal. Unlike the disciplinary committee, the tribunal's decisions are binding.
When the management report was released in late March, Britain's U.N. Ambassador Emyr Jones Parry said Perelli had done ``a terrific job'' on Iraq's elections and was ``a very good servant of the U.N.'' He said he expected ``due process to be followed'' in whatever happened - a point he reiterated recently.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/04/2005 00:00 ||
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Thanks to a congressional earmark, an open-borders advocacy group that pushes for driverâs licenses, free in-state tuition and healthcare for illegal aliens and bilingual requirements for state agencies and ballots is slated to get $4 million in new taxpayer money to add to the more than $30 million it has received from various federal agencies since 1996.
The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), Spanish for âthe race,â will get its latest grant through an appropriations bill passed by Congress on November 18. The Joint Explanatory Statement of HR 3058, available on the Houseâs Rules Committee website lists 1,100 plus earmarks in the bill, including La Razaâs grant under the Housing and Urban Development Departmentâs Self-Help and Assisted Ownership Programs. Under this account La Raza will receive four times as much as the Special Olympics, which won a $1-million earmark.
La Raza is the nationâs largest Hispanic advocacy organization. It was adamantly opposed to the REAL ID Act, which will prevent states from issuing driverâs licenses to illegal aliens if they want them to be usable for federal purposes. It is also opposed to the CLEAR Act, which would grant state and local law enforcement agencies that wish to do so the authority to enforce federal immigration laws.
Spontaneous Spending
The Capital Research Center (CRC), which rates public interest groups on a scale of 1 to 8, with 1 equaling âradical leftâ and 8 equaling âfree market right,â gave La Raza a rating of 2, the same rating it gave People for the American Way and NARAL Pro-Choice America. CRC reports that La Razaâs net assets totaled nearly $52 million in 2003.
La Raza Senior Vice President Charles Kamasaki explained in an e-mail that his group typically gets government grants three different ways: The largest awards probably come from competitive bidding processes for grants and contracts said Kamasaki. But other grants include congressional earmarksâsuch as the one in this yearâs Housing appropriationâand discretionary funds allocated from agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which have all provided tax dollars to NCLR.
NCLR also employs an appropriations lobbyist who works to secure federal earmarks for the group. Tax forms available from CRC also reveal that La Raza spends about $1 million per year on lobbyists, fundraising and web design.
The $4-million grant in this yearâs housing bill, which is the fifth in a series of similar congressional earmarks, wasnât expected, Kamaski said. âThis was a somewhat unusual year in that this earmark was not specifically requested,â he explained. He also said the funding is targeted primarily toward a La Raza subsidiary that has made over $40 million in loans to NCLR affiliates and other community based groups such as charter school facilities, heath clinics, day-care centers and affordable housing developments. So Who TF dunnit?
One person who would like to know how La Razaâs $4-million earmark got into the bill is Rep. Charlie Norwood (R.-Ga.) who, with Rep. Pete Sessions (R.-Tex.), sponsors the CLEAR Act. Jennifer Hing, communication director for Rep. Joe Knollenberg (R.-Mich.) who is chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that handled the bill, said the Senate inserted the earmark.
Norwood said he was told the money was stricken from the House version of the bill because NCLR has not used the money for housing they received last year. âBut no matter what they did or didnât do last year, we ought not to send taxpayerâs money to people who absolutely advocate perhaps using that money for this country not to follow the law of the land and not to secure our countryâs borders,â he said. Said Norwood: âIt sounds like they have a sugar-daddy in the Senate.â
One possible culprit is Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) who sits on the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that handled the bill carrying the earmark. In 2001, Reid sent a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee requesting $5 million for La Razaâs housing programs. That same year Reid also received NCLRâs Capital Award for âhis commitment to advance legislation priorities of the Latino Community.â In gratitude, Reid told NCLR, âLa Raza is like the biblical David, fighting all these Goliaths.â
Reidâs office did not respond to calls asking whether he inserted or even supported the earmark. Coward and liar
Despite the significant federal assistance La Raza has received, Cecilia Munoz, the groupâs vice president for policy, has rebuked the Bush Administration for not catering to the needs of immigrants. âWe all know there is a wing of the Republican Party that will never like anything that treats immigrants well,â she said in June. âAny attempt by the President to move in the direction of those folks is going to be viewed as hostile to the Latino community.â
Commenting on the irony that a Republican-controlled Congress would send to a Republican President a spending bill that included a multi-million-dollar subsidy for a left-wing group, a GOP aide told Human Events: âWe Republicans excel at funding or otherwise supporting our political adversaries.â Why not veto that particular item, porkbarrelers?
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/04/2005 19:29 ||
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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.
Four Pakistani expatriates in Kuwait were hanged in public in Naif Palace, Kuwait City, on Saturday. Kuwaiti police had arrested them on drug peddling charges, which is punishable by death in Kuwait. The Pakistanis had appealed against their death sentence, but the higher courts, including the Amirâs Apex Court, upheld the death sentence. 
ANKARA - In a fresh test of Turkeyâs human rights record and its bid to join the EU, a state prosecutor has filed charges against five journalists for comments they made on a conference about World War One massacres of Armenians.
