(SomaliNet) A minister said on Wednesday that Kenya will soon discuss re-opening its border with Somalia to exercise better control over the influx of refugees who have continued to cross the frontier despite an 18-month close.
"The closure of the border has not in effect achieved what we intended," Immigration Minister Otieno Kajwang told reporters during a visit to Dadaab refugee camp in northeastern Kenya. "What the government intended was that inflow would be reduced and combatants would not come in with their weapons."
So you'll open the border instead. Brilliant, Minister, brilliant ...
The minister, who accompanied UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres on a tour in the refugees camp, said 3 500 refugees crossed the border in June alone. "We are going to discuss this as a cabinet and come up with a decision as to to whether this closure of the border is in any way beneficial to Kenya," he added.
Guterres said: "I don't believe in the possibility of closing borders in this world. Probably, there are better ways of controlling flows."
Kenya is home to 237,000 refugees, many of them from Somalia which has seen an exodus since January last year when Ethiopia-backed forces swept aside Islamist militants who had ruled part of the country for six months, touching off an ongoing Islamist-led insurgency.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/20/2008 00:00 ||
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U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for stronger international action against political repression in Zimbabwe during a meeting at the U.N. Thursday. Zimbabwe has seen increasing violence and the intimidation of opponents of President Robert Mugabe ahead of next week's runoff presidential election.
Secretary Rice told an informal meeting of the 15 members of the Security Council, African nations and some non-governmental groups that the political instability and economic collapse created by the Zimbabwean government's actions are destabilizing the entire region. She accused the Mugabe government of orchestrating a 'campaign of violence and harassment' designed to prevent the country's opposition from conducting its peaceful election campaign. 'Clearly, we have reached a point where broader, stronger international effort is needed,' said Rice.
She urged the Security Council to take up the matter, and she welcomed the efforts so far of the African Union and the Southern African Development Community [SADC] as well as the 14 former African presidents and dignitaries who have called for Zimbabwean authorities to allow for a free and fair runoff election on June 27.
'We urge the SADC to increase its pressure on President Mugabe and his followers to stop this violence immediately, to permit the resumption of humanitarian activities, to allow the election to proceed freely and fairly and to peacefully abide by the results,' said Rice.
President Mugabe has warned that he is prepared to go to war to prevent the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) candidate from governing if he succeeds in the runoff election.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Can he afford to go to war?
I'm thinking he can't.
It sounds quite expensive.
Mugabee has the arms. He has the 'veterans'. Likely his military leaders have been getting additional training. His patron is quite willing to pony up the extra funding for future considerations.
If it's quick and vicious, like I think it will be, any so-called international action will be moot. The Africans will back down. For all their words, the AU and the SADC are pretty much impotent. Besides, there's always been reluctance to throw-over a fellow African revolutionary.
#3
Why now is Condi making all this noise? Did she finally wake up and see that all the goodness that used to be Zimbabwe has 'left the building?'
seems about 2 or 3 years too late.
where was all the concern at the time of the election rehersal?
#4
Why now is Condi making all this noise?where was all the concern at the time of the election rehersal?
It took a really bad economic situation (that finally hurt the Zim's mid-level elite) for the oppo to come up with some sort of credibility. Then it took an election/runoff result, a horde of economic refugees and likely USDS arm-twisting (and probably some incentives) to get African leadership on board.
Likely there was no concern because nobody thought the MDC-T had a snowball's chance in hell. Rice and the Brits could make all the noise they wanted, but if Zimbabwe's neighbors couldn't be brought/dragged on board the bandwagon, nothing was going to happen.
Zimbabwe's opposition party said Thursday that it was facing escalating violence as it tries to campaign in the last days before a presidential runoff pitting its leader against longtime President Robert Mugabe.
In recent weeks, party activists have been burned alive or have turned up dead after being spirited away in trucks, the Movement for Democratic Change said. Their rallies have been banned and police have blocked campaign stops. The violence, restrictions on opposition campaigning and the arrest of a top opposition leader have raised concerns that the June 27 elections will not be free and fair, leading some in the region to wonder whether the vote should be scrapped in favor of a power-sharing arrangement.
Opposition presidential candidate Morgan Tsvangirai's party says more than 60 of its activists have been killed in recent weeks.
Independent human rights activists have implicated police, soldiers and Mugabe party militants in the violence. Amnesty International said Thursday that 12 bodies had been found across the country and that most of the victims showed signs of torture. The London-based rights group said the victims appeared to have been abducted by supporters of Mugabe's Zanu-PF party.
One of the worst single attacks came Wednesday, when the opposition said four activists were abducted in Chitungwiza, about 15 miles south of the capital, and assaulted with iron bars, clubs and guns, opposition spokesman Nelson Chamisa said. The victims were forced onto trucks and taken away by militias chanting slogans of Mugabe's party, witnesses said. The bodies were found early Thursday, Chamisa said.
In a separate incident, the homes of three Chitungwiza opposition councilmen and their families were firebombed Wednesday night, but everyone escaped uninjured, Chamisa said. Attempts to reach police for confirmation of the firebombing were not immediately successful.
BRUSSELS (AP) The European Union on Thursday agreed to lift its diplomatic sanctions against Cuba, but imposed tough conditions on the communist island to maintain sanction-free relations, officials said. The U.S., which has maintained a decades-long trade embargo against Cuba, criticized the move, saying there were no significant signs the communist island was easing a dictatorship.
EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said the bloc felt it had to encourage changes in Cuba after Raul Castro took over as the head of the country's government from his ailing brother Fidel. "There will be very clear language also on what the Cubans still have to do ... releasing prisoners, really working on human rights questions," she told reporters at an EU summit. "There will be a sort of review to see whether indeed something will have happened."
"But we'll reward them first and hope they comply later," she added.
The largely symbolic decision takes effect Monday. The diplomatic sanctions, which banned high-level visits to EU nations by Cuban officials, have not been in force since 2005. They were imposed in 2003 following the arrests of dozens of dissidents but suspended two years later.
As part of its action, the EU approved a set of conditions on Cuba in return for sanction-free relations. They include the release of all political prisoners; access for Cubans to the Internet; and a double-track approach for all EU delegations arriving in Cuba, allowing them to meet both opposition figures and members of the Cuban government. Officials said the bloc will evaluate Cuba's progress in a year's time and could take new measures if human rights do not improve.
The chances of that happening are about the same as my winning 'American Idol' ...
The U.S. expressed its opposition before the EU's final decision. State Department Deputy spokesman Tom Casey said the United States would "like to see a real transition occur in Cuba, one that would allow for the release of political prisoners, for democratic opening, and ultimately for free and fair elections in which the Cuban people could choose their own leadership."
Casey said the U.S. has recently seen "some very minor cosmetic changes" in Cuba. "We certainly don't see any kind of fundamental break with the Castro dictatorship that would give us reason to believe that now would be the time to lift sanctions or otherwise fundamentally alter our policies," he said. Asked if lifting EU sanctions would weaken U.S. sanctions, Casey said simply, "We'll see," but offered no assessment.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/20/2008 11:54 ||
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#2
As per GUAM PDN OP-ED this AM > CUBA LOOKS TO THE NEXT US PRESIDENT [NEW POST-DUBYA US-CUBA RAPPROCHEMENT?]. Cuba desires to see an end to 20,000 Cubans on average legally emigrating to the USA every year, + return of GITMO proper to sovereign Cuba.
As BROADLY/SUBJECTIVELY SIMILAR TO WHAT MAY OOCUR IN GUAM OVER THE NEXT DECADE OR SO [Various Pressures]> Uncles Fidel-Raul may be worried that THERE MAY NOT BE ENUFF ORIGINAL CUBANS LEFT IN OWG = POST-WOT CUBA, espec when the future OWG CARIBBEAN, etc. FREE TRADE = SPEC ECON ZONE IS FORMALLY UP AND RUNNING???
#5
Well, Joe considering that the Mummy movies, besides using Brendan Fraiser and a hottie of the month, features a mummified power mad creature that in earlier more animated existence destroyed the life of its own people and country, I would say that your question in a posting about Cuba is appropriate. They could haul the film team to Havana and begin production tomorrow on The Mummy Undying Curse.
MOSCOW - Russia warned on Thursday it might have to use force against Georgia if Russian peacekeepers were attacked again in its southern neighbour.
General Lieutenant Alexander Burutin, first deputy of the military general staff, told reporters in Moscow that peacekeeping troops in Georgia showed considerable restraint when they were detained earlier this week. In the future we cannot guarantee that our servicemen will act in this patient way. Their patience is not limitless. The consequences will be grave and there could be bloodshed. Responsibility for that will be entirely on the Georgian side, Burutin said.
Georgian police on Tuesday detained a group of Russian soldiers who they said were transporting weapons without permission. They later released them.
Russia has had peacekeeping troops in Abkhazia since the end of a separatist war in the 1990s, and the region is a source of friction between the two countries. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday warned his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili in a phone conversation that Moscow would not stand for provocations against its peacekeepers.
Moscow alleges Tbilisi has been preparing to attack Abkhazia, but Georgia's pro-Western government, which has been promised eventual NATO membership, says it has no plans, and accuses Moscow of trying to annex the region.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/20/2008 00:00 ||
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The Czech government is on the verge of a crisis. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said his Cabinet might collapse in the fall. He admitted the Cabinet lost a firm majority in Parliament over the possible deployment of a high-frequency radar of the U.S. third positioning strategic missile defense area in the Czech Republic. Environmentalist deputies did not even want to hear about it, while others insist on a nationwide referendum, which the government cannot win because 68 percent of the population is emphatically against the deployment.
No problem. Don't deploy the system; cancel it.
If Europe does not wish to defend itself, we are under no obligation to defend it for them. Those days are gone.
I don't want to see the BMD system become the new wedge in our relations. Cancel the plans, keep the system at home, and work on our own BMD.
#1
I bet we'd have no problems bringing it home as long as we named it the Robert Byrd Missile Defense Radar and located it in West Virginia.
Posted by: ed ||
06/20/2008 13:22 Comments ||
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that's what they get for dragging out the negotiations. I agree, don't make them take what they don't want. This is, after all, the same country that once said to it's picturesque, bucolic Slovak half, "You won't stay unless we give you lots of special concessions and money? Fine, go and be happy. We'll get along without you somehow." Of course, the president then was the esteemed dissident playwright Vaclav Havel, but even so.
The publisher of a book by a British author acknowledging the 1915 Armenian genocide has been convicted under Turkey's notorious Article 301, despite reforms intended to make the law less draconian. A judge sentenced Ragip Zarakolu to five months in prison after ruling that The Truth Will Set Us Free, written by George Jerjian, "insulted the Turkish republic".
The conviction came despite a letter of support from the author to the court arguing that his book was intended to forge a "new understanding of history between Turks and Armenians".
Translated into Turkish in 2005, Jerjian's book tells the story of the slaughter of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces during the first world war through the eyes of his Armenian grandmother, who survived largely thanks to the protection of a Turkish soldier. Turkey disputes allegations that the Armenians' deaths were a result of deliberate genocide.
Zarakolu, who was acquitted of a separate charge of insulting Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the modern Turkish state, has been freed on appeal. He is not expected to serve time after the judge ruled that his sentence could be reduced to a fine, citing good behaviour.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/20/2008 00:00 ||
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Intersting comparison to the US where insulting America is a cottage industry. Or insulting Bush, which seems to be the national pastime, replacing baseball which was just too damn boring, anyway.
Weeks after his presumptive Republican presidential competitor, Sen. Barack Obama is launching his first general election national television ad. And the subject -- patriotism -- shows where his campaign may feel he's weak right now.
It's a 60-second biographical spot that will run in 18 states. Candidates like to start off with bio ads so they're setting the stage with their own narrative, not responding to someone else's versions.
The ad, entitled 'Country I Love,' seeks to highlight Obama's biography and patriotism. Without military service, he stresses the upbringing of his family in the Kansas heartland and the values of working hard taught in his single-parent home and by his grandparents. He does not mention his life in Hawaii or Indonesia.
His campaign said it will start running the commercials Friday in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia. 'America is a country of strong families and strong values,' the ad begins. 'My life's been blessed by both. I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. We didn't have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up. Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses.' Geez, they sound like...Typical White People. Does this mean granny can come out from under the bus now?
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2008 00:00 ||
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Because if he showed it in Kansas people here would do a serious "WTF!? We must not know what accountability and self-relience are because we don't act like him at all." Also, Missourians tend to have their own version of what Kansas Values are, isn't that right Mr. William Quantrell? Why yes it is Mr. John Brown. Perhaps the poly sci lawyer would like to look that up before bragging his tenuous ideas about values around the show-me state.
As Nepal continues on the path to being a Chinese poodle ...
KATHMANDU - Hundreds of Tibetan exiles, including nuns and monks, shouted anti-China slogans and scuffled with police in Kathmandu on Thursday before being hauled into waiting trucks and taken to detention centres, police said. Nearly 600 protesters were detained for trying to storm a visa office of the Chinese embassy, but it was not clear if they had been charged.
Tibetan exiles in Nepal, numbering about 20,000, have protested almost every day in Kathmandu since China cracked down to quell an unrest in Tibet in March. Shouting 'Long Live the Dalai Lama' and 'Down with Hu Jintao' the protesters on Wednesday briefly clashed with police in blue camouflage. 'We want free Tibet,' they shouted as they were driven to detention centres.
Nepal considers Tibet part of China, a key aid donor, and does not allow anti-China protests by Tibetans who fled their homeland after the failed 1959 uprising against Chinese rule.
In India, police arrested 30 Tibetans on Thursday in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh as they marched towards the Chinese border. They will appear before a magistrate on Friday, police said.
Posted by: Steve White ||
06/20/2008 00:00 ||
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Rear Admiral Shahid Iqbal has taken charge as Commander Pakistan Fleet from Vice Admiral Noman Bashir.
'And who is your commander?'
'Noman is my commander!'
That sort of thing made 'em squirt resinated wine outta their nostrils back in Homer's day. Today it's just about as funny having an admiral of the fleet named 'Shaheed.'
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2008 00:00 ||
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From one of my most careful and accurate pen pals:
For all yesterday and in to the night, the people of the city of Mashad, one of the most religious cities, on the north east corner of Iran, has been under the peoples demonstration. The news is that over 8,000 to 10,000 people were on the streets demonstrating against the regime of the mullahs. 1500 Students of the Ferdowsi University there have been demonstrating against the government.
The slogans were: Death to the revolution. "Guns, tanks and Basijies are not effective any more." "The economic Mafia must be exposed. Illegitimate government must resign Must resign." "We are waves who will move."
The Basijies, paramilitary force, have used chains, axes, electric batons, teargas and they were shooting over the crowds heads. There has been report of one person shot, hundreds injured and over 200 were arrested at the university. The number of arrests on the streets is not known.
Mashad is a very important place for the mullahs, one of the holy sites of Shi'ism. That they now face such a large demonstration in that city is a bad sign for the regime. It would, of course, be nice if someone at a major "news" outlet got on this, but...
Posted by: Sherry ||
06/20/2008 15:02 ||
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#1
It's good to see them chanting something besides "death to America" all the time.
#1
If a New York City deli man wanders into my kitchen, feeds my children and calls me "sweet cheeks," words will result. I may even have to get out my antique ivory fan.
Posted by: Fred ||
06/20/2008 00:00 ||
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Hate to break it to them, but drilling is already going on a bit over 50 miles off key west. Except its not us, its the Cubans and thier forieng partners drilling, who, I might note, are immune to US environmental regualtions and US courts.
#5
florida will have it affects..but frickin chicoms and cuba will be drilling....
Posted by: dan ||
06/20/2008 9:32 Comments ||
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A major risk to the environmentalists is that people will notice that all the off shore drilling in the Gulf has produced very little pollution - even though the platforms have been pounded by some cat 5 hurricanes.
#8
There won't be a tourist industry if nobody travels. As said, the drilling is already in process but the US is a couple years behind already.
The only consideration in my mind is that if people trying to escape from cuba can just get within a mile and call "Alli Alli Otsenfree" as an area controlled by the US, thus being Florida and granted citizenship.
#10
IRAN-DAILY > UNDERWATER OIL BREWING BORDER BATTLE. SHELL OIL's new innovative PERDIDO Platform versus Mexico vv GULF OF MEXICO. Many Mexicans fear Perdido will suck out crude oil from their fields into Shell's = USA's, + affect on PEMEX.
ALso from IRAN-DAILY > THE NORTH-SOUTH CORRIDOR [Asia] CONSORTIUM DISCUSSED; + EXPOSURE OF PERSIAN GULF FREE TRADE ZONE [FTZ's] ON THE AGENDA, as envisioned for Iran's MINISTRY OF COMMERCE's PAN-PERSIAN GULF "VISION 2025" PLAN [Iran + Littoral Gulf nations].
*IRANIAN. WS > THE ENERGY NON-CRISIS; + FREEREPUBLIC > THE DEFEAT OF THE TRANS-TEXAS CORRIDOR [TTC] - DON'T BET ON IT!
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.
The Czech government is on the verge of a crisis. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek said his Cabinet might collapse in the fall. He admitted the Cabinet lost a firm majority in Parliament over the possible deployment of a high-frequency radar of the U.S. third positioning strategic missile defense area in the Czech Republic. Environmentalist deputies did not even want to hear about it, while others insist on a nationwide referendum, which the government cannot win because 68 percent of the population is emphatically against the deployment.
Weeks after his presumptive Republican presidential competitor, Sen. Barack Obama is launching his first general election national television ad. And the subject -- patriotism -- shows where his campaign may feel he's weak right now.
