 |
INTERNATIONAL |  |
|
COLUMNISTS | |
|
Zimbabwe Independence Day
Posted: Thursday, April 19, 2007
¤ Zimbabwe Independence Day - An African Statement
Yesterday the people of Zimbabwe celebrated their nation's 27th year of independence and the US and other European powers are not pleased. They hoped that the White minority settlers in Zimbabwe could have continued controlling the vast amounts of land that were taken during colonial rule.
Despite the increasing pressure from the US and other European powers, the majority in Zimbabwe remain strongly aligned to the ruling ZANU-PF party and their president, Robert Mugabe. It was hoped that economic hardship fueled by sanctions and the ongoing campaign by Western countries to demonize President Robert Mugabe could have been enough to turn the majority of people in rural areas against Mugabe. So far that has failed.
¤ The Hobbesian Hell of Iraq
What are we to make of the bizarre contrast between our national grief over the terrible slaughter of students and faculty at Virginia Tech and our muted reaction to the continuing bloodbath in and around Baghdad? One mass killing in the 209 years since Virginia Tech was founded is not exactly a trend. It is a terrible thing but not likely to be repeated anytime soon.
We cannot say the same about events in Baghdad and Iraq. Just today four separate car bombs in and around Baghdad teft at least 180 Iraqis--mostly Shia--dead. On Tuesday, at least 85 bodies turned up and there were more bombings. Monday was not much better--thirty corpses and at least twenty killed in bombings. Sixty nine plus on Sunday. And the beat goes on.
¤ Wolfowitz's World Bank deputy tells him to quit
¤ In Baghdad, carnage continues
US efforts to subdue the insurgency in Baghdad suffered a setback yesterday when the Iraqi capital endured one of its most wretched days in four years of slaughter, with nearly 200 people killed and more than 200 injured in a volley of afternoon bomb attacks.
Some of the capital's poorest and most densely populated areas once again confronted scenes of carnage and devastation as at least five large explosions detonated within a terrifying few hours. In the worst attack, a car bomb at a market in a Shia district killed at least 140 people, some of them labourers rebuilding the marketplace from a previous attack in February.
¤ A Day of Bombs and Blood
¤ Somalia Fighting Kills at Least 12
¤ Police 'sorry' killer's videos were broadcast
US police said tonight they were "sorry" hate-filled videos recorded by campus killer Cho Seung-Hui have been broadcast. Virginia Police Superintendent Steve Flaherty said he was disappointed US channel NBC chose to show the disturbing footage. He said officers studied the ranting speeches recorded by the 23-year-old South Korean murderer but they "simply confirmed what we already knew". Although NBC News delayed broadcasting clips for several hours while FBI officers examined the footage, it has since been criticised for airing them
¤ Wednesday: 312 Iraqis, 1 GI Killed; 302 Iraqis Wounded
¤ Unplugged McCain sings 'bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran'
¤ John McCain Just Doesn't Get It - II
¤ Former Mossad chief not against taking out Ahmadinejad
¤ The Endless War
¤ Tangled in Table Talk
¤ Heck of a Job, Wolfie
At least they can't blame Paul Wolfowitz on the Jews anymore. That's the good news in the scandal; his lover and neocon political soul mate, Shaha Ali Riza, the World Bank official who received a lucrative transfer to the State Department at Wolfowitz's direction, is an Arab Muslim. She is one in a group of Arab exiles, the most prominent being Ahmed Chalabi, who clearly had as much of a role as the oft-mentioned Israel lobby in driving the U.S. to war. Throw in the Christian right's fierce support for the invasion and responsibility for this debacle is now proved to be quite ecumenical.
¤ Meeting the Resistance in Iraq
¤ Wolfowitz's Quid Pro Quo
Of the top five outside international appointments made by embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz during his nearly two-year tenure, three were senior political appointees of right-wing governments that provided strong backing for U.S. policy in Iraq.
The latest appointment came just last month, when former Jordanian Deputy Prime Minister Marwan Muasher was named senior vice president for external affairs. Muasher served as King Abdullah II's ambassador in Washington in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2002 and reportedly played a key role in ensuring Amman's cooperation in the March 2003 invasion. During and after the invasion, when Muasher served first as foreign minister and then as deputy prime minister, he was considered among Washington's staunchest supporters in an increasingly hostile Arab world.
¤ Imus Is Out, But Whitey Execs Get the Last Laugh
¤ Mauritania swears in first President
¤ Iran denies US claims on weapons in Afghanistan
¤ 'I Wish The Iraq War Never Existed,' It Was 'Osama Bin Laden's Idea'
¤ Va. Tech shooter was laughed at
¤ Backlash leads to pullback on Cho video
¤ Bomber gets by Baghdad security; 12 dead
¤ The Deeper Darkness Behind the Wolfowitz Scandal
¤ Deadly clashes erupt in Mogadishu
Fighting has erupted again the Somali capital Mogadishu, leaving at least 10 civilians dead and 15 more injured, Al Jazeera says. Heavy shelling could be heard around the city on Thursday as Ethiopian troops clashed with Somali groups opposed to the country’s interim government, agencies report. Witnesses told the AFP news agency that eight people were killed when a mortar landed in a bus station in the south of the city.
¤ Bringing Down the House of Lies
It's a bit of a mixed feeling to realize that millions and millions of people who didn't get this distinction two, four or six years ago now understand that the "political' issues we now face aren't about right and left, they're about right and wrong. On one hand, what took you so long? On the other, thank God and welcome aboard.
¤ Trouble is brewing for the US in Iraqi Kurdistan
¤ The Assault on a Pregnant Woman
¤ Our dead, their dead
As tragic as the Virginia Tech shootings are, let's face it: 32 dead is a slow day in U.S.-occupied Iraq.
"Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate," President Bush said. "They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time." He would know.
In America, we have the luxury of mourning our dead for days or even years (see 9/11). If Iraqis tried to "pull together" and "come to grips" with every massacre of innocents . . . well, you get the idea.
Theology and violence against women
Posted: Wednesday, January 16, 2002
www.jamaicaobserver.com
THE World Council of Churches has launched a "Decade to Overcome Violence" (2001-2010) DOV, but, that decade has to liberate religion from the theology of patriarchal authoritarianism, which seeks to use scripture to engenderise male dominance and perpetuate female inferiority. The main contributor to the idea of female inferiority is the fall/redemption theological focus which we inherited from Augustine of Hippo, Thomas a Kempis, Bossuet; Cotton Mather, Tanquerry and others mainly from Europe. Fall/redemption theological premise includes the following: Very male-oriented, ascetic, mortification of the body, passion is a curse, God as Father but not seen as mother, child as well as Father, suffering is the wages of sin, emphasises original sin and guilt; very pessimistic; talks about the spirituality of the powerful and not necessarily of the powerless; apolitical, that is, supportive of the status quo and maintains the view that humanity is sinful. This theological orientation is suspicious of the body and violent in its body/soul imagery. "The soul is at war with the body" (Augustine of Hippo). MORE
Welcome Move By Caricom
Posted: Monday, January 14, 2002
www.nationnews.com
THE DECISION of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments to become engaged in the current crisis of democratic governance with a functioning parliament in Trinidad and Tobago is to be highly commended.
To have done otherwise would have been to breed more cynicism and disenchantment about CARICOM as a regional institution in the life of its peoples on whose behalf the leaders speak and take decisions with the hope of promoting a better future for all.
Since the outcome of last month’s general election with both the People’s National Movement (PNM) of Patrick Manning and the United National Congress (UNC) of Basdeo Panday emerging with 18 seats each for the 36-member House of Representatives, there have been concerns by CARICOM for national efforts at co-operation that could prevent problems of governance at home and avoid negative impact for other member states. MORE
Zimbabwe
Posted: Sunday, January 13, 2002
www.jamaicaobserver.com
THERE has been an all-out press attack on President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for the last few years. The attacks have been vicious, unbalanced and unwarranted. Reading the reports, one would say the attacks were because President Mugabe was resisting democratic change and he wants to take land from whites unjustifiably. If the critics of the president were asked the question, "Are you trying to justify that the white people are entitled to the land which was robbed by their foreparents from the indigenous African people of Zimbabwe? What about the people who were forcefully removed from their land? What about those freedom fighters that sacrificed, fought and lost their lives for the independence of Zimbabwe. Are these people not justified in having some of the land that was stolen from them? Are we saying that we should forget that? I think the words of Robert Mugabe during the height of the vicious attacks against him and his government should be recalled. He stated, "England and the western world feels that what I'm doing is unjustified and that the white land owners should be compensated." He suggested, "Then let England compensate them for the land that I want to give back to my people." MORE
Anguilla anti-colonial struggle
Posted: Monday, December 17, 2001
By Tonya Carter
WHERE HAVE ALL THE LEADERS GONE?
Independence must be first conceived. As Anguillians stand now, there is an unconscious deep-rooted psychological dependence.
It is my belief that "Independence begins in the mind!" Many of us who make a business out of predicting the future are guilty of one common error. According to Warren Bennis, "a futurists should never let himself be tempted into premature optimism."
Where have all the leaders gone?
All around the world desperate societies are asking this very same question and Anguilla is definitely no exception. Leaders are lacking important qualities and this is why there is something dangerously wrong in Anguilla today. These qualities were evaluated in Warren's book 'THE UNCONSCIOUS CONSPIRACY' and are as follows:
1) INTEGRITY - standards of morals and intellectual honesty on which we base our individual conduct and from which we cannot swerve without a sense of betraying and cheapening our better selves. This can only be restored by each of us asserting our own. By the very existence, people of integrity lend new hope to our society.
2) DEDICATION - finding something to believe in with passionate conviction and intensity. We must remain committed to our brethren, our institutions, and our ideas. 'Labour is in a real sense its own reward'.
3) MAGNANIMITY - to be noble of mind and heart; generous in forgiving, above revenge or resentment. This is very important especially in Anguilla and the wider Caribbean where victimization is carried out.
4) HUMILITY - learning not to confuse your own ego and pride and self-importance with the true issue at stake. It is the ability to learn from the mistakes rather than having mistakes pointed out. This quality is very important as was indicated my Mr. V. A Vanterpool in his articles that highlighted the prerequisites for independence and agreed upon by the AIM.
5) OPENESS - the willingness to listen to any new idea or suggestion and also involve the openness to change. The leaders of Anguilla must be open minded when dealing with the issue of independence and any other issues. This also leads me to the state the paradox - confidentiality is good, secrecy is bad. There is a difference between confidentiality and secrecy. There must be transparency and accountability but everything that goes on within Government cannot be discussed with the public.
6) CREATIVITY - This is something that most of us seem to lose as we leave childhood. A publisher defines genius as 'someone who sees things very clearly but sees them with the eyes of a child'. To rediscover creativity, we must find ways of recreating our sense of wonder, of heightening, even altering our consciousness. 'The more our work makes us specialists, the more we must strive to become generalists in other matters, to avoid becoming lopsided'. If there is to be a change in the mentality of Anguillians about the much talked about political Independence from Britain, it must rely on three things - participation of the people involved in the change; trust in the people who are the basic proponents, advocates or leaders of the change and thirdly, clarity about the change.
One cannot really overemphasize the fact that we are living in an era where human resource development is paramount to economic, social and political development. 'Where have all our leaders gone' is not directly aimed at those in 'leadership positions’ as such but rather to us ALL. We should all be leaders rather than followers. And to those brave Anguillians who took the stand in 1967, they were indeed leaders and not followers. I applaud them and I join them in the celebration of Separation Day.
I hope that the readers of this article do not misunderstand my article. I see great things happening for Anguilla but we must first obtain those chief qualities that I mention, namely: humility, creativity, magnanimity, integrity, dedication and openness. Not just for our elected officials but for all of Anguilla.
Come let us reason together and in the mean time...let us continue striving to educate the people about the future of Anguilla!
Tonya Carter
Student~Anguilla
British West Indies
Naipaul: greatness and ungraciousness
Posted: Tuesday, December 11, 2001
by Tony Deyal
IT WAS always widely believed in Trinidad that at some time in his life, Vidia Naipaul would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. It was also always widely believed, and not only in Trinidad, that he would never receive a noble prize an award for graciousness, gratitude or the Chaucerian gentilesse.
I first met Vidia Naipaul on Miguel Street, Presentation College, San Fernando. I immediately related to Naipaul's characters. Later in life when one of my friends, in the throes of unrequited love and betrayal, climbed a tree and invited us to stone him, my respect for Naipaul as both chronicler and seer grew enormously. I felt that he really knew his people. It is only afterwards that I recognised that while he knew us, we were definitely not his people.
It was some time before I read The Suffrage of Elvira. It had fooled me on two counts. Like Dickens little Philip Pirrups' infant tongue which converted his name to Pip, my limited vocabulary converted suffrage to sufferage. Having met at least one neighbour named Eldica, and another lady named Eltie, I assumed Elvira was a woman. I had no great expectations that the book was anything but the travails and triteness of the life of some woman. I stuck to Zane Grey. El Paso came before Elvira. MORE
My parent and my pimp - Child prostitution in Jamaica
Posted: Friday, December 7, 2001
By Stephen-Claude Hyatt, Jamaica Gleaner
ALL THROUGHOUT the world, the theme of prostitution and more specifically, child prostitution, has been given much attention. In quite a few countries, "red light" districts have been established to promote the age-old trade of selling one's body for favours, as legal. Even in Jamaica, women of the trade and other individuals, have been protesting to make same legal and harassment free, and rallying for the establishment of "red light" districts here.
The reality, however, is that the modern prostitute is no longer only female, as there are a growing number of men and children who have either worked their way in or are forced into the "industry". The reality within the Jamaican society these days, is that we have children, who have been encouraged and even forced by their parents to sell their bodies for money and favours.
Many Jamaican women, for years, have been content with the understanding that their teenaged daughters are sexually involved with mature men, old enough to be their fathers, in exchange for taking care of the family. What is not known is that there are Jamaica women who will send their daughters and sons out nightly to "work the beat" and take money home to them. Many of these children are not allowed back into the home unless a certain amount of money is made nightly. MORE
Should we blame Naipaul?
Posted: Monday, November 12, 2001
By Auliana Poon
Jamaica Gleaner
IT IS not so nice when someone of the stature of the Nobel Prize winner, V. S. Naipaul, refuses to accept and acknowledge the fact that he was born in Trinidad and Tobago.
Let this be a lesson for all of us. It is easy to condemn Naipaul for his stand. But how many of us blame the past for our perils today?
How many of us can say that we are truly grateful for our past because it has crafted us and made us what we are today?
But I can tell you, the day that I became grateful for the fact that I was born in Trinidad and Tobago; grateful to Britain for enslaving and indenturing my ancestors; for bringing them to the New World, - to Trinidad and Tobago - just to produce this tiny little soul - this Auliana Poon; that was the day - a day not too long ago - the day that I was truly free; that I was finally emancipated! MORE
'War is at my Black Skin'
Posted: Sunday, October 28, 2001
JAMAICA OBSERVER - IT is wholly appropriate that Sir Vidia Naipaul should have been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature. Sir Vidia, a most eloquent and gifted writer, has been a fountain of joy for those who believe that the 'end of history' has sanctified capitalism and the Mid-Atlantic way of life.
Naipaul has been at pains for four decades, to explain away the 'White Man's Burden'. He has made it his mission to explain to the Anglo-Saxon world the painful deficiencies of the lesser breeds, so granting absolution to those who may have felt guilt about mistreating the masses of humanity without the law.
My only meeting with Naipaul was 42 years ago, around the time of Jamaica's independence, when he was writing The Middle Passage. I helped shepherd him round Kingston and, unwisely, as it turned out, was responsible for inviting him to a party at a house in Trafalgar Park. There, a furious argument broke out between two of my friends, Parboosingh, the painter and Basil Keane the dentist. This row was later immortalised in The Middle Passage as one example of the 'Congolese behaviour' Naipaul found so acutely distressing.
The use of the term 'Congolese behaviour' was a giveaway. It was not only a deliberate insult to Jamaicans but to the Congolese, whose prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, had recently been murdered by the Belgians on behalf of the Americans. It was the kind of express malice which is Naipaul's signature in his dealings with his ex-compatriots in the post-colonial world.
Naipaul is, as far as I am concerned, a lifeless robot with a second-hand soul. MORE
The cocaine pile-up
Posted: Sunday, October 28, 2001
JAMAICA OBSERVER - SINCE the tragic September 11 attack on the WTC complex in New York not only have the economy of the US and those countries that rely on it as a vital trade outlet been affected, but in the illicit movement of drugs into the great market that the USA is, serious pile-ups are now occurring.
As Jamaica has established itself as one of the main trans-shipment points in the movement of cocaine from South America to the United States, at any one time there are shipments-in-waiting someplace in Jamaica ready to take off by sea or air to one of the many islands in the Bahamas or another of the outlying islands for ultimate destination, USA.
With the tightening of security worldwide and especially at the points of entry into the USA, the local handlers in Jamaica and the South American suppliers are in a panic as they attempt to figure out how to make money on goods that cannot move to their natural market.
The laws of economics apply here too. Costs are skyrocketing. Security costs both for local carriage of the goods and for gunmen; "soldiers", with high-powered weapons to do guard duty are up. MORE
Zimbabwe Independence Day
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Theology and violence against women
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
Welcome Move By Caricom
Monday, January 14, 2002
Zimbabwe
Sunday, January 13, 2002
Anguilla anti-colonial struggle
Monday, December 17, 2001
Naipaul: greatness and ungraciousness
Tuesday, December 11, 2001
My parent and my pimp - Child prostitution in Jamaica
Friday, December 7, 2001
Should we blame Naipaul?
Monday, November 12, 2001
'War is at my Black Skin'
Sunday, October 28, 2001
The cocaine pile-up
Sunday, October 28, 2001
Bombing a Myth
Tuesday, October 16, 2001
|
|
