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Topic: International
The new items published under this topic are as follows.
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Food, glorious food...
Posted by: DavidK on Tuesday, October 18, 2005 - 01:30 PM
[Topic:-International]
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4349916.stm
"The US has blocked the distribution of 357,000 British ration packs sent out to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina, amid fears they are infected with mad cow disease. So what happened?"
Their loss; our rat packs - especially the big ones lucky tank people get - are the best in NATO. You get Spangles or Rolos in them. Although the French ones do include a powdered wine concentrate which would be a nice change from tea...
Apologies for the lack of political satire, must be lunch time.
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Earthquakes
Posted by: DavidK on Monday, October 10, 2005 - 06:13 PM
[Topic:-International]
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I feel I should point out, as Pakistan pleads poverty in dealing with the current aftermath of an earthquake.
1. This part of northern Pakistan is on a known fault line where the Indian sub-continent plate is pushing into the European plate and amongst other things creating the Himalayas. So hardly a surprise was it?
2. Any country which can afford to run F16 wings and develop nuclear warheads and a strategic delivery system for them, (Look Tony, REAL WMDs!) is not poor, or has its priorities hopeless skewed. (Same with India which can afford to run aircraft carriers, Flankers and has nukes too) (Look, Tony etc…)
I may be wrong, wouldn't be the first time, but I feel no sympathy for such people.
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re Campaign to Free Omar Deghayes from Guantanamo Bay: via Chicken Yoghurt
Posted by: ringverse on Sunday, October 02, 2005 - 02:38 PM
[Topic:-International]
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re Campaign to Free Omar Deghayes from Guantanamo Bay: via Chicken Yoghurt,
The Argus newspaper in Brighton is running a campaign to get justice for a Guantanamo detainee from Brighton, Omar Deghayes and needs help....
I am going to deliver coupons and emails of support we have been collecting to the Home Office on Monday and would be massively grateful if you could bump up the numbers by emailing news@theargus.co.uk before Monday. At the end is a message you could cut and paste. I have detailed who he is and why you should help him below, but if you haven't got time to read it, skip straight to the bottom.
I am really sorry for the mass 'please do this' incredibly long mail which I know everyone hates, but this is now literally a matter of life and death. Please help.
Miriam Wells
Reporter
The Argus
...
Omar and his family are Libyan refugees who fled here in the 80s after their father was murdered by Colonel Gadaffi's regime. We gave them asylum. Omar grew up and went to school in Brighton then got a law degree.
In 2001 he went travelling and doing humanitarian work in Afghanistan, where he got married. After 9/11 he fled because Afghanistan was a very dangerous place to be, but got captured by bounty-hunters in Pakistan and sold to the Americans.
He has been in Guantanamo Bay ever since. He has not been charged with a crime and the only evidence produced against him is a video supposedly linking him to the Madrid bombings, but the man said to be him in the video just blatantly isn't, something which has been confirmed by various facial recognition experts (not to mention the fact he was in Guantanamo when the bombings took place).
He has been blinded in on eye by American guards, and been beaten, sexually abused, humiliated, mentally tortured and had his religion abused, like all the other prisoners. He has been in solitary confinement for most of his time there. I have read his accounts which describe in exact detail dates, times and names of people involved in the horrific things which go on there day in, day out.
Because they have now lost all hope, more than 200 inmates are now on hunger strike. Dozens are seriously ill and their lawyers fear people will start dying very soon. Omar has specifically been mentioned several times.
The British Government has got all the British nationals out, but because Omar is a Libyan refugee rather than a British national, it says it won't help him. it says it is up to the Libyan government (the same one that murdered his dad and that will torture/kill him if he returns).
Incidentally, Omar's lawyer, this amazing international human rights lawyer who represents more than 40 of the inmates, said Omar's case is the worst miscarriage of justice he has seen in 20 years and he believes it will come to be known as the worst in British history.
This is the message we've been using in our coupons, you can cut and paste it into an email to: news@theargus.co.uk
Dear Home Secretary,
It is a scandal that Omar Deghayes has been held in Guantanamo Bay without
trial for more than three years. He has the right to a trial so the courts
can decide whether he is innocent or guilty. I support the campaign to get
justice for Omar.
(Name and address)
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Foreign Affairs
Posted by: DavidK on Wednesday, September 28, 2005 - 02:25 PM
[Topic:-International]
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Lies, damn lies and Jack Straw...
I too was just watching our Foreign Secretary. I am sure those hereabouts of greater eloguence than I will put the boot in, er, comment more fully, but I found myself shaking with anger watching, and wondering what planet he is living on and who is briefing him?
Afghanistan: a nice peaceful democracy with a democratic government? No sign of that when I was last there two months back.
Iraq: 60% voted? Possibly, although I doubt it, but the critical point is which 60%? The alleged 'elected' goverment want the so called 'coalition' troops to remain there to keep them in power, that's all, as has been pointed out many times.
Kosovo, a wonderful success? I was there; it was chaos then and still is.
Sierra Leone: Ditto; changed nothing, achieved nothing.
I am just so ....
My boss is up tomorrow to close the conference, I can't wait.
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Barbara Bush: Things Working Out 'Very Well' for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans
Posted by: ringverse on Tuesday, September 06, 2005 - 07:48 PM
[Topic:-International]
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This via rimone over at dateline bristol:Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated,
"This is working very well for them."
The former First Lady's remarks were aired this evening on American Public Media's "Marketplace" program.
She was part of a group in Houston today at the Astrodome that included her husband and former President Bill Clinton, who were chosen by her son, the current president, to head fundraising efforts for the recovery. Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama were also present.
In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said:
"Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston."
Then she added:
"What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."
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re the Federal/State Government Resonse to Katrina
Posted by: ringverse on Sunday, September 04, 2005 - 08:25 PM
[Topic:-International]
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Further to the question of where responsibility for the disasterous response to Katerina lies, Chromatius over at No Contact Politics seems to have found the answer:
Emergencies & Disasters
Preparing America
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation.
This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness.
Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.
That seems pretty clear, and this link on the DHS page tells us exactly what they have taken responsibility for so far.
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Dubya on Katrina Reconstruction Priorities
Posted by: ringverse on Sunday, September 04, 2005 - 05:32 PM
[Topic:-International]
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It's all about getting your priorities right:
We've got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we're going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we're going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before.
Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)
I'm sure the people of Mississippi will be most relieved that Senator Lott is not going to be short of somewhere to stay...
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Dubya's Doing a Superb Job... Katrina Chaos is the Locals Fault...!?
Posted by: ringverse on Sunday, September 04, 2005 - 05:09 PM
[Topic:-International]
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Because condemnation of the response to Katrina has been so universal, I thought I would have a look round if there is anyone speaking out in favour of Bush and the federal government's role.
And guess where I found it?
Apparently, and I paraphrase:
- Bush did all he could,
- The chaos is due to state authorities incompetence,
- Nobody could have seen this coming,
- It was that philanderer Big Bad Bill Clinton who cut the funding for Flood Defence...
- Oh, and the author of the above has given up on BBC reporting of the disaster in disgust...
"I for one gave up on the BBC after Matt Frei's rants this afternoon."
(By 'rants', I assume he means Matt Frei being utterly flabbergasted at finding himself in the middle of a 3rd world disaster zone, in the richest and most powerful country in the world.)
Ok, maybe I am being a little harsh, it is fair to say that the response at state level was as lacking as the response at Federal level, but to use the failures of state authorities to discount the negligence and incompetence of the Bush administration is pathetic.
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Move Along, Move Along, Nothing to See Here: Red Cross Refused Access to New Orleans
Posted by: ringverse on Sunday, September 04, 2005 - 11:22 AM
[Topic:-International]
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Shades of Iraq again...
Hat Tip to Logical Voice for pointing us towards this:
As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.
"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.
"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders."
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We don't do body counts
Posted by: bedblogger on Sunday, September 04, 2005 - 10:49 AM
[Topic:-International]
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We don't do body counts, say the US Administration in Iraq.
In the majority of American eyes this is right, you count your own dead, not Iraq's.
Yet this time it is their own, and the dead are not being counted.
The fact that people are still being yanked off the roof of their houses, after this amount of time, shows how delayed this federal response has been. Had the Administration acted faster, now they would be collecting the thousands bodies, not the survivors, and proper respect for American dead would be shown. A First World country, the only Superpower no less, unable (unwilling?) to collect and count its own dead has real problems.
Issues over Human Rights and the sanctity of life elsewhere in the world, that the US media have been happy to gloss over, will not be so easily hidden this time. The US passport equates with superiority, whatever the colour of the owner, American's believed. Not now.
It also has to be remembered that the media access to Iraq has been micromanaged from the start. From the war "embeds" who reported only what they were allowed to see and say; the spiraling violence meant that the few US reporters in Iraq were able to leave their hotels and see the real outcome of the war on Iraq's population and infrastructure; the American public have no factual concept of what is happening in Iraq, nor why. Every American is sensitive to the huge sacrifices in US lives (again disproportionately poor and black), in federal funding for the War Against Terror and the increase in the tax burden. There was more truthful US reporting in Iraq when Comical Ali gave each reporter a minder.
Thus not having a true picture of the disintegration in Iraq, the media are flying into a war zone in their own back yard and making unrealistic comparisons between money spent in Iraq and money spent in USA. Reporters and public are shocked by what happened, how their invincible system broke down this way.
And this disparity between what is actually happening in Iraq - how bad it is, the real reason for needing all the extra funding and troops, with little rebuilding, regeneration and nation building occuring - and the fantasy that Bush portrays of a successful war, just a long-winded one, will be the prism through which this natural, unavoidable disaster is seen. The lies and misrepresentations about Iraq are coming back to bite Bush hard.
The media and public do not appear to be in a mood to pull any punches this time, unlike 9/11 four years ago. The uncounted American dead, rotting where they lay today, will be washing up on beaches for a long time, and each new corpse will be blamed on the Bush Administration's inactivity afresh.
And for that reason alone they are scared and acting now. It is too late in the eyes of the majority, both black and white, as these images jar with American self-image. The neo-con doctrine will never recover from these shameful events.
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An Insurgency?
Posted by: quarsan on Sunday, September 04, 2005 - 07:58 AM
[Topic:-International]
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From The Army Times, a story with disturbing implications:
“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force... “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”
And the article refers to the events in the city as "the insurgency".
Behind this is a simple story. The poor and the Black just don't count. They're invisible. That's why, as the long lines of SUV's left ahead of the hurricane, those in charge relaxed, for only the invisible remained. I think that is one of the main causes of the tardy response.
But there i a price to pay. It's going to impossible to keep this quiet, especially as the survivors are being shipped to 19 states. There's a lot of people going to be hearing first hand accounts...
In addition, America's reputation for invincibility has taken a battering it will not recover from.
Elsewhere Juan Cole has a devastating comparison between New Orleans and Baghdad.
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British doctors looting in New Orleans
Posted by: bedblogger on Saturday, September 03, 2005 - 01:19 AM
[Topic:-International]
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Newsnight has talked to a UK woman, in New Orleans for a medical conference on infectious diseases, discussing the doctors taking an armed guard and looting a pharmacy, taking all the medicines they found. Catriona MacKay said, on realising that "we were not getting out of here" they decided to set up a makeshift clinic for the victims of Katrina in their hotel.
Luckily they were not seen by any of the cops or army who are presently pointing their guns anyone requesting advice, let alone people running off with huge stocks of prescribed medications.
Good on them. Rob it all. If Bush and his people won't help, what option does anyone have but self-preservation and altruism like this.
Would a situation like this have been allowed to develop had Martha's Vinyard and the Hamptons been destroyed? After 9/11 a massive federal effort was deployed. Ignoring for the minute the fact that a "terror training exercise" was ongoing that day in Manhattan (very handy, ditto the dayof London bombings), when a financial heart is hit all essential services are rapidly deployed. Not so poor, majority black southern areas.
The American dream doesn't look so impressive, the gap between Presidential rhetoric and reality is too great.
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