EDITORIAL:
Binyamin Netanyahu has
been invited by Israeli President Shimon Perez to form a
coalition government. Immediately after Mr Netanyahu
lost no time in restating his warnings about a
nuclear-armed Iran, calling it the greatest existential
threat faced by Israel since its creation. His words
came a day after the UN announced that Tehran had
acquired sufficient uranium to build a nuclear bomb,
a 'red line' development Israel has said it will not
tolerate. His party, the Likud, came second in last
week’s elections to the Kadima party, led by Tzipi Livni,
but Mr Netanyahu’s chances of forming a government are
in little doubt with the hard-line nationalist party
Yisraeil Beitenu, led by Moldovan Avigdor Lieberman and
with the support of the ultra-Orthodox and settler
factions.
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THE
REVENGE OF GERONIMO
The descendants of
Geronimo have sued Skull and Bones, a secret
society at
Yale University
with ties to the Bush family, charging that its
members robbed his grave in 1918 and have kept
his skull in a glass case ever since. The claim
is part of a lawsuit filed in federal court in
Washington on Tuesday, the 100th anniversary of
Geronimo’s death. The Apache warrior’s heirs are
seeking to recover all his remains, wherever
they may be, and have them transferred to a new
grave at the headwaters of the Gila River in New
Mexico, where Geronimo was born and wished to be
interred. A longstanding tradition among members
of Skull and Bones holds that Prescott S. Bush —
father of President George Bush and grandfather
of President
George W. Bush
— broke into the grave with some classmates
during World War I and made off with the skull,
two bones, a bridle and some stirrups, all of
which were put on display at the group’s
clubhouse in New Haven, known as the Tomb. The
story gained some validity in 2005, when a
historian discovered a letter written in 1918
from one Skull and Bones member to another
saying the skull had been taken from a grave at
Fort Sill along with several pieces of tack for
a horse.
OSCAR
NOMINEES
Australia, starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole
Kidman, is short listed for Best Costume in 2009
Oscar awards
BURMA'S HUMAN EXPORTS
Her glasses were
Gucci and her bag YSL. The smart Burmese
businesswoman was perched neatly on a
sofa in the lobby of a Rangoon hotel,
delivering her sales patter to a small
group of businessmen. Her product? Human
beings. "We supply only strong bodies,"
she says crisply. "That is our
guarantee." The woman is a supplier of
workers for deep-sea trawlers, and her
stock of men come from Burma's beautiful
but impoverished Inle Lake area, where
fishing the tranquil waters no longer
makes enough to feed a family. "These
are just simple fishermen; they are not
educated, but what we promise you is
strong bodies," she says, using a phrase
she repeats again and again. It appears
that the businesswoman's potential
customers are middlemen, probably
Chinese. Through a translator, they
discuss placing the men on boats in the
South China Sea, trawling for tuna.
First, they will be flown to a Chinese
city. In echoes of the slave trade, she
describes a selection process worthy of
a livestock market. In a 21st-century
twist, she does so with the aid of
pictures on her laptop. "We make them
stand in the sun for one hour," she
says. "In the middle of the day when it
is very hot. We see how they manage, if
they look uncomfortable." The group
leans in to see the pictures on her
computer. "We make them carry 20 kilos,
like this," she continues, showing them
photographs I cannot see. "For deep-sea
fishing, they may need to carry very big
fish for long distances across the
ship." The group nods. The images of
Burma's Rohingya boat people, fleeing
oppression only to be allegedly abused
and cast adrift by the Thai military,
has drawn international attention to the
plight of one of the world's most
downtrodden people.
SEEN
FROM SPACE
Inauguration Day, seen from spacelooked
like
warms of
bees landed on a street somewhere? A
huge colony of worker ants on the march?
Or the effects of a Predator strike in
some distant battlefield.? You're
probably way ahead of us already. Those
aren't just any old buildings:
that's how the National Mall and the
US Capitol looked from space during Barack
Obama's inauguration when more than 2
million people, according to some
estimates, came to hear him take the
oath of office and deliver his inaugural
address. What a passing Martian would
have made of it is anyone's guess. How
do they all crowd together like that
without crushing each other? Don't they
have televisions?
CULTURE
CREOLE
STOMP
This band
incarnates the traditional
values of Cajun music in the
USA. The Cajuns live mainly in
Louisiana and are the
descendants of Acadian exiles.
Today, the Cajuns make up a
significant portion of south
Louisiana's population, and have
exerted an enormous impact on
the state's culture.
Every now
and again a band comes along that
redefines a genre of music and carries
it even further...that group is Dennis
Stroughmatt and Creole Stomp.
Always leaving audiences wondering "who
are they?," and "where do they come
from?," Dennis and CS are based in
southern Illinois and happily tell
audiences "we are from upper Louisiana."
While this may bring chuckles from many
and nodding heads from others "in the
know," this is the group that does
represent "old upper Louisiana." Dennis
learned to speak French and play French
Creole music in a southeast Missouri
French Creole community before moving to
the state of Louisiana. Their unique sound and mix of ancient
and modern Mississippi River valley
musical tradition positions them as the
only band to encompass French Creole and
Folk Music from the entirety of the old
Louisiana Territory.
Read DEATH OF
A FINANCIER by
JOHN FRANCIS KINSELLA
Tom Barton, a City
mortgage broker, decides
to quit his business in
the wake of the subprime
crisis and arrives in
Kovalam, in the south of
India. In the Maharaja
Palace he finds himself
in the company of
holiday makers from the
UK, Scandinavia and
Russia. Stephen Parkly,
the CEO of a successful
City bank, and his young
wife Emma are taking a
well earned year end
break. Parkly falls
gravely ill with a
mysterious infection,
whilst back in the City,
unknown to him his
mortgage and investment
bank, West Mercian
Finance is in grave
difficulties. Ryan
Kavanagh, a doctor,
comes to Emma’s aid with
the help of Barton,
after an attempted
cover-up by the Indian
authorities, who fear
for their tourist
industry and more
especially medical
tourism, as the disease
threatens the resort
with the tourist season
in full swing. Thousands
of British tourists
enjoying the sun are
unaware of the pending
disaster, many are
equally unaware their
savings about are to be
wiped out in the West
Mercian collapse.
More books by John Francis Kinsella from Vincennes Books: Borneo Pulp, The Legacy of Solomon, Offshore Islands, The Lost Forest
LONDON TO TIMBUKTU BY
FLYING-CAR
A voyage to fabled
Timbuktu in a flying car
may sound like a magical
childhood fantasy.
A British adventurer
will set off from London
on an incredible journey
through Europe and
Africa in a souped-up
sand buggy, travelling
by road - and air. With
the help of a parachute
and a giant fan-motor,
Neil Laughton plans to
soar over the Pyrenees
near Andorra, before
taking to the skies
again to hop across the
14-km Straits of
Gibraltar.
NEW LONDON FASHION
MAG
ELEVEN BILLION DOLLAR
FRAUD
Sir
Allen
Stanford,
the
Texas
billionaire,
seen
here
with the
wives of
English
cricket
stars,
is
accused
of an
$11
billion
dollar
fraud.
In
Texas,
Allen
Stanford
was just
another
wealthy
financier.
But in
the
breezy
money
haven of
Antigua,
he was
lord of
an
influential
financial
fief,
decorated
with a
knighthood,
courted
by
government
officials
and
basking
in the
spotlight
of
sports
and
charity
events
on which
he
generously
showered
his
fortune.
On
Tuesday,
his
reign
was
thrown
into
turmoil
as a
caravan
of cars
and
trucks
carrying
federal
authorities
pulled
up to
the
headquarters
of his
company,
the
Stanford
Group,
to shut
down
what the
regulators
described
as a
“massive
ongoing
fraud”
stretching
from the
Caribbean
to
Texas,
and
around
the
world.
Unknown
is the
status
of
investments
in as
much as
$8
billion
in
high-yielding
certificates
of
deposit
held in
the
firm’s
bank in
Antigua,
which
the
Securities
and
Exchange
Commission,
in a
civil
suit,
said Mr.
Stanford
and two
colleagues
fraudulently
peddled
to
scores
of
investors.
Also
unknown
Tuesday
were the
whereabouts
of Mr.
Stanford
— or Sir
Allen,
as he
became
known
after
the
Antiguan
prime
minister
knighted
him —
whose
financial
activities
on the
tiny
island
had
raised
eyebrows
among
American
authorities
as far
back as
a decade
ago.
Robert Allen Stanford, the Texas financier accused of an
$8 billion fraud, has been tracked down in Virginia, the
Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday. FBI agents located Stanford in the Fredericksburg, Va., area
and served him with court orders and documents related to
the SEC's civil suit against him, the regulator added in a
statement.
The SEC's suit, filed Tuesday, claims Stanford and three of
his companies defrauded investors in an $8 billion scheme
involving certificates of deposit. The SEC has filed a
request for emergency relief "for the benefit of defrauded
investors" with U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, the SEC
said in a statement, and O'Connor has responded by freezing
Stanford's assets.
In addition, the SEC said it is seeking a judgment
"permanently enjoining" Stanford from future violations of
federal securities laws and ordering him "to pay financial
penalties and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with
prejudgment interest."
Stanford's Antigua-based bank, Stanford International Bank,
sold roughly $8 billion of certificates of deposit to
investors through a network of financial advisers by
promising "improbable and unsubstantiated" high interest
rates, the regulator said in a statement.
Federal prosecutors are trying to find out whether Stanford
ran a Ponzi scheme, where money from new customers is used
to pay withdrawals by existing clients, The Wall Street
Journal reported Thursday.
Stanford's whereabouts remained a mystery Wednesday and
earlier on Thursday as depositors in Antigua and several
Latin American countries rushed to try to withdraw their
money from the Stanford-run banks.
Stanford, ranked by Forbes last year as the 205th-richest
person in the U.S., is one of the biggest investors in the
Caribbean. He's also ploughed millions of dollars into
promoting and sponsoring cricket and other sports including
golf.
THE
BEARS
ARE BACK
- WALL
ST
LOWEST
SINCE
2002 AS
BAD NEWS
BUILDS
The U.S. stock market's fall on this past week has plunged below the bear-market bottom set in November and the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at a more than six-year low. Shares in London slumped on Friday on fresh fears over the state of the economy and a heavy sell-off in New York. The FTSE 100 index crashed below the 4000 level - as City trading screens flashed red. It saw £21 billion wiped off the value of Britain's blue-chip companies. The slump followed a dismal night on Wall Street where the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 89.68 points to a six-year low of 7465.95. It came amid a fresh wave of gloomy economic news on both sides of the Atlantic including more British job cuts and soaring home repossessions. Bank of England deputy governor Sir John Gieve warned that Britain could slide into a decade-long depression similar to that suffered by Japan in the Nineties. City commentator David Buik, of BGC Partners, said: "The slew of dispiriting international economic data is now starting to resemble a tsunami. It just gets worse and worse." Matt Buckland, a dealer at City trading firm CMC Markets, said: "This could be a rather damaging end to the week after the Dow closed last night below the key 7,500 level - its lowest in around six years. Investors are quite simply running out of short-term confidence with equities - especially among the banks."The Bank of England has cut interest rates to a 315-year low of one per cent as is now preparing to print money to flood the economy with cash.
A
SIMPLE STORY
OF THE
CREDIT
CRISIS
HELP MICHAEL
MOORE
KOALAS SUFFER IN
BUSH FIRES
THE INDEPENDENT NEW YORK
TIMES PRESENTS A ROUNDUP OF THE
WEEKLY NEWS
DAILY MAIL LONDON - Labour's
intimate relationship with the
financial industry has seen
dozens of bankers given honours,
appointed as ministers and given
jobs on Government taskforces,
reviews and quangos. An analysis
by the Daily Mail reveals that
while ministers are now railing
against the role of bankers in
causing the economic crisis,
they have spent the last decade
cosying up to the industry.
Labour has given 23 bankers
honours, brought three into the
Government as ministers and
involved 37 in commissions and
advisory bodies. Seven have got
jobs on quangos and agencies,
ten have been appointed to
various councils, and four were
given life peerages. Two banking
chiefs have been appointed to
senior posts inside Number Ten.
In addition, banks have been
awarded a string of Government
contracts and bankers have paid
for hospitality events enjoyed
by ministers. When Labour came
to power in 1997, it was
desperate to be seen as being on
the side of big business and
assiduously courted the City.
Ministers delivered light-touch
regulation that left the banks
free to pursue aggressive
lending and investment
strategies. In a 2007 speech to
the City, Mr Brown even claimed
bankers had forged an ‘era
that history will record as the
beginning of a new golden age
for the City of London’.
Of the finance chiefs honoured
by the Government, eight were
given knighthoods, seven CBEs,
four OBEs and four MBEs. Those
who were knighted include Fred
Goodwin, the former chief
executive of the Royal Bank of
Scotland, who has been blamed
for expected losses of up to
£28billion – the biggest in
British corporate history. In
2004, Sir Fred received his
knighthood, on the advice of Mr
Brown, for services to banking.
Two years later he was a member
of the Chancellor’s
International Business Advisory
Council. Nicknamed ‘Fred the
Shred’, he instigated the
acquisition of Dutch bank ABN
Amro that placed a toxic loan
timebomb at the heart of one of
Scotland’s oldest financial
institutions. Mr Brown now says
he is ‘angry’ about the
‘irresponsible risks’ taken by
RBS. Other bankers knighted
since Labour came to power
include Sir James Crosby, head
of HBOS, who was forced to quit
yesterday as deputy chairman of
the Financial Services Authority
watchdog; Sir Philip Hampton,
chief financial officer for
Lloyds TSB; and Sir Mervyn
Pedelty, chief executive of
Cooperative Financial Services.
The others are Sir George
Mathewson, group chief executive
of RBS; Sir John Bond, group
chairman of HSBC Holdings; Sir
Keith Whitson, group chief
executive of HSBC Holdings; and
Sir Peter Burt, executive deputy
chairman of HBOS.
SATELLITES
COLLIDE IN SPACE
A US and a Russian satellite
have collided in space hundreds
of miles above Earth in what is
believed to be the first major
crash of two spacecraft in
orbit.
The collision – which
occurred nearly 500 miles over
Siberia on Tuesday – caused
massive debris clouds to shoot
out into the atmosphere and
posed a risk to astronauts
aboard the International Space
Station. Nasa said that it would take
weeks to determine the full
magnitude of the crash, during
which an Iridium commercial
satellite from a Maryland-based
company was destroyed after it
was struck by a spent Russian
satellite. “We knew this was going to
happen eventually,” said Mark
Matney, an orbital debris
scientist at Johnson Space
Centre in Houston. Nasa believes that any risk
to the space station and its
three astronauts is low as it
orbits about 270 miles below the
collision course. There also should be no
danger to the space shuttle
scheduled to launch with seven
astronauts later this month,
officials said, but that would
be re-evaluated in the coming
days. The Russian satellite, which
was launched in 1993 and weighed
nearly a tonne, was out of
control. The Iridium commercial
satellite was launched in 1997
and weighed 1,235 pounds. No one has any idea yet how
many pieces were generated or
how big they may be. “Right now, they’re
definitely counting dozens,” Mr
Matney said. “I would suspect
that they’ll be counting
hundreds when the counting is
done.” The Bethesda-based company
that owns the Iridium commercial
satellite said that it had "lost
an operational satellite”.
MICHELLE
OBAMA
Michelle
Obama
has
ended a
period
of
relative
seclusion
to grace
the
cover of
Vogue
magazine
and
detail
her new
life as
“Mom-in-Chief”.
In an
extensive
and at
times
gushing
interview,
the
First
Lady
talks
about
her
young
children’s
schooling
and her
desire
to open
up the
White
House to
a new
generation
of
hip-hop-loving
youngsters.
Much of the
interview
centres on the
Obamas’ two
daughters, Malia,
10, and Sasha,
7. “I’m going to
try to take them
to school every
morning as much
as I can,” Mrs
Obama says. The
two girls attend
Sidwell Friends,
a Washington
private school
that costs more
than $28,000
annually for
each child. “But
there’s also a
measure of
independence.
And obviously
there will be
times I won’t be
able to drop
them off at all.
I like to be a
presence in my
kids’ school. I
want to know the
teachers; I want
to know the
other parents.”
Although Vogue
has photographed
every First Lady
since Lou Hoover
in 1929 — except
for Harry
Truman’s wife,
Bess — Mrs Obama
is only the
second to have
graced the
cover. The first
was Hillary
Clinton, in
December 1998.
SENTENCED
TO BLINDING
TEHRAN: An Iranian man
has been sentenced to be
blinded under Islamic
laws in retribution for
blinding a woman by
throwing acid on her
face for rejecting his
marriage proposal, press
reports said on
Thursday.
A Tehran criminal court
on Wednesday issued the
ruling against the
jilted suitor identified
as Majid, 27, who
confessed to throwing
acid on Ameneh Bahrami's
face four years ago,
Kargozaran newspaper
said.
Despite years of
treatment in Spain,
Bahrami has lost sight
in both eyes and still
bears serious injuries
to the face and body,
the report said. The
newspaper did not say
whether the convict
would appeal against the
ruling that he also be
blinded by acid.
Under the Sharia-based
law practised in the
Islamic republic, those
convicted of causing
intentional physical
injury are punishable by
"qisas", or the
eye-for-an-eye Islamic
penalty.
SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP?
Barack Obama’s
grandfather was imprisoned and brutally
tortured by the British during the
violent struggle for Kenyan
independence, according to the Kenyan
family of the US President-elect.
Hussein Onyango Obama, Mr Obama’s
paternal grandfather, became involved in
the Kenyan independence movement while
working as a cook for a British army
officer after the war. He was arrested
in 1949 and jailed for two years in a
high-security prison where, according to
his family, he was subjected to horrific
violence to extract information about
the growing insurgency.
IMAMS
AND RABBIS GATHER TO PROMOTE
PEACE
Paris,
15 December 2008, the Foundation
Hommes de Parole inaugurated the
Third World Congress of Imams
and Rabbis for Peace at UNESCO.
The theme of the Congress is
The Sacredness of Peace.
Abdoulaye Wade, President of the
Republic of Senegal and
President of the Organisation of
the Islamic Conference and Mr
Koïchiro Matsuura, Director
general of UNESCO opened the
proceedings.
RIOTS IN
FRENCH CARIBBEAN ISLAND OF GUADELOUPE
Tourists have
begun leaving a pair of riot-hit French
Caribbean islands as France finally
gave-in to campaigners demanding a
higher cost of living. At least 10,000
tourists have cancelled planned holidays
in Martinique and Guadeloupe as piles of
uncollected rubbish are left in the
street and stores are looted and burned.
Police helped dozens of tourists to
depart by pulling apart barricades
protesters had set up on roads to the
main airport. The island's visitors have
been stranded for two days because of
blocked roads, hotel manager Armelle
Longuet said. One of Longuet's guests,
Maia Schon, 54, from Switzerland, said
she expects to leave next week as
planned, even though she feels unsafe
walking outside the resort.
UKRAINE
CRISIS CONTAGION TRIGGERS FEAR FOR EU
Europe's
institutions are scrambling for ways
to prevent financial contagion from
Ukraine and the rest of Eastern
Europe from setting off a full-blown
banking crisis in Austria, with
risks of systemic contagion across
the eurozone. Joaquin Almunia, EU's
economic commissioner, said Brussels
is ready to co-ordinate a pan-EU
response to contain the crisis
before matters get out of hand. "I
share with the Austrian authorities
their concern about the situation of
these economies. Everybody shares
their concern about the risks
involved. We are extremely concerned
about the difficulties with the
Ukrainian government," he said. West
European banks have lent roughly
$1.6 trillion (£1.13 trillion) to
the region, led by Austrian,
Swedish, Italian, Greek, Belgian,
and Swiss banks. Almost $400bn must
be rolled over this year in hostile
markets. Lithuania's president
Andrius Kubilius echoed the warnings
on Wednesday. "We are worried about
what can happen in Ukraine and
Russia. The collapse of one of these
markets would have a very negative
impact. It would be good to see a
more co-ordinated approach," he told
the Financial Times. Ukraine's
travails appear to be snowballing
out of control after the central
bank said the economy contracted
20pc in January year-on-year, with a
dramatic 34pc slide in industrial
production. Valery Lytvytsky, the
bank's top adviser, said the
collapse is the worst in recorded
Ukrainian history, exceeding the
darkest days after the Bolshevik
revolution. The currency has fallen
40pc since the crisis began, a
crippling blow to companies with
large debts in dollars or euros.
Three banks have failed. Credit
default swaps measuring risk on
Ukraine's state debt rose to panic
levels of 3,500 on rumours of
imminent default following the
refusal of the International
Monetary Fund to disburse the second
tranche of its $16.4bn rescue
package. The IMF said the government
had failed to rein in public
spending as agreed. Premier Yulia
Tymoshenko insisted there was no
danger of default. "I would like to
tell the whole country that the
state is paying all its credits,"
she said.
ATLANTIS
FOUND?
Google Ocean: Has
Atlantis been found off Africa? A "grid
of streets" on the seabed at one of the
proposed locations of the lost city of
Atlantis has been spotted on Google
Ocean. The network of criss-cross lines
is 620 miles off the coast of north west
Africa near the Canary Islands on the
floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The perfect
rectangle – which is around the size of
Wales – was noticed on the search
giant's underwater exploration tool by
an aeronautical engineer who claims it
looks like an "aerial map" of a city.
The underwater image can be found at the
co-ordinates 31 15'15.53N 24 15'30.53W.
Last night Atlantis experts said that
the unexplained grid is located at one
of the possible sites of the legendary
island, which was described by the
ancient Greek philosopher Plato.
According to his account, the city sank
beneath the ocean after its residents
made a failed effort to conquer Athens
around 9000 BC.
EXTINCT IBEX RESURRECTED BY CLONING
The
Pyrenean
ibex, a
form of
wild
mountain
goat,
was
officially
declared
extinct
in 2000
when the
last-known
animal
of its
kind was
found
dead in
northern
Spain.
Shortly
before
its
death,
scientists
preserved
skin
samples
of the
goat, a
subspecies
of the
Spanish
ibex
that
live in
mountain
ranges
across
the
country,
in
liquid
nitrogen.
Using
DNA
taken
from
these
skin
samples,
the
scientists
were
able to
replace
the
genetic
material
in eggs
from
domestic
goats,
to clone
a female
Pyrenean
ibex, or
bucardo
as they
are
known.
It is
the
first
time an
extinct
animal
has been
cloned.
Sadly,
the
newborn
ibex kid
died
shortly
after
birth
due to
physical
defects
in its
lungs.
Other
cloned
animals,
including
sheep,
have
been
born
with
similar
lung
defects.
But
the
breakthrough
has
raised
hopes
that it
will be
possible
to save
endangered
and
newly
extinct
species
by
resurrecting
them
from
frozen
tissue.
It
has also
increased
the
possibility
that it
will one
day be
possible
to
reproduce
long-dead
species
such as
woolly
mammoths
and even
dinosaurs.
Dr
Jose
Folch,
from the
Centre
of Food
Technology
and
Research
of
Aragon,
in
Zaragoza,
northern
Spain,
led the
research
along
with
colleagues
from the
National
Research
Institute
of
Agriculture
and Food
in
Madrid. He
said:
"The
delivered
kid was
genetically
identical
to the
bucardo.
In
species
such as
bucardo,
cloning
is the
only
possibility
to avoid
its
complete
disappearance."
FRANCE'S
TOXIC AIRCRAFT CARRIER
A former French aircraft
carrier is due to arrive
at a shipyard in Teeside
to join a fleet of so
called 'ghost ships'. The ship, called the
Clemenceu, is to be
dismantled and recycled
at Graythorp, after
being rejected by India
and Egypt for being too
toxic.
DUBAI HEADS INTO CRISIS
An abandoned car in a parking garage in
Dubai. One report said 3,000 cars were
sitting abandoned at the Dubai Airport.
USA AID FAILS IN UGANDA
DUNGU, Congo — The American
military helped plan and pay for
a recent attack on a notorious
Ugandan rebel group, but the
offensive went awry, scattering
fighters who carried out a wave
of massacres as they fled,
killing as many as 900
civilians. Dungu used to be
tranquil but is now surrounded
by chaos. The operation was led
by Uganda and aimed to crush the
Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal
rebel group that had been hiding
out in a Congolese national
park, rebuffing efforts to sign
a peace treaty. But the rebel
leaders escaped, breaking their
fighters into small groups that
continue to ransack town after
town in northeastern Congo,
hacking, burning, shooting and
clubbing to death anyone in
their way. The United States has
been training Ugandan troops in
counterterrorism for several
years, but its role in the
operation has not been widely
known. It is the first time the
United States has helped plan
such a specific military
offensive with Uganda, according
to senior American military
officials. They described a team
of 17 advisers and analysts from
the Pentagon’s new Africa
Command working closely with
Ugandan officers on the mission,
providing satellite phones,
intelligence and $1 million in
fuel. No American forces ever
got involved in the ground
fighting in this isolated,
rugged corner of Congo, but
human rights advocates and
villagers here complain that the
Ugandans and the Congolese
troops who carried out the
operation did little or nothing
to protect nearby villages,
despite a history of rebel
reprisals against civilians. The
troops did not seal off the
rebels’ escape routes or deploy
soldiers to many of the nearby
towns where the rebels
slaughtered people in churches
and even tried to twist off
toddlers’ heads. “The operation
was poorly planned and poorly
executed,” said Julia Spiegel, a
Uganda-based researcher for the
Enough Project, which campaigns
against genocide. The massacres
were “the L.R.A.’s standard
operating procedure,” she said.
“And the regional governments
knew this.”
READING DEATH
OF A FINANCIER
THE CREDIT CRUNCH
SONG
DON'T LOOK AT THIS IF YOU
HAVE A WEAK HEART AND YOUR ARE WORRIED ABOUT
YOUR BANK
HALIFAX BANK
OF SCOTLAND LOSES £10 BILLION?
The British
banking group HBOS stunned the City last
week by
warning of £10 billion in annual losses,
which it rescued with Government backing
at the height of the financial turmoil
last autumn. The taxpayer already owns
43% of the group after pumping in some
£17 billion into the two banks, and was
left with paper losses of more than £2.5
billion at one stage yesterday as
Lloyds' shares tumbled up to 40%. The
Chancellor Mr Darling has defended the
Government decision to broker the merger
of Lloyds and HBOS and offer financial
backing, saying that failure to do so
would have brought down HBOS and
potentially collapsed the whole UK
banking system. Speaking from the G7
finance ministers summit in Rome, the
Chancellor said the immediate priority
was to identify banks' bad assets and
"put them out of the system", warning
that without this step normal lending to
businesses and individuals cannot
resume. Asked on two occasions during an
interview with BBC2's Newsnight whether
he could rule out nationalisation of the
Lloyds Group, Mr Darling did not do so.
Instead, he responded: "I said in
January there is a range of options that
we will be deploying, a range of levers
that can be pulled to help all banks,
because I have made it very, very clear
that the integrity of the banking system
is very, very important. "What we are
focusing on at the moment is making sure
that we can identify these bad assets
and then deal with that problem. That's
our focus at the moment and that will
continue not just here but it will
continue across the world as well."
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman
Vince Cable said: "It looks increasingly
as if Lloyds is being dragged under by
the dead weight of HBOS, a financial
disaster created by Andy Hornby and his
predecessor, Sir James Crosby.
"Obviously we need to digest the detail,
but it looks increasingly as if Lloyds
HBOS will now go into majority public
ownership, followed inevitably by
nationalisation."
EURO
PUT STRAINS ON WEAKER ECONOMIES
“The Italians, the
Spaniards, the Greeks, we all have been
living in happy land, spending what we
did not have,” said George Economou, a
Greek shipping magnate, contemplating
his country’s economic troubles and
others’ from his spacious boardroom. “It
was a fantasy world.” In Greece, another
of the euro zone nations in trouble,
stores like this one in Athens are
offering deep discounts to stay open.
For some of the countries on the
periphery of the 16-member euro currency
zone — Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal
and Spain — this debt-fired dream of
endless consumption has turned into the
rudest of nightmares, raising the risk
that a euro country may be forced to
declare bankruptcy or abandon the
currency. The prospect, however
unlikely, is a hum
'JEWISH WAR VICTIMS HAVE HAD ENOUGH
COMPENSATION'
THE TIMES
LONDON:
Charles Bremner
in Paris. 'Jewish war victims have had enough
compensation' French court says. The French
State was responsible for deporting Jews during
the Second World War, the top judicial authority
ruled for the first time yesterday, but it
dismayed families of victims by declaring that
they had already been compensated. The decision
by the Council of State, the final arbiter on
civil law matters, made formal a doctrine that
has been accepted by successive governments
since 1995. It was advising on a case brought by
Madeleine Hoffman-Glemane, 75, one of hundreds
of victims who have sued recently for damages
over their arrests and deportation during the
Nazi occupation from 1940 to 1944. The council
called for a “solemn recognition of the
responsibility of the State”. France was
“responsible for damages caused by actions which
did not result from the occupiers' direct orders
but facilitated deportation from France of
people who were victims of anti-Semitic
persecution”, it said. The ruling endorses a
view that was proclaimed by the former President
Jacques Chirac when he took office in 1995.
Before that the crimes of the collaborationist
Vichy Government had been acknowledged but they
had been ascribed widely to an outlaw regime and
not to the French State. The late President
Mitterrand who left office in 1995 and who
served as an official of the Vichy regime,
refused to accept the responsibility of the
nation for more than 75,000 people who were
taken to Nazi death camps. Most were arrested by
French police on the orders of state officials
and few survived. Since taking office in 2007
President Sarkozy, whose mother is Jewish, has
ordered acts of remembrance of the French role
in the Holocaust but during his election
campaign he said that France should stop
apologising for itself because it had never been
involved in a policy of genocide. To the anger
of campaigners the council advised the court
dealing with Ms Hoffman-Glemane's case that
deportees had already received enough
compensation. “The different measures taken
since the end of the Second World War have made
reparation as much as possible,” it said. The
Paris court had sought the opinion of the
council on the request of Ms Hoffman-Glemane,
whose mother died at Auschwitz, for material and
moral damages for the suffering of her and her
father. She is suing the state and the SNCF, the
national railways, for 200,000 euros (£180,000)
for Joseph Kaplon, her father, and 80,000 euros
for herself. Anne-Laure Archambault, the lawyer
for Ms Hoffman-Glemane, said that she would
appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.
Avi Bitton, another lawyer who represents 600
deportees and plaintiffs, said: “We are simply
asking to be treated like any other citizen who
is a victim of asbestos poisoning or a road
accident. When you suffer damage, you should be
able to seek recourse.” For more than a decade
Holocaust survivors and their families have been
waging legal battles in French and US courts. In
2007, however, an appeal court reversed a
Bordeaux court conviction against the railways
for holding and robbing two Jews. The court
ruled that the SNCF was not an arm of the State.
HELP THOSE IN NEED IN
THE CONGO
Since food prices began to rise
100 million more people have been pushed into poverty,
according to the World Bank, with as many as two billion
on the verge of disaster. Almost half the world's
population, let's remember, live on less than $2.50 per
day. Millions die annually of hunger and starvation, and
more than a billion do not have access to fresh water.
GIVE GENEROUSLY - DIRECTLY TO
THESE CHARITIES
With the world financial crisis
these numbers are poised to rise dramatically with
population growth, dwindling natural resources and
higher consumer prices across all goods and services. So
as the stock market tumbles and the world economy
falters, it's important to remember that it's more than
financial losses we are talking about, it's the loss of
life.
Send your comments to
sumpinein@gmail.com
Paris,
15 December 2008, the Foundation
Hommes de Parole inaugurated the
Third World Congress of Imams
and Rabbis for Peace at UNESCO.
The theme of the Congress is
The Sacredness of Peace.
