This article at Front Page Mag. details the adventures of a journalist who infiltrated the "no press allowed" workshop sessions at the recent Duke University sponsored hate fest known as the Palestinian Solidarity Movement and smuggled in a tape recorder. Go and read it. It is, well, horrifying. It is also very long and very detailed.

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The Spaniards have disinvited the United States to their Columbus Day celebration, according to the guys at Diplomad, in favor instead of inviting French troops to take part. Their take on it was pretty damn funny.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I write, from time to time, about Africa. Indeed, I ought to give it its very own category, I suppose. From a safe distance removed, it is impossible not to find Africa compelling and fascinating, scary and sad.

The NY Times has written this morning about Uganda and the boy king. This is a far from gripping article about the 12 year old boy who sits the throne in Uganda. His name is King Oyo. It is a typical puff piece about young royalty thrust onto the throne at 3 1/2 and how he wishes he could be just like every other normal kid. He runs with his dogs and goes to school and his mother tries to resist the attempts of Parliament to remove him as king. *Yawn* The piece does note that Uganda is very poor but after we make our expected obesiance to that inconvenient fact, we move on the the leopard covered chairs and the business class plane trips.

Now, if you are the typical American reader (whatever that means) you will have turned the page in your NY Times, secure in the fact that Uganda, while poor, is a happy place where everyone loves their boy king. You can now turn your attention to the more interesting sports section.

But wait a second. What if you happened to read the NY Sun last night on the train home? Maybe you'd have a different take on Uganda. Maybe you'd be forced to ask yourself if the NY Times has even the barest beginnings of a glimmer of a clue about Uganda.

Uganda is a basket case. The Sun reproduced an article from the Telegraph, entitled, Broken Lives of the Twlight Children. Don't follow this link unless you need a good cry, ok? This is seriously horrible stuff.

Uganda's children are not all playing with dogs and running around with leopard skins. Some of them, over 20,000 children, have been kidnapped, tortured, raped, and forced to become soldiers in the "Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Africa's most brutal rebel group led by a self-styled prophet called Joseph Kony." Here is some information about the LRA.

Since the onset of his campaign 18 years ago, the LRA has kidnapped 20,000 children, brainwashing and enslaving them for use as soldiers and sexual playthings. More than 10,000 have disappeared in the last two years.

Kony targets children, devoting his messianic energies towards the abduction, indoctrination and often murder of as many as possible.

The catastrophe inflicted is almost without parallel. At least 1.6 million people - virtually the entire rural population - have fled their villages for squalid refugee camps. The number of refugees has trebled since 2002 and exceeds the 1.2 million in Sudan's war-torn Darfur.

The conflict has being going on for 18 years. Where is the much vaunted United Nations in this? More people have been displaced here than in Darfur, which is getting a lot of press and attention. The UN is nowhere, instead suggesting that other NGO's do a little more.

[T]he UN has passed five resolutions in as many years on the protection of children in armed conflicts, including specific calls for action in Uganda, but the rate of abductions is higher than ever. "While the extreme abuses of children in northern Uganda are well documented and widely known, the international community has failed to find an effective way to protect them," it adds.

It says the 18-year conflict has cost the country £725 million. More than 20,000 children have been abducted by the LRA, made to kill their parents and forced into bondage as child soldiers, sex slaves and weapons porters.

Two million people are living in squalid and cramped camps for the homeless and malnutrition among displaced children is up to 21 per cent in some areas. "Many international appeals were made to the UN and world leaders, Ugandan children addressed the UN. "Each time their stories shocked audiences, each time they went home with hope. Their hopes turned to despair," the report says.

Denis McNamara, the UN special adviser on displacement, rejected charges that the UN has offered "too little, too late" suggesting instead that groups such as World Vision should increase their own staff in the countryside.

Once again, the UN rides to the rescue. By the way, I've left out a lot of the gruesome details, like about the boy who was forced to kill his own family by setting fire to their hut. It pains me to even write that last sentence. Go see for yourself, if you can.

The article in the Telegraph starts by telling you about a child named Simple who walks six miles into town to sleep on the concrete outside by the hospital to avoid being taken by Kony's army. The little girl is 12 years old. Can you imagine what it must be like to have to send your child out of your house for her own protection? And then not know if she was safe until she came back the next day?

And King Oyo wants to be just like a normal kid. He doesn't mean the kids who have to sneak into town to sleep, does he?

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:42 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Well, I am keeping with my practice of giving my views on this before looking at any newspaper or other blog. My view is that Cheney won last night and I'm not sure that it was particularly close. Remember, if I'm changing presidents in the middle of a war, I need a good reason. Edwards did not give me a good reason last night, although I really liked what he had to say about Israel. To my surprise, I thought Cheney was a stronger supporter of gay marriage than Edwards was. Cheney seemed to have a better handle on the facts and figures and if he was wrong, well, he at least sounded confident and in command. Who would I like to see one heart beat away from the oval office? Last night, it would have to be Cheney.

By the way, I am going to go check out the factcheck.org or .com site he spoke about in relation to Haliburton.

Advantage: Cheney.

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Before I got involved with blogging -- both reading and writing -- I knew next to nothing about Australian politics. Now I am just slightly farther along on the continuim after reading people like Yobbo, Simon, Michael, and Chrenkoff. First of all, what the hell do they feed these people in Australia in order to produce such articulate political commentators? Where can I get some of that and it better not be Vegemite?

Now, you may think to yourself, "Self, why should I care?" You should care because Australia is a critical ally and partner in Iraq and in the WoT (War on Terror) generally. It is headed, at the moment, by John Howard and he is in quite a fight with Mark Latham, head of the Labour Party. I'd turn here for more of an explanation: Decision Time, an excellent piece.

I admit that I am finding the Australian campaigns to be much more interesting, or at least more entertaining, than the American one. The reason? We're not getting quotes like this one in our campaign (Mark Latham on John Howard):

Mr Howard and his government are just yes-men to the United States. There they are, a conga line of suckholes on the conservative side of Australian politics. The backbench sucks up to the Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister sucks up to George W. [...] In my book they are not Australian at all. They are just the little tories—the little tory suckholes.

I am not informed enough to have an opinion, unlike the blogger I took the above quote from, but I must admit I wish we had a more colorful campaign going on over here.

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I saw this misleading little blurb, buried in the middle of the NY Times this morning and wanted to highlight it:

BRITAIN: GURKHAS GAIN CITIZENSHIP Gurkhas, who have served with the British Army for nearly 200 years, won a court battle to settle in Britain and become citizens. The soldiers, recruited in Nepal, are continuing to demand equality in pay and conditions with their British Army counterparts. The right to settle in Britain is restricted to those who left the army after July 1, 1997, when the Gurkhas were rebased from Hong Kong to Britain. The Home Office estimates 230 soldiers and about 800 dependants will settle in Britain each year. Gurkhas have served in the army since 1815 when a peace agreement was reached by the British East India Company after it suffered heavy casualties during an invasion of Nepal. From a peak of 112,000 in World War II, their numbers have dwindled to about 3,400.

Why is it misleading? Because the Ghurkas who served in Hong Kong, while they may be permitted to settle in Great Britain, are excluded from citizenship (link has lots of pop ups so I reproduce relevant bits below).

Former Nepalese-born Gurkha soldiers who helped defend Hong Kong under British rule are fuming at London's decision to exclude them from a new law giving the crack fighters British citizenship, a spokesman said Thursday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that serving and retired fighters of the army's famous Ghurka Brigade would be allowed to settle in Britain.

But the law applies only to those demobilised after July 1, 1997, the day Britain disbanded its Hong Kong regiment and returned the city to Chinese control.

"The law has been stacked against Hong Kong's Gurkhas, they have been deliberately left out," said Hem Thapa, an agent at Gurkha International, an employment agency that finds work for former Gurkhas who still live here.

"Those who went back to Nepal will definitely be making some noise about this -- many were definitely counting on Britain offering them citizenship."

Why can't the Brits treat these men properly?

UPDATE: Predictably, and I should have looked before posting the above, Simon has a great post on this subject.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 07:28 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I stayed up past my bedtime last night with my wife to watch the debate. I was not impressed overly much although, on the whole, I liked Bush better. I am keeping in open mind, despite the oft quoted danger of having my brain fall out, but I know that I am going to need a reason to change presidents in the middle of a war and I was anxious for John Kerry to give me that reason. He didn't. You see, I'm still not really sure what he stands for. I know what he's against -- Bush. But what is he for? Lehrer asked him several times to give specifics about how he would handle things differently from Bush. I actually moved physically to the edge of my seat when he was asked this question because I didn't want to miss a single word. I sat back disappointed when he concluded his answer. There was no substance to the reply, it was just another attack on Bush. Kerry referred us to his website for the "details". Go see it yourself. I did, last night. I looked up the homeland security platform and walked away with no greater understanding than I had after the debate. Basically, it says on the website that they'll identify sensitive targets and do a better job guarding them. That doesn't make me feel safer.

Advantage last night: Bush.

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