BMEWS
 
Sarah Palin is the reason compasses point North.

calendar   Sunday - April 04, 2010

the grand unveiling

Monument de la Renaissance Africaine

Dakar, Senegal



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Senegal on Saturday unveiled a colossal statue during a lavish ceremony amid reports of criticism over the monument’s construction at a time when the western African nation is struggling financially.

The 164-foot structure—about a foot taller than the Statue of Liberty—shows the figures of a man, a woman and a child, arms outstretched, facing the Atlantic Ocean.

President Abdoulaye Wade says the statue, which he designed, is a monument to Africa’s renaissance. Critics say the opulent copper structure is merely the product of the president’s own self-indulgent vision and poor governance.

Oh, the objections are more than that. They’re more like a laundry list

Senegal is the westernmost country in Africa. It sits “at the back of the elephant’s ear” of the continent. Dakar is the westernmost city in the country. This statue does not stand at the westernmost point in the city. That’s a small isthmus a mile to the northwest where a rather run down Club Med resides for the surfers who come to ride the waves just off the coast. Instead, this new Colossus of Wade stands not astride the harbor, but between the ends of the two main runways to Dakar’s international airport. Thus it will be the first and last thing any airborne tourist sees in Dakar. Situated along the north end of the controversial - and only - 4 lane highway in the city, the Route de la Corniche Ouest, that separates the beachfront properties from the slums, and right by Avenue Cheik Anta Diop, this grand copper edifice commands one of the choicer parcels of land in the city, rising on a hill right over the Mosque de la Divinite, a few hundred yards to the southeast. (un?)Fortunately, as the child in the man’s arms points west, the view from the mosque is not an upskirt of the copper lady’s wind blown bit of wrapping, but the back side of the “volcano” the family is rising up from.

Senegal has been independent for 50 years now, and that fact is celebrated by this giant statue. That, and the generalized notion that Africa in general is rising up, growing up, and ready to meet the future head on. Ok, it also represents whatever anybody reads into it, like Jesse Jackson.

“This renaissance statue is a powerful idea from a powerful mind,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson in remarks to the crowd of hundreds waving flags at the foot of the lighted monument. “This is dedicated to the journey of our ancestors, enslaved but not slaves.”

Sure Jesse, if you say so. I wonder if the little kid isn’t pointing back to Columbia, where all the cocaine that fuels Senegal’s economy is coming from. Or else he’s pointing the way towards the new world - “daddy, jobs and food, that way!” while pop grabs his woman and skedaddles.

Anyway, it’s a great honking thing, it’s got everybody in western Africa all wound up, and it was officially unveiled yesterday. Next time you’re in Senegal, stop by for a visit.



But oh, the drama. The controversy! Egad.

Senegal yesterday kicked off ceremonies to inaugurate a contested statue marking 50 years of independence after thousands marched to demand the president resign over the multi-million dollar monument.

President Abdoulaye Wade was joined by scores of dignitaries, including African heads of state and representatives from around the world, at the base of the bronze colossus, which is higher than the US Statue of Liberty.

Situated on a hill overlooking Dakar, the North Korean-built monument - whose cost is estimated at more than €15 million - has been attacked as a wasteful extravagance in hard economic times.

Riot police patrolled nearby streets earlier in the day as demonstrators held up banners demanding the president’s resignation.

“The people demand ethical governance and reject the gangster management of the Wade clan,” read one placard.

Deputy opposition leader Ndeye Fatou Toure said the statue was an “economic monster and a financial scandal in the context of the current crisis,” in a country where half the population lives below the poverty line.

Championed by Wade, the 50-metre monument has caused a mixture of anger over its cost, and bewilderment over its style.

It depicts a muscular man emerging from a volcano with a scantily clad woman in tow and holding a baby aloft in his left arm, pointing West towards the Ocean.

DAKAR (Reuters) - Soaring above the Dakar skyline, the nearly finished monument to the African Renaissance in Senegal’s capital is billed as a symbol of Africa’s rise from “centuries of ignorance, intolerance and racism”.

But critics of the bronze family of man, woman and infant—at 50 metres tall just higher than New York’s Statue of Liberty—say it only goes to show that even one of the continent’s strongest democracies must put up with the whims of its rulers.

President Abdoulaye Wade, who has long styled himself a champion of the poor on the world stage, sparked the furore by declaring himself the “intellectual owner” of the monument and so entitled to a 35 percent cut from future tourist revenues.

Wade, 83, who is expected to seek another term in office at elections in 2012, said the monument commemorated the entire continent. “It brings to life our common destiny,” Reuters reported him saying at the launch ceremony. “Africa has arrived in the 21st century standing tall and more ready than ever to take its destiny into its hands.”

Wade has faced criticism for spending so much money on the structure when Dakar residents living in its shadow endure regular power blackouts and flooding. He has angered both Senegal’s Christian minority and some within the Muslim majority population.

Wade apologised to the former group after likening the monument to Christ, while some imams have condemned the Soviet realist-style statue as idolatrous. Other have expressed concern at the thigh-length hemline skirt worn by the female figure.

Not only criticised for its enormous cost, the figure has also been slated by the country’s majority Muslim community, who disagree with works which take on a human form.

People are so frustrated by this,” says opposition leader Abdoulaye Bathily.

Bathily says the statue is the product of a power-drunk president. “The economy has collapsed. ... The education system is in a crisis. The health system is in crisis. And yet Abdoulaye Wade is squandering public money,” Bathily says. “So all these things, people are seeing it, and it is creating so much frustration.”

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Dreams vs. Reality



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Architect’s vision of the completed colossus


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 04/04/2010 at 01:08 PM   
Filed Under: • AfricaArchitecture •  
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calendar   Monday - March 08, 2010

Africa Sucks, Part 4261

I really don’t want to run this story. Not only is it awful, it’s awfully repetitive. How many times have we seen essentially the same thing happen? What is it with the people on this continent? Tribalism? In the modern world? It’s hard to accept that any one person could be this brutal, much less a whole village or tribe full. Or several tribes full.

And yet ... here we go again.



500 murdered in one night



Nigeria’s security forces have been put on high alert after a new burst of sectarian violence left over 500 people dead, most of them women and children hacked to death by machete wielding gangs.

The attack happened before dawn on Sunday morning when gangs of men descended on several mainly Christian villages near the central city of Jos, firing guns as they approached. Witnesses of the attack, which centred on the village of Dogo-Nahawa, described how victims were caught in animal traps and fishing nets as they tried to flee their attackers.

A resident of Dogo-Nahawa said that the attackers had fired guns as they entered the village, to lure their victims out of their houses. “The shooting was just meant to bring people from their houses and then when people came out they started cutting them with machetes,” said Peter Gyang, who lost his wife and two children .

Dan Manjang, a state government advisor, confirmed that 500 people had been killed. “We have been able to make 95 arrests but at the same time over 500 people have been killed in this heinous act ... by Fulani herdsmen,” Mr Manjang said in a telephone interview.

An aid worker with the Christian charity Stefanus Foundation, Mark Lipdo, told the BBC he went to the villages of Zot and Dogo-Nahawa after daylight on Sunday and recorded the names of 77 victims. He said that there were at least two dozen more bodies. “We saw mainly those who are helpless, like small children and then the older men, who cannot run, these were the ones that were slaughtered,” he said, adding that Zot had been almost wiped out.

An unnamed government official said that over 100 people had been killed, mostly women and children. ”Some of the children are less than one year old,” he added.

But analysts said that the attack seemed to be in reprisal for the violent clashes in Jos between Christians and Muslims in January, which claimed the lives of at least 300 people and displaced thousands of others.

...

This central region of Nigeria had been a regular ethnic and religious flashpoint.  [ no kidding. I’d call it more of an ongoing fireball. ]

...

In November 2008, the federal government sent in the troops after Christians and Muslims fought each other using firearms and machetes in clashes that followed a contested election in Jos.

Official figures put the death toll [ for that fight then ] at 200, but rights groups Human Rights Watch said it was more than 700.

Lovely place. Lovely locals. Charming culture. Remind me to visit ... on the 12th of NEVER.  At least 1000 dead in 3 major incidents in just 16 moths. And who knows how many more died in minor skirmishes, random individual murders, and mysterious disappearances.

Muslims vs. Christians? Or is it that one tribal group is one faith, and their enemy tribal group is another faith, and both tribes just continue to murder in the most heinous ways possible. Keep the vendetta going forever. Because that’s their way, and they’ll never change.

The killings add to the tally of thousands who have already perished in Africa’s most populous country in the last decade due to religious and political frictions. Rioting in September 2001 killed more than 1,000 people. Muslim-Christian battles killed up to 700 people in 2004. More than 300 residents died during a similar uprising in 2008.

“In the last decade”? Please. It never stops. It’s forever. Anybody old enough to remember the genocide in Biafra? That happened when I was a kid. Guess where Biafra is? (or was?) In Nigeria. 1967. 100,000 dead in battle, and 2 million dead by torture, reprisals, and starvation. At the hands of the Fulani. It can’t just be “blood for oil”.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/08/2010 at 10:00 PM   
Filed Under: • AfricaReligion •  
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calendar   Monday - February 08, 2010

Mau Mau claims of British brutality are the reverse of the truth. By a man who was there.

Many of you may recall the vermin known as the Mau-Mau many years ago.  If you don’t, you’re quite young.
The left and especially and most unfortunately in America, began to see these murderous butchers as freedom fighters. But then, the left would. Wouldn’t they?  They (the left in America and even some who weren’t left) didn’t approve of “empire” or colonial possessions and so for many, the killings were you might say, the price paid for colonialism.  Well maybe. But NOT on the scale and in the manner as practiced by the stone aged verminous Mau-Mau. 

Now, all these years later in an age of political correctness and diversity and multi culture crap along with easy litigation, some of the stone age veterans have discovered the 20th century and want to sue the Brits claiming their “human rights” were violated by England.

In order to have those kind of rights one would necessarily have to be a human to begin with.  Vermin may have some of the attributes of a human but you don’t have to look very close to find they are not that at all. 

If the Brits had a failing, it was the failure to exterminate the entire tribe to the last living or near living life form.

It’s a long article but well worth your time. Also please see the comments after the article.

That’s all for me for tonight. 


Why Mau Mau claims of British brutality are the reverse of the truth, by a man who fought them

By Tim Symonds

To have survived so long - avoiding people like me, determined to hunt him down - meant he was immensely resourceful. I fired a shot about four inches above his head. Prodding the prisoner forward, I showed him where the bullet had passed clean through the trunk of a large tree.

‘Next one goes through your skull,’ I said. He began to shake uncontrollably. ‘Kill him,’ my Masai askaris, or ‘soldiers’, chorused. ‘Kill him. He’s Mau Mau.’

‘Please, believe me. I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he pleaded.

My principal Masai tracker shook his head and drew his finger across his throat. ‘He’s lying, Effendi. Kill him.’

I lowered my gun level with his head and slowly began to squeeze the trigger…

It was 1955 and the ‘Kenyan Emergency’, which began in 1952 and lasted until the end of the decade, was at its height. The Mau Mau were rebels against British rule. Most of them were drawn from the Kikuyu, Kenya’s biggest tribe, and they practised primitive sacrifice and murder.

n October 1954, about 60 Mau Mau guerrillas had attacked the famous anthropologist Louis Leakey’s cousin, Gray Leakey, strangling his wife in front of him and then hauling him away to the Mt Kenya Crown Forest to sacrifice to their fearsome and demanding god.

We heard later that they cut open his stomach, yanked out his intestines and buried him in a pit upside-down, alive, facing the jagged peak of Mt Kenya where their deity lived.

I thought of myself as the perfect foot-soldier of the Empire, hunting the Mau Mau. When I crossed the forest verge I entered their twilight world - a world outside of civilisation, in which different rules applied.

Looking back over half a century, from the perspective of the modern world, those rules seem stark, even brutal. But this is what I experienced as a young man in the dying days of Empire.

HERE FOR THE REMAINDER OF THE ARTICLE

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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 02/08/2010 at 02:02 PM   
Filed Under: • AfricaTerroristsTURD WORLDUK •  
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calendar   Tuesday - January 26, 2010

Africa Sucks

Human sacrifice almost common in Uganda

“Witches" burned throughout Africa



Moving to the 7th century would be a HUGE LEAP FORWARD for these stone agers


A BBC investigation into human sacrifice in Uganda has heard first-hand accounts which suggest ritual killings of children may be more common than authorities have acknowledged.

One witch-doctor led us to his secret shrine and said he had clients who regularly captured children and brought their blood and body parts to be consumed by spirits.

Meanwhile, a former witch-doctor who now campaigns to end child sacrifice confessed for the first time to having murdered about 70 people, including his own son.

The Ugandan government told us that human sacrifice is on the increase, and according to the head of the country’s Anti-Human Sacrifice Taskforce the crime is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity, and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly.

“They capture other people’s children. They bring the heart and the blood directly here to take to the spirits… They bring them in small tins and they place these objects under the tree from which the voices of the spirits are coming,” he said.

Asked how often clients brought blood and body parts, the witch-doctor said they came “on average three times a week - with all that the spirits demand from them.”

Plenty more at this link, as well as a disturbing 15 minute video. And sidebar links to similar articles about Kenya, Angola, Nigeria, Tanzania, Gambia, Guinea, and the DR Congo.

What was that about “all cultures are equal”? No. No they are not. These are at the very bottom of the barrel. And you can’t blame whitey for any of this crap. Not a jot of it. Now, if this news article was dated 1650 that would be one thing. Or maybe even 1840. But it’s not. It’s only 2 weeks old. And none of these areas have been living in total isolation from the rest of the world for the past few centuries. Every one of them was colonized and run by Europeans for the past several hundred years. It isn’t that they don’t know better. It isn’t that the entire rest of the world hasn’t been there for hundreds of years trying to teach them morality. They all have modern technology to some extent. So I can’t accept the “primitive culture” reasoning. There are no primitive cultures by happenstance any more. They are primitive by choice. Animist and animalistic. Barbarism would be an improvement. This isn’t one small isolated group in one area. It’s a multinational horror story, a way of life practiced by tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people. Thankfully it isn’t the entirety of these cultures. At least some folks there are against it. And while some elements of these societies are doing what they can to fight it, in northern Uganda human sacrifice is on the rise.

Blaming mistakes and misfortune on evil spirits and spells cast by witches is common in Africa. Burn the witch doctors alive when things go bad, but run to them with bloody hands when you need some hlep. And as these nations slowly move towards the modern world, providing a blood sacrifice to a witch doctor to ensure the prosperity of your business is becoming frequent. Even the Ugandan government minister of ethics and integrity believes in evil spirits, though he doesn’t approve of the other leaders in his government consulting witch doctors on a regular basis. It’s a mess.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 01/26/2010 at 03:45 PM   
Filed Under: • Africa •  
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calendar   Tuesday - December 22, 2009

Tiz the season to be giving?  What have politicians done for them? Zilch.

Ran across this a few days ago, found it quite interesting and thought our readers might too.

Nothing to add from me so posting without comment.

From The Times
December 19, 2009

In the 50 years since I was in Malawi as a young boy, life in most African villages has not changed in the slightest

Matthew Parris

Before leaving Britain for Central Africa earlier this month, I saw the news that Gordon Brown was to place on the table at Copenhagen more than £1 billion in British aid to developing countries, to help them to combat climate change. The offer sounded generous. But could we, I wondered, ever really monitor how the money was spent? Could we micromanage its distribution? Alternatively, could we trust recipient governments to spend it for us?
In Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, where I landed three days ago, I passed a prominent sign on the outskirts of the city, notifying the public of the offices to which a driveway led. It read: “Capacity-building for non-government actors.”
“What does that mean?” I said to my companion, a well-educated Malawian woman with fluent English.
“We don’t know,” she said. “We’ve been trying to find out. We think it might be something to do with training for charity workers.” She paused, then added, half to herself: “They are talking to themselves.”

They are trying to say training for charity workers without using the words training, charity or workers.
I find myself making an unexpected connection between that exchange with my Malawian companion and an earlier conversation she had had with our Malawian driver.
“I say!” he had called to her, to gain her attention. The rest of their conversation was conducted in their shared language of Chichewa, but “I say!” had caught my ear.
I’ve heard it used in Malawi before and since. It means almost what it used to when employed by the officer class in Britain: something between “Look here”, “Do I have your attention?” and “Gosh”. It has almost certainly came into the local idiom via our colonial officers in the days when Malawi was the British Protectorate of Nyasaland.

My uncle was a forestry officer in the central region of the country, and to stay with him one Christmas I travelled on my own by train (a great three-day adventure) from what was then Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), via Mozambique, 50 years ago. Now I am back here in the sub-Sahara: a subcontinent I know well. This time I’m travelling under my own steam, with friends, in true rural Africa, a land I love.

Malawi is a friendly, safe and gentle country, welcoming to strangers, and not by African standards notably inefficient or corrupt. But what strikes me most — more than any of the changes I see in the cities — is how little has changed in the lives of the vast majority of the people of Africa, who live on the land. Fifty years ago “I say” had entered the lingo, and if overseas aid remains centre-stage here for much longer, perhaps “capacity-building” may pop up in the Chichewa language too, as part of the idiom, along with a new political language of Africanisation that independence has brought. All else remains the same.

During the half-century in which Harold Macmillan’s winds of change have blown themselves — in political terms — into a gale, half a century in which revolutions both violent and peaceful have thrown off the yoke of six great European empires and all the colours of the countries on the map have changed, half a century of tremendous political struggle, half a century about which it would be possible to fill a whole library with works of political science describing, analysing and disputing the processes of imperialism, decolonisation and liberation ... during the half-century between what I saw when I was 10 and what I see now at 60, life in the average African rural village is unaltered.

As a little boy I spent a week alone with my young brother staying in a remote village in Mashonaland in Rhodesia. My mother had organised this through an African friend, believing her children should know how other people live. That was 1959. This week I returned to a small village near Lake Malawi, where I went last November to write (for The Times Christmas Appeal) about the work of a small British charity. I am not exaggerating when I say, without qualification, that nothing — nothing — has changed for better or worse or at all, in village life. You could rewind the video 50 years and you would not spot a single feature that placed us in 2009 rather than 1959 — none, that is, except the lines of my face. Oh, there is, perhaps, one: the new pumps we were installing are of a more primitive design than the 19th-century style lever-pumps that used to be installed in colonial days, as these often proved too complicated to maintain in remote areas in Africa.

I do not, from this, conclude that colonialism was good, or that African independence has been bad. No, they have both proved largely irrelevant, hardly scratching the surface.
When we British marvel at how so small a nation managed to govern so much of so large a continent, with so few colonial officers on the ground, we overlook the fact that we weren’t really governing at all. We were just there. We were marching around, building and mending a few (rather bad) roads, policing (after a fashion) with the help of tribal chiefs and elders, and generally flying the flag. And on the whole, and for some time, the locals couldn’t be bothered to remove us.

Modern African governments in most African cities — so far as their rural hinterlands are concerned — are just there too: strutting around a bit too; mending a few bridges; sticking up signs announcing plans and schemes; jetting off around the world (as our Colonial Service sailed or flew back and forth) and suppressing opposition as our colonial predecessors did. Primary education has spread, but most rural children never go on to secondary school, and if they did there would be no jobs for them. Infant mortality remains, as it always was, unbelievably high.

From this we should perhaps draw no conclusion at all: for or against Africa. We should instead observe that in large parts of the world, and for billions more of our fellow human beings than it suits us political obsessives to acknowledge, politics hardly matters.

SOURCE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 12/22/2009 at 11:01 AM   
Filed Under: • AfricaEditorials •  
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calendar   Thursday - September 10, 2009

You’ve seen this before, but not quite this way or quite this much.

Hi Mommy and Daddy ... guess what I learned in school today? 

Jeesh ...

Headline in the Mail quotes the UN saying:

TEACH PUPILS AGE FIVE ABOUT THE SEX ACT.  Now that was the headline in the hard copy. Teach the actual sex act to a five year old?
What the hell is the point of that? Five?  Are they freeken mad?  Have those loony tunes finally and totally lost it?
In the past they called for sex ed. which I thought (and so did you) was outrageous. But this is the first time they’ve spelled it out in exactly this way.

How’s a baby supposed to take that in and understand that sort of thing? 

Here’s the on line version.


Children as young as five to learn about masturbation and abortion under new UN guidelines

By Kirsty Walker
Last updated at 7:55 AM on 10th September 2009

Children as young as five should be taught about explicit sex acts, according to guidelines from the United Nations.

The advice also calls for youngsters to learn about abortion, same-sex relationships and sexually transmitted diseases.

The draft report on sex education has been compiled by UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
Children in school

Too young? Children as young as five could be taught about masturbation if UNESCO guidelines are followed.

The guidance is due to be issued to governments, local authorities and education bodies around the world by the end of next month.

But it has provoked an international outcry. Critics claim that addressing the issue of masturbation, which is contained in the plan, is too explicit for young children and removes the responsibility of parents to teach their own children about sex.

The guidelines break down suitable topics for discussion into four age groups. Among the most controversial recommendations are for teachers to begin discussing subjects such as masturbation with children from the age of five.

They recommend teachers should discuss the idea that ‘girls and boys have private body parts that can feel pleasurable when touched by oneself’.

The guidelines also recommend young people should learn about the ‘right to and access to safe abortion’. The report is intended to help countries improve sex education and sexual health, especially in the developing world.

SOURCE FOR THE REST OF THE ARTICLE HERE

“ESPECIALLY THE DEVELOPING WORLD” Got it. This would be the same world that has been developing for ALL OF MY LIFE. And it still hasn’t developed. It just produces more babies that the west then feels obligated to feed. Though I’ve no idea why. Really. Never thought I was obligated to em. Still don’t.  If the UN wants to really help, they should find a way way to quietly sterilize the populations of , The Developing World , so they don’t develop any further.


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 09/10/2009 at 10:36 AM   
Filed Under: • AfricaAnimalsSexUnited-Nations •  
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calendar   Monday - August 24, 2009

FOUND AT LAST.  THE POSSIBLE ORIGINS OF HIP-HOP

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some fancy footwork?

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OK, SO IF YOU INSIST ON FINDING THE STORY THAT RUNS WITH THIS, GO HERE


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Posted by peiper   United Kingdom  on 08/24/2009 at 03:39 AM   
Filed Under: • AfricaAnimalsArt-PhotographyHealth and SafetyNature •  
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calendar   Monday - March 02, 2009

The Newest Narco State?

Guinea-Bissau President Assassinated




BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau — Renegade soldiers killed Guinea-Bissau President Joao Bernardo Vieira in his palace on Monday, hours after a bomb blast took the life of his rival, the fragile West African nation’s armed forces chief.

It was not immediately clear whether a coup was under way, and the capital, Bissau, was tense but calm.

Luis Sanca, security adviser to Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr., confirmed the president’s death but gave no details.

A bomb blast Sunday night killed armed forces chief of staff Gen. Batiste Tagme na Waie at his headquarters in Bissau, according to a state radio report.

The two men were considered staunch political rivals.

Guinea-Bissau has suffered multiple coups and attempted coups since 1980, when Vieira himself first took power in one. The United Nations says the impoverished nation on the Atlantic coast of Africa has become a key transit point for cocaine smuggled from Latin America to Europe.

Just hours after Waie’s death late Sunday, volleys of automatic gunfire were heard for at least two hours before dawn in Bissau and residents said soldiers had converged on Vieira’s palace.

Guinea-Bissau, a tiny country in West Africa, has had a long history of instability and numerous attempted coups since independence from Portugal in 1974. For 23 of the past 29 years, the country was ruled by President Joao Bernardo Vieira.

RISE AND FALL OF VIEIRA: Vieira came to power in a 1980 coup and weathered numerous coup attempts until being forced out 19 years later at the onset of the country’s civil war in 1999. Vieira went into exile in Portugal. A transitional government was formed and opposition leader Kumba Yala became president, but he was ousted in a 2003 coup. The country organized elections in 2005. Vieira returned from exile and ran, winning the vote.

MILITARY PURGE: The military is made up primarily of members of the Balanta ethnic group, who have long resented being under the rule of Vieira. He belonged to the Papel ethnic group, which represents roughly 5 percent of the population. After one of many failed coup attempts in the 1980s, Vieira set up a military tribunal and condemned to death several Balanta officers in an attempt to purge the military of his ethnic enemies.

COCAINE TRADE: In recent years, Guinea-Bissau has become a key transit point for South American cocaine. The drugs are flown from South America in small planes and then parceled out to dozens of drug mules that carry them north to Europe. The huge influx of money from the drug trade has been a major destabilizing force for the small nation.

Military coup? I doubt it, other than that the soldiers may have been the ones doing the actual killing. Bought and paid for. No, I’m fairly certain that this was the drug lords taking over. They run the country in all but name anyway; everyone in power is deeply involved with narcotics because that’s where all the money is.

And do you know what is going to happen? Nothing. Not a damn thing. The rest of the world will hardly even notice. The UN won’t do a damn thing. They probably won’t even bother to draft a mildly worded letter of protest. Who cares? It’s shithole west africa, that poorest corner of the piss poor continent where the primitives animists local populace hasn’t been able to get past absolute tribalism for 10,000 years. That same corner where never ending civil war rages. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Niger Delta. All neighbors, all soaked in blood. Tribalism is the curse of africa, and it keeps the people in a stone age mindset. And that makes them weak. And violent. And into that weakness the drug barons come.

So tribalism probably fueled this conflagration, but the narco-traffickers are going to be the victors. Guaranteed. Even islam can’t save this place.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 03/02/2009 at 08:55 AM   
Filed Under: • AfricaCrimePoliticsTyrants and Dictators •  
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calendar   Saturday - January 24, 2009

We Buy Oil From These People

Goat On A Pole?

No,

Goat On Parole!



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Police arrest goat accused of armed robbery

Police in Nigeria are holding a goat on suspicion of attempted armed robbery. Vigilantes seized the black and white goat, saying it was an armed robber who had used black magic to transform himself into an animal to escape after trying to steal a Mazda 323. ‘The group of vigilante men came to report that while they were on patrol they saw some hoodlums attempting to rob a car. They pursued them.

‘However one of them escaped while the other turned into a goat,’ Kwara state police spokesman Tunde Mohammed said. ‘We cannot confirm the story, but the goat is in our custody.
‘We cannot base our information on something mystical. It is something that has to be proved scientifically, that a human being turned into a goat,’ he said.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in parts of Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation. Residents came to the police station to see the goat, photographed in one national newspaper on its knees next to a pile of straw.

I think Nigerian beer must be some rather amazing stuff. 


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 01/24/2009 at 11:45 AM   
Filed Under: • AfricaAnimalsFun-StuffStoopid-People •  
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calendar   Friday - January 16, 2009

From silly to asinine

This has got to be some kind of world record

Zimbabwe releases $Z100 Trillion note



That’s $Z100,000,000,000,000. Originally worth $30, but deflated to $10 by the time you read this.



Zimbabwe is introducing a Z$100 trillion note, currently worth about US$30 (£20), state media reports.

Other notes in trillion-dollar denominations of 10, 20 and 50 are also being released to help Zimbabweans cope with hyperinflation.

However, the dollarisation of the economy means that few products are available in the local currency.

There you go: a little truth sneaks out. The local scrip is worthless, so they’re using US dollars. No kidding. Of course, that’s probably illegal, but nobody cares.

I wonder how many more spins around the bowl this country has before it completely goes down the drain? What’s left to fail at this point? What actually works in that nation? Even if they just took Mubabe out and shot him, along with the rest of the joke of a government, it couldn’t make anything better. Or worse.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 01/16/2009 at 11:54 AM   
Filed Under: • AfricaTyrants and Dictators •  
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calendar   Tuesday - January 13, 2009

Not Worth The Effort

Latest Zimbabwezian Money: $Z 50 BILLION



2 weeks ago it was worth $3.30. Last week, $2.20. This week $1.25. Next week? Probably a quarter. Maybe.



A few months ago I posted on the utterly silly currencies being printed in that hellhole, and wondered at what point they would simply give up on the concept of money. Between then and now, not only have they revalued their money by snipping off TEN zeroes [10,000,000,000 to 1], the new currency has deflated just as much. So, in old money $Z100,000,000,000,000,000,000 is worth $Z10,000,000,000 in new money, which will be worth $US 1 by this afternoon. In August I calculated that the value of the ink on the paper was worth far more than the face value of the bills. Today it is billions of times worse. And they still cling to the concept.


The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe unveiled new $20 billion and $50 billion notes in an advertisement in Monday’s Herald newspaper. It said the notes were being introduced “for your convenience”. In December, the bank printed new $10 billion notes.

But each time a larger denomination note comes, prices shoot up in the shops even though local currency is so scarce that most demand that customers pay in US dollars or South African rand.

Zimbabweans are reeling from the inflation. The largest note ever in the country was $100 billion in August, when the before the bank struck 10 zeros from the currency. Then The Herald newspaper cost 10 new Zimbabwe dollars. Today the paper costs $15 billion.

Zimbabwe’s economy is in meltdown amid a months-long political crisis over President Robert Mugabe sharing power with the opposition amid acute shortages of everything from medication and food to fuel and electricity. A collapse of the piped water system has caused a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 2,000 people.



Hey Mugabe - I’ve got a new currency idea for you. Here’s a million Zdollars that will hold it’s value:

image




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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 01/13/2009 at 12:33 PM   
Filed Under: • AfricaTyrants and Dictators •  
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calendar   Tuesday - January 06, 2009

Zimbabwe Going Exponential?

Cholera Deaths in Zimbabwe Top 1,700; more than 34,000 infected




When I last posted on this, the number infected was around 10,000 with 300 dead. That wasn’t more than a couple weeks ago. Obviously nothing has improved a jot in that hellhole.

Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic is picking up speed, with a total of 1,732 deaths out of 34,306 cases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday. A cholera update dated January 5 showed a further 59 deaths and 731 new cases, up from 32 deaths and 379 fresh cases reported the previous day, it said.
...
The waterborne disease, which causes severe diarrhea and dehydration, has spread to all of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces because of the collapse of health and sanitation systems.

On Monday Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said the epidemic could get worse as the rainy season develops.

The rainy season peaks in January or February and ends in late March. Floods, which can affect Zimbabwe’s low-lying areas, may increase the spreading of the disease.

6.3 million citizens are being fed almost solely by foreign food emergency aide.  That’s more than half the population. The last harvest failed; they’d better pray for a bumper crop to ripen in March. What will happen if the aide money dries up, even a little? Or when the rainwater spreads the cholera to an area 1000 times as big? Goodbye Zimbabwe.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 01/06/2009 at 05:47 PM   
Filed Under: • AfricaTyrants and Dictators •  
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calendar   Tuesday - December 23, 2008

Told ya so

Less than a day. Some things are just so predictable. Murder, mayhem, and atrocities are up next, followed by famine. Another turd from the Turd World, circling the drain.

Group declares Guinea coup after dictator’s death

CONAKRY, Guinea – A military-led group seized control of the airwaves in Guinea and declared a coup Tuesday after the death of the mineral-rich West African country’s longtime dictator, but the prime minister insisted he remained in charge.

An Associated Press reporter saw three tanks and dozens of armed soldiers heading toward the prime minister’s office inside the country’s presidential compound.

The troops’ allegiance was not immediately apparent. But they appeared less than an hour after Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare announced in a state broadcast that he was inside his office and that his government had not been dissolved.

Earlier Tuesday, a group calling itself the National Council for Democracy began announcing its takeover on state-run radio and TV, just hours after longtime dictator Lansana Conte’s death was made public.

“The government is dissolved. The institutions of the republic are dissolved. ... From this moment on, the council is taking charge of the destiny of the Guinean people,” said the coup leader, who identified himself as Capt. Moussa Camara.




Why is it just impossible for any nation on this entire continent to behave in a civilized manner? 


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/23/2008 at 10:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Africa •  
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calendar   Monday - December 22, 2008

Sad News

Guinea’s dictator, Lansana Conte, dead

CONAKRY, Guinea – Guinea President Lansana Conte, who has ruled the African nation with an iron hand since seizing power in a coup nearly a quarter century ago, has died following a lengthy illness, the National Assembly president said Tuesday.

Aboubacar Sompare, flanked by the country’s prime minister and the head of the army, said on state-run television 2 a.m. that Conte died Monday evening. He was believed to be in his 70s but the government has never disclosed his birth date.

“I have the heavy duty of informing the people of Guinea of the death of Gen. Lansana Conte following a long illness,” said Sompare. He did not provide a specific cause of death or elaborate on the type of illness.

Sompare said that for many years Conte “hid his physical suffering in order to give happiness to Guinea.”

According to the Constitution, the head of the national assembly becomes president in the case of the death of the head of state. But transfers of power have rarely been smooth in Guinea, which has been crippled by corruption and rocked by multiple coups.

Prime Minister Ahmed Tidiane Souare called on the army to secure the nation’s borders, while Sompare directed the country’s courts to apply the law.

The two announcements, coupled by the presence of the head of the army, appeared to be an effort to signal that the government intended a peaceful transition.

The most serious recent challenge to Conte’s rule came two years ago as demonstrators called for him to step down and Guinea descended into chaos.

Conte responded by declaring martial law and sent tanks into the capital streets. Security forces killed dozens of demonstrators.




Now, this news makes me feel really sad. Because a) I’ve never heard of this idiot, and b) I’m not even sure where the hell Guinea is. Africa? Somewhere on the Equator I think, because the phrase “Equatorial Guinea” seems familiar.  All I really know about Guinea is that it’s either 1) some old word for some kind of coin, 2) some sort of research critter, ie a Guinea Pig, which also make nice disposable pets for children (we probably had a dozen. You bring them home, feed them a bit of lettuce, they go “wheep wheep wheep!” in their little box full of cedar shavings, they poop constantly, then they get tumors and die. I’m pretty sure most didn’t make it a month. One might have lasted a year.), 3) it’s also some kind of fowl, something like a chicken, 4) It’s a derogatory name for Italians. I have no idea why, as they don’t come from there at all.

Ok, Wikipedia tells me that Guinea is indeed on the equator in western Africa. The lower part of the upper corner that looks like an elephant’s ear. You know, the area where the locals kill each other even more than they do in the rest of the continent. 10 million people live there, average annual income is about $400. Geez. They had one train, but it broke. Along with Jamaica, this is where aluminum comes from. Even though it’s a muslim country, everybody speaks fwench. Oh joy. Their most famous citizen, aside from a couple soccer players, was Amadou Diallo, the guy who managed to get shot 41 times by the NYC cops because they couldn’t tell a pistol from a wallet in the darkness.

Ok, so one less dictator. Whoo hoo! Expect a civil war to break out there shortly, followed by genocidal mayhem. Just because it’s africa. I just about guarantee it.


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Posted by Drew458   United States  on 12/22/2008 at 11:29 PM   
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