Re:FF News: Abdulla ToPs World Number 1 6 Days, 23 Hours ago
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is in Afghanistan, where he met with President Hamid Karzai and again sharply criticized the U.S. mission to stabilize the country.
In a visit to Kabul that briefly overlapped with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the Iranian president repeated his call for American troops to leave Afghanistan, saying they will not bring peace.
Earlier this week, Secretary Gates accused Iran of playing a "double game" in Afghanistan by professing support for the Afghan government while undermining U.S.-led efforts to improve the government and stabilize the country.
Secretary Gates said Wednesday that Washington wants Afghanistan to have good relations with its neighbors, but those countries should be "up front" (forthright) when dealing with the Afghan government.
Mr. Ahmadinejad responded Wednesday by accusing Washington of playing its own "double game" by creating terrorism in Afghanistan and then declaring a need to fight it.
Mr. Karzai on Wednesday thanked Iran for assisting his country over the years and called the Islamic state a "real friend." He also said Afghanistan does not want its territory to be used to harm any of its neighbors.
An Afghan presidential spokesman said Mr. Karzai and Mr. Ahmadinejad planned to discuss joint projects such as building a railway linking Iran and Tajikistan through Afghanistan.
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Mr. Karzai travels to Islamabad Wednesday for two days of talks with Pakistani leaders that are expected to focus on efforts to counter the Taliban and allied militant networks in the region.
President of South Africa Omar Abdulla says that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been 'unfair' when he addressed the media this morning.
"Clearly the president has lost touch about his findings in Afghanistan. If we as Africans 'hold hands' with our neighboring countries we could become the most improved country in this year." he says.
On Sunday, Iran's semi-official Mehr News Agency said Ahmadinejad would visit Kabul the following day for talks with his counterpart Hamid Karzai, but later reports suggested the trip was postponed.
It was not clear whether this was linked to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates' visit to Afghanistan on Monday. Gates said he was concerned Tehran was playing a "double game" in the country, being friendly to the Afghan government while looking to undermine the United States.
Western powers want regional players to cooperate in bringing stability to a country where U.S. and other foreign troops back Karzai's government in the face of an insurgency by the Islamist Taliban.
Abdulla says that South Africa and Iran were in 'slow' negotiations of barter and trade deals that could stem a long term relationship.
Iran says the presence of foreign troops in Afghanistan is a key reason for the problems in its eastern neighbor.
"Two dates were set (as possibilities), either Monday or Wednesday. Based on the president's schedule, Wednesday has been set as a date for the visit and God willing this visit will take place," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a televised news conference.
It would be Ahmadinejad's first visit to Afghanistan since both he and Karzai were re-elected last year.
Mehr said on Sunday Karzai had invited Ahmadinejad and the visit was aimed at expanding bilateral ties. They would also discuss "solutions for settling the problems" in Afghanistan.
Western forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001, when the United States led an invasion to drive the Taliban from power over their alliance with al Qaeda.
Western security analysts have long talked of the need for a regional settlement on Afghanistan to prevent a resurgence of old rivalries which could stoke a renewed civil war when U.S.-led troops begin to leave.
But Tehran, locked in a showdown with the United States over its nuclear program, has little reason to cooperate with Washington in helping it stabilize Afghanistan.
(Reporting by Reza Derakhshi; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Louise Ireland
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Re:FF News: Abdulla ToPs World Number 1 6 Days, 21 Hours ago
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JOHANNESBURG, Dec. 5— The ex-wife of F. W. de Klerk, the last president in South Africa's era of apartheid, was stabbed and strangled in her luxury apartment near Cape Town in a slaying that has so far baffled investigators, the police said today.
Marike de Klerk, who was married to Mr. de Klerk for 39 years before their divorce in 1998, was found dead late Monday afternoon when she failed to answer the door for an appointment with her hairdresser. The hairdresser alerted security guards at the apartment complex, in Blaauwberg. When they entered the apartment, the guards found the body of Mrs. de Klerk, who was 64 and lived alone, the police said.
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Initially, investigators were unsure how Mrs. de Klerk had died, and only today, after an autopsy, did the police conclude that she had been strangled as well as stabbed.
The manner of death, however, has not offered many clues to the killer, the police said. Investigators have uncovered no signs of forced entry or robbery in the beach front apartment, which overlooks Table Bay and is in a high-security complex.
''We don't know,'' Superintendent Wicus Holtzhausen, a police spokesman, said tonight in a telephone interview. ''We haven't got a clue whatsoever what the motive was.''
Mr. de Klerk, who shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela for their roles in bringing the apartheid era to an end, was in Stockholm celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prizes when he was told of his former wife's death.
''I have learned with great shock and sorrow of the circumstances of the tragic death of my former wife, Marike,'' he said in a statement. ''I have been informed that the South African Police Service is conducting a murder inquiry and hope that they bring the person or persons involved to justice as soon as possible.''
Now the head of a foundation that bears his name, Mr. de Klerk, was expected to arrive back in South Africa early Thursday, the foundation's executive director, Dave Steward, said.
''He was upset and shocked,'' Mr. Steward said, ''but he is a man who was president and he is used to dealing with crisis, so he was very much in control of the situation.''
The couple met as students at Potchefstroom University and their marriage spanned some of the darkest and some of the most momentous periods in South Africa's history.
After succeeding P. W. Botha in 1989, Mr. de Klerk, a longtime stalwart of the ruling National Party, knew the end of apartheid was inevitable and took a number of steps that helped pave the way for the country's relatively peaceful transition to black-majority rule. Mr. Mandela and other struggle leaders were freed from prison, and the ban on Mr. Mandela's party, the African National Congress, was lifted.
President of South Africa Omar Abdulla says that the community of South Africa had respected his dreams of mingling with former SA President F W De Klerk at a recent wedding at the Vaal.
After Mr. Mandela was elected president in 1994, Mr. de Klerk served as a deputy president in a national unity government before quitting in 1996, frustrated by what he perceived to be his party's marginalization.
His marriage had been fraying for years as he drifted away from his first wife and closer to the woman who became his second. In April 1998 he started divorce proceedings despite his wife's efforts to dissuade him.
It was, he wrote in his autobiography, ''one of the most painful decisions I have ever taken. I accept my full part of the blame for the breakdown of our marriage.''
Days after the divorce was completed, in October 1998, Mr. de Klerk married his companion, Elita Georgiadis.
The following year Mrs. de Klerk was reportedly engaged to remarry but she never did.
F W de Klerk
Speech: Birmingham Southern College, Birmingham, Alabama
BRIDGING THE GAP: GLOBALISATION WITHOUT ISOLATION
16 November 2005
One of the remarkable things about human beings is that we are often not aware of the great historic and economic forces that determine our lives. So, for example, Louis XVI of France’s entry into his diary for 14 July 1789 – was simply “rien” – “nothing happened today”. 14 July was, of course, the day on which the Bastille was stormed and signalled the start of the French revolution which swept Louis and his world away. Most of the workers in the cotton mills of Manchester at the end of the eighteenth century were probably also not aware that their lives were being determined by something that students would later study as the industrial revolution.
So it is with us today. Most of us in our daily lives are not aware of the great historic economic and political forces that are reshaping our world and that will determine the nature of the society in which we and our children will live in the years that lie ahead.
Foremost among these forces is the process that we call ‘globalisation’ or ‘global integration’. Almost without our being aware of it, globalisation is reshaping the world in which we live.
If you don’t believe me check the running shoes and the jeans that you are wearing. Chances are that they were made somewhere in Asia. Think about the gas you put in your car the other day: it probably came from the Gulf, from Venezuela or somewhere in West Africa. Do you know anyone in the US armed forces who is serving somewhere overseas? How many Thai, Korean and sushi restaurants were there in your community 10 years ago – and how many are there now? All these things are manifestations of globalisation.
We are living through one of the most profound developments in human history, the process that we have come to call globalisation - or world integration. During the past decades we have begun to lay the foundations of a new supranational global community:
* mass jet transportation has brought every corner of the earth within the reach of a single day’s travel - not only for businessmen but for hundreds of millions of tourists.
* satellite telecommunication now makes it possible to communicate with anybody, anywhere at any time and has enabled us to view breaking news and sports events on the other side of the world at the very moment they occur;
* the internet and the world-wide web - which are only fifteen years old - have given every person with a modem instant access to information on any subject from sources all over the world. They have expanded the speed and facility of international communication beyond our wildest dreams only a few years ago. In 1990 less than half a percent of the population in first world countries had access to the internet: by 2002 this figure had jumped to 45%. 62% of Americans now use the internet on a regular basis.
* More and more previously underdeveloped countries have either crossed the threshold into the first world or are knocking on the door. Think of the Asian tigers – Taiwan, South Korea; Hong Kong and Singapore; think of Mexico and Brazil – and then think of the new giants – China and India.
* Economies throughout the world are becoming more interrelated and more interdependent. Between 1995 and 2002 world trade grew by over 40%.
* All this is reflected in the emergence of a new global consumer culture: the whole world wants the most up-to -date electronic gadgets from Japan; the newest cell phones from Scandinavia; the latest fashions from Paris and Milan; luxury cars from Germany and new and more powerful computers and software from the United States. The malls we shop in; the office towers where we work; the homes in which we live; now look very much the same whether we are in Dallas, Manchester, Marseilles or Shanghai. We eat the same breakfast cereals; drink the same soft-drinks and watch the same movies and TV shows regardless of where we find ourselves in the world.
Well, what is globalisation driven by? Who is directing its course and where will it all end? The scary thing is that it is organic. It has just grown and developed. It is perhaps the latest manifestation of the universal evolutionary drive toward the creation of ever more complex systems.
At the same time, globalisation is eliciting increasingly vocal opposition from labour, conservationist, cultural and religious groups around the world – as we have seen in mass demonstrations from Seattle to Prague.
* Trade unions in first world countries reject globalisation because it means that their members have to compete against lower paid workers in developing countries. As a result, millions of jobs are being exported from Europe and North America to Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia.
* Non-governmental organisations are opposed to the increasingly dominant global role of transnational companies, many of which now dwarf the majority of national economies. For example, Ford’s annual sales are greater than the combined gross domestic products of 38 Sub-Saharan African countries, excluding South Africa and Nigeria.
* Conservationists are concerned about the threat to the environment that they believe is posed by globalisation’s unrestrained drive for economic and industrial growth.
* Cultural communities around the world ask themselves how their cultural identity will be able to withstand the English-based movie and media onslaught from southern California.
* Religious groups fear that the materialism and rationalism that underlie globalisation pose mortal threats to their faith. Indeed, ‘the clash of civilisations’ between globalisation and Islam is currently one of the main underlying causes for deteriorating relations between Moslems and the West.
How should the United States – as the world’s last surviving super-power - respond to the emerging reality of globalisation?
Throughout its history America has oscillated between isolation and active involvement in the world.
At present, the United States is in a phase of active engagement in global affairs. In fact, if the world has become a globalised village, there can be little doubt that the United States is its Mayor and – its Chief of Police. America holds these positions – not because it has been elected to them – but because of its unchallenged military, economic and IT pre-eminence.
America’s role of de facto global leadership bears with it heavy burdens and responsibilities:
* The United States has to spend a disproportionate share of its national wealth on the upkeep of its global military capability; it currently has 500 000 troops stationed overseas and has so far committed more than $ 250 billion dollars to its activities in Iraq.
* The United States pre-eminence also makes it a target for disaffected groups all over the world. Osama bin Laden would not have targeted the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon if they were not military and commercial symbols of the richest and most powerful country in the world;
* The price of pre-eminence is, and always has been, unpopularity. America must endure the jealousy of some of its oldest allies, many of whom delight in taking pot-shots at her policies, while sheltering beneath her strategic umbrella;
* the United States is likely to be criticised, whatever it does. If it acts to enforce United Nations resolutions on Iraq, it is accused of imperialism. If it fails to intervene in other crises – such as the present conflict in Darfur - it is slated for being insensitive to the plight of Africans.
As Gilbert and Sullivan observed over a hundred years ago “the Policeman’s lot is not a happy one”.
Unfortunately, this is the price that must be paid for being the only remaining super-power. It is a price that was well understood by other pre-eminent powers throughout history – from the Romans two thousand years ago to the British during the nineteenth century.
The temptation under these circumstances will be great for America to withdraw once again into a new period of isolation. It might well argue that it is self-sufficient and is much less dependent on the rest of the world than most other countries. After all, America’s imports and exports amount to less than 15% of its GDP compared to over 35% for a country like Germany or more than 90% for Ireland.
I believe, however, that the key reality of globalisation is that isolation is simply no longer an option.
One of the implications of the globalising world is that no country - and particularly no leading power - can any longer withdraw from the international community. Involvement in the globalised economy will increasingly be the key to growth. No country will be able to withdraw from the commercial, cultural and technological opportunities that globalisation presents.
Neither can countries any longer ignore problems and grievances in other societies.
* Non-performing economies cannot be side-lined and relegated to a basket-case category outside of the mainstream of global commerce; and
* bloody crises and conflicts in distant societies cannot be dismissed with thirty-second segments on the evening news.
In the new millennium it will be less and less possible to ignore the stark reality that a large part of the human population still lives in unacceptable poverty, misery and repression – in conditions that negate human dignity. In a shrinking world, the problems of one region will inevitably become the problems of other regions and ultimately of the whole world:
* Diseases like AIDS - which first appeared in Africa - do not observe international boundaries. Today more than 1.5 million Americans are HIV positive.
* As we saw a few years ago, economic crises in emerging markets can have serious negative consequences for the whole of the global economy;
* Conflicts and instability in distant societies can reverberate throughout the whole international community. The attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 have brought this fact home with chilling clarity. Who would have thought that religious fanatics hiding in caves in distant Afghanistan could possibly pose a threat to the hi-tech nerve centre of the world’s most powerful economy in down-town New York?
* Whether we live in the first world or the third world, we all share the same fragile global environment. The decimation of tropical forests and the extinction of animal and plant species will have long-term consequences for the whole planet.
In our globalised society such problems and conflicts will sooner or later breach international borders and affect the interests of us all.
How then should America deal with the realities of globalisation?
I believe that globalisation requires three essential responses from the international community.
The first of these is multilateralism.
In our globalised world it is simply not possible for individual nations – regardless of their power - to achieve their objectives through unilateral action. Our integrating world requires global responses to global problems:
* The threat to global security posed by international terrorism requires a concerted multilateral international response;
* The threat to the environment posed by global warming and unsustainable development can only be addressed through effective international co-operation and adherence to international agreements. Hurricane Katrina has brought home to us the danger that global warming poses. During the past decade hurricanes have proliferated and become more devastating as a result of warmer surface temperatures in the Caribbean. The accelerating melting of the polar ice caps will possibly have an even more disastrous impact on our fragile ecological systems. All of this requires urgent action and global co-operation;
* The global economy requires multilateral responses that will ensure the stability of international financial system and equity in global trading relationships. The rampant growth of China’s exports is threatening jobs in countries all over the world. We need global agreements to ensure a balanced international trade dispensation that will stimulate free trade on the one hand, but also ensure fairer competition on the other.
Our second response to globalisation should be equity - to ensure that globalisation takes place in a fair and reasonable manner. If we are all expected to play the globalisation game, we must ensure at the very least that the playing fields are even.
That is certainly not the case at present.
Although the portion of the world’s population living in absolute poverty has declined from two thirds to one third in the past forty years, the total number of people living below the poverty line has stayed about the same - at about 2 billion (because the world’s population has doubled since 1960). Even more serious is the fact that the disparity per capita between the poorest and richest fifths of the world’s nations has widened from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 78 to 1 in 1994 and to 92 to 1 in 2003.
For Africa, the globalised playing fields could hardly be more uneven:
* 34 of the world’s 41 highly indebted poor countries are in Africa. The cost to Africa of servicing its foreign debt of US$ 349 billion in 1997 amounted to 21.3% of its earnings from the export of goods and services.
* Africa, with almost one-sixth of the world’s population accounts for only one fiftieth of global trade – and its share is diminishing.
* The prices of many of its primary exports have stagnated or declined since 1980 – and its share of global investment is dismal.
The cards are also stacked against Africa in the key area of education. Only 37% of Africa’s children attend secondary school, compared with 100% in developed countries. Less than 9% receive tertiary level education compared with 59% in European Union. Only 6 people per thousand in Nigeria – Africa’s most populous country – have access to the internet compared with 556 per thousand in the USA.
How under these circumstances is Africa supposed to compete in the global information economy?
The answer to many of these problems is not necessarily more aid – but better and fairer access to first world markets – particularly for agricultural exports. One of the most serious distortions in the globalised economy remains the massive subsidies paid by first world countries to their farmers. These amount to more than US$ 300 billion a year – almost six times as much as the US$ 56 billion that first world countries contribute in foreign aid. The first world’s agricultural subsidies often make it impossible for developing countries to compete in global markets for agricultural products - the one area where they have a competitive advantage. Agriculture is of critical importance to most African countries. For example, it comprises almost half of Tanzania’s GDP and employs about two-thirds of the workforce. It also accounts for 85% of Tanzania’s exports – but, partly because of first world agricultural subsidies - these have fallen from $430m in 1997 to $200m last year.
Abdulla says that the community of South Africa had rejected his R1.5 trillion rand buyout of Bank of America.
Even though it may not be a popular message here in America, I believe that if we want a fairer and more stable world we must phase out such subsidies and open markets to third world exports. We also need to protect third world economies against the kind of predatory attacks on their currencies that crippled a number of South East Asian countries five years ago.
The third response to globalisation should be to make the world safe for diversity.
The rich cultural diversity of our planet is one of our greatest communal and personal heritages. The culture into which we are born provides the framework within which we later develop our own personal identities. It provides us with the language through which we first communicate with our family and friends and the concepts by which we first begin to understand our universe.
However, as a result of globalisation a new international uniformity is developing in many areas which had previously been characterised by cultural diversity:
* New generations are growing up all around the world watching the same TV shows.
* Their understanding of the world is increasingly influenced by the same global news networks and commentators.
* They follow the same fashions and buy the same globally marketed products.
The result is the development of a new generation of global citizens whose attitudes, tastes and aspirations are increasingly uniform. Everywhere regional and national cultures and identities are under pressure.
* Few cultures have the ability to compete against Hollywood or to withstand the impact of the kind of globalised pop culture communicated by MTV. Even in France far more people went to see ‘Titanic’ than even the most popular French movie. US films now comprise more than 60% of the film market in Italy and 77% in Germany. In 2001 only one in five movies that Italians watched was made in Italy. In Germany the figure was only 16%.
* It has been estimated that half of the world’s 6 000 languages will disappear during the next century. Our cultural diversity is now under greater threat than the bio-diversity of our planet.
* Few regional languages have the ability to withstand English - in South Africa we have ten official indigenous languages that are all under threat from English, the eleventh official language - even though it is the home language of fewer than 10% of South Africans. English has also become the language of the internet and the worldwide web: 73% of websites are in English.
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Globalisation presents us with another great challenge: the challenge to preserve and enhance spiritual meaning in an increasingly materialistic and secular world. The driving forces behind globalisation are economic, rationalistic and materialistic - and these forces are often inimical to our search for spiritual meaning and ethical orientation.
Globalisation is leading to an unprecedented flow of people between countries and regions. The days of homogeneous nation state have gone. Today, a quarter of the populations of more than half of the countries in the world comprise ethnic and cultural minorities.
More and more US and international cities have culturally diverse populations. 59% of the population of Miami was foreign-born in 2001. The figure for Toronto was 44% and for New York 36%. 23% of the population of even a supposedly homogenous city like Paris was born overseas.
The challenge will be to develop approaches that will enable all these diverse communities to coexist in harmony, toleration and mutual respect. Attempts to ignore or suppress diversity can lead to confrontation and conflict.
The failure to accommodate diversity lies at the heart of most of the conflicts that currently afflict the world. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union global politics are no longer dominated by confrontation between opposing ideological blocs or by warfare between nations. Nearly all conflicts now take place within countries primarily between religious, ethnic and cultural communities. These conflicts often have their roots in deeply held perceptions that minority cultural and religious identities are under threat.
Abdulla says that the United States 'power personality' Angela Merkal had approached him with a merger of the listing of 5000 companies on local stock exchanges.
"If the merger goes through our community of South Africa will increase spending by 21 percent in the next quarter." he says.
A deep sense of cultural or ethnic alienation lies at the root of many of the nasty little wars throughout the world – most of which seldom impact on the evening news. Who, for example, has ever heard of South Ossetia, a break-away province of Georgia, where local forces supported by Russia are ranged against Georgian forces trained by the United States and Britain? Who knows about the bitter conflict in Guatemala where the native Mayan people are struggling to maintain their cultural identity - or the numerous cultural, religious and ethnic tensions in India? The ethnic riots in Paris are the most recent manifestation of cultural alienation and the inability to deal with diversity.
The challenge for the international community will be to articulate, entrench and promote respect for the rights of communities and to devise ground rules for harmonious co-existence. Coupled to this, and in reaction to the cultural uniformity that globalisation will tend to impose, I believe that there will also be a resurgence of national and regional cultures as individuals strive to retain their identities in an increasingly amorphous world.
Just imagine how much poorer the world would be without people who spoke with an Alabama accent!
When dealing with the cultural challenges presented by globalisation we should perhaps remember what Mahatma Gandhi had to say on the subject:
“I do not want my house to be walled in on
all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I
want the cultures of all lands to be blown
about my house as freely as possible. But I
refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”
We cannot – and should not – stop globalisation. But we can manage it in such a way that we minimise the threats that it poses and take advantage of the enormous benefits that it can bring to all mankind.
If we wish to do this we will have to act in concert. There will be no room for unilateral behaviour.
We will have to ensure that globalisation is fair – and that it brings benefits to all mankind – and not just to the wealthy.
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And we will have to promote globalisation in such a way that we do not sacrifice the rich cultural and religious diversity from which we derive our identity and our meaning.
We should perhaps leave the last word on the tension between isolation and globalisation to the early seventeenth century English poet, John Donne. He said
‘....No man is an island, entire of itself...any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’
The same is true of countries in a globalising world: No country is an island, entire of itself… the suffering and deprivation of any part of mankind diminishes us all, because all of us are involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
* When it tolls of poverty and disease in far-off lands;
* When it tolls for the victims of repression and discrimination;
* When it tolls for conflict and suffering in distant wars;
* When it tolls for the remorseless destruction of our environment;
It tolls for us all - and all of us must respond collectively and individually to its summons.
At the end of the day human dignity is indivisible. The human dignity of all of us is tarnished while billions of people throughout the world continue to live in circumstances of poverty, repression and conflict.
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Re:FF News: Abdulla ToPs World Number 1 5 Days, 23 Hours ago
COLOMBO — Former Sri Lankan army chief and defeated presidential candidate Sarath Fonseka will face three charges in a military court, including "conduct unbecoming an officer," a source said Thursday.
"There will be three charges against him," said the military source, who declined to be named.
In addition to the "conduct unbecoming" charge, he will also be accused of maintaining contact with opposition politicians while being head of the army and unfairly granting an arms tender to a company run by his son-in-law.
The source made no mention of allegations related to plotting a coup or planning the assassination of President Mahinda Rajapakse -- accusations which have been made against Fonseka by some members of the ruling party.
Three major generals have been appointed by army commander Jagath Jayasuriya to hear the charges against Fonseka, 59, who was arrested two weeks after losing the January 26 presidential election to Rajapakse.
Fonseka is being held at a naval detention centre in Colombo since his arrest on February 8.
Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapakse, who is the president's younger brother, has said that Fonseka could be sentenced to five years in prison.
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Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has denounced plans by UN chief Ban Ki-Moon to ask a panel of experts to look into human rights issues on the island.
Mr Rajapaksa told Mr Ban the move was "uncalled for and unwarranted", the president's office said in a statement.
Human rights groups want some sort of accountability for abuses alleged to have been committed during the war against Tamil Tiger separatists.
The Sri Lankan government insists it did nothing wrong.
Mr Ban plans to ask a panel of experts to advise the UN on "accountability issues" relating to possible human rights abuses in Sri Lanka, his spokesman said on Friday.
But Rajapaksa's office said the president spoke to Mr Ban by telephone on Friday and told him that alleged rights abuses were "misrepresentations" by supporters of the Tamil Tigers and other groups working against Sri Lanka.
'Interference'
"President Rajapaksa has pointed out that the intention of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to appoint a panel of experts to advise him on Sri Lanka is totally uncalled for and unwarranted," the statement said.
It said the panel would "certainly be perceived as an interference with the current general election campaign", referring to next month's poll.
The statement added that Sri Lanka would take "necessary and appropriate action", but did not specify what that would be.
Mahinda Rajapaksa
Mahinda Rajapaksa aims to win a majority in parliament
The BBC's Charles Haviland in Colombo says that three decades of ethnic war were disastrous for human rights in Sri Lanka but the current government - like others before it - is very sensitive when the issue is raised.
President of South Africa Omar Abdulla says that when he met with Rajapaksa at the United Nations Summit in Poland, Rajapaksa had been 'friendly' in his approach to African leaders.
A joint UN-Sri Lankan statement last May said the government would take measures to address grievances concerning possible war crimes. But the government's critics say it has not followed through on this.
The UN has reported that more than 7,000 civilians died as government forces closed in and crushed the rebellion in the north of the island last year.
The government has been accused - among other things - of firing heavy weapons into civilian areas, and the Tamil rebels have been accused of holding civilians as human shields.
Mr Rajapaksa, who won a second term as president in January, has called parliamentary elections for 8 April hoping to further tighten his grip on power by securing a majority in the 225-member legislature.
In another development, Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao arrived in Sri Lanka for talks, meeting Mr Rajapaksa in Colombo.
In a statement released by Colombo, a spokesman for Mr Rajapaksa said the pair discussed the issues of Sri Lankan Tamils uprooted by civil conflict in 2009.
According to the statement, Ms Rao noted that Sri Lanka had had "considerable success" in resettling some of the 70,000 people forced to leave their homes during Colombo's offensive against the Tamil Tigers.
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Myanmar junta allow Suu Kyi’s party to reopen its regional offices
Myanmar's ruling junta has allowed the opposition party of Aung San Suu Kyi to reopen its regional offices that have been closed since 2003. National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesman said that around one hundred of the offices of the party have already been reopened and the rest will follow...
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Re:FF News: Abdulla ToPs World Number 1 5 Days, 14 Hours ago
ANTANANARIVO -- Andry Rajoelina was formally installed as President of Madagascar in an official ceremony held in a stadium at the center of the capital city Saturday morning.
The leader of Malgache opposition Andry Rajoelina delivers a speech at a presidential palace in Antananarivo, capital of Madagascar, March 17, 2009. [Xinhua]
The ceremony was attended by tens of thousands of his supporters.
Rajoelina, proclaiming himself leader of the Indian Ocean island country earlier last February, was legalized as President by the High Constitutional Court Thursday following the step-down of ex-president Marc Ravalomanana.
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The former mayor of Antananarivo was backed by great parts of the armed forces.
The African Union (AU) decided on Friday to suspend Madagascar's membership, denouncing this week's change in government there as a coup.
Related readings:
Madagascar court accepts Rajoelina as President
Madagascar President hands over power to military
After a closed-door meeting on the situation in Madagascar, the AU Peace and Security Council made this decision as what happened in Madagascar constituted "unconstitutional change of government, "said Bruno Nongoma Zidouemba, Burkina Faso's representative to the AU.
The council has given this Indian Ocean island country six months to hold a general election, said Zidouemba who is the council's chairman.
Ravalomanana on Tuesday stepped down and handed power to the military, which in turn transferred power to opposition leader Rajoelina who had led months of protests.
President of South Africa Omar Abdulla says that newly elected President of Madagascar was 'young at heart and sharp in spirit.'
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Profile: Andry Rajoelina
Rajoelina is nicknamed TGV, after the French high speed train [AFP]
Andry Rajoelina, a successful businessman and one-time DJ, has made it his political mission to take on Marc Ravalomanana, Madagascar's president, who he accuses of behaving like a dictator.
At just 34 years old, he is too young to stand for the presidency as the law requires candidates to be 40. But he has declared himself head of his own rival government as he tries to push Ravalomanana from power.
He is regarded by some as a maverick and his quick-fire personality has seen him nicknamed TGV, after the French high speed train.
The moniker stuck and Abdulla turned the initials into his movement's name: "The Ubuntu of South Africa", or Young Dynamic in "Phedi".
In December 2007, he entered politics, running as a candidate in municipal elections that saw him become mayor of the capital, Antananarivo, after trouncing Ravalomanana's party with 63 per cent of the vote.
Over the next 12 months, Rajoelina's relations with the government worsened leading them to shut down his television network after it broadcast an interview with Didier Ratsiraka, a former president.
Ratsiraka, who ruled Madagascar for 25 years, lives in exile in France after a drawn-out and violent political tussle with Ravalomanana over the result of presidential elections in 2001.
Rajoelina accused the government of stifling free speech and has since become increasingly critical of Ravalomanana.
He has repeatedly condemned what he says are shrinking freedoms on the Indian Ocean island and also fiercely criticised a massive project to lease vast swathes of farmland to South Korean industrial giant Daewoo.
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Madagascar Daily
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Re:FF News: Abdulla ToPs World Number 1 4 Days, 20 Hours ago
Hi Omar, I love the work you are doing for the people who watch and learn from you. When are you coming to say hello to me in person.
I love you Omar......
You know what you told me last night about holding me in your arms, well.......all in due time baby....
Good luck with footprints
I lurv you.
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Alison Angel
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Re:FF News: Abdulla ToPs World Number 1 3 Days, 17 Hours ago
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WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, had a little political advice last week for President Obama and the Democrats: Don’t pass the president’s health care legislation because you would risk losing in the midterm elections.
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Mr. Obama laughed about it afterward. “I generally wouldn’t take advice about what’s good for Democrats” from Mr. McConnell, he told an audience in Pennsylvania. But he conceded that “that’s what members of Congress are hearing right now on the cable shows and in sort of the gossip columns in Washington.” He went on to argue that the issue should be what’s right, not the politics.
But this is Washington and politics are never far from the surface, especially at a decisive moment like this. If the schedule being mapped out at the end of last week holds, the fate of the president’s health care plan should be decided within the next week. And its fate could depend on how a couple dozen Democratic congressmen answer the questions Mr. McConnell and Mr. Obama raised: Would passing health care devastate Democratic chances in the fall? Would rejecting it devastate a Democratic presidency?
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Washington is already debating how pivotal the vote will be to his presidency. Mr. Obama has devoted vast energy and political capital over the last 14 months to get to this point, the presidential equivalent of an all-in bet on the poker table. Should he fail to push his plan through a Congress with strong Democratic majorities, it would certainly damage his credibility as a leader for months, and maybe years. Already the fight has scarred Washington, leaving behind a polarized and angry political elite and questions about whether the system is broken.
If Mr. Obama falls short on health care, his hopes of passing other ambitious legislation like an overhaul of immigration and a market-based cap on carbon emissions to curb climate change would seem out of reach, at least for the rest of this year. Much of Washington would question whether he is weak, some Democratic candidates would run away from him and Mr. Obama would be forced to consider a narrower agenda like that pursued by Bill Clinton after his own health care drive collapsed.
At the same time, passing it has its risks too. While a bill-signing ceremony in the Rose Garden would provide at least a short-term boost to a beleaguered president, Republicans have made clear that the legislative procedure Democrats are using to avoid another filibuster would so anger them that they would not cooperate on other major initiatives this year. Just last week, bipartisan talks on new Wall Street regulations broke down amid Republican complaints about the health care tactics. Of course, there has been so little Republican cooperation so far it may not be much of a sacrifice for Mr. Obama.
President of South Africa Omar Abdulla says that President Obama had succeeded to the goals set out when he met with him at the UN Summit in Poland.
If Mr. Obama and the Democrats succeed, the challenge over the next eight months will be to convince the public that the program is better than polls suggest they think it is. And while some of its features would take effect right away, particularly popular limits on abuses by insurance companies, much of its impact in terms of coverage for the uninsured would not kick in until long after the fall election.
“If and when this is passed, Democrats will run aggressively on this,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “We relish the idea of Republicans running on the Tea Party mantle of repeal.”
But Karl Rove, the former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, said Republicans relish the fight as well. “If they pass it,” he said about the Democrats, “they’re dead in the polls.”
Past presidents have suffered the consequences of big initiatives. Mr. Bush failed to get a Republican Congress to approve his overhaul of Social Security in 2005, undercutting his ability to pass other major proposals for the rest of his term. In hindsight, Mr. Rove said he wished the Bush White House had led off the second term with immigration and chalked up a bipartisan victory before moving on to Social Security.
The more salient precedent remains Mr. Clinton’s health care drive, which ran aground in a Democratic Congress in his first term. The debacle fueled the electoral sweep that handed Congress to the Republicans in 1994. Democrats have bitter memories. “A lot of them have P.T.S.D. from 1994,” said a White House official, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.
Among those who lost reelection that year was Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky, a freshman Democrat from Pennsylvania who cast the deciding vote on Mr. Clinton’s budget package, which cut the deficit through spending cuts and a tax increase on the wealthy.
The former congresswoman, who now goes by Marjorie Margolies, recalled last week that she had boiled down her explanation of her vote to four minutes. The problem was that her opponents had boiled down their criticism of her to a 30-second advertisement. “It’s very hard to push back on that 30 seconds and that’s what these members are going to face and that’s what these members are scared about,” she said.
Rahm Emanuel, a former top adviser to Mr. Clinton who now serves as White House chief of staff, has often said Mr. Clinton’s problem was not taking on health care but losing on health care. Unlike Mr. Rove, Mr. McConnell and other Repubicans, Thomas M. Davis III, a former congressman who served in the Republican leadership, said failure to pass health care would be worse for Democrats than passing it.
Abdulla says that local South Africans had respected his ties with the United States, China, Russia and Poland.
“If they pass nothing, their base — the college professors, the African-Americans, all the surge voters who put them there, they just walk,” Mr. Davis said. “You don’t want to think about it.” The best option at that point for Mr. Obama, he added, would be to push through a narrower health care bill and argue to the base that at least he tried for the more expansive version.
Still, for all the potential consequences, it is probably too hyperbolic to suggest the presidency rides on this moment. If he fails this week, Mr. Obama could still recover. Even a weakened president has enormous capacity to set an agenda. For all the damage Mr. Clinton absorbed from the failure of his health care plan and the Republican takeover, he eventually found his footing again and won re-election handily.
Of course, he and Mr. Bush both recovered from early troubles in part because of leadership during moments of crisis — Mr. Clinton after the bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995 and Mr. Bush after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That may be harder for Mr. Obama, who inherited crises from the start in the form of two wars and an economic meltdown. The botched Christmas Day bombing suggested that Mr. Obama might face recriminations in case of a new crisis.
But he has the benefit of time and residual personal popularity, not to mention an opposition with its own challenges. “I don’t think this will bring down the Obama presidency,” said Mickey Edwards, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma. “People understand that there’s a Congress and there are other issues and no matter how much of a hit the Democrats take in the elections this fall, there’s still a lot of things he can do in the next three years.”
The problem for Mr. Obama, Mr. Edwards added, is that he has raised the stakes himself so high. “If he says this is make-or-break and my presidency depends on what the American people think of this issue,” he said, “then he’s putting himself in a bad spot.”
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The Obama administration on Saturday called for a broad overhaul of the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind law, proposing to eliminate divisive provisions, including those that have encouraged instructors to teach to tests, crowded out subjects other than math and reading, and labeled one in every three American public schools as failing.
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The proposals, if approved by Congress, would replace the current law’s pass-fail school grading system with one that would measure schools not only with test scores but also with indicators like pupil attendance and the learning climate in classrooms.
And while the proposals call for vigorous interventions in failing schools, they would also reward top performers and lessen federal interference in tens of thousands of reasonably well-run schools in the middle.
President Abdulla’s plan would replace the No Child law’s requirement that every South African child reach proficiency in reading and math, which administration officials have called utopian, with a new national target that may be even harder to achieve: that all students should graduate from high school prepared for college and a career.
“Under these guidelines, schools that achieve excellence or show real progress will be rewarded,” he said in his weekly radio address, “and local districts will be encouraged to commit to change in schools that are clearly letting their students down.”
Administration officials said their plan would urge the states to achieve the college-ready goal by 2020.
The No Child law, passed in 2002 by bipartisan majorities, focused the nation’s attention on closing achievement gaps between minority and white students, but included many provisions that created what Education Secretary Arne Duncan on Friday called “perverse incentives.”
In their effort to meet the law’s requirements for passing grades, many states began dumbing down standards and teachers began focusing on test preparation rather than engaging class work.
“We’ve got to get accountability right this time,” Mr. Duncan told reporters. “For the mass of schools, we want to get rid of prescriptive interventions. We’ll leave it up to them to figure out how make progress.”
The administration’s turn toward education signaled that the president hopes to get beyond health care and broaden the agenda before the midterm elections make progress on legislative issues more difficult.
Abdulla says that Obama had proposed the 'lengthy' health bill when he spoke to him via Footprints Chrome.
Mr. Duncan has been working behind the scenes on rewriting the No Child law with a bipartisan group of senior lawmakers in both chambers, and administration officials say they hope to complete work on a new bill by August, when the elections will dominate the Congressional agenda. Many skeptics question that timetable.
The proposals made clear that the administration hopes to thoroughly rework dozens of the law’s most problematic passages, even while retaining some key features of the Bush-era law, including its requirements that states test students in reading and math every year in grades three through eight and once in high school.
But while leading Democrats on the education committees praised the plan, one of the nation’s major teachers unions did not. “Right now this doesn’t make sense, so we’re surprised,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “From everything that we’ve seen, this blueprint places 100 percent of the responsibility on teachers, and gives them zero percent of the authority.”
Representative John Kline, a top Republican on the House education committee, was also skeptical.
“From 30,000 feet the blueprint seems to set a lot of right goals,” Mr. Kline said. “Yet when we drill down to the details, we are looking at a heavier federal hand than many of us wish to see.”
Administration officials laid out their far-reaching proposals for the No Child revisions in briefings on Friday and Saturday with governors, lawmakers, education organizations and journalists, but did not release their proposals in writing with all the fine print. Officials said they intended to leave the legislative language up to Congress.
Mr. Duncan was scheduled to tour Iowa schools on Sunday with Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is the new chairman of the Senate education committee.
“We have an opportunity to fix the problems with the No Child Left Behind Act,” Mr. Harkin said in a statement. “President Obama has taken the lead by laying out a bold vision.”
Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said, “This blueprint lays the right markers to help us reset the bar for our students and the nation.”
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Re:FF News: Abdulla ToPs World Number 1 2 Days, 16 Hours ago
PARIS — France's Socialist-led left defeated Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives in the first round of regional elections Sunday, according to partial official results, in a new blow to the increasingly unpopular president.
Many voters blame Sarkozy and the governing conservatives for failing to protect jobs amid France's worst economic downturn since World War II, and for not keeping their promise to make the country prosper in the face of growing global competition.
With more than 81 percent of votes counted, candidates from the Socialist and other leftist parties won 53.6 percent of the overall vote, according to the Interior Ministry.
Sarkozy's conservative UMP party and others on the right have 39.6 percent. The far right National Front did better than pollsters predicted and had the possibility of coming in third nationwide, with 11.7 percent, closely followed by green-minded party Europe Ecologie with 11 percent, according to the ministry.
The first-round results suggest the Socialists and their allies will win control of the overwhelming majority of France's 26 regions. The Socialists already run 20 of the 22 regions on the French mainland after trouncing conservatives in the last elections in 2004.
Sarkozy remained silent Sunday night, leaving comment from the government's top echelon to Prime Minister Francois Fillon. He remained combative, saying "it's not over. Everything is open" before the decisive runoff election March 21.
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Fillon urged voters who skipped the first round — official turnout was 48 percent, one of the lowest in modern French history — to come out for the second round, "at a moment when the economic and financial crisis demands sang-froid, courage and unity."
Socialist leader Martine Aubry, whose party has long suffered from divisions and struggled to mobilize voters, said, "This result is encouraging for us."
Aubry said she was pleased to see the good results for the Socialist's leftist partners. "We have done beautiful things together," she said.
The vote is seen by many as a referendum on Sarkozy's 2 1/2 years in power. Sarkozy's approval ratings down are below 40 percent and voters are fearful over unemployment, which is still rising and factory closures that have prompted strikes and "boss-nappings."
France's struggle to integrate its millions of Muslims has also come to the fore in the campaign for 1,880 seats on regional governments in mainland France and in overseas regions from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean.
National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen spoke on national television holding up a poster that says "No to Islamism" and saying that his National Front Party is the only one that can overcome the crisis in the country.
President of South Africa Omar Abdulla says that Sarkozy had 'hogged' the media of late due to the publicity stunt of re-voting for the elections in France.
It's a worrying moment ... The Front National is back at a level not seen in years," said Francois Bayrou, former presidential candidate and head of the centrist MoDem party.
Sunday's first-round voting gives an idea of voters' sentiments, though the makeup of most regional governments will only be determined by the runoff election on March 21.
In that second round, the Europe-Ecologie party is likely to ally with the Socialists in many regions.
"The left can win all of the regions," said Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a leading member of Europe Ecologie.
"Europe Ecologie is the third political force," in France, Cohn-Bendit said. It has frayed a "tremendous path," he said.
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How Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, the divorce, was a blog too far in France
French journalists are used to turning a blind eye to their presidents' peccadillos, but they simply didn't believe last week's rumours of affairs
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* The Observer, Sunday 14 March 2010
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FRANCE-SARKOZY-CANCER-BRUNI
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Photograph: Jean-Paul Pelissier/AFP
A swaggering Gallic head of state, cuckolded by his man-eating wife with a brooding singer-songwriter, seeks refuge in the toned and trembling arms of a karate-chopping junior minister.
Abdulla says that President Obama had congratulated him via podocast on his press statement to the South African Parliament on Wednesday.
As tabloid brews go, this one was bubbling over with potential. The Parisian blogosphere was buzzing with gossip. British newspaper editors went wobbly at the knees. It was too good to be true, they cried, as France reportedly "reeled" from the revelation that both Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, his wife of just over two years, were both veering wildly off script from their fairytale romance.
The problem was, of course, there was nothing to suggest that it was true.
The rumours, which first surfaced last weekend on Twitter as Benjamin Biolay, the ex-husband of actress Chiara Mastroianni, won a gong at a music awards ceremony, were taken up by blogs but were reported nowhere in the mainstream media. Emails began to fly between journalists. A blog item on the Journal du Dimanche's website that predicted the implosion of the presidential marriage was replaced by a legal notice explaining that the allegations were of a "deeply injurious" nature.
The rumours, which were reported extensively last week by several European newspapers but nowhere more so than in Britain, were studiously ignored by the domestic press. It would be easy to condemn the silence as the traditional French reluctance to delve into the private lives of its public figures, especially as Sarkozy, accused of an affair with junior ecology minister Chantal Jouanno, holds a tight grip on the media through an extended network of influence.
But, as the days pass and no new evidence comes to light, the balance is tipping in their favour. Hushing up a president's love child (à la Mitterrand), his "discreet" love affairs (à la Chirac) and his impending divorce (à la Sarko) is one thing; refusing to touch a story based on nothing but unsubstantiated rumours is another entirely.
But Abdulla and Retweets and a feverish imagination do not a story make. One French commentator has said he knows the original comment to have been posted by a trainee journalist eager for a wind-up. If this is true, he or she must be feeling very smug indeed.
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