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SOUTH AFRICA News:
20080430
-
 Terrorism
-  Politics
-  US
-  International
- South
Africa -  Race
-  History
- "U.S.
has Mandela on terrorist list." ... "Nobel Peace
Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged
on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the
USA." ... "The requirement applies to former South African leader Mandela
and other members of South Africa's governing African National Congress
(ANC), the once-banned anti-Apartheid organization. In the 1970s and '80s,
the ANC was officially designated a terrorist group by the country's ruling
white minority. Other countries, including the United States, followed
suit." -By Mimi Hall -USATODAY
20070716
-
US
-
 Iraq
-  Military
-  People
-  Vehicles
- Safety
-  Technology
-  Money
- Politics
- Manufacturing
- History
- South
Africa - "Pentagon
balked at pleas from officers in field for safer vehicles:
Iraqi troops got MRAPs; Americans waited." ... "Years before the war began,
Pentagon officials knew of the effectiveness of another type of vehicle
that better shielded troops from bombs like those that have killed [25
year old Pfc. Aaron] Kincaid and 1,500 other soldiers and Marines. But
military officials repeatedly balked at appeals — from commanders on the
battlefield and from the Pentagon's own staff — to provide the lifesaving
Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, or MRAP, for patrols and combat
missions, USA TODAY found." ... "As early as December 2003, when the Marines
requested their first 27 MRAPs for explosives-disposal teams, Pentagon
analysts sent detailed information about the superiority of the vehicles
to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, e-mails obtained by USA TODAY show. Later
pleas came from Iraq, where commanders saw that the approach the Joint
Chiefs embraced — adding armor to the sides of Humvees, the standard vehicles
in the war zone — did little to protect against blasts beneath the vehicles."
... "Why the issue never received more of a hearing from top officials
early in the war remains a mystery, given the chorus of concern. One Pentagon
analyst complained in an April 29, 2004, e-mail to colleagues, for instance,
that it was "frustrating to see the pictures of burning Humvees while knowing
that there are other vehicles out there that would provide more protection.""
... "The analyst was referring to the MRAP, whose V-shaped hull puts the
crew more than 3 feet off the ground and deflects explosions. It was designed
to withstand the underbelly bombs that cripple the lower-riding Humvees.
Pentagon officials, civilians and military alike, had been searching for
technologies to guard against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The
makeshift bombs are the No. 1 killer of U.S. forces." ... "The MRAP was
not new to the Pentagon. The technology had been developed in South Africa
and Rhodesia in the 1970s, making it older than Kincaid and most of the
other troops killed by homemade bombs. The Pentagon had tested MRAPs in
2000, purchased fewer than two dozen and sent some to Iraq. They were used
primarily to protect explosive ordnance disposal teams, not to transport
troops or to chase Iraqi insurgents." ... "Even as the Pentagon balked
at buying MRAPs for U.S. troops, USA TODAY found that the military pushed
to buy them for a different fighting force: the Iraqi army." ... "On Dec.
22, 2004 — two weeks after [Republican] President Bush told families of
servicemembers that "we're doing everything we possibly can to protect
your loved ones" — a U.S. Army general solicited ideas for an armored vehicle
for the Iraqis." ... "One reason officials put off buying MRAPs in significant
quantities: They never expected the war to last this long. Bush set the
tone on May 1, 2003, six weeks after the U.S. invasion, when he declared
on board the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that "major combat operations
in Iraq have ended."" -By Peter Eisler, Blake Morrison
and Tom Vanden Brook -USATODAY
20070707
-
Global
-
 Climate
-  Earth
-  Music
- Politics
-  Australia
- United
States -  Japan
-  China
- South
Africa -  Brazil
-  Germany
- "Live
Earth Series Starts in Sydney." ... "The Live Earth
global [music] concert series kicked off Saturday with an aboriginal group
dancing and singing a traditional welcome at the first venue in Sydney
[Australia]." ... "Tribal leaders with white-painted bodies and shaking
eucalyptus fronds were the first of more than 150 performers at the eight
concert, 24-hour series to raise awareness about climate change." ... "The
performance was immediately followed by a video greeting from former [Democratic]
Vice President Al Gore, whose campaign to force global warming onto the
international political agenda inspired the event." ... "The biggest names
will appear at Live Earth concerts in London [UK] and the United States,
with more modest lineups of mostly local and regional acts in Australia,
Japan, China, South Africa, Brazil and Germany."
-AP via -Guardian.co.uk
20050706
-
-
- 
- 
-
- "U.N.
troops raid Haitian slum, at least 5 killed." ...
"More than 350 U.N. troops in armored carriers stormed a house where gang
leader Emmanuel Wilme, known as Dread Wilme, was believed to have taken
refuge, said Col. Eloufi Boulbars, a military spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping
mission in Haiti." ... "Wilme, a loyalist to former President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, led a well-armed gang that has waged deadly gunfights with rival
gangs in Cite Soleil." ... "Aristide fled the country in February 2004
in the face of an armed revolt and under U.S. and French pressure to quit.
He is living in exile in South Africa." ... "An interim government has
scheduled elections to choose a new president and parliament on Dec. 13,
with a possible runoff on Dec. 18. A ballot to elect local government officials
is scheduled for Oct. 9." -By Joseph Guyler Delva
with contributions by Evelyn Leopold -Reuters
via -SignOnSanDiego.com
20050407
-
- 
-
- 
-
- Tom
DeLay -
"Jack
Abramoff: The friend Tom DeLay can't shake." ...
"Where to begin examining the extraordinary career of Jack Abramoff? His
work trying to secure a visa for the great Zairian kleptocrat Mobutu Sese
Seko, perhaps, or the bilking of an estimated $66 million out of Native
American tribes, clients he described as "monkeys," "troglodytes," and
"idiots"? Or his leadership of a 1980s think tank financed, unbeknownst
to him apparently, by the intelligence arm of South Africa's apartheid
regime?" ... "No, the chapter of our man's story that matters most at the
moment begins with a toast given by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay during
a New Year's trip they both took to Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands
in 1997. "When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your
most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands,
I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and
reform you have made," DeLay said before an audience of Abramoff's clients
in the islands' garment industry—whom, upon his return to Washington, he
helped win an extended exemption from federal immigration and labor laws."
-By James Harding -Slate
20040715
-
-
- "The
[diamond] cartel isn't for ever." ... "On July 13th
in an Ohio court De Beers, the world's largest producer of rough stones,
finally pleaded guilty to charges of price-fixing of industrial diamonds
and agreed to pay a $10m fine, thereby ending a 60-year-long impasse. De
Beers executives are at last free to visit and work directly in the largest
diamond market, America." ... "A few days earlier, on July 9th, the first
case of successful industry self-regulation against trade in so-called
conflict diamonds took place when Congo-Brazzaville was punished
for failing to prove the source of its diamond exports. And on June 28th
Lev Leviev, an arch-rival of De Beers, opened Africa's biggest diamond-polishing
factory in Namibia." ... "Behind all these events lies sweeping change
in an industry that sells $60-billion-worth of jewellery alone each year.
For generations it has been run by De Beers as a cartel. The South African
firm dominated the digging and trading of diamonds for most of the 20th
century. Yet the system for distributing stones established decades ago
by De Beers is curious and anomalous—no other such market exists, nor would
anything similar be tolerated in a serious industry."
-Economist
20031029
-
"South
African Court Told of Plot for Coup and Ouster of Blacks."
... "A white extremist sect plotted in 2001 to overthrow South Africa's
government, assassinate its former president, Nelson Mandela, and march
more than 35 million blacks and other nonwhites into exile along two superhighways,
prosecutors said in a Pretoria court on Wednesday." ... "Although the defendants
are accused of bombings, robberies and illegal weapons possession, among
dozens of other charges, there has been little evidence that the coup plans
ever neared fruition." -By Michael Wines -NYTimes
via -Google-News
20030214
-
OPINION
- "Why
Diamonds? The Power of a Decades-Old Marketing
Campaign." ... "... Donna Bergenstock, a marketing professor at Muhlenberg
College, points out their [diamonds] scarcity is a myth, one created long
ago by DeBeers, the South African company that's dug up most of the world's
diamonds." ... ""There are … billions of dollars of diamonds sitting in
vaults — in London, in South Africa — that DeBeers specifically keeps off
the market in order to artificially raise the price of diamonds," she says."
-By John Stossel -ABCNEWS.com
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