Array In that sense, my decision was vindicated, as the actual number of No votes cast barely moved (529,478 in the first referendum as opposed to 534,887 in the second, yet the result went from 55% - 45 % against to 63 % - 37% in favour of the treaty). The results proved that the claims of euro sceptic groups like the Bruges Group that the original result showed the people of Ireland have unequivably rejected the Nice Treaty[sic] was plain wrong.Things have changed in the intervening four years since the referendum - I’ve moved to England, and the EU Constitution was introduced and rejected by the Dutch and the French in referenda. Regardless of the rights or wrongs of the issue (and I am opposed to software patents) for an un elected body to simply disregard the ruling of an elected body on an EU wide issue is fundamentally undemocratic.After the defeat of Nice in Ireland in 2001, Romano Prodi said that the EU would listen and reflect on what the Irish voters had said. This has turned out to be complete hogwash - despite the votes against the EU Constitution, EU Ministers seem to be determined to push ahead with it.
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The next missile is yours!.Key figure in al-Qaida in Iraq killed By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer Tue Jun 20, 2:08 PM ET BAGHDAD, Iraq - A key al-Qaida in Iraq leader described as the group’s religious emir was killed in a U.S. airstrike hours before two American soldiers went missing and in the same area, the military said Tuesday.
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By John A. Akec18 June 2006London, UKWe must go back, in order to move forward - John Garang de Mabior, January 2004, Naivasha, Kenya.WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM WARS IN EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE?In 20th century Europe and North America, few wars have been fought for longer than 6 years. That is with one exception- the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Apart from that, the first world war started in 1914 and ended in 1918, lasting only for 4 years, and claiming 37 million lives amongst the Allied and Central powers (excluding other parts of the world). The second world war was fought between 1939 and 1945, lasting for 6 years, and led to death of 61 million people (including 6 million Jews, 6 million Polish, 7 Million Germans, and 25 million Russians - which bore the highest number of fatalities in that war). The American Civil war took 5 years from 1861 to 1865, and resulted in death of 970,000 Americans (or 3% of the population at the time) of which 620,000 were soldiers. The Irish civil conflict that broke out between supporters and opponents of Anglo-Irish Treaty of 6 December 1921 which established Irish Free State (the precursor of today’s independent Republic of Ireland), lasted only for just under a year between June 1922 to May 1923 and led to loss of about 4000 on both sides including Michael Collins, the republican leader who led the negotiating team in the treaty.Before the anti-treaty forces sparked the war off the Irish civil war, Michael Collin who signed the treaty on behlf of the Irish argued that the treaty did not grant the ultimate freedom that all nations aspire and develop, but the freedom to achieve freedom. History proved him right, and his opponents wrong as the semi-independent and semi-colonised Irish Free State later gave birth to fully sovereign Republic of Ireland.Hence, it is fair to say that underneath every civil conflict, every sectarian feud and hatred, and every endless political argument, runs myopia in great abundance.Beyond those few hellish years, sense tended to prevail over greed and short-sightedness in Northern Europe, most of Asia, and North America as those caught up in these wars either conceded defeat, or sought compromises and peaceful coexistence. This ingredient is tragically amiss in most African conflicts, as we are about to examine.THE ETERNAL AFRICAN WARSIn Africa and parts of the Middle East, wars go on indefinitely. Ethiopian-Eritrean war ran from 1962 to 1991 (that is 29 years). And then briefly from 1998 to 2000. The true death toll is unknown. Somalia has not had a stable government since the overthrow of president Siad Barre in 1991. About 1 million people have been killed in inter clan fighting. 15 years on, still there is no hope for a peaceful and politically stable Somalia in anyone sight. The war in Angola started in 1974, the year in which it gained its independence from Portugal. The war ran for 30 years, killing 600,000 (mostly civilians) and displaced 3 million others.Sudan’s North-South war went on for 17 years between 1955 and 1972, stopped for 10 years, and resumed again from 1983 to 2004, that is for another 22 years. This sums up to nearly 40 years of strife and carnage. Between the two civil wars, over 4 millions people lost their lives in Southern Sudan alone. And only God and astrology know what is still in store for my generation and the next. Yet this is a less well documented of Sudan wars and of Africa. Darfur war which started in January 2003 is better known and better documented. Do not ask me why, despite my sympathy with Darfurians, I consider the international attention in their conflict to be the exception, not rule. The world we know has not been always that kind. Probably the word Muslims is a key. Otherwise, it could have been the same African tale, where the loss of lives never means anything to anyone. In case of Southern Sudan, September 11 might have helped the South in many big ways to convince the US administration to take a more serious interest in ending the Sudan’s long North-South conflict. Previously, it was not a viable war.The WAR IN NORTHERN UGANDAEnter Northern Uganda and the Lord Resistance Army (LRA). All the world knows about this otherwise forgotten war is that of a maniac called Joseph Kony who has been trying to overthrow Ugandan regime in order to rule Uganda with Ten Commandments. That what LRA men do best is to rape women and abduct children for forced recruitment in the army and to exploit some of them as sex slaves. That LRA has no political objectives whatsoever. Speaking cheek in tongue, kind of. Obviously this is not the whole truth about the causes of the war that has been running for last 20 years since 1986.The war has displaced between 1.3 to 1.6 million people from their homes. Not many people outside Northern Uganda have shown any real concern about the humanitarian disaster that has been unfolding in that part of the world with spill over into Southern Sudan and Eastern Congo. Not even the UN has done anything to halt the crisis. The head of Oxfam in Uganda, Emma Nyalor in January 2005 told Reuters that UN is appallingly negligent of the conflict in Uganda, failing to pass a single resolution. How many resolutions have been passed on Darfur in the last 3 years? Again, I am not against UN’s role in Darfur, but it appears that double standards do apply in this case.In an address by the Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, Rima Salah, to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on 9th March 2006, an statement extracted from the address is very revealing of human catastrophe at large scale, specially amongst some 900,000 children in the concentration camps numbering 200 in Northern Uganda:The social issues that exist elsewhere in Ugandas domestic violence, rape and child abuse, among othersâ are exacerbated in the camps. The mortality and morbidity rates are above emergency threshold. Men, women, girls and boys suffer from acute shortfalls in the provision of basic services such as health, education, water and sanitation. Large numbers of households are headed by women” - Dr Rima Salah, 9th March 2006.JOSEPH KONY: THE AFRICAN UNTOUCHABLE?It appears, in LRAs case, the story has been told by the hunter and not by the lion himself. BBC and other Western pro-Museveni media have for more than a decade told a one-sided story: that of Joseph Konys organisation, the LRA, abducting children for recruits and slavery. BBC, CNN and many other Western media never bothered to investigate or expose the underlying causes of war in Northern Uganda. And so, we have come to take Joseph Kony and his predominantly Acholi army as mindless thugs who have no genuine political grievance. How misleading, naive, and disgusting. LRA is partly to blame. As a pupil of secondary school in late seventies, I had little sympathy for the Eritrean fighters [who wanted to cut away a piece of African soil from Ethiopia to annex to Arab world, as I was made to believe], until I began to read Eritrean own account through their literature. It was then that I began to understand. So, LRA is partly to blame for doing nothing to put their political views across to the world. And so the only thing we know about Kony and his lieutenants is that they are a mere bunch of rapists, murderers, and looters. We have fallen to Ugandan sponsored BBCs propaganda. Even US went on to classify LRA as a terrorist group and pledged military assistance worth US$ 150 million for Uganda to fight LRA. Adding wood to the fire and creating no incentive for Museveni to look for peace. Who said US administrations and CIA never made strategic or political errors?The truth is much deeper than this one sided story. That is, Uganda suffers from similar ills that masterminded Sudans wars - uneven distribution of power and economic development and wealth between different ethnic groups, luck of political freedoms, lack of respects for human rights, ethnic cleansing/genocide and so on. You will find all these problems in Ugandan political system if anyone cares enough to look closely. And it is these little spoken of issues that are driving the war. The US, Britain, ICC, and almost everyone else think otherwise.Northern Ugandan, as a result, has been dehumanised by everyone including their Museveni-led government. For years and years - the Acholis of Northern Uganda have lived in squalid concentration camps - Ugandan style. Here, people are being held hostages so that they are protected from the possible influence by the LRA. Thanks to the blessing and funding by UNDP and many charitable NGOs, the world call these death camps: “refugees camps.”If the war in South Sudan has produced “lost boys and girls”, the war in Northern Uganda has produced “Night Commuters.” of children. Even lost boys of Sudan will recognise that after all, they are not lost. In Northern Uganda, the world has decided to look the other way.Milton Obote once said, “Joseph Kony is only a good student of Musevenis methods. But no one took a damn.In a rare Gulu’s Mega FM political radio talk show on 28th December 2002, Kony told his interviewer (Full script available by request from this author):My friend, we are not killing Acholi. We are not abducting children. We are not doing anything bad in northern Uganda. All this dirty work is done by government, not LRA. We donât abduct children. How can children walk for one hundred miles. How can children walk for twenty miles? That is not true at all. …. These are our people. We are not doing anything bad to them. I know they are my people. They are the very reason why I am in the bush. I went to liberate them because you are killing them. ..There are many that we brought here in the bush because of the untold suffering they were going through in the camps. - Joseph Kony - 28th Dec. 2002.THE BREAKING OF LRA TABOO: WHEN GREAT LOVE OVERCOMES FEARThe initiative of the government of Southern Sudan (GOSS) led by its vice president, Dr Riek Machar resulted in a face to face meeting between Riek Machar and Joseph Kony on the 4rth of May 2006 in Southern Sudan town near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.A Message of Peace:This was the message which the vice president Riek Machar delivered to Joseph Kony:We want peace in southern Sudan and northern Uganda.This is the option we want to pursue with you. Make use of us. You may not trust us but you have to trust us. The offer is better that you make use of us and negotiate with the Uganda government. If you do not make use of us then leave Sudan and go and fight from your country. Unquote - Dr Riek Macar, 4 May 2006.Joseph Kony SpeaksJoseph Kony responded with emotional (and straight-from-the-heart African sort of way):Me I know is that the whole people even the journalists donât know me because to get me is very difficult but Museveni is blocking people not to meet me so that people believe that propaganda that Kony is a terrorist, Kony is a killer but I am a human being like you and I am fighting for the right cause, what is happening in our country is very bad that is why we are in the bush. …You cannot stay in the bush for 20 years for nothing, ..So what is happening there is very bad so my being in Sudan does not mean I am a terrorist like Arabs, it doesnât mean I have adopted the whole system of Arabs, I am African, I will remain African, I will die African, that is what I want and all the people should know so if I read the story of SPLA in Kenya, you went there to get friends or to the people of Kenya to get a relationship, you went to Eritrea, you went to Uganda and Ethiopia.Museveni said I was accused in The Hague or in ICC, which is not true. Iam not a terrorist, I am also a rebel in military opposition like SPLA as some other people. I am in opposition so if Museveni says that then it means that all opposition leaders of Africa they should also be taken to The Hague, which is not true this is what you should know.Because we are human beings also we know law, we want peace. We are fighting for our people to be free. We are fighting for the right cause. We want to talk in a good way not forgery not by force not in a local way. We want also to be international not as the papers of Uganda say.We want to talk. I agree to everything, I am a human being
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everyone, I believe, accepts the fact that America has moved to the right politically for some time now, but Political Parallax is the idea that the gauge or measuring stick used to define that move has also moved to the right. The reason that no-one grasps the facts is that the shift is the result of a delilberate effort on the part of the right, with a certain amount of collusion from the left.It’s easy to see how this perspective shift has occurred once it is recognized as the result of decades of subtle psyops (from the military term for psychological operations) primarily based on the manipulation of language. Whether or not this meme helped Reagan in the short term, it certainly helped the conservative movement in the long term. They accepted, whether consciously or not, the absurd idea that liberalism was wrong, and they themselves began moving towards the right. as the Democrats moved towards the center, and as the Republicans moved towards the right, the center itself moved towards the right. The Republicans had successfully moved the goalposts of American political discourse.It is of course nigh unto impossible to quantify the ‘right’ or ‘left’ -ness of any given policy or position in politics, so I’ve kind of put myself on the spot to demonstrate this assertion. Review the career of the current US president before answering that last question.If we measure the position of US society in practical terms rather than theoretical, it looks very much as though there has been a steady and increasing movement to the right.
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While talk of a mass exodus may be nonsense, the Serb community faces certain decline in Bosnia’s capital.By Predrag Popovic in Sarajevo (Balkan Insight, 14 June 06)Prominent Sarajevo Serbs have dismissed claims by Republika Srpska, RS, politicians that their community is set to leave the city imminently, but with falling numbers, a bleak economic outlook and continuing discrimination their prospects seem poor. The number of Serbs in the capital has slumped from about 160,000 in the 1990s to between 20,000 and 40,000. The exact number is unknown as no census has taken place in Bosnia and Hercegovina since the war.During the Serbian siege in the Nineties, the Serb community experienced random violence from the Bosnian army, which attacked, killed and evicted Serbs from their homes. While some put the number of fatalities in the hundreds, RS says thousands may have been killed.Under international pressure, the Bosnia and Hercegovina Council of Ministers last month agreed to set up a truth commission for the city, tasked with uncovering the real number of victims of all ethnicities and the nature of their deaths.While the politicians argued, some of the RS media added fuel to the fire by publishing dramatic accounts of the discrimination faced by Sarajevo Serbs and claiming a mass exodus was imminent.Some leading Sarajevo Serbs, such as Nenad Markovic, coach to the national basketball team, have poured scorn on such claims. Markovic said he had no plans to leave the city he had lived in since the age of four.I went to kindergarten and primary school here, and passed through cadet and junior basketball teams
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