Author: Mick Hartley

According to the BBC, talks will begin next week between the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Ugandan government.

Ugandan government spokesman Robert Kabushenga said there would be no conditions for the talks, which will be mediated by the south Sudan government.

He was speaking after a delegation met senior southern Sudanese officials in Juba for preliminary discussions.

Some LRA leaders are wanted by a UN court for war crimes, a fact that is expected to complicate the talks.

When asked whether the Ugandan government were prepared to drop charges laid against the rebel leadership by the International Criminal Court, the spokesman said it was too early to discuss this, but said the priority was to achieve peace as soon as possible.

So why, after all these years, is Joseph Kony suddenly interested in peace talks?

When the 2005 peace agreement between the regime in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) ended the 21-year war in Southern Sudan, there was a reasonable hope that the Lord’s Resistance Army, deprived of support from the Sudanese, might find themselves in such a weakened state that they’d abandon their reign of terror in Northern Uganda. Sadly, they’re still going strong, despite an indictment against the top five LRA leaders as war criminals, by the International Criminal Court.

Sudan is vital to the LRA. The Sudanese government were long-time supporters, supposedly in retaliation for Ugandan support for the SPLM/A, providing sanctuary as well as food and arms. Since the peace agreement, with that support cut off, the LRA has started abducting civilians, looting, and generally spreading their terror tactics to southern Sudan.

Now it looks like Kony realises the game’s up, and wants to save his skin. He’s been indicted as a war criminal by the International Criminal Court, and his Sudanese backers are gone. All he can do is cause enough trouble in Sudan to be bought off by the Southern Sudanese government, and appear before the cameras of the BBC to present himself as a misunderstood freedom fighter and lover of democracy.

As a reminder of the kind of person we’re dealing with, here’s one of Koby’s victims remembering what happened when the LRA came to his village. And here’s Christopher Hitchens, reporting from Northern Uganda back in January.

Brussels Journal report on a ground-breaking case in Denmark, where nine members of a family originally from Pakistan have been sentenced for their part in the honour killing of 18-year old Ghazala Khan:

Ghazala had married an Afghan man, 27-year old Emal Khan, against the wishes of her father. An aunt, the youngest sister of Ghazala’s mother, who had told the young couple that she would try to reconcile them with her family, asked them to come to Slagelse train station. Her brother Akhtar shot her dead in front of the station and wounded Emal Khan, who survived the murder attempt.

On Wednesday a Danish judge sentenced Akhtar Abbas to 16 years in gaol, and the father, 57-year old Ghulam Abbas, to life imprisonment (which, if one behaves well in gaol, is reduced to 16 years). The aunt and two uncles were given 16 years as well. Other members of the family and friends who had helped to track down Ghazala received sentences of between 8 and 16 years. Two Pakistanis who do not have the Danish nationality will be expelled from Denmark after serving their prison term.

The Danish verdict is historic, not only because the entire clan was punished but also because the head of the family, who ordered the killing, was given a heavier sentence than the actual murderer. Families often choose a family member who is still a minor to carry out an honour assassination because, being a minor, he is likely to get a more lenient sentence under Western law.

Kofi Annan speaks, at a summit of African Union leaders in Banjul, Gambia:

In his speech, Mr Annan painted a mixed picture of Africa’s progress as a continent.

He praised what he called its inexorable and unstoppable progress on development, but said much remained to be done.

“Overall, the number of Africans living in extreme poverty continues to increase,” he said.

“The spread of HIV/Aids continues to outpace our efforts to halt it.

“The conflicts in Darfur, Ivory Coast, Somalia and northern Uganda continue to outrun efforts for a solution.

“Many governments continue to suppress opposition parties and a free press… Many continue to practise or tolerate large-scale corruption.”

He called for a fresh strategy to build development, security and human rights.

Somalia, Ivory Coast, and the impending trial of former Liberian President Charles Taylor are also on the agenda at the summit.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are also attending the summit as invited guests.

Fifty-two villas and a huge hotel and conference centre have been built in just under six months just outside Banjul, to accommodate the delegates.

They don’t have a great record at looking after their fellow Africans, these leaders, but they certainly know how to look after themselves.

Well, it’s an all-European last four, and England’s not included. Somehow, writing five hours after the penalty shoot-out debacle, I’m coming round to seeing that fact as something of a relief. Now I can sit back and enjoy some great football without the constant disappointment of seeing my team – full of great players – consistently under-perform. We’ve been poor right through the tournament, and all that belief that somehow we’d come good when it mattered – well, we didn’t. Portugal were lacklustre, and we were just that bit worse – though I’d have to single out Owen Hargreaves for praise: he was all over the place, and entirely appropriately was the only one (of four!) who managed to score in the shoot-out. Watching the Brazil-France game afterwards was like watching a top-flight premiership game after sitting through a grim relegation struggle in the second division. We don’t deserve to be in that company – but neither do Portugal.

I don’t imagine it’ll be long before Man U see the back of Cristiano Ronaldo. Quite apart from the, er, tension in the dressing room, he’ll be loudly booed at every premiership game next season.

Taking a break…..back next weekend 1st/2nd July.

Yet another example of the hegemony of Western imperialist values, stifling an indigenous culture (via Japundit):

Banner-wielding animal rights protesters swarmed into a restaurant serving cat meat in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen and forced it to shut, Xinhua news agency said today.

The 40 or so, mainly female demonstrators – holding banners reading “cats and dogs are friends of human beings” – entered the Fangji Cat Meatball restaurant and demanded the owner free any live cats on the premises, Xinhua said.

There were none in the building as the owner had already moved them out, it said. But some burst into tears upon finding a skinned cat in a fridge.

“I cannot go on with my business and I will not sell cat meat any more,” the restaurant owner was quoted as saying, though he defended his trade by saying eating cat in Guangdong province was a tradition.

The organiser of the protest, identified only as Isobel, the founder of a cat protection website, said the restaurant had been chosen because it killed cats in the street and it was “very bad for the students from nearby schools”.

A local beauty queen, Miss Shenzhen 2005, also took part, calling on people to “stop eating cats and dogs and become civilised”, Xinhua said.

esponsible for the busy task of running multicultural London be expected to know that a name like Reuben might suggest a particular faith or ethnicity? These PC zealots will be expecting poor Ken to know the difference between a mosque and a temple next. The mayor was just unlucky in his choice of words — as he has been before.

It was, obviously, just a coincidence that Ken suggested to two Jewish brothers that they be sent to a country run by a Holocaust denier. Just as it was pure bad luck that Ken found himself comparing a Jewish reporter to a concentration camp guard. It must also have been a simple slip of the tongue when Ken argued that global capitalism killed more people than Hitler. He could not possibly have been aware how often global capitalism, like rootless cosmopolitanism, has been deployed as a metaphor for conspiratorial Jewish influence. And nor could Ken have been expected to know, when he invited the Muslim Brotherhood leader, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to City Hall, that the Sheikh supported suicide attacks on Israel.

Surely only radicals carried away with crazy notions like institutional racism or unwitting prejudice could possibly detect anything worrying in these stray words and acts? And surely the Ken Livingstone we have grown to know and love would never have any time for that sort of nonsense now, would he?

?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=73303″>Daily Star:

It’s time to say it, loud and clear: The newborn Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) is on its death bed. Without determined action to save it, the war in Darfur will continue – a steady drip of death, more or less according to the season and the mood of the Sudanese government, while hundreds of thousands of Darfurians become permanent residents of displaced camps where the Janjaweed roam.

The two signatories of the DPA are those in whom Darfurians have least trust – Sudan’s government and the faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) controlled by Minni Minawi. Sudan’s leaders are serial war criminals; Minawi is a brutal dictator – increasingly rejected even by his own Zaghawa tribe. Neither has changed its spots since signing up for peace.

The BBC, meanwhile, report on increased Janjaweed attacks in Chad:

As Sudan’s feared Janjaweed militia step up their cross-border attacks into Chad, there is worrying new evidence that some Chadians have joined forces with the Janjaweed to attack their own countrymen.

Victims of attacks say that some Chadians are acting as “guides” to the Janjaweed, directing them to certain villages and suggesting which cattle to steal.

Many victims also say that some Chadians are taking part in the actual killings. […]

Some people believe they are now being attacked by the Janjaweed as revenge for having helped their Sudanese neighbours in the past.

As is often the case in such conflicts, the humanitarian price is high.

Many of the displaced, who are camping on the outskirts of Sudanese refugee camps for security, have little access to food, clean water or shelter.

The displaced Chadians tell very similar stories to their Sudanese refugee neighbours.

“There is no security,” said Aze Hamat, 23, who lost her father and two brothers in an attack.

“They take our cattle, kill men, even rape women,” she said.

“If they find a pretty woman they will take her across the border, where she is raped. Sometimes the women are dumped back in the bush afterwards. Sometimes they are never seen again.”

No doubt it’s easy to criticise from a country where China isn’t a huge and looming presence, but still, this is disappointing from South Korea:

Last week, 22 of 28 Nobel Peace Prize winners gathered in South Korea for the 2006 Gwangju (Kwangju) Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates. Winners from Kenya, Russia, Guatemala, Iran, East Timor, and the United Kingdom have accepted invitations, as have representatives from Nobel-winning organizations, such as Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, and the American Friends Service Committee.
The Dalai Lama, however, couldn’t attend. Not because he wasn’t invited, or because he had other plans: like those other laureates, the Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 award, had also accepted an invitation from the Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library to a summit about peace on the Korean Peninsula and in all of East Asia.
But the South Korean government has refused to grant him a visa, letting politics trump its own peace initiatives. As a Foreign Ministry official told Human Rights Watch, “Considering various factors, for now, we decided the Dalai Lama’s visit to South Korea is not desirable.’’
The government of South Korea, sensitive to the wishes of China, has consistently refused the Dalai Lama entry to its territory. In 2000, for example, a committee of private citizens representing 73 religious and civic organizations invited the Dalai Lama to visit in November. The South Korean government was in no way involved.
After the Chinese embassy in Seoul made known its displeasure, a representative of the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade met with group members and asked that they postpone the suggested visit until 2001. That visit never took place; nor did one proposed by the student council of Seoul National University that same year. The Dalai Lama had planned to deliver a speech at the university on peace and non-violence. But, said a Foreign Ministry official, “His visit would not be beneficial to the country’s national interest.’’
For many, the Dalai Lama is not only a desired visitor but an emblem of their desire for peace. How ironic, then, that he was prevented from contributing last week to a gathering dedicated in part to “reaffirm democracy and human rights as universal values of human kind and the foundation of peace around the world.’’

The waving of the Israeli flag by a Ghanaian player at the World Cup has caused a stir. Many people, especially Arabs, have been deeply offended. There have been complaints, and an apology has been issued:

The Ghanaian Football Association has apologised after defender John Pantsil waved an Israeli flag to celebrate the World Cup win over the Czech Republic.

Spokesman Randy Abbey said the Ghanaian FA was not taking sides in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Pantsil plays in Israel for Hapoel Tel Aviv wanted to thank Israeli fans who travelled to support him, Abbey said

“He’s unaware of international politics. We apologise to anybody who was offended,” said Abbey.

“We promise that it will never happen again.

“He did not act out of malice for the Arab people or in support of Israel. He was naive… we don’t need to punish him.”