Author: Mick Hartley

wearing blue Sudanese military fatigues and turbans. Witnesses described their attackers as Janjaweed and noted that Chadians who had recently migrated to Sudan were among them.

The recent militia attacks in Chad seem to be part of a wider pattern of cross-border violence that Human Rights Watch has documented over the past year, during which time the Sudanese state of West Darfur, which borders Chad for more than 500 kilometers, has become increasingly volatile. More than a dozen armed groups, including four factions of the Darfur rebel movements, several Sudanese government-backed militias, and Chadian rebel groups are active along the porous border. Livestock raiding has become common, but the April attacks on the four Chadian villages were unusual for the high number of deaths.

Desmond Dekker was one of the Jamaican greats, no doubt about it, and the first to break the international market. “The Israelites”, when it appeared in 1968, was so unlike anything else in the charts that it felt like it came from another planet. He was overshadowed by the whole late 70s reggae scene led by Bob Marley, but he was always there as the forerunner of the spread of Jamaican music.

Dead at only 64, it’s a tribute to the man that his big hits – “007 (Shanty Town)”, “The Israelites”, “It Mek” – still sound great today.

The latest findings suggest that chimpanzees in south-east Cameroon were the source of AIDS, and that people first contracted the virus as long ago as 1930:

A virus called SIVcpz (Simian Immunodeficiency Virus from chimps) was thought to be the source, but had only been found in a few captive animals.

Now, an international team of scientists has identified a natural reservoir of SIVcpz in animals living in the wild….

It is thought that people hunting chimpanzees first contracted the virus – and that cases were first seen in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo – the nearest urban area – in 1930.

Scientists believe the rareness of cases – and the fact that symptoms of Aids differ significantly between individuals – explains why it was another 50 years before the virus was named. […]

Chimpanzees in south-east Cameroon were found to have the viruses most similar to the form of HIV that has spread throughout the world.

The researchers say that, as well as solving the mystery about the origin of the virus, the findings open up avenues for future research.

But SIVcpz has not been found to cause any Aids-like illnesses in chimpanzees, so researchers are investigating why the animals do not suffer any symptoms, when humans – who are so genetically similar – do.

Paul Sharp, professor of genetics at the University of Nottingham said: “It is likely that the jump between chimps and humans occurred in south-east Cameroon – and that virus then spread across the world.

“When you consider that HIV probably originated more than 75 years ago, it is most unlikely that there are any viruses out there that will prove to be more closely related to the human virus.”

This rather buggers up the theory that AIDS crossed over from chimps in the late Fifties due to contaminated polio vaccines.

e the MSBP sufferer can label as likely to have made the suggestion. Munchausen sufferers, as with most attention seekers, are always plausible and convincing.

It’s been estimated that as many as one in five cot deaths is really a murder resulting from a mother with Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy. The MSBP mother (who becomes a serial killer) knows that fear [by the police or investigating authorities] of accusing the wrong person is usually enough to evade accountability and prosecution. No-one is going to challenge a grieving mother, and the father may be in ignorance of what has really happened and thus steadfastly supporting his partner. Evidence is minimal and the cause of death is put down as cot death (also known as Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS), choking, breathing difficulties or some other plausible reason. However, MSBP is an ongoing condition and it is the repeated deaths from ambiguous or unidentified causes which arouse suspicion. There’s a saying in social services: one [death] is cot death, two is suspicious, three is Munchausen. But who is going to take the risk of wrongly accusing a bereaved mother or a caring nurse?

Including the wholly discredited notion of “one [death] is cot death, two is suspicious, three is Munchausen”, this just drips contempt for the silly immature mothers who clutter up hospitals and clinics with concern about their children’s health. It doesn’t take much to imagine how this goes down with social workers on the lookout for unsuitable parents.

It’s not the misdiagnosis of MSpB that’s the problem: it’s the definition of the illness itself.

Not having murdered or raped anyone while he’s been here, the man’s clearly got to go:

BBC’s fake interviewee — an illegal immigrant from the Congo mistakenly plucked from the lobby and interviewed as an expert on British TV — may be deported.

Guy Goma became an overnight sensation after overstaying his tourist visa and several months of unemployment when he was mistaken by a BBC News 24 producer for Guy Kewney, who was supposed to be interviewed about a court case involving Apple Computer and the Beatles Apple Corps Ltd.

Goma — who coincidentally has a master’s degree in business from the Congo — tried to blunder through the question and answer session, the Sunday Mail reported.

His cryptic responses in broken English left his identity and expertise in question. The interview session — which has been downloaded 1.6 million times off The Mail’s Web site and aired countless times on television — has brought Goma worldwide acclaim.

But it also brought the immigrant to the attention of British authorities who may deport him. That would be unfortunate because Goma recently applied for a technology position and wanted to capitalize on the publicity he’d received.

But there are people supporting the man.

And here’s his appearance on the Jonathan Ross show.

(via Metafilter)

ribally based elites, which run ruthless security apparatuses and which do not have the confidence of even a fraction of the people in whose name they have divided the spoils of war.

With the AU mediation leaderless, there is no process today even to attempt to bring Abdul Wahid around – a difficult task, certainly, but a vital one when the alternative is, at best, the probable failure of the DPA and, at worst, a descent into chaos in which the man who created the rebel movement, inasmuch as any one person did, will be portrayed as the villain and the genocidal Sudanese government that made rebellion necessary as a disappointed partner in peace.

Abdul Wahid’s support for the DPA is what is needed to change the opinion of the displaced camps and villages of Darfur, if not the intellectuals in Khartoum and the diaspora. For most Darfurians, Abdul Wahid, not Minni Minawi, is the symbol of the “revolution.” If either of the two factional leaders has a political vision it is Abdul Wahid, no matter how poor his leadership skills and how chaotic and unreliable his negotiating style. Minawi’s Zaghawa are at most 8 percent of the population of Darfur and are themselves divided; Abdul Wahid’s Fur, historic rulers of the sultanate which gives Darfur its name, comprise 26-30 percent and are more cohesive. If either man has support outside his own tribe, it is Abdul Wahid. Not one of his key negotiators at the inter-Sudanese peace talks in Abuja was Fur; Minawi’s, by contrast, were all Zaghawa. […]

The DPA has many strong points but it also has several weaknesses – any one of which could prove fatal. There is insufficient detail about the implementation of a number of key issues; a reliance in many areas of implementation on a government that no one trusts; an absence of any accountability mechanism or human rights monitoring. In essence, Abdul Wahid and the people of Darfur are being told to put aside these concerns and to trust in assurances that the international community will ensure implementation.

But why should they trust the international community? Why should they be impressed that Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party has just committed to disarm the Janjaweed for the seventh time in two years? Why should they believe that we will punish Khartoum for violating a seventh agreement when it has done nothing to punish it for violating the first six? What is different this time around?

Hitchens on the persecution of Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

The Hague is a much less surreal place than Prague, but there are elements of this proceeding that might have made Franz Kafka smile. Unlike Joseph K, Hirsi Ali is very well aware of the evidence against her; indeed, she is the author of it. She has several times explained, in public and in print, that, among other things, she changed her name to get political asylum in the Netherlands. This was partly to prevent her family—her father being a well-known Somali politician—from discovering her whereabouts after she had fled an arranged marriage to a distant relative. The minister in the present case—a former prison warden named Rita Verdonk—comes off less as a Kafka figure than as a cross between Nurse Ratched and Capt. Renault in Casablanca, who was “shocked, shocked” to find out what was going on at Rick’s Cafe. A prisoner of her own rectitude, she has decided that now is the time to display zero tolerance for refugees who falsify their biographies. She has also decided that someone who was quietly leaving anyway must also be kicked out. It reminds me of those cults and sects from which it is impossible to resign, because if you say you want to quit, you will instead be expelled. […]

It will be delightful to have Ayaan Hirsi Ali in Washington. But the American Enterprise Institute, which has offered her a perch, is not the place where she is most needed. In Holland, every day, extremist imams preach intolerance and cruelty, and, when they are criticized, invoke the help of foreign embassies to bring pressure on the Dutch authorities. They face no risk of expulsion. In my youth, the action of lighting one person’s cigarette with another was called—don’t ask me why—a “Dutch f***.” I once heard a young lady, offered a light in those terms, respond loftily by saying, “Doesn’t say much for the Low Countries, does it?” No, it didn’t, and neither does this mean and petty harassment of a woman who has also redefined that old expression “Dutch courage.”

With friends like these…

France, Italy and Germany sanctioned the payment of $45 million in deals to free nine hostages abducted in Iraq, according to documents seen by The Times.

All three governments have publicly denied paying ransom money. But according to the documents, held by security officials in Baghdad who have played a crucial role in hostage negotiations, sums from $2.5 million to $10 million per person have been paid over the past 21 months. Among those said to have received cash ransoms was the gang responsible for seizing British hostages including Kenneth Bigley, the murdered Liverpool engineer.

The list of payments has also been seen by Western diplomats, who are angered at the behaviour of the three governments, arguing that it encourages organised crime gangs to grab more foreign captives.

France:

When Florence Aubenas was freed in June 2005 a government spokesman, Jean-François Cope, said: “There was absolutely no demand for money. No ransom was paid”.

Florence Aubenas: held for 157 days, freed June 2005. Ransom $10 million

Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot: freed December 2004. Ransom $15 million

Italy:

On January 30 this year Gianfranco Fini, then Italian Foreign Minister, denied that Italy paid between $6m and S10m to free Giuliana Sgrena. “Italy did not pay any ransom to obtain the freedom of Giuliana Sgrena in Iraq or any other hostage. There is never a quid pro quo”

Giuliana Segrena: taken February 2005, freed March 2005. Ransom $6 million

Simona Pari and Simona Torretta: taken September 2004, freed 20 days later. Ransom $5 million.

Germany:

Frank Walter Steinmeier, the German Foreign Minister, was asked if paying a ransom for Susanne Osthoff had compromised the security of other German hostages. He replied: “The problem is not ransom payments, but the reporting of them.” That was seen in Germany as indirect confirmation that ransoms were paid

Susanne Ostloff: taken November 25, 2005, and freed three weeks later. Ransom $3 million

Rene Braunlich and Thomas Nitzschke: taken January 24, 2006, and freed on May 2. Ransom $5 million.

st suited to illuminate our age.

To speak truthfully and insightfully today you must have a sense of the absurdity of human life and endeavour. Past attempts to construct grand and noble theories about human history and destiny have collapsed. […]

The satirical cartoon world is essentially a philosophical one because to work it needs to reflect reality accurately by abstracting it, distilling it and then presenting it back to us, illuminating it more brightly than realist fiction can.

That’s why it is no coincidence that the most insightful and philosophical cultural product of our time is a comic cartoon, and why its creator, Matt Groening, is the true heir of Plato, Aristotle and Kant.

You can say the same kind of things for any piece of culture. Indeed whole libraries are full of books saying this kind of thing about novels, or about films. Any worthwhile art says things about life which you can fit into a piece of philiosophy if you want to – though it has a similar deadening effect as explaining what a piece of poetry is trying to say.

A commenter on Baggini’s piece mentions “The Parables of Peanuts“, which analysed the Snoopy and Charlie Brown cartoons. Could there be a clearer warning of where this kind of talk could lead? And let’s not forget “The Tao of Pooh“. No doubt we’ll soon be getting (maybe we already have?) “The Wisdom of Homer”.

ut that’s not really why I do it (though on a related topic, I’ll buy free-range chickens and eggs in the vague hope that somehow the birds have led better lives).

So…do I think the free-range chickens I buy spend 100% of their time happily running around in the farmyard? No – I’m not so naive. Would I spend twice the price for organic stuff? Probably not, but it depends: there’s no point in being fanatical about it. Have I on occasion paid more for food which was marked organic when it was no different from the cheaper non-organic stuff next to it? Undoubtedly. It can sometimes be a con….but that doesn’t mean it’s always a con.