Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic has claimed at least 1,778 lives since August last year with the number of diagnosed cases rising to 35,931, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. On Tuesday the organisation reported 1,732 dead and 34,306 suspected cases of the water-borne disease. United Nations aid agencies have been warning for weeks that the number of cases could top 60,000, with the impending rainy season likely to facilitate the spread of the disease. All 10 of the country's provinces have been hit, according to UN statistics, which remain incomplete because of a lack of local medical personnel and communications problems.
On Tuesday the organisation reported 1,732 dead and 34,306 suspected cases of the water-borne disease.
United Nations aid agencies have been warning for weeks that the number of cases could top 60,000, with the impending rainy season likely to facilitate the spread of the disease.
All 10 of the country's provinces have been hit, according to UN statistics, which remain incomplete because of a lack of local medical personnel and communications problems.
About 600,000 migrant workers left south China's industrial heartland last year as the economic crisis caused exports to shrink and forced factories to close, a senior official said Thursday. The number of migrants departing Guangdong province, one of the world's top makers of toys and electronic appliances, accelerated through 2008 as the global situation worsened, said provincial deputy governor Huang Longyun. "This year the situation is more serious than at any other time since the start of the decade, indeed since the Asian financial crisis," he told a briefing in Beijing, referring to regional turmoil that broke out in 1997. By the middle of last year, when the economic crisis was still in its embryonic stage, only 143,100 workers had left Guangdong, but the number reached half a million at the end of October and has now hit 600,000, he said.
The number of migrants departing Guangdong province, one of the world's top makers of toys and electronic appliances, accelerated through 2008 as the global situation worsened, said provincial deputy governor Huang Longyun.
"This year the situation is more serious than at any other time since the start of the decade, indeed since the Asian financial crisis," he told a briefing in Beijing, referring to regional turmoil that broke out in 1997.
By the middle of last year, when the economic crisis was still in its embryonic stage, only 143,100 workers had left Guangdong, but the number reached half a million at the end of October and has now hit 600,000, he said.
Much of the $586 billion stimulus package proposed by the Jintao is directed at tackling inequality and poverty. This having be said, one of the untold stories of the package is that the CCP dropped the burden on municipalities and provinces. So the amount coming from Beijing is relatively small. Second, China is dependent on resource imports, and these must be purchased with hard cash from abroad. This means that while the US-China balance of trade may remain favorable to China, the China-world balance is likely to tip in favor of the world. So the Chinese are going to be forced to finance essential imports with money from their dollar savings.
Second, China has to maintain 8%+ growth to avoid social unrest. Must likely the Chinese economy is going to shrink in 2009, which is going to create a revolutionary situation akin to what happened during Tianamen.
If the CCP can't control this with economic and social policy, then the PLA will, with brute force. And once the back of any resistance to the regime is broken, with the PLA in power, the country is likely to turn to nationalism. And that means running roughshod over neighbors and in Africa.
We are being set up for a situation in which global war is a strong possibility. It's the same damn thing that happened at the start of the 20th century, and it's happening again. And the death toll is unlikely to be so low this time around. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
A senior Israeli military commander involved in Operation Cast Lead said on Saturday that Hamas militants are suffering from exhaustion and are deserting battle. The commander told reporters that Amir Mansi, the commander of Hamas's rocket-launching program in the Gaza City area who was killed by the IDF on Saturday, fired mortars himself after junior Hamas operatives refused to go outside, fearing an Israeli strike. The IDF official estimated that more than 300 Hamas operatives have been killed since Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza one week ago. This is the highest estimate provided thus far, and the IDF said that Hamas has purposely refrained from releasing casualty figures among its military wing. The commander added that the army is working to tighten its grip on the northern section of the Gaza Strip. The IDF earlier on Saturday killed Mansi, an expert with regard to long-range Grad rockets.
The IDF official estimated that more than 300 Hamas operatives have been killed since Israel launched its ground offensive in Gaza one week ago.
This is the highest estimate provided thus far, and the IDF said that Hamas has purposely refrained from releasing casualty figures among its military wing.
The commander added that the army is working to tighten its grip on the northern section of the Gaza Strip.
The IDF earlier on Saturday killed Mansi, an expert with regard to long-range Grad rockets.
The United Nations has resumed aid distribution in the Gaza Strip after a promise from Israel to guarantee the security of its personnel. UN humanitarian chief Navi Pillay on Friday called for an investigation into possible violations of humanitarian law during Israel's operation in the territory, saying that some incidents may constitute war crimes.
LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in cities across Europe and the Middle East on Saturday to protest against Israel's offensive in Gaza, with sporadic clashes with police as some rallies turned violent. Police in riot gear confronted around 20,000 protesters waving banners and Palestinian flags outside the Israeli embassy in central London, while Oslo police used tear gas as they fought activists on the streets of the Norwegian capital. About 30,000 took to the streets of Paris to call for an end to Israeli attacks in Gaza, with many demonstrators wearing Palestinian keffiyah headscarves and chanting "we are all Palestinians," "Israel murderer" or "peace."
LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in cities across Europe and the Middle East on Saturday to protest against Israel's offensive in Gaza, with sporadic clashes with police as some rallies turned violent.
Police in riot gear confronted around 20,000 protesters waving banners and Palestinian flags outside the Israeli embassy in central London, while Oslo police used tear gas as they fought activists on the streets of the Norwegian capital.
About 30,000 took to the streets of Paris to call for an end to Israeli attacks in Gaza, with many demonstrators wearing Palestinian keffiyah headscarves and chanting "we are all Palestinians," "Israel murderer" or "peace."
Israel has dropped leaflets on the Gaza Strip warning residents that it is to escalate its military action. There is speculation the leaflets may mean Israel will adopt new tactics in its battle with Palestinian militants. On Saturday, Israel attacked dozens of Hamas targets, including what it says were rocket-launching sites, weapons stores, and smuggling tunnels. Israel said Hamas militants fired more than 30 rockets across the border, injuring two Israelis in Ashkelon. Medical staff in Gaza say more than 800 Palestinians have died during the two-week offensive. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, most of them troops.
Israel has dropped leaflets on the Gaza Strip warning residents that it is to escalate its military action.
There is speculation the leaflets may mean Israel will adopt new tactics in its battle with Palestinian militants.
On Saturday, Israel attacked dozens of Hamas targets, including what it says were rocket-launching sites, weapons stores, and smuggling tunnels.
Israel said Hamas militants fired more than 30 rockets across the border, injuring two Israelis in Ashkelon.
Medical staff in Gaza say more than 800 Palestinians have died during the two-week offensive. Thirteen Israelis have been killed, most of them troops.
t's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause - even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves ... This international backing must stop."
t's time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on "people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era". The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.
Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause - even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for "the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions" and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. "The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves ... This international backing must stop."
A senior Israeli military commander involved in Operation Cast Lead said on Saturday that Hamas militants are suffering from exhaustion and are deserting battle.
Umm, I hate to tell him, but firing a few rounds and then running away to fight another day is what guerilla tactics are all about. But does he believe that by bombing Gaza into rubble, Hamas are going to stop fighting ? And does he think that, with Fatah silent on this issue, they do not convince even W Bank Palestinians that Hamas are more on their side while Fatah are on the Israeli. So, the W Bank is being driven in to the arms of Hamas.
the trouble with miltary thinking is that they seem to believe it is all about armies. They win a battle or a war and everything stops.
And the political elite in Israel now have a problem. How do they negotiate a ceasefire ? Who do they talk to ? Every bomb they drop makes Hamas more secure. The Israelis forced the Gaza people into Hamas' arms by only negotiating with Fatah. Fatah became the quisling govt, so anybody who hated the way the IDF and thesettlers acted went to hamas.
Just like their US patrons, the israelis don't seem to understand any right of national self-determination other thean their own. The idea of coexistence doesn't occur to them; they must rule or fight in order to establish rule. keep to the Fen Causeway
New Delhi(PTI): India on Saturday virtually ruled out any Israel type action against Pakistan in the wake of Mumbai terror attacks, saying the situation is not comparable. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, however, maintained that "future course" will decide how India will deal with Pakistan if the latter does not comply with its demands about ending terrorism. "I do not agree to that. Because this is totally wrong. The situation is not at all comparable," he said when asked whether Israeli type offensive against Hamas in Gaza Strip could be an option for the Government against Pakistan. "I have not gone and occupied any (of) Pakistan's land which Israel has done (in Palestine). So, how the situation can be comparable," Mukherjee asked during an interview to CNN-IBN.
New Delhi(PTI): India on Saturday virtually ruled out any Israel type action against Pakistan in the wake of Mumbai terror attacks, saying the situation is not comparable.
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, however, maintained that "future course" will decide how India will deal with Pakistan if the latter does not comply with its demands about ending terrorism.
"I do not agree to that. Because this is totally wrong. The situation is not at all comparable," he said when asked whether Israeli type offensive against Hamas in Gaza Strip could be an option for the Government against Pakistan.
"I have not gone and occupied any (of) Pakistan's land which Israel has done (in Palestine). So, how the situation can be comparable," Mukherjee asked during an interview to CNN-IBN.
Well of course. All the talk about "doing a Gaza" on Pakistan is quite misguided, and this has nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
According to a recent Census Bureau report, whites could become a minority of the U.S. population as early as 2042. In the January/February issue of the Atlantic, contributor Hua Hsu explores the implications of this development from both a demographic and cultural perspective. Also see: Intolerant Chic (October 2008) The new "white people" are bigoted, but not the way you think--or they'll admit. A review of Christian Lander's Stuff White People Like. By Benjamin Schwarz To some extent, Hsu argues, an important shift has already taken place. "Where the culture is concerned," he writes, "[white America] is already all but finished." While some are celebrating this new, more multiethnic America, others, he notes, have reacted with anxiety--sometimes with blunt xenophobia (like Pat Buchanan, who characterizes America's white-minority future as "Third World America"), and sometimes with ironic self-deprecation (like Christian Lander, whose blog and book, both titled "Stuff White People Like," have found popular success). Such concerns about perceived or real challenges to white hegemony are nothing new. Hua Hsu opens his essay with a look at some of the fears about racial encroachment that once prevailed among a certain cadre of scholarly white men in the 1920s: Their sense of dread hovered somewhere above the concerns of everyday life. It was linked less to any immediate danger to their class's political and cultural power than to a perceived fraying of the fixed, monolithic identity of whiteness. From the hysteria over Eastern European immigration to the vibrant cultural miscegenation of the Harlem Renaissance, it is easy to see how this imagined worldwide white kinship might have seemed imperiled in the 1920s.
According to a recent Census Bureau report, whites could become a minority of the U.S. population as early as 2042. In the January/February issue of the Atlantic, contributor Hua Hsu explores the implications of this development from both a demographic and cultural perspective.
Also see: Intolerant Chic (October 2008) The new "white people" are bigoted, but not the way you think--or they'll admit. A review of Christian Lander's Stuff White People Like. By Benjamin Schwarz
To some extent, Hsu argues, an important shift has already taken place. "Where the culture is concerned," he writes, "[white America] is already all but finished." While some are celebrating this new, more multiethnic America, others, he notes, have reacted with anxiety--sometimes with blunt xenophobia (like Pat Buchanan, who characterizes America's white-minority future as "Third World America"), and sometimes with ironic self-deprecation (like Christian Lander, whose blog and book, both titled "Stuff White People Like," have found popular success).
Such concerns about perceived or real challenges to white hegemony are nothing new. Hua Hsu opens his essay with a look at some of the fears about racial encroachment that once prevailed among a certain cadre of scholarly white men in the 1920s:
Their sense of dread hovered somewhere above the concerns of everyday life. It was linked less to any immediate danger to their class's political and cultural power than to a perceived fraying of the fixed, monolithic identity of whiteness. From the hysteria over Eastern European immigration to the vibrant cultural miscegenation of the Harlem Renaissance, it is easy to see how this imagined worldwide white kinship might have seemed imperiled in the 1920s.
That I think is the surprise. Once Hispanics get past the first generation and start speaking English at home, it's surprising how quickly they basically see themselves as white. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
The two big cities I've spent a fair amount of time in are both majority-black, and, yes, black people -- and Latinos and Asians -- like organic food and lattes. They watch soccer and drink craft beer, too.
Anyway, as for white hegemony in culture, I'd submit that whites haven't had cultural hegemony for quite some time. Nearly the entire music industry in America, for example, is composed of artists producing songs that have their roots in Black America. Unless you think marketing the Beatles and Elvis was more important, culturally, than what Robert Johnson and BB King actually produced.
The ratings on baseball continue to tank, while soccer is on the rise -- a trend that I suspect will continue as more kids play soccer instead of baseball in youth leagues, and as America's Latino population continues to boom.
This is the point -- the point where race enters into anything -- at which a pretty sharp observer of politics, like Pat Buchanan, is exposed as the Nazi-loving racist pig he truly is. (Buchanan makes Lou Dobbs look like Martin Luther King.) "White culture" -- how the hell do you define that? -- isn't all but dead. The Very Serious People have these silly ideas that (1) cultures divided by race are still something obvious (in much of America, especially among kids, they're not), and (2) that "culture" is some kind of quantifiable thing rather than a constantly-evolving and -growing series of contributions.
It's not wholly unrelated to Tweety spitting all over Howard Fineman and Chuck Todd for five minutes straight about left-handed, anti-Vatican II, industrial working-class whites in Whothefuckcaresburg County, PA. As though they were going to magically change their opinions about everything because the guy on the ballot was black with a funny name instead of John Kerry or Al Gore. People's understandings of culture -- especially old white people in rural areas and those who masturbate to what they imagine those people's lives are like -- are really screwed up in some corners of America.
The stupid really burns. Conservatives want live babies so they can raise them to be dead soldiers. - George Carlin
Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary who advised Citigroup Inc. as it lost $20 billion in the subprime mortgage crisis, resigned his position as senior counselor and won't stand for re-election to the board. Rubin's departure comes as Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are in talks to merge their brokerage units, said a person familiar with the matter. Rubin, 70, intends to "deepen his involvement in outside activities and organizations to which he has been strongly committed," the New York-based bank said in a statement on Jan. 9. Rubin, who served at the Treasury's helm from 1995 to 1999 under President Bill Clinton, was criticized by investors for collecting more than $150 million in pay in a decade while failing to steer Citigroup away from subprime securities. The investments led to four straight quarterly losses and prompted the bank to turn to the government for a rescue package. "His reputation has very much been damaged by what has happened at Citi," Bert Ely, chief executive officer of Ely & Co., a bank consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. "Fair or not, Citi's problems do reflect negatively on him."
Jan. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary who advised Citigroup Inc. as it lost $20 billion in the subprime mortgage crisis, resigned his position as senior counselor and won't stand for re-election to the board.
Rubin's departure comes as Citigroup and Morgan Stanley are in talks to merge their brokerage units, said a person familiar with the matter. Rubin, 70, intends to "deepen his involvement in outside activities and organizations to which he has been strongly committed," the New York-based bank said in a statement on Jan. 9.
Rubin, who served at the Treasury's helm from 1995 to 1999 under President Bill Clinton, was criticized by investors for collecting more than $150 million in pay in a decade while failing to steer Citigroup away from subprime securities. The investments led to four straight quarterly losses and prompted the bank to turn to the government for a rescue package.
"His reputation has very much been damaged by what has happened at Citi," Bert Ely, chief executive officer of Ely & Co., a bank consulting firm in Alexandria, Virginia, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. "Fair or not, Citi's problems do reflect negatively on him."
