The extermination of Zimbabwe’s wild life continues
Yet another case of what seems to be a government-administrated slaughter of wild life in Zimbabwe, has occurred. On the 7th of November three black rhinos were shot to death by poachers on Imire Safari Ranch about an hour’s car ride from the capital Harare. One of the rhinos was pregnant and due to give birth that same week. Warning due to upsetting pictures.
The four black poachers wore camouflage clothing and had parked their car by a neighbouring farm. From there they went on foot to the game park. The white owners of the farm weren’t home but were out patrolling another area for poachers.
NEW ZEALAND: Maori girls eyes gouged out by family for being the devil
A 14-YEAR-OLD New Zealand girl has had her eyeballs gouged by relatives who thought she was possessed by the devil.
The girl was the cousin of Janet Moses, a 22-year-old mother of two who died on October 12 during the same ceremony to lift a Maori makutu (curse), the Dominion Post newspaper reported today.
Relatives gouged her eyes because they believed they saw the devil in them, and poured water down her throat.
They finally took the teenager who was close to death to the Hutt Hospital, near Wellington, where she needed emergency treatment to save her sight.
She was dead for about nine hours before police were called and a homicide investigation is ongoing, with police seeking help from Maori experts.
Zimbabwe: Racist whites wanted back in charge
The hungry children and the families dying of AIDS here are gut-wrenching, but somehow what I find even more depressing is this: Many, many ordinary black Zimbabweans wish that they could get back the white racist government that oppressed them in the 1970′s.
“If we had the chance to go back to white rule, we’d do it,” said Solomon Dube, a peasant whose child was crying with hunger when I arrived in his village. “Life was easier then, and at least you could get food and a job.”
Mr. Dube acknowledged that the white regime of Ian Smith was awful. But now he worries that his 3-year-old son will die of starvation, and he would rather put up with any indignity than witness that.
An elderly peasant in another village, Makupila Muzamba, said that hunger today is worse than ever before in his seven decades or so, and said: “I want the white man’s government to come back. … Even if whites were oppressing us, we could get jobs and things were cheap compared to today.”
His wife, Mugombo Mudenda, remembered that as a younger woman she used to eat meat, drink tea, use sugar and buy soap. But now she cannot even afford corn gruel. “I miss the days of white rule,” she said.
Germany should pay as long as even one survivor lives
Nobody can calculate accurately how much the Germans paid for their crimes against the Jews: By any account, they paid neither too much nor enough.
Most of the money was paid before the euro was introduced. If 60 million Germans for 60 years paid some 12 billion Deutsche mark – it works out that each one paid on average DM 33 per year, or less than one mark a week, between 25 and 50 cents.
In the interim, they became one of the wealthiest countries in the world. They owe their present standing among other things to their wise decision to compensate the Holocaust’s survivors. Had they not done so in the early 1950s, they would not have been welcomed so quickly into the family of nations and would also not be so rich today.
Israel to steal Iraqi oil?
The United States has asked Israel to check the possibility of pumping oil from Iraq to the oil refineries in Haifa. The request came in a telegram last week from a senior Pentagon official to a top Foreign Ministry official in Jerusalem.
The Prime Minister’s Office, which views the pipeline to Haifa as a “bonus” the U.S. could give to Israel in return for its unequivocal support for the American-led campaign in Iraq, had asked the Americans for the official telegram.
The new pipeline would take oil from the Kirkuk area, where some 40 percent of Iraqi oil is produced, and transport it via Mosul, and then across Jordan to Israel. The U.S. telegram included a request for a cost estimate for repairing the Mosul-Haifa pipeline that was in use prior to 1948. During the War of Independence, the Iraqis stopped the flow of oil to Haifa and the pipeline fell into disrepair over the years.
The National Infrastructure Ministry has recently conducted research indicating that construction of a 42-inch diameter pipeline between Kirkuk and Haifa would cost about $400,000 per kilometer. The old Mosul-Haifa pipeline was only 8 inches in diameter.
Israel’s fight against sex trafficking
Marina rarely leaves her two-room home in northern Israel these days.
She is in hiding – wanted by the Israeli authorities for being an illegal immigrant, and by the criminal gangs who brought her here to sell her into prostitution.
Marina – not her real name – was lured to Israel by human traffickers.
During the height of the phenomenon, from the beginning of the 1990s to the early years of 2000, an estimated 3,000 women a year were brought to Israel on the false promise of jobs and a better way of life.
“When I was in the Ukraine, I had a difficult life,” said Marina, who came to Israel in 1999 at the age of 33 after answering a newspaper advertisement offering the opportunity to study abroad.
India, Russia to strengthen ties
India and Russia have agreed to boost economic and military ties at the end of Indian PM Manmohan Singh’s two-day visit to Russia.
The two sides signed agreements to jointly develop a military transport aircraft and mount a join mission to the moon, among other things.
Mr Singh met Russian President Vladimir Putin, the latest in a series of yearly meetings between the two allies.
Race riot in US school
[Can't blame evil whites for this one, or will they?-ed]
A fight outside Lakewood High School yesterday morning escalated into a full-scale riot inside the building, where nearly 150 students attacked each other, innocent bystanders and even police.
The first officers to respond to the scene were set upon by combatants and needed to call in backup from several surrounding towns. Students said the fight was precipitated by rival black and Hispanic gangs, who had been sparring in recent days.
At its height, the melee featured random attacks on bystanders, students throwing chairs and tables and some officers pinned to the ground.
Police in full riot gear and using pepper spray and dogs finally got things under control after about 20 minutes. Worried parents summoned to the school by cell phone calls from their children found it in a state of siege, and some were arrested when they refused to obey orders from police.