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Tuesday, March 01, 2011

The ripple effects of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya continue to spread

in addition to what's happening in northern africa, the near east and the u.s., we're starting to see tremors in the balkans (croatia and albania, specifically) and southern africa (zimbabwe)... having just been in zimbabwe last week and had a member of mugabe's secret police join the second day of our conference to make sure we weren't plotting against the government, i'm not surprised to see things being stirred up against yet another corrupt dictator...

croatia...

Croatian police clashed with about 15,000 anti-government protesters who rallied in Zagreb on Saturday, with 33 people injured and 58 protesters taken into custody, according to reports of the Croatian news agency HINA. The protesters, among whom were masked members of the Bad Blue Boys group of football supporters, demanded protection of war veterans from prosecution. They clashed with the police in an attempt to reach St. Mark's Square, where the government is located. The police were forced to use force as some protesters acted violently and tried to break police cordons, Zagreb police chief Tomislav Buterin was quoted as saying at a news conference, adding that 33 people were injured in the process, including journalists. A great number of policemen were guarding the downtown area and helicopters were seen flying over the city. The situation calmed down around 4 p.m. local time (1500 GMT). At another Zagreb square Bana Jelacica, thousands protested peacefully against the government and in support of a Croat war veteran awaiting extradition to Serbia in a Bosnian prison. A similar protest was also organized in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek. Croatian police clashed with about 15,000 anti-government protesters who rallied in Zagreb on Saturday, with 33 people injured and 58 protesters taken into custody, according to reports of the Croatian news agency HINA.

The protesters, among whom were masked members of the Bad Blue Boys group of football supporters, demanded protection of war veterans from prosecution. They clashed with the police in an attempt to reach St. Mark's Square, where the government is located.

The police were forced to use force as some protesters acted violently and tried to break police cordons, Zagreb police chief Tomislav Buterin was quoted as saying at a news conference, adding that 33 people were injured in the process, including journalists.

A great number of policemen were guarding the downtown area and helicopters were seen flying over the city. The situation calmed down around 4 p.m. local time (1500 GMT).

At another Zagreb square Bana Jelacica, thousands protested peacefully against the government and in support of a Croat war veteran awaiting extradition to Serbia in a Bosnian prison.

A similar protest was also organized in the eastern Croatian city of Osijek.

croatia isn't the only balkan country ripe for political upheaval... only a month ago, i was in kosovo and i can tell you, the corruption there is on a par with the worst of them... in fact, there has already been uprising and unrest in albania, kosovo's close neighbor, as recently as late january...

zimbabwe's mugabe is still managing to keep his heel on the throat of his people but, once the ball gets rolling, that might change quickly...

Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, remained tense Tuesday as military and police maintained a show of force though protests against President Robert Mugabe called for by a group on the Internet social media site Facebook failed to materialize.

A Facebook page called "Zimbabwe Million Citizen March" called for protests in Harare, Bulawayo and other major cities to “demand the end of the 31-year rule of the iron-fisted and corrupt dictator Robert Mugabe."

Zimbabwean authorities for weeks have warned against any attempt to emulate the mass protests seen across North Africa and the Middle East, and recently arrested 45 people on charges of treason alleging they were conspiring to topple the government.

Those arrests and a general crackdown has been condemned by the United Nations and other human rights groups. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay condemned the arrest and alleged torture of activists and said the arrests “appear to be part of a growing crackdown on civil society and members of the political opposition."

we're only seeing the tip of the iceberg... i predict when we hit june, we might not recognize a lot of the world we thought we knew - and that will be a very good thing...

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Friday, February 25, 2011

Photoblogging - Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe


Victoria Falls through clouds of mist

at sunrise this past wednesday morning, i walked to victoria falls, not knowing quite what to expect but prepared to be astounded... i wasn't disappointed...

the first glimpse was of a small cataract barely visible through the vegetation... it was apparent, however, from the volume of water rushing by and the incredible roar that there was a lot more to be seen...

the sheer volume of water and the precipitous drop creates boiling clouds of mist that rush up the sides of the gorge from the bottom and then are blown about by the breezes... the clouds of mist can be seen for miles across the what is a deceptively flat, densely vegetated landscape...

everything within several hundred yards of the downstream side of the falls is bathed in a more or less perpetual light rain and viewing the falls along the path constructed at the side of the gorge can't be comfortably done without a raincoat and umbrella.. glimpses of the main falls are intermittent through the constantly shifting clouds of mist...

it's an altogether amazing place as symbolically representative of africa as any place I could imagine... the photos and the youtube clip don't begin to do justice to the intense reality of the experience...

walking back, i fell in with a tourist "policeman" named welton... we had quite a talk... he told me about his family, his three children (11, 7 and 22 months) and how he had taught himself welding and tried to operate a small welding business without success in the ever-turbulent zimbabwean economy (unemployment in zimbabwe hovers around 85%)... at one point, he motioned me to be quiet as he pointed out three elephants in the bush... i was able to snap a long-distance shot just before they caught our scent and ambled off in the opposite direction...

i am sure there are many more amazing sights and wonderful people to be encountered in this area of the world and i will be sharing them regularly here...


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Victoria Falls
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
23 February 2011


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Victoria Falls
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
23 February 2011


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Sun through the mist
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
23 February 2011



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Elephant in the trees
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe
23 February 2011

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Monday, February 21, 2011

Some photos from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

at sunrise yesterday morning, i walked to the zambezi river gorge overlook... i wasn't prepared for the sheer ruggedness and vertical drop, particularly after walking through the almost flat surrounding vegetation... and, of course, the photo doesn't begin to do it justice... i didn't have time to make it all the way to the falls but i plan to do that tomorrow morning when we have a half day free before an early afternoon departure...

i didn't realize until coming here that, in order to combat the stratospheric inflation, zimbabwe shifted to the u.s. dollar as currency in 2009... that tamed things down considerably but they're still nicking folks for $30 to see the falls... ah, well... how many times am i going to get the chance to see victoria falls anyway, eh...?


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African sunrise
6:45 a.m., 21 February 2011
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe


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Zambezi River Gorge
21 February 2011
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe


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Children's crocodile warning
Kingdom Hotel
21 February 2011
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe


p.s. i'm particularly fond of that last photo... ;)

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Hello from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe

i arrived yesterday and took this photo as i was leaving the airplane... it's an amazing place...! stay tuned for more pics...!

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Friday, March 06, 2009

Is there any reason whatsoever to believe that the car crash that injured Morgan Tsvangirai and killed his wife was an accident?

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it's all so very convenient, isn't it...?
Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's wife was killed and he suffered injuries in a two-vehicle crash near the capital Friday that sent their car rolling over three times, officials said.

Tsvangirai was traveling to a weekend rally in his home region, south of Harare, when their car sideswiped a truck, said his spokesman, James Maridadi. No other details were immediately available and Tsvangirai's aides refused to elaborate.

Maridadi had initially said the injuries to the Tsvangirais and an aide were not life-threatening. Later, two officials from the Movement for Democratic Change party told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that 50-year-old Susan Tsvangirai was dead and an official statement would come later from the family.

President Robert Mugabe paid a condolence visit to the hospital, but a long rivalry with his new premier fed suspicions about the circumstances surrounding the crash.

i think the real "accident" is that morgan tsvangirai wasn't killed as well... somebody must have screwed up...

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Sunday, June 22, 2008

Is threatening to attack and kill your political opposition a form of vote manipulation?

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this is soo-o-o-o-oooo wrong... and where the hell are the leaders of the african nations and the rest of the world community...?
Only five days before Zimbabwe’s presidential runoff election, the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai announced Sunday that he was pulling out of the race because armed forces backing President Robert Mugabe have made it clear that anyone who votes for Mr. Tsvangirai faces a real possibility of being killed.

At a news conference, Mr. Tsvangirai, who leads the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, or M.D.C., said he was unwilling to ask the party’s supporters to go to the polls on Friday “when that vote will cost them their lives.”

Mr. Tsvangirai’s decision came on a day when governing party youth militia armed with iron bars, sticks and other weapons beat his supporters as they sought to attend a rally for him in Harare.

it's a tragedy that tsvangirai is pulling out, but, given the circumstances, also seems to me to be a display of true leadership...

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Friday, May 23, 2008

Hillary goes off the deep end: RFK, Florida, Michigan and Zimbabwe

i mean, seriously...

OFF. THE. DEEP. END.

from yahoo and afp...

item...

Clinton told a newspaper board in South Dakota she could not understand calls for her to quit, arguing that history showed that some past nominating contests had gone on into June.

[...]

"We all remember, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California, I don't understand it," Clinton said.

item...
On Thursday, Clinton brought up what for Democrats is the nightmare of the 2000 presidential recount debacle to demand the reinstatement of Florida and Michigan delegates.

item...
"People go through the motions of an election only to have it discarded and disregarded," she said.

"We're seeing that right now in Zimbabwe -- tragically an election was held, the president lost, they refused to abide by the will of the people. So we can never take for granted our precious right to vote."

i think she's losing it, if she hasn't already...

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Delta/Northwest, Berlusconi, Zimbabwe, and food riots: waking to a string of unpleasant news

where to start...
Delta Air Lines Inc. and Northwest Airlines Corp., squeezed by record high fuel prices and a slowing economy, are combining in a stock-swap deal that would create the world's biggest carrier.

my experience with one of the previous holders of the "world's biggest airline" title, united, tells me that no good will come of this...

and that's the least of the gloomy news...

the europeans couldn't believe we re-elected bush, and i can't believe the italians were stupid enough to re-elect this annoying, corrupt piece of offal...

Media billionaire Silvio Berlusconi won a decisive victory Monday in Italy's parliamentary election, setting the colorful conservative and staunch U.S. ally on course to his third stint as premier.

meanwhile, another totally corrupt, to-hell-with-the-people dictator desperately hangs on to power while the leaders of neighboring countries do nothing...
President Robert Mugabe's security forces fanned out across Zimbabwe Monday on the eve of a general strike called by the opposition after a judge threw out its bid to force the election results.

[...]

At Saturday's emergency summit in Lusaka, regional leaders discussed the post-election impasse long into the night, but they stopped short of criticising the Zimbabwean government or Mugabe.

Regional leaders have been chided for their traditional reluctance to speak out against 84-year-old Mugabe, seen by many as an elder statesman who still deserves respect for his role in winning Zimbabwe's independence.

Some three million Zimbabweans have fled to neighbouring countries in the wake of the country's economic collapse under Mugabe, who has ruled uninterrupted since independence from Britain in 1980.

A one-time regional model, Zimbabwe is now groaning under the impact of the world's highest rate of inflation while even basic food products such as bread and cooking oil are scarce.

and soaring food prices are having the predicted result across the globe, most notably, in a country that hasn't had any genuine good news in seemingly forever...
The good news is that there hasn't been a coup d'etat in Haiti in the wake of violent protests over increased food prices. However Saturday's vote by 16 of the country's 27 lawmakers to oust Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis means that the country is in the middle of a severe leadership crisis - and that Haiti's Head of State, President Rene Preval, is now politically impotent, bereft of his chief executive.

and here's what really, really hungry people look like, courtesy of spiegel...


Haiti


Pakistan


Philippines

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