Another Term Begins; Something about Chimps

(I’m not very good at titles, sorry, and I know it’s supposed to be one topic per post, but whatever.)

I didn’t really get the classes I asked for, but that’s nothing new.  However, two of them are better than I had hoped so far, and the third has potential.  All of them are intermediate level.  Each class has a mix of students from each of the five continents (if you count that way:)  One thing that has surprised me in the last year — we have been getting a higher number of Africans —  from almost every point in the continent — Mali, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Equtorial Guinea — you name it (almost).  One funny thing is that I have one student name Michel — he and I laughed today about how we would have to be in the same place when I talked about him — otherwise people would think I was talking to myself.

I don’t have a writing class this time, just grammar and listening and speaking.  I think I can make it interesting and fun for all of them.  We will see.

The other thing I came across today is an article about chimps.  According to Discovery News, they have made modifications in the eternal hunt for termites.  While I always read these reports with wonder and awe, I know that we, as humans, will soon exterminate all of the great apes.  We, as humans, do more to our own, value our own humans less than we do them, our fellow primates.

And don’t get me wrong:  I care about and worry over people — humans — who die every day from things that — in a just world — no one human would have to suffer.

To those who waste their time and votes on fertilized cells, I say, get your priorities in order.  Stop harping on single cases and look at the bigger picture.  We are killing ourselves through war and destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

Getting your carpet changed after a hurricane has devistated the region you live in illustrates your mindset better than your words.

This is Rich

Former colonial power and assholes extraordinaire Belgium decides that it has something on the Africans.

I’d love to just copy and paste the VOA account of this, but I will just link and copy this one part:

“Belgium is not saying we want Habre extradited to Belgium to stand trial. They are saying Senegal has an obligation either to extradite him or to prosecute him. Hissene Habre is accused of systematic torture, of thousands of political killings. The documents say his political police which provide a roadmap to how Hissene Habre organized his repression in Chad and lists the names of 1,208 people who died in detention. So there’s a very strong against Hissene Habre for torture and crimes against humanity. Senegal has legal obligation under the Torture Convention and other conventions to either prosecute or extradite him,” Brody said.

Belgium’s action against Senegal comes at a time when the International Criminal Court is on the verge of issuing an arrest warrant against Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir.

Brody dismissed accusations by some Africans that the international justice system has been targeting only Africans.

 

“For Africans who complain that African leaders are being target by international justice, I think there’s a need to show that Africans are capable of delivering justice when crimes are being committed in Africa. In this case, I think Senegal should take the lead and show the world that African courts are capable of bringing to justice Africans who are alleged to have committed these crimes,” Brody said.

Brody is an attorney for Human Rights Watch.

The irony of the Belgians going after African torturers, and all the while George Bush gets to go to a hardware store and ask for a job as  a greeter is more than I can take.

The Zoo (more pics after the break at the end)

My school went to the Houston Zoo today for a field trip.  Everything went rather well.   We had more than 2/3 participation and thankfully, the stragglers I promised got in with a prepaid ticket.

I love the Houston Zoo. 

The Meercats are wonderful.  I got to see the new baby giraffe, but my pics turned out to just be the people reflected in the glass.

The thing about Meercats — and other small mammals — is that they look out for possible predators.  It’s something I had wanted to study before I decided to teach English.

I’m good at what I do.  I just wish now I had pursued my goal.  I would have been watching howler monkeys or orangutans or maybe mandrills sleep.

I made the correct choice.  Education and medicine are two of the fields open now.  We can’t seem to get good teachers.  My job is secure as long as English is spoken on the planet.

I still wish I could have lived these past twenty years in the wild.

I have a friend who plans to move to Africa when her last dog dies.  It’s something to think about.  I’d love to go back home to Africa.  I’d love to end my years visiting all of the countries that I’ve taught students from and then land in Africa.  My home.

More pictures later.

Cool kitty video and more

This kitty (via rump roast) is cool.

Poor Kathleen, she can’t find any fun, only sadness and Marxism talk.  No ‘scandal’ worked to defeat Obama.

On a more serious note, the continent of Africa is blowing up — it’s more than Somalia or Sudan, but the Congo.  Snarky me thought that Sarah Palin might put her expertise to work helping the Congo make their natural resourses work for the general population.  But she’s back in Alaska and that sort of ‘share the wealth’ program only works there.

I love it when my boss calls at 4:59 on a Friday about some web edit and then uses something I said about a FTP issue from 5 years ago to criticize her failure to edit copy — especially when she edited the copy all those years ago.  She’s recently taken to quoting my exact words (in her mind) from several years ago — all the while lying about simple stupid things that have happened since.  As always, my hope is just to last until she retires while making my work as interesting as possible.

RW&B is Chris Bell and Joan Huffman.  We’ll see if it’s interesting (TX Senate seat 17).

Oh, and Obama made a joke about Nancy Reagan. PLEASE.  The woman was horrible to everyone but those she trusted (very few) in her time.  GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK.  Let Nancy cry about being the butt of a joke.  She’s got an entire organization and mouthpiece lauding her hubby day in and day out.  She deserved it.

I Thought That Sounded Fishy

I’ll have to do a little research, but my recollection of the 1980’s is that Republicans all around the country were opposed to divestment in South Africa over apartheid.  The argument went along the lines of free markets will do something or other.

I was quite surprised last night to hear Gov. Sarah Palin claim that Alaska had divested from Sudan.  (Not only because I hadn’t heard it before, but also because the current party line is that the Sudanese are important wrt intelligence in the war on terror.

I was surprised with cause:

“The [Palin] administration killed our bill,” said Alaska state representative Les Gara, D-Anchorage. Gara and state Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, co-sponsored a resolution early this year to force the Alaska Permanent Fund – a $40 billion investment fund, a portion of whose dividends are distributed annually to state residents – to divest millions of dollars in holdings tied to the Sudanese government.

<snip>

“The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens’ financial security is not a good combination,” testified Brian Andrews, Palin’s deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature.

 

Gara says the lack of support from Palin’s administration helped kill the measure.

<snip>

 

The Alaska Permanent Fund currently holds $22 million in Sudan-linked investments, according to the non-profit Sudan Divestment Task Force. Divestment advocates say the fund does not need an act of the state legislature to divest itself of those holdings.

 

The McCain-Palin campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been a strong supporter of Sudan divestment efforts, and has urged Americans to liquidate their holdings in companies who do business there. He was criticized for that position when it was revealed in May his wife Cindy held $2 million in investment funds owning shares of Sudan-linked companies. She sold those holdings following a reporter’s inquiries.

First off, who exactly was she pandering to?  The Christianists are hardcore trying to convert in Sudan, and the poor victims of the government are their target.  Don’t they have enough to deal with?

Second, she just lied.

Third, the McCains have so much money it’s difficult for them to align their positions with their investments.

Luckily, I have no such problem.  I have no investments.  I choose not to buy or eat table grapes from California.  I’ve never had a slice of Domino’s pizza.  I don’t buy anything made in China unless there is no other available.

Which reminds me, I need to add another link on the blog.  Here’s McCain’s score.  And Obama’s and Durbin’s.  I know that C is passing, but as a teacher, I love those A+’s.

Somalia News

I haven’t been as good as I had hoped to be about keeping up with the situation in Somalia and Africa at large.  I’ll try my best to get back to it properly.

I came past a link today about the Islamic Courts taking control of the port in Kismayo.  Ethiopia has been in Somalia militarily since late 2006 and have not made much progress.  The African Union peacekeepers from Uganda and Burundi are under attack almost daily in the capital.

I have always supported the AU presence in Somalia.  The only problem is that the AU has some other problems to deal with — namely Darfur and the Congo.  The invasion of Somalia by Ethiopia was as bad as our invasion of Iraq in my mind.  The fact that yappers like Bill Bennett and his side kick Seth thought it was such a great idea and then forgot about it is one of the main reason I scoff at both of them.   It’s been more than a year and a half and it looks more and more like the Ethiopians took their play book straight from the Bush administration and the neocons like Bennett.

How easy it must be to sit on your fat ass in Washington D.C. as Bennett does and carp about politics.

A Few Things

Our summer term starts tomorrow.  We’ve got a lot to offer — new mini-desktops in the Sanako lab and some new texts — same teachers though.  I shouldn’t get into that.  I’ve got two intermediate grammar classes and the research paper class.  I haven’t taught the latter in a while, so it should be interesting.

The situation in Somalia and Burma are troubling for different reasons.  Somalia is still to this day struggling with the Ethiopian occupation, and on top of that, people can’t afford to buy food.  Add to all that the Bush administration bombing civilians and it is a place that I would wish on no one (down in the comments, the blogger takes solace in the flypaper argument. 

Laura Bush came out today to speak about Burma.  When asked why she has taken such an interest, she gave a standard answer, but I’m sorry, I think she was sent out for other reasons — or she asked to be to.  My doubt about her is based on her so-called initiative about gangs that has gone nowhere since she announced it.  Burma has had a repressive regime for a very long time.  I couldn’t get what she was saying about it having been one of the richest countries in the region.  That must have happened before I was born.

About taxes and energy — Republicans are trying to lay blame at the Congressional Dems and ethanol.  It’s not that, or rather that’s a small part.  It’s that speculators, OPEC and instability have pushed oil to record prices.  that makes it more expensive to produce basic foodstuffs, and countries have stopped exporting.  A tax holiday for the summer on gas is a cynical ploy.  It’s even worse than the rebate being sent out — worse than the one the Bush administration sent out no so long after gaining office. 

I am weary of the tax whiners.  They are the same ones who lived high on the hog in early 2000’s.  Now that things are tight for everyone, they want to get more of theirs back and screw everyone else.  Too bad.

Homeland Security Makes My Point

From an article in USA Today:

Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation “embarrassing,” and some members of Congress vow to fix it.

<snip>

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says “common sense” suggests Mandela should be removed. He says the issue “raises a troubling and difficult debate about what groups are considered terrorists and which are not.”

Duh.

But it’s no big deal, right?  No harm done, right?  This doesn’t make us look like idiots, does it?

When ANC members apply for visas to the USA, they are flagged for questioning and need a waiver to be allowed in the country. In 2002, former ANC chairman Tokyo Sexwale was denied a visa. In 2007, Barbara Masekela, South Africa’s ambassador to the United States from 2002 to 2006, was denied a visa to visit her ailing cousin and didn’t get a waiver until after the cousin had died, Berman’s legislation says.

That’s your tax dollars at work protecting you from scary South Africans.

Related post here.

Divestment and Bush’s Idea of Foreign Policy

Bush signed a bill that will allow state and local governments to divest from Sudan.  From an article in the Sudan Tribune, published last Friday,

The US House of Representatives voted unanimously in favor of a Senate version of “Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007″ on December 18th.

The bill aims at providing protection from lawsuits to State and local divestment efforts in Sudan to sanction it over the Darfur crisis labeled genocide by the US administration.

The bill also allows asset managers to divest from foreign companies operating in Sudan without being deemed in violation of their fiduciary duty. Also no government agency shall grant federal contracts to companies believed to be conducting business in Sudan unless they certify otherwise.

The Sudan Accountability and Divestment Act of 2007 specifically targets the main sources of revenue of Khartoum; oil, power production, mining and military equipment. It will only impact foreign companies since most American businesses are prohibited from dealing with Sudan under executive order issued in 1997 by former president Bill Clinton.

The legislation was sent to Bush last Friday along with other bills which were all signed with the exception of two including the divestment bill.

The US administration has been intensively lobbying Congressmen to kill the bill citing concerns over limiting the president’s constitutional powers to conduct foreign policy.

To me, this is yet another way that Bush is still trying to increase executive powers.  I’m going to have to do a little more research, but divestment made a big difference in ending apartheid in South Africa, no?

From what I can tell, Bush added a signing statement instead of vetoing the bill.  I guess it’s one thing to side with an inmate on death row, but yet another to appear to side with something Bush himself called genocide.  From a Reuters article:

But he said some provisions of the new law could interfere with his ability to conduct foreign policy and therefore he would “construe and enforce this legislation in a manner that does not conflict with that authority.”

At least I can say this for the Bush administration: they have a unitary vision concerning the unitary executive.

Sec. of State Rice in Africa

But nothing much got accomplished.  Sure she urged, she sought and she pushed, but to what end?

Sec. Rice went to Addis Ababa and talked about Somalia:

She said the US appreciated the deployment of an advance Ugandan force but they “frankly need to be joined soon by other forces”.

The US is offering to help African states who send troops to Somalia.

(snip — link to a report on the extremely competent Ugandan forces)

Ms Rice said she and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi had “emphasized the need for a ceasefire” between the Somali government and “non-extremist opposition groups”.

(My emphasis)

In a meeting about DR Congo, Rice met with reps from that country, Burundi, Uganda, and Rwanda:

They included the “rapid strengthening” of security forces in Congo, reiteration of a commitment not to “harbour negative forces” and a recommitment to previous agreements. But there appeared to be no concrete or new ideas on the table.

Also in the meeting with the Ethiopian PM:

“I also urged the prime minister to avoid any acts that might heighten friction between Eritrea and Ethiopia and to take concrete steps to lessen tensions on the border,” she said.

Ethiopia remains in a tense stand-off with its arch-enemy Eritrea, following the dissolution last week of a commission tasked with brokering an agreement on the neighbours’ disputed common border.

“There must not be a resumption of hostilities initiated by either side,” she added.  

There was supposed to be some talk about Darfur, but the Sudanese government rep. skipped the meeting.

For current info on Sudan and Darfur:  UNMIS