Monday, July 31, 2006
 Netpano.com |
World sits and watches as Lebanon faces destruction Regina Leader-Post, Canada - … what is even more disturbing is the position taken by the United States in the … time and again by President George W. Bush, is to promote democracy in that … A Real Plan For Freedom, democracy, Security in Lebanon and the … Americans in Lebanon: Neither the power to act, nor to influence |
Monday, July 31, 2006
28% approval rating for Congress. Bush is at 36. And by the GOP’s definition, most Americans hate America:
More than twice as many respondents ? 63 percent versus 30 percent ? said the Iraq war had not been worth the American lives and dollars lost.
Monday, July 31, 2006
After all, how important really is stopping the next September 11 when there are more important issues like gays to worry about. The Republicans are simply obsessed with cultural issues, to the expense of national security and every other problem facing this nation. In this case, they went so far as to blatantly violate their own Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy, launching an eight-month investigation – eight months, folks – in order to catch this guy simply for being gay. That is simply an absurd waste of resources during war time. We have yet to catch Osama bin Laden. We are convinced that we will be struck again. And the Bush administration is more interested in wasting time and resources going after gays. This is what the Republican party has become.A decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist was dismissed from the U.S. Army under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, though he says he never told his superiors he was gay and his accuser was never identified. Bleu Copas, 30, told The Associated Press he is gay, but said he was “outed” by a stream of anonymous e-mails to his superiors in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C…. An eight-month Army investigation culminated in Copas’ honorable discharge on Jan. 30 — less than four years after he enlisted, he said, out of a post-Sept. 11 sense of duty to his country. Copas now carries the discharge papers, which mention his awards and citations, so he can document his military service for prospective employers. But the papers also give the reason for his dismissal.Finally, read this part of the story. The Army went out of its way to find ‘the gay’ and kick him out. This isn’t just a flagrant violation of policy, it’s an incredibly screwed up, and deadly, look at what the Bush administration’s, and this Pentagon’s, priorities really are. Finding Osama clearly isn’t one of them.Shortly after Copas was appointed to the 82nd Airborne’s highly visible All-American Chorus last May, the first e-mail came to the chorus director. “The director brought …
Monday, July 31, 2006
 Aljazeera.net |
The Battle for the Soul of the Middle East Zaman Online, Turkey - … Rice on her latest visit to the region, forcing the United States to arrange … It will face forces espousing ?Islamic democracy.? Given Bush?s interest in … Bush, Rice await birth of new Mideast A cautionary tale for Muslim rulers Roots of Mideast dissension |
Sunday, July 30, 2006
International Herald TribuneJuly 29, 2006Sacrificing A Democracy While Supporting An AllyBy Roger CohenNEW YORK–When I was in Lebanon 22 years ago, a few months after 241 U.S. servicemen were killed by a suicide bomber, I met Fouad Siniora, now the Lebanese prime minister. He was working then as a financier and, in the world-weary way of his compatriots, he said:”Lebanon is a wound kept open to bleed a little when it is in the interest of one of the parties.”Siniora seemed wise to me then, a shrewd man trying to plan a business in the midst of civil war, and the ensuing couple of decades have demonstrated his foresight. The blood has kept flowing in Lebanon, with occasional interludes of peace; a little blood sometimes, and then, at moments like this one, a lot.Lebanon gained independence from France in 1943, five years before the foundation of Israel. Like its southern neighbor, it has found survival a battle. Like Iraq, another post-Ottoman invention, it has struggled with a multiplicity of religions, clans and ethnicities. Like any small country squeezed between greater powers, it has suffered its share of abuse.Back in 1984, when I was in Beirut, the country was still suffering the consequences of the 1982 Israeli invasion, aimed in part at evicting the Palestine Liberation Organization. The PLO had been using Lebanon as a base, much like Hezbollah today.The names change, the aims shift a little, the parties shuffle around the dance floor. But the basic facts endure: Lebanon is a weak country, flanked by a far stronger Israeli state still trying to define its borders, and living in an Arab neighborhood more ready to let Beirut “bleed a little” than back the much-trumpeted Arab cause with arms.A little over two weeks into the conflict’s current incarnation, it is safe to say the following: Hezbollah has already kept the Israeli Army busy longer than the army of any Arab state in the past several decades; the standing of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, is likely to rise. The disarming of Hezbollah – the group widely believed to have been behind the slaughter of the U.S. Marines back in 1983 – appears remote.Whatever vestigial standing the United States had as an honest broker in the Middle East has disappeared with the Bush administration’s embrace of Israel’s sustained use of force in response to Hezbollah’s murderous July 12 cross-border raid.With little subtlety and great predictability, the administration has gone through its familiar post-9/11 paces: Hezbollah equals terrorism, terrorism must be crushed, ruthlessness is the only way forward, and damn the consequences.This position has allowed Israel to do its own post-9/11 thing. “Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror,” said Haim Ramon, the Israeli justice minister.Not so: A victory for Hezbollah is a victory for Hezbollah, which is not Al Qaeda, which is not the Palestinian national movement, which is not the Iraqi insurgency, which is not homegrown European Muslim suicide bombers.Trying to turn the problems of the world into a single undifferentiated issue – the war on Islamic terror – does nobody any good.Witness the current mayhem, a reflection of a terrible American failure to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in any serious way over the past five years.Problems must be fixed one at a time, which requires the curiosity to understand them, and to come up with particular solutions. Not everyone in the Middle East wants to be Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, a man generally ready to do America’s bidding. Siniora, who is understandably furious, certainly does not want to be. Nor, of course, does President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.But nor do these leaders want to be in the pocket of Iran. The United States has room to probe this ambivalence. But first, of course, it must stop giving a green light to Israel to, in the current parlance, smash terror.Bush, however, is very unlikely to change course, especially in an American election year. His stance is popular not only with many Jewish Americans, but also the Christian right.”The United States has been more a party to this conflict than an arbiter,” said Mourhaf Jouejati, director of Middle Eastern Studies at George Washington University. “Lebanese democracy, a supposedly cherished American aim, has been sacrificed for the Israeli ally.”The fragile Lebanese polity born since the withdrawal of Syrian troops last year has been shattered.The democratic movement of 2005, applauded by the State Department as the “Cedar Revolution,” has been left with shipments of American food as a token of sympathy. America’s regional record of cheering on democratic uprisings and disappearing when the going gets rough – remember the Shiites of Iraq at the end of the 1991 Gulf war – has notched another unhappy chapter.The chapter could drag on. Unless America reins in Israel and engages with Syria as a means to curtail Hezbollah, the two sides could fight it out for months. Israel needs a clear victory and Hezbollah needs to survive to proclaim its own victory: Those competing aims look like a recipe for drawn-out conflict.Twenty-two years ago, the Beirut airport was shattered and the only way out was to take a small launch from the Jounieh fishing harbor, north of Beirut, to a waiting vessel anchored 200 yards offshore.I wrote then in The Wall Street Journal: “As the launch bobs beneath the liner, women scream, children stand paralyzed with fright, and officials nudge people into making the leap aboard. The alternative is go to back, so the Lebanese shut their eyes and perform yet another tearful and weary act – a jump across a yard or more of heaving sea. Then it is over.”But it’s not. Lebanon still bleeds. Siniora deserves better, not least from Washington. And Israel deserves a peace that no show of might will deliver.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Huh. Gosh, do you think privacy might actually be a good issue for Democrats to jump on? Oh that’s right, I’ve been saying this for a good ten months. Silly me.Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid discovered this week he was the victim of identity theft after someone used his MasterCard number to charge about $2,000 at a Wal-Mart and other stores in Monroe, North Carolina.The Nevada Democrat said he found out someone had obtained the number after opening his bill Tuesday night.There’s a part of me that thinks the Democrats don’t even deserve to take back Washington. Short of Iraq, there is NO other issue that I can think of that keeps popping into the news with weekly tragedies other than privacy. And the issue, privacy, affects so many issues that progressives care about, from contraception to abortion to gay rights to domestic spying to your tax returns and medical records. This is a perfect issue to stealthily forward a progressive agenda and overtly address the real needs of every single American. It’s a no brainer. Or so you’d think. The Democratic party and its leadership are nowhere to be found on this issue.If they can’t seize on political manna from heaven when it drops in their lap twice a week for ten months, then seriously, what good are they?Sigh.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
| Bush’s Demagogy of Democracy Zaman Online, Turkey - … Since spreading freedom is the main duty of the United States, it holds the right to … suppose that the US goal is really to bring freedom and democracy to Iraq … Iran delivers a powerful warning without firing a shot Coincidence or Consequence? |
Sunday, July 30, 2006
 Washington Times |
Bush sending Rice back to the Mideast Boston Globe, United States - … has prolonged a conflict that threatens to unravel any gains the United States has made in its effort to improve relations and foster democracy in the region. … Bush, Blair Push Plan To End Mideast Fighting Bush, Blair to seek UN cease-fire resolution President Bush, Tony Blair Hold a Joint News Conference |
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Guess who? Sounds like they also need a juicy tax break, courtesy of the middle class taxpayers.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
After flirting with the EU-3 on Nuclear issues for a long time and basically getting its way, Iran seems to be doing the same with the Lebanon/Hizbollah debacle, using it as a distraction and smoke screen. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/viewpoints/articles/0723vipkittrie0723.html The big winner thus far in the clash between Hezbollah and Israel is Iran. Through attacks by its proxy, Hezbollah, Iran is deftly succeeding in distracting the world from the rapidly progressing Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran’s success brings it one step closer to one of its ultimate goals. That goal is America’s destruction. As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has starkly put it: “God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States. . . . This goal is attainable, and surely can be achieved.” Why does Iran want to destroy the United States? Because the United States is the foremost purveyor of Western culture. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, wants to root out Western culture because it is contrary to Islam and in his view directs “everyone toward materialism while money, gluttony and carnal desires are made the greatest aspiration.” As Khamenei put it in an interview in May 2004: “The source of all human torment and suffering is the ‘liberal democracy’ promoted by the West.” Iranian President Ahmadinejad claims he was divinely given the presidency for a single task: provoking a ????clash of civilizations???? wherein the Muslim world, led by Iran, defeats the ????infidel???? West, led by the United States, and thereby hastens the return of the ????Hidden Imam,???? a messiah-like figure. According to Hassan Abbassi, chief strategist for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards: ????We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization . . . There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West . . . We know how we are going to attack them . . . Anything that can be done to terrorize and create fright in the infidel camp is our privilege and honor. . . We have to uproot liberal democracy from the face of the world.” — Just an Old Salt, by the water Spirit Group Paddles There are 3 replies, with the last one an 2006-07-30 at 08:02:15 by saltydognh
Saturday, July 29, 2006
| United States Ready To Help Cuba Move Toward Democracy Washington File, DC - … "The United States … [wants] to encourage all nations to join with us in supporting the right of all Cubans to define a future of freedom and democracy for … |
Saturday, July 29, 2006
USA out-flanked in Eurasia energy politics?
Publication time: 24 July 2006, 13:06
Curiously and quietly the United States is apparently being out-flanked in its now-obvious strategy of controlling major oil and energy sources of the Persian Gulf and Central Caspian Basin.
The US’ global energy strategy it is now clear was the actual reason for the highly costly regime change in Iraq. The quest for energy control has informed Washington support for high-risk ‘color revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgystan in recent months. It lies behind US activity in the Western Gulf of Guinea states of Africa, as well as in Sudan, source of 7% of China oil import. It lies behind US policy vis-??-vis Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela and Evo Morales’ Bolivia.
In recent months, however, this strategy of global energy hegemony, a strategic US priority, has shown signs of producing just the opposite: a coalition of the unwilling, states who increasingly see no other prospect, despite traditional animosities, but to cooperate to oppose what they see as a US push to control it all.
Washington is beginning to realize it might have been too clever by about half, as is evident in recent public statements to both China and Russia, two nations whose cooperation in some form is essential to the success of the global US energy project.
Offending both China and Russia
Contrary to advice from older China hands, including, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, architect of the Nixon 1972 opening to China, the White House denied visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao the honor of a full state dinner when he visited in April, serving instead a short lunch. Hu was publicly humiliated by a well-known Falun Gong heckler at the White House press conference and by other obvious humiliations. In other words, the White House welcomed Hu with a diplomatic slap in the face.
At the same time, Vice President Dick Cheney slapped Putin’s Russia with the most open attack on its internal human rights policy as well as its energy policy in a speech in the Baltic state of Lithuania in early May, where Cheney declared, ‘the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people,’ and accusing Russia of energy ‘intimidation and blackmail.’ Some days later, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reiterated that Russia should be ‘pressed’ on democratic reforms. Rice also slapped China in the face in March during a trip to Southeast Asia, calling China a ‘negative force’ in Asia. Curiously, Washington has accused China of ‘not playing by the rules,’ and declaring that China is ’seeking to control energy at the source,’ conveniently ignoring the fact that that had been US energy policy for the past century.
The significance of taking aim simultaneously at both Russia and China, the two Eurasian giants, the one the largest investor in US Treasury securities, the other the world’s second most developed nuclear power, reflects the realization in Washington that all may not be as seamless in the quest for global hegemony as originally promised by various strategists in and around the Bush Administration.
SCO takes on new weight
At the June 15, 2006 SCO meeting, China and Russia initiated discussion that Iran become a full SCO member. Iran’s President was received as an honored head of state, holding private talks with both Russia’s Putin and China’s President Hu Jintao, an obvious contrast to Hu’s recent snub by the Bush White House. And a Sinopec-Iran energy deal worth upwards of 0 billion is about to be signed. That’s hardly the kind of diplomatic pressure on Iran Washington hoped for.
That SCO meeting was held in Shanghai. Even if full membership for Iran was postponed, the fact remains that Russia and China both want to seal closer cooperation with Iran in Eurasian energy development. Washington is obviously uneasy with that development. On the eve of the SCO summit,US Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld criticized Russia and China for trying to draw Iran into closer co-operation with SCO, declaring, ‘It strikes me as strange that one (sic–w.e.) would want to bring into an organization that says it’s against terrorism…one of the leading terrorist nations in the world, Iran.’
Indicative of the new independent stance of the SCO nations, the Chinese Secretary-General of SCO, Zhang Deguang responded to Rumsfeld, declaring that the SCO did not consider Iran to be a terrorist state, a comment unthinkable until recently.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, SCO, was founded in June 2001 by China and Russia, and includes Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Its stated goal was to facilitate ‘cooperation in political affairs, economy and trade, scientific-technical, cultural, and educational spheres as well as in energy, transportation, tourism, and environment protection fields.’ Recently, however, the SCO is beginning to look like an energy-financial bloc in central Asia consciously constructed to serve as a counter-pole to US hegemony.
In the last months their members have taken several potentially strategic steps to distance themselves from US dependence, both in energy as well as monetary dependence.
Russia’s energy geopolitics
In his recent State of the Union speech, President Putin anno unced that Russia is planning to make the Ruble convertible into other major currencies, such as the Euro, and to use the Ruble in its oil and gas transactions. The convertible Ruble is due to be introduced according to latest Russian comments in July, 2006, six months before originally planned. Russia also has stated it plans to shift a share of its now considerable dollar reserves away from the dollar and that it will use billion in US dollars to purchase gold reserves.
Russia’s state-owned natural gas transport company, Transneft, has consolidated its pipeline control to become the sole exporter of Russian natural gas. Russia has far the world’s largest natural gas reserves and Iran the second largest. With Iran, the SCO would control the vast majority of the world’s natural gas reserves, as well as a significant portion of its oil reserves, not to mention potential control of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow corridor for a majority of Gulf oil tanker shipment to Japan and the West.
In late May it was reported that Russia and Algeria, the two largest gas suppliers to Europe, have agreed to increased energy co-operation. Algeria has given Russian companies exclusive access to Algerian oil and gas fields and Gazprom and Sonatrach will co-operate in delivery of gas to France. Putin also has cancelled Algeria’s .7 billion debt to Russia, and for its part Algeria will buy .5 billion worth of Russian advanced jet fighters, air defense systems and weapons.
On May 26 Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov also announced Russia will definitely supply Iran with sophisticated Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missiles, reportedly as a prelude to supply far more sophisticated weapons.
Then, in one of the more fascinating moves by Putin’s Russia in the area of energy geopolitics, the Kremlin-controlled Gazprom gas monopoly has entered into quiet negotiations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert through Olmert’s billionaire friend, Benny Steinmetz, to secure Russian natural gas supplies to Israel via an undersea pipeline from Turkey to Israel.
Olmert’s office has said, according to the Israeli paper, Yediot Ahronot, it will support the Gazprom proposal. In several years Israel faces gas shortage from Tethys Sea drilling and soon gas from Egypt. Tethys Sea gas is projected to run dry in a few years. British Gas is in talks to supply gas from Gaza but Israel disputes BG right to drill.
But even with Egypt and Gaza gas, shortages are expected by 2010 unless Israel is able to find new sources. Enter Gazprom and Putin. The Russian gas would be diverted from the underutilized Russia-Turkey Bluestream pipeline which Russia built for increasing influence over Turkey two years ago. Putin clearly seeks to gain a lever inside Israel over the one-sided US influence on Israel policy.
China energy geopolitics also in high gear
Beijing for its part is also moving to ’secure energy at the sources.’ On May 26, Kazakhstan crude oil began to flow into China from a newly-completed oil pipeline from Atasu in Kazakhstan to the Alataw Pass in far western China Xinjiang province, a 1000 kilometer route announced only last year. It marked the first time oil is being pumped directly into China.
Kazkhstan is also a member of the SCO, but had been regarded by Washington since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as its sphere of influence, with ChevronTexaco, Condi Rice’s old oil company, a major oil participant.
By 2011 the new pipeline would extend some 3000 kilometers to Dushanzi where the Chinese are building its largest oil refinery due to complete by 2008. China financed the entire 0 million pipeline and will buy the oil. In 2005 China’s CNPC state oil company bought PetroKazkhstan for .2 billion ands will use it to develop oilfields in Kazakhstan.
China is also in negotiations with Russia for a pipeline to deliver Siberian oil to Northeast China a project that could be completed by 2008, and a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Heilongjiang in China’s Northeast. China just passed Japan to rank as world’s second largest oil importer behind the United States.
Beijing and Moscow are also integrating their electricity economies. In late May the China State Grid Corp announced it plans to increase imports of Russian electricity fivefold by 2010.
The Shanghai Co-operation Organization, with inclusion of new observer candidates Iran, India, Indonesia and Mongolia, also includes in addition to China, Russia and Kazkhstan the Eurasian states of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. A close look at the map of Eurasia will indicate the devastating geopolitical implications for the post-1990 Washington Eurasia domination strategy.
It’s little wonder that some neo-conservative Washington hawks are getting alarmed. Suddenly the world of potential ‘enemies’ is no longer restricted to the Islam-centered War on Terror. Leading neo-conservative ideologue, Robert Kagan, whose wife, Victoria Nuland, had worked as Vice President Cheney’s Deputy National Security Advisor until being named as US Ambassador to NATO, wrote a prominent OpEd recently in the Washington Post.
Kagan declared, in reference to Russia and China, ‘Until now the liberal West’s strategy has been to try to integrate these two powers into the international liberal order, to tame them and make them safe for liberalism.’ Kagan co-founded the hawkish Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990’s to among other things advocate a major US military buildup and forced regime change in Iraq.
Kagan continued, ‘If, instead, China and Russia are going to be sturdy pillars of autocracy over the coming decades, enduring and perhaps even prospering, then they cannot be expected to embrace the West’s vision of humanity’s inexorable evolution toward democracy and the end of autocratic rule.’
Kagan charged that China and Russia have emerged as the protectors of ‘an informal league of dictators’ – that, according to Kagan, currently includes the leaders of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Burma, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Venezuela, Iran and Angola, among others – around the world, who, like the leaders of Russia and China themselves, resist any efforts by the West to interfere in their domestic affairs, either through sanctions or other means.
‘The question is what the United States and Europe decide to do in response,’ wrote Kagan. ‘Unfortunately, al-Qaeda may not be the only challenge liberalism faces today, or even the greatest.’ The question, as Kagan wisely states it, is what the United States or Europe can do in response. The Washington pre-emptive hawk strategy is showing some tattered edges.
* F. William Engdahl is the author of ‘A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics,’ Pluto Press Ltd. His website is www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. Revised June 16, 2006
Saturday, July 29, 2006
King of Zembla: The death, three years ago, of British weapons inspector David Kelly smelled at the time. It stinks now. Democrats.com: Republican hypocrisy on teen pregnancy Confined Space: Unions petition OSHA to deal with a slow-motion chemical disaster. Orcinus: That head-scratchin’ right-wing logic The Poor Man Institute: Your professional pundit class in action Take [...]
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Reuters:The toll from a car bombing and mortar attacks in central Baghdad climbed to at least 27 people killed and 101 wounded, Interior Ministry sources said.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
The Way of the Gun – Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, Comments, Discussion, Taglines, Trailers, Posters, Photos, Showtimes, Link to Official Site, …
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The German Way by Hyde Flippo is available at Amazon.com. When in Germany, Do as the Germans Do by Hyde Flippo ?? When in Germany, Do as the Germans Do by …
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Saturday, July 29, 2006
| United States, Europe Warming Once-Chilly Relations, Envoy Says Washington File, DC - … of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has said that, growing up under communism, her generation viewed the United States has a symbol of democracy. … |
Friday, July 28, 2006
I forgot to post this from the other day. Colbert tries to explain to Matt Lauer and Jake Tapper what his show is all about.Video-WMP Video-QTColbert: This show is the news. Not only is this show-the news, Evidently, it is news.(h/t Mike)
Friday, July 28, 2006
 Washington Post |
Baghdad Chaos Pushes Bush to Shift US Troops New York Times, united states - … of the United States component there,? he said. ?The security of Baghdad can tip the scales to achieving a self-sufficient democracy, or losing in Iraq. … Bush: More troops needed to combat Baghdad violence Plan for troops, training aims to calm Iraq violence Text of Bush-al-Maliki news conference |
Friday, July 28, 2006
Author: admin
Subject: Presidency – UK Group Condemns Zonal Agitations
Posted: Mon Jul 24, 2006 5:20 pm (GMT 0)
Topic Replies: 0
The Nigerian Project (TNP), a UK based Nigerian think-tank over the weekend strongly condemned what it called the present anti-democratic agitations across Nigeria for the selection of a Nigerian President based on zonal or geographic considerations.
Meanwhile, Nigerians based in the European Union (EU) have kicked off a survey on the acceptability of the presidential candidates in the 2007 elections
In a press statement made available to THISDAY and signed by Chief Bimbo Roberts Folayan, Chairman, TNP, UK and General Secretary, Omusa Baba Ohyoma, the group warned that the present campaign if not stopped, will have far reaching implications for the country.
TNP, the largest UK-based Nigerian group which supports the candidacy of former military President Ibrahim Babangida warned that the “present agitation across the country raises important moral and political issues in a far-reaching way; In particular, we like to emphasize the principles of non-discrimination and equality under the law, a violation of which serve to define significant limits on the development of democracy and its institutions.”
The statement read in part: “We will like to warn that this present campaign if not stopped, will have far reaching implications for our country, Nigeria.
“As the largest Nigerian organisation in the United Kingdom, with membership from all the states of Nigeria, we are deeply concerned that our politicians are once again compromising the important gains which the country has made since this new democratic dispensation.
“We will like to state that as responsible citizens with equal stake in the Nigerian project, we will not fold our hands and allow unprincipled politicians plunge the nation into crisis as in the past,” the release read in part.
The group further reminded politicians that a South South, South East or Northern President is both undemocratic and unacceptable. Any President elected under that kind of arrangement will certainly be unacceptable to Nigerians in the Diaspora or at home. It is certain that such an arrangement can only produce an inferior President.
Speaking with THISDAY, from Brussels over the weekend in a related development, Dr. Peter Omegbei said the survey which EU-based Nigerians have resolved to undertake is a poll on the ratings and public acceptability of all the presidential candidates and disclosed the exercise would be scientific and made public.
According to Omegbei, the exercise would enable Nigerians judge and decide who to vote for.
His words: “What we are doing is a critical approach to ;politics in Nigeria. It has never been so before now. We want to contribute our own quota to the development of democracy in our country. That is why this scientific survey is being done.
“Its outcome will be published in all national newspapers in Nigeria and international media in Europe. We have had a stunted growth because of the local quality of leaders we have always had. Now is the time to say no to thieves, no to illiterates who don’t understand the 21st Century development model that drives growth all over the world.
“So far, we would be fair to all. But we are concerned with only those who have expressed c ear interest in running for the presidency in 2007.
“People like General Ibrahim Babangida, Brig-General Buba Marwa, Gov. Victor Attah, Prof Pat Utomi, Gov. Peter Odili, SenatorUdo Udoma, General Muhammadu buhari, Gov. Makarfi and Gov. adamu Abdulahi of Nasarawa State.” Apart from the aforementioned, the present agitation across the country raises important moral and political issues in a far-reaching way; In particular, we like to,emphasize the principles of non-discrimination and equality under the law, a violation of which serve to define significant limits on the development of democracy and its institutions.
We will like to remind our countrymen and women that sometimes, the effort to rectify a violation of one right or principle often leads to practices that threaten or violate the other.
Besides, the use of the terms, North Central, North East, North West, South – East and South- South or South-West is synonymous with ???legal citizens??? of those geographic areas which is revelatory of a jingoistic mindset, which casts the real issue of legality (citizens and legal aliens versus illegal aliens) as an issue of ethnicity, as neither an Hausa man born and bred in the South -South will be allowed to represent the South -South nor will an Ijaw man born and bred in the North be allowed to represent the North. We have to state that the world has moved away from these backward considerations.
Our country must join the league of civilised and progressive survereign nations with long standing pedigree of democratic practices and elect our leaders on the basis of their politics, policies and demonstrable track record plus their vision to take Nigeria to greater heights. Above all, the next Nigerian leader must be like the outgoing President Olusegun Obasanjo, a strong and detribalised individual with genuine interests in reforms and the indivisibility of Nigeria.
We will like to seize this opportunity to state that The Nigerian Project (TNP) UK, supports the candidacy of President Ibrahim Babangidaas the next president of Nigeria on the basis that he is the best man to continue with the reforms of the Present government and not because he is from North Central. We strongly believe that he is the only man capable of keeping Nigeria together after President Obasanjo.
We implore all patriotic Nigerians to canvas similar arguments about their favourites and talk less of ethnic origins.
Our members will work with other progressive individuals to promote a civilised approach to the electioneering process and ensure that the best man emerges the next President of Nigeria.
This Day
Friday, July 28, 2006
| India phenomenon The Statesman, India - … upper and middle class market roughly the size of the United States that is … the country which now epitomises the organic link between democracy and development … |
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