6/14/08

Elections américaines : Vers un raz-de-marée Obama?

 

Vers un raz-de-marée Obama?


 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Tout porte à croire que Barack Obama, candidat démocrate à la présidence américaine de novembre prochain, se dirige tout droit vers la Maison Blanche. Et que Contrairement à Al Gore en 2000 et à John Kerry en 2004 qui avaient tous perdu devant Georges W. Bush, cette fois ci les démocrates ont le candidat idéal pour reconquérir la Maison Blanche après huit années républicaines. Pourvu que toutes les machines électorales fonctionnent le trois novembre.
Soit. Mais une chose est certaine, pour le moment, Barack Obama, le premier afro-américain à être si proche de la présidence étasunien est donné gagnant par tous les sondages. À moins qu'un scandale n'éclate, McCain, représentant républicain pour succéder à Georges W. Bush, n'a aucune chance de l'emporter l'automne prochain. Ce vétéran et ancien prisonnier de  guerre au VietNam se dirige droit, comme un train sans freins, "vers une défaite jamais vue chez les républicains" , prédit M. Beckel, analyste à Fox News et chroniqueur pour USA Today. Cet ancien stratège démocrate croit même que des États clés tels la Pennsylvanie, le Michigan, le Minnesota et l'Iowa, voteront démocrate en novembre. Qui plus est, même l'Ohio, où John Kerry a mordu la poussière en 2004, va tourner démocrate en novembre, soutient-il.
Et pour cause, la situation actuelle de l'économie favorise Obama dans les intentions de vote pour novembre prochain. L'économie des États-Unis en 2008 est en lambeaux, la guerre en Irak est maintenant rejetée par la majorité des Américains, Le Président Georges W. Bush, qui est en tournée d'adieux cette semaine, est le plus détesté de tous les présidents, et 80% des électeurs affirment que son pays est sur la mauvaise voie. Ce qui du coup favorise Obama par rapport à McCain, son adversaire de novembre, considéré comme une doublure du président républicain sortant.
Continuant dans la même veine mais sans aller jusqu'à prédire un raz-de-marée d'Obama, l'éditeur de Newsweek, Jon Meacham trace lui aussi, dans son billet de cette semaine, un portrait assez sombre des chances de McCain de l'emporter en novembre. Selon lui, la campagne présidentielle ne s'annonce pas comme un concours serré. Le camp McCain sait bien que l'humeur du pays est contre lui. Huit Américains sur dix sont désabusés après huit années de Bush.
Bonne nouvelle pour Barack Obama, cette semaine les sondages ont montré que les femmes se tournent désormais vers lui. Constituant ainsi une grosse déception pour McCain, qui tendait de charmer cette clientèle féminine plutôt proche de Clinton durant les primaires. Les détails de ce sondage que l'institut Gallup a publié mardi montre que Barack Obama récupère le soutien des femmes qui avaient préféré Hillary Clinton lors des primaires. Ainsi, entre la veille des dernières primaires démocrates le 3 juin et lundi, l'avantage de Barack Obama dans l'électorat féminin a bondi pour s'établir à 13 points face au républicain John McCain (51 % contre 38 %), alors qu'il n'était que de 5 points avant que M. Obama ne remporte l'investiture démocrate. Ce qui doit sérieusement  inquiéter McCain car le vote féminin est considéré comme le plus fidèle. C'est aussi une démonstration que les frustrés démocrates de Hillary Clinton commencent à se ranger  derrière Obama. Ce qui est une bonne chosem car démontre que l'intérêt du parti a prévalu.
D'ailleurs selon Gallup, la nette préférence des femmes pour M. Obama lui a permis de prendre le large face à John McCain, avec 48 % d'intentions de vote contre 41 %. Toujours selon ce même sondage, la base la plus solide de l'électorat de Mme Clinton, parmi les femmes de 50 ans et plus, se reporte sur M. Obama, qui bénéficie désormais d'un avantage de 6 points (47 % contre 41 %) dans cette catégorie , alors qu'avant les primaires il accusait un retard de 3 points (43 % contre 46 %).  M. Obama a également engrangé des gains chez les hommes, réduisant à seulement 2 points (45 % contre 47 %) l'avantage de M. McCain dans cet électorat (contre 6 points, 43 % contre 49 %, avant les dernières primaires).  Cette analyse est fondée sur des sondages réalisés du 27 mai au 2 juin auprès de 5270 électeurs, et du 5 au 9 juin auprès de 4390 électeurs, comportant des marges d'erreur de 2 points.
Malgré toutes ses bonnes nouvelles pour Barack Obama, on ne saurait oublier qu'on est en politique et que tout peut arriver. Il suffit d'un scandale pour tout perdre. Et aux États-Unis, les médias savent bien fouiller.
© copyright 2008  www.icicemac. com
 


 
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Black conservatives conflicted on Obama campaign

Black conservatives conflicted on Obama campaign

By FREDERIC J. FROMMER, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 31 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Black conservative talk show host Armstrong Williams has never voted for a Democrat for president. That could change this year with Barack Obama as the Democratic Party's nominee.

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"I don't necessarily like his policies; I don't like much that he advocates, but for the first time in my life, history thrusts me to really seriously think about it," Williams said. "I can honestly say I have no idea who I'm going to pull that lever for in November. And to me, that's incredible."

Just as Obama has touched black Democratic voters, he has engendered conflicting emotions among black Republicans. They revel over the possibility of a black president but wrestle with the thought that the Illinois senator doesn't sit beside them ideologically.

"Among black conservatives," Williams said, "they tell me privately, it would be very hard to vote against him in November."

Perhaps sensing the possibility of such a shift, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has made some efforts to lure black voters. He recently told Essence magazine that he would attend the NAACP's annual convention next month, and he noted that he recently traveled to Selma, Ala., scene of seminal voting rights protests in the 1960s, and "talked about the need to include 'forgotten Americans.'"

Still, the Arizona senator has a tall order in winning black votes, no doubt made taller by running against a black opponent. In 2004, blacks chose Democrat John Kerry over President Bush by an 88 percent to 11 percent margin, according to exit polls.

J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he's thinking of voting for Obama. Watts said he's still a Republican, but he criticizes his party for neglecting the black community. Black Republicans, he said, have to concede that while they might not agree with Democrats on issues, at least that party reaches out to them.

"And Obama highlights that even more," Watts said, adding that he expects Obama to take on issues such as poverty and urban policy. "Republicans often seem indifferent to those things."

Likewise, retired Gen. Colin Powell, who became the country's first black secretary of state under President George W. Bush, said both candidates are qualified and that he will not necessarily vote for the Republican.

"I will vote for the individual I think that brings the best set of tools to the problems of 21st-century America and the 21st-century world regardless of party, regardless of anything else other than the most qualified candidate," Powell said Thursday in Vancouver in comments reported by The Globe and Mail in Toronto.

Writer and actor Joseph C. Phillips got so excited about Obama earlier this year that he started calling himself an "Obamacan" — Obama Republican. Phillips, who appeared on "The Cosby Show" as Denise Huxtable's husband, Navy Lt. Martin Kendall, said he has wavered since, but he is still thinking about voting for Obama.

"I am wondering if this is the time where we get over the hump, where an Obama victory will finally, at long last, move us beyond some of the old conversations about race," Phillips said. "That possibly, just possibly, this great country can finally be forgiven for its original sin, or find some absolution."

Yet Phillips, author of the book "He Talk Like a White Boy," realizes the irony of voting for a candidate based on race to get beyond race.

"We have to not judge him based on his race, but on his desirability as a political candidate," he said. "And based on that, I have a lot of disagreements with him on a lot of issues. I go back and forth."

Michael Steele, the Republican former lieutenant governor of Maryland who lost a Senate race there in 2006, said he is proud of Obama as a black man, but that "come November, I will do everything in my power to defeat him." Electing Obama, he said, would not automatically solve the woes of the black community.

"I think people who try to put this sort of messianic mantle on Barack's nomination are a little bit misguided," he said.

John McWhorter, a self-described political moderate who is a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a New York Sun columnist, said Obama's Democratic Party victory "proves that while there still is some racism in the United States, there is not enough to matter in any serious manner. This is a watershed moment."

"Obama is probably more to the left than I would prefer on a lot of issues," he adds. "But this issue of getting past race for real is such a wedge issue for me. And he is so intelligent, and I think he would be a perfectly competent president, that I'm for him. I want him to get in because, in a way, it will put me out of a job."

James T. Harris, a Milwaukee radio talk show host and public speaker, said he opposes Obama "with love in my heart."

"We are of the same generation. He's African American and I'm an American of African descent. We both have lovely wives and beautiful children," Harris said. "Other than that, we've got nothing in common. I hope he loses every state."

Moderate Republican Edward Brooke, who blazed his own trail in Massachusetts in 1966 as the first black popularly elected U.S. senator, said he is "extremely proud and confident and joyful" to see Obama ascend. Obama sent Brooke a signed copy of his book, inscribed, "Thank you for paving the way," and Brooke sent his own signed book to Obama, calling the presumed Democratic nominee "a worthy bearer of the torch."

Brooke, who now lives in Florida, won't say which candidate will get his endorsement, but he does say that race won't be a factor in his decision.

"This is the most important election in our history," Brooke said. "And with the world in the condition that it is, I think we've got to get the best person we can get."

Williams, the commentator, says his 82-year-old mother, who also hasn't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, has already made up her mind.

"She is so proud of Senator Barack Obama, and she has made it clear to all of us that she's voting for him in November," Williams relates. "That is historic. Every time I call her, she asks, 'How's Obama doing?' They feel as if they are a part of this. Because she said, given the history of this country, she never thought she'd ever live to see this moment."






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Should you drop your house price to sell?

Should you drop your house price to sell?

£1m has been knocked off this house to get a sale. As the market slips, vendors are dropping their prices - but there is still some way to go before we hit the bottom

Click here to see how property prices have dropped during the credit crunch

When Mariateresa Boffo-O'Kane decided to sell her two-bedroom flat in Turnham Green, west London, last December, it looked as if she would escape the doom and gloom that was already beginning to engulf the property market. Despite reports in the press of crumbling house prices, her immaculately renovated home was put onto the market at £650,000 - some £250,000 more than she had paid for it 18 months earlier. The valuation was, to put it mildly, somewhat optimistic.

Last month, after several viewings, she cut its price by almost £100,000 to £569,950 - but still had no takers. "It's just not shifting at all," says Boffo-O'Kane, 42, who is selling through Foxtons (020 8996 6000, www.foxtons.co.uk ). "It was clearly too high a price, but you know how it is: the estate agent tells you one thing and the price goes to your head a bit." Now, after receiving just one offer - of £500,000, rejected at the time as derisory - she is thinking of reducing the price yet again, "but not by a huge amount". In the meantime, like many frustrated sellers, she is letting her property out.

For Boffo-O'Kane, and others like her, the penny has finally dropped. For several months, many vendors were effectively in denial, unwilling to accept that a falling market meant it was not just the value of other people's houses that had fallen - theirs, too, was worth less. The result, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) reported last week, has been a drop in the number of properties changing hands to the lowest level since 1978 - lower even than during the depths of the recession in the early 1990s.

As the first anniversary of the credit crunch approaches, and with the bad news - from soaring food and energy prices to predictions of interest-rate rises - still coming, sellers seem finally to be getting real. The website www.propertysnake.co.uk lists 185,082 homes across the country that have had their asking prices reduced - some by as much as 48%. Agents' windows and websites are full of properties marked down sharply in the hope of a sale.

Take Winslow Hall, a beautiful Christopher Wren house with 22 acres in Buckinghamshire, viewed last year by Tony and Cherie Blair when it was on the market for £3m. It is now for sale through Savills for £2.5m (01295 228002, www.savills.co.uk ). Or Gifford Hall, a William and Mary house set in four acres in Broughton Gifford, Wiltshire. The six-bedroom property, which has walled gardens, a pool and a pavilion, went on sale last year for £3.5m. After three price cuts, it is now on the market for £2.5m, again through Savills (01225 474550).

At the other end of the scale, a semidetached cottage on the edge of Framlingham - a second-home hot spot on the Suffolk coast - has just had its price cut from £310,000 to £299,950, through Clarke & Simpson (01728 724200, www.clarkeandsimpson.co.uk ).

"It's all about realism," says Marc Goldberg, head of residential sales at the estate agency Hamptons International. "You get some people who take our advice straightaway and others who would like to see if they can get the same price as six or nine months ago. But it's not possible. We are frank with people and we are turning away vendors with unreal expectations."

What should a would-be seller do? "It is important to price realistically and take account of market conditions - 15% down on the peak of last year," Goldberg continues. "Get a good idea of the prices at which properties have actually exchanged recently, not just their asking prices. If your property has had 40 viewings and no offers, it is unlikely that the next 40 viewings will produce anything different." Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist at Rics, agrees: "Agents are making sales where vendors are pricing realistically."

Not that price cuts alone are always enough to sell a property: with the credit crisis getting worse rather than better, agents say deals are continuing to fall through when prospective buyers fail to obtain the mortgage they had been counting on.

"The chances of selling your home in a month are now half what they were this time last year," says Miles Shipside, commercial director of Rightmove, the property website that monitors asking prices. "Lenders are being more critical, only half the mortgage funds are available and the choice of products is even more reduced. Deals are falling through, and properties are returning to the market at ever lower prices."

Faced with such problems, some sellers are postponing their decision to move - or, like Boffo-O'Kane, choosing to let out their property instead. Happily for them, demand for rental properties is rising - as are rents. The young and transient, who have traditionally been the mainstay of the rental market, are being joined by a new group of would-be tenants: those who are fortunate enough to have sold their homes at the top of the market and are waiting for prices to fall before plunging back in.

Yet those putting off a sale in the hope of a quick recovery may be disappointed: indeed, the latest statistics suggest the market may still have some way to go before it hits the bottom and starts to pick up again. The Halifax reported a drop in prices of 2.4% in May – the seventh month in the past eight to have seen falls. The Council of Mortgage Lenders, meanwhile, has forecast that repossessions will rise by 50% this year to 45,000.

The residential property futures market, which is based on the Halifax index, makes for even grimmer reading: it indicated last week that prices would fall by more than 20% by 2011 and would not return to current levels until 2017. While that prediction looks overly pessimistic to most analysts, there seems little doubt that things will get worse for homeowners before they get better."My suspicion is that the indices we have seen so far do not reflect the full extent of the fall," says Lucian Cook, director of residential research for Savills, which predicts that prices will continue to fall over the next few months, ending the year 8%-10%

down. With access to mortgage finance continuing to be difficult, next year is unlikely to be much brighter. "Sentiment is such that even if someone waved a magic wand and the credit crisis eased tomorrow, we would still see some falls next year," he says.

Ed Mead, director of the London-based agency Douglas & Gordon, also believes that the fall still has some way to go. "Previous crashes have never taken less than five years to correct themselves," he says. "It is a question of how far and how fast it falls.

"There is little doubt that those who sell for what they can get now are going to be looking cleverer than those who wait in the hope that this is a short-term correction."

Bargain buys

Glebelands, a Grade II-listed former rectory set in 1.75 acres in Dibden, Hampshire, hasn't had any offers since it came on the market in the summer of 2006 for £1.25m. The price of the five-bed Queen Anne house with outbuildings has just been reduced to £895,000. Savills; 023 8071 3990, www.savills.co.uk

Even the smarter streets of Fulham, in southwest London, are beginning to struggle. This five-bedroom period house in SW6, with a double reception, has just had £200,000 lopped off its price. It is now for sale for £995,000. John D Wood; 020 7731 4223, www.johndwood.co.uk

Built in traditional Cotswold stone, the Corner House, in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, has had its asking price trimmed for the third time. The fourbed property is on the market for £798,000 - £182,000 less than the original price. Jackson-Stops & Staff; 01386 840224, www.jackson-stops.co.uk

Down by a more modest £20,000 to £575,000, the White Cottage, in Piddinghoe, East Sussex, has been on the market for four months. The Grade II-listed property, 6½ miles from Lewes, has three bedrooms, two reception rooms and a conservatory. Oakley; 01273 487444, www.oakleyproperty.com






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Local man to volunteer in Burundi

Local man to volunteer in Burundi

Published Saturday June 14th, 2008
C

Many people use summer as a time of travel and new experience.

Click to Enlarge
RETURN TO BURUNDI: John McKendy will take part in a workcamp in Burundi next week after doing similar work there last year. This photo shows staff and volunteers at the Kamenge AIDS clinic, on the outskirts of Bujumbura, Burundi, at the end of a three-day Alternatives to Violence Project workshop. McKendy, back row, right, co-facilitated the workshop with two experienced Burundian volunteers.

Few do it like John McKendy.

McKendy, associate professor of sociology at St. Thomas University, is leaving Fredericton next week to take part in a workcamp in Burundi. This is organized through a partnership between a North American Quaker organization called A next week to take part in a workcamp in Burundi frican Great Lakes Initiative, and Friends Women's Association, a group of Burundian Quaker women.

"Our main project is to help construct a building that will be used by the Kamenge Clinic, providing primary medical care to women, especially those with HIV/AIDS," McKendy said.

Kamenge is a desperately poor and troubled section of the capital city of Bujumbura. It has the site of a great deal of violence over the past 15 years.

That can really be said for all of Burundi - a tiny country in East Africa bordered by Rwanda to the north, Tanzania to the east and south, and Lake Tanganyika and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the west.

Burundi's population approaching eight million - 10 times that of New Brunswick, with less than half the land mass.

It is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranked 167 out of 177 of the UN's Human Development Index. The people of this country have a life expectancy of 48.5 years, with 45 per cent of children under five malnourished.

The problem is exacerbated by civil strife. Over 300,000 citizens have been killed in civil unrest since the mid-1990s. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people are part of a turmoil that continues, though the area is not the news hot button item that it was a decade ago.

McKendy is returning to Bujumbura after doing similar work there last year.

"When all is said and done, the desire to go back comes from the personal relationships I made with fellow Quakers in Burundi. It was an honour to work alongside them. They taught me much about the resilience of the human spirit," he said.

The goal of the work is to providing primary health care, primarily to women, and especially women with AIDS

"Last summer we completed a building to house a clinic. This summer we will be helping to construct a smaller second building that will provide space for a waiting room, minor surgery and maternity care. This will allow the clinic to be officially certified by the government," McKendy explained.

This work resonates with McKendy professionally as a sociology scholar and professor with a particular interest and expertise in social inequality and social justice, gender and social class.

It also ties into his own spiritual journey.

"I have been attending Quaker meetings of silent worship for over 30 years as a member of the Fredericton Worship Group, which is part of the New Brunswick Monthly Meeting, which includes worship groups in St. Andrews, Houlton-Woodstock, Fredericton, Sackville and P.E.I."

McKendy has also worked for 15 years with The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) organizing and leading workshops inside Dorchester Penitentiary and occasionally in the community.

The work in Burundi is a logical action for a man of his interests and inclinations.

Everyday life in this tiny and densely populated East African country is marked by political instability, extreme poverty and violence. With meager material resources but an abundance of hope and faith, these women and their supporters are planting the seeds of peace, reconciliation and justice.

McKendy leaves to do his part in this journey on Friday. People will converge in Washington, D.C., and then move out to Burundi, Kenya and Rwanda.

McKendy's team, going to Burundi, will consist of young people from the U.S. and from Burundi.

He hopes to take a subsequent journey of faith in action next year.






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Burundi court releases six police officers convicted of murdering WHO official

Friday, June 13, 2008

Burundi court releases six police officers convicted of murdering WHO official
Devin Montgomery at 2:27 PM ET

Photo source or description
[JURIST] A Burundi [JURIST news archive] court Thursday released six former police officers convicted of

killing a World Health Organization (WHO) [official website] official because two key witnesses against the
accused escaped from custody. In May of 2005, four of the men were sentenced [BBC report] to death and

two were sentenced to twenty years in jail for their role in the 2001 murder of WHO representative Kassi

Manlan [WHO statement]. The court that convicted the men never formally alleged a motive for the killing, but

defense lawyers say it was to prevent Manlan from investigating high-level politicians for defrauding a WHO malaria

program. Reuters has more.

Burundi has severe corruption problems, and the research group Global Integrity [website] has given the country an

integrity score [Global Integrity materials] of "very weak", amounting to 54 on a 100 point scale. In February of this

year, opposition leaders in the country sought UN protection [JURIST report] after allegedly receiving death threats

from ruling party officials. In November 2006 President Pierre Nkurunziza [BBC profile] made limited admissions to

Amnesty International [advocacy website] accusationsreport] that the military and police used brutality and even

torture to deal with suspected rebels. In October 2006 Human Right Watch [advocacy website] accused Burundi's

National Intelligence Service of committing widespread extra-judicial killings [HRW report; JURIST report].
[press release; JURIST





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Indians and Chinese happy amidst economic gloom

Indians and Chinese happy amidst economic gloom

Indo Asian News Service

Saturday, June 14, 2008
(Washington)
 
 

Amidst the global economic gloom, people of India and China remain upbeat about national economic conditions, though Indians are less positive than they were a year ago, according to a new survey.
In contrast, some of the most negative evaluations of economic conditions come from citizens of advanced Western countries, the latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project covering 24,000 people in 24 countries suggests.

The survey was conducted between March 17 and April 21, just before the fuel and food crisis gathered speed.

Positive views of the economy have declined sharply over the past year in Great Britain, the US and Spain. France, where most people were already quite negative about the economy, just 19 percent view the national economy as good down from 30 percent in 2007.

Majorities in 18 of the 24 countries surveyed say conditions have worsened with 61 percent rating their national economy as bad compared with 50 percent in 2007. The proportion of those expressing a positive view of their nation's economy has declined in 14 of the 22 countries since last year.

People around the world also have a familiar complaint, most think the US is having a considerable influence on their economy. The impact is seen as largely negative on national economies, both large and small, in all parts of the world.

But Indians think otherwise. In fact, India and Nigeria are the only nations surveyed where more than a third of respondents express a positive view of America's economic influence.

The view that the American economy is hurting their national economies is most prevalent among the publics of Western Europe. About seven-in-ten in Great Britain, Germany (72 percent each) and France (70 percent) say that the US economy is having a negative impact on economic conditions in their country.

Despite these economic concerns, there is little evidence that the overall image of the US has slipped further as a consequence.

On the contrary, positive views of the US have risen sharply in Tanzania (by 19 points) and South Korea (12 points), and by smaller but significant margins in Indonesia, China, India and Poland.

Overall, opinions of the United States are most positive in South Korea, Poland, India and in the three African countries surveyed this year - Tanzania, Nigeria and South Africa.

However, positive opinions of the US have declined by 11 points in Japan, a traditional US ally, and in neighbouring Mexico (by nine points). The image of the US also remains overwhelmingly negative in most of the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed, though no more so than in recent years.




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Uganda's Museveni confident rebels pushed into Congo would be defeated if they returned

Uganda's Museveni confident rebels pushed into Congo would be defeated if they returned

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kansas: The president of Uganda said he is confident that his African nation can defeat any attempt by rebels to return to his country from neighboring Congo.

President Yoweri Museveni was visiting Fort Leavenworth on Friday to watch his son, Maj. Muhozi Museveni Kainerugaba, graduate from the Army's Command and General Staff College.

Museveni said members of the Lord's Resistance Army were in Congo now and that it would be up to that nation, along with the United Nations, to take the lead in fighting the rebels.

"If they want our support, we are ready and able to assist them," Museveni told reporters after the graduation. "Otherwise, it is really a problem of Congo and the United Nations."

The U.S. State Department numbers the rebels only in the hundreds but considers them a terrorist group. Formed more than 20 years ago, the Lord's Resistance Army became known for raping children and using them as soldiers, and its leaders are wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.






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Rwanda sting Morocco in Kigali

Rwanda sting Morocco in Kigali

Oliver Karekezi
Rwanda's Oliver Karekezi scored their third goal

Rwanda kept up their 100 percent record in group 8 with a big win over Morocco on Saturday.

3-1 was the final score in Kigali, with Elias Ntaganda getting the opener in the 14th minute.

The lead was doubled after 13 minutes of the second half thanks to Bogota Labama.

Morocco's Youssef Safri gave the Atlas Lions hope of getting something from the game with a goal 10 minutes from time.

But the Amavubi made sure of all three points when Olivier Karekezi got their third in the final minute of the game.

In the other game in group 8, Ethiopia beat Mauritania 1-0 in Nouakchott on Friday evening.




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Kenyan police arrest possible key suspect in Rwanda genocide

Africa News

Kenyan police arrest possible key suspect in Rwanda genocide

Jun 14, 2008, 15:18 GMT

Nairobi - Kenyan police are carrying out DNA tests on a man suspected of being a key financier of the Rwandan genocide, in which almost 1 million people died, reports said Saturday.

The man, who police say could be Rwandan businessman Felicien Kabuga, was arrested in Nairobi on Friday, the BBC reported.

Local media reported that the man arrested claims to be a lecturer at a Nairobi university.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) accuses Kabuga of financing the massacre of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the 1994 genocide.

Kabuga, who has a 5-million-dollar price on his head, has several property and business interests in Nairobi.

He has been spotted in several bars popular with middle-class Kenyans and expats in the capital's affluent neighbourhoods.

The ICTR has been pressing Kenya to arrest Kabuga and the high court recently froze his assets.






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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
Gsm: +250-08470205
Home: +250-55104140
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Kigali-Rwanda
East Africa
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6/13/08

World Bank Tells Govt to Stop Budget Misuse

Uganda: World Bank Tells Govt to Stop Budget Misuse


The Monitor (Kampala)
 

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Yasiin Mugerwa
Kampala

A senior World Bank official has said that the high level of corruption in procurement deals in Uganda has disrupted national budget performance over the years.

Half of the national budget is spent on procurement deals where corruption is severe, said Mr V.S.

Krishnakumar, the bank's African procurement manager, while presenting a paper titled "Context of Public Procurement Reforms" at a three-day East African Procurement Summit in Kampala.

"We need to protect public resources," he said on Thursday. "The fact that half of the resources in the national budget go to procurement deals... explains why there is a need for government to strengthen internal financial controls to protect public resources."

The conference closed on Thursday, the same day Finance Minister Ezra Suruma presented the 2008/09 Budget. The World Bank's anti-corruption talk coincided with the release of a Bank report showing that the country has lost about $300 million (about Shs510 billion) annually since 2005 through corruption and procurement-related malpractice.

Mr Krishnakumar called for the enforcement of fair, competitive, transparent, non-discriminatory, and value-for-money public procurement and disposal standards and practices.

The 2005/06 Auditor General's report indicated that an estimated 20 percent of the value of public procurement was lost through corruption, prompted by weak public procurement systems yet procurement accounts for a high percentage of public expenditure.

In his written response distributed to participants, Dr Suruma said the government is committed to fighting procurement-related corruption. "We created the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA) in 2003," Dr Suruma said. "The objective of this system is to create efficiency, accountability and value for money. We shall continue to review the systems."

Reiterating the need to streamline service delivery, Mr Krishnakumar told participants: "It is useless to have good procurement laws without implementation. Compliance is still a major challenge in Uganda and East African governments should take keen interest in fighting procurement corruption because it is a serious problem to development."

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He said that in Uganda, more than 70 per cent of the government contracts were not awarded according to established procurement procedures, a set-up that has continued to upset budget performance.

Procurement-related corruption is a problem throughout East Africa. This form of corruption takes the number one spot in Kenya as it does in Uganda.

The conference that attracted participants from Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda was intended to enhance the effectiveness of public procurement systems in the region.






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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
Gsm: +250-08470205
Home: +250-55104140
P.O. Box 3867
Kigali-Rwanda
East Africa
Blog: http://www.cepgl.blogspot.com
Skype ID : Kayisa66

Monuc Report On the Bas Congo Violence in February/March 2008

Congo-Kinshasa: Monuc Report On the Bas Congo Violence in February/March 2008


 

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A multidisciplinary team led by the United Nations Office for Human Rights was deployed in Bas Congo province from 17 -28 March 2008, to inquire into the violent incidents that took place between the Congolese National Police (PNC) and Bundu Dia Kongo* (BDK) members in Bas Congo, in February and March 2008.

Since October 2007, tensions were reported between BDK members and the local authorities in several Bas Congo cities and villages. On 28 February 2008, the DRC government launched operations to restore state authority in the whole of the province.

These police operations were carried out by the Rapid Intervention Force and the Integrated Police Unit, sent from Kinshasa to respond to a series of criminal acts made by the BDK, which included murder, attacks and the taking over of state authority in certain areas of Bas Congo.

The investigation concluded that at least 100 people, mainly BDK members, were killed during the operations launched by the PNC on 28 February 2008, in the province of Bas Congo.

The PNC were deemed responsible for the destruction of more than 200 buildings (churches, houses of BDK members as well as houses of civilians with no links to the BDK) in several Bas Congo villages, as well as the looting of many houses in the province.

More than 150 BDK members were arrested during the violence, and several of them were victims of torture or cruel and degrading treatment.

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MONUC recommends that measures are taken by the Congolese Government so that the PNC is sufficiently equipped and trained to manage situations such as those which occurred in Bas Congo.

MONUC also recommends that the Congolese legal authorities open an investigation into the crimes and the serious violations of the human rights presented in the report, so that the presumed authors of these criminal acts are judged and condemned in accordance with the law.

*Bundu dia Kongo (BDK): Politico-cultural movement, created in June 1969. Present in most of Bas Congo province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bundu dia Kongo's motto is "to fight for the defence, the protection and the promotion of the rights and interests of the Kongo people throughout the world."






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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
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Europe Worries About a 1970s-Style Oil Shock

Europe Worries About a 1970s-Style Oil Shock


Published: June 14, 2008

FRANKFURT — In Europe, where the tight credit market has caused less havoc than in the United States, fears are focusing on another economic bogeyman: a 1970s-style oil shock.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain and Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank, have both warned about the dangers of a new oil shock to Europe.

Soaring fuel costs have ignited strikes by fishermen and truck drivers from Spain to Scotland. Blockades have paralyzed highways outside Madrid and Barcelona. And with deliveries of auto parts disrupted across the Continent, Volkswagen shut down a car plant in Portugal on Friday.

Fears that the spike in oil prices might start an inflationary spiral were reinforced on Friday when the European Union released figures showing that hourly labor costs jumped sharply in the first quarter, and are growing at their fastest pace since early 2003.

A similar ripple effect occurred after the first oil shock in 1973, and it left Europe with a legacy of inflation and stagnation that took a decade, and a painful recession in the early-1980s, to banish.

"The historical memory of the first oil shock is much stronger for Europeans than for Americans," Daniel Yergin, the chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said. "For Americans, the memory is of gas lines. For Europeans, it was the end of their postwar economic miracle."

He and other experts caution against overstating the comparison between 2008 and 1973. Europe, they say, is better equipped to absorb these kinds of shocks than it was 35 years ago — with a sturdy, shared currency, an independent central bank, and more flexible, open economies.

Still, with growth slowing at the same time that wages and prices rise, there are unsettling similarities.

"There is unrest among workers, who today, as in the 1970s, feel they have been shortchanged," said Holger Schmieding, chief European economist at Bank of America in London. "They have to spend more money on fuel, so they have less to spend on other things, and they want to be compensated."

The sharp rise in labor costs, economists said, all but guarantees that the European Central Bank will lift interest rates next month, as it signaled it might last week. A rate increase, they said, would be a stern warning to unions not to use inflation to extract hefty raises from employers.

During a news conference in Frankfurt, Mr. Trichet offered a brief history lesson to underscore that the bank would not repeat the mistakes of its forebears by reacting too slowly to inflation.

"In Europe," he said, "you can date from the first oil shock the start of much lower growth and mass unemployment. A large number of economists are also saying that, and I trust that governments that have the memory of these shocks are very lucid as regards the dangers."

Prime Minister Brown has called for a coordinated global response to rising oil prices, and wants it to be a "top priority" at a meeting of leaders of the Group of 8 industrial nations in Japan next month. The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, proposed cutting taxes on gasoline.

But political leaders have relatively few options to curb the price of oil, which is why most of the focus in Europe has been on the central banks — and in particular on the European Central Bank.

After surprising markets last week by signaling that it might raise rates in July, the bank spent this week reassuring investors — through comments by Mr. Trichet and other members of its governing council — that it did not plan to embark on a new round of rate increases.

"They rocked the boat a very fragile moment," said Thomas Mayer, the chief European economist at Deutsche Bank. "It was like you were in the kitchen with the gas cap leaking, and somebody lit a match."

Beyond the issue of how the bank communicates, Mr. Mayer said he worried that raising rates would aggravate the slowdown in Europe. He said he also doubted that monetary policy could dampen wage increases, particularly in countries like Spain, that index wages to inflation.

Mr. Mayer is among those skeptical of analogies to the first oil shock. Deutsche Bank drew up a list of factors that were present in Europe in the 1970s — lax fiscal policies, powerful unions, politically weak central banks, protectionist trade policies, and so on — and found that in almost every area, Europe is more open and flexible today than in the 1970s.

That makes stagflation — the combination of inflation and stagnation that gripped Europe after the first shock — less likely this time, here or in other advanced economies, Mr. Mayer said.

With less muscular unions, wage inflation is not yet a problem across Europe. While labor costs in Spain rose 5.7 percent in the first quarter of 2008, they slowed in France and Germany. Recent wage agreements for public-sector workers in Germany may yet drive up its numbers.

The European Central Bank's response to oil prices, Mr. Mayer said, reminded him less of the 1970s than of the German hyperinflation of the 1920s, which helped create the inflation-fighting Bundesbank, the German central bank that heavily influenced the European bank.

"The E.C.B. has had a very Bundesbank-like reaction," he said, adding that in the 1970s, the Bundesbank "got it right."






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Jean-Louis Kayitenkore
Procurement Consultant
Gsm: +250-08470205
Home: +250-55104140
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Kigali-Rwanda
East Africa
Blog: http://www.cepgl.blogspot.com
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Obama et les signes (2), par Christian Salmon


  

Chronique
Obama et les signes (2), par Christian Salmon
LE MONDE | 13.06.08 |
 
"Les beaux livres, écrivait Marcel Proust, sont écrits dans une sorte de langue étrangère." On pourrait en dire autant de toute forme d'expression humaine... Et pourquoi pas du discours politique quand il ne se contente pas de mimer les idées reçues, qu'il est porteur d'une nouvelle langue et d'une nouvelle grammaire politique ? L'ampleur des changements se mesure alors à la prolifération de signes nouveaux, parfois contradictoires, parfois convergents, mais difficiles à lire dans la langue politique traditionnelle car ils échappent au simple message des communicants et à la logique médiatique de la persuasion.
 
S'il y a un Barack Obama que les médias ignorent obstinément, c'est bien l'Obama sémiologue, attentif aux signes et à leur circulation dans la médiasphère.
Dans L'Audace d'espérer (Presses de la Cité, 2007), il décrit par exemple comment une histoire fabriquée ou une fausse nouvelle "répétée inlassablement et lancée dans l'espace cybernétique à la vitesse de la lumière finit par devenir une particule de réalité, comment des caricatures politiques et des pépites de conformisme s'incrustent dans notre cerveau sans que nous ayons eu le temps de les examiner...". Un contexte, ajoute-t-il, qui "favorise non pas ceux qui ont raison, mais ceux qui, comme le service de presse de la Maison Blanche, peuvent présenter leurs arguments le plus bruyamment, le plus fréquemment, avec le plus d'obstination possible, et devant la meilleure toile de fond".
Obama dénonce l'écart croissant "entre les paroles et les actes, un fossé qui corrompt le langage et la réflexion" et qui n'a cessé de se creuser depuis Ronald Reagan et "ses tours de prestidigitation verbale". A peine élu au Sénat, assailli par les reporters et les commentateurs, il se demande "combien de temps il faut à un homme politique... avant que le comité des scribes, des rédacteurs en chef et des censeurs n'élise résidence dans sa tête. (...) Combien de temps pour se mettre à parler comme un politicien ?".
 
L'avenir dira si Barack Obama est l'inventeur d'un nouvel idiome politique ou s'il n'en est que le simulacre, le simple avatar d'un Lincoln à l'ère de "Second Life". Mais il serait absurde de nier qu'il incarne une nouvelle génération d'hommes politiques qui méritent d'être qualifiés de sémio-politiciens, porteurs de signes et de symboles plutôt que de programmes et de promesses, moins aptes à se "positionner" sur un arc traditionnel de forces politiques qu'à inspirer des manières nouvelles de penser le monde et de le changer.
 
C'est sans doute la clef de l'attraction qu'exerce sa candidature sur les jeunes Américains : son parcours raconte l'apprentissage difficile des signes, la quête d'une identité métisse, partagée "entre deux mondes, le noir et le blanc", chacun d'eux possédant "son propre langage, ses propres coutumes et ses propres structures", et la tentative de les réconcilier par "un effort de traduction". Obama, depuis son plus jeune âge, fut contraint à un usage intensif et attentif des signes. "Depuis la découverte effrayante que j'avais faite dans Life, celle de crèmes blanchissantes, écrit Barack Obama dans Les Rêves de mon père (Presses de la cité "Etranger", 256 p., 21 €), j'avais fait connaissance avec le lexique en vigueur dans la communauté pour décrire les différentes façons d'être noir : les bons cheveux, les mauvais cheveux, les lèvres épaisses ou les lèvres fines. (...) De fait, il n'était même pas certain que tout ce que nous pensions être une expression libre et sans entraves de notre identité noire - l'humour, les chants, la passe dans le dos - ait été librement choisi par nous. Au mieux tout cela était un refuge, au pire un piège."
 
Obama est beaucoup plus qu'un "storyteller" de génie. C'est un stratège de l'inconscient américain. Il a su faire de sa personnalité hybride, aux repères biographiques hétérogènes, une métaphore des nouvelles identités composites à l'ère de la mondialisation. C'est pourquoi on ne peut analyser cet événement à la lueur des analogies historiques (Martin Luther King ou les Kennedy) mais dans l'espace, dépourvu de tout antécédent, de l'après-11-Septembre . Il tend à une Amérique désorientée un miroir où se recomposent des éléments narratifs dispersés.
 
Depuis le 11-Septembre, les républicains ont opéré un véritable retournement des idéaux types américains : en criminalisant l'immigration, en bâtissant des murs aux frontières, en encadrant la liberté d'expression, en surcodant l'identité par la religion.
Obama fait l'inverse. A la rhétorique du conflit des civilisations, il oppose une autre syntaxe, celle des assonances et des conciliations, celle des identités métissées et des variations, l'identité ouverte de l'émigré à l'âge des déplacements. Son parcours d'Américain métis est un retour au récit américain des origines.
 
Avec Obama, c'est toute une Amérique qui retrouve ses repères perdus depuis le 11-Septembre : l'immigration, le voyage, le melting-pot, la frontière comme dimension vivante et positive. Obama incarne une tentative de faire rebondir le récit américain mis à mal et de reconstruire l'identité d'un "peuple déjà spolié de son histoire, un peuple manquant souvent des moyens de rétablir cette histoire en la montrant sous une forme différente de celle qui apparaissait sur les écrans de télévision".
Jean Genet, dans un tout autre contexte, en avait peut-être pressenti l'imminence. "Les Noirs en Amérique, disait-il, sont les signes qui écrivent l'histoire, sur la page blanche ils sont l'encre qui lui donne un sens."

Christian Salmon est écrivain.


 
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