World News - July 2009

Brazil

Five major hospitals in Brazil's crime-ridden city of Rio de Janeiro are to be bullet-proofed because of frequent gunfights involving drug gangs, the state news agency, Agencia Brasil reported Saturday. The federal hospitals, all located in risky zones, will have concrete walls built around them and steel shutters installed over the windows, some of which will also be reinforced to stop bullets.
What is this? The wild, wilder, wildest West? Isn't Brazil challenging advanced world economies as a South American financial tiger-in-the-making? What's with the third-world criminal status?

China

Chinese police shot dead 12 "mobsters" during unrest in Urumqi on July 5, state media reported Saturday, quoting a local official saying the action was taken to prevent further bloodshed. Three died on the spot and nine after unsuccessful treatment, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The report did not give details of the ethnicity of the deceased or those involved in the unrest, but blame for the violence in the Xinjiang regional capital that day was previously pinned on ethnic minority Uighurs.
Oh those splittist monsters. Never, ever the innocent Han Chinese who wish only to establish a state of even-handed opportunity to all of China's inhabitants. The evil Uighurs threaten to secede, and this is a criminal offence of the highest order hence the designation of miserable mobsters.

Lebanon

Fourteen United Nations peacekeepers were injured in south Lebanon on Saturday (18July) when protesters tried to stop an investigation into an arms cache that exploded in a Hezbollah stronghold last week, a spokeswoman said. Ammunition stored in an abandoned house in the village of Khirbet Selm, 20 kilometres from the Israeli border, exploded on Tuesday. The UN had launched an investigation into the cause of the blast in co-ordination with the Lebanese army, and around 100 people gathered on Saturday and tried to stop it by throwing stones at the troops.
Hel-lo!? These are terrorists and their fervidly conscienceless supporters. This is akin to faulting al-Qaeda for not recognizing the civil niceties of the Geneva Convention. As for the Palestinians, they are consummate rock-throwers; political 'refugees' so utterly consumed with hatred and tribal vengeance a mere peacekeeping unit is no match.

Honduras

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya agreed Saturday to give his enemies a share of power if he is allowed to return to office, but they rejected any deal that puts him back in the presidency. Zelaya, who was toppled in a military coup on June 28 and is in exile in Nicaragua, backed the proposal for a government of national reconciliation put forward by the mediator trying to negotiate a deal between Zelaya and interim president Roberto Micheletti, the former speaker of Congress. Also Saturday, Zelaya again vowed he would soon return to Honduras despite warnings he would be arrested.
And then the scenario following his arrest would be a signal for his supporters to come out in full array, challenging the country's government, its Supreme Court, its Congress, its respectable elected officials and its military. Civil disobedience in this instance leading to civil war, and a good time by all in pursuing their ends.

Indonesia

The bombings at the Jakarta JW Marriott and Ritz Carlton hotels that killed nine people, including two suspected attackers, are probably linked with the mastermind of the 2002 Bali blasts, an Indonesian official said. The attacks days earlier bear the hallmark of tactics and explosive devices used by Malaysian terrorist Noordin Mohammad Top, said Ansyaad Mbai, who coordinates Indonesian counter-terrorism efforts. Top and Azahari Husein were the alleged masterminds of the Bali attacks that killed 202. Indonesian police killed Azahari in 2005, while Top escaped during the raid. Top, the chief ideologue of the most violent wing of the Jemaah Islamiyah terror network, was probably looking for the right moment to strike, such as the presidential election and a planned trip by the Manchester United Football Club, said Mbai.
Jemaah Islamiyah is out to demonstrate, indelibly, that the thugs of the Manchester United are no match in their sports zeal for the peerless energy and aggravated hostility of Islamists' religious ardour.

England

Henry Allingham, the world's oldest man and oldest First World War veteran, who put his longevity down to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women", died Saturday at the age of 113. The Queen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown led the tributes to Allingham, who symbolized the stoicism of the last generation of servicemen who saw the horrors of the Great War. The veteran spoke of his experiences in the 1914 - 1918 conflict in order to remember fallen comrades shorn of the chance to live as long as he did, and hoped there would be "no more wars".
Clearly, God was not listening, hasn't his ear attuned, is not all that engaged with the puny, petty affairs of humankind, sitting high and complacently on His throne.

United States

This marks the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's Lunar Module Columbia Moon landing when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin touched down at the Sea of Tranquility 40 years ago Monday, 20 July to spend 3-1/2 hours walking on the Moon. To the present time, a dozen men have walked on the moon, in splendid lunar isolation in a series of 'one small steps' for humankind.
The event has not, other than with technically-advanced materials-creation, changed human life forever, as the famed astronomer and science fiction writer Fred Hoyle claimed it would.

Britain

A British student who converted to Islam was jailed for a minimum of ten years yesterday for plotting a suicide attack with home-made explosives last year. Andrew Ibrahim, 20, also known as Isa Ibrahim, was found guilty of plotting to blow himself up with intent to endanger life or cause serious injury in April 2008 in Bristol, southwest England. The son of a hospital consultant was arrested in a Bristol suburb, where police found two home-made vests, ball bearings, pellets for an air gun, nails and screws, wired circuitry and batteries. In a refrigerator, police found a quantity of the high explosive HMTD, used in the 2005 London bombings. Prosecutors alleged that Ibrahim, a drug addict who had been expelled from a number of schools, was planning to mount an attack on a shopping centre in Bristol.
What a way for an enterprising free-wheeler to end up, miserably incarcerated so he can live out his fantasies in a jail cell. He blew it, poor slob, and will never now be venerated as a living martyr - or a deservedly dead one - by the international coterie of vicious jihad.

Russia

Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov is suing the head of the Russian rights group Memorial after he accused the Caucasus strongman over the murder of activist Natalya Estemirova, his lawyer said yesterday. "I have prepared and will file to court a complaint on protecting the honour, worthiness and professional reputation of the president of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov", lawyer Andrei Krasnenkov told Interfax. Memorial's head Oleg Orlov had accused the pro-Kremlin Chechen leader of being responsible for the murder of Ms. Estemirova, saying he was guilty irrespective of who ordered the killing. Mr. Kadyrov is suing for defamation, and Mr. Krasnenkov said he was sure that the case would be won "as the statements by Orlov carried a clearly expressed slanderous character". Ms. Estemirova, 50, was found dead Wednesday afternoon with gunshot wounds to the head and chest. She was seen being bundled into a car outside her home in the Chechen capital Grozny.
A neat balance of judging the value of a reputation already deep in a hellish chasm, against that of a well-lived and courageous life elevated in repute beyond anything Mr. Kadyrov can declare inside or outside a court of law.

Iran

In apparent defiance of Iran's supreme leader, a powerful cleric declared the Islamic Republic in crisis after a disputed election, and tens of thousands of protesters used Friday prayers to stage the biggest show of dissent for weeks. Clashes erupted in central Tehran between police and followers of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, who still contests official results that showed hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been re-elected by wide margin. "Police fired teargas and beat supporters of Mousavi in Keshavarz Boulevard, a witness said, adding that protesters were carrying hundreds of green banners - Mr. Mousavi's campaign colour - and chanting "Ahmadinejad, resign, resign."
Well good luck there, protesters, and keep up the good work. Pity that regardless of who heads the country, under the savagely fanatic ayatollahs, nothing much will change. Iranians, rise up! and do more than protest; have yourselves a much-needed revolution toward the evolution of your humanity.

Pakistan

There is a genuine risk Islamist terrorists may get their hands on Pakistan's nuclear weapons or nuclear material for a dirty bomb, according to a British security expert. "Knowledge that such a transfer has occurred may not become evident until the aftermath of a nuclear 9/11 in Pakistan or elsewhere in the world", says Dr. Shaun Gregory, director of the Pakistan Security Unit at the University of Bradford in Britain. "The challenge to Pakistan's nuclear weapons from Pakistani Taliban groups and from al-Qaeda constitutes a real and present danger, he writes in an article to be published in the Combating Terrorism Center's magazine Sentinel at the U.S. Military Academy West Point.
Saying it can't be so, won't make it so. The threat is real and the world simply is not ready to face the finality of the End of Days. Thanks so much for your concern.

Canada

A 77-year-old Pakenham woman is mourning the loss last week of four cement figurines she hand painted and placed on her veranda every spring. Donna Pierce noticed that Snow White and the Three Dwarfs were missing while sitting out on her veranda, and called Lanark County OPP. Snow White stands 40 centimetres tall, has blond pigtails and wears a blue dress with an apron filled with multicoloured flowers. One dwarf is multi-coloured and pushes a wheelbarrow, the second has a bag marked "seeds" draped over his shoulder, and the third carries a pickaxe. Anyone with any information about the theft is asked to call Lanark county OPP at 613-267-2626 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-TIPS (8477).
Sigh.