“For years, African militias have used proceeds from precious natural resources to fund conflicts – a practice dramatized in the 2006 Hollywood film “Blood Diamond.” Now, there’s a new twist: blood cows.
Warring rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo are stealing and selling livestock to finance a conflict sparked by spillover from the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which 800,000 were killed.
“It’s just like the mining resources,” says Alpha Sow, head of the local office of the United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUC). “Part of this money goes to buy munitions.”
Gervais Ruhubika and his partners, who have a small farm in army-controlled territory outside Goma, saw their herd dwindle from 200 to 120. To make matters worse, Congolese soldiers also claimed a stake in the cows.
“Every morning,” he says, “they came and demanded almost all the milk.”
“Weeping, Dawn Yingling, a 44-year-old single mother from Indianapolis, said that the speech was “fabulous” but that she still isn’t going to work for the Obama campaign. “She was fabulous, nothing less than I expected. It’s hard to sit here and think about she would have accomplished. We’re not stupid — we’re not going to vote for John McCain,” she said. But she’ll limit her campaigning to a House candidate. “It will take a Congress as well as a president. That’s what I can do and be true to who I am.”
Insane:
“I hate Obama so much that I’m going to devote as much time to McCain as I did to Hillary,” said Adita Blanco, a Democrat from Edward, Okla., who has never voted for a Republican. “Obama has nothing. He has no experience. The Democratic Party doesn’t care about us.You couldn’t treat [Clinton] any worse.”
I’ll assume there are more sane voters than insane voters. We can only hope…hahahahah!
Classic. As mentioned originally on BccList.com here, I wish Bob Casey Jr. would have been talked about for VP a little more.
P.S. Fortunately, unlike last night as seen here, I don’t have to watch DNC coverage tonight via the DVR. This said, I’ve tuned into Chicago public television – WTTW – and have had the luxury of catching every speech without obnoxious pundit filler. Awesome. You can also catch full live coverage on C-SPAN but your local public television may be broadcast in HD so I would suggest going there first.
Update: Video…around the 1 minute mark there are a few seconds of the chant which went on throughout the remainder of his speech.
Launched 2 weeks ago, RealClearWorld is an excellent addition to the RealClear series of websites. To be fair, only one of their editions – RealClearSports – is less than desirable.
As mentioned during my recent trip abroad here (bottom of the posting), here, and here (bottom of the posting) – keeping up with world news internationally puts a different prospective on global affairs. Why? Plain and simple – international news services and international editions of U.S. publications offer a more interesting and in-depth look at current affairs. Enter RealClearWorld.
Competent coverage of worldwide events – as the world continues to get smaller with emerging technology – will only grow in popularity. Congrats to the brass at RealClear for launching an excellent resource/portal for international news.
I’m going to vomit if I see one more NYT, MSN, Drudge Report, CNN, etc. headline reading to the equivalent of “Hillary Voters Threaten to Become Stupid.”
This is a mainstream media fairy tale that receives click throughs (web traffic pays the bills) from both the left and the right. There is no story. Few – if any – of Hillary’s 18 million supporters would be stupid enough to vote for mccain or refuse to vote. If they are, as posted originally on BccList.com here, good riddance!
Note to the gop and mccain camp – it’s probably not a smart idea to help sell this storyline since you’re going to look pretty fcking stupid once the MSM finally reports that the party is united at the end of the week. If the mccain camp wasn’t run by imbeciles, they would have figured this out already. But, I digress…
“Debra,” not a lot of Democrats will vote republican. It’s not ok, really. You’re in a commercial pushing a bullsh!t agenda for an elderly man out of touch with reality that was only propped up as the nominee in hindsight because the gop couldn’t acknowledge a mormon, fred thompson is as likeable as an old broken down basset hound, and video of giuliani dressing in drag came to light.
Fortunately, I had the convention coverage dvr-ed so I was able to skip all the weird live filler commentary from pundits.
Aesthetics:C-at best.Dark, blue lights, high tech, and awkward women crying/chanting. Enough to make any republican puke. I’m thinking the gop will make their floor well lit (good idea) and chuck-full of kazoos, those plastic things that sport fans hit together, belt buckles, cowboy hats, etc. Which, in turn, will make any democrat puke.
Pelosi: D-. Seriously, shut up. Teresa Heinz Kerry is waiting to have a spot of tea and scone. This is coming from a guy that’s a supporter of the democratic congress since they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place without having enough of a majority to do anything real. But, Nance, why do you exist?
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter:C. I’m glad that parade is over though I must admit that Rosalynn Carter is still put together well for being 81.
Caroline Kennedy:B+. Class act. Great introduction for Ted. She was sort of like a robot though when passionately (maybe? – I couldn’t really tell) trying to explain that this is undoubtedly a crucial time for our country.
Ted Kennedy:B+. I was able to focus on what he was saying after I finally got “Bridge Over Troubled Water” out of my head. Actually, I first had to stop trying to find his scar. Regardless, attaboy. It’s weird watching somebody on TV that could just as easily be dead. But, he delivered a pretty good speech. I hope he’s around long enough to see Obama in office since his endorsement was instrumental in turning the tides back in Obama’s favor during the primary.
Chris Matthews Commentary Regarding Ted Kennedy:F. WTF? “Well, we’re seeing a prominent Kennedy man finally enter old age.” Chris, seriously? Ted is about to die. There’s no reason to remind us all about JFK, RFK, and JFK Jr.
Craig Robinson: A. Outside of the awkward shout out to the Oregon State Beavers – yes, he said “Beavers” on stage – Craig delivered a great introduction for Michelle.
Michelle Obama:A-. Outstanding speech that should help alleviate her from the militant mom role. Easily the best speech that’s come out of the campaign since Super Tuesday. Almost perfect but her voice and mannerisms somehow reminded me of when my mom used to read “The Tall Book of Christmas” at bedtime during the holiday season.
Malia and Sasha: A+. They stole the show as seen here and via the video below. As Olbermann commented, “I think they just wrapped up the election.” He wasn’t kidding. Nor am I though it was sealed up well before this Cosby Show moment.
P.S. I fast forwarded through much of the convention and commentary. I may have missed a speech or two and definitely missed most of the lame commentary.
What should you do when someone passes out? Keep singing? Pick up the mic but not the person? Prop up the person that passed out for a wave and a hug? All of the above?
It should be interesting to see what bush and cheney have to say in Minneapolis in a few weeks seeing that the failed administration was the catalyst to the global downturn…
If they do play the blame game, have the “terrorists” won by crippling the world’s economy? If so, shouldn’t we point the finger at the failure of the administration over the last 7 years?
“A tribal elder from the region who helped bury the dead, Haji Tor Jan Noorzai, said people in the village were gathered in memory of a man who was anti-Taliban and was killed last year, and that tribal enemies of the family had given out false information.
“It is quite obvious, the Americans bombed the area due to wrong information,” he said by telephone. “I am 100 percent confident that someone gave the information due to a tribal dispute. The Americans are foreigners and they do not understand. These people they killed were enemies of the Taliban.””
Looks like tim pawlenty and tom ridge just turned into the front-runners for the meaningless gop veep stakes since the mccain camp ran the following:
The above ad plus mccain not knowing how many houses his family owns, makes romney looking in from the outside since mccain and romney have a few intense debate clips of their own and the romney family has slightly more than 1 house.
As cheney did, Biden brings DC street smarts, experience, age, seemingly grave health issues, votes from a state some would consider meaningless, and baldness.
Thankfully, Biden doesn’t carry 2 DUIs, a shooting accident (while presumably drunk), and hasn’t been the sitting chairman and CEO of haliburton like cheney.
While anticlimactic and a lame attempt at using technology, the Obama camp got their Catholic and he should deliver Pennsylvania.
Expect the mccain camp to counter with a Catholic of their own – it’s a shame the party will turn on mccain if he selects a pro choice warmonger Catholic like tom ridge.
Text Messages:
P.S. I didn’t get an email either. Really weird since text/email alerts of the VP announcement were so highly touted. I hope the camp didn’t overpay by outsourcing this text message/email project to some Rielle Hunter~esque organization.
Bcc:List.com 