NEW VISITOR!
Today I got another visitor!
I was out working in my garden in the most beautiful, sunny and warm day. I had all my windows open and the back door open as well. I had been chatting to a neighbour for a while, and I suddenly realised what the time was, it was getting on and I still had to water the garden flowers. So I walked smartly to my back door and there inside was my new visitor. I honestly dont know who was the more suprised. I stopped dead in my tracks and gazed down on my carpet to see what the blackbird was going to do? He looked up at me and decided maybe it was time he had better go, and hopped towards me, passed me by and then few out. I cant begin to know why he would have come inside a house, where he knows that there are 2 cats, albeit old cats, and for what. Damn it I will never know!
Posted by: Mara at June 29, 2005 21:07 |
link | comments (1) |
PRICE OF PETROL UP.
Zimbabwe triples price of petrol.
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Zimbabwe has been short of fuel for months
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The cost of petrol in Zimbabwe has been raised by a factor of three, in an attempt to curb rampant fuel smuggling and cope with the rising cost of oil.
An announcement in the official Herald newspaper said a litre of petrol would cost 10,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($1; £0.55), up from Z$3,600.
The rise follows months of extreme fuel shortages in Zimbabwe. The country is also beset by sky-high unemployment, soaring inflation and a moribund economy. Inflation has fallen from a high of more than 600% to about 144% in May, but could go up on the back of the fuel price hike. After five years in which farmland has effectively been renationalised and - up to a point - redistributed, both agriculture and industrial production in Zimbabwe have collapsed. The result has been a punishing shortage of hard currency, making fuel imports hard to come by. The government's announcement follows a recent increase in world oil prices, which have risen above $60 a barrel.
It was confirmed by Reuters, which visited five petrol stations. The news agency's survey found that few stations had fuel to sell, but those which did were using the new price. What little fuel is available is being routed first to public transport, hospitals, agriculture and government departments, the Herald said. Very little is available on the free market, forcing commuters in the cities to give up on the normally-ubiquitous minibus taxies. Instead, they rely either on walking or on lifts from those truck drivers who can lay their hands on petrol. The shortages, many observers say, are exacerbated by cross-border smuggling. The old fixed official price made Zimbabwean fuel the cheapest in the region.
With most Zimbabweans suffering the effects of the country's economic collapse, employees and officials of the state petroleum firm are believed to have diverted petrol to be sold in neighbouring countries.
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UK, US 'caused Zimbabwe droughts'.
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The Herald says the weather has been artificially manipulated
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A state-run newspaper in Zimbabwe has suggested the UK and US are to blame for droughts in southern Africa.
The Herald said climate change has been artificially induced "in a bid to arm-twist the region to capitulate to the whims of the world's superpowers".
It said weather was being manipulated for political gain using unspecified "unconventional" chemical weapons. It is widely seen as a mouthpiece for President Robert Mugabe's government, correspondents say. It said recent droughts, which defied predictions by the Zimbabwean government and the Southern African Development Community's Drought Monitoring Centre, pointed to the possibility of the weather being manipulated for political purposes.
"The overt and covert machinations by Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler Britain, which has declared its intentions to effect illegal regime change in Harare, have given credence to the conspiracy theory," the paper said. It said that the US Famine Early Warning System had predicted famine in Zimbabwe six months before it occurred.
"The prediction, which was the exact opposite of other forecasts, seems to confirm that the conspiracy to remove the Zimbabwean government has gone chemical." Zimbabwe is currently facing a food crisis and the country urgently needs to import 1.2 million tonnes of food to avoid famine. Correspondents say the crisis is complex with erratic rains, disastrous economic policies, land reform and the spread of HIV/Aids all playing a part.
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HOLIDAY.
LAUGHTER IS AN INSTANT VACATION!
CAN THIS BE RIGHT?
Zimbabweans fight on two fronts.
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By Hannah Goff - BBC News
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As scores of Zimbabwean asylum seekers go on hunger strike against deportation back to their home country, BBC News went to a London church for what was billed as a "service for victims of torture of Robert Mugabe's brutal regime".
It may have been billed as a "service of remembrance for the fallen victims of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe". But this was more a demonstration of determination and an upbeat call to action.
The Commonwealth has questioned whether people should be returned to Zimbabwe
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The service at St Paul's Church, Covent Garden, in the heart of central London, was an expression of hope for a Zimbabwe where people could speak out as loudly as those singing in the congregation.
As asylum seekers and activists chatted happily outside the church in the English sunshine, it was hard to believe they were there to commemorate lost loved ones and fight for those threatened with deportation.
But as Eldridge Calverwell, of the Zimbabwe Diaspora Coalition, explained: "You don't have that same sense of oppression that you have in Zimbabwe. It's a natural human reaction, it's like a burden has been lifted from your shoulders.
"Most of the people here have been subjected to the brutality of the regime and a lot of them have relatives who have been tortured. "People bear the scars on their backs and in their minds."
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My Garden Birds
Yesterday I had 2 new visitors to my bird garden. They were Gold Finchs. Really lovely small birds.
So with the couple of very yellow Siskins last week that were also new, my number of bird varieties is increasing. The number of babies around is nice to see as well. With it being so hot now, I seem to be for ever cleaning their bird bath and food table. There were a number of very tall trees in two of my neighbour's gardens, and they have been cut down a fair amount. So now, not only will I get more of the sun in Winter which I am delighted about, it means I can see the birds perched on them looking down into my garden.
Posted by: Mara at June 28, 2005 23:24 |
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WHERE IS HELL ON EARTH?
'Jail hell' over for Zimbabwe MP.
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Roy Bennett lost 30kg in prison
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Former Zimbabwean opposition MP Roy Bennett has described conditions in jail as worse than he could have ever imagined, following his early release.
"I feel very sad for those that are left behind... because I should imagine if one gets to hell, that is what you experience," he told a news conference. He was freed after serving eight months of a one-year jail sentence for assaulting a minister in parliament. While in jail, he was prevented from standing in elections in March. Mr Bennett, once a stocky coffee farmer, lost 30 kg during his time in Mutoko prison, 140 km north-east of Harare.
He told reporters he had been made to stand naked in front of prison guards and was then given a prison uniform covered with human excrement when he arrived in jail. He said he now planned to campaign for the human rights of Zimbabweans after spending some time with his family and holding talks with the MDC leadership. "This was worse than anything I've heard of, or could have thought, to experience people being beaten on a daily basis, to hear their screams, to see people hardly clothed," he said. Bennett's sentence was decided by the Zimbabwean parliament, which has the authority to impose prison sentences on MPs.
Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa said Bennett's ancestors were thieves and murderers
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Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa had called Mr Bennett's forefathers "thieves and murderers" and said he deserved to lose his farm after benefiting from a British colonial system that robbed blacks of their land.
"I pushed him... and for that I have spent eight months in jail under the most inhumane conditions. If that is justice, then so be it, but I certainly don't feel I deserved the sentence that I got," Mr Bennett said. He was one of only three white Zimbabwean MPs in the last parliament and is one of the Movement for Democratic Change's most prominent members. Mr Bennett's farm was confiscated by the government as part of its controversial land reform scheme.
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TIME
IF YOU WANT TO KILL TIME
TRY WORKING IT TO DEATH.
"V " FORMATION BY BIRDS
Bird flight explained
Great white pelicans flying over the Senegal River
Scientists have given a clear demonstration of why birds fly in a "V" formation.
It is something the animals do because it reduces energy expenditure, helping large birds to migrate in groups.
 Everything that has been done until now has been theoretical, based on aerodynamic models
 Dr Henri Weimerskirch
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A French team was given a unique opportunity to study great white pelicans that had been trained to fly behind an aircraft for a feature film.
They found that the birds' heart rate went down when they were flying together and they were able to glide more often.
The energy saving may be crucial for migrating birds, which spend thousands of kilometres on the wing.
Pelicans, like many other large birds, fly in "squadron" formation flapping in time with their leader.
Gliding not flapping
Scientists from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Villiers en Bois, France, taped heart monitors to the birds' backs.
The pelicans had been trained to follow a light aircraft and a motor boat, allowing the team to observe and study them during flight.
The researchers found that when the pelicans were flying in formation - benefiting from each other's airstreams - their heart rates were lower than when they were flying solo. They also spent more time gliding.
"They fly in formation to save energy," team leader Henri Weimerskirch told BBC News Online. "It's not because they are using the upward airstream of their neighbour, it is because they are able to glide more often."
The aerodynamic benefit of formation flying has long been suspected. But until now, it has proved impossible to test.
"Everything that has been done until now has been theoretical, based on aerodynamic models," said Dr Weimerskirch. "It cannot take in the full complexity of the flight of the bird."
The work, published in the journal Nature, suggests that formation flight evolved because it allowed birds to reduce their energy expenditure and fly further.
This would be an advantage both for migration and in hunting for food.
Flying in a "V" also has social advantages: it allows birds to communicate with each other while on the wing.
The film featuring the pelicans, Le Peuple Migrateur, goes on general release in France in December.
Images courtesy of Dr Henri Weimerskirch.
3 MEN ACQUITTED IN KENYA.
Mombasa bombing suspects cleared.
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The three suspects had repeatedly professed their innocence
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A Kenyan judge has acquitted three men accused of conspiracy in the case of the 2002 suicide bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa.
Nairobi Chief Magistrate Aggrey Muchelule said prosecutors had failed to connect the men to the bombing.
Fifteen people, including three Israeli tourists, died in the attack on the Paradise Hotel. Charges against four other Kenyan suspects in the bombing were thrown out of court earlier this month. The three suspects - Kubwa Mohammed Seif, Said Saggar Ahmed and Mohammed Khamis - were also accused of plotting a failed rocket attack on an Israeli airliner that took off from Mombasa airport on the same day.
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Many of the dead were local dancers welcoming tourists to the hotel
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The attacks were widely blamed on al-Qaeda. No-one has been convicted in connection with the bombing so far, and no-one else is due to stand trial.
When the trial first opened in January last year, the prosecution described the three men as "sworn suicide bombers".
Mr Seif's lawyer, Kirathe Wandugi, told the Associated Press news agency that his client was extremely happy with the magistrate's decision. "Our clients have been exonerated and the course of justice has been met. It's been a very long trial. These people have suffered," Mr Wandugi said. Critics have said the men should never have been charged in the first place and that the evidence presented was at best circumstantial.
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FRIENDLY.
DONT WAIT FOR PEOPLE TO BE FRIENDLY,
S H O W THEM HOW!
STRIKES.
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Strike affects key SA industries.
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Cosatu claims to have 1.8 million members
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Tens of thousands of workers have demonstrated in South Africa's main cities in a nationwide strike over unemployment and poverty.
Overall support was patchy, with mines and the textile industry most affected.
Jobs in these sectors have been lost through the strengthening of the South African currency, and by cheap clothing imports from China.
The main demonstrations were in Johannesburg, and in Cape Town, where strikers took a petition to parliament. The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), which called the strike, claimed an overwhelming response to the strike, but the Chamber of Business said only 10% of workers were striking. Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi told demonstrators in Johannesburg there would be more protests in coming months unless government and business acted to stop job losses.
BBC NEWS
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AFRICAN UNION CRITICISED.
AU stand on Zimbabwe criticised.
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The opposition says its supporters are being punished
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European Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso has said he is "disappointed" by the African Union's response to Zimbabwe's demolitions campaign.
Speaking in South Africa, Mr Barroso said he was "gravely concerned" about events in Zimbabwe.
The AU said on Friday that it had many more serious problems to consider. The UN says 275,000 people have been made homeless as a result of an operation which Zimbabwe says is aimed at removing illegal structures. I am disappointed with the reaction of the African Union to the latest crisis," Mr Barroso said after a two-hour meeting with South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has also refused to condemn the evictions.
Jose Manuel Barroso said the evictions were a 'human rights crisis'
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"This is a human rights crisis and human rights are not an internal matter. They should be the concern of all people, African, Asian and European.
"I hope that Africans themselves can decide the way to go in terms of freedom and can see that freedom is not a foreign value," he added.
Mr Barroso is in South Africa at the start of a three nation tour ahead of next month's G8 meeting of leading industrial nations, where increasing aid for Africa will figure prominently. The US and the UK have urged African leaders to speak out against what she described as "tragic" events. But AU spokesman Desmond Orjiako told the BBC that if the Zimbabwe government said it was restoring order, then it would not be "proper for us to go interfering in their internal legislation".
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe said on Friday that the removal of illegal homes and market stalls was part of a bid to fight crime and clean up cities. But the opposition says the demolitions - codenamed Operation Restore Order - are meant to punish urban residents, who rejected him in recent elections. At least three children have been crushed to death during the operation.
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CATHY's weekly letter from Zimbabwe.
Dear Family and Friends,
There has been a nation wide shortage of petrol and diesel in the country
ever since the March elections which has now got so bad that it has bought
almost everything to a complete standstill. Petrol stations are either
completely dry and deserted or they are places where rumours of deliveries
are rife and unmoving queues of driverless vehicles snake away into the
distance. There may not be fuel for the everyday things like commuter
buses and delivery trucks but there is still diesel for destruction.
Countrywide the bulldozers continue to growl and roar as they push down
walls, flatten homes and reduce lives to rubble in the fourth week of the
government's Operation Restore Order.
One day this week I met a man who is in his early eighties and was
desperate for just 10 litres of petrol so that he could get his wife to a
specialist for medical treatment. The man has worked all his life in
Zimbabwe and had prepared well for his old age. He hadn't banked on hyper
inflation and economic collapse though and now his entire monthly pension
isn't enough to buy even one litre of petrol. The man sat, counting filthy
hundred dollar notes into piles, trying to work out just how much money he
had and how many notes he would need. It was almost irrelevant that there
was no petrol to buy because the fact was that 10 litres of petrol
represented a years worth of pension cheques.
Later that same day I met another elderly man who stood waiting for me
near my car and greeted me politely as I arrived. "Can you help me,
please. I have nothing to sell and am just an old man." Once a farm worker
until the government seized all the farms, the man had then got a job
working in a garden in the town. Four months ago the government increased
the minimum wage for garden workers by one thousand percent and this
elderly man lost his job. He has become just another helpless, hopeless
victim in Zimbabwe. I did not ask the man where he was living or if his
home had been reduced to a pile of rubble as everywhere there are police,
many police, watching and waiting to "restore order". I pressed a note
into his hand and felt ashamed that an old man who has lost everything,
has been reduced to this.
While the western world watches, condemns, appeals and urges intervention,
the African Union say they will not criticise events in Zimbabwe. An AU
representative speaking on BBC radio said the organisation had other far
more important things to worry about than Zimbabwe. What shame on these
leaders of Africa who will not even appeal for mercy for women and
children, old men and the sick and dying. Will the AU also refuse the
west's cancellation of debt? Will the AU refuse to accept western money
raised by Bob Geldof and the worlds pop stars? What shame on Africa.
With love, cathy. Copyright cathy buckle
25 June 2005 http://africantears.netfirms.com
My books "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are available from:
orders@africabookcentre.com ; www.africabookcentre.com ; www.amazon.co.uk ;
in Australia and New Zealand: johnmreed@johnreedbooks.com.au ; Africa:
www.kalahari.net www.exclusivebooks.com
COCKROACH
IF YOU STEP ON PEOPLE IN THIS LIFE,
YOU'RE GOING TO COME BACK AS A COCKROACH!
TO AID OR NOT TO AID - YOU DECIDE!
Aid 'is not solution' for Africa.
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By Richard Dowden
Director of the Royal African Society
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As the momentum for Live 8 gathers pace and the pressure on international leaders to deal with Africa's problems mounts, Richard Dowden argues that aid is not the answer.
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Many argue that aid creates a situation of dependency
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When a tsunami hits or war creates refugees, the victims can do with some help to get back on their feet wherever they are.
Humanitarian relief aid will always be needed when disaster strikes.
But the evidence that aid can transform whole societies and lift millions out of poverty is unconvincing.
It can only speed up a process that is already happening. When we see scenes of destitution from Africa we assume that we can change things by sending money.
But if aid could make Africa prosperous, it would have done so by now.
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Zimbabwe's human tragedy
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By Alastair Leithead - BBC News, Zimbabwe.
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Lavender Nyika's daughter was one of at least three to have died
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Lavender and Herbert Nyika tidied a small earth grave of their two-year-old daughter Charmaine.
Her mother adjusted the small cross next to the scrap metal headstone and remembered the day that police came with bulldozers and destroyed their home. "I didn't even have time to bring Charmaine to safety," she told me. "She was killed when the walls collapsed on top of her."
A piece of red plastic flaps in the wind outside the Nyika's home - a symbol of loss in the family. All that remains of the house itself is the foundations and a pile of rubble. At least two other children have also been killed. Charmaine's family blame the government, saying it is they who tell the police to continue the destruction. A conservative estimate from the UN puts the number of displaced people at 275,000, but it appears to be a lot more than that on the ground.
Officials blame street vendors for wrecking the economy
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Riot police are systematically going from suburb to suburb in the towns and cities, destroying the homes of the poorest Zimbabweans and leaving them destitute and desperate.
But these are not all illegal or makeshift settlements - many are brick and concrete houses and business that were built during Zimbabwe's colonial days. In Bulawayo, the church halls are full of the newly homeless. "They came to my home and they burned it down," one man told me as he stirred a pot of bubbling maize meal. "They say they have a strategy, they say they are clearing up the towns."
Those who made it to refuge in church grounds are the lucky ones.The destruction is now taking place on such a scale that the police cannot keep up. In some cases they are forcing people to demolish their own homes, or charging them a fee to do it. Those who choose to do it themselves at least have one last opportunity to salvage some meagre possessions or a piece of roofing to take with them as they are displaced.
Outside Harare, thousands of people have been dumped on a farm by the government and left to fend for themselves without clean water, food or sanitation.
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Thousands are in camps with no sanitation, water or food
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At one of the camps, Caledonia Farm, intelligence agents mingled among the dispossessed.
The entrance was blocked by police, forcing us to sneak in through the bush to see the conditions there.
People arranged what was left of their possessions around them as though they still had a home, taking shelter under a few sheets and blankets.Elsewhere, others sleep in the open or try to go out to their extended families in rural areas. But a lack of fuel in some places makes that increasingly difficult; buses stand in petrol queues while the people sleep in the bitter cold of Zimbabwe's winter. It is like a scene from a natural disaster, but the Zimbabwean government is doing this to its own people. But for what purpose?
Some believe the campaign is meant as punishment to the urban voters who sided with the opposition; others say it is to disperse an angry poor population before thoughts of revolution can surface from within it. Others see a longer term purpose of creating a new class of rural poor, dependent on government aid and ultimately prepared to support the government because of that aid.
Whatever the government's motivation, this is a human tragedy - and it gets worse by the day.
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EAR.
THERE IS NO GREATER LOAN
THAN A SYMPATHETIC EAR!
ONLY 57 DAYS!
Kenya MPs 'dishonest and selfish' .
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Parliament often does not have a quorum to pass business
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Kenya's MPs are mostly dishonest, insincere and tribalistic, says speaker of parliament Francis ole Kaparo.
"There is clear lack of clarity, purpose, and vision in the behaviour of our MPs and political parties," Mr Kaparo told a meeting of young MPs.
He went on to reprimand them for failing to turn up to work, which meant the chamber was unable to pass laws. A recent survey revealed that parliament was open for business for only 57 days last year. Mr Kaparo, one of Kenya's longest-serving MPs, likened his colleagues to local councillors, concerned only with petty and selfish interests.
"If you want to talk about parochial issues, you'd rather go back to the councils," Mr Kaparo is quoted by Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper as saying.
On occassion as few as five MPs attend debates when a quorum of 30 is needed to pass bills, the newspaper reports. Mr Kaparo also expressed concern that MPs showed no party loyalty, with many leaving the former ruling party Kanu to join the governing Narc coalition which came into power in 2002. "They no longer have any cause and do not espouse any ideology,"he said.
The BBC's Caroline Karobia in Nairobi said many people in the capital agreed with the speaker's comments, regarding their parliamentarians as lazy. It was difficult to find anyone who had a good word to say about MPs, she said.
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