Happy New Year!

Peace on earth, for every child. Injustice reigns, riots run wild.

RIOTS: Kenya

Kenyan police battled thousands of opposition supporters enraged over President Mwai Kibaki's allegedly fraudulent re-election, firing tear gas and live ammunition as the death toll from the violence rose to 103, officers and witnesses said. Several officers said they had orders to shoot to kill, while opposition supporters said they would risk death to protest what they called a stolen election. Demonstrators were beaten back with tear gas and water cannons, and police fired live rounds over their heads in Nairobi's burning slums…Raila Odinga, the fiery opposition leader who came in second according to the official results, compared Kibaki to a military dictator
who "seized power through the barrel of the gun," and called on 1 million people
to gather Thursday in Nairobi's Uhuru Park — where protesters gathered to demand multiparty democracy in the early 1990s. "We are calling for mass action," said Odinga, who had been leading early results and public opinion polls. "We will
inform police of the march. We will march wearing black arm bands because we are
mourning."… Teams of riot police fired shots into the air and tear gas into homes and businesses; in one home, a woman and her four young children ran out, retching…The violence has killed at least 103 people since Saturday across the country, police and witnesses said, although the tally was likely far higher. Three police officers told The Associated Press independently that they had been ordered to shoot to kill to stop the rioters. (Houreld, A.P. 2007) Yahoo news

RIOTS: Pakistan

The assassination late Thursday of Benazir Bhutto, the charismatic opposition
leader and two-time former prime minister of Pakistan who had promised to restore democracy in a country long dominated by military rulers, has unleashed a wave of grief and fury, raising fears that the nuclear-armed nation could be pushed to the brink of civil war. For the second time in less than two months, the world is forced to hold its collective breath as events threaten to spiral out of control, raising anew fears among Western security experts of Pakistan's nuclear weapons falling into the hands of al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremists. After Bhutto's body was entombed Friday next to her father, the late former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, at the family mausoleum in her hometown of Larkana, angry mobs accusing President Pervez Musharraf of complicity in Bhutto's murder have been on a rampage for the past three days, ransacking banks and burning train stations. Rioting and street clashes have killed at least 40 people as of late Sunday afternoon, according to a senior security official. Security forces in Bhutto's home province of Sindh in southern Pakistan were ordered on Friday to shoot violent protesters on sight. Residents of Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, cautiously emerged from their homes Sunday and struggled to find food and fuel amid the blackened buildings, shattered glass and burnt-out vehicles littering the streets. With police and troops patrolling,
Karachi appeared quiet for the first time since Bhutto's assassination (Skeeter
Sanders OpEd News 2007)

On that note, Happy New Year.