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.

R.I.P. Women of the year

Time Man of the Year 2008
Should be Nicholas Negropante of MIT Designer of the ONE LAPTOP

The mission of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child. In order to accomplish our goal, we need people who believe in what we’re doing and want to help make education for the world’s children a priority, not a privilege.

"Since November 12th, OLPC has been offering a limited-time Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During Give One Get One, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. Thanks to a growing interest in the program, we have extended Give One Get One through the end of the year. You may also donate laptops via our Simply Give and Give Many options. Through the increasing public interest in OLPC, we hope to give many more children the opportunity to grow, explore, learn and express themselves."Visit Site, Donate.

There have been many arguments but Negroponte was right and is making an impact!

Doubts about whether poor, rural children really can benefit from quirky little computers evaporate as quickly as the morning dew in this hilltop Andean village, where 50 primary school children got machines from the One Laptop Per Child project six months ago...At breakfast, they're already powering up the combination library/videocam/audio recorder/music maker/drawing kits. At night, they're dozing off in front of them — if they've managed to keep older siblings from waylaying the coveted machines...But no competitor approaches the XO in innovation. It is hard drive-free, runs on the Linux operating system and stretches wireless networks with "mesh" technology that lets each computer in a village relay data to the others..."What they work with most is the (built-in) camera. They love to record," says Maria Antonieta Mendoza, an Education Ministry psychologist studying the Arahuay pilot to devise strategies for the big rollout when the new school year begins in March...Before the laptops, the only cameras the kids at Santiago Apostol school saw in this population-800 hamlet arrived with tourists who visit for festivals or to see local Inca ruins...It's the best answer yet to "a global crisis of education" in which curricula have no relevance, he said. "If we make education pertinent, something the student enjoys, then it won't matter if the classroom's walls are straw or the students are sitting on fruit boxes." (msnbc 2007)

Breaking news Bhutto killing might have been killed by Al Queda...DUH
Why is the United States in Iraq fighting, when Al Queada is from the country of Afghanistan which borders Pakistan.


Islamabad (PTI): World wide condemnation poured in on Friday after the assassination of former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto, with leaders urging Islamabad to move forward with the democratic process. The two-time prime minister of Pakistan was killed in a suicide attack in Rawalpindi on Thursday just weeks after she returned to the country from eight years in self-exile. (The Hindu 2007)

Is the current prime minister Muhammad Mian Soomro or the current president Pervez Musharraf who enacted martial law to keep his power earlier in the year not suspect, They both have alot to lose by Benazir Bhutto Returning to the country and possibly be re-elected by Pakistan Peoples Party. One thing about suicide attacks, the blame automatically can be placed on a terrorist group and the attacker who can't be question. Just a thought or the truth, maybe.

IT IS NOT INHUMANE IF THEIR NOT HUMAN!!!

I was watching Animal Cops: Houston today and I still can't figure out why Michael Vick is in jail for 2 years. They took a horse from a breeder who had left the horse in a stall with another one that repeatedly was taking chucks of skin, fat, and muscle out of its neck. This hole was about 8 inches deep 1 foot tall and a foot and a half wide. There is no way that hole was developed overnight, why didn't the animal police take the owner in custody for animal cruelty? When is it considered inhumane treatment to an animal, people fish and kill the fish by depriving it of air, much like Michael Vick did by choking out a dog. Its a dog, yes it is a mans best friends, but it is not inhumane. DOGS ARE NOT HUMANS, THEY ARE JUST DOGS.

Vick 'EM

Michael Vick He was the leagues poster child, and they turned on him like they didn't know him we he ran into trouble with the law. Fans wanted him to change since the league is a PRIVILEGE. What about college, Virgina Tech made money off of him and gave him a $50,000 dollar education. That would be nice but he made that school millions and a recruiting lift. They would have no chance to make it to the Atlantic Coast Conference without the booster support from his work on the field.