Six In The Morning

Robert Fisk: Iraq's road back from oblivion

 

Memories of sectarian war, kidnapping and child killing are fading. It is safer. But nine years since Saddam's fall, Robert Fisk meets many who feel they have lost their homeland

 

Tuesday 24 April 2012 

 

"Al-Qa'ida killed two of our men here two days ago," the cop said. "Then they called us up to tell us the name of their operation – on a police radio!" We were standing in rebuilt Fallujah, where the police request all foreigners to call by for an escort. We got six, one wearing a ski mask. You get the idea. As a police colonel said later: "Al-Qa'ida [is] still here, they are a nuisance, to me personally when I have to move around the city. But they are not what they were."

We were standing in the old US Marine base not far from the newly re-built railway station – there are, of course, no trains – and the pale stencil of "USMC" was still on the wall. But there was dust blowing around the yard and some of the sandbags had broken open.

Le Pen's Result 'Is a Blemish on French Democracy'

 Socialist challenger François Hollande may have got the biggest share of the vote in the first round of the French presidential election, but the real winner seems to be right-wing populist Marine Le Pen. German commentators argue that incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy only has himself to blame for his poor showing.

The results of Sunday's first round of the French presidential election had barely been announced when attention already began shifting to the runoff on May 6. Current President Nicolas Sarkozy's chances of victory seem slimmer than ever, especially after the psychological blow of becoming the first incumbent president to lose in the first round since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

But Sarkozy isn't throwing in the towel yet, and the campaign over the next two weeks is expected to be a tough one. Observers were quick to point out that both Socialist Party candidate François Hollande, who won the first round with 28.6 percent of the vote, and Sarkozy, who received 27.2 percent, will make efforts to woo supporters of the right-wing populist Marine Le Pen. She shocked France by getting almost 18 percent of the vote, the best-ever result for her National Front.

NGOs plead for aid as millions starve in the Sahel

 DAKAR, SENEGAL - Apr 24 2012 07:01

 Aid agencies say they are facing a multimillion-dollar funding shortage to deal with a food crisis in the Sahel, the zone in northern Africa that stretches across the continent from the Atlantic to the Indian oceans, marking the transition between the Sahara desert and the savanna regions to the south.

"A huge gap in funding for aid projects ... is threatening to leave millions of people hungry in the coming months," a coalition of aid agencies said on Monday. The people of the Sahel, they said, are resorting to increasingly desperate measures to survive.

 

Europe undams Myanmar sanctions

 By Chris Stewart

China's President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao will be well satisfied with an easing of European Union and United States sanctions on Myanmar, even as Western companies anticipate the gains to be made from the poor but resource-rich country.

The EU on Monday suspended its sanctions against Myanmar for a year. Foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said the EU wants to support progress made in the country "so it becomes irreversible". She is due to visit Myanmar this week. The US has previously eased some sanctions and is considering lifting some trade and financial restrictions. 

 

UN chief urges rival Sudans to hold dialogue

Ban Ki-moon condemns Sudanese air raids on the South as President Bashir rejects talks in favour of "guns and bullets".

 Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has condemned air raids by Sudan on South Sudan, and called on the countries' leaders to return to dialogue.
"The secretary-general condemns the aerial bombardment on South Sudan by Sudanese armed forces and calls on the government of Sudan to cease all hostilities immediately," Eduardo del Buey, deputy UN spokesman, said on Monday.
Ban "reiterates that there can be no military solution to the disputes between Sudan and South Sudan", the spokesman said.

 "He [Ban] calls on President [Omar] al-Bashir and President [Salwa] Kiir to stop the slide toward further confrontation and urges both sides to return to dialogue as a matter of urgency."
The UN chief’s call for calm came after Bashir ruled out any future talks with his southern counterpart, who is in Beijing to drum up support from China.

California voters to consider ending capital punishment

 By Isolde Raftery, msnbc.com

 California voters will decide whether to abolish the death penalty this November, the San Jose Mercury News reported. A group in favor of doing away with the nation’s largest death row gathered more than 800,000 signatures –- enough to put capital punishment on the ballot.

Death would be replaced with life in prison without possibility of parole, according to the Mercury News. Inmates currently on death row would live out life in prison instead.
"It's a proposition whose time has come," measure proponent Jeanne Woodford, a former San Quentin State Prison warden, told reporters Monday morning, according to the Mercury News.