Let the crack show whacko out of the red
muck: A red state
wants to ban underwear from showing but wait the blacks says it's racial because
more blacks show there underwear than whites OKAY what about banning underwear.
Another need for the money ? Right wing crazy Secretary of Education censors
and wants money back to produce PBS show
showing lesbian and daughter as a a family. Everyone knows a typical right wing
crazy family is Bob and Mary each having two children by their first marriages.
Then one each by there second marriage and now three by this marriage and they
all sit around dinner table praising the sanctity of marriage and family values
while doing trivial question on which kid has the most last names. Is this the
same group that gave a quarter million to radio talk person to push no child
left behind. Then he wouldn't give the money back.
The deteriorating situation has aggravated a dispute between Khartoum, the
African Union and the United Nations over who would lead and fund the expanded
peacekeeping mission. The groups reached a compromise last month that provides
for U.N. command of the overall U.N. mission in Sudan, with the African Union
commanding operations in Darfur.
But Norway and Sweden, the only European nations that have expressed interest in
participating in the Darfur mission, have rejected the accord. "We are not
members of the African Union; we are members of the United Nations," said
Raymond Johansen, Norway's deputy foreign minister. "It will not be easy
for our troops to report to an African Union or Iraq commander
The problem is simple," said Theophilus Vodounou, head of the Aden
office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. "What's not simple is
the risk these people are taking. They're leaving their lives to fate."
By virtue of geography and a relatively lenient government, Yemen has emerged as
the way station from East Africa to Saudi Arabia, other wealthy Persian Gulf
states and occasionally Europe. Passage on rickety fishing boats costs $50 to
$120 for a 180-mile trip that lasts two, three or sometimes four days.
By virtually every account, the smugglers are brutal: Unruly refugees are thrown
overboard into shark-infested waters; others are shot, sometimes to teach the
rest of the passengers a lesson. Some refugees are shoved into the sea a
half-mile or more from shore so the boats can make a quick getaway, and
residents have seen corpses wash up with their hands and legs bound. U.N.
officials cite a variety of ordeals on board, including rape, stabbings and
dehydration.
Once here, the survivors -- at least 8,000 already this year arriving aboard
more than 70 boats, by the U.N. count -- are left to navigate the fringes of a
country mired in its own poverty and unrest, in a passage of desperation and
determination.
"When people are so desperate, it's amazing what they can do," said
Firas Kayal, a UNHCR official in Sanaa, Yemen's capital.
Ruqiya Abdullah, a 22-year-old Somali who swam to shore at Bir Ali last week,
was less awed.
"We ran away," she said simply.
Hardship and Hope
Abdullah fled Mogadishu in January after Ethiopian troops backing Somalia's
transitional government seized the notoriously lawless capital from an Islamic
group that had taken control six months earlier. She bided her time in Bosaso, a
Somali port that the United Nations says has become the world's busiest
smuggling city. On Wednesday of last week, she found room on a boat with 75
others and took what she had: dates and water for the trip, two shirts, two
shawls, shoes and $100 for life in Yemen.
"The smugglers told us not to move. If you tried to move one inch either
side, just to stretch, they beat you," she said. Her face was framed in a
black veil that fell across her brown skirt. "It's their nature. They beat
everybody -- men, women and children."
Last October, smugglers beat five Ethiopians, then threw them overboard, U.N.
officials said. Passengers watched as sharks in the warm water attacked them. In
February, smugglers forced 137 passengers into deep water off Yemen's coast.
More than 50 drowned, many unable to swim.
Kindness in ourselves is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in
another.