from:"musamize"

(... seeking evidence of crimes against humanity for the World Court?)

Uganda [DVD] : The war of the children / a film by Walter Heinz.

Other Author(s):
Films for the Humanities (Firm)

Title:
Uganda [DVD] : The war of the children / a film by Walter Heinz.

Publisher:
Princeton, NJ : Films for the Humanities and Sciences, c2000.

Description:
1 videocassette (45 min.) : sd., col. ; 1/2 in.

Notes:
Filmed in 1999."In the Lord's Resistance Army, eight out of ten rebels are under 16 years of age. Some are as young as 6. Providing rare footage of guerrilla leader Joseph Kony, interviews with President Museveni and village and church leaders, and firsthand accounts of the child soldiers and their families, this program reveals the stark facts of life in northern Uganda's Acholi villages. There thousands of children - both male and female - have been forcibly conscripted into the rebel army. Attempts at rehabilitation and repatriation of escaped and captured rebels are also emphasized."
--
washingtonpost.com

New Direction in Uganda's Old War Government Arms Militia to Fight Rebels
By Emily WaxWashington Post Foreign ServiceMonday, February 16, 2004; Page A17

PAGAK, Uganda -- The despondent-looking man with the smudged glasses moved gingerly through this squalid camp, home to 20,000 people and not a single health center.
In a maze of tightly packed mud huts, smoldering pit latrines and dirt footpaths, children lay collapsed on the hot earth, their bellies swollen and sore from hunger, their hair yellowing from lack of protein, their noses raw and leaking.
An entire generation of Ugandans in the north of the country is growing up in places like Pagak, 200 miles north of Kampala, the capital. An estimated 1.4 million of the country's 25.8 million people are living in camps in northern and eastern Uganda. They fled their villages in waves to escape the Lord's Resistance Army, a guerrilla force that has terrorized the population for nearly two decades.
"We can't live like this anymore," said Lemoi, a community leader who has lived in the camp since 1996. "It's just absolutely shameful. . . . We are beggars now. We can't even sleep in separate areas from our children. All of our traditional pride is withered. How long will we be here? Forever?"
Ugandans call it the war that won't end. In the face of a government offensive called Operation Iron Fist, launched in March 2002, rebels have stepped up their raids on villages -- burning huts, reportedly hacking civilians to death with machetes and axes, and abducting children in increasing numbers.
Across the country there is despair about the war in the north. In response to rebel attacks and the apparent inability of the Ugandan military to counter them, the government has in the last six weeks trained and armed 8,000 civilians. The new militia members were portrayed on state television as heroes, marching through towns like Lira, 40 miles southeast of Gulu, proudly wielding their AK-47s.
Human rights groups have criticized the government, saying that children are being recruited. An even bigger concern is that the groups being armed by the government are members of the Langi tribe, ethnic rivals of the Acholi, who live in the north.
"Arming ethnic militia is a very dangerous idea and is nothing to feel proud about," said the Rev. Carlos Rodriguez, a Spaniard who has lived in Uganda for 20 years and works with the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, an interdenominational group.
Security officials recommended that Rodriguez be deported, saying he was spreading false information, according to Ugandan newspapers.
In Lira, where piles of trash fumed and hundreds of people were lined up at camps to collect food handouts, those who have joined the militia said there would not be any problems.
Stone-faced and wearing a government-issued green uniform, Nancy Awio, 25, said she had quit her job as a secretary to join the forces. Her father was killed by rebels in November, she said, dragged off by 15 men and beaten in the head and stomach until he hemorrhaged. Awio has 6-year-old twins and said she was worried about the pay the government promised her for being in the militia, but has yet to give her. But she said she is not afraid of death.
"I'm not afraid because I have the techniques to fight in the front lines," said Awio, a bulky woman with serious eyes. "I don't think they can kill me. I was so shocked when I saw my father lying there. It was so painful. That's why I joined."
From his office in Kampala, Felix Okot Ogong, state minister for youth and children's affairs, defended the decision to create the militia, saying it was fine to supplement the army with civilians.
"Everyone wants to join and fight back," said Ogong, who wore a blue pinstriped shirt and said he had just been to see a militia training session. "I don't see any dangers in it. They are not

[Ugnet] Besides Corruption and Wars, what are some of Uganda's most urgent problems?

Uganda's AIDS Crisis: Its Implications for Development
by Jill Armstrong Price: $ 22.00

English Paperback 108 pages
Published December 1995 by World Bank ISBN: 0-8213-3437-9 SKU: 13437

World Bank Discussion Paper No. 298.
Traces the social and economic channels through which the AIDS epidemic is likely to have its impact on Uganda's development prospects. In 1988 the World Bank adopted an agenda for addressing the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It soon became evident that the syndrome is not solely a health problem, nor can it be treated as such. This paper traces the social and economic channels through which AIDS is likely to have its impact on the development prospects of Uganda, one of the first African countries to confront the seriousness of the epidemic.

The paper revises and updates an earlier study to incorporate results of the country's 1991 population census. The study recommends that key policymakers in ministries other than health, such as finance and planning, must factor in the consequences of AIDS when considering development strategies. It examines the effects of AIDS on health expenditures in light of projections of essential drugs required for treatment, as well as the impact of the epidemic on agricultural production from a household and farming system perspective. Recommendations and suggestions of areas for further research conclude the study.

Health Care in Uganda: Selected Issues
by Paul Hutchinson Price: $ 30.00

English Paperback
Published August 1999 by World Bank ISBN: 0-8213-4531-1 SKU: 14531

World Bank Discussion Paper no. 404.
"The government of Uganda faces a multitude of challenges in the health care arena, from ensuring that health care services are delivered in the most equitable manner, to structuring the health care delivery system to be most effective, to waging campaigns against the leading causes of mortality and morbidity. The government needs the best information available on existing conditions, in order to devise strategies to successfully meet these challenges." This technical paper summarizes the results of three research efforts concerning current health care issues in Uganda. Its purpose is to summarize key actions and identify new challenges. In "Part I, Equity of Access to Health Services in Uganda: The Effects of Income, Gender, Proximity to Services, and Quality of Care," the author examines a number of factors that affect access to health services, including quality of servi
ces and
income.

Part II of this technical paper, "Decentralization of Health Services in Uganda: Moving Toward Improved Delivery of Services," summarizes the key actions that have been undertaken during the decentralization of Uganda's health sector and identifies challenges that are emerging during this process. Part III, "Malaria: A Priority Health Problem," summarizes the status of malaria control in Uganda and highlights some of the key issues that need to be addressed to further strengthen malaria control efforts. This paper should prove useful to those working in Uganda and in other countries facing similar policy changes, to anticipate the challenges as they seek to improve the quality of health and other public services.

---
Adult Literacy Programs In Uganda
by World Bank Price: $ 22.00

English Paperback 143 pages 8.375 x 10.75
Published March 2001 by World Bank ISBN: 0-8213-4882-5 SKU: 14882

The Government of Uganda believes that illiteracy and inadequate basic education deprive people of the opportunity to fulfill their potential and effectively participate in decisionmaking and other development objectives. In order to achieve these objectives, the Ugandan government started a pilot project in eight districts using the functional literacy approach.

This publication suggests that the track record of an adult basic education program need not be poor. Of particular interest, is the finding that government programs and those delivered by non-government agencies can be equally effective. However, the manner and the quality of the implementation do influence the outcomes.

The purpose of this evaluation is to compare and contrast the resource requirements and the effectiveness of the Functional Adult Literacy (FAL) programme and Regenerated Freirean Literacy through Empowering Community Techniques (REFLECT). The book assesses the implementation of adult literacy education and recommends future policy on the development of adult literacy education.
---

Uganda: Growing Out of Poverty Price: $ 22.00

English Paperback 226 pages
Published June 1993 by World Bank ISBN: 0-8213-2460-8 SKU: 12460

This study describes a strategy to reduce poverty by boosting labor productivity and economic growth. It focuses on Uganda's two key sectors, agriculture and industry.
The strategy seeks to make Uganda a self-sufficient food producer and a major crop exporter. It also advocates policies that would make the nation less dependent on imports and better at

[Ugnet] Anatomy of an electoral heist?


As D-Day approaches, it behooves all stake holder to pay close scrutiny to this report.
www.humanrights.uio.no/forskning/publ/wp/wp_2001_17.htm



Dilemmas of Popular Support in Guerrila War (in Uganda)www.duke.edu/web/licep/6/kasfir/kasfir.pdf
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[Ugnet] Uganda killed 1,600 people DRC

Uganda killed 1,600 people DRC
The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) documented about 1,600 people including 138 Congolese soldiers, which it says were killed by Ugandan soldiers, reports Anne Mugisa. This was one of the issues that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague is to decide. The DRC documented 38 officers and some 100 Congolese soldiers whom it said had previously been disarmed, as some of those massacred by the Ugandan forces at the Kavumu airport on August 3, 1988. It said about 856 civilians were killed at Kasika in Lwindi in south Kivu and their bodies scattered in a distance of about 60 km between Kilungutwe and Kasika, on August 24 1988. The DRC cited an unspecified number of people, which it said were killed by the Ugandan forces in different places. It said there were many cases of rape
particularly on August 29, 1998 in Kasika and on September 22,1998 in Bukavu. It alleged that Ugandan troops spread HIV/AIDS as a weapon of war. Uganda maintains it is innocent and that to demonstrate that it even allowed and cooperated with the United Nations Panel, which investigated the allegations of its plunder of the DRC.
New Vision: Thursday, 14th April, 2005

--
Avoid revisionism
IN THE continuing will he, wont he debate about the possible return home of former president Apollo Milton Obote, a lot has been said about how culpable he is for what went wrong in Uganda under his watch.
In his two stints in power, detention without trial was commonplace, opposition politicians were harassed, 300,000 people lost their lives in a scotched-earth anti-insurgency policy, and there was politics of violence, including the raid on Lubiri. All this is on record, yet in the past few days, there has been an attempt to whitewash Obote.
Obote may not have held a gun at anyones head, just as Agusto Pinochet may never have personally shot anyone. But the former Chilean dictator is being held accountable for the extreme violence that underpinned his rule. In both cases, we have to evaluate how the two leaders benefited from excessive use of force by their state organs, and whether either president took any measures to mitigate their effect on a cowed population.
Attempts to re-write history are common with the passage of time. We witnessed it two years ago when Idi Amin died, and people tried to put a gloss on what is otherwise acknowledged to be the most murderous rule Africa has known. There are still voices that claim that the Holocaust did not happen in mid-20th century Europe, and that Hitler was misunderstood. What next shall we hear about the Rwanda genocide? All this is an insult to the respective peoples who suffered, but thankfully, most of it is documented. The Nuremberg trials record Nazi atrocities and Hitlers culpability. In Uganda, the Human Rights Commission has a big catalogue of abuses occasioned on Ugandans between 1962 and 1986. These records should now be put on public display, lest we forget or are conditioned to forget. Legally, Obote may or
may not
be liable; political expediency may dictate that he be forgiven. But morally, he is culpable, so we could forgive, but should never forget. Ends
New Vision Editorial: Thursday, 14th April, 2005

Obote talk just a scare!
SIR It is shocking for President Yoweri Museveni and his loud speaker, Nsaba Buturo, to insist now that Milton Obote will be charged for crimes against humanity when he returns. The President and Buturo are both well-educated men who should know that you do not have to wait for Obotes return to charge him in court. Suspects are charged in absentia, and a warrant is issued for their arrest. The current remarks are only to scare Obote. If, for 18 years, the NRM has not preferred any charges, I doubt they have any against him. Edward Okadapao Kampala
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[Ugnet] 2.6 million voters to miss polls - Monitor


2.6 million voters to miss polls
By Badru D. Mulumba
Monitor, April 15, 2005
KAMPALA  A report of registered voters confirms Kampala as the district to scramble for by the political parties in the run up to a possible referendum, and possibly the presidential elections.But Mbarara is fast bridging the gap, according to the report that also shows that about 2.6 million eligible voters could miss voting on account of failure to register.Every 6 out of 100 registered voters reside in Kampala (525,553) compared to 5 out of every 100 voters in Mbabara (440,790) Wakiso, Mbale and Bushenyi follow in that order.The gap between Kampala and Mbarara is down to 84,793 registered voters from a gap of 104,048 voters in 2001.Third placed Wakiso (314, 920) - the same position as in 2001 - also has the highest number of actual eligible voters who have not registered, according to a ranking of the districts by number of re
 gistered
 voters done by The Monitor from the Electoral Commission statistics.The updated list of total registered voters was released to the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee on April 12. In the report, Electoral Commission chairman Badru Kiggundu said the voters were captured in 2001 and during the continuous voter registration (August 2003 to February 2005). Voters captured from March 7 to March 24 were yet to be included in the report. The new voters list is relevant in the face of the current politicking and likely elections where politicians will want to be strategic. 

The Monitors calculations indicate that almost half the registered voters (4,021,358) are found in only 14 districts. And of the 8.5 million registered voters, 3,126,561 are in ten districts.According to the Electoral Commission registration returns, Bushenyi (282,900) rose to fourth displacing Mbale (282,283) who dropped to fifth and Mukono (269,850), which fell to sixth.However, Mukono has a high number of eligible voters than Mbale and Bushenyi meaning that its fall to sixth position is only because 74 out of every 100 voters turned out to register in Mukono compared to 86 out of every 100 in Bushenyi.The ranking further shows Masaka (269,422) stuck at seventh ahead of Iganga (252,900) at eighth and Lira (246,324) at ninth.But Mubende (241,148) slipped to eleventh being overtaken by Arua (241,863) that rose to
 tenth.The initial response from the general public to the continuing registration was not encouraging but the Commission, nevertheless, continued with programmes that included schools, institutions, Government Ministries and Statutory bodies, among others, both at headquarters and in districts, says the EC Report.A quarter of all eligible voters (23.99 percent) did not register to vote, which puts 2,690,528 potential votes to waste during the upcoming referendum or during the national elections - in case they dont register later in the year.Curiously, while some districts achieved a near one hundred percent registration, in others only just over half the eligible voting population turned up to register.Karamoja region has a problem where population of voting age is out grazing animals and is unreachable for registration purposes, says the Electoral Commission.In Kotido, only 30 out of every 100 voters registered (82,998) - leaving 187
 ,168
 eligible voters in the wilderness. And in Nakapiripirit, only 57 out of every 100 eligible voters have registered.In Moyo, only 41 out of every 100 eligible voters registered (37,583) - leaving 53,017 eligible voters off the voters roll. And in Adjumani, registration was only 43 out of every 100 eligible voters (39,115). And in Yumbe, 52 out of every 100 eligible voters missed the exercise.However, the EC blames the wide mismatch between eligible voters to registered voters to faulty census results.Border districts like Adjuman and Moyo have refugee populations that were included in the census figures, says the report.In his report to Parliament, Kiggundu said: While it is the responsibility of the Electoral Commission to put in place facilities for registration of voters, it is the duty of every Ugandan aged 18 years and above to register as a voter for public elections and referenda.The EC cites Article 59 of the Constitution.It is
 important to note that it is not mandatory for one to register as a voter or even to participate in the electoral process, he says.However, several other districts outside these regions registered miserable turnouts. Soroti had 56 per 100 eligible voters registering to vote.In Apac, 70 per 100 eligible voters registered, and in Lira it was 71 per 100 eligible voters.In Bundibugyo, it is only 68 per 100 eligible voters, and in Hoima only 63 per 100 voters. In Kabarole 72 out of 100 eligible voters.Interestingly, the war-ravaged districts of Gulu, Pader and Kitgum had a fair registration turnout than many other districts. In Gulu 82 per 100 eligible voters turned out to register while this was 72 per 100 in Pader and Kitgum.But in

[Ugnet] Obote 'not planning return soon'


Obote 'not planning return soon' 

Uganda's former President Milton Obote has told the BBC that he has no plans to return home soon because the country is still a "dictatorship". 
After reports that Mr Obote would end his exile in Zambia next month, President Yoweri Museveni has said that he would face trial if he returned. 
Mr Obote was deposed in a 1985 coup - a year before Mr Museveni seized power. 
Presidential elections are due next year but Mr Obote, 88, said he was now too old to lead Uganda. 
Civil war 
"There is no question in my mind. I will go home - when questions about dictatorship have been removed," Mr Obote told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme, explaining that political parties could not compete in elections. 
"I don't know if we can reach the position when you can ask me about going home." 
Mr Museveni banned political parties but they may be allowed to operate again after a referendum in June. 
"I now hear that Obote wants to return. They should tell him that he must answer for the crimes that were committed by his government. They murdered people in a deliberate way," Mr Museveni said at the weekend. 
But Mr Obote denied responsibility for the deaths of civilians during the civil war which eventually brought Mr Museveni to power. 
Supporters of Mr Museveni are currently campaigning for the constitution to be changed to allow him to stand in next year's elections after already serving two terms. 
If parties are allowed to compete, Mr Obote said he would not be the candidate of his Uganda People's Congress. 
"I've been there, I know how exacting it is and I don't want to do it again," he said. 
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4433993.stmPublished: 2005/04/11 15:37:39 GMT© BBC MMV
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[Ugnet] Museveni backtracks on succession -- recent history

Museveni backtracks on succession
By Will Ross BBC Focus On Africa magazine
In Yoweri Museveni's 2001 election manifesto, he stated he wanted a second and last term in office - and one of his tasks would be to choose a successor.
He won the election, which was marred by an increase in state-sponsored violence - his main opponent fled the country claiming his life was in danger, while President Museveni settled into the hot seat once again.
Last year at a national conference for senior members of the ruling Movement grouping, the main issue was the idea of a return to multiparty politics.
Then out of the blue a man stood up and proposed that the issue of the two-term limit on the presidency be revisited.
Who was that man? President Yoweri Museveni himself.
Prolonged power
A few years ago this did not seem likely. Museveni has in the past been fiercely critical of African leaders for staying in power too long; he saw himself as a new breed.
Addressing workers soon after he came to power, he stated he would be drinking from plastic cups and buying his furniture locally - clearly not the kind of African president who would fly to the south of France to get his moustache trimmed.
But critics say that almost 19 years in power have changed Museveni and the signs are not good.
They say he has become less tolerant of opposing views, and his language has become more combative.
When in June 2004, the government lost a ruling in the Constitutional Court, the president appeared on state television and lambasted the judges.
And when he used the presidential jet to fly his daughter to Germany to give birth, he stated that some Ugandan doctors could not be trusted.
Museveni's former friend Eriya Kategaya - with whom he began the struggle together against Idi Amin in 1971 - openly opposed the campaign to amend the constitution.
When he did so, he was booted out of cabinet along with two other colleagues - despite the fact the two had been in power together for 17 years.
"Our sacking from the cabinet was to show that either you toe the line or you get out," he told the BBC's Focus On Africa magazine.
"I never believed Museveni would try to change the constitution. If he wants it he should be honest enough to say so and give reasons.
"These tactics of dodging the question and hoping people don't see what he's doing - it's not something I expected from him," he added.
And he argued that prolonged power had changed the Ugandan president.
"For an incumbent of 18 years, if one is not very clear and careful it can go to your head," he said.
"You have power and you think you can do anything. Museveni thinks he is the Movement and he thinks if he's not around the country will not go forward.
"The difference between the Movement and himself and the Movement and the country is becoming thinner and thinner."
Difficult transition
A White Paper containing proposed amendments to the constitution is before parliament.
It contains wide-ranging issues - from the proposal to make Swahili an official language to granting the president the power to dissolve parliament.
But the proposal to lift the two-term limit on the presidency is by far the most controversial.
"I don't know what all the fuss is about," Janat Mukwaya, Uganda's minister of justice, told Focus On Africa.
"He is a very patient man with a big heart. He is still intelligent and capable and he will know when to quit."
Pressed on whether power has changed Museveni, she replies: "When I was reading political science, the most interesting philosopher was Machiavelli. He argued that leaders change to fit within the new environment."
She wants her changing president to stay.
"Anybody who has served his country should not be fettered just because of the term limits," she insisted.
"Leave it to the electorate. If we are going the multi-party way then we should open the term limit. We still want Museveni to be our chair through this difficult transition."
In reality, Museveni has been campaigning since the beginning of 2004, promising to increase the likes of teachers' salaries. His helicopter has rarely been still.
When the mayor of Kampala introduced a monthly US$5 tax for all motorbike taxis, known as boda bodas, Museveni won himself a legion of mobile supporters by quickly scrapping the tax.
Returning from a trip to the US, Museveni was greeted by hundreds of boda boda cyclists decorated with dried banana leaves - which quickly became the symbol for those who support lifting the presidential term limit.
And the government has started to use cash as a means of opening the door for President Museveni to stand again. MPs who openly support the move were recently given close to US$3,000.
The official line is that the money was to enable the MPs to consult with their constituents on the white paper. However, many feel it is simply a bribe to ensure that the required two-thirds of MPs' vote to lift the two-term limit.
As the political temperature rises

[Ugnet] Does a Christian Condom Exist?

The battle over Uganda's Aids campaign

By Will Ross BBC News, Kampala On the billboard is a photo of two crested cranes - Uganda's national bird. "The Crested Crane sticks faithfully to one partner until death. Abstinence and faithfulness - 100% guaranteed," reads the caption below the entangled lovebirds.

Has the C for Condom been dropped from Uganda's Aids information campaign?Read on and you learn that the poster has been put up by the office of first lady Janet Museveni. The first lady's office is one of the major recipients of US funding to combat HIV/Aids.
On the other side of the billboard is a picture of a truck driver passing "Safari Hotel" as two women try to flag him down. "Thank GOD I said NO to Aids - driving home to my wife," it states, before asking: "Abstinence - why not?"
This is a "condomless" billboard. There is no mention of the word "condom" or "safe sex".
This push for abstinence and faithfulness in the fight against HIV/Aids has been welcomed by some sections of society, especially religious groups.
'Life-threatening'
Pastor Martin Ssempa says donor funding has for years been heavily biased towards condom promotion, and he claims this has lead to an escalation in casual sex and infidelity.

I've tried abstinence but it is quite hard - I always walk with condoms in my pocket

Dan, 20The outspoken pastor says it is time for that to change.
"Until recently, all HIV-related billboards were about condoms. Those of us calling for abstinence and faithfulness need billboards too," he says.
However, others consider it dangerous to push the "A" for "Abstinence" and the "B" for "Be Faithful" if the "C" for "Condom" message is lost or diluted.
After all, it was the ABC approach and a policy of openness inspired by President Yoweri Museveni which helped Uganda perform well in the fight against HIV/Aids compared to other countries.
Many African governments have fared miserably in attempting to counter the HIV pandemic, with devastating consequences.
By comparison, Uganda has performed well in bringing down the HIV prevalence to around 6%. In many parts of the country, it was at least three times as high during the early 1990s.
The New York-based group Human Rights Watch (HRW) has strongly criticized the Ugandan government, accusing it of pushing the abstinence line while downplaying the safe sex message.

We are in love but we are not going to have sex before marriage

Alex, 19A "life-threatening" shift which HRW says is orchestrated and funded by the US.
It says the funding for abstinence is due to President George W Bush's conservative Christian views, which are similar to those of Uganda's first lady.
The US says it plans to spend more than $100m combating HIV/Aids in Uganda this year - of which more than $8m will be on the abstinence and faithfulness programme. Some of that money will be focused on the young.
'Wacky ideas'
On a wall in Kitante Hill secondary school in Kampala is a poster advertising an abstinence march.
"Please wear your 'True Love Waits' T-Shirt if you have one," the organisers advise.

There have been concerns about the quality of condoms in Uganda"Abstinence is the best method. It is 100% safe against early pregnancies, STDs [Sexually Transmitted Diseases] and the common one, HIV, which is very deadly as it has no cure at the moment," says Linda, 19.
Alex, 19, tells me he has a girlfriend. "We are in love but we are not going to have sex before marriage."
Sandra, 16, says of her boyfriend: "His friends sometimes give him wacky ideas, but we sit down and talk it out as we both decided not to have sex before marriage."
Sandra says she was inspired by Linda and Alex. "If these guys can abstain, then I can also do the same no matter what pressure I get."
I ask if there are many people at the school who do not take on this abstinence message.
"Oh yes," replies Alex. He leaves the room for two minutes and returns with Dan and Usher, aged 20 and 19.
"I've tried abstinence but it is quite hard," says Dan. "I always walk with condoms in my pocket. But I don't think there is enough education in schools about safe sex."
Usher believes abstinence is a good idea but says it is not realistic: "I think most people get tempted too much and I think condoms are a good alternative."
'No change'
Despite the funding for abstinence based programmes, the Ugandan government is keen to deny that there has been any shift of emphasis.
"I would like to assure the world that we have continued to maintain abstinence, being faithful and the use of condoms as the principal strategy in the fight against HIV/Aids," says Uganda's Minister for Health, Mike Mukula.

Many of the young people we are working with are surviving on sex

Rogers KasiryeYouth worker
But while US cash has seen the canoodling crested cranes flying onto Uganda's billboards, it seems the birds are somewhat territorial and may have chased other messengers

[Ugnet] Is this where we are headed? At least one condition exists already...

Why Ceausescu Fell: His Silent War Against the Romanian People Backfired

by Thomas P.M. Barnett

The end finally came for Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu.
Literally scared out of office by an angry population that no longer feared his bullets, the fleeing tyrant and his wife were eventually captured, arrested, and executed after a secret trial. Genocide was the first of several charges leveled against the deposed leaders by the military tribunal.
Less than two weeks ago Ceausescu's dictatorship seemed immune to Eastern Europe's political upheaval. Now, new questions arise in light of the widespread violence that accompanied the end of this Stalinist regime.
Why was Ceausescu willing to wage open warfare against his people? And why would Romanians risk death rather than see his rule continue? The answers must be found in the silent war Ceausescu waged against his subjects for the last seven years.
This silent war dates back to 1982, when Ceausescu implemented severe austerity policies designed to retire the nation's foreign debt by 1990. Why so quickly? The Romanian dictator had witnessed Warsaw's near default on its large foreign debt. Poland's subsequent economic collapse convinced Ceausescu that his regime had to avoid this scenario at all costs.
Three elements drove him to this drastic conclusion:

First, a debt crisis would force the self-proclaimed "Genius of the Carpathians" to admit his economic mismanagement.
Second, such a crisis would cause Ceausescu's regime to lose credibility with the already hard-pressed workers. The ever-vigilant dictator could not allow a Romanian version of Solidarity to develop.
Finally, Ceausescu abhorred the idea of Western financial institutions gaining leverage over Romania's economy. The despot had spent years reducing Moscow's influence, and was not about to have it replaced by Western meddling.
Like his brash anti-Sovietism of the late 1960s, Ceausescu again cloaked his policies in the guise of defending Romania's sovereignty. But the cruel and uneven nature of his austerity program meant that ordinary Romanians were paying for the leader's paranoia with their lives.
Bucharest rapidly reduced its foreign debt over the 1980s, but the extreme rationing of food, basic amenities, and energy created virtual wartime conditions. Exiled dissident Mihai Botez estimates that at least 15,000 Romanians died annually from starvation, cold, and shortages.
Romania was rich enough to provide all these basic requirements, but Ceausescu chose not to do so. Instead, the debt was finally retired earlier this year.
Not everyone suffered these shortages equally. Ceausescu's ruling clan continued to live like modern-day Roman emperors, awash in luxury and decadence. The autocrat also kept his dreaded security police well paid so they would be willing to crush dissent wherever it arose.
After overseeing the economic strangulation of the Romanian people for seven years, it was not surprising that Ceausescu ordered the Timisoara massacre. What were another 4,000 dead to a tyrant who had already sacrificed 20 times that amount?
Similarly, when the security troops fought on like desperate gangsters after the regime's collapse, they were well aware of the people's deep anger over their long history of oppression.
It was anger so great, that when faced with their eighth straight winter of this silent war, Romanians were ready to choose death over Ceausescu. The turning point of the popular uprising occurred when military leaders realized that the people could be pushed no further.
With Ceausescu's downfall, Romania faces severe tests in the weeks ahead. The No. 1 task of the newly formed opposition, the National Salvation Front, is to contain the potential for continued violence.
The anger resulting from Ceausescu's silent war must be properly channeled in order to avoid a long and ugly backlash. An orderly and fully disclosed trial for Ceausescu would have gone a long way in releasing some of this pressure.
It is a good sign that the National Salvation Front is led by political figuressuch as the interim president, Ion Iliescuwho, because of their past dissent, fell out of Ceausescu's favor many years ago. Their social stature will be instrumental in promoting new government policies which address Romania's present problems rather than dwell on its past.
Ceausescu subjected his people to any sacrifice necessary to maintain his absolute power. The end result was a nation isolated abroad and economically crippled at home. While the isolation has ended, the economic damage remains.
Both East and West have declared their readiness to aid in Romania's economic recovery. But both sides must also continue to be patient with Romania. It is a country coming out of a long and brutal conflict. While open warfare didn't break out until last week, Ceausescu's silent war had been claiming victims for years.
Do

[Ugnet] Monitor Letters, April 16, 2005

2005-04-15 Thread musamize

Just buy us all helicopters
Something is terribly and worryingly wrong with the NRM government. When Ministers announce their well researched and thought through policies, you feel like running out of your skin.
Now the Prime Minister and leader of government business is telling the gullible Ugandans and the ever receptive donor and international community, that it has failed to work on our roads to minimum standard levels, so they want to buy Land Cruisers for the more equal animals than the rest of us commoners!
Readers may remember that Uganda is one of those countries with the highest number of ministers (67) and where the majority of them are more of a liability than an asset to the common tax payers whose backs are breaking to maintain them.
If I may ask the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, Prof. Apolo Nsibambi who announced this abusive and obscenely exploitative plan, how will the thousands of the public servants and the millions of the tax payers who pay for your luxuries, Sir, be able to drive their small cars and less durable vehicles across the gullies and trenches that we call roads? Maybe we buy helicopters for all of them Sir?
Now that the list of things our government has failed to solve is long, are we going to extend this approach across the board? OK, Mulago and other government hospitals hardly have enough drugs and medical equipment, so we take all our patients to foreign countries for treatment.
Because almost all primary school toilets under the UPE programme were poorly constructed, we buy mobile toilets for all primary schools. Because the government has failed (or is it refused?) to fight corruption, then we give all public officers a corruption disincentive of say Shs10 million every month etc !
A government that openly accepts that it has failed to provide the minimum basic services to its citizenry has no moral authority to continue presiding over their leadership Hon. Nsibambi.
We pay taxes, you continuously and chronically borrow money (I hear on our behalf) to work on these roads, where does our money go? The Prime Minister is better of telling us that the Land Cruisers are meant to facilitate ministers to mobilise for Mr Yoweri Musevenis 5th term.
Frank Mutagubya[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Monitor, April 16, 2005.
Will corruption ever end in our dear country?
Recently, there was a screaming headline in The Red Pepper of April 8 saying M7 Trashes Cheeyes NSSF-Mugoya Report.The article said that after making several unsuccessful attempts to see the President, Mugoya finally managed to see him. And after a one-on-one with his Excellency, managed to convince him that Cheeyes NSSF report was fake and that Cheeye in writing his report had been duped by Mugoyas business rivals.
This is despite the fact that earlier, on the strength of this report, the President had taken the following actions:He ordered the Prime Minister to transfer the NSSF from the Ministry of Gender to the Ministry of Finance.
He ordered the Ministry of Finance to suspend the NSSF board.He ordered the suspension of the managing director Mr Leonard Mpuuma.He instructed the Auditor General, the CID and the IGG to investigate the Nsimbe Housing Estate deal and all other NSSF projects with a criminal angle and if any irregularities or improprieties were discovered, prosecute the culprits.
There was an overwhelming support for the Presidents actions from the public, judging from the comments one read in the press . The investigative bodies seem to have confirmed that the contents of the Cheeye report were indeed true.
Now we are told all that is to be reversed just because of a visit by Mugoya to State House. It took just this visit to convince the President to give the Nsimbe Estates deal the nod, thus throwing out of the window, Cheeyes report, the Auditor Generals report and the CID findings.
What is really happening in this NSSF/ Mugoya thing?Josky Tikada[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Monitor, April 16, 2005.

[Ugnet] RE: [UNAANET] Ugandas rosy image deceptive- report

2005-04-15 Thread musamize



Mr. Kironde,

You give no basis for your conclusion. But let us for argument's sake assume that GGI is indeed has "the finger prints of the disgranted (sic)opposition in Uganda", as you put it. 

1. The question is: disgruntled or otherwise, is there any grain of truthin what they are saying?

2. Another question: what is it that you understand by good governance? 
i.e. is it even remotely possible that neither you nor the presidentialattack dog, Nagenda, are actually cluess as to exactly what good governance is?

3. Lastly, does/can your NRM accept criticism or does everyone who dares criticize it, however constructively, automaticallybecome its mortal enemy?


Ssemakula

btw: given that thegroup was founded in August 2004 out of a merger of The Asia Review, Middle East Monitor, Africa Analysis International and Refugee Watch, how and when did it acquire "the finger prints of the disgranted (sic) opposition in Uganda", as you claim?Ed Kironde [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

The so-called New York based Good Governance International seems to have the finger prints of the disgranted opposition in Uganda. It is is fed on garbage. Garbage In - Garbage Out [GIGO]
The report forgets that these are the times of the information age and it is is an insult to the foreign analysts whose information as alleged by the so called GGI, comes from government agents or the paid public agents. Unless proved otherwise, GGI seems to be not so creditable.Ssemakula [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:






Ugandas rosy image deceptive- report 


By Badru D. Mulumba

KAMPALA - In the latest effort to convince the international community to take a critical look at President Yoweri Musevenis government, a new report claims the countrys rosy image in the past 19 years has been a deceitful creation by paid publicists.But yesterday, the Senior Presidential Adviser on the Media and Public Relations, Mr John Nagenda, said it is not a crime to hire publicists. He dismissed the report and cast doubt on the credibility of the authors.The report Revealing Uganda: The Mask of Politics, Economics and Social Realities, was released on Monday by the New York based Good Governance International (GGI).It says the Movement governments vision for democracy, rule of law, popular participation, transparency and accountability remains daunting, if not, doubtful and devastating.Yet, Uganda is portrayed in the international arena as responsive to the waves of good govern
 ance
 progress in Africa, the report says. The organisations country monitoring shows that the portrayal of the Ugandan government by some western analysts and nations is consequential of a hidden mask projected by the countrys administration and its paid public relations agents.The report says Uganda appears promising and dynamic only because the international community is not obtaining the actual truth. It says political, economic and social progress in Uganda should not be based on what international institutions and western nations hear from Museveni and his emissaries. Their account would be promotional, subjective, calculative, over-stated and partisan for international impression, the reports reads. Nagenda said the report is a reflection of cheap publicity. Good Governance International whom I have never heard of should carry out its investigations before yapping in this nonsensical fashion, he said.According to the report, the ro
 sy
 picture of the Movement government painted internationally, results from the need to secure international assistance, recognition and alliance.The report says the donors were initially convinced the Movement would adopt good governance practices by adhering to popular political and economic principles, minimising corruption and guaranteeing human rights protection and establishing an accountable fiscal system. Musevenis National Resistance Army rebellion of 1981-86 reportedly preached democracy, transparency, accountability and development by promising restoration of political and socio-economic sanity and alleviation of mass poverty and disease. Yet those promises seem ironical considering his record of misrule, the report says. It says the hope for democratic freedom and development policy reforms remains a complete contrast to dismal projections emanating from the country. There is an absolute diversion from the rule of law, democracy, 
 popular
 participation, transparency and accountability, the report says. It cites constitutional proposals that would give the president more powers, the insistence by the Movement that it is not a political party, and reports of torture of opposition supporters.GGI also found out that the government is succeeding in its constitutional distortion drive because it uses bribery and intimidation as well as dismissals to attain mass support and loyalty, the report reads. It says the positive dimension of Ugandas politics was thriving on the fact that, unlike the countrys previous regimes, Ugandan

[Ugnet] Re: [FedsNet] M7 gained from neo-colonialism [Letters--Wkly Observer]

2005-04-15 Thread musamize

Mr. Basudde:

Thank you so very much for posting the letter which hilights Museveni's hypocrsy.

Doe anyone recall how he(MU7) lambasted African leaders for wanting fancy titles e.g. "his excellency", and flying off to attend OAU or UN conferences in multi-millon dollar jets while the citizens were walking bearfoot?

Well on his watch, not only did he buy a US $40M presidential gulf-stream that had even conservertive thensenator Grahm (R- TX) bewildered about the opulence of third world presidents -- he quickly added a US $400,000 Range Rover (are itsrims made of gold?), and that was after he had already acquired a US $1M mercedes benz --, but citizens of Uganda today die of jiggers!

To add insult to injury, he has proposed that the State House be rebuilt completely. Cost? A cool US $150M! And that was after the old State House was perennially allocated money to repair it don't (just take my word for it, look at copies of the past budgets), and after the public had balked at an obscenely overpriced repair bill of US $60M., etc etc etc.

Museveni runs circles around Swaziland's King Muswati when it comes to squandering a nation's scarce financial resources or running up a public debt that would take all the drunken sailorsfrom an armada of aircraft carriers a month of Sundays to even rival.

By the time you toss in looting the natural resources of the DRC -- oh yes, the DRC will sue Uganda for reparations even if by then Mu7 may be sweating in purgatory-- and you got one heck of a mess!

Need I mention that as of now, Uganda is a reccuring basket case that depends on begging and charity for well over 50% of her annual budget -- debt forgiveness be damned, and in spite of the fact that there has been no Ethiopian level-drought in Uganda for decades??

Need I detain you while I wonder at the NGOization of the Ugandan economy to a level not seen befor on the African continent.

But, what truly amazes me, is that a man withwith such an abysmal record is shamelessly campaining to be re-elected!

Ugandans need to wake up and ask him soberly: what have you done for me lately, and at what cost?

James Basudde [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

M7 gained from neo-colonialism
14th April 2005
While presiding over the release of the 2002 National Census results at Speke Resort Muyonyo, the President lambasted foreigners for meddling in our national affairs, saying they failed to govern us when they where our colonial masters.
Much as what Museveni said might seem sensible, even the President is a direct beneficiary of the neo-colonial era. In 1986, when he had just captured power, Museveni came in with a mentality of self-reliance and Africanisation, castigating former leaders for purchasing furniture from Italy when it could be made locally in Kawempe. He also wondered why they should spend lavishly on cutlery from Europe when he was drinking from a mug made by TUMPECO.
As they say, time is the best judge, and now 20 years down the road, we have a Westernised President Museveni whose State House furniture is imported from Europe; whose daughter delivers in EUROPE. When he quarrels with his neighbours (such as Rwanda), he has to fly to EUROPE to settle their differences. When his daughters need education, they have to be enrolled in Western fashion colleges in Minnesota, U.S.A.
When his son needs military training, he is enrolled at Sandhurst Military Academy, previously having been enrolled at Nottingham University all in EUROPE. His motorcade is composed of vehicles manufactured in EUROPE; the Presidents suits, shoes and ties are all made in EUROPE. So when you start criticising the Europeans, you should remember that you are a direct beneficiary of neo-colonialism.
So we should all ask ourselves, should the Europeans be wrong to criticise you if the opulence of your lifestyle and family evolves around their products and when over 50 percent of your national budget is donor funded?
As the saying goes, people who live in glasshouses should not throw stones.
Malcolm Byagaba, London. [EMAIL PROTECTED]__Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___
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[Ugnet] NEWS: Muntu pins Obote over massacres

Muntu pins Obote over massacres
By Charles Mwanguhya Mpagi Hussein Bogere
Monitor 19, 2005

KAMPALA - One of President Yoweri Musevenis harshest critics has defended the National Resistance Armys conduct during the Luweero war while blaming Milton Obotes Uganda National Liberation Army for killing civilians.Maj. Gen. (Rtd.) Mugisha Muntu, the former army commander, who is now a leader of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change, said the UNLA had committed a lot of atrocities during the 1981-1985 war that was based mainly in the Luweero Triangle. But he also criticised Mr Museveni for betraying the cause of the war. Muntu said Musevenis government veered so much from its original ideals that people can no longer distinguish between the NRA liberators and the Uganda National Liberation Army who massacred people.Addressing journalists at the FDC headquarters in Najjanankumbi yesterday, Muntu gave a chronological account of the war and pinned the UNLA for the kil
lings.
He said he would testify in court if the matter ever came to that.His remarks came in the wake of the recent exchange between former president Obote and Museveni over who is responsible for the Luweero massacres. The war of words was triggered off by Obotes claims in The Monitors series, Obote: My Story, in which he accuses Museveni and his NRA of masterminding the Luweero killings. While Obote insists that it was NRA that was responsible, Museveni and government officials on the other hand say the UNLA committed the atrocities. They add that Obote should account for them and the atrocities committed during his rule. The president has threatened to sue The Monitor and Obote for telling lies about him. Said Muntu: Doubt has come into the population that we were not liberators, that we were a bunch of self-seekers. It is very painful.He said if the Movement and Museveni had stuck to the ideals that led to the war, the current deb
ate
would not have emerged. This debate would be totally seen differently if it arose in the late eighties or early nineties because NRM had taken a moral high ground, Muntu said. That should be an eye opener to Museveni and NRMO. However, Muntu dismissed Obotes claims as absolute lies in an interview with The Monitor. Those people (civilians in Luweero) were killed in broad-day light inside the camps. There is no way we could have penetrated the camps, he said. Besides the population would not have supported us if we were killing their own. Dont forget also that the majority of our soldiers were from that area.Muntu, who was the rebel NRAs chief of intelligence, also dismissed Obotes claims that the NRA killed parents in order to recruit their children as child-soldiers. Thats absolutely impossible, he said. But he remained critical of Museveni for not sticking to the ideals that took the NRA to war and appealed to him to make amends.
Its not yet too late to rectify the situation, Muntu said. What betrayal that can be to the thousands of people and soldiers that died. That a whole sacrifice now stands a danger of being erased because of one, two, or three people! President Museveni we would like to request you to rethink. Dont get a whole part of our history which was gained through sacrifice and subject it to oblivion because of a selfish interest of a few individuals.Muntu said the Movement had lost the high moral ground that helped the then guerrilla group to win over hearts of the people and liberate the country. Its painful; because of a few selfish individuals we lost that ground, he said. People no longer know whether we are liberators, fighters or crooks like many others. An emotional Muntu said, All those people who died are now being seen as a mere statistic. He said there was need for an independent inquiry to establish who was responsible for the
killings.When this debate comes up as to who was responsible for killing and who was not, we need to hear from a third party, he said. But he added: I have no doubt that UNLA committed a lot of atrocities. Many people were killed in camps in Kapeeka, Bombo, Katikamu and other areas. Muntu said it was because of these atrocities that the people would run to the NRA camps. He said like in Luweero in the 80s people ran to those they felt could guarantee them protection. Yes there is collateral damage. Anybody who has been in the army cannot deny that, but we should not forget the principle, Muntu said. If people feel they want to be liberated even if some die but if they achieve the objective to liberate themselves...
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[Ugnet] Monitor Letter: Selfish business interests killing our country


Selfish business interests killing our countryTwo recent events have reminded me of how predictable entrenched business interests are when it comes to blocking progress in order to maintain their unfair advantage. The first of these events is the president's giving a go-ahead to the Nsimbe project. The second is the installation of the thermal power plant.We m
 ust not
 forget how we got ourselves into the $30 million bill for thermal generators. During the Bujagali Dam saga, we were bombarded in the media with unspecific allegations of corruption and imprecise scares of environmental fallout. We had parliamentary probes, and spin after spin. The short of it is, the dam never got built, and now we have to contend with power cuts and increased costs. So when I saw the circus around the NSSF Nsimbe project, I felt a strong sense of deja vu: Imprecise allegations, shrill voices with no facts, parliamentary probes, spin! The result? Well, if you think it is hard today finding a decent house in a decent area to buy, wait and see what it will be like five years from now! When shall we stop? After we have totally mortgaged the entire country to business interests? What sort of country will our children find?John KatendeMasaka
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[Ugnet] News: Obote's selective amnesia (dementia?)

Obotes story a counterpoint to Musevenis Mustard Seed?
It is a political autobiography, but also an apologia and defence where Dr Milton Obote hardly concedes anything that he has been held responsible for. It is right for him to put his own side of the story, though perhaps we will hear nothing that we do not know already. In my opinion, Obote needs to be judged against the situation that he inherited from the colonial era. The picture he paints for himself is that of a consistent champion of multiparty democracy and of the rule of law someone who eschewed use of the military in maintaining himself in power. He presents Amin and Museveni as men who have used violence to take and maintain themselves in power. The two dominant elements in Ugandas politics since independence have been manipulation and manoeuvre, and Obote was a genius in these. The objects of manipulation have been the pe
ople
(as a fiction, as tribes, religions, and youths), parliament, the judiciary, and the electoral process. The military (army, special forces) have been used for purposes of manoeuvre. In Museveni, Obote met his match in the game of manoeuvres and timing. Presidents like Yusufu Lule and Godfrey Binaisa, not to mention Tito Okello, who were poor at manoeuvring did not last long. Obote counting on his popularity and capacity to manoeuvre did not realise the power of former youthful UPC cadres who had become opposed to his legacy and tactics. He miscalculated when he thought to stage a heroic comeback against the forces arraigned against him, especially in Buganda. The NRA may have done their own killings in Luwero, but the UNLA pursued a scorched earth policy, killing civilians on an unprecedented scale. It would be more realistic for Obote to admit that during his second administration the army was really out of his control.
Rev Amos KasibanteLeicester, UK
**
Former president Milton Obote is telling lies about his tenure. Iam lost when he says government soldiers never committed atrocities in Luweero Triangle. Could he tell us who de-roofed houses and emptied coffee stores left by fleeing peasants? Surely, it cannot be Museveni bandits as he prefers to call them. They had no business with iron sheets as they were known to sleep in bushes and were not coffee dealers. For the thousands of human skeletons picked from the countryside after the war, its inconcievable to count them on Museveni as Obote wants the public to believe since Museveni could not have killed the very people sustaining his war effort. In Kampala from 1980 - 85, shops and offices closed as early as 3 p.m., and one could venture into the city after dark only if he wanted to meet his Creator, not forgetting the notorious pand
a gari
operations which some of its victims have never been seen again. If this is the security Obote alleges to have brought, God forbid. The best Obote can do is to apologise to the Baganda instead of revoking memories of the dead.
Lastus KibowaE-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
**
I was amused but not amazed when I read Obote's account of why he nominated Oyite Ojok to become the Chairman of the now defunct Coffee Marketing Board. One remains baffled by the childish and stupid logic that Obote advances for justifying his actions. "I appointed Oyite Ojok the Chairman for the Coffee Marketing Board because when we came (sic) to government we found that Uganda Government had no money. There was no fuel in the country and we needed foreign exchange ... so I appointed Oyite Ojok as Chairman of the Coffee Marketing Board to give that security at the plant in Kampala for overnight work, which we did. That is how I solved the problem of fuel in the country"In typical Obote fashion, as Shakespeare once remarked, 'the devil will cite the scriptures to his cause,' he unashamedly and blatantly lies about such a scandalous matter
of
which he had no control whatsoever. It was common knowledge during his tenure that Obote was a weak and vacillating leader who had little control over the likes of Paulo Muwanga and Oyite Ojok. According to Muwanga's account, Oyite Ojok informed Obote that with immediate effect he would become the Chairman of CMB. Obote refused, whereupon Oyite Ojok berated him (in front of Muwanga) and said to him, "Milton, you are so ungrateful! You mean to tell me after rigging this election in your favour you dare to challenge me? We did not win for nothing." He left Obote in tears. A Kadumukasa Kironde IIButikiro Road, Kampala

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[Ugnet] Muteesa II Life Death in Brief

Mutesa II
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutesa_II)

Mutesa II, the first President of Uganda.

Edward Mutesa II (November 19, 1924 - November 21, 1969) was king of the Buganda region and President of Uganda from 1963 to 1966.
His full name was Sir Edward Frederick William David Walugembe Mutebi Luwangula Mutesa but was often nicknamed King Freddie by his supporters. As king he was also leader of the Ganda tribe which dominated Buganda.
Mutesa became king in 1939 upon the death of his father, King Daudi Cwa II. At the time Buganda was part of the British protectorate of Uganda. He continued his father's practices of reforming the largely self-governing kingdom into a constitutional monarchy<
/A> system of government. When discussions began among British officials of making Uganda into an independent country, King Freddie lobbied them in an attempt to secure independence for Buganda as a country sovereign from Uganda. The efforts were both ineffective and unpopular, however, and he was briefly deposed and exiled.
Mutesa returned to Uganda and his throne in 1955. In 1962 Uganda became independent from Britain with Milton Obote as Prime Minister and Walter Fleming Coutts as Governor General. In 1963 Obote abolished Uganda's status as a Commonwealth realm and replaced the post of Governor General with a figurehead Presidency. A largely rigged election saw Mutesa get elected as Uganda's first President, a result Obote had deliberately orchestrated in order to appease the Ganda tribe.
Mutesa was not content to serve as a mere figurehead, however, and continued to feud with Obote over the future of Buganda. In 1966 Obote suspended the Ugandan constitution and proclaimed himself as the new president, exiling Mutesa to Britain. President Obote proceeded to abolish all of Uganda's kingdoms, including Buganda.
[edit]
Death
Mutesa died of alcohol poisoning in his London flat in 1969. Attributed to suicide by the British police, the death has been viewed as a possible assassination by those claiming that Mutesa may have been forcibly administered large amounts of vodka by agents of the Obote regime. Mutesa was interviewed in his flat only a few hours before his death by the British journalist John Simpson, who found that he was sober and in good spirits. Simpson reported this to the police the following day on hearing of Mutesa's death, although this line of enquiry was not pursued.Edward Mulindwa [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Kasangwawo"I've already said that it was an assassination by agents of the Obote regime"That is the crap sold in Uganda, you and I have been abroad for a while and we state matters we can prove. So I am not my grand mother who still believe that Muteesa is still alive and well in UK. Every body who dies in UK has a cause of death, and I state that Muteesa's cause of death is listed , officially listed as alcohol poisoning.Kindly tell us what is officially listed as the death of this drunkard?EmTorontoThe Mulindwas Communication Group"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"Groupe de communication Mulindwas"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"- Original Message - From: "jonah kasangwawo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005
9:30
AMSubject: Re: [Ugnet] Buturo knows Luweero killers, says UPC Man, are you illiterate or plain dumb ? I've already said that it was an assassination by agents of the Obote regime, through poisoning. Is it clear to you now ? Regarding Lule, I was only trying to point out to you that it would be better if you first ask yourself in which university Obote did his doctorate before you start questioning Lule's credentials who was an academic. But that also seems to be beyond you. I'm done with your hopeless allegations on this issue.From: "Edward Mulindwa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Reply-To: ugandanet@kym.netTo: CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: [Ugnet] Buturo knows Luweero killers, says UPCDate: Wed, 13 Apr 2005 20:11:55 -0400KasangwawoWhat
did
Kabaka Muteesa die from? This is your chance to make it public. Mutesa was a King of Buganda, and a Uganda president at a certain point, surely the cause of his death must be stated and publicly. The floor is yours.On Lule I will not waste my time for we have asked you many times where he did his professorship and you have not answered, that means you do not know and you do not care to research..EmTorontoThe Mulindwas Communication Group"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"- Original Message - From: "jonah kasangwawo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: Sent: Wednesday, April 13, 2005 11:41 AMSubject: Re: [Ugnet] Butur
o knows
Luweero killers, says UPCMulindwa,I'm not going to do your research for you, but I'll tell you this. Circumstances of Muteesa II's death clearly point to an assassination by agents of

[Ugnet] Do you know of a brown nose in your hood?

Slap Your Co-Worker Day is Coming!!

Tomorrow is the official Slap Your Irritating Co-workers Holiday: Do
you have a co-worker who talks nonstop about nothing, working your last
nerve with tedious and boring details that you don't give a damn about?
Do you have a co-worker who ALWAYS screws up stuff creating MORE work for
you?

Do you have a co-worker who kisses so much booty, you can look in their
mouth and see what your boss had for lunch? Do you have a co-worker who
is SOOO obnoxious, when he/she enters a room, everyone else clears it?
Well, on behalf of Ike Turner, I am so very very glad to officially
announce tomorrow as SLAP YOUR IRRITATING CO-WORKER DAY! There are the
rules you must follow:

* You can only slap one person per hour - no more.
* You can slap the same person again if they irritate you again in the
same day.
* You are allowed to hold someone down as other co-workers take their
turns slapping the irritant.
* No weapons are allowed...other than going upside somebody's head with
a stapler or a hole-puncher.
* CURSING IS MANDATORY! After you have slapped the recipient, your
"assault" must be followed with something like "cause I'm sick of your stupid-a$$ always messing up stuff!"
* If questioned by a supervisor [or police, if the supervisor is the irritant], you are allowed to LIE, LIE, LIE!

Now, study the rules, break out your list of folks that you want to slap the living day lights out of and get to slapping.and have a great day!!
.hmm, I guess all those psycophants we have back in the pearl better get body armour
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[Ugnet] Nigeria takes debt case to IPU

April 19, 2005:
Nigeria takes debt case to IPUFrom John Abba-Ogbodo, Abuja
DETERMINED to secure cancellation to her debt burden by creditor nations, Nigeria has taken the issue to the Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU).
A statement issued in Abuja yesterday by Mr Austin Uganwa, special assistant to Deputy Speaker said the issue of Nigeria's foreign debt was the crux of a presentation made by a delegation led by the deputy speaker to the recent IPU conference in Manila, Philippines.
Nigeria, according to the statement, pleaded with parliaments of the creditor nations to put pressure on their governments to provide a window for this country by way of debt relief programmes, stressing that no nation could make meaningful progress with such a debt burden.
The delegation told the conference that frustrated by the debt burden, the House of Representatives recently passed a motion urging the Nigerian government to declare a unilateral moratorium on the servicing of the debts.
According to the deputy speaker, Nigeria with her huge population required enormous resources for development and servicing the debts would deny the citizens much-needed infrastructure.
The move, if adopted, Opara said, would substantially assist Nigeria in meeting her obligations to the citizens.
"A large percentage of our national earnings, which would have otherwise gone to development projects, is now being channelled to servicing debts," he said.
Opara, in his presentation, described the debt situation as pathetic and appealed to his colleagues to assist by making their home governments appreciate the Nigerian situation.
He also urged them to increase the volume of their investments in the country, stressing that the current administration had taken the war against corruption to an appreciable level.
The deputy speaker pledged the support of the National Assembly for the reform process of the United Nations, noting that enlarging a vital organ like the Security Council to accommodate the current dynamics of the world was a welcome development. Nigeria's total external debt profile today stands at about $35 billion.`

Tiny Uganda's Red Ink is some US $4.5 Billion -- 60% of the annual GDP,and growing furiously. Barely three years ago it stood at $3.5Billion.

Another way look at it is that every, man, woman and child in Uganda owes about $200. With rh annual per capita income in the neighborhood of $200, it would take each Uganda to work for an entire year to pay off the debt -- and that is without spending on anythingelse during that year.
Now of course the "Bannakyeyo" could retire the entire currentdebt -- all be it in 10 years --- if every cent they annually were used to pay it off, . er and noadditional interest accrued in the mean time .

[Ugnet] NEWS: Atrocity Victims in Uganda Choose to Forgive

April 18, 2005
Atrocity Victims in Uganda Choose to ForgiveBy MARC LACEY

ULU, Uganda - The International Criminal Court at The Hague represents one way of holding those who commit atrocities responsible for their crimes. The raw eggs, twigs and livestock that the Acholi people of northern Uganda use in their traditional reconciliation ceremonies represent another.
The two very different systems - one based on Western notions of justice, the other on a deep African tradition of forgiveness - are clashing in their response to one of this continent's most bizarre and brutal guerrilla wars, a conflict that has raged for 18 years in the rugged terrain along Uganda's border with Sudan.
The fighting features rebels who call themselves the Lord's Resistance Army and who speak earnestly of the import of the Ten Commandments, but who routinely hack up civilians who get in their way. To add to their numbers, the rebels abduct children in the night, brainwash them in the bush, indoctrinate them by forcing them to kill, and then turn them - 20,000 over the last two decades - into the next wave of ferocious fighters seeking to topple the government. Girls as young as 12 are assigned as rebel commanders' wives. Anyone who does not toe the line is brutally killed.
The international court, invited to investigate the war by President Yoweri Museveni, has announced it is close to issuing arrest warrants for rebel leaders including, no doubt, Joseph Kony, the self-styled spiritualist calling the shots. But some war victims are urging the international court to back off. They say the local people will suffer if the rebel command feels cornered. They recommend giving forgiveness more of a chance, using an age-old ceremony involving raw eggs.
"When we talk of arrest warrants it sounds so simple," said David Onen Acana II, the chief of the Acholi, the dominant tribe in the war-riven north, who traveled to The Hague recently to make his objections known. "But an arrest warrant doesn't mean the war will end."
Lars Erik Skaansar, the top United Nations official in Gulu, has sought peace in as varied places as the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone and the Middle East over the last 12 years. "I have never seen such a capacity to forgive," he said.
Mr. Kony tells his followers that he is in direct contact with God, and that God says it is right to kill in the cause of toppling Mr. Museveni's evil government, which is accused of hostility toward the country's north. (The government's sins, however, remain unstated.)
In 1988, when the government tried to train villagers in self-defense, Mr. Kony was quoted as saying: "If you pick up an arrow against us and we ended up cutting off the hand you used, who is to blame? You report us with your mouth, and we cut off your lips. Who is to blame? It is you! The Bible says that if your hand, eye or mouth is at fault, it should be cut off." The rebels began cutting off the lips, hands, noses and breasts of civilians, intending that their victims survive as constant warnings to others.
The other day, an assembly of Acholi chiefs put the notion of forgiveness into action. As they looked on, 28 young men and women who had recently defected from the rebels lined up according to rank on a hilltop overlooking this war-scared regional capital, with a one-legged lieutenant colonel in the lead and some adolescent privates bringing up the rear. They had killed and maimed together. They had raped and pillaged. One after the other, they stuck their bare right feet in a freshly cracked egg, with the lieutenant colonel, who lost his right leg to a bomb, inserting his right crutch in the egg instead. The egg symbolizes innocent life, according to local custom, and by dabbing themselves in it the killers are restoring themselves to the way they used to be.
Next, the former fighters brushed against the branch of a pobo tree, which symbolically cleansed them. By stepping over a pole, they were welcomed back into the community by Mr. Acana and the other chiefs.
"I ask for your forgiveness," said Charles Otim, 34, the rebel lieutenant colonel, who had been abducted by the rebels himself, at the age of 16, early in the war. "We have wronged you."
The age-old rite is what local residents have used when members of one tribe kill members of another. After being welcomed back into the fold, the offender must sit down together with tribal leaders and make amends. After confessing to his misdeeds, the wayward tribesman is required to pay the victim's kin compensation in the form of cows, goats and sheep.
It is a system not unlike those in use in other parts of Africa. Somalis still pay compensation to quell the inter-clan battles in that country, although the traditional rite cannot possibly keep up with all the killings. In northern Kenya, where a recent bout of clan violence resulted in several dozen deaths, tribal mediation became bogged down over complains that the loss of a man's life was compensated

[Ugnet] Africa meets e-Commerce

April 18, 2005E-COMMERCE REPORT
Questioning Eziba's DecisionsBy BOB TEDESCHI

HEN Eziba, an online retailer, declared bankruptcy last year, it left behind more than the usual amount of financial pain.
The privately held company had built a considerable business by selling hand-made goods from local artisans around the world through catalogs, stores and its own Web site. But hundreds of those suppliers were left unpaid when Eziba encountered financial trouble. Some of the company's critics, including those at Overstock.com, which later bought the company's assets, are now questioning Eziba's decision to forgo payments.
Since its debut in 1999, Eziba was never shy about publicizing the benefits it bestowed on vendors around the world. The company said it paid a total of $10 million to groups like Rwandan basket weavers, many of them widows of that country's war, and South African papier mâché artists.
But when Eziba's financial fortunes soured late last year, the company paid off a $500,000 bank loan instead of paying hundreds of artisans more than $100,000 it owed them.
Eziba said that paying off the loan was the best business practice - a contention disputed by some bankruptcy law specialists. Shortly after paying the loan, the company entered a voluntary liquidation process in hopes of paying off creditors like the New York public relations firm Ruder Finn, among others. (According to Emmanuel Tchividjian, a Ruder Finn senior vice president, his company, which was owed $11,000, was more concerned with protecting the interests of the Rwandan artisans, whose work Ruder Finn publicized, than recovering its money.) The bankruptcy proceedings are continuing.
But the creditors then petitioned for Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings after a liquidation attorney told them that a bankruptcy trustee might be able to recover the $500,000 payment - which it subsequently did - and thereby increase the amount available to pay themselves and the artisans.
Overstock.com, the publicly held online seller of discount merchandise, bought Eziba's assets from the bankruptcy trustee for $500,000, a price unrelated to the bank loan, and announced that it would pay the artisans in full, even though it is not legally obliged to do so. Overstock further said that it would try to revive their businesses by selling their goods on Worldstock.com, an Overstock division with a mission similar to Eziba's.
Eziba's former chairman and co-founder, Richard Sabot, said last week that he and a handful of former Eziba executives would help Overstock pay back at least part of what was owed to the artisans out of their own pockets. Mr. Sabot said the two companies reached a tentative agreement to "cooperate together in insuring that all the overseas creditors, the artisans, are paid in full."
Patrick Byrne, Overstock's chief executive, said last week that Overstock had already begun identifying and paying artisans, although he welcomed Eziba's help. Earlier this month, for instance, Overstock paid a debt of $23,000 that Eziba owed to the Rwandan widows. But Mr. Byrne also said he felt that Mr. Sabot and Eziba committed grave ethical lapses by not paying its artisans when it had the money to do so.
"I smell skunk," Mr. Byrne said. "Even if Eziba really did have to repay the bank loan when it did, which I don't believe, the fact remains that they had eight months to pay the Rwandan widows $23,000 and they chose not to."
In measuring the legacy of Eziba, a loan of $500,000 from Vermont's Chittenden Bank could loom large. Mr. Sabot, an emeritus professor of economics at Williams College and the former co-founder of Tripod, a pioneering Internet business that Lycos bought in 1998 for $64 million, said the company was obligated to repay the loan at the height of Eziba's post-Christmas cash reserves. If the company failed to repay Chittenden before March, the bank could claim Eziba's cash and other assets.
According to Mr. Sabot and others familiar with the terms, the loan contract also stated that if those assets were not enough to pay back the loan in full, the bank could raise the rest by claiming personal assets of Mr. Sabot, and those of Bill Miller, Eziba's chief executive, and Michele Gilbert, the company's vice president of marketing.
Executives at Chittenden declined to comment, but Mr. Sabot strenuously objected to suggestions that the company might have paid off the loan to protect his personal assets, and those of Mr. Miller and Ms. Gilbert. Mr. Sabot said that if it had paid other vendors rather than a secured creditor like Chittenden, Eziba would have been risking what is known in bankruptcy law as a preferential payment, or a payment made to creditors who may not have as valid a claim to the company's assets as others.
Since bankruptcy judges can order the return of preferential payments pending a fuller hearing of all creditor claims, Mr. Sabot said Eziba was essentially acting in the interests of its artisan vendors by not

[Ugnet] Not yet ...Hoodia

Brooklyn Botanic GardenAn illustration of Hoodia gordonii from the archives of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

April 19, 2005THE CONSUMER
An Appetite Killer for a Killer Appetite? Not YetBy MARY DUENWALD

he way the San people of the Kalahari Desert describe it, Hoodia gordonii is nature's hunger buster. Break off a spiny, cucumber-shaped stalk from this succulent plant, feed on its milky center and you will have the energy to set off on a long hunt unencumbered by hunger pangs.
Or, if you live far from the arid regions in South Africa, Botswana and Namibia where hoodia grows, simply buy one of many new brands of hoodia supplements.
In the past few years, after reports that Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, had begun looking into hoodia's potential as an appetite-control drug, the market for hoodia that has been dried, powdered and fashioned into capsules has been growing fast. "The demand is very high, and the supply is ridiculously low," said Hugh Lamond, who runs Herbal Teas of Africa, one of a handful of hoodia exporters. "It's like shark-feeding time."
One supplement, called Hoodoba, advertises online that it "kills your appetite, ups your mood and gives you waves upon waves of energy."
The makers of Pure Hoodia, another brand, boast that the product contains an active ingredient that "fools your brain into believing you are full, making it easier to lose that excess weight."
Yet no human studies gauging the effectiveness or safety of the hoodia plant or of supplements made from it have been published.
That is why many physicians who specialize in weight loss do not recommend hoodia.
"In good conscience, I can't recommend something when the benefits are unproven and the health risks are unknown," said Dr. Jonathan Waitman, a nutrition specialist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital's weight control program.
Dr. Madelyn Fernstrom, director of the weight management center at the University of Pittsburgh, said it would not be surprising to find foods "that might stimulate or suppress hunger."
But even if eating the plant dampens the San people's hunger, she said, that does not mean that processed supplements necessarily work the same way. For one thing, people who take the supplements do not get as much exercise as the San people do and have easier access to food.
Even assuming hoodia can affect appetite, there are many other unknowns, including how much of the supplement a person needs to consume to achieve that effect, how often someone can safely take it and how long it will keep working.
One unpublished study by a British company found that nine men who took an unspecified amount of P57, said to be the active ingredient in hoodia, twice a day for 15 days ended up eating fewer calories and losing more body fat than did a like-size group of men who took placebos. But the study was small and short. And because it has not been published in a journal, scientists cannot examine the details of how it was conducted or what it found.
The study was done by Phytopharm, a British company that in 1997 acquired a license from South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to develop P57. The council had previously isolated P57 from Hoodia gordonii and identified it as the ingredient responsible for appetite control.
Phytopharm teamed up with Pfizer to develop a drug containing P57. But by mid-2003, Pfizer lost interest. Kate Robins, a spokeswoman for Pfizer in New London, Conn., explained that early research suggested that P57 would be too difficult to synthesize and could not readily be made into a drug in pill form.
Now, Phytopharm has teamed up with Unilever, the consumer products company that makes cleaning products, deodorant and a wide variety of foods, to look for ways to use P57 in foods and beverages. That effort will require studies to gauge the ingredient's safety and effectiveness, and no products are expected for at least three years, said Trevor Gorin, a spokesman for Unilever in London.
The new demand for hoodia, a wild plant, has led to a sudden surge in collecting it. As a result, it has been placed on the endangered species list. Mr. Lamond of Herbal Teas and other exporters have established hoodia farms in South Africa to provide a legal source of supply.
Unilever has done preliminary tests on 10 different supplement brands available in the United States, Mr. Gorin said, and has found that two contain no significant quantities of P57, four contain small amounts of it, and four contain significant amounts.
Hoodia supplements come in a variety of formulations, some containing other ingredients like green tea extract and cocoa extract. Bottles containing 60 capsules of varying strengths cost anywhere from $20 to $60.
How does hoodia work? Laboratory research, supported by Pfizer, in which P57 was injected into the brains of rats, indicated that it might act on the hypothalamus, a center of appetite control. Dr. David MacLean, an endocrinologist at Brown

[Ugnet] NEWS: WE ARE READY TO EXPLAIN THE LUWEERO INCIDENT -- UPC






Obote is the most deserving citizen of this country - Ochieno


By Charles Etukuri 


The return of Dr. Apollo Milton Obote has seen all hell break loose. So is he really returning this time around? With accusations flying around between Government and the UPC, who should answer for Luweero? Is Obote telling lies about President Museveni?The Monitor's CHARLES ETUKURI talks to The Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) UK bureau chief Mr Joseph Ochieno on his return to the coutry, UPC re-organisation and the way forward: 
How was life in exile generally?Exile is not something somebody should wish one to go to. Anybody who has been in exile should ensure that nobody else goes there. My exile was forceful and I never enjoyed each single day that passed by. Each day that passed made me long to come back home and as a matter of fact exile is a place everybody should at least avoid to go to.
How do you find Uganda different from the time you were here during your childhood?It's probably too early to comment on that. But I have been to a few places in the outskirts of Kampala for the few days I have been here. The image we had of Kampala, as Uganda's capital city was different from what we are seeing here now. We were told that Kampala had fundamentally changed but I did not see anything dramatic to be proud of compared to towns like Nairobi, and major cities in South Africa among other countries I have been to.I have seen a few people on the streets through my window seen a series of taxis and personal cars moving around the streets creating traffic in town. I didn't get exci
 ted for
 once and look at these as individual achievements. We in the UPC had emphasised on public services and public utilities over individual achievements the current Government is emphasising. 







WE ARE READY TO EXPLAIN THE LUWEERO INCIDENT- Joseph Ochieno (Photo by Natty Dread)
By the time we left power we had public commuter means in places like the passenger trains, which were even plying the city routes, and you could travel to Nateete on train. I am now told that even the long distance passenger trains we left in place have collapsed. I don't want to weep because its too early but so far I notice nothing substantial to talk about and get excited over. I represent a political party which is actually ambitious and determined to restore our past glory and achievements.
Do you have intentions to permanently stay here or you are just coming and going away?The republic of Uganda was founded for all Ugandans. My party stands out to be one of the oldest parties we have today and it is the party that helped usher Uganda into independence. We fought for this country and got its independence from colonialists and there is no way I can be a visitor in my own country. Uganda is my country and I am back to it. I am here to help my party the UPC rebuild and since the courts of laws liberated us from the york of some old draconian laws that existed in a section of the laws like the Political Parties Organisations Act (PPOA)
What is the state of Dr. Obote's health?The President is in good sound health and before I came here I was with him. There is definitely nothing bad with him he is in sound health. If he was sick his son couldn't be here.
The idea of Obote's return began to form seriously in 1997, during that much-publicised "UPC Convention" in Lusaka but nothing came out of it. On his recent interview with the BBC Obote said that there was no deal for his return, and he could only come back home after the "dictatorship" of President Yoweri Museveni had been overthrown. Why the sudden shift?Definitely Obote is coming back home this time round. I was with him when he was making that statement of his return . There is definitely no change of position. He is coming back to Uganda and this is the position he held since day one. His argument was that he would return if the dictatorial provisions like article 269, sections of the Politi
 cal
 Parties and Organisation Act were scraped off and generally when there is a return to multiparty politics, a neutral electoral commission among others. He is returning sooner than later. He is a Ugandan and the first citizen of Uganda and the most deserving citizen of this country better than me and everybody else. He fought for the creation of this country and he is definitely going to come back.
Questions are being raised about Dr.Obotes role in the Luweero massacres, and Government is apportioning blame on him. Would you for once think that he should answer for Luweero?The media should rightly inform the people about what happened in Luweero. I am happy that Monitor is running the Obote series about what exactly happened but that is not enough President Museveni should be challenged more on this. Dr. Obote won the 1980 elections convincingly and until today nobody contests the elections on the grounds that it was rigged. President Museveni decided to go to the bush despite UPC asking those that were

[Ugnet] NEWS: Let the emperor rule if people cannot see he is naked

Let the emperor rule if people cannot see he is naked
By Ignatius Ssuuna
Monitor, April 20, 2005
I was visiting a Kenyan friend in Nakuru-Kenya last month when news came from Uganda that hundreds supporting the return of President Yoweri Museveni to power after 2006 took to the kanmpala streets to demonstrate against anti-third term critics. The demonstrators, who called themselves, concerned patriots and clad in essanja (dry banana leaves), a symbol of third term for Museveni, chanted: "we want third term," and denounced the Irish Rock star Sir Bob Geldof and the British government for opposing the amendment of the Constitution to remove term limits hence allowing Museveni run for another term.
My Kenyan friend, Koros could not believe it. The news that Ugandans could go to the streets in support of a president ready to 'bend' the constitution hit him like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky.
Still reeling from the shock, he took me aside and asked whether it was indeed true that Ugandans were pestering Museveni to seek re-election after his term, which expires in 2006.I confirmed to my host that what he had heard and read in papers was nothing but the truth. I also told him that the president in his own words had promised not to 'betray' his electorates and would abide by the supporters' wishes.
He contacted his other friends in Kampala and was told the same. He sat down and bled. He wondered and asked what had become of Ugandans. "No, I think it's not true. There is no way Ugandans could go to the streets and ask Museveni to rule them for life. Are Ugandans becoming mad or what?" Koros posed. He was seething with anger and pain.
"Any way this is your country and I don't know what you want. I had thought voters were preparing to 'punish' Museveni by voting him out once he seeks re-election. Why do Ugandans refuse to learn from the past?" Koros wondered as he sat back murmuring curses to Africans who abet the creation of dictators. While in Makerere, Koros used to fancy Ugandans, saying unlike their counterparts in Kenya, Kampalans were principled politically and could not be manipulated.
Koros is right. It is not President Museveni to blame for ruling Uganda for twenty years but the wananchi who keep dancing to his tunes and giving our presidents more years even when they seem so obviously tired.
Ugandans who cheer Museveni ought to understand that it is the respect of the constitution but not what Museveni has that matters.
Yes, Koros's feeling is the feeling of millions of other Ugandans who feel insulted and betrayed by demonstrators who instead of telling off our leaders who don't want to leave power, protect them or maintain aloofness when anti third term people are being beaten up.
The problem with Ugandans is that when they are eating, they will never 'see' any problem with the ruling government. It is only when they run short on favours from the powers that be that they start shouting murder.
If Museveni can sack former Internal Affairs Minister Mr Eriya Kategaya, his childhood friend, Bidandi Ssali, one of the founding members of NRM, what makes kisanja agitators think Museveni cannot immediately discard them once their usefulness in his third term pursuit has ended?
Ugandans who run down and up now to marshal a third term should remember that they are breeding a culture of dictatorship which shall swallow their sons once they begin speaking a different language from those in power. Those who jump now should remember the many ugly things that happened during the 2001 presidential and parliamentary elections to certain supporters simply because they happened to support 'wrong' candidates!
The relations between the leaders and the led have taken a bad skid. Why do peasants want to behave like some MPS who abdicated their responsibility by taking Shs5 million given to 'sell' proposals contained in government White Paper - in particular the provision on the lifting of the presidential term limits?
It is this Shs5 million given to kisanja supporters that has translated into such demonstrations by the peasants. It is of course good for Ugandans to express their views openly and show support to certain candidates, but this should not be at the expense of the constitution that may spill blood of innocent people.
Musevenis government has done despicable things to Ugandans. His revolution is beginning to practice the same evils the old regime committed, and the few democrats who stand up against the ugly have been accused of counter revolutionary thoughts and risk facing serious crimes by the system they once fought for so vehemently to establish.
When the Movement came to power in 1986, the leadership promised it would stay for a short period, but later kept on extending and has been masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Does locking people up in 'safe houses', or 'crushing' anti-kisanja agitators make Ugandans happy?
Do electorates believe in Museveni when he stands without a tinge of

[Ugnet] Re: [FedsNet] NEWS: Muntu pins Obote over massacres

musamize [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

You would have been rithgt hadn't the the NRM been worse than Obote! e.g.
* 20 years of concentration camps in Norhern Uganda -- Obote had promised to turn W. Nile into a National Park.
* military misadventures in the DRC that ended with Uganda looting DRC's natural resources, e.g. see:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=5970Cr=DRCr1=Congo
www.reliefweb.int/w/Rwb.nsf/0/AB11819FBAC78BF985256A3000655C44?OpenDocument
Entire 56-page UN Security Council Report at:http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N02/621/79/PDF/N0262179.pdf?OpenElement

(I have a copy on if you can nnot get it)

*CORRUPTION than knows no boundaries, e.g.
1.a US $40MILLION gulf Stram jet used to ferry the presidential brood to and from maternity wards in Germany

2. a US $400,000 presidentialRange Rover

3. a US $1MILLION presidential Mercedes Benz

4. US $150 MILLION slated to for bulding a new State House -- not even in Holly Wood! And this, after pizantis groaned and moaned loudlyabout a proposed US $70MIILION tab to "renovate" the said State House -- moneys for the repair of which have been perennially budgeted for the last fifteen (15) years in each year's budget!

5. MILLIONS of US $$$ spent on junk helicopters that, in any case, never materialized.

6. the multi-million dollar "rescue" of a Kampala "tycoon" after many failed business misadventure, one Basajjabalaba (I am sure you'll never guess who his "business" partners are -- courtsey of the Uganda taxpayer.

7. a shadowy deal negotiated by Mu7 and the President of UNAA in cahoots with elements of NRM-zero, whenMu7 attended the UNAA convention in Seattle last year. In this deal, Mu7 wants to give US $13MILLION -- which is twenty paercent (20%) of the annual budget for the Ministry of Eduaction to a dubious Canadian company to supply Uganda with "computer cards". The case is before the public right now and has caused a rare rift between State House and ISO. But MU7 has "directed" that the money be handed over very quickly -- according to his assistant, one Frank(?) Odoi.

etc etc ad infinutum
All this corruption has thus far landed Uganda in a US $4.5 BIILION debt, with nothing to show for it, plus moneys that have disappeared in NSSF, etc etc
Simon Nume [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Musamize

This headline should have been " No difference between Obote and NRM - says Muntu"

Numemusamize [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Muntu pins Obote over massacres
By Charles Mwanguhya Mpagi Hussein Bogere
Monitor 19, 2005

[Ugnet] Re: [FedsNet] NEWs 1980 polls were rigged

WB Kyijomanyi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

1980 polls were rigged, period

The Author: DR Paul Sebuliba
--It is not true that all Ugandans prefer dubious politicians I wish to respond to Gawaya Tegules opinions published in The Monitor on April 6, on who won the 1980 election and Paulo Muwangas role in manipulating figures to proclaim Obote winner and the statistical data to back up the allegations: Here is one bit of statistical data that may be of interest to Tegule and other readers: The Mubende North-East Constituency results of December 1980 elections: Dr Paul Sebuliba (DP) 19,328 votes, Mr Samwiri Mugwisa (UPC) 3,832 votes, CP 2,468, UPM 1,898. Sorry, I do not have the names of the last two candidates. Dr Paul Sebuliba (DP), the writer of this article, with 19,328 votes, won the election in this constituency in December 1980, defeating Mr Samwiri Mugwisa (UPC). The Parliament seat was simply given to Mugwisa, the UPC candidate. The details of the result were never announced. Even Obote, in his ongoing My Story series in The Monitor dated A
pril 14,
acknowledges this: The first (results) to come in were from Buganda which is geographically near Kampala and UPC was been (sic) losing badly. Out of 35 seats, DP had won 34, and one remained undeclared. Obote does not say why this result remained undeclared. Mubende North-East, which combines todays Mityana North and Kiboga East constituencies, was not the remotest part of Buganda. It started at Busunju, 32 miles from Kampala. At Mubende, I saw the correct results that were sent to the late Paulo Muwanga after his usurping of the duties of the returning officers and the Electoral Commission. I can only guess that his (Muwangas) conscious, which I cannot describe here, since he is dead and cannot defend himself, prevailed and he could not bring himself to read out the figures. It was the most shameful act any decent human being could have contemplated doing. Some members of the UPC, whose names I will not mention, were afraid I would appeal, and th
e
returning officer would disclose the results in the High Court. They decided to kill me. A doctor, whose name I will not reveal, was kidnapped by a prominent member of the UPC and taken to Kireka Army barracks, which was a human slaughterhouse at the time. The soldiers were given orders to finish the hapless doctor off. He was lucky, a young Acholi officer came in before he was killed and ordered his release. The poor man ran on foot up to Busia. His only fault; he was a doctor, his name was similar to Dr Sebulibas, and like Dr Sebuliba he comes from Mityana. I was smuggled out of Uganda by my in-laws, who were high ranking officials in the Ministry of Internal affairs, the portfolio of my former friend and colleague, Dr John Luwuliza Kirunda. They had full knowledge of what was in store for me. If anyone has doubt about the figures, let him check at Mubende district headquarters. A Mr Mulala was the returning officer. I do not know his whereabouts these day
s. Mr
Vincent Ssekkono, who was the technical head of the Electoral Commission at the time can be contacted. He is now Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government. More statistical data can be found from Busoga. The story of Mr Paul Wangoola (DP) versus Dr John Luwuliza Kirunda (UPC) was very similar to mine. Wangoola, of course, fled for dear life. For even more exciting statistical data, the results of Tororo Constituency can be checked. The returning officer there read out the detailed results before Muwangas coup. He declared the DP candidate the winner. The UPC candidate, duly conceded defeat. He was surprised when on arrival at Uganda House, people were congratulating him on his win. He informed them he had lost, and he had already openly conceded defeat at Tororo. The man had to take up the seat in Parliament, and accept a senior ministerial post in the Obote II government, possibly out of fear for his life. lOn Musevenis justification to wage bush
war, I
do not think Museveni needed any justification or moral ground to wage his war. It was his birthright to fight what he understood to be an injustice. lAnything produced to the contrary could rid the bush war of due legitimacy: I am not a lawyer, but winning the war automatically made it legitimate. I think the outside world got to know the true results of the 1980 elections. That could explain why the Tanzanians decided not to help Obote to fight Museveni. l On whether voters would choose Ssemogerere over Obote outside Buganda, it was not Ssemogerere versus Obote the voters were choosing. It was DP versus UPC, CP and UPM. We do not go for personalities, we vote for policies, which are found in party manifestos. A few examples: The late Yoweri Kyesimira won for DP in Busoga, so did the late Dr Muzira. Kuteesa won in Nyabushozi for DP against a heavyweight for another party. Nyabushozi is in Ankole, not in Buganda. Kaheru won for DP in Fort Portal a
gainst

[Ugnet] fwd: [UNAANET] MPs Okumu, Ocula jailed over murder

Ssemakula [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Mr. Mujungu,

Oh, poor U! We need to something about those pesky foreigners. Know what? Now they are out there tarning Uganda's holly name, this time in international courts. See below:

Shs. 500m for international cases

By Dick Nvule

Tuesday, 19 April 2005Government is to spend over 500 million shillings on two international cases, State Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs Adolf Mwesigye has said.

Appearing before Parliaments Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, Adolf said the first case is currently being heard at The Hague where Uganda is alleged to have plundered DR Congos wealth during Operation safe Haven.

Mwesigye says the second case is at the International Criminal Court which is hearing a case against LRA rebel leader Joseph Kony.
He says offices for this court have already been set up.
==

Mbu simanyi, the UN has the ink on Kazini, Salim Saleh, Jeje, Joviah, and an assortment of other characters. The goodthing is that Our Man the Intrepid Ofwono Spokesman Per excellence is out of it. Any see the rumors at:

Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S/2001/357)
www.reliefweb.int/w/Rwb.nsf/0/AB11819FBAC78BF985256A3000655C44?OpenDocument
DR of Congo: UN panel on illegal exploitation of resources gets new 6-month mandate
www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=5970Cr=DRCr1=Congo

For the Full 59-Page Security Council Report S/202/1146click on the language of your choice at:
http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=S/2002/1146

As for that Kony chap, Museveni has had to despatch government lawayers to the international courts to defend Kony who is charged with crimes against humanity -- all at pizanti taxpayer cost. There are several problems, not the least of which the mountains of credible evidence. S, when did Museveni jump in bed with Kony?

One also hears persistent rumbles about the brutal murder of Kainerugaba's Motoro mother ... and about Uganda's complicity in the downing of the plane that killed two presidents setting off a genocidalorgy in Rwanda ...

By the way, many moons ago the government of kenya used to harrass 3 MPs who were dubbed "The Three Bearded Sisters". Funny thing was, everytime they were thrown into jail on some pretext, they were lionized and their popularity soared.

Do you think Kaguta's son will find himself in a similar position?

Johnson Mujungu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

It is the forigners at it again! First they said Kisanja was not popular and now all this? Weas truePan-Africanist will make sure that whoever opposes us ends up in jail, even if for a few nights. Andbe warmed out there because"this orchestrated international misinformation crusade will fall onto its face before long".

JKM

MPs Okumu, Ocula jailed over murder

By Lominda Afedraru, Peter Nyanzi, Emmanuel Gyezaho Lydia Mukisa

COURT Two Members of Parliament were yesterday charged with murder and sent on remand at Luzira Prisons. Mr Reagan Okumu (Aswa County), also the deputy executive co-ordinator of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), and Mr Micheal Nyeko Ocula (Kilak County) are accused of murdering Alfred Bongomin on February 12, 2002 at Pabbo in Gulu district. But opposition colleagues and their lawyer said the charges were politically motivated. To me this is a case of political intimidation, lawyer Peter Walubiri said adding, The government and President Yoweri Museveni have been forced to the wall and are resorting to these kinds of tactics.

ASWA MP: Okumu

KILAK MP: OculaOkumu and Ocula appeared in the Buganda Road Chief Magistrates Court at 4.45 p.m.The Magistrate, Mr Emmanuel Baguma, did not allow them to enter any plea. This is a capital offence and this court has no jurisdiction to hear your plea, he said. You will apply for bail at the High Court if you wantThe Magistrate said the two MPs would reappear in court tomorrow.Outside the courtroom, Okumu kept smiling and talking to a host of sympathisers who included 10 opposition MPs. He told his colleagues and journalists that these were the birth pangs of democracy.Okumu also warned that his colleagues in the opposition to prepare themselves for such arrests.Ocula looked depressed as he waited to be transferred to Luzira.The two MPs are jointly charged with Mr Steven Otim Olanya, an LC I chairman of Green Valley Sub Ward in Gulu, Mr Oc
han
Layang of Ayeri and Mr David Ocheng, a local councillor in the same district.The three men were separately charged on April 6 before the same court and remanded at Luzira.The Prosecution led by Ms Jane Kajuga told Court that investigations into the matter were not complete.The 10 opposition MPs looked on helplessly as their colleagues were whisked away to Luzira in a police pick-up truck. Ms Salaam Busumba (Bugabula South) described the incident as an

[Ugnet] NEWS: Did Opondo accidendly lift this man's lunch?


The agony of working with Movt Secretariat
We soldiers and policemen working with the Movement Secretariat are treated like second hand citizens. Our lunch allowances for three months disappeared, and right now there are accusations and counter accusations amongst top officials about where the money went.We appeal to the President to come to our rescue as the situation is getting out of hand. 
Names withheld on requestMonitor Letter, April 21, 2005__Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___
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[Ugnet] NEWs: Rewriting Ugandas history is a recipe for disaster

Rewriting Ugandas history is a recipe for disaster
By Frank Tumwebaze
The proposed return of former president Milton Obote has not only been politicised by those forces who want to easily derive cheap political capital out of it, but has also seen desperate efforts of some politicians trying to erase history under the cover of reconciliation. Reconciliation does not mean that people shouldn't be asked to account for their deeds, and more so crimes against humanity.
One fundamental ingredient of reconciliation is that aggressors should show remorse, admit guilt and then ask for forgiveness from the aggrieved. It is not about keeping off an eye at deliberate crimes committed, thus being insensitive to the emotions of those who suffered at the hands of those criminals, that will bring about reconciliation. Instead, the past should be well reflected on such that history does not repeat itself as they often say.Dr Milton Obote committed crimes against the people of Uganda, they are well documented and the victims who suffered but fortunately survived are here to tell their story . Whether Obote is forgiven by the Museveni government and the people of Uganda or not, is a different matter. The record of his crimes will remain and there is no harm in talking about them.
The ping- pong debate some politicians are trading in that Museveni too is responsible for the massacres of Luwero simply because he waged a pro-people war against the dictatorship is simply illogical. The good thing, President Museveni is in power now and he has a social contract with the people of Uganda. The record of his government for the last 19 years is an open secret for the whole world. The visibly clear line of distinction between Museveni and Obote is that the government of the former has established human rights monitoring institutions with full constitutional powers to check those in power, while the government of the latter survived on the very human rights violations. Detaining people without trial as well as denying them the right of habeaus corpus as it happened to the five Ministers: Grace Ibingira, Balaki Kirya, Emmanuel B.
Lumu, Mathias Ngobi and John Magezi when their lawyer John Kazoora tried to demand for trial by an application of habeas corpus with no success. Such acts characterised Obote's regime and they enabled him to sustain power for whatever period he managed to rule. Waging a war therefore, against such a dictatorship was the primary duty of every right thinking Ugandan at that time since everyone had been disenfranchised.
Fighting a guerilla war in Luwero did not call for Obote and his soldiers to sanction and execute organised mass killings in every sub-county of Luwero. Those who don't know this, perhaps need to be told that at every sub county of Luwero there is a mass grave of skulls, which could be easily found in piles in one place indicating that people were killed in one place, not even in battle in crossfire exchanges.This of course, could not have been an act of the Museveni guerillas who were hiding in the bushes running around not to be traced, otherwise the skulls and bodies would have been found scattered in the bushes as has been the case with LRA in the North. The fact that there was a war and that Obote was trying to defend his regime does not in anyway exonerate him from the crimes against humanity he committed.
If that argument was to hold, then the whole world would not be concerned or even talking about the genocide in Rwanda, apartheid in South Africa and many other crimes against humanity the world over. The perpetrators of those crimes like Habyarimana, Mobutu, Hitler, Millosovic, Sadam and others would easily get away with it on the basis of the same argument that they were defending their regimes. Indeed Obote was defending his regime and not the people, thus the rationale behind Museveni's protracted guerilla struggle.The other disgusting argument is this idea of advancing reasons like " what evidence is in place to pin down Obote as an abuser of human rights?", actually even shamelessly echoed by Obote himself in his recent newspaper serialised interviews, as if surely Ugandans do not know that a commission of inquiry was put in place to investigate human rights violations in
Uganda
since independence up to 1986, whose findings are overwhelming.
This commission was chaired by Justice Arthur Oder then judge of the High Court and other commissioners included Hon. Dr Khiddu Makubuya, Hon. Dr Jack Luyombya, Mrs Joan Kakwenzire, Hon. John Baptist Kawanga and Mr John Nagenda. The Hon. Edward Sekandi, now Speaker of Parliament was the Commission's lead counsel.
The evidence gathered by this commission through witnesses was amazing, and is available in big report volumes at the Human Rights Commission.
Witness after witness gave testimony to the commission about the dreadful murder of their relatives, family members, colleagues at work and so on. The degree of brutality and cruelty

[Ugnet] NEWS: Uganda's Privileged Thieves

Governments new anti-corruption strategy wont bite thieving elite

By Victor Karamagi

President Yoweri Museveni on April 6th launched the new National Strategy to Fight Corruption and Build Ethics and Integrity in public office 2004- 2007. This is second government strategy, after the first one, which covered the period 2001-2004.The strategy, which was drawn up by the Directorate of Ethics and Integrity, is a framework on which anticorruption actors are to carry out their mandates up to the end of 2007, says Minister of State for Ethics and Integrity Tim Lwanga.However, only days after the launch, the strategy whose overall aim is to "minimize levels of corruption and increase and increase transparency and integrity in public office, has come under criticism. Many legislators, pro anti-government alike questioned its effectiveness, and therefore government's commitment. This is a sort
of
government anticorruption blueprint, but does it address the real political problems on which corruption breeds? Will it make any difference or is it a waste of time?According to Lwanga, the strategy details a four-year plan being implemented and it a very crucial tool needed in the war against corruption."We are in a war fighting corruption and we must have a plan. W are going to sit down and come up with what is necessary to win the war," he says. But the real problems, which have been pointed out again and again are not addressed by the strategy, according to former IGG Augustine Ruzindana. What has now become sort of a 'theme song' in the corruption debate; the lack of political will is nowhere near mention in the strategy.

SAME OLD STORY: (L-R) Former IGG Augustine Ruzindana believes that the new report by Ethics Minister Tim Lwanga is a hoax. Maj. Kakooza Mutale is one of those whose court battle helped cripplethe anti-corruption fight.
"Whatever strategy they come up with, this government does not have the capacity to fight corruption. There is simply no political will at all levels of government from the center to the lower councils. They can have a strategy, but it will not be useful," he says.
The anti corruption blue print touches on the political environment as one of the factors that will affect its implementation. "Political commitment on the part of government and all parliamentary and local government institutions to take on issues of corruption and accountability in a consistent and vigorous manner is central to the success of the strategy," it says.
But a look at recent events suggests that such a statement is actually blunt, and the strategy therefore fails to address the problem. In the ongoing prosecution in which Emma Kato is accused of causing loss to government in the junk helicopter saga is puzzling because the DPP chose to leave out some people whom the Ssebutinde probe recommended for prosecution. Government has also not caused prosecution of other individuals implicated by various judicial probes.There is also another question that has been asked over and over: can government talk of political will given the cabinet recommendations to the constitutional review commission regarding the institution of the IGG? Although Cabinet later dropped some, the fact that cabinet could recommend such measures says volumes about government's apathy.Also, although the strategy calls for strengthening of the institutio
nal
framework, it does not call for any action concerning the row over the Leadership Code, in which some crucial sections were nullified during the Mutale petition. The Constitutional Court ruled that the IGG could not recommend to the President sacking of some officials because it would interfere with Presidential Prerogative. Jotham Tumwesigye, the IGG at that time, questioned government's commitment to support the institution of the IGG.Lwanga acknowledges that there were some loopholes in the code, a reason the AG chose not to appeal."You appeal when you feel the judgment is wrong. In this case, the judges were right. The legislators made mistakes in the code. But we are making constitutional amendments and they will take care of the loopholes," he says.What the strategy therefore refers to as a mere "perception that there is inadequate political commitment in support of anti corruption efforts" turns out to be not just a perception but
reality.This is what the strategy refers to as "the ambiguity in high level political commitment [which] is associated with an inability or unwillingness to penalize high profile corruption."But the strategy is spot on, noting that such ambiguity "increases public cynicism, and increases perceptions that grand corruption can be committed with impunity. The strategy must seek to increase political support and commitment for the anti corruption agenda." Such passing statements have led critics to point out that this is just another of government's rhetoric.Do these reports reflect a genuine desire on the part of government

[Ugnet] He Sues Lover After Sex Change Hitch


He Sues Lover After Sex Change Hitch




Mon Apr 25, 8:29 AM ET







NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian who became a man to marry a female relative was dumped after the surgery, a newspaper reported Monday. 






Twenty-nine-year-old rubber tapper Kuttiyamma, born with both male and female genitals, had been in love with the relative, Laura, 25, for 15 years before having surgery to become a man and change her name to Binu, the Hindustan Times reported. 

But Laura became engaged to another man and Binu is suing her for breach of trust after spending 50,000 rupees ($1,150) on the sex change in southern Kerala state. 

"She had agreed to marry me after the surgery," the paper quoted Binu saying in the petition. "I took loans to pay the hospital bills." 

Laura's fiance has since backed out of the wedding after hearing of Binu. The paper did not say how Laura and Kuttiyamma/Binu are related. __Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___
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[Ugnet] BUDONIAN REUNION




BUDONIAN REUNION
CEREBRATING 100 YEARS
MAY 28, 2005 
MEADOWLAND SHERATON HOTEL
NEW JERSEY
www.budoreunion.com






Time is running out! Make your hotel reservations before April 30th, to get the $119 rate for a standard room. The rate may be $149 and above after that date.

Remember no on site registration, register on line at www.budoreunion.com or download the registration form and send it by mail.

All registrations must be received by May 21!

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[Ugnet] Mind-reading machine knows what you see

Mind-reading machine knows what you see

15:26 25 April 2005
NewScientist.com news service

It is possible to read someones mind by remotely measuring their brain activity, researchers have shown. The technique can even extract information from subjects that they are not aware of themselves.
So far, it has only been used to identify visual patterns a subject can see or has chosen to focus on. But the researchers speculate the approach might be extended to probe a persons awareness, focus of attention, memory and movement intention. In the meantime, it could help doctors work out if patients apparently in a coma are actually conscious.
Scientists have already trained monkeys to move a robotic arm with the power of thought and to recreate scenes moving in front of cats by recording information directly from the felines neurons (New Scientist print edition, 2 October 1999). But these processes involve implanting electrodes into their brains to hook them up to a computer.
Now Yukiyasu Kamitani, at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, and Frank Tong at Princeton University in New Jersey, US, have achieved similar mind reading feats remotely using functional MRI scanning.
Between the lines
The pair showed patterns of parallel lines in 1 of 8 orientations to four volunteers. By focussing on brain regions involved in visual perception they were able to recognise which orientation the subjects were observing.
Each line orientation corresponded to a different pattern of brain activity, although the patterns were different in each person. What is more, when two sets of lines were superimposed and the subjects were asked to focus on one set, the researchers could work out which one they were thinking of from the brain images.
In a separate study, also published in Nature Neuroscience, John-Dylan Haynes and Geraint Rees at University College London, UK, showed two patterns in quick succession to 6 volunteers. The first appeared for just 15 milliseconds - too quick to be consciously perceived by the viewer.
But by viewing fMRI images of the brain, the researchers were able to say which image had been flashed in front of the subjects. The information was perceived in the brain even if the volunteers were not consciously aware of it.
The study probed the part of the visual cortex that detects a visual stimulus, but does not perceive it. It encodes what we dont see, Haynes says. He thinks that, further along the visual pathway, brain regions consciously take note that there has been a stimulus. But this does not happen for the invisible stimulus.
Consciousness kicks in
By understanding the perception pathway and working out the point at which consciousness kicks in, patient consciousness could be diagnosed. This would mean the setup could be used as a consciousness-meter, says Haynes; a device that allows us to assess whether a patient is consciously perceiving his or her outside environment.
Yang Dan, a neurobiologist at the University of California in Berkeley, agrees this would be possible. But she cautions that there is little agreement over what consciousness actually is.
More subtle forms of mind-reading such as working out intentions or beliefs are much more speculative, she argues. Even if such subtle information could be gleaned from brain scans both studies suggest the patterns are unique to individuals.
And using the technique as an alternative to the polygraph would be very risky, says Dan. The relationship between brain patterns and lies may be very loose.
Journal reference: Nature Neuroscience (DOI: 10.1038/nn1445 and 10.1038/nn1444)

Behind the mask
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18324585.500
31 July 2004
No-brainer
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18324580.100
31 July 2004
Monkey's brain signals control 'third arm'
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4262
13 October 2003

Weblinks

ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories
http://www.cns.atr.jp/dcn/
Psychology, Princeton University
http://webscript.princeton.edu/~psych/psychology/home/index.php
Psychology, University College London
http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/home.html
Yang Dan, University of California in Berkeley
http://impulse.berkeley.edu/
Nature Neuroscience
http://www.nature.com/neuro/index.html __Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___
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Re: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now that I did NOT KNOW!

Mr. Kasangwawo,

You are wasting your breath on these malcontents. In so many ways, the lights are on but nobody is home.jonah kasangwawo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I see that you intentionally fail to mention that Kabaka Mutebi studied law at Cambridge and that he wrote for reknowned publications such as 'The economist' !You don't sound like you've seen the inside of a lecture room, so you might not know this. But students do all sorts of jobs during their holidays. For example Prince William of England has worked on construction in S. America and so has his brother Harry in S. Africa. I don't see you calling them builders.Ssabasajja did not go to UK to become a pipe fitter. I'm challenging you to produce the evidence that he did. So many times you have failed to provide proof after making such wild allegations.KasangwawoFrom: "Edward Mulindwa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Reply-To: ugandanet@kym.netTo: CC:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now that I did NOT KNOW!Date: Thu, 21 Apr 2005 20:47:27 -0400MOSsabasajja is a well qualified pipe fitter, he did the course in UK.Buganda's politics is so silly that it runs under the blanket of secrecy that many of these facts are not mentioned any where, and the Kasangwawo's only preach Obote is bad, and who ever does not agree with Buganda stand as a Rwandese, but facts always remain facts. Mutebi is a pipe fitter and I challenge any one to tell other wise, and I will post where he qualified.If I post it I know it is true and verifiable.EmToronto The Mulindwas Communication Group"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
-
Original Message - From: Matek Opoko To: ugandanet@kym.net Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 8:19 PM Subject: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now that I did NOT KNOW! revoke that order from the bank of Uganda books. Obote left power the second time and the family remained taking the money from Uganda government. It is that same money, why people like Kabaka Mutebi managed to go to school in UK and become pipe fitters. __ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com-- ___ Ugandanet mailing list Ugandanet@kym.net
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[Ugnet] Intense Competition for Top Students Is Threatening Financial Aid Based on Need

April 14, 2005ECONOMIC SCENE
Intense Competition for Top Students Is Threatening Financial Aid Based on NeedBy ROBERT H. FRANK

ONSIDER the awkward decision confronting the admissions director of a highly selective university that is trying to move forward in the academic pecking order (one of, say, 50 institutions that would have landed in the top 10 this year, except for various flaws in the rankings formula).
On the director's desk sit the folders for two applicants. They have almost the same credentials, but one is just a little better than the other. She has a 4.2 grade point average, the other just a 4.0. She attained a combined score of 1580 on her SAT's, the other only 1440. Her family has an annual income of $500,000, the other's only $30,000.
Now, as in the past, both students would be admitted. Years ago, the financial aid packages for these students would have been tailored in a way that would strike most people as just: the low-income student would have received a large aid package and the high-income student no aid at all. And both would probably have enrolled.
No longer. Now, the slightly better-qualified student is likely to be lured elsewhere unless the director can match the substantial merit scholarships she has been offered by other institutions.
But coming up with extra money for her means having to offer a much smaller aid package to the slightly less well-qualified applicant, notwithstanding her family's economic need. In brief, universities' traditional commitment to need-based financial aid is under siege.
Why this change? In large part, it is a result of the sharp growth in the economic rewards of having a degree from an elite institution.
The steep rise in overall earnings inequality over the last three decades has occurred in virtually every industry and occupation.
Even among entry-level jobs, a handful of elite positions now pay several times as much as the average job in each category. Competition for these jobs is fierce. For every starting analyst's position posted by J. P. Morgan, for example, the firm receives mail sacks full of applications. Employers in this situation seldom find time to interview applicants who did not graduate from an elite university.
Ambitious high school students have responded by applying in record numbers to the nation's most selective universities. But there is no greater number of slots in these institutions than before.
And as the many thousands of highly qualified applicants whose rejection letters arrived two weeks ago can attest, the admissions hurdle at top universities has become all but insurmountable. Some now reject 10 or more applicants for each one they accept.
If so many highly qualified students are clamoring for admission to the best universities, why do these institutions feel such pressure to offer merit aid?
The answer is that they need top students every bit as much as top students need them. Indeed, several popular national rankings formulas are based in part on the average SAT score of a university's entering freshmen. So, to lay credible claim to elite status, a university must attract not only a renowned faculty, but also the top-scoring freshmen each year.
To lure such students, other top students are often the most effective bait. Thus, according to one study, applicants typically seek an institution whose average combined SAT score is roughly 100 points higher than their own.
The ideal university, it seems, has much in common with Garrison Keillor's mythical Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average."
With median SAT scores in the nation's elite institutions rising steadily over time, bidding for superstar applicants has intensified accordingly.
In short, top-scoring students are an asset whose value has been appreciating more rapidly than Manhattan real estate.
If success in attracting these students tends to be self-reinforcing, so does failure. Losing even a few of them to a rival university can set off a downward spiral, making a university less attractive not only to other top students, but also to distinguished faculty who prefer working with such students.
Institutions aspiring to elite status thus have little choice but to bid aggressively for top-scoring students. And hence the growing tendency for merit-based financial aid to displace need-based financial aid.
Many elite institutions were once party to an agreement in which they pledged to direct their limited financial aid money toward students with the greatest financial needs.
The Justice Department, animated by its belief that unbridled competition always and everywhere leads to the best outcome, took a dim view of this agreement. In 1991, it charged an alliance of 23 elite universities with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by agreeing not to compete with merit-based financial aid packages for students admitted to more than one member institution.
In response, 22 institutions pledged to end their cooperation on

[Ugnet] Brother, Can You Spare $195 Billion?





 


April 24, 2005
'The End of Poverty': Brother, Can You Spare $195 Billion?By DANIEL W. DREZNER 



THE END OF POVERTY Economic Possibilities for Our Time.By Jeffrey D. Sachs.Illustrated. 396 pp. Penguin Press. $27.95. 
EFFREY D. SACHS makes a bold declaration in ''The End of Poverty.'' He argues that if the wealthy countries of the world were to increase their combined foreign aid budgets to between $135 billion and $195 billion for the next decade, and properly allocate that money, extreme global poverty -- defined by the World Bank as an income of less than a dollar a day -- could be eliminated by 2025. Readers should fervently hope that Sachs is correct, and persuasive; the political, economic and ethical returns to improving the plight of 1.1 billion people would be enormous. 
Sachs brings a unique background to this issue. He is macroeconomist to the stars -- in the foreword the U2 frontman, Bono, characterizes Sachs as ''my professor.'' A tenured economist at Harvard in the mid-1980's, he stumbled into the developing world by brashly claiming that he could tame Bolivia's hyperinflation. His success at that task led to consulting gigs in Poland and Russia. The experience in Russia did not turn out so well, but for this kind of work a 67 percent success rate borders on the miraculous. Sachs is now the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser on global poverty to the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan. 
''The End of Poverty'' is really two books. One consists of Sachs's recollections of his experiences as an adviser to distressed and developing nations. This memoirish part is not terribly gripping. One of the most dramatic passages consists of a Sachs colleague calling him from Warsaw a week after radical reforms were implemented in Poland to say, ''Jeff, there are goods in the stores!'' 
The heart of the book is Sachs's forceful analysis of the causes of extreme global poverty, his proposed solutions and his peroration on why his plan should be carried out. Boiled down to its essentials, the argument is simple. Too much of the globe is ensnared in a ''poverty trap.'' A combination of poor geography, poor infrastructure and poor health care renders some societies incapable of generating any economic surplus for the future. These places cannot afford investments that would boost their economies over the long term when bare subsistence is the short-term goal. 
For about 20 years now, the West's standard refrain has been that market-friendly policies stimulate greater economic growth and in turn reduce poverty. Sachs does not disagree with this view so much as declare it incomplete: ''Market forces, as powerful as they are, have identifiable limitations, including those posed by adverse geography.'' Intuitively, this makes sense; a Kenyan village struggling with AIDS, malaria, inadequate drinking water and a lack of electricity cannot grow out of poverty unless its health care system and physical infrastructure improve. 
Sachs says the first step should be to increase foreign aid in a way that would provide a greater return to private investment. Once these investments are made, private entrepreneurs will be earning a greater rate of return on their businesses, triggering market-led economic growth. He details a multidimensional plan for international intervention that goes beyond simple market economics -- involving human capital, business capital, natural capital, public institutional capital, knowledge capital and infrastructure. In these pages Sachs's technocratic enthusiasm bubbles over. At one point he writes that all of the challenges of extreme poverty ''can be met, with known, proven, reliable and appropriate technologies and interventions.'' He makes a powerful case: the kinds of technologies he calls for include fertilizers, cellphones, antiretroviral AIDS drugs and antimalarial bed nets. 
For cynics who doubt whether the international community has the will to accomplish such a monumental task, Sachs points out that global efforts on this scale have succeeded in the past: the eradication of smallpox and the Green Revolution in Asia are examples. He also notes that his proposed annual budget is still less than the pledge made by the developed world at the 2002 Monterey Summit to devote 0.7 percent of its gross domestic product to development aid. 
Sachs's missionary zeal is infectious, but the flaws in ''The End of Poverty'' should sound important notes of caution. There is, for one thing, the matter of Sachs's ego. Anyone who can write that ''as a young faculty member, I lectured widely to high acclaim, published broadly and was on a rapid academic climb to tenure, which I received in 1983 when I was 28'' clearly lacks the gift of understatement. This faith in his own abilities is what allowed him, as a relative newcomer to development economics, to declare that he had found the answer to extreme global poverty where others who had devoted

[Ugnet] News: Nigerian Forgers Get Busy

2005-04-26 Thread musamize

Naum Kazhdan/The New York Times
Through a dating site, Kevin McCrary began corresponding with a woman in Nigeria. The woman asked him to buy a computer and mail it to her, and sent him postal money orders that turned out to be forged.

April 26, 2005
Authorities Note Surge in Online Fraud Involving Money Orders
By TOM ZELLER Jr.

ake checks have been the stock in trade of online fraud artists for years. Now authorities are noting a surge in schemes involving sophisticated counterfeiting of a different form of payment: United States postal money orders. And the fleecing of victims often begins in an e-mail in-box.
In the last six months, the F.B.I. and postal inspectors say, international forgers - mostly in Nigeria, but also in Ghana and Eastern Europe - appear to have turned new attention to the United States postal money order. More than 3,700 counterfeit postal money orders were intercepted from October to December, exceeding the total for the previous 12 months, according to postal inspectors.
Moreover, 160 arrests have been made in the United States since October in cases where people have been suspected of knowingly receiving fraudulent postal money orders or trying to cash them, Paul Krenn, a spokesman for the United States Postal Inspection Service, said.
"The quality of what they are producing is very good," he said, adding that ordinary consumers can easily be fooled. "They are not going to know what they are looking at," he said.
Despite the arrests, however, the schemes often do not involve attempts by the fraud artists to cash the postal money orders. In many cases, unwitting victims, often contacted by an e-mail message or in an online chat room, are deceived into accepting the bogus money orders as payment for items they are selling, or into cashing the orders in return for a fee. It is the latest twist in a long series of Internet schemes that use bogus financial instruments to bilk unsuspecting victims out of merchandise and cash.
The United States Postal Service would not estimate the dollar value of the counterfeit postal money orders it has intercepted. But law enforcement officials estimate that the amount runs into the millions of dollars.
The trend is significant, because unlike private business checks or even other money orders, the postal money order is generally regarded as one of the more difficult financial documents to counterfeit because of its watermarks, security threads and a rainbow of inked patterns and tones.
The fake money orders have been received by small Internet retailers, classified advertisers or others lured into an Internet confidence scheme, from sellers of Siberian Husky puppies in Iowa to art dealers in Indiana. Some consumers, authorities say, are simply not using common sense.
One victim, Kevin McCrary, a 56-year-old Manhattan business consultant, would not dispute that. After falling prey to a fake postal money order scheme, he said, "I couldn't reach around far enough to kick myself."
Single and lonely, Mr. McCrary joined an international online dating site, Elitemate.com. In late January, he was contacted by someone claiming to be a young woman from Nigeria. She - or perhaps he, or even they, Mr. McCrary now concedes - went by the name of Ogisi Douglas.
Their e-mail exchanges were barely a week old before the supposed Ms. Douglas asked Mr. McCrary for his help buying a laptop computer. Mr. McCrary purchased a $1,500 laptop, and after he received two United States postal money orders for $950 each, he sent the laptop to an address in Nigeria.
Neither Mr. McCrary nor the teller at the J. P. Morgan Chase branch where he deposited the postal money orders knew they were bogus. It was only after he was asked to buy more computers and received several more postal money orders that he discovered, after trying to cash them at a post office, that he had been duped.
He had not yet sent out any more computers. But the cost of the first laptop was a total loss: the money from the first two postal money orders was ultimately debited from his Chase account.
"I felt, obviously, a bit foolish for not listening to those little voices that say: 'Something's not quite right here. You don't have all the information on this person,' " said Mr. McCrary, whose parents, Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, helped define the talk radio format in the 1940's. "But it all moved very fast."
Mr. Krenn said that postal inspectors had been working with other delivery agencies to intercept packages containing bogus money orders as they entered the United States, as well as warning financial institutions to be vigilant. He said tips for identifying counterfeit postal money orders were available online, at www.usps.com/postalinspectors.
The best way to identify a genuine postal money order, postal service officials say, is to look for the telltale watermark, which, when held up to the light, should reveal an image of Benjamin Franklin. Genuine postal money orders also have

[Ugnet] A blast from the past?

2005-04-26 Thread musamize




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Re: [Ugnet] Buganda: We Are Ready to Forgive Obote But... (In your dreams!)

Mr. Opoko:

I don't know which Baganda Ms. Among is referring to. Forgive Obote? Not this Muganda. Never! I wrote a a letter to the Monitorto the same effect, butwhich letter they they seem to have declined to publish. I reproduce it and some exchange pertaining to it below for your edification.
=

Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 13:31:34 -0700 (PDT) 
From: "Ssemakula" [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Subject: Re: [UNAANET] Obote apologists mistaken 
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
CC: "Buganda Discussion" [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You are welcome Mr. Chadiha. Those were dark days indeed, ironically coming close on the heels of the Amin's more publicized brutality.
Of the Western nations, one deserves special mention for prolonging the suffering in Uganda. That country is Great Britain. The Thatcher government aided and abetted Obote's excesses, by adopting a foreign policy of "Hear No Evil, See No Evil" in Uganda.
The device they used to pull off their duplicity was simplicity itself. Each of their Embassies or High Commissions, as the case may be, is supposed to have a Labor Officer. One of the functions of that officer is to monitor abuses of human rights in the host country. 
What the UK did was to just never fill that post in Uganda for the duration of Obote's regime. Without that officer, there could not be any official reports of human rights abuses in Uganda. So, British officials could tell the world that (officially) it had no evidence of abuses of human rights in Uganda, even as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Minority Rights Group, the US Department of State, the Intenational Commission of Jurists, Human Rights Watch, US Committee for Refugees and plethora of other organizations, and newspapers, all said the opposite.
Then, as now, Britain's single-mindedinterest in keeping a dictator in power was Obote's promise to allow Indians back in Uganda. Apparently Britain was (is) under the illusion that they would voluntarily return in the thousands. Also, Britain was selling all sorts of arms and military equipment to Obote's regime. For a few quid our blood was spilled wantonly. What is needed to fully expose British involvement in human rights abuses in Africa is an investigative reporter and a good informer, e.g. a former cabinet member to spill the beans. But then again, there are no Pultizer Prizes for journalism in the UK, or are there?
Many, if not most,of Africa's wars are fueled from the outside. Wealth is curse that Africa bears: be it in form of diamonds, oil, gold, etc etc Africans get killed for it whether in Darfur, Southern Sudan (think SPLA), Angola, DRC, Chad,W. Africa, etc Do you recall one of the reasons USA gives for not intervening in certain African oft-disastrous skirmishes? We have no "interests" ...
As you know, the current regime in Uganda doesn't pass muster either, e.g. see State of Pain: Torture in Uganda (http://hrw.org/reports/2004/uganda0404/) or go to http://hrw.org/doc?t=africac=ugandaor http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/hurights.htmletc
James Ssemakula
Jonathan Chadiha [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Mwami Ssemakula:Thanks for your enlightening information, at least to me. That was a very dark period for Uganda. After so many counter coups, I refused to read news from Uganda. I did not want to know what more bad news was going to come from there. That is when some Ugandans in the Diaspora, did not want to be identified as Ugandans. They claimed to be from anywhere else in Africa, but Uganda.Jonathan
===
Dear Editor,
The Monitor ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Obote Should Face Trial to Answer for His Crimes Against Humanity

Mr. (Ms?) Sanyas recent letter, (Why Museveni is scared of Obote), reminded me that I, too, need to join my other red-blooded compatriots in the current Obote-gasm that has seemingly gripped the entire nation occasioned and unleashed by Mr. Mwendwas mini series on Obote.

Like Mr. Sanya, I am all for giving Mr. Obote a chance to clear his name. However, Id rather he did it in a court of law. Heinous crimes against humanity, such as Obote is accused of, must never be allowed to go unpunished, no matter how long ago they were committed. As I understand it, there is no statute of limitation on murder.

Mr. Sanya resorts to sophistry and blatant lies to exonerate his murderous hero. For example he states blithely Figures of the 1981 census put the entire population of Luwero at 150,000. 

Well, as luck would have it, I happened upon a copy of Report on the 1980 Population Census, Volume I, September 1982, issued by the Census Office in the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, Kampala. For Luwero District, it put the population size at 412,474 persons distributed as follows: 116,238 in Nakaseke County, 128,251 in Katikamu County, 94,019 in Wabusana County and 73,966 in Buruli County. So, what is the basis of Mr. Sanyas claim that Luweros population was 150,000?

The horror of Luwero can be put in context easily enough. The population of that

[Ugnet] NEWS: Groveling before Museveni and the fix ...




Mr President, your help will be a great relief to me

SIR  I joined the NRA forces in July 1981 when I was already trained by the Uganda Army. I worked hard in our struggle and was one of the first commanders who recruited and trained NRA soldiers at Kijjaguzo and Bulamba primary schools in 1982.

Today many relatives and friends of fallen NRA soldiers are sad that they were not able to take the remains of their loved ones for a decent burial.

June 9 is commemorated as Heroes Day. However, many of us who fought and those who lost their loved ones have been forgotten to suffer the pangs of poverty.

On July 1, 1998, I met President Museveni at Kisozi, and we talked for more than four hours with Mrs Miria Kyambadde. The President asked us to go back to him after two weeks. I was promised a house for my family but up to now I am still renting.

I assure the President that I am still his staunch supporter and request him to remember his promise. It will be a great relief to me and others in the same category.

RA.0180 Sgt (Rtd) Stephen Sekyanzi 


New Vision: Wednesday, 27th April, 2005

My, oh my, for an adult man to have to grovel like this!

Institutional weakness is Africas trouble

SIR  Recently, Bob Geldof kicked up a political storm when he declared that President Yoweri Musevenis time was up. Some of us supported him, or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt, while others questioned his knowledge and moral authority.

Seezi Cheeye, for example, pointed to Geldofs private life  his wife left him for another man  and wondered how the pop star who had failed to keep his wife could now presume to tell Ugandans how to govern themselves. I believe a persons private life may influence a persons public life and even signal whether they can be trusted or not.

However, I do not believe that personal morality or private life is necessarily indicative of who can make a good leader.

The prominent American ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr spelt this out in a famous book Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1960).

Morality that may apply in the personal sphere may not apply in the public realm. He had in mind Christian personal morality. The conduct of public life depends on putting in place structures for delivering certain intended outcomes.

Politics in Africa did not fail because the people are immoral but due to institutional weakness. 

The Rev Amos Kasibante
Leicester, UK


Published on: Wednesday, 27th April, 2005

Bodaboda Candidate Petitions EC Over 'Illegal Registration'

New Vision (Kampala) 
April 27, 2005 

LAWRENCE kushemererwa, a bodaboda cyclist competing for the Mbarara municipality parliamentary seat, has petitioned the returning officer, William Kanyesigye, over the "on-going illegal registration of voters." 

Ebenezer Bifubyeka reports that at a press conference at the Voice of Toro office on Saturday, kushemererwa displayed a copy of over 300 names that he said had secretly been registered. 

In a letter dated April 22, Kushemererwa said a group of people claiming to be from the office of Mbarara mayor Wilson Tumwine were registering voters. 


"This registration was being directed by Hajji Bakawonga, a re-known supporter of candidate John Arimpa Kigyagi, who was travelling in the mayor's Land Cruiser UAF 514T," he said.

Ps: Did I mention that thefix is in?


Prisoners to Vote in 2006 Elections 

The Monitor (Kampala) 
April 27, 2005 

By Mercy Nalugo
Parliament 

If the government gets its way, prisoners will vote in the 2006 general elections. This would be the first time in the country's history that prisoners are allowed to vote. 

The Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs has written to the Electoral Commission asking that Uganda's over 21,000 prisoners should be included on the updated voters' register ahead of the 2006 elections. 

The ministry argues that prisoners too have a right to vote and should be considered. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, announced the government proposal while appearing before the House committee on Defence. He said the Justice ministry contends that since voting is a constitutional right, every Ugandan should enjoy it. Rugunda was in Parliament to defend his ministry's budget estimates for the financial year 2005/2006. He said the details of conducting campaigns in prisons would be left to the Electoral Commission. 

More than 8,874,744 people have been registered to vote in 2006 compared to the 8,125,666 people who registered in 2001. 

This is the first time the prisoners are being considered as voters in the country's history. Electoral Commission officials told The Monitor yesterday that they had heard about the letter from the Ministry of Justice. "I have heard that the letter has come [from the ministry] but I have not seen it," EC Secretary Sam Rwakoojo said. 

He concurred with the ministry that prisoners have a constitutional right to vote. "There is no reason why they should

[Ugnet] HEIST: New Dam to Cost Government $35 Billion (Is the Monitor on dope?)




New Dam to Cost Government $35 Billion 

The Monitor (Kampala) 
April 27, 2005 

By Risdel Kasasira
Kampala 

The government of Uganda is planning to spend $35 billion on the construction of a new bridge on Nalubaale dam following reports that the bridge may collapse. The bridge at Nalubaale, which was constructed in 1952, has developed cracks. Engineers say the cracks are as a result of the reaction between the cement used at the time and the water. 

The Minister of Transport, Housing and Telecommunication, Mr John Nasasira who was on April 19 appearing before the Parliamentary Committee on Works, said $5 billion (14.3%) will be spent on the studies and $30 billion will be for constructing the bridge. Nasasira said the government is to acquire funds from different development partners like the World Bank, the International Monitory Fund (IMF) and African Development bank. 

The Chairperson of the Parliamentary Committee on Works and also Bukanga county Member of Parliament, Mr Nathan Byanyima, appealed to the government to ensure that the construction starts as soon as possible. Nasasira said surveys and studies would start this year.



If you have forgotten the AES fiasco in which they  with World Bank and IMF blessing -- proposed to build a hydro-electric dam costing almost US $3 MILLION per Megawatt of power generated, check this out and tell me if our robber-baron rulers have changed their stripes at all:

Ugandas Bujagali Dam - A Case Study in Corporate Welfare
www.ciel.org/Ifi/ifccaseuganda.html or

AES Backs Out of Bujagali Dam Project
www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=8250 or

Scandinavians pull out of Uganda's Bujagali project
www.afrol.com/articles/12892




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[Ugnet] The Poor-R-Us

Census: We Now Know Where the Very Poor Live

The East African (Nairobi)
INTERVIEW
April 25, 2005

By Bamuturaki Musinguzi
Nairobi

Uganda last month released the findings of the 2002 Population and Housing Census. BAMUTURAKI MUSINGUZI spoke to the executive director of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, John B. Male Mukasa

The Population and Housing Census was carried out in August 2002 and the report was expected after one year. Why has it taken you almost two years to release the report?

It was a very comprehensive census. The census questionnaire used was more detailed than previous ones or what any other country has used. We we are also transcribing the information manually into computers as opposed to other methods like scanning; and this was time consuming.

What are the salient issues in the census report?

That the population is growing at a rapid rate of 3.3 per cent per annum, and now stands at 24.4 million people. It is also now possible to identify poverty enclaves. It is one thing saying that we have the rural poor, but even within the rural people there are enclaves where you find the majority of the poor. Even in urban areas, we know there are slums where the poor live, but even within those so-called slums you can get into smaller area-identification of where the very poor are. And these are still unexplored areas of population information that we have collected.

Are you concerned about the population growth rate?

The growth rate is not so much a concern but rather the quality of life that the growing population will have. What facilities do we have or can we offer and what are is our ability to nurture this growing populace into productive citizens?

What were the major challenges of the census?

It cost us $17 million, which is a lot of money mobilised over five years. For example, we started the mapping back in 1998. And these resources were not always available. There were periods in between when we had to suspend the preparations because resources were lacking.

How much did it cost you per person?

About US 75 cents per person enumerated, and that is arrived at by dividing what we have generally spent up to this point, which is about $17 million, and the population that was enumerated or 24.4 million people.

South Africa carried out a census at the same time using a short questionnaire, but the exercise cost $2.5 per person enumerated while Zambia spent $1.6 per person. We hired fewer foreign consultants and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics did most of the work, making use of the extensive administrative infrastructure up to the district level. Analysing and disseminating the data may push the total sum used up to $18 million.

What is the relationship between the census size and the voters register, given that the opposition says the government may try to manipulate the report?

We did not have any interference and pressures in the processing of our data, and the information that was given about the age structure, which is basically age structure and nationality, is what determines the voters register. We know that in Uganda, people qualify to be voters at the age of 18 and the census report gives the proportion of people who are 18 years and above.

And of course we know that not all those who qualify by age to vote, register to do so. In any case, the role of registering voters is the responsibility of the Electoral Commission.

The agriculture census usually follows the population and housing census. Are there any plans to hold the agriculture census, which is already behind schedule?

Ideally, the agriculture census should follow the population census because the former collects information on the structure and organisation of agriculture, and for a country that depends so much on agriculture it is imperative that we get up to-date-information on the sector. We have developed a framework for the agriculture census and we have already undertaken a pilot census to test the questionnaire that will be used, but funding has been a constraint.

When should Ugandans expect the next population and housing census?

The normal interval for population and housing censuses is 10 years. The next Round of Global Censuses is called Global Round 2010, but since we undertook our census in 2002, most likely the next census will be around 2011 or 2012.__Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___
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[Ugnet] Everything you always wanted to know why the 3rd World doesn't work ...

If you only read one book in a year, this is a good candidate, or if you merely want to know why the world just looks on as Museveni and his fellow kleptos loot Uganda Mobutu-style
(anyone recall the new dam fiasco and the bribes that flew around -- and wonder how come we still dont have a new power plant or what happened to Uganda railways, Uganda hotels, etc or why a Gulf Stream jet cost Uganda $40M or why a new state house will cost us at least $150M?)

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.comJohn Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this expose of his former professional life. Perkins, a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, says he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business. "Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars," Perkins writes. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it's a true story.
Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It was, Perkins wri
tes, a
clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens. While at times he seems a little overly focused on conspiracies, perhaps that's not surprising considering the life he's led. --Alex RoslinFrom Publishers WeeklyPerkins spent the 1970s working as an economic planner for an international consulting firm, a job that took him to exotic locales like Indonesia and Panama, helping wealthy corporations exploit developing nations as, he claims, a not entirely unwitting front for the National Security Agency. He says he was trained early in his career by a glamorous older woman as one of many "economic hit men" advancing the cause of corporate hegemony. He also says he has wanted to tell his story for the last two decades, but his shadowy masters have either bought him off or threatened him until now. The story as presented is implausible to say the least, offering so few details that Perkins often seems paranoid, and the
simplistic political analysis doesnt enhance his credibility. Despite the claim that his work left him wracked with guilt, the artless prose is emotionally flat and generally comes across as a personal crisis of conscience blown up to monstrous proportions, casting Perkins as a victim not only of his own neuroses over class and money but of dark forces beyond his control. His claim to have assisted the House of Saud in strengthening its ties to American power brokers may be timely enough to attract some attention, but the yarn he spins is ultimately unconvincing, except perhaps to conspiracy buffs.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Jim Garrison, author, America As Empire, President of the State of the World Forum"John Perkins has written a book that shakes one's confidence in the ethics of the prevailing economic system."Michael Brownstein "Perkins narrates his moral awakening
to
break free from the corrupt system of global domination he himself helped to create."Gary Margolis Ph.D., Director, Center for Counseling and Human Relations, Associate Professor of English, Middlebury College, author, Fire in the Orchard and Falling Awake"This book is Perkins' story, that through necessity and courage offers us a way back, beyond salvation, to human justice."Hazel Henderson, author of Beyond Globalization and Building a Win-Win World"Must reading for those who know another world is possible!"David Korten, author of the bestselling When Corporations Rule the World" true, powerful, revealing, and bone chilling personal story that names names and connects the dots . . . "Dragonfly

[Ugnet] Re: [UNAANET] Groveling before Museveni and the fix ...

:

Rev. K.

There are a couple of other problems too: what is the number of prisoners? And, are prisoners on remand also eligible to vote or only convicted ones?








Status
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003

Convicted
5,283
5,594
5,380
6,169
6,908

Remand
10,630
9,815
9,853
10,901
11,044

Total
15,913
15,409
15,233
17,070
17,952

Source: Uganda Prisons






Note the rate of change from year to year. Now ask your self: How did Uganda get "over 21,000 prisoners" as claimed by the Min. of Justice  Const. Affairs, and where do those figures come from?

It seems to me that they are assuming that the prison population will grow at a rate of about 5% per year. But given that this population flactuates, wouldn't it be more prudent to use an average growth rate established over at least 10 years? 

Who came up with this idea,how much planning has gone into imlementing it, how will the process be monitored and what is its legality?

I think the fix is very muchin.
Joseph Kamugisha [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Mw. Ssemakula:

This is absurd! Acts of desperation have now sent the NRM-O all the way to Luzira in an effort to manipulate the prisoners.

Clearly these are"fixes" as you put it. The way i understand it, inorder for one to vote, he/she must know what the incumbent and hisopponents stand for and all this comes through opencampaigns in a free environment. How in the world are the prisoners going to be subjected to such conditions without causing chaos and unnecessary overtime for the prison gurads?

Is it going to be only for prisoners in Luzira Prison or in all upcountry prisons? Will all political parties in the race be freely allowed to go in and out of jails withouta problem?

Now that prisoners can be allowed to vote, what other priveledges are left for them to enjoy? Attending their family wedding cerebrations,attending funnerals ceremonies orattending graduation ceremonies?

Only in Uganda can these crazy things happen.

Kamugisha


Ssemakula [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


Mr President, your help will be a great relief to me

SIR  I joined the NRA forces in July 1981 when I was already trained by the Uganda Army. I worked hard in our struggle and was one of the first commanders who recruited and trained NRA soldiers at Kijjaguzo and Bulamba primary schools in 1982.

Today many relatives and friends of fallen NRA soldiers are sad that they were not able to take the remains of their loved ones for a decent burial.

June 9 is commemorated as Heroes Day. However, many of us who fought and those who lost their loved ones have been forgotten to suffer the pangs of poverty.

On July 1, 1998, I met President Museveni at Kisozi, and we talked for more than four hours with Mrs Miria Kyambadde. The President asked us to go back to him after two weeks. I was promised a house for my family but up to now I am still renting.

I assure the President that I am still his staunch supporter and request him to remember his promise. It will be a great relief to me and others in the same category.

RA.0180 Sgt (Rtd) Stephen Sekyanzi 


New Vision: Wednesday, 27th April, 2005

My, oh my, for an adult man to have to grovel like this!

Institutional weakness is Africas trouble

SIR  Recently, Bob Geldof kicked up a political storm when he declared that President Yoweri Musevenis time was up. Some of us supported him, or at least gave him the benefit of the doubt, while others questioned his knowledge and moral authority.

Seezi Cheeye, for example, pointed to Geldofs private life  his wife left him for another man  and wondered how the pop star who had failed to keep his wife could now presume to tell Ugandans how to govern themselves. I believe a persons private life may influence a persons public life and even signal whether they can be trusted or not.

However, I do not believe that personal morality or private life is necessarily indicative of who can make a good leader.

The prominent American ethicist, Reinhold Niebuhr spelt this out in a famous book Moral Man and Immoral Society (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1960).

Morality that may apply in the personal sphere may not apply in the public realm. He had in mind Christian personal morality. The conduct of public life depends on putting in place structures for delivering certain intended outcomes.

Politics in Africa did not fail because the people are immoral but due to institutional weakness. 

The Rev Amos Kasibante
Leicester, UK


Published on: Wednesday, 27th April, 2005

Bodaboda Candidate Petitions EC Over 'Illegal Registration'

New Vision (Kampala) 
April 27, 2005 

LAWRENCE kushemererwa, a bodaboda cyclist competing for the Mbarara municipality parliamentary seat, has petitioned the returning officer, William Kanyesigye, over the "on-going illegal registration of voters." 

Ebenezer Bifubyeka reports that at a press conference at the Voice of Toro office on Saturday, kushemererwa displayed a copy of over 300 names that he said had secretly been registered.

[Ugnet] Re: [UNAANET] HEIST: New Dam to Cost Government $35 Billion (Is the Monitor on dope?)

Ssemakula [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Mr. Mujungu,

The figures struck me as being off the wall too. True to donor-form, 15% of the loan will be devoted to "studies". Do you remember Kaijuka's $10,000 bribe? Apparently he had first asked for a a cool $500,000. Does it surprise you that he went to work for the the same World Bank? (See
World Bank set to aid multinational power company, not Africa's poor www.probeinternational.org/pi/index.cfm?DSP=contentContentID=2656 )

It has been known for sometime that the donor-club id laden with wolves, e.g. Rodney's book How Europe Un(?)developed Africa and the like. Also the wise are quite wary of World Bank "development loans".

More recently were have been reminded by Perkins in The Confessions of an Economic Hitman (also availabe on CD). see the following reviews:

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.comJohn Perkins started and stopped writing Confessions of an Economic Hit Man four times over 20 years. He says he was threatened and bribed in an effort to kill the project, but after 9/11 he finally decided to go through with this expose of his former professional life. Perkins, a former chief economist at Boston strategic-consulting firm Chas. T. Main, says he was an "economic hit man" for 10 years, helping U.S. intelligence agencies and multinationals cajole and blackmail foreign leaders into serving U.S. foreign policy and awarding lucrative contracts to American business. "Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars," Perkins writes. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is an extraordinary and gripping tale of intrigue and dark machinations. Think John Le Carré, except it's a true story.
Perkins writes that his economic projections cooked the books Enron-style to convince foreign governments to accept billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and other institutions to build dams, airports, electric grids, and other infrastructure he knew they couldn't afford. The loans were given on condition that construction and engineering contracts went to U.S. companies. Often, the money would simply be transferred from one bank account in Washington, D.C., to another one in New York or San Francisco. The deals were smoothed over with bribes for foreign officials, but it was the taxpayers in the foreign countries who had to pay back the loans. When their governments couldn't do so, as was often the case, the U.S. or its henchmen at the World Bank or International Monetary Fund would step in and essentially place the country in trusteeship, dictating everything from its spending budget to security agreements and even its United Nations votes. It
was,
Perkins writes, a clever way for the U.S. to expand its "empire" at the expense of Third World citizens. While at times he seems a little overly focused on conspiracies, perhaps that's not surprising considering the life he's led. --Alex Roslin
(Do you recall how Museveni became a pariah in Cancun WTO talks or how he suddenly became allergic to condoms in Asia or how our budget is controlled by donors -- whose puppet Museveni has become? Weak leaders always do the bidding of their masters. So Mu7 is nothing more than Dubya's poodle, a glorified one perhaps, but apoodle nonetheless.)
From Publishers WeeklyPerkins spent the 1970s working as an economic planner for an international consulting firm, a job that took him to exotic locales like Indonesia and Panama, helping wealthy corporations exploit developing nations as, he claims, a not entirely unwitting front for the National Security Agency. He says he was trained early in his career by a glamorous older woman as one of many "economic hit men" advancing the cause of corporate hegemony. He also says he has wanted to tell his story for the last two decades, but his shadowy masters have either bought him off or threatened him until now. The story as presented is implausible to say the least, offering so few details that Perkins often seems paranoid, and the simplistic political analysis doesnt enhance his credibility. Despite the claim that his work left him wracked with guilt, the artless prose is emotionally flat and generally comes across as a personal crisis of conscience blown up to
monstrous proportions, casting Perkins as a victim not only of his own neuroses over class and money but of dark forces beyond his control. His claim to have assisted the House of Saud in strengthening its ties to American power brokers may be timely enough to attract some attention, but the yarn he spins is ultimately unconvincing, except perhaps to conspiracy buffs.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Jim Garrison, author, America As Empire, President of the State of the World Forum"John Perkins has written a book that shakes one's confidence in the ethics of the prevailing economic system."Michael Brownstein "Perkins narrates his moral awakening to break free

[Ugnet] In Rare Accord, Spurned Asylum Seeker to Get $87,500

April 28, 2005
In Rare Accord, Spurned Asylum Seeker to Get $87,500By DEAN E. MURPHY

AN FRANCISCO, April 27 - In a rare settlement, the federal government has agreed to pay $87,500 to a woman from Kenya who was denied entry into the United States even though she says she expressed fears for her life in Kenya.
The woman, Rosebell N. Munyua, was returned to Kenya by immigration officials at San Francisco International Airport in March 2001. She was admitted six months later on a tourist visa in Houston and now lives with her two daughters in Santa Rosa, Calif. She was granted political asylum in September 2002.
The proposed settlement was submitted Wednesday in federal court here and requires approval by United States Magistrate Judge Elizabeth D. Laporte. In January, Judge Laporte dismissed several of Ms. Munyua's claims against immigration officials, including assault and false imprisonment, but allowed a claim of negligence to go forward.
Lawyers for Ms. Munyua said it was the first time in which an arriving refugee had successfully sued the federal government by accusing immigration officials of negligence. Other civil rights lawyers and experts on asylum cases, though uncertain that Ms. Munyua had broken entirely new ground, agreed that the settlement was remarkable.
"It's a big deal," said Anwen Hughes, a staff lawyer in the asylum legal representation program at Human Rights First, an advocacy group based in New York. "This is a rare case where somebody actually made it back to the United States, applied for asylum and was lucky enough to find counsel to gain compensation for injuries."
Peter Duignan, a historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who has written extensively about immigration, said most people who were turned away at airports by immigration officials were never heard from again.
"I've never heard of anyone actually getting any money like this," Dr. Duignan said.
Ms. Munyua, 35, had sought more than $1 million in damages, but she said Wednesday that she was not disappointed in the settlement.
"I wasn't sure what I was hoping for," Ms. Munyua said in a telephone interview. "I was just hoping for some justice to be done."
She added, "I'm excited. I got a chance to stand up for myself."
In agreeing to the payment, the United States attorney's office, which represented the Department of Homeland Security, admitted no wrongdoing by federal officials.
A spokesman for Kevin V. Ryan, the United States attorney in San Francisco, would not comment on the settlement, but pointed to a provision in it that states it was "for the purpose of compromising disputed claims, avoiding the expenses and risks of litigation, and buying peace."
Philip Hwang, a lawyer with the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco, which represented Ms. Munyua, said the settlement carried symbolic significance beyond Ms. Munyua's case. The committee is already bringing another suit involving a woman who was sent back to Zimbabwe, Mr. Hwang said.
"Our hope is that by providing some measure of accountability, by allowing refugees to sue the United States, it will have tremendous impact in making sure the government follows the correct procedures," he said.
According to the lawsuit, Ms. Munyua fled Kenya with one of her daughters in March 2001 after being beaten by Kenyan authorities for anti-government political activities. In one incident cited in the suit, Kenyan police put plastic bags over the heads of her two children and made her husband strip naked, beating him until he was unconscious. The suit says her husband eventually went into hiding in neighboring Tanzania.
Arriving in San Francisco, Ms. Munyua's right arm was bandaged from a beating, and, the lawsuit said, she told an immigration officer, "If I go back, I am going to be killed." Under federal law, immigration officials are required to refer people who express a fear of returning to their home country to an asylum officer. That did not happen in Ms. Munyua's case.
In reply to the suit, immigration officials said that Ms. Munyua never expressed a fear of returning to Kenya and that she voluntarily withdrew her application for admission.
A study on asylum seekers by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, released in February, found that such "he said, she said" situations were not uncommon, said Mark Hetfield, who directed the study.
In 79 cases observed at airports in which people expressed fear of return, 12 were not referred to an asylum officer. In 7 of the 12, the immigration inspector stated incorrectly in a sworn statement that the applicant had no fear of return.
Though not familiar with the details of Ms. Munyua's case, Mr. Hetfield said the system was stacked against such legal challenges.
"All the evidence they have is a paper file created by the inspector," he said, "so any misbehavior by the inspector would not be captured. It is amazing any case would come this far."
Copyright 2005The New

[Ugnet] news: On the Dark Side of Democracy

On the Dark Side of Democracy
By Emily Eakin
New York Times January 31, 2004

To most Americans, the notion that free markets and democracy are essential to curing the world's ills is an article of faith. If only Iraq and Afghanistan, Cuba and North Korea, Syria and Rwanda would adopt both, their people, not to mention the world, would be safer and richer. Yet to Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, such accepted wisdom is mostly evidence of a persistent and disturbing national naïveté. All too often, she says, bringing free markets and elections to developing nations leads not to stability or prosperity but to hate-mongering, discrimination and even genocidal violence.

The idea that political and economic liberty could trigger such atrocities is heretical to many Western liberals. That, Ms. Chua says, is because people here are blind to ethnicity. "I think it's kind of a taboo topic in the West," said Ms. Chua, 41, during an interview at her office on the Yale campus. America, she said, doesn't like to talk about ethnic conflict: despite a long history of racial problems, assimilation is part of the national creed. But in much of the developing world, she argues, nations are starkly divided along ethnic lines. Disproportionately wealthy ethnic minorities Ms. Chua calls them market-dominant minorities exist alongside poor and resentful majorities. And in such cases, she insists, adding democracy and free markets can be disastrous.

As she states the case in her recent book, "World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability"(Doubleday, 2003): "Markets concentrate wealth, often spectacular wealth, in the hands of the market-dominant minority, while democracy increases the political power of the impoverished majority. In these circumstances the pursuit of free market democracy becomes an engine of potentially catastrophic ethnonationalism." And this, she adds, is precisely what is happening today in Indonesia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Russia and the Middle East."

With its volatile mix of Sunnis (the elite Muslim minority favored by Saddam Hussein), Shiites (the generally poorer Muslim majority) and Kurds, Iraq could soon join the list, Ms. Chua said. "It's a big mess," she said. "You have a 60 percent Shiite majority that has long been oppressed and has just every reason to take back the country and re-establish its identity."

A Chinese-American whose family is from the Philippines, Ms. Chua says she has seen firsthand the destructive effects of free markets and democracy. Both arrived in the Philippines after its independence from the United States in 1946, benefiting the tiny, entrepreneurial Chinese community at the expense of the Filipino majority. Though they make up barely 1 percent of the population, she writes, "Chinese Filipinos control as much as 60 percent of the private economy, including the country's four major airlines and almost all of the country's banks, hotels, shopping malls and major conglomerates." Today ethnic tensions on the island are high. In November 2003, The New York Times reported that there had been 156 kidnappings so far that year apparently a 10-year high. Most of the victims, some of whom were eventually murdered, were ethnic Chinese. In 1
994, Ms.
Chua's aunt was stabbed to death in her home by her Filipino chauffeur. He was never arrested. And though he stole money and jewelry from his employer, Ms. Chua writes, the motive listed in the police record was not robbery but "revenge."

Longtime critics of America's markets-and-elections approach to the developing world are finding lately that the chorus of dissenting voices joining them has swelled. The optimism many analysts felt after the fall of the Berlin Wall has waned, dissipated by more than a decade of bloodshed and strife in Somalia, Rwanda, the Balkans and the Persian Gulf. And the theoretical model that experts relied on to predict orderly transitions from dictatorship to democracy is in shambles.

That may be one reason Ms. Chua's book, which was published a year ago and released in paperback earlier this month, has received respectful reviews from magazines on both sides of the political spectrum, including The Nation, Mother Jones, The Weekly Standard and Business Week. Some analysts dispute her thesis, saying she exaggerates the prevalence of ethnic conflict, making, for example, too much of the fact that many of Russia's wealthiest moguls are Jewish. Still, her book has appeared briefly on The New York Times best-seller list and even garnered Ms. Chua an invitation to address a group at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Today skeptics of America's democratization policies include scholars and commentators, liberals and conservatives, even if few of them agree with one another. Among the most influential are the Harvard political scientist Samuel Huntington, one of the first to question the wisdom of rapid democratization; the Nobel

[Ugnet] Recent History: Museveni Blasts NGOs Over AES Bujagali

Museveni Blasts NGOs Over AES Bujagali
By Simwogerere Kyazze
The Monitor, September 3, 2002

President Yoweri Museveni yesterday attacked international NGOs for interfering with Uganda's dam construction projects. Speaking 12th among world leaders at the World Summit for Sustainable Development, the president said that only increased use of electricity by peasants would save the environment.

"Therefore the arrogant so-called NGOs that interfere with the construction of dams in Uganda are the real enemies of the environment," Museveni said, in a veiled reference to the pressure from environmentalists that threatens to block the US $530 Bujagali dam project by AES Nile Power.

The president spoke entirely from prepared text.

He told other world leaders that the principles of Agenda 21 which were agreed on in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, have remained largely unfulfilled because of poverty in Africa, lack of commitment in developed countries and "a parasitic trading system in the world that is skewed against Africa." "Africa continues to struggle in her quest to develop because it is faced with major obstacles," the president said, citing poverty and disease as chief among them.

"In Uganda poverty reduction is high on our agenda and we plan to bring it down to 10 percent by 2017," Museveni said. The president also quoted from the Bible (Luke 10: 25) about Jesus' teaching on loving one's neighbour and God. "Similarly, this summit needs to ask itself, 'what do we need for all mankind to get out of poverty and enter the kingdom of sustainable development?'"

Museveni named macro-economic stability, human resource development and access to markets as some of the ways for entering this "kingdom." He said there was greed and insensitivity among the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries and Russia that contribute 86 percent of all global greenhouse emissions. "They preach free trade but practice protectionism," Museveni said. "We must banish all methods that bring such distortions in world trade," he said.

Namibia President Sam Nujoma provided the early fireworks when he demanded that the European Union lifts sanctions against Zimbabwe, "otherwise what they are telling us is useless." "Here in southern Africa we have one problem created by Britain whose leader Tony Blair is here," Nujoma said. "The British colonialists brought this on Zimbabwe, where settlers own 78 percent of the land and millions of indigenous people do not even have a single acre." He said Mugabe was doing the right thing and that it was up to the EU to compensate their settlers who were being evicted from the farms.

Nujoma stirred further controversy by saying the countries that created HIV/AIDS should find the money for a cure. "Some of the governments are here," Nujoma said, away from his prepared text. "They know themselves."__Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___
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[Ugnet] FYI: Who is Who in Uganda Mining

Uganda, Sanctions and Congo-K: Who is Who in Uganda Mining
Africa Analysis
June 5, 2001

The UN recommendation that sanctions should be imposed against Ugandan minerals has rattled those involved in the Countrys mining sector. The UN measure was taken as a result of Ugandas participation in the looting of natural resources, including gold and diamonds, in Congo-Kinshasa. Opponents of the UN measure, however, point out that it might unfairly penalise those involved in Ugandas tiny, thriving, and potentially highly lucrative mining sector.

WHO IS WHO IN UGANDA MINING

Bryan Artwood, chairman of the Uganda Chamber of Mines, claims that minerals can be found in many districts in Uganda. He maintains that about 500,000 artisan miners will suffer as a result of the UN sanctions. Artwood is also owner of the Heritage Oil and Gas Company , which along with Petrel of Ireland, is involved in oil exploration in western Uganda.

However, as matters now stand, UN sanctions may be largely symbolic. Mining in the country remains undeveloped, and accounts for just 1% of GDP. Although the country almost certainly contains viable, and possibly considerable, deposits of gold, oil, cobalt and nickel, no comprehensive survey of the mineral wealth has been undertaken and the economic significance of the deposits remains unknown. The Ugandan government, however, is keen to diversify an economy dominated by the agricultural sector. Its efforts have been rewarded with the Uganda Investment Authority having already registered 20 investors who apparently propose to inject $ 210m into mining related activities.

Anything to do with gold mining and sales is handled by the office of President Yoweri Museveni. He recently told parliament that the country last year exported 10 tonnes of gold, a substantial increase over the average for recent years. However, the bulk of gold transactions are handled by companies that are either 100% foreign-owned or are joint ventures with army officers. These liaisons have created a complicated web of interests, but they remain dominated by the private sector.

Catalyst Corporation of Canada, which acquired 100% interest in Kaabong, is reputed to control substantial gold reserves in north-east Uganda. It has Major-General Salim Saleh , Musevenis controversial brother, as a shareholder. Along with Oslo International it took over the adjacent Lopedo prospect when Branch Energy renounced its concession. Nabisoga Mining Ltd ., has four permits for Kyakiddu property in central Uganda and has entered into a joint venture with the Canadian-based Gold Empire Ltd . They operate in Bushenyi in western Uganda with 22 concessions covering an indeterminate area.

New Ensigns Resources , affiliated to the Irish-based Glencar Mining plc has four permits in south-east Uganda, and International Roraima Corporation has 20 of which 17 were funded by South AfricaOs Iscor.

Many of these companies hold licences in the south-west and south-east of the country. But most are not actively mining and some have already abandoned exploration or mining.

PRIVATE SECTOR PRESSURES

Because of the involvement of so many western companies, the Ugandan government, with some justification, feels that it will ultimately not be penalised by the UN. Both Britain and the US are apparently reluctant to institute sanctions against Uganda. Marts Berdal , a director at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies believes that the UN is in a no-win situation with the sector. Industrialised governments have come under pressure to protect the private sector from UN interference, he says. Yet the fact that most of the foreign companies are located in south-east and south-west Uganda, in areas near Congo-Kinshasa, has created problems. Allegations of minerals from Congo-K being filtered through such operations are inevitable. Geographically, Uganda provides a strategic platform for companies with regional ambitions. South African company Foskor early this
year
gained a controlling interest in Ugandas existing phosphate mines, which it now owns with Rhodie Chemie of France. Manufacture of fertilisers from the phosphate is intended for the regional market. Regional economic organisation, Comesa, has already approved the development. It is to be financed by the South African governments investment arm, the Industrial Development Corporation.

Some Australian companies engaged in gold mining in Tanzania are also eyeing Uganda. Normandy Limited took a controlling interest in Kasese a $ 140m cobalt project whose plant was commissioned by Museveni last October. So far it has exported 290lbs of Cobalt. Hardman , another Australian company, has apparently begun prospecting for oil.

A DARLING OF THE WEST

Museveni is on friendly terms with various western investors who still regard him as influential in the region. His military conquest and subsequent economic liberalisation have created a climate conducive for

[Ugnet] Recent History: Diamond Exports Triple, Says UN Congo Report

Diamond Exports Triple, Says UN Congo Report
Monitor, November 22, 2001

Uganda's diamond exports have tripled in last eight months, the second United Nations report on the alleged exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo mineral wealth has said. The report, which was released yesterday, said that the sharp rise in Uganda's diamond exports, is evidence of the continued plunder and exploitation.

The first UN panel of experts report, which was released in April, indicated that Uganda exported 11,000 carats valued at $ 1.7m. "Figures for 2001, extrapolated form the sales for the first eight months, shows 35,000carats valued at $ 3.8 million, Ugandan diamond export to Antwerp," the 38-page report said.

The report said they gained better understanding of diamond exploitation activities by "taking a closer look at the activities of the Belco-Diamant comptoir in Kisangani."

Uganda denied exploiting Congo' mineral wealth before Justice David Porter's Commission of Inquiry into the alleged exploitation of DRC's natural resources.
Appearing before the Justice David Porter probe in July this year, the commissioner in charge of minerals in the ministry of Energy and Mineral Development Watuwa Bwobi did not deny the diamond export figure but expressed ignorance over its source.

Uganda is not known to have diamond deposits.

The second report also indicates a sharp rise in gold exports. The exports were an eighth of a tone in 1994 but has since raised to over ten tones by 2000. The new report has no figures for this year.

However, government contested these findings in the first report and attributed the increase in exports to the 1993 policy to liberalize gold sales and exports.

Government officials claimed that as a result of the ease, with which gold can be smuggled, Uganda became the preferred destination for gold produced by artisanal miners in the surrounding region.

Interestingly though the panel says it has evidence that artisanal gold mining activities in the northeast by UPDF and RCD-ML have continued. It sites an example of the Kilo-Moto area where operations at the Gorumbwa and Durba sites in the DRC are under the control of the UPDF and RCD-ML.

One of the sites reportedly "employs 10,000 diggers and generates amounts of gold valued at $10,000 per day". It also claims that the gold produced is still being sold through the Victoria comptoir in Kampala.
The Porter Commission exonerated all the accused including President Yoweri Museveni and members of the First Family. __Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___
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[Ugnet] Is Uganda Chocking on the DRC?

Congo Seeks Reparations From Uganda At World Court
By Paul Gallagher
Reuters April 11, 2005
The Democratic Republic of Congo accused Uganda on Monday of "massive" human rights abuses, looting and destruction in a war on its territory and demanded compensation from its neighbour at the World Court.

The Congo -- rich in gold, diamonds and timber -- was the battleground for rebels, local factions, tribes and neighbouring countries, including Uganda, in a 1998-2003 war in which 4 million people died, mainly from hunger and disease. "Uganda played a considerable role in the murderous war which tore apart the Congo for five years," Congolese representative Maitre Tshibangu Kalala told the court at the start of public hearings on Monday.
Congo took Uganda to the World Court in 1999, accusing it of responsibility for human rights abuses and "armed aggression". It called for compensation for what it said were acts of looting, destruction and removal of property. Congo says Uganda committed "violations of international humanitarian law and massive human rights violations", the World Court said in a statement.
Cases at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, can take years to be completed. The court is the U.N.'s highest and its ruling in the case will be final and not subject to appeal. Uganda has filed a counter claim, accusing Congo of responsibility for attacks on Ugandan citizens and diplomatic buildings in Kinshasa and unspecified acts of aggression against Uganda. A Ugandan representative declined to comment on the case and said his country would outline its position on Friday. Congo's Justice Minister Kisimba Ngoy was quoted by U.N. radio as saying reparations could amounts to billions of dollars.
Changing Motives
Rwanda and Uganda invaded Congo after rebel factions backed by them took up arms in 1998 to topple the late President Laurent Kabila, who was supported by Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe. A ceasefire was negotiated in 1999 and Ugandan troops finally pulled out in 2002.
A U.N. report in November 2001 said the initial motivation for Rwanda and Uganda to intervene in the central African nation had been to secure their borders. But over time the lure of natural resources became the primary motive for staying in many areas of the former Zaire and perpetuating the warfare, the report said.
U.N. officials have accused Ugandan commanders of stealing gold, diamonds and timber, although Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has rebuffed such charges, saying there is nothing of value in the country to exploit. Under a 2003 peace deal, a power-sharing government was set up to shepherd the Congo to elections this year, but armed groups still rule much of the country as local strongmen protect privileges built up during the war.
Uganda, Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Congo pledged in September 2002 to stop interfering in each other's affairs in a new regional bid to end Congo's war. But a U.N.-commissioned report in January singled out Uganda for failing to control cross-border trade into the Congo's lawless northeastern district of Ituri, where warlords prosper amid a local conflict that has killed 60,000 people since 1999.
Additional reporting by David Lewis in Kinshasa

Diamond Exports Triple, Says UN Congo Report
Monitor, November 22, 2001

The report said they gained better understanding of diamond exploitation activities by "taking a closer look at the activities of the Belco-Diamant comptoir in Kisangani."

Uganda is not known to have diamond deposits.

However, government contested these findings in the first report and attributed the increase in exports to the 1993 policy to liberalize gold sales and exports.

[Ugnet] Recent History: Dracula Taking Over Uganda's Blood Bank?

Dracula Taking Over Uganda's Blood Bank?
Monitor, July 31, 2001

The revelations by former Greenland Bank Managing Director Suleiman Kiggundu are shocking.

In short, Kiggundu claimed that President Yoweri Museveni, Bank of Uganda officials including the late Governor Charles Kikonyongo, the whole Ministry of Finance beginning with then Finance minister Jehoash Mayanja, then Attorney General Bert Katureebe, Museveni's younger brother Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh and his son Lt. Kainerugaba Muhoozi, and the Privatisation Unit discussed at length the controversial sale of Uganda Commercial Bank in an underhand way to the Malaysian firm Westmont.

That all these people in effect agree to a deal that was all but a looting of the country's largest bank, and plotted to hide the facts from the owners of the bank - the Ugandan people.

When the scandal was blowing over, and donors were getting angry, Maj. Gen. Saleh stepped forward to take the blame personally in order to deflect the blame from the government; and Kiggundu became the sacrificial lamb.

Even if only one tenth of what Kiggundu alleged is true, it raises very troubling about the government's moral right to govern. In addition, it shows that the reason official corruption remains pervasive, is that there is no serious commitment at the top to deal with, and in fact some of the most powerful leaders in the country privately condone it.

Minister of State Matthew Rukikaire resigned from government because he didn't live with the lie any more, and Katureebe's conscience is also reported to have caught up with him, as he felt that one could no longer be an Attorney General of Uganda without being a first class crook.

For all this, the UCB scam represents just the tip of the iceberg of the rot that went on in regard to its privatization, and other sales of public enterprises. It seems we are not too far away from the Dracula being in charge of the Uganda blood bank (Treasury) in Uganda. All democrats and people of goodwill must wake up and reclaim the country from the ruin of corruption.__Do You Yahoo!?Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ___
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[Ugnet] Re: Exploding toads baffle scientists



www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/27/exploading.toads.ap

possible explanation:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/germany_exploding_toadsprinter=1
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Re: [Ugnet] Buganda's treachery in Uganda...

Mr Wambuga:

Where and when was this published?B Wambuga [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:






Return of a Patriarch and Bagandas history of treachery


By Elias Biryabarema


If we were all to be as ravenously vindictive as the Baganda are in their crusade against the return of the patriarch, Dr Milton Obote from Zambia, then what a nasty nation Uganda would be.In fact, if people were to be humble and forgiving, then Baganda would know better: for they cant have forgotten that they colluded in the first theft of Ugandans sovereignty; the British having tapped into their legendary gullibility, opportunism and propensity for treachery to launch their vicious aggression against the Ugandan people.It was they that shook the hands of Captain Lugard and his imperial ilk and proceeded to swiftly turn themselves into proxies and compatriots of the enemy. The Baganda treasonously ganged up with the British to desecrate and destroy Bunyoro, subsequently annexing all other regions through a crafty mix of deception and intimidati
  on to
 put them under the queens rule. What was the motivation for this crime? Greed, avarice and mindless naivety. Through the six decades or so of the stifling British colonialism, Ugandans never forgot the enemy within that was in fact the real force of white repression, for it was he (Buganda) that had traded off our power in their evil schemesand childlike excitementwith Europeans.It is thus logical to ask why the Banyoro, who had their royal heritage ravaged, their land stolen and the rest of our people conquered and humiliated, have never so much as asked the Baganda to apologise, let alone atone for that criminal conduct. For a people with such historical record of criminality therefore, (its not entirely unfair for the sons to bear the sins of their forefathers, but Europeans still carry the guilty over their savagery of Jews and are continuing to pay huge amounts for crimes of seven decades ago); how stupefying that they are the first to cast the fir
  st
 stone. That they are cheerleaders of efforts to strip Obote of his truest image as the father of the nation, the loudest in stoking hatred against him, ever more ready to undercut efforts to return this man. How vexing!We must rise collectively to douse this unworthy anti-Obote fire and let our Mzee return in peace and enjoy his evenings with the reverence, grace and honour he deserves. The issue of culpability in the Luweero massacres is a muddy and complex one. And I would say its useless to let unexorcised ghosts of the past entangle current efforts to steady Uganda on its onward march: a situation that inevitably requires national harmony, goodwill and a culture of respect for retired leaders, more so for an independence figure that Obote is. Obotes account of what went on in the jungles of Luweero and the counterpoint by Museveni excerpted from his Mustard Seed book, have just shown us the futility of trying to fix blame for crimes in a hig
  hly
 fluid and volatile period that the early 1980s were. After reading both stories, you end up persuaded by neither: suffice to note here though, that clues have continued to pop up incriminating NRA insurgents, said to have used the cruel guerilla tactic of brutalising civilians while disguised as their enemy forces to discredit and rob it of grassroots support. What we are certain of is that soldiers murdered civilians: as to whether they were UNLA and under Obotes explicit directive or NRA on Musevenis orders will perhaps remain infinitely mysterious. Museveni himself, who accuses Obote, was reported to have wondered while in northern Uganda recently whether Obote was aware of the killings or savage soldiers simply committed those atrocities on their own. That wondering suggested his awareness of the difficulty of attempting to pin Obote without compelling proof. The Luweero war has little authentic documentation that offers us evidence abundant
  and
 plausible enough to determine the guilty with pinpoint accuracy. Let us nurture a culture not of retribution, but reconciliation. John Nagenda through his acidic Saturday writings, alongside Luweero boss, Hajji Abdul Nadduli, have been leaders in denigrating Obote, scorning him as an unrepentant and unremorseful master minder of massacres. What is good for the gander is also good for the goose: If we demand that Obote apologises, then I would rather Nagenda and Nadduli show the way by first apologising or better still atoning for the criminal treachery of their forbears that inflicted such harm to the peoples of this nation. The Banyoro have never forgotten. 
Years of blistering attacks and defacing will not diminish Obotes noble role in the evolution of Uganda as a modern state and Africa as a continent: notably his patriotic personality, his chivalrous stewardship of the independence struggles, two episodes of presidential incumbency, development of some of the best infrastructure Uganda has ever known and contribution to

[Ugnet] Sayansi N'omuntu wa Bulijjo: Zebra x Donkey = Zonkey (Deebra?)




http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/barbados_zonkey;_ylt=AmM7n7QgboTojWU2TmD0BKgDW7oF;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl


Baby Aye-Ayehttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/04/0419_050419_ayeaye.html
Whale Found in Egypt Deserthttp://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/04/0414_050414_egyptwhale.html


Grow a penis on your arm




http://www.opinion.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=E4HR2KFT2H54JQFIQMFCM54AVCBQYJVC?xml=/news/2005/04/10/wruss10.xmlsSheet=/news/2005/04/10/ixworld.html

or
http://funreports.com/2005/03/18/58703.html

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Re: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now that I did NOT KNOW!

Mr. Kasangwawo:

Don't confuse (hateful) people with facts ...jonah kasangwawo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Matek,I acknowledge your repeated effort to support Mulindwa by referring me to "one of those British News Magazines", but this is off the point. Mulindwa claimed that Ssabasajja went to school in the UK to become a pipe fitter. He challenged anyone "to tell other wise" and threatened that "he will post where he qualified." Now, I have been challenging him to produce the evidence for over a week and nothing is forthcoming. I can only deduce that nothing exists.I'm sure it will not have escaped your watchful eyes that at every opportunity he gets, he brings up anything anti-Kabaka or anti-Buganda, even when there's no evidence to substantiate his allegations. So it was in this case. I even took the trouble to point out to him that Ssabasajja had studied law at Cambridge (after attending a private school in Sussex) and
had
written for renowned publications - but Mulindwa didn't want to know. I also tried to enlighten him about student life by giving him examples of Prince William and Harry, but he wanted to remain ignorant. This only proves that he did it in bad faith.Now you join the fray by making it seem as if I started it all, instead of telling your friend to shut it if he can't produce the evidence he promised ! No sir, I'm not going to "swing to the US Library of Congress" to do the research for him.KasangwawoFrom: Matek Opoko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Reply-To: ugandanet@kym.netTo: ugandanet@kym.netSubject: Re: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now that I did NOT KNOW!Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 06:17:45 -0700 (PDT)Jonah:I can see you are on Em's neck. The fact of the matter is that there is a small biographical article about Ssebasajja Magulu Nyondo the king of Bugan
da in
one of those British News Magazines. The Writer of the siad article , points out that Magulu Nyondo was once a pipe fitter.Now there is nothing wrong with being pipe fitter. In fact, to a certain extent , show the Humility which Ssebasaga had to go through..and probably helps him relate to his subjects.Anyhow, swing to the US Library of Congress..and dig the infor for your self.Peace!Matekjonah kasangwawo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:And rightly so ! You have failed to produce any evidence and the onlyalternative you had was to give up. From: "Edward Mulindwa" Reply-To: ugandanet@kym.net To: CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now that I did NOT KNOW! Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 19:12:03 -0400 That does it I
give
up. Em Toronto The Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" - Original Message - From: Simon Nume To: ugandanet@kym.net Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2005 9:23 AM Subject: Re: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now that I did NOT KNOW!Absolute nonsense. Obote sold Muteesa House in London and ate the money. And people like Obote cannot waste money on educating their kids. Look at his sons ! Try another oneEdward Mulindwa wrote: Simon Nume No what I want you to state here and now, is very simple. When Muteesa<
BR>
fled Uganda did Obote as a current president instruct bank of Uganda to maintain Muteesa by sending him money to London, are these Obote's instructions still on Uganda books? Em Toronto The Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" - Original Message - From: Simon Nume To: ugandanet@kym.net Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2005 8:07 AM Subject: Re: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now that I did NOT KNOW!Mulindwa You should at least learn to spell correctly the swear words you use. Interestingly I KNOW ( and probably Kasangwawo)
where he
got the money from to go to private school and Cambridge after both his parents were dead. Just because YOU dont know is not my problem. Nume Edward Mulindwa wrote: Simon Nume Where did Mutebi get that money from. Address the issues instead of sending firkin snipes. Yes he had the money but what we are discussing here is where was it coming from? Did you Simon Nume or Kasangwawo ever send money to Mutebi for his studies? How dare you claim how he had the money to study in Cambridge but you can not acknowledge the source? That is where the failure of Buganda is.And I swear we will live to death but every single leader will be bad to Buganda for we as a tribe are just too fucked up. Em &
gt;
Toronto The Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy" Groupe de communication Mulindwas "avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie" - Original Message - From: Simon Nume To: ugandanet@kym.net Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 10:50 AM Subject: Re: [Ugnet] Kabaka Mutebi a Pipe fitter!..Now

Re: [Ugnet] WTO is for Enriching the West, Says Kituyi

Oxfam International Press Release - 11 April 2002
The Great Trade Robbery
www.oxfam.org.uk/press/releases/maketradefair.htm

WTO and Agriculture: The Great Trade Robbery www.mindfully.org/WTO/2003/Trade-Robery-WTO-Sharma2sep03.htm
Matek Opoko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

WTO is for Enriching the West, Says Kituyi

Email This Page Print This Page VisitThePublisher'sSite

The Nation (Nairobi)
April 28, 2005 Posted to the web April 28, 2005
Bernard NamunaneNairobi
The World Trade Organisation was imperialistic and meant to enrich developed nations, a minister said in Parliament.
The trade body would do nothing to reduce poverty in the country, Trade and Industry minister Mukhisa Kituyi said, putting WTO in the same league as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

For a YEAR IN REVIEW excerpt from the Africa 2005 guidebook, click here.(Adobe Acrobat).
To buy the book, click here.
"The WTO is not a development vehicle to deal with poverty. It is a tool of imperialism, which has overtaken IMF," he said.
Dr Kituyi was giving a statement of the status of the Doha Round of Negotiations requested by Kitutu Chache MP Jimmy Angwenyi (Ford-P).
Developing countries should slow the effects of globalisation of trade, which impacts negatively on fragile economies, he said.
He challenged MPs to seek ways of blocking the effects of world trade, which fights to open up third world markets and restrict entry into western markets.
"The only way is to form powerful lobbies to ameliorate effects of trade globalisation," he said.
Responding to concerns by MPs Angwenyi, Abdul Bahari (Isiolo South, Kanu) and Peter Munya (Tigania East, Safina) on WTO's non-reciprocity towards less developed nations, Dr Kituyi said he had put in place a G90 group, which was fighting to slow the components of trade globalisation.
The G90 group, he said, had warded off moves by rich nations to have developing nations reduce tariffs on their goods and also reduce restrictions on exports from the Third World.

Relevant Links

East Africa Sustainable Development Kenya Economy, Business and Finance Trade
The move was spearheaded by United States at the Doha round table negotiations on core areas of agriculture, goods, services, rules including trade facilitation and development.
The US proposed that WTO members agree on a specific date for elimination of agricultural tariffs and trade-distorting domestic support. It suggested elimination of all tariffs on consumer and industrial goods by 2015.

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[Ugnet] Pizanti Fleeced of at Least US $9Million

Cheeye, Bumba Clash Over Thermal Project The Monitor (Kampala) May 2, 2005 By Charles Mwanguhya Mpagi Angelo IzamaKampala
The Minister of Energy and Mineral Development, Ms Syda Bumba, and Mr Teddy Ssezi Cheeye are locked in a bitter row over the hiring of Aggreko International Power Projects to develop a 50 megawatts (MW) thermal electricity generating plant in Kampala.
Cheeye, the Director for Economic Monitoring at the Internal Security Organisation (ISO), says the $167.8 million (about Shs300 billion) project is inflated by over $9 million (about Shs16 billion).
But Bumba dismissed the claims saying they lacked thorough research. Cheeye wrote to President Yoweri Museveni on April 9 saying, "The Ministry of Energy has wrongly preferred to enter into a contract of hiring generators to produce the 50MW power at an astronomical figure of $167 million covering only three years."
Aggreko started assembling the thermal generators early April. When complete the project is expected to reduce on day load shedding.
The New Vision on April 15 quoted the Managing Director of Uganda Electricity Transmission Company limited (UETCL) Mr Eriasi Kiyemba as saying, the project is "...Government's strategic intervention...to enable small industries and commercial enterprises to operate in the daytime as it will greatly reduce the daytime shortfall of power. Domestic consumers will have fewer days of load shedding."
But Cheeye claims his investigations have uncovered corruption in the thermal equipment procurement process.
Cheeye first raised the red flag on the contract in February saying the government stands to lose $9.3 million (about 162b) on the Thermal contract with Aggreko because the Ministry of Energy opted to hire the thermal generation equipment instead of outright purchase, which would save the country some money.
His letters were copied to President Museveni and the Minister for General Duties Prof Mondo Kagonyera.
In a strongly worded letter, Bumba said the Cabinet approved the thermal project. She said Cabinet considered options for hiring generators and direct purchase and the former was chosen because it would save time.
Bumba also accused Cheeye of fronting for one of the bidders. She refers to a telephone conversation she had with Cheeye on February 1, four days before the ISO director first wrote to the President about the matter.
"By the time you called, the evaluation team had not yet taken the results of the evaluation exercise to the Ministry's contracts committee to make a decision on the bidding process. The tone of your conversation was a clear signal that you were fronting for one of the companies," she wrote on February 11.
She did not mention the company Cheeye was reportedly fronting for.
Four companies bid for the project; they included Ms Aggreko International Projects Ltd of the United Arab Emirates [the eventual contract winners], Ms Cummins Power Generation Ltd, Uganda, Ms Mantrack Uganda Limited and Ms Jacobsen Electro AS of Norway. Aggreko won the tender in March and started installing the equipment at Lugogo Sub-station in April.
"It is advisable that in future you should carry out adequate investigations before disseminating unresearched information taking up serious people's valuable time responding to it," Bumba's February 11 letter read. "It is also advisable that you as a government officer acquaint yourself with the [proper] channels of communication as laid down in the standing orders. I am therefore coping this letter to the Minister for Security who should have been the appropriate party to communicate your concerns to me."
Cheeye blames the energy crisis in the country on the Ministry, saying it had a history of bungling projects and contracts.
In a subsequent letter on April 6 written in response to Bumba's, Cheeye said, "One of the major signs of dubious contracts, which end up becoming a total haemorrhage of the national financial resources, is the inbuilt element of 'inconclusiveness'. The 50 mega watt Thermal Project is a typical case of a contract, which is inconclusive, and would therefore expose the government to a total financial haemorrhage."
On February 9, Cheeye had written a letter warning against the awarding of the contract to Aggreko, which advice Bumba ignored.
Cheeye said his investigation had revealed that the contract at $872, 941 per month for three years, would make the government to lose at least $9.3 million at the end of the three years.
Quoting Prof Aswath Damodaran, a top corporate finance professor in the US, Cheeye said, "A postulate of sound investing is that an investor does not pay more for an asset than it is worth," he said of the power deal.
"What this means is that the government can still pay less for the same investment. For example under the contract which your ministry is keen to sign, the government will lose $9.3 million (the difference with the lowest and equally reliable bidder, and the highest which you have

[Ugnet] Weekly Observer: NRM feared secret ballot even in 2002

Article Published on:
28th April 2005.

FLASHBACK: NRM feared secret ballot even in 2002

Recently, Parliament voted for a motion moved by Minister Nyombi Thembo to do away with secret voting when changing the Constitution. This is the second time the ruling party is battling secret ballot. On May 9, 2002, the opposition moved a motion calling for secret ballot during reconsideration of the Political Parties and Organisations Act.We reproduce the debate in Parliament as recorded in The Hansard. It is Thursday, May 9, 2002. The Speaker, Edward Ssekandi, is in the Chair:
AGGREY AWORI: I move that we suspend the rules so that Members can pronounce themselves through secret ballot. ROSEMARY SENINDE: I do not actually agree with Hon. Aworis motion. Mr. Chairman, you will agree with me that we have all along been calling for transparency. (Applause).

Nyombi Thembo
We have passed the other clauses transparently. So, I would not see the reason why we would like to pass this particular motion (allowing parties to open branches at district) in hiding. I therefore urge my colleagues to reject this motion, if possible, so that we vote transparently.
BEN WACHA: For the last two days, we have been engaged in a debate that will shape the future of our politics. It is obvious that this particular clause that we are going to vote on is the gist of this particular bill. It is therefore necessary that when we come to pronounce ourselves on it, we must do it with our consciences free of any fear, but knowing that we shall personally own our decisions.
It is important that we recognise that which ever way, this particular clause will have an impact on the future of our country. It is important that each one of us takes personal responsibility for the repercussions of our actions.
BERNARD MULENGANI: We have been voting on several occasions through the secret ballot since we came to the 7th Parliament. The Commissioners were elected through the secret ballot, even parliamentarians came through the secret ballot, and particularly I am talking about the august House internal elections. The Members of the East African Community were 3ed through the secret ballot. In my own observation, there is none other than the show of the hands that is very transparent and very open and very free.
KAHINDA OTAFIIRE: I think a political system is like faith. When somebody is a Muslim, they wear these religious scarves to identify their faith. Catholic priests wear cassocks and soldiers wear uniforms. A political system is a faith. That you belong to the multi-party system is no crime. It is not in the penal code. That you belong to this other faith is not bad. If we gave political parties a chance to go down to the districts for example, I would not have a problem with that, but you see, at the national level, they act as a block. When they are sent down there, they will go as individuals and they will compete. Their competition is indisciplined. Their indiscipline will tear their national cohesion. That is advantageous to us, but that same indiscipline will cause havoc in our nation.Since this is a creed, since everybody wants to be identified with what they believe - (Laughter) - and believe openly, I urge Members of Parliament to all vote
publicly.
We should stand to be counted. Let us know where everybody is. What are you hiding? Ona ficha nini?
JAMES KAKOOZA: .We have a saying in my culture that once a snake poisons you, when you see a lizard, you also run away. I do not agree with the Hon. Aggrey Awori when he says that we should vote secretly.
First, I want to be on record. Some of us want to identify ourselves because we have been called radicals; we have been called everything. I do not see why somebody who supports the radical point of view does not go on record so that they see, as they said in the newspapers, that some of us are radicals and core supporters of the Movement. This shows we have got a constituency binding us to our voters.
GEOFFREY EKANYA: I want to tell the members here that our democracy is a growing democracy. After being in power for 16 years, recently Government had to even introduce secret voting for LCI chairmen in the village. I want to make an appeal to members that when voting through secret ballot; it is your freedom that is guaranteed.
JENNIFER NAMUYANGU: I know that all of us are here on individual merit, and we are here for the betterment of this country. I believe in transparency and I do not see why a honourable member can fear to vote openly. Voting secretly is not only expensive in terms of time and resources, we also have to start preparing the ballot papers and you can imagine it might take us the whole of today and tomorrow.
MICHAEL MABIKKE: I would like to dispel the fears of some Members of Parliament who have contributed before me that actually some members are scared of voting in public. We are not scared of voting in public. The whole point is the fear of undue

[Ugnet] New Vision: 800,000 Ugandans have HIV





800,000 Ugandans have HIV









By J. MaserukaOVER 800,000 adults in Uganda are infected with HIV, which is about 7% of all adults, according to a ministry of Health survey on HIV/AIDS.There has been an overall declining trend of HIV infection from 18% in 1992 to the current figure of 7%, according to preliminary findings from the 2004-2005 Uganda HIV/AIDS Sero-Behavioural Survey.Releasing the results yesterday at the ministrys headquarters at Wandegeya, health minister Jim Muhwezi said Kampala had the highest HIV infection rate of 9.2%, followed by north-central and central regions at 9%.Prof. Francis Omaswa (right), the director general of health services, said HIV prevalence was higher in towns than villages because town social life was more tempting and that many couples had fled rural areas due to wars in the last decade.WHO representative Dr. Walker Oladapo said interlocked poverty in towns was more difficult to deal with than in rural areas due to mo
 re
 temptations in towns.West Nile has the lowest HIV infection rate at 2.5%. It comprises of Adjumani, Arua, Moyo, Nebbi and Yumbe districts.The northeastern region, which comprises Kaberamaido, Katakwi, Kotido, Kumi, Moroto, Nakapiripirit and Soroti districts, has the second-lowest infection rate at 4.3%.Infection levels were highest among the 30 to 40 age bracket and lowest between 15 to 19 years.However the prevalence steadily rises and peaks at 12% for women aged 30 to 34 while the HIV infection among men peaks at 35 to 39. Men have a higher prevalence than women at the age of 50 to 59 years. 
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[Ugnet] Letter in Weekly Obsverver April 28, 2005: Thieves in Uganda Post Office, etc

Thieves in Post Office
Rampant theft apparently continues unabated at the Main Post Office in Kampala. Over the past 19 years, many of my letters, magazines and large parcels have routinely disappeared with promises of an investigation.
For the past five years I have been caring for and educating 110 small street kids in four homes in Mulawa Kira, near Namugongo. This is a very expensive undertaking and I have had to rely on countless loyal expatriate friends and benefactors to make it a reality. Over the past five years they have sent me huge parcels of clothing, soccer uniforms, school supplies, sports equipment and indoor games for the children.
Several weeks ago, I learned to my horror and shame that seven huge boxes of these things, some sent over one year ago, have never arrived. How could so many large boxes (postage $270) simply get lost?
Also missing was a huge box of fruit and vegetable seeds for the kids to grow some of their own food and learn how to become self-reliant. Add to that a large box of videocassettes for the kids.
I am a cancer patient and had ordered a large supply of cancer provisions (unavailable in Uganda). These too have mysteriously disappeared.
Doesnt this rampant theft cause donors to believe that Uganda is, indeed, one of most corrupt countries on the face of the earth? For, Ugandans are almost literally stealing food from the mouths of their own starving children! This is shameful and inexcusable. The thieves know quite well that these gifts are meant for my poor street kids, mostly AIDS orphans, for the boxes are clearly marked. I would strongly advise such corrupt and heartless people to prepare a fitting excuse for the Lord on Judgment Day.
As I have done on many occasions before, I explained all this to the head postmaster who promised to make a thorough investigation. Many days have now passed and I still have not received a single word from him.
Name withheld on request.

Article Published on:
28th April 2005.

OPINION

Anne Mugisha

Why we left Museveni
I am often asked: How is FDC different from the Movement? I often answer that NRM-O is a personality cult but FDC is about institution building. I have started breaking down the answer to give it more meaning and hopefully get more understanding for the reasons why followers left the flock to become opponents.
Some time after taking power in 1986, President Museveni diverted from the original Movement goal of building a democratic nation and embarked on a journey to entrench himself in power by manipulating legitimate authority and the abundant hope that the population had in him. Like the CEO who increases his own interest at the expense of stockholders, Musevenis government became an affair of loyalists and their interests transcended those of serving the nation.
From there on, it was a matter of personal conviction and timing for ethical leaders to quit NRM upon realising that there was no room for undoing the damage from within the organisation. To this day, other leaders such as Bidandi Ssali still cling to the hope that they can wrestle Goliath from within rather than step back to use Davids sling from the other side of the political divide.
The turning point may have been different but the reasons given for leaving revolve around the same themes. A common theme is that Museveni undermines legitimate authority in favour of parallel structures of loyalists. The usurpers who usually had no prior standing in law become so powerful that they render legitimate structures obsolete and non-consequential. SRPS (special revenue protection services) was closely aligned with Uganda Revenue Authority (URA); run by the military and no one knew exactly how SRPS recruited or to whom it was accountable. AGOA and the Uganda AIDS Commission are not associated with line ministries; instead they found their way to the Presidents Office. Foreign policy is not evolved in Foreign Affairs; instead it is State House which influences positions on international trade, war in Iraq, and aligning all policies with U.S. interests. Regional policy was implemented by the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence (CMI), External Se
curity
Organisation (ESO), and Ministry of Defence; after all, we were negotiating our way out of conflict rather than negotiating trade agreements. And military men Col. Noble Mayombo, Maj. Gen. Kahinda Otafiire, and Amama Mbabazi (Defence minister) became the negotiators.
Legitimate authority was deliberately undermined and power centres devolved from professionals to loyalists. Then the coercive machinery of government came to the fore; CMI was big, the Presidential Protection Unit was replaced by the Presidential Guard Brigade, Kakooza Mutale became a household name associated with election violence. All pretences at a democratic evolution were thrown out of the window.
While Musevenis first decade was inclusive, broad-based, with a shared vision, now the

[Ugnet] Lets Play ... The Missing Link!

Wed May 4,11:11 AM ET
HOLD FOR RELEASE 1 P.M. EDT; graphic shows new dinosaur Falcarius utahensis. (AP Graphic)
Newfound Dinosaur a Transitional Creature

By MALCOLM RITTER, AP Science Writer

Caught in the act of evolution, the odd-looking, feathered dinosaur was becoming more vegetarian, moving away from its meat-eating ancestors.
It had the built-for-speed legs of meat-eaters, but was developing the bigger belly of plant-eaters. It had already lost the serrated teeth needed for tearing flesh. Those were replaced with the smaller, duller vegetarian variety.

"I doubt seriously this animal could cut a steak with that mouth," said Utah state paleontologist James Kirkland, one of those who discovered the bones of the beast in east-central Utah.

The scientists dubbed it Falcarius utahensis. Bones from hundreds or maybe thousands of these dinosaurs were discovered at a two-acre dig site south of the town of Green River. Nobody knows why they gathered there or what killed them, Kirkland said.
It ate plants, but its bones show the transition from its carnivorous ancestors while still in progress.

All plant-eating dinosaurs were ultimately descended from a meat-eater, and switchovers to plant-eating occurred several times. The newly discovered species, which lived 125 million years ago, could help scientists understand details of how the changeovers took place.

It's "our first really good case of a dinosaur in the midst of shifting from the meat-eating body to a plant-eating one," said an expert not involved in the discovery, Thomas R. Holtz Jr. of the University of Maryland.
"It's definitely eating a substantial amount of plants, (but) we still see the original imprint of meat-eating upon it."

The creature, with 5-inch claws on its outsized hands, measured some 12 feet from its snout to the tip of its long skinny tail. It stood just over 3 feet tall at the hip and could apparently reach about five feet off the ground with its long neck to munch leaves or fruit, said Kirkland.
He describes the creature in Thursday's issue of the British journal Nature with Lindsay Zanno and Scott Sampson of the Utah Museum of Natural History at the University of Utah, among others.

They dubbed it Falcarius utahensis. Bones from hundreds or maybe thousands of these dinosaurs were discovered at a two-acre dig site in east-central Utah, south of the town of Green River. Nobody knows why they gathered there or what killed them, Kirkland said.

But analysis revealed that Falcarius was the earliest known member of a bizarre-looking group of plant-eaters called therizinosaurs (pronounced THAY-rih-ZY-no-sores.) Found mostly in Asia, the barrel-bodied creatures waddled upright like Godzilla or "a pot-bellied bear," Kirkland said.

Falcarius, very early in its evolution into the therizinosaur body type, retained the rather horizontal posture and powerful legs of its meat-eating ancestors. And its teeth were more suited for eating plants, Zanno said.
It also showed some change toward the larger gut needed to digest plant material rather than meat, as well as a lengthened neck and smaller head associated with eating plants, she said.

Holtz said Falcarius still had fairly slender proportions overall rather than the barrel body of later therizinosaurs. "This one could probably move fairly quickly," he said, whereas its more evolved relatives "would have had problems hunting things faster than a tree."

Kirkland and Zanno said they suspect Falcarius probably ate some meat in addition to plants. "I wouldn't doubt this thing would eat a lizard or two in a pinch," Kirkland said.

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[Ugnet] Budget: Uganda to Limit Donor Funding to $200m

Budget: Uganda to Limit Donor Funding to $200m The East African (Nairobi) May 2, 2005 By Okodan AkwapNairobi
For the first time in a long time , Uganda will in the 2005/06 budget limit its external borrowing to only $200 million and also announce a shift in its economic strategies in order to lift the incomes of the 38 per cent of the population, senior Ministry of Finance officials said last week.
The budget, which is to be presented to parliament on June 13, will mark a shift from the current free market to a government interventionist approach especially in the area of agriculture, in order to improve incomes and reduce poverty and the widening gap between poor and rich.
Minister of State for Information Dr Nsaba Buturo told The EastAfrican last week that the Cabinet is considering radical proposals put forward by new Finance Minister, Dr Ezra Suruma in order to push the economy forward.
The scaling down of donor funding of the national budget from the current 48 per cent will be another major issues to be highlighted in the new finance minister's budget estimates in June.
"Strategically, we are limiting the extent of external debt that we enter into. For this financial year, the government's decision is to commit to borrowing $200 million only," the officials said.
During previous fiscal years, there has been no ceiling to external borrowing, which has contributed to the swelling of Uganda's debt burden to unsustainable levels in recent years. The debt now stands at $4.7 billion.
Finance officials add that the budget will lay emphasis on the need for Uganda to be cautious in accepting foreign aid in the form of loans and to switch to mainly grant assistance. President Yoweri Museveni and former finance minister Gerald Sendaula have in the past criticised aid inflows as working contrary to the government's overall poverty eradication action plan (PEAP).
They said the inflows not only led to unsustainable levels of external debt commitments but also the appreciation of the shilling, rendering exports of predominantly agricultural products less competitive in the global market. About 80 per cent of Uganda's population depend on agriculture.
There will also be continued pressure on donors to direct their assistance to budget support rather than to the financing of projects.
In this way, Finance Ministry officials argue, the government can direct more resources to the social sectors, especially education, health, water and sanitation, transport and agriculture.
Last month, Dr Suruma met with all donors represented in Uganda to brief them on his new economic proposals, which lay strategic emphasis on key poverty eradication priorities to improve the incomes of Uganda's 3.8 million households through an integrated rural development approach. Revival of co-operatives and farmers' associations is part of the package.
The minister is also expected to unveil elaborate new measures to increase the stock of domestic resources. With the coming into force of the East African Community Customs Union, Uganda's collection from Customs duties, which now amounts to 30 per cent of total revenue, is expected to fall, putting pressure on the government to find alternative means of earning revenue.
Widening the tax base, increasing tax and non-tax revenue collection and encouraging domestic capital formation are some of the vehicles the minister of finance will be pointing to.
Tax revenue currently is around 12.3 per cent of GDP and the government wants it to go up to at least 13 per cent of GDP.
The matter of widening the export base will also be emphasised in the coming budget. Dr Suruma, Finance officials say, will talk about new measures now being refined to enable Uganda to attain better penetrate of lucrative markets like the European Union, the United States (mainly through the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act window) and the Comesa region.
Reducing government expenditure is another area that the minister is looking at. He will address issues of quality assurance and certification as well as adherence to sanitary and phytosanitary standards demanded by these markets, especially the EU.
Measures will also be announced to help the private sector become more competitive by facilitating access to long-term credit, among other things.
Additional reporting by Barbara Among

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[Ugnet] news:Uganda Foreign Debt Grows


Foreign Debt Grows New Vision (Kampala) May 3, 2005 By Isaac Kalembe
UGANDA owes international organisations sh15.3b subscription fees arrears that have accumulated over the years. 

"Uganda has defaulted in its international obligation," finance committee chairperson Maj. (rtd) Bright Rwamirama (Isingiro North) said yesterday. Rwamirama, who was presenting the committee's sh45.150b proposed 2005/06 budget to the budget committee, said the default had dented Uganda's international credibility. "Some Ugandan delegates shy away from international fora because of the debt. The Government should allocate more resources to meet its international obligations and redeem its credibility," he said. Budget committee chairperson James Mwandha (disability) said the country's debt to international organisations might be as high as sh
 50b.
 "The total arrears may be bigger than the total annual budget. Last year, the tourism ministry's arrears was sh1.293b," he said. 
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[Ugnet] news:University Admissions Suspended

University Admissions Suspended New Vision (Kampala) May 3, 2005 By F. AhimbisibweKampala
MAKERERE University and other public universities have halted the 2005/06 admissions, citing defective guidelines from the education ministry on the new scholarship scheme which emphasises sciences.
The exercise hit a deadlock at the weekend when the Public Universities Joint Admission Board (PUJAB) noticed that the guidelines, particularly in determining district quota beneficiaries, were vague.
Subsequently, the academic registrars of Makerere, Mbarara, Kyambogo and Gulu universities have demanded to meet ministry officials to sort out the matter.
Sources in PUJAB said some board members wanted the scheme to be taken back to the drawing board. The meeting is scheduled for tomorrow, Makerere University Academic Registrar Amos Olal Odur said yesterday.
"We are meeting on Wednesday to discuss some matters relating to the guidelines which were issued by the ministry. We cannot continue the process until workable guidelines are outlined," he said.
Sources in PUJAB said the guidelines were silent on what would happen if some districts failed to raise the 16 students. The director of education, Dr. Richard Akankwasa, issued the guidelines in March.
"Each district is entitled to 16 students but some, such as Sembabule, Katakwi, Kyenjojo, Kaberamaido, Yumbe, Bundibugyo, Nakapiripirit and Pader do not have 16 students qualifying for university education. The guidelines are unclear and they do not tell us what will happen to these scholarships, which are not taken by the districts. Who will determine where these scholarships should go?" a senior registrar at Makerere asked.
Makerere Deputy Vice-Chancellor Prof. Lillian Ekirikubinza is the chairperson of PUJAB. The commissioner for higher education, Elizabeth Gabona, attended on behalf of the ministry.
Permanent secretary Francis Lubanga said last evening, "If there is any problem with the guidelines, we shall meet them and offer additional information on how they should admit. But the commissioner for higher education is the one directly in charge."

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Re: [Ugnet] conscious pirate

Mr. Gwokto:

The caption on the photo belowreads: "UPDF murder 5 women in Mucwini ". To me it looks more like an outright massacre. Certainly when I count the bodies on the ground I count more than five.

Could you please provide details as to where  when this gruesomephoto was taken and what the circustances were? Have you tried to circulate all this among international human rights organizations and the international press?


Peter-Rhaina Gwokto [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


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[Ugnet] Re: [FedsNet] news:Uganda Foreign Debt Grows

Don't forget:

1. US $5MILLION to service Mu7's jet.
2. A new State House budgeted at US $150 MILLION. Recall: this cameafter the public complained ofthe proposedUS $70,000,000.00 tab to refurbish the old State House.
3. Museveni's US $400,000.00 Range Rover
4. Museveni's US $1,000,000.00 Mercedes Benz
5. Padded expenditures on every single government procurement project, e.g. the millions of extra dollars spent on Bujagali dam, the geothermal energy project
6. Monies Museveni directed the governmenthandoutto bail out a private businessman, one Basajjabalaba. No need to mention the indefatigible Mu7's efforts to "sell" off the Dairy Corporation for the princely sum of One genuine United States Dollar.
7. The $300,000.00 we must annually dole out to one Black American, Rose Whittaker as an "AGOA Consultant" of Tri-Star fame -- although Uganda has never exported anything worth even one tenth of her fee as a result of her efforts in any given year.

And not to mention that, for good measure, we are paying for our own re-colonization:

David Dorward, 'The African Growth and Opportunity Act, 2000: American Penetration of Africa under the guise of commercial opportunity", Boab Connection of the Australia-Southern Africa Business Council (Winter 2000) pp. 12-13.
David Dorward, "American Re-colonisation of Africa: African Growth and Opportunity Act, 2000". LaTrobe Forum XVI (Aug 2000), pp. 29-31.

etc, etc,Christine Nabukeera [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

And thenProf. Nsibambi wants his Pajeros. musamize [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Foreign Debt Grows New Vision (Kampala) May 3, 2005 By Isaac Kalembe
UGANDA owes international organisations sh15.3b subscription fees arrears that have accumulated over the years.

"Uganda has defaulted in its international obligation," finance committee chairperson Maj. (rtd) Bright Rwamirama (Isingiro North) said yesterday. Rwamirama, who was presenting the committee's sh45.150b proposed 2005/06 budget to the budget committee, said the default had dented Uganda's international credibility. "Some Ugandan delegates shy away from international fora because of the debt. The Government should allocate more resources to meet its international obligations and redeem its credibility," he said. Budget committee chairperson James Mwandha (disability) said the country's debt to international organisations might be as high as sh
50b.
"The total arrears may be bigger than the total annual budget. Last year, the tourism ministry's arrears was sh1.293b," he said.

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[Ugnet] News: History Remembers Obote's Coup d'Etat

These are from Time Magazine.

The PressAsking for It
Monday, Aug. 23, 1971

Many governments chronically complain about press criticism, but Uganda has the opposite problem. No newspaper will attack the regime of General Idi ("Big Daddy") Amin Dadaand Big Daddy is worried about it. Tamed to a whisper for eight years under President Apolo Milton Obote, the papers have still not made a critical peep since his ouster seven months ago.

Attorney General P.J. Nkambo-Mugerwa went on television last week to declare that Uganda's press is "like a dog that has been chained too long. It does not know what to do now that it is free." The newspapers, he complained, are "playing the role of court jester. Constantly singing a government's praises is the surest way of toppling it." Earlier he had declared: "We know we are not infallible. How can we be assisted if we never receive constructive criticism from the press?"
The press was stung to criticism all right, but of Nkambo-Mugerwa. In an angry editorial about the sword being mightier than the pen, the Uganda Argus announced boldly that it would not be bullied into "reckless criticism. A newspaper plays an ambassadorial role, only it is accredited to its own country and is charged with promoting the interests of the country." Furthermore, said the Argus, "freedom of _expression_ is a cliché phrase."

The WorldCoup of Convenience
Friday, Mar. 04, 1966

The strange goings-on in Uganda last week presented a variation on Africa's current crop of coups. Uganda's gov ernment was overthrown all right, but not by military men. It was Prime Minister Milton Apollo Obote himself who seized full powers, and he did it, so he said, only to prevent another coup which was being planned against him.
Obote has long nursed an ambition to do away with the political opposition and run Uganda on a one-party basis under the domination of his fellow Nilotic tribesmen of the north. Trouble is that a split recently began developing even in his own Uganda People's Congress, caused by a group of Bantu Cabinet ministers determined to resist control by the northerners. The split widened last month when the anti-Obote faction supported the charge in Parliament by an opposition party leader that the Prime Minister, two of his ministers, and the deputy army commander had illegally shared a $325,000 windfall that was captured from Simba rebels by Uganda troopers during the 1964-65 Congo rebellion.
At first, Obote agreed to set up a judicial panel to investigate the charge. But before the judges could convene, Obote took matters into his own hands.
Ordering the arrest of five of his ministers, Obote had them dragged screaming and kicking from a Cabinet session by members of his personal 500-man police force. Next he suspended the constitution and began broadcasting wild stories about internal intrigues and the threat of invasion by foreign troops.

Obote's actions caused deep divisions among Uganda's 8,000,000 people. His political opposition refused to be intimidated. "It is the duty of all Ugandians to protect the constitution and to die for it, if necessary," cried Kabaka Yekka Party Leader Daudi Ocheng. "Once the constitution is broken, the rule of the jungle takes over." Actually, whether there was to be any dying appeared to be up to the four-battalion army. So far, its loyalty seemed badly split between Obote and the figurehead chief of state, Sir Edward ("Freddy") Mutesa, 42, who is the Kabaka, hereditary ruler of Buganda kingdom, most powerful of Uganda's four regions.
Ps: Also see these Times Magazine stories

The Battle of Mengo Hill, Time Friday, Jun. 03, 1966
King Freddie Comes Home,Time Monday, Apr. 12, 1971
Tough Shepherd, Time, Friday, Oct. 13, 1967
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[Ugnet] HRH the Nnabagereka of Buganda, Sylvia Nagginda, to visit USA

Her Royal Highness (HRH) the Nnabagereka of Buganda, Sylvia Nagginda, isscheduled to visit the U.S. in August 2005.

The major purpose of her visit is to participate in fund-raising activities to support the Nnabagereka Development Trust (NDT). HRH is the founder and chairperson of the NDT, which is a non-governmental organization whose major objectives include supporting:

(1) Early childhood care and development,
(2) Education for the girl child,
(3) Health issues particularly regardingthe prevention and cure of childhood diseases and nutrition,
(4) Adolescent reproductive health, including HIV/Aids, and
(5) Vocational training and employment for the youth.

All these activities have been championed both within the Buganda Kingdom and Uganda as a whole.HRH is scheduled to visit the following cities on the dates indicatedbelow:August 15 - 18, 2005 - New YorkAugust 19 - 23, 2005 - BostonAugust 24 - 30, 2005 - DallasSept. 6 - 11, 2005 - Washington DCSpecific details concerning the activities planned for each city arebeing finalized and will be made available soon. Please make note ofthese dates and plan to participate in fund-raising activities in any ofthe above-referenced cities closest to you.

Details contacts to follow
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[Ugnet] Deputy PM: It takes 10 years to study, define and map Pot Holes







THE WRITER: Henry Kajura






Land Cruisers for ministers a policy matter
This is in response to the public concern about the proposed procurement of Toyota Land Cruisers for ministers. 
· When Prime Minister, Prof. Apolo Nsibambi, met members of the parliamentary committee on Presidential and Foreign Affairs, he was asked by Hon. Aggrey Awori to clarify the official policy regarding vehicles for ministers and state ministers. Prof. Nsibambi pointed out that this question should have been raised with the 2nd deputy prime minister and minister of public service who is in charge of the policy. However, the prime minister said according to a Cabinet decision, all ministers should have Toyota Land Cruisers for official use.
· The daily newspapers have recently carried articles, cartoons and letters attacking the prime minister as if he initiated the policy. This was a Cabinet decision based on sound reasons.
· It should be noted that prior to 1997, ministers and ministers of state were entitled to two official vehicles and they travelled by first class air ticket. In the 1997/98 financial year, the facilitation was reduced to one official vehicle and travel by club class. This was a deliberate effort by the Government to reduce costs on public administration.
· In a bid to ensure standardisation, economy and modesty of vehicles for political leaders and other entitled officer, Cabinet, in the 1999/2000 financial year, approved a policy of provision of Toyota Prados as official vehicles for ministers and state ministers.l In 2004/2005 financial year, Cabinet reviewed the policy and in keeping with recent developments, opted for the Toyota Land Cruiser as one of the most suitable and robust vehicles to faciliate ministers in carrying out their work, which includes monitoring the implementation of Government programmes and consulting with their constituents, since they a
 re also
 members of parliament.
· The procurement of these vehicles is being done in a phased manner and within the budget ceilings of ministries. In other words, there will be no diversion of funds already earmarked for other priorities.
· The repair of roads is also being undertaken in accordance with the road sector development plan. To this end, many roads have been rehabilitated, resurfaced or upgraded. Presently many roads are undergoing repair and upgrading and others are about to start. This is an ongoing effort and the Government is committed to improving the state of roads countrywide. Roads take a long time to study, design and detail out and to reconstruct or construct; they cost colossal sums of money. This is why the Government had to draw up a 10-year programme.
· The public is informed that ministers and state ministers are mindful of the fact that budget resources should be spent frugally and in line with priorities and national interest. In the short run, it is necessary to procure the Land cruisers. Then the policy will be reviewed to take account of changes in motor vehicle technology and progress made in rehabilitation of the road network.The writer is 2nd Deputy Prime Minister/ Minister of Public ServicePublished on: Friday, 6th May, 2005
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[Ugnet] 1967 Constitution

www.kituochakatiba.co.ug/kafir.htm
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[Ugnet] Museveni's future?

May 6, 2005
U.S. Vows to Help Bring Liberian to Justice
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, May 5 - The administration took a cautious stance on Thursday on the deposed Liberian leader Charles Taylor, pledging to help bring him to justice over war crimes but refusing to say whether President Bush would push to have him expelled from Nigeria, where he has been sheltered.
Mr. Bush met Thursday with Nigeria's president, Olusegun Obasanjo, and has been under pressure from Republicans to prod him into sending Mr. Taylor to be tried in war crimes in the Special Court for Sierra Leone, which is supported by the United Nations. That tribunal has indicted Mr. Taylor on 17 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder and enslavement, in connection with his support for rebels in Sierra Leone, Liberia's neighbor.
Mr. Bush's chief spokesman, Scott McClellan, declined to say before the meeting whether Mr. Bush would raise the subject of Mr. Taylor with the Nigerian president. And Mr. Obasanjo, addressing reporters at the White House afterward, spoke generally of his hope that some accord could be reached on Mr. Taylor.
"Nobody should, of course, condone any crime that anybody has committed, no matter how highly placed," Mr. Obasanjo said, indicating that he and Mr. Bush had discussed the issue.
"The administration and Congress share a common goal," Mr. McClellan said. "A way needs to be found for Charles Taylor to be held to account for the crimes that he has committed."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also discussed Mr. Taylor in a meeting with Mr. Obasanjo earlier on Thursday, the State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, said. Asked whether Ms. Rice had suggested that Mr. Taylor be sent to the special Sierra Leone court, Mr. Boucher said only that the issue of how to bring Mr. Taylor to justice was "a matter of continuing discussion."
On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a resolution calling on Nigeria to send Mr. Taylor to Sierra Leone to stand trial.
In late 1989, Mr. Taylor organized a rebellion in Liberia that gained a reputation for appalling violence. He became Liberia's president in 1997, though the fighting continued. Exiled in 2003, he was given shelter in Nigeria, in a deal involving Nigeria, the United States and African leaders.

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[Ugnet] The Inexplicable Survivors of a Widespread Epidemic

2005-05-09 Thread musamize

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times
Kai Brothers, left, who has H.I.V. but no signs of AIDS, with Dr. Jay Levy in his office.

May 3, 2005
The Inexplicable Survivors of a Widespread EpidemicBy CAROL POGASH

AN FRANCISCO, April 28 - Before powerful antiviral medicines became available, Kai Brothers lost his partner and many friends to AIDS. Thinking he was next, he quit his job, emptied his 401(k) and waited to die.
Nothing happened.
It has been 16 years since Mr. Brothers learned he was H.I.V. positive. Since then, he has never taken AIDS drugs or had any illnesses associated with the disease. Despite his good fortune, Mr. Brothers says he feels isolated.
"I don't identify with people who are H.I.V. negative because I'm not," he said. "I could infect someone. I don't identify with the positive people, because I don't have to deal with my health and medications and the things they have to worry about."
Once a month Mr. Brothers visits the laboratory of Dr. Jay Levy, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who is director of the university's laboratory for tumor and AIDS virus research. Since the epidemic began in 1981, Dr. Levy has been trying to understand why Mr. Brothers and others who are H.I.V. positive can remain medicine-free yet fit for decades, while the average person with H.I.V. progresses to AIDS within 10 years, if untreated.
An answer to that question could help in the development of a vaccine.
As a long-term survivor, also known as a long-term nonprogressor, Mr. Brothers, 42, is a much sought after anomaly. Dr. Levy believes that about 5 percent of people with H.I.V. are medicine-free and still healthy after 10 years.
Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases defines nonprogressors as treatment-free people with H.I.V. who have so little virus in their blood that it cannot be routinely detected. He suggests their numbers are far smaller, more like 0.2 to 0.4 percent.
Whatever the percentage, locating these research subjects is challenging. In the early years, one of Dr. Levy's volunteers trolled gay bars looking for survivors. A number of Dr. Levy's volunteers take part in other studies, here and at the infectious diseases institute in Bethesda, Md.
Long-term survivors have been around for a long time, said Dr. Mike McCune, senior investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology.
"We just don't know why they do what they do," Dr. McCune said.
Martin Delaney, founder of Project Inform, an H.I.V. information and advocacy organization based in San Francisco, said: "The disappointing thing is that there's no consensus about what the long-term nonprogressors do. Different things explain it in different people."
For many years, Mr. Brothers said, he carried a sense of guilt. Before his infection was discovered, his church encouraged him to donate blood four times a year. The blood bank discovered that one of its donors was H.I.V. positive and asked that Mr. Brothers, too, be tested. Reluctant to learn the truth, he refused and quit donating blood.
In retrospect, Mr. Brothers, who had a flu-like illness in 1981, an early symptom of infection with the virus, believes he was H.I.V. positive before he began donating blood.
"This is something I contributed to and could possibly have meant dozens of people contracting the virus and dying," he said in an interview.
For years, he wanted to be part of a study. Five years ago, friends told him about Dr. Levy's research. Even when AIDS was a death sentence, Dr. Levy, a virologist, knew that every virus had its survivors.
He believed he could learn from those whose bodies had kept the virus in check.
Some of Dr. Levy's subjects have been H.I.V. positive for 27 years, longer than there has been an epidemic.
The dates of infection were confirmed by the San Francisco Department of Public Health, which in 1978 began a hepatitis B study of 6,704 gay men, whose blood was preserved. Over time, some of these nonprogressors have turned into slow-progressors, dying of AIDS. But there remain a dozen who are infected but have stayed healthy for more than 20 years without treatment.
In 1986, Dr. Levy discovered that in survivors, the white blood cells, known as CD8 cells secreted minuscule amounts of an antiviral factor that blocked replication of viruses in cells but did not kill them. The better the antiviral activity of those cells, the healthier the individual.
Dr. Levy has devoted his career to trying to determine what that factor is. "It is the hardest thing I've ever had to do," he said.
When Dr. David Ho, the founder of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, reported that he had found the substance, Dr. Levy told him he was mistaken.
Repeatedly, Dr. Levy has told peers that they are wrong. He is also his own worst critic: "After a while they say 'Levy is spending all this time telling us what it isn't. What is it?' " he said.
Over the years, Dr.

Re: [Ugnet] 10, 000 Ugandans to get Iraq, US jobs ...talk about fools!!!

2005-05-09 Thread musamize

Mr. Opoko, 
It could be that the US has run out of idiots ...do you recall a photo of Pakistani soldiers clearing mines with simle sticks after Gulf War I? Can you find many in the US that would engage in clearing mines in that fashion?


"Consider first the cost to the international community of removing a landmine, estimated at $300 to $1,000 USD. Additionally consider the cost of new demining technology. Current demining practices employ very low-tech means, like sniffing dogs and human workers using sticks to comb the ground in front of them as the beginning of a long an complicated process. New technology in demining is needed but it must be affordable, appropriate to the end-user, and the research and development of such new technology must not come at the expense of current mine action conducted with the present technology. A final financial consideration is who shoulders the costs. Many representatives in the General Assembly stress the need for demining responsibility by those states that had laid landmines and they urge the provision of adequate resources for the Voluntary Trust Fund for Assistance in Mine Clearance. "
www.unimun.org/unimun_hb_5.html

a report of deaths among the deminers by country may be found at:
www.mech.uwa.edu.au/jpt/demining/info/mines.html(?)


and just in case ... let me jog your memory: Uganda manufactures landmines. Such is the "vision" of out pilgarlic leader ...


Matek Opoko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:





As if to say that The US does not have enough citizens , who can be recruited and deployed to perform the Jobs, which Ugandans will be doing in Iraq? The bottom line is that I do not think Iraq Citizens will readly welcome the Ugandans in Bagdad. But then again foolsaways learn the hard way!

Matek 
The article below appeared in the Monitor News Paper Kampala



10,000 Ugandans to get Iraq, US jobs  

By Gaaki Kigambo  Kabona Esiara 



KAMPALA - At least 200 Ugandan youths on Saturday signed up for security work in Iraq and at American installations worldwide. 
The Ugandans who go to Iraq will be deployed to guard public and private installations in the war-ravaged country where the United States forces continue to battle local insurgents. 
A local law firm, Hall  Partners, is working in collaboration with a local security firm, Aktar Security Services, on the recruitment exercise, which is targeting 10,000 people in three years. Mr Bob Kasango, a lawyer with Hall  Partners, said the firm was hired by the World Wide Special Operations (WWSO), who work for and closely with the US government and other international organisations like the World Bank, Coca Cola, and Microsoft Corporation to provide security. Kasango said not all the recruits will be employed in in Iraq. 
They will work in any part of the world where America has installations. Iraq is just one of them, he said. 
The recruitment exercise has got clearance from the US State Department, State House in Kampala, the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, sources said. 
The Minister of Internal Affairs, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, said yesterday, Im aware that there is a programme of equipping Ugandans with capacity to do guard duties locally in Uganda and if necessary abroad, but it is strictly a private initiative. He said the exercise was strictly voluntary. But Samia Bugwe MP Aggrey Awori condemned the exercise. 
It is tragic for the Uganda government to allow its citizens to be recruited as mercenaries. It is not true that they are only going to provide guard services. How do you provide only guard services in a country like Iraq? These people will definitely shoot back when they are shot at, Awori said.
But Kasango denied the Ugandans would work as combat personnel.No single Ugandans is going to manage roadblocks. They are going to be involved in non-combatant security. They may be at banks and at airports checking bags. Some are going to be trained in computing as they will be entering data. 
Others will be trained as motor vehicle mechanics and others will do secretarial work, he said.Sources said Uganda had been targeted because of its close working relations with the US government and because it was one of the African countries that supported the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. 
Kasango said other countries had also been targeted to provide people needed for various jobs at American installations across the world.In Uganda the local firms conducting the exercise are targeting able-bodied people with high education qualifications. Military experience is an added advantage, sources said.
The State Department has reportedly cleared private firms in different countries of the world to source employees for mostly security work at US installations because Americans are shunning the lucrative, but risky jobs.


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[Ugnet] Gimme my Gorilla!

2005-05-10 Thread musamize


May 10, 2005
Cameroon vs. South Africa in the Battle of the Gorillas
By MICHAEL WINES 



PRETORIA, May 4 - Where does a 600-pound gorilla sleep? 
Cameroon's government says South Africa's government knows the right answer. But for two years, South Africa seemed not to have heard the question. Since acknowledging it last December, South Africa's Science Ministry has offered one reply and its Environment Ministry another, and each contradicts the other. 
Only two things are clear: the gorilla - actually, four Western Lowland gorillas - are sleeping at the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa, in Pretoria, in what it calls a "state-of-the-art, world-class facility" that is receiving its final flourishes. 
And despite Cameroon's claim on the gorillas, the zoo has no intention of giving them up. 
Cynics suggest that South Africa's extended pondering of the gorilla question was intended to permit the zoo to build its gorilla house and claim permanent ownership of what is, in the zoo world, the Mona Lisa of exhibits. 
Malicious slander, the zoo's executive director, Willie Labuschagne, said in an interview. 
"We've done it for protecting the animals," he said. "It will not happen in my lifetime that any assumed increase in visitors will defray the capital expenditure on this investment." 
The four gorillas, stolen as babies and smuggled to Malaysia before being surrendered a year ago, are the prize in a protracted custody battle involving South Africa, Cameroon, Nigeria and much of the international wildlife conservation community. 
Mr. Labuschagne says the overriding issue is how best to save the endangered Lowland gorilla, whose Central African habitat is being gobbled up by loggers and whose numbers have been decimated by the deadly Ebola virus. Breeding programs in zoos like his, he says, are the only solution. 
But Cameroon officials and some wildlife activists, led by the chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall, roundly disagree. The issue, they say, is whether any zoo should reap a benefit from smuggling vanishing species - and whether the gorillas, which apparently come from Cameroon, should not have a chance to return to their home. 
"We have proof that they came from our forests," said Mary Fosi Mbantenkhu, an adviser in Cameroon's Environment Ministry who is seeking the gorillas' return. "South Africa and Cameroon belong to several conventions, and we know the obligations of each party to the conventions." 
Refusing to return smuggled animals, she said, is "condoning those who engage in illegal exploitation, and we know they don't want that reputation." 
Western Lowland gorillas are avidly sought by zoos, both for their crowd appeal and as part of the zoos' conservation mission. Males weigh as much as 600 pounds and boast eight-foot arm spans; females are about half as heavy. 
As many as 110,000 lived recently in Cameroon, Congo and nearby nations, but logging, a thriving trade in gorilla meat and especially the Ebola pandemic have sharply reduced their numbers. 
The Pretoria gorillas, known to wildlife activists as the Taiping Four, were apparently captured in Cameroon in late 2001, taken to a zoo in neighboring Nigeria, then shipped to Taiping Zoo in Malaysia, via South Africa. Such deals are barred under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites, but Nigerian officials used forged Cites documents and veterinary certificates to assist the smuggling. 
The International Primate Protection League, which battles smuggling of endangered apes, unmasked the deal a few months later, and the Taiping Zoo agreed to return them to a place chosen by Cites officials. 
To Cameroon's astonishment, that place was the Pretoria zoo, which had lobbied Cites officials and Malaysian zookeepers with the backing of the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums. 
The Cites treaty states explicitly, "Where the country of origin desires the return of the animals, this desire should be respected." But the statement is in a nonbinding annex, and requests for the animals' return to Cameroon went unheeded. 
Gorillas in hand, South Africa's government talked with Cameroon for nine months about their repatriation, until December, when the Environment Ministry said a committee would oversee the animals' return within six months. Five months later, the committee has not been formed. 
The ministry did not respond to requests for comment. 
Mr. Labuschagne, the zoo director, said that in any event, the ministry's opinion did not count. "I take my instructions from the National Research Foundation," he said, and that is part of the Ministry of Science and Technology. 
The International Primate Protection League claims that the Pretoria zoo is ill prepared to care for gorillas. Two baby gorillas there died in 1989 and 1990, and at least two apes died in 1997 and 1998 in their mid-20's, an age well below the 35 to 40 years that experts say a captive gorilla usually lives. The sole remaining gorilla is about 30.

[Ugnet] Volunteer Wanted: Tracking Child Soldiers in N. Uganda

2005-05-10 Thread musamize

Volunteer Position Available: Field Research Manager Child Soldier Tracking Project (CSTP)Associazione Volontari per il Servizio Internazionale (AVSI) UgandaChristopher Blattman, PhD Candidate, Department of Economics, UC BerkeleyJeannie Annan, PhD Candidate, Department of Counseling Psychology, Indiana UniversityLOCATION: Eastern Equatoria in southern Sudan; Kitgum and Pader districts in northern Uganda.PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The CSTP will be the first-ever socio-economic and psychosocial survey of former child soldiers. The aims of CSTP are: (i) to understand the social, economic and psychological impacts of war and violence on adolescents and young adults; and (ii) to assess the effectiveness of reintegration programs for ex-combatants and refugees. A full description of the project, its aims, and the region is available online at www.CSTproject.org. Additiona
l
materials are available upon request.TIMING: Survey planning activities will commence in early July 2005. Implementation of Round 1 should be completed by October or November 2005. Summer positions (July and August) and longer positions (July to October/November) are possible, as is a longer-term arrangement.RESPONSIBILITIES: In cooperation with the principal investigators, the field manager will share responsibility for conducting qualitative exploratory interviews with refugees and ex-combatants, coordinating with other local aid agencies, designing and pre-testing the questionnaire, working with target community leaders, developing a sample frame and random sample of research subjects, hiring and training enumerators, managing the survey implementation, coordinating data entry and management, and analyzing data.BENEFITS: This survey is the first of its kind, and has an ambitious resear
ch and
humanitarian agenda. The individual will be fully trained in survey design and management by experienced mentors, and will have the opportunity to participate in research and publication. Valuable contacts with aid agencies and donors will be made, and opportunities for full-time employment are widely available.EXPERIENCE REQUIRED: Applicants should display strong managerial skills, resourcefulness and responsibility. No prior survey experience is required; we will fully train the individual. Experience working in developing countries is strongly preferred. Experience in project management, statistical analysis, conflict studies, psychological counseling, early childhood development would all be advantageous but are not required.REMUNERATION: The position is presently a volunteer one. All of the principal investigators are unpaid. Grants under review may mean that the position can be made a s
alaried
one, and perhaps permanent. Successful applicants will be encouraged to apply to university and outside granting agencies for travel support. In the absence of outside support, travel expenses can be covered by the project for individuals interested in participating in the full project.PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS: AVSI is an Italian-founded non governmental organization active in 35 countries (www.avsi.org). AVSI has been active in these northern Ugandan communities for two decades, and has been reintegrating former child soldiers in Kitgum and Pader District in northern Uganda since 1997. AVSI has been working in schools, villages and refugee camps in southern Sudan since 1992. Jeannie Annan, a doctoral candidate in counseling psychology, has more than five years experience working as a postconflict psycho-social program manager and consultant with a non-governmental organization (NGO) in northern Uganda an
d
southern Sudan. Christopher Blattman, a doctoral candidate in economics, has run household and firm surveys in India and East Africa, including the tracking and interviewing of 7,500 children in western Kenya following a randomized health intervention.SECURITY CONCERNS: By its nature, the CSTP is located in a zone of recent conflict. The conflict in southern Sudan has now ended, with a peace agreement signed and in implementation. The conflict in northern Uganda is ongoing but low-scale, and away from the protected towns and camps where aid workers live and operate. Many thousands of aid workers are present in the region and able to conduct their work. At the same time, extra security and caution are required. All individuals associated with the project will receive the same treatment accorded any AVSI staff member and the principal investigators.CONTACT: Interested applicants
should
send a cover letter/e-mail and CV to Christopher Blattman, [EMAIL PROTECTED], 510-207-6352.
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[Ugnet] How to pay for a $300K Hummer, $400 Range Rover, $40M Gulf Stream, etc

Govt to cut Ministry of Health budget

By Peter Nyanzi

KAMPALA - Mr Francis Omaswa, the director general of health services, has said the government will drastically cut the budget for the Ministry of Health.
He was on Monday speaking at an HIV/Aids orientation workshop for parliamentarians in Kampala.
We have been told that the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development has decided to reduce the budget for the Ministry of Health and allocate the money to other sectors," Omaswa said amid murmurs from over 70 MPs.
The MPs said they would oppose the move. "No, we shall oppose it in Parliament, it cannot be," Mr Henry Basaliza (Fort Portal Municipality) said.
The Ministry of Health is the third most funded ministry after Defence and Education. In the last financial year, the ministry got Shs360 billion and an increase of Shs13 billion for the wage bill. The Chairperson of the Social Services Committee, Ms Dorothy Hyuha, said the government would allocate the money to the Ministry of Gender.
=

Imelda Marcos: It makes the pizanti happy for me to have 800+ pairs of shoes ...

Mrs Baby Doc had cold rooms built in Haiti so sho she could wear her obscenely expensive fur coats ...

Does Uganda let roads fall into serious disrepair so our leaders can justify theuse of obscenely expensive luxurious4-wheel drive SUVs? Ask Uganda's Premier, Prof. Nsibambi.

I suppose, as Marie Antoinette would quip, the pizanti can always eat cake!

Ps: If you feel stressed click on the pig: http://members.cox.net/ladysarakat/piggy.swf
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[Ugnet] Re: [FedsNet] Re: News: Critique of Obote's story (Obote and democracy)

Mr Kibuka,

He is the short answer to your question #1. from the horse's own mouth (my emphasis):

DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY
He did not mind people saying it was a good thing to have Parliamentary democracy, or even a great thing. But he stressed there was no point in pretending that Uganda was at a stage wherefull Parliamentary democracy could obtain, because there were certain matters that came with it that were lacking in Uganda. These things had become effective in certain states in the world after many years of trial and error, and many upheavals. But they did not just come like that. Uganda must be prepared to go through years of trial and error in order to get them. Many countries of the world were in various transitional stages. It could not be achieved by wishful thinking.DR. A. MILTON OBOTE (The President) Uganda Argus 23rd June,
see: www.kituochakatiba.co.ug/kafir.htm
Joseph Senyonjo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Mr. Kibuka,

You are right, Mwenda should have put those questions to AMO. It would seem from the 1966-1967 machinations ochestrated by Obote and his disciples that the answer to all the three questions isNO.

Joseph"M. Kibuka" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Jal Senyonjo,I bet you can venture an answer to these questions that the likes of Mwenda should have asked:1. Does Jal Obote believe in multi-partyism, free and fair elections ec.?2. Does Jal Obote believe in presidential term limits?3. Does Jal Obote subscribe to power sharing in the form of federo?It is allowed to subsitute Jal Obote for UPC as there is a very little difference if at all between the two.Cheers, M. Kibuka==Federo is the only way forwardhttp://www.federo.com--- In [EMAIL PROTECTED], Joseph Senyonjo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mr. Kibuka, Thanks for sharing this indispensable link containing Abu Mayanja's brilliant analysis right at the time when Uganda was beg
inning
to disintegrate http://www.federo.com/Pages/1967%20Constitution%20-%20Abu%20Mayanja.htm There are a couple of choice sentences from the article which I thought were worth highlighting for our purposes here: First: Unifomity may not be co-extensive with unity, and a constitution which looks to the end-result, without carefully evaluating or allowing for the strengths of exisiting tribal feeling, may not be realistic or intelligent. Second: The present proposals, by making the President virtually irremovable from office are an open invitation to revolution. Yet the truest test for a successful constitution is whether it provides for a change of government by constitutional means, without recourse to
revolution. Like you, I also noted the reference, by the Obote I government, to Uganda's backwardness, and why it was not ready for democracy as practiced elsewhere in the world. This has precisely been Museveni's position for the past 20 years! It is gratifying to note that there were people such as Mayanja who foresaw the turmoil that the 1967 'Republican' constitution would bring Uganda. Joseph

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[Ugnet] AOL to Offer Free E-Mail in Bid to Build Audience

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/10/AR2005051001671.html?referrer=email
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[Ugnet] $0.14 to Call Uganda

Vonage has a $25/month unlimited calls to US  Canada (http://www.vonage.com/products_premium.php), $0.14 to Uganda (mobile or landline), but $0.28 to UK (http://www.vonage.com/intrates.php#U).

Where is the catch?

Musamize
Usual disclaimers, and, I'venever used Vonage.
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[Ugnet] Handsome or Not, Was King Tut Assassinated?

Tut Was Not Such a Handsome Golden Youth, After All

By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Published: May 11, 2005

Artists and scientists drawing on a detailed examination of King Tut's mummy have reconstructed the face of the young ruler as he might have looked in life: an unusually elongated skull, a narrow face, pronounced lips and possibly a receding chin.

Pictures of Tutankhamen's reconstructed face and head were released yesterday by Dr. Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo. The new photos presented an apparently more realistic depiction of Tut than the stylized image of him on his golden burial mask.
"The shape of the face and skull," Dr. Hawass said in a statement, "are remarkably similar to a famous image of Tutankhamen as a child, where he is shown as the sun god at dawn rising from a lotus blossom."
The reconstructions were based on the most thorough examination yet of Tut's mummy, including 1,700 three-dimensional images taken in January with computed tomography, or CT scans. The pictures of the skull, bones and soft tissues, more revealing than ordinary X-rays, were the latest of the Tut mummy's encounters with curious scientists and their modern technology since its discovery in 1922.
Tutankhamen died at 19, too soon to have given much thought to the hereafter. But he must have shared his royal predecessors' belief in an afterlife befitting rulers of ancient Egypt, an eternity with all of life's pleasures enjoyed in the company of the gods. Still, his has been an afterlife he could never have imagined.
The discovery of Tut's tomb in the Valley of the Kings at Luxor was one of the archaeological sensations of the 20th century. The treasures buried with him have drawn throngs to exhibitions, making him the most celebrated of pharaohs. His mummy was X-rayed twice, more than three decades ago, and the results heightened speculation about his untimely death: whether he died of natural causes or was murdered.
Now three independent teams of artists and scholars, one French, one American and one Egyptian, have used the CT images to reconstruct Tut's face, which Dr. Hawass said was the best preserved part of the mummy. The French and Egyptian teams were told the subject was Tutankhamen; the American team was working blind.
The teams essentially agreed on the proportions of the skull, the basic shape of the face and the size and setting of the eyes. They differed on the shape of the nose and ears, which have not held up well. The American and French versions showed a weak chin, while the Egyptians gave Tut a stronger one.
Dr. Hawass said the Egyptian team's version "looks the most Egyptian."
Before the artists began their work, Egyptian and international experts in anatomy, pathology and radiology, led by Dr. Madiha Khattab, dean of medicine at Cairo University, spent two months analyzing the CT images.
They concluded, for example, that Tut's elongated skull was a normal anthropological variation, not a result of disease or congenital abnormality. They noted his thin face and pronounced overbite - buck teeth. Egyptologists said overbites ran in his family, like the Hapsburg lip of more recent royal history.
Tut also had large lips, a receding chin and a small cleft in the roof of his mouth. The examiners said the cleft palette did not appear to have affected his external _expression_ in any way.
All in all, the science team said, Tut appeared to have been in good health until he died. Judging from the bones, he was well-fed and there were no signs of malnutrition or disease in childhood. His teeth, except for an impacted wisdom tooth, were in excellent condition. He was slightly built and probably stood 5½ feet tall.
So why did Tut die so young, around 1325 B.C.?
An X-ray in 1968 revealed a hole at the base of Tut's cranium. Some Egyptologists suspected he was murdered, possibly by his successor, Ay.
On a recent visit to the University of Pennsylvania, however, Dr. Hawass said the scientists who analyzed the CT images found no apparent evidence of foul play. They said the damage to the cranium was apparently caused when the mummy's discoverers pried the burial mask from the head.
"No one hit Tut on the back of the head," Dr. Hawass said, though he conceded that he could have been poisoned. But to establish that would require other lines of analysis. He also speculated that the broken leg that Tut is known to have suffered days before he died could have become infected and contributed to his death.
The application of CT imaging to mummy research is becoming widespread. Egypt is scanning all the royal mummies in the Cairo Museum. Last week Stanford performed CT scans on the mummy of an Egyptian child. Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif., recently conducted similar research on seven mummies on loan from the British Museum.
Not coincidentally, the re-examination of the Tut mummy and the release of the images of the reconstructed head coincided with promotions of a new

[Ugnet] Can a cookie make you quit your day job?

May 11, 2005
Who Needs Giacomo? Bet on the Fortune Cookie
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

Powerball lottery officials suspected fraud: how could 110 players in the March 30 drawing get five of the six numbers right? That made them all second-prize winners, and considering the number of tickets sold in the 29 states where the game is played, there should have been only four or five.
But from state after state they kept coming in, the one-in-three-million combination of 22, 28, 32, 33, 39.
It took some time before they had their answer: the players got their numbers inside fortune cookies, and all the cookies came from the same factory in Long Island City, Queens.
Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association, which runs Powerball, said on Monday that the panic began at 11:30 p.m. March 30 when he got a call from a worried staff member.
The second-place winners were due $100,000 to $500,000 each, depending on how much they had bet, so paying all 110 meant almost $19 million in unexpected payouts, Mr. Strutt said. (The lottery keeps a $25 million reserve for odd situations.)
Of course, it could have been worse. The 110 had picked the wrong sixth number - 40, not 42 - and would have been first-place winners if they did.
"We didn't sleep a lot that night," Mr. Strutt said. "Is there someone trying to cheat the system?"
He added: "We had to look at everything to do with humans: television shows, pattern plays, lottery columns."
Earlier that month, an ABC television show, "Lost," included a sequence of winning lottery numbers. The combination didn't match the Powerball numbers, though hundreds of people had played it: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. Numbers on a Powerball ticket in a recent episode of a soap opera, "The Young and the Restless," didn't match, either. Nor did the winning numbers form a pattern on the lottery grid, like a cross or a diagonal. Then the winners started arriving at lottery offices.
"Our first winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie," said Rebecca Paul, chief executive of the Tennessee Lottery. "The second winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie. The third winner came in and said it was a fortune cookie."
Investigators visited dozens of Chinese restaurants, takeouts and buffets. Then they called fortune cookie distributors and learned that many different brands of fortune cookies come from the same Long Island City factory, which is owned by Wonton Food and churns out four million a day.
"That's ours," said Derrick Wong, of Wonton Food, when shown a picture of a winner's cookie slip. "That's very nice, 110 people won the lottery from the numbers."
The same number combinations go out in thousands of cookies a day. The workers put numbers in a bowl and pick them. "We are not going to do the bowl anymore; we are going to have a computer," Mr. Wong said. "It's more efficient."

May 10, 2005

James Estrin/The New York TimesMany different brands of fortune cookies come from Wonton Food's Long Island City factory.

How?
www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2005/05/10/nyregion/20050511_COOK_SLIDESHOW_index.html

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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[Ugnet] Robot Sex

Researchers at Cornell University designed this modular cube (photo and illustration at top), the basic building block of a three-module robot that can self-reproduce. Each cube contains a microprocessor, a motor, and electromagnets. The magnets selectively weaken and strengthen connections between other cubes, thereby determining where the structure breaks and joins.The growing cube assemblies are supplied with extra cubes at two "feeding" locations. A three-module robot can replicate itself in just over a minute.Images courtesy Cornell University

New Robot Reproduces on Its Own
James Owenfor National Geographic News
May 11, 2005
Scientists have created a robot that can replicate itself in minutes. The team behind the machine says the experiment shows that self- reproduction is not unique to living organisms

The researchers add that the ability could be harnessed to drive major advances in nanotechnology, the science of the very small, and may even lead to space colonization by robots.

Developed by researchers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the machine was constructed from cube-shaped robotic units (modules) that functioned independently. A four-module robot could assemble an exact replica of itself in just two and a half minutes.

Writing for tomorrow's issue of the science journal Nature, the researchers say the plastic robotic cubes each contained a microprocessor, a motor, and electromagnets. The cubes were split diagonally into two halves, allowing the cubes to swivel to change position or move objects.

Each cube was preprogrammed with building instructions, says Hod Lipson, an assistant professor at Cornell's department of mechanical and aerospace engineering and department of computing and information science.
"The cubes are aware of contact and release events [with other cubes] and of the order in which they were assembled," he said.

Lipson says the robot can do little but self-reproduce. But he notes that it would be fairly easy to add modules with grippers, cameras, or other specialized equipment.

The researcher adds that, while the robot is a relatively simple device, it strengthens the case of scientists who believe self-reproduction isn't unique to living organisms and that in the future machines will be able to clone themselves.
If so, the implications for some fields, including nanotechnology and space exploration, could be huge.

"Consider a robotic mission to a remote planet," Lipson said. "If a traditional robot is sent and it breaks, the mission is over. But if modular robots are sent over with a supply of materials, and a fault happens, they may be able to self-repair."

Recycling Robots
The researcher suggests such robots could adapt to solve problems.
"If a new, unforeseen task emerges, a robot might construct a new, more suitable robot from scratch, and then the new robot will dismantle the old robot," he said. "These kinds of scenarios, where machines sustain themselves and adapt by consuming and recycling components, get a little closer to the way biology works."

The prevailing view holds that self-replication is an ability that organisms or objects either have in full or lack entirely. But Lipson's team theorizes that self-replication isn't a yes-or-no proposition, but exists at varying degrees.

The researchers present their new robot as an example of this theory.
The team says the extent to which something is self-replicating depends on many factors. For example, mineral crystals build exact replicas of themselves, but only in a solution. By contrast, rabbits reproduce themselves less accurately than crystals do but are less dependent on a specific environment.
Through understanding the principles of self-replication in nature, the team aims to make robots that are more robust and adaptive.

"We are interested in making a practical robot that can self-reproduce but also do something useful," Lipson said. "We are also interested in making these machines at microscale."

Nanotechnology involves the precise manipulation of atoms and molecules to create structures around the scale of one billionth of a meter. Proponents say this fast-expanding field, seen by some as the next industrial revolution, could potentially change the way almost everything is manufactured, from medicines to automobiles.

More advanced nanotechnology could see the creation of nanomachines. For instance, so-called nanobots could be programmed to attack and reconstruct the cells of cancer patients or perform surgeries a thousand times more precise than currently possible.

Low-Cost Production
A crucial objective of nanotechnology is to make products inexpensively, says Ralph Merckle, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Computing in Atlanta.

"While the ability to make a few very small, very precise molecular machines very expensively would clearly be a major scientific achievement, it would not fundamentally change how we make most

[Ugnet] Tycoon Glazer seizes control of ManU

ManU fans protest against team sale in February

Thursday May 12, 06:41 PM
Manchester United fans protests against the proposed sale of the club to U.S. tycoon Malcolm Glazer prior to their Champions League soccer match against AC Milan at Old Trafford in Manchester, February 23, 2005. REUTERS/Darren Staples

Thursday May 12, 06:41 PM

Tycoon Glazer seizes control of ManU

Click to enlarge photo
LONDON (Reuters) - Malcolm Glazer seized control of Manchester United, buying out its biggest investor and snapping up further shares to take his stake to 70 percent in a deal that values the soccer club at 790 million pounds.
Red Football Ltd, acting on behalf of the U.S. tycoon, agreed to buy the 28.7 percent stake in United from Cubic _expression_, the investment vehicle of Irish race horse magnates John Magnier and J.P. McManus, for 300 pence a share.
Glazer's advisers quickly moved to buy up the remaining shares on Thursday. Sources close to the deal said Glazer had raised his United stake to around 70 percent, while they were confident of reaching a key 75 percent level within days.
The deal with the Irish duo marks the end of a two-year battle for Glazer, who has twice had his plans to win control of the 15 times national soccer champions rebuffed, but it sparked any angry reaction from United fans who promised to fight on.
Glazer, who already held 28.1 percent, took his stake to 56.9 percent with the purchase from Magnier and McManus and, in line with UK rules, launched a cash bid for the rest. The deal leaves the Irishmen with a 70-million-pound profit from their stake.
United's third-biggest shareholder, Scottish mining millionaire Harry Dobson, later sold his 6.45 percent stake to the Glazer camp, according to sources close to the deal.
With a 50-percent plus majority, Glazer has effective control of the club, but with over 75 percent he can run the club unfettered and delist United's shares. At over 90 percent he can force out any remaining minority shareholders.
United said it was awaiting the terms of the offer before making any further announcement.
Shares in the 127-year-old northern English football club jumped 12.9 percent to close at 299-1/4p.
"Glazer is in the driving seat, although he's had to go a bit hostile without the board's approval," said Richard Bullas, a fund manager at Rensburg Investment Management. Rensburg holds some Manchester United shares in its small-cap fund.
ANGRY FANS
Fans' groups called a demonstration at United's Old Trafford ground, saying Glazer had no knowledge of the football side of the club and was only interested in its brand and revenue.
They fear his offer will saddle United with heavy debts, force up ticket prices and divert funds which could be used to buy players for the team, which will finish a disappointing third this season in the country's top soccer league.
"He's got himself an extremely tainted asset -- this is by no means over," said Oliver Houston at supporters' pressure group Shareholders United. "Even if Mr Glazer succeeds in getting all-out control, the campaign by fans to show that no customers equals no profit will continue."
Last month, United said the Glazer approach was fair and reasonable but it did not believe the offer was in the best interests of the club because of the high level of debt in the bid and therefore could not recommend it to shareholders.
Glazer, the owner of American football team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and his sons Avi and Joel plan to heap up to 300 million pounds of debt on to the club's balance sheet, and raise the remainder of the cash themselves.
United, home to star players Wayne Rooney and Ruud van Nistelrooy, is debt free and has argued that it needs this flexibility because failure to qualify for the European Champions League would wipe out its annual pretax profits.
Glazer's son Joel is expected to take charge of the day-to-day running of the club. Chief Executive David Gill and other executives are expected to stay on with the club, while the non-executive directors and Chairman Roy Gardner will resign.
"He'll probably come over here, or at least do it between the U.S. and Manchester," one source close to the deal said, adding that Joel had already spoken to Gill on the telephone to inform him of the change of control.
Another source said the deal was struck over the telephone with the Irish investors late on Wednesday night with a deadline to transfer the money to their investment vehicle Cubic _expression_ by 1300 GMT on Thursday.
"They saw it as an investment. They got a very good deal," a spokesman for the publicity-shy Irish investors said.

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RE: [Ugnet] $0.14 to Call Uganda

how about www.lingo.com? Mitayo Potosi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:






Vonage has a $25/month unlimited calls to US  Canada (http://www.vonage.com/products_premium.php), $0.14 to Uganda (mobile or landline), but $0.28 to UK (http://www.vonage.com/intrates.php#U).

Where is the catch?

Dear all,

I dont think there is any catch. Vonage is at the forefront of VoIP. It is only because telephone companies, which have recouped their investiment a zillion times over, cheat us with these high telephone rates. There is no reason why Telephoning is not as cheap as e-mail.

Uganda should have never allowed the local phone companies to charge wananchi an arm and a leg. And we warned Hon Nkuuhe - head of NRM Science policies. Regardless, Vonageand somefive or so other companies are trailblazing the future.

The British, under cover of South African telephony may be bleeding us now but the writing is on the wall - they will not fleece us for ever.

In Canada the big Telephone companies are fighting back. They want govt to regislate them special favours and protection. They are lobying to getwhole telephone-law enforcment public services disbanded and the relevant public servants who enforce these laws put out of business.

Wherever you reside get more informed on this ripoff and fight back, through your political representatives. But in the end technology and the people will win.

Humanity is entitled to telephony which is as cheap as e-mail.
=From: musamize [EMAIL PROTECTED]Reply-To: ugandanet@kym.netTo: ugandanet@kym.netSubject: [Ugnet] $0.14 to Call UgandaDate: Wed, 11 May 2005 11:43:38 -0700 (PDT)Vonage has a $25/month unlimited calls to US  Canada (http://www.vonage.com/products_premium.php), $0.14 to Uganda (mobile or landline), but $0.28 to UK (http://www.vonage.com/intrates.php#U).Where is the catch?MusamizeUsual disclaimers, and, I've never used Vonage.
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Re: [Ugnet] Noc 's Mambo Jambo!

I am curious, what is "Mato Ofut" or what does it mean -- literary? Matek Opoko [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Okutu. Noc Rac :

You are a engaged innothing other then Political demagogary. To be honest with you, I personally find no sense in your utterences.

That fact is: Themany problems our countryhas been going through for the last 20 years, ( and sill continues to go through) can and must be atrributed to Yoweri Musebeni and his NRM Mis-Rule. That stated, any solutions to our problem as a nation must involved isolating anddealing with the cause of such problem by any means necessay. This Mato Ofut (thing), oohhh Kacoke Matidi is, like I stated, an exercise in futility.

The rest of yours below is nothing other then Mambo Jumbo!!!

Matek

Okuto del Coli [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:









We are in tune, arent we? 

That is why some of us who do not give in to reality mystification have always pledged our fellow Ugandan to invest in enshrining the LAW instead of the fucking mato-ofut.

By the way, is not the UPC a parliamentary party? In which case it has a responsibility / an obligation in the legislation. 

Are we together? 

To blame or transfer every responsibility on /to Musseveni is vindictive of inability. 

Agree?

Example we have a constitution and we have Laws and lawmakers. The same legislators cannot turn around and blame some one for taking advantage of loopholes in the Law or Constitution the have legislated and endorsed.

If the builders build hoses that leak, who is to blame?

By the way, each time you see my postings, you bring MUSEVENI in it, why? Do you see some signature that I do not see at time of posting? Does he thief-sign my postings? I do not see it. 

President Musseveni never initiated any Mato- Ofut legacy. Our local leaders and certain parliamentarians did. They are the ones who are baby-sitting and they are the ones who are baking problems for future generations who might have the curse to re-experience the similar perseverance. On the contrary, they should have be firm in establishing resolute formulae so that our every one knows what is what and what to expectant should they attempt to take Ugandan for a ride.

One more thing, it seems to me like your notion of democracy is rusty. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ABSOLUTE DEMOCRACY. The generation Ugandan who will enjoy the kind of democracy / freedom or liberty we are talking about are not yet born!!

Democracy is a fresh-commodity. It must, and indeed it is, constantly nourished, reformed, and amended. Are we in tune here?

If that is the case, I find it hard to understand you variety of M7aphobia. It appears more or less like it is stagnating your efforts (self-destructive). You as a Party prominence should actively participate in the exercise so that Musseveni, the Movement, the DP etceteras do not do it alone or do it their own ways.

Fallalla like us have the prerogative to blow our shit any way we want. Not you!!
What do you think?
RgdsNocl



--- On Wed 05/11, Matek Opoko  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  wrote:
From: Matek Opoko [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], ugandanet@kym.net, [EMAIL PROTECTED]Date: Wed, 11 May 2005 19:10:30 -0700 (PDT)Subject: RE: [Ugnet] Okutu Del Coli:You will drink your Ofut forever.. as long as Mucenbeni , the war monger continues to rule Uganda, there will laway be death destruction and suffering..may be those who are killing Ugandas ( as in UPDF) do not really care about your OFUT thing!!MatekOkuto del Coli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:









The guards Labyrinths have fed them a few liters too much of Ofut. They have "mato-Ofut" and "mato-Ofut" and "mato-Ofut" for decades. And they have been forgiven, and forgiven and forgiven. The guards of the Labyrinths even went all the way to Annans Banquet to top Ofut and forgiveness with AMNESTY.
Hell knows, the way it can only go!!
noc'l




--- On Mon 05/09, Matek Opoko  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  wrote:
From: Matek Opoko [mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], ugandanet@kym.netDate: Mon, 9 May 2005 16:43:59 -0700 (PDT)Subject: [Ugnet] "LRA" Slay 20 People
LRA Slay 20 People












 

Email This Page Print This Page Visit The Publisher's Site 







New Vision (Kampala)
May 9, 2005 Posted to the web May 9, 2005 
Justin Moro, Chris Ochowun and Dennis OjweeKampala 
AT least 10 more bodies of civilians battered by the LRA rebels were recovered in bushes away from Koch Goma IDP camp in Gulu district putting the death toll of the Thursday massacre to 20.
The camp commandant, John Odong, told a security meeting that 10 other bodies were retrieved on Friday evening.



 
Koch-Goma IDP camp is 24km southwest of Gulu town in Nwoya county.
President Yoweri Museveni on Friday sent government condolences to families of the deceased.
Gulu resident district commissioner Max Omeda delivered the President's and government message to displaced people at Koch-Goma camp on Friday.
Five people were not yet accounted for by Friday evening.
The UPDF 4th

[Ugnet] Bunyoro Kingdom to give certificates to virgin

from UNAANET

Rev. K.

This would be a good idea -- may be absent of Ssenga's "supervision", unless they intend to marry off v. young girls and boys,and if some effort was made to encourage male virginity.

Actually, the Omukama is right to be concerned about the effects of AIDS. After all, it is due to infertility -- caused by the ravages of sexually transmitted diseases that the population of Bunyoro declined from the mid 1800s to the mid 1900s and eventually led to the decline of the Kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara (rather than battles with the Kingdom of Buganda, as is traditionally assumed).

Of course, like other communities, Buganda too was affected by venereal disease induced infertility to the point that it was feared that we (Baganda), and others, would become extinct if the trend went unchecked. Like I have stated before on this forum, Mulago Hospital was founded expressly to combat venereal diseases.

This idea is set forth in a dissertation by Shane Doyle of the British Institute in Eastern Africa. If you have no time or inclination to wade through a dissertation, she has boiled down the central ideas into a paper that appeared in 2000:
POPULATION DECLINE AND DELAYED RECOVERY IN BUNYORO, 18601960, The Journal of African History, 41:429-458.

To pique your interest, here is the abstract:

Rapid population growth is commonly depicted as one of the greatest problems facing modern Africa. For decades, the tendency of birth rates to exceed mortality rates has prompted predictions of land shortage, resource depletion and mass starvation.

Underlying causes of high fertility are hypothesized to have been an unusually high demand for human agricultural labour, traditional religious pronatalism and a horror of barrenness, while in some areas the later colonial period saw a shortening of the durations of post-partum sexual abstinence and lactation.

Mortality decline from the 1920s is commonly linked to the establishment of cash crop economies, networks of roads and railways, and the diffusion of western medicine, maternity facilities, missionary activity and primary education.

Yet the empirical evidence supporting this model of population growth is contradictory. Areas such as Buhaya, Buganda and Bunyoro should have experienced rapid demographic expansion by natural increase in the colonial period according to dominant theories but instead experts in the early decades of this century feared the extinction of the Haya, Ganda and Nyoro.

This paper will attempt to explain why population decline among the Nyoro was more severe than anywhere else in colonial Uganda, and probably East Africa.

Ssemakula
Joseph Kamugisha [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Omw. Mujungu:

While i applaud the efforts taken by the Kingdom of Bunyoro in combating HIV/AIDS in the region, i think some issues are better off when left alone.

My view on the issues of"supervising" the virgin during her first sexual encounter, will end up promotingadultery, fornication and more aids in the regionhence jeopardising thegood intentions of fighting the disease.

I'm told that in the olden days in Buganda, whenever the bride (virgin) failed to fulfill her expectations, the aunt (Ssenga) would take over and show the young lady what to do and how to do it.

To me, the business of having such "supervisions" will be nodifferent fromhusband/wife inheritance (okuhungura, in Rukiga)which is known to be one of the channels of spreading AIDS/HIV.

Let the Kingdom leave that exercise to the potential husband and wife to do the reporting if the exercise is to be of any benefit.

Kamugisha

Abu Senkayi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Wow! What a process!! And you get a certificate forthis?"The process shall involve the aunt witnessing themaiden sexual act between the bride and the groomwhich will be on a white bed sheet. If blood is foundon the bed sheet, then the kingdom shall be notifiedthrough its sub-county chief to award a certificate tothe bride, Nsamba explained."--- Johnson Mujungu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote: Bunyoro Kingdom to give certificates to virgin brides By Francis Mugerwa HOIMA - The Omukama's Private Secretary, Mr Yoram Nsamba, has said the Bunyoro- Kitara Kingdom has launched a comprehensive campaign against HIV/Aids. He said this was to curb the increasing HIV/Aids infection rate in the kingdom. Nsamba was on Saturday addressing
journalists at the kingdom's headquarters at Karuziika Palace. "Omukama Solomon Gafabusa Iguru I has noted that in Hoima alone there are 1,000 registered HIV/Aids patients and the there are high chances that several other infected persons are not registered," Nsamba said. He said there were reports that the situation in Kibaale and Masindi districts could be worse. He said the king's visit to Kibaale district last month was to establish task forces in the district to fight the disease. "This campaign intends to reform cultural practices like wife/husband inheritance, polygamy and early

[Ugnet] Net-Based Phone Services Can Save Subscribers Money

Net-Based Phone Services Can Save Subscribers Money, but They Have FlawsNet-Based Phone Services Can Save Subscribers Money, but They Have Flaws
By Yuki NoguchiWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, May 13, 2005; H06

Warren C. Duthie, who over the years dabbled in selling long-distance phone service, thinks he has finally found the best deal in his Internet-based phone.
Duthie, a retired Coast Guard officer who lives in Woodbridge, hooked an Internet phone up to his cable-modem line in September, and now pays a fraction of what he used to for local and long-distance calls. "I'm kind of a fanatic," said Duthie, who got his daughter, son and neighbor to sign up with Lingo, a service sold by Primus Telecommunications Inc. in McLean. For $20 a month, they get unlimited domestic calling, he said, which used to run him $60 a month with Verizon Communications Inc. Another advantage: "There are not a whole bunch of added-on taxes and other stuff," he said.
Duthie is part of a small but growing number of callers who are using the Internet to get around the traditional phone system. Cable companies, Primus and start-ups such as Vonage Holdings Inc. are championing the service as a cheaper alternative for calling.
The phone isn't without its flaws, Duthie says. Initially, there were some glitches in the system, and occasional power outages and cable network outages shut down his Internet phone.
When his Internet phone couldn't connect to a toll-free 800 number, he had to contact Lingo to correct the problem. And he said he had to make sure his home alarm system could still alert him if he converted his traditional phone line to the new Internet-based system. He also called to make sure that 911 emergency calls made from his new Internet phone would be routed through to his local public safety calling center, and it would know where he was calling from.
"If you recognize that it's a new technology and you recognize that there will be new problems, then it's okay," Duthie said of his phone.
Frequent calls to his wife's native Brazil used to cost 45 cents a minute, which during an average month amounted to an $80 bill. Now, for $10 a month, Lingo allowed Duthie to sign up for a Brazilian phone number, which means relatives there can dial a local phone number and call him over the Internet at no additional charge. "Now we get no less than two to three calls a day," he said.
SIEDEBAR: Internet Calling Choices

· Internet phone service allows people to make telephone calls over a high-speed Internet connection instead of a regular phone line. Such services come in many different flavors.

· Some, such as Skype ( http://www.skype.com ), or the talk option in AOL's instant message program ( http://www.aim.com ), amount to free software that allows you to use your computer's speakers and microphone to talk to someone else on his or her computer. Skype also offers an option to complete calls to and from traditional telephone numbers for a small charge.

· Other companies offer services that work more like traditional phone service, allowing users to plug in their regular handsets to special adapters connected to the Internet. Examples include Vonage ( http://www.vonage.com ), ATamp;T's CallVantage service ( http://www.usa.att.com/callvantage ), 8x8 Inc.'s Packet8 service ( http://www.packet8.net ) and Primus Telecommunications Inc.'s Lingo offering ( http://www.lingo.com ).
©2005The Washington Post Company
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[Ugnet] NYT: Out of Africa ...

May 13, 2005
DNA Study Yields Clues on First Migration of Early Humans
By NICHOLAS WADE

Andy Wong/Associated Press
The Orang Asli people, north of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were studied by geneticists who traced their mitochondrial DNA from Africa.

By studying the DNA of an ancient people in Malaysia, a team of geneticists says it has illuminated many aspects of how modern humans migrated from Africa.
The geneticists say there was only one migration of modern humans out of Africa; that it took a southern route to India, Southeast Asia and Australia; and that it consisted of a single band of hunter-gatherers, probably just a few hundred people strong.
Because these events occurred in the last Ice Age, when Europe was at first too cold for human habitation, the researchers say, it was populated only later, not directly from Africa but as an offshoot of the southern migration. The people of this offshoot would presumably have trekked back through the lands that are now India and Iran to reach the Near East and Europe.
The findings depend on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, a type of genetic material inherited solely through the female line. They are reported today in Science by a team of geneticists led by Dr. Vincent Macaulay of the University of Glasgow.
Everyone in the world can be placed on a single family tree, in terms of their mitochondrial DNA, because everyone has inherited that piece of DNA from a single woman, the mitochondrial Eve, who lived some 200,000 years ago.
There were, of course, many other women in that ancient population. But over the generations, one mitochondrial DNA replaced all the others through the process known as genetic drift.
With the help of mutations that have built up on the one surviving copy, geneticists can arrange people in lineages and estimate the time of origin of each lineage.
With this approach, Dr. Macaulay's team calculates that the emigration from Africa occurred 65,000 years ago, pushed along the coasts of India and Southeast Asia and reached Australia by 50,000 years ago, the date of the earliest known archaeological site there.
The Malaysian people whom the geneticists studied are the Orang Asli. The term means "original men" in Malay.
They are probably descended from this first migration, because they have several ancient mitochondrial DNA lineages that are found nowhere else.
These lineages are 42,000 to 63,000 years old, the geneticists say. Subgroups of the Orang Asli, like the Semang, have probably been able to remain intact because they adapted to the harsh existence of living in forests, said Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer, the member of the geneticists' team who collected blood samples in Malaysia.
Some archaeologists theorize that Europe was colonized by a second migration that traveled north out of Africa. This fits with the earliest known modern human sites, dating from 45,000 years ago in the Levant and 40,000 years ago in Europe.
Dr. Macaulay's team says there could have been just one migration, not two, because the mitochondrial lineages of everyone outside Africa converge at the same time to the same common ancestors. Therefore, people from the southern migration, probably in India, must have struck inland to reach the Levant and, later, Europe, the geneticists say.
Dr. Macaulay said it was not clear why just one group succeeded in leaving Africa. One possibility is that because the migration occurred by continuous population expansion, leaving people in place at each site, the first emigrants may have blocked others from leaving. Another is that the terrain was so difficult for hunter-gatherers, who carry all their belongings with them, that only one group succeeded in the exodus.
Although there is general but not complete agreement that modern humans emigrated from Africa in recent times, there is still a difference between geneticists and archaeologists about its a timing. Archaeologists tend to view the genetic data as providing invaluable information about the interrelationship between groups, but they place less confidence in the dates derived from genetic family trees.
There is no evidence of modern humans outside Africa earlier than 50,000 years ago, said Dr. Richard Klein, an archaeologist at Stanford. Also, if something happened 65,000 years ago to allow people to leave Africa, as Dr. Macaulay's team suggests, there should surely be some record of that in the archaeological record in Africa, Dr. Klein said. Yet signs of modern human behavior do not appear in Africa until 50,000 years ago, the transition between the Middle and Later Stone Ages, he said.
"If they want to push such an idea, find me a 65,000-year-old site with evidence of human occupation outside of Africa," Dr. Klein said.
Geneticists counter that many of the coastline sites occupied by the first emigrants would now lie under water, because the sea level has risen more than 200 feet since the last Ice Age. Dr. Klein expressed reservations about that

[Ugnet] What's Up, Pussycat? Whoa!

May 12, 2005
What's Up, Pussycat? Whoa!
By SUSAN SAULNY

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
ON THE PROWL: Savannahs, like this one in Greenwich Village, are illegal in New York.

Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
CONTRABAND CAT: Darjeeling out for a stroll in Greenwich Village.

DARJEERLING and Bunnicula are two kittens who prefer shrimp cocktails and steak frites to pet food. They sleep on Burberry beds in their Greenwich Village apartment and wore matching crystal-studded collars until a few weeks ago, when they chewed off all the stones.
They live a life of luxury, to be sure, but it is life on the lam.
They are outlawed in New York City, members of a new designer breed growing in popularity called the Savannah, an offspring of a wildcat - the African serval - and the domestic house cat.
"If I have to move to New Jersey to keep these cats, I will," said their owner, a 29-year-old hedge fund analyst who equates life in downtown Manhattan with life itself. "That's how much I love them," she said, speaking only on the condition of anonymity.
The cats - which can cost from $4,000 to $10,000 - are visually striking with their long necks and oversized ears, and they can be intimidating. They look like little leopards and grow to more than twice the size of normal cats. They love to leap and splash in water, and they don't mind taking long walks on a leash. Some people describe them as dogs in cats' bodies.
"More than ever, everyone's been calling me about the Savannah, and I'm like, 'What's going on?' " said Bash Dibra, an animal trainer in New York whose sessions, at $300 to $500 an hour, are often the last resort for people who cannot control their Savannahs.
Taking care of them on the sly - as New Yorkers must - can be tricky. Across the country, however, the Savannah is not always illegal: a hodgepodge of city and county regulations and state laws govern pets that are part wild.
In New York authorities do not scour the streets for such pets. Owners are often in hiding from their neighbors who might report them. For instance Darjeerling and Bunnicula rarely appear outdoors in the light of day. In an apartment on the Upper East Side, another Savannah named Tiger is tended by the household help in the middle of the night. And Kara LoDolce, who recently moved to a new town on Long Island with her Savannah, Mazi, will not even tell her friends where she lives.
"It's hard to have, hard to keep," said Mr. Dibra, who calls that part of the Savannah's appeal. It makes it "more mystical to own," he said.
New York City banned ownership of any wild or part-wild animals long ago. The state followed suit in 2004. Bethany Schumann, an aide to Assemblyman Paul D. Tonko, a Democrat from Amsterdam, who sponsored the state law, said her office had heard from hundreds of angry cat owners for and against the Savannah in the last couple of years.
"For whatever reason, these cats are cats many people would like to have," she said. "There is some sort of wow factor to the 35-pound cat in your Manhattan apartment."
But they come with too many unknowns, she added. "We have no idea what this cat's habitat should be," Ms. Shumann said.
The cats are growing in popularity elsewhere in the country too. It is hard to estimate exactly how many Savannahs are kept as pets. Their numbers are surely small compared with the average cat. But animal trainers, veterinarians and pet-business owners say they are seeing the Savannah more frequently, while they were rare five years ago.
In Chicago, Cynthia A. King, a Savannah owner and breeder, said: "I had to wait two years to get my kittens, and I had cash I was waving in the air. For a first-generation pet, we're talking a $5,000 minimum expenditure. That's how popular they are."
Julian Robertson, a breeder in Reidsville, N.C., said: "We've shipped them to Alaska, we've shipped them to Austria. You name it, and we've shipped them. We can't keep enough of them."
But owners are increasingly worried about restrictions. Chicago recently considered a wide-ranging ban on exotic pets. So far the proposed law has languished in a City Council committee for more than a year, and its future is unclear. Massachusetts and Georgia, like New York, have strict bans against pets like the Savannah, while other states like Illinois and Arizona have restrictions but do not completely prohibit the animal. Some states require owners to obtain permits for part-wild pets. Others require nothing.
"We are one of the stricter states because we are one of the most densely populated states," said Dr. Thomas French, the assistant director of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. "Any time you get a lot of people in close proximity to untrustworthy animals, it causes conflict. Sometimes the conflict is no more than a neighbor being frightened, but that is still conflict."
"We don't cater to people's fears," he said, "but we do try to regulate what we think is a public health threat."
The United

[Ugnet] Turn up the sound for this video clip


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Re: [Ugnet] There are other sufferers in the North

Mr. Kipenji:

I always think and identify as a Muganda before anything else -religion, politics, gender, education, inclusive. So, I do not find it strange, neither do I take offence, nor do do I feel slighted if anyone else does so.

IMHO, to do otherwisewould be putting the cart before the horse.

The hogwash that "Let us talk about the 1966 problem with Mengo. Sir Edward Muteesa left Uganda for United Kingdom. Obote as the Uganda president instructed Bank of Uganda to send money to Sir Edward for upkeep. That is why Sir Edward did not end up on a welfare line in United Kingdom." is just that: unadultered Grade Z hogwash and sophistry generated by asingularly contorted mind.

We all know that Obote was did not endup in a welfare line while in Tanzania. So, should we conclude that this was due to General Idi Amin's "generosity" in "instructing" the Bank of Uganda to send money to Obote for upkeep? From which account, and who was paying?

Likewise, we all know that Obote did not endup on welfare in Zambia after being kicked out of power by the Okellos. We also know that Obote has never worked a day in his life in Zampia (and, for that matter, in Tanzania). Why then don't we sing the praises of Okello, and Museveni for similarly instructing the Bank of Uganda to send money for Obote's upkeep courtsey of the pizanti, aka "common man"?

What is good for the goose ...

MusamizeOwor Kipenji [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

There are other sufferers in the north

With due respect I found Yoni Okwera-Olok's letter: "Let the Government prove it does not hate the Acholis" very bothering and a true example of the problem we have in our nation today.

Mr Okwera must remember to always be a Ugandan before he thinks as an Acholi. Many of his facts are not true and we need to throw away passion on this issue so that we can see through the web of Okwera's lies. Only then can we try to plant nationalism in our nation.

Okwera must remember that Uganda has gone through very hard times during the Movement. Ombaci happened in West Nile, Mukura was in eastern Uganda, Kibwetere was in western Uganda. Yes, northern Uganda has had the largest suffering under the Movement. But northern Uganda is not only a land of Acholis, so let us not play a tribal game here. The last time I checked, Uganda had a people called Langis. Can Okwera tell us today that Langis are not in camps? It is quite wrong for us to get a problem in our nation and we tribalise it.

The example Okwera-Olok uses of Obote and Buganda is equally false, for Buganda has never enjoyed power in Uganda than under both Obote's governments. Yes, Okwera has a right to hate Obote, but he must as well recognise that the most powerful ministers in Obote's government were actually Baganda. Okwera-Olok must remember the names of powerful Baganda like Eriya Babumba, Apolo Kironde, Luyimbazi Zaake, Kalule Ssetaala, Keefa Ssempangi, Sam Mugwiisa, Bidandi Ssali. Let us talk about Attorney Generals like G. L. Binayiisa or even Nkambo Mugerwa. Governors Bank of Uganda like Mubiru, Kikonyogo, Leo Kibirango. All these were very powerful Baganda during Obote's government.

Let us talk about the 1966 problem with Mengo. Sir Edward Muteesa left Uganda for United Kingdom. Obote as the Uganda president instructed Bank of Uganda to send money to Sir Edward for upkeep. That is why Sir Edward did not end up on a welfare line in United Kingdom. Baganda did not organise any means for maintenance of their exiled King. What is interesting is that this money continued flowing into the same account through Amin's era, up to today, because the instructions are still on Uganda papers. When Obote came back to Uganda, as a President and a minister of finance, he did not cancel those instructions.

We must be very careful when we make false public statements to push our agenda. Okwera-Olok's claim that Obote hates Baganda is totally unfair. If he did hate them, Miria Obote should have been a Langi or an Acholi. This is the mother of Obote's children.

By all means we have a problem in northern Uganda and no one will debate that. But this problem is the same with Langis as well.

Edward MulindwaToronto[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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[Ugnet] Finger this ...

story at:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/wendy_s_finger


 

Fri May 13, 3:35 PM ET 
These photos released by the Las Vegas Metro Police Department show Jamie Plascencia, left, and his wife Anna Ayala, right. On Friday, May 13, 2005, San Jose police announced that the finger that Ayala claimed she found in a bowl of Wendy's chili came from an acquaintance of her husband who lost it in an industrial accident in December. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Police Department, File)





Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. 
Slideshow (finger in one of slides)
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050513/480/fx10205131935g=events/lf/032405finger
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[Ugnet] Jumbo baby, Mkombozi rescues Angel, Breastfeeding a tiger, injections

Mon May 9, 4:36 AM ET
Eleven-month-old Lokman Hakim Mondol, who weighs 22 kilograms (48 pounds) is brought at a hospital by his grandfather Tabarak Mullick, in Calcutta, India, Monday May 9, 2005. His mother, Jnanera Bibi, tries to cool him with a hand fan. Lokman consumes 5 liters of milk and 1 kilogram of rice-flour every day and is suspected to be suffering from a rare hormonal disorder. (AP Photo/Sudipto Das)

---

Thu May 12,10:10 AM ET
Mkombozi outside her home in the outskirts of Nairobi. Kenyan police said they had arrested the mother of an infant reportedly rescued by the foraging dog in a forest south of the capital Nairobi.(AFP/File/Simon Maina)
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Thu May 12,10:10 AM ET
Angel is attended to by a nurse at the Kenyatta hospital in Nairobi. Kenyan police said they had arrested the Angel's mother after the infant was reportedly rescued by a foraging dog in a forest south of the capital Nairobi amid amounting scepticism over the truth of the heartwarming tale.(AFP/File/Tony Karumba)
-

Thu May 12, 9:47 AM ET
Hla Htay breastfeeds a tiger cub in Yangon. Two endangered Bengal tiger cubs breastfed for weeks by a Myanmar woman have died of dehydration.(AFP/File/Law Eh Soe)

Dog Nurses Tiger Cubs in China

Photograph from China Newsphoto/Reuters/CorbisMore Photos in the News
May 9, 2005Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks? The mother of these tiger cubs couldn't produce enough milk, so zookeepers in Hefei, China, enlisted this dog. She began work when the cubs were one day old, on May 2, when this picture was taken. This isn't the first time a dog has played wet nurse to tigers at the Hefei zoo, which organized a similar arrangement with another dog last year.
It may not even be the oddest recent example of cross-species suckling. As of February, India's Namatia Ghosh, 46, was still breastfeeding the pet monkey her husband found orphaned several years ago. "He is my son," she told BBC News. Not to be outdone, Hlah Htay, 40, helped a Burmese zoo feed two tiger cubs in April, according to the AFP news service. The cubs had been separated from their aggressive mother.
Tigers are born toothless. In the wild they nurse for about six months but begin eating meat after six to eight weeks, when the mother begins sharing her kills.
Ted Chamberlain http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/05/0509_050905_dogtigers.html

Size-obsessed Thai men warned on penis injections
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[Ugnet] KABAKA COMES BACK FROM EXILE. (Photos in Life Mag)

KABAKA COMES BACK FROM EXILE.
Oct. 31, 1955
When the signal came from the airport, the royal drums thundered into life for the first time in two years. To Buganda's 1,300,000 people, the noise announced the return of their beloved Kabaka (King). Thousands of gallons of banana beer had been brewed, garlands fashioned, 16 arches constructed over the processional route with banners proclaiming: "He has triumphed." Stiffly upright in his immaculate grey suit, 31-year-old Edward William Frederick David Walugembe Luwangula MutebiKabaka Mutesi IIbowed stiffly to the right and left from his Rolls-Royce convertible as it rolled triumphantly toward his palace in Kampala past throngs of his screaming, weeping, dancing subjects.
They beat their cheeks in the Baganda brand of war whoop, thumped tom-toms, flung themselves prostrate as the Kabaka passed. And for four days and nights, an orgy of welcome roared on.
No Time for Change. For young King "Freddie," as his London friends call him, it was a proud moment and sweet revenge for the humiliation back in 1953, when he watched Uganda's British Governor Sir Andrew Cohen touch a button in his office to summon a policeman. Then, King Freddie was unceremoniously hustled aboard a plane for exile in London without so much as a chance to change his clothes or say goodbye to his wife. King Freddie's sin was that he had dared defy the governor's plans for Uganda, of which Buganda is officially a province.
The British were talking of melding Uganda into white-dominated Kenya and Tanganyika to form an East African Federation. The Kabaka, ruler of a proud old kingdom where white men cannot even buy land without great legal difficulties, wanted no part of a multiracial federation. He demanded separation from Uganda and that the British set a date for self-government. Furthermore, the Kabaka balked at Governor Cohen's proposal to allocate to Africans only 20 of the 56 seats in the protectorate's new Legislative Councilless voice for 5,300,000 Africans than for 57,000 whites and Asians. The British colonials were aghast; this troublesome young man had to go, and the Lukiko (Parliament) could elect somebody more malleable to replace him. The decision, said Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton, was "final."
Hollow Triumph. To the British it had seemed simple and tidy. Lyttelton silenced Laborite criticism and moved himself nearly to tears with an emotional speech about his own affection for the Kabaka. "It was the more painful to me because he was a member of my university, and of my regiment [the Grenadier Guards], and a friend of my son's at Cambridge!" The press applauded, the critics subsided chapfallen.
Scarcely anybody noticed that parliamentary triumphs in London had no effect whatever in Buganda. There the Lukiko refused flatly to elect anyone to replace the Kabaka. Cohen was hissed and booed in Kampala. Thousands of the Kabaka's subjects swore never to shave until he returned. Even when the British offered concessions, the Lukiko refused to accept them in the Kabaka's absence. King Freddie, ensconced in a West End apartment at Britain's expense, behaved as a young ex-guardsman should.
Price of Mistake. Finally, Her Majesty's government was forced to recognize that they had made a mistake. Under new Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd, agreements were worked out which changed the Kabaka from an absolute to a constitutional (and therefore more manageable) monarch, and King Freddie agreed to swear renewed loyalty and obedience to the Queen. But Freddie got more than he gave. The British reshaped the protectorate's Legislative Council to include, for the first time, more Africans than whites. They promised not to press the East African Federation. They gave Buganda control over its own natural resources, schools and local government. Africans were allotted three jobs in the protectorate "Cabinet," the first time that African hands have been allowed to touch executive power.
With typical Whitehall urbanity, the Colonial Office represented the Kabaka's exile and return as designed from the first for the Baganda's own good, which had been practically forced on them to save the Baganda from the stubbornness of an absolute monarch. They should have told that to the Baganda. At the ceremonial signing of the new agreements last week, 10,000 roared noisy applause as King Freddie spoke. Then Governor Cohen rose. "Who does not believe that this friendship [of Britain and Buganda] has emerged not diminished but strengthened?" he asked rhetorically.
The assembled tribal chiefs burst into raucous, mocking laughter.

Ps:
Ayagala okulaba ku bifaananyi ebiraga oBuganda bwe bwajaganya nga Ssekabaka Muteesa II akomawo okuva mu buwanganguse e Bungereza mu 1955 atunuleko wano:
Life Magazine 14 November 1955 (Eisenhower Convalescing).

The Troubles of the King of Buganda.
Nov. 30, 1959
In the East African kingdom of Buganda, a province of the British protectorate of Uganda, the night

Re: [Ugnet] There are other sufferers in the North

Mr. Kipenji:

The only pruritus I am getting is from the disingenuity of your argument.

Pray tell, if you personally do not "feel it not wise to engage in any discussions on the contents of this letter", did you post it on this forum just to clutter cyberspace with garbage?

If you put your flame-thrower down for minute or two, and want to comment intelligently on what I wrote, please direct your effort at the main thrust of my argument, with regard to Obotes capacity and ability to even lifting a finger to offer financial support to Ssekabaka Muteesa II during (final) exile vs. Amin/Okello/Museveni offering Obote support Obote during the latters spells of exiles.

Have a nice weekend sir.

Musamize

"Cowardice asks the question: is it safe?;
Expediency asks the question: is it politic?
Vanity asks the question: is it popular?
But conscience asks the question: is it right?
And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, or popular -- but one must take it because it is right."
Martin Luther King

Owor Kipenji [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Musamize:
For starters,I do not see why you shoot release you bazooka
for no reason.
The document I forwarded has nothing to do with me but I saw it in
Monitor. The bibliography is well documented at the end of it. So
your outpouring of your ethnocentricity is really unwarranted.
I personally feel it not wise to engage in any discussions on the contents
of this letter and incase you are still getting pruritus from it,address your concerns
with the originator.
Thank you
Kipenjimusamize [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Mr. Kipenji:

IMHO, to do otherwisewould be putting the cart before the horse.

What is good for the goose ...

MusamizeOwor Kipenji [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

There are other sufferers in the north

With due respect I found Yoni Okwera-Olok's letter: "Let the Government prove it does not hate the Acholis" very bothering and a true example of the problem we have in our nation today.

Let us talk about the 1966 problem with Mengo. Sir Edward Muteesa left Uganda for United Kingdom. Obote as the Uganda president instructed Bank of Uganda to send

[Ugnet] Opinion: Obote was no democrat, Janet Museveni dishonest, etc

Obote was no democrat
In your issue of April 28-May 4, you published a letter, Obote not Nagendas equal by Peter Kawada of Makerere University. The writer asserted that John Nagenda (a presidential advisor) could not be Apollo Milton Obotes equal because the latter was MP, party president, prime minister, president and commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
However, Obote was never a legitimate president of Uganda. In 1967, he declared himself president through a derailed parliament. It was an internal coup. In 1980 he was declared president on the basis of torture. Ask Vincent Ssekono the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Local Government [who was chairperson of the electoral commission]! He (Obote) brutally did this using his peg boy the late Paulo Muwanga. So, Kawada, you are wrong!
Patrick Kiggundu,Masaka.
Weekly Observer, 12th May 2005

First Lady not being honest
Mrs Janet Museveni has hit back at ex US envoy, Mr Johnnie Carson, in an article in the local press, making a circular argument in support of a third term for her husband.
During the 2001 campaigns Janet begged Ugandans to vote for her husband for the last time. She evidently has a lot of difficulty directly asking Ugandans to return her family to State House one more time, hence the veiled appeals.
The part that is most unacceptable is where she says: "And all we ask is, let Ugandans discuss their destiny without those who chose to be silent when we lived in shame and now that we are marching forward as a nation, they want to decide that we should not be doing that." Janet then concludes by asking: "Are these friends or enemies?"
I would expect the shame in which Ugandans live today to be felt most at State House, unless those in power have lost their sense of shame. Abject poverty, endless wars, encampment, shameless desire for life presidency and uncertainty about the future amidst the so-called stability brought about by her husbands government, constitute the most shameful of cocktails Ugandans have had to go through under any regime.
Therefore, to answer her question, people like Mr Carson who bother to advise us for no gain during such a shameful era in our history are friends, not enemies.
Clement LaloboJinja
The political future for Uganda looks utterly bleak

If unemployment can make our desperate graduates risk their lives willingly to work in deadly Iraq, do we have any tomorrow? The government said more districts should be created in West Nile such that unemployment can be checked. Can someone tell me whether Koboko is finished with proper infrastructure? Where is the administrative block? Why do we turn blind to problems of our own creation by creating more districts when the existing ones are all limping?

We rant against corruption, but we cannot fight it, because we reap from it. What kind of leaders has Uganda engendered?

Denis A. Toko
Kampala

Let govt meet our simple needs''Makerere university faces closure'' - no money.''Mulago Hospital suspends surgeries'' - no money.''War in northern uganda is likely to continue for years" - no money.
However, the goverment is reserving Shs31 billion for the referendum.Referendum concerning which way we should go politically is really not a matter for debate. The Movement and the opposition should consider that we ordinary mortals are the ones suffering in their fight for supremacy.
We do not care who rules, provided we get our peace and basic necessities, which we are not getting now.
David Mugume KateebaMakerere University

I would like to salute the government of Uganda that whereas Mulago is on the verge of closing for lack of money to buy medicine and other basic equipment for surgical operations, someone in the echelons of power is pushing for Shs3,040,000,000 (Shs10 million for each MP) as Constituency Development Fund (CDF), to be spent on the 304 Members of Parliament that already take a whopping Shs5.7 million each month, and will most likely spend 50% of the CDF on their stomachs. I am also thanking the government, given that whereas Makerere University is in dire need of Shs5.2 billion, some people in certain circles are highly charged to spend Shs7.6 billion on 66 vehicles.
I advise the government to always keep to itself its proposals, should not be bothered by Public Expenditure Review meetings in the guise of consultations.
It should simply spend as lavishly as it so wishes.
Julius KapwepweKampala

Ps: do not forget the

US $150 MILLION proposed to build a State House (one that Ugaganda has done without for the last 20 years with no visible ill effects,
US $300K+ rececently spent on acquiring a Hammer SUV for H.E. General Museveni,
US $400K+ spent on acquiring a Range Rover just a couple months back for H.E. General Museveni,
US $40 MILLION splurged on a Gulf Stream jet for the very same H.E. General Museveni, and which now needs over $5 MILLION (i.e. 12.5% of the purchase price) just for a tune up. I suppose all that

[Ugnet] Would like the verbatum article as it appeared in the BOG