Traditional and modern concepts existing together!
Let’s see how it works out.
Tens of thousands of virgin maidens danced today for Swaziland’s King Mswati III in a traditional reed dance at Ludzidzini palace outside the capital Mbabane. The final day of the annual dance attracted a record 70,000 girls, some of them as young as six years of age. Image shows The princess of Swaziland (centre) dances in front of King Mswati III and his delegates. Photo: AFP
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At the Sibaya (‘people’s parliament’) held last week King Mswati made it clear that teachers who have been on strike for five weeks should return to work and government must start talks with them to solve the 4.5 percent wage claim that is at the heart of the dispute. The King ordered all teachers to go to school today (13 August 2012).
But, yesterday (12 August 2012), Minister of Education and Training, Wilson Ntshangase, said teachers who had been sacked for taking part in the strike should not return to work. It was up to the Swazi Cabinet to decide their fate.
Now, Timothy Velabo Mtetwa, acting Ludzidzini Governor, otherwise known as the ‘traditional’ prime minister, has said no one has a right to further deliberate on an issue that the king has already pronounced on.
Mtetwa is considered in traditional Swazi society to be more important than the nominal Prime Minister Barnabas Dlamini. Mtetwa is said to speak for the king and his word is law.
Upon hearing of the Education Minister‘s statement Mtetwa told local media, ‘My understanding of Swazi culture and etiquette is that the king’s word is final. Once the king issues an order regarding anything, the order has to be implemented by the relevant structures.’
(Sri Lanka Guardian)
How this is developing, possibly by the West’s meddling?
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“There was a paradigm shift from the previous people’s parliament, which took place five years ago. That parliament was such that if you said you needed multiparty democracy, you were booed to sit down. But, this time, people were listening carefully. I think the scale of teachers going around the whole country making people aware of how corrupt our government is has changed the people’s mind to think that why can’t we try multi-party democracy,” Mazibuko said.(voa News)
In general practice, however, the monarch’s power is delegated through a dualistic system: modern, statutory bodies, like the cabinet, and less formal traditional government structures. At present, parliament consists of a 82-seat House of Assembly (55 members are elected through popular vote; the Attorney General as an ex-officio member; 10 are appointed by the king and four women elected from each one of the administrative regions) and 30-seat Senate (10 members are appointed by the House of Assembly, and 20 are appointed by the king, whom at least the half must be women). The king must approve legislation passed by parliament before it becomes law. The prime minister, who is head of government is appointed by the king from among the members of the House on recommendations of the King’s Advisory Council and the cabinet, which is recommended by the prime minister and approved by the king, exercises executive authority.
This is the incredibly rare moment an African python was caught on camera trying to eat an entire wildebeest.
The massive snake looked like its eyes were bigger than its belly when it was discovered in the South African bush swallowing the massive meal.
It is thought to be the first time this behaviour has been caught on camera as the python – which can grow up to 16 foot – was believed to try for much smaller prey.
Therm Blue Moon is often used to denote rare occurrence.
Watch the Blue Moon Live Today.
The Blue Moon
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Catch the blue moon that comes around every 3 years this Friday, August 31st, 2012. If the weather permits, it will be very easy for anyone to catch a glimpse of the rare full moon. Everyone is welcome to watch a special live stream hosted by Slooh Space Camera that will capture extraordinary and surprising views of the blue moon and the sun. Laptop, IOS and Androidmobile devices can all access the streaming.
Fox News reported that the broadcast program will showcase dual feeds of both “the moon and sun in true color.” Live shots of the moon will be taken from “an observatory in the Canary Islands, off the coast of Africa.
Despite mounting evidence on the existence of Illuminati, people still refuse to accept the fact as in the case of the UFOS.
Now fresh documented information is available with Reuters, which has investigated the manipulations of a group of people who shaped US policies on Sudan which eventually to Sudan’s Independence.
(Special Report: The wonks who sold Washington on South Sudan‘)
One is reminded of Robert Ludlums Thriller ,The Materese Circle,Matlock Papers and the like.
In many a case it is the CIA which handles these messy cases and usually lands with egg on its face.
However the Group, on the other hand does get things done quietly and successfully.
Now Read on.
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In the mid-1980s, a small band of policy wonks began convening for lunch in the back corner of a dimly lit Italian bistro in the U.S. capital.
After ordering beers, they would get down to business: how to win independence for southern Sudan, a war-torn place most American politicians had never heard of.
They called themselves the Council and gave each other clannish nicknames: the Emperor, the Deputy Emperor, the Spear Carrier. The unlikely fellowship included an Ethiopian refugee to America, an English-lit professor and a former Carter administration official who once sported a ponytail.
The Council is little known in Washington or in Africa itself. But its quiet cajoling over nearly three decades helped South Sudan win its independence one year ago this week.
Across successive U.S. administrations, they smoothed the path of southern Sudanese rebels in Washington, influenced legislation in Congress, and used their positions to shape foreign policy in favor of Sudan’s southern rebels, often with scant regard for U.S. government protocol.
“We never controlled anything, but we always did try to influence things in the way we thought most benefited the people of South Sudan,” said Roger Winter, now an honorary adviser to the South Sudan government and one of the group’s original members, who dubbed himself the Spear Carrier.
The story of the Council has not been told before. For a Reuters series chronicling the first year in the life of South Sudan, the group’s main members spoke for the first time about how they came together and what they tried to achieve. They pinpointed key moments when peace could have slipped away. Some expressed disappointment at the compromises America made to broker the creation of South Sudan. One idea shines through: Independence was far from inevitable.
“I actually think it was a miracle we got something,” said Winter.
Nationhood has many midwives. South Sudan is primarily the creation of its own people. It was southern Sudanese leaders who fought for autonomy, and more than two million southern Sudanese who paid for that freedom with their lives.
President George W. Bush, who set out to end Africa’s longest-running civil war, also played a big role, as did modern-day abolitionists, religious groups, human rights organizations and members of the U.S. Congress.
But the most persistent outside force in the creation of the world’s newest state was the tightly knit group, never numbering more than seven people, which in the era before email began gathering regularly at Otello, a restaurant near Washington’s DuPont Circle.
A CHARISMATIC REBEL
In 1978, Brian D’Silva, a young student in agricultural economics, began pursuing a doctorate at Iowa State University. There, he studied alongside an intensely charismatic southern Sudanese man named John Garang, who had begun dreaming of a democratic Sudan.
After graduation, D’Silva went with Garang to Sudan to teach at the University of Khartoum. An uneasy peace held between Sudan’s predominantly Arab Islamic north and largely Christian south. The divide stemmed from colonial times, when Britain encouraged Christian missionaries to evangelize the south. The British considered splitting the country in two, but ultimately handed a unified Sudan to a small Arab elite in Khartoum, who tried to impose Islamic law throughout the country.
A 1972 agreement had given southerners semi-autonomy. That fragile deal began unraveling in 1979 after Chevron discovered oil in the south; the north did not want to lose control over the newly found riches.
Roger Winter visited Sudan in 1981 for a non-governmental outfit called the U.S. Committee for Refugees. Upon his return, the former Carter administration official sought out Sudanese who were based in Washington. Key among them was respected legal scholar Francis Deng, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
“A man with a ponytail came to see me,” recalled Deng, who is now the U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide.
Deng hails from Abyei, a fertile area straddling north and south Sudan. He thought Winter must be some “wealthy hippie-type” who wanted to give money to the rebels. When Winter explained that the best he could do was disseminate information, Deng suggested that the American public needed first-hand accounts of people affected by the war. He called a cousin in the rebel movement to ensure that on future visits, Winter would have access to all the so-called liberated areas – the parts of Sudan held by the rebels – where he could gather direct testimony on the impact of the war.
By the mid-1980s, these three future Council members – D’Silva, Deng and Winter – were working in the United States as proxies for John Garang. Over six feet tall and more than 200 pounds, the rebel leader had a laugh – and a personality – that filled a room.
“You meet Dr. John, you get converted,” said Winter, who first met Garang in 1986.
The three men quickly discovered the size of the task ahead of them. In 1987, D’Silva tried to bring a delegation from the SPLM to meet officials in Washington. But standard procedure at Foggy Bottom was to maintain relations with the recognized Sudanese government in Khartoum and ignore the rebel movement. D’Silva received a phone call from an official instructing him that no meetings should be arranged on any government-owned or -leased property.
ENTER “THE EMPEROR”
According to Deng, many in Washington associated the rebels with the Soviet-backed government in neighboring Ethiopia, leaving the SPLM on the wrong side of the Cold War. “It took a lot of hard work to remove the prejudice against John Garang,” Deng said.
As D’Silva, Winter and Deng tried to get the southern rebels through doors in Washington, a wayward college graduate in search of a cause was traveling in the Horn of Africa. By the early 1990s, John Prendergast had decided his calling was to help win better U.S. policies for Africa.
At the time, the circle of people in Washington who cared about the Horn of Africa was small. Prendergast soon ran into Winter, and the pair began briefing journalists, urging them to cover the conflict and putting them in contact with the rebels.
Human rights campaigning was very different from today. The idea of Western groups advocating in a coordinated way on behalf of foreign causes – as they had during the British-led anti-slavery campaigns in Belgian Congo more than a century before – had only recently been rekindled by the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
For the few Americans who had heard of Sudan at all, “the south was a black hole,” said Winter, the refugee-rights organizer.
It was about this time that the Council’s future Emperor made his entrance. Ted Dagne was a 14-year-old Ethiopian in 1974 when a Soviet-backed military junta seized power. Dagne’s older sister, a student leader, was among the first to be executed by the new government.
“After that, there was a (target) on our family,” said Dagne, drawing a cross in the air.
By the time Dagne was 16, both he and his older brother had been imprisoned and tortured. Dagne was subsequently released, but his brother was executed and Dagne’s own prospects for survival looked slim. One morning he donned his sister’s T-shirt and his brother’s jeans and shoes, keepsakes for an unknown future, and told his parents he was going out for groceries. It was the last time he saw them.
The proof is here as to who guzzle energy and contribute to Global Pollution.
Irony is that these countries and the EU are taxing the countries like India under the guise of carbon Tax!
India is pondering to hit back.
Hope it does.
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Britain and Europe at Night.
Light show: An image of the U.S. from space highlighting the staggering light pollution, especially on the east coast, in Houston, Texas, and San Francisco and Los Angeles on the west coastIn darkness: Third World countries in Africa barely register any light at night in contrast to the West, apart from an amazing trail of light from Cairo running down the Nile in EgyptGlobal view: A satellite picture of the energy waste in the West and darkness in the rest of world showing how much more energy the rich world uses than other areas
At night, London is a burning bright spot, consuming enough energy to power Ireland with its light show.
But as these stunning images from space show, we in the West are guilty of wasting energy and polluting light on a staggering scale.
Each year London consumes 150 thousand gigawatt hours of energy, equal to the consumption of nations such as Portugal and Greece.
Campaigners have warned that 50 per cent of the UK’s population cannot see many stars because the night skies are ‘saturated’ with light pollution.
The pictures created by scientist Felix Pharand-DeschÍnes using data gathered by satellites highlight the contrast between the first and third world.
They show Egypt’s densely populated River Nile as it scorches a path through the darkness of Northern Africa while Japan is wall-to-wall light.
America shines brightly, but south of its border the countries are almost lightless and in central Asia, India and Australia barely any light is registered.
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