Posts Tagged ‘embargo’
FBI nabbed colonel on official business – arms smuggling!
Preparing for elections,eh?
An Ivory Coast man arrested while allegedly trying to buy weapons in New York last week was on official business, a spokesman for his government says.
Former Ivory Coast Defense Minister Bertin Kadet told Radio France Internationale that the man arrested by the FBI was an army colonel named Yao N’Guessan.
Kadet said N’Guessan was sent to New York to purchase crowd control armaments in advance of the Ivory Coast’s October elections.
The FBI said N’Guessan allegedly was engaged in a deal worth more than $3.8 million for 4,000 handguns, 200,000 rounds of ammunition and 50,000 tear gas grenades when he was apprehended.
The funds to purchase the armaments had already been transferred to the United States.
Opponents of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbago say the arms purchase was intended to keep his party in power.
The United Nations imposed an embargo on arms to the Ivory Coast in 2004.
That’s what happens when you send an amateur out on a shopping trip like this one.
He should have worked through traditional channels, discovered which members of Congress would grease the wheels of international arms sales for him, which lobbyists needed to be engaged to avoid anything like law or principle getting in the way.
Israel eases Gaza embargo to allow junk food
Israel’s coastal defense against foreign invaders
Israel is easing its Gaza embargo to allow snack food and drinks into the Palestinian enclave…following an international outcry over Israel’s raid on an aid flotilla.
Hamas, the Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, said the territory needs cement — banned by Israel and essential for reconstruction after a December 2008-January 2009 war — not soft drinks.
An Israeli official said the new product list, announced hours before U.S. President Barack Obama was to host Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Washington, was unrelated to Israel’s May 31 takeover of the convoy that challenged its Gaza blockade.
The talks between Obama and Abbas are expected to focus on ways to ease the embargo, which has drawn mounting international criticism since Israeli commandos…killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.
The Palestinian officials, based in the West Bank, said that as of next week, Israel will allow a wider variety of food, such as potato crisps, biscuits, canned fruit and packaged hummus, as well as soft drinks and juice, into the Gaza Strip.
“They will send the first course. We are waiting for the main course,” Palestinian Economy Minister Hassan Abu Libdeh said in Ramallah. “We are waiting for this unjust siege to end.”
It is wholly unsurprising that a government consumed with egregious and bigoted ideology treats other nations – captive nations – as imperial nations have always treated their servants.
The right-wing Israeli government needs to be thrown out of office. If the nation of Israel, that minority of residents within the current boundaries of Israel who are allowed to vote, continues to maintain crap politicians in office – they deserve the disdain they receive from the rest of the world.
Iranians freak out over jeans with name of God on the butt
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
A Chinese clothing manufacturer probably thought it was on to a winner by exporting jeans bearing the Islamic expression “In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful” to Iran. But an otherwise sound marketing ploy was undone by one embarrassing flaw: the phrase (Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim in Arabic), which graces each of the Qur’an’s 114 chapters, was prominently displayed on the pockets of the jeans’ backsides, something likely to be seen as disrespectful by devout Muslims.
The perceived slight, first reported in the Iranian media, prompted a firm response from the police who announced they had seized the garments and arrested three businessmen said to have imported them.
Asriran website said the jeans, tailored for women, had sold for around $10-$12 in Tehran’s southern and eastern districts and bore labels reading Made in the PRC (People’s Republic of China).
The country of origin is embarrassing for Iranian authorities, given the close political and economic relationship between Iran and China. Beijing is Tehran’s biggest trading partner and has used its veto on the UN security council to protect Iran from further sanctions over its nuclear programme…
However, Asriran accused China of “attacking Iranian Muslim sacred symbols in the most offensive manner: In Islam, Allah is a respected word that you need to have ablutions before saying. Now it is embroidered on the sitting place of these jeans. Worse, they are sold in Tehran, which many would like to call the heart of the Islamic world.”
Since the manufacturer now has excess stock of these jeans, where might they show up next?
Obama to start winding down Cuban embargo at Summit of the Americas
Brazil’s President signed agreement to explore for oil in Cuba’s offshore waters
Daylife/Reuters Pictures
The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual lifting of the four-decade-old economic embargo. Several Bush-era controls are expected to be relaxed in the run-up to next month’s Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago to gild the president’s regional debut and signal a new era of “Yankee” cooperation…
“The effect on ordinary Cubans will be fairly significant. It will improve things and be very welcome,” said a western diplomat in Havana. The changes would reverse hardline Bush policies but not fundamentally alter relations between the superpower and the island, he added. “It just takes us back to the 1990s.”
Bush wanted to take us back to the 1940′s. As did Kennedy.
