ME and Ophelia

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SUDAN'S PRESIDENT
Named as worst dictator in world

US Parade magazine's yearly list of the planet's 10 worst living dictators has named Sudan's Omar Bashir as the head of world's most ignominious class. Here is a copy of a UPI report:

Although last year Bashir ranked a mere seventh among the 10 worst dictators, this year's list has him as the worst of the worst because of the 70,000 people who have been killed in Sudan's Darfur region and 6 million internally displaced as a result of Khartoum's ethnic cleansing, contributing editor David Wallechinsky wrote in Sunday's edition of Parade.

Among his signature forms of abuse: slave trading and aerial bombing of women's and children's refugee camps.

Following Bashir are, in order: Kim Jong Il (North Korea), Than Shwe (Myanmar, formerly Burma), Hu Jintao (China), Crown Prince Abdullah (Saudi Arabia), Muammar al-Qadafi (Libya), Pervez Musharraf (Pakistan), Saparmurat Niyazov (Turkmenistan), Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe) and Teodoro Obiang Nguema (Equatorial Guinea).

Receiving dishonorable mentions are King Mswati III (Swaziland), Aleksander Lukashenko (Belarus) and Fidel Castro (Cuba), the world's longest-reigning -- and in Latin America an almost beloved -- dictator.

Wallechinsky developed his list by consulting such human rights groups as Freedom House, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders.
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Mans inhumanity to man

Following on from the post above, it is interesting to see Middle East Financial Network online Feb 12 carrying the same UPI report titled "Omar Bashir named world's worst dictator".

Here's hoping the news item will spread on the Internet and reach him and all the other dictators listed, in time for Valentine's Day as a message from the world to make love not war. Who knows if it might sober them up and change their mindset. If their wives, children, relatives, friends and religious leaders got to hear about it, maybe they could make a difference. Mankind needs more love, not hate and cruelty.

Note the absence of females among the list of those who mass murder defenceless women and children. Since when did men stop protecting women and children? Men really must wake up to what is going on or they will, like the Neanderthals become extinct. It might take 10,000 years or more but with so many psychos in power and so few men willing to do stop them, who needs any of them?

On the other hand, with a population of six billion human beings chasing resources, maybe the world needs such predators. After the holocaust and Rwanda the world said "never again" but it was less than ten years ago, and a two hour flight away from here in England, that genocide occurred in Bosnia while the world watched. Mankind is not as civilised as we like to believe. There is a long way to go yet. Genocides will continue to occur. Too many humans amongst too many predatory barbarians. Perhaps sporadic culling of humans is part of nature in their battle for survival. Over the past year and a half, after much thinking and discussion with a friend, I have no other explanation for mans inhumanity to man.



Photo: June 2004 Secretary-General Kofi Annan (second from left) meeting with the President of Sudan, Omir Hassan A. Al-Bashir (right). (UN Photo by Eskinder Debebe).

See more photos of Mr Annan's visit to the Sudan June 30, 2004 and July 10-12, 2002.
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Islam will remain main source for legislation in Sudan: president

9 Feb AFP news reveals Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir said that Islam will continue to be the main source of legislation in Sudan even after the peace deal with the mainly animist and Christian southern rebels. He made the comments while addressing a crowd in al-Suqi in central Sudan, the official Sudan News Agency reported.



Photo: Sudanese Sufis practice their religious rituals in the arid Khartoum suburb of Omdurman. (AFP)