Word: congos
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...policy - on sleeping bags. Many German soldiers "are whingeing to high heaven," Schneiderhan said at a reception thrown by the parliamentary army ombudsman, complaining about everything from being sent on yet another overseas tour of duty to the "unsuitable" sleeping bags they are given for their deployment in the Congo. Then Schneiderhan did some complaining of his own, noting the tendency for his officers to delegate blame, with no one taking responsibility for their actions. "We can't guarantee an all-round, feel-good experience for our soldiers," he said...
...addition, international troops are already deployed across Africa in hot spots such as Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as a long list of post-conflict zones. Overstretched and under-motivated by lack of success in Darfur and Congo, the world is increasingly looking to a more confident and assertive Africa to solve its own problems. On June 22, Odinga appealed to the "IGAD [Intergovernmental Authority on Development in Eastern Africa], A.U., E.U., U.S.A., the U.N., all to combine forces" but acknowledged that despite similar appeals from the government in Mogadishu, "unfortunately, no country has come forward...
...particularly charged finding is that in most species besides humans, same-gender pairings rarely lead to lifelong relationships. In other words, when one attractive bonobo male eyes another in a lovely patch of Congo swamp forest, they occasionally kiss and then move on to other oral pleasures, but they don't bother anyone afterward about trying to legalize their right to an open-banana-bar ceremony. In fact, they are likely to move on to girl bonobos: most animals that engage in same-gender sex acts do so only when an opposite-sex partner is unavailable...
...Bongo was far from the only postcolonial African head of state to take his country's riches as a personal reward for the burdens of office. The French-property portfolios of two others - Denis Sassou-Nguesso of Congo Brazzaville and Teodoro Obiang of Equatorial Guinea - are also under investigation, and the French have made inquiries into the assets of Jose Eduardo dos Santos of Angola and Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso. Like Bongo, all have denied any wrongdoing. But Bongo was one of the greediest and, coming to power at 31 in 1967, just seven years after Gabon...
...African disasters do qualify for R2P intervention, in the form of large peacekeeping forces. The U.N. has authorized 26,000 troops for Darfur, where massacres are common and 2.5 million people need aid (and mostly receive it). It has also authorized another 20,000 for the Democratic Republic of Congo, where human-rights abuses are rife and millions are intermittently made refugees...