I Didn’t Mean To Say That
Until I said It
But It Wasn’t Really Me Who Said It
Hillary Clinton forced to apologise for staying in race ‘in case of an assassination’
From The Times
May 24, 2008
Hillary Clinton rushed out an apology last night after citing the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as a reason for her to remain in the race against Barack Obama – an extraordinary admission which caught her campaign aides off guard.Mrs Clinton, dismissing the idea of abandoning her increasingly longshot attempt to win the Democratic presidential nomination, said in South Dakota: “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it.”
She added that she did not understand why, given this history, some Democrats were calling for her to quit. The former First Lady had been responding to a question from a newspaper editorial board.
USA
270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push
WATERLOO, Iowa – In temporary courtrooms at a fairgrounds here, 270 illegal immigrants were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.The prosecutions, which ended Friday, signal a sharp escalation in the Bush administration’s crackdown on illegal workers, with prosecutors bringing tough federal criminal charges against most of the immigrants arrested in a May 12 raid. Until now, unauthorized workers have generally been detained by immigration officials for civil violations and rapidly deported.
Obama would take California in November, Times/KTLA poll finds
Clinton would also defeat McCain in the fall, but by a smaller margin. The survey comes less than four months after Obama’s loss in the state primary.
Less than four months after losing the California primary, Democrat Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain in projected November general election matchups, a new Los Angeles Times/KTLA Poll has found.Obama, the Illinois senator who has inched close to his party’s nomination, would defeat McCain by seven points if the election were held today. New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose fortunes have faltered since her Feb. 5 drubbing of Obama in California, would eke out only a three-point victory, the poll found.
The poll appeared to illustrate that Democrats, at least in California, are gravitating toward the candidate who is broadly expected to eventually seize the party’s mantle. Obama now runs better against the Arizona senator than does Clinton among many of the groups that powered her victory in the state, among them Latinos, Catholics and those without college degrees.
Asia
Ban praises China quake response
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has praised China’s “extraordinary leadership” in dealing with the recent earthquake in Sichuan.
He was speaking in the badly-hit town of Yingxiu, as Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the death toll had passed 60,000 and could rise to 80,000.Mr Ban said the UN was ready to provide further support for the relief effort.
Earlier a Chinese official said 50 sources of radiation were now known to have been buried by the earthquake.
Thirty-five of the sources had been secured but the remaining 15 were buried under debris or in dangerous buildings, Environment Vice-Minister Wu Xiaoqing said.
Mr Wu said there had been no leaks of radioactive substances.
Tibet could be ‘swamped’ by mass Chinese settlement after Olympics, says Dalai Lama
· Buddhist leader fears attempt to dilute identity
· Meeting with Brown helpful despite problems
The Dalai Lama claimed yesterday that Beijing was planning the mass settlement of 1 million ethnic Chinese people in Tibet after the Olympics with the aim of diluting Tibetan culture and identity.Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader also claimed that some of Asia’s most important rivers which flow from the Tibetan plateau are being polluted and diminished by careless industrialisation and unplanned irrigation.
The Dalai Lama made the claims in an interview with the Guardian after a meeting yesterday with Gordon Brown at Lambeth Palace. He said the talks had been detailed and the prime minister had been helpful “in spite of his difficulties”. The Dalai Lama said: “He met me and he showed genuine concern and he wants to help.”
Europe
French trawlers blockade straits of Dover in fuel protest
French fishermen blocked the straits of Dover, the world’s busiest seaway, with slow-moving trawlers yesterday in a dispute over catch-quotas and fuel prices.The 25 trawlers, sailing abreast, dawdled along at three knots, instead of the normal 25-knot speed of freighters and oil-tankers passing between Kent and the Pas de Calais. The maritime go-slow escalated a week-long series of protests, including blockades of French oil refineries and attacks on the fish counters of supermarkets. The fishermen say diesel fuel forms 40 per cent of their costs and they cannot survive the steep increases in oil prices of the past three months. They have been demanding direct government subsidies to reduce the dock-side price of diesel oil from €0.75 (60p) a litre to €0.40.
Rubbish threatens Tuvixeddu necropolis
Richard Owen in Rome
An ancient Mediterranean necropolis described as one of the world’s greatest historical sites is being submerged beneath cement, high rise housing and rubbish dumps, according to Italian conservationists.Tuvixeddu – which means “hills with small cavities” in the Sardinian dialect – contains thousands of Phoenician and Punic burial chambers from the 6th century BC.
It has long been robbed of funerary objects but some of its tombs have retained their original paintings, including “Ureo’s Tomb”, named after a sacred serpent, and “The Warrior’s Tomb”, in which a decoration depicts a warrior throwing a spear.
Africa
Opposition leader returning to Zimbabwe
JOHANNESBURG: Morgan Tsvangirai, the chief rival of Zimbabwe’s authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe, drove up to a Harare police station last year to check on dozens of his supporters inside on their bellies, being kicked, clobbered and stomped.The officers quickly stopped and grabbed him. Witnesses said the station reverberated with the sickening thwack of blows to his buttocks, back and head.
“They were fighting with each other to beat him,” said Tendai Biti, his deputy in the opposition party.
Tsvangirai, whose thrashing made him an international symbol of resistance to Mugabe’s repressive rule, now plans to return to Zimbabwe on Saturday for a showdown with his nemesis in a June 27 runoff after six weeks of self-imposed exile. He bested Mugabe in a March 29 election, then fled the country in the middle of the night on April 8 after his staff said it got word of a plot to kill him.
ANALYSIS-Poverty a recipe for wider South Africa unrest
Failure to spread South Africa’s economic gains to the poor has fuelled violence against immigrants and could spark wider unrest as living conditions become tougher and higher food prices bite.More than 14 years after the end of apartheid, millions are still trapped in poverty despite record economic growth averaging five percent in the past four years. The poverty also fuels South Africa’s frighteningly high violent crime rates.
Living in squalor in Johannesburg’s shantytowns, the poor have taken their anger out on immigrants, killing 42 people, mostly targeting Zimbabweans and Mozambicans.
Middle East
Sign of change? Israeli, Palestinian officers meet
SALEM CHECKPOINT, Israel – The military men don’t look like diplomats and the sun-baked checkpoint dividing the West Bank from Israel couldn’t have been farther from the Jerusalem hotels and ministerial residences where Israeli-Palestinian peace talks unfold.
But the fate of those negotiations depend in large measure on the success of meetings like this one around a faux-wood desk in Lt. Col. Fareis Atilaa’s utilitarian office. The Associated Press was given rare access to the meeting this week, providing a glimpse of the minutiae and personal dynamics of the new contacts.Atilaa, a 36-year-old Israeli army officer, heads the military unit that coordinates links between Israel and the Palestinian government and security forces in the West Bank town of Jenin.
Marines Won’t Charge 2 Officers Whose Men Killed Afghans After Car Bombing
WASHINGTON – The Marine Corps will not bring criminal charges against two officers in command of a unit involved in the shooting deaths of as many as 19 civilians in northeastern Afghanistan last year after a car bomb struck the marines’ convoy, it was announced Friday.
In the episode, on March 4, 2007, several marines opened fire with automatic weapons after a suicide car bomb exploded and wounded one marine.Human rights groups said that up to 19 unarmed civilians were killed and 50 people were wounded along a six-mile stretch of road near Jalalabad, as the convoy fired automatic weapons along the route back to its base.
Latin America
Cuban sting shows US diplomat handing over cash to dissidents
Cuba has accused Washington of illegally funding opposition groups on the island after conducting an elaborate sting on a dissident who met a US diplomat.
The government published emails, letters, videos and audio tapes which purportedly showed a political activist, Martha Beatriz Roque, receiving monthly payments from Michael Parmly, the head of the US interests section in Havana.“We have a right to know all about this dark drama,” said Felipe Pérez Roque, the foreign minister.
Cuban agents spied on the dissident for months, filming her, bugging her home and mobile phones, hacking into her emails and sifting through her rubbish.
The communist authorities said the diplomat delivered mail including three monthly cash payments of at least $1,500 (£750) intended for other dissidents.
Caminata Nocturna, the Night Hike, shows what it’s like to cross the border illegally
A small Mexican village gives participants the experience of trying to sneak into the U.S. without actually doing so.
EL ALBERTO, MEXICO — Gunshots ring out and sirens shriek, mixing with the ragged breath of muddy, panting humans. Suddenly, the full moon sweeping the ground like a searchlight reveals a disturbing scene: a group of illegal immigrants being handcuffed and led away by U.S. Border Patrol agents.But the U.S. border is about 400 miles from this rugged municipal park in Hidalgo state, a three-hour drive north of Mexico City. The spectacle unfolding here isn’t an actual border crossing attempt but a live simulation-adventure that attempts to give participants a taste of what it’s like for the thousands of Mexican and other Latin American undocumented migrants trying to enter the promised land of el norte.
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Watched Spy Game
In it’s lack of comprehension of why the remark “may have offended some”. (Mistakes were made?)
For me, that day in 1968 was a shattering, staggering blow.
It followed so closely after the murder of Dr. King on April 4, 1968. And, of course it revived the memories of the horrors of 1963.
It was a time of chaos, of struggle between those that championed the principles of civil rights and freedoms, against those that would oppress them. With the loss of MLK, then RFK–many dreams died that day. Senator Clinton lived during those turbulent times. I had believed that she shared the horror and the sadness of those days. I had believed that as a Democrat she understood the symbolism of the death of Bobby was also for many of us the death of our hopes and dreams for a better future.
I simply cannot understand how any Democrat who lived through those days could utter the words “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.” as a mere reference to the timeframe of an election in CA. Just to justify her Presidential bid.
And her “apology” still shows an almost bush-like lack of comprehension as to why “some people may have been offended”. Personally I’m tired of the “mistakes were made” attempts by leaders to deny personal responsibility for their errors in judgment-seven years of that type of clueless incomprehension have been soul-draining enough. Apologies are easy–admitting one is wrong, and understanding why–and vowing to do better in the future–that’s what I look for in one who wants to be a leader.
if ever I have heard one.
Seldom has it been a Democrat who has caused me to wake up in the morning nauseated and anxious. Senator Clinton, that was the Republicans’ job, until this morning.