Selected clips from UPI Drums of war mute Afghani peace message
UNITED NATIONS, March 17 (UPI) -- An Afghan dentist who cycled halfway around the world to draw attention to the suffering that war has caused his country ended his 11-month ride in frustration Monday, his message of peace to the United Nations drowned out by the drums of war.
Nadir Shah Nangarhari, 36, with tears in his eyes, expressed disappointment that none of the U.N. press corps, or even an official U.N. photographer, captured the moment as he delivered a letter expressing the Afghan people's desire to live in peace and prosperity to the U.N. headquarters in New York.
"When there are a couple of shots fired in any corner of the world, everybody knows about it, but if I talk peace, no one is interested," he said through a translator. He worried that the utter devastation and abject poverty that war has brought to Afghanistan would be forgotten as the world's attention shifted to Iraq.
Nangarhari had never left Afghanistan before biking through Iran, Turkey, Europe and the United States. He speaks no European languages. Local Afghan communities and strangers often took him in, but he sometimes slept outside or in bus shelters or gas stations. A truck hit him in Turkey, causing memory loss and recurring headaches. A supporter in London bought him an airline ticket to Washington, where he resumed his journey to Ground Zero in New York and the United Nations.
After two decades of war, Afghans are lighting their homes with homemade oil lamps while the rest of the world surfs the Internet, Nangarhari told Assistant Secretary-General Gillian Martin Sorensen. People have to leave the country to get adequate health care, most of the population is illiterate, and even raising livestock is impossible because the animals are blown up by land mines, he said.
When asked about the looming war in Iraq, he said, "Our country has been so damaged we cannot concentrate on other countries." He added, "Long live peace. Long live love."
The cyclist said his wife is not angry he left her and his five children to deliver his message of peace, because his brother-in-law was killed by fighting.
Copyright 2003 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
NEW YORK, May 6 (UPI) -- Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who federal prosecutors say was sexually tortured by New York City police, has taken the stand in Brooklyn federal court.
Louima testified he was beaten bloody and taken to a Brooklyn police station after he chastised police for beating a fellow Haitian outside a Flatbush nightclub.
At the station, he said one police officer pulled his pants down to his knees and dragged him to the men's room, where Officer Justin Volpe sexually tortured him with a stick, then shoved the stick in his mouth. He said Volpe threatened to kill him if he ever talked about the attack.
Louima testified he remained handcuffed to his hospital bed as prisoner after undergoing emergency surgery, until shortly after Mayor Rudolph Giuliani came to visit him.
Louima said he lied when he told reporters that the white officers who assaulted him said the administration of a former black mayor, David Dinkins, was over and it was now Giuliani time.
Louima also admitted he had an off-the-books job at a used car lot.
Under cross examination, the 32-year-old father of two said he could not recall specific interviews he gave with different reporters and investigators.
Outside the courthouse, Volpe's attorney Marvyn Kornberg attacked Louima's credibility, saying his memory worked well while answering questions for federal prosecutors but suddenly failed under cross-examination.
Lawyers for the other three officers noted to reporters that Louima could only identify Volpe.
Kornberg will continuing cross-examining Louima on Monday, at which time the lawyer promised reporters he would expand on his allegation that Louima was injured in a consensual homosexual sex act.
He says he will present medical and physical evidence that he says shows another man's DNA was mixed with Louima's feces found in the station house bathroom.
In other testimony, Internal Affairs investigator Reinaldo Daniels testified a hospitalized Louima froze with fear when he identified Volpe from several sets of photos.
Daniels said, "His eyes were as wide as half silver dollars....He was afraid. There was recognition, but he was reluctant to tell me."
Thirty-two-year-old Officer Paul Chapman testified that he saw Louima being taken out of the precinct by two ambulance medics in handcuffs in obvious pain with his pants hanging loose and a swollen left eye.
Chapman testified he later saw Volpe, who looked upset and said he was angry because someone hit him.
Prosecutors say Volpe assaulted Louima because he believed the immigrant had sucker-punched him.
Throughout his testimony, Louima referred to Officer Charles Schwarz only as the "driver" of the police car that brought him to the station house, and said he could not recognize him.
Louima testified Schwarz pulled down his pants in the station house and took him to the men's room.
Louima testified he could not identify the two other police officers who beat him. Prosecutors say the men are officers Thomas Wiese and Thomas Bruder.
Their supervisor, Sgt. Michael Bellomo, is charged with trying to cover up the August 1997 incident.
Copyright 1999 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Internet takes root in crumbling Albania
By CHRIS HAWKE= TIRANA, Albania, April 28 (UPI) -- Down a pot-holed dirt road, past an abandoned, crumbling stadium in the heart of Tirana, lies the unfinished 11-story building that is home to one of Albania’s fledgling commercial Internet providers.
The startup is one of a handful of commercial dial-up Internet service providers that starting this year have opened up the Net to regular citizens of the former hermit nation.
Albanian universities and non-governmental organizations have had access to e-mail and other Internet services since 1997, when the United Nations Development Program and the Soros Foundation set up a satellite link with an escort of international troops amid gunfire, riots and looting.
Although the chaos of that year sparked by widespread financial fraud has settled down, today’s entrepreneurs must contend with power outages, abysmal phone service, government regulations from a former dictatorship, and a crumbling infrastructure.
Twenty-two-year-old Edmond Kereku, one of Adanet’s three co- founders, says the power went out four or five times a day when the company launched its service in January.
The three partners bought eight giant boat batteries they say will power for two days the three computers that serve their clients.
They also bought 25 chargers they say can fully power up the batteries in one-and-a-half hours.
Twenty-six-year-old partner Rezart Andoni says the new Internet service providers must pay off the technicians from the government- run phone company to get service, noting that one bad phone line can put over half of their 55 lines out of service.
After the power headaches over the winter, Adanet moved its office to its current building, the headquarters of a private Albanian television station, complete with an uninterruptable power source and a backup diesel engine.
However, Andoni won’t hazard a guess about when the construction will be completed.
Andoni has worked for the UNDP and the Soros Foundation, the two pioneers who developed Albania’s Internet links with the rest of the world.
During the anarchy of 1997, 200 donated computers were looted from a warehouse, and a bomb detonated outside the Tirana Soros Foundation headquarters, damaging cars and shattering windows.
Kereku was one of the earliest devotees of a cyber cafe set up by the Soros Foundation in 1997 that provided two hours a day of free Internet access to the public.
It was shut down a year ago because it became too busy.
Andoni says his goal is not to make millions, but for the company to survive.
While his entrepreneurial counterparts in the United States become wealthy beyond imagination by selling shares of their Internet companies in initial public offerings, Andoni does not even know what the term means.
The crumbling road and unfinished building that houses Adanet is representative of the poor infrastructure throughout the country.
Albania is perhaps the poorest country in Europe.
Most homes in the capital city of Tirana have only a hole in the floor for a toilet, which must be flushed out with a pail of water.
Hot running water is usually provided by electric heaters that take 30 minutes to warm 10 gallons, and are usually turned off.
Water service is intermittent throughout the day.
Roughly 90 percent of Albanian homes do not have phone lines.
With the recent surge of ethnic Albanian refugees and foreign military and humanitarian personnel into the country, it can take an hour of attempts before an international call connects.
Andoni says many foreigners have signed up with Adanet to use software that allows them to make international calls at U.S.rates, which are roughly a tenth of Albanian prices.
Adanet has set up high-speed microwave Internet connections throughout Tirana, and offers service in the port city of Durres, the second largest in the country.
A satellite link connects Adanet directly to the Internet in New York City.
Copyright 1999 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Milosevic indictment being considered
TIRANA, Albania, April 23 (UPI) -- The war crimes prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, setting her sights for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the architects of Serbia’s ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo, is preparing an indictment based partly on intelligence gathered from NATO countries, according to a spokesman.
Jim Landale, spokesman for the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, says, "The policy of the prosecutor has been to go after as senior officials as she can—the architects of certain policies." He says the chief prosecutor, Justice Louise Arbour, has gathered intelligence from Britain, Germany and other NATO countries and will issue an indictment as soon as enough evidence has been gathered.
He says international organizations are helping amass information on alleged crimes, including reports of "killings, murder, summary execution, systemic rape, destruction of property (and) extermination."
Acknowledging help received and reaching out to other organizations for assistance, he said, "The sheer scale of this crisis with the number of refugees that have gone across the border is enormous and so we are obviously happy to get the cooperation from other organizations."
He says prosecutors from The Hague are in Macedonia, Montenegro and Albania gathering information.
Arbour has 70 prosecutors available to send to the region, although many are occupied.
"A large number of offenses that would fall within our mandate seem to have been committed. We just want to build up as good a picture as we can of what’s happened."
Prosecutors have prepared a questionnaire to assist organizations collecting reports of atrocities from refugees, which can then be used and corroborated as evidence.
Copyright 1999 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Future, past confused for refugees
MULLET, Albania, April 23, (UPI) -- Forced from his Kosovo home, 11- year-old Arian Shtaloja walked two days to the Albanian border.
Although he and his family were met with food, shelter and medical care, he left behind his school, his home and his grandparents.
Arian and his extended family are among the 200,000 ethnic-Albanian refugees who have been moved through Kukes, a remote town in the mountains of north Albania near the Kosovo border.
Arian’s father, Afrim, a 46-year-old electrical engineer said Serb police killed his ailing parents because they would not leave his home in Djakovo.
Arian’s 3-year-old brother Etor is recovering from rubella under the care of the four doctors and eight nurses from Tunisia working at the refugee camp in Mullet, 10 miles from the Albanian capital of Tirana.
The doctors say Etor is one of two children in the camp with the disease.
They have treated other children for diarrhea, dehydration and malnutrition, and say they are focusing on providing basic care for pregnant women and educating the 12,000 refugees in the camp on public sanitation and good hygiene.
A spokeswoman for the UNHCR says the health situation in the camps throughout Albania is good, with refugees suffering mainly from exhaustion and some babies suffering from dehydration.
The meals Arian and his family are eating include, bread, beans, hot dogs, cheese and yogurt, much like the fair being served at camps across Albania.
Officials from the World Food Program say refugees are being given food from the moment they cross into Albania and preparations are under way to provide basic nutrition for a year to 650,000 refugees throughout Albania, Montenegro and Macedonia.
However, it will be up to smaller organizations to provide fresh fruit and meat to the refugees.
Arian says he doesn’t know how long he’ll be in the camp.
His father says the family will stay until they can return to their home.
Arian’s father, who when pressed was unable to provide a detailed account of his parents’ shooting, immediately switched gears and relayed a friend’s account of how Serbs killed his wife and children.
Then he said Serbs killed 26 women and children in his hometown.
Tired of being badgered with detailed questions, he changed his story altogether and said his parents were alive and in the camp. But they weren’t.
Privately, Arian said a family friend visited their home after they fled and saw his grandparents had been killed.
Another refugee from Arian’s hometown interrupted his account with stories of atrocities including children with their throats slit and a person hanged at the local bus station.
When asked if he witnessed this, the man replied he had read about it in the newspapers.
Copyright 1999 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
New bakery to feed Montenegro refugees
TIRANA, Albania, April 27 (UPI) -- Preparing for an anticipated flood of refugees from the Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro, a team of expert bakers are setting up a bread factory in the border city of Shkodra, Albania.World Food Program officials are preparing for the steady arrival of ethnic Albanian refugees pushed into Montenegro by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosovic’s effort to "cleanse" them from their home province of Kosovo.
Baking expert Piet Sluimer of Holland says within two weeks he hopes the bakery in Shkodra will have the capacity to produce 40,000 loaves of bread a day, although only half that amount is currently needed.
Noting that bread is the refugees’ favorite staple food, he says, "I’ve eaten now two meals with bread, and I think we can meet the (local) standards—not so difficult, I must say." The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says 64,000 displaced ethnic Albanian refugees have fled Kosovo to Montenegro.
Over a thousand refugees a day were entering Albania at Shkodra last week, but that number trickled down to about 400 by today.
Officials report that alongside the displaced Kosovars, ethnic Albanians who live in Montenegro are fleeing because they fear the crackdown could spread.
Other Montenegrins are leaving to escape the draft, or the possibility of bloodshed in their homeland.
Officials estimate there are nearly 25,000 refugees in the Shkodra area.
Montenegro’s government has been sympathetic to the West, and its police forces remain loyal.
However, the Serbian military has moved into the country in force, prompting fears of a coup attempt.
The World Food Program has been baking the equivalent of 75,000 one- pound loaves of bread a day for the 365,000 refugees in Albania, with bakeries set up in Tirana, Elbasen, the port of Durres and Kukes, a small city near the Kosovo border that is the country’s busiest gateway for refugees.
WFP spokeswoman Heather Hill says, "In general, the refugees are getting enough bread." She notes, however, there are shortages of canned meat and fish that are served with the bread.
Officials have noted that Albanians in the poorer parts of the country may become resentful, because the refugees are receiving better health care and food than some Albanians typically do.
WFP official David Kaatrud says the International Red Cross has agreed to provide food to host families, as well as the refugees staying with them, to make sure the refugees aren’t better fed than their benefactors.
The WFP called in Sluimer for his advice on setting up the bread factory in a Shkodra warehouse that will make 10 times as many loaves as the largest local bakery.
Sluimer has advised on bread making in Libya, Nigeria, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia.
He boasts he has taught students from Kansas to China to bake better bread.
The WFP’s main mission is to provide monthly rations of cooking oil, rice, beans, sugar and salt so refugees can cook their own food in common kitchens in refugee camps.
Distribution of these dry provisions is scheduled to start on Saturday, and the organization is currently making plans to provide 12 months’ worth of dry provisions for Kosovo refugees throughout the region.
The bread is being delivered to camps throughout Albania using a fleet of 22 Swedish trucks and six Swiss government helicopters.
Hill says the WFP is also counting on assistance from 100 trucks NATO has offered to provide humanitarian aid.
The UNHCR estimates there are 583,000 displaced refugees outside the Republic of Serbia, which includes Kosovo.
There may be hundreds of thousands more within Serbia’s borders.
Copyright 1999 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Stories written during 1997 UN General Assemby meeting
Nations pledge support on Bosnia vote
NEW YORK, Sept.24 (UPI) -- The ministers from five nations charged with peacekeeping in the Balkans say local media may be shut down if they do not stop broadcasting inflammatory "misinformation" aimed at international forces stationed there.
During today’s meeting in New York, the foreign ministers also warned against violence during an upcoming student demonstration in Kosovo, an Albanian region of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia controlled by Serbs.
A senior Clinton administration official says that radio and television stations in the Bosnian cities of Pale, where indicted Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is based, and Mostar may be shut down if they don’t stop broadcasting calls for violence against NATO forces.
A U.S. official told United Press International that Kosovo has been a tinderbox for many years, and an Oct.1 demonstration at Pristina University could lead to bloodshed if violence erupts.
He said the oppressive Serbian forces controlling the region purged the Albanian-speaking staff at the university starting six years ago.
The students are planning sit-ins to demand the implementation of a recent agreement to give the Kosovar community back control of the state education system.
The foreign ministers called on the Serbians to yield control of the schools, and urged both sides to cool things down so that the over 100,000 Albanian refugees from Kosovo throughout Europe can return home.
Copyright 1997 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
U.S., France to cooperate on Algeria
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Responding to massacres in Algeria that have claimed hundreds of lives in the past few weeks, France and the United States have agreed to expert-level talks on the problem.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright today called the situation "tragic," and said she and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine had discussed ways of assessing the situation and working together at a bilateral meeting in New York yesterday.
State Department spokesman James Rubin said the two governments will exchange experts and consider further action.
According to the official Algerian news agency, at least 85 men, women and children were butchered south of the capital, Algiers, on Monday but independent observers estimate the death toll at more than 200.
The agency described the killing as the "most violent massacre" by Muslim radicals, whose five-year Islamic insurgency has so far cost more than 60,000 lives.
The massacre is believed to have been committed by the most militant of the Islamic factions, the Armed Islamic Group.
Copyright 1997 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Albright meets Latin American ministers
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 25 (UPI) -- Secretary of State Madeleine Albright talked about education and other issues today with her Latin American counterparts in a series of meetings in New York.
A senior state department official said the region is embracing democracy and getting wealthier, but needs more education to reduce the gap between rich and poor.
Albright and her counterparts discussed President Bill Clinton’s October 20 trip to Latin America and next April’s Summit of the Americas in Chile, which will focus heavily on education.
In a meeting with the foreign ministers of the Rio Group countries, the official said there was a consensus that there is no threat of an arms race in Latin America.
Earlier this year, the U.S. decided to allow the sale of F-16 fighter jets in the region on a case-by-case basis.
During a series of bilateral meetings, Albright complimented Brazil for its new support of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Brazil previously opposed the treaty on the grounds that it confirmed a very small club of nuclear powers.
Mexican Foreign Minster Jose Angel Gurria expressed concern for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens when tough new U.S. immigration laws kick in on Sept. 27.
The two also took up a White House report slamming Mexico’s drug enforcement, and discussed problems along the border, including ways to speed up the nearly 1 million daily border crossings.
Chilean Foreign Minister Jose Miguel Insulza brought up fast track legislation that would help Clinton negotiate Latin American free trade deals.
Chile is lobbying Congress to support the legislation.
Albright thanked Argentina for supporting the return of gold looted by the Nazis.
Copyright 1997 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Story written during Iraq weapons inspection crisis
U.N. probes Iraq’s claim inspector lied
UNITED NATIONS, Jan.13 (UPI) -- The man heading up the U.N. commission charged with eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction will respond in front of the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to Iraqi charges he is a liar.
Richard Butler will answer questions about letters sent to him by Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz that charge Butler is lying about weapons inspection teams and seeking to continue the economic embargo by creating confusion.
The Security Council will discuss a presidential statement drafted by the United States expressing what ambassadors from Britain, France and the United States call the unanimous support of Butler on the council.
U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson says the statement will be passed Wednesday or Thursday.
Butler will also answer detailed questions from Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov about the "arithmetic" of the inspection teams.
A U.S. official says the questions are about team members’ various duties, which range from translator to scientist.
Secretary General Kofi Annan and Butler affirm the controversial inspection team headed by American Scott Ritter was made up of 44 inspectors from 17 nations.
Iraqi Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon ("nah-ZAHR hahm-DOON") says 14 of the 16 "major figures" on the team were British or American.
Hamdoon says his country won’t change its stance until Butler, who is Australian, "reconsiders" the composition of the team.
Security Council President and French Ambassador Alain Dejammet says the council was very interested in Butler’s views on the national composition of the teams.
Dejammet emphasized the council’s full support of Butler, noting the council has promised the inspection teams will be composed of people from a range of countries.
Butler says the inspector nationality issue is a sham, and Iraq has not stated its true motives for rejecting the inspection team headed by Ritter, a Persian Gulf war veteran who Iraq has branded a spy.
Letters from Iraq to Butler dated Dec. 29 and Jan. 10 imply that inspection teams headed by Ritter have falsely accused Iraq of dodging weapons inspectors, while failing to acknowledge that no traces of chemical or biological weapons were found at one suspected weapons site.
Iraq wants Butler’s office to produce documents that would refute these charges.
A reply from Butler states the Security Council requires Iraq to provide information for the inspectors to verify—not the other way around.
Copyright 1998 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
A feature written after a spate of random face slashings in NYC.
New York responds to rising gang threat
NEW YORK, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Ritual random slashings and a new awareness of the growing teen gang presence in New York schools have energized city authorities to launch a series of action plans and investigations.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani says New York has not been confronted with the youthful gang violence facing other American cities, but the problem is beginning to grow.
Officials say unsupervised kids in their early teens searching for safety and somewhere to belong are being actively recruited in schools by some gangs, such as the highly organized Latin Kings.
Police say a number of gangs including the Bloods, which originated in Los Angeles, are recruiting in New York jails and prisons.
The city correction department says that over the last eight months, there has been a steady growth in the number Bloods among the 1,900 gang members in New York City jails.
Other youngsters seem to be forming their own gangs.
New York Police Department spokesman Lenny Alcivar tells United Press International, "You have groups that pattern themselves after the Bloods in Los Angeles, but there is no connection."
While the Bloods have a "powerful and dangerous" presence in the city and state prison systems and often recruit young offenders, Alcivar says, "It’s tough to gauge how much of a connection there is between the L.A. Bloods, organized Bloods in New York, and copycats."
Police say they dismantled seven "sets" of hard-core Bloods throughout New York when they rounded up 167 people in August on charges ranging from selling drugs to attempted murder.
However, Deputy Inspector Edwin Young, who monitors gang activity in North Brooklyn, says there are roughly six copycat sets of Bloods in his small area of the city alone.
Police Officer Shawn Khan, a beat cop in Brooklyn, says kids join up for status.
He says, "They want to impress their friends, they want to belong to something." Police and community officials say the media glamorizes gangs by broadcasting images of the gang members flashing secret hands signs and wearing their identifying colors.
Stories about gang violence like ritual slashings help the gangs grow by adding to their notoriety.
Initiation rites for the Bloods include randomly slashing an innocent person, often with a boxcutter, a weapon of choice among New York youth.
The Bloods have been implicated in over 135 random slashings in the streets and subways of New York, including one this week and three the week before.
In a possible Bloods’ initiation ritual, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly forced to give oral sex to three boys in the washroom of a Manhattan high school this week, while classes were going on.
Six students have been arrested.
Deputy Schools Chancellor Harry Spence says gangs are pervasive and the problem is growing.
An independent probe of the Latin Kings released by the city concludes the gang "actively seeks out children from troubled homes, offering a perverted sense of family." The report concludes schools are "critical" to the Latin King’s success, and schools and schools playgrounds are used as meeting grounds and places where "beefs" are settled, sometimes violently.
Recommending more police involvement in schools and a "zero tolerance" for gang attire and graffiti, the report predicts Latin Kings’ crimes will rise with the growing presence of rival gangs, particularly the Bloods.
The police department, the mayor, a city councilman, the Nation of Islam and the Brooklyn district attorney also put forward action plans on gangs this week.
The plans call for stepped-up law enforcement, tougher penalties, new criminal laws, education and awareness programs and a special grand jury investigation.
Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes warns, "We’ve got to focus on prevention. We don’t have enough jail cells for this kind of violence."
He says the thousands of unsupervised kids between the ages of 3 and 6 from broken families and from well-off families with both parents working need a safe haven, such as after-school programs.
Otherwise, he says, it is "inevitable" that children will get involved with street gangs, and some will be forced to join.
Noting that it costs $58,000 a year to put one person in prison, Hynes says, "Where the hell is the money for after school programs? Isn’t that infinitely cheaper?"
Frank Sanchez, the director of delinquency prevention at the Boys and Girls Club, says, "The kids most at risk are 11 to 14, searching for an identity."
Some kids seek esteem, he says, while others are motivated by fear and the need for protection in rough neighborhoods.
The Boys and Girls Club has 325 chapters in public housing buildings across the United States, and the programs led to a marked drop in gang activity, says the organization’s spokeswoman.
Sanchez says tackling gangs takes strong law enforcement to incarcerate gang leaders, prevention teams to educate the community, intervention to reach kids in gangs, and community groups like the Boys and Girls Club.
Sanchez says gangs thrive where communities fail, adding, "If those young people had something positive to do, they wouldn’t become involved in gangs."
Copyright 1997 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
An excerpt from the New York Daily News’s March 25, 1999 Rush and Malloy gossip column that cited an article I wrote:
Hold that ambassadorship for the Rev. Al Sharpton.
The firebrand told UPI reporter Chris Hawke yesterday that Gen. Augusto Pinochet should be extradited to Spain to stand trial for human-rights abuses, because "people have to face their crimes at the place that they were committed." Uh, Al, the general is from Chile...
