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US empire relentless with anti-democratic policies supporting authoritarian leaders and plunder of natural resources in the Congo and other nations globally.

On Friday, Aug. 10, Ronald Muwanga, commonly called Ronnie Ronnie, a member of Krip Hop Nation Worldwide and founder of the Krip Hop chapter in Uganda, was arrested, beaten and tortured with a colleague, Herbert Zziwa, he works with at NTV Uganda, a national television station. The duo was covering the scene where a driver for a Member of Parliament was shot dead by presidential security personnel.

This is not charity. It is the right to have access to education, not only in the US but all over the world. This was our goal when Krip-Hop Nation of the USA and journalist Ronald Galiwango of Uganda, Africa, teamed up to write about a single father raising two disabled daughters who needed basic things to survive like wheelchairs and help to pay for the oldest daughter to go to school to become “a disabled advocate like Leroy Moore of Krip-Hop Nation!” Eunice Atim told Ronald in a video interview.

Helen Epstein’s new book, “Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror,” is dense with detailed and fascinating accounts of events in Ugandan history and politics and those of neighboring nations. I’m familiar with much of it, but there’s also much I hadn’t known, some I disagree with, and elaborations or different interpretations of what I’ve previously read or been told.

The Congo crisis is now one of the greatest humanitarian emergencies in the world and the most underreported. An average of 5,500 people a day flee violence and insecurity, even more than in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Unlike Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, however, the Congo wars are undeclared and there’s no front line. There are instead many wars over many concentrations of resource wealth in this immensely resource-rich country, especially in the eastern provinces.

Eighty-four percent of the population of Uganda are rural subsistence farmers. They are resisting both rampant land grabbing and U.S. ally Gen. Yoweri Museveni’s attempt to rule for life. I spoke to Phil Wilmot, an American-born activist who now lives in rural Uganda. Land grabbing is one of the manifestations of dictatorship in northern Uganda. In 2012, we started Solidarity Uganda to resist evictions and land grabs.

A grenade has for the second time in two days been thrown at my house and exploded. I have been receiving death threats on an almost daily basis. Reason? Opposing the removal of age limits in the Ugandan Constitution to allow General Museveni to be “president” for life. Anonymous calls are targeting not only me but my family as well. WE SHALL NOT BE INTIMIDATED.

Eunice Atim and her sister Sarah Atiano are disabled. Their father says it is very expensive to sustain them even in terms of taking them both to school. Eunice’s education had stopped in 2007 and was able to resume in 2014 after getting funding through publishing articles in the San Francisco Bay View and posting on Facebook. With her education, she wants to be an advocate for youth and adults with disabilities in Uganda.

The El Cajon police shooting of Alfred Olango is one of the most recent police shootings of an unarmed Black man to make national and international headlines and inspire Black Lives Matter protests. Olango and his family fled war and persecution by the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, who has ruled Uganda with an iron fist since 1986. KPFA’s Ann Garrison filed this report.

“A Brilliant Genocide” tells the story of the Acholi Genocide that President Yoweri Museveni and his army committed against the Acholi people during their 20-year war and occupation of the Acholi homeland in northern Uganda, from 1986 to 2006. Museveni waged that war in the name of fighting Kony and claimed to be protecting the Acholi, not destroying them. RT will air “A Brilliant Genocide” on Oct. 1.

Dr. Kizza Besigye and Gen. Yoweri Museveni both swore in as president of Uganda at competing inaugural ceremonies this week. Both claim to have won the Feb. 18 election, and Dr. Besigye has demanded an election audit. Gen. Museveni, the incumbent president now entering his fourth decade in power, had Besigye arrested and charged with treason. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has more.

A Ugandan political party, Forum for Democratic Change, has announced plans to hold country-wide demonstrations ahead of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s inauguration on Thursday, May 12, because they believe that their candidate, Dr. Kizza Besigye, in fact won the election. Museveni’s government responded by banning not only the protests but also press coverage of the protest. KPFA’s Ann Garrison reports.

We have just witnessed what must be the most fraudulent electoral process in Uganda. We participated in this process to highlight and show the world quite how fraudulent this military regime is. We were not free to carry out our campaigns without intimidation. On election day, all access to social media platforms was switched off. The regime is baring its bloodied fangs and claws for all to see. This is a creeping military coup.

Observers have an eye on the U.S. government’s response to Uganda’s presidential election coming up on Feb. 18. President Gen. Yoweri Museveni began his 30th year in power in 2016, and he is running for his fifth term. Uganda’s Parliament abolished presidential term limits in Uganda to enable him to remain in power in 2005. Ann Garrison spoke to Milton Allimadi, Ugandan American Editor of the Black Star News, about what to expect.

In accordance with President Obama’s Congo bill, the U.S. should withhold aid to Rwanda and Uganda and impose sanctions on its presidents and other government and military officials, whose culpability for cross border wars of aggression and illegal resource extraction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have long since been documented.

Rwandan and Ugandan troops have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the past two weeks, but reporting is scant and neither the U.S., the U.N. Security Council nor any other members of the international community have spoken to this, the latest Rwandan and Ugandan violation of Congo’s sovereignty. The international community has instead been focused on the constitutional crisis in Congo’s neighbor, Burundi.

Three presidents in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, Burundi’s Nkurunziza, DR Congo’s Kabila and Rwanda’s Kagame, are all doing their best to stay in office beyond constitutional term limits. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, however, doesn’t have to overcome term limits because Uganda’s Parliament abolished them in 2005. He has already announced that he will run again in 2016, his 30th year in office.

In a recently published open letter to 60 Minutes, the CBS TV news magazine, former New York Times Africa correspondent Howard French expressed concern about the program’s “frequent and recurring misrepresentation of the African continent.” Dr. Edmund Lubega says, “As Africans, it would be good if we could organize ourselves and try to find means by which we can share and broadcast our stories in our own way, in our own words.”

Ronald Galiwango and Krip-Hop Nation teamed up in 2013 to write articles, published in the SF Bay View newspaper, about a single father raising two daughters with disabilities who needed wheelchairs to get around. The campaign turned into a two-year effort with two goals 1) wheelchairs and 2) education. Here is Ronald's update on this successful campaign with pictures of Atim at school.

Rwanda and Uganda are threatening to send troops across their borders with the Democratic Republic of the Congo yet again to, they say, eliminate the Hutu refugee militia known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or FDLR. Going after the Hutu refugee militia has been Rwanda and Uganda’s excuse for crossing into Congo for the past 18 years, since the outset of the First Congo War in 1996.