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Congolese say South Africa’s Congolese immigrant sweep targeted anti-Kabila refugees
January 23, 2012
Two hundred Congolese immigrants, especially activists opposed to the Kabila regime, were, they said, “hounded out of their shops and homes by scores of South African police, then summarily arrested on ludicrous, trumped up charges of ‘public violence.’”
A sourcebook for the media revolution
January 22, 2012
According to Mickey Huff, the corporate media are serving up a diet of “junk-food news to avoid telling the public what is really going on at home and abroad”; for example, Ann Garrison discloses that pilotless drones are fast becoming the dominant means of delivering explosives from the air.
Urgent message from South Africa: Free Ayanda Kota
January 12, 2012
Ayanda Kota, chairperson of the Grahamstown, South Africa, Unemployed Peoples’ Movement, was brutally beaten and arrested by the police today. Will he suffer the same fate as South Africa’s Steve Biko, the anti-apartheid leader and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, who died in 1977 at age 31 in police custody, or Andries Tatane, a math teacher and community newspaper publisher whose police murder, caught on video during a protest on April 13, 2011, shocked the nation?
Santa Rosa: Protesting Wells Fargo profit in private prisons and predatory lending
January 10, 2012
On Friday, a coalition of immigrant rights and Occupy activists temporarily shut down two branches of Wells Fargo Bank in Santa Rosa and distributed a flyer charging that Wells Fargo profits from the private prison business now booming on increased immigrant detention.
U.N. on Congo: Dodd-Frank conflict minerals law increases conflict
January 7, 2012
A U.N. report says that the USA’s conflict minerals legislation, Section 1502 of the Dodd Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, is increasing rather than decreasing criminality and conflict in the Congo and that Bosco Ntaganda is now in control of minerals smuggling from the Congo into Rwanda.
Congo: What’s Rwanda got to do with it?
December 27, 2011
Rwandan political prisoner Victoire Ingabire is spending her second Christmas in Rwanda’s maximum security prison. Her ongoing trial, on charges of terrorism and genocide ideology, has implications not only for Rwanda, but also for the entire Great Lakes Region of Africa – most of all, for the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Rwanda: Victoire Ingabire’s daughter calls for world pressure on Kagame
December 23, 2011
Victoire Ingabire left Rwanda almost two years ago in January 2010 to return to her native Rwanda in hopes of challenging Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the country’s 2010 presidential election. Her party was not allowed to register, she was not allowed to run, and she has spent the last year not as the president of Rwanda, but as a prisoner in Kigali’s 1930 maximum security prison.
Kabila, Tshisekedi and Congo
December 17, 2011
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is in political crisis. The Independent National Electoral Commission announced that incumbent President Joseph Kabila is the winner, with 49 percent of the vote. But his leading challenger, Étienne Tshisekedi, rejected the results and declared that he now considers himself the nation’s president.
Congo in crisis: Election results cannot be reconstructed
December 12, 2011
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is in political crisis. After an unfair, fraudulent and violent election, the National Electoral Commission, stacked with supporters of incumbent President Joseph Kabila, has announced Kabila is the winner. Leading challenger Étienne Tshisekedi has declared himself the winner.
Kabila, Tshisekedi, Congo and the International Criminal Court
December 7, 2011
If the International Criminal Court and ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo were committed to international justice, they would issue an arrest warrant for sitting Congolese President Joseph Kabila. But the Western powers that control the ICC have been expected to do whatever it takes to keep Kabila in power.
Protestors gather for Ingabire, the woman who challenged Kagame
November 15, 2011
Supporters of Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire gathered to celebrate her 43rd birthday. Ingabire has been in jail for over a year and her trial continues with almost no attention from the international press, even though she’s charged with challenging the received history of the Rwanda Genocide.
Rwanda returns Congo minerals as more are smuggled in
November 10, 2011
The Kagame regime knows about these minerals that have been entering Rwanda illegally for all these years. We’re happy they gave a little back, but they never should have invaded and occupied the eastern Congo in the first place, so there should be no points given for having emptied the cookie jar and then giving back one of the cookies.
San Francisco mayor’s race: Monitor, investigate, certify?
November 3, 2011
Last weekend, in a letter to California Secretary of State Debra Bowen and to the U.S. Justice Department, seven of the San Francisco mayoral candidates asked the Justice Department to send election observers and monitors and federal investigators to protect San Franciscans’ voting rights.
B of A’s last San Francisco stand: ED LEE
November 2, 2011
San Francisco District 11 Supervisor and mayoral candidate John Avalos held a hearing about creating a San Francisco municipal bank. He says, the municipal bank idea is one that has been in the making for a long time, and now people are greatly suspicious and frustrated with our banks, that they serve the 1 percent and not the everyday people, the 99 percent.
Rwanda’s Kagame, keynote speaker at a Sac State genocide conference?
November 2, 2011
Rwandan President Paul Kagame will be traveling to Sacramento to give a keynote speech at a conference on genocide. Many leading scholars, human rights investigators, genocide survivors and now Kagame’s own former Chief of Staff Theogene Rudasingwa hold him most responsible for the Rwanda Genocide of the 1990s, for the ensuing Congo Wars and Congo conflict, and for the plunder of Eastern Congo’s vast natural resource wealth.Join the protest Thursday, Nov. 3, 9 a.m., outside the Redwood Room, Sacramento State University campus, 6000 J St., Sacramento.
Mayoral campaigns ask the Justice Department to protect San Franciscans from Interim Mayor Ed Lee
October 24, 2011
Seven San Francisco mayoral candidates have asked the U.S. Department of Justice to send in election observers and monitors and federal investigators to protect San Franciscans’ voting rights from the official mayoral campaign of Interim Mayor Ed Lee and from the “independent expenditure committee” also trying to elect him outside the campaign spending confines of the official campaign.
Common cents for San Francisco: Avalos schedules public hearing on a municipal bank
October 21, 2011
A municipal bank is finally on the table, and Supervisor and mayoral candidate John Avalos has scheduled a public hearing at San Francisco City Hall for Oct. 24, 10 a.m., in Room 250. There will be time for public comment. At least four mayoral candidates are outspoken advocates for a municipal bank: Supervisor Avalos, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, Terry Baum of the Green Party and state Sen. Leland Yee.
Resource sovereignty: Congo, Africa and the Global South
October 18, 2011
Congolese youth are not going to give up. They’re fighting day and night, educating their peers, their communities and mobilizing throughout the country to bring about change, whether it comes today or tomorrow. They’re clear that they have to be organized to protect their interests, and no one, no one, can protect their interests like they can.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame on the night of Troy Davis’ execution
September 21, 2011
Tomorrow Kagame will appear as one of Bill Clinton’s featured speakers in a plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual gathering of the global elite. At the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative, Clinton presented Kagame with a Global Citizenship Award.
Obama requests immunity for Kagame re Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars
September 14, 2011
On Aug. 29, Barack Obama’s State Department filed a request for immunity for Rwandan President Paul Kagame in the civil lawsuit Habyarimana vs. Kagame, which alleges Kagame’s guilt in the Rwanda Genocide and Congo wars and demands damages for the widows of assassinated Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira.