World News & Views

Syria has long dominated international headlines while the big powers discuss the possibility of dividing it into smaller, more homogeneous states along ethnic or religious lines. The Democratic Republic of Congo is rarely if ever at the top of the Western headlines, but heads of state and so-called experts have long made similar proposals to carve out new, smaller, more homogeneous nations in Congo’s resource-rich eastern provinces. I spoke with Congolese scholar and activist Boniface Musavuli about the plans.

President Donald Trump and Chairman Kim Jong-un’s summit meeting is a historic and bold step toward achieving peace in the Korean Peninsula. Their agreement to work toward denuclearization by North Korea, as well as the other goals to achieve piece, such as guaranteeing security to North Korea, are welcome progress.

Join us today, June 19, at Building One, Treasure Island, at 5:30 to speak at a Tribunal holding bad actors Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Nancy Pelosi to account for their RICO crimes. The Tribunal is being held just before the 7:00 p.m. RAB meeting, where speakers will talk to the Navy and the RAB members. Looking forward to seeing you today.

It was only a few weeks ago – in fact, it was before the Syrian chemical weapons incident – that the Secretary General of the United Nations António Guterres said that Yemen was the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Yet once again Nikki Haley, the U.N. ambassador, was as quiet as a church house mouse! She didn’t say a word. She certainly did not plead with the Security Council to intervene with decisive action against the perpetrators of the bombing campaign against the Yemeni people.

America’s Declaration of Independence has served as a model for other nations. One hundred sixty-nine years after its ratification, on Sept. 2, 1945, the leader of the independence movement in Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh, stood in Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi to deliver his Proclamation of the Birth of the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam, “Tuyen Ngon Doc Lap Viet Nam Dan Chu Cong Hoa.”

Rosatom – Russia’s state nuclear energy corporation – has recently signed Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with a number of African nations to build nuclear power plants within their borders. I spoke to David Himbara, a professor of international development and African energy activist, about the likelihood of Rosatom actually building these nuclear plants. Currently, Sub-Saharan Africa faces an extraordinary level of energy poverty.

At 6:13 a.m. on July 23, Big Man joined the ancestors. Above all else, Elbert “Big Man” Howard loved his comrades and all oppressed people, who he never stopped fighting for. His Celebration of Live will be on Saturday, Aug. 25, 1 p.m., in the Bobby Hutton Grove inside of DeFremery Park, Oakland. Big Man was responsible for a free medical clinic for sickle-cell anemia and a work-study program for parolees at Merritt College. He was the first editor of The Black Panther newspaper, rebuilt Black Panther chapters decimated by COINTELPRO and built Solidarity Committees in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

He’s the president of Rwanda and the current president of the African Union, feted by the Brookings Institute, one of the most venerable ideological pillars of U.S. capital interests. So why is Paul Kagame manifesting more and more signs of paranoia? Let’s consider just a few possibilities: Assassination rumors, insurgency, political prisoner Victoire Ingabire, 7,000 Rwandan churches and mosques shut down.

Bobi Wine, Ugandan pop singer, parliamentarian and opponent of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, was arrested on July 17. His lawyers report that he has been beaten so badly by Ugandan police that they weren’t sure he understood the charges read when he was brought into court. Bobi Wine’s driver was shot dead in the driver’s seat of his car before he and more than 30 of his allies, many of whom are also members of Parliament, were arrested.

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.

On Sept. 15, Rwandan political prisoners Victoire Ingabire and Kizito Mihigo walked out of Nyarugenge Prison in Rwanda’s capital, along with nearly 2,000 more Rwandan prisoners whom President Paul Kagame had granted “executive clemency.” Victoire Ingabire is a politician and member of Rwanda’s Hutu ethnic majority. Kizito Mihigo is a gospel singer and a member of Rwanda’s Tutsi minority. Charging these two Rwandan leaders with terrorism was ludicrous to say the least.

Pacifica Radio stations are known as havens for leftwing thought and action, but the Berkeley station board and the national Pacifica Network board have yet to come to the defense of Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange. The following resolution has been submitted for a vote to the national board of directors of Pacifica. The resolution has also been submitted to Pacifica station KPFA’s local station board in Berkeley.

While I was immersed in the National Prison Strike back home, I had no idea how solidarity looked to others who felt trapped outside of the resistance. Some felt unable to connect with the people they desperately wanted to join in fighting for. Some Americans may say, How can I support a prisoner? in the same way that I struggled to connect with Tico Educators – in both cases knowing that their plight is worth fighting for.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has launched U.S. Out of Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM, a campaign designed to end the U.S. invasion and occupation of Africa. October 1 marked the 10th anniversary of the establishment of AFRICOM, short for U.S. Africa Command. Although U.S. leaders say AFRICOM is “fighting terrorism” on the continent, we believe geopolitical competition with China is the real reason behind AFRICOM’s existence. AFRICOM is a dangerous structure that has only increased militarism.

On Feb. 12, 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that there were 4.49 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 630,500 refugees in neighboring countries. The IDP population had nearly doubled in the previous year alone, mainly as a result of clashes and armed attacks. This week I spoke to Swiss Congolese historian and activist Bénédicte Kumbi Ndjoko about recent developments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The email excerpted within included an ungrammatical apostrophe in “mofo’s” which I corrected to “mofos.” The mofos that Stratfor’s Bayless Parsley refers to are members of Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s government, military and intelligence services, not ordinary Rwandan citizens suffering under his dictatorship. For those unfamiliar with the events he recounts, I’ve included explanation and elaboration in italics.

President Donald Trump’s comments regarding the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi aptly reflect the true nature of the power brokers that he represents. Instead of the usual “Empire-speak” statements, hypocritically condemning Khashoggi’s murder, followed by a pep talk on the values of “democracy” and “freedom of speech,” Trump is basically saying, as the leader of one rogue state to another, that was the “worst cover up ever,” boys, and heads should roll.

During a recent campaign event, Florida Sen. Bill Nelson said: “That story of Rwanda is very instructive to us because when a place gets so tribal that the two tribes won’t have anything to do with each other, and that jealousy turns into hate – we saw what happened to the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda, it turned into a genocide. A million people hacked to death within a few months. And we have got to watch what’s happening here.”

Toxic environments, as evidenced by human exposure to dirty water or polluted air, are deadly for everyone. The police, or band of brothers, who fill quotas and shoot first are also toxic. To connect the dots completely, we must understand how police brutality and toxic environments are inextricable forms of violence that impact communities. We must understand how this violence intersects and demand an incompatible alternative to what we now endure.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), a founding member of the Global Campaign Against U.S./NATO Military Bases, joined 300 attendees from 36 countries at a historic conference that re-committed anti-war activists to closing U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military bases throughout the world. The Global Campaign Against U.S./NATO Military Bases held its first international conference Nov. 16-18 at Liberty Hall in Dublin, Ireland. The conference’s Unity Statement was endorsed by more than 700 individuals and organizations.