Pan-African News Wire

Don Cornelius, 75, Founder of Soul Train, Dead of Apparent Suicide

2012-02-02T13:09:00.001-05:00

Former Soul Train host Don Cornelius at a 40th anniversary tribute to the show in Chicago. Cornelius was found shot dead at his home in California on January 31, 2012. Reports indicate it was a suicide., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Friend recalls Tuesday conversation with Cornelius: ‘He was very upbeat and even joking’

By STELLA FOSTER
sfoster@suntimes.com
Feb 2, 2012 02:12AM

THE TRAIN HAS STOPPED: The news of “Soul Train” creator/host and former Chicagoan Don Cornelius’ death shocked the music industry and his fans.

THE 75-year-old Cornelius, whose legendary “Soul Train” dance show aired weekly for over 35 years, was found dead early Wednesday morning in his Sherman Oaks, Calif., home apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

MARV DYSON, director of operations at Kennedy King College’s WKKC-FM radio, was crushed after hearing about his dear friend’s death. Dyson told me he last spoke with Cornelius around noon Tuesday to inquire if he had gotten Grammy Awards tickets for Dyson’s son, Jordan, a USC student, and according to Dyson, “he was very upbeat and even joking on the phone.” “On Tuesday night, Don left me three different messages between 7 p.m. and 8:20 p.m. on voicemail saying he had secured the tickets,” said Dyson. “We were friends for over 40 years, and I will miss him.”

I CALLED THE REV. Jesse Jackson Wednesday, and he told me since hearing the tragic news, he is kicking off Black History Month by dedicating his Saturday morning Operation PUSH forum to celebrating Don’s life and legacy by having the “Don Cornelius & Soul Train Day.” The public is invited to come out and celebrate his life.

I asked him about his longtime friendship with Cornelius, whom he first met in 1964 when Cornelius was a street reporter for WVON radio. “I first met Don when he would cover Dr. Martin Luther King’s open housing rallies in Chicago, and he felt that black artists needed a TV audience and at that time you only had ‘American Bandstand’ out of Philly with Dick Clark way before BET and MTV,” Jackson said. “So Don started his ‘Soul Train’ weekly dance show on the 43rd floor of the Board of Trade building in the WCIU-TV studios, and it became extremely popular. George Johnson, former owner and founder of Johnson Products, became the exclusive and very first sponsor of ‘Soul Train’ with his Afro-Sheen commercials.”

“Don and I always competed to see who had the biggest natural, but he always won,” Jackson laughingly said. “And Aretha Franklin called me this morning to verify if the news was true. His show was a groundbreaking transformer in the music industry by providing access,” Jackson said.

THE DONS: I ALSO TALKED TO local TV producer Don Jackson of Central City Productions, who first met Cornelius when they both worked at WVON radio. Jackson helped Don launch the original “Soul Train Music Awards” show back in 1987.

“Stella, at that time, other major TV music awards shows objected to the need for a soul music awards show,” Jackson said. “And I was pleased to work with Don in launching the ‘Soul Train Music Awards’ and getting the Tribune Entertainment company to partner with us and air the show live and in primetime. The show was an instant hit in the ratings and lasted for 20 years ending in 2007.”

“I last saw him at the huge Chicago tribute last year in Millennium Park where my wife, Rose, and I spent two hours with him backstage in his dressing room, and he looked great and was joking, and reminiscing about the times we spent in starting the awards show,” Jackson said. “His Chicago nieces and nephews were also there, and he didn’t seem depressed or sad. His death was truly a shock and in passing, “We wish him LOVE, PEACE AND SOOOOOOOOOUL!”

Cornelius' legacy lives on in Chicago

February 2, 2012
by The Associated Press / DON BABWIN (Associated Press), KAREN HAWKINS (Associated Press)

(AP) -- When this proud city welcomed back hometown hero Don Cornelius last year, it wasn't just Chicago-style -- it was "Soul Train" style, complete with Afro wigs, bell bottoms and hip-shaking in the streets.

The 40th anniversary celebrations for "Soul Train" traced a remarkable journey for a former Chicago police officer who got his start in broadcasting when he pulled over a radio executive in a traffic stop and then had to build up his pioneering show one step at a time.

Cornelius, who became an icon defining black culture in America for decades, died at his California home Wednesday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was 75.

While the South Side native and his show left Chicago decades ago for Los Angeles, his legacy has lived on here -- in the "Don Cornelius Way" street sign west of downtown, in the teens and performers who boogied onstage during the early days of "Soul Train" and in the audiences who were glued to their televisions every Saturday to see the newest dance moves and styles.

To television viewers -- especially those in Chicago -- Cornelius was the epitome of cool. An impeccably dressed cat whose voice was as smooth as his demeanor and who rubbed elbows with the biggest stars in music and the most promising up-and-comers.

Which is why Chicago Ald. Walter Burnett says it was so much fun to see Cornelius let his guard down last year when the city gave him an honorary street sign.

"Don was just in rare form," said Burnett, whose ward the sign is in. "He just wanted to talk and talk and talk. ... He broke down because he was with his friends."

The sign is outside the studios of WCIU-TV, where "Soul Train" got its start in 1970. It began as a local program and aired nationally from 1971 to 2006.

Cornelius came back to town last year for the sign's unveiling and for a 40th anniversary celebration of the show. An anniversary concert featured acts such as soul singer Jerry "Iceman" Butler, the Impressions and the Chi-Lites.

Butler recalled that Cornelius seemed particularly pleased to be back home in Chicago.

"In his introduction, he talked about how much Chicago meant to him and even though he was transplanted now to California, that this would still be home and the home of 'Soul Train,'" said Butler, now a Cook County Commissioner.

At the sign unveiling, Chicago was just as happy to see Cornelius, Burnett said.

"That was a wonderful day, it took people back, man, to the 'Soul Train' days," he said. "I came in my leather jacket, people came with their Afro wigs on and their bell bottoms, people were dancing in the crowd. It was packed. ... It was a beautiful thing."

Cornelius got his start in broadcasting while working as a Chicago police officer. He pulled over Roy Wood, then news director of black radio station WVON-AM, who "was amazed at this police officer's voice," said Melody Spann Cooper, current president of WVON. Wood offered Cornelius a job in the newsroom, and he said yes.

Cooper said that while Cornelius was from Chicago, his influence was national.

"He was the original social network," she said. "Before we had internet or Facebook, we all gathered around that television every Saturday to see what people were listening to, what we were dancing to.

"Don Cornelius helped shape black culture at a time coming out of the Civil Rights era, when America had not been exposed to the social side of who we were," she said.

But "Soul Train" didn't start out big, and Butler recalled getting a call to come over and perform on the show on the day it was to make its inaugural syndicated broadcast.

"I think Gladys Knight and the Pips were originally scheduled to come and do it and they got jammed up and couldn't come and I was the stand-in, so I went and did it," he said.

Though he appreciated being called, Butler suggested that it was Cornelius who was the more grateful one.

"Well, you know, this is going to sound arrogant but at the time I did 'Soul Train' I meant more to the show than he meant to me. He was dealing with a South Side perspective and I was dealing with a nationwide perspective."

But, he said, Cornelius' career took off as the significance of the show grew and grew.

"Over time, he became the show to be on if you wanted to be anybody in this business," said Butler.

Butler, who played with the likes of Otis Redding and was once a member of the Impressions, along with Curtis Mayfield, sang for Cornelius at the 40th anniversary show. Along with two original Impressions and the singer who replaced the late Mayfield, Butler performed his 1969 hit "Only The Strong Survive."

Butler recalled Cornelius walking a little slower, but otherwise seeming to be in good health and in good spirits.

Malcolm X Artifacts Unearthed: Police Documents and More Found Among Belongings of Malcolm Jarvis

2012-02-02T10:52:00.001-05:00

Malcolm X as a young man during the early 1950s when he first began to represent the Nation of Islam. February 21 marks the 45th anniversary of his assassination., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Malcolm X artifacts unearthed: Police docs and more found among belongs of 'Shorty' Jarvis

By theGrio
3:10 PM on 02/01/2012
JEFF KAROUB,Associated Press

DETROIT (AP) -- Documents outlining the crime that landed Malcolm X in prison in the 1940s are among some 1,000 recently unearthed items purchased jointly by the civil rights leader's foundation and an independent collector of African-American artifacts.

The documents and other artifacts belonged to late musician Malcolm "Shorty" Jarvis, who served in prison with Malcolm X and was one of his closest friends. Jarvis' 1976 pardon paper also is part of the collection, which was recently discovered by accident.

The items had been in a Connecticut storage unit that had gone into default, and were initially auctioned off to a buyer who had no idea what he was bidding on.

The Omaha, Nebraska-based Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, which oversees the Malcolm X Center located at his birthplace, will house and display the just-arrived archives. It split the cost with Black History 101 Mobile Museum, based in Detroit -- the birthplace of the Nation of Islam.

Mobile Museum founder and curator Khalid el-Hakim declined to identify the original buyer or the price the two organizations paid for the trove. Still, even after splitting the cost, he said it's the largest acquisition to date for his mobile museum, which includes Jim Crow-era artifacts, a Ku Klux Klan hood and signed documents by Malcolm X and Rosa Parks.

He said the buyer first contacted the foundation, which in turn contacted el-Hakim.

"Once (the buyer) found out that it was of a significant historical nature, he decided then he didn't want to break the collection up. He wanted to make sure it went to the right home," said el-Hakim, a former Detroit Public Schools teacher now in graduate school at Western Michigan University.

Malcolm X foundation Board President Sharif Liwaru said the public will get its first full look at the collection on May 19, Malcolm X's birthday. El-Hakim said the mobile museum is taking some items on a multistate tour that started in January and includes upcoming stops in Chicago; New York; Cleveland; Lexington, Kentucky; and Honolulu.

Among the most interesting is a document of the 1946 sentencing of Jarvis, Malcolm X -- then known by his birth name, Malcolm Little -- and three others. The yellowed jury report describes the 1945 larceny of a home in Arlington, New Jersey, in which they stole a pair of gloves, flashlights, a rug, two perfume bottles, 20 pounds of sugar and assorted jewelry. As a bookend, the collection also contains a letter of pardon 30 years later from the state of Massachusetts that exonerates Jarvis of the conviction and sentence.

The collection also reveals an enduring connection between the two Malcolms after their incarceration, Malcolm X's conversion to Islam and his rise to prominence. There's a 72-page scrapbook of Malcolm X's life that was maintained by Jarvis until after his friend's 1965 assassination.

One of the civil rights era's most controversial and compelling figures, Malcolm X rose to fame as the chief spokesman of the Nation of Islam, a movement started in Detroit more than 80 years ago. He proclaimed the black Muslim organization's message at the time: racial separatism as a road to self-actualization and urged blacks to claim civil rights "by any means necessary" and referred to whites as "devils."

After breaking with the Nation of Islam in 1964 and making an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, he espoused a more internationalist approach to human rights and began emphasizing that he didn't view all whites as racists.

Lawrence Mamiya, a Vassar College professor of religion and Africana studies, said there's no doubt that the two Malcolms had been accomplices and good friends. He said it's difficult to assess the collection's historical significance, though there could be some value in Jarvis' published and unpublished book manuscripts, particularly to the extent that they describe their relationship before and after their incarceration.

For his part, el-Hakim said the court paperwork "represents one of the pivotal times in Malcolm X's life," and has never seen the document in all of his years of research and collecting, which he began more than two decades ago as a college student. But he's also grateful to discover and share pieces from Jarvis, who deserves his own scholarly treatment.

"You find out there's two Malcolms here -- one that developed spiritually in Islam and (the other) in Christianity," el-Hakim said.
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Copyright 2012 The Associated Press.

Government Investigation Ongoing Against Anti-War Activists

2012-02-01T23:48:00.001-05:00

Detroit activists gather at the McNamara Building to demand a halt to attacks by the federal government against anti-war and solidarity organizations. The FBI staged raids in numerous cities targeting several organizations. (Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe), a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

U.S. Attorney’s Office Confirms Investigation Is Ongoing into Anti-war Activists

The Northern Illinois Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas stated that the “investigation is continuing” into the case of the anti-war and international solidarity activists hit with FBI raids and grand jury repression. Barry Jonas is known for his leading role in prosecuting the leaders of the Holy Land Foundation while he was trial attorney for the Department of Justice Counter-terrorism Section.

This confirms what the U.S. Attorney’s office related some months ago - they are preparing multiple indictments of multiple activists. The FBI raided seven homes and the government subpoenaed 23 international solidarity activists to a Chicago grand jury over a year ago. The anti-war activists refused to appear at the secretive grand jury and launched a campaign against political repression. The U.S. government is threatening to imprison anti-war activists on the grounds of “material support for terrorism.”

The confirmation of the ongoing investigation came during a January 24, 2012 phone call between Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas and attorney Bruch Nestor, who represents some of the political activists.

Nestor initially contacted Minneapolis Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Winter to view some of the sealed documents in the case. The grand jury proceedings against the anti-war activists are secret. The vast majority of documents relating to their case are under seal, meaning the targeted activists or their attorneys cannot view them. Assistant U.S. Attorney Winter helped to oversee the Sept. 24, 2010 raids and in recent months represented the government on the issue of returning property seized in the raids. Winter told Nestor to contact Chicago Assistant U.S. Attorney Barry Jonas.

Jonas told Nestor the documents would remain secret "pending completion of the investigation."

Barry Jonas is responsible for railroading the Holy Land leaders. Jonas views solidarity with Palestine as a crime deserving long-term imprisonment. He is willing to pull every dirty trick available to him to obtain convictions. The Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development was once the largest Muslim charity in the U.S. Its efforts were geared towards providing humanitarian aid to help the people of Palestine and other countries. In 2001 its offices were raided. Three years later, five people associated with the charity were indicted. The first trial ended with a hung jury. The second trial ended with convictions. The five defendants received sentences that range from 15 to 65 years in prison.

The Holy Land trial included secret witnesses - the defense never got to find out who the witnesses were - the use of hearsay evidence, and the introduction of evidence that had nothing to do with the defendants in the case, such as showing a video from Palestine of protesters burning an American flag, as a means to prejudice the jury.

As lead prosecutor, Barry Jonas played a key role in all this. He is now working under Chicago U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who runs the federal grand jury attacking anti-war and international solidarity activists.

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression urges all supporters of peace with justice to sign the pledge to take action (http://www.stopfbi.net/get-involved/pledge-of-resistance) in the event that international solidarity activists are indicted.

In a closely related case, the FBI directed the LA Sheriff to raid the home of veteran Chicano leader Carlos Montes. Carlos Montes is now facing trial and imprisonment on six felony charges relating back to a student protest that happened 42 years ago.

Kenyan Newspaper Says 'Bring Our Soldiers In Somalia Back Home'

2012-02-01T23:25:00.001-05:00

Kenyan Defense Forces occupying the Horn of Africa nation of Somalia. The Kenyan government has invaded their neighbor in conjunction with an imperialist onslaught into the strategic state., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Opinion

Bring our soldiers in Somalia back home

By WILLIAM OCHIENG’
Kenya Daily Nation
Wednesday, February 1 2012 at 20:00

We have bombed them, whacked them and clobbered them. What next? Every event, however nice or ugly, must have an end – be it a dance, sex or beer-drinking. If you outstretch the limit you might die.

The government must decide when to put a stop to our foray in Somalia. To roam all over Somalia chasing Al-Shabaab will be futile. We think they have been taught a lesson. All that remains is to tell them: “Behave yourselves, or else, we will return”.

Yes, let a team of our army join the pan-African force in Mogadishu to support the Somali Government to do its work. The point, however, is that Kenya has no capacity to hold Somalia for long. We have better things to do with our funds.

Many of our institutions are asking for better salaries, and some of our trunk roads have began to fall apart.

It is time to quit. After all, we are not colonisers!

What has shocked us are the brutal conditions in which Al-Shabaab have held their people. It is a pointer that there are many human beings who have not crossed the road from wildlife to modernity.

Al-Shabaab did not care that there was a big drought, and famine in their country. They even denied the donor communities the chance to distribute food to their people. Will the feeble Mogadishu Government ever humanise these brutes?

We must do the Barack Obama thing: Call our boys back home, stay armed, alert and vigilant. We must work with the international community as we keep our borders safe and secure.

Indeed, our policy should be to keep 100 miles of bordering Somali territory clean of Al-Shabaab. Should they attack us again, then we must (in collaboration with the United Nations Security Council) determine the next phase of conflict.

For many years, since the Shifta war in the 1960s, we kept our defence force away from the international spotlight. Some of our neighbours have boasted that the Kenya Army would be a walk-over in any fight.

Well, our forces have shown that they have mettle.

But we cannot keep them slogging in a dysfunctional war. Fighting Al-Shabaab is like keeping weaver birds off a garden, knowing you cannot chase each bird to its nest. Our army must be trained to help modernise and expand our infrastructure, rebuild our forests, and manage disasters.

There is also the question of whether that country, if properly reconstituted, could in the future resume its earlier agitation for a “greater” Somalia. We hope not, but in case that agitation returns, it should be met by a multilateral force that includes Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

Besides, it is hoped that the Somali citizens of neighbouring East African countries will not be lured to take part in utopian ethnic bandwagons.

Ultimately, however, it is our hope that the Somali Republic will be absorbed into the East African Community, where it rightly belongs.

Somalis are a very industrious and friendly people. Their economy combines agriculture, in a few well-watered valleys, with pastoralism. They have been traders and fishermen for centuries, and it is suspected that Somalia, like neighbouring territories, might have vast oil deposits.

Prof Ochieng’ teaches history at Maseno University.

American Airlines Plans to Cut 13,000 Jobs, Eliminate Pensions

2012-02-01T23:03:00.001-05:00

American Airlines attendants union picket company in 2009. The airline firm says it will lay of 13,000 workers., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

American Airlines plans to cut 13,000 jobs, eliminate traditional pensions to cut costs

By Associated Press
Updated: Wednesday, February 1, 9:40 PM

DALLAS — The parent of American Airlines wants to eliminate about 13,000 jobs — 15 percent of its workforce — as the nation’s third-biggest airline remakes itself under bankruptcy protection.

The company proposes to end its traditional pension plans, a move strongly opposed by the airline’s unions and the U.S. pension-insurance agency, and to stop paying for retiree health benefits.

AMR Corp. said Wednesday that it must cut labor costs by 20 percent. It will soon begin negotiations with its three major unions, but the president of the flight attendants’ union quickly rejected the company’s ideas as unacceptably harsh.

CEO Thomas W. Horton said Wednesday that the company hopes to return to profitability by cutting spending by more than $2 billion per year and raising revenue by $1 billion per year.

AMR lost $884 million in the first nine months of 2011, and $904 million for December alone. It has lost more than $11 billion since 2001.

“We are going to use the restructuring process to make the necessary changes to meet our challenges head-on and capitalize fully on the solid foundation we’ve put in place,” Horton said in a letter to employees.

AMR’s 88,000 employees have braced for bad news for weeks. AMR, American and short-haul affiliate American Eagle filed for bankruptcy protection in November. Horton said in December that the company would emerge from bankruptcy with fewer workers.

Laura Glading, president of the Association of Professional Flight Attendants, said the proposal was more drastic than she expected. She claimed that the annual reduction in employee costs, which AMR put at $1.25 billion, would be closer to $2.8 billion.

“This is an absolute outrage,” Glading said. “There’s nothing in here that’s remotely acceptable.”

Transport Workers Association President James Little declared, “We’re going to fight this.” His union represents American’s mechanics and bag handlers, who would be hit hardest — 40 percent would be laid off.

The job cuts would include 4,600 maintenance workers, 4,200 baggage handlers, 2,300 flight attendants, 1,400 management and support employees and 400 pilots.

If American and its three unions can’t agree on changes, the company could ask a bankruptcy judge in New York to throw out existing labor contracts and impose the company’s conditions on workers. Federal law requires the company to first make a good-faith effort to negotiate agreements with its workers.

Besides fewer workers and reduced benefits, company officials said that other cost-cutting moves would include restructuring debt and aircraft leases and grounding older planes. A maintenance-overhaul facility in Fort Worth, Texas, would close and some maintenance would be outsourced, a move that American has long resisted. Aircraft-cleaning and fueling work would also be outsourced, and pilots and flight attendants could work more hours.

Ray Neidl, an analyst with Maxim Group LLC, said for American to win support for its plan, it would have to offer employees a goal — a carrot — and not just a stick. He said an AMR proposal for a new profit-sharing plan might help.

“It’s hard to see a carrot right now,” he said, “but you have to convince them that this is part of a plan to return to profits and secure jobs.”

The company also wants union approval to drop its traditional pension plans, which cover 130,000 employees and retirees. It would replace them with 401(k)-type plans under which the company contributes to workers’ retirement accounts.

The pension plans were once standard in the airline industry. AMR’s are underfunded by billions of dollars and the company said on a new website Wednesday that it could no longer afford them. This week, the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. slapped liens on $91 million in AMR property after the company paid only $6.5 million of a required $100 million contribution to the plans.

PBGC Director Joshua Gotbaum said that before American “takes such a drastic action as killing the pension plans of 130,000 employees and retirees, it needs to show there is no better alternative.” He said the company had failed to provide even basic financial details.

American said the cost of traditional pensions and retiree health benefits saddled AMR with higher labor costs than its rivals. Through the first nine months of 2011, labor was 29 percent of operating costs at AMR compared with 22 percent at United and 20 percent at Delta.

Horton said AMR also plans to go ahead with orders to buy hundreds of new aircraft to replace older gas-guzzlers. That would cut fuel use — high fuel costs have been a major drag on American and other airlines. The bankruptcy judge hasn’t approved those new orders, but he has allowed the company to take delivery of some new jets.

American plans to increase flights in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Miami by 20 percent over the next five years to raise revenue, Horton said.

AMR, which barely avoided bankruptcy in 2003, is the latest of several large U.S. airlines to go through Chapter 11 in an effort to reduce costs and debt. United, Delta and US Airways did so in the past decade, and Continental — now part of United — in the 1990s.
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Follow David Koenig at http://www.twitter.com/airlinewriter

Egypt Soccer Unrest Leaves More Than 70 Dead, Military Blamed

2012-02-01T22:19:00.001-05:00

A distrubance at a soccer match in Egypt left over 70 people dead and many injured. Many are blaming the military for the deaths., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

February 1, 2012

Riot in Egypt Kills More Than 70, and Many Blame Military

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
New York Times

CAIRO — At least 73 people were killed in a brawl between rival groups of soccer fans after a match in the city of Port Said on Wednesday, the bloodiest outbreak of lawlessness since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak one year ago.

The riot refocused attention on the failure of the transitional government to re-establish a sense of order and stability in the streets and threatened to provoke a new crisis for Egypt’s halting political transition. The deadliest soccer riot anywhere in more than 15 years, it also illuminated the potential for savagery among the organized groups of die-hard fans known here as ultras who have added a volatile element to the street protests since Mr. Mubarak’s exit.

Leading members of the newly elected Parliament accused the military-led government of deliberately allowing the violence to escalate to justify its expansive police powers and undermine the revolution.

Lawmakers demanded high-level resignations and threatened a vote of no confidence in the military-appointed cabinet, and Parliament scheduled an emergency session on Thursday to discuss the episode.

“The reason for this tragedy is the deliberate neglect and absence of the military and the police,” said Essam el Erian, a senior lawmaker from the Muslim Brotherhood’s political arm, which leads the chamber.

He accused security forces of “a plot against democratic transition” and of “a revenge against us” for seeking to end the so-called emergency law allowing extralegal detention.

“This will not pass without punishment, a thousand punishments,” he warned.

Politicians, fans and Egyptian soccer officials all faulted the police for failing to conduct the standard gate searches to prevent fans from bringing knives, clubs or other weapons into the match.

The first flurries of violence, by all accounts, occurred about midway through the match between the historical rivals El Masry of Port Said and Al Ahly of Cairo. The visiting Ahly fans displayed a sign questioning the virility of Port Said fans, and the game was halted temporarily because of scuffles in the stands.

After El Masry came from behind to win in a 3-1 upset, its fans stormed the field, chasing Al Ahly’s players back to their locker room and attacking its fans with knives, clubs and stones. The police around the stadium appeared unable or unwilling to control the violence, and video footage showed officers standing idle as the melee exploded.

Mohammed Abu Trika, a star player with Al Ahly, said that the police had done nothing. “People here are dying, and no one is doing a thing. It’s like a war,” he said in an interview on Al Ahly’s satellite channel. “Is life this cheap?”

Soon locker rooms had transformed into makeshift field hospitals. Bloody bodies littered the field. Health Ministry officials said that some people had died of knife wounds and some from blows to the head. Some were thrown down from high in the stands. Others were trampled by stampeding fans rushing to escape.

An official of the Port Said morgue said at least a few of those killed were members of the security forces, The Associated Press reported.

Egypt’s military rulers sent helicopters and military vehicles to Port Said to carry the Ahly players and fans, the injured and the dead back to Cairo. Other soldiers and tanks were deployed around the city to help keep the peace.

In a rare impromptu statement, Egypt’s top military officer, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, vowed in a phone call to Al Ahly’s satellite channel that the military would apprehend those responsible and that the victims would be compensated.

“We will get through this stage. Egypt will be stable,” he said. “We have a road map to transfer power to elected civilians. If anyone is plotting instability in Egypt, they will not succeed. Everyone will get what they deserve.”

Others sought to associate the rioting fans with political protests in the streets. “This is a plot to topple the state,” said Kamel Abu Ali, president of the Masry club, who resigned over the deaths. “The police have to come back strongly, and we must let them do their job,” he continued, in a television interview. “When a thug is being punished, we shouldn’t defend him.”

The bloodshed was believed to be the deadliest soccer match since 1996, when 78 people died in a stampede after a match in Guatemala City.

In Cairo, the die-hard fans of the capital’s Zamalek club, usually archrivals of Al Ahly, abandoned a match in midgame in solidarity with the team, burning their signs as they usually do at the end. The match was called off, and by the end of the night, the league had suspended its schedule.

Apolitical before last year’s uprising, the fans, or ultras, were known for their rowdy behavior, obscene chants and apparently endless enthusiasm for clashes with the often-brutal Egyptian police.

The ultras joined the revolt against Mr. Mubarak on the first day of protests, taunting and harassing the police as they tried to crack down on thousands of other marchers heading for Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Protest organizers said that they had played a more central role in the “battle of the camels,” helping to beat back mobs of Mubarak supporters in a daylong battle of rocks and gasoline bombs. Thursday is the anniversary of that event, a turning point in the Egyptian revolt.

By 2 a.m. Thursday, a new wave of protests had begun, blaming the military-led government for allowing the deaths of the fans. There were reports of marchers’ making their way through Port Said and chanting for the fall of the military council and clashes with police officers firing tear gas in the city of Suez.

In Cairo, demonstrators against military rule who had been camped out by the state television building moved their vigil to the Ahly headquarters. Then they marched to the train station, where hundreds were gathering to receive returning survivors.

Mayy El Sheikh contributed reporting.

Corporate Press Claims Detroit Mayor, Unions Have Reached Concessions Deal

2012-02-01T22:05:00.001-05:00

Crowds at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Detroit attending a rally in opposition to the imposition of an emergency manager. The mass meeting was held on January 2, 2012. (Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe), a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, unions reach tentative deals

February 1, 2012

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is seeking to cut $102 million from this fiscal year's budget. By

Suzette Hackney and Steve Neavling
Detroit Free Press Staff Writers

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing's administration has reached tentative agreements -- contracts with substantial worker concessions -- with a significant number of the city's 48 labor unions in a down-to-the-wire effort to ward off a state-appointed emergency manager, according to people close to the negotiations.

Labor leaders said Tuesday that 25, slightly more half of the city's bargaining units, have reached tentative agreements. However, administration officials would not confirm that number.

The city has been unable to negotiate as much savings as Bing had hoped, but the concessions on health care and prescription drugs are substantial, according to people close to the negotiations. Bing is seeking to cut $102 million from this fiscal year's budget to help avoid the state taking control of the city.

Union leaders said they agreed to a savings of $20 million a year alone on prescription drugs by finding a new provider.

The biggest long-term savings targets the ballooning pension costs. Under the tentative agreements, new employees would be largely responsible for paying into defined-contribution plans, much like a 401(k).

Currently union members have defined-benefit plans, financed largely by taxpayers. Still, the pacts are anything but certain.

Labor leaders said they won't seek ratification by their members unless defiant police and fire unions also approve concessions. And rank-and-file members, most of whom accepted 10% wage cuts nearly three years ago, would still have to approve the deal.

Late Tuesday, the administration released a statement offering few details about the ongoing talks. Negotiations were expected to last into the night.

"Mayor Bing has met with key members of the major unions, both uniform and nonuniform, today," the statement said. "Negotiations are ongoing."

Although tentative agreements could be a victory for Bing, they may not contain the cost savings needed to solve the budget crunch alone. Some council members say the union concessions are not enough, and are proposing deeper cuts, including closing all of the city's recreation centers, privatizing ambulance services, increasing bus and garbage fees and reducing the salaries of employees making more than $100,000 by 15%.

The council has suggested cuts that members hope Bing will include in his final financial restructuring plan that will be presented to Gov. Rick Snyder.

City officials don't want to present two plans to Snyder -- a Bing plan and a council plan -- because such a move would give the state the impression of divisiveness and leadership deficiencies.

The Michigan Treasury gave city leaders until early February to reach concessions.

Snyder appointed a 10-member financial review team that has been examining the city's finances. Under a law backed and signed by Snyder in March, the review is another step in a process that could lead to the appointment of an emergency manager.

Alternatively, it could lead to a consent agreement under which local officials receive increased powers and agree to take certain steps to right the city's finances.

A meeting to discuss proposed council reductions Tuesday ended because not enough council members were present. Five of the nine council members are required in attendance to hold a public meeting of the full board. But three council members had scheduled meetings with the financial review team.

Without full union concessions, the state is expected to appoint an emergency manager or urge the council and mayor to use a consent agreement to privatize services, restructure government and impose a contract on employees when most of the union contracts expire June 30.

After learning that some of the city's 48 unions appear likely to tentatively approve landmark concessions, council members expressed cautious optimism that some services could be saved.

"The more concessions we get, the more we can scale back some of the recommendations" for cuts, City Council President Charles Pugh's spokeswoman Kirsten Ussery said. "Concessions will help with the immediate cash crisis, but there is no way to avoid some of these tough decisions that council will have to make."

Ratified union contracts could limit the divisions among council members who can't agree on the severity of cuts needed to ward off an emergency manager.

Council members Kwame Kenyatta and JoAnn Watson said Tuesday they were uncomfortable with some of their colleagues' recommendations for more than $100 million in cuts.

"At this point, I'm not voting for this," Kenyatta said, without offering alternatives. "Until we have a vote, we don't have a plan. I don't think even the majority at the table would support this."

Councilman James Tate said he was encouraged by word of the tentative agreements, and called the negotiations unprecedented, particularly in such a short period. The administration has been in talks with the unions since November.

"I am aware that the clock is ticking and action has to be taken quickly," Tate said.

Tate said the council is aware that cuts will have to be made if union concessions aren't enough, but there is a limit to slashing services without viable options. Take recreation, for example.

"I don't have a problem with us getting out of the recreation business, but we have to provide an alternative for the community or at least foster relationships with others who can fill in the gaps if we can't provide that service," he said.

Contact Suzette Hackney: 313-222-6678 or shackney@freepress.com

Great-Granddaughter of Ida B. Wells-Barnett Seeking Monument to Anti-Lynching Crusader

2012-02-01T00:45:00.001-05:00

Abayomi Azikiwe as director of the Pan-African Research & Documentation Center in Detroit. In 1998 he formed the Pan-African News Wire. The news agency has published thousands of articles in over 100 different publications and websites., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Great-Granddaughter of Ida B. Wells-Barnett Seeking Monument to Anti-Lynching Crusader

Pioneer in civil rights, women’s emancipation and social welfare deserves tribute in Chicago

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

150 years ago on July 16, 1862, Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born into the antebellum slave system in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Wells-Barnett, who died on March 25, 1931 during the Great Depression, is still recognized today as one of the early pioneers in the struggle against lynching and for the rights of African Americans, women and the working poor.

During late 2011, an effort was undertaken by the great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Michelle Duster, to have a sculpture placed in the location where a housing project named after the anti-lynching activist once stood on Chicago’s south side. The Ida B. Wells Homes opened in 1941 and was part of the New Deal era Public Works Administration construction projects.

The Wells Homes suffered the same fate as other public housing projects in Chicago and throughout the United States. In the decades after World War II when larger numbers of African Americans migrated from the southern states to the northern industrial regions, racist employment and residential practices led to the systematic segregation of urban areas in the country.

This de jure and de facto segregation stemmed from the conscious policies of the ruling class in the U.S. to divide the working class in order to continue the super-exploitation of the African American population. Housing projects, although considered progressive for providing low-income residents when they were first built during the mid-20th century, later became the dumping-grounds for African Americans.

The Wells Homes, which consisted of 1,662 units with more than 860 apartments and nearly 800 row houses, deteriorated over the decades. By the 1990s, the area became a center for drug activity and gang-related crime and violence.

In an article published by the Associated Press it noted that “In an infamous 1994 case, two boys, ages 10 and 11, dropped a 5-year-old boy to his death from a vacant 14-floor apartment. The boys were convicted on juvenile murder charges.” (Associated Press, December 30, 2011)

This case gained nationwide attention and illustrated the conditions under which millions of African Americans lived in urban areas. The Associated Press recalled in the same article that “The same year two neighborhood teenagers produced an award-winning radio documentary ‘Ghetto-Life 101,’ which aired on National Public Radio.”

Eventually by 2002, the final buildings at the Wells Homes were torn down. Other housing projects in Chicago such as the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini Green would also be razed in a federal and local government program purportedly aimed at eliminating blight and encouraging more humane living conditions for low-income city dwellers.

Nonetheless, the government policies of eliminating public housing and refusing to invest adequate sums of public money into building low and moderate-income communities contributed significantly to the burgeoning problem of homelessness as well as foreclosures and evictions. Today the lack of quality and affordable housing is one the most serious problems facing working people under capitalism.

The Legacy of Ida B. Wells-Barnett

It was not until the emergence of the campaign launched by Ida B. Wells during the early 1890s that there was widespread attention given to the genocidal wave of terror inflicted on African Americans centered in the southern United States, but not necessarily limited to this region. Wells, whose parents had been enslaved, studied at Shaw University and eventually became a primary school teacher in Mississippi as well as in Shelby County, Tennessee.

Her parents died in the yellow fever epidemic of the late 1870s that struck Mississippi and southwest Tennessee. Soon Wells went to Memphis to live with the widow of her uncle who had also perished during the yellow fever epidemic.

It was during her tenure as a school teacher in Woodstock, Tennessee in 1884 that she became embroiled in a racial segregation lawsuit after the young educator was forcibly removed from a ladies’ coach reserved for whites-only on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. After filing suit in the Circuit Court and winning a favorable judgment against the railroad company, the firm appealed to the State Supreme Court of Tennessee, having the lower court’s decision overturned against Wells.

As a young school teacher in Memphis, Wells participated in the social life of the African American community during this period. She joined a lyceum in the city where she read poetry, essays and engaged in debates on the contemporary issues of the times. After making an impression on her colleagues at the lyceum, she was asked to take over the editorship of their literary journal, the Evening Star.

Later she would take partial control of the Free Speech and Headlight newspaper in Memphis. This was a period of flowering for numerous African American newspapers which covered issues the white-dominated corporate publications would never address.

Eventually she would take full control of the newspaper then called the Free Speech. It was during the course of building her reputation as a newspaper publisher and editor that a murderous act of mob violence in Memphis would change the course of the life of Ida B. Wells. While away from Memphis on newspaper business in Natchez, Mississippi, word came to Wells on the lynching of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell and Henry Stewart who were friends of the Free Speech editor.

According to published newspaper reports of the period, the three African American men had wounded three whites who had unlawfully entered a store they owned in order to carry out a robbery. The three Black men were arrested and placed in the Shelby County jail where some days later a select group of whites were admitted by the authorities inside the lock-up in order to remove Moss, McDowell and Stewart.

The men were forced on to a switch engine rail car which ran in back of the county jail. The three were taken one mile north of Memphis city limits and shot to death by the white mob.

Wells was outraged by the killings and wrote fiery editorials denouncing the authorities in Memphis for allowing such actions to take place without any attempts at prosecuting the perpetrators. While away on a speaking tour the offices of the Free Speech were ransacked and destroyed.

Wells wrote in her autobiography that “I had bought a pistol the first thing after Tom Moss was lynched, because I expected some cowardly retaliation from the lynchers. I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap.” (Wells-Barnett, Crusade for Justice, p. 62)

Wells never returned to Memphis to live after the destruction of her newspaper offices. She would travel throughout England, Scotland and Wales in 1893-94 speaking on the atrocities being committed against African Americans in the U.S. She would continue as a newspaper writer and public lecturer for the remaining years of her life.

In 1895 she would publish the first serious study on the problem of racially-motivated mob violence. This book was entitled: “A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings in the United States, 1892-1893-1894.”

Wells would marry Attorney Ferdinand Lee Barnett in 1895, the founder of the Conservator, the first African American newspaper in Chicago. She was an early proponent of women’s suffrage and in Chicago, where she re-located to live the remainder of her life, she worked as a leader in the African American women’s club movement, the Equal Rights League and the Negro Fellowship League.

Monument Commissioned in Chicago

The Ida B. Wells Commemorative Committee is attempting to raise $300,000 in donations to complete the project. Chicago artist Richard Hunt has been commissioned to create the sculpture, which will combine an image of Wells along with her writings.

Michelle Duster said of the project that “I want people to remember Ida B. Wells the woman, not Ida B. Wells the housing community. Something should be done to remember who she was.” (Associated Press, December 30, 2011)

Duster went on to comment that “I think who she was as a woman got lost when it was attached to the housing projects. Her name and what she did can’t be lost with the housing project.”

Libyan Loyalists Retake Bani Walid

2012-02-01T00:27:00.001-05:00

Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire, has been interviewed on numerous occasions on Press TV. Azikiwe has discussed U.S. foreign policy toward Libya and the African continent., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Libyan Loyalists Retake Bani Walid

Attacks mount against imperialist-backed NTC rebel regime

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

A series of attacks have been launched against the United States and NATO-installed National Transitional Council in Libya. The most significant events occurred on January 23 when local forces still loyal to the former government of slain leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi retook the city of Bani Walid located 200 k (120 miles) south-east of Tripoli.

During the battles to reclaim the city four people were killed and 20 others were injured. Reports indicate that heavy weaponry was used by several hundred Libyan loyalists including 106 mm anti-tank launchers.

The liberation of Bani Walid took place after a gun battle with the NTC rebels that lasted only a few hours. Immediately green flags were hoisted, a symbol of the Jamahiriya government that was driven from power by a seven-month bombing campaign carried out by the U.S.-NATO forces.

A witness to the events on January 23 told Reuters that “They (the loyalists) control the town now. They are roaming the town.” (Reuters, January 23)

NTC rebels that were patrolling Bani Walid had recently arrested supporters of the former government prompting outrage among the population. The city had been one of the last to fall during the war against Libya which lasted for eight months and resulted in the wholesale destruction of the country’s infrastructure and the theft of its national wealth.

After holding out for many months against the U.S.-NATO forces and the NTC rebels, the local loyalist forces agreed to allow the western-backed gunmen to enter the city. However, tensions have remained extremely high.

Just last November gun fights erupted when NTC rebels entered the city in an attempt to arrest pro-Gaddafi supporters. On January 23, loyalist forces attacked a NTC militia garrison killing several guards before moving to occupy the center of the city.

According to Reuters, it may be very difficult for the NTC to make any attempts to exercise authority over Bani Walid. Sentiments against the western-backed rebels have not subsided.

Journalist Taha Zargoun wrote that “Taking back control of the town will be challenging because it has natural defenses. Anyone approaching from the north has to descend into a deep valley and then climb up the other side, giving defenders an advantage.” (Reuters, January 23)

Bani Walid Liberation Part of Broader Unrest

In various regions of Libya the NTC has been rapidly losing any semblance of control of the country. Other attacks by loyalist forces took place in the eastern city of Benghazi, the base of the counter-revolution and in Tripoli, the capital.

In Benghazi, pro-Gaddafi fighters mounted offensives against NTC rebels killing at least three gunmen. In the capital of Tripoli, guerrilla units loyal to the former government of Gaddafi launched attacks against NTC personnel in several neighborhoods across the city.

Overall dissatisfaction with the imperialist-backed rebel regime is increasing by the day. Even elements that supported the counter-revolution have rapidly grown disillusioned with the NTC regime which has failed to reign in the militia groups that roam areas of the capital and other cities committing atrocities against the people.

Even the Associated Press had to admit that “The bold attacks are the latest breakdown in security, three months after Gaddafi’s capture and killing. Protests have surged in recent weeks, with people demanding that the interim leaders deliver on promises of transparency and compensation for those injured in the civil war.” (Associated Press, January 23)

There have also been reports of attacks launched by loyalist forces in the western Nafusa mountains. This has prompted the NTC rebel regime to heighten security in Misrata, setting up check points in order to secure entrance points into the city.

After the fall of Tripoli in August, many loyalist units took refuge in Bani Walid and other areas in the west of the country. Reports of clashes have been consistent from the area.

Imperialists Ignore Human Rights Violations in Libya

Since the beginning of the rebellion against the Gaddafi government last February, there have been gross human rights violations against people inside the country. Foreign nationals, Black Libyans and loyalist forces were subjected to harassment, beatings, illegal imprisonment, torture and death at the hands of the NTC rebels and their imperialist backers.

During the course of the bombing campaign between March 19 and October 20, 26,000 sorties were carried out and 10,000 airstrikes. Estimates of deaths during this period range from 50,000-100,000.

At least 7,000 people remain imprisoned inside the country including the son and heir apparent to Muammar Gaddafi, Seif al-Islam. Seif was captured by the NTC rebels in south of the country late last year and has been held incommunicado since then.

Seif al-Islam has had one of his hand severed and reportedly is not allowed to seek legal counsel. The International Criminal Court (ICC), which had indicted Muammar Gaddafi and Seif al-Islam for alleged war crimes during the bombing of the country, has now said that the son can be tried on Libya soil under the purported laws of the NTC rebels.

In a report released in January by several human rights organizations, there are still widespread abuses, unjustified imprisonment and torture being conducted by the NTC rebel regime. The document entitled: “Report of the Independent Civil Society Fact-finding Mission to Libya,” reveals that victims of NATO and NTC war crimes reside in numerous areas throughout the country including Tripoli, Sibrata, Khoms, Zilten, Misrata, Tawergha and Sirte.

The authors of the report include the Arab Organization for Human Rights, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the International Legal Assistance Consortium. The document further confirms the deliberate targeting of civilians during the bombing campaign between March and October of 2011.

Journalist Farirai Chubvu wrote of the findings that “The report exposes the human rights and democratic pretexts employed by the U.S., France, Britain and their NATO accomplices to carry out a colonial-style war of conquest. It makes clear that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973, imposing a ‘no-fly zone’ and arms embargo on Libya supposedly to protect civilians from repressive actions by Muammar Gaddafi, was in fact used to carry out a ruthless air war waged in coordination with ‘rebel’ forces on the ground.”

Consequently, the imperialist states cannot be relied upon to protect the basic human rights of peoples within countries where they are carrying out wars. When President Barack Obama boasted during his state of the union address recently that the government of Gaddafi had been overthrown, no mention was ever made of the horrendous crimes committed by his government and NATO against the people of Libya.

Anti-war, peace and social justice organizations in the U.S. and other western countries must continue to speak out against imperialist wars being waged against oppressed peoples. Despite the false claims of concern for human rights and civil rights both inside the U.S. and abroad, it is the western states that are the main purveyors of violations of fundamental rights throughout the world.

United States Military Says Taliban Set to Retake Power

2012-01-31T22:54:00.001-05:00

Taliban units on patrol in Afghanistan. The resistance movement to US/NATO occupation has issued a "Code of Conduct" manual. Casualties are mounting among both the Afghan people and the imperialist troops., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

U.S. military says Taliban set to retake power: report

10:22pm EST

LONDON (Reuters) - The United States military has said in a secret report that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control over Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country, Britain's Times of London newspaper said Wednesday.

"Many Afghans are already bracing themselves for an eventual return of the Taliban," the newspaper said, quoting the report. "Once ISAF (NATO-led forces) is no longer a factor, Taliban consider their victory inevitable," it quoted the report.

The Times said the "highly classified" report was put together by the U.S. military at Bagram air base in Afghanistan for top NATO officers last month. The BBC also carried a report on the leaked document.

Large swathes of Afghanistan have already been handed back to Afghan security forces, with the last foreign combat troops due to leave by the end of 2014.

The document cited by the Times and the BBC also stated that Pakistan's powerful security agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), was assisting the Taliban in directing attacks against foreign forces -- a charge denied by Islamabad.

Washington and its allies have long complained that the Taliban and other Islamist and criminal groups operate out of safe havens in tribal areas in Pakistan's west and northwest.

The document's findings were based on interrogations of more than 4,000 Taliban and al Qaeda detainees, the Times said, adding however it identified only few individual insurgents.

A State Department spokesman and Britain's Foreign Office both declined comment on the report. NATO and Pakistani officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Despite the presence of about 100,000 foreign troops, violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in 2001, according to the United Nations.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) says levels of violence are falling.

Citing the same report, the BBC reported on its website that Pakistan and the ISI knew the locations of senior Taliban leaders and supported the expulsion of "foreign invaders from Afghanistan."

"Senior Taliban leaders meet regularly with ISI personnel, who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the government of Pakistan," it said.

Pentagon officials said they had not seen the reports and could not comment on their specifics.

But Pentagon spokesman George Little said: "We have long been concerned about ties between elements of the ISI and some extremist networks."

Little said U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta "has also been clear that he believes that the safe havens in Pakistan remain a serious problem and need to be addressed by Pakistani authorities."

The Times said in its report the document suggested the Taliban were gaining in popularity partly because the austere Islamist movement was becoming more tolerant.

It quoted the report: "It remains to be seen whether a revitalized, more progressive Taliban will endure if they continue to gain power and popularity. Regardless, at least within the Taliban, the refurbished image is already having a positive effect on morale."

(Reporting by Stephen Mangan; addtional reporting by Missy Ryan in WASHINGTON; Editing by Paul Tait and Sanjeev Miglani)

As Afghanistan Soldiers Rebel U.S.-led 'Coalition' Shows Cracks

2012-01-31T22:15:00.001-05:00

Afghans protest in Mozar-i-Sharif against the civilian deaths resulting from US/NATO military operations inside the country. The death toll for the imperialist forces has escalated despite a troops surge., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

As Afghan soldiers rebel U.S.-led ‘coalition’ shows cracks

By Deirdre Griswold
Published Jan 29, 2012 6:28 PM

It was more than 10 years ago — Oct. 7, 2001, to be precise — that the Bush administration first sent troops to Afghanistan, in what it called Operation Enduring Freedom. The name was cooked up by whoever in the Pentagon comes up with such euphemisms. The only thing that has endured is war, brutal and destructive.

In fact, by June 2010 the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan had become the longest war in U.S. history.

And unless the Obama administration abandons the ambitions of the U.S. ruling class to subdue the Afghan people and turn their country into a strategic stepping stone to exploit Central and Southwest Asia, the war will go on indefinitely.

But perhaps not with what the U.S. government calls its “coalition partners” — other imperialist countries in NATO that agreed to send forces to bolster the U.S. troops there.

Every war waged by imperialist “allies” involves secret promises to share the spoils of war once they have won. But when victory is called into question, these alliances become shaky.

Right now, it is France that may be contemplating leaving the “coalition” and withdrawing its troops. There is an immediate reason: the killing of four French soldiers and the wounding of 15 others on Jan. 20 by just one soldier of the Afghan armed forces, supposed allies of the imperialists.

Just weeks earlier, two members of the French Foreign Legion had been killed, also by an Afghan soldier.

After the latest attack, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that France was suspending its military mission in Afghanistan, which has been training Afghan soldiers. France has almost 4,000 troops there; they were due to stay until the end of 2013. The vast majority of the people in France oppose their country’s role in the war, according to polls, and want the troops brought home now. The economic crisis in Europe undoubtedly has made the people even more war-weary.

Some 90,000 of the 130,000 foreign troops now stationed in Afghanistan come from the United States. Nearly 10,000 come from Britain, which first attempted to shoot its way into Afghanistan in the middle of the 19th century, but finally gave up after fierce resistance by the Afghan people.

The original reason given by Washington for the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the presumed role of Al-Qaida in the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. Last May, U.S. Special Forces killed the leader of Al-Qaida, Osama bin Laden, as U.S. military and political leaders watched on satellite television. Bin Laden was living in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, when he was killed.

So what’s the excuse now for the U.S. to stay in Afghanistan?

Afghan soldiers take aim at ‘allies’

A report based on a secret military study conducted by the “coalition” admitted there was enormous hostility in the Afghan army to the occupying troops. “Lethal altercations are clearly not rare or isolated; they reflect a rapidly growing systemic homicide threat (a magnitude of which may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern military history),” notes the report. (New York Times, Jan. 20)

The study found that between May 2007 and May 2011, at least 58 Western troops were killed in 26 separate attacks by Afghan soldiers and police. Most of the attacks had occurred after October 2009. By the end of 2011, the number was even higher.

It’s bound to increase as reports grow of U.S. soldiers desecrating the bodies of Afghans they have killed, while insulting their religion and culture.

This “coalition” report is critical of the Pentagon’s public relations department, which has tried to belittle the problem. But the report evades the real cause of the Afghan people’s animosity toward the West — putting it down to “cultural incompatibility.”

This attitude toward Afghanistan perpetuates the insults added to the injuries done to this country by Western imperialism. Afghanistan, a land at the heart of the historic Silk Road linking the Middle East and Europe to China, was from its earliest days a place where many cultures came into constant contact. “It was not only in terms of trade, money and luxury goods that the Silk Road had an overwhelming effect. It was also vitally important in the transport of ideas,” writes Bijan Omrani on the website of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan.

The people of Afghanistan are no less tolerant than any others toward outside cultures. What they cannot and will not accept, however, are the atrocities and vicious indignities that are inevitable when outside powers attempt to impose their will through military might.

The virtual rebellion by members of the Afghan army and police against the occupying forces merely reflects the intense hatred for these oppressors by the Afghan people as a whole.

According to costofwar.com, the war in Afghanistan has cost the U.S. almost $500 billion. The destruction done to Afghanistan and its people is incalculable. But it will take a very big struggle by the anti-war movement in the U.S. to force the capitalist government to admit its defeat and get out.
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'Some African States Used As Fronts by Europe'

2012-01-31T21:53:00.001-05:00

Martyred Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi with President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe. Gaddafi was assassinated by US imperialism and its agents on October 20, 2011., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

‘Some African states used as fronts by Europe'

Wednesday, 01 February 2012 00:00
Munyaradzi Huni recently in ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Zimbabwe Herald

PRESIDENT Mugabe has said some African countries have become "just bodies" used by Europe as fronts.

He said this yesterday following what transpired at the just-ended 18th African Union summit in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.

He said even if Africa had no means to establish a force to stop NATO from bombarding Libya, at least the continent should have protested and said "no" to the wanton killing of people and destruction of infrastructure in that country.

Speaking to journalists on arrival at the Harare International Airport yesterday, the President said the Peace and Security Commission should not have rushed to recognise Libya's National Transition Council as this was the responsibility of the AU Summit.

He described the NATO actions in Libya as criminal, adding that: "we said absolutely nothing. Even if we could not raise a force, at least we should have protested. How did we fail to say even no?"

The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces said the continent's founding fathers had fought to regain lost territory in Africa.

He said they fought for self-determination and non-interference, the founding principles of the Organisation of African Unity, the predecessor of the AU.

The President said the Peace and Security Commission was established to facilitate dialogue between the fighters in Libya, but it seemed "they felt intimidated into recognising the NTC".

Asked whether there was any foreign hand that could have influenced the deadlock in voting for the chairperson of the African Union Commission pitting incumbent Jean Ping of Gabon and South African Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, President Mugabe said: "Yes, there is always a foreign hand. Some African countries have become just bodies; they are fronts of Europe, fronts of France and so on."

He said Southern Africa felt Mr Ping did not handle the Libyan issue properly.

He said the summit did not have time to discuss its theme on boosting intra-trade in Africa as they focused on the political situation on the continent.

President Mugabe, however, said there was not much trade between African countries due to the products they produced and the different economic structures.

The summit ended in the early hours of yesterday as the majority of Franco-phone states continued to frustrate progress amid reports that they were taking instructions from Europe, especially France.

Instead of issuing a communiqué as is the tradition, the summit only held a poorly attended Press conference where the election of the AU Commission chairperson took centre stage.

Occupy D.C. Defies Eviction Order

2012-01-31T08:12:00.001-05:00

Occupy D.C. encampment is facing eviction by the city authorities. Occupy movements are under attack across the United States., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Occupy DC Camps Remain As Deadline Passes

No Arrests As Of Tuesday
By Ed Payne CNN
UPDATED: 5:27 am MST January 31, 2012

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Defiant but festive, Occupy DC protesters hunkered down early Tuesday as a deadline passed for U.S. Park Police to begin enforcing a ban on camping in two Washington parks.

"We're just having a great party," said Occupy DC representative Sara Shaw. "We've camped since October so it's a lot like any other night. We're all staying awake and looking out for each other."

Until now, Occupy protesters have been allowed to remain under a Park Service interpretation that considered the activity a "24-hour vigil."

But on Friday, the National Park Service set a noon Monday deadline for protesters who have occupied the parks for months to remove their camping gear.

Park officials said protesters would be allowed to remain around the clock and keep up tents, so long as one side of each tent remains open at all times so they can see inside.

Early Tuesday morning, the scene at McPherson Park was largely quiet. Some milled around, with little hint of police presence.

"It's quiet because it's been a long day," said a person streaming the scene from the park using a wireless Internet connection "A lot of people are sleeping."

Dozens huddled under what movement members were calling their "Tent of Dreams" -- a large blue tarp draped over the statue of the park's namesake, Civil War Gen. James B. McPherson.

"Let us sleep so we can dream," they chanted.

Blue tents dotted the grounds. "Eviction?? BRING IT!!" read one cardboard sign.

Another sign, scrawled in white paint on a blue tarp, said: "Evicted from home by the banks. Evicted from the tent by the police. 99% has no safe place to rest."

The threat of arrest didn't deter many in the Occupy DC movement. Many braced for a police raid, spurred by rumors on social media. But it never came.

"If anyone can explain the source of the raid "confirmation" tonight, please provide it," the Occupy DC said on its Twitter feed. "Otherwise don't spread rumors. #occupydc"

No arrests had been made as of early Tuesday morning at McPherson Park or Freedom Plaza. Some protesters packed up the prohibited gear, but others moved in and set up camp.

"This is our final stand in a way," protester Todd Fine told CNN affiliate WJLA. "This is not camping. This is free speech. We have no other way to reach our government."

Occupy DC is part of a larger activist surge that began last year in New York and quickly spread.

While the protesters have highlighted a number of causes, the overarching theme has remained largely the same: populist anger over what activists portray as an out-of-touch corporate, financial and political elite.

Violent clashes erupted over the weekend in Oakland, California.

Protesters trying to take-over a vacant convention center threw rocks, bottles and other objects Saturday afternoon at police, who responded with bean-bag rounds, tear gas and smoke grenades. Afterward, the activists criticized police as being heavy-handed, with police and city officials said the protesters instigated the violence.

The Oakland demonstrators later got into a downtown YMCA and, eventually, City Hall. Once there, police said that protesters painted graffiti on walls, took down and burned an American flag and committed other acts of vandalism.

Oakland police Chief Howard Jordan later said about 400 demonstrators were arrested.

City Hall reopened Monday after an extensive clean-up effort.

Also on Monday, protesters in Charlotte, North Carolina, were given an afternoon deadline to remove tents from the site of the old city hall.

Police took down several tents.

"We're doing the right thing, peacefully and quietly," protester Malachi Vinson told CNN affiliate WCNC. "We're expressing ourselves in a better way than anyone else would."

CNN's Athena Jones, Joe Sutton, Courtney Battle, Paul Courson, Brian Todd and Dugald McConnell contributed to this report.

Cops Attack Occupy Protests Across the Country

2012-01-31T07:49:00.001-05:00

Washington D.C. cops arrest members of the Occupy DC encampment. The attacks follow a similar pattern in many cities throughout the United States., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Demonstrators affiliated with the Occupy movement faced challenges in several cities, including Charlotte, N.C., and Oakland, Calif.

By Seattle Times news services

WASHINGTON — Demonstrators affiliated with the Occupy movement faced challenges in several cities across the country on Monday.

In Washington, D.C., a deadline from the National Park Service for campers to remove their gear or depart from two downtown parks came and went with no immediate effort by the police to clamp down on the campers during daylight hours.

The scene stood in marked contrast to a violent confrontation 3,000 miles away over the weekend when 400 Occupy protesters in Oakland, Calif., were arrested after tearing down construction barricades. As of Monday afternoon, about 100 protesters remained in custody, according to the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, and 42 were set to be released by the end of the day. The other 58 protesters were being held on more serious misdemeanor or felony charges.

Oakland protesters and city officials blamed each other for the weekend's violence, which left three officers and at least two protesters injured.

The protest culminated in rock- and bottle-throwing and volleys of tear gas from the police, as well as a City Hall break-in that left glass cases smashed, graffiti spray-painted on the walls and, finally, flag burning.

Mayor Jean Quan referred to the vandalism at City Hall, where a case containing a model of Frank Ogawa Plaza was destroyed and a flag was burned outside, as "like a tantrum." Members of the Occupy movement, in turn, decried the actions of the police and said the focus on the damage was misplaced.

"I don't think that Mayor Quan is weighing the big picture — the small amount of destruction caused by these autonomous people that may or may not be part of Occupy Oakland, versus the kind of destruction against the environment, working people and poor people," said Wendy Kenin, 40, a spokeswoman for Occupy Oakland.

Until recently, the Park Service has largely taken a hands-off approach to the Washington camps, because there is a long-established right for protesters to hold vigil in federal parks, including long-term ones, as long as there's no camping, which it defines as, among other things, using park land for sleeping and storing personal possessions.

Occupiers in McPherson Square dragged an enormous blue tarp emblazoned with "Tent of Dreams" over a statue of Civil War Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson at the park's center.

Only a few patrol officers watched from the outskirts of the park, where the enforcement deadline had been posted in recent days. At a nearby encampment, Freedom Plaza, police kept a low profile as well. There were no confrontations during the day; instead, many demonstrators removed their camping equipment and unzipped their tents for police to inspect.

But the agency has increasingly come under criticism for allowing legal vigils to turn into permanent campsites that are not permitted under the law. Pressure on the Park Service has increased along with deteriorating conditions, including a rat infestation in McPherson Square and the discovery of an apparently abandoned infant in a tent.

On Jan. 12, Mayor Vincent Gray, a Democrat, wrote to the Park Service director, Jonathan Jarvis, complaining of "serious concerns" about health and safety problems at the sites and citing a rat problem, worries about illness and hypothermia, and other hazards.

Last week, a subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing in which Republicans questioned the Park Service over allowing camping to continue.

"We were under the apparent misapprehension that camping was illegal in McPherson Square, and we look forward to hearing the National Park Service explain the difference between camping and a 24-hour vigil, especially when that 24-hour vigil lasts several months," said South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy.

In North Carolina, meanwhile, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police waded into the Occupy Charlotte protest site Monday afternoon, arresting at least seven people and dismantling the campground that the group had established last fall.

Capt. Jeff Estes had given Occupy Charlotte's members "one final warning" to take down their tents and comply with an order he had given for the first time almost eight hours earlier.

Police were acting to comply with a new city ordinance that went into effect at midnight, prohibiting groups from camping on city-owned property.

In preparation for the Sept. 3 Democratic National Convention, the Charlotte City Council on Jan. 23 approved ordinances that give police more power to stop and search people during the convention and to arrest people living or sleeping on public property.

Across the country, cities have been enforcing existing ordinances, or passing new anti-camping rules, to clear out Occupy protesters.

Charlotte has said its changes protect the First Amendment, though the American Civil Liberties Union has said some of the measures go too far, including giving police power to arrest people carrying backpacks or coolers if they believe the items are being used to carry weapons.

Large protests — and some violence — have been common at political conventions, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say they are trying to ensure they have enough power to keep people and property safe.

Compiled from The New York Times, The Associated Press and Charlotte Observer

Let's Stand Up to the West, President Mugabe Tells African Union

2012-01-31T00:30:00.001-05:00

President Robert Mugabe of the Republic of Zimbabwe has urged Africans to stand up to the Western imperialist states. Mugabe has taken a principled stand against western interference in the internal affairs of the continent., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Let's stand up to West

Tuesday, 31 January 2012 00:00
From Munyaradzi Huni in ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia
Zimbabwe Herald

PRESIDENT Mugabe has warned that recolonisation of Africa might take place if leaders fail to handle issues as the continent's founding fathers used to do.

He said the AU should not rush to recognise Libya's National Transitional Council, but look at exactly what happened in that country leading to the callous murder of Colonel Muammar Gadaffi.

The President said America and Europe have ran out of resources and "they will come to Africa" as the continent continues to discover more resources.

Speaking during the session on Peace and Security here yesterday, President Mugabe said Africa should have said "No, No" to the bombing of Libya by NATO.

Zimbabwe is a member of the AU Peace and Security Commission.

"We fought imperialism and colonialism and forced them out of Africa . . . Our founding fathers did not have the means, but they stood up and said ‘no' but here we are absolutely silent.

"We should have said no, no to NATO," said the President adding that due to the silence, "Gadaffi was killed in broad daylight, his children hunted like animals and then we rush to recognise the NTC."

He said it was not the mandate of the Peace and Security Commission to recognise the NTC and the summit "should look at what happened and we should be deciding whether to recognise the NTC or not."

"Well, well that was Libya. Who will be next?" asked the President.

He said NATO had now discovered that "we are toothless bulldogs" and "they can come in and out" of the continent without anyone challenging them.

"This is not what our founding fathers would have thought would happen. We don't certainly represent them properly if we take that stance. So I am saying let's look at ourselves Mr Chairman, look at ourselves and look at Europe.

"I saw a picture yesterday of Gadaffi shaking hands with Sarkozy in France after they invited him there, but those hands that Gadaffi was shaking were the hands that were going to kill him a few months later.

"How far then do we go in associating with such people?

"They have an economic crisis in Europe, they have exhausted their resources.

"Africa still has plenty of them. We are discovering more oil, more minerals, gold more diamonds. We still have our natural resources, natural gas, so another recolonisation might take place. Let us take care, all of us. It has not just happened to Gadaffi.

"America will need more oil, Europe needs more oil," he said, adding that soon after killing Gadaffi, America and Europe rushed to apportion themselves oil.

The President said he was there when the Organisation of African Unity was formed in 1963 in Ethiopia and he went on to attend its next meeting in 1964 in Cairo, Egypt, before he was arrested by the Rhodesian regime.

"You redeemed me (freeing him from jail), you redeemed Mandela and many more and we thank you because you are the successors of the founding fathers who actually did it.

"If they did it, you did it but this time there are things you are not doing which they would have done. Let us be like them," he said to thunderous applause from the delegates.

South African President Jacob Zuma was chairing the session and soon after the President's speech, a clearly livid and incoherent NTC representative took to the floor but some delegates were already walking out.

Vote for African Union Commissioner Ends in Deadlock

2012-01-30T23:54:00.001-05:00

Republic of South Africa Minister of Home Affair, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, is currently a candidate for the African Union Commissioner. She is challenging Jean Ping, the current holder of this position, from Gabon., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Vote for AU commission chief ends in deadlock

Tuesday, 31 January 2012 00:00

ADDIS ABABA - A vote by African leaders for the head of their bloc's executive ended in deadlock yesterday. Gabon's Jean Ping, who has headed the African Union Commission since 2008 and was seeking a new term, was challenged by South Africa's Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

Intense campaigns had preceded the vote and dominated the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, where leaders gathered to discuss broadening trade within Africa and tackle conflict hot spots.

"We went for an election and none of the two candidates emerged as a winner," Zambian President Michael Sata said. "The next elections will be held in June."

Deputy AU commission chief, Erastus Mwencha from Kenya, will step in until fresh polls are held during the next summit in Malawi.

Analysts say the vote for the AU agenda-setting position has exposed political fault lines between English-and French-speaking Africa, as well as between different geographic regions.

AU sources said the election was tight, with Ping holding a slender lead in three rounds of voting in which neither candidate obtained the required two-thirds majority.

Ping, led Dlamini-Zuma in the first three rounds 28 votes to 25; 27 to 26 and 29 to 24, AU sources said.

Dlamini-Zuma was then forced under AU rules to pull out, leaving Ping to face a fourth round on his own, but he still failed to muster the necessary votes in his support.

Ahead of the vote, sources said Ping had been confident of re-election, counting on support from French-speaking West and Central African countries.

However, he has appeared to have fallen foul of criticism that he performed poorly in recent crises on the continent, after a year that saw a post-election crisis in Ivory Coast as well as the Arab Spring revolutions.

Dlamini-Zuma (63), had launched a tough campaign and had the backing of the 15-member Southern African Development Community, and Pretoria lobbied hard across Africa to drum up support.

South African delegates broke into song and dance after the stalemate vote conducted at the two-day summit in the new ultra-modern AU headquarters built by the Chinese and unveiled at the weekend.

But Cilliers warned that while Dlamini-Zuma supporters were celebrating, her failure to win suggested many might oppose South Africa for the post too.

"Importantly, this result may mean that Africans don't want a key country such as South Africa in the position of chair," he said.

In a pre-vote pledge, Dlamini-Zuma said if elected, she would "spare no effort in building on the work of those African women and men who want to see an African Union that is a formidable force striving for a united, free, truly independent, better Africa."

No woman has held the post to which Ping was elected in 2008.

South Africa said late yesterday that Dlamini-Zuma will vie again for the African Union commission chief's post after her challenge against the incumbent ended in a stalemate.

AFP.

400 Arrested in Oakland Protest

2012-01-29T23:56:00.001-05:00

Washington, D.C. cops arrested some members of the Occupy DC movement. The authorities gave the excuse that a wooden structure had been at the camp., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Clashes at Occupy Oakland protest

By Emmett Berg
OAKLAND, Calif |
Sun Jan 29, 2012 11:20pm EST

OAKLAND, Calif (Reuters) - Crews cleaned up Oakland's historic City Hall on Sunday from damage inflicted overnight during violent anti-Wall Street protests that resulted in about 400 arrests, marking one of the largest mass arrests since nationwide protests began last year.

At a press conference on Sunday, Oakland police and city officials said they did not have a final tally of arrests. Earlier in the day, the city's emergency operations office put the figure at around 400. The skirmishes injured three officers and at least one demonstrator.

Police said a group of protesters burned an American flag in front of City Hall, then entered the building and destroyed a vending machine, light fixtures and a historic scale model of the edifice. The city's 911 emergency system was overwhelmed during the disturbances.

"While City Hall sustained damage, we anticipate that all city offices will be open for regular business tomorrow," said Deanna Santana, Oakland city administrator.

Oakland has become an unlikely flashpoint for the national "Occupy" protests against economic inequality that began last year in New York's financial district and spread to dozens of cities.

The protests in most cities have been peaceful and sparked a national debate over how much of the country's wealth is held by the richest 1 percent of the population. President Barack Obama has sought to capitalize on the attention by calling for higher taxes on the richest Americans.

Occupy protests focused on Oakland after a former Marine and Iraq war veteran, Scott Olsen, was critically injured during a demonstration in October. Protesters said he was hit in the head by a tear gas canister but authorities have never said exactly how he was hurt.

The Occupy movement appeared to lose momentum late last year as police cleared protest camps in several cities.

Violence erupted again in Oakland on Saturday afternoon when protesters attempted to take over the apparently empty downtown convention center to establish a new headquarters and draw attention to the problem of homelessness.

Police in riot gear moved in to drive back the crowd, which they estimated at about 500 protesters.

BOTTLES, METAL PIPE

"Officers were pelted with bottles, metal pipe, rocks, spray cans, improvised explosive devices and burning flares," the Oakland Police Department said in a statement. "The Oakland Police Department deployed smoke, tear gas and beanbag projectiles in response to this activity."

Oakland Mayor Jean Quan accused a "violent splinter group" of the Occupy movement of fomenting the Saturday protests and using the city as its playground. Protesters have accused the city of overreacting and using heavyhanded tactics.

By early evening on Sunday, about 80 to 100 protesters were gathered in the plaza next to Oakland City Hall, but there was no police presence and the park was peaceful.

Oakland Police warned protesters that they would not tolerate a repeat of the protest actions on Saturday.

Tension also flared on Sunday in Washington where police used a taser on an Occupy protester during an arrest at a park near the White House, U.S. Park police said.

The National Park Service has said it will begin enforcing a ban on Occupy protesters camping overnight in McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza, two parks near the White House where they have been living since October.

That order, if carried out as promised starting at noon on Monday, could be a blow to one of the highest-profile chapters of the movement.

(Additional reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York and Kim Dixon and Rachelle Younglai in Washington; Editing by Greg McCune and Stacey Joyce)

African Union Gets Majestic Complex From Chinese Government

2012-01-29T02:22:00.001-05:00

A new African Union headquarters building was recently constructed by the People's Republic of China in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. China-Africa Relations have improved., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

African Union gets majestic complex from Chinese governmnent

Saturday, 28 January 2012 19:54
Zimbabwe Sunday Mail

The new African Union headquarters built by the Chinese. - Pic from guardian.co.uk
Munyaradzi Huni in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
President Mugabe yesterday joined other African heads of state and government to witness the official opening of the new multi-million-dollar African Union Conference Centre and Office Complex which was built by the Chinese government.

China has pledged to strengthen its “sincere and win-win” partnership with Africa and commit 600 million yuan (about US$86 million) towards the maintenance of the majestic building that is about 99,5 metres high.

Speaking at the handover of the building to the African Union Commission, the Chinese government representative, Mr Jia Qinlin, the chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said the building was a milestone in the history of the China and
Africa relationship.

He said the decision to build the conference centre and the office complex was announced by the Chinese president in 2006 and construction of the building started in 2009.

“This building is a symbol of the deepening of relations between China and Africa. In the 21st century, the China-Africa relations should be strengthened so that we meet the challenges ahead together.

“China attaches great importance to the trade and economic trade with Africa and I am proud to announce that China has 13 billion of investment stock in Africa at the moment.

“We will continue to strengthen our sincere and win-win partnership with Africa so that we conquer the challenges ahead together,” said the representative to wild applause from the delegates.

The chairperson of the African Union, Mr Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, thanked the Ethiopian government for availing land to build the conference centre and the Chinese government for the construction of the building.

He said the building was a reflection of a new era in Africa, adding that co-operation with China was set to increase.

“For years Africa has remained a tenant in its own land, but now thanks to China we have our own headquarters. China has shown its commitment to Africa and its people. It’s clear that Africa can count on China’s support that doesn't come with conditions.

“This is because of our shared values and common history,” he said. He challenged Africa, especially the African Union Commission, to make sure that the building was well maintained, adding that member states will have to chip in with financial support for the maintenance of the conference centre and complex.

The official opening of the 18th AU Summit is set for today. Issues expected to take centre stage include the election of the chairman of the AUC, which is being contested by current chairman Jean Ping and South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

The summit will also, among other issues, deliberate on issues to do with the political tension between Sudan and South Sudan, the deteriorating situation in Libya and the situation in Somalia. Civic groups from Zimbabwe, that descended on Addis Ababa hoping to tarnish the image of the country, were largely ignored as they were not allowed anywhere near the venue of the summit.

Zimbabwe, Cuba Relations Hailed

2012-01-29T01:59:00.001-05:00

Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Fidel Castro of Cuba. The two nations have a long record of solidarity and mutual cooperation., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Zim, Cuba relations hailed

Saturday, 28 January 2012 19:48
Sunday Mail Reporter

Zimbabwe and Cuba should continue enhancing and widening bilateral and multilateral co-operation in areas of development and promoting the political independence of both countries, the Cuban Ambassador to Zimbabwe, Cde Enrique Antonio Prieto Lopez, said yesterday.

Speaking on the occasion to mark The First of January 53rd anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and the 159th anniversary of the birth of the founder of the Cuban Revolution Jose Marti, Ambassador Lopez hailed the everlasting friendship between Zimbabwe and Cuba.

Dignitaries

The event was attended by several dignitaries, among them the Acting Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cde Raphael Faranisi, members of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association (Zicufa) and Cuban nationals in Zimbabwe.

“This annual activity is also dedicated to the various organisations which fight for the lifting of the US blockade against Cuba and the Western-imposed economic sanctions against Zimbabwe,” said the ambassador.

“In addition, those who advocate for the freedom of the five Cuban heroes unjustly imprisoned in the USA for preventing terrorist attacks on Cuba must be thanked for their sustained and combative support to the just causes of Cuba and Zimbabwe.”

Embargoes

Addressing the same gathering, president of the Zimbabwe-Cuban Association Cde Fananidzo Pesanai said Cuba, like Zimbabwe, faced Western-imposed embargos for its principled stance on the total liberation of its people.

“Your (Cuban) people have been facing internal and external hostile forces which have sought to hinder and eliminate your victorious revolution,” he said.

The head of the Zimbabwe Committee for the Liberation of the Cuban five, Cde Lovemore Gwati, also condemned the economic blockade imposed against Cuba.

“The blockade, which now enters its fifth decade, demonstrates the cruelty of the imperialist forces,” he said.

The Cuban Five were arrested after infiltrating United Sates security against the backdrop of the massive onslaught on the Cuban people.

The five — Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González — were captured by the United States in 2001 and are serving four life sentences and 75 years collectively in a US prison.

China to Promote Friendly Cooperation With Sudan

2012-01-29T01:36:00.001-05:00

China-Sudan relations are at the highest point in the history of both nations. The oil industry in Sudan is one of the major areas of cooperation between the African and Asian states., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Top Chinese political advisor: China to promote friendly cooperation with Sudan

2012-01-29 08:59

ADDIS ABABA, Jan. 28 -- China will deepen its friendly cooperation with Sudan and support its efforts of maintaining national stability and developing economy, top Chinese political advisor Jia Qinglin said here on Saturday, when meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

"China and Sudan boast a traditional friendship and they have always trusted and understood each other despite changing international landscape and situations of both countries," said Jia, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

"China appreciates Sudan's consistent support for China on issues of China's core interests and major concerns, and will in turn support its efforts of maintaining national stability and developing economy," he added.

Bashir said the solid friendship and fruitful results in economic cooperation between China and Sudan sets an example for South-South cooperation.

"Chinese enterprises are welcomed to invest in Sudan, and they will be protected by concrete measures," he added.

Both Jia and Bashir arrived here to attend the 18th African Union summit which will be held from Jan. 29 to 30.

Source:English.news.cn

11 Boko Haram Militants Slain in Nigeria

2012-01-29T01:31:00.001-05:00

Nigerian military units move into areas of unrest which have reportedly killed at least 38 people in the central and north of the West African country. Nigeria is preparing for national elections in 2011., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

11 Boko Haram militants slain in Nigeria

Sun Jan 29, 2012 3:39AM GMT
presstv.ir

Nigeria's army killed 11 Boko Haram militants during a gun battle at a checkpoint in the northeastern city of Maiduguri on January 28, 2012.

Nigerian troops have killed eleven members of the militant group Boko Haram during a gun battle at a checkpoint in the northeastern city of Maiduguri.

"Eleven BH (Boko Haram) members have been shot dead by the JTF (joint military taskforce) in Maiduguri today, following a shootout with the sect members at a checkpoint in a stop and search operation," field operations officer Colonel Victor Ebhamelehe said on Saturday.

He added, "One member of the sect who was wounded is receiving treatment at the hospital."

The operation came in response to a spate of attacks launched by Boko Haram militants.

Security forces in Africa's top oil producer have struggled to contain Boko Haram, which began as a movement opposed to Western cultural influences.

It has previously said that it wants to create an Islamic state in Nigeria's impoverished mainly Muslim north and has accused the government of torturing and illegally detaining Muslims and raiding Islamic schools.

Gunmen suspected to be affiliated with Boko Haram killed one officer in the northern city of Kano on Friday evening when they opened fire on a police station.

Boko Haram was also blamed for coordinated attacks on Christmas Day at a Catholic Church near the capital Abuja. At least 44 people lost their lives in the attack.

The purported head of Boko Haram, Abubakar Muhammad Shekau, threatened to kill more Nigerian security personnel and kidnap their families in an audio tape recently posted on the Internet.

Labor Unrest Continues in Nigerian Education

2012-01-29T01:16:00.001-05:00

Federal Republic of Nigeria Minister of Education Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufai. The ministry has attempted to quell an education dispute with higher education academic staff., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Still On ASUU Strike

Sunday, 29 January 2012 00:00 Editor
Nigerian Guardian

THE failure of official efforts to stop the nation-wide strike of university teachers, despite the recent passage of a bill by the Senate approving the retirement age of professors from 65 to 70 years, is disappointing.

Although the age issue is only one of the several demands of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), many Nigerians who have been concerned about the prolonged strike had hoped for a resolution. In the event, that has not happened and the collateral damages of the strike continue to pile up nearly two weeks after the bill was passed.

It would appear from the contending issues that a holistic approach is needed to resolve the problem once and for all. And university autonomy should be in the front burner having regard to its pre-eminent position among the teachers’ grievances. Government should take steps to address all outstanding issues in order to get the universities back to work without further delay.

Granted that the state of the universities in the country is appalling, ASUU should also consider the interest of students now roaming the streets, and their hapless parents. Besides, the strike can only add further dent to the country’s unenviable image arising from battered development in its education and academic sector.

About a fortnight ago, the Senate passed the bill approving a 70-year retirement age for academics in the professorial cadre, which has been one of the key demands of ASUU. It also passed another bill for an act to harmonise the retirement age of academic staff of universities, polytechnics and colleges of education. The bill states that “The compulsory retiring age of academic staff of tertiary institutions shall be 65 years, while the retiring age of academics in the universities shall be 70 years”.

Ordinarily, this ought to provide sufficient ground for ASUU to call off its nearly two months old strike. But the Union insists that the bill is not law yet, until the president assents to it. ASUU also appears to be pressing for the full implementation of the agreement it reached with the federal government in 2009. Logical as it may be, such an attitude may not be the best in the circumstance.

It is saddening that ASUU strike has become intractable and perennial, partly because government is unwilling to grant universities their autonomy. But this is damaging the country. It is a central issue that must be addressed, not in isolation, but as part of a corporate entity.

Government and ASUU should seek to resolve all outstanding issues quickly. Closing down the universities intermittently is not in the national interest, nor does it portend well for the future. The issue of autonomy has dragged on for too long. Autonomy would enable the councils to run their universities with minimum interference and more creativity. Besides, there is need to raise the standard of education, starting with facilities on the campuses. The universities need rebranding and adequate funding partly by government and partly through academic attraction, which goes with autonomy. This is in line with the practice in other countries. The ability to attract funding should be a necessary yardstick for advancement and promotion.

Government funding may be effected after due consideration of the carrying capacity of each university, followed by a calculation of what it takes to train a student in different disciplines. The aggregate would determine what it costs per university.

So far, this is not being done. The education authorities need to address it the right way, instead of the current haphazard manner. There should be an enduring system in operation. Education is too vital for the nation’s development; and it should be handled with such an appreciation.

Nigerian Union to Stop Oil Production

2012-01-29T01:00:00.001-05:00

Nigerians continue to demonstrate against the elimination of fuel subsidies by the federal government. There has been a general strike since January 9, 2012., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Nigerian union to stop oil production

Fri Jan 27, 2012 2:20AM GMT
presstv.ir

The Nigerian army men stand guard as people protest on a major road in Lagos, Nigeria, Jan. 16, 2012.

A major oil workers' union in Nigeria has vowed to shut down all oil and natural gas production in the country if the government will not restore fuel subsidies.

The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria announced on Thursday that it will shut down all production units on Sunday as part of a nationwide strike.

A statement by the association said that if the government does not restore the subsidies, the workers will be “forced to go ahead and apply the bitter option of ordering the systematic shutting down of oil and gas production.”

Tens of thousands of people have been protesting in Africa's biggest oil producer since the start of the year in response to the removal of the fuel subsidies, which more than doubled the petrol price to nearly 150 naira ($0.93) per liter. The weeks-long violence has left at least 12 people dead in the country.

President Goodluck Jonathan has announced the reduction of petrol prices by 30 percent to 97 naira (60 cents) per liter "after due consideration and consultations with state governors and the leadership of the National Assembly," but Nigerians rejected the government's concession insisting on 100 percent restoration of subsidies.

Nigeria produces over 2 million barrels of crude oil per day and is a key supplier to the United States, Europe and Asia.

Jonathan has said that the subsidies on fuel are unsustainable for the populous country.

His government says it will use USD 8 billion in savings to make much-needed infrastructure improvements in the country.

Somalian Radio Journalist Hassan Fantastic Killed

2012-01-29T00:53:00.001-05:00

Radio Shabelle managing director Hassan Osman Abdi, also known as Hassan Fantastic, was shot to death in Somalia., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Somali radioman Hassan Fantastic killed

Sat Jan 28, 2012 11:57PM GMT
presstv.ir

Unknown assailants have shot and killed the managing director of a respected private Somali radio station in front of his home in Mogadishu, Press TV reports.

Two men armed with pistols stopped Hassan Osman Abdi, the managing director of Radio Shabelle, on Saturday as he was heading home from work. The gunmen then shot him several times in the head and shoulders. Abdi died on the spot.

Muhiyadin Hassan, one of Abdi's colleagues, told Press TV that Abdi was immediately rushed to Medina hospital in southern Mogadishu. However, he was pronounced dead upon arrival.

Ahmed Haasan Ma'alin, a government security officer, confirmed the incident and blamed the al-Shabab militant group for the terrorist attack.

Radio Shabelle interrupted its programs to broadcast several verses from the Holy Qur'an as an expression of mourning for the slain 29-year-old managing director, who was popularly known as Hassan Fantastic.

Abdi was the third managing director of the Shabelle media network to be killed. Bashir Nur Gedi was killed in Mogadishu on October 19, 2007, and Mukhtar Mohamed Hirabe was assassinated in 2009.

Somalia, which has not had a functioning government since 1991, is considered one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists.

Reporters Without Borders (Reporteurs Sans Frontieres), reported in December 2011 that 25 journalists had been killed in Somalia since 2007.

A man wearing a military uniform shot and killed a journalist working for the local Horn Cable television station on a Mogadishu street last December. And a Malaysian cameraman was gunned down in the Somali capital two months earlier.

Injured Rushed to Galkayo Hospital After Somaliland Attack

2012-01-29T00:45:00.001-05:00

Healthcare workers in Somaliland treat victims of recent military clashes. The Horn of Africa is a focal point of imperialist intervention., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Jan 28, 2012 - 7:55:47 AM

Somalia: Injured rushed to Galkayo hospital after Somaliland attack

28 Jan 28, 2012 - 7:42:51 AM

GALKAYO, Somalia Jan 28 2012 (Garowe Online) – The injured in Thursday’s battle after Somaliland forces attacked the city of Buhodle were rushed to Galkayo hospital capital of Mudug region, Radio Garowe reports.

The three hour battle on Thursday resulted to over 80 killed for Somaliland forces after the local militia counterattacked the Somaliland forces who launched the battle at 4 pm Thursday. On the other side the local militia had 23 deaths and more than 20 injured.

The injured residents of Buhodle were rushed to Galkayo hospital which is a 3 hour drive from Buhodle. The Director of Galkayo General Hospital Ahmed Diriye Sugule who spoke to reporters said that one man aged 54, has died from his injuries.

Mr. Sugule added that the injured included 2 women and 2 children amongst the 23 men. The 2 children aged 6 and 7 and two women are in stable condition.

The Governor of Mudug Mohamed Yusuf Tigey who held a press conference today discussed the attack by Somaliland forces on residents of Buhodle calling it a shameful attack. Mr. Tigey said, “It is shameful to see the blatant attack of women and children.”

He went to add that Somaliland’s intellectuals, scholars and clan elders should tell their government to stop the bloodshed in Buhodle by Somaliland forces.

Somaliland's authority in contested regions

Somaliland’s authority is growing weaker in the contested regions of Sool, Sanag and Ayn. In Baran located in Sanag region protesters lined the streets to protest a Somaliland official who had visited the region.

Another protest in Las'anod capital of Sool region resulted in 2 deaths and 12 injured after Somaliland forces opened fire on protesters.

Buhodle the capital of Ayn region was attacked on January 15 2012, Somaliland forces have been in and around the city since then.

Puntland and Somaliland have had a territorial dispute since 2003 over the regions of Sool, Sanaag and Ayn. Although the three regions were hotly contested Las'anod was under Puntland rule until 2007 after Somaliland forces captured Las'anod and have occupied it ever since.

GAROWE ONLINE

Oakland Cops Attack Occupy Movement, 100 Arrested

2012-01-29T00:20:00.001-05:00

Oakland cops attacked Occupy demonstrators on January 28, 2012. The Occupy Movement has been met with repression for the last several months., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

January 28, 2012 7:52 PM

Oakland police arresting about 100 protesters

Updated 11:13 PM ET

OAKLAND, Calif. - Oakland officials say police are in the process of arresting about 100 Occupy protesters for failing to disperse.

Police Sgt. Christopher Bolton says the arrests come after Occupy Oakland protesters marched through downtown Oakland a little before 8 p.m. Saturday, with some of the protesters entering a YMCA building in the city's downtown.

The arrests Saturday night come after 19 people were arrested in Occupy Oakland protests during the day.

Police used tear gas and "flash" grenades Saturday to break up hundreds of Occupy protesters after some demonstrators started throwing rocks and flares at officers and tearing down fencing.

Three officers were hurt and 19 people were arrested, the Oakland Police Department said in a release. No details on the officers' injuries were released.

Police said the group started assembling at a downtown plaza Saturday morning, with demonstrators threatening to take over the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center. The group then marched through the streets, disrupting traffic.

The crowd grew as the day wore on, with afternoon estimates ranging from about 1,000 to 2,000 people.

The protesters walked to the vacant convention center, where some started tearing down perimeter fencing and "destroying construction equipment" shortly before 3 p.m., the release said.

Police said they issued a dispersal order and used smoke and tear gas after some protesters pelted them with bottles, rocks, burning flares and other objects.

Most of the arrests were made when protesters ignored orders to leave and assaulted officers, the release said. By 4 p.m., the bulk of the crowd had left the convention center and headed back downtown.

The demonstration comes after Occupy protesters said earlier this week that they planned to move into a vacant building and turn it into a social center and political hub. They also threatened to try to shut down the port, occupy the airport and take over City Hall.

In a statement Friday, Oakland City Administrator Deanna Santana said the city would not be "bullied by threats of violence or illegal activity."

Interim police Chief Howard Jordan also warned that officers would arrest those carrying out illegal actions.

Oakland officials said Friday that since the Occupy Oakland encampment was first established in late October, police have arrested about 300 people.

The national Occupy Wall Street movement, which denounces corporate excess and economic inequality, began in New York City in the fall but has been largely dormant lately.

Oakland, New York and Los Angeles were among the cities with the largest and most vocal Occupy protests early on. The demonstrations ebbed after those cities used force to move out hundreds of demonstrators who had set up tent cities.

In Oakland, the police department received heavy criticism for using force to break up earlier protests. Among the critics was the mayor, who said she wasn't briefed on the department's plans. Earlier this month, a court-appointed monitor submitted a report to a federal judge that included "serious concerns" about the department's handling of the Occupy protests.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57367927/oakland-police-arresting-about-100-protesters/#ixzz1koyKmZ9f

Etta James: Rebel Till The End

2012-01-28T01:24:00.001-05:00

Etta James(1938-2012), the pioneering and legendary Blues and R&B recording artist, passed on January 20, 2012. Her music will live on., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Etta James: Rebel Till The End

By Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali

Six men are locked into a Hollywood hotel suite. One is the marvellous Marvin Gaye. The other is the suave, cosmopolitan and debonair Harvey Fugua, the legendary founder of the vocal group the Moonglows and record executive for both Chess and Motown Records. At this moment in history they are a part of Motown royalty both having married Gordy sisters.

Rhongea Southern (now Daar Malik El-Bey), Carl Dyce (the late Sigidi Abdullah), the late Harold Clayton and myself were there auditing for Motown. Gaye and Fugua are the talent scouts.

Our audition is interrupted by a long distance call from Etta James. James, who is calling all the way from Chicago. In the mid 60s this the equivalent of receiving a call from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania as far as we were concerned. We were impressed to say the least. All the guys in the group loved Ms. James. We were all from the same bowl of grits. Like us she was from Angel Town.

James lost her battle with Leukaemia on January 20,2012. She was born Jamesetta Hawkins, on January 25,1938. The Los Angeles born James is regarded as having bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, is the winner of six Grammys and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of fame of 2001 and the Grammy Hall of Fame both in 1999 and 2008. Rolling Stone ranked James number 22 on the list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time and number 62 on the list of the 100 Greatest Artists.

The outspoken James said she was of two minds about being induced into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She made her views known in her autobiography,"Rage To Survive: The Etta James Story" which she wrote along with David Ritz.

Says James, “Part of me is thrilled to be recognized, but another part resents the lily-white institution that sends down its proclamations from on high. They decide who is rock and who isn’t , they decide who is important and who isn’t. Man, I grew up with some cats who should have been inducted years ago --- Jesse Belvin and Johnny “Guitar” Watson to name two”. It must be mentioned that Johnny Otis, the man she introduced when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame died days before her on January 17th.

James attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Los Angeles along with Belvin and Watson. Jeff as it is called by Angeleos has a heavy weight cast of graduates: Noble Peace Prize Winner Ralph Bunche, Dorothy Dandridge, Alvin Ailey, Roy Ayers, Richard “Louie Louie” Berry also went there. Her life was surrounded by controversy. It was widely reported that she wanted to sing “At Last” at President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Beyonce ended up serenading President Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama.

I saw her only one time in Toronto. Unfortunately, I never interviewed her. However, I have read and enjoyed Rage To Survive. The book reveals many little known things about Soul Sister James. She was once Jamesetta X when she joined the Nation of Islam at Temple Number 15 in Atlanta, Georgia. She says her mother use to know members of Temple 27 in Los Angeles. Sam Cooke, Hank Ballard, Barry White and others came to Temple 27 to hear Minister John Shabazz (who today is Abdul Allah Muhammad).

James’ life is African history at it’s best and worst -- she witnessed many major historical developments. One example: She was staying at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem when El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) met with Cuban President Fidel Castro in September 1960. Says James, “...Fidel Castro was living up in the Theresa Hotel the same time as us. They blocked off the top six floors for him --- this was in 1960 --- and had coops on the roof with live chickens so he could prepare his own food. Fidel worried about being poisoned.” This is probably why he is still in the land of the living."

After she parted company with the Nation of Islam she became part of the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam. She was influenced by her partner at the time John Lewis. “John became pious, praying five times a day. He was also urging me to become more serious. I tried and for a while I was. At the same time, running around with characters like James Brown, I got distracted.”

She was so distracted by Soul Brother Number One, that she along with Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba (Kwame Ture aka Stokely Carmichael) , B.B. King, Sister Sledge and Bill Withers ended up in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) for the "Rumble in Jungle" between Muhammad Ali and George Forman. James points out, “In fact, it was a singer Lloyd Price who had first introduced (Muhammad) Ali to (Don) King.”

However, James ended up not performing. She returned to the USA because of the treatment she received from Mobutu Sese Seko aka Joseph Mobutu, the man who played a role in the assassination of the great African patriot Patrice Emery Lumumba on January 17, 1961.

Unlike many of her contemporaries she did not write off the current crop of black music makers as untalented. "I don't subscribed to the school that says great soul music is dead. That's usually some old fart talking, remembering his youth while forgetting that new generations are entitled to cultures of their own."

James like all human beings had merits and demerits. However, the world will remember Etta James for vocal renditions of songs like "At Last", "I'd Rather Go Blind", "Sunday Kind of Love","I Just Want to Make Love to You" and "All I Could Do Was Cry".

Norman (Otis) Richmond aka Jalali can be heard on Diasporic Music on Uhuru Radio www.uhururadio.com, Sunday's 2pm to 4pm and Saturday Morning Live on Regent Radio http://www.radioregent.com/ 10am to 1pm every Saturday. The co-host of SML is Malinda Francis,@docuvixen Toronto, ON. filmmaker, telling untold stories. LiveProfile: LPL47VBO
http://www.docuvixen.com

A Political Obituary of Etta James

2012-01-28T00:30:00.001-05:00

Etta James made her transition on January 20, 2012. She has a recording career that spans nearly six decades., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

A Political Obituary of Etta James

Archives/Stringer by Kenyon Farrow
Tuesday, January 24 2012, 9:09 AM EST

It’s a damn shame that many people were introduced to Etta James in the years before her death last week through Beyonce’s portrayal of her in the 2008 biopic “Cadillac Records.”

No one understood the awkwardness of that casting choice better than James herself, who told The New York Post’s Page Six in 2007, when she learned the film was already in production, that “she is going to have a hill to climb, because Etta James ain’t been no angel!… I wasn’t as bourgie as she is, she’s bourgeois. She knows how to be a lady, she’s like a model. I wasn’t like that … I smoked in the bathroom in school, I was kinda arrogant.”

The woman born Jamesetta Hawkins on January 25, 1938, was far more than just a torch song singer, and was not at all the tragic mulatto with a white daddy complex that “Cadillac Records” constructed. In many ways, James’s personal and artistic journey, as opposed to the film’s caricature, has a lot to teach us about the shifting politics of race, class and feminist politics over the course of the last half century.

Etta James was born in Los Angeles, when many African Americans were moving due West to escape the brutality of the Jim Crow South and chase the promise of manufacturing jobs. She was raised by a handful of caregivers, as her mother was often running the streets chasing a good time.

Her mother was a woman James sometimes despised and at the same time desperately wanted to please. Her father’s identity was not really known to her, though it has been rumored her father was white. In fact, James learned late in life during an argument with her mother that he was likely legendary pool shark Rudolf “Minnesota Fats” Wanderone, whom James met in 1987.

At age five, James developed two relationships that would remain with her throughout her life: one relationship with singing and one with black gay men, and the LGBT community as a whole. In her 2003 autobiography Rage To Survive, James describes her first vocal coach, James Earl Hines—musical director at L.A.’s St. Paul Baptist Church and one of the the early gospel superstars—as “married, acted gay as a goose, and I was crazy about him…. Truth is, all the gay guys in the choir sang like angels, and acted so different…. I loved their little underground talk, their gossiping about the sisters.”

Though James’ formative years were spent singing in the church, she turned to the streets, and street life, for inspiration. She moved to San Francisco’s Fillmore district as an early teen, where she sang in the doo-wop group the Creolettes (which later become The Peaches) and recorded on Modern Records, before leaving in 1960 to sign with the legendary Chess Records (which the film “Cadillac Records” attempts to profile). Her debut album “At Last!” was released the same year, when she was 22 years old.

Unlike most artists who work for many years before writing or recording their “definitive” work, James is most remembered for songs from this debut album, including “At Last” (though it was not a crossover single) and “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and “A Sunday Kind of Love.”

At Last has become arguably the most popular song in the U.S. for weddings, Valentine’s Day, or other kinds of bourgeois events calling for cheap sentimentality—despite the fact that James’s powerhouse vocals and phrasing actively work against the sentimentality of the song’s arrangement, as it does in most of her work covering jazz standards during that period.

But her vocals weren’t the only place James was working decidedly against a safe “jazz singer” image. She worked in her personal life and her styling to embody the kind of black urban street culture in which she was immersing herself:

“I [was] serious about turning little churchgoing Jamesetta into a tough bitch called Etta James…. I wanted to look like a great big high-yellow ho’. I wanted to be nasty.”

James ascribes the blonde-yellow hair and black eyebrows that she adopted early in her career to being closely associated with street-based sex workers and drag queens at the time. That’s who she was emulating.

She also says the beginning of her addiction to heroin was not a way to cope with the abandonment issues or physical abuse she suffered as a child. She starting shooting drugs because she thought that’s what bad girls do, and because she saw Billie Holiday, her idol, as the ultimate bad girl.

She lost many friends to issues related to substance addiction (Billie Holiday, Destiny—a black drag queen and best friend to James, even Janis Joplin, who emulated James and for whom’s overdose James felt personally responsible). She was able to kick heroin in the 1970s, but she struggled with addiction much of her adult life, and she was pretty open about that fact.

While James was touring the country, getting high and running the streets with gangsters, street walkers, gays, and drag queens (and likely some folks we’d now call transgender), she also became friends with Muhammad Ali (they met when he was still Cassius Clay) and Malcolm X, both of whom she says she spent a lot of time with. At one point she joined the Nation of Islam, and gained her “X.”

But James in many ways was exactly the kind of convert the Nation of Islam sought—black people from urban areas involved in various forms of street culture. “My religious practices might have been erratic, and my wildness surely overwhelmed my piety, but for ten years I called myself a Muslim,” said James.

As the 1960s moved on, James’ music also began to shift from doo-wop and jazz to more R&B, blues, rock, and even country over the course of the 1960s and 70s. Though James began doing the kind of gospel-influenced R&B (which later got described as “soul” music), in the early 1960s, it was Aretha Franklin who got credit for ushering in the soul era, along with James Brown (whom James toured with, and sometimes sang for in the 1960s).

James really capitalized on the blues resurgence of the 1970s to make a living touring the world. She got frustrated by the fact that people constructed a blues identity for her work and deeply resented the “Earth Mama” trap she felt that put her in.

(It’s a trap many other black women artists find difficult to escape as well.) In the end, though, she went with it, as she saw it as the easiest way to make money to support herself and her two young sons.

By the end of the 1970s when Chess Records folded, James was on hard times, still struggling with an addiction, and trying to make a living in the disco era, without a record label and doing her own bookings.

James said that without the gay community, she would have starved in the late 1970s early 1980s, when she performed in a lot of gay bars across the country. Her 1994 release “Life From San Francisco” was actually recorded in March 1981 in a gay bar.

In her memoir, Etta recounts a harrowing premonition at the time about the onset of the AIDS epidemic.

James eventually began to record again. With her two adult sons serving as bandmates and co-producers, she recorded and toured from the 1990s up through 2011, mostly recording in the jazz and blues genres.

Is it any wonder that a woman who struggled to define her self, her sound and her career over the span of 50 years would be a little suspicious of a Hollywood portrayal of her, in a film on which she was not consulted?

James was not happy about her portrayal in “Cadillac Records,” for which Beyonce served not only as actress but also as producer. Contrary to the portrayal of James in the film, she was not romantically involved with Chess Records founder Leonard Chess.

Nor did she use drugs because she was distraught over not knowing the identity of her biological father—James knew this was a possibility, but clearly saw herself as black and never tried to identify as mixed or biracial.

The film tries to suggest James was sexually attracted to Chess because he represented the white daddy she never had. Marshall Chess, the surviving son of Leonard Chess, said of the Chess/James relationship, “Now, my father was no angel, but (he) was never caught in an affair. It never happened.”

Marshall reported that he asked James about it, and she said, “He kissed me on the cheek once.”

To add insult to injury, after the film, Beyonce performed Etta’s signature song, “At Last” at the President Obama’s inauguration in 2009, laying claim to the tune James was still singing professionally and which she relied on to make a living. James told an audience shortly after that that Obama “is not my president” and “that woman he had singing for him, singing my song … she’s going to get her ass whipped.”

James (or likely her publicist) later released a statement saying James was “kidding” about the comment. But the conflict between James and Beyonce is not as simple as divas behaving badly. It really represents an artist angered by the attempts made without her consent to control the public’s understanding of her life and legacy. Audiences will hopefully be willing to go beyond “At Last,” and beyond “Cadillac Records” to find a woman whose talent and legacy went beyond both.

Kenyon Farrow is a regular contributor to Colorlines.com.

Read this online at http://colorlines.com/archives/2012/01/etta_james_political_obituary.html

Open Statement to the Fans of "The Help," From the Association of Black Women Historians

2012-01-28T00:20:00.001-05:00

Book on African domestic workers in South Africa. The Association of Black Women Historians have criticized "The Help.", a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Saturday, January 28, 2012

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help:

On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office.

Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women's employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes.

The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families.

Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them.

The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.

Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in the South, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, overexaggerated black dialect.

In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, “You is smat, you is kind, you is important.” In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the “Law,” an irreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawn strength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and the validation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.

Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discovered letter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domestic workers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the other hand, makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.

Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention.

However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.

We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context for this popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South.

In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.

Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University.

Daina Ramey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH and Associate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a Lifetime Member of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.

Suggested Reading:

Fiction:

Like one of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress

The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James

Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley

The Street by Ann Petry

A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight

Non-Fiction:

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph

To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter

Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones
Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis

Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Any questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to: ABWHTheHelp@gmail.com

Zimbabwe Inquest Continues Into Gen. Mujuru's Death

2012-01-27T23:12:00.001-05:00

Zimbabwe Vice-President Joice Mujuru with her late husband retired General Solomon Mujuru. General Mujuru died as a result of a fire at his home., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Mujuru family wants pathologist quizzed

Saturday, 28 January 2012 00:00
Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Zimbabwe Herald

THE Mujuru family has asked the court to call in a South African forensic expert to question the local pathologist who examined the remains of General Solomon Mujuru.

The family said should questions arise, they might apply for the exhumation of the remains to enable the South African expert to conduct another examination.

This came out during the ninth day of the inquest into the death of Gen Mujuru at the Harare Magistrates' Courts.

Gen Mujuru died in an inferno at his farmhouse in Beatrice in August last year, but policemen who testified yesterday ruled out foul play.

Presiding magistrate Mr Walter Chikwanha read out a letter from the family lawyer Mr Tekhor Kewada seeking a second pathological opinion.

He then asked Mr Kewada to justify the need for another pathologist and to state whether they had already found one.

Mr Kewada confirmed that he indeed wrote the letter on the family's behalf and said the justification will be that various experts have different opinions.

"There is always another possibility of another expert giving a different opinion on the cases of death from such circumstances," he said.

"From viewing records, the second pathologist may come to a different conclusion. My application is about calling a South African expert Dr Perumel. He has indicated he would be free to come to Zimbabwe."

MUJURU INQUEST

2 assault rifles found on Mujuru bedroom floor
Mujuru evidence destroyed - fireman
Mr Kewada said Dr Perumel may or may not agree with the first pathologist and questions could arise.

"The question is whether the body be exhumed or not," he said.

"I can only rely on what the experts would tell us. We are reliant on the opinion of the pathologist."

In response, Mrs Sharon Fero from the Attorney-General's Office confirmed receipt of the letter from Mr Kewada, but the State thought the family wanted the pathologist to help in questioning the evidence of the local pathologist Dr Gabriel Alviero.

Mr Chikwanha concurred with the State and said he had no application for exhumation of the remains before him.

He will rule on whether or not Dr Perumel should come in to help question Dr Alviero on Monday.

Earlier, the 28th witness in the inquest, Chief Supt Crispen Makedenge, said he requested printouts from Econet and Netone to have a look at his calls history.

He said he got the printout on September 14 of Gen Mujuru's 0773 411 909 number, but the Netone line had been terminated.

Asked the time when Gen Mujuru last made a call, Chief Supt Makedenge said on August 15 at around 2:56pm to number 0773 381 920.

He said on the same day, Gen Mujuru received a call at around 6pm from a UK number +44208640236.

Chief Supt Makedenge said they initially thought the number of firearms recovered was 17, but when they were reassembled, 15 firearms came out.

He said others were parts to firearms.

Chief Supt Makedenge ruled out that evidence was destroyed and said all the firearms recovered were registered in Gen Mujuru's name except for the AK47 rifle.

Mr Kewada asked Chief Supt Makedenge why the General changed his parking spot on the day in question, preferring to park on the opposite side and labour himself by going round the house and use the kitchen entrance to get into the house.

Chief Supt Makedenge said no one could give them the answer during investigations.

Mr Chikwanha asked how they managed to identify Gen Mujuru's remains and Supt Makedenge said it was through taking a blood sample from his daughter Kumbirai and matching from his tissue.

He said the match was 99 percent.
Asked how the General met his death, Chief Supt Makedenge said he inhaled carbon monoxide.

"We do not have evidence that there was foul play even from reports I got from Zesa, Fire Brigade, Forensic Science and the post-mortem."

Detective Inspector Admire Mutizwa, the 29th witness in the inquest from the ZRP forensics, said he examined the 15 firearms and the 6kg of ammunition found in the house.

He said the ammunition exploded as a result of heat and they took two days examining the cartridges.

Detective Insp Mutizwa said all the rifles were commercial, except for the AK47, saying most farmers were entitled to have them.

Asked by the General's nephew Mr Mudiwa Mundawarara on the origins of the AK47 rifle, Detective Insp Mutizwa said he could have got it from the army given his status.

Gen Mujuru's first born child Kumbirai said on the day in question, she arrived at the farm around 3:30am with her siblings after Maria Musona informed her of the incident.

She confirmed that the blood sample was taken by a police doctor which was to be matched with her father's tissue.

Kumbirai said up to now, she does not know the results of the tests.

Dr Edward Fusire, the 31st witness who is employed by ZRP, said he is the one who took blood samples from Kumbirai which he handed over to Chief Supt Makedenge for matching.

He also said he did not know the outcome of the tests.

2 assault rifles found on Mujuru bedroom floor

Friday, 27 January 2012 00:00
Zimbabwe Herald

Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter

TWO assault rifles were found on the floor in General Solomon Mujuru's bedroom on the day he died in an inferno while 15 other guns were in a gun cabinet close to the bedroom.
The investigating officer, Chief Superintendent Crispen Makedenge yesterday said they recovered 17 firearms and ammunition in the house.

He was testifying in the inquest into Gen Mujuru's death at the Harare Magistrates' Courts.

Chief Supt Makedenge, who is the Deputy Officer Commanding Law and Order, was the 28th witness.

While being led by Mr Clemence Chimbare of the Attorney-General's Office, he said one of the recovered guns was an AK47 rifle.

Asked where exactly they recovered the weapons, Chief Supt Makedenge said they were on the floor.

He said investigations showed that the weapons were in Gen Mujuru's fitted wardrobe which was destroyed by fire.

"In total, there were 17 guns," he said.

"Except for those found on the floor, the others were in a gun cabinet which was in a room next to the main bedroom.

"The gun cabinet was badly burnt and partially open. It might have been caused to open by the heat."

Chief Supt Makedenge said the firearms, magazines and ammunition were taken to experts.

Commenting on the state of Gen Mujuru's body, Chief Supt Makedenge said it was badly burnt and the stomach was ripped open.

He said a pathologist examined the body which was later taken to One Commando Barracks where some tissue matched his daughter Kumbirai's.

Chief Supt Makedenge said he travelled to South Africa with forensic experts where tests were done by South African Police.

Earlier, the Mujuru family lawyer Mr Tekhor Kewada asked Harare Fire Brigade station officer Mr Clever Mafoti what usually happens when a fire breaks out in a house.

Mr Mafoti said if a fire breaks out when one is awake, a person would try to escape.

"If that person is awake, they will try to save themselves, however, much of the consequences would depend on the contents of the room," he said.

"If there were, for example, a form rubber, it would produce toxic gas.''

Mr Mafoti said experience showed that one would fall down at the point which they would think to be the exit.

He said the fire at the farmhouse showed that considerable time elapsed without the inferno being noticed.

Asked if it was normal for a body to produce a blue flame while burning, Mr Mafoti said: "I did not see the blue flame and the intensity. If it is general blue, what usually happens is that if the temperatures are 500 Degrees Celsius, some fluids ooze out of the body, thereafter fat would come out that would create a triangle of combustion which consist of air, combustible materials and the heat.

"A combination of the three items causes an ignition of fire with a blue flame."

Mr Mafoti said if water is poured on a body which has temperatures above 500 Degrees Celsius, it will boil at 100 degrees and a component of hydrogen in the water which is explosive may cause the fire to intensify.

Asked by Gen Mujuru's nephew Mr Mudiwa Mundawarara the substances which are not extinguished by water, he said they were petroleum products, fats and metals.

Mr Mafoti said the state of preparedness of the Fire Brigade during the time in question was not ideal.

He was responding to a question from presiding magistrate Mr Walter Chikwanha.

"For example, we would go to Borrowdale with 400 litres of water, but we would reach the place with 100 litres because the truck (fire tender) was not in good condition and it leaked," he said.

Mr Mafoti said the Fire Brigade was not well equipped.

The 27th witness, Mr Douglas Chiradza Nyakungu, a customer service officer with Zesa said he drank with Gen Mujuru at Beatrice Motel on the eve of his death.

He said the General wanted him to fix a transformer which drew water from Mupfure River which had been vandalised.

He said the transformer was 9km away from the farm.

Mr Nyakungu said Gen Mujuru went home early after telling him that he was supposed to leave his farm at 2am for Beitbridge where he had a scheduled meeting.

"He intended to proceed to Polokwane (South Africa) for another meeting and I asked why he did not use air transport but he said his vehicle was in good condition,'' he said.

Mr Nyakungu said Gen Mujuru left for his farm after taking two tots of whiskey.

The following morning, he said he received a phone call from Gen Mujuru's neighbour Mr Grant Nakhozwe who told him that Gen Mujuru's house was on fire.

He said when he reached the house, he checked on the transformer and realised that someone had switched it off before getting into the house with Chief Supt Makedenge to check on the electricity equipment.

Mr Nyakungu said he did not know the cause of the fire, but said it was not caused by an electrical fault.

"Wiring was in steel pipes," he said.

"If there was a fault in the pipes, one would find a hole in the pipe. We saw that all the pipes had not suffered such damage and the electrical set-up in the house had been destroyed by the fire."

Mr Nyakungu said Zesa's responsibility stretched up to the customer's meter box.

But he said he did not see anything suggesting that appliances could have caused the fire, adding that if there was an electrical fault, electricity would have switched off at the source.

He said there were no gadgets which required heavy current that could have caused the fire.

Mujuru evidence destroyed - fireman

Thursday, 26 January 2012 00:00

Scores of people who thronged the Mujuru farm residence soon after the inferno destroyed evidence that could have helped ascertain the cause of the fire.

Court Reporter
Zimbabwe Herald

HARARE Fire Brigade officers failed to ascertain the cause of the fire that killed General Solomon Mujuru because scores of people who visited the farmhouse during and after the accident destroyed the evidence. Fire Brigade station officer, Mr Clever Mafoti, made the revelations at the seventh day of the inquest into the death of Gen Mujuru at the Harare Magistrates' Courts yesterday.

Mr Mafoti was responding to Mr Clemence Chimbare of the Attorney-General's Office who sought to know what could have caused the fire.

"When we eventually arrived at the scene, most leads had been destroyed by people present," he said.

Mr Mafoti said the fire could have started from the bedroom or the main lounge because peeling off of plasters and cracking showed that the fire had been in the two rooms for a long time.

Asked how fire could start from two rooms, Mr Mafoti said it was possible in cases of arson or short circuit.

"In cases involving arson, the person who would have started the fire would have been of unsound mind or when there is a short circuit or when sockets are overloaded," he said.

Mr Mafoti said fire could be caused by the expansion of dust particles in the ceiling as a result of heat coming from the floor.

He said the ceiling could eventually burst and the fire could spread to other areas.

Mr Mafoti, who was the 26th witness in the inquest, said on the day in question they received a phone call from Harare Central Police Station that fire had broken out at the Mujuru farmhouse at around 3:40am.

"I first made inquiries whether we were going to get water from the scene. It was fortunate that my superior who was known to Gen Mujuru was present. He knew that there was water 1km from the scene in the form of a dam and that there were some water bowsers at the farm," he said.

He said the cars they had could not go to Beatrice without breaking down so they took a truck they referred to as a horse layer.

Mr Mafoti said he left the station with seven subordinates at 4:09am.

Asked why it took them 30 minutes to depart, Mr Mafoti said, "We did not have the capacity to travel outside Harare hence when we received the report we started making arrangements."

He said during the time in question, they had a vehicle, which carried 400 litres of water but it was leaking such that they would reach Beatrice without water if they had used it.

Mr Mafoti said they arrived at the farm at around 5:03am and found the water bowser at the scene and they connected a portable pump and began dousing the fire.

"When we reached the scene, there were some pockets of fire here and there but the fire had already been put out," he said.

Mr Mafoti, who has been working for the Fire Brigade for 27 years, two of them as a station officer, estimated the damage of the fire to be 75 percent.

Yesterday morning, the Mujuru family lawyer Mr Tekor Kewada requested that the inquest be held in the afternoon and the State consented.

In an interview, Mr Kewada said: "There are certain aspects I have been looking at and there is someone researching for me and I made a request to the State to accord postponement.

"When you are calling experts, there are certain aspects that I need to look at. I would also want to consider before I question."
He said both counsels were there to assist the court in the inquest.

Mr Kewada said if he felt there were insufficient experts, he would apply to call more experts.

The inquest continues today with Mr Mafoti being questioned by the Mujuru family.

An expert from the Police Ballistics Department and a Zesa official are also expected to give evidence.

Mujuru inquest: Policemen testify

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 00:00
Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Zimbabwe Herald

POLICEMEN from Beatrice Police Station yesterday said the fire that burnt General Solomon Mujuru was bluish in colour and different from ordinary flames that were in other parts of the house.

Inspector Simon Dube and Constable Clatwell Garisayi said this at the inquest into the death of Gen Mujuru at the Harare Magistrates' Courts.

Const Garisayi, who was the 23rd witness, said on the fateful day, Gen Mujuru's maid Rosemary Short phoned him to report that the farmhouse was on fire.

"The caller identified herself as Rosemary Short and I asked her if they had managed to locate the General and she said they had only seen his vehicle that was parked near the house.

"She said doors were locked and further explained that the General had come to her house to collect some keys," he said.

Const Garisayi said he sent his subordinate to make a report to the duty officer who arrived with the officer-in-charge minutes later.

The officer-in-charge Inspector Dube, he said, made a call to Tavistock Farm's owner requesting for a vehicle to ferry them to Gen Mujuru's Ruzambo Farm.

He told Mrs Sharon Fero of the Attorney-General's Office that Beatrice Police Station had no vehicle.

‘General Mujuru unhappy with ZRP security'
Mujuru wanted to sleep in car: Maid
Mujuru inquest: Security rapped
Const Garisayi said he went to the farm with Insp Dube when the vehicle arrived.
Upon arrival after 20 to 25 minutes, people were using water to put out the fire.

"At the back of the house, people managed to identify a bluish flame. There was an object, which was burning. I peeped through the window and saw an object with folded hands . . . it was akin to a human body," he said.

Asked where the bluish fire was emanating from, he said it came from the body and areas surrounding it, adding it was different from flames in other parts of the house.

The bluish fire reportedly covered the body and a portion of about 30cm from the body.

Const Garisayi said they were instructed to douse the fire on the body and it took about 10 buckets to extinguish it.

He said upon pouring the first buckets of water, the flames became ferocious.

Const Garisayi said Deputy Commissioner-General Godwin Matanga arrived at the scene and instructed him to guard a door leading into the house.

When asked about the state of the body, Const Garisayi said, "I would say from the chest going downwards to the stomach, it would appear that the body was burnt such that fire got inside."

He said his superiors asked him and others to gather debris and they placed it in a plastic bag adding that some objects were hard while others contained ashes.

Const Garisayi said they took the debris to One Commando Barracks.

The 25th witness, Insp Dube, told the court that he has served the ZRP for 27 years and knew Gen Mujuru from the days of the liberation struggle.

He said he also knew him as a prominent farmer in Beatrice and a member of the Crime Consultative Unit in the area.

He said upon arrival at Ruzambo Farm, he saw people around the burning house.

He testified that one of the people who were fighting the fire said he saw a burning object and he went to investigate.

He said he saw a charred body, which was burning from both sides and instructed people to pour water over the body.

He said quite a number of buckets were used to extinguish the fire.

"The fire was bluish and the area covering the chest had flesh, but the bottom area was heavily burnt and on the head only the skull remained," he said.

Insp Dube said the body lay downwards.

He said he did not know the cause of the fire when he was asked by Gen Mujuru's nephew Mr James Mushore.

Mr Mushore suggested to him that people who went in to have a look at the body might have destroyed evidence.

Insp Dube denied the suggestion saying people viewed the remains from a distance and Deputy Comm-Gen Matanga would partially lift the blanket covering the remains for people to view.

He said the only people allowed to view the remains were police and members from the Zimbabwe National Army before conceding that some people might have also viewed Gen Mujuru's remains. The 21st witness, Mr Jimmy Maponga, who is the district information officer for Seke, did not give evidence in court.

His testimony was admitted into the record by consent of the State and the lawyer representing the Mujuru family, Mr Tekor Kewada.

It was admitted through Section 3 (1) (4) of the Criminal Law (Codification and Reform) Act because it was similar to that of other witnesses --- Tongai Chimuka and Blessing Madzivire.

The 22nd witness, Mr Grant Nakhozwe, the owner of Moonlight Funeral Services and a neighbouring farmer, said on the fateful day he was sleeping when he received a phone call from a Maponga who is employed at Beatrice Hospital at around 4am.

He said he was advised that Gen Mujuru had been burnt in a fire at his farmhouse.

"I called my manager and told him to wait by his gate so we could go together to the General's farm. When I arrived at the farm, I asked the guards what happened and where they were when the incident occurred. The guards told me they only heard noise akin to gunshots," he said.

He said upon arrival, he met Vice President Joice Mujuru and she told him that the General had died in the inferno.

Mr Nakhozwe returned to his farm to collect a solar light, which he gave to a policeman.

He said when the policeman went into the house, he told him that he had found a body and he and the VP peeped through the window, but they could not tell whether it was a human body or not.

Mr Nakhozwe said Gen Mujuru's body was still burning and Insp Simon Dube told people to pour water over it.

He said he was interested in knowing the cause of the fire so he called a Zesa official, Mr Nyakungu who came 30 minutes later and inspected the house.

Responding to a question from Gen Mujuru's elder brother, Joel, Mr Nakhozwe said two security guards at the farm had told him that they heard gunshots.

The 24th witness, Asst Insp Jokoniya Zaza stationed at Beatrice Police Station and attached to police general security intelligence, said on the fateful day, he was instructed by his officer-in-charge to call the fire brigade and Beatrice Hospital for an ambulance after they heard the news.

"I called the fire brigade, but failed to get through, so I called Harare Central for them to get in touch with them," he said.

He said he followed to Ruzambo Farm when the ambulance from Beatrice Hospital came to the police station.

He said when he arrived at the scene, Insp Dube told him that Gen Mujuru's remains had been found and most parts of the house had been consumed by the fire.

He said when he accompanied VP Mujuru into the house, he could tell that it was lying facing downwards.

Today, a member of the ZRP Ballistic Department, the Fire Brigade and Zesa will give evidence.

After yesterday's session, VP Mujuru said an inquest was the best way of dealing with the matter as things were becoming "clearer and clearer".

Mujuru wanted to sleep in car: Maid

Thursday, 19 January 2012 00:00

Rosemary Short wept after testifying at the Harare Magistrate court yesterday

Lovemore Chikova and Innocent Ruwende
Zimbabwe Herald

A STAR witness in the ongoing inquest into the death of General Solomon Mujuru yesterday told the court that the General sometimes slept in his car and had contemplated doing so the day he died in an inferno that gutted his house.

Gen Mujuru's maid, Ms Rosemary Short, said when the General left the farm on August 11, he said was going to Harare.

He returned on August 15, and died that night in the inferno.

She had knocked off early that day because she was unwell, but a child told her around 8pm that there was a vehicle outside her house, which was in the workers' compound about 3km from the farmhouse.

"I saw the vehicle and it belonged to Gen Mujuru. He told me he had forgotten his keys in Harare and asked for the ones I used," she said.

"I went back into the house and brought out my keys, which I handed over to him."

Gen Mujuru told Ms Short that he had been thinking of sleeping in the car that night and even showed her how he could do that by opening the door and moving the seat up and down.

Ms Short said Gen Mujuru sometimes slept in the car, especially when he came to the farm drunk.

But the General, Ms Short said, was not drunk that night, as he was in control of his faculties.
After Gen Mujuru bade her farewell, Ms Short retired to bed, but around 2:45am - her brother Mr Petros Jaison - who works as a general hand at the farm, phoned her to say the main house was on fire.

Ms Short was among the General's workers who testified at the inquest yesterday.

She said it had been impossible to enter the blazing house to rescue the General because the fire that engulfed the house was so intense.

She broke down as she recounted telling Vice President Joice Mujuru over the phone about the fire, triggering further weeping from Gen Mujuru's elder brother, Joel, and sister Mrs Elizabeth Marowa.

Mr Joel Mujuru briefly left the court to compose himself.

Mr Clemence Chimbari of the Attorney General's Office, who was leading Ms Short in her evidence, suggested that the hearing presided over by provincial magistrate Mr Walter Chikwanha at Harare Magistrates Courts adjourns to give Ms Short a break, but she insisted that she was fit to continue giving evidence.

A policeman, Const Obert Mark, who has already given evidence, arrived at her house with the same message.

She asked him why the police did not break the window or door to the bedroom to rescue Gen Mujuru.

Const Mark told her that they did not know which one was Gen Mujuru's bedroom.

His own evidence told of a similar dilemma.
She asked Const Mark if the police had called for help, but he said he did not have airtime.

Ms Short said Const Mark told her that the fire came from a geyser, but he could not tell which one exactly.

She then phoned VP Mujuru and told her of the inferno.

VP Mujuru told her to rush over to the house and see what was happening.

"When I arrived at the farmhouse, I realised that the house had been utterly destroyed and the policemen told me that they could not locate the General," said Ms Short.

She said there were two windows in Gen Mujuru's bedroom, totalling about three metres.

Ms Short said there was a small candle in the bedroom, but she did not put any matches out because she did not think that Gen Mujuru would visit the farm that day.

She said Gen Mujuru sometimes used a candle when there was no electricity at the farmhouse, although there was a generator; the general usually asked for the generator to be switched on when he wanted to watch television.

There were three doors used to access Gen Mujuru's bedroom, she said.

Ms Short said the bedroom held a bed, headboard, dressing table, a television set, three sofas, a chest of drawers, two fitted wardrobes, a desk table, a chair, a safe and a coffee table.

After the fire had been fought with the help of Harare Fire Brigade, which arrived at around 5am, Ms Short said the Officer-in-Charge at Beatrice who had arrived earlier told them that he had located Gen Mujuru's remains in the house.

"I started crying," said Ms Short.

"We were looking at the remains through the window, but I did not see them properly because it was dark. I only saw a burnt object."

Ms Short said there were chemicals to treat cattle, a safe, a gun cabinet, shoes, electricity transformer boxes and water glasses in the room where the remains were found.

She said Gen Mujuru's vehicle was parked near the swimming pool where he did not usually park it.

Mr Albert Alufandika, who worked at the farm as a groundsman, said he was woken up by a police officer at around 2:26am and told that there was fire at the main house.

When he arrived at the house, they pushed Gen Mujuru's car, whose windows were not locked, about 5 metres.

Alufandika said a cellphone which was in the car rung and he answered to find that it was VP Mujuru who asked him if they had found the General.

Mr Jaison broke a window to the sitting room and those there started moving out property, salvaging sofas in the process.

Mr Alufandika said he looked for Gen Mujuru around the garden, but could not find him, only to return after he heard that his remains had been discovered in the house.

"We heard that there was a body next to the window, but I was gripped with fear and could not take a look," he said.

Quizzed by VP Mujuru on why the car was parked in an unusual place, Mr Alufandika said it was also surprising to him that the vehicle was parked at the back of the house.

He said Gen Mujuru had parked his car at the back only twice before.

"It is said that he collected keys for the house from the maid, this means that he did not have keys to the bedroom door," said VP Mujuru.

"I think the obvious thing is that he should have parked the car on the usual place near the kitchen door because that is the door for which he colleted keys from the maid."

Mr Jaison told the court that he was told by a police officer at around 2:30am that the main house was on fire.

When they arrived at the house, Mr Jaison said he broke the window to the sitting room and used a torch to look for Gen Mujuru.

The fire was intense in other rooms and after failing to locate him in the sitting room, he started throwing out sofas.

He then rushed out and brought a water bowser and the people who had gathered started dousing the flame using buckets.

He said the Officer-in-Charge at Beatrice arrived later and called the fire brigade.

"Gen Mujuru's body was found in a room next to the door leading to the verandah," said Mr Jaison. "I was told to bring some water so that it could be poured on the body to stop it from burning further."

Under questioning from the Mujuru family lawyer, Mr Takor Keweda, Mr Jaison said he knew where Gen Mujuru's bedroom was, but did not make any effort to break the door and the windows because the fire was intense that side of the house.

"I tried all I could to save Gen Mujuru, but I could not because of the fire," he said.

One of the three police officers assigned to guard Gen Mujuru's house, Constable Lazarus Handikatari, said he was not on duty when the fire broke out.

He said they had a duty roaster and it was Constable Augustinos Chinyoka's turn to guard the house.

Const Handikatari said when he heard that fire had broken out, he teamed up with the other police officers to look for Gen Mujuru around the house.

"Const Chinyoka smashed one of the windows, but we did could not go far inside the house because we were choked by smoke," he said.

"I asked for reinforcements from workers in the compound, but we could do nothing because the fire was intense."

Const Handikatari said VP Mujuru arrived at the house around 4am and one of the workers was able to go into the house because the fire had subsidised and discovered the body of Gen Mujuru.

He said there had been some explosions from the asbestos sheets on the house because of the fire.

Const Handikatari said there was no electricity at the farm around 8pm when he went to rest and the room where he was resting was not part of the guardroom.

Mr Chikwanha adjourned the proceedings to today, with Ms Short expected to continue giving her evidence.

NATO's Grisly Crimes in Libya

2012-01-27T22:47:00.001-05:00

Africans held prisoner in the US-led and trained occupied Libya., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

NATO’s grisly crimes in Libya

Friday, 27 January 2012 00:00
Farirai Chubvu

While Charles Ray - the US envoy here - portrays himself as the face of the free world, a champion of human rights and democracy and has been vociferous about his country's role in the Libyan invasion, it turns out that just like Vietnam and other illegal wars before it, Libya is turning into a major embarrassment for Uncle Sam.

A report released last week by human rights groups in the Middle East presents extensive evidence of war crimes carried out in Libya by the United States, NATO and their proxy "rebel" forces during last year's invasion, that culminated in the murder of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

The "Report of the Independent Civil Society fact-finding Mission to Libya" presents findings of an investigation carried out last November by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights, together with the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and the International Legal Assistance Consortium.

Based on interviews with victims of war crimes as well as with witnesses and Libyan officials in Tripoli, Zawiya, Sibrata, Khoms, Zliten, Misrata, Tawergha and Sirte, the report calls for the investigation of evidence that NATO targeted civilian sites, causing many deaths and injuries.

Civilian facilities targeted by NATO bombs and missiles included schools, government buildings, at least one food warehouse, and private homes.

The report also presents evidence of systematic murder, torture, expulsion and abuse of suspected Gaddafi loyalists by the NATO-backed "rebel" forces of the National Transitional Council. It describes the forced expulsion of the mostly black-skinned inhabitants of Tawergha and the ongoing persecution of sub-Saharan migrant workers by forces allied to the NTC and its transitional government.

The investigators report savage and repeated beatings of prisoners held without trial or charges, the summary execution of pro-Gaddafi fighters, and witness reports of "indiscriminate and retaliatory murders, including the ‘slaughter' (i.e., throat slitting) of former combatants."

The report exposes the human rights and democratic pretexts employed by the US, France, Britain and their NATO accomplices to carry out a colonial-style war of conquest. It makes clear that UN Security Council Resolution 1973, imposing a "no-fly zone" and arms embargo on Libya supposedly to protect civilians from repressive actions by Muammar Gaddafi, was in fact used to carry out a ruthless air war waged in co-ordination with "rebel" forces on the ground.

The report suggests that soon after the outbreak of anti-Gaddafi protests in Benghazi and other cities, opposition forces were receiving training from Western armed forces as well as weapons from NATO powers and allied Arab states. Opposition to Gaddafi that erupted last February following the fall of Mubarak in Egypt was rapidly taken into hand by the US, France, Britain and their agents within Libya to launch a pro-imperialist invasion.

As the report states: "From first-hand information available to the Mission, and secondary sources, it appears that NATO participated in what could be classified as offensive actions undertaken by the opposition forces, including, for example, attacks on towns and cities held by Gaddafi forces. Equally, the choice of certain targets, such as a regional food warehouse, raises prima facie questions regarding the role of such attacks with respect to the protection of civilians."

The report gives only the palest picture of a brutal onslaught whose purpose was to turn the clock back 43 years to the conditions that prevailed under the US-UK stooge King Idris, who turned the country's oil resources over to American and British conglomerates and allowed the two powers to maintain large military bases on Libyan soil. The mass destruction and killing, which culminated in the levelling of Sirte and lynching of Gaddafi, make the UN-sanctioned claims of a war for "human rights" and the "protection of civilians" not only absurd, but obscene.

The rape of Libya was the Anglo-Saxons response to the revolutionary uprisings that ousted long-time pro-Western regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, two countries that border Libya. The aim of the invasion was to impose complete control on the country's oil resources, divert and suppress the growth of working class struggles throughout North Africa and the Middle East, and deal a blow to China and Russia, which had established close economic relations with the Gaddafi regime.

The war destroyed Libya. The NTC - an unstable coalition of ex-Gaddafi regime officials, Islamists, including some with links to Al Qaeda, and Western intelligence assets - itself estimates that the invasion claimed 50 000 lives and injured another 50 000. Rising infighting between the NTC's factions is opening the door to full-scale civil war between rival clan-based and regional militias.

Just this weekend, amid warnings from NTC Chairman Mustafa Abdel Jalil of looming civil war, a crowd demanding the resignation of the transitional government forced its way into the NTC's headquarters in Benghazi. Abdel Hafiz Ghoga, the vice president of the NTC, promptly resigned.

The report on US-NATO war crimes is also a further indictment of the assortment of "left" parties, intellectuals and academics who parroted the human rights pretexts of Washington and NATO and thus gave open or backhanded support to the invasion of Libya.
And still, the so-called International Criminal Court is deafeningly silent.

Zimpapers Bids Veteran Journalist Zulu Farewell

2012-01-27T22:40:00.001-05:00

The Zimbabwe Herald is the leading state newspaper in the Southern African state. The headline reveals its anti-imperialist political character., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Zimpapers bids veteran journalist Zulu farewell

Saturday, 28 January 2012 00:00
Herald Reporter

ZIMPAPERS yesterday bade farewell to Herald managing editor, Isaac Zulu, who retired after serving the company for 29 years.

Speaking during the farewell ceremony at Herald House yesterday, group chief operating officer, Pikirayi Deketeke, described Zulu as an "asset" to the organisation.

He said he learnt a lot in the 24 years he had worked with Zulu.

"I came here when he was already in the field.

"He is a veteran journalist, especially in the designing area. For the years we have been together, I learnt a lot," he said.

"In terms of contribution, he is an institution with vast knowledge.

"He was and I hope he will always be there to guide the young journalists in realising their dreams."

Herald editor William Chikoto said Zulu had a distinguished career in journalism and was an expert in media management.

He said Zulu had personal and corporate discipline.

"He is a man with vast experience in terms of management.

"We have learnt a lot from him as he is a man who believed in management-by-keeping-a-step-ahead," he said.

In his remarks, Zulu urged young journalists to stay focused to achieve their dreams.

"Always remember that the time to retire will come for you. Make hay while the sun shines and be disciplined to reach greater heights," he said.

Zulu started his journalism career in 1969.
He joined Zimpapers as a senior sub editor in 1982 before he rose through the ranks to become managing editor.

He left briefly to work for the Daily News before rejoining The Herald.

Senegal Court Says President Wade Can Run Again

2012-01-27T22:30:00.001-05:00

President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal with President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe during a recent visit commemorating the 50th anniversary of the independence of Senegal., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

January 27, 2012

Senegal Court Says President Can Run Again

By ADAM NOSSITER
New York Times

DAKAR, Senegal — Senegal’s elderly president can run for a third term next month, according to a ruling Friday night by the nation’s constitutional court, which also threw out the candidacy of the popular music star Youssou N’Dour.

The decision, which appears to contradict a two-term limit in Senegal’s Constitution, could provoke a renewal of last summer’s street clashes between young opponents of the president, Abdoulaye Wade, and Senegal’s police. Already Friday night there were reports that the police were using tear gas and batons to disperse youthful protesters in the normally peaceful capital.

Mr. Wade, officially 85 but believed to be older, has become the focus of youthful discontent in a coastal nation of high unemployment and widespread poverty; in his 11 years in power, Senegal’s place on the United Nations Human Development Index — a measure of living standards, life expectancy, literacy and education — has hardly budged.

Yet Senegal had also maintained its reputation for vigilantly sticking to democratic rules, particularly compared with its turbulent West African neighbors, with a peaceful handoff of power in 2000, when Mr. Wade was first elected, and elections generally judged fair.

His critics say Mr. Wade has damaged that reputation with his determination to stay in power despite the constitutional limit. On Friday night, the court — whose head was appointed by Mr. Wade — gave a major boost to the president’s hopes for the election, to be held Feb. 26. He faces three of his own former prime ministers, among other candidates.

At the same time, the constitutional court apparently pushed aside one of Mr. Wade’s leading critics, Mr. N’Dour, a top-selling singer popular worldwide. Mr. N’Dour has been outspoken for several years in denouncing what he and others say are the president’s authoritarian tendencies. He has written songs decrying the failings of Mr. Wade’s rule, including frequent power failures, and has built a small media empire in Senegal that serves as a voice for opposition to the president.

It was not immediately clear why the court did not include the singer on its list of approved candidates — a decision confirmed on Mr. N’Dour’s own television station Friday night. But the move seemed likely to further inflame youths in Dakar’s volatile suburbs, whose opposition to Mr. Wade has coalesced into a civil society movement that earlier Friday filled a central city square here with protesters.

Late Friday night, Senegalese television showed the square, the Place de l’Obélisque, still packed with angry opponents of the president.

Mr. Wade, an accomplished lawyer who spent decades as an opposition leader himself, has a reputation for self-assurance. Earlier this week he airily dismissed his critics, as he often does, in an interview published on the Web site Dakaractu.com: “The constitution, it’s me that wrote it. All by myself. Nobody knows it better than me.”

434 People Killed in Iraq Since U.S. Pulled Out

2012-01-27T22:19:00.001-05:00

Aftermath of bombings in Baghdad where dozens were killed in renewed attacks. Since the US ostensibly withdrew nearly 450 have been killed., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

January 27, 2012

434 People Killed in Iraq Since U.S. Pulled Out

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
New York Times

BAGHDAD — Since the United States military withdrew from Iraq in the middle of last month, 434 Iraqis have been killed in attacks across the country, according to security officials, one of the highest tolls for that amount of time in the past few years. The latest attack occurred Friday when a suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives near a funeral procession in a Shiite neighborhood. The procession was for a man who had been fatally shot, along with his wife and son, a day earlier by insurgents.

According to security officials, 31 people, including 8 police officers, were killed in the Friday attack and 60 were wounded. Elsewhere in Baghdad, a young boy was killed in an explosion near a soccer field.

It is difficult to make sweeping statements about security trends, and accounts about attacks and death tolls differ. Nevertheless, the wave of violence over the past five weeks has unnerved Iraqis who fear that their leaders, embroiled in a political fight with one another, are not prepared to thwart attacks without help from the Americans.

According to statistics compiled by the Ministry of Interior, the rate of deaths over the past month has been higher than all but one month last year. The average daily death toll since the withdrawal has been about 11. Last year, the average daily death toll was nine.

The attacks, which have been aimed mainly at Shiites, have also raised questions about whether the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq has regained its footing after it was significantly diminished in 2008. In recent statements on its Web site, the group said it had shifted its attention toward those with close ties to Iran, particularly Iraq’s Shiites, in an effort to push back against Iran’s influence in Iraq in the wake of the American withdrawal.

Despite the carnage, top Iraqi security officials say their fight against insurgents is increasingly successful.

The acting minister of interior, Adnan al-Asadi, said in an interview here on Thursday that when the Americans were in Iraq they made the fight against Al Qaeda more difficult.

“It became better after the Americans left,” he said. “They were slowing our operations. Sometimes we would arrest a bad guy, and they would get involved and say, ‘That is our guy,’ and they would have him set free.”

The United States provided extensive support to Iraqi security forces in counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda, including helicopter transportation for many of the raids to detain insurgents. Mr. Asadi said that even though the Iraqis no longer have that help, “Al Qaeda has received a number of hits, and we were able to arrest a large number of their leaders.”

“We are hitting them hard,” he added. “And we are arresting big numbers of them every day, sometimes as much as 50 a day.”

The recent wave of attacks, Mr. Asadi said, was “just to prove that they are still here.”

The attack on Friday occurred around 11 a.m., as the procession made its way past a market, taking the man’s body to be cleaned before being buried.

“The people in the market got hurt, there were women and children burning,” said a man who was part of the procession and who would identify himself only as Abu Hussein. “There were a lot of officers in the funeral procession.”

Abbas Munther, 32, was selling cigarettes on the street when “the explosion went off and I flew right into the air,” he said.

“I was blinded by the heavy smoke. I couldn’t see who was beside me,” said Mr. Munther, who sustained arm and head wounds. “Then I could hear the voices of injured people and the sirens of rescue vehicles. Later I saw the ground and it was full of body parts and blood."

On Thursday, 20 people were killed across Iraq, including a high-ranking member of the Awakening movement, which is made up of former Qaeda members who turned against the insurgents and helped the Americans and Iraqis fight them.

Zaid Thaker and Omar al-Jawoshy contributed reporting.

Explosions Rock Kano, Nigeria

2012-01-27T20:29:00.001-05:00

Glory Ndudi, a Christian, and her five children board a bus headed out of town on Wednesday. The recent bomb attacks that have targeted churches in Kano, Nigeria, have led to an exodus of Christians from the city., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Nigeria: Explosions Rock Kano

Abdulsalam Muhammad
Nigeria Vanguard
27 January 2012

---------------------------------
Kano — For the third time in one week, another bomb explosion, yesterday, rocked Sabon Gari, a predominantly Christian quarter in Kano, injuring two persons.

Another explosion, from a burst tyre at Sabon Gari market, yesterday, afternoon caused pandemonium as people thought it was another bomb blast.

The Improvised Explosive Devise, IED, went off between two long buses at a motor park along New Road, Kano, triggering pandemonium.

Eyewitness told Vanguard that the explosive, stuffed in an empty soft drink can, was thrown by unknown persons between commercial buses operated by two transport companies, Gobison Bus and Ezenwata Motors.

The explosion was said to have shattered the glasses in one of the buses, while two people sustained slight injuries in the pandemonium that ensued.

The eyewitness said as soon as the dust settled, transporters evacuated their buses from the park in anticipation of more bomb blasts.

Soldiers, who arrived the scene immediately cordo-ned off the area and commenced investigations into the remote causes of the explosion.

A soldier keeping watch at the eastern end of the new road told Vanguard: "We had a blast at the park and two people were feared injured. The police bomb disposal unit is inside conducting their investigation."

A resident in the area, who also spoke to Vanguard on the incident, said: "We heard a blast, rushed in there to see what happened and saw two people slightly injured. They were taken to the hospital."

Unconfirmed report had it that a utility vehicle laden with bombs was discovered in the garage but police authorities said they were still investigating and that it was "too premature to let the cat out of the bag."

Police image-maker, Magaji Majia, told reporters that the police had dispatched a team of bomb disposal experts to the scene of the blast.

Also confirming the story, an Army spokesman told reporters on phone: "Yes, we had a blast in Sabon Gari area of the city and we have deployed our men to the spot to take charge of security. But I advise you call the police for details."

A combined team of gun-wielding soldiers and police personnel have taken over the entire stretch of New Road and the adjourning street in a bid to restore normalcy to the trouble spot.

The Improvised Explosive Devise, IED, went off between two long buses at a motor park along New Road, Kano, triggering pandemonium.

Eyewitness told Vanguard that the explosive, stuffed in an empty soft drink can, was thrown by unknown persons between commercial buses operated by two transport companies, Gobison Bus and Ezenwata Motors.

The explosion was said to have shattered the glasses in one of the buses, while two people sustained slight injuries in the pandemonium that ensued.

The eyewitness said as soon as the dust settled, transporters evacuated their buses from the park in anticipation of more bomb blasts.

Soldiers, who arrived the scene immediately cordo-ned off the area and commenced investigations into the remote causes of the explosion.

A soldier keeping watch at the eastern end of the new road told Vanguard: "We had a blast at the park and two people were feared injured. The police bomb disposal unit is inside conducting their investigation."

A resident in the area, who also spoke to Vanguard on the incident, said: "We heard a blast, rushed in there to see what happened and saw two people slightly injured. They were taken to the hospital."

Unconfirmed report had it that a utility vehicle laden with bombs was discovered in the garage but police authorities said they were still investigating and that it was "too premature to let the cat out of the bag."

Police image-maker, Magaji Majia, told reporters that the police had dispatched a team of bomb disposal experts to the scene of the blast.

Also confirming the story, an Army spokesman told reporters on phone: "Yes, we had a blast in Sabon Gari area of the city and we have deployed our men to the spot to take charge of security. But I advise you call the police for details."

A combined team of gun-wielding soldiers and police personnel have taken over the entire stretch of New Road and the adjourning street in a bid to restore normalcy to the trouble spot.

Identify Yourself for Dialogue, Nigerian President Jonathan Tells Boko Haram

2012-01-27T19:50:00.001-05:00

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan visiting relatives of victims of the St. Theresa Catholic Church that was bombed on December 25, 2011. Dozens were killed in a series of attacks blamed on Boko Haram., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Identify yourselves for dialogue, Jonathan tells Boko Haram

SAM OLUWALANA WITH AGENCY REPORTS 27/01/2012 01:31:00
Nigeria National Mirror

President Goodluck Jonathan President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday challenged the Boko Haram Islamic sect to identify themselves and state clearly their demands as a basis for talks, even as he acknowledged that military confrontation alone will not end their insurgency. Jonathan, in an interview with a foreign news agency at the Presidential Villa, Abuja said there was no doubt that Boko Haram had links with other jihadist groups outside Nigeria.

The sect killed more than 500 people last year and more than 250 in the first weeks of 2012 in gun and bomb attacks, according to Human Rights Watch. Coordinated attacks in Kano last Friday left 186 people dead in its most deadly strike to date, prompting the president to visit surviving victims.

If they clearly identify themselves now and say this is the reason why we are resisting, this is the reason why we are confronting government or this is the reason why we destroy some innocent people and their properties, then there will be a basis for dialogue. We will dialogue, let us know your problems and we will solve your problem but if they dont identify themselves, who will you dialogue with, said Jonathan.

The President pledged to bring development to the remote, semi-arid corners of the country where high youth unemployment has provided easy recruits for extremists.

Military confrontation alone will not eliminate terror attacks, an enabling environment for young people to find jobs is also needed .Our commitment is to make sure our irrigation programs are all revitalised so most of these young people are engaged in productive agriculture and will not be free for them to recruit as political thugs, he said.

As well as coming under fire for his handling of the crisis in the north, President Jonathan suffered a week of vitriolic anti-government protests this month when attempt was made to scrap fuel subsidies, part of efforts to cut the fiscal costs, but was forced to partly reinstate it.

This prompted the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to announce a raft of measures aimed at defusing public anger about the extent of corruption and mismanagement in the sector, including setting up a new committee to hurry along the stalled Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB.

Why Abubakar Should Not Be IGP in Nigeria, by Northern CAN, Others

2012-01-27T19:28:00.001-05:00

Mohammed Dahiru Abubakar has been appointed as the new Inspector General for the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The West African state has been hit by sectional violence., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Why Abubakar shouldn’t be IGP, by Northern CAN, parties, others

Friday, 27 January 2012 00:00
From Saxone Akhaine (Kaduna), Chika Goodluck-Ogazi, Bertram Nwannekanma (Lagos), Uzoma Nzeagwu (Awka), Charles Coffie-Gyamfi (Abeokuta) and Isa Abdulsalami (Jos)

Boko Haram has declared war on Nigerians, says NSCIA

ALTHOUGH reactions to President Goodluck Jonathan’s appointment of Mohammed Dahiru Abubakar as Acting Inspector-General of Police (IGP) are mixed, the opposition to it is fierce. Only a section of the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) hailed the decision.

Political parties, Christian bodies and civil society groups, which commented on Abubakar’s choice yesterday, raised posers over his suitability for the office.

Among the critics of the President’s action were leaders of the 19 Northern State chapters of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), the Lagos League of Political Parties (LLPP), and the Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO).

Even the Governor of Zamfara State Abdulaziz Yari (Abubakar’s home state) does not believe that the removal of Mr. Hafiz Ringim as IG from office by the President would lead to improvement in the security situation in the country.

At the Presidential Lounge of the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos yesterday, Yari said rather than sack them, security chiefs should be encouraged to do their jobs, especially on intelligence gathering.

In a statement issued in Kaduna yesterday, CAN said the “new IG’s appointment came to us as a big surprise because this is a man whose career is trailed by controversy based on religious fanaticism. For him to be appointed as the acting IG, we wonder whether President Jonathan meant well for the country?”

The Publicity Secretary of Northern CAN, Mr. Sunday Oibe, who signed the statement, said, “to us, the appointment of Abubakar is an extension of terrorism in Nigeria. Christians in Northern Nigeria will not feel safe following his antecedents as the Commissioner of Police in Plateau State as documented by the Justice Niki Tobi Commission of Inquiry into the bloody killings during the 2001crisis in Jos.

“To us, it is a licence given to him by President Jonathan to unleash terror on Christians and we reject his appointment as acting IG. The profile of Abubakar is not befitting of an acting IG of Police. One begins to wonder why a man who was indicted for religious fanaticism by the Niki Tobi Commission, which equally recommended him for retirement or outright dismissal, could be allowed to remain in the Police.

“It appears that some unpatriotic characters, especially in the Nigeria Police are being allowed to have their ways in this country,” Oibe said

According to him, there is a similarity between Zakari Biu, the commissioner of police, who allegedly freed the suspected Boko Haram bomber and Abubakar, who “supervised the killings and wanton destruction of lives and property in the 2001 crisis in Jos.”

But the Chairman of PFN in Anambra State, Prof. David Eberechukwu, has commended Jonathan for appointing a new IG, saying it was a step in the right direction that could polish the battered image of the Police.

He told reporters yesterday at the headquarters of Overcomers’ Holy Ghost Bible Ministries, Umunze, Anambra State that the move was aimed at restoring sanity in the country and creating confidence in the Nigeria Police.

Eberechukwu tasked the Chairman of the Police Service Commission, Mr. Parry Osayande, to seek more opinions from Nigerians before taking the final decision on security matters.

Yari however said: “Personally, I want to say that the removal of service chiefs does not improve security in the country, but let the security men do their job, especially when it comes to the issue of intelligence gathering.

“In Nigeria today, we know the situation of security and I don’t put the blame on our security personnel because in some countries, the citizen support their security agencies with required information. The situation is different in our nation.”

The LLPP also faulted the appointment of Abubakar as the police boss and appealed to Jonathan to vet him thoroughly.

The coalition of parties in a statement by its Chairman, Chief Udoka Udeogaranya, urged the President to scrutinise the vetting machinery, which recommended Abubakar as the most suitable person for the job, stressing that “it is still not too late to make a review of the action.”

The parties therefore urged the President to follow the constitutional provisions in section 215 and 216 as stipulated as well as thoroughly review the Tobi panel’s report, which indicted Abubakar.

“We acknowledge Abubakar’s outstanding performance in fighting armed robbery attacks, but are quick to raise an objection that armed robbery fighting is different from fighting terrorism against a group that shares his religion and ethnicity.”

The CLO also picked holes in Abubakar’s appointment. The group’s Executive Director, Mr. Steve Aluko-Daniel, told The Guardian yesterday that CLO’s fear is based on the fact that the process of appointing IGs in the country had been far from global practices.

“The situation where junior ranking officers are being appointed as IGs over and above their seniors is not the best and in the process you lose the best hands you could have used in building security synergy to fight criminality,” he said.

But the Nigeria Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), yesterday condemned last week’s killings and wanton destruction of life and property in Kano by Boko Haram sect, describing the incident as the worst in the history of the country.

In a statement issued in Abeokuta, Ogun State yesterday by its Secretary-General, Dr. Lateef Adegbite, lamented the threat the activities of the sect posed to the security and stability of the nation.

“These hard faced rebels (Boko Haram) have declared war on all Nigerians hence it would be wrong for any Christian leader to call for reprisal against Muslims, Adegbite said.

The Council called on all Muslims to offer special prayers to Allah in Mosques throughout the Federation (today) Friday, “praying Allah to ward off Boko-Haram menace from the land and any other threat to National security.”

Lagos political group faults Abubakar’s appointment as Acting IG.

Bombing Kills 32 at Iraq Funeral

2012-01-27T18:15:00.001-05:00

People gather at the scene of a car bomb attack in Zafaraniyah, Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Jan. 27, 2012., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Suicide Bomber Kills 32 at Iraq Funeral Procession

By BARBARA SURK
BAGHDAD go.com

A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-packed car near a funeral procession in southeastern Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 32 people — half of them policemen who were guarding the march — in the latest brazen attack since the U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq.

Police said the bomb exploded at 11:00 a.m. in the predominantly Shiite neighborhood of Zafaraniyah, where mourners had gathered for the funeral of a person killed the day before. They said 65 people were wounded in the attack, including 16 police.

Hospital officials confirmed the death toll.

Across Iraq, at least 200 people have been killed in a wave of attacks by suspected insurgents since the beginning of the year. Erupting just weeks after completion of the U.S. military withdrawal Dec. 18, it raised concerns that the surge in violence and an escalating political crisis might deteriorate into a civil war.

Most of the dead have been Shiite pilgrims and members of the Iraqi security forces.

A sectarian-based political crisis has added to the concerns of descent into violence.

Salam Hussein, a 42-year-old grocery store owner in Zafaraniyah, said he was watching Friday's funeral procession, which was heavily guarded by police, when the blast blew out his store windows and injured one of his workers.

"It was a huge explosion," Hussein said. As he took his worker to the hospital, Hussein said he saw cars engulfed in flames, "human flesh scattered around and several mutilated bodies in a pool of blood" around the place where the attacker's car exploded.

Officials at the Zafaraniyah General Hospital, where most of the dead and injured were taken, said the powerful blast shattered windows and damaged walls in the hospital, injuring a nurse and four patients who were being treated at the time of the attack.

Zafaraniyah resident Talib Bashir, 50, said he was part of the procession of about 500 men but left the group to take his child home, and then he heard the blast.

"I saw smoke coming from a parked car that exploded," Bashir said, and police and civilians cars, an ambulance and several stores were engulfed in flames hours after the blast. "The fire lasted for a long time," Bashir said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday's attack.

Minutes after the explosion, gunmen opened fire at a checkpoint in Zafaraniyah, killing two police officers, according to police officials. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

Since the United States completed its pullout, militant groups — mainly al-Qaida in Iraq — have stepped up attacks targeting the country's majority Shiites to undermine confidence in the Shiite-led government and its efforts to protect people without American backup.

On Thursday, 17 people were killed in bombings around the country, including seven people in attacks on Baghdad's s two mostly Sunni districts, suggesting that Shiite militants could be retaliating for attacks against them.

Friday's blast was the second deadliest single attack in Iraq this month.

At least 53 people were killed Jan. 14, when a bomb tore through a procession of Shiite pilgrims heading toward a largely Sunni town in southern Iraq.

Imperialist-imposed Chaos in Libya Is Forcing NGOs Out

2012-01-27T18:02:00.001-05:00

Africans beaten, tortured by NATO-led counter-revolutionaries in the North African state of Libya. The imperialists have invaded the country and killed its leader Col. Muammar Gaddafi., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Libya: Is a breakdown in order forcing NGOs out?

BBC

The decision by the French group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) to withdraw its fieldworkers from prisons in the Libyan city of Misrata is an important and disturbing indicator of the situation in that country.

While some NGOs are guilty of trying to apply western 'best practice' in unrealistic ways, or to put the safety of their own teams ahead of project work, MSF's reputation, built over decades of operations in the most inhospitable parts of the world, suggests they should be listened to carefully both by the interim government in Libya and the western countries that assisted it to overthrow Muammar al Gaddafi's regime.

According to the NGO, in a few months its field workers have treated 115 people in the city's jail for wounds arising from torture.

"Patients were brought to us in the middle of interrogation for medical care, in order to make them fit for further interrogation", says MSF director Christopher Stokes, "this is unacceptable".

When one considers that this is just one city, it is not unreasonable to suppose that hundreds or even thousands of detainees have been abused in this way.

'Score-settling'

Apparently those subjected to this treatment have been removed from Misrata's prisons, taken to 'interrogation centres' run by various militias or state agencies before being returned with bad bruises, broken bones, and other signs of beating. Some are suspected of loyalty to the Gaddafi regime, others of criminality, and with some it is completely unclear.

Has Libya overthrown an oppressive, centralised, regime that relied upon torture, with one that also uses brutal methods but is so diffuse and divided along regional or tribal lines that it cannot run the country?

It is too early to write off the interim government, the revolution still has huge support, and it is natural that it should take time to establish a new democracy after 42 years of dictatorship.

However, the torture in Misrata and other places suggests that a great deal of score-settling is going on - much of it along tribal or local lines - and that it is not petering out in a way that many might have hoped.

Arbitrary detention and abuse now seem to be fuelling a new insurgency among former regime supporters in places like Sirte, Abu Salim (a neighbourhood of Tripoli), and Bani Walid, as well as feuds between tribes.

There have already been warnings to the Libyan government from the Foreign Office and State Department about the mistreatment of people in prison.

It does not appear that these have produced any effective action from the authorities.

Rather the arbitrary nature of the arrests, who is being beaten by whom, and the signs of new violence from former regime members and tribal enemies all suggest a situation in which authority is fragmenting.

France Says It Will Speed Up Departure From Afghanistan

2012-01-27T17:59:00.001-05:00

Presidents Sarkozy of France and Karzai of Afghanistan met in Paris where France said they would speed up their withdrawal from Afghanistan by one year. France has suffered casualties on the battlefield in the war., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

France will speed up troop withdrawal from Afghanistan by one year

By Edward Cody and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post
Friday, January 27, 5:00 PM

PARIS—France said Friday that it will accelerate the pullout of its combat forces from Afghanistan by one year, to the end of 2013, and in concert with Afghanistan urged NATO to hand over all combat operations to the Afghan army by the same date.

President Nicolas Sarkozy made the unexpected proposal with the visiting Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, standing at his side. The French-Afghan initiative, which would speed up the agreed NATO timetable by one year, dramatized growing uncertainty—in Afghanistan as well as NATO countries—over the wisdom and effectiveness of the U.S.-led military campaign to force the Taliban to submit to Karzai’s U.S.-supported government.

The 2014 NATO withdrawal timetable was agreed on more than a year ago, when official and public attitudes about the Western intervention in Afghanistan were more optimistic. Since then, the war has not tipped drastically to one side or the other, grinding on with daily casualties, and the effort to put together a functioning Afghan government, army and police force has proven more difficult than anticipated.

In that light, European governments allied with the United States in Afghanistan have had increasing difficulty in explaining the need for continuing casualties in a faraway, little understood place and year after year of large expenditures during a time of economic crisis.

Obama administration officials insisted that the French decision followed extensive consultations and would not upset overall alliance plans to gradually withdraw their combat troops by the end of 2014.

“This was a national decision of France,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. “It was done in a managed way. We will all work with it.”

Nuland said the French action “could have been a whole lot more precipitous.” Once France initially indicated it was considering withdrawal, “our request was that this be consulted, that this be managed.” France’s 2013 deadline, she said, “will allow us to do that, and we’re going to work within the decision of the French government.”

The announcement, however, threatened to throw a wrench into planning for the withdrawal of U.S. troops--a timeline that the administration is only beginning to address. With the departure by next September of the 33,000 surge troops President Obama authorized two years ago, U.S. troop strength will be down to 68,000. The Pentagon would like to see it remain there until just before the end of 2014, while domestic pressure is growing for a faster drawdown.

Sarkozy’s plan to ask NATO to move the deadline for ending all combat missions from 2014 to 2013 is also likely to upset overall plans for a smooth NATO path toward the exit in Afghanistan. The original 2014 decision, reached at NATO’s summit in Lisbon, was designed to keep European members from bolting at a time their governments were under strong domestic pressure to withdraw.

NATO’s next summit, to be held in Chicago in May, is supposed to continue that orderly process. By France’s unilateral decision, and Sarkozy’s proposal to change the entire NATO gameplan, may lead others to want to leave sooner rather than later.

“Frankly, we would rather that everyone stay in as long as they’ve committed to stay in,” said a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity about the sensitive issue.

Sarkozy told reporters in Paris that he planned to talk with Obama by telephone on Saturday to explain his reasoning. In addition, the call for NATO to adopt an accelerated pullout schedule will be put forth next week at a scheduled NATO defense ministers’ meeting, he said.

“We will ask NATO to reflect on the Afghan Army’s taking total charge of NATO combat missions during 2013,” he added.

Sarkozy was said by his aides to have been deeply affected last Friday when an Afghan soldier opened fire with his automatic rifle on a group of French soldiers finishing a jog around their base. Four were killed and about 15 wounded.

That incident came less than a month after two French Foreign Legionnaires were shot and killed by another Afghan soldier, one of a growing number of such shootings over the last two years in what has been described as a sign of tension between Afghan recruits and their foreign trainers.

Sarkozy threatened then to accelerate France’s withdrawal and suspended all French training and other operations. In Friday’s talks with Karzai, Sarkozy said, they agreed the training operations will resume Saturday after a week of down time.

Sarkozy is at the start of a difficult political campaign for re-election in a two-round vote April 22 and May 6. His main opponent, Francois Holland of the Socialist Party, reacted to the four deaths last Friday by saying that, if elected, he would bring home all French soldiers from Afghanistan by the end of this year.

Although the French role in Afghanistan has drawn little opposition in Parliament, even among Socialists and other opposition forces, public opinion has become increasingly hostile as French casualties rise. A survey published Thursday by the CSA polling firm said 84 percent of those queried want a total pullout this year.

Eighty-two French soldiers have been killed since France intervened alongside the United States in 2001, most since Sarkozy increased the number of troops and opened them to more combat operations after his election in 2007.

Sarkozy said Karzai also agreed with the early French withdrawal.

“It is important that you understand that this agreement was done with President Karzai and with our allies in an organized and reasonable manner,” he said. “The pursuit of the transition and a gradual transfer of combat responsibilities will allow us to plan for the return of all our combat forces by the end of the year 2013.”

France’s early withdrawal of combat troops is likely to have limited impact on the conduct of the war. Most of the 3,600 French soldiers in Afghanistan, although qualified as combat forces, have been engaged nearly exclusively in training operations since last summer, working mainly in the Kapisa area northeast of Kabul.

Nevertheless, the changed schedule means 1,000 soldiers will return home by the end of this year, French officials explained. The previous schedule called for 600 to return this year.

Despite the announcement, France’s training and aid role appeared likely to remain strong for years to come. France and Afghanistan have reached a strategic cooperation agreement that calls for several hundred French police and military trainers well beyond 2014.

The United States has yet to reach such an agreement, despite more than a year of negotiations. Among other things, the United States has refused to bow to Karzai’s demands that nighttime military raids be halted and that terrorist detention facilities be handed over to Afghan control.

Top U.N. Official Moves to Somalia As Violence Rages

2012-01-27T01:05:00.001-05:00

United Nations Ambassador to Somalia, Augustine Mahiga, was recently appointed in the war-torn Horn of Africa state. Somalia is under siege by several imperialist nations and their allies., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Top U.N. official moves to Somalia as violence rages

Tue, Jan 24 2012
By Abdi Sheikh and Feisal Omar

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The U.N. special envoy to Somalia moved to Mogadishu on Tuesday for the first time in 17 years, signaling international support for a government fight against Islamist rebels and preparations for elections this year.

High-level officials from the United Nations have been based in Kenya's capital Nairobi since 1995 because of security concerns, although its Political Office for Somalia had a few political officers in the capital Mogadishu.

Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab militants withdrew from most of their bases in Mogadishu last August after sustained pressure from Somali and African Union troops, but violence still grips many parts of the country.

In Mogadishu, U.N. Special Representative for Somalia, Ambassador Augustine Mahiga arrived at the airport where the U.N. flag was raised. Mahiga was due to meet President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed and African Union force officials.

The U.N. said the move signals its commitment to support Somali leaders who adopted a political roadmap in September that is meant to lead to parliamentary and presidential elections in August, ending a series of fragile transition governments.

"It is historic to bring the U.N. back to Somalia. The secretary general told me I should go and join you to make the roadmap a reality," Mahiga said as he handed a letter from U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to the Somali president.

Speaking in the presidency later, where Somali men performed a traditional dance, Mahiga called on U.N. agencies and other countries to send their representatives to be based in Somalia.

BALADWAYNE ATTACK

Somalia descended into chaos in 1991 after dictator Siad Barre was ousted. The first internationally backed transitional government was established in 2004 only to lose control to rebels and semi-autonomous administrations.

Al Shabaab, who control many parts of southern and central Somalia, have been able to launch guerrilla-style attacks in the capital despite a Kenyan, Ethiopian and Somali offensive.

On Tuesday, an al Shabaab fighter rammed a minibus loaded with explosives into a government building in Baladwayne, a town in central Somalia about 45 km (28 miles) from Ethiopia.

"A minibus carrying explosives entered Baladwayne administration headquarters compound. Government soldiers tried to stop it by firing but all in vain," Hussein Aden, a senior military official, told Reuters by phone.

Aden said there was no immediate report of casualties and the area surrounding the compound had been sealed off.

Aden Abdulle, head of a militia fighting alongside Somali and Ethiopian soldiers against al Shabaab, said the building housed Transitional Federal Government lawmakers and Ethiopian and Somali government soldiers.

Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for the attack.

"We carried the car bomb successfully into the Ethiopian and Somali base in Baladwayne this morning. Our brave driver is martyred. There we killed many Ethiopian and Somali troops on a parade," said al Shabaab spokesman Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab.

Al Shabaab said in a statement it had killed 33 Ethiopian soldiers and wounded at least 72.

There was no immediate comment from Addis Ababa.

Ethiopian soldiers previously went into Somalia in late 2006 and pushed the Islamist organization, Islamic Courts Union, out of Mogadishu. The Ethiopian presence helped fuel the rise of al Shabaab and the foreign troops left in early 2009.

Al Shabaab, which wants to impose a harsh interpretation of sharia on the Horn of Africa nation, has waged a five-year campaign to drive the largely impotent government from power.

(Additional reporting by Ismail Taxta; Writing by Yara Bayoumy and George Obulutsa; Editing by David Clarke and Elizabeth Piper)

Reflections of Fidel Castro: The Fruit Which Did Not Fall

2012-01-26T03:27:00.001-05:00

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara during the early days of the Cuban Revolution. The role of the intellectuals in Cuba was a major point of discussion during the early 1960s., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Havana. January 25, 2012

Reflections of Fidel: The fruit which did not fall

(Taken from CubaDebate)

CUBA was forced to fight for its existence facing an expansionist power, located a few miles from its coast, and which was proclaiming the annexation of our island, which was destined to fall into its lap like a ripe fruit. We were condemned not to exist as a nation.

Within the glorious legions of patriots who, during the second half of the 19th century, fought against the abhorrent colonial status imposed by Spain over 300 years, José Martí was the man who most clearly perceived such a dramatic destiny. He confirmed it in the last lines that he wrote, the night before the anticipated difficult combat against a battle-hardened and well equipped Spanish column, when he declared that the fundamental objective of his struggle was, “…to prevent the United States from spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence, and from overpowering with that additional strength our lands of America. Everything that I have done up until now, and everything that I will do, is to this end.”

Without understanding this profound truth one cannot today be either a patriot or a revolutionary.

Without any doubt, the mass media, the monopoly of many technical resources and the substantial funds directed at dehumanizing the masses constitute considerable but not invincible obstacles.

Cuba demonstrated – starting from its position as a colonial yankee trading post, together with the illiteracy and generalized poverty of its people – that it was possible to confront the country which was threatening the definitive absorption of the Cuban nation.

Nobody can even affirm that there was a national bourgeoisie opposed to the empire; the bourgeoisie developed in such close proximity to it that, shortly after the triumph, it sent 14,000 totally unprotected children to the United States, although that act was associated with the perfidious lie that parental custody was to be suppressed. This is what history recorded as Operation Peter Pan, described as the largest maneuver of child manipulation for political ends recalled in the Western Hemisphere.

National territory was invaded, barely two years after the revolutionary triumph, by mercenary forces – comprising former Batista soldiers and the sons of landowners and the bourgeoisie – armed and escorted by the United States with warships from its naval fleet, including aircraft carriers with equipment ready to enter into action, and which accompanied the invaders to our island. The defeat and capture of virtually all the mercenaries in less than 72 hours and the destruction of their aircraft operating from bases in Nicaragua and their naval transportation, constituted a humiliating defeat for the empire and its Latin America allies, which had underestimated the Cuban people’s fighting capacity.

In the face of the termination of oil supplies on the part of the United States, the subsequent total suspension of the historic sugar quota in that country’s market, and the prohibition of trade established over more than 100 years, the USSR responded to each one of these measures by supplying fuel, buying our sugar, trading with our country and finally, supplying the weapons that Cuba could not acquire in other markets.

The idea of a systematic campaign of CIA-organized pirate attacks, sabotage and military actions by armed bands created and supplied by the United States before and after the mercenary attack, and which would culminate in a military invasion of Cuba by this country, gave rise to events which placed the world on the brink of a total nuclear war, which neither of the parties involved nor humanity itself could have survived.

Without any doubt, those events resulted in the removal from the presidency of Nikita Khrushchev, who underestimated his adversary, disregarded opinions presented to him and did not consult with those of us in the front line concerning his final decision. What could have been an important moral victory thus turned into a costly political setback for the USSR. For many years the worst of crimes against Cuba continued and more than a few of them, like the U.S. criminal blockade, are still being committed.

Khrushchev made exceptional gestures to our country. On that occasion, I unhesitatingly criticized the non-consulted agreement with the United States, but it would be ungrateful and unjust not to acknowledge his exceptional solidarity at difficult and decisive moments for our people in their historic battle for independence and revolution in the face of the powerful empire of the United States. I understand that the situation was extremely tense and he did not wish to lose any time when he made the decision to withdraw the missiles and the yankees, very secretly, agreed to give up the invasion.

Despite the decades gone by, already half a century, the Cuban fruit has not fallen into yankee hands.

News reports currently coming in from Spain, France, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, the United Kingdom, the Malvinas and countless other points on the planet are serious, and all of them augur a political and economic disaster as a result of the stupidity of the United States and its allies.

I will confine myself to a few subjects. I must note that, going by what everyone is saying, that the selection of a Republican candidate to aspire to the presidency of this globalized and far-reaching empire is, in its turn – I am serious – the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that I have ever heard. As I have things to do, I cannot devote any time to the subject. I already knew it would be like that.

Some news agency cables better illustrate what I wish to analyze, because they demonstrate the incredible cynicism generated by the decadence of the West. One of them, with amazing tranquility, talks of a Cuban political prisoner who, it states, died after a hunger strike lasting 50 days. A journalist with Granma, Juventud Rebelde, radio news or any other revolutionary organ might be mistaken in any interpretation of any subject, but would never fabricate an item of news or invent a lie.

A Granma informative note affirms that there was no hunger strike; the man was an ordinary prisoner sentenced to four years for attacking and injuring his wife in the face; that his own mother in law asked authorities to intervene; family members were kept fully abreast of all procedures used in his medical treatment and were grateful for the effort made by medical specialists who treated him. He received medical attention, as the note states, in the best hospital in the eastern region, as is the case with all citizens. He died from secondary multi-organic failure related to a severe respiratory infection.

The patient had received all the medical attention administered in a country which has one of the finest medical services in the world, provided free of charge in spite of the blockade imposed on our homeland by imperialism. It is simply a duty that is fulfilled in a country where the Revolution is proud of always having respected, for more than 50 years, the principles which give it its invincible strength.

It would be more worthwhile for the Spanish government, given its excellent relations with Washington, to travel to the United States and inform itself as to what is taking place in yankee jails, the ruthless conduct meted out to millions of prisoners, the policy of the electric chair and the horrors perpetrated on detainees in the country’s jails and those who are protesting in its streets.

Yesterday, January 23, a strong Granma editorial titled “Cuba’s truths,” which occupied an entire page of the newspaper, explained in detail the unprecedented shame of the campaign of lies unleashed against our Revolution by certain
governments “traditionally committed to anti-Cuba subversion.”

Our people are well aware of the norms which have governed the impeccable conduct of our Revolution since the first battle and which has never been stained over more than half a century. They also know that it can never be pressured or coerced by enemies. Our laws and norms will be respected unfailingly.

It is worth noting this with clarity and frankness. The Spanish government and the shaky European Union, plunged into a profound economic crisis, must know what should guide them. It is pitiful to read news agency reports of the statements of both utilizing their barefaced lies to attack Cuba. First concern yourselves with saving the euro if you can, resolve the chronic unemployment from which young people are increasingly suffering, and respond to the indignados, constantly attacked and beaten by the police.

We are not ignorant of the fact that Spain is now being governed by admirers of Franco, who dispatched members of the Blue Division, together with the Nazi SS and SA, to kill Soviets. Close to 50,000 of them participated in the cruel aggression. In the most cruel and painful operation of that war: the siege of Leningrad, where one million Russian citizens died, the Blue Division was among the forces attempting to strangle the heroic city. The Russian people will never pardon that horrific crime.

The fascist right of Aznar, Rajoy and other servants of the empire, must know something about the 16,000 casualties of their predecessors in the Blue Division and the Iron Crosses which Hitler awarded to officers and soldiers from that division. There is nothing unusual about what the Gestapo police are doing now to the men and women demanding the right to work and bread in the country with the highest unemployment in Europe.

Why are the mass media of the empire lying so barefacedly?

Those who manipulate the media are striving to deceive and dehumanize the world with their crude lies, possibly thinking that it constitutes the principal resource for maintaining the global system of domination and plunder imposed, particularly upon victims in close proximity to the headquarters of the metropolis, the close to 600 million Latin American and Caribbean people living in this hemisphere.

The sister republic of Venezuela has become the fundamental objective of this policy. The reason is obvious. Without Venezuela, the empire would have imposed its Free Trade Treaty on all the peoples of the continent who inhabit it from the south of the United States, a region where the greatest reserves of land, fresh water and minerals of the planet are to be found, as well as large energy resources which, administered in a spirit of solidarity toward other peoples of the world, constitute resources which cannot and must not fall into the hands of transnationals imposing a suicidal and infamous system on them.

For example, it is enough to look at the map to comprehend the criminal dispossession signified by stripping Argentina of a little piece of its territory in the extreme south of the continent. There, the British deployed their decadent military apparatus to murder rookie Argentine recruits wearing summer clothing in the middle of winter. The United States, and its ally Augusto Pinochet, shamelessly supported them. Now, just before the London Olympics, its Prime Minister David Cameron is also proclaiming, as did Margaret Thatcher, his right to use nuclear submarines to kill Argentines. The government of this country is unaware of the fact that the world is changing, and the scorn of our hemisphere and that of the majority of the peoples for the oppressors is increasing every day.

The case of the Malvinas is not the only one. Does anyone know how the conflict in Afghanistan is going to end? Just a few days ago U.S. soldiers desecrated the corpses of Afghani combatants, killed by NATO drone bombings.

Three days ago a European agency reported, “Afghani President Hamid Karzai has given his backing to a negotiated peace with the Taliban, emphasizing that this issue must be resolved by the citizens of his country.” It went on to add, “…the process of peace and reconciliation belongs to the Afghani nation and no country or foreign organization can take away this right from the Afghanis.

For its part, a cable published by our press communicated from Paris, “France today suspended all its training and aid operations in Afghanistan and threatened to expedite the withdrawal of its troops, after an Afghani soldier shot four French soldiers in the Taghab valley, in Kapisa province… Sarkozy instructed Defense Minister Gérard Longuet to travel immediately to Kabul, and indicated the possibility of an early withdrawal of the contingent.”

After the disappearance of the USSR and the socialist bloc, the U.S. government imagined that Cuba would be unable to sustain itself. George W. Bush had already prepared a counterrevolutionary government to govern our country. On the very same day that Bush initiated his criminal war on Iraq, I asked our country’s authorities to end the tolerance afforded the counterrevolutionary capos who, in those days, were hysterically demanding the invasion of Cuba. In real terms, their attitude constituted an act of treason against the homeland.

Bush and his stupidities prevailed for eight years and the Cuban Revolution has already lasted for more than half a century. The ripe fruit has not fallen into the empire’s lap. Cuba will not be one more possession with which the empire spreads through the lands of America. Martí’s blood will not have been spilled in vain.

Tomorrow I will publish another Reflection to complement this one.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 24, 2012
7:12 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

Cuba News Update: Torchlight March for Marti and Cuba; Radioelectronic Aggression Opposed

2012-01-26T03:21:00.001-05:00

A group of Cuban women pledging to defend the revolutionary nation and state from U.S. imperialism and its allies. The revolution celebrated its 52nd anniversary on Jan. 1, 2011., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Havana. January 24, 2012

Torchlight march for Martí and Cuba

Raquel Marrero Yanes and Yohan Rodríguez Blanco

THIS Friday, thousands of torches will illuminate Havana’s streets in honor of José Martí, Cuba’s national hero, on the eve of the 159th anniversary of his birth.

At the Martí Forge, where organizational details are being discussed, Carlos Rangel Irola, national president of the Federation of University Students (FEU) explained that the torches carried by students symbolize this generation’s commitment to the achievements of the Revolution and the backing of Cuban youth for the National Conference of the Communist Party, which begins this Saturday, January 28.

Osnay Miguel Colina, member of the National Bureau of Union of Communist Youth (UJC), called on all those who feel themselves part of Martí’s legacy to take part in the march with homemade torches and in support of the present and future continuity of the homeland.

"It will be a tribute to Martí, to Cuban patriots, to the historic leadership of the Revolution and the five Cuban heroes," he affirmed.

The traditional Marcha de las Antorchas (Torchlight March), comprising the people, members of the Federation of Students in Intermediate Education, UJC and Communist Party leaders headed by the FEU, begins 9:00pm Friday at Havana University’s stairway and goes to the Martí Forge. This year, it will only take place in the capital.

In conjunction with the Ministry of Education, the José Martí Young Pioneers Organization is organizing a political-cultural event for this Saturday at the base of the José Martí monument in Plaza de la Revolución. Similar tributes are planned for the country’s other provinces.

Havana. January 24, 2012

Cuba condemns U.S. radioelectronic aggression

GENEVA, January 23.—Cuba has lodged a complaint before the World Radiocommunication Conference against increased U.S. radio and television aggression on the part of the United States.

Wilfredo López, regulations and standards director of the Cuban Ministry of Informatics and Communications, condemned Washington’s open violation of international law, and the provisions of the constitution, agreements and rules of radiocommunications.

Speaking at the first plenary session of the conference, López said that the U.S. continues broadcasting televised material into Cuba from a flying aircraft, property of the U.S. government. Additionally, these transmissions seriously interfere with national radio broadcasting, he noted.

The 2007 Radiocommunication Conference established that any radio broadcasting from aircraft transmitting exclusively to the territory of another country without its consent cannot be considered to be acting within radiocommunications regulations.

It is unacceptable that, in the execution of its policy of subversion against Cuba, the U.S. government is ignoring and infringing standards and commitments contracted by the international community, López noted. (PL)

Cuba's Truths: An Editorial From Granma International

2012-01-26T03:16:00.001-05:00

Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz and President Raul Castro Ruz at the Communist Party of Cuba Congress held in April 2011. The revolutionary brothers have contributed decades of struggle on behalf of the humanity., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Havana. January 23, 2012

Editorial
Cuba’s truths

OVER the last few days, the media and representatives of certain governments traditionally committed to anti-Cuba subversion have unleashed a new campaign of accusations, unscrupulously taking advantage of a lamentable event: the death of an ordinary prisoner, which possibly only in the case of Cuba, is converted into news of international repercussion.

The method utilized is the same one as always: fruitlessly attempting, through repetition, to demonize Cuba, in this case through the deliberate manipulation of an incident which is absolutely exceptional in this country.

This so-called political prisoner was serving a four-year sentence after a fair legal process during which he was at liberty and a trial in accordance with the law, for a brutal physical attack on his wife in public and violent resistance to arrest by police agents.

This man died from multi-organ failure due to an acute respiratory infection, despite having received appropriate medical attention, including specialized medication and treatment in the intensive care room of Santiago de Cuba’s principal hospital.

Why did Spanish authorities and certain members of the European Union hasten to condemn Cuba without any investigation into the incident? Why do they always utilize pre-fabricated lies in the context of Cuba? Why, in addition to lying, do they censor the truth? Why is the voice and truth about Cuba openly denied the smallest space in the international media?

They are acting both cynically and hypocritically. How would they describe the recent manifestations of police brutality in Spain and a large part of "educated and civilized" Europe against the indignados movement?

Why is there no concern over the dramatic situation of overcrowding in Spanish jails with a high immigrant population – in excess of 35% of total prisoners in the country – according to the most recent report by the ACAIP prison union, dated April 3, 2010?

Who has made any effort to investigate the death in July of 2011 in the Spanish penitentiary of Teruel, of Tohuami Hamdaoui, an ordinary prisoner of Moroccan origin after a hunger strike of several months? Who has reflected the fact that he has insisted he is innocent?

Has the Chilean spokesperson slandering us by asserting that the dead man was a political dissident on his 50th day of hunger strike lost his memory and sense of reality? He must remember his days as a student leader linked to Pinochet’s troops, who massacred Chileans and instituted disappearances and torture throughout the Southern Cone via Plan Condor, while there have been no statements about the harsh repression of students peacefully demonstrating in defense of the human right to universal and free education. Is he one of those who supported re-labeling the Pinochet dictatorship a military regime in school textbooks? Has he made any statement about the repressive and arbitrary Anti-Terrorist Law implemented against Mapuche prisoners on hunger strike?

The United States government, the principal instigator of any effort to discredit Cuba in order to justify its policy of hostility, subversion and the economic, political and media blockade of Cuba, could not be missing from this campaign.

The hypocrisy of spokespersons for the United States, a country with a poor human rights record at home and abroad, is staggering. The UN Human Rights Council has acknowledged frequent serious violations in this country of women’s rights, in the treatment of persons, racial and ethnic discrimination, inhuman conditions in prisons, neglect of inmates, a differentiated racial standard and frequent judicial errors in imposing capital punishment, and the execution of minors and the mentally ill. This is compounded by abuses of the migratory detention system, deaths along the militarized southern border, atrocious acts against human dignity and the killing of innocent civilians by U.S. army troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries, not to mention arbitrary detentions and acts of torture perpetrated in the illegally occupied Guantánamo Naval Base.

It is barely known that three people died in the United States last November 2011 during a mass hunger strike of prisoners in California. According to testimonies from prisoners in adjoining cells, prison guards offered no assistance whatsoever and ignored their cries for help, as opposed to the abusive practice of force feeding hunger strikers.

A few weeks previously, African American Troy Davis was executed despite a large body of evidence demonstrating legal errors in his case. The White House and the Department of State did nothing about this case.

A total of 90 prisoners have been executed since January 2010 to date in the United States, while a further 3,220 remain on death row. The government frequently brutally represses those who dare to expose injustices within the system.

This new attack on Cuba is clearly politically motivated and has nothing to do with legitimate concerns for the lives of Cuban men and women. It is fuelled by the complicity of the financial-media corporations such as the Prisa Group and the corporation running CNN en Español, in the finest style of the Miami Mafia. It is irrationally accusing the Cuban government without having made any investigation into the facts. Condemnation and judgment are made a priori.

It is apparent from the immediate and crude response of authorities and the apparatus in the service of media aggression against Cuba that they did not even take the trouble to confirm the information. The truth is unimportant if the intention is to fabricate and sell a false image of alleged flagrant and systematic violations of civil liberties in Cuba which could one day justify an intervention in order to "protect defenseless Cuban civilians."

The attempt to impose a distorted image of Cuba meant to indicate a notable deterioration in human rights, to construct an allegedly victimized opposition dying in prison, where health services are denied, is evident.

The humanist vocation of Cuban doctors and health personnel, who spare no effort or the country’s scant resources – to a large extent the result of the criminal 50-year blockade imposed on the Cuban people – to save lives and improve the health standards of their own people and in many other nations is well known.

Cuba is respected and admired by many peoples and governments who recognize its social undertakings at home and abroad.

Deeds speak louder than words. Anti-Cuban campaigns will not inflict any damage on the Cuban Revolution or the people, who will continue improving their socialism.

The truth of Cuba is that of a country in which human beings are most valued: a life expectancy rate at birth of 77.9 years; free health coverage for the entire population; an infant mortality rate of 4.9 per 1,000 live births, a figure exceeding that of the United States and the lowest on the continent along with Canada; a literate population with full and free access to all levels of education; 96% participation in the 2008 general elections; and a democratic process of discussion of the new economic and social guidelines prior to the 6th Congress of the Communist Party.

The truth of Cuba is that of a country which has taken its universities and schools to penitentiaries holding inmates who had fair and impartial trials, who receive the same wages for work undertaken, and enjoy high levels of medical attention without any distinction in terms of ethnicity, gender, creed or social origin.

It will be demonstrated yet again that lies, however much they are repeated, do not necessarily become truths, because, as José Martí stated, "A just principle, from the depths of a cave, can do more than an army."

Translated by Granma International

Thanks for Nothing, Obama

2012-01-26T03:10:00.001-05:00

The U.S. imperialists are attacking the North African state of Libya in order to seize the oil-rich country and establish a military beachhead inside the region. Thousands have died in the imperialist war., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Thanks for nothing, Obama

Thursday, 26 January 2012 00:00
Reprinted From the Zimbabwe Herald via
Russia Today

The challenges, he said, were real. He called them serious and said there were many. America had gathered because the country had "chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord," and proclaimed "an end to the petty grievances and false promises."

But three years to the day that Barack Obama told millions of Americans that it was these choices that brought him to Washington in his inaugural address from the steps of the Capitol Building - the hope, change and abolishment of false promises remain largely out of reach for the American people.

Obama took the oath of office on January 20, 2009, beginning a position he earned by promising a new era of peace and accepting his role as, as he put, aiding in the ushering in of "a new era of responsibility."

Three years later, however, the country's commander-in-chief has been persistently pounced on by both the press and public alike. He advertised a future built on hope, not fear, yet recently authorised the US military to indefinitely detain any American it sees fit.

There was more hope back then, hope for a unity of purpose over conflict and discord, yet he continued George W Bush's war in Iraq for more than 1 000 additional days and even aided the uprising in Libya - without asking Congress for approval or giving much in the way of an explanation.

And, as we reach four years after he addressed 1,5 million people in the US capital and spoke to billions worldwide, we can anticipate another speech on those same steps - and according to most recent polls the same person will deliver it.

Despite opposition from his own party in addition to that from the other side of the aisle, President Obama is currently polling as the most likely winner in the 2012 election.

After three years of broken promises, failed policies and dangerous legislation, is America only less than half done with Obama's reign in the White House?

Two days into office, Obama signed Executive Order 13492, vowing to suspend proceedings at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba - and to have the facility shut down within a year.

On January 22, 2009, the new president cited that "significant concerns "raised at home and abroad about detentions at the facility allowed him to insist that ending America's detention program there "would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice."

But not even two years had passed when Obama approved the 2011 Defence Authorisation Bill, effectively preventing the closure of the facility, and as of January 2012, 171 men remain in the prison.

Some have now been there for over a decade.

"The commitment that the president has to closing Guantanamo Bay is as firm today as it was during the (2008) campaign," White House spokesman Jay Carney said earlier this year. Yet days before those comments to the media, Obama signed the updated Defence Authorisation Act for 2012, allowing the same grave, torturous and inhumane conditions Guantanamo's detainees have come to know so well to be imposed on Americans. In a signing statement that accompanied the bill, the president said, "I want to clarify that my Administration will not authorise the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens." That declaration, however, was given two years after his last presidential memorandum promising the closing of Guantanamo - a promise broken time and time again.

As Americans wait for the closure of Gitmo, many of the president's other promises have either gone unfulfilled or broken - and many of them impact more than just the few dozen men behind bars at the facility in Cuba. On the campaign trail, Obama outlined a goal of putting humans back in outer space, insisting on having moon missions up and running again - with a Mars program being a not-so-distant goal for future generations, if not this one. Only a year into office, however, Obama told NASA to cancel its moon programme.

"By the mid 2030's," the president said at the Kennedy Space Centre in 2010, "I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow and I expect to be around to see it." A year later, NASA's shuttle programme was abolished completely.

During his White House campaign, Obama vowed to "cut wasteful and ineffective programs" and "slash earmarks." Obama would vow to cut those earmarks to under US$7,9 billion - their pre-1994, Clinton Administration level. But one year into Obama's term, congressional earmarks had more than doubled that figure. Then, in July 2008, Senator Obama told ABC News, "I cannot guarantee that it is going to be in the first 100 days. But what I can guarantee is that we will have - in the first year - an immigration bill that I strongly support, and that I'm promoting. And I want to move that forward as quickly as possible."

Less than three years into his presidency though, Americans assumed to be in the country illegally can be detained, cuffed and questioned by law enforcement agents in Alabama, Arizona and Georgia. A swarm of immigrants has already migrated from Alabama in an exodus brought on by the fear of imprisonment, and other minorities say that they continue to feel prosecuted in America as anti-immigrant sentiment expands. And even a decade after 9/11, Islamophobia is as rampant as ever.

It might have outshone the errors that marred the Bush administration, but between on-going wars, promises rescinded and America's superiority on thin ice, to many that hope was never delivered. And the change? It wasn't for the better. - RT.

Africa and Global Energy Security

2012-01-26T03:00:00.001-05:00

Sudan oil refinery where the newly-emerging oil-rich central African state has been under fire from U.S. imperialism for years. The leadership of the country is being hounded by the ICC which it is not a party to the Rome Statute., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Africa and global energy security

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 00:00
Reprinted From the Zimbabwe Herald via The African Executive

Africa has strategic significance in maintaining the global energy security architecture. Since 1998, beginning with President Bill Clinton's visit to Africa, a number of high level officials from US, China, India, Russia, Turkey, Brazil and the EU have visited the continent. Most of the visits have taken place in oil and gas-rich countries. Oil and gas remain strategic commodities critical to the functioning of the global economic system.

Africa is known to have 10% and 8% share of the proven global oil and gas reserves respectively.

According to the 2009 U.S. Energy Information Administration records, Libya is home to Africa's largest oil reserves with about 43.7 billion barrels in total, followed by Nigeria with 36.2 billion barrels, Algeria 12.2 billion barrels and Angola with 9 billion barrels.

Sudan, Gabon, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt, Mozambique, Ghana and Uganda have huge deposits of oil and gas which are either being exported or are being developed for export.

There is growing recognition among energy experts that Africa may be home to unknown quantities of oil and gas reserves making it what experts refer to as the ‘New Arabian Gulf' in reference to the oil-rich Arabian Gulf.

Tapping these reserves is very important for the energy dependent economies of US, China, India, and the EU.

Available information indicates that Africa has overtaken the Middle East as a major oil supplier to the US Data from U.S. Energy Information Administration indicates that in 2010, US total oil imports from Africa amounted to 1.9 billion barrels representing 21.7% of US total global oil import. In the same period, US oil imports from the Middle East was 1.7 billion barrels, representing 18.5% of US total global oil import.

It is projected that US oil imports from Africa will reach 25% in 2015 and will grow even further as Ghana begins to export some of its oil to the country.

Europe's dependence on Africa's energy is also growing. Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Libya and Nigeria in particular have become very important energy suppliers to the European Union. France for instance is the single largest EU importer of Angolan oil. The 27 EU members together buy three-fifths of Algerian Liquefied Natural Gas exports.

Nigeria with its 3% share of global gas reserves, exports nearly two-thirds of its gas to the EU making her the EU's fourth largest major natural gas supplier. A $10 billion Trans-Sahara Pipeline from Nigeria through Niger and to Algeria is expected to boost gas export from Nigeria to the European market and solidify the continent as a major gas exporter to the EU.

Similarly, the EU is expected to secure about 15% of its power needs from the planned $550 billion solar power project in North Africa dubbed the DESERTEC Project.

New comers in the global energy consumption league including China and India have also focused their attention on Africa. Angola, Nigeria, Sudan, and the Republic of Congo have become China's major oil suppliers providing China with 30% of its annual oil imports.

According to Jeffrey Henderson, in 2003 about 41 per cent of Sudan's exports and 23 per cent of Angola's mostly oil went to China.

Vivian Foster of the World Bank notes that since 2006, two Chinese companies: China National Oil Corporation and China National Petroleum Corporation have committed to invest about $5 billion in Nigeria, $3 billion in Angola and $1.5 billion in Sudan. Jeffrey Henderson notes that in 2005, China's Export-Import Bank had investment portfolio of US$15 billion in Africa mostly in the energy, mining and construction sectors.

Whether analysed from the perspective of the US, the EU or China, there is growing recognition that Africa is on a strategic transition to become a major geostrategic powerhouse for the maintenance of the global economic system.

As a matter of fact, Africa now features in the international calculus of many of the major global energy importers indicating the growing significance of the continent to maintaining a healthy global economic system.

Several other factors also buttress Africa's rising strategic importance to the global energy security architecture.

They include: higher oil prices; the peaking of energy production in the North Sea; the unpredictability of Russia as energy supplier to the EU; climate change; rising energy consumption in China and India and the ensuing competition with U.S. and the EU for the remaining 1,114 trillion barrels of global oil reserves; and the arms race, conflicts and instability in the Middle East which together controls 60% and 41% of global oil and gas reserves respectively.

Due to the arms race, conflicts and instability in the Middle East, the U.S. now appears to favour energy imports from Africa more than the Middle East. Part of the reason is that there is stability in Africa now than it was in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.

The internal civil wars that ravaged Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mozambique and Congo Brazzaville in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s have been resolved and democratic governance is taking shape in a number of the countries, making security of production and transportation less a problem than they used to be.

Additionally, the prospect of major inter-state conflict in Africa involving the use of deadly weapons that could destabilise oil and gas supply looks relatively distant. Few African countries possess the destructive war machines that Middle Eastern countries have acquired over the last 10 to 20 years. In 2010 for example, Saudi Arabia purchased $60 billion worth of US military hardware which experts believe is geared towards countering Iran's arms buildup.

Again most of Africa's oil is located offshore and could be exploited and transported relatively easily with very little contact with the local population.

By way of distance the parts of Africa where most of the oil and gas are located is relatively closer to the U.S. making cost of transportation and the security associated with it relatively less expensive.

These factors make oil and gas from Africa more reliable than say the Middle East and remain some of the main reasons why Africa's strategic importance is growing among oil and gas importers.

Two things are worth mentioning here about Africa's rising strategic importance. The first is that the growing strategic importance may help Africa to enjoy economic growth, gain diplomatic respect, and secure influence on the global stage.

Currently the increased investment from China, India, US and European Union is fuelling growth in energy export economies such as Angola, Ghana and Nigeria. The Economist magazine has predicted that between 2011 and 2015, seven of the top 10 fastest growing economies in the world will be found in Africa.

This economic growth, if well managed, may help lift millions of people from poverty i.e. if the growth and the revenue are redistributed.

The growing demand for Africa's energy resources could also increase the bargaining capacity of the governments in Africa vis-à-vis energy buyers.

The demand could mean more revenue to the governments which in theory could be used to reduce their dependence on aid and loans from the World Bank and IMF and hence correct the power imbalance between them.

In other words, the rise in demand for Africa's energy resources if better managed, could alter the balance of power between Africans and their international creditors.

The second point is that as African countries become major oil and gas suppliers and as US China, France, Britain, India, Russia, and Brazil increasingly compete with each other for the continent's energy resources, there are fears that the region is becoming a cockpit of superpower rivalry.

Observers have indicated that rivalry is slowly leading to militarization of policies by energy importers towards the continent. It is believed that Libya became the first casualty of this rivalry in 2011.

Critics of the war argue that the US-EU-NATO invasion was a strategy to scare away their rivals and competitors, particularly China.

As evidence, they point to the more than 35 000 Chinese oil and construction workers who were forced out of Libya during the invasion.

In 2008, during a meeting with oil and gas multinationals in London, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, then NATO Secretary General announced that NATO would use its air, land and sea capabilities to police and protect the energy security interest of its members.

That policy, it is argued, was implemented in Libya where NATO played a key role in overthrowing the Gaddafi government.

As another sign of the growing militarisation of the continent, in 2007 President Bush Jr and the Pentagon, launched what they call Africa Command a military project which (although denied by U.S. officials) is intended to protect US energy and other interest in Africa.

The invasion of Ivory Coast (a small but significant oil exporter) by France in 2011 after the Ivorian electoral dispute also shows the increasing use of the military by foreign powers to achieve their national interest objectives in Africa.

African governments and their peoples need to guard against the superpower competition and the associated rivalries and ensure that the attention the continent is receiving does not lead to exploitation, instabilities and proxy wars but rather opportunities for the masses.

African countries should take a unified and coordinated approach vis-à-vis the major buyers to ensure that Africa's political and economic stability, long term security and prosperity of its citizens are not jeopardised.

Secondly, while African countries deepen partnership with energy multinationals they should formulate and implement policies to influence negotiation outcomes, and get the best commercial deals for their resources, so as to ensure that the people of Africa become the ultimate beneficiaries of their resources.

Finally, there is perception particularly in Europe and America that Africa is both economic and political dwarf that can be manipulated to suit their interests.

That perception ought to be corrected. Africa should use its revenue to build economic and political power to influence and shape the current world order to its advantage. Africa should harness its growing strategic importance to pursue agenda relevant to its interest.

The governments in Africa, the oil and gas industry, the academia, the media, civil society, and the think tanks all have a role to play in making Africa benefit from its growing strategic importance. - African Executive.

Cash Lifeline to Somalia: Restored But Precarious

2012-01-26T02:36:00.001-05:00

Somalian-Americans line up to transfer money to their families still living inside the Horn of Africa nation. The US govnment has targeted Somalians for harrassment., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Cash lifeline to Somalia: Restored but precarious

Article by: ALLIE SHAH
Star Tribune
January 25, 2012 - 11:28 PM

The $100 that Burnsville resident Farah Ahmed recently sent to his elderly father in a small city in Somalia arrived within 48 hours.

Ahmed's money home travels a winding and well-traveled path from his pocket to Amal Money Wire, a modest money transfer branch office in Minneapolis, then on to a bank in another state. The bank wires a block of money, including Ahmed's $100, to a clearinghouse agency in Dubai, which eventually disburses the funds from Minnesota to its satellite offices in towns, cities and refugee camps in Somalia.

"It's an unbelievable service," said Ahmed, who paid a mere $5 fee for the transaction.

Tracing the path of Ahmed's aid to his father offers a window into a system that is fighting to survive in Minnesota in the wake of heightened scrutiny.

The state's 14 Somali money transfer shops were shut down for more than two weeks when Sunrise Community Banks, the last known Minnesota bank to wire money to Somalia, closed their accounts.

The closings sparked protests in the Somali community -- the nation's largest -- as people who wire money to support families in their famine-stricken native land wondered how their relatives would get by without what, for many, is their only source of income.

Now most of the shops have reopened, but the situation is precarious. They are using out-of-state banks or running on credit. They are being extra cautious, refusing to name their new banking partners, for fear the exposure may make those banks nervous about the relationship and flee, too.

A banker's point of view

More U.S. banks such as Sunrise are cutting off services to the money transfer shops that help countless people send money to Somalia and nearby countries in the embattled Horn of Africa. The banks are growing uneasy about the business amid stiffened federal banking rules designed to clamp down on terror financing.

"When you take the dollars and cents and compare it to the risk involved, there really is an imbalance," said David Reiling, CEO of Sunrise Community Banks in St. Paul, which stopped wiring money Dec. 30. "And obviously, there was a definite risk imbalance and one that tipped us over from a legal aspect when the court cases and the convictions started to really transpire."

He cited at least two recent cases involving people convicted of using money wiring to send support to Al-Shabab, designated by U.S. authorities as a terrorist group in Somalia.

"It was really those cases where, in studying and researching them, we determined that we could not have prevented that," he said.

Reiling said he wants to continue doing business with the money transmitters. He is working daily with federal agencies, elected officials and the Somali community to do two things: 1) secure a temporary waiver from regulations, like that granted to humanitarian aid organizations providing relief to East Africa; and 2) come up with a permanent solution.

Reiling said he believes the permanent fix must come from a coordinated effort, especially from federal agencies that are privy to information about investigations that the banks don't have.

Omar Jamal, first secretary of the Somali Mission to the United Nations, said the underlying problem is that banks and federal agencies clearly have concerns about money laundering and terror financing, but the money service business owners, in general, are not openly discussing those concerns.

Back at work, and wary

On Jan. 13, Tawakal Money Express in Minneapolis opened for business again, handling smaller transactions of up to $500 at a time. Company officials declined to name the cooperating bank, saying they feared that people who dislike Muslims may harass bank officials and Tawakal Express could lose banking services again. The roundabout process is adding time and cost to their business expenses.

"We're trying to make sure all of our customers have an opportunity to send money," said Hamza Abubakar, compliance officer and marketing strategist for Tawakal Money Express in Minneapolis. "The main heart of the operation is the bank."

The money transfer businesses act as brokers between the people wanting to send the money in Minnesota and the banks that do the actual wiring of money overseas, he explained.

With fewer and fewer banks willing to get involved with money wiring to Somalia, "this was a door that has been getting slimmer," Abubakar said. "This is an issue that goes back to 2001."

Money-transfer companies came under heavy scrutiny immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as U.S. government leaders acted on information that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network used money wiring to finance its activities.

From 2001 to today

Garad Nor knows the scrutiny all too well.

The CEO of Tawakal Express, a global money transfer company that operates in 11 U.S. states, Nor opened one of the first Somali money-transfer businesses in Minnesota. He started his business in the early 1990s in Marshall, Minn.

Nor, who became an American citizen, later moved to Minneapolis and continued to work in the money-transfer business.

But within months of the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. agents raided and blocked the accounts of five Minneapolis money-transfer operations, including his company Aaran Money Wire Service Inc.

Nor, who also goes by the name Garad Jama, was in Dubai the day he learned through CNN that his name was listed among 62 individuals and organizations that the U.S. government said had helped fund Osama bin Laden.

He returned immediately to defend himself, and nine months later, after he sued several members of then-President George W. Bush's cabinet, Nor's name was finally removed from the United Nations list of entities believed to have terrorist ties. The U.S. Treasury Department unfroze his business' assets.

Nor opened a new company -- Tawakal Money Express. Today, he says he is fighting fear once again.

He said while there are risks involved in the business, the systems and training he has put in place mitigate those problems. His staff receives updated lists from the federal Office of Foreign Assets and Control. Tawakal also recently provided a training workshop on preventing money laundering for employees working in Somalia to help them better detect any suspicious activity.

Tawakal is one of the first ones to initiate training to address that concern, Jamal said.

In addition, Nor travels to Dubai regularly to check the compliance procedures at the headquarters office. His business is moving from accepting cash only toward a system that uses electronic payments.

"We are doing a lot of things the government wants us to do. But the banks are saying we just want to exit this business," Nor said. "We have to take away that fear that the bank is feeling."

Allie Shah • 612-673-4488

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Shakes Her Finger in Obama's Face

2012-01-26T02:04:00.001-05:00

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer shaking her finger in President Barack Obama's face. "Boy, you better listen to me," she may have said. Obama soon walked away., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Jan Brewer, Obama have heated exchange during airport greeting

By Jessica Testa / Cronkite News Service (MCT) | Thursday, January 26, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | West

PHOENIX — The Arizona Republican governor who has "Scorpions for Breakfast" says she was chewed out Wednesday by the leader of the free world.

Gov. Jan Brewer’s greeting at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport devolved into a tense exchange after President Barack Obama raised concerns about the way the governor’s political memoir portrayed him, according to Matthew Benson, her spokesman.

"The president clearly was unhappy with the way he was characterized in her book," Benson said in a telephone interview.

According to a pool reporter, the two spoke intensely for a few minutes and talked over each other at times. At one point, Brewer pointed her finger at the president. He appeared to walk away from the conversation, with Brewer still talking, and the governor said later that she didn’t finish her sentence.

Brewer, who appeared flustered and taken aback, told the pool reporter that when she asked Obama whether he read her book, he said he had read an excerpt. Later, a post on her Facebook page said Obama had disagreed with the way her book, released in November, depicted a meeting they had at the White House in 2010 after the governor signed SB 1070, the state’s controversial law on illegal immigration.

Benson said Brewer has no regrets about the incident.

"She was gracious but didn’t back down from the president when he voiced her displeasure with her," Benson said.

A representative in the White House Office of Media Affairs said he couldn’t comment.

In "Scorpions for Breakfast," Brewer discusses her handling of SB 1070 and its fallout, accuses Obama of mischaracterizing the immigration law’s provisions and describes a sharp exchange during a meeting with Obama in the Oval Office.

The governor, who didn’t join Obama during his visit to an Intel Corp. plant in Chandler, handed the president a handwritten letter welcoming him to Arizona and saying she was happy that he would see the state’s economic recovery.

"She made clear that we pursued very different economic policies in Arizona than he’s pursued in Washington," Benson said.

She ended the letter by repeating an invitation for the president to visit the U.S.-Mexico border.

Brewer told the pool reporter that she had "all the respect in the world for the office of the president. I thought we probably would’ve talked about the things that were important to him and important to me, helping one another. Our country is upside down. Arizona was upside down. But we have turned it around," Brewer said. "I know again that he loves this country and I love this country."
___
Distributed by MCT Information Services

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/west/view.bg?articleid=1398873

Soldiers Oust Papua New Guinea Defense Chief Amid Power Struggle

2012-01-26T01:52:00.001-05:00

Veteran leader Sir Michael Somare, second right, attends a press conference after claiming to have been reinstated as Papua New Guinea's prime minister in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Soldiers oust PNG defence chief amid power struggle

A group of soldiers in Papua New Guinea say they have taken control of the military and are demanding the reinstatement of the ousted PM.

The apparent mutiny, involving 12-20 soldiers, took place early in the morning in Port Moresby, reports said.

The group have placed the defence chief under arrest.

The incident is linked to the conflict between Peter O'Neill and Sir Michael Somare - the two men claiming the role of prime minister.

They have been wrangling over the role for six months.

'Within a week'

The leader of the soldiers, retired Colonel Yaura Sasa, is a former defence attache to Indonesia.

He has declared himself commander after placing the head of the defence forces, Brigadier General Francis Agwi, who backed Mr O'Neill, under house arrest.

Col Sasa has denied staging a mutiny and said instead that he was appointed by Sir Michael's government.

''My task is restoring the integrity and respect of the constitution and the judiciary," he said at a press conference at the military headquarters.

"I am now calling on the head of state to immediately implement Sir Michael's post as prime minister," he added.

If this was not done within a week, he said, he ''may be forced to take necessary actions''.

However, shortly after his statement, Deputy Prime Minister Belden Namah said that 15 of the 30 or so men supporting Col Sasa had been arrested.

Mr Namah also told reporters that the soldiers did not have the wider support of the military.

According to the ABC report, the soldiers overpowered guards at Taurama barracks and took the commanding officer there captive.

They then moved to Murray Barracks, placing Brig Gen Agwi under house arrest.

Power tussle

The incident is the latest conflict in a power tussle between the two men claiming the South Pacific nation's top job.

Sir Michael left Papua New Guinea in March to receive treatment for a heart condition. In June, his family announced he was standing down from politics, a move he later said had been taken without consulting him.

He remained out of the country for five months and in August, MPs declared the position vacant and that Sir Michael was no longer an MP. Mr O'Neill was elected by 70 votes to 24, replacing acting Prime Minister Sam Abal.

A Supreme Court ruling in December 2011 then stated that parliament had acted illegally by electing Mr O'Neill prime minister. The court also ruled in a 3-2 decision that Sir Michael should be ''restored to the office of prime minister''.

Mr O'Neill, who is backed by the civil service and effectively running the country, refused to step down.

Last week, Sir Michael showed up in parliament waving court documents and demanding to be reinstated. A rowdy scene ensued, with Sir Michael being ejected.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has issued a travel advisory to ''limit travel around Port Moresby today''.

"We urge that the situation be resolved as soon as possible, and that the PNGDF chain of command is restored," the department said in a statement.

Mr O'Neill has not made any statement on the situation, the Associated Press news agency reported.

However, Australia's High Commissioner in Port Moresby, Ian Kemish, has spoken Mr O'Neill, who said authorities were taking steps to manage the situation, said an Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesperson.

The Head of the Australian Defence Staff at the High Commission has also talked with Brigadier Agwi.

''We understand that discussions (are) underway within the PNGDF to resolve the matter,'' the spokesperson said.

US Military Outpost in Djibouti Behind Somalia Attacks

2012-01-26T00:25:00.001-05:00

United States military base in Djibouti at Camp Lemonier in the Horn of Africa. Pentagon chief Leon Panetta shown talking with troops., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

January 25, 2012

Djibouti Outpost Behind Somalia Rescue Is Part of New Defense Strategy

By THOM SHANKER
New York Times

WASHINGTON — An austere Pentagon outpost in the hardscrabble desert on the Horn of Africa proved serendipitously ideal as a launching pad for Tuesday’s commando raid that freed two aid workers held in Somalia. The use of the base, Camp Lemonier in neighboring Djibouti, is also a signpost to the future, as the military focuses on “economy of force” missions that can preserve an American military presence and protect national security interests at relatively low cost.

A rescue mission from any other American base in the region would have added hours to the raiding party’s mission to infiltrate Somalia and neutralize the nine kidnappers — all were killed — without injury to the Navy Seal team or the hostages. Basing the complex airborne assault on a warship would have been far more complicated.

The “economy of force” concept involves using small numbers from the American military to set up installations in far-flung regions of interest, where they can be joined by personnel from other arms of the United States government, including the State, Justice, Agriculture and Commerce Departments; Customs and Border Protection; and the Agency for International Development.

While a hostage-rescue mission generates news, the day-to-day work at Camp Lemonier focuses on quiet efforts at improving the abilities of local militaries and law-enforcement personnel to protect and police their own territory, while assisting in building schools, digging wells, laying roads and vaccinating livestock.

Camp Lemonier is part of an archipelago of outposts in high-risk environments that also can serve as lily pads for commando raids and intelligence operations if required. It offers runways, communications, housing, a hospital — and privacy.

“Djibouti is the central location for continuing the effort against terrorism,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said during a visit to Camp Lemonier last month.

The trend in favor of a small American footprint overseas is expected to grow as Mr. Panetta must cut about $487 billion from the Pentagon budget over the next decade, even as he shifts more forces to Asia while not diminishing American deterrence and influence in the Middle East.

This military math may require the size of American forces to shrink in Europe and elsewhere — and bases like Camp Lemonier will be expected to manage the risk at a modest cost.

Jennifer G. Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy center here, said the mission of the military’s Africa Command originally was to upgrade the abilities of local security forces — “so the U.S. would not be drawn into conflicts or crises.”

“But the United States may not have the leeway of waiting to build up partner capacities to take on these kinds of challenges,” she said. “So, being nimble and flexible with a light footprint in a place like Djibouti, the U.S. military may be required to tackle these crises immediately as they arise.”

Another important military mission that deploys a small force on the huge African continent is in Uganda.

In October, President Obama ordered 100 Special Operations advisers to Uganda to help train regional forces combating the Lord’s Resistance Army, a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity.

When Mr. Panetta visited Camp Lemonier, there were about 3,500 American personnel assigned there, up from the several hundred Marines and members of Special Operations forces that landed in 2003 when the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa relocated. It had been based on a warship when the mission was conceived a year before, dedicated to hunting for remnants of Al Qaeda in the wake of the Taliban’s ouster from Afghanistan.

The units include a headquarters staff, civil affairs teams that include doctors and veterinarians, as well as engineers and military trainers. Mostly invisible to the local population, the task force has responsibility for a vast area of Africa that includes Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden — almost 70 percent the size of the continental United States.

While the Djibouti outpost is hot and isolated, American military personnel do get an unusual benefit: a daily beer ration, prohibited under General Order No. 1 for troops assigned to Afghanistan and, previously, to Iraq.

Egyptians Show Mix of Jubilation, Anger to Mark Anniversary

2012-01-26T00:04:00.001-05:00

Egyptians commemorating the one-year anniversary of the national uprising of 2011. The gathering took place at Tahrir Square with an obelisk emobdying the martyred., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

JANUARY 26, 2012

Egyptians Show Mix of Jubilation, Anger to Mark Anniversary

Rallies Reflect Country's Rifts Since Regime Was Toppled

By CHARLES LEVINSON and MATT BRADLEY
Wall Street Journal

Demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Wednesday carried an obelisk bearing the names of people who were killed during the conflict that toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

CAIRO—Egyptians took to the streets on Wednesday to mark the one-year anniversary of the uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30-year dictatorship, amid deepening concern that bitter political divisions and a troubled economy have deflated Egypt's once heady revolutionary hopes.

Hundreds of thousands joined rallies in cities across the country. In Cairo, processions clogged the streets, wending their way from every corner of the sprawling capital toward the city's central Tahrir Square, the cradle of January's uprising. Some jubilantly celebrated the revolution. Others angrily denounced the continuation of military rule.

The demonstrations underscored how much has changed in Egypt over the past year. Last January, those protests were met by armies of truncheon-wielding riot police, who fired live ammunition at protesters. On Wednesday, those police were nowhere to be seen.

Wednesday's demonstration also reflected a stark change in popular protests, which took on a dramatically more Islamist complexion from earlier events that were dominated by mostly secular youth groups.

Cairo residents took to the streets Wednesday to celebrate the first anniversary of the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak. But strong tensions remain over the direction of the country.

The largest Islamist group, the Muslim Brotherhood, holds 47% of the country's newly elected Parliament, which held its inaugural session on Monday, and the more hard-line Islamist Salafi movement holds an additional quarter of the seats.

During last year's uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood only threw its support behind protesters days into the uprising. On Wednesday, they were far and away the dominant force.

The hand-in-hand unity that last January bound the country's divided political forces together has long since evaporated.

On Wednesday, the country's Islamist and secular forces congregated on opposite sides of Tahrir Square. In some cases, they directed their protests chants at each other.

The two political camps disagree over how best to manage the country's transition to democratic rule. The Muslim Brotherhood has proved far more willing to compromise with the ruling military than many of the secular and liberal activists, who accuse the Brotherhood of betraying the revolution's democratic objectives for their own short-term political gain.

"The Brotherhood didn't support us when we made the revolution and today they have taken over the square and left no room for us," said Hala Mustapha, a member of the liberal Social Democratic Party. "They don't care about the revolution."

In contrast, Mohammed al-Ghazzar, a 30-year-old demonstrator from the Brotherhood, said he had faith the military would fulfill its pledge to hand over power after presidential elections in June.

"We trust the military," said Mr. Ghazzar. "The majority of Egyptians trust the military."

Wednesday's demonstrations also stood as a reminder of what hasn't changed in the past year. Many protesters shouted the same angry chants on Wednesday as they did one year ago, this time calling for the ouster of the ruling military rather than Mr. Mubarak.

They accuse the military of perpetuating many of the same abuses of power as Mr. Mubarak's regime did and doubt it intends to cede power to a democratically elected civilian ruler.

Some pointed to a report published Wednesday by the press watchdog Reporters Without Borders that said freedom of the press is worse in Egypt today than it was under Mr. Mubarak, who is now on trial accused of murder and corruption. In its annual index of global press freedoms, the group dropped Egypt's ranking 39 places, to 166 from 127 last year.

Egypt has been tense in the days leading up to the anniversary, as the country waited to see whether Wednesday's demonstrations would fizzle after one day of celebration or explode into another spasm of violent clashes between protesters and security forces, as some recent protests have.

In November, a one-day protest against military rule sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties seemed to end peacefully at sunset. But a crackdown by police the following morning on a few dozen stragglers who remained in the square kicked off days of violent clashes that paralyzed downtown Cairo and left close to 80 protesters dead.

The Muslim Brotherhood vowed to pull its ranks from the square at the end of the day, satisfied to continue its struggle inside the halls of a Parliament it now dominates. But many other protesters promised to stay, setting the stage for another possible showdown with security forces.

Egypt's ruling military council also appears to be nervous that Wednesday's demonstrations could still snowball into violent unrest. The day's demonstrations appeared to draw more Egyptians into the street than any popular protest since Mr. Mubarak gave up power on Feb. 11.

Police and army were absent from the square, but not far away. They hunkered down a few blocks outside the square, behind recently erected concrete barriers, meant to protect the Ministry of Interior against angry demonstrators.

State media had repeatedly warned the public of a foreign-financed plot to undermine Egypt on Wednesday—rhetoric activists say was designed to frighten Egyptians away from street demonstrations. Activists also said security forces appeared to step up arrest raids against antimilitary activists in recent days.

"The police haven't changed and the rules haven't changed," said Yousuf Al-Badi, a protester in an antimilitary march on Wednesday. He said his brother Mohsen had been arrested on Tuesday night after police stormed the family's home and confiscated computers, CDs, and personal papers.

"We're still afraid," Mr. Badi said.

The country's top general, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, offered a pair of concessions to protesters on the eve of the anniversary demonstrations. On Saturday, the military said it would release and pardon nearly 2,000 prisoners who had been convicted in military trials.

Among those released was a Coptic Christian blogger who in March was convicted of insulting the military and sentenced to two years in prison by a military tribunal after he wrote a blog post titled "The army and the people were never one hand." The military says 1,443 prisoners from military trials remain in custody, but rights activists say the actual number is likely higher.

On Monday, Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi declared an end to the country's draconian emergency law, which has long been a top priority of democracy activists in Egypt. But he also said the law would remain in effect in cases of "thuggery."

Activists have been planning for weeks for the anniversary celebrations. They've drawn up and distributed elaborate maps for protesters to know the routes of various marches in the city. Others have been in workshops for weeks constructing massive protest puppets and masks, poking fun at the country's military rulers, or commemorating those who died in protests.

Write to Charles Levinson at charles.levinson@wsj.com and Matt Bradley at matt.bradley@dowjones.com

Libyan Rebels Seek Deal Over Town Seized by Pro-Gaddafi Loyalists

2012-01-25T11:32:00.001-05:00

Poster Libyan revolutionary leader Muammar Gaddafi speaking on television in the North African oil-rich state. Libya has fought off an imperialist onslaught for nearly a year., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Libyan defense minister seeks deal in seized town

By RAMI AL-SHAHEIBI, Associated Press

BENGHAZI, Libya (AP) — The Libyan defense minister held talks Wednesday with tribal leaders in a town overrun by locals loyal to former leader Moammar Gadhafi, an official said.

The recapture this week of Bani Walid, 90 miles (140 kilometers) southeast of Tripoli, was the first such organized operation by armed remnants of Gadhafi's regime.

But there were no immediate signs that the operation was part of some wider attempt to restore the family of Gadhafi, who was swept out of power in August and killed in the nearby city of Sirte in October. His sons, daughter and wife have been killed, arrested or have fled to neighboring countries.

Rather, the fighting seemed to reflect a rejection of Libya's new Western-backed authorities by a town that never quite accepted the rebel's rule,

It also highlighted the still unresolved tensions between those who benefited under Gadhafi's regime and those now in power — tensions that are tightly wound up with Libya's tribal and regional rivalries.

Bani Walid government representative Mubarak al-Fatmani said Wednesday that Defense Minister Osama al-Juwali was "seeking a solution" to the clashes between Gadhafi loyalists and forces of the new regime.

Bani Walid was one of the last Gadhafi strongholds captured by the new leadership late last year.

On Wednesday, brigades loyal to the ruling National Transitional Council held positions and checkpoints outside Bani Walid as al-Juwali held the talks with the tribesmen inside the town.

Before the town's takeover, a simultaneous outbreak of shootings in the capital and Libya's second largest city, Benghazi, raised authorities' concerns that other networks of loyalists could stage operations elsewhere.

The security woes add to the difficulties of the NTC, which is struggling to establish its authority and show Libyans progress in stability and good government.

The Bani Walid fighting erupted on Monday, when hundreds of well-equipped and highly trained remnants of Gadhafi's forces battled for eight hours with the local pro-NTC rebel brigade, known as the May 28 Brigade, said al-Fatmani, the town representative. The brigade was driven out and Gadhafi loyalists then raised their old green flag over buildings in the western city.

Four US-backed rebels were killed and 25 others were wounded, al-Fatmani said.

Detroit Marxism Class on "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa," Saturday, Jan. 28, 5:00-7:00pm

2012-01-25T03:15:00.001-05:00

Dr. Walter Rodney of Guyana became a leading African and Caribbean historian during the 1960s and 1970s. He was assassinated in Guyana in June 1980., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

For Immediate Release

Media Advisory

Event: Detroit Marxism Class on "How Europe Underdevelped Africa," Chapter 2, Sec. 1
Author: Walter Rodney (1942-1980)
Location: 5920 Second Avenue at Antoinette, North of the WSU Campus
Date: Saturday, Jan. 28, 5:00-7:00pm
Facilitator: Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor of the Pan-African News Wire
Contact: 313-671-3715
E-mail: panafnewswire@yahoo.com
URL: http://workersworld.net/detroit
Sponsor: Workers World Party and the Harriet Tubman School

Detroit Marxism Class to Review Walter Rodney's Classic Work on "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa," Chapter 2, Section 1
http://www.marxistsfr.org/subject/africa/rodney-walter/how-europe/ch02.htm

The Detroit Marxism Class series continues with the study of an important and relevant work on the significant role of Africa in world history. Walter Rodney, who taught for years at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, published this book in 1972.

As the U.S. government and ruling class intensifies its intervention in Africa with wars of economic penetration, aggression and occupation in Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe and other states, it is essential that activists and students of modern life be grounded in the actual historical evolution of the relationship between the African continent and world imperialism.

We will read and discuss Chapter 2, section 1 of this groundbreaking study. Materials for the class will be available at the session. Admission is free and open to the general public.

US-backed Rebels to Hold Show Trial for Seif al-Islam Gaddafi

2012-01-25T02:31:00.001-05:00

Libyan leader Seif al-Islam Gaddafi was captured in the south of the country. Seif is the heir apparent to Muammar Gaddafi, the martyred leader of this North African oil-rich state., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Libya says it, not ICC, will try Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam

Mon, Jan 23 2012

TRIPOLI/THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Libya said on Monday that Saif al-Islam Gaddafi would face trial at home, threatening a showdown with the International Criminal Court which may decide to prosecute the son of Libya's former dictator in The Hague.

Minister of Justice Ali Humaida Ashour told Reuters that its application, submitted to the ICC last Friday, to try Gaddafi had been accepted "so the trial will be in Libya under Libyan law."

However, a spokesman for the war crimes court in The Netherlands said it had yet to decide whether it would put Saif al-Islam on trial there, after charging him in June with crimes against humanity over the killing of civilian protesters.

Ashour repeated his assertion when told of the ICC's comments.

The international court was given jurisdiction over the case after the United Nations Security Council referred Libya to the ICC in February in the wake of the uprising that eventually toppled his father, Muammar Gaddafi, in August.

Libya does have the right to put Saif al-Islam on trial under international law, but only if the ICC agrees it is able to mount a fair trial, something Libya's prime minister on Saturday assured it would do.

Ashour also brushed away concerns, expressed by rights group Human Rights Watch, that he had no access to legal representation. "Any defendant has the right to have a lawyer during interrogation," the justice minister said.

"The trial will be in public and observers will have the right to attend court. The date of trial has not been set yet, since Saif is still being questioned," he said.

The powerful Zintan militia, who captured Saif al-Islam in the southern desert last November, continue to hold him in an undisclosed location, however Ashour insisted that he was under the control of Libya's public prosecutor.

If tried in Libya on charges of homicide, rape and mismanagement of public funds, the former leader's most prominent son could face the death penalty. In The Hague he would live in a detention center branded "The Hague Hilton" by its critics, with no risk of execution.

The ICC's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, said in November that he was happy for Libya to hold the trial, even though he had no guarantee that it would be fair.

An ICC spokesman said it had received information from Libya Monday - its deadline for details on Saif al-Islam, including his mental and physical health - but added the dossier's details were confidential.

(Reporting by Ali Shuaib in Tripoli and Sara Webb in The Hague; writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Ben Harding)

Despite Obama's Rhetoric, Iraq Instability Grows

2012-01-25T02:03:00.001-05:00

Aftermath of bombings in Baghdad where dozens were killed in renewed attacks. Since the US ostensibly withdrew nearly 350 have been killed., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Iraq violence kills at least 19

Dan Morse, Washington Post
Tuesday, January 24, 2012

At least 19 people were killed in Iraq on Tuesday as insurgents targeted day laborers, government workers and an antiterrorism police captain amid a continuing surge of violence, according to security officials.

At least 80 people were injured, the officials said.

In the attack on the captain, gunmen stormed the home of Hassan Abdulla al-Timimi in the Abu Ghraib area, west of Baghdad, killing him, his wife and their three children, said Col. Sabah al-Falahi, a local police commander. After leaving the house, the insurgents set off two explosions, injuring four of Timimi's neighbors.

The attacks come amid a political crisis that has virtually paralyzed the government after the U.S. troop departure last month. Analysts contend that insurgents are taking advantage of the chaos to try to exacerbate sectarian strife between Shiite and Sunni extremists. In recent weeks, an al Qaeda-affiliated group, the Islamic State of Iraq, has asserted responsibility for at least 37 attacks, saying it was protesting the detention of Sunnis in Shiite-controlled jails. Many of Tuesday's bombings targeted Shiite neighborhoods.

Insurgents attacked in two locations in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum in Baghdad named after the father of Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr. In once incident, a parked car exploded near a group of day laborers waiting for work. In the other, a bomb detonated near a gas station. The blasts killed six people and injured 35, a security official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to brief reporters publicly.

In Baghdad's Hurriya district, another Shiite area, a parked car exploded, killing one and injuring 13. A blast in the central area of Allawi injured six, and in the Shaala area, a car bomb blew up near a school, killing two students and injuring 18.

In the 30 days after U.S. troops left on Dec. 18, at least 327 people were killed in bombings and assassinations, according to a security official. That appears to be a sharp increase over previous months. For the year ending Dec. 31, Iraqi officials recorded about 2,640 deaths.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/24/MN871MTLB6.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Nigerian President Set to Drop Inspector General

2012-01-25T01:23:00.001-05:00

Nigerian troops block protesters in Lagos after the Federal Government imposed a settlement regarding the general strike over cancellation of fuel subsidies. People have objected to the deployment., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Jonathan set to drop IG Ringim, DIGs

By Yusuf Alli and Vincent Ikuomola, Abuja
Nigeria Nation

THE President seemed set yesterday to tell police chief Hafiz Ringim: time is up.

Baring a last-minute change of mind, Dr Goodluck Jonathan will ask Inspector-General Hafiz Ringim and all the Deputy Inspectors-General of Police to go.

An Assistant Inspector-General of Police is likely to stop into Ringim’s shoes. He is also from the North.

The President is said to have planned the overhaul of the Police management to address the increasing insecurity in the country.

It was learnt that the President may have confided in Ringim yesterday his plan to ask him to proceed on retirement with his colleagues. The police chief is believed to be due for retirement in about two months.

He was at the Presidential Villa yesterday, but he was not his usually boisterous self.

Ringim avoided reporters, pleading that he would brief them later.

The DIGs, who may retire with Ringim, are: Mrs. Ivy Okoronkwo, Second in Command (2i/c); Mr. Azubuko Udah DIG “A” (Administration); Audu Abubakar DIG “B” Operations; Saleh Abubakar DIG “C” (Logistics and Supply); Alhaji Sardauna Abubakar DIG “E” (Training); and Mohammed Yesufu DIG “F” (Management Services).

A source, who pleaded not to be named, said: “The government has opted for a breath of fresh air in the police by asking the police management to step aside. A new IGP is due to take over from Ringim.

“The government is looking beyond the DIGs because they were part of Ringim’s team that did not achieve much in policing the country. They have all reached their limit.

“To avoid ethnic insinuations, the new IGP, who is a tested hand, has also been picked from the North. He has a mandate to address the Boko Harm menace.

“So far, the AIG has undergone security checks ahead of the formal disengagement of Ringim by the Presidency.”

The source added that the need to cleanse the police informed the President’s cancellation of his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos.

But a Presidency source said Dr Jonathan will be at the AU Summit in Addis Ababa from January 28 to 30.

Responding to a question, another source said the new IGP’s appointment will be in acting capacity, until the President convenes a session of the Nigeria Police Council and the National Council of State.

Sections 27 and 28 of Part 1 of the Third Schedule to the Constitution states: “The Nigeria Police Council shall comprise the following members:

(a) the President who shall be the Chairman; (b) the Governor of each state of the Federation; (c) the Chairman of the Police Service Commission; and (d) the Inspector-General of Police.

“The functions of the Nigeria Police Council shall include (a) the organisation and administration of the Nigeria Police Force and all other matters relating thereto (not being matters relating to the use and operational control of the Force or the appointment, disciplinary control and dismissal of members of the Force) (b) the general supervision of the Nigeria Police Force; and (c) advising the President on the appointment of the Inspector-General of Police.”

In the past six months, Ringim has been engrossed in a game of survival, with calls for the government to fire him.

But his fate became clearer, with the escape of a Boko Haram suspect, Kabiru Sokoto, from police custody. The suspect was alleged to be one of the masterminds of the Christmas Day bombings in Madalla, Niger State in which 44 people died.

Besides the suspension of a Police Commissioner, Zakari Biu, the IGP was also queried by the Minister of Police Affairs, Navy Capt. Caleb Olubolade.

A source said: “The IGP lost whatever goodwill he has been enjoying. He has to proceed on retirement before his exit date.”

The IG is facing a panel set up by National Security Adviser, Gen. Owoye Azazi to look into his response to the query issued him following Sokoto’s dramatic escape.

NSA’s panel is expected to submit its report on the IG’s response to the query on Friday.

Ringim, who was at the Villa for the first time since Sokoto’s escape, told reporters: “Please, please, not now. I will brief you later.”

Nigerians Hail Withdrawal of Soldiers From Capital

2012-01-25T01:04:00.001-05:00

Nigerian masses confront army troops on the streets. The government has ordered the military into the capital of Lagos after the announcement by the NLC and TUC of a suspension of strike action., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Lagosians hail withdrawal of soldiers from streets

By Miriam Ndikanwu and Adebisi Onanuga
Nigerian Nation

LAGOSIANS reclaimed their city yesterday without a fight. Gone were soldiers deployed by the Federal Government to smash the popular anti-fuel subsidy removal protest.

They stole out of the metropolis the way they came in early January 16.

Lagosians woke up on that day to find military men on the streets following labour’s suspension of the national strike against petrol subsidy removal and termination of street protests.

Lagosians were united in their rejection of the troops’ presence in the city.

Governor Babatunde Fashola, in a broadcast called for the withdrawal of the troops. He followed up with a letter to the President to press home the request.

Elder statesmen – Prof. Ben Nwabueze, Dr Tunji Braithwaite, Dr Kalu Idika Kalu – among others marched on the streets in protest. They were tear-gassed by policemen.

The troops were no longer at the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park.

All the military trucks, pick up vans and three armoured tanks deployed at the Freedom Park, scene of the protests, and on Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun, had been removed.

Soldiers have vacated the popular Ikorodu Oga Roundabout at Garage bus stop, Gbagada and Oshodi.

However, the police are still mounting guard at the Fawehinmi Park and at other locations within Lagos and on the outskirts of the city.

A driver at the motor park near the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Park told our reporters that he saw the military vehicles and the personnel moving away from the Park towards Maryland early yesterday.

Troops were no longer at Agege, Falomo, Agboju, Ijora, Costain and Ojuelegba.

Residents hailed the withdrawal of the troops. They said that their continuous presence was fast becoming an embarrassment to the nation in the wake of serious security threats in Northern Nigeria.

“See what happened in Kano on Friday; we lost about 200 innocent Nigerians, and here you had soldiers who looked poised for war, sleeping all day. If they were deployed in Kano, we couldn’t have had that kind of devastating incident. Lagos is peaceful and will always remain peaceful. They would be more useful in the North”.

Nigerian Government, ASUU End Talks, May Suspend Strike

2012-01-25T00:56:00.001-05:00

Lecturers demonstrating in southeast Nigeria against the cuts in higher education. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (AASU) has been striking in the region since July 2010., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Govt, ASUU end talks, may suspend strike .

Wednesday, 25 January 2012 00:00 From Kamal Tayo Oropo (Lagos) Uzoma Nzeagwu, (Awka) and Karls Tsokar, (Abuja) News
Nigerian Guardian

Fashola, Obi urge quality education

THERE were strong indications yesterday that the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU ) may soon end its strike as the Union had held talks with the Federal Government over the trade dispute.

Meanwhile, the Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Fashola, has decried what he called the poor content quality of the nation’s educational system, saying the lapses were a threat to the country’s aspiration for development.

In the same vein, Governor Peter Obi of Anambra State has said that qualitative education was critical in equipping children properly to become productive citizens.

The ASUU’s National President, Prof. Awuzie Ukachukwu, while speaking to journalists in Abuja yesterday at the end of the negotiations with the Federal Government said “we have discussed, we have looked at the issues, and government has made its offer and I will have to take it to my principal.”

“They have laid their cards on the table, they have done their best within what they believe is available by government, we are all Nigerians, we did not go on the strike to destroy the system. They have told us why they took certain decisions, we are going to take it to our principal and I want to assure you that I will take it to my principal soonest”, he added.

The Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i who spoke on behalf of the Federal Government delegation said, Nigerian students should pray for the strike to be called off since there was hope in sight.

“The students should pray for us at home. We have just concluded our discussions with them, the series of meeting we have had. As soon as they finish their meeting, the will let us know. We are very hopeful, we cannot say they are calling off or not, but that will depend on the decision of the NEC. Because it is only after the meeting that we will know”.

While refusing to also disclose the content of the Federal Government’s package to the striking lecturers, Prof. Rufa’i said the implementation of the demands by ASUU could not be itemised in the circumstances, but that the Federal Government had made useful offers that the academic body would consider and call off the strike.

Speaking at this year’s Lagos State Ministry of Education Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Awards in Ikeja, Fashola said the current system lacked the ingredients of functional education to power Nigeria’s development.

He said obsolete curriculum, poor infrastructure, poor teachers’ training among other challenges had only ensured that the system produced so many literate people with little knowledge.

Fashola added that the lapses had also worsened the unemployment rate in the country, stating it had made most graduates from tertiary institutions in the country unemployable.

He said all must be ready, urging all stakeholders to get involved in the development of public education and help find a lasting solution to the problem.

Obi who stated this yesterday, while inspecting on-going building projects at the Police Children School, Central Police Station Awka, added that good schools were important to nurture quality human infrastructure needed for nation-building.

He assured that the state government would support the building project.

Was the Egyptian Revolution Really Nonviolent?

2012-01-25T00:12:00.001-05:00

Egyptian demonstrators are confronted and attacked by the security forces who sought to curb the mass protests that swept the country on Friday, Jan. 28, 2011 in the aftermath of prayers. The revolutionary upsurge that started in Tunisia has spread., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Was the Egyptian revolution really non-violent?

Abdel-Rahman Hussein Tue, 24/01/2012 - 14:32

As attention turns to the anniversary of the 25 January revolution, questions arise about the nature of the Egyptian revolution and what is required for its success.

The questions are: for a revolution to succeed, can it be completely peaceful and nonviolent? When you are trying to overthrow a heavy-handed security-based regime that cracks down on dissent in a violent manner, can you succeed using only nonviolent means?

The Egyptian revolution of 2011 was universally celebrated as peaceful in nature, especially with the media spotlight on Tahrir Square and the consistent and strategic chanting of “selmeya” (peaceful) that rang out from the crowd. Yet numerous police stations and buildings associated with the ruling National Democratic Party were burned on 28 January and fierce battles occurred in Sinai and Suez. Flames looming in the skies of different Egyptian cities could be seen as a symbol of the regime’s fall.

The fighting continued past 28 January. Many ask if this revolution would have succeeded had Tahrir Square fallen to pro-regime thugs during the Battle of the Camel on 2 February. Protesters valiantly fought back throughout the night to keep the square.

The uprising of 2011 is often idealized as nonviolent, and to a great extent that is true, but since then and as violence toward protesters increases, there is a popular perception that the revolutionary on the street has changed: that there is a more violent atmosphere during recent events and that the revolutionaries of post-25 January are no longer the clean, middle-class faces associated with the 18-day uprising.

This perception overlooks the fact that violence broke out on 25 January in different places throughout the country. Shehab Bassam was one of the earliest protesters to make it to Tahrir Square. “They started tear gassing us right away so we threw stones at them, which they threw back,” he says. Bassam was hit in the head with a rock that day and had to get four stitches. He was detained on 28 January.

“28 January was an extremely violent day,” says Hosni Nabil, whose brother, Ali, was killed that day in downtown Cairo. “We paid a dear price for this revolution, and it wouldn’t have succeeded otherwise.” Ali lived downtown and initially went to find his other brother Mostafa, who was participating in the protests. He was shot as he carried injured protesters to a field hospital.

The deaths that involved a measure of violence reinvigorated revolutionary fervor during the 18 critical days that led to the toppling of Hosni Mubarak. Many revolutionaries today credit the sacrifice of these martyrs for the fact that the revolution continues.

Ali was a house painter who supplemented his meager income by doing random jobs in his neighborhood. He is an example how popular perceptions of the revolutionaries have been skewed, so that the martyrs are idealized as educated, internet-savvy, white-collar types.

This perception is encouraged and utilized by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to discredit protesters, such as during the November battles on Mohamed Mahmoud Street and the December clashes in front of the cabinet building. In their press briefings after these violent events, the SCAF claimed that the protesters were actually thugs. The insinuation is that these protesters aren’t the original type of protesters, the true revolutionaries who were in the square last January.

The discourse of thug versus revolutionary is also brought up during the trials of policemen accused of killing protesters. A certain media discourse, aided by the defense of these policemen, has purported that those who have been killed near police stations were thugs who were shot in self-defense.

Mohamed Gamal Bashir, a former member of the football group Ultras White Knights and known in online social networks as “Gemyhood,” unpacks this image.

“Let’s not forget what happened in the days between 25 January and 28 January, this glossed over part of history,” he says. “There were constant clashes in Omraneya for example, and there were people in Talbiya trying to get to the Foreign Ministry. The fighting continued long after the political elite were tear-gassed out of the square on 25 January.”

Bashir speaks of the “harafish,” whom he defines as youth with no prospects who often skirt the edge of the law. He claims that their actions led to the revolution’s success. He says that they burnt police stations in their neighborhoods in response to decades of oppression by police against the poor.

“The power of this revolution came from these harafish burning police stations and from the collapse of the Interior Ministry. That was utilized by the political elites who centralized the struggle in Tahrir Square. Without this confrontation, the revolution wouldn’t have been possible, and every police station was burnt to the ground because people have been dying inside them for years. There is a veneer of nonviolence but no one saw the battles in Suez and elsewhere — How is it peaceful when people are dying in the streets?” Bashir says.

“People don’t understand what nonviolent resistance means,” Bashir continues. “It means not taking up arms and revolting, like what happened in Libya and Yemen, where uprisings began like the one in Egypt but people eventually took up arms. It doesn’t mean not responding to violence.”

But some say that nonviolent resistance means not responding to attacks by security forces. Protesters faced criticism during the clashes at Mohamed Mahmoud for continuing to fight with police forces after the latter attempted to forcibly evict a sit-in.

Essam Saber died on Mohamed Mahmoud, shot in the head as he was pulling injured protesters out of the fray. Saber hailed from Imbaba and worked in advertising.

“Essam was a fighter who didn’t accept injustice, a young man who cared about his country and defended it. He is a huge loss for us, and we want justice from those who killed him,” his uncle says.

Again, this shows that those who were involved in the clashes are not necessarily politicized and do not fit the archetype portrayed in the media. Bassam recalls that at the beginning of 25 January, “there were all kinds of people there, even people I knew who I hadn’t seen in years. None of them were into politics. No one expected this to happen. It wasn’t arranged, people just headed down [to Tahrir] because they had nothing to lose.”

Yet Abdel-Rahman Samir from the Revolutionary Youth Coalition feels that the protesters lost some public sympathy during the clashes on Mohamed Mahmoud because some were responding in kind to violence.

“We won some media solidarity but we lost sympathy from citizens. Last January we lost a lot of lives, but we didn’t win by attacking the Interior Ministry — we won by staying in the square. When you are attacked but remain peaceful you manage to get more support on the streets, and this creates greater pressure.”

Samir says that nonviolent resistance is the most successful revolutionary method, and prior to January 2011 some young revolutionaries studied the examples of countries such as Chile where nonviolent resistance was successful. Members of the April 6 Youth Movement faced heavy criticism for attending a workshop in Serbia about how to peacefully overthrow dictatorial regimes.

Similarly, Sherif Younes, history lecturer at Helwan University sees that nonviolent resistance is the best approach in a place like Egypt. He points out that there is a difference between the intensity of politically-related violence in Egypt and other countries in the region, such as Iraq, where violence is more intense.

"In Egypt, the murders of Khaled Saeed and Sayed Bilal or the Two Saints Church bombing were huge events, but in Iraq, for example, they might not resonate as much," he says. "So there is a difference in the extent of violence."

Younes also contends that the Egyptian revolution was not an organized one and was carried out by regular citizens who were less likely to be carrying arms. Weapons are generally uncommon in Egypt except in the south.

However, violence against protesters has increased since the first 18 days. Younes believes that this trend has adversely affected the military’s standing.

"A confrontation such as that in Libya or Syria usually stems from a schism within the military ranks, because it is the military that has the firepower. The military did not attack protesters in January for fear of schisms emerging within the ranks," he says. "So it couldn't have happened any other way. The military has increased violence recently but has lost politically as a result. That is why it is now in its interests to hand over power as soon as possible."

Thousands Dead in Internecine Fighting in South Sudan

2012-01-24T23:50:00.001-05:00

Jonglei dissident George Athor was killed by SPLA units in South Sudan. The rebel leader was at odds with the newly formed regime in Juba after it broke away from Khartoum in July, 2011., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Thousands dead in inter-ethnic fighting in South Sudan

By Catholic Online (NEWS CONSORTIUM)
1/24/2012
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

South Sudan has been riddled with violence ever since declaring its independence from Sudan. Fighting between the Murle and Lou Nuer tribes have left thousands dead, and humanitarian aid to the area has been hampered on account of its isolated location.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic online) - The hostilities gathered momentum after an attack killed about 600 Lou Nuer in August. The Sudan Council of Churches launched a peace initiative that was meant to bring tribal leaders together in December to sign a peace agreement. The process broke down, and U.N. aerial patrols reported that at least 6,000 Lou Nuer youth were marching towards Pibor in December.

The Lou Nuer tribal army, called the White Army, in reference to the ash the fighters rub onto their bodies, the group issued statements publicizing its planned attack on Pibor and vowing to "wipe out the entire Murle tribe on the face of the earth."

According to the U.N., the violence has affected at least 120,000 people. Families have lost their homes and their cattle, which are the key to their livelihoods.

The U.N. has launched a huge emergency operation to bring food to those people, many of whom have been living in the bush for weeks, surviving off wild fruits. The U.N.'s World Food Program is using helicopters to deliver food to communities that are inaccessible by road in this isolated region.

Lise Grande, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan, told reporters last week in Juba that the estimated number of people in need of aid had doubled and may rise even higher. The U.N. has a contingency plan for 180,000 people, she said.

The number of people killed remains a mystery. The county commissioner has estimated 3,000 people dead. The government quickly dismissed that figure. James Chacha, the Pibor county medical officer, told reporters that about 2,000 were killed.

Neither the government nor the U.N. has released figures of bodies counted so far by their investigators.

"We have also been doing recces (reconnaissance flights) over the areas to look at the numbers of tukuls (homes) burnt and so on but there is no credibility in the total figure here that would lead to a number that can give an indication," Hilde Johnson, the U.N. Secretary General's representative to South Sudan reported last week. "It is far too early."

"We are very worried about the medical needs of the people who are still in the bush," spokesman Karel Janssens says. "We hear from patients and our staff that there are still many wounded in the bush, but as long as we don't see their direct medical needs it is difficult to answer to that."

Whatever the final death toll, it will only add to the already 1,100 people the U.N. says were killed over the past year in fighting between the Murle and Lou Nuer.

Russia to pull helicopters from South Sudan

3:33pm EST

* President Medvedev decrees withdrawal after U.N. Sudan mission ends

* Africa envoy's spokeswoman says security concerns not involved

* U.N. diplomats say Russia's refusal to fly behind slow deployment

By Steve Gutterman

MOSCOW, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Russia will withdraw its helicopters and personnel servicing the United Nations peacekeeping force in South Sudan, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, a move that will cause problems for the stretched mission.

The move followed expressions of concern by Russian diplomats over security in South Sudan, including attacks on helicopters operated by Russia's military.

But Varvara Paal, spokeswoman for Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's Africa envoy Mikhail Margelov, said the withdrawal had nothing to do with security.

"The Russian contingent of peacekeepers made a meaningful contribution to the process of the peaceful division of the state (Sudan), which ended in July of last year," Margelov said in a statement.

The U.N. Mission in Sudan, known as UNMIS, ended shortly after South Sudan became independent last July under a 2005 peace pact that ended decades of civil war, and the Russian contingent then worked with a new U.N. mission established in South Sudan.

The Russian departure comes as Africa's newest country grapples with tribal and rebel violence and a dispute with Sudan over oil revenues.

A Kremlin statement said an unspecified number of personnel and Mi-8MT helicopters would be withdrawn by April 1. Paal said there were four helicopters remaining after the withdrawal of another four in December.

Russia's U.N. mission said earlier this month that Moscow was alarmed by attacks on utility helicopters operated by the Russian military for UNMISS.

"Recently the situation in providing security to the Russian helicopter crews has been deteriorating," the mission said.

U.N. diplomats and officials told Reuters in New York that the main reason for the slow deployment of UNMISS troops to an area in South Sudan where clashes have taken place was Russia's refusal to fly its helicopters there.

"It is clear that the reason why Russia has (grounded) the helicopters is based on the threat and the risk the troops have faced," said Susana Malcorra, undersecretary-general of the U.N. Department of Field Support.

(Additional reporting by Louis Charbonneau in New York; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

January 24, 2012

South Sudan's Doomsday Machine

By ALEX DE WAAL

South Sudan was born as an independent nation on July 9, 2011, with good will and a bounty. Three hundred and fifty thousand barrels of oil per day provided the government with $1,000 per year for each of its 8 million citizens.

But the only pipeline to market runs through northern Sudan, giving the government in Khartoum control over South Sudan’s economic artery. And on independence day there was no agreement on the terms of pipeline use.

When Sudan was still one country, 50 percent of the revenue from southern oil went to the central treasury, comprising 40 percent of its budget. After July 9, Khartoum received nothing — not even a transit fee. International promises of debt relief and lifting economic sanctions, to fill a part of the budget gap, came to nothing. Continued negotiations — convened by the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel on Sudan, which is headed by former President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and to which I am an adviser — have failed to resolve the issue.

On Jan. 20, South Sudan announced the dramatic step of shutting down oil production, with immediate effect. As oil money comprises 97 percent of the South’s budget, it seems a suicidal step. The rationale is that for the last month, Khartoum has been diverting the oil to its own refinery and filling three tankers.

A year ago, President Omar al-Bashir congratulated his southern counterpart, President Salva Kiir, on independence and promised a new and peaceable chapter in the troubled history of north-south relations. This quickly turned sour, particularly with the outbreak of war in two areas of northern Sudan — Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile — where about half of the population is loyal to the former rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, who are now the government in the South. Although the northern branch of the party supposedly split off, the South does not disguise its solidarity with its former comrades in arms.

Khartoum’s delegates to the just-concluding talks in Addis Ababa complain bitterly. “Why should we allow Southern oil to go free to market, when the money from its sales is used to arm rebels who want to destroy us?” They follow it up with a promise — we will reconcile our respective claims after we agree on a transit fee that matches a third of the budget gap.

The South counters, “Why do we allow our oil to be stolen and the money used to buy weapons to kill our comrades in arms? Khartoum has always wanted to control the South and its readiness to strangle us financially shows that they will never allow us to be truly free.” The Southern government in Juba has floated plans for a new pipeline through Kenya. Optimistically, this may cost $3 billion to $4 billion and take three years to build, but many Southern leaders would rather leave their oil in the ground than submit to Sudan’s coercion.

So South Sudan has set off its economic doomsday machine. The shutdown of wells is already beginning and within a week the oil companies will begin flushing the pipeline with water, so that the oil it contains doesn’t jam and turn into a 600-mile asphalt tube. After that, the best case would be six months’ work to reopen exports.

The South’s lead negotiator, Pagan Amum, said he was at peace with himself when he explained: “This is a matter of respect. We may be poor but we will be free.”

But South Sudan is a fragile state, as the recent interethnic killings in the Jonglei area show, and it will need massive foreign aid to compensate for the lost $650 million per month.

A northern general remarked, “The shutdown will hurt us but it will kill them.” But Sudan cannot be stable if its southern neighbor is in crisis.

Based on its principle that Sudan and South Sudan should be two viable states, at peace and mutually supportive, the African Union panel has proposed an agreement. This will keep the oil flowing, stop the unilateral diversion of southern oil by the north, and provide enough funds to cushion the economic crisis in the north. China — the main buyer of Sudanese oil — the United States and the United Nations have endorsed the African Union’s plan.

President Bashir and President Kiir are due to meet in Addis Ababa on Friday. This is the last chance, not only for the two to snatch a deal on oil, but also to stop an escalation into a wider north-south war. The two must step back from the brink.

Alex de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation.

South Sudan and Kenya sign memorandum on construction of oil pipeline

January 24, 2012 (JUBA) - South Sudan and Kenya have signed a memorandum of understanding on the building of a oil pipeline from South Sudan to the Kenyan port of Lamu.

South Sudan and Kenya sign MoU for construction of oil pipeline, Juba, Jan. 24, 2012 (ST)The agreement comes four days after South Sudan passed a resolution in cabinet to shut down the oil operations through the pipeline which passes through Sudan to its sea port of Port Sudan.

South Sudan accused Sudan of stealing its oil while Khartoum claimed it was confiscating the oil for unpaid fees; a claim Juba said was unfounded.

The South Sudanese government also passed another resolution seeking an alternative oil pipeline to another neighboring country.

A high level delegation from Kenya, led by the prime minister, Raila Odingo, arrived in Juba on Tuesday to negotiate the memorandum with their South Sudanese counterparts, which resulted in the signing ceremony at J-One Palace.

The Kenyan delegation also included its minister of foreign affairs, Moses Wetangula, minister of public service, Dalmas Otieno and minister of energy, Kiraitu Murungi, among others.

South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, and vice president, Riek Machar, witnessed the signing ceremony. Minister of foreign affairs, Nhial Deng and several other ministers and ambassadors were also present.

The minister of petroleum and mining in South Sudan, Stephen Dhiew Dau, and the Kenyan minister of energy, Kiraitu Murungi, signed the memorandum on behalf of their respective governments.

The memorandum also provided for the installation of fibre optic connections between the neighbouring countries.

In a press statement after the signing ceremony, the two ministers explained that the memorandum laid a foundation for economic cooperation between the South Sudan and Kenya.

“The purpose of this memorandum of understanding is to develop and expand a framework of cooperation and partnership between the Government of the Republic of South Sudan and the Government of the Republic of Kenya on the principles of equality, mutual benefit, mutual understanding, respect and trust,” partly reads the memorandum’s text.

The memorandum explained that the two countries will negotiate transit fees for the oil pipeline which will be based on international practice.

Currently, many countries in the region pay less than US$1 per barrel as transit fees; Khartoum is asking for $32.20.

(ST)

South Sudan Blames Khartoum for Bombing Refugee Camp

2012-01-24T23:20:00.001-05:00

South Sudan Jonglei State Governor Kuol Manyang Juuk has accused the NCP government in Khartoum of supporting rebels fighting the new SPLA administration. Fighting continues despite independence in July., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

South Sudan blames Khartoum for bombing refugee camp

12:57pm EST

* United Nations says 14 missing from bombing of camp

* Rebels say Khartoum launched second attack north of border

* Incident deepens arguments over oil revenues (Adds South Sudan comment, background)

By Tom Miles and Hereward Holland

GENEVA/JUBA, Jan 24 (Reuters) - An air strike on a refugee camp near South Sudan's border with Sudan wounded one boy and left 14 people missing on Monday, the U.N. refugee agency said.

South Sudan blamed the attack on Khartoum, which has repeatedly denied carrying out such strikes on its neighbour.

South Sudan seceded from Sudan in July under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war, but the two countries have remained at loggerheads over issues including oil, debt and fighting along the poorly drawn border.

Several bombs were dropped on Elfoj, a camp of about 5,000 refugees used as a transit site, less than 10 km from the border on Monday morning, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement on Tuesday.

"Definitely it is Khartoum forces ... there is no one else who can bombard South Sudan's territory," a South Sudan military spokesman said of the attack on Elfoj. "This is not the first time."

Rebels fighting Khartoum's forces said Sudanese government helicopters and ground forces launched separate attacks on the Sudan side of the border on the same day, although the report was impossible to verify independently.

Sudan's military was not immediately available to comment on either incident, but Khartoum has always denied carrying out such attacks, including one on the Yida refugee camp in November, which the United Nations blamed on Khartoum.

Fighting between Khartoum's forces and rebels from the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement-North (SPLA/M-N) began in June, before South Sudan became independent in July, and have forced around 417,000 people to flee their homes and 80,000 to cross the border into South Sudan, and into camps such as Elfoj.

The SPLM is now the ruling party in South Sudan but it denies supporting SPLM-N rebels across the border.

The insurgency against Khartoum is a remnant of a two-decade civil war in which many in Blue Nile and South Kordofan states fought with those now ruling South Sudan but ended up falling under Khartoum's control.

However, fighting around the border also feeds into wider animosity over issues including the division of revenues from oil from South Sudanese fields which is exported through Sudan.

UNCHR did not apportion blame. It moved 1,140 people from the site, around 70 km (45 miles) to the south after the air strike.

Details about what the South Sudanese spokesman described as the attack on rebels in the south of Sudan were sketchy but a U.N. source confirmed it had received reports of two helicopters attacking the Ullu area near the border.

An SPLM-N spokesman told Reuters the settlement of Danfona, just across the border from Elfoj, had been bombed.

"There is a big movement of Sudan Armed Forces from (Blue Nile state capital) al-Damazin towards the Bau mountains. They are coming with heavy weapons and air cover from helicopter gunships," the spokesman told Reuters by telephone.

Tension between Sudan and South Sudan further escalated on Monday when South Sudan began shutting down oil production, accusing Sudan of stealing $815 million worth of crude that it piped to its northern neighbour for shipment. (Writing and additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz and Ulf Laessing; Editing by Stephanie Nebehay and Ben Harding)

Imperialist-driven War on Somalia Raises Casualties

2012-01-24T02:51:00.001-05:00

Abayomi Azikiwe, the editor of the Pan-African News Wire, speaking on Press TV on the humanitarian and political crisis in the Horn of Africa. 11 million people are facing famine in the region., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Imperialist-driven War on Somalia Raises Casualties

Kenyan and AMISOM offensives intensify while oil drilling begins in Puntland

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

Broader western-backed military interventions in Somalia have not resulted in a lessening of hostilities. During mid-January, the number of deaths and injuries has escalated as Kenyan, Ethiopian and AMISOM military forces accelerate their campaign to destroy the Al-Shabaab Islamic resistance movement and subdue areas of the country under its control.

The United States and United Nations, along with a number of other imperialist states and Israel, are propping up the Somalia Transitional Federal Government, the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) forces and Ethiopian troops who have leveled a three-pronged attack in several regions of the Horn of Africa state. These inland attacks are accompanied by the presence of flotillas of Europe Union Naval vessels that are in the Gulf of Aden ostensibly to fight “piracy.”

On January 22, Kenyan army spokesman Major Emmanuel Chirchir reported that a TFG soldier and two other Kenyan Defense Force (KDF) personnel were killed by Al-Shabaab resistance fighters when the western-led military units attempted to take control of Hosingow and Delbio in southern Somalia. Chirchir claimed that in the course of the operation 11 Al-Shabaab fighters were killed, an assertion that has been rejected by the Islamic group.

Kenyan Defense Forces entered southern Somalia in October in an operation called “Linda Nchi.” Although the Kenyan government said that it was responding to incursions by Al-Shabaab into its territory, the military invasion had been planned with Washington for nearly two years.

The White House and the State Department have said repeatedly that Al-Shabaab is linked with Al-Qaeda in an effort to justify its intervention in Somalia. The U.S. has utilized drone attacks that have killed hundreds of Somalis over the last several months.

Fighting Causes More Displacement in Capital

On January 21, a British citizen of Lebanese descent was killed by a U.S. drone in Elasha Biyaha, located outside the capital of Mogadishu. The AMISOM forces have launched an offensive in the capital and its environs in recent days aimed at driving al-Shabaab supporters out of Mogadishu.

As early as January 20, civilians living in the capital reported serious clashes between TFG troops, who are reinforced by AMISOM, and the Al-Shabaab fighters in the Karan and Heliwa districts. Afgoye, a town that is the current residence of many internally displaced people from the war, was bombed as well in an airstrike of unknown origin.

A Somalia security official, Said Mohamed Hassan, speaking on behalf of the TFG, declared that “Al-Shabaab commanders and their Al-Qaeda allies will be targeted wherever they are in Somalia, including the Afgoye corridor and that is why people are now avoiding living in areas under their control.” (AFP, January 23) This is the same policy that has been enacted by the U.S. in the Horn of Africa and other areas of the North Africa and Middle East.

Hundreds of residents of the northern sections of the capital fled after they were awakened Friday morning to sounds of mortar fire. The AMISOM forces, composed of 10,000 troops from Uganda, Burundi and Djibouti, states all closely allied with the U.S., is making a major effort to expand their operations outside Mogadishu.

Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda, a spokesman for AMISOM, said that “We are moving out of the city now so we can defend the city from the outside now. Our troops have captured strategic bases from Al-Shabaab.” (Guardian, UK, January 21)

AMISOM has been restricted to small parts of the capital due to the fierce resistance of Al-Shabaab and the largely unpopular sentiment harbored against them by the Somalian people. Several nations in East Africa have appealed to the United Nations Security Council to authorize another 7,000 so-called “peacekeeping” troops to enter the country, bringing the total up to 17,000.

Nonetheless, the Al-Shabaab fighters are continuing to carry out a formidable resistance to the western-backed military units. People residing in the capital reported that Al-Shabaab ambushed AMISOM and TFG troops in Daynile, Heliwa, Dharkenley and Yaqshid districts resulting in the deaths of a TFG military official.

In a video released by Al-Shabaab on January 18, an alleged spy for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Ahmad Ali Hussein, confessed to be being recruited by the U.S. covert action organization. Hussein was reportedly executed by his captors in late January or early February of 2011.

In other developments on January 21, several armed militants reportedly took a U.S. citizen into custody in Galkayo, located in the breakaway Puntland region of the country. Somalia police officer Abdi Hassan Nur said that the gunmen had surrounded the man’s vehicle, forced him to exit and enter another car.

During the course of the recent fighting in Mogadishu, Keysaney Hospital in northern Mogadishu was struck by two mortar shells on January 22. Reports indicate that there were no injuries or deaths from the attack.

Keysaney is one-of-two International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) surgical referral hospitals in the capital. The hospital is managed by the Somalia Red Crescent and treated 2,000 patients with war-related injuries in 2011.

Kenya Pays Heavy Price for Intervention in Somalia

Despite the claims that the Kenyan military is already halfway through its operations to subdue Al-Shabaab in Somalia, the invasion has had a serious negative impact on the East African state. Col. Cyrus Oguna, who is the director of information and operations for the KDF, said on January 21 that “As we are speaking now, Al-Shabaab is halfway in the pit.” (Kenya Daily Nation, January 21)

Col. Oguna went on to state that “The target has been on logistics bases and command centers and these are critical in any operation and if you cripple a logistics base and a command center, the war is hallway won.” However, Al-Shabaab has been able to raid Kenyan territory in Wajir, where an estimated 100 Islamic fighters destroyed an administrative police camp at Gerille and took five military personnel and civil servants into custody.

In a report issued by the Nairobi-based Inter-Regional Information Network (IRIN), an agency of the United Nations, it says that “Security, service delivery and economic activity in northeastern Kenya have deteriorated considerably since October 2011, when the country’s military forces deployed in neighboring Somalia in an effort to eradicate the Al-Shabaab militia, which has vowed to avenge the incursion.” (IRIN, January 13)

This same article goes on to point out that “In December alone, at least 15 incidents involving grenades or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) occurred in the regions of Garissa, Wajir, Mandera and Dadaab, where some 463,000 people, mostly Somalis, are housed in the world’s largest refugee complex. Food prices had also increased with local traders no longer able to import goods from Somalia.”

A former Senior Research Analyst at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London wrote also that “Military intervention in Somalia, whether unilateral, multilateral or under the auspices of some supranational body, has never achieved its aims nor led to long term peace let alone political and social harmony. Current operations conducted by the African Union, Kenya and Ethiopia are the latest in a line of foreign military actions in Somalia.” (African Arguments, January 17)

Oil Drilling Begins in Puntland

In the breakaway region of Puntland, where the leadership of the area has sought international recognition independent of Mogadishu, a Canadian oil and gas exploration firm has begun drilling at two wells known as Shabeel-1 and Shabeel North-1 in the Dharoor plains. The Canadian corporation, known as Africa Oil, is working in partnership with two Australian counterparts, Red Emperor and Range Resources, where it has been claimed that 300 million barrels of recoverable oil may exist.

According to Reuters Press Agency, “The site is a humid, barren area of about 2,600 square km (1,004 square miles) near Dharoor town, some 350 km (217 miles) from the port of Bosasso on the Gulf of Aden. Africa Oil said last year it planned to drill up to eight wells in blocks it holds interests in across East Africa, including the two in Puntland.” (Reuters, January 17)

The initiation of such economic activity lends credence to the notion that the current military interventions in Somalia harbor a strong strategic underpinning. The United States and other imperialist countries are exporting more oil than ever from the African continent, and these trends will continue well into the first half of the 21st century.