In Equatorial Guinea Ban Pledges Closer Collaboration With African Union

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon addresses African
Union Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

26 June 2014 – The United Nations is proud to be a key partner with Africa, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told continental leaders gathered for a summit in Equatorial Guinea today, underscoring the Organization’s commitment to working with them to resolve and prevent conflict, as well as to enhance agricultural productivity, promote industrialization and ensure gender equality.

“We are committed to your goal of ‘an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena’,” Mr. Ban told the 23rd African Union (AU) Summit in Malabo, echoing the regional body’s vision of a transformed continent. A transformed Africa will also need an empowered civil society, gender equality and respect for human rights.

“As you develop and implement Agenda 2063, the United Nations will remain by your side – promoting peace, human rights and sustainable development,” said the UN chief, referencing the “call to action” for all segments of African society to work together to build a prosperous and united continent, adopted by African Heads of State and Government last year on the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the regional body.

Mr. Ban said that “narrative of hope” had been consolidated over the past year: “Across most of Africa, we saw stability, economic growth and continued progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). And wherever there was crisis, the African Union and regional partners took the lead in forging solutions. The United Nations is proud to be a key partner.”

He also spotlighted the collaboration between the UN and the AU in the field of conflict prevention and resolution, from promoting a peaceful democratic transition in Guinea-Bissau and helping restore constitutional order in Madagascar, to the Central African Republic, where the UN is working closely with the AU to prepare for the transition from the African-led peacekeeping force to a UN operation.

Regarding the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the Secretary-General welcomed the commitment of sub-regional countries to remove the threat posed by rebel groups. “But many rebels and persons suspected of serious crimes escape justice by moving from one country to another,” he said, emphasizing that he counts on all signatories to the Framework Agreement for Peace, Security and Cooperation not to accommodate any person accused of crimes under international law or protect any individuals covered by UN sanctions.

“Our goal in these troubled places is to restore a peace based on the rule of law, responsive institutions and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” he said, adding that if the foundation of peace is built in these countries, development can take root and prosperity will follow.

As for the continent’s other top priorities, the UN chief said the period after 2015 must ensure that development is sustainable and beneficial to all. “We must therefore promote rapid industrialization that leads to job creation. [Africa] must export more value-added goods, develop regional markets, eliminate illicit financial flows and ensure a more efficient and responsible use of natural resources.”

He also called for stepping up the fight against inequality, and improving access to social protection and basic services such as water supply and sanitation, as well as education and health care quality. The continent had made significant strides in the fight against HIV and AIDS, in boosting the health of women and children, and it is on track to eradicate polio.

“A transformed Africa will also need an empowered civil society, gender equality and respect for human rights,” Mr. Ban said, commending the work of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the recent decision condemning acts of discrimination and violence against individuals based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I welcome, too, the decision to declare 2016 as the ‘African Year of Human Rights with Particular Focus on the Rights of Women’, he said, calling for intensified efforts to protect women from violence and secure their right to fully participate in all aspects of society on an equal basis with men.

Africa’s transformation and economic progress will also entail sustainable energy for all and a revolution in agricultural productivity through policy reforms and technology, he continued, explain that agriculture does not simply produce the food people need. “It is a source of employment, an engine for economic growth and a vital contributor to environmental services. It is the glue that binds rural societies.”

Commending the AU on its resolve to end hunger and malnutrition by 2025, the Secretary-General thanked the 44 AU members that have so far joined the Movement for Scaling Up Nutrition, which focuses on the critical 1,000 days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday.

On efforts to tackle climate change, “a crucial investment in a nation’s future,” he said the African Alliance for Climate-Smart Agriculture is setting a global example with its goal of enabling 25 million African farmers, fishers and livestock keepers to increase productivity, adapt to climate change, and reduce emissions by 2025.

The UN chief hoped to see similarly ambitious plans as part of a global alliance to be launched at the climate summit that he will convene in New York on 23 September.

Finally, he noted that on this day, 69 years ago, the UN Charter was signed in San Francisco. Over the next 16 months, the Organization will commemorate the 70th anniversary of the UN’s founding in 1945. Of the 51 original members of the UN, only four were from Africa.

“Today, each of you is a member, including the Organization’s youngest. The issues which the UN has addressed most successfully, which include decolonization, apartheid, and development, are deeply connected to this continent," said Mr. Ban.

“And the issues where we must remain engaged are rooted here too – from eradicating poverty to promoting climate-smart development; from ending preventable disease to human rights for all; from peacekeeping to democratic nation-building,” he said urging the UN and the AU to commit to working together in common cause for the people of Africa, so they may live in peaceful, prosperous nations.

Later in the day, the Secretary-General met with several African leaders, including President Salva Kiir of South Sudan. They discussed the latest developments in the country. According to a readout of the meeting, Mr. Ban urged in that regard President Kiir to resume talks with Mr. Riek Machar, in the context of the IGAD-led process, and ensure the full implementation of the 9 June Agreement signed in Addis Ababa.

The Secretary-General informed the President that he had conveyed a similar message to Mr. Riek Machar, and called on the two parties to rapidly agree on the composition of the transitional government. The UN chief further called on the President to continue to fight impunity and ensure full accountability for human rights violations committed in South Sudan.

He informed President Kiir of the steps taken by the United Nations to beef up the capacities of UNMISS, consistent with the relevant Security Council resolution, to enhance the protection of civilians and support the verification mechanism set up to monitor the implementation of the 9 June Agreement.

Mr. Ban also met with Catherine Samba Panza, Head of State of the Transition of the Central African Republic, to discuss the latest developments in her country, ahead of the transfer of authority from the African-led peacekeeping force (MISCA) to a UN operation, scheduled for 15 September 2014.

He commended Ms. Samba Panza for her leadership of the transition, reiterated the full support of the United Nations to her efforts and encouraged her to launch the national dialogue in earnest, with a view to address some of the key challenges faced by the country.

In a meeting with President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita of Mali, the Secretary-General discussed the latest developments in that country, including prospects for the launch of a dialogue with the armed groups in the North, as well as the role of the UN mission there (known as MINUSMA) in support of the political process and stabilization of Mali.

Also on the margins of the AU Summit, Mr. Ban met today with President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt. The Secretary-General noted the importance of Egypt’s leadership in the region and globally. The President and Secretary-General discussed issues of Middle-East peace and security and Egypt's domestic developments.

Mr. Ban pledged the ongoing support to the UN to the Egyptian Government in helping to meet the aspirations of the Egyptian people for a prosperous, peaceful and democratic Egypt. According to a readout of the discussion, he urged President El-Sisi to use his leadership and popular mandate to promote full respect for human rights in Egypt.

El-Sisi Speaks at AU Summit Attempting to Justify Coup

Former Egyptian military leader turned President Abdel Fattah
El-Sisi speaking at the African Union Summit in Malabo, Equatorial
Guinea.

Ahram Online, Thursday 26 Jun 2014

The newly elected president says in his first international speech that the Egyptian armed forces took the people's side 'not the other way around'

President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi addressed the African Union’s 23rd Ordinary Summit in Equatorial Guinea's capital Malabo on Thursday afternoon.

Egypt’s membership in the union was suspended for almost a year after the ouster of president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013, but was restored this week.

"Egypt returns to you after what it achieved from the 25 January and 30 June revolution (the date of mass protests against Morsi's rule) in terms of goals of freedom, democracy and social justice, which Egypt achieved through the constitution," said El-Sisi in his first international speech, adding that "no one can claim to have achieved perfect democracy.”

"In the 30 June revolution, the Egyptian armed forces took the side of the people and not the other way around, saving Egypt from a civil war and chaos," he said, adding that many African countries suffered from civil wars.

The new elected president also expressed what he said was Egyptians' dismay that their "African brothers" did not support them after 30 June.

Egypt's membership in the African Union was suspended Egypt from the 54-nation bloc after the overthrow of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, with the Peace and Security Council citing the need to restore "constitutional order".

It is the AU's policy to suspend any member state that undergoes an "unconstitutional" change of government.

The Egyptian president also tackled the problem of terrorism in Africa describing it as a threat to nations in the continent which must be confronted with joint efforts.

El-Sisi announced that Egypt will create an Egyptian partnership for development in Africa which will start working this July.

The new agency will support new initiatives to implement development projects in Africa. El-Sisi mentioned that Egypt has already founded an Egyptian fund for development in Africa.

Earlier, AU head Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma welcomed the new elected president of Egypt in the opening of the summit.

http://english.ahram.org.eg/News/104836.aspx

China Sends Solidarity Message to AU Summit in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea

Chinese leader Xi Jinping with his first lady and President Sassou
Nguesso and the first lady of Congo-Brazzavile.

Beijing — Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday lauded the opening of the 23rd Summit of the African Union (AU), saying China firmly supported its unity, self-improvement and integration process.

In a congratulatory message to the summit, which is being held from Thursday to Friday in Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea, Xi said China sincerely hoped to see a united and strong AU and wholeheartedly wished to see African countries and their people continue their progress along the road to peace and development and realize the great dream of Africa's revival soon.

The Chinese president spoke highly of the significant contributions made by the AU and its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, to strengthening unity and cooperation among African countries, promoting Africa's economic development, and maintaining regional peace and stability.

Xi said China-Africa friendship was linked to the happiness and benefits of 2.3 billion people and was also conducive to enhancing unity and cooperation among developing countries.

No matter how the international situation changed, China would always be a reliable friend and sincere partner of Africa, Xi said.

He said there was currently an unprecedented opportunity for China-Africa cooperation and China would strengthen its cooperation with African countries and the AU and promote the new-type China-Africa strategic partnership to a higher level.

Cuba Ratifies Firm Decision to Forge Historic Ties With Africa

Cuban Vice President of the Council of State, Salvador Valdes Mesa shakes
hands with Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, the Chair of the African Unon
Commission.

 Malabo, Jun 27.- Cuba continues today in its firm resolve to forge close and profitable political, economic and cooperation ties with African countries, the island''s Vice President of the Council of State, Salvador Valdes Mesa, said today.

"Visiting this continent and, in particular, this country (Equatorial Guinea) is a great source of pride for us," Valdes Mesa said after speaking at the opening ceremony of the 23rd ordinary session of the African Union (AU) Summit, focused this time on agriculture and food security.

He said he feels honored "as dignified beneficiaries of the African legacy and accumulated suffering experienced by the African slaves who were forcibly uprooted from their homeland."

We not only share the same language with Equatorial Guinea, but we also have common points in our homelands, dating from the struggles for independence.

After condemning the blockade, the United States still maintains against his people, the Cuban vice president recalled his country's cooperation with Africa over decades.

He ratified that as an Afro-Latin American nation, Cuba has maintained a strong commitment to strengthen ties with African nations, "aware that whatever we do together will be to the benefit of our peoples."

During the first day of the summit, the President of the Spanish Government, Mariano Rajoy, mentioned his country's ties with Africa, and Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Riyad al-Maliki, thanked African nations for their support and solidarity with the cause of his people, and called for additional concrete measures. (Prensa Latina).

World Affairs: When the Mould Breaks

V.I. Lenin was the leader of the Russian Revolution and
founder of the Soviet state.

June 28, 2014
Nathaniel Manheru, Opinion & Analysis
Zimbabwe Herald

I hope I will not sound obscure and thus needlessly pedantic. While it has to be admitted that the object of writing is to communicate, it must also be conceded that the purpose of reading is to enlarge one’s knowledge, indeed to venture beyond one’s ken. Otherwise, there is no point. So, the art of writing is being able to communicate but without denying scope for acquisition of new knowledge and perceptions, deny that by being overly mundane.

And here we go, so brace up. Students of literature will gladly introduce a big word: de-familiarisation. It is a term associated with Russian Formalism, a literary school of thought whose godfather is one Viktor Shklovsky who opens the Russian twentieth century with this one profanity.

I will explain. Up until the rise of this apostate, Russian literature had been reared on the staple of realism, a school of literary thought which required art to reflect life, or to have some near one-to-one relationship with reality and truth.

The big word for that was verisimilitude, “verite” in French. Of course this was an old literary notion, stemming from the days of Plato and Aristotle, and their theory of mimesis, or art as a mirror of reality.

The law of dialectics

But it was a theory which had endured, albeit assuming various mutations. Within the Russian literary tradition, it was about to be reinforced, what with the emerging notion of socialist realism as propounded by Lenin and his acolytes, under the broad rubric of Bolshevism.

As with, but beyond realism, socialist realism required of art not just a definite relationship with reality, but also a firm commitment to the underdog in class struggles which this ideology saw as the essence and motor of history.

Art could not be for art’s sake. It had to patronise a cause and that cause had to be that of workers whose triumph in future was preordained! Of course Lenin and company forgot one rule of dialectics, itself a framework for their interpretation of reality and social change, the rule of opposites.

Dialectical theory recognised the unity and tension of opposites, including a higher resolution of that tension to yield a new and higher state of synthesis.

That new, higher synthesis would in turn get upset by a new opposite it brews in its wake, thereby starting yet another evolving tension.

One Jonathan Swift

True to the laws and logic of dialectics, socialist realism theory birthed its own opposite by way of a rival theory called formalism which repudiated reality’s shackles on art.

From foregrounding realism, formalism and its more radical successor, structuralism, postulated that the chief end of art lay in artistic beauty deriving from a creative use of language.

Art did not have to mean; it merely had to grant its consumer some pleasurable experience through word smithery.

And one way of conveying this beauty was to use language in such unusual ways that the reader got jolted from language’s familiar or conventional use.

To de-familiarise language usage, in other words. Shklovsky limited the notion to language use. But his notion became handy in appreciating old texts, including a familiar one by Jonathan Swift, an Augustan novelist writer who gave us the famous Gulliver’s Travels.

In it, Swift paints a make-belief cosmos which subverted the world as his contemporaries and ourselves know it. Man became either a midget or a monster, with his whole world either slimmed or magnified beyond familiarity.

Where the world dwindled to midget size, Swift sought to show how conceited, self-convoluting man was anything but some puny, pernicious creature wielding oversized destructiveness.

Where the world magnified to a scale larger than the human eye could encompass, the idea was to enlarge the human being so his repulsive ugliness, all along hidden by normal size and distance, could be fully grasped and recoiled from.

Either way, Swift sought to show conceited human ugliness, which is why he stood accused of misanthropy. This technique of imaginatively rearranging reality, of subverting ordinary perception and disrupting the banality of everyday scenes and life, is what then came to be called de-familiarisation as a technique or literary device.

And as a technique, it was meant to teach readers human nature through shock.

Of course I now have to apply this very notion, otherwise why expound it in this elaborate way except as a conceptual aid in my instalment for the week. As I write, Iraq is showing signs of disintegrating, and this after its founding a good ninety-three years ago.

Those with a good grasp of history will recall that it was part of the Ottoman Empire, and was carved once this sick man of Europe (Ottoman Empire which incorporated modern Turkey) twitched its last and died, thanks to First World War.

There is a rebellion in Iraq, with a Sunni fundamentalist group called ISIS leading the country-breaking rebellion.

But that is not my point this week, tragic though the auguries are or may be, for that fantastic country which has been raped repeatedly by the West, starting with the British, ending with the Americans (at least for now).

Those of my readers with a strong biblical geography will readily recognise Iraq by the fact of its boundedness by two mighty rivers Tigris and Euphrates, themselves drivers of a great civilisation which rivalled the West.

My interest is how this latest crisis has remoulded reality, teaming new bedfellows in ways that de-familiarise.

The Middle Eastern religious mosaic

The current embattled Iraq government is Shiite-dominated.

It was installed by Americans after their aggression against that country then as led by Saddam
Hussein, the American slain Iraqi leader.

Spurred by sect  considerations, the new Shiite Iraq government kept close to Americans — its maker — while developing links with Iran, an inveterate enemy of America since  the 1979 Revolution that deposed the American-propped Shah.

The Americans suffered this other link, or fumed acceptingly.

Iran emerged the biggest winner, having harnessed American military might to undo the monster America had created and armed — Saddam — without lifting a drone, or shedding an ounce of her blood.

Soon America the war-monger moved to instigate another surrogate war in Syria, while it was losing another war in Afghanistan, another of Iran’s neighbour. Syria borders Iraq which America thought had stabilised.

The surrogate war in Syria needed a Sunni Trojan Horse, feeding as it did on the inveterate schismatic animosity between Shiites and Sunnis.

It also needed Turkey as a rear base for Sunni rebels fighting Bashar al-Assad, the Alawaaittes president of Syria. And the Alwaaittes are a small group within the Shiite sect.

Friends, foes, friends, foes

Assad enjoys support of Iran, quiet indifference if not sympathies of Maliki, the prime minister of the Shiite-led, American-made Iraq government.

Iran sent fighters to prop Assad, who also got support of Lebanese veteran fighters of Hezbollah, also supported by Iran, against Israel, America’s unconditional friend.

The antagonistic Syrian National Coalition fought and still fights Assad on the strength of support from the West, but also from Sunni-led Gulf States, led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

And in the wake of the fall of Libya to the rebels, the stiff pressure on Al Qaeda elements in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, Syria became the new cynosure for jihadist fighters, each pursuing different, even antagonistic visions, but joined by a common fight against Assad, joined by the irresistible prospect of getting sophisticated arms and cheap money from an America angling for regime change in Syria by whatever fighters.

Among these fighters is ISIS whose religious sect is Sunni, whose religion is fundamentalist political Islam, and whose political programme is challenging geography in the form of “crusader partitions” which made Iraq smaller that it should have been, made Syria exist when it should not have.

And because ISIS challenges the very existence of Syria, Assad is now having to bomb ISIS rebels who have been incubated in the Syrian cauldron, before they crossed into Iraq to begin their own revolution using arms and training gotten from Americans and other western powers!

When the sick man gets sicker

And here is the new equation: America, Iran, Shiite Iraq and Assad on the one side against ISIS which benefited from the American project in Syria, and still benefits from Sunni-Arab world, led by the House of the Saudis, themselves American allies in Syria.

Not to be left behind in this entanglement, Turkey, all along opposed and even supporting the anti-Assad Coalition, finds itself supporting Kurds in the north and closer to its border, in their quest for a break-away state, independent of Iraq.

Up until now, Turkey was opposed to this development which it said would give ideas to its own Kurds who have been simmering for a new order away from Turkey.

But today Turkey has a greater fear in the form of ISIS which could affect its present boundaries while fomenting a Sunni rebellion within its secular state.

Presently Turkey reasons a new Kurdistan could, after all, prove a better buffer against ISIS. So Turkey has an interest in the break-up of Iraq, assuming a Shiite Iraq cannot subsist. Perforce, it finds itself on the same side with Assad, the man it has fought against, alongside the Americans.

When Obama personifies weakness

Clearly the mould is broken and a new reality breaks out of this amorphousness. Old foes are patching up into new friendships while old friends are unearthing buried hatchets for new wars.

That is a new, evolving reality within which Zimbabwe will have to make new friends, lose old ones; make new enemies, reconcile with old ones. Old boundaries, old loyalties, old causes continue to melt, calling for new moulds. Or, could it be challenging any moulds at all?

The world seems formless, with its gyre ever turning, ever widening. If moulds are challenged, how then does the emerging reality become recognisable cognitively, how is it made familiar perception-wise?

The centre seems no longer able to hold, even for America which thinks it wields and moulds reality, twenty years into the future. Today, it accuses Obama of being weak, without realising Obama personifies its very weaknesses.

Making Albion squeak

Let me take the matter home, closer in ways that illustrate de-familiarisation is much more than a creative artistic device in the hands of proponents of formalists. In the news is Deborah Bronnett, the British Ambassador.

She says Britain now seeks friendship, normalisation of relations with Zimbabwe. She adds: “I hope this means Zimbabwe will look in all directions in terms of its trade and other relationships and that we will shortly see an official return visit from the United Kingdom to Zimbabwe”. Of course she is pleading with us to re-look West, together with, or better still away from, our looking East. Britain has come back to her senses, realising which side her bread is buttered. All that sounds like a major climb-down, a ringing victory for a Zimbabwe that has stood firm and unshaken, in the face of combined Anglo-American punitive sanctions. I don’t doubt that, the same way I don’t doubt that by taking on the West economically and legally, Zimbabwe is beginning to bite where it worries and matters respectively.

Raising the scotch-skirt

The British are a proud lot, given to granting minimal concessions only to foe nations that have either beaten them outright, dragged them into a debilitating stalemate, or against which they have won at great personal loss. Going back in history, this is why the British respected the Ndebeles even after defeating them; why they were contemptuous of Shonas even after the Shonas collaborated with them, against their better interest. Indeed, this is why as far afield as the Sudan, the British respected Mahdi who wiped a whole lot of them, before vengeful Albion regrouped for subsequent victory. Or nearer home, why after Majuba, the British respected the Boers. When their envoy here finally raises her scotch-skirt up beyond the knees, well closer to nether regions, all in full view of two-eyed natives, know then that River Save has risen effectively, and this at a time when the African sun is setting inexorably. The river has to be crossed, if home is to be reached before sunset. We have worked very hard to get to this, paid dearly for this moment to come. We cannot fritter it away, un-gainfully.

Here comes a deadly offer

But . . . and it’s a big BUT. While animosity with Britain is familiar and in fact has shaped a fight, shaped a generation, shaped a diplomatic tradition since 1996, structured a world now familiar since 1996, do we know what to do when the Queen turns lewd and coquettish, and does so when we are so far away from home, right in the middle of a battlefield which has taken us away from the nocturnal bed for so many moons? Do we know what to do when the Queen tantalisingly offers succulent, deadly peace? Our hunger is acute, our carnal desires run brimful, our wives are so far away, locked behind chastity belts by way of vast distances that ironically sanction the lock owner, and before us is lascivious Demi-Albion, so scantily dressed, inviting. Do we have good tools, for whatever ends? De-familiarisation! Think Zimbabwe. Often, hard-won victory is lost in peace. All the King’s horses, all the King’s man, had no problem for as long as Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall.

The MDC-Madhuku-Renewal riddle

And here is another illustration of what happens when de-familiarisation sets in suddenly, inexorably. MDC-T is in turmoil. Biti is dangling renewal. The courts are diffidently handling cases they don’t find too meaningful, or promising any jurisprudential vista. Dead matter, they see and endure in this disputation of no known local value. There is the property issue which is now before the unhappy courts. Professor Madhuku, all along known to us as political NCA, enters a notice to represent Biti and his renewable colleagues. What is happening? Familiar faces, old players, old game, new roles? And before we can answer, Professor Madhuku re-emerges again, in same courtyard, to make yet another entry: he will represent Biti and Holland in defense of an April 2 resolution to oust Tsvangirai from leading MDC what? MDC-Tsvangirai! An MDC-T which Biti says he will leave shortly once events are more propitious, once renewal congress is held and a low-hanging orange reached! So why shake down a ripening damba when what you are after is a softer fruit called orange? Never mind. Another puzzle: Holland? Sekai? Yes! Yet she was part of the Guardian Council seeking reconciliation between the factions! Breaking the mould, it is called and the result is something quite unfamiliar. He told me once.

I mean Madhuku. He said, the NCA has many of its members embedded in the two MDCs. When the time is ripe, he added, they will show their true allegiances and “we shall rise against the petty bourgeoisie in both Zanu-PF and MDCs”. I wrote about it.

All the same I hope Madhuku remembers the law of opposites. We may be about to see a new synthesis, but what will be its new, emerging antithesis as it simmers and settles? I just hope he will matter beyond the litigation moment. The world is never too familiar.

Going back to Federal Rhodesia

Lastly, Jacob Mafume. Recall East 24? Hahahaha! How events hurtle forward, often at breakneck speed. His new boss, Tendai Biti, addressed his supporters (so he thinks) last week in Chinhoyi. In part, Biti: “It has been a failed 34 years since Zimbabwe got its Independence in 1980. Our lives have gone to the era of 1958. We have no electricity, we have no water. We have got a natural crisis and we cannot stand by and watch. That is why there is a renewal call. If there is good governance in any country then everything else flows. We cannot let past mistakes of Zimbabwe to revisit us. That is why we are proud of renewal as an ideology and as new ways of thinking”. Of course that was boldly oblivious, something Biti is quite capable of, given his innate impulsive recklessness.

He counts 34, embracing the five years he was Finance Minister in the Inclusive Government, as wasted years. He condemns himself, in the haystack of words and dates. Much worse, his excellent education as a lawyer — all of it after Independence — rebukes him and his claim beyond measure. Conscripting all of us, he says our lives have gone to the era of 1958, suggesting his “era” is made up of a year. Really? A white era, federal era in which you are appoint-able as black minister of finance? In which you are a lawyer, much earlier than the pioneering Herbert Chitepo?

One very old Rhodesian dawn

He also forgot Kariba is still under construction, making his electricity claims quite fraught. Much worse, he saw good governance then in 1958, under white rule! Heyi! And then hoping he was placing the punchline, he added: “That is why we are proud of renewal as an ideology….”  Ha ha ha ha! Renewal of Rhodesia! To Federal Rhodesia, and then to what? UDI? Ha ha ha! Thanks Roy Bennett! De-familiarisation! Good politicians always remember their hinds as they discharge fiery words, or seek to remake the world through false words.

That is how new and renewed things shall be, in the world that Jack built! To that add young Mafume whose new world is symbolised by an orange. Well, apart from not being an orange, the sun takes on that orange colour twice in its day’s life: as it rises and as it sets.

The science of semantics works by limiting meaning possibilities, trimming those possibilities in preferred directions. Where the semantic field is left open, the reader walks in with referred sense. And you suffer the unintended, to your detriment, Sir. Kuti haasi Mavambo zvakare? Could the orange be rotting already, the sun setting before the rise of a new day? After all, this is a sun in a day in the Year of Our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Fifty- Eight. A very old Rhodesian sun indeed.

Icho!

nathaniel.manheru@zimpapers.co.zw

Zimbabwe President Mugabe Makes Senior Appointments

Republic of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe with First Lady Grace
Amai at the national sports stadium in Harare.

June 28, 2014
Lloyd Gumbo Senior Reporter
Zimbabwe Herald

President Mugabe has appointed Engineer George Mlilo as permanent secretary in the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing to replace Mr Kilian Mupingo who died last month. He also appointed Mr James Jonga as permanent secretary in the Office of the President and Cabinet in charge of the District Development Fund and related infrastructure development.

Eng Mlilo was secretary in the Ministry of Public Works and National Housing during the inclusive Government.

He had not been re-assigned after the formation of the new Government in September last year after the July 31 elections won resoundingly by Zanu-PF.

Chief secretary to the President and Cabinet Dr Misheck Sibanda said President Mugabe appointed Eng Mlilo and Mr Jonga in terms of Section 205 (1) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe and after consultations with the Civil Service Commission.

“Engineer Mlilo was the City Engineer of the City of Gweru in 1983 and later transferred to the City of Bulawayo,” said Dr Sibanda.

“In 1988, he became the Director of Engineering Services.

“In September 2005 he was appointed secretary for Transport and Communications.
“In 2009, he was appointed secretary for Public Works.

“Eng Mlilo holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering, a Bachelor of Science Urban Economy and Planning and Masters in Business Administration.”
Dr Sibanda said Mr Jonga was the director Operations in the District Development Fund before assuming the Director General position in 1991.

“He holds a Bachelor of Administration degree, a Bachelor of Science in Political Science and a Master of Science in International Relations,” said Dr Sibanda.

President Mugabe also appointed Ambassador Mary Margaret Muchada as deputy chairperson of the Civil Service Commission with immediate effect in terms of Section 202, sub-section 1(a) as read with Section 320 of the new Constitution.

“Dr Muchada joined the service in 1980 as Senior Research Officer in the Department of Research and Planning, subsequently in the then Ministry of Manpower Planning and Development,” said Dr Sibanda.

“She was subsequently promoted to the position of under-secretary in the same ministry.
“In 1985, she was promoted to deputy secretary in the then Prime Minister’s Office for Policy Research and Analysis.

“She was appointed secretary for Information, Posts and Telecommunications in 1994.”
In 2000, Dr Muchada was appointed Zimbabwe’s ambassador to Italy and permanent representative to the United Nations Organisations in Rome before being appointed ambassador to Belgium.

Dr Muchada holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics, Post Graduate Diploma in Social Work, Masters Degree in Social Studies and PhD in Development Communications.

President Mugabe also appointed former secretary in the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, Dr Elizabeth Xaba, as deputy chairperson of the Health Services Board with immediate effect.

“Dr Xaba was the Director of Health Services at Gweru City Council. In 2001, she was appointed secretary for Health and Child Welfare,” said Dr Sibanda.

“She became a commissioner in the then Public Service Commission in 2005. She obtained a Doctor of Medicine Degree in 1981 and a Master of Science in Community Health in Development Countries (CHDC) in 1987.”

Equatorial Guinea Leader Slams Western Hypocrisy

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe attending the African Union
Summit in Equatorial Guinea.

June 27, 2014
Zimbabwe Herald

Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has attacked the West for using its influence in strategic institutions such as the United Nations to interfere in the domestic affairs of African nations.This came as prime minister Mariano Rajoy Brey of Spain pledged to increase investments in Africa, while also canvassing African support in his country’s bid to land a UN Security Council seat next year.

Speaking at the opening of the 23rd African Union Heads of State and Government Summit here yesterday, President Nguema, who is hosting the two-day Assembly, said it should be made clear that the “monopoly of colonial power is history”.

He implored Africa to harness local resources for development and desist from relying on developed economies to avoid perpetuating neo-colonialism.

President Mugabe was among the leaders who attended the opening ceremony whose special guests included UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, prime minister Brey, Palestine’s president Mahmoud Abbas and vice prime minister Salvador Valdes Mesa of Cuba.

“Africa should not continue to depend on the economies of developed countries. The continent has to seriously consider its relations with the world,” said president Nguema.

“Africa now has 50 years of independence, so we do not need to suffer neo-colonialism and perpetuate it. We have adopted measures that have led to the stagnation of parity of our currencies.

“The economic development of Africa is ensured by developed countries themselves. Another negative form that entrenches the dependence of Africa is not recognising cultural values.”

President Nguema encouraged the continent to review monopoly of the world economy, saying the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank appeared reluctant to help stimulate African economies.

He said African nations should ensure the continental democratisation processes already under way were free of foreign dictatorship.

“Democracy is not new to Africa,” said President Nguema. “It has always been practised in our traditional set-ups. Africa is in an irreversible democratic process and this should conform to an Africa that does not allow foreign dictatorship.

“Economic relations between nations should be developed by respecting the aspirations of those involved. The monopoly of colonial power is history. The world has to be governed through equality. It is high time to reconsider the monopoly of the world economy.

“The World Bank and IMF have never assisted African states. We need to revise international trade. We also need to revise the UN to meet the demands of Africa so that it is not a springboard for others to interfere in Africa.”

Prime Minister Brey told African leaders that Spain would guarantee more African seats on the UN Security Council if his country was elected into the organ.

He said Spain, which imports 28 billion worth of African products annually, intended to increase investment.

“It is only natural that Spain, as the closest European country to Africa, should have as much more intense relationship with the continent than at present,” he said. “If Spain is chosen (for UNSC), I can assure you that in two years, Africa will not have three seats on the Security Council, but four.”

Africa is seized with a debate regarding over-reliance on foreign donors who are presently funding most AU operations.

AU foreign ministers raised the matter when they met in Ethiopia early this year to formulate key principles of Agenda 2063, Africa’s 50-year vision. Two documents on Agenda 2063 have been produced in keeping with an agreement to accelerate the plan’s implementation.

The AU Summit enters its final day today with the leaders expected to consider peace and security, looking at terrorism and armed conflict.

Central Africa Republic, Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya and South Sudan will be of special interest.

US Cong. Conyers Asks Obama For Help With City Water Shutoffs

Detroit Freedom Friday 8 organized by Moratorium NOW! marches
through downtown demanding a halt to water shutoffs by
the emergency manager.

5:49 PM, June 27, 2014
Freep.com

WASHINGTON — U.S. Rep. John Conyers wants President Barack Obama to sanction use of an earlier multimillion-dollar award to Michigan to help pay delinquent water bills of low-income residents threatened by the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department’s most aggressive shutoff campaign ever.

“Assisting low-income residents with paying their water bills would help avert a public health crisis,” Conyers, D-Detroit, said in a letter to Obama Thursday. Separately, he asked Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell to declare a public health emergency, calling the shutoff campaign “draconian” and raising concerns about what it could mean to the young, sick or elderly.

“Since March, water service for up to 3,000 Detroit customers per week has been cut off due to an overzealous and misguided approach to cost-cutting,” Conyers said in a statement Friday. “Regardless of the rationale for these cutoffs, the human consequences are unacceptable and unsustainable.”

Neither the White House nor HHS immediately replied to Conyers’ pleas.

Conyers’ efforts comes on the heels of the the water department’s effort to collect on more than 90,000 accounts with delinquent bills totaling more than $90 million. As a way of collecting on those debts, the shutoff campaign is targeting residential and commercial customers owing at least $150 who are more than 60 days late on payment.

Officials at the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) say water service to 7,556 customers was cut off in April and May as part of the campaign, but now there are crews in place to shutoff service to speed that up to as many as 3,000 delinquent accounts per week.

While citizen groups have gone as far as to appeal to the United Nations to force water service to be restored, the Free Press reported this week that there was evidence the campaign was having the desired effect. As of June 4, more than 17,000 accounts were on some kind of payment plan, compared to 12,000 in February, before the effort was started.

In his letter to Obama, Conyers appealed to him to allow a portion of the funding remaining from a 2010 award of $498-million through the federal Hardest Hit Fund to “assist low-income residents” facing or having experienced water shutoffs. Nearly $300 million remains from the original award, which was intended to fund programs to keep people from losing their homes to foreclosures. About $100 million was repurposed to fight blight in Michigan already.

In his appeal, Conyers pointedly suggested the funds be used to help low-income residents facing shutoffs anywhere in Michigan, not just in Detroit. But it was clear who he is trying to help most.

“Last week, the Detroit City Council approved an 8.7% increase in the water rate, contributing to a total increase of 119% over the last decade,” Conyers said. He blamed the water system’s problems on a shrinking population, high unemployment, widespread blight, an aging infrastructure and short-staffing, adding that some estimate as many as two-thirds of the shutoffs will occur in homes with children.

In his letter to Burwell asking her to expand access to medical and public health services to those disconnected, Conyers said his office is “hearing accounts of pregnant women, familes with children still in diapers, the elderly and the infirm” who are having their water shut off.

“As roughly half the city is now eligible for shutoffs, we believe that immediate action is necessary to stem the consequences of this counterproductive and coldhearted policy,” he said.

Conyers also wrote Sue McCormick, DWSD’s director and CEO, asking her to “reevaluate” the policy and cease all shutoffs for vulnerable residents and those families with children — as well as those with what he called “demonstrated inability to pay.”

He also took issue with DWSD’s suggestion that the fact that 2,700 customers who were shut off in May either made payments or arrangements to pay within a short time indicated the program was working, noting that it also meant about 1,800 customers who were shut off were unable to pay.

“It is utterly unacceptable to put the most vulnerable members of our population through severe hardship, utilizing a method that clearly violates thier basic human rights, as a collection practice,” Conyers wrote.

Contact TODD SPANGLER at 703-854-8947 or at tspangler@freepress.com

Bobby Womack Dead at 70

Soul artist Bobby Womack has died at the age of 70.

Veteran soul singer had numerous hits and heartaches throughout seven-decade career

by JASON NEWMAN
Rolling Stone
JUNE 27, 2014

Bobby Womack, the legendary soul singer whose career spanned seven decades, died Friday at age 70. A representative for Womack's label XL Recordings confirmed the singer's death, but said the cause of death was currently unknown.

The son of two musicians, Womack began his career as a member of Curtis Womack and the Womack Brothers with his brothers Curtis, Harry, Cecil and Friendly, Jr. After Sam Cooke signed the group to his SAR Records in 1960, the group released a handful of gospel singles before changing their name to the Valentinos and earning success with a more secular, soul- and pop-influenced sound. In 1964, one month after the Valentinos released their hit "It's All Over Now," the Rolling Stones released their version, which went to Number One on the UK singles charts.

After leaving the group in 1965, Womack became a session musician, playing guitar on several albums before releasing his debut album, Fly Me to the Moon, in 1968. A string of successful R&B albums would follow, including Understanding and Across 110th Street, both released in 1972, 1973's Facts of Life and 1974's Lookin for a Love Again.

After the death of his brother Harry in 1974, Womack's career stalled, but was revived in 1981 with the R&B hit "If You Think You're Lonely Now." Throughout most of the Eighties, the singer struggled with drug addiction, eventually checking himself into a rehabilitation center for treatment. A series of health problems would follow, including diabete, pneumonia, colon cancer and the early signs of Alzheimer's disease, though it was unclear if any of these ailments contributed to his death.

In 2012, Womack began a career renaissance with the release of The Bravest Man in the Universe, his first album in more than 10 years. Produced by Damon Albarn and XL's Richard Russell, the album made Rolling Stone's 50 Best Albums of 2012 alongside numerous other critical accolades. Upon his death, Womack was in the process of recording his next album for XL, tentatively titled The Best Is Yet to Come and reportedly featuring contributions by Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart and Snoop Dogg.

Womack was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/bobby-womack-dead-at-70-20140627

CENSUS: African-American Population's Growth Ebbing in Inland Counties California

Pastor Raymond Turner of Temple Missionary Baptist Church in
San Bernardino, California.

Growth in African-American residents slows in Riverside County; both counties see fewer whites, more Latinos and Asians.

BY DAVID OLSON / STAFF WRITER
June 26, 2014 1:56 p.m.

The African-American population in San Bernardino County dropped for the first time in memory between 2012 and 2013, and growth in Riverside County’s black population was slower than in past years, newly released Census Bureau estimates show.

The Latino population in the two counties continued to grow steadily, increasing by nearly 40,000 people, to 2.14 million, or nearly half the Inland Empire’s population. The growth rate, though, is well below the increases before the recession.

The population estimates show a continuation of other trends as well: A growing number of Asians in both counties and a drop in the white population, the latter a phenomenon that goes back more than two decades in San Bernardino County and to 2012 in Riverside County.

Demographer William Frey said the Inland Empire’s struggling economy and high foreclosure rates, along with more stringent requirements for mortgages, likely help explain the population trends. In addition, for many years people have left the area — during good and bad economic times — because of a lower cost of living in states such as Arizona and Colorado, said Frey, a senior fellow with the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution.

The Census Bureau’s estimates of the population on July 1, 2013, were released late Wednesday and are based on information such as birth, death and tax records.

Riverside County’s African-American population inched upward by slightly more than 1 percent between 2012 and 2013, to more than 138,000. San Bernardino County’s black population decreased half a percent, to 174,140.

That followed a near doubling of the region’s black population between 1990 and 2010, when the Inland Empire was a magnet for African-Americans moving from Los Angeles County in search of more affordable housing.

The region’s black population rose 43 percent in the 1990s and 24 percent in the 2000s.

The Rev. Raymond Turner, pastor of Temple Missionary Baptist Church, a mostly African-American congregation in San Bernardino, has seen a number of members leave the area in recent years. At first, it was primarily a migration to the South among middle-aged and older congregants, he said.

“Now I’m seeing a lot of people going to Vegas and Arizona,” he said. Most are young adults.
Turner said African-Americans are leaving the San Bernardino area in search of cheaper housing, more jobs and lower crime. Older residents without college degrees who 25 or 30 years ago earned solid middle-class wages at Norton Air Force Base, the Kaiser steel plant in nearby Fontana and railroad yards typically can find only low-paid work, if any at all, and younger African-Americans with college educations find fewer job opportunities in the Inland Empire than elsewhere, he said.

Most of the congregants who moved to the South have roots there, Turner said. They’re part of a nationwide trend of African-Americans leaving California and Northern cities for the South as the South’s race relations and economy improve.

Delores Armour was born in South Carolina, grew up in the Philadelphia area and lived as a young adult in New York. She moved to Riverside in 1988, but in 2007 she left for the Atlanta suburbs.

She said she has met five other African-Americans there who also moved from Riverside County.

“Part of the reason is that people were able to sell their homes and buy bigger houses here,” Armour said.

RIVERSIDE COUNTY

July 2013

• Hispanic/Latino: 1,075,767

• White, non-Hispanic: 871,677

• Black/African-American: 138,250

• Asian: 138,936

• Native American: 11,161

July 2012

• Hispanic/Latino: 1,053,204

• White, non-Hispanic: 873,400

• Black/African-American: 136,732

• Asian: 135,388

• Native American: 11,188

SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY

July 2013

• Hispanic/Latino: 1,066,337

• White, non-Hispanic: 654,765

• Black/African American: 173,323

• Asian: 135,611

• Native American: 8,562

July 2012

• Hispanic/Latino: 1,049,281

• White, non-Hispanic: 664,336

• Black/African-American: 174,140

• Asian: 132,401

• Native American: 8,573

SOURCE: U.S. CENSUS BUREAU

Why Mississippi’s African American Voters Saved an Elderly White Republican

Cochran greeting African Americans in Mississippi.

They saw Chris McDaniel for what he is: A classic Southern reactionary

By Jamelle Bouie
Slate Staff Writer

On Tuesday, black Democrats saved an elderly white Republican from political oblivion in the nation’s most racially polarized state.

That’s not an exaggeration. On June 3, six-term Sen. Thad Cochran lost Mississippi’s Republican Senate primary to Chris McDaniel, a talk radio host and Tea Party–backed state senator with a long history of divisive and extreme rhetoric. But because of their vote totals—neither candidate broke 50 percent—the race went into a runoff. And the assumption from then until Tuesday was that Cochran would lose. After all, if there’s a rule in American elections, it’s that turnout goes down in a small, obscure contest like a Senate runoff. With his intense grass-roots support and wide backing from national Tea Party groups, McDaniel was the favorite.

Cochran had a choice: He could play the game the way it's always been played and lose his seat, or he could bend the rules to his favor. He went with the latter. “His campaign,” wrote the New York Times last week, “is taking the unlikely step of trying to entice black voters to help decide the most high-profile Republican contest in the country.”

Between open primaries (anyone can vote in any primary, as long as he or she didn’t vote in a previous one), low turnout in the Democratic Senate primary, and racially polarized voting (the vast majority of whites are Republicans and the vast majority of blacks are Democrats), Mississippi contained a huge number of eligible black voters who could turn the tide if persuaded to vote for Cochran.

If McDaniel resembles anything, it’s a Southern reactionary whose appeal is built on resentment of assorted others, which in Mississippi, means blacks.

Yes, by backing Cochran, blacks would guarantee a GOP win in the fall—Democratic candidate Rep. Travis Childers probably had a better chance of defeating McDaniel, with his extremist views, than of defeating Cochran. But Mississippi is the most Republican state in the union; the difference between Cochran and McDaniel is the difference between likely Republican and leans Republican. Either way, Republicans were favored.

In which case, black voters had to choose between the man they knew—a relative moderate who deals in earmarks and largess—and a new man. If you know anything about Chris McDaniel, this wasn’t a hard choice. For as much as he’s described as a generic Tea Partier—an angry, abrasive conservative extremist—the truth is a little more complicated. Remember, the “Tea Party” isn’t a single ideology as much as it’s a collection of related ideologies under a single banner. The civil libertarianism of Sen. Rand Paul, for instance, is distinct from the compassionate conservatism of Utah Sen. Mike Lee, which is distinct from the Goldwater libertarianism of Sen. Ted Cruz.

If McDaniel resembles anything, it’s not a libertarian—although he swims in the current of right-wing libertarianism—as much as it’s a Southern reactionary whose appeal is built on resentment of assorted others, which in Mississippi, inevitably includes black Americans. Take these clips from his radio show, circa 2006, where he mocked complaints of racism, railed against hip-hop as a “morally bankrupt” culture that “values prison more than college,” and promised to stop paying taxes if reparations were ever passed: “How you gonna make me pay for something that I had nothing to do with? How you gonna do that to me? I don’t get it.”

As a state senator, McDaniel has spoken to gatherings of the Sons of Confederate Veterans—a neo-Confederate group that promotes present-day secessionists—and delivered the keynote to a SCV event last fall. Indeed, his rhetoric decries the rise of a “new America” and pines for days of old. “There are millions of us who feel like strangers in this land, an older America passing away, a new America rising to take its place,” he said in a speech after the June 3 election. “We recoil from that culture. It’s foreign to us. It’s alien to us. ... It’s time to stand and fight. It’s time to defend our way of life again.”

His voters get the message, lashing out against those people who siphon dollars from hard-working Americans. Here’s the Times with more:

“Everybody’s got their hand out like these damn people at the food stamp office,” Mr. Harris, 67, said between sips of coffee on Thursday at a local barbecue restaurant. “They’ve got to put an end to all of this spending.” [...]

On Friday, Mike Thornton, 65, was browsing the wares at a hunting and fishing superstore called Sportsman’s Warehouse. Mr. Thornton, a land surveyor, said he could not really see what federal dollars had done for Mississippi, other than encourage lazy welfare recipients who were “working the system.”

Cochran’s appeal to black voters was simple. We may not agree on much, but at least you can work with me. It succeeded. While turnout increased everywhere on Tuesday, it jumped highest in Cochran’s strongest counties, Jefferson and Humphreys, which also stand as the blackest areas in the state. “Black pastors here organized their congregations to back Cochran as if he were a Democrat,” reports Perry Bacon Jr. for NBC News,  “noting that the incumbent had helped fund historically black colleges and other initiatives that appeal to African-Americans and linking McDaniel to the Tea Party, which black voters feel is unduly harsh to President Obama.”

 Overall, notes Nate Cohn for the Upshot, “Turnout increased by 4,156 votes in the handful of counties where black voters represent more than 65 percent of eligible voters.” White voters also turned out in greater numbers, but given the final results—191,508 votes for Cochran versus 184,815 votes for McDaniel—there’s a strong case that blacks were a necessary part of Cochran’s victory.

Right-wing conservatives aren't happy. Cochran won “through a combination of race-baiting attacks on McDaniel, and touting his ability to make government larger and bring home more goodies from Washington,” wrote John Hayward for Human Events. Following his lead, more than a few bloggers—and a whole lot of tweeters— have accused Cochran of “race-baiting” for making active appeals to black voters. “GOP primary voters in Miss wanted Cochran out. GOP establishment wanted him in. So they turned to Dems & race baiting. But I repeat myself,” said one conservative on Twitter.

I think we can agree this is ridiculous. Cochran was well in his rights, and the law, to expand the map of the electorate. To appeal to new groups of voters—to ask them to consider your policies and their impact on their communities—is to play politics in its purest form. Cochran didn’t cheat, he changed the game. And because of his views and his rhetoric, McDaniel couldn’t play.

Kanaka Maoli to Feds: ‘Get Out of Our House! Go Home!’

Queen Liliuokalani of the Kingdom of Hawaii who
resisted the United States imperialist takeover of the
pacific nation in 1893.

Interior Department receives a resounding "no" to federal recognition of Native Hawaiians

JUNE 24, 2014
By CHAD BLAIR

To help the U.S. Department of the Interior understand how some Native Hawaiians view federal recognition, DeMont R. D. Conner offered this analogy:

Your car is stolen. The person who stole the car later apologizes and offers you a bicycle.

The only proper response to such an offer, said Connor, is to insist that the stolen property be returned to its rightful owner.

“Go back and tell your boss, ‘Give ’em back da car!’” he told a panel of Interior officials as the audience that packed the Hawaii State Capitol Monday morning erupted into laughter and hearty applause.

Connor’s point was that the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 was a theft.

Leona Kalima shares her manao with the Department of Interior about a government-to-government relationship with Hawaiians, Hawaii State Capitol, June 23, 2014.

For federal officials to offer recognition, a 121 years later, to Kanaka Maoli as an indigenous people entitled to government-to-government status with the United States is like giving them a bike. Not just any bike, either, said Conner: a Schwinn.

He was one of 143 people who testified — and shouted, cried, pleaded, prayed, chanted and sang — for more than three hours Monday before Interior officials. It was the first of 15 public meetings in the islands scheduled over the next two weeks.

The hearings are part of a “listening tour” being conducted by Interior to solicit comments and feedback on “whether and how” the process of reestablishing a government-to-government relationship should proceed.

The answer from nearly everyone who testified Monday was that it should not. In their view, Hawaii is still a nation and the Americans are occupiers — like the U.S. military — who should leave.

“Get out of our house!” several speakers told the Interior panel, which included Esther Kiaaina, a senior adviser to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell. “Go home!”

Many of the testifiers, some proudly identifying themselves as Hawaiian, said the U.S. government had no jurisdiction in the islands. They cited analyses of treaties, bills, acts, resolutions, petitions and law that led them to passionately believe that Hawaii is quite independent of the other 49 states.

They were the arguments cited by many of the same people who participated in a series of  public meetings held this spring by the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, which worked with the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission to sign up Hawaiians for a future government.

As at the OHA meetings, opponents of federal recognition said Monday that self-determination was their business and not that of the federal or state government.

Despite the anger, there was also a lot of aloha in the room, which surpassed the 200-person capacity and spilled out into the hallway and upstairs into the Rotunda. Conner, for example, told Kiaaina, “Come home, Sista, come home!”

Little Aloha for Recognition

Before the Interior’s first hearing even began there was talk that it was a rigged affair.

Word circulated on the web that the public would be shut out of the process and that only government officials and those sympathetic to OHA and the roll commission, which have worked toward nationhood, would be permitted to speak.

That was not the case.

Only a handful of government officials, such as OHA Chairwoman Colette Machado and Naalehu Anthony, vice chairman of the Roll Commission — set up by the Hawaii Legislature in 2011 to create a Hawaiian registry — spoke Monday. And they were among only a handful of people who favored federal recognition.

Dan Akaka, the former U.S. senator who spent a decade unsuccessfully fighting for federal recognition through the U.S. Congress, gave an opening pule (prayer).

Next, Rhea Suh, an Interior assistant secretary, explained that the department was continuing a process that began with the 1993 apology to Hawaiians by President Bill Clinton.

Sam Hirsch, an acting attorney general with the Department of Justice, then began to explain the “listening process.”

But the public address system was muddied and people complained.

“It”s hard to hear the propaganda!” one audience member cracked.

Hirsch moved the podium microphone closer and explained that neither the state nor the Interior secretary would be involved in deciding the structure of a Native Hawaiian government.

‘I Am Not an American’

Moderator Dawn Chang, an expert on land issues and regulatory requirements, then opened things up for questions before testimony was to start. Immediately the panel was challenged over its very legitimacy.

Protesters proclaimed support for the monarchy, insisted Hawaii was still sovereign, said they did not have to adhere to the laws of Congress and said they were insulted to be compared to American Indian tribes.

“I am not an American,” several people said.

In light of the hot remarks, Chang several times asked people to be respectful of others. Hirsch, meanwhile, did his best to provide answers, keeping his cool and saying things like, “Another wonderful question!”

Kiaaina also responded, telling “Uncle Joe” Tassel, a member of the Hawaiian Homes Commission, that federal recognition would not have an impact on the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

(Later, Tassel claimed that the entire Hawaiian archipelago should be returned to the indigenous population. “You need to pack your bag and leave,” he said to the Interior panel. “But before you leave, please pay the back rent and all the interest with that back rent.”)

At some point someone started singing “Hawaii Ponoi,” the state song and former Hawaiian national anthem, prompting most everyone else to rise from their seats and join along.

Not long after, Dennis “Bumpy” Kanahele told the panel that the federal government could be held liable for genocide committed against Hawaiians.

“I am against this process,” said Kanahele, a Hawaiian nationalist. “We don’t need you folks to come here and tell us. Let us figure out how to govern ourselves.”

Kanahele closed by telling the panel — almost with a knowing wink — that he would see them again Monday night in his own neighborhood in Waimanalo, where Interior had scheduled its second public hearing.

The formal comment process had not even begun and already things were pretty intense. The third hearing is scheduled Tuesday night in Waianae, another Oahu town with lots of Hawaiians.

‘One Pissing Match’

The first hearing illustrated what is already known to many: that there are strongly differing views within the Hawaii community.

That was obvious Monday when Machado testified — or tried to. She was booed by some in the audience, which led Machado, like Chang, to call for respect as well.

“Let’s not get into one pissing match, let’s have some aloha over here,” she said, urging that the government be allowed to move forward on a path toward recognition.

Anthony, of the roll commission, recalled that many of the things said in opposition to federal recognition Monday had been said 25 years ago.

“I’d like to move forward now,” he said.

But attorney Keoni Agard was one of many who said there was no pretext for such movement, arguing that it is unconstitutional even under American law.

“A massive fraud has been committed against our people and the Hawaiian Kingdom, and it is very upsetting to realize these facts,” said Agard.

Mililani Trask, a former OHA trustee who is seeking a seat again this year, said the roll commission had failed to sign up a sufficient number of Hawaiians to form a governing entity. The largest group to sign, she said, was 2,000 inmates in a federal penitentiary in Arizona.

“We are not Indians,” she said. “What was taken … was one nation, individual, under the Akua (God). We will never agree to accept bits and pieces of an Indian confederacy.”

Tempers were growing, and several people shouted profanities.

“This is all bullshit,” said Peter Kealoha, referring to the process.

Evoking the Queen

At times the swearing made things more intense, but at other times it served as a valve release that helped people laugh and blow off steam.

Kalani Asam, for example, referred to “intercourse” between the Hawaiian nation and the United States, meaning formal dealings between people. But sometimes the U.S., he said, had been guilty of the “wrong kind of intercourse,” meaning rape.

All of it was caught live on the cameras of Olelo Community Media.

There were surprisingly tender moments, too.

For their testimony, Laulani Teal and Liko Martin sang a song about Queen Liliuokalani and her “red-ribbon document” opposition to the 1893 annexation.

Palani Vaughan, a professional musician recognizable by his mutton chops, joined them midway, holding aloft a reproduction of the document and softly singing along.

For his part, Maurice Crabbe, who works at the Moana Surfrider in Waikiki, brought visual aids that he said modeled the relationship between the U.S. and Hawaiians.

The first was a Snickers bar, which he equated to candy being given to children. The second was cookies, which Hawaiians have eaten since statehood in 1959 but today are just crumbs.

“GMO crumbs!” someone yelled.

The third item or model, said Crabbe, was a homemade chocolate macadamia pie from Ted’s Bakery at Sunset Beach. What Hawaiians want today, he said, is the whole pie: monetary damages, claims against the government and a renewed nationhood status.

Crabbe said he uses the same props to “educate tourists.”

After the hearings conclude, Interior will take its finding back to Washington. If Monday’s hearing is any indication of what’s to come in the next 14 meetings, the panel should have quite a lot to share with Secretary Jewell.

The Feds Have Turned America Into a War Zone: Four Disturbing Facts About Police Militarization

Detroit Rebellion beginning on July 23, 1967 changed the
character of policing in the United States.

June 25, 2014
By Aaron Cantu
AlterNet

For nearly half a century, America’s police forces have undergone a process of “militarization.” They've upped their cache of assault weapons and military defense gear, increasingly deployed SWAT teams to conduct ops-style missions on civilians, and inculcated a warrior attitude within their rank. While major metropolitan areas have maintained SWAT teams for decades, by the mid 2000s, 80 percent of small towns also had their own paramilitary forces.

But beyond deep reporting of individual journalists and scholars, little is known about the extent of militarization across the country. The ACLU has attempted to bridge that knowledge gap with a new report called War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing.

“Our investigation is the first to conduct an analysis using raw data received directly from police departments, by looking directly at incident reports themselves,” says Kara Dansky, Senior Counsel at the ACLU’s Center for Justice and the primary author of the report. The ACLU sent public records requests to 260 law enforcement agencies in 25 states plus Washington D.C., asking for records of all SWAT deployments between 2011 and 2012. Below are some of its most significant findings.

1. The federal government’s war on drugs is the single greatest catalyst for local police militarization.

Far from being used for emergencies such as hostage situations, the ACLU found that 62% of all SWAT deployments were for the purpose of drug searches, and 79% were to search a person’s home with a search warrant—usually for drugs.

These deployments are usually violent and feature bands of heavily armed officers ramming down doors or chucking flash bang grenades into homes. Innocent people are often caught up, and sometimes killed, in the ensuing chaos, including Eurie Stamp, a Massachusetts grandfather who was shot dead by an officer as police attempted to locate Stamp’s girlfriend’s son for a drug offense. Other SWAT-induced tragedies abound: The ACLU found that 46 people were injured as a result of paramilitary deployment.

For decades, the federal government—in its quixotic quest to eliminate drug use— has abetted these aggressive tactics with programs that create incentives for militarization. One is called the 1033 program, which was launched in the 1980’s to create a pipeline for military equipment between the Department of Defense and local law enforcement.

From the ACLU report:

“There are few limitations or requirements imposed on agencies that participate in the 1033 Program.... In addition, equipment transferred under the 1033 Program is free to receiving agencies, though they are required to pay for transport and maintenance. The federal government requires agencies that receive 1033 equipment to use it within one year of receipt.”

Equally to blame is the federal Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program, another 80’s artifact that gives local police forces incentives to seek out low-level drug offenders in exchange for grant money.

From the ACLU report:

“Between April 2012 and March 2013, JAG grantees spent 64 percent of their JAG funding on law enforcement…state and local agencies used JAG funds to purchase hundreds of lethal and less-lethal weapons, tactical vests, and body armor.”

Kara Dansky says this complex for funneling federal money to paramilitary drug policing undermines potential reforms to the criminal justice system that US Attorney General Eric Holder has called for.

“Holder has been outspoken about the need to ensure that the police have the trust of the community, [and] it has the potential to do some really good work,” she said. “But we are concerned that if justice department continues to grant money to local police departments, money they use to engage in paramilitary weapons and tactics, the Attorney Generals’ great work will be undermined.”

2. Militarization is occurring with “almost no oversight.”

The ACLU found that there is no federal agency that keeps an accurate record of information related to SWAT proliferation. Where records are kept, the ACLU found their formats varied wildly across the country. “The records that were produced revealed an extremely troubling trend: that data collecting and reporting in the context of SWAT was at best sporadic and at worst virtually nonexistent,” according to the report.

Relatedly, there is virtually no oversight for SWAT deployment at the state level, meaning no agency or governing body tracks how, and for what purposes, SWAT teams are dispatched. There are few exceptions. Maryland passed a law mandating the state to track SWAT deployment after the mayor of a small municipality had his home raided, but that law is unlikely to be renewed this year. The Utah state legislature recently agreed on a bill to track SWAT deployment and is currently going forward with implementing the law. Local agencies usually engaged in after-action reports of SWAT use, but the ACLU found these reports were “woefully incomplete.”

The ACLU also discovered there are no uniform standards for deploying SWAT teams. Discretion ultimately rests with police officers themselves. On that point, the report notes that police were often wrong in estimating the danger of a particular mission: “SWAT teams found weapons in just over one-third of the incidents in which they predicted finding them, which suggests police are not particularly good at forecasting the presence of weapons.”

But overestimating danger may not be so surprising, given the degree of warrior indoctrination among SWAT teams. One SWAT training PowerPoint presentation uncovered by the ACLU illustrates this perfectly: The slides “urge trainees to ‘Steel Your Battlemind’ and defines ‘battlemind’ as ‘a warrior’s inner strength to face fear and adversity during combat with courage. It is the will to persevere and win. It is resilience.’”

3. Non-whites are more likely to be targeted by SWAT deployments.

It should come as no surprise that the people most persecuted by police in their communities are also more likely to have their front doors bashed down by a police battering ram.

Many of the SWAT teams examined by the ACLU “either do not record race information or record it unsystematically.” Nevertheless, the report found that for all people affected by a SWAT deployment, 37 percent were Black, 12 percent were Latino, 19 were white, and race was unknown for the rest of the people impacted.

Racial disparities were even more pronounced when examining the purpose for SWAT deployment. When SWAT was dispatched for drug raids, 68 percent of the time their targets were Blacks or Latinos, while targets were white only 38 percent of the time. Similarly, when SWAT was dispatched with warrants to search homes, non-whites were affected to a greater degree than whites. In contrast, nearly half of those affected when SWAT was deployed for emergency situations (hostage, barricade, or active shooter scenarios) were white, while only 23% were non-white.

Basically, non-whites were not only more likely to come into contact with paramilitary police forces, but their contact was usually prompted by drug searches rather than the sort of emergencies where you may actually want police to show up.

4. Police are secretive about their use of SWAT

Overall, the ACLU report lacks the sort of robustness you might expect for a definitive report on police militarization in America. This is largely the fault of police agencies themselves, who denied nearly half of the ACLU’s public records requests in part or in full, and who keep poor records of their own SWAT use.

Those difficulties seem to inform much of the ACLU’s recommendations to local, state and federal officials. Above all, the organization calls for a streamlined system of record keeping for SWAT deployment and equipment procurement. No such system currently exists. The ACLU also asks that standards for deployment be bolstered and unified across precincts, and that federal programs incentivizing militarization be weakened or dismantled outright.

AU Sounds Alarm Over Terrorism

Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is the Commission Chair of the
African Union June 25, 2014.

MALABO. — The emergence of new conflicts alongside terrorism could reverse socio-economic progress achieved in many African countries, officials said on Monday during a meeting of the Executive Council of the African Union, which is made up of ministers of AU member countries.“We remain deeply concerned about the situation in Central African Republic and South Sudan. The massive loss of lives and sexual violence are appalling,” said AU Commission Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.

The chairperson of the AU commission stressed that peace and stability underpins sustainable development in Africa.

“We strongly condemn acts of terrorism in Kenya, Nigeria and Libya. The abduction of young school girls in Nigeria by armed militants should be a wakeup call on the need to strengthen vigilance,” Dlamini-Zuma remarked.

She urged the international community to partner with African states to combat new security threats.

The African Union commission has proposed the establishment of a standby force to strengthen response to emerging security challenges.

Dlamini-Zuma stressed that early warning mechanisms and intra-country sharing of best practices will strengthen response to insecurity.

Equatorial Guinea’s foreign minister Agapito Mba Mokuy regretted that rising insecurity has dented Africa’s image.

“We need to propose solutions to conflicts and terrorism that have reversed development in Africa,” Mokuy said.

He challenged African countries to safeguard their sovereignty through promoting communal harmony and inclusive development.

Chairman of the AU Executive Council Ahmed Ould Teguedi stressed that stability and peaceful co-existence are key to economic growth in Africa.

“We must re-organise our security architecture to guarantee long-term peace, stability and growth.

"Africa has re-awakened and people’s aspirations will only be achieved in an environment of peace,” Teguedi told the foreign ministers.

He noted that complex socio-economic factors are fuelling new conflicts in Africa.

“The difficult situations in Nigeria, Kenya and Somalia call for a review on socioeconomic triggers of conflicts,” Teguedi said.

— Xinhua.

Chaos Politics Killing Africa

Damage from attacks in eastern Kenya on June 15, 2014.

June 26, 2014 Opinion & Analysis
Reason Wafawarova
Zimbabwe Herald

Zimbabwe and Kenya share a significantly great deal of similarities on the political landscape in both the pre and post-colonial eras, and recently the two countries had coalition governments forced into being by inextricable political stalemates. Both countries fought painful wars of attrition en-route to Uhuru, and the atrocities suffered by both countries were at the hands of ruthless British supremacists.

The unworkable coalition marriages between opposing political players have now ended rather belligerently in both countries, with the TNA/URP Jubilee coalition of Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto defeating the multi-party CORD coalition led by Raila Odinga in Kenyan elections, while the Robert Mugabe led-Zanu-PF secured a comprehensive landslide electoral victory over Morgan Tsvangirai’s MDC-T in Zimbabwe.

The Kenyan elections were held on March 4, 2013, while the Zimbabwean plebiscite followed on July 31 the same year. It would appear like both Morgan Tsvangirai and Raila Odinga cannot get over the excruciating reality of reverting to opposition politics after electoral defeat, and the two good friends seem to be desperately hankering for a reincarnation of the 2007-2008 crises that gave births to the respective coalition governments in both countries.

Odinga has been in the turbulent Kenyan political landscape for a long time, joining the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) in 1992 on his return from a short stint in Norway — a party then led by his late father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

FORD was born out of protest politics against Daniel Arap Moi’s one party rule. On July 7, 1990, Kenya experienced a four-day riotous protest that resulted in massive looting and destruction of property, very similar to the December 1997 riots experienced in Zimbabwe.

In Kenya, the protest started with 6000 people defying a ban by the Kanu government and going ahead to attend a rally at Kamukunji grounds, and the rally degenerated into a four-day violent protest. In Zimbabwe, it all started with the ZCTU calling for a nation-wide protest against a newly introduced development levy, and like in Kenya the protest degenerated into two days of massive looting and destruction of property, especially in Harare and Chitungwiza.

July 7, 1990, is commonly referred to as the Saba Saba day in Kenya, loosely meaning the day of mass action, and the events of that day led to the formation of FORD in August 1991, before Kanu agreed to introduce multi-party democracy in December that year.

While Zimbabwe has always been a multi-party democracy from independence in 1980, the 1997 riots led the ZCTU assuming an ostensible political dimension, leading to the formation of the MDC in September 1999.

There is something in these riots that both Tsvangirai and Odinga assiduously seem to admire, and certainly that something is not the nobility of the cause for which the peoples of the respective countries protested. Rather it is the chaos in these protests that the two politicians seem to be obsessed with. The two are ardent adherents of chaos politics — remorselessly convinced that making their respective countries ungovernable is a democratic way of dealing with incumbent political opponents in government.

While Tsvangirai is now absolutely incapacitated by personal shortcomings when it comes to the clout to call for anything close to a mass action in Zimbabwe, his friend in Kenya has been holding politically charged rallies across the country — mobilising people for what he calls the 24th anniversary of the Saba Saba day.

The last time Odinga called for something he called Saba Saba was in the aftermath of the disputed 2007 election, and his call resulted in the killing of about 1 500 people in what turned out to be nothing more than ethnical confrontations punctuated by primitive blood letting. It is a wonder Odinga escaped the ICC charges after the role he reportedly played in stirring up emotions at the time.

Both Tsvangirai and Odinga became Prime Ministers by political arrangement in the coalition governments of their respective countries — going on to lose the arranged posts in the two countries’ post coalition elections. In typical frivolousness of African opposition politics, both men vehemently refused to accept their electoral defeat, with Tsvangirai approaching the wrong court for purported remedy, while Odinga had his petition thrown out by the Supreme Court.

While Tsvangirai has been making laughable calls for another coalition government in Zimbabwe his friend in East Africa seems to be determined to create chaos bad enough to necessitate another round of talks that he believes could bring him back into power corridors.

Tsvangirai perorates a lot about the economy of Zimbabwe set to torment the Mugabe Government terribly enough to warrant another round of talks similar to the ones that gave Zimbabweans the misnamed Global Political Agreement, and his utterances could be funny if the man was not in this terrible self-destructing mode.

It would appear like Odinga and Tsvangirai want to assert themselves as Africa’s founding fathers of chaos politics outside civil wars, and the two clearly believe that post-chaos negotiations are a legitimate route to state power.

It is sad to read what is happening in Kenya right now, and the hate language in both parliament and at political rallies is appalling if the least were to be said.

Odinga suffers this delusion that Kenya is unliberated, and that only he is the Joshua designated to take the country to some imagined Promised Land, and his Zimbabwean friend hallucinates along the same lines when he talks of something his party calls “a new Zimbabwe.”

To sum up the mendacious politics of Raila Odinga, Koigi waWamwere had this to say:
“To begin his mission of liberating Kenya, Raila has called President Uhuru and his Jubilee government to a national dialogue that is neither national — because Raila has only invited five delegates from Cord side and five delegates from Uhuru side — and nor is it a dialogue — because, rather than promise a free flow of ideas on the problems that bedevil Kenya, the Raila team, like a victorious army, is inviting Jubilee government like a vanquished enemy, not to discuss a common future, but read it surrender terms.”

We see here a culture of mercenary blackmail, where opposition politicians in Africa would want to threaten incumbent governments into submission. Many times this attitude has brought mass-killing civil wars on the continent.

Odinga is calling for dialogue to deal with corruption, yet he was the Kenyan prime minister recently, and corruption in Kenya was never abated by his presence. It is like his Zimbabwean friend who accuses the incumbent government of misplaced financial priorities when he himself still occupies a $4 million dollar government mansion acquired for him at a time some Zimbabwean hospitals had next to nothing in terms of medical supplies.

Kenya has a rather sad taste of ethnicity to its politics, and this is why chaos politics must be avoided at all costs. Kalenjin MPs led by Peter Keter have openly complained that their 50 percent share of government jobs in the Jubilee government has not been met, and Odinga himself has been accused of playing negative ethnicity politics when he was in government, and even so in the affairs of his own ODM.

It is quite hypocritical for Odinga to pretend to be leading the crusade for curing insecurity in the wake of Al-Shabab terrorist activities in Kenya. Is it not a fact that the Kibaki/Odinga government sent the Kenyan army to Somalia under pressure to protect the tourism industry in Kenya? Surely Odinga cannot suddenly be against a military venture he advocated when it suited the politics of the day, and it is not a noble gesture for him to try and capitalise on the tragic terrorist activities of Al-Shabab in order to expedite his waning political fortunes.

Zimbabweans will remember Tsvangirai threatening villagers with more sanctions and more hunger in the run up to the 2008 elections.

Political expediency at the expense of the suffering of ordinary people is not exactly a democratic way of doing things.

Instead of telling Zimbabweans alternative policies to help recover the faltering economy, Tsvangirai gleefully celebrates the economic downfall and diligently prays for harsher economic conditions — to him the best tool to incapacitate his political opponents in Zanu-PF. The continent cannot successfully develop when all we have are opposition parties with this pull down mentality.

The opposition must be telling us alternative policies on how to manage our natural resources, or how to ensure that our populations across Africa benefit from these resources. We need alternative policies on how to structure the legal framework governing investment on the continent. We need alternative policies on how we can set up an effective tax regime for foreign investors on the continent. We need alternative policies on how to attract investment, and how to stop illegal outflows of money and profits from industries on our continent.

Odinga’s idea of alternative policies is calling for a Saba Saba bloody revolution that will unleash havoc and violence so that Kenya can hold talks to take him back into government. That behaviour is not only unpatriotic, but also frankly primitive.

Koigi waWamwere asks pertinent questions about the possibility of outside forces behind the renewed energy of Odinga.

He writes: “But given that revolutions are risky gambles, who is encouraging and giving Raila so much confidence? Can it be western governments that have supported bloody and highly destructive Arab spring revolutions that have wrecked and destroyed countries like Libya? Does Raila want Kenya to be destroyed like Libya when he can fight for power without destroying the country using democratic means?”

We know that the Western hand in Zimbabwe is with an MDC faction opposed to Tsvangirai at the moment, but we can assure the Kenyans that we have seen massive funding for these so-called mass actions, and indeed it is a possibility that Raila Odinga could be getting his fuelling from Western money bags.

Democracy is all about peaceful means of acquiring power, and those among us that christen themselves as democrats must respect democratic processes even at those times when democratic outcomes are not in their favour.

If we have leaders that believe in subverting seating governments through undemocratic means we are only undermining our progress towards developing our nations into mature democracies.

Africa we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!

REASON WAFAWAROVA is a political writer based in SYDNEY, Australia.