Congo On-Line Resources
There will be much more added to this entry..
4, Sexual Violence In The Congo
6. United Nations Congo Report Released: Democratic Republic of Congo – 1993-2003
7, Mobutu – King of Zaire Part One (in French – 60 minutes)
8. Mobutu- King of Zaire Part Two (in French – 60 minutes)
9. Mobutu- King of Zaire Part Three (in French – 60 minutes)
Blog News – September 17, 2010
Every once and a while, I hope to comment on responses to the blog that I have gotten. It is interesting what people gravitate towards and why. Through the program I use `wordpress’ – a very popular, free and easily maneuverable one – I can tell how many `hits’ (people who visit the site), which entries or articles they read. I can also tell what searches led people to the site. I cannot tell who is reading the blog or where they are from and can only guess at that.
Some of these are obvious enough `Yemen’ or `savings and loan crisis’; others are a bit ominous; yet others people `fishing’ for pornography of one kind or another, or people who are searching for `Jew Prince’ (get more and more of those)
Here is a sampling:
- To my surprise, – mostly because Tunisia is so far afield from Colorado – the articles on Tunisia have gotten considerable play. As of today, the two part series – Farhat Hached and the struggle for Tunisian Independence – has gotten 1750 hits and continues to be read almost every day. I have since learned somewhat more about Hached, nothing that contradicts what I have written, but that adds to it considerably and I will return to the subject again soon.
- The 4 part (soon to be 5 part) series on the imprisonment of Fahem Boukadous, Tunisian political prisoner, has received 300 hits.
- More than a year after writing a series on the Silverado Bank scandal of the late 1980s/early 1990s, the number of views continues to grow almost daily. The combined number of people going to those articles is now above 1300 suggesting that the subject still holds interest for people.
- The piece `When Dems Court The Left/Peace Movement’ has been visited 505 times (as of Sept. 22)- and although written several months ago – most of those visits have been in the past week, so it struck a chord in some circle, but who/where I don’t know. I am wondering what the interest is all about. The link seems to be `hot’ for the moment.
- My informal film reviews (Zinneman, Fuller, Imamura) has gotten over 300 hits and a number of comments (and some emails which are not posted)
- Labor Day in Louisville Colorado has gotten 100 hits plus several comments (and criticisms) from friends in the Colorado Labor Movement
Recent searches that found this site include:
- `Carol and Larry A. Mizel’ (several pieces on the Denver developer recently)
- `military bases in Iraq’
- `Byron Plumley peace’ – director of Peace Studies at Regis University. Signed a letter to Christians about Middle East peace process
- `People Against `Bob Kinsey for Colorado’ – suspect that these could be people close to Michael Bennet’s bid for the Senate, wanting to check out their `threat from the left’…but I’m not sure of that
- `Florida Democratic Primary’ – looking for Jay Jurie’s fine piece on the Democratic Primary there
- `Jewish films’ – there is a review of a few Jewish films I’ve seen recently
- ` SODEXO Denver’ – piece on the attempt by concession workers at the University of Denver to organize a union (SEIU)
- `possible attack on Iran’
- `Van Heflen
- `Houthi victims’ – concerns the internal conflict in Yemen
- `hateful gaze’…don’t have a clue
- `Sudan – Red Sea Map’… have one of those in the series in Yemen
That give a feel for `what sells’, or at least `what is read’ these past few months
Cheers… rjp
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The Second Coming of John Hagee to Denver
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“I’ll buy you a diamond ring my friend if it makes you feel alright
I’ll get you anything my friend if it makes you feel alright
‘Cause I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love” … or respect or culture
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It’s an open debate as to whether or not money can or cannot buy love, despite the Beatles’ lyrics. But if can’t buy love, for Larry Mizel it seems, money can buy many other things that compensate for it quite nicely, – fame, fortune, political influence and the – most importantly – the remolding of his image from something akin to a small time developer, wheeler-dealer type from Colorado’s `Silverado’ Bank days to a philanthropist and `humanist’ of national, if not international stature. Heck of an image reconstruction,
John Hagee with Christian devotee and then presidential candidate John McCain before the 2008 election
With a little help from his friends here in Denver, and possessing undeniable shrewdness and savvy, Larry Mizel has come a long way from his boyhood days in Tulsa Oklahoma. While politically `flexible’ – he’s as friendly with Democratic Colorado gubernatorial candidate John Hickenlooper as he is with John Hagee -Mizel’s politics have been consistent in what could accurately be described as a neo conservative tradition: supporting deregulation of much of the economy and tax breaks for the rich on domestic policy and a hard line on US foreign policy, supporting the war on terrorism in all its aspects and Israel’s special relationship with the USA. He has supported the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to no one’s great surprise.
The Mizel-Hagee relationship is more than personal.
It is what could be called `a strategic alliance’ between those elements of the Jewish Community – not inconsiderable – who put support for Israel, right or wrong, pretty much above all else, with the ultra-right wing of the political spectrum in this country. It also includes some of the more zealous neo-conservatives of the far right, militarists hoping for more U.S. wars abroad to feed the military industries. This alliance has no small amount of support from elements of the Democratic Party as well – especially those tied to the Democratic Leadership Conference and it has always had an element of bipartisanship about it.
But at its heart and soul it is driven by the likes of Larry Mizel and John Hagee and if anything, the relationship between a `moderate’ Republican (Mizel is not a Tea Party type to my understanding) and a wacko Christian fundamentalist organizing for a world-ending world war as a prelude to the second coming of Christ… but more on that below Read more…
Labor Day — 2010, Louisville, Colorado/Los Angeles Port
Note: a report on the Labor Day Demonstration from my old friend Paul Krehbiel – along with pictures, follows my intemperate remarks on the Louisville activities…rjp
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Denver used to celebrate Labor Day.
The different unions from all over the Denver Metro Area, and some from further afield would march in downtown Denver – a reminder to many who would like to forget of who built the state and ultimately, who produces the wealth of Colorado and the nation. It was also a reminder, now long forgotten by many, of the state’s militant labor history – the story of which remains to be written.
Colorado trade unionists marching, Labor Day, Louisville CO, Sept 6, 2010
It includes the struggles of the miners in the coal mining district just north of Trinidad, including what is today the ghost town of Ludlow, the Coors Boycott of the mid 1980s which for one shining moment scared the shit of that rightwing brewer and his family, enough so that to counter the boycott’s influence, Coors became, kicking and screaming, an affirmative action employer of sorts.
Addressing a Denver seminar held by the Minority Business Development Center, William Coors, grandson of the beer company’s founder gave Minority business leaders some of his more philosophical thoughts on the status of Blacks in America. To quote his words of dubious wisdom:
“Your ancestors were dragged here in chains against their will. I urge those of you who feel that way to go back to where your ancestors came from and you will find out that probably the greatest favor that anyone ever did you was to drag your ancestors over here and I mean it.” Read more…
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Tunisia..an example of the `Singapore Model of Development’ – Development Without Democracy
How much of the extensive system of repression in place today, to which the good people of Redeyef and
Sousse, Tunisia 1900
journalists like Fahem Boukadous have fallen victim, draws its inspiration, structures and roots from the period of French colonialism? I would argue a fair, if not extensive, amount. It is not only the economic structures of that period (1881 – 1956) that were passed down to `independent’ Tunisia, but political and repressive structures as well. And then there is the pattern of pre-independence history, the internal power struggles between the `old’ and `neo’ Destour (Old and New Constitutional Parties) that greatly influenced the undemocratic one party system which exists in Tunisia today. Read more…
(updated, August 18, 2010)
– On the 2005 Death of Zouhaier Yahyaoui, Tunisian Human Rights Activist, Blogger
– Tunisia Watch (in french – Tunisian Human Rights watchdog site)
Fahem Boukadous… Last in a long line of Tunisian political prisoners…
Fahem Boukadous on Oxygen, Just Before Entering Prison In Gafsa
The picture here is of Fahem Boukadous, hospitalized with acute asthma, probably in Sousse, Tunisia, last month, just before being sent to prison for four years. He somehow manages to to flash the peace sign with the fingers of one hand, and hold up his press card with the other, this despite being attached to an oxgyen machine.
Boukadous’ `crime’ was that he covered a six month protest in the Gafsa mining region for a Tunisian owned, Paris based, satellite television station for which he has been sentenced to four years in prison. Originally the sentence was for six years, but, according to one source, the leaders of the Redeyef mining district social movement were able to negotiate the sentence down abit to four years. The government’s hard line against the journalist is a result both of his reporting and the fact that he and his wife, Afef Bennacour, have been active in the country’s democratic and human rights movement for some time.
The government of Zine Ben Ali, Tunisia’s president, was trying to suppress live coverage of the events which went on over a period of six months starting in January 2008 in Tunisia’s phosphate mining district in Gafsa Province; the center of the protest movement was Redeyef, a town of 38,000 that have virtually no other economic lifeline than the mines. Over the past twenty years, as a result of modernization of the mines combined with a substantial level of government corruption and neglect, the mining workforce shriveled from as many as 20,000 (according to one source) to a mere 5000 employed throwing tens of thousands of miners throughout the district out of work, and triggering regional unemployment rates estimated at 40% for the area’s youth.
These untenable conditions sparked a social revolt against unemployment, despair and government corruption which embraced the overwhelming majority of the region’s population regardless of age, social class. Boukadous was (apparently) the only journalist to cover the events live and as such, provide a link between the movement and the rest of the world. Read more…
Israel’s illicit stockpile of nuclear weapons is the real threat to Middle East peace (Part 1 )
Since 2002 when the Bush government and the US media found a new bone of contention with Iran and its nuclear program, attacking Iran has been on the table by both Bush and Obama administrations as well as various Israeli governments. Lately the surge of articles in an assortment of US papers asking Obama to give the green light to Israel to attack Iran not to mention the introduction of House Resolution 1553, has given this issue an added urgency that must be addressed.
Although peace or political activists, left or right, are willing to write to the papers and occasionally call their political representatives, too few of them are prepared to challenge what is the core of the problem, “Israel’s Samson Option threats” or even to make a nuclear free Middle East a central demand. For the rest of the article, click here.
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Israel’s illicit stockpile of nuclear weapons is the real threat to Middle East peace (Part 2 )
Over the last 50 years, Israel has been directly and indirectly aided and funded in its development of weapons of mass destruction by the United States, France, Norway, Britain, Germany and others. These powerful nations have neither been forthright nor accountable in their roles in giving one small country in the Middle East enough clout to wipe out most of their neighbors via nuclear holocaust. Such a stance is not only hypocritical to non proliferation; it is intrinsically detrimental to all other diplomacy and hope(s) concerning peace in the future of the Middle East.
Israel’s long standing ambiguity about its nuclear weapons, gives the world, pause and speculation as to why some governments, especially the US and few EU governments, chose to either subvert emphasis on non proliferation, or simply did not have the adequate intelligence to discern what historians and journalists are now only beginning to piece together as history, concerning Israel’s illegal acquisitions of heavy water, fissure material and technology. For the rest of the article, click here.
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Israel’s illicit stockpile of nuclear weapons is the the real threat to Middle East peace (Part 3)
In the final part of this three part series on Israeli nuclear threat to peace, I intend to look at the claim made by Zionist and other Israeli supporters calling for what one may call “Israeli Exceptionalism.” The essence of their argument is based on the premiss that Israel has never threatened any other country and does not intend to do so, and although it has not signed the Nonproliferation treaty, it has never violated the charter and has kept its nuclear arsenal for self defense. Hence we should not liken Israel’s nuclear policy with other regimes in the Middle East.
This proposition is flawed for a number of reasons:
1- Contrary to the above claim, a number of Israeli leaders have threatened the use of “Samson Option” (nuclear weapons) against not only the neighboring countries, the rest of the world, and in particular Russia.
For the rest of the article, click here.
`No To War With Iran’ Piece By Kazerooni and Prince Published In Two Local Newspapers
An op ed by Ibrahim Kazerooni and myself, warning of a possible major US/Israel attack on Iran was published today in two local newspapers. An elaborated version appears on this blog below (or click here)
No To War With Iran! Boulder Daily Camera. 8/15/2010
Signs of US Involvement Abound Denver Post. 8/15/2010
Florida’s Primary: Big Money and Sleaze are Winners So Far
(Note – the Florida Primaries are August 24, 2010)
Florida’s Primary: Big Money and Sleaze are Winners So Far
by Jay Jurie
Blue Spring State Park, Florida
(Jay Jurie, PhD, teachees Public Administratoin and Planning at the University of Central Florida, Orlando)
Mudslinging attack ads in the Florida primary are proving ever-new lows an ongoing reality. One of the most vicious contests is between Republican gubernatorial candidates Attorney General Bill McCollum and entrepreneur Rick Scott. McCollum, a career politician, previously served as a 20-year representative in the U.S. House, where one of his top staff aides was Rob Owen, the bagman for Oliver North. Ironically, flamboyant liberal Alan Grayson now occupies the seat once held by McCollum. After losing a U.S. Senate race, McCollum was elected as state attorney general but it was clear his sights were still set on higher office. As attorney general, he’s been criticized for misuse of a state airplane, and one of his most notable achievements has been to file suit against the national health care program signed into law by Pres. Obama. Read more…
Follow Up:Once More, The Specter of a US and/or Israeli Military Strike Against Iran Loom (2)
The following is lifted from Just Foreign Policy‘s August 12, 2010 newsletter. It discusses an article that appears
- US manufactured Israeli Blackhawk helicopter
in Atlantic on-line by Jeffrey Goldberg, arguing for an Israeli strike on Iran within the next year whether or not the US goes along with the project. It gives new information, especially that Admiral Mullen, Joint Chiefs of Staff head, has, as he did in the Bush years, once again gone to Israel to warn the Israeli’s not to strike Iran without US permission. The discussion here does not fundamentally contradict our arguments of yesterday, except that Goldberg seems to support such a strike while we are against it, and the time line he suggests for a proposed strike is extended beyond the elections to sometime next year, but before the end of next summer. If this is the case, it would give those of us who are against such a strike a bit more time to organize, here and abroad. Finally, these remarks note that Goldberg was active before the US invasion of Iraq, arguing for a U.S. invasion based in part on what the world now knows to be a lie – an Osama bin Laden-Saddam Hussein link. ie which gives a good sense of where he is coming from. Cheers. RJP
Iran
8) In an important and controversial piece in the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg argues that next spring, if there has not been significant progress in addressing Iran’s nuclear program, and if the Obama Administration will not attack Iran, it is likely that Israel will try to do so even without U.S. permission. Goldberg claims that based on many interviews with Israeli, American, and Arab leaders, that “a consensus emerged that there is a better than 50 percent chance that Israel will launch a strike by next July.” Goldberg acknowledges that such an attack Read more…
(note – this article has been `rediscovered’ [april 16, 2013] and suddenly there are hundreds of hits on the entry, most of them, it appears, from brazil! hello brazil! good. nearly three years after it was written – there has been no full scale u.s. led military attack on iran. there has been some of the most punishing and inhumane sanctions in modern history, all kinds of subversion against the regime. at the same time events in syria tend to isolate the iranian regime more. but make no mistake: the goal is regime change, otherwise known as overthrowing another government. oh yes, if anything, the u.s. regional military build up continues. rjp)
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by Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni and Rob Prince
(Note – an edited version of this has been submitted to some newspapers that are, to our surprise, threatening to print it; we’ll see. Also want to add, a few days after this has been submitted, the article by Jeffrey Goldberg in the on-line version of Atlantic Monthly suggesting more or less the same thing as Kazerooni and Prince – but with a slightly altered timeline of `sometime before the end of next summer.’ Goldberg seems to be defending such a loopy course of action)
Reading the signs…
Signs – coming from a number of different sources – suggest that some kind of major US-Israeli military offensive could be in the offing between now and the November mid-term elections. Among them
- A background of one of the largest regional military buildups in modern time, the creation of military and `floating bases’, the intensive arming through arms sales and grants of U.S. regional allies with sophisticated modern weapons and delivery systems. This was perhaps the only `new’ element in what former U.S. Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice referred to as the creation of `a new Middle East.’
- New warnings of possible US/Israeli military action coming from the Friends Committee on National
Middle East `choke points’. A good portion of the world’s oil is carried through these narrow passages.
Legislation, the National Iranian American Council, Time’s columnist Joe Klein (An Attack On Iran Is Back On The Table – July 15) – among others
- A bizarre July 31 piece in the Washington Post by Ray Tayeyh and Steven Simon arguing that the United States should only attack Iran’s nuclear facilities and then `signal’ the Iranians that the bombing would stop and that the goal was not to overthrow the regime. This is part of a larger and mostly hidden debate within the administration over how extensive the bombing should be.
- Articles by neo-conservative columnists Reuel Marc Gerecht and William Kristol calling for a military strike.
- Admiral Mike Mullen’s August 2 admission that the United States `has plans’ to attack Iran to prevent that country from producing nuclear weapons
- An August 4 open letter from former intelligence officers to President Obama warning that Israel could be planning to attack Iran and draw the United States into the conflict Read more…
Memorials For Tony Judt
I will write my own commentary on Tony Judt’s passing in the near future. Having previously read and greatly appreciated his `Post War’ (a history of postwar Europe) I’ve spent a good part of the summer reading his works, including the recent small volume `Ill Fares The Land’ and a collection of his essays `Reappraisals’ (highly recommended). Beyond that, I reading stuff to which he refers. Recently finished French historian Marc Bloch’s `Strange Defeat’ and am about to crack Manes Sperber’s Trilogy `Like A Tear In The Ocean’. Judt leaves an interesting legacy,… and represents the best of a fine tradition – that of a secular Jewish intellectual.
May he rest in peace. It might sound corny but his spirit will live on…through many of us. He leaves us a considerable intellectual work…and as important, an example to live up to.
Tony Judt Dies At the Age of 62 by Jim Wall
Tony Judt, Chronicler of History is Dead at 62 NY Times Obituary
Wealth Well-being and Change (in Open Democracy) by Tony Judt
Israel: The Alternative (Tony Judt’s critique of Zionism)
Historien britannique – Tony Judt. Le Monde
– For Part Three of the Series
– Tunisia Tries To Silence Human Rights Watch (HRW)
– The Myth of a Moderate Tunisia (HRW)
– Tunisia: Quash Unfair Convictions (HRW)
– Tunisia: Crushing A Person, Crushing A Movement (HRW – 2005)
– Human Rights In Tunisia: No To Opposition (Economist – July 29, 2010)
– Boukadous’ Wife Describes Bribe Attempt Before Arrest (Ethiopian Review – July 15, 2010)
– Letter from Tunisian Human Rights Journalist Taoufik Ben Brik To Fahem Boukadous (August 15, 2010). It’s in French… touching, caring solidarity letter from one human rights journalist, just out of a Tunisian prison, to one now incarcerated.
– Prince’s (rough) translation of Taoufik Ben Brik’s August 15, 2010 letter to Fahem Boukadous. Ben Brik If anyone can improve on the translation – and especially give an accurate sense of the last paragraph, …my feelings will not be permanently damaged. To the contrary
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How Repression Works in Tunisia…
Fahem Boukadous, the journalist for El Hiwar Eltounsi, who suffers from asthma and is languishing in a Gafsa jail
Habib Bourguiba `Le Combattant Supreme'...or so he would have liked his people to believe
serving a 4 year sentence, got caught in a repressive web that has been a long time in the making in Tunisia. Some of Tunisia’s practices, it can be argued and rightly so, were inherited from the colonial days when a legal system functioned in such a way as to limit or eliminate dissent, and in which the heavy hand of the French secret police was felt everywhere. The goal then – as now – was to present an `image of democracy’ at the same time repressing, crushing any genuine manifestation of an independent Tunisian political voice.
The two Tunisian leaders of the independence period, first, one of the nation’s founders, Habib Bourguiba and then Zine Ben Ali, followed in the French footsteps. Both, early on in their rules, promised `glasnost’ – ie – political openness, multi-party democracy. Both pulled away from these promises as soon as their grip on power became even mildly undermined and turned to more authoritarian methods.
Bourguiba was a master, in particular, of playing one group within Tunisian society against the others. He’d cultivate different constituencies (Baa’th, labor movement, etc), let them take some initiatives for a short time, and then crush them brutally while encouraging another constituency. And thus he maintained power and tightened his grip. The price of his success was that he failed to create the kind of political culture in which his succession could be crafted democratically. Ben Ali, still in power after 23 years, followed a similar pattern but was, all told, less clever and as a result, generally much more brutal than Bourguiba. Read more…
(note: it has come to my attention that this little harmless blog is currently censored by the Tunisian government, meaning that the content is blocked by the authorities there. I am honored to learn this. Although difficult to substantiate, there is a good chance that it is a credible claim. As a result, I intend to write many more pieces on the situation in Tunisia – a country whose relative economic success in Africa is matched only by the seething repression of all forms of dissent by its unpopular government – a democracy in name, but dictatorship in fact – run by Zine Ben Ali, who was trained in a US police academy several decades ago. Ben Ali became Habib Bourguiba’s Minister of Interior and then, in what amounted to a `medical coup’ of sorts, overthrew Bourguiba, had him declared incompetent to rule, and took over. That was nearly a quarter century ago. – cheers, RJP)
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other entries on Tunisia and on the 2008 events in Redeyef:
– Part Two – Tunisia – The Imprisonment of Fahem Boukadous (Part Two of a series)
– Part Three – Tunisia – The Imprisonment of Fahem Boukadous (Part Three of a series)
– Part Four – Tunisia – The Imprisonment of Fahem Boukadous (Part Four of a series)
– Redeyef: The Struggle For Dignity
– Land Grab, Repression in Tunisia’s Phosphate Belt
– Farhat Hached and the Struggle for Tunisian Independence
– Tunisia: Videos on Political Repression (added Nov. 15, 2010)
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“The only way that the [Tunisian] state deals with social problems is with police repression”
——————-Moktar Trifi, President of the Tunisian League of Human Rights————————
Who Is Fahem Boukadous?
To most Americans with the exception of those few, for whatever
Fahrem Boukadous - Tunisian political prisoner risks death from health treatment neglect from Tunisian authorities
reason, who have an attachment to the North African country of Tunisia, the name Fahem Boukadous, so foreign to American ears, means nothing. It means a good deal more to `Reporters Without Borders‘ and to the US State Department that actually issued a statement (half way down the page) on his behalf, to the US intelligence agencies and military that have carefully followed the Spring, 2008 uprising in the Tunisian region of Gafsa – deemed the most extensive and militant social protest in that country’s history in the past quarter century.
During the Gafsa protests (more, much more on this in later posts) Fahem Boukadous was there in the mining town of Redeyef at the center of the center of the social Read more…
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 