This is UN Report On Eastern Congo issued on November 23, 2009.
UraniumMine at Shikolobwe, Congo. Despite having been closed for four decades, men mine uranium there by hand...
It deals with the military situation on the ground in the Eastern Congo, with the theft of the Congo’s mineral resources by the militias of neighboring countries and the desperate human rights situation. The report is 287 pages long and as a result, its retrieval is slow, but the report is there. It is not easy reading, both because the political connections are complex and the tale told is painful.
The highlights – or lowlights – of the information presented include
- The Eastern Congo remains in 2010 a zone of war and human suffering
- Atrocities are being committed on all sides
- The refugee population continues to grow at an alarming pace
- The country’s mineral wealth continues to be exploited at a rapid and very profitable rate by what amounts to forced or slave labor. The minerals – gold, diamonds, coltan etc are then spirited across the borders through Rwanda and Uganda and sold to international mining companies
Yemen (4): Yemen War Intensifies/US Heavily Involved
First love or for the Saudi Royal Family - First delivery of US made F-16s- along with their smiling US trained Saudi pilots. Israel need not fear; these metal mosquitos are meant to target Yemenis (and maybe Iranians?) not Tel Aviv
Related Entries:
_ Yemen (1) – Nobel Peace Prize Recipient Kills Dozens of Women and Children in Yemen
_ Yemen Powerpoint Presentation
Saudis Continue To Pound Yemen
On February 3, yesterday, Saudi jets …ie – US jet planes sold to Saudi Arabia – pounded Yemen, killing at least 14 civilians, among them 10 women and children – in Houthi populated areas of the country’s north. According to the Iranian press, on just that one day, Saudi war jets carried out 16 bombing missions against several northern districts of Yemen. One report said that on this day the Saudi’s fired 620 at targets in Yemen’s Shada, al Malaheez , al Hurra districts. Read more…
China and the Great Transformation
Rubber Worker, Firestone Rubber Plantation, Liberia - each one of those buckets weighs 75-80 pounds. He's carrying 150-160 pounds of weight
Today in one of my classes I was trying to put together some of the various threads that led to the Third World Debt crisis that was first manifested in 1982. A number of themes were cited
- economic and political structures inherited from Colonialism – ie, peripheral economic status of producing basic food stuffs and raw materials for industry, rushed transitions to independence without infrastructural support systems, debts carried over from the colonial period imposed on newly independent countries, the `neutralization’ or elimination of Third World leaders who might have developed alternative models – Lumumba, Allende, Nkrumah, Sukarno, Mossadeq – , etc
- post-colonial failed models of development – imposition of Cold War developmental models, reliance on World Bank- IMF developmental `advice’, foreign aid that re-enforced Third World countries peripheral status, the Third World all star cleptomaniacs (Mobutu, Marcos, Somoza, the Duvaliers of Haiti)
- what I refer to as the quadruple whammy of the 1970s:
1. the floating of the dollar and currency instability
2. the spike in the price of oil as a result of the October 1973 Middle East war and the Saudi decision to raise the price of oil at the well head
3. the flooding of the US-UK financial sector with oil money much of which was than recycled to the Third World in what were irresponsible if not reckless loans – this combined with poorly conceived World Bank-IMF equally reckless loans during the `McNamarra Period’ of the World Bank – the so-called World Bank `mega-projects’ – , few of which translated into development `successes’ that produced income for the lenders
4. the collapse of the price of commodities across the board in the late 1970s and early 1980s that devastated Third World economies and forced them to beg for more funds Read more…
note: I am posting this report for students in 2 classes. It gives a good – and sobering – overview of current US policy towards Africa today with its concentration not on human rights and democracy but on the US fixation with strategic control of the continent’s energy and mineral resources. It also has the broad sketches of U.S. economic policy towards Africa, including its continued support and fixation for IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs. The sections of the report on the Congo and on Africa debt ($200 billion) are brief but include references to other reliable and interesting sources
In addition I have added the `Foreign Policy In Focus’ website to the links at the right of this website. It includes regular commentaries by John Feffer, Emira Woods, Conn Hallinan and Walden Bello – all of whom are worth reading.
For the report..
Africa Policy Outlook 2010 (link to FPIF website)
Why Is The US Bombing Yemen? Powerpoint Presentation
The presentation is in PDF Form. Sections 1 and 2 are complete. I’ll do a little more work on editing Section 3. The presentation is based upon a talk I gave to the Middle East Study Group at the University of Denver’s Korbel School of International Studies on January 26, 2010.
For the presentation Yemen Powerpoint (in powerpoint)
Yemen Powerpoint (in pdf)
The presentation continues to be updated ; (Feb 6, 2010, April 17, 2010)
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related entry – Yemen Articles (note – there are some additions to this list, especially Pepe Escobar’s piece `Empire Reloaded’ 1-29-10 rjp)
– Pro-Israel Lobby Powerpoint (October 2008)
Food Workers At the University of Denver a Part of National Union Organizing Campaign
The food workers at the University of Denver are trying to organize a union. It is a part of a national campaign targeting the multinational corporation SODEXO.
For more information about the campaign, Sodexho Fact Sheet
More on New Frontier Bank Failure in Greeley
(related articles Silverado (5) – Silverado the Sequel: New Frontier Bank of Greeley)
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updated April 18, 2010.
New Frontier Ex-Workers Still Reeling (from the SF Examiner April 11, 2010)
New Frontier Failure: Non-Profits Also Effected (from the Greeley Tribune April 10, 2010)
FDIC List of Failed Banks Since 2000
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The suit against New Frontier Bank of Greeley has been filed against the bank officers and board members. What comes out in the suit that is new – or at least not developed in the previous piece
- Greg Bell was the chief loan officer who is alleged to have pushed through many of the irresponsible loans
- Loans with favorable interest rates were made to insiders, including Dean Juhl, even after he had been convicted of mortgage fraud
- Conflict of interest: In 2004, New Frontier built a new building in Greeley. Rather than buy the land, the bank entered into a lease arrangement with Gateway Holdings LLC, owned by New Frontier board members Seastrom, Brunner, Kammeier, Renfroe and Thissen. Throughout the course of the lease, the bank paid Gateway Holdings LLC more than $5 million, well above the market rate the bank would have paid to lease similar land, the lawsuit alleges.
The defendants have until February 5 to answer the charges.
Senators Bennet and Udall and US Congresswoman Markey have asked for the Justice Department to investigate. The Justice Dept has agree to review the request.
links that update the case
Yemen Articles….
- Yemen
Articles on Yemen
updated April 25, 2010
Uri Avneri – Yemen: The Country `on The Right
MK Bhadrakumar – A witches cauldron brews in Yemen
Phyllis Bennis – Yemen Deja Vu All Over Again
Pepe Escobar – The Roving Eye, Empire Reloaded
Khaled Fattah – The al Qaeda Storm In Yemen
Khaled Fattah – Yemen: A Slogan And Two Wars (1)
Khaled Fattah – Yemen: A Slogan And Two Wars (2)
Yemen – FIDH Report on Human Rights Violations
Andrei Fedyaskin – Will Obama Put US Boots on the Ground In Yemen
Hallinan, Conn – Yemen Terrorist Haven Or Chess Piece
Raza Naeem – Yemen’s Memories of Revolution and Resistance
William Pfaff – New Wars For The New Year?
Rob Prince – Yemen (3) – Knee Deep In The Big Muddy
Rob Prince – Yemen (4) – Yemen War Intensifies/US Heavily Involved
Rob Prince – Yemen (5) – Houthi Rebellion In Yemen Has Saudis Nervous
Rich Rozoff – US, NATO Expand War to Horn of Africa, Indian Ocean
Stephen Zunes – Yemen Latest U.S. Battleground
Tunisia, Vietnam, Haiti, Iraq
related posts: ( Farhat Hached and the Struggle for Tunisian Independence) , (Death of Fran Macy – Peace Corps Director, Tunisia)
Introduction to the Series
These four countries seem disconnected as if their names were just picked out of a hat. They were and they weren’t. Watching the news about the tragedy in Haiti and the growing US response, I could not help thinking about another time and place when in one part of the world the United States was bombing a country to smitherines, in the case of my youth, Vietnam, while elsewhere humanitarian and economic aid was being offered. Two seemingly contradictory faces of the same policy, intimately connected despite appearances to the contrary. For the moment, sticking to the Tunisia-Vietnam analogy, it is easy to think that policies are disconnected but in fact, that is untrue as some of us in the Peace Corps in Tunisia came to conclude. Indeed, if the United States is destroying one part of the world, mercilessly by the way, it is important that elsewhere it tries to conduct some kind of public relations campaign to confuse or neutralize anti-American sentiment both at home and abroad.
And while I am glad that the United States offers its young people a chance to serve peacefully rather than in the cockpits of F-16s (or is it now F-22s), firing Cruise Missiles from submarines or as a thousand Rambo wannabe’s… the fact remains: we Peace Corps volunteers were the sheep’s mask covering the wolf’s face of US foreign policy, a cover for war, little more. In the 1960s the US Peace Corps offered a different image of the country than the tv footage shown round the world of children being napalmed and Vietnamese put in tiger cages or eliminated by what was called the Phoenix Program, an early and chilling example of profiling. How can that be reconciled with a bunch of American college graduates – either architects (our program had a fair number), child care specialists or teachers with degrees in this and that liberal arts area. Most of us, the great majority, were liberal to left in our political orientation and were, like so many others of our time, `children of the sixties’. Placed in a Tunisian rural village, where many were and wanted to be, our impact was to soften the hard edge of US Imperialism. How could people like us be connected with the bombs and suffering being unleashed in Vietnam? It must have been confusing for Tunisians who got to like and respect us personally -as many did – while knowing that the other face lurked somewhere in the background. A Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde foreign policy if ever there was one. And up to a point it worked. Read more…
Yet More Ritter (3)
(related entries: Ritter Drops Out Of The Race (Jan 6); Ritter Drops Out Of Governor’s Race (2) (Jan. 8); More Thoughts On Bill Ritter (Jan 10) )
Why so much of my attention to Bill Ritter dropping out of the governor’s race here in Colorado?
Because probing the governor’s surprise announcement, we get closer to what is going on in politics here in Colorado and to a certain extent, nationally as well. The more I explore it, the more I wonder if one of the key political motives underlying Ritter’s dilemma isn’t related to the immigration issue and Democratic Party fears – both in Denver and Washington – of addressing it and hopes, which will go nowhere, of deflecting it. Admittedly this does take some explaining.
National – Colorado Democratic Party Game Playing?
Nationally Ritter’s withdrawal puts some pressure on Barack Obama who has been counting on Democratic governors in the West to help elect Dems to Congress this year. There is a sense that the sweeping Democratic victory of 2008 has already become fragile. That Obama is watching closely comes through can be seen by the speed with which he personally came out and endorsed Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper to replace Ritter, Obama’s attempt to help Colorado Dems avoid a Democratic Party primary battle. But it was alot of the `back room orchestrated stuff and I can say that it annoyed many Colorado Democrats who think that they/we should have say in who gets nominated to replace Ritter. Read more…
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(Fifth in a series – for the other entries: Silverado 1; Silverado 2: Silverado 3: Silverado 3a; Silverado 4; Silverado 4a
– for more on the New Frontier Bank of Greeley)
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Is it deja view all over again?
The resemblances between the collapse of Greeley’s New Frontier Bank last month with a more famous bank collapse 22 years ago of Denver’s Silverado Bank are striking, at least on some levels. It does not appear that regulating errant banks has progressed much – either on the federal or state level – or that in this age of deregulating everything, that `the markets’ (in this case the banks) are particularly good at that non existent form of self control called `self regulation’. Read more…
Ibrahim Kazerooni on Iran
I want to highlight some of the links found on the right of this home page and, over the next weeks explain what they are about.
One of them is the blog of Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni – I would note especially his commments on the US and Iran. Written a year ago, they remain valid and of interest. While the news suggests that Iran is a danger to Israel – and some of even more farfetched versions suggest to the USA itself, it is essentially the other way round – that the US and Israel are threatening Iran in a number of ways. Kazerooni explains it well. rjp
More Thoughts on Bill Ritter
Political Blather on Ritter’s Announcement To Pull Out.
I just reread a series of news stories from different Colorado papers about Governor Bill Ritter’s decision not to run for re-election. They were so much political blather. Of course, his fellow Democrats, not wanting to kick the man when he’s down, spoke well of him, expressing surprise and disappointment that he is leaving and how well they worked with him, etc etc. On the other hand the Republicans interviewed were `pumped’ and now think they’ve got the governorship in the bag. Premature boasting. But what was missing from virtually all the commentaries, left, right or center – save a few insights from Westward reporter Mike Roberts about Ritter’s troubles with the state’s labor movement and his alleged liason with Stephanie Villafuerte – was the absence of any serious discussion of the political motives for what amounts to Ritter’s resignation. It’s as if the state’s media is all in league to fall in line behind a kind of non credible `party line’ accepting the governor’s stated rationale of wanting to spend more time with his family. I don’t doubt he wants to spend more time with his family, but please….
Ritter Defeats Himself
The more I think of it, Bill Ritter, Colorado’s Democratic Party governor who announced last week he would not run for re-election, defeated himself, although the mess he got caught up in – both personal and political – is really quite typical, not usual. Seeing the prospect of a bruising contest that would included mounting personal attacks, and realizing that his support base was shinking if not shriveling to naught, `seeing the handwriting on the wall’ to use a cliche, he bowed to reality and dropped out. Maybe that is wisest thing he could have done under the circumstances. I did not take a formal survey of the depth of his unpopularity among Democrats, but except for one I can think of, virtually all the others with whom I have spoken these past months, Democrats all, were from lukewarm to hostile to his tenure as governor, so much so that it even surprised me. Nor was he particularly someone who `is on my radar screen’ , whom I had strong feelings about one way or another. Read more…
`The Daily Show’ on Tiger Woods’ Spiritual Dilemma
No one does it better than Jon Stewart
View from the Left Bank: Rob Prince's Blog 