The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the current incarnation of a nation that has been known to history by various names, although most of us will have known it as Belgian Congo or Zaïre. It is presently known in some circles as Congo-Kinshasa, to distinguish it from its neighbour, Republic of Congo, or Congo-Brazzaville. Much of DRC’s western border is comprised of the Congo River, which it shares with Republic of Congo in an undefined way; no specific agreements have been reached on the division of the river, its islands, or its resources.

This nation of approximately 55 million people straddles the equator in central Africa, an area called by author Joseph Conrad the “Heart of Darkness”. When you hear the phrase “darkest Africa”, this is it.

DRC is comprised of more than 200 ethnic groups and is surrounded by Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Angola. It is virtually landlocked although there is a narrow band of a few dozen miles along the western Bight of Africa.

And the country has had a troubled history that leads squarely back to one man: King Leopold II of Belgium.
axisoflogic.com

Vice President Cheney in a recent speech to US military personnel has acknowledged that the war could go on for several decades. This statement, which reveals the Bush Administration’s commitment to global warfare, was barely mentioned by the mainstream media.

We are dealing with a “military roadmap”. Iraq and Afghanistan are at the outset of the Bush administration’s military adventure.

Cheney warned that the US will be involved in war for decades to come:

“Like other great duties in history, it will require decades of patient effort, and it will be resisted by those whose only hope for power is through the spread of violence.”

What is referred to in military parlance as GWOT (The Global War on Terrorism) requires, according to Cheney, the deployment of US forces Worldwide in more than one hundred countries rather than in a select number of overseas military bases::

“American soldiers are currently serving in 120 countries, and the Army remains an active, visible sign of America’s commitments — defending our interests, standing by our friends, keeping patient vigil against possible dangers, and, above all, directly engaging the enemies of the United States.”

The US will be involved in the conduct of major theater wars as well as “military policing” and punitive actions.

These actions are based on the doctrine of preemptive warfare, where war is conducted as an act of self defense.

The US will also be involved in military actions against “failed states” and “unstable nations”, which do not constitute a perceived threat to the security of the US, as defined in the March 2005 National Security Strategy.

The NSS consists in US military presence around the World, the development of new weapons systems, the conduct of theater wars and global military policing.

The stated purpose of the US military agenda as conveyed in Cheney’s speech are to:

a) fight terrorism and protect the “civilized World”
“There is still difficult work ahead, because the terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against the civilized world. We are dealing with enemies that recognize no rule of warfare and accept no standard of morality, and they are determined to continue waging a campaign of terror against coalition forces, Iraqi security personnel, and other innocents.

By their methods of murder, the terrorists hope to overturn Iraq’s democratic government and return that country to the rule of tyrants, and then use Iraq as a staging area for ever greater attacks against America and other civilized nations.

If the terrorists were to succeed, they would return Iraq to the rule of tyrants, make it a source of instability in the Middle East, and use it as a staging area for ever greater attacks against America and other civilized nations.

b) promote democracy
If the terrorists were to succeed, they would return Iraq to the rule of tyrants, make it a source of instability in the Middle East, and use it as a staging area for ever greater attacks against America and other civilized nations.

c) spread free market reforms Worldwide
In the broader Middle East and beyond, America will continue to encourage free markets, democracy, and tolerance, because these are the ideas and the aspirations that overcome violence, and turn societies to the pursuits of peace.”
globalresearch.ca

10/12/05 “Daily Star” — — BEIRUT: In the latest official Syrian comment on the increasing pressure on Damascus, Premier Naji Otari said “all the gates of hell will open on the U.S. if it attempts to attack Syria.” Otari was replying to a report this week in Newsweek magazine revealing that Washington had debated launching military strikes inside Syria against camps used by insurgents operating in Iraq.

Citing unnamed government sources, the magazine reported that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had managed to block the proposal during a meeting of senior U.S. officials on October 1.

Speaking to reporters in Shanon, Ireland, on a four-nation tour, Rice said: “I am not going to comment on internal deliberations in the administration.”

Otari also accused Lebanese officials of being unable to make an independent decision, saying they were answerable to the French and U.S. ambassadors to Lebanon.
infoclearinghouse.info

Sinking under a host of socioeconomic problems and still in mourning after the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, the African-American community is in deep pain. It finds itself directionless, losing ground and lacking the world-class leadership it needs to right itself.

In other words: Black America is in desperate need of a hero. Friday afternoon, a hero returned.

In an emotional, see-saw speech, former U.S. Rep. Ron Dellums announced to a deliriously happy crowd of 500 that next year he will run for mayor of Oakland.

The announcement was a dramatic turnabout, because he mounted the podium apparently intending to say “no.”

A grassroots movement had sprung up to draft him, collecting 8,000 signatures using only volunteer labor. But Dellums, the hero of the anti-apartheid struggle and mentor to anti-war U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee, has been working for the past few years as a well-paid Washington lobbyist. Though he looks like a fit man of 50, he is actually nearly 70 years old.

In other words, he is of retirement age and finally earning some money. No one could fairly begrudge him the chance to spend his twilight years unburdened by all the problems of urban America. Oakland has some of the highest crime and murder rates in America. Its public schools are crumbling and in receivership. The city council often appears dysfunctional and largely in the pocket of big developers. No one in his right mind would willingly take on the challenge of turning around this town.
commondreams.org

The war on poverty cannot be won unless much greater efforts are made to give women equality, says the annual UN Population Fund report, published yesterday.
The report calls for government action to free women from the poverty and ignorance often forced upon them by cultural confines in many countries, which has an economic as well as a social toll.

“I am here today to say that world leaders will not make poverty history until they make gender discrimination history,” said the UNFPA’s executive director, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, at the report’s launch. “We cannot make poverty history until we stop violence against women and girls. We cannot make poverty history until women enjoy their full social, cultural, economic, and political rights.”
guardian.co.uk

BALAKOT, Pakistan, Oct. 12 – From the valley of death, they pointed to the far reaches of desperation. Over there in the village of Gunela, said Mushtaq Ahmed, pointing to hills under a mass of clouds, it is very cold, and there is nothing more than a bit of corn to eat. In a village called Khesarash, said Abdul Wahid, who had walked from there, children have died for lack of food.

From across the river came Imdad ul-Haq Mian, bearing on his shoulders a frail old man with a broken arm. With the road still blocked by a landslide, Mr. Mian and his kinfolk had trekked six hours through the hills, across loose, slip-sliding rocks, to bring the wounded from Dabriyan to a makeshift clinic here.

Balakot was once a pretty little village on the eastern edge of North-West Frontier Province, nestled in a green valley next to a gurgling river. Today it is a putrid, enraged, aggrieved place. All the houses have fallen in on themselves. Tents have arrived, but they are so scarce that one man said his was occupied by five families on Tuesday night. The suffering has made people lose their minds, one man said. The townspeople were fighting amongst themselves for the meager aid that had arrived, he said.
nytimes.com

Months before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, volunteer searchers found 6,251 homeless people living in the coastal areas of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama. The search was part of an unprecedented count of the nation’s homeless population that the federal government asked cities and counties to conduct.

That snapshot tally was 727,304 homeless people nationwide, meaning about one in 400 Americans were without a home, according to a USA TODAY survey of all 460 localities that reported results to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in June.
news.yahoo.com

Diane Wilson is facing four months of jail in Texas.

But she now says that she’s not going to jail until Warren Andersen, the former CEO of Union Carbide, is extradited to face manslaughter charges in Bhopal, India.

“I’m going to go on the lam,” Wilson told Corporate Crime Reporter today. “I realize I have to go to jail. I’m quite willing to do that. But Warren Andersen – who jumped bail 13 years ago – needs to go to jail too. I’m going to stay out to expose the inequality – corporate executives don’t go to jail for high crimes and little citizens go to jail for misdemeanors.”

In August 2002, Wilson scaled a Dow Chemical facility in Seadrift, Texas and unfurled a banner that read – “Dow Responsible for Bhopal.”

When she came down, she was arrested and charged with criminal trespass.

In January 2003, Wilson was convicted of that charge and sentenced to four months in prison and fined $2,000.

An appellate court affirmed her conviction earlier this month.

She is out on a $1,500 bond.

Andersen was CEO of Union Carbide on December 3, 1984 when a deadly gas leak from Union Carbide’s pesticide factory in Bhopal, India poisoned at least 500,000 people.

More than 8,000 people died within three days and over 20,000 people have died to date as a result of their exposure.

Andersen was charged with manslaughter by prosecutors in Bhopal.

He reportedly lives in Bridgehampton, New York.
commondreams.org

Countdown to a Legal Lynching
By PHIL GASPER

On the morning of October 11, the US Supreme Court declared that it will not hear the case of Stanley Tookie Williams, the most famous inmate on San Quentin’s death row.

Last February, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals turned down Stan’s request for a new hearing by a vote of 15 to 9. But the minority issued a blistering dissent, condemning the “blatant, race-based jury selection” in Williams’ original trial.

Williams appeal reached the Supreme Court in May, where it has been sitting ever since. A decision was originally expected last week, but the court delayed, reportedly to allow its new Chief Justice an opportunity to weigh in on the case. Now it has spoken in no uncertain terms.

Welcome to the racist Roberts’ court.
rastafarispeaks.com

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize

University of Illinois College of Law Professor Francis A. Boyle will once again nominate former Illinois Governor George Ryan for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize because of his courageous, heroic and principled opposition to the racist and class-based Death Penalty system in America. Due to George Ryan‘s continued and proven commitment to seek justice for the poor, the oppressed, the downtrodden, and People of Color in America, he has become one of a handful of courageous voices calling for an end to the repressive political, legal, and social climate that keeps the death penalty alive in this country. George Ryan has performed more effective work against the death penalty than the entire American abolitionist movement put together.

As a consequence he has drawn the vindictive attention of the stridently pro-death penalty U.S. Department of Justice. It is no coincidence that the racist and pro-death penalty U.S. Department of Justice indicted George Ryan for allegedly misappropriating $167,000 over a ten-year period of time soon after he had liberated 167 human beings from the Illinois death row, two-thirds of whom were People of Color. This indictment and persecution were designed to send a message to George Ryan and to the American abolitionist movement that the U.S. Department of Justice will continue to fight its rearguard action against the mortally wounded death penalty system in America. It was Governor George Ryan who inflicted that grievous blow upon the entire American death penalty system. He is now paying a very heavy price for his courage, integrity, and principles. For that reason, he richly deserves to win the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

The constitution, if implemented, paves the way for secession of territories, leading the way to an oil rich Kurdistan in the North, a southern Shia state also controlling great oil wealth, and a western area, war torn and without resources, left for Sunnis to rebuild after a brutal and heavily damaging occupation.

As the U.S. continues its campaign in Western Iraq, and as questions about U.K. involvement in terrorism in the South continue to grow, the impossibilities of democracy under occupation are highlighted. Next weekend’s vote on the future of Iraq further illustrates the perversions to democracy that have recently been envisioned by a U.S. administration that itself gained power under this dark cloud that now looks to envelope and dissect Iraq. All that stands in its way is the resolve of a highly terrorized constituent, a constituent that is asked to register its opinion under the watchful eye of a security force that recently razed their communities. In Anbar, as in other provinces, it doesn’t take a great leap of reasoning to know that a vote against the referendum is a vote against the occupation, an occupation intent on pushing it through.
informationclearinghouse.info