Kimpa Vita Press

Apocalypse in Central Africa: The Pentagon, Genocide and the War on Terror By Keith Harmon Snow

Kimpavitapress — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:00:32 +0000

20 July 2010
keith harmon snow
Published (edited extensively) by:
Z Magazine, July 2010 under the title:
BRUTAL REGIMES:
Apocalypse in Central Africa:
Ongoing repression, war crimes, and U.S. involvement

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"As a key partner, we are very happy to be working with the Rwandan Defense Force as they seek to improve their capacity to do various peacekeeping missions as well as contribute in other ways to bringing peace to this region. And what we’re doing as a part of this visit is demonstrating to our Rwandan friends that… Red more

Uganda Land Alliance: STATEMENT ON THE OCCASION OF THE NATIONAL LAND CONFERENCE MAY 25TH-27TH 2010

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 25 May 2010 14:34:38 +0000

As representatives from across the country gather for the 3-day National Land Conference currently ongoing at Hotel Africana in Kampala to discuss salient issues in the National Land Policy, the Uganda Land Alliance wishes to call upon all stakeholders to put politics aside and churn a brighter future for all Ugandans both present and those to come.

The Uganda Land Alliance, representing over 60 CSOs and Individuals advocating for land rights of the poor women, men and children, is particularly concerned about the escalating land wrangles across the country, and hopes that this issue will be prioritized in the discussions… Red more

Drilling and killing: From the Gulf of Guinea to the Gulf of Mexico By Horace Campbell

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 18 May 2010 16:42:06 +0000

It was simply a matter of time before the systematic destruction being carried out by petroleum companies around the world would reach the living rooms of the citizens of North America. In the wake of the tonnes of oil being spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the destruction of the coastline of the United States since 20 April 2010, there has been increased awareness of the nested loop of criminality and killing that for generations has been set in motion by petroleum companies.
An oil rig called the Deepwater Horizon located about 51 miles (82 kilometres) southeast… Red more

Rwanda Pursues Dissenters and the Homeless By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 18 May 2010 08:58:07 +0000

Appeared on the net: April 30, 2010

IWAWA ISLAND, Rwanda — A few months ago, Gasigwa Gakunzi was hanging around a ramshackle house where poor children pay to watch television when the Rwandan police arrested him for loitering. The next thing he knew, he said, he was taken away from his family and carted off to this remote island in the middle of Lake Kivu.
Gasigwa, 14, now spends his days learning patriotic songs and how to march like a soldier. At night, he sleeps in a huge sheet-metal shed with hundreds of men… Red more

Sudan and Congo point to the need for a new, realistic map for Africa By Pascal Zachary

Kimpavitapress — Sun, 09 May 2010 20:26:52 +0000

Muammar al-Qaddafi isn’t exactly known for brilliant ideas on maximising political justice. His own country, Libya, is essentially his private fiefdom.

But a few weeks ago, he had a pretty good one: to partition Nigeria, “the giant of Africa,” as he called it, in half. Religious violence along the border between the country’s north and south seemed to have drawn a pretty clear battle line; Nigeria’s massive and diverse population seemed to warrant separate states.

After years of watching this oil-rich country of… Red more

How Do Wars End? By Johan Galtung

Kimpavitapress — Sun, 09 May 2010 19:57:20 +0000

“Only about 400 rebels had been in the fight at the bridge, but as the day wore on the number increased to several thousand. They would shoot at the enemy column from behind fences, trees, barns, walls, from inside houses, then reload, hurry ahead, and then shoot again. This was a strange, new type of warfare to the British, who were neither experienced, nor trained for it. To them it seemed dishonorable, hiding and shooting at men in the open who could not even see their enemies. As one Redcoat wrote his family: They did not fight us like a… Red more

Rwanda: President’s Widows Sue Kagame, Demand $100BN

Kimpavitapress — Sun, 09 May 2010 19:45:00 +0000

The widows of two slain African presidents have filed a wrongful
death lawsuit against Rwandan President Paul Kagame, whom they claim
ordered a missile strike that brought down the plane carrying their
husbands.
Attorneys for the widows of former Rwanda president Juvenal
Habyarimana and Burundi’s Cyprien Ntaryamira filed the lawsuit
Friday in federal court in Oklahoma City.
The women allege that Kagame, then leader of a non-governmental rebel group, gave the final order to shoot down the plane in 1994. They also allege that the actions of Kagame’s group destabilized Habyarimana’s government and… Red more

SUDAN: Asharq Al-Awsat talks to SPLM Sec Gen Pagan Amum By Mustafa Sirri

Kimpavitapress — Sun, 09 May 2010 19:14:30 +0000

Source: London, Asharq Al-Awsat -

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, which rules in the south of Sudan, has warned against tampering with the Referendum on Self Determination that is scheduled to take place early next year. It also rejected that the south is accountable for Sudan’s foreign debts estimated at 34 billion dollars and expressed its belief that that money was mainly used to kill southerners.

Sources from the South Sudan army revealed that elements from the guerrilla Lord’s Resistance Army of Uganda received joint training and armament with other militias affiliated to Arab tribes in order to re-launch… Red more

"We Want Our Voices To Be Heard": Democracy in Haiti’s Earthquake Zone By Laura Flynn

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 04 May 2010 13:42:20 +0000

“We are living in the mud. We are wet and we are hungry. Those in charge have left us without hope. If they have a plan we do not know it. We are asking about the future. And we want our voices to be heard, " Suzette Janvier a resident of St. Martin (a neighborhood of central Port-au-Prince) - April 24, 2010

Each Saturday for the past two months a thousand or more Haitian earthquake survivors have met in the auditorium of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy to talk about the future of their country. Since its founding in… Red more

Creating a new South African identity By William Gumede

Kimpavitapress — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:25:57 +0000

The raging debate over what makes one South African, which currently focuses on whether a person is African enough, is simply the wrong debate.
Can we ever cobble together a common South African-ness?
To start with, diverse developing countries such as South Africa with such a politically divided past obviously cannot find a solution in a nationalism based on a shared culture, language or ethnicity. Neither can it rest on common citizenship or living in a shared space alone – often assumed in Western models of nationhood.
South Africa’s bitter history of more than 350 years of… Red more

The Three Nuclear Issues by Johan Galtung

Kimpavitapress — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 11:12:11 +0000

Source: TRANSCEND Media Service published on the net 26 April 2010

Washington– The three issues are disarmament-proliferation, the military use, and the theological use of nuclear arms. All rather untractable. But there is the universal remedy: solve underlying conflicts, please. More easily said than done? To the contrary.

The USA-Russia possible treaty to junk aging “strategic” (genocide) nuclear bombs of the 23,000 said to exist; the “nuclear summit” of 46 countries in Washington convened by Obama to secure fissionable material (in the USA?); the nuclear disarmament conference in Tehran convened by Ahmadinejad of 60 countries calling for… Red more

Gates’ ”Slavery Blame Game” Misses the Point Written by Frederick Alexander Meade

Kimpavitapress — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 13:41:29 +0000

In recent days an enormous discussion has taken form within many American quarters, as Dr. Henry Louis Gates has once again weighed in on the question of reparations for African Americans.

The Harvard Professor’s most recent article entitled, “Ending the Slavery Blame Game”, in which Gates produces information regarding those African nations which actively aided European slave merchants during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade has functioned to not only broaden the lens in which this tragic event may be viewed, but has also served to explain the complexity in which culpability may be assessed.

Gates, within the article, makes mention of… Red more

Noliwe By Leopold Sedar Senghor

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:03:16 +0000

The weakness of the heart is holly…

Ah! You think that I never loved her

My Negress fair with palmoil, slender as a plume

Thighs of a starlet otter, of Kilimanjaro snow

Breasts of mellow rice-fields, hills of acacias under the

East Wind.

Noliwe with her arms of boas, lips of the adder

Noliwe, her eyes were constellations there is no

need of moon or drum

But her voice in my head and the feverous pulse of the

night…

Ah! You think that I never loved her!

But these long years, this breaking on the wheel of the… Red more

Obama and US military engagement in Africa By Daniel Volman

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:54:40 +0000

When Barack Obama took office as president of the United States in January 2009, it was widely expected that he would dramatically change, or even reverse, the militarised and unilateral national security policy toward Africa that had been pursued by the Bush administration. But, after a little more than one year in office, it is clear that the Obama administration is essentially following the same policy that has guided US military involvement in Africa for more than a decade. Indeed, it appears that President Obama is determined to expand and intensify US military engagement throughout Africa.
Thus, in its… Red more

Japanese Military Joins U.S. And NATO In Horn Of Africa By Rick Rozoff

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 16:35:29 +0000

Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He is the manager of the Stop NATO international email list at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/

Sources: Opednews

Japanese navy commander Keizo Kitagawa recently spoke with Agence France-Presse and disclosed that his nation was opening its first overseas military base – at any rate since the… Red more

Ahmadinejad bullish on nuclear bullying By TABU BUTAGIRA, Daily Monitor uganda

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:41:16 +0000

Dinner speech highlights
“We think it is the right of all nations to use nuclear energy. No one has a right to deny any nation this right. Iran and Uganda both enjoy this purity and integrity and believe in a world of compassion and stand firm against oppression and aggression against any country that thinks only about their own interests.
We are ready to do everything to invade other countries [that] undermine the independence and sovereignty of all nations; plunder and loot resources of other nations and ignore human dignity anywhere and anytime. We shall stand firmly… Red more

Nuclear disarmament and the need for new beginnings By Andrew Lichterman

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:49:14 +0000

In May, disarmament organisations will assemble alongside government delegations meeting for the 2010 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. Coming together in side-events between attempts to pursue and persuade diplomats has become a familiar practice among the world’s non-governmental organisations working on many issues, and should provide an opportunity to reflect and to develop strategies together. The focus on governments and their agendas in particular international forums, however, often overshadows our own discussions, limiting their scope to what those now in power might be persuaded to do in the near term, and how we might persuade them to do it.… Red more

Cuba in Haiti: Selective commendation, selective indignation By Emily J. Kirk, John M. Kirk and Norman Girvan

Kimpavitapress — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:01:54 +0000

The January 2010 earthquake in Haiti caused some 230,000 deaths, left 1.5 million homeless, and has directly affected 3 million Haitians – a third of the population. On 31 March, representatives of over 50 governments and international organisations gathered at the United Nations Haiti Donor Conference to pledge long-term assistance for the rebuilding of Haiti. At the conference, Cuba made arguably the most ambitious and impressive pledge of all countries to rebuild the entire National Health Service. While the efforts of other governments have been praised, those of Cuba, however, have largely been ignored in the media.
The… Red more

The Bridge of Beauty and Understanding written by Rene Wadlow

Kimpavitapress — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 09:36:31 +0000

Only the bridge of Beauty will be strong enough for crossing from the bank of Darkness to the side of Light - Nicholas Roerich

The United Nations General Assembly in resolution A/RES.62/90 has proclaimed the year 2010 as the International Year for the Rapprochement of Cultures “to promote universal respect for, and observation and protection of, all human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Cultures encompass not only the arts and humanities but also different ways of living together, value systems and traditions. Thus 2010 should provide real opportunities for dialogue among cultures. It is true that… Red more

last on Break the Silence www.friendsofthecongo.com

Kimpavitapress — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:20:37 +0000

Say No To Canadian Troops For Congo and Yes To Canadian Diplomacy By Bodia Macharia, President, Friends of Congo University of Toronto

As Canada’s Governor-General Michaelle Jean visits the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), much speculation abounds regarding the new-found attention being paid to the DRC by the Canadian government. It appears that Canadian General Andrew Leslie is primed to head the 20,000 strong United Nations Mission in the Congo. There is speculation that the anticipated Canadian troops withdrawal from Afghanistan may result in Canadian troops presence in Congo.

Canadian troops should stay home. The DRC does… Red more