Folks,
It is sad that, the Corporate Business of Special Interest greed & excessive corruption are in a conspiracy of Government Shut Down, but if Not, they feel that the Government must be in full controlled by one of them and no one else.
The U.S. government, in its democratic principle rule, has a system that prioritizes public service interests of its people fairly and in an organized manner. This is the plan fore-Fathers had in plan. It is worrying that Corporate power is now pushing the Government to devolve into a system of plutocracy where corporations Agents control both the government and the peoples livelihood and survival. This is so because, Other government regulatory bodies are in control by politicians and bureaucrats who are Agents of these Corporate Special Interest and it is the reason why huge sums of money is poured during compaign to put on board political figures who will serve Special Interest utterly in disregard to People's basic priorities. It is the reason why there is a big fight about big influential corporation not wanting to pay taxes but instead have the general public pay their taxes in ways and means.
Policies on Foreign partnership, health, finances, agricultural, national/international defense and even education are increasingly facing problems because of the pressure slanted towards enriching the unscrupulous Corporations business investments with other Special Interest at the expense of the People. We are left with no options but are treated like sacks of maize and potatoes - being forced to migration; shifted and moved to different places against our wishes.
Without President Obama putting his feet down and rallying for fair and shared common value to all, it is feared the system is slowly dropping to a worse-case-scenario that of tyrannical system of government that treats the people like no good. This is why such cases like those of slaughter houses to butcher Africans in Congo and basically catching up with Kenya treating Africans badly etc., is common-place.
How did the corporations gain so much power over government and the people? It's simple: Campaign finances. The corporations hire hoards of lobbyists who dart in and out of lawmakers' offices in Washington, leaving behind trails of cash and corruption. Most lawmakers operate on the simple principle of greed. Think of Enron and Wall Street, Ponzi Schemes, Pyramis Schemes and Hedge funding, World Bank and IMF etc.,…….Those are the accumulative networking powers who controls Congress through political leaders today and is what is controlling African Leaders in Africa where the scramble to control public wealth and resources is shifting to.
We demand for a peaceful dialogue and solution to save and fix Africa from slaughter houses of the Corporate selfishness and greedy wealth creators. We demand for a responsible engagement where we are all treated with dignity, value and virtue.
It is sad, it hurts and pain us a great-deal when we see our loved ones killed, our land taken away from us, our people perish or are slaughtered and killed mercilessly because of some greedy corporate business of special interest who valueless humanity except those of their own, and do not care for human dignity or shared value for common good of all in a dignified manner; for the sake of Peace and Unity for common shared interest ........where, we all are able to form good partnership relation deal of give and take from available opportunities where everyone gets a fair share value and sacrifice.........what is wrong in that ???........
Vision 2030 is an agenda for the unscrupulous Corporate Special Interest in the scramble to Africa. They are the reason for Chinese Commission Agency scavenging in East Africa with North to South corridor road and energy program agenda including Equity for transfer of Stocks and Banking, (in Offshore activities) and where Mutual Fund of the value of an ownership interest in property, including shareholders' equity in a business made transparent and accountable still remain foggy.
Because of the unscrupulous corporate greed, we are faced with Euro-zone economic collapse affecting Greece, Portuguese, Europe and is wiping Congo and slowly taking toll in Kenya with the rest of Africa. It is the reason we are faced with professionals having no jobs and are on US unemployment program because of lack of regulatory policy and balance. The problem is bigger and those who caused the problem do not know how to fix it. If they take leadership control of America, they will make the problem worse.........We need urgent dialogue to fix the problem or the whole world will perish..........
Good People of the world must stand up together and be counted. We must speak with one voice. We must not perish in silence. we must defend our human rights in Liberty in a dignified democracy that works for people in a fair and dignified manner. We must all refuse this Corporate syndicate of slow death of innocent Africans with the middle class of the world who became victims of circumstances. This corporate greed is spiralling out of control, it has become a cancer and is now eating from its own people, it is killing and destroying the world.......!!!
To save America and the world, the Eurozone economic collapse must be salvaged, Africa must be saved from Chinese (Corporates' Commission Agents) occupation. Things must begin to be done differently and for the sake of peace and unity, Corporate Greed must stop so love is able to transcend and change our moral beings and thinking; so transformation can begin to take effect in caring and sharing for one another......and peace and unity will blanket the whole world. This is the Gospel of Love we must all wear on our breastplace…….and…….
The Truth Shall Set us all free indeed people…….This is the promise from God our creator.......... Judy Miriga Diaspora Spokesperson Executive Director Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc., USA http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
Millionaires On US Unemployment? Yes, And That's Perfectly Legal (For Now)
By Alberto Riva: Subscribe to Alberto's RSS feed August 9, 2012 6:29 AM EDT
During the Great Recession that ended in 2009, the longest since the 1930s, images of workers lining up at state Labor Department offices throughout the United States to apply for unemployment subsidies rivaled the grainy black-and-white footage of men waiting in line at soup kitchens during the Great Depression. But not all of the people applying for unemployment benefits were desperate for a lifeline to keep food on the table, or avoid foreclosure on their homes. Some of them were millionaires, but they weren't rich people gaming the system to the detriment of those who really needed the money. Under current law, they had every right to get unemployment benefits -- and according to IRS data compiled by the Congressional Research Service, thousands of people with annual incomes of more than $1 million did. For the federal and state governments funding unemployment benefits, the sums paid to wealthy people on the dole are in fact negligible, amounting to just 0.02 percent of benefits paid in 2009. And they may be negligible for most of the recipients, too: To the average Wall Street millionaire laid off by an investment bank, the $1,700 in monthly benefits from the state of New York are little more than chump change. Or, not quite half of the monthly salary of a good nanny in Manhattan. The issue hasn't surfaced on the presidential campaign trail, yet. But politically, governments doling out benefits to people with nannies does not look good, and Congress is trying to stop the payments. Representatives and senators of both parties have introduced several pieces of legislation that would tax the unemployment benefits of people making $500,000, or more depending on the proposal, up to 100 percent. While Congress ponders the legislation, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service warned that the well-meaning proposals may have unintended effects. For example, the added complexity of extra paperwork that would be needed to file for unemployment may discourage some applicants from asking for what they are entitled to. Ironically, the people who may shy away from applying would be those with arguably the lowest incomes, such as new immigrants facing a language barrier. In any event, there's a legal precedent that may pose a problem for any new legislation on unemployment for the rich: The federal government has said before that it's all right. A 1964 decision by the Department of Labor prohibited states from means-testing to determine whether someone can get benefits. As the table below from the CRS report shows, among Americans whose tax returns show adjusted gross incomes of $1 million or more, 2,840 reported receipt of unemployment benefit income in 2008, while 2,362 did so in 2009, the last year for which the CRS had data. That's as little as 0.02 percent of tax filers who reported getting unemployment benefits. Not surprisingly, most tax filers who got unemployment, almost 8.7 million, were those making from $1 to $100,000 (median household income in the U.S. is roughly halfway between those two figures.)  What about when one measures by dollar amounts instead? The CRS study shows than in tax year 2008, filers who reported at least $1 million in income got $18.6 million in unemployment benefits, just 0.04 percent of the total (or, for that Wall Street nanny set, about the same amount that Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, took home last year in total compensation.) Figures were pretty much unchanged in 2009. In comparison, the $1 to $100,000 bracket got more than $39 billion in unemployment subsidies, almost 90 percent of the total in both years. But voters in November would not focus on that 0.04 percent figure. The number, and the negative image, that would count is that million-dollar income. Related Content
KAMPALA (Reuters) - Congo has rejected calls for an exclusively African regional force to tackle a raging insurgency in the country's east, accusing neighbouring states of involvement, and ruled out any negotiations with the rebels behind the crisis.
Fighting between M23 rebels and Democratic Republic of Congo government forces has displaced nearly half a million people since April and damaged relations between neighbouring countries in the Great Lakes region that have a history of conflict. Regional African leaders agreed last month on the idea of a "neutral force" to take on Congo-based rebel groups. But when heads of state of east and central African nations met this week in Kampala to discuss the eastern Congo crisis, they failed to agree on whether such a force would be drawn from their own countries or have a broader U.N. make-up. Congolese Foreign Minister Raymond Tshibanda said Kinshasa would accept soldiers from certain central and east African states as part of an international mission, but not from Rwanda and neighbouring states that he did not specify. The U.N. Security Council last week demanded an end to foreign support for the Tutsi-led M23 rebels, a rebuke diplomats said was aimed at Rwanda and Uganda. Rwanda has denied accusations by U.N. officials that its military has provided equipment and recruits for the M23 rebellion. Uganda has rejected similar accusations. Congo favours an expanded role for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo while Rwanda and Uganda, under pressure from the West to cut all links to the M23 insurgency, want a regional force to tackle the rebels. STICK WITH UN FORCE, CONGO SAYS "To us, the quickest and easiest way, is to use the mechanism that's already in the DRC," Tshibanda told reporters late on Wednesday in Kampala. "(The neutral force) cannot involve Rwandan troops because Rwanda is part of the problem. These negative forces operate on Congolese soil but they come from neighbouring countries. So I think these ... countries logically shouldn't be part of this force." The regional heads of state said they would decide the composition of the force at a later meeting. The United Nations has more than 17,000 peacekeepers in Congo but they have often struggled to halt fighting and protect civilians in the vast, unruly central African state, which produces gold, copper, tin, diamonds and other minerals. Tshibanda said the Congo government was unwilling to negotiate with rebels who have seen their ranks swelled by hundreds of defectors from the Congolese army. "We don't want them to survive as a movement, as an ideology, we don't want to see their actions continue... there is no question about it, and there is nothing to discuss, to negotiate," he said. The M23 name comes from a 2009 peace accord the rebels say was violated by Kinshasa, an assertion denied by the government. Benjamin Mbonimpa of M23's political wing said it was ready for dialogue and that the Kampala meeting had failed. "Whilst they were in Kampala (the army) has been reinforcing its positions... We've always said we're open to dialogue but if they attack us we'll defend ourselves," he said on Wednesday. Dictatorships in Uganda and Rwanda: root cause of Eastern Congo crisis The ongoing crisis in Eastern Congo has been raising countless discussions on possible solutions in different circles. We have witnessed donors cutting or delaying their aid to Rwanda. This was after UN experts found the country guilty of strongly supporting M23, the Congolese rebel group responsible of the current humanitarian crisis created in the region since the fighting started in April of this year. In addition, as of mid-July, at the AU summit held in Addis Ababa, it was decided to set up an international force to stand between Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo and monitor the border. The force would also have for mission to track and destroy "negative forces" as armed militias operating in the region are called. The irony of the idea of having that force as neutral as possible is that Uganda and Rwanda, though alleged to be involved in supporting M23 at different degrees and despite their official denial, are almost leading in its establishment. But US Congressmen are skeptical about the efficiency of such new force coming on top of the UN peacekeeping mission which has been operating from the particular province of North Kivu for the last 10 years at least, and is staffed with a 20,000 men force. In their letter dated 3rd August and addressed to President Kagame, they argue that, "… it is far from clear how that force will be implemented, and it will not ultimately address the underlying problems between Rwanda and DRC or in the broader region." Among these underlying problems there are undoubtedly the dictatorial regimes of Uganda and Rwanda led respectively by presidents Joweri Museveni and Paul Kagame. The Ugandan president has been in power for 26 years. During all those years, it would be a gargantuan task to evoke all atrocities committed under his leadership from the time he went in the bush in 1981 after being democratically defeated and starting a war to seize power by force. The Rwandan president, who has 18 years as the strong man of his country, has been mentored by Museveni while serving as his Chief of Internal Intelligence service. Crimes he is alleged to be responsible of have been documented by many international institutions including UN and Human Rights Watch. Saying that both regimes are fundamentally undemocratic would be an understatement. It suffices to consult records of political prisoners upheld in each country, or journalists who have been killed, exiled, or are in prisons. Unfortunately it is not only in those areas that one needs to look at to understand how their respective leaderships are corrupt, discriminative in distributing national wealth among their citizens. Though the recent move of several donor countries have suspended their aid to Rwanda is laudable to make Kagame rethink his persistent actions of destabilization of DRC, it does not address the root cause of never ending politics of violence and oppression Uganda and Rwanda have established in the region. For the West not to review fundamentally their relationship with Rwanda and Uganda is considered by informed citizens of the Great Lakes region as a sign of ongoing complicity with these regimes in the misery of local populations. I am convinced that linking efforts of improving stability in the region with tangible pressure on Kagame and Museveni to provide more political space to their non violent oppositions, and bringing all antagonists together for a dialogue on critical issues would bring more sustainable peace and development. It is regrettable that billions of $ have been spent on MONUSCO and ICTR to achieve nothing more than an ongoing instability in the region and a state of unprecedented division between Hutus and Tutsis, particularly in Rwanda.  Kayumba Nyamwasa, president's closest confidant during years after genocide, calls for uprising to overthrow him International | Anti-WarBill Clinton's damage control mission re Rwanda's war in Congo Bill Clinton traveled to Rwanda within weeks of the UN Panel of Experts on Congo's report that Paul Kagame's Rwandan regime is behind the M23 militia that has resumed the war in D.R. Congo. Critics, including many Rwandan and Congolese people, believe that he really went to do damage control.
Aid donors UK and US must condemn Rwanda's support for Congo rebellionRwanda is backing a revolt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's eastern region. The US and UK, as Rwanda's largest aid donors, must hold the Kigali government to account
 Soldiers from the M23 rebel group walk towards one of their positions in North Kivu province in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photograph: Melanie Gouby/AFP/Getty Images A recent UN report reveals the Rwandan government has violated the Democratic Republic of the Congo's (DRC) national sovereignty and breached international sanctions by providing soldiers, weapons, ammunition and financial support to a new rebellion in eastern DRC that began in March. The UN details how the M23 revolt enjoys direct support from senior levels of Rwanda's government, including the defence minister, General James Kabarebe. Findings like these should create political shockwaves across Rwanda's donor community. The UK and US in particular, as the country's two largest single donors, have a key role to play. Donor funds constitute 26% of Rwanda's 2012-15 budget and donors should be using the influence this kind of support affords to ensure Rwanda immediately stops supporting the M23. Instead, the donor community has been largely silent since the report came out. Rather than condemning Rwanda, the US government's first reaction was to attempt to block the report's publication, although it later issued a statement of deep concern. The UK, which this year alone has committed £75m of taxpayers' money to Rwanda, has shied away from public comment and expects us instead to be reassured by personal expressions of "concern" made by the international development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, to Rwanda's foreign minister. The UK's lack of public reaction is astounding. DRC is rated near the of bottom of the 2011 Human Development Index. It has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the world. In eastern DRC, where the Rwandan-backed rebellion is taking place, civilians have endured attacks, pillage, torture, rape and murder for over 15 years. The UK Department for International Development's website makes the case clearly, saying the DRC is: "… one of the poorest countries in the world and is said to be the worst county in the world to be a woman … Years of conflict have left the country deeply impoverished, without basic services and infrastructure." Worse still, Rwanda is backing a rebellion whose leader, General Bosco Ntaganda, is wanted by the international criminal court to face war crimes charges. Since 2009, Ntaganda has seized control of some of the region's richest mining areas. He has built up a highly lucrative minerals trafficking operation. It is highly likely that proceeds from this racketeering have been used to finance the fighting. Global attention must be brought back on to this issue. The Rwandan government's actions and the new rebellion in eastern DRC cannot be written off as strategically unimportant or – worse – as Congo fatigue. In 2008, the last time rebels threatened to attack Goma, the then Labour government's foreign secretary, David Miliband, flew to the region for emergency talks with the DRC president, Joseph Kabila. Today's situation demands similar high-level intervention from our government, and not only through negotiations. That does mean, in the first instance, public condemnation. Our government should be reaching out to other states in the region so that they too call upon the Rwandan authorities to change course. Kabila, Kagame in Kampala over Congo CrisisPublish Date: Aug 07, 2012  A Congolese soldier walks in the market on the outskirt of Goma on August 5, 2012. Clashes between l The presidents of Rwanda and DR Congo will take part in a regional summit in Uganda Tuesday to agree on a neutral force tasked with policing their border and neutralising rebel groups, officials said. President Yoweri Museveni will host the two-day summit of 11-member International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) at Munyonyo. Kigali confirmed Rwanda's Paul Kagame would attend while airport sources in Kinshasa said Congolese President Joseph Kabila was already on his way there. The United Nations will also dispatch a representative to the summit, which aims to defuse mounting tensions between Rwanda and DR Congo, who have traded accusations of supporting eachother's rebels. Kinshasa charges that Rwanda is arming the M-23 mutiny which has battled regular forces in the eastern DR Congo since May while Kigali accuses its neighbour of plotting attacks with Rwandan Hutu rebels based in the same region. A UN report published in June said there was ample evidence that Kigali was actively involved in the M-23 rebellion led by a renegade Congolese general who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. Rwandan President Paul Kagame said in mid-July that both sides had agreed "in principle" to accept a neutral force. A meeting of regional defence ministers held in Khartoum last week was supposed to hammer out some of the details of the force, as Kigali and Kinshasa hold divergent views of which troops would be neutral. Kinshasa has said it favours using MONUSCO, the 19,000-strong UN stabilisation force deployed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Kigali, while it has not issued any outright public refusal of MONUSCO, argues that the UN force is anything but neutral. Regional foreign ministers holding preparatory meetings behind closed doors Monday were discussing at least three types of force, according to documents available at the venue. One option would see the region's states contribute troops and funds. The African Union has said it is ready to contribute to such a force. A second option is "an international and regional force incorporated into MONUSCO" and including a beefed up mandate as MONUSCO's current mandate is limited to the protection of civilians. A third idea is an "interim MONUSCO force" but the document did not specify if this would be in addition to the "international and regional force." Even if a compromise is reached, the troops still need to be capable of routing some of the most battle-hardened fighters in the region, be it the M-23 or the Rwandan FDLR rebels. The 11-nation ICGLR comprises Angola, Burundi, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.
AFP Rwanda: Paul Kagame's problemThe formula of 'bread today, freedom tomorrow' is one that has led many a leader, and many a country, to ruin
It is hard now to recall how high were the hopes invested in what was called "the new generation" of African leaders. Men like Yoweri Museveni in Uganda, Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia, Isaias Afewerki in Eritrea, and Paul Kagame in Rwanda were seen as ushering in a harmonious era of democracy, clean government, and peaceful inter-state relations in sub-Saharan Africa. The US and Britain in particular were enthusiastic supporters of the new men, not least because they saw their governments as reliably pro-western. Nearly 20 years later all those leaders have disappointed, and some have disappointed mightily. Paul Kagame has until recently been the exception. Criticism of his government's tight control domestically and of its continuing interventions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been muted, and there has been, by African standards, a very generous flow of aid. The recent UN report on Rwandan support for insurgents in eastern Congo has changed the picture. The US has suspended military aid and an American official has even suggested that Kagame and other members of the government could find themselves facing prosecution at the international criminal court. The military aid programme is small, and the ICC suggestion verges on the fantastical. But these kinds of decisions and these sorts of remarks do indicate a shift in attitude toward the Kigali government. This should be welcomed if it means that there will be more conditionality, preferably of the informal kind, in relations between Rwanda and western governments, and more readiness to speak out in the future. But it is important to put Rwanda in context. The government has been called "a minority within a minority" in the sense that it is not even sure of the full allegiance of all Tutsis, let alone the majority Hutus. Nor is it a monolith, but rather a coalition of groups and individuals which Kagame has to assuage, even if this is not usually visible. Kagame's controlling personality is another factor. The best gloss on the regime's domestic policies is that it is intent on establishing a flourishing economy and nurturing social changes before bringing about a wider political opening. The best gloss on its foreign policies is that Kagame reckons the country must remain a player in the Congo to forestall developments that could threaten the stability of Rwanda itself. The worst gloss on both is that the formula of "bread today, freedom tomorrow" is one that has led many a leader, and many a country, to ruin. Paul Kagame is an impressive man who almost certainly knows that he should slacken his too-tight grip. The problem is that knowing something and doing it are two different things. The end of the west's humiliating affair with Paul KagameThe US has belatedly woken up to the warts-and-all reality of the Rwandan president. When will Britain acknowledge that its development darling may have feet of clay?
 Paul Kagame meets the former US president Bill Clinton and his daughter, Chelsea, in Rwanda. Photograph: Cyril Ndegeya/AP A "visionary leader," said Tony Blair; "one of the greatest leaders of our time," echoed Bill Clinton. Such hero worship is usually reserved for South Africa's Nelson Mandela. But Blair and Clinton were describing the president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame. The UK and US have staked their pride, reputations and ability to judge character, not to mention hundreds of millions of pounds in aid, on Kagame's powers of post-genocide healing and reconciliation matching those of Mandela after apartheid. That is why the US decision to cut aid, and now to warn Kagame that he could even face criminal prosecution over meddling in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, is a humiliating but long overdue reversal. It piles the pressure on Britain to make a similar admission that its long-time darling, revered as a success story that underpins an entire ideology around donor development aid, could have feet of clay. There are two main reasons why Kagame's Rwanda has been bulletproof for so long. One is western guilt over doing nothing to stop the 1994 genocide, in which 800,000 people perished. Clinton, whose most recent visit was last week, has described it as "my personal failure". The UK, US and others rushed to embrace the east African state's new leadership and support the rebuilding of the country: Rwanda was a special case, and would be given more leeway than most. The aid taps were turned on and the money flowed, with tangible results: great gains in education and health and in the reduction of crime and poverty. Secondly, then, Rwanda has come to symbolise what donor aid can do. It has been a trump card for the defence of the Department for International Development (DfID) when the Treasury attempts to turn the screws. Britain is the country's biggest bilateral donor, with an average of £83m a year. "When Clare Short was secretary of state, she was Kagame's number-one fan," says Carina Tertsakian, Human Rights Watch's senior researcher on Rwanda. "In her eyes, he could do no wrong. We're still living with the legacy of that now. Tony Blair was also taken in." Blair was, and remains, one of Kagame's most ardent cheerleaders, and an unpaid adviser. His charity, the Africa Governance Initiative, places young interns in Rwandan government offices. Eighteen months ago, he told the Guardian: "I'm a believer in, and a supporter of, Paul Kagame. I don't ignore all those criticisms, having said that. But I do think you've got to recognise that Rwanda is an immensely special case because of the genocide. "Secondly, you can't argue with the fact that Rwanda has gone on a remarkable path of development. Every time I visit Kigali and the surrounding areas, you can just see the changes being made in the country." David Cameron appears almost equally enamoured, and the current development secretary, Andrew Mitchell, visited Rwanda only last week. He said he had delivered "frank messages" to both Rwanda and Congo about the current instability and violence. Diplomatic language apart, however, Britain has been painfully silent about Rwanda's pernicious influence in its war-torn neighbour. The recent UN group of experts' report named names in the Rwandan government and military who are in contact with Congolese rebels, feeding from the trough of its mineral resources and supplying weapons and uniforms. Yet Kagame categorically denies it , and Britain apparently believes him, or can't bear to disbelieve, lest it suffer buyer's remorse. "Kagame was here last week and told a barefaced lie to David Cameron and other British officials," says one UK-based analyst. "He denied Rwandan meddling in Congo even though the evidence is overwhelming." Britain and others have turned a similarly blind eye to Rwanda's domestic affairs. The state has been accused of murder and intimidation; political opponents and journalists have been jailed. In 2008, the Economist said of Kagame: "Although he vigorously pursues his admirers in western democracies, he allows less political space and press freedom at home than Robert Mugabe does in Zimbabwe." The warts-and-all reality has been dawning on the US for some time. In 2010 it sounded warnings that "the political environment ahead of the election has been riddled by a series of worrying actions taken by the government of Rwanda, which appear to be attempts to restrict the freedom of expression". Kagame was re-elected with 93% of the vote. None of this fits the development darling narrative, however. Instead, it is much less unpleasant for visiting diplomatics to admire the transformation of the capital, Kigali, with its safety, orderliness and cleanliness (there is a ban on plastic bags). Rwanda has a flourishing economy and well-oiled PR machine, and the affable Kagame uses that most democratic of media, Twitter. In decades past, the west has been criticised for applying selective vision to the sins of leaders such as Mugabe and Idi Amin until late in the day. America, it seems, is reluctantly removing the scales from its eyes regarding Paul Kagame. For Washington it may merely represent the end of a beautiful friendship; for London, it will feel more like a broken heart. Kenya Vision 2030From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kenya Vision 2030 is the country's development blueprint covering the period 2008 to 2030. Its objective is to help transform Kenya into a "middle-income country providing a high quality life to all its citizens by the year 2030". Developed through an all-inclusive and participatory stakeholder consultative process, the Vision is based on three "pillars": the economic, the social and the political. This Vision's adoption comes after the successful implementation of the Economic Recovery Strategy for Wealth and Employment Creation (ERS), responsible for the country's GDP growth from a low of 0.6% and gradual rise to 6.1% in 2006. The Kenya Vision 2030 is to be implemented in successive five-year Medium-Term Plans, with the first such plan covering the period 2008–2012. At an appropriate stage, another five-year plan will be produced covering the period 2012 to 2017, and so on till 2030. As the country makes progress to middle-income status through these development plans, it is expected to have met its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) whose deadline is 2015. Some of the goals have already been met. The Vision 2030 spells out action that will be taken to achieve the rest.
[edit] VisionThe Vision 2030 development process was launched by President Mwai Kibaki on 30 October 2006 when he instructed the National Vision Steering Committee to produce a medium-term plan with full details on the development programmes that would be implemented in the first five years after the ERS expires on 31 December 2007. A consultative approach was undertaken through workshops with stakeholders from all levels of the public service, the private sector, civil society, the media and NGOs while in rural areas, provincial consultative forums were also held throughout the country. The objective of all these consultations was to provide an in-depth understanding of the country's development problems and the necessary strategies to achieve the 2030 goals. Experts used the input from the above stakeholders and their own economic analysis to identify sectors with the most promising potential in driving Kenya's economic growth up to 2030. This approach involved an assessment of two critical components:
A similar process and methodology was followed in identifying projects and priorities in the social and political pillars. Detailed analysis was carried out under a consultative process in order to come up with strategies capable of resolving the social and political problems that Kenyans face today. To arrive at workable solutions, the team of experts learnt as much as they could from countries that have achieved rapid growth and also improved the lives of their people greatly in a span of 20–30 years, with particular reference to the South East Asian newly industrialising countries. The standards achieved by those countries are ones Kenya should aim for, bearing in mind her own history and culture. The team made extensive use of information available from the Government, Kenya's private sector, civil society and universities. [edit] Foundations
[edit] Economic PillarThis aims to improve the prosperity of all Kenyans through an economic development programme, covering all the regions of Kenya. It aims to achieve an average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate of 10% per annum beginning in 2012. To achieve this target, Kenya is continuing with the tradition of macro-economic stability that has been established since 2002. It is also addressing other key constraints, notably, a low savings to GDP ratio, which can be alleviated by drawing in more remittances from Kenyans abroad, as well as increased foreign investment and overseas development assistance (ODA). Delivering the country's ambitious growth aspirations required a rise of national savings from 17% in 2006 to about 30% in 2012. It was also found necessary to deal with a significant informal economy employing 75% of the country's workers. The informal sector is being supported in ways that will raise productivity and distribution and increase jobs, owner's incomes and public revenues. The country is continuing with the governance and institutional reforms necessary to accelerate economic growth. Others critical problems being addressed include poor infrastructure and high energy costs. The six key sectors described below are being given priority as the key growth drivers for achievement of the economic vision:
[edit] Social PillarThrough this strategy, Kenya aims to build a just and cohesive society with social equity in a clean and secure environment. This strategy makes special provisions for Kenyans with various disabilities (PWDs) and previously marginalized communities. These policies (and those in the economic pillar) are equally anchored on an all-round adoption of science, technology and innovation (STI) as an implementation tool. Key sectors:
[edit] Political PillarThis aims to realise a democratic political system founded on issue-based politics that respects the rule of law, and protects the rights and freedoms of every individual in Kenyan society. It hopes to transform Kenya into a state in which equality is entrenched, irrespective of one's race, ethnicity, religion, gender or socio-economic status; a nation that respects and harnesses the diversity of its peoples' values, traditions and aspirations for the benefit of all its citizens. The political pillar vision for 2030 is "a democratic political system that is issue-based, people-centered, result-oriented and accountable to the public". An issue-based system is one in which political differences are about means to meet the widest public interest. "People-centered" goals refer to the system's responsiveness to the needs and rights of citizens, whose participation in all public policies and resource allocation processes is both fully appreciated and facilitated. A result-oriented system is stable, predictable and whose performance is based on measurable outcomes. An accountable system is one that is open and transparent and one that permits free flow of information. This vision is expected to guarantee Kenya's attainment of the specific goals outlined under Vision 2030's economic and social pillars To meet objectives outlined in the economic and social pillars, Kenya's national governance system is being transformed and reformed to acquire high-level executive capability consistent with a rapidly industrializing country. The country is adopting a democratic decentralization process with substantial devolution in policy-making, public resource management and revenue sharing through devolved funds. This has been achieved through a delivery of a new constitutional dispensation which came in effect in August 2010. Transformation within Kenya's political governance system under Vision 2030 is expected to take place across six strategic initiatives, whose overarching visions, goals and specific strategies for 2012 are as follows:
[edit] Guiding PrinciplesTo ensure that economic, social and political governance gains made under the Vision are neither reversed nor lost as a result of change in ruling parties, the following eight governance principles will be adhered to:
[edit] ImplementationA Semi Autonomous Government Agency (SAGA) with the requisite capacity has been established to oversee the implementation of all the Vision 2030 projects. The agency works closely in collaboration with government ministries and departments as well as the private sector, civil society and other relevant stakeholder groups. The strategies to deliver the 10% annual growth by 2012 is being executed through concrete flagship projects across the priority sectors in all the three pillars of the Vision. The projects are original large-scale initiatives that look beyond their immediate locality and are capable of having an impact on the entire nation. Flagship projects form part of the national development with complementary projects being undertaken in line with the Medium-Term Plans, the Budget Outlook Paper, and the Medium- Term Expenditure Framework. During the life of the Vision, strategies and action plans are expected to be systematically reviewed and adjusted every 5 years in order to effectively respond to the changing global, regional and local environment. The Vision 2030 is being delivered over many different horizons and flagship projects, each with defined goals. Following the expiry of the ERS in December 2007, the first part of Vision 2030 is now being implemented under the 2008-2012 plan. [edit] Vision Delivery SecretariatThe Kenyan Government has created a Vision Delivery Secretariat (VDS), which provides strategic leadership and direction in the realization of the Vision 2030 goals to ensure the timely implementation of the flagship projects. The Secretariat is managed by the Director-General leading a team of four Directors and Secretariat members, under the overall guidance of the Vision 2030 Delivery Board that plays a policy-making and advisory role. [edit] External links
POWER INFRASTRUCTURE North-South Corridor project to boost Southern Africa's power generating capacity 31st March 2009 The North-South Corridor was likely to add an additional 35 GW of electricity to the grid of the Southern African power pool by 2015. The Corridor, which would run along the two main trading routes in Africa, would travel between South Africa's Durban port and the copperbelt area of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Zambia, as well as between the copperbelt and the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam. The initiative aimed to create a reliable and efficient transport network, and to reduce the bottlenecks along the two trading routes. Speaking at a conference on Tuesday, North-South Corridor head of the regional trade facilitation programme, Mark Pearsons, said that there was currently an 8 600 MW difference between the power pool's installed and available capacity. The difference was ascribed to the fact that several units in the Southern African power pool were currently being refurbished and would be returning to service shortly. There was also the matter of fuel constraints. In 2008, the power pool commissioned only 1 747 MW of power, against a set target of 2 014 MW. Pearsons estimated that more than $4,7-billion would be needed to fund the development of identified transmission projects in the region, which would include linkages between Zambia and Tanzania, the DRC and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique. Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) director of infrastructure Remmy Makumba sated the SADC had a generation capacity of about 43 000 MW, and that it anticipated a shortfall of between 3 000 MW and 4 000 MW within the short term. "In terms of addressing those shortfalls, its almost like one is chasing a moving target, because the demand of the region is ever increasing." Makumba stated that the expectation was that between 2012 and 2013, the region would have reached the stage where electricity supply would exceed demand. He added that another issue was that Tanzania, Malawi and Angola were not connected to the Southern Africa power pool, so initiatives were being launched to connect those countries. The East African power pool would also be connected to the Southern Africa pool, and would in turn facilitate trading between the two major regions. The cost of electricity and transport in Africa are higher than most other regions, and to address the continent's needs, the SADC, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, and the East African Community were working to identify priority infrastructure programmes. One such initiative was the North-South Corridor. The initiative would aim to improve an estimated 8 650 km of road and 600 km of rail track, and would support the increased infrastructure of power generators. The estimated cost of implementing all projects and programmes was about $1-billion over a five to ten year period. Edited by: Mariaan Webb InfrastructureIntroductionThe government of Kenya is moving steadily toward economic development over the next couple of decades. Vision 2030 is a forward looking plan to increase the country's GDP. Infrastructure is one of the major areas slated for improvement under the Vision. The development plans include significant improvements to roads, railways, seaports, airports, water, sanitation and telecommunications. Kenya is focusing on these in the hope of attracting, accelerating and retaining investors who often complain its dilapidated facilities increase the cost of doing business, rendering Kenya's products uncompetitive in the global market. Improved transportation, more reliable shipping methods and a dependable telecommunications network will ensure the success of Kenya's economic growth plan and reduce risk significantly for investors. The proposed plan is estimated to cost $22 billion. Lamu PortThe new Lamu port will serve Kenya, the East African Community, Southern Sudan, Ethiopia, the Central Africa Republic, DR Congo, Congo-Brazzaville and Chad. Its importance stems from the port's ability to handle super post-Panamax vessels because of its deep natural channel — 18 meters in depth. The new Lamu port will be the largest on the continent, serving as a trans-African port. Construction will begin next year, and the entire project will take five years. The port project, estimated to cost $3.5 billion, will also serve as a trade corridor from Lamu to Juba in Southern Sudan after a standard gauge rail-track is constructed. The regions to be served by the port will be connected by a standard railway gauge that will run from Lamu with a capacity to handle trains moving at 160 kph when the project is finally completed in 2015. The new railway network will connect the corridor from Lamu to Southern Sudan, Uganda, DR Congo, Central African Republic, Cameroon and Chad. The proposed railway line has already been incorporated in the East Africa Railway Master Plan. Kenya- Sudan- Ethiopia Second Transport Corridor ProjectKenya's plans to link the new port at Lamu by rail to Juba provides the shortest distance to the sea for Southern Sudan. An important objective is to export oil from Sudan. The land and rail corridor can provide an alternative route for southern Sudan oil which now transported by a pipeline to Port Sudan in the north eastern part of the country. Construction of the second transport corridor connecting the planned Lamu port to Southern Sudan and Ethiopia will provide an opportunity to open up the remote and dry Northern parts of Kenya. The rail and road link from Lamu to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and another to Juba in Southern Sudan will pass through the northern parts of the country, which is resource rich but unexploited. From Lamu, the corridor will pass through Hola, Bura to Garissa. Hola and Bura are agriculturally rich with potential for rice and cotton production. The government has already launched a Sh2 billion irrigation project to boost food production in Hola. There are plenty of deposits of cement around Wajir and titanium in the west of Lamu. Another route from Garissa will head to Mwingi and Matuu where there are rich deposits of coal and iron ore. The channel will provide easy access to the mines for shipment through Lamu port. The third branch from Garissa will proceed to Isiolo, which will also be made a resort city and a free economic zone. Isiolo will be an intersection point for three corridor routes. The first route will proceed to Moyale at the Kenya- Ethiopian border. Ethiopia is already developing the route having completed a feasibility study on the railway line connecting Addis Ababa to Moyale. The second route from Isiolo will proceed to Nairobi where the new corridor will be linked to the existing Northern Corridor and a final route will proceed to Lokichoggio at the Kenya- Southern Sudan border. Lamu and Mombasa will be connected by a railway line and the two ports will compliment each other. Mombasa port is currently serving Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the DRC only. The government of Southern Sudan will construct its part of the corridor link to the Kenya border near Lokichoggio. EthiopiaIn line with its commitment to support integrated infrastructure development in the Regional Member Countries, the African Development Bank Group recently approved a $326 million loan to finance the second phase of the Mombasa-Nairobi-Addis Ababa Road Corridor Project. It involves the construction and tarring of 438 km road sections including 245 km Merille River-Marsabit-Turbi road section in Kenya and 193 km Ageremariam-Yabelo-Mega road section in Ethiopia, the construction of roadside socio-economic infrastructure, and the construction of a One-Stop-Border-Post. The project will benefit trade in Kenya and Ethiopia by:
Modernization of the EAC RailwaysThe existing EAC railways will be modernized into a high-speed railway line to ease the burden from the roads and increase the speed of movement of bulk cargo into and outside the region. This will involve:
The rail system will:
Airports and resortsInternational airports will be constructed in Lamu, Isiolo and Lokichoggio, three important centers along the new transport corridor. The three centers will also be made resort cities. Oil RefineryAn oil refinery with a capacity to process 120,000 barrels of oil per day will be constructed at the new port of Lamu to meet the growing demand for oil products in the region. It will largely refine crude oil from Southern Sudan and other parts of the world to serve the larger East African market. Power GenerationFor Kenya to be competitive in the region and beyond, the availability of reliable, adequate and affordable power, among other key infrastructure components, is imperative. Kenyan electricity producer, Kengen, opened its 15 billion shilling Public Infrastructure Bond Offer to investors in September 2009. KenGen received subscriptions worth 335 million for its bond offer, meaning the issue was oversubscribed by at least 68%. Funds from the bond will be invested in diverse sources of energy. About 80% of the capital would be used in generation of thermal power while the remainder would go to upgrade power plants at the Tana River Delta. The additional funds will also enable the implementation of renewable power projects like geothermal. More InformationExposing U.S. agents of low-intensity warfare in Africa Thursday, August 9, 2012 15:33 Posted on August 8, 2012 by Alexandra Valiente The "Policy Wonks" Behind Covert Warfare & Humanitarian Fascism.
It is, oh! such a happy fairy tale! It begins as all happy fairy tales do, in fantasy land.The fantasy is one of human rights princes and policy 'wonks' in shining armor and the new kingdom of peace and tranquility, democracy and human rights, that they have created. That is what the United States foreign policy establishment and the corporate mass media—and not a few so-called 'human rights activists'—would have us believe about the genesis of the world's newest nation South Sudan. "In the mid-1980s, a small band of policy wonks began convening for lunch in the back corner of a dimly lit Italian bistro in the U.S. capital," wrote Rebecca Hamilton in "The Wonks Who Sold Washington on South Sudan." Hamilton is a budding think-tank activist-advocate-agent whose whitewash of the low intensity war for Sudan (and some Western architects of it), distilled from her book Fighting for Darfur, splashed all over the Western press on 11 July 2012. [1] The photos accompanying Hamilton's story show a happy fraternity of 'wonks'—what exactly is a 'wonk'?—obviously being your usual down-jacket, beer- and coffee-slurping American citizens from white America, with a token black man thrown in to change the complexion of this Africa story. Their cups are white and clean, their cars are shiny and new, their convivial smiles are almost convincing. There is even a flag of the new country just sort of floating across one guy's hip. With the exception Eric Reeves, they are probably nice enough guys. For his 'anti-genocide' work in Sudan, Boston College professor Alan Wolfe has written that Smith College English professor Eric Reeves is "arrogant to the point of contempt." (I have had a similar though much more personal experience of Dr. Reeves' petulance.) The story and its photos project the image of casual, ordinary people who, we are led to believe, did heroic and superhuman things. What a bunch of happy-go-lucky wonks! Excuse me: policywonks! And their bellies are presumably warmed by that fresh Starbucks 'fair trade' genocide coffee shipped straight from the killing fields of post-genocide [sic] Rwanda… where, not coincidentally, Starbucks cut a profit of a few hundred million dollars in 2011. In fact, this is a tale of dark knights, of covert operators and spies aligned with the cult of intelligence in the United States. Operating in secrecy and denial within the U.S. intelligence and defense establishment, they have helped engineer more than two decades of low intensity warfare in Sudan (alone), replete with massive suffering and a death toll of between 1.5 and 3 million Sudanese casualties (using their own fluctuating statistics on mortality), and millions upon millions of casualties in the Great Lakes of Africa. Behind the fantasy is a very real tale of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocides real and alleged, and mass atrocities covered up by these National Security agents with the help of a not-so-ordinary English professor—their own one-man Minister of Disinformation. "After ordering beers, they would get down to business: how to win independence for southern Sudan, a war-torn place most American politicians had never heard of." Rebecca Hamilton deepened the intrigue into the extra-ordinariness of this happy cabal of 'wonks'. "They called themselves the Council and gave each other clannish nicknames: the Emperor, the Deputy Emperor, the Spear Carrier. The unlikely fellowship included an Ethiopian refugee to America, an English-lit professor and a former Carter administration official who once sported a ponytail." How quaint! How absolutely Clark Kent! From the photo, I immediately recognized three of the five people policy wonks standing next to the car in some casual pose in a nondescript parking lot somewhere in America. There is John Prendergast, Eric Reeves, Brian D'Silva, Ted Dagne and… Roger Winter. (Not 'Roger Miller'.) (The massive Reuters syndicate can't even get the wonk's name right.) "The Council is little known in Washington or in Africa itself." Rebecca Hamilton deepened the intrigue. "But its quiet cajoling over nearly three decades helped South Sudan win its independence one year ago this week. Across successive U.S. administrations, they smoothed the path of southern Sudanese rebels in Washington, influenced legislation in Congress, and used their positions to shape foreign policy in favor of Sudan's southern rebels, often with scant regard for U.S. government protocol." Smoothed the path of the Sudanese rebels? Well, that's an understatement, but that's not all they did. Faustin Twagiramungu, former Prime Minister under Paul Kagame's Rwandan Patriotic Front government (1994-1995), speaks on U.S. Intelligence Operative Roger Winter: Faustin Twagiramungo on Roger Winter Published on Jul 17, 2012 by AllThingsPass1 No description available. Wonks? What is a wonk anyway? Sounds excessively benign. Even charming. Not being an English professor-cum-Sudan-genocide-savior or a national security operative or a gun-running covert intelligence asset myself, I looked the word up in my American Heritage dictionary, but it doesn't exist in my (apparently) antiquated copy. Seems the word 'wonk' is about as new as the country of South Sudan. wonk/wäNGk/"Look at the names mentioned by the story," says Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, one of many former Rwandan government officials who continues to be harassed by the brutal regime of president Paul Kagame in Rwanda and watched by U.S. Homeland Security. "All of them have a good cover. They move from one job to another easily. The story suggests they are somehow unrelated to the U.S. government even though their employer is the U.S. government." What does this Roger Winter know about the Rwandan rebel 'Zero Network' and alleged CIA involvement in shooting down the presidential plane on April 6, 1994—assassinating the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, their top aides and the French crew? Was Roger Winer involved in the October 23, 1993 assassination of Burundi's Hutu president Melchior Ndadaye? "It is also known that Roger Winter, an influential American politician was present at Paul Kagame's headquarters at Mulindi [Rwanda] a few days before the offensive launched in the night of April 6-7, 1994," reported Bernard Lugan, a prominent French historian and the editor of the online journal L'Afrique Réelle. "Whoever shot down the plane, the killing began within hours, as Kagame and his Tutsi army fought their way toward Kigali to stop the genocide they had helped provoke," wrote U.S. scholar-diplomat Stephen Weissman in 2004. While selling the establishment mythology where Kagame "stopped the genocide' Weissman also elaborates a very serious point. "Traveling with them, by his own account, was at least one American—the refugee's [Paul Kagame's] friend Roger Winter. Should Congress ever investigate America's role in the Rwandan holocaust, Mr. Winter would be a star witness." [2] "Roger Winter was the chief logistics boss for [RPF] Tutsis until their victory in 1994," said Ugandan dignitary Remigius Kintu, "and he was operating from 1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington D.C." Ugandan dignitary Remigius Kintu speaks on U.S. Intelligence Operative Roger Winter: Remigius Kintu on Roger Winter Published on Jul 18, 2012 by AllThingsPass1 No description available. Rebecca Hamilton set out to save Sudan from itself during her Save Darfur days at Harvard University, circa 2004,where she organized the campaign to divest Harvard from corporations doing business with Khartoum. Since then doors have opened for her everywhere she goes, though she was once detained in Khartoum. Stupidly surprised to be suspect as a 'journalist', Hamilton later chronicled her 'ordeal' in the Atlantic Monthly, where she positioned herself as an innocent journalist unfairly harassed by the Government of Sudan's "dreaded internal security agency". With her cell she texted her husband to "contact [my] employer in Washington"—but she didn't tell us who that is—and her self-described cunning in going to the ladies room to secretly communicate with the outside world exposes her imperial arrogance. A "special correspondent for the Washington Post in Sudan", Rebecca Hamilton is also supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the New America Foundation. These institutions serve and advance the ever expanding Anglo-American Zionist Empire—multinational corporations and investment banks and currency speculators like Soros and the German Jewish firm Warburg Pincus. [3] These entities have deep ties to establishment news corporations and their use of qualifiers like 'Pulitzer'—perceived to be synonymous with truth—only serve to blind the 'news' consuming masses to these institutions' biases and interests. They are also deeply tied to powerful Christian and Jewish interests, and lobbies. To H.E. President Paul Kagame
A call to curb the increasing political oppression in Rwanda.
Mr. President,
AMAHORO People's Congress is deeply troubled by the tense political and social atmosphere prevailing in Rwanda, on one hand, and its increasing isolation in the region, on the other. Mr. President, you must realize the consequences of such an atmosphere in a country that is still recovering from the 1994 genocide, two wars in the DRC, a war against Uganda in the DRC, and the continual tensions between Rwanda and virtually all her neighbors.
We are particularly alarmed by the fact that you and your government are the source of the said atmosphere. On April 3rd, 2003 at Bwisige, you gave a speech that was reminiscent of those heard then from the government officials during the 1990-1994 war. We are greatly concerned by the strongly worded threats that you issued in your speech, such as your threat to « wound » (nzabakomeretsa) those who disagree with you and your government, and that of firing from civil services those you suspect would flee the country if they did not hold government jobs. By your own affirmation, the upcoming elections are a foregoing conclusion. You indicated that you knew, one hundred percent, those who will be elected! Following your speech, human rights organizations in Rwanda reported a number of people being rounded up, and some simply disappearing. Mr. President, it goes without saying that these actions, following your speech, are directly imputable to you. Furthermore, following your speech, the un-elected Parliament recommended the dissolution of the « mouvement democratique republicain » (MDR).
The MDR, signatory to the ARUSHA agreement, has for the past decade, been a staunch supporter and ally of the RPF in your government. It has provided 3 prime ministers who have implemented the political program of the RPF since 1994. One might wonder why it took the RPF nine years to want to dissolve the MDR if indeed it preached Parmehutu IDEOLOGY among Rwandans. One might wonder, with reason, about the motives of such a move, given the fact that the MDR is the only political party among those allowed to exist by your government, which is capable of mounting a credible challenge to the RPF during the upcoming elections.
Mr. President, your government has illegally forbidden new political parties from being formed inside Rwanda. Mr. Pasteur Bizimungu who dared to form one, after the then Secretary General of the RPF and the current minister of foreign affairs declared that it was perfectly legal and allowed in Rwanda for new political parties to be formed, has been jailed for it for over a year. Now, even some existing political parties are being dissolved, not to mention that those remaining are only allowed to function at the political bureau level. Clearly Rwanda is moving in the wrong direction. We call on you and your government to return to the democratic path.
As we clearly demonstrated in our analysis and evaluation of your unilaterally drafted constitution, it is not a desirable constitution for any country aspiring towards a true democracy. We repeat our recommendation that a new and more representative commission be set up to draft a truly national constitution that will guaranty freedom and liberty for all Rwandans. We renew our call for the release of all political prisoners and the immediate cessation of harassment, threats, and intimidations of human rights organizations such as the LIPRODHOR.
Notwithstanding the contribution of the international community, peace, security, and prosperity will come from Rwandans themselves. It is for this reason that we call upon you and your government once more, to open up the political domain, so that Rwandans can freely participate in the affairs of their country without fear for their lives or their livelihood.
Mr. President, the politics of exclusion that your government has practiced to date, have led to increased tension inside the country, and animosity with virtually all neighboring countries. These alone should be the hallmarks to the failure of your government.
We hope Mr. President, that you and your government will heed our call.
Sincerely,
Alexandre Kimenyi President AMAHORO People's Congress CP 24024 CSP-POINTE Montréal Québec H1A4Z2, Canada WHO IS ROGER WINTERS? The Man for a New Sudan  J Carrier for The New York Times A camp for members of the Dinka tribe outside the town of Abyei, Sudan.  When Roger Winter's single-engine Cessna Caravan touched down near the Sudanese town of Abyei on Easter morning, a crowd of desperate men swamped the plane. Some came running over the rough red airstrip. Others crammed into a microbus that barreled toward the 65-year-old Winter as he climbed down the plane's silver ladder. Some Sudanese call Winter "uncle"; others call him "commander." On this day, angry and anxious, the people of Abyei wanted Winter's help in averting a return to civil war between the predominantly Arab north and the black south — a decades-long conflict, claiming more than two million dead, that Winter helped to end with his work on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005. Winter blinked in the flat light. It was 9 a.m., and the Caravan's fuselage cast the only shadow. Abyei is 600 miles north of the equator, and this was the height of the dry season. The sun sucked the color from everything; alongside the airstrip a herd of gaunt cows licked at the last remnants of mud. The cows would head back north when the rains returned. The people who tend them, the Arab tribe called Misseriya, would then be gone for the season, and northern forces, guided by the national government in Khartoum, would feel free to swoop down and force the Ngok Dinka farmers farther south. Burning villages, killing young men, raping and abducting women and children: this creates ethnic facts on the ground to justify pushing the border south and increasing the north's control of a territory rich in oil. From Easter until May was not much time to forestall the attack, and Winter knew it. For the past quarter century — as head of a nongovernmental organization called the U.S. Committee for Refugees, as an official at the federal Agency for International Development and, most recently, as a special representative to the State Department for Sudan, a post created for him — Winter has fought in the back rooms of Washington and in the African bush to bring peace to Sudan. It's not evenhandedness that makes him effective; it's his total commitment to the people of south Sudan and a conviction, which has only grown with the years, that the government in Khartoum is, in essence, a brutal cabal. After two decades of fighting for their rights at negotiating tables, he has gained the southerners' complete trust. "He's simple and clear," Edward Lino, the southern government's chairman in Abyei, told me. "He doesn't mince words. He's a great man" who also "has great, great push." His stamina is also legendary. Once, during an all-night meeting on the 2005 agreement, a snake bit Winter as he raced through tall grass to present an amended paragraph for the south's approval. Intent on striking a deal, he thought he had run into a rock until a colleague pointed out fang marks in his leg the next day. Senator Jack Danforth, the Bush administration's special envoy to Sudan from 2001 to 2004, calls him "a saint," an "excellent, excellent human being," whose "soulfulness" inspires trust in those he serves. According to Danforth, Winter's intense attachment to the southern side was an asset in the context of a larger diplomatic offensive. "The same person," Danforth notes, "doesn't have to talk to everybody." Winter's bond with the south is such that, since retiring in August 2006, he has worked pro bono as an adviser to the government of southern Sudan, a government he helped to build following the 2005 agreement. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement — which ended the north-south war but did nothing to stop the conflict to the west in Darfur— was among the Bush administration's few major foreign-policy successes. Now it's coming undone, and the collapse is beginning in Abyei, a hot little village built up into a town by oil companies. The population grew to 30,000 from 5,000 as its residents returned after two decades of war. Around a buzzing market of tin-roofed lean-tos and U.N. food warehouses, people were building huts and hanging up tarps. But on the main road, the armies of north and south were mobilizing T-72 tanks and amassing more soldiers. Abyei is at the southern edge of arid land and the beginning of sub-Saharan jungle — even the soil changes from barren sand to rich laterite loam. From the north comes the influence of the Arab world; the south, partly because of the war, has far stronger ties to the West and Christianity. Here, two worlds collide and two governments compete for territory inch by inch; under that ground lies as much as half of Sudan's estimated five billion barrels of oil. In many ways, Abyei is a microcosm for the entire country. As Winter put it, "The future of Abyei is the future of all Sudan." Winter wore black Rockports and brown socks. He carried a nylon briefcase in one hand and a blue plastic shopping bag in the other. Inside it were bug spray, a shaving kit, a change of clothes and "An Army at Dawn," a history of World War II in Africa. As an architect of the failing peace, Winter came to see what might be done to avert the potential slaughter.
(Page 2 of 7) As activists and journalists in recent years focused attention on Darfur, Winter argued, they and the Bush administration have neglected the push for comprehensive peace in the rest of the country. Although both north and south signed the peace accord more than three years ago, little has changed. Without international pressure sufficient to slow the process, both sides were starting to play a very dangerous game of chicken in Abyei. Skip to next paragraph  J Carrier for The New York Times The town of Abyei before it was virtually destroyed by northern military forces in May. "I hope you've done some homework in the United States," Chol Changoth, a member of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (S.P.L.M.), which dominates Sudan's south, said as someone handed Winter a sweating bottle of orange Fanta. "Are the people of the United States taking Abyei into consideration?" He scanned Winter's face for any flicker of hope. Although, technically, north and south share a unified government, the National Congress Party of the north and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement of the south are mostly at odds. Between them, politics become a zero-sum game. The 2005 peace agreement calls for a nationwide census, which, despite flaws, has finally started. The accord also calls for a 2009 national election, which Winter and others say Khartoum may try to delay. Above all, peace means that in 2011, the south is counting on a referendum on whether or not to stay with the north. The question of Abyei was so contested during negotiations for the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that it got its own protocol, one that the United States — with Winter on the negotiating team — agreed to in order to save the peace process as a whole. The U.S. drafted the protocol, pushed both sides to sign it and, according to Winter, then walked away. "We did a good thing and a bad thing," as he explained to the crowd at the airport. "The good thing is the Abyei Protocol. The bad thing is we went home." Now Winter is watching his old adversary, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, play familiar tricks. "Bashir knows he's looked the whole international community right in the eyes," Winter said. "He says yes, yes, yes to the protocol, and then he says no. . . . And what happened? Nothing. So he's learned a lesson, and you can see the lesson even in Darfur because the United Nations says a hybrid force should come and he says no, and what happens? Nothing. So it's very, very, very dangerous, this pattern." At its core, the fight over Abyei raises the question of whether Sudan will remain a single country and how a fissure might be averted. As Alex de Waal, a longtime observer of Sudanese politics, told me, "Abyei is the cockpit of Sudan where the two parties are testing each other's readiness to go to war again." ON THE SURFACE, two different people, the ethnic Ngok Dinka linked to the south and the Arab Misseriya of the north, vie over who has rights to the land. With the added pressure of desertification, the Arab nomads need the greener pastures of Abyei more than ever to graze and water their cattle. They are also being pushed south by the pressures of commercial farming. "In this belt north of the 10th parallel, land that used to be common access has been leased out to mechanized farming schemes," Douglas H. Johnson, a member of the Abyei Boundaries Commission, said. To settle the problem, after the 2005 agreement Johnson and an international team drew a shared border along the 10th parallel, but the north rejected their solution and, on the ground, there was only mounting tension. With so much to lose, the Misseriya and Dinka were growing more anxious as May loomed ahead. And in this standoff President Bashir has done what he always does: endorsed Arab militias who carry out Darfur-style scorched-earth tactics. In the late 1980s, when Bashir was the general in charge of Abyei, the militias chased the Dinka off their land. Just last year, Bashir called on the militias "to open their camps and gather the mujahedeen." Salva Kiir, the president of south Sudan, said, "The guns the Misseriya are using are military weapons." According to Kiir, who is also first vice president in the somewhat notional united Sudanese government, the militias are supported by Khartoum. The similarities between Darfur's attacks and those around Abyei are no coincidence. They betray war's grander pattern in Sudan, the largest country in Africa. As Winter says: "You have to connect the dots. You connect the dots, you see a pattern. A pattern means intent." All of Sudan's wars involve the handiwork of a small group in the center waging campaigns against those who live at the periphery. To hold onto power and resources, the center fights its own edge. Marginalization, Winter said, meant perpetual warfare. "Unless you really have engaged in Sudan, you don't get to that point of thinking," he said. (Page 3 of 7) Winter got to that point of thinking some time ago. His colleague Susan Rice, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs under President Bill Clinton, watched Winter's views evolve. "I've seen him be an advocate when I was a policy maker, and when I was on the outside, he was somebody on the inside we could trust to do the right thing," she told me. "Roger has been a consistent, passionate, principled advocate at a time when we had reason to doubt that the Bush administration was really engaged in these issues." On Sudan, she added, "people of all political, religious and racial stripes view Roger as the compass's true north." In this case, true south is more apt. For Winter's part, he has watched many an American offer "carrots," as he says, to Khartoum. That practice "can be deadly," he told me. "You go to Khartoum, they treat you very nicely, they're very presentable, they're indefatigably hospitable, but their approach to governance is murderous," he said. It's this murderous governance that Winter is determined to end. "I'm not opposed to engagement," he said. "The problem is the way we're doing this and the atmosphere which surrounds it." In Sudan, he argues, "there's a good guy and a bad guy." As he sees it, he sides with the good guys. He doesn't hang out in the middle. "I guess there's a role for that," he said. "It's just not mine." Taking sides can be dangerous, Andrew Natsios, who served as U.S. special envoy to Sudan from 2006 to 2007, argues. "We don't need rallying cries," he said. "A big advocacy campaign right now could be really destructive to the possibility of peace." Winter argues that the Bush administration's pressure for comprehensive peace in Sudan is flagging, in part because America's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have hamstrung its ability to call Khartoum on its myriad abuses against its own people. The U.S. government also seems to be moving toward strengthening relations with Khartoum, which Winter vehemently opposes. But Natsios believes that right now, with the likelihood of a tougher American administration taking over in January, there's a critical window to engage Khartoum. "The north badly wants to normalize relations with the U.S. during the Bush administration," he said. Natsios envisions "a grand deal," including an exchange of oil for land in which the north cedes Abyei to the south (as it already is supposed to do under the Abyei Protocol) in exchange for a percentage of southern oil revenue. "Quite frankly, to make progress in Sudan, you have to engage all parties," Jendayi Frazer, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told me. "Our vision has been a unified government, which is something Roger himself worked for, so we can't not engage the government." Regime change has not been part of American policy in Sudan, and while the United States has kept Khartoum under sanctions, put pressure on it at the United Nations, acquiesced in the referral by the Security Council of Darfur prosecutions to the International Criminal Court (which the Bush administration otherwise opposes) and led several large-scale diplomatic initiatives to push for peace in the region — not least the initiatives in which Winter played a key role — Washington has nonetheless always accepted Khartoum as a partner of sorts. According to Frazer, the United States offered as recently as last December to mediate the north-south conflict over Abyei, but the southern government, led by the S.P.L.M., said it preferred to handle the negotiations with Khartoum itself. "You can't really criticize us for dealing with President Bashir when the S.P.L.M. themselves are saying that's their partner and that's who they want to negotiate on Abyei," Frazer told me. Richard Williamson, the American negotiator appointed by President Bush, has come under fire for his talks with Bashir. "Our president's commitment to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan is deep," Williamson said. "His support for our efforts is unwavering. He looks at me, and I can't come up with a key. Some of my critics have criticized me for engaging. But given the level of suffering, it's worth engaging. It's not enough to criticize. It may make you feel better, but people are still suffering." Danforth told me: "Roger is more principled than I am. He definitely sees engagement as more of a moral issue." But there's a practical aspect, too, to negotiation. After all, Danforth points out, the north did sign a peace agreement. "It has lasted nearly four years," he said. "A lot of lives, I think, have been saved." (Page 4 of 7) WINTER DUCKED INTO a thatched hut in the front-line village of Todaj, a few miles north of Abyei. On the roof were a wooden cross and book-size solar panels, which were charging a satellite phone. Inside, the air was close. Several days earlier, this entire village — 150 Dinka families — fled south to the safety of Abyei on foot. Now only a handful of elders and a chief, Nyol Paduot, his salt-and-pepper hair and beard unkempt, his eyes baggy with lack of sleep, had returned to safeguard their land. Having been run off the land three times — in 1991, 1997 and 2000 — the elders knew the lethal pattern by heart. "We know that when they burn our village, they want the land," Paduot said. "That's why we come back." The elders of Todaj refused to be pushed farther south by Arab militias camping nearby or by the government (northern) soldiers who built barracks at the village's edge. Under the peace deal, the soldiers of Sudan's 31st Brigade stationed here were supposed to withdraw from Todaj, but they have not. As Winter drove past the barracks in a silver S.U.V., one shirtless soldier doing laundry stood up and took a long look. The S.U.V. belonged to their rival, the S.P.L.M., for whom Winter was working. Winter passed what looked like a huge white circus tent, which was labeled I.O.M. in U.N. blue, for International Organization for Migration: a way station for displaced people. It stood dusty and empty. The U.N. had judged it too risky to stay in Todaj. "It's a long war," the chief told Winter. "Peace came, and no one helped us implement it, and it's become a problem." He went on: "I have a question for you who've come from America. In Abyei, we don't know if it's war or peace. When will the intervention come? When the fighting has started again?" The hut grew quiet. A fly buzzed; a pair of baby goats bleated in the corner. Cooking pots clanged next door. "All that's happening in Darfur," the chief said, "happened here in Abyei." The main differences between Darfur and Abyei were religion and oil. Khartoum's troops hit Todaj because they claimed many people there had left Islam, becoming apostate. They justified their actions as jihad against infidels. But in Darfur, government troops attacked fellow Muslims. "That surprised us," the chief said. Besides religion and oil — which Darfur does not have — there was nothing to separate Abyei from Darfur. "Todaj is very strategic for the 31st Brigade to coordinate all their activities for the oil fields," Paduot added. "They bring their supplies from the oil fields here, and this is where they come to distribute ammunitions." He ran his finger north along the white space of a tattered map. According to the boundaries commission's recommendation, this land — up to the line of latitude at 10 degrees 10 minutes — belonged to the Dinka, although the Misseriya were free to use it for grazing. The global-positioning-system reading off the satellite phone put Todaj, the last and northernmost Dinka settlement, at 9 degrees 43 minutes, more than 30 miles south inside where the Dinka had the right to be. "This is our land," the chief said. His own village lay in Block Four of an oil concession operated by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (G.N.P.O.C.) — pronounced gin-pock. The oil was right under us, Paduot said, but no Dinka he knew — or Misseriya for that matter — worked in the oil fields. Suddenly, a group of men in ragtag fatigues arrived outside the mud hut. They sat with their backs against the wall, where they could hear everything going on inside. Sure enough, it was the government forces, and it was time to go. Winter clasped the chief's hand, and then quickly took his leave. Not all of the Dinka were as lucky as those of Todaj. Days earlier, many who had been working as goatherds at Misseriya cattle camps were forced to leave everything behind for good and flee south to the relative safety of Abyei. Because the large white tents near Todaj were too risky to use, about 400 survivors were camped in Abyei, using water from a nearby swamp. (Page 5 of 7) "We refused to leave without our goats," Ayii Dut Dut, one of the displaced goatherds, told me. Among the herders in the camp, about half a dozen were abducted years earlier, then taken north to work for the Misseriya. But most were there voluntarily as shepherds and sharecroppers after the 1988 famine sent them searching for work. In recent skirmishes between the Arab militias and the southern forces, many Arabs were killed. As a result, when the militias returned to their cattle camps after fighting, they wanted their Dinka workers to leave — immediately. But the Dinka said they wouldn't go without the goats, which represented all their wealth in the world. So that night, riding camels and horses, Arabs attacked their camp. Most escaped, but not all. After hiding in the nearby bush, Dut said he returned to the deserted camp at dawn to find three children — ages 5, 5 and 3 — who had been shot. He buried them and left without his goats, he said as he squatted in the shade of a single acacia tree near 200 other displaced people. If Darfur is a land grab, then Abyei is an oil grab. Last year, an estimated $529 million of oil revenue came from the region, according to the International Crisis Group, an independent, nonprofit political-analysis group. Khartoum has used the south's oil to build the north's infrastructure. A combination of war, sanctions and public outcry forced Western companies to abandon Sudan's oil over the past decade, and China, among others, stepped in. Without knowing what to look for, the signs of oil excavation around Abyei aren't so easy to see. You can drive for hours and see nothing but fishermen searching in ponds for Nile perch and mudfish. The roadside is lined with long brown braids of dried fish for sale. "They are some of the poorest people in the world," Edward Lino, the southern government's chairman for Abyei, told me as we drove through the wasteland. "They have this rich land that's being robbed from them, and they don't know what to do." Suddenly, a series of white pipes with red knobs appeared in a clearing along the telltale hummock covering the pipeline itself, which was built in 2003. Beginning in the 1980s, many of the fishermen were forced to resettle in much the same way the people returning to Todaj were being threatened this year. To survive, they depended on a battery of international aid agencies as oil was pumped out from beneath them. One afternoon, I visited a field office of the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company. The company is a consortium in which 40 percent of the investment is Chinese, 30 percent Malaysian, 25 percent Indian and 5 percent Sudanese. International workers in red, green and beige jumpsuits scurried through the waiting room, where a sign read, "Use the waiting time to ask for forgiveness." Outdoors, Chinese workers in red jumpsuits worked alongside Sudanese. The Great Wall Drilling Company was "rigging up": preparing to drill in the next few days, a supervisor, Mohamed Idris, said. He sat behind a door that read "Company Man," while soap operas flickered on flat-screen televisions in the air-conditioned dark. The fishermen living outside the facility have no electricity at all. THE RELATIONSHIP between the Ngok Dinka and the Arab Misseriya is more complex than it looks at first glance. They share a way of life in what John Ryle of the Rift Valley Institute calls "an intimate enmity." One evening, Winter attended a feast in his honor at the home of the paramount Dinka chief, Kuol Deng Kuol, a towering, soft-spoken man. The large mud greeting room, hung with red-flowered bedsheets, was full of Dinka and Misseriya elders. Winter was eating wild honey and bread when two anxious Misseriya leaders, wearing white turbans, approached him. Each was the head of at least 2,000 Misseriya — they were the "cornerstone" of the Arabs in Abyei — and none of them wanted war. Conflict would mean their cows could no longer come south into Dinka land, and they would die. Already under pressure from farming and other nomads to the north, they couldn't risk being squeezed out of the south too. "About this peace, we don't want to lose it," Deng Bilial Bachar, a blustery leader, told Winter. "We're holding it very tightly and very hard." (Page 6 of 7) Recently, the two elders told Winter, government-backed militias had gathered at the edge of town. They were going to attack Abyei. "Three days I was talking night and day to make people go back," Bachar said. Both the Misseriya Arabs and the Dinka were simply pawns in a larger battle playing out between north and south over politics and oil, he said. If north or south wanted to return to war, let them do it somewhere else. "We don't want war, 100 percent," he said. "You have to convey this message clearly." Next to Bachar, with clear blue eyes and a deeply creased face, was Shogar Muhammad Mahmud, who had come from his cattle camp next to the village of Todaj. "The water on that side," he said, indicating the north where he'd come from, "has become so few — little — like drought. Just allow our cattle to graze and get water because there's no water in our side. Just allow us to come through." The Abyei Protocol safeguarded Misseriya migration routes, but Mahmud didn't know this. Critics like Winter argue that Khartoum manipulates the Misseriya by not explaining that peace protects their rights. "It is too easy for those who wish to undermine the C.P.A. to exploit the fear on the part of the Misseriya that ceding Abyei to the south would cut them off from access to dry-season grazing," Ryle told me, referring to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. "And the fear of Ngok Dinka in the S.P.L.M. that they might once more be cheated of the chance for self-determination means that they also are in no mood to compromise." The north argues that Abyei isn't simply a matter of maps. Culturally, Abyei has always been part of the Arab north, they say. "Even during World War II, Abyei was supporting the Middle East by sending cows," the chairman of the National Congress Party in Abyei, Zachariah Atem Payin, said. As a Dinka man who supports Khartoum, Payin exemplifies the complexities of identity in Abyei. He was also among Winter's many detractors. "I've heard he's very difficult, very hard," Payin said. "He's the one who caused all this confusion in Sudan." By confusion, he meant war. "It's because of Roger Winter supporting the S.P.L.M. that they won't listen." WINTER GAZED AT the sun-bleached photo and the artificial flowers that marked the grave of his friend, Dr. John Garang, in the southern capital, Juba. The leader of the south's liberation movement, Garang was killed in a helicopter crash three years ago. Many, including Winter, saw his death as an enormous setback to durable peace. Winter and Garang were extremely close. "He loved to tell jokes, he loved to tell stories," Winter said. Tears gathered on his white eyelashes. "He never lost his focus and basically his focus was a new Sudan, a totally new country, whether it was in one piece or two." Later, Winter sat by the Nile drinking a Bell, a Ugandan beer. The moon was heavy and full, bright enough to see the river eddy as it passed. He spied a baby crocodile splash off the bank. "Look!" he said gleefully, seeming much more like a boy adventurer than an elder statesman. Winter's new role as an adviser to the southern government set off a political storm in Khartoum. In a cable, the U.S. Embassy took note of what one northern paper said: "Winter's appointment 'shows that the S.P.L.M. is a farce . . . a movement that suckles the breasts of the U.S.' " Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the State Department, insisted that Winter's advocacy for the south shouldn't bother people ("It doesn't me," she said) because he no longer has any official American role. His activism began when he was in his 20s in Hartford, where he worked for the Salvation Army. He went on to resettle refugees arriving in America from the world's worst conflict zones, beginning with Southeast Asia after the Vietnam War. But it was his experience working with Tutsis displaced from Rwanda — before the genocide began — that made him move on to the conflict zones themselves. Soon he was riding on the front lines in Rwanda in 1994 with the Rwandan Patriotic Front led by Paul Kagame. During the genocide, he flew home every few weeks to brief the U.S. government on what he witnessed firsthand. President Clinton's later statements that he had not been fully aware of what was happening caused Winter, he says, to leave the Democratic Party. Winter told the people in Abyei: "Honestly, the people that have your interests at heart are you, really only you. The Americans can be O.K. now, but next year they may be not so O.K. But it's your place, it's your life, it's your future." Now that he's out of the American government, Winter makes no bones about what he is: an advocate. His job is to shout himself hoarse until someone listens to what he's saying about the worsening crisis in Abyei and the failure to do enough about it. "That's what an advocate does," he said. "No matter how good the government does, you're always goosing them to do better. Otherwise, why does anybody need you?" (Page 7 of 7) Sometimes neutrality is just not the right answer, and on Sudan, he thinks neutrality is practically and morally bankrupt. "I'm an evangelist," he said, only half joking. "I preach the gospel of Sudan." ABYEI BURNED TO the ground when the rains began in May. As Winter predicted, once the Misseriya cattle were safely out of the south, the north attacked the town. The violence began with the kind of small skirmish that had been occurring for months: policemen from the south and soldiers from the north got into a fight a few miles from Todaj. There was a shootout, and when a northern soldier died in the hospital, his colleagues shot up the ward. Within hours, the 31st Brigade was firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades into the heart of Abyei. The United Nations evacuated most of its nonessential staff by helicopter. Tens of thousands of Dinka fled south. The Arabs took over the town. The ethnic facts that favored Khartoum now existed on the ground. "Mainly women and children are uprooted again from their houses and are now in open areas under heavy rains with no shelter, food and water," the south's president, Salva Kiir, said in a speech late last month. "This human tragedy is caused unfortunately by Sudan Armed Forces Brigade 31 that is illegally present in Abyei town and against the provisions of the C.P.A." As usual, Winter was close by. He flew in the next day from Juba. He organized the first convoy into town after the attack. "Some of the buildings and vehicles are still smoking," he told me by satellite phone. Then he was caught in a sandstorm. "I can't see squat and I can't open my eyes," he said, as he spat sand through his teeth. "The U.N. is buttoned up behind barricades again," he added. "There are almost no people." Later, Winter sent me photographs: the market's stalls were incinerated. Lines of white ash marked where the walls had been. Hospitals and schools were shelled. The U.N. warehouses were destroyed. Terrified people were still streaming south. The U.N. first estimated that 50,000 people were displaced, but Winter, in the road among them, thought the number looked much higher. "This didn't have to happen," Winter shouted over the wind. Kuol Deng Kuol, the gentle Dinka chief who had held the feast in Winter's honor six weeks earlier, was now destitute and staying in huts with dozens of family members. "My people are living under trees," he said by phone from a camp south of town. The American negotiator, Richard Williamson, flew to the town. "I've been to Bosnia and Kosovo and I've never seen anything like Abyei," he told me. "At least 95 percent of the homes were destroyed" — even those 25 feet from the United Nations base. When U.S.-led talks between north and south over Abyei turned to bickering, Williamson walked out. "I'm not going to give any legitimacy of U.S. participation to name-calling," he said. The next day, amid reports of troops massing at Abyei, the United Nations Security Council met with both sides, who agreed to international arbitration, as they have many, many times before. "We need terms of arbitration — specifics," Williamson said. "If 50,000 people who've had their lives shattered isn't enough for you to take responsibility for your own solution, then the U.S. cannot impose one." Disgusted, he told both sides, "If you think I'm a junkyard dog, wait until January." U.S. Trade Officials File Complaint Against China Over Chicken Tariffs  First Posted: 09/20/11 02:13 PM ET Updated: 11/20/11 05:12 AM ET WASHINGTON -- The United States filed a complaint Tuesday with the World Trade Organization that says China violated international trade rules when it imposed tariffs last year on U.S. chicken exports. U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said the tariffs threaten 300,000 jobs in the U.S. poultry industry. The tariffs ranged from 50 to 100 percent, a U.S. trade official said. That means some Chinese importers paid as much as twice the price for U.S. chicken. The case is one of several that U.S. trade officials have filed against China this year at the WTO. The United States has also filed complaints about Chinese tariffs on steel products and its subsidies of wind power equipment. "The United States does not arbitrarily seek disagreements with China," Kirk said. "However, we will not stand still if we believe that China has violated its commitments as a WTO member and is therefore threatening American jobs." China imposed the tariffs in September 2010. It said U.S. chicken producers benefited from subsidies and were exporting their goods to China at unfairly low prices. Countries are allowed to impose punitive tariffs to offset both practices, but U.S. officials said China didn't follow proper procedures when it imposed them. The U.S. was the largest exporter of chicken parts to China before the tariffs were imposed. Since then, exports have dropped 90 percent, trade officials said. That's expected to cost U.S. exporters $1 billion by the end of this year. Once a country files a trade complaint, the two nations negotiate for 60 days. If they are unable to reach agreement, the WTO launches its dispute settlement proceedings. It generally takes about 18 to 24 months for the WTO to resolve a trade dispute. Romney set to assail Obama for welfare changes(CNN) - Changes to welfare pushed by President Barack Obama's administration are providing his Republican challenger Mitt Romney with material for a new round of attacks, including a television ad released Tuesday. The changes, which would allow states greater flexibility in administering their welfare-to-work programs, came in a directive issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in mid-July. At the time, some Republicans claimed the new rules amounted to a "gutting" of work requirements for welfare recipients, which were a central element of the bipartisan welfare reform law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. – Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker – Check out the CNN Electoral Map and Calculator and game out your own strategy for November. In Tuesday's ad from the Romney campaign, an announcer points to Clinton's achievement, and claims Obama's directive would "gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements." "Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check," the announcer continues. "And welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare." Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the welfare ad was one piece in a larger push to highlight the Obama administration's changes to ways states administer welfare. "Middle-class Americans are working harder and harder to make ends meet," Saul wrote. "Under President Obama, they have fewer jobs and less take-home pay. And now, President Obama wants to take their hard-earned tax dollars and give it to welfare recipients without work requirements." Romney, she wrote, "would restore the work requirement in the welfare law so that recipients know the dignity of work instead of the dependency of a handout." The Obama administration directive, issued July 12, allows individual states to experiment with changes to their welfare-to-work programs, which are federally funded. The intent, according to the directive, is to "challenge states to engage in a new round of innovation that seeks to find more effective mechanisms for helping families succeed in employment." The welfare-to-work program affected by the directive – the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) – was created by the welfare reform law signed by Clinton in 1996. That measure was considered a win for conservatives, who long pushed for a provision that required work training for Americans receiving government assistance. The Obama administration argues the potential changes would help people move quickly from welfare rolls to paying jobs by reducing burdensome requirements, including excessive paperwork. Jay Carney, the White House Press Secretary, said Tuesday that any suggestion Obama was "gutting" welfare-to-work programs was false. "Let me say that this advertisement is categorically false and it is blatantly dishonest," Carney said. "This administration's policy will strengthen the program by giving states the opportunity to employ more effective ways." He called Republican criticism of the changes "outrageous," pointing to past support from Republican governors – including Romney – for waivers to the federal requirements. "The ad is particularly outrageous as Governor Romney himself with 28 other Republican governors supported policies that would have eliminated the time limits in the welfare reform law and allowed people to stay on welfare forever. Those are not standards the president supports," Carney said. In 2005, Romney signed a letter along with 29 other state governors to then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, calling for greater state flexibility in managing their TANF programs. "Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work," the letter read. In a memo Tuesday, Romney's campaign Policy Director Lanhee Chen wrote that Romney has remained consistent in supporting work requirements for welfare recipients. "Because Massachusetts had implemented reforms of its own shortly before the federal reforms of 1996, it was actually exempt from many of the federal requirements when Romney took office as governor," Chen wrote. "But nevertheless, facing an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature in one of the most liberal states in the country, Romney vetoed efforts to weaken work requirements and he pressed repeatedly to instead strengthen them and bring them in line with federal standards." Obama's re-election campaign responded to the ad in a statement Tuesday, accusing Romney of "not telling the truth." "The truth is that the President is giving states additional flexibility only if they move more people from welfare to work – not fewer. As Governor, Romney asked for even greater flexibility to waive the central part of the law by letting people receive benefits for an indefinite period and as HHS has said, his waiver request wouldn't be approved today because it weakened the law too much. By falsely attacking a policy that both he and his Republican allies have supported for years, Romney is once again flip flopping on a position he took in Massachusetts, and demonstrating that he lacks the core strength and principles the nation needs in a President," Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith said in a statement. Reacting to boos, Romney goes off-script (CNN) – Mitt Romney was met with a round of boos Wednesday during his speech at the NAACP convention in Houston, after he voiced his goal to repeal "Obamacare." "I'm going to eliminate every non-essential expensive program I can find. That includes Obamacare, and I'm going to work to reform and save," he said, before being interrupted by the unhappy crowd. – Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker – Check out the CNN Electoral Map and Calculator and game out your own strategy for November. The presumptive GOP presidential nominee paused for 15 seconds, as he looked out over the crowd hissing and jeering. Instead of moving on to his next point, Romney went off-script to back up his claim. Romney mentioned, as the boos began to fade, a survey of 1,500 members of the Chamber of Commerce, in which three-quarters said President Barack Obama's health care plan made them "less likely to hire people." "So I say again," Romney continued. "If our priority is jobs, and that's my priority, that's something I'd change and I'd replace with something that provides to people something they need in health care, which is lower costs, good quality, a capacity to deal with people who have pre-existing conditions and I'll put that in place." He then went on to make his next point, as listed in his prepared remarks. The candidate had a few more boos from those who took issue with some of his positions. However, Romney also received some applause lines, as well as a few bursts of organ music during the remainder of his speech. After the event, campaign adviser Tara Wall described Romney's reception as favorable, saying, "I'll take three boos out of thunderous applause over and over again." Pressed by reporters if she really considered the applause "thunderous," Wall quickly walked back her remark. "Okay, applause in general. I think there was a lot more, as I've said a few times, a lot more applause than there were boos. I will take the fact that there was acceptance overall with his speech," she said. After the speech, the NAACP released a statement thanking Romney, "We are pleased that Gov. Romney addressed our convention today." But then Chairman Roslyn Brock criticized Romney's policies, "This morning Gov. Romney laid out his policy agenda for this nation. Unfortunately, much of his agenda is at odds with what the NAACP stands for - whether the issue is equal access to affordable health care, reforming our education system or the path forward on marriage equality. We appreciate that he was courageous and took the opportunity to speak with us directly." NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous also stated that Romney's plans did not meet the interests of the audience. "His criticism of the Affordable Care Act– legislation that will improve the access to quality health care for millions - signals his fundamental misunderstanding of the needs of many African Americans," Jealous stated. – CNN Political Producer Shawna Shepherd contributed to this report. An exemplary determination to end Paul Kagame's oppressionFriday, November 26th, 2010, on an unusual cold day (0 degree Celsius), a group of supporters of democracy and justice from the Great Lakes region, particularly from Rwanda and their friends from other countries of Europe gathered in front of the Department for International Department (DfID) in  London. Some came from Belgium to support their colleagues in UK to raise awareness on issues related to the ongoing repressive situation in Rwanda. I would call the Belgian group The Professionals because of the way they transformed the outlook and impact of the demonstration after their arrival. One of the protesters had travelled from the Republic of Ireland. Another potential participant from Manchester only arrived to London long after the event had ended because of problems of transport he encountered.A participant to the protest was interviewed by BBC World Service in its Kinyarwanda language (Gahuzamiryango Programme). She explained the reason the group had gathered at DfID. The focus was on the lives of oppressed millions Rwandans and memory of those killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo as documented by the UN Mapping Report which was published on October 1st. Two of the protesters had their father imprisoned in Rwanda since 1994. Despite harsh conditions of life in  prison, he had survived until today while tens of thousands had fallen victims of ill treatment, disappeared, been enslaved in mining fields of Eastern Congo, or died in the process of recycling the prison population where some have to give room to unstopping queues of waiting candidates to incarceration.At the end of the demonstration an open letter of which a copy is reproduced below was signed by all participants then handed to a representative of DfID. The group of protesters were highly looking forward to December 6th and 7th when Paul Kagame will be visiting Brussels. They expected to let him know their feelings about his oppressive regime. January 16th, 2011 was another milestone they were geared to as it would be the first anniversary of Ms Victoire Ingabire's return to Rwanda. As she is, among many in the exiled Rwandan community, considered as  an icon of courage, hope for reconciliation and democracy in their home country, they were mobilising Rwandans around the world to come out in big number on that day to tell the international community how urgent was change needed in Rwanda.Copy of open letter to DfID November 26th, 2010 Open Letter to The Rt. Hon. Andrew Mitchell MP Secretary of State for International Development 1 Palace Street London SW1E 5HE Call for immediate release of Ms Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and other political prisoners, and a stop to impunity of Rwandan leaders for war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide Honorable, On this day of November 26th, 2010, we supporters of democracy and justice from the Great Lakes region, particularly from Rwanda, Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo, living in the UK, and friends from different European countries are gathered in front of the Department for International Department in London, to call upon your government to use its financial leverage to put pressure on the Rwandan regime led by President Paul Kagame. We request an immediate and unconditional release of Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, Chair of FDU-Inkingi opposition party, freedom for all other Rwandan political prisoners, and prosecution of perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and apparent acts of genocide committed in Democratic Republic of Congo. Ms. Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza was arrested and immediately incarcerated on October 14th. She continues to be detained in inhuman and humiliating conditions, paraded handcuffed each time she is brought into court hearing. The alleged crimes are seemingly politically motivated charges of forming a terrorist organization (Coalition of Democratic Forces as an alleged military wing of FDU-Inkingi). Ms Victoire Ingabire denies the accusations and has pleaded all along not guilty explaining that she was only being imprisoned for her persistent differing views on Paul Kagame's government policies. The UN Mapping report on crimes committed in Democratic Republic of Congo between 1993 and 2003, which was released on October 1st, 2010, provides detailed evidence of atrocities including acts which could be qualified as genocide in front of a court, and of which Paul Kagame forces are responsible. The Rwandan government, conscious of the seriousness accusations in the UN report has been on the offensive to distract the international community and its partners by mounting monstrous allegations against Ms Victoire Ingabire which could not stand before an independent judiciary. We consider that UK government has committed to support Rwanda at a high cost and without any value for money of what British citizens are giving away in terms of their taxes. This allocation has been so far distributed to Kagame's government without questioning its records particularly on human rights grounds. At the time when Britain and British people are living under drastic budget cuts in different areas of their welfare, it should objectively be the moment to use the financial leverage the country has to put strict and new conditions on UK assistance to Rwanda. Your government can help Rwandans take a commitment to make sure there is peaceful competition for and transfers of power between the political elites. Justice is needed for the country to achieve genuine reconciliation and sustainable development. To have long-lasting peace in Rwanda, there is a strong need of creating political space that enables a concerted and agreed transparent process of transfer and competition for power. In that line, we additionally call for a Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission and a Rwandan National Dialogue. Prevailing situation in Rwanda demands a complete change of UK policy towards Kigali. Not reviewing current approach, and particularly using existing leverage of the millions of pounds of aid committed to the Rwandan government for several years, would be considered as a breach of trust between the British government and its taxpayers. This would as well look as a sign of deplorable indifference with regrettable consequences for the millions of Rwandan victims of institutionalized injustices. Yours sincerely Signed
KAMPALA (Reuters) - African leaders failed on Wednesday to agree on the make-up of a proposed neutral force to tackle the insurgency in eastern Democratic of Congo, diplomats at a regional meeting said. Fighting between M23 rebels and Congolese government forces has displaced nearly half a million people since April. Regional leaders last month brokered a deal for a "neutral force" to be set up to take on Congo-based rebel groups. But the heads of state of east and central African nations meeting to discuss the eastern Congo crisis were divided over whether the troops for a mission to Congo would be drawn from regional countries alone, or would be an international force. Rwanda and Uganda, under pressure from the West to cut all links to the M23 insurgency, want a regional force to tackle the rebels. But Congo has in the past resisted such calls, favoring an expanded role for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo. All 11 members of the International Conference of Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) signed a final communique in Kampala, pledging to seek "home-grown solutions" to the fighting. But a diplomat who declined to be identified said the agreement lacked any real solutions about which countries would provide the troops and who would fund them. "They've just kicked the can down the road," he said. Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni said the heads of state would meet again in four weeks to discuss the findings of defense ministers who were asked to look into the size and make-up of such a force and its logistical requirements. The U.N. Security Council last week demanded an end to foreign support for the Tutsi-led M23 rebels, a rebuke diplomats said was aimed at Rwanda and Uganda. Rwanda has denied accusations by U.N. experts that its military officials have provided equipment and recruits for the M23 rebellion. Uganda has also rejected similar accusations. Ugandan Foreign Minister Henry Okello Oryem told reporters Congo President Joseph Kabila has agreed for troops from regional ICGLR states to tackle the M23 rebels. But Congolese Defence Minister Alexandre Luba Ntambo did not confirm this. He said the "composition and the size of the international neutral force" was to be discussed when the committee of defence ministers meets. Benjamin Mbonimpa, a member of M23's political wing, said representatives from his group were ready for dialogue. "In my opinion they haven't moved forward," he said. "We are actors in the conflict, but the Congolese government wants to negotiate with other actors who aren't on the ground." HUMANITARIAN DISASTER The U.N. has more than 17,000 peacekeepers in Congo but has often been hard pressed to halt fighting and protect civilians in the vast, unruly central African state which produces gold, copper, tin, diamonds and other minerals. Rwandan Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo said there was a need to try a regional force this time around. "We've had an international force in the DRC in the last 13 years and here we are, if not the same then more instability in the region," she said after the meeting. "What we expect to get from the chiefs of defence ... is a clear picture of what this force should look like." UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said on Wednesday a "terrible" humanitarian situation was developing in eastern Congo. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday urged Rwanda and other Great Lakes states to stop supporting the M23 rebels. Donors including the United States, Britain, the Netherlands and Germany have suspended some of their financial aid to Rwanda over the accusations that it is backs the rebels. (Additional reporting by Jonny Hogg in eastern Congo; Writing by James Macharia; Editing by Rosalind Russell) Clinton, Kagame, Rwanda, and CongoSubmitted by annie on Wed, 07/25/2012 - 00:53  KPFA Evening News, 07.21.2012 Bill Clinton traveled to Rwanda within weeks of the UN Panel of Experts on Congo's report that Paul Kagame's Rwandan regime is behind the M23 militia that has resumed the war in D.R. Congo. Transcript: KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Rosenberg: Former president Bill Clinton flew into Kigali, Rwanda this week to, reportedly, officiate at the opening of a cancer prevention and treatment center.  Bill Clinton and Paul Kagame in Rwanda, 07.19.2012Clinton and the Pentagon's longstanding partnership with Rwanda and Congo think he's really there to do damage control after the latest report by the UN Panel of Experts, which offered 75 pages of photographic and documentary evidence that Rwanda is behind the M23 militia led by ICC indicted war criminal Bosco Ntaganda. It was that militia which resumed the war in eastern Congo in April. KPFA's Ann Garrison spoke to Rwanda Genocide survivor and human rights activist Aimable Mugara about Bill Clinton's alliance with Rwandan President Paul Kagame. KPFA/Ann Garrison: Aimable Mugara, how credible do you think it is that Bill Clinton arrived in Kigali, to meet with Paul Kagame and have his picture taken with these children for a charitable enterprise, a cancer hospital, within weeks of the UN report that Kagame is responsible for the M23 militia which has resumed the war in D.R. Congo? Aimable Mugara: I really don't think that it's credible. I don't think this is a coincidence. I really think that those two genociders are talking about Congo. Ntaganda has been indicted by the United Nations International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bill Clinton is probably letting Kagame know that their support for Ntaganda's mutineers in Congo needs to be much more covert, without leaving behind any traces like they recently did and got caught by UN experts. So having Kagame's support for Ntaganda on record is really not going to do good for their image, both Kagame and Bill Clinton, his enabler. KPFA: You wrote an essay, "Bill Clinton, the genocider who just might get away," published in the San Francisco Bay View and the OpEdNews. "Genocider" seemed to be an attempt at an English translation of the French term "genocidaire," which means "someone who commits genocide." Could you explain why you gave the piece that title? Aimable Mugara: Absolutely.The reason why I deeply believe that Bill Clinton is a "genocider" or "genocidaire" is because everything that happened in Rwanda and Congo, the big massacres that happened in Rwanda and Congo were done using the United States government support to General Kagame. And this support was military weapons, financial support, and political support. So without that support by the United States, I really don't think the Great Lakes Region of Africa would have been transformed into the death ground that it became in the 90s. And even after he was not in power anymore, Bill Clinton continues to support General Kagame, despite so many credible sources that have shown how Kagame's forces have committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possible genocide. KPFA: And, when you say that the U.S. supplied weapons and other forms of support to the wars and massacres in the Great Lakes Region, you're including not only Rwanda and Uganda's invasions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, beginning in 1996, but also General Kagame's invasion of Rwanda from Uganda in 1990, which ended in the ethnic massacres of 1994, which then became the justification for Kagame's repeated invasions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Is that right? Aimable Mugara: Absolutely. Basically, when Kagame invaded Rwanda from Uganda in 1990, that was an international crime of aggression. Typically what happens in those situations is for the aggressor to be sanctioned, but in the case of Kagame, the U.S. government instead protected him at the United Nations against any sanctions, and continued to provide the weapons and training and all kinds of support to his rebels who then went on to cause the largest killings ever in that region. KPFA: That was Rwanda Genocide survivor and human rights activist Aimable Mugara. His essay, "Bill Clinton the genocider who just might get away" can be found on the website of the San Francisco Bay View, sfbayview.com, as can Paul Rusesabagina's response to Clinton's trip to Rwanda, this week. Book DescriptionResponsibility of Bill Clinton in the Rwanda and DR Congo GenocidesBy Aimable Mugara.  Bill Clinton, the Genocider Who Just Might Get Away Bill Clinton, the Genocider Who Just Might Get AwayThere are some who will claim that Bill Clinton was the first African president of the United States. Those people clearly do not know that Bill Clinton is the one who established the stranglehold that the murderous gang of General Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda have on the people of central Africa. Those people clearly do not know that as American military satellites showed evidence of the millions of civilians being butchered by General Kagame's and Museveni's forces, Bill Clinton doubled down on his financial, political and military investment in this gang of murderers. Unless of course these people mean that Bill Clinton has the same cold-heartedness that many African presidents have when they order their troops to kill innocent African civilians. The kind of cold-heartedness where your troops come to report that today they butchered an entire village of unarmed civilians because they do not support your dictatorship and you respond "Great job! Other villages now got a good lesson that you're either behind me or you're dead." In 1990, General Kagame who was the Chief of Military Intelligence of Uganda led a violent invasion of Rwanda from Uganda, with the approval and support (financial, military and political) of the United States government. This violent war changed the landscape of that region forever. By landscape, I also mean the number of mass graves that dot every of inch of that region now. The two final years of President Bush the father, during which his American government supported the murderous gang of General Kagame and Yoweri Museveni resulted in the deaths of many innocent Rwandan and Ugandan civilians. During those two years, there are thousands who lost their lives at the hands of General Kagame's soldiers and Yoweri Museveni's soldiers. But this was nothing compared to the more than 6 millions of civilians that would later die under Bill Clinton's 8 year reign, with American money, American weapons and American political support. In a September 30, 2010 New York Times article titled Dispute Over U.N. Report Evokes Rwandan Déjà Vu, it is mentioned how in the fall of 1994, a United Nations investigation discovered that General Kagame's forces had killed tens of thousand of innocent civilians that year. That under pressure from Bill Clinton's government, the United Nations was forced not to publish that report. In that New York Times article, they talk about how the 1994 UN report describes General Kagame's soldiers "rounding up civilians and methodically killing unarmed men, women and children." But that was 1994, a year that is famous for extremist Hutus who went on a rampage and butchered hundreds of thousands of innocent Tutsi and Hutu civilians. The fact that extremist Tutsis under General Kagame went on a rampage in 1994 killing innocent Hutu and Tutsi civilians was totally blacked out due to pressure from Bill Clinton's government. The existence of that 1994 UN report was denied by some American officials and was only revealed recently. One would think that after that, Bill Clinton's government would have kept a tighter leash on its African stooges General Kagame of Rwanda and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Far from that, the two stooges used American money, American weapons and with American political support attacked neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where their forces butchered so many millions of civilians that it is in fact surprising that there is anybody alive left in that country today. As American military satellites recorded evidence of millions of civilians being butchered by this gang of murderers, Bill Clinton smiled away as his government gave more money and more weapons and more political support to these two stooges so they can use this support to keep doing what they do best: kill a multitude of unarmed civilians. They just kept killing and killing and Bubba kept making sure they had the money and weapons necessary to continue the killings and provided political cover whenever anyone asked questions. Fast-forward to 2010. On October 1st, 2010 the United Nations released a report on the Mapping Exercise documenting the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo between March 1993 and June 2003. Regarding General Kagame's extremist Tutsi forces behavior during the 10 year period, especially 1996 to 1998, the report says that "The extensive use of edged weapons (primarily hammers) and the apparently systematic nature of the massacres of survivors after the camps had been taken suggests that the numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage. The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who were often undernourished and posed no threat to the attacking forces. Numerous serious attacks on the physical or mental integrity of members of the group were also committed, with a very high number of Hutus shot, raped, burnt or beaten. If proven, the incidents' revelation of what appears to be the systematic, methodological and premeditated nature of the attacks listed against the Hutus is also marked: these attacks took place in each location where refugees had allegedly been screened by the AFDL/APR over a vast area of the country. The pursuit lasted for months, and on occasion, the humanitarian assistance intended for them was allegedly deliberately blocked, particularly in the Orientale province, thus depriving them of resources essential to their survival. Thus the apparent systematic and widespread attacks described in this report reveal a number of inculpatory elements that, if proven before a competent court, could be characterized as crimes of genocide." How did Bubba react to this latest report? The report was published on October 1st, 2010 however its contents had been leaked earlier and published in the media a month before. So, on September 23, 2010 the Daily Beast site asked Bill Clinton about this report. Bill Clinton said this about his buddy General Kagame "Right now I'm not going to pre-judge him because there's this huge debate about what happened in the Congo and why, and I don't know." To which human rights researcher Carina Tertsakian responded to the Daily Beast that "It is not a matter of pre-judging. … The facts are well-established. … There is no doubt that Rwandan troops, together with their Congolese allies, committed large-scale massacres and other grave human-rights violations against Rwandan and Congolese civilians. The evidence is there for all to see. What more does Clinton need?" But then again, when you are Bill Clinton whose government provided the money, the weapons and the political cover for General Kagame's forces to commit that genocide, I don't know what else you can say. There is a high chance that the long arm of justice will catch up with General Kagame and his commanders in our lifetime. As for Bill Clinton, the enabler, whose government's financial support, military support and political support were crucial in perpetrating this genocide against Africans and covering it up afterwards; I am afraid he will retire peacefully at some mansion. But for those of us Africans who lost many of our loved ones to Bill Clinton's African gang of murderers General Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, we will always remember. We will always remember that Bill Clinton smiled away and gave more support to those butchers as they murdered more and more of us. Take action — click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people: Aimable Mugara. www.rwandahumanrights.org [OpEdNews] A mutual fund is a type of professionally-managed collective investment scheme that pools money from many investors to purchase securities.[1] While there is no legal definition of mutual fund, the term is most commonly applied only to those collective investment schemes that are regulated, available to the general public and open-ended in nature. Hedge funds are not considered a type of mutual fund. The term mutual fund is less widely used outside of the United States. For collective investment schemes outside of the United States, see articles on specific types of funds including open-ended investment companies, SICAVs, unitized insurance funds, unit trusts and Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities. In the United States, mutual funds must be registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission, overseen by a board of directors or board of trustees and managed by a registered investment advisor. They are not taxed on their income if they comply with certain requirements. Mutual funds have both advantages and disadvantages compared to direct investing in individual securities. They have a long history in the United States. Today they play an important role in household finances. There are 3 types of U.S. mutual funds: open-end, unit investment trust, and closed-end. The most common type, the open-end mutual fund, must be willing to buy back its shares from its investors at the end of every business day. Exchange-traded funds are open-end funds or unit investment trusts that trade on an exchange. Open-end funds are most common, but exchange-traded funds have been gaining in popularity. Mutual funds are classified by their principal investments. The four largest categories of funds are money market funds, bond or fixed income funds, stock or equity funds and hybrid funds. Funds may also be categorized as index or actively-managed. Investors in a mutual fund pay the fund's expenses. There is controversy about the level of these expenses. A single mutual fund may give investors a choice of different combinations of expenses by offering several different types of share classes. WORLD BANKER MAKES STUNNING CONFESSION Uploaded by PremierLegend on May 31, 2011 THE FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE WORLD BANK, JAMES WOLFENSOHN, MAKES STUNNING CONFESSIONS AS HE ADDRESSES GRADUATE STUDENTS AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY. HE REVEALS THE INSIDE HAND OF WORLD DOMINATION FROM PAST, TO THE PRESENT AND INTO THE FUTURE. THE SPEECH WAS MAS MADE JANUARY 11TH, 2010. THE NEXT 19 MINUTES MAY OPEN YOUR MIND TO A VERY DELIBERATE WORLD. Quote Commentaries:
Kennendy proposed a bill meant as a form of resistence ...before he was mysteriously killed. The Tzars of Russia resisted...then the family was finally killed and overthrown...Bankers don't just steal. They kill those who resist.
Govt downplays drought severity Uploaded by NTVKenya on Jul 8, 2011 http://www.ntv.co.ke World Bank questions Sh362m expenditureUpdated 4 hr(s) 37 min(s) ago Related Stories
| ||||||||||||||||||||
Africa's internal trade (intra-Africa trade) has consistently remained minimal compared with its intercontinental trade. The pattern of African exports continues to be heavily influenced by historical links with the rest of the world as more than 80 per cent of African countries' exports are still destined for markets outside the continent. RECs have fostered trade development through programmes aimed at achieving a free-trade area, a customs union, and a common market. However, numerous initiatives and decades of experimentation with integration in Africa have not brought about any significant levels in intra-REC and intra-African trade.
World Bank snubs House committee
DROUGHT EFFORT UPDATE 
Karibu Jukwaa la www.mwanabidii.com
Pata nafasi mpya za Kazi www.kazibongo.blogspot.com
Blogu ya Habari na Picha www.patahabari.blogspot.com
Kujiondoa Tuma Email kwenda
wanabidii+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com Utapata Email ya kudhibitisha ukishatuma
Disclaimer:
Everyone posting to this Forum bears the sole responsibility for any legal consequences of his or her postings, and hence statements and facts must be presented responsibly. Your continued membership signifies that you agree to this disclaimer and pledge to abide by our Rules and Guidelines.
0 comments:
Post a Comment