The Pentagon is rapidly expanding its little-noted “anti-terrorist” training program in the nations of Africa’s Sahel. From page 11 of the New York Times, June 10: As Africans Join Iraqi Insurgency, U.S. Counters With Military Training in Their Lands A… Read morePentagon “Pan-Sahel Initiative”
The international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is protesting the arrest of a second representative in Sudan. Vincent Hoedt, a Dutch national and regional coordinator for MSF in Darfur, was arrested May 31 in Nyala. A… Read moreDarfur: Doctors Without Borders volunteers arrested
Italy has finally blinked. Afer two generations of delay, the first of three pieces of a third-century Ethiopian obelisk plundered by the Italian fascist occupation in the 1930s has touched ground in the ancient city of Axum, where it was… Read moreItaly blinks in obelisk controversy
Unfortunately, the recent victory for indigenous land rights in Brazil may be followed by a rollback of recent gains for indigenous peoples in Botswana–where the world is paying even less attention. Reads an April 18 alert from Survival International: Botswana’s… Read moreBotswana: indigenous rights under attack
Italy has once again retreated from a repeated pledge to return to Ethiopia a third-century 75-foot obelisk from the ancient city of Axum which fascist dictator Benito Mussolini brought to Rome as a prize of conquest after his invasion and… Read moreItaly plays politics with Ethiopian obelisk
Brian Grogan, a spokesman for Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief coordinator, told the UK Guardian that an average 10,000 civilians are dying each month in Darfur, totalling 180,000 over the past 18 months. These are only the victims of… Read moreDarfur: 180,000 dead
The UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), being held in Tanzania, has sentenced a former Rwandan civic leader to six years in prison after he pleaded guilty to involvement in the 1994 genocide. Vincent Rutaganira, 60, is the fourth man… Read moreRwanda: one million await genocide charges
A day after "peacekeeping" troops got into a deadly gun battle with a Congolese militia, a UN official blamed "neighboring countries" for fueling the violence in Congo. The Pakistani "blue helmets" mixed it up with troops of the Nationalist &… Read moreUN: “Neighboring countries” fuel Congo violence
Three international reports have fled Zimbabwe ahead of President Robert Mugabe’s 81st birthday celebrations, and a fourth is in hiding after police searches their offices and threatened to have them arrested for slandering the state. Those who fled, Angus Shaw… Read moreZimbabwe: journalists flee
The UN’s IRIN news agency reports that Nigerian troops shot and killed four villagers who were protesting at the main export terminal run by ChevronTexaco in the Niger Delta Feb. 4. Over 200 protesters from the village of Ugborodo near… Read moreNigeria: protesters shot at Chevron terminal
The US is petitioning the UN Security Council not to prosecute Darfur war criminals–just another piece of Washington’s ongoing campaign against the International Criminal Court, which could one day be used against US troops or political leaders. Meanwhile, a report… Read moreAirstrikes hit Darfur village; UN: “not genocide”
