DRC Supreme Court of Justice sentences MP Adolphe Onusumba to 1 year jail term & $100,000 fine

(PHOTO: MP Adolphe Onusumba)



***



MP Adolphe Onusumba was found guilty as charged and sentenced to a

12-month jail term and slapped with a $100,000 fine for statutory rape

by the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) Friday, September 28.



After sentencing, Onusumba was taken away to Kinshasa Makala Prison,

where he'll serve his sentence.



The speedy trial at the CSJ --five court sessions (from Monday,

September 24 to Friday, September 28)--was due to the case of

flagrante delicto involving a member of parliament.



Paradoxically, the CSJ explained the light sentence due to the

extenuating circumstances over the controversy swirling around the age

of Ms. Mireille Owale, the victim of the statutory rape and longtime

ward of MP Onusumba.



One of the six lawyers of the team representing Ms. Owale told

reporters he was dissatisfied by this slap-on-the-wrist sentence that

sends the wrong signal to other sexual predators:





"The public prosecutor was requesting a 20-year jail term but the

Court has settled for 12 months.



"Therefore, we are not quite satisfied regarding this part of the

ruling for it should have served as an example to other predators.



"We are going to take the case to the Grand Instance Court to sue for

damages on behalf of the girl since she'd been sexually abused."



On their part, lawyers of MP Onusumba were subdued and accepted the

verdict and the sentence.



Said one of them:



"The Court rendered its verdict in all sovereignty. We abide by it.



"It's out of the question to talk about either satisfaction or not.



"We respect the verdict of the Court."



After the verdict, Kinshasa tabloids and the grapevine of

Radio-Trottoir went on overdrive with conspiracy theories of settling

of scores along two main threads:



1) FIRST THREAD. According to Kinshasa tabloid "Congo News," MP

Onusumba had allegedly set up a Ponzi-scheme company through which

he'd defrauded investors of $10 million in a bogus bankruptcy.



Those investors, for the most part brass of the regime, had concocted

this sex scandal to take revenge on Onusumba.



2) SECOND THREAD. Still according to "Congo News," though both are

members of the Presidential Majority, MP Onusumba and DRC Media

Minister Lambert happen to be bitter political rivals in their

constituency of Lodja, in the Oriental Kasai Province.



To be sure, Mende and Onusumba are members of the Tetela ethnic group.



But Mende is a Tetela from the forest where the city of Lodja is

located, whereas Onusumba belongs to the Tetela group from the

savannah whose presence in Lodja is resented by locals as an

encroachment.



During the 2011 legislative electoral campaign, supporters of Mende

and Onusumba clashed violently--with death tolls ranging from 1 to 3,

according to last year's press reports.



It took the personal intervention of President Joseph Kabila for the

two rivals to come to an uneasy peace.



"Congo News" report sees the hand of Mende behind the alleged

double-cross. It points to the fact that all the 6 lawyers

representing Ms. Mireille Owale are Mende's own lawyers.



Anyway, this case could be the end of the political career of Adolphe

Onusumba--whose trajectory includes a stint as chairman of the

Rwandan-backed RCD rebel group, DRC Defense Minister in the

post-conflict Transitional regime, and Member of Parliament.



(With radiookapi.net, africanews.cd, Kinshasa tabloids & Radio-Trottoir)



***

PHOTO CREDITS: Klaus Werner

Via: africanews.cd

Read More

No Comment: Onset of Madness: DRC Oil Minister Crispin Atama: We'll see whether we'll destroy Virunga National Park or not!

(PHOTO: DRC Hydrocarbons Minister Crispin Atama Tabe Mogodi)



(MAP: "Block V" oil reserve, given to SOCO International at the

Virunga National Park. See details and legend of this map on SOCO Web

site on the page address below)



(Map Address: www.socointernational.co.uk/block-v-and-the-virunga-national-park)



***



"The DRC has the right to know what resources it has under the earth,

even if it's in the park or the forest, anywhere.



"We're going to evaluate the quantity of the deposit. If it's very

significant we'll compare the

value of the park with the oil...



"We'll see whether we'll respect the park or not. It's up to us!"



--DRC Hydrocarbons Minister Crispin Atama Tabe Mogodi--



Statement made at the weekend to defend the right of the DRC to

obliterate Virunga National Park on behalf of the British oil company

SOCO International, which has just been authorized to conduct aerial

oil exploration at the Park.



North Kivu civil society, the UK government, and 15 conservation NGOs

are opposing the deal to no avail.



***

PHOTO CREDITS: Via: oilgas.ipad-africa.com/



Map Credits: socointernational.co.uk

Read More

DRC Prosecutors seek 20-year jail term for MP Adolphe Onusumba for statutory rape

PHOTO: Dr. Adolphe Onusumba in 2002 while still RCD warlord. He is

currently the chair of the political party "Union des Congolais pour

le Progrès" (UPC), affiliated with the pro-Kabila plank called

"Majorité Présidentielle" (MP).



***



Legal woes of MP Adolphe Onusumba, accused of statutory rape on his

ward Ms. Mireille Owale, worsened Thursday, September 27, at the

Supreme Court of Justice.



MP Onusumba was first stripped of his parliamentary immunity and then

remanded in custody to Kinshasa infamous correctional facility of

Makala Prison.



Then on Thursday, in summing up the prosecution case, the Prosecutor

of the Republic sought a 20-year jail term, assorted with a $108 fine,

for MP Onusumba.



Ms. Mireille Owale's mother first claimed that her daughter was born

in 1995, but when pressed on the subject in cross-examination by the

defense, she changed the year of birth to 1993.



But that as it might, the prosecutor is now focused on the year 2007,

when MP Onusumba is alleged to have first raped Ms. Owale when she was

still either way a minor.



The prosecutor has dismissed altogether the disculpatory evidence of

the copy of the supposed voter's registration card of Ms. Owale

introduced by the defendant, claiming it was "fraudulently obtained."



The prosecutor was basing this dismissal on the finding of the

investigation at the electoral commission by detectives of the General

Prosecutor of the Republic's office.



The defense strategy remains unchanged: the defendant is pleading not

guilty to the charge of staturory rape as, according to MP Onusumba's

lawyers, the sexual relations only happened this year and were

initiated by the victim.



MP Onusumba told the court:



"It was I who was sexually harassed by Mireille."



The defense was set to present its closing arguments this Friday, September 28.



(With radiookapi.net & Kinshasa media)



***

PHOTO CREDITS: Via: bbc.com.uk

Read More

Joseph Kabila & Paul Kabila met twice in New York as North Kivu citizens say No to Neutral Force

(PHOTO 1: Tanzanian Brig. Gen. James Aloys Mwakibolwa, head of Joint

Verification Mechanism, unfurls ICGLR flag in Goma, September 14)



(PHOTO 2: Goma riot cops disperse anti-Neutral Force demos and nab

civil society youths on International Day of Peace, September 21)



***



On Tuesday, September 25, Presidents Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagama

huddled with other regional leaders at an informal "Congo Summit,"

chaired by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, on the margins of the

General Assembly.



The previous day, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had an

"unadvertised meeting" with the pair, Reuters reported.



At both of those meetings the pressure was piling up on President

Kagame to stop interfering in Congo domestic affairs by its support of

M23.



As one US senior official summed up for Reuters Secretary Clinton's

démarche at Monday meeting with the pair:



"The secretary made no threats.



"But it is important for Rwanda to cease any support for any groups

operating against the government of the DRC, and it is important for

the DRC government to take steps to protect all of its citizens."



Diplomatic démarches of the kind engaged in by UNSG Ban Ki-moon and

Secretary Clinton wrongly assume that both parties are coming to the

table to negotiate in good faith.



Rwanda isn't negotiating in good faith, it's negotiating "for side

effects," that is, dissembling all along, as I recalled one reading of

Fred Ikle's book "How Nations Negotiate" (1968) in a post in June.



(See: alexengwete.blogspot.com/2012/06/rules-of-accommodation-congo-vs.html?m=1)



The proof of this contention can be found in the preposterous

anthropological theory of regional conflict-resolution expounded by

President Kagame in his remarks to the 67th General Assembly on

September 25, hours after meeting with Secretary Clinton.



President Kagame claimed that:



"deep analysis of specific political and cultural contexts of any

given conflict is key to lasting solutions.



"Too often, the inclination is to parachute into a situation with

ready-made answers based on superficial examination of the conflict's

dynamics, doing considerably more harm than good, despite the

intentions.



"There is no one-size-fits-all remedy; these issues are complex and

should be approached as such for the best possible outcome."



Little wonder then that President Kagame--after his solipsistic "deep

analysis" à la Clifford Geertz's "thick description"--is frantically

pushing for a regional solution and is defiantly rejecting any

"parachuting" of the international community into his design in

eastern Congo.



President Kagame is betting that at the regional level, he'd get away

with mayhem, mass murder, and plunder.



As for the regional solution to the conflict in eastern Congo, the

military Joint Verification Mechanism (JVM) dreamed up by the

International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) was

launched in Goma on September 14.



The couple of dozens of military officers making up the JVM are led by

Brig. Gen. James Aloys Mwakibolwa of Tanzania People's Defense Force

(TPDF).



The madness or the joke of the JVM mission is that at this stage it

purports to evaluate the strength and armament of negative forces

operating in eastern DRC.



Now, how would they go about gathering such vast intelligence, with drones?



And M23 have warned they'd shoot on sight at anyone venturing into

their micro-state.



Besides, where would this neutral force get funding for such a

formidable military operation?



The UN is already voicing serious doubts about this neutral force,

though it is diplomatically paying lip service to the ICGLR

initiative.



Said U.N. peacekeeping chief Hervé Ladsous at the close of the meeting

of Ban Ki-moon with Kabila and Kagame:



"It is something that generates interest, but we are short of a real

concept of operations - who

would be in, who would do what, who would pay - and this is why more

work needs to be done."



Adding:



"We are already working (with ICGLR) to flesh out the concept because

at the end of the day it will be submitted to the Security Council and

the Security Council will want very precise explanations as to what it

is all about."



Meanwhile on the ground in the DRC, and particularly in the provincial

capital of Goma, there's mounting rejection of this so-called neutral

force, as denizens see the crooked hand of President Kagame behind it.



Goma-based blogger Charly Kasereka (actudukivu.blogspot.com) reported

that the International Day of Peace (September 21) was particularly

violent in Goma.



Charly Kasereka writes that youths of civil society from across North

Kivu Province, carrying white banners reading "No to Neutral Force,"

were violently tackled by riot cops who fired live bullets at the

crowd, wounding one demonstrator in the leg.



***

PHOTO CREDITS: Charly Kasereka & French freelancer Charlotte Cosset

(france24.com)

Via: actudukivu.blogspot.com

Read More

No Comment: François Hollande on foreign interferences in the DRC (UN General Assembly)

(PHOTO: French President François Hollande delivering his maiden

speech at the 67th UN General Assembly, New York, Tuesday, September

25, 2012)



***



"May I recall that this Assembly has been able to assert one

principle: States have all the responsibility to ensure the security

of their civilians.



"And if a state were to fail this obligation, it is incumbent upon us,

upon the UN, to engage means to assume it in its stead.



"Let's not bury this promise for it could be useful.



"I think in particular to what is happening in the Democratic Republic

of Congo, where civilians are the principal victims of clashes and

where interferences should cease as rapidly as possible."



--Translated by Alex Engwete--



(Source: www.elysee.fr/president/les-actualites/discours/2012/discours-du-president-de-la-republique-a.13974.html)



***

PHOTO CREDITS: Mike Segar/Reuters

Via: lesinrocks.com

Read More

MP Adolphe Onusumba, under house arrest for statutory rape, claims his ward not a minor

(PHOTO: Dr. Adolphe Onusumba Yemba, former RCD warlord and current

pro-Kabila MP)



***



There is definitely "equal opportunity" in the number of pervs

populating both wings of the political spectrum in the National

Assembly.



There was first pro-Tshisekedi MP Diomi Ndongala who went into hiding

a while ago after being accused of having repeated sexual intercourses

with two underage sisters.



Now is the turn of former RCD warlord and current pro-Kabila MP

Adolphe Onusumba, who was placed Monday under house arrest after

appearing at the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) for statutory rape of

his underaged ward, Ms. Mireille Owale Kalema.



(Strangely, the Congolese justice system makes short shrift of the

identity of rape victims--and in this case, an underage victim. The

case was brought to the Supreme Court of Justice as "The people and

Ms. Mireille Owale Kalema vs. Hon. Adolphe Onusumba for rape on

Minor"--and featured the live testimony of the rape victim.)



MP Adolphe Onasumbu was nabbed Sunday, September 23, in a room of Dom

III Hotel, in the Barumbu Commune, where he was having sex with his

17-year-old ward.



Mireille Owale's aunt reportedly tailed the couple to the hotel, and

then called cops at the live crime scene.



MP Onusumba, who hails from the constituency of Lodja (Oriental Kasai

Province), took Mireille Owale and her unidentified brother under his

legal guardianship in 2007 and brought them to Kinshasa.



At Monday's crowded court hearing, the CSJ mainly dealt with the

victim's underage status as well as the non-consensual nature of the

sexual encounters brought by General Prosecutor of the Republic (PGR)

Mireille Owale and her lawyer.



MP Onusumba maintained it was consensual sex with a woman who was no

longer underage.



He even produced a photocopy of the alleged voter's registration card

of Mireille Owale issued by CENI for the November 2011 general

elections that gave her age as 22.



(For all legal intent and purposes, the voter's registration card also

serves as the official ID of Congolese citizens.)



Owale denied having ever seen that voter's registration card, produced

her school transcripts that back her age claim, and told the Court: "I

gave in to his sexual advances out of fear."



But, rehearsing the usual defense pedophiles and rapists, MP Onusumba

blamed the victim for seducing him.



Claiming that he was the victim of a double-cross, MP Onusumba told the court:



"I never had sexual relationships with her in 2007. Only three times

since the beginning of this year.



"The sexual relationship were consensual and initiated by her. The

girl kept sending me text messages soliciting those encounters.



"It was her harassments that seduced me."



MP Onusumba further made a self-serving self-incriminating admission

to the court, alleging he'd illegally reduced the age of Mireille

Owale when he had her register at her new school in the Bas-Congo

Province in 2007.



The court ordered the PGR to send detectives Tuesday at CENI to

investigate the matter related to the issuance of the voter's

registration card to Mireille Owale.



The Court also ordered the victim to undergo age tests at the

coroner's labs as there were contradictory documents produced at the

CSJ!



"Age tests"?



MP Onusumba's age defense is preposterous.



Does he mean that he would have gotten away with passing a 17-year-old

young woman for a 12-year-old, in 2007, when he successfully

petitioned for guardianship of Mireille Owale?



In any event, if convicted, MP Adolphe Onusumba faces between 3 to 20

years behind bars.



--(With Kinshasa media)--



***



PHOTO CREDITS: Via: africatime.com

Read More

Comic Relief at Virunga National Park: Guerrilla Marketing by Gorilla Marketing

(PHOTO 1: Ranger Balemba Baligizi, Project Leader of the Briquette

Programme at Virunga National Park, in a gorilla suit in a crowd of

IDPs squatting the buffer zone of the Park)



(PHOTO 2: Ranger Balemba Baligizi leans on the entrance sign at

Rumangabo Station)



***



Who says there can't be comic relief amidst the misery of war in North Kivu?



We see that there are indeed jocular patches on the seemingly smoothly

woven fabric of gore, fear, dread, and want that are the daily lot of

IDPs by reading the 19 September blog entry of Virunga National Park

Chief Warden, Dr. Emmanuel de Mérode.



The short post is titled "Gorilla Marketing in the Refugee Camps."



Dr. de Mérode:



"Because of the war, there are now about 250,000 internally displaced

people on the park boundary.



"They desperately need fuelwood, and their only option is to go into

the park and cut down the forest.



"We have been trying to convince them to use fuel briquettes as a

clean alternative.



"But we have to convince them, and that's not easy, but we've

discovered a new form of marketing.



"Guerrilla Marketing…"



Then, Dr. de Mérode suspends the sentence so as to amplify with the

definition of "Guerrilla Marketing" as given on Dictionary.com:



"Main Entry: guerrilla marketing



"Part of Speech: n



"Definition: any of a number of unconventional methods of marketing

with minimal resources for maximum results; any marketing campaign

that uses non-mainstream tactics and locations



"Etymology: 1982"



After which, Dr. de Mérode picks up his suspended sentence:



"… and this is what Balemba came up with:



"[PHOTO 1 above]



"[Legend:] Balemba, looking pretty. Briquettes in one hand, energy

efficient stoves in the other. Potential customers all around.



"The jury is still out as to whether it will work, but it did bring a

few smiles to otherwise terribly stressed families."



(Source: gorillacd.org/2012/09/19/gorilla-marketing-in-the-refugee-camps/)



Laughter aside, I've got this pressing question: Where the hell would

these deprived IDPs find the money to buy those briquettes and those

energy-efficient "bambolas"?



***



PHOTO CREDITS: gorillacd.org & flickr.com

Read More

Burundian Army Sources: Rwanda setting up Mai-Mai militias in South Kivu via Burundi

(PHOTO: Luberizi, South Kivu, where Rwandan-created Mai-Mai Obed

attacked a proving ground of FARDC September 17)



***



Chances are you've already heard of the "false twins" that Burundi and

Rwanda represent.



Well, forget all about that.



Burundi and Rwanda are now (and have always been) true, and even

conjoined, twins when it comes to wreaking terror, instability, and

pillage in eastern Congo.



And this association has now hatched yet another devious scheme against the DRC.



But, uncannily, with Congolese aiding and abetting!



Sources in the Force de la Défense Nationale du Burundi (FDNL), the

Burundian army, tell me about their frustration at not being able to

put a stop at the vast-scale conspiracy now unfolding in South Kivu.



It seems, they tell me, that Rwanda has revamped its military strategy.

And they tell me that this a major shift in Rwandan Congo strategy.



One of the sources even joked, saying the strategy seems to echo

Ernesto Che Guevara's "Foco" theory developed in his book Guerilla

Warfare and with contributions from Régis Debray.



The idea in Foco Theory is that small roving bands of young fighters

could ignite small, focused and sustained guerilla "foyers" and still

bring down a regime by sheer exhaustion without waiting for the proper

so-called revolutionary conditions to happen.



Guevara went as far as to generalize this Foco theory of his by

claiming that he'd bring down American Imperialism by igniting one,

two, ten and more Vietnams around the world!



As we all know, Guevara fought in the Kivus, where his theories were

proven unsuccessful.



Guevara also wrote that the only thing distinguishing a guerrilla from

a bandit is the support of the people for the former.



Rwandans need to constantly keep this precept in mind as they push

ahead with this new crazy scheme in the Congo.



At any rate, here's how those sources presented to me the new Rwandan

(and Burundian) strategy:



1) Congolese intelligence agents and assets in South Kivu Province,

especially Uvira and all across the Ruzizi Plain, are in the pocket of

Burundian intelligence;



2) Burundian intelligence agents and assets are in the pocket of

Rwandan intelligence;



3) A massive recruitment drive of combatants is underway in Rwandan

and Burundian refugee camps sheltering Congolese Rwandophones;



4) New recruits have all had some military training or familiarity with weapons;



5) Combatants are then escorted into the DRC by Rwandan military advisors;



6) Some of these combatants are now in the Rubumba hills above the

city Luberizi, and, aping Congolese armed groups, call themselves

"Mai-Mai Obed" (after their leader who's named Obed, a former RCD

officer);



7) In the night of Monday, September 17, Mai-Mai Obed successfully

launched an attack on the FARDC proving ground of Luberizi, looting

the arms depot and killing one soldier (an attack confirmed by a

report filed by Radio Okapi on September 18); and



8) The idea is to spread those "foco groups" inside DRC to stir or to

create "foyers of armed tensions" by setting up fake Mai-Mai groups,

as one of the officers summed up the strategy.



***

PHOTO CREDITS: globalgiving.org

Read More

Wuthering Flats: Contemporay masses & the violence of the withering Aura of monokini-clad Victorian Bodies in the Age of Digital Reproduction

(PHOTO 1: Cover of Italian gossip magazine "Chi" featuring grainy

pictures of topless Kate Middleton, presumably shot by French

paparazza Valérie S.)



(PHOTO 2: An unidentified woman carjacker mobbed and stripped naked in

downtown Nairobi about a week ago)



***



A twister of Victorian rage triggered by photos of monokini-clad Kate

Middleton has swept over Great Britain these past few days, leaving in

its path free speech severely scathed in... France!



France, where the gossip magazine Closer--owned by ex-Italian PM

Silvio Berlusconi--first published the topless pictures.



And where a court has since fined Closer and ordered it to hand over

originals of those photos to the princely couple.



To just show the futility of this ruling, the princely topless photos

are ubiquitous on the Internet and copies of the issue of Closer

magazine are "up for grabs on e-Bay," according to news reports.



What's more, Chi--the other Berlusconi-owned gossip mag--has since

picked up where its sister publication has left, turning the court

ruling into a Sisyphean farce.



Pull-outs of the topless photos have been included in tabloids in

Ireland and are also set to be published in Denmark and Sweden.



A "hollow victory" of the princely couple in France, as a London

tabloid has aptly quipped.



In the U.K., there's a nascent movement of French bashing; a hunt for

The "Rat" (paparrazo), reported gone into hiding, is launched; a

boycott of French goods may be afoot; Berlusconi is once more a

whipping boy; and there's even talk of a "diplomatic row" with Italy!



British wrath over the Satanic Photos has even kicked the murderous

outrage over the infamous anti-Muslim movie out of news cycles.



And the North-African Al-Qaeda affiliate call for assassinations of

American ambassadors had barely registered in the firestorm.



All this rage over grainy pictures shot by a paparazza with a Canon

telephoto-lens camera from a mile away!



Oh my, the hypocrisy!



Both British tabloids and high-brow media have even conspired to not

publish those topless photos.



And if you go to their Web sites, you won't get any links to the

pictures or to the magazines that published them or still host them on

their sites.



You'd only find self-cannibalizing, self-referential hyperlinks

relating to their previous outrage over the topless photos.



A while back, it was a different game altogether, when British

tabloids scrambled for the naked photos of Berlusconi.



Anyway, I don't know what the princely couple expect to achieve with

these frivolous lawsuits in this Age of Digital Reproduction, to

paraphrase the title of Walter Benjamin's famous essay, "The Work of

Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."



Incidentally, in that essay, the words "close," "closer," and

"up-close" recur quite a few times--as shoutouts before the fact at

Closer magazine.



Benjamin posits that in the past works of art and natural objects had

"authenticity" and "aura" conferred to them by the "distance" from the

beholder.



But with the advent of the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (ushered in

by still photography and motion-picture), that aura "withers" and the

distance to the beholder has vanished.



These technologies of Mechanical Reproduction caused a sea change in

the mind-set of people, in the history of mentality.



People--Benjamin call them "contemporary masses"--now want to draw

things "closer" to them and to "[overcome] the uniqueness of every

reality by accepting its reproduction."



Says Benjamin:



"Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very

close range by way of its likeness, its reproduction."



Benjamin was writing in 1936, in the prehistory of modern-day

technologies of reproduction.



(Other thinkers have come with new concepts to describe the same

reality Benjamin was pointing to.



From Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle to Régis Debray's

Mediat Society--to just name those two.)



In this Age of Digital Reproduction, this "desire" for closeness with

objects by mass reproduction has reached fever-pitch urgency.



I don't recall Benjamin ever mentioning in that essay the violence

entailed in this craving for immediacy, though he talks about the

crafting of aura by celebrities off stage and off cinemas.



A violence akin to the ripping violence imagined by British novelist

Peter F. Hamilton in the sci-fi trilogy "The Night's Dawn."



In Hamilton's trilogy, a "reality dysfunction" suddenly occurs in a

remote space colony whereby souls trapped in the torments of the

beyond come back to possess the bodies of the living.



And the possession is spreading all over the inhabited planetary

systems like an unstoppable virus.



People learn from those returned souls that naked souls stuck in

Purgatory live in perpertual torment as other souls pry into all the

emotions and memories they'd experienced while still in the vessels of

their human bodies.



That's the kind of prying violence celebrities are experiencing in

their daily lives at the hands of paparrazi and the "contemporary

masses" that feed on the red meat being thrown at them.



It comes with the terrority as the adage has it.



And there are no categories in celebrities.



Lady Di is just as fair game as Lady Gaga or as Mitt Romney at the

Boca Raton fundraiser.



We're all shoulder-to-shoulder in these Wuthering Flats--you, me, and

monokini-clad Victorian bodies.



That craving for immediacy is also what fuels the urge for

transparency of both whistleblowers and hackers.



I relish reading the diplomatic immediacies brought to me at the

nearest Internet access by WikiLeaks--despite the "harm" it may cause

to US interests worldwide.



The explosion of the Internet; and the possibility of instant

democratic, unrestricted access to everything by everyone. This is

grand!



By the way, some hackers would pretty much enjoy the immediacy of your

bank account.



Unable to penetrate the vaults of Wall Street, the OccupyWallStreeters

go to the immediate vicinity of Wall Street.



Things are out there and it's up to you to uncover them, to grab them,

to bring them near to us, and to them to share with others.



I read somewhere that there's a new school of British

artists-theorists called "The New Aesthetics," who are able to account

for all these occurrences in the Age of Digital Reproduction.



I'm curious to know what their take would be about the hoo-haa over

the topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge.



Now, look at the second photo above.



The unnamed woman, caught as she and her gang were in the process of

broad daylight carjacking in the streets of downtown Nairobi, was

mobbed and stripped naked.



This is real naked and raw violence--perpetrated by the crowd, the

photographer, and by the consumer of violence that I am, who force you

to share this violence with me!



We live in an age where to even conceive of the Aura of objects like

the boobs of the Duchess of Cambridge is idiotic.



The Brits, who have invented tabloids, ought to know that there are no

such things as prudish closeted "Victorian" bodies in the Age of

Digital Reproduction.



***



Photo Credits: Chi

Via: www.mondadori.com/Group/Magazines/Italy/Chi ; & kenyan-post.com

Read More

AFRICOM: Gen. David "Rod" Rodriguez to take over command next year

(PHOTO: Major General David M. Rodriguez speaking on an unspecified

date at the Washington Foreign Press Center while still the commander

of the 82nd Airborne Division, Coalition Joint Task Force - 82

Regional Command-East, Afghanistan)



***



The New York Times reported Wednesday, September 19, that Gen. David

"Rod" Rodriguez "would take over early next year from Gen. Carter Ham

in what two American officials said was a routine change of command."



The reporting piece, written by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, says

that Africa "in the wake of the Arab Spring has become one of the

Defense Department's most challenging theaters of operation."



Gen. Rod is currently "head of the Army's Forces Command, which trains

and equips troops," with the responsibility of "training and equipping

265,000 active-duty soldiers, as well as training and overseeing the

readiness of 560,000 soldiers in the Army Reserve and Army National

Guard."



Still citing those unnamed officials, the report says:



"Because of the presidential election and the need to get the

necessary paperwork ready, General Rodriguez's expected nomination

would probably not go to the Senate for confirmation until the

postelection session."



Gen. Rod, a West Point graduate, "also has extensive combat

experience. He served two tours in Iraq and two tours in Afghanistan,

including a stint in eastern Afghanistan as commander of the 82nd

Airborne Division and later as deputy commander of allied forces there

with responsibility for the day-to-day management of the war."



Among the fallouts of the Arab Spring, the report points to the US

Benghazi Consulate deadly attack, the Boko Haram terrorist group in

Nigeria, Al Qaeda affiliates in Mali and Somalia as well as "remnants

of the Lord's Resistance Army" (LRA).



(Source: www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/world/africa/ex-commander-in-afghanistan-in-line-for-top-africa-post.html?ref=world&_r=0)





***

PHOTO CREDITS: fpc.gov; state.gov

Read More

Photo Test

Photo Test.

Read More

Curse of Celebritydom (by Shobhaa De): On Indian Cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, indicted on Sedition Charges

(PHOTO: 25-year-old Indian cartoonist Aseem Trivedi speaking to the

media after his release on bail from Arthur Road Prison in Mumbai,

Wednesday, September 12, 2012)



***



(Outraged, I recently begged Indian celebrity blogger, writer,

scriptwriter, producer, columnist, social & cultural critic, Ms.

Shobhaa De, to come out swinging on her blog--which is on my

blogroll--against the arrest of anti-corruption campaigner-cartoonist

Aseem Trivedi on sedition charges.



Those sedition charges stem from Trivedi changing last year in one

cartoon, as the BBC has it, the "customary three lions of India's

national emblem" into "three wolves, their teeth dripping blood, with

the message 'Long live corruption.'"



Another cartoon, adds the BBC reporting piece, "depicts the Indian

parliament as a giant toilet bowl."



Anyway, Shobhaa De was already planning to write about the hoo-haa on

her regular "Politically Incorrect" column in Times of India.



So, she tersely emailed me: "in my Sunday Times col. thanks de."



She also posted that column on her blog.



I must confess, I didn't anticipate she'd tackle the controversy from

this angle.)



(I reformat the text to suit my formatting on mobile phone.)



***



Curse of celebritydom



Shobhaa De



16 September 2012, 06:11 AM IST



Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the ugh-est of them all?



That's the question Aseem Trivedi seems to ask in his latest cartoon.



Errr, Aseem? Yup. The same.



This is what happens when an utterly nonsensical sedition case is

filed against a cartoonist (high on

anger, low on talent) — it's called a one day phenomenon.



But here's the upside to the controversy.



The recent furor has drawn public attention to the growing antipathy

against the 'ugly politician'.



It sure looks like this is going to be the winter of our discontent.



First came the brutal attack on traffic cop Mohan Lal by a minister's

security personnel.



Lal's crime?



He had dared to stop the minister's convoy for jumping a red light.



Then came news of some obscure cartoonist's arrest in Mumbai.



In both these seemingly unrelated cases, the strident howls of protest

from the aam junta were similar in nature — they were more against the

abuse of power by the high and mighty than in support of

two wronged individuals.



The big question in both cases — how long before we move on?



Mohan Lal may end up nursing a bloodied and bulbous eye all by

himself, once the media pounces on an even grislier story.



After all, Mohan Lal has not announced his intentions of joining a

citizens' movement or turning into an activist .



There is nothing 'sensational' about Mohan Lal's predicament.



This beastly incident is just another tragic case of an earnest

government servant paying a huge price for doing what he's paid to —

his duty.



Congress minister Taj Moiuddin will carry on, unapologetic, unscathed

and unmoved.



His repeated chant that he doesn't have eyes at the back of his head,

will also be filed away indifferently and soon forgotten.



But what happens from this moment on to young Aseem Trivedi will be

far more interesting to

monitor.



Here's a likely scenario: as of now,

Aseem is the newest darling of the media.



He has been completely co-opted by those crying hoarse against an archaic law.



So far, it reads like a meaty story.



Aseem, with disheveled hair and

wearing the mandatory black kurta, lends himself perfectly to the

darkness of the moment , as he

plays to the gallery, spewing contempt and talking of freedom of expression.



He is also producing cartoons on command as apt photo-ops.



That is, when he isn't posing for shutter bugs, hugging well-known

people like Dr Binayak Sen.



Aseem's minders may have taken over his image building, going by how

swiftly he undertook an expeditious damage control

exercise when the Dalit heat was about to get to him.



Once out of jail, what did our cartoonist friend do — he rushed to

Buddh Vihar to pay his respects to Babasaheb Ambedkar, adding he had

the 'greatest respect" for the Dalit leader and the Constitution.



He also grabbed a quick lunch at

Mayank (India Against Corruption) Gandhi's office, before addressing a

packed press conference.



What does the future hold for disgruntled young people like Aseem when

they are suddenly

propelled into the limelight and converted into overnight martyrs?



What happens when an Aseem becomes a pivot, a symbol, even a hero?



Does collective anger find the outlet it seeks?



Or does the initial emotional outpouring get dissipated , leading to

absolutely nothing but a

few dramatic media clips?



Political parties are quick to swoop down on people like Aseem.



Any person who can grab headlines is worth courting . In such a

cynical scenario, someone like him is a catch.



So far, he has presented himself as a somewhat naïve but reasonably

sensitized young man, using

crude cartoons to express his disillusionment.



His life has undergone a 360-degrees change after the misplaced

sedition charge.



He is now owned by the media.



He is hot property.



He will make it to international publications and global channels.



For a short while at least, Aseem will gobble up publicity and share

front page space with movie

stars and sports heroes.



Someone smart will ask him to walk the ramp— for a cause, of course.



He will be wooed to play showstopper during the unending Fashion Weeks.



Reality shows will chase him.



He may enter the Big Boss house.



Get a publishing deal.



His career as a budding cartoonist may end abruptly.



But so what? For another 15 minutes, or perhaps 15 days, Aseem will be

hailed as a bona fide celebrity, a star.



The ravenous media monster isn't done with him yet.



And yes,he also draws cartoons for a living.



(Source: blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/shobhaadeblog/entry/curse-of-celebritydom)



(Source: shobhaade.blogspot.com/2012/09/aseem-trivedi-one-day-wonder.html?m=1)



***



(PHOTO CREDITS: Via: timesofindia.com)

Read More

South African Ambassador to Burundi secures safe-conduct for MP Roger Lumbala, who's now in Paris

(PHOTO: Pro-M23 MP Roger Lumbala Tshitenge)



***



Few details have emerged about the safe-conduct the the South African

Ambassador to Bujumbura was able to secure for the Congolese pro-M23

MP Roger Lumbala.



MP Lumbala, flanked by South African diplomats and a UNHCR senior

official, arrived Saturday at Bujumbura International Airport at 11:00

am local time (GMT+ 2) and boarded a Paris-bound Kenya Airways flight,

Radio France Internationale (RFI) reports.



MP Lumbala arrived in Paris in the morning of Sunday, September 16.



On Friday, Burundian External Relations Minister Laurent Kavakure

confirmed to RFI Lumbula's safe passage without adding any further

comment.



But diplomatic sources tell RFI this outcome was possible because the

DRC dragged its feet in lodging its formal extradition request to

Burundi.



(Source: www.rfi.fr/afrique/20120916-burundi-roger-lombala-rdc-m23-laurent-kavakure-france-sud-africaine-ambassade-)



In a phone interview with Radio Okapi Sunday, Lumbala denied any link

with M23, switching from the first person to the third person, as is

his wont, while talking about himself:



"I'm not part of M23. I'm not in contact with friends of M23. Roger

Lumbala is free to go anywhere, wherever he wants, as a citizen of the

world. But this doesn't mean I went to Kigali."



Lumbala added:



"When you want to build, you don't accuse others, you don't look for

scapegoats. I wish the government would rather deal with reform of the

army than look for scapegoats."



Reached by phone to give his reaction to Lumbala's departure from

Bujumbura and his statements from Paris, DRC Media Minister Lambert

Mende told Radio Okapi:



"This changes absolutely nothing to the will of the DRC government to

see Roger Lumbala explain himself before the Congolese justice for the

serious deeds that were reported to us and of which he is the culprit

by conspiring with the Rwandan aggressor against the Democratic

Republic of Congo in this war that continues to plunge North Kivu into

mourning."



(Source: radiookapi.net/actualite/2012/09/16/depuis-paris-roger-lumbala-je-netais-pas-kigali-je-ne-suis-pas-en-contact-avec-le-m23/)



***

PHOTO: Wat.tv

Via: rfi.fr

Read More

Parallel Universe: President Mitt Romney orders strikes on Benghazi, Tripoli & Cairo

Navy destroyers USS McFaul and the USS Laboon (seen here) unleashed

early Friday morning a barrage of Tomahawk cruise missiles on

Benghazi, Tripoli, and Cairo. The two warships were already deployed

in the region at the time of the US Benghazi consulate attack Tuesday

for a naval exercise dubbed "Restore Faith in American

Exceptionalism." One aircraft carrier and 4 destroyers left Norfolk

early yesterday and are headed to the region. Photo by Communication

Specialist 2nd Class Daniel Barker/ US Navy/AP.





***



The Associated Press

Saturday, Sep 14, 2012 (3:30 p.m.)



President Mitt Romney ordered Friday strikes on Benghazi, Tripoli, and

Cairo in the wake of the killing of US Ambassador Christopher Stevens

and three other embassy personnel this week.



But The Associated Press correspondent in Benghazi saw scores of

civilian casualties, including women and children, at the city's main

hospital in the wake of the first wave of the combined air raids and

tomahawk cruise missile strikes.



In Tripoli, the tomahawks leveled Liberty Square, shortly after 50

marines of the Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST) had extracted

all US embassy personnel Friday at mid-morning.



In Cairo, the presidential palace has been razed to the ground and

Tahrir Square is a smoldering lunar landscape.



Secretary of State Michael Bolton told CNN yesterday:



"This is a wake-up call to the Islamist world. They've got to realize

that the time when America used to apologize for our way of life has

come and gone! Attacks on American interests abroad will no longer

stand!"



Sources at the State Department tell The Associated Press that

Secretary Bolton is pressuring Google to "unblock" access to the Islam

bashing video in Egypt and Libya.



The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not

permitted to share information with the media, add that Secretary

Bolton feels that American values of free speech are "non-negotiable,"

echoing President Romney.



To just make that point crystal clear, President Romney publicly

rebuked on Fox News Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey

for calling Florida pastor Terry Jones (who infamously burned copies

of the Quran in April), asking him not to promote the anti-Islam

YouTube video at the heart of protests.



To further drive that point home, the White House announced this

morning that President Romney will be hosting this weekend at Camp

David Sam Bacile, writer and director of the offending low-budget

movie, its promoters and producers, as well as pastor Terry Jones.



Romney's National Security Advisor Lanhee Chen told The New York Times

this morning:



"We've had this consistent critique and narrative on Obama's foreign

policy, and we felt this was a situation that met our critique, that

Obama really has been pretty weak in a number of ways on foreign

policy, especially if you look at his dealings with the Arab Spring

and its aftermath. Now is the time, as the president said, to tell the

Islamists that our values are not negotiable."



At a press briefieng at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Dan Senor

revealed that a no-fly zone has been established over Libya, Egypt,

and Yemen as drones are gathering intelligence on the targets in the

next wave of bombings.



Defense Secretary Senor also warned that if Yemen fails to rein in

Islamist demonstrators at the US embassy, Sanaa will be added to the

list of targets.



The whereabouts of Libyan President Mohammed Maqrif are unknown.



He's presumed to have gone into hiding shortly after President Romney,

who took his call in the Oval Office on speaker phone in the presence

of Fox News Sean Hannity, testily told him:



"We are gonna bomb your country back to the Middle Ages where you

Islamists belong!"



The Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi is stuck in Brussels, where he

was holding talks with the European Commission.



President Romney is vowing to bring both presidents to justice.



Rep. Tom King (R/New York), chairman of the House Anti-Shariah

Activities Subcomittee, told the New York Daily News he won't leave a

stone unturned until he uncovers the help extended to Libyan

extremists by all Islamist Brotherhood anti-American and pro-Sharia

activits embedded in mosques all across the nation.



___



Michael Shields reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Caleb

Cohen in Washington, Asha Makt in Tripoli, Joseph Russel in Benghazi,

Tony Ashton in Sanaa, and Daniel Moore in Jerusalem contributed to

this report.

Read More

Le Potentiel attacks PM Matata but Radio-Trottoir sees hand of Inner Circle

(PHOTO: Didier "Didi" Kazadi Nyembwe, former spy chief, the man

Radio-Trottoir accuses of engineering vicious attacks against PM

Augustin Matata Ponyo Mapon)



***



When the new government was ushered in in early May, Kinshasa daily Le

Potentiel was among other Congolese media that praised the wisdom of

President Joseph Kabila in selecting the unassuming and nerdy new

prime minister, Matata Ponyo, and hailed the cabinet of "technocrats"

the latter selected.



Well, no more!



The short-lived honeymoon has given way to a throbbing hangover.

Four months later, Le Potentiel is on the frontline, launching vicious

ad hominen attacks against PM Matata.



These past few days, Le Potentiel has published in rapid succession

two reports-cum-opinion pieces calling for nothing less than the

firing of PM Matata and his team.



But Radio-Trottoir or Sidewalk Radio--the grapevine cauldron where

Congolese concoct their conspiracy theories--has forcefully come out

to the defense of the embattled prime minister.



Radio-Trottoir claims that these attacks show the rise, after a brief

retreat, of President Kabila's so-called "Inner Circle," made of

powerful kleptocrats and whose racketeering activities have been

hampered ever since PM Matata took office.



I give below first the attacks against PM Matata by Le Potentiel, then

Radio-Trottoir's spirited defense of the DRC premier.





I. ATTACKS BY LE POTENTIEL



1) The first installment of attacks by Le Potentiel happened on

September 9 in a sometimes confused article titled "Government:

Shake-up or Rejigging."



The article recounts the meeting the previous week of the political

bureau of President Kabila's Majorité Présidentielle (MP), presided by

Speaker Aubin Minaku.



According to Le Potentiel, that meeting saw MP stalwarts come out

swinging against the "technocracy" of PM Matata and his team of

"nerdy" cabinet ministers.



And Le Potentiel sides with and relay the virulent criticisms against

PM Matata voiced by MP top brass at that meeting, whose day and

setting aren't otherwise specified.



Le Potentiel claims that the first stalwart to jab PM Matata was

Speaker Minaku, who was demanding that the government "refocus" its

action--though Le Potentiel fails to unpack the content of the

reframing the Speaker has in mind.



Unnamed MP sources cited by Le Potentiel charge that Matata cabinet,

all too deeply wired into "theory," don't have the "political" brass

balls it takes to block the body blows Kigali is administering on

Kinshasa!



Says Le Potentiel:



"The original sin of setting up a government of technocrats has bobbed

up to the surface. It's about a reaction-time deficit in the face of

Kigali offensives. Which would amount to an absence of sociological

anchoring into reality. A lethal abscence in this war-time period."



Only "seasoned" and "heavyweight" pols could be up to the daunting

task of countering diplomatic and political assaults coming out of

Kigali, Le Potentiel quotes PM Matata's critics charging.



"The management of a war is an eminently political affair," Le

Potentiel has one of those unnamed MP stalwarts angrily exclaim.



The pro-Kabila crowd points to the lone combat being waged by Media

Minister Lambert Mende on the frontline, who, these past few days, was

warding off verbal assaults Rwandan Defense Minister James Kabarebe

had unleashed against Kabila in interviews with Colette Braeckman and

France24.



It's therefore about time, the pro-Kabila cadres insist, that the DRC

line up a government made of politicians with some "backbone" and

"able 'to talk to their [Rwandan] counterparts by looking at them

straight in the eye.'"



The feather-weight members of the current "technocracy" in charge of

government have turned politically blind by closely monitoring on

their laptops IMF macroeconomic bottom lines and benchmarks.



Le Potentiel therefore advocates 2 courses of action to President

Kabila: either rejig the Matata-I government by adding "seasoned"

pols; or just fire the whole bunch.



Not urgently taking these actions would be "suicidal" for the country,

Le Potentiel concludes.



(Source: (www.lepotentielonline.com/1025-ouvernement-chambardement-ou-reamenagement)





2) The second installment of attacks by Le Potentiel is outrageously ad hominen.



It published on Tuesday, September 12, and is titled "The 'hyper-nerd'

hogs all the powers of his ministers."



A look at the cartoon illustrating the article gives the full measure

of the virulence of the attack against PM Matata and encapsulates the

gist of the article.



The cartoon shows a number of barechested, subdued, disgruntled, or

angry fooballers on a pitch.



A pennant on one of the goalposts gives the name of the team as: "FC

Sourdoués" [Football Club Nerds].



The squad is facing, on the foreground and seen from the back, the

only player wearing a shirt.



On the back of the shirt of this bespectacled pla yer are written:



A) His name: "Kuna Matata" [Swahili = There are worries/problems]



(The name of the prime minister, Matata, is a substantive that has

quite an extensive connotation in Lingala and in Swahili.



In both languages, it means difficulties, problems, worries, crisis,

fuss, and as a verb conjugated with the appropriate auxillary, to

hassle or to be the cause of difficulties, etc.)



B) Seven numerals of the 7 field positions at which this player

simultaneously plays: 8, 3, 11, 9, 10, 7, 5.



This multi-pronged player tells his teammates:



"Our game plan is simple: To me all the passes! I'm the Striker, the

Defender, the Right Winger, the Left Winger, the Sweeper, etc."



Before adding:



"Need I remind you I'm also the Captain?"



(Page Address of the Cartoon: www.lepotentielonline.com/images/CARR5626_.jpg)



The piece itself is of the same scathing tone as the cartoon.



It claims that a "malaise" runs deep within the government,

threatening to tear it asunder.



This malaise is caused by PM Matata who's hogged all the powers of his

ministers.



Le Potentiel claims that the ministers are grumbling, disgruntled by

the micromanagement style of PM Matata.



They complain that they have to spend all their time in the office of

the prime minister, where they're "regularly" summoned and given

"orientations and instructions" almost "daily."



Those "nerdy ministers" are "stifled" by their "hyper-nerdy" premier.



Still according to Le Potentiel, the nerds in government accuse the

Prime Minister of having "set up insidiously a presidential regime at

his level" characterized by a "hyper concentration of powers."



In a nutshell Ministers have turned into "naked kings" and mere

"Minister Delegates to the Prime Minister" under the "totalitarian

power" of PM Matata, who is a "power-hungry" Doctor-Know-It-All"

freak!



Le Potentiel concludes with a prophecy:



"Matata Ponyo's days at the helm of the government seem to be

numbered, barring a reframing of both his working methods and of his

relations with the Presidential Majority that brought him to power."



(Source: www.lepotentielonline.com/1092-le-super-doue-accapare-les-pouvoirs-de-ses-ministres)



II. RADIO-TROTTOIR'S DEFENSE OF PM MATATA



Radio-Trottoir sets out by identifying the architects of these attacts

as the desperate rise of President Kabila's "Inner Circle."



It identifies as the chief architect of this cabal Didier "Didi"

Kazadi Nyembwe, former security adviser of Laurent-Désiré Kabila,

ex-chief spy, former CEO of the state-owned oil company COHYDRO

(Congolaise des Hydrocarbures), former MP, etc., and current chair of

the Security Commission of Kabila's PPRD party.



(A report by the UN Group of Experts cited Kazadi among war profiteers

of Africa's World War; and the 2005 Lutundula Commission Report

accused him of embezzling more than $7m at COHYDRO alone and other

state entities he'd run. Kazadi denies any wrongdoing.)



Radio-Trottoir strangely claims that Kazadi is assisted by Kabila's

twin sister Jaynet Kabila and her younger brother, Zoe Kabila; and the

influential MP Pierre Lumbi, who is also said to be the president's

special advisor.



An objective ally of this group, but fuelled by another motive is

Jean-Claude Masangu Mulongo, the governor of the Central Bank of

Congo.



The latter's motive is simply professional ambition.



In a few months' time (December probably), Masangu will end the last

leg of his stint at Central Bank. By law, a non-renewable tenure at

this stage of the game. And he may be eyeing the position of prime

minister.



Radio-Trottoir even claims Masangu turned down the position of finance

minister in the current government as he's nursing his ambition for

premiership.



But Radio-Trottoir alleges that the cabal being mounted by Kazadi to

have PM Matata fired is solely motivated by wonga.



And the pretext of the purported indifference of PM Matata to the war

in North Kivu is just that: a pretext.



And Radio-Okapi brushes off as preposterous the claim that

Communication Minister Lambert Mende is single-handedly battling

Rwanda.



"When the government spokesperson speaks up," someone told me, "he

speaks for the entire government--including the prime minister!"



Matata, according to Radio-Trottoir, is a bane to powerful individuals

and senior civil servants whose racketeering activities he has

dramatically disrupted.



Even on paper, the program for the mining sector PM Matata unveiled

when he took over loomed like a clear and present danger to

kleptocrats.



PM Matata vowed to have the contribution of the mining sector to the

state budget go from 9% (2010) to 25% by 2016; and its contribution to

the GDP from 12% to 25% in 2016.



This kind of increase, PM Matata stated, can only be achieved, among

other things, by "improving governance and transparency in the

management of this sector as well as the traceability of public

revenues."



He also promised to revisit the 2002 Mining Code as well as contracts

deemed disadvantageous to the Congolese state.



Radio-Trottoir further says that kleptocrats are already losing

millions of dollars as PM Matata is slowly tightening his grip on the

mining sector.



Gone are the heroic days of contrabands in broad daylight and of

opaque mining deals made in backrooms.



And what's now happening in the public sector can only add to the

worries of thieves of all stripes gravitating in high circles.



In order to control the exploding number of civil servants--more often

fictitious than real, PM Matata has fired every single civil servant

hired since 2010, retired older functionaries, and hired new

university graduates through recruitment by competitive examanination

in order to inject new blood into a decaying bureaucracy.



What's more, every single new hire in the public sector has to be

pre-approved by the Budget Minister and the Premier's office--thus in

effect turning the Civil Service Minister into a lame duck.



PM Matata has set up a system called "mobile banking," whereby

salaries of civil servants go directly to their newly-opened bank

accounts instead of transiting through some paymasters.



The system is already netting the government $1m a month from

fictitious civil servants. And this is only the beginning as the

system has yet to cover the whole country and be expanded to the

military and the police as well.



A few days ago, PM Matata has opened an independent audit cabinet to

track down fictitious civil servants, those behind them, and to bring

them to justice for defrauding the state.



PM Matata, nicknamed "Mr. Red-Tie" for the signature power tie he dons

every day, is on the roll... and urges Kabila to let him be.



Finally, Radio-Trottoir comes up with its own brand of dire prophecy:

if Kabila turns out to be stupid enough to yield to the pressures to

fire Matata, then he'll see how his own supporters will defect in

droves to the opposition!



***



PHOTO CREDITS: Via: laconscience.com

Read More

French Socialist brass tap Parisian-born Martinican Harlem Désir as party boss

(PHOTO: Harlem Jean-Philippe Désir)



***



Both outgoing Socialist Party Secretary General Martine Aubry and

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, who represent the majority

wing of the party (wings are called "motions" or platforms), announced

in a terse statement this Wednesday morning they've chosen Harlem

Désir as the next party boss--pending the vote by party members in

October.



Harlem Désir prevailed over his rival, Paris socialist MP

Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, who quickly wrote on his blog that Désir

could "count on me" for full support.



The result of the October vote by socialist party members is said to

be a foregone conclusion.



Party faithfuls will rubber-stamp that choice, as in a recent opinion

poll carried out by Paris-Match, 70% of them chose Désir over

Cambadélis.



This is the first time that a black French citizen leads a major

political party and, hence, is in a position to be a presidential

candidate.



Another first in French politics was the appointment by President

François Hollande of the controversial French Guianian politician

Christiane Taubira as Justice Minister.



Harlem Désir, 52, was born in Paris to a Martinican father and a

French mother from Alsace.



His father gave him the first name Harlem to celebrate the resilience

in the fight for civil rights by the African-American people.



The center of the American civil rights movement is often mistakenly

thought in France to have been centered in Harlem, New York City.



Placing Harlem at the epicenter of the worth of everything

African-American might have also been reinforced by the fame of the

Harlem Renaissance School of Poets, whose study long used to be a

requirement in the curriculum of Francophone high schools.



A co-founder of rights organization SOS-Racisme, the charismatic Désir

also sits in the European Parliament.



Would he be the French Obama?



Supporters say yes. But critics point to his 1998 18-month suspended

sentence and the hefty fine he had to pay for the "misuse of social

goods."



Désir was prosecuted and convicted for getting paid huge salaries in a

bogus job scheme while chairing SOS-Racisme.



Confronted yesterday on that sentence by the radio station France

Info, Désir said:



"Nothing new is uncovered about me. Those condemnations stem from

facts, twenty-five years ago, when I was a young party member.



"The court ruled and I don't have any comment to make even though [the

sentence] could have harmed me.



"It was a mistake. But never has my integrity come into question.



"There had not been personal enrichment."





(Sources: lejdd.fr; & metrofrance.com)



***



PHOTO CREDITS: lejdd.fr

Read More

NINE-ELEVEN: In Memoriam: Victims of Armies of Traitors

(From Daniel Richter's 2011 Kestnergesellschaft Exhibit "10001nacht")



***



Artist: Daniel Richter

Title: Army of Traitors

Date: 2011

Dimensions: 200 x 300 cm

Material: oil on canvas

Credits: kestnergesellschaft.de

Via: Third Parties

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DRC GOV cuts off signals of RLTV, media group owned by pro-M23 MP Roger Lumbala

(PHOTO: Psychedelically-smeared façade of RLTV, media group owned by

MP Roger Lumbala, former warlord and chair of RCD/N, sought for

questioning by Kinshasa prosecutors on suspicion of high treason and

war-mongering)



***



It was bound to happen.



The government has finally cut off radio and TV signals of Radio Télé

Lisanga (RLTV), a media group belonging to MP Roger Lumbala, former

warlord and current chair of the party RCD/N.



Radio Okapi reports that RLTV lost its signals Thursday, September 6,

three days after MP Lumbala had fled to the South African Embassy in

Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.



MP Lumbala was nabbed by Burundian military intelligence spooks upon

deplaning from an inbound flight from Kigali, Rwanda.



Sources in Bujumbura, Kigali, and Kinshasa tell me that Rwandan

authorities were particularly irked by the unsolicited and clamoring

offer of MP Lumbala to join M23 leadership.



Rwandan authorities feared a double-cross on the part of the Congolese

mercurial politician at a time when it was getting worldwide incoming

flak over its alleged backing of M23 insurgency.



Worse still, MP Lumbala is alleged to have stunned Rwandan

intelligence operatives by boasting to have already taken concrete

steps domestically.



MP Lumbala told the flabbergasted Rwandan spooks he'd instructed his

brother-in-law and former member of his rebel outfit, Col. John

Tshibangu, FARDC second-in-command of the FARDC 4th Military Region in

western Kasai, to defect, recruit combatants, and march to North Kivu

to join M23.



Rwandan spooks are quite familiar with MP Lumbala and till his sudden

appearance in Kigali there seemed to have been no love lost between

them.



In fact, Rwandan officials have sheer contempt for MP Lumbala for his

terminal opportunism motivated by greed.



During Africa's World War, MP Lumbala was in the leadership of the

Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD).



The RCD soon splintered into 3 main groups, with MP Roger Lumbula

taking charge of RCD/National wing, based in the diamond- and

gold-rich district of Bafwasende, Orientale Province.



This was clearly a move against the interests of Rwanda, which

continued to back RCD/Goma.



During the post-conflict transitional phase, MP Lumbala transformed

his military outfit into a political party.



He rechristened it "Rassemblement Congolais des Démocrates

Nationalistes" (Congelese Rally of Nationalist Democrats), thus

keeping the same RCDN acronym--minus the forward slash.



He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2006; and in the

November 2011 elections, he was elected MP in his native constituency

in eastern Kasai.



He's recently emerged as one of the most vocal pro-Tshisekedi

opposition pols, and his TV station, RLTV, gave a tribune to the

radical opposition.



It was in a political show hosted by RLTV anchor Eliezer Thambwe that

Etienne Tshisekedi, who was then in South Africa, proclaimed himself

president-elect of the DRC in a phone interview.



In any event, Rwandan intelligence tipped off Burundian security

services on the uncanny errands of MP Lumbala in the Rwandan capital.



In turn, Burundian intelligence tipped off DEMIAP (Military Detection

of Anti-Homeland Activities), the Congolese military intelligence.



DEMIAP then chartered a non-commercial Bujumbura-bound flight with a

view to the rendition of MP Lumbala to Kinshasa.



Now, as it turns out, MP Lumbala has a mistress in Bujumbura, Ms.

A.W., who's a member of a prominent business family in the Burundian

capital.



It was to her custody that Burundian intelligence placed MP Lumbala

and his bodyguard under unsupervised house arrest after questioning

the pair on Saturday, September 1--summoning them to appear in the

morning of Monday, September 3 for further questioning.



But the rendition plan was leaked to Ms. A.W. late Sunday night, September 2.



MP Lumbala then decided to flee along his bodyguard to the Bujumbura

South African embassy as soon as the gates of the diplomatic mission

were opened Monday, September 3.



The Congolese rendition aircraft idled at Bujumbura airport till

Tuesday, September 4 when it departed for Kinshasa, Radio France

Internationale (RFI) reported.



Acting dumb, reporter, TV host and anchor Eliezer Thambwe, who also

doubles as deputy CEO of RTLV, told Radio Okapi he didn't know why the

signals of RLTV were cut off.



Said Thambwe:



"The day the signal was cut off, we called our partner Télé Consult to

ask what was going on.



"They answered us it was a technical problem.



"It was only the next day around midday that the management of Télé

will end up telling us it was instructed to withdraw our signal."



Ratcheting up his act, Thambwe went to see the chief of staff of Media

Minister Lambert Mende.



Acting dumber than Thambwe, Mende's chief of staff claimed to have no

knowledge whatsoever about the loss of the signals of RLTV.



He suggested that Thambwe go and query officials at the Audiovisual

and Communication High Council (CSAC), the media overlord that has the

authority to censor and cut off radio and TV signals.



Those CSAC officials pretended to be more baffled than Thambwe himself

by the unexplained and unexplainable loss of the signal of RLTV, and

advised him to query the Interior Minister.



Said Thambwe:



"We talked to the deputy chief of staff of the [interior] minister.

The latter told us he had to talk to the minister so as to secure the

permission to liaise with ANR to have the measure lifted."



(The "Agence Nationale de Renseignements," acronymed ANR, is the

Congolese intelligence agency.)



Stupid is what stupid does, once famously quipped Forrest Gump.



And stupid is the bafflement of Thambwe, who told Radio Okapi:



"We're wondering whether this cutoff is linked to the political

activities of Roger Lumbala."



Duh!!!





(Source: radiookapi.net/actualite/2012/09/09/media-la-television-de-lopposant-roger-lumbala-nemet-plus-depuis-trois-jours/)



***



PHOTO CREDITS: John Bompengo/radiookapi.net

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Prez Paul Kagame snubs dead-end ICGLR Kampala-II Summit

(PHOTO: Prez Joseph Kabila arriving at Entebbe airport, Friday,

September 7, 2012)



***



President Paul Kagame snubbed the dead-end ICGLR Kampala-II Summit at

Speke Resort Munyonyo.



He was instead represented by his hawkish defense and foreign

ministers, James Kabarebe and Louise Mushikiwabo respectively.



President Kagame had far more exciting glamorous stuff to attend to

in... Hong Kong (Young Presidents Organization and meeting with

business leaders), Tianjin (Summer Davos, meeting with PM Wen Jiabao),

and Beijing University (speech to students).



In the meantime, at Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala, the ICGLR Heads

of State Summit was experiencing a dramatic dwindling of the number of

of its presidential attendees.



Only 3 other regional presidents bothered to join current ICGLR

Chairman Yoweri Museveni at the closed-door Summit: Joseph Kabila

(DRC), Salva Kiir (South Sudan), and Jakaya Kikwete (Tanzania).



Though the leaders said in a statement released Saturday that the

"neutral force" will be "deployed under the mandate of the African

Union and the United

Nations," there was no significant progress.



To be sure, the communiqué also added that the ICGLR will find ways

for the "operationalization of the Neutral International Force within

three months."



Meanwhile, M23 will be left to their own devices, roaming free and

unfettered eastern DRC within the confines of their micro-state.



The communiqué also lauded President Kikwete for pledging troops to

the "neutral force."



This confirmation of Kikwete's pledge came as a stark rebuttal to the

contradictory claim made earlier by Ugandan Defense Minister Crispus

Kiyonga who told reporters that "no single country" had made such

pledge.



The ICGLR also wants regional member states to contribute 2 military

observers each to the Joint Verification Mechanism (JVM) that will be

based at Goma--with the exception of the DRC and Rwanda, who have to

contribute 3 monitors apiece.



The regional defense ministers will implement the JVM this upcoming week.



The paucity of the number of these observers doesn't bode well for

their mission.



Still sticking to her government's official talking points, Rwandan

Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo viewed the JVM as a sure way of

vindicating her country's innocence.



Said Mushikiwabo:



"Rwanda is very pleased that in actually one week we'll have officers

on the ground, near our

border, to observe that Rwanda has nothing to hide and cannot be part

of any action against its

neighbor."



But UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in a strong-worded statement

read to the Summit by his Special Representative and Head of the UN

Regional Office for Central Africa (UNOCA) Abou Moussa, still bemoaned

"the continuing reports of external support to the M23, and call[ed]

for an end to all such support without delay."



What's more, Ban Kin-moon seemed to be rebuking Ugandan Defense

Minister Crispus Kiyonga who'd earlier speculated about the viability

of the option of revisiting the accord of March 23, 2009 between CNDP

and the DRC government.



Ban Kin-moon in effect wants M23 and other militias wreaking mayhem in

eastern Congo "to be thoroughly investigated by relevant institutions

and the perpetrators held accountable."



(Sources: newvision.co.ug; monitor.co.ug; newtimes.co.rw; AP; &

Kinshasa media outlets)



***



PHOTO CREDITS: newvision.co.ug

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