A terrible day in Rwanda; letter from Rwandan Green leader Frank Habineza

Frank Habineza sent this letter, below, to the African Greens list.  Note that Rwanda is the U.S.A. and AFRICOM's closest ally in Africa; its President/General Paul Kagame are constantly lauded and awarded by former President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Reverend Rick Warren, and American universities.

I changed just a few of Frank's sentence structures because he speaks French, English, and his native language, Kinyarwanda, so occasionally his English sentences aren't idiom we'd readily recognize:

Dear Greens,

It's indeed been a terrible day. A man started shouting and threw chairs at our convention in Kigali, and we have established that he is an ex-soldier and a former employee of Military Intelligence. Three people joined him, and one of them had something like a gun-pistol. This was also observed by the US Envoy and Netherlands Envoy and many others.

This was a well planned sabotage done by security operatives. Another guy was also from the local Defense Forces. The police were not helpful at all. It looked like they were compromising us.

The police released the guys who caused trouble, then arrested our members instead, one of them a mother. Thankfully they have been released but were forced to make statements to the police, who asked why they had decided to be members of our party.

Several people are injured, one lady is in intensive care, with back injuries. I am still finding out how many are injured.

Keep us in prayers--

Frank Habineza

Here's BBC Radio audio from the failed convention: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/2009/10/091030_rwanda_opposition.shtml?bw=nb&mp=rm&news=1&ms3=0&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=2

Call, for the safety, and full civil and political rights of Rwandan Greens, and, all Rwandans:

Rwandan Embassy telephone # in D.C.: (202) 232-2882.

Main switchboard of the U.S. State Department 202-647-4000.

Interim Rwandan Green Party leader Frank Habineza with 

his wife Edith and son Godwin. No pictures of the fourth failed 

Rwandan Green Party convention in Kigali yet.

Broken bones and arrests at Rwandan Green Party convention

This should tell the world what Rwanda, the U.S.A.'s closest ally in Africa, and its President Paul Kagame, are:

The Rwandan Democratic Greens tried, for the fourth time, to hold their founding convention in Kigali, on 10.30.2009, but the police appeared again, with even worse consequence.

This morning I spoke to Frank Habineza, interim Rwandan Green Party leader, who was in a Kigali hospital trying to arrange an X-ray for another Rwandan Green, a woman with a broken leg.

Another woman, and Rwandan Green, has a broken back.

More are injured, and I believe Frank said some are in jail. He was on a cell in a hospital and I always have to work to understand his sweet French/Kinyarwanda English accent as well.

He wasn't able to give me any more details because he had to hurry off to help his friend with the broken leg and I had to run too, but he said, "It wasn't a good day."

Indeed.  Twelve hours later, at 3:00 A.M. in Kigali, 6:10 P.M. in San Francisco, I don't have any new e-messages Tweets, Facebook posts, or phone calls from Frank.

No news on the Web yet.   Frank said to watch the BBC and the Rwandan News Agency websites. I told him that the state run Rwandan News Agency won't let me on their damn website. He himself had to pay them $250 to get on and pick up the articles he sends me, which are almost always yanked off as soon as they're posted.

I didn't have a chance to urge Frank to Twitter, but I'm going to try calling again to suggest that.  http://twitter.com/habinef

We obviously need to get on phones to the White House, Rwandan Embassies, and the press.

Greens of course, should call and I first addressed this note mostly to Greens, but, obviously, no one from any nonviolent political party should wind up in a hospital with broken bones, or in jail, for attempting to hold a founding convention.

This is the Rwanda that Bill and Hillary Clinton and Reverend Rick Warren point to as "a shining beacon of hope for Africa." Bill Clinton hung a Global Citizenship Award around Rwandan President Paul Kagame's neck a week before Reverend Rick Warren presented him with the same International Medal of Peace that he hung around George Bush's neck last year.

This is the Rwanda that criminalizes homosexuality and denies them access to U.S.-funded HIV/AIDS services, in keeping with Reverend Rick Warren's abstinence-only-until-heterosexual monogamy HIV prevention proscriptions. 

This is the Rwanda where the Rwandan Greens are the only political party with a "sexual diversity" plank in their platform, a plank that Frank Habineza and the Rwandan Greens defended adamantly during their attempts to register the party last week.

This is the Rwanda that the U.S. uses to control the vast oil and gas reserves, and many other natural resources of D.R. Congo.

Most of all, this is the Rwanda that the U.S. uses to control Congo's military industrial minerals.   It has long been official U.S. State Department policy that the U.S. must be prepared to go to war in Central Africa, as it has, covertly, to control its cobalt, in the Katanga Copper Belt running through southeastern Congo's Katanga Province into Zambia. 

U.S. military industries cannot manufacture for war without cobalt and most of the world's cobalt reserves are there.

(Anyone should feel free to post this note to Green Party lists and websites, and wherever else, ASAP.)

During the past two weeks, as we lobbied to see the Rwandan Democratic Greens emerge with full political rights, Greens posted this to Green Party sites around the U.S. and the world:


Green Party banner over Rwanda, http://www.greenpartywatch.org/2009/10/16/green-party-banner-over-rwanda/

Now we're all praying for Frank Habineza, his family and other Rwandan Greens.  

Rwandan interim Green Party leader Frank Habineza, and his wife Edith and son Godwin.

Peace activism = climate activism

"Militarism is the way corporations maintain their access to their food supply — the planet."     --Steve Martinot, Militarism and Global Warming

The best thing Copenhagen climate talks could produce would be protest.  Not more ineffective international standards and protocols.  Protest.

So it's no wonder that UK border police, on October 14th, invoked anti-terrorist law to arrest Chris Ktichen, a British climate change activist attempting to cross into mainland Europe for events leading up to the talks.

The Danish government is also preparing new "turmoil and riot" law to control expected protest.

Two days before Kitchen's arrest, Denmark's top climate negotiator, Thomas Becker, resigned and "could not be reached for comment."  Some speculated that Becker was too determined to fight for agreements with real consequence, but the Danish government called it "purely an administrative matter," then claimed that Becker had put too many bottles of red wine on his state funded restaurant tab.

Reuters and most other outlets all published the same unattributed report, including this conclusion:

Although the host's chief negotiator can wield influence as a broker behind the scenes, Denmark's own position is tightly tied to European Union policy, and Becker's absence was seen as unlikely to change an outcome which will be decided primarily by the big powers.  - --Reuters, 10.12.2009

But, no matter how much control, including police control, Denmark and the big powers organize between now and December's climate talks, there will no doubt be considerable angry protest.   I hope that it will include anti-war protest, because, broadly understood, the wars for fossil fuels and other resources, are the greatest cause of global warming.  Steve Martinot makes this argument with irrefutable logic in "Militarism and global warming," where he argues that "militarism is the way corporations maintain their access to their food supply --- the planet."

The U.S. military is the world's largest single consumer of fossil fuels---and uranium, to generate nuclear power and maintain the nation's nuclear weapons stock.  We fight in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa, to secure the fossil fuels, fossil fuel transport corridors, uranium, and other military industrial minerals that we must have to keep fighting for more of the same, and, that U.S. military industries must have to continue to manufacture for war.

So, although there were rallies against global warming all over the world, yesterday, the most powerful, in effect, was the London protest against the Afghanistan War led by Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, who now faces court martial for refusing to return to fight in Afghanistan:

Moveon.org takes the fudge, in Iraq and Afghanistan

by Ann Garrison

Obama's Peace Prize already took the cake, so this takes the fudge:

MoveOn.org, the Democratic Party's fundraising and PR PAC, is urging all of us to join a global rally, against global warming, on 10.24.2009. In San Francisco, they want us to show up at Justin Herman Plaza, at 3:00 P.M. And, they promise that: "There will even be events in Afghanistan and Iraq."

They seem to want us to appreciate them, now that President and Commander-in-Chief Obama, and the Democratic Party, are controlling and escalating the U.S. war(s) and occupations for fossil fuels, uranium, and military industrial minerals.

The U.S. military is the world's largest single consumer of fossil fuels.  It wages war, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Africa, to secure fossil fuels and fossil fuel transport corridors, and thus ensure its ability to wage more wars for more fossil fuels and transport corridors.  War--and global warming--without end, Amen.   Just as Moveon.org warned us, in their 2008 presidential campaign ad:

First published on Examiner.com, http://www.examiner.com/x-8257-SF-Energy-Policy-Examiner

Oil for blood: T. Boone Pickens wants his

     Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens

Oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens has reversed the anti-war complaint "No blood for oil,"  He's upset that U.S. energy companies aren't getting enough oil for American blood----and U.S. taxpayer dollars.  He complains that it's going to China instead.

From Examiner.com.

San Francisco recruits; Blue Angels over the Bay

San Francisco waterfront during the Blue Angels Air Show.

Each September the City of San Francisco, California, submits its request for a Blue Angels Air Show recruiting drive, which the U.S. Defense Department confirms each December, as it has every year since then Mayor Dianne Feinstein requested it in 1981, eight years after the end of the U.S. draft, six years after the end of the Vietnam War, and three years after the assassination of Harvey Milk.

Where I publish

On:

San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper 
OpEdNews

Examiner.com

Global Research

Colored Opinions
YouTube

Google Video
The Price of Uranium

Current TV