US On Uganda's Presidential Elections

Press Statement

*Museveni and Obama

The United States commends the Ugandan people for participating actively and peacefully in the February 18 elections. While the vote occurred without major unrest, we must acknowledge numerous reports of irregularities and official conduct that are deeply inconsistent with international standards and expectations for any democratic process.

Delays in the delivery of voting materials, reports of pre-checked ballots and vote buying, ongoing blockage of social media sites, and excessive use of force by the police, collectively undermine the integrity of the electoral process. The Ugandan people deserved better. We are also concerned by the continued house arrest of opposition presidential candidate Kizza Besigye. We call for his immediate release and the restoration of access to all social media sites.

We encourage those who wish to contest the election results to do so peacefully and in accordance with Uganda’s laws and judicial process, and urge the Ugandan government to respect the rights and freedoms of its people and refrain from interference in those processes.

Mark C. Toner

Washington, DC

February 20, 2016

Pursue Justice, Not Retribution – American Lawyer Tells Buhari In An Open Letter

President Muhammadu Buhari

Aso Rock, Abuja Nigeria

Dear President Buhari:

When you visited the United States Institute of Peace last July, you pledged that you would be "fair, just and scrupulously follow due process and the rule of law, as enshrined in [the Nigerian] constitution" in prosecuting corruption.

Such loftiness is laudable. As the Bible instructs in Amos 5:24: "[L]et justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." 

But to be just, the law must be evenhanded. It cannot, in the manner of Russian President Vladimir Putin, be something that is given to punish your enemies and withheld to favor your friends. If so, the law becomes an instrument of injustice bearing earmarks of the wicked rather than the good.

In the United States, you declared a policy of "zero tolerance" against corruption. You solicited weapons and other assistance from the United States government based on that avowal. But were you sincere?

During your election campaign, you promised widespread amnesty, not zero tolerance. You elaborated: "Whoever that is indicted of corruption between 1999 to the time of swearing-in would be pardoned. I am going to draw a line, anybody who involved himself in corruption after I assume office, will face the music."

After you were inaugurated, however, you disowned your statement and declared you would prosecute past ministers or other officials for corruption or fraud. And then again you immediately hedged. You were reminded of your dubious past by former Major General and President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida, who succeeded your military dictatorship. He released this statement:

Did Washington Order Russian Aircraft Shot Down?

By Stephen Lendman

A personal note. I’m not writing from my usual location, comfortably at home on my desktop - currently hospitalized, hopefully released soon. 

I’ll be briefer than usual, conserving strength - thankful to maintain daily communication with readers, best as able when less than par.

*Obama and Putin (pix: vox)

Let’s not mince words. Washington is no Russian partner. Its policy is adversarially hostile, notably during the Cold War, especially throughout Putin’s leadership years - a preeminent world leader/peace champion polar opposite rogues running America, perhaps one day able to turn the tide against their hegemonic agenda.

Saving humanity from the scourge of another devastating global war - potential nuclear armageddon - depends on his efforts to prevent it. 

Washington’s rage for endless wars threatens world peace, security and humanity’s survival. Bipartisan US policymakers tolerate no independent countries, especially Russia, China and resource rich ones like Iraq, Libya, Iran and Venezuela - two down, two to go plus others. 

CLICK HERE TO READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE 

President Buhari Dupes The United States!

By Bruce Fein 

With the glitter of fool’s gold, Nigeria’s recently elected  President Muhammadu Buhari arrived in the United States in July uttering time-worn democracy vows to President Barack Obama and his administration. Among other things, he pledged at the United States Institute for Peace to combat graft with procedures that would be “fair, just, and scrupulously follow due process and the rule of law, as enshrined in our constitution.”

Skepticism is in order— a conclusion reinforced by the ongoing persecution of  former National Security Advisor Sambo Dasuki for alleged money laundering and illegal possession of firearms.

But first some background.

Mr. Buhari initially tasted power as a military dictator following a coup de tat in 1983. His dictatorship was earmarked by chilling human rights abuses. Take the word of Nigerian Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka.

Among other things … Mr. Buhari’s draconian edicts, exemplified by Decree 20 under which the judicial murders of Nigerian citizens Lawal Ojuolape, Bernard Ogedengbe, and Bartholomew Owoh were authorized. Mr. Obedengbe was executed for a crime that did not carry the death penalty at the time it was committed in violation of the universal revulsion of ex post facto laws…

Mr. Buhari turned the nation into a slave plantation, and forbade the slaves from any discussion of their enslavement—especially a return to democracy. He favored the north over the south, dividing rather than unifying Nigeria after the convulsions of the 1967-70 Biafran War. He lent support to the introduction of Sharia law in the North—a major source of strife and disharmony.

Mr. Buhari’s brutal military dictatorship was overthrown in 1985. Mr. Dasuki played a key role. Dictators do not forget. Fast forward to today.

After celebrating fairness, due process, and the rule of law last July to win the good will of the United States, Mr. Buhari returned to Nigeria to mock all three in a vendetta against the Dasuki, the immediate past National Security Adviser.

He placed Mr. Dasuki under house arrest. He confiscated his passport. He charged him with firearms and money laundering violations. He sought a secret trial to prevent independent scrutiny.

He opposed Mr. Dasuki’s pretrial application to the Federal High Court sitting in Abuja for permission to receive urgent medical treatment for cancer in London, but it was nonetheless granted.

Justice Adeniyi Ademola explained that an accused is presumed innocent before trial, and that a citizen’s health is paramount before the law. Mr. Buhari was ordered to release Mr. Dasuki’s international passport.

Mr. Buhari defied the order. He put Mr. Dasuki’s house under siege, a microcosm of the Bosnian Serb siege of Sarajevo. Mr. Dasuki returned to court. Justice Ademola reaffirmed his order, asserting “My own orders will not be flouted.”

 Click Here To Read The Whole Article 

'We Are Not Gays!' - Mugabe Shouts At The UN General Assembly

Speaking at the 2015 United Nations  General Assembly, Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe abandoned his prepared speech to tell his listeners: We are not gays! 


"Respecting and upholding human rights is the obligation of all states, and is enshrined in the United Nations charter. Nowhere does the charter arrogate the right to some to sit in judgment over others, in carrying out this universal obligation. In that regard, we reject the politicisation of this important issue and the application of double standards to victimise those who dare think and act independently of the self-anointed prefects of our time.

"We equally reject attempts to prescribe 'new rights' that are contrary to our values, norms, traditions, and beliefs. We are not gays! Cooperation and respect for each other will advance the cause of human rights worldwide. Confrontation, vilification, and double-standards will not."

Watch The 

VIDEO 

US Congressman's Statement On Zimbabwe

The Statement below was released by Rep. Christopher H. Smith, R-N.J. It was published in the Congressional Record on the future of US-Zimbabwe Relations on June 12, 2015, and addressed to the U.S. Congress Speaker

*President Mugabe 
(pix: ewn.co.za)

Mr. Speaker, Zimbabwe is a country the size of the state of Montana, with a population of nearly 14 million people. However, its mineral wealth gives it an outsized importance. The southern African nation is the world’s third largest source of platinum group metals and has significant reserves of nickel, gold, chromium and dozens of other metals and minerals. Significant diamond reserves were discovered in 2006. Currently, about 40 percent of the country’s foreign exchange is earned from the export of these metals and minerals.

It was the abundance of such mineral resources, and their exploitation, which has driven the relationship between the West and Zimbabwe. Since its colonization by Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company in 1889 on behalf of Great Britain, the area once known as Southern Rhodesia has experienced a tumultuous history.

The white minority gained self-governance in 1922, and a 1930 Land Apportionment Act restricted black access to land, making many Africans laborers and not land owners. In 1964, the white minority government unsuccessfully sought independence from Great Britain, and then unilaterally declared independence a year later under white rule. This move sparked international outrage and economic sanctions, and that regime was never widely recognized by the international community, though the support of white-ruled South Africa enabled the government to limp along.

Ben Bruce: Heading For The Senate

By Banji Ojewale

As it is going to be with the next set of Senators of the United States of America, where new faces, the majority being the Republicans, are coming up, Nigeria in 2015 may witness a similar displacement of old hands in its Senate. I am not making any attempt to predict bloc party victory or defeat.

Ben Murray Bruce

(pix: thenewsnigeria)

There is always some tricky of impreciseness in it for analysts. In the case of the US, it was perhaps “easy” for the Cable News Network (CNN) to arrive  at its 246-Senate seat forecast for the Republicans in the November 2014 ballot because of the near-infallible opinion poll system in the country. CNN journalists and experts relied on such advanced sampling techniques as computer technology and sociological and psychological research.  

But it was not always so. The pollsters of the previous age plunged the US into trouble when their statistics misled the nation’s media. In the 1948 Presidential election, the “soothsayers” predicted victory for the Republican candidate Thomas Dewey. Now without waiting for the official count of the vote after the ballot, US newspapers declared in screaming headlines: Dewey defeats Truman.

Remarks By US President Obama And Israeli PM Netanyahu, After A Bilateral Meeting

President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting 
with Israeli Prime Minister  Benjamin Netanyahu 
in the Oval Office, Oct 1, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it’s a pleasure to welcome Prime Minister Netanyahu back to the Oval Office.  I think I've had the pleasure of hosting him more often than just about any other world leader, and hopefully this will provide just some small measure of repayment for the wonderful visit that I had in Israel this spring.  And I want to thank him and his family and his entire team for the tremendous hospitality that we had when we were there.

The Prime Minister and I were just talking about the fact these are hectic times, and nowhere is that more true, obviously, than in the Middle East.  And so we had an opportunity for a wide-ranging discussion about a range of issues.  

I commended him for entering into good-faith negotiations with the Palestinian Authority in discussing how we can resolve what has been, obviously, one of the biggest challenges for a very long time in the region.  And both Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas have assigned outstanding negotiators.  They have been engaging in serious conversations.  And our goal continues to be to help facilitate -- not dictate, but facilitate -- the kinds of genuine negotiations that will result in two states living side-by-side in peace and security.

Changing Dialogue With Dialogue: Confronting The Language Of Ebola

 

 

US President Barack Obama meets with ebola 

survivor,  Dr. Kent Brantly at the oval office on 

September 16, 2014 (pix Pete Souza/White House)

By Emma Fox

The African continent – which is so often unjustifiably spoken of collectively and dismissively throughout the globe as a one entity – can truly claim a unity through its diverse and eye-opening library of great literature and language.

Whether it is in the dreamlike magical realism of Ben Okri, the underlying critiques so carefully yet organically articulated by Nadine Gordimer, or the poignant and profound work of Assia Djebar, Africa’s many shapes and sounds have been delivered in a perpetual life poem which has courageously addressed various social challenges and defined the continent as a rich and creative Diaspora of contemporary literature. 

 

While these works detail issues and triumphs which are focused on a particular region, they also encompass the bigger picture – just take Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, for example – which has accumulated some truly remarkable responses to the heavy footprint of colonialism and the rest of the world’s inability to look at Africa and African countries separately through an unclouded lens. It is through language and literature where reclamation, liberation and life transform, a vital tool through which lies the potential for change, and is especially crucial in combating the recent challenges which certain parts of western Africa are facing.

President Obama's Address To The United Nations General Assembly

Tuesday, September 24, 2013 (New York)

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General, fellow delegates, ladies and gentlemen:  Each year we come together to reaffirm the founding vision of this institution.  For most of recorded history, individual aspirations were subject to the whims of tyrants and empires.  Divisions of race and religion and tribe were settled through the sword and the clash of armies.  The idea that nations and peoples could come together in peace to solve their disputes and advance a common prosperity seemed unimaginable.  

*President Obama

It took the awful carnage of two world wars to shift our thinking.  The leaders who built the United Nations were not naïve; they did not think this body could eradicate all wars.  But in the wake of millions dead and continents in rubble, and with the development of nuclear weapons that could annihilate a planet, they understood that humanity could not survive the course it was on.  And so they gave us this institution, believing that it could allow us to resolve conflicts, enforce rules of behavior, and build habits of cooperation that would grow stronger over time. 

For decades, the United Nations has in fact made a difference -- from helping to eradicate disease, to educating children, to brokering peace.  But like every generation of leaders, we face new and profound challenges, and this body continues to be tested.  The question is whether we possess the wisdom and the courage, as nation-states and members of an international community, to squarely meet those challenges; whether the United Nations can meet the tests of our time.

World Bank Selection A ‘Hypocrisy Test’, Says Okonjo-Iweala

... As Financial Times Newspaper Endorses Her... 

Nigeria's Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has said that the process through which a new World Bank president is selected to succeed Mr. Robert Zoellick whose tenure ends in July would serve to determine the "level of hypocrisy" of the rich nations.  

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
 “I would really hold the Bretton Woods shareholders to their word, that they want to change the way business is being done and want a merit-based, open and transparent process for the presidency. I just want to see whether people just say things with their mouth that they don’t mean and what’s the level of hypocrisy. So we want to test that,” Okonjo-Iweala told Financial Times (London) in a recent interview. 
Since the World Bank was established, America has always produced its president. And it is always taken for granted that the American nominee will always emerge the winner due to her superior voting power. Already, President Barack Obama has nominated an American health expert and Dartmouth professor, Jim Yong Kim, for the top job. Other contenders are Okonjo-Iweala herself who is backed by the African Union (AU) and the former Colombian Finance Minister, Jose Antonio Ocampo. 

US President Barack Obama, US Nominee For World Bank Presidency, Jim Yong Kim, US Secretary Of State, Hillary Clinton, During The Announcement Of The US Nominee In The Rose Garden At The White House On  Friday, March 23, 2012

Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bank managing director, thinks that since the bank is focusing on development, the weak economies which are the targets of such developmental efforts ought to be allowed stronger voice in the running of the bank. She called for a “contestable process” in the selection of the bank’s leadership. 

“Many developing countries are very desirous to see this. They may not necessarily be saying they support Okonjo-Iweala, but they will be saying we support a contestable process,” she said.  

Okonjo-Iweala is also Nigeria's Coordinating Minister of the Economy. A decision to remove the subsidy on fuel in Nigeria recently led to serious civil crises which paralyzed activities in the country for several days. Most people thought she was the architect of the policy.  But most African leaders believe she is the best person for the World Bank job. And she thinks so herself.  

Time To Say Goodbye: Robert Zoelick: His Tenure

As World Bank President Ends June 30

"I’m not a typical bureaucrat, and not a typical World Banker either. I’ve come in and out. Someone like me can hit the ground running. I don’t have a steep learning curve,” she told Financial Times  

“I think that the World Bank matters so much to many of the world’s poor, it matters so much to emerging market countries, so I think this time they need to get it right. I can’t do better than demand they stick to their words. If they fail then it will be for the world to judge them,” she said.  

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala Being Greeted By Her Greatest

Supporter, President Goodluck Jonathan

Meanwhile, the Financial Times has endorsed her for the job. In an editorial on Tuesday, March 27, 2012, the paper said that the new president of the World Bank “should have a command of macroeconomics, the respect of leaders of both the funding and the funded countries, and the management skills to implement his or her vision. These requirements make Ms Okonjo-Iweala the best person for the role… Having an African woman at the helm of the world’s leading development institution would send a strong signal both to developing and developed countries. … In this less than ideal world, Mr. Kim’s appointment seems inevitable. But if the Bank’s shareholders wanted the best president, they would opt for Ms Okonjo-Iweala.”