A US drone’s missiles had just slammed into a convoy of vehicles in a remote part of Yemen, killing three alleged militants.

The attack – like all other US drone strikes outside warzones – was supposed to be clandestine. Yet within minutes Sanaa-based lawyer Haykal Bafana was reporting the strike in almost-realtime.

But arguably the most interesting vessels in the area are also the least flashy. Lewis and Clark-class supply ships, normally used to carry fuel and cargo, have also been used as Afloat Forward Staging Bases -- in essence, seaborne military camps for housing Special Forces and launching helicopters and small boats. The ships can be configured with makeshift jails for holding captured pirates and, in theory, terror suspects.

The Lewis and Clark class ship Carl Brashear visited Djibouti in early May 2012, according to a military press release. Where the ship went next - and what exactly she did there -- is unclear. But if Cenciotti's investigation of the F-15s is any indication, there could be a surprising truth beneath the layers of official secrecy concealing America's underreported Indian Ocean shadow war.

American military advisers in Uganda are drawing on lessons learned from Iraq and Afghanistan to help train African Union soldiers to fight Somalia’s most powerful insurgent group, al-Shabab.

Many of the American trainers give firsthand knowledge of what works and what doesn’t from years of learning to deal with improvised explosives, fighting insurgents in cities and other experiences from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Al-Shabab militants recently figured out how to take out AU tanks with the help of makeshift obstacles and traps, so a group of about 20 Marine reservists is now in the middle of a 10-week program teaching Ugandan forces combat engineering skills, like ways to quickly bridge trenches to permit the tanks to pass.

Sudan has claimed three foreigners arrested in a disputed area on the border with South Sudan had military hardware and an armored vehicle. But a representative for one of the three said Sunday that they were on a humanitarian mine-clearing mission.

A Briton, a Norwegian, a South African and a South Sudanese were captured by Sudanese troops Saturday in the oil-rich region of Heglig.

The arrests are the latest sign of spiking tensions along the disputed border, where clashes have raged in recent weeks. The violence has brought the two nations, already at odds over demarcating the border and dividing oil revenue, to the brink of war.

It’s a sign of the times: Hollywood heart-throbs, pop divas and TV chat show celebrities are turning on the mood music for America’s never-ending global war.

In a world of lawlessness, state terrorism, rank mendacity and war criminals masquerading as government leaders, what better than to engage the glamor of reassuring celebrities to add a certain “star appeal” to otherwise barbaric endeavours?

George Clooney, Rihanna, Oprah Winfrey are just some of the big names lending their faces and voices to a script worthy of Hollywood – only the script is coming out of the Pentagon.

Speaking in a seminar in Helsinki, Finland on Wednesday, organized by the Department of the Study of Religions at Helsinki University, Menkhaus said humanitarian organizations suspended food aid delivery to drought- struck areas controlled by al-Shabaab for fear of violating the USA Patriot Act.

Congress passed the Act in 2001 as part of its response to the Sep. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and under it, anyone who provides material benefits, even if unwittingly, to a designated terrorist group, could face the most severe penalties.

While southern Ethiopia and the Ogaden continues to suffer from the worst drought and famine in 60 years the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) has been turning over all its food aid for the region to the Ethiopian military which uses it to feed the paramilitary death squads conducting a counterinsurgency in the region.

What food is left over is sold by the Ethiopian generals on the black market with the proceeds pocketed, all the while millions are left to starve.

And what is the UN doing about this crime? Their motto seems to be "silence is golden" and silent they remain since they last sent teams to investigate the region in 2007, the reports of which have remained under lock and key in UN headquarters in Addis Ababa.

Behind razor wire and bamboo walls topped with security cameras sits one of the newest U.S. military outposts in Africa.

“To really reduce population, quickly, you have to pull all the males into the fighting and you have to kill significant numbers of fertile age females The quickest way to reduce population is through famine, like in Africa, or through disease, like the Black Death.”? - Thomas Ferguson, US State Department Office of Population Affairs

Washington’s “hunt” for Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebel group, is a sideshow masking America’s intention to fulfill a long-held dream to gain a foothold in the DRC’s minerals sector.

An analysis of America’s Africa policy shows that it is premised on an axis of three strategic interests: securing minerals, off-setting Chinese economic and political influence, and moving its African Command (AFRICOM) from Stuttgart in Germany to the continent.

The “humanitarian” card is the pivot, with Washington’s propaganda machinery being deployed to justify America’s increasingly bellicose attitude towards the continent.

While the Sahel security crisis continues to deteriorate following Tuareg rebels’ declaration of an independent state in Mali’s troubled northern territory [1], recent events in Nigeria indicate a potential for increased regional instability. Boko Haram, a Salafist organization seeking to overthrow the secular administration of Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, has recently killed 38 civilians in a suicide car bomb targeting nearby churches holding Easter services in the northern city of Kaduna [2]. As part of an ongoing campaign of sectarian violence, the group has strived to implement sharia law through the establishment of an Islamic State in northern Nigeria [3].

The people behind this campaign are MASSIVELY misguided. Or it's a CIA-sponsored psy-ops.

Take for example the fact that one of the 12 'policy makers' (US politicians) that they are targeting to help them ensure Joseph Kony is arrested is George 'Dubya' Bush. The puppet president who presided over the murder of 1.5 million Iraqi civilians. And we're all meant to believe that people like him are going to care about the plight of Ugandan children? Kony is Bush's ideological brother for god's sake.

It seems that even in this 21st century the United States of America government does not respect the sovereignty of African states and the territorial integrity of the continent.

The US government never approached Uganda or the African Union or its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, to ask how the United States could help. Now there is discovery of oil in Uganda. Almost immediately, there are reports that US government has sent an army to Uganda to find Joseph Kony and rescue Uganda’s children. Why did America not make this offer long before Uganda discovered this oil wealth? Acquisition of Africa’s resources is the chief purpose of Africom, not the development of Africa.

The Pentagon confirmed Friday that all U.S. special operations forces in Mali are safe amid an attempt by rogue military forces to topple the east African nation’s civilian government.

“We do have SOF personnel in country and they’ve ceased all activity,” says a senior Pentagon official. “I don’t know if they’ve departed, but as of [Thursday], they had not. Additionally, all were accounted for.”
The Pentagon official did not disclose the number of SOF personnel in Mali, but special operations deployments typically include small numbers of troops.

South Africa will this week take some initial steps to unseat the US dollar as the preferred worldwide currency for trade and investment in emerging economies.

Thus, the nation is expected to become party to endorsing the Chinese currency, the renminbi, as the currency of trade in emerging markets.

The European Union authorised its navies to strike Somali pirate equipment on land as foreign ministers on Friday beefed up the anti-piracy mission and extended it until December 2014.

The EU’s Operation Atalanta has deployed between five and 10 warships off the Somali coast since 2008 to escort humanitarian aid shipments and thwart pirate raids on commercial vessels using vital shipping lanes.

Foreign ministers meeting in Brussels agreed to extend “the force’s area of operations to include Somali coastal territory as well as its territorial and internal waters,” said an EU statement.

According to the London Guardian, Invisible Children’s “accounts show it is a cash-rich operation, which more than tripled its income in 2011” to nearly $9 million, mainly from personal donations. Of this, nearly 25% was spent on travel and film-making. Most of the money raised has been spent in the US, not for Africa’s “invisible children” or even visible ones. According to information obtained by the Guardian, “the accounts show $1.7million went to US employee salaries, $850,000 in film production costs, $244,000 in ‘professional services’ – thought to be Washington lobbyists – and $1.07 million in travel expenses.

Within a week of the video going viral, it was facing enormous amounts of criticism. Everything about the campaign was placed under a microscope. Is the video accurate? How do they plan on stopping Kony? Can it work? How are they using the money? Last week, al Jazeera screened the video in Uganda for people who were affected by Kony, and they seemed to have a problem with the video's attitude, claiming it promotes the idea that Americans know more about their struggle than they do. In light of that, we asked the public if it still supports the campaign.

Thanks to relentless promotion by corporate media, government, celebrities and politicians of both corporate parties, along with right wing church groups and foundations, the Kony 2012 video has "gone viral." Viewed on YouTube more than a hundred million times by now, it paints a vivid and simple picture, clear enough, its narrator says, for a five year old. But is it real, or is it propaganda, and for what purpose?

Amama Mbabazi, the Ugandan prime minister, has launched an online response to a video by a California-based non-profit organisation calling for the arrest of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army.

The response, launched on Saturday and posted on YouTube, seeks to correct the "false impression" that Uganda is in conflict.

Ugandan criticism of a viral video about a brutal central African warlord continued to grow since a public screening in a remote Ugandan town once terrorized by the Lord's Resistance Army.

The head of a Ugandan charity that showed "Kony 2012" said Thursday he would suspend further screenings after getting overwhelmingly negative reaction from viewers on Tuesday who did not understand why there were so many white faces in the video, or why Kony needed to be made famous.

The hidden agenda in Uganda, Central Africa and the Horn of Africa is the conquest of oil and strategic mineral resources. Going after Joseph Kony and protecting Ugandan children is a cynical smokescreen, a pretext for a "humanitarian intervention" in a region where US sponsored "civil wars" (Sudan, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia) have in the course of the last 20 years resulted in more than eight million deaths:

The US government never approached Uganda or the African Union or its predecessor, the Organisation of African Unity, to ask how the United States could help. Now there is discovery of oil in Uganda. Almost immediately, there are reports that US government has sent an army to Uganda to find Joseph Kony and rescue Uganda’s children. Why did America not make this offer long before Uganda discovered this oil wealth? Acquisition of Africa’s resources is the chief purpose of Africom, not the development of Africa.

The hidden agenda in Uganda, Central Africa and the Horn of Africa is the conquest of oil and strategic mineral resources. Going after Joseph Kony and protecting Ugandan children is a cynical smokescreen, a pretext for a "humanitarian intervention" in a region where US sponsored "civil wars" (Sudan, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia) have in the course of the last 20 years resulted in more than four million deaths:

In a first ever musical collaboration between South Africa and Palestine, South African band, The Mavrix, and Palestinian Oud player, Mohammed Omar, have released a music video called “The New Black”. The song is taken from The Mavrix’ upcoming album,”Pura Vida”, due for release in June 2012.

Written and composed by Jeremy Karodia and Ayub Mayet, the song was a musical reaction to the horror of the Gaza Massacre of 2008/2009 and then subsequently inspired by the book “Mornings in Jenin”, authored by Susan Abulhawa. Mayet had penned the first lyrics in 2009 after the Massacre and the song went into musical hibernation. Having read the novel, “Mornings in Jenin”, he then re-wrote the lyrics and the song evolved into its current version.

The author of the blog aangirfan writes: "In Uganda, Joseph Kony is the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, 'which is a US and Mossad-backed guerilla force.'" He quotes Richard Cottrell, a former European MP, journalist, and author of the book, "Gladio: NATO’s Dagger At The Heart of Europe," who wrote in an article in October 2011 called, "African ping pong: US plays both sides in Uganda":

"The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rampaging around Uganda is nothing more than a US and Mossad-backed guerilla force.

Its task is to destabilize wide areas of Africa rich in minerals like Uganda, ex-French and Belgian Congo, and Sudan.

Invisible Children Inc. is a charity organization that wants Joseph Kony to be apprehended for his war crimes in Uganda. It sounds like a righteous enough cause doesn't it? But where do the donations actually go? According to Invisible Children's official financial reports from last year over 68% of the money donated went towards film-making, merchandising, and salaries for organizers while the remaining 32% actually went to Uganda. They claim they support the direct action of the Ugandan Government, The Ugandan army, and Sudan People’s Liberation Army in the capture of Kony. Meanwhile the Ugandan army and the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army are guilty of many of the same crimes Kony himself is being charged with.

The organization behind Kony 2012 - Invisible Children Inc.- is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called "misleading," "naive," and "dangerous" by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of "manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes." They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureau's standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they won't let their financials be independently audited. That's not a good thing. In fact, it's a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money you're sending them is going.

On Wednesday, Angelo Izama, an award-winning Ugandan journalist who specializes in security issues in central Africa, said the US is running a "multi-country intervention with a small number of troops" with a mission that isn't entirely humanitarian in nature.

Izama argues that there's a key natural resource component to the Uganda story that the Kony 2012 campaign has failed to address: in 2009, significant oil deposits were discovered near Uganda's border with DR Congo.

A series of bizarre coincidences has left several African countries experiencing significantly reduced Internet traffic.

Britain is engaged in a secret oil grab in Somalia under the guise of humanitarian aid and security assistance, a Sunday newspaper alleged today.

Suspicions have long been held that – as with previous interventions in Iraq and elsewhere – Somalia’s mineral reserves may be the main reason that Western powers have begun to focus so sharply on the situation in the war-torn east African country.

The prime minister of the government of Somalia, which has control over parts of the capital Mogadishu, promised the West a share in its oil riches in exchange for security and reconstruction in an interview this week.

Significant oil reserves have been discovered in Somalia, and after drilling it is expected to successfully flow within weeks, with the crude reaching the north-east corner of Somalia by April. Somali diplomats say that an offensive against the al-Shabab militant group in the south, backed by U.S. drone strikes, should take.

The deal will be unveiled by British officials at a landmark London conference on Thursday, at which more than 40 countries will convene to discuss the future of the war-torn African state.

Under the plans, Britain will contribute £20 million to a 'stability fund' for Somalia to help its new government secure the territory it has won from the al-Qaeda backed insurgency.

This will pay for a civilian force of “chino-clad warriors” who will be sent into vulnerable areas to help establish a police presence, health care facilities, schools and basic services before the militants can return.

An air strike in al-Shabab-held southern Somalia has killed four people, including three foreigners, eyewitnesses have told the BBC.

Rear Adm. Brian L. Losey, the top U.S. special operations commander for Africa, said the U.S. troops are now stationed in bases in Uganda, Congo, South Sudan and Central African Republic.

"We've already seen a decrease in the lethality of LRA activities, which we think is attributable in part to the pressure we and our partners are applying," Losey said in a telephone briefing to journalists.

It’s hard enough being admitted into the hospital to receive needed medical attention…but imagine being a patient and not being able to bathe or flush the toilet for several days!

A news article reports that patients in a South African hospital were without the necessity of water for days. Things were so bad that the hospital’s only source of water was in two-liter bottles which the public provided.

I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said I did not think they were.

"Still, it is true, lamb," said Satan. "Look at you in war -- what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!"

"In war? How?"

They’ve got to sell it to you like it’s good, that’s why they call themselves ‘pro-democracy’ groups, but as this clip lays bare, so-called pro-democracy groups don’t always promote democracy.
*
In fact, stirring the pot in favor of the U.S. government is, more often than not, far from promoting democracy and more akin to stirring up trouble…

Words by Mark Twain

Illustrations by the United States Government

The UN said today that it would launch an investigation after the Daily Telegraph reported allegations that UN personnel have abused children in southern Sudan.

It is a situation increasingly out of the Nigerian government’s hands, and one which the Obama Administration and the US Congress both appear more than eager to insinuate themselves into, arguing that oil-rich Nigeria’s problems are America’s problems, and that Boko Haram is forging ties with al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the region’s al-Qaeda auxiliary.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation and its largest oil producer, is from all evidence being systematically thrown into chaos and a state of civil war. The recent surprise decision by the government of Goodluck Jonathan to abruptly lift subsidies on imported gasoline and other fuel has a far more sinister background than mere corruption and the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) is playing a key role. China appears to be the likely loser along with Nigeria’s population.

Citing recent ethnic violence and with the apparent certainty that every nation on the planet needs at least a few US boots on the ground, President Obama has announced his intention to send troops to the Republic of South Sudan to help the new government with “strategic planning.”

The deployment, which will only include five troops so far, comes after a report of a massacre was refuted by the United Nations, and also as South Sudan continues to accuse the Sudanese government of preventing it from shipping oil more efficiently.

With its coastline overlooking the key oil routes of the Gulf of Yemen and Red Sea, the US has been vexed by Somalia’s relentless instability – instability that has been largely engendered by Washington’s proxy warmongering in the region. The US-backed government in Mogadishu, which is accused of corruption and misrule, has proven incapable of decisively controlling the country. Even with generous aid from Washington and military support from neighbouring US-backed states, including the presence of US mercenaries, the government in Mogadishu can only but cling on to its central seat of power.

The entry of forces from Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti could be seen as Washington trying to ratchet up the military pressure on Al Shabab.

Mogadishu—Britain is apparently preparing its troops for the next oil war in Africa after Prime Minister considered Somalia as a “failed state” that has been threatening Britain’s interests and security.As the British government considered Libya’s regime change as a victory of the Nato forces, it is now looking for its next humanitarian intervention in oil-rich states in the Middle East and Africa.

Meanwhile analysts believe that as the western oil companies planning to start exploration in some of the regions, the politicians will use the pretext of fighting terrorism to impose war to secure more drillings all over the country.

Kenya's invasion of Somalia, hailed by the West and the UN Security Council, was meant to deliver a knockout blow to the militant Islamist group al-Shabaab. Instead it has pulled Somalia's regional rival Ethiopia back into the country, stirred up the warlords and rekindled popular support for fundamentalists whose willingness to let Somalis starve rather than receive foreign aid had left them widely hated.

My thought on hearing “armed humanitarian mission” was: Would this be the precedent for military deployments in the post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan world?

Most people are unaware that President Obama’s Oct. 14 announcement of the Special Forces deployment was done in accordance with a bill that Congress passed in 2009 and was signed into law in 2010. It required the administration to plan and coordinate “diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military elements of United States policy across the region regarding the Lord’s Resistance Army.”

Kenya’s cabinet reports today that they have agreed to a call from the African Union (AU) to deploy ground troops into Mogadishu to “fight al-Shabaab,” with the troops expected to begin deploying early next year.

The AU operation was initially carried out by Uganda and Burundi, but the alliance has sought ever more involvement from its other members, and the US has committed increasing amounts of support to the conflict.

Forces loyal to outgoing Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh shot dead a woman in a protest march in Taiz on Monday, witnesses and activists said, despite tanks withdrawing under a ceasefire pact.

The Seven Step Mainstream Media Country Destruction Guide

1. First, they start by targeting a country ripe for “Regime Change”, and brand it a “rogue state”; then...

2. They arm, train, finance local terrorist groups through CIA, MI6, Mossad, Al-Qaeda (a CIA operation), drug cartels (often CIA operations) and call them “freedom fighters”; then...

3. As mock UN Security Council Resolutions are staged that rain death and destruction upon millions of civilians, they call it “UN sanctions to protect civilians”; then...

4. They spread flagrant lies through their “newsrooms” and paid journalists, and call it "the international community’s concerns expressed by prestigious spokespeople and analysts…” then…

During CNN’s debate on foreign policy, Santorum said that “Africa was a country,” instead of a continent.

About 100 U.S. troops that President Obama ordered to Uganda last month to help crush the cult-like Lord’s Resistance Army will likely remain deployed until the group’s leader is captured or dead, according to the top U.S. commander for Africa.

The Pentagon’s shadow war in Africa could have a new front, if reports coming out of Nigeria are accurate. U.S. troops are headed to Nigeria to help local forces do battle with Boko Haram, an Islamic terror group that has killed up to 400 people this year in an escalating campaign of bombings and shootings. At least that’s what Nigerian military sources tell Scott Morgan, a journalist based in Washington, D.C. who writes under the pseudonym “Confused Eagle.” The Guardian also has the story.

U.S. officials have refused to confirm the deployment.

An all-out offensive against the Al-Shabaab Islamic resistance movement based in Somalia is currently underway in the southern region of this Horn of Africa nation. A combined force of U.S. Predator drones and French naval vessels is targeting four towns in the southern region so that Kenyan military forces on the ground can seize Kismayo, a port city under the control of Al-Shabaab. The city is a major source of trade and serves as the economic lifeline for the resistance movement, which has been labeled by the U.S. as a terrorist organization allied with al-Qaida.

On Friday, October 14, President Barack Obama announced he would be sending 100 Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) forces to Uganda to "remove from the battlefield" (meaning capture or kill) the leader of the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony. "I believe that deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central Africa," wrote Obama in a letter to U.S. House Majority Leader, John Boehner, R-OH.

Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.

The Obama administration put Somali shipments on the no-fly list Monday, declaring the war-torn country's militants a direct threat to the U.S. homeland.

"The ban on air cargo from Yemen will continue and has been extended to all air cargo from Somalia as well," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said.

Southern Sudan produces 480,000 barrels-a-day of oil and if an agreement on sharing the wealth is not amicably resolved with the north the country could return to the civil war that ended in 2005 after 21 years and the loss of almost two million lives.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warned earlier this month that the world risked "sleepwalking" into a humanitarian disaster as the referendum could lead four million southerners living in the north being forced out.

The Civilian Response Corps has a budget of $100 million and employs a core of 300 people with another 1,000 on standby for operations. It was set up in 2008 with the aim to work alongside the military to stabilise war-torn countries and rebuild nations

Museveni is already scheduled to get thousands of reinforcements and money for his troops in Somalia, paid for by the Americans and Europeans. There is plenty of military business for Uganda, which acts as a hit man and enforcer for neocolonialism in Africa.

So what is Uganda's Museveni up to, with his saber-rattling?

Museveni is making big war talk in Somalia to call attention to his ongoing service to U.S. policy in Africa. He is telling the top gangsters in Washington that the hit man still has value; that the hired killer deserves his proper respect.

According to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the UN Security Council is studying his government’s proposal to provide some 20,000 additional troops for the Somalia occupation. The escalation of the African Union-backed war would be conditional on finding funding from abroad.

Few Americans realize that the Rwandan and Ugandan armies are armed and trained by the U.S. or that the U.S. military uses both countries as staging grounds, but they may learn about it now.

Few realize either that the sole piece of legislation that President Obama shepherded into law on his own, as a Senator, was S.B. 2125, the Obama Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act of 2006, in which, in Section 101(3), he quoted USAID:

Given its size, population, and resources, the Congo is an important player in Africa and of long-term interest to the United States.”

Nigeria would be a success story, if it was not for the CIA and other trouble makers.

The South African government said that the head of the Netcare company and a director of the St. Augustine's Hospital in Durban, Richard Friedland, had been aware of illegal kidney trade at the hospital, but "nevertheless permitted these operations" to take place, South African daily The Times reported on Wednesday.

The police said that wealthy Israelis paid organ dealers between 2001 and 2003, the year when the ring was exposed, the German Press Agency (DPA) reported.

Local media outlets are reporting that the Ethiopian military has returned to Somalia and fought alongside troops loyal to the self-proclaimed Somali “government” against al-Shabaab militants.

The U.S. has a long history of foreign intervention and long ago perfected the art of gaining access to other countries’ natural, human, and capital resource markets through the use of foreign trade policy initiatives, international law, diplomacy, and, when all else fails, military intervention. Typically and historically, diplomatic efforts have largely been sufficient for the U.S. to establish itself as a player in other nations’ politics and economies. While U.S. intervention in Africa is nothing new, the way the U.S. is going about the intervention features a new method that is being implemented across the globe.

South Africa's schools and hospitals were transformed into battlegrounds yesterday as a nationwide strike escalated into a sometimes violent test of strength between the government and unions.

Public-sector unions have launched an indefinite strike demanding an 8.6 per cent pay rise, which the government has insisted the debt-stricken country cannot afford. The struggle could be critical to the future of President Jacob Zuma as well as damaging for sub-Saharan Africa's largest economy.

In this faux-morality play, everyone has an assigned role:

•Cover-seeking panjandrums of the diamond industry—egged on by the canny PR spinners at DeBeers. The latter's main interest is in eliminating independent diamond production.

The waste of tax money in this country knows no bounds. The entire tax base of this country of perhaps 50+ million people is probably no more than about 4.5 million workers. The parasites and money-wasters want more money from those of us who have to carve it out of business opportunities which are becoming ever harder to come by. Jan]

More than 900,000 South African government workers will go on strike starting on Aug. 10 to demand an 8.6 percent wage increase.

One of the main missions of AFRICOM is create, train and deploy regional military forces to further U.S. and general Western objectives in Africa, the world's second most populous continent. Somalia is the first test case.

A retired US Air Force colonel, who was charged with weapons smuggling during the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s, has been indicted again, this time for trying to smuggle automatic weapons into Somalia. US federal authorities accuse Joseph O’Toole, now 79, of conspiring with Israeli citizen Chanoch Miller, formerly an aeronautics engineer with Israeli defense firm Radom Aviation, to transport nearly 2,000 AK-47s from Bosnia to Banderal, Somalia.

Chanoch Miller, an Israeli aeronautical engineer who previously served as an executive with Israel’s Radom Aviation, was indicted on June 17, 2010 on seven counts of conspiring to export defense equipment to an embargoed nation, Somalia, money laundering, providing false end user certificates, and related charges.

The large numbers of civilians being killed by African Union troops in their attempted occupation of Somalia are damaging their image, internal African Union reports are cautioning.

U.S. President Barack Obama has said Washington will "redouble" its efforts against the Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab (The Youth), whose deadly bombings in Kampala, Uganda on Sunday are likely to result in stepped-up U.S. military and other assistance to the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in Mogadishu.

In an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation Tuesday, Obama suggested that the group represents a growing threat to the region.

"[W]hat we know is that if al-Shabaab takes more and more control within Somalia, that it is going to be exporting violence the way it just did in Uganda," he said.

International coalition warns two-decade civil war could restart as referendum on south's independence nears

Robert Mugabe has threatened to flood the world's diamond markets - despite being slapped down by the world's diamond control body.

The Zimbabwean president said his nation's massive reserves of diamonds have 'huge potential' to revive the shattered economy.

He said Zimbabwe can account for one-fourth of the world's diamond supply.

The Kimberley Process diamond certification scheme has not authorised international sales amid allegations of killings, human rights violations and corruption in the massive diamond fields discovered in eastern Zimbabwe in 2006.

US President Barack Obama warned Africans that groups like Al-Qaeda saw their "innocent" lives as cheap, in a personal challenge to extremists on the continent after the Uganda bombings.

"What you've seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself," Obama told the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).

CNN host Rick Sanchez let slip a telling admission in response to the deadly bombings in Uganda during his show yesterday, the fact that such attacks are “helpful” for the military-industrial complex agenda to take over and occupy third world countries under AFRICOM, the United States African Command.

At least six Americans are among those injured in Sunday's bombings in Kampala, Uganda, CNN has confirmed.

Cluster bombs are in the news again, thanks to a recent report from Amnesty International. The human rights agency has confirmed that 35 women and children were killed following the latest US attacks on an alleged al-Qaeda hideout in Yemen.

Foreign Ministry and Defense Ministry sources adamantly denied yesterday that they were in any way involved in arms shipments to Somalia.

Spokesmen for both ministries were responding to news of the arrest in the U.S. of Hanoch Miller, an Israeli arms merchant, for allegedly illegal arms sales to Somalia, forging documents, money laundering and violating the UN arms embargo on Somalia.

There are growing fears among the nuclear powers that South Africa would not be able to safeguard its stored nuclear material. On November 7 2007, Africa's only enriched-uranium storage facility, Pelindaba in Pretoria, was invaded by two armed gangs.

As the Anti-Privatization Forum of South Africa has written, “Our government has managed, in a fairly short period of time, to deliver ‘world class’ facilities and infrastructure that the majority of South Africans will never benefit from or be able to enjoy. The APF feels that those who have been so denied, need to show all South Africans as well as the rest of the world who will be tuning into the World Cup, that all is not well in this country, that a month long sporting event cannot and will not be the panacea for our problems. This World Cup is not for the poor – it is the soccer elites of FIFA, the elites of domestic and international corporate capital and the political elites who are making billions and who will be benefiting at the expense of the poor.”