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.”

In Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. military has embraced social science as a tool of counterinsurgency, embedding anthropologists and sociologists within brigades as part of an effort to understand local cultural and tribal dynamics. It’s a controversial approach, but in theory, it’s supposed to make military operations less lethal by helping commanders identify who their friends are.

In Africa, the military wants to try the same experiment, with a twist: The idea is to help top military planners better understand Africa and its peoples, and perhaps provide some “early warning” to prevent conflicts before they start.

Rwanda is not unique-- despite the attempts to wrap it in its very own "war crimes tribunal" (ICTR). In fact the proper comparison for Rwanda is Indonesia (1965) where a million odd were murdered at the insistence of US and UK corporate interests represented by their governments overtly and covertly. The US and its international harem of corporate-driven states used the same tactics in Rwanda that they did when they gave Suharto the green light to annihilate anyone who might be capable of continuing support for the post-colonial nationalism of Sukarno.

At least 30 people have been killed after two bombs exploded at a mosque in the Somalian capital Mogadishu on Saturday.

A high-ranking member of Somalia's most powerful militia, who was inside the mosque during the blast, is believed to be the target of the attack.

Until he reached the White House, Barack Obama repeatedly insisted that the United States apply more pressure on Sudan so as to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and elsewhere.

Yet, as president, Mr. Obama and his aides have caved, leaving Sudan gloating at American weakness. Western monitors, Sudanese journalists and local civil society groups have all found this month's Sudanese elections to be deeply flawed - yet Mr. Obama's special envoy for Sudan, Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, pre-emptively defended the elections, saying they would be "as free and as fair as possible." The White House showed only a hint more backbone with a hurried reference this week to "an essential step" with "serious irregularities."

Violence in the Somali capital of Mogadishu today killed at least 21 civilians and two government soldiers, and left scores injured. The bulk of the civilian toll came, as it so often does in Mogadishu, with AU shelling against a densely populated residential area.

The eastern Congo remains awash in bloodshed due to western mining companies and their proxy armies, the military regimes of Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), and Joseph Kabila (DRC), all hidden behind reams of western newsprint blaming Congolese victims for their own suffering.

After three young men and a boy told police last June an Italian priest had been sexually molesting them for years at a shelter for poor children, the most senior Roman Catholic cleric in Kenya announced the church would investigate thoroughly.

Ten months later, nothing has been investigated by the church, its lawyer says, and the Vatican has not been notified.

Unable to make headway against the Shabab Islamic militants that control 95 percent of south and central Somalia, the Americans step up their war against the civilian population, withholding food from the millions that depend on foreign aid to keep from starving.

From the outset of the Rwandan civil war in 1990, Washington's hidden agenda consisted in establishing an American sphere of influence in a region historically dominated by France and Belgium. America's design was to displace France by supporting the Rwandan Patriotic Front and by arming and equipping its military arm, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA)

South African farmers suffered millions of dollars in lost income when 82,000 hectares of genetically-manipulated corn (maize) failed to produce hardly any seeds.The plants look lush and healthy from the outside. Monsanto has offered compensation.

However environmental activitist Marian Mayet, director of the Africa-centre for biosecurity in Johannesburg, demands an urgent government investigation and an immediate ban on all GM-foods, blaming the crop failure on Monsanto's genetically-manipulated technology.

This growing U.S. military involvement in Africa reflects the fact that counterinsurgency has once again become one of the main elements of U.S. security strategy.

Or, as a senior U.S. military officer assigned to Africom was quoted as saying in a recent article in the U.S. Air University’s Strategic Studies Quarterly, "We don’t want to see our guys going in and getting wacked. … We want Africans to go in."

Somali militant factions are preparing for heavy confrontation over control of towns in central Somalia where the groups have strong presence.

The two, Islamist militant group of Al-Shabaab and local clan based Ahlul-Sunnah Wal-Jamaa for the last few weeks have been building up armies in central Somali region of Galgadud, causing panic among residents in the region.

At least 1,000 UPDF soldiers will leave next month for Somalia to replace one battalion which is coming home after one year of keeping peace in the war-torn Somali.

NATO has now joined AFRICOM’s first war, in Somalia.

The bloc’s Allied Command Operations website announced on March 18 that from March 5-16 the North Atlantic military alliance had airlifted 1,700 Ugandan troops from their homeland to the Somali capital of Mogadishu for the intensified fighting that began there earlier this month.

The Pentagon supplied the transport planes “under the NATO banner” and the operation was “undertaken by USA contracted DynCorp International.

As with the government of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, the Western-backed Transitional Federal Government doesn’t even control its own capital. Since last week fighting there has led to hundreds of people being killed and wounded and thousands displaced.

The experience of Nyikaw Ochalla, an indigenous Anuak from the Gambella region of Ethiopia now living in Britain but who is in regular contact with farmers in his region, is typical. He said: "All of the land in the Gambella region is utilised. Each community has and looks after its own territory and the rivers and farmlands within it. It is a myth propagated by the government and investors to say that there is waste land or land that is not utilised in Gambella.

"The foreign companies are arriving in large numbers, depriving people of land they have used for centuries. There is no consultation with the indigenous population. The deals are done secretly. The only thing the local people see is people coming with lots of tractors to invade their lands."

Millions of dollars in Western aid meant for victims of the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s instead went toward purchasing weapons, a report says.

The BBC, citing interviews with former rebels and CIA documents, said militant leaders had posed as merchants in meetings with aid groups and diverted the money to weapons purchases as they attempted to overthrow the government.

The official story is that the members of Congress were focused on science, technology and humanitarian relief - at the very same time that the military coup was unfolding on the streets of the capital, Niamey.

This intriguing "coincidence" raises the question: Was this Congressional presence during a military coup another instance of a massive intelligence failure or something entirely different?

Darfur's most powerful rebel group has initialed a truce with the Sudanese government, officials said Saturday, marking the rebel group's return to peace talks aimed at ending the Darfur conflict.

The truce between the rebel Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudanese government takes effect immediately, said Idriss Deby, Chad's president, in a statement.

UN officials today issued their most public condemnation yet of US policy on Somalia, noting that the US government is preventing millions of dollars worth of humanitarian aid, including food aid, from reaching the Somali people.

The US defended the policy, saying that they had “evidence” that some of the contractors shipping the aid in were forced to pay protection tolls to militant groups. They have demanded the UN enact policies that officials say will restrict aid delivery even further in the nation, where the US-backed government controls only a few city blocks around the presidential palace.

Both the Transitional Government and Islamic radicals are bringing more gunmen to Mogadishu, as both sides insist they will launch operations that will give them control. The Islamic radicals have been getting the worst of it lately, but neither side appears strong enough to chase the other out of the this city of over a million people. Meanwhile, the increasing number of police in Mogadishu are setting up more checkpoints, in an attempt to disrupt the growing number of car bombs being used by Islamic terrorists (particularly al Shabaab).

Soldiers opened fire Thursday in the Niger capital -- where explosions and long bursts of gunfire resounded across the city -- in what a top French official said was an coup attempt against President Mamadou Tandja.

Witnesses said the firing appeared to be centred on the presidency. State radio stayed silent on events, concentrating on playing traditional music as tensions erupted in the uranium-rich West African nation.

Al-Shabab fighters have declared an all-out war against the fragile transition Somali government and African Union peacekeeping forces in Mogadishu.

Al-Shabab's declaration of war on Friday comes amid heightened tensions over a possible government campaign against the militia's fighters.

Nigerian militants calling themselves the Joint Revolutionary Council (JRC) said Sunday they had attacked a major Shell oil pipeline in the volatile Niger Delta, in a statement obtained by AFP.

The group said the overnight attack "successfully disabled the trunk line belonging to Shell in the swamp of Obunoma" in the oil-rich Rivers State.

A key demand of the militants is that local communities benefit from the region's oil wealth.

A peer-reviewed study found that 5.4 million people had already died in this war as of April 2007, and hundreds of thousands more have died as the situation has deteriorated since then. A catastrophically planned military offensive last year, backed by the governments of Congo and Rwanda as well as the United Nations force here, made some headway against Hutu militias but also led to increased predation on civilians from all sides.

Nigeria's main rebel group Saturday called off a truce in the oil-rich Niger Delta, threatening an "all-out onslaught" and adding to the political and economic woes of Africa's oil and gas giant.

The announcement is a fresh blow for authorities amid uncertainty over the health of the country's president, in hospital in Saudi Arabia for more than two months, which has sparked an unprecendented political crisis.

The DC dimwit ghouls were after a pipeline right-of-way from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to the Pakistan port of Gwadar, Baluchistan Province, Pakistan.

Problem is China now controls that port and has announced a pipeline across Pakistan to China and their willingness to enter into the IPI (Iran, Pakistan, India) pipeline.

These nitwit planners in the US and UK evidently did not see that 'checkmate' coming. Even while the Ivory Tower zionists in DC and London were salivating over all of the natural gas in the Caspian Basin, both Russia and China sucked most of it up with shrewd and savvy contracts, and that is now where it's headed.

There are also allegations of US-sponsored bomb plots in the capital.

The bombings will be carried out in order to create a pretext to launch a campaign against Al-Shabab, a spokesman of the group, Sheikh Ali Mohammed Rage, told Reuters.

“We have discovered that US agencies are going to launch suicide bombings in public places in Mogadishu,” he told reporters. “They have tried it in Algeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan… We warn of these disasters. They want to target Bakara Market and mosques, then use that to malign us.”

African leaders must not forget that under the Barack Obama administration, US policy towards Africa and the rest of the developing world has not changed an inch. It remains militaristic and materialistic.

African leaders do not need prophets from Mars to know that US's fascination with oil, the war on terrorism and the military will now be centred on Africa, after that escapade in Iraq.

Pass beyond what is described as government territory in the Somali capital — a few blocks between the airport, the harbour and the presidential palace — and you are at the mercy of al-Shabaab, the extremist Islamic group that holds sway across southern and central Somalia. Where it rules, it has implemented laws and punishments reminiscent of Afghanistan under Taleban rule.

Men claiming to be leaders of al-Qaeda have made a rare public appearance in Yemen, telling an anti-government rally the fight is against the US, not the country's army.

A U.N.-backed Congolese military operation to oust rebels from eastern Congo has caused more civilian casualties than damage to rebels, with more than 1,400 people deliberately killed over a nine-month period, human rights groups said Monday.

"For every rebel combatant disarmed, one civilian has been killed, seven women and girls have been raped, six houses have been burned and destroyed and 900 people have been forced to flee their homes," British-based organization Oxfam said.

A U.N.-backed Congolese military operation to oust rebels from eastern Congo has caused more civilian casualties than damage to rebels, with more than 1,400 people deliberately killed over a nine-month period, human rights groups said Monday.

The U.S. military’s AFRICOM forces pretend their mission on the continent is humanitarian. In reality, AFRICOM is the sharp edge of U.S. imperialism, a killing force eager to impose American dominance. The military command "locks Africa into a state of dependency and maintains favorable political and social conditions for U.S.-based corporations that exploit Africa’s natural resources." This is not a bug in the system. It's a defining feature of it.

Spanish authorities have blamed the kidnapping on an organization called "Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb." It is the same group authorities believe abducted a French man from his hotel in northern Mali just a few days earlier.

The recruits gather in scorching desert hideouts, use portraits of President Obama for target practice, learn how to make and detonate bombs, and vow allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Training camps in the lawless nation of Somalia are attracting hundreds of foreigners, including Americans, and Somalis recruited by a local insurgent group linked to al Qaeda, according to local and U.S. officials. American officials and private analysts say the camps pose a security threat far beyond the borders of Somalia, including to the U.S. homeland.

The United States is waging a war of starvation against the people of Somalia. According to United Nations officials, Washington has interrupted the flow of desperately needed food to Somalia, on the grounds that some of it might find its way into the hands of the Shabab, the Islamists the U.S. calls "terrorists," but who are winning the war for control of southern and central Somalia.

Somali refugees and ethnic Somali citizens of Kenya are being recruited and trained by the thousands for a U.S.-backed offensive in Somalia, to begin next month. The Associated Press, citing numerous sources among refugees, young men who have deserted from the new militia and their families, local Kenyan officials and foreign diplomats, reports that the offensive against Islamist forces in Somalia is planned for late December, the end of the Somali rainy season. That’s the same seasonal window the Americans took advantage of three years ago, when the U.S. instigated an Ethiopian invasion of Somalia that plunged the country into what the United Nations described as the “worst humanitarian crisis in Africa.” That crisis continues, complicated by a severe drought and a U.S.

The apparent bottom line in a paper published in the South African Journal of Science is that South Africa's gold industry is on final deathwatch, despite claims of massive existing below-ground reserves. Chris Hartnady, research and technical director of Cape Town earth sciences consultancy Umvoto Africa, has found that South Africa's Witwatersrand goldfields are around 95% exhausted, and anticipates that production rates should fall permanently below 100 tonnes a year within the coming decade.

Maurice Tempelsman is one of the top funders of the Democratic Party who has funded Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Templesman was the unofficial ambassador to the Congo (Zaire) for years, but a new Israeli-American tycoon has replaced him. In the world of bling bling and bling bang, some things change, some stay the same. The CIA, the MOSSAD, the big mining companies, the offshore accounts and weapons deals—all hidden by the Western media. The holocaust in Central Africa has claimed some six to ten million people in Congo since 1996, with 1500 people dying daily.1 But while the Africans are the victims of perpetual Holocaust, the persecutors hide behind history, complaining that they are the persecuted, or pretending they are the saviors. Who is responsible?

US President says Sudan 'hostile' to US 'interests', poses 'extraordinary threat' to Washington.

Somalia's al-Shabab fighters have said they will attack the capitals of Burundi and Uganda in revenge for rocket attacks by peacekeepers from the two countries.

The threat follows the killing on Thursday of at least 30 people in Mogadishu, the capital, by Amisom, the African Union's peacekeeping force to which Uganda and Burundi contribute troops.

The grounds have reportedly been established for armed American presence on Somali soil with a US security firm winning a contract in the war-ravaged country.

The contractor's operations team was composed of former military and law enforcement personnel, including Special Forces, Michigan Live added.

Ethiopia appears to have launched yet another incursion into Somalia, with hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers pouring across the border into Central Somalia and rounding up villagers suspected of having ties to the insurgency.

The government of Sudan, eager to curry favor with a U.S. government that accused it of genocide, sought help last fall from an unlikely source: a former Reagan administration official known for his role in the Iran-contra scandal.

The approach by Sudanese officials led to a $1.3 million contract for former national security adviser Robert "Bud" McFarlane, who went on to meet with two of the Obama administration's top policymakers on Sudan and its strife-torn Darfur region, according to documents and interviews.

An Islamic insurgent group that controls much of this lawless nation has released a video showing its members vowing allegiance to Osama bin Laden, training in dusty camps and slamming Somalia's U.S.-backed president as a traitor.

The primary destabilising force in the Horn of Africa in general and Somalia in particular is the US. The explosive spread of militarism is rooted in the deepening crisis of US capitalism. As the economic foundations of the United States claim to global hegemony weaken, Washington is driven to ever greater reliance on its residual military superiority. Somalia provides a case study in the immense destruction and human suffering produced by this policy.

As the Somalia conflict spirals into a new proxy war between Al-Qaeda and the United States, there is mounting evidence that U.S. weapons and Somali soldiers are ending up under the control of Islamic terrorists, Somali politicians say.

It didn’t take long to see the fallout from Monday’s US incursion into Southern Somalia. Just days later insurgents launched a deadly car bombing against an African Union (AU) base, killing at least 16 people.

It has underscored just how fragile the AU force in the nation is, but the attack has also led to yet more calls for international intervention by both the AU and the self-proclaimed Somali government.

Private security firms which protect Spanish fishing boats from Somalian pirates in the Indian Ocean will be allowed to use long-range weapons, Spain's junior defence minister said on Tuesday.

It is official now. According to the Associated Press, witnesses have spotted U.S. troops invading the town of Barawe, Somalia, near Mogadishu. Spelled out, the war on terror has found a new home front.

The president of the African Union (AU) holds Israel responsible for all the woes facing Africa, calling on member-states to cut diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv.

Israel is "behind all of Africa's conflicts," Muammar Gaddafi said on Monday and demanded the closure of all Israeli embassies across Africa.

The U.S. has intensified military involvement in Africa over the past seven years with such projects as the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI), launched by the State Department but which deployed US Army Special Forces with the Special Operations Command Europe to Mali and Mauritania among other locations. U.S. military personnel are still engaged in the counterinsurgency wars in Mali and Niger against Tuareg rebels.

America’s establishment of the so-called African Command(AFRICOM), should be seen for what it is: America’s self-interested armada of protection for America, and her allies and not for Africa’s security. Africa has steadily and increasingly become more important by playing the role for Westerners as repository of energy resources which powers the engine-rooms of Western economies.

President Obama has decided instead to expand the operations of Africom throughout the continent. He has proposed a budget for financial year 2010 that will provide increased security assistance to repressive and undemocratic governments in resource-rich countries like Nigeria, Niger, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and to countries that are key military allies of the United States like Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti, Rwanda and Uganda.

The 21st Century scramble for Africa is taking us to some very strange and ugly departures. The US estimates that in six years, a quarter of its oil will come from Africa, but the trouble is that - as the establishment Committee on Foreign Relations complained some years back - China is doing a good job of getting its foot in the door. So, America responded by forming Africom, initially as a subdivision of Eucom and then, by October last year, as an independent command. Just on the off chance that anyone doesn't get this, Africom is specifically charged with running military operations in 53 African states. That is it's job. It's formation consolidated a conscious drive to increase military intervention into the continent.

The slick video showing the last moments of a suicide bomber, entitled “Message to those who stay behind”, is part of the latest recruitment propaganda to emerge on English-language websites directed at young wannabe jihadis.

Its origins were not, however, in Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan, the usual bases of jihadi recruiters, but Somalia, the war-torn east African state.

The site has been traced to Al-Shabaab, a radicalised Islamist militia group led by Somalis trained in Afghanistan and aligned with Al-Qaeda. The group is fighting against Somalia’s fragile transitional government, which is backed by the West and the United Nations.

There is apparently no path blazed by George W. Bush that Barack Obama will not eagerly follow. Surges, assassinations, indefinite detention, defense of torture, senseless wars and rampant militarism -- in just a few short months, we've seen it all.

Troops struggled to crush an Islamist sect in northern Nigeria Wednesday as the death toll from four days of clashes surged past 300 and thousands of people were forced from their homes.

The militarization of mining in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is prolonging the armed conflict which has been tearing the country apart for more than 12 years.

In their broader struggle to seize economic, political and military power, all the main warring parties have carried out the most horrific human rights abuses, including widespread killings of unarmed civilians, rape, torture and looting, recruitment of child soldiers to fight in their ranks, and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. The lure of eastern Congo's mineral riches is one of the factors spurring them on.

The bloody conflict in Somalia has created the world's largest refugee camp, with 500 hungry and exhausted refugees pouring into this wind-swept camp in neighboring Kenya every day, the U.N. refugee agency said Friday.

Dadaab, just 50 miles from the Somali border, is home to more than 280,000 refugees in an area meant to hold just 90,000.

While your eyes have been diverted to the "colour revolution in Iran... things have been heating up in Somalia!

The Ethiopian troops who reached in Balanbal town in central Somalia recently have said that they want to fight against what they called foreign enemies of Ethiopia in Somalia, officials told Shabelle radio on Sunday.

In its efforts to contain protests over its environmentally devastating operations in Nigeria, Shell Oil systematically co-opted the country’s military to suppress opposition to its operations.

That Shell was so actively involved in the violent suppression of the Ogoni people comes as no surprise to environmental and social justice activists, who have alleged misdeeds by Shell in Nigeria for decades. But the documents obtained by The Independent, if accurate, would provide a historical record of the situation for the first time.

Somali residents say heavily-armed Ethiopian soldiers have crossed into central Somalia by entering a border town controlled by a pro-government militia.