Muslims and Christians riot in Nigeria

Once again, I'll be the first to admit I have to do some digging to find "the rest of the story." But the barest details suggest that there was an election in Nigeria and one side disagreed with the results ... and riots broke out today.

Over 300 appear to be dead already.

Here's some thoughts on Gateway Pundit ... who quotes Reuters and adds: In 2001, more than 1,000 people died in religious clashes in the city of Jos.

Sectarian Violence Claims Hundreds in Nigeria

The city is situated in Nigeria's "middle belt," where members of hundreds of ethnic groups commingle in a band of fertile and hotly contested land separating the Muslim north from the predominantly Christian south. Authorities imposed an around-the-clock curfew in the hardest-hit areas of the central Nigerian city, where traditionally pastoralist Hausa Muslims live in tense, close quarters with Christians from other ethnic groups.

The fighting began as clashes between supporters of the region's two main political parties following the first local election in the town of Jos in more than a decade. But the violence expanded along ethnic and religious fault lines, with Hausas and members of Christian ethnic groups doing battle.

Angry mobs gathered Thursday in Jos after electoral workers failed to publicly post results in ballot collation centers, prompting many onlookers to assume the vote was the latest in a long line of fraudulent Nigerian elections.

Indy tweetup - huge success today

Was able to meet some twitter friends, who are excited about ways that God is using online social media to connect missions, churches, and those of us interested in both

One project that I've considered is finding as many online social missions personalities as I can

clipped from ubbloggin.blogspot.com A number of 'tweeps' showed up today for a 'tweetup' -- don't ask. LOL. We heard 'names' like... Y0mbo DaltonsBriefs DrThomasHo LauraHo JimAckert IndyChristian ...and a girl named Tabby who has a dog named Bruce. ...and a guy named Bruce who has a cat named Tabby. Go figure. We discussed how Twitter, Facebook and other social-networking sites can help missions and global awareness in general.... eg. the recent Mumbai story... being reported minute by minute among tweeters onsite at the hotels under seige. [Visit the UBcafe's photostream.] clipped from ubbloggin.blogspot.com

Mumbai and the WAR on TERROR

I'll be the first to admit, as I have when discussing Kosovo or DR Congo here on this site, that I really don't get the whole Paki-Indian historical conflict. But that sure doesn't mean it's not real.

As the terror crisis in Mumbai unfolded over the last 48 hours there were quick comments to attempt to tie Pakistan to these attacks. So far, I think this is totally unfounded. There's surely a possibility that Al Queda or other groups inside Pakistan could have taken part ... with other rumors suggesting Russia, China, Iran, or Somali terrorists. Time for a deep breath, and let the intelligence professionals sort things out.

• First, the situation is not even over yet. Go to live search on twitter for minute by minute updates, some from people standing outside one of the hotels.
• Second, we know from our own experience that terror is not necessarily a country and can be entirely borderless. It's time to return to George W. Bush's philosphy, if you work with us great, if you work against us then we will assume you are harboring terrorists and will take steps to pre-emptively protect the free world.
  
• Third, we know that Israel has the capability to knock out Iran's nuclear capability, this may be the right time to make that happen and get rid of one massive potential problem.

I know that some of you will disagree, great, give me your best shot.

Photos from Mumbai today - fires raging

Use this link for live updates

A well written photo diary of the events of the last 24 hours from an eyewitness

clipped from arunshanbhag.com OMG! One of the domes of the Taj is on fire; It is burning like a bonfire! I can actually see the structs/frameworks under the tiles in full blaze. OMG! NO! This can’t be happening! ~ Hand held; rested my elbow on the sill!; Sorry for blurry images from ~ 10:45 pm But when I saw this image of the Taj dome burning, my heart bleeds! It is all in knots! I am overwhelmed! Finally tears, … in torrents! NOW! I am … very, very sad!

Are terrorists watching twitter for information?

Report: Indian Government asking eyewitnesses not to post detailed information on twitter today, for fear that terrorists are on twitter and using the #mumbai hashtag just like the rest of us are

An unconfirmed report out of India has the Indian Government urging Twitter users to not share specific on the scene information, and further that the Government may be trying to block Twitter in India, or is asking Twitter to block Mumbai related tweets.

Twitter has become an international talking point today following its use by many on the scene witnesses in Mumbai after the multiple terrorist attacks there Wednesday evening local time.

The interesting side of the report, read out on ABC Radio Melbourne at 3:10pm AEST (so no hard link, I just happened to be in the car at the time) is the notion that terrorists may be reading Twitter for intel; it’s not impossible, but notably someone in India thinks Twitter offers a bigger risk than traditional blogging or even heritage media.

Mumbai has a strong Twitter community, which as shown by the logo in this post, even has its own regular Twitter meetups.

We’ve asked Twitter for comment and we’ll update the post if we get a response, or hear anything more. If you’re on the ground or have any further details tips at inquisitr.com or direct duncan at nichenet.com.au

International Roundup

• It sure looks like Binyamin Netanyahu will be the Prime Minister of Israel: A new poll published on Channel One television Tuesday night projects Likud party chairman Binyamin Netanyahu as the next prime minister with a commanding 37-25 lead over Kadima. This gives credence to worries that he will move to knock out Iran's nuclear capability quickly too.

Opinion: He's the right man for the time. Israel needs someone strong with the US featuring weak liberals in the White House.

Russia continues their courting of evil empire types: Venezuala, Zimbabwe, Cuba, rebel groups in South Ossetia, and basically anyone who doesn't like the US. Down deep I think Russia like the tough kid down the street who can see that he's falling out of all the important groups, so he aligns with all the bad gang types so he can have someone to hang with. Eventually those gangs get arrested and broken up, and that kid is still standing there with a foolish grimace.

Russian warships approached Venezuela Monday for upcoming joint maneuvers -- Moscow's first military presence in the region since the Cold War -- as Washington closely monitored the situation.

Venezuelan defense officials said the ships, including the nuclear-powered cruiser Peter the Great and destroyer Admiral Chabankenko, would arrive on Tuesday.

The joint exercises were to coincide with a two-day visit by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Venezuela, the strongest US critic in the region.

Medvedev was due to arrive Wednesday and meet fiercely anti-liberal President Hugo Chavez on Thursday, before heading to communist Cuba.

Analysts see Medvedev as bringing a defiant message to Washington's doorstep, in the wake of Russian outrage at US plans to install a strategic missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, and support for the brief Georgia war in August.

Are Somali-Americans sneaking back to become pirates?

Gates of Vienna does a nice job of asking the questions, with some source material:

The Missing: Somali Men Off Twin Cities Streets, Back in Somalia

Somali community fears young men leaving to fight holy war

MINNEAPOLIS — Young Somali men are vanishing off the streets of the Twin Cities. More than 20 have left in the last few months, and the community fears they’ve gone back to Somalia to fight in a holy war.

They’re known in the Somali community simply as The Missing. More than 20 young Somali men, between the ages of 17 and 22, who have left the Twin Cities in the last few months, without a single word to their families.

The families and community leaders believe the men have gone back to fight in a bloody civil war, in which Al Qaeda is a major player.

With tongue in cheek the author at the end commends the Horn of Africa for drawing some gang members out of the US. But this is much more serious, if ethnic groups who risked their lives to come to the US leave to go fight jihad and eventually attack US interests.

Hugo Chavez suffers embarrasing setbacks

Venezuelan Opposition Makes Solid Gains

To follow up on Anastasia Moloney's WPR preview of the Venezuela elections, the NY Times is reporting that the opposition indeed made significant gains, but according to the WaPo, it apparently lost Sucre which would have signaled inroads into Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's core base urban poor. Chávez also managed to avoid some of the more significant symbollic defeats that had been forecasted, like the governorship that his brother was trying to inherit from their father. Still, the defeat is a substantial one for Chávez, and comes despite a good deal of pre-election government interference. How he responds to the outcome will go a long way towards determining the truth to his claim that the elections prove the strength of Venezuela's democracy.

A small detour from our DR Congo coverage, but when a dictator from the Soviet-Islamacist block takes it in the teeth from real voters ... we want to spotlight. He won't care much for their votes though, and it still may require an uprising to eliminate him.

Actor Ben Affleck in DR Congo

Touring the devastation of human crisis levels in DR Congo, actor Ben Affleck commenting on the Darfur crisis (with huge Hollywood concern) and the rather lackluster interest in similar or even worse problem in DR Congo

clipped from news.yahoo.com Ben Affleck visits refugee camps in eastern Congo Ben Affleck is trying to draw more attention to the conflict in eastern Congo, touring refugee camps and consulting with aid workers in the region where at least 250,000 people have been displaced by recent fighting. The actor, who has visited the Central African country four times since 2007 and has made a documentary about its problems, is also encouraging people to donate more to aid agencies working there. "I'm not an expert in international affairs or diplomacy, but it doesn't take that to see the tremendous suffering here," he told The Associated Press on Thursday in Goma, the regional capital. "It's not something that we as human beings can, in good conscience, ignore." Some fear the current crisis could once again draw in neighboring countries. Congo's devastating 1998-2002 war split the vast nation into rival fiefdoms and involved half a dozen African armies.

Congo Rebel Stronghold

There's a story to be had on both sides of this civil war in DR Congo. Fighting has died down a bit, but could flare back up at any time.

clipped from www.iht.com Life in the capital of the Congo rebels From the cracked concrete steps of an expropriated government building, Jules Simpeze Banga looked out at a mass of hundreds of freshly displaced people on Wednesday morning and delivered one of his first speeches as the new, rebel mayor of this town. Most of the fighting has died down since the rebels declared a cease-fire last month after routing government troops in several strategic towns. On Wednesday, the rebels lived up to their word. They began pulling back troops from a few towns to allow aid workers better access to the hundreds of thousands of displaced people huddled in huts made out of banana leaves. The flimsy shelters are no match for the tropical rains that brew all morning and dump down every afternoon in sheets.

Zimbabwean Blogger reports troops will go to DR Congo

Again, I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a ton about the whole story in Congo this week, but reports that economically ravaged Zimbabwe may well be sending troops back into DR Congo can't be good for the region. Zimbabwean soliders will only be protecting junta interests.

Wouldn't it be far better for Zimbabwe to focus on following the will of the people in democracy and basic human rights. What's next, will Iraq start sending troops into Israel or Palestine? Of course not, they are trying to build a democratic nation and won't be ready to take part in their neighbors disputes for years to come.

The truth is, and this is easy to pick out of the clutter of news reports, there are massive mineral resources in DR Congo, and the nations surrounding it would like to get their hands on those riches.

DR Congo talks with all sides

UN mediators beginning to see some openess on both sides to talks in impending crisis in DR Congo. It's my uninformed opinion that the groups that started the Rwandan massacres, snuck into DR Congo years ago and like Al Queda in Afganistan they are the true problem. Remains to be seen if my guess is close to true

clipped from english.aljazeera.net DR Congo rebels ready for talks General Laurent Nkunda, the Congolese rebel leader, has said he is ready to negotiate with the government in Kinshasa without any pre-conditions to end fighting in the east of the country. Ahead of a planned meeting with Olusegun Obasanjo, the UN envoy visiting DR Congo, Nkunda told Al Jazeera on Saturday that he was "asking only for direct negotiations". Nkunda's remarks came as Obasanjo met Joseph Kabila, the country's president, in a bid to stop fighting between government troops and rebel forces. After meeting Kabila in the capital Kinshasa, Obasanjo, a former Nigerian president, travelled to Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, where he said he would hold talks with Nkunda,  who heads the National Congress for the Defence of People (CNDP).

Is democracy enough for Africa?

Oh my, this article is so well written, and with obvious regret, but once again I'll merely excerpt and hope you take the time to read the whole thing and even comment here or there.

Post-election crisis and instability - still no international solutions :

Hasty polls can make things worse as Congo’s case shows By Paul Collier

LONDON: Much of my work has been on conflict in Africa, so the latest catastrophe in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has unsurprisingly generated questions of the form ‘What now?’ My buck-dodging answer is: ‘Don’t start from here’. We are where we are because of the persistent failure of the international community to face reality. Part of that reality is that the UN is ill-suited to a reactive mode of operations: reaction requires decisions and logistics that are usually stymied by a lack of consensus and resources.

So what is the alternative to the reactive mode? It is to pre-empt these situations by changing the approach that has been adopted in post-conflict societies.

The international community has based its pre-emptive strategy on a naive faith in the restorative power of elections. The theory has been that elections usher in an accountable and legitimate government and so bring peace and prosperity. In the DRC, elections were duly held on October 29. 2006, costing the aid donors $500mn. So confident was the international community in this model that the date set for the withdrawal of UN peacekeepers was October 30. Instead, the elections provoked a full-scale shoot-out between the forces of the defeated candidate, Bemba, and the victorious Kabila, while manifestly failing to resolve the problem of eastern Congo.

Compelling opinions on DR Congo

African leaders to blame for Congo crisis

"I recently watched a Congolese man break down while watching footage of children with distended tummies begging for food in the DRC following the recent outbreak of fighting in the country. With ironic nostalgia, the man reflected on life in his home city Kinshasa, noting how in almost every street, for every three blocks, there is a Church. It is a pattern, he said, that is easily replicated in much of the country."

Having been chastised for re-printing entire articles, and this one is well worth reading, I will merely make comment that the author puts the blame for the atrocities squarely on Africans. Not on Chinese for contracting for resources, not on colonialists for dubious crimes in the past, not on Islamo-fascists though there is talk in this article of the Christian community. Real closely, at least the writer seems to have a strong opinion.

Are Zimbabwe and Angola sending troops into DRC?

The saddest part of all this is how much it resembles the 20th Century wars in Eastern Europe. Did we merely fight wars in Europe so that we can watch the same thing happen in Africa? Rival tribes and ethnic groups, some legitimate others dubious, cleansing and attacking one another across all national boundaries. Age old allies being drawn into fight, for what? For freedom? For democracy? For speech or religion?

No, so far it would appear that the fighting is over who gets to control mineral resource profits, and which tribe was most ravaged 13 years ago in the last major ethnic outbreak.

Update: Eliminate former Interahamwe/FDLR who caused Rwandan massacres and the rebellion will go away

OK, I'll admit it, just like I have many times with regards to Kosovoan Independence, this situation has more than one side to the story. This write obviously takes a pro-Rwandan perspective that this group, supposedly being harboured by DR Congo, is the root of the problem.

I'm open to all opinions and data and news, just as the Taliban and Al-Queda should be totally disbanded and disarmed, so also any group that caused the Rwandan massacres should as well.

11-12-08 Update on DR Congo

Today some links with updates, but needless to say the situation is fluid and the emotional tension is surely high. Remember this country borders Rwanda and shares the same tribal problems that engulfed Rwanda in civil war and mass murders. Those same tribal groups live side by side in DR Congo, and the incivility has flared back up.

Reportedly the United Nations will send 3,000 more troops in to the region, to join an existing 17,000 troops in a group called Monuc.

Similar to many hot spots in the world, the United Nations sends in troops, gives them little ability to actually defend or fire weapons, the troops are sitting ducks. Sorry to be so blunt but this isn't the solution. Where exactly are the thousands of African nation troops that should be protecting these civilians and forcing both sides to cease fire? Where exactly does Rwanda stand, are they encouraging this recent violence to foment problems in their neighbor's country.

The following is a longer than normal exerpt from PBS, well written, to give a background on the Rwandan and DR Congo problems, the tribal tensions, and the players in what could become the world's next major emergency.

From PBS:

	In the Central African nation of Democratic Republic of Congo, a conflict largely financed by mining the metals that make video games and cell phones has driven hundreds of thousands from their homes and spread death and destruction in what the United Nations is calling one of the most dangerous crises on Earth.
		The latest conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo has displaced 250,000 people, and caused conditions for the spread of disease.
	Rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda and his army invaded eastern DR Congo (another neighboring country is called the Republic of Congo) in late August, overrunning towns and taking up positions near the city of Goma. Cause of the conflict The fighting in the Congo is tied to the 1994 genocide in neighboring Rwanda, where members of one ethnic group, the Hutu, killed hundreds of thousands of members of the Tutsis, another group. General Nkunda, a Tutsi, says he is invading the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to protect other minority Tutsis from Hutu militia that fled to the region after being ousted from power in Rwanda. Freelance journalist and fellow at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University Mvemba Dizolele said the Hutu militia has been used to justify past invasions by Rwanda, which may be supporting Nkunda. “(The Hutu militiamen) are ruthless. They live in the mountains. They threaten the population, oppress the population, rape women, run a lot of trade. I'm talking about minerals and any other riches that you find in the region. Those are specifically the cause of this war,” Dizolele told the NewsHour. Nkunda threatens takeover President Joseph Kabila refuses to meet with Nkunda, and his government considers the rebel leader a criminal. General Nkunda has threatened to take over all of the DR Congo, which is the size of the entire eastern United States, if the democratically elected leader, Joseph Kabila, refuses to negotiate with him. The DR Congo’s government considers Nkunda a criminal. The United Nations is concerned that other southern African countries, which support the DR Congo, will enter the mix. Leaders from the Southern African Development Community said Nov. 9 that they were willing to send peacekeeping troops to the region if necessary, and there are reports that soldiers from neighboring Angola are already in DR Congo. The United Nations also has 17,000 peacekeepers in DR Congo, its largest troop commitment in the world, but the country is too large to protect, Mvemba Dizolele told the NewsHour. The situation is similar to the civil wars in the region during the 1990s, when several African states backed different warlords fighting for control in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, according to the BBC. Important natural resources The rebel army funds itself by mining and selling coltan, a mineral needed to make computers, cell phones and video games. While many in this area of Africa are poor, the DR Congo has valuable natural resources that armies use to buy weapons and uniforms. Eastern DR Congo in particular has 80 percent of the world’s supply of coltan, which is needed to make video games, cell phones and computers. “(DR Congo) is a poor country on the surface, but underground it's one of the richest countries in the world. Congo today holds largest deposits of copper, coltan, gold, diamond, and so on and so forth,” Dizolele said. Militias control the areas with coltan and then sell it in Rwanda and Uganda to buy equipment for their soldiers. Upwards of four million people have died in the region since 1998, mostly due to hunger and disease as a result of the chaos, the New York Times reported.