Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's campaigners

I am so impressed with Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's campaigners.

Yesterday I attended a post-campaign event so I could attempt to explain to Mr. Nelson-Pallmeyer the source of my frustration.
(Click to read the details.)

I'm mathematical and calculating enough that I can't stomach the idea of putting my time and labor into preaching to the choir. I joined his campaign when it seemed like it was going to be a chance to get thousands of mainstream Americans who don't read "liberal fringe magazines" exposed to sound policy proposals that use phrases like "militarized empire."
(Something Mr. Nelson-Pallmeyer slipped into a sentence yesterday without thinking, bless his heart.)

Mainstream Americans will show up and listen to such talk if what they're doing is "learning a political candidate's views before voting." They won't show up to places where policy and action proposals include that kind of language under any old circumstances.

That's what makes them not "the choir."

I told Mr. Nelson-Pallmeyer that I needed guidance towards other arenas--arenas besides campaigns for public office--where I could direct my labor if I was going to feel my heart calling me towards his proposed "citizen movement."

Since I didn't have the heart to stick with the part of hte movement that's reaching, at best, 1 new mainstream person a week by waving "No Blood for Oil" signs, I asked him if through his mailing list or his next book he could provide guidance for people like me.


He said he was searching for answers to such a question and would continue to do so so--and address them as he figured out how to.


But it turns out I didn't need to worry about Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer campaigners turning his message's mainstream momentum into a bunch of choir-preaching.

A large chunk of Nelson-Pallmeyer's contact structure in CD 1 has turned into an opposition movement to construction of a corn ethanol plant.

Let me reemphasize that.

JNP campaigners are keeping one of his "liberal fringe magazine" messages--that almost all biofuels do more harm than good--in the mainstream down there.

Wow.

What the heck was I worried about?




(Click here and scroll to the end of the post to read a wonderful University Ave. light rail fight story, too.)




Beyond that, the "Hopeful Thursdays" meeting in someone's back yard that I rolled my eyes at when I first heard about it...

...is pretty much a mirror image of the meetings in the same person's back yard out of which SPRUNG this candidacy (which I do not roll my eyes at).

After that news, I'm excited to hear what people come up with at "Hopeful Thursdays" meetings.



And, last but not least, a Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer supporter or two really touched me yesterday by surprising me with support for my University Avenue activities I hadn't asked for:

Attached to my clipboard, on top of the flyers, flapping in the wind, were two dollar bills.

What confidence in people's "do good" projects exists in the Nelson-Pallmeyer world. Running both ways.

You Couldn't Find A Few Hundred Non-Killers Out Of 12,000 Detainees, Hamas?

I read that the ratio of prisoners being talked about exchanging with Israel & Palestine is something like several hundred : 3.

Now, that sorta makes sense, once you factor in that the number of people held by the two sides is something like 12,000 : ... is it less than 10?


But here's what BUGS me.

Dumb*** officials on the Palestinian side aren't asking for a list that's 100% people who shouldn't be imprisoned in the first place.

According to this article, some of the hundreds they're asking for have committed actions that resulted in deaths.

Now, I'm not for keeping all people whose actions have resulted in deaths locked up forever, but for crying out loud, can they at least ask for them to be let out SECOND?

Can they at least ask for them to be let out after letting out a few hundred of the Palestinians who were locked up for throwing a rock at a tank or spitting at a soldier who let a bully beat them up?

I really hate the way people w/ power behave. **shakes a fist at Hamas elected & appointed officials**




(I wish I knew of some group who'd agree w/ me who could communicate with and influence Hamas officials. Something like Avaaz, only they don't get that narrow, so that wouldn't really work...da**it.)

Farmer's Market food

Grocery stores in my area:
Salad bar: $8/lb
Bread: $2/lb

Farmer's Markets in my area:
Salad fixins: $0.50/lb - $4/lb (mostly $1/lb - $2/lb)
Bread: $4/lb - $8/lb


Why on earth some people go to farmer's markets for the bread and other prepared goods and seem not to care much about the beans, greens, and other salad fixins is beyond me.

(P.S. Make sure to take a close look at the produce of people of color. The bread-lovers are probably passing them over for $32/lb artisinal oregano or something, so they could use your business to stay on the farm.

The more you shop at stalls with cheap food marketed based on traditional-yet-wise approaches to safety and health (and no more), the better they can stay afloat despite the non-traditional rules set up by modern bureaucracy.

If you worry about them not being "organic," which is a crock, anyway, talk to them.

My favorite experience: I said I was so hungry, I'd like something I could eat right now, without access to water for washing. Did the farmer-vendor have any ideas? She showed me some greens with holes in them, and when I expressed skepticism about the holes, she answered: "If the bugs won't eat it, neither should you!"

Lesson: there are always old tricks and farm wisdom that can help you pick out safe food for you and your family at low prices.)

Minnesota senate race

Blogger Penigma wrote:

Franken...obviously wouldn't...utter political pomposity and economic boondoggle for the benefit of corporations (summer gas-tax break).

Excuse me?

Do you really think that?

I would LOVE it if that were true.

If I could believe that about him, I would definitely vote for him (right now, uninformed about 3rd-party alternatives, I would...but of course, I'll see if there's anyone I like better come November. 3rd-party voting is useful here--5% in a statewide election gets them automatic entrance to debates) and possibly even campaign for him.

*sigh*

I wish Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer had won.

Two Buck Chuck, Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, UFW

Well I'll be darned.
My favorite of ProfBW's action suggestions, which she asked me to subordinate to promoting the UFW's actions (which were more relevant to the immediately deceased victim), is now a UFW action.

Good thinkin' 99.

(On the other hand, now I wish I HAD gotten around to getting my conservative buddy who shops at Trader Joe's all the time to call them about Two Buck Chuck and voice his opinion as a consumer before the UFW got behind it. Now he'll think I'm just bugging him about my "UFW mailing list" stuff when he Googles the issue and sees the UFW come up!)

Female Dentist of Color

Click here to read why I'm looking for a female dentist of color.

Yesterday, I read Dr. Weems write:

Who can say for sure whether it’s blackness or femaleness that’s despised most in this country? Meaning, there’s probably no way to parse out which part of you is under attack when as a black woman professor you sit reading the vicious evaluations of your students

I'd searched for her after seeing her leave this comment:

Have you ever considered the possibility that your students' reactions hav more to do with You than they do with the material you are asking them to reflect upon there in the classroom?

Could it be that it's not only their own unexamined racism, but their own internalized sexism that makes them resent and resist the race discussion their black Female professor is trying to get them to engage?

Sure, the Obamas of the world faced their share of racism as they traversed through the halls of places like Harvard and Princeton. But the experiences of the black women students in class with Obama and other black males would tell that there's a very unique reaction academics reserve for black women in the classroom.

I wonder if a significant part of white (and black) students' revolt against and resistance to the material you and I present isn't also motivated by their deep suspicions about our right and competence to teach them.

As black women in academia we all have a rather sophisticated grasp of race and racism in the classroom, media, and in this country. But sexism, especially when it's directed at us, we aren't always astute at naming and addressing.

I don't know if the reaction I'm having is a helpful one or if it's a well-intentioned yet "*headsmack*" one...but my reaction, after thinking:

Geez Louise, that must be hard. I don't know if I could survive being in their shoes.

was to think,

By gum, since I do my darndest NOT to be like the students described over there (who give bad reviews of a teacher simply because the teacher is bringing coverage of women of color to their rightful proportional representation in studies about women), maybe I, just by going into someone's professional world and being a good human being, can be a bright spot in someone's day.

Although I'm not a student any more, I do have other ways in which I need to interact with professionals and support them. And this would be with my dollars, not my "review" words.

See, I need a dentist.

So I'm thinking about looking for a female dentist of color. Particularly of a racial/ethnic background that gets practically NO respect in the health fields.


Of course, my mom being in the health field, I've heard nightmare stories about incompetent treatment. Stories that make me very much want to avoid incompetent treatment.

So it'll be quite a challenge to filter out truly incompetent people from people who're very competent but not racially/ethnically mainstream enough to get the reviews they deserve.


But, the good news is, once I FIND a dentist of color who knows what she's doing with teeth, the rest of it isn't any more complicated than being who I strive to be anyway. A good person. (Who actually bothers to get dental checkups.)




But...

Boy is it hard to find a list of female dentists of color in Minnesota! 2 hours on the internet and nothing.

Can any readers help me?

I'm Going To Continue Protesting The Central Corridor LRT Plans

Well, today didn't go as badly as I thought.

My mobilization efforts did--I only managed to mobilize 4 people, thanks to my lousy organization.

But luck connected me to proper organizers who, although previously not 100% against light rail trains going down University Avenue, are now 100% against it. They've changed their minds about not fighting the route because they've decided that they're not going to be able to win a fight for any other means to their end (true economic justice for the people currently on & around University Ave..)

I have hope that even as a lazy, half-assed runner, I've nevertheless looked up, wishing for someone to hand my baton off to while I walk off the track and coddle my ego for a while, and, miraculously, found a whole team reaching back to me.

I don't deserve it, of course...but I got it. It's what luck delivered today.

And I'll take it.

And keep fighting. I ain't quitting today.

Protesting the Central Corridor LRT Plans

I'm about ready to give up the fight against light rail trains on University Avenue.

I don't like why, either.

The thought of how badly I've failed--both through lack of time investment and lack of skill--at organizing makes me sick at my stomach.

I suck at getting people to follow up.
I suck at following up and doing work myself (like getting my damned flyers and calls to action translated into Hmong, Cambodian, Lao, & Vietnamese).

And now it's mobilizing time and I've got no one standing beside me because I failed at organizing.

That's no reason to give up fighting the good fight.

But it sure makes me feel like doing so.

Contact Google; Boycott If They Don't Respond

I wrote:

Please change the mouseover text of your front page graphic ASAP. It is HIGHLY offensive and makes me want to avoid Google for the day and go use Yahoo or something. And makes me want to spread the boycott via blog if the caption lasts. It reads, "Anniversary of the first ascent of Mount Everest." That is ridiculous and erases people of color's history by implying that the only things that the entire world bothers to count when it says "First," etc. are first-world Westerners' history. Please change it to, "Anniversary of the first outsider ascent of Mount Everest" or "Anniversary of the first Western ascent of Mount Everest." Thank you.

Write what you like, but submit a comment to them, then change your home page, hide your toolbar, and search with something else until the word gets out that they've changed the "mouseover" text of that image on the front page of http://www.google.com/

I'm not sure if the above comment link is better or if this one is. I sent my comment to both.

Teaching Different Consent Rules ->->-> Society Judging Breach Of Consent Differently?

I don't know how to get our entire judicial/legal culture changed so things like this don't happen.

*sigh*

Best I can come up with as my own plan of action is to work on getting our entire mainstream culture changed in the ways BetaCandy suggests here and let the changes seep from there into our judicial/legal culture.

My current guess is that actions like BetaCandy's are the fastest way to get to the point where most mainstream-acculturated people would answer a dialogue like the one Marcella had with a commenter ("Anna C") exactly the way Marcella did:

Anna C:
So basically, his actions (from his point of view) come down to [3-point list]

Marcella:
I disagree with your assessment of his actions from his POV. That assessment at most matches the rationalizations and excuses he would give for his actions if he faced a criminal investigation. Someone's rationalizations which support the decisions they make are not the same thing as the situation from their perspective.

Do White Male Vegans Think Of Themselves As "Vegans," Not "White Male Vegans?"

Johanna at Vegans of Color asked:

Do (white, male) vegans see themselves as my ally automatically when they learn that I, too, am vegan? Do they assume we’re on the same side? (Is it even a conscious thought?) Such vegans divide the world into two parts: people who are vegan, & thus allies, & those who are not vegan.

I'm not vegan, but Johanna, I can tell you that the answer for me, as a white woman raised with a lot of privilege, is "Yes."

Nerdishness, sci-fi lovers, fellow students and enthusiasts of my favorite high school subject...YES.

That's exactly how I felt 80% of the time. And I don't have any stand-out memories I can think of as I type this about the likely 20% of the time that I didn't feel that way.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I finally got exposed to enough words like yours:

Some of us don’t have the luxury of seeing things that simply. Some of us will never, ever have the privilege of ignoring, if we want to, the rest of who we are in favor of focusing solely on our diets. Why?

Oh yeah, because the world won’t let us.

Because being who we are — completely aside from veganism — can be very dangerous sometimes. Some of us are getting raped or fired for being gay or pulled over ... or losing our homes ... or being harassed on the street or getting deported or being tortured or having the franchise taken away from us or struggling to get health care or ...

and Sly Civilian's on figuring out how to make whiteness something as prominent in my sense of identity as my "interests" or B.D. Tatum's book and started doing my damndest to think of myself as "colored" the color white.

Rachel Moss needs to know what she did

So here's a link to the post that I think lets her know.

Hopefully, Rachel Moss see that post whenever she Googles her own name and never forget AngryBlackWoman's take on what she did.

Working on this University Ave. thing

Just in case it isn't clear, like Macon D, I hope I'm being a different kind of helper.

I hope I'm being a true ally.

Though I'll appropriate "do-gooder" language when people who understand it have power and I'm trying to convince them, I do hope I'm not a do-gooder.

I did start this whole "stop the train on University" thing because of the answers to questions I got from people who live and work there. If I hadn't met so many people who share my opinions, I wouldn't be doing this, and I don't try to convert people who live and work in area to sharing my opinions. (Converting people with power--politicians and such from out of the area--is a different matter.) I don't even explain why I'm against LRT on University unless they ask.

I hope I'm doing a good job of being an ally.

Back to the Drawing Board: Keeping train transit off University Avenue

Dammit.

The MN legislature re-introduced bonding legislation that funds the "Central Corridor" University Avenue light rail train, the legislature passed it, and Gov. Pawlenty promised, as part of budget negotiations, not to veto it.

I don't even know whether to call the governor and ask him to veto that line of the budget bill or not.

I mean, it probably wouldn't help if he was working all weekend and, as a result of a whole week's/weekend's work, said he'd sign the bill, including that part.

*sigh*

I THINK my time--and especially the time of the people I'm trying to organize--would be better spent calling those who have yet to make any decisions about whether or not to fund the University Ave. train plan.

Still, it's really hard to imagine trying to convince all the people I'm organizing to move on to the next stage. I think half of them signed on because the questionable status of state funding gave them hope that they could do something.

I don't even know how to get myself up out and at 'em enough to get as many of my 130 contacts as possible writing letters (which is what it's going to take at the next level of funding decisions, I think).

*sigh*

Help?




I could use some advice about how to further organize the people on my petition.

I think we have to write the next organization that'll be making a funding decision now. I don't know if calling that organization will work.

I mean, I'll write a letter, and I'll tell the organization that my petition has about 130 people of the University Ave. area on it so far, but I doubt that'd be nearly as effective as 50 of those petitioners EACH writing a letter. A good swarm.

Thing is, I'm no experienced activist! And a ridiculous number of people of my race and social class (that is, the people I actually strike up conversations with easily) are for this stupid train because they're upper-middle-class privileged people who just don't happen to see what a poverty-creating clusterfuck this thing is. Everybody makes mistakes, but theirs are particularly frustrating to me right now.



I only have phone numbers for most of the people I've gotten contact info of who're against putting light rail on University Avenue (sometimes addresses, sometimes not--almost never e-mail addresses). So getting sample text to them is either going to be hard & slow (going door-to-door) or super expensive.

I'll bite the bullet & choose one of those two ways of trying to motivate them to get a letter written and get it off to next organization making a funding decision if I have to...but are there better ways than providing sample text to get working people to write letters?

Central Corridor - 24 signatures against University Avenue trains in 2.5 hours

I got 24 signatures against putting Central Corridor light rail trains on University Avenue in one night!

Considering my petition was only at about 110 when I set out this afternoon, that is AWESOME.

I hope I can really get this going. If I could keep up at this evening's rate, I'd actually reach my first goal of getting more signatures on my petition than there are policymakers who have backed the current plan. (State legislators, the Metro Council, nonprofits, big businesses, etc.)

People of the Central -> Charles / Lexington -> Western area, you rock. You're probably not reading this, but thanks for talking to me today. There IS strength in numbers--glad you believed it.

Poll: Twin Cities Couldn't Care Less If Current Central Corridor LRT Dies

I do believe that the good people of the Twin Cities know that Light Rail would kill University Avenue and drive minorities into an even worse wealth gap!

Although the overall Minnesota poll wasn't so good, when asked, "Governor Pawlenty vetoed funding for the Central Corridor light rail line between Minneapolis and St. Paul. Should the Central Corridor funding be re-considered as part of a budget deal at the end of the legislative session?" Twin Cities residents (who were 64% of poll respondents) answered:

No: 45%
Not sure: 9%
Yes: 45%


Not all hope that Twin Cities liberals care about the poor is lost.

Suburbs poor, transitless, & bad schools; Cities rich, transit-full, & good schools

Oh dear heavens.

We (people who care about justice) need to WATCH OUT and make sure action gets taken about bad policy in the next decade or three.

Without good, deliberately anti-racist policies everywhere and in every aspect possible, there could be a lot of people of color stuck taking external assistance (because they can't afford gas for a commute, and that's the only way to survive staying at home) while living in shoddily built houses in the middle of nowhere.

And their kids could be in just as bad of schools as they are now in the cities, if, say, upper-middle-class (mostly white) people crowding the cities cry for schools to stop letting kids attend whatever school they started at (in other words, not letting kids whose parents have had to move to the middle of nowhere at least get to stay at their old in-the-city school as its quality of education improves).


S***, s***, s***, s***, s***.

I'd just been thinking about this over the last few days--wondering if low-wealth people of color would ever get locked out. Wondering if high-wealth (mostly white) people would ever legislate seriously just and fair rules whenever they find themselves having a mixed claim on social goods with low-wealth people of color.

And then I see this article.

S***.

P.S. How offensive, calling poor people moving to suburbs "decline" of those suburbs. Geez Louise, the suburbs are important enough entities that we personify them and say they "decline?" Even though the cause of our word choice is individual people making real life decisions in their very real lives? The f***? How about their LIVES declining? Can we forget about the f***ing suburb's "decline" in our press and acknowledge that their LIVES are "declining" if they're having to relocate away from family and friends over money concerns? Cripes!

P.P.S. If you are upper-middle-class, and low-wealth people live near you, get to know them and introduce them to neighbors you know. Knowing neighbors is how they fought to keep their neighborhoods "decent" all these decades. Want to be an anti-racist, anti-class-warfare ally? Fight side-by-side with your low-income neighbors against crime; don't write entire households off and try to run.

Blogswarm Roundup (Rape & Mutilation in the Congo)

Click here to see my running blogswarm link roundup - submit links if I haven't found them yet by Google searching.

(Sorry, my roundup, my categories! ;-) So I'm sorting into people who dove into the corporate thing and people who chose another topic. Unless y'all strongly object.)
Corporate
Elle, Ph.D.
The Sowing Circle
Elaine Vigneault
The Hyperborean
Feministe
Off Our Pedestals
KitKat's Critique (and KitKat's Critique part 2)

Other
Texas in Africa
Hell on Hairy Legs
Hagar's Daughters
Black Fire, White Fire (I think this is a blogswarm post...)
Diary of an Anxious Black Woman (and DABW part 0)
Work in Progress
Spectrum Blue
Shakesville
Abyss2Hope
Noli Irritari Leones

Let's End Mass Rape & Mutilation In The Congo: Part 2

Naming names

See also ABW's/Elaine's list and Lisa's list.
Series part 1 of 2 is here.

Resources:
(Click here to expand to the full post.)

Coltan
The "mineral" you hear about in the mainstream media. It's actually 2 minerals chemically attached as found in the ground.
One is "columbium" and the other is "tantalum."
Keith Harmon Snow refers to "columbium" as "niobium"--another name for it.

Pyrochlore
A special kind of coltan.

Columbium/Niobium
You're gonna love this. Where do I start? Mixed into:

• Stainless steel
• Heat-resistant steel for construction
• Steel for oil pipelines
• Glass for corrective eyeglasses
• Jet engine ferroniobium
• Rocket assembly ferroniobium
• Furnace part ferroniobium
• Automobile & truck body ferroniobium
• Railroad track ferroniobium
• Ship hull ferroniobium
• Turbine ferroniobium
• Nuclear reactors
• Airframes
• Jewelry
• Chemical processing equipment
• MRI machines
• Superconducting magnets
• "Nanotechnology" of various kinds

Tantalum
Another lovely list.

• Electronic capacitors
• Cell phones (not sure which part)
• Laptops (not sure which part)
• Video game systems (not sure which part)
• Pacemakers (not sure which part)
• Surgical instruments
• Pagers (not sure which part)
• Automotive electronics
• Camera lenses
• Digital cameras (not sure which part)
• GPS
• Lithium ion batteries
• Prosthetics
• Surgical implants
• Fiberoptics
• Heat-resistant jet-engine materials
• Heat-resistant nuclear reactor materials
• Heat-resistant missle parts

Cassiterite
You want tin? You'd better get yourself some cassiterite. There's tin in it, and it's easy to extract--just smelt the stuff.
You can also coat automotive metal in it and the metal won't corrode very easily.

Tin
Replaces what used to be lead in solders and other things that environmentalists think lead shouldn't be in. (Solder = sticking electronics parts together!)

Diamonds
In the Congo. Often right at the same mine as other minerals.

Uranium
In the Congo. Often right at the same mine as other minerals.

Cobalt
In the Congo. Often right at the same mine as other minerals.

Bauxite
In the Congo. Often right at the same mine as other minerals.


Companies, People, & Organizations
(Click here to expand to the full post.)
The mid-2007 "Blood Minerals" article by David Barouski where I found most of the mineral use information gave me twice as many names as I'd catalogued from Snow's "Three Cheers" article. I think I will have to do a "Part 3" to list them. This list will simply come from Snow's article and followup I did with Wikipedia, etc.

Lueshe mine
Where you get perchlorate in Central Africa.

SOMIKIVU
A company set up for the sole purpose of being "in charge" of a mining concession that was about to be given to "Mettalurg Inc." by the Congolese/Zairian government in 1982.

Arraxa
Controls Lueshe mine somehow, according to Snow.

GfE Nuremburg
Owned 70% of SOMIKIVU.

Metallurg Inc.
US-based. Owns Arraxa & GfE Nuremburg.
Got the 1982 Lueshe mine 20-year mining concession.

Metallurg Holdings
US-based. (Pennsylvania.) Owns Mettalurg Inc.

The government of Zaire/Congo
Gave Metallurg Inc. the Lueshe mine "mining concession" for a 20-year term in 1982, but gave the operations duties to SOMIKIVU.

Hermes AG
Insured SOMIKIVU. According to Snow, this had to do with getting SOMIKIVU to not actually mine much out of Lueshe (so the price of niobium/columbium would be high).

The German government
Backed Hermes AG.

Laurent Kabila
President of Congo, 1997-2001.
A cruel man, it seems, but he did at least one great thing (or tried):
In 1999, his government dissolved SOMIKIVU, which left GfE without legal control of the Lueshe mine. Instead of giving it back to GfE somehow, his government gave the mining concession to a company they thought would actually bother to mine the mine (which would mean taxable money for the Congolese government): E. Krall Metal Congo.

E. Krall Metal Congo
From 1999-present, owns the Lueshe mining concession.

E. Krall Investment Uganda
Owns E. Krall Metal Congo

Michael Krall
Owns E. Krall. Australian. I can't imagine he's any Mother Teresa, since he owns a copper & cobalt plant in Uganda, but his company does seem to have refused to buy soldiers occupying its Lueshe mine weapons. In addition, it seems his company has refused to hire counter-militias to get control of their mine--instead they've been trying for 9 years to take their case to court with the official governments of various countries.

Karl Heinz Albers
He's been the manager of SOMIKIVU, is the man whose company GfE sold off its 70% share of SOMIKIVU to, and was affiliated with the German Embassy in Congo. (He is German.) It sounds like he had connections to pretty much every mineral-related businessperson in Rwanda.
He has personally ordered E. Krall employees killed by African soldiers (though that was thwarted).

Paul Kagame
President of Rwanda. Willing to order ANYONE killed or send troops to assist in another army's killing of ANYONE for profit or retention of his position as President of Rwanda.
He's one of the asshats who has, in the past, set his forces to raping people. (Though that was largely in Rwanda and in the 90's.)

Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)
Rwandan President Paul Kagame's party.
Though before it was the president's party, it was the militia Kagame was leading.

Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA)
The name of Rwanda's military. (As far as I can tell.)

Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD)
A Congolese political party.
Snow refers to them as militias, too, but Barouksi separates the party from its "armed wing" and refers to its armed wing as the Congolese National Army (ANC).

At first, the RCD just let Albers use the Lueshe mine despite the fact that he no longer had any rights to it. Soon, though, the RCD loaned him armed guards. Heck, some of the time, they were operating the mine instead of him or his companies.

This political party and its armed forces are supported by the Rwandan government, army, and president.

"The chief of the RCD's secret service in Goma, North Kivu"
Refused to kill E. Krall members on Karl Albers's orders and even let them go.
(Had to flee to Uganda and still had trouble escaping Albers's hit men there.)

Gen. Laurent Nkunda
With the RCD. Or at least part of it. Whoever the heck is doing his dirty work, he's got a helluva lot of power in North Kivu thanks to them. Oh, and the RPF (Rwandan government & its army) support him when he needs their help.
Apparently his invasion of Bukavu in 2004 had something to do with helping Rwanda get firmer control of Lueshe mine. (It made Congolese and UN forces head from North to South Kivu to chase him down.)
He's one of the asshats who sets his forces to raping people.

Dr. Johannes Wontka
German. Technical director of SOMIKIVU. Ordered 2 sets of murders:
1) The leader of the labor union that was on strike at Lueshe mine (they hadn't been paid in months)
2) Krall Metal employees who were on their way to check out Lueshe's mine (that they had rights to)
Foiled by the man he gave the order to, who reported his orders to the police.
Arrested and almost put on trial, but released by the Congo's national Minister of Justice when the German Embassy declared that all German businesses would pull out of Congo if this one man were not released.

"A major of the RCD army"
Got the killing orders from Johannes Wontka. Turned him in to the police instead.

Doretta Loschelder
German Ambassador to Congo.
Told Congo that if Germany didn't release Wontka, all German businesses would pull out of Congo.

Johanna König
German ambassador to Rwanda.
A member of Karl Albers's company's board.
Visited Lueshe mine in 2004, told striking workers (who were also locals to the area) that the German government owned the mine now and ordered them to get back to work, without pay, or be punished by the RPA (Rwanda's military).

H.C. Starck
Bought a lot of coltan from Albers / the RPF even when they knew they shouldn't.

Bayer AG
Owns H.C. Starck.

A&M Minerals
A British company who's purchased pyrochlore even when they knew they shouldn't.

Alfred Knight Holdings (AKH)
"Tested" a lot of pyrochlore before re-exporting it, cassiterite, and coltan to Europe.
Barouski asserts they should've known exactly what it took to get that pyrochlore out of the ground and to them, since pyrochlore only comes from Lueshe mine.

Rotterdam, Netherlands
The port lots of niobium/coltan/pyrochlore came into Europe through

Rastas
They're the "black men pulling the trigger" that Snow refers to--committing a lot of the violence--but Barouski declares that it actually isn't clear exactly what chains of power their commanders are from...or even who they are.
(But as Snow says, let's start going for the ones we can figure out pretty easily.)

The United Nations Panel of Experts
Reported on raw material plunder in the Congo and named names of corporations and people and syndicates acting illegally.

The United Nations
Removed the names named on the Panel of Experts Congo report.

GTZ, Nokia, Intel, Sony, Barrick Gold Corporation, Anglo-American Corporation, Banro, Moto Gold, DeBeers, Royal/Dutch Shell, John Bredenkamp, Billy Rautenbach, George Forrest, Louis Michel, Yoweri Museveni, Salim Saleh, James Kabarebe, Walter Kansteiner, Maurice Tempelsman, Philippe de Moerloose, Dan Gertler, Etienne Viscount Davignon, Simon Village, Ramnik Kotecha, Jean-Pierre Bemba, Romeo Dallaire...
Copmanies and people that Snow suggests we investigate and, depending on what we find, possibly demand "help the victims of sexual violence in the Congo."

Most of the names I've chronicled from Keith Harmon Snow's article relate to the Lueshe mine story. But he warns us not to zoom in and only focus our outrage on those white, Western, rich people ordering black, African, poor people to protect "their land."

He speculates that:

these activities certainly apply to...other corporations--this is how the system works, and who works it. The Lueshe Niobium mining scandal merely provides us an excellent case study where the thief has been caught red-handed...

Let's End Mass Rape & Mutilation In The Congo!

Arlene Fenton, a.k.a. "shecodes," of Black Women Vote, has started an April 13 blogswarm against mass rape and mutilation in the Congo. This is my participation (part 1 of 2).

I have a lofty aim with this post. I want all the blogswarmers to see my opinion, and I hope to change every single blogswarmer's discourse about mass rape and mutilation in the Congo.


You see, all those armies whose soldiers are raping and mutilating women have a goal, and it ain't hurting women.

Rape & mutilation of women are one of the ways those armies' commanders order their soldiers to terrorize populations.

And the reason those armies are trying to terrorize populations is because their commanders are getting paid by Westerners to depopulate (or at least demoralize the populations of) areas with minerals prized by the West.


I believe that we must get this assertion commonly accepted--at least within the blogosphere--if we're going to have any effectiveness reducing mass rape and mutilation in the Eastern Congo.

(Read The Rest of This Post.)

To introduce everyone to this concept, I'd like to highlight parts of Keith Harmon Snow's late 2007 article, "Three Cheers for Eve Ensler?"

It's not a perfect article--Snow made some tenuous connections about certain people's business activities and left it to the reader to continue the research and decide if people were innocent or guilty. But nevertheless, I owe everything about this thesis to his clear points.

Some mainstream media has been drawing attention to sexual violence against women in the East Congo lately. Eve Ensler. Glamour Magazine. Now the HBO documentary The Greatest Silence. But Snow believes that these stories are being allowed to proliferate so that better-researched stories--the ones that point to orders coming from Western, White, rich wrongdoers--won't be audible.

Not that it even takes much conspiring by media bosses, he points out. It doesn't always take conscious selection by editors to exclude stuff like Snow's work and include stuff like Ensler's work. It can happen subconsciously, too, since Ensler's work reminds people of the "hopeless African condition [of violence]" they've associated with Africa all their lives, whereas Snow's work reminds them of...well...nothing familiar.
(By the way, Snow does not name himself as someone excluded. That is my choice of an example. And he names many more voices included in media attention--referring only to Ensler is my shorthand.)

Snow wrote the following:

According to [the mainstream descriptions...African men]...are universally castigated for "rape as sport," no matter that...armed forces backed, armed, and licensed by the West to commit massive sexual atrocities...are paid in kind for services provided to maintain and insure natural resource plunder and the acquisition and control of vast tracts of Congolese territory.

From researching with Google--I'm sorry to say that I've forgotten all my sources, but an interview of Paul Ruseabagina by Snow is one--it sounds like the way things work is similar to theories I've heard about when it comes to Darfur.
(Sadly, I can't find any links, but somewhere a year or two ago, I read that the Janjaweed and others aren't settling the areas they're depopulating, which is highly unusual for a bunch of poor, rag-tag folks who could really use free land. In other words, they're getting orders not to settle the land themselves. Which means someone with power wants the land completely empty. From there, the likely guess is "mining or oil," since that's the kind of use for empty land that's easier to get access to when no one lives there.)

The multinationals don't want normal "daily life" activity going on on land with minerals under it.

So they get militias to "protect" said land.

And they know damned well that the only way that a militia can "protect" land from being lived on and used in normal "local" ways is to terrorize the locals into

1. leaving or
2. feeling too scared to demand that they get to use their ancestral land for normal stuff again.

But they give the orders to "protect" it for mining/drilling/etc. anyway.

Of course, they don't bother to pay the militias full wages. Just the commanders.

So terrorization of local populations happens for 2 reasons.

1. The commanders deliberately order soldiers to do it as part of demoralizing the population or getting them to pack up and leave. (Mentioned by Snow in "Three Cheers.")
2. The commanders don't necessarily order soldiers to terrorize people, but they do order soldiers to stay in the army or get shot...and to fend for themselves as far as pay for service is concerned out of whatever and whomever they find in the area. (Mentioned by Ruseabagina in the interview with Snow.)

Back to the mainstream media narrative.

Ensler, according to Snow, declared that "'we don't know who' is involved behind or beside" the militias actually committing the rape.

Snow contests that we have a pretty damned good start. He asks:

How does a company of white executives...from Canada gain control of such vast concessions? Through bloodshed and depopulation with black people pulling the triggers.

Snow named a few names, which I will summarize in my next post. If we Westerners would do the investigations where we ought to--into the heads of White/Western-benefitting, rich corporations--we'd know even more names.