MATADOR NINETY-FOUR

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.

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The US is accusing Eritrea of supporting the insurgents against what the BBC characterises as Somalia’s ‘unity government’, and promising more weapons for its clients. Clinton claims that the ‘al-Shahab’ insurgents are liable to become a “threat” to the United States and “launch attacks against countries far and near”. That rootless, worldwide conspiracy against freedom just will not go to bed.

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There has been a lot of talk lately about Somali pirates, so it’s probably a good time for a little summary.

In 2006 “the CIA propagated that Al-Qaeda had made its base in Somalia where three senior leaders were residing. CIA then encouraged Ethiopia to invade Somalia in support of weak TFG forces (Transitional Federal Government) against UIC fighters (Union of Islamic Courts) and promised to provide intelligence and air cover. Ethiopian troops backed by USA invaded Somalia on 28 December 2006.

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The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menace of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell — and some justice on their side
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome?

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Ken Saro-Wiwa swore that one day Shell, the oil giant, would answer for his death in a court of law. Next month, 14 years after his execution, the Nigerian environmental activist’s dying wish is to be fulfilled.

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While George Bush was busy railing at Zimbabwe’s President, Robert Mugabe at the G-8 summit in Toyako, Japan; his Ethiopian proxy-army in Somalia was grinding out more carnage on the streets of Mogadishu. More than 40 civilians have been killed in the last 48 hours. On Sunday, Osman Ali Ahmed, the head of the UN Development Program in Somalia, was shot gangland style as he left a mosque Mogadishu. He died before he reached the hospital with wounds to the head and chest. Ali Ahmed is just the latest of the peace-keepers who have been killed in the ongoing battle between Bush’s Ethiopian occupiers and Somali guerrillas.

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The campaign of terror sweeping Zimbabwe is being directly organised by a junta that took over the running of the country after Robert Mugabe’s shock election defeat in March. Details of the organised violence are contained in a report released today by Human Rights Watch, corroborated by senior Western diplomats who describe the situation in Zimbabwe as a “military coup by stealth”.

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