This is an email I've sent to rachel@msnbc.com: Bonjour, I live in France -- I have both French and American citizenship -- so I watch Rachel via podcast, always a bit late...

I CAN predict when SA's "Tunisia Day" will arrive. Tunisia Day is when the masses rise against the powers that be, as happened recently in Tunisia. The year will be 2020, give or take a couple of years. The year 2020 is when China estimates that its current minerals-intensive industrialisation phase will be concluded.

For SA, this will mean the African National Congress (ANC) government will have to cut back on social grants, which it uses to placate the black poor and to get their votes. China's current industrialisation phase has forced up the prices of SA's minerals, which has enabled the government to finance social welfare programmes.

Paul Barrow points out that "the real focus" of DHS "is not on prevention but on management of disasters" which "have created immense political backlash." But the real backlash will come when we attempt to use the new software & there's noone to show us how!

How can anyone justify threatening rape victims with a Bad-Conduct Discharge if they dare to speak out about their assaults? I'm just dying to hear the argument, if you've got one!

Perhaps we should listen to more of what the "real socialists" have to say.... What do you think?

A rather unbiased piece (though tipped off in the end) by a "real socialist" (not your animus Obamacreation that you keep dreaming up around every left-leaning corner in DC today) about the facts on the ground & what you should know about the Egyptian revolution: that it's "a mas …

In a statement today, Political Research Associates condemned the murder and demanded an end to "the export of homophobia to Uganda by American conservatives."

David Kato knew he was a marked man.

"Nearly one-third of Zimbabwe's registered voters are dead, and others appear to be babies or up to 120 years old, researchers said Friday,

US giant Walmart is expanding its operations in Africa by bidding for a controlling stake in South Africa's Massmart, the continent's third-largest retailer with 288 stores in 14 countries.

But South Africa's trade unions are not happy. Despite Walmart's promise to create jobs and its assurances that it will honour existing labour agreements and rules, the union are threatening to boycott its operations because of its reputation as a company that engages in unfair labour practices.

"Jerusalem--African migrants en route to Israel are subject to torture, rape and assault by traffickers in Egypt's Sinai desert, Israeli Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) said, citing interviews it conducted with victims.

World eagerly awaits for S. Sudan to separate from 'Arab Islamic Racist Apartheid' in the north

"Villagers in southern Sudan voted on Sunday for what many saw as their freedom from "slavery" in a referendum forecast to bring independence to their neglected region of central Africa.

There are very few nations around the world that have not been almost entirely plundered by the global elite. When the elite speak of "investing" in poor countries, what they really mean is taking control of the land, water, oil and other natural resources.

Does the pope live in the popemobile bubble all the time? Does he have zero connection with the real world? My friend Dan sent me the following link yesterday: Pope: Christians are most persecuted group: Pressing concern for Christian minorities, especially in the Middle East.

"In January, the Western world will welcome a new nation, South Sudan. The Islamic world will not. The coming independence of South Sudan, which holds most of the oil in the country now called Sudan, marks a loss of territory and of wealth for the Islamic world.

If David Bahati succeeds in passing the death penalty for homosexuals in Uganda, we need to pray for our own deliverance in the United States. [...]

"A vote last week by the United Nations General Assembly Human Rights Committee has LGBT and human rights activists outraged over the decision to remove "sexual orientation" from a resolution that protects people from arbitrary executions.

" US Senator John Kerry on Friday warned of tougher sanctions against Sudan if the governments of north or south placed obstacles in the way of a January 9 referendum on southern independence.

A lobby group says politicians are involved in the trade of human albino body parts in Africa and use them as charms to bring them good fortune.

If all you ever read about gay people in Africa is in the western media (including gay media), you would be forgiven for thinking it's one endless horror story.

The UN has released a report which accuses armies and rebel groups of committing massacres and rapes in the eastern Congo, despite a chorus protest from African governments. Hours before its publication, Rwanda's government slammed it as "flawed and dangerous" and an "insult to history," while Uganda threatened to review the deployment of its troops in peacekeeping missions. The final report reportedly suggests that war crimes and even genocide may have been committed by foreign armies and rebel groups over two wars from 1993 to 2003 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

President Obama will use next week's annual gather ing of world leaders at the United Nations to highlight a looming catastrophe in Sudan -- but not to actually prevent it. At least, not the way he's going.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is in Chad for a regional summit, and human rights groups are pleading for his arrest. Bashir presided over the conflict in Darfur, where an estimated 300,000 people were killed and over 2.5 million displaced.

"In what's being hailed as an unprecedented move that will boost buyer awareness of blood diamonds, a global diamond trading network vowed Monday to expel any member who knowingly trades gems from two Zimbabwe mines where laborers have been killed and children enslaved.

BBC: "Two peacekeepers with the joint UN-African Union force in the Sudanese region of Darfur have been kidnapped. A spokesman for the mission said the two police advisers were seized by gunmen about 100 metres (110 yards) from their accommodation in Nyala.

"Roy Brown, Main Representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU), spoke to the UN Human Rights Council yesterday, protesting against slavery in states like Mauretania, and laws against "apostasy" in states like the Maldives.

To NGOs, the gems represent the repression they campaign against. But these riches could transform my country...

Ehad Ever is a religious Zionist. In this video he explains his views on Israel, Zionism, race, policies of the current Israeli government (Olmert's Kadima Party), etc.

Moses ka Moyo has lived in Hillbrow for the past 11 years - working tirelessly as a community activist trying to bring change in the lives of average people, foreign and local.

His mission, with community workers, has been to create a sense of a real life in a place where few people would have wanted to live 10 years ago.

Never before has the Zimbabwean-born Ka Moyo felt as uncertain, or so in danger of his life, as he did last week.

"The fact that in some way, the products that I'm buying is supporting [violence against women in Congo] is something I can't live with. So it just seems like a no brainer," Smith said.

A man has been convicted of strangling his common-law wife after finding she was cheating on him.

But Ramakgale Mokoena claimed in mitigation that he put his hands around Tebogo Brenda Ramafatse's throat to make her let go of his testicles. A row broke out on November 28, when Mokoena visited Ramafatse at the Tshikondeni mine in Venda where she lived and worked, the Pretoria High Court heard.

"One of the Jersey Jihadists was radicalized in his early teens and boasted about wanting to mutilate gays and blow up his school.

A gay couple who were jailed in Malawi have been pardoned by President Bingu wa Mutharika.

Mr Mutharika, speaking as UN chief Ban Ki-moon visited Lilongwe, said he had ordered their immediate release.

"We have no law that criminalizes sexual orientation, just certain sexual acts. --Malawi's Solicitor General

'The rebel leader asked me two things: 'Do you want us to be your husband? Or do you want us to rape you?'"

Congolese mother-of-eight Clementine speaks in a quiet and hesitant voice: "I chose to be raped." She explains: "I told myself, if I tell them that I want to be their wife, they will kill my husband. I didn't want my children growing up saying the one that made our father die is our mother."

The UN is investigating reports of a massacre by Ugandan rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A senior UN official says as many as 100 people were killed in the alleged attack, which is believed to have taken place in February.

The Zimbabwe high court has approved the sale of diamonds from a field plagued by human rights abuses, as Harare moved to defy the Kimberley Process, state-run media reported on Tuesday.

The sale of 300 000 carats of diamonds from the eastern Marange fields was blocked last year by the international regulator after it found that Zimbabwe had failed to comply with human rights standards.

Police in this small town in eastern South Africa thought they had a problem with prostitutes they could solve in the usual way — arrest the women and get them off the streets.

3000s BCE – The Royal Archives of China hold the earliest written record of an abortion technique.

"Ingenuity, creativity, and guts have sustained this People longer than any other identifiable group of people in existence today. The only thing that may have outdone this is their sensitivity to needs of others.

15 killings reported last year, up from 3 in 2007

"The people of South Sudan have a right to secede from the north, should they chose to do so in a referendum early next year. They also have a right to a peaceful government respectful of human rights -- one which they seem increasingly less likely to inherit.

"On 15 March, the day before the Guardian published a report headlined An African success story in Sudan, government security agents seized an 18-year-old student active in the Girifna movement in Khartoum.

The date, 28 September, was repeated by just about everyone I spoke with there - women and men - etched in their memories as if they had been branded. It is etched in mine too - and yet I was not at the main stadium in Conakry on that day.

This so-called virgin myth, perpetuated by Zimbabwe's traditional healers, has led to the rape of hundreds of girls, according to UNICEF. Some of those victims are too young to walk, much less protect themselves.

Dumisani Rebombo wasn't circumcised, did chores considered girls' work and was sick of being taunted for not being a man. So at age 15, he took the only course considered "manly" in his rural South African village: He raped a girl.

"Women who fled violence in Sudan's Darfur region are being regularly raped in refugee camps in neighbouring Chad, despite the presence of U.N.-trained forces, Amnesty International said on Wednesday.

"The world's response to Haiti is fully warranted - anything less would be reprehensible.

"He said no when fighters from Somalia's notorious al Shabab militia came to recruit him. A month later, he was tied down in a stadium while his hand and foot were hacked off. The Star 's Michelle Shephard talks to the victims and butchers in the world's most failed state

"Looking ahead over the next five years, a number of countries in Africa and Asia are at significant risk for a new outbreak of mass killing."

An international news channel is showing chilling footage of men in uniforms shooting unarmed men after they purportedly were arrested during clashes last year with Muslim militants in northern Nigeria.

Evidence of the massacre of at least 321 people in Democratic Republic of Congo has been uncovered by the BBC.

''Six people convicted by Islamic sharia courts in a northern Nigerian state are awaiting death by stoning, while 46 others are waiting for amputation, the official News Agency of Nigeria reported on Friday.