100 US troops heading to Uganda

[Colbyor]

oh man not this again... and hey why not just use a drone? whats really going on? we've been all over that part of africa (and the rest of africa) for 20 or so years at least

[dicktater]

The same guy sending 100 armed jarheads to central Africa and pointing his finger at Iran has also been sending grenades to Mexican drug gangs:

"Grenade-walking" part of "Gunwalker" scandal

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson, who has reported on this story from the beginning, said on "The Early Show" that the investigation into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)'s so-called "Fast and Furious" operation branches out to a case involving grenades. Sources tell her a suspect was left to traffic and manufacture them for Mexican drug cartels.

Police say Jean Baptiste Kingery, a U.S. citizen, was a veritable grenade machine. He's accused of smuggling parts for as many as 2,000 grenades into Mexico for killer drug cartels -- sometimes under the direct watch of U.S. law enforcement.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/ ... 0395.shtml" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Ry]

go forth find what they have to steal

[dicktater]

go forth find what they have to steal

A Watermelon's wet dream.

It's about what has already been stolen, land. Land for tree plantations to earn carbon offset credits. It must be protected from the rightful owners who want to get it back from New Forests Company apparently seeking the help of the US and UK militaries.

The New Forests Company is a UK-based sustainable and socially responsible forestry company with established, rapidly growing plantations and the prospect of a diversified product base for local and regional export markets which will deliver both attractive returns to investors and significant social and environmental benefits.

In desperation, the Ugandans displaced by their own corrupt government are probably getting help from the bad guy du jour, Joseph Kony and his Lord's Resistance Army.

The carbon offset industry is booming. But how fair is the trade?
In Uganda, a debate rages over the benefits of tree-planting schemes
Feb 7, 2008
http://www.plentymag.com/features/2008/ ... e_cost.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

20,000 People Allegedly Displaced in Uganda for UK Forestry Company's Carbon-Offset Program
by Jennifer Hattam, Istanbul, Turkey
on 09.23.11
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/09 ... rogram.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Nzabakulisiza Sirasi, 32, is one of over 20,000 people to have been evicted from their homes in Mubende District, Uganda, since the government licensed land to the New Forests Company.

With the spotlight turning this week to climate refugees, including the 30 million people in Asia reportedly displaced last year by environmental and weather-related disasters, the latest news out of Uganda seems even more poignant. More than 22,500 people, mostly poor farmers, have allegedly been forced out of their homes to make way for a project that purports to do something to counteract climate change: planting trees.

Small farmers growing coffee and tending fruit trees and beehives in Mubende and Kiboga districts were evicted last year by the Ugandan government "to make way for the U.K.-based New Forests Company to plant trees, to earn carbon credits and ultimately to sell the timber," John Vidal wrote yesterday for The Guardian. The farmers say they have lost everything, and cannot feed their children.

Victims Of Land Disputes
"Their land claims were being considered by the Ugandan courts when, they allege, the army and police forced them out in several waves of violent evictions which took place up to last year," Vidal wrote, noting that land disputes are common in Uganda.


Two boys in Kiboga, Uganda, where communities have absorbed thousands of people forced off their land since the arrival of the New Forests Company

The story adds a sad new twist to the ongoing controversy over whether planting trees is an appropriate and effective way to offset carbon emissions. According to Oxfam, NFC -- which has had two of its Ugandan plantations certified by the Forest Stewardship Council -- claims to be planting and harvesting timber on "underutilized and/or degraded" land in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Rwanda. One commenter on The Guardian's website took that statement to task:
So Ugandan land occupied by a Ugandan farmer is "degraded," according to NFC. In fact his small-scale mixed agriculture is the most sustainable form of land use there is. Over time his trees will probably absorb more CO2 than NFC's trees, because unlike NFC he doesn't kill them for commercial timber when they are grown. For what it's worth, unlike NFC's managers, shareholders, and log transporters, his carbon footprint is negligible.

The New Forests Company, which is partially owned by HSBC Bank, denies the allegations of violence and says it played no role in the evictions. Following criticism by Oxfam, which is conducting an international campaign against "land grabs" in poor countries, the company has said it is conducting an investigation.


In Scramble for Land, Group Says, Company Pushed Ugandans Out
September 21, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world ... d-out.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



KICUCULA, Uganda — According to the company’s proposal to join a United Nations clean-air program, the settlers living in this area left in a “peaceful” and “voluntary” manner.

People here remember it quite differently.

“I heard people being beaten, so I ran outside,” said Emmanuel Cyicyima, 33. “The houses were being burnt down.”

Other villagers described gun-toting soldiers and an 8-year-old child burning to death when his home was set ablaze by security officers.

“They said if we hesitated they would shoot us,” said William Bakeshisha, adding that he hid in his coffee plantation, watching his house burn down. “Smoke and fire.”

According to a report released by the aid group Oxfam on Wednesday, more than 20,000 people say they were evicted from their homes here in recent years to make way for a tree plantation run by a British forestry company, emblematic of a global scramble for arable land.

“Too many investments have resulted in dispossession, deception, violation of human rights and destruction of livelihoods,” Oxfam said in the report. “This interest in land is not something that will pass.” As population and urbanization soar, it added, “whatever land there is will surely be prized.”

Across Africa, some of the world’s poorest people have been thrown off land to make way for foreign investors, often uprooting local farmers so that food can be grown on a commercial scale and shipped to richer countries overseas.

But in this case, the government and the company said the settlers were illegal and evicted for a good cause: to protect the environment and help fight global warming.

The case twists around an emerging multibillion-dollar market trading carbon-credits under the Kyoto Protocol, which contains mechanisms for outsourcing environmental protection to developing nations.

The company involved, New Forests Company, grows forests in African countries with the purpose of selling credits from the carbon-dioxide its trees soak up to polluters abroad. Its investors include the World Bank, through its private investment arm, and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, HSBC.

In 2005, the Ugandan government granted New Forests a 50-year license to grow pine and eucalyptus forests in three districts, and the company has applied to the United Nations to trade under the mechanism. The company expects that it could earn up to $1.8 million a year.

But there was just one problem: people were living on the land where the company wanted to plant trees. Indeed, they had been there a while.

“He was a policeman for King George,” Mr. Bakeshisha said of his father, who served with British forces during World War II in Egypt.

Mr. Bakeshisha, 51, said he was given land in Namwasa forest in Mubende district in 1997 by a local kingdom through his father’s serviceman association. Mr. Bakeshisha lived happily on the property for years, becoming a local administrator and ardent supporter of President Yoweri Museveni. In a neighboring district, people had been living on land the company would later license since the 1970s.

Tensions brewed. The company and government said the residents were living illegally in a forest. Residents said they had rights. Community members took the company to court in 2009 and a temporary injunction was issued, barring evictions. Nevertheless, Oxfam and residents say, evictions continued.

Residents were given until Feb. 28, 2010, to vacate company premises while soldiers and the police kept surveillance. Company officials visited, too. From time to time a house would be burnt down, villagers said. Then came Feb. 28, a Sunday.

“We were in church,” recalled Jean-Marie Tushabe, 26, a father of two. “I heard bullets being shot into the air.”

“Cars were coming with police,” Mr. Tushabe said, sitting among the ruins of his old home. “They headed straight to the houses. They took our plates, cups, mattresses, bed, pillows. Then we saw them getting a matchbox out of their pockets.”

Homeless and hopeless, Mr. Tushabe said he took a job with the company that pushed him out. He was promised more than $100 each month, he said, but received only about $30.

New Forests says that it takes accusations that settlers were forcibly removed “extremely seriously” and will conduct “an immediate and thorough” investigation.

“Our understanding of these resettlements is that they were legal, voluntary and peaceful and our first hand observations of them confirmed this,” the company said in a response to the Oxfam report.

A Ugandan government spokesman said residents in Namwasa were illegal encroachers, but he acknowledged and deplored the use of violence to remove them, saying it was done by corrupt politicians and police officers operating outside the law.

Olivia Mukamperezida, 28, said her house was among the first in her community to be burned down. One day in late 2009, she said, her eldest son, Friday, was sick at home, so she went out to find medicine. Villagers suddenly told her to rush back. Everything was incinerated.

“I found my house when it was completely finished,” she said. “I just cried.”

Ms. Mukamperezida never found the culprits. She buried Friday’s bones in a grave, but says she does not know if it is still there.

“They are planting trees,” she said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 22, 2011

A previous version of this article misstated the name of HSBC, a global banking and financial services organization.

[Colbyor]

very often they will wipe out an inconveniently located village, put the bodies in a mass grave, just to blame it on the people they are "looking for" (how fuckin hard is it to find an army with satelites and drones at your disposal?) i think the most shoacking thing about all this activity in Africa is that the internet has forced them to announce it in real time.... usually 100 troops in uganda is called "none of your buisiness" but now they have to fake a pretext...

[Herstory]

Watermelon lol that's perfect!

Condsider me that comendian with the sledge-o-matic then.

[Phys]

Watermelon lol that's perfect!

Condsider me that comendian with the sledge-o-matic then.

I dont get it.

[dicktater]

Watermelon lol that's perfect!

Condsider me that comendian with the sledge-o-matic then.

I dont get it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbKayY6eD9k" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;