Meme: Joe Trippi's Eleven-Eleven 1111Campaign - America's and Britain's Veterans have given so much. Now, you can give back.

Joe Trippi, one of America's greatest bloggers, has launched Eleven Eleven Campaign. The objective of the Eleven Eleven Campaign is simple: to get 11 million Americans to donate $11 to support America’s Veterans. Here is a copy of Joe's latest tweet on Twitter:

Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and now is our moment to encourage our friends, family members and colleagues to join us... http://bit.ly/9Iu9s
33 minutes ago from Facebook
1111Campaign
Eleven Eleven

Hey Joe! Britain's Veterans have given so much too!

Stand with 11 million Brits and Give £11 to Support Britain’s Vets!

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November 11, 2009

IMF Helping Africa Through the Crisis

As a reminder, the IMF agreed to mobilize $17 billion through 2014 for lending to low income countries, mostly in Africa—trebling our lending capacity to these countries. This goes far beyond the promise given by our Managing Director in Tanzania to seek a doubling of concessional resources. The financial terms of IMF support have also become more concessional, with zero interest until the end of 2011, and will remain more concessional thereafter.

And the IMF has moved quickly to deploy these resources in Africa. Among international institutions, it has an extraordinary capacity to react early to a country’s needs, as I know from my own experience as a policymaker in my home country of Liberia. Indeed, in the first eight months of 2009, we committed over $3 billion in new resources to countries in sub-Saharan Africa, trebling the total stock of outstanding commitments this year alone.

Full story: iMFdirect - The International Monetary Fund's global economy forum, Sep 10, 2009 by Antoinette Sayeh - IMF Helping Africa Through the Crisis

FOCA: China, Africa hold summit to reinforce bilateral trade

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao can expect a warm welcome from Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and finance and foreign ministers from 50 countries when the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCA) starts in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh on Sunday.

Ever-eager for raw materials and markets to sell its products, China has said the new meeting will lay down a “road map” to further boost cooperation between 2010 and 2012.

Direct Chinese investment in Africa leapt from $491 million in 2003 to $7.8 billion in 2008. Trade between the two has increased tenfold since the start of the decade.

Last year, China-Africa trade reached $106.8 billion - a rise of 45 percent in one year and on a par with with the United States, which estimated its two-way trade with sub-Saharan Africa at $104 billion for 2008.

Chinese imports from Africa last year were worth $56 billion, dominated by oil ($39 billion) and raw materials.

Its $56 billion of exports in 2008 consisted mainly of machinery, electrical goods, cars, motorbikes and bicycles.

FOCAC is held every three years and this will be the fourth since it started in 2000.

Source: AFP report via Saudi GazetteFriday 06 November 2009. Copy:
China, Africa hold summit to reinforce bilateral trade

CAIRO - Leaders from China and Africa start a three day summit on Sunday that will again throw the spotlight on Beijing’s strategic sweep for energy, minerals and political influence in the continent.

China has over the past decade paid for dams, power stations, football stadiums across Africa and scooped up copper, oil and other fuel for its breakneck economic expansion from Algeria to Zimbabwe.

It has invested billions of dollars while raising eyebrows in the United States and its allies by pursuing the hunt for oil and other resources in Sudan, Somalia and other nations that the West has shunned.

Many African leaders praise China however for not preaching about rights and corruption. So despite neo-colonialist qualms, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao can expect a warm welcome from Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and finance and foreign ministers from 50 countries when the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation starts in the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh on Sunday.

FOCAC is held every three years and this will be the fourth since it started in 2000.

Ever-eager for raw materials and markets to sell its products, China has said the new meeting will lay down a “road map” to further boost cooperation between 2010 and 2012.

Direct Chinese investment in Africa leapt from $491 million in 2003 to $7.8 billion in 2008. Trade between the two has increased tenfold since the start of the decade.

Last year, China-Africa trade reached $106.8 billion - a rise of 45 percent in one year and on a par with with the United States, which estimated its two-way trade with sub-Saharan Africa at $104 billion for 2008.

Chinese imports from Africa last year were worth $56 billion, dominated by oil ($39 billion) and raw materials.

Its $56 billion of exports in 2008 consisted mainly of machinery, electrical goods, cars, motorbikes and bicycles.

Some in the West have accuse China of worsening repression and human rights abuses in Africa by supporting countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe.

US intelligence director Dennis Blair told a Congress committee in March that US agencies are keeping close tabs on China’s expanding influence in Africa, especially in oil-producing countries like Nigeria.

Cross-posted to:
China Tibet Watch
Congo Watch
Egypt Watch
Ethiopia Watch
Kenya Watch
Niger Watch
Sudan Watch
Uganda Watch

AGI: Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative

From The Office of Tony Blair
November 05, 2009
Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative to create development through good governance becomes charity

The Tony Blair Africa Governance Initiative has become a registered UK charity after creating a unique 'hands-on' approach to development and poverty eradication over the past eighteen months.

The Charity Commission approved the application from this relatively new organisation, which is underpinned by the belief that good governance and sustainable development are key to poverty eradication in the long term.

Tony Blair, founder of the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI), said:

"I'm extremely proud of our excellent project teams who are working in partnership with the governments of Rwanda and Sierra Leone to reduce poverty and develop new opportunities for growth.

"It is a privilege to work with leaders as talented and as committed to their people as President Koroma and President Kagame who represent a new generation of leaders in Africa with a commitment to building a new future for their people.

"The developed world needs to keep up its commitment to Africa expressed at the 2005 G8 Summit in Gleneagles. But lasting change in Africa will only come in the end from African solutions. By building the capacity to create sustainable long-term development through good governance and providing high level advice, we have already started to help deliver that change.

"And it won't stop here. Whilst developing our work in Sierra Leone and Rwanda, we want to launch new projects with other countries, sharing our knowledge, experience and expertise. We want more countries to develop sustainably, paving the way to a prosperous future.

"This work has reinforced my optimism about Africa's future, as well as my conviction that governance and growth are the key ingredients to effectively reduce poverty across the continent."

Commenting on Tony Blair and the work of the Africa Governance Initiative, Ernest Koroma, President of Sierra Leone, said:

"Mr. Blair has demonstrated an enduring commitment to Sierra Leone and its people. The work comes at a critical stage in Sierra Leone's development. I believe together we have an opportunity to ensure that Sierra Leone puts in place the policies, people and institutions to achieve real and lasting change."

Commenting on the work of AGI, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda said:

"What I would like people to know is that the type of partnership we have with Tony Blair is totally different from the type of consultancy people are used to. We work in very strong partnerships whereby not only gaps are filled where they exist, but there's also the notion of transfer of skills, mentoring, actually doing things that are measurable such that over a period of time, we will be able to know what kind of impact was made."

Cross-posted to:
China Tibet Watch
Congo Watch
Egypt Watch
Ethiopia Watch
Kenya Watch
Niger Watch
Sudan Watch
Uganda Watch

Judge: British coup plotter Simon Mann, 4 South Africans, pardoned in Equatorial Guinea

By AP November 3rd, 2009 (via Breaking News 24/7)
Judge: British coup plotter Simon Mann, 4 South Africans, pardoned in Equatorial Guinea
Coup plotter Simon Mann pardoned in Eq. Guinea

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — British coup-plotter Simon Mann and four South African mercenaries have been pardoned for plotting the overthrow of the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, the country’s chief judge told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Obono Olo said Mann and his accomplices would be freed Tuesday morning and flown home. Olo said President Teodoro Obiang Nguema on Monday gave the five men “a full pardon for humanitarian reasons” for the 2004 coup plot.

The men were convicted in a spectacular trial where Mann implicated Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as a chief bankroller along with Equatorial-Guinean based Lebanese businessman Elie Khalil. Mann said Khalil told him the government of Spain, the country’s former colonial power, was aware of and supported the plot to overthrow Obiang. He has led the African country for three decades, and is accused by human rights groups of using the oil wealth to make his family fabulously rich while most of his countrymen live in squalor.

The government of the United States was reported to have gotten wind of the plot and blown the whistle, though no U.S. government official ever confirmed that. Several leading U.S. oil companies operate in Equatorial Guinea, including Exxon Mobil, Amerada Hess, Marathon Oil, ChevronTexaco, Devon Energy and CMS Energy Corp.

The plan was to put opposition leader Severo Moto, who is exiled in Madrid, in power and get some control over the country’s oil wealth.

Mann first was arrested in 2004 when his plane landed in Harare, Zimbabwe, with 70 other alleged mercenaries to collect weapons purchased from Zimbabwe’s state arms manufacturer.

Olo, who was the attorney general who prosecuted the coup plotters, denied rumors that Mann was unwell, saying he is “fine, fit.” He also denied that any pressure had been brought by foreign governments seeking their release from the notorious Black Beach prison.

But a statement at the Ministry of Information Web site noted that Mann and the others were being freed “with the hope that the accused return to their families and receive appropriate medical treatment according to their age and health.” The ministry noted that if he had served his 35-year sentence, Mann would have been more than 90 years old on his release.

It said the Ministry of Justice, Culture and Prisons proposed the pardon to the president, who granted “compassionate forgiveness.”

Eton-educated Mann, a 56-year-old former British military officer, was the failed coup’s ringleader. Thatcher pleaded guilty in a South African court several years ago to unwittingly helping to fund the operation. He was fined and given a suspended sentenced.

The South Africans involved are Nicolaas du Toit, Sergio Cardoso, Jose Sundays and George Alerson.

Obiang himself took power in a 1979 coup in which then President Francisco Macias Nguema, his uncle, was assassinated by a firing squad. Under pressure from Western backers, Obiang held the first multiparty elections in 1991 and has won every election since, most recently in 2002 with 91 percent of votes. New elections are scheduled Nov. 29.

Opponents say the electoral process and voting are rigged in his party’s favor.

Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s No. 3 oil producer. Despite its wealth, most of the country’s half-million people are very poor, child mortality rates have risen and government officials are accused of siphoning off oil revenue.

International human rights groups have accused U.S. oil companies of aiding corruption. A U.S. government 2004 report into Equato-Guinean accounts found that some $700 million was held at Washington’s Riggs Bank — making the country the bank’s biggest customer.

Riggs was fined millions of dollars in money-laundering fines. Nothing was done against Obiang, who was invited to Washington by then President George W. Bush in 2006 and called a “good friend” by then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.