Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa.

Steven Press, Rogue Empires

At Amazon, Steven Press, Rogue Empires: Contracts and Conmen in Europe’s Scramble for Africa.

Lawrence James, Empires in the Sun

At Amazon, Empires in the Sun: The Struggle for the Mastery of Africa.

Tim Butcher, Blood River

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Tim Butcher, Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through The World's Most Dangerous Country.

Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Michela Wrong, In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo.

Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters

At Amazon, Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions)

Here's my copy, below.

And also available at Amazon, Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions).

Gerard Prunier, Africa's World War

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Gerard Prunier, Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe.

Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Thomas Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man's Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness

Two paperback versions, at Amazon, Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (Dover Thrift Editions), and Heart of Darkness and the Secret Sharer (Signet Classics).

Grim: Libyan Red Crescent Recovered Dead Bodies of at Least 24 Migrants Off the Coast of Tripoli (VIDEO)

I'd say this is unconscionable, but it's par for the course in European politics.

Until the EU leadership, and especially Germany, get the refugee scandal under control, they can't say jack about the U.S., the Trump administration, or "human rights."

Content Warning, at Ruptly, "Libya: 24 migrants found dead off Tajura coast *GRAPHIC*: The Libyan Red Crescent recovered the dead bodies of at least 24 migrants, who lost their lives attempting to cross the Mediterranean in a bid to reach Europe, off the Tajura coast, some 14 kilometres (8,69 miles) east of Tripoli, Tuesday."

Big Game Hunter Crushed to Death by Falling Elephant in Zimbabwe

The elephant was wounded. Once shot, it had apparently grabbed the hunter by its trunk, then falling dead, crushed the guy under its weight. Talk about taking 'em out with you, heh.

That was some righteous karma at the end there.

At the Telegraph U.K., via Memeorandum, "South African hunter crushed to death by elephant."

On Twitter, one woman writes, "Big game hunter crushed to death under an elephant he's just shot? Good."

Actually, I wish they weren't hunting big game myself, but it's not illegal. And I wouldn't wish the man killed. I get the karmic justice, but it's still a sad loss of human life.

South African hunter crushed to death by elephant https://t.co/MFU6lZ8rmr

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) May 21, 2017

Germany Reckons With Its Genocide of the Herero People in Namibia

At NYT, "Germany Grapples With Its African Genocide":

Long before the Holocaust, Germany killed tens of thousands in Namibia. It will soon recognize this as genocide. https://t.co/C0QN5ShDJx pic.twitter.com/gkf9cuKKN5

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 29, 2016

WATERBERG, Namibia — In this faraway corner of southern Africa, scores of German soldiers lie in a military cemetery, their names, dates and details engraved on separate polished tombstones.

Easily missed is a single small plaque on the cemetery wall that gives a nod in German to the African “warriors” who died in the fighting as well. Nameless, they are among the tens of thousands of Africans killed in what historians have long considered — and what the German government is now close to recognizing — as the 20th century’s first genocide.

A century after losing its colonial possessions in Africa, Germany and its former colony, Namibia, are now engaged in intense negotiations to put an end to one of the ugliest chapters of Europe’s past in Africa.

During German rule in Namibia, called South-West Africa back then, colonial officers studying eugenics developed ideas on racial purity, and their forces tried to exterminate two rebellious ethnic groups, the Herero and Nama, some of them in concentration camps.

“It will be described as genocide,” Ruprecht Polenz, Germany’s special envoy to the talks, said of a joint statement that the two governments are preparing. Negotiations, which began this year, are now also focusing on how Germany will compensate and apologize to Namibia.

The events in Namibia between 1904 and 1908 foreshadowed Nazi ideology and the Holocaust. Yet the genocide in this former colony remains little known in Germany, the rest of Africa and, to some extent, even in Namibia itself.

Throughout Namibia, monuments and cemeteries commemorating the German occupiers still outnumber those honoring the victims of genocide, a concrete reminder of the lasting imbalance of power.

“Some of us want to remove that cemetery so that we can put our own people there,” said Magic Urika, 26, who lives about an hour away from the cemetery here in Waterberg. “What they did was a terrible thing, killing our people, saying all the Herero should be eliminated.”

While Germany’s efforts to atone for crimes during World War II are well known, it took a century before the nation began taking steps to acknowledge that genocide happened in Namibia decades before the Holocaust...

More.

'The Battle of Algiers' — It's Excellent

I took my older son with me yesterday. He loves hanging out in L.A.

Here're my earlier posts, "Going to See 'The Battle of Algiers' Today," and "At the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles: 'The Battle of Algiers' — 50TH ANNIVERSARY NEW 4K RESTORATION (VIDEO)."

I remember from years ago, although I can't remember where (probably the LGM homos), how leftists praised "Battle of Algiers" as THE cinematic exegesis of the revolutionary experience. It was the radical left's "in" movie.

And I can see why. It's practically a do-it-yourself instructional video on how to mount an insurgency against the hegemonic colonial capitalist ruling classes.

See for example the review, at A.V. Club, from 2004 (when he movie came out on DVD):

In the current political climate, between the war in Iraq and the looming election, topical documentaries and fiction features have flooded the marketplace. But none are more relevant to the times than Gillo Pontecorvo's masterpiece The Battle Of Algiers, which was made nearly four decades ago. Throughout the years, the film has been tagged as a terrorist textbook, an inspiration for the Black Panthers and other radical organizations, yet its startling verity has recently proved useful for Pentagon officials eager to understand how networks like al-Qaeda operate. Still smarting from their moral and tactical failures in colonial Algeria, the French banned the 1965 film for several years, and some countries excised scenes revealing the systemic torture of National Liberation Front (FLN) operatives. But even though The Battle Of Algiers ranks among the great works of revolutionary cinema, Pontecorvo depicts insurgent warfare with a stark, evenhanded realism that feels like history painted on the screen. In fact, many prints actually come with the disclaimer that the film doesn't include a single frame of documentary or newsreel footage. And that's not a boast: It really does seem that real.

 Plus, I missed this earlier, at the New York Times from 1967, "MOVIE REVIEW - Screen: Local Premiere of Pontecorvo's Prize-Winning 'Battle of Algiers': Gripping Re-enactment Opens Film Festival."

And here's a good piece on the conflict altogether, at the World Socialist Web, "Torture in the Algerian war (1954-62)."

More here, from an interesting blog post by a leftist academic, "What was the Algerian War/Why should you care."

Related: James D. Le Sueur, Uncivil War: Intellectuals and Identity Politics During the Decolonization of Algeria. And, General Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counter-terrorism in Algeria, 1955-1957.

At the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles: 'The Battle of Algiers' — 50TH ANNIVERSARY NEW 4K RESTORATION (VIDEO)

The film's coming to the Nuart in West L.A. on October 7th. Sounds like something I'd like to attend. We'll see.

In any case, here's the trailer, "The Battle of Algiers."

A history of the three-year Battle of Algiers, chronicling the escalating terrorism and violence between French military forces and the Algerian independence movement, based on the memoirs of Saadi Yacef, a leader of the National Liberation Front. The 50th anniversary restoration opens October 7 at New York's Film Forum, Landmark's Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles, and Landmark's E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C.

*****

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1966), Italian director Gillo Pontecorvo’s legendary re-telling of the struggle for Algerian independence from France, on the 50th anniversary of its release, will run at Film Forum in New York in a new 4K restoration from Friday, October 7 through Thursday, October 13.

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS is also a selection of the NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL 2016 and will be released theatrically by Rialto Pictures on October 7 at New York’s Film Forum, Landmark’s Nuart in Los Angeles and E Street Cinema in Washington, D.C., followed by a major city roll-out through the fall.

Algiers, 1957: French paratroopers inch their way through the labyrinthine byways of the Casbah to zero in on the hideout of the last rebel still free in the city. Flashback three years earlier, as the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) decides on urban warfare. Thus begin the provocations, assassinations, hair-breadth escapes, and reprisals; Algerian women — disguised as chic Europeans — depositing bombs at a sidewalk café, a teenagers’ hang-out and an Air France office; and massive, surging crowd scenes unfolding with gripping realism.

Shot in the streets of Algiers, The Battle of Algiers vividly re-creates the tumultuous uprising against the occupying French in the 1950s. As the violence escalates on both sides, the French torture prisoners for information and the Algerians resort to terrorism in their quest for independence.

Battle’s startling relevance to today’s world events motivated the Pentagon to hold a much-discussed private screening for military personnel shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. A flyer advertising the screening stated, "How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafés. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar?"

One of the most influential films in the history of political cinema, Battle of Algiers won the Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1966, was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Foreign Film, Best Director and Best Story and Screenplay), and was ranked as the 26 greatest film of all time in the 2012 Sight and Sound directors’ poll (it was also in the critics’ top 50), though it was long banned in France for its negative depiction of French colonialism.

With the exception of actor Jean Martin, as the French colonel brought in to quell the uprising, the cast is comprised mainly of non-professional actors who’d been involved in the Algerian struggle. Saadi Yacef, who produced Algiers, also stars as one of the leaders of the insurrection – a role he played in life as a general in the National Liberation Front. Yacef wrote the original treatment for the film – adapted from his book Souvenirs de la bataille d’Alger – in jail after he was captured by the French.

The stirring score is by Pontecorvo and the great Ennio Morricone.

Restored by Cineteca di Bologna and Istituto Luce - Cinecittà at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in collaboration with Surf Film, Casbah Entertainment Inc. and CultFilms

Approx. 121 min. | A Rialto Pictures Release

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo | Screenplay: Franco Solinas,

Based on the book by Saadi Yacef | Cinematography: Marcello Gatti

Music: Gillo Pontecorvo & Ennio Morricone

Lucca Poni and Her Child in South Sudan

At the Los Angeles Times, letters to the editor, "The price of being a girl in South Sudan":

Child brides being sold for cows: The price of being a girl in South Sudan https://t.co/XjbtCuQayw pic.twitter.com/UFwgiimPOm

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 30, 2016

To the editor: On the front page of The Times this week was one of the simplest, yet most spectacular photos that I, a designer, have seen. (“What daughters are worth,” August 1)

The portrait of Lucca Poni and her child in South Sudan accompanied a fine article by Robyn Dixon on young girls’ plight in that part of the world.

I had to look twice to be sure it was not a painting.

Photographer Sara Hylton’s attention to subject matter illustrating the article, composition, light and color are worthy of Pulitzer consideration to my mind.

Marty Huyette, Dana Point

That's very nice.

The status of women in South Sudan? Not so much.

The ANC's Culture of Impunity in South Africa

From Jessica Piombo and Cherrel Africa, at Foreign Affairs, "Has South Africa Lost Its Way? The ANC's Unfulfilled Promise":

Under Zuma’s leadership, a culture of impunity has taken root at the highest levels of the ANC. https://t.co/OoLfVbjOJa

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) May 22, 2016

South Africa is in the middle of a period of political and economic unrest unlike anything the country has experienced since the end of apartheid in 1994. In March 2015, students at the University of Cape Town launched the #Rhodesmustfall campaign, aimed at bringing down a statue of the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes. Since then, students have regularly stormed the nation’s universities, labor unions have held strikes, and populist social movements have taken to the streets. The protesters have called for wholesale reform of the country’s economy and directly challenged the ruling African National Congress. And the ANC itself is in crisis, divided between supporters and detractors of South African President Jacob Zuma. On March 31, the country’s highest court ruled that Zuma had failed to uphold the constitution when he ignored a state order to repay government funds used in a $23 million upgrade to his private residence at Nkandla in KwaZulu Natal. And on April 29, the High Court in Pretoria ruled that the former head of the National Prosecuting Authority, Mokotedi Mpshe, had acted irrationally when he had dropped corruption charges against Zuma in 2009. Although the opposition failed in its bid to impeach Zuma, the National Assembly remains fractious and divided. The Nkandla revelations and growing dissatisfaction with Zuma have sparked broader protests about poor living standards, low economic growth, high unemployment, and political stagnation.

The roots of the current crisis lie in the country’s tortured past. Since the end of apartheid, the number of people who live in absolute poverty has fallen, and access to and quality of services has improved, but unemployment, crime, and housing remain the top three concerns of South Africans, as they have been since the mid-1990s. In fact, the gap between rich and poor has widened: South Africa’s Gini coefficient, a measure of economic inequality ranging from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality), increased from 0.62 in 2008 to 0.70 in 2013; by contrast, Brazil’s has fallen from 0.55 in 2009 to 0.53 in 2013. For all of those who expected great progress since 1994, the slow pace of change has been bitterly disappointing.

After the political stalemate of the late 1980s, the ANC made a bargain with the then ruling National Party: it would take power and focus on postapartheid reconciliation, while committing to economic policies that would disavow the appropriation of land and economic assets from the country’s white elite. In short, the ANC chose political power and social reconciliation over economic restitution and the redistribution of wealth.

The concessions hobbled the party during the critical years immediately following the end of apartheid, when economic restructuring could have had great impact. Apartheid policies had stripped the country of its natural wealth and impoverished its people, and the state had developed the capacity to provide services to only a small portion of the population. The government had pushed responsibility for the black majority to the Bantustans, self-governing territories that the architects of apartheid had established to house the country’s “African” populations. After the transition, the state had to expand its scope to include the millions it had previously excluded.

Yet political freedom did not lead to economic prosperity for the vast majority of South Africans. The ANC had not anticipated how much globalization had constrained the ability of the state to foster economic redistribution. What’s more, the ANC discovered that the state it had inherited lacked the resources to deliver on its 1994 campaign promise, “A Better Life for All.” The dual costs of maintaining the security apparatus and unequal welfare system necessary to sustain the apartheid state had drained the state’s coffers. The ANC had initially adopted a moderately redistributive economic program (the Reconstruction and Development Programme), but in mid-1996 it replaced this with Growth, Employment and Redistribution, which was modeled on the structural adjustment programs that the World Bank promoted in the 1980s. Many South Africans who had been deprived of basic services under apartheid continue to lack housing, electricity, water, and sanitation...

Keep reading.

Dying Lion Caught in Poacher's Snare Saved After Tourists on Safari Share Photos on Facebook

I think we can all agree that this is cruel and absolutely unacceptable.

At London's Daily Mail, "Happy ending for king of the jungle caught in a poacher's snare: Dying lion is rescued after staggering across road in front of horrified safari group in apparent plea for help."

Dying lion rescued after staggering in front of horrified safari group https://t.co/LCYIANH5ZM pic.twitter.com/dAoRgnPMJM

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) January 5, 2016

Inside Zimbabwe's Business of Big-Game Hunting (VIDEO)

From CBS News This Morning, "Zimbabwe announced this week it would not charge a Minnesota dentist who hunted a popular lion. But the killing of Cecil the lion has brought worldwide attention to trophy hunting. Critics say the controversial practice is full of corruption."

National Dialogue Quartet wins Nobel Peace Prize (VIDEO)

It's the Tunisian pro-democracy group that pushed the Arab Spring.

At USA Today, "Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet wins Nobel Peace Prize":

The 2015 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet for its efforts to bring democracy to the country, where the political upheaval in 2011 sparked pro-democracy movements throughout the Arab world.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised the group "for its decisive contribution to the building of a pluralistic democracy in Tunisia in the wake of the Jasmine Revolution of 2011."

“It established an alternative, peaceful political process at a time when the country was on the brink of civil war,” the committee said.

The National Dialogue Quartet is made up of four organizations: the Tunisian General Labour Union; Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts; Tunisian Human Rights League; and Tunisian Order of Lawyers....

More.

Plus, so far so good, at the Times of Israel, "Tunisia’s elections represent yet another Muslim Brotherhood defeat."