#second congo war

The first Congo War ended in 1997, the second is the reason for the still-ongoing war in the eastern DRC today. This war, accordingly, long predates the current round of fighting in Gaza and reflects patterns of cultural flexing by Rwanda in particular and Uganda, from time to time, that started the new war and with the Rwandans not only haven't stopped so much as taking pauses so they can reload and clean off the machetes to go and kill more Congolese.

People who think that all history begins and ends within the boundaries of the state of Israel since 1947 might be genuinely stunned to realize this but this is not in fact true in other parts of the world. The animosities stored up here begin with the war of the 1960s and the 1990s, and reflect the simple reality that the DRC does not have the military power to evict the Rwandans.

US inflation hit a 7.5% annual rate of inflation, the highest in forty years. (WSJ)

The Ukrainian situation is ongoing with parties saying talks are still on the table. German Chancellor Scholz is also now personally involved, traveling to Kiev and then Moscow. Biden and Putin had a phone call, but it wasn't fruitful. (Politico)

Afghanistan is experiencing extreme dire straits since the fall to the Taliban. One of the issues is the Afghan government housed $7B of its money in the US, and the US froze those funds upon the Taliban takeover, so the group had no money to provide for infrastructure, medical needs, etc. Biden announced families of 9/11 victims could try to get about $3.5B of that, which is deeply angering a lot of people. (NYT)

A Canadian court ordered Ambassador Bridge between Canada and the US to be reopened, and the police spent most of the weekend clearing out the truckers who blocked it. There are still plenty in Ottawa, and Prime Minister Trudeau is looking for ways to clear that out. (Globe and Mail)

The International Court of Justice ordered Uganda to pay the Democratic Republic of Congo $325M. I am going to have to extremely abbreviate the context of the Second Congo War in this explanation, so please bear with me. Essentially the Rwandan Genocide spilled over into the DRC (then called Zaire). The Tutsi fighter group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), is based in Uganda, and when it saw the DRC's government was favoring the Hutu and attacking Tutsis, it invaded with Ugandan support and installed its own president, Laurent-Désiré Kabila. Kabila started having difficulties holding onto power, so he called in foreign aid, and what followed was a war that involved nine countries, left millions dead, stripping of DRC's natural resources, rape, child soldiers... Seven years ago the ICJ demanded Uganda pay $11B, but Uganda is poor as well and said it could not afford that amount, so that's why it's been dropped to $325M. (Independent, Voice of America)

I was asked by several people about the mask mandate in NYS. The mandate required private businesses to demand masks and/or vaccines, but now that it's expired businesses can choose on their own to have those rules. The mandate is still in place for restaurants, gyms, and venues. Masks are still mandatory for schools (for now), public transport, hospitals, nursing homes, and jails. (NY1)

Even when he was president, Trump and the National Archives had a tense relationship. Legally he had to relinquish all of his paperwork, but he had this habit of tearing up papers, which the National Archives then had to tape back together. With the current January 6th investigation, it came to light Trump took a lot of records with him to Mar-a-Lago, including stuff that was classified. The National Archives had to get boxes from his residence, and threatened to get the Justice Department involved. (The Hill)

Someone asked for clarification on the RNC censuring issue. On paper, censuring doesn’t have any consequences, it’s just an upper body telling a politician “you messed up.” That's about it. I’m not familiar with the national committee procedures, but in congress usually the person has to sit through a panel where their colleagues tell them how much they messed up, which is really humiliating. Censures are relatively rare (the House I think has only censured less than twenty people in the last century), so when it happens it’s a pretty big sign the politician did something really, unequivocally bad. That’s why this is a big brouhaha because the RNC is saying it’s a horrible thing to be involved with the committee that’s trying to figure out what happened on the January 6th.

The Second Congo War, 2001-2003.