It all started a few days ago, when North Kivu Governor Julien Paluku
(photo above) publicly called for an "assessment of the Accords of
March 23, 2009" between the DRC government and the Rwandan-made CNDP,
the political and militia outfit that has since hatched M23.


Paluku then posted his statement on his blog.


A statement that baffled the whole nation, and to which M23 leaders
responded with jeers of contempt.


Then, last Saturday, in a torpid interview he gave to a pool of
Kinshasa journos, President Joseph Kabila talked about the new
three-pronged approach of his government to… ( Read on! )

Dr Emmanuel de Mérode published this evening a post titled "Rwindi
under Strain."


It reads:


"We finally managed to get contact with Rodrigue, our warden in
Rwindi. He made the decision to
evacuate most of his staff to Kanyabayonga, to
the north west of Rwindi, but has remained at the station with 10 of
his rangers.


"The situation is extremely tense, with several thousand soldiers who
fled Kiwanja and Rutshuru after the fighting yesterday. Many of them
haven't eaten for 4 days.


"The latest report is that the fighting is approaching Rwindi. A group
of 12 rangers have
moved our two… ( Read on! )

It seems I got a glitch with my Mail-to-Blogger feature yesterday, on
top of the daily hassle I got with the trackball of the Blackberry
8310 that's disintegrating on me.


I typically file my posts from the portable convenient remove of my
mobile phone.


This proved however to be a daily challenge in itself.


The Blackberry 8310 I'm now using as replacement since my Samsung
Infuse was stolen in Kinshasa--woe unto that wretched Kinois who stole
my android!--is in itself turning into a daily pain in the neck.



And I want to have a word with the moronic geek that invented the
Blackberry… ( Read on! )

Virunga National Park Chief Warden Dr Emmanuel de Mérode, an
eyewitness to the man-made wanton destruction now taking place in
eastern Congo, cautions us, in the post he filed in the evening of
Wednesday, July 25, about the kind of bragging implicit in the title
of this post.


Dr de Mérode ends that heart-wrenching post by remarking:


"The battlefield victories lose their relevance amidst the cries of
the injured."


Who's gonna blame him?


In one single afternoon, Dr de Mérode:


1) Saw "seriously wounded [civilians] asking for help. All had
been caught in the crossfire";


2) Had… ( Read on! )