Podcasts about Congolese

Hendrickx Ntela is a Liège-based dancer and choreographer of Congolese origin, specializing in urban styles like Hip Hop, Krump, Dancehall, Kuduro, and AfroHouse. A founding member of the all-female collective One Nation and the international Krump group Gully Fusion, she is a pioneer of Belgian Krump performance and event organization, including Ch'eza Street Battle and Krump Date. Hendrickx has collaborated with artists like Camille Lellouche and Jean Dujardin, choreographed for Netflix's La Nouvelle École, and toured internationally with her original work Blind. She is an associate artist at Théâtre National de Bruxelles and continues to shape hip hop dance culture worldwide.

With this episode of Guerrilla History, we bring you another fascinating episode in our series African Revolutions and Decolonization.  This time, a big episode on mining in Congo - extraction, exploitation, environmental and economic impacts, as well as the history, regional variations, and the difference between industrial mining and artisanal mining in Congo.  For this, we are lucky to be joined by Ben Radley as a guest host, and two excellent guests from the Congo -   Josaphat Musamba and Germain Ngoie Tshibambe.  Given their academic work on this, plus Josaphat's actual experience as a miner himself, we could not ask for a better group to unpack this!  Share widely to help others understand this remarkably pivotal industry.  Also be sure to check out our two previous episodes from the series on the Congo (The First, and The Second).  Lastly, check out the Centre of Expertise on Mining Governance.   Josaphat Musamba is a Congolese researcher, and is a Ph.D. student at Ghent University. Check out Josaphat's twitter @MusambaJosaphat and his ResearchGate profile.   Germain Ngoie Tshibambe is a full professor at the University of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he teaches international relations and is the Head Advisor of the Rector's Cabinet. Check out his Academia page and ResearchGate profile.   Ben Radley is is a Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath, is author of Disrupted Development in the Congo: The Fragile Foundations of the African Mining Consensus, and is an editor of the Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE). Follow him on twitter @RadleyBen and check out his website. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

Suchitra Vijayan speaks with Abdullahi Boru Halakhe in a conversation that traces the longue durée of exploitation and violence in the Congo from the colonial atrocities of King Leopold II to the resource wars that continue to devastate the region today. They unpack how the technologies of extraction and the politics of dispossession remain intertwined, shaping a global system in which Congolese land, labour, and life continue to underwrite the comforts of the Global North. Abdullahi situates Congo's crisis within the history of empire and its afterlives. He revisits the 19th-century “civilising mission” of Henry Morton Stanley and Leopold's personal ownership of the Congo Free State, connecting it to today's extraction of coltan, cobalt, and gold that powers Silicon Valley. From the uranium that fuelled the Manhattan Project to the minerals driving AI and green tech, he argues that the Congolese people have been made to pay for the world's progress with their blood and labour. The conversation then turns to Rwanda's complicity in the ongoing violence. Abdullahi unpacks how the legacies of the 1994 genocide, and the First and Second Congo Wars that followed, continue to shape Rwanda's sub-imperial role in the region. He details how Rwanda and Uganda act as conduits for resource extraction, exporting minerals that geologically do not exist within their borders, and how the profits of this trade flow through the Gulf states to Western markets. In this network, Congo becomes the epicentre of a global pipeline linking African sub-imperial powers, Gulf petrostates, and Western tech conglomerates: a chain of exploitation that transforms human suffering into industrial capital. The discussion broadens into an examination of how the same extractive and militarised logics underpin genocides and wars across the Global South from Congo to Sudan to Palestine. Abdullahi identifies the United Arab Emirates as a central malign actor, financing wars and shaping political economies of violence under the guise of development and modernity. What emerges is a picture of a world where the technologies of genocide — surveillance, securitisation, and resource militarisation — are integral to the global order. The episode closes with a meditation on history as resistance. For Abdullahi, liberation begins with reclaiming historical knowledge and refusing amnesia. From the Bandung Conference to the dreams of pan-African solidarity, he insists that history offers both warning and possibility: a reminder that despair is political, but so is hope. As Suchitra notes, this conversation marks a rare moment in the Technologies of Genocide series — one where history itself becomes a site of liberation, and knowledge a tool against the algorithmic erasure of human struggle. — Abdullahi Boru Halakhe is the Senior Advocate for East and Southern Africa at Refugees International. He is an African policy expert with over a decade of experience in security, conflict, human rights, refugee work, and strategic communications. He has advised organisations including the International Rescue Committee, International Crisis Group, Amnesty International, BBC, the EU, AU, USAID, and the UNDP. Abdullahi holds a Master's in International Security Policy from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Maud Kells was born in Northern Ireland and grew up on a farm where church was more of a tradition than a heartfelt commitment. After coming to faith in Christ, she shocked her parents by announcing her call to the mission field.When it came time for her placement, Maud asked to go to one of the most dangerous and unstable countries in the world — the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite facing rebel attacks, robberies, and primitive conditions, Maud flourished among the Congolese people she came to love so deeply.Her story is a powerful reminder of what God can do through a life fully surrendered to Him.

Welkom in de elfde aflevering van het tweede seizoen van Ballieman. De voetbalpodcast van Friends of Sports en Koolcast Sport. Elke zondagavond praten Alexandre & Gilles met enkele liefhebbers na over het voetbalweekend in België en het buitenland. Dit weekend is Mardochée Nzita te gast.Het hoogtepunt van La Liga; De Classico. Er werd veel gepraat over deze wedstrijd, misschien zelfs te veel voor sommigen die de wedstrijd niet konden winnen. Onze heren stellen zich de vraag of sommige spelers misschien niet te veel zelfvertrouwen hebben. Mardochée speelde als linksachter van Charleroi een degelijke partij tegen RSC Anderlecht en komt napraten over het seizoensbegin van Charleroi tot frustratie van Alexandre. Gilles zette zijn weekend in op de 125ste verjaardag van KAA Gent met een pandoering tegen Standard. Club Brugge won met het kleinste verschil in een iets te stille Bosuil volgens ons panel. In de Premier League gaat alle lof dan naar Sunderland met zen Congolese enclave in de kern. Eindigen doen we met Balliemannen van de week. Nu al benieuwd naar de Balliemannen van volgende aflevering? Volg ons op social media en blijf op de hoogte van nieuwe afleveringen!

From the Juventus academy to a record transfer at Werder Bremen, Samuel Mbangula is the explosive Belgian winger dazzling the Bundesliga! This episode breaks down the DR Congolese talent's rapid rise, analyzing his incredible 85% dribbling success rate, key goals in Serie A and the Champions League, and his immediate, high-impact start with 2 goals and 3 assists in the season. Find out why this pacey, technical "Next Gen" star is quickly becoming a must-watch for Belgium's senior national team.Samuel Mbangula, Werder Bremen, Bundesliga, Belgian football, Juventus, winger

Guest artist ALINE MOTTA joins PELUMI ODUBANJO to discuss her work via 'Water is a Time Machine' by the artist herself. Originally published in Brazilian Portuguese by Fósforo Editora and Luna Parque Edições in 2022, the text reconfigures memories by using a non-linear perception of time and is part of a multi-layered project including video and performance. It includes personal documents that belong to the artist's mother, her calendars and journals from the 1970s and an account of her death in 2011, which is the central piece and backbone of the work. FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM! @artfictionspodcast BUY US A COFFEE! buymeacoffee.com/artfictionspodcast CONTRIBUTE VIA PATREON! patreon.com/artfictionspodcast EMAIL US DIRECTLY! artfictionspodcast@gmail.com Aline and Pelumi discuss the book's stories around the artist's family members and their lives in Rio de Janeiro at the turn of the 20th century, a time of political turmoil which immediately followed the abolition of slavery. Their conversation encompasses floating, bombs, bridges, tuberculosis, mistranslation, iconography, submerging, chemotherapy, prayer, breathing, stoicism, Catholicism, time machines, interracial marriage, film school, personal archives, double images, direct communication, permanent connections, exchanging cells, changing organs, fraught connections, Congolese traditions, disciplinarian mothers, avoiding sugarcoating, intentional disorientation, umbilical cords, oral histories, heavy heartedness, Yoruba influences, colonial erasure, speculative studies, layers of time, writing in fragments, metaphors of motherhood, constructing new narratives, sleeping in hammocks, foundations of thought, clothes being archives, abolition of slavery, lineage as language, contradictions in relationships, the beginning of the Republic, the way histories are told in (black) families, trying to find reasons for a person's death, the magic of making someone breath under water, using words to make maps, connecting personal history with collective history, envisioning new pasts to free us from old narratives and manifest new futures, plus a recipe to treat bruises.   ALINE MOTTA alinemotta.com @1alinemotta 'A água é uma máquina do tempo' / 'Water is a time machine' '(Outros) Fundamentos' / '(Other) Foundations' 'Pontes sobre Abismos' / 'Bridges over the Abyss'   INSTITUTIONS Bienal de São Paulo 2023 'Choreographies of the Impossible' Buenos Aires, Palermo Buenos Aires, Argentina Centre Pompidou, France MALBA Museo de Arte Lanoamericano de Buenos Aires / Latin American Art Museum of Rietberg Museum, Zurich   ARTISTS + FILM + WRITERS 'BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions' 2025  John Akomfrah 'Vertigo Sea' 2015 Kathleen Collins 'Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?' 2016 Kahlil Joseph 'Losing Ground' 1982 Machado de Assis 'Father Against Mother' 1906 Professor Stuart Hall (1932-2014) Rosana Paulino Saidiya Hartman 'Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route' 2006 'The Cruz Brothers and Miss Malloy' 1980   PLACES Angola Australia Bahia Bahia Brazil Burma Cachoeira Congo Germany Ghana Guanabara Bay Myanmar Niterói Nigeria Portugal Rio de Janeiro São Paulo  Sierra Leone Torres Strait Islands   TERMS + CULTURAL GROUPS ase/ashe Bantu languages capoeira martial art movement Kimbundu/Mbundu language maracatu dance ori orishas oyinbo/oyibo samba dance Yoruba

​​Maud Kells was born in Northern Ireland and grew up on a farm. For her family, church was simply a tradition, but not a heartfelt commitment. After she received Christ, she shocked her parents when she told them she felt called to go to the mission field. When it came time for Maud's placement, she asked to go to one of the most dangerous and unstable countries in the world— the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite setbacks, rebel attacks, robbers, and primitive conditions, Maud flourished in the Congo among the Congolese people she loved so much. Her story will inspire you.

When the trauma of life feels too heavy to bear, where else can we go but to Jesus? He alone understands the depth of our wounds and the weight of the sins committed against us. This week, Jolie Nabigondo returns to share the extraordinary story of how Christ met her in the aftermath of unthinkable suffering. After surviving the horrors of the Congolese genocide, Jolie's faith was pushed to its breaking point, but God's healing power proved stronger than her pain. Through surrender and forgiveness, He transformed her trauma into a testimony of freedom and redemption. Now serving in refugee resourcing, Jolie works alongside people from the very tribe that once sought to destroy her. Her ability to love her former enemies is a triumph of the gospel, a powerful reminder that nothing is too hard for God (Jeremiah 32:17) and nothing is impossible with Him (Luke 1:37). You will be deeply inspired by this conversation about healing, forgiveness, and the unstoppable grace of Jesus.   Connect with Jolie: https://brand.site/HumuraCareCenter Books mentioned:   How Dare the Sun Rise: Memoirs of a War Child by Sandra Uwiringiyimana (Author), Abigail Pesta (Author) Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust by  Immaculée Ilibagiza (Author), Steve Erwin (Contributor)   To inquire about counseling, email Louise at Louise@louisesedgwick.com.

Elaine Heath is the abbess of Spring Forest, a new monastic community in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Spring Forest centers around communal prayer and meals, a vibrant farm, refugee support, and other ministries you can read about here. You can learn more about Elaine's work as an author and speaker on her website, or in articles like this one from the Center for Action and Contemplation.Many thanks to Elaine and her husband Randall for welcoming Ron and I and our audio producer, Colin, to the farm last June. Besides relishing the good company of our hosts, we enjoyed harvesting cabbage, feasting and praying with the Sunday evening group, walking through the woods, and petting some good-natured goats.Dr. Elaine HeathOn the farm.Someone had to help harvest the cabbage, so Ron and Colin and I pitched in.Elaine, husband Randall, and I in their lovely home.TRANSCRIPTElaine Heath If you are nurtured by traditional church—or let's say, conventional church—keep doing it, but also realize that for other people that's not nurturing. It feels dry and lifeless, and it's clear the Spirit is doing something new. So instead of insisting everybody stop doing the new thing, and everybody has to come and do the conventional thing, you can be conventional in your worship and bless and make space for others so that we have a plethora of experiments going on.Debra Rienstra Welcome to the Refugia Podcast. I'm your host, Professor Debra Rienstra. Refugia are habitats in nature where life endures in times of crisis. We're exploring the concept of refugia as a metaphor, discovering how people of faith can become people of refugia: nurturing life-giving spaces in the earth, in our human cultural systems, and in our spiritual communities, even in this time of severe disturbance. This season, we're paying special attention to churches and Christian communities who have figured out how to address the climate crisis together as an essential aspect of their discipleship.Today, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Elaine Heath. Elaine is founder and abbess of Spring Forest, a new monastic community centered on a 23-acre forest and farm property near Hillsboro, North Carolina. The farm supplies a CSA and supports food security for refugees and serves as the setting for outdoor programs for kids, cooking classes, potlucks, forest walks and more. But the Spring Forest community is a dispersed network of people who move in and out of the farm space in a variety of ways. They live on the farm for a time, they visit often to volunteer, or they simply join the community online for daily prayer. We got to visit the farm last spring, and I can tell you that Elaine's long experience with new monasticism, trauma-informed care, and contemplative practice make her an ideal curator of refugia space. The vibe on the farm is peaceful, orderly, and full of life. It's a place of holy experimentation in new ways to form Christian community and reconnect with the land. Let's get to it.Debra Rienstra Elaine, thank you for talking with me today. It's really great to be with you.Elaine Heath Yeah, I'm glad to be with you too.Debra Rienstra So you served in traditional parish ministry and in religious academia for many years, and then in 2018 you retired from that work to found Spring Forest. Why a farm and a new monastic community? What inspired and influenced this particular expression of faith?Elaine Heath I've always loved farms and forests. But actually, my dream to do this started about 25 years ago, and my husband and I bought a 23 acre property in North Central Ohio, right when I was right out of my PhD program and I got my first academic job at my alma mater, which is Ashland Theological Seminary. So I went there to direct the Doctor of Ministry program, and we bought this beautiful property. It had a little house that looked like the ranger station, and it had a stream and a big labyrinth cut in the field, and it had beautiful soil to grow, you know, for market gardening. And what we planned to do was gradually develop retreat ministries there. My husband was going to build some hermitages up in the woods, because I did a lot of spiritual direction with pastors who were burned out and traumatized, and we felt like that, you know, as I got older and phased out of academia, that would be something we could do together.So we were there for a couple years, and then I was recruited to go to Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. And we were very sad to leave our property behind, but we were clear that we were being called to Texas. So we bought a home in the city in a sort of mixed income, racially diverse neighborhood in Garland, and it was a big house with a nice yard, and soon after starting to teach evangelism—which, I kind of created my own path for how to teach evangelism, because I don't believe in selling Jesus or any of those kinds of colonizing things. So I was teaching about living a contemplative life and practicing social and environmental justice and being good news in the world, and being good neighbors to all our neighbors, and thinking of our neighbors as us and not them. And I had them reading Shane Claiborne and the people writing with the emerging church movement at the time, and pretty soon, I had students in my class coming to my office every week. It was a different student, but the same tears and the same kind of narrative: “Dr. Heath, I think I'm going to have to leave the church to answer my call. Tell me what I should do.” And it was because they were being called to do innovative, new monastic ministry, missional, new monastic kinds of things. But our denomination in particular didn't quite get it, even though early Methodism was very much like that.So I realized fairly quickly that this was God calling me through these students to focus my research and writing and my teaching in the area of emergence. Emergence theory, what's happening in the world. How do these currents of emergence intersect with what's happening politically and environmentally, and what's happening, you know, in the economy and with the church. So pretty soon, I don't know, it wasn't very long, I felt God was calling me to gather students and start some experiments outside, out in the city. And so I had a prayer partner, and we were praying for a house to come available, so that we could start a new monastic house. And she came to me one day and she said, “I saw the house coming. It'll be here soon.” And I said, “Okay.” I had no money for a house. You know, kind of a lowly professor, didn't make that much. And within two weeks, one of our neighbors came to me, who didn't really know me well at all, and said, “Hey, my mom has a rental property. It's been in our family for a long time, and we wondered if you might have some students that would like to live there. We won't even charge rent, just pay their utilities and not have drug parties or whatnot.” And I said, “No, that's unlikely,” you know. So I said, you know, I could throw the phone down and ran down to get in her car and go over to this house with her. And we were driving over, and she says, “You know, it's not the best neighborhood.” I said, “Perfect!” But we got there, and it was a really great little three bedroom house in a predominantly Latina neighborhood, and that was our first new monastic house. So I asked three of the students who'd been crying in my office, “Would you be willing to break your leases wherever you live and come and live here for a year?” And I can assign a spiritual director to work with you, and I can write a curriculum for an independent study on the theory and practice of new monasticism. And we can develop a Rule of Life based on our United Methodist membership vows. And they all immediately said yes, and so that's how we got started with our first house.Elaine Heath And then right around the same time, I started a missional house church that was quickly relocated into the neighborhood where most of the refugees are resettled in Dallas, because one of my students brought six Congolese men to our little house church worship, and that that was the beginning of realizing we were called to work with refugees.Debra Rienstra Oh, I see.Elaine Heath So that all got started around 2008. And by 2009, there was a student who came to Perkins who had been a commercial real estate banker on Wall Street. And he came to Perkins as a student. He was an older man. And we were going on my very first pilgrimage to Iona, Northumbria, and Lindisfarne, and Michael Hahn was with us too. He and I team-taught this class, so it was my first one. But it turned out that Larry Duggins, the student, had come to seminary because he really wanted to be equipped to help young adults who were feeling disillusioned with the church but wanted to be out in the world doing good work. And he started describing what he was called to, and I'm like, “Well, that's what I'm doing with these students.” So we joined forces and created a nonprofit called Missional Wisdom Foundation, and within three years, we had a network of eight new monastic communities across the metroplex. They were all anchored at local churches. Some of them were parsonages that weren't being used. And we wove into the expectations and sort of the lifestyle of those houses, urban agriculture.Debra Rienstra Oh, I was waiting for the farm to come back into it. Yeah, because I'm seeing these threads of experimentation and monasticism and place. We're sitting here today on your current farm land. So it's really interesting to hear all these threads being developed early on in an urban context.Elaine Heath Yes, it was quite something. These houses were all in different social contexts. There was one house, the Bonhoeffer house, that was in East Dallas, in a neighborhood that was not only mixed income and racially diverse, but also used to be where the mayor lived. And now there are people who are unhoused living there, and there are also people with nice houses living there. So it was a very interesting neighborhood. So that house, we learned quickly that you needed to take a year to get to know the neighborhood before you try to figure out how you're going to support whatever justice work needs to happen in the neighborhood. But that house got really close with the unhoused community and did a lot of good ministry with the guys and a few women. Then there was one for undocumented workers, the Romero House, and just different social contexts. But all of them had a backyard garden or, you know, some type of growing food kind of thing. And I used to take students to this farm that was an urban farm in DeSoto, which is just south of Dallas, where it was quite small, but these were former missionaries, the type that have crusades and show the Jesus film and everything in sort of poor countries. And then they had an awakening that happened, and they realized they were being called to help people in orphanages learn how to grow their own food in a sustainable way and raise the living standard for the whole village. So they had this little farm, and I would take students there every semester to experience the conversion of thought that this couple had over what mission is, and to experience the beauty and joy of tilapia that provide food for the lettuce, that provide for the bees, you know. So this closed system. So that also affected my imagination about what I really wanted to do in the future.And so gradually, the years—we were there for 11 years, and we lived in community the whole time that we were there. By the time we came here for me to work at Duke, we had a very clear picture of what we wanted to do here. And so we looked for the property back when we had to sell that first farm, when we were so sad about selling it, I had an experience in prayer where I sensed God was saying to me, “Don't give up on this dream. It's sacred, and it will happen in the future on a better piece of property, at a better time in your life for this.” And so when it was time to move here, I said to Randall, “This is the time. Let's look for that property.” So that's how we landed here.Friendly, very contented dairy goats, hanging out in the afternoon.Debra Rienstra Yeah. When talking about your students, you mentioned yesterday that you like to “ruin them for fake church.” So what do you mean by fake church, and how exactly do you ruin them for it?Elaine Heath Well, you know, church is really the people and not the building. You all know that. It's the people and we're called to be a very different kind of people who are a healing community, that neighbor well, that give ourselves away, that regard our neighbors—human and non human—as part of us, whether they think they're part of us or not. We have this sort of posture in life. And when I think of how Jesus formed the church, Jesus had this little ragtag group of friends, and they traveled around and did stuff and talked about it, and they got mad at each other and had power struggles and drama and, you know, and then Jesus would process the drama with them. And he would do these outrageous things, you know, breaking sort of cultural taboo to demonstrate: this is what love really looks like. And so we don't get to do much of any of that, sitting in a pew on Sunday morning, facing forward while the people up in the front do things. And so many churches—maybe you've never experienced this, but I certainly have. The pastor's sort of the proxy disciple while people kind of watch and make judgments and decide whether or not they want to keep listening to those sermons.Debra Rienstra Oh yes.Elaine Heath So when you experience Christian life in a community where it's both natural, it's just the way you live in the world, and it's also liturgically rich, and the life is a contemplative life, and it's also a life of deep missional engagement with the world— that other version of church, it's like oatmeal with no flavoring in it. It makes you, I mean, it's about the life together. It's how we live in this world. It's not about sitting somewhere for an hour once a week and staring forward.Debra Rienstra Right. Yeah, so I would, you know, of course, I would describe what you're describing as refugia, being the people of refugia. You know? Not that I'm—we'll come back to traditional worship and traditional forms of faith and religion. But it seems like what you're doing is living into something you say on your website that we are in the midst of a new reformation in the church, and I certainly sense that too. I think the evidence is all around us, and the research bears out that we've reached this inflection point, and it's a painful inflection point that a lot of people think of as decline, because living through it feels confusing and bewildering and dark and full of loss. So what is your sense of when we are, in this point in history, in particular, for those of us who've been part of church communities, where are we finding ourselves? Why is it so confusing?Elaine Heath I really believe we're in a dark night of the soul as the church in the West and perhaps places in the East too. I know we've exported a capitalist version of church all over the world, sadly. But I believe we're in a dark night of the soul, you know, classically understood, where it's spirit-breathed. It's not that the devil is doing something to us. It's spirit-breathed to detach us from our sort of corporate ego that thinks we get to show up and boss the world around and act like we own the joint.Debra Rienstra We call that church of empire.Elaine Heath Yeah. And so I think that's what's happening. And when, you know, if you study the literature, if you work in spiritual direction, and you're looking at what happens with the dark night of the soul. That's a real dark night, not a clinical depression or something like that, but an actual dark night. You have to go through it. You can't bypass it. You can't work your way out of it. You can't talk your way out of it. And what happens is you find yourself increasingly hungry for simplicity, for a simple but clear experience of God, because it's like God's disappeared. There's a deep loneliness, even a sort of cold hell, to being in a dark night of the soul. And so there's a restlessness, there's a longing for actual experience of God. There's a feeling of futility. Things that used to work don't work anymore. So you know the threefold path? The purgation, illumination and union is one way that we've learned to think about what happens. The purgation part is— we're there.Debra Rienstra We're being purgated.Elaine Heath We're being purgated, yeah. And at the same time that we're having these flashes of intuitive knowing, this sort of illumination is coming. “Oh, let's pay attention to the saints and mystics who lived through things like this. What gave them life? What helped them to keep showing up and being faithful?” And we're having moments of union too, when we feel like, “Oh, discipleship means I make sure that the trees are cared for and not just people. Oh, all living things are interconnected. Quantum physics is teaching us a spiritual truth we should have known already.” So the three parts of that contemplative path are happening simultaneously. But I think what feels most forward to a lot of people is the purgation piece where you're like, “Oh, things are just dropping away. Numbers are dropping. Things that used to work don't work. What's going to happen now?” Sort of a sense of chaos, confusion. Tohu va bohu, yeah.Debra Rienstra Yeah, do you want me to explain what that is?Elaine Heath Yeah, chaos and confusion. From the beginning of time.Debra Rienstra It's the realm out of which creation is formed. So the idea that the spirit is drawing us into this dark night is actually really reassuring. We are where we're supposed to be. And even though it feels confusing and painful, there are these moments of wisdom—that's so reassuring. In fact, one of the things you write: the new reformation is all about the emergence. So this emergence is happening of a generous, hospitable, equitable form of Christianity that heals the wounds of the world. What is your vision about what the church needs to release and hold and create right now?Elaine Heath We need to release everything that even slightly has a hint of empire, that we have thought of as what it means to be the church, because that completely reverts what church is supposed to be about. So giving up empire, we need to take up the great kenotic hymn of Philippians two and actually live it.Debra Rienstra The self emptying hymn.Elaine Heath The self emptying. And it's not—I know that that can be problematic when we're thinking of women or, you know, groups that have been forced to empty themselves in an exploited way. But that's not really what that's all about. It's about showing up to God, paying attention, seeing what God's invitation is, then cooperating with that and just releasing the outcome. That's what that's about, and really finding out, what am I in this world for? What are we in this world for? And being about that and not about something else.Debra Rienstra Yeah, it's hard to release the ways that we have done things. Well, you have a congregation, you have a pastor, you have a sanctuary, you have programs, you want the kids to come, you need tithes, all of those systems. And actually, what you're doing here at Spring Forest—let's talk about that. What you're doing here at Spring Forest doesn't have any of that. Sunday services. There's no church building. You have barn buildings, you have farm buildings. No Sunday school, no adult ed, no choirs, organs, praise bands, any of that stuff, right? Do you think of Spring Forest as a new model for church? Perhaps one among many?Elaine Heath It's one among many. We're definitely shaped by traditional monasticism. We're shaped by early Methodism. We're influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement, and definitely Bonhoeffer's work and a number of others: the Clarence Jordan and Koinonia farms. And so we're influenced by all of those. We do have music sometimes at Forest Feast, if we have someone that can lead it, and, you know, do a good job. But the backbone of our worship life is morning and evening prayer. And that is so wonderful. You were here last night for Forest Feast, and we use the same structure we use for morning and evening prayer, and we have a group of about six people who are writing the liturgies for us, who have been writing for a year and a half now.Debra Rienstra Who are those people?Elaine Heath Well, there's Steve Taylor is our lay leader, and his wife, Cheryl, and then there's Donna Patterson, who's—none of them were here last night. They all had to go somewhere. But some of them are lay people. Some of them are clergy.Debra Rienstra And they don't live here?Elaine Heath No, they live— well, some of the people that write live far away, and they're in our digital community. But, yeah, Steve and Cheryl live in Lumberton, which is, you know, almost two hours away. But they're beautiful. I mean, if you go online and look at some of the last month, look at the prayers and see the—they're just truly beautiful, and they reflect our spirituality of our community.Debra Rienstra Yeah. So the community, it seems to me, you have had people living on the farm itself, but your community, like the Iona community, is both located here on this land, but also dispersed. And so you have that interaction, that conversation between this residential life. So let's try to describe for listeners: there's the farm. You live here with your husband. You have interns from Duke. You have a farm. What do you call Larry?Elaine Heath He's our farm coach.Debra Rienstra Coach, yes, I love that. They have the farm coach who has the farming knowledge that you all sort of follow. You have chefs. They don't live here either, but they come in. So you have a lot of people coming in and out on this farm. And you do regenerative farming. You have programs for kids, you have refugee support, and you can talk about that, trauma informed rest for spiritual leaders. And then a number of other things. The farm produces vegetables and those go to a CSA, and also a lot of it is donated. Why this particular assembly of activities? How does it all fit together? And what are the theological principles beneath each of these endeavors?Elaine Heath The overarching principle is that the Holy Spirit gives gifts to every believer and to every person, let's just be honest. And the job of the pastor, the pastor teacher, is to fan those gifts into flame, to help them have the support they need to use their gifts and that the ministries should be shaped by the gifts of the people, which means you can't use a cookie cutter. And we have numerically a small community, but incredibly high capacity of people. So we have these gifts that they have, and then the ministries are emerging out of those gifts. And it might seem like, why do you have refugee support? And you know, just name anything else we're doing. How does this fit together? The organizing principle—okay, so you have the foundation. These are gifts given by the Spirit. Our ministries are emerging from our gifts. And the organizing sort of a cohesive piece is our rule of life that ties everything together. And so our rule of life is prayer, work, table, neighbor and rest. And that rule of life came about after we lived here for a year, when we first started Spring Forest with—there was another pastor that co-founded it with me, Francis Kinyua, who's from Kenya, and he was my student in Dallas, and did all those other things with me. So we invited him to come. We had to work with three different bishops to kind of make it work. But it worked, you know. Anyway, we just waited for a year to see. We had lots of work to do with getting the farm ready to go and Francis and I went to Church World Service right away to say, “Hey, we have a lot of experience supporting refugees, and we would like to do that here as well.” So we got started with that, but we waited a year and then just articulated, what are the practices that we do that are keeping us grounded here and keeping us right side up. And it was those things, so we named it.Debra Rienstra Okay, you were just doing it, and then you named those things.Elaine Heath Instead of creating sort of an aspirational rule and tried to live into it, we named what was actually working, what was actually grounding us and felt life giving.Debra Rienstra Hi, it's me, Debra. If you are enjoying this podcast episode, go ahead and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. If you have a minute, leave a review. Good reviews help more listeners discover this podcast. To keep up with all the Refugia news, I invite you to subscribe to the Refugia newsletter on Substack. This is my fortnightly newsletter for people of faith who care about the climate crisis and want to go deeper. Every two weeks, I feature climate news, deeper dives, refugia sightings and much more. Join our community at refugianewsletter.substack.com. For even more goodies, including transcripts and show notes for this podcast, check out my website at debrarienstra.com. D-E-B-R-A-R-I-E-N-S-T-R-A dot com. Thanks so much for listening. We're glad you're part of this community. And now back to the interview.Debra Rienstra You do partner a lot with, you know, “regular church folk.” It's that sort of in-and-out permeable membrane. How do you think about the relationship of what you're doing here, with Spring Forest, with the work of sort of standard congregations, is there like a mutuality? How do you think about that?Elaine Heath It's just like traditional monasticism. You've got a community that have this rule of life they follow. People who are not living in the community can become Oblates to the rule of life and have a special relationship. And usually those people go to church somewhere else. Part of our ethic here is we want to resist competition between churches, so we don't meet on Sundays to do things like programmatically. We usually just rest on Sundays and watch a movie and eat popcorn, you know.Debra Rienstra That's a spiritual practice.Elaine Heath But also, so there's that sort of historic piece, and people from churches come here for retreats. Lead teams come for retreats. People come—pastors, we have a lot of pastors who come here for a retreat. But also we are a mission community, so we're very active with supporting refugees. We're very active with the food programs that we have, and that gives people from a church—lots of churches don't have things like that going on. They don't have the resources for it, or they haven't figured it out. But that way, we can partner with churches and people can come here and they can actually get their hands in the soil, and they can teach somebody to read, and they can see little children learning where food comes from. They can help the chef with her kitchen things, you know. So it's a wonderful way to provide spiritual formation and missional formation to congregations that don't have those resources. And we can do these things together.Debra Rienstra Yeah. And that's that's premised on this being a place, an embodied place, a refugia space that people can come to. Yeah. I think that's a wonderful model. Do you yourself ever feel a sense of loss for “the old ways?” And I'm just thinking of this because at the beginning of your book, God Unbound, which is about Galatians, you write about how Paul challenges the Galatians to let go of their tight grip on the past, and you write about how you, reading that, felt yourself like a little bit of a traditionalist, you know, sort of defending, “But what about the past? What about the old ways?” Which you have loved too, right? So, how would you counsel people who have loved traditional church despite everything, and really do feel this sense of loss and wonder anxiously about what's next?Elaine Heath Yeah, I feel empathy. You know, something was going on in the Middle East at the time. I can't remember exactly the situation. There's always something going on, but it had to do with people's culture being wiped out and being told that what they believed didn't count and wasn't right and everything. And I was feeling such grief for them, and then all of a sudden, you know, I'm in Galatians, and think, “Well, that's how those people felt.” And even myself, there are things in my own daily practice that are—they're precious to me. My way of praying in the morning, the facing into the forest, you know, and things like that, that are rituals for me. And thinking, you know, if somebody told me “that doesn't matter,” how hard that would be. So I think in the spiritual journey, we come to the place, if we keep maturing, where we realize, in Merton's words, that so often we think it's the finger pointing to the moon, we think the finger is the moon. And it's that way about rituals and all sorts of things that we do, and we get to a place where we realize that intellectually and even spiritually, in an emotional way. But you can't force people to get to that point. This is something that happens as we grow and mature as life goes by. So what I have said to many people is, “If you are nurtured by traditional church, or, let's say, conventional church,”—because which traditional church are we talking about? One, right here, middle class, white, are we talking about Brazil? —”So if that nurtures you, keep doing it. But also realize that for other people, that's not nurturing. It feels dry and lifeless, and it's clear the Spirit is doing something new.” So instead of insisting everybody stop doing the new thing, and everybody has to come and do the conventional thing, you can be conventional in your worship and bless and make space for others so that we have a plethora of experiments going on. Because we're in a time of great emergence, as Phyllis Tickle wrote, and we need lots of experiments.Debra Rienstra Yeah. I appreciated what you wrote about trial and error. It's a time of trial and error, and it's okay to try things and have them not work. And that fits the refugia model too, really, really well. I mean, refugia don't always work. They just sometimes fail. Let's talk about a couple of key metaphors that I've noticed in your writings and in the website for Spring Forest too. One is that metaphor of the mycelial network, so the underground fungus that connects the creatures, the beings, the plants, the trees of the forest. I think is a wonderful metaphor too, for the way that faith and climate people, people who are worried about the climate crisis, and also people of faith—it's a great metaphor for how they're finding each other and connecting and building this sort of cultural and spiritual soil where the seeds of the future can grow. How is that metaphor meaningful for you here at Spring Forest?Elaine Heath Well, it means a lot in terms of the first of all, the diversity of expressions of ministry that are even here on the property, but also, especially in our dispersed community, through following the rule of life together, which—we are a practice-based community, rather than a dogma-based community. So as people are practicing those practices where they live and work and play, then they are forming community in a very specific, contextual way where they are. I think of Steve and Cheryl again, the friends I mentioned earlier. He's our lay leader. They live in a, I think a working class neighborhood in Lumberton, which is the land of the Lumbee here in North Carolina. And they have developed a wonderful, just neighborhood ministry there with—and they've been able, through potluck dinners and front yard barbecues and remembering people's birthdays and things like this, they've developed this friendship network in the neighborhood with people that are on complete opposite sides, politically, racially, and this is in the South, where you've got all sorts of issues. And they've taken the sort of ethic of Spring Forest here, but it's caused a mushroom to bloom there that looks really different from here. They don't have a farm, they don't have a forest, they've got this neighborhood. But the neighboring, the praying, the tabling, resting, all of those things are part of how they live there. And so it's fruiting there. And it's the same in other places in the world where we have people that live there.Debra Rienstra It's a good example, too, of how eating together is sacramental, both here and in these other networks that are connected to you. The Garden of Eden and the vision of the New Earth in Revelation are both important to you, that that whole long scriptural arc begin in a garden, end in a garden city, and then the Tree of Life is also your symbol, your logo. So how would you situate our work today as people of faith in that long arc of history, from the garden to the Garden City, and how does the Tree of Life fit into that for you?Elaine Heath There's a way in which the whole story is happening simultaneously. Does that make sense?Debra Rienstra Yeah.Elaine Heath It's all happening beyond time, sort of simultaneously. So sometimes we're living in the garden and we've been deceived, and now we have to figure out what to do, and sometimes we're rebuilding the wall, and sometimes we're on our way to Bethlehem, and sometimes we're in the garden of the new creation. And we can see it, and we're living that truth even while there's still the wall being built. There's a simultaneity to it all. But for me, I think especially of the theology of Julian of Norwich. That's why we have her icon here. There's this vision of love making all things new, that God, Christ, the risen Christ, says in Revelation 21:5, “Behold, I make all things new.” All things, not just a handful of people who get the right doctrine, not just—no, all things: horses and amoeba and all things are being made new in mysterious ways that we can't completely know.Debra Rienstra And that's Colossians one and Romans eight as well.Elaine Heath It's this thread that comes through scripture, and we get to participate in that, even while we don't see all the things completely made new, we get to be part of that. And to me, that's what it means to follow Christ. That's what it means to be a disciple. And to be the love of God enfleshed in this world is to keep participating in the making of all things new. This is why healing has such a central role in my theological vision and my practice, is it's making all things new.Debra Rienstra Healing land, healing people, healing communities.Elaine Heath Yeah, yeah. Healing theology. Theology has been so damaged by patriarchy and philosophy and all sorts of things, you know, and racism.Debra Rienstra Colonization. Yeah, so that embodiment is important even theologically, because we're not aiming for some abstract doctrinal perfection. We're not aiming to become disembodied creatures. We're aiming for this embodied redemption. And so working on the farm, healing, you know, getting muddy, walking through forests, harvesting veg, and you're able to invite people into that embodiment. Little kids doing yoga, I think that's wonderful. You know, just finding this kind of rest in their own little bodies. Eating—one of the most embodied and kinship-with-creation things we do, right? Taking it inside ourselves. And that, I think, is condensed in ritual. So I know that you have been playfully experimenting with rituals. I was able to be a part of the Forest Feast last night with my husband Ron and our friend Colin. And it was this beautifully curated event where we shared table together and then went through this prayer sequence that you described, and it was beautifully participative. I noticed you do a blessing of the animals too on the farm. So good thing these are blessed chickens and blessed dairy goats, blessed dogs and cats. What other sort of liturgical shenanigans have you tried to help people live into this embodied faith practice?Elaine Heath We do so many things. It's so much fun. It's never boring. It's never boring. We have a ritual in the fall, in late November, where we tuck the farm in and put it to bed for the winter, and we have the children come, we get some compost. You know, we've cleared out the beds, and they're gonna rest now. And so the children put some compost in. And we have a liturgy that we use. We light candles, and we thank Mother Earth for the food, we thank God for the opportunities. And so this is one of the things that we do ritualistically. We also have a spring ritual. It's very Hebrew-Bible like, right? With these seasons and the crops and the things with the liturgical seasons, we also have done a bunch of things. My favorite one so far was for epiphany, and this was two years ago. And so I had the interns from Duke Divinity School do the bulk of the planning. I just gave them a little bit of guidance about the four-fold order of worship and just some things like that. So we had a journey through the forest. It started here. We went on the forest trail. Of course, it was dark outside, and they had gone ahead and set up fairy lights at certain places where we're going to stop. And one of the interns' fiance was a musician, so he had his guitar, and he had one of those things where you can play the harmonica and play the guitar at the same time, but he was our troubadour, and all of us were the Magi. So there's this troop of Magi, and we would stop at each station along the way, and there were prompt questions that we would take five minutes, and people could respond to these questions. There would be a scripture reading, and we respond to the question, we go to the next station. And it was so amazing. People shared from their lives in a very deep way. It surprised me how quickly they went deep. Well, it was dark, and there were these twinkle lights, and there was the troubadour. Then we finally got up to the Christ child, and we went into the goat barn. And honestly, I get chills every time I even remember this. But the students had set up in the goat barn—and the goats were in the barn. Okay, they were behind a little chain link thing so they didn't step on the icons and everything. But they had set up an altar at the base of the feeding trough with a big icon of Mary with the Christ Child, candles, and some other things there. There were different icons and some fairy lights. And we went in there, and we all crowded in and began to sing. We sang “This Little Light of Mine,” we sang some Christmas carols, and finished the story. And then we came back to the house and had some snacks and talked about what kind of wisdom was given to us since we were Magi. We were going to be people seeking wisdom and seeking—it was the most beautiful thing. And we've done lots of things like that. We see the land here is a primary text to learn from and to listen to and to observe, not as a metaphor, but as, it's actually a conversation partner. So we do things like that.Debra Rienstra That playfulness is so exciting to me, this sense of using our tradition, using our scriptures, using the skills that we've honed as people of faith over generations, singing together, praying together, but experimenting with those things in new contexts and new ways, in new forms of embodiment that are just faithful and yet playful. And so, as you say, people go deep because they're sort of jarred out of their habitual ways, and that can be such a great formational moment and bonding moment too, and it's very memorable. We remember that in ways—you know, you had such joy on your face as you're describing that. What would you say as you look back over the last, well, let's see, it's been almost eight years? Seven, eight years here at this location. What would you say has given you the most anguish and what has given you the most joy?Elaine Heath Oh, anguish. Which story should I tell?Debra Rienstra Yeah, I don't want to make it sound like it's all been beautiful and romantic and perfect.Elaine Heath Whenever you have community, you have drama. Well, you know, at your typical church, you're gonna have drama sometimes. But what we've found a few times, and it's pretty predictable. This happens in traditional monasteries too, which is why they have novitiate periods that are sometimes quite lengthy and sort of staggered, like you put your toe in the water. People of very high capacity who are deeply grounded spiritually and have a real vision for the gospel, are attracted to community life like this. People who are really hurt, who've had a lot of brokenness, especially from religious institutions or abusive situations, trauma that that is unresolved, that has a lot of unhealed wounds, are also attracted to places like this, often with a sort of utopian hope, because of, you know, life's deficits.Debra Rienstra And they feel that this is a place of healing, and they're right about that.Elaine Heath They're right about it. And so what actually happens is sometimes with the person, the second category of person, will come and join in and just be so full of gladness, because, “Oh, these, these are real people, like they're really doing things in the world. This is what I've longed for.” But then, as relationships form, and we're doing life together, and we all bump up against each other at times, the unhealed wounds fester. And the way I see it is, God's bringing them to a place where, if they'll just do their inner work now, now that it's clear what's the next step—if they'll take the next step, whether it's get some therapy, stay on your meds, get some support for your addiction recovery, whatever the things are—if you'll take the next step, then this is a very supportive community that can help you. It's a village that can be around you and you will heal here in the context of this village. But sometimes people are not willing or not able, or it's not time in their own sense of what they can do, and so then they'll leave. Sometimes when people leave, this happens in traditional churches, for whatever reason, this is a common sort of psychological reaction, they'll create some sort of chaotic drama to be the excuse for leaving, rather than have to face the fact that it was time for me to take the next step, and I was too scared. Because that takes a lot of self awareness, you know, to come to realizations about things like that. So I know from talking to people, from, you know, friends that are in traditional monasteries and convents that this is a common thing that happens there. So it happens here sometimes, and it's never easy. It's always painful and always challenging, you know, but with God's help, we get through it. And so that's the anguish, when those kinds of things happen. We've had a time or two where, over the last 20 years, really, where a person would come in, usually a young adult who's very idealistic, and they're like, “This isn't a new monastic community. You're not forcing people to pray three times a day!” You know, whatever the thing is that they have in their head that is supposed to be, because we're pretty gracious, you know.Debra Rienstra You don't get up at three in the morning.Elaine Heath Yeah, that's not us. We can't do that because, especially if you've got families with children and, you know, you've got to get up and go to work in the morning. So sometimes there will be somebody that figures they know more than everybody else in the room, and they want to take over and run the joint. You know, that's not going to happen. So then that sometimes creates some anguish. What about the joy? The joy is—and there's so much to give me joy. I really, really love seeing people come alive, like I really love seeing people who have, especially people who have been harmed by religion, because of their identity or because of anything, and they find deep spiritual friendship. They find how to connect, in Buechner's words, their deep passion with the world's great need, and start a new thing. And it gives them so much joy. And it's actually helping people. It's helping the world. And just sort of fanning that flame, that gives me a lot of joy. I have so much joy being in touch with the land and the animals. I just really experience them directly mediating God to me. I feel the divine life in them, and I feel, I guess I get a lot of dopamine hits when I'm out there harvesting and when I'm, you know, brushing the goats and talking to the chickens and whatnot.Debra Rienstra They are blessed chickens!Elaine Heath They are blessed chickens.Debra Rienstra What advice would you give to church people who, even though they love their church and their community, recognize that something needs to change, but they don't know where to start? What advice would you give?Elaine Heath To start in their own home, if at all possible, start in their own neighborhood. Start having neighbors over for dinner. Do not tell them we're going to have a Bible study now, because that's—it's not to have a Bible study. It's to form friendships with our neighbors. Start neighboring well. Figure out who lives on my street. Who lives across the street? Invite them for dinner. Have neighborhood potlucks. We did this in Texas, right after we moved there, I think they're still going. We'd have 50 people in our house sometimes. But just invite the neighbors for dinner. Have a potluck. Get to know them. Remember their birthdays, go to their kids' graduation. When you find out their mother died, go to the funeral. It's so simple. It's just such basic neighboring. That's where to start. It's not a church program. It's not making you stop going to church somewhere, to go to church over here. What you're actually doing is living church in your own neighborhood. Start doing that.Debra Rienstra Elaine, it's been such a pleasure to be here on the farm with you and to talk with you, get to know you a little bit. Thank you for what you do, and thank you for spending some time with me today.Elaine Heath It's been a joy. Thank you for the interview.Debra Rienstra Thanks for joining us for show notes and full transcripts, please visit debrarienstra.com and click on the Refugia Podcast tab. This season of the Refugia Podcast is produced with generous funding from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Colin Hoogerwerf is our awesome audio producer. Thanks to Ron Rienstra for content consultation as well as technical and travel support. Till next time, be well. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit refugianewsletter.substack.com

Bénédicte Kusendila is afkomstig van Sint-Niklaas, heeft een Congolese vader die diplomaat was, werkt voor Pax Christi, is vrijwilliger in de Brusselse Begijnhofkerk, ook bekend als het House of Compassion van roerganger Daniël Alliët. Ze studeerde aan de universiteit van Leuven en aan die van Kaapstad (Zuid-Afrika). Ze was onderzoeker, directeur van een taleninstituut, leerkracht, geluidstechnicus. In 2017 debuteerde ze met de dichtbundel Sewn In Red, in rood geweven. Ze toerde en trad op en haar in het Engels en het Zuid-Afrikaans geschreven kortverhalen en poëzie werden gepubliceerd in Europa, Zuid-Afrika en de Verenigde Staten. Overal viel haar werk in de prijzen. Bénédicte - Bene voor de vrienden - houdt van haar kinderen, is muzikant en ze houdt van de natuur. Oog in oog met onrecht, geweld en conflict valt er een keuze te maken, vindt ze, wat haar betreft een moeilijke en niet de meest comfortabele keuze, een keuze die moed vraagt. De keuze houdt in dat je geweld niet met geweld beantwoordt, onrecht niet met stilzwijgen en conflict niet met ontwijking. Het is een keuze voor de Zachte Kracht, niet die voor oog om oog, tand om tand, want die laat alleen blinden achter. Het is een keuze die vandaag ondergesneeuwd is geraakt door een oorlogsnarratief, maar nog altijd overeind staat. Het is de levenskeuze van Bénédicte Kusendila. Leo A. De Bock praat met haar over haar leven en keuzes, over poëzie, over de Zuid-Afrikaanse zanger en anti-apartheidsactivist Johannes Kerkorrel, over oorlog en vrede, over pacifisme versus het oorlogsopbod van vandaag, over de waarheid als enige waardige uitkomst en toekomst.

Good afternoon, I'm _____ with today's episode of EZ News. Tai-Ex opening The Tai-Ex opened up 117-points this morning from yesterday's close, at 26,911 on turnover of 8.3-billion N-T. The market closed lower on Tuesday as renewed concerns over US-China trade tensions prompted (促使) investors to lock in profits. Former EVA Airways rep accused of spying for China The Supreme Prosecutors' Office has indicted a former EVA Airways representative to China on charges of spying for Beijing. The former airline representative was stationed in Sichuan and is suspected of being recruited by Chinese intelligence. Reports says he sought classified information from several officials at the Mainland Affairs Council concerning details about direct cross-strait flights. The suspect reportedly attempted to bribe at least one official with a payment of 100,000 N-T multiple times between 2012 and 2014. The Mainland Affairs Council official refused the offer and reported the case to authorities. The suspect has now been charged with violating the National Security Act. MOFA allocates funds to buy representative office space in Boston The Ministry of Foreign Affairs says it has allocated a budget of 156-million N-T for the purchase of a property (房產) to house its representative office in the U-S city of Boston. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Boston is currently located in a rented building. According to the foreign ministry, the funding means it will be able to a property in the city, pending approval of the budget by the Cabinet and Legislature. The government also plans to purchase properties in Houston and Denver in the U-S and in Sydney, Australia to house its representative offices .. .. saying the aim of the purchases is to save taxpayer money that is currently being spent on renting overseas offices. Argentina Leader at White House Just hours after returning from his trip to the Middle East, US President Donald Trump is shifting (轉移) his focus to the other side of the world - hosting the Argentinian leader Javier Milei at the White House. It comes after the US agreed to a 20 billion dollar currency swap in a major bailout of the Latin American nation. Kate Fisher reports Congo M23 Establish Oversight Congo and the Rwanda-backed rebel group M23 have agreed to establish an oversight mechanism for a potential permanent ceasefire. The agreement was announced Tuesday by a Congolese government spokesperson and confirmed by a M23 spokesperson. The ceasefire monitoring body will include representatives from Congo, M23 and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region. The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo will participate. The agreement is an important step toward a peace deal after recent efforts to end fighting in eastern Congo stalled. The body is expected to meet within seven days of its creation, with the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo providing logistical (後勤的) coordination. That was the I.C.R.T. EZ News, I'm _____. －－－－以下為 SoundOn 動態廣告－－－－ 行人過馬路要注意安全！ 沒有路權時不要通行，穿越馬路請遵守號誌燈指示，注意來車與周圍環境，步行安全最重要，保護自己也保護他人。

Congo is een land vol goud, kobalt en diamanten — maar arm aan stabiliteit. President Félix Tshisekedi, zoon van de legendarische oppositieleider Étienne Tshisekedi, kwam aan de macht met grote beloftes: vrede, hervormingen en een einde aan corruptie.Zes jaar later is de realiteit weerbarstig. In het oosten laait de oorlog op, politieke allianties verschuiven, en de vraag blijft: wie heeft écht de macht in Kinshasa?Samen met correspondent Sophie van Leeuwen onderzoeken we wie Tshisekedi werkelijk is — hervormer, overlever, of gewoon een nieuwe versie van het oude systeem.Volg onze LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/africastpodcast?originalSubdomain=nlVoor mooie beelden, quizjes en 'behind the scenes', volg onze Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/africast_podcast/Link met Jos of Joeri via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jos-hummelen/ & https://www.linkedin.com/in/joerinortier/

Israeli military says the last 20 living hostages have been freed by Hamas and are now in Red Cross custody in the Gaza Strip. US President Donald Trump about to address Knesset. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and other world leaders attending "Summit for Peace" in Egypt. US President Donald Trump threatens to send Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine if Russia does not agree to end war soon. Hospitals in the Democratic Republic of Congo are facing severe medical supply shortages, amid clashes between Congolese forces and M23 rebels. Seniors in Montreal are learning French thanks to a special program that takes them outside the classroom.

Episode 76 Congo: When History Walks into Your Exam Room On this episode host Raj Sundar sits down with Jean Jacques, physician, community organizer to explore how the long and complex history of the Democratic Republic of Congo—including colonialism, resource-driven conflict, and trauma—shapes the healthcare experience of Congolese immigrants and refugees in the U.S. They talk through the diversity of Congolese identities, languages, and traditions, and examine how food, faith, and community form the backbone of cultural resilience, even as new challenges like diabetes, hypertension, and mental health stigma emerge after resettlement. Our conversation highlights practical advice for clinicians—from building trust and acknowledging trauma to asking about family and respecting cultural foodways—while also discussing the vital role of Congolese churches and grassroots organizations in healing and navigating the American healthcare system. Find all of our network podcasts on your favorite podcast platforms and be sure to subscribe and like us. Learn more at www.healthcarenowradio.com/listen/

The head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, MONUSCO, is urging people in the restive eastern part of the country not to lose hope after years of conflict.Binto Keita spoke to UN News's Jérôme Bernard a few days after she briefed the Security Council in New York on the overall situation in the DRC.She emphasized that the government, the UN and the international community remain engaged in efforts to bring peace to the east, where armed groups continue to terrorise communities.Ms. Keita expressed compassion and empathy for the Congolese people whose “resilience is also very much admirable.” 

Your co-hosts are taking a little break, but we didn't want to leave your podcast feed empty. Instead, we're bringing you something special: a replay episode!We've dug back into the archives to highlight one of our favorite authors!Hunter Farrell is the co-author of Freeing Congregational Mission: A Practical Vision for Companionship, Cultural Humility, and Co-Development.Hunter is also the Director of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary's World Mission Initiative. He worked for thirty-four years as a missionary (in DR Congo and Peru), mission leader (Director of World Mission for the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A.), and teacher of mission and intercultural studies (Pittsburgh Theological Seminary). He developed fluency in three languages (Spanish, French and Tshiluba) and earned his Master of Divinity in Cross-Cultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary, the Diplôme d'études approfondies in religious anthropology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris and a doctorate in anthropology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.While living overseas, he received more than sixty short-term mission groups and studied the complex and nuanced interactions between U.S. visitors and Congolese and Peruvian hosts. He has researched and written articles on congregational mission engagement that have been published in Missiology: An International Review, The Journal of Latin American Theology and Christianity Today. He speaks frequently to groups of congregational mission leaders to better understand their concerns and offer them tools to lead their congregations into more faithful and effective mission.To buy Freeing Congregational Mission, visit: https://a.co/d/21CrJmkMusic by: Irene & the SleepersLogo by: Jill EllisWebsite: menomissions.orgContact Us: brokenbanquetpodcast@gmail.com

Love is the Message is back! After last series' mammoth 18-month excavation of the year 1977 we're switching things up a bit. While we'll continue to chart our rough way through the history explored in our work to date, for the moment we're going to focus on a few smaller, more bite-size topics, starting with the 2024 film Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat. A natural partner piece to our beloved Summer of Soul, Johan Grimonprez's documentary tracks in vivid and exhilarating style the Cold War episode that led American musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach to crash the UN Security Council in protest against the murder of Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba. On this show Tim and Jeremy discuss mid-Twentieth Century decolonialism, resistance and the activities of black jazz activists in America. We hear the history of the colonisation of Congo by Belgium, introduce Lumumba as a unique historical figure, and spend some time reflecting on how these imperial legacies resonate today. On the music front, we hear listen to Roach behind the kit, cue up a series of Congolese rhumbas and boleros, and close with seminal civil rights singer Nina Simone. Elsewhere in the episode we stop by Malcom X, Khrushchev, and Joseph Conrad. The horror, the horror…Edited by Matt Huxley.Tracklist:Max Roach - Freedom Day Ata Ndele - Adou Elenga Joseph Kabasele - Independence Cha-Cha O.K. Jazz - Pas Un Pas Sans… Nina Simone - Wild is the WindBooks:Joseph Conrad - Heart of Darkness

Overview: We sit down with Jean Jacques, physician, community organizer to explore how the long and complex history of the Democratic Republic of Congo—including colonialism, resource-driven conflict, and trauma—shapes the healthcare experience of Congolese immigrants and refugees in the U.S. We talk through the diversity of Congolese identities, languages, and traditions, and examine how food, faith, and community form the backbone of cultural resilience, even as new challenges like diabetes, hypertension, and mental health stigma emerge after resettlement. Our conversation highlights practical advice for clinicians—from building trust and acknowledging trauma to asking about family and respecting cultural foodways—while also discussing the vital role of Congolese churches and grassroots organizations in healing and navigating the American healthcare system. Three Takeaways: Deep Historical Context Shapes Present-Day HealthcareJean Jacques gives a nuanced overview of how the Democratic Republic of Congo's colonial and post-colonial history—including conflict over natural resources, genocide spillover, and foreign interference—directly affects how Congolese refugees experience healthcare today. Understanding these origins is crucial for providers because patients may carry deep-seated mistrust toward healthcare systems, especially given past experiences of forced medical campaigns and trauma from displacement. Language Diversity is a Barrier and a BridgeThe episode details that Congo is staggeringly diverse with “450 ethnic groups, over 5,000 dialects, and four national languages” aside from French. Many community members arrive in the US speaking little or no English—English might be their fourth language, as Jean Jacques shares from personal experience. Assumptions about shared language or uniformity can result in missed care opportunities; tailored language access and culturally sensitive interpretation are essential. Traditional Foods and Diet Transitions Present Unique Health RisksMoving to the US shifts dietary habits—fresh, traditional foods are often replaced by processed convenience meals, contributing to increased rates of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease in the Congolese community. Efforts to offer healthy-eating guidance (like suggesting less palm oil or leaner meats) often run up against powerful forces: taste, cost, cultural significance, and lack of culturally competent nutrition counseling. Next Step: Visit our website, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Healthcare for Humans⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and join our community to enjoy exclusive benefits at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.healthcareforhumans.org/support/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Support Our Mission: Non-clinicians, explore exclusive content and contribute to our collective journey. Be an Active Participant: Go beyond listening. Shape our narrative by co-creating episodes with us. Be part of our community by visiting⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.healthcareforhumans.org/support/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow us on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@healthcareforhumanspodcast⁠⁠⁠

Bénédicte Kusendila is afkomstig van Sint-Niklaas, heeft een Congolese vader die diplomaat was, werkt voor Pax Christi, is vrijwilliger in de Brusselse Begijnhofkerk, ook bekend als het House of Compassion van roerganger Daniël Alliët. Ze studeerde aan de universiteit van Leuven en aan die van Kaapstad (Zuid-Afrika). Ze was onderzoeker, directeur van een taleninstituut, leerkracht, geluidstechnicus. In 2017 debuteerde ze met de dichtbundel Sewn In Red, in rood geweven. Ze toerde en trad op en haar in het Engels en het Zuid-Afrikaans geschreven kortverhalen en poëzie werden gepubliceerd in Europa, Zuid-Afrika en de Verenigde Staten. Overal viel haar werk in de prijzen. Bénédicte - Bene voor de vrienden - houdt van haar kinderen, is muzikant en ze houdt van de natuur. Oog in oog met onrecht, geweld en conflict valt er een keuze te maken, vindt ze, wat haar betreft een moeilijke en niet de meest comfortabele keuze, een keuze die moed vraagt. De keuze houdt in dat je geweld niet met geweld beantwoordt, onrecht niet met stilzwijgen en conflict niet met ontwijking. Het is een keuze voor de Zachte Kracht, niet die voor oog om oog, tand om tand, want die laat alleen blinden achter. Het is een keuze die vandaag ondergesneeuwd is geraakt door een oorlogsnarratief, maar nog altijd overeind staat. Het is de levenskeuze van Bénédicte Kusendila. Leo A. De Bock praat met haar over haar leven en keuzes, over poëzie, over de Zuid-Afrikaanse zanger en anti-apartheidsactivist Johannes Kerkorrel, over oorlog en vrede, over pacifisme versus het oorlogsopbod van vandaag, over de waarheid als enige waardige uitkomst en toekomst.

Good afternoon, I'm _____ with today's episode of EZ News. Tai-Ex opening The Tai-Ex opened up 240-points this morning from yesterday's close, at 26,121 on turnover of 9.8-billion N-T. The market closed at another record high on Monday, rising more than 300 points, as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing hit a record high on the back of ample (充足) liquidity. Land warnings for Super Typhoon Ragasa lifted The Central Weather Administration has lifted its land warning for Super Typhoon Ragasa. The weather administration is expected to lift its sea warning this evening at the earliest. Ragasa is continuing to move in a westerly direction into the South China Sea. However, rain advisories remain in effect for much of the island. Extremely torrential rain warnings have been issued for mountainous areas of Hualien and Taitung. Torrential rain alerts are in effect for lowlying areas of Hualien and Taitung as well as for mountainous areas (多山，山區) of Kaohsiung and Pingtung. While extremely heavy rain alerts are in effect for all of Yilan, lowlying areas of Pingtung as well as for mountainous areas of New Taipei, Taoyuan, Taichung and Nantou. All of those rain advisories are currently expected to be be effect through tonight. Taipei-Shanghai City Forum postponed The Taipei City Government has announced that this week's Taipei-Shanghai City Forum will not take place as scheduled due to "unresolved details." According to the city government, both sides have agreed that the annual forum should be well-prepared rather than rushed. City Hall is still working on two memoranda of understanding with the central government and its Shanghai counterpart. Deputy Mayor Lin Yi-hua says the city government sent those M-O-Us to the central government about a month ago to comply (遵守) with regulations. One is still awaiting approval from several agencies, while details of the other are still under negotiation. DRC M23 Rebels Clash with Congolese Army Fighting between the Congolese army and the M23 rebels erupted in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo over the weekend leaving a trail of death and destruction. Chris Ocamringa has more from Kinshasa… Egypt ProDemocracy Activist Freed by Presidential Pardon Pro-democracy activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah was released from prison after being granted a presidential pardon. He and five other prisoners had been pardoned Monday after the National Council for Human Rights acted on behalf of their families and urged President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to consider (考慮) the prisoners' situation on humanitarian grounds. His campaign said el-Fattah was released after being imprisoned almost all of the past 12 years and was now in his home in Cairo. He was arrested 2014 for participating in an unauthorized protest and allegedly assaulting a police officer. el-Fattah was one of the most prominent Egyptian activists in the 2011 Arab Spring uprising. That was the I.C.R.T. EZ News, I'm _____. -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts, OR— BRAND NEW: we've included a fully edited transcript of our interview at the bottom of this post.In this episode of The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, I have a conversation with Desireé B. Stephens about her 10 conscious steps to talking to kids about global crisis. **If you'd like an ad-free version of the podcast, consider becoming a supporter on Substack! If you already ARE a supporter, the ad-free version is waiting for you in the Substack app or you can enter the private feed URL in the podcast player of your choice. You can find the private feed URL for the ad-free version in your Substack account settings under “manage subscription”.Know someone who might appreciate this post? Share it with them!We talk about:* 7:30 What inspired Desiree to write about talking to kids about global crisis* 9:50 1- Start with consent not control* 12:30 How to rest, reset, resist* 15:00 2- Ask, don't assume* 16:34 3- Name the reality, not the details* 20:24 4- Honour their hidden hives* 24:00 5- Let them see your grief with boundaries* 28:00 6- Link emotions to actionable compassion* 31:00 7- Revisit, don't one and done* 35:00 8- Build their critical consciousness* 39:00 9- Co-creating boundaries for when it's too much* 42:00 10- Root it all in relationship, not rhetoricResources mentioned in this episode:* Screen Free Audio Book Player https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/yoto* The Peaceful Parenting Membership https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/membership* Concious Parenting for Social Justice Collective https://parentingdecolonized.com/join-the-collective/* IG post: Conscious Steps to Talking with Kids about Global Crisis with Desiree B Stephens * https://desireebstephens.bio/digitalproductsConnect with Sarah Rosensweet:* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahrosensweet/* Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/peacefulparentingfreegroup* YouTube: Peaceful Parenting with Sarah Rosensweet @peacefulparentingwithsarah4194* Website: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com * Join us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/peacefulparenting* Newsletter: https://reimaginepeacefulparenting.com/newsletter* Book a short consult or coaching session call: https://book-with-sarah-rosensweet.as.me/schedule.phpxx Sarah and CoreyYour peaceful parenting team- click here for a free short consult or a coaching sessionVisit our website for free resources, podcast, coaching, membership and more!>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, "Weekend Reflections" and "Weekend Support" - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in November for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything' session.Our sponsors:YOTO is a screen free audio book player that lets your kids listen to audiobooks, music, podcasts and more without screens, and without being connected to the internet. No one listening or watching and they can't go where you don't want them to go and they aren't watching screens. BUT they are being entertained or kept company with audio that you can buy from YOTO or create yourself on one of their blank cards. Check them out HEREInterview Transcript: Talking with Kids about Global Crisis with Desireé B. Stephens: Episode 205Sarah: Today's guest is Desiree B. Stephens, and we are going to be talking about 10 Conscious Steps to Talking with Kids About Global Crisis. With everything that's going on in the world right now, it's so important to know how to effectively talk to our kids about what's happening and to help them become social change-makers, rather than wanting to turn away from everything scary.I loved this conversation with Desiree. I was inspired by her and the work that she does, and I thought it would be a great overlap to have her come on and talk to us about this topic.On her Instagram, she asks the question: Ever wonder how decolonization and whole self-healing can transform our world? She and I would both agree that adding conscious parenting—or peaceful parenting—to that is really important. It's one way we are changing the world. Slowly, yes, but still changing the world.Hey Desiree, welcome to the podcast.Desiree: Hello. How are you, Sarah?Sarah: Good. I'm so glad! We've crossed paths a couple of times, but we've never really sat down to talk. I'm so glad to have this opportunity.Desiree: I am as well.Sarah: So, tell us about who you are and what you do.Desiree: Okay. Well, my name is Desiree B. Stephens, and I used to open up on TikTok and say, I pathologize whiteness as a system. What I do is believe in dismantling systems through somatic and trauma-informed practices and education. We work on removing shame spirals and touching on the root of the oppression that intersects us all.Sarah: Awesome. I found you—well, I knew you from Yolanda Williams—but I also came across an article you wrote on Substack that someone forwarded to me. That's what we're going to be talking about today.But I was also looking at your Substack, and you write about everything from parenting to history, decolonization, and politics. You cover a lot of really interesting topics. I encourage everyone to check it out—we'll link it in the show notes.The article that really piqued my interest was titled 10 Conscious Steps to Talking with Kids About Global Crisis. This is something I get asked about a lot, and honestly, I've never felt like I had great answers. Now you do! So I'm excited to hear about your steps. I think conscious parents are really struggling with this right now. I know I am, both personally and as a professional.My kids are older, so they have a little more understanding—not that it makes it easier, but at least they can use logic a little bit more. Whereas little kids are like, but why?You opened your article with the line: The world is burning and our children are absorbing the smoke. How do we talk to them about war, injustice, genocide, climate collapse, and economic fear? Just a few light dinner table topics, right?So what inspired you to write this? And then let's get into your ten steps.Desiree: What inspired me was simply that I am a conscious parent. I think we've all traversed different parenting styles over the years. I've been parenting since I was 17 years old. My youngest just started first grade, and over the years I've always had conversations with my children about what's happening in the world.I think where parents struggle is that it's innate to want to protect our children. Protection often looks like insulation. But in this current climate—having parented through the ‘90s and now parenting kids who have access to the entire world—it doesn't matter if we talk about it or not. They're going to find out. They can get on TikTok, and parental controls don't stop that.So I asked myself: how can I do this in a trauma-informed way? How can I honor their bodies? Because, like you said, we can't logic our way through colonization, genocide, starving people, or climate collapse. None of it makes sense.What we can do is trust what our kids are feeling, what they're going through, and what they're hearing from friends. So I began sitting down with them and asking: What did you hear about today? How did that make you feel? Where did that show up in your body?Our bodies tell us something. If they say, “My tummy hurt,” that's anxiety. For example, if a child hears about a school shooting, then suddenly doesn't want to eat and complains of a stomach ache, they're not sick—they're anxious. I can't tell them, You're safe, there's a security guard at school. That doesn't erase their fear.So the question is: how do we process those feelings and help them engage in social justice within a framework that makes sense to them—usually, the home?Sarah: That's such a good point—that none of it makes sense, and that the fear is real. I love that one of your steps is asking them what they already know. But before that, you have a step that I think is so important: start with consent, not control. Can you talk about that?Desiree: I believe in consent in all things. We often talk about consent in the context of sex—like, don't touch me here, that's my no-no square. But consent is much broader. A touch on the shoulder could be the lead-in to inappropriate behavior. Most children who are harmed are hurt by someone they know, who has built trust.So for me, consent extends to all things—including conversations. That ties into the second step, which is: What have you heard? But it begins with consent: Would you like to talk about this today? How are you feeling? Do you have questions?It lets them lead and make a choice. Because sometimes, even I don't want to talk about it. Sometimes I just want to eat dinner or relax, not think about the world burning. And if I feel that way, surely they do too.Sarah: You know what I love about that? I think of my oldest child, who's 24 now. From day one, he carried this existential angst. He cares so deeply about everything we're talking about, but he's always had a hard time putting it down.As he was growing up, I kept saying, It's amazing that you care so deeply and you go to protests, but you don't have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. That's such an important lesson—and it's embedded in your idea of starting with consent.Desiree: Exactly. Right now, I'm in what I call a season of rest, reset, resist. On my Substack, I've been writing lessons on these themes: two on resting, two on resetting, and two on resisting.There's no way this work can be sustainable if we live in constant crisis. If we only focus on the terror, we lose the joy. But joy and rest are also acts of resistance. They are resilience.For example, in my work on decolonization, I remind people that these systems have existed for thousands of years. And yet—we're still here. That should bring joy. It's proof of resilience.White-bodied people who are new to anti-racism work or activism often burn out quickly. They go to every march, every meeting, until they're exhausted. And I ask: When are you just going to take a walk? When are you going to gather with friends and celebrate?This doesn't have to feel like an emergency all the time. That sense of urgency is one of the pillars of supremacy culture. Not everything is urgent. We're still here.Sarah: Yeah.Desiree: And that's why it's so important to balance. Otherwise, kids end up feeling crushed under the weight of global crisis, on top of their own developmental changes. Sometimes the best response is: Okay, baby, breathe.Sarah: Yes. And so, by starting with consent, you give them the choice to say, Tonight I'm just going to play video games, even if there was a school lockdown earlier that day.Desiree: Exactly. That's fine. Because later is coming. These conversations are not going away.Activism has to be sustainable. You have to know your capacity. Not everyone can march. Some people write emails. Some people color with their kids and talk about it during that time. That's valid too.Sarah: I love that.Desiree: Coloring with your kids, reading children around the world books, talking about culture—these are beautiful, simple ways to weave in social justice. It doesn't have to be violent or traumatizing.Sarah: Yes—because if you traumatize people, they shut down. And then nothing gets done.So, your second step is ask, don't assume. Ask them what they've heard, what they know, and how they feel. And your third step is name the reality, not the details. Tell us about that.Desiree: This changes with age. I have children from adulthood down to six years old. So, for example, when my kids ask about expensive sneakers, I explain: They cost $3 to make, using child labor. That's why I won't pay $300 for them.That's naming the reality—without overwhelming them with traumatic details. Similarly, with Gaza, I don't need to show my kids graphic images of starving babies. That's traumatizing. The reality is enough: This is happening. People are suffering.Children don't need trauma dumps. We can speak clearly without overwhelming them. For a younger child, it could be as simple as: Some leaders are hurting people, and some people are standing up to stop it.Sarah: Right. And you use examples at home too, like play-fighting among siblings. One child steps in and says, That's too rough. That's social justice on a small scale.Desiree: Exactly. Small examples at home translate to global understanding. We can show kids that standing up for others matters. And then we help them find their own capacity—whether it's writing letters, talking about it, or making a video.Sarah: Yes. And if you just pour out trauma, kids will shut down.Desiree: Exactly.Sarah: So step four is honor their hidden hives. What does that mean?Desiree: Kids have their own communities, their own secret lives. Online especially, they connect globally—with Palestinian friends, Jewish friends, Congolese friends, kids in red states, kids with MAGA parents. Their reach is global in a way ours never was.So, honoring their hidden hives means respecting that their conversations matter. Ask: What are you and your friends talking about? What do they think? Don't dismiss them as “just kids.” They often understand more than we do.Sarah: Yes! I remember being dismissed by adults as a child, and how frustrating that felt. I had real thoughts and opinions. That's a kind of adult-centrism, and I know that's a theme in your work.Desiree: Exactly. Center kids in their own lives. What matters to them matters—just like what matters to us in our friendships.Sarah: Okay, now step five: Let them see your grief, with boundaries. This is a hard one for me. I cry easily when talking about these topics, but I don't want to traumatize my kids.Desiree: But why do we think crying is traumatizing?Sarah: I guess I worry that if they see me overwhelmed, they'll feel overwhelmed too.Desiree: The opposite can also happen. If you never let them see you grieve, they may feel they have to hold it in as well.Our parents and grandparents grew up in eras of war, enslavement, displacement. They learned to “button it up” and carry on. They raised us to believe there's “no crying in baseball.”But my parenting journey has been about humanizing myself. I don't want my kids to only realize I'm human after I die. If they see me cry about a world in crisis, that teaches them it's okay to feel deeply too.Now, the boundary is important—we don't completely fall apart in front of them. They still need to feel safe. If a parent collapses emotionally, kids may feel like they have to take care of the parent. That's the line we don't want to cross.Sarah: Yes—that's exactly what I was worried about.Desiree: Right. So we want to find that balance of communal care. We take care of each other here, right? Let's set aside a moment for grief. How are you feeling? What are you grieving today?What made you feel sad? What made you feel displaced? What made you feel unheard, unseen, unloved? Let's get into that. Let's feel that for a moment. And then — what could feel different? What could we all do better as a community?This made me feel bad when you said that. I share with my kids: “When you don't do X, Y, and Z, it makes me feel like you don't care about what I think. And that hurts me.” Right? I don't want to be a parent who just seems angry. I want to be clear that I'm hurt. That hurt my feelings.And I love you so much, I care about you so much, that your feelings matter to me — but I also want to matter to you. And that, for me, is communal care.Sarah: You mentioned a couple of sentences back about “what can we do,” which links nicely into your next step: link emotions to actionable compassion.There's that Mr. Rogers quote about whenever anything bad is happening, look for the helpers. And research shows that when you have big emotions without feeling like you can do anything, that's when kids (and adults) turn cynical.So maybe you could give us a couple of examples. You already mentioned going to marches and emailing. But what are some other things you've done with your kids, or that you've seen other people do with their kids, that connect emotions to actionable compassion?Desiree: Well, again, it all ties together. What's your capacity? What are you able to do that's long-term and sustainable?When the George Floyd protests were happening, my eldest was outside. She said, “Absolutely not. I'm not going to march, I'm not going to take risks.” I said, “Okay, but how do you feel? Do you feel like you're making a difference?”She started going out with water and sandwiches. That turned into a nonprofit — Feed the Revolution. Donations poured in. We even had to get a storage unit for all the water and dry goods. That's linking compassion and passion with actionable steps. It was something she could do safely.And that's how you bring in community care. Other people couldn't march, but they could bring food, bring water, or look for the helper.With kids, it might look different. If they have a Discord group, maybe they can have a conversation once a week: What are your thoughts on this? How do you feel? That's activism too. Sharing, course correcting, letting people know, “Hey, that was harmful. Can we do better?”So: What are you feeling? What do you have the capacity for? What's sustainable? And what can we do?Sarah: And you mentioned even some quiet things, like coloring with your kids, learning about kids around the world, lighting a candle at home, making art for peace, or helping someone locally. Even helping actions that aren't tied to a “cause,” but are just about kindness.Desiree: But that is the issue, right? Because then you start raising helpers.The other day, we had some leftover curry. My son Kira said, “I don't want any more… but can we box it up and give it to somebody?” I said, “I love that. Great. Let's microwave some rice, put it in a container, and go outside to share it.”So now he's learning about not wasting food, about climate collapse, about taking care of community. And people often think it has to be big. “Oh, you need to feed 50 people.” But you fed one. That matters.Sarah: Even if it's just your next-door neighbor who doesn't cook much — bring them some food.Desiree: Or the burned-out parent who's doing all the caretaking. How nice would it be to say, “Hey, I got dinner for you. I know you've already fed your kids. Let someone take care of you.”That shows your children you can make a difference without it having to be huge. The fatigue comes from feeling like we need to combat everything at once. That's overwhelming, and overwhelming leads to burnout.Sarah: Right.Desiree: Liberation isn't one-and-done. It isn't a single conversation. It's a practice, a relationship, a rhythm. You're modeling that the truth takes time, and we don't have to rush.Sarah: I love that. It's like conversations about sex, right? You don't have one talk and then you're done. You keep talking as kids grow and change.Desiree: Exactly. When I talk about liberation work and decolonization, it's about creating a culture shift. None of us like to feel lectured to. Making it conversational changes everything. It becomes about solution-finding: there's a problem, what's the solution, what are the steps?That teaches kids that even if a problem can't be completely eradicated, we can do something. Harm reduction matters. How can we create less harm and do more good?Sarah: And it leaves space for thought and choice. For example, my daughter's iPhone screen broke. She wondered if she should just buy a new phone. I told her, “I'm not going to judge you, but my value is: fix what's still good.” It might not be the most practical or cheapest option, but it feels better ethically.So we talked. And then she made her own decision.Desiree: Yes, exactly. It's harm reduction again. And you gave her the choice — you didn't say, “Absolutely not.”Sarah: Right.Desiree: That's powerful.Sarah: Okay, so your next step is build their critical consciousness. This means inviting them to go deeper — asking questions like, “Who benefits from this system? What would fairness look like? What do you wish adults would do differently?”Desiree: Yes. The safest place to practice that questioning is at home. But that's hard in a hierarchical society.Sarah: Right, you're like, “Question other people, not me!” (laughs)Desiree: Exactly. But raising reflective rebels — kids who can think critically, even with us — is essential.We even did this around bedtime. My kids didn't want a set bedtime. I explained why rest matters. Then we co-created a boundary: “Okay, stay up as late as you want, but you have to get up happily, on time, and not be dysregulated at school.”It lasted less than two weeks! They realized for themselves that lack of sleep doesn't work. That's better than me saying “Because I said so.” They learned through experience.Sarah: That's such a good example of co-creating boundaries. What does that look like in the context of activism and social justice?Desiree: It's about recognizing reality. Not everyone is open to these conversations, especially because they're kids, and also because they're Black and neurodiverse. They need to know when to call me in, and when to stand firm with a respectful “no.”For example, my kids don't do homework. I don't want them indoctrinated into an 80-hour work week. They come home to rest, play, and have a balanced life. That's our boundary.Sarah: Yes, that's so good.Desiree: And finally, root it all in relationship, not rhetoric. If I don't trust you, I won't have conversations with you. Punitive parenting “works,” but only out of fear. The opposite of fear is radical love.Our kids need us to see them as human beings and build real relationships with them. That includes repair when we mess up. Restoration is key.Sarah: Yes.Desiree: Parenting is inherently hierarchical, and that creates a power imbalance. It can be abusive if we're not conscious of that. So our goal is to shift from power over to power with. That's how we raise kids who believe in communal power — and who grow up ready to change the world.Sarah: I love that. That's a hopeful place to stop. Thank you so much.Desiree: Thank you.Sarah: One last question I ask all my guests: if you could go back to your younger parent self, what advice would you give?Desiree: Parent the child in front of you. That's the best advice I ever got. Don't parent from your own trauma.Sarah: Beautiful. And where can people find you?Desiree: My Substack is desireebstephens.com— that's Stephens with a PH. I also co-host Parenting Decolonized with Yolanda, and we run a parenting support group. I'll share those links.Sarah: Perfect. We'll put all of that in the show notes. Thank you again.Desiree: Thank you.Sarah: We're all out here trying to change the world. Slowly, but sustainably.Desiree: Absolutely.>> Please support us!!! Please consider becoming a supporter to help support our free content, including The Peaceful Parenting Podcast, our free parenting support Facebook group, and our weekly parenting emails, "Weekend Reflections" and "Weekend Support" - plus our Flourish With Your Complex Child Summit (coming back in November for the 3rd year!) All of this free support for you takes a lot of time and energy from me and my team. If it has been helpful or meaningful for you, your support would help us to continue to provide support for free, for you and for others.In addition to knowing you are supporting our mission to support parents and children, you get the podcast ad free and access to a monthly ‘ask me anything' session. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sarahrosensweet.substack.com/subscribe

Zambia's former Foreign Minister Joseph Malanji has been sentenced to four years in prison with hard labour after being convicted, along with a co-accused of corruption. President Hakainde Hichilema promised to root out corruption when he swept to power four years ago, is he now delivering on that pledge?In Egypt, dozens of teenage TikTok influencers have been arrested in recent weeks on charges such as violating family values, indecency and money laundering. We hear more on why authorities are getting tough with digital content creators.And the Congolese word Liboke is a new entry in a French dictionary, but why has the given definition sparked a debate in the DRC?Presenter: Charles Gitonga Producers: Mark Wilberforce, Sunita Nahar and Yvette Twagiramariya in London. Ayuba Iliya was in Lagos Senior Producer: Patricia Whitehorne Technical Producer: Craig Kingham Editors: Maryam Abdalla, Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi

Zambia's former Foreign Minister Joseph Malanji has been sentenced to four years in prison with hard labour after being convicted, along with a co-accused of corruption. President Hakainde Hichilema promised to root out corruption when he swept to power four years ago, is he now delivering on that pledge?In Egypt, dozens of teenage TikTok influencers have been arrested in recent weeks on charges such as violating family values, indecency and money laundering. We hear more on why authorities are getting tough with digital content creators.And the Congolese word Liboke is a new entry in a French dictionary, but why has the given definition upset people in the DRC?Presenter: Charles Gitonga Producers: Mark Wilberforce, Sunita Nahar and Yvette Twagiramariya in London. Ayuba Iliya was in Lagos Senior Producer: Patricia Whitehorne Technical Producer: Craig Kingham Editors: Maryam Abdalla, Andre Lombard and Alice Muthengi

Top headlines for Tuesday, August 26, 2025A landmark judicial decision in Minnesota that deemed the exclusion of faith-based colleges from a dual enrollment program unconstitutional. Next, we'll discuss the case of a Congolese pastor in Maine who faces detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for reportedly overstaying his visa, highlighting the intersection of immigration, faith, and community. Plus, we travel to Abu Dhabi, where an extraordinary archaeological find on Sir Bani Yas Island is reshaping historians' perspectives on the spread of early Christianity.00:11 Christian colleges can't be barred from Minnesota credit program01:03 Chinese national in US illegally charged for prostitution ring01:54 Congolese pastor who founded a Maine church detained by ICE02:45 Attorneys urge DOJ to 'bring action' in case of Christian boys03:41 ISIS remains a 'complex' threat as it adapts, UN expert warn04:36 Archaeologists make ancient Christian discovery in Abu Dhabi05:34 Comedian John Crist announces engagement to news anchorSubscribe to this PodcastApple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsOvercastFollow Us on Social Media@ChristianPost on TwitterChristian Post on Facebook@ChristianPostIntl on InstagramSubscribe on YouTubeGet the Edifi AppDownload for iPhoneDownload for AndroidSubscribe to Our NewsletterSubscribe to the Freedom Post, delivered every Monday and ThursdayClick here to get the top headlines delivered to your inbox every morning!Links to the NewsChristian colleges can't be barred from Minnesota credit program | EducationChinese national in US illegally charged for prostitution ring | U.S.Congolese pastor who founded a Maine church detained by ICE | Church & MinistriesAttorneys urge DOJ to 'bring action' in case of Christian boys | EducationISIS remains a 'complex' threat as it adapts, UN expert warn | WorldArchaeologists make ancient Christian discovery in Abu Dhabi | WorldComedian John Crist announces engagement to news anchor | Entertainment

This Day in Maine Wednesday, August 20, 2025

President Trump wil vrede stichten tussen De Democratische Republiek Congo en Rwanda. Maar Afrika-correspondent Koert Lindijer doet meer dan 40 jaar verslag over die regio, en volgt het bloedige conflict al vanaf het begin. Hij ziet dat de vredesdeal vooral een zakendeal is ten koste van de Congolese bevolking.Gast: Koert LindijerPresentatie: Suzan YücelRedactie: Esmee DirksMontage: Jeroen JaspersEindredactie: Nina van HattumCoördinatie: Belle BraakhekkeProductie: Andrea HuntjensFoto: REUTERS/Zohra BensemraHeb je vragen, suggesties of ideeën over onze journalistiek? Mail dan naar onze redactie via podcast@nrc.nl.Zie het privacybeleid op https://art19.com/privacy en de privacyverklaring van Californië op https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From zoot suiters and mods, to mashers and Congolese sapeurs, since the early 19th century, fashionable male subcultures have popped up across the globe. Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Peter Andersson examines how the idea of the 'dandy' has evolved over time, and argues that the idea of dressing well was not limited to the elites. (Ad) Peter Andersson is the author of The Dandy: A People's History of Sartorial Splendour (Oxford University Press, 2025). Buy it now from Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dandy-Peoples-History-Sartorial-Splendour/dp/0198882432/?tag=bbchistory045-21&ascsubtag=historyextra-social-histboty. The HistoryExtra podcast is produced by the team behind BBC History Magazine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From the BBC World Service: The pharmaceutical industry is still waiting to see what duties they'll be hit with, but pharma giant Sandoz, based in Switzerland, says the duties won't get them to move manufacturing to the U.S. Then, President Donald Trump called for the boss of U.S. chipmaker Intel to resign. And, the Congolese government is in the spotlight for spending massive amounts of money to sponsor some of the world's biggest soccer teams.

From the BBC World Service: The pharmaceutical industry is still waiting to see what duties they'll be hit with, but pharma giant Sandoz, based in Switzerland, says the duties won't get them to move manufacturing to the U.S. Then, President Donald Trump called for the boss of U.S. chipmaker Intel to resign. And, the Congolese government is in the spotlight for spending massive amounts of money to sponsor some of the world's biggest soccer teams.

Over the past week, sharply contrasting images of Chinese engagement in Africa surfaced online. Anger erupted on social media over the release of yet another violent video that shows Congolese soldiers brutally beating local miners purportedly at the behest of Chinese nationals watching in the background. A controversial hour-long documentary by one of Zambia's leading newspapers also sparked a lot of discussion over the labor and environmental records of Chinese mining companies in the country. The Chinese embassy in Lusaka denounced the program as "biased" and containing "hidden motives." Meanwhile, in China, a 15-second teaser of a new blockbuster movie also dropped this week that looks like it's set in a fictitious North African country, while popular Chinese travel vlogger Zhang Jun released a visually stunning 2.5-hour-long documentary on the Congolese fashion scene known as "La Sape." Eric, Géraud & Cobus discuss these various clips and shows that emerged this week and what they reveal about the evolution of China-Africa media narratives. SHOW NOTES: Justicia ABSL: Violent beating of Congolese miners by FARDC soldiers News Diggers: China: The Good, the Bad and the Dangerous Movie Trailer: 用武之地/The Point of No Return The Fashion Bible: Congo's “La Sape” Fashion Culture Through the Unlikely Lens of a Chinese Vlogger JOIN THE DISCUSSION: X: @ChinaGSProject | @eric_olander | @stadenesque | @christiangeraud Facebook: www.facebook.com/ChinaAfricaProject YouTube: www.youtube.com/@ChinaGlobalSouth Now on Bluesky! Follow CGSP at @chinagsproject.bsky.social FOLLOW CGSP IN FRENCH AND ARABIC: Français: www.projetafriquechine.com | @AfrikChine Arabic: عربي: www.alsin-alsharqalawsat.com | @SinSharqAwsat JOIN US ON PATREON! Become a CGSP Patreon member and get all sorts of cool stuff, including our Week in Review report, an invitation to join monthly Zoom calls with Eric & Cobus, and even an awesome new CGSP Podcast mug! www.patreon.com/chinaglobalsouth

If you're a Barca fan, you might want to look out for a small change to the players' kits that's coming soon. The Democratic Republic of Congo has struck a four-year sponsorship deal with FC Barcelona, that will see “DR Congo - Heart of Africa" emblazoned on the back of their training shirts from the start of next season. The deal reportedly cost the country around 50 million dollars and includes a training camp in Spain for 50 young Congolese players, according to the Sports Minister. But it's also faced criticism at home and abroad, as the DRC continues to struggle with poverty and political instability.BBC journalist Emery Makumeno joins us from Kinshasa to explain the reasons the country has given for making the deal and the issues its own football league is facing. BBC sports journalist Daniel Austin explains how sports sponsorship works and what it reveals about money, image, and influence in sport. And we hear from football fans in the DRC, who share what they think of the deal.Instagram: @bbcwhatintheworld Email: whatintheworld@bbc.co.uk WhatsApp: +44 330 12 33 22 6 Presenter: Hannah Gelbart Producers: Emily Horler and Chelsea Coates Editor: Verity Wilde

A new MP3 sermon from Frontline Fellowship is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: When We Walk in the Light (English - Congolese Swahili Translation) Speaker: Peter Hammond Broadcaster: Frontline Fellowship Event: Sunday Service Date: 8/3/2025 Length: 75 min.

William Wilberforce is remembered for his two great aims: the abolition of slavery and advancing public morality. Another horrific attack on Christians in the Congo, and the stories surrounding IVF and surrogacy keep getting stranger. Recommendations Amazing Grace (2006) Segment 1 - Wilberforce Day and an Attack in the Congo Breakpoint: The Long, Faithful Obedience of William Wilberforce Associated Press: An attack on a Congolese church killed nearly 40 worshippers. Here's what to know The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer Segment 2 - IVF & Surrogacy The Free Press: One Embryo. Three Parents. The Future Is Already Here. The Daily Citizen: Baby Should Be Immediately Removed from Convicted Child Predator The Free Press: What I Went Through to Meet My Daughter Ethics and Public Policy Center: First-of-its-Kind Resource Recommends a New Response to the Nation's Infertility Crisis Ethics and Public Policy Center: Introduction to Restorative Reproductive Medicine Breakpoint: IVF and Infertility: Good Ends Do Not Justify All Means Segment 3 - Is Snark Biblical? 2025 Great Lakes Symposium: Truth, Love, and Humor: Faith Without Fear with Seth Dillon & Jim Daly The Babylon Bee Truth Rising The Babylon Bee: The Babylon Bee's Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine The Babylon Bee: Police Calm Millennial Protesters By Handing Out Participation Trophies Segment 4 - Questions and Recommendations The World and Everything in It: Tracing the truth __________ Stay up to date on Truth Rising, premiering September 5, at truthrising.com/colson. Get access to the Why Life? video series at colsoncenter.org/whylife.

Josie tells Taylor about the 1966 near-founding of the micronation of Abalonia on a sunken island 100 miles off the California coast, and how the would-be country's future was washed away with the tides. Plus: enter the mystical and dangerous world of catch fétiche, a.k.a. Congolese voodoo wrestling.

THIS WEEK's BIRDS: new music from guitarist Lingyuan Yang;  samba from Neguinho da Beija-Flor; Bossa from Da Silva Do Sul Et Son Ensemble; Bridgette Fontaine; Paul Dunmall Brass Project; new music from percussionist  Dan Weiss; classical vocalist Hamid Al-Saadi from Iraq; Senegalse salsero Laba Sosseh w. Super Star de Dakar; American salsa from Hector Lavoe; Sonora Ponceñal; Roberto Roena w. Adalberto Santiago; vintage Congolese rumba from Orchestre Kara De Kinsahasa; vocalist Thandi Nuti w. Carlos Nino; Mark Masters reprises Sam Rivers; Sam Rivers does Sam Rivers; vocal raga from  Parveen Sultana; ghazal from Iqbal Bano;  Tunisian pop-jazz from Fatima Charli; Gulf pop from Mobarak Almaatooq; Groupe El Hemri from Morocco; and, as ever, lots of mumbling and so much, much more. Catch the BIRDS live on Friday nights, 9:00pm-MIDNIGHT (EST), in Central New York on WRFI, 88.1 FM Ithaca/ 88.5 FM Odessa;. and WORLDWIDE online via our MUSIC PLAYER at WRFI.ORG. 24/7 via PODBEAN: https://conferenceofthebirds.podbean.com via iTUNES: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conference-of-the-birds-podcast/id478688580 Also available at podomatic, Internet Archive, podtail, iheart Radio, and elsewhere. Always FREE of charge to listen to the radio program and free also to stream, download, and subscribe to the podcast online: PLAYLIST at SPINITRON: https://spinitron.com/WRFI/pl/20891034/Conference-of-the-Birds and via the Conference of the Birds page at www.WRFI.ORG https://www.wrfi.org/wrfiprograms/conferenceofthebirds/  Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/conferenceofthebirds/?ref=bookmarks Find WRFI on Radio Garden: http://radio.garden/visit/ithaca-ny/aqh8OGBR

Skip the Mona Lisa when you visit Paris. Don't tour the Coliseum in Rome. Walk, don't hurry. Chris Arnade speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about a different way to travel. Listen as Arnade shares what he learned from Istanbul's small community mosques and how Avignon's Congolese-neighborhood cathedrals provided moving moments of spirituality. He also explains why Japan and Vietnam's emphasis on community lends itself to more happiness than America's "me-focused" approach, and what gear he carries--and leaves behind--for his extremely long walks through the world. Finally, he offers suggestions for choosing places to eat on the road that can elevate meals into meaningful experiences. This is a thoughtful conversational journey about veering off the beaten path to find home in surprising places.

This week, Skylar sits down with Samuel Uwimana, a Congolese refugee who resettled in Amarillo in 2018. Drawing from his own story and those of fellow African refugees, Samuel founded United Refugee Services to support and uplift the community. Together, they talk about the challenges and triumphs of resettlement, the realities versus perceptions of “coming to America,” and so much more.

In this powerful episode of the 4biddenknowledge Podcast, hosted by Billy Carson, activist Chakabars dives deep into the ongoing crisis in the Congo. With passion and clarity, he sheds light on the struggles faced by the Congolese people, the exploitation of natural resources, and what we can do to help.This conversation is more than just informative—it's a call to action. If you care about global justice, human rights, and the future of Africa, this is a must-watch.

Have you ever wondered how to turn a lifelong passion for food into a celebrated career? In this episode, I sit down with the wonderfully creative food photographer, stylist, and cookbook author, Murielle Banackissa. Murielle shares the story of her creative journey, from her childhood memories in the Republic of Congo to her family's move to Montreal.   Join us as we explore how Murielle masterfully blends her Congolese and Russian-Ukrainian heritage into mouth-watering vegan recipes that might just have you rethinking everything you thought you knew about vegan food. We'll dig into how she organically merged her love for cooking and photography, turning a social media trend into a thriving business and eventually, a beautiful cookbook. This conversation is a heartfelt exploration of identity, the courage to follow your own path, and the magic that happens when you slow down and savor the process.   Chapters   00:00 - From Pointe Noire to Montreal: A Creative Childhood 02:49 - Early Food Memories and Creative Pursuits 06:02 - Merging Passion for Food and Photography 09:38 - The Comfort Foods of Home: A Taste of Heritage 11:30 - The Art and Science of Recipe Development 13:59 - A Cookbook Dream Come True 16:34 - Conceptualizing "Savoring": Memories on a Plate 19:19 - The Four-Year Journey to "Savoring" 21:15 - Finding Joy in Slowing Down the Cooking Process 25:06 - Cultivating an Authentic and Unfussy Style 27:24 - Trusting the Process: Advice to Her Younger Self Connect With Murielle: Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/muriellebanackissa/?hl=en Murielle's Website: https://muriellebanackissa.com/ Buy Murielle's Cookbook: https://muriellebanackissa.com/savoring/   Support the Show Website: www.martineseverin.com Follow on Instagram: @martine.severin | @thisishowwecreate_ Subscribe to the Newsletter: www.martineseverin.substack.com This is How We Create is produced by Martine Severin. This episode was edited by Santiago Cardona and Daniel Espinosa.   Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts Leave a review Follow us on social media Share with fellow creatives  

In today’s deep dive, we'll bring you a conversation about how East Central Illinois' Congolese community is reacting to President Trump's travel ban.

The most brutal conflict of the modern era is grinding onwards in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In this episode, we'll hear from Justin Zihindula and Esther Muziranenge, two Congolese from different families who were displaced and resettled in Canada many years apart. Undercurrents is generously supported by ⁠Kindred Credit Union.⁠Transcription is here.Download the discussion guide for this episode here.Read about MCC's new $4.7M relief project with Global Affairs Canadahttps://mcc.org/our-stories/mcc-canada-awarded-47-million-grant-humanitarian-assistance-democratic-republic-congoDonate to MCC's response in DR Congo:https://mcc.org/what-we-do/initiatives/disaster-response/dr-congoCollaborative global Anabaptist response to crisis in DR Congo:https://mcc.org/our-stories/collaborative-anabaptist-response-dr-congo-crisisA concise history of the 30-year conflict in DR Congo:https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/violence-democratic-republic-congoCREDITS:Editing support by Christen KongTheme song by Brian MacMillanArtwork by Jesse Bergen

ORIGINALLY RELEASED Feb 15, 2024 Passy and Maurice from Friends of the Congo join Breht to discuss the history and the present of the Congo. Together, they discuss their organization, Passy's on-the-ground organizing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the history of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba and his legacy, European and Belgian colonialism, King Leopold II, the brutal ongoing violence and displacement occuring in the Eastern DRC, US imperialism and the Kagame Regime in Rwanda, M23, Neo-Colonialism, Colbalt and rare-earth mineral mining, modern day slavery and the industries it serves, the so-called "green capitalist transition" and its rotting underbelly, and much more. Friends of the Congo (FOTC) is a Pan African solidarity organization raising global consciousness about the challenges and potential of the Congo. Become A Friend of the Congo: http://www.congoweek.org http://friendsofthecongo.org/https://twitter.com/congofriends https://www.facebook.com/congofriends   ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio HERE Outro Beat Prod. by flip da hood

May Day is no more, but the world, sadly, does not revolve around the left. This week: a new report on 2024 global military spending shockingly shows it has increased (2:05); the UN's World Food Programme is out of food in Gaza (4:05), the IDF herds people into Rafah (5:55), and the PLO creates a vice presidency in anticipation of a successor to Mahmoud Abbas (8:32); in Syria, violence between security forces and Druze militias kills over 70 people (12:18); the US bombs a migrant center in Yemen (16:14) as Houthi/Ansar Allah forces continue to shoot down drones (17:58); the Iran-US nuclear talks have been postponed (19:35); there are rumblings of imminent armed conflict between India and Pakistan (21:48); Trump claims to have spoken with President Xi Jinping of China as both economies take a hit from the former's tariffs (24:31); a court ruling may upend South Korea's election (28:00); Nigeria sees an increase in jihadist violence (30:00); Congolese and Rwandan foreign ministers set a deadline for a peace deal (32:10); in Russia-Ukraine, Russia's Kursk operation appears to be at its end (34:03), Trump and Zelensky meet at Pope Francis' funeral (35:33), and the US and Ukraine finally sign a mineral deal (37:26); the Trump administration designates gangs in Haiti as terrorist groups (39:54); the Liberal Party wins Canada's election (41:19); Donald Trump relieves Mike Waltz of duty as national security advisor, but appoints him as UN ambassador (44:03); and the US is negotiating with Rwanda so that the latter may take migrants on the former's behalf (48:50).  Grab a copy of Spencer Ackerman's current run of Iron Man! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

May Day is no more, but the world, sadly, does not revolve around the left. On this week's news roundup: a new report on 2024 global military spending shockingly shows it has increased (2:05); the UN's World Food Programme is out of food in Gaza (4:05), the IDF herds people into Rafah (5:55), and the PLO creates a vice presidency in anticipation of a successor to Mahmoud Abbas (8:32); in Syria, violence between security forces and Druze militias kills over 70 people (12:18); the US bombs a migrant center in Yemen (16:14) as Houthi/Ansar Allah forces continue to shoot down drones (17:58); the Iran-US nuclear talks have been postponed (19:35); there are rumblings of imminent armed conflict between India and Pakistan (21:48); Trump claims to have spoken with president of China Xi Jinping as both economies take a hit from the former's tariffs (24:31); a court ruling may upend South Korea's election (28:00); Nigeria sees an increase in jihadist violence (30:00); Congolese and Rwandan foreign ministers set a deadline for a peace deal (32:10); in Russia-Ukraine, Russia's Kursk operation appears to be at its end (34:03), Trump and Zelensky meet at Pope Francis' funeral (35:33), and the US and Ukraine finally sign a mineral deal (37:26); the Trump administration designates gangs in Haiti as terrorist groups (39:54); the Liberal Party wins Canada's election (41:19); Donald Trump relieves Mike Waltz of duty as national security advisor, but appoints him as UN ambassador (44:03); and the US is negotiating with Rwanda so that the latter may traffick migrants on the former's behalf (48:50). Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Donate (no account necessary) | Subscribe (account required) Join Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA Operations Officer, for The Friday Roundup — covering the week's biggest stories, your questions, and commentary on what's shaping America and the world. Supreme Court to Hear Trump's Birthright Citizenship Case – Justices agree to weigh whether U.S. citizenship should be based on “right of blood” instead of “right of soil,” which would end automatic citizenship for babies born to non-citizens. Illegal Immigrants Targeted for Medicare and Social Security Fraud – ICE and DOGE tap into federal health data to identify migrants who are unlawfully collecting benefits. Deportation sweeps may follow. Democrats Double Down on Defending MS-13 Gang Member – Despite revelations of domestic violence and human trafficking, Sen. Chris Van Hollen continues efforts to bring Kilmar Garcia back to the U.S. Trump Administration to Strip Harvard's Nonprofit Status – After refusing to drop DEI and anti-Semitic programming, Harvard faces IRS action that could cost the school billions. Poll: Americans Fear China and Russia Less—Especially Young Adults – Pew Research reveals surprising shifts in perception, possibly influenced by platforms like TikTok. Radical Left Violence Targets Politicians and Businesses – A pro-Palestinian activist attempts to burn down Pennsylvania's governor's mansion. Coordinated attacks on Tesla dealerships continue. Leakers Fired at the Pentagon, Wind Farms Shut Down – Conservative insiders caught leaking info on Musk, Panama, and the Red Sea. Trump also kills offshore wind projects, calling them a threat to whales and wallets. Around the World: China Satellites Help Houthis Target U.S. Navy, Xi Courts Southeast Asia, and Trump Eyes Iran – The White House confirms Beijing's involvement in Houthi missile strikes. Xi pushes regional unity against the U.S., while Trump opts for diplomacy before considering strikes on Iran. Congo Update: Erik Prince Signs Military Deal – The former Blackwater CEO will provide private security for Congolese mining zones, potentially laying groundwork for U.S. access to critical minerals. "And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." - John 8:32​

Sex Toy bill in Texas… Meta limits live streaming on Facebook… Former Meta employee testifies / Sarah Wynn-Williams / New Book “Careless People”... Government Financial Hack…Doctors' office hack… Donated Womb gives birth… How my mind works? National Recording Registry new additions… Email: ChewingTheFat@theblaze.com Who Died Today: Ray Shero 62 / Alice Tan Ridley 72… Death toll rises in DR… Hippos in the DRC update /Congolese rare earth?... www.blazetv.com/jeffy Promo code Jeffy... Weight Watchers going bankrupt?...Boris Johnson pecked by an Ostrich…Joke of The Day… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

War has broken out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rwandan military forces are getting more and more involved. Entire battalions of the Rwandan fighters have crossed into the DRC to fight alongside the Congolese rebels, and together, the rebels and the Rwandan military have quickly taken over key cities in the region. The war is spiraling out of control, with soldiers from Burundi, South Africa, Tanzania, and even Romanian mercenaries getting increasingly involved. But observers have their eye on one international force, particularly a power whose involvement may change the world!--Go to https://TryFum.com/STEVETURLEY or scan the QR code and use code STEVETURLEY to get your free FÜM Base when you order your Journey Pack today!*Click here to attend the Kingdom Builder's Experience Summit! https://turley.pub/BuildersSummit*The content presented by sponsors may contain affiliate links. When you click and shop the links, Turley Talks may receive a small commission.*--Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and/or leave a review.FOLLOW me on X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/DrTurleyTalksSign up for the 'New Conservative Age Rising' Email Alerts to get lots of articles on conservative trends: https://turleytalks.com/subscribe-to-our-newsletter**The use of any copyrighted material in this podcast is done so for educational and informational purposes only including parody, commentary, and criticism. See Hosseinzadeh v. Klein, 276 F.Supp.3d 34 (S.D.N.Y. 2017); Equals Three, LLC v. Jukin Media, Inc., 139 F. Supp. 3d 1094 (C.D. Cal. 2015). It is believed that this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is at war. Again. Sixty-five years of mismanagement began with a CIA assassination plot that condemned millions of Congolese to unending conflict. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Miles Bryan, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Rebel soldiers with a group called M23 who have taken control of the Congolese city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo by MICHEL LUNANGA/AFP via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Palestinians are returning to their homes in northern Gaza, a proposal by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would give local law enforcement officials the power of immigration agents, and rebels backed by Rwanda have captured a key city in the Congo.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Jerome Socolovsky, Larry Kaplow, Russell Lewis, Janaya Williams and Alice Woelfle. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Claire Murashima. We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis. And our technical director is Carleigh Strange.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy