Nigeria is a giant on the African continent, a maturing democracy and a major hub for culture and trade. It also contains about one sixth of Africa’s population, many of whom live in abject poverty. So when the government decided to “save” funds by removing a critical fuel subsidy, it lit a tinderbox of populist outrage.

Uprisings have been rocking the country all week. Tens of thousands of protesters amassed to express anger at a jump in oil prices. Labor activists launched a general strike. Oil workers have also threatened to shut down production, jolting global oil markets.

The holiday season is a time of material pleasures, but it’s also a time to take stock of how our social values tend to be at odds with the objects we most prize.

While countless American shoppers splurge this month–probably to delude ourselves momentarily that we can still afford to indulge—the social cost of one luxury item has exposed a global crisis. The human rights group Global Witness has abandoned the Kimberly Process, the international regulatory framework aimed at restricting trafficking in “conflict diamonds.” The group argues that the process, which it helped create, is broken and ridden with loopholes.

I guess Leon Panetta’s admonition against reducing the US military presence had some foreknowledge. The President, in a letter to Congress, just acknowledged that he deployed approximately 100 combat forces to central Africa to assist in the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) there.

Leon Panetta has said time and time again since the inking of the debt limit deal that defense cuts at the level of what would be triggered by a Super Committee failure would be disastrous. He did so again at a Congressional hearing today. And we finally got a sense of what that “disaster” would specifically look like, according to Ben Armbruster’s account. Turns out it would mean that US military personnel might not be in every country on Earth. Disaster!

Buried in with today’s news was this story about one of our secret wars, this time in Somalia. It appears that now we’re using African proxies to fight Al Shabab there.

2011 marks the 30th year HIV/AIDS has been with us. 2011 marks the 30th year HIV/AIDS has been with us. Tremendous strides have been made in treatment and in stemming the spread of the disease. Currently Africa is the continent most affected by HIV/AIDS.

That two pills which cost about 40 cents a day can bring life back to those dying of HIV/AIDS is truly a miracle. Through The Global Fund, financial efforts by world governments (the US leading the way), and innovative private sector funding, medication, health care, testing and counseling are now available to millions people. Through The Global Fund, millions of people across Africa, and around the world, are now on life-saving antiretroviral treatment.

Gadhafi is both defiant and dug in at the capital of Tripoli, while the rebels are a small, ragtag bunch that even with superior air support cannot really expect to win a conventional war. And that leads us to the next drip in the mission creep here, as the US mulls over arming the rebels.

Barely-celeb former SNL cast member Victoria Jackson wrote a bunch of homophobic remarks about Glee and then tried to Bible-lize her way out them on Showbiz Tonight.

It looks like South Sudan already has the necessary votes in hand to secede from Sudan and become the planet’s 195th country. Some regions are showing 99% of the vote for secession. What will follow after certification is a five-month process that eventually will lead to independence, no sooner than July. This is a great victory for the South Sudanese people (or whatever name they plan to come up with). But among the many outstanding issues includes the status of the troubled Abyei region.

How much does unsafe abortion cost national health systems? This is exactly the question that a group of medical experts and health researchers set out to answer in 2007, using the example of the east African country Ethiopia.

Written by Christi van der Westhuizen for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive justice.</p