Over Five Million Dead in Congo?
by Keith Harmon Snow
(Global Research)The International Rescue Committee in late
January 2008 released a new report on the mortality in the war-torn
Democratic Republic of Congo. The report caught the eye of some news
agencies, who quickly whipped up trite little articles as supposed
expressions of horror. Over and over it has been declared he world
forgotten crises.?There are reasons why Darfur is in the crises of the
day, the poster crises, and why Congo is hardly mentioned.1
However, the story of war and plunder in Congo is
not unreported. It is a story that has been censored, manipulated, and
covered up even while it is ostensibly being told. Plenty of
information has been published about the war in the Democratic Republic
of Congo, and plenty of this is flak, designed to whiteout the truth,
and help keep the real story buried, and that includes the truly honest
representations of war and suffering in Congo that have been published.
Just because the mainstream doesn cover it, doesn mean it didn
happen. This is the falsification of consciousness.
While the true death toll in Congo over the past
series of wars梖or the Congolese it is one long contiguous war梬ill
never be known, it is far higher than the IRC figures. In the IRC
tidy statistical equations there is no recounting the ordeal of the
millions of people who have disappeared into the swamps, the tropical
forests, the mass graves, torture chambers and death camps, or after
crossing borders. The entire exercise in counting the dead is another
way to do little to stop it. The IRC is about profits, but that is not
all.
The International Rescue Committee has been
described in the past as the ideal instrument of psychological warfare,
and it is. This is exactly what is going on with the IRC today, and
more, when the IRCeavily subsidized by the very same profiteers梥ends
its body counters into Congo. But the IRC is not only the ideal
instrument of psychological warfare, it is also the ideal instrument of
intelligence gathering. The IRC capitalizes on their access to refugee
populations, conflict areas and individual refugee encounters and
interviews to gather intelligence on armed groups, leadership,
resources, weapons and geographical conflicts, information that is
selectively used to serve the greater interests of the IRC and its
partners.
America Secret Warriors
Amongst the trustees or overseers of the
International Rescue Committee is Henry Kissinger, a man whose
interests run very deep in Congo. Henry Kissinger is tied to Freeport
McMoRan (FXC) and FCX is all over the copper and cobalt show in
Katanga. FCX director J. Stapleton Roy was Assistant Secretary of State
for Intelligence and Research under Madeleine Albright, 1999-2000,
during the Clinton administration invasions of Rwanda (1994) and then
Congo/Zaire (1996); Roy retired to join Kissinger Associates.2
Another Kissinger Associates principal is Lawrence
Eagleburger, who has past affiliations with the defense and
intelligence insider Scowcroft Group, and has been a director of
Halliburton Corporation since 1998. Scowcroft Group founder Brent
Scowcroft served as the National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald
Ford and George H.W. Bush and, 1982-1989, he was Vice-Chairman of
Kissinger Associates.
Walter Kansteiner, a National Security insider for
the Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations and a rincipal member?of
the Scowcroft Group today, is a director of Moto Gold (operating in
blood-drenched Ituri, Congo) and of the military-based æ·onservation?
organization, the Africa Wildlife Foundation (Washington D.C.), that is
backing mercenary activities in the Congo Virungas Mountains region
under the cover of gorilla protection.
Another Kissinger Associates director is Belgium
Viscount Etienne Davignon, one of the Congo most lasting and current
enemies. Davignon was directly involved, 1964-1965, in the code-named
æ‡ragon?operations that installed the æ†leptocrat?Mobutu and seeded
the beginning of the end for millions of Congolese people.3,4 Davignon is also a close associate of Donald Rumsfeld through the bio-warfare production company Gilead Sciences.
The IRC board includes Samantha Power, the Founder
of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard and Pulitzer-prize
winning author of A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide,
the book that peddles genocide inflation on the one hand (regarding
Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Sudan), and genocide denial on the other
(regarding Congo, Uganda and Rwanda).5
The IRC æŠreedom Award?for æºxtraordinary
contributions to the cause of refugees and human freedom?has been
given to some of the genocide inflators and deniers. In 1987 it went to
John C. Whitehead and in 1992 to Cyrus Vance, two men with historical
ties to covert operations in Congo, for example, through their National
Security Agency and CIA insider status, and two men tied to the Maurice
Templesman empire behind the plunder of Congo/Zaire for decades.
U.S. Congressman Donald Payne is one of those
æ»riends of Africa?who hangs in the Andrew Young and Maurice
Templesman crowd. His role as Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee
on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations in the Bush
administration is one of his more stellar performances, a sad
disappointment and complete betrayal to Africans and African-Americans.
In 1993 the æŠreedom Award?went to Dwayne O.
Andreas, the Archers Daniels Midland executive and top U.S.
congressional campaign funder whose company makes sure there are
starving refugees. ADM is deeply tied to Robert Dole and Andrew Young,
the latter counting ADM as his many top clients at PR firm Goodworks
International. Young is also deeply connected to the client regimes in
Rwanda and Ugandahe chief protagonists in the Congo wars.
In 1995 the IRC æŠreedom Award?went to Richard
Holbrooke; in 1996 to Madeleine Albright; and in 2004 to General Romeo
Dallaire. All three people were pivotal to the U.S. covert operations
and the subsequent massive refugee displacements and mortality in
Central Africa. Holbrooke and Albright are also culpable in crimes
against humanity in former Yugoslavia, Haiti, Sudan and Iraq.
Finally, the æŠreedom?award was shared in 2005 by
William J. Clinton and G.H.W. Bush; Clinton launched the wars in Rwanda
and Congo with the background support of his predecessor; Bush
umanitarianism?includes massive state destabilization, terror
networks, torture, coups dæŠtat and war on sovereign nations.
The International Rescue Committee is not a neutral
or purely umanitarian?organization. The IRC has a deep history of
nefarious activities going far beyond relief operations. The IRC is
also a huge financial operation providing scads of executives and
business people with scads of income in ways that do not help to
alleviate the war or suffering, but rather exacerbate it. While the IRC
claims 90% of its funds re spent on refugee programs and services,?
much of this money never hits the ground in Africa, what does often
barely touches the life of a refugee. Amongst the IRC biggest funders
are HSBC bank, GE, and Goldman Sachs, all involved in Congo blood
diamonds plunder, and Pfizer and Gilead Sciences (the Davignon-Rumsfeld
company). The IRC involvement in Congo mortality studynvolves
deeply political but generally hidden motives. Why doesn the IRC
focus on feeding the living instead of counting the dead?
The Horror, The Horror
Beyond the simple calculus of the IRC highly
political bias and interests, and cloaked in a smokescreen of
neutrality, the mortality assessment is flawed. The IRC considers only
the period of 1998 to 2007, excluding the first phase of the war, the
U.S.-backed overthrow of Zaire and coup dæŠtat against Mobutu
Sese Seko, 1996-1998. The IRC excludes this period for multiple
reasons. (Requests to the IRC for comment were not answered.)
One of the obvious reasons is that the Pentagon was
directly involved, 1996-1998, along with the private U.S. military
companies Military Professional Resources Incorporated, and Kellogg,
Brown and Root (Halliburton). Just as happened with the massive
bloodletting in Rwanda, and premised of course from the start on the
examples of selective justice at the Nazi Nuremburg trials, the
international system manipulates statistics, dates, and timeframes
partly to shield those agents who might otherwise be subject to some
kind of future reckoning, and partly to serve the falsification of
history and fabricate a false consciousness.
The IRC excludes the period 1996-1997 to shield the
governments of now military President Paul Kagame, in Rwanda, and
Yoweri Museveni, in Uganda, and their inner circles and extended
networks of syndicated, organized crime.
In 1995 and 1996, the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front
(RPA/F) and their partners and backers, the Ugandan People Defense
Forces (UPDF), the Pentagon, MPRI and assorted other mercenaries, laid
the groundwork for their imminent war by engaging Zairian territory
through significant cross-border covert and terror operations from
Uganda and Rwanda. In October 1996 there were at least 1.5 million
Rwandan and Burundian refugees in eastern Zaire, according to most
refugee agencies. The full-scale invasion began more formally when the
RPA/UPDF proxy forces shelled the refugee camps. This was in violation
of international humanitarian law, and it was a pivotal event to
understand, because it was a replay of the events of October 1990,
whereby the RPA invaded the territory of a sovereign government:
Rwanda. Only this time it was eastern Zaire, and it involved the
shelling of Hutu refugee camps.6 These are egregious crimes of international law.
France reported at the time that there were 1.2
million refugees and the United States insisted there were only
700,000, and the U.S. took the disingenuous line that all the refugees
went back to Rwanda. They did not.
Hundreds of thousands of unarmed and innocent men,
women and children were driven west, north, and south, running in fear
for their lives from the allied invading forces who they knew from
experience over the previous six years to be bloodthirsty killers. Many
also were forced back to Rwanda where the RPA was targeting them. The
RPA/UPDF forces hunted down and killed hundreds of thousands in a clear
case of genocide. The names of the U.S. officials, the RPA and UPDF
commanders and Congolese collaborators are all very well known to those
who were on the ground or involved at the time.
One of these is long-time UNICEF executive Nigel
Fisher, who is today also a member of the Advisory Council of the
Diamond Development Initiative, a program run by and for the diamond
industry but meant to put a reformative face on corporations and
syndicated crime networks that for decades have plundered the Congo.
Fisher was the UNICEF Special Representative for Rwanda in 1994, and he
led that agency post-genocide [sic] recovery operations [sic] in the
Great Lakes region of Africa (Rwanda, eastern Zaire, western Tanzania
and southern Uganda) in 1994-1995. This places him squarely in the know
about the massive genocidal killings and other crimes against humanity
that occurred as the Rwandan military (then the Rwandan Patriotic Army)
under current President Paul Kagame and the Ugandan military under
President-for-life Yoweri Museveni first shelled the refugee camps and
then marched across Zaire committing genocide.
So right off the bat we can add between 200,000 and
800,000 deaths to the new IRC mortality figures (and the 200,000 would
be a very conservative figure).
Finally, the IRC is known for its long history of
involvement in CIA and NSA activities, including shipping or
transporting weapons.7
According to a top United Nations investigator, the IRC moved into
bases in eastern Zaire in 1996 and started shelling the refugee camps
with heavy weapons. Here is the direct quote: he IRC took over some
bases near the refugee camps and started shelling the camps with heavy
weapons.?(Name withheld for confidentiality.)
The IRC has spent millions of dollars analyzing the
æƒmpact of conflict?in the Democratic Republic of Congo but they have
said nothing of substance about the parallel economy of plunder that is
enriching some of the same organizations that support their
umanitarian?programs. Their recent report is a glossy brochure
offering a pornography of violence.
How stupid and blind do they think people are? How stupid and blind are we?
At the same time, the IRC has received massive
oans敆in the millions of dollarsæ¢ ver recent years from the U.S.
taxpayer-funded Overseas Private Investment Corporation. What happens
to all these OPIC funds?
In the new IRC report about mortality in Congo there
is not a word about the causes of the ongoing strife or the structural
factors which have made this holocaust possible, and perpetuate it.
Things Go Better with Blood
Offering their only real reason for the high mortality rates, the IRC states:
æœecovery from conflict is a slow and protracted
process. The persistent elevation of mortality more than four years
after the official end of the 1998?002 war provides further evidence
that recovery from conflict can take many years, especially when
superimposed on decades of political and socioeconomic decline.?/p>
This is nonsense. When hurricane Katrina hit, it
was, after a brief delay, a rapid intervention process that established
a chain of U.S. military command posts across the gulf coast. Troops,
helicopters, tanks, and private military armies were quickly sent in,
not to rescue people, but to secure the facilities of the US military
and defense contractors, shipyards, banks and the high-end economic
zone. It was all very efficient, hundreds of millions of dollars of
U.S. taxpayer money was squandered on professional killers who, fresh
from Iraq and Afghanistan, did the only thing they seem to know how to
do, they killed people. But the point is that the U.S. government moves
mountains when it wants to, and quickly.
Recovery from conflict æƒs a slow and protracted
process?because there is an ongoing policy of intentional depopulation
in Africa. The United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) spends
about 40-45% of its billion dollar budget on airplane contracts flying
around central Africa, and this goes to big business. There is never
any problem shipping in weapons, andæ¢ ffering a rather stark and
poignant and undeniable example of the way things work and donæ¡Ÿoca
Cola trucks ship coke all over the place, even in rural areas. Full
stop.
Think about it.
There are no books and no bookstores in Congo for a reason. Starvation is widespread and there are food and grain shortages because of, and not in spite of,
the United Nations and the IRC and the World Food Program and its ties
to Robert Dole, Archers Daniels Midland, ConAgra and Henry Kissinger
linkæ¡Ÿontinental Grain. There are shortages of health supplies and high
rates of disease for a reason, and it is not because this is the eart
of darkness?or any other racist foolishness.
Coca Cola is not a healthy beverage for malnourished
and starving children with no access to dental facilities. More
importantly, Coke directorDonald F. McHenry is a President of the IRC
Group, a Washington DC consulting firm whose connections to the
International Rescue Committee are difficult to ascertain. Former
Ambassador Andrew Young, Madeleine Albright, George Soros, Lawrence
Eagleburger, Frank Ferrari, Donald Easum, Donald F. McHenry and Frank
Carlucci all frequently surface like tentacles of the Templesman
octopus and most of these are tight with the intelligence apparatus,
and all have ties to the flak producing CIA ciphers the Africa-America
Institute and the Corporate Council on Africa.
IRC President and Director George Rupp is also a
director of the secretive and euphemistically named Partnership to Cut
Hunger and Poverty in Africa, a right-wing Judeo-Christian front
organization. Other PCHPA directors include Ugandan President Yoweri
Museveni, Robert Dole and David Beckman from the equally fundamentalist
Christian front group Bread for the World. The Museveni government has
forced 1.3 million Acholi people onto death camps in northern Uganda and denied them humanitarian relief.
Starvation happens not because this is Africa, or
the Congo, it is because we are witnessing the most devastating example
of predatory capitalism and heartless, absolute greed, combined with a
spiritual crisesn the æ»irst?worldæ¢ f unprecedented proportions. The
long term control of Congo resources is best served by eliminating as
many black people as possible. The capacity to control Congo
resources is enhanced by spreading terror, uprooting people, destroying
families, sowing distrust and hatred. It is called divide and conquer
and it is the oldest trick in the book of European conquest. The word
that best describes the portfolio of psychological, emotional,
physical, social, cultural and political effects of such campaigns of
destabilization and terror is DERACINATION.
And all the while the humanitarian isery?industry
is raking in billions of dollars on programs to elp?the Congolese
people, and universities create new programs and departments to train
the privileged evelopment?work force, all to create and
institutionalize dependency. This is structural violence, and it is
part of a cycle of perpetuated wealth and privilege. It is managed
inequality.
This is the U.S. foreign policy in action. The IRC
merely institutionalizes the false framework of thinking that supports
war and plunder and the entrenchment, rather than alleviation, of
structural violence. Behind the psychological warfare the picture in
Congo is very different, and the responsible forces are easily
identified.
The Falsification of Consciousness
Here how the system projectsnd inculcateshe falsified consciousness about Africa that people in the West are blinded by.
One of the long term dictator Mobutu Sese Seko
right-hand men was Albert-Henri Buisine, a French mercenary-pirate who
worked on the Kamanyola, the luxury yacht where Mobutu arrived
by helicopter to receive foreign backers and æ¤IP?cronies. While
Mobutu frequently visited the White House, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo,
Geneva, Londonnd sometimes Tel Avive regularly received his cronies
and patrons on his yacht in Zaire.8
Protected by Albert-Henri Buisine and Israeli
mercenary Meir Meyouhasnd a slew of crack black intelligence
operatives桵obutu received his guests. Hundreds of people came and went
from Zaire over the years, and these included Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger; Vice-President George H.W. Bush; Ambassadors Andrew Young
and Jean Kirkpatrick; and mercenary Frank Carlucci. Diamond tycoon
Maurice Templesman dined often with Mobutu on the Kamanyola,
sometimes with his lover, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, often with his
Zaire-based diamond agents like Jerry Funk or James Barnes, and with De
Beers agents like Nicky Oppenheimer or Nick Davenport.9
The Templesman and De Beers empires exist today in
Congo in their modern forms, and many of the same agents of the Mobutu
period are connected to policies or actions that perpetuate suffering
and violence in Congo and Angola and South Africa today. It is
important to note, also, that the Templesman blood minerals machine has
heavily subsidized the campaigns of the democrats, including recent
fascist manifestations, Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In the final
counting, Hillary Clinton has done more damage to Africa than Obama
(but there is still time).
On May 11 and 12, 1990, Mobutu shock troopsncluding the Israeli-trained Special Presidential Division
(DSP), SARM and National Gendarmeriettacked the campus at the
University of Lumumbashi, and they killed hundreds of students, at
least, while countless more were tortured and brutalized. The U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency station in Lumumbashi supported the
atrocities and cover-up. It sounds like a long time ago, but the
players are still around. Some, like James Barnes, Maurice and Leon
Templesman, and Nicky Oppenheimer, are still running big operations in
Africa.
What was Albert-Henri Buisine role in protecting
the Mobutu dictatorship and perpetuating such atrocities and where is
Mobutu old mercenary bodyguard today?
Well, Mobutu French mercenary bodyguard Albert-Henri Buisine surfaced in October, 2007, in a Harper magazine article by Bryan Mealer, a journalist who formerly freelanced with the Associated Press and The Independent
(London). Buisine is no longer a private military agent serving the
terror apparatus of a Cold War dictator; he is the loquacious captain
of a barge pressing 2600 tons of cargo up the Congo River (for his
private shipping company and substantial personal profit). One hundred
years after Joseph Conrad Heart of Darkness we have a white American AP journalist retelling his unfathomable voyage up the Congo.
And there the nostalgic Captain, a reluctant
French mercenary-terrorist-turned-pilot-profiteer, who for 16 years,
against his will, Mealer tells us, served Mobutu reluctantly. æŒe was
chained to Mobutu’s shadow at all times, even living four straight
years aboard the lavish presidential yacht, the Kamanyola, as it drifted aimlessly down the Congo River.?
Drifted aimlessly? Chained to Mobutu shadow?
Hardly. This is fiction. There are deep cultural stereotypes and
subliminal fault lines at work here that have been inculcated through
decades of propaganda about Congo/Zaire. There is nothing but dross in
Mealer account, no mention of the brutalities suffered by Congolese
people, the strike-breaking and student massacres, or the rented crowds
chanting æ—obutu! Mobutu?and the empty slogans of Mobutu Movement Populaire de la Revolution party. There is no mention of the hated Special Presidential Division
terror apparatus, the illegal arrests and detention without trial, the
tortures at underground dungeons like the æ™AU-2?or the æ·orridor of
death?in Kinshasa. It is all rendered nostalgic, and the plunderers of
the past are painted as unwitting victims who missed their lot in life.
The story casts the standard dispersions of pathos on the white
exploiters, and this works to displace the attention from their past
and often current criminality.
æƒuisine now led the simple life of a river rat,?
Mealer tells us, aking his run six or seven times a year,?pointing
out hirlpools roiling in the deep spots, crocodiles camouflaged in
the mud, or, along a wooded island, a tree whose leaves cured
hemorrhoids.?10
Harper never mentions the agents of
repression in such places, because the American public is all too happy
with the vainglorious version of the beleaguered white hero challenging
the savagery in the heart of darkness. How many stories about Congo
involve a River and a Great White Hero challenging the savagery and
darkness of the forest? Harper tells us nothing about Congo:
it is the usual racist nonsense meant to displace the truth. The story
is æ¼ood?reading, but it is fiction, a mirror reflecting our whiteness
back to us. The author even claims that the natives communicate by
drums so that villages along the river know the boat is coming before
Buisine and the heroic white journalist arrive upstream. This is the
falsification of American consciousness.
To cap the Harper silly whitewash, the
photographer that traveled up river with Mealer is based in Kigali,
Rwanda, and everyone in the region knows that you cannot work in and
out of Rwanda today and still be telling the truth. Finally, Harper publisher John R. MacArthur is described by his magazine company as a ireless advocate for human rights.?
And that is why we have more than 10 million dead in
Congo since 1996, and millions more in Uganda and Rwanda. These
nightmare numbers are the products of the Bush-Clinton-Bush
administrations, a contiguous unfolding of fascism in America.
I traveled on this river more than once: in 2007 I
also swam two-thirds of the way across it (at Lukutu, where I hit an
island and turned back); I also swam across the tributary Lomami (2007)
and Lopori (2006) rivers. The Harper production mirrors the
obliviousness of white men in Congo and the even greater obliviousness
of white editors, and it is all to satisfy the voracious obliviousness
of increasingly stupefied readers.
Been there, done that. Now it is time for us all to grow up.
Plantation Slavery in the Heartland
At the height of the supposed disintegration of
Zaireid-1980 through the mid-1990he Blattner family was rapidly
expanding their operations and consolidating power. The previous and
already vast empire in Zaire was established by James Blattner as the
Group Agro Pastoral (GAP), and this was later divided up amongst sons
David and Elwyn (Daniel role in Congo is uncertain), who scooped up
plantation after plantation, concession after concession, becoming
involved in transportation, shipping, aviation, telecommunications,
agriculture, logging and construction. Elwyn Blattner father-in-law,
Shimon Razin, also runs a company, Safgaz, in Congo, when he is not in
Tel Aviv, and the Blattners send their children to elite colleges in
Europe. In 2003, Elwyn Blattner was President of the Communaute Israelite de Kinshasa.11
The Blattner empire today is perpetuating massive
suffering in the interior, with slavery and all the abominations of
paramilitary fiefdoms occurring on the Blattner plantations.12
None of this has been reported, but for those who wonder how the
mortality rate in the interior of the Congo could be so high sudden
flash of awakening with the release of the January 2008 International
Rescue Committee statisticshe answer lies in the capitalist
enterprises of the Elwyn Blattners, the Maurice Templesmans, the
Etienne Davignons and Nicky Oppenheimers, and the IRC itself. The
Blattners frequently travel back and forth from Congo to the United
States, Belgium, Tel Aviv and South Africa. On August 2, 2007, for
example, David Blattner and family attended a lavish Bar Mitzvah of
friends in Israel held at the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv. On the same
day, the second of August, 2007, at least 1500 people died in the Congo.
What is the IRC relationship to the plantation
slave-drivers and how did the IRC statistically figure the higher
mortality rates on plantations run by the Blattner or George Forrest
Groups in rural Congo?
It Takes a Village
By the late 1990s, the guarding of the diamond
concessions in Zaire had ceased to operate under a single chain of
command and had become increasingly militarized by thugs of all
stripes. Atrocities mounted during the heaviest war years, but violence
continues in these areas today.
Katanga has repeatedly been described as the
province of æ»orgotten strife.?In the past decade alone, millions of
people have been dispossessed of their livelihoods, their land, their
futures and their lives, and the mining in Katanga and Mbuji-Mayi has
been going on since the end of the Leopold era.
Entire villages have been sacked and burned by
militias and in some almost every woman has been raped during military
campaigns of the past few years.13
More than 5000 children have lived on the streets in the center of
Mbuji-Mayi town in the past few years梱et another generation of
Congolese leaders lostnd recent systematic massacres of street
children have occurred at the hands of militias, political groups and
security forces.14
How does the IRC mortality study factor in the deaths of street children murdered in Mbuji Mayi?
After a century of exploitation and slavery, we find
the DRC huge state diamond firm, MIBA, consistently withholding
payment of salaries to starving Congolese laborers and middle managers
for months at a time. April and May 2007 saw strikes and protests
leading to the Kabila government arbitrary arrest, detention and
torture of trade union organizers like Leon Ngoy Bululu; police have
also shot protestors.15
So-called 慽llegal?diamond workers梔isenfranchised local Congolese
people forced into æ·riminal?activities to survive梬ere summarily
executed on MIBA concessions in Mbuji-Mayi. The BBC, in August 2006 reported that MIBA security guards were sniping unemployed diamond miners.16 Of course, the BBC
never gives us the deeper story, it is only for expedience and some
interest somewhere that they are saying anything revealing at all.
Katanga is the Democratic Republic of Congo
southernmost province, and it is the world richest mining metropolis,
with the poorest people in the world. Part of the vast copper belt that
stretches across northern Zambia and southern Congo, Katanga is home to
unprecedented human misery. The Zambian copperbelt concessions over the
border involve many of the same companies and interests mentioned above.17
But hundreds of billions of dollars are involved in these mining
projects and they have no problems moving heavy equipment into the most
rural areas, building runways, and shipping the product out.
IMMEDIATE AND RADICALæ¡®OING TO THE ROOT OF THE
PROBLEMæ¡°NTERVENTIONS TO AID THE PEOPLE AND MITIGATE SUFFERING IN THESE
AREAS COULD BE ACHIEVED IF THE CORPORATIONS WORKING THERE WERE HELD TO
ACCOUNT.
But as long as people in the West gobble up the corporate do-nothing nonsense peddled by the IRC, CARE, Save the Children, Newsweek, the New York Times, the BBC and the International Crises Group, it is, indeed, hopeless.
Workers and communities in and around these mines
suffer due to state orchestrated repression, chemical mining processes
and toxic runoff, tuberculosis, immune disorders, racial discrimination
and slavery. There are all the standard treatable maladies (typhoid,
malaria, tetanus, polio, malnutrition) as well. However, such stories
are off the agenda for the North American, European, Japanese,
Australian and Israeli media corporations providing the mainstay of
English language indoctrination meant to instill racial superiority and
a vast ignorance and obliviousness that leaves westerns populations
shaking their heads and wringing their hands and clicking their
tongues, while all the while wondering hat is to be done??It does
not cross people minds that their own hands are dirty, that their own
consciousness has been falsified, that change is possible.
Lies, Lies, Those Slippery (Petroleum) Lies
German diplomat Albrecht Conze is the deputy
political director of the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo
(MONUC). In an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel,
after the first round of elections in August 2006, Conze redicted?
the inevitable return of white patronage in Congo. æ‘t is like being
the Congo foster parents,?Conze said, suggesting that such patronage
is a blessing, rather than the curse that it is to the people of Congo.
Conze continued to misrepresent the Western plunder in Congo by saying,
for example, that the U.S. government’s interest in rebuilding Congo is
limited. After all, he said, the deeply Catholic country æ·ontains
neither oil nor terrorists.?18
The above statement is consistent with the perpetual
lies by powerful interests who benefit by always downplaying or hiding
Congo (Africa) wealth.
The first petroleum refinery in the Congoæ¢ wned by Societe Congolaise Italienne de Raffinage (SOCIR), a joint venture between the Congolese government and Ente Nazioale Idrocarburi,
Italy state-owned petroleum company梒ommenced production near the
mouth of the Congo River in 1967. Under a five year contract signed in
1967, the crude for the refinery was supplied by Shell, Mobil,
Petrofina and Texaco.19
Petroleum exploration occurred heavily off the Atlantic coast after
1968; production began in 1976 involving Chevron, Mobil, Unocal,
Royal/Dutch Shell, Agip, TotalFinaElf, Teikoku Oil and the Japan
National Oil Company. Recent onshore exploitation near the refinery
involves Total, Pan Ocean Energy (UK) and Addax Petroleum (Canada).
The heartland of the Congo also has petroleum, and
this is part of the reason for the unfathomable terrorism involving
Western enterprises and agents and the concomitant rates of mortality
in the interior. Petroleum reserves were discovered (but left dormant)
by Chevron in the Equateur rainforest in the late 1970.20 By 1997 this vast concession梜nown as Cuvette Centrale for the former petit province梬as held by Trillion Resources Ltd., established in Vancouver in 1987.21
The company is involved in exploration throughout Africa in association
with Canadian mining companies such as Nickelodeon Minerals Inc.,
Oliver Gold Corporation and Skeena Resources Ltd. In DRC its activities
have also involved mining in Katanga with DRC parastatal Gecamines. There is no doubt that Trillion and Chevron interests supported certain factions in Congo wars.
In Eastern DRC, petroleum under Lake Albert is being
tapped on the Ugandan side by Canada Heritage Oil %26amp; Gas, Tullow
Oil and Hardman Resources, supported by the organized crime syndicates
involved with the Uganda æ¼overnment,?which is itself another
syndicated crime ring run by the Ugandan military, General James
Kazini, and Museveni half-brother Salim Saleh. Further south near
Goma and Bukavu, Lake Kivu is targeted by U.S. companies, working
through the current dictatorship in Rwanda, for its massive methane
reserves.
his is an oil country,?the new Congo newly created Oil Minister Lambert Mende was quoted by Reuters
to say, æ‰ot because of our current small production, but because there
is major potential?Quite modestly, we expect nothing less than three
billion barrels of reserves, and it’s certainly more than that.?Reuters
in July 2007 confirmed that onshore reserves remain untapped and
largely unexplored in Equateur province in the north as well as under
Lake Albert and Lake Tanganyika along the eastern border.22
As always, the exploiters try to minimize the
awareness of the resources they are targeting. Contrary to the
statement by MONUC German diplomat Albrecht Conzes the Congolese,
Rwandan and Ugandan people know all too wellhe errorists?are all
over Central Africa, even if some of them have never visited the
country.
Conze behavior epitomizes white supremacy masked
by umanitarianism?and eacekeeping?in Africa. The eacekeeping?
operations of MONUC, like the umanitarian?or misery industry, are
merely well-cloaked disguises for more predatory capitalism with the
added insidiousness of a supposed and self-righteous igher moral
purpose?that allows the exploiters in the West to celebrate our
æ¼oodness?and our umanity?and to claim that our hands are clean
and, of course, that we care. But this is big business and nothing
else. To question such things are themselves written off as complete
heresy, and that is why MONUC does not take any notice of such writings
as this one: good journalists produce tripe for Harper, they
don point the finger at modern day conquistadors and attach blame to
the names of U.N. officials, corporate executives, or high society
philanthropists and diamond tycoons.
MONUC officials say nothing of substance about
mining in Congo, which proceeds in parallel with the bloodletting, arms
trading and extortion. For example, Anvil Mining has been involved in
massacres in DRC.23
Anvil directors include former U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Brown, who
served at U.S. embassies in Brussels, Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville and
South Africa. Brown was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa
(1987-1989) under George Schultz and George H.W. Bush and then Director
of Central African Affairs (1980-1981). Meanwhile, the former top
internal intelligence and security chief of the United Nations
Observer Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has been
worked for Anvil mining in Katanga since 2006.24
With top MONUC security officials taking high paying
jobs with companies involved in the atrocities, one begins to see the
nature of an organized, armed, free-for-all for Congo resources.
This journalist reported in July 2007 that MONUC
officials were accepting kickbacks from warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba, and
there is evidence of MONUC collusion with other individuals
capitalizing on war and plunder in Congo.25
In December 2007, it was reported that a special task force for the
United Nations æ–ncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and
mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts
for fuel, food, construction and other materials used by U.N.
peacekeeping operations.?26
But this is the tip of the iceberg and the United
Nations actions are weak and, often enough, meaningless. Finally, the
MONUC mission in Congo institutionalizes the inequality and suffering
endured by Congolese people by maintaining double standards about labor
and employment packages provided to MONUC employees who live in the
host country: In August 2007 a major top work?strike was undertaken
by Congolese nationals in the MONUC system due to the entrenched and
continued injustices served on Congolese people working for the
mission, in comparison with the more comprehensive employment packages
provided to expatriate foreigners. The strike was almost entirely
unreported by the MONUC public information offices. The international
pressn keeping with their role as gatekeepers of suffering in
Congonvestigated nothing and, in the end, they only parroted the
official line.27
Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles
The United Nations and European Union Forces (EUFOR)
involved in Congo are there to secure corporate resources and insure
profits through military domination. Yet the cover story is hammered
into the Western æ‰ews?consuming consciousness as a umanitarian?or
a eacekeeping?mission.
Advanced technologies like Israel Aircraft
Industries/Belgian Hunter UAVs (Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles)
intelligence platforms are now used by Belgian defense forces in flying
operations over Congo.28
Two UAVs have crashed in Kinshasa, killing one Congolese person and
wounding 10 others, and the Israeli-Belgian fleet has depl
oyed three
more UAVs. Belgian Defense command indicates that the UAVs are to
æ·ollect information on road traffic and crowd activities.?sup> 29
But the statement is a euphemism for maintaining the status quo of
suffering, starvation, torture and dispossession in Congo, while
further enhancing foreign military domination and expansion.
Three cheers for the rogue Congolese soldier with
the battered Kalashnikov AK-47 whose single shot at one of the EUFOR
robotic UAVs flying overhead (at 1200 feet) penetrated the wing joint,
pierced a structural weak point and caused the wing to crumble and the
UAV to crash. Of course, the poor man has disappeared into the dungeons
of hell in Kinshasa, and he will go down in history as a criminal,
rather than a hero whose expression of frustration and misery
manifested in shooting down a $10 million dollar Israeli weapon with a
pop gun.
The Belgian military described the man as a one gunmen with a known criminal record.?a href=”http://us.f537.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?box=Inbox%26amp;MsgId=4363_42740801_21733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387%26amp;bodyPart=2%26amp;tnef=%26amp;YY=81843%26amp;y5beta=yes%26amp;y5beta=yes%26amp;order=down%26amp;sort=date%26amp;pos=0%26amp;ViewAttach=1%26amp;Idx=34#0200001E” rel=”nofollow”>30
But the hubris of this statement defies articulation when we remember
the known criminal records of the white men involved in devastating
Congo, then Zaire, and now Congo, since the arrival of Henry Morton
Stanley and his blood-rubber and hand-chopping-off enterprises in the
1870.
Where is the international rescue committee?
As of January 2008 there are consistent reports of
starvation in Kinshasa, and reports of arbitrary arrest and illegal
detention of men, women and children at security facilities, including
underground torture centers, and this is certainly true all over the
country. As of December 2007, those arrested as a ecurity threat?and
held incommunicado in these Kinshasa dungeons include: Mimi Mboyo (19)
and child (jailed %26gt;18 months); Angele (17) and child (jailed %26gt;24
months); Mianda Kadogo (19) and child (jailed %26gt;11 months); Nicolette
Mukungu (20) and child (jailed %26gt;20 months); Bokungu (21); Olga (20)
and child (jailed %26gt;13 months); Edjoka (29). The main security
facilities in Kinshasa are Camp Tshiatshi, the Central Prison at
Makala, Camp Kokolo, and the underground dungeon known as æ·orridor of
death.?31 See Notes: Click here.
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