Captain America offers spectator-consumers the chance to yet again sit back and be taken for a phantasmagorical ride. The new Hollywood film is another forces of good versus the forces of evil production, where the goodest good guy is a white superhero whose scrawny body is technologically transformed into the perfect muscular male. Moral, good, manly, just, brave, caring, altruistic — all in a physical package that buckles women at the knees. He might as well be God.

Is there anything realistic about the film? Is it the American propaganda tool that the Russia media venue Russia Today (RT) has portrayed it as? Look at the comments that follow this short RT Captain America video and you see that people question Russia Today‘s motives — rejecting it as a flagrant example of ugly Americana.

Here’s one example. “Can’t anyone just enjoy a movie?” said a guy, DaveSquibbSr, who seems to display some rather hysterical patriotic fervor about how the mass media lies to the people and falsely demonizes private enterprise.

Another example: “Dear RT News: Fuck You. By the way, Saving Private Ryan and Apocalypse Now are without a doubt anti-war movies. And the others mentioned contain anti-war messages too,” wrote Austionous, who lists his favorite video as Glen Beck’s patriotic cheer-lead The Real Story: Iraq.

The real story is that the Pentagon’s military adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan — never mind Somalia, Congo, Ethiopia, Libya, Rwanda or any of the other sites of U.S. covert operations — has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $1,228,000,000,000 since 2001, and the ticker is ticking, and the United States economy and all social services are in collapse. The real story is that more than 1,000,000 Iraqi people and at least 4000 US troops have died, with scores of thousands of U.S. veterans wounded and traumatized. Remember Iraq war veteran Timothy McVeigh?

But here’s the best RT Captain America comment of all, replete with the threat of violence that differs little from the threat of violence advanced by Norwegian freedom fighter Anders Behring Brievik — label and segregate, kill the multiculturalists amongst us, and purify Europe by forcibly repatriating all Moslems.

“Anyone who points at Hollywood and accuses them of doing anything other than making entertaining movies for profit,” says acircleoflight, “needs a tattoo on their forehead that says, ‘I’m too stupid to understand fiction’. And then when we have all these people properly labelled, kill them and send their meat to a starving country. Nothing that comes out of Hollywood is nonfiction. Movies based on ‘real events’ or ‘based on a true story’ are still Fiction. Its never actually what happened.” This guy or gal self-identifies as a ‘pagan’ whose “spirituality is based in logic and reason.”

And that’s a death threat against, well, against your humble correspondent. Alas, I’ll have to go into hiding now, hunker down and secure my own little heavily armed fortress in preparation for the Christian crusaders, soon to come my way, as this story gains readership.

Hmmm. I wonder if that’s what Moslem immigrants or Rwandan Hutu refugees feel like? I mean, the mass media, governments, and plenty of the common people hold these awe-fully biased and ugly stereotypes about Moslems, you know, towel-headed camel jockeys and all that, and about people of color (niggers, spicks, chinks, gooks), more generally, and every Rwandan Hutu is considered a genocidal machete-wielding savage. How did these stereotypes and mythologies of persecution become so deeply seated in the mass psychology?

What is it about multiculturalism that people find so scary? The idea that we should share? Do unto others as we want others to do unto us?

Anti-Islamic fervor is whipped up by governments, corporations and individuals to provide an excuse for state terror and rationale for weapons proliferation. Such fervor is alive and thriving in the white power economies of the U.S., Canada, England, Italy, Japan (though this is changing), and, well, Norway. When stories about the twin Oslo attacks first broke, the mass media immediately launched into their private inquisition about Islamic jihadists, grounded in nothing but speculation and fear-mongering. Russia Today was no different and just as bad as the British and U.S. press.

Your correspondent, a bit too quick to speak (several friends were quite correct about this) but also caught off guard, was stupid enough to get caught up in it, and missed the chance to say, “Hey, wait, it’s a blond-haired blue-eye white man who looks more like the Viking comic book superhero THOR… This is no Osama bin Laden recruit, so please kick your Islamophobia, and stop perpetuating war against innocent people…”

Too Stupid to Understand Fiction

It seems that Norway’s self-proclaimed savior decided to launch his own personal revolution, hoping to inspire Christian Holy War against non-white immigrants who are, in somebody’s mind, soiling the blood of virile white men and defiling their (the white man’s) virgin white women. This sounds like a Neo-Nazi screed about Aryan blood purity. In fact, he has been labelled a Nazi, and saddled with all kinds of other labels, which people and organizations — who seem to have a lot in common with Breivik — have used to distance themselves from him.

Did Breivik act alone? Did he independently flee the proverbially chicken coop of Norwegian normality and privately hatch his personal ideology and revolutionary intent? Christian purity, dirty Arabs, the imminent destruction of Israel? I don’t think so. I think there are other cells, and plenty of them, or movements, and militias, spread over Europe and North America, who are quite pleased with Breivik’s as-yet simmering revolution.

I think Breivik knows perfectly well that his ideas are embraced, and that’s what gave him the sense of entitlement to do what he did. He expects to see Europe “burn”. They are also shared by plenty of North Americans. In fact, the celebrated American Islamophobe Robert Spencer was cited 64 times in Breivik’s ‘Manifesto’. Spencer co-founded the hate group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Jihad Watch. The latter was funded (2003) by the David Horowitz Freedom Center (Center for the Popular Study of Culture), a “conservative” group that set out to influence Hollywood and spread their ideas about freedom.

“Some of the ideas [Breivik] expressed are good, barring the violence.
Some of them are great,” Italian official Mario Borghezio reportedly told British press. Borghezio is a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. How does a guy like that defend civil liberties? It brings a whole new meaning to the words. “Christians ought not to be animals to be sacrificed,” he said. “We have to defend them.”

The xenophobic hatred of non-white people is written all over the walls of Fortress Europe and Fortress America and Fortress Canada and Fortress Israel. Who could miss it? Kill the Moslems. Kill the Libyans. Kill the Somalis. Kill the Yemenis. Kill the Iraqis and the Afghans and the Iranians. And kill every last Rwandan Hutu — the fact that they are Christian doesn’t matter, since their spirituality was void and null after they, according to the standard mythology, chopped off their own sisters’ heads. Kill the Palestinians. To justify, to win popular support, the same people who advance these racist sentiments, and generally the ones who take action on them, are the ones who secretly produce and secretly disseminate much of the supposed ‘hate’ propaganda (Kill the Christians, Kill the Americans, Kill the Jews) that is directed at their own ethnic demographic (Christians, Americans, Jews).

Hollywood plays a huge role. Films like Captain America… well, tattoo my forehead “I’m too stupid to understand fiction.”

Kill the Arabs in Sudan — another rallying cry — and arrest Omar Al-Bashir, the Arab Islamic president of Sudan: He’s committing genocide says the powerful Jewish ‘Save Darfur’ lobby, and he’s enslaving good Christians the Christians redouble. Hollywood actors and the mass media say so, it must be true. This rhetoric spews forth from think tanks and universities and ‘human rights’ agencies and from the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Empire operates in a curious manner. Take Smith College, Northampton Massachusetts, where English professors like Dr. Eric Reeves sit in their quaint offices, surrounded by Shakespeare and Milton (and by eugenics professors like Seymour Itzkoff), worshipped by starry-eyed bleeding heart liberal elite women, and they hatch political screeds on genocide informed by intelligence operatives — you know, Central Intelligence Agency types — who are fomenting the Pentagon-backed guerrilla insurgencies on the ground in those far off places like Sudan.

Harvard University’s Samantha Power has confirmed that this is our problem from hell: America has entered the age of genocide. Of course, we don’t have anything to do with it, and poor Lady Liberty has to drag her allies with her, kicking and screaming, and stepping on the tails of her gown dragged through the mud on the rocky road to freedom. Of course, we sell ‘em the humvees, missiles, tanks and fighter-bombers to get there.

The Rise of the Macro-Nationalists

What’s a guy gotta do to get a little recognition in the world? It was only a few days after his shooting spree in Oslo and the former nobody Anders Behring Breivik already had a huge Wikipedia entry with 164 references — and it’s expanding by the day. Obviously, he didn’t create it. Is this capitalism? Or education? No one has created a page for me. Not a single word!

I mean, Rwandan government agents like Tom Ndahiro, who spin the lies for President Paul Kagame, have labeled me a “notorious Tutsi genocide denier” and such praise for my work is not restricted to Rwandans. Canadian academic Dr. Gerald Caplan, who is often seen at the side of dictator Paul Kagame, has published articles deriding me and the other “genocide deniers who drink the each other’s putrid bath water.” (Seems Caplan forgot to have his work peer-reviewed: its rather hysterical.) Meles Zenawi, the dictator in Ethiopia was a bit nonplussed by my exposure of genocide there. You’d think someone would create a Wikipedia page for me.

What’s wrong with this picture? Do I have to become an elite warrior of the Christian Knights Templar? Embrace Zionism? Steal a few million diamonds from Congo and get away with it? Plagiarize the Unibomber’s manifesto and then re-enact the Crusades by massacring a bunch of kids at summer camp? Or should I dress as a soldier and have my picture taken like King Leopold II? Leopold is still celebrated in Belgium, his crimes covered up. Is this the future historical situation of Mr. Breivik — our modern day THOR?

“The recent killings in Norway were horrific,” said British rock star Steven Morrissey (former Smiths singer). “As usual in such cases, the media give the killer exactly what he wants: worldwide fame. We aren’t told the names of the people who were killed — almost as if they are not considered to be important enough, yet the media frenzy to turn the killer into a Jack The Ripper star is… repulsive. He should be un-named, not photographed, and quietly led away.”

Does the coverage around this one Norwegian guy at all remind anyone of a guy named O.J. Simpson? Like the twin World Trade towers demolitions in New York City on September 11, 2001, did the twin Breivik attacks provide the corporate media system with the perfect topic to whip up hysteria and manufacture mass distraction? The media is now turning over every rock they can find in the hunt for clues to Breivik’s madness. Imagine if they investigated the crimes of the big mining or military or pharmaceutical corporations, or the kickbacks to government officials?

Breivik’s most favorite movie was the vaingloriousy bloody Roman war flick Gladiator. No. 2 was 300, an American comic fantasy action thriller marketed by Warner Brothers. No. 3 was independent film Dogville, with Hollywood stars James Caan, John Hurt, Lauren Bacall and, especially, Nicole Kidman — who has the townspeople killed for sexually and emotionally abusing her.

Dogville is under attack. Danish director Lars Von Trier, a self-proclaimed Nazi, stated that he’s “sorry for having made it” [the film] whose machine-gun massacre at the end might have inspired Breivik’s armed assault on the little Norwegian island Utoya. While advocates of Nazism might want to look at themselves in psychotherapy, at the very least, the film Dogville is a harsh critique on American ‘society’ and there is absolutely no reason for Von Trier to apologize for making it. Why is an independent filmmaker bullied and shamed into apology? Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino applauded Dogville; does that make Tarantino culpable in mass murder? Why isn’t director George Lucas under attack for making Star Wars now that killer robotic drone technologies are deployed against innocent people all over the world?

Why isn’t Steven Spielberg under attack — if not arrested — for his alliance with the Pentagon in the war production Saving Private Ryan, for which he was awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Service by Secretary of Defense William Cohen at the Pentagon? The award honored Spielberg for making “a historic contribution to the national consciousness.” Stephen Speilberg also has the unprecedented distinction of producing mass hysteria about sharks through the one film — Jaws — responsible for demonizing sharks as ruthless killers and, in large part, for the ongoing decimation of shark species and the uncertain fate of our oceans. What kind of national consciousness does such cinematography contribute to? How is Cohen’s ‘national consciousness’ any different from the disease of nationalism?

William Cohen was Secretary of War under President William Jefferson Clinton at the height of the U.S. invasion of Central Africa. He was also deeply involved in the Iran-Contra affair. Cohen has been involved at the deepest levels of secrecy and denial in, for example, intelligence, torture, and special operations.

Saving Private Ryan provokes deep psychological sentiments and emotions based in the standard constructions and discourses of nationalism, patriotism, democracy and freedom. “Ryan, I must be quick to point out,” Secretary of War Cohen disingenuously declared, “is not a recruitment promotional for the Pentagon. It speaks to us, however, about the importance of values, discipline, determination and sacrifice.”

Who is “US”? It doesn’t speak to me that way. It speaks to me of war, blood, private profits and deceptions that have ripped apart millions and millions of people’s lives, and for no good reason, and that have exterminated entire nations of people. How are Cohen’s important characteristics — values, discipline, determination and sacrifice — different from the patriotism and nationalism that the Pentagon uses to conscript and recruit young people to do its dirty work? Under the Nazi regime, all music had to ‘fit’ within certain standards defined as ‘good’ German music — and censorship was ruthless. How does that differ from the Pentagon’s approval or or rejection of films?

Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen escorts Steven Spielberg through a military honor cordon into the Pentagon (1999).

The Pentagon routinely influences the scripts and the direction of Hollywood films. Plot-lines have been changed, history altered, and scripts modified to meet the Pentagon’s approval. If the Pentagon doesn’t like the direction, plot, themes or characters of pre-production films they won’t support them, and don’t.

In keeping with the privatization of war, the Pentagon’s interests are often served by civilian firms packed with ex-military who maintain tight ties to the war room. Professional soldiers with long service records in covert and psychological operations — Navy Seals or 10th Mountain Division Rangers or Green Berets — are often hired as consultants to enhance war films.This way, the Pentagon and U.S. officials can ‘plausibly deny’ involvement in a film’s direction or production — but the links, ideologies, patriotism and emotional hooks all satisfy the ideals of the American fighting machine.

Captain Dale Dye, a retired Marine who earned three purple hearts in Vietnam, has worked in Hollywood as an actor, producer, writer, and consultant, with major credits for Saving Private Ryan and Platoon. “We are fighting Islamo-fascists who will not tolerate the existence of non-Muslims — infidels — on this earth,” Dye said in a Los Angeles Times article. “These are folks who are told they cannot rest until every infidel is driven from this earth…. They aren’t people you can negotiate with.”

Dye’s consulting company is Warriors, Inc., but he works three days a week to influence mass media reportage on wars the U.S. is involved in. He is a frequent ‘independent expert’ cited in corporate media stories. Dye worked as a reporter for Soldier of Fortune magazine, and he has run his own radio program. Dye’s record in Vietnam raises questions about his involvement in illegal operations like the Phoenix Program. Later, during the Reagan administration’s terrorist covert guerrilla wars Latin America, Dye worked “reporting and training troops in guerrilla warfare techniques” in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The Reagan projects in Latin America were meant to subvert democracy, institute dictatorship and further U.S. corporate interests; hundreds of thousands of people died from massacres, beheadings, dismemberment and disappearing.

Who says violence in cinematography has no connection to the real world? In Captain America we find some fascinating themes that should inspire anyone to question the motives of the corporate enterprises and the star-studded casts — Hollywood, the Pentagon, Viacom, Paramount, Walt Disney, Marvel Entertainment — that bring such phantasmagorical extravaganzas to the public’s pleasure.

Isn’t Empire the main theme of Captain America? Military superiority in a we-are-the-forces-of-good-they-are-the-forces-of-evil narrative that never threatens our sensibilities or ever makes us squirm in our fifteen-dollars-a-shot-plus-popcorn-and-soda seats? Is the film aimed at indoctrination for war and the manufacture of consent for our participation in elite military imperatives premised on private profit and power?

What about Hollywood’s presentation of ideas about the manipulation of the human body achieved by modern science through genetic engineering, pharmaceutical products, (breast implants, plastic surgery, liposuction), hormones and steroids? Are there any references to these scientific advancements?

What about the theme of patriarchal male domination and the ideologies of the sexual control of women and male supremacy? Come on, can’t anyone just sit and watch a movie?

Not Just a Soldier, a Good Man

“We’re gonna make a new breed of super-soldier,” one of the military grunts proclaims. “Stay the way you are,” the slightly mad scientist with the German accent tells the scrawny un-superized-soldier, prior to his physical transformation to glossy super-chested hero. “Not just a soldier, but a good man.”

A good man. “I’m just a kid from Brooklyn,” the as-yet-unsuperized hero says. Could be anybody from America. The mythology is that any one of us can rise to great heights if we set our minds on it. Isn’t this the great American dream?

The soldier is a good man. The goodness projected by our Captain America savior translates directly to the commonly held belief in the goodness of the average U.S. soldier who, of course, is spreading truth and democracy around the world. This is not a guy who tortures or massacres innocent people, he is a very principled and very ethical hero — like the great white American savior Jake Sully in the blockbuster 3-D emotional sensation Avatar. The projected image of the good soldier in these films maps directly onto U.S. forces deployed at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, or the heroes “defending American values” in Afghanistan through Operation Enduring Freedom. America’s soldiers are not unprincipled killers — the kind of sociopath that some people are portraying Anders Behring Breivik out to be — they are good men. Right?

Of course, Hollywood has its way with reality. Camp Lemonier is a Pentagon outpost for so-called ‘snatch-and-grab’ terrorist operations run by covert forces, in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia, with secret CIA torture centers. These illegal operations and covert guerrilla wars involve violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. The U.S. backs bloody dictatorships and nasty warlords all across the region. Such facts are obscured by Hollywood and its propaganda films, aren’t they?

Survivors of U.S.-backed state-sponsored genocide in Ethiopia; the government of Meles Zenawi is committing massive atrocities against numerous indigenous tribes. (© Keith Harmon Snow, 2006)

We Take the Brain

The new Captain America film is packed with action adventures and high technology war weapons. Consider the film’s presentation of the secret weapons of the HYDRA — the Nazi deep science division presented as the ominous evil enemy. It sure looks a lot like the Pentagon’s billion dollar boondoggle the Northrup-Grumman Corporation B-2 bomber. Coincidence?

Well, in the film this stealth bomber has a different name altogether, and its not our name for the thing, its the Nazi’s name for it. Like the choice of the language that the Allied scientist speaks with — a decisively Germanic accent — the choice of the stealthy ‘flying wing’ resembling the Pentagon’s B-2 bomber is no coincidence, but an intentional choice based in the hidden history of allied war crimes of WW-II.

Modern aerospace programs and technologies had their genesis in the secret aerospace programs of the Nazi-American war machine. On April 12, 1945, having crushed the last bastion of Nazi military resistance, U.S. forces under General Dwight D. Eisenhower secured Thuringia, the heart of the Nazi secret weapons research and development programs in Germany. Eisenhower led the charge to transfer superior and futuristic Nazi weapons technologies to the United States before the weapons facilities were turned over to the allied invading Soviet army on July 4, 1945. The Soviets, of course, drew the iron curtain over Thuringia and Eastern Germany for the next 43 years (until 1989).

General Eisenhower personally oversaw the removal of futuristic aerospace ‘assets’, including the Fi 103 ‘flying bomb’ (propaganda name ‘V1′), the A4 rocket (‘V2′), and the world’s first deployable jet turbine aircraft, the Messerschmidt Me 262 (which as a fighter could attain speeds of over 800 km/h). At least five Me 262 planes were assembled under the direction of U.S. forces in control of the Messerschmidt Me 262 production factory from April to July 1945.

The biggest and most secretive catch was an intact prototype of an all-wing, single engine, single-seater jet plane, type named the Horten Ho IX or Go 229 V-3. The futuristic Northrup-Grumman Corporation ‘stealth’ bomber — the flying wing — unveiled in the United States (circa 1989) bears a striking similarity to the Nazi Go 229 V3. It is widely unknown that at least one complete Go 229 V-3 plane and a large number of finished parts of the prototype fell into U.S. hands and disappeared into supra-governmental ‘black’ programs in the secret weapons complex post WW-II.

Who ran this weapons complex? John Foster Dulles was Secretary of State under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1952-1959. Allen Dulles ran the Central Intelligence Agency, until recently known as the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.). The Dulles brothers had ties to Nazi Germany in the 1930′s and into the war. Most interesting was the Sullivan and Cromwell — Dulles brothers’ law firm to a guy with a mustache named Adolf — one of their clients. So began the post WW-II era in secrecy and denial, the Cult of the Atom, and the mythology of the comic strip superhero, Captain America.

“While watching the trailer for this movie I spotted a number of what-if planes and tanks,” posted a guy named ‘Nick” on a specialized military technology Internet forum. “The main one is a giant Nazi flying wing bomber that looks like an overgrown Ho-229 [sic] and it was being chased by what looks like an XP-55 Ascender. There were also some Nazi armoured cars that looked rather slick and streamlined, only on screen for a few seconds so not too sure. This should be a fun summer movie to switch off the brain and enjoy!”

Allied intelligence ascertained well in advance the locations of the supreme Nazi weapons facilities, including the exact factories and their production capabilities but the Allied bombing campaign did not target the weapons complex. For example, while bombs fell in an ostensible attack on the V2 rocket production facilities near Nordhausen on April 3, 1945, the V2 centers were entirely spared: some 8,800 civilians instead died when the bombs hit the town. There was no military significance to these killings, merely eight days before the American troops arrived. This is yet another example of U.S. government war crimes that went unchallenged.

General Eisenhower personally oversaw the exfiltration of over 2000 Nazi scientists — experts in biological warfare, rocketry, munitions, intelligence and psychological operations (torture and propaganda) — to U.S. military and intelligence bases, mostly, but not exclusively, in the continental United States. This mass and secretive recruitment and exfiltration occurred under highly classified programs of the O.S.S. — and continued under its later incarnation, the Central Intelligence Agency. These O.S.S./CIA programs were called Project Paperclip and Project 63. Through the defense and intelligence establishment’s then “Operation Sunshine,” Nazis belonging to the elite ‘Gehlen Org’ — named for Nazi intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen — were exfiltrated into the CIA.

The U.S. Combined Intelligence Objectives Subcommittee (CIOS) was set up early in WW-II and tasked with collecting scientific data on the level of research attained by the Germans in select technical fields and weapons — primarily, at first, concerned with the atom bomb. Some 3000 researchers and engineers wearing U.S. Army and Air Force uniforms were attached to General Patton’s Third Army solely for this purpose, and they converged en masse on the Nazi secret underground weapons complex in Thuringia after the Allied invasion.

Their slogan was: “We take the brain.”

Taranis, an unmanned combat aircraft prototype unveiled in Britain in 2010.

Taranis, designed and manufactured by Northrop Grumman with assistance from Boeing, the B-2 ‘Spirit’ bomber aircraft each averaged US$737 million in 1997 dollars ($1.01 billion today). Total procurement costs averaged $929 million per aircraft ($1.27 billion today), while the total program cost (development, engineering, testing) averaged $2.1 billion per aircraft in 1997 dollars ($2.87 billion today). In 2010, Britain’s scandal-ridden BAE Systems unveiled a new unmanned stealth bomber prototype of its own, Taranis, funded by the people of Britain to the tune of 143 million pounds.

The B-2 has been deployed in Serbia, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan and in the recent illegal war against Libya, yet Hollywood films glamorize weapons of mass destruction, and they inspire young people to want to operate them, no matter the moral or ethical questions, which are never asked. Raining bombs down from the sky is as immoral as sitting in a remote office somewhere far from the actual war theatre pulling some joystick which rains UAV-deployed weaponry down on innocent men, women and children. Pakistan offers an egregious example which has only slightly scratched the surface of the impenetrable western mass media propaganda system.

The film Top Gun offers the premier example of western technological war propaganda and nationalism, completely stripped of all moral and ethical conundrums cast as another contest of good (US) versus evil (them). Captain America (Tom Cruise), to the rescue. Of course, he always gets his girl. It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.

The Brain Drain

The military-entertainment complex comprises a lot more than the sleek propaganda and psychological mind-melts plastered across the big screen in such films. Often there are direct ties between current or past Pentagon or intelligence officials. For example, Captain America is a Paramount Films, Viacom Industries, Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Corp. production (the exact relations between these industrial giants are opaque and fluid).

One Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer director for some 19 years, who  directed the interests of the corporation, was former U.S. General Alexander Haig — the former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army (1973), White House chief of staff under Presidents Nixon and Ford (1973-74), Supreme Allied Commander of NATO Forces (1974-79), and secretary of state under President Reagan (1981-82). While serving MGM, Haig was also a director of the multinational defense contractor United Technologies International (UTI), the parent company of Sikorsky Helicopters, the maker of the Blackhawk choppers of the Pentagon’s Somalia propaganda film Black Hawk Down.

Other highly leveraged corporate ties proliferate. For one example, one of the directors of aerospace and defense giant GE Company, Barbara Scott Preiskel, is also a director of the Washington Post, and she is Senior Vice-President of the Motion Picture Associations of America, New York, NY. You see the Motion Pictures of America cited on every pre-preview trailer. For another example, consider that Lucille S. Salhany sits on the Hewlett Packard board of directors with Philip M. Condit, Chairman and CEO of The Boeing Company, and that Lucille S. Salhany was President of United Paramount Network (1994-1997); Chairman and Director of Fox Broadcasting (1993-1994); and Chairman of 20th Century Fox Television (1991-1993).

Directors of Viacom Corporation (the parent company of numerous other media entities) include media magnate Sumner Redstone, a 1944 Harvard University and 1947 Harvard Law School graduate who served in the “Military Intelligence Division” during World War II. ” While a student at Harvard, he was selected to join a special intelligence group whose mission was to break Japan’s high-level military and diplomatic codes. Mr. Redstone received, among other honors, two commendations from the Military Intelligence Division in recognition of his service, contribution and devotion to duty, and the Army Commendation Award. Mr. Redstone served in the Military Intelligence Division during World War II.”

Redstone’s 2010 annual compensation for Viacom was $35.3 million, while Viacom CEO received the largest annual compensation in America — $84.5 million — while Viacom’s No. 2 director received $64.7 million in 2010.

The U.S. government’s Joint Intelligence Committee, established soon after Pearl Harbor, had the dual mission of providing intelligence advice to the joint Chiefs of Staff and representing the United States in combined Military Intelligence matters with its British counterparts; they were also involved in interrogation operations (torture) against Japanese and German war prisoners. The Military Intelligence Division was also used to coordinate and implement various international ‘deception operations.’

The film Pearl Harbor only advanced nationalistic and patriotic sentiments meant to further indoctrinate and recruit warriors. Starring great white hope Ben Affleck, the 2001 production is rife with inaccuracies and devoid of any serious geopolitical context. The oversimplified plot was purely based on emotion and jingoisms. Even U.S. military historians agreed.

One of the great cover-ups of the World War II era was the U.S. government’s advance knowledge of an impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. However, it seems that U.S. taxpayers needed to be coaxed into another blood-drenched war that would claim the lives of so many aspiring Captain Americas.

But that was not the only big World War II whitewash that Hollywood has massaged for the Pentagon and its corporate allies. While the blockbuster film Schindler’s List also helped recast the hidden history of World War II, it serves other propaganda purposes — favorable to capitalism and the elites who benefit most from it.

Schindler’s List fits neatly into the narratives about the Holocaust that have become industries unto themselves. Remember the wealth that ghetto refugees carried along with them in the film? Diamonds, easily concealed: the state of Israel was born out of the blood diamonds plundered from the Congo (Africa). While the suffering of the Jews in Europe was very real, it is their ‘victim’ status that has been used and abused to shield them against all charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide being perpetrated by Israeli interests in the Congo, Angola, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa, Botswana — its a long list — and the Palestinian territories. (Of course, the same ‘victim’ status has been used, falsely, by the elite Tutsi dictatorship ruling Rwanda today.) But Jewish film director Stephen Spielberg has played a major role in creating war propaganda that suits his personal preferences and private interests in real life. Exemplifying his deep anti-Arab sentimentality, Spielberg was boycotted by the Arab League for having secretly donated $1,000,000 to Israel in 2006 during the second War on Lebanon.

The ‘good versus evil’ dichotomy is often used to inculcate emotionally seated ideas about patriotism and nationalism, and to indoctrinate subjects and citizens, and this dichotomy was profoundly advanced by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals and the post-WW II Cold War propaganda.  Nuremberg and the formation of the United Nations  were nothing more than sham dress rehearsals for the victor’s justice of the international criminal tribunals on Yugoslavia (ICTY), Rwanda (ICTR), the Special Court for Sierra Leone, and the International criminal Court. The fire-bombings of the city of Dresden and Nordhausan (Thuringia), and the atomic atrocities at Nagasaki and Hiroshima all warranted investigation and prosecution for war crimes. Had the American and British and Belgian and French military officials and the monopoly capitalists that backed them been tried in an international court of law by a truly international League of Nations, the world would most likely be a far different place today.

Instead, the prevailing establishment narratives about genocide — born out of the Nazi Holocaust — set the stage for the evolution of deeply manipulative and hegemonic discourses that politicized the international human rights and war crimes arenas. These politicized doctrines have transformed all reasonable definitions and applications of international ‘humanitarian’ law into tools that the most powerful nations use against their ideological, political or economic enemies. Schindler’s List quite neatly fits into the political economy of genocide and the financial and political imperatives of the Holocaust industry, and it’s no surprise to find that corporate executives from Hollywood film enterprises — like Viacom director Sheri Redstone — and are deeply connected to powerful Jewish and Zionist organizations.

And the weapons procurements, productions, proliferation and profits continue to rise.

Norway is a key partner in the ongoing and illegal “War on Terror.” Norway provides a base station (on its home turf) for the U.S. Missile Defense program intelligence and reconnaissance gathering against Russia and its neighbors. Norway is the 14th largest arms importer in the world, and a major exporter, with the highest military expenditures per capita of any country in Europe.

In 2002, Norway sent 18 F-16 fighter-bombers to support the Pentagon’s illegal ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ and the illegal coalition attacks against Afghanistan. Norwegian Armed Forces are involved today in covert ‘counterterrorism’ [read: terrorism] operations with U.S. and British Special Forces in Afghanistan: between 2001 and 2010, Norway had sent over 6938 soldiers who participated in the illegal International Security and Assistance Forces (ISAF) occupation of Afghanistan.

Norway is also part of the international coalition that attacked Libya, in contravention of international law, on March 17, 2011. Norway has six General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jets, and two Lockheed Martin C-130 J-30 tactical transport aircraft, operating against Libya from an air base in Crete. By April 26, 2011, Norwegian F-16s had dropped over 200 bombs on the people of Libya.

The people of Norway are not innocent spectators to the wars their government and troops and intelligence apparatus are involved in. The anti-Arab sentiments in the country are reflected by their global position vis-a-vis the U.S., Canada, Britain, and Israel — the predominant purveyors of Empire. The Norwegian government’s recent shift to stand up against Israel’s war crimes is certainly something to watch.

Imagineering War

In 1999, the University of Southern Califonia was awarded a $42 million grant by the U.S. Army to establish the Institute for Creative Technology (ICT). The ICT “was created to combine the assets of a major research university with the creative resources of Hollywood and the game industry to advance the state-of-the-art in training and simulation.” The ICT is an Army University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). The contract is managed by the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command’s Simulation Training Technology Center (RDECOM STTC).

“At USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), high-tech tools and classic storytelling come together to pioneer new ways to teach and to train. Our goal is to create engaging and effective immersive experiences that shape the future of learning. With applications for leadership, and decision-making, ICT also seeks to redefine the range of skills these experiences can address.”

Sound pretty benign? Check out the page where this text appears and you will see that it revolves around U.S. military agendas. The graphics openly display soldiering and military hardware. One of the main thrusts of interactive simulations is war gaming, a billions of dollars a year industry.

The Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) has enlisted film studios and video game designers and it reflects the extensive overlap between Hollywood and the Pentagon. Officers from the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) sector of the DoD play an integral part in developing these simulations. ICT video games Full Spectrum Command and Full Spectrum Warrior use the Xbox and Sony Playstation platforms. Pac Man, Game Boy and DOOM were all used by the military as training simulation programs.

It is important to truly appreciate the subservient role that the mass media and entertainment industries play in further institutionalizing the American addiction to war and space. It is no anomaly that the Pentagon has sponsored hi-tech ‘brainstorming’ sessions with some of Hollywood’s most celebrated science fiction writers and producers. With a five-year, $45 million dollar contract with the U.S. Army, the Institute for Creative Technology in Marina del Rey (CA) has been tapping the creative genius of John Milius (co-writer: Apocalypse Now), David Ayer (writer: Training Day), Ron Cobb (creature designer for Star Wars films). Hollywood consultants are paid anywhere from $500 to $1,000 a day to dream up new high-tech military gizmos — coming to an Army near you.

It doesn’t take the brawn or brains [sic] of Captain America to figure out that this Pentagon research and development institute facilitates advanced robotic and simulation warfare systems. Drones. That is, robotic killing technologies such as Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (UUVs) and a whole fleet of related warfare technologies.

Early in 2002, U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld added over $1 billion to the fiscal 2003 defense budget request to develop certain Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle (UAV) programs. The DOD invested more than $3 billion in UAV development, procurement and operations between 1996 and 2001; invested $2.3 billion more by 2005 and another $4.2 billion before 2009. According to the so-called UAV Roadmap produced several years ago, the UAV inventory of all the military services was expected to grow to 290 vehicles by 2010. How many are really out there now?

The deployment of drone technologies with bombing and strafing capabilities represents the most egregious American immorality and cowardice — the opposite of everything the Captain America supposedly stands for. There’s no courage involved in the war games environment where some G.I. Joe operates a joystick — hardly any different than masturbation — in some isolated control room far from the killing fields.

Contrary to the propaganda of assurance and accountability ever touted by the Obama administration, the drones are every day deployed to spy on, terrorize, strafe and bomb innocent civilians from Pakistan to Iraq to Darfur to the Mexican border of the U.S.

Farmers working in poppy fields in Balakh, Afghanistan. (© Keith Harmon Snow, 2006)

“Al Qaeda seeks to bleed us financially by drawing us into long, costly wars that also inflame anti-American sentiment,” John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s Office of Homeland Security counter-terrorism adviser. “Going forward, we will be mindful that if our nation is threatened, our best offense won’t always be deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us.”

America will pursue war “in the shadows” Brennan said, “relying heavily on missile strikes from unmanned aerial drones, raids by elite special operations troops, and quiet training of local forces to pursue terrorists… No civilians are ever hurt… And by that I mean, if there are terrorists who are within an area where there are women and children or others, you know, we do not take such action that might put those innocent men, women and children in danger.”

“In the past year there hasn’t been a single collateral [civilian] death, because of the exceptional proficiency, precision, of the capabilities we’ve been able to develop,” said good soldier John Brennan, lying through his teeth. According to a British investigative journalism agency, and countless witnesses on the ground, civilians are routinely killed by drones. Brennan is a veteran CIA operative with a distinguished career in deception and death for profit.

Never explained are the direct connections between drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the poppy (opium) growers who are not on the Central Intelligence Agency’s list of approved growers. The opium trade is used to fund covert operations all over the world — to back our Captain Americas in their pursuit of freedom and truth.

In 2005,  Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld appeared in a Pentagon press conference with Marvel superaction heroes Spiderman and Captain America. The purpose of the Pentagon photo op was to launch a new domestic war propaganda program aimed at active duty troops dubbed “America Supports You.”

Under Donald Rumsfeld and his successor, the Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle sector has grown exponentially, exceeding its own expectations, and the military roles, uses, launch platforms, control rooms and payloads of UAVs — like government expenditures on research, development and acquisition — are out of sight. In 2005, tactical and theater level unmanned aircraft alone, had flown over 100,000 flight hours in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. The United States, Belgium, France, Germany and Israel are the leading producers of UAVs and related weaponry.

These are the Predators and other UAV drones being deployed by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon to bomb and strafe “insurgents” in remote Afghan villages, to patrol and surveil national borders in Israel and Texas, and to “stop genocide” in places like Sudan, where NATO alliance forces — especially the US, Canada, Britain and Israel — are deeply involved in perpetrating war crimes.

For example, instead of offering anything close to the truth about Sudan, the military-entertainment complex’s “Save Darfur” (a province in Sudan) narrative has been based on flagrant propaganda channeled from the Pentagon and intelligence operatives in Sudan, and onto the western English-language press, through mouthpieces like National Security Council operative John Prendergast or the Holocaust Memorial Museum or Smith College English professor Eric Reeves. The ‘Save Darfur’ and ‘Never Again’ sloganeering advances by these propagandists relies accusations (e.g. Reeves) of a “genocidal war against African people’s” ostensibly being committed by President Omar Al-Bashir, whose government is under a Pentagon ‘regime change’ attack.

May the Force Be with You

Today’s battle-fighting environments — often cast in jungles, like Apocalypse Now or Rambo or the post-apocalyptic Mad Max genre films or Predator — are awash in weaponry and mythologized storylines that destroy the links between state-sponsored terrorism and domestic violence, between war propaganda and our complicity in war crimes, environmental destruction and terrorism. The ugly truth is that the ‘universal American soldier‘ is indoctrinated to kill, and to kill ruthlessly, and is not some aberration who went astray of the pack and lost his sense of ‘goodness’.

We see this lone aberration soldier gone awry in the Rambo films, and it is most starkly personified by Marlon Brando’s caricature of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. The film is packed with references to Central Africa, culminating in the bloody death where Kurtz (Brando) exclaims, “the Horror, the horror,” right out of Joseph Conrad’s famous novel on Belgian atrocities in the Congo, Heart of Darkness.

Apocalypse Now is no anti-war film. Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) is a Special Operations assassin with the Pentagon’s Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG). Captain Willard is sent up the Mekong River to deep territory to assassinate a rogue U.S. Special Forces Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, who has gone ‘native’. There’s that theme of rogue U.S. commando again. In fact, MACV-SOG was responsible for covert operations, and sometimes these actually were against U.S. military — but probably against officers and soldiers who opposed the illegal Pentagon or CIA operations and had become ‘liabilities’ that needed to be ‘neutralized’.

The MACV-SOG operations supplemented a ruthless CIA ‘counterinsurgency’ program called ‘Phoenix‘ — an instrument of terror, accountable to no one, a psyop gone mad — that cut like a scalpel deep into the hearts and minds and bodies of Vietnamese civilians in violation of the Geneva Conventions and all reasonable codes of war. Tortures, assassinations, kidnappings, detention for years without trial or survival — ‘neutralizations’ of soldiers, fathers, mothers, supporters, innocent bystanders, friendly agents, entire families and entire villages, that occurred late at night after people went to bed. “Such horrendous acts were, for propaganda purposes, made to look as if they had been committed by the enemy.” And everything occurred behind the smiling faces and democratic assurances — standing up in front of the patriotic Western mass media for photo-ops — of intelligence and defense officials’ lies.

Hollywood cinematography introduced robotic technologies to the general public through the Hollywood Star Wars trilogies — everything from the 1970′s hit TV series The Six Million Dollar Man to the Schwarzennegger Terminator films. Thus we can say for certain where the language and public introduction of the new Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles (UAV) technologies came from — language like ‘drones’, names like Predator and StrikeStar and DarkStar. These films habituated U.S. citizens to an increasingly militarized environment, the physical and social environments of every day life now characterized by rapid technological changes that are occurring at a rate far more accelerated than the rate of human adaptability, and beyond the capacity for any organized social protest.

These major Hollywood productions clearly facilitated the military objectives of “turning science fiction into fact” and it is in the context of the popularity of these films, and the hundreds of millions of dollars dedicated to their production and proliferation, that we can situate the realities of the “death-and-destruction” technologies that were developed behind them. Indeed, the technologies did not appear overnight: the Hollywood Star Wars type films were the chronicles of death foretold. Drones, droids and other ‘futuristic’ robotic systems employed in war zones today include sophisticated gadetry like Robotic Vehicle Trainers and these, in turn, revolve around simulation and gaming technologies.

“The robotic vehicle trainer teaches Soldiers how to operate robots like the Talon, SWORDS and PackBot,” reads the US Army RDECOM Research Laboratory description, “using a virtual environment in the ‘America’s Army’ video game.” RDECOM is the U.S. Army’s Research, Development and Engineering Command, another war-making agency that has a direct relationship to Hollywood.

Simulation centers create the means for remotely piloted killing machines to perpetrate atrocities (war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide) on innocent civilian populations in places where the Pentagon seeks to limit soldier (human) casualties.

While the text explaining what the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) is supposedly about makes laudable (I’m being very sarcastic) attempts to classify their activities as civilian — there is always some civilian benefit, like the peaceful atom and the medical uses of biological weapons — there is no attempt to cover up the fact that this “university research center” is highly militarized and serves the Pentagon’s war-making agenda: it is written all over the ICT web site.

For those traumas and casualties that do occur, the survivors can try to piece themselves — and their relations with their significant others — back together and lead semi-productive lives with the support of Bill Ford — one of the ICT’s trauma recovery simulation coaches. Retired Sergeant Major and Vietnam war veteran Bill Ford is a virtual human who is “based on the personality and experiences of real soldiers and marines.”

Remember that rush of emotion that overwhelmed your body when watching the 3-D simulation of the decimation of ‘Home Tree’ in Avatar?

Hollywood, in conjunction with academic and military research institutions, has honed in on subliminal psychology and ways to more deeply impact and influence human emotion. Avatar was no progressive film, but a deeply compromised narrative with all the same old stereotypes and ideologies of white supremacy and patriarchy, and contrary to commonly held public beliefs, the film helps to inculcate deeply insidious messages that actually enhance the western imperial project of Empire.

That is, Avatar facilitates conquest, and resource plunder, it does not challenge it. It does not challenge the destruction of the earth, and it facilitates the ongoing genocides of indigenous peoples, everywhere. Like Captain America, already is, or King Kong, Avatar became an industry unto itself — complete with Na’vi action superheroes, books, costumes, T-shirts, and other materialistic paraphernalia peddled by Toys R’ Us and other garbage producers.

Enter scientists like Jonathan Gratch, a member of the ICT research and development team, whose research focuses on virtual humans and computational models of emotion. He studies the relationship between cognition and emotion, the cognitive processes underlying emotional responses, and the influence of emotion on decision-making and physical behavior. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, DARPA, AFOSR and RDECOM. DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and AFOSR is the Air Force Office of Scientific Research — two of many amongst the most secretive military-intelligence entities on earth.

ICT’s Associate Director Dr. Stacy Marsella has lead research efforts on a number of technologies, but his most recent work includes “modelling beliefs about others (Theory of Mind) plays in multi-agent based social simulation and the design of virtual humans, software-artefacts that look like, act like and can interact with humans within virtual environments.” Doctors Gratch and Marsella’s accomplishments include development and implementation of the Pentagon requisitioned MRE/SASO warfare systems: the “Mission Rehearsal Exercise” [play MRE Movie Clip] and the Stability and Support Operations [play SASO Movie Clip] training prototypes.

ICT Associate Director Dr. Albert Rizzo’s latest project “has focused on the translation of the graphic assets from the Xbox game, Full Spectrum Warrior, into an exposure therapy application for combat-related PTSD with Iraq War veterans.” ICT director Randall Hill graduated with a bachelor of science degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point and subsequently served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army for six years with assignments in field artillery and military intelligence before getting an advanced degrees in computer sciences (artificial intelligence).

No connection between Hollywood and the Pentagon?

The Marvel Universe

The Pentagon’s public web pages — for all these agencies — are awash in public relations, greenwashing (the Pentagon is the top global environmental polluter) and propaganda (read: perception management) whitewashing their true missions, agendas and record. Hollywood sets the stage by programming the minds of entertainment consumer-spectators.

While Hollywood continues to falsify the consciousness of consumer-spectators through the bombast of 3-D film extravaganzas like Captain America, the other forms of mass media — the information overload of “news” productions, advertising and military-corporate whitewashing — are sure to help finish the job.

Walt Disney Corporation purchased Marvel Entertainment in 2009. Hollywood’s Walt Disney productions are legendary, of course, with such animation films as The Lion King, Madagascar, and Pocahontas — each with its own subliminal themes dedicated to the indoctrination of youth in service to the entrenchment of capitalist interests (values, desires, associations) at a young age.

The indoctrination of children to serve the military-entertainment complex in its operational war theaters begins at an early age. It’s not just the films. Amongst the many commodities being mass marketed by Marvel Industries are a whole line of superhero action apparel for children. You can also get your superaction hero dolls and fleece blankets and T-shirts and underwear.

That’s right, for just $16.50 you can order your superaction hero pajama tops and shorts set on line today and tuck your tiny tot into bed in his Captain America pajamas for a restful night of superhero action associations — influencing the developmental character structure at a deeply subconscious level through dreams — which translate into early childhood indoctrination for weaponry, war and patriarchy. The Lion King, for example, has a deeply anti-immigration message, this crafted over and above the more obvious racial stereotypes and patriarchal themes of male power and dominance that serve the ongoing evisceration of resources from Africa, and the depopulation that attends these. Such animation shorts are filled with mythologizing themes and images that distort the spectator-consumer’s perceptions of reality, underscoring the supposed supremacy of the white societies (the light-skinned lions) and the supposed sociopathologies of people of color (the dark-skinned lion plotting with sniveling and drooling hyenas to leave the ‘spoiled’ badlands and take the good lands).

Never mind the elderly ape with walking stick being the closest thing to a human. While the Pentagon and multinational corporations are engaged in exercises to depopulate landscapes in Africa, we have co-existent and simultaneous the production and mass consumption of racialized animation imagery of The Lion King or Madagascar — and it’s not a whole lot different with Out of Africa either, it’s just different — that inculcates the white consciousness with the un-peopled Africa. This is yet another debasing projection of savagery and bestiality onto African people — and the blotting out of indigenous tribes of East Africa in favor of the mining and tourism interests of white western capitalism, backed by the Pentagon’s new Africa Command, AFRICOM.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Along with these primary western agents of disinformation come the Pentagon’s ‘humanitarian’ entourage, Hollywood actorvists like George Clooney, Mia Farrow, and Don Cheadle, our Captain Americas for Sudan, and Ben Affleck, Angelina Jolie and now Emile Hersch, our Captains America for Congo. Hollywood films that disinform consumer-spectators and whitewash the historical and contemporary realities of western military and multinational corporate interventions in Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda and Congo are spread around the globe through the global cinema distribution complex. These films include The Devil Came on Horseback (Darfur, Sudan); Hotel Rwanda; Black Hawk Down; The Last King of Scotland; King Kong and Blood Diamond.

In the late fall of 2005, the Hollywood film King Kong opened to sellout crowds everywhere. The high-action cinematography and special effects combined with the racy recycled story of Beauty and the Beast to bring home a walloping fortune for everyone involved. Behind the film, however, is a dark forest of conservation organizations, primatologists and public relation firms peddling billions of dollars in so-called ‘conservation’ programs for Central Africa. Behind these conservation organizations, funding them, or working with them directly, are some very interesting corporate species. As you penetrate deeper and deeper into this jungle of surprises, the landscape gets curiouser and curiouser.

The King Kong industry and Kong paraphernalia was peddled at Starbucks and Burger King, but there’s a whole jungle of Kong-related products on sale out there. The King Kong media machine pumped articles into many print magazines, including WIRED, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. Turner Broadcasting (CNN/TBS/TNT) ‘scooped up’ the rights for the television network premier of King Kong from owner-producers NBC/Universal and Universal Studios Home Entertainment peddled the King Kong DVD and King Kong computer games.

Remarkably, there are many real life parallels to the characters and events in the King Kong epic. Included in these are interests connected to Universal Studios. One interesting entity cashing in on the King Kong frenzy is the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGF-I). Behind or partnered with them are a whole troop of multinational corporations whose interest in gorilla conservation appears to be a front for the control and exploitation of Banana Republics — Rwanda, the two Congos, Uganda, Central African Republic, Gabon.

One of these secretive firms, ESRI (Earth Sciences Research Institute), has worked in the defense sector for years, initially focused on supporting defense mapping organizations and advanced terrain analysis and other cartographic military necessities for military base development. “Now as a result of Congressional mandate,” said expert John Day in Military Geospatial Technology, “technology is being deployed into a wide range of warfighter, intelligence and base support programs; and ESRI is playing a leading role in that transformation.”

At the heart of the King Kong tale is the white damsel in distress. Like the Tarzan myth, the sassy white female makes the adventure, and her sexuality is the central draw. Ann Darrow (actress Naomi Watts) makes her Kong debut in a flimsy nightgown and she closes the film in an equally seductive dancing gown. The seductress captures the imagination of the viewers, adding a titillating energy of subliminal sexual desire, but her white femininity is situated in a subordinate role, and her sexual availability is advertised most clearly when the big beast pokes at her. For the spectator-consumer, the titillating advances provoke subliminal sexual emotions.

Like Tarzan‘s Jane, Kong‘s Ann Darrow offers a metaphor for the real life femme fatales of the primate conservation community involved in the imperial enterprise of ‘conservation’ in Africa. A central character is Dian Fossey, the primatologist whose pioneering research on the mountain gorillas of Rwanda led to her murder in 1985. Another is Sigourney Weaver, the Hollywood star who played Dian Fossey in the late 1980′s Hollywood film Gorillas in the Mist. And then there is Jane Goodall, the internationally renowned chimpanzee specialist. More recent femme fatales to enter the fray are Daryl Hannah and Madison Slate.

The buck doesn’t stop there. The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) has a base in an out-of-this-world place called Walikale, in South Kivu province, Congo. The JGI has been involved with militias and land theft, and is indirectly backing extortion, war crimes and genocide in Eastern Congo.

Of course, like the place itself (Walikale), such stories appear completely off the map of establishment media reality — an so they appear as crazy as the people of color, portrayed as drooling tribal zombies, in King Kong.

Black Hawk Down

“And ah, can someone explain to me how Hollywood was dishonest with Black Hawk Down?” said DaMarlboroMan3, commenting on RT’s Captain America video. “We were there to help people and they tried to kill us and we killed a lot of them to defend ourselves. Somalia has no resources we would want unless dust becomes the next big thing on wall street.”

And, ah, DaMarlboroMan3 watches too many Hollywood movies (or smokes too much). Black Hawk Down was an outrageous war propaganda production that completely falsified the story of western occupation and plunder of Somalia. Scandalous corporate entities like Save the Children, and the deceptive spin on the Pentagon’s war machine there, were chronicled in journalist Michael Maren’s expose The Road to Hell.

The early 1990′s crises in Somalia had its roots in the invasion of Western humanitarian aid organizations that occurred steadily as big money and big relief flooded into Somalia from 1981 onward. By the mid 1980′s the aid machine had crippled the local economy and Somalia could not feed its own people.

After a furious political scramble involving Royal/Dutch Shell, Agip and other petroleum vultures, all oil concessions were granted (1989) to Conoco, Chevron, Amoco (BP) and Philips Petroleum. The Pentagon’s Operation Restore Hope was never a “humanitarian” mission: that was the cover story.

U.S. forces killed scores of thousands of Somali people — and a few Captain America wannabees were dragged through the streets to ridicule our American arrogance. The Israeli-American-Ethiopian-Ugandan mission in Somalia today is far more nasty, involving U.S. Covert Ops in war crimes qualifying the US and Israel for the International criminal Court, and the western powers are equally culpable in the massive ongoing famine. So, oil in Darfur, covert operations in Somalia? This is the new, old, ‘humanitarian’ warfare in Africa and Hollywood covers it all up.

Like the representations of the females in Avatar, in the Indiana Jones series, in The Lion King Pocahontas and the many King Kong flicks, the typical Hollywood propaganda film casts females either in weak or subservient roles, or as lusty sex-craved female fatales out to eat every good man alive. In both cases the stereotypical females are overshadowed by dominant male roles, protectors and saviors of all that is good, out to rid the world of the scourge of evil.

The White Male Savior-Slaughterer

Sigourney Weaver appears in Avatar as an older woman scientist who can hardly trot for the scenes where she appears in human form, and so she is recast as a young, nubile, sexually attractive Na’vi avatar. Weaver can’t accomplish what she wants, nor can the other non-white minorities (Latino helicopter pilot), until their dominant white male Jake Sully comes along and saves the day. The crippled Jake Sully is portrayed as an impotent soldier who, like the Six Million Dollar Man, can be made whole again through the technological transformation to an avatar. But even as a paraplegic, Jake Sully retains his white male superhero savior status and all the privileges that come with it, and this status is enhanced and reconfigured — just as Captain America is physically reconfigured — when he embodies a Na’vi, the people his occupying imperialist other-worldly corporate-dominated (earth) society has come to conquer.

Many Hollywood propaganda films promote technological utopia: science and technology are presented as a religion we should all (continue to) worship. The scrawny weakling but omnipotent moral soldier in Captain America is marvelously transformed into a spectacle of masculinity. Not only is he smart, and moral, now he is the super athletic man. In Avatar, Jake Sully goes native with the help of the futuristic technologies of the conquerors (that would be you, me, US). Here is the glorification of science, and the real-time corporate influence (aligned with Hollywood) provides the impetus behind the higher ‘moral’ purpose to save and not bomb ‘Home tree’. Weaver’s scientist character facilitates this medico-pharmaceutical-academic narrative which, translated, means biopiracy and theft of indigenous people’s traditional knowledge, intellectual property, and ways of life. Sounds a lot like genocide, but the film does not leave ANYONE with any greater awareness of the actual genocides against indigenous people’s that are happening while we sit in the theater watching the film.

The story is only slightly different in District 9. The weaponry is futuristic, to the average spectator-consumer’s eye, but the Pentagon has already created weaponry which the general public is almost totally unaware of: directed energy weapons; advanced artificial intelligence systems; nanotechnology; biological weapons; and weather as a weapon. These things don’t just appear out of the blue. District 9 is another film with a deep, dark anti-immigration message, but now the ‘illegals’ and ‘refugees’  are actual aliens from elsewhere in the universe. I saw in District 9 a depiction of a present day state, South Africa, which had fallen from black control under the unseen hand of white corporate control in the near future,” says anthropologist Dr. Enoch Page. “That white control was exemplified in that film by a white male corporate executive who superficially seemed to be a racist bungling idiot, but in exercising his racism against the aliens he got infected with their genetic material and began to morph himself into the physical form of that oppressed alien population. As the man morphs into the other he is, of course, rejected by his own who deem him crazy or at least lost in battle. Consequently, he can only gain safe haven among the oppressed and begins to assist their liberation (but only with the thought of being healed so he can return to his white wife and white life). The total completion of his metamorphosis probably will be the basis for a sequel to that film. So we are seeing in recent films venues for projecting an imagined future in which the strategy of appropriating the physical form of the oppressed becomes the vehicle for a white male hero.”

District 9 builds tension in the spectator-consumer by playing on deep-seated psychological anxieties about bodily fluids and primordial origins of existence. This tension is mapped over all the standard racial stereotyping where the whites — the forces of good — are superior, civilized, educated and rational, and they (we) must protect them (our) selves. In contradistinction, the non-whites — the mixed up crazy forces of evil fighting amongst themselves — are disgustingly irrational, violent, drug-dealing crack-addicted savages (the African warlords in the films) out to get us, or disgustingly insect-like alien prawns, whose biological material is infectious and dangerous to our society, mimicking the Africa disease narratives about ebola and malaria and HIV/AIDS spreading to the uninfected global north. “It is important [to note] that we are seeing in both these films images of formerly colonized people of color who are aiding and abetting the white invasions as fellow Americans,” says Dr. Page. “In District 9 we never see them come to the aid of the aliens. Even the raunchiest Africans engaged in the lowest of trade and behavior racially despise the aliens, while at the same time seeking to gain parts of their bodies to enhance their own sexual and physical powers. In Avatar people of color are positioned more centrally in support of the hero and defect from the cause of the invasionary force along with him but not on their own.”

Avatar went on to become the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing more than US$2.730 billion ($2.8 billion adjusted for inflation) in box-office receipts worldwide. It should be no surprise to find out that Sam Worthington (Jake Sully) also stars in Call of Duty: Black Ops a first-person shooter video game released worldwide on November 9, 2010 for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 consoles, with a separate version for Nintendo DS. Within 24 hours of going on sale, the game sold more than 7 million copies, 5.6 million in the U.S. and 1.4 million in the U.K.

Talking about immigration and plunder of resources and human trafficking, note that Marvel Entertainment director Morton Handel is also a director of American Uranium Mining and Trump Entertainment Resorts. The Trump casinos in Atlantic City exploit Mongolian students, lured into the United States through a U.S. State Department affiliated program, in hopes of experiencing the American Dream, and then forced to accept horrendous working conditions, to engage in survival sex, to be subject to rat infested living conditions and drug dealers and armed gangs. This is the trafficking and slavery side of the war on immigrants, refugees and people of color.

The film Blood Diamond also stars a muscular great white male (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a seductive white female (Jennifer Connelly) who assumes a subordinate role. Here the white savior warrior is again the savior of the other protagonist subordinates [1] first, the white female; [2] second, the African negro and freed diamond mine slave (Djimon Hounsou) who found the big diamond everybody is killed for.

Blood Diamond is packed with overt and covert racial codings that further entrench white superiority and the discourses that proclaim the need for white economic, political and military deployments to rescue/save Africa. “It’s my teekit to geet out of thees God-forsaken continent,” the white South African mercenary hero (DiCaprio) tells his soon-to-be-lover girl.

Blood Diamond appeared at precisely the same time as the diamond industry was whitewashing its bloody operations through the Harvard University-sponsored development of the Kimberley Process — another faux mechanism shielding the true agents of warfare and plunder in Africa through a hegemonic protection mechanism — conquerors policing themselves — that criminalizes anyone who cuts into the profits of the big diamond cartels.

Blood Diamond ends by informing the reader that the Kimberley Process has sorted it all out, when in reality it merely rinses the blood off the diamonds sold in western luxury boutiques. The happy Hollywood ending arrives when the freed slave succeeds in testifying at some faux international court — another euphemistic ‘United Nations’ reference — and the journalist chick (Connelly) gets her story. Both of the subordinate role (white female, freed negro slave) successes relied on the supreme white warrior savior muscle male (De Caprio) who, in the end, is presented as a reformed and moral man, a good man, a martyr.

The Captain America of the savage jungles — themes of darkness portrayed in such films as King Kong — is our Hollywood hero Tarzan, another white Marvel comic action hero of stellar repute, and a popular fixture around Hollywood since the 1950′s. Of course, every Tarzan has his seductive and easily seduced sidekick, Jane.

Tarzan and the Lion Man was set in the Ituri forest in Congo. “It has the makings of a good story,” the publisher wrote, on the book jacket of the 1934 Edgar Rice Burroughs classic. “A motion picture company in the wilds of Africa, two beautiful girls, ruthless Arabs [emphasis added], a half-maniacal scientist, a tribe of gorillas that he has taught to speak English, a coward who looks like Tarzan, and Tarzan himself.”

The whole Tarzan genre set the stage for the historical and ongoing conquest of Africa — led by the Central Intelligence Agency, the French and Belgian and Israeli (Mossad) secret service, the Pentagon and the French Foreign Legion, and the rapacious multinational corporations that have long been plundering and killing on the continent.

In this 2009 AFRICOM image screen-captured from a 'Operation Lightning Thunder' video, the Pentagon forgot to expunge the white pilot.

Hollywood and the Holocaust in Central Africa

Hotel Rwanda covers up the United State’s invasion of Central Africa. From the very first words, where the image has yet to appear and the screen is completely black, the film Hotel Rwanda sets up viewers to think a certain way about what happened in Rwanda in 1994. Here is a story about good versus evil. An ominous African voice is heard, clearly the announcer on a radio program, and he is describing the Tutsis as ‘cockrrrRRROACHES.’ The voice is black and the cataclysm unfathomable, as anyone will tell you, and the black screen underscores the evil darkness of Africa. This voice of terror returns throughout the film to haunt the innocent Tutsi refugees, on screen, and the viewers gripping their seats.

The good guys are the Tutsis, the victims of genocide. They are not killers in the movie: they are never killers. At the end of the film, when a well-attired guerrilla force is shown — the “rebels” of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) — they are rescuers. They are disciplined, organized. They keep a tidy United Nations camp safely behind their lines. They don’t kill Red Cross nurses, or orphaned children, in the film: they reconnect them to their families. They are good men — the forces of good fighting the forces of evil. The Hutus in the standard Rwanda genocide stories are always the bad guys, and they are all bad guys. Every Hutu is a genocidaire. These are Hollywood’s forces of evil.

“Speaking as an Englishman I am often appalled by the blatant propaganda that comes out of Fox News,” said randomsamno9, commenting on Russia Today’s Captain America video. “But on an equal level or perhaps even more so RT is pure propaganda… RT just spends all day bitching about the US rather than giving you actual news. Also ‘The Last King of Scotland‘ may have been a fictionalized account but that doesn’t change the fact that Amin was a real mass murderer rather than a fictional one.”

Oh really? Back in the late 1960′s the big imperialists were alarmed by Ugandan President Milton Obote’s socialist shift. Imagine the audacity of an African leader — who was supported by Israel — actually taking care of his people at the expense of foreign interests! In a new alliance with Sudan, Obote challenged the Israeli backing of southern Sudanese guerrillas from Uganda, armed by Israel to punish Sudan for backing Arabs in the Six-Day War (1967). Everywhere derided as a nasty dictator today, Obote was a truly great African leader who was saddled with false accusations of genocide and war crimes, these actually committed by his enemies.

Idi Amin Dada received training in Israel after Ugandan independence. As one of Obote’s generals, Amin maintained Israeli supply lines to the Sudanese rebels. Backed by Colonel Bar-Lev, the Israeli Defense attache, Amin’s army overthrew Obote in 1971 and restored relations with Israel (severed in 1967). In 1972 Israel refused Amin’s request for tanks, and so Amin expelled Israeli residents from Uganda, severed relations, and forged a pact with Libya. Well, we all know how Washington and the Israelis feel about Muammar Gaddafi — the supreme commander of the Islamic forces of evil, and so Israel and the west blockaded the Amin government, which overnight became a ‘dictatorship’ in western news reportage. Enter and the falsified narrative in Hollywood’s Last King of Scotland.

The real mass murderer is Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president for the past 25 years, but this is the Pentagon’s man. The Last King of Scotland deflects public attention away from the ongoing Acholi and other genocides committed by the Museveni dictatorship, and Museveni is far more bloodthirsty and ruthless than Idi Amin ever was. The early 2009 US-Israeli-Ugandan ‘Operation Lightning Thunder‘ was a massive military failure that led to thousands of civilian deaths in the border areas of South Sudan, northern Uganda and eastern Congo. But I am not even scratching the surface on the Museveni apparatus of terror in Uganda, Sudan, Rwanda, Somalia or Congo. The prisons in Uganda are packed, the people starving, with high maternal death rates, after 25 years of “a model African success story”. All “development” aid to Uganda has been converted into weapons and war.

All of the documentary films about the Uganda/Sudan/Rwanda region — The Devil came on Horseback, Shake Hands with the Devil, Lost Boys of Sudan, Invisible Children — serve a one-sided and essentialized agenda: the advancement of Empire. Enter the Pentagon’s PR machinery — each year pumping thousands of “news” stories into the New York Times and Washington Post and National Public Radio — and the pictures of U.S. troops holding smiling African children orbuilding  schools in desert villages. Enter the great white actorvist hero Ben Affleck and the corporate sustained catastrophe in the Congo that his debonair Hollywood image and sleek Stars-and-Stripes privileges shield us from seeing.

Do western war superhero films like Captain America influence children? Exit the matrix, jump back to the most deadly conflict in the world: Congo. The western human rights nexus likes to shake its trigger-happy fingers at foreign armies, rogue militias and uncooperative governments, and the Pentagon and State Department, with the help of USAID, are quick to accuse them of everything and anything the US, NATO and Israel are also doing. Massacres, torture, mass rape, spreading land mines across the land, and, of course, child soldiers. Well, look at the image of the child soldiers below, a photo snapped by your soon-to-be-killed foreign correspondent in eastern Congo. There’s no mistaking the red-white-and-blue superhero graphic splashed across one soldier’s T-shirt, and the twelve year-old children with AK-47′s and cigarettes didn’t pick these fruits of western progress out of the trees of the King Kong forests nearby.

“The recruitment of young people to military service in African conflicts has provoked a unanimous moral outcry from the West,” writes Danish academic Dr. Kasper Hoffman. Child soldiering is by no means new or restricted to Africa, Hoffman notes, since children aged 16 can bear arms in U.S. military, and the West engages in a disingenuous hegemonic discourse where the use of child soldiers is always equated to disorder and moral corruption in Africans. But Hoffman found that child soldiers in Congo were heavily influenced by Hollywood superaction hero films.

The West likes to point its trigger-happy fingers at African conflicts, like the wars in Congo, where many child soldiers — called ‘kadogos‘ — joined militias of their own accord to defend their country against foreign invaders. The West use accusations of child soldiering, immorality, tribalism and irration spirit magic to demonize the highly organized and nationalist Mai Mai militias, and most all violence is blamed on the Mai Mai or the remnants of the Hutu Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) that fled the illegal RPA invasion in 1994. Mai Mai do not fight with any sense of purpose or morality, according to arrogant Western agents and the corporate mass media, themselves complicit in plunder and genocide in Congo — the Mai Mai worship spirit mediums and they rip out and eat the bloody hearts of their victims and they walk backwards into battle wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads (Newsweek, 1996).

Hoffman found that Mai Mai militia members fight out of a sense of pride, nationalism and a highly ethical sense of home-defense. They have seen entire villages wiped off the face of the earth by the U.S.-backed Rwandan (Kagame) and Ugandan (Museveni) troops and they know very well that clandestine cells of the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) are perpetrating terrorism there. The RPA/UPDF employ ruthless and unaccountable false flag operations and pseudo operations (covert psychological operations developed by British Maj. Frank Kitson during the Mau Mau insurgency on Kenya) to disguise their origins and intent.

The Global War on _____  (please fill in the blank).

Western governments and United Nations, and the human rights, development and ‘humanitarian’ industries — the merchants of death that profit off violence — all play along with Western media reports that generally whitewash reality to exonerate Rwanda and Uganda and the corporations involved in eastern Congo (Banro, Moto Gold, DHL International, OM Group). More expedient to the mass media whitewashing of war in Congo, every Congolese Mai Mai and Hutu soldier is accused of mass rape, this offering another essentialized narrative convenient for conquest, and one that is peddled by tabloids from the New York Times to Wired to the BBC, from CNN to OPRAH to Democracy Now. Even the rape of men is excluded by the international discourse which confines all discussion about war in eastern Congo to the manipulative discourse about rape of women.

“The influence of Western action films emerges clearly in the care of the self among the kadogos Mai Mai,” reports Dr. Hoffman in The Ethics of Child Soldiering. Popular culture influences the forms of violence, slang, gestures, and body language of the militia members that re-enact the attitudes and actions of ‘freedom fighter’ heroes. They aren’t just mimicking Captain America: the kadogo internalize the deeper ethical constructs of freedom and resistance and apply them to the formation of their self and strength of purpose. The Rambo (Stallone) and Commando (Schwartzenegger) films were especially important in offering a sense of purpose and ethical direction to sustain their unending struggle.

“In these films the heroes are subject to grave injustices and are made to suffer immensely before they vanquish their enemies against all odds through the use of spectacular violence,” wrote Hoffman. “The sublime qualities of the hero such as manliness, bravery, initiative, innate sense of justice, strength, speed, power, muscularity, warrior-skills, tactical abilities, etc., insure him of victory in the end.”

Of course, the heroes in these films are the white saviors, the good men, the super-ethical-anything-in-the line-of-duty-goes-soldiers, the Captains America and Captains Norway.

Breivik in a Navy Seal type scuba diving outfit pointing an automatic weapon.

“I grew up in the 80′s and read a lot of comics — not Captain America but i know the story line,” says CasinoHijack, another commenter on the Russia Today Captain America propaganda video. “Looking back at my old comics I saw a ton of guns, violence, and every woman superhero looks like a stripper. Now that I’m older and more aware of the world we live in I see the propaganda in those comics and how it helped getting young men to fight for something they are not truly aware of. I educate kids all the time of the negative side of comics and superheros. Now I’m their super hero.”

Super heroes, super heroines. We have become saturated by media that seeks to create super duper dumbed-down spectator entertainment warfare consumer conquerors who plead ignorance, rationalize our supposed non-participation in war, and even fight back against all who suggest that we might be more culpable than we want to believe. Kill them and feed their bodies to the starving masses in Somalia…

“The military-industrial complex, contrary to initial expectations, did not fade away with the end of the Cold War,” wrote Tim Lenoir, in the excellent research paper All But War is Simulation. “It has simply reorganized itself. In fact, it is more efficiently organized than ever before. Indeed, a cynic might argue that whereas the military-industrial complex was more or less visible and identifiable during the Cold War, today it is invisibly everywhere, permeating our daily lives. The military-industrial complex has become the military-entertainment complex. The entertainment industry is both a major source of innovative ideas and technology, and the training ground for what might be called post-human warfare.”

Sadly, post-human warfare prosecuted by western military institutions and their highly armed proxy forces involve real human beings on very real battlefields. What has not evolved to match the technologies themselves are the moral and ethical standards by which these post-human battles can be seen to be inhuman, fostered by machine thinking, cold warrior killing. This is the all-too-omnipotent man that the military-entertainment complex has created — the man whose psyche is grounded in absolutes about god versus evil themselves informed by nationalistic propaganda themes based in fear, hatred, difference and the false beliefs about superiority.Nationalism, patriotism, subliminal sexuality, female sexual control, and the destruction of matriarchal power all go hand in hand, as this translates to the anchoring of authoritarian beliefs in the basic character structure of the human beings in everyday technological society.This is fascism. “‘Fascism’ is the basic emotional attitude of man (sic) in authoritarian society,” wrote Dr. Wilhelm Reich, in his potent 1933 work, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, “with its machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical view of life…. It is the mechanistic mystical character of man in our times which creates fascist parties, and not vice versa.”We can name several of the most egregious manifestations of this post-human fighting man. We saw him in Avatar — no, not Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), he was the ‘good soldier’ of the Captain America variety whose goodness and humanity is projected into the consciousness of the masses by the military-entertainment complex and its video games and other industrial war-making offshoots. It is the antagonist, Colonel Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the supreme destructor who takes out ‘Home Tree’ and everything else that gets in his way.

We can be sure that Quaritch will be back, more lethal than ever, along with the corporate world government Imperial earth forces — Avatar 2 and Avatar 3 are already in production and, as we have seen over and over, imperialist forces never die, they only come back to finish the job. The early (white) conquistadors to arrive in the Philippines were slaughtered after the indigenous people were abused and their goodness exhausted. Ditto the first (white) Puritans to land on Turtle Island (North America) and the first (white) settlers who became the subjects of umpteen Cowboys and Indians films.

Dances with Wolves was no radical critique of western military conquest and genocide: the narratives about ‘good’ soldier / ‘bad’ soldier, ‘good’ white man / ‘bad’ white man, and whitey-goes-native all reared their ugly heads. The white hero also saves a white woman in this film — though she too first had to undergo a transformation to native. The good-versus-evil / savior-versus-savage films all entrench racial (white) superiority and they are coexistent with the overwhelming racialized propaganda about Christians versus Pagans, Christians versus Moslems, Christians versus Arabs, Israelis versus Arabs, Jews versus Arabs, Arabs versus black Africans, civilized people versus savage others, Christianity versus Islamic Fundamentalism.

So what are the real life consequences of all this warfare gaming, warfare simulation, warfare propaganda, racial propaganda, anti-immigration propaganda, technological propaganda, and weapons proliferation?

Well, most of the actual atrocities occur out of sight of the western media, because the media corporations are directly tied to the profits and perks of the power structure and the imperial project falsifies our consciousness about victims and killers. Soldiers do what they do because they can. They can get away with it because they are taught to. Their training, their education, the dynamics of the groups they are surrounded with, the messages in the mass media, the entire process of enculturation within and from a society premised on the supposed permanence and necessity of war, conquest and private profit.

The international legal term thrown around by ‘human rights’ and ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrines is impunity. People are not being held to account for their wrong actions. Wrong actions come from wrong thinking, wrong education, wrong messages about virulence and domination and entitlement encoded in a zillion different ways in the mainstream cultures of technological civilization. Such wrong thinking infects and grows in the minds of people increasingly isolated and disconnected from their true inner nature, their loving and compassionate selves and from the earth. Every now and then somebody is called out for their white supremacy — some Bronx Catholic Seminary principal or other — but most of the racial profiling and extrajudicial executions committed by police go unchecked by the system, unnoticed by the (white) public, and the perpetrators are often enough rewarded or celebrated.

The fears and insecurities are compounded by the many forms of class warfare and structural violence that We The People are increasingly subject to. Meanwhile the very same elites producing and disseminating the disturbing propaganda — disguised as harmless entertainment — are benefiting from the manufacture of consent and the structural violence that insures their elite economic status. More and more ordinary people, all over the world, are watching as their lives and loves are being stolen from them. We can see the contradictions that surround us, and we are many.

While presenting good versus evil narratives to justify bombing the coasts of North Africa, there is little discussion of why there are so many people, mostly people of color, seeking refuge and survival in the economically advantaged countries of North America and Europe. Refugees are presented as aliens, devoid of context or agency, people who ostensibly seek to steal our jobs and steal our land and steal our sons and daughters and steal everything that we have worked so hard to build. There is little discussion or awareness of why or how the rich First World countries got so rich or came in ‘first’.

At its roots, the film engages in class warfare against the average middle and lower class spectator-consumers of the United States, and it facilitates imperialist conquest against people everywhere else, based on a hierarchical order of ethnicity that values white people and devalues people of color by degrees and categories and labels.

On immigration and refugees and displaced peoples, the military-entertainment and their corporate ‘news’ partners inculcate emotional and irrational beliefs grounded in fear, confusion, associations, falsified history, stereotypes and simplifications. The manufacture or production of ‘refugees’ and ‘displaced peoples’, or the political economy of the misery industry that feeds on them, are never examined. These things falls under the rubric of charity and philanthropy and… with all the ‘good’ things we are doing for those people over there, the least they could do is stay put and show some appreciation.

That is: “I think RT is stretching on this one” said MarcFaust. “The REAL story is the fact that it was renamed “The First Avenger” to other parts of the world because the USA is SO fucking horrible. How dare the US do whatever it takes to quell terrorism and donate billions across the world with aid… fucking Americans!”

These films distill the context and truth of the world down to nothing of value, save to perpetuate suffering and further institutionalize injustice. It is all summed up by that moment in Avatar when the white conquerors are force-marched (very politely!) onto their aerospace weapons platforms and sent back to earth sans unobtanium. The losers look for sympathy. It’s as if they expect more privileges, even as losers.

Of course, almost every Hollywood film has some brand recognition and product placement. For example, how many products do you see advertised in the ‘anti-war’ film Across the Universe? And what about product placement and brand recognition in The Matrix? How many products do you see there? Neo gets a cell phone delivered by Fed-X. But what else? Take a hard look, and then look again, and then again. How many?

So, coming to the end of this little not-so-comic tale, we can at last examine the violence perpetrated within the dominant cultures themselves — in North America, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Norway — the so-called thriving democracies. The psychic propaganda assault — of patriotism, nationalism, xenophobia, racial superiority, male domination, subliminal sexuality, consumerism, individuality and desire — saturates our society with irrational emotional beliefs and psychological insecurities. Fear is a driving force, and testosterone its sidekick. These are the effects inculcated by the propaganda films of the military-entertainment complex.

When the story of the Oslo massacres first broke, mass media outlets of all stripes, including Russia Today (“Oslo-Terrorist-Norway-Jihadist“), were quick to broadcast the typical western fear-mongering propaganda about Islamic jihad.

Naturally, the global assault on our consciousness, where everything Islam is suspect, where Israel is above reproach, has not spared Norway. Not every Jew is a victim, and many are perpetrators. Not every Christian is a fundamentalist, and many are. Not every Hutu is a genocidaire; many Tutsis are. Not every Tutsi is a victim; many Hutus are.

Of course, the killing sprees perpetrated by individuals are no different then those perpetrated on the battlefield. In one case the mass murder is sanctioned by society, and in the other case society is victimized by it.

You get what you pay for. We get what we pay for. Perhaps that’s why we have more killing, more bloodshed, more conquest, more rape, more white supremacy of the Anders Breivik and Tim McVeigh variety. These men are products of the societies in which they lived. Both men apparently believed themselves to be superheroes, called to rid their societies of the scourge of evil, to assault a tyrannical federal government out of control, and both brought other innocent human lives to a definitive end.

And so we have Timothy McVeigh, who appears to be a fine example of what our society teaches people they can do. Norwegian nationalist Anders Behring Breivik — now described as an aberration, a Christian fanatic, a psycho, fascism behind a mask of morality — appears to be another. McVeigh might have been part of a government conspiracy; he claimed to be a martyr in defense of U.S. government tyranny, but he was a Gulf War veteran socialized by our permanent warfare society and he probably suffered from serious post-war traumatic stress disorder. Breivik saw himself as a martyr who would spark a revolution, “a real European hero”, “the savior of Christianity” and “the greatest defender of cultural-conservatism in Europe since 1950,” and he called for a patriarchal revival. The two men held some similar beliefs. They are very much not alone in their fanaticism. They are Captains America, by any other names.

Make Love, Not War

Why did Anders Breivik target the young people? Vulnerability, for one: they were an easy target and the most vulnerable to attack. He targeted them for political currency: they symbolized multiculturalism and waved flags calling for Palestinian liberation and truth and equality. If I had any heroes in this story, it would be these kids. They didn’t do anything wrong. Were these kids naive? I don’t think so. They stood up for what they believed is right, and good, and just. They believed in working for a better world. I guess they believed in love, and advocated for it. They had something going for them: the bluebird of consciousness.

I mean, just look at these kids — really look at them — and weep.

Some of the younger victims of the Breivik massacre in Oslo, Norway, 2011.

And if you can’t weep, then you are moving too fast, watching too many Hollywood movies, drinking too much coffee, consuming too much New York Times or Economist, chasing after some addiction or other, caught up in meaninglessness, in denial, suffering from collective amnesia or the mass psychology of fascism, and stuck.

Stuck. Are you stuck?

These could be your friends, or your kids. They are not just someone else’s kids, they are now part of our collective responsibility to wake up and stop the violence. To show compassion and tolerance, to sacrifice and to share, to organize for the betterment of all. There’s plenty of information out there on how this needs to be done. What is lacking is the courage and the initiative. What is needed is love, more love, and more love.

Gosh, I can’t think of a single Hollywood movie where love is the motivation for superheroism. We see plenty of love nonsense in the Hollywood war films, white male white female protagonists fall in love, blah blah blah, and in sit-com films like City of Angels or Beyond the Universe, films that ostensibly have nothing to do with war, blah blah blah, but where do we ever get propaganda that peddles love? Where is our U.S. Government Department of Peace? Why isn’t the Dalai Lama speaking out for state-sanctioned acts of love in Iraq, Libya, or Afghanistan, achieved through an immediate U.S. military withdrawal?

Worried about profits and the the destabilization of the YEN and NIKKEI Index, the media is doing damage control to help keep people from flooding out of Japan and further destabilizing the Japanese economy. Given the evidence, the history of disasters and epidemics of disease, reporting that downplays Japan’s radiation threat is criminal.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A., frightened investors are seeking protections and insurances from industry and government. Wall Street is worried. This is getting curiouser and curiouser.

The irony: "art project" photographed in Tokyo depicts humans in states of decay, resembling images of children with deformed limbs born near Chernobyl. © Keith Harmon Snow, 1992

For example, on 20 March 2011, CNN ran a video story, “Facts whisper, fears scream during crises,” where their experts proclaim that fears of radiation are unfounded and misinformation abounds. CNN’s latest nuclear expert — Dan Polansky — calls this radiophobia: an irrational fear of radiation with no basis in fact. Even for the Japanese nuclear workers who are closest to the Fukushima hot zone, says CNN reporter Stan Grant, “radiation might make people sick, but it won’t kill them.”

Meanwhile, CNN describes Dan Polansky as a “nuclear expert”, who “specializes in weapons of mass destruction and knows about radiation.” What they don’t tell us is that Polansky works for the Georgia (USA) Department of Community Health, he studied at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL), and is a recent graduate of Radiological Emergency Planning at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Pretty good credentials, no doubt. Must be telling the truth. [Quack.]

However, LLNL and INEL are two of the Department of Energy and Department of Defense top classified weapons laboratories, both also SUPERFUND sites of massive toxic nuclear waste. Work at national laboratories like INEL and LLNL requires high-level national security clearances: it looks like Daniel Polansky is another spook.

The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) has produced some studies that show some incidence of disease around the Yankee Rowe reactor (Rowe, MA, U.S.A.), which is now decommissioned; but they have also helped to whitewash nuclear (and other) risks of modern day society.

This is indeed very curious.

The Harvard Center for Risk Analysis (HCRA) was founded by John D. Graham and specializes in advocating forms of risk-assessment widely criticized by community groups and legitimate health professionals. The Center gained funds from both industry and government agencies, including nuclear interests like: General Electric, the Edison Electric Institute, Electric Power Research Institute, New England Electric System (at least five nukes on the New England power grid) and Westinghouse Electric. GE and Westinghouse are two of the U.S.A.’s biggest nuke companies, and EPRI is a pro-nuke think tank that has produced propaganda about nukes for more than four decades.

Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis are not the same thing. Harvard School of Public Health supports the nuclear industry and helps to downplay radiation threats at many levels. However, Harvard Center for Risk Analysis is an industry front producing junk science — spurious information posited as science — and debunking truth everywhere in the corporate media.

Looking a little deeper down the rabbit hole we find, for one curious example, that David Ropeik is an Instructor in the Harvard University School of Continuing Education, Environmental Management program. Ropeik is also a former affiliate at the Harvard Center for Risk Assessment (which he says he left in 2004).

According to his own public relations biography advertised on the BAYER CropScience web page [Bayer is the big German multinational pharmaceutical corporation], Ropeik has also worked closely with the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and he “has been interviewed on risk perception by ABC Nightline, National Public Radio, NBC Dateline, ABC 20/20, Fox News, CNN, CNN International, BBC, CBC, CNBC, Voice of America, and dozens of regional radio stations nationwide.”

He has also “taught courses on media coverage of risk issues at the Harvard School of Public Health, the Kennedy School of Government, the Neiman Fellowship Program at Harvard, the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship program at MIT, Boston University’s Program in Science Journalism, the Emerson College program in Health Communication, and to the National Association of Science Writers, the Council for the Advancement of Science Writers, and the Society of Environmental Journalists.”

A long-time member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, David Ropeik is now a private consultant in Risk Perception, Risk Communication, and Risk Management with Ropeik & Associates, whose nuclear clients include Entergy Power Corporation (owns the dangerously unsafe Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station), Edison Electric Institute, the Electric Power Research Institute, the American Nuclear Society, the Egyptian Nuclear Authority, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Nuclear Institute, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (who did a study on the incidence of disease on the radiation ‘pathways’ from the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station), The Veterans Board for Dose Reconstruction, Department of Defense, and etc., and etc., and etc.

“Risk is a subjective affair,” reads the home page of Ropeik & Associates. “It’s not just a matter of the facts, but also how those facts feel. Understanding why some risks feel more frightening, and some less, is essential for communicating about risk effectively, and for tackling the human behavioral aspects of overall risk management.”

As far as the Society of Environmental Journalists, this is just another trade industry group, like any ‘Society of Professional This-or-That’, which maintains deep ties to industry and the media corporations that have censored and distorted the truth about radiation, nuclear weapons and nuclear power. For example, a look at their sponsors and foundation donors quickly leads to a large list of corporate interests, including nuclear corporations.

What a curious world we live in.

Given that there is “so little threat from radiation” in Japan, it is very curious that NBC pulled their entire news team out of Japan. Curiously, it seems that CNN’s Anderson Cooper also pulled out of Japan — and who could blame him! — and is now reporting on Libya from somewhere else (Hong Kong?).

On March 20, 2011, Japanese Officials confirmed radiation food poisoning. “Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said checks of milk from Fukushima prefecture, where the plant is located, and of spinach grown in Ibaraki, a neighbouring prefecture, surpassed limits set by the government… It was the government’s first report of food being contaminated by radiation since the March 11 quake and tsunami unleashed the nuclear crisis.”

Thousands of U.S. military families have also been evacuated from Japan under the U.S. Department of Defense ‘voluntary evacuation’ program initiated because of radiation concerns.

Meanwhile, on March 19, 2011 financial media began reporting that U.S. investors seeing the nuclear industry in Japan crash, burn and melt are frightened of Financial Losses due to Boring Utility Debt.

Curiouser and curiouser.

“Investors are seeking protection from a public backlash against nuclear power producers as the threat from earthquake-damaged reactors in Japan stokes calls by U.S. lawmakers to limit plants in this nation,” reported Bloomberg News.

“Utility companies, typically considered a haven among credit investors because of their resilience in economic downturns, are being punished as Tokyo Electric Power Co. struggles to cool damaged reactors. Environmental groups want limits on U.S. nuclear plants, and Representative Edward Markey is seeking a moratorium on facilities in seismically active areas. Nuclear-power executives say the nation’s reactors can withstand such disasters.”

Behind the scenes, corporations and money markets managers and futures investors are swapping debt portfolios and jockeying to maximize profits and minimize losses.

While the people of Japan suffer the fate of massive radiation emissions — ‘leaks’ is another term invested by the industry and used by media to downplay the invisible radiation dispersed near any reactor — the utility companies are portrayed as the victims. Utility companies are “being punished” and “investors seeking protection” are now the victims.

Curiouser, and curiouser, and curiouser.

Only after the last tree has been cut down… the last river has been poisoned… the last fish caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

– anonymous

For there shall arise false mesiahs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

– Mathew 24

As the sun set over quake-stricken Japan on Thursday 17 March 2011, we learned that four of six Fukushima nuclear reactor sites are irradiating the earth, that the fire is burning out of control at Reactor No. 4′s pool of spent nuclear fuel, that there are six spent fuel pools at risk all told, and that the sites are too hot to deal with. On March 16 Plumes of White Vapor began pouring
from crippled Reactor No. 3 where the spent fuel pool may already be lost. Over the previous days we were told: nothing to worry about. Earthquakes and after shocks, tidal wave, explosions, chemical pollution, the pox of plutonium, contradicting information too obvious to ignore, racism, greed — add these to the original Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine and Death. The situation is apocalyptic and getting worse. This is one of the most serious challenges humanity has ever faced.

The U.S. nuke industry is blaming Japanese experts, distancing itself from the monster it created. Instead of sending nuclear or health experts to assistance the Japanese people in their time of desperate need, US President Barack Obama first sent teams of intelligence agents and FEMA trained military grunts with special security clearances. The Pentagon floated a naval strike force led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan off the coast of Japan: advertised as a ‘humanitarian’ operation, the strike force was repositioned after it was partially irradiated. Can we trust officials and the corporate news media to tell us what is happening in an honest, timely, transparent manner? Are there precedents to the nuclear crisis in Japan? What is the U.S. defense establishment really concerned with here?

Intentional efforts to downplay or dismiss this catastrophe reveal the immaturity of western civilization and some of our most acute human pathologies, including our worship of technology and our psychopathology of denial. The widespread distortion and cover-ups to protect private profits, national and corporate interests, and to fool the people, are unacceptable. Here are some of the deeper whats and whys and hows — some technical issues and the kinds of questions people need to ask — about the nuclear apocalypse unfolding on planet earth. Prayers are not enough. It’s time to call for the resignation of President Barack Obama, to put politics aside, to take personal action to halt nuclear expansion and defend ourselves from our industrial juggernaut.

I know something about technology, and science: I have Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering — with honors — from one of America’s top Engineering schools. Before 1990 I worked in classified programs for General Electric — the maker of the nuclear reactors now irradiating Japan. I worked at GE Aerospace Electronics Laboratories: low-level classified government programs in communications, radars and missile guidance systems for Ronald Reagan’s infamous Star Wars (Strategic Defence Initiative) programs.

From 1990 to 1993 I taught English at Japan’s big Soga Shosa (trading houses) like Mitsubishi and Sumitomo Corporations, and meanwhile I biked the rivers, swam the beaches, hiked the mountains and studied the culture of Japan. Japanese corporations were paving the shorelines and rivers with concrete, sinking giant tetrapods off shore. One corporation even developed these giant rubber bladders — the size of football-fields — sunk offshore, which could be pumped full of seawater to provide a giant barrier against tsunami’s. Of course, the profit margins for these corporations supplying these bags were huge, but I wonder what happened to the technology, if these were ever deployed, and where. For the first 34 years of my life I was in favor of nuclear power. This changed when I saw young people in the United States put their bodies on the line to protest the Watts Bar Nuclear Power Station operations in Tennessee (1994). The commitment and integrity of these young people made me rethink my nuclear bias.

I began my career as a journalist by looking deeply into the rabbit-hole of nuclear power from 1993 to 2000. I visited the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) Public Document Rooms — which have since been closed in many places — where I read thousands of microfilms and scanned microfiche records and excavated document after document in search of truth. I visited nuke plants in New England and industry conferences. I interviewed officials and I attended the most boring and sometimes secretive public meetings with the most stifling and unimaginative bureaucrats and with engineers (like me) so dry they squeaked. And then I reported on regulatory corruption, technical failures, undemocratic initiatives to betray the public trust, and the accumulating radiation and nuclear poisons.

Humanity now faces a deadly serious challenge coming out of Japan — the epicenter of radiation. Intentional efforts to downplay or dismiss this catastrophe reveal the immaturity of western civilization and some of our most acute human pathologies, including our worship of technology and our psychopathology of denial. The widespread distortion and cover-ups to protect private profits, national and corporate interests, and to fool the people, are unacceptable. Here are some of the deeper whats and whys and hows — some technical issues and the kinds of questions people need to ask — about the nuclear apocalypse unfolding on planet earth.

The Arrogance of Humanism

“I repeat, there was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors,” wrote Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Dr. Joseph Oehmen on March 13. “By ‘significant’ I mean a level of radiation of more than what you would receive on — say — a long distance flight, or drinking a glass of beer that comes from certain areas with high levels of natural background radiation.”

So begins a recent U.S. business sector article titled “You Can Stop Worrying About A Radiation Disaster in Japan — Here’s Why,” published four days after the earthquake struck in Japan. It has already proved false. Properly understood for what it is — a childish, myopic, arrogant attempt to belittle the truth and influence public opinion — the article provides an apt example of the rampant industry disinformation that is sweeping aside rational and compassionate and precautionary assessments with irrational jingoism, simplistic emotional appeals, and wrong-headed thinking. The post went viral and was republished widely.

How do we define apocalypse?  EARTHQUAKE + TSUNAMI  + AGED NUKE PLANT  + LOSS-OF-COOLANT ACCIDENT + PLUTONIUM + FIRES + DISINFORMATION + GREED + DENIAL + FEAR + POLITICS = APOCALYPSE.

How many nuke plants are involved? We don’t really know. Not that we have not been told, we have. There are six reactors at the Fukushima site, one reactor at the Tokai nuclear facility and three reactors at the stricken Onagawa nuclear complex. There are toxic chemical spills, petroleum refinery fires, gas fires, dangerous debris and human pathogens from the thousands of dead people and animals. The place is an apocalyptic nightmare, to be sure, but from the beginning the most important facts regarding the status of the nuclear pants and their components, their functioning or failing systems, the operability of the control rooms or integrity of the reactor containment structures, were being denied to the public. Now we are seeing some damage control by the U.S., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the media.

It is simultaneously as though we are believed to be incapable of even the most rudimentary understanding of what is going on, while also being denied the truth in keeping with more than sixty years of secrecy and denial by the cult of the atom and its incestuous cult of intelligence.

The question is: what can we believe to be true? Look at the photos of the explosion. Are we stupid enough to believe that no radiation has been released from this reactor’s primary or secondary containment systems? On Wednesday March 16 we were finally told that Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) had ordered its remaining staff to evacuate areas of the Fukushima plant after radiation levels spiked and plumes of white vapour “were seen pouring from what authorities identified as [emphasis added] the station’s No. 3 reactor.”

The language about white vapors “seen pouring from what authorities identified as the stations No. 3 reactor” does not inspire confidence that ‘authorities’ had any clue about the status of things. Indeed, they are not in the control room, obviously, or anywhere near it, or anywhere near ‘the station’s No. 3 reactor’ because they are standing back trying to identify what they are seeing, to see what is going on, and where it is going on. The reactor’s are too hot: this is radiation: this is the nightmare scenario we were told could not happen. Radiation is contaminating air, soil, ocean, people.

The “You Can Stop Worrying” “article” first appeared as a reader’s comment posted following the Business Insider journal story Japan Death Toll Climbs Astronomically As Nuclear Crises Intensifies, which was itself a republished and retitled New York Times feature of Monday March 13. At first glance, the two Business Insider stories couldn’t be further apart in their general themes: “You Can Stop Worrying,” which translates to, calm down, don’t get hysterical, pay no attention to those anti-nuclear fanatics who think that even microwave ovens will kill you, versus the “Death Toll Climbs Astronomically” feature, which for all practical purposes we can translate to “Holy shit, brother! Run for your life! Duck and Cover!”

However, both stories serve as part of the unraveling global media disinformation campaign about the ongoing nuclear catastrophe in Japan. The primary imperatives of this campaign are economic. In other words, most of the reportage out there about what is happening in Japan — so far — has been anchored in western epistemological frameworks based in money, greed, private profits and loss. The loss should not be interpreted to mean that people (mostly we are talking about people NOT affected by the apocalypse in Japan) care about who lives or dies, but rather that their primary concerns are their financial balance sheets, their corporate images, their personal retirement portfolios, and the fall of the Nikkei Index and Dow Jones trading they drool over.

Sadly, the attitudes of many “news” writers (and their readers), government officials, energy consultants, corporate executives, nuclear experts and technicians, western humanitarian relief professionals (such as World Vision careerists), or of environmentalists for nuclear power –  like scientist James Lovelock — and many other people who, for one reason or another, have had something to say about the nukes crisis in Japan, or about how Japan’s nuclear misfortune can never become a Chernobyl, or how Three Mile Island didn’t kill anyone, or why the events in Japan, no matter how alarming, should not be allowed to interrupt the “nuclear renaissance” touted by U.S. President Barrack Obama, or something about the beauty of some nuke somewhere else, are all based in self-interest, not the altruistic and compassionate concerns of all humanity, of environmental stewardship or the preservation of all life on earth, but in a self-righteous, arrogant and ignorant selfishness of the kind that author David Ehrenfeld elaborated in his monumental work, The Arrogance of Humanism.

Japanese are technical geniuses. The rail system and subways were precise: you could set your watch by them. In 2003, their advanced magnetic levitation Shinkansen bullet trains performed at 581 kilometers per hour (361 mph). If the Japanese can’t do, no one can. Yet today Japan is on fire — the epicenter of deadly radiation now emanating out of that sizable island. This is not about Japan, folks, or national borders: its about all of us, everywhere.

Spent Fuel Pool Fools

While the absence of cooling water facilitated the nuclear crises in Japan, most likely some major reactor components (proven unsafe) also failed under the seismic stresses of the 9.0 quake. Key components likely cracked or shattered. The tsunami and huge aftershocks advanced the chaos. These factors were complicated by the loss of offsite electrical power (an electrical BLACKOUT), the failure of emergency diesel generators, and the subsequent loss-of-coolant (water).

Embrittlement of nickel-based superalloys that comprise reactor internals was flagged as a major safety issue as early as the 1960s, yet such problems were bureaucratically dismissed, covered over, buried in paperwork and regulatory studies produced by the NRC (“NUREG” documents), and ignored. Intergranular stress corrosion cracking of BWR core shrouds (the core shroud is next to fuel rods deep inside) is another major safety issue in GE designed BWRs built by Hitachi at Fukushima, and these plague every BWR reactor in the U.S.

We don’t know, however, and for many days we were offered the standard industry refrain: no need to worry, no threat to public health and safety. BWR core shroud cracking (NUREG-1544), reactor pressure vessel cracking (NUREG-1511), embrittled components and aging (NUREG/CR-5939), cooling system failures (NUREG/CR-6087), reactor containment isolation systems failures (NUREG/CR-6339) — all thoroughly documented.

The redundancy and ever-touted ‘defense-in-depth’ systems failed at Fukushima. All over the U.S. such systems have been routinely disabled to minimize electricity-generating outages, increase output power and maximize corporate profits. There are as many possibilities of failures outside what we have been spoon-fed — the official sequence of events — as there are dead people.

Amongst the most troubling and most deeply underplayed questions of the entire crisis concern the Fukushima Spent Fuel Pools. These basin are packed with tons of irradiated fuel rods that need to be cooled. One of the major postulated accident scenarios involves a Loss-of-Coolant Accident (LOCA) to the reactor core, but a LOCA event can also occur with a spent fuel pool. It has. Fires and explosions in Japan. The Spent Fuel Pools at the six Fukushima reactors are NOT inside primary containment. They are exposed. Burning. About to burn.

Reactors No. 4, 5, and 6 at Fukushima were shutdown when the earthquake struck. After the water drained and the spent fuel became exposed, the pool at reactor No. 4 caught fire, and continues to burn, as of Thursday March 17, releasing massive amounts of radiation into the environment. The status of the other six spent fuel pools at Fukushima is unknown. A courageous U.S. journalist Rachel Maddow explored the spent fuel pool issue with a former government official. The most important, critical point made by Princeton professor Frank Von Hippel occurs at minute 14:19 — where Rachel Maddow talks over him: these are LONG-LIFE RADIONUCLIDES being emitted from the spent fuel pool(s). Isotopes of cesium: Cs-137 has a half-life of 30 years and will be around and hot for decades.

How much disaster are we talking about? The atomic bomb that exploded at Hiroshima created about 2000 curies of radioactivity. The spent fuel pools at Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant (U.S.) are said to hold about 75 million curies. There are six spent fuel pools at Fukushima, but the numbers of tons of fuel rods in each have not been made public.

The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) did the math: If Fukushima’s Reactor No. 4 operated for 35 years and produced 30 tons of irradiated fuel per year and each ton is equivalent to 24 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, then each fuel pool could contain on the order of 24,000 times the amount of cesium-137 produced by the Hiroshima bomb, if all the produced irradiated fuel remains in the fuel pool.

Nuclear stupidity No. 1: the Fukushima reactor buildings are square (not circular) and had to absorb the force of the tsunami wave straight on. Stupidity No. 2: six reactors clustered too close together. Stupidity No. 3: no shoreline protection against a tsunami. Stupidity No. 4: reactors sited on earthquake faults. Stupidity No. 5: assumptions and calculations proving that the reactor, prior to its construction, could withstand anything that nature threw at it. Stupidity No. 6: it didn’t begin in Japan: the industry, with all its corruptions, false assumptions and technological hubris, was born in secrecy in the United States of America.

Stupidity No. 125: spent fuel pools are packed too tightly, as is well-established by industry documents, for economic reasons, discarding safety concerns. Stupidity No. 458: the Spent Fuel Pools at Fukushima are suspended up high inside the reactor buildings secondary containment — the same buildings whose roofs are blowing off! Are we to believe that the massive explosions that were captured on film, and others that were not, did not damage these elevated time bombs?

How many stupidities do we need to admit before we admit that it can happen in the United States as certainly as it can happen anywhere else? Imagine those courageous Japanese nuclear workers at Fukushima — sacrificing their lives! — trying to save their families, Japan and the rest of us from our unprecedented stupidity!

During World War II we called them kamikaze: soldiers and pilots throwing away their own lives for the sake of their nation. Well, these heroic men and women get my respect now.

There is an ocean adjacent to the Fukushima complex, and yet the reactors and fuel pools cannot be kept cool. Impossible. The huge heat sink necessary to cool the melting fuel is not available. This is not about earthquakes and tsunamis — it is about loss of off-site power, backup generators and emergency systems that occur in a blackout. Do electrical outages and blackouts occur anywhere else? Blizzards? Tornadoes? Hurricanes? The world is seeing more and more extreme and unpredictable climate. Claims that a serious nuclear ‘accident’ cannot happen in the U.S., Europe or Canada are false, and nuclear industry knows it.

A Long History of Deception

Like the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the International Atomic Energy Agency, Japanese officials have a long history of covering up ugly nuclear realities. In a recent WikiLeaks diplomatic cable, politician Taro Kono, a high-profile member of Japan’s lower house, told U.S. diplomats that the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (MITI) — the Japanese government department responsible for nuclear energy — has been “covering up nuclear accidents and obscuring the true costs and problems associated with the nuclear industry.” In 2002 “the chairman and four executives of TEPCO, the company that owns the stricken Fukushima plant, resigned after reports that safety records were falsified.”

Such singular but remarkable events follow a pattern of wholesale U.S. cover-ups that define the industry as secretive and criminal, and they involve shoddy equipment, human incompetence, unsafe designs, inadequate safety measures, and economic decisions that have occurred since the very beginning of Japan’s nuclear power era — which itself was born out of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with U.S.-made weapons of mass destruction.

In the 1960′s, TEPCO planned to build a reactor outside Kashiwazaki city: nuclear officials told the local community, for example, that radioactivity from the plant would increase rice cultivation and the coloring of the carp (a delicacy): seven reactors were eventually built there. In June 1973, radioactive waste water leaked from a storage tank at Fukushima’s reactor No. 1. In July 1974, Kansai Electric asked Westinghouse Corporation to replace the steam generator of one of Kansai’s two Mihama reactors after Mihama I experienced four major shutdowns in less than four years.

In September 1974, following the emergency shutdown of 21 of the then 55 U.S. reactors due to radioactive leaks at the Illinois Dresden Reactor No. 1, Japanese officials inspected their six Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), similar to the Dresden BWR, and they found similar defects at Fukushima I and Hamaoka. Ditto, 1975: emergency shutdown’s in the U.S. prompted inspections that discovered Emergency Core Cooling System  (ECCS) problems at the Fukushima I and Tsuruga BWR reactors. Japan’s Mihama reactors were plagued with radioactive ‘leaks’ and faulty equipment that prompted Kansai officials to demand a refund from U.S. contractor Westinghouse Corporation. The Mihama Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) have been scrammed and shutdown and leaked. The accident at the Mihama Reactor No. 3 on 9 August 2004 was previously considered Japan’s worst nuclear accident: there was no tsunami, and no earthquake.

Japan’s fleet of white elephant nukes only grew more problematic. From April to September 1977, six of Japan’s fourteen reactors were shutdown. Japanese corporations joined with Westinghouse and General Electric in the 1980′s to export their destructive technology to other countries, mostly targeting the so-called Third World. Before 1979 there were some 25 reactors under construction or completed in Japan, and until last week there were 55 operating reactors. In 2006, GE and Hitachi Corporation teamed up to create three joint venture nuclear companies to expand nukes in North America.

One fact is certain: we have already been massively lied to about a massive and still unfolding nuclear disaster. The radiation releases from some four to six nuclear reactors in collapse are already known to be excessive, described by reputable experts as “worse than Three Mile Island but not as bad as Chernobyl.” It may be worse than Chernobyl yet.

Additional radiation has been reported at the Onagawa complex, but this was explained away as wind-blown radioactivity from the Fukushima complex. Meanwhile, in the same reports, officials said that radiation was not leaking from Fukushima, or it was minimal, and there was no cause for alarm.

After several days of lies and distortions and official government censorship, reports appeared under the headlines Japan radiation leaks feared as nuclear experts point to possible cover-up. Reports also began citing partial meltdowns of nuclear fuel rods. The threat of meltdown is real, it has been happening to some degree, and it has already occurred far more than we have been told. The physical and thermonuclear states of materials and systems and the spread of radioactivity at Japan’s reactors remains shrouded in disinformation and silence.

Clean and Green Propaganda

Of course, technology gurus and corporate executives and financial consultants are hysterical, claiming there were no deaths from Three Mile Island and that deaths at Chernobyl are exaggerated by the mass media. These claims are false. The new book, Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment provides irrefutable evidence of massive loss of life.

“The book is solidly based — on health data, radiological surveys and scientific reports — some 5,000 in al,” says journalist Karl Grossman. “It concludes that based on records now available, some 985,000 people died, mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident. That is between when the accident occurred in 1986 and 2004. More deaths, it projects, will follow.”

James Lovelock, author of the renowned GAIA Hypothesis, is a celebrated environmentalist for nuclear energy peddling nuclear power as a clean, green, renewable energy source of the future. However, Lovelock has a long history working for NASA — the outer-space division of the Pentagon — and is deeply enmeshed in the western epistemological framework.

Commenting on Japan’s nuclear crisis, Lovelock said that people were ‘prejudiced’ against nuclear power unreasonably. “It is very safe,” he said. Chernobyl, for instance, was “an idiotic mess-up that could only have occurred in the Soviet Union”, and according to UN estimates had killed only about 56 people. More people are routinely killed in oil refineries and coal mines, he pointed out.”

James Lovelock’s Chernobyl statement should immediately discredit him as a quack: Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is unwilling to go on record claiming anything less than many, many deaths. Further, Lovelock’s comment about the ‘idiotic mess-up’ by Russians is inherently racist: the Russians were the first to put a satellite (Sputnik) into orbit, for example, and NASA collaborated with the Russian MIR Space Station, which broke all kinds of records.

Lovelock suggests that nuclear reactors are our only hope to curtail global climate change, and that this may involve, for example, the ‘suspension of democracy’. However, democracy has been long since suspended for many of the earths people and species — forced to live and die with our burgeoning wastes, consumption and exploitation. Lovelock’s analysis is patently false — contaminated by his own inability to see beyond his privilege and self-interests.

Not convinced? Lovelock has also reportedly stated, wrongheadedly: “One of the striking things about places heavily contaminated by radioactive nuclides is the richness of their wildlife. This is true of the land around Chernobyl, the bomb test sites of the Pacific, and areas near the United States’ Savannah River nuclear weapons plant of the Second World War.”

Tell this to the mutant babies, weak-spined and deformed children from the Chernobyl killing zones, chronicled in Russian filmmaker Vladimir Kuznetsov’s, “While We Are Still Alive, and to the people of Bikini Atoll whose stolen island is officially acknowledged to be highly contaminated. Savannah River is another SUPERFUND site.

The nuclear power cycle involves disease, despair and death from the uranium mining to daily operations to the nuclear waste “‘dumping’. Uranium mines in Niger that have built France’s entire nuclear complex are toxic wastelands spreading radiotoxins across north and sub-Saharan Africa. The Tuareg and Toubou nomads have been completely shattered

by the confiscation, exploitation and irradiation of their lands by the nuclear complex. Native Americans continue to suffer massive epidemics of disease, contamination and confiscation of lands in the Secret Nuclear War at the American Ground Zero: the nuclear complex has compounded the native American genocide begun in 1492. Daily contamination releases into water, soil and air occur at every operating nuclear reactor in the world. There is no ‘disposal’ of deadly nuclear toxins that now exist to perpetuity, and yet wastes are typically dumped on poor communities like Barnwell, South Carolina, or native American lands.

Out of sight, out of mind: nuclear poisons are colorless, odorless, and deadly.

Start Worrying, Here’s Why

The writing You Can Stop Worrying About A Radiation Disaster in Japan — Here’s Why is packed full of disinformation and technical jargon, masked as scientific expertise, meant to confound, confuse and scientifically impress the un-technical (concerned) reader. The author at first did not identify himself, which is a tactic many people use so that they do not have to take responsibility, or worry about being held accountable. Appended as a sort of disclaimer to the article that morphed out of the comment we find the statement: “Since posting this, we have learned that it was written by Dr. Josef Oehmen, a research scientist at MIT.”

In the nuclear arena, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is known for the infamous Nuclear Reactor Safety Study (WASH 1400), chaired by MIT nuclear scientist Norman P. Rasmussen (commonly known as The Rasmussen Report), that whitewashed the massive flaws and safety failures of a burgeoning, secretive, incestuous nuclear power industry, even while it exposed them to some degree.

According to a Nuclear Information and Resource Service fact sheet on Fukushima, in 1986, Harold Denton, then the NRC’s top safety official, told an industry trade group that the GE “Mark I [BWR] containment, especially being smaller with lower design pressure, in spite of the suppression pool, if you look at the WASH 1400 safety study, you’ll find something like a 90% probability of that containment failing.”

Produced at the height of the United States’ anti-nuclear movement in 1974, the Rasmussen Report downplayed the risk of nuclear accidents and polished the image of a technologically diseased industry. The stridently pro-nuclear MIT has spent billions of taxpayers dollars on secretive and highly biased research programs of all things nuclear. MIT is also a known hotbed of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with a revolving door from MIT to government to the CIA.

“I have been reading every news release on the incident since the earthquake,” wrote MIT’s Dr. Josef Oehmen in his initial post of March 12. “There has not been one single report that was accurate and free of errors… By ‘not free of errors’ I do not refer to tendentious anti-nuclear journalism – that is quite normal these days. By ‘not free of errors’ I mean blatant errors regarding physics and natural law, as well as gross misinterpretation of facts, due to an obvious lack of fundamental and basic understanding of the way nuclear reactors are build and operated.  I have read a 3 page report on CNN where every single paragraph contained an error.”

Turns out Dr. Oehmen’s report had so many errors, and yet was so widely regurgitated, that it was taken over by MIT’s nuclear experts. Dr. Oehmen employs the standard ruse of claiming that the press, which can very easily be shown to as stridently pro-nuclear as MIT itself, is instead plagued by “tendentious anti-nuclear journalism — that is quite normal these days.” He then explains nuclear power (wrongly) arriving at last at his definitive statement that, “I repeat, there was and will *not* be any significant release of radioactivity from the damaged Japanese reactors.”

“The first ‘type’ of radioactive material is the uranium in the fuel rods,” wrote Dr. Oehmen, “plus the intermediate radioactive elements that the uranium splits into, also inside the fuel rod (Cesium and Iodine). There is a second type of radioactive material created, outside the fuel rods. The big main difference up front: Those radioactive materials have a very short half-life, that means that they decay very fast and split into non-radioactive materials. By fast I mean seconds. So if these radioactive materials are released into the environment, yes, radioactivity was released, but no, it is not dangerous, at all. Why? By the time you spelled “R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E”, they will be harmless, because they will have split up into non radioactive elements…”

It takes about five seconds to spell R-A-D-I-O-N-U-C-L-I-D-E and it takes about the same amount of time to read a chart (below) which shows the actual lifetimes and half-lives of radioisotopes that people need to be concerned about today.

Not only does Dr. Oehmen intentionally misinform people about the inherent design flaws and potential failures of nuclear reactors and subsystems, but he knowingly disinforms about the potential for serious health consequences and the radioactive contaminants that are typically released during a nuclear power accident. While millions of people in Japan are suffering the personal psychological terror of a possible nuclear holocaust, the fears and horrors of life and death from a natural disaster, starvation and thirst, and radioactive poisoning. Dr. Joseph Oehmen — safe in Boston Massachusetts — has been been boasting about his blog post — equally popular with people who hate it and love it — which spread like a virus on the Internet.

During nuclear fission, the uranium from the fuel rods splits into many radioactive fission products that can then escape during a nuclear power ‘event’. These include dangerous Noble Gases (xenon and krypton); Hallogens (including iodines and bromines); Alkali Metals (including cesium 137); Alkaline earths (including barium 133 and strontium 90) and the elements Tellurium and Ruthenium.

Some fissionable elements decay rapidly and are inconsequential during releases, but some decay into other, more deadly nuclides. The most dangerous nuclides have half-lives in days (I-131 = 8 days), years (Cs-137 = 30 years) or centuries (Pu-239 = 24,000 years). Half-life is the time it takes for one-half of the material to decay — lest we forget that the other half is still present.

All of these fissionable products are potentially released and they have varying degrees of half-lives, mobility, migration and toxicity depending on factors like atmospheric conditions, temperature of the reactor core and operating capacity (megawatts) at shutdown, and the presence of coolants. The most dangerous of these are iodine 131 (I-131), cesium 137 (Cs-137), strontium 90 (Sr-90), cobalt 60 (Co-60) and plutonium 239 (Pu-239). All of these negatively affect the human body and all of these have been released in nuclear power ‘accidents’, during venting of radioactive steam or flushing of radioactive water, and other ‘events’. Another deadly isotope which seems to consistently ‘escape’ from nuclear power sites is cobalt 60 (Co-60), half-life 5.2 years. Co-60 accumulates and migrates through steam generator tubes and other secondary coolant processes, in core shrouds and reactor pressure vessels, and many of the other components of nuclear reactors whose histories of failures are thoroughly documented.

Is radiation leaking in Japan? Yes and no. The term ‘leak’ suggests air squeaking out of a balloon. In Japan we have leaks, here and there, but we also have explosions, fires and other phenomena that create massive radioactive emissions. To say ‘leak’ is to downplay what is happening. The balloons in Japan have burst: primary containment has been breached at Reactor No. 3 and at least one spent fuel pool is burning up. With the walls blown out and roof blown off, it seems at least one other spent fuel pool is gone or going.

Nuclear advocates deride and dismiss public ignorance about radionuclides like, for example, the noble gases. Nuclear advocates frequently state that both xenon and krypton decay and disappear in a matter of seconds or minutes. What they don’t tell us is that these isotopes decay into daughter isotopes that are extremely deadly emitters. Many credible physicians, scientists and other nuclear experts — free of the self-interests of nuclear profits, academic sponsorship or career advancement — have outlined the absence of epidemiological studies of certain radionuclides emitted or flushed at nuclear reactors. Dr. Helen Caldicott has elaborated the detrimental health effects of the noble gases xenon (Xe) and krypton (Kr), and she notes that these have appearance hundreds of miles from reactors believed to have emitted them.

• Xenon 137, with a half-life of 3.9 minutes, converts almost immediately to the notoriously dangerous cesium 137 with a half-life of thirty years.
• Krypton 90, half-life of 33 seconds, decays to rubidium 90, half-life of 2.9 minutes, then to the medically toxic strontium 90, half-life of twenty-eight years.
• Xenon 135 decays to cesium 135 with an incredibly long half-life of 3 million years.
• Large amounts of xenon 133 are released at operating reactors, and although it has a relatively short half-life of 5.3 days, it remains radioactive for 106 days.
• Krypton 85, which has a half-life of 10.4 years, is a powerful gamma radiation emitter.
• Argon 39 has a 265-year half-life.

“Other dangerous noble gases include xenon 141,143 and 144, which decay to cerium 141,143 and 144,” Dr. Helen Caldicott reports in Nuclear Power is Not the Answer. “According to the National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP Report No. 60) these three cerium isotopes,which are beta emitters,are abundant products of nuclear fission reactions and have moderately long half-lives. They bio-concentrate in the food chain, and they irradiate the lung, liver, skeleton, and gastrointestinal tract, where they act as potent carcinogens.”

On March 14, Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) outlined the risks from Japan. Iodine 131 migrates in air and is known for causing thyroid cancers, especially in children. Strontium 90 causes different cancers. Cesium 137 concentrates in bone and causes leukemia. Microscopic particles of plutonium 239 cause lung cancer if inhaled and Pu-239 kills instantly in any sizable dose. Areas contaminated by plutonium will have to be abandoned — as happened at Chernobyl.

“Since 2010, Fukushima Daiichi Unit-3 reactor had been using mixed-oxide fuel (also called plutonium fuel or MOX),” PSR reported, in Japan’s Nuclear Crises Worsens, “which is even more dangerous to the public than a severe accident with uranium fuel. Plutonium fuel contains plutonium and other very toxic actinides that would increase the number of resulting cancers. Current reports say that this fuel has been exposed to air.”

“Pressure in at least two of the reactors have reported to be well above normal levels,” continued PSR, “and the reactor operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company, released some of the pressure by venting radioactive vapor from the containment structure.  In addition, the radionuclide cesium has been reportedly found outside the reactor, which indicates that there has been fuel damage.”

The proponents of nuclear power have used all kinds of disinformation and tactics to protect the industry — compelling the nuclear complex to arm guards to ‘protect’ these secrets and to ‘protect’ civilian reactors. It is not only ‘terrorists’ that the nuclear establishment seeks to protect us from: the armed guards and classified documents are to prevent the public from learning the truth about the destruction of documents, the disappearing of evidence, the falsification of reports and records, the calculated fudging of risk and safety assessments. There have been countless exposes, such as Daniel Ford’s 1982 book The Cult of the Atom: The Secret Papers of the Atomic Energy Commission.

False Statements and Premature Assurances

The original New York Times story, “Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief Efforts Intensify” (retitled by Business Insider, commented on by Dr. Joseph Oehmen), follows the patterns of the media and government begun on DAY ONE, wherein authorities offered false assurances, premature evaluations, and outright lies. These officials — and the media that quoted them — repeatedly reiterated that there was no cause to worry. At first, no radiation was released, we were told, over and over, even though, admittedly, there were some slight reactor problems here and there. Then there were explosions, but still the radiation levels were normal, or, well, maybe there was a puff of steam, which we were told was a hydrogen blast, but radiation monitors showed nothing, and there was no threat to the public health or safety.

The Japanese Government soon dispatched health and rescue teams dressed in white moon suits and breathing through respirators and hauling around geiger counters to measure radiation levels in frightened children, but still, no radiation was released, they chanted, no cause for alarm, the media reported. A handful of citizens reported to the hospital showing signs of radiation poising, but still there were ‘no serious radiation concerns’, officials were everywhere quoted, or else what little radiation was released was compared to what you might get riding on a school bus in the sunshine. While evacuating thousands of people in the 20 kilometer zone (12 miles) around Fukushima, on the one hand, the government continued to tell people that the public was not at risk, on the other, and the media continued to report the lie, as they have always done, and still do, with radiation emergencies in the United States.

For example, on November 23, 2009, a radioactive contamination at Three Mile Island led to a Reuters news report titled Federal Officials: Radiation Leak At Three Mile Island No Threat to Public Safety. Like the ‘news reportage’ coming out of Japan, the Three Mile Island leak story was bereft of any discussion, analysis, counterpoint or critique from anyone. Journalists who collaborate with the western English-language news-consuming media have no comprehension of the technological issues, the industry cover-ups, the deceptions, the bureaucratic inertia or the radiological poisons produced and the concomitant epidemics of disease clustered around nukes. They have swallowed the industry slogans and green-washing for so long that their capacity to provide comprehensive, informed, investigative reportage is less than zero. Hence we find innocent [sic] people like CNN’s Anderson Cooper (360) reporting from 100 kilometers north of Fukushima and then freaking out and running for their lives from the invisible killer: radiation. Meanwhile, CNN cuts back-and-forth from Cooper to Jim Walsh — ‘our nuclear expert and CNN contributor’ — who arrogantly reassures the increasingly anxious Anderson Cooper that everything is under control and the blasts and white smoke are of no concern.

“We had an explosion,” MIT’s Dr. Jim Walsh reports, the Boston, Massachusetts skyline and the Prudential Center skyscrapers glimmering brightly behind him. “It turned out that explosion did not compromise the [nuclear] core facility,” he guesses (minute 29). Walsh immediately betrays his speculation a few minutes later (minute 59).

“Hopefully [emphasis added], it’s just the outer structure, and has left unaffected the reactor, and unaffected the containment vessel. Because if it were to affect those things…uh… that would be bad news…”

“The subtext here is Should I Get Out of Here?” interrupts the alarmed Anderson Cooper, in the live on-the-air broadcast. Of course, from this point on the western press increasingly focuses the public’s attention on the trials and tribulations and death-defying escape of the courageous [white] investigative reporter, Anderson Cooper.

“I hear you Anderson,” responds expert Jim Walsh, chuckling. “I want to err on the side of caution for you here, Anderson.” Walsh is barely able to contain his laughter as he sells Cooper out. “Uh, ah, my guess is that you are O.K. But I don’t want you to sue me if I am wrong. But, uh, I’m inclined that you’re O.K.”

“There have been release of..uh..uh…I guess a gas,” Cooper continues, “and correct me, I flunked science… There have been releases out over the ocean…why were they doing these controlled releases?”

Dr. Jim Walsh then pontificates that radiation releases that ostensibly drift out over the ocean — releases questioned by the ill-prepared and uneducated Cooper — are ‘mildly radioactive’, unwanted but not dangerous, in any case, that they are being screened for dangerous radonuclides by the Japanese reactor experts, and “it’s not going to be a major health threat.”

Nonsense! Here is a simultaneous catastrophe beyond human comprehension: At least six nuclear reactors in various states of collapse, out-of-control, and in partial meltdown, and at least one even more deadly spent fuel pool overheating and burning, amidst the apocalypse from the original Richter 9.0 earthquake, the Richter 5.0 and 6.0 aftershocks, the Tsunami, the massive death toll, the lack of emergency vehicles and spreading radioactivity, the fires, the melting Spent Fuel Pools — they are not “screening” radioactive releases which, in any case, are now uncontrolled.

Of course, according to his own biography, CNN’s nuclear consultant, Dr. Jim Walsh, an expert in international security and a Research Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Security Studies Program (SSP) — which also shares U.S. special forces as ‘research fellows’. He is published and selected as the chosen expert by the major U.S. and European media. Dr. Jim Walsh is the former Executive Director of the Managing the Atom project at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — one of our Department of Energy SUPERFUND sites, deep down the dark [nuclear] rabbit hole. Dr. Jim Walsh is another government spook.

For another example, “[T]he most urgent worries concerned the failures at two reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant,” the New York Times wrote, in Death Toll Estimate in Japan Soars as Relief Efforts Intensify, “where engineers were still struggling to avert meltdowns and where some radiation had already leaked. An explosion at one of the reactors on Monday did not appear to have harmed it, Japanese officials said.”

In one sentence we are told that a nuclear meltdown may be imminent, and in the next sentence, same paragraph, Japanese officials assured the public (the New York Times backed them up) that an explosion occurred but the reactor was not harmed. Is this believable? When the Japanese nuke experts took the drastic measure of pumping seawater into the reactors they knew that the reactors would be ruined forever. Given the economics of such a choice — billions upon billions of Japanese yen destroyed forever — we can infer that the situation is beyond grave: the Fukushima area is now a permanent sacrifice zone: people, wildlife, land has been sacrificed to the Gods of nuclear technology.

We have no evidence of harmful radiation,” deputy Cabinet secretary Noriyuki Shikata told reporters after one of the recent reactor building explosions.

Environmental activists in the area of the Fukushima reactors began to cry foul after finding that radiation monitoring stations were not operating. At the top of the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) Monitoring Website it said “monitoring goes on around the clock year round” and at the bottom it said “THIS SYSTEM IS CURRENTLY SHUTDOWN.” Activists believed that TEPCO was downplaying radioactive releases. At the same time, TEPCO was announcing that it planned to vent the containment [vessel] to relieve the pressure, which caused releases of radioactivity into the air.

On Wednesday March 16, National Public Radio reported that “the chief of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that all the water is gone from one of the spent fuel pools at Japan’s most troubled nuclear plant, but Japanese officials denied it.” Of course, National Public Radio has been heavily subsidized by the nuclear power industry and has consistently advanced the nuclear industry agenda.

More nonsense: Radiation from Japan’s troubled nuclear reactors has virtually no chance of reaching the U.S. — the West Coast, Alaska or other locations — the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Tuesday March 15. (Note that they don’t want to disturb the tourist industry, so they say nothing about Hawaii.) The statement from the NRC said that “the ‘small’ radiation releases so far [sic] from the Japanese reactors has been blown out to sea, away from populated areas.”

On Wednesday March 16, the United Nations Comprehensive Test Ban treaty Organization reported that a radiation plume from Japan nukes would hit Southern California late Friday. Of course, health and NRC officials say it poses very little risk.

Distancing U.S. Nuke Industry from Japan

NBC News on Wednesday evening (March 16) ran several short ‘news’ clips about Japan’s nuclear crises. One of these was clearly intended to distance General Electric and the nuclear Regulatory Commission from Japan, a sort of betrayal of the culture of secrecy and their historically incestuous relationship. Why? To perform damage control, improve investor confidence, assuage public fears of a similar catastrophe at one of the 110 reactors in the U.S.

The NBC broadcast began by pointing out that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has advised U.S. citizens who are within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of the Fukushima reactors to evacuate or stay indoors. The U.S. set a higher standard, and the news went on to promote the idea that Japanese officialdom cannot be trusted, but U.S. officialdom can.

Then the NBC News reporter, Lester Holt, was shown being scanned for radiation after returning from the Sendai area: no contamination on his body, but his “shoe bottoms [soles] contained slightly elevated amounts of radiation, but of no danger to us,” he said. Again, the standard tactic of reporting that contamination has occurred — this time it is on his shoes — but that it is of no danger. Furthering the myths about radioactivity and its deadly means of spreading disease, the shoe bottom problem was nothing a little soap and elbow grease couldn’t fix. And so, later in the hour, they showed the shoes being scrubbed and everything being returned to [business as] normal.

NBC followed the news tidbits about radioactive shoes with pictures of Fukushima reactors — buildings with their roofs blown apart — accompanied with assertions that there is a POSSIBLE breach of containment at the Fukushima Reactor No. 2, and that a breach of Reactor No. 3 containment vessel is CONFIRMED.

Cut to the U.S. Congress, where NBC brings us a very, very short clip from a special Senate hearing held on Wednesday March 16. Suddenly the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is awake, and they care, and they are telling an equally awake and suddenly concerned U.S. Congress that they believe that Japan has covered up the extent of the nuclear disaster.

“Radiation levels are extremely high,” proclaims NRC chief Dr. Gregory B. Jaczko. The spent fuel pools are dry. Secondary containment at the reactor [No. 3] has been breached, but Tokyo is denying this.”

Finally, NBC informs its viewers, in passing, that General Electric — the designer and salesmen of the GE Mark I Boiling Water reactors that General Electric dumped on Fukushima back in the 1970s — is a part owner of MSNBC. Full disclosure, of course.

Suddenly the ‘news’ shifted to big bold banners flashed across the TV screen in big blue fonts. These banners remind good, tax-paying and law-abiding citizens — good people watching the evening news after a hard day’s work — that GE has reviewed the safety concerns that were previously raised about GE BWR reactors, and so reactors in the U.S. are safe. It was no longer news: it was a public relations ploy, a photo op for GE to improve its image, right out of George Orwell’s 1984.

The latest psychological operation underway is to convince and reassure the U.S. public and English-language speaking world that General Electric is not responsible for what is happening in Japan; that U.S.-based G.E.-designed reactors elsewhere, being of the same age and design, are not going to have the same problems as reactors in Japan. The message is also that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission runs a tight ship, that oversight is comprehensive and thorough, people are doing their jobs, and that the nuclear industry in the U.S. is nothing like the secretive and bungling industry in Japan.

While the message is racist at its [nuclear] core, nothing could be further from the truth. It can happen here. San Onofre. Diablo Canyon. Vermont Yankee. There have been all kinds of warning signs. It won’t be a tsunami, on the back of an earthquake, or maybe it will. It will be a BLACKOUT scenario of some kind, as it is in Japan.

In the Congressional Hearing, Senator Barbara Boxer was suddenly awake, and suddenly concerned, and suddenly the U.S. Congress is going to straighten this all out and protect us. The U.S. Senate Hearings began with some grandstanding by U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), whose jabs were directed at Republicans, but in the end she asked a few questions.

The next speaker, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla) reads a garbage speech about how wonderful the NRC is and how safe are U.S. reactors. Our first and foremost concern is safety, he says, and we must continue to develop and site and license and operate new reactors world wide. “We’ve delayed for 30 years now. So I think that we certainly don’t want to slow down, let’s keep going.”

The hearing was completely corporate, one Senate official citing recent New York Times stories that have suddenly awoken them (the Senators) to the many warnings that had previously occurred. My God, we didn’t know. Meanwhile, the NRC Chairman testified that the NRC can not attribute a single death to the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island.

A few months ago, President Barrack Obama signed some 8.5 billion dollar loan guarantees for a nuclear reactor construction project for U.S. nuclear corporation Southern Company, in partnership with the Tokyo Electric
Power Company (TEPCO).

Of course, the Price Andersen Act, passed in 1957, indemnifies nuclear utilities and reactor operators from all lawsuits, financial liability or related responsibility.

Everything suggests that it will be business as usual. Destabilization, destruction, war and catastrophe have always been turned into a big business for the United States of America. Across the ocean tens of thousands of people are protesting in Germany and France and Briton. Here, even the discussion is off course. The wrong questions are being asked and the wrong people are answering them. Instead of talking about limits to growth, the focus is on expansion, profits, trade and so-called progress. Why would this situation be any different? As Senator Barbara Boxer eventually said: we should be humbled.

Perhaps the worst horror of all is that people trapped in the contaminated zones are now being shunned by outsiders, including aid organizations. Radiation fears, mingled with a sick sense of abandonment, reported the Los Angeles Times, as people are afraid to help them. People in the evacuation zones – elders and those without fuel or transport — are getting no help, and no information. We should be humbled. ]]> http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/nuclear-apocalypse-in-japan/feed/ 9 http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/goldman-prizewinner-shoots-up-foreign-mining-firms-in-mongolia/ http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/03/goldman-prizewinner-shoots-up-foreign-mining-firms-in-mongolia/#comments Fri, 11 Mar 2011 16:02:43 +0000 Keith Harmon Snow http://dissidentvoice.org/?p=30401 Predatory capitalism has invaded Mongolia — the savage western hordes overrunning the land — and except for the recent Hollywood-distributed movie spectacle Mongol¹ and colorful travel magazine articles, no one in America hears much of anything about the place. Behind the bells and whistles promoting ‘democracy’, ‘conservation’, ‘human rights’, and a ‘free press’, Mongolia is under attack and the people suffering a world of hurt. The same companies destroying Mongolia are destroying Congo and Canada and everywhere else they appear. Meanwhile, three years after winning the Goldman Environmental Prize — the ‘Green Nobel’ — Mongol herder Tsetsegee Munkhbayar shot at foreign mining operations and thus he is denounced and shunned by the same foreigners who recognized him as a hero. This is a story about the killing of the earth, the killing of truth, the killing of hope — and the killing of the nomad’s way.

In early September 2010, a small band of Mongolian citizens armed with hunting rifles opened fire on gold mining equipment owned by two foreign mining firms operating illegally in northern Mongolia. One of the four armed activists was Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, a 2007 winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize — the ‘Green Nobel’ — awarded annually to pivotal environmentalists taking a stand around the globe.

“With unwavering passion,” reads the National Geographic Emerging Explorers profile of Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, “he inspired thousands of local villagers, held press conferences, organized town hall meetings, lobbied legislators, and led protest marches — mobilizing an unprecedented level of grassroots participation among citizens who previously felt they had no power to shape government policy.”²

Three years after winning the award — and a whole lot more illegal mining and pollution later — Munkhbayar’s little gang of four and their militant actions against the capitalist invasion remain in complete media whiteout in the western press: it’s as if the early September shootings never happened. While the civic activists face possible prosecution and extended jail terms — if not sudden unexplained death — rapacious mining companies further plunder and pollute the land.

The gang of four — Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, G. Bayaraa, D. Tumurbaatar and O. Sambuu-Yondon — are environmentalists from the United Movement of Mongolian Rivers and Lakes (UMMRL), a consortium of Mongolian groups organized to fight foreign extractive industries that have invaded the fledgling ‘democracy’. UMMRL was formed in June 4, 2009 after its predecessor, the Mongolian Nature Protection Coalition (MNPC), dissolved in the spring of 2008. Tsetsegee Munkhbayar — and many collaborators he works with — was pivotal to the creation of both MNPC and UMMRL.

Behind the story of Tsetsegee Munkhbayar is a story of greed, private profit, deception, betrayal, stealth and heartbreak. Just three years after becoming a global hero, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar is today shunned by the people who lobbied to make him a Goldman Award winner, and they have even branded him and his colleagues as terrorists.

“The shooters sent a powerful message,” reported EurasiaNet, the only foreign media outlet to report on the recent shooting action. Puraam, a Chinese firm, and Centerra Gold, a Canadian-operated company, “aren’t welcome in the area, one of Mongolia’s only forested regions.”³ Centerra is also operating in Kyrgyzstan, a former Russian republic where paramilitary government forces repressed public protests and shot hundreds of unarmed protesters in 2010.⁴

Centerra Gold and Puraam Mining are operating on 168 hectares of land and contaminating the headwaters of the Selenge, Mongolia’s largest river, and the source for Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake. The Gatsuur deposit, currently exploited by Centerra Gold, contains an estimated 1.3 million ounces of gold valued at tens of billions of dollars. Centerra’s Boroo gold mine began production in 2004 and yields an average of 180,000 ounces of gold annually.

The locals see very little from the gold taken from their lands. At least 70% of the population lives in absolute poverty. Alcoholism is a national epidemic. The social fabric is unraveling. Human trafficking is a big business. Everything is for sale, or already sold.

“[People] see the 1990s privatization rush and years of harsh weather as a kind of economic one-two punch. Twenty years after Mongolia peacefully threw off 70 years of communism, one-third of Mongolia’s 2.9 million people live below the poverty level of less than $2 a day; even white-collar workers like doctors and teachers can earn as little as $300 a month.”⁵

Mining operations devastate the sensitive Mongolian environment. Photo credit: unknown.

The mining companies arrived in Mongolia hand-in-hand with the international NGOs — euphemistically called ‘non-government’ organizations — and they promote the western imposed ideal of ‘privatization’. The unstated assumptions that came along with this are that freedom-loving westerners are uniquely qualified to teach Mongolians about democracy, human rights, good government and environmental stewardship. Tsetsegee Munkhbayar was patronized and promoted by this framework of foreign intervention.

“According to the promoters,” writes Dr. Joan Roelofs, “the precondition for such benefits is a ‘free market’ economy, or the adoption of ‘neoliberalism’, which entails the privatization of most government functions, deregulation of business, abolition of subsidies and welfare, and availability of all assets (land, TV stations, national newspapers, etc.) for purchase by any corporation, regardless of nationality. Freedom also means that foreigners can start any business anywhere…”⁶

A Hero’s Welcome

“Tsetsegee Munkhbayar spent his childhood herding yaks on the banks of the Onggi, one of Mongolia’s largest rivers,” wrote National Geographic in their Emerging Explorers profile.⁷ “About 60,000 people and one million head of livestock depended on the powerful waterway. But in the early 1990s the essential life source began shrinking, grew contaminated, and by 2001 water that had coursed through his village for centuries had vanished — leaving a rocky riverbed, thirsty herds, and devastated families.”⁷

“The dramatic dry-up was the result of unregulated hydraulic mining that used high-pressure water systems to extract gold and other minerals,” the National Geographic continues. “With more than half the nation’s land granted to mining, the effects were rapid and enormous — 1,500 rivers and creeks were cut off and 300 lakes were emptied. Desperate for drinking water, Munkhbayar’s family and neighbors dug wells. But groundwater was so contaminated that dozens [sic] of local children suffered serious liver damage. Munkhbayar’s son was taken ill, and his mother lost her life.”⁷

As a child, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar dreamed of his hero, Chinggis Khan, the great horseman of the Mongolian steppes, and of becoming a respected herder in the long nomadic tradition of his family. After the heartbreak of seeing his native Onggi River run dry due to unregulated foreign mining, and seeing his people and their herds dying from toxic pollution related diseases, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar took action, organized people, challenged corporations and government.

“The Onggi River Movement he co-founded convinced government officials to expand and enforce mining regulations, pass new legislation, establish citizen oversight for the entire mining process, and start environmental restoration work. As a result, 35 of the 37 mining operations in the Onggi river basin stopped destructive operations, the worst offender shut down, and for the first time in years the river flows again. Munkhbayar went on to unite 11 river movements, creating the Mongolian Nature Protection Coalition, one of the nation’s most influential civic and environmental organizations.”⁷

It wasn’t long before Tsetsegee Munkhbayar was noticed by the experts at the The Asia Foundation, a San Francisco-based ‘think tank’ and ‘advocacy’ organization that meddles, quite deeply, it turns out, in the foreign affairs of ‘repressive’ nations (e.g. China), little island protectorates involved in ‘counter-insurgencies’ (e.g. Philippines), former Soviet Republics (e.g. Kyrgyzstan) and so-called ‘failed states’ where the United States just happens to be prosecuting all out war (e.g. Afghanistan & Iraq).

“On Monday, April 23, 2007, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar of Mongolia, founder of a mass citizen’s movement to protect Mongolia’s national waterways, won a 2007 Goldman Environmental Prize — the largest accolade in the world for grassroots environmentalists,” wrote TAF’s director at the time, Bill Foerderer Infante. “Often referred to as the ‘Green Nobel,’ the $125,000 annual award was established in 1990 by San Francisco civic leader and philanthropist Richard N. Goldman⁸ and his late wife, Rhoda H. Goldman, to recognize outstanding individuals who are combating pressing environmental challenges, and was created to allow these people to continue their important work.”

“The only Asian recipient of the award this year,” Bill Infante continued, “Mr. Munkhbayar, 40 [at the time], was recognized for having successfully pressured 35 of 37 mining operations working in Mongolia’s Onggi river basin — a precious drinking water supply for rural Mongolians — to permanently stop harmful, ruinous mining and exploration activities. Beginning in 2001, and with a volunteer staff of more than 2,000 people, Mr. Munkhbayar’s Onggi River Movement organized multi-province roundtable discussions and launched high-profile radio and television campaigns to build public awareness.”

After winning the Goldman Environmental prize in 2007, activist Tsetsegee Munkhbayar was widely celebrated by western institutions and the English-speaking press for his peaceful and collaborative achievements in uniting nomads and organizing civil society to protect Mongolia’s environment. Tsetsegee Munkhbayar was not just an environmentalist, he was a national hero, standing up for ordinary people and basic human rights, a former herder turned national spokesman who rose out of the backward and repressive social milieu of communism in collapse. Tsetsegee Munkhbayar was rewarded for speaking up — an action unheard of in Mongolian society — in the former Soviet-run communist republic turned ‘emerging democracy’ of Mongolia.

Home, Home on the Range

I found Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and other key river movement activists from around the country at the offices of the Onggi River Movement in Mongolia’s capital city, Ulaanbaatar.⁹ Tsetsegee Munkhbayar is every bit a man deserving of awards.

“In Mongolia it is nonsense to speak about ‘pollution’ when the entire water source has disappeared,” Tsetsegee Munkhbayar told me. “Because of climate differences — it is not like the United States — we have to completely prohibit the use of water in Mongolia.”

The year 2000 saw massive livestock die-offs in Mongolia due to a regional climate (drought) condition called ghang — meaning that water resources in Mongolia were always scarce to begin with — exacerbated by global climate instability. On the great Mongol steppe, killing droughts come with the ghang, where summer sunshine scorches grasslands, and the qara zhud, a snowless winter in a waterless desert. Torrential rains bring floods. The caghan zhud is a blizzard of frozen snowy starvation and the tugharai-yin zhud defines another kind of hunger: too many cattle or horses, thousands of hooves ripping apart the land; too many sheep or goats, devouring every last grass. Winter plunges the mercury to minus 35 or minus 40º or colder — minus 70º in recent years — the killing temperatures. Whole herds vanish overnight, and with them the livelihoods of whole families. Hardest hit were small-scale Mongolian herders. Ghang struck again in the winter of 2010, killing some 8 million (17%) of the country’s livestock.

However, ghang and zhud have now also become big businesses in Mongolia: absent the appropriate land management policies, or the enforcement of laws, in a system rife with corruption, the effects of climate mayhem have been exacerbated by government officials with over-sized herds who capitalize on ordinary people’s losses and monopolize government subsidies, capitalize on western donors’ support, and dominate the best grazing land.

A landlocked nation of steppes and desert, Mongolia is known mostly for its nomadic herders and heroic former leader Chinggis Khaan.¹⁰ With an estimated $1.3 trillion worth of untapped mineral assets, according to Eurasia Capital, a predatory Hong Kong-based investment bank, “the investment world is eagerly eyeing opportunities in Mongolia”.

Capitalism arrived in Mongolia circa 1990 and the people saw more than 60 years of communist propaganda dissolve into capitalist propaganda overnight. Suddenly, everything that was bad was good, and everything that was good was bad. Now they are seeing the reality of capitalism.

The rapid expansion of rapacious profit-driven ecotourism is destroying Mongolia’s culture, people and land: Mongolia is the new wild, wild west, the last frontier. Tourist camps and lodges run by ‘entrepreneurs’ wielding the power of private-profit have sprouted up in pristine wilderness where only herders once roamed. More and more herders are landless and herd-less.

Big mining companies have forced more and more nomads into the sprawling poverty of ger cities.¹¹ Communities of herders that have stood up, peacefully and unarmed, for their environmental and human rights — clean air, clean water, clean pastures — for more than a decade. Mining and logging have dried up or poisoned whole rivers. Increasingly aggressive responses from increasingly desperate communities have been met with paramilitary violence and illegal western-style ‘legal’ actions in the elite-controlled courts.

The poverty in cities takes many forms: homelessness, over-crowding, squatting, slave labor. The urban poor — increasingly desperate and disillusioned — have robbed Ulaanbaatar’s graves of sacred artifacts that were long ago buried with the ancestors: pried open and ransacked, skulls and skeletons spill out of crumbling wood caskets.

Hundreds of street children were living in Ulaanbaatar’s underground sewer systems in the dead of the Mongolian winter: temperatures have plummeted to minus 40º Fahrenheit in cities and minus 70º F in rural areas in recent years. One Mongolian researcher who was involved in a street children study in Mongolia reports that according to the national statistics the number of homeless children in Mongolia reached about 2000 at its highest in the early 1990s, but the number hovered steadily around 1000-1400 annually, depending on the season (in winters some kids returned home). However, the numbers suddenly dropped since around 2006: people explain the drop by the trafficking of homeless children to China to use their body parts (kidneys, livers, hearts) for transplants.

Hundreds of people work each day picking through garbage in the city dumps; many of them live there: western charity and aid groups have preyed on them, promising all kinds of changes, using images of them in fancy brochures to win new grants, but providing no substantive relief.

Preying on the country’s 2.9 million people and polluting the vastly unpopulated land, transnational corporations backed by foreign governments and the western intelligence apparatus are plundering what some call ‘the Saudi Arabia of Central Asia’. The same companies are plundering Mongolia as Congo and Canada, for example, and Western mining works in league with NGOs claiming to be working for Mongolia’s conservation and development and freedom. The ‘intelligence apparatus’ includes the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA): The CIA has a long history of foreign interventions, tortures, drugs-running and covert operations — as bad as anything ever done by SAVAK (Iran), KGB (Russia), or STASI (East Germany).

Our Mongolian Land

“The government has sold out to mining companies and the government is fully under their control,” said M. Bold, a leader of the civic movement My Mongolian Land.¹² A former military commander, M. Bold’s movement attracted many other military — former soldiers disillusioned and disenfranchised by government. M. Bold has often been propositioned to take a bribe. He is worried about his life. “But someone has to speak out,” he said. “If not me, no one will.”¹³

Formed in 2005, My Mongolian Land organized 29 public protests between 2005 and 2008, averaging 7000-8000 people in each; the biggest was 13,000 people. To protest corrupt government deals that completely sold out to Ivanhoe Mines — one of the most notorious western corporations in Mongolia¹⁴ — the group camped out for weeks on the streets of Ulaanbaatar in April 2006. One of the largest mass gatherings in Mongolia’s history, they even burned an effigy of Ivanhoe’s mining magnate Robert ‘Toxic Bob’ Friedland. M. Bold shows me the minerals map of Mongolia — specked and dotted with deposits all over the land.

“Many top Mongolian military officials are linked to corrupt government officials,” M. Bold told me. “It’s not the ‘Democratic Party’ and ‘Communist Party’ fighting each other in Mongolia, it’s actually mining companies fighting for power and control.”

Western corporate lawyers sent by the mining companies have helped create tax and mining laws favorable to multinational corporations. Since 1991, the most progressive mining laws — hard fought for, hard won — have been reversed at least three times for the benefit of foreign extractive industries. However, most of the mining laws were copied over from Canada in 1997. Also helping to impose favorable mining and other laws are big western NGOS.

“As a newly developing ‘democracy’ we don’t know how to control these NGOs and their projects,” said M. Bold. “The money just cycles back to foreigners — advisers, experts, consultants — and these foreigners live very comfortably in Mongolia. There are so many of them. And we don’t know what they are doing.”

The big NGOs in Mongolia include the Soros Foundation, World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and The Asia Foundation — funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), Department for International Development (DFID) United Kingdom, Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and the KEIDANREN.¹⁵ The big conservation and human rights NGOs work to ‘protect the environment’, but only selectively. They protect Mongolian resources from western capitalism’s competitors — from China, Korea and Russia, in Mongolia’s case — and blind the Mongolian people to the truth.

Saruul Avgandoorj is a former school teacher turned green movement activist from Hongor village, next to the mining metropolis of Darkhan — where mining has poisoned the whole village with cyanide. We meet in the ‘Veteran’s Building’ in Ulaanbaatar, where green movement and human rights activists have converged to form an alliance against government corruption and human rights abuses. They are also waging a war of occupation to hold onto the last public meeting space they have.

“Babies have been born with deformities,” Saruul Avgandoorj tells me, “and there have been more than 30 miscarriages. There are many birth defects in cattle too. Around 15 people died — not old people — of the same symptoms.”¹⁶

Problems in this case are caused by the Chinese gold mining company ‘Mich’, partnered with the government of Darkhan and a federal parliamentarian official named Mr. Khayanharvaa. “He poisoned the whole village — the cattle, the humans, the environment, the water,” says Saruul Avgandoorj. “He purchased and manipulated votes [in a recent election]. Now the green movement in Mongolia works in solidarity with human rights groups.”

In early July 2008 thousands of people protested the rigged national elections. Police responded with bullets, massive arrests, tortures, disappearances and secret trials. The western press produced superficial reports, but like most substantive news, the post-elections violence was mostly in whiteout. Saruul Avgandoorj, now the National Green Movement leader, and Arslan Gombosuren, leader of the Mongolian Citizens for Justice Movement, were imprisoned for 14 days in August 2008 for sitting down in a public place with pieces of tape emblazoned with the Mongol word for ‘release’ taped over their mouths.¹⁷

The Asia Foundation (TAF) provided ‘election observers’ — more US government funding — but according to Mongolian civil society organizations the entire show was a farce; even foreign expatriates agreed. Director Bill Infante published TAF reports claiming that the elections were ‘free and fair’ — it’s too bad about the elections-related violence, he said, dismissing it — but a good example of an ‘emerging democracy’ in the making.

“They [TAF] called the elections ‘free and fair’, and they were quoted by all the western newspapers,” said ‘Bayarma Ganbold’, a Mongolian civic activist afraid of being targeted for speaking out, “and they never changed their story, even when it became obvious it wasn’t true. Bill Infante’s wife Bettina started a public relations company with government candidates as her clients. Bill and Bettina created all this propaganda about how wonderful the elections were. But the elections were fixed from the beginning to the end.”¹⁸

In October 2008, some 230 innocent civilians — over 70 teenagers and 130 people aged 19-21 — remained locked in brutal Mongolian jails after police swept the streets in early July arresting 823 people. Mongolian witnesses claim that the post-election ‘riots’ of early July were designed to justify arrests, since they were manufactured by neo-Nazi provocateurs tolerated and promoted by police. More than 72 people disappeared, while official tolls reported only five people killed. Far-right groups in Mongolia are proliferating, and the neo-Nazis allegedly serve as mafia thugs for government parliamentarians and other recipients of western largesse.¹⁹

Nazi memorabilia and statues adorn the walls of a popular bar cafe in downtown Ulaanbataar, speaking to the rise of neo-Nazi factions there.

“The government hid the facts,” said ‘Bayarma Ganbold’, “and The Asia Foundation played along. They were partners in crime. We’ve made the human rights situation known to international human rights organizations — Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International — but they haven’t responded.”

In 2009, Amnesty International published a report blaming the July 2008 violence on ‘riots’: there was no mention of western interests in elections-rigging or neo-Nazi provocateurs who instigated the ‘riots’.²⁰

Those arrested were tortured into signing confessions, denied legal representation, tried in groups in secret government trials, and some were sentenced to 15-20 years in prison. A few people with money were able to buy their way out: one family paid $11,000 to police to release their son, who they quickly packed off to South Korea for safety.

Saruul Avgandoorj described how the George Soros Foundation funds a lot of police projects in Mongolia, projects like the ‘Police and Community Cooperation’ and ‘Achievement of a New Level’. “But we don’t know what they do,” she said. “Many [foreign] NGOs and organizations are working as agents for [corrupt] politicians. No one realizes the catastrophe that is unfolding here.”

Non-Government Euphemism

In the beginning, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar had a very positive understanding about The Asia Foundation (TAF), which had been working in Mongolia since (at least) 1990. One of the local Mongolia partners for the World Bank, TAF helped build the Mongolian Nature Protection Coalition (MNPC), an alliance of eleven domestic civil society conservation NGOs created through the organizational skills and respectful dialog of Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and his colleagues.

TAF financed a variety of Onggi River Movement projects with some $10,000 over four years, 2004-2008. In 2007, the first year of the MNPC, TAF donated $US 120,000 to be shared amongst eleven groups of the coalition; TAF gave $60,000 in 2008.

While pitching a few thousand dollars to the MNPC, TAF was at the same time filling its coffers and funding its foreign salaried professionals with money earned by leveraging the success story of Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and the Goldman prize TAF won him.

In 2006, for example, TAF used the success story of the Onggi River Movement and MNPC to leverage 2.7 million Euros ($US 3,630,000) from the Dutch government for a TAF project titled ‘To Guarantee the Future’.  It wasn’t long before TAF dropped the Mongolian Nature Protection Coalition altogether and the coalition disbanded. By October 2008, the MNPC hadn’t seen a penny of the Dutch funds.

It was the salaried professionals at TAF who nominated Tsetsegee Munkhbayar for the Goldman Prize, and an investigation into their motivations, their ties to big business and other facts, reveals that their agenda is not as pure as they would like the world to believe. In nominating and awarding Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, the people at TAF also wrote the script for his environmental heroism — not out of concerns for the environment, but to guide and shape the environmental movement to suit TAF — and the western corporate template for ‘social activism’ in an ‘emerging democracy’. TAF and their partners and sponsors used Tsetsegee Munkhbayar as a tool in their multibillion dollar plans for ‘shaping’ Mongolian civil society in the interests of western penetration and control.

While pumping money into domestic civic organizations, subversive neocolonial entities like TAF also impose limitations on grant recipients. NGOs affiliated with the MNPC began to notice ‘donor preferences’ — where funds were channeled to the NGOs that remained more silent and acquiescent about government policies, and especially those that did not protest against mining companies. Mongolian NGOs were expected to defer to TAF when dealing with the media, and they were compelled to sign contracts forbidding them from publicly protesting against mining companies or government policies. TAF also worked to determine and control the members of the boards overseeing the environmental coalitions that received TAF funds. Ultimately, river coalition members found they had no control over their own groups: TAF tried to maintain all control.²¹

Indigenous activists like Tsetsegee Munkhbayar are encouraged to ‘cooperate’ and subordinate themselves to powerful foreign NGO entities in a multitude of ways — much like self- and other forms of censorship in the western press model. That they will not cross a certain invisible but tangible line is expected of them. When members of domestic organizations like Tsetsegee Munkhbayar “make ‘noises’ in society they draw[s] public attention to issues which either are not known or were not able to be known previously due to a lack of access to information, secrecy and distance from the areas where issues exist.”²¹

Pictures Worth a Thousand Herds

Due to the influence and subterfuge of western interests, and their lack of accountability or transparency, Mongolian nationals sometimes harbor distorted perceptions. For example, one MNPC activist claimed that “TAF paid one photographer $90,000 to do some pictures in Mongolia. Meanwhile all eleven MNPC organizations, with $120,000 to split between them in the first year [2007], were tasked with buying computers and other equipment and establishing an environmental protection network across all Mongolia.”

Ted Wood claims that the MNPC activist was incorrect (they have not responded to my clarification inquiry of February 2011). “This is complete fiction,” Ted Wood responded [February 2011]. “The only fee I received from TAF for photography was $900 for a 3-day shoot in eastern Mongolia for their ‘Books for Asia’ program.”

Ted Wood would not answer questions about how much money he received from TAF for other projects or purposes. According to his own biography, Ted Wood is a Boulder, Colorado (USA)-based freelance photographer and author “who specializes in natural history and environmental images. He has photographed for Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times Magazine, New York Times, National Wildlife, and Outside,” and his images are copyrighted, marketed and sold through the photo agencies Aurora Photos and Getty Images.

Ted Wood’s photographs from Mongolia were used in part for books peddled by TAF as part of their effort to penetrate Mongolian culture with ‘educational’ materials infused with western values and norms about private profit, individualism, and ‘free-market’ competition. However, not one of the elite US magazines that Ted Wood shoots for have published anything substantive about the western mining, human rights atrocities, or other foreign meddling in Mongolia. Both Ted Wood and TAF capitalize on their relationship: on their ‘Power of a Book: Books for Asia’ web page, TAF promotes Ted Wood; his biography is also listed on a TAF web page. Sponsors for TAF’s international “Books for Asia” program include Chevron Oil and USAID.

“The conclusions you are drawing here are wrong,” Ted Wood wrote me [February 2011], protesting my characterizations of his work. “I donated a couple images to TAF guides concerning citizen rights as they pertained to mining and the environment. I have no control over the editorial content of magazines that license my photos, as you should know. I’ve proposed many mining stories, but mining stories in Mongolia are not at the top of magazines’ lists I’m afraid. The connection you’re making here between my work and the absence of magazine stories is truly unfair.”

In fact, Ted Wood and his journalism colleague Jeremy Schmidt also formed an NGO in the United States called Conservation Ink whose self-advertised mission “is to support conservation and environmental awareness in natural and cultural areas through the production and distribution of educational materials.” The financial sponsors of Conservation Ink include the National Geographic Society, USAID, The Nature Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, The Asia Foundation and — no small surprise — the Ivanhoe [Mines] Community Development Fund.²²

“Many corporations have funds or foundations,” Ted Wood replied [letter of complaint, February 2011]. “Ford, Microsoft, etc. Shell even supports Frontline and PBS, even when the story is anti-oil. The Ivanhoe Fund gave us money to translate our educational materials on Gobi Gurvansaikan National Park for use in Mongolian schools.”

“I suggest you contact Ivanhoe,” said Jeremy Schmidt, co-founder of Conservation Ink, responding to questions about their grant from Ivanhoe Mines, for the original publication of this story. “Alyson Croft was our contact with the Fund at the time of the grant we received. It was 2004 or 2005, a small grant to translate our Gobi map-guide into Mongolian for free local distribution.”²³

Alyson Croft is the wife of Layton Croft, the former Mongolia country director for The Asia Foundation and, as we will shortly see, he was one of Tsetsegee Munkhbayar’s primary advocates with the Goldman Foundation.

National Geographic has used some of Ted Wood’s images. In a single on-line story they did which talks in any detail about mining in Mongolia — a story where they cite Tsetsegee Munkhbayar — National Geographic blamed Mongolia’s mining woes on Chinese and Russian firms (who are certainly doing their share of plundering and poising the land) and on small-scale Mongolian miners — mom-and-pop herder families struggling to eke a living out of the harsh, cruel world that wiped out their herds — and the only hint of any western mining involvement was in a quote they inserted by Ivanhoe Mines spokesman Layton Croft.

Mining companies are always downplaying the size of mineral reserves, and western mining companies are not to blame for anything, they say, since they have hardly arrived in Mongolia and haven’t even begun to exploit the resources. Anyways, big things are in store for the lucky communities nearby, they promise.

“Mining to date has been relatively small-scale,” said Layton Croft, an executive with Ivanhoe Mines, a Canadian company with a massive copper and gold mine development project in southern Mongolia. The boom really hasn’t yet started. The prospect of mining is what’s on everyone’s mind.”²⁴

The statement was both true and false at once. More interesting, however, is how the western invaders quote each other, slap each other’s backs and butter each other’s bread, how the western media uses these select experts to give voice to select ideas, and how the money cycles back and forth between them — perpetuating the propaganda and private profits of predatory capitalism.

Follow the Money

Substantial efforts (2005-2006) by Layton Croft, TAF’s former Mongolia Country Director, and William Foerderer Infante, his successor, to lobby the Goldman Fund paid off when Tsetsegee Munkhbayar traveled to San Francisco, California (USA) to receive the $125,000 cash prize (2007).

Robert Redford introduces Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and the other 2007 Goldman Prize winners in the moving Goldman Foundation video.²⁵ The video applauds Tsetsegee Munkhbayar for his organizational skills and peaceful, collaborative approach. One mining company public relations executive –  Mongolian giving mining a Mongolian face — talks about restoration done by their mining company, suggesting a progressive mining climate in Mongolia, where companies comply with environmental stewardship, perform due diligence and work with communities. The video paints a happy and collaborative picture over the brutal realities attendant to the clash of civilizations.

And then, at minute 4:18 in the Goldman Fund 2007 video we meet Mr. Layton Croft, who left TAF in 2005 to become Vice-President, Corporate Affairs & Social Responsibility, for Ivanhoe Mines.

“The key to [Tsetsegee] Munkhbayar’s success as a leader for responsible mining in Mongolia,” says Layton Croft, in the Goldman Prize video, “is that he’s had the courage to acknowledge that mining could be good for Mongolia, as long as it’s done in a very open and participatory way.”

Layton Croft began his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia (1994-1997). He later joined the Mongolian office of the big US government and intelligence organization PACT,²⁶ where he was the Program Director for Information Systems for their Gobi Regional Economic Growth Initiative/Mongolia (1999-2002), working for PACT-Mongolia in an alliance with Mercy Corps and USAID.

Mercy Corps has a very euphemistic name suggesting that they are merciful, caring, dedicated to helping — a.k.a. we are supposed to perceive them, as many of their workers perceive themselves, as selfless and charitable and serving a higher moral purpose: to alleviate suffering. However, the Merc Corps partners include at least one multinational weapons manufacturer whose business depends on the proliferation and actuation of war (The Boeing Company).  They are also affiliated with sweatshop companies (NIKE), predatory international banking (International Finance Corporation), and one of the US corporations (ITT) that directly supported the 1970 coup d’etat against Chilean president Salvador Allende and the rise of the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

One of Layton Croft’s USAID-backed projects with PACT involved bringing National Public Radio founder Bill Siemering and NPR personality Corey Flintoff to Mongolia to promote the USAID-funded fiction of ‘free and independent’ media.²⁷ Another PACT project Croft was involved with created and broadcast a TV sit-com “where marginalized herder and non-herder business operators are learning new skills to manage their diversified businesses for higher returns via a 26-episode educational TV soap opera broadcast on Mongolian National TV.” The show had more than 400,000 viewers.²⁸

One of PACT’s nationally broadcast TV dramas was called Endless Labyrinth, described by PACT as “a 26 part drama, focused on a family that had lost its entire herd through natural disaster. Destitute, and in need of income, the family moves to the provincial center in search of employment opportunities. The show addressed issues such as urban migration, and helped to unravel the tangles of life in a modern market economy.”

However, we can be sure that the show did not challenge the basic beliefs and tenants of predatory capitalism, or international finance (George Soros made his billions by currency speculation that facilitated the collapse of former communist countries), or the nature of western propaganda, or the predation that comes side-by-side with the “humanitarian” business sector (with all their attendant human rights and environmental atrocities and their undermining of labor and health standards) or the spread of disease that comes with the penetration of multinational pharmaceutical corporations (dumping outdated or forbidden products or testing untested medicines) and agribusiness (spreading genetically modified seeds) and multinational food corporations (laced with poisons like monosodium glutamate or aspartame).

The urban migration of Mongolian nomads is in PACT’s interest — getting the pesky people out of the way and freeing up the land for exploitation by mining, petroleum or other extractive industries. Meanwhile, the urban migrants can be more easily targeted by corporations peddling western commodities and serving the interests of companies like Nike and Wal-Mart, who also to be PACT partners.

In short, while the scourge of western capitalism penetrates further and further into the Mongolian hinterland, the scourge of western propaganda penetrates deeper and deeper into the psyche of the average Mongolian citizen (who is daily tuned in to these soap operas and herder dramas). The icing on the cake of indoctrination is the advertising that is infused between the segments of the episodes, filing up the airwaves and the minds of anxious listeners with ideas of consumption, the politics of desire, and the pathological western worship of individuality (and hostility to community, a.k.a., socialism).

Such foreign created and controlled propaganda is not purely entertainment: like the ‘educational’ books peddled by TAF and the TV sit-coms created by PACT, these programs rely on ‘behavior change communications’ — analyzing and changing local content to change attitudes and eventually change behaviors; creating desire, opening up new markets for western commodities, and selling advertising.²⁹

Layton Croft’s next career step was TAF, 2003-2005, where he lobbied the Goldman Foundation to recognize Tsetsegee Munkhbayar.

Layton Croft’s experience working with and for the big NGOs — Soros Foundation, Mercy Corps, PACT, USAID, TAF — certainly enhanced his next career move. Since 2005, Layton Croft has been the Executive Vice-President for Corporate Affairs and Community Relations at South Gobi Resources, an Ivanhoe Mines/Rio Tinto megaproject, and he is an “advisor for investor relations in Asia and corporate social responsibility” for Ivanhoe Mines. Alison Croft, his wife, works in ‘community relations’ with Ivanhoe Mines.

As the newly hired public relations executive for Ivanhoe Mines, Layton Croft wasted no time in accusing Mongolian civil society groups — including some of his former allies when he worked at TAF — of betraying the public. One of his first major public relations whitewash came in April 2006, when the effigy of ‘Toxic Bob’ Friedland was burned by My Mongolian Land, the Green Movement, and other civic groups.

“We also overturned Ivanhoe cars in 2007 protests,” M. Bold from My Mongolian Land told me. “Ivanhoe wanted to get a contract like the government had with the Canadian company Boroo Gold. They [Boroo] were robbing us for more than ten years (1997-2007). In one year of operations they used 800 tons of [toxic] chemicals,³⁰ so they were also destroying the place: it’s not useable for centuries. The company produced the only reports about water, for example, and what a wonderful job they were doing.”¹³

“The [Ivanhoe] company deeply regrets the fact that civic movements are misleading the Mongolian public by misrepresenting the real facts in order to further their own political interests,” said Layton Croft, Executive Vice President for Corporate Affairs for Ivanhoe Mines. “As a public company listed and traded on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges, Ivanhoe Mines respects the independence and sovereignty of the countries where it operates. To this end, Ivanhoe has not and will not interfere in internal Mongolian political affairs,” Croft said.³¹

In 2007, Ivanhoe mines came very close to physically changing the direction of the Kherlan River, but it was the intervention of the Mongolian Nature Protection Coalition (MNPC) that stopped it. Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and Clayton Croft engaged in a heated argument about this at a public meeting.

“Ivanhoe Mines had their own people already elected to Parliament,” said M. Bold of My Mongolian Land. “We don’t want Mongolia to be a playground for these criminals and their corruption. Our country is in grave danger.”³²

Shunned by Sponsors

On May 30, 2005 members of the Onggi River Movement traveled to Arkhangai aimag³³ to organize an MNPC training workshop for local herders facing critical water stoppages on the Nariin Hamar River in Tsenkher soum.³⁴ During the training an excited herder on horseback arrived to alert them that a new mining company was commencing operations at a new site on the river at that very moment. The workshop drew 128 people, and all of them moved quickly to the new site where a Mongolian company called Mongol Gazar was setting up a new ger camp.

Blocked from the site by armed security guards, the herders were attacked after they told the company personnel to immediately leave their land. The security guards tear-gassed the angry herders, beat them and shot into the air. A professional cameraman from Mongolian National Broadcast TV who was attending the rivers movement training was attacked, his equipment destroyed, along with all evidence of the attacks of violence by security guards. Herders were arrested and threatened by the company, who warned that Mongolian law protected all mining companies from protest.

For Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, this incident signaled his evolving awareness of how far mining companies would go — and how ruthless — to protect their stolen interests. Barely one year after Tsetsegee Munkhbayar was awarded the Goldman Prize he and his colleagues asserted their independence even further — much to the disapproval of the people at TAF — and they began to suffer for it immediately.

On May 16, 2008, at another protest in Selenge aimag, herders of the Khuder River Movement — another MNPC member organization — faced similar violence from armed guards with the Erdes Group, an iron and gold company. Erdes guards had guns and batons and they intimidated the river movement herders into keeping their distance.

A Mongolian front company with Chinese investors behind it, Erdes Group is allegedly partnered with Mr. O. Chuluunbat, ex-president of Mongol Bank and the Communist Party parliament member from Selenge aimag. The company clear-cut the local forests, but they left a wall of trees intact at the front of the clear-cut to disguise the devastation behind.³⁵ Similarly, Erdes Group publicly championed ‘restoration’ that never happened. Due to the protest, the company halted mining for two months, bribed everyone they could, and started up again. Bulldozing everything in sight, they turned the forest into mud and chopsticks — processed at their nearby factory, exported to China.⁹

By the spring of 2008, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar finally began to understand that TAF was acting against the interests of Mongolia and protecting the mining companies. When the Onggi River Movement demonstrated its independence, really taking on mining companies aggressively, TAF at first lobbied the Onggi River Movement to soften its approach, and then they attacked them.

Meanwhile, the mining companies had become increasingly violent in response to the successes of the conservationists in organizing civil society against illegal mining, privatization of natural resources, corruption in government, and the overuse and degradation of the commons. More and more, companies deployed armed security guards. Across the country there was a rise in attacks on herders and conservationists who protested the illegal land grab and environmental destruction of mining operations.

Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and his colleagues saw clearly that the government was not enforcing the environmental protections brought into law in previous years. It was the duty of the Mongolian government to regulate companies, they said, but the government was not doing so. There were no protections of citizen’s basic human rights and the environment. More and more herders and their herds were suffering due to mining and whenever the Onggi River Movement organized a protest in the countryside they were met by armed thugs.

Then on May 26, 2008, six of the member organizations of the Mongolian Nature Protection Coalition (MNPC) organized a press conference announcing their intentions to defend themselves and their lands with rifles — promising to meet intimidation and violence with a show of armed self-defense. Leading the charge was Tsetsegee Munkhbayar.

Given the MNPC’s commitment to defend their basic rights and sovereignty, on May 30, 2008, TAF dropped the Onggi River Movement and the five coalition partners who had pledged to defend themselves. TAF immediately began smearing and discrediting Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and the other environmentalists by issuing a letter expressing TAF’s ‘disappointment’ that they ‘threatened violence and the use of weapons’. The letter was reportedly picked up by the Mongolian newspapers — the state propaganda apparatus — and stories appeared that discredited and divided the MNPC.³⁶ Soon Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and the six MNPC members who stood firm began hearing stories portraying them as terrorists.

TAF director Bill Infante slammed Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and the others publicly and privately. While Bill Infante and TAF apparently circulated their statement about the MNPC,³⁷ TAF never took a similar stance against the armed violence or plunder of resources by foreign or domestic mining companies.

“Since May 30 [2008] Bill Infante has repeatedly called the six environmental groups terrorist organizations,” MNPC activists told me. “He said this personally, when they met face-to-face.”³⁸

In a meeting with the MNPC just after May 30, 2008, Bill Infante stated that The Asia Foundation activities are based on U.S. laws: TAF doesn’t follow Mongolian laws. TAF then directed its might at further dividing and co-opting the leaders of MNPC member organizations that did not adopt the stance of direct action and armed self-defense. With the defamation by TAF and the bad publicity that followed — and with TAF’s purchasing power buying the silence of groups and individuals — the Mongolian Nature Protection Coalition (MNPC) collapsed.

Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, photo by William Infante, The Asia Foundation.

“The [public] letter is in English, and it does accuse them,” said Tracey Naughton, country director for PACT-Mongolia, yet another ‘non-government’ organization — funded by the US State Department — whose mission is to bring about the US system of ‘democracy’ by and for the corporations and the corporate elites. “He [Bill Infante] does use strong language and it does say ‘terrorism’. Bill is very competitive and unpleasant and he slams other NGOs in front of donors. The real people who are running Mongolia are the ‘Infantes’ of the world: they’re in all the spaces.”³⁹

The Asia Foundation also undermined the MNPC by creating petty jealousies and leadership struggles within the Mongolia river organizations; they pitted the Onggi River Movement and Tsetsegee Munkhbayar against the other members of the MNPC.

On October 28, 2008, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and five of the eleven member organizations of the defunct MNPC filed a lawsuit in federal court against The Asia Foundation. The coalition sought $1,000,000 compensation for the damages caused by TAF publicly branding the five organizations ‘terrorists’. TAF filed a counter suit, and the Mongolian courts demonstrated their bias in favor of western interests by rejecting both lawsuits as ‘unjustified’. But the damage was already done.

“The MNPC disintegrated,” said Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, “due to conflict created with and by The Asia Foundation. The main interest of The Asia Foundation is to assist mining companies in Mongolia. All events are showing that The Asia Foundation is behind the mining interests.”

Capitalism’s Trojan Horses

Through the Goldman Prize, TAF created an image of Tsetsegee Munkhbayar as a peaceful and cooperative Mongolian citizen organizing public awareness and politely challenging international mining companies to ‘do the right thing’. According to the TAF video, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar is a local champion of conservation, a proponent of democratic values and the hopeful image of the ‘win-win’ scenario falsely advanced by the mining industry, by NGOs like TAF, and by their agents like Layton Croft and Bill Infante.

But the real mission of TAF is to mold and manipulate domestic challenger groups into positions of cooperative acquiescence and competitive participation with the western plunder of Mongolia — to shape societies, in the interests of predatory capitalism, through cash-driven interventions that divide and conquer domestic groups and create strong constituencies that will serve the interests of the external organizations. It was a condescending relationship from the start, but TAF used Tsetsegee Munkhbayar to enhance their image and advance their interests in the game of international influence-peddling and transnational control.

“The Asia Foundation has really got some slick people.” Conservation expert ‘Jane Smith’ asked that her name be changed to protect her from retaliation. “Using my name and my organizations’ name would jeopardize our lives and years of work here. No one will touch us again. The government and big [international] donors would pounce on us.”

With years of experience in Mongolia, Jane Smith has seen the daily changes. She describes a government with no regulations, a black economy, trading in thugs and violence, where anyone bold enough to take something — those who have the allies and influence — can just take it.

“These big organizations like The Asia Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, WWF [World Wildlife Fund], WCS [Wildlife Conservation Society] and GTZ [German Technical Corporation],” said Jane Smith, “they all came to smaller NGOs like ours and they wanted to learn how to do things — things it took us years to learn — over lunch. They didn’t have any funding for us, and they never took up the ideas that we felt were most important. They have their glossy brochures and they make a show of being interested in the programs that really need to be done, but they don’t really do anything. They are the new wave of colonialists.”⁴⁰

“The Nature Conservancy is one of the richest conservation organizations in the world.” Jane Smith provided examples. “Yet they couldn’t fund their [Mongolian branch] offices here — it took four years to develop the office and it has to fund itself. The ‘sustainable mining’ idea came from The Asia Foundation: they know all the buzz words and jargon. They are really good at throwing around and adapting terminology. It looks good in their presentations and their brochures and government reports, and international donors accept it because they don’t know, or they don’t care.”

“One woman from World Wildlife Fund-Mongolia [WWF],” Jane Smith explained, “Yoko Watanabe, from Japan.⁴¹ She had this long, pedigreed career background. She stood up and gave a beautiful presentation in Ulaanbaatar, for foreign donors, about what WWF was doing across the country. She was talking about all these things WWF supported, like this [redacted project] in [redacted location]. I worked in [redacted] for years, and I thought to myself, ‘Where is this [redacted project]?’ My driver was from the soum center where this [redacted project] was and he cracked up [laughing]. We drove down there and there was this one guy with a shovel…”

“But this [Watanabe] woman was typical of the problem: a young, inexperienced person being hired on and elevated quickly to postions of responsibility, and making decisions on things they know little about, and then they move on to bigger and better things. They are usually removed from, and unaware of, the consequences of those decisions on the ground. They are well-educated, intelligent, not very curious, but they know who butters their bread, and they know exactly what to say and how to say it.”

“I know everyone, they are all nice people,” said Jane Smith. “The head of The Asia Foundation, Bill Infante, he’s really removed from reality and really removed from the local people.⁴² There’s no interest in long term development in the country, it’s all about long term development of their careers. They have to spend money — their careers are based on how many projects they can get going and all the assessments and reports they can show to donors.”

“The Asia Foundation helped bring the rivers movement together as a coalition,” Jane Smith continued. “They [TAF] lobbied very hard — especially Bill Infante — for [Tsetsegee] Munkhbayar to get the Goldman Prize. It makes them look very good, but it had the effect of weakening the river movement, which is counter to what TAF claims they are doing, which is strengthening. They brought the heads of the rural organizations and key figures to Ulaanbaatar, gave them nice offices.”

“They basically cut off the heads of the rural organizations. Rather than fighting the mining companies and protecting the rivers they [leaders] were fighting over offices and who would get the best computers. We worked with movements all over Mongolia, and we cautioned against removing the [movement] heads. We had a lot of experience in community development and organizing so that local people could take advantage of the new system under ‘democracy’. Instead of bringing all these river movements together to unite against the mining companies — and say ‘hey, you guys are killing us’ — The Asia Foundation just dropped them.”

Doublespeak and Gobbledygook

Interview after interview with Mongolian leaders in Ulaanbaatar confirmed the wall that lower level government officials slam up against when trying to enforce environmental regulations. Environment and human rights activists outlined rapacious logging — including logging in ‘strictly protected’ areas — for the building boom in Ulaanbaatar and they pointed to western mining companies who can do anything they want, anywhere, companies bent on destroying the pristine Lake Hovsgol ecosystem, for example, just as they are destroying the rest of the world.

These corporations are fueling an unprecedented disaster in Mongolia. They begin by corrupting officials and paying bribes in the capital city, and then they show up in rural areas where the local people know nothing about their plans, their methods, or their histories of terrorism and environmental destruction. They peddle human rights and democracy, and then they block off whole valleys, divert and drain vast rivers, throw herders off communal lands, and then arm themselves with thugs. They have their economic hit men and their propaganda experts.

My interviews with the foreign ‘experts’ at the big western NGOs were almost identical. They all threw around the language of sustainable development, democracy, and conservation; they knew exactly what to say and how to say it — if they would meet with me at all. They had fancy brochures announcing all their fancy projects, and when it came to answering the hard questions they became mute, squirmed in their chairs, and suddenly had another meeting to attend. They also threw volumes of information at me, demonstrating — in their eyes — their efficacy and indispensable presence.

I met with Rebecca Darling at TAF headquarters in Ulaanbaatar.⁴³ As TAF’s Director of Natural Resources and Development/Securing our Future Program, here was a perfect example of a nice, well-educated, salaried, career-track, western NGO professional who knew what to say and when to say it, and whose tune changed depending on her audience.

“We try to get information into the hands of the policy makers,” Rebecca Darling told me. “The past four years saw a lot of nothing happening. In the next four years some very serious decisions will be made about natural resource use. The environment is still in a pretty good state but headed for a world of hurt. Mining companies here are all frustrated because things have been stalled for four years. Mongolia is on the cusp of major changes.”⁴⁴

“They have transparency in mining Canada,” Rebecca Darling continued. Flags went off in my mind when she expressed sympathy for the mining companies, and now she was defending Canada’s mining policies. “Every piece of paper goes [public] there. Here it’s all behind closed doors, and there are no checks and balances. Western companies, Chinese and Russian companies, Mongolian companies — none of them are doing the right thing.”

She admitted that companies are so far out in the Mongolian bush that they can do anything and get away with it. However, she cited the effectiveness of TAF experts, like her, in formulating policy with government officials. She also acknowledged TAF’s involvement in revisions of mineral laws. “Government officials are under-resourced, undereducated, and understaffed,” she added, underscoring her faith in western expertise.

“For example, there’s a Canadian mining company that has a mining site out in Dornod,” Rebecca Darling says. “They have asked The Asia Foundation to come out and deliver community engagement seminars for them, as one of their goals is to have community engagement. We won’t go out to talk to the people about uranium, we go to talk to them about how to talk to the mining company, teaching them where their rights are, what legal avenues they have. We try to build transparency. We are trying to get them to engage.”

“Some citizens engage in unproductive and illegal ways.” Now Rebecca Darling is responding to my questions about civil society protests against mining operations. “They show up at the gates of companies and threaten violence. There are six organizations that threatened violence — all part of a coalition [MNPC] of 13 organizations from across the country. They are still threatening to take up arms, since April [2008]. Now they are threatening to hurt themselves — civil disobedience and stuff like that.”⁴⁴

“Their leader’s name is Munkhbayar, from the Onggi River Movement. We had to cease and desist all support of the [MNPC] coalition. We are not working with these six groups in any way because they broke the law and they advocate breaking the law. Most of them I have a tremendous amount of respect for, they are civic activists, and it’s true that there have already been environmental problems.”

Rebecca Darling holds up Canada as a model of transparency, good governance, and responsible mining and environmental policy. She maintained her storyline even after I provided evidence that Canada-based mining companies perpetuate poverty, human rights atrocities, terrorism and genocide around the world — even in Canada, where First Nations have recently made news, again, for blockading mining.⁴⁵ ,⁴⁶

“Can you do me a favor?” Rebecca Darling asked me at the end of a long interview where my questions were open and my role as a journalist was understood. “Please don’t quote me on anything that’s going to get my ass in a sling without checking with me.”

I’m quoting Rebecca Darling (above) because her private remarks don’t square with her public advocacy in favor of mining and the private profits to be had by TAF and others, against the people. In one commentary she authored, also published on the PACT web site, she extolled the virtues of mining and of NGOs like The Asia Foundation.

“A paradigm shift is underway in Mongolia,” Rebecca Darling wrote in April 2009. “The integration of ‘responsible mining’ and ecological protection in government policy papers, public speeches by elected officials, and platforms of political parties, reflects Mongolia’s growing environmental awareness and commitment to developing the minerals sector in ways that will protect natural resources and benefit all Mongolians. This is the result of significant advocacy efforts on behalf of a committed group of representatives from industry, government, and civil society.”⁴⁷

“Since 2006, The Asia Foundation in Mongolia has convened a Multi-Stakeholder Forum that brings together representatives from civil society, government, industry and academia,” the Rebecca Darling article continued. “After a year of regular meetings, a definition of responsible mining was developed and the Forum defined eight guiding principles. The Forum later elected a smaller group of 15 leaders, representing different sectors, to form a local non-governmental organization, named the Responsible Mining Initiative (RMI) that spearheads advocacy efforts.”

“No, I don’t agree with this rosy article,” Jane Smith countered. “The prime minister recently issued Government resolution 86, which states the intent to allow minerals (gold) exploration in protected areas, and Government ordinance 26, which forms a working group to discuss the possibility of mining in protected areas and to create a new law to allow this. This effectively undermines the Law on Special Protected Areas… The intent is to open up protected areas for anything they want, anywhere, any time… Some of the article may be true, but it’s not the rosy picture Rebecca [Darling] paints. A new law to undermine the protected areas to allow mining is not responsible, and will only degrade, if not dissolve the whole system.”⁴⁸

Blame the Victims

Who are the real terrorists? Big industry responsible for terrorism has a long history of attacking indigenous people and/or organizations fighting for their rights and labeling them terrorists. The private profit based western media and its clone institutions — domestic media aligned with corrupt elites and often funded by NGOs like TAF and NED — perpetuate this blame-the-victims inversion of reality and protect the mining interests that fund their rag sheets. Marlon Santi, President of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, is another heroic indigenous leader recently labeled as a terrorist for taking a stand against murderous and rapacious western extractive industries.⁴⁹

When I first contacted the Goldman Environmental Fund’s media relations office in early November 2010, I was surprised to find that they’d heard nothing about their past prizewinner’s armed protest two months earlier. “Technically, we don’t support winners with any more dollars, but we do step in if something is dire,” said one spokesperson. “The Goldman Foundation has some clout, here in the US, and we do work with the State Department. We don’t know how people will behave after they receive the award. In some cases we just let them slip off into obscurity.”⁵⁰

“The Goldman Environmental Prize has recently become aware of 2007 recipient T. Munkhbayar’s armed protest actions in Mongolia,” the Goldman media office wrote, when pressed, in a formal public statement on November 29, 2010. “The Prize does not condone armed protest of any kind. The Prize honored Mr. Munkhbayar for his leadership in Mongolia’s grassroots movement against mining pollution in the region’s waterways and is concerned about the recent developments. We are working to learn more about the situation as we have heard conflicting reports about his involvement and subsequent actions.”⁵¹

“Does the Goldman Fund condone armed paramilitary forces defending illegal mining companies?” I followed up. “Does the Fund agree with The Asia Foundation labeling Tsetsegee Munkhbayar a terrorist?”

“The Fund does not condone or support violent or armed actions of any kind by anyone,” they replied. “We find it hard to believe that they [TAF] would say this [about Tsetsegee Munkhbayar]. However, we really don’t have enough information from Mongolia to know what’s going on and our questions have not been answered. But no, the Goldman Environmental Fund does not agree with the definition of [Tsetsegee Munkhbayar] being a ‘terrorist’.⁵¹

I contacted The Asia Foundation offices in San Francisco in November 2010. After receiving my questions, they informed me that the people I needed to speak with were busy traveling but would get back to me when they could.⁵²

Invading Western Hordes

Since the early 1990′s, consortiums involving Centerra Gold (Canada/USA), Purram Mining (China), BHP-Billeton (USA), Rio Tinto⁵³ (Australia/UK/Canada), Itochu (Japan), Barrick Gold⁵⁴ (Canada/USA), Hunnu Coal (Australia), Xanadu (Australia), Cold Gold Mongolia (New Zealand), and many more, have snatched up mining and petroleum concessions. Many of these corporations are synonymous with environmental destruction and human rights atrocities all over the world.

QGX Corporation is a Canadian-based company that has been exploring for minerals in Mongolia since 1994.⁵⁵ By 2003, QGX held over 30,000 square kilometers in exploration rights in Mongolia, and was also partnered with Ivanhoe Mines in the South Gobi. QGX had ‘acquired’ 131 concession licenses by 2008. AngloGold Ashanti — who is partnered with De Beers and Barrick Gold elsewhere — has ‘acquired’ exploration ‘rights’ to 1.7 million hectares in northern Mongolia.

Canadian and US companies mining uranium in Mongolia include World Wide Minerals Ltd., Uranium 308 Corp., WM Mining Company, and Khan Resources Inc. WM Mining executive Wallace M. Mays is also tied to other companies in Mongolia, and his mining company IKH TOKHOIROL XXK received a $10,000,000 loan from the US government-controlled Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) in 2009. Uranium mining causes epidemics of cancer and birth defects in workers and surrounding communities. The desert steppes of Mongolia will soon be transformed into vast radiotoxic wastelands — as has happened elsewhere — but the windstorms of the high desert steppes will carry radioactivity and contaminate distant lands.

Toxic mercury is another pitfall of mining and has caused epidemics of disease around Mongolia.

Canada’s infamous Ivanhoe Mines is now in control of more than 90,000 sq. kilometers of copper, gold and coal concessions in Mongolia. Ivanhoe and its subsidiaries are run and owned by Robert Friedland — Toxic Bob⁵⁶ — a known associate of William Jefferson Clinton. Beyond his legacy of toxic cyanide poisoning in Colorado (USA), Friedland achieved notoriety in the 1990′s when his Sierra Leone subsidiary Diamondworks was linked to mercenary companies Executive Outcomes, Sandline International and Branch Energy, and to Colonel Tim Spicer and Tony Buckingham, mercenaries deeply involved in war and plunder in Iraq, Yemen, Uganda and Congo.⁵⁷

Oyu Tolgoi has been known for centuries by the local people as ‘turquoise mountain’ for the visible copper ores. This is the largest copper-gold mine in the world, located near Khobogd village in South Gobi province of southern Mongolia. Oyu Tolgoi LLC is the Mongolian subsidiary for a strategic partnership between the Government of Mongolia (34% stake), Ivanhoe Mines (66%) and Rio Tinto. It is scheduled to begin commercial production in 2013.

According to the Oyu Tolgoi public relations site: “Rio Tinto, which is the third largest mining company in the world, became a strategic partner of Ivanhoe in 2006 after buying 20% of Ivanhoe shares. Rio Tinto has over 150 years of experience in mining, in 30 countries. In recent years Rio Tinto has put a lot of emphasis on social relations and social planning. Oyu Tolgoi has adopted the high standards of social relations and planning set by Rio Tinto.”

“Once the mining begins, the Khobogd site will have a population of 20,000 within a few years and approximately 80,000 when the smelter is finished, potentially making the site the second largest city in Mongolia,” Peter Morrow, the American CEO of Mongolia’s Khan Bank [at the time], was quoted to say.⁵⁸

The article also quotes TAF’s Rebecca Darling. The local Gobi communities are in favor of the project, Darling says, because it will support them economically. There is no mention of any opposition. “Darling said that Ivanhoe and Rio Tinto have participated for three years in The Asia Foundation’s responsible mining project,” the UB Post reported. “‘As far as we’re concerned, they’re models in this country for responsible mining,’ she said.”⁵⁸

Delivering the equivalent of trinkets to the local people — scholarships for a handful of doctors, a few cars and trucks here and there, a few paved roads, token hospitals and token schools — the companies and their ‘responsible civil society partners’ work to shut people up and co-opt them into betraying the greater needs of the communities, and of the country as a whole, just as it is done with predatory extractive industries that are plundering and depopulating the Congo. The token schools and hospitals provided by the mining companies are used to silence the communities that are being mined. Roads are often constructed, or dirt tracks are paved, because it is in mining companies interest to do so: they want to drive their trucks on the roads! Its the same with railways: they want to ship their raw materials out to China or — as in the case of Science Solutions Incorporated, a San Diego (USA) company mining tungsten (wolfram) in Bayan Olgy — by rail to China and by boat to the United States. If the fair value of the natural resources was paid, every village would have a school with an extensive library full of the best books in the world, and every child in that school would have a brand new top-of-the-line computer. Most likely these schools will be little more than cement shells with tin roofs and chalkboards and wooden desks. That is not the American or Canadian standard for a school — at least not the kind of elite private school (in the USA or Europe) that these mining company executives send their children to or the kind that their Mongolian agents, the MPs they have bought, are sending their children to (also in the USA or Europe).

What the Mongolian people deserve as fair compensation are entire universities — with the assurance that every Mongolian who wants can have access to high quality higher education. Sometimes the mining companies even staff the hospitals with their own co-opted doctors — ‘professionals’ paid to conclude that the patients disease was NOT caused by the mercury or cyanide from the company mine. In the end, however, the mining company can say: We made a deal! Your leaders signed and agreed on our terms! We gave you schools and hospitals! The epidemics of tuberculosis and cancers are not our problems! Send your people to the hospital (we gave you)! Your (Mongolian) community leaders are responsible for these problems! Anyways, when all is said and done the foreign mining company executives jet out of the country waving a little American or Canadian or Swedish flag that says “Bye. Bye. See You!” The profits are expatriated. It’s always the same old story: promises, promises in the beginning; poverty, violence, pollution and disease in the end.

For another simple example of how the propaganda and plunder system works, with parallels between Congo and Mongolia, consider again the US-based photojournalists Ted Wood and Jeremy Schmidt. In the spring of 1998 the two journalists were dispatched to Central Africa by the elite US conservation [sic] magazine International Wildlife to report on mountain gorillas. The article appeared in January 1999, and the contexts of the US- and corporate-backed war and bloodshed in Congo/Zaire, or Rwanda, were completely absent. Instead we found only a couple quotes from Wildlife Conservation Society’s expert [sic] Amy Vedder and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund Europe (DFGFE) expert [sic] Greg Cummings. [This writer has done an extensive series on how Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International, DFGFE (now The Gorilla Organization) and Wildlife Conservation Society profit from the plunder and bloodshed in Congo -- and I have delineated the hidden interests of these organizations and these particular individuals.⁵⁹ ] The International Wildlife story was just fluff — which is all fine, as long as we are honest and admit how we (westerners) participate in, and profit from, the exploitation. International Wildlife is nothing more than the propaganda mouthpiece for big zoo interests and the industries of academic research (zoology, biology, primatology, oceanography), and such stories serve to indoctrinate and immunize the western world and its western readers, rendering western interests invisible and inculcating innocence and arrogance, a.k.a. white superiority.

Back in Mongolia, communities and a coalition of NGOs⁶⁰ have protested the Oyu Tolgoi project — located in the fragile ecosystem of the South Gobi Desert — and hunger strikers have been arrested and jailed. On April 1, 2010, the Mongolian NGOs, assisted by MiningWatch Canada and Rights and Accountability in Development (UK), filed complaints in the UK and Canada against Rio Tinto and Ivanhoe Mines Ltd for alleged breaches of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Companies.⁶¹

Economic Hit Men

Transnational capitalism also achieves its aims in Mongolia by controlling the banks. Mongolia’s Trade Development Bank is 34% owned by Americans but the 66% controlling interest is hidden — people suspect the previous president, Enkhbayar, who privatized it, circa 2005, when he was prime minister. Other people’s collectives, like the Ard Bank, were also privatized.

Mongolia’s Khan Bank was privatized (2000-2004) under the direction of Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), a Washington DC intelligence and defense outfit, packed with CIA types, that directly links USAID with the Pentagon (amongst other things, DAI conducts special operations trainings for the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command Europe). Khan Bank is now 52% owned by Sawada Holdings of Japan, with DAI, the International Finance Corporation (World Bank), and Khan Bank CEO Simon Morris (UK) and former CEO and present adviser Peter Morrow (USA). The Khan Bank shareholder Tavan Bogd Group is their Mongolian front company partner. DAI provided the two senior managers of the bank: J. Peter Morrow and Ben Turnbull, Deputy CEO. Establishing a clear link between global capital and military force, DAI’s Vice-President for Global Security is Colonel (Ret.) Barry Shapiro, who spent most of his career conducting U.S. Army Special Forces special operations missions throughout Southeast and Central Asia. DAI director Ann Hudock is a former Country Representative for The Asia Foundation. TAF is teamed with Khan Bank for their ‘Books for Asia’ program in Mongolia, and Khan Bank is funding all kinds of public relations initiatives — green-washing campaigns meant to sanitize their corporate image and blind the public about their true impact on the people and land.

Herders in Mongolia have been hard hit by Khan Bank. Strapped for cash but rich in livestock, slammed by the economic onslaught of capitalism and abandoned by the once-helpful Mongolian state, herders have taken out loans to feed, clothe and educate children, to purchase vehicles and gers and regular supplies. With some 98% of all herders in the country under debt with Khan Bank, almost every herder owes Khan Bank a minimum of 5 million tugriks (US$ 4000). Parliament member D. Baldan-Ochir reported in April 2010 that herders who took out loans using their herds as collateral owed Khan Bank some 63 billion tugriks (US$ 50.5 million), and he advised herders whose herds were wiped out by zhud “to get a good lawyer” and not pay Khan Bank. In 2010, Khan Bank took some 3000 herds from herders in Duut soum in Khovd aimag. In 2008, one herder from Chandmani soum in Khovd aimag who was indebted to Khan Bank lost his herds (zhud) and was unable to repay the loan: he committed suicide. “I can’t live any longer,” he wrote in a note to his family, “because I owe so much to the bank. Please help my wife and children. I am afraid that if I stay alive, I will go to jail.”

The transnational financial plunder of Mongolia is also facilitated through the most secretive multinational corporations on earth: the tax and auditing consultancies Arthur Andersen, Coopers & Lybrand, Deloitte  & Touche and Ernst & Young. These firms exploit taxation loopholes, manipulate profit and loss balance sheets, and help them utilize ‘offshore’ tax havens and subsidiary and front companies to maximize predatory exploitation. Extractive industries (mining, petroleum, logging) will exploit customs and evade tax duties through such illegal practices as ‘transfer-pricing’, over-invoicing, mis-declaration of ores or species (wood), under-measuring and under-reporting, and the practice of declaring maximum ‘losses’ for years — even when maximizing profits. Many of these practices cannot be achieved without the corruption of domestic (Mongolian) agents at all levels of the bureaucracy.  The international consulting and auditing firms put their stamps of approval on the corruption, while taking hundreds of millions of dollars profits, annually, from their global operations. Finally, a near-government organization (NGO) like The Asia Foundation closes the circle by producing reports on ‘good governance’ and ‘accountability’ and they do this, for example, through their multi-stakeholder Responsible Mining Initiatives — involving Mongolian NGOs like the MNPC or UMMRL.

In 2004, OPIC established a $50 million credit fund for US investments in Mongolia, and since then has funded three projects, including a $61,596 insurance loan to The Asia Foundation in 2007. TAF receives millions of dollars annually from OPIC for its other Asia operations.⁶²

American real estate scalper and investment banker Lee Cashell, who operates through his Hong Kong firm, Asia Pacific Investment Partners Corp, received a $250,000 OPIC loan in 2002 for a luxury tourist resort destined for the Mongolian hinterland. Lee Cashell is the founder of The Mongolian Institute for Sustainable Economic Development, he runs Mongolia’s first real estate agency, and he has been scalping properties in Mongolia’s ‘privatization rush’. Lee Cashell is also behind Belgravia Mining, a molybdenum firm with seven exploration licenses in Mongolia.

In 2003, Newsweek lauded American business penetration into ‘democratic’ Mongolia in a typical neoliberal whitewash of reality that applauded, for example, the ‘free-market’ acquisition of ‘low rent’ properties. “The reason: Washington sees strategic gain in supporting a free and democratic Mongolia, sandwiched between Russia and China in a region rife with dictators and swelling Islamic fervor.”⁶³

“Property prices have doubled in the last one and a half years alone,” American Express journalist Ron Gluckman (USA) quoted an excited Lee Cashell to say. “Rents are skyrocketing. Rental yields are the highest in Asia, by far…There are no big-name multinationals here, [just] a lot of guys making $150,000, one dollar at a time.”⁶³

“One day at a time,” said ‘Bayarma Ganbold’, the human rights activist and mother of three who took me around Ulaanbaatar, “these criminals are taking everything that we love: every public space, every publicly owned building, every public park, every river. The Selbe River runs through the city, but it’s quite dead already. We used to play by the water when I was a child. The Tol River is also drying up: Coca Cola has a bottling plant using water from the Tol for the past 5 years.⁶⁴ All the school playgrounds have been chopped up or destroyed.”

“I used to play in the children’s park, it was green and beautiful.” ‘Bayarma Ganbold’ is tearful. “There were carousels, swan boats, merry-go-rounds, people jogging, children laughing, birds flying all around, people kissing each other. There were skating rinks all over the city. It was all free. The Russian wife of President Tsedenbal⁶⁵ did so many things for women and children: she set up social welfare systems, she set up health systems; she built schools, children’s libraries — she built this children’s park. Like everywhere else, the land was bought for almost nothing by ‘private investors’ connected to the government. The park is dead.”⁶⁶

“No one knew what was ‘democracy’ or what was ‘privatization’,” said Tumur, a coal miner who previously worked for the state mining company in Nalaikh city, just west of Ulaanbaatar, for 8 years. “The first four years of democracy were hell. It was chaos and confusion and the mafias stole property and ‘privatized’ it. By now everything is being ripped apart.”⁶⁷

Pimping for Transnational Corporations

The situation in Mongolia is not unique. The very same NGOs involved in Mongolia are involved in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. Barrick Gold moved into Congo with Rwandan and Uganda forces in the US-backed invasion of 1996-1998. AngloGold Ashanti is another corporation behind war, genocide and plunder in Congo.⁶⁸

DeBeers will plunder Mongolia’s kimberlite pipes — read: diamonds — just as they have plundered Congo, Sierra Leone, Angola, Botswana, C.A.R., South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Canada: De Beers is also partnered with AngloGold Ashanti in Mongolia.⁶⁹

PACT-Congo has worked to support western mining corporations even while purporting to challenge them. One PACT official is Donald Easum, a US national security operative who was bad news in every country he worked — programs often coordinated with the Africa-America Institute and USAID, two more CIA fronts.⁷⁰ Similarly, Wildlife Conservation Society is tied to mining and petroleum companies exploiting Congo, and Hans Hoffman, a GTZ director in Mongolia until recently, was formerly working for GTZ in the Congo, where GTZ protects German interests involved in the warfare, genocide and plunder of minerals.⁷¹

TAF, WWF, The Nature Conservancy, GTZ and Wildlife Conservation Society are working to ‘conserve’ and ‘protect’ the Mongolian environment from Chinese, Russian and Mongolian companies, but when US, Canadian or European companies are involved — often tied to these NGOs’ boards of directors and donors — such NGOs are silent, acquiescent to mining interests and private profit plunder. There are plenty of western ties to Chinese and Russian banking and mining mafias, in any case.

It’s the same with the ‘human rights’ and ‘humanitarian’ NGOs: corporate entities like Save the Children, Mercy Corps, UNICEF and UNDP leverage and protect western corporate interests while co-opting domestic civil society and neutralizing opposition. Powerful US government intelligence and national security front groups — including TAF, the George Soros Foundation (Open Society Institute) — have been engineering elections, engineering laws, and channeling civil society to achieve and ensure political control and access for transnational capitalism in Mongolia. Most prominent amongst these groups is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its core affiliates, Center for Private Enterprise (CIPE), International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI).⁷² ,⁷³

In 1983, the Pentagon, USAID, US State Department, and the CIA were all involved in the creation and implementation of ‘Project Democracy’ — National Security Decision Directive 77 (NSDD 77) — and this led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy. After that, many foreign covert interventions were shifted away from the CIA and onto the NED.⁷⁴] NED’s involvement with covert operations and foreign interventions are well-established.⁷⁵ ,⁷⁶ ,⁷⁷ ,⁷⁸

The Asia Foundation (formerly the Committee for Free Asia) was created by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1951 and served as the CIA’s main front group for covert operations in Asia for decades.⁷⁹ CIA funding was revealed in 1967 and was reportedly stopped, though TAF continued to operate as a secretive instrument of US foreign policy.⁸⁰ Primarily funded by USAID, US Department of State, US embassies, US Department of Labor, and the US Congress, The Asia Foundation uses the ‘non-government’ euphemism as part of its strategy of camouflage as a US government front group that is part of an extended US state apparatus for intervention.

TAF directors and trustees include national security, defense and intelligence operatives with long careers serving elite US corporate interests. TAF trustee J. Stapleton Roy, also one of TAF’s ‘Benefactor ($5,000-9,999)’ donors, was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research under Madeleine Albright, 1999-2000, and he has worked for the secretive entities Kissinger Associates and Kissinger Institute. He is a director of Conoco Phillips and Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold — both known for human rights atrocities around the world.⁸¹ ,⁸²

TAF trustee Karl Inderfurth was a high ranking US official at the United Nations (1993-1997) during the war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocides in Rwanda, Congo and the Balkans; a ‘national security council expert’ with ABC News and has served on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees and the National Security Council.

TAF trustee Ellen Laipson, also a former TAF president and CEO, was vice-chairman of the US National Intelligence Council under William Jefferson Clinton (1997-2002); director of the US National Security Council (1993-1995); and US national intelligence officer for Asia. In December 2009, President Barrack Obama appointed Ellen Laipson to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board.⁸³

The Asia Foundation works as a conduit for ‘phantom aid’: official funds channeled to ‘pass-through’ organizations that then launder these funds and divert them for covert interventions such as elections rigging, intelligence gathering, and — most relevant to the Mongolian example — surveillance and infiltration of domestic organizations, psychological operations, and dissemination of propaganda. Mathew Nasuti, a former US military official involved in accountability investigations and budgets oversight with the US Department of Defense, claims that TAF operations in Afghanistan have diverted US State Department ‘aid’ funds for unknown operations.⁸⁴ TAF has one of their largest budgets and operations in US and NATO-occupied Afghanistan.⁸⁵

TAF also receives funding from some of the worst multinational corporations on earth, including big oil, banking, mining and defense contractors: Chevron, American International Group, Coca Cola, GE, Walt Disney, Halliburton, Boeing, HSBC, Pfizer, Qualcomm, Raytheon, PepsiCo and Wal-Mart.⁸⁶

Of course, TAF is also funded by the National Geographic Society, by the Goldman Environmental Fund, and by the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Foundation, thus completing the circle involving the socially constructed image of Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, in the public mind, as a model of Mongolian civil society’s acceptable behavior — as long as he was civil and pragmatic — and as an instrument (in this case an unwilling one) of US foreign policy.

Groups like TAF, NED, PACT, USAID, World Vision and the American Center for Mongolian Studies are closely aligned with western elites who benefit from neoliberal transnational capitalism that imposes the ‘Washington Consensus’ on Mongolia.⁸⁷ This is a full-blown operation to subvert democracy, control emerging Mongolian social groups and plunder Mongolia. This involves a campaign of attrition against the masses in Mongolia, working to create a situation where sooner or later the poor majority ‘gives up’ and abandons the struggle for basic human rights, basic dignities, and basic freedoms.

This strategy of attrition is accomplished by exacerbating economic hardships, creating difficulties and deprivations for ordinary people; by exploiting any mistakes made by the Mongolian resistance and preying on the vulnerability of the people. At the same time, the international power elite divide and conquer domestic groups by funding and grooming individuals and organizations that serve their agenda, while marginalizing, discrediting or eliminating those that challenge their agenda. Both international and domestic media — outlets like the UB Post are already sufficiently under elite control — highlight the actions and voices of the groomed individuals who are saying what the external elites want people to hear.

“No longer do citizens need to organize on their own behalf and engage in various forms of opposition, including social movements, rallies, and other forms of dissent,” wrote academic Shelly Feldman, in “NGOs and Civil Society: (Un)Stated Contradictions,” pointing out that the rise of the western NGO sector means that the people — in this case the Mongolian people — are no longer necessary and their voices are no longer heard. “Instead, the NGO sector, legitimized as a controlled, organized arena of public debate with institutional and financial support from the donor community, has come to speak on behalf of the citizenry, particularly those groups that have been targeted among the needy, women and the poor.”⁸⁸

Terrorism in Mongolia

The Asia Foundation is committing treasonable offenses against the people and state of Mongolia — imagine a Mongolian ‘non-government organization’ equivalent to TAF operating similarly in the United States! — and they are rewarded for doing so by Mongolian elites who are partnered with transnational capitalism and who use the domestic media and paramilitary forces against the people.

TAF and other big NGOs (NED, IRI, NDI, Open Society Institute, etc.) rig elections, fund political sects, bribe ‘citizen’ groups, and divide communities to gain access to natural resources. Behind the western rhetoric of promoting democracy, human rights and environmental protection is the reality that US foreign policy has nothing to do with these ideals: US interests like NED, PACT and TAF are a threat to democracy everywhere and, in Mongolia, violence, homelessness, poverty, desperation and environmental destruction are increasing.⁸⁹

The bottom line is that North American taxpayers are directly funding U.S.-government organized devastation and disaster in Mongolia and — blinded by corporate propaganda in the guise of daily news media — we don’t know enough to ask anything about it.

Many of those who have access to the big money flooding into Mongolia — from ‘independent’ photographer Ted Wood to the big NGOs GTZ, PACT and TAF — also work to sanction and greenwash mining companies. Ivanhoe Mines offers the perfect example: the NGOs are supportive of Ivanhoe’s massive Oyu Tolgoi copper/gold megaproject, deep in the heart of the Gobi, and they support the euphemisms of ‘good community relations’ and ‘herder relocation’ programs.

Of course, the mining companies also create their own NGOs — to promote their interests, leverage policy and buff their image. One of these is World Growth, a Washington-based NGO believed to be the creation of Ivanhoe Mines and/or Rio Tinto. World Growth Mongolia appeared on the scenes in 2008. Its Mongolian board of advisers includes one former president and several former top ministers.

In Central Africa, ‘relocation programs’ have displaced pygmies from national parks where big western NGOs work. In Botswana, diamond, oil and ‘wildlife conservation’ interests have backed the forcible ‘relocation’ of San bushmen. In Borneo, the nomadic Penan people have been dispossessed of land and resources and ‘relocated’ with only cursory notice by National Geographic or big conservation NGOs. Results are the same in each case: genocide.

The leaders I interviewed from Mongolian conservation, human rights and civil society were sincere, committed, frustrated and undervalued. They work hard, with little or no resources, challenging the roots of problems they know from the inside out. They know what is wrong, on the small scale, and with the big picture, but they have little awareness of the international machinery they are up against. Many have come from rural areas where they knew extreme poverty and hardship of the herders’ way of life, and so they know what would best serve the people and the land. They are Mongolians, they know Mongolia; we don’t and we never will.

They’ve seen rivers dry up and rivers completely diverted. They’ve seen whole villages with epidemics of mining-related diseases — silicosis and bronchitis, cancer, miscarriages and birth defects. They see Mongolian elites using (mostly Chinese) undocumented immigrants for slave labor. They know that young girls and boys are being trafficked in and out of Mongolia, and that prostitution and survival sex are on the rise. They’ve seen people beaten and arrested, others shot.

“People are afraid now to let their children out freely,” says ‘Bayarma Ganbold’, “afraid they will be kidnapped, afraid they will be run over. The Asia Foundation has a huge project dealing with trafficking: they produce fancy reports but they haven’t done anything: after five years not one person has been found — or arrested! — for human trafficking. Mongolian journalists have raised many questions about street children who have disappeared that have never been answered. And Mongolian girls are beautiful — it’s a big mine here: pretty young girls from urban and rural areas. They promise them a great ‘job’ abroad, luring and enticing them, buying them — even drugging them. The girls have no passports and no way to escape afterwards.”⁹⁰

Undocumented Chinese immigrants work for under slave conditions for the Mongolian power elite and for mining and construction companies.

“Chinese bring in at least 40 or 50 illegal workers for these labor camps,” said Tumur, the coal miner in Nalaikh, “and every night they bring 20 to 30 young girls, 17 to 18 years old, from poor districts. They have 20 or 30 girls having sex in these open barracks without caring about privacy. Once girls do this they are ostracized by Mongolian culture. We can’t protect our girls because the government sends in security and police, at the least sign of trouble, to protect the companies. There’s a law that every Mongolian has a right to own seven acres of land, but one morning you wake up and thousands of hectares are owned by foreigners.”⁶⁷

By October 2008 the civil society movements were feeling cornered, their backs against the wall, from the growing western influence-peddling, corruption, bribery, intimidation, and the massive propaganda apparatus backing up the multinational corporations, with government complicity. Since then the situation has only gotten worse. Worst of all, they see salaried western ‘experts’ rolling around in $60,000 4×4 Toyota Landcruisers, living in the best homes, eating at the best restaurants, doling out advice and producing policy papers with an intolerable hubris and righteousness, accountable to no one.

“People are afraid of being seen or photographed. People are being threatened and followed by security agents for organizing,” said Baasan Geleg, an economics teacher and the leader of Mongolia’s iSenior Citizen’s Federationi. After organizing a country-wide registration of all mining in Mongolia, and after informing the public, Baasan Geleg became a public target: she was arrested four times in 2007 and 2008, and held in isolation for up to 20 days. “More and more civic leaders and activists are becoming apathetic, discouraged and disheartened, and thinking nothing will change. So they turn toward the money — the NGOs — and then they are dead.”⁹¹

The Struggle Continues

After the iMongolia Nature Protection Coalitioni dissolved, thanks to The Asia Foundation, river coalition activists formed the United Movement for Mongolian Rivers and Lakes. Goldman Prize winner Tsetsegee Munkhbayar is one of the key organizers, but nothing would happen without the other pivotal activists he works with.

Now, three years after the movement faltered, the United Movement for Mongolian Rivers and Lakes (UMMRL) has worked hard to create, pass and strengthen Mongolian laws to protect communities and the environment. According to UMMRL, the directors and other officials of Puraam Mining and Centerra Gold — the two companies Tsetsegee Munkhbayar’s gang of four shot at — have committed crimes specified in Articles 202, 204, 205, 206, 207, 208, 214 of the Mongolian Criminal law.

“Actions of both companies are illegal,” notes UMMRL, “as they are violating Mongolian laws on the prohibition of mining operations at headwaters of rivers, protected zones of water reservoirs and forest areas. Because of these mining companies, local citizens, herders and livestock animals experienced environmental damages including skin irritation and formation of lumps; eye diseases and intoxication of internal organs of humans and livestock animals… in Selenge province. These companies are operating in the headwaters of Gachuurt and Budanch Rivers and have reduced the flows of these rivers. Local people and livestock animals have no access to drinking water sources.”⁹²

On March 10, 2010, the UMMRL established a student chapter named ‘Fresh Water’. Its main goal is to involve Mongolian young people and students in the protection of the environment and natural resources. In May, 2010, the UMMRL and Mongolian Water Agency were working to delineate boundaries to prohibit mining operations in 350 soums and 21 aimags. Another draft law advanced by UMMRL would enable local people and civic organizations to sue mining companies for compensation against environmental destruction and emotional damages.

On July 16, 2010, the Mongolian Parliament authorized a law imposing restrictions on exploration and mining near water resources and empowering local officials to adjudicate mining issues. The UMMRL began a process of petitioning government to enforce laws that have been passed and put some teeth behind their paper proclamations.

On August 24-28, 2010, some 60 participants from Russia, Germany and Mongolia — including Tsetsegee Munkhbayar and other members of UMMRL — participated in a conference to address the past decade of collaboration and future needs to protect the ecology and natural resources in the Lake Baikal and Selenge River basin, from northern Mongolia to southern Siberia.

Protests and conflicts between herder communities and mining companies escalated all summer long, and occurred all over Mongolia. “These clashes occurred because of illegal mining operations,” reported UMMRL, “local residents and herders are facing a lack of drinking water and livestock pastures.”⁹³

On September 2, 2010, UMMRL announced that they will implement the law by force of local citizens if the Mongolian government does not. When the government did not respond, Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, leader of the Onggi River Movement, and G. Bayarra, leader of the Khuder River Movement, and D. Tumurbaatar and O. Sambuu-Yondon from UMMRL, opened fire on the two foreign mining companies. They had previously written to the mining companies, well in advance, but there were no replies.

The Mongolian press reported the September 2nd action, noting that the gang of four Mongolian activists shot at bulldozer blades and other heavy equipment. There were no clashes with security guards and no arrests, though Tsetsegee Munhkbayar was summoned to police offices in Selenge aimag and questioned. (The English translations of the original Mongolian story were very bad and greatly distorted the facts.).

Civil society protests involving thousands of people have continued in Mongolia: more than 10,000 people were reported to have protested government policies against the people in April 2010. However, it remains to be seen whether Mongolia’s civil society leaders can endure and prevail against the big money and power of western mining and their NGO vanguard. Some mining companies use the argument that pollution is the fault of companies that preceded them on the site that is polluted. Companies also argue that any canceled mining licenses or revolved permits must be compensated, in the millions of dollars, no matter that they were stolen in the first place, and no matter that companies have already expatriated hundreds of millions of dollars that Mongolians will never see.

On a visit to Centerra’s ‘Boroo Mine’ site in June, 2010 Mr. John Kazakov, director of Centerra’s Boroo Gold personally warned UMMRL partners that the mining association and mining corporations were working to pass a new law to neutralize the 2009 law that prohibits mineral exploration at the headwaters of rivers, protected zones or water reservoirs and forested areas. “We have a lobby group in the Parliament,” he promised, “and hope that law will be passed very soon.”

On October 21, 2010 the UMMRL filed a lawsuit against Puraam Mining and Centerra Gold for environmental damages and violations of Mongolian environmental protection laws. “We targeted these companies because they are mining illegally in a historically important place,” responds Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, “right next to the headwaters of two crucial rivers in a healthy forest region in defiance of existing laws. They need to be shut down.”

“People have criticized our choice [to take up arms] but, tell me,” said J. Nyamdavaa, head of the NGO Protect the Security of Mongolia, an Onggi River Movement partner, “what could we hope to achieve through peaceful means like meetings and demonstrations in streets?”⁹⁴

In February, 2011, Mongolian news agencies reported that that six members of parliament MPs J. Batsuuri, Y. Batsuuri, O. Chuluunbat, D. Batbayar, A. Tleikhan, and B. Choijilsuren) are fiercely lobbying parliament to change the laws to allow Centerra Gold and other companies to continue plundering and polluting the land, and the six MPs have drafted a new law favorable to mining. Meanwhile, mining MP D. Zorigt issued at least 170 new licenses for exploration and extraction (one Mongolian M.P. claims he issues 192 new licenses) on land protected by current laws.

Not every western policy or idea should be rejected, and not every westerner in Mongolia is there to exploit: some of the most dedicated and honest conservationists and human rights people — like ‘Jane Smith’ who was afraid to go on the record here — can be found in some of the small foreign, reputable NGOs, and there are even a few good people working for some of the rotten NGOs. The former types give their entire lives to doing what is right, while the latter deceive themselves, while always collecting their paycheck, into thinking they can make a difference from the inside. What we are talking about here is dishonesty and deception, and many of the Anglo-Americans or Europeans working in Mongolia harbor deeply racist ideas about Mongolians being barbarians who do not wash and cannot think and could never runs things. Most tourists don’t give a damn, for sure; they are driven by self-interests and become another kind of ‘innocent’ visitor who exploits the people and the land. The mining corporations are determined to get what they want, one way or another, they always have, and they always do. In the Congo they kill the people to get what they want; in Mongolia it has not yet come to that.

1. Mongol: The Rise of Genghis Khan, Andreevsky Flag Film Company, 2007, was distributed by Universal Studios Home Entertainment and Picturehouse Studios, making a Hollywood blockbuster entertainment extravaganza. That is, it made a lot of money.
2. “Tsetsegee Munkhbayar,” Emerging Explorers, National Geographic.
3. Unsigned, “Eco-warriors call attention to Mongolia’s development dilemma,” EurasiaNet, October 26, 2010.
4. Liezel Hill, “Centerra’s Kumtor mine not affected by Kyrgyz violence,” Mining Weekly, April 7, 2010.
5. Daisy Sindelar, “Mongolian Democracy: ‘Unless Your Life Improves, What’s the Point of a Market Economy?’” December 12, 2009.
6. Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, SUNY Press, 2003: p. 161.
7. “Tsetsegee Munkhbayar,” Emerging Explorers, National Geographic.
8. Richard N. Goldman (90) died on November 29, 2010.
9. Private interviews with members of the Mongolian Nature Protection Coalition, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 2008: (1) Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, Onggi River Movement; (2) Tserenkhand Yadanbatar, Angir Nuden Mondoohei; (3) J. Tudevdoorj, Salkhin Sardag; (4) Enkhtur Duvchigdamba, Toson Zaamar Tuul Gol; (5) Chimgee Ganbold, Onggi River Movement; (6) Dashdemberul Ganbold, Onggi River Movement.
10. Chinggis Khan is known to the western world as Genghis Khan.
11. Mongolian nomads live in gers: tent-like structures similar to yurts.
12. ‘My Mongolian Land’ is translated from the Mongolian: Minii Mongolyn Gazar Shoroo.
13. Private interview, M. Bold, founder and director, My Mongolian Land: Minii Mongolyn Gazar Shoroo, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 2008.
14. On Ivanhoe Mines history of human rights abuses and environmental destruction elsewhere see, e.g.: Roger Moody, Grave Diggers: A Report on Mining in Burma, Mining Watch Canada, January 5, 2001, http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=1739; and Thomas Maung Shwe, “Canada urged to probe Ivanhoe over ‘arms-for-copper’ deal,” Mizzima, June 30, 2010.
15. The Keidanren is the coalition of the most powerful Japanese trading houses (Soga Shosa), corporations like Marubeni, Mitsubishi, C. Itoh, Hitochi and Sumitomo.
16. Private interview, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 2008.
17. “Leader of Mongolian Green Movement Arrested during Peaceful Protest,” Global Greens, August 12, 2008.
18. Private interview and tour with ‘Bayarma Ganbold’, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 21, 2010.
19. Chris Hogg, “Discontent fuels Mongolia’s far-right groups,” BBC News, September 5, 2010.
20. See: Amnesty International, “Where should I go from here?” The Legacy of the 1 July 2008 Riot in Mongolia, 2009.
21. Danaasuren Vandangombo, NGOs as Accountability Promoters: in the Mongolian Case, PhD. candidate paper, School of Accounting and Commercial Law, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
22. Conservation Ink.
23. Private communication with Jeremy Schmidt, co-founder of Conservation Ink, November 21, 2010.
24. Stefan Lovgren, “Mongolia Gold Rush Destroying Rivers, Nomadic Lives,” National Geographic News, October 17, 2008.
25. Tsetsegee Munkhbayar, Goldman Foundation.
26. Private Agencies Collaborating Together (PACT).
27. Layton Croft, “Public Radio Veterans Support Independent Mongolian Radio,” EurasiaNet, October 4, 2002.
28. PACT, Annual Report, 2005.
29. See, e.g., Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: the Mask of Pluralism, SUNY Press, 2003.
30. Gold mining typically uses cyanide leaching processes and involves sulfuric acid and arsenic, creating vast expanses of toxic wasteland and poisonous aquifers around heap leeching, processing plants, and open pit mines.
31. Ch. Sumiya, “Opening of spring Parliament session marked by protest,” from UB Post, date unknown, republished on OREADS Daily on April 6, 2006.
32. Private interview, M. Bold, founder and director, My Mongolian Land, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 2008.
33. ‘Aimag’ is the biggest administrative unit in Mongolia. It is similar to a province. There are 24 aimags in Mongolia.
34. ‘Soum’ — similar to a district — is an administrative unit after aimag (province); Mongolia has more than 300 soums.
35. Exactly like western logging companies Maxaam, Weyerhauser and Champion International have disguised clear-cuts in North America with thin barriers of intact forest in front.
36. These stories have not been seen by this writer.
37. From 2001 to 2004, William Foerderer Infante was director of USAID’s Economic Policy and Finance Office and acting mission director in Belgrade, Serbia, then Mongolia Country Director for The Asia Foundation from 2006 until 2009, when he left to work for UNDP in the Balkans.
38. Private interviews, Onggi Rivers Movement offices, Ulaanbaatar, October 28, 2008.
39. Private interview, Tracey Naughton, PACT-Mongolia, Ulaanbaatar, October 2008.
40. Private interview, Ulaanbaatar, October 2008.
41. Yoko Watanabe left WWF-Mongolia and at the time of this publication she was working for the Global Environment Facility (GEF). See bio.
42. In 2009, William Foerderer Infante quit The Asia Foundation for a position with UNDP in the Balkans.
43. Rebecca Darling left The Asia Foundation in 2009.
44. Interview with Rebecca Darling, The Asia Foundation, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 23, 2008.
45. Canada is the corporate home for over 75 per cent of the world’s mining companies. The mining and minerals manufacturing sector added $35 billion to Canadian GDP in 2009, according to the Mining Association of Canada, and in the same year the sector was reporting over $56 billion invested overseas. Canadian taxpayers and pension recipients contribute to these impressive numbers for the mining sector. Canada’s National Post recently reported that the taxpayer, mainly through Export Development Canada, supports Canadian mining companies to the tune of $20 billion annually through subsidized financing and insurance. See: Tom Sandborn, “Canadian Mining Firm Accused of Complicity in Congo Killings: Lawsuit highlights need for firmer hand in Ottawa, say human rights groups. Anvil Mining denies culpability,” www.TheTyee.ca, November 26, 2010.
46. For a tiny representative sampling of the criminal and terrorist operations of Canada-based mining companies and the protests or claims against them see: Chris Albin-Lackey, “Canada: Monitoring of Mining Companies Long Overdue,” Human Rights Watch in Toronto Star, October 27, 2010; Jeffery R. Webber, “Indigenous Struggle, Ecology, and Capitalist Resource Extraction in Ecuador: An Interview with Marlon Santi,” The Bullet, e-bulletin #391, July 13, 2010; Dylan Penner, “Canadian Civil Society Demands Canadian Mining Companies Be Held Accountable for Overseas Abuses,” Council of Canadians, November 22, 2010; “Development Protest: Goro delayed by blockade,” Daily News, April 9, 2006; Fernando Sanchez, “Violent protest in Barrick Gold’s Dominican mine injures at least 17,” Dominican Today, November 17, 2010; Nak’azdli Keyoh Huwunline, “Nak’azdli blockade enters second day: Mt Milligan mining project proponent threatens legal action,” Vancouver Media Co-op, November 16, 2010; Tom Sandborn, “Canadian Mining Firm Accused of Complicity in Congo Killings: Lawsuit highlights need for firmer hand in Ottawa, say human rights groups. Anvil Mining denies culpability,” www.TheTyee.ca, November 26, 2010; James Rodriguez, “GOLDCORP: No More Mining Terrorism,” MIMUNDO.org, May 2, 2007.
47. Rebecca Darling, “From Mongolia: A New Paradigm in responsible Mining is Taking Shape,” PACT, April 15, 2009 (blog content updated April 28, 2009).
48. Private communication, ‘Jane Smith’, conservationist with small NGO in Mongolia, May 5, 2009.
49. Jeffery R. Webber, “Indigenous Struggle, Ecology, and Capitalist Resource Extraction in Ecuador: An Interview with Marlon Santi,” The Bullet, e-bulletin #391, July 13, 2010.
50. Private communication, Goldman Foundation media relations, November 4, 2010.
51. Private communication, Goldman Foundation, November 29, 2010.
52. Private communication with The Asia Foundation November 2010.
53. For example, on Rio Tinto’s human rights and environmental atrocities in Papua New Guinea see: Gwen Kinkead, “Battling a Toxic Billionaire,” Men’s Journal, Dec. 1, 2009.
54. Barrick Gold Corporation is also partnered with Anglo-American, and AngloGold Ashanti. Barrick directors have included/include Brian Mulroney, former prime minister of Canada, Howard Baker, former US Senator, and international advisers George Herbert Walker Bush and Vernon Jordon.
55. Barrick Gold Corporation has a 9.5% stake in QGX, mining in Mongolia in a joint venture with Ivanhoe Mines.
56. See Robert Friedland on Sourcewatch.
57. On Robert Friedland, Tony Buckingham and Tim Spicer, see, e.g., Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999; Stan Correy, “Robert Friedland: The King of the Canadian Juniors,” Radio National, April 6, 1997; keith harmon snow & Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink & Deception Over Those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Global Research.
58. Danielle Mario, “OT Agreement Passes Parliamentary Committees,” UB Post, July 17, 2009.
59. See Keith Harmon Snow's "KING KONG" series.
60. The members of the NGO coalition include Oyu Tolgoi (OT) Watch, Center for Citizen’s Alliance, Centre for Human Rights and Development, Steps without Border, Drastic Change Movement and National Soyombo Movement.
61. “Mongolian NGOs Appeal to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Business and Human Rights to resolve Oyu Tolgoi Mine Dispute,” Press Release, Center for Human Rights and Development (Mongolia), OT Watch (Mongolia), MiningWatch (Canada), Rights and Accountability in Development (UK), April 23, 2010.
62. For example: The Asia Foundation received OPIC funding: 2007: $378,516 South Korea operations; 2007: $168,502 East Timor; 2007: $458,293 Bangladesh; 2007: $562,707 Afghanistan; 2007: $281,441 Thailand; 2007: $764,390 Indonesia. Source: OPIC web site.
63. Ron Gluckman, “Believe it or Not A mini-Boom in Mongolia,” Newsweek, September 2003.
64. In Northampton MA (USA), the local Coca Cola bottling plant uses over 1,000,000 gallons of fresh city water annually, and this is the people’s water.
65. President Yumjaagiyn Tsendenbal was president of Mongolia from 1952 to 1974.
66. Private interview and private tour with ‘Bayarma Ganbold’ in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 22, 2010.
67. Private interview, Tumur, Naliakh coal mines, October 30, 2008.
68. See e.g. “The Curse of Gold: Democratic Republic of Congo,” Human Rights Watch, June 1, 2005, or the many DRC related publications of keith harmon snow.
69. See, e.g., Janine Roberts, Glitter and Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel,” Disinformation Press, 2003; or keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamonds: Doublethink and Deception over those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, July-August, 2007.
70. See: Elizabeth Liagin, “Background to the Recent Nigerian Elections: General Obasandjo more than just a ‘Friend’ of the Americans,” World Socialist Web Site, March 17, 1999.
71. See, for example, keith harmon snow, “Congo: Three Cheers for Eve Ensler?” Toward Freedom, December 24, 2007.
72. On NED funding in Mongolia see NED Annual Report 2009: http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/asia/mongolia; IRI’s 2009 NED funding was $250,000 and NDI’s 2009 NED funding was $240,000. See NED.
73. In 2008 NED granted $137,977 to CIPE “[t]o establish more effective communication between the public and private sectors in Mongolia. CIPE will provide advisory support lending its expertise on policy advocacy and policy reform to its local partner, who will develop and submit official proposals for draft laws and policy recommendations to the government, organize training seminars, and create a monthly television program for educational purposes.” See NED.
74. William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony, Cambridge University Press, 1996: p. 86-116.
75. Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, SUNY Press, 2003.
76. See: Jonah Gindin, “Interview with William I. Robinson: The Battle for Global Civil Society,” International Endowment for Democracy, June 13, 2005. See also: NED’s funding of groups in China, for example, which is considered an anti-democratic challenger state and ideology to the US.
77. See: William Blum, “Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy,” International Endowment for Democracy.
78. William I. Robinson, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony, Cambridge University Press, 1996: pp. 86-116.
79. E.g., Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, SUNY Press, 2003: p. 162; and, on TAF involvement in Afghanistan, see, e.g., William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, Common Courage, 2004: p. 343.
80. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, Knopf, New York, 1974.
81. See, e.g., Freeport McMoRan’s criminal operations in Papua New Guinea, in league with terrorizing Indonesian security forces: John M. Miller, West Papua Report December 2010, East Timor and Indonesia Action Network, December 2010.
82. Both Conoco Philips and Freeport McMoRan have long histories of devastating interventions, human rights violations and environmental crimes in Latin America, Asia and Africa; Freeport McMoRan is also in Congo.
83. “President Obama Announces Members of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board,” The White House, December 23, 2009.
84. Mathew Nasuti, “Afghan AID Funds Diverted to The Asia Foundation,” Atlantic Free Press, January 31, 2010.
85. On TAF involvement in Afghanistan, see, e.g., William Blum, Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions since World War II, Common Courage, 2004: p. 343.
86. QUALCOMM is deeply involved in US government classified ‘top secret’ programs, and is probably, if not certainly, one of the big recipients of funding for ‘black’ programs.
87. James Baker traveled to Mongolia in the early 1990′s to press the ‘Washington Consensus’ as Mongolia’s savior and model for a successful transformation to democracy and free market capitalism.
88. Shelly Feldman, “NGOs and Civil Society: (Un)stated Contradictions,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 554, 1997: p. 44-66, cited in Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism, SUNY Press, 2003: p. 168.
89. See: Jonah Gindin, “Interview with William I. Robinson: The Battle for Global Civil Society,” International Endowment for Democracy, June 13, 2005.
90. Private interview and tour with ‘Bayarma Ganbold’, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 22, 2010.
91. Private interview with Baasan Geleg, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, October 2008.
92. United Movement for Mongolian Rivers and Lakes, “Brief Update on UMMRL, Mongolia,” October, 2010.
93. United Movement for Mongolian Rivers and Lakes, “Brief Update on UMMRL, Mongolia,” September 9, 2010.
94. “Interview by Mongolian NGO: Our struggle is to protect our environment and land,” www.news.mn, September 16, 2010.

Presented with this story are petroleum industry concessions maps   for North Africa that people might want to ponder in between the Western propaganda on Libya. Amidst the full-court press of propaganda presented by the western media and State Department disinformation apparatus we find that Muammar Gaddafi is even accused of committing genocide against his own people. Are there double standards at work?

An original photograph; backside text reads: Al Haji Amin (centre) is introducing military senior officers to his brother Col. Gaddafi, Chairman of the Revolutionary Command of Arab republic of Libya, shortly on arrival at Gulu Airfield [northern Uganda] to perform the official handing over of aircrafts to Uganda Airforce, March 3, 1974.

From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli

On September 1, 1969 the pro-western regime that had ruled in Libya was overthrown by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and his officers. At the time, Libya was home to the largest US Air Base (Wheelus Air Base) in North Africa. Agreements between the USA and Libya signed in 1951 and 1954 granted the USAF the use of Wheelus Air Base and its El Watia gunnery range for gunnery and bombing training and for transport and bombing stopovers until 1971. During the Cold War the base was pivotal to expanding US military power under  the Strategic Air Command, and an essential base for fighter and reconnaissance missions. The Pentagon also used the base — and the remote Libyan desert — for missile launch testing: the launch area was located 15 miles east of Tripoli. Considered a ‘little America on the shores of the Mediteranean’, the base housed some 4600 US military personnel until its evacuation in 1970.

With the discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, a very poor desert country became a very rich little western protectorate. US and European companies had huge stakes in the extremely lucrative petroleum and banking sectors, but these were soon nationalized by Gaddafi. Thus Libya overnight joined the list of US ‘enemy’ or ‘rogue’ states that sought autonomy and self-determination outside the expanding sphere of western Empire. Further cementing western hatred of the new regime, Libya played a leading role of the 1973 oil embargo against the US and maintained cooperative relations with the Soviet Union. Gaddafi also reportedly channeled early oil wealth into national free health care and education.

At one time Gaddafi played around with Idi Amin, but his ties to other despots — such as Tony Blair and George H. W. Bush — are far more notable, though far less advertised. Of course, just as Gaddafi is heavily slammed and maligned — in disproportion to his actual actions — we find that Idi Amin is not the premier African terrorist he is always billed to be: Amin’s crimes pale in comparison to the current despot in power in Uganda, President-for-Life Yoweri Museveni. Remember that Gaddafi has served the prerogatives of imperialism for years, even while being presented as the world’s premier terrorist.

Like previous revolutionary figures of the 20th century such as Mao and his Little Red Book, Gaddafi followed the example of other revolutionary figures like Mao Zedong in authoring his own unique and highly idealistic political philosophy. Gaddafi’s Green Book was published in three volumes between 1975 and 1979 and, as you might expect, it is almost unknown by the western enlightened [sic] world.

Over the past four decades the US and its closest allies, including Israel and Japan, have maintained a mostly hostile relationship with Muammar Gaddafi and Libya. This relationship has included economic sanctions, covert attacks, open warfare and other actions of aggression committed by the United States. The ‘international community’ repeatedly enforced or renewed sanctions against Libya in the 1980s and 1990s.

After September 11, 2001, the US issued extensive threats and warnings against Libya to pressure it to accept US demands and collaborate in the US “War on Terror.” Since Libya was considered one of the premier ‘rogue states’ involved in ‘terrorism’ and Gaddafi was forced to concede some of his country’s independence and autonomy. After diplomatic wrangling, sanctions against Libya were dropped in 2004 in exchange for Gaddafi’s (limited) collaboration.

In 2004, during heightened western media propaganda about Libyan terrorism and Gaddafi’s supporting Al Qaeda — all kinds of disingenuous reports and outright lies — the G.W. Bush administration dropped sanctions against the regime — and paved the way for a new era in US-Libyan bilateral trade.

US officials were reportedly under pressure from multinational corporations, including big petrol companies BP, ExxonMobil, Halliburton, Chevron, Conoco and Marathon Oil, and defense giants like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, and other corporations like Dow Chemical and Fluor. These corporations and lobbyists then formed a “trade” association, US-Libya Business Association (USLBA) in 2005 with $US 20,000 membership dues.

USLBA members lobbied the US government to protect and advance their interests in Libya, through the US government, and business executives flocked to Libya and negotiated for million or billion dollar deals. Bilateral trade with Libya totaled $2.7 billion in 2010, up from virtually nothing when sanctions were in place prior to 2004. The USLBA also lobbied on behalf of the former outlaw state of Libya and has sponsored policy conferences, briefing sessions and events featuring senior U.S. and Libyan officials.

Officials traveled to Libya for meetings with Libyan government officials, private business leaders, and representatives of American companies working in the country — leading to some of the unbridled development that was evident in Tripoli (2009).

Through the secretive Libyan Investment Authority, billions of Libya’s petrodollars were reportedly invested in US Equity and Big Banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and others, and into other private equity like the Carlyle Group — connected with Frank Carlucci, who is noted herein to be affiliated with the National Endowment for Democracy (described below).

The CIA has long wanted to eliminate and replace Muammar Gaddafi. President Reagan bombed Tripoli, killing Gaddafi’s infant daughter: the United States bombing of Libya (code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon) comprised the joint USAF, Navy, and Marines air-strikes against Libya on April 15, 1986. The US CIA brought down the Lockerbie Pan Am 103 flight over Scotland in 1988 and blamed this on Gaddafi.

Many of the top-level security documents from the Reagan Administration pertaining to Libya remain classified. These include National Security Decision Directives 16 (Economic and Security Decisions for Libya), NSDD 205a (Annex: Acting Against Libyan Support of International Terrorism), NSDD 224 (Counter-Terrorist Operations Against Libya), and NSDD 234 (Libya Policy), while even those that have been declassified are partially redacted. The George H.W. Bush NSDD 19 (US Policy Toward Libya) also remains classified.

In recent years Gaddafi has played along with the western fiction of Al-Qaeda, though it seems likely that some of the true mercenaries in Libya today are ‘Al-Qaeda’ terrorists trained by the United States to serve US interests in places like Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and now Libya. However, the CIA has always had their sights on Gaddafi.

Note the double standard in how the western press presents the accusations of Gaddafi using mercenaries, as if it is something unique to Gaddafi and Libya, and not something we ever do.

National front for the Salvation of Libya

In almost all western media accounts, the so-called “opposition” in Libya includes the unspecified, unnamed, unidentified “rebels” of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL). These are not innocent ‘pro-democracy’ protestors who began with a ‘peaceful sit-in’ as reported by the New York Times and uncritically repeated everywhere else.

Reportage of atrocities in Darfur, Sudan (2003-20011), and Rwanda (1990-1994) was always blamed on the governments (Omar Bashir in Khartoum and Juvenal Habyarimana in Kigali) with no context to the foreign backed insurgency and intervention occurring, which in both cases involved the US, UK and Israel. Similarly, in Libya today, there is no context or history to the FNSL ‘rebels’: they are categorically presented as the good guys, no matter that they seem to have appeared out of thin air. No one explains who these people are who are cited by the New York Times or CNN or Democracy Now as sources.

Street scene in Tripoli, September 2009

The FNSL was part of the National Conference for the Libyan Opposition held in London in 2005, and British resources are being used to support the FNSL and other ‘opposition’ in Libya. The FNSL was actually formed in October 1981 in Sudan under Colonel Jaafar Nimieri — the US puppet dictator who was openly known to be a Central Intelligence Agency operative, and who ruled Sudan ruthlessly from 1977 to 1985. The FNSL held its national congress in the USA in July 2007. Reports of ‘atrocities’ and civilian deaths are being channeled into the western press from operations in Washington DC, and the opposition FNSL is reportedly organizing resistance and military attacks from both inside and outside Libya.

Italy and France are also said to be backing these opposition groups, as the Italian and French oil companies AGIP and ELF and others seek to chop off and eat their pieces of the predatory pie. The US, Britain and Israel seek to insure control of the petroleum sector in advance of competitor corporations from other European countries.

Many of the petroleum concessions in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt appear (the map is 15 years old) to be held by state-owned oil companies. The US/European/Israeli nexus seeks to dislodge state-ownership — to whatever extent it actually exists — and dislodge any Chinese workers or Chinese companies involved in the oil exploitation, and replace these with western companies and western agents.

National Endowment for (non) Democracy

In 1983, the Pentagon, USAID, US State Department, and the CIA were all involved in the creation and implementation of ‘Project Democracy’ –based on National Security Decision Directive 77 (NSDD 77) — and this led to the creation of the National Endowment for Democracy.

After that, some of the ‘softer’ tactics used in covert interventions were shifted away from the CIA and onto the NED, whose involvement with covert operations and foreign interventions are nonetheless well-established.

A ‘soft’ intervention CIA front, the National Endowment for Democracy has been deeply involved in Libya along with the CIA fronted Freedom House (under their Blue Umbrella program and others). These entities have backed ‘opposition’, supported propaganda campaigns and so-called ‘pro-democracy’ movements, and are known to be involved with backing armed insurgents and interventions.

Libyan currency 2009

NED works its overt intelligence sector magic through four organizations under its (own) umbrella: National democratic Institute; International Republican Institute, Center for Private Enterprise, and the AFL-CIO’s American Center for International Labor Solidarity.  NED is closely aligned with US foreign policy interests and achieves its mission through the revolving doors between US Government and the NED Board of Directors.

Some of these NED directors include: former US Secretaries of State, Henry Kissinger (Nixon) and Madeleine Albright (Clinton), former US Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci (Reagan), former National Security Council Chair Zbigniew Brzezinski (Carter), former NATO Supreme Allied Command in Europe, General Wesley K. Clark (Clinton), and the current head of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz (George W. Bush).

Freedom House is supportive of NED programs but has been around since its creation by Elanor Roosevelt and they have been very active against Libya. Freedom House is funded by, amongst others, UNILEVER Corporation, USAID, and the US Information Agency (USIA). Freedom House, in alliance with USIA, has provided covert and overt “Radio Free” disinformation programs all over the world since at least 1952: e.g. Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia. The USIA is directly involved with US Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group in planning and coordinating major military operations (e.g. the Gulf War and the UNITAF intervention in Somalia).

Past and present Freedom House trustees include: former CIA director R. James Woosley; former national security adviser (at the time of the 1996 US invasion of Congo-Zaire) Anthony Lake; Harvard professor Samuel Huntington; UNILEVER executive Ned Bandler; CIA insider Andrew Young; former Joseph Mobutu confidant and national security insider Jeanne J. Kirkpatrick; former NED director and International Crisis Group trustee Zbigniew Brzezinski; USAID intelligence operative J. Brian Atwood (USAID administrator who oversaw the US-backed genocide against millions of Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire, 1996-1998) and many more.

Freedom House is also very likely affiliated with the phantom US Office of Strategic Information (OSI), formed after September 11, 2001. OSI is said to have been reorganized, with all its original functions reassigned to the Office of Global Communications, Information Awareness Office (IAO), and the newly reactivated Counter-Disinformation/Misinformation Team (Counter-Information Team). However, then-Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld issued statements affirming that the OSI’s operations would continue.

Banner mural on a building in downtown Tripoli, September 2009

Rogue State Painted with Blatant Propaganda

In the ABC LITELINE report “FNSL Leader Speaks from Washington,” we find the Washington monument in the background for an interview with an Arab agent being used by the western propaganda system as a credible source — but with zero explanations of who he is or why his claims might be false.

FNSL operative Irahim Sahad speaks freely, making any claim he likes, and nothing he says is challenged or counter-balanced. Sahad suggests that the UN Security Council MUST be convened to stop the ‘war crimes and ‘mass murder’ and ‘genocide’ being committed by Gaddafi against his own people. Ibrahim Sahad’s bias is unveiled by such statements as “The UN Security Council was convened when just one man was killed in Lebabon — so it should be convened to address the most brutal use of live ammunition, heavy arms and mercenaries.” The claim employs a double-standard, saying in short that Lebanese lives are worth more than Libyan, which is not at all the case, and that the United Nations takes serious one man’s life in Lebanon, so they should take far more serious the monumental loss of life [claimed] in Libya.

Here are some of the media’s rallying cries making headlines everywhere the English language is used:

• Gaddafi killing his own people!
• West worried that Gaddafi may use Nerve Gas!
• Heavy Weaponry Used Against Civilians!
• Heavy Arms Used in Libyan Crackdown!
• Gaddafi Committing Crimes Against Humanity!

The death tolls in Iraq, Afghanistan and Congo-Zaire — by US/NATO/ Israeli forces — far surpass anything that might have occurred in Libya. Meanwhile, most ‘news’ on Libya is based on false accusations and false assertions — such as the THREAT of nerve gas being used.

However, just prior to the dropping of sanctions in 2004 it was established that Washington and London were grossly exaggerating claims of Gaddafi’s development of nuclear and chemical weapons. The western propaganda about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Libya had the same empty ring as the lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction used to justify the war against Iraq.

In Afghanistan the US is using weapons of mass destruction and has been since the invasion of 2001: these include phosgene and uranium weapons. A deeper issue might be the loss of certain nuclear weapons, by the west, as claimed by sources in London, which reportedly went missing from US/NATO stocks. Claims are that these weapons made their way into the hands of British arms dealer John Bredenkamp, a long time crony of the Robert Mugabe gang in Zimbabwe and war lord involved in Congo-Zaire, and that they may have been sold to Libya, Yemen or North Korea.

Muammar Gaddafi Sides with the Empire?

“[T]he fundamental problem and issue before the people in the region is that the US rulers seek imperial control and imposition of semi-colonial country-selling regimes,” reports Ralph Schoenman, in ‘US Imperialism Against Democratic ME.’ “The more autocratic and brutal, the better from the point of the US imperialism that is unrelenting history. Every time the population is given the opportunity to shape its own destiny, to seek its national independence, to seek its own control over its own resources, to seeks its own sovereignty and determination of its own future, that is incompatible with the US imperialism.”

When Barack Obama was accepted by the US people as the new president, Gaddafi praised Obama and described Obama’s White House house-sitting gig as “a victory against racism,” and he urged the first Black U.S. president “to lead his country boldly and with integrity.”

“The Black people’s struggle has made tremendous advances against racism in America,” Gaddafi said. “It was God who created color. Today President Obama, son of a Kenyan father, a true son of Africa, has made it in the United States of America.”

At a speech he gave in his private tent in Tripoli in September 2008, Gaddafi rambled and muddled and zipped his all-over-the-place speech up as quick as he began it. Is he a desert mystic? Did he write the infamous Green Book or was it ghost-written? Are his sometimes rambling speeches emblematic of his propensity to try to please, to do what he likes, to be careful not to say the wrong thing, while being unable to remain silent when the hypocrisies of the west are (or were) thrown up in his face?

The Green Book says that workers should be involved and self-employed, and that the land must be of those who work it and those who live in the house. And power shall be exercised by the people directly, without intermediaries, without politicians, through popular congresses and committees, where the whole population decides the fundamental issues of the district, city and country. These are fighting words to predatory international capitalism.

When Gaddafi bowed to Western demands in 2004, it was most likely in part due to the incredible alignment of forces against Libya. Gaddafi and the Libyan government, and governments of other countries, will agree to a lot of imperialist dictates to avoid having a war launched against their country and to allow the people to still enjoy some decent standard of living and peaceful lives. Gaddafi played along with the West’s moral righteousness for “the war on terror,” knowing that he didn’t have much choice. His opening to western interests made no difference in the end, as too many forces have desired his destruction for far too long. Now that time has come: this is no ‘popular revolution’ sweeping Libya.

Pentagon Invasion Already Underway

The US will use any propaganda necessary to whip up American fervor over Gaddafi and justify Pentagon or MI6 or NATO operations. US and British warships sit off the coast of Libya — and they don’t sit there idly. The imposition of a ‘no-fly’ zone means that US/NATO plannes can do as they like, with the understanding that what we are really talking about are possible bombing and fighter sorties against Libya.

US troops have already moved ashore in Libya, joining the ‘opposition’ and ‘rebel’ forces in ‘rebel’ controlled territories. The US, France and Britain have already set up Bases in Libya.

The recent report noted that British and US special forces entered Libyan port cities of Benghazi and Toburk on February 23 and 24.

US covert operatives have been on the ground for weeks, and probably much longer than that, whether they have entered by sea (SEALS) or by way of Niger, where the US has openly published information about its covert operations. (See, for example, the travelology reports by former U.S. Special Forces now ‘journalist’ Robert Kaplan in America’s African Rifles a Pentagon massaged and approved propaganda feature in the pro-war Atlantic Monthly). Any opportunity to attack, destabilize, invade will be exploited by the Pentagon.

Of course, as this is written the US media is preparing the ground for the English-news consuming masses to see the Pentagon invasion as a “humanitarian” mission in Libya. There is nothing humanitarian about the Pentagon, and there has never been.

It’s Not Only the Oil, Stupid

Using state-of-the-art satellite remote sensing, the western powers have certainly mapped the mineral deposits that lie beneath the sands of the Libyan desert. For example, Canada’s Barrick Gold has for years had concessions in Niger and Mali — this is the corporation affiliated with former US President George Herbert Walker Bush, former US Senator Howard Baker and former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney — and Libya has a huge landmass with massive untapped mineral potential that goes way beyond the known petroleum deposits.

Another strategic geopolitical concern of the western powers is the protection and control of the massive nuclear (uranium) resources both inside Libya and nearby. France and Canada had already signed memorandums (circa 2007-2008) with Libya to explore and exploit uranium in Libya.

France’s entire nuclear weapons complex (and massive nuclear power industry) revolves around uranium extracted from Agadez and Arlit in northern Niger and it was built, over the past 50 years, out of the blood, seat and tears of the Nigerienne people. Japanese companies have been extracting uranium out of Niger through the Overseas Uranium Resources Development Corporation (OURD), in cooperation with U.S., Israeli, German and French corporations. In 2008, France and former colony Algeria signed defense and civil nuclear power accords, including cooperation in research, training, technology transfer and the exploration and production of uranium, all of interest to French nuclear giant Areva. Canadian and Australian corporations are also mining in Libya’s other southern neighbor, Burkina Faso. And yet, unlike Libya, where the people have seen some benefits from the extraction of wealth from their land, Niger remains the second poorest country in the world and Burkina Faso is close behind.

Russia and Ukraine had also signed memorandums with Libya regarding uranium exploration and development. However, China intends to quadruple its uranium consumption and China’s largest nuclear power corporation China National Nuclear Corp, has signed an agreement with China-Africa Development Fund to jointly develop uranium resources in Africa. Western nuclear corporations aim to monopolize Libya’s uranium sector and exclude China and Russia from the exploration and development — so they can build the nuke plants themselves and sell uranium to their Asian competitors.

Egypt
View full size pop-up image 

 

The Desert Mystic

 

Libya is a country of approximately 6 million people, having a huge geographical area but low population density. Claims that Gaddafi has uplifted his people over the course of his 40 year dictatorship are questionable. Supporters claim that poverty is low and enemies that poverty is high throughout the country. However, in Tripoli in September 2009 there were the obvious signs of capitalism: overcrowding, traffic, poverty, pollution and destruction of nature. There was also an element of fear visible in people’s faces.

It is completely hypocritical of citizens of the United States to speak of the outrage of ‘poverty’ abroad when that poverty is so often the result of US militarization, unjust trade, and plundering entities like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Further, some of the worst poverty in the world can be found in US cities like Gary, Indiana and on Native American reservations like Pine Ridge. Hillary Clinton complaints about Muammar Gaddafi are really just a projection of her shadow — a long, dark shadow steeped in bloodshed and deception — and another example of the hypocrisy on Libya.

Gaddafi’s Green Book and the ‘Third Universal Theory’ it propounds are worth reading. Had it been written by most anyone else who is opposed to the expansion of western empire with all its horrors, it would be more widely appreciated. The book addresses the falsification of democracy and the proliferation of organized criminal gangs — like the Republicans and Democrats that call themselves parties of and for the US people.

Gaddafi has funded Pan-African organizations and individuals, some of whom have very noble missions and serve to challenge the downtrodden, while he has also funded some armed factions involved in unjust wars or destabilizations. Gaddafi also supports one state in Palestine with equal rights for everyone, and he has spoken forcefully about the unjust war against the Palestinians by Israel. Gaddafi has funded Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam (this is a value neutral comment by this white author).

Gaddafi also funded Jean Pieerre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), the ‘rebellion’ [sic] that was also backed by Yoweri Museveni and allied with Rwandan ‘rebel’ forces (Congolese Rally for Democracy) backed by Paul Kagame, and these forces were responsible for a very definite genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo-Zaire). Bemba is on trial at the ICC for war crimes committed in the Central African Republic.

Human Rights Watch has reported that international arms dealer Victor Bout illegally shipped weapons into Congo-Zaire, picking them up in Libya and delivering them to Rwandan Hutu forces. However, Human Rights Watch is deeply compromised when it comes to reporting and not reporting the facts — or selectively reporting them — on Central Africa. If Gaddafi did supply or facilitate the provision of arms to Rwandan Hutu insurgents in Congo-Zaire, it may be one of the more reasonable actions he took: e.g. the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are forever misaligned by the Pentagon and its propaganda minions precisely because they fought against the illegal invasion of Rwanda by Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. Meanwhile, it is Rwanda, Uganda and their foreign multinational corporate allies that are responsible for the preponderance of killing in Central Africa, not the FDLR.

According to Amnesty International, another selective human rights organ serving western interests, Gaddafi also reportedly armed Sudanese in Darfur — long before the current conflict began in 2003 — to fight against western backed interventions in Chad and Sudan.

Gaddafi reportedly owns land in Zimbabwe and may flee there or to other countries where repressive control is maintained in service to western interests.

Muammar Gaddafi is/was the most recent chairman of the African Union, another elite organization designed to serve western exploitation — or run by a cabal of thieves, at the very least, who all have the goods on each other, and so none will ever challenge the way things are — while the people, the masses of Africa, everywhere suffer.

The African Union (AU) signed on with Washington for the devastating neo-liberal trade and tariffs agreement known euphemistically as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The AU special report on genocide in Rwanda was a complete whitewash serving US/UK interests and protecting dictators Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni. The AU has also been slammed by African leaders for inaction and silence in various developments on the continent.

Former AU chairman have included some of Africa’s most criminal dictators, such as Dennis Sassou Nguesso, who has reigned with absolute military brutality in the Republic of Congo for some 20 years (with a gap from 1992-1997). Gabon’s present ruler Albert-Bernard Bongo is the son-in-law of Dennis Sassou-Nguesso, and both have been
sustained with millions of Elf petrol dollars (see, e.g., keith harmon snow: “The Crimes of Bongo“). Sassou-Nguesso’s elite Cobra militia were also trained by French advisers and, like Colonel Joseph Mobutu, Sassou-Nguesso relied on Israeli security and intelligence for protection.

The AU’s alliance with NATO began long ago, and it saw expanded joint military operations in Sudan, where the AU served as NATO’s “African face” for US/UK and Israeli military interventions in the war for Darfur. For example, forces fighting for the NATO interests, commanded and commandeered under an AU banner, came from Paul Kagame’s Rwanda Defense Forces (formerly called Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Uganda, Rwanda, Congo-Zaire, and then Darfur. Rather than condemning western military expansion and different forms of AFRICOM or CIA-backed terrorism, for example, the AU backs the western war of annihilation in Somalia, involving Ugandan troops trained by US Special forces, and the Pentagon’s expansion in Ethiopia, and support for dictator Meles Zenawi there. Ethiopia is the site of an ongoing genocide against the Annuak, Omo and Orono people — and no one has reported the atrocities in the blood-drenched oil-rich Ogaden basin there. What say the AU?

In “AFRICA: Global NATO Seeks to Recruit 50 New Military Partners,” journalist Rick Rozoff reports: “A recent article in Kenya’s Africa Review cited
sources in the African Union (AU) disclosing that the 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] is preparing to sign a military partnership treaty with the 53-nation AU.” Rozoff explains that this is a likely maneuver against the spread of Chinese interests in the continent.

According to Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford, who also traveled to Tripoli in 2008, Gaddafi is on the outs: the man who ruled this not-so-little North African dictatorship is about finished. Whatever the truth about Muammar Gaddafi, at least one thing is certain: he was not the big bad bogeyman now under attack by the West.

SUDAN
(Darfur is the giant block 12 concession on the left side.)
View full size pop-up image 

And Now, the Gaddafi Genocide

On February 22, 2011, the Libyan deputy ambassador to the United Nations called on Muammar Gaddafi to step down and face trial over “war crimes and genocide.”

The charge has now been widely repeated in other news venues. “European diplomats are meeting around the clock to minimise risks for their nationals after a speech by Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi yesterday (22 February) was interpreted as “code to start genocide.”

“Gaddafi’s Genocide!” declared one CNN news pundit. A Stop Gaddafi Genocide! page was created on Facebook.

Such claims made by Libyan ‘opposition’ and reported in the western press that Gaddafi is committing genocide or about to commence genocide against his own people represent the height of western arrogance and hypocrisy.

The disinformation frenzy and hysteria knows no bounds. A web site dedicated to English language reporting on human rights in Cuba had this headline: “Human Rights in Cuba: Is Casto Supporting Gaddafi’s Genocide?” “Are Cuban pilots flying Gaddafi’s military jets, which are being deployed to attack peaceful Libyan protesters?” the article begins. Interestingly, Fidel Castro was the first international leader to publicly assert that Washington was about to invade Libya: Castro was right.

At this very moment the wars being prosecuted by the USA and its allies, including Japan, Europe, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia, far dwarf the ‘atrocities’ committed in Libya. While we have no credible reporting about who is killing, who is opposition, how many dead, etc., out of Libya, we have credible report after credible report establishing that the US and its allies have perpetrated massacres, tortures, and other atrocities, including genocide, in the millions of people, in Congo-Zaire, Rwanda, Uganda, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan — for a short list.

The claim of genocide here, akin to the one-sided charges against former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, or against Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, are one more clear example of the Politics of Genocide delineated in great detail by this writer and others. Reports in western media — provided, again, by the FNSL and other western intelligence, covert operations or psychological operations flak organizations — are filled with harsh language and characterizations not seen in reporting on or by western military campaigns. For example, in many western reports we can find, such as Gruesome Footage Proves Libya Using Heavy Arms makes claims that “newspapers obtained shocking footage of corpses with bodies blasted off and several torsos in Libyan hospitals.”

So there are several torsos. That is not quite genocide. Where are the images? If such images of death and destruction do appear it will be in sharp contrast to the complete whiteout on dead bodies in the Pentagon’s other theaters of war, in the eastern Congo-Zaire or Somalia, or in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, some videos purporting to be ‘violence in Libya’ have disappeared from the web.

Images of dead bodies can be produced and published but these are easily stripped of context. How do western audiences and propaganda consumers know that these are authentic and not recycled images of protests from Yemen or Bahrain dumped into the western press (with their willing acknowledgment) by Britain’s MI-6, as has been alleged? Al-Jezeera shows its true western colors by not reporting much of anything, and that certainly not critical of western manipulation or involvement.

Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni greets the entourage of foreign mercenaries Tony Buckinham and others as part of the Heritage Oil & Gas / Sandline International meetings to secure oil concessions in the bloody Semliki basin bordering eastern Congo-Zaire & northern Uganda: both sites of actual genocides.

We saw the tactic of collecting dead bodies and skeletons used in Rwanda by the Pentagon’s agents of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, and in Darfur and South Sudan, where journalist Nicholas Kristof produced some dead shriveled bodies from some desert somewhere and claimed these were from the New York Times‘ Secret Genocide Archives. The atrocities were committed, we are told, by President Omar al-Bashir and the government of Sudan.

However, there is never any mention of US military involvement, mercenaries (Pacific Architects and Engineers, Dyncorp, others) on the ground in Sudan. Dead men tell no tales, or dead women: these dead bodies are as likely dead from US or Israeli backed ‘rebels’ — the Justice and Equality Movement or Sudan Liberation Army backed by the US, NATO, Israel and our puppet dictator in Uganda.

The double-standards and outright lies can be seen quickly, if one knows there are deeper truths, by examining propaganda produced by the International Crisis Group, or such propaganda tracts as Smith College English teacher Eric Reeves’ “A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide” — where there is not one reference to Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni and his backing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in South Sudan — a US military covert operation — and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) in Darfur, in all of the 386 pages.

Western mercenaries that have been deeply involved, and remain so, in some of the world’s bloodiest conflicts, in coup d’etats, in massacres and other atrocities, include British mercenary Tony Buckingham — whose mercenary past is legendary — founder of Heritage Oil & Gas, a petroleum company linked by Buckingham to mercenary firms Branch Energy and Sandline International. Buckingham was also a partner in the infamous Executive Outcomes, with former British Special Air Services (SAS) soldier-of-misfortune Tim Spicer — the recipient of massive Pentagon contracts in Iraq. Heritage director General Sir Michael Wilkes retired from the British Army in 1995 and is a former Middle East adviser to the British government and a member of the Army Board. Wilkes commanded Britain’s SAS regiment and was director of Special Forces. Heritage Oil has exploited opportunities in Mali, Uganda, Republic of Congo, Oman and Iraq.

 

Heritage Oil & Gas map of operations in Iraq

Similarly, there was no public outcry about the use of mercenaries to shore up a dictator when Central African Republic dictator Ange Felix Patasse called in Libyan troops and commanders to protect his private diamond republic. When Ethiopian troops joined the Pentagon’s efforts to overthrow Col. Joseph Mobutu and reorganize capitalist interests in Congo-Zaire (1996) — no one said a word. What are UN troops from Pakistan, Guatemala, India or Bangledesh — paid to carry a gun and use it if necessary in support of protecting capitalist interests? Mercenaries.

If there are acts of genocide being committed in Libya, they are not being committed by Gaddafi or those fighting for Gaddafi. Reports are emerging that indicate that black Africans are being targeted by ANTI-government forces — these would be the western media’s precious ‘rebels’ — for their perceived support of Gaddafi. These include black Africans from Sudan, Chad, or Egypt, many of which are apparently laborers who have been working the service and lower menial jobs in Libya.

In short, almost everything in the western press on the crises in Libya is slanted by some faction, or interest, or it is tainted by western arrogance, or by anti-imperialist ideology (of ‘solidarity’), even in the case of what is perceived to be the ‘alternative’ media. There is very little accurate reporting of any kind (but some good work linked or cited herein).

Muammar Gaddafi has been a champion for people of color — providing funding, hope and solidarity where none existed, and this correspondent is aware that this correspondent’s writing herein is deficient in presenting all the positive aspects of his collaboration with people of color.

“The lies of the media cannot hide the fact that Gaddafi has supported the struggles of peoples for liberation in Nicaragua, Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and many other countries, specifically concretely helping the people who fought for liberation,” writes Antonio Cesar Oliviera, in “Who Is Muammar Gaddafi?”

“In practice, Gaddafi has always been a benefactor of mankind, but for the mercenary [western] media, a benefactor is one who creates wars in search of profits for the arms industry or to dominate the world, as were the wars created by the U.S. in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua and many other countries.”

Gaddafi’s alliance with Islam and his support for truly revolutionary movements must be understood for what the capitalist system sees them as: slaps in the face of power and threats to that power. This is one of the biggest reasons that Gaddafi, throughout his tenure as leader of the Libyan Revolution, has been considered the devil incarnate by Washington and London etc.

This report [herein] is just another incomplete picture of an incomplete puzzle — but it seeks to penetrate through and expose the ongoing western media campaign for what it is: a psychological operation against the masses of earth’s people who have not and do not benefit from the nasty policies and actions implemented to serve a very small and elite group of people.

Muammar Gaddafi is not my enemy, and I am not his, and so my criticisms are reserved for those involved in the unjust and illegitimate invasions and wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Congo-Zaire, Somalia and now Libya. Gaddafi has opposed the unjust International Criminal Court, and so do I.

People wishing to support the legitimate grievances and actions for freedom and truth in Libya should challenge the western terrorist apparatus out of Washington, DC, Tel Aviv, Brussels, London and Toronto.

Prayers for the true innocent civilians in Libya, and across the region.

• keith harmon snow traveled to Tripoli, Libya in 2009 and stayed about 3 days while attending the “2009 International Conference of the Green Book Supporters” as a member of the US Delegation invited by former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia Mckinney (D-GA).
• Maps are from a petroleum industry map of all Africa produced in 1996: much has changed since then, only for the worse, in terms of oil and gas expansions.
• Photography Credits: keith harmon snow

“If the road would speak, then I wouldn’t be scared, if the birds would sing, then I would vow to never vanish,” wrote Beatrice Munyenyezi, “I wouldn’t be lost in the woods, a place where sound and noise is unheard of, and the sky, the sky is not even there to guide you, to guide me.”

So begins Beatrice Munyenyezi’s personalized account as a refugee who survived the slaughter of millions of people in Rwanda, in Zaire/Congo, and in neighboring countries, between 1990 and 1998—always erroneously defined as “the 1994 Rwanda genocide” where brutality is universally attributed to the Hutu ethnic group and Tutsis are always the only victims.

Ms. Munyenyezi has been transforming her ordeal of unspeakable brutality and terror into a book tentatively titled Life in the Middle of Nowhere: Surviving Genocide in Rwanda and Zaire. It is her version of Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (2004) a renowned non-fiction book published in Europe and written by Marie Beatrice Umutesi, a Hutu and genocide survivor.

On Thursday June 24, 2010, this project abruptly came to a halt when Federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confiscated all of Ms. Munyenyezi’s texts, notes, documents, computers and other personal items. (ICE is the largest investigative agency in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.) Now her private testimony as a refugee and survivor will likely be used against her in another case of politically motivate genocide charges.

The U.S. Department of Justice has suggested that Beatrice Munyenyezi might be deported to face genocide charges in Rwanda. But Ms. Munyenyezi will be a milestone case: the first international legal proceedings in the United States involving a female of any ethnicity or nationality charged with rape as a genocide and war crime.

On June 24, 2010, Beatrice Munyenyezi (MOON’-yen-yezi) was arrested in Manchester, New Hampshire (USA) and charged, according to U.S. prosecutors, with “procuring U.S. citizenship unlawfully by misrepresenting her activities during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.”

According to the government of Rwanda, Beatrice Munyenyezi, 40, allegedly “participated in, committed, ordered, oversaw, conspired to, aided and abetted, assisted in and directed persecution, kidnapping, rape and murder during the Rwandan genocide of 1994.”

These are generic genocide charges used by the Rwandan military regime against all Hutus.¹

According to U.S. prosecutors, Ms. Munyenyezi allegedly concealed these facts in order to obtain immigration and naturalization benefits and lied about her connection to the genocide when seeking citizenship. Ms. Munyenyezi’s husband and mother-in-law are in custody at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania on genocide charges.²

If convicted of the two counts of procuring U.S. citizenship unlawfully, Munyenyezi faces up to 10 years imprisonment, followed by 3 years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine, along with revocation of her U.S. Citizenship.

Beatrice Munyenyezi survived the invasion of Byumba Prefecture by Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) guerillas in 1990, and the years of RPF persecution and genocide that saw entire Hutu villages in Byumba razed, massacres of scores of thousands of people, and the internal displacement of some 2 million Hutus—forced into a life-and-death refugee existence inside Rwanda between October 1990 and April 1994.

Ms. Munyenyezi then survived the so-called ‘100 days of genocide’ in Rwanda from April to July 1994. She fled Rwanda with family members on July 18, 1994, part of the massive exodus of millions of Rwandans, mostly innocent Hutu women and children, after the RPF won the civil war in Rwanda, to eastern Zaire (Dem. Rep. of Congo), where she survived the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Hutu civilians by the RPF.³

Beatrice Munyenyezi fled from Congo to Kenya at the advice of her brother, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, another U.S. citizen also being hunted by the Kagame regime and its political, military and economic partners.⁴ In Tanzania and Kenya she survived RPF agents hunting refugees and assassinating dissidents (including former RPF official Seth Sendashonga).⁵

Evacuated to the United States in March 1998, Beatrice Munyenyezi was first assisted by a Catholic charity in New Hampshire. She later worked for the Manchester Housing and Redevelopment Authority, which owns and manages 1,271 public housing apartments for low-income families, elderly, and adults with disabilities, from March 2001 to March 2005. MHRA spokeswoman Michelle Desmond would not comment on Ms. Munyenyezi’s service record, but Beatrice has regularly worked with other groups to assist refugees of many nationalities. She taught herself English and pursued degrees at a local community college and at the University of New Hampshire.

The Associated Press and other news outlets splashed Ms. Munyenyezi’s arrest across the news on June 24, 2010. “An estimated 800,000 people were murdered during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, which took place over the course of approximately 100 days,” these outlets universally reported.⁶

The official narrative on ‘genocide’—distilled to the simple sound-bite above—is maintained by the current government of Rwanda and its military, political and economic partners to silence debate and manufacture a version of events that protects the perpetrators and criminalizes victims like Beatrice Munyenyezi and her family members.

President Paul Kagame runs the military dictatorship in Rwanda with his closest military associates from the former Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF), now known as the Rwanda Defense Forces. In October 1990, the RPF guerrilla army invaded northern Rwanda from neighboring Uganda, backed by the United States and Britain. Over the next four years the RPF terrorized Rwandan civilians as they slowly seized the country and overthrew the Hutu-majority government of President Juvenal Habyarimana.⁷

Predominantly comprised of hardened Uganda guerrillas of the Tutsi ethnicity who fought (1980-1985) to bring Uganda’s strongman Yoweri Museveni to power, these guerrillas, backed by London and Washington, have perpetrated massive genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity on millions of innocent civilians in Uganda, Rwanda and the Dem. Rep. of Congo.

Contrary to popular propaganda, the sound bite claiming that the RPF ‘stopped the genocide against Tutsis’ in Rwanda is a gross mischaracterization of the nature of genocide versus civil war in Rwanda. It is also a sound bite that deflects attention from the RPF role in mass atrocities in Rwanda and Congo. The Kagame regime is able to get away with anything it wants—arrest and torture opponents, persecute refugees everywhere, plunder minerals from Congo —because President Paul Kagame has provided the Pentagon its biggest, centralized base for the Pentagon’s U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM.

PERSECUTING OPPOSITION AND SURVIVORS

On June 24, 2010, the Kagame regime in Rwanda violently suppressed dissent in Rwanda as the three primary political parties standing in opposition to President Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front saw their members and leaders physically harassed, barred from leaving their residences, and in some cases arrested. Reports were of ‘mobs’ of government supporters—these are often rented crowds—at each location where the harassment occurred.⁸

This follows the June 19, 2010 assassination attempt in South Africa of exiled Rwandan General Faustin Nyamwasa, who fled Rwanda after being accused of opposing the Kagame government.⁹ Nyamwasa is one of over 15 leading military officers and Ambassadors who have been imprisoned or forced into exile in recent months.¹⁰

On June 29, 2010, South African Security Service (SASS) arrested four men for the June 19 attempted murder Nyamwasa and all four men have asylum in South Africa. Three of the four men have already surrendered asylum papers for an investigation.¹¹ South African officials are withholding information about the nationality of these bogus ‘refugees’. However, initial reports have confirmed that these are Rwandan nationals, former RPF soldiers and agents from the Directorate of Military Intelligence (DMI), sent by President Paul Kagame and his chief operative General James Kabarebe. The operation to assassinate Nyamwasa was run by a former soldier of rank Captain while the actual shooter was a soldier who formerly served under General Nyamwasa.

Authentic Rwandan refugees, asylum seekers, and true genocide survivors have claimed for years that Rwandan intelligence agents are infiltrated through the asylum process into foreign countries to assassinate or otherwise neutralize perceived enemies, or anyone who speaks out against the Kagame regime. INTERPOL should have arrested General Nyamwasa and Kabarebe, indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide by the Spanish National Court, along with Paul Kagame, whose diplomatic immunity prevented his indictment.

On June 24, Rwandan journalist Jean-Leonard Rugambage, from an opposition newspaper, was shot dead by assailants when returning to his home in Kigali.¹²

On May 23, U.S. attorney and ICTR defense counsel Peter Erlinder was arrested and illegally detained in Rwanda.¹³ Mr. Erlinder flew to Rwanda to represent his client Victoire Ingabire, a Hutu woman also persecuted by the Kagame regime. Erlinder, charged with ‘genocide denial’ and denied bail twice, was released on medical grounds after 21 days incarceration but faces charges with punishment up to 25 years.¹⁴

Victoire Ingabire arrived in Rwanda in January 2010 to contest the upcoming presidential elections. She and her aides were immediately arrested and she has been charged with genocide denial and other thought crimes.¹⁵

The military and intelligence apparatus directly run by President Paul Kagame maintains elite networks of death squads inside and outside Rwanda. Tasked with hunting and neutralizing any dissidents, critics, intellectuals, writers, human rights activists, or other ‘opposition’ to Kagame’s regime, these agents operate freely throughout Africa, Europe, Canada and the United States. Anyone critical of the Kagame military regime is falsely accused of involvement in genocide, ‘genocide negationism’ or ‘genocide denial’.¹⁶

Young Congolese men falsely accused of being Hutu genocidaires beaten and detained in Eastern Congo. Photo by KHS

RPF agents in the Boston, Massachusetts area, which is very close to Manchester, New Hampshire, include Tufts University ‘law scholar’ Patrick Karuretwa, a current member of the Rwandan Defense Forces, a former RPF guerrilla, and a member of Paul Kagame’s elite and brutal Republican Presidential Guard.¹⁷ Paul Kagame has been a regular guest in Boston at Tufts’ Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Boston University and Harvard: his power base in the U.S. is Boston.

Karuretwa has been using the Harvard Law Record, a high profile student newspaper, to advance propaganda favorable to the Kagame regime and to turn public opinion against legitimate Rwandan refugees and portray them as genocidaires or genocide deniers.¹⁸ (The Harvard Law Record claims to be independent but would not respond to inquiries or publish comments contrary to Karuretwa.)

The process of Karuretwa’s admission to the United States and enrollment and funding at Tufts University has not come under scrutiny by the Department of Homeland Security. The Kagame government has infiltrated agents into western countries posing as asylum seekers.¹⁹

“The Kagame government is trying to frame my sister now,” says Professor Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro. “They are trying to get to me. They have tried to accuse me of lying on my immigration forms, but I was evacuated from Rwanda [1994] as a family member of a U.S. citizen. Probably I will be arrested soon.”

Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro is a U.S. citizen who was evacuated by the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda and U.S. marines from Bujumbura, Burundi, on April 9, 1994.

The war in Rwanda was escalated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front on April 6, 1994, after the plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down by the RPF with surface-to-air missiles, killing both presidents, their chiefs of staff, the French pilots and other top Rwandan and Burundian officials. The United States and its allies, including the United Nations and the Rwanda Tribunal (ICTR), have blocked all investigations into this major act of international terrorism.²⁰

The Rwandan Patriotic Front and Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) marched through Byumba Province clearing the land of its people, whether Hutu or Tutsi. Attacks against Byumba began with the RPF invasion of October 1990, another act of international terrorism that remains opaque and unpunished, though it set the stage for the death of more than ten million people in Central Africa since. Ninety-nine percent of Byumba was occupied by the RPF and their scorched earth campaign to clear the land through massacres, rapes, and forced displacement.

In their village in Byumba, the family home of Beatrice Munyenyezi, Prudence Kantengwa and Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, built by their father with the help of Catholic missionaries in 1957, was destroyed by the RPF in 1991.

“I was born in Northern Rwanda, a province of Byumba, a place that perhaps many of you have never heard of,” the introduction to Ms. Munyenyezi’s book continues. “Yes, it is in the middle of nowhere. It is a place where your cry, echoes and echoes but still is not heard, a place where you cry and the tears refuse to come, a place where you wait for someone, anyone to come and save you, but instead the ghost of your failure, of your misery shows up on your doorstep. No one can hear your cries, your sobs, for you are alone.”

Associate Professor of Communications at Western New England College in Springfield, MA, Dr. Higiro is one of few remaining Hutu intellectuals not arrested or killed by the RPF regime. He has been a constant source of tension to Kagame, who in turn maintains intense pressure on the U.S. government—its leading military and economic partner—to arrest Higiro.

Dr. Higiro was critical of both the Habyarimana and Kagame governments, and he has published articles and given talks about the media climate just prior to the events of April-July 1994, and about the commodification of genocide used to advance the political and economic objectives of the Kagame military regime and to hide the RPF’s organized criminal activities and war crimes in the Democratic Republic of Congo.²¹

Prior to April 1994, Higiro was director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINFOR). The RPF government has tried to arrest and extradite Higiro since Dr. Higiro’s refusal to accept the RPF government appointment of Minister of Information, in July 1994, after seeing reports of RPF massacres against scores of thousands of Hutus.

“They arrested my sister Prudence Kantengwa in Boston in 2008. Her case resulted in lengthy trials costing U.S. taxpayers a lot of money. Now they have arrested Beatrice. But she [Beatrice] was not a government official in Rwanda, she was not with the Interahamwe [militias], she is just a young Rwandan woman who survived the genocide and made it to America.”

FALSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE

Prudence Kantengwa was arrested in Boston in 2008. Also a Hutu and the sister of Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and Beatrice Munyenyezi, Ms. Kantengwa applied for asylum in the United States in 2001, but she was initially denied.

U.S. immigration judge Eliza C. Klein granted asylum to Prudence Kantengwa against the U.S. government prosecutor’s wishes. U.S. immigration then appealed to the Immigration Review Board who confirmed Judge Klein’s ruling in June of this year.

But prior to the first favorable asylum ruling by Judge Klein, the U.S. immigration prosecutors saw that the Kantengwa asylum case was not going their way. ICE then arrested and accused Prudence Kantengwa of lying on her visa application. The resulting U.S. Federal Criminal Court case is ongoing.

Jeffrey Auerhahn is a U.S. prosecutor on Prudence Kantengwa’s criminal court case. In a high-profile organized crime murder case in Boston, begun in 1985, U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn engaged in misconduct and when deposed by the court in 2003 he lied about it. Auerhahn went beyond misconduct to criminal behavior, including: [a] coercing a witness into giving false testimony (suborning perjury); [b] falsifying evidence; 
[c] withholding exculpatory evidence from defense; and [d] lying before the court (perjury).²² He is also named in an open citizen’s letter seeking redress from the U.S. prosecutor’s office in Boston for FBI retaliation against Muslims who have refused to work as FBI informants in the Muslim communities around Boston.²³

The case was investigated and reported in detail by Boston’s WBUR News journalists David Boeri, Lisa Tobin, Jesse Costa and Andrew Phelps. “Federal Judge Mark Wolf called the conduct of Jeffrey Auerhahn ‘A fraud upon the court’,” they reported.

U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn is one of two federal prosecutors on the Beatrice Munyenyezi case, also a Federal Criminal Court case because Beatrice Munyenyezi is now a U.S. citizen and the asylum system no longer can be used against her. Auerhahn was never disciplined or disbarred for his unscrupulous actions. The case raised troubling questions from critics—including judges—who worry that withholding evidence has become a tactic of some federal prosecutors.

“Unfortunately, this U.S. prosecutor Mr. Auerhahn is still exhibiting the same misconduct in my case,” says Prudence Kantengwa. “The discovery process, which usually takes no more than 3 months, has taken more than a year and is still going on because prosecutors have refused to share the information they have that contradicts their allegations. And my guess is that they are hiding written information—such as investigation made about me which took 6 months before I was granted a visa to the US in 2001—and plan to bring witnesses in collaboration with the Rwanda government [whom] they have trained on what to fabricate against me.” 

Rwandan asylum hearings in the U.S.,²⁴ Canada and Europe also suppress evidence that would exonerate the accused. Instead, prosecutors and judges rely on disinformation and falsified evidence, including the U.S. State Department’s annual Country Report on Human Rights: Rwanda, which are extraordinary documents that suppress critical facts and information and advance very positive images of the Kagame regime: Not only is the Rwanda Government cleansed of its crimes, it is applauded for its supposed attention to the rule of law and recovery from an untenable political horror story: genocide.²⁵,²⁶

U.S. asylum hearings also rely heavily on testimonies collected by Rwandan military and intelligence officials using intimidation, bribery, torture and the threat of being accused of genocide and tried before the so-called ‘people’s courts’ in Rwanda, the Gacaca courts.²⁷ Communities and family members in Rwanda are also retried for the same offenses at Gacaca trials where intimidation is used to force a verdict that satisfies the Kagame regime. People are also routinely disappeared in Rwanda, and assassinated in other countries.²⁸ Young men and boys are forced to attend “re-education camps” on remote Iwawa Island in Lake Kivu, heavily guarded by RDF soldiers, subject to ‘thought-control’ and psychological intimidation.²⁹

In United States of America vs. Francois Karake et al., a U.S. court dismissed all charges brought by the U.S. and Rwanda governments against three Rwandan defendants, all Hutus, accused of the murder of two U.S. and other tourists in Uganda’s Bwindi National Park in March 1999. The investigation spanned four years and involved the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ascertained that the defendant’s testimonies had been extracted through physical torture with the involvement of U.S. agents. The prisoners were incarcerated and interrogated at Kami Military Barracks, notorious for RPF torture operations, in Rwanda.

Terror is a strong incentive to make people collaborate with Rwandan government officials to produce convincing documentary ‘evidence’. In the fall of 2009, Human Rights Watch documented the case where more than 300 Rwandans fled southern Rwanda to Burundi in fear of being falsely accused or genocide, sent back to Gacaca for retrial, or disappeared.³⁰

“Jeffrey Auerhahn continues to work as a federal prosecutor in Boston,” WBUR News David Boeri reported in February 2010. “He’s been praised by the last U.S. Attorney. There’s never been a public action by the Justice Department to discipline him.”²²

The evidence used by U.S. prosecutor Jeffrey Auerhahn against Prudence Kantengwa was in part marshaled in Rwanda by investigator Thomas Brian Andersen Jr., a special agent with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Boston, MA.

Agent Anderson traveled to Rwanda on U.S. taxpayer’s money to investigate the case of Prudence Kantengwa for the Federal criminal hearing. In his notarized affidavit to the court, Andersen provides facts that seriously discredit his claim to expertise on Rwanda or the case in question.

• Paragraph 12: “The vast majority of the Hutu elite, including the assassinated president, were from Byumba.” President Juvenal Habyarimana was from Gisenyi Prefecture, northwestern Rwanda, not Byumba Prefecture, northeastern Rwanda; the vast majority of the Hutu elite did not come from Byumba either; if anything Byumba was one of the least privileged provinces even though it was considered as President Habyarimana’s fiefdom.

• Paragraph 12: “The prime minister, who was a member of the RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] Tutsi party, was murdered.” Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana was a Hutu, never a member of the RPF party, but a member of the MDR, or Mouvement Démocratique Républicain; further, the prime minister’s murder remains shrouded in questions about RPF and United Nations Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR) troop involvement as extensive ICTR trial documents make clear; the assumption and allegation that she was murdered by Hutu extremists is another example of the investigator’s prejudice based on news media, falsified stories, and falsified human rights reports, and RPF propaganda;

• Paragraph 12: “[Prudence] Kantengwa was married to Athanse Munyemana, who was a minister in the extremist Hutu government.” Athanse Munyemana was never a Hutu government minister: he was a state intelligence bureau official and a magistrate who could not have belonged to a political party under the Rwandan constitution of 1991.

ICE AGENT THOMAS BRIAN ANDERSEN

In his June 2010 request for a warrant for search and seizure of property belonging to Beatrice Munyenyezi, ICE special agent Thomas Brian Andersen Jr. provided an affidavit that is a travesty of justice.³¹ He does not anywhere discuss his relationship with the Rwandan government, but nonetheless declares his independence from, for example, the Rwandan regime’s Directorate of Military Intelligence: it is impossible to pursue the investigations he claims to have performed independently without the involvement, oversight, or monitoring of the notorious DMI.

Agent Andersen does not elucidate his relationship to Rwandan ‘genocide survivor’ organizations IBUKA (“remember”) and AVEGA (Association des Veuves du Genocide/Association of the Widows of Genocide), both known to be populated with bogus ‘survivors’ coached, paid and protected by the RPF government.³²

Basing his statements from witnesses whom he purportedly interviewed in Rwanda, purportedly without government interference, these being people whom he claims are independent and authentic witnesses, authentic genocide survivors and authentic convicted genocidaires, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen then testified:

I believe these witnesses are reliable because they are eyewitnesses for whom it is a great personal risk to submit to being a witness and because there is no motivation to provide false information, given that many of these witnesses reside in Rwanda and have no contact with Munyenyezi.

The above statement indicates that Andersen has no understanding of events in Rwanda in general, and, in particular, no understanding of: [1] the politics of genocide accusations; [2] motivations such as land, housing and other property disputes; [3] motivations such as personal or economic rivalry; [4] intimidation, accusation and the threat of physical violence used to coerce and fabricate witnesses and testimonies; [5] financial and other incentives used to induce testimonies that suit the Rwandan regime; [6] the motivations of Hutu prisoners accused or already convicted of genocide to produce false testimonies against other Hutus.

The fact that witnesses ‘reside in Rwanda’ is not evidence of their absence of bias, but rather evidence of their propensity toward bias. In particular, thousands of Ugandans currently occupy Rwandan homes and lands taken by force by the RPF from previous landowners of both Hutu and Tutsi ethnicity. (If agent Andersen went to Butembo in North Kivu province in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo he would find thousands of Rwandan RPF Tutsis occupying homes and lands there; it would be impossible and outrageous to conclude that their presence in Congo substantiated evidence of their veracity as ‘witnesses’ to events that took place in the local geographical areas of their illegal occupation.)

Paragraph 11 of Andersen’s affidavit reveals the real reason that President Paul Kagame seeks to punish and imprison Beatrice Munyenyezi, with ICE support, and why Rwandan officials are pressing the U.S. government to intimidate, arrest and silence her:

“Over the several days in February 2006, Munyenyezi testified in her husband’s and mother-in-law’s trials at the ICTR.”

ICE agent Andersen offers ‘evidence’ of Beatrice Munyenyezi’s alleged criminality primarily based on guilt by association with her husband and mother-in-law, both involved in ongoing trials at the ICTR. Further, he alleges by association that Beatrice Munyenyezi, a witness who testified in her family member’s defense at these ICTR trials in 2006, is complicit in genocide merely because she testified on her sister’s behalf. Icing the cake of injustice, special agent Andersen alleges in his affidavit (paragraph 11) that Beatrice Munyenyezi committed perjury in her ICTR testimony. Finally, the modus operandi of the Kagame regime and RPF military is to arrest, convict, re-educate (through intimidation and terror) or disappear anyone who testifies contrary to the wishes of the Kagame regime or contrary to the established ‘Rwanda genocide’ narrative, as did Munyenyezi.

In paragraph 12, agent Andersen claims that Beatrice Munyenyezi manned roadblocks, organized killings, oversaw rapes, and gave public speeches inciting mass murder and rape and all the standard crimes that the Kagame regimes uses to criminalize Hutu people. On its face, the evidence produced by agent Andersen appears irrefutable. However, Mr. Andersen does not have all the facts, and it seems he has very few of them, and certain facts are being reserved for the defense arguments of Beatrice Munyenyezi in a court of law.

In attempting to make a case that Beatrice Munyenyezi lied on her immigration forms, ICE special agent Thomas Brain Anderson adduced that she was a member of the Rwandan political party Movement Republicain pour le Developpment (MRND), the party of President Juvenal Habyarimana that has been castigated as an extremist Hutu genocide organization, and she did not check the box declaring her membership in ANY organization.

However, everyone in Rwanda was required to be a member of the MRND party for many years, beginning in 1975, soon after President Habyarimana seized power (1973), and lasting until 1991, when the Habyarimana government opened political space for opposition parties. Also, the fact that your brother and father are members of a certain political party does not confirm that you are also a member of that political party, certainly not in Rwanda, certainly not in the years between 1991 and 1994, when allegiances, alliances and memberships were highly in flux and highly politicized.

Is special agent Thomas Brian Andersen a member of the National Rifle Association? Timothy McVeigh was also a member. Does this make agent Andersen an ‘NRA extremist’? Is agent Andersen a democrat? Are his siblings ALL democrats? Is his father a democrat? Of course, there is no automatic inference of guilt attached to being a democrat or republican in the U.S.—not like MRND membership in Rwanda has been criminalized—no matter the involvement of democrats or republicans in advocating, authorizing and supporting atrocities in foreign interventions. Finally, Did David Kaczynski share the ideology of his brother, Dr. Theodore John Kaczynski? Quod erat demonstrandum…

Additionally, any Hutu refugee fleeing the RPF terror apparatus and genocide against Hutus would have been suicidal to identify themselves as MRND members after July 1994. Further, the assumption or suggestion that the U.S. State Department and its immigration and naturalization service agents would be impartial towards Hutus is unreasonable, and the immigration forms clearly take no account of the extreme conditions of mistrust, terror and basic survival that genocide and war crimes survivors (including Beatrice Munyenyezi) were subject to at the time.

In fact, special agent Andersen later confirms the U.S. official who granted Beatrice Munyenyezi her naturalization status would not have done so had he ‘known the truth about’ her statements—supposing she admitted she was a member of the MRND party: he declared he would have denied her application.

Special agent Thomas Brian Andersen also unreasonably concludes that Beatrice Munyenyezi must have lied in answering the question “have you ever committed a crime of moral turpitude”? Here Andersen jumps from being an ICE investigator to judge and jury against Beatrice Munyenyezi with this conclusive statement of absolutes:

“In fact, as described herein, Munyenyezi had participated in the genocide, and had committed a number of individual crimes, including the assistance of murder, rape, assault and theft, against the Tutsi minority.”

An admission by Beatrice Munyenyezi of involvement in genocide is not herein accepted to be amongst the ‘truthful’ statements that Ms. Munyenyezi was mandated to provide.

Perhaps the most outrageous statement of all, and evidence of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen’s extreme psychological and paranoid prejudices, applied herein against Rwandan genocide survivor Beatrice Munyenyezi, is the Paragraph 28:
I

n addition, on or about January 31, 2005, Munyenyezi was interviewed by the New Hampshire affiliate of National Public Radio to discuss the challenges which face African refugees in the Manchester, New Hampshire area. During the interview Munyenyezi said that she escaped a war in Rwanda with her family and husband. Munyenyezi described how there is discrimination against her in New Hampshire as an African refugee, and she also described herself as a ‘fighter’ against adversity.

Now it is a crime to be interviewed on National Public Radio? Or, is it a crime to be interviewed on NPR in New Hampshire only? Clearly it is a crime to ‘escape a war’ when the top officials for the victor’s of that war, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, have been internationally indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But the coup de grace comes in the possibility that the ‘crime’ or ‘infraction’ or violation that Beatrice Munyenyezi has committed in special agent Thomas Brian Andersen’s mind is to have admitted so shamelessly that “she described herself as a ‘fighter’ against adversity.”³³

The outrageous crimes of Beatrice Munyenyezi—or the absurdities and paranoia of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen’s mind—don’t stop there however. In paragraph 29:

Munyenyezi also appears to use a computer to correspond with others. An Internet search related to Munyenyezi reveals that on or about May 11, 2009 Munyenyezi submitted a story for publication to the National Endowment for the Arts website related to how she is persevering after her experience in Africa. In addition, a public Internet search as of June 21, 2010 reveals that Munyenyezi has a FACEBOOK account and is virtually connected with several on-line friends.

Is it the appearance of using a computer or the actual use of a computer to correspond with others that agent Andersen finds incriminating? Are Africans not supposed to know how to use computers, or is it only Rwandan Hutus (even U.S. citizens) who are not supposed to use computers and/or correspond with others? Is having a FACEBOOK profile one of Beatrice Munyenyezi’s crimes? Or is her crime that she is “virtually connected with several on-line friends?”

Amongst the most egregious examples of the extreme biases of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen—in favor of the current Rwandan Patriotic Front regime, and against Beatrice Munyenyezi, a former Rwandan national and a person of Hutu ethnicity, now a U.S. citizen, comes in Paragraph 35:

Based on my training and experience and my discussions with other agents who have investigated similar offenses, I have reason to believe that people who were active participants in the Rwandan genocide were themselves Hutu extremists and that they have maintained an active Diaspora throughout the world in the hope of returning to Rwanda for the purpose of overthrowing the current government and re-instituting the policy of genocide, ‘to complete the work’ of killing every last Tutsi. To promote that effort and prove their long-term commitment to the cause—i.e., the extermination of the Tutsi race—Hutu extremists, like Munyenyezi, maintain documents, photographs and memorabilia, which link them to their past and their expected role in the future. The documents, photographs and memorabilia are particularly important to Hutu extremists because, to them, the items prove that the extermination of Tutsi is an act of self-defense.

According to the above reasoning, every Hutu is a genocidaire; every Hutu must be denied any memorabilia of their past or hope for the future; and every Hutu dreams of exterminating Tutsis, and is nefariously plotting “the extermination of the Tutsi race.” This is evidence of special agent Thomas Brian Andersen’s psychological projection, conjecture, paranoia, indoctrination and, worst of all, it exemplifies a psychological profile of an individual or group of one ethnicity (white, Anglo-European) harboring a hostile racial categorization and extreme racial prejudice that seeks to dehumanize all members of different ethnic group—the Hutus—comprised of millions of people.

The FBI surveillance visit to the home of Beatrice Munyenyezi and the subsequent ICE fishing expedition—secured through the arrest warrant obtained through agent Andersen’s affidavit—were clearly in search of, for example, “photographs and memorabilia” that could be used to make an Orwellian argument about “Hutu extremists, like Munyenyezi.” Agent Andersen’s belief that any memorabilia found in the home of a Hutu person is by default evidence of their intention to retake Rwanda by force and “overthrow the current government” is paranoid, hysterical and delusional.

Thomas Brian Andersen shows his extreme hatred for ‘Hutu’ people as a group. His prejudice is exhibited throughout the document, beginning with his summary of Rwandan history, e.g. in paragraph 5, where his encapsulation of hundreds of years of complex African history destroys all context of Hutu-Tutsi relations in favor of the ‘Tutsis as victims’ narrative advanced by the RPF and its allies. He demonstrates his lack of knowledge of the simplest discernable facts, such as the October 1, 1990 date of the illegal RPF invasion of Rwanda (in paragraph 6 he states: “In or about the early 1990’s, the RPF invaded Rwanda”). He uses the label ‘Hutu extremist’ to mask his hatred against Hutu instilled in him by the current government of Rwanda and its one-sided historiography.

U.S. AGENT PERJURY, FBI DECEPTION

It appears that it can be reasonably established that Thomas Brian Andersen committed perjury—at least once—in his affidavit signed June 22, 2010, and that the FBI used deception to gain access to Beatrice Munyenyezi’s home, under conditions of her trust and cooperation on an international matter completely unrelated to her asylum status, with the intent of surveillance of both Beatrice Munyenyezi and her sister Prudence Kantengwa.

In paragraph 36 agent Andersen states:

I am aware of the close relationship between Munyenyezi and her sister Prudence Kantengwa. I am also familiar with the ongoing proceedings before the Immigration Court related to Munyenyezi’s sister, Kantengwa, and I know that Munyenyezi had appeared in court during those proceedings and was announced as a witness for her sister. In addition, on January 13, 2010, the FBI visited Munyenyezi at her residence at 73 Goffe Street, Manchester New Hampshire, and they were invited into the home. While present, the FBI noticed that Kantengwa was present at the home, and appeared to be living or at least sleeping there.

To begin with, agent Andersen is more than simply “familiar with the ongoing proceedings before the Immigration Court related to Munyenyezi’s sister, [Prudence] Kantengwa,” but he does not disclose these and instead downplays his vested interests in both cases: He is also the ICE agent who has investigated the Kantengwa case in Rwanda and his investigations, affidavits and testimonies are evidence for the Kantengwa case in Boston. So there is an absence of full disclosure in this affidavit to New Hampshire U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel J. Lynch, who is likely very unfamiliar with the Boston cases or deeper issues.

Second, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen has added a very curious footnote to his affidavit that begs explanation. From December 18, 2009 to January 10, 2010, Beatrice Munyenyezi was traveling to the ICTR in Arusha (Tanzania), via Kenya, from/to the United States. On her return entry to the U.S. Munyenyezi volunteered information about, apparently, Jamaican Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal (Trevor William Forrest), who was detained in Kenya during the same time period (creating a barrage of western mass media stories about his supposed terrorist profile).³⁴ As noted in agent Andersen’s peculiar footnote number 3, Beatrice Munyenyezi was interrogated on her return to Boston Logan Airport on January 10, 2010:

Footnote 3: “At the time of her entry, Munyenyezi told the Customs and Border Protection personnel that she had important information to relate pertaining to someone she believes she saw in Kenya who had been in the news recently as an associate of a contemporary terrorist group. Munyenyezi was told that the FBI would follow up with her on a later date.”

When FBI agents showed up at Beatrice Munyenyezi’s Manchester, NH home on January 13, 2010, it was not in the context of ascertaining her asylum status, as ICE agent Andersen falsely indicates, but rather as the follow-up to Munyenyezi’s volunteered information at Logan airport. The statement that FBI agents were “invited to her home” (paragraph 36) also misrepresents Munyenyezi’s position: she was intimidated by the FBI agents but even so she invited them into her because she felt she had nothing to hide. However, based on the above details, it seems that Beatrice Munyenyezi had long since been under surveillance, and the “invitation to her home” was used as a cover for FBI surveillance of Beatrice Munyenyezi, her sister Prudence Kantengwa, and the 73 Goffe Street dwelling.

It seems that Beatrice Munyenyezi’s attempt to demonstrate her allegiance to the U.S. war on terror backfired and was used against her. More importantly, it is clear that the search warrant of June 22, 2010 was used for an ICE fishing expedition with the hope that something incriminating (a computer, manuscript of surviving genocide, old photographs or other memorabilia) might be discovered and used against either Beatrice Munyenyezi or Prudence Kantengwa or both.

But the surveillance was much more comprehensive. FBI agents were not only watching and photographing the Munyenyezi home, as agent Andersen indicates, but they were also spying on her, she alleges, by planting plain-clothes FBI operatives in her political science classes at the University of New Hampshire, where she was enrolled in an advanced degree program, in the spring of 2010.

Is Beatrice Munyenyezi a suspected terrorist? It appears that all Hutus outside of Rwanda have been designated de facto ‘terrorists’ by the U.S. government in its alliance with the Kagame regime.

Third, the evidence of Thomas Brain Andersen’s perjury in his June 22, 2010 affidavit comes in his paragraph 36 statement: “…and I know that Munyenyezi had appeared in court during those [her sister Prudence Kantengwa’s immigration court] proceedings and was announced as a witness for her sister.”

However, Beatrice Munyenyezi was never a witness at the immigration trial of her sister Prudence Kantengwa. Instead, the trial was interrupted when U.S. prosecutor Mary Kelly noticed Beatrice Munyenyezi sitting in courtroom taking notes. The judge had no problem with note taking by Beatrice Munyenyezi. U.S. prosecutor Mary Kelly then apparently complained that she had planned to call Beatrice Munyenyezi as a witness. After discussions with the defense lawyer for Prudence Kantengwa, and a few questions to Beatrice Munyenyezi in a private chamber, the U.S. prosecutor dropped the issue of Munyenyezi’s presence in the courtroom. Munyenyezi was never registered as a witness by either side, and she never testified.

ICE special agent Thomas Brian Andersen misrepresents the presence of Beatrice Munyenyezi at her sister’s immigration trial to exaggerate a greater sense of collusion and conspiracy between these two ‘Hutu extremists’, no matter that the two women are sisters, or that it is common for someone to testify in behalf of a family member. If special agent Andersen was present in the court on the day that Beatrice Munyenyezi appeared to support her sister Prudence, either he was sleeping through this disturbance in court proceedings or he lied directly. If he was sleeping, he obviously fabricated this ‘evidence’ used as sworn testimony. If he was not present, then he used hearsay—incorrect information related by someone else—as sworn testimony in his affidavit.

An evaluation of the overall methodology employed by special agent Andersen, according to his own affidavit, suggests he has little or no training in international human rights and genocide investigations. Indeed, Mr. Andersen has been with the Boston Bureau of ICE for approximately two years, coming from five years duty with law enforcement in Vermont State. After less than two years with ICE in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen, a Vermont State cop, purports to have gained expertise on Rwanda and ‘genocide’ (as related in paragraphs 5-21 of his affidavit) and the operations of the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda that ICTR defense attorneys—trained in human rights law, some having more than ten years full-time and dedicated experience with ICTR trials and the government of Rwanda—would never claim.

All the genocide charges in the Thomas Brian Andersen affidavit signed June 22, 2010 are generic charges that have been leveled over and over, against all Hutus, and the Thomas Brian Andersen is not credible or impartial: he should be rejected as a witness in all Rwanda hearings.

Instead, special agent Thomas Brian Andersen should be deposed under oath and interrogated about his clandestine relationship to RPF officials and RPF intelligence agents, He should be interrogated about his relationship to the Rwanda ‘genocide’ front-organizations IBUKA and IVEGA. And he should be interrogated about ties between ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Directorate of Military Intelligence and other secretive organizations of the state of Rwanda.

PUBLIC BRANDING OF GENOCIDAIRES

As in the 2009 asylum trials of Dr. Vincent Bajinya and three other Rwandan Hutu men in the U.K., and Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, in Maryland, VA, where all defendants are accused of being genocidaires, and similarly for other Rwandan asylum hearings in the U.S., Europe or Canada, anyone traveling to Rwanda on a discovery for the defense would not be able to investigate without government interference. Even cases at the ICTR in neighboring Arusha, Tanzania, have seen serious interference from the Rwanda regime. Similarly, ICE agent Thomas Brian Anderson would not have been able to travel to Rwanda without the direct involvement and highest authorization of the RPF regime, in collaboration with the U.S. State Department, and his actions were monitored from beginning to end.

Usually the RPF regime provides ‘handlers’ that manage investigations and spoon-fed investigators with information fabricated or cleared by the regime. Rwanda experts for the defense at asylum hearings, including ICTR lawyer Peter Erlinder and Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian Rwanda expert, have testified (as experts for the defense) to the problems of asylum cases and the interference by the Kagame regime in court cases in Rwanda, at the ICTR and abroad.

Dr. Vincent Bajinya was arrested in London, many years after he arrived and gained citizenship in England, and was framed by Fergal Keane, a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalist who was also deceived by Rwandan officials.³⁵ Keane traveled to Rwanda and worked with RPF ‘handlers’—agents posing as civilians—to ‘discover’ and interview the ‘witnesses’ to Dr. Vincent Bajinya’s (et al.) supposed crimes.³⁶

Dr. Leopold Munyakazi was a professor employed at Goucher College in Maryland until 2008, when he was arrested by ICE agents after making a public speech decrying the abuses of the Kagame regime, the falsification of genocide charges and the lies of the official RPF genocide narrative.³⁷

Dr. Munyakazi was framed by the Kagame regime and publicly branded as a genocidaire by a short-lived NBC News television program that sought prime-time ratings by tracking down and ‘exposing’ supposed genocidaires. The program was titled The Wanted, and the morality of ‘good versus evil’ was underscored by the choice of the show’s commentator, Scott Tyler, an ex-Navy Seal, while the wanted man, Dr. Leopold Munyakazi, was their embodiment of evil. The zealous NBC News team acted as accuser, judge and jury against Dr. Munyakazi.³⁸

U.S. prosecutors in Rwanda asylum cases are generally very ignorant of the politics of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Rwanda, or they have been irreconcilably swayed by the propaganda of the Kagame regime and its partners, which is everywhere in the western media.³⁹

In two related U.S. court cases (where the Rwandan defendants’ hearings are underway and they do not wish to be named) two U.S. prosecutors traveled to Rwanda and later testified in court to that it was very easy to get the information they wanted, they did not need a clearance from the Rwanda government, and that they went to the countryside and met witnesses without government assistance or monitoring. They even went to prisons to talk to prisoners without Rwanda government help, they claimed, and reported to the court that conditions of prisoners were excellent.

While U.S. government prosecutors who have worked in Rwanda under these supposed ‘independent’ conditions have not been deposed under oath, their claims are impossible under the current military regime in Rwanda.

THE GENOCIDE RAPE CHARGE

Beatrice Munyenyezi’s husband, Shalom Ntahobari, and mother-in-law, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, remain in detention at the ICTR in Arusha, Tanzania. Both have been on trial at the ICTR for more than ten years and are awaiting decisions on genocide and rape charges for more than a year now.

The same ‘Tutsi victims’ of rape who testified in the ICTR hearing against Shalom Ntahobari also allegedly testified in the case of Hutu businessman Désiré Munyaneza, the first alleged Rwanda genocidaire tried in Canada, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in October 2009. In Shalom Ntahobari’s case, the women could not even recognize the defendant in court, no matter their allegations of having been repeatedly raped.

Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was the first woman internationally charged with rape as a war crime or act of genocide. The former Minister of Family Affairs, she is accused of ordering Interahamwe militia to rape members of the Tutsi minority.

These rape charges were handed down immediately after then First Lady Hillary Clinton visited the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR). When Ms. Clinton pledged $600,000 to be paid after the first ICTR rape conviction was delivered, indictments at the ICTR were modified to include rape charges against most top alleged genocidaires on trial.

The case against Pauline Nyiramasuhuko was sensationalized in an eight-page feature in the New York Times Magazine (September 15, 2002). Penned by Peter Landesman and titled “The Minister of Rape: How Could a Woman Incite Rwanda’s Sex-Crime Genocide?” the magazine ran an unflattering and blurred photo of Ms. Nyiramasuhuko’s bespectacled face on the cover.

“The 1994 genocide, one of the worst mass slaughters in recorded history,” Landesman later wrote in “Out of Madness, A Matriarchy,” another fictional account (also deploying the racist “madness” theme) this time in Mother Jones magazine, “was triggered by the assassination of Rwanda’s Hutu president, after a lengthy civil war between the Hutu-led government and the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front. It was a deliberate effort to eliminate the country’s Tutsi ‘problem’; books about Hitler and the Holocaust, and lists of potential victims, were later discovered in the offices of top government officials. In all, at least 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus died… Among the most nefarious tools of the genocide was a planned mass sexual assault on Tutsi women, with Hutu officials encouraging HIV-positive soldiers to take part in gang rapes.”⁴⁰

First, these numbers of Tutsi’s killed are highly disputed, and many of the Tutsis were killed by the RPF. Second, any ‘deliberate effort to eliminate the country’s Tutsi ‘problem’ was more the responsibility of the RPF than any other institution of power in Rwanda in 1994. Third, every western library and most all western human rights and media professionals, and academics, have books about Hitler, just as every western public and university library does. Fourth, these supposed genocide ‘lists’ have never been produced at the ICTR. Fifth, the reference to the Holocaust is part of the overall ‘genocide’ propaganda that defines the Tutsi minority as the sole proprietors of victim-hood in Rwanda and falsely defines them as “the Jews of Africa.”⁴¹

Finally, there was no “planned mass sexual assault on Tutsi women.”

Notwithstanding the fictions, when the allegations against a branded genocidaire are repeated they are often no longer presented as allegations, but as absolute fact.

For example, Emily Heroy, the founder and executive editor of Gender Across Borders—“a global feminist blog—regurgitated the 2002 ‘Minister of Rape’ story in 2009.⁴² “In 2002, Peter Landesman wrote an article in the New York Times about Nyiramasuhuko entitled ‘A Woman’s Work’ about her role in the genocide… Nyiramasuhuko ordered her son and militia to rape and kill thousands of women during the Rwanda genocide.”

The falsification of rape testimonies by Rwandan ‘survivors’ of genocide used to accuse opponents or critics or others targeted by the Kagame government has occurred before. Considering just one very significant example, supposed Tutsi ‘genocide survivors’ and ‘rape victims’ were used as witnesses against Rwandan Catholic Bishop Monsignor Augustin Misago.

Bishop Misago’s female Tutsi accusers cried on the witness stand in an effort to sway the court. They claimed to have been repeatedly raped by Misago over more than one day. When asked to identify a very remarkable physical feature of Bishop Misago’s anatomy, these women were proven to be fakes who falsified testimonies with Rwandan government support.

The London-based ‘non-government organization’ African Rights, co-founded by RPF agent Rakiya Omaar, helped frame Misago, who was subsequently arrested and jailed in 1999, but was cleared by the Rwandan Court of all genocide and rape charges in 2000.

Rakiya Omaar has worked since 1990-1991 as a paid agent of the RPF regime, always casting the Hutus as perpetrators and the Tutsis—especially the RPF Tutsi extremists—as the victims of the violence, creating a positive image for the RPF. She works freely in Rwanda, where she has a special office.⁴³

Rakiya Omaar also fabricated evidence against Beatrice Munyenyezi, Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and Prudence Kantengwa.⁴⁴ Omaar reportedly traveled to the home village of Dr. Higiro and sisters and then produced documentation used by the western media, United Nations experts, the RPF regime, and by U.S. asylum courts, to accuse Dr. Higiro and Beatrice Munyenyezi of crimes. Family members were also intimidated and threatened in Rwanda.

One of the most suppressed facts about the realities of the RPF Tutsi extremists and their elite networks is the historical and contemporary existence of ubwenge (ou-WEN-gay)—a complex Kinyarwanda language term referring to wisdom, trickery, caution, cleverness, prudence, deceptions, lies, manipulations. It relates to the capacity to gain a clear understanding of situations and the capability to surround oneself with a network of profit generating social relations.

French author Pierre Péan discussed ‘ubwenge’ in his 2005 book Noires Fureurs, Blancs Menteurs (Black Furies, White Liars), noting that Tutsis were affected by a ‘lying culture’ and questioning the historiography of genocide in Rwanda. Péan alleged that Tutsis have systematically resorted to lying, while employing doubtful and fraudulent maneuvers, with the aim of misleading the international community relating to the accuracy of its genocide cause. Péan was immediately sued in French courts by S.O.S Racisme, an ‘anti-racism’ organization that has been very pro-Kagame and pro-RPF in France.

Ubwenge or the culture of deception was highly valued in traditional Rwanda, particularly in Tutsi aristocratic circles. Young Tutsi aristocrats were trained in ubwenge to help insure the Tutsi domination of Rwanda and the enslavement of the Hutu majority. By any name, the extremist RPF Tutsi regime and its leaders excel at ubwenge.

“They will bring into the U.S. court these women from Rwanda,” says Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro. “They will say ‘I was raped’ and they will cry. The jury will think this is spontaneous and the judge and jury will believe them. But the jury will not understand that this is an exercise in ubwenge. Some Hutus will also use ubwenge. In the RPF kingdom ruled by Paul Kagame there are people who train people to lie in court. They are used in different trials to lie and frame and accuse. Westerners and judges in western countries do not grasp this.”

Beatrice Munyenyezi’s case will join those of other Rwandans accused by the Kagame regime that are costing U.S. taxpayers millions of dollars for hearings that have historically involved fraud, disinformation, and U.S. government manipulation. The U.S. government is fighting its own judiciary in its effort to maintain the shiny clean façade masking the terrorism of the Paul Kagame government in Rwanda. This is not a successful entrepreneurial government, but an absolute military dictatorship whose grip of terror extends into the hearts and minds—as with Thomas Brian Andersen—of the United States of America.

1. See, e.g., Dr. Helmut Strizek, Discredit the Hutu Population Forever, Report by Dr. Helmut Strizek, Expert Witness in “The Prosecutor v. Innocent Sagahutu,” Before the International Criminal tribunal For Rwanda, (Case No. ICTR 2000-56-I), entered into ICTR records October 30, 2008.
2. For a singular example of the western press reporting on her arrest, which has some factual errors but no context or balance, see: Joseph C. Cote, “Woman Allegedly took part in Genocide,” Nashua Telegraph, June 25, 2010.
3. The RPF (U.S. & U.K. & Israel backing) war crimes and genocide against Rwandan and Burundian refugees is well documented. In August 1996 there were an estimated 1.5 million refugees in eastern Zaire, and by November the estimated 500,000 to 750,000 Rwandan refugees that did not return to Rwanda under the illegal forced repatriation became the targets of a systematic manhunt by ADFL forces. See, e.g., Roberto Garreton, Special Rapporteur of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Zaire” No. E/CN.4/1996/66, June 29, 1996; Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage Books, 2005; and Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War, Cambridge University Press, 2009; Gerard Prunier, Africa’s World War, Oxford University Press, 2009, p. 120-128; Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999; and “International Non-governmental Commission of Inquiry into the Massive Violations of Human Rights Committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Former Zaire) 1996-1997,” Int’l Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 1998; DRC: What Kabila is Hiding: Civilian Killings and Impunity in Congo, Human Rights Watch, Vol. 9, No. 5(A), October 1997.
4. See Rwanda state newspaper Rwanda New Times propaganda republished at AllAfrica.com: Kennedy Ndahiro, “Rwanda Genocidaires Should Be Hunted Down and Punished,” February 26, 2010.
5. See: Human Rights Watch World Report 1999, December 1998, p. 62; and “Alleged Murderers of Sendashonga Mysteriously Die One After Another,” AfroAmerica Network, March 3, 2001.
6. “Feds Say NH Woman Involved in Rwandan Genocide,” AP, June 24, 2010.
7. See: Robin Philpot, Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard, The Taylor Report and Robin Philpot, 2003.
8. See, e.g.: Ann Garrison, “Erlinder released as Rwanda cracks down on its own,” San Francisco Bay View, June 27, 2010; “Rwanda Repression Rises Ahead of Poll—Watchdog,” Reuters (AlertNet), June 27, 2010; “Rwanda: Stop Attacks on Journalists, Opponents,” Human Rights Watch, June 26, 2010.
9. See, e.g.: Reuters, “Rwanda Repression Rises Ahead of Poll—Watchdog,” AlertNet, June 27, 2010; “Rwanda ex-army chief Nyamwasa shot in Johannesburg,” BBC News, June 19, 2010.
10. “Rwandan Ambassador Flees Post,” The Amsterdam Post, March 19, 2010; Juma Kwayera, “Kagame in Spot as Spate of Killings Hits Rwanda,” The Standard, June 27, 2010.
11. Kristin Van Schie, “Rwandan General Shot by Asylum Seekers,” IOL News South Africa, June 29, 2010.
12. “Murder Stokes Rwanda Crackdown Fear,” AlJazeera, June 26, 2010.
13. Heidi Boghosian, “NLG Demands Immediate Release of Attorney Peter Erlinder,” National Lawyers Guild, May 28, 2010.
14. Josh Kron, “American Lawyer Denied Bail in Rwanda,” New York Times, June 7, 2010; Jeremy Herb and Kevin Diaz, “Rwanda Frees Peter Erlinder on Bail,” Star Tribune, June 17, 2010; Madeleine Baron, “Minn. law professor detained in Rwanda accused of threatening national security,” Minnesota Public Radio, June 1, 2010; Steve Karnowski, “Professor: Rwanda Officials Wanted Me to Disappear,” AP, June 24, 2010.
15. Josephine Whittaker, “Rwandan Opposition Leader Appears in Court,” Open Security, April 22, 2010; “Rwanda’s Election Opposition Leader Demands Protection After Mob attack in Rwanda,” VOA News, February 4, 2010; “Mob attacks Rwandan opposition leader in capital,” Reuters, February 3, 2010, (AlertNet).
16. Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial & the Genocide Conspiracy,” 24-31 March 2010, The African Executive.
17. See: Patrick Karuretwa biography, Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University.
18. See: Patrick Karuretwa, “Not up for debate: Rwanda cannot excuse Peter Erlinder’s genocide denial,” Harvard Law Record, June 16, 2010.
19. See Keith Harmon Snow, “The US Sponsored ‘Rwanda Genocide’ and its Aftermath: Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees,” Global Research, April 12, 2008.
20. Tiphaine Dickson, “Rwanda’s Deadliest Secret: Who Shot Down President Habyarimana’s Plane?: The most under-investigated of political assassinations,” Global Research, November 24, 2008.
21. See: Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro, “Rwandan Private Print Media on the Eve of the Genocide,” in Alan Thomson, Ed., The Media and the Rwanda Genocide, Pluto Press, 2007, and Jean-Marie Vianney Higiro and William Woodward, “The Commodification of Genocide in Ruanda Since 1994,” paper at the Seventeenth Annual ESHHS Conference held at Durham Castle, August 28-September 1, 1998.
22. David Boeri, “Evidence of Misconduct,” WBUR News, February 17, 2010.
23. See, e.g., “Open Letter to U.S. Attorney from Terek Mahana Support Committee,” March 13, 2010.
24. The author has provided expert testimony in two Rwandan asylum hearings in the United States in 2010.
25. The author has analyzed the U.S. State Department country reports on human rights for Rwanda, where the U.S. tolerates and abets violence, from 1993 to 2009, and has compared these to reports from countries that the U.S. does not like, in particular: Cuba, Sudan and Iran.
26. 2009 Country Report on Human Rights: Rwanda, U.S. Department of State, March 11, 2010.
27. Kenneth Roth, “The Power of Horror in Rwanda,” Los Angeles Times, April 11, 2009.
28. There is extensive documentation of assassinations in articles, books or ICTR documents by Jordi Palou Loverdes, Wayne Madsen, Luc de Temmerman, Filip Reyntjens, Dr. Helmut Strizek, Peter Erlinder, Christopher Black, Phil Taylor and others. See, e.g.: Filip Reyntjens, “Rwanda, Ten Years On: From Genocide to Dictatorship,” African Affairs, 2004, 103, 177–210: p. 197. See also: Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Hit List: Revisionism, Denial, and the Genocide Conspiracy,” The African Executive.
29. “Iwawa Island: Prison Camp or Paradise Vacation Spot?” NGO News Africa, May 1, 2010.
30. “Rwandans Flee into Burundi,” SAPA, October 1, 2009, and “Burundi: Stop Deporting Rwandan Asylum Seekers,” Human Rights Watch, December 1, 2009
31. Find affidavit with article by Joseph C. Cote, “Woman Allegedly took part in Genocide,” Nashua Telegraph, June 25, 2010.
32. See, e.g.: Filip Reyntjens, “Manipulation and Falsification of ICTR Evidence: The Role of the Rwandan Government,” (Excerpts from Expert Report, Prosecutor v. Joseph Kanyabashi, Case No. ICTR-96-15-I); “An Open Letter to the U.S. Congress Regarding HR #1426,” BusinessWire, June 17, 2010; and “The Rwandan Genocide: Result of a Carefully Planned Military Operation.
    “Open Letter to President Kagame,” Global Research, June 3, 2009.
33. Laura Noy, “Finding Refuge in the Queen City,” NHPR, January 31, 2005.
34. See, e.g, “Kenya: Airlines Refuse to Fly Jamaican Home,” AllAfrica.com, January 6, 2010.
35. Fergal Keane, “Rwanda Genocide Suspect in UK,” BBC News. November 6, 2006.
36. keith harmon snow, “The US Sponsored ‘Rwanda Genocide’ and its Aftermath: Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees,” Global Research, April 12, 2008.
37. While the article and the framework for the article are in many ways flawed, displaying the same tendencies toward a priori assumptions of guilt, please see, e.g.: Andrew Rice, “Doubt: A Professor, A Genocide, and NBC’s Quest for a Prime Time Hit,” The New Republic, August 12, 2009.
38. While the article and the framework for the article are in many ways flawed, displaying the same tendencies toward a priori assumptions of guilt, please see, e.g.: Andrew Rice, “Doubt: A Professor, A Genocide, and NBC’s Quest for a Prime Time Hit,” The New Republic, August 12, 2009.
39. See, e.g., Steven Da Silva, “Revisiting the ‘Rwandan Genocide’: Resurrecting Ghosts, or Exorcising Demons?”, Global Research, June 1, 2007.
40. Kimberley Acquaro and Peter Landesman, “Out of Madness: A Matriarchy,” Mother Jones, January/February 2003.
41. Even New York Times journalist (sic) Bill Berkeley, whose work deep in the pro-RPF, Pro-Tutsi establishment narrative, has criticized the ‘Jews of Africa’ characterization of the Tutsis: “As Stephen Heder was pointing out at lunch when we were talking earlier, the Tutsis were not the Jews of Africa. Philip Gourevitch… got it wrong in that regard. To put it in its crudest, simplest terms historically, the Tutsis were the bad guys.” Speaker series, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, March 6, 2002.
42. Emily Heroy, “International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: Woman is Accused of Inciting Troops & Militia to Rape 1000s of Women,” Gender Across Borders, April 25, 2009.
43. See, e.g.: [1] Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal, “Death, Despair and Defiance,” African Rights, November 1994; [2] Rakiya Omaar, “Rwanda: Insurgency in the Northwest,” African Rights, 1998; [3] Rakiya Omaar, “Letter to Ambassador Mihnea Ioan Motoc, President of the United Nations Security Council,” African Rights, October 19, 2005; [4] Rakiya Omaar, “An Open Letter to His Holiness, Pope John Paul II,” African Rights, May 13, 1998.
44. Rakiya Omaar, Consultant to the Rwanda Demobilization and Reintegration Commission, Report for the RDRC on the Leadership of Rwandese Armed Groups in the DRC, December 2008, p. 215-217.

With the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) engulfed in bloodshed and terrorism due to the secretive occupation and expansion by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has received support from Belgium and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) to crush a growing rebellion sparked by resistance forces in far Western Congo. But the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) has downplayed the new rebellion and hidden massive military and civilian casualties.

Are Belgian Paratroopers Fighting in Western Congo?

A rising alliance calling themselves “The Resistance Patriots of Dongo” (Patriotes-Résistants de Dongo) spread in western Congo over the past six months after Congolese people learned that Congolese resistance forces tired of the corrupt regime of Joseph Kabila were fighting against Rwandan troops in the little frontier town of Dongo.

Sources in Congo’s capital Kinshasa reported that an emergency “crisis” meeting was convened in Brussels on Nov. 28, 2009, after a distress call was sent by Congo-Kinshasa President Hypolitté Kanambe, known to the Western world by his alias, Joseph Kabila Kabange, and the Belgian military attaché in Kinshasa was instructed to deploy a detachment of elite Belgian Armed Forces (BAF) paratroopers to Congo.¹

Sources in DRC claimed that Belgian troops joined the Kabila COALITION forces, backed by AFRICOM and allied with Rwanda, and engaged the RESISTANCE forces in Equateur province in January.

Interests competing with President Joseph Kabila’s Congo (including U.S. and Israeli minerals cartels, weapons dealers and money-laundering operations) support the new western Congo RESISTANCE forces. These interests operate through regional power brokers, e.g., in Gabon, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa.

In mid-November President Joseph Kabila secretly airlifted a battalion of Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) across Congo to crush the rebellion. Comprised of former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels who overthrew the government of Juvenal Habyarimana in Rwanda (1990-1994), the RDF joined Kabila’s COALITION, which includes MONUC troops from the international “peacekeeping” mission and Tutsi Rwandan soldiers infiltrated by Rwanda, with the Kabila government’s support, into Congo’s national army, the FARDC. RDF forces, moved to Congo from Rwanda exclusively for the operation, were uniformed as Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC).²

Thus western Congo is awash in bloodshed involving COALITION forces backed by AFRICOM, Belgium and Israel Amongst the biggest Kabila supporters are the U.S.-Israeli Dan Gertler, Moshe Schnitzer and Benny Steinmetz families, also holders to Congo’s most lucrative (copper/cobalt) mines.

MONUC Hides Equateur Conflict

The Tutsi forces in the FARDC include infiltrated Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF, formerly Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) and “ex-”CNDP forces from the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), the extremist terrorist militia that sprouted out of the Kivu Provinces but is heavily backed by Rwanda and infiltrated with thousands of extremist Tutsis.

The secret infiltration and official integration of Rwandan forces into Congo was a strategic maneuver championed by Rwandan general James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame, both wanted for war crimes by the Spanish and French courts. Rwanda’s Kagame is the primary cause of the massive destabilization of Eastern Congo.

The leaders of the rebellion in western Equateur Province have reportedly forged an alliance with General Dunia, a Mai Mai leader operating against the joint operations of the Kabila COALITION in South Kivu, eastern Congo, and site of Canadian BANRO Gold Corporation’s massive illegal gold concessions. Mai-Mai forces in Congo are highly nationalist Congolese. In late 2009, Mai-Mai leaders issued a communiqué and declaration of war against Joseph Kabila and his foreign and corporate allies.

South Kivu human rights groups have documented BANRO’s links to local terrorism, yet not one mainstream western media source has reported or even named the pivotal western mining interests—including BANRO, Moto Gold (Walter Kansteiner), Mwana Africa, Heritage Oil & Gas—behind the war and plunder in blood-drenched eastern Congo.

Many Congolese people have long since known that the president of their country has supported a secret extremist “Tutsi” alliance that seeks to dominate Central Africa. His real name is Hypolitté Kanambe, formerly a junior Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) officer plucked from the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) forces.

It is widely supported that Joseph Kabila reported directly to RPF/A commanders James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame in the Pentagon-backed AFDL “rebellion” that overthrew President Joseph Mobutu in Zaire (Congo); there are also claims that Kabila was a soldier in the RPF/A during the multiple genocides orchestrated by Kagame’s extremist Tutsi RPF/A in Rwanda (1990-1994).

The term “extremist Tutsi” applies only to the elite secretive organization, formerly the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A), which exists in parallel with the parliamentary government of Rwanda.³,⁴,⁵,⁶ RDF are not exclusively Tutsi, but are controlled by the extremist Tutsi network maintained by Paul Kagame, General James Kabarebe and others of the 40 top war criminals indicted by the Spanish court on Feb. 6, 2008.

After seizing power in July of 1994, the extremist Tutsi network continued to perpetrate atrocities, including massacres, assassinations, tortures and disappearances, and the network moved into Congo-Zaire in 1996. The modus operandi of the Kagame terrorist network is to perpetrate crimes and blame them on victim populations (Hutus, FDLR, Mai Mai, Congolese civilians, even Tutsi dissidents). The western media plays along.

A major source of ongoing conflict in the DRC’s Kivu provinces, Rwandan Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, was rewarded in January 2009 for playing along with the Kabila COALITION charade of “arresting” Rwandan war criminal Gen. Laurent Nkunda, another perpetrator of war crimes who received Washington’s blessings for several years. One of few points to their credit, the U.N. Panel of Experts, in their report of November 2009, exposed the appointment of Gen. Bosco Ntaganda as CNDP-FARDC commander, which Kagame and Kabila officially denied.

The International Criminal Court indicted General Bosco Ntaganda for war crimes committed in DRC in May 2008. The ICC is a political instrument used to selectively target certain individuals and militias, while ignoring more substantial state sanctioned actors like Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Yoweri Museveni, Maurice Templesman, or former U.S. National Security Council member Walter Kansteiner, all deeply behind the war and plunder in DRC.

Gen. Ntaganda commanded CNDP-FARDC units responsible for massive war crimes under the joint “Kimia” operations launched with MONUC backing in eastern Congo in January 2009. Ntaganda’s role is to work from the inside to destabilize eastern Congo in exchange for Kabila and Kagame protecting him from the ICC.

The current death toll in the eastern provinces of Congo alone stands at some 1,000 people per day, with at least ten million dead in Congo since the U.S. invasion of 1996, with millions of refugees in the Great Lakes member states. Rwandan allied forces in DRC are perpetrating genocide at present in North Kivu, and the western media and “humanitarian” agencies have remained silent. More than 15,000 IDPs were registered between December 2009 and January 2010, with thousands more IDPs reported hiding in North Kivu forests.

Violence in eastern Congo is universally and falsely blamed on the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), but in fact violence is primarily due to Rwandan allied forces. Additionally, more than 168,000 people have been uprooted due to recent fighting in Western Congo.⁷

Congo-Brazzaville has harbored the ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) since the overthrow of President Mobutu in 1997, and it harbors Rwandans that fled the AFDL genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire (1996-1997).⁸ There may be some 300 ex-MLC (Movement for the Liberation of Congo) rebels and more than 10,000 ex-FAZ involved in the western rebellion.

Equateur Province is the site of major untapped petroleum reserves. Belgian, French, Portuguese, German and U.S. families and corporations control vast tracts under attack by industrial logging. There are also Western-owned plantations with modern day slavery involving tens of thousands of Congolese people subject to terrorism by state paramilitary services.⁹

Resistance Patriots of Dongo

In March 2009 the Western press reported a “tribal dispute” and “ethnic clash over fishing rights” in the little Western Congo outback town of Dongo. The dispute reportedly began between two different ethnic groups. However, the “Resistance Patriots of Dongo” claim that government agents manipulated the parties of the dispute and escalated armed hostilities.

In October 2009 President Kabila and top military adviser John Numbi dispatched FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Benjamin Alongaboni to Dongo to negotiate peace with resistance forces. Gen. Alongaboni, a Congolese son hailing from Equateur Province and the first FARDC officer on the scene, secured a negotiated peace with Dongo area combatants.

Soon after, however, President Kabila sent RDF forces—in FARDC uniforms—who enraged Congolese in the region and provoked hostilities by killing some local people and undermining peace negotiations. The Resistance Patriots of Dongo retaliated and Congolese FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Alongaboni defected.

Meanwhile, the “Dongo Crisis” blossomed into a full-blown Congolese rebellion against international occupation forces and the powerful Kabila-Kagame clique. Hundreds of Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC)—of ethnic Congolese origin—reportedly deserted and joined rebellion ranks with Congolese civilians and various military elements of past rebellions.

Bound for the Dongo rebellion in mid-November, Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) crossed Lake Kivu from Gisenyi to Goma, DRC, and were then flown from Goma to Kamina Air Base in Katanga, a military transport hub used for the Belgo-American-U.N. mercenary occupations during the Katanga secession (1960-63) and “Congo Crises” (1964–67). The RDF battalion was next flown to Bandundu Province.

The RDF troops were reportedly next moved onto the 42-acre campus of the U.S. Embassy-affiliated American School in Kinshasa (TASOK), near the notorious Camp Tshatshi military base, and then flown to Gemena airport in Equateur. The Colonel Tshatshi Military Camp in Kinshasa is the FARDC military command headquarters. The TASOK campus was used for RDF troops because Rwandans would not be welcome amongst Congolese-FARDC at Camp Tshatshi.

There were at least three round trips in some legs of the RDF flight plan reportedly using both MONUC and Hewa Bora Airlines, an airline 70 percent owned by Belgian arms trafficker Philippe de Moerloose. In the “leaked” November 2009 U.N. Panel of Experts Report on Illegal Exploitation in the Congo, Philippe De Moerloose and Hewa Bora Airlines were named for weapons shipments from Sudan to Congo in violation of the International Arms Embargo on the DRC.¹⁰ De Moerloose supplies Kabila with presidential jets and other war toys.

Attempting to discredit the High Court in Spain for its issuing of international war crimes indictments against 40 top Rwandan military officials, the U.N. Panel of Experts Report also falsely accused Spanish non-government organizations affiliated with the judicial war crimes investigations of backing “terrorist” groups in eastern Congo.

The Resistance Patriots of Dongo have inflicted high casualties on the Kabila Coalition forces dispatched to Equateur. MONUC issued one tiny press report on Nov. 26, after resistance forces shot up a MONUC helicopter that flew to Dongo to resupply the Coalition ground troops. Some 2000 of the coalition troops were reported killed in February and March.

A short Western media propaganda blurb titled “Armed group claims firing at UN chopper in DRC,” Agence France-Presse attempted to discredit the rebellion and cover for MONUC’s involvement in open military aggression against Congolese people.

The AFP described the conflict as purely tribal and framed it as ruthless savage Africans killing with machetes. The MONUC chopper apparently was attacked on Nov. 26.¹¹

Dongo War Not Connected to Eastern Congo?

“The fighting is not related to the simmering conflict in the mineral-rich eastern borderlands,” Reuters wrote, “where the army – backed by thousands of peacekeepers – are attempting to stamp out local, Rwandan, and Ugandan rebels.”¹²

On Dec. 3, 2009, Belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique and RTLM reported that Belgium’s Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere and Defense Minister Pieter De Crem had responded to the communiqué of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo, circulated on the Internet on Dec. 1, which warned Belgium and Kinshasa that the resistance knew of the secret plan to dispatch paratroopers to Kisangani. The two Belgian ministries issued a joint communiqué denying denying the secret plan.¹³

According to Kinshasa sources, the MONUC-uniformed Belgians would be flown from Kisangani, Orientale Province, to Equateur Province’s northwestern frontier city of Gbadolite — the stronghold of former President Mobutu and rebel warlord Jean Pierre Bemba — and then to Gemena airport near Dongo.¹⁴

Soon after the Resistance Patriots of Dongo forces occupied the frontier city of Libenge, President Kabila dispatched 600 elite FARDC commandos trained by 60 Belgian Armed Forces instructors at Kamina Air base.

Sources in Kinshasa on Dec. 5 reported: “massive violent fighting in Libenge and Gemena areas,” involving 1,000 Congolese National Police (PNC) and 100 Ghanaian MONUC troops and two MONUC helicopter gunships.¹⁵

The MONUC “peacekeeping” enterprise in Congo is a $1 billion a year operation involving contracts with Lockheed Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE).

On December 14, 2009, the Spanish Press Agency SAPA and Agence France-Presse reported that DRC government troops fighting against ‘tribal forces’ had taken back the town of Dongo, with the tribal forces being “led by the animist priest Udjani.”¹⁶ The article maintained the ongoing silence about high casualties.

The international news media was completely silent after government forces that had reentered Dongo by December 14 suffered a crushing defeat when resistance forces sprang a trap: scores of Kabila Coalition troops (allegedly including ‘white’ mercenaries) were massacred.

On December 16, 2009, the MONUC spokesman in Kinshasa DRC announced that MONUC troops were deployed in Dongo in Equateur province “to sustain the joint PNC/FARDC operations aimed at re-establishing order [sic] and state authority…”¹⁷

MONUC transferred some 500 regular MONUC Ghanaian, Tunisian and Egyptian “peacekeepers” to Equateur province from the eastern Congo’s conflict areas in Orientale and the Kivus, along with Armored Personnel Carriers, weapons, and transport and combat helicopters. MONUC also deployed Guatemalan Special Forces to the Equateur region.

On December 22, New York’s Bloomberg News reported with a news brief deepening the racist mythology portraying this as African savagery and superstition.

“The Enyele leader is a mystic named Udjani,” wrote Michael J. Kavanagh, reporting for Bloomberg from Kinshasa (DRC) and Impfondo (Republic of Congo), referring to the Enyele tribe, “who claims to have a magical sword that can poison people and pass its powers to the curved machetes wielded by many of his followers, witnesses said.”¹⁸

Sources working for MONUC in Kisangani confirm that there are Belgian troops in Kisangani, with “one or two” Hercules C-130 Belgian military aircraft.

Resistance forces and Kabila’s Coalition forces engaged in major battles since January with many top military officers of the Kabila Coalition killed. Sources claim that Kabila Coalition forces have used incendiary bombs causing huge civilian casualties. A key intelligence source in Kinshasa insists that Belgian paratroopers were on the ground in Equateur and, unprepared for the organized resistance they encountered, were forced to retreat after some (unknown) number were wounded and killed. MONUC troops have also been engaged in the fighting, in continued violation of the U.N. “peacekeeping” mandate.

Election Slogans and Empty Promises (Sound Familiar?)

In the beginning, many Congolese supported President Kanambe, alias Kabila, ignoring his origins, hoping that he would share power, that he would develop the Congo, build roads and schools and, especially, that he would forestall and evict Ugandan and Rwandan agents, provocateurs, mining cartels and war criminals from the 1996-2001 war years. They were the usual empty promises made by the usual empty politicians.

The plan has all along been to colonize Congo through Rwanda. This involves eliminating as many Congolese people as possible to control their land, balkanizing the Congo and creating a “Republic of the Volcanoes” (Republique des Volcans) as Clinton-Bush official Herman Cohen has repeatedly called for since the U.S.-backed invasion of 1996.

For years now several high visibility Western intelligence organizations, in particular the groups ENOUGH, STAND, Genocide Intervention Network, and the RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO—created and funded by the International Crisis Group and Center for American Progress—have lobbied college students and Western governments to action. Legislation backed by these intelligence fronts includes the “LRA Disarmament Act” (Lord’s Resistance Army), the so-called ‘Blood Minerals’ legislation, and the “Violence Against Women Act” (Resolution 1888). The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is blamed for all terrorism in the northern Uganda region, which is awash in oil, thus shielding the organized war crimes of Ugandan President Museveni and his western allies, just as the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are blamed to shield the Kagame terror networks.

William Jefferson Clinton’s former national security insider John Prendergast is the leading cheerleader for these groups, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s help, and with John Podesta, Tom Daschle and Madeleine Albright, behind the scenes. John Prendergast was the expert of choice for CBS 60 Minutes’ “Blood Minerals” broadcast, nationally televised in the United States on Nov. 29, 2009, which was an advertisement for ENOUGH, the International Rescue Committee and so-called “humanitarian” organizations. These lobby and flak entities are working to displace and neutralize all true international grassroots efforts to help the Congolese people take control of their own resources and future, and they cover for hidden Western interests; they also advance military solutions over diplomatic or other peaceful solutions.

The Western media perpetually broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the Western “news”-consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime. These include diamonds, gold, columbium-tantalite, cobalt, copper, petroleum, germanium, tin, tungsten, palm oil, coffee and chocolate (sold in Whole Foods groceries stores). But the value of Congo’s greatest natural “resource” exceeds the value of all the above resources combined: the biggest western moneymaker in Congo is humanitarian aid, charity and international relief—Save the Children, CARE, UNICEF, UNHCR—a.k.a., and the misery industry.

In mid-March actorvist Ben Affleck launched yet the latest western “humanitarian” enterprise in eastern Congo. Affleck’s ‘humanitarianism’ operates behind the western disinformation campaign that charges Congolese men with using ‘rape as a weapon of war’—an agenda also pushed by Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues fame)—but fails to address the true perpetrators of crimes, including the many mining, private military, intelligence and other military interests involved in bloodshed and plunder. The ‘rape as a weapon of war’ framework facilitates western ignorance of the true perpetrators of war, including western agents, weapons brokers, mercenary companies, proxy forces, NATO and AFRICOM, and U.S. brokered military hardware (AK-47s, rockets, armored personnel carriers, tanks, grenades, surface-to-air missiles). Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of “rape as a weapon of war” in July 2009 covered up her negotiations with Joseph Kabila regarding the Clinton aligned diamond interests in DRC.

Affleck’s new Congo initiative is funded by Howard Buffet, whose powerful holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has diverse business interests involved in the Great Lakes. Berkshire Hathaway has an 18.2% stake in the Washington Post and the Buffet’s agribusinesses in Africa are entrenching Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) crops. The Buffets are tight with Bill and Melinda Gates, all close business partners with the Clinton’s in Rwanda and Uganda. In September 2008, Bill Gates, Howard Buffet, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni met at the United Nations headquarters to launch their GMO partnership “Purchase for Progress” with the UN’s World Food Program. Affleck also has his own private business interests facilitated by the Kagame regime in Kigali, and like Gates and Buffet he comes and goes from Kigali on a private jet. Washington Post reportage on Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Sudan is a complete whitewash of western interests.

Rwanda has become the Pentagon’s main base and center of military operations in Africa, and this partnership involves Israel.

On January 28, 2009, sources in Congo reported that Joseph Kabila narrowly survived another assassination attempt, the third this year, with his bodyguard taking the bullet. Meanwhile, violent fighting continued in Equateur province into March, with Kabila coalition troops allegedly arresting and torturing civilians and accusing them of being rebels, including boys as young as 10, and widely committing summary executions. This is a massive violation of international law; AFRICOM and MONUC officials know it is happening; United Nations officials in New York know it is happening;¹⁹ and the western press is silent.

In Mid-March, at an exclusive United States Institute for Peace meeting in Washington, DC, AFRICOM spokesman Mark Swayne dismissed any AFRICOM involvement in these covert operations by responding that such reports are “irrelevant.” The USIP has funded pro-Kagame disinformation campaigns since the early 1990’s, shielding U.S. involvement in Central African war crimes and genocide. AFRICOM information campaigns exclusively project an image of U.S. troops being only involved in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.

Curiously, at the same USIP meeting, Mark Swayne reportedly “apologized” for AFRICOM’s use of Ugandans in building the new AFRICOM base under construction in Kisangani, Congo. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni—through his wife and brother Salim Saleh’s organized crime networks and the Ugandan military—are hated for more than a decade of plunder and terror in Congo. The Pentagon’s own web site identifies the elite U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as ‘training’ Congolese troops in Kisangani, DRC, and Swayne did not reveal that the Ugandans are mercenaries likely affiliated to the western mercenary-linked oil companies (Heritage Oil & Gas, Hardman Resources, H Oil) operating in the Lake Albert basin on the DRC-Uganda border.

AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have also been training and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the U.S.-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans in Darfur.

In December 2009, a group of Congolese chiefs sent an open letter to U.S. President Barrack Obama proclaiming a “categorical refusal of your AFRICOM Project in the Congo.”

AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have been ‘training’ and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the US-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans reported to be in Darfur. An unknown number of Rwandan soldiers are also in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are allegations that “peacekeeping” sorties sent to Darfur, Sudan, may actually serve as cover for military personnel and hardware actually bound from Rwanda to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Sudan is exploding as you read this, and the huge Rwandan deployments might be behind new violence. These are Rwandan and Ugandan troops responsible for the most egregious war crimes in all the Great Lakes countries.

On April 4, 2010, rebellion insurgents crossed the Congo river and attacked the provincial capital of Mbandaka. Two MONUC troops were killed, and many more wounded after insurgents attacked the governor’s residence and took the Mbandaka airport. By April 9 the government FARDC forces and MONUC had regained the airport leaving three MONUC troops dead. The story finally broke onto the pages of the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream press, but all continue to hide deeper interests and distort the realities. The heavily populated city of Mbandaka was described as a “ghost town” and reporting ignored civilian casualties.²⁰,²¹,²²

1. See Keith Harmon Snow, “Congo’s President Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, Nov. 13, 2007.
2. For this report these RDF-disguised troops will be designated “RDF” (Rwandan Defense Forces) to separate them from other FARDC troops with Rwandan allegiances.
3. See, e.g., Spain’s Feb. 6, 2008, indictments issued by High Court Judge Andreu Merelles charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.
4. See, e.g., Davenport and Stam, “What Really Happened in Rwanda?” Miller-McCune, Oct. 6, 2009.
5. See, e.g., Keith Harmon Snow, “The Rwanda Genocide Fabrications,” Dissident Voice, April 13, 2009.
6. See, e.g., Christopher Black, “The Truth About Rwanda,” SaveRwanda.org, December 29, 2010.
7. United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and OCHA.
8. Private investigations, Democratic Republic of Congo, July-August 2006 and February-March 2007.
9. The Elwyn Blattner Groupe plantation holdings are revealed in the 2008 documentary film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty by Dutch filmmaker Renzo Martens.
10. United Nations: Letter dated Nov. 9, 2009, from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to Resolution 1533 (2004), “leaked” November 2009.
11. Unsigned, “Armed group claims firing at U.N. chopper in DR Congo,” AFP, Nov. 26, 2009.
12. Joe Bavier, “Congo gunmen fire at U.N. helicopter, five wounded,” Reuters, Nov. 26, 2009.
13. Belga, “La Belgique dément tout projet d’envoi de troupes en RDC,” RTBF, Dec. 3, 2009. ["Belgium denies all project of sending of troops to DRC."]
14. Bemba Saolona’s company, Scibe CMMJ, was implicated by the U.N. in smuggling weapons to UNITA during the Angolan Civil War: Johan Peleman, “The logistics of sanctions busting: the airborne component,” (PDF file), p. 303.
15. In 2006-07, Police Nationale Congolaise were outfitted with high-tech radio communications, funded by the United Nations Development Program, purchased from New Zealand.
16. “DR Congo troops take back town from tribal forces: Govt.” SAPA-AFP, December 14, 2009.
17. “Equateur [DRC]: An extra 500 MONUC troops being deployed to Dongo,” MONUC Press Briefing, December 16,2009.
18. Michael J. Kavanagh, “Thousands Flee Northern Congo Insurgency Inspired by Mystic,” Blomberg.com.
19. Direct communications with high-level United Nations officials in New York confirmed in late January 2010 that UN officials in New York were discussing the Equateur conflict, but that there were (paraphrased) “conflicting interpretations of the facts.”
20. Unsigned, “Troops Retake Mbandaka Airport,” BBC, April 5, 2010.
21. Reuters, “Fighters Kill Peacekeeper in North Congo Attack,” Washington Post, April 4, 2010.
22. Katrina Mansen & David Lewis, “UN Failed Civilians During Rebel Attack,” Washington Post, April 9, 2010.

A rising alliance calling themselves ‘The Resistance Patriots of Dongo’ (Patriotes-Résistants de Dongo) has gained currency and recruits after Congolese people learned that the Dongo resistance forces were fighting against Rwandan Tutsi troops in the little frontier town of Dongo.

Sources in Congo’s capital Kinshasa report that an emergency ‘crises’ meeting was convened in Brussels on Friday, November 28, 2009, after a distress call was sent by Congo-Kinshasa President Hypolitté Kanambe, known to the western world by his alias, Joseph Kabila Kabange. According to intelligence sources, the Belgian military attaché in Kinshasa has been instructed to lay the groundwork for the arrival of a detachment of elite Belgian Armed Forces (BAF) paratroopers as soon as possible, before mid-December.

Sources in Kinshasa report that in mid-November President Joseph Kabila secretly airlifted a battalion of Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) across Congo to put down the small rebellion. The operation involved multiple flights in November and was supported by the United Nations Observes Mission in Congo (MONUC) and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The RDF forces, moved to Congo from Rwanda exclusively for the operation, were uniformed as FARDC troops.¹

Pitched battles involving RDF occurred in past weeks on November 22-24 and November 26-28 in the Dongo region. Along with RDF regulars, MONUC troops from the supposed international ‘peacekeeping’ mission have been fighting alongside Tutsi Rwandan soldiers infiltrated by Rwanda, with the Kabila government’s support, into the national army, the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC).

Equateur Province achieved a relative peace by 2004 and the majority of United Nations Observers Mission to Congo (MONUC) troops pulled out by 2005. Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), the humanitarian organization that had worked in Equateur Province from 1992, disregarded their own reports about the state of the health emergency and mortality in Equateur and abandoned the population in 2006.²

On December 2, 2009 the remote strategic airport town of Libenge, near the Central African Republic, fell to the new rebellion, which is expanding and spreading with foreign backing. Towns in Equateur Province have been falling one by one to the rebellion, sending Kinshasa’s elites into a scramble on December 3 and President Kabila into a security panic.

Now the entire Congo has been launched into a state of massive fear, warfare and insecurity—and the house of cards—propped up by western corporations and military—comes tumbling down.

The international media has completely blacked out this story, reporting only an ethnic conflict over fishing rights. Faced with almost two months of suppressing information about the Dongo crisis in Equateur, MONUC is faced with the prospect of full disclosure—or launching another massive campaign of damage control and disinformation.

MONUC HIDES EQUATEUR CONFLICT

The Tutsi forces in the FARDC include infiltrated RDF and ‘ex’-CNDP forces from the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), the extremist terrorist militia that sprouted out of the Kivu Provinces, but is heavily backed by Rwanda and infiltrated with thousands of extremist Tutsis.

Thousands of CNDP militia forces were integrated into the FARDC military in 2009, in a strategic maneuver championed by James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame and their U.S. and U.K. backers. These ‘ex’-CNDP wear FARDC uniforms, with some units commanded by FARDC officers—whose loyalty might first be to Congo, and not Kabila—while others are commanded by ‘ex’-CNDP officers serving Kabila but loyal to Rwanda.

The CNDP is one of the pivotal causes of the massive destabilization of eastern Congo, along with the many other Rwandan and Ugandan interests maintained by the organized crime networks run out of Rwanda (Paul Kagame) and Uganda (Yoweri Museveni). The formal military integration process involving so-called ‘ex’-CNDP forces is resented by many Congolese and Rwandan people as a logical step in the secret plan by Tutsi extremist forces to dominate both the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Great Lakes region.

Rwandan Defense Forces are not exclusively Tutsis, but are controlled and highly regulated by the secret extremist Tutsi network maintained by Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, and others of the 40 top war criminals indicted by the Spanish court on February 6, 2008. Much ado is made in the international press, based on propaganda cranked out by the Kigame regime and its supporters that Rwanda’s is a power-sharing government, that Hutu-Tutsi reconciliation has been a huge and lasting success, and that the RDF and intelligence services are comprised of non-Tutsi.

Anyone who remotely steps out of line, in or out of Rwanda, will immediately be targeted, accused of genocide revisionism, negationism or participation in ‘the genocide’ itself.

President Kabila reportedly asked Central Africa Republic (C.A.R.) president Francois Bozizé to intervene and flank the resistance forces through the remote frontier town of Zongo, DRC, also in Equateur Province, across the border from Bangui, the C.A.R. capital. The two presidents share a common enemy, Jean-Pierre Bemba and ex-forces of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC). Jean-Pierre Bemba is under arrest at the International Criminal Court, thanks to Bozizé and Kabila, charged with war crimes in C.A.R.

Bozizé is occupied with his own insurrections and guerilla insurgencies in C.A.R., having come to power by force in March 2003 coup d’etat against Ange-Félix Patassé, C.A.R. president from 1993-2003. Patassé, in exile in Togo, will clearly be an interested party in the Dongo rebellion, given Kabila’s relations with Bozizé. Military and intelligence from France, U.S. and Chad all meddle in C.A.R.

Kabila is reportedly furious at Congo-Brazzaville and its President Sassou-Nguesso for allowing veteran rebel guerrillas to attack Congo-Kinshasa on its western Oubangi River frontier (see map).

AN ALLIANCE ACROSS THE VAST CONGO

The very first military intervention by U.N. Blue Helmets, anywhere, occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the secession of Katanga Province (1960-63). The U.N. occupied Congo again in the ‘Congo Crises’ (1964-66). Both occupations involved Belgian paratroopers and other western mercenaries. The Congolese people were shafted.

These illegal foreign occupations by the ‘international community’—under the guise of the United Nations—served to insure western control of the diamond, copper, uranium and cobalt mines of Katanga and Kasai. Billed as ‘peacekeeping’ operations, this misnomer set the stage for present day misunderstanding of the true MONUC role as an armed combatant protecting the corporate interests or predatory western capitalism.

Now, fifty years later, following more than a century of Belgian-Anglo-American-Franco-Israeli big business profits and slavery in Congo—with ten million deaths under King Leopold (1885-1908), with a brutal Apartheid dispossession and military occupation under Belgian colonial rule (1908-1960), with countless deaths under the U.N. occupations of 1960 to 1965, with tens of millions of deaths under the U.S. client state regime of Joseph Mobutu (1965-1996), with more than ten million deaths since the Pentagon-backed invasion of 1996—the Belgians are reportedly again planning to rescue their military client-partnership in Congo-Kinshasa.

The elite Belgian paratroopers would be deployed first to Bangaboka Airport in Kisangani, in Congo’s eastern Orientale Province.

Kisangani is the site for the V.S. Naipal novel A Bend in the River and the proverbial ‘heart-of-darkness’ outpost where Henry Morton Stanley organized the genocidal red-rubber and ivory pillage for Belgium’s King Leopold. Today, western-owned plantations and logging companies reap their high profits through mass slavery of Congolese people in the Kisangani region.

To conceal President Kabila’s illegal Belgian intervention from international public opinion, Brussels, Kinshasa and MONUC plan to dress Belgian paratroopers as ‘peacekeepers’ to be deployed out of Kisangani as MONUC ‘Blue Helmets’ bound for Equateur and Dongo.

The leaders of the rebellion in western Equateur Province have reportedly forged an alliance with other disaffected Congo-Kinshasa forces in the eastern Kivu provinces. This alliance is united against the Kabila regime and its allies, including MONUC and AFRICOM.

Sources in Kinshasa report that the Patriotic Resistance Forces of Dongo are now aligned with General Dunia, a Mai Mai leader operating against the joint operations of the RDF-FARDC-MONUC nexus in the Fizi and Barako areas of South Kivu.

Joseph Kabila is a black pawn in the great game by white foreigners and multinational corporations to control and plunder Central Africa. Like Congo’s historic leaders Patrice Lumumba (1925-1961) and his paternal namesake, the former President Laurent Desiré Kabila (1939-2001), Joseph Kabila would quickly be assassinated if he diverged from the hidden agenda of western capital.

Now however, internal hatreds and domestic disaffections threaten Joseph Kabila’s regime.

“What is happening now in Dongo [Equateur] is the beginning of something that no one will stop,” said one Congolese intelligence insider on November 25. “For sure, Kabila and his friends are sending Rwandan troops to kill people but the resistance movement says that Dongo will be the tomb of Rwandan troops and the beginning of the end of Kabila and his supporters. At this time, thousands of people—young Congolese men, ex-Mobutu fighters, Congolese FARDC—have joined the movement. I’m very sure that this Dongo movement was prepared for a long time.”

EXTREMIST TUTSIS BLEEDING CONGO DRY

Many Congolese people have long since known that the president of their country has supported a secret extremist ‘Tutsi’ alliance that seeks to dominate Central Africa. His real name is Hypolitté Kanambe, formerly a junior Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) officer plucked from the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) forces.

It is widely supported that Joseph Kabila reported directly to RPF/A commanders James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame in the Pentagon-backed AFDL ‘rebellion’ that overthrew President Joseph Mobutu in Zaire (Congo-Kinshasa); there are also claims that Kabila was a soldier in the RPF/A during the multiple genocides orchestrated by Kagame’s extremist Tutsi RPF/A in Rwanda (1990-1994).

“For us Congolese-Zairians, the boy is Rwandan Tutsi,” explains Congolese intellectual Yaa-Lengi Ngemi. “Yes, [the assassinated president] Laurent Kabila lived in Dar es Salaam and had a business there. Hypollite Kanambe’s Tutsi father was a close friend and business partner of Laurent Kabila.” 

The term ‘extremist Tutsi’ applies only to the elite secretive organization, formerly the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that exists in parallel with the parliamentary government of Rwanda. While some of the same people occupy both, the extremist Tutsis came to power through war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994, operating a secret terrorist network.³ ,⁴ ,⁵

The RPF/A killed everyone in its path, no matter their ethnicity: Hutu, Tutsi, or minority indigenous Twa people. The so-called ‘Tutsi’ RPF/A killed Tutsis in Rwanda during their four year invasion, and afterwards, because Major General Paul Kagame and General James Kabarebe and their ‘exiled’ Tutsi conspirators in Diaspora—dubbed the ‘Jews of Africa’, a ‘people without a homeland’—did not trust any Tutsis that stayed behind in Rwanda after Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana came to power in 1973.

The RPF/A also killed everyone in their path because their plan from the start was to eliminate as many people as possible, to depopulate Rwanda of the soon-to-be problematic landowners, businessmen, farmers and peasants—mostly the majority Hutu population, but also Tutsis—and repopulate Rwanda with Ugandans and Tutsis who had been living comfortably in Western countries. It was about big business, corruption and greed.

Now, after more than fifteen years of massive western propaganda proclaiming an organized, systematic elimination of the Tutsi people by the Hutu leaders of the former Rwandan government, the official Rwanda genocide story has finally collapsed. A genocide revisioning is imperative and, given the recent acquittals at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR), between December 2008 and December 2009, it is well under way.

In sharp contradistinction to the tired establishment refrain, the entrenched sacred narrative accusing the ‘Hutu leadership’ of an ‘organized’ and ‘planned’ genocide in the so-called 100 days of slaughter between April 6 and July 1994—a narrative defined by victor’s justice—were the countless acts of genocide committed through a spontaneous uprising of the Hutu masses.

These were Hutu people who had been brutalized, disenfranchised, uprooted and forced from homes; people who had witnessed massacres and rapes of family members; people who were themselves the victims of brutal atrocities; people who knew of crematoriums and mass graves filled with their friends, families, and neighbors who were both Hutu and Tutsi.

These were reportedly more than one million internally displaced Rwandan Hutus, people who had been terrorized by the RPF/A from October 1990 to April 1994, as it butchered its way into Rwanda; and possibly over one million Burundian refugees, Hutus who suffered massive reprisals in Burundi after the first civilian President, Melchior Ndadaye, a democratically elected Hutu, was assassinated by the Tutsi military in October 1993, and his successor, President Cyprien Ntaryamira, was assassinated on April 6, 1994.

On April 6, 1994, they responded to the extremist Tutsi onslaught with a vengeance. There was killing on all sides, that is not in dispute. This was a war, a bloody conflagration of horrors. But the numbers don’t add up, the dead don’t compute, the labels ‘Tutsi’ and ‘Hutu’ become circumspect. The propaganda story is quite different than the facts, and no one has yet to write a true and comprehensive account not biased by fear, interests, imperial arrogance or whiteness.

After seizing power in July of 1994, the extremist Tutsi network continued to perpetrate atrocities, including massacres, assassinations, tortures and disappearances, and the network moved into Congo-Zaire in 1996 and persists in Rwanda and Congo to this day. The modus operandi of this terrorist structure is to perpetrate crimes and blames them on the victim populations.

ELECTIONS SLOGANS & EMPTY PROMISES

In the beginning, many Congolese supported President Kanambe, alias Kabila, ignoring his origins, hoping that he would share power, that he would develop the Congo, build roads and schools and, especially, that he would forestall and evict Ugandan and Rwandan agents, provocateurs, mining cartels and war criminals from the 1996-2001 war years.

In July of 2006, prior to the presidential elections, I traveled on the campaign trail with President Kabila’s sister alias Janet Kabila, around Kinshasa and into bush towns nearby. The Kabilas doled out cash and propaganda (t-shirts, caps, flyers, buttons, food, alcohol) and they rallied entire villages with a five-piece marching band. To the uneducated and impoverished masses of the interior the Kabilas pledged roads and schools within next three years.

Janet Kabila on the campaign trail in Bas Congo promises roads and schools to impoverished villages. Photo by Keith Harmon Snow.

They were the usual empty promises made by the usual empty politicians. The Congolese people have seen nothing but misery and death delivered from within and without the vast Congo.

The western media broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the western news [sic] consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime.

High visibility western organizations, in particular the ENOUGH and Raise Hope For Congo projects and their wealthy backers the International Crisis Group and Center for American Progress [sic], have lobbied college students and western governments to action, always pushing for legislation, and licensed by capitalism and the major mass media to speak as the only bona fide experts on the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda. They also advance military solutions over diplomatic or other peaceful solutions.

William Jefferson Clinton’s former national security insider John Prendergast is their leading cheerleader. There’s a reason Prendergast is all over the news, appearing at colleges where ENOUGH and Raise Hope’s advance publicity includes expensive color brochures and posters.

“Already the Enough Project, an anti-genocide group based in Washington, and Eve Ensler, an American playwright who has been supporting Congolese women’s projects for years through the organization V-Day, among others,” wrote Jeffrey Gentleman in the recent New York Times article slamming the Congolese people for their own suffering, “have been urging Congress to pass legislation that would bar American companies from buying Congo’s ‘conflict minerals’, which include gold, tin and coltan, a metallic ore used in many cellphones and laptop computers. Several bills have been proposed.”⁶

John Prendergast was the expert of choice for CBS 60 Minutes’ ‘Blood Minerals’ broadcast, nationally televised in the United States on November 29, 2009, which was an advertisement for ENOUGH, the IRC and so-called ‘humanitarian’ organizations. These lobby and flak entities are working to displace and neutralize all true international grass roots efforts to help the Congolese people take control of their own resources and future, and they cover for hidden western interests.

Beholden to powerful western corporate interests, the most powerful originating from Belgium, the United States, Israel, Canada, Britain and Germany, but also including Australian, Japanese, South African and Dutch interests, the Kabila regime, backed by the MONUC military occupation and the U.N. Security Council, has delivered to the Congolese people one disappointment and outrage after another.

EASTERN CONGO ABOUT TO EXPLODE TOO?

A major source of ongoing conflict in the Kivus, General Bosco Ntaganda was rewarded in January 2009 for playing along with the Kabila-Kagame-MONUC charade of ‘arresting’ CNDP-RDF war criminal General Laurent Nkunda. To their credit, the U.N. Panel of Experts, in their recently ‘leaked’ report of November 2009, exposed the appointment of General Bosco Ntaganda as CNDP-FARDC commander, which Kagame and Kabila officially denied.

General Ntanganda commanded CNDP-FARDC units responsible for massive war crimes under the joint ‘Kimia’ operations in the Kivus launched with MONUC backing in January 2009. Ntanganda is an insider and—if arrested and sent to the supposedly neutral ICC—he is purportedly a huge risk to Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Laurent Nkunda and Joseph Kabila.

The International Criminal Court indicted General Bosco Ntanganda for war crimes committed in DRC in May 2008. The ICC is a political instrument used to selectively target certain individuals and militias, while ignoring more substantial state sanctioned actors like Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Yoweri Museveni or former U.S. national security council member Walter Kansteiner.

Sources on Kinshasa report that General Ntanganda may imminently trigger a new war between CNDP and FARDC forces in the Kivus, with the blessing of Joseph Kabila and Paul Kagame, who seek to protect Ntanganda from the ICC.

Given the recent secret infiltrations and sanctioned integrations of CNDP and RDF into FARDC units during 2008 and 2009, this would create havoc and trigger immense suffering, on top of the already unprecedented depopulation of the Great Lakes’ people.

General Ntanganda will likely create a new military faction, sources report, yet another acronym to confuse obtuse western foreign policy experts—yet another militia licensed to kill civilians in the soup of bloodshed, depopulation and impunity.

REGIONAL ALLIANCES AND HATREDS

In the DRC’s ‘historic’ rigged national elections of 2006, formalizing Joseph Kabila’s ‘presidency’, millions of Congolese people supported MLC rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, ignoring his murderous tryst with Ugandan strongman Yoweri Museveni, because they knew Kanambe—alias Joseph Kabila—was Rwandan.⁷

“During the [presidential] election the majority of the Congolese voted for Bemba,” says Congolese human rights activist Yaa-Lengi Ngemi, “even though Congolese people knew that Bemba also killed Congolese as a stooge of Uganda. The choice was between a Congolese criminal and a foreigner, a Rwandan criminal.  So they voted for the Congolese criminal, or ‘mwana mboka’ (native son)…”

The elections rigging in Congo was multi-faceted, with all kinds of irregularities, and manipulations on all sides.⁸ The ‘international community’ backed the Kabila win.

Bemba and Kabila unleashed their troops in deadly battles, also targeting civilians, in Kinshasa in March 2007.⁹

Since 1996 more than 10 million Congolese people have died across the vast country, with the current death toll in the eastern provinces alone at some 1000 people per day. There are millions of refugees in the Great Lakes member states, and now more than 92,000 people are uprooted in western Congo due to recent fighting.

During his brief tenure as president, Joseph Kabila tried to balance out power interests through a combination of bribery and brute force. He gave Paul Kagame’s gang carte blanche over mining and land in the Kivu provinces. Extortion, racketeering, open occupations and secret infiltrations of Rwandan forces became the norm, and persisted in this pattern, to this day.

In western Congo, home to Kinshasa, Kabila gave President Eduardo Dos Santos and Angola carte blanche over oil concessions in Bas Congo province in exchange for providing presidential security forces and to counterbalance extremist Tutsi expansionism out of Rwanda. In March 2009, DRC’s oil minister Rene Isekemanga Nkeka accused Angola of stealing Congo’s oil. Many Congolese parliamentarians resent Kabila’s foreign alliances and can no longer be bribed into submission.

The Angolans hate Kagame and the Rwandan Defense Forces (former RPF/A), and vise versa. The RPF/A teamed up with Angolan UNITA rebels fighting against President Dos Santos after the Angolans cornered and shamed RPF/A troops in Bas Congo during the war; the two armies also fought on opposing sides in Congo (1998-2001).

Angola’s Eduardo Dos Santos and Gabon’s General Ali Bongo also cooperate with Congo-Brazzaville President Dennis Sassou-Nguesso.¹⁰ (Gabon’s recently deceased dictator Omar Bongo was Sassou-Nguesso’s son-in-law.)

Next door to the vast Congo-Kinshasa, President Dennis Sassou-Nguesso in Congo-Brazzaville is one of Joseph Kabila’s most enduring enemies. The Congo River separates the two presidents in Brazzaville and Kinshasa, and one of the Congo’s largest tributaries, the Oubangi River, separates DRC’s Equateur province, running its course northeast along the border of Congo-Brazzaville and then the Central African Republic.

President Sassou-Nguesso was a close ally of Rwanda’s former Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana, apparently assassinated by the Tutsi extremist RPF/A ‘Zero Network’ on April 6, 1994, and he was friend and ally of Joseph Mobutu.

MOBUTU SESE SEKO’S GHOSTS

Brazzaville has harbored Mobutu’s ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) since 1996-1997, and it harbors Rwandan elements that fled the AFDL genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire (1996-1997). Sources suggest there are at least 300 ex-MLC and more than 10,000 ex-FAZ troops available for the Dongo rebellion.

Rwandan refugees in Congo-Brazza include civilian survivors of the 1994 exodus from Rwanda and the subsequent international war crimes committed by the Paul Kagame and James Kabarebe and their troops in DRC from 1996-1998. Uganda People’s Defense Forces also helped hunt and massacre Hutu refugees.

Congo-Brazzaville also supports the ex-Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-FAR) and their allies, the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), providing a distant rear base for Congo operations directed at liberating Rwanda from the extremist Tutsis and the Kagame dictatorship. ¹¹

Thus many Rwandan refugees in Brazzaville are former liberation fighters hostile to the terrorist Kagame regime for its ‘blame-the-victims’ inversion of the Rwanda ‘genocide’ story and the mass murder of millions of Hutu people from 1990 to the present.

As of 2005, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) counted some 59,000 Congo-Kinshasa refugees in Congo-Brazzaville and more than 4000 Congo-Kinshasa refugees in C.A.R.

Sassou-Nguesso, Dos Santos, Ali Bongo and his father Omar, Mobutu, Habyarimana—all of these current and former Central African regimes align(ed) themselves with French and Israeli security and intelligence interests¹² —and all seek to counter balance and limit Tutsi extremist expansionism in Central Africa backed by the Anglo-American alliance.

Equateur Province is the site of major untapped petroleum reserves. Belgian, French, Portuguese, German and U.S. families and corporations control vast tracts of land being denuded by rapacious industrial logging. There are also western-owned plantations with modern day plantation slavery involving tens of thousands of Congolese people subject to terrorism by state paramilitary services.

The outside world hears little or nothing about the western-owned logging and plantation concessions producing timber, coffee, cocoa, palm oil, and rubber through modern day slavery. Similarly, the immense untapped petroleum reserves beneath the Congo River basin and its rainforests in Equateur province remain undisclosed by western institutions—including World Wildlife Fund (WWF), USAID, and Care International—involved in possessing and depopulating these rainforest lands for western corporate interests that benefit through the Kabila regime.

According to Congo researcher David Barouski, cassiterite (tin) mined from the bloody Kivu provinces in eastern Congo also passes through the networks of the plantations and logging interests in Equateur and Orientale.

“Outside of Asia, Belgium is the primary importer of Congolese cassiterite. Sodexmines sells to SDE, located in Brussels and directed by Mr. Edwin Raes. SDE is a subsidiary of the U.S.-based Elwyn Blattner Group. Mr. Elwyn Blattner, who hails from Bayonne, N.J, owns several businesses in the Congo through his firm, African Holding Company of America. They include logging concessions, transportation, and palm oil plantations. The products [from] these businesses are also imported by SDE.”¹³

The Elwyn Blattner Groupe has supported all sides in Congo’s wars, bankrolling combatants, police, governors and officials who control the geographical areas where his interests are. The Blattner family—James, Elwyn, Daniel, David—began and expanded under Mobutu and are entrenched with the Kabila regime.¹⁴

ASSASSINS TARGET JOSEPH KABILA KANAMBE

Recognizing the growing disaffection amongst his own military and intelligence services, President Kabila is surrounded by trusted elite Angolan Special Forces.

Since Joseph Kabila came to power in 2001, the elite Guard Républicaine (GR) controlled directly by the President outside the military chain of command or any civilian or judicial oversight, has been expanded to some 15,000 elite, heavily armed forces deployed at all strategic locations around the country. Sources in the intelligence sector in Congo-Kinshasa claim that the GR is predominantly comprised of elite Angolan Special Forces, with a token number of Congolese to put a proper face on things.

In 2005, it was reported that Kabila’s closest security detail in the Presidential Guards was a detachment of 50 elite Zimbabwe Defense Forces under the command of Lt. Colonel Richard Sauta, a 5th dan (rank) Tae Kwan Do expert trained in North Korea.¹⁵

Kabila has also reportedly moved all ammunitions depots off Congolese FARDC military bases in Kinshasa, though Rwandan FARDC (‘ex’-CNDP) and Angolan troops remain heavily armed and supplied.

Angolan troops backed Kabila during the deadly battle for Kinshasa against Jean-Pierre Bemba and MLC loyalists in March 2007. Enraged by MLC attacks that claimed some 23 Angolans, including a senior officer, the Angolan forces ruthlessly retaliated, causing massive civilian casualties thousands of bodies were collected and dumped in mass graves and in the Congo River.⁹ At the time, President Dos Santos convinced Congo-Brazzaville president Dennis Sassou-Nguesso to block ex-FAZ troops in Brazzaville from crossing the Congo River to join the MLC fight.

This time, Sassou-Nguesso has allowed ex-FAZ and ex-MLC to cross the border and join the Dongo rebellion.

Since March 2007, MLC forces that were captured or surrendered to MONUC after the deadly battle were detained by MONUC in Kinshasa ‘for their own safety.’ In past weeks, Kabila’s loyalist forces in Kinshasa seized some of the MLC captives in military operations described by Kinshasa intelligence insiders as ‘staged assaults.’

Sources claim that MONUC has collaborated with the Kabila security apparatus in their efforts to seize and eliminate MLC captives. These captives included some 150 former combatants, along with their wives and children. Reports from Kinshasa suggest that these MLC are being systematically eliminated in what amount to extrajudicial executions.

“MONUC tried to get these MLC soldiers ‘integrated’ into the FARDC because they [MONUC] knew that Kabila would have them [MLC] killed,” says an insider in Kinshasa. “In June, officers from MONUC wanted to transfer the Bemba MLC men in secret to Kabila. Bemba’s men refused and took MONUC soldiers hostage and MONUC had to negotiate for their release. Now, Kabila’s Presidential militia have forced the door and arrested Bemba soldiers. MONUC seemed to pretend not to know what was happening. We know that between 80 and 103 people from MLC have been arrested by the Presidential Guard.”

There have been massive arrests and illegal detentions of young men in Kinshasa and outlying areas in the past month. In the past week, Congolese newspapers reported that escaped prisoners had been shot. However, sources indicate that these ‘escapees’ were killed in prison.

Such actions are routine for the Kinshasa security apparatus. Any time that Kabila suspects or discovers a coup, street children and young men are rounded up and detained, often involving intimidation and beatings, by the Presidential Guard.

Sources in Kinshasa also say that Kabila’s forces rounded up scores and possibly hundreds of young civilian men in Maluku, a former Jean-Pierre Bemba MLC stronghold some 70 kilometers from Kinshasa. Kabila is worried that an insurgency against him will come from Maluku.

Kabila has good reason to be alarmed. There have been at least four serious coup attempts against Kabila over the past two years; two of these occurred in 2009.

One recent unreported coup attempt occurred in Kinshasa on May 18, 2009 at 7:30 pm when Kabila was returning from Mbakana, reported to be the Kabila clan’s privately fortified ‘farm’ security compound also some 70 kilometers from Kinshasa.

When the presidential procession set off down the Boulevard de 30 Juin, Kinshasa’s central artery, on May 18 a sniper, lying in ambush, opened fire on the presidential Mercedes Jeep at the intersection of Wangata Avenue. Kabila had switched vehicles and was riding in a Nissan Patrol like those used by members of parliament. Following the attack, Kabila ordered the systematic destruction of all the public kiosks and pavilions along the Boulevard de 30 Juin, and the indiscriminate round up and arrest of young men in Kinshasa. The attack reportedly involved five commandos.

All media inside Congo were forbidden from reporting on the May coup attempt, reportedly on the personal orders of President Kabila. Several media outlets of the Congolese Diaspora reported the events. It is also true that ‘coups’ and ‘attacks’ in Kinshasa have been staged by the Kabila government and by opposition as devices to manipulate public opinion or justify retaliatory action.

In October 12, 2009, Colonel Floribert Bofate Lihamba was arrested in Lubumbashi, Katanga Province, the heart of Congo’s most lucrative western mining operations, and transferred to a prison in Kinshasa. A top security agent in President Kabila’s Presidential Guard Républicaine (GR), and a former member of the Special Presidential Security Group (GSSP) under President Laurent Kabila, Col. Lihamba is accused of planning a coup d’etat.

On October 21, 2009, President Kabila survived the second most recent attempted coup d’etat, another recent pivotal event in Congo unreported by the western press or Congolese media. Informed in advance of the impending attempt on his life, President Kabila had curtailed all public appearances and was reportedly again holed up with Angolan troops on his ‘farm’ security compound outside Kinshasa.

According to Congolese intelligence sources, ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) commandoes crossed the Congo River seeking to assassinate Kabila. The commandoes all reportedly originate from the Mobutu and Jean-Pierre Bemba strongholds around Gbadolite , in northwestern Equateur.

The arrested officers include: four Majors (Yogo, Zwafunda, Mokwesa, Ngombo); five captains (Koli, Nzale, Gbaka, Kongawi, and Salakoso); nine lieutenants (Libanza, Masisi, Gerembaya, Mbuyi, Ndongala, Ngani, Kpdobere, Nzanzu and Sido); and four sergeants (Kongo, Dondo, Lisala, and Lite).

“President Kabila is afraid of the ex-FAZ,” says one Congolese source. “He is afraid of Ngbanda.”

One of the former President Mobutu’s closest advisers, Honoré Ngbanda—the ‘Terminator’—is also rumored to back the uprising in Dongo. Ngbanda held various positions under Mobutu, including Minster of the Interior, Ambassador to Israel and Head of the Mobutu’s notorious SNIP, the National Intelligence and Protection Service (Service National d’Intelligence et de Protection).

Honoré Ngbanda’s ties to other Mobutu era big men likely include the Bongo family (Gabon) and Jewish-American diamond kingpin Maurice Templesman (United States), whose De Beers-affiliated diamond interests were partially displaced when the Kabila regime partnered with Israeli businessmen Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz. Gertler and Steinmetz cemented their interests in Congo-Kinshasa through former U.S. President G.W. Bush and former U.S. State Department official Jendayi Frazer.

South Africa is home to several former high commanders from the former Mobutu regime of Zaire. Former Security Police Chief General Kpama Baramoto, former Special Forces Commander General Ngabale Nzimbi and former Zairean Defense Minister Admiral Mudima all now reside in South Africa and are clearly interested in overthrowing Joseph Kabila.

In past weeks, Kabila has attempted to replace Congolese intelligence agents with Rwandans drawn from the CNDP, the extremist Tutsi terrorist network out of Rwanda. This has stirred further anger amongst the Congolese members of the FARDC and the National Intelligence Agency (ANR), Congo-Kinshasa’s secret service.

“The CNDP is a rebellion that Kagame used, and Kabila allowed, to infiltrate Rwandan soldiers into the Congolese [FARDC] army,” reports an intelligence insider in Kinshasa. “These CNDP are described as Congolese Tutsis but they are Rwandans. The fact that Kabila tried to replace some members of secret services and [FARDC] army by people who came from CNDP [provoked] the anger of many in the Congolese army and intelligence services. Kabila will be captured or killed very soon. TRUST ME.”

RESISTANCE PATRIOTS OF DONGO

In March 2009 the western press reported a ‘tribal dispute’ and ‘ethnic clash over fishing rights’ in the little western Congo outback town of Dongo. The dispute reportedly began between two different ethnic groups. However, the newly announced “Resistance Patriots of Dongo” claim that President Kabila’s agents manipulated the parties of the dispute and thereby escalated armed hostilities.

In October 2009 President Kabila and John Numbi—one of his top military advisers—dispatched FARDC troops under the command of General Benjamin Alongaboni to Dongo to negotiate peace with resistance forces. General Alongaboni, a Congolese son hailing from Equateur Province, and the first FARDC officer on the scene, secured a negotiated peace with Dongo area combatants.

Soon after however, President Kabila sent RDF forces—in FARDC uniforms—who enraged Congolese in the region and provoked hostilities by killing some local people and destroying the possibilities of peace negotiations.

The Resistance Patriots of Dongo retaliated and FARDC under the command of General Alongaboni began defecting.

Now President Kabila is uncertain who is with him and who is against him. All FARDC troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo are on full security alert, prevent from leaving the country or taking leaves of absence.

General Benjamin Alongaboni and the few troops that did not defect to the resistance were moved to nearby Gemena military center where he is currently under surveillance by President Kabila’s security and intelligence operatives. General Alongaboni is an Adjutant General to Kabila’s trusted FARDC insider John Numbi, formerly the head of FARDC Air Forces and now Inspector General of the Police National Congolaise (CNP).

Meanwhile, the ‘Dongo Crises’ has blossomed into a full-blown Congolese rebellion against international occupation forces and the powerful Kabila-Kagame clique. Over the past three weeks civilians and former combatants have been flooding into the remote Dongo region to join a growing rebellion against the now hated military regime of President Joseph Kabila and his western corporate business and military partners.

Hundreds of Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC)—of ethnic Congolese origin—have deserted and joined rebellion ranks with Congolese civilians and various military elements of past rebellions. The Resistance Patriots of Dongo is reportedly comprised of Congolese-FARDC deserters, former Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ), and former MLC rebels.

Thousands of ex-FAZ and elite troops of Mobutu’s former Special Presidential Division (DSP) fled Congo-Kinshasa to Congo-Brazzaville between 1996 and 1998 when the Pentagon-backed insurgency led by Rwanda and Uganda swept across the Congo (Zaire) and drove out Zaire’s long-time strongman Joseph Desire Mobutu.

Sources in Kinshasa say that President Kabila seeks to frame and accuse Mobutu’s former intelligence chief Honoré Ngbanda and ex-MLC leader Jean-Pierre Bemba, who is already under arrest for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, in a propaganda ruse to justify the international intervention in Equateur and legitimize further military aggression by the Kabila-Kagame-MONUC nexus.

Kabila hopes for strategic gain by claiming that the Dongo uprising is purely an MLC uprising. By convincing his white international patrons that the MLC is the problem, Kabila hopes to further purge his government and the country of MLC supporters.

In September 2009, armed assailants shot up the residences of DRC Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexis Tambwe Mwamba and another minister, Olivier Kamitatu, both ex-MLC supporters who have joined Kabila, in a drive by shooting; other assassination attempts have also been reported.

Sources in Kinshasa say Kabila’s security apparatus staged these assassination attempts to create further international sympathy for Kabila, to discredit the MLC and manipulate the ICC proceedings against Jean-Pierre Bemba. Officials in Kinshasa have been threatened in response to fears that Jean-Pierre Bemba will wiggle and bribe his way out of the ICC war crimes charges and return to Congo. Given the highly political nature of the already corrupted ICC, the fear is not unfounded.

President Kagame and President Yoweri Museveni have a long history of ‘pseudo-operations’ and ‘false-flag operations’ that blame and punish the victims after secret operations and atrocities that are actually committed by disguised RDF and UPDF soldiers.

Joseph Kabila’s goal might be to follow the example of his allies, Paul Kagame and the extremist Tutsis in Rwanda, by blaming all exactions, tortures, assassinations, massacres and organized plunder of Congo on the Dongo forces who are today fighting against western imperialism and its agents in Central Africa—in the person of Joseph Kabila. President Paul Kagame’s success in this conspiracy is evident in the many awards he has received, for his absolute terrorism in service to western interests, with the coup de grâce being Rwanda’s acceptance into the Commonwealth of Nations last week.¹⁶

Congolese people everywhere were outraged by the eastern Congo FARDC military operations with RDF and UPDF forces early in 2009, but Kabila and partners heaped one insult on top of another by airlifting RDF across Congo to the far western Equateur to attempt to crush the Dongo resistance.

MONUC and AFRICOM supported the RDF airlift operations.

The Kabila government has reportedly agreed to base AFRICOM out of the remote east-central Congo River city of Kisangani, also the site of a secret U.S. military-intelligence ‘fusion cell’ linking Uganda, Rwanda, Congo-K in a tripartite cooperation agreement focused on minerals and mining. The details of the ‘base’ are unknown, but Kisangani will likely be one of AFRICOM’s many ‘lily-pad’ bases.

AFRICOM LURKING IN THE WINGS

AFRICOM currently has cooperative security location agreements, commonly known as ‘lily pad’ operating agreements with a dozen African nations stretching from Algeria on the Mediterranean to Zambia and Botswana in southern Africa. The U.S. Seventeenth Air Force’s contingency and crisis planning and response team had already visited four African nations through April 2009 to carry out airfield surveys, with plans to visit seven more nations by September 30.¹⁷

In January 2009, AFRICOM delivered four 200 hp Yamaha outboard engines to RDF marines in Gisenyi, Rwanda. The RDF maritime regiment was formed in 1995—“in response to Rwanda’s genocide,” according to AFRICOM, “to control [Rwanda’s] water border with the Democratic Republic of Congo and prevent the infiltration of genocidal forces from the Congo.”

In May 2009, Brigadier General Mike Callan, vice commander of the new AFRICOM Air Forces AFRICA (U.S. Seventeenth Air Force), met with RDF Chief James Kabarebe—an internationally indicted war criminal—and Rwandan Air Force commanders in Kigali for talks focused on turning tiny Rwanda into central and east Africa’s leading ‘air hub’ for both military and civilian air traffic.¹⁸

Bound for the Dongo rebellion in mid-November RDF crossed from Gisenyi, Rwanda to Goma, DRC, and were then flown from Goma to Kamina Air Base in Katanga, a military transport hub used for the Belgo-American-U.N. mercenary occupations during the Katanga secession (1960-63) and ‘Congo Crises’ (1964–67). The RDF battalion was next flown to Bandundu Province and from there they joined President Kabila at his ‘farm’ security compound outside Kinshasa.

The RDF troops were reportedly next moved to the 42-acre campus of the U.S. Embassy-affiliated American School in Kinshasa (TASOK), near the notorious Camp Tshatshi military base, and then flown to Gemena airport in Equateur.

The Colonel Tshatshi Military Camp in Kinshasa hosts the defense department and the Chiefs of Staff central command headquarters of the FARDC. The TASOK campus was used for RDF troops because they would not be welcome amongst Congolese-FARDC at Camp Tshatshi.

There were at least three round trips in some legs of the RDF flight plan reportedly using both MONUC and Hewa Bora Airlines, an airline 70% owned by Belgian arms trafficker Philippe de Moerloose. In the ‘leaked’ November 2009 U.N. Panel of Experts Report on Illegal Exploitation in the Congo, Philippe De Moerloose and Hewa Bora Airlines were named for weapons shipments from Sudan to Congo in violation of the International Arms Embargo on the DRC.¹⁹

De Moerloose supplies Kabila with Presidential jets and other toys.

“Nobody in the Congo was aware of this operation except Kabila and John Numbi,” says one insider in Kinshasa. “Everyone was surprised to see Rwandan troops enter Kivu [Goma] from Rwanda. When the speaker of the Congolese parliament, Vital Kamhere, criticized the operation, President Kabila pushed for his resignation.”

Former DRC Air Force Commander John Numbi is reported to be Kabila’s main link to Rwandan military officials Paul Kagame and the indicted war criminal James Kabarebe. John Numbi, currently the Inspector General of the Congolese National Police, is a regular visitor to Kigali and described as ‘one of Congo’s most dangerous men’.

John Numbi reportedly orchestrated the joint military operations between RDF and FARDC that began in January 2009. The main overt military campaigns were ‘Umoja Wetu,’ a joint operation between FARDC and RDF, and the ‘Kimia I’ and ‘Kimia II’ operations, which were FARDC operations supported by MONUC.
 
“Just before the joint operation ‘Umoja Wetu’ [RDF General] James Kabarebe met Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa, and they have spoken in secret,” says one Congolese insider. “Nobody knows what they talked about. The real story is that Rwanda took the opportunity to secretly inject at least 4000 and maybe as many as 10,000 Rwandan soldiers into the FARDC army.”

Congolese FARDC troops deployed by Kabila to the Dongo area refused to fight and instead defected to the rebel cause rather than kill their Congolese brothers and sisters for the private enrichment of foreigners and the pro-Rwanda alliance of Kabila and Kagame. Thus President Kabila has been forced to deploy to Dongo only those FARDC units comprised exclusively of ‘ex’-CNDP Tutsi units loyal to Rwanda.

By mid-November 2009 international humanitarian agencies began reporting thousands of refugees flooding across the Congo River to Congo-Brazzaville, with 54,000 now in Congo-Brazzaville and 38,000 IDPs in Congo by December 1, according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).

The Resistance Patriots of Dongo are claiming to have inflicted high casualties on the RDF-MONUC-FARDC forces dispatched to Dongo and surrounding areas. Several towns have been taken, lost, and retaken in pitched battles against RDF-MONUC-FARDC forces.

While the conflict in Equateur slowly escalated from March to October, and deteriorated quickly after that, MONUC’s press and information corps have been mute about the rebellion.

All official channels deny the presence of RDF troops, or that RDF troops fought in Equateur. Several very small media outlets are also reporting the RDF presence, their sources appearing to be connected with the Resistance Patriots of Dongo movement.²⁰

MONUC issued one tiny press report on November 26, after resistance forces shot up a MONUC helicopter that flew to Dongo to resupply the RDF-MONUC-FARDC ground troops. Five of the 25 to 30 personnel on board were injured, and the pilot took off and flew the chopper to Congo-Brazza. None of the personnel (or their nationalities) aboard the MONUC chopper was identified.

A short western media propaganda blurb circulated by Agence France-Presse attempted to discredit the rebellion and cover for MONUC’s involvement in open military aggression against Congolese people. Titled “Armed group claims firing at UN chopper in DRC,” the AFP blurb also confirmed the Resistance Patriots of Dongos’ strike against a MONUC helicopter.

“In their confused statement,” AFP wrote, November 26, 2009, “the Patriots-Resistance [of Dongo] alleged that Rwandan occupation forces were in the region and they denounced the ‘complicity’ of MONUC ‘with the Mafia-like imperialists’.”

“Dongo was attacked on October 29 and 30 by a group from the Lobala community (also known as the Enyele), which targeted the Bamboma (or Boba) community,” the AFP reported. “Both sides have frequently disputed the fishing resources of the region. The violence, which has since spread to other villages, left at least 100 dead, mainly in Dongo, who were either hacked with machetes or shot, while a number drowned trying to cross the Oubangi river, which marks the border with the Congo Republic [Brazzaville].”

The AFP not only decontextualized the conflict, describing it as purely tribal, they also framed it as ruthless savage Africans killing with machetes. The MONUC chopper apparently was attacked on November 26. There was no mention of the major battles that occurred between foreign forces on November 22-24 or November 26-28.23

On December 3, 2009, the Dongo resistance forces intercepted a tugboat pulling two big barges carrying 2,500 tons of arms and ammunition destined for Dongo RDF-MONUC-FARDC forces. The commander of the FARDC operations involved in moving the weapons, Colonel Nyav, was killed during the clashes; Nyav had previously been commanding RDF-MONUC-FARDC troops at Dongo. The ethnic Congolese FARDC under Col. Nyav’s command jubilantly defected to the resistance after seizing the boat and weapons.
 
Also on December 3, the strategic Congolese airport town of Libenge fell into the hands of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo. The resistance forces now control the towns of Dongo, Libenge, all the territory located along Oubangi River, the localities of Bomongo, Kutu, Kungu, Saba-Saba, Buburu and the Catholic mission of Bokonzi.

The Resistance Patriots of Dongo next plan to take Mbandaka, the major administrative city on the Congo River—and the end of the line for thousands of Hutu refugee women and children executed in cold blood by the RPF/A and the AFDL on the banks of the Congo River there in 1997.

“We take the engagement before God and before all the Congolese to topple the puppet regime currently in place in Kinshasa,” the November 26 resistance statement added, according to the AFP.

DONGO WAR NOT CONNECTED TO EASTERN CONGO?

“The helicopter was delivering supplies to peacekeepers recently deployed to the town of Dongo,” reported Reuters, basing their “news” report on MONUC Public Information Officer Madnodje Mounoubai. Reuters reported “around 20 Ghanaian peacekeepers” deployed by MONUC in Dongo.

“The fighting is not related to the simmering conflict in the mineral-rich eastern borderlands,” Reuters wrote, “where the army—backed by thousands of peacekeepers—are attempting to stamp out local, Rwandan, and Ugandan rebels.”²¹

On December 3, 2009 Belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique and RTLM reported that Belgium’s Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere and Defense Minister Pieter De Crem had responded to the communiqué of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo, circulated on the Internet on December 1, which warned Belgium and Kinshasa that the resistance knew of the secret plan to dispatch paratroopers to Kisangani. The two Belgian ministries issued a joint communiqué denying the operation “with the biggest firmness.”²²

According to Kinshasa sources, the MONUC-uniformed Belgians would be flown from Kisangani, Orientale Province, to Equateur Probvince’s northwestern frontier city of Gbadolite, the stronghold of former President Mobutu and the Bemba family, Jean-Pierre and father Saolona (1942-2009), and then to Gemena airport near Dongo.²³

Soon after the Resistance Patriots of Dongo forces occupied the frontier city of Libenge, President Kabila dispatched 600 elite FARDC commandos trained by 60 Belgian Armed Forces instructors in Kindu Province. As of December 5, Libenge remained under siege, with civilians fleeing to escape the massive battle.²⁴

Sources in Kinshasa on December 5 report “massive violent fighting in Libenge and Gemena areas,” involving 1000 Congolese National Police (PNC) and 100 Ghanaian MONUC troops and two MONUC helicopter gunships. MONUC sources in Kisangani indicate that two additional MONUC helicopter gunships are ‘standing by’ for possible immediate deployment to Equateur.

The MONUC ‘peacekeeping’ in Congo is a one billion dollar a year operation.

The recently ‘leaked’ United Nations Group of Experts Report provides evidence of direct PNC involvement in contraband activities involving Rwandan Defense Forces in eastern Congo. The U.N. experts investigated the frequent and suspicious undocumented flights of a white Mi-8 helicopter leased on 27 January 2009 to the Congolese National Police through John Numbi, the head of the PNC. Numbi managed the joint RDF-MONUC-FARDC military operations (‘Umoja Wetu’) in eastern DRC begun in January 2009, along with Major General James Kaberebe, the army chief of Rwanda.¹⁹

1. For this report these RDF disguised troops will be designated ‘RDF’ to separate them from other FRADC troops with Rwandan allegiances.
2. Private investigations and interviews, Kinshasa, Equateur (Mbandaka, Basankusu, Bosondjo, Lisala) and Orientale (Kisangani, Isangi, Lokutu) Congo, 2004-2007.
3. See e.g., Spain’s February 6, 2008, indictment issued by High Court Judge Andreu Merelles charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population, and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.
4. See e.g., Davenport and Stam, “What Really Happened in Rwanda?” Miller-McCune, October 6, 2009.
5. See e.g., keith harmon snow, “The Rwanda Genocide Fabrications,” Dissident Voice, April 13, 2009.
6. Jeffrey Gettleman, “Congo army helps rebels get arms, UN finds,” New York Times, November 25, 2009.
7. See keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.
8. Private investigations, De. Rep. of Congo, July-August 2006 and February-March 2007.
9. See keith harmon snow, “Behind the Scenes: Warlord’s Deadly Battle in Congo,” Toward Freedom, August 19, 2007.
10. I previously, but incorrectly, reported that Joseph Kabila married Sandrine Nguesso, the sister the President in Congo-Brazza. See keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.
11. Interviews with Rwandans in the Diaspora, keith harmon snow.
12. See Keith Harmon Snow, “The Crimes of Bongo: Apartheid & Terror in Africa’s Gardens of Eden,” Dissident Voice, July 17, 2009.
13. David Barouski, “Transcript of David Barouski’s 10/19/08 Presentation for Congo Week in Chicago, IL.,” World News Journal, October 22, 2008.
14. Elwyn Blattner and his plantations holdings are revealed in the 2008 documentary film Episode III: Enjoy Poverty by Dutch filmmaker Renzo Martens.
15. Wilf Mbanga, “Zimbabwe/DRC: Zimbabwean troops guards President Kabila in Congo,” The Zimbabwean/UK, August 12, 2005.
16. See Wayne Madsen, “Admission of Rwanda to Commonwealth caps off assassination, genocide, and civil war,” Online Journal, December 4, 2009.
17. Stewart M. Powell, “Engagement in Africa,” airforce-Magazine.com, July 2009.
18. Eric Elliot, “U.S. Begins Flying Rwandan Peacekeeping Equipment to Darfur,” U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs, January 14, 2009.
19. United Nations: Letter dated 9 November 2009 from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the Chairman of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004), ‘leaked’ November 2009.
20. “La radio Bendele reçoit Mr Ambroise LOBALA MOKOBE Porte-parole des Patriotes-résistants de Dongo,” Radio Bendele, November 22, 2009.
21. Joe Bavier, “Congo gunmen fire at U.N. helicopter, five wounded,” Reuters, November 26, 2009.
22. Belga, “La Belgique dément tout projet d’envoi de troupes en RDC,” RTBF, December 3, 2009. [“Belgium denies all project of sending of troops to DRC”].
23. Bemba Saolona’s company, Scibe CMMJ, was implicated by the U.N. in smuggling weapons to UNITA during the Angolan Civil War: Johan Peleman, “The logistics of sanctions busting: the airborne component.” (PDF file), page 303.
24. In 2006-07, Police Nationale Congolaise were outfitted with high-tech radio communications, funded by the United Nations Development Program, purchased from New Zealand.

Behind the crocodile tears the news of Bongo’s death saw police and troop reinforcements hitting the streets of Gabon—France’s private Eden in Africa—as the old crocodile’s teethy security apparatus clicked into lockdown. Who are the white secret service agents behind Bongo (See the ancient photo of Gabon’s then new President, Albert-Bernard Bongo, circa 1965.) And then there’s Halliburton, nuclear weapons, secret societies… Who was Omar Bongo really?

In September 2003 the National Geographic unveiled the first in a series of feature stories about the world’s ‘least spoiled’ and ‘most threatened’ tropical forests. The ‘Saving Africa’s Eden’ series showcased elephants walking on white sand beaches, silverback gorillas in lush greenery, and hippos surfing in the salty sea. Omar Bongo—“a self-possessed man with a wide mustache and a warm smile”—was the African hero who created thirteen new national parks literally overnight.

The National Geographic series followed the adventures of the requisite modern day white-skinned Tarzan personified by American biologist J. Michael Fay—the ‘man who walked across the continent of Africa’—and photos showed Fay trekking through the equatorial jungle, crisscrossing savannahs and, later, surveying the wilderness with the charismatic black-skinned then U.S. Secretary of State—fresh out of a helicopter for a photo op—General Colin Powell.¹

It was all so captivating that I got the idea I had to go there. And so I did. Intrigued by the stories in National Geographic—which I recognized as the propaganda of the corporate empire² –in late 2004 I took a ‘vacation’ from the beauty and bloodshed in the big Congo (Kinshasa) and hitchhiked across the (not-so) little Congo (Brazzaville) for a visit to ‘paradise.’³

From Libreville I flew to Gamba, in the south of Gabon, took a boat to Sette Cama, and spent Christmas 2004 with my base camp on a bluff some 50 feet above the ocean in Loango National Park, the jewel of Gabon’s largest new protected area, the 1,132,000 hectare ‘Gamba Protected Area Complex.’ It is also the heartland of Shell, Halliburton and Schlumberger operations in Gabon.⁴

“Blue seas, white sand, elephants, whales, sea turtles, monkeys, bush pigs, unbelievable scenery,” biologist Fay was quoted to say. “Gabon has it all. It has everything that everyone ever dreams about in paradise, as far as I’m concerned.”

J. Michael Fay was right, I said to myself, many times, surrounded by beauty and wildness, warm (90 degree) mists on the ocean and elephants on the beaches, soaring ospreys and chimpanzees falling out of trees, and the peace of the deserted shores of one of the most fantastic enduring wild places on earth.

But J. Michael Fay skipped the dirty details. Fay didn’t mention the poverty and suffering of black Gabonese villagers whose mud-hut and malaria suffering stands in sharp juxtaposition to the swimming pools and golf courses for highly paid white expatriates, sport fisherman or adventure tourists. Or that the Gamba Complex is a private zone controlled by Shell Oil, with checkpoints and guards, where pipelines, oil barges, well-heads and huge toxic flames burning off natural gas are more visible than the elephants. And the medical waste, dumped at sea, that litters the ‘pristine’ beach: one day I picked 48 syringes with 2 inch needles out of the white sand where I was walking barefoot. J. Michael Fay became a personal adviser to Omar Bongo, but he didn’t tell us about the terror Gabonese people live and die with.

“It [‘Saving Africa’s Eden’] is unbelievable,” Marc Ona Essangui told me, in Libreville. It was just like another film about Africa.” In April 2009, Marc Ona received the Goldman Environmental Prize for his selfless grass roots struggle to exposing corruption and human rights violations and protect Gabon’s environment, and he was threatened, arrested and illegally detained by the Bongo government.

“They announced that setting up these new Gabon parks would bring one million tourists a year, but even Kenya couldn’t do that. The pictures in National Geographic suggested that it’s easy to encounter these animals, but it’s not. It would take many days. Even though the whole world may perceive that conservation is proceeding in Gabon, this is not the reality.”

“Why did Bongo create [gazette] these thirteen new reserves? Because of scandals that took place in the past few years, like the financial scandal with FIBA Bank and the fraudulent presidential elections here, and to create tension and play off the United States against France. Bongo needed to find some way to repair relations with the United States.”

Welcome to Gabon, a small otherwise unheard of Banana Republic in equatorial Africa. Hippos in the surf… gorillas in the mist… the adventures of the great white Tarzan, National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, J. Michael Fay, “the crazed American, the wild child who footed his way across all those nearly impassable forests and swamps, who sat half-naked atop the Inselbergs, who brought back photos and tales of a Gabon that Omar Bongo himself hadn’t known existed.”⁵

Now he’s bushwhacking through tropical lianas and serpent filled trees with machete… now’s he wading through leech-filled crocodile swamps… his trusty negro porters and trackers at hand… now he’s being gored by an elephant… Welcome to the state-of-the-art cartography and explorer-conqueror genre: Fay’s private helicopter almost daily dropping supplies in the jungle to the tune of hundreds of thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars and mom & pop conservation donations…

The coup des grace on all this propaganda was the portrait of Omar Bongo—the altruistic African President more interested in saving the environment than selling it off for the glitter of gold or the bling bang of diamonds or for parquet floors and plywood. President Omar Bongo was portrayed as the intent listener, the wise philosophical leader, the humanitarian negotiator. He was not—according to the spin-doctors of the propaganda system—your usual African dictator who packs people’s severed heads in his refrigerator (Idi Amin) and later has his ears cut off (Samuel Doe).

The National Geographic photos of Eden unveiled were splashed all over cyberspace. Films were made and speeches given to capitalize on the momentum of public interest. Maps and guides were mass produced, DVDs and coffee table picture books, interactive features—even “classroom companion African resources” to properly influence the kiddies. The travel agencies jumped on board. Everyone was echoing the mantra: “Could Gabon be the next ecotourism destination?”

The National Geographic series was a sort of public relations pitch for the big money conservation non-government organizations—Bi(g) NGOs or BINGOs—who get all the funding: corporate entities like World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International, Fauna and Flora International, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. But the series also introduced and paved the way for the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP), a predatory USAID⁶ initiative involving some seven African countries, U.S. logging companies, NASA, the Pentagon and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, launched under President George W. Bush.⁷ In 2002, Walter Kansteiner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, paid a six-day visit to President Omar Bongo to negotiate the CBFP, and “Saving Africa’s Eden” whitewashed the Kansteiner story as falsely as they did the Bongo regime.

National Geographic was selling ecotourism and wildlife protection as a panacea to ‘save’ Africa’s idyllic gardens of Eden. But it was all a smokescreen, a blanket of propaganda draped over the primitive realities of the country of Gabon. The script was written by big business masquerading as conservation: the Wildlife Conservation Society wrote Colin Powell’s speeches, delivered in Johannesburg. Kansteiner was described as a humanitarianism possessed with the need for democracy, health care and peace, but the Kansteiner family profits by exploiting Africa as ruthlessly as King Leopold. Trading in columbium tantalite (coltan) out of the bloody Kivu provinces of D.R. Congo, Kansteiner is also a director of Moto Gold, a company that sprouted out of the genocide in the DRC’s bloody Ituri districts.⁸

Today the blanket of propaganda is being draped over the casket of Albert-Bernard Bongo, the elfish little man who for forty-one years ran the country of Gabon as a private enterprise for himself, his family, his foreign backers and protectors. Articles that mildly illuminate the corruption of the Bongo government merely serve to distance Western governments and cover for multinational corporations and state sponsored terrorism by blaming everything on Bongo.⁹

This was not my first visit to Gabon. In 1997 I was focused on the murder of Ken Saro Wiwa and the petroleum genocide in the Niger River Delta.¹⁰ I wanted a visa for Nigeria, and I passed through every country around or near Nigeria trying to get one. But the country was closed under dictator Sani Abacha—the butcher—and I was too frightened to enter Nigeria without a visa.¹¹

Ghana was an Anglo-American stronghold, but the others I passed through were all Francophone dictatorships: Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo, Cameroon—and Gabon. It was a wake-up call to the structural violence that enslaves Africa and enriches the West and its comprador class agents like Omar Bongo.¹² (Of course, U.S. President Obama’s recent criticisms of corruption and cronyism in Africa are extremely hypocritical, at the very least.)

In Libreville, I met Thierry (not his real name). Thierry quietly told me he had worked in human rights until he became a very outspoken critic of the government. He was on the run, living ‘underground’ and existing by moving, one day to the next, through networks of friends. He was an intellectual, and he described a climate of terror in Gabon involving extra-judicial executions, disappearances, torture, all run by Bongo’s intelligence operatives and the Deuxieme Bureau, also known as the Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage (SDECE), the French secret service.

The most egregious repression occurred in 1990, Thierry said, when civilians were massacred during the ‘pro-democracy’ protests in Port Gentil. The true human rights situation is hidden, he said, even after numerous letters were sent to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

“President Bongo knows everything that goes on in Gabon,” said Thierry. “Everything. Nothing happens that he does not know about. And there are very sophisticated forms of terror, like torture, disappearing, ritual killings, using plain-clothes operatives, in designer blue jeans or NIKE tracksuits. Bongo knows all about it—he is involved—and they have killed a lot of people with no one knowing about it. People just suddenly disappear or turn up dead.”¹³

A white woman named Catherine who worked in language translations confirmed the 1990 massacres. “There are a lot of things you can do in the United States that you cannot do here,” Catherine told me, acerbically, “and one is to be politically curious. You just don’t go around asking these kinds of questions here. You would never get away with it, but even if there was an attempt to investigate the massacres it would be blocked.”

I also met a white expatriate consulting in the oil sector. He had just come from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, but he shuffled around between Cameron, Nigeria, Gabon and Angola. “Foreigners who work in Gabon work in wood or in oil,” he said. He confirmed that killings were routine before the mid-1990’s, and that massacres occurred in Port Gentil just as Thierry had said. He said that the stories about protestors being arrested and tortured were true. “It was not just a few people killed,” he insisted. “It was a lot of people. Protestors were taken out over the ocean in oil company helicopters and pushed out, alive or dead. It’s more than just a rumor.”

Togolese and Nigerian refugees in Benin, human rights activists in Cameroon, all have described these terrorist tactics involving petroleum sector helicopters. One Togolese refugee explained that in Togo they didn’t just push people out, they hang them from helicopters and fly low over the ‘jungle communities’ to instill them with terror.¹⁴

“Bongo used to just kill anyone he wanted, openly, before 1990,” a local Gabonese man, Maconi, told me in Libreville. Maconi’s family is involved in the timber sector in Gabon, and his mother is French and he moves within the French community. “Bongo would just kill them without trying to keep it quiet. Now [2004] it is different, it is subtle, quiet, you don’t see it, but it hasn’t stopped.”¹⁵

PARISTROIKA

From the very beginning, circa 1865, Gabon was the focal point from which France projected its military and economic power across the continent, serving as an intelligence-gathering base much as Burkina Faso has historically served that role for Israel and the Congo (Zaire) has for the USA.

In fact, France forced Gabon’s independence movement to accept France’s full economic control as a pre-condition for ‘independence’.

Gabon’s first President Leon M’ba—and his early one-party dictatorship—set the stage for the Bongo regime both through sheer corruption and the Gabonese state’s nefarious military and intelligence alliance with the French. A rapid intervention by French Foreign Legion commandoes secured M’ba’s presidency after an attempted coup d’etat in 1964: M’ba was said to be a close friend of Charles De Gaulle. Many of Mba and Bongo’s French supporters considered Gabon their private domain and were threatened by Gabon’s ‘independence’ after decades of French colonial occupation. When M’ba died of illness, Bongo took the reins and with the help of France he consolidated absolute power: one of the fledgling President’s first actions was to immediately dissolve all political parties and replace them with the ‘Democratic Party of Gabon.’

Charles de Gaulle and his ‘Monsieur Afrique,’ Jacques Foccart directly installed Bongo in 1967. Bongo was the choice of a powerful group of Frenchmen—the Clan des Gabonais—composed of key members of the French government and influential Gabonese in alliance with strategically placed French nationals who controlled the economy of Gabon.¹⁶ Foccart maintained French control in the former colonies through the Reseau Foccart, an intricate ‘network’ who collaborated with the French military and major French economic interests to guarantee access to strategic minerals. Former French ambassador and close M’ba adviser Maurice Delauney was a central figure in the Foccart network and the man who handpicked Bongo as Mba’s successor.¹⁷ French mercenaries and legionnaires like Bob Denard were (and remain) members of the Clan des Gabonais, using Gabon as home base for intelligence, covert operations and terrorism from Sao Tomé to Madagascar.¹⁸ French soldiers operate within the Gabonese military and French pilots in the Air Force; elite Mirage and Jaguar aircraft from the French air force are based on the military side of the Leon Mba airport in Libreville.

Petroleum exploration in Gabon was begun in the early 1930s by the French national oil company and Gabon was the first African country to host French oil giant Elf in the 1960s, from where Elf operated as a state within a state, serving as a base for French military and espionage activities, and for many decades Libreville remained the French nerve center of covert operations in central and southern Africa.¹⁹

Shell Oil entered Gabon in 1960 (Nigeria in 1958). Other oil companies in Gabon today include: AGIP (Italy), Amerada Hess (USA), AMOCO (US), BP (British Petroleum), Occidental Petroleum (USA), Energy Africa Gabon (South Africa), Pan African Energy, Marathon Oil (USA), Exxon/Mobil (and subsidiary Esso Exploration West Africa), Broken Hill Petroleum and Tullow Oil, a U.K.-based profiteer also involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in eastern Congo and Uganda.²⁰ The French oil conglomerate Total acquired Belgium’s PetroFina in 1999 and Elf-Acquitaine in 2000, creating one of the world’s nastiest multinational oil companies.

For almost 50 years, France’s entire international security policy—its classified nuclear weapons strike force (le force de frappe atomique) and atomic reactor complex —revolved around access to uranium from Gabon and Niger. Uranium in Gabon was discovered in 1956 and exploitation began through the Compagnie des Mines d’Uranium de Franceville (COMUF), a consortium involving multinationals like Total and AREVA, in 1958.²¹ COMUF is 68.4% owned by French multinational COGEMA, which is also one of Canada’s largest uranium producers; COGEMA is partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy in the production of nuclear fuel for the U.S. weapons complex. The infamous U.S. multinational Union Carbide, responsible for crimes against humanity in Bhopal, India, was heavily involved in another catastrophe: uranium mining in Gabon. A hospital near the remote Mounana uranium mine has documented the long history of under five children living and dying with disfigured bodies, gynecological tumors, blood and skin diseases, cancers and leukemias, or the epidemics of radiation poisoning that quietly obliterated so many adult miners over 38 years of operations.²² It is the same, ugly story in Niger, only uglier, due to higher populations of Tuareg and Toubou nomads; National Geographic writers who have whitewashed Gabon hide the same ugly imperial realities of uranium.²³ ,²⁴

Also involved in uranium in Gabon are: Motapa Diamonds (U.S.A.); Mineral Services International (Cape Town, Vancouver, London, Gaborone and Libreville); Pitchstone Exploration (Canada, U.S.A.) and CAMECO (U.S.A., Canada)—a DeBeers connected company also tied to the Washington D.C. law firm Winston & Strong.²⁵ ,²⁶ ,²⁷

Manganese is essential for superalloys essential to the western aerospace and defense complex: Gabon is the second largest producer behind South Africa and manganese is Gabon’s third largest export earner. U.S. Steel owned 44% of Gabon’s manganese producer, the Compagnie Miniere de l’Ogooue (COMILOG), which U.S. Steel set up with France in 1953; U.S. Steel reportedly sold out in the 1960’s, but 60% of COMILOG was controlled by French and U.S. interests until 1996 when Eramet Group (France) bought 57%, leaving the Gabon government with 27% and ‘other private parties’ (read: U.S. & French businessmen) with 16%. ¹⁷ COMILOG has a capital value of over $80 billion and its profits soared from US$ 4.2 million in 2003 to US$ 183 million in 2004; about one-third of COMILOGs production is used by Eramet’s manganese plants in France, Norway and USA (two-thirds goes to China, India and Ukraine).

COMILOG also controls the TransGabonese Railway—crucial to the massive devastation of rainforest logging. (Due to heavy metals emissions, Eramet Marietta is under fire in Ohio and West Virginia for epidemics of disease.²⁸ ) Repression in the logging sector in Gabon is widespread: foreign companies penetrate rural areas, dividing and conquering forest people with cash and conflict, bringing alcohol, hunting, prostitution, traffic in endangered species, and direct paramilitary violence. The entire western NGO (e.g. BINGOs like WWF, WCS, Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, the Great Apes Survival Project, Jane Goodal Institute) narrative on the ‘bushmeat trade’ ignores the role of state repression backed by western institutions and the private profits and white supremacy of the BINGOs. ²⁹

Directors of the mighty French nuclear conglomerate AREVA also serve on the boards of Lloyd’s of London, Goldman Sacs (USA), Power Companies of Canada, Euro Disney, Total Oil and others. AREVA’s connections to the Belgian establishment include intelligence insider Viscount Etienne Davignon, a man deeply tied to the depopulation of the Congo (DRC) through his long-time directorship of Belgium’s Societé Generale—one of the DRC’s longest and most lasting enemies and the copperbelt giant Union Miniére. Davignon is also an affiliate of Donald Rumsfeld and George Schultz through Gilead Sciences, a U.S. pharmaceutical (read: biowarfare) firm, and he is a director of Kissinger Associates.³⁰ Davignon was Belgian Minister of State during the ‘independence’ transition (1960) and the installation of Colonel Joseph Mobutu. A 2001 Belgian parliamentary enquiry explored Davignon’s role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, but the enquiry was a political tool from the start and, naturally, exonerated Belgian officials of all but ‘moral responsibility’ in the assassination.³¹

Successive government’s of Japan have also supported the corruption and terror in Gabon through mining and oil and direct financing provided by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to the Bongo regime.³² Mitsubishi holds four major petroleum concessions, one in partnership with Tullow Oil, but Gabon was also critical to Japan’s nasty atomic reactor industries.

The stranglehold of the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) economic austerity plans led to civil unrest as labor taxed, wages were cut, education and public health sectors, never much to begin with, were gutted. By the late 1980’s Bongo was overseeing a massively oppressive regime predicated on state terror backed by France and, more poignantly, multinational corporations.

With the fall of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Perestroika the veneers of stability in Gabon gave way to deep, festering wounds of decades of state oppression: students, onshore oil workers, civil servants and the general public took to the streets in pro-democracy protests. It was the same story in Burma, South Korea, Indonesia and China, but only Tiananmen Square made the news: China is considered an ‘enemy state’ of Western predatory capitalism, while the others are client states.³³ It was the same story in Port Gentil and Libreville, Gabon as in Colonel Joseph Mobutu’s Zaire, General Gnassingbe Eyadema’s Togo, Paul Biya’s Cameroon, and General Ibrahim Babangida’s Nigeria: all Western client states which saw massive repression of civil society, with student massacres, 1989-1991. This state orchestrated terrorism occurred at Jos and Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and in Lubumbashi, Zaire (May 11-12, 1990), and massacres were covered up by the West and its propaganda system; subsequent student-government clashes in Zaire occurred in Kisangani, Mbuji-May, Bukavu, Kinshasa and Mbanza-Ngungu during the communications blackouts, and were never known to the world in any details.³⁴ Meanwhile, Dennis Sassou-Nguesso and Omar Bongo collaborated with Mobutu to prevent all news of the Lubumbashi massacre from leaking out. And then, a few weeks later, Bongo had the same problem: corpses needing to be disappeared.

The violence in Gabon reached a local peak in March, April and May of 1990. Pressured to declare the ‘end of one party rule,’ Bongo and his one-party state set about to neutralize all significant opposition. The people protested fearlessly. The state terror apparatus clicked into action after foreign oil sector executives (e.g. Shell Gabon’s director André-Dieudonne Barre) complained.³⁵

On May 21, 1990, France sent in several hundred elite paratroopers. Dubbed ‘Operation Requin’ (Shark), the rapid intervention forces of the French Foreign Legion 2nd Paratroopers Regiment (REP: 2eme Regiment Etranger des Parachutistes)—the elite of the world’s elite soldiers—were sent to support the French Foreign Legion Infantry Regiment (REI: 2eme Regiment Etrangere d’Infanterie) troops permanently based in Gabon. The REP was known to attach U.S. covert operatives on missions and is described as “some of the most skilled and dangerous soldiers on earth.”³⁶

From May 21-30 some 500 French troops were dispatched to the luxury oil city of Port Gentil. Bongo, furious, arrogant and absolute, declared a ‘state of siege’ throughout the coastal province of Ogooue-Maritime, the only significant population center in the country. Quite literally overnight, key opposition leaders were assassinated or disappeared. But the French troops collected all French nationals at the Elf Corporation compound in Port Gentil and together with the Presidential Guard they battled with ‘rebel forces’ [read: civilian protestors]. The Presidential Guard was ‘credited’ with the killing and not the French troops —it is always black Africans who are credited with massacres in partnership with foreign troops.³⁵

While reporting that “several people had been shot in the unrest”—official reports today suggest only five dead³⁷ —international media also reported that the Presidential guard crushed civilian barricades “deploying tanks, automatic weapons and grenades” and, in the last days, finally “began to round up demonstrators” amidst “continued intermittent gunfire.”³⁵ But people in Gabon report that at least 500 to 600 civilians (some say 2000), many of them students, were massacred on the streets of Port Gentil—from May 21 to May 31, 1990—by the orders of President Omar Bongo.³⁸

The appearance of tolerance for any ‘opposition’ in the country was provided by a faux opposition connected to Bongo’s and France’s multinational corporate competition: any true opposition was bought off by Bongo and/or compromised by their participation in secret societies (like the Freemasons).³⁹ The intelligence networks and terror apparatus targeted anyone unable to be silenced by bribery or blackmail. The long arm of Omar Bongo’s assassinations squads even reached outside Gabon: in 1996 one opponent of Bongo was assassinated in France on the orders of Libreville.⁴⁰

All so-called ‘elections’ that have occurred in Gabon (Cameroon, Togo, Nigeria, post-1994 Rwanda, etc.) are demonstration elections meant to legitimize nasty dictatorships serving western capital.⁴¹ Of course, President Omar Bongo Ondimba always won—in 1993, 1998 and, most recently, 2005—and Bongo’s foreign patrons characteristically whitewashed elections violence.

Meanwhile, Bongo visited the White House, and its counterparts in France, England, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Canada, Germany, China and Saudi Arabia.

Military relations between the U.S., Canada, France, England and Israel on the one hand, and the dictators like Bongo on the other, continued throughout their decades long tenures, no matter their brutalities: under the Clinton Administration, for example, the Pentagon sent U.S. covert forces to train General Eyadema and Paul Biya’s elite killers under a new program, the Africa Crises Response Force (‘Force’ was later changed to ‘Initiative’ to soften it, transforming ACRF to ACRI); troops also trained at the Pentagon’s Special Operations School at Fort Hurlburt, Florida.⁴²

Bongo meddled in weapons and money-laundering: one of Bongo’s private arms dealers, Frenchman René Cardona, fell out with Bongo and was imprisoned in Gabon in 1996: a corruption investigation in France found that Cardona’s son paid 300 million CFA francs into Bongo’s personal account to buy his father’s freedom.⁴³

Gabon grew to become an unprecedented example of the success of the national security client state, where the offshore petroleum industry was designed to operate as an independent state, with its own private communications, transport, and supply chain infrastructure thus making offshore oil operations immune to onshore civil strikes or public protests. The oil operations grew to become islands of stability staffed by foreign expatriate labor and management, supplied by independent shipping and aviation, protected by elite networks of the foreign and domestic security apparatus.

DIALING FOR DICTATORS

For some forty-one years the Elf-ish Albert-Bernard Bongo ruled Gabon. Was Bongo the international humanitarian and peacemaker that the propaganda system has universally portrayed him as? Why do so many people know so little about the realities of life and death in Gabon?

In his widely lauded 2004 book, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Howard W. French, the former New York Times bureau Chief for Africa from circa 1993-1998, had only this to say of Gabon: “It has long been said that even tinier, oil-rich Gabon next door [to Congo-Brazzaville] was the world’s leader in per capita champagne consumption.”⁴⁴

However, back in 1995, Howard W. French reported that Bongo and friends patronized lavish prostitution scandals run by Europeans; one Italian fashion designer who ended up in a French court admitted to personally furnishing Bongo with French call-girls charging $15,000 a visit in exchange for $600,000 tailoring contracts.⁴⁵ French also reported: “the French engineered a partly successful boycott of an international investors conference in Gabon this year because it was organized by an ex-American Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen.”

What the New York Times forgot to add was that Herman Cohen, who worked in the George H.W. Bush administration, was a lobbyist whose firm Cohen & Woods (C&W) was paid $300,000 to present Gabon as a “politically stable and economically successful country” and to “generate awareness of President Bongo and his national and international accomplishments,” including the “very concrete process of democratization and democratic reforms.”⁴⁶

C&W also whitewashed the crimes of another blood-drenched client near Gabon, the government of Eduardo Dos Santos in diamond and oil-studded Angola. While C&W were peddling influence for Bongo and Dos Santos, the U.S. State Department was flagging human right in Gabon for extra-judicial killings, torture, corruption and election rigging; Angola was far more grim.⁴⁷ It was the tip of the iceberg on the brutal dictatorships and plunder of the oily Gulf of Guinea.

It was Herman Cohen and James Woods that convinced African countries to participate in the Pentagon’s ACRF, the precursor to the current Africa Contingency Operations Training Program (ACOTA), two programs training killers under a ‘peacekeeping’ smokescreen: Gabon has participated in both. C&W were also pimping for Military Professional Resources Inc., the private military company out of Virginia; MPRI and LOGICON, another Pentagon contractor, advanced the ACRF/ACOTA cause, and benefited from it.⁴⁸ One of the primary architects of ACRF was Susan Rice, Barrack Obama’s foreign policy adviser and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. since January 2009.⁴⁹

Over the past two decades the Bongo regime has been publicly whitewashed by public relations agencies connected to power in Europe, Japan and to both political parities in the USA. These included Cohen & Woods, Cassidy Associates, Powell Tate, and Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson & Hand in the USA, and UK-based Shandwick Public Affairs.⁵⁰ PR firms also sanitized the French language markets with customized propaganda. Cassidy & Associates spent between $20-30 million lobbying Congress between 1998 and 2009. In 2000 and 2001, Gabon also hired the public relations firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips.

The son of Jacques Foccart’s affiliate Mahmoud Bourgi, French lawyer Robert Bourgi is considered Foccart’s francafrique successor. As an example of media censorship and postcolonial control, his brother Albert Bourgi is the editor of Jeune Afrique, Francophone Africa’s popular news publication coming out of Paris since 1964, but a disinformation front billed as the ‘number one Pan-African magazine.’ Robert Bourgi was one of former President Joseph Mobutu’s most intimate security advisers and an intimate adviser and lawyer to Omar Bongo.⁵¹ On September 27, 2007 at the Palais de l’Elysée, French President Nicolas Sarkozy honored Robert Bourgi with the Medal of the Knight’s Insignia in the National Order of the Legion of the French Republic; Bongo’s daughter was also in attendance.⁵² According to Robert Bourgi, Omar Bongo had President Sarkozy’s overseas-aid minister Jean-Marie Bockel removed due to a ‘bold’ speech denouncing patronage and corruption. ⁵¹

Gabon also maintained a three-year-old relationship with Jacqueline Wilson, the ex-spouse of senior U.S. diplomat and Gabon Ambassador Joe Wilson, who received tens of thousands of dollars for special projects and reports to President Omar Bongo’s daughter, Pascaline Mferri Bongo.

In another well-publicized case, lobbyist Jack Abramoff was the supposed mover-and-shaker behind the 2003 meeting between Bongo and George W. Bush—a meeting where President Bongo pledged support for the Pentagon’s “war on terror” and signed an “open skies agreement” between the two countries. Abramoff, who was also a Washington lobbyist for President Joseph Mobutu in Zaire (DRC), sought $9 million for his services for the Maryland public relations firm GrassRoots Interactive.⁵³ Abramoff also reportedly worked with Bongo through David Safavian, a former business partner, former White House budget official and a registered agent in Washington for President Bongo, and also through another of Bongo’s paid influence peddlers in Washington named Joe Slavik, a mysterious insider who is apparently also very close to Bongo’s eldest daughter, Pascaline Bongo who also served as her father’s principal secretary, and is reportedly a director for several large French firms operating in Gabon, including Total Gabon.⁵³ President Omar Bongo left the White House and later attended a lavish dinner organized by the Corporate Council on Africa (CCA), the public relations wing of the world’s most negligent and destructive corporations in Africa, as everywhere; later still he showed up in Houston as a guest at the Baker Institute. The CCA chairman at the time was diamond magnate and Democratic Party financier Maurice Tempelsman, the United States’ equivalent of France’s ‘dirty tricks’ operative Jacques Foccart.

Tempelsman’s role in interventions in Africa and his networks of organized crime involved in diamonds and cobalt are legendary, but wholly hidden by the bling bling of the propaganda system. One of Tempelsman’s stellar roles was serving as a broker for the Oppenheimer and De Beers diamond cartel—another friend of the Bongo regime. Given the blood diamond wealth in the nearby countries—Angola, Namibia, the two Congos—there is no chance De Beers would overlook Gabon.

Years of prospecting in Gabon by the De Beers cartel led to the development of a cartographic minerals database based on 13,513 sq. kms of terrestrial surveys and 36,580 km of airborne magnetic surveys. One company affiliated with De Beers in Gabon is the Canada-based SearchGold Corporation, which is licensed to exploit 7,865 sq. kms of concession in partnership with the U.K. company Zambezi Gold and its Luxembourg subsidiary Arc Mining and Investment.⁵⁴ Also mining Gabon is Cluff Mining, a shareholder in Banro Mining Corporation—the Canadian powerhouse that is plundering and depopulating eastern Congo; Anglo-American Corp., the Oppenheimer/DeBeers conglomerate, is a majority shareholder in Cluff.

“Gabon was the only one of France’s former African colonies to vote to become a French department, or administrative district, on the eve of independence in 1960, a request that President Charles de Gaulle turned down,” Howard W. French wrote. “Since independence, however, as the extent of the Gabon’s oil, forest and mineral wealth has become known, France has fought ferociously to keep the influence of other Western powers in the country to a minimum.”⁵⁵

Seven French soldiers died recently when a French army AS 532 Cougar helicopter crashed into the sea off Gabon during joint military exercises.⁵⁶ While the propaganda system is always advertising withdrawals of French troops from bases in Africa, the French contingents in Gabon will certainly remain.⁵⁷

BONGO THE PEACEMAKER

While France was consolidating its control over Gabon it was also arming neighboring regimes: Omar Bongo was their African kingpin.

Under the cover of ‘humanitarian’ flights, the Bongo government shipped weapons from Libreville to the Biafran war in Nigeria 1967-1970, and Bongo imported Biafran rebels connected to secessionist leader Emeka Ojukwu to luxurious lives in Gabon. France also supported the Biafra struggle, where a U.S./NATO/U.S.S.R. blockade led to some 500,000 to 2,000,000 deaths from starvation, disease and war. Shell-British Petroleum and the French state company Société Anonyme Française des Recherches et d’Exploitation de Pétrole (SAFRAP; now Elf Petroleum Nigeria Ltd.), were centrally involved in the bloodshed and exploitation.⁵⁸

From 1970-1975 France provided over 300 Panhard armored cars to Mobutu in Zaire: this is a footnote in the long history of French arms transfers to dictatorships that served their interests in Africa.⁵⁹ President Richard M. Nixon met with Bongo on August 2, 1973. At the time, the SDECE (Service de Documentation Exterieure et Contre-Espionage) and CIA were collaborating against the MPLA (Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola) government in Angola by training and arming UNITA and FNLA guerrillas.⁶⁰ Elf Acquitaine backed both the MPLA government and UNITA rebels: Bongo was certainly involved in French interventions.⁶¹ In 1975, the SDECE hired the infamous Congo mercenary Bob Denard and twenty French mercenaries, all paid by the CIA station out of Zaire —Maurice Tempelsman’s gang Lawrence Devlin, Mark Garsin and others—for covert operations in Angola; the SDECE and CIA also worked with Bureau of State Security (BOSS) agents out of South Africa at the height of the Apartheid struggle.⁵⁹ Omar Bongo was clearly aware of Washington’s covert terrorist operations in support of UNITA from the 1970’s to 1990’s. Bongo’s government allowed individuals in Gabon to back UNITA rebels in the brutal civil war in Angola, and in 1990’s Gabon was caught red-handed violating United Nations sanctions against UNITA.⁶²

When Ian Smith’s white supremacist government needed support against the imperialist forces seeking to put a black face on power in Rhodesia, it was Omar Bongo who helped Smith bust the international sanctions by routing through Libreville aircraft ferrying contraband to and from Rhodesia and Europe; networks of organized crime worked through Switzerland and Lichtenstein, and Bongo’s officials in Gabon issued false certificates of origin and other fabricated documentation, while also taking their cut in profits.⁶³

Bongo also maintained relations with Harvard University’s Liberian warlord Charles Taylor; Bongo was known to receive Taylor at his presidential mansion and certainly benefited from the blood diamond cartels Taylor was involved with.⁶⁴ ,⁶⁵

The Bongo government was complicit with the successive Nguema dictatorships (1968-1979, 1979-present) and their campaigns of terror and depopulation in Equatorial Guinea (E.G.). Under Bongo’s rule, Gabon violated the territorial sovereignty of E.G. through military occupation of southern E.G. islands and military incursions in the southwest near Rio Muni, all in search of oil and profits.⁶⁶

Before his ascendancy to President by coup d’etat in 1979, Teodoro Obiang Nguema personally ran the notorious Black Beach prison in E.G.: his regime is today considered one of the most corrupt, ethnocentric, oppressive and undemocratic states in the world. U.S. corporate backing of the Obiang regime involved corruption and profiteering that was exposed in the U.S. Rigg’s bank investigations in 2004. U.S. companies—Exxon-Mobil, Amerada Hess, Chevron-Texaco, Marathon Oil and others—paid for scholarships for children of the country’s leaders to attend elite schools like Pepperdine University (CA), formed business ventures with government officials, hired companies linked to Obiang and rented property from government officials and their relatives.⁶⁷ Petroleum-connected U.S. officials like Condoleeza Rice have called Obiang a ‘good friend’ of the U.S., while Obiang has for years paid Cassidy & Associates some $120,000 a month to whitewash the regime. While the arrogance of oil wealth caused a small rift between the two dictators, Bongo’s importance to E.G. can be measured by Nguema’s decree of three days of national mourning after Bongo’s death.

Albert-Bernard Bongo is the son-in-law of Dennis Sassou-Nguesso, another dictator who has reigned for two decades, with a gap from1992-1997, sustained with millions of Elf petrol dollars: Sassou-Nguesso’s elite Cobra militia were also trained by French advisers and, like Mobutu, Sassou-Nguesso relied on Israeli security and intelligence for protection. Omar Bongo backed bloodshed in the recent Congo-Brazzaville war (1997-2000) by offloading planeloads of weapons and shipping them across the border to Sassou Nguesso’s home village of Oyo.⁶⁸ Bongo’s government was also accused of airlifting Rwandan and Moroccan mercenaries into Congo-Brazzaville, even as Bongo was preparing to lead negotiations between Sassou-Nguesso and Congo-Brazzaville’s more openly U.S.-backed President Pascal Lissouba, and after a ceasefire had been declared in July 1997.⁶⁹ All sides were involved in ethnic cleansing. The French military, the Elysée Palace and Elf Aquitaine all actively supported Sassou-Nguesso, who fought his way back to power on October 25, 1997 with the assistance of Chadian troops backed by French logistical support.⁷⁰

After France, Bongo maintained his closest alliance with Joseph Mobutu’s CIA client state in Zaire.

On the morning of March 3, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter had a conversation with French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing. Later in the afternoon President Carter met with Omar Bongo; also in attendance were Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, Assistant for National Security Affairs, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Robert Bongo, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Gabonese Republic and nephew of President Bongo.⁷¹ Less than 10 days after Bongo met with Carter the U.S. and Belgium shipped weapons to Shaba (Katanga), Zaire, and on March 16 Secretary of State Vance appeared before the U.S. Congress to justify the intervention as critical to protect the flow of Shaba’s copper from Zaire, but it was the cobalt of the copperbelt veins, stockpiled by the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency and essential to the western permanent warfare enterprise, that the national security apparatus was concerned about.⁷² , ⁷³ ,⁷⁴ Bongo met with Carter again on October 17, 1977, and he thus played a definitive role in backing the western terror apparatus in Zaire, in sharp contradistinction to the propaganda system’s salutations as ‘peacemaker’ on the continent.

In June 2002, Robert Bongo was appointed as a United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General in the DRC.⁷⁵ Brzezinski is a high level adviser to the International Crises Group, a flak organization promoting peace through war in Sudan, Uganda and Congo, and was advising Barack Obama in 2008. As National Security Advisor under Carter, Brzezinski reportedly commissioned the March 17, 1978 document Presidential Review Memorandum/NSC 46; entitled Black Africa and the U.S. Black Movement, the classified ‘Secret’ document advocated for clandestine U.S. support to (Apartheid) South Africa and called for a special covert U.S. program to “perpetuate divisions in the black movement; to neutralize the most active groups of leftist radical orientation and diminish their influence among blacks; and to stimulate dissension and hostility between organizations representing different social strata of the community…”⁷⁶ ,⁷⁷

“For 20 years President Bongo has led his country in an era of stability and progress,” said President Ronald Reagan during an October 2, 1987 meeting with Bongo in Washington. “Under his leadership, Gabon has consistently encouraged the peaceful settlement of regional disputes, siding with reason, dialogue, and moderation over bloodshed, war, and terror.”

Reagan pledged to increase U.S. investment in Gabon—and it happened—and Gabon’s financial programs were subsequently restructured in keeping with western ‘shock doctrine’ economics of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) arranged with and for Bongo’s elite clique. The U.S. media called the deal ‘U.S. Aid to Gabon.’ Meanwhile, SAPs shattered the social fabric and further ruined hundreds of millions of ordinary people’s lives from Gabon to Bolivia to South Korea.⁷⁸

The strategic and corporate alliance with Bongo thrived under every U.S. president who sat during Bongo’s reign—Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G.H.W Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush—and the imperial relations and structural violence were perpetually whitewashed by the western propaganda system.

Gabon provided military logistical support to the Laurent Kabila government during the second phase of war in DRC (1998), but later and/or simultaneously Bongo backed Jean-Pierre Bemba and his Movement for the Liberation of Congo. Bemba was another Mobutist warlord who was close to Congo-Brazzaville’s Dennis Sassou-Nguesso. Until his death, Bongo was sending $US 20,000 a month to Bemba’s legal fund, along with Sassou-Nguesso, Moamar Gadhafi and a fourth (unidentified) African President (for a total of $US 80,000 a month).”⁷⁹

“Bongo even financed small politicians with no hope,” says one Congolese businessman, “he gave money to everyone, that’s how he maintained access. In DRC, for example, he even gave money to Alou Bonioma Kalokola—a lawyer who has lived his entire life as a hustler. Bonioma was married to [Dennis] Sassou-Nguesso’s step-daughter, and Sassou-Nguesso’s wife is from DRC. Alou knew he would get money from Bongo so he ran for president [in the 2006 elections].”⁸⁰

THE KING OF BLING

Bongo was connected to the Corsican mafia through the French ministers and shady businessmen, including Michel Tomi and son Jean-Baptiste, and Robert Feliciaggi (assassinated in a professional hit in Corsica, March 10, 2006), his son Jean-Jerome and brother Charles. Alleged to run French money-laundering schemes through casinos, lotteries and betting shops in Togo, Benin, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Congo-Brazzaville and Gabon, Jean-Jerome is close to Sassou-Nguesso, and Charles’ business supplies the Presidential Guard of diamond and petroleum magnate Jose Eduardo Dos Santos in Angola; the brothers held the second biggest bank accounts —after Elf-Aquitaine—at France’s now defunct FIBA bank, the conduit for Gabon and Angola’s plundered oil wealth.⁸¹

Gabon’s wealth was also siphoned off through the BGFI Bank, Gabon’s biggest investment bank. Created in Libreville in April 1971, the Bank was born out of a partnership between private Gabonese investors and the Banque de Paris, under the name Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas Gabon. In view of the majority share of capital held by private Gabonese, the Bank took the name of Banque Gabonaise et Française Internationale (BGFI) in April 1996. To reap the plunder of nearby dictatorships, BGFI opened major branches in Equatorial Guinea (2001) and Congo-Brazzaville (2004). BGFI directors include Jean Ping (once married to Bongo’s daughter) and Christian Bongo; director Yves Abouab is also an executive with the Banque Belgolaise in Paris. Christian Bongo is also a director of the Banque Gabonaise de Development.

Jean Ping is one of the most powerful members of Bongo’s clan des Gabonaise, and an unapologetic agent for western capitalism’s enterprise of plunder and depopulation in Africa. Ping has played a pivotal role, for example, in furthering the ‘new humanitarian’ [read: same old imperialist] policy doctrine of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’.

Corsican Michel Tomi operates through Groupe Kabi in Gabon, involved in private airlines, communications and gaming, and winning lucrative construction contracts from the Bongo government.⁸² An adviser to Omar Bongo in the 1990’s, Corsican Andre Tarallo was boss of Elf-Corsica from 1987-1988, and he funded the anti-Marxist guerrilla movement FLEC in neighboring Angola in the 1980’s.⁸³ Tarallo managed Elf’s Africa interests for more than 30 years, and he ended up in a French jail (2004) over the Elf petroleum bribery scandals, where he testified about payoffs to Bongo, Sassou-Nguesso and Teodoro Obiang Nguema.⁸⁴ ,⁸⁵ Another member of the ‘Clan Corsican’ at Bongo’s disposal was former French Minister Charles Pasqua, one of Jacques Chirac’s former aides, described as a mafia godfather.⁸⁶

Omar Bongo, Charles Pasqua, Jean-Christophe Mitterand and other officials were involved in Angolagate, the French arms-for-oil scandal involving shady arms merchants, oil executives, intelligence operatives and others in France and Africa. In 1999, the U.S Congress flagged Bongo’s huge accounts at Citibank in a money-laundering probe.⁴⁶ Omar Bongo and friends have also bankrolled French politicians: Former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing accused former President Chirac of receiving party financing from Omar Bongo in a 1981 campaign.⁸⁷

Gabon received $850,000 dollars in foreign military financing from the Pentagon from 2005 to 2008, with $1,597,000 in International Military Education & Training funds from 2001-2007, and with 192 Gabonese military trained in the US IMET program from 1950-2007; ninety of these Gabonese soldiers were trained in the U.S. between 2000 and 2007.⁸⁸ ,⁴⁸

Through the Pentagon’s Gulf of Guinea Initiative, Gabon is involved with the US Navy’s Maritime Partnership Program and the Africa Partnership Station, programs that militarize the Gulf of Guinea to assure and secure U.S. control of oil infrastructure, shipping lanes, offshore sea-bed mining, illegal fishing, toxic dumping and other corporate piracy. Gabon also provides the Pentagon with air naval base access for Cooperative Security Locations (CSLs) and Forward Operating Locations (FOLs). All of these programs are conduits for U.S. covert operations and facilitate the involvement of private military companies and transnational corporations in resource plunder and depopulation.⁸⁹

THE CALCULATED IMPOSITION OF IGNORANCE

Gamba town is the urban centre of the wild Gamba Protected Area Complex, an enclave of white, gated western privilege surrounded by dense forests, impenetrable swamps and deep estuaries where you might see an elephant swimming across open water or ambling across a grassy field. This is Shell country in Gabon, and the only way in is on an expensive Air Gabon flight.

“If I have to describe Gamba to someone,” confided one French expatriate in “Shell’s Best Kept Secret,” a blurb in a Royal/Dutch Shell public relations brochure, “I always say it is a Club-Med in the middle of the jungle. You have the freedom and opportunity to do things you thought you’d only ever dream of and all with an amazing backdrop of jungle and unspoilt beaches and lots of wildlife right on your doorstep! … We are quite a sporty bunch in Gamba. We have our own 18 hole golf course, there is the Yenzi Boat club a sailing club, tennis, football, tae-kwon-do, yoga, fitness, swimming, aerobics & step classes, volleyball, badminton, squash, hockey, rugby and much, much more…not to mention that every so often you can take part in our triathlon!”⁹⁰

In October 2004, paramilitary police in Gamba killed two locals who protested against Shell’s injustices. A survey of local attitudes revealed a climate of fear seething beneath the surface. Locals reported routine oil spills where Shell and contractors Halliburton and Schlumberger have for years and years burned off oil spills as a form of remediation.⁹¹

With a certain arrogance that comes with white society beliefs about entitlement, French expatriates have considered Gabon their private property since the colonial era, and Gamba is one of their hideaway playgrounds.⁹² One French expatriate in Gamba, Louis Rigon, runs a high-end sport fishing and ‘ecotourism’ business, with private luxury camps and powerboats in the bush.⁹³ He also provides a logistic base for oil exploration when companies like Transworld Exploration Gabon—a Houston Texas oil company—arrive in Gamba (2006) for seismic testing in Loango National Park. It is families with names like Louis Rigon and Pierre Goods—a Transworld director based in Port-Nice, Gabon—who float their 4-WD safari land rovers from Sette Cama, across the estuary on a barge, off-load in Loango National Park, and casually joy-ride some 50 kilometers down the pristine beach—as they did when I was there. This is their version of ‘ecotourism’—another buzzword and the cutting edge of the white, western, corporate invasion of wilderness.

Oil exploration in the Loango wilderness was not the only reality I found incongruent with the slick propaganda about “Saving Africa’s Eden.” The western diamond firm Southern Era was prospecting in the newly designated Lope Reserve—J. Michael Fay’s newly ‘discovered’ Eden in northeastern Gabon—and all the BINGO conservation groups involved in the Congo Basin Forest Partnership knew this. None had said a word.

Southern Era began prospecting in Gabon in 1999 and when the CBFP came along—and Bongo created the new parks—they were issued permits for the Lope region from the Bongo regime. Southern Era is a fully owned subsidiary of Mwana Africa—another secretive mining company involved in the blood-drenched mining operations in eastern Congo (also Angola and Botswana’s blood diamond areas)—connected to the U.S., U.K. and South Africa.⁹⁴

Tracking elephants in the Loango reserve turned up the remains of a research camp in the savannah. My local guide and WWF-paid ranger Robert (not his real name) took me to the place where the Smithsonian Institute set up a massive animal and plant collection operation; teams of researchers descended on the Loango wilderness and began catching, counting, cataloging, categorizing, and collecting species and genetic material. Claiming a universal benefit to all humanity—and to the people of Gabon, of course—the Smithsonian’s Gabon Biodiversity Monitoring and Research Program involves U.S. universities and scores of western researchers and tens of millions of dollars in funds; it is also backed by Shell Oil Corporation. These funds cycle to and from western economies bringing little benefit to Gabonese people like Robert, and nothing of benefit to the average Gabonese citizen. Smithsonian scientists reported that they have ‘recorded’ over 2019 species of trees and thousands of species of birds, reptiles, snakes and amphibians, but they didn’t merely ‘record’ these species, they collected them.⁹⁵ “Voucher specimens were injected with formaline (5%), then preserved in 70% ethanol, and will be housed in several scientific institutions.” ⁹⁵

“They paid us 6000 CFA (US $12) per day to collect birds, snakes, lizards,” says Robert, “They killed them and packed them up in jars and boxes. We worked hard, setting traps and checking nets, all day and night sometimes. It wasn’t much money.”

Robert was hired because he knew how to catch birds, where to hang nets, where bat species might be found, the habitat of rare snakes—you know, simple stuff, like where a rodent will hide—but based on years of painstaking study and intimate knowledge of the local environment for which Robert has dedicated his heart and soul all his life. Robert didn’t know anything about genetic engineering, cloning, or intellectual property rights, and that’s why it was easy for the Smithsonian to come in to Gabon and steal Robert’s intellectual property and pay him approximately one dollar and fifteen cents (sic) an hour.

Robert was hired as a grunt for an exclusive western program that offers the perfect example how white supremacy operates in Africa: lucrative contracts, travel perks, capital equipment budgets, romantic interludes in paradise for whites; hard labor, theft of expertise, downward mobility, obtuse explanations for blacks. It’s all about access. People like Robert will always be collecting dead birds, while someone else will be flying in and out of Gabon, presenting papers at conferences, getting PhDs, ostensibly saving the earth, murdering wilderness as fast as they are murdering the truth.

“Under Bongo life is hard,” Robert told me. “Many people are malnourished, many people are poor. There is no work. It’s terrible.”

The Smithsonian proceeded with the support of President Omar Bongo, the Pentagon, U.S. State Department, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, NASA and other predatory agencies. Massive physical, economic and intellectual (property) thefts are underway, and it occurs on the backs of eager, willing, hopeful, yet unfreedomed Africans.⁹⁶

The markets in Gamba are muddy, dirty, run-down sites of suffering where a scattering of local people peddle bush-meat, manioc, cassava, little packets of salt and sugar, some traditional foods and forest products, bananas and mangos, and whatever manufactured commodities they can get their hands on and resell at a small profit. In the enclave of Sette Cama, a few miles across the estuary and down the beach, the people live by small-scale fishing and farming cassava. But for a few crumbs splashed their way—where the (mostly white) benefactors reconcile their entitlement and privilege behind assumptions that their pitiful charity is further evidence of their goodness and morality—the local people do not benefit from the itineraries and budgets of foreign eco-tourists. Misery is endemic.

Gabon has been a major oil producer since 1962. Historically, oil revenues accounted for approximately 60% of the government’s budget, more than 40% of GDP, and 75% of export earnings. Despite half a century of production from Sub-Saharan Africa’s third largest oil reserves, the majority of Gabon’s citizen’s exist in a Hobbesian nightmare where life is nasty, brutish and short.

In a country of approximately 1 million people, only about eight percent (80,000) have access to any kind of running water or electricity. Adding insult to injury, in 1992, the French corporation Lyonnaise des Eaux took control of the state-owned Societé d’Electricté et d’Eaux du Gabon (SEEG): Bongo signed on with the U.S. International Finance Corporation and IFC/Japan to privatize Gabon’s water and electricity sectors, leading “one of the first privatizations of electricity and water services in sub-Saharan Africa,” over a decade ago.⁹⁷

In 2003, another beltway Maryland (U.S.A) company—Decision Analysis Partners (DAP)—won a lucrative contract ostensibly to map out the eco-tourism infrastructure for five of Bongo’s newly gazetted Gabon parks. But DAP’s deep ties to the Pentagon and intelligence networks suggest that there is, as usual, some hidden military agenda.⁹⁸

There are no accurate census figures for Gabon because the Bongo government benefited by inflating population statistics to maximize the regime’s profits skimming off the so-called ‘development aid’ business sector. Infant mortality is very high in Gabon due to malaria, malnourishment, diarrhea and starvation. Malaria, the principal cause of hospitalization, is of epidemic proportions: 40 per cent of children aged 0 to 5 years and 71 per cent of all pregnant women suffer from the disease. Some 64 percent of all households are in communities where waste is disposed of untreated.⁹⁹

There are separate schools in Gamba for white expatriate children, and for black African children: Shell and Elf back the expatriate schools.¹⁰⁰ The housing and levels of health and community development are also unequal. Whites hire blacks as maids, nanny’s and housekeepers, and blacks are used for the most grueling and dangerous physical labor. The educational books that are produced in France and sent to Gabon are different for African children than the books for French children of the same ages and developmental levels. “Less content, less substance,” said one French woman. “It is the calculated imposition of ignorance and it’s happening throughout French speaking Africa.”¹⁰¹

Companies like Shell, Elf and Total are deeply tied into dictating public policy through their control of advertising, schools, arts venues, TV news and wildlife programming—both in Gabon and the USA, Europe and Japan—and funding for all of these: their corporate logos are branded everywhere.

Education is also privatized: Shell is partnered with WWF and the Ministry of Education through the Shell program L’Ecole Que J’Aime (The School I Like). Further, the basic commodities (and luxury goods) available to expatriates connected to the oil industry are denied to poor Gabonese, and the black slave sector couldn’t afford them if they were, and there are stores (pools, clubs, etc.) where most blacks are not allowed.

This is Apartheid. It is also environmental racism.

“It’s family living in an African Paradise,” wrote expatriate Louise Tasker in a Royal/Dutch Shell magazine for expatriates, “Apart from wildlife and beaches, Gamba offers children a chance to really enjoy childhood rather than grow up too fast… Flights in Gabon are very expensive, so you may not have as many visitors as you’d like.”¹⁰²

Just as there is Apartheid on the ground, you won’t see the average Gabonese flying on Air Gabon: it is an airline for people of the privileged classes—and the black people allowed to join the club.
All air travel in Gabon was for more than 45 years controlled by the so-called “government-owned” national airline whose financial interests were also held by Air France,¹⁰³ and whose directors included Omar Bongo’s relative Robert Bongo. Journalists in Gabon were jailed and whole publication runs confiscated in March 1997 after they reported that Air Gabon was involved in ivory smuggling.¹⁰⁴ In another international scandal, Air Gabon—the airline of the elite in Gabon, tied to petroleum companies and run by the most powerful people in Gabon and France—went belly up in 2005.

Amongst the greatest causes of sickness in Gabon and its neighboring countries are unregulated corporate mining and pollution from extractive industries: gas flaring, uranium and manganese mining, all contribute to toxic environments. Gas-flaring by Royal/Dutch Shell, alone, in Africa, alone, is a leading cause of global warming.¹⁰ Yet, looking at the fancy public relations of the Shell Oil Foundation, we find that the corporate perpetrators of violence and destruction are blaming the victims for their own suffering. “More than half the world’s population uses open fires or traditional biomass-burning stoves to cook in their homes,” reads the disingenuous propaganda, where Shell wields a World Health Organization statistic. “There is also growing evidence that this pollution contributes to global warming.”¹⁰⁵

Does the World Health Organization challenge Shell, Elf, Total or Mobil for the massive and devastating carbon footprint of gas flaring? No. Of course, next to Shell’s support for dictatorships where petroleum flows are insured through rape, torture, and murder—the case of the Niger River Delta offering the most thoroughly documented example—Shell’s gas-flaring is perhaps one of the less troublesome aspects of petroleum operations in Africa.¹⁰⁶ Meanwhile. In 1999, Shell flared some 25.6 million standard cubic feet of gas per day, in the Gamba complex Rabi concession alone—and this in a year where Shell—as supposed evidence of their benevolence—reported ‘reductions’ in their flaring footprint from 30 mmscf/d in 1998.¹⁰⁷ On this basis, and given the past six decades of their operations, Shell’s contribution to global climate mayhem is unimaginable.

The evidence that multinational corporations and their government, academic, scientific and ‘philanthropic’ partners are decimating cultures and landscapes is overwhelming.¹⁰⁸ What is underwhelming is the extent to which the general public—U.S., Canadian, European, Australian and Japanese citizens, ostensibly concerned about human rights and the environment, for example—are unable to recognize and name these rich-man poor-man relationships for what they are: genocide.¹⁰⁹ An agent of predatory western capitalism, Omar Bongo played a major role in that, too. Gabon offers a perfect example of how the propaganda system covers for the western terrorist apparatus, always maximizing profits for the white-based economies of permanent warfare, depopulation and elite control.

On the cutting edge of this massive project of conquest over people and places of color are white people like J. Michael Fay, with their mega-transects and mega-flyovers,¹¹⁰ and their Pentagon connections, and the agendas they serve, even as they deny that they are in any ways involved, while peddling the new, old white power projects of conservation and humanitarian intervention in Africa. Meanwhile, the Hollywood dimension of modern day genocide involves such reality TV productions as Survivor Gabon—Earth’s Last Eden.¹¹¹

“I’d be more than happy to meet a couple of cute girls on the island,” says Survivor’s arrogant tarzan-stud Marcus Lehman, who thinks the ‘remote Gabon coast’ is an island. “It is Earth’s last Eden, so I’ll be Adam, she can be Eve, and see what goes on.”

Such is the nature of white supremacy, with all its attendant obliviousness, and assumptions of innocence, and power relations, and subliminal sexuality, and this is the true face of the globalization of terror.¹¹² The history of Gabon is the history of slavery, alive and well in Africa’s gardens of Eden.

1. See: David Quammen, “Saving Africa’s Eden,” National Geographic, September 2003; J. Michael Fay, “Gabon’s Loango National Park: In the Land of the Surfing Hippos,” National Geographic, August 2004; Quammen, “Views of the Continent,” National Geographic, September 2005; and J. Michael Fay, “Ivory Wars: Last Stand in Zakouma,” National Geographic, March 2007.
   [2] E.g., Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins, Reading National Geographic, Univ. of Chicago, 1993.
2. E.g., Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins, Reading National Geographic, Univ. of Chicago, 1993.
3. The Gabon mission was partly funded with a small grant from the Rainforest Foundation U.K.
4. Halliburton has been subcontracting to Shell in Gabon for many, many years.
5. Quammen is one of the Outside magazine editorial gang (David Quammen, Donovan Webster, Jon Kracauer, Randy Wayne White) who guided Outside when it went astray of any substantive reportage in the late 1980’s, becoming a corporate travel and beauty rag, and who now unquestionably serve the Empire in producing whitewashed features about Africa for National Geographic, IMAX cinema productions, Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, New York Times Magazine, and other white institutions; their reportage has been directly funded by big corporate entities. See, e.g.: David Quammen, “Saving Africa’s Eden,” National Geographic, September 2003; Quammen, “Tracing the Human Footprint,” National Geographic, September 2005; Donovan Webster, “Journey to the Heart of the Sahara,” National Geographic, March 1999; “USADF Hosts Writer & Editor Donovan Webster as Part of Distinguished Lecturer Series: Talk Focuses on Water Projects Funded in Niger by USADF.”
6. United States Agency for International Development—another Pentagon-intelligence conduit.
7. CBFP involves too many agencies, countries, corporations and NGOs to list here.
8. keith harmon snow, “Merchant’s of Death: Exposing Corporate-Financed Holocaust in Central Africa: White-Collar War Crimes, Black African Fall Guys,” Black Star News, December 4, 2008.
9. E.g., “Omar Bongo,” The Economist, 6/18/09.
10. Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas, Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights, and Oil, Verso, 2003.
11. The nature of the west’s partnership with, and disposal of, General Abacha is unappreciated and opaque.
12. An excellent writing on the nature of race relations and control is: Frances Nesbitt Njubi, “Migration, Identity and The Politics of African Intellectuals in the North,” Paper Prepared for CODESRIA’s 10TH General Assembly on “Africa in the New Millennium”, Kampala, Uganda, 8-12 December 2002.
13. Private interview, “Thierry,” Libreville, Gabon, 1997.
14. keith harmon snow, personal interviews with UNHCR officials and Ogoni refugees in Cotonou, Benin, 1997. See also keith harmon snow (pseudonym Zak Harmon), “No Safe Haven: Even in refugee camps, Nigeria’s Ogonis Face Abuse and Intimidation,” Toward Freedom, Vol. 46, No. 6, November 1997.
15. Private interview, Maconi, Libreville, Gabon, December 29, 2004.
16. See: Nicolas Shaxon, “Gabon: Omar Bongo; Franco-African Secret Society,” The East African, June 22, 2009; “French Secret Services: African Debate,” Africa Confidential, date uncertain; James F. Barnes, Gabon: Beyond the Colonial Legacy, 1992; “Gabon: Oil, Money, Paristroika,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 31, No. 12, June 15, 1990.
17. James F. Barnes, Gabon: Beyond the Colonial Legacy, 1992.
18. See: Aidan Hartley, “Paradise Lost,” Africa Report, March-April 1990.
19. “French Secret Services: African Debate,” Africa Confidential, date uncertain.
20. Tullow Oil. See: keith harmon snow, “The War That Did Not Make the Headlines: Over Five Million Dead in Congo,” Dissident Voice, January 31, 2008; and keith harmon snow, “The Rwanda Genocide Fabrications: Human Rights Watch, Alison Des Forges, and Disinformation on Central Africa,” Dissident Voice, April 13, 2009.
21. COMUF publication on Gabon’s uranium mining in the author’s possession.
22. See: “Gabon: AREVA sets up its observatory of health at Mounana,” Gaboneco, April 4, 2009.
23. See, e.g., “Desert residents pay high price for lucrative uranium mining [Niger],” UN Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), March 30, 2009; and “Niger Uranium: Blessing or Curse?” IRIN, October 10, 2007.
24. Donovan Webster, “Journey to the Heart of the Sahara,” National Geographic, March 1999.
25. See: Motapa Diamonds web site.
26. Pitchstone Exploration Ltd.
27. See: CAMECO and Wise Uranium.
28. Ohio Citizen Action, “Eramet Marietta Inc.”
29. The Jane Goodall Institute, for example, has directly backed war in eastern Congo. See the KING KONG series at All Things Pass.
30. Of course Henry Kissinger ran covert wars in Zaire and Angola, and other places, and has been for years affiliated with the International Rescue Committee, an intelligence and propaganda front agency that is all over the Congo and Sudan today. See: Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee, and the CIA, M.E. Sharpe, 1995.
31. On Davignon see David Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis, University of Chicago, 1991: p: 177; Ludo De Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba, Verso, 2001: p. 24; Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry in Charge of Determining the Exact Circumstances of the Assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the Possible Involvement of Belgian Politicians, Belgium, final report released Nov. 16, 2001; and a discussion of the politics of the commission in Mark Gibney et al, ed., The Age of Apology: Facing Up to the Past, University of Penn., 2008. See also the BBC whitewash “Belgian Link in Lumumba Death,” BBC, November 16, 2001.
32. “Gabon: Oil, Money, Paristroika,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 31, No. 12, June 15, 1990.
33. On ‘enemy’ versus ‘client’ states see Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon, 1988; Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, South End, 1979; William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military & CIA Interventions Since WW-II, Common Courage, 1995.
34. There were “estimates of at least 100 killed” in Lubumbashi (e.g., “Zaire: Mobutu Takes to the Water,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 31, No. 12, June 15, 1990, pp. 1-3), but DRC experts attest to more than 2000 casualties as the murderous Division Spéciale Présidentielle massacred throughout the night on a campus with a student body of 7000 resident and 3000 external students. By the time the U.S.-based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights issued its 1990 report, the U.S. had “confirmed that one person had died” at Lubumbashi (see Zaire: Repression As Policy, Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 1990).
35. “Gabon: Opposition Leader’s Death Unleashes Riots,” Africa Research Bulletin, June 15, 1990.
36. Howard R. Simpson, The Paratroopers of the French Foreign Legion: From Vietnam to Bosnia, Brassey’s, 1997.
37. E.g., Nicolas Shaxon, “Gabon: Omar Bongo; Franco-African Secret Society,” East African, June 22, 2009.
38. Interviews in Gabon, keith harmon snow, 1997, 2004.
39. See, e.g., Nicolas Shaxon, “Gabon: Omar Bongo; Franco-African Secret Society,” The East African, June 22, 2009; and Shaxson, Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil, Palgrave, 2007: p. 75-78.
40. Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 45, No. 3, March 2008, p: 17479.
41. On ‘demonstration elections’ see: Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon, 1988; Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism, South End, 1979.
42. “Africa-US,” Africa Research Bulletin, July 1-31, 1997, p: 12770. On ACRI, see Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen, 1999, p. 251-257.
43. Africa Confidential, Vol. 48, No. 14, July 6, 2007.
44. Howard W. French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Knopf, 2004: p. 72.
45. Howard W. French, “Prostitution Trial Upsets France-Gabon Ties,” New York Times, April 23, 1995.
46. Ken Silverstein, “Good Press for Dictators,” The American Prospect, April 8, 2001.
47. Ken Silverstein, “Good Press for Dictators,” The American Prospect, April 8, 2001.
48. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen, 1999, p. 251-253.
49. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen, 1999, p. 356-358.
50. Silverstein reported that in 2001 the U.K. firm bought out Powell Tate and Cassidy & Associates. Ken Silverstein, “Good Press for Dictators,” The American Prospect, April 8, 2001.
51. “They Came to Bury Him Not to Praise Him,” The Economist, June 18, 2009.
52. “Robert Bourgi, l’héritier des secrets de la Françafrique,” Le Monde, March 26, 2009.
53. Philip Shenon, “Lobbyist Sought $9 Million to Set Bush Meeting,” New York Times, Nov. 10, 2005.
54. “Searchgold options two Au properties in Gabon,” Searchgold News Release, September 5, 2007.
55. Howard W. French, “Prostitution Trial Upsets France-Gabon Ties,” New York Times, April 23, 1995.
56. Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 46, No. 1, January 1-31, 2009, p. 17839.
57. Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 45, No. 3, March 2008, p. 17479.
58. Biafra-Nigeria, 1967-1969, Political Affairs, Confidential U.S. State Dept. files, ISBN 0-88692-756-0.
59. John Stockwell, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story, Replica Books, 1978: p. 176-192.
60. União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA) and Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA).
61. Toby Shelley, Oil: Politics, Poverty & the Planet, Zed Books, 2005.
62. See: “Report of the Panel of Experts on Violations of Security Council Sanctions Against UNITA,” UN Doc S2000/203, 10 March 2000. See also Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, 2002.
63. James Mukuwire, “Omar Bongo Rescued Ian Smith,” Zimbabwe Times, June 11, 2009.
64. Charles Taylor has the distinction of having attended Harvard University; being arrested in Boston (MA) for international warrants relating to embezzlement of funds in Liberia; being held in a Charlestown (MA) prison; and being ‘broken out’ with no trace or trail of his having been there.
65. See: keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink & Deception Over Those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June & July 2007.
66. Max Liniger-Gourmaz, Small is Not Always Beautiful: The Story of Equatorial Guinea, 1988.
67. Justin Blum, “U.S. Firms Entwined in Equatorial Guinea Deals,” Washington Post, September 7, 2004.
68. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen, 1999.
69. “Congo: Truce Broken,” Africa Research Bulletin, July 1-31, 1997, p.12760.
70. See, e.g., Guy Robert, “France’s African Policy in Transition: Disengagement and Redeployment,” Paper prepared for presentation at the African Studies Interdisciplinary Seminar, Center for African Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Il, March 3, 2000.
71. Daily Diary of Jimmy Carter, March 3, 1977.
72. Bernard Gwertzman, “Vance Says Invaders in Zaire Threaten Vital Copper Mining; Calls Situation ‘Dangerous’,” New York Times, March 17, 1977: p. 61.
73. On western interventions in Shaba (Katanga) during the Ford/Carter years see: Antonio Tanca, Foreign Armed Intervention in Internal Conflict, Martinus Nijhoff, 1990; and William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since WW-II, Common Courage, 1986.
74. See, e.g., Defense National Stockpile Center, Gecamines (DRC) Cobalt; Rae Weston, Strategic Minerals: A World Survey, Croom Helm, 1984.
75. Decisions of the Seventy-Sixth Ordinary Session of the OAU Council of Ministers / Eleventh Ordinary Session of the AEC, 28 June to 6 July 2002, Durban, South Africa, CM/Dec. 661-670.
76. “US-Africa: Genuine Leak or Disinformation?” Africa Confidential, 1984.
77. Of course, the African American community had long (since the 1960’s) been under attack in the U.S. through domestic COINTELLPRO terrorist operations. See, e.g., Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party an the American Indian Movement, South End, 1988.
78. “Reagan Promises to Boost U.S. Aid to Gabon,” Washington Post, August 2, 1978.
79. Personal communication, businessman, Democratic Republic of Congo, June 2009.
80. Personal communication, businessman, Democratic Republic of Congo, June 2009.
81. “France/Africa: Professional Risks,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 47. No. 6, March 3, 2006.
82. See: AG Pertners.
83. Frente para a Libertação do Enclave de Cabinda, FLEC.
84. “President Bongo Loses Court Case Against Ex-Official at Oil Group Elf,” African Oil Journal, December 26, 2007; and Toby Shelley, Oil: Politics, Poverty & the Planet, Zed Books, 2005.
85. Sophie Coignard & Marie-Théres Guichard, French Connections: Networks of Influence, Algora, 2000.
86. “France/Africa: Professional Risks,” Africa Confidential, Vol 47. No. 6, March 3, 2006.
87. “They Came to Bury Him Not to Praise Him,” The Economist, June 18, 2009.
88. Historical Facts Book, U.S. Department of Defense, December 30, 2007.
89. Wayne Madsen, “AFRICOM: The Recolonization of Africa by Uncle Sam,” Wayne Madsen Report, January 3, 2008; see also Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen, 1999, p. 251-253.
90. Jet Hoeve and Sue Garrone, “Shell’s Best Kept Secret,” Destinations, a Royal/Dutch Shell public relations expatriate magazine, Issue 39, Vol. 11, No. 2, June 2006, p. 8; see also Yenzi Boat Club.
91. Private interviews, Gamba Complex, December 2004.
92. See: “Les Anciens de Gamba.”
93. Rigon also operates in Madagascar and Senegal.
94. keith harmon snow, “Merchant’s of Death: Exposing Corporate Financed Holocaust in Africa,” September 2008,; see also: http://www.southernera.com/ and http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ .
95. Gabon Biodiversity Program, Publication No. 20, February 2003, http://nationalzoo.si.edu/ConservationAndScience/MAB/documents/GabonBriefingPaper6.pdf.
96. Nobel economist Amartya Sen describes “unfreedoms” in his book Development as Freedom (Sen, 1999).
97. “Lyonnaise to Manage SEEG,” Africa Intelligence, December 10, 1992.
98. “decision/analysis partners Awarded National Park Transportation Development Study for Gabon,” PR Newswire, September 14, 2004; and DAP.
99. Draft Country Programme Document for Gabon (2007-2011), United Nations Development Program, May 1, 2006.
100. Kees Cline, Tracey Cripps and Terry Boyle, “Schooling in Camp Yenzi, Gabon,” Destinations, a Royal/Dutch Shell public relations expatriate magazine, Issue 39, Vol. 11, No. 2, June 2006, p. 7.
101. Interview in Libreville: Elaine Muerat (Responsable Librairie), SOGAPRESSE, Libreville, Gabon.
102. Louise Tasker, “Family Living in an African Paradise,” Destinations, a Royal/Dutch Shell “OUTPOST” public relations document, Issue 39, Vol. 11, No. 2 June 2006, p. 13.
103. Flight International, March 29, 1986.
104. Committee to Protect Journalists, Country Report: Gabon, December 31, 1998.
105. “Breathing Space,” Shell Foundation web site.
106. Royal/Dutch Shell’s involvement in crimes against humanity and genocide in Nigeria is incontrovertible.
107. Royal /Dutch Shell statistics, 1998, 1999.
108. See, for example: Ike Okonta and Oronto Douglas, Where Vultures Feast: Shell, Human Rights, and Oil, Verso, 2003; Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon, Harper Collins, 1995; Max Liniger-Gourmaz, Small is Not Always Beautiful: The Story of Equatorial Guinea, 1988; and Bruno Manser Fonds.
109. See: Ward Churchill, A Little Matter of Genocide, City Lights, 2001.
110. See: David Quammen, “Views of the Continent,” National Geographic, September 2005; and J. Michael Fay, “Ivory Wars: Last Stand in Zakouma,” National Geographic, March 2007.
111. “CBS reveals the castaways of ‘Survivor: Gabon—Earth’s Last Eden’,” Reality TV staff, 8/27/08.
112. See: keith harmon snow, “Towards an Anthropology of White Man in Africa: A Call to Explore the Militarized White Project of Dark Continentalism,” Paper presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, December, 2007.

Allison Des Forges presents a lecture on ‘genocide in Rwanda’ at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Photo keith harmon snow, 2007.

On 12 February 2009, Alison Des Forges, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch (HRW) for more than 20 years, was killed when Continental Airlines Flight 3407 crashed on route to Buffalo, New York. Des Forges was widely cited as a staunch critic of the Rwandan military government controlled by Paul Kagame and the victors of the war in Rwanda, 1990-1994.

In the ongoing life-and-death struggle to reveal the truth about war crimes and genocide in Central Africa, competing factions on all sides have posthumously embraced Alison Des Forges as an activist challenging power and a purveyor of truth and justice against all odds. Meanwhile, in March, 2009, based on false accusations of genocide issued by the Kagame regime—and given the close relations between Rwanda and the Obama administration’s former Clintonite officials—the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began the process of revisiting all immigration cases of Rwandan asylum seekers and criminalizing innocent refugees.

“In May of 1994, a few weeks into the killings of Tutsis in Rwanda, [Alison Des Forges] was among the first voices calling for the killings to be declared a genocide,” reported Amy Goodman, after Des Forges’s passing away, on Democracy Now. “She later became very critical of the Tutsi-led Rwandan government headed by Paul Kagame and its role in the mass killings in both Rwanda and neighboring Congo after 1994. Last year, she was barred from entering Rwanda.”

To say that Des Forges was “amongst the first voices calling for the killings to be declared genocide” in 1994 is an Orwellian ruse. The genocide label applied by Alison Des Forges and certain human rights bodies in May of 1994 was misdirected, used to accuse and criminalize only the majority Hutu people and the remnants of the decapitated Habyarimana government (much as the genocide and war crimes accusations have been selectively applied against President Omar al-Bashir in Sudan).

The Clinton administration refused to apply the genocide label: to do so might have compromised an ongoing U.S.-backed covert operation: the invasion of the Pentagon’s proxy force, the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A).

According to U.S. intelligence insider Wayne Madsen, Des Forges’ criticisms of the U.S.-brokered pact between presidents Paul Kagame (Rwanda) and Joseph Kabila (Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC) in December 2008 “earned her some powerful enemies ranging from the murderous Kagame, who will not think twice about sending his agents to silence critics abroad, and international interests who want to nothing to prevent them from looting the DRC’s vast mineral and energy resources.”

“With U.S. military forces of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) now backing a joint Ugandan-DRC offensive in the northeastern DRC to wipe out the Lord’s Resistance Army,” wrote Madsen on 16 February 2009, “with hundreds [sic] of civilian casualties in the DRC and Uganda, and a secret pact worked out between Kabila and Kagame to permit Rwandan troops to occupy the eastern DRC, the target of both operations is securing the vast territory that is rich in commodities that the United States, Britain and Israel—all allies of Uganda and Rwanda—want badly. Those commodities are gold, diamonds, columbium-tantalite (coltan), platinum and natural gas.”

Massive oil reserves are also at stake, with major concessions bifurcated by the international border. Ongoing petroleum sector investment (exploration and exploitation) in the region involves numerous western extraction companies—many being so-called petroleum ‘minors’ likely fronting for larger corporations—including Hardman Resources, Heritage Oil and Gas, H Oil & Minerals, PetroSA, Tullow Oil, Vangold Resources, ContourGlobal Group, Tower Resources, Reservoir Capital Group, and Nexant (a Bechtel Corporation subsidiary).

Billed as a “tireless champion” and “leading light in African human rights,” there is much more to this story than the western propaganda system has revealed: Alison Des Forges and HRW provided intelligence to the U.S. government at the time of the 1994 crises, and they have continued in this role to the present. Des Forges also supported the show trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), institutionalizing victor’s justice and shielding the Kagame regime.

Alison Des Forges came across to many people as a wonderful human being with great compassion and impeccable integrity. Indeed, this was my impression upon meeting her as well. She is said to have helped people who were being persecuted—no matter that they were Hutus or Tutsis—by the Rwandan regime that has for more than 19 years operated with impunity behind the misplaced and misappropriated moral currency of victimhood. In the recent past, Alison Des Forges spoke—to some limited degree—against the war crimes of the Kagame regime.

The volcanoes region of the Zaire-Uganda-Rwanda border in 1991, seen in relative peace here, was then just beginning to suffer the destabilizing effects caused by the U.S.-backed invasion of Rwanda by Ugandan troops and the Rwandan Patriotic Army. Photo keith harmon snow, eastern Zaire, 1991.

In life she did not speak about the deeper realities of ‘genocide in Rwanda’, and she had plenty of chances. In fact, she is the primary purveyor of the inversion of truth that covered up the deeper U.S. role in the Rwanda ‘genocide’, and she spent the past 10 years of her life explaining away the inconsistencies, covering up the facts, revising her own story when necessary, and manipulating public opinion about war crimes in the Great Lakes of Africa—in service to the U.S. government and powerful corporations involved in the plunder and depopulation of the region.

THE MYSTERIES OF A PRESIDENT

“Alison des Forges is a liar,” Cameroonian journalist Charles Onana told me, in Paris, France, several years ago. Onana is the author of numerous exposés on war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity in Central Africa, and he is the author of the book The Secrets of the Rwandan Genocide, Investigations on the Mysteries of a President, published in French in 2001.

Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s one-party president ‘elected’ through rigged elections, sued Charles Onana for defamation in a French court in 2002; Kagame lost the original trial and the appeal. Kagame was the commander of the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) and a leading agent—with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and their U.S., U.K., Belgian and Israeli backers—behind the massive bloodshed and ongoing terrorism in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Congo, Sudan and Somalia.

“Leading light in African Human Rights killed in Buffalo Crash,” reported the Pentagon’s mouthpiece, CNN. “Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York, said she was ‘best known for her award-winning account of the genocide, Leave None to Tell the Story.’ She was truly wonderful, the epitome of the human rights activist—principled, dispassionate, committed to the truth and to using that truth to protect ordinary people.”

Alison Des Forges first worked as a HRW agent in Rwanda in 1992; in 1993 she helped produce a major international document highly biased against the Rwandan Government and protective of the RPF/A invaders: Report of the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990.

In late 1992, the International Federation of Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, the Inter-African Union for Human Rights and the Rights of Peoples, and the International Center for the Rights of the Individual and the Development of Democracy created the International Commission of Investigation on Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since October 1, 1990. With ten members from eight countries, the commission reported its findings in March 1993: Des Forges was co-chairperson, one of the three principal writers, and translator of the French to English version.

The report noted that ‘hundreds of thousands’ of Rwandans were made homeless and forced to flee, prior to January 1993, but these casualties of the RPF/A invasion were not attributed to international crimes of peace against a sovereign government committed by an invading army—the RPF/A guerrillas covertly backed by the U.S., Britain, Belgium and Israel—but instead merely to ‘war’. In other words, the initial act of aggression, the RPA/F invasion, was institutionally protected and the war crimes that set the stage for the conflagrations in Rwanda and Congo went unpunished.

Later in 1993, Rwandans Ferdinand Nanimana and Joseph Mushyandi, representing four Rwandan organizations under the Rwanda Associations for the Defense of Human Rights, challenged the Des Forges commission in their 26-page document, “A Commentary on the Report of the International Commission’s Inquiry on the Violation of Human Rights in Rwanda since October 1990.”

“How can an international commission be taken seriously when its members spent only two weeks extracting verbal and written evidence on human rights violations for a period of two years?” the authors wrote. They also pointed out that the commission spent less than two hours in areas controlled by the RPF/A rebels and that they could not visit all the 11 prefectures in the country because of demonstrations that blocked the roads. “Can there be any objective and credible conclusions in their report?”

Ferdinand Nanimana was later sentenced to life imprisonment for genocide. Many members of the Rwandan human rights organizations he worked with prior to April 1994 were subsequently killed.

The rights and due process of Rwandan Hutus are systematically violated due to victor’s justice secured by the U.S., Europe, Israel and the proxy states Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. Bernard Ntuyahaga, a Major of the former Rwandan army (ex-FAR) accused of killing 10 Belgian soldiers and Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, surrendered to the ICTR to avoid extradition to Rwanda; he was tried in Belgium and sentenced to 20 years in prison on July 4, 2007. Photo keith harmon snow, Tanzania, 2000.

The rights and due process of Rwandan Hutus are systematically violated due to victor’s justice secured by the U.S., Europe, Israel and the proxy states Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda. Bernard Ntuyahaga, a Major of the former Rwandan army (ex-FAR) accused of killing 10 Belgian soldiers and Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana, surrendered to the ICTR to avoid extradition to Rwanda; he was tried in Belgium and sentenced to 20 years in prison on July 4, 2007.

Like other researchers who have endlessly perpetuated the disinformation, Des Forges made no attempts to correct the record. In 1992, human rights researchers Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal established the London-based NGO African Rights. In August 1995, African Rights published Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, another pivotal ‘human rights’ report that manufactured the ‘genocide’ fabrications, set the stage for victor’s justice at the ICTR, and began the process of dehumanizing millions of Hutu people and protecting the true terrorists. In 1995, Omaar and de Waal recycled the disinformation in the left-leaning Covert Action Quarterly under the title “U.S. Complicity by Silence: Genocide in Rwanda.” Since 2003, Alex de Waal has been one of the primary disinformation conduits on Darfur, Sudan.

“This woman [Omaar] of Somali origin is an RPF agent,” says Jean-Marie Higiro, former director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINFOR). “[Today] she has her office in Kigali. In 1994 she was at Mulindi [Rwanda], the headquarters of the RPF. As the RPF conquered territories from the Rwandan Government Forces [FAR], she collected information fed to her by the RPF.”

“An intensive back and forth activity between this so-called British human rights organization, African Rights, and the intelligence services of the [Kagame] President’s office and the Rwandan military, has been observed,” wrote Hotel Rwanda star Paul Rusesabagina. “Her investigators are very close to the [RPF/A] military intelligence apparatus, and the modus operandi of both appears to be similar.”

Alison Des Forges’ years long ‘investigations’ into the bloodshed of 1994 resulted in the fat treatise on genocide in Rwanda, Leave None to Tell the Story, a book co-researched and co-written by Timothy Longman, now Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Vassar College. Longman and Des Forges produced numerous documents—based on field investigations in Congo (Zaire), Rwanda and Burundi, from 1995 to 2008—touted as independent and unbiased human rights documents, all skewed by hidden interests.

According to a recent PBS Frontline eulogy, less than two weeks into the killing in April 1994 Des Forges met with officials in the U.S. State Department and National Security Council (NSC) and lobbied for their help. “We were not asking for U.S. troops,” Frontline quotes her to say, “it was clear to us that there was no way that the U.S. was going to commit troops to Rwanda.”

But the U.S. military was heavily backing the RPF/A tactically and strategically already. Key to the operation were ‘former’ Special Operations Forces (Ronco Company) providing military equipment and ferrying RPA troops from Uganda to Rwanda; the Pentagon’s logistical and communications support; Defense Intelligence Agency and CIA operatives. Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), was also collaborating with the RPF/A, serving the Pentagon interest.

Genocide in Rwanda became a massive psychological operation directed against media consumers using ghastly images—produced by RPA-embedded photographers like James Nachtwey and Gilles Peres—to infer that all cadavers were Tutsi victims of an orchestrated Hutu genocide; meanwhile the text was racist disinformation produced by Joshua Hammer. Newsweek, June 20, 1994.

ICTR defense attorney Christopher Black reports that reliable sources confirm that US Special forces were with the RPF all the way through the war. “My client testified in June that U.S. Hercules [C-130 military aircraft] were seen dropping troops in support of the RPF…”

Further, on 9 April 1994, three days after the so-called ‘mysterious plane crash’ where Burundi’s President Cyprien Ntaryamira and President Habyarimana were assassinated, some 330 U.S. marines landed at Bujumbura’s airport in Burundi, ostensibly to ‘rescue Americans’ in Rwanda. More centrally however, Uganda—with U.S. trained forces and U.S. supplied weaponry—launched its war against Rwanda as a proxy force for the United States of America. The result was a coup d‘etat: we won. The 2003 Frontline interview with Alison Des Forges exemplifies her continuing role in whitewashing U.S. involvement in war crimes and genocide in Central Africa.

“Kagame received his military education under the Pentagon’s Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) at the Command and General Staff College of Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, beginning in 1990,” wrote John E. Peck of the Association of African Scholars (2002). “His sidekick, Lt. Col. Frank Rusagara, got his JCET schooling at the U.S. Naval Academy in Monterey, California. Both were dispatched to Rwanda in time to oversee the RPF’s takeover in 1994. Far from being an innocent bystander, the Washington Post revealed on July 12, 1998 that the United States not only gave Kagame $75 million in military assistance, but also sent Green Berets to train Kagame’s forces (as well as their Ugandan rebel allies) in low intensity conflict (LIC) tactics. Pentagon subcontractor Ronco, masquerading as a de-mining company, also smuggled more weapons to RPF fighters in flagrant violation of UN sanctions. All of this U.S. largesse was put to lethal effect in the ethnic bloodbath that is still going on.”

“This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern elite to foster hatred and fear to keep itself in power,” Des Forges wrote, blaming ‘Hutu Power’. However, her assertions about a ‘planned’ Hutu genocide—“They seized control of the state and used its machinery and its authority to carry out the slaughter”—collapse under scrutiny.

From 1990 to 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), comprised most heavily of Ugandan soldiers led by Ugandan citizens like Paul Kagame, committed atrocity after atrocity as they forced their way to power in Kigali, always falsely accusing their enemies—the power-sharing government of then President Juvenal Habyarimana—of genocide.

“Kagame assigned some people to work with Alison Des Forges,” says Ugandan Human Rights expert Remigius Kintu, “and also to assist her in fabricating and distorting stories to suit Tutsi propaganda plans.”

According to the International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, whose discoveries resulted in the high courts of Spain issuing international indictments against 40 top RPF/A officials: “Between 1990 and 1994, the RPA waged a systematic, pre-planned, secretive but highly organized terrorist war aimed at eliminating the largest number of Rwandan people possible—bodies were hacked to pieces and incinerated en masse. From 1994, once the RPA violently seized power, a terror regime was created, and developed, and a criminal structure parallel to the state was set up to pursue pre-determined kidnappings; torturing and raping of women and young girls; terrorist attacks (both directly and by simulating that the same had been perpetrated by the enemy); illegal detention of thousands of civilians; selective murdering; systematic elimination of corpses either by mass incineration or by throwing them into lakes and rivers; indiscriminate attacks against civilians based on pre-determined ethnic categories for the elimination of the predominant ethnic group; and also to carry out acts of war in Rwanda and Congo.”

Before former President Habyarimana’s assassination on 6 April 1994, Des Forges, and the organizations she worked with, blamed the whole war crimes show on President Habyarimana and his government, they dismissed the illegal invasion and atrocities of the RPF/A, and they began calling it genocide against the Tutsis as early as 1992.

“In the Military II case Alison Des Forges admitted that she was funded by USAID when she was part of that so-called International Commission condemning the Rwandan Government [Habyarimana] for human rights violations,” reports Canadian Chris Black, a defense attorney at the ICTR, “and she admitted that she just took the word of the RPF and pro-RPF groups and that she did not deal with RPF atrocities, as she did not have the time.”

Chris Black notes that Des Forges presented reports to the ICTR in certain legal cases that were decidedly doctored from the original reports presented in previous cases against other accused Hutu genocidaires, and that it was necessary to cross-examine Des Forges ‘very forcefully’ to get her to agree that changes had been made to the reports presented as evidence in the case being tried.

Twelve year-old Hutu child soldiers with the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in Congo—so-called genocidaires who purportedly fled Rwanda in 1994 and have served as Kagame’s justification for plundering and depopulating Congo since. Photo keith harmon snow, South Kivu, DRC, 2006.

“In her expert report in the 2006 Military II trial against General Ndindiliyimana,” Chris Black adds, “she removed all the positive things she had said about him in her book and in her previous expert report in the [Colonel Théoneste] Bagasora case. When asked by me why she deleted the positive view of him at his own trial, and why she tried to hide the fact that he saved a lot of Tutsis, among other things, she had no explanation. It was a cheap, low thing to do and I can tell you even the judges here at the ICTR were not too happy about it.”

On December 18, 2008, after the protracted ‘Military I’ trial, the judges at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda ruled that there was no conspiracy to commit genocide by former Rwandan military leaders affiliated with the former Habyarimana government. It was war, and the actions—far from a calculated genocide—were found by ICTR judges to be ‘war-time conditions’.

“The media reports of the December 18 judgment [Military I] at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda focused primarily on the convictions of three of four former top military leaders, who were the supposed ‘masterminds’ of the Rwandan genocide,” wrote ICTR defense lawyer Peter Erlinder. “But, as those who have followed the ICTR closely know, convictions of members of the former Rwandan government and military are scarcely newsworthy.”

Since the inception of the ICTR its decisions have been decisively biased—victor’s justice—in favor of protecting the Kagame regime and its backers. Thus it is no surprise that the former top military leaders of the Habyarimana government—Colonel Théoneste Bagosora and Major Aloys Ntabakuze—were sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, an act of genocide is not an organized, calculated, systematic genocide.

“The real news was that ALL of the top Rwandan military officers, including the supposedly infamous Colonel Bagosora, were found not guilty of conspiracy or planning to commit genocide,” writes Erlinder. “And General Gratien Kabiligi, a senior member of the general staff, was acquitted of all charges! The others were found guilty of specific acts committed by subordinates, in specific places, at specific times—not an overall conspiracy to kill civilians, much less Tutsi civilians.”

Now, after more than fifteen years of massive western propaganda proclaiming an organized, systematic elimination of the Tutsi people by the Hutu leaders of the former Rwandan government, the official Rwanda genocide story has finally collapsed.

THE GENOCIDE FACTS

In contradistinction to the establishment narrative accusing the ‘Hutu leadership’ of an ‘organized’ and ‘planned’ genocide were the countless acts of genocide committed through a spontaneous uprising of the Hutu masses—people who had been brutalized, disenfranchised, uprooted and forced from homes; people who had witnessed massacres and rapes of family members; people who were themselves the victims of brutal atrocities. These were more than a million internally displaced Rwandan Hutus, people who had been terrorized by the Rwandan Patriotic Army from October 1990 to April 1994, as it butchered its way into Rwanda; and possibly a million Burundian refugees, Hutus who suffered massive reprisals in Burundi after the first civilian President, Melchior Ndadaye, a democratically elected Hutu, was assassinated by the Tutsi military in October 1993. There is evidence that the RPA/F pursued “pseudo-operations”—death squads committing atrocities disguised as government soldiers—and evidence that at least some of the infamous Interahamwe militias pursued their campaigns of terror in the pay of the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army.

“She [Des Forges] concealed the fact that from 1990 the war caused an unprecedented economic poverty and that the one million internally displaced people tore the social fabric apart!” wrote Dr. Helmut Strizek, a former German official who had called for Des Forges’ resignation from HRW. “And these people knew that Tutsi rebels [RPA] caused their misery. They did not wait for ‘instructions’ in order to revenge, once no one was able to maintain public order after the April 6 [1994] assassination [sic] and resumption of hostilities by the RPF.”

“Alison Des Forges is no longer,” writes Charles Onana. “Peace be with her soul! She nonetheless leaves behind her many victims of injustice, who she painstakingly accused, using false testimony, before the International Criminal Tribunal Court for Rwanda (ICTR).”

Alison Des Forges provided expert testimony in 11 genocide trials before the ICTR, including the ‘Military I’ trials that condemned Col. Theoneste Bagosora and two others on December 18. Des Forges also testified in genocide trials in Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Canada.

Charles Onana continues:

Among her victims there is Jean-Paul Akayesu, the first to be condemned to life imprisonment for genocide. This man, who Alison Des Forges had accused without any proof against him, was even defended by a Tutsi from the Patriotic Rwandan Army [RPA] who had been party to the fabrication of the ‘incriminating’ evidence against him in Rwanda. The Tribunal never listened to this witness, but they did listen to Alison Des Forges.

I have also discovered during the course of my investigations into the ICTR that, at the start of the trial in 1997, she introduced a forged fax that was purported to be written by General Dallaire in 1994. This fax, maintained Des Forges, concerned the ‘planning of genocide’.

New Yorker staff writer Philip Gourevitch spread the mythology of “The Genocide Fax” far and wide. Gourevitch’s first pro-RPF/A disinformation piece appeared in the New Yorker in December 1995; in May 1998 the New Yorker published Gourevitch’s “The Genocide Fax,” a charade fed to him by Madeleine Albright’s undersecretary of state James Rubin. Gourevitch’s fictional book We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families was funded by the euphemistically named U.S. Institute for Peace and written in league with the Kagame regime. It is certainly possible that Alison Des Forges was unaware of the original fabrication, but she and Human Rights Watch never changed their tune, and they never denounced the fabrication.

Charles Onana continues:

It was on the basis of this false document that she called for the condemnation of Jean-Paul Akaseyu. To lend credibility to this first trial process, the ICTR, with astonishing lightness and irresponsibility, condemned this man to life. The Tribunal had no proof. The judicial dossier is slapdash and skimpy, but that has no importance. This was Alison Des Forges first great victory.

She then decided to pursue a Rwandan refugee living in Canada: an ideal target. He had the misfortune to be Hutu. For her, this man was a ‘planner of genocide’. But where is the proof? Alison Des Forges has none, but she wants to see this man [Leon Mugesera] in prison. Having deciphered or seen through Alison Des Forge’s arguments, the Judge of the Canadian Federal Tribunal concluded witheringly and without pity: ‘I note above all the relentlessness with which Mme Des Forges launched her diatribe against M. [Leon] Mugesera, and am astonished by the lack of care she has demonstrated in drawing up the report for the International Commission of Enquiry and in her Expert Assessment.’

The Canadian judge did not hesitate to qualify Mme. Des Forges as partisan, demonstrating ‘a prejudice or preconceived position against Léon Mugesera’. He concluded that she could not be considered an objective witness, adding that no correctly informed tribunal could take her allegations seriously. Nevertheless it was on the basis of the same arguments, and of the same fantasy report published in 1999, that she accused numerous Rwandans, all Hutu.

“CONTINENTAL SHIFT,” one of Philip Gourevitch’s pivotal disinformation essays that appeared in the New Yorker, outlined the “new brand of African leader” exemplified by Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame: it is a whitewash of U.S.-backed terrorism.

It was thus that she devoted the penultimate day of her examination, during the process against the military, to presenting Colonel Bagosora, Hutu, as the king pin in the genocide. The Tribunal in the long-running ‘Military I’ trial did not accept the ‘planning of genocide’ that Alison Des Forges never ceased to hammer on about by means of her pseudo-fax of 11 January 1994. She lied, lied and lied again. She tried a come-back or to recover her credibility by criticizing her ‘hero’ Paul Kagame, the organizer the 6 April 1994 assassination of two presidents.

Alison Des Forges finally dared to speak of the crimes committed by the Tutsi rebels of the RPF/A: the great taboo. It was a bit late but it assuaged her conscience. For those who were condemned by the ICTR, deliberately and unjustly recorded by her, there will be no justice for them. Can Alison Des Forges still hear their suffering and their pain? She who has done them so much harm—along with their families? She who claimed to defend the Rights of Man has without doubt violated the rights of many Rwandans, who will undoubtedly never forget her. Their homage to Mme. Des Forges would have been different, very different, to what her many friends in the media have to say.

Timothy Longman and Des Forges, the co-authors of the HRW treatise, Leave None To Tell The Story, both worked with USAID, the U.S. State Department and the Pentagon. Des Forges was a member of the HRW board from 1988 and was “principal researcher” on Rwanda and Burundi, 1991-1994. In this period Des Forges also consulted for USAID, and collaborated with the State Department, Pentagon, and National Security Council. Simultaneously, Des Forges worked with, informed and influenced U.S. Congress-people, Permanent Representatives at the United Nations, the U.N. Under-Secretary General, and U.N. Special Rapporteur for Rwanda and Special Rapporteur for Summary and Arbitrary Executions. Des Forges also pumped the disinformation into the academic world through her high-level ties to human rights committees, African and Africana Studies departments and the elite African Studies Association.

In the same period, Des Forges constantly influenced the U.S. media through special briefings to the editorial boards and reporters of the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio, and Associated Press, and she was frequently presented as an “expert” on genocide in Rwanda for CNN, 60 Minutes, Nightline, All Things Considered, BBC, Radio France Internationale, and the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Such relations explain the mass media’s consistency in producing the monolithic disinformation about Rwanda that shielded the illegal U.S.-backed and covert RPF/A (Ugandan) guerrilla insurgency. The blanket media coverage falsely situated the “Rwanda genocide” as it is now widely misunderstood: 100 days of genocide, 800,000 to 1.2 million Tutsis killed with machetes; the ‘highly disciplined’ RPF/A stopping the genocide. Such is the disinformation that indoctrinated the English-speaking media consumers and created a mass psychological hysteria about Rwanda that persists to this day.

Timothy Longman worked with Des Forges in Rwanda in 1994 and has worked regularly with both USAID and HRW on contracts in Congo, Burundi and Rwanda, throughout the late 1990’s and into the present; Longman worked in Rwanda on one USAID contract for Management Systems Incorporated, a firm whose clients include the Pentagon. Longman also worked as a consultant for HRW in the spring of 2000 conducting field research in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and producing “a detailed report on human rights conditions in rebel-controlled areas.”

The Des Forges and Longman position vis-à-vis their whitewashing of the Tutsi-led RPF/A-organized genocide in Rwanda certainly explains the sanitation of HRW reports, and it raises questions, for example, about how Human Rights Watch ‘researchers’ navigate their ‘work’ in rebel (read: Rwandan and Ugandan) controlled areas in DRC. It also raises questions about how, why and when HRW does or doesn’t expose the western operatives, non-government organizations and multinational corporations: a singular example is the Human Rights Watch report that mildly exposes the criminal operations of Anglo-Gold Ashanti—a company partnered with the Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation—in eastern DRC. HRW says nothing about Moto Gold, Mwana Africa, Banro Resources, Hardmann Oil, Tullow Oil, De Beers, H Oil & Minerals, OM Group, Metalurg, Kotecha, International Rescue Committee—and the many proxy armies, militias, gun-runners and other organized white collar war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Congo.

The role of HRW as an intelligence conduit to the U.S. Government is incidentally confirmed by Samantha Power in her book A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide—a whitewash of U.S. and allied war crimes for which she was rewarded with a Pulitzer Prize. While Power’s “bystanders to genocide” thesis about Rwanda is a total inversion of the facts, she notes in passing that “Human Rights Watch supplied exemplary intelligence to the U.S. Government and lobbied in one-on-one meetings” in April and May 1994, and that Alison Des Forges and other HRW staff visited the White House on April 21, 1994. Samantha Power is currently a member of the National Security Council in the administration of President Barack Obama.

The mass media was flooded with “Rwanda genocide” disinformation between April and July of 1994, and advertising that served up subliminal seduction and white supremacy often surrounded these ‘news’ clips. This adverts’ sexualized message—MODERN MEANS STAYING COOL, CALM AND DIRECTED—is augmented by a sanitized ‘news’ clip that described the double presidential assassination as a “mysterious plane crash.” New York Times, June 12, 1994.

Alison Des Forges continued to remain silent about western corporate and military interests in the Great Lakes region to her death. A perfect example of this silence is the very unrevealing March 2008 interview by the U.S. nationalist and Zionist U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum titled “Alison Des Forges: The Impact of Rwandan Genocide in Congo.”

Timothy Longman also produces significant pro-US propaganda about Sudan. Thus it is important to note that amongst the key USAID conduits for disinformation and covert operations in Sudan today is Roger Winter, one of the primary architects of the RPF/A guerrilla war, organized from Washington in 1989, that led to the loss of at least twelve million lives in the Great Lakes of Africa since October 1990. Alison Des Forges, of course, never mentioned Roger Winter or his colleague in covert operations, Susan Rice, the Obama Administration’s Ambassador to the U.N.

“Roger Winter was with the RPA on the front lines in Rwanda and he regularly briefed the Clinton Administration of the RPA’s military achievements,” says Jean Marie Vianney Higiro, former Rwandan official. “Alison Des Forges contributed to the RPF/A takeover of Rwanda. I have no doubt about that… I met her three times, first in 1995, and in 2004 she encouraged me to testify at the ICTR. I said no way: I will only testify if RPF officials are arrested. She insisted I should testify, she was confident that the RPF were going to be arrested. I think she did not realize that the U.S. government would never accept that. She was something of an opportunist.”

“I don’t know how assassins could control icing on the wings or why it was necessary to bring down 50 other people just to silence her,” says ICTR lawyer Chris Black, commenting on the speculation that Alison Des Forges was assassinated by ‘plane crash’. “It would have been much simpler to kill her in all sorts of other ways. But she was no big critic. She made some noises, but it was just to give Human Rights Watch some credibility.”

“I hold a strong belief in the plane crash being planned,” says Remigius Kintu. “These international cabal members have no mercy to hide their crime in something like this and could care less about the other people on the plane. As for Roger Winter, he was the chief logistics boss for [RPF] Tutsis until their victory in 1994, operating from 1717 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington D.C.”

The zeal displayed by Alison Des Forges and Human Rights Watch in the pursuit of justice and human rights appears in sharp contradistinction to their absence of zeal in pursuing the architects of the criminal invasion of Rwanda on 10 October 1990, the double presidential assassinations of 6 April 1994, and all kinds of other nasty corporate conspiracies in Central Africa.

Thus while the world commemorated the 15th Anniversary of the “Rwanda Genocide” on 6 April 2009, innocent Rwandan asylum seekers and critics of the Kagame terrorist regime, all over the world, live under perpetual fear of being hunted down, branded as genocide perpetrators, ostracized, and persecuted by an illegitimate one-party dictatorship comprised 40 military officials indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by two international courts.

According to insiders from Rwanda, Kagame’s ruthless Directorate of Military Intelligence has dispatched some 300 agents to Europe to kill RPF opponents; some of these agents are operating under cover as bogus asylum seekers in Europe and North America. As of January 20, 2009 the U.S. Department of Homeland Security began reopening all cases of Rwandan asylum seekers, and is criminalizing and threatening to deport legitimate refugees to Rwanda, actions that violate the 1951 United Nations High Commission for Refugees Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

After some weeks of back and forth discussions and me revisiting notes and photos to see what I had, I sent them an e-mail at the definitive moment when they were hoping to receive a brief “dossier” about the specific case — which they said “had generated a lot of interest” at the ICC — and I shared my uncertainty about the ethics of collaborating with an “International Criminal Court” that was only indicting black Africans. I indicated my concern for the witness ‘Sandrine,’ a young girl discussed in my story who named names of commanders, dates of executions, and who herself used a machete in an ethnic massacre and was raped by militiamen. I noted that witnesses identified for the Rwandan Tribunal (ICTR) had been murdered or mysteriously disappeared, and noted my awareness of the injustice of the Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the disconcerting trajectory of the ICC.

I told them I couldn’t in good conscience help them, it seemed, until the ICC arrested some of the white-collar war criminals running loose around the world. It was the right decision, in light of the recent ICC indictments against another black man, and an Arab at that. It was a very stupid career move, some one else remarked.

On 4 March 2009 the ICC prosecutors announced that they were at last issuing the long-threatened but first ever indictments against a sitting head of state, Omar al-Bashir, the Arab President of Sudan. Meanwhile, Somali ‘pirates’ off East Africa recently freed a Ukrainian ship with a Panamanian registration, a Ukrainian crew and flag of Belize. The freighter carried tanks, rockets and munitions destined for Darfur, and is owned by an Israeli ‘businessman’ and reputed MOSSAD operative named Vadim Alperin.

It is difficult to make sense of the war in Darfur — especially when people see it as a one-sided “genocide” of Arabs against blacks that is being committed by the Bashir ‘regime’ — but such is the establishment propaganda. The real story is much more expansive, more complex, and it revolves around some relatively unknown but shady characters. What follows is a short and imperfect summary of some of the deeper geopolitical realities behind the struggle for Sudan.

THE POLITICS OF WAR CRIMES

First note that the ICC can now be viewed as a tool of hegemonic U.S. foreign policy, where the weapons deployed by the U.S. and its allies include the accusations of, and indictments for, human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. To understand this, we can ask why no white man has yet been charged with these or other offenses at the ICC, which now holds five black African “warlords” and seeks to incarcerate and bring to trial another black man, also an Arab, Omar Bashir. Why hasn’t George W. Bush been indicted? Or what about Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? Henry Kissinger? Ehud Olmert? Tony Blair? Vadim Alperin? John Bredenkamp?

Following on the heels of the announcement that the ICC handed down seven war crimes charges against al-Bashir, a story broadcast over all the Western media system and into every American living room by day’s end, President al-Bashir ordered the expulsion of ten international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in Darfur under the pretense of being purely ‘humanitarian’ organizations.

What has not been reported anywhere in the English press is that the United States of America has just stepped up its ongoing war for control of Sudan and her resources: petroleum, copper, gold, uranium, fertile plantation lands for sugar and gum Arabic (essential to Coke, Pepsi and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream). This war has been playing out on the ground in Darfur through so-called ‘humanitarian’ NGOs, private military companies, ‘peacekeeping’ operations and covert military operations backed by the U.S. and its closest allies.

However, the U.S. war for Sudan has always revolved around ‘humanitarian’ operations — purportedly neutral and presumably concerned only about protecting innocent human lives — that often provide cover for clandestine destabilizing activities and interventions.

Americans need to recognize that the Administration of President Barack Obama has begun to step up the war for control of Sudan in keeping with the permanent warfare agenda of both Republicans and Democrats. The current destabilization of Sudan mirrors the illegal covert guerrilla war carried out in Rwanda — also launched and supplied from Uganda — from October 1990 to July 1994. The Rwandan Defense Forces (then called the Rwandan Patriotic Army) led by Major General Paul Kagame achieved the U.S. objective of a coup d’etat in Rwanda through that campaign, and President Kagame has been a key interlocutor in the covert warfare underway in Darfur, Sudan.

During the Presidency of George W. Bush, the U.S. Government was involved with the intelligence apparatus of the Government of Sudan (GoS). At the same time, other U.S. political and corporate factions were pressing for a declaration of genocide against the GoS. Now, given the shift of power and the appointment of top Clinton officials formerly involved in covert operations in Rwanda, Uganda, Congo and Sudan during the Clinton years, pressure has been applied to heighten the campaign to destabilize the GoS, portrayed as a ‘terrorist’ Arab regime, but an entity operating outside the U.S.-controlled banking system. The former campaign saw overt military action with the U.S. military missile attacks against the Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical factory in Sudan (1998); this was an international war crime by the Clinton Administration and it involved officials now in power.

The complex geopolitical struggle to control Sudan manifests through the flashpoint war for Darfur and it involves such diverse factions as the Lord’s Resistance Army, backed by Khartoum, which is also connected to the wars in the Congo and northern Uganda. Chad is involved, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Germany, the Central African Republic, Libya, France, Israel, China, Taiwan, South Africa and Rwanda. There are U.S. special forces on the ground in the frontline states of Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the big questions are: [1] How many of the killings are being committed by U.S. proxy forces and blamed on al-Bashir and the GoS? And [2] who funds, arms and trains the rebel insurgents

UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVASTATION

Rebels? Insurgents? The drumbeat of western propaganda portrays the conflict as a one-sided affair: a “genocidal counter-insurgency by the GoS” — in the words of Eric Reeves — versus the good Samaritans of the ‘humanitarian’ NGO community . . . and throw in a few (non-descript) rebels.

“Sudan ordered at least 10 humanitarian groups expelled from Darfur on Wednesday after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the country’s president,” wrote Associated Press reporter Ellen M. Lederer. “Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the action ‘represents a serious setback to lifesaving operations in Darfur’ and urged Sudan to reverse its decision, U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.”

However, when Ban Ki-moon met with Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame recently, he never called for Kagame’s arrest, no matter the findings of two international courts of law that have issued indictments against top RPA officials. Instead Ban Ki-moon praised Kagame and called for African countries to hunt down and arrest Hutu people purportedly involved in the now specious ‘genocide’ in Rwanda in 1994.

The non-governmental aid groups ordered out of Darfur by President al-Bashir on March 4 were Oxfam, CARE, MSF-Holland, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee, Action Contre la Faim, Solidarites and CHF International.

Of course, the western media is all over the expulsion of any big ‘humanitarian’ moneymaker from Darfur — the moral outrage is so thick you can almost wipe it. The NGOs and the press that peddles their images of suffering babes complain that hundreds of thousands of innocent refugees will now be subjected to massive unassisted suffering — as opposed to the assisted suffering they previously faced — but never asks with any serious and honest zeal, why and how the displaced persons and refugees came to be displaced or homeless to begin with. Neither do they ask about all the money, intelligence sharing, deal making, and collaboration with private or governmental military agencies.

Large ‘humanitarian’ NGOs (and ‘conservation’ NGOs) operate as de facto multinational corporations revolving around massive private profits and human suffering. In places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Darfur these NGOs also provide infrastructure, logistical and intelligence collaboration that supports U.S. military and government agendas in the region. Most are aligned with big foundations, corporate sponsors and USAID — itself a close and long-time partner for interventions with AFRICOM and the Pentagon.

Refugees and displaced populations are strategic tools of statecraft and foreign policy, just as ‘humanitarian’ NGOs consistently use food as a weapon and populations as human shields. The history of the U.S. covert war in South Sudan is rich with examples of the SPLA and its ‘humanitarian’ partners, especially Christian ‘charities’, committing such war crimes and crimes against humanity.¹

CARE International has received funding from Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s largest and most secretive producer of weapons of mass destruction, and both CARE and Save the Children are tied up with weapons and extractive industries in other ways. A peek at the board of directors of Save the Children makes it clear why the U.S. media is so devoid of truth about Darfur. Similarly, the International Rescue Committee does not work with refugees, per se, but serves as a policy and pressure group involved in funneling private profits from the west back to the west. The IRC has also been cited for involvement in military operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and it has deep ties to people like Henry Kissinger.

The AID (read: misery) industry in Sudan was by the mid-1990s the largest so-called ‘humanitarian’ enterprise on the planet, Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) — a form of managed inequality and a temporary and mobile economy of white privilege, adventurism and, of course, good will (sic). The misery industry shifted its focus from South Sudan to Darfur after a pseudo peace ‘treaty’ was organized to end the decades old war between the SPLA and GoS; the U.S. and Israel backed the SPLA from 1990 onward, and continue to do so at present. The result of more than 12 years of illegal U.S. covert low-intensity warfare in Sudan resulted in the creation of the independent and sovereign state of South Sudan in circa 2005 — a state dominated by Jewish and Christian faith-based interests and western multinational corporations.

Much of the AID infrastructure in Sudan has at one time or another been used as a weapon through the use of human shields, food deliveries to refugee populations inseparable from insurgents, and shipments of weapons by ‘humanitarian’ NGOs. This is both incidental and deliberate policy. Christian ‘relief’ NGOs played a huge role in supporting the covert western insurgency in South Sudan. One notable ‘humanitarian’ NGO involved in weapons deliveries was the Norwegian People’s Aid (known affectionately in the field as the Norwegian People’s Army).

In Darfur, Sudan, the U.S. government agenda is to win control of natural resources and leverage the Arab government into a corner and, at last, establish a more ‘friendly’ government that will suit the corporate interests of the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and Israel.

Several major think tanks — read: propaganda, lobbying and pressure — behind the destabilization of Sudan include the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, Center for American Progress, Center for Security Policy, International Rescue Committee and International Crises Group. Individuals from seemingly diverse positions of the political and ideological spectrum run these organizations, which are ultra-nationalist capitalist organizations bent on global military-economic domination.

The former Clinton officials most heavily focused on the destabilization of Sudan include: Susan Rice, Madeleine Albright, Roger Winter, Prudence Bushnell, Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Anthony Lake and John Prendergast. Carr Center for Human Rights co-founder Samantha Power, now on the Obama National Security Council, has helped to whitewash clandestine U.S. involvement in Sudan.

John Prendergast has continued to peddle disinformation disguised as policy and human rights concerns through the International Crisis Group (ICG), and through its many clone organizations like ENOUGH, ONE and RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO. Prendergast has been a pivotal agent behind the hi-jacking of U.S. public concern and action through the disingenuous (and discredited) SAVE DARFUR movement.

Other notable agents of disinformation on Sudan include Alex de Waal and Smith College Professor Eric Reeves. It is through these and other conduits to the corporate U.S. media that the story of ‘genocide’ in Sudan is cast as an Africa-Arab affair devoid of western interests.

In 1992, human rights researchers Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal established the London-based NGO African Rights. In August 1995, African Rights published Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, one of many pivotal ‘human rights’ reports that falsely represented events in Rwanda, set the stage for victor’s justice at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, and began the process of dehumanizing millions of Hutu people and protecting the true terrorists: Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame, the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and their western backers.

THE MAN FOR A NEW SUDAN

The pivotal intelligence asset working on the ground in Sudan to destabilize and overthrow the Government of Sudan (GoS) is Roger Winter, profiled very disingenuously in the seven-page New York Times Magazine feature story of 15 June 2008.

Interestingly, “The Man For A New Sudan” story, an establishment whitewash of the involvement of the U.S. military-intelligence establishment in Sudan, was written by Eliza Griswold, a ‘Fellow’ with the New America Foundation, a left-leaning think tank and pressure group with a very confused ideological but nationalist-militaristic position. (The NAF is obviously dependent on U.S. foundation funding, and it reveals no apparent policy formulations of substance on the Great Lakes or Horn of Africa, conflicts for which they remain completely silent).

“When Roger Winter’s single-engine Cessna Caravan touched down near the Sudanese town of Abyei on Easter morning, a crowd of desperate men swamped the plane,” Griswold wrote. “Some came running over the rough red airstrip. Others crammed into a microbus that barreled toward the 65-year-old Winter as he climbed down the plane’s silver ladder. Some Sudanese call Winter ‘uncle’; others call him ‘commander’.”

Winter’s special post at the State Department was created specifically for him and his ‘work’ in Sudan. Why do Sudanese people in South Sudan call Roger Winter ‘commander’?

Roger Winter is the primary conduit for the ongoing covert destabilization of Sudan. His operations are run primarily out of Uganda, with the terrorist government of Yoweri Museveni providing support through the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) alliance with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

The SPLA is the de facto backbone of the Sudan Liberation Army, one of the main so-called ‘rebel’ factions involved in Darfur; the SPLA provides military and logistics support to Uganda from the Pentagon through unknown channels, but most likely involving the nearby Pentagon client states of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Chad and Eritrea.

The primary Ugandan agents supporting the U.S. war in Darfur have always been, and remain, Brigadier General James Kazini, a nephew of Ugandan dictator Museveni and the chief of staff of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF); General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Museveni; and President Yoweri Museveni himself.

One of the main protagonists in the Darfur conflict is the current military regime in Rwanda, whose troops have been involved in Darfur under the guise of an ‘independent’ and ‘peacekeeping’ operation under the African Union ‘peacekeeping’ umbrella — back by NATO and private military companies.

Little known and widely misunderstood is the role of the United States and its proxies, the UPDF and the RPA, in committing massive crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide during the Rwandan conflagration from 1990 to 1994. Prior to the RPA invasion of Rwanda (from Uganda) in October 1990, the RPA and Rwandan Tutsi Diaspora had publications like Impuruza published in the United States between 1984 and 1994 (when the RPA achieved the coup d’etat against Rwandan President Habyarimana). Tutsi refugees joined Roger Winter, who was at the time the Director of the United States Committee for Refugees, to help fund the publication. The editor, Alexander Kimenyi, is a Rwandan national and a professor at California State University. Like most RPA publications Impuruza circulated clandestinely in Rwanda amongst Hutu and Tutsi elite and it peddled a genocidal ideology against Hutu people.

The Association of Banyarwanda in Diaspora USA, assisted by Roger Winter, organized the International Conference on the Status of Banyarwanda [Tutsi] Refugees in Washington, DC in 1988, and this is where a military solution to the Tutsi problem was chosen. The U.S. Committee for Refugees reportedly provided accommodation and transportation.

THE DEVIL CAME IN A HELIOCOPTER

Roger Winter was one of the primary architects of the RPA guerrilla war, organized from Washington in 1989, that has led to the loss of more than ten or twelve million lives in the Great Lakes of Africa since 1990. Winter acted as a spokesman for the RPF and their allies, and he appeared as a guest on major U.S. television networks such as PBS and CNN. New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch and Roger Winter made contacts on behalf of the RPA with American media, particularly the Washington Post, New York Times and Time magazine.

Roger Winter moved through Rwanda during the RPA invasion and worked the front lines of the covert war as a key Pentagon and U.S. State Department asset in collaboration with the Kagame-RPA operation of terror. From 1990 to 1994, Winter traveled back and forth from the RPA-controlled zone to Washington D.C., where he briefed and coordinated activities and support with U.S. military, intelligence and government officials.

Roger Winter is intimate with USAID, and is a long-time ally of Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State on African Affairs (1997-2001), Special Assistant to President Clinton (1995-1997), and National Security Council insider (1993-1997). Susan Rice is the Obama Administration’s Ambassador to the United Nations and staunch enemy of Omar al-Bashir.

Roger Winter is also a staunch supporter of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, one of the leading U.S. Democrats pressing for action to “stop genocide” in Darfur, Sudan. Payne sponsored the Darfur Genocide Accountability Act and was arrested in June 2001, along with John Eibner, director of Christian Solidarity International, for protesting against the GoS.

Christian Solidarity International has a very subversive relationship to ‘peace’ and ‘religion’ in Sudan, and they have been one of the front-runner organizations peddling the accusations of slavery by the al-Bashir government, in particular, a highly contested and controversial issue generally inflated and manipulated by fundamentalist Jewish and Christian NGOs and missionary organizations, like Christian Solidarity International, Samaritan’s Purse, Servant’s Heart, and Freedom Quest International, that operate in Sudan.

“Roger Winter was the chief logistic boss for [RPA] Tutsis as early as mid-1990,” says Ugandan human rights expert Remigius Kintu, “and until their victory in 1994 they were operating from 1,717 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. Roger Winter told a [name deleted] South Sudanese exile at the time [1994]: ‘I have now stabilized Rwanda and will turn my full attention to Sudan.’ Winter subsequently closed up shop in Rwanda and based himself in Kampala working on Sudan. A few years later, Darfur exploded and with Winter’s manipulations, Rwanda was the first to send troops into that troubled area. From my sources, the Rwanda Defense Forces [working under the African Union umbrella] have killed civilians and brought in their media experts to pile the blame on Sudanese government troops.”

This is exactly what the Kagame and Museveni terror apparatus has done in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Much of the terror operations of the UPDF/RPF in Rwanda in the 1990s were covered up by Human Rights Watch experts Alison Des Forges (d. February 2009) and Timothy Longman, Associate Prof. of Africana Studies and Political Science at Vassar College.

Similarly, throughout the long war in south Sudan, and now in Darfur, the atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed factions were/are downplayed, dismissed or ignored, while those committed by competing factions are amplified and spotlighted. Also, following the pattern of UPDF and RPA criminal activities — such as massacres committed under disguise and/or attributed to the ‘enemy’ — for which there is now a long history of documentation, and given the lack of any true independent evaluation, there is no telling who actually committed the massacres always blamed on the GoS or ‘Janjaweed’ militias.

One Sudanese professional from the south told me recently that it was not the Government of Sudan but rather the UPDF and SPLA who were arming the Janjaweed — the so-called Arab militias accused of wanton killing in an Arab-against-Black genocide. (This Arab-on-black genocide has been widely discredited.

Professor Timothy Longman and Alison Des Forges co-produced the fat treatise on ‘genocide’ in Rwanda, Leave None to Tell the Story, published in 1999. Longman and Des Forges produced numerous documents, based on field investigations in Congo (Zaire), Rwanda and Burundi, from 1995 to 2008, touted as independent and unbiased human rights reports but always skewed by hidden interests. Both Longman and Des Forges had relationships with the U.S. Department of State, National Security Council and Pentagon, both were regular consultants with USAID, and they certainly worked with Roger Winter, the Pentagon’s secret weapon in Sudan.

On 25 September 2008, a Ukrainian freighter was seized by ‘pirates’ off the coast of Somalia and was held until a ransom of $3.2 million was paid on 5 February 2009. (Somali fishermen disenfranchised by international dumping of toxic [and possibly nuclear] wastes off Somalia are labeled ‘pirates’ when they fight for their rights and freedoms.) The MV Faina is registered in Belize, owned by a company registered in Panama and piloted by Ukrainians. The MV Faina carried 33 Soviet T-72 battle tanks, grenade-launchers, anti-aircraft guns and ammunition en route to Mombassa, Kenya, the Pentagon’s primary base on the east coast of Africa.

The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet monitored the Ukrainian ship during the four-month standoff, with the MV Faina pinned down by at least six U.S. and four European warships. The ship’s owner is Israeli national Vadim Alperin (alias Vadim Oltrena Alperin), said to be a MOSSAD agent involved with clandestine activities through offshore front companies and money laundering. The ship was unloaded in Mombassa on February 12, and the weapons are destined for Juba, South Sudan.

There are reports that weaponry also included tank munitions heads sporting deadly depleted uranium and that the final recipients are the Israeli-backed Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) ‘rebels’ in Darfur. Sudan has previously accused Israel of supporting ‘rebels’ in the Darfur war. International arms syndicates and dealers routinely transfer ‘Soviet-era’ arms for international organized crime, including covert military operations involving proxy militias and national governments in Sudan, Uganda, Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda.

1. See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?” Global Research, 7 February 2007.

The euphemistically named Refugees International (RI)—like the US Committee for Refugees—is tight with the US intelligence community and uses a ‘humanitarian’ front to project American power and nationalist interests through hegemonic pressure tactics and direct interventions. However, RI’s support for expanded militarization and global domination is easily unveiled.¹

Indeed, the UNHCR has a much more incestuous relationship with the massive ongoing catastrophe on the ground in eastern Congo. One of the multinational corporations affiliated with UNHCR is PricewaterhouseCoopers International (PWC), an ‘accounting’ firm whose business revolves around balancing the books, financial audits and advising tax write-offs and other forms of financial shuffling for multinational corporations. Head-quartered in New York City, PWC earned $US 28.2 billion in revenues in 2008.

PWC is also a shareholder in the corporations involved in the niobium/tantalum (pyrochlore) mine at Lueshe, North Kivu, at the heart of Rwanda’s ‘Tutsi rebel’ occupation in eastern DRC.² ,³

The mining ores from the Lueshe mine have previously been moved into international commerce through Rotterdam harbor, Netherlands, involving the following firms affiliated with PricewaterhouseCoopers International (US): Alfred K. Knight International (UK); Masingiro GmbH (Germany); Helvetia Transport (Germany); Gesellschaft fuer Elektrometallurgie GmbH (Germany); HSBC Bank (UK); A&M Minerals (UK); Mettalurg NY (US).

PWC was the dominant majority shareholder of Somikivu s.c.a.r.l., a company established in Congo (Zaire) in 1984, and controlled in North Kivu for numerous years past by troops under the command of Rwandan warlords Laurent Nkunda and Jules Mutebusi, both wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.⁴

“The crimes and war crimes committed by the management of the PricewaterhouseCoopers company Somikivu since the year 2000 up until now will not be quoted here,” wrote the authors of a 2006 letter calling on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to address PWC for violations of OECD guidelines for multinational corporations.⁵

In budget year 2008, PWC offices worldwide collectively ‘donated’ $US 1,511,982 to UNHCR.⁶

Affleck’s affiliation with Save the Children is equally problematic given their sponsorship by the giant Swiss multinational corporation Credit Suisse Group (CSG).

One CSG director is Peter F. Weibel, a CEO and executive of PricewaterhouseCoopers AG, Zurich since 1988, member of PWC’s Global Oversight Board from 1998 to 2001, and CEO of PWC Zurich until mid 2003—a period when PWC continued to intervene in Congo—militarily and politically—through the Lueshe mine.⁷

Interestingly, PricewaterhouseCoopers has also served as the ‘Chartered Accountants’ for Banro Corporation from September 1996—the date of the first RPA/UPDF invasion of Congo—until November 2002, and was listed as such again for 2005 (at least).⁸

Another CSG director is Thomas W. Bechtler, also the Chairman of the Zurich Committee of Human Rights Watch. Of course, HRW ‘researcher’ Alison Des Forges wrote the HRW tome on genocide in Rwanda—Leave None to Tell the Story—the book that turned genocide in Rwanda upside down and set the stage for the total falsification of international consciousness.⁹

“This genocide resulted from the deliberate choice of a modern elite to foster hatred and fear to keep itself in power,” Des Forges wrote. Her assertions about a ‘planned’ Hutu genocide—”They seized control of the state and used its machinery and its authority to carry out the slaughter”—are now completely discredited.⁹

In contradistinction to the establishment narrative accusing the ‘Hutu leadership’ of an ‘organized’ and ‘planned’ genocide were the countless acts of genocide committed through a spontaneous uprising of the masses—people who had been brutalized, disenfranchised, uprooted and forced from homes; people who had witnessed massacres and rapes of family members; people who were themselves the victims of brutal atrocities. These were more than a million people, mostly Hutus, who had been terrorized by the Rwandan Patriotic Army from October 1990 to April 1994, as it butchered its way into Rwanda.

“She [Des Forges] concealed the fact that from 1990 the war caused an unprecedented economic poverty and that the one million internally displaced people tore the social fabric apart!” wrote Dr. Helmut Strizek, a former German official who has called for Alison Des Forges’ resignation from Human Rights Watch.¹⁰ “And these people knew that Tutsi rebels [RPA] caused their misery. They did not wait for ‘instructions’ in order to revenge, once no one was able to maintain public order after the April 6 [1994] assassination [sic] and resumption of hostilities by the RPF.”¹¹

At one Harvard University lecture on October 14, 1998, Alison Des Forges proposed a hypothetical ‘decapitation’ scenario whereby military intervention by a team of elite operatives could have ‘stopped the genocide’. “The scenario calls for elite troops to enter Rwanda in the first 2 to 5 days of the genocide and kill or capture the 20 or so extremist leaders who were primarily responsible for mobilizing the genocide.”¹²

However, this is regime change, and it is in keeping with the new ‘humanitarian’ warfare paradigm, and it licenses special operations forces to commit human rights atrocities and acts of terror legitimized by one state (US) over its ‘enemies’. And, in any case, there was no regime in Kigali to change as the state had already been decapitated by the double presidential assassinations of April 6, 1994. Des Forges’ role has been to hide the US backed coup d’etat in Rwanda and to obscure the involvement of the United States military and its western military partners.

Allison Des Forges, senior adviser to Human Rights Watch, presents a lecture on 'genocide in Rwanda' at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Photo Keith Harmon Snow, 2007.

Between 1990 and 1994, the RPA waged a systematic, pre-planned, secretive but highly organized terrorist war aimed at eliminating the largest number of Rwandan people possible—bodies were hacked to pieces and incinerated en masse. From 1994, once the RPA violently seized power, a terror regime was created, and developed, and a criminal structure parallel to the state was set up to pursue pre-determined kidnappings; torturing and raping of women and young girls; terrorist attacks (both directly and by simulating that the same had been perpetrated by the enemy); illegal detention of thousands of civilians; selective murdering; systematic elimination of corpses either by mass incineration or by throwing them into lakes and rivers; indiscriminate attacks against civilians based on pre-determined ethnic categories for the elimination of the predominant ethnic group; and also to carry out acts of war in Rwanda and Congo.¹³

Ben Affleck has met with Rwandan ministers and he is investing in Rwanda. However, his ties to Paul Kagame run deeper than mere investments supported by Rwanda’s organized crime cartel.

A SUSTAINABLE CATASTROPHE

The 1996 Rwandan Patriotic Army invasion of eastern Congo—then Zaire—began with military attacks against refugee camps in the North and South Kivu provinces where more than two million Rwandan refugees were amassed. These death camps were created by the so-called international community—the ‘humanitarian’ business sector—and they revolved around massive profits for the corporate agencies involved, including Refugees International, Save the Children, World Food Program and UNHCR—all connected to the western military intelligence apparatus and integrated with multinational corporate plunder.

Refugees International’s operations during their involvement in the Rwandan refugee camps in Congo (Zaire), 1995-1996, were funded in part by Credit Swiss (CS) First Boston, a subsidiary of the Credit Suisse Group.¹⁴ Robert Weisenthall, a strategic advisor at CS First Boston in the same period, counted as clients Cox Communications, Time Warner and the New York Times—all involved in the big Rwanda genocide cover-up. Wiesenthall is today an executive with Sony Corporation, whose PlayStations depend upon columbium tantalite, one of the rare earth metals being plundered from eastern Congo.¹⁵

The Rwandan refugee camps were reportedly first shelled in a military operation involving the International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of the UNHCR’s main partners today.¹⁶ The IRC is an agency that does not work directly with refugees and has been criticized for its direct involvement in military operations.¹⁷

“Humanitarian organizations operating among the Hutu refugees in eastern Zaire and Belgian newspapers accused some US refugee non-governmental organizations, especially the [IRC] of being covers for CIA operations,” reported intelligence insider Wayne Madsen. “Two Belgian newspapers, Antwerp Gazette and De Standaard, reported that the IRC was actually engaged in ‘military operations and military support operations’ in support of [Laurent] Kabila’s rebels in eastern Zaire.”¹⁸

According to UNHCR documentation, IRC agents are allowed to move freely in and out of UNHCR and other UN field operations. It almost need not be stated, so obvious a conclusion is it, that so-called ‘humanitarian’ organizations are routinely and unquestioningly used for intelligence gathering and for identifying both friendly and hostile members of certain populations.

With the support of his friends in the RPA, Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani traveled to the Kivus shortly after the 1996 invasion of Congo (Zaire). Mamdani and RPA backer Jacques Depelchin produced a report that documented the genocidal RPA campaign against Hutus, and the devastating effects of the AID enterprise on eastern Congo.¹⁹ Mamdani described the ‘dollarization’ that destroyed the local economy; how rents were driven up by the influx of an army of ‘AID’ workers; how local people found basic needs increasingly beyond their reach.²⁰

“To talk to civil society leaders in Kivu about the experience of hosting two million plus refugees resourced through international NGOs,” Mamdani reported, “is to listen to a litany of troubles—criminality, ill health, increased prices, lowered production, mounting insecurity—all traced to that single experience.”²⁰

The eastern Congo never recovered from the combined devastation wrought by the post-1994 Rwandan Patriotic Army terror regime in combination with the Rwandan refugee influx. Then as now, the enterprise spawned one disaster after another and the situation today can only be explained as a manufactured disaster.

In Congo they call it MONUC AIR. Seen here is a jetliner leased by MONUC on a flight from Bujumbura, Burundi to Kinshasa, Congo's capital city, filled to about 10% capacity. Photo Keith Harmon Snow, 2005.

The Ben Affleck Gimme Shelter film is part of an ongoing propaganda campaign to whitewash the international catastrophe created, and sustained, in eastern Congo, by the conflux of so-called ‘humanitarian aid’ operations and so-called ‘international peacekeeping’ operations with multinational corporate plunder.

“Ordinary people in Goma, DRC, struggling with economic consequences of war have accused rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda of waging a war that is beneficial to the whites,” reported Zimbabwe News. “Deniece who runs a vegetable stall in north Kivu, said the conflict is good for the well-paid members of the 18-nation MONUC peacekeeping force, aid agencies and news organizations.”²¹

What is obvious to peasant vegetable sellers is that the Democratic Republic of the Congo offers a very clear example of a corporate sustained catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions.

THE OBTUSE MONUC MISSION

The United Nations Observers Mission for Congo (MONUC) supported Ben Affleck’s visit to eastern Congo. This mission is increasingly seen as a boondoggle, and it appears more and more likely that MONUC’s ‘failure’ is by design. How do we measure the overall failure or success of the MONUC peacekeeping mission?

Any discussion of the role of MONUC in Congo is absent from Affleck’s film. Instead we only see a few passing images of MONUC blue helmets, armed Pakistanis or Indian troops, suggestive of an efficacious and honorable security force selflessly defending the Congolese people.

The MONUC Public Information Office (PIO), responsible for disseminating information about the MONUC mission, might best be described as a ‘disinformation’ office for the false information that they have provided, on many occasions, regarding MONUC realities.

“In La Potentiel today,” wrote Great Lakes analyst David Barouski, in January 2008, “UN civilian sector spokesman Mr. Kemal Saiki reported that the [Rwanda Defense Forces] is not present in Congo. This is not the truth and I cannot imagine that Mr. Saiki is so poorly informed that he honestly does not know they are there. Such an act degrades MONUC’s credibility with the Congolese people and the international community, who already know the RDF is there.”²²

This was not the first time that Public Information Officer (PIO) Kemal Saiki clouded the truth with intentional disinformation. At the beginning of 2007, MONUC troops opened fire on angry civilians who rushed a MONUC vehicle: people were shot dead. When asked about the incident, Saiki denied that MONUC has opened fire on the crowd and insisted that the MONUC forces only ‘shot into the air.”²³

MONUC PIOs have also supported the establishment claims about Ugandan military (UPDF) withdrawals, and they have refused to report UPDF incursions in the Orientale region.

Not only does MONUC makes it possible for western mining companies to loot Congo, but MONUC contingents have also participated in illegal minerals plunder from DRC.²⁴

On October 17, 2007, MONUC spokesperson Kemal Saiki told journalists that the MONUC mission categorically denied recent reports in the Congolese press that the peacekeepers were in any way supporting the factional forces loyal to Rwanda’s in-country agent, General Laurent Nkunda.²⁵

Can MONUC PIOs be believed? Can MONUC press reports be trusted?

While certain political actors, including FARDC troops, have sometimes played a hand in civilian protests against the MONUC ‘peacekeeping’ mission in Congo, civilian attacks have become routine as the besieged Congolese people wage frustration battles against the forces of intervention that many believe—based on their personal experiences—are both contributing to and profiting from chaos in the region. The Congolese FARDC army also distrusts the mission: a MONUC convoy moving militia soldiers was recently stopped by FARDC forces and the militia soldiers forcibly removed.²⁶

December 28, 2008 saw fresh allegations that MONUC blue helmets were involved in sexual violence and other abuse against civilians in North Kivu.²⁷ Simple investigations in Bunia, capital of Orientale, found at least five cases of young women who had been raped by MONUC personnel; in one case, the young girl killed her baby and went to prison, but the civilian MONUC official, unpunished, was apparently transferred to another post.²⁸ Is this an example of MONUC’s ‘zero tolerance policy’ against sexual violence by MONUC personnel?

“The Congolese people no more have trust in MONUC. We think that they are supporting the rebels,” North Kivu resident Adili Amani Romauld is reported to say. “And there is a rumor that MONUC profits from the business of the rebels because people have seen soldiers of MONUC saying that ‘no Nkunda, no jobs.’ This is what the Congolese say they saw soldiers of MONUC saying… but from the time they say MONUC came to this country, nothing has changed. So we no more expect anything good from them.”²⁹

The annual MONUC budget is $US 1.13 billion, of which approximately 40% is annually spent on air transport in and between DRC, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda.³⁰ The air transport system therefore provides massive incomes to foreign companies involved in aviation, for fixed wing and helicopter leasing.³¹ Meanwhile, the leased jumbo jetliner oil burners traveling the long transnational air routes for MONUC are at times over 80% empty.

The MONUC air transport infrastructure maintains structural violence by diverting funds that should be available, and used, for development of Congo’s national transportation infrastructure (especially an appropriate road or light rail system) to the private profits of foreign corporations and governments.

MONUC also rents properties and facilities in Rwanda, Uganda and South Africa (approx. $US 370,000 annually) and pays some $US 93 million annually to oil companies.³¹ One of the primary providers of air support services for MONUC is Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE), a subsidiary of the U.S. aerospace and defense giant Lockheed Martin Corporation. Most importantly, the MONUC air transport system is highly exclusive, unavailable to most Congolese people, but open to many highly paid white personnel working for the NGO sector.

Evidence of the structural violence against the Congolese people is prolific, seen with the swimming pools and water yoga classes filled with white expatriate AID professionals—where 99% of blacks are excluded due to their economic (slavery) status—and with the MONUC mission’s expenditures on entertainment infrastructure.

MONUC’s Pakistani and Indian brigades, for example, constructed cricket and soccer (football) facilities. The MONUC cricket games, soccer matches, marching bands, bagpipes and kilts on Sundays and special celebrations are very curious: the construction of athletic facilities and provision of leisure activities are seen by some as examples that MONUC is in it for the long term. Is this a serious ‘peacekeeping’ mission? Or part of a prolonged and lucrative sustainable catastrophe?

UN Messenger for Peace George Clooney, appointed January 31, 2008 due to his high profile role in Darfur, Sudan, also visited the MONUC Indian brigades in DRC’s Kivu provinces, where he painted a picture of MONUC troops as selfless soldiers for good. “We were in Congo and met with the Indian Kivu brigade in January,” he said, in October 2008. “We saw the incredibly important and tough work they are doing every day.”³²

Isn’t the MONUC military mission just another faction involved in Congo’s conflagration, a faction of foreign mercenaries backed by multinational corporations? Like the United Nations itself, the MONUC mission is compromised at the highest levels, and the hands of the good people in the mission are tied and their voices silenced.

According to MONUC staff in Kinshasa, the Special Representative of the Secretary General to the DRC, current MONUC Head of Mission Alan Doss, a US citizen, has violated MONUC mission protocol prohibiting family members from joining mission employees. Doss brought his wife to DRC, against regulations, and she is reportedly provided a personal maid, a MONUC 4×4 Toyota SUV with a MONUC driver, for personal use, all paid for by the MONUC mission.

“Everybody cannot believe that Doss is so corrupt,” says one MONUC insider. “He knows nothing about Congo… he is breaking rules every day. Mrs. Doss gave a big reception in Kinshasa to receive George Clooney at the Grand Hotel. It was paid for by MONUC and Doss didn’t even clear the party with the Chief of Division [according to protocol]. People are very angry but they cannot say anything and morale is very low, because everyone sees that the MONUC mission they are part of is a failure.”³³

What constitutes success or failure of a United Nations ‘peacekeeping’ mission of MONUC’s stature? What about the failure to displace Rwanda’s guerrilla forces from eastern Congo? What about the failure to intervene and/or halt the ongoing minerals plunder?

Does the involvement of MONUC soldiers in sex trafficking or minerals smuggling constitute the mission’s failure? What about millions of people dead and millions more displaced during the years of MONUC’s involvement in DRC, circa 2001 to 2009?

To his credit, on December 17, 2008, MONUC Chief Alan Doss publicly announced that the MONUC ‘peacekeeping’ mission with its 17,000 soldiers and its $US one billion annual budget “was not equal to the task.”³⁴

Alan Doss inherited a catastrophe from his predecessor, William Lacy Swing—a US State Department official who’s diplomatic career spanned some 40 years including five postings as Ambassador to African countries each under long term organized assault by white collar crime, corporate plunder and covert military interventions: South Africa, Nigeria, Liberia, Zaire (now DRC), and the former People’s Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville); Swing is also deeply tied to the malaise in Haiti.

At this writing, MONUC staff in Congo are dealing with labor violations due to inequitable treatment and poor working conditions: the promises made by MONUC officials after MONUC in-country staff organized a stop-work strike more than a year ago have been entirely ignored.³⁵

On December 18, 2008, President Bush released $US 6 million in “AID” funds for Congo from the United States Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance Fund, ostensibly to ‘aid refugees’.

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

After one of Ben Affleck’s promotional visits to Rwanda, Francis Gatare, Director General of Rwanda Investment and Export Promotion Agency, quoted the Oscar winner as saying: “When you are cheated in a place like Seattle in the US, it’s very easy to think that Rwanda you saw on CNN in 1994 is still the same. Seeing is believing, and I am happy to have come to Rwanda to witness how the peace and security in the country is real and should be communicated to the world.”³⁶

A MONUC financed cricket and football (soccer) field constructed by the Pakistani MONUC brigade near the Bukavu airport, South Kivu. Indian and Pakistani troops regularly hold competitions complete with marching bands. Photo Keith Harmon Snow, 2005.

However, Rwanda’s ‘peace’ has come about through a campaign of absolute terror against the people and depopulation of the Rwandan countryside.³⁷

But Rwanda pimps its sanitized image through numerous celebrities. In 2007, actress Natalie Portman joined other global celebrities to name baby mountain gorillas for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Virunga National Park; actress Daryl Hannah has also played that role. Actress Sigourney Weaver is officially tied to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. William Taliaferro Close, the father of actress Glen Close was for many years the personal physician for Zaire’s president Joseph Mobutu.³⁸ Ewan McGregor also boosts Rwanda’s image by traveling there in league with the regime.

The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Jane Goodall Institute are two big profit-based ‘conservation’ NGOs directly tied to militias involved in extortion, land theft and other organized crime in North Kivu province.³⁹ Jane Goodall is currently a United Nations Messenger of Peace but she is so busy giving “Save the Chimp” lectures worldwide that she doesn’t know what she is talking about, and is blind to the crimes that the Jane Goodall Institute is committing, in her name, in Congo.⁴⁰

A number of other big international names, including Quincy Jones, and the CEOs of Starbucks, Microsoft, Google and CISCO, have previously visited Rwanda on business missions. Kagame’s strategy of surrounding himself with big business to shield his regime against criticisms or indictments for war crimes and acts of genocide has paid off. Big business leaders, business web sites and public relations campaigns the world over describe Paul Kagame as ‘The Entrepreneur President.’⁴¹

President Obama’s Christian right evangelist fanatic Rick Warren has also gotten in on the Kagame game. “In 2005 Rwanda became, at the request of its president Paul Kagame, the initial testing ground for Rick Warren’s P.E.A.C.E Plan and the first nation in the world to implement Warren’s “Purpose Driven Life and Leadership training program” on a national level. Warren has made at least ten separate trips to Rwanda and has been photographed multiple times with Rwanda’s President, Paul Kagame.”⁴²

It seems that birds of a feather flock together. Former US President George W. Bush has also had his image buffed by spotlight celebrities. In February 2008, soon after Bush departed Kagame and Rwanda on Air Force One, Bob Geldof—another of Africa’s Great White Hopes—praised Bush as one of the greatest humanitarian Presidents, due to Bush’s supposed concern for Africa —measured in big business financial allocations ostensibly for African people.

Andrew Young, the former US Ambassador to the UN and former Mayor of Atlanta has promoted Rwanda through his corporate consulting firm Goodworks International; Young is also a close sponsor and partner of the US-Uganda Friendship Council, a multinational corporate organization involving and protecting Yoweri Museveni. In 2007, Young’s perception management firm produced the pro-Kagame whitewash titled Rwanda Rising. Billed as a documentary and entered into film festivals, the promo starred Paul Kagame, William Jefferson Clinton and musician Quincy Jones.

Andrew Young is reportedly building a mansion on Lake Muhazi in Rwanda, where Kagame also owns a mansion, and next to exclusive multi-million dollar lakeside resorts and golf courses. Quincy Jones has bought an island on Lake Muhazi.

In 2005, Kagame was awarded the annual Andrew Young Medal for Capitalism and Social Progress by Georgia State University. In 2007 Kagame received the “Abolitionist of the Year Award” after Rwanda abolished the death penalty, a rather ironic result given Kagame’s role in mass death in Congo and Rwanda. But Kagame’s award for being a capitalist couldn’t be more apropos, given the predatory nature of western capitalism as practiced by Kagame’s gang in the Great Lakes region.

Operating in Rwanda and Uganda is the Canadian company Vangold Resources, connected to Robert and Eric Friedland, two of the Friends of Bill Clinton linked to the bloodletting in Congo, Uganda and Rwanda through their multiple interlocking companies and offshore holdings.⁴³

Vangold copper, cobalt and gold mining operations proceed in Uganda’s western border districts.⁴⁴ The West Nile district mining occurs near the sites of the massive Ugandan government backed atrocities and concentration camps that confine some 1.2 million indigenous Acholi people. Vangold has interests in Kenya, and holds a 1,631 square km (630 sq. mi) petroleum concession bordering Congo in northeastern Rwanda.⁴⁵

A Vangold Corporation map showing the extent of gold concessions in northeastern Congo, with an arrow denoting the Vangold property on the DRC-Uganda border, making it clear why there is so much bloodshed in DRC's Orientale Province. Image from Vangold web site.

Tony Blair, Britain’s Prime Minister (1997-2007) at the time of the first and second Anglo-American invasions of Congo, led by the proxy forces of Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni, has been a personal advisor to President Kagame since January 2008.

Another high profile mover and shaker who helps legitimize the Kagame regime is Harvard University doctor Paul Farmer, who moved his family to Rwanda in 2008 and became a citizen there. Farmer’s Partner’s in Health project has received millions of dollars from the Clinton Foundation and Clinton HIV/AIDS programs—money rinsed from the blood diamonds and indigenous genocides in Botswana, Sierra Leone, Angola, Uganda, Rwanda, South Africa and Congo.⁴⁶ Maurice Tempelsman, the Clinton/Kennedy family diamond broker, Democratic Party sponsor and an architect of covert operations in Africa, is the Chairman of the board of Harvard University’s euphemistically named AIDS Institute; HAI is partnered with the US Military HIV Research Program.⁴⁷ ,⁴⁸

Paul Farmer is also linked to the Kagame regime’s network in Boston, where agent’s of the Kagame regime operate an intelligence cell used to identify, repress and criminalize any Rwandan people who in any way challenge the criminality or injustice of the current regime.⁴⁹

Paul Farmer wrote an excellent book on structural violence titled Pathologies of Power. In the introduction, Farmer discusses Rwanda and, for example, he comments on the ‘blinkered analyses’ by aid workers in “most settings where massive human rights violations are about to occur.”

“How, one wonders incredulously,” Farmer asked, “could anyone working on behalf of the Rwandan poor [before 1994] have failed to anticipate the oncoming cataclysm?”⁵⁰

How, one wonders incredulously, could anyone working on behalf of the Rwandan poor today have failed to challenge or distance themselves from Kagame’s Rwanda and its terrorist enterprises, in Congo at the very least, and instead works with the regime and its agents?

Farmer cites the work of Samantha Power, about how the Clinton administration knowingly let genocide in Rwanda happen, as opposed to playing the active role it did in backing a covert coup d’etat and Hutu genocide.⁵¹ This fabricated ‘bystanders to genocide’ thesis, intentionally obtuse, won Samantha Power—a founder-director of Harvard’s highly biased Carr Center for Human Rights—a Pulitzer Prize.⁵² Farmer’s additional references and citations regarding ‘genocide in Rwanda’ are equally misinformed, examples of propaganda that intentionally blinds people.⁵³

Michael Porter, a Harvard professor and ‘intellectual entrepreneur’ from Brookline, Massachusetts, also has close ties to Kagame, both in Massachusetts and in Rwanda. Porter is one of Paul Kagame’s primary economic advisers, “helping that nation craft an economic plan, develop the private sector and build relationships around the world.”⁵⁴

Ben Affleck’s hometown is Boston, Massachusetts, and this is the stage for Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s film Good Will Hunting. Boston, it turns out, is also Paul Kagame’s most important power base in the United States, and Cambridge (Harvard University) and Brookline are two influential suburbs.

On January 27, 2009, Democracy Now host Amy Goodman will moderate a panel about Dr. Paul Farmer’s Partner’s In Health mission in Haiti. Panelists will include Paul Farmer and Matt Damon and the panel will be held at Kennedy Library in Boston.

Paul Kagame and his wife Jeanette are regular visitors to Boston, where they have wooed many business leaders, including Mayor Thomas Menino, and where they are tight with the Jewish community. The Tutsis, after all, are the ‘Jews of Africa’ and Rwanda the ‘Israel of Africa’, according to the efficacious mythology perpetuated in part by New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch, in part by Israeli officials.⁵⁵ Of course, Israel is also fueling the holocaust in the Congo.⁵⁶

Kagame has given numerous “we the poor victims of genocide” speeches at Boston area colleges. Such speeches usually provoke guilt about the moral failure of us in the west, and all dissent is stillborn for fear of being accused of genocide denial. The result is a hysterical western ‘news’ consuming public—a hysteria amplified by visits to skeleton ‘memorials’ in Rwanda.⁵⁷

At Boston College in 2005, Kagame was joined by Pierre-Richard Prosper, the US Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues. Prosper is a member of Boston College Board of Trustees and has repeatedly visited Rwanda since 1995. Prosper played a major role in neutralizing the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, and in derailing the attempts by ICTR prosecutor Carla Del Ponte to prosecute the RPA for war crimes.⁵⁸ Prosper echoed the big Rwanda deception about a systematic genocide committed by the Hutus, and he followed with the usual coup de grace on truth: he criticized the international community for ‘failing to act’ and, completely inverting reality, said that the US media “did nothing to explore the genocidal machine that was under full operation in Rwanda.”⁵⁹ In reality, the US ‘news’ system facilitated the RPA coup d’etat.

Kagame followed with the typical speech filled with the usual platitudes about ’100 days of killing’, with ’800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsis slaughtered’—the language that the propaganda system has, by constant repetition, cemented into the minds of western ‘news’ consumers, thus fostering a sort of mass hysteria about Rwanda that is echoed, mindlessly—even self-righteously, by everyone from the miseducated masses to over educated intellectuals—everywhere. As usual, Kagame turned reality on its head, falsely stating that “the genocide was engineered by the government” of Juvenal Habyarimana.

“It was deliberate, calculated, and cold-blooded,” Kagame said. Indeed it was, as Paul Kagame knows only too well.

Although Paul Kagame has criticized western society and pontificated on the importance of Rwandans being educated in Rwanda, his children attend school in Boston, where they are sheltered by an extensive network, and Ben Affleck—Congo’s new hero and an avid Red Sox fan—has taken the Kagame youth to Boston Red Sox baseball games.⁶⁰

This is the kind of hidden interest, according to Congolese who have now learned about Affleck’s Kagame and Rwanda connections, that one cannot, in good conscience, ignore. While it might seem endearing that Affleck takes Kagame’s children out to the ball game, it exemplifies Affleck’s close relationship to an internationally renowned war criminal and his conflict of interest in Congo.

The Gimme Shelter campaign is but the latest smokescreen by the western propaganda systems deployed to protect private profits, hidden agendas, and white-collar war crimes in Central Africa. In this equation, the actors and actresses themselves are being used like brand names. UNHCR has the Angelina Jolie brand. UNICEF has the Mia Farrow brand. Save the Children and UNHCR share the Ben Affleck brand name.

Such smokescreens immunize people in North America, Europe, South Africa, Israel and Australia against our own waking up. Using words like ‘humanitarian’ and ‘AID’ and ‘relief’ and ‘peacekeeping’ to misname what are otherwise profitable white operations that are reliant purely on markets—where the commodities are people of color who have been uprooted and displaced, physically and sexually traumatized, and murdered en masse—is another way to justify the exploitation that proceeds both in plain site (refugee operations, peacekeeping interventions, media productions) and behind the scenes (extractive industries, weapons proliferation, multinational dumping, covert operations).

In eastern Congo, it is clear that the goal is to create chaos, to mobilize and dispossess millions of people of their lands and their agency, to herd them and intern them in ‘refugee’ concentration camps, where they die of starvation and disease, where they become test populations for pharmaceutical corporations, where every justification is used—by the white people who serve them—before we go off to the swimming pool or take a vacation.

But most of all, the goal is to create a hopeless and destitute people, who don’t know if they are coming or going, who are traumatized, shattered, apathetic, afraid of everyone and everything, where even the most vile forms of corporate exploitation can appear, almost magically, as promising solutions.

The Gimme Shelter video—like so much of the western capitalist communications apparatus—allows whites to justify our ignorance, to inculcate and nurture our apathy, and to simultaneously hide behind our ‘innocence’. Ben Affleck offers a stellar performance of the ostensibly innocent white man, the latest white savior for Africa, taken to the extreme.

“But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent,” wrote African American James Baldwin. “It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.”⁶¹

1. Clifford H. Bernath and David C. Gompert, The Power to Protect: Using New Military Capabilities to Stop Mass Killings, Refugees International, July 2003.
2. Contributions to UNHCR Programmes
3. Conflict and Development: Peacebuilding and Post-conflict Resolution; Sixth Report of Session 2005-06, Parliament Great Britain International Development Committee, 2006, pp. 247, 251.
4. You will find an interview favorable to Rwanda’s Gen. Laurent Nkunda published as an “Exclusive Interview” in the Huffington Post by this writer’s former colleague. See: Georgianne Nienaber “Congo rebel leader Accused of War Crimes Tells His Story,” Huffington Post, January 9, 2009.
5. Letter titled “Violation of OECD Guidelines for multinational Enterprises through PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd. New York,” by Mag. Thomas Eggenburg, Vienna, Monday, March 27, 2006. It is important to recognize that the interested parties who brought the PricewaterhouseCoopers crimes to light are themselves corporate competitors interested in controlling the Lueshe mine: Kroll Associates.
6. Donations often occur in the form of tax write-offs that provide significant and expeditious benefits to the ‘donors’ due to their timing and amounts. Contributions to UNHCR Programmes
7. Credit Suisse Group web site.
8. Banro Corporation, SEC Form 6-K 2006 and TSX Company Summary.
9. Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, Human Rights Watch, 1999.
10. Helmut Strizek is a German national who worked in the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development from 1974 to 2004. Strizek was a member of the delegation from the European Community to Rwanda, and led work on projects in Rwanda and Burundi. An expert on Africa, he wrote his doctoral thesis on both countries in 1996 and most recently published the book Geschenkte Kolonien (2006).
11. “Discredit the Hutu Population Forever, Analysis of the social, political, economic, military, geostrategic and diplomatic aspects of the crises in Rwanda before, during and after the outbreak of the crisis on April 6, 1994,” Report by Dr. Helmut Strizek, Case no ICTR 2000-56-I, Bonn, August 3, 2008.
12. Dr. Taylor Sebolt, “Could Genocide Have Been Stopped in Rwanda?” Harvard University, 3/17/1999.
13. Decision of the National Pre-Trial Examining Court No.4 (Juzgado Central de Instrucción nº 4 ) of the Audiencia Nacional (Spanish National Court) issuing international arrest warrants, “Sumario 3/2008—D,” Order of Indictment, Madrid, February 6, 2008. This is a confidential document outlining the indictment delivered by the Spain’s high court against the 40 architects of the terrorism in Rwanda and Congo, who are all members of the former Rwanda Patriotic Army. Courtesy of the International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
14. For information about this, review New York Times articles of the era, where you will find staff from Refugees International repeatedly cited as experts.
15. Sony Corp web site, Wiesenthall biography.
16. Private communication, United Nations Special Investigator, DRC, 2007.
17. Private interview, United Nations Special Investigator, DRC, 2006 & 2007.
18. Kabila’s rebels were none other than the RPA and UPDF forces, with their covert western military backers. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999.
19. Jacques Depelchin is today one of the founders of the pro-Rwandan Ota Benga Alliance, a non-governmental organization based in San Francisco. One advisor of the Ota Benga Alliance is Berkeley scholar Adam Hocschild, author of the acclaimed book King Leopold’s Ghost.
20. Mahmood Mamdani, Understanding the Crisis in Kivu: Report of the CODESRIA Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo September, 1997, Centre for African Studies University of Cape Town, November 20, 1998.
21. “DRC conflict good for aid agencies—Congolese,” ZBC News, November 24, 2008.
22. David Barouski, Press Release, World News Journal, February 8, 2008.
23. Private interview, Kemal Saiki, Kinshasa, DRC, April 7, 2007.
24. On the MONUC support for international mining giant AngloGold Ashanti in Mongwalu, see Renzo Martens, Episode III: Enjoy Poverty, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam; on MONUC involvement in minerals plunder, see United Nations, Office of Internal Oversight Services Investigation Division. ID Case Number 0151/06, July 2, 2007.
25. “DR Congo: UN mission stresses its goal is to help restore state authority,” UN News Service, October 17, 2007.
26. “UN peacekeepers attacked in Congo,” BBC and AP November 24, 2008.
27. “MONUC Demands Urgent Investigations on Allegations of Bad Conduct,” MONUC Press Release, December 28, 2008.
28. Private investigations, Bunia and Kinshasa, DRC, March and April 2007.
29. “North Kivu DRC Residents Blame UN Mission for Escalation of Violence,” Voice of America, December 18, 2008.
30. MONUC Budget.
31. See 2007-2008 Acquisition Plan, UN Procurement Division.
32. “Congo-Kinshasa: UN Advocate George Clooney Calls for Greater Efforts to End Conflict,” UN News Service, 30 October 2008.
33. Interview with MONUC official working in Kinshasa, DRC, January 2009.
34. “Congo peacekeeping mission no longer equal to task: UN,” AFP, December 17, 2008.
35. Private communications, MONUC staff, Kinshasa, DRC, December 2008.
36. James Munyaneza, “Rwanda: Hollywood Star Ben Affleck Here,” The New Times, December 18, 2007.
37. See Decision of the National Pre-Trial Examining Court No.4 (Juzgado Central de Instrucción nº 4 ) of the Audiencia Nacional (Spanish National Court) issuing international arrest warrants, “Sumario 3/2008—D,” Order of Indictment, Madrid, February 6, 2008. This is a confidential document outlining the indictment delivered by the Spain’s high court against the 40 architects of the terrorism in Rwanda and Congo, who are all members of the former Rwanda Patriotic Army. Courtesy of the International Forum for Truth and Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
38. See William Taliaferro Close, Beyond the Storm, Meadowlark Springs, 2006.
39. Private communications from North Kivu and personal investigations in North Kivu.
40. UN Messengers of Peace.
41. See e.g., the video The Entrepreneur President—Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Technocrati.
42. Bruce Wilson, “Rick Warren’s African Allies Tied to Massacres, Sex-Slavery, Forced Labor, Concentration Camps,” Huffington Post, January 19, 2009.
43. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999, and Vangold web site.
44. Vangold Uganda maps.
45. Vangold Announces Airborne Survey over Rwanda Oil Concession, July 9, 2008; see also.
46. Keith Harmon Snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception Over Those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June & July 2007; and Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999.
47. Aids Initiative
48. Since publication of the Blood Diamond article the page outlining the Harvard AIDS Institute links to the US Military HIV Research Program has been removed and the HAI web site sanitized.
49. Private interviews, Rwandans in the diaspora, USA, December 2008. See also Keith Harmon Snow, “The US Sponsored Rwanda Genocide and Its Aftermath: Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees,” Global Research, April 12, 2008.
50. Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health Human Rights and the New War on the Poor, University of California Press, 2005: p. 12.
51. Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power: Health Human Rights and the New War on the Poor, University of California Press, 2005: p. 261 n.11.
52. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Harper Perennial, 2003.
53. Farmer’s Pathologies of Power cites Philip Gourevitch, Peter Uvin and Elizabeth Neuffer.
54. Biography of Michael Porter, Alumni Association of Princeton University.
55. See Dr. Helmut Strizek on the Jerusalem Post article where David Kimche, Israel’s former Director-General of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs praised Paul Kagame and compared him to David Ben-Gurion. “Discredit the Hutu Population Forever, Analysis of the social, political, economic, military, geostrategic and diplomatic aspects of the crises in Rwanda before, during and after the outbreak of the crisis on April 6, 1994,” Report by Dr. Helmut Strizek, Case no ICTR 2000-56-I, Bonn, August 3, 2008.
56. See keith harmon snow, “The Steinmetz Gertler Bling Bang Torah Gang: Israel and the Holocaust in Central Africa,” Dissident Voice, February 8, 2008.
57. See e.g., Terry Tempest Williams, “Healing Rwanda,” Orion Magazine, Sept./October 2008. Also, Jane Goodall is on the Advisory Board of the Orion Society.
58. See “The Prosecutor versus Joseph Nzirorera, Motion for Binding Order to the United States of America,” ICTR Case Number OCTR 99-48-T, August 19, 2008.
59. Melissa Currier, “Rwandan Leader Fills Robsham,” The Heights (BC Student Newspaper), April 14, 2005.
60. Private interviews, Rwandans in the diaspora, USA, December 2008.
61. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 1963 Civil Rights Manifesto.

Tears run down the face of a humble Congolese man grieving his wife’s death at the hands of a militia in North Kivu, DRC. He is one of millions of innocent people struggling to survive amidst the ongoing and sustainable catastrophe in Congo. Photo Keith Harmon Snow, 2007.

On December 17, 2008, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) unveiled their latest fundraising campaign in pursuit of charity donations ‘for Congo War Victims’. Set to the iconic song by Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, the four-minute Gimme Shelter video filmed and produced by Hollywood star Ben Affleck is an advertisement for UNHCR.¹ The UNHCR logo appears at least ten times in the short film, serving the modern day advertising technique of ‘product placement’ to inspire charitable giving to the UNHCR enterprise.

“When awareness is raised, when constituencies start to pay attention, they are more likely to pay attention to that one thing than another,” director Ben Affleck told Voice of America. “What I can do is care about something. What I can do is make it important to my elected officials. Diplomacy is free.”

Diplomacy is free? Is Ben Affleck a ‘free’ agent working to help the people of Congo? Or is Affleck enhancing and trading in moral currency in the arena of international public opinion?

Since 2007, Ben Affleck has repeatedly traveled to Rwanda and Congo. While presenting himself as an independent agent on a humanitarian mission in Congo, Ben Affleck, simultaneously, has closely affiliated himself with Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his military government—the people responsible for perpetrating and perpetuating war crimes in Congo and Rwanda.

Considering his relationships to powerful people directly involved in war in Africa’s Great Lakes, one wonders if Ben Affleck is playing his actor’s role both on stage and off. In any case, Ben Affleck is not the first Hollywood celebrity to be fronted as the Great White Hope for the Congo, and many of the same Hollywood actorvists have been similarly used by the NGO industry in Haiti.

Actress Jessica Lange has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2003; her first mission was into the Congo. Covering Congo and Sudan, Actor George Clooney has starred as a UN Messenger of Peace since January 2008, a role actor Michael Douglas has played since 1998.

Since 2001, actress Angelina Jolie has been UNHCR’s ‘Goodwill Ambassador,’ a role that took her to eastern Congo in 2003 and 2004.² Jolie traveled in eastern Congo with intelligence insider and International Crisis Group agent John Prendergast, who is aligned with a growing army of ‘Save Darfur’ cloned organizations that deploy state-of-the-art media technologies to undermine and co-opt any true grass roots movement to legitimately empower African people.³ ,⁴

Jolie also starred as a ‘selfless’ hero working as a UNHCR official in Hollywood’s Beyond Borders, a film that peddles the necessity of mixing Central Intelligence Agency gun-running operations with humanitarian missions—because it is ostensibly for the ‘right’ cause: Western sponsored covert interventions.

Hollywood stars from the film Ocean’s Thirteen formed another ‘humanitarian’ organization that inevitably throws celebrity raised funds at the western structural violence and white power economies focused on sustaining disaster in Africa. The governing board of Not On Our Watch includes Ocean’s Thirteen stars George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Don Cheadle, and Matt Damon—Ben Affleck’s buddy ‘Will’ from the film Good Will Hunting—and producers Jerry Weintraub and David Pressman.⁵

Clooney recently joined John Prendergast, a U.S. National Security apparatus insider, and Hollywood producer David Pressman to pen a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, opining all the usual trite platitudes—but absent a single recommendation of substance—about how President Obama can help Congo.⁶ Prendergast, who is billed as a ‘leading American human rights activist’, has previously boasted of traveling around Sudan and Central Africa with President Paul Kagame, and he is named as one of the early architects of the RPA coup d’etat in Rwanda.⁷

The entire exercise of appointing and fronting Hollywood celebrities as United Nations ‘Messengers for Peace’ and ‘Goodwill Ambassadors’ is a further means by which the establishment whitewashes the war-making and plunder of multinational corporations, and the individuals responsible for carnage the world over, and to more deeply institutionalize the structural violence. Described as ‘helping to shine light on the world’s trouble spots’, celebrity actorvism is more like a cop shining a bright light in your eyes so that you are disoriented, confused and blinded.

Privatizing the ‘humanitarian’ sector through media celebrities or through entertainment and publicity extravaganzas—like ‘Food AID’ and ‘Band AID’ and ‘Not on Our Watch’—that falsely claim to benefit African people, simultaneously lets governments off the hook, obscures the true intent of predatory capitalism, and creates personality cults that further entrench white ‘society’ pathologies of obliviousness, ignorance, goodness and supremacy.⁸

“I’m not an expert in international affairs or diplomacy,” Affleck is quoted everywhere as saying, “but it doesn’t take that to see the tremendous suffering here. It’s not something that we as human beings can, in good conscience, ignore.”

What does it take to see and understand the nature of systemic exploitation? We might question Affleck’s good conscience, given what he is ignoring. The short Gimme Shelter video produced by Ben Affleck ignores the realities and players fueling the bloodshed. Is this the same creative genius that brought us the award-winning film Good Will Hunting?

“My hope in being here is primarily to bring attention to the fact that there’s a real lack of (aid agencies) here,” Affleck said, according to public relations productions about his visit. “There’s a real lack of money going to these folks.”

In eastern Congo, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) coordinates 126 organizations, including 10 UN agencies and 50 international NGOs, and scores of state and national NGOs. OCHA also works with Congolese governmental officials and donors.

The annual OCHA budget alone hovers around $US 680-700 million. The 2008 budget for the World Food Program in DRC was about $430 million, with 56% of all food resources designated for North Kivu.⁹ And while such organizations each year project more than they are able to actually raise, their incomes and their expenditures rise annually: their operating behaviors are identical to that of multinational corporations.

From 2000 to 2007 the UNHCR global expenditures grew from $US 800 million to $US 1.2 billion—and UNHCR delineates $US hundreds of millions annually for DRC and Uganda, where they count some 1.1 million and 1.6 million internally displaced people (IDPs) respectively.¹⁰ Indeed, while UNHCR uses the media to plead poverty and peddle hope in the public limelight, the agency applauds its fundraising success in private—where UNHCR statements indicate that UNHCR considers ‘fundraising’ as a profitable business opportunity in its own right. The market—in this case the welfare of millions of people of color—is irrelevant to their goals.

“Following a period of strong income growth,” reads a UNHCR executive job posting, “the UN Refugee Agency has decided to increase its investment in private sector fundraising through the recruitment of an experienced fundraising management professional… This fundraising strategy is implemented through a network of nine UNHCR National Associations and Country Offices (Australia, Canada, Greece, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, US, Spain, UK). As part of its new investment strategy the UN Refugee Agency is currently carrying out various new market entry studies and plans to launch fundraising programs in several new markets in the coming years.”¹¹

The salary for the UNHCR’s chief fundraising executive ranges from $US 127,104 to $US 151,446—after deductions, per annum, tax exempt, plus additional major benefits.¹¹

Food AID is also being siphoned off the massive ‘humanitarian’ mission in eastern Congo and being sold in markets.¹² The criminal aspects of the ‘humanitarian’ enterprise are well established.¹³

“These international NGOs are all here for the same reason as every other foreigner in Congo—to make money,” reports a newly arrived NGO volunteer from eastern Congo. “I came here to help the folks and seek work, but the more I learn the more FUBAR this place appears to be. It has evolved into a highly efficient corrupt system.”¹⁴

Ben Affleck’s statements about “a real lack of (aid agencies) here” and “a real lack of money going to these folks” are demonstrably false. There is no lack of agencies, no lack of money, and these are not ‘folks’—they are highly politicized institutions, part of an industry that perpetuates and institutionalizes deracination, and they use and abuse ‘innocent’ but nihilistic celebrities like Ben Affleck.

“I was thinking there was some thing wrong with him,” reports a Congolese insider, who said that UN officials were telling Congolese people that Ben Affleck wants to build a hospital in North Kivu. “He was not really interested by the position of Congolese people and his heart was in Rwanda during all the time he was here.”¹⁵

When George Clooney visited the war zone in eastern Congo the ‘peacekeepers’ played some basketball with him. Did MONUC roll out its marching bands to meet Ben Affleck?

Affleck traveled into to the bush to meet with the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR)—the militia that Paul Kagame and the western press falsely cite, ad nauseam, as the cause of Rwanda and Congo’s woes. Why did Affleck meet with the FDLR? Was Affleck secretly scouting FDLR positions for Rwandan officials? He also met with Rwandan General Laurent Nkunda, a bonafide war criminal named by the United Nations.

“He didn’t want people to know he came from Rwanda,” the Congolese insider said, after learning about Affleck’s relations with Rwandan officials. “Our problem will never reach an end.”¹⁶

Affleck’s visits coincided with protests by Congolese people fed up with MONUC, due to the unchallenged war lords and impunity for war crimes and massive suffering. People everywhere were pelting MONUC vehicles with stones and Affleck’s UN convoy was also reportedly pelted.

Ben Affleck has been defended for “not being guilty of being a celebrity.”¹⁷ But given the unsurpassed mortality, sexual atrocities, depopulation and war crimes in Central Africa, and given the extent to which the root causes of these wars have been articulated by certain independent journalists and certain organizations, can one morally or ethically plead ‘innocence’ about the white power interests one is peddling or protecting?

No matter the political intrigues and hidden agendas—which we have only just begun to unpack—the Affleck-Jagger Gimme Shelter campaign is billed as ‘not a political, but a humanitarian’ gesture. However, Ben Affleck is now a highly political actor in the Congo warfare and exploitation arena, as this article will show, and this raises questions about culpability, responsibility and ethics.

Is Ben Affleck seriously concerned about suffering in Congo? Why doesn’t he name any of the white exploiters like Banro Corporation or PricewaterhouseCoopers? What is Ben Affleck’s relationship to the protagonists in this war? Is Ben Affleck being paid for his silence? Or is he just another victim being used by, and benefiting from, a hopelessly corrupt system?

Pakistani troops in kilts play the bagpipes in a marching band attached to MONUC 'peacekeeping' operations in South Kivu, DRC. Photo copyright Keith Harmon Snow, July 2005.

SHATTERED, SHATTERED, THIS TOWN’S IN TATTERS

A new United Nations Development Program (UNDP) study released December 17, 2008, reports that nearly half the population in the DRC may not live to 40 years of age, that 75% of the population lived below the poverty line—on less than one dollar a day—while more than half the population (57%) had no access to drinking water or to basic health care (54%), and three out of every 10 children are malnourished.

At the beginning of the Gimme Shelter video, we are told that “In Eastern Congo, the AK-47″—which flashes across the screen strapped to a Congolese soldier’s back—”is known as the Congolese Credit Card.”

Characterizing the Kalashnikov AK-47 as “the Congolese Credit Card” is overtly racist, because it casts Congolese people—and males in particular—as pathological gun-toting thugs. It is the same type of characterization of Congolese men that is made by Eve Ensler and the V-Day Congo lobby about ‘femicide’ in Eastern Congo. ‘Femicide’ is an inaccurate description for a situation where males are usually killed outright, as in Congo. The combination of femicide and homocide amounts to mass murder and, in the case of RPA operations in Rwanda and Congo, genocide.¹⁸

Comparing an AK-47 in the hands of a Congolese male to a credit card is doubly racist because it is premised on a blame the victim mentality (by whites) that further ridicules black African males who have no possibility of upward mobility, no possibility of obtaining a Master Card or VISA or American Express—symbols of excessive materialism, western privilege, selective financial access and financial gate-keeping.

Similarly, Affleck’s four minute video of black African faces—who are suffering the indignities of homelessness and beggary—deliberately whites out any images of, or references to, the raw materials leaving the eastern Congo through Uganda and Rwanda, or arriving at ports and factories in Europe, Japan, China and the USA. Affleck’s short film also unquestionably serves the misery industries and the so-called ‘peacekeeping’ professionals that profit from the massive suffering.

After the ‘Congolese Credit Card’ image we are told “there are twenty-two recognized armed groups” in Congo, but nothing at all about their ties to the organized crime networks run by Uganda or Rwanda and their western allies. There is nothing about the proliferation of AK-47s, landmines or other weaponry, or the many white merchants of death behind Central Africa’s woes.

We are told: “UNHCR transports refugee families fleeing from the violence,” but any and all reasons why millions of brutalized people have been forced to flee homes and villages are omitted.

UNHCR senior media officer Tim Irwin said that Gimme Shelter is “designed to inform and mobilize people all around the world to bring relief to hundreds of thousands of Congolese victims who have been uprooted from their homes because of the violence between Hutu militias, ethnic Tutsi rebels, and Congolese soldiers.”

What are the differences between ‘Hutu militias’ and ‘ethnic Tutsi rebels’? Why are Hutus described as ‘militias’ while Tutsis are described as ‘rebel’? What makes ‘ethnic Tutsi rebels’ ethnic, while ‘Hutu militias’, apparently, are not ‘ethnic Hutu’? The same distortions of reality were applied to the establishment narrative of genocide in Rwanda: 100 days of killing; Hutus killing Tutsis and ‘moderate Hutus’… What is a ‘moderate Hutu’?

In establishment narratives, war is peace, slavery is freedom, and language is used to criminalize the innocent, just as it is in the so-called ‘war on terror’. Thus ‘Hutu militias’ has come to mean ‘the genocidal Interahamwe’.¹⁹ ‘Tutsi rebels’ means ‘those victimized minority guerrillas who stopped the genocide and are now seeking justice by hunting down every last genocidaire‘—whether man, woman or child. A ‘moderate Hutu’ is one who sided with the minority Tutsi RPA guerrillas—the real terrorists—against the supposed ‘extremist’ government of Juvenal Habyarimana.

As indicated above, mainstream ‘news’ stories are frequently whitewashed by simplistic racial stereotypes: racially tainted sound bites meant to confuse and mislead western ‘news’ consumers. These racial markers serve to distance western populations, especially but not only Caucasians, and they underscore and further inculcate false beliefs about the superiority of both western civilization and white people.

Similarly, the Affleck production whitewashes the chaos created by foreign interventions, covert operations and white-collar organized crime by reducing a complex imperialist invasion to ‘ethnic warfare’. (This is called essentializing.) The structural factors that insure this war will continue, and the huge salaries, adventurous lifestyles and special privileges of white expatriates working in the so-called ‘humanitarian’ aid sector are rendered equally invisible. Multinational corporations, involved in the exploitation, are obliterated without a trace of their ever being there, and, in many cases, they are offered up as the perfect, as yet untried, solution.

Consider just one company, Banro, a Canadian-based gold exploration company with four wholly owned properties, each with mining licenses along a major gold belt of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.²⁰ Banro Corporation operates only in eastern DRC, where they are projecting massive gold profits—in the billions of dollars.

Banro was ‘awarded’ gold concessions comprising 5,730 square kms (2,212 square miles), and Banro personnel are ferried over the remote and blood-drenched South Kivu landscape by private helicopters. From December 31, 2005, to September 31, 2008, Banro—always declaring a loss due to exploration—increased its assets from $US 100 to $US 121 million. In the same period, more than 1000 Congolese people died every day—roughly 1,000,000 victims.

Banro Corporation has identified 4.68 million ounces of gold on ‘their’ properties, and they have inferred another 4.87 million ounces. Banro’s gold prospects are today valued at some $US 3.74 billion (identified) and $US 3.89 billion (inferred), for a total of $US 7.63 billion dollars—and this is just one of the many foreign companies pillaging Congo.

Perhaps Ben Affleck can tell us something we can’t, in good conscience, ignore. How does a Canadian mining company come to ‘wholly-own’ land in blood drenched eastern Congo? And why are Banro Corporation directors—Simon Village, Michael Prinsloo, Arnold Kondrat, Peter Cowley, John Clarke, Bernard van Rooyen, Piers Cumberlege and Richard Lachcik ²¹ —not under the spotlight for their obvious involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide?

Banro advertises themselves as one of Congo’s great benefactors “well-positioned to benefit from the timely economic, social and political recovery of the DRC.”²² Hello? To benefit from the timely economic, social and political recovery of the Congo? Hello! The ongoing white-collar business operations of Banro Corporation amidst the killing in eastern Congo are crimes against humanity.

“The principle thing for me, over the course of this last year, has been learning,” Affleck said, prior to a primetime ABC Nightline broadcast—Ben Affleck in Congo—in June 2008. “I needed to learn and I’m still learning. It’s not as if I’m some expert or I’m presenting myself as a person with answers—and I’m not an advocate of a particular organization.”

Affleck’s independence didn’t last long. Before his December 2008 deal with UNHCR, Affleck signed on with Save the Children, a Connecticut based corporate enterprise whose massive profits earned from the chaos of war and suffering in Africa have been sufficiently documented.¹³

In May 2008, Ben Affleck visited with former child soldiers, as part of Save the Children’s global Rewrite the Future campaign. According to Save the Children PR, the campaign “helps to provide quality education” to children in conflict countries, such as kids in Goma, DRC.²³

A Congolese child suffering from malnutrition waits to die in a clinic in North Kivu, DRC. Such images are perpetually used to provoke western media spectators to donate to corporate relief operations. Photo Keith Harmon Snow, 2005.

Can anyone honestly provide a single example of ‘quality education’ available to children in all of Congo?²⁴ White westerners think that a dilapidated cement shell with a tin roof and some wooden benches qualifies as ‘education’ of a higher standard in Africa.

More importantly, Save the Children’s sponsors include Starbucks and Credit Suisse, two multinational corporations that are deeply enmeshed in the geopolitical plunder of Central Africa. However, such relationships between corporate ‘donors’ and so-called ‘non-government’ organizations (NGOs) billed as apolitical humanitarian charities are obscured by the propaganda of white power interests and the obliviousness of its beneficiaries, like Ben Affleck.

President Paul Kagame gave a corporate endorsement at Starbuck’s annual shareholder meeting in Seattle in March 2007. “Starbucks and Rwanda are extended family, very closely linked by the business we do together and the passion we share,” Kagame said.²⁵

THE UPSIDE DOWN GENOCIDE

The Kagame military machine—backed by the US, U.K., Canada, Germany and Israel—is one of Congo’s greatest enemies. Kagame was one of the original 27 soldiers to launch the guerrilla war in Uganda, 1980, alongside now president-for-life Yoweri Museveni. Kagame soon became the head of Museveni’s dreaded Internal Security Organization, and he was directly involved in tortures, massacres and other human rights atrocities during the Museveni regime’s consolidation of power.

In October 1990 Kagame returned from training at the US Army base at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas to lead the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) illegal invasion of Rwanda. The US military and its partners backed the invasion, just as they backed the invasion of Congo in 1996, and the recent invasion of Congo launched this week.

From 1990 to 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA), comprised most heavily of Ugandan soldiers led by Ugandan citizens like Paul Kagame, committed atrocity after atrocity as they forced their way to power in Kigali, always falsely accusing their enemies—the power-sharing government of then President Juvenal Habyarimana—of genocide.²⁶

On December 18, 2008, after the protracted ‘Military I’ trial, the judges at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) ruled that there was no conspiracy to commit genocide by former Rwandan military leaders affiliated with the Habyarimana government. It was a war, and the actions—far from a calculated genocide—were found by the ICTR judges to be ‘war-time conditions’.²⁷

“The media reports of the December 18 judgment [Military I] at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda focused primarily on the convictions of three of four former top military leaders, who were the supposed ‘masterminds’ of the Rwandan genocide,” wrote ICTR defense lawyer Peter Erlinder. “But, as those who have followed the ICTR closely know, convictions of members of the former Rwandan government and military are scarcely newsworthy.”²⁷

Since the inception of the ICTR its decisions have been decisively biased—victor’s justice—in favor of the Kagame regime and to protect it and its backers. Thus it is no surprise that the former top military leaders of the Habyarimana government—Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, Major Aloys Ntabakuze and General Gratien Kabiligi—were sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.²⁸

“The real news was that ALL of the top Rwandan military officers, including the supposedly infamous Colonel Bagosora, were found not guilty of conspiracy or planning to commit genocide,” writes Erlinder. “And General Gratien Kabiligi, a senior member of the general staff was acquitted of all charges! The others were found guilty of specific acts committed by subordinates, in specific places, at specific times—not an overall conspiracy to kill civilians, much less Tutsi civilians.”²⁷

Now, after more than fifteen years of massive western propaganda proclaiming an organized, systematic elimination of the Tutsi people by the Hutu leaders of the former Rwandan government, the official Rwanda genocide story has finally collapsed.

While the western media has consistently covered up the Rwandan occupation in Congo over the past decade, with a complete denial of Rwandan presence from circa 2005 to 2008, the imminent changing of the Presidential guard in the US provoked a recent rash of articles stating the obvious: Rwanda is all over Congo. In mid December the UN released a report further documenting what independent journalists have maintained and reported all along: the Rwandan government is directly backing rebel factions, criminal networks and mining operations in eastern Congo.

The euphemistically named guerrilla army—National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP)—lorded over by General Laurent Nkunda, has maintained direct personal communications with the office of the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame. The Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) have dispatched military personnel into Congo, recruited and armed child soldiers, and they are involved in minerals plunder, racketeering, extortion and war crimes.²⁹

Now the Kagame government, immunized against prosecution thanks to their connections to top former Clinton and Bush officials, who now sit on high in the Obama administration, has openly sent more than 1500 troops into North Kivu using weapons recently delivered to Rwanda for their equally illegal terrorist operations in Darfur, Sudan.

The Kagame government, with its foreign backers, has pursued an identical strategy in Congo as they did in Rwanda, 1990-1994. The goal is to destabilize the region, manufacture chaos, sue for peace while pursuing war, and use the UN ‘peacekeeping’ mission to aid the predatory agenda. The final solution is to permanently criminalize the Hutu majority, entrench economic and political relations between the Kivus and Rwanda, and between Ituri and Uganda, and balkanize Congo—exactly as proposed by president Clinton’s national security insider Walter Kansteiner (1996).³⁰

The ‘surprising’ arrest of General Laurent Nkunda, on January 22, 2009, by the troops of the joint FARDC and Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) operation is merely damage control, with General Laurent Nkunda being the latest Fall Guy arrested to recover some sense of credibility for the international police forces—the Pentagon and its proxy armies in Rwanda and Uganda—and to enable the Kagame military cabal to distance itself from the recent exposés documenting Rwanda’s machinations in eastern Congo.

THE MISERY INDUSTRY

The Gimme Shelter campaign set out to raise $23 million for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) for so-called “emergency humanitarian assistance” to help displaced persons in the DRC, and now it has spawned an industry unto itself.

“The Rolling Stones are very happy to contribute to Gimme Shelter in support of Ben’s efforts to raise the profile of the conflict in the Congo,” one UN public relations agency quotes Mick Jagger as saying. “We all need to stand up and support the work of organizations like UNHCR who are on the ground offering protection and working hard to ensure the rights and wellbeing of refugees.”³¹

Does UNHCR insure the rights and well being of refugees? The Gimme Shelter film has been distributed worldwide via Internet, television, mobile phones, cinemas and hotel chains.

Hollywood actorvist Mia Farrow—the Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF—also jetted into Congo for the festivities. Farrow made a three-day visit to the DRC in December, 2008, and then made a plug for the corporate AID industry by “urging all armed groups in North Kivu to allow aid organizations to provide life-saving assistance to women and children.”³¹

The structural violence that allows for white actorvist jet-setters like Mia Farrow to zoom into and out of such complex emergencies as Congo or Darfur, to make films in refugee camps or hold press conferences in war zones, and to urge armed groups to stop fighting so that business operations can be transacted, is never explored.

UNHCR’s headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland and there are 262 field offices in 116 countries: this is a big business operation dependent on insecurity, population displacements, and warfare.³²

The current head of the UNHCR is António Guterres, who started as UN High Commissioner for Refugees on June 15, 2005, after Rudd Lubbers, the former UNHCR chief, resigned amidst a sex scandal.³³ Guterres served as Portuguese prime minister from 1996 to 2002. Jean-Pierre Bemba, a Congolese warlord with deep ties to Portugal, was at the time a warlord in Congo backed by Uganda and its western allies.³⁴

Western expatriates take a break from humanitarian relief operations to practice 'aquatic yoga' at a plush club swimming pool off limits to ordinary Congolese people. Just one of the many perks of relief work in 'exotic' foreign war zones. Photo Keith Harmon Snow, 2007.

The UNHCR’s interests in Congo are not only about sustained employment for its highly paid workers—where white people get the best jobs—and lucrative procurement contracts for other corporations. UNHCR also takes a highly politicized, corporate stance in host countries.

In Benin, in 1997, the UNHCR openly collaborated with Royal/Dutch Shell Corporation officials after Shell set up offices immediately behind the UNHCR headquarters in Cotonou. UNHCR was at the time responsible for several thousand indigenous Ogoni refugees who fled persecution by Royal/Dutch Shell and the Nigerian military in the oil-devastated Niger River Delta.³⁵

In Gambella, Ethiopia, during the genocidal pogroms against the Anuak people (2005-2006), UNHCR operations were openly affiliated with the perpetrators and UNHCR never spoke out against atrocities committed by the government of President Meles Zenawi, with his approval.³⁶

According to a Refugees International situation report of May 17, 1994, at the height of RPA war crimes in Rwanda, the UNHCR ‘Ngara’ Protection report documented atrocities committed by the RPA at the Tanzanian border—cold-blooded massacres of men, women and children, burned alive in huts, countless war crimes that were attributed to the ‘organized Hutu genocide.’³⁷

“Asked by [a] UNHCR field officer, refugees said the RPF [sic] did not care whether victims [killed by RPA] were Hutu or Tutsi.”³⁷

“Each day there are more and more bodies in the river and most of them without their heads.”³⁷

Commenting on RPA massacres at other border points: “The people of Rwanda have nowhere else to go and we cannot expect them to stay and be slaughtered in their homes.”³⁷

Further, and more devastating to the establishment’s portrayal of the RPA as a ‘disciplined’ rebel force that ‘stopped the genocide,’ it was a consultant named Robert Gersony, contracted by UNHCR, who staked his 25 year career on his findings from his investigation in Rwanda—”what he described as calculated, preplanned, systematic atrocities and genocide against Hutus by the RPA … a plan implemented as a policy from the highest echelons of [the Kagame] government.”³⁸

The United Nations buried the Gersony Report, and it remains buried. When the Gersony report came out, the UNHCR suspended their support for voluntary repatriation of refugees to Rwanda because of RPA massacres. In response, the Rwandan government and many others in the UN turned on the UNHCR. Since that time (1995), UNHCR has accepted the establishment narrative about genocide in Rwanda.

Read on to part 2 …

1. Howard Lesser, “UNHCR Unveils ‘Gimme Shelter’ Campaign for Congo War Victims,” Voice of America, December 18, 2008.
2. In 2004, after this investigator’s first mission to Congo, a (naïve) letter was delivered directly to Angelina Jolie inviting her to travel deep into central Congo to witness the realities of white-owned slave plantations and mining; there was reply
3. See Keith Harmon Snow, “Merchants of Death: White Collar War Crimes, Black African Fall Guys,” Dissident Voice, December 8, 2008.
4. Today, teachers and students can download ‘teaching resources’ that are used to indoctrinate a new set of young people to the mythologies and propaganda that are creating exploitation and suffering in the world, and further entrenching structural violence, while loudly and proudly claiming to alleviate it. See the pro-UNHCR propaganda web site connected to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum: Ripples of Genocide: A Journey Through Eastern Congo.
5. “Ocean’s Thirteen stars donate $1 million in support of UN food agency,” UN News Centre, June 27, 2007.
6. George Clooney, David Pressman and John Prendergast, “George Clooney on how Obama can help Congo,” Wall Street Journal, November 22, 2008.
7. “Discredit the Hutu Population Forever, Analysis of the social, political, economic, military, geostrategic and diplomatic aspects of the crises in Rwanda before, during and after the outbreak of the crisis on April 6, 1994,” Report by Dr. Helmut Strizek, Case no ICTR 2000-56-I, Bonn, August 3, 2008.
8. See Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana, Ed., Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance, State University of New York Press, 2007.
9. World Food Program, DRC.
10. United Nations General Assembly, Executive Committee of the High Commissioner’s Program, UN Doc A/AC.96/1040, 12 September 2007.
11. Head, Private Sector Fundraising Service (PSFR), UNHCR, UNHCR, July 10, 2007.
12. “UN peacekeepers attacked in Congo,” BBC and AP November 24, 2008.
13. Michael Maren, The Road To Hell: The Ravaging Affects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, 1996.
14. ‘FUBAR’ is an acronym, coined by US military during the US war in Vietnam: ‘Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition’. Private communication from Bukavu, DRC, January 16, 2009.
15. Private communications, DRC, December 2008 & January 2009.
16. Private communication, DRC, January 2009.
17. Patrick Goldstein, “The Big Picture:
    Patrick Goldstein on the collision of entertainment, media and pop culture,” (Ben Affleck is Not Guilty About Being A Celebrity), Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2008. Note that the L.A. Times page with the Affleck story above has a dead baby fundraising advertisement for the multinational corporate entity World Vision, showing an African child, crying, with the headline, “A Child Dies Every Four Second: Sponsor A Child” and a digital clock ticking away the four seconds before the child’s image is blacked out and replaced with the next child to die and a new four second counter.
18. See Keith Harmon Snow, “Three Cheers for Eve Ensler: Propaganda, White Collar Crime and Sexual Atrocities in Eastern Congo,” Z-Net, October 24, 2007.
19. Even the word Interahamwe was misrepresented—providing a generalized media sound bite used to easily instill fear and criminalize—as ‘those who attack together’ or ‘those who kill together’ or though it is claimed to more accurately mean ‘united for the same ideal’ and ‘those who work together’. The misrepresentations proliferate in popular spaces like Wikipedia, where Interahamwe is curiously described as ‘the young Hutu males who carried out the Rwandan Genocide acts against the Tutsis in 1994′ but who ‘did not have a clearly organized group of followers’. Such language is telling. Wikipedia attributes the Interahamwe with ‘acts’ of genocide while also noting their total lack of organization, both facts being contrary to an organized, pre-planned, systematic genocide—which is exactly what the judges at the ICTR opined in their decisions of December 12, 2008.
20. Banro Corporation, Financial Reports. See map of properties in South Kivu.
21. Banro Corporation directors.
22. Banro Corporation, “Why Africa and the DRC?”
23. “Ben Affleck Meets Former Child Soldiers in Save the Children’s Campaign to ‘Rewrite the Future’,” Save the Children.
24. We are immediately reminded of the extensive and costly public relations campaigns of the Atlanta (GA) based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. The DFGF cranked out public relations stories describing a beautiful school of university quality that was built, outfitted and sponsored by western donors. However, the situation at the Tayna Center for Conservation Biology—the “American University” and crown jewel of the Conservation International and DFGF efforts—was a sham. See Keith Harmon Snow and Georgianne Nienaber, “King Kong,” Parts 5 & 6, published August 2007 by COA News, available here.
25. Marc Gunther, “Why CEOs love Rwanda: As a small African nation recovers from genocide, Google, Starbucks and Costco lend a hand,” Fortune Magazine, April 3, 2007.
26. See Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999; and “Discredit the Hutu Population Forever, Analysis of the social, political, economic, military, geostrategic and diplomatic aspects of the crises in Rwanda before, during and after the outbreak of the crisis on April 6, 1994,” Report by Dr. Helmut Strizek, Case no ICTR 2000-56-I, Bonn, August 3, 2008; Keith Harmon Snow: “Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees,” Global Research, April 12, 2008.
27. See Peter Erlinder, “Rwanda: No Conspiracy, No Genocide Planning … No Genocide?” Jurist, December 23, 2008.
28. “International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) / Bagosora, Ntabakuze and Nsengiyumva given life sentences;
    Kabiligi acquitted,” African Press Organization, December 18, 2008.
29. Final report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, UN, S/2008/773, December 2008.
30. Walter Kansteiner, the son of a coltan trader in Chicago, is the former Assistant Secretary of State for Africa and former member of the Dept. of Defense Task Force on Strategic Minerals. Kansteiner’s speech at The Forum for International Policy in October of 1996 advocated partitioning the Congo (Zaire) into smaller states based on ethnic lineage. Ironically, while the speech was given, Laurent Kabila and his ADFL were beginning their march to overthrow Mobutu with the aid of Rwanda, Uganda, and the US.
31. “Actor Ben Affleck and Rolling Stone Mick Jagger join forces to help UN refugee agency,” UN News Center, December 17, 2008.
32. Roxanne Stasyszyn, “A World Playground: Congolese Sacrificed for International Games and Profits,” Dissident Voice, November 8, 2008.
33. Kate Holt and Leonard Doyle, “Harassment, intimidation and secrecy—UN chief engulfed in sex scandal,” The Independent, February 18, 2005.
34. See Keith Harmon Snow, “A People’s History of Congo’s Jean-Pierre Bemba,” Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007,
35. Keith Harmon Nnow, personal interviews with UNHCR and Ogoni refugees in Cotonou, Benin, 1997. See also Keith Harmon Snow (under the pseudonym Zak Harmon), “No Safe Haven: Even in refugee camps, Nigeria’s Ogonis face abuse and intimidation,” Toward Freedom, Vol. 46, No. 6, November 1997.
36. Livelihoods and Vulnerabilities Study, Gambella Region of Ethiopia, United Nations Report, made public ‘without authorization’ by Keith Harmon Snow, December 13, 2006.
37. See Mark Prutsalis, SITREP #10 Refugees in Tanzania, Refugees International, May 17, 1994.
38. Shaharyar Khan, “The Gersony ‘Report’ Rwanda,” Outgoing Code Cable, United Nations, October 14, 1994.

How will Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State compromise the Obama Administration’s capacity to honestly redress the untold suffering, massive theft of resources and millions of deaths in Africa? And Tom Daschle? Behind the media smokescreens are people whose involvement has been documented and exposed, but there is always some African fall guy—the ‘embraceable’ black subordinate or ‘rebel’ commander—charged with war crimes and used to deflect attention from the leaders of organized white-collar crime networks.

Blacked out are the corporate executives, government officials and expatriate personnel of Western enterprises whose success amidst chaos implicates them in the deracination and death of millions of black people. What’s behind the recent hostilities and media posturing in Central Africa?

THE SHORT, BRUTISH LIFE OF SANDRINE

On a darkling plain in a far away place the skeletons of hundreds of unnamed people lie strewn over the land amidst the red dirt and brown grasses scorched by the equatorial sun. Bones poke into the air here and there, hidden by the tall grass, tripping you up as you walk; others lay bleaching white in piles where the bodies fell. These are the killing fields of Bogoro, a small hillside village on a southerly road out of Bunia, a metropolis of suffering in the wild, wild east of Congo.

The grassy plains of Bogoro were guarded by soldiers and when I arrived the militia of the day wore black trench coats and black mirror sunglasses to enhance the aura of terror that surrounds them. With AK-47’s slung over their shoulders they talked on shiny Nokias and Motorolas and Samsungs—cellphones built with the blood minerals of the Congolese people.
Militia soldier talking on is cell-phone while guarding the killing fields of Bogoro. Photo copyright 2007 Keith Harmon Snow.

Sandrine—not her real name—is a survivor who participated in the massacre at Bogoro. I interviewed Sandrine, just seventeen at the time, in 2007, and she recounted her ordeal as the sex slave of soldiers. Sandrine told how people were forced by militia commanders to chase down neighbors and kill or be killed. I found Sandrine living in misery in an evacuated refugee camp.

Sandrine knows nothing at all of the vast mining operations or minerals shipments being flown out of remote jungle airstrips in her home territory—or even that such airstrips exist. Ditto for the Congolese researchers I met, in Orientale, who worked with the International Criminal Court. Moto Gold? Mwana Africa? Walter Kansteiner? They had never heard of such companies, or such people.

In Western media reportage the plunder of raw materials in Congo is usually de-linked from the killing, even though the extractive industries are directly behind it, and even though almost everyone has begun to parrot the accusation of “resource wars” in Congo.

The Bogoro massacre occurred in February 2003 and, like the Hutu-Tutsi stories from Rwanda, the media whipped up the specter of ancient tribal animosities between Hema and Lendu tribes. But the real story is not quite so black and white. Or is it?

Today the International Criminal Court (ICC) holds three Congolese “warlords” in the ICC prison at The Hague, Netherlands, and all three were associated with events at Bogoro. However, the white patrons reaping the profits behind the bloodletting in the eastern Congo are protected by a new humanitarian order predicated on permanent inequality, structural violence and race politics.

But for a few brief periods of relative calm, the war in Congo’s eastern Orientale and Kivus provinces has hardly stopped since its’ beginning in 1996, and the realities have been shrouded in media clichés and stereotypes and disingenuous expressions of outrage that deflect attention from the true protagonists and root causes of war and plunder in Africa.¹

GOOD VERSUS EVIL AND THE NAMES GAMES

The UPC, FPRI, FNI—these are three of the scores of militias that have risen and fallen in Orientale since the war began in 1996 and, more poignantly, they are meaningless acronyms used to scramble the brains of western spectator-news-consumers.

First there was the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that invaded Rwanda, and then came the Alliance for the Democratic Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) that marched across Zaire to unseat President Mobutu. Next came the “rebellion” with Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), and all the different factions of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie, or Congolese Rally for Democracy—RCD, RCD-G (Goma), RCD-K, RCD-K-ML—backed by Rwanda and Uganda.

Here are the comrades in arms who studied together at the Marxist University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Yoweri Museveni, Uganda’s president; Laurent Desire Kabila, the ADFL figurehead and assassinated president of the Democratic Republic of Congo; Meles Zenawi, president of Ethiopia; Isaias Afwerki, president of Eritrea; Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani; former RCD leader Wamba dia Wamba; Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president; and John Garang (d. 2005), former leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and first president of South Sudan.

Both the RPF/A and SPLA waged successful covert guerrilla wars against governments that were considered “undesirable” by Washington, both achieved their objectives of seizing land and gaining control, and both insurgencies were covertly backed by U.S. Committee for Refugees official Roger Winter—a pivotal U.S. intelligence asset operating in Sudan and a dedicated ally of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame and John Garang. Winter’s protégé is Susan Rice, Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Rice was one of the primary architects of the Pentagon’s prized Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named entity created to project U.S. power in Africa, and run by U.S. Army Special Forces Command (SOCOM).²

The coups d’etat in Rwanda and Burundi occurred after the presidents Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated on April 6, 1994. Similarly, more than a decade of covert U.S. military support for the SPLA, channeled through Uganda and Ethiopia, led to the Naivasha Peace Agreement of January 2005 and the creation of the autonomous country of South Sudan.

The “Rwanda genocide” began with the 1990 invasion of northern Rwanda by Ugandan forces that brutally targeted everyone in their path. By the time the RPF/A forces—comprised mostly of seasoned Ugandan troops—reached Kigali, more than 800,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) were hovering around the capital city: they were terrified, they were homeless, they were hungry, they were angry and—justifiably—they took up arms. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and its Canadian General Romeo Dallaire clandestinely backed the illegal guerrilla war.³

The guerrilla wars in Rwanda and South Sudan were prosecuted much like the CIA-backed low-intensity guerrilla warfare, spawned by Washington, against populist movements in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and Guatemala. This is exactly what is playing out in Congo and Sudan today: low-intensity guerrilla warfare prosecuted by powerful shadow forces competing for land and loot.

SPLA leader John Garang received military training at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia. Paul Kagame received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At the time he was sent for training, Kagame was Museveni’s director of military intelligence; upon his return he assumed command of the army created, financed and trained by Uganda: the Rwanda Patriotic Army.

Both Garang and Kagame likely received “counter-insurgency” training through the Pentagon’s International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Since 1998, the IMET program has provided training to 318 RDF and 291 UPDF soldiers. Many other IMET soldiers who attended the notorious School of the Americas are today known human rights violators in Latin America.

In North Kivu province we find the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the CNDP, created by self-appointed Rwandan “General” Laurent Nkunda. Here the media has historically cast General Nkunda as good, the FDLR as evil. Only recently has Nkunda come under any kind of “harsh” criticism.

The war in Eastern Congo is almost universally described with clichés about the “Rwanda genocide.” The usual targets of white media racial profiling and hysterical academic polemics are the Hutu—the infamous Interahamwe and FDLR—the “killers” that “fled Rwanda after committing genocide” there. This is how millions of innocent Hutu people—comprising over 85% of the populations of Rwanda and Burundi—are collectively dehumanized.

Congolese Mai Mai militias are described as “nationalists” sometimes “wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads” and “shooting magic bullets.” The Mai Mai are the closest thing to a people’s or indigenous justice movement in Congo. The Mai Mai have most recently allied with the Congo’s national army, the Armed Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and the Mai Mai are sometimes cast as good, but usually as evil.

In 2007 the Mai Mai and FLDR joined forces to form the Front for the National Liberation of Kivu (FNLK). Backed by the FARDC, the FNLK is purportedly vying for power against General Nkunda’s CNDP. However, alliances are constantly shifting based on private profit and “warlord” fiefdoms, and ALL factions, at some point or other, have collaborated in war and resource plunder.

Western news stories throw the acronyms and names of militias around with little or no information about their rise or fall, and nothing substantive about foreign backers they collaborate with. Militias mysteriously appear and disappear. Indeed, the more you read about Congo from venues like the New York Times, Harper’s, the New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly, the less you will understand. This is no accident, and—no, you are not dumb.

Take the militia FNI: but for the victims and their suffering, it makes no difference what the acronym stands for, it’s all one big sadistic joke of language and power. The most significant fact to remember about this “F” “N” “I” is that they served as the private proxy army for the gold mining operations of Metalor, a Swedish firm, and AngloGold Ashanti, headquartered in South Africa and partnered with Barrick Gold.⁴ Secondly, they were agents for Ugandan power brokers.

Anglo-Gold Ashanti directors include Sir Sam Jonah, who is also a director of shady mining-cum-military companies operating in Sierra Leone and connected to Tony Buckingham and other white-collar mercenaries. Buckingham affiliated companies—e.g. Heritage Oil and Gas, Branch Energy, Saracen Uganda—collaborate with the Museveni regime. Saracen’s top shareholder is General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Yoweri Museveni, and Congo’s nemesis, a Ugandan agent cited by the United Nations for war and plunder in Congo.

AngloGold Ashanti is the Anglo American mining conglomerate of the Oppenheimers and De Beers mining cartels of Britain and South Africa, interests deeply aligned with Belgian American intelligence insider Maurice Tempelsman—the godfather of covert operations in Africa. Tempelsman’s diamond interests in Congo were, at least partially, displaced by the Israeli cartels of Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz.⁵ It is a no-brainer that the Tempelsman gang backs Rwanda’s occupation of eastern Congo.

For a second example, media corporations have consistently blacked out the truth about the lucrative corporate “conservation” industry with articles like the recent New York Times production “Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas” (Jeffrey Gettleman, 11/18/08). Unreported however are the many accusations coming out of North Kivu that link the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to local Mai Mai and FDLR: like every other militia, or occupation army, these factions have infiltrated villages and now prey on, intimidate and abuse the locals. The white agents working for Western “conservation” NGOs—and we know their names—are directly responsible for extortion, racketeering, land theft, human rights atrocities and for ripping apart the social fabric.⁶

“The commander of the Mai-Mai is Colonel Ntasibanga and the commander of the FDLR is Colonel Faraja,” report Congolese locals who have been documenting the abuses (the facts are confirmed by a Spanish journalist). “We count already five people killed because of this [conservation] project… DFGF and JGI are without doubt corrupt… they are paying armed groups and forcing us off of our lands.”⁷

The Gettleman NYT article, on the other hand, cites one of these agents, Samantha Newport, described as “a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park,” who in fact works for Richard Leakey’s organization Wildlife Direct, a shady paramilitary entity involving Walter Kansteiner.

A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE

The international arrest warrants issued by Spain and France against some 40 former RPF/A and current Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) are patently dismissed by Western media of all stripes, buried behind waves of pro-RPF propaganda and intimidation that labels anyone who does not support the Kigali military dictatorship as genocide deniers, themselves guilty, by extension, of genocide.

While the RPF/A and UPDF are often named for leading the charge and supplying the bulk of the forces, the 1996 invasion of Zaire, launched from Uganda and Rwanda, involved U.S. covert forces with state-of-the-art C4ISTR—Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance—and there were Humvees and C-130 aircraft ferrying black-skinned U.S. Special Forces into South Sudan and northeastern Congo. The invasion also involved Israeli military experts, an assortment of Eritrean and Ethiopian regulars, and SPLA forces.⁸

The Anglo-European-Israeli forces penetrated eastern Zaire through the Gulu and Arua Districts of northwestern Uganda—the heart of Acholiland and ground zero for the ongoing genocide of the indigenous Acholi people—and they backed the RPA/UPDF who marched across Zaire massacring refugees, mostly women and children, mostly Hutus, that fled Kigali in 1994.⁹¹⁰

Howard French, then the Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times, witnessed the Hutu genocide in Zaire, and wrote about it.¹¹ Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani—who by no means was an impartial observer when he arrived in Goma in September 1997—described “an indiscriminate slaughter” of Interahamwe, of unarmed Hutu refugees, and of Congolese Hutus in the Kivus.¹² Bill Richardson, President Clinton’s Ambassador to the United Nations, stated in a may 1997 interview: “I think there’s strong evidence that there have been these massacres.”¹³

But the subject of Hutus being slaughtered was only broached as a tool to hammer down the uppity black rebel who diverged from his script and upset Washington’s plans. Indeed, the rise and fall of ADFL figurehead Laurent Desire Kabila exemplifies the embraceable black leader transformed almost overnight into the unembraceable black fall guy. In the end, a bullet dispatched Laurent Kabila on 16 January 2001, exactly 40 years after the assassination of Patrice Lumumba (17 January 1961).

Anyone who dismisses the organized and intentional RPF/A and UPDF military campaign against millions of Hutu people—massacred and chased from the Uganda border to Kigali, into to eastern Congo, and finally attacked in refugee camps and butchered all the way across Zaire—is a genocide denier. (Of course, the UPDF-RPF/A alliance also summarily executed and massacred Rwandan Tutsis and indigenous Twa, and Congolese people.) Similarly, anyone who dismisses the organized persecution and atrocities against the Acholi people in northern Uganda—maintained by the Museveni government and the UPDF occupation—is a genocide denier.

The criminality of the Kagame regime is whitewashed by the massive public relations campaigns involving Kagame’s special advisor/sponsors: former Ambassador Andrew Young and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Young’s Goodworks International also backs the Museveni regime. Buffing the shiny image of the government of Congo’s President Joseph Kabila is Stevens and Schriefer Group the Washington D.C. PR-firm that twice helped get George W. Bush elected.

The New Yorker and CNN have consistently manufactured the pro-RPF/A propaganda, reported by Christiane Amanpour and Philip Gourevitch. Amanpour is married to James Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Assistant Secretary of State and Madeleine Albright’s right-hand man, and now economic adviser to President-elect Barack Obama. Gourevitch—who produced the celebrated pro-RPF/A text We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, is a close friend of Paul Kagame and a conduit for State Department disinformation passed by James Rubin, who was also Chief Spokesman for the Clinton State Department (1997-2000), and whose sister, Elizabeth Rubin, was dating Gourevitch.

U.S. business tycoon Joe Ritchie “has volunteered in Rwanda for the past five years introducing the country to business leaders around the world.” Ritchie also runs an “entrepreneurial philanthropy” called Friends of Rwanda and serves on President Paul Kagame’s Advisory Council and as CEO of the Rwanda Development Board.¹⁴¹⁵ Like Walter Kansteiner, Joe Ritchie is a commodities and options trader from Chicago with deep pockets and dark secrets: involved in a private attempt to overthrow the Taliban in 2000, Joe and James Ritchie were aided by their favorite consultant, former national security adviser Robert McFarlane, who successfully lobbied the CIA to dispatch an Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle (UAV) to the skies over Afghanistan.¹⁶

The Congo wars have direct links to the many long years of war in Sudan and Uganda, and they are intertwined with the current low-intensity warfare and the mass murder in Darfur, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. If we apply the genocide label to conflicts where it surely fits, then genocide is ongoing in Congo’s Orientale and Kivus provinces, and in Acholiland in Northern Uganda.¹⁷ But it is also occurring in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burundi, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Botswana, Columbia, the Palestinian Territories and Malaysia, to mention a few irrefutable cases.

These geopolitical and strategic hotspots remain mostly blanketed by media reportage that quite literally blacks out key white protagonists by putting a black African face on things. Another example: there has been little reported about the perpetual warfare and human rights atrocities in Orientale linked to tight little airstrips carved out of the rainforest and paved with support from the Pentagon-connected United States Agency for International Development (USAID).¹⁸

Consider Mwana Africa, a South African firm that controls the Kilo-Moto gold fields in Zani, DRC. The Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), led by Thomas Lubanga, occupied the Zani gold fields in 2002 and stirred up ethnic animosities that led to massive suffering and depopulation. However, according to Congolese locals, it was the white missionaries from the Africa Inland Mission that deeply divided local ethnic groups. French tycoons Jacques and Alvaro Hachuel own Mwana Africa.

Mwana Africa’s European director, Etienne Denis, began his long career of impoverishing the Congo at Umicore, formerly the Belgian mining giant Union Miniere, in 1974. The Mwana Africa airstrip at Zani, and nearby roads, were built with USAID backing, and the gold is flown out to Tanzania—one of the most underappreciated criminal players funneling weapons to Uganda and Congo—or sometimes shipped out by road through Uganda.¹⁹ Mwana Africa is also involved in Congo’s bloody MIBA diamond concessions in Mbuji Mayi and the cobalt/copper concessions in Katanga.²⁰

Similarly, almost nothing in context has been reported of the white mercenaries and their petroleum operations on the Uganda border with Orientale.²¹ Like the ongoing covert war in Darfur, where the backers of the “mysterious” rebel groups are never exposed, the militias operating in Congo are proxy armies that serve the interests of external power blocks at the expense of their competitors.

Most reporting from the Kivus zooms in on sexual violence and the Western media always blames the victims—Congolese soldiers caught in the maelstrom of international proxy warfare and organized crime—but we hear nothing about U.S. or Canadian or Australian mining companies—and for those rare times that we do the reportage de-links the mining from the mass murder.²² More often, the media turns the story upside down, claiming that responsible Western mining executives are waiting in the wings for security to improve so they can provide jobs and accountability and “sustainable development” for the Congolese people. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A recent front-page news feature, “Congo’s Riches, Looted by Renegade Troops,” about the Bisie tin mine in North Kivu, offers the perfect example. “On paper, the exploration rights to this mine belong to a consortium of British and South African investors who say they will turn this perilous and exploitative operation into a safe, modern beacon of prosperity for Congo,” wrote Jeffrey Gettleman for the New York Times. “But in practice, the consortium’s workers cannot even set foot on the mountain. Like a mafia, Colonel Matumo and his men extort, tax and appropriate at will, draining this vast operation, worth as much as $80 million a year.”²³

And thus do the valiant white knights of the New York Times shine their spotlight on plunder and extortion in Congo. Alas, it is a selective shining, an expedient “humanitarian” concern, and an arrogant moral high ground. Indeed, it is just another shade of the black and white race politics behind the politicization of the International Criminal Court.

THE BLACK AFRICAN FALL GUYS

In June of 2008 the ICC charged two black African rebel leaders, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, with six counts of war crimes (willful killing; inhuman treatment or cruel treatment; using children under the age of fifteen years to participate actively in hostilities; sexual slavery; intentionally directing attacks against civilians; and pillaging) and three counts of crimes against humanity (murder, inhumane acts and sexual slavery).

ICC prosecutors say that Chui and his commander Katanga—known as Simba—led a militia called the Front for Patriotic Resistance of Ituri (FPRI); Chui was also a commander in another militia, the National Integrationist Front (FNI). The FPRI was fighting against the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC); another militia in Congo backed by outsiders, in particular, some faction from the U.S.

UPC commander Thomas Lubanga—another black man—was the first person detained at the ICC’s Scheveningen prison at The Hague. Charles Taylor, former “warlord” and president from Liberia was the second. Germaine Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui were next to be chosen for this auspicious club. Congolese “warlord” Jean-Pierre Bemba is the last of five detainees now held at the ICC. Bemba was the leader of the Congolese rebel army, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), but he is charged with crimes in the Central African Republic.²⁴

These five men all have more in common than the charges against them. They are all black men, once embraced by the system and empowered as local or national leaders, and they are now the black stooges who fell from grace to become, in the language of anthropologist and scholar Dr. Enoch Page, “unembraceable.”²⁵

The unembraceable status, applied to Africa, is reserved for black males, for dictators and warlords, rapists and killers, for ‘dirty’ Arabs like Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, and for former ‘Marxist’ guerillas, like Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. Always they are people of color: they are the O.J. Simpsons and Michael Jacksons of Africa, formerly embraced black males now ruthlessly persecuted by the Western establishment—primarily through racial surveillance and targeting in the mass media. Such treatment is rarely applied to white males, anywhere.

Someone has to be held responsible for the mass murder at Bogoro, but who paid the 29 year-old “warlord” Germaine Katanga? Why should he be the only one prosecuted? Who provided the jeeps for the “warlord” Mathieu Chui? Where did “warlord” Thomas Lubanga get the satellite phone to coordinate his private militia? How did Charles Taylor go from Harvard University to money laundering in Liberia to a Massachusetts prison—which he “escaped” from—and then on to become first the “President” and later “warlord” of Liberia?

How does Moto Gold Mining Company extract gold from a war zone? And how do the shiny black leather belts and pressed camouflage fatigues and crisp felt berets and rocket-propelled grenades find their way to Laurent Nunda’s “rebel” army now fighting in the North and South Kivu provinces of Congo?

Aware of their vulnerability as black African fall guys—and soon after the ICC arrest of Jean-Pierre Bemba—the top brass of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces curtailed their international travel plans and convened a special meeting at Uganda’s Bombo army headquarters near Kampala, in June 2008, to discuss fears of ICC warrants being issued against them.

Of course, the U.S. Government and its business partners dictate the operations of the ICC. While considering soldiers of the United States and its allies to be above international humanitarian law and protected from the jurisdiction of the ICC, the Pentagon has simultaneously directed the formation, operations and legal precedents of the ICC through the involvement of members of the U.S. military’s Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corps, the legal arm of the Pentagon.²⁶

Congolese troops and militias connected to Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni and wife Janet and their military collaborators operate extortion and racketeering networks that are plundering Congo. While former militias responsible for plunder have ostensibly been disbanded, new military networks have replaced them again and again.

UGANDA ARMING MILITIAS YET AGAIN

“The Congolese military [FARDC] works with Ugandans,” reported Christian Lukusha, an expert with Justice Plus, a Congolese human rights NGO based in Bunia, “including Salim Saleh, Museveni’s half-brother. And they ship timber and minerals across the border at both Aru and Mahagi. It’s completely clandestine.”²⁷

According to the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC), fighting in Orientale in September 2008 drove over 90,000 additional IDPs from their homes and lands. Fighting continued into October and November, and militias new and old are today floating between Uganda, South Sudan and DRC, recruiting and conscripting soldiers, including children, and training and indoctrinating them in the ideology of their “mysterious” leaders.

The FPJC—Front Congolaise Pour la Justice au Congo—is but the latest militia to suddenly emerge from the hills of Orientale. On September 29, 2008, the FPJC, described as “a newly formed rebel group,” attacked and pursued retreating contingents of President Joseph Kabila’s regular army, the FARDC, before raiding and looting villages. Since mid-September the FPJC has engaged FARDC troops in firefights along the Lake Albert border zone.

According to Congolese sources in Bunia, the FPJC is solidly backed by Uganda and provides a second front in an alliance with Laurent Nkunda’s Rwandan army, which has freely operated in the Kivu provinces for years.

“The FPJC rebels are in the bush close to the Semliki River and the Uganda border,” says Godefroid (not his real name), a Congolese professional in Bunia who travels back and forth to Uganda by land. “There is some new recruitment of former militias along the Congo-Uganda border by Thomas Lubanga’s former UPC minister Mr. Avochi, a Congolese who as been in exile in Uganda since 2004.”²⁸

Military training camps for the new FPJC recruits are today operating from at least four sites on the Uganda side of the border: {1} in the Kikong-Hoima district; {2} in Kasatu (close to Djegu) in Nebbi district; {3} in the Urusi area (close to Mahagi) of Nebbi district; and {4} in Bondo (close to Aru and Arua) in the Uganda district.

“Such trainings cannot happen without a clear agreement and support of the upper authorities of Uganda,” says Godefroid. “It’s all connected to the oil under Lake Albert and the gold in Orientale.”

According to this source, a senior FPJC military commander named Sherif confirmed that Laurent Nkunda and his National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) are involved with these Ugandan bases. “They are providing CNDP military training and recruits are given the CNDP ideology.”

Coincidentally—but not reported by the media—a hornet’s nest of Western petroleum and mining companies, all linked to international private military companies, local militias, and the national armies of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo, are fighting for control of the land on both sides of the Congo’s eastern border.

“Salim Saleh is involved in all of this,” said one Congolese official at the border town of Aru, DRC. “He is certainly responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Saleh worked with Jerome Kakwavu when he was the big chief in Aru. Kakwavu is a FARDC general now, in Kinshasa. Salim worked all the different groups, trading arms, playing them off one against the other.”²⁹

Petroleum companies that have recently emerged and now laying claim to DRC or Ugandan concessions on Lake Albert include: Tower Resources; South African consortiums PetroSA and Divine Inspiration; and H Oil & Minerals Ltd.³⁰ Tower Resources is a U.S.-U.K. firm affiliated with U.K.-based Hardman Resources and tied to oil exploitation in Kenya and Namibia.³¹

H Oil & Minerals is a European firm operating in South Sudan, DRC and Angola; financiers include the Deutsche Bank, European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, and the Belgian giant Société Generale—one of the Congolese people’s greatest historical enemies. H Oil & Minerals is also closely linked to Marc Rich and his Switzerland-based company Glencore International, both known for arms trafficking in Angola and DRC through Angolagate notable Pierre Falcone. An Arizona (USA) republican, Falcone is reportedly very tight with the Joseph Kabila government. Marc Rich is the fugitive Swiss financier who for years appeared on the FBI’s list of most wanted criminals on charges ranging from trading with embargoed states, tax evasion, racketeering and arms trafficking; Marc Rich was pardoned by Bill Clinton on Clinton’s last day in office.³²

One of the most notorious global arms traffickers involved in Congo, Namibia and Zimbabwe is John Bredenkamp, one of Britain’s 50 richest men. Walter Hailwax, the Belgian honorary consul to Namibia, is a director of arms producer Windhoeker Maschinenfabrik, and the local director of Bredenkamp’s arms brokerage company ACS International Ltd. A key agent in Zimbabwean and DRC organized crime networks, Bredenkamp is one of the phantom white-collar criminals behind Robert Mugabe, another black African fall guy now targeted by the Western press, think tanks and flak organizations, to the exclusion of other major interests. Of course, the Ndebele people suffered war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide under Mugabe, with the bulk of the atrocities committed from 1981-1988. (Mugabe remained an embraceable black agent of white power until about 1999, and today—according to the Western economic and policy establishment, and the mass media, who no longer embrace him—he is the devil incarnate in Zimbabwe.)

THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY

If you asked Western media consumers to name a bloodthirsty guerrilla movement in Africa it is likely they would point to “warlord” Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), this thanks to the one-sided fictional media campaigns waged by National Public Radio, Time magazine, Washington Post, or by Christopher Hitchens—who calls them “a Christian Khmer Rouge”—and Vanity Fair.³³³⁴

In the simplistic Western media narratives, the LRA is always described as a “fanatical Christian cult” that abducts children and forces them to commit atrocities. In the dichotomy of “good” versus “evil” the LRA is “wicked” and the forces they are fighting against, President Museveni and the UPDF, are benevolent. Indeed, evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States have been deeply involved with the SPLA war against the “satanic” forces of the LRA and the Islamic Government of Sudan.³⁵

Spilling over from the wars in Uganda and Sudan and operating a clandestine network of terror and extortion in the north of Congo today, the LRA has waged a low-intensity war against the Museveni regime since circa 1987. The LRA is a Ugandan guerrilla force backed by the government of Sudan (Khartoum) and its allies and clandestinely supported by unnamed factions in Congo, Europe and Washington.

“For 19 years, Joseph Kony has been enslaving, torturing, raping, and murdering Ugandan children,” wrote Christopher Hitchens, “many of whom have become soldiers for his ‘Lord’s Resistance Army,’ going on to torture, rape, and kill other children.” Parroting the establishment line, Hitchens has no complaints about the UPDF brutalizing children in the refugee camps of Acholiland, and he never mentions the SPLA’s conscription of thousands of child soldiers.³⁶

According to a high-level United Nations source working in the DRC, the LRA maintains very high-level political ties in New York and Washington D.C. through Jongomoi Okidi-Olal, a Ugandan-American representative living in the U.S. The Uganda government has purportedly asked the Bush Administration and the United Nations to arrest Okidi-Olal and hand him over to the ICC.³⁷ Other sources claim that Okidi is a fraud.

Interestingly, we find that Mwana Africa—whose vast Kilo-Moto mining concessions sprawl across northern Orientale—is also operating in Angola and South Africa, and at five major mining concessions in the so-called “failed state” of Zimbabwe.²⁰The government of Angola has always backed President Joseph Kabila, is very hostile to the Kagame gang, and currently controls Congolese territory (Kehemba) near the Angolan border. Given the spoils to be had, it is likely that factions from Angola or Zimbabwe also back the Lord’s Resistance Army in a bid to displace Mwana Africa and other competitors from mining and petroleum sites in northeastern Congo.³⁸

Congolese sources claim that MONUC moved into the Watsa region in northern Orientale only after the LRA—coming in through Garamba National Park near the Sudan border—began threatening the operations of AngloGold Ashanti, Mwana Africa and Moto Gold Mining.³⁹ Additionally, Garamba National Park is rich in diamonds and gold.

While the LRA is also supported by Ugandan factions opposed to the Museveni dictatorship, it is widely believed the LRA is a tool of the Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion, create chaos across the region, gain international sympathy from foreign donors and thereby procure massive financial backing to facilitate some of the world’s most lucrative and unappreciated AID-for-ARMS scandals. It is the perfect ruse to facilitate permanent foreign military intervention.

The LRA also reportedly moved into the northern DRC to displace SPLA troops that had a long history of plundering the area, shooting wildlife and harassing villages.⁴⁰ Thus while the evil LRA is always in the crosshairs of the international media, the same media protects the saintly SPLA, no matter the justice or criminality of either.⁴¹

The mass media and foreign policy discourses are saturated with the writings, op-eds and policy briefs of “experts” that serve as apologetic propagandists for foreign interventions and hidden agendas. Such “experts” exercise stark biases in naming or delineating the “killers” versus “victims” and for this reason they often gain exclusive access to mass media venues. The system of information control becomes self-perpetuating in favor of power and deception.

Experts working for the Pentagon, State Department, or national security apparatus deploy arguments cloaked in righteous assumptions of higher morality about human rights or humanitarian concern. For example, Sudan “experts” like Dr. Eric Reeves and Alex De Waal provide a constant barrage of one-sided propaganda to manufacture consent at home and project American power in Sudan.⁴¹ This propaganda is unassailable by Western “news” consumers, because consumers are not otherwise privy to, interested in, or compelled to discover the deeper truths.

STARBUCKS GENOCIDE COFFEE

Like the “Save Tibet” campaign, the one-sided propaganda campaign and institutionalized big-money networking of the “Save Darfur” movement compelled ordinary citizens to become active participants in “stopping genocide.” A similar agenda is driving the new “RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO” initiative. While their ideological programs are advanced through the Western mass media, organizations—e.g. the International Crises Group, Center for American Progress, International Rescue Committee, ENOUGH!—work to manufacture consent and channel popular consciousness through jingoistic sloganeering and humanistic language that offers “news” consumers exactly what they want to hear: peacekeeping, human rights, democracy, sustainable development, participatory mapping, Africa for the African people, and “never again” interventions against genocide.

Such propaganda campaigns proscribe ideas and possibilities, and they subvert popular movements. In the end, the true grass roots initiatives for social justice and legitimate peace have been expropriated or channeled into serving narrow prerogatives of power. And the voices of the voiceless are crushed, along with their bodies. The International Criminal Court serves a similar and necessary function in manufacturing consent and consolidating Western power. It is really about keeping up appearances: the appearance of justice being served, human rights being protected.

On October 14, 2005, the ICC unsealed arrest warrants against five LRA commanders, all of them black Africans: Joseph Kony, Vincent Otti, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen. In October 2008, after the LRA committed fresh atrocities in northern DRC, the ICC renewed its calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony.⁴²

Uganda’s representation at ICC proceedings to explore war crimes in Congo has included at least two very high-profile lawyers from Foley Hoag LLP, an influential Washington law firm.⁴³ Similarly, the Pentagon seconded its lawyers from the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corp to the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR), where victor’s justice has arbitrarily and selectively politicized genocide in favor of the Pentagon’s UPDF/RPA proxy governments.⁴⁴

Foley Hoag LLP is also tied to the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council, a consortium that involves Coke, Pfizer and Chevron-Texaco. Coke director Kathleen Black is a principle in the Hearst media empire, while Coke directors Warren Buffet and Barry Diller are directors of the Washington Post Company, and these are the media institutions that whitewash the white-collar crime in Congo. Uganda’s image is further sanitized by London PR firm Hill & Knowlton.”⁴⁵

From 2000 to at least 2004, Yoweri Museveni was co-chair of the euphemistically named Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa (PCHPA). The PCHPA is a front for multinational corporations and USAID, a Christian-based “soft policy” wing of the Pentagon that uses food as a weapon under the disguise of charity. Other PCHPA chairs include former U.S. Senator and Alston & Bird lawyer Bob Dole; Peter Seligman, Chair and CEO of Conservation International, an NGO connected to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Jane Goodall Institute operations in DRC; George Rupp, President of the International Rescue Committee, a flak-producing organization involved in DRC; and Alpha Konare, the former Chair of the Commission of the African Union (2003-2008), the governing body responsible, for example, for oversight of the supposedly “neutral” African Union “peacekeeping” force in Darfur, Sudan—a force that again deploys RDF forces as proxies to secretly further U.S./U.K. interests.

One PCHPA director also represents Bread for the World, a protectionist and nationalistic U.S.-based Christian evangelical “charity” whose directors include Bob Dole and former White House cabinet officials Mike McCurry and Leon Panetta. Along with Thomas Pickering, Susan Rice, Gayle Smith, Donald Payne, Ed Royce, John Podesta, Anthony Lake, Bill and Hillary Clinton and others, these are the architects of covert operations in Africa during the Clinton years.²

Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Policy Advisor for Alston & Bird, and an Honorary Senior fellow of the Center for American Progress (CAP), the nationalist U.S. big money “think tank” behind a multitude of front groups with hidden foreign policy agendas around Uganda, Rwanda, Congo and Sudan. These include the ENOUGH! Project, the new RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO initiative, the Genocide Intervention Network, the ONE Campaign and the International Crisis Group (ICG)—all of which somehow involve agents like John Prendergast, former national security insider for President Bill Clinton. It is interesting that a lot of the same people show up tied to different organizations involved in “grass roots” campaigns to help Africa.

The ONE campaign was launched by a coalition of 11 prominent corporate so-called “charity” organizations, including Bread for the World, CARE, Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee (IRC); each of these profit-based organizations has a euphemistic name that suggests a humanitarian or humanistic agenda, but they actually serve corporate interests. CARE has received funding from weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin Corporation. In 1996 the IRC reportedly took over bases near the Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire and proceeded to shell the camps with heavy weapons; also, Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright are IRC overseers.⁴⁶ ICG director Zbigniew Brzezinski is an advisor to President-elect Barack Obama.

In July 2008, Senator Tom Daschle led a special delegation of policymakers on behalf of the ONE Campaign, described as “a bipartisan movement of over 2 million advocates for the elimination of global poverty and disease.” The ONE delegation also “met with civic and government leaders, as well as everyday citizens and entrepreneurs, to discuss Rwanda’s courageous national reconciliation since the genocide in 1994…”⁴⁷

Child Soldiers in the Congolese National Army FARDC— Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Photo copyright 2006 Keith Harmon Snow.

Daschle and Dole’s law firm, Alston & Bird, is a sponsor of the corporate “Millennium Promise” project, and they provide pro bono legal services, in both the U.S. and Africa, for the Millennium Villages and Millennium Promise, both in Rwanda.⁴⁷ These programs are designed to put a “development” face on Africa while maintaining structural inequality, protectionist trade barriers and military superiority.

To put it simply, white people will always get the best jobs, corporations will run and ruin the world—dumping substandard and outdated products on confused populations; seeding the natural world with genetically engineered crops; peddling pretty plastic junk; pushing pharmaceutical pills; strip-mining everything—and we will all fool ourselves and ease our consciences by pretending that we are breaking down barriers of inequality and building a better world.

According to a very high level United Nations special investigator sent to negotiate with LRA commanders in DRC’s far north Garamba region in February 2007, the Uganda government had then recently “arrested” a U.S. military agent and five Congolese militia leaders discovered in Uganda. Originally detained in Kampala, the U.S. military agent was nonetheless allowed to move freely in and out of the DRC.⁴⁸

The U.S. maintains “Intelligence Fusion Cells” in Congo and one cell, in Kisangani, capital of Orientale, was situated in a compound, ringed with coils of barbed wire, near the Tshopo River power station, and was run by a “ex” marine named “Tom” who refused to discuss the cell. There were two U.S. military and two Rwandan military working there.⁴⁹ MONUC’s local spokesman confirmed only that the cell revolves around a “tripartite security arrangement between Rwanda, Uganda and DRC,” adding, “that one we don’t touch. It’s very hot.”⁵⁰ British soldiers stationed in Kisangani said the American fusion cell “monitors intelligence on tantalum extraction.”

A few years back, the U.S. donated to Rwanda two Boeing aircraft that were routinely used by the regime’s Ministry of Defense for arms and minerals trafficking between Rwanda, Belgium, Albania and Bulgaria. Operated by Silverback Cargo Freighters, a Kigali-based company blocked from European airspace since 2006, the planes were also reportedly used for CIA operations, including the transfer of U.S. “war on terror” prisoners. The Rwandan government refused to aid UN investigators seeking information about the company’s clandestine operations.⁵¹⁵²

Recent massive human suffering and the escalation of hostilities by the Nkunda army in eastern Congo have provoked a spate of high-visibility policy statements where some powerful Western interests are calling on the “international community” to strengthen the MONUC military occupation of Congo, while other powerful interests from the new humanitarian order are calling for the European Union to send in a rapid reaction force.⁵³

BLESSED BE THE PEACEKEEPERS

Congolese sources everywhere confirm the widespread involvement of MONUC soldiers in guns-for-minerals swaps and sexual violence; sources repeatedly accuse MONUC troops of delivering weapons back to militias to justify MONUC’s one billion dollar a year occupation of Congo.⁵⁴

“MONUC was giving weapons to the militias,” says yet one more Congolese official. “MONUC had their own ambitions. It was about gold. The peace that was achieved in Orientale around 2006 was not achieved by MONUC; the National Police Force from Kinshasa and the integrated FARDC brigades achieved it. MONUC was frustrating the peace.”⁵⁵

In the new Congo war documentary by Dutch filmmaker Renzo Martens, ENJOY POVERTY, we see South African mining staff of AngloGold Ashanti confirming MONUC’s pivotal role in securing the company’s access to gold in Orientale. The entire “humanitarian” enterprise must be properly situated in the political economy of profit-based charity, resource control and racial injustice.⁵⁶

MONUC doesn’t need more guns, it needs fewer guns (but arms dealers keep shipping them in), and Congo doesn’t need more foreign mercenary forces posing as “peacekeepers” but secretly serving narrow, undisclosed interventionist agendas on behalf of multinational corporations.

Ditto for Darfur. In an “explosive” new book by progressive activists that mildly exposes some of the hypocrisies of the Save Darfur movement we find the authors calling for greater military intervention and sneering at others who have criticized and rejected military intervention for being what we might call the new, old humanitarian warfare in Africa.⁵⁷

The book, Scramble For Africa: Darfur—Intervention and the USA, cites ad nauseum all the usual propagandists that are monopolizing the English language mass media, publications from the far right to progressive left, on Darfur. These experts include Alex De Waal and Eric Reeves—and the International Crisis Group—but there are plenty of citations and references to journalists who peddle the establishment inventions and thereby black out the forces of Western control.

By page xvii of the preface, the authors—who have no experience anywhere near Sudan—have become the prosecution, judges and jury of their own private international court: “That [President Omar al-Bashir] is a major war criminal is beyond doubt,” they wrote, “as is the fact that he should face trial for his substantial violations of international human rights law.” The American authors, it seems, are also in the business of overthrowing governments: “Given the litany of abuses for which [the Government of Sudan] is guilty,” they wrote, “there would be little to mourn in Bashir’s overthrow, and such a move—depending, of course, on the actors involved, and its prospects for success—could be cautiously supported.”⁵⁸

In other words, it’s fine for white people from the United States to organize the overthrow of sovereign governments, as long as we selectively chose the “right” people for the job. The authors never similarly condemn “leaders” from the United States, Canada, Israel or Europe, and they never suggest that President Bush should be overthrown, or that Donald Rumsfeld, or Henry Kissinger, or General Norman Schwarzkopf, or Maurice Tempelsman, should be prosecuted for war crimes. The book makes no mention of covert operations or private military companies operating in South Sudan or Darfur, and while it illuminates the Bush Administration’s collaboration with the Khartoum government, it is nothing more than a cheerleading tool for the opposing power blocks, including the massive so-called “humanitarian relief” operations. Such is the racial obliviousness of the new humanitarian disorder.

But Darfur’s cheerleaders and Khartoum’s enemies are not so neutral as they appear.

In 1992, Darfur human rights expert Alex De Waal established African Rights, an NGO based in London, co-directed with Rakiya Omaar. In August 1995, African Rights published the report, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, one of the first “human rights investigations” to appear after the so-called “100 days of killing” and the successful RPA/UPDF coup d’etat in Rwanda of 1994.

“Among the early reports on the genocide, none matches Africa[n] Rights, Rwanda, Death, Despair and Defiance (September 1994) for the clinical description of the atrocities inflicted upon Tutsi victims,” wrote renowned Africa scholar René Lemarchand, “ranging from political murders to collective massacres in churches, schools and stadiums, and the daily manhunts conducted on the hills. Significant as it is to our understanding of the sheer savagery that has accompanied the carnage, the African Rights report is utterly silent on the grisly crimes and torture inflicted by Tutsi soldiers on innocent Hutu civilians, some of which are by now well documented (Nduwayo, 2002: 9-16; Amnesty International, 1994; Des Forges, 1999; Reyntjens and De Souter, 1994).”⁵⁹

Lemarchand makes the usual error of accepting the “clinical description of the atrocities inflicted on Tutsis” at face value. How does he know they are all Tutsis and only Tutsis? Because African Rights says they are? Where does he get his information about “daily manhunts conducted on the hills”? Why would Lemarchand so quickly trust the claims of a report that he simultaneously castigates for its (authors’) extreme and obvious biases?

“This woman of Somali origin is an RPF agent,” says Jean-Marie Higiro of African Rights’ co-director Rakiya Omaar. Higiro was Director of the Rwandan Information Office (ORINFOR). “She has her office in Kigali. In 1994 she was at Mulindi, the headquarters of the RPF. As the RPF conquered territories from the Rwandan Government Forces, she collected information fed to her by the RPF.”⁶⁰

“An intensive back and forth activity between this so-called British human rights organization, African Rights, and the intelligence services of the President’s office and the military, has been observed,” wrote Paul Rusesabagina. “Her investigators are very close to the [RPF/RDF] military intelligence apparatus, and the modus operandi of both appears to be similar.”⁶¹

The African Rights report was one of the first to manufacture and promulgate the false (one-sided) mythology of “genocide” in Rwanda. It says nothing about RPF/A massacres or foreign military involvement and peddles the now clichéd and disingenuous stereotypes about victims and killers. What does the African Rights report tell us about the veracity of Alex De Waal’s “human rights” reports and political analyses coming out of Darfur? Further, Alex De Waal’s ties to U.S. intelligence include his involvement with Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations: De Waal was a member of a CFR task force focused on defining a new military and intelligence engagement with Africa that is cloaked in “humanitarian” rhetoric.⁶²

We further witness the hypocrisy and international scandal of having three battalions of Pentagon “trained” Rwandan Defense Force (RDF) “peacekeepers” operating in Darfur while the RDF is openly backing Laurent Nkunda’s occupation proxy force in Congo. Similarly, the UPDF—having received fresh military training by U.S. covert forces in Uganda—has been sent to Somalia. This is not “peacekeeping,” it is crazy making.

A few well-placed arrests—beginning in Washington, Frankfurt, London, New York or Brussels—would redress the problem of impunity for war crimes and crimes against humanity everywhere.

THE KANSTEINER CONNECTION

The Moto Gold Project is located in the Kilo Moto goldfields in the north east of the DRC, some 150 kilometers west of the Ugandan border town of Arua. Kilo Moto was President Joseph Mobutu’s private mine, but the project, at various stages, involved powerful Western interlocutors: Belgians Yves Le Norvan and the Damseau family; Roger Lemaire, a Houston (TX) insider; and an Israeli military agent identified as David Agnon.⁶³ Kilo Moto’s gold, then as now, usually exited Congo (Zaire) through remote airstrips.⁶³

The present Moto Gold Mining “lease”—a massive land grab corruptly obtained—covers an area of approximately 1,841 square kilometers and involves sites at Durba, Watsa and Doko. Moto Gold’s partners in Orientale include Siemens and Ken Overseas. Siemens director Tiego Moseneke is also a director of PetroSA, a new South African oil minor poaching DRC oil concessions on Lake Albert.⁶⁴ Ken Overseas Company is involved in the Minière de Bakwanga (MIBA) diamond mines in Congo’s Mbuji-Mayi province. In their reports on war and plunder in DRC, the United Nations Panel of Experts named Ken Overseas in a MIBA mining consortium linked to Belgian tycoon Philippe de Moerloose and Israeli mining magnate Dan Gertler; both men have been flagged for arms trafficking.⁶⁵

Walter Kansteiner III is one of the shadiest architects of Congo’s troubles. The son of a coltan trader in Chicago, Kansteiner was Assistant Secretary of State for Africa under G.W. Bush and former “National Security” insider and member of the Department of Defense Task Force on Strategic Minerals under Bill Clinton. Kansteiner’s speech at The Forum for International Policy in October of 1996 advocated partitioning the Congo (Zaire) into smaller states based on ethnic lineage; Laurent Kabila was marching across Zaire at the time.⁶⁶

The balkanization of Congo appears to be a major objective behind the current organized chaos in the Great Lakes region.⁶⁷ Further, it is obvious that conflicts from within the U.S.—between the Department of State, Pentagon and intelligence agencies—are translating to regional warfare on the ground in, especially, Sudan, Uganda, and Congo.

Kansteiner is a trustee of the Africa Wildlife Foundation—another profit-based “conservation” corporation tied to Conservation International, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and the Jane Goodall Institute—entities whose front of gorilla and chimpanzee protection hides a deeper agenda.⁶⁸ It is not surprising to find that one of the AWF’s premier sponsors is Barrick Gold. Kansteiner is also linked to Richard Leakey’s paramilitary front organization Wildlife Direct, and to the Africa Conservation Fund, a shady Washington D.C. entity.⁶⁹

Kansteiner is a director of the precious metal firm Titanium Resources Group, a company deeply tied to Sierra Rutile Limited, a firm pivotal to the bloodshed in Sierra Leone.⁷⁰ Sierra Rutile Ltd. director Sir Sam Jonah reportedly helped finance Rwandan RCD rebel groups in DRC while he was a CEO of Ashanti Goldfields; Jonah is also a director for Moto Gold.² Sierra Rutile is owned by Max and Jean-Raymond Boulle and Robert Friedland, “Friends of Bill” Clinton who are linked to clandestine networks of offshore holdings and front companies involved in weapons trafficking, money laundering and human rights atrocities from Burma to the Congos to Mongolia.²

On April 28, 2008, the ICC issued an international arrest warrant for militia commander Bosco Ntaganda, former commander of the Forces Patriotiques pour la Libération du Congo (FPLC), a militia that operated in the oil and gold areas of Orientale. Bosco is currently the Chief of Staff of Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP army in North Kivu.

On July 14, 2008, the prosecutor of the ICC applied for an arrest warrant for Sudanese President, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, accused of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. Bashir is an Arab—another person of color—and the ICC has deeply politicized the Darfur conflict in keeping with the imperialist smokescreen of the “Save Darfur” movement.

There have been no ICC indictments against a single white man who could be proven to be equally culpable in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide, though the list of possibilities—as indicated herein—is very, very long.

“Its name notwithstanding, the ICC is rapidly turning into a Western court to try African crimes against humanity,” writes Mahmood Mamdani. “It has targeted governments that are U.S. adversaries and ignored actions the United States doesn’t oppose, like those of Uganda and Rwanda in eastern Congo, effectively conferring impunity on them.”⁷¹

The writing is on the wall, and we can anticipate the eventual arrest of Ugandan military commanders, including Laurent Nkunda, James Kazini, James Kabarebe, Salim Saleh and Paul Kagame. Such arrests aren’t likely to involve legitimate judicial proceedings, and it won’t merely because these people deserve to be arrested, which they do, and they probably won’t be arrested before a few more million people are slaughtered in Central Africa.

The arrests will come because these are the notoriously visible people of color used to make invisible—quite literally black out—the white war criminals and covert operators wrecking havoc in Africa and elsewhere around the world. They are the embraceable black Africans, and the future fall guys, and Africa’s “leaders” should take note. And so should Barack Obama.

Even more critical is the need for the Western news consuming public to recognize the face of propaganda and the nature of “change” and what it means to people of color everywhere. Thus it is critical to note the recent shift in media coverage that accompanies the imminent shift in the post-election balance of U.S. power. General Laurent Nkunda has been deeply involved in Congo for years and the Kagame military machine has been shipping weapons and officers directly to Congo; these Rwanda Defense Force (RDF) officers infiltrate the country and direct the “rebel” operations, and the CNDP has served as a lever of power used against the Kabila government. Reported herein—and nowhere else—is the ongoing secret military involvement of Yoweri Museveni and the Ugandan crime networks.

Only recently, as power shifts from the G.W. Bush power elite to the incoming Obama Administration—being packed with Clintonite friends and officials, and by Democratic Party financiers like diamond kingpin Maurice Tempelsman—has Nkunda or Rwanda been subject to any kind of “harsh criticism”. The New York Times article of December 3, 2008, is the perfect example of the “news” media serving hidden agendas. In “Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo,” the New York Times peddles the standard narrative about “genocide in Rwanda” in 1994.

Suddenly, writes Jeffrey Gettleman, one of the NYT’s chief Congo propagandists of late, there is a “secret Rwandan brotherhood” and Rwandan government officials are involved in the bloodletting and plunder in Congo.⁷² Such “exposés” appear only because power factions—in this case a right-wing Republican faction allied with the Bush administration—are exerting leverage through their mouthpiece, the New York Times, and thus mildly exposing the obvious links of the former Clinton administration—a competing power faction, more heavily comprised of right-wing Democrats—to war and covert operations in Congo. There is a similar political economy of intervention at work vis-à-vis Darfur, Sudan.

Suddenly it is beneficial to name a few names—names like Modeste Makabuza Ngoga—names that have been known and named before.⁷³ These New York Times articles are nothing more than expedience, tricks in a bag of tricks, as power jockeys for its positions, and for massive private profit, as we approach the zero hour and the twilight of savior Barack Obama’s coming, bringing “change” to America, and the same old, new, humanitarian warfare to Africa.

1. There are exceptions to the rule, including the extensive publications by this author and those by Africa researcher David Barouski. See, e.g., David Barouski, “Mining in the Ituri Province of the Congo-A Contemporary Profile,” Z-Net, April 15, 2008; and David Barouski, Laurent Nkundabatware, His Rwandan Allies, and the ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting Peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, February 13, 2007.
2. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999.
3. Investigations into the 1994 events in Rwanda and documents presented at the International Criminal tribunal for Rwanda reveal a huge body of evidence supporting what soon become obvious conclusions.
4. keith harmon snow and David Barouski, “Behind the Numbers: Untold Suffering in Congo,” Z Magazine, March 1, 2006; and Human Rights Watch, The Curse of Gold, June 1, 2005.
5. See: keith harmon snow, “Gertler’s Bling Bang Torah Gang,” Dissident Voice, February 9, 2008.
6. Private investigations, North Kivu, DRC, 2005-2007, and private communications, 2008.
7. Private communications, July through November 2008.
8. See: Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999; and keith harmon snow, “Darfurism, Uganda, and U.S. War in Africa: The Spectre of Continental Genocide,” Dissident Voice, November 24, 2007; private interviews, eyewitnesses working in western Uganda at the time, October 2007.
9. The Acholi people—non-combatant men, but mostly women and children—have suffered decades of genocidal treatment by UPDF soldiers deployed by Yoweri Museveni, president in Uganda, and top military commanders Gen. James Kazini, Gen. Salim Saleh, Gen. Kahinda Otafiir, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, Lt. Gen. Katumba Wamala, Maj. Gen. Jim Owoyesigire, and Brig. Gen. Robert Rusoke.
10. Private interview, eyewitness working in western Uganda at the time, October 2007; see also Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999.
11. Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage, April 2005.
12. Mahmood Mamdani, Understanding the Crisis in Kivu: Report of the CODESRIA Mission to the Democratic Republic of Congo September, 1997, Centre for African Studies University of Cape Town, November 20, 1998.
13. “ZAIRE: Peace Possible?” “Interview with Bill Richardson,” PBS Online News Hour, May 9, 1997.
14. Friends of Rwanda advisory board.
15. “A Brief Profile of Joe Ritchie,” New Times, November 26, 2008.
16. Marc Kaufman and Robert E. Pierre, “Rich Brothers Mission to Save Afghanistan Stirs Suspicions,” Washington Post News Service, International herald Tribune On-Line, November 9, 2001.
17. Quotes are used because the “genocide” label and realities on the ground are highly contested.
18. Moto Gold Mines web site.
19. Private interviews, Bunia, Kisangani and Zani, DRC, March 26-28, 2007; and Mwana Africa presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006.
20. Mwana Africa presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006.
21. See: keith harmon snow, “Northern Uganda: Hidden War, Massive Suffering: Another White People’s War for Oil,” Global Research, May 26, 2007.
22. See: keith harmon snow, “Three Cheers for Eve Ensler? Propaganda, White Collar Crime and Sexual Atrocities in Eastern Congo,” Z-Net, October 24, 2007.
23. Jeffrey Gettleman, “Congo’s Riches, looted by renegade Troops,” New York Times, November 18, 2008, p. 1.
24. See: keith harmon snow, “A People’s History of Congo’s Jean-Pierre Bemba,” Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007.
25. See: Dr. Enoch (Helan) Page, “‘Black Male’ Imagery and Media Containment of African American Men,” American Anthropologist, March 1997, Vol. 99, No. 1, pp. 99-111.
26. See e.g., William K. Lietzau.
27. Interview with human rights investigator, Bunia, DRC, March 23, 2007.
28. Private communications, Orientale, DRC, November.
29. Private interview, Aru official, Aru, DRC, March 26, 2007.
30. See: “An Industry Rebirth? Oil in the DRC,” Consultancy Africa Intelligence; and Tower Resources; H Oil and Minerals Ltd.
31. Tower Resources.
32. Ken Silverstein, “The Arms Dealer Next Door: International billionaire, French prisoner, Angolan weapons broker, Arizona Republican. Who is Pierre Falcone?” In These Times, December 22, 2001.
33. Christopher Hitchens, “Childhood’s End,” Vanity Fair, January 20076.
34. After querying Vanity Fair editors with a story idea about war in Africa, the editors responded that Christopher Hitchens is their sole source correspondent on Africa.
35. See: Richard Bartholomew, “American Pastor Helps SPLA Battle LRA in Sudan,” January 25, 2005; and keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?” Global Research, February 7, 2007.
36. Jo Becker, “Children as Weapons of War,” Human Rights Watch World Report 2004, Human Rights Watch, January 2004.
37. Interviews with UN Official in eastern DRC, August 2006 and February 2007. See also: “U.S. asked to arrest Ugandan-American rebel Jongomoi Okidi-Olal—The real brain behind LRA leadership?” Xinhua, April 9, 2006.
38. See: Charles Onyango Obbo, “Soon the Guns of Goma might be heard in Kampala,” Monitor On-Line, November 19, 2008.
39. Private interviews, Bunia and Kisangani, February and March 2007.
40. The international rhino conservation programs at Garamba are reportedly somehow tied to the political interests of the opposition party in Zimbabwe; private interview, UN investigator, Kisangani, DRC 2007.
41. See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?” Global Research, February 7, 2007.
42. “ICC calls for renewed efforts to arrest Joseph Kony,” RNW International Justice Desk, October 6, 2008.
43. Paul S. Reichler and Lawrence H. Martin. See: Public sitting held on Monday 18 April 2005, at 10 a.m., at the Peace Palace, President Shi presiding, in the case concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda), International Court of Justice, CR 2005/7, 2005.
44. Ralph G. Kershaw, “Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice According to Washington,” Covert Action Quarterly, No. 74, Fall 2002.
45. Jeevan Vasagar, “Uganda hires PR agency to buff up its image,” Guardian, May 21, 2005.
46. Private interview with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC, 2006; investigations in Goma and Bukavu, DRC, 2005-2007.
47. See: “Senator Tom Daschle Leads Delegation in Rwanda,” Alston & Bird web site, July 22, 2008.
48. Private interview with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC, 2006.
49. Investigations of “American Intelligence Fusion Cell,” Kisangani, DRC, July 31, 2006.
50. Investigations and interviews in Kisangani, DRC, 2006.
51. Private interview with UN special investigator XXX XXX, Kisangani, DRC 2007.
52. See: “Silverback Cargo Freighters Rwanda,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Silverback Cargo Freighters.
53. Marianna Brungs, “EU: Coalition of Leaders Calls for EU Force in Congo,” Crisis Watch Press Release, Human Rights Watch, London, November 27, 2008.
54. Private interviews, Bunia, DRC, February and March 2007.
55. Private interviews, Bunia, Aru and Zani, February 2007.
56. Renzo Martens, Enjoy Poverty, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam.
57. See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia? The New, Old, Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,” Global Research, February 7, 2007.
58. Kevin Funk and Steven Fake, The Scramble for Africa: Darfur—Intervention and the USA, Black Rose Books, 2008.
59. René Lemarchand, Scholarly Review: Rwanda: The State of Research.
60. Private communication, Jean-Marie Higiro, October 17, 2008.
61. Paul Rusesabagina, “Rusesabagina responds to Rwanda government book on ‘Hotel Rwanda’,” EUX-TV (Brussels), April 12, 2008.
62. More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa, Council on Foreign Relations, Task Force Report Number 56, January 2006.
63. Private interview, keith harmon snow with OKIMO Company officials, Bunia, March 24, 2007.
64. Legal Brief Today, July 27, 2006; and “Local Companies in Scramble for DRC Oil,” Johannesburg Sunday Times, August 18, 2008; and H Oil and Minerals Ltd. web site.
65. The others included the Groupe Van De Ghinste, Demimpex, Chanic and OSS; both OSS and Demimpex are De Moerloose companies. See: Report of the United Nations Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Also see: keith harmon snow, “Gertler’s Bling Bang Torah Gang,” Dissident Voice, February 9, 2008; and keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.
66. “Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999,” United States One Hundred Seventh Congress, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, First Session, 17 May 2001, comp. Centre for Research on Globalization.
67. “The U.S. (Under)mining Job of Africa.”
68. See the KING KONG series published by keith harmon snow and Georgianne Nienaber, Op-Ed News, 2007 and 2008.
69. Africa Wildlife Foundation.
70. Titanium Resources Group.
71. Mahmood Mamdani, “The New Humanitarian Order,” The Nation, September 29, 2008.
72. Jeffrey Gettleman, “Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo,” New York Times, December 3, 2008; and Jerome Delay, “Many of the most powerful people in Congo have close ties to Rwanda’s elite in Kigali,” New York Times, December 3, 2008.
73. See: Roxanne Stasyszyn, “A World Playground: Congolese People Sacrificed for International Games and Profits,” Dissident Voice, November 8, 2008.

For Israeli-American Dan Gertler, business in blood drenched Congo is not merely business, it is a quest for the Holy Grail. Young Dan Gertler goes nowhere—does nothing—without the spiritual guidance of Brooklyn-born Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Leibovitch, a personal friend of Condoleeza Rice.² Gertler and Leibovitch are two of the principals behind a diamond mining company, Emaxon Finance Corporation, involved in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Gertler and gang won the majority rights to the diamonds from the state mining company, Société Minière de Bakwange, MIBA, found near the government-controlled town of Mbuji-Mayi, the rough diamond capital of the world.

Emaxon Finance Corp. has apparently out-maneuvered diamond competitors, especially the big rivals Energem and De Beers. Energem is one of the many shady mining companies connected to Anthony Teixeira, a Portuguese born businessman now residing in South Africa whose daughter married Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba. The warlord’s deadly battle in Congo in March 2007 was a bid between rival agents—Jean-Pierre Bemba and Joseph Kabila—to be the black gatekeeper for the mining cartels run by dynastic families like Templesman, Oppenheimer, Mendell, Forrest, Blattner, Hertzov, Gertler and Steinmetz, and for companies like NIKANOR, whose stock prices rose early in July 2006 in expectation of a July 30th “win” for Joseph Kabila.³ Africa Confidential called President Kabila’s 2003 visit to the Bush White House a “coup” for the Israeli diamond magnates Dan Gertler and Beny Steinmetz.

Canadian-based Energem, formerly DiamondWorks, is owned by British mercenary Tony Buckingham and its director/shareholders include Mario and Tony Teixeira, J.P. Morgan, and Gertler’s partner Israeli-American Beny Steinmetz (50%).⁴ Through subsidiary Branch Energy, the Energem-DiamondWorks gang has perpetuated war in 11 African countries.⁵ In December 2007, Energem re-launched itself on the London Stock Market with the newly laundered image of a renewable energy company. Regarding diamonds, it said only it “had decided to give up exploration rights in the Central African Republic.”⁶ The Energem spokesman explained that Tony Teixeira “had a clean bill of health” etc., etc. Of course, Energem “quit” the C.A.R. because Jean-Pierre Bemba marched his troops into C.A.R., where they raped and pillaged widely.⁷ Energem is still operating in Congo, but Dan Gertler is the new, unofficial ambassador to the Congo for the George W. Bush gang.

Gertler and partners like Beny and Danny Steinmetz, Nir Livnat, Chaim Leibovitz and Yaakov Neeman run a hornet’s nest of companies involved in African hotspots, including: Dan Gertler International (DGI), Steinmetz Global Resources, International Diamond Industries, NIKANOR and Global Enterprises Corporate.

“Dan Gertler is ‘the new kid on the block,’” writes Yossi Melman in Israel’s Haaretz news. “Bold, sophisticated, brutal, he is an adventurer with a short fuse.” Haaratz confirmed that Dan Gertler owns a complex network of interconnected companies, often registered in offshore tax havens and involved in India, Russia, Belgium and the United States, and that Dan Gertler is looking to God for guidance.⁸

THOU SHALT NOT STEAL

“In the diamond industry,” Melman wrote, “Gertler is considered something of an odd bird. He maintains few ties with the other merchants and is not very sociable… Alongside his business affairs, most of his energy is channeled into matters of faith. He is a donor to religious institutions and from time to time makes a pilgrimage to the rabbi he most admires, Rabbi David Abuhatzeira, from Nahariya, in order to consult with him and receive his blessing. Gertler is surrounded mostly by religious people and laces his speech liberally with praise to God.”⁸

In 2003, Condoleeza Rice, then Assistant to President Bush for National Security Affairs, introduced Dan Gertler and Chaim Leibovitch to U.S. official Jendayi Frazer, a Harvard Kennedy School affiliate and former National Security Council agent focused on Africa. On December 6, 2006, Frazer, then Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, was one of seven special Bush delegates sent to the inauguration of Congo’s newly installed President Joseph Kabila in Kinshasa.⁹

When Dan Gertler and Chaim Leibovitch and their friends visit the luxury Gertler villa in Lumumbashi, the capital of Katanga, Congo’s large southern province, their kosher meals arrive by private plane from Kinshasa. The special executive jet that flies their kosher meals a few hundred miles over the roadless Congo costs some $US 23,000 per trip.¹⁰

The average income for Congolese citizens each year—if they survive it—is about $95. Shootings at mining facilities and diamond mines are common, land is stolen from Congolese people, strikes are crushed by security forces that companies are partnered with, and black overseers of state terror routinely arrest and torture any vocal opposition—and sometimes disappear them—in support of white bosses. The Société Minière de Bakwange—MIBA— and the diamond fields of Mbuji-Mayi in Congo have a long history of bloodshed backed by Western powers, including Israel, from the beginning.¹¹ Amnesty International points out that not a single state agent has ever been prosecuted for the extrajudicial executions of suspected “illegal” miners in Mbuji-Mayi.¹²

After a century of exploitation and slavery, we find 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’s arbitrary arrest, detention and torture of trade union organizers like Leon Ngoy Bululu; police have also shot protestors.¹³ So-called ‘illegal’ diamond workers—disenfranchised local Congolese people forced into “criminal” activities to survive—were summarily executed on MIBA concessions in Mbuji-Mayi. MIBA security guards have also been sniping unemployed diamond miners.¹⁴

Meanwhile, Dan Gertler’s kosher meals depart Kinshasa, the capital of the big Congo, through the arrangements of Rabbi Chlomo Bentolila, high priest of the Chabad of Central Africa. Rabbi Chlomo Bentolila has been a Kinshasa Rabbi since 1991, and he was a spiritual force who survived the terrorism of the old dinosaur, Mobutu Sese Seko, the way most elites did: by working with him. Rabbi Bentolila is a member of the Chabad Lubavitch Global Emissary Network, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York, and his wife Miriam is the sister of Rabbi Mena’hem Hadad, a high priest in Brussels.¹⁵

“Kosher does not mean that a Rabbi blesses the food,” Rabbi Betolila corrected me, “but rather that the food was supervised by a Rabbinical Thora [sic] authority who sees that the ingredients were in accordance with the laws of Kashrut expressed in the Bible (Leviticus and Deuteronomy).”¹⁶

Dan Gertler often flies people into Congo, on his private jet, for sacred Jewish rituals. For the Bar Mitsvah of Rabbi Chlomo Bentolila’s son Binyamin Avrahim in June 2005, guests included eminent Rabbis, Hassidic singer Yoni Shlomo and special orchestra Yossef Brami, all arriving in “special flights” from Israel, New York and Brussels. The reception was held at the luxurious and exclusive Memling Hotel. Joseph Kabila sent a sizeable delegation but did not attend: his closest advisers provided a blessing on his behalf.¹⁷

The Gertler, Steinmetz and Templesman interests are advanced in part through the support of the Committee of the Jewish Community of Kinshasa—le Comité de la Communauté Israélite—that is tightly coordinated with the power structure in Kinshasa to exert influence and assure control of Israeli-Belgian-Anglo-American interests over the geopolitical arena.

From June 26-30, 2007, the Communaute Israelite de Kinshasa received a visit from the Israeli Ambassador Yaakov Revah, director of the Africa Department of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Revah also flew to Lumumbashi for meetings with Dan Gertler and his agents, including Moishe (Moses) Katumbi, the Governor of Katanga, and they most likely enjoyed a lovely, $23,000 kosher meal sent from the Chabad in Kinshasa.¹⁸ The Communaute Israelite de Kinshasa maintains very intimate political relations with President Joseph Kabila’s PPRD party, the People’s Party for Reconstruction and Democracy. On March 1, 2006, in a formal ceremony, the President of the Communaute Israelite de Kinshasa, Ashlan Piha, was awarded the Congo’s Medal of Civil Merit.

THOU SHALT NOT COVET

Before his assassination on January 16, 2001, Laurent Desire Kabila—the President of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—made a deal with the Gertler gang that would play out in favor of the current President Joseph Kabila and, it seems, be a central factor in relation to both Congo’s ongoing war and the bloody warlord’s battle in Kinshasa in March 2007.¹⁹

Back in 2000, former Congolese president Laurent Kabila offered a monopoly on Congolese diamonds, and 88% of the proceeds, to Gertler’s International Diamond Industries (IDI) in exchange for Israeli military assistance to his new government.²⁰ Top Congolese military officials apparently flew to Israel in 2000 to negotiate the deal. Gertler pledged military assistance to President Laurent Kabila through top Israeli officials.²¹

The original Gertler-Kabila deal fell through after Laurent Kabila was assassinated for not cooperating with the Great White Fathers of industry (January 2001), but Gertler and Leibovitch and their disciples formed another company, Dan Gertler International, and advanced their Congo plan.²² By 2002 Gertler’s company was the leading exporter of Congolese gems, controlling a diamond mining franchise worth about $US 1 billion annually.²³

In 2003, the mighty Congolese diamond parastatal Societe Miniere De Bakwanga (MIBA)—which has been forever controlled by the Great White Fathers in Belgium, Israel and America—signed an exclusive contract with Gertler’s startup company, Emaxon Finance International. The deal involved Israeli’s Foreign Defense Assistance and Defense Export Organization (SIBAT), and high-level Israeli defense and intelligence officials. Gertler and his buddies reportedly bribed Congolese officials and Angolan generals who, on and off, have commanded Angolan Army troops protecting Kinshasa, Congo’s capital.²¹,²⁴

Security for mining operations in Congo is provided by exclusive security companies like Overseas Security Services (OSS) one of the many DRC interests of Belgian billionaire tycoon Philippe de Moerloose. A member of the Kinshasa elite, de Moerloose supplies jets and other presidential toys to DRC President Kabila. In 2006, President Joseph Kabila’s campaign helicopter was at the centre of a legal battle involving Philippe de Moerloose.²⁵ De Moerloose’s companies operated in Mobutu’s Zaire from at least 1991, backing state terrorism and Western corporate plunder that was rendered invisible by the Western media. De Moerloose is also an adviser to European Union (EU) Commissioner—and diamantaire—Louis Michel.

Dan Gertler and Philippe de Moerloose were, reportedly, the only two white men who attended the wedding of Joseph Kabila and the two clearly share interests in “security” provided by OSS at MIBA and elsewhere in Congo. The April 2003 secret agreement signed between the Gertler/Steinmetz company Emaxon Finance and the Kabila government involved MIBA and two de Moerloose companies, OSS-Congo and Demimpex, and other firms.

Overseas Security Services (OSS) operations are apparently grounded in the experience of top expatriate security operatives formerly involved with the biggest security firm in Mobutu’s Zaire.²⁶ According to OSS public relations materials, “these persons have a not unimportant experience in the safety of this country.”²⁶ Providing mine security, body-guard and protection services, OSS operates in Burundi, Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Dubai, South Africa, Republic of Congo (Brazzavile) and Belgium, placing them in cahoots with all sides warring and plundering eastern Congo today.²⁷

Emaxon Finance International is a real gem, one of these octopuses of mining tangled up with interlocking companies and subsidiaries based in specious geographical offshore “tax havens” that work to shield from prosecution people who are responsible for money laundering, weapons and drugs operations, assassinations and other terrorism.

NIKANOR is registered as an Isle of Man (UK) company, an offshore tax haven that helps to conceal criminal activities and maximize profits. NIKANOR directors include Dan Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel (2001-2005) and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research under Madeleine Albright. NIKANOR partners include Mende and Moshe Gertner [sic], Israeli property tycoons with vast holdings in London who control 22 percent of NIKANOR. Another partner is Israeli-born Nir Livnat, managing director of Johannesburg-based Ascot Diamonds, a member of the Steinmetz Group of Diamond Companies, and a principal involved in numerous U.S.-based businesses from Miami to New York.²⁸

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS

Back in 2001, when the Gertler enterprises surfaced in dirty diamond deals, public relations was handled by Lior Chorev, the “Special Strategic and Communications Consultant” to International Diamond Industries (IDI), and Chorev continued in this role to support Dan Gertler businesses.²⁹ Today, Lior Chorev is partnered with the brothers Yuval and Eyal Arad as director-owners of the Israeli marketing and public relations firm, ARAD Communications.³⁰

“We do work for Mr. Gertler on some of his business issues,” said Lior Chorev.³¹ ARAD’s many clients include Dan Gertler companies, Los Angeles-based Coral Diamonds and an Israeli aeronautics weaponry manufacturer producing Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles (UAVs)—robotic weapons and intelligence platforms like those being used against the people of Congo today.³² As a political strategist, Lior Chorev has worked for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.³³ He has also participated in Israel-NATO defense planning conferences.³⁴

Dan Gertler is close to Israeli politicians, especially Avigdor Lieberman, head of the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, and he is very close to diamantaire Beny Steinmetz, a good friend of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Gertler’s inseperable friend, Chaim Leibovitz, is also very close to Lieberman, and was “a regular fixture” in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s offices.³⁵

Beny Steinmetz is considered to be one of the richest billionaires in Israel. The Steinmetz Group, controlled with his brother Daniel, is one of the biggest clients of the de Beers diamond syndicate. Steinmetz is also involved in an Israeli real estate group that purchased the assets of the British Haslemere real estate company for $1.46 billion. Steinmetz’s real estate partners include the billionaire Israeli investors David and Simon Reuben, and the Saudi Arabian Olayan Group, an investment company that is deeply connected with Bechtel Corporation.³⁶ The Steinmetz web site map of operations hides their involvement in war-torn Congo.³⁷

Seems Dan Gertler’s land grabs and exclusion in Congo have a lot in common with the current crimes against humanity being committed by Israel through its illegal partition in the Middle East. On January 3, 2008, the Jerusalem Post reported that Lior Chorev was an integral part of past Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s advisers, and he was recently quoted to say that even though Sharon did not get to finalize Israel’s final borders (he suffered a debilitating stroke in 2006), the route of the security fence—which he decided—would ultimately serve as the basis for the border and as Sharon’s lasting legacy.³⁸

“He felt he needed to set the border because he didn’t trust the younger generations,” Chorev was quoted to say. “He knew the fence route by heart and the reason for every stretch of land being on one side or the other.”³⁸

In 2003, the U.N. Panel of Experts on war in Congo revealed that Emaxon Finance International is controlled by Israeli diamond traders Chaim Leibovitz and Dan Gertler.³⁹ Emaxon lists as its address an office in Montreal, Canada, but Emaxon’s majority shareholder is listed as FTS Worldwide, a nebulous global corporation whose business address is that of a firm of lawyers, Mossack Fonseca & Company, in Panama City. FTS Worldwide is registered with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission to lawyer Andre Zolty of Geneva Switzerland. A copy of the MIBA-Emaxon contract was signed on 13 April 2003 by Israeli-Americans Yaakov Neeman and Chaim Leibovitz.⁴⁰

Yaakov Neeman is a founding partner of Herzog, Fox and Neeman, Tel Aviv, one of Israel’s top law firms, and he has held Israeli government cabinet and ministerial positions.⁴¹ Neeman is on the Advisory Board of Markstone Capital Group, a very influential group of investment bankers, with Eli Hurvitz. On the board of Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries with Eli Hurvitz is Northrup-Grumman director Philip Frost.⁴² Both Philip Frost and Maurice Templesman are top-level councilors for the American Stock Exchange. Eli Hurvitz sat on the International Advisory Counsel of Harvard University’s Belfer Center, 2002-2005, during the period when the Belfer Center and their intelligence operative Robert Rotberg formalized the “Kimberley Process” to officially whitewash blood diamonds.⁴³ Yakov Neeman is also a governor of the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency for Israel.

One of the main objectives of the Kimberley Process, and the Harvard Belfer Center’s role, was to protect the South African Oppenheimer and De Beers diamond cartels and their leading buyers and agents like Maurice Templesman and Beny Steinmetz.⁴⁴ Added to those diamond industry firms whitewashed by the Kimberley Process are all the Zionist diamond dealers and cartels that have risen like a phoenix out of the ashes of the Holocaust.

The Israeli-American enterprises of the Gertler/Steinmetz gang have proliferated and today are major shareholders or owners of diamond concessions in Congo’s Kasai province and copperbelt concessions in Katanga. The copperbelt is the big money in Congo. Copper prices recently hit an all time high due to monopoly control by corporations and new applications in transportation, aerospace and weaponry. Cobalt is used in dye and paint processes for manufacturing. More importantly, it is elemental to superalloys used for tank armor, spacecraft, turbines, ship hulls, ship hulls, blast furnaces, refineries, petroleum drilling rigs, nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Like coltan, or columbium-tantalite, cobalt is also used in cell phone batteries. The Katanga copperbelt is also rich in germanium, a rare metal used in optical fibers, infrared lenses and telecommunication satellites.⁴⁵

The entire military-industrial-prisons complex revolves around minerals like cobalt, niobium and heterogenite (cobalt oxide), yet the truth about what happens to African people in lands taken over by these mining companies is hidden by the corporate media. More and more land is being stolen, more and more atrocities committed, with less and less transparency, and less and less accountability, and fewer and fewer voices for the voiceless. And, as usual, there are always a lot of empty promises.

THOUGH SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS

Over the past fifty years, elite Israeli nationals have perpetrated conflict and injustice in Africa, fueled by and for minerals. Operatives associated with the Israeli military or intelligence services—the Mossad—maintain strategic criminal syndicates in competition and in partnership with other syndicates involving men like Philippe De Moerloose, Louis Michel, Viscount Etienne Davignon, John Bredenkamp and Tony Buckingham.

Israeli trained shock troops became Mobutu’s bodyguards, with Mossad advisers. According to a report by the American Jewish Committee: after 1980 “Mossad agents, military emissaries, and a small group of private businessmen… replaced diplomats as Israel’s main interlocutors with African leaders and political (mainly opposition) groups.” The report cites rising involvement of private defense and security interests, especially in Angola, DRC and Central Africa Republic, since 1992.⁴⁶

Israeli operatives and “businessmen” appear everywhere there is egregious suffering and dispossession. Dan Gertler’s forays into the bloody world of diamonds involve Israeli arms dealers Yair Klein, who is reportedly wanted by the U.S. for training Medellin drug-cartel militias in Colombia, and Dov Katz.⁴⁷ Klein was convicted by Israel (1991) for his involvement with groups that targeted and assassinated Colombian politicians, journalists, and police. Jailed in Sierra Leone in 1999, Klein was a field representative for Gertler in war-torn Sierra Leone and Liberia. Gertler also mingles with the Russian Military Brotherhood, a group of “retired Russian generals whom Gertler describes as good friends.”⁴⁸,⁴⁹

Retired Israeli Defense Forces Colonel Yair Klein reportedly organized arms for diamonds networks in Sierra Leone and Liberia after President Charles Taylor was deposed. In 1999, Klein was arrested in Sierra Leone on charges of smuggling arms to the rebel Revolutionary United Front.⁵⁰ The U.N. also documented collaborations between Sierra Leone’ rebels and Lazare Kaplan agent Damian Gagnon; Lazare Kaplan International is one of the organized crime syndicates of Jewish American Maurice Templesman.⁵¹

The Steinmetz Group of companies are also involved in the bloody diamond fields of Sierra Leone, along with Energem (formerly DiamondWorks), the company described above that is connected to the white mercenaries depicted in Hollywood’s Blood Diamond propaganda film.⁵² In December 2007, local people in Sierra Leone struggling to gain the smallest livelihood from their own resources were shot by police during peaceful protests against the Steinmetz-controlled Koidu Holdings site. It’s the same old local people’s story happening everywhere. These were people from communities driven off their own land by mining companies that promised the world, cajoled the trusting people, and gave nothing after. The Steinmetz gang called in the local paramilitary, a curfew was imposed and people were shot; the police, as usual, falsely claimed that protesters were armed.⁵³

Like most mining mafias in Africa, the Israeli octopus—organized crime syndicates, offshore subsidiaries, interlocking directorships and affiliated mercenaries—has gripped the very heart of Congo like an octopus grips and stuns its prey. Mining regulates the pulse of Congo, and foreign mining companies with their black sell-out agents are sucking the blood out of the people and the wealth out of the land.

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

Beyond the intriguing Jewish rivalry for diamonds in the heart of darkness, this tale takes a chilling turn with the involvement of certain German firms and New York City lawyers. NIKANOR, another Gertler/Steinmetz company of dubious origins operating in DRC, has a subcontract with the notorious ThyssenKrupp conglomerate, a company comprised of two former Nazi weapons manufacturers linked to the New York law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, to Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., Lehman Brothers, Chase Manhattan Bank, J.P. Morgan, DuPont and IBM, in the great Nazi-American money plot.⁵⁴

These companies were all behind the Jewish Holocaust. The infamous German Krupp firm is the industrial corporation that collaborated with former CIA director Allen Dulles and former U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Clients of the Dulles brothers’ law firm Sullivan and Cromwell included Adolph Hitler.⁵⁴ Ted Terry, one of the senior counselors of the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell today, is also a director of a philanthropy called the Harold K. Hochschild (HKH) Foundation, named for the mining magnate behind AMAX, a company operating in the copperbelt in Zambia, but whose parent company, Phelps Dodge, operates in Katanga, Congo. Harold K. Hochschild was close to the CIA, and he appears to have backed the Katanga succession in the 1960’s just as Dan Gertler in recent years backed the reorganization of power in Congo by force. Sullivan and Cromwell was also the law firm for AMAX. ⁵⁵,⁵⁶

Brown Brothers Harriman & Company (BBH) was the primary Wall Street connection for German companies and the U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, an early financial backer of the Nazi party. BBH bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, steel, fuel, coal, and U.S. treasury bonds to Germany. These were used to build Hitler’s war machine, and the ties proliferated even after the Nazi concentration camps began churning out skeletons. The horrors of the concentration camps at Auschwitz, Birkenau and Buckenwald became public knowledge long before they became public outrage. It is the same story for Congo.

A PRAYER FOR THE DEAD

There are no records or statistics of the numbers of people brutalized or killed in the diamond or cobalt mining areas, like Kolwezi, Mbuji Mayi, Tshikapa, Banalia, or Kananga in DRC, or Ndola in Zambia, and many of the victims of security abuses will never be known.

When Gertler and Steinmetz and their buddies came to Congo it was soon clear that they had to challenge Zimbabwean tycoons John Bredenkamp and Billy Rautenbach—two cronies of dictator Robert Mugabe involved in pillaging Congo and Zimbabwe for decades. The United Nations Panel of Experts on DRC named both men for plundering copper and cobalt from Katanga, and both deal globally in weapons. Bredenkamp is one of the fifty richest men in England and he reportedly owns a mansion several doors down from Margaret Thatcher’s residence in London.

On November 7, 2007 it was reported that Dan Gertler was instrumental in putting together a deal in which Katanga Mining Ltd. would buy rival NIKANOR for $2.1 billion and merge their adjacent mine projects in Congo to form the world’s largest cobalt company. Also announced was a joint venture between the Central African Mining & Exploration Company (CAMEC) and another Gertler-controlled firm called Prairie International Limited.

The CAMEC/Prairie joint venture will exploit DRC’s Luita copper processing facility, develop the Mukondo Mountain cobalt mine—called the world’s richest cobalt mine—and work on “other” exploration properties. Prairie is majority owned by the family of Dan Gertler. CAMEC is connected to Zimbabwean/South African/British tycoon Billy Rautenbach.⁵⁷ The DRC government effectively banned controversial Zimbabwean businessman Billy Rautenbach from the country by declaring him persona non grata in July 2007, but this doesn’t seem to stop him from getting what he wants. Rautenbach is also wanted in South Africa on 300 charges of fraud, corruption and theft.

Rautenbach is a former motor car rally driver who controls a business empire in Southern and Central Africa through a British Virgin Islands company called Ridgepoint Overseas Development Limited. In 1998, the short-lived President of Congo, Laurent Kabila, named Rautenbach the managing director of La Générale des Carrières et des Mines (Gécamines), one of Africa’s biggest cobalt mines, the Katanga properties of the Union Miniere de Haut Katanga formerly developed by the Belgian colonial government. Rautenbach today is one of the Africa’s largest exporters of heterogenite (cobalt ore) from the DRC through his Congo Cobalt Company (CoCoCo), but he also has shares in two other lucrative DRC mining firms—Boss and Mukondo—which reportedly earn over US$100 million a month.⁵⁸

While there has been a lot of Western media fanfare over the Kabila governments’ supposed “independent” review of mining contracts, little substantive change can be expected.⁵⁹ Structural factors exploit the Congolese people and lands and benefit white businessmen, arms dealers, bankers, and their embraceable black agents. Big business benefits from perception management articles well-placed in media to give the impression that the international system is just, that there are watchdogs, checks and balances.

However, while the DRC and the World Bank present a propaganda front about their ostensible attention to mining reform and the new mining code, NIKANOR—Mining Journal reports—“is in the advantageous position of having entered into a post mining-code contract, ‘which makes us [NIKANOR] relatively comfortable’”⁶⁰ In other words, the mining review is a sham, it may force some changes, but it will be cosmetic at best.

Dan Gertler and the Steinmetz Group’s partner Jewish-American Nir Livnat is also a director of Anglovaal Mining with Rick and Brian Menell and Basil Hersov of the South African Menell and Hersov dynasties.⁶¹ Hersov has been named as a beneficiary of fraud and racketeering involving British BAE Systems weapons deals with shady offshore companies.⁶²

The octopus of South African connections is a story in itself, with links to top officials from Britain to Canada, like Canadian Senator J. Trevor Eyton, and offshore mining companies involved in all the big money (diamonds, gold, petroleum, cobalt) and big corporations with interlocking directorships: Coca Cola, Nestlé, General Motors, and the Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation. Barrick, of course, is partnered up with the Oppenheimer/De Beers firm Anglo-American Corporation at six sites in Africa, including Congo.

Rick Menell is a director of Bateman Engineering—owned by Benny Steinmetz—the junior partner of the NIKANOR projects in Katanga. Britain’s Earl of Balfour is a director of both Bateman and NIKANOR. Menell is also the director of Teal Exploration and Mining, whose directors include Joaquim Chissano, former President of Mozambique; Murray Hitzman, a Clinton administration official with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (1994-1996); Hannes Meyer, who worked with Anglo-Gold Ashanti in Congo, 1999-2006, when militias in Ituri were funded to get the gold out. Teal Exploration also has ties to Anvil Mining and Anglo-American Corporation.⁶³

Brian Menell, Nir Livnat’s associate on the board of Anglovaal, is on the board of Energem (formerly DiamondWorks) with Tony and Mario Teixeira. The Livnat connection ties Teixeira into networks that have supported both Joseph Kabila and Jean-Pierre Bemba in Congo’s bloody wars. Energem is also involved in the trans-Uganda-Kenya pipeline, along with Nexant, a subsidiary of the deep intelligence and defense insider Bechtel Corporation.⁶⁴

Brian Menell is also on the board of First Africa Oil, which operates in seven African countries, and First Africa Oil director John Bentley is a director of Osprey Oil and Gas, whose directors include Carol Bell, a director of the Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank. Bentley is also on the board of Adastra Minerals—formerly America Mineral Fields (AMF, AMFI, AMX), a company based in 1995 in Hope, Arkansas—and set up by Robert Friedland and Max and Jean-Raymond Boulle, notable “friends of Bill” Clinton. Since 1995, American Mineral Fields has been involved in Brazil, Russia, Norway, Zambia, Angola and the DRC. A criminal backer of the war in DRC, Jean-Raymond Boulle, who holds 36.4 % of the company stock, was the former General Director of De Beers in Zaire, part of the Templesman alliance of terrorism under the Mobutu regime.⁶⁵,⁶⁶

The Gertler/Steinmetz interests apparently curry huge favors with Congo’s number two most powerful man, Augustine Katumba Mwanke, one of Joseph Kabila’s closest allies and financiers, former Governor of Katanga (1998-2001) and director of Australia’s Anvil Mining. The UN Panel of Experts (2002) cited Mwanke for illegal arms deals and plunder of Congo: Mwanke negotiated arms purchases through Belgian banks and the DRC mining company MIBA.⁶⁷ Reportedly, Mwanke personally clears $US 1,000,000 a day through his interests in Katanga mining deals.⁶⁸

Anvil Mining has been involved in massacres in DRC.⁶⁹ Anvil directors include former U.S. Ambassador Kenneth L. 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 Director of Central African Affairs (1980-1981). The former top internal intelligence and security chief of the United Nations Observer’s Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has been worked for Anvil mining in Katanga since 2006.⁷⁰

THOU SHALT NOT RAPE AND PLUNDER

Gertler/Steinmetz interests have also been jostling for copper and cobalt concessions with Kinross-Forrest Group. Gertler has bought up or invested heavily in companies just to close them down. George Forrest also made the UN hit list of Congo’s looters and Forrest and his three sons helped bankroll Joseph Kabila’s 2006 election “victory”.⁷¹ George Forrest’s daughter is reportedly married to the son of Louis Michel. Malta and George Forrest are controlling directors in Katanga Mining Limited.

Born as Entreprise Générale Malta Forrest, the Belgian Forrest interests have been pillars of exploitation in Congo since at least 1922, when they launched mining operations in Katanga. Forrest’s Katanga Mining directors include: three Canadians; Congo’s Jean-Claude Masangu Mulongo, a former Governor of DRC and high official at the IMF and World Bank; and the current Governor of the Central Bank of DRC. The Forrest dynasty has munitions factories in Belgium and Kenya, and has partnered with OM-Group, in Ohio [USA], dealing in Congo’s cobalt and coltan. Forrest International also operates in Europe, Burundi—involving him on both sides of Congo’s bloody war—and the Middle East.⁷² Forrest interests in DRC include aviation, foods, plantations, construction, logging, copper and cobalt mining. Forrest companies are enmeshed in the coltan plunder in eastern Congo.

Katanga is the world’s richest mining metropolis, part of the vast copper belt that stretches across northern Zambia and southern Congo—and the home to unprecedented human misery due to state orchestrated repression and communities overrun with toxic mining, tuberculosis, cancers, immune disorders, racial discrimination and slavery. The Zambian copperbelt concessions over the border involve many of the same companies and interests mentioned above, and others.⁷³

Workers and communities in and around these mines suffer 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 “what is to be done?” It does not cross people’s minds that their own hands are dirty, that their own consciousness has been falsified, as all the raw materials from Congo enrich the lives of people in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel.

The immediate capital investment required for just one Gertler project in Katanga—the Komoto Oliveira Virgule (KOV) project—is reportedly $US 1.8 billion dollars, income to kick start billions of dollars of unused equipment mothballed in the middle Mobutu era. There are rumors that Bechtel is involved, but the KOV project involves ThyssenKrupp AG as a minor player.⁷⁴

The Krupp firm is one of several German firms involved in the plunder in eastern Congo, exploitation which involves the DeutscheGesellschaft für technische Zusammenarbeit—GTZ—a “German technological cooperation agency” whose Supervisory Board has representatives of four Federal [German] Ministries.⁷⁵ Krupp industries use coltan and cobalt for superalloys.⁷⁶ Dr.-Ing. Ekkehard D. Schultz, a ThyssenKrupp director, is also a director of Bayer AG, the Germany firm whose subsidiary H.C. Starck was named for its involvement in the ongoing illegal plunder of coltan and cassiterite (tin) in eastern Congo. NIKANOR director Jay Pomrenze is also a consultant for the Deutsche Bank.⁷⁷ Certain German and U.S. firms benefit from the military occupation of Rwandan-backed warlord Laurent Nkunda in North Kivu, DRC, where Nkunda controls the Lueshe niobium mine “owned” by Gesellschaft fuer Elektrometallurgie GmbH, a subsidiary of New York-based Mettalurg Group.⁷⁸,⁷⁹

HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER

Dan Gertler’s grandfather, Moshe Schnitzer (d. November 2007), was known in Israel as “Mr. Diamond;” in youth he joined the pre-state underground organization Etzel (Irgoun), an Israeli military cell self-defined as an “untra-nationationalist Jewish militia,” but one that committed acts of terrorism in service to the Israeli cause.⁸ Moshe Schnitzer assumed a major role in the Africa-Israeli diamond trade in the 1950’s in a partnership business called Schnitzer-Greenstein. Schnitzer later founded the Israel Diamond Exchange in Tel Aviv in 1960, which today brings Israel $14 billion annually in blood business, and is the country’s second-largest industry, but Israel’s top export. King Leopold III of Belgium decorated Schnitzer in recognition of his activities favoring the close relationship of Belgium, Israel and the DeBeers diamond cartels, and Schnitzer was also President of the Harry Oppenheimer Diamond Museum in Israel.⁸⁰

The diamond jewelry trade in the United States is more than $30 billion annually, and 99%—everything that is not synthetic or artificial diamonds—involves blood diamonds and the above organized crime syndicates. Israel buys more than 50% of the world’s rough diamonds, and the U.S. buys two-thirds of these. The diamond factories are located in Nethanya, Petach Tikvah, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Jerusalem, and other cities around the country, but most of the offices were in Tel Aviv in the financial district on Ahad Ha’am Street.⁸¹ Dan Gertler’s father, Asher Gertler, and his uncle, Shmuel Schnitzer, manage the original family business, and Shmuel is Vice-Chairman of the Belgian-based World Diamond Council—the entity that spends more money promoting the false image of “conflict-free” diamonds than it does helping any of the people dispossessed or brutalized by the diamond industry.⁴⁸

On August 16, 2007, Rabbi Bentolila in Kinshasa received a communication asking: “What does the Torah say about men exploiting other men for vast profits while other men are starving and dying all around them? Is there some hierarchy to the Torah that suggests, for example, that black people or Africans are lesser beings, and therefore not to be a concern where profound profits are being made?”

There was no reply from Rabbi Bentolila, he was apparently busy readying for another Bar Mitsvah in Belgium. Unfortunately for Dan Gertler and his spiritual advisers, the Torah says that a Jew can keep a slave, but a Jew kept as a slave must be redeemed, and that—an empty, foolish justification for exploiting innocent people—is how religion falsifies spirituality.

1. In January 2008 the International Rescue Committee, who is also discussed in this article, released its second survey of mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo, estimating that 5,400,000 people have died, or some 1500 people every day. Mortality in the Democratic Republic of Congo: an Ongoing Crisis, International Rescue Committee, January 2008. However, IRC statistics are highly biased and politicized. See: keith harmon snow, “Over Five Million Dead in Congo?” Dissident Voice, February 4, 2008.
2. Personal interview, Democratic Republic of Congo, August 2006.
3. keith harmon snow, “Warlord’s Deadly Battle, Toward Freedom, 2007.
4. Officers: Antonio Teixeira, President & CEO; Robert G. Rainey, CFO; Brett Thompson, COO, Mining; Dimitri (Jimmy) Kanakakis, Vice President, Corporate & Legal Affairs; Bernard Poznanski, Corporate Secretary; Board Members: Brian Menell, Richard Dorfman, Bruce Holmes, Robert Rainey, Antonio Teixeira.
5. See: “Africa/Diamonds: Rough diamonds,” Africa Confidential, 5 March 2004, Vol. 45, No. 5; and “Equatorial Guinea: All Theft is Property,” Africa Confidential, 17 Nov. 2006, Vol. 47, No. 23: p. 12.
6. Tim Hoare, the head of the advisers that launched it, Canaccord Adams, sits alongside rock star and champion of Africa Bob Geldof on the board of the television-production company Ten Alps. See: Ben Laurance, “Energy firm link to blood diamonds,” The Sunday Times, December 30, 2007.
7. See: keith harmon snow, “A People’s History of Congo’s Jean-Pierre Bemba,” Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007.
8. Yossi Melman and Asaf Carmel, “Diamond in the rough,” Haaretz, March 24, 2005.
9. See: keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.
10. Private interview, Kinshasa, August 2006.
11. See: “Terror in the Diamond Fields: Excessive Force and Impunity in the DRC,” Amnesty International Canada; Democratic Republic of Congo: Government should investigate human rights violations in the Mbuji Mayi diamond fields, Amnesty International, October 22, 2002.
12. Making a Killing: The Diamond Trade in Government Controlled DRC, Amnesty International, 2002, AFR 62/017/2002 22/10/2002.
13. See: “ICEM protests Congo’s Transport, Diamond Injustices,” International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worker’s Union, May 7, 2007.
14. “Diamond miners killed in DR Congo,” BBC News, 7 August 2006.
15. See: Jewish Africa and Chabad.
16. Private communication, Rabbi Chlomo Bentolila, August 16, 2007.
17. “Lag Baomer in Kinshasa,” June 2005.
18. “Visite de l’Ambassadeur Revah a’ Kinshasa,” Kadima 010, June-September 2007.
19. See: keith harmon snow, “Behind the Scenes: Warlord’s Deadly Battle in Congo,” Toward Freedom, August 9, 2007.
20. Nicole Gaouette, “Inside Israel’s diamond trade: a family affair,” Christian Science Monitor, 21 February 2002.
21. Yitzhak Danon, “Top Israelis accused of illegal diamond deals: Israel: Lawsuit claims corruption in Congo diamonds for arms deal,” Globes (Israel), 18 February 2004. See also: “Column One: What Lieberman Wants,” Jerusalem Post, October 20, 2006.
22. Christian Dietrich, “Blood Diamonds: Effective African-Based Monopolies,” African Security Review, Vol. 10, No 3., 2001.
23. Yitzhak Danon, “Top Israelis accused of illegal diamond deals: Israel: Lawsuit claims corruption in Congo diamonds for arms deal,” Globes (Israel), 18 February 2004.
24. See: keith harmon snow, “Behind the Scenes: Warlord’s Deadly Battle in Congo,” Toward Freedom, August 9, 2007. The Angolan military protected Kinshasa during the so-called “rebellion” involving Rwanda and Uganda. The Angolans do not like the Rwandans or Ugandans due to their military and commercial relations with Angolan rebels, the União Nacionalpara a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), and because Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers invaded Angola after their failed bid to control the Congo’s strategic Inga Dam power station and Matadi port between 1998 and 2001. Angola sent troops to Congo in July and August 2006, and there were black Angolan troops amongst the European Union mercenary forces—EUFOR—sent to quell any possible rebellions during the “historic national elections.” Angola also sent troops to Congo to back Kabila during the warlord’s deadly battle of March 2007.
25. “Presidential Chopper,” Africa Confidential, Vol. 47 Number 23, November 17, 2006.
26. See: Overseas Security Services Congo sprl web site.
27. OSS-Congo owner Philippe de Moerloose communicated with this author after his name appeared in a prior story mentioning OSS-Congo and offered to meet in Europe and provide the author with the “correct” information about his companies operations in Congo. Repeated communications with De Moerloose seeking clarifications and information for this story were not answered.
28. See e.g., SEC info on Lenorth Holdings and SDG Marketing.
29. Lior Chorev, The First [DRC] Diamond Polishing Plant to Move into Full Production, Press Release, DGI Group of Companies, January 11, 2005.
30. ARAD Communications web site.
31. Private communication, Lior Chorev, January 19, 2008.
32. See: keith harmon snow, “Over Five Million Dead in Congo?” Dissident Voice, February 4, 2008.
33. Private email communication, Lior Chorev, January 19, 2008. See also: Gil Hoffman, “Olmert, Netanyahu Rivalry Gets Personal,” Israel.jpost.com, March 26, 2006; “Sharon allies and foes joust over new party as March 28 elections are set,” Associated Press, November 22, 2005.
34. NATO Transformation, the Mediterranean Dialog, and NATO-Israel Relations, October 23, 2006.
35. Yossi Melman and Asaf Carmel, “Diamond in the Rough,” Haaretz, March 24, 2005.
36. The Olayan Group web site.
37. The Steinmetz Group.
38. Gil Hoffman, “Politics; Unconscious Legacy,” Jerusalem Post, features.jpost.com, January 3, 2008.
39. United Nations Panel of Experts Confidential Report.
40. Under the contract Emaxon granted Miba loans totaling $5-million in 2003, and a further $10-million subsequently. In exchange, Emaxon gained rights to 88% of Miba’s production at a discount, formally, of 5%.
41. Herzog, Fox and Neeman web site.
42. Tevapharm.
43. See: keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception About those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June and July, 2007.
44. On Neeman and Hurvitz, see Markstone Capital Group; on Robert Rotberg, Maurice Templesman and the Harvard Belfer Center, see: keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception About those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June and July, 2007.
45. Criminal rackets known to the United Nations security were or some time illegally shipping uranium and cobalt out of Katanga by road to Zimbabwe and Tanzania (private interview, U.N. Official, 2006).
46. Israel and Africa: Assessing the Past, Envisioning the Future, The Africa Institute American Jewish Committee and The Harold Hartog School Tel Aviv University, May 2006.
47. Ron Ben-Yishai and Molly Camprier-Kritz, “The Murder Request Went to the Wrong Address,” Yediot Aharonot weekend supplement on 19 September 1999.
48. Nicole Gaouette, “Inside Israel’s diamond trade: a family affair,” Christian Science Monitor, 21 February 2002.
49. For a discussion of the veracity of these facts and more on the “Russian Military Brotherhood” see: Central Africa Minerals and Arms Research Bulletin, Edition 2, International Peace Information Service, June 18, 2001.
50. Jimmy Johnson, “Israelis and Hezbollah Haven’t Always Been Enemies,” Appearing in Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions USA, 6 September 2006.
51. Report of the Panel of Experts Appointed Pursuant to UN Security Council Resolution 1306 (2000), Paragraph 19, in Relation to Sierra Leone, December 2000.
52. Energem web site; and also: keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception About those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June and July, 2007.
53. Mineweb.
54. Charles Higham, Trading With The Enemy: The Nazi-American Money Plot, 1933-1949, Delacorte Press, 1983.
55. Susan Mazur, “Deeper Into the Dillon-Euphronios Nexus with David N. Gibbs,” SCOOP, April 26, 2006.
56. David Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crises, University of Chicago Press, 1991.
57. Eric Onstad, “UPDATE 2-CAMEC shares soar after agrees Congo joint venture,” Reuters, Nov. 7, 2007.
58. Brenna Chigonga, “Zimbabwe: Meet Country’s Richest People,” The Herald, July 14, 2007.
59. See: Maurice Carney, “Congo’s Contract Review,” Pambazuka News, January 17, 2008.
60. Martin Creamer, “Funded NIKANOR presses on with $1,8bn copper mine, refinery,” Mining Weekly, September 21, 2007.
61. Julie Walker, “Hersovs and Menells are in no hurry to yield control of Anglovaal,” Sunday Times.
62. Evelyn Groenink, “Arms deal: Who got R1bn in pay-offs?” Mail & Guardian, January 12, 2007.
63. Teal Exploration & Mining web site.
64. Press Release: Kenya-Uganda Oil Products Pipeline, Kenya-Uganda Joint Co-coordinating Commission for Extension of Oil Pipeline, August 17, 2005; see also: Energem web site.
65. François Misser and Olivier Vallée, “Des matières premières toujours convoitées. Les nouveaux acteurs du secteur minier Africain,” Le Monde Diplomatique, May 1998, p.24-25; also Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Press, 1999.
66. Diamond Fields International Management.
67. ‘Inculpations à la Belgolaise’, Le Libre Belgique, 4 June 2004.
68. Private interview, Kinshasa, DRC, April 2007.
69. Norm Dixon, “Congo Massacre: Australian mining company’s managers indicted,” Green Left Review, November 4, 2006.
70. His name is known, but he threatened to track down and break the author’s legs if he is revealed.
71. See: Barry Sergeant, “NIKANOR’s Quandry: Meet Dan the Man, King of the Congo,” MoneyWeb, 4 April 2007; “Congo Kinshasa: After the Election” Africa Confidential, Vol. 47, No. 23, 17 Nov. 2006; and United Nations Security Council Report to the Secretary General, S/2003/1027, 23 October 2003.
72. George Forrest International.
73. Personal investigation, Ndola, Zambia copperbelt mines, 2000.
74. Nikanor.
75. These are: the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ); Federal Foreign Office; Federal Ministry of Finance; and Federal Ministry of Economics and Labor. Since 1998 the Supervisory Board Chairman has been State Secretary Erich Stather from the BMZ.
76. Karen Hayes and Richard Burge, Coltan Mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo: How tantalum-using industries can commit to the reconstruction of the DRC, Fauna & Flora Int’l, 2003.
77. NIKANOR web site.
78. Metallurg Group.
79. See keith harmon snow, “Three Cheers for Eve Ensler? Propaganda, White Collar Crime, and Sexual Violence in Eastern Congo,” Z Magazine on-line (Z-Net), October 24, 2007.
80. “Moshe Schnitzer: Un Legende s’en est Allee,” Kadima 010, June-September 2007.
81. “The Israel Diamond Exchange — Kiryat Moshe Schnitzer”, Diamond Key, 2002.

Wight was in court on January 24, and his trial is set for April. The Associated Press filed the first news articles on the morning of Christmas Eve. “Anarchist Group Behind Local Flag Burning,” read the banner headline. “Police say a flag-burning incident in Northampton may be the work of an anti-American anarchist group,” the story began.¹

It was not an anarchist group, not an anarchist, and it was not anti-American. It was only Doug Wight, a former public school teacher and patriotic citizen spurred to action by a combination of frustration, outrage and conscience.

Doug Wight is the primary suspect in four flag related incidents in the weeks just prior to Christmas 2007. But contrary to what most people believe, three of the five flags destroyed were on Federal Property. The flag at the Greenfield (MA) Post Office was lowered off the pole and burned in a dumpster. Two flags on the highway overpass above the Massachusetts Turnpike in Palmer (MA) were burned on December 7. One flag was taken from someone’s yard and a note left to say it would be burned. The fifth flag was burned where it hung from a tree outside someone’s home.

“A man police have linked to four vandalism incidents around the Pioneer Valley said he felt called to burn American flags as a way to draw public attention to what he sees as abuses of power by the U.S. government,” the Greenfield Recorder began on December 27, 2007.

The story is not as simple as it would appear, much to the dismay and celebration of those both for and against what Doug Wight did, and the important points of consideration have been swept away with the ashes of the flags. As usual, the media and the news-consuming public have distilled a very complex and intriguing story down to a collection of sound bites and jingoisms.

Doug Wight gave an interview to the local Daily Hampshire Gazette newspaper several hours before his arrest. He said he hoped his actions would inspire others to take a critical look at the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he says are illegal, and other policies of the Bush administration, like the USA PATRIOT ACT, which he says violates the Constitution.

“I felt called, as a kind of duty and responsibility,” Wight told the Gazette, “to try and wake up the American people in any way I can without harming or hurting them. If I have to go to jail and suffer to help put an end to these state-sponsored atrocities and abuses, so be it. Such is the price of true liberty!”

News of Doug Wight’s arrest prompted yahoo reactions from all sides. Some people extrapolate from the string of flag desecrations that Wight is a terrorist, a menace to society and an anti-war radical who should be tried for treason. Others believe that Wight is himself a symbol of freedom and courage that the United States is meant to stand for. Some peace activists complained about his tactics.

“Why would a 65 year-old man, a former public school teacher, high school coach, health and fitness consultant, and YMCA Director, decide that he must start burning American flags?” Doug Wight wrote in explanation of his actions. “I felt it was time I stepped up some tough action that would incite, anger, arouse, and hopefully move some Americans to take stock of the values and principles our country is actually representing.”

My reasons for writing this story are many. The citizens of the United States are hardly able to communicate about diverse and difficult issues to come to some agreement about truths underlying the real problems we face as communities and people.

Most people believe they have a right to say or do this or that, but they are quick to deny the same rights to others when others try to say or do something they don’t agree with. This tendency plays out in public spaces, in issues of freedom of speech and press.

Freedom of Speech is the right for you to say something that I don’t want to hear and for me to say something you don’t want to hear. It is not the right to silence those with whom we disagree, as much as we all—including myself—would sometimes like to do that. One is freedom, the other is fascism. People are confused about the difference.

FLAGS OVER YONDER

Many flag displays have been erected in public spaces across the United States. In Massachusetts there are a lot of displays on highways structures and bridge overpasses.

One incident attributed to Doug Wight involves two flags that were part of a huge “patriotic” display on the overpass bridge above Interstate I-90, the Massachusetts Turnpike, in Palmer, MA. By late November, the Mass Pike overpass—and others across the state—were adorned with as many as 12 flags, each about 3 x 5 feet, and there were scores of little U.S. flags on sticks.

On December 4, 2007, the Massachusetts Highway Department issued an order to workers to remove American flags and other patriotic tributes on highway overpasses. State officials said they are concerned the flags and signs could fall on drivers, causing an accident. The state did not have a planned time line to enforce the ban, but Mass Highway indicated that workers would be removing the flags and anything else hanging over bridges and overpasses in upcoming weeks.²

“It has nothing to do with safety,” said James Wareing, quoted by the Boston Globe. Wareing was reported as the leader of a military support group in Methuen, MA, who assembled and maintains a display dedicated to Alex Jimenez, a U.S. Army specialist kidnapped in Iraq. “Nothing has ever happened in six years.”

If it was a peace display that Mass Highway was threatening to remove, many peace activists would make the same claim: “It has nothing to do with safety.”

The Boston Globe reported that James Weiring invited Alex’s father, Andy Jimenez, to help him take down their display before highway workers could dismantle it. The display “is good for me,” Jimenez was quoted to say, “because, I don’t feel alone.” The Globe reported that Jimenez’ son’s unit was ambushed south of Baghdad in May. “Now I have to pull it down. I don’t know why.”

Any compassionate American would share in the sadness and concerns of a man like Andy Jimenez losing his son. (The Boston Globe didn’t offer any information about Alex Jimenez, just that his unit was ambushed in May.) However, to quote Jimenez saying “I don’t know why” is to disingenuously suggest confusion, rather than legality and public safety. Jimenez is accountable as the rest of us are for understanding citizen responsibility.

The Boston Globe took a biased position by presenting the case of a U.S. soldier purportedly kidnapped, and invoking readers’ sympathetic feelings to the U.S. soldier’s father, and to his son, the U.S. soldier. If the Boston Globe were to take a neutral position they would seek out comments from the men who are losing sons in the wars where the U.S. is fighting. Mothers and fathers from Afghanistan and Iraq are also distraught about losing children in war. Also, the Boston Globe did not seek out anyone who disagreed with the patriotic displays on the bridge, only those who agreed with it. In a whole series of articles there is not one dissenting opinion.

It is important to call out the bias involved in the reporting and slanting of these news stories. This bias is also practiced by the general population whenever passion and fear—rather than truth and reason—rule over personal interests. In my experience, and there is plenty of evidence to support my contention, no one would be allowed to decorate any Federal property with political materials—such as peace flags or peace “tributes”—that do not fulfill the war effort’s criterion of “appropriate” displays. There is a very clear public bias in favor of what some people consider “appropriate” and against others whose beliefs and values differ.

However, when Mass Highway Commissioner Luisa Paiewonsky said that the new edict applies to all signs on bridges over highways, she was not singling out people who would like to express their patriotism by constructing memorials to the war in Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather applying some kind of reasonable standard about public safety.

“It neither singles out patriotic displays, nor makes an exception for them,” she said. “The state doesn’t want anything—flags, sheets, signs—hanging over a major roadway for safety reasons,” the Boston Globe continued, noting “that Erik Abell, Massachusetts Highway spokesman, said the state is concerned about the safety of drivers.”

Of course, the December 4 edict by the Mass Highway department that forbade “patriotic tributes” and flag displays—and peace signs and rock-star banners and whatever else somebody might decide to post in public spaces—was upsetting to the people who put up the displays.

Public fury by a select group of people led to an immediate reversal order issued by the Governor’s office. On December 5, Mass Governor Deval Patrick overturned the Mass Highway edict and declared that the flag displays could remain.³

The Boston Globe reported this but did not report that people do not agree with the Governor’s dictatorial action. Instead they reported that people were pleased their displays would stay.

Is the Mass Highway department against the war effort? I doubt it. However, as more and more people in the U.S. are seeing the damage the wars are doing to this country it may be that the Mass Highway and other state officials have also had enough of it.

Be it pro-war or anti-war or pro-peace or anti-peace or pro-life or pro-choice, where do the rights of those who wish to display their cherished symbols in Federal and state and other public spaces infringe upon the rights of those whose beliefs differ?

Thousands of cars daily whish under the Mass Pike overpass and each is treated to the spectacle of someone’s version of patriotism displayed across the sky above them. None of these commuters has any say in how their personal space is impacted, but that is of little concern to many people in the country, who feel it is their right and duty to publicly show their support for the war by decking concrete overpasses with the red white and blue. The false assumption is that everyone agrees with it. They don’t. More and more people disagree.

If neo-Nazis choose to put up swastikas will people complain? Will the Governor overrule the people if he happens to believe that Swastikas are perfectly fine? What about Confederate Flags? Or pro-choice banners? Or nooses hanging from sticks? Or gay rights flags?

The crux of the issue is that those who display their flags on public property don’t care how it impacts me or anyone else. Indeed, we as a society suffer from a great lack of caring, and believe that we have the right to impose our will on others. In local terms, this is just an extension of the war, by U.S. citizens against U.S. citizens. The Governor’s action is the most flagrant example of an abuse of power, but for those who approve of his abuse it is nothing of the kind. This time.

On December 7, at about 9:30 pm, two of the twelve large United States flags on the Palmer overpass of the Massachusetts Turn Pike were ignited and melted to a crisp. A silver pick-up truck was spotted leaving the scene. The flags were made of a cheap plastic material and they all said “Made in China” on them.

While the newspapers carried stories celebrating the construction of the flag displays on the Mass Pike, none reported that some flags were burned. Does the public have a right to know that someone is burning flags? Should the public be informed? Is that “news”?

FLAGS FOR THE WAR

For most Americans “Old Glory” is the ultimate symbol of American freedom, truth and liberty. According to what is now a long history of burning the American flag, those who choose to do so are afforded protection under the 1989 Supreme Court decision protecting their fundamental rights and freedoms of speech.

Is the state contesting Doug Wight’s free speech flag burning rights? In the case of the two privately owned flags on private property they are charging him with private property violations. With the other three cases it’s not clear: the flags were on Federal or state property.

Joyce Doody, executive director of the National Flag Foundation, and her organization, a so-called “nonprofit flag education organization” based in Pittsburgh, gets a lot of press promoting patriotism—centered around the U.S. flag—through all kinds of paraphernalia and programs.

According to Doody and her “education” organization, the U.S. flag is a symbol of the sacrifices made to preserve the liberties and ideals behind the founding of the country. “It’s not a partisan or political symbol,” Doody is quoted to say. “And it is not an appropriate vehicle for demonstrations for or against an issue.”

The idea that the American flag is “not a partisan or political symbol” is ridiculous. If the U.S. Congress successfully overturns the free-speech flag-waving protections—as it has sought to do just about every year since 1989—then an awful lot of Americans are going to need to be arrested and tried for using the U.S. flag as an “inappropriate vehicle for demonstrations for or against an issue.”

The National Flag Foundation is a private organization that promotes state laws mandating school “education” programs about “flag etiquette” and “good citizenship” and “free enterprise.” This is where the flag is used as a tool of indoctrination. The organization uses the flag to promote an issue—“good” citizenship—but such definitions are very subjective.

According to the Doody statement above, the organization is itself guilty of using the flag as a partisan and political tool. They just pretend that it isn’t so. By their interpretation, Doug Wight is a “bad” citizen, as is anyone who disagrees with their selective programs.

PASSIONS FLYING HIGH

Everyone reading this story knows what it means to have an irrational reaction: How many people have had some kind of very strong reaction to this story already? That is the place to begin learning about one’s self. The burning of the American flag is an incendiary act. It affronts some peoples’ deepest, most cherished beliefs. The irrational part is the part of ourselves that we find we are unable to control or confront.

It is by examining the strong, burning sensations that arise inside our bodies that we are given the opportunity to grow, to be better people, to become part of the solution and not remain part of the problem. That is how we will find our collective way through the complex and chaotic and, for many people, very frightening world around us.

But America is deeply disturbed. People of all walks of life hold deep and sacred beliefs that are generally not open to discussion. Most of us struggle with the question of the sanctity of our beliefs. It is because of deeply held beliefs that we individually and often collectively consider “not open to negotiation” that we often find ourselves unable to communicate with each other, unable to find the common ground we share with our neighbors, our communities, and people everywhere.

Americans are hungry for truth, for leadership, for a strong and independent country. No one can deny this. Part of the reason we are so quickly “offended” by other people’s actions and other people’s words is that we often have no idea how to navigate within the world in which we have found ourselves. For many people this leads to deep and very real fears and frustrations, which often quickly overwhelm common sense.

Everyone knows that the American flag is flown all over the place as a symbol of support for the U.S. government and its’ policies. Especially since 9/11, displays of the U.S. flag have become pervasive throughout the culture and most Americans will readily acknowledge that flag flying is an action to publicly express support for the United States’ war effort. Anyone who doubts this needs only to look back at the photographs of Germany, 1936-1944, to refresh their minds about flags, nationalism and state power.⁴

Back to the flags on the Mass Pike overpass, by what right do a handful of townspeople decide they are going to determine state or Federal policy? To see how twisted and one-sided the argument has become, let’s go back to the fall of 2001. It just so happens that two miles down the State Highway U.S. 9 from my family’s farm in Williamsburg, MA, there was a bridge being rebuilt by a construction crew who lived half way across the state and every day commuted to Williamsburg to rebuild the bridge under state contract.

After September 11, 2001, the construction crew flew a U.S. flag on the bridge and also posted a sign about supporting the war. For those of us who lived in town who disagreed with either the flag or the sign, it didn’t matter: it had suddenly become “their” bridge, and there was no way they were about to take either the sign or the flag down. The town police supported them. Anyone who had the fortitude to speak up was quickly silenced. Remember the hysterical climate of fall 2001? (Not that much has changed.)

It was public property. It was never “their” bridge, and it wasn’t even “their” town. Now imagine some folks coming into “your” town and putting signs up on the state highway bridge that you cross every day, twice a day, to get to work. Signs that said, well, something you don’t like. Everyone can imagine such a sign, you don’t need me to hold your hand, and if you are honest with your self you can imagine how you would feel about some out-of-towners waving—in your opinion—their garbage in your town and in your face.

And of course, when I walked across the bridge and knocked the sign off its pole in broad daylight, the construction foreman lost his mind, one worker picked up a rock to throw, the police were called, and I was the “bad” citizen.

In Williamsburg it’s not my bridge to decorate, even if it is my town, and in Palmer it’s not my bridge to decorate, because it’s not my town. (Iraq is not my country, but it’s my country’s oil.) Not unless I want to be a “good” flag-waving citizen.

AMHERST COLLEGE OF WAR

Doug Wight’s December flag-burning actions seemed to be part of his rising agitation. Some people are quick to write this off as some kind of personal grandstanding, but the same people would never say that about the first patriots who took up arms at Lexington and Concord in the American Revolution.

It was just a few days before the first flag burning of December 7 that Doug Wight attended a talk by John Bolton, former United Nations Ambassador, held at nearby Amherst College on December 3. Bolton’s lecture, “Dealing with Rogue States after Iraq,” is part of the U.S. government’s dishonest campaign to sell the imminent invasion of Iran, Sudan, Yemen and whoever we decide we don’t like. (Oh yeah, Venezuela.) Wight asked John Bolton to admit that he did not have a military service record and the students didn’t like it. Wight rose to his feet and challenged Bolton and the Amherst College audience by repeatedly proclaiming “Blood on Your Hands.” He was accused of “embarrassing” people and told to “relax” and shut-up.⁵

Amherst College perpetuates elitism and ignorance by maintaining a sheltered educational climate. There’s no question about freedom of speech when everyone thinks exactly the same and no one says anything out of the accepted norms. In this kind of climate, even the mildest questions sound like heresy, and the outcome is intolerance of other people’s beliefs, ideas, actions and freedoms.

Rogue states? How do we deal with rogue Ambassadors like John Bolton?

HOMELESS MAN ARRESTED

At the scene of all the December flag incidents Doug Wight left notes attributing the actions to “The American Patriot Liberation Front.” In some cases he left a letter.

“They [letters] outline the group’s three goals,” reported the Greenfield Recorder, “which are: to burn every flag in America, to wake the American people up and to elect an independent president and Congress in 2012 that truly represents the real cares and deep concerns of the American people.”

The notes Doug Wight left on the scene spark my humor, reminding me of the movie “V” for “VENDETTA.” Much like the theatrical mask worn by the film’s character “V” suddenly began to appear on people all around the city, I envision a sudden rash of clandestine flag burnings all across America.

Most of the few people who have heard about Doug Wight setting the flags on fire gained their limited awareness from the few regional newspapers that briefly reported the arrest on December 26 and his arraignment on December 28, and most of the news articles, at least partly, focused public attention on the fact that Doug Wight is homeless.

On December 23, Wight was stopped for a traffic infraction and his truck was matched to reports of one spotted on the scene of the first flag burning incident in Palmer, MA, on December 7. Wight was arrested and jailed when he could not produce his drivers’ license, which he later did. The police impounded Wight’s truck and ransacked everything inside it. On December 26, the police arrested Wight at 4:30 in the afternoon at an apartment complex in Northampton.

On December 27, Doug Wight was arraigned in Northampton District Court. Wight was in handcuffs and leg irons, an appropriate treatment, some said, for disrespecting the American flag, an example of the oversexed security industry, said others, given Doug Wight’s decades of service to the public. Homeless and indigent, Wight was given a public defender and charged with trespassing and destruction of personal property.

The initial charges all stemmed from the incident on December 21 where a 5-by-9 foot American flag that hung from a birch tree outside of a home in Northampton was reduced to ashes. Charges for the other dates would come later.

“This flag burned up in less than five seconds and then it was out,” says Wight. “The tree is 20 feet from the house and it is the middle of winter with several feet of snow on the ground. There was absolutely no chance of further fire damage and the charred limb is so minor it is clearly an act of desperation to create a legal issue out of it.”

The note found at the scene was signed by the “American Patriot Liberation Front” and it claimed the United States was oppressing millions of people around the world. Police found a similar sign in Doug Wight’s truck.

The home belonged to a family whose daughter is a marine in Iraq and whose son had enlisted but not yet served. Doug Wight says he has compassion for the family but cites bigger issues at stake. “It’s very sad that his daughter will have to die or be seriously wounded before he ‘gets it’ and wakes up,” said Wight.

News reports also cast aspersions on Doug Wight’s character by drawing attention to his homeless status. Headlines like “Homeless Man Charged with Flag Burning” planted seeds in readers’ minds that because Doug Wight is homeless his actions are illegitimate. However, no one learns anything by whipping up an irrational mathematical equation that says HOMELESS PERSON EQUALS QUESTIONABLE MORAL CHARACTER.

My dad is homeless, and he is a very respectable, generous, kind-hearted and loving U.S. citizen who pays his taxes and has never, in his entire 73 year-old life, received even a traffic infraction of any kind. You cannot say that about Senator Edward Kennedy or William Jefferson Clinton or Dick Cheney. My dad’s homelessness says nothing about his politics or his moral character. Furthermore, it is nobody’s business that he’s homeless. He does not use food stamps, stay in a shelter or otherwise tax public services. He is, by the way, a Veteran who served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War.

Doug Wight didn’t choose the “homeless” label that the media assigned to his headlines, and he isn’t asking for anyone’s sympathy. Indeed, quite the opposite. Since his pre-trial hearing Doug Wight has been very vocal about his actions and his reasoning.

“Over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children were murdered in the initial ‘shock and awe’ bombing massacre of Baghdad,” he wrote in one of his letters, “and since then anywhere from 550,000 to 1.1 million Iraqi people have been murdered. In addition, 2 million people are internally displaced refugees and another 2.3 million people are external refugees. And that is only Iraq. All Americans have blood on our hands. Our American flag has become an international symbol of shame around the globe. Better to burn them all! I say.”

Doug Wight’s homeless status has nothing to do with whether his flag actions were good choices or poor ones. Drawing attention to Doug Wight’s homeless status is yet another way that people in the United States dehumanize people based along class or racial lines, merely because such people do not own a home, a car, or keep a regular job. The tendency to attach worthlessness to homeless people is symptomatic of the pathologies of American society. It is an indication of mental illness—on the part of those of us who harbor prejudices against other people.

OH SAY CAN’T YOU SEE

In the past few years people across the United States have become increasingly excited about the American flag. Displays have appeared on people’s lawns, in public spaces, dangling from antennas on cars and hanging from trucks. As far as “respect” goes, many people ignore the contradictions in their use and abuse of the U.S. flag.

First there are all those tattered and shredded flags attached to vehicles, many of which blow off and disintegrate in the gutters of the country’s highways. So the “respect the flag” argument is just another form of hypocrisy. What is most offensive however is that a huge percentage of the American flags seen in public today are produced in China.

Can people not see the contradictions and stupidities involved? For just $9.96 you can buy a U.S. flag made in China at Wal-Mart. Since 2001, millions of flags have been imported and tens of millions of dollars in profits have been made on flag sales. In 2001 alone, flag imports topped out at $51.7 million of which $29.7 million came from China.

“As Bertolt Brecht reminds us,” Doug Wight reminds us, “War is business by other means!”

American companies produce more than 100 million flags annually. For those who are concerned about the environment, buying a flag is purchasing waste and pollution. For those who are not concerned about the environment, what difference does it make where it comes from? The symptomatic American carelessness wins again: “I don’t care about anyone else or the planet, I want my flag.”

“Post 9/11, and in our current state of war with Afghanistan and the Iraqi insurgents, we are all feeling patriotic,” wrote freelance writer Matthew Thompson, who makes the standard assumptions to speak on behalf of some 300 million Americans.

“The sight of bloodied soldiers and flag draped coffins sears unsettling images into our souls on a nightly basis. Remember that ache you feel for our troops and country the next time you need to buy a flag or magnet. For once, check the label, and buy American. A soldier is bleeding right now for your right to be able to buy anything in a free country!”⁶

Indeed, parents whose mangled children return from the killing zones don’t want to find a little “Made in China” tag on the Stars and Stripes draped across their sons’ or daughters’ coffins. Representing the business of globalization, and hoping to fool Americans about how a globalized economy and workforce benefit us all, we have the deceptive claims that there is nothing more American than an American flag made in China. Problem is, U.S. citizens are so confused they actually swallow the stupidities and lies.

“There is no way you would be able to buy an American flag for $1 if it were made in the United States,” writes Lois Kaneshiki, a homemaker who all by herself has figured out the basics of slavery abroad and unemployment at home—but can’t make the obvious connection in her muddled or self-interested thinking.

“If America wishes to remain the great nation she is, she should celebrate American flags made in China and, for that matter, anything else foreigners make available to Americans at dirt-cheap prices,” she wrote. “High worker wages, labor laws, unions, and burdensome regulations on business all add costs to doing business that are not a factor in Chinese-made products…The savings Americans realize from these purchases, estimated at more than $1,000 per year just from shopping at Wal-Mart, allow families to afford more luxuries than they otherwise could if every single product they bought had to be made in the United States.”⁷

It doesn’t matter if American workers don’t have health care, secure employment, a living wage or a clean and safe environment—a.k.a. those burdensome regulations on business—and it doesn’t matter if companies abroad have no protections for workers.

Those “burdensome regulations” are meant to protect people from the kind of irresponsible greed and carelessness that corporations and capitalism thrive on. Making my point are the millions of cheap but contaminated Chinese toys that have been snapped up by American parents and given to their children play with. What kind of savings do American families accrue when they take their children to the doctors to find out they have brain damage from lead poisoning? Naturally, the writer does not address the sweatshop labor in China—not in my backyard—or the lead poisoning of American children.

Does the American flag represent freedom from “burdensome regulations” that result in suffering for the American people? Sure enough. The elimination of “burdensome regulations” are at the very heart of the National Flag Foundation’s programs to indoctrinate children in favor of “free enterprise”—meaning to teach children how to exploit other people for their self-ish-interests and private profit.

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

Here is an example of how foolish and childish Americans can be. On one list-serve where the news story about Doug Wight’s arrest was posted the readers who commented complained that Wight was a fraud because he was “staying with friends” in their Northampton apartment. So not only are homeless people worthless, but they have no right to have friends, or friends to stay with, or even to stay at someone’s apartment?

Another reader complained that Wight is a freeloader and a liar because he claims to be homeless yet he owns a stylish pick-up truck. Not only are homeless people considered scum, they are not supposed to own anything at all, else they are also liars and cheats.

“Anybody got a meaningful job for this guy?” wrote another reader. Obviously, there is no meaning in protesting against war, especially by homeless people. In fact, many of us believe there is no deeper meaning in life than to take a principled stand like Doug Wight has. As far as Doug Wight is concerned, indeed, he has nothing better to do than stand up for truth, liberty and freedom for all.

The examples above indicate the huge prejudice and hypocrisies of the American public. You see this hypocrisy and prejudice in action with homeless veterans on the streets of our cities. And there is the real scandal. The same violence is directed at thousands of Americans and it is even used against U.S. War Veterans.

Thousands and thousands of Native American and Hawai’ian people today are homeless and there is a direct relationship between the expanding U.S. military occupation and toxic pollution of Hawai’i and the homelessness and ill-treatment of Hawai’ian people. Been on a Hawai’ian vacation lately? Oahu is repeatedly circled, all day long, by black helicopters: the entire island has become a huge military base where uranium weaponry used on shooting ranges has contaminated the environment. Homeless Hawai’ian people are seen everywhere; and everywhere they are mistreated. Tourism masks the militarism in Hawai’i.

According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) says that the vast majority of the nation’s homeless veterans are single, most come from poor, disadvantaged communities, 45% suffer from mental illness, and half have substance abuse problems. America’s homeless veterans have served in World War II, Korean War, Cold War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Lebanon, Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Operation Iraqi Freedom, or the military’s anti-drug cultivation efforts in South America. Forty-seven percent of homeless veterans served during the Vietnam Era. More than 67% served our country for at least three years and 33% were stationed in a war zone.⁸

It is very telling that no one keeps national records on homeless veterans. Not only does the American war machine create homeless people, it punishes the victims. The Pentagon does not have any problem counting enlistees. This shows yet again how the U.S. government operates — irresponsibly, with no responsibility for the Veterans who have served this country at their own peril. Irresponsibility is the big problem of the United States and the big problem of the citizenry: a refusal to take responsibility and a refusal to be held accountable for our actions and for the actions of our government and corporations.

“Polls show that seventy percent of all Americans are opposed to the Iraq war and want it ended,” says Doug Wight, “yet what percent are willing to take a strong civil disobedience action to help make that happen? Every day I have to deal with the rage and sadness of these two terrible wars and the shame and responsibility that comes with it because it is my beloved country that is inflicting these murderous wars on innocent people.”

The National Coalition on Homeless Veterans offers VA estimates that nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and some 400,000 experience homelessness over the course of a year. One of the main reasons for Veteran homelessness is post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): a debilitating and sometimes deadly effect of the lasting trauma that war inflicts on soldiers and civilians everywhere.

This story of the U.S. government’s treatment of Veterans is a unconscionable scandal.

In weighing one’s quick moral judgment of Doug Wight’s actions one should take such facts into account and ask: where is the moral high ground? Who are the big hypocrites here?

The newspapers reported that Doug Wight moved to Massachusetts to be part of the intentional community, Sirrius, in Shutesbury, MA, “founded in 1979 with the goal of creating a self-sustaining, ecologically-friendly community.”

And so one newspaper reader complained that Doug Wight is also an environmental hypocrite. “This guy supposedly left the flag burning in a tree, catching it on fire,” she wrote, “but he moved to dedicate his life to the environment? Something is off here.”

Indeed, what is off is common sense or rational thinking or perspective. The Pentagon—never mind all the multinational corporations—produces millions of tons of toxic waste every year, but Doug Wight is criticized for charring the twigs on the limb of a tree.

“Many of us here claim to be environmentally and ecologically friendly,” another reader chimed in, “yet we still use non-biodegradable items such as plastic garbage bags, we still drive gas-guzzling SUVs, we still refuse to recycle glass containers. Mr. Wight is not the only hypocrite in the world, nor is he even a particularly important hypocrite. He just happened to get himself mentioned in the news. But I think Mr. Wight has a valid reason for doing what he did, even if his methods might be a tad illegal. He is trying to draw some much needed attention to the REAL needs of millions of people in the U.S.A.”

“Americans need to understand how truly insidious large-scale corporate finance and multinational capitalism is,” wrote Doug Wight in a long treatise on war that he hopes to have published. “People need to wake-up to see how it is destroying our environment and oppressing billions of poor people everywhere. Too many Americans are a bunch of ‘sleeping sheep’ who need to wake-up now to help bring about fundamental changes that will help create healthy, equitable, peaceful, democratic, and sustainable communities, societies, and nations. We have to wake-up NOW!”

“Freedom of speech does not extend to endangering other people or their property,” said another reader reacting to Doug Wight’s actions. It seems most people would agree, and so now we get to the final issues.

POLICE STATE POLICE

“I actually planned on getting arrested eventually and attempted to turn myself in four times,” said Doug Wight, mentioning another aspect of the story the press ignored. “Every time I called the police they assured me no warrant had been issued for my arrest. I even had my attorney call the police. At 4:30 pm on December 26th, I called the police again and spoke to a Lieutenant who said he didn’t know if there had been a warrant issued. I asked him to go check. After a few minutes he returned to inform me that no warrant had been issued for my arrest. Sixty seconds later the Northampton storm-troopers were beating down the door of my friend’s apartment to arrest me. Fortunately, anticipating my arrest, I had already gone to the local press and given them a 90 minute story of why I was burning flags.”

By arresting Wight on their own terms the police insured that he would go to jail with bail required. Further, the court looks far more favorably on those who turn themselves in than it does those arrested by warrant and posse.

The state prosecutor recommended that Wight’s bail be set at $50,000 because he apparently chose to see Doug Wight as a madman—the way that state prosecutors typically exaggerate the risks of those who appear before the court. The judge set bail at $2500 cash, but the public defender defended and Doug Wight emptied his savings account and posted $500 bail. Considering him a flight risk—rather than a civil disobedience case who willingly sought to face the consequences of his actions—the court confiscated his drivers’ license.

Homeless and without transport—his truck’s camper and mattress also served as his makeshift home at times—Wight then faced the sub-zero January temperatures of a snowy New England winter with no funds. Much to his surprise, even some of his friends did not support his cause. He spent three nights with no place to sleep.

“I feel that my entire life has been defined by wars,” Doug Wight told me. “I was born in 1942 and lost my name-sake uncle in that war. Then the Korea War came in the 1950’s and then the Vietnam War in which I lost three very close friends—two of these from neighborhood streets where I grew up in Westfield, New Jersey. Then there was the first Persian Gulf War in the 1990s and now our two wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.”

DESTROYING PRIVATE PROPERTY

“The fact that Doug Wight was both jobless and homeless at the time makes a significant difference to many people who would be weighing the merits of his protest,” says local carpenter and civic activist Stephen Goodale, an acquaintance of Doug Wight. Goodale, who is part of a growing movement of citizens who challenge the U.S. government’s explanation of the September 11 attacks, disagrees with Doug Wight’s protest.

“Doug chose to burn a flag that was private property, instead of burning one that belonged to him, or to the federal government,” says Goodale, listing his strongest objection. “This was a catastrophic mistake, in my opinion.”

The point about private property is well taken, and one that seems to have turned many people off to Doug Wight’s cause. I am one who believes that burning the flags at or taking them from people’s homes is questionable. I believe it contributes to fear and violence and I have a lot of sympathy for the family who woke up to find their flag burned or stolen by some sneaky bandit under the cover of darkness.

I love the country where I grew up—I was born a redneck farmer in rural Massachusetts—and I love traveling across this land, and meeting people, and seeing how they live. I love my friends and my family and my neighbors and even some of the stupid things that only Americans would do. I also love the people and land of Afghanistan, Congo and Nicaragua, where I have worked. But in the months after September 11, 2001, I posted a sign on my family’s property in Williamsburg, a few miles west of Northampton, and when my sign was vandalized I was angry. It was my sign, it was my families’ property, and I felt completely violated.

We are very touchy, aren’t we, about private property?

The farm was attacked over 40 times in the next months: attackers defaced and stole the sign, stole the farm stand canopy, destroyed the farm stand and finally some 4 x 4 pick-up trucks came at the night and tore down the large teepee I was living in while running an organic garden. Each time the sign was vandalized I put it back up. As far as I know, the police did nothing to find out who did it. But I consider those who attacked my farm cowards, because they did not show their faces.

How many readers disagree with Doug Wight sneaking around in the middle of the night destroying people’s private property? Is this terrorism? Was it terrorism to attack my farm stand and tear down my teepee?

“The vast majority of the activists in the Pioneer Valley have been supportive,” says Doug Wight, “saying that more strong actions have to be waged since Congress refuses to end these immoral wars. It never ceases to amaze me that Americans will get upset and angry about the burning of our national icon. The very same people accept the hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings our military ‘burns’. We all should be furiously enraged by the atrocities we have wrought, which are annihilating the heart and soul of America and sapping her once great spirit. Instead, we slink softly and lamely into the silence of the night.”

Terrorism often moves under cover of night. U.S. Special Forces do all their work after dark. In Afghanistan, where I have investigated it, U.S. troops break into people’s homes and commit crimes against innocent people who have never held a weapon in their life, and whose family members have never done so either. U.S. covert operations like this are occurring all over the world.

The United States foreign policy is a foreign policy of destruction, both at home and abroad. There is no understanding, and to cooperation, only bullying, torture and other forms of terrorism—and everywhere the destruction of private property.

Doug Wight said it well: Blood on our hands. There is nothing honorable about what U.S. troops are doing around the world. Soldiers—men and women young and old—are victims of a violent system that indoctrinates and exploits them, but they are, first and foremost, perpetrators of violence.

Before judging Doug Wight for destroying a few flags, even under the cover of darkness, Americans—all of us—need to take responsibility to stop the massive destruction of personal property and the destruction of entire nations and societies by the U.S. war machine and its European, Canadian and Israeli allies. And this includes the officials, and especially the judge, at the Northampton District Court.

Anyone who participates in war becomes a legitimate target, a culpable agent, an enemy to someone somewhere. War is murder, and no one should expect anything less to come of U.S. troops who participate in it. Hiding behind the flag and taking some “I am not part of this violence” stance is self-imposed and willful ignorance of one’s culpability.

Families whose sons and daughters are involved in war have responsibility in this too: None of this “I don’t understand” nonsense from the Boston Globe example above. (The Boston Globe understands, and very well, how to select its quotes.) We are all responsible for our obliviousness, and obliviousness is no excuse for murder.

“The first step to waking-up is to “feel” something—like sadness, horror, anger or disgust,” Wight says. “Something! In truth, WE THE PEOPLE have the power to stop these two sick wars, bring our troops home, and drastically reduce our military-industrial-congressional complex, but not until we care enough to ‘feel the pain’ of what our mendacious America is doing to Iraq and Afghanistan.”

1. “Anarchist Group Behind Local Flag Burning,” Associated Press, December 24, 2007.
2. “Massachusetts orders removal of overpass flags, troop tributes,” Boston Globe, Dec. 4, 2007.
3. “Patrick Halts Plan to Remove War Memorials.”
4. Nazi Photos & Posters.
5. See YouTube video Amherst College
6. Matthew Thompson, “American Flag Made Overseas: China Profits From Our Patriotic Hearts, Soldiers’ Blood,” Associated Content, May 18, 2005.
7. Lois Kaneshiki, “What’s More American Than an American Flag Made in China?” Freedom Daily, January 2, 2008.
8. National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

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’t cover it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. This is the falsification of consciousness.

While the true death toll in Congo over the past series of wars—for the Congolese it is one long contiguous war—will never be known, it is far higher than the IRC figures. In the IRC’s 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 IRC—heavily subsidized by the very same profiteers—sends 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’s 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 “principal member” of the Scowcroft Group today, is a director of Moto Gold (operating in blood-drenched Ituri, Congo) and of the military-based “conservation” organization, the Africa Wildlife Foundation (Washington D.C.), that is backing mercenary activities in the Congo’s Virungas Mountains region under the cover of gorilla protection.

Another Kissinger Associates director is Belgium’s Viscount Etienne Davignon, one of the Congo’s most lasting and current enemies. Davignon was directly involved, 1964-1965, in the code-named “Dragon” operations that installed the “kleptocrat” Mobutu and seeded the beginning of the end for millions of Congolese people.³⁴ 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 “Freedom Award” for “extraordinary 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 “friends 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 “Freedom 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 Uganda—the chief protagonists in the Congo wars.

In 1995 the IRC’s “Freedom 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 “Freedom” 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’s “humanitarianism” includes massive state destabilization, terror networks, torture, coups d’etat and war on sovereign nations.

The International Rescue Committee is not a neutral or purely “humanitarian” 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 “are 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’s biggest funders are HSBC bank, GE, and Goldman Sachs, all involved in Congo’s blood diamonds plunder, and Pfizer and Gilead Sciences (the Davignon-Rumsfeld company). The IRC’s involvement in Congo—a mortality study—involves deeply political but generally hidden motives. Why doesn’t the IRC focus on feeding the living instead of counting the dead?

The Horror, The Horror

Beyond the simple calculus of the IRC’s 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 d’etat 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 Nuremberg 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’s 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’s 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: “The 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 “impact 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 “humanitarian” 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 “loans”—in the millions of dollars—over 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:
“Recovery from conflict is a slow and protracted process. The persistent elevation of mortality more than four years after the official end of the 1998–2002 war provides further evidence that recovery from conflict can take many years, especially when superimposed on decades of political and socioeconomic decline.”

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’s 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 “is 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, and—offering a rather stark and poignant and undeniable example of the way things work and don’t—Coca 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—a Henry Kissinger link—Continental Grain. There are shortages of health supplies and high rates of disease for a reason, and it is not because this is the “heart 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 director Donald 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 crises—in the “first” world—of unprecedented proportions. The long term control of Congo’s resources is best served by eliminating as many black natives as possible. The capacity to control Congo’s 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 “misery” industry is raking in billions of dollars on programs to “help” the Congolese people, and universities create new programs and departments to train the privileged “development” 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’s how the system projects—and inculcates—the falsified consciousness about Africa that people in the West are blinded by.

One of the long term dictator Mobutu Sese Seko’s 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 “VIP” cronies. While Mobutu frequently visited the White House, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo, Geneva, London—and sometimes Tel Aviv—he regularly received his cronies and patrons on his yacht in Zaire.⁸

Protected by Albert-Henri Buisine and Israeli mercenary Meir Meyouhas—and a slew of crack black intelligence operatives—Mobutu 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’s shock troops—including the Israeli-trained Special Presidential Division (DSP), SARM and National Gendarmerie—attacked 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’s role in protecting the Mobutu dictatorship and perpetuating such atrocities and where is Mobutu’s old mercenary bodyguard today?

Well, Mobutu’s French mercenary bodyguard Albert-Henri Buisine surfaced in October, 2007, in a Harper’s 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’s Heart of Darkness we have a white American AP journalist retelling his unfathomable voyage up the Congo.

And there’s the nostalgic Captain, a reluctant French mercenary-terrorist-turned-pilot-profiteer, who for 16 years, against his will, Mealer tells us, served Mobutu reluctantly. “He 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’s 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’s account, no mention of the brutalities suffered by Congolese people, the strike-breaking and student massacres, or the rented crowds chanting “Mobutu! Mobutu” and the empty slogans of Mobutu’s 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 “OAU-2” or the “corridor 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.

“Buisine now led the simple life of a river rat,” Mealer tells us, “making his run six or seven times a year,” pointing out “whirlpools roiling in the deep spots, crocodiles camouflaged in the mud, or, along a wooded island, a tree whose leaves cured hemorrhoids.”¹⁰

Harper’s 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’s tells us nothing about Congo: it is the usual racist nonsense meant to displace the truth. The story is “good” 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’s 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’s publisher John R. MacArthur is described by his magazine company as a “tireless 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’s 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 Zaire—mid-1980’s through the mid-1990’s—the 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’s 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’s 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—a sudden flash of awakening with the release of the January 2008 International Rescue Committee statistics—the 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’s 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 “forgotten 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—yet another generation of Congolese leaders lost—and 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’s 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’s arbitrary arrest, detention and torture of trade union organizers like Leon Ngoy Bululu; police have also shot protestors.¹⁵ So-called ‘illegal’ diamond workers—disenfranchised local Congolese people forced into “criminal” activities to survive—were 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’s southernmost province, and it is the world’s 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 RADICAL—GOING TO THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM—INTERVENTIONS 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 “what is to be done?” It does not cross people’s 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 “predicted” the inevitable return of white patronage in Congo. “It is like being the Congo’s 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 “contains 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’s (Africa) wealth.

The first petroleum refinery in the Congo—owned by Societe Congolaise Italienne de Raffinage (SOCIR), a joint venture between the Congolese government and Ente Nazioale Idrocarburi, Italy’s state-owned petroleum company—commenced 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’s.²⁰ By 1997 this vast concession—known as Cuvette Centrale for the former petit province—was 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’s wars.

In Eastern DRC, petroleum under Lake Albert is being tapped on the Ugandan side by Canada’s Heritage Oil & Gas, Tullow Oil and Hardman Resources, supported by the organized crime syndicates involved with the Uganda “government,” which is itself another syndicated crime ring run by the Ugandan military, General James Kazini, and Museveni’s 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.

“This is an oil country,” the new Congo’s newly created Oil Minister Lambert Mende was quoted by Reuters to say, “not 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’s German diplomat Albrecht Conze—as the Congolese, Rwandan and Ugandan people know all too well—the “terrorists” are all over Central Africa, even if some of them have never visited the country.

Conze’s behavior epitomizes white supremacy masked by “humanitarianism” and “peacekeeping” in Africa. The “peacekeeping” operations of MONUC, like the “humanitarian” or misery industry, are merely well-cloaked disguises for more predatory capitalism with the added insidiousness of a supposed and self-righteous “higher moral purpose” that allows the exploiters in the West to celebrate our “goodness” and our “humanity” 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’s, they don’t 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’s 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’s 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 “uncovered 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 “stop 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 press—in keeping with their role as gatekeepers of suffering in Congo—investigated 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 “news” consuming consciousness as a “humanitarian” or a “peacekeeping” 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 deployed three more UAVs. Belgian Defense command indicates that the UAVs are to “collect information on road traffic and crowd activities.”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’s 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 “lone gunmen with a known criminal record.”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’s.

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 “security threat” and held incommunicado in these Kinshasa dungeons include: Mimi Mboyo (19) and child (jailed >18 months); Angele (17) and child (jailed >24 months); Mianda Kadogo (19) and child (jailed >11 months); Nicolette Mukungu (20) and child (jailed >20 months); Bokungu (21); Olga (20) and child (jailed >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 “corridor of death.”³¹

1. See: keith harmon snow, “Darfurism, Uganda, and U.S. War in Africa,” November 11, 2010.
2. Biography, J. Stapleton Roy, Freeport McMoRan web site.
3. Major Thomas P. Odom, Dragon Operations: Hostage Rescues in the Congo, 1964-1965, Leavenworth Papers No. 14, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College (1988?).
4. keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007.
5. See: Edward S. Herman, “Genocide Inflation is the Real Threat,” Z-Net, Oct. 26, 2007.
6. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.
7. See, e.g., Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee, and the CIA, M. E. Sharp, 1995.
8. On Mobutu in Tel Aviv see: “Mobutu and Israel,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, Autumn, 1985: pp. 171-175.
9. Jerry Funk, Life is an Excellent Adventure: An Irreverent Personal Odyssey, Trafford, 2003.
10. Bryan Mealer, “The River Is A Road: Searching for Peace in Congo,” Harper’s, October 2007.
11. Kadima 010, June-September 2007.
12. keith harmon snow, human rights research and investigations in Congo, 2004-2007.
13. “DRC: Katanga’s Forgotten Strife Displacing Thousands,” IRIN, August 3, 2005.
14. What Future? Street Children in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Human Rights Watch, April 2006.
15. See: “ICEM protests Congo’s Transport, Diamond Injustices,” International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worker’s Union, May 7, 2007.
16. “Diamond miners killed in DR Congo,” BBC News, 7 August 2006.
17. Personal investigation, Ndola, Zambia copperbelt mines, 2000.
18. Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, “Congo’s Future: A Western Protectorate in Africa?” Speigel Online, Aug. 17, 2006.
19. Minerals Yearbook Area Reports: International 1968 Bureau of Mines, 1970: 215-216.
20. Private investigations and site viewing, Mbandaka, DRC, 2007.
21. See: Annual Report of Consolidated Trillion, October 8, 1999. Trillion Resources was renamed Consolidated Trillion Resources in 1999, and it had merged with US.-based Viceroy Explorations Ltd. by 2002.
22. Joe Bavier, “Congo to audit oil sector, first time in 10 years,” Reuters, July 3, 2007.
23. Norm Dixon, “Congo Massacre: Australian mining company’s managers indicted,” Green Left Review, November 4, 2006.
24. His name is known, but he threatened to track down and break the author’s legs if he is revealed.
25. keith harmon snow, “Behind the Scenes: Warlord’s Deadly Battle in Congo,” August 9, 2007.
26. Colum Lynch, “U.N. Combats Peacekeeping Staff Corruption,” Washington Post, December 18, 2007
27. “Local U.N. workers strike in Congo over conditions,” Reuters, August 23, 2007.
28. Israel Aircraft Industries UAVs operate in 15 countries.
29. “Belgium Resumes Congo UAV Operations after Belgian-B is Shot Down,” Flight International, August 15, 2006. Israel’s Rafael Armament Authority is teamed with Lockheed-Martin and Northrop Grumman on advanced missiles and aerospace productions: see Mark A. Loral et al, Going Global? U.S. Government Policy and the Defense Aerospace Industry, RAND, 2002.
30. “IAI-Eagle-B Hunter UAV”
31. Private communications from Kinshasa, DRC, December 2007.

When President George Bush met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at the White House on October 30 they certainly discussed much more than “Uganda’s leadership in Somalia, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and President Museveni’s development plan for northern Uganda” or their “strong partnership to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS in Uganda,” as announced by the White House Office of the Press Secretary.

The role of Yoweri Museveni and his “government” in service to the Western economic neoliberalism and the shock doctrine of deconstruction and chaos is greatly misunderstood and deeply camouflaged by simplified establishment narratives like those above. Bush and Museveni discussed the U.S.-Uganda military relations and bilateral involvement in the ongoing wars in Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo). The “partnership to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS” is camouflage language for military vaccination and bio-warfare programs involving pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, USAID, and “humanitarian” philanthropies.¹ A vaccine for malaria was developed for the U.S. military some time ago and this is shared only with certain U.S. client state partners, though “clinical trials” have been undertaken in public using African “volunteers.”²

Museveni and Bush certainly discussed America’s escalating war in the Sahara desert, expanding petroleum operations across the region, U.S. Special Forces deployments and newly identified uranium resources in Uganda.³ Maybe they discussed the March 1, 1999 killing of eight foreign tourists at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a story that has not yet been critically unpacked.⁴ The “development plan for northern Uganda” is euphemistic language for the ongoing depopulation and massive natural resource extraction that today proceeds in northern Uganda in parallel with the genocide of the Acholi people and Uganda’s militarization in support of covert programs in Sudan and Congo.

The Darfur conflict rides along the fault line of continental warfare spread from Niger to Djibouti and Somalia, and from eastern Congo and Rwanda, through Uganda and Sudan, to Eritrea and the Red Sea. Congo is at war with Uganda and Rwanda. Ethiopia is at war with Somalia, and poised to reinvade Eritrea: there are massive troop build-ups on both sides of the Eritrean-Ethiopia border. Ethiopia, Uganda and Chad are the three “frontline” states militarily destabilizing Sudan. Uganda is internally and externally at war, has intervened secretly in Burundi, and the Ugandan military recently re-occupied towns in eastern Congo over petroleum. Rwanda is fighting in Eastern Congo, meddling in Burundi, and has some 2000 troops in Darfur. Burundi is militarily involved in Congo and soon to be in Somalia. Khartoum backs guerrilla armies in Uganda, Chad and Congo.

The U.S. is all over the place, with both covert and overt military programs. France, England, Canada, Belgium, Libya, Israel and China are all involved. All these conflicts are intertwined, and the targeted populations have allegiances and alliances dictated by the pre-colonial boundaries demarcated at the Berlin Conference of 1885 by the imperial doctrine of divide and conquer. In 1885 “Soudan” was synonymous with “Sahara” and “Darfur” was the center of power.⁵ Conflict involving U.S. covert forces and nomads in Niger and Nigeria, for example, impacts Sudan: the history of the Sahara revolves around the trans-Saharan influence of the Mahdi. In 1875 the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, led the indigenous resistance against Britain. ‘Abdallah at-Ta‘ishi, the Mahdi’s “Khalifah” or successor, who took over as leader of the independent Sudan when the Mahdi died in June 1885, was a native of Darfur.⁶

PEACE IS WAR IS PEACEKEEPING

On October 24, 2007, the United Nations awarded Lockheed-Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers a $250 million no-bid contract to provide “infrastructure” for the United Nations “peacekeeping” missions now unfolding in Sudan (Darfur), Somalia, and Chad/Central Africa Republic. The newly announced contract is to build five new camps in Sudan’s Darfur and Kordofan regions for 4,100 U.N. and African Union personnel. Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest and most secretive aerospace and defense corporation.

This is not Pacific Architects and Engineers’ first contract in Darfur, or in Africa’s “peacekeeping” missions. PAE won the contract for staffing the deeply compromised “Civilian Protection Monitoring Team” (CPMT) in Sudan under a U.S. State Department contract. In 2004, the CPMT office was being run by Brigadier General Frank Toney (retired), who was previously the commander of Special Forces for the United States Army; General Toney organized covert operations into Iraq and Kuwait in the first Gulf War.

Pratap Chaterjee reported in 2004 how “Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Bittrick, the deputy director of regional and security affairs for Africa at the State Department, flew to Ethiopia to hammer out an agreement to support African Union troops by committing to provide housing, office equipment, transport, and communications gear. This will be provided via an ‘indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity’ joint contract awarded to Dyncorp Corporation, and Pacific Architects & Engineers (PAE) worth $20.6 million.”⁷ PAE also set up MONUC operations in Congo, and continues to operate there; the total PAE involvement includes numerous intermediary contracts. In 2002, PAE/Daher won a $34 million air-services follow-on contract amidst complaints of a “lack of transparency and irregularities in the procurement system…confirmed by the bidding of the air-service contract with PAE/Daher.”⁸ Daher International is a French aerospace and defense corporation.⁹

Meanwhile, the “Save Darfur” advocates pressing military intervention in Darfur as a “humanitarian” gesture have escalated pressure in the face of mounting failures, including allegations that millions of “Save Darfur” dollars fundraised on a sympathy for victims platform have been misappropriated.

But the players, the private military companies, the arms dealers—and a handful of missing SRAM missiles armed with nuclear warheads dumped by an American B-52 before it crashed—are mostly unknown to the general public. These covert wars all involve different propaganda strategies to provide cover and deflect attention through “perception management”—managing the perceptions, stereotyping and creating false belief systems—of the North American and European public.

The numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons across the region are staggering and they are indicative of a cataclysmic regional crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. This is not because refugees, insurgency and guerrilla warfare are inherent to Africa: refugees and IDPs are big business for white systems of power that maintain structural violence based on profits and the globalization of poverty, terror and war. The numbers are staggering, and these are not merely statistics, they are about suffering human beings.

United Nations agencies report some 4,700,163 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan—2,152,163 in Darfur and 2,276,000 in Northern Sudan—with some 686,311 refugees out of Sudan.

REGIONAL REFUGEES AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS¹⁰

      Burundi: 100,000 IDPs 396,541 refugees out

      Chad: 179,940 IDPs 36,300 refugees out

      Central Africa Rep.: 212,000 IDPs 71,685 refugees out

      Dem. Rep. of Congo: 1,400,000 IDPs 401,914 refugees out

      Eritrea: 32,000 IDPs 193,700 refugees out

      Ethiopia: ?200,000? IDPs 80,000 refugees out

      Kenya: 413,000 IDPs 5,356 refugees out

      Rwanda: ???? IDPs 92,966 refugees out

      Somalia: 700,000 IDPs 464,253 refugees out

      Sudan: 4,703,163 IDPs 686,311 refugees out

      Uganda: 1,310,000 IDPs 21,752 refugees out

Is Kenya at war? Sure looks like it. Unreported anywhere are the massive petroleum concessions and exploration projects in Kenya’s remote Samburu and Turkana districts. (For $5000 apiece you can purchase reports like “Petroleum Potential of Lake Turkana Area” from international oil and gas consultants Beicip-Franlab.¹¹) G.H.W. Bush’s old Swedish pal Adolph Lundin and Lundin Petroleum signed an exploration contract for the Turkana region in June 2007.¹²

While the United Nations lists some 200,000 IDPs in Ethiopia, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (iDMC) reports: “[r]elatively little is known about the extent and nature of conflict-induced internal displacement in Ethiopia.” There are 92,966 refugees out of Rwanda, if we can trust the iDMC numbers, and an “indeterminate” number of IDPs. Refugee and IDP statistics, like mortality figures, are highly politicized. The situation in Ethiopia today is cataclysmic and the United Nations and the vast network of profit-based NGOs operating in Ethiopia are complicit in genocide because they do not stand up against that regime in fear of losing business.¹³

These humanitarian emergencies involve massive depopulation and death, internally displaced persons and trans-national refugees, all of which provide a lucrative business opportunity for Western “relief” and “development” organizations. The business of AID is a racket. Weapons sales are a racket. The people who suffer are different from the industries, the providers of services, equipment and expertise who profit from these crises. Like most weaponry, landmines are predominantly manufactured in white economies of North America and Europe and, scandalously, it is the companies from the same white economies who have a lock on UN landmine removal contracts worth billions of dollars a year. The so-called “humanitarian relief” business is an industry that relies on the creation of markets. Millions of people across the region are dying, while millions more are homeless, set adrift in a sea of nowhere, with no rights, no possessions, no protection and very little prospect for survival; their only hopes come from the false belief that the Western “humanitarian” AID enterprise is designed to rescue them.

The engagement of the world’s premier war-making industries—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Bechtel, SAIC—behind and within a so-called “peacekeeping” platform is not new, and something is seriously wrong with this picture.

THE ‘SAVE DARFUR’ NARRATIVE

“Save Darfur” is the predominant propaganda front running on Africa and it has overwhelmed the public consciousness with deceptions. In this establishment narrative Arabs on horseback, the Janjaweed, backed by the Sudan government seated in Khartoum, are the purveyors of genocide. This mirrors the establishment narrative of Rwanda, 1994, which said that the Hutus and the nasty Interahamwe militias committed genocide against the Tutsis in 100 days of killing with machetes. The Rwanda genocide narrative—combined with the narrative about “humanitarian” intervention in Yugoslavia, where the final blow to dismember the country came with the NATO bombing campaign—set the stage for the Darfur genocide narrative.

All over the United States, Britain and Canada advocates and activists who claim to be concerned about human rights, and even those who otherwise would not get involved, have supported the “Save Darfur” movement, a political movement similar to the anti-Apartheid movement mobilized against South Africa in the 1980s. The “Save Darfur” movement has resulted in a huge outpouring of funds, and it has mobilized support from people in all walks of life, and across the political spectrum, on the “never again” platform of “stopping genocide.”

Hollywood personalities dubbed “actorvists,” including Mia Farrow, Don Cheadle and George Clooney, have helped to whip up the “Save Darfur” hysteria. From Elie Wiesel to Barak Obama, people are “outraged” by genocide that the Bush Administration, we are told, is reluctant to stop. And it is hysteria, in the true definition of the word, but it did not simply rise out of a sudden concern for a bunch of Africans in some far-off God-forsaken place (as it is portrayed).

At a “Voices for Darfur” fundraiser held on October 21, 2007 at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, for example, the local chapter of the Congregation B’Nai Israel Darfur Action coalition, raised over $14,000 for “humanitarian” aid to Darfur. The B’Nai Israel Save Darfur Coalition had a broad array of public and organizational support, including other Jewish organizations, Smith College, Northampton Mayor Claire Higgins, Massachusetts’ Senator Stan Rosenberg and Representative Peter Kocot. The campaign organizers claim that “more than 90% goes to direct-on-the-ground AID.” Working with big humanitarian groups like Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children, it is impossible that 90% of funds will hit the ground in Darfur.¹⁴

Behind the “Save Darfur” movement are fundamentalist organizations and think tanks with a deeply nationalistic, militaristic, religious fundamentalist agenda. The Center for Security Policy, for example, supports the “star wars” Strategic Defense Initiative, Homeland Security—which is nothing more than expanding militarism and emasculated public rights—and the Biometric Security Project. The BSP centers around emerging biological technologies that will be used to register, identify, monitor, track and control each and every U.S. citizen. They call it “identity assurance,” it involves state-of-the-art recognition equipment, sensors and security technologies, and it is a central component of the evolving national security and “counter-terrorism” apparatus.¹⁵

The Center for Security Policy is the nerve center of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, a deeply nationalist, neoliberal think-tank and flak organization promoting the all-out attack against non-cooperative governments—dubbed “rogue states”—peripheral to Western economic control. These, of course, are primarily Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Cuba. Zimbabwe is a special case that has joined the list to some degree. What these states have in common is that they are all targeted for divestment by the Center for Security Policy brainchild, divestterror.org. Sudan is another of the “rogue states” targeted.

The establishment narrative on Darfur motivates U.S. citizens to take action to “Save Darfur,” thus facilitating popular support for heightened U.S. military involvement. The truth is that the United States military is already there, in its various incarnations, and the United States is involved in atrocities.

THE UGANDA NARRATIVE

In the northern Uganda region—involving South Sudan and northeastern Congo—another conflict has boiled for over 21 years between the government Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF), led by Yoweri Museveni, and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony. This war offers yet another one-sided Western establishment narrative that says that Kony and the LRA—always described as a Christian fanatical cult that captures and drugs children—is the primary problem in northern Uganda. (Usually African savages are not Christian enough for America’s liking; here we find that they are too Christian.)

The establishment narrative has been furthered across the popular culture, in everything from Vanity Fair to the BBC to the journal The National Catholic Weekly (America). The newly established ENOUGH Project (ENOUGH “genocide” and “not on my watch” etc. etc.) picked up the mantle of LRA atrocities and, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, has supported the establishment narrative which shields the Museveni government from the kind of criticism and international action that is called for in keeping with the scale of the atrocities the Uganda government is responsible for. Amnesty International and Human Rights have produced disinformation, in some cases, Rwanda and Yugoslavia being the most notable.

The Museveni war machine and its state terror apparatus have perpetrated massive atrocities in the region and it has evolved into genocide against the Acholi, Teso and Lango people of the north. The indigenous Acholi people have been forced onto concentration camps over the past 21 years, and these camps have become places of death. In the establishment narrative, the people are always the victims of Kony’s LRA “rebellion.”

Human Rights Watch has addressed torture and government complicity in atrocities in Uganda, and other problems, but they have rarely named names or corporations and they almost never link the conflict or the atrocities to Western interests. One massive report on Northern Uganda details criminal government actions, but the recommendations sections effectively sanction structural violence and white supremacy.¹⁶ The net effect of these policy and “human rights” positions is complicity in genocide and genocide denial on Uganda.

Contrary to the proliferation of propaganda always attributing Kony’s LRA with child abductions—another example of Western Orientalism that essentializes Africa to serve political purposes—is research showing that many LRA abductions are short term with children returning home from LRA abductions in less than three weeks. Further, many children who fight with the LRA have joined by choice, and they do so willingly.¹⁷ In “Childhood’s End” (Vanity Fair, 2006) Christopher Hitchens described the LRA as a “grotesque zombie-like militia…that has set a standard of cruelty and ruthlessness…” American troops that have committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, no less brutal or gruesome or masochistic, would never be described this way.

Yoweri Museveni and his business and military partners are responsible for millions of deaths, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Eastern Congo. Museveni and his generals were the primary backers of Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo. With UPDF support, Bemba’s MLC perpetrated massive atrocities under the covert military operation, Effacer le Tableau (Erasing the Board)—a scorched earth policy amounting to genocide against the Mbuti pygmies of Eastern Congo.¹⁸

The U.S. military invasion of Zaire (now Congo), involved U.S. covert forces, U.S. military communications, logistical and weapons support, and Ugandan and Rwandan forces. Humvees, C-130’s and black-skinned U.S. Special Forces entered South Sudan and northeastern Congo through the Gulu and Arua Districts of Uganda, the heart of Acholiland and the center of atrocities against the Acholi people.¹⁹

Ugandan and British interests living mostly in Britain and aligned with the former dictator Idi Amin have always backed the Lord’s Resistance Army and the West Nile Bank Front; support also came from Saudi Arabia and Qatar (the Qatar General Petroleum Corporation is involved in Sudan’s oil sector and has partnered in various international enterprises with Norwegian, Japanese and French corporations). Idi Amin, the brutal dictator, lived out his life in luxury in Saudi Arabia (d. 2003). The LRA stepped up its military actions in parallel with the UPDF invasion of Zaire (1996), and the subsequent years of warfare and plunder in Congo (1998-present).

According to the investigations of the United Nations and the humanitarian law work of lawyer Karen Parker, the war in Uganda involves massive rapes, killing, tortures, and extrajudicial executions as a policy by the Ugandan military. Some 1.3 million people are displaced in the Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts of northern Uganda (there were 1.7 million IDPs in March 2007). There are over 73 camps with from 1000 to 50,000 people in them, all forcibly displaced by UPDF soldiers, with over 350,000 people out of some 400,000 people displaced from the Gulu district alone.²⁰

THE U.S.-UGANDA INVASION OF ZAIRE

The forced displacements of Acholi people began with Museveni’s ascension to power in 1986, but major forced displacements occurred throughout the 1990’s and again in 2002-2003. However, there was a massive displacement operation in 1996 that appears to have been coordinated in part with the planned U.S. invasion of Zaire from Northern Uganda and Rwanda.

The UPDF Army barracks at Masindi and airstrip at Gulu, both in Northern Uganda, served as the staging grounds for the U.S. invasion of Zaire. The Museveni government organized the closure of northern Uganda in October 1996 ostensibly because of heightened LRA attacks. The UPDF, in chronological coincidence with the U.S. invasion, forced hundreds of thousands of Acholis into concentration camps in the fall of 1996, often by bombing and burning villages and murdering, beating, raping and threatening those who would not comply.

According to testimony from eyewitnesses, on Oct 26, 1996 the top Ugandan brass behind the invasion of Zaire met at the village of Paraa, in the Murchison Falls National Park, near Lake Albert, in the Gulu District. At the meeting were: [1] UPDF Brigadier General Moses Ali—Idi Amin’s right hand man who later became Minister of Internal Affairs, Minister for Disaster Preparedness, and Deputy Prime Minister in the Museveni administration; [2] Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh; [3] then Colonel James Kazini; and [4] Dr. Eric Adroma—head of Uganda National Parks. Salim Saleh is perhaps the leading agent of terror in the UPDF Zaire/Congo wars, but both Saleh and commander James Kazini led UPDF troops involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide involving millions of people in Eastern Congo (1996-2007).

The meeting was ostensibly about security and it was announced that due to a recent LRA rebel attack at Paraa, the UPDF would be placing parts of Northern Uganda off limits to all non-military personnel. (LRA rebels committed the Paraa attack; UPDF troops arrived on the scene quickly and looted bodies but did not pursue the LRA.) The main road from Karuma to the border town of Pakwach was thereafter closed. This road apparently served as a primary transport route for Ugandan and non-Ugandan military—including black U.S. Special Forces—who invaded Zaire.²¹

On November 6, 1996, Bill Clinton was elected. Around 10 November 1996 an armored 4×4 Humvee (HUMMWV)—heavily rigged with sophisticated communications equipment inside and out—was encountered carrying two black U.S. special forces in the Murchison Falls region: the soldiers were wearing UPDF uniforms. Two busloads of black U.S. Special Forces were encountered at a UPDF checkpoint on the Karuma-Pakwach road; wearing civilian clothes, with duffel bags, the muscled and crew cut “civilians” showed U.S. passports and claimed they were “doctors” heading to the tiny Gulu hospital. From November 21-23 Boeing C-130 military aircraft passed over the region every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, heading both north and south. The C-130’s apparently landed at Gulu airstrip—closed by the Museveni government for a two-week period—and offloaded military equipment then moved by roads—closed by the UPDF—to the border. Some C-130’s were charted on a course believed to take them to Goma, Zaire. From mid-November to February 1997 access to northwestern Uganda regions was highly restricted. On 1 March 1997 another wave of C-130’s passed over the region. The UPDF used the LRA threat as cover for massive military operations involving the invasion of Zaire for the United States of America.¹⁹

The in-country U.S. Ambassador to Uganda at the time was E. Michael Southwick (October 1994-August 1997). Oil surveys began in 1998 and the entire Northwestern Uganda region is now designated as oil concessions controlled by Heritage Oil and Gas, Hardman Oil and Tullow Oil, three Anglo-American companies connected to British mercenary Tony Buckingham (founder of he mercenary firms Sandline International and Executive Outcomes) and his partners.²² Nexant, a Bechtel subsidiary, is involved with the trans-Uganda-Kenya pipeline. South African firm Energem—tied to Tony Buckingham through Anthony Texeira, the brother-in-law of Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba—is also involved. Another Energem and Buckingham affiliated company tight with the Museveni regime is Branch Energy, involved with the oil pipeline and mining in Uganda.

On September 5, 2007, UPDF troops—and rebels reportedly aligned with Jean-Pierre Bemba—had occupied the Congo’s oil- and gold-rich Semliki Basin on the western shores of Lake Albert. Heavily armed foreign forces occupied the villages of Aru, Mahagi, Fataki, Irengeti and the Ruwenzori mountains. The international press and the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) remained completely silent about the Ugandan incursions. By September 8, 2007, Ugandan troops were heavily massed on the Congo border while Kabila and Museveni were signing oil and gold sharing agreements in Tanzania. UPDF forces and “rebel” troops alleged to be Bemba’s remained in Congo as of October 25. The MONUC information offices were claiming by mid-October that UPDF had pulled out, but Congolese citizens in eastern Congo continued to report a significant UPDF military occupation.²³

The China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company is also involved in the Uganda-Kenya pipeline, offering an interesting comparison for people concerned about China’s involvement in atrocities in the Darfur region. And, after much scrambling, Libya was cut out of the Kenya-Uganda pipeline deals.²⁴ The petroleum sector in Libya involves U.S., Canadian, and European companies.

Uganda’s representation at the International Criminal Court exploring war crimes in Congo has included at least two very high-profile lawyers from Foley Hoag LLP, an influential Washington law firm deeply entrenched in the proliferation of the mainstream narratives and the victor’s justice doled out—through the ICTY and ICTR tribunals—on Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Pentagon seconded its lawyers from the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corp to the ICTR to “try” those unfortunate “enemies” both arbitrarily and selectively accused of genocide.²⁵

The people most responsible for atrocities in the region—unprecedented human bloodletting, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide—are protected. These include Yoweri Museveni, Salim Saleh, Paul Kagame, James Kazini, Moses Ali, James Kabarebe, Taban Amin, Jean-Pierre Bemba, Laurent Nkunda, Meles Zenawi… a long list of people whose culpability is without question, many of whom have been named for atrocities again and again. U.S. Special Operations forces know what happened and should be deposed under oath in a legitimate International Criminal Court, which at present does not exist, and is not in the making. Ditto for Madeleine Albright, Anthony Lake, Thomas Pickering, Susan Rice, John Prendergast, General William Wald, General Frank Toney, Walter Kansteiner, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Holbroke, Roger Winter, Frank G. Wisner, Andrew Young… another short list.

Foley Hoag LLP is also tied to the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. On May 6, 2002 in Washington D.C. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and wife Janet were special guests at U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council event sponsored by members Coke, Pfizer and Chevron-Texaco. Museveni also met with President Bush at the White House. Coke director Kathleen Black is a principle in the Hearst media empire, while Coke directors Warren Buffet and Barry Diller are directors of the Washington Post Company, and these are the media institutions that whitewash client regimes, corporate plunder and Pentagon actions. Of course, Coca Cola covets the gum Arabic potential of Darfur, and Coke is a client of Andrew Young’s PR firm Goodworks International. Uganda’s image is sanitized by one of the world’s largest PR firms, London’s Hill & Knowlton. In 2005 Uganda spent some $700,000 on a Hill & Knowlton contract to facilitate and “encourage dialogue between the Ugandan government and people like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, Oxfam.”²⁶

THE RWANDA NARRATIVE

Museveni’s bush war began in 1980. Paul Kagame, current President of Rwanda, was Museveni’s Director of Military Intelligence in the mid-1980’s. Museveni and Kagame led the invasion of Rwanda in 1990. The two military commanders utilized terrorist tactics that assigned blame for atrocities they committed—against both their enemies and their own people—on their enemies. They used psychological operations, embedded international reporters, and fabrication of massacres. These tactics have continued to the present.

While Rwanda is billed as a major “success story” of recovery and development after a devastating genocide—see for example the PR “documentary” film Rwanda Rising produced by Andrew Young’s Goodworks International—the country is ruled with an iron-fist and a finely tuned intelligence and torture apparatus involved in political assassinations, suppression of information and disappearances. Huge areas of Rwanda were entirely depopulated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and UPDF as they hammered away at Rwanda beginning in October 1990. The invasion culminated in a coup d’etat that succeeded, with broad U.S. military support, in capturing Kigali in July of 1994.

From 1994 to the present President Paul Kagame has used the genocide card and the establishment narrative to institutionalize repression, criminalize or assassinate anyone who challenges the regime, and further depopulate rural areas for “development” benefiting corporate interests.

Another member of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship council is the Honorable Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta and U.S. Ambassador. Andrew Young and his firm Goodworks International have helped whitewash the image of the Rwanda government and its state apparatus of terror. Andrew Young, Quincy Jones and other wealthy Americans are building (have built) mansions on the shores of Rwanda’s Lake Mwazi in areas where peasants were driven off the land or killed by the Kagame terror machine before, during and after 1994. State terror and depopulation is ongoing along Lake Kivu and in the Volcanoes National Parks regions for methane and high-end tourism development.²⁷

Back to the refugees and IDPs question, the United Nations recognized some 650,000 IDPs in “makeshift camps” in Rwanda in 1998 and 1999, in the northwestern prefectures of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. These IDPs were categorized as “mostly Hutu” and forcibly resettled through implementation of Rwanda’s “National Habitat Policy, or “villagisation” policy, of December 1996, which provides for the relocation of all Rwandans living in scattered homesteads into government-created villages.²⁸ While the UN ceased to recognize these people in Rwanda as internally displaced, in 2003 there remained 200,000 families living in IDP conditions.²⁹ What is their status today?

Rwanda gains currency and good press through big HIV/AIDS projects run by Paul Farmer but funded by the Clinton AIDS foundation. Rwanda was overthrown by and for the Pentagon on Clinton’s watch. Hillary Clinton toured Uganda in July 1997, wore African clothes, danced African dances, and spoke about “democracy” and “development” and a “partnership” against HIV/AIDS.

The Kagame regime has recently awarded petroleum concessions to Canada’s Vangold Resources for the project titled “White Elephant” in northern Rwanda—2700 sq. kilometers of land depopulated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army between 1990 and 2007.³⁰ Contracted to provide “feasibility studies” of petroleum infrastructural development in Rwanda is the San Diego firm Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).³¹

SAIC has ongoing collaborations with Bechtel—another of the world’s most secretive aerospace technology, energy infrastructure and defense contractors—both known for their involvement in U.S. beyond top-secret “black” programs; SAIC also works closely with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.³² Recent SAIC directors have included: U.S. Navy Admiral B.R. Inman (Ret.); U.S. Army General W.A. Downing (Ret.); and U.S. Air Force General J.A. Welch (Ret.). SAIC also has an ongoing collaboration with the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS).³³ Unsurprisingly, through shared directorships, BMS is economically and politically aligned with the New York Times Corporation. SAIC has also been flagged for involvement in highly questionable U.S. mercenary activities and human rights violations in Africa.³⁴

Petroleum, defense and mining interests connected to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International programs in “gorilla conservation” led to the production of high-tech satellite prospecting data, gathered by remote sensing over-flights (1994-2000), delivered to the Rwandan Ministry of Defense.³⁵

The Pentagon has been involved in building military bases in Rwanda, installing military and civilian communications infrastructure, and training Rwandan Defense Forces; a military-communications radar installation has been constructed with U.S. support on Mt. Karisimbi in Ruhengeri Province.³⁶ The installation is being built by the Rwanda Ministry of Defense in partnership with the “Rwandan” company Terracom SPRL and Rwandatel. Terracom is owned by U.S. businessman Greg Wyler; Rwandatel is 99%-owned subsidiary.³⁷

It is believed that Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) sent to Darfur on the African Union “peacekeeping” mission include black U.S. Special Forces disguised as RDF—just as the black U.S. Special Forces were disguised as UPDF during the invasion of Zaire.

Andrew Young is widely lauded as a leader of the African-American civil rights movement and ally of Martin Luther King Jr., claims that were specious to begin with. “In Rwanda Rising,” reads the PR promo for the film, Andrew Young, “a former United Nations Ambassador, Civil Rights leader and top aide to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. documented the amazing transformation taking place in Rwanda today, including the country’s remarkable story of reconciliation despite the 1994 Genocide.”³⁸

Rwanda Rising opened the 15th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival February 8, 2007. “Fifteen years into the Pan African Film and Arts Festival and we continue to showcase the important stories of our brothers and sisters on the Continent,” Festival Director Ayuko Babu said. “Having Rwanda Rising open this year’s festival is keeping in that tradition while making sure that we stay connected to our roots in Africa.”³⁸

THE ROOTS OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN AFRICA

Lockheed Martin is a California-based aerospace and defense giant involved in classified black programs that are beyond “top-secret” and shielded from government oversight. In September 2003, CNN—a corporate-military “news” agency deeply embedded with the Pentagon—reported “[a]ccording to the U.S. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) classified or black programs account for about $23.2 billion or 17 percent of the 2004 budget request for the Department of Defense.”

According to United Nations spokeswoman Michele Montas the six-month Darfur contract with Lockheed-Martin subsidiary Pacific Architect Engineers, Inc. was awarded without competitive bidding “because of complex requirements and a short timeline.”

Reporting from the United Nations, Inner City Press said the terms of the contract will not be public and the United Nations has violated numerous UN charter laws in the tendering of this award.³⁹

The no-bid award process followed the United Nation’s issuance of an official “Expressions of Interest” notice on October 9, 2007. “The United Nations is seeking Expressions of Interest (EOI) from experienced Multi Functional Logistics Services (MFLS) contractors,” the UN’s EOI notice reads, “for the provision of a wide range of services at headquarters, logistic bases, military and police camps, airfields and water resources at various locations in any or all of the following: the Darfur Region of Sudan, Chad/Central African Republic (CAR), and Somalia.”

Inner City Press reported that the EOI solicitation, made after the rules had already been waived to allow the transfer of $250 million to Lockheed Martin for six months in Darfur, is intended to try to clean up the process after-the-fact.³⁹

Another multinational aerospace and defense corporation directly benefiting from this regional U.S. war is Boeing Aircraft Corporation. The U.S. military used Boeing Chinook helicopters in the U.S. invasion of Somalia in 2006. Tom Pickering, former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, is senior vice president for International Relations and a member of the Boeing Executive Council since January 2001. Pickering played a decisive role in the Clinton Administration overthrow of Rwanda (1990-1994) and Congo (1996-1997). He is a leading advocate for the “Save Darfur” propaganda. He is also a member of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa along with Ed Royce (R-CA), former U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker (R-KS), Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Andrew Young.

While the New York Times reported in December 2006 that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia began in late December, military involvement of U.S. covert forces had been ongoing, and was heightened significantly in the early spring of 2006 when the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency openly complained about cross purposes in Somalia. Private military companies were all over Somalia, as were known international arms syndicates, including of course the criminal networks of John Bredenkamp, one of Britain’s fifty richest tycoons and one of the primary financial backers behind the rise and fall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

John Bredenkamp reportedly acquired three SRAM missiles with nuclear warheads jettisoned in shallow water off the coast of Somalia by a U.S.A.F. B-52 that soon after crashed into the Indian Ocean near the U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia. The U.S. invasion of Somalia is believed to have been partly an aborted attempt to recover the lost nukes—called “broken arrows” in Pentagon speak. While the story of the dumped nukes “lost” by Dick Cheney has received some attention, no one has publicly identified John Bredenkamp as the likely weapons dealer involved.⁴⁰

COVERT OPS IN SOMALIA

The war in Somalia dates back to deep U.S. involvement in the 1980s, where major oil concessions were awarded to four Western multinational petroleum giants: Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Philips petroleum. The infusion of Western “AID” provoked destabilization of Somalia, leading to the U.S. military invasion that culminated in the October 3, 1993 mission where scores of U.S. Special Operations Forces were killed when their Blackhawk helicopter was shot down over the capital city, Mogadishu. The mythology of U.S. involvement was indelibly inscribed in the popular consciousness through the Hollywood/Pentagon film Blackhawk Down. Part of the consistent propaganda on Africa is that “the U.S. does not want to get involved and potentially face another Somalia.” But the U.S. pullout of Somalia occurred in perfect synchronicity with the heightened military involvement in Rwanda (1994).

U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) did not cease Special Ops deployments in Somalia with the U.S. withdrawal and covert operations have proceeded on and off, with heightened activity through the late 1990’s. The Pentagon confirmed in November 2006 that SOCOM forces were in Somalia as of October “providing military advice to Ethiopian and Somali forces on the ground.” The U.S. Navy moved “additional forces” into waters off the Somali coast, where the Pentagon said they “conducted security missions, monitoring maritime traffic and intercepting and interrogating crew on suspicious ships.” These included the USS Ramage guided missile destroyer, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, the USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio guided missile cruisers, and the USS Ashland amphibious landing ship.⁴¹ On June 2, 2007, a U.S. Navy destroyer shelled northern Somalia. Somali media reported that News media reported that the strikes destroyed farms, flattened hilltops and killed or injured an unknown number of villagers.⁴²

The British Navy’s newest warship HMS Bulwark was also stationed off the Somali coast in early 2006. The HMS Bulwark deployed to the Indian Ocean on 9 January 2006 for the first live operation of this “unique Commando Assault ship” (as it is described by the British Navy).⁴³

However, sources in Kenya and Eritrea reported “snatch and grab” terrorist operations involving massacres and torture that were run by SOCOM forces inside Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. There are at least 52,000 U.S. special operations forces on active duty and reserve military worldwide, including SEALs, Green Berets and commando-style troops from the 10th Mountain Division and others.

At least three U.S. Navy guided missile destroyers were operating off Somalia in October and November 2007. The U.S.S. Porter, U.S.S. Arleigh Burke and U.S.S. James E. Williams were operating—sinking “pirate ships” and “terrorist” vessels—as part of the Combined Maritime Forces Task Force headquartered in Bahrain.⁴⁴

The establishment narrative is that Ethiopia invaded Somalia to displace Al-Qaeda terrorists and check the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, both of which are propaganda themes that misrepresent the reality of U.S. and allied military interventions.

Ethiopia is considered an essential partner of the U.S. in its “War on Terrorism” and Ethiopian bases have been used for attacks on Somalia. In 2003, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division (SOCOM) completed a three-month program to train an Ethiopian army division in “counter-terrorism tactics”—code language for covert operations. Operations are coordinated through the Combined Joint Task Forces-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) base in Djibouti. In January 2004, SOCOM forces from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment replaced the 10th Mountain Division forces at a new base “Camp United” established at Hurso, northwest of Dire Dawa, near the border with Somalia. Since 2003, under the U.S. State Department-sponsored Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program, CJTF-HOA provided instruction to thousands of Ethiopian soldiers at a base in Legedadi. CJTF-HOA forces from the U.S Army’s 478th Civil Affairs Battalion also operated in Ethiopia (Somalia) in and around Dire Dawa, Galadi and Dolo Odo, among other areas.⁴⁵

Ethiopia seeks to control Somalia to gain access to a much-needed deepwater seaport. Ethiopia’s oil concessions are contiguous with the oil reserves in Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Yemen. Hunt Oil, the Chinese National Petroleum Company and many others are active in Ethiopia.⁴⁶ Hunt’s $18-million refinery across the waters in Yemen was officially dedicated by then U.S. Vice-President G.H.W. Bush in April, 1986. In remarks during the event, Bush emphasized the critical value of supporting U.S. corporate efforts to develop and safeguard potential oil reserves in the region.⁴⁷

The U.S. military used and uses Ethiopian air bases modernized by infusions of millions of dollars of “AID” funds to launch attacks against Somalia. Ethiopia now has the largest standing army on the continent and this was achieved through the conversions of millions of dollars in “AID” to weapons and militarization; even “debt forgiveness”—where foreign “debt” was canceled—benefited the militarization of Ethiopia, and the same occurred in Uganda.See: Ituri: Covered in Blood (part VII), Human Rights Watch, July 2003. U.S. spy satellites were used provide intelligence to Ethiopian troops as they swept across the Oganden basin and Somalia. Presidents Bush and Zenawi both denied that the invasion was coordinated and well planned, and both denied the involvement of the U.S.

The Ethiopian government retained former U.S. Republican house majority leader Dick Armey as a lobbyist in Washington to whitewash the Ethiopian regimes’ crimes.⁴⁸

ETHIOPIA’S GENOCIDES

The Ogaden, Oromo and Anuak regions of Ethiopia have seen massive military occupation and state repression. The Ethiopian government of Meles Zenawi has perpetrated mass starvation and scorched earth policy in the region. There has been very little international media coverage and most is favorable the Zenawi regime or pressing the upside-down stories about “relief” and “starvation” that serve the Western “humanitarian” business sector. The Ogaden basin is a bloodbath today. Applying the same legal standards as in Darfur, all three Ethiopian regions qualify as ongoing genocides against indigenous people.⁴⁹ Failure to apply the genocide standards constitutes genocide denial.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1778 (2007) on 25 September 2007 established the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT). According to the UN’s October 2007 Expression Of Interest, “[i]n it’s Presidential Statement of 30 April 2007, the Security Council requested the Secretary General to ‘immediately begin appropriate contingency planning for a United Nations mission to Somalia’. At this early stage it is planned to have a UN logistics base at Mombassa, Kenya to support the main supply line from Mombassa to Kismayo, Mogadishu and Hobyo, which will serve as secondary logistics bases in Somalia. At this early stage the number and location of these sites is unknown, but it is envisaged that approximately 24,000 personnel may be required.”

Ethiopia’s war in Somalia has taxed the government drawing widespread criticism. The U.S. is pressing for an African Union mission as a proxy force to replace the Ethiopian troops and further U.S. interests. Mombasa, Kenya is a U.S. military port. The U.S. war in Somalia is ongoing. More than 100 U.S. military “trainers” supervised “combat training” of two Burundian “African Union” battalions (1700 troops) in Bujumbura, Burundi, in advance of their deployment in Somalia expected in November 2007. French military also provided training, while the U.S. and France both are providing logistical and telecommunications support. Burundian troops are also in Darfur.⁵⁰ On November 28, 2004, the Bush White House issued a document announcing a cooperative agreement with Burundi, Guyana and Liberia preventing the International Criminal Court from proceeding against U.S. personnel operating in these countries.⁵¹

In March 2007 the Pentagon deployed an additional 150 SOCOM Forces in Uganda. The troops were part of the Combined Joint Task Force Horn-of-Africa, an “anti-terrorist naval force” deployed around the Horn of Africa with support points in Bahrain and Djibouti. Ugandan sources divulged that the SOCOM troops would be dispersed “around the country” to “support UPDF troops” and “provide support to distribute humanitarian aid.” It was openly reported that the SOCOM are “possibly training the South Sudanese army, which has just signed an agreement for this with its Ugandan counterpart, strengthening Ugandan capacity to fight terrorism.” The U.S. military has also modernized the old Entebbe airport for UPDF operations, and the Entebbe airport supports a small but permanent U.S. military contingent.⁵²

It is believed that U.S. SOCOM troops are operating in blood-drenched Eastern Congo. Ugandan opposition sources have reported that SOCOM forces in UPDF uniforms have joined the more than 2000 Pentagon-trained UPDF forces sent by Museveni to Somalia. The UPDF troops operating in Somalia behind a “peacekeeping” propaganda front have been accused of widespread atrocities. More than 1000 people die daily in Eastern Congo where fighting since 1996 has claimed at least 7 million lives. The Democratic Republic of Congo has seen multiple genocide campaigns, and multiple genocide denials are ongoing.

SOCOM forces have been openly reported in Niger, where operations are billed as “humanitarian” and “human rights” training of Nigerien troops.⁵³ But the insurgency and “rebellion” by the Tuareg and Toubou nomads has always been about uranium and depopulation: Canadian and Chinese companies have recently gotten involved but Esso (Exxon), Japan and French corporations were exploiting the Agadez and Air regions in the 1970’s and 1980’s (at least), dumping radioactive sickness and social devastation on another indigenous population.⁵⁴ Niger is the poorest country in the world. Yet another genocide?

Exxon, Elf and Hunt Oil are in Niger for oil. Barrick Gold is also in Niger, and in Guniea, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mali; through their partnership with Anglo-Ashanti, Barrick is responsible for atrocities and plunder in eastern Congo. Directors of the G.H.W. Bush-connected Barrick Gold include former U.S. Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), whose wife, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, has been an outspoken advocate for immediate action on Darfur.

“I was in the Senate at the time of Rwanda,” said Kassebaum Baker at a speech in 2006 where discussed Darfur. Kassebaum Baker served as chairwoman of the Foreign Relation Committee’s Subcommittee on African Affairs. “We were all aghast at what was taking place there [Rwanda], but I must say no one really knew what to do about it,” Kassebaum Baker said.⁵⁵

The Bakers are on the advisory board for the nationalist think-tank Partnership for a Secure America—another policy-formulating-perception-management-force behind the “Save Darfur” movement—along with a stellar cast of corporate executives involved in war and plunder in Africa.⁵⁶ Most notable of these are Frank G. Wisner, Richard Holbroke, Anthony Lake, Thomas Pickering, Carla Hills and Sam Nunn. Wisner was also on the National Security Council under Clinton, along with the International Crisis Group (ICG) Special Advisor and ENOUGH co-chair John Prendergast. Wisner’s co-directors of the American International Group include: Marshall Cohen, a director of the Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation; Clinton Cabinet members William Cohen and Richard Holbrooke; and Carla Hills, NAFTA negotiator and director of Chevron-Texaco and the ICG. Partnership for a Secure America advisory board members Zbigniew Brzezinski, Pickering, Hills, and Kassebaum Baker are all on the Board of Trustees for the ICG—International Crisis Group—the leading flak organization pressing the “Save Darfur” and Lord’s Resistance Army (Uganda) narratives.

DARFURISM

The Darfur region of western Sudan has been a hotbed of clandestine activities, gunrunning and indiscriminate violence for decades. The Cold War era saw countless insurgencies launched from the remote deserts of Darfur. Throughout the 1990s factions allied with or against Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo, Libya, Eritrea and the Central African Republic operated from bases in Darfur, and it was a regular landing strip for foreign military transport planes of mysterious origin.

In 1990, Chad’s President Idriss Déby launched a military blitzkrieg from Darfur and overthrew President Hissan Habre; Déby then allied with his own tribe against the Sudan government. Sudanese rebels today have bases in Chad, and Chadian rebels have bases in Darfur, with Khartoum’s backing. When the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed in the Central African Republic in March 2003, soldiers fled to Darfur with their military equipment. Khartoum supported the West Nile Bank Front, a rebel army operating against Uganda from Eastern Congo, commanded by Taban Amin, the son of the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, who heads Uganda’s dreaded Internal Security Organization.

France is deeply involved in covert operations and genocide in Africa. Central Africa Republic (C.A.R.), run by General François Bozizé, is a major base of French defense and intelligence operations linked to security regimes in the bloody dictatorships of Republic of Congo, Togo, Cameroon and Gabon, and France backs guerilla groups committing atrocities in Chad, Sudan, DR-Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. C.A.R. is also a conduit for blood diamonds, and the back-up for France’s nuclear policy, today heavily reliant on uranium exploitation in Niger: C.A.R. reportedly has massive uranium reserves. Like oil-cursed Equatorial Guinea, C.A.R. is also a bloodbath, completely off the international media screen.⁵⁷

Darfur is another epicenter of the modern-day international geopolitical scramble for Africa’s resources. Conflict in Darfur escalated in 2003 in parallel with negotiations “ending” the south Sudan war. The U.S.-backed insurgency by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the guerilla force that fought the northern Khartoum government for 20 years, shifted to Darfur, even as the G.W. Bush government allied with Khartoum in the U.S. led “War on Terrorism.” The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—one of some twenty-seven rebel factions mushrooming in Darfur—is allied with the SPLA and supported from Uganda. Andrew Natsios, former USAID chief and now U.S. envoy to Sudan, said on October 6, 2007 that the atmosphere between the governments of north and south Sudan “had become poisonous.” This is no surprise given the magnitude of the resource war in Sudan and the involvement of international interests, but the investigation should center on the involvement and activities of USAID officials Andrew Natsios, Roger Winter and Jendayi Frazer.

Roger Winter, USAID chief in Khartoum today, is directly linked to the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army and U.S. military campaign that destabilized Rwanda and decapitated the leadership of Rwanda and Burundi. USAID’s affiliations with the Department of Defense are now openly advertised with the propaganda peddling AFRICOM—the Pentagon’s new Africa Command. AFRICOM combines U.S. CENTCOM, PACIFICOM and EUCOM operations in Africa; it is nothing new, merely the consolidation and expansion of widespread and ongoing involvement.⁵⁸

Darfur is reported to have the fourth largest copper and third largest uranium deposits in the world.⁵⁹ Darfur produces two-thirds of the world’s best quality gum Arabic—a major ingredient in Coke and Pepsi. Contiguous petroleum reserves are driving warfare from the Red Sea, through Darfur, to the Great Lakes of Central Africa. Private military companies operate alongside petroleum contractors and “humanitarian” agencies. Sudan is China’s fourth biggest supplier of imported oil, and U.S. companies controlling the pipelines in Chad and Uganda seek to displace China through the U.S. military alliance with “frontline” states hostile to Sudan: Uganda, Chad and Ethiopia.

There are claims in the Arab community that Israel provides military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, but insiders in Eritrea dispute this. Israel has a deep history of intelligence and military relations with both Eritrea and Ethiopia, and Israel reportedly has a naval and air base on Eritrea’s Dahlak and Fatma islands, from which German-made Dolphin-class submarines patrol the Red Sea with long-range nuclear cruise missiles.⁶⁰ Eritrea reportedly serves as Israel’s outpost for spying on enemies Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Sudan.⁶¹ Africa Research Bulletin in 1998 reported an Israeli base in Eritrea’s Mahal Agar Mountains.⁶² Israel has clearly strengthened ties with the regime in Chad, from which more weapons and troops penetrate Darfur. The refugee camps have become increasingly militarized. There are reports that Israeli and U.S. military and intelligence operate from within refugee camps in Darfur. Israel is all over the Sahara, from Burkina Faso to Ethiopia and Uganda. Israel’s clandestine actions are partly funded by Israeli-American diamond magnates involved in Angola, Sierra Leone, C.A.R. and Congo, especially Dan Gertler (G.W. Bush’s unofficial Ambassador to Congo), Beny Steinmetz, Nir Livnat, Lev Leviev and Maurice Tempelsman.⁶³

African Union (AU) forces in Darfur include Nigerian and Rwandan troops responsible for atrocities in their own countries. Ethiopia has committed 5000 troops for a UN force in Darfur. AU troops receive military-logistic support from NATO, and are widely hated. Early in October 2007, SLA rebels attacked an AU base killing ten troops. In a subsequent editorial sympathetic to rebel factions Smith College English professor Eric Reeves espoused the tired rhetoric of “Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur,” a position counterproductive to any peaceful settlement.⁶⁴ To minimize the damage this rebel attack has done to their credibility Reeves and other “Save Darfur” advocates cast doubt about the rebels’ identities and mischaracterized the SLA attackers as “rogue commanders.” However, there is near unanimous agreement, internationally, that rebels are “out of control,” committing widespread rape and plundering with impunity, just as the SPLA did in South Sudan for over a decade.

Debunking the claims of a “genocide against blacks” or an “Islamic holy-war” against Christians, Darfur’s Arab and black African tribes have intermarried for centuries, and nearly everyone is Muslim. The “Save Darfur” campaign is deeply aligned with Jewish and Christian faith-based organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. These groups have relentlessly campaigned for Western military action, demonizing both Sudan and China, but they have never addressed Western military involvement—backing factions on all sides.

Christian and Jewish involvement in the “Save Darfur” campaign centers on a long-running but deeply manipulative narrative about slavery and genocide in South Sudan. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum furthered the establishment narrative about Darfur in keeping with the genocide theme; no one ever examines the interests behind the Holocaust Memorial Museum (e.g. Bob Dole), it is merely some apolitical institution with the championing of supposed “universal” human rights of all people everywhere as its raison d’etre. The new political and propaganda doctrine that uses “genocide” as a political tool is morally ambiguous, it attacks the crimes of some and passes over the crimes of others. It uses as its universal principle the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its complementary covenants and proclamations. On the one hand, however, this involves genocide inflation, and on the other hand genocide denial. But the USA—with good Christian and Jewish foot soldiers—is always the final arbitrator: global cop, judge, jury, executioner, surgeon and savior all in one.

Christian organizations involved in Sudan for years include Servant’s Heart and Christian Solidarity International. On Servant’s Heart’s “Board of Reference” is British Baroness Caroline Cox, who is also closely affiliated with Christian Solidarity International (CSI)—one of the main Christian allies of the SPLM/A war in southern Sudan. The propaganda system advocates in favor of the “rebels” in Darfur using a handful of techniques developed in their propaganda campaign behind the “rebels” in South Sudan. Rebels are supported partly by never mentioning them, partly by decrying abuses against them, partly by providing sympathetic one-sided accounts of Khartoum government attacks, and partly by defending their excesses if and when—infrequently—the rebel abuses come to light.⁶⁵

Christian Solidarity International (CSI) in 2006 issued press releases claiming that the Lebanese organization Hezbollah “is using Christian villages to shield its military operations in violation of international law.”⁶⁶ These reports appear to be fabrications to begin with and the CSI accusation a projection of their own involvement with the SPLA in South Sudan, where the SPLA for over a decade used the civilian population as human shields, used the Western AID apparatus (Operation Lifeline Sudan) as cover for military support, and used food as a weapon. If Hezbollah did this during the recent U.S.-Israeli invasion they [Hezbollah] certainly learned it by studying SPLA (CSI) tactics in Sudan. Thus we have twisted triple-standards where the establishment propaganda accuses Hezbollah of violating international law, but the SPLM/A—and the “rebel” groups in Darfur—while doing exactly the same thing, are never anything but poor, defenseless Christians under attack in a “genocidal counter-insurgency” run out of Khartoum government.⁶⁵

Who are the rebels in Darfur? Where do they get new uniforms and modern weapons? With the establishment propaganda on Rwanda and the invading Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army from 1990-1994, all abuses were covered up, the government of Juvenal Habyarimana was blamed for everything, and the “rebels”—backed by Washington, partnered with the Pentagon—were never exposed for atrocities and scorched earth attacks. It was the same with the establishment propaganda that covered for the SPLA: their role in committing and provoking atrocities in South Sudan from 1983 to 2003 has been greatly misrepresented and mischaracterized by virtually every popular source cited in the western press. No one has pressed this line more than Dr. Eric Reeves, the Smith College English professor and most widely cited “expert” behind the establishment narrative to “Save Darfur.”⁶⁷

There is growing dissent within the “Save Darfur” movement as more supporters question its motivations and the links to Israel. “Save Darfur” leaders have been replaced after complaints surfaced about expenditures of funds. Many rebel leaders reportedly receive tens of thousands of dollars monthly, and rebels emboldened by the “Save Darfur” movement commit crimes with impunity. There is a growing demand to probe the accounts of “Save Darfur” to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and bribery—rebel leaders provided with five-star hotel accommodations, prostitutes and sex parties.⁶⁸

The French “humanitarian” charity NGO Zoe’s Ark (L’Arche de Zoé) involved in Chad and Darfur is under investigation by the United Nations, France and Chad for trafficking in black children in the widely under-reported “L’Arche de Zoé affair.” Chadian President Idriss Déby is under attack for alleging “pedophilia” and “organ trafficking” and for arresting seventeen Europeans intercepted at an airport in Chad attempting to depart to France with 103 “Darfur orphans” aged six to ten. The Zoe’s Ark project began fundraising April 28, 2007 to “evacuate 10,000 orphans facing certain death” to France and the United States. Some 300 European’s paid 2000 Euros ($3450) each as “donations” toward logistics costs to receive an orphan. UNHCR determined the children “were living with their families in communities”—they were neither from Darfur nor were they orphans—and their health was not a serious concern.⁶⁹ The NGO was reportedly provided logistical support by the French military, and they had made numerous trips to villages on the Darfur border offering enticements and taking children.⁷⁰ Outraged Chadians on the border with Sudan had already been questioning the motives of scores of foreign aid groups that work with Darfur refugees.⁶⁹ The United Nations and other relief organizations initially denied all knowledge of the Zoe’s Ark NGO but the NGO was registered as an international charity with the UN Mission in Sudan. The Zoe’s Ark website lists 800,000 children “in mortal danger today who must be saved now!”

Humanitarian relief is an industry, with corporate directors, big salaries, career advancement, permanent infrastructure in white economies but mobile, structurally nebulous projects in black countries that entrench structural violence and perpetuate dependence and suffering. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, the outspoken advocate for Congo and Darfur, is also a Director Emeriti for the International Medical Corps (IMC), a “humanitarian” NGO with operations in Darfur, South Sudan, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sierre Leone—all the “problem” countries involved in the transcontinental warfare and then some—and 14 countries outside Africa, including the U.S.-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. Total revenue to IMC in 2005 was $101,727,119.

Amongst the (many) large IMC donors for 2005 and 2006 were numerous Christian and Jewish organizations, charities and missionary affiliates, the Christian right organization euphemistically named Bread for the World (Bob Dole, Donald Payne, David Beckman, Leon Panetta links), and the American Jewish World Service, Pfizer, BP, American Friends Service Committee, Chevron, Trammel Crow (affiliated with Barrick Gold directors), Coca Cola, World Food Program (Bob Dole link), USAID, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

“Save Darfur” is today the rallying cry for a broad coalition of special interests. Advocacy groups—from the local Massachusetts Congregation B’Nai Israel chapter to the International Crises Group and USAID—have fueled the conflict through a relentless, but selective, public relations campaign that disingenuously serves a narrow policy agenda. These interests offer no opportunity for corrective analyses, but stubbornly press their agenda, and they are widely criticized for inflaming tensions in Darfur. This is what we might call Darfurism.

The latest Lockheed Martin contract with the United Nations illustrates the latest stage in the transformation of international conflict whereby military-industrial giants are openly engaged, rather than clandestinely, as has been previously the case. This development parallels the rise of Darfurism— a mass movement in the West designed to channel popular sympathy and agitate people to act on a cause they know nothing about, but think they do. Darfurism is a pathological mix of fear, patriotism, social immaturity, opportunism and unconsciousness akin to fascism. Under the current climate of apathy, fear and public opinion, anything goes, and warfare involves humanitarian agencies as active players in the mix. Like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum they are seen as neutral, described as apolitical, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The United Nations and African Union serve as pseudo-privatized military forces backing a hegemonic, corporate, political and economic agenda. Someone who produces both the danger and, at a price, the shield against it is a racketeer.⁷¹ The future has arrived, and it uses human rights institutions, the label of genocide and accusations of atrocities, and the ever-expanding international AID and charity industry—operating out of pure profit motives—as pivotal elements in the Western portfolio of soft and hard weapons used to further the prerogatives of Empire and clear the land for absolute corporate exploitation. ~

More information:

EXPOSE UGANDA’S GENOCIDE

CEGUN: Campaign to Stop Genocide in Uganda Now

UNIGHT: FOR THE CHILDREN OF UGANDA

FRIENDS OF THE CONGO

ANUAK JUSTICE COUNCIL

1. Maurice Tempelsman chairs the International Advisory Council at the Harvard AIDS Institute (HAI) of the School of Public Health; his involvement in covert actions and interventions flags this program as cover for clandestine biowarfare. HAI partners with the U.S. Military HIV Research Program (USMHRP), a program whose said purpose is to develop vaccines and AIDS prevention for U.S. Military servicemen.
2. Malaria Vaccine.
3. Dulue Mbachu, “Africa’s Unfolding Desert War,” ISN Security Watch, July 11, 2007.
4. “Tourist Killings in Buhoma,” Gorilla Journal, June 18, 1999.
5. See the 1885 map before partition and after.
6. Abu Iskandar as-Sudani, Darfur: The New American French Protectorate, translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr from Al-Hadaf, Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25.
7. Pratap Chatterjee, “Darfur Diplomacy: Enter the Contractors,” CorpWatch, 21 October 2004.
8. FIFTH COMMITTEE CONCLUDES CONSIDERATION OF FINANCING OF UN MISSION IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, Press Release GA/AB/3499, United Nations, 12/3/2002.
9. Daher International
10. Statistics generated by United Nations bodies and reported by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
11. See: National Oil Corporation of Kenya and Beicip-Franlab
12. “Lundin Petroleum Signs Production-sharing Contract with Kenya,” Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connections, June 10, 2007.
13. See: Livelihoods & Vulnerabilities Study Gambella Region of Ethiopia, UNICEF, January 2006.
14. See: Michael Maren, The Road To Hell: The Ravaging Affects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, 1996.
15. From the BSP web site: “As biometrics becomes an increasingly important component of physical and logical security systems there is a need for an authoritative and regularly updated reference and data base on virtually all aspects of biometrics and identity assurance.”
16. See e.g. “Uprooted and Forgotten: Impunity and Human Rights Abuses in Northern Uganda,” Human Rights Watch, Vol. 17, No. 12a, September 2005.
17. David M. Rosen, “Child Soldiers, International Humanitarian Law, and the Globalization of Childhood,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 109, Issue 2, 2007, p: 299.
18. See: Keith Harmon Snow, “A People’s History of Congo’s Jean-Pierre Bemba,” Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007; and “Effacer le Tableau: Rapport de la mission internationale de recherche surles crimes commis, en violation du droit international, contre les Pygmées bambuti dans l’est de la République démocratique du Congo,” Minority Rights Group International, ISBN 1904584217, July 2004.
19. Private interviews, eyewitnesses, October 2007.
20. Karen Parker, “Forced Displacement in Northern Uganda,” United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
21. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999.
22. See: Tullow, Hardman and Heritage Oil concessions maps
23. keith harmon snow & Georgianne Nienaber, “Are USAID Gorilla Conservation Funds Being Used for Covert Operations in Central Africa?” Z Magazine Online (ZNET) September 19, 2007.
24. Angelo Izama, “How badly did Libya want the Kenya-Uganda oil pipeline deal?” Alexander’s Gas and Oil Connections, Vol. 11, Issue 12, November 24, 2006.
25. Ralph G. Kershaw, “Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice According to Washington,” Covert Action Quarterly, No. 74, Fall 2002.
26. Jeevan Vasagar, “Uganda hires PR agency to buff up its image,” The Guardian, May 21, 2005.
27. Private interview, Eastern Congo, March 2007.
28. See: Internal Displacement
29. “Are the Internally Displaced Persons in Rwanda?” ReliefWeb, July 2003.
30. The Rwandan Patriotic Army was renamed the Rwanda Defense Forces (circa 2000?).
31. “Uganda: Kampala-Kigali Oil Pipeline Estimated at $ 193.6 Million,” 16 October 2007, Rwanda News Agency.
32. Laton McCartney, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, Simon & Schuster, 1988.
33. SAIC information is taken from their Annual Reports, Proxy Statements, and web site.
34. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999: 358.
35. Keith Harmon Snow and Georgianne Nienaber: “Gorillas ‘Executed’ Stories front for Privatization and Militarization of Congo Parks, Truth of Depopulation Ignored,” ZNET, August 3, 2007; and “King Kong: The Map, The Mad Scientist, and the Mayor.”
36. “Rwanda’s Karisimbi Antenna to Cost USD 2.3 Million,” New Times (Rwanda), 2007.
37. David Barouski, “Laurent Nkundabatware, His Rwandan Allies and the Ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting Peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” ZNET, February 2007.
38. “Rwanda documentary to open US Black gala,” Rwanda Cinema Center, January 2007.
39. Mathew Russel Lee, “At UN, Darfur No-Bid Contract Spun by UK, Chad and Somalia Preemptively Bid Out,” Inner City Press, October 24, 2007.
40. See, e.g., Wayne Madsen, “The CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD) and British intelligence have evidence that then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney lost three nuclear weapons in 1991,” Madsen Report, May 2, 2007; Alexander Cockburn, “Broken Arrows and Iran,” Counterpunch, August 3, 2005.
41. Pauline Jelenek, “U.S. special forces in Somalia,” Associated Press, November 1, 2007.
42. Stephanie McCrummen, “U.S. Warship Fires Missiles at Fighters in Somalia,” Washington Post, June 3, 2007.
43. “HMS Bulwark welcomed home after Lebanon operations,” defense news, 15 August 2006.
44. “U.S. Gunships Battle Pirates Who Seized Ships Off Somalia, Mogadishu,” Fox News, October 30, 2007.
45. keith harmon snow, “State Terror Against Indigenous People in Ethiopia: Another Secret War for Oil,” World War Four Report, April 2004.
46. See: keith harmon snow, “Today is the Day of Killing Anuaks,” Genocide Watch and Survivor’s Rights International Report, February 25, 2004.
47. Mark Fineman, “The Oil Factor in Somalia,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1993.
48. Xan Rice, “US military ‘used Ethiopian base’ to attack Somali militants,” Guardian Unlimited, February 23, 2007.
49. Livelihoods and Vulnerabilities Study, Gambella Region of Ethiopia, UNICEF report, December 13, 2006.
50. “Burundi: Troops Ready for Deployment in Somalia,” www.allafrica.com, October 5, 2007.
51. “Waiving Prohibition on United States Military Assistance with Respect to Burundi, Guyana, and Liberia, Presidential Determination” No. 2005–08 of November 29, 2004, The White House.
52. “Uganda: American Advisors Being Deployed,” Indian Ocean Newsletter, No. 1209, March 3, 2007.
53. Robert Kaplan, “America’s African Rifles,” Atlantic Monthly, April 2005; Dulue Mbachu, “Africa’s Unfolding Desert War,” ISN Security Watch, July 11, 2007.
54. See e.g.: Mouvement des Nigeriens Pour la Justice; James Finch, “Uranium Mining in Niger at Risk,” The Conservative Voice, July 20, 2007; Sven Ridley-Wordich, “Niger’s Uranium and Oil Sector Threatened by Rebels,” Resource Investor, July 9, 2007; “Uranium prices fall again, conflict in Niger,” National Post, July 9, 2007; “Niger Rebels Pressure Uranium Miners,” The Conservative Voice, July 9, 2007; “Niger rebels attack power plant in uranium area,” Reuters, July 5, 2007.
55. Bill Blankenship, “Ex-senator speaks out: Kassebaum Baker touches on politics of Sudan, Iraq,” The Capital-Journal, October 16, 2006.
56. See: “DARFUR ACTION NOW, Partnership for a Secure America.”
57. Johann Hari, “Inside France’s Secret War,” The Independent, October 5, 2007.
58. AFRICOM
59. Abu Iskandar as-Sudani, “Darfur: The New American French Protectorate,” translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr from Al-Hadaf, Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25 ; see also : keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,” Global Research, February 2007.
60. See: “Close intelligence relations between Israel and Ethiopia, Eritrea
,” June 26, 1998, Arabicnews.com; “Israel to acquire two more German Submarines,” IMRA Newsletter, December 22, 2004.; Muhammed Salahuddin, “How Israel Casts Its Dark Shadow Over Horn of Africa,” Arab News, August 31, 2006.
61. Muhammed Salahuddin, “How Israel Casts Its Dark Shadow Over Horn of Africa,” Arab News, August 31, 2006.
62. Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 35, Issue 6, p. 13131-13166, June 1-30, 1998.
63. keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception Over Those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June & July 2007.
64. Eric Reeves, “Darfur’s Bitter Ironies,” Guardian Online, October 4, 2007.
65. See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,” Global Research, February 2007 and revised for allthingspass, April 2007.
66. “Hezbollah is Using Christian Villages to Shield its Military Operations in Violation of International Law,” Christian Solidarity International, 1 August 2006.
67. See keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa” and, e.g. “SPLA Offensive Overwhelms Muslim Forces,” excerpted from Frontline Fellowship News, 197, Edition 2.
68. Private communication, October 2007. See also, e.g.: “Gaddafi, the Peacemaker in Chad and Darfur.”
69. Stephanie Hancock, “Most Chad Case Children Not Orphans,” Reuters, November 1, 2007.
70. “CHAD: French NGO Accused of Trafficking Children,” IRIN News, October 26, 2007; “Chad: Government Accused of Hypocrisy in Zoe’s Ark Affair,” IRIN News, November 8, 2007; Guillemette Faure, “Trafic d’enfants ou pieds nickelés de l’humanitaire?,” October 26, 2007, Anne Else, “Untangling the Zoe’s Ark Affair,” Anne Else’s Letter from Elsewhere, November 6, 2007.
71. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” In Bringing the State Back In, Peter Evans et al.

The Darfur region of western Sudan has been a hotbed of clandestine activities, gunrunning and indiscriminate violence for decades.

“The humanitarian tragedy in Darfur revolves around natural resources… Given current realities, no intervention in Darfur will proceed, and if it did it would fail.”

So opined the authors of the September 2006 OPED “Keeping Peacekeepers out of Darfur” [GN1](DHG, 9/15/06). Now, over a year later, the situation in Sudan is grimmer than ever, the Darfur conflict remains widely mischaracterized, and many of the predictions of that OPED have come true. Meanwhile, the “Save Darfur” advocates pressing military intervention in Darfur as a “humanitarian” gesture have escalated pressure in the face of mounting failures, including allegations that millions of “Save Darfur” dollars fundraised on a sympathy for victims platform have been misappropriated.

The Darfur region of western Sudan has been a hotbed of clandestine activities, gunrunning and indiscriminate violence for decades. The Cold War era saw countless insurgencies launched from the remote deserts of Darfur. Throughout the 1990s, factions allied with or against Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo, Libya, Eritrea and the Central African Republic operated from bases in Darfur, and it was a regular landing strip for foreign military transport planes of mysterious origin. In 1990, Chad’s Idriss Deby launched a military blitzkrieg from Darfur and overthrew President Hissan Habre; Deby then allied with his own ethnic group against the Sudan government. Sudanese rebels today have bases in Chad, and Chadian rebels have bases in Darfur, with Khartoum’s backing.[GN2] When the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed in the Central African Republic in March 2003, soldiers fled to Darfur with their military equipment. Khartoum supported the West Nile Bank Front, a rebel army operating against Uganda from Eastern Congo, commanded by Taban Amin, the son of the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, who heads Uganda’s dreaded Internal Security Organization. Darfur is the epicenter of a modern-day international geopolitical scramble for Africa’s resources.

Conflict in Darfur escalated in 2003 after in parallel with negotiations “ending” the south Sudan war. The U.S.-backed insurgency by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the guerrilla force that fought the northern Khartoum government for 20 years, shifted to Darfur, even as the G.W. Bush government allied with Khartoum in the U.S. led “war on terror.” The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—one of some 27 rebel factions mushrooming in Darfur—is allied with the SPLA and supported from Uganda. Andrew Natsios, former USAID chief and now US envoy to Sudan, said on October 6, 2007 that the atmosphere between the governments of north and south Sudan “had become poisonous.” This is no surprise given the magnitude of the resource war in Sudan and the involvement of international interests.

Darfur is reported to have the fourth largest copper and third largest uranium deposits in the world. Darfur produces two-thirds of the world’s best quality gum Arabic—a major ingredient in Coke and Pepsi. Contiguous petroleum reserves are driving warfare from the Red Sea, through Darfur, to the Great Lakes of Central Africa. Private military companies operate alongside petroleum contractors and “humanitarian” agencies. Sudan is China’s fourth biggest supplier of imported oil, and U.S. companies controlling the pipelines in Chad and Uganda seek to displace China through the US military alliance with “frontline” states hostile to Sudan: Uganda, Chad and Ethiopia.

Israel reportedly provides military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, and has strengthened ties with the regime in Chad, from which more weapons and troops penetrate Darfur. The refugee camps have become increasingly militarized. There are reports that Israeli military intelligence operates from within the camps, as does U.S intelligence. Eritrea is about to explode into yet another war with Ethiopia.

African Union (AU) forces in Darfur include Nigerian and Rwandan troops responsible for atrocities in their own countries. While committing 5000 troops for a UN force in Darfur, Ethiopia is perpetrating genocidal atrocities in Somalia, and against Ethiopians in the Ogaden, Oromo and Anuak regions. Uganda has 2000 U.S.-trained troops in Somalia, also committing massive atrocities, and the genocide against the Acholi people in northern Uganda proceeds out of sight. Ethiopia is the largest recipient of U.S. “Aid” in Africa, with Rwanda and Uganda close on its heals. France is deeply committed to the Anglo-American strategy, which will benefit Total Oil Corp.

AU troops receive military-logistic support from NATO, and are widely hated. Early in October 2007, SLA rebels attacked an AU base killing ten troops. In a subsequent editorial sympathetic to rebel factions (“Darfur’s Bitter Ironies,” Guardian Online, 10/4/07), Smith College English professor Eric Reeves espoused the tired rhetoric of “Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur,” a position counterproductive to any peaceful settlement. To minimize the damage this rebel attack has done to their credibility, Reeves and other “Save Darfur” advocates cast doubt about the rebels’ identities and mischaracterized the SLA attackers as “rogue commanders.” However, there is near unanimous agreement, internationally, that rebels are “out of control,” committing widespread rape and plundering with impunity, just as the SPLA did in South Sudan for over a decade.

Debunking the claims of a “genocide against blacks” or an “Islamic holy-war” against Christians, Darfur’s Arab and black African ethnic groups have intermarried for centuries, and nearly everyone is Muslim. The “Save Darfur” campaign is deeply aligned with Jewish and Christian faith-based organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. These groups have relentlessly campaigned for Western military action, demonizing both Sudan and China, but they have never addressed Western military involvement—backing factions on all sides. By mobilizing constituencies sympathetic to the “genocide” label and the cries of “never again” they do a grave disservice to the cause of human rights.

There is growing dissent within the “Save Darfur” movement as more supporters question its motivations and the Jewish-Israeli link. “Save Darfur” leaders have been replaced after complaints surfaced about expenditures of funds. Many rebel leaders reportedly receive tens of thousands of dollars monthly, and rebels emboldened by the “Save Darfur” movement commit crimes with impunity. There is a growing demand to probe the accounts of “Save Darfur” to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and bribery—rebel leaders provided with five-star hotel accommodations, prostitutes and sex parties.

“Save Darfur” is today the rallying cry for a broad coalition of special interests. Advocacy groups—from the local Massachusetts Congregation B’Nai Israel chapter to the International Crises Group and USAID—have fueled the conflict through a relentless, but selective, public relations campaign that disingenuously serves a narrow policy agenda. These interests offer no opportunity for corrective analyses, but stubbornly press their agenda, and they are widely criticized for inflaming tensions in Darfur. Rhetoric, aggression and propaganda do not make a strong foreign policy, and the African people suffering from this brutal international conflict involving China, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain, Canada, the United States and Israel cannot eat good intentions foolishly delivered under the banners of “humanitarian aid” and a poorly cloaked militarism.

The West is desperate to deploy a “robust peacekeeping” mission in Darfur, to press the Western agenda, but United Nations forces will only deepen the chaos. The UN forces will cost billions of dollars and will achieve nothing positive. Indeed, the results will be disastrous, creating another Iraq and Afghanistan—only increasing the chaos and devastation already apparent. The United States is hated for this kind of aggression and posturing, and the U.S. economy will continue to suffer.

This article was first published at Black Agenda Report.