The War that did not make the Headlines

Over Five Million Dead in Congo?

Behind the Numbers Redux: How Truth is Hidden, Even When it Seems to Be Told

By Keith Harmon Snow

The International Rescue Committee in late January 2008 released a new
report on the mortality in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. The
report caught the eye of some news agencies, who quickly whipped up trite
little articles as supposed expressions of horror. Over and over it has been
declared “the world’s forgotten crises.” There are reasons why Darfur is in
the crises of the day, the poster crises, and why Congo is hardly mentioned.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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 Nuremburg trials, the international system manipulates statistics,
dates, and timeframes partly to shield those agents who might otherwise be
subject to some kind of future reckoning, and partly to serve the
falsification of history and fabricate a false consciousness.

The IRC excludes the period 1996-1997 to shield the governments of now
military President Paul Kagame, in Rwanda, and Yoweri Museveni, in Uganda,
and their inner circles and extended networks of syndicated, organized
crime.

 

In 1995 and 1996, the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front (RPA/F) and their
partners and backers, the Ugandan People’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.
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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.
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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 people 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.
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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.
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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’sMovement 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.”
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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’sproduction 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.
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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.
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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.
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200000D> 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.
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1733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387&bodyPart=2&tnef=&YY=81843&y5beta=
yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200000E> 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.
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200000F> 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.
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1733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387&bodyPart=2&tnef=&YY=81843&y5beta=
yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000010> 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.
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000011> 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.”
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000012> 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.
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000013> 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.
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000014> 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.
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1733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387&bodyPart=2&tnef=&YY=81843&y5beta=
yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000015> 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.
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000016> 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.
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000017> 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.
<http://us.f537.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?box=Inbox&MsgId=4363_42740801_2
1733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387&bodyPart=2&tnef=&YY=81843&y5beta=
yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000018> 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.
<http://us.f537.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?box=Inbox&MsgId=4363_42740801_2
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#02000019> 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.”
<http://us.f537.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?box=Inbox&MsgId=4363_42740801_2
1733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387&bodyPart=2&tnef=&YY=81843&y5beta=
yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200001A> 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.
<http://us.f537.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?box=Inbox&MsgId=4363_42740801_2
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200001B> 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.
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yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200001C> 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.”
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1733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387&bodyPart=2&tnef=&YY=81843&y5beta=
yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200001D> 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.”
<http://us.f537.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?box=Inbox&MsgId=4363_42740801_2
1733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387&bodyPart=2&tnef=&YY=81843&y5beta=
yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200001E> 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.”
<http://us.f537.mail.yahoo.com/ym/ShowLetter?box=Inbox&MsgId=4363_42740801_2
1733_2445_63963_0_563184_160785_2623389387&bodyPart=2&tnef=&YY=81843&y5beta=
yes&y5beta=yes&order=down&sort=date&pos=0&ViewAttach=1&Idx=34#0200001F> 31 


Notes

1 See: Keith Harmon Snow, “Darfurism, Uganda, and U.S. War in Africa,”
November 11, 2010, < <http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php>
http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php>.

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?), <
<http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/odom/odom.asp>
http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/odom/odom.asp>.

4 keith harmon snow, “Congo’s President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?”
Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007, 
< <http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1171/1/>
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1171/1/>.

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, 
< <http://74.52.200.226/~sefarad/kadima/kadima10.pdf>
http://74.52.200.226/~sefarad/kadima/kadima10.pdf>.

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,
 < <http://hrw.org/reports/2006/drc0406/5.htm>
http://hrw.org/reports/2006/drc0406/5.htm#_Toc129594720>.
 

15 See: “ICEM protests Congo’s Transport, Diamond Injustices,” International
Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worker’s Union, May 7,
2007, <
<http://www.icem.org/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2243-ICEM-protests-Congo%E2%80%99s-T
ransport-Diamond-Injustices>
http://www.icem.org/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2243-ICEM-protests-Congo%E2%80%99s-Tr
ansport-Diamond-Injustices>.

16 “Diamond miners killed in DR Congo,” BBC News, 7 August 2006, 
<
<http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:z9WCcOGeL8MJ:news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/afric
a/5254006.stm+%22MIBA%22+%22illegal+miners%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4>
http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:z9WCcOGeL8MJ:news.bbc.co.uk/
2/hi/africa/5254006.stm+%22MIBA%22+%22illegal+miners%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&
cd=4>.
 

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 <
<http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/689/35790>
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/689/35790>.

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, 
< <http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1096/1/>
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1096/1/>.

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; <
<http://www.iai.co.il/> www.iai.co.il>.  

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”:
 
<http://belmilac.wetpaint.com/page/IAI+-+Eagle+B-Hunter+UAV+(Unmanned+Aerial
+Vehicle)?t=anon>
http://belmilac.wetpaint.com/page/IAI+-+Eagle+B-Hunter+UAV+(Unmanned+Aerial+
Vehicle)?t=anon>.

31 Private communications from Kinshasa, DRC, December 2007.

© Copyright Keith Harmon Snow, Global Research, 2008

 

EM

On the 49th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in
anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni
katika machafuko" 

 

 

 

 

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