Poll: Congo War Is World's Top 'Forgotten' Crisis

[seemslikeadream]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2097314



By Ruth Gidley
LONDON (Reuters) - Brutal conflicts in Congo, Uganda and Sudan are the world's three biggest "forgotten emergencies," each dwarfing the toll of the Asian tsunami but attracting scant media interest, a Reuters poll of experts showed on Thursday.

War in Democratic Republic of Congo has claimed at least 10 times as many lives as the December tsunami yet remains almost unheard of outside of Africa, key players in the aid world said. "It's the worst humanitarian tragedy since the Holocaust," said John O'Shea, chief executive of Irish relief agency GOAL. "The greatest example on the planet of man's inhumanity to man."

Reuters AlertNet, a humanitarian news Web Site run by Reuters Foundation, asked more than 100 humanitarian professionals, media personalities, academics and activists which "forgotten" crises the media should focus on in 2005.

After Congo, they chose northern Uganda, west and south Sudan, West Africa, Colombia, Chechnya, Nepal and Haiti as the most neglected humanitarian hotspots.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

more
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7862859&pageNumber=0


"IT'S THE WORST HUMANITARIAN TRAGEDY SINCE THE HOLOCAUST"



Thanks chlamor for reminding me

[Imperialism Inc.]

1. So sad isn't it.

This is the first piece in anything close to the mainstream media that I have seen on the conflict. Of course the alternative media mentions it now and again but it is off the map otherwise.

[seemslikeadream]

2. UN to tackle claims of Congo sex abuse

Independent
By David Usborne in New York
02 March 2005


The United Nations is to investigate claims of sexual abuse by its peacekeepers after conceding that recent cases involving its soldiers in the Democratic Republic of Congo may not be isolated to that country and similar abuses have probably happened elsewhere.

An internal UN report is expected to recommend for the first time that any peacekeepers accused of sexual molestation will not be allowed to return home until they have been prosecuted in the country where the behaviour is said to have been committed. Their own militaries would have to conduct the court martials.

The report, being prepared by Jordan's UN ambassador, Prince Zeid al Hussein, will aim to end the present arrangements under which accused soldiers are allowed to return home to face trial. Many are never prosecuted so offenders can go unpunished. The UN also wants to identify publicly countries whose soldiers face sex charges.

The UN, already reeling from multiple scandals, notably involving alleged corruption in the management of the oil-for-food programme in Iraq, knows it must take firm action to address the Congo debacle as quickly as possible. Instances of abuse in the country began to come to light last May


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/story.jsp?story=615961


So sad, so true WakingLife

[seemslikeadream]

3. DIAMONDS AND GOLD

Fighting between ethnic-based militia in remote Ituri has killed more than 50,000 people since 1999. The latest
clashes started in December between Hema and Lendu militia in the Djugu territory, not far from the border with
Uganda.

The ethnic conflicts are rooted in commercial and land rivalries in a region rich in diamonds, gold and timber.

Civilians bear the full brunt of the brutality. Militias have razed villages, butchered several hundred people,
kidnapped civilians and raped scores of women.

Sheltering in a refugee camp protected by U.N. peacekeepers with tanks and machine guns, Therese Yeda said a
militia group gang-raped her last week as she walked between two villages.

"Ten of them had guns, the other two had machetes. All 12 of them raped me," the 32-year-old said. "I am eight
months pregnant but the baby doesn't seem to be moving any more."

Aid group Medecins San Frontieres says it has treated more than 2,500 rape victims, from 4-months old to 80
years, in Bunia since June 2003, but warns the true number could be 50 times' greater.

The Human Rights Watch report showed that rape was regularly used by fighters across eastern Congo, not just in
Ituri.
more
http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5584289

[seemslikeadream]

4. Tribal slave raids bring new wave of terror to Congo

Maria, a mother of three, lost her arm defending her children in Nizi, Eastern Congo. She says soldiers ate flesh from the arm after they had amputated it.
http://slate.msn.com/id/2097314

Tribal slave raids bring new wave of terror to Congo
(Filed: 09/03/2005)

Kidnapped families face punishment beatings and amputations, reports Adrian Blomfield in Tchomia

As though time had turned back at least a century, tribal raiders are swooping on the villages of eastern Congo and carrying off their human booty to slave camps where order is enforced with beatings and amputations.

They come in the cool hours before dawn, their presence announced by the clanging of a cow bell that echoes through the hillside hamlets of the Hema tribe, overlooking Lake Albert in Congo's Ituri district.

Armed with machetes and machineguns, the raiders scythe through the rows of huts, torching their thatched roofs.

Mothers clutching their screaming children run through the flames into the arms of their captors, members of a militia from the rival Lendu tribe.

The fat and the elderly, those unsuited for work on the Lendu farms or in the gold and mineral mines they illegally occupy, are hacked to death.

more
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/03/09/wcongo09.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/03/09/ixworld.html

[MisterP]

13. I recall that Cheney dined with one of the leaders of a cannibal army

I can't remember if it was Pygmies or Zaireans in general that were being eaten (by the army)

[seemslikeadream]

5. Tin trade fuels Congo war

A DRC tin miner.
(Riccardo Gangale, AP)


Bukavu - In a haze of dust, wearing ear mufflers against the clang of machines, Lobano Kalimbiro smashes red rocks rich in tin ore with a metal hammer, working up a sweat in a trade that fuelled Central Africa's biggest war and may spawn another.

Democratic Republic of Congo and its tiny but militarily powerful neighbour Rwanda have fought two major wars in this part of eastern Congo, coveted for its gold, tin ore, rare gems and other metals.

Now, officials and analysts say, rising metals prices have intensified competition for eastern Congo's riches, adding to worries of renewed fighting between the armies of Rwanda and Congo.

"Rwanda lives economically off Congo's back now, through a mafia-like exploitation of the zones it has occupied," says Congo's Information Minister Henri Mova.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/Features/0,6119,2-11-37_1672558,00.html

[chlamor]

6. Coltan, Guns and Cell Phones- The Congo

Who's calling on the cellphone?

Are you listening to their cries?

Will you give up your toys so I can survive?

Why in the West do you need all these machines?

Are you so important to be heard all the time?

Why won't you listen?

See the blood in my eyes.

[seemslikeadream]

7. What happens to a dream deferred?

[Zerex71]

8. Meanwhile, back in Jesusland

Martha Stewart's getting out of prison! Jacko shows up to court! And "Survivor: Dubuque" is getting huge ratings!

[seemslikeadream]

16. DIAMONDS ARE ON SALE AT WAL-MART!!!!!!

A. CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Crimes Against Humanity have been crimes under customary international law since at least 1945. Article 7 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court codifies them as follows:

1. For the purpose of this Statute, “crime against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(a) Murder; (b) Extermination; (c) Enslavement; (d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population; (e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law; (f) Torture; (g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity; (h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court; (i) Enforced disappearances of persons; (j) The crime of apartheid; (k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health….

Crimes committed in violation of customary international law cannot be perpetrated against a civilian population, regardless of whether the State has ratified a particular convention or treaty. According to a current codification of customary international law (articulated in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the ICC), numerous acts constituting “crimes against humanity” have taken place.

The following acts reportedly committed by the EPRDF and Highlanders as part of the larger widespread and systematic attack against the civilian Anuak population, constitute crimes against humanity and are punishable as violations of customary international law:

1) Widespread and systematic murders and executions of Anuaks
2) Arson and murder in order to forcibly deport the Anuak population
3) Mass rape of Anuak women and girls
4) Forced pregnancy to produce non-Anuak children
5) Enforced disappearances of Anuak persons
6) Arbitrary arrests, detention and torture of Anuak persons
7) Purposeful transmission of HIV/AIDS to Anuak rape victims (inhumane acts)
8) Intentional mutilation of Anuak persons
9) Other cruel or inhumane acts intentionally causing great suffering or bodily harm.

B. GENOCIDE

According to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), Article II, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Ethiopia was one of the first signers of the Genocide Convention on December 11, 1948, and ratified it in July 1949.

The following acts committed by the EPRDF constitute acts of genocide:

1) The intentional killing of members of the Anuak ethnic group, targeted solely because they are Anuak, destroying a substantial part of the Anuak group.
2) The deliberate targeting of members of the Anuak ethnic group to cause serious bodily or mental harm.
3) The deliberate infliction on the Anuak group, through burning of homes and destruction of food supplies, of conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction.
3) The systematic use of rape as a weapon against a large number of Anuak women in order to destroy the Anuak ethnic group, by:
a. Forcing Anuak women to bear the children of non-Anuak fathers.
b. Intentional infection of Anuak women with HIV/AIDS so as to cause future death.
c. Rapes of Anuak young girls so as to prevent them from having children in the future.

C. ARBITRARY ARREST, ILLEGAL DETENTION & TORTURE

Article 9 of the ICCPR prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention. It provides in its relevant part:

2. Anyone who is arrested shall be informed, at the time of arrest, of the reasons for his arrest and shall be promptly informed of any charges against him; and

3. Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to a trial within a reasonable time or to release.

States parties to the ICCPR are prohibited under paragraph (1) of Article 9 to deprive persons of liberty “except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedures as are established by law.”

MORE
http://www.ictr.org/ENGLISH/basicdocs/statute.html

[chlamor]

9. Western Prosperity Based on the Destruction of Africa

Today, Africa is the most war-torn continent in the world. Over the past fifteen years, thirty-two of the fifty-three African countries experienced violent conflict. During the cold war years (1950-1989), the U.S. sent $1.5 billion in arms and training to Africa thus setting the stage for the current round of conflicts. From 1991-1995 the U.S. increased the amount of weapons and other military assistance to fifty of the total fifty-three African countries. Over the years these U.S. funded wars have been responsible for the deaths of millions of Africans, and the subsequent displacement, disease, and starvation of many millions more.

<snip>


Loans provided by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and G8 have traditionally included strategies known as Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) which came in to effect in Africa in 1980. SAPs require that governments reduce public spending (especially on health, education and food/storage) in order to pay Western Banks. They must also increase exports of raw materials to the West, encourage foreign investment and privatize state enterprises. Instead of reducing the debt, since 1980 SAPs have increased African debt by 500 percent, creating a domino effect of disasters (prolonged famine, conflict, abject poverty, environmental exploitation) linked to an estimated 21 million deaths and, in the process, transferring hundreds of billion dollars to the West.

<snip>


Since the story was first published in October 2002, 1.5 million more people have died in the Congo War bringing the total up to a shocking four million since 1998. This is a war foisted on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC — the richest country in Africa) by the U.S. through its proxies Rwanda and Uganda, who have occupied the country, stolen its abundant natural wealth, and sent it to the West. A peace agreement signed in September 2002 in which Rwanda and Uganda agreed to withdraw, is not working since Uganda has reoccupied parts of the eastern Congo and Rwanda keeps raiding the country. Recently, Rwandan troops burnt down thousands of homes in the eastern Congo. Uganda has armed two ethnic groups, the Hema and Lendu in Ituri province and encouraged them to fight resulting in 11,400 deaths so far; the two groups have laid siege to the provincial capital, Bunia, where bloody massacres continue. This shows the extent to which the U.S. will go to plunder Africa.

<snip>

My article shows how Western prosperity is based on the destruction of Africa. The story details the U.S. imperial design for Africa, which involves fostering wars and destroying economies in order to plunder natural riches. The U.S. has created a holocaust in Africa by backing wars and imposing structural adjustment programs, which have allowed it to loot hundreds of billions of dollars from the continent.

http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2004/10.html

[seemslikeadream]

10. U.S. policy in the DR Congo has failed

U.S. policy in the DR Congo has failed and is another example of policy failures across the Continent
A letter from Congresswoman McKinney to American President Clinton

Cynthia McKinney
Member of Congress and member of the House Committee on International Relations and Committee on National Security
08.31.99

Honorable William Jefferson Clinton
President, United States of America
The White House
Washington, DC 20515

Mr. President:

I have just returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo, meeting with committed individuals from myriad walks of life. Unfortunately, I feel compelled to report to you that crimes against humanity are being committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo and throughout Africa, seemingly with the help and support of your Administration.

I would suggest to you that U.S. policy in the Democratic Republic of Congo has failed and it is another example of our policy failures across the Continent. One only has to point to diplomatic duality in Ethiopia and Eritrea, indecisiveness and ambivalence in Angola, indifference in Democratic Republic of Congo, the destruction of democracy in Sierra Leone, and inflexibility elsewhere on the Continent. The result is an Africa policy in disarray, a Continent on fire, and U.S. complicity in crimes against humanity.

Mr. President, everywhere, people whisper it, but are too "polite" to say it out loud: your Africa policy has not only NOT helped to usher in the so-called "African Renaissance", but has contributed to the continued pain and suffering of the African peoples.

Meanwhile, thousands of people die unnoticed across the entire Continent each day from poverty, disease, and war. This is not the legacy that you want to leave for all of us who have supported you and who also care very deeply for Africa. And I am convinced that you don't want the "drift" of your Africa policy to inflict more suffering among the world's most vulnerable people as you wind down your last days in the White House.

In addition, your failure to intervene and stop the illegal invasion of Democratic Republic of Congo by your allies, Uganda and Rwanda, has directly led to the commission of crimes against humanity by their troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Even now, you ask the world to "shadow kiss" this outrageous policy by calling these two countries uninvited when the world knows that both Uganda and Rwanda are military aggressors deep in the territory of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, far away from their borders. The atrocities being suffered daily by all the people of this region are outrageous and are compounded by bad U.S. policy and indifferent U.S. leadership.

Finally, Mr. President, you must take personal charge of our policy. The current policies have boomeranged against us and have bankrupted us in the eyes of our victims and the world. How can you justify leaving Africa in flames as you leave the White House?

It is now time for you to personally engage on these important issues. I stand ready to be your ally on the Hill for all these important issues. We all know that when you get involved in a concerted push for peace it does make a difference. The time for your personal engagement is now.

Thank you, Mr. President for your consideration of this request. Now, more than ever, your attention is needed to help Africa climb out of this vicious downward cycle.

Sincerely,

/signed/
Cynthia McKinney, Member of Congress and member of the House Committee on International Relations and Committee on National Security

http://www.inshuti.org/mckinney.htm

[struggle4progress]

11. kick

[seemslikeadream]

12. Dark heart of Congo's former rulers returns to haunt them

To harvest the Congo’s natural wealth of ivory, rubber and expensive tropical woods, a system of forced labour was established, in effect enslaving most of the population. Villages had all their women and children held hostage until the men had collected predetermined quantities of rubber from trees in the jungle. Villages that failed to supply enough rubber were left with piles of bodies. Those that resisted were wiped out as an example to the rest.

King Leopold upheld his rule with the Force Publique, largely staffed by Congolese. To ensure they did not steal bullets, they had to return a human right hand for every bullet used. To stop the hands rotting in the moist heat in the jungle, they were smoked on fires to preserve them until the soldiers returned to base.

One Belgian officer, Leon Rom, was famous for decorating his garden with severed African heads, while Guillaume van Kerckhoven paid his black soldiers five brass rods for every human head they delivered him during military operations.

Mr Hochschild estimated that King Leopold was responsible for ten million deaths — halving the population of the Congo — during his 23-year rule, though most other historians and the present exhibition consider that an exaggeration.
more
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1521591,00.html

Thanks struggle4progress for always being there :hug:

[chlamor]

14. Congo,Coltan,Cell Phones & 3,000 Remaining Mountain Gorillas

Coltan and Gorillas

The main area where Coltan is mined, also contains the Kahuzi Biega National Park, home of the Mountain Gorilla. In Kahuzi Biega National Park the gorilla population has been cut nearly in half, from 258 to 130 as the ground is cleared to make mining easier. Not only has this reduced the available food for the Gorillas, the poverty caused by the displacement of the local populations by the miners has lead to Gorillas being killed and their meat being sold as "bush meat" to the miners and rebel armies that control the area. Within the Dem. Rep. of Congo as a whole, the U.N. Environment Program has reported that the number of eastern lowland gorillas in eight Dem. Rep. of Congo national parks has declined by 90% over the past 5 years, and only 3,000 now remain.

<snip>

What to do ?

There is very little the "man on the street" can do to prevent Coltan exploitation as it is not a "visible" component of cellphones that can be differentiated when shopping, but continuing pressure on circuit board manufacturers has lead to many demanding that their Coltan supplies only come from legitimate sources. Similar pressure on other users of Coltan can also help to ensure that only legitimately mined and sold Coltan is used in circuit boards. At a government level, pressure on local politicians to drive awareness of the ongoing civil war in the Dem. Rep. of Congo and help to secure a resolution will help to prevent the extinction of the Mountain Gorilla.

http://www.cellular-news.com/coltan/

[seemslikeadream]

15. War is Golden for the Bush Administration

After George Bush Senior left the White House, he became an advisor and lobbyist for a Canadian gold-mining company, Barrick Gold. Hey, a guy’s got to work. But there were a couple of questions about Barrick, to say the least. For example, was Barrick’s Congo gold mine funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict? Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.

You’ve guessed: Cynthia McKinney.

That was covered in the . . . well, it wasn’t covered at all in the U.S. press.

McKinney contacted me at the BBC. She asked if I’d heard of Barrick. Indeed, I had. Top human rights investigators had evidence that a mine that Barrick bought in 1999 had, in clearing their Tanzanian properties three years earlier, bulldozed mine shafts . . . burying about 50 miners alive.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=229&row=1

War is Golden for the Bush Administration

And the commodities connection? President Pretzel's relentless hissy-fit for war on Iraq has of course goosed the price of gold enormously--and that's set Bush Family coffers a-clinking. How so? In the waning days of his failed presidency, Bush I invoked an obscure 1872 statute to give a Canadian firm, Barrick Corporation, the right to mine $10 billion in gold from U.S. public lands. (U.S. taxpayers got a whopping $10,000 fee in return.) Bush then joined Barrick as a highly-paid "international consultant," brokering deals with various dictators of his close acquaintance. Barrick reciprocated with big bucks for Junior's presidential run. And in another quid for the old pro quo, last year Junior dutifully approved Barrick's controversial acquisition of a major rival. (Barrick is also one of the biggest polluters in America, by the way.)

Thus every step toward war fills Bush pockets quite literally with gold. That's the way they operate, these liars and thieves in thousand-dollar suits, these secretive fronts who profit from war, fear, blood and greasy palms. They arm the "monsters," they disarm the monsters, making money both ways. Then they drape themselves with Bible and flag, like smug pimps promenading to church, singing "Glory Hallelujah" while the whole world burns.

http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd02152003.html


Billions of Dollars at Stake

American Minerial Fields (AMFI), a consortium based origninally in Hope,Ark.--yes, Bill Clintos's hometown--is a big player in exploiting Congo's mineral wealth. In 1997, just a month before Mobutu fell, it signed contracts with the Kabila-Rwanda-Uganda alliance forces for almost a billion dollars investment in copper, cobalt and zinc mines and processing plants in Kolwezi and Kipushi.

This project is part of the $60 billion so-called National Missle Defense system that George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donalc Rumfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice-President Richard Cheney are pushing so vigorously. Building the space station will require many rare metals found in eastern Congo.

Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold Corp., headquartered in Canada. It is the world's second-largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South Africa.

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila1.htm


The Lost World War

The war on Iraq is not the only war in the world and it is not the only war being fought for our material benefit. Western consumers' seemingly insatiable demand for mobile phones, laptops, games consoles and other luxury electronic goods had been fueling violent conflict and killing millions in the Democratic Republic of Congo(formerly Zaire).

The Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC) is possibily the most minerial rich place on Earth - though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese, uranium, (the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki werre built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resource - used to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and mirco-capacitors.

http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/issue13_part3.htm


4 MILLION LIVES HAVE BEEN LOST SINCE 1998 IN CONGO


Barrick Corporation and Cynthia McKinney

The real reason McKinney was trashed.

Was Barrick Gold Mining funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict?

Top human rights investigators had evidence that a mine bought by Barrick in 1999 had in clearing their Tanzanian property three years earlier bulldozed mine shafts burying 50 miners alive.

Tundu Lissu was one of those investigators and McKinney was trying to save his life.

Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.
In 2001 Cynthia McKinney convened a special congressional panel to explore the role of US covert forces and private interest in Central Africa.

But maybe ther was another reason Andrew Young and Vernon Jordan let McKinney swing, Remember Barrick? Did I mention to you that Andy Young and Vernon Jordan are both on Barrick's payroll? Well, I just did.
http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/unitedstates/de... ...



Anybody read the book, King Leopold's Ghost
by Adam Hochschild? I just started it. It's about the Congo and the slave trade under King Leopold II of Belgium which killed between 5-8 million people. The author's point is that most of us have heard very little about this holocaust and the worldwide movement that happened to stop the slavery trade there in the late 1800s.

The author also mentions an encounter he had while on a trip through the Congo in 1961 and how a CIA agent who had had too much to drink described how Patrice Lumumba--the newly independent country's first prime minister, had been killed a few months earlier--someone the US regarded as a "dangerous leftist troublemaker".

Another event to make Americans proud...



Indeed, diamonds are Bill Clinton's best friend

Throughout his tenure in the White House, Clinton personally profited at profound human loss of life from Congo connections tried and true. For years influential with the brutal Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese-Seko, Cia operative Lawence Devlin used his Congo network to access diamonds and cobalt for Clintonite diamond kingpins Michael McMurrough, Jean Raymond-Bouelle, Maurice and Leon Templesman, and their companies: American Mineral Fields International (AMFI) headquatered in Hope, Arkansas in 1995; and Lazare Kaplan International.

Counted among Barrick directors is Brian Mulroney, former Prime Minister of Canada. Another is Edward Neys, former US Ambassador to Canada and chairman of Burson-Marsteller one of the world's largest and most secretive public relations firms.

Burson-Marsteller is a billion-dollar company that covers for organized crime. They are in the business of "perception management" the latter day term for propaganda. They covered for the Nigerian oil barons and Shell Oil during the Biafran War. They covered for Babcock & Wilcox and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as the Three Mile Island nuclear melted down and irradiated the American landscape. They managed the public and their perceptions as the Exxon Valdez supertanker greased the Alaskan wilderness with black crude. Burson-Marsteller covered for Union Carbide after the gas massacre in Bhopal in 1984. Burson-Marsteller has run public relations campaigns to shield extensive, state-orchestrated terror by the "governments" of Argentina, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Singapore.

http://wmass.indymedia.org/newswire/display_printable/47/index.php



Barrick boosts Russian exposure
The 31.7% stake in Alternative Investment Market-listed Highland Gold, formerly Harmony Gold, has been picked up by Barrick Gold and an international group of institutional investors.

Barrick has acquired 10% of the equity from the placing and Highland Gold has also conditionally agreed to issue a further 29.58 million shares at the placement price of 235p per share.

This would give Barrick in total 29% stake in Highland Gold

"This agreement with Barrick marks a new phase in the progress of Highland Gold and we are excited about the prospects of developing a relationship with them in Russia."
http://www.miningnews.net/storyview.asp?storyid=19417



West has "failed to stop" Congo war profiteering from war {Independent}

In the past five years it is estimated that war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has taken three MILLION lives. Many multinational corporations have made huge profits from this.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=501950



Profile: River Congo
By Mark Doyle
BBC News

The boat disaster on a tributary of the River Congo, in which over 160 people were killed, involved two of the very large ferries that ply the waterways of the region...


River rebels

It flows from the capital Kinshasa in the west, in a great arc through impenetrable jungle, to the mining city of Kisangani in the east.

Boats are the cheapest form of travel in DR Congo

The river is so strategically important that for several years, during the Congolese civil war, boats were banned from it because the authorities in Kinshasa thought it could be used by advancing rebels.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3243552.stm


By Martin Plaut
BBC regional analyst

The hunt for minerals has fuelled the conflict
A British-based development group has accused industrialised countries of failing to punish companies alleged to have profited from the DR Congo war.
The group says governments from the world's 30 richest countries failed to investigate what companies based in their countries did in the Congo.

Four years ago a UN panel named companies and individuals that had allegedly been enriched by the war.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3519002.stm


Congo uranium mine investigated

The uranium used in bombs dropped on Japan in 1945 came from the mine

A spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was very concerned about activities at the Shinkolobwe mine in Katanga province.

The mine has been used in the past to producer uranium for nuclear bombs.

The government says it shut down the mine, but a BBC correspondent found 6,000 illegal miners at work there.

They are extracting large amounts of material containing cobalt, copper, platinum and uranium, says our correspondent.

The uranium is sold to nearby furnaces operated mainly by private businessmen from China and India, and exported illegally to the world market via neighbouring Zambia.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3566701.stm


Congo officials seize illegal uranium

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- Authorities seized two cases of uranium in Kinshasa, the capital, that they feared might end up on the black market in neighboring countries, Congo atomic energy officials said Monday.

The cases contained less than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of uranium 235 and 238 and were not sufficient to make an atomic bomb, said Fortunat Lumu Badimayimatu, a top government atomic energy expert.

The containers were seized at the beginning of March. Badimayimatu said he believed the uranium could have been intended for use in the oil industry, in which he said small quantities are used for drilling and measuring the density of hydrocarbon.
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/03/22/congo.ur... /

Trial Begins Over Alleged Congo War Crimes
Wednesday March 24, 2004 8:31 PM
By ANTHONY DEUTSCH
Associated Press Writer

He denied claims by the Dutch Immigration Service that he was ``an important member'' of an execution squad. ``I can't be a member if I have never heard of it, can I?'' he said. He also denied knowing any of the witnesses.

A statement by Francoise Mtumba said Nzapali had forced her into sexual slavery for months, in part by injecting her with tranquilizers.

Mtumba, who the judges said gave an accurate description of the inside of the defendant's house, said Nzapali held her prisoner for two weeks at the Metropole Hotel in Matadi after arresting her for ``bumping into him on the street.''

``He injected me with drugs and I went dizzy. When I woke up I was naked on the bed and he was lying next to me,'' she said in her statement. ``He forced me to, and I couldn't leave because I was scared of beatings.''

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-389...


King of the Beasts Denies He Is A Torturer and Rapist

A Congolese war crimes suspect known as the King of Beasts denied accusations today that he was a feared member of an execution squad who earned his nickname by habitually raping and torturing prisoners.

Sebastian Nzapali is the first suspect to be tried in the Netherlands for war crimes allegedly committed abroad.

He was charged with crimes against humanity that allegedly occurred in 1996 when he was a colonel under Mobutu Sese Seko, the long-time dictator in then Zaire who was overthrown in 1997.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2691661


A charter to intervene

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 23, 2004
The Guardian
...

The third argument is surely the strongest. This is that as soon as we accept that an attack by a powerful nation against a weak one is legitimate, we open the door to any number of acts of conquest masquerading as humanitarian action. As Chomsky points out, Japan claimed that it was invading Manchuria to rescue it from "Chinese bandits"; Mussolini attacked Abyssinia to "liberate slaves"; Hitler said he was protecting the peoples he invaded from ethnic conflict. It is hard to think of any colonial adventure for which the salvation of the bodies or souls of the natives was not advanced as justification.

Faced with this dreadful choice, a sort of moral numbness comes over us. To accept that force can sometimes be a just means of relieving the suffering of an oppressed people is to hand a ready-made excuse to every powerful nation that fancies an empire. To deny it is to tell some of the world's most persecuted peoples that they must be left to rot.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1175621,00.html


It seems to me that there is no instant or reliable answer to this dilemma. But one thing is clear: that the current framework of international law is incapable of resolving it for us. Even if other nations wished to act selflessly on behalf of the oppressed by attacking a despotic state, the charter of the United Nations forbids it. What this means is that any government can then claim it has a moral duty to ignore the law. In attempting to prevent unjustified acts of aggression, in other words, the charter's lack of discrimination may have encouraged them.


Per-Anders Pettersson

A precariously crammed commuter train rolls into the center of Kinshasha, capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After decades of government corruption and a bloody four-year civil war, Congo-DRC—nearly the size of western Europe—has few maintained roads and a decaying transportation infrastructure, making overburdened rail lines one of the few viable travel options.



America Mineral Fields - company decription (link)

http://www.hoovers.com/america-mineral-fields/--ID__535... ...

America Mineral Fields Inc. (Toronto: AMZ )
St. Georges' House, 15 Hanover Sq.
London
W1S 1HS, United Kingdom
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

http://www.am-min.com

What's in a name? America Mineral Fields is based in London but has mining projects in development in Central Africa (Angola, Congo, and Zambia). The company owns exploration and mining concessions to diamond and mineral (including copper, cobalt, and zinc) properties. Upon acquiring the concessions, America Mineral Fields conducts feasibility studies to determine if reserves can be recovered profitably. Founder Jean-Raymond Boulle owns about 30% of the company through his firms America Diamond Corp. and Gondwana (Investments). Belgian metals processor n.v. Umicore s.a. owns nearly 10%


Bush, Clinton in the Web: Behind the Assassination of Kabila


George Bush Sr., father of the president, even had an intimate connection with one of these plundering corporations.

But this is not mentioned in the commercial media, which, as usual, go even further than indifference to insult the fallen head of state, while speculating on the breakup of the Congo.

The industrial enterprises that set up AMFI, according to Baracyetse, "are interested in the contract for the construction of the orbital platform around the world that is destined to replace the Russian station MIR."

This project is part of the $60-billion so-called National Missile Defense system that George W. Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Richard Cheney are pushing so vigorously. Building the space station will require many of the rare metals found in eastern Congo.

Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold Corp., headquartered in Canada. It is the world's second- largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South Africa.
http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila1.htm


Poppy Strikes Gold

Tuesday, April 8, 2003

By Greg Palast,
From The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin/Plume, 2003)


Some of the loot for the Republican effort in the 1997-2000 election cycles came from an outfit called Barrick Corporation. The sum, while over $100,000, is comparatively small change for the GOP, yet it seemed quite a gesture for a corporation based in Canada. Technically, the funds came from those associated with the Canadian’s U.S. unit, Barrick Gold Strike.....

They could well afford it. In the final days of the Bush (Senior) administration, the Interior Department made an extraordinary but little noticed change in procedures under the 1872 Mining Law, the gold rush-era act that permitted those whiskered small-time prospectors with their tin pans and mules to stake claims on their tiny plots. The department initiated an expedited procedure for mining companies that allowed Barrick to swiftly lay claim to the largest gold find in America. In the terminology of the law, Barrick could “perfect its patent” on the estimated $10 billion in ore—for which Barrick paid the U.S. Treasury a little under $ 10,000. Eureka!

How did he go from busted stereo maker to demi-billionaire goldbug? The answer: Adnan Khashoggi, the Saudi arms dealer, the “bag man” in the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostage scandals. The man who sent guns to the ayatolla teamed up with Munk on hotel ventures and, ultimately, put up the cash to buy Barrick in 1983, then a tiny company with an “unperfected” claim on the Nevada mine. You may recall that Bush pardoned the coconspirators who helped Khashoggi arm the Axis of Evil, making charges against the sheik all but impossible. (Bush pardoned the conspirators not as a favor to Khashoggi, but to himself.)

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=207&row=4



Congo Signs $332 Million Mineral Deal

EDDY ISANGO
Associated Press

KINSHASA, Congo - Congo's government has signed a $332 million deal giving a London-based mining company access to lucrative copper and cobalt mines in southeastern Congo, officials said Wednesday.

America Mineral Fields Inc. signed the agreement with the state mining company, Gecamines, in Kinshasa late Tuesday, said Francois Collette, the U.K.-based company's spokesman.

America Mineral Fields said on its Web site the mine at Kolwezi in southern Katanga province could become "one of the world's largest and lowest-cost sources of cobalt as well as a major source of copper."

Congo is struggling to recover from five years of war that ended with a peace deal between rebels, the government and their foreign backers in December 2002.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/8265869.htm


Interesting that American Mineral Fields seems to have used Executive Outcomes (Private Military Company) in the past.
http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:nvBwK5fWMWoJ:www.miningwatch.ca/d



Scamble for Africa: part two.

So Congo is poised to become the retirement capital of the world's mercenaries?

Somehow I do not think so unless they are planning to airfreight that ore to London. Congo has a 37 kilometre coastline on the west coast of Africa. Nip that and it is all over.

Also consider that the global economy is sinking fast and some minerals are not necessarily as important as they once were.
Compare fibre optics and copper cables.
Even diamonds are losing their value.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html
That is why Walmart has a gem counter.

The basic problem remains the same.
It is a battle between the haves and the have-nots.
Europe has never had anything that the rest of the world wants. This has meant that Europe has effectively been cut out of trade. Therefore Europe has changed this weakness into their greatest strength by investing heavily in items that nobody wants, such as a missile delivered at high speed into their living-room.
The US now finds itself in the same position, hence their funding of mercenary-led attacks on those nations with something of value.
http://www.disinfo.com/archive/pages/dossier/id442/pg1 /



While we should perhaps applaud the New York Times and Boston Globe and other major media for having finally reported something on the inhuman conflict in Congo—which is also driving the extinction of the great apes, the deforestation of the vast Congo Basin, and hence global climate mayhem—we must also recognize that the imperatives of corporate profit have insured that four years of western military and economic exploitation of Congo have taken place completely off the radar screen of the American public.

War in Congo has claimed over three million lives since 1998 alone. Innocent civilians have been brutalized, massacred, raped and tortured by all parties to the conflict. It began with the U.S.-sponsored invasion of Rwanda in 1994, and followed with two subsequent U.S.-sponsored invasions of Congo (in 1996 and 1998). These are not the simple "civil wars" declared by the western press. Even the Rwanda "genocide" (in 1994) has to some extent been manufactured in the American mind to serve the mythology of tribalism. Meanwhile, American green berets and military advisors and Pentagon officials have participated from blackboard to battlefield.

Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan, Rwanda and Congo/ Zaire are wars where factions are armed with U.S.-made weapons (M16s, SAMs, tanks); where U.S. covert forces undertake brutal secret missions and psychological operations—accountable to no one—behind the headlines. They are wars where the Central Intelligence Agency is deeply and maliciously entrenched in subverting democracy and orchestrating chaos that is expediently advertised—as such—by our dubious media. At the roots, however, these are wars like any other war.

Essential to the superalloys and weaponry of the global economy of war are Congo’s cobalt, uranium and columbium tantalite (coltan). Cobalt is elemental to nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons, tank armor, industrial furnaces and aerospace, and for 50 years the CIA has insured the free flow of cobalt out of Congo. The human devastation in poverty, disease, torture and massacres is uncountable. Adjectives do not describe the suffering. Similarly, coltan is essential for cellphones and children’s playstations, and companies like Sony and Nokia have been cashing in on this windfall—paid in human blood.


Congo's four-and-a-half-year long civil war has led to factional fighting among myriad groups, some employing children. (Photo: AP)

Child soldiers in Congo




Child soldiers with weapons wait for instructions in an ethnic Hema militia camp near Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, June 16, 2003. REUTERS/Antony Njuguna



A child soldier practices with a machine gun in an ethnic Hema militia camp near Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, June 15, 2003. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen



Child soldiers holding machines guns look out from a window in an ethnic Hema militia camp near Bunia in the Democratic Republic of Congo June 15, 2003. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/photoalbum/1074859618.htm

Handicap International raises mine awareness around world

street theatre is used to raise awareness in Kisangani, Democratic Republic of Congo.

People prepare to mark a zone for clearing in Kisangani.

Signs in Kisangani warn people not to step in a minefield.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/photogallery/HIgallery.htm


http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo....

Finding 2 – The ongoing civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) is a prime example of the devastating legacy of U.S. arms sales policy on Africa. The U.S. prolonged the rule of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Soko by providing more than $300 million in weapons and $100 million in military training. Mobutu used his U.S.-supplied arsenal to repress his own people and plunder his nation’s economy for three decades, until his brutal regime was overthrown by Laurent Kabila’s forces in 1997. When Kabila took power, the Clinton administration quickly offered military support by developing a plan for new training operations with the armed forces.

http://www.africaaction.org/docs00/wpi0001.htm


Keith Harmon Snow, photojournalist reports on U.S. Interests in Africa
Background: Keith Harmon Snow is a journalist/photographer who covers the global crises in environment and security matters. A former electrical engineer and business developement manager with GE Aerospace, he has worked in 26 countries and has presented his photos at colleges and universities across the nation. Last year, he provided expert testimony at a special U.S. congressional hearingon "Western interests, private profit and genocide in Africa." Snow address the roots of violence and the hidden agendas behind the profound, but unnecessary suffering in Africa.



Sponsor: Global HOPE, a registered UH-Hilo student organization
http://harmontalk.blogspot.com /
http://www.survivorsrightsinternational.org/about_us/contact.mv
http://genocidewatch.org/PressReleaseAnuak022804.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/news2002/0828-04.htm
http://www.worldwar3report.com/89.html#africa2

In a new paper on the Congo conflict, award-winning investigative journalist Keith Harmon Snow connects the dots between the Congo coltan mines and the corridors of power. After the 1996 revolution that overthrew the long dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire (now DRC), US-supported Rwanda and Uganda started grooming proxy guerilla forces in eastern Congo to fight the new revolutionary regime of Laurent Kabila (since assassinated, and whose son now rules). Meanwhile, figures close to the White House and global aid programs for Central Africa indirectly profited from the blood coltan:

"Some 80% of world supplies of cobalt and columbo-tantalite (coltan) are found in DRC. Coltan is essential for cell phones, Sony Playstations and computers. During the US proxy wars in Central Africa in the 1990's, Sony America's now Executive Vice-President and General Counsel Nicole Seligman was legal counselor to President William Jefferson Clinton (through the Washington DC firm Williams and Connally, LLP). During his media banking stint with First Boston, one of the major backers of profit-based 'humanitarian relief' efforts in Zaire in 1995, Sony Corporation Executive VP and Chief Financial Officer Robert Wiesenthal counted Cox Communications, Time Warner and the New York Times as major clients."


Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (African Studies, 50)
This book is the source for the information, I believe you are questioning.
Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (African Studies, 50)
by Wayne Madsen (Editor)

Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa: 1993-1999
Background
The Ba-n'daw Report
Covert American Support for the Combatants
American Military Support for the Second Invasion of the Congo
Profiting from the Destabilization of Central Africa
Summary
NOTES
Background
(c) Wayne Madsen

Prepared Testimony and Statement for the Record of

Wayne Madsen
Author,
“Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999”
Investigative Journalist
On:
Suffering and Despair: Humanitarian Crisis in the Congo
Before the
Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
Committee on International Relations
United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC
May 17, 2001

An ominous report on the fate of refugees was made by Nicholas Stockton, the Emergencies Director of Oxfam U.K. & Ireland. He said that on November 20, 1996, he was shown U.S. aerial intelligence photographs which “confirmed, in considerable detail, the existence of 500,000 people distributed in three major and numerous minor agglomerations.” He said that three days later the U.S. military claimed it could only locate one significant mass of people, which they claimed were identified as former members of the Rwandan armed forces and the Interhamwe militia. Since they were the number one targets for the RPF forces, their identification and location by the Americans was undoubtedly passed to the Rwandan forces. They would have surely been executed.<19> Moreover, some U.S. military and diplomatic personnel in central Africa said that any deaths among the Hutu refugees merely constituted “collateral damage.”

Some of the companies involved in this new “scramble for Africa” have close links with PMCs and America’s top political leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of Kabila, was, at the time of its involvement in the Congo’s civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major stockholders included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant of past and current administrations on Africa matters.<26>

When the AFDL-CZ and their Rwandan allies reached Kinshasa in 1996, it was largely due to the help of the United States. One reason why Kabila’s men advanced into the city so quickly was the technical assistance provided by the DIA and other intelligence agencies. According to informed sources in Paris, U.S. Special Forces actually accompanied ADFL-CZ forces into Kinshasa. The Americans also reportedly provided Kabila’s rebels and Rwandan troops with high definition spy satellite photographs that permitted them to order their troops to plot courses into Kinshasa that avoided encounters with Mobutu’s forces.<20> During the rebel advance toward Kinshasa, Bechtel provided Kabila, at no cost, high technology intelligence, including National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite data.<21>

One of the major goals of the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma faction, a group fighting the Kabila government in Congo, is restoration of mining concessions for Barrick Gold, Inc. of Canada. In fact, the rebel RCD government’s “mining minister” signed a separate mining deal with Barrick in early 1999.<29> Among the members of Barrick’s International Advisory Board are former President Bush and former President Clinton’s close confidant Vernon Jordan.


BLOOD MONEY OUT OF AFRICA

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington, D.C.

Rayburn House Office Building
Friday, April 6, 2001
10:00am - 12:00 noon


The accounts we are about to hear today assist us in understanding just why Africa is in the state it is in today. You will hear that at the heart of Africa's suffering is the West's, and most notably the United States', desire to access Africa's diamonds, oil, natural gas, and other precious resources.

You will hear that the West, and most notably the United States, has set in motion a policy of oppression, destabilization and tempered, not by moral principle, but by a ruthless desire to enrich itself on Africa's fabulous wealth. While falsely pretending to be the friends and allies of many African countries, so desperate for help and assistance, many western nations have in reality betrayed those countries' trust--and instead, have relentlessly pursued their own selfish military and economic policies. Western countries have incited rebellion against stable African governments by encouraging and even arming opposition parties and rebel groups to begin armed insurrection.

The Western nations have even actively participated in the assassination of duly elected and legitimate African Heads of State and replaced them with corrupted and malleable officials. Western nations have even encouraged and been complicit in the unlawful invasions by African nations into neighboring counties.

Something must be done to right these wrongs.

I invite you to listen and learn first-hand of the West's activities in Africa.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Prepared Statement of Wayne Madsen

WHAT A DIFFERENCE AN ELECTION MAKES: OR DOES IT?

Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist who has written for The Village Voice, The Progressive, CAQ, and the Intelligence Newsletter. He is the author of Genocide and Covert Activities in Africa 1993-1999 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1999), an expose of U.S. and French intelligence activities in Africa's recent civil wars and ethnic rebellions. He served as an on-air East Africa analyst for ABC News in the aftermath of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Mr. Madsen has appeared on 60 Minutes, World News Tonight, Nightline, 20/20, MS-NBC, and NBC Nightly News, among others. He has been frequently quoted by the Associated Press, foreign wire services, and many national and international newspapers.

Mr. Madsen is also the author of a motion picture screen play treatment about the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion. He is a former U.S. Naval Officer and worked for the National Security Agency and U.S. Naval Telecommunications Command.

---

I wish to discuss the record of American policy in Africa over most of the past decade, particularly that involving the central African Great Lakes region. It is a policy that has rested, in my opinion, on the twin pillars of unrestrained military aid and questionable trade. The military aid programs of the United States, largely planned and administered by the U.S. Special Operations Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), have been both overt and covert.

Some of the companies involved in this new "scramble for Africa" have close links with PMCs and America's top political leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of the late Congolese President Laurent-Desire Kabila, was, at the time of its involvement in the Congo's civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major stockholders included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant of past and current administrations on Africa matters.

One of the major goals of the Rwandan-backed Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD), a group fighting the Kabila government in Congo, is restoration of mining concessions for Barrick Gold, Inc. of Canada. In fact, the rebel RCD government's "mining minister" signed a separate mining deal with Barrick in early 1999. Among the members of Barrick's International Advisory Board are former President Bush and former President Clinton's close confidant Vernon Jordan.

Currently, Barrick and tens of other mining companies are stoking the flames of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Each benefits by the de facto partition of the country into some four separate zones of political control. First the mineral exploiters from Rwanda and Uganda concentrated on pillaging gold and diamonds from the eastern Congo. Now, they have increasingly turned their attention to a valuable black sand called columbite-tantalite or "col-tan." Col-tan is a key material in computer chips and, therefore, is as considered a strategic mineral. It is my hope that the Bush administration will take pro-active measures to stem this conflict by applying increased pressure on Uganda and Rwanda to withdraw their troops from the country. However, the fact that President Bush has selected Walter Kansteiner to be Assistant Secretary of State for African, portends, in my opinion, more trouble for the Great Lakes region. A brief look at Mr. Kansteiner's curriculum vitae and statements calls into question his commitment to seeking a durable peace in the region. For example, he has envisaged the splitting up of the Great Lakes region into separate Tutsi and Hutu states through "relocation" efforts and has called the break-up of the DRC inevitable. I believe Kansteiner's previous work at the Department of Defense where he served on a Task Force on Strategic Minerals and one must certainly consider col-tan as falling into that category -- may influence his past and current thinking on the territorial integrity of the DRC. After all, 80 per cent of the world's known reserves of col-tan are found in the eastern

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/politics/blood_sp...


Africa: U.S. Covert Action Exposed

By Eric Ture Muhammad
Final Call
April 25, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Corporate greed, combined with a desire to never allow the "throne of civilization" to unite and become self-sufficient, continues to join at the hip the U.S. Government, the United Nations and corporate cartels in a persistent war on Africa, a recent congressional hearing concluded.

Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) chaired the hearing, "Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington, D.C.," and led the voices of castigation that claimed the U.S. Government, the UN, private militias and western economic interests possessed complete knowledge of pending civil unrest in Africa and fed the fray between African nations. Their aim was to use war, disease, hunger and poverty as covers while continuing the centuries-old practice of rape and exploitation of the continent's human and mineral resources, testimonies charged.

Among those named as collaborators during the daylong hearing were U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeline K. Albright and international diamond merchant Maurice Tempelsman.

http://www.corpwatch.org/news/PND.jsp?articleid=116

A former U.S. ambassador to Uganda ? acting on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) -- gathered intelligence on the movement of Hutu refugees through eastern Zaire. The DIA¡¯s second ranking Africa hand, who also served as the U.S. military attache in Kigali, reconnoitered the Rwandan border towns of Cyangugu and Gisenyi, gathering intelligence on the cross border movements of anti-Mobutu Rwandan Tutsis from Rwanda.<3>

The Defense Intelligence Agency¡¯s African bureau chief established a close personal relationship with Bizima (alias Bizimana) Karaha, an ethnic Rwandan who would later become the Foreign Minister in the Laurent Kabila government. Moreover, the DIA¡¯s Africa division had close ties with Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), an Alexandria, Virginia private military company (PMC), whose Vice President for Operations is a former Director of DIA.

The political officer of the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, accompanied by a CIA operative, traveled with AFDL-CZ rebels through the eastern Zaire jungles for weeks after the 1996 Rwandan invasion of Zaire. In addition, it was reported that the Kinshasa embassy official and three U.S. intelligence agents regularly briefed Bill Richardson, Clinton¡¯s special African envoy, during the rebels¡¯ steady advance towards Kinshasa.<4> The U.S. embassy official conceded that he was in Goma to do more than meet rebel leaders for lunch. Explaining his presence, he said ¡°What I am here to do is to acknowledge them as a very significant military and political power on the scene, and, of course, to represent American interests.¡±<5> In addition, MPRI was reportedly providing covert training assistance to Kagame¡¯s troops in preparation for combat in Zaire.<6> Some believe that MPRI had actually been involved in training the RPF from the time it took power in Rwanda.<7>
Some of the companies involved in this new ¡°scramble for Africa¡± have close links with PMCs and America¡¯s top political leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of Kabila, was, at the time of its involvement in the Congo¡¯s civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major stockholders included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant of past and current administrations on Africa matters.<26>
http://www.geocities.com/minjokhan/SocAnthro/MadsenCong...

Bush, Clinton in the Web: Behind the Assassination of Kabila

By Deirdre Griswold and Johnnie Stevens

The failure of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to express even the most perfunctory regret over the assassination of Congo President Laurent Désiré Kabila last year, betrays how implicated Washington is in this latest outrage against the most important country in central Africa.

Washington's silence is even more glaring considering that its foreign policy experts are well aware that the African people view the secret intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, which work closely with corporations seeking vast fortunes in the region, as the probable authors of this crime.

http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Company/kabila1.htm

Congo (Kinshasa): Arms Past and Present, 01/2699
Congo (Kinshasa): Arms Past and Present
Region: Central Africa
Summary Contents:

This posting contains the executive summary of a new report from the Arms Trade Resource Center of the World Policy Institute, citing past and present U.S. military connections to countries involved in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The report calls for greater restrictions and transparency in U.S. programs of arms sales and military training, and for refocusing resources on civilian development.


Deadly Legacy:
U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War
A Report of the Arms Trade Resource Center
January 2000
William D. Hartung
World Policy Institute


Executive Summary

As the Clinton administration moves into the presidency of the United Nations Security Council, it is declaring January 2000, "the month of Africa." Hoping to counter criticisms that it has been engaged in a rhetorical promotion of U.S.-Africa relations over the past two years without substantive follow-up, the administration has announced its intent to prioritize finding solutions to the ongoing conflicts in the region, including a 30-year civil war that trudges on in Angola and the ongoing crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It has not, however, accepted its own responsibility in helping to create the conditions that have led to these seemingly intractable conflicts.

Over the past few years, the administration has made considerable effort to put a new and improved face on its relations with African countries. High-level visits to the region -- first by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, then President Clinton himself in the spring of 1998, and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrooke this past December -- have reinforced the idea of a new partnership with the continent based on promoting "African solutions to African problems." The reality, however, is that the problems facing Africa and her people -- violent conflict, political instability, and the lowest regional rate of economic growth worldwide -- have been fueled in part by a legacy of U.S. involvement in the region. Moreover, the solutions being proposed by the Clinton administration remain grounded in the counter-productive Cold-War policies that have defined U.S.-Africa relations for far too long.

Unfortunately, the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo presents a vivid example of how U.S. policies -- past and present -- have failed the people of Africa. After more than two years of devastating war, African leaders are struggling, with little success, to implement the Lusaka peace accord. Signatories to the treaty continue to call for UN peacekeeping support even as they prepare for continued fighting. Despite its demonstrable role in planting the seeds of this conflict, the U.S. has done little to either acknowledge its complicity or help create a viable resolution. Official tours of the region and impressive rhetoric will not be enough to contribute to lasting peace, democratic stability, and economic development in Africa.

http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Urgent_Action/apic-012600.h...

The U.S. played a major role in converting the newly independent Congo into a cold war battleground. In 1961, the Eisenhower administration authorized the murder of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who had been voted into office just months earlier in the territory’s first-ever democratic election. Washington, which then installed Mobutu in power and kept him there for more than 30 years, bears heavy responsibility for the disastrous economic conditions, massive corruption, and suppression of human rights in Zaire. The U.S. prolonged Mobutu’s rule by providing more than $300 million in weapons and $100 million in military training.

With the end of the cold war, the U.S., France, and Belgium formed a “troika” designed to pressure Mobutu to move toward democracy. This effort might have produced more positive results had not France defected to support Mobutu and the Hutu military dictator in Rwanda, Juvénal Habyarimana, in defense of French language and culture, supposedly threatened by “Anglophone” Uganda and its Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) protégés.

All of the Western powers contributed to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 by ignoring warning signs and reducing the United Nations presence at a time when it should have been reinforced. France compounded the problem by intervening, ostensibly to protect Hutus from the vengeance of the Tutsi-dominated RPF, but also to permit the authors of the genocide to escape. The creation of refugee camps in the Congo near Rwanda was a virtual invitation to the 1997 attacks on the camps. The Clinton administration stalled international intervention, which might have saved refugee lives but which also would have thwarted the effort by Rwanda and Uganda to replace Mobutu with Kabila.

Despite the end of the cold war, Washington decisionmakers have continued to impose simplistic dichotomies on a complex, ambiguous reality. In Africa, Clinton posited a single solution to the problems of “rogue states”—notably Islamist Sudan and “dinosaurs” such as Mobutu—namely the “new leaders” of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Uganda, and Rwanda. Presumably these pragmatists would cooperate with Washington in establishing the new order in Africa.
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n10congo_body.html

Holbrooke's defenders argue that the State Department's violently pro-Rwanda policy -- one in which the U.S. has done virtually nothing to try to compel the regime in Kigali to curtail its abuses -- is not just ineffective, as it was when the crisis was restricted to Rwanda and its border areas, but has become dangerous now that a general war has broken out across so much of Central Africa. Holbrooke, they insist, may not have half of Susan Rice's background, but he at least has the wit and the vision to see that something radical needs to be done.

The problem is that despite President Clinton's well-publicized trip to Africa, and his admirable decision to apologize to the Rwandan people for the U.S. refusal to intervene to stop the genocide, Washington is not really serious about getting involved in Africa in any way that could make a difference.

Holbrooke's motives may well be of the best -- certainly, it is hard to see how focusing on Congo will impress the hard-headed pols around Al Gore -- but the initiative he is supporting for a U.N. deployment is the worst kind of symbolic politics. It may be attractive in Washington, since it will permit policymakers to say they don't just care about suffering Kosovars, but about suffering Africans as well. But it has little or no chance of working, and it also risks confirming the cynical impression -- already too common in America and Western Europe -- that no matter how hard people try, there is nothing that can be done for Africa.

If the risks are small for the United States and its allies (they can all do their Bill Clinton imitations and say they feel Africa's pain), the risk for sub-Saharan Africa is great. The last thing the continent needs is more symbolic politics, either in the U.S. or the U.N. version.
http://dir.salon.com/news/feature/2000/05/08/congo/inde...

Depopulation & Perception Management

Keith Harmon Snow, October 7, 2003
GENOCIDE IN RWANDA - capital “G” for its omnipotent grounding in the American psyche - is said to have killed 1,000,000 people in 1994. It is said that hard-line Hutus, which held a monopoly on power for decades, slaughtered minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus. There is some truth in this. Like the 1996 and 1998 “rebellions” in Zaire and its nemesis the Democratic Republic of Congo, this Genocide was attributed to tribalism: “An African conflict by Africans themselves,” wrote the western media. That part is pure fiction.

There has been another genocide small “g” for its service to globalization -- and this contre-genocide was orchestrated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) -- the 1994 victors in Rwanda -- to consolidate power. That the RPF may have been Tutsis is incidental.

“Rwanda was invaded by Uganda,” says one Genocide investigator. “These were powerful Ugandans and their job was to grab the place. This pack of terrorists didn’t give a damn whether 1,000,000 fellow Tutsis were killed. And I don’t believe it was one million -- that’s the standard number of dead Africans they need to get Americans to pay attention. Before the RPF invaded there was an army of 5000 in Rwanda. The United States gave them all the support they needed. Now there are 60,000 soldiers and all the money that goes into “helping the victims of Genocide” goes for war. All hell has broken loose. There’s blood all over the place.”
http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc3006.html


An investigative journalist, and African scholar


* * *
Amartya Sen does not address rape in the Indian context. With hundreds of thousands of women incorporated into the sex trade in Indian brothels, and thousands taken by sale, coercion or force from Nepal, Myanmar and other countries - among them are girls as young as 10 years old - Sen's omission is highly problematic. Indeed, in terms of some of India's gravest gender inequalities, Sen's scholarly article really says hardly anything.

The United States perhaps leads the world in various forms of gender inequality, discrimination and violence against women. As in Japan, the "glass ceiling" prevails in the work place and restricts women's access to pivotal career opportunities.

Rape as a social institution prevails, particularly in the burgeoning prison industry - and is an epidemic problem for men as well - where thousands of women in numerous U.S. state and federal prisons are constantly subject to egregious coercive sexual violence and rape by their male captors.

Keith Harmon Snow

(An investigative journalist,
photographer and African scholar)
Williamsburg, Massachusetts.
http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl1826/18261050.htm


principal author of this joint GW and SRI report
Keith Harmon Snow
Crimes Against Humanity, Acts of Genocide and Ongoing Atrocities Against the Anuak People of Southwestern Ethiopia
A Genocide Watch and Survivors’ Rights International Field Report
25 February 2004
http://traprockpeace.org/anuak_report_25feb04.doc

chlamor :hug:

[Moderator]

17. seemslikeadream

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.


Thank you.

DU Moderator

[seemslikeadream]

18. Sex-Assault Continues Unchecked in Congo

Run Date: 03/13/05
By Nicole Itano
WeNews correspondent
In the jungles and border towns of eastern Congo, a civil war staggers on, largely ignored. So far tens of thousands of women and girls have been sexually assaulted during this humanitarian crisis, according to Human Rights Watch.


JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA (WOMENSENEWS)--A woman is gang-raped by six soldiers, in front of her husband and children, while their companion assaults her 3-year-old daughter. A 13-year-old girl dies, vomiting blood, two days after being brutally raped by a group of militants. A United Nation's peacekeeper trades a desperate woman two eggs for sex.

The stories are horrifying and endless and come from a new report by Human Rights Watch, evidence of the ongoing tragedy in a forgotten corner of Africa.

In the jungles and border towns of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world's greatest humanitarian crises staggers on largely ignored by the international community. Millions have died or been displaced. And

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2218/context/archive


Sorry to the Moderator, I'll try to not let that happen again

[AnnInLa]

19. Recommended reading for background:

http://worldatwar.net/chandelle/v2/v2n3/congo.html

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Congo_KH.html

http://www.leftwatch.com/archives/years/2000/000091.html

[Minstrel Boy]

20. Sex-Assault Continues Unchecked in Congo

on edit: oops, a dup


Sex-Assault Continues Unchecked in Congo

Mar 13

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA (WOMENSENEWS)--A woman is gang-raped by six soldiers, in front of her husband and children, while their companion assaults her 3-year-old daughter. A 13-year-old girl dies, vomiting blood, two days after being brutally raped by a group of militants. A United Nation's peacekeeper trades a desperate woman two eggs for sex.

The stories are horrifying and endless and come from a new report by Human Rights Watch, evidence of the ongoing tragedy in a forgotten corner of Africa.

In the jungles and border towns of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world's greatest humanitarian crises staggers on largely ignored by the international community. Millions have died or been displaced. And tens of thousands of women and girls have been victims of sexual assault.

...

"This isn't just soldiers on occasion wanting a bit of sex. This is becoming part of conduct of war. In that sense Congo is not unique. What's particularly frightening, of course, is the scale of what's happening in the Congo."

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2218/context/archive