Merchants Of Death: Exposing Corporate-Financed Holocaust In Africa

The New Yorker and CNN have consistently manufactured the pro-RPF/A propaganda, reported by Christiane Amanpour and Philip Gourevitch. If we apply the genocide label to conflicts where it surely fits, then genocide is ongoing in Acholiland in Northern Uganda.

[White Collar War Crimes; Black African Fall Guys]

Editor’s Note To Readers: If your confused by or tired of reading the
propaganda and misinformation in The New York Times and or listening
to it on the BBC about the wars, genocide, and looting of natural resources
in East and Central Africaby Western corporations –while being abetted
by corrupt African governments and “media” such as the Times and BBC
and Western governments– read brilliant investigative reporter Keith Harmon
Snow’s expose. Use this article as your reference and guide every time the
corrupt corporate media try to deceive and hoodwink you. After a series of
recent editorials on blackstarnews.com calling out the Times on their corrupt
coverage and cover-up of genocide, the newspaper finally threw a piece of dry
bone on the dining table on December 4 with an article about Rwanda’s not-
so-secret war of aggression against Congo. For the real deal, read what follows.
It’s long but everyword is an expose. After you’re done reading
please call President elect Obama’s transition office and ask what Secretary
of StateClinton will do to end U.S. involvement in the African genocide:

 

How “Media” Facilitates Mass Murder And Looting In Africa


War in Congo has again been splashed across world headlines and the same
old clichés about violence and suffering are repackaged and rebroadcast as
“news”. Meanwhile, early indications out of America are that President-
elect Barack Obama will assemble a foreign policy-team primed for business
as usual.

How will Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State compromise the Obama
Administration’s capacity to honestly redress the untold suffering, massive
theft of resources and millions of deaths in Africa? And Tom Daschle?
Behind the media smokescreens are people whose involvement has been
documented and exposed, but there is always some African fall guy—the
‘embraceable’ black subordinate or ‘rebel’ commander—charged with war
crimes and used to deflect attention from the leaders of organized white-collar
crime networks.

Blacked out are the corporate executives, government officials and expatriate
personnel of Western enterprises whose success amidst chaos implicates them
in the deracination and death of millions of black people. What’s behind the
recent escalation of violence and media posturing?

On a darkling plain in a far away place the skeletons of hundreds of unnamed
people lie strewn over the land amidst the red dirt and brown grasses scorched
by the equatorial sun. Bones poke into the air here and there, hidden by the tall
grass, tripping you up as you walk; others lay bleaching white in piles where the
bodies fell.

These are the killing fields of Bogoro, a small hillside village on a southerly road
out of Bunia, a metropolis of suffering in the wild, wild east of Congo.

The grassy plains of Bogoro were guarded by soldiers and when I arrived the
militia of the day wore black trench coats and black mirror sunglasses to
enhance the aura of terror that surrounds them. With AK-47’s slung over
their shoulders they talked on shiny Nokias and Motorolas and Samsungs
—cell phones built with the blood minerals of the Congolese people.

Sandrine—not her real name—is a survivor who participated in the massacre
at Bogoro. I interviewed Sandrine, just seventeen at the time, in 2007, and she
recounted her ordeal as the sex slave of soldiers. Sandrine told how people
were forced by militia commanders to chase down neighbors and kill or be killed.
I found Sandrine living in misery in an evacuated refugee camp.

Sandrine knows nothing at all of the vast mining operations or minerals
shipments being flown out of remote jungle airstrips in her home territory—
or even that such airstrips exist. Ditto for the Congolese researchers I met, in
Orientale, who worked with the International Criminal Court. Moto Gold?
Mwana Africa? Walter Kansteiner?

They had never heard of such companies, or such people.

In Western media reportage the plunder of raw materials in Congo is
usually de-linked from the killing, even though the extractive industries are
directly behind it, and even though almost everyone has begun to parrot
the accusation of “resource wars” in Congo.

The Bogoro massacre occurred in February 2003 and, like the Hutu-
Tutsi stories from Rwanda, the media whipped up the specter of ancient
“tribal” animosities between Hema and Lendu people. But the real story
is not quite so black and white. Or is it?

Today the International Criminal Court (ICC) holds three Congolese
“warlords” in the ICC prison at The Hague, Netherlands, and all three
were associated with events at Bogoro. However, the white patrons reaping
the profits behind the bloodletting in the eastern Congo are protected by
a new humanitarian order predicated on permanent inequality, structural
violence and race politics.

But for a few brief periods of relative calm, the war in Congo’s eastern
Orientale andKivus provinces has hardly stopped since its’ beginning in
1996, and the realities have been shrouded in media clichés and stereotypes
and disingenuous expressions of outrage that deflect attention from the
true protagonists and root causes of war and plunder in Africa. [1]

GOOD VERSUS EVIL AND THE NAMES GAMES
The UPC, FPRI, FNI—these are three of the scores of militias that
have risen and fallen in Orientale since the war began in 1996 and,
more poignantly, they are meaningless acronyms used to scramble
the brains of western spectator-news-consumers.

First there was the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that
invaded Rwanda, and then came the Alliance for the Democratic
Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) that marched across Zaire to unseat
President Mobutu. Next came the “rebellion” with Jean-Pierre Bemba
and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), and all the
different factions of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie,
or Congolese Rally for Democracy—RCD, RCD-G (Goma), RCD-K,
RCD-K-ML—backed by Rwanda and Uganda.

Here are the comrades in arms who studied together at the
Marxist University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Yoweri Museveni,
Uganda’s president; Laurent Desire Kabila, the ADFL figurehead
and assassinated president of the Democratic Republic of Congo;
Meles Zenawi, president of Ethiopia; Isaias Afwerki, president of
Eritrea; Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani; former RCD leader
Wamba dia Wamba; Paul Kagame, Rwanda’s president; and
John Garang (d. 2005), former leader of the Sudan People’s
Liberation Army (SPLA) and first president of South Sudan.

Both the RPF/A and SPLA waged successful covert guerrilla
wars against governments that were considered “undesirable”
by Washington, both achieved their objectives of seizing land
and gaining control, and both insurgencies were covertly
backed by U.S. Committee for Refugees official Roger Winter—
a pivotal U.S. intelligence asset operating in Sudan and a
dedicated ally of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame and John
Garang. Winter’s protégé is Susan Rice, Clinton’s Assistant
Secretary of State for African Affairs. Rice was one of the
primary architects of the Pentagon’s prized Africa Crisis
Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named
entity created to project U.S. power in Africa, and run
by U.S. Army Special Forces Command (SOCOM). [2]

The coups d’état in Rwanda and Burundi occurred after
the presidents Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira
were assassinated on April 6, 1994. Similarly, more than a
decade of covert U.S. military support for the SPLA,
channeled through Uganda and Ethiopia, led to the
Naivasha Peace Agreement of January 2005 and the
creation of the autonomous country of South Sudan.

The “Rwanda genocide” began with the 1990 invasion
of northern Rwanda by Ugandan forces that brutally
targeted everyone in their path. By the time the RPF/A forces—
comprised mostly of seasoned Ugandan troops—
reached Kigali, more than 800,000 IDPs were hovering
around the capital city: they were terrified, they were
homeless, they were hungry, they were angry and—justifiably
—they took up arms. The United Nations Assistance Mission
for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and its Canadian General Romeo
Dallaire clandestinely backed the illegal guerrilla war. [3]

The guerrilla wars in Rwanda and South Sudan were
prosecuted much like the CIA-backed low-intensity guerrilla
warfare, spawned by Washington, against populist
movements in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and Guatemala.
This is exactly what is playing out in Congo and Sudan
today: low-intensity guerrilla warfare prosecuted by
powerful shadow forces competing for land and loot.

SPLA leader John Garang received military training
at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia.
Paul Kagame received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
At the time he was sent for training, Kagame was
Museveni’s director of military intelligence; upon his
return he assumed command of the army created, financed
and trained by Uganda: the Rwanda Patriotic Army.

Both Garang and Kagame likely received “counter-insurgency”
training through the Pentagon’s International Military
Education and Training Program (IMET). Since 1998,
the IMET program has provided training to 318 RDF and 291
UPDF soldiers. Many other IMET soldiers who attended
the notorious School of the Americas are today
known human rights violators in Latin America.

In North Kivu province we find the Forces for the
Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the
National Congress for the Defense of the People, the CNDP,
created by self-appointed Rwandan “General” Laurent
Nkunda. Here the media has historically cast General
Nkunda as good, the FDLR as evil. Only recently has
Nkunda come under any kind of “harsh” criticism.

The war in Eastern Congo is almost universally described
with clichés about the “Rwanda genocide.” The usual
targets of white media racial profiling and hysterical
academic polemics are the Hutu—the infamous Interahamwe
and FDLR—the “killers” that “fled Rwanda after committing
genocide” there. This is how millions of innocent Hutu people
—comprising over 85% of the populations of Rwanda and Burundi
—are collectively dehumanized.

Congolese Mai Mai militias are described as “nationalists”
sometimes “wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads” and
“shooting magic bullets.” The Mai Mai are the
closest thing to a people’s or indigenous justice movement
in Congo. The Mai Mai have most recently allied with the
Congo’s national army, the Armed Forces for the
Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and the Mai Mai
are sometimes cast as good, but usually as evil.

In 2007 the Mai Mai and FLDR joined forces to form the Front
for the National Liberation of Kivu (FNLK). Backed by the FARDC,
the FNLK is purportedly vying for power against General Nkunda’s
CNDP. However, alliances are constantly shifting based
on private profit and “warlord” fiefdoms, and ALL factions,
at some point or other, have collaborated in war and resource plunder.

Western news stories throw the acronyms and names of militias
around with little or no information about their rise or fall, and
nothing substantive about foreign backers they collaborate with.
Militias mysteriously appear and disappear. Indeed, the more you
read about Congo from venues like the New York Times, Harper’s,
The New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly, the less you will understand.
This is no accident, and—no, you are not dumb.

Take the militia FNI: but for the victims and their suffering, it makes
no difference what the acronym stands for, it’s all one big sadistic joke
of language and power. The most significant fact to remember about this
“F” “N” “I” is that they served as the private proxy army for the gold
mining operations of Metalor, a Swedish firm, and AngloGold Ashanti,
headquartered in South Africa and partnered with Barrick Gold. [4]

Secondly, they were agents for Ugandan power brokers.

Anglo-Gold Ashanti directors include Sir Sam Jonah, who is also a
director of shady mining-cum-military companies operating in Sierra
Leone and connected to Tony Buckingham and other white-collar
mercenaries. Buckingham affiliated companies—e.g. Heritage Oil
and Gas, Branch Energy, Saracen Uganda—collaborate with the
Museveni regime. Saracen’s top shareholder is General Salim Saleh,
half-brother of Yoweri Museveni, and Congo’s nemesis, a
Ugandan agent cited by the United Nations for war and plunder in
Congo.

AngloGold Ashanti is the Anglo American mining conglomerate
of the Oppenheimers and De Beers mining cartels of Britain and
South Africa, interests deeply aligned with Belgian American
intelligence insider Maurice Tempelsman—the godfather of covert
operations in Africa. Tempelsman’s diamond interests in Congo
were, at least partially, displaced by the Israeli cartels of
Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz. [5] It is a no-brainer that that
the Tempelsman gang backs Rwanda’s occupation of
eastern Congo.

For a second example, media corporations have consistently
 blacked out the truth about the lucrative corporate “conservation”
industry with articles like the recent New York Times production
“Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas”
(Jeffrey Gettleman, 11/18/08). Unreported however are the
many accusations coming out of North Kivu that link the
Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to local
Mai Mai and FDLR: like every other militia, or occupation
army, these factions have infiltrated villages and now prey on,
intimidate and abuse the locals.

The white agents working for Western “conservation” NGOs—
and we know their names—are directly responsible for extortion,
racketeering, land theft, human rights atrocities and for ripping
apart the social fabric. [6]

“The commander of the Mai-Mai is Colonel Ntasibanga and
the commander of the FDLR is Colonel Faraja,” report Congolese
locals who have been documenting the abuses (the facts are confirmed
by a Spanish journalist). “We count already five people killed
because of this [conservation] project… DFGF and JGI are without
doubt corrupt… they are paying armed groups and forcing us
off of our lands.” [7]

The Gettleman NYT article, on the other hand, cites one of
these agents, Samantha Newport, described as “a spokeswoman
for Virunga National Park,” who in fact works for Richard Leakey’s
organization Wildlife Direct, a shady paramilitary entity involving
Walter Kansteiner.

A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE
The international arrest warrants issued by Spain and France against
some 40 former RPF/A and current Rwanda Defense Force (RDF)
are patently dismissed by Western media of all stripes, buried behind
waves of pro-RPF propaganda and intimidation that labels anyone
who does not support the Kigali military dictatorship as genocide
deniers, themselves guilty, by extension, of genocide.

While the RPF/A and UPDF are often named for leading the
charge and supplying the bulk of the forces, the 1996 invasion of
Zaire, launched from Uganda and Rwanda, involved U.S. covert forces
 with state-of-the-art C4ISTR—Command, Control, Communications,
Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance—
and there were Humvees and C-130 aircraft ferrying black-skinned
U.S. Special Forces into South Sudan and northeastern Congo.
The invasion also involved Israeli military experts, an assortment
of Eritrean and Ethiopian regulars, and SPLA forces. [8]

The Anglo-European-Israeli forces penetrated eastern Zaire
through the Gulu and Arua Districts of northwestern Uganda—
the heart of Acholiland and ground zero for the ongoing genocide
of the indigenous Acholi people—and they backed the RPA/UPDF
who marched across Zaire massacring refugees, mostly women
and children, mostly Hutus, that fled Kigali in 1994. , [9], [10]

Howard French, then the Africa Bureau Chief for the New York
Times, witnessed the Hutu genocide in Zaire, and wrote about it. [11]
Ugandan scholar Mahmood Mamdani—who by no means was an
impartial observer when he arrived in Goma in September 1997—
described “an indiscriminate slaughter” of Interahamwe, of unarmed Hutu
refugees, and of Congolese Hutus in the Kivus. [12]

Bill Richardson, President Clinton’s Ambassador to the United Nations,
stated in a may 1997 interview: “I think there’s strong evidence that
there have been these massacres.” [13]

But the subject of Hutus being slaughtered was only broached as a
tool to hammer down the uppity black rebel who diverged from his
script and upset Washington’s plans. Indeed, the rise and fall of
ADFL figurehead Laurent Desire Kabila exemplifies the
embraceable black leader transformed almost overnight into
the unembraceable black fall guy.

In the end, a bullet dispatched Laurent Kabila on 16 January
2001, exactly 40 years after the assassination of Patrice
Lumumba (17 January 1961).

Anyone who dismisses the organized and intentional RPF/A
and UPDF military campaign against millions of Hutu people
butchered all the way across Zaire—is a genocide denier.
(Of course, the UPDF-RPF/A alliancealso summarily executed
and massacred Rwandan Tutsis and indigenous Twa, and
Congolese people.)

Similarly, anyone who dismisses the organized persecution
and atrocities against the Acholi people in northern Uganda
—maintained by the Museveni government and the UPDF
occupation—is a genocide denier.

The criminality of the Kagame regime is whitewashed by
the massive public relations campaigns involving Kagame’s
special advisor/sponsors: former Ambassador Andrew Young
and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Young’s
Goodworks International also backs the Museveni
regime. Buffing the shiny image of the government of
Congo’s President Joseph Kabila is Stevens and Schriefer
Group the Washington D.C. PR-firm that twice helped
get George W. Bush elected [http://www.ssg-dc.com/].

The New Yorker and CNN have consistently manufactured
the pro-RPF/A propaganda, reported by Christiane
Amanpour and Philip Gourevitch.

Amanpour is married to James Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Assistant
Secretaryof State and Madeleine Albright’s right-hand man,
and now economic adviser to President-elect Barack Obama.
Gourevitch—who produced the celebrated pro-RPF/A text
“We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed
With Our Families,” is a close friend of Paul Kagame and a
conduit for State Department disinformation passed by
James Rubin, who was also Chief Spokesman for the
Clinton State Department (1997-2000), and whose sister,
Elizabeth Rubin, was dating Gourevitch.

U.S. business tycoon Joe Ritchie “has volunteered in
Rwanda for the past five years introducing the country to
business leaders around the world.” Ritchie also runs an
“entrepreneurial philanthropy” called Friends of Rwanda and
serves on President Paul Kagame’s Advisory Council and as
CEO of the Rwanda Development Board. , [14], [15]

Like Walter Kansteiner, Joe Ritchie is a commodities and
options trader from Chicago with deep pockets and dark
secrets: involved in a private attempt to overthrow the Taliban
in 2000, Joe and James Ritchie were aided by their favorite consultant,
former national security adviser Robert McFarlane, who successfully
lobbied the CIA to dispatch an Unmanned Aerospace Vehicle
(UAV) to the skies over Afghanistan. [16]

The Congo wars have direct links to the many long years of war
in Sudan and Uganda, and they are intertwined with the current
low-intensity warfare and the mass murder in Darfur, Uganda,
Rwanda and Burundi. If we apply the genocide label to conflicts
where it surely fits, then genocide is ongoing in Congo’s Orientale
and Kivus provinces, and in Acholiland in Northern Uganda. [17]

But it is also occurring in Iraq, Afghanistan, Burundi, Nigeria, Ethiopia,
 Botswana, Columbia, the Palestinian Territories and Malaysia,
to mention a few irrefutable cases.

These geopolitical and strategic hotspots remain mostly blanketed
by media reportage that quite literally blacks out key white
protagonists by putting a black African face on things.
Another example: there has been little reported
about the perpetual warfare and human rights atrocities in
Orientale linked to tight little airstrips carved out of the rainforest
and paved with support from the Pentagon-connected
United States Agency for International Development (USAID). [18]

Consider Mwana Africa, a South African firm that controls
the Kilo-Moto gold fields in Zani, DRC. The Union of Congolese
Patriots (UPC), led by Thomas Lubanga, occupied the Zani gold
fields in 2002 and stirred up ethnic animosities that led to massive
suffering and depopulation. However, according to Congolese locals,
 it was the white missionaries from the Africa Inland Mission
(www.aimint.org/usa/where_we_work/) that deeply divided
local ethnic groups. French tycoons Jacques and Alvaro Hachuel
own Mwana Africa. Mwana Africa’s European director, Etienne
Denis, began his long career of impoverishing the Congo at
Umicore, formerly the Belgian mining giant Union Miniere, in 1974.
The Mwana Africa airstrip at Zani, and nearby roads, were built with
USAID backing, and the gold is flown out to Tanzania
—one of the most underappreciated criminal players funneling
weapons to Uganda and Congo—or sometimes shipped out by
road through Uganda. [19]

Mwana Africa is also involved in Congo’s bloody MIBA diamond
concessions in Mbuji Mayi and the cobalt/copper concessions in
Katanga. [20]

Similarly, almost nothing in context has been reported of the white
mercenaries and their petroleum operations on the Uganda border
with Orientale. [21]

Like the ongoing covert war in Darfur, where the backers of the
“mysterious” rebel groups are never exposed, the militias operating
in Congo are proxy armies that serve the interests of external power
blocks at the expense of their competitors.

Most reporting from the Kivus zooms in on sexual violence and
the Western media always blames the victims—Congolese soldiers
caught in the maelstrom of international proxy warfare and organized
crime—but we hear nothing about U.S. or Canadian or Australian
 mining companies—and for those rare times that
we do the reportage de-links the mining from the mass murder. [22]

More often, the media turns the story upside down, claiming that
responsible Western mining executives are waiting in the wings for
security to improve so they can provide jobs and accountability
and “sustainable development” for the Congolese people.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

A recent front-page news feature, “Congo’s Riches, Looted by
Renegade Troops,” about the Bisie tin mine in North Kivu,
offers the perfect example.

“On paper, the exploration rights to this mine belong to a consortium
of British and South African investors who say they will turn this
perilous and exploitative operation into a safe, modern beacon of
prosperity for Congo,” wrote Jeffrey Gettleman for the New
York Times. “But in practice, the consortium’s workers cannot even
set foot on the mountain. Like a mafia, Colonel Matumo and his
men extort, tax and appropriate at will, draining this vast operation,
worth as much as $80 million a year.” [23]

And thus do the valiant white knights of the New York Times
shine their spotlight on plunder and extortion in Congo.
Alas, it is a selective shining, an expedient “humanitarian”
concern, and an arrogant moral high ground. Indeed, it is just
another shade of the black and white race politics behind
the politicization of the International Criminal Court.

THE BLACK AFRICAN FALL GUYS
In June of 2008 the ICC charged two black African rebel
leaders, Germain Katanga and Mathieu Ngudjolo Chui, with
six counts of war crimes (willful killing; inhuman treatment
or cruel treatment; using children under the age of fifteen
years to participate actively in hostilities; sexual slavery;
intentionally directing attacks against civilians; and pillaging)
and three counts of crimes against humanity (murder,
inhumane acts and sexual slavery).

ICC prosecutors say that Chui and his commander Katanga—
known as Simba—led a militia called the Front for Patriotic
Resistance of Ituri (FPRI); Chui was also a commander in
another militia, the National Integrationist Front (FNI).
The FPRI was fighting against the Union of Congolese Patriots
(UPC); another militia in Congo backed by outsiders,
in particular, some faction from the U.S.

UPC commander Thomas Lubanga—another black man—was
the first person detained at the ICC’s Scheveningen prison
at The Hague. Charles Taylor, former “warlord” and president
from Liberia was the second. Germaine Katanga and Mathieu
Ngudjolo Chui were next to be chosen for this auspicious club.
Congolese “warlord” Jean Pierre Bemba is the last of five
detainees now held at the ICC.

Bemba was the leader of the Congolese rebel army, the
Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), but he is
charged with crimes in the Central African Republic. [24]

These five men all have more in common than the charges against
them. They are all black men, once embraced by the system and
empowered as local or national leaders, and they are now the black
stooges who fell from grace to become, in the language of anthropologist
and scholar Dr. Enoch Page, “unembraceable”. [25]

The unembraceable status, applied to Africa, is reserved for black
males, for dictators and warlords, rapists and killers, for ‘dirty’ Arabs
like Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, and for former ‘Marxist’ guerillas,
like Robert Mugabe, President of Zimbabwe. Always
they are people of color. (An American analogy would be the O.J. Simpsons
and Michael Jacksons of Africa; formerly embraced black males now
ruthlessly persecuted by the Western establishment—primarily
through racial surveillance and targeting in the mass media.)

Such treatment is rarely applied to white males, anywhere.

Someone has to be held responsible for the mass murder at
Bogoro, but who paid the 29 year-old “warlord” Germaine
Katanga? Why should he be the only one prosecuted?
Who provided the jeeps for the “warlord” Mathieu Chui?
Where did “warlord” Thomas Lubanga get the satellite
phone to coordinate his private militia? How did Charles
Taylor go from Harvard University to money laundering
in Liberia to a Massachusetts prison—which he “escaped”
from—and then on to become first the “President” and
later “warlord” of Liberia?

How does Moto Gold Mining Company extract gold
from a war zone? And how do the shiny black leather
belts and pressed camouflage fatigues and crisp felt berets
and rocket-propelled grenades find their way to Laurent Nunda’s
“rebel” army now fighting in the North and South Kivu
provinces of Congo?

Aware of their vulnerability as black African fall guys—
and soon after the ICC arrest of Jean-Pierre—the top
brass of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces
curtailed their international travel plans and convened
a special meeting at Uganda’s Bombo army headquarters
near Kampala, in June 2008, to discuss fears of
ICC warrants being issued against them.

Of course, the U.S. Government and its business
partners dictate the operations of the ICC. While considering
soldiers of the United States and its allies to be above
international humanitarian law and protected from the jurisdiction
of the ICC, the Pentagon has simultaneously directed the
formation, operations and legal precedents of the ICC through
the involvement of members of the U.S. military’s Judge
Advocate General (JAG) Corps, the legal arm of
the Pentagon. [26]

UGANDA ARMING MILITIAS YET AGAIN
Congolese troops and militias connected to Ugandan
president Yoweri Museveni and wife Janet and their military
collaborators operate extortion and racketeering networks
that are plundering Congo. While former militias
responsible for plunder have ostensibly been disbanded,
new military networks have replaced them again and again.

“The Congolese military [FARDC] works with Ugandans,”
reported Christian Lukusha, an expert with Justice Plus, a
Congolese human rights NGO based in Bunia, “including
Salim Saleh, Museveni’s half-brother. And they ship timber
and minerals across the border at both Aru and Mahagi.
It’s completely clandestine.” [27]

According to the United Nations Observers Mission
in Congo (MONUC), fighting in Orientale in September
2008 drove over 90,000 additional IDPs (internally
displaced persons) from their homes and lands.
Fighting continued into October and November, and
militias new and old are today floating between Uganda,
South Sudan and DRC, recruiting and conscripting
soldiers, including children, and training and indoctrinating
them in the ideology of their “mysterious” leaders.

The FPJC—Front Congolaise Pour la Justice au Congo—
is but the latest militia to suddenly emerge from the hills of
Orientale. On September 29, 2008, the FPJC, described as
“a newly formed rebel group,” attacked and pursued retreating
contingents of President Joseph Kabila’s regular army, the
FARDC, before raiding and looting villages. Since
mid-September the FPJC has engaged FARDC troops in
firefights along the Lake Albert border zone.

According to Congolese sources in Bunia, the FPJC is
solidly backed by Uganda and provides a second front
in an alliance with Laurent Nkunda’s Rwandan army,
which has freely operated in the Kivu provinces for years.

“The FPJC rebels are in the bush close to the Semliki River
and the Uganda border,” says Godefroid (not his real name), a
Congolese professional in Bunia who travels back and forth
to Uganda by land. “There is some new recruitment
of former militias along the Congo-Uganda border by Thomas
Lubanga’s former UPC minister Mr. Avochi, a Congolese who
as been in exile in Uganda since 2004.” [28]

Military training camps for the new FPJC recruits are today
operating from at least foursites on the Uganda side of the
border: {1} in the Kikong-Hoima district; {2} in Kasatu
(close to Djegu) in Nebbi district; {3} in the Urusi area
(close to Mahagi) of Nebbi district; and {4} in Bondo
(close to Aru and Arua) in the Uganda district.

“Such trainings cannot happen without a clear agreement and
support of the upper authorities of Uganda,” says Godefroid.
“It’s all connected to the oil under Lake Albert and the gold
in Orientale.”

According to this source, a senior FPJC military commander
named Sherif confirmed that Laurent Nkunda and his
National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) are
involved with these Ugandan bases. “They are providing
CNDP military training and recruits are given the CNDP
ideology.”

Coincidentally—but not reported by the media—a hornet’s
nest of Western petroleum and mining companies, all linked
to international private military companies, local militias,
and the national armies of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo,
are fighting for control of the land on both sides of the
Congo’s eastern border.

“Salim Saleh is involved in all of this,” said one Congolese
official at the border town of Aru, DRC. “He is certainly
responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Saleh worked with Jerome Kakwavu when he was the big
chief in Aru. Kakwavu is a FARDC general now, in Kinshasa.
Salim worked all the different groups, trading arms, playing
them off one against the other.” [29]

Petroleum companies that have recently emerged and now
laying claim to DRC or Ugandan concessions on Lake Albert
include: Tower Resources; South African consortiums PetroSA
and Divine Inspiration; and H Oil & Minerals Ltd. [30]
Tower Resources is a U.S.-U.K. firm affiliated with U.K.-based
Hardman Resources and tied to oil exploitation in
Kenya and Namibia. [31]

H Oil & Minerals is a European firm operating in South Sudan,
DRC and Angola; financiers include the Deutsche Bank,
European Bank for Reconstruction & Development, and the
Belgian giant Société Generale—one of the Congolese people’s
greatest historical enemies. H Oil & Minerals is also closely linked
to Marc Rich and his Switzerland-based company Glencore
International, both known for arms trafficking in Angola and
DRC through Angolagate notable Pierre Falcone.

An Arizona (USA) Republican, Falcone is reportedly very
tight with the Joseph Kabila government. Marc Rich is the fugitive
Swiss financier who for years appeared on the FBI’s list of most
wanted criminals on charges ranging from trading with embargoed
states, tax evasion, racketeering and arms trafficking; Marc Rich was
pardoned by Bill Clinton on Clinton’s last day in office. [32]

One of the most notorious global arms traffickers involved in Congo,
Namibia and Zimbabwe is John Bredenkamp, one of Britain’s 50
richest men. Walter Hailwax, the Belgian honorary consul to Namibia,
is a director of arms producer Windhoeker Maschinenfabrik, and the
local director of Bredenkamp’s arms brokerage company ACS
International Ltd. A key agent in Zimbabwean and DRC organized
crime networks, Bredenkamp is one of the phantom white-collar
criminals behind Robert Mugabe, another black African fall guy now
targeted by the Western press, think tanks and flak organizations,
to the exclusion of other major interests. Of course, the Ndebele people
suffered war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide under Mugabe,
with the bulk of the atrocities committed from 1981-1988. (Mugabe
remained an embraceable black agent of white power until about 1999,
and today—according to the Western economic and policy
establishment, and the mass media, who no longer embrace him—
he is the devil incarnate in Zimbabwe.)

THE LORD’S RESISTANCE ARMY
If you asked Western media consumers to name a bloodthirsty
guerrilla movement in Africa it is likely they would point to “warlord”
Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), this thanks to
the one-sided fictional media campaigns waged by National Public
Radio, Time Magazine, Washington Post, or by Christopher
Hitchens—who calls them “a Christian Khmer Rouge”

—and Vanity Fair. [33], [34].

In the simplistic Western media narratives, the LRA is always
described as a “fanatical Christian cult” that abducts children and
forces them to commit atrocities. In the dichotomy of “good” versus
“evil” the LRA is “wicked” and the forces they are fighting against,
President Museveni and the UPDF, are benevolent. Indeed,
evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States have been
deeply involved with the SPLA war against the “satanic” forces of
the LRA and the Islamic Government of Sudan. [35]

Spilling over from the wars in Uganda and Sudan and operating a
clandestine network of terror and extortion in the north of Congo
today, the LRA has waged a low-intensity war against the Museveni
regime since circa 1987. The LRA is a Ugandan guerrilla force backed
by the government of Sudan (Khartoum) and its allies and clandestinely
supported by unnamed factions in Congo, Europe and Washington.

“For 19 years, Joseph Kony has been enslaving, torturing, raping,
and murdering Ugandan children,” wrote Christopher Hitchens, “many of
whom have become soldiers for his ‘Lord’s Resistance Army,’ going on to
torture, rape, and kill other children.” Parroting the establishment line,
Hitchens has no complaints about the UPDF brutalizing children in
the refugee camps of Acholiland, and he never mentions
the SPLA’s conscription of thousands of child soldiers. [36]

According to a high-level United Nations source working in the DRC,
the LRA maintains very high-level political ties in New York and Washington
D.C. and at one time the Uganda government claimed it was through Jongomoi
Okidi-Olal, a Ugandan-American representative living in the U.S.
The Uganda government has purportedly asked the Bush Administration
and the United Nations to arrest Okidi-Olal and hand him over to the ICC. [37]
(Other sources claim that Okidi is a fraud.)

Interestingly, we find that Mwana Africa—whose vast Kilo-Moto
mining concessions sprawl across northern Orientale—is also operating
in Angola and South Africa, and at five major mining concessions in the
so-called “failed state” of Zimbabwe. [38]

The government of Angola has always backed President Joseph
Kabila, is very hostile to the Kagame gang, and currently controls
Congolese territory (Kehemba) near the Angolan border. Given the
spoils to be had, it is likely that factions from Angola or Zimbabwe
also back the Lord’s Resistance Army in a bid to displace Mwana
Africa and other competitors from mining and petroleum sites in
northeastern Congo. [39]

Congolese sources claim that MONUC moved into the Watsa
region in northern Orientale only after the LRA—coming in through
Garamba National Park near the Sudan border—began threatening the
operations of AngloGold Ashanti, Mwana Africa and
Moto Gold Mining. [40]

Additionally, Garamba National Park is rich in diamonds and gold.

While the LRA is also supported by Ugandan factions opposed to
the Museveni dictatorship, it is widely believed the LRA is a tool
of the Museveni government used to manipulate public opinion,
create chaos across the region, gain international sympathy from
foreign donors and thereby procure massive financial backing
to facilitate some of the world’s most lucrative and unappreciated
AID-for-ARMS scandals. It is the perfect ruse to facilitate
permanent foreign military intervention.

The LRA also reportedly moved into the northern DRC to
displace SPLA troops that had a long history of plundering the area,
shooting wildlife and harassing villages. [41]

Thus while the evil LRA is always in the crosshairs of the
international media, the same media protects the saintly SPLA,
no matter the justice or criminality of either. [42]

The mass media and foreign policy discourses are saturated
with the writings, Op-Ends and policy briefs of “experts” that
serve as apologetic propagandists for foreign interventions and
hidden agendas. Such “experts” exercise stark biases in naming
or delineating the “killers” versus “victims” and for this reason
they often gain exclusive access to mass media venues.
The system of information control becomes self-perpetuating
in favor of power and deception.

Experts working for the Pentagon, State Department, or national
security apparatus deploy arguments cloaked in righteous
assumptions of higher morality about human rights or humanitarian
concern.

For example, Sudan “experts” like Dr. Eric Reeves and Alex
De Waal provide a constant barrage of one-sided propaganda to
manufacture consent at home and project American power in Sudan. [43]
This propaganda is unassailable by Western “news” consumers, because
consumers are not otherwise privy to, interested in, or compelled to
discover the deeper truths.

Like the “Save Tibet” campaign, the one-sided propaganda campaign
and institutionalized big-money networking of the “Save Darfur”
movement compelled ordinary citizens to become active participants
in “stopping genocide.” A similar agenda is driving the new
“RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO” initiative.

While their ideological programs are advanced through
the Western mass media, organizations—e.g. the International
Crises Group, Center for American Progress, International Rescue
Committee, ENOUGH!—work to manufacture consent
and channel popular consciousness through jingoistic
sloganeering and humanistic language that offers “news”
consumers exactly what they want to hear: peacekeeping, human rights,
democracy, sustainable development, participatory mapping, Africa for
the African people, and “never again” interventions against genocide.

Such propaganda campaigns proscribe ideas and possibilities, and they
subvert popular movements. In the end, the true grass roots initiatives
for social justice and legitimate peace have been expropriated or
channeled into serving narrow prerogatives of power. And the voices
of the voiceless are crushed, along with their bodies. The International
Criminal Court serves a similar and necessary function in manufacturing
consent and consolidating Western power. It is really about keeping
up appearances: the appearance of justice being served, human
rights being protected.

On October 14, 2005, the ICC unsealed arrest warrants against
five LRA commanders, all of them black Africans: Joseph Kony,
Vincent Otti, Raska Lukwiya, Okot Odhiambo and Dominic Ongwen.
In October 2008, after the LRA committed fresh atrocities in northern
DRC, the ICC renewed its calls for the arrest of Joseph Kony. [44]

Uganda’s representation at ICC proceedings to explore war crimes
 in Congo has included at least two very high-profile lawyers from
Foley Hoag LLP, an influential Washington law firm. [45] Similarly,
the Pentagon seconded its lawyers from the Judge Advocate General
(JAG) Corp to the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR),
where victor’s justice has arbitrarily and selectively politicized genocide
in favor of the Pentagon’s UPDF/RPA proxy governments. [46]

STARBUCKS GENOCIDE COFFEE
Foley Hoag LLP is also tied to the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council,
a consortium that involves Coke, Pfizer and Chevron-Texaco.
Coke director Kathleen Black is a principle in the Hearst media empire,
while Coke directors Warren Buffet and Barry Diller are directors of
the Washington Post Company, and these are the media institutions
that whitewash the white-collar crime in Congo. Uganda’s
image is further sanitized by London PR firm Hill & Knowlton.” [47]

From 2000 to at least 2004, Yoweri Museveni was co-chair of the
euphemistically named Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in
Africa (PCHPA). The PCHPA is a front for multinational corporations
and USAID, a Christian-based “soft policy” wing of the Pentagon that
uses food as a weapon under the disguise of charity. Other PCHPA
chairs include former U.S. Senator and Alston & Bird lawyer Bob Dole;
Peter Seligman, Chair and CEO of Conservation International, an NGO
connected to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Jane Goodall Institute
operations in DRC; George Rupp, President of the International
Rescue Committee, a flak-producing organization involved in DRC;
and Alpha Konare, the former Chair of the Commission of the African
Union (2003-2008), the governing body responsible, for example, for
oversight of the supposedly “neutral” African Union “peacekeeping”
force in Darfur, Sudan—a force that again deploys RDF forces as
proxies to secretly further U.S./U.K. interests.

One PCHPA director also represents Bread for the World, a
protectionist and nationalistic U.S.-based Christian evangelical
“charity” whose directors include Bob Dole and former White House
cabinet officials Mike McCurry and Leon Panetta. Along with Thomas
Pickering, Susan Rice, Gayle Smith, Donald Payne, Ed Royce, John Podesta,
Anthony Lake, Bill and Hillary Clinton and others, these are the architects
of covert operations in Africa during the Clinton years. [48]

Senator Tom Daschle is a Special Policy Advisor for Alston & Bird,
and an Honorary Senior fellow of the Center for American Progress (CAP),
the nationalist U.S. big money “think tank” behind a multitude of front
groups with hidden foreign policy agendas around Uganda, Rwanda,
Congo and Sudan. [49]

These include the ENOUGH! Project, the new RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO
initiative, the Genocide Intervention Network, the ONE Campaign, the Center
for American Progress, and the International Crisis Group (ICG)—all of
which somehow involve agents like John Prendergast, former national
security insider for President Bill Clinton. It is interesting that a lot of the
same people show up tied to different organizations involved in the
“grass roots” campaigns to help Africa.

The ONE campaign was launched by a coalition of 11 prominent corporate
so-called “charity” organizations, including Bread for the World, CARE,
Save the Children and the International Rescue Committee (IRC); each of
these profit-based organizations has a euphemistic name that suggests a
humanitarian or humanistic agenda, but they actually serve corporate interests.
CARE has received funding from weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin
Corporation. In 1996 the IRC reportedly took over bases near the Hutu refugee
camps in eastern Zaire and proceeded to shell the camps with heavy weapons;
also, Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright are IRC overseers. [50]
ICG director Zbigniew Brzezinski is an advisor to President-elect Barack Obama.

In July 2008, Senator Tom Daschle led a special delegation of policymakers on
behalf of the ONE Campaign, described as “a bipartisan movement of over
2 million advocates for the elimination of global poverty and disease.” The
ONE delegation also “met with civic and government leaders, as well as
everyday citizens and entrepreneurs, to discuss Rwanda’s courageous
national reconciliation since the genocide in 1994…” [51]

Daschle and Dole’s law firm, Alston & Bird, is a sponsor of the corporate
“Millennium Promise” project, and they provide pro bono legal services,
in both the U.S. and Africa, for the Millennium Villages and Millennium
Promise, both in Rwanda. [52]

These programs are designed to put a “development” face on Africa while
maintaining structural inequality, protectionist trade barriers and military
superiority.

To put it simply, white people will always get the best jobs, corporations
will run and ruin the world—dumping substandard and outdated products
on confused populations; seeding the natural world with genetically
engineered crops; peddling pretty plastic junk; pushing pharmaceutical
pills; strip-mining everything—and we will all fool ourselves and ease
our consciences by pretending that we are breaking
down barriers of inequality and building a better world.

BLESSED BE THE PEACEKEEPERS
According to a very high level United Nations special investigator
sent to negotiate with LRA commanders in DRC’s far north Garamba
region in February 2007, the Uganda government had then recently
“arrested” a U.S. military agent and five Congolese militia leaders
discovered in Uganda. Originally detained in Kampala, the U.S.
military agent was nonetheless allowed to move freely in and
out of the DRC. [53]

The U.S. maintains “Intelligence Fusion Cells” in Congo and one
cell, in Kisangani, capital of Orientale, was situated in a compound,
ringed with coils of barbed wire, near the Tshopo River power station,
and was run by a “ex” marine named “Tom” who refused to discuss
the cell. There were two U.S. military and two Rwandan military
working there. [54] MONUC’s local spokesman confirmed only that the
cell revolves around a “tripartite security arrangement between Rwanda,
Uganda and DRC,” adding, “that one we don’t touch. It’s very hot.” [55]

British soldiers stationed in Kisangani said the American fusion cell
“monitors intelligence on tantalum extraction.”

A few years back, the U.S. donated to Rwanda two Boeing aircraft that
were routinely used by the regime’s Ministry of Defense for arms and
minerals trafficking between Rwanda, Belgium, Albania and Bulgaria.
Operated by Silverback Cargo Freighters, a Kigali-based company
blocked from European airspace since 2006, the planes were also
reportedly used for CIA operations, including the transfer of U.S.
“war on terror” prisoners. The Rwandan government refused to aid
UN investigators seeking information about the company’s
clandestine operations. , [56], [57]

Recent massive human suffering and the escalation of hostilities
by the Nkunda army in eastern Congo have provoked a spate of
high-visibility policy statements where some powerful Western
interests are calling on the “international community” to strengthen
the MONUC military occupationof Congo, while other powerful
interests from the new humanitarian order are calling for the
European Union to send in a rapid reaction force. [58]

Congolese sources everywhere confirm the widespread
involvement of MONUC soldiers in guns-for-minerals swaps and
sexual violence; sources repeatedly accuse MONUC troops of
delivering weapons back to militias to justify MONUC’s one
billion dollar a year occupation of Congo. [59]

“MONUC was giving weapons to the militias,” says yet one
more Congolese official. “MONUC had their own ambitions.
It was about gold. The peace that was achieved in Orientale around
2006 was not achieved by MONUC; the National Police Force from
Kinshasa and the integrated FARDC brigades achieved it.
MONUC was frustrating the peace.” [60]

In the new Congo war documentary by Dutch filmmaker Renzo
Martens, ENJOY POVERTY, we see South African mining staff
of AngloGold Ashanti confirming MONUC’s pivotal role in securing
the company’s access to gold in Orientale. The entire “humanitarian”
enterprise must be properly situated in the political economy
of profit-based charity, resource control and racial injustice. [61]

MONUC doesn’t need more guns, it needs fewer guns (but arms
dealers keep shipping them in), and Congo doesn’t need more foreign
mercenary forces posing as “peacekeepers” but secretly serving narrow,
undisclosed interventionist agendas on behalf of multinational corporations.

Ditto for Darfur. In an “explosive” new book by progressive activists that
mildly exposes some of the hypocrisies of the Save Darfur movement we
find the authors calling for greater military intervention and sneering at
others who have criticized and rejected military intervention for being
what we might call the new, old humanitarian warfare in Africa. [62]

The book, Scramble For Africa: Darfur—Intervention and the USA,
cites ad nauseum all the usual propagandists that are monopolizing
the English language mass media, publications from the far right to
progressive left, on Darfur. These experts include Alex De Waal and
Eric Reeves—and the International Crisis Group—but there are plenty
of citations and references to journalists who peddle the establishment
inventions and thereby black out the forces of Western control.

By page xvii of the preface, the authors—who have no experience
anywhere near Sudan—have become the prosecution, judges and
jury of their own private international court: “That [President Omar al-Bashir]
is a major war criminal is beyond doubt,” they wrote, “as is the fact that he
should face trial for his substantial violations of international human rights law.”
The American authors, it seems, are also in the business of overthrowing
governments: “Given the litany of abuses for which [the Government of Sudan]
is guilty,” they wrote, “there would be little to mourn in Bashir’s overthrow,
and such a move—depending, of course, on the actors involved, and its
 prospects for success—could be cautiously supported.” [63]

In other words, it’s fine for white people from the United States to organize
the overthrow of sovereign governments, as long as we selectively chose the
“right” people for the job. The authors never similarly condemn “leaders”
from the United States, Canada, Israel or Europe, and they never suggest
that President Bush should be overthrown, or that Donald Rumsfeld, or
Henry Kissinger, or General Norman Schwarzkopf, or Maurice Tempelsman,
should be prosecuted for war crimes. The book makes no mention of covert
operations or private military companies operating in South Sudan or Darfur,
and while it illuminates the Bush Administration’s collaboration with the
Khartoum government, it is nothing more than a cheerleading tool for the
opposing power blocks, including the massive so-called “humanitarian relief”
operations. Such is the racial obliviousness of the new humanitarian disorder.

But Darfur’s cheerleaders and Khartoum’s enemies are not so neutral as
they appear.

In 1992, Darfur human rights expert Alex De Waal established African Rights,
an NGO based in London, co-directed with Rakiya Omaar. In August 1995,
African Rights published the report, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance,
one of the first “human rights investigations” to appear after the so-called
“100 days of killing” and the successful RPA/UPDF coup d’état in Rwanda
of 1994.

“Among the early reports on the genocide, none matches Africa[n]
Rights, Rwanda, Death, Despair and Defiance (September 1994)
for the clinical description of the atrocities inflicted upon Tutsi victims,”
wrote renowned Africa scholar René Lemarchand, “ranging from political
murders to collective massacres in churches, schools and stadiums,
and the daily manhunts conducted on the hills. Significant as it is to
our understanding of the sheer savagery that has accompanied the carnage,
the African Rights report is utterly silent on the grisly crimes and
torture inflicted by Tutsi soldiers on innocent Hutu civilians, some
of which are by now well documented (Nduwayo, 2002: 9-16;
Amnesty International, 1994; Des Forges, 1999; Reyntjens
and De Souter, 1994).” [64]

Lemarchand makes the usual error of accepting the “clinical description
of the atrocities inflicted on Tutsis” at face value. How does he know
they are all Tutsis and only Tutsis? Because African Rights says they are?

Where does he get his information about “daily manhunts conducted on
the hills”? Why would Lemarchand so quickly trust the claims of a report
that he simultaneously castigates for its (authors’) extreme and obvious biases?

“This woman of Somali origin is an RPF agent,” says Jean-Marie Higiro of
African Rights’ co-director Rakiya Omaar. Higiro was Director of the Rwandan
Information Office (ORINFOR). “She has her office in Kigali. In 1994 she was
at Mulindi, the headquarters of the RPF. As the RPF conquered territories
from the Rwandan Government Forces, she collected information
fed to her by the RPF.” [65]

“An intensive back and forth activity between this so-called British
human rights organization, African Rights, and the intelligence services of the
President’s office and the military, has been observed,” wrote Paul Rusesabagina.
“Her investigators are very close to the [RPF/RDF] military intelligence apparatus,
and the modus operandi of both appears to be similar.” [66]

The African Rights report was one of the first to manufacture and promulgate
the false one-sided mythology of “genocide” in Rwanda. It says nothing
about RPF/A massacres or foreign military involvement and peddles the
now clichéd and disingenuous stereotypes about victims and killers.
What does the African Rights report tell us about the veracity of
Alex De Waal’s “human rights” reports and political analyses coming
out of Darfur? Further, Alex De Waal’s ties to U.S. intelligence include
his involvement with Harvard University and the Council on Foreign
Relations: De Waal was a member of a CFR task force focused on defining
a new military and intelligence engagement with Africa that is
cloaked in “humanitarian” rhetoric. [67]

We further witness the hypocrisy and international scandal of having
three battalions of Pentagon “trained” Rwandan Defense Force (RDF)
“peacekeepers” operating in Darfur while the RDF is openly backing
Laurent Nkunda’s occupation proxy force in Congo. Similarly, the UPDF—
having received fresh military training by U.S. covert forces in Uganda—
has been sent to Somalia. This is not “peacekeeping,” it is crazy making.

A few well-placed arrests—beginning in Washington, Frankfurt, London,
New York or Brussels—would redress the problem of impunity for war crimes and
crimes against humanity everywhere.

THE KANSTEINER CONNECTION
The Moto Gold Project is located in the Kilo Moto goldfields in the north
east of the DRC, some 150 kilometers west of the Ugandan border town
of Arua.

Kilo Moto was President Joseph Mobutu’s private mine, but the project,
at various stages, involved powerful Western interlocutors: Belgians
Yves Le Norvan and the Damseau family; Roger Lemaire, a Houston (TX)
insider; and an Israeli military agent identified as David Agnon. [68]
Kilo Moto’s gold, then as now, usually exited Congo (Zaire)
through remote airstrips. [69]

The present Moto Gold Mining “lease”—a massive land grab corruptly
obtained—covers an area of approximately 1,841 square kilometers and involves
sites at Durba, Watsa and Doko.

Moto Gold’s partners in Orientale include Siemens and Ken Overseas.
Siemens director Tiego Moseneke is also a director of PetroSA,
a new South African oil minor poaching DRC oil concessions on
Lake Albert. [70] Ken Overseas Company is involved in the Minière
de Bakwanga (MIBA) diamond mines in Congo’s Mbuji-Mayi province.
In their reports on war and plunder in DRC, the United Nations Panel of
Experts named Ken Overseas in a MIBA mining consortium linked
to Belgian tycoon Philippe de Moerloose and Israeli mining magnate
Dan Gertler; both men have been flagged for arms trafficking. [71]

Walter Kansteiner III is one of the shadiest architects of Congo’s
troubles. The son of a coltan trader in Chicago, Kansteiner was
Assistant Secretary of State for Africa under G.W. Bush and
former “National Security” insider and member of the Department
of Defense Task Force on Strategic Minerals under Bill Clinton.
Kansteiner’s speech at The Forum for International Policy in October
of 1996 advocated partitioning the Congo (Zaire) into smaller states
based on ethnic lineage; Laurent Kabila was marching
across Zaire at the time. [72]

The balkanization of Congo appears to be a major objective
behind the current organized chaos in the Great Lakes region. [73]

Further, it is obvious that conflicts from within the U.S.—between
the Department of State, Pentagon and intelligence agencies—
are translating to regional warfare on the ground in, especially,
Sudan, Uganda, and Congo.

Kansteiner is a trustee of the Africa Wildlife Foundation—
another profit-based “conservation” corporation tied to
Conservation International, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund
and the Jane Goodall Institute—entities whose front of gorilla
and chimpanzee protection hides a deeper agenda. [74] It is not
surprising to find that one of the AWF’s premier sponsors is
Barrick Gold. Kansteiner is also linked to Richard Leakey’s
paramilitary front organization Wildlife Direct, and to the
Africa Conservation Fund, a shady Washington D.C. entity. [75]

Kansteiner is a director of the precious metal firm Titanium
Resources Group, a company deeply tied to Sierra Rutile Limited,
a firm pivotal to the bloodshed in Sierra Leone. [76]

Sierra Rutile Ltd. director Sir Sam Jonah reportedly helped finance
Rwandan RCD rebel groups in DRC while he was a CEO of Ashanti
Goldfields; Jonah is also a director for Moto Gold. [77]

Sierra Rutile is owned by Max and Jean-Raymond Boulle and
Robert Friedland, “Friends of Bill” Clinton who are linked to
clandestine networks of offshore holdings and front companies
involved in weapons trafficking, money laundering and human
rights atrocities from Burma to the Congos to Mongolia. [78]

On April 28, 2008, the ICC issued an international arrest
warrant for militia commander Bosco Ntaganda, former
commander of the Forces Patriotiques pour la Libération du
Congo (FPLC), a militia that operated in the oil and gold
areas of Orientale. Bosco is currently the Chief of Staff of
Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP army in North Kivu.

On July 14, 2008, the prosecutor of the ICC applied for an
arrest warrant for Sudanese President, Omar Hassan Ahmad
al-Bashir, accused of crimes of genocide, crimes against
humanity and war crimes in Darfur. Bashir is an Arab—
another person of color—and the ICC has deeply politicized
the Darfur conflict in keeping with the imperialist
smokescreen of the “Save Darfur” movement.

There have been no ICC indictments against a single
white man who could be proven to be equally culpable
in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide,
though the list of possibilities—as indicated herein
—is very, very long.

“Its name notwithstanding, the ICC is rapidly
turning into a Western court to try African crimes
against humanity,” writes Mahmood Mamdani.

“It has targeted governments that are U.S. adversaries
and ignored actions the United States doesn’t oppose,
like those of Uganda and Rwanda in eastern Congo,
effectively conferring impunity on them.” [79]

The writing is on the wall, and we can anticipate the
eventual arrest of Ugandan military commanders,
including Laurent Nkunda, James Kazini, James Kabarebe,
Salim Saleh and Paul Kagame. Such arrests aren’t likely
to involve legitimate judicial proceedings, and it won’t
merely because these people deserve to be arrested,
which they do, and they probably won’t be arrested
before a few more million people are slaughtered in
Central Africa.

The arrests will come because these are the notoriously
visible people of color used to make invisible—quite
literally black out—the white war criminals and covert
operators wrecking havoc in Africa and elsewhere
around the world. They are the embraceable black Africans,
and the future fall guys, and Africa’s “leaders” should take
note. And so should Barack Obama.

Even more critical is the need for the Western news
consuming public to recognize the face of propaganda
and the nature of “change” and what it means to people
of color everywhere Africa. Thus it is critical to note the
recent shift in media coverage that accompanies the
 imminent shift in the post-election balance of U.S. power.
General Laurent Nkunda has been deeply involved in Congo
for years and the Kagame military machine has been shipping
weapons and officers directly to Congo; these Rwanda
Defense Force (RDF) officers infiltrate the country and direct
the “rebel” operations, and the CNDP has served as a lever of
power used against the Kabila government.

Reported herein—and nowhere else—is the ongoing
secret military involvement of Yoweri Museveni and the
Ugandan crime networks. Only recently, as power shifts from
the G.W. Bush power elite to the incoming Obama Administration—
being packed with Clintonite friends and officials, and by
Democratic Party financiers like diamond kingpin
Maurice Tempelsman—has Nkunda or Rwanda been subject to any kind
of “harsh criticism”. The New York Times article of December 3, 2008, is
the perfect example of the “news” media serving hidden agendas.

In “Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of Troubles in Congo,” the New York
Times peddles all the standard narrative about “genocide in Rwanda” in
1994. Suddenly, writes Jeffrey Gettleman, the NYT’s chief Congo
propagandist of late, there is a “secret Rwandan brotherhood”
and Rwandan government officials are involved in the
bloodletting and plunder in Congo. [80]

Power factions allied with the Bush administration are exerting
leverage, and mildly exposing the obvious links of the former Clinton
administration to war and covert operations in Congo.

Suddenly it’s beneficial to name a few names—names like Modeste
Makabuza Ngoga—names that have been known
and named before. [81]

These New York Times articles are nothing more
than expedience, tricks in a bag of tricks, as power jockeys for position,
and massive private profit, as we approach the zero hour and the twilight
of savior Barack Obama’s coming, bringing “change” to America,
and the same old, new, humanitarian warfare to Africa.

SOURCES:
[1] There are exceptions to the rule, including the extensive publications by
this author and those by Africa researcher David Barouski. See, e.g.,
David Barouski, “Mining in the Ituri Province of the Congo-A Contemporary
Profile,” Z-Net, April 15, 2008; and David Barouski, Laurent Nkundabatware,
His Rwandan Allies, and the ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting
Peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo, February 13, 2007.
[2] Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999,
 Mellon Books, 1999.
[3] Investigations into the 1994 events in Rwanda and documents
presented at the International Criminal tribunal for Rwanda reveal a
huge body of evidence supporting what soon become obvious conclusions.
[4] keith harmon snow and David Barouski, “Behind the Numbers: Untold
Suffering in Congo,” Z Magazine, March 1, 2006; and Human Rights Watch,
The Curse of Gold, June 1, 2005.
[5] See: keith harmon snow, “Gertler’s Bling Bang Torah Gang,” Dissident
Voice, February 9, 2008.
[6] Private investigations, North Kivu, DRC, 2005-2007, and private
communications, 2008.
[7] Private communications, July through November 2008.
[8] See: Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa,
1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999; and keith harmon snow, “Darfurism,
Uganda, and U.S. War in Africa: The Spectre of Continental Genocide,”
Dissident Voice, November 24, 2007; private interviews, eyewitnesses
working in western Uganda at the time, October 2007.
[9] The Acholi people—non-combatant men, but mostly women and
children—have suffered decades of genocidal treatment by UPDF
soldiers deployed by Yoweri Museveni, president in Uganda, and top
military commanders Gen. James Kazini, Gen. Salim Saleh, Gen. Kahinda
Otafire, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, Lt. Gen. Katumba Wamala, Maj.
Gen. Jim Owoyesigire, and Brig. Gen. Robert Rusoke.
[10] Private interview, eyewitness working in western Uganda at the time,
October 2007; see also Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations
in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellon Books, 1999.
[11] Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of
Africa, Vintage, April 2005.
[12] Mahmood Mamdani, Understanding the Crisis in Kivu:
Report of the CODESRIA Mission to the Democratic Republic of
 Congo September, 1997, Centre for African Studies University of
Cape Town, November 20, 1998,
http://hrp.bard.edu/resource_pdfs/mamdani.kivu.pdf .
[13] “ZAIRE: Peace Possible?” Interview with Bill Richardson,
PBS Online
News Hour, May 9, 1997,
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/may97/zaire_5-9.html.
[14] Friends of Rwanda advisory board:
 http://www.friendsofrwanda.com/foractivity/ .
[15] “A Brief Profile of Joe Ritchie,” The New Times, November 26, 2008,
http://www.newtimes.co.rw/index.php?issue=13707&article=10610 .
[16] Marc Kaufman and Robert E. Pierre,
“Rich Brothers Mission to Save Afghanistan
Stirs Suspicions,” Washington Post News Service, International
herald Tribune On-Line,
November 9, 2001,
http://www.uni-muenster.de/PeaCon/global-texte/
g-notes/IHT%20RichBrothersMission-IHT.htm
.
[17] Quotes are used because the “genocide” label and realities
on the ground are highly contested.
[18] Moto Gold Mines web site:
http://www.motogoldmines.com/board_of_directors.9.html
[19] Private interviews, Bunia, Kisangani and Zani, DRC,
March 26-28, 2007; and Mwana Africa presentation, 30th
Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006:
http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite
_mar06.pdf .
[20] Mwana Africa presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum
March 28, 2006:
http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite
_mar06.pdf .
[21] See: keith harmon snow, “Northern Uganda: Hidden War, Massive
Suffering: Another White People’s War for Oil,” Global Research,
May 26, 2007.
[22] See: keith harmon snow, “Three Cheers for Eve Ensler?” Propaganda,
White Collar Crime and Sexual Atrocities in Eastern Congo,” Z-Net,
October 24, 2007.
[23] Jeffrey Gettleman, “Congo’s Riches, looted by renegade Troops,”
New York Times, November 18, 2008,
p. 1, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/world/africa/16congo.html.
[24] See: keith harmon snow, “A People’s History of Congo’s
Jean-Pierre Bemba,”
Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007.
[25] See: Dr. Enoch (Helan) Page, “‘Black Male’ Imagery and Media
Containment of African American Men,” American Anthropologist,
March 1997, Vol. 99, No. 1, pp. 99-111.
[26] See e.g., William K. Lietzau,
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/May2003/d20030522liet.pdf.
[27] Interview with human rights investigator, Bunia, DRC,
March 23, 2007.
[28] Private communications, Orientale, DRC, November
[29] Private interview, Aru official, Aru, DRC, March 26, 2007.
[30] See: “An Industry Rebirth? Oil in the DRC,” Consultancy
Africa Intelligence;
and Tower Resources: <http://www.towerresources.co.
uk/corporate.html>; H Oil
and Minerals Ltd. web site: www.hoilminerals.com .
[31] Tower Resources web site: http://www.towerresources.co.uk/operations.html.
[32] Ken Silverstein, “The Arms Dealer Next Door: International billionaire, French
prisoner, Angolan weapons broker, Arizona Republican. Who is Pierre Falcone?”
In These Times, December 22, 2001.
[33] Christopher Hitchens, “Childhood’s End,” Vanity Fair, January 20076,
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/01/hitchens200601.
[34] After querying Vanity Fair editors with a story idea about war in Africa, the
editors responded that Christopher Hitchens is their sole source correspondent on Africa.
[35] See: Richard Bartholomew, American Pastor Helps SPLA Battle LRA in Sudan,”
January 25, 2005,
http://barthsnotes.wordpress.com/2006/01/25/american-pastor-
helps-spla-battle-lra-in-sudan/;
and keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?”
Global Research, February 7, 2007,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=view
Article&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.
[36] Jo Becker, “Children as Weapons of War,” Human Rights
Watch World Report
2004, Human Rights Watch, January 2004, http://www.hrw.org
/legacy/wr2k4/index.htm.
[37] Interviews with UN Official in eastern DRC, August 2006
and February 2007. See also: “U.S. asked to arrest Ugandan-
American rebel Jongomoi Okidi-Olal—The real brain behind LRA
leadership?” Xinhua, April 9, 2006, http://news.xinhuanet.com/
english/2006-04/09/content_4402556.htm .
[38] Mwana Africa presentation, 30th Minesite Mining Forum March 28, 2006:
http://www.mwanaafrica.com/ir/files/presentations/2006/minesite_mar06.pdf.
[39] See: Charles Onyango Obbo, “Soon the Guns of Goma might be heard
in Kampala,” Monitor On-Line, November 19, 2008,
 http://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/11dd77ace1d4c3d0.
[40] Private interviews, Bunia and Kisangani, February and March 2007.
[41] The international rhino conservation programs at Garamba are reportedly
somehow tied to the political interests of the opposition party in Zimbabwe;
private interview, UN investigator, Kisangani, DRC 2007.
[42] See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?”
Global Research, February 7, 2007,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=
viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.
[43] See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?”
Global Research, February 7, 2007,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?
context=viewArticle&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.
[44] “ICC calls for renewed efforts to arrest Joseph Kony,” RNW International
Justice Desk, October 6, 2008,
 http://www.rnw.nl/internationaljustice/icc/Uganda/081006-uganda-kony.
[45] Paul S. Reichler and Lawrence H. Martin. See: Public sitting held on
Monday 18 April 2005, at 10 a.m., at the Peace Palace, President Shi
presiding,
in the case concerning Armed Activities on the Territory of the Congo
(Democratic Republic of the Congo v. Uganda), International Court of Justice,
CR 2005/7, 2005
[46] Ralph G. Kershaw, “Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice
According to Washington,” Covert Action Quarterly, No. 74, Fall 2002.
[47] Jeevan Vasagar, “Uganda hires PR agency to buff up its image,”
The Guardian, May 21, 2005.
[48] See: Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999,
Mellon Press, 1999.
[49] http://www.americanprogress.org/
aboutus/staff/DaschleSenatorTom.html.
[50] Private interview with UN special investigator in Kisangani, DRC, 2006;
investigations in Goma and Bukavu, DRC, 2005-2007.
[51] See: “Senator Tom Daschle Leads Delegation in Rwanda,” Alston & Bird web
site, July 22, 2008, http://www.alston.com/firm/News/Detail.aspx?news=2612.
[52] Alston & Bird web site: http://www.alston.com/firm/News/Detail.aspx?news=2612.
[53] Private interview with UN special investigator in, Kisangani, DRC, 2006.
[54] Investigations of “American Intelligence Fusion Cell,” Kisangani, DRC, July 31,
2006.
[55] Investigations and interviews in Kisangani, DRC, 2006.
[56] Private interview with UN special investigator in, Kisangani, DRC 2007.
[57] See: “Silverback Cargo Freighters Rwanda,” Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute,
http://www.sipri.org/contents/armstrad/Air_Cargo_Operators/
Silverback_Cargo_Freighters.html
and Silverback Cargo Freighters web site: http://www.silverbackcargo.
com/inside.php?photo.
[58] Marianna Brungs, “EU: Coalition of Leaders Calls for EU Force in Congo,”
Crisis Watch Press Release,
Human Rights Watch, London, November 27, 2008.
[59] Private interviews, Bunia, DRC, February and March 2007.
[60] Private interviews, Bunia, Aru and Zani, February 2007.
[61] Renzo Martens, Enjoy Poverty, International
Documentary Festival Amsterdam,
http://idfa.nl/en/festival/schedule/film.aspx?id=781e5666-0d52-43d5-ba66-67c6815ce198.
[62] See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?
The New, Old, Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,”
Global Research, February 7, 2007,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=view
Article&code=%20SN20070207&articleId=4717.
[63] Kevin Funk and Steven Fake, The Scramble for Africa: Darfur—Intervention
and the USA, Black Rose Books, 2008.
[64] René Lemarchand, Scholarly Review: Rwanda: The State of Research,
http://www.massviolence.org/Rwanda-The-State-of-Research?artpage=4.
[65] Private communication, Jean-Marie Higiro, October 17, 2008.
[66] Paul Rusesabagina, “Rusesabagina responds to Rwanda
government book on
‘Hotel Rwanda’,” EUX-TV (Brussels), April 12, 2008, http://eux.tv/article.aspx?
articleId=20114.
[67] More Than Humanitarianism: A Strategic U.S. Approach Toward Africa,
Council on Foreign Relations,
Task Force Report Number 56, January 2006, http://www.cfr.org/publication/9302/#author.
[68] Private interview, keith harmon snow with OKIMO Company officials, Bunia,
March 24, 2007.
[69] Private interview, keith harmon snow with OKIMO Company officials, Bunia,
March 24, 2007.
[70] Legal Brief Today, July 27, 2006, http://www.legalbrief.co.za/article.php?story=
2006072709081497; and
“Local Companies in Scramble for DRC Oil,” Johannesburg Sunday Times,
August 18, 2008; and H Oil and Minerals Ltd. web site:
www.hoilminerals.com/index.php/news/entry/local_companies_in_scramble_for_drc_oil/.
[71] The others included the Groupe Van De Ghinste, Demimpex,
Chanic and OSS; both OSS and Demimpex are De Moerloose
companies. See: Report of the United Nations Panel of Experts on the
 Illegal Exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Also see: keith harmon snow, “Gertler’s Bling Bang Torah Gang,”
Dissident Voice, February 9, 2008; and keith harmon snow,
“Congo’s President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty or Travesty?” Toward Freedom,
November 13, 2007.
[72] “Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa, 1993-1999,”
United States One Hundred Seventh Congress, Subcommittee on
 International Operations and Human Rights, First Session, 17 May 2001, comp.
Centre for Research on Globalization:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/MAD111A.html .
[73] “The U.S. (Under)mining Job of Africa” : < http://cryptome.org/us-africa.wm.htm >.
[74] See the KING KONG series published by keith harmon snow
and Georgianne Nienaber, Op-Ed News, 2007 and 2008.
[75] Africa Wildlife Foundation:
 http://www.awf.org/section/about/trustees.
[76] Titanium Resources Group,
http://titaniumresources.com/about-us/management-team.
[77] See Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa,
1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.
[78] See Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations In Africa,
1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.
[79] Mahmood Mamdani, “The New Humanitarian Order,”
The Nation, September 29, 2008.
[80] Jeffrey Gettleman, “Rwanda Stirs Deadly Brew of
Troubles in Congo,” New York Times, December 3, 2008; and Jerome Delay,
“Many of the most powerful people in Congo have close ties to Rwanda’s
elite in Kigali,” New York Times, December 3, 2008.
[81] See: Roxanne Stasyszyn, “A World Playground: Congolese
People Sacrificed for International Games and Profits,” Dissident Voice,
and Global Research, November 8, 2008.

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