Thursday, April 22, 2010
A US Phenomenon
The Widespread Psychiatric Drugging of Infants and Toddlers
The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world, medicating children at a younger and younger age.
By Evelyn Pringle
April 20, 2010 -- The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age. Medicaid records in some states show infants less than a year old on drugs for mental disorders.
The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry."
The number of children in this age group diagnosed with bipolar disorder also doubled over the last decade, Reuters reported.
Of antipsychotic-treated children in the 2007 study sample, the most common diagnoses were pervasive developmental disorder or mental retardation (28.2%), ADHD (23.7%), and disruptive behavior disorder (12.9%).
The study reported that fewer than half of drug treated children received a mental health assessment (40.8%), a psychotherapy visit (41.4%), or a visit with a psychiatrist (42.6%) during the year of antipsychotic use.
"Antipsychotics, which are being widely and irresponsibly prescribed for American children--mostly as chemical restraints--are shown to be causing irreparable harm," warned Vera Hassner Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, in a February 26, 2010 InfoMail.
"These drugs have measurable severe hazardous effects on vital biological systems, including: cardiovascular adverse effects that result in shortening lives; metabolic adverse effects that induce diabetes and the metabolic syndrome," she wrote. "Long-term use of antipsychotics has been shown to result in metabolic syndrome in 40% to 50% of patients."
The lead researcher on the study above, Columbia University psychiatry professor Mark Olfson, told Reuters that about 1.5% of all privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70, received some type of psychiatric drug in 2007, be it an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant.
Psychiatric drugs bathe the brains of growing children with agents that threaten the normal development of the brain, according to Dr Peter Breggin, founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), and author of about 20 books, including "Medication Madness."
The drugs themselves are causing severe disorders in millions of children in the US, he warns. "Substances like antidepressants, stimulants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic drugs cause severe, and potentially permanent, biochemical imbalances."
American Phenomenon
A number of presentations at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in May 2009, addressed the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, including one titled, "Pediatric Bipolar Disorder: A Critical Look at an American Phenomenon," at which Dr Peter Parry, a consultant child & adolescent psychiatrist, and senior lecturer at Flinders University in Australia, presented a survey on, "Australian and New Zealand's Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists' Views on Bipolar Disorder Prevalence and on Rates of Pediatric Bipolar Disorder in the USA."
Dr Parry and his colleagues conducted a survey of child and adolescent psychiatrists in Australia and New Zealand. Of the 199 psychiatrists who responded to the survey, 90.5% thought pediatric bipolar disorder was overdiagnosed in the US.
In an October 1, 2009 article titled, "Medicating Our Children," Dr Parry reports that since "the mid-1990s in the USA, some researchers have claimed that Paediatric Bipolar Disorder (PBD) frequently starts prior to puberty."
One of PBD's main proponents, Harvard University's Professor Joseph Biederman, stating onset "is squarely in the preschooler age group," he notes.
Parry explains that "PBD has been created by moving the diagnostic goalposts away from traditional concepts of bipolar disorder."
"In children," he says, "episodes were redefined to last hours instead of days or weeks and, instead of manic elation, severe anger in children sufficed as mania."
"Unlike diagnoses like ADHD or depression, or simply accepting a child has serious emotional and behavioural problems in reaction to various stressors, PBD implies a lifelong severe mental illness requiring of strong psychiatric medication," Parry warns.
"In the USA," he says, "the public is furthermore exposed to direct pharmaceutical advertising that can feed the natural desire parents of distressed and aggressive children have for a quick solution by suggesting a simple medication fix."
"The medicating of America's children has become intensely controversial, highlighted by the tragic case of Rebecca Riley, a four-year-old Boston girl diagnosed at 28 months old with ADHD and PBD," he points out.
On April 7, 2009, the author of the book, "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness," Christopher Lane, featured an interview on his Psychology Today blog, "Side Effects," with journalist, Philip Dawdy, the creator of the popular website, Furious Seasons, and discussed the rising number of children being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
"As for bipolar disorder in kids (meaning pre-teens and younger), it's simply not an issue in the rest of the world," Dawdy told Lane. "The bipolar child is a purely American phenomenon."
"The pharma companies and the Harvard crew worked hand-in-hand to bring America a generation of ADHD kids and bipolar children, and their profound influence can be seen in the millions of children and teens who now carry lifetime diagnoses and take gobs of psychotropic drugs each day, often to their detriment," he advised.
Lane asked for Dawdy's opinion on a recent report in the St Petersburg Times that found 23 infants less than one-year-old had been prescribed antipsychotics in Florida in 2007, as well as the drug overdose death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley in Massachusetts. "How is it possible for psychiatrists to continue prescribing to infants in such numbers without more oversight?" Lane asked.
"What's gone on with antipsychotics prescribed to infants and toddlers is simply inexplicable to me," Dawdy said. "The drugs are known to cause huge problems in adults, so why the heck would a doctor give them to little kids, especially infants? It boggles my small mind."
"I'm no fan of bans or restrictions," he told Lane, "but this does strike me as a situation where there needs to be a serious rethinking of what we are doing—and maybe there should be a ban on the use of these drugs in kids under, say, 6 years of age."
An October 2007 report by the University of South Florida found the most common diagnosis for antipsychotic use with children in Florida’s Medicaid program, between July and December 2005, was ADHD. Roughly 54%, or 1,372 cases, involved prescriptions for children five and under and the total number of antipsychotic users in this young age group was 2,549, with all disorders combined, according to the report.
Increased Prescribing to Poor Children
Federally funded research published online in December, 2009, revealed that children covered by Medicaid were prescribed antipsychotics at a rate four time higher than children with private insurance. The data showed that more than 4% of children in Medicaid fee-for-service programs received antipsychotics, compared to less than 1% of privately insured youth. The study found Medicaid kids were more likely to receive antipsychotics for unapproved uses such as ADHD and conduct disorders than privately insured children.
The researchers examined records for children in seven states for the years 2001 and 2004, chosen as representative of the US Medicaid population. But more recent data through 2007 indicates that the disparity has remained, said Stephen Crystal, a Rutgers professor who led the study, according to the December 11, 2009, New York Times.
Antipsychotics were the top selling class of drugs in both 2008 and 2009. With sales of $14.6 billion in 2009, they brought in more than the $13.6 billion earned by both heart burn and cholesterol medications. Antidepressants ranked fourth with sales of $9.9 billion, according to data by IMS Health. In 2008, the drug makers took in $11.3 billion from antiseizure drugs and $4.8 billion from ADHD drugs.
In a new book titled, "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America," Robert Whitaker reports that the number of children on government disability rolls due to severe mental illness has increased more than 35-fold since 1987.
The book explores the question of whether the epidemic rise in people disabled by mental illness, among all age groups in the US over the past 20 years, could have been fueled by a drug-based paradigm of care.
It also explores what is happening to children over the long-term who are placed on psychiatric drugs. "Once again, science tells a very clear story, and, as you might imagine, it is one that — when you think of the millions of children so affected — makes you want to weep," Whitaker stated in a March 26, 2010, notice for the book's release on the Beyond Meds Website.
The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world, medicating children at a younger and younger age.
By Evelyn Pringle
April 20, 2010 -- The United States has become the psychiatric drugging capital of the world for kids with children being medicated at a younger and younger age. Medicaid records in some states show infants less than a year old on drugs for mental disorders.
The use of powerful antipsychotics with privately insured children, aged 2 through 5 in the US, doubled between 1999 and 2007, according to a study of data on more than one million children with private health insurance in the January, 2010, "Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry."
The number of children in this age group diagnosed with bipolar disorder also doubled over the last decade, Reuters reported.
Of antipsychotic-treated children in the 2007 study sample, the most common diagnoses were pervasive developmental disorder or mental retardation (28.2%), ADHD (23.7%), and disruptive behavior disorder (12.9%).
The study reported that fewer than half of drug treated children received a mental health assessment (40.8%), a psychotherapy visit (41.4%), or a visit with a psychiatrist (42.6%) during the year of antipsychotic use.
"Antipsychotics, which are being widely and irresponsibly prescribed for American children--mostly as chemical restraints--are shown to be causing irreparable harm," warned Vera Hassner Sharav, president of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, in a February 26, 2010 InfoMail.
"These drugs have measurable severe hazardous effects on vital biological systems, including: cardiovascular adverse effects that result in shortening lives; metabolic adverse effects that induce diabetes and the metabolic syndrome," she wrote. "Long-term use of antipsychotics has been shown to result in metabolic syndrome in 40% to 50% of patients."
The lead researcher on the study above, Columbia University psychiatry professor Mark Olfson, told Reuters that about 1.5% of all privately insured children between the ages of 2 and 5, or one in 70, received some type of psychiatric drug in 2007, be it an antipsychotic, a mood stabilizer, a stimulant or an antidepressant.
Psychiatric drugs bathe the brains of growing children with agents that threaten the normal development of the brain, according to Dr Peter Breggin, founder of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP), and author of about 20 books, including "Medication Madness."
The drugs themselves are causing severe disorders in millions of children in the US, he warns. "Substances like antidepressants, stimulants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic drugs cause severe, and potentially permanent, biochemical imbalances."
American Phenomenon
A number of presentations at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in May 2009, addressed the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, including one titled, "Pediatric Bipolar Disorder: A Critical Look at an American Phenomenon," at which Dr Peter Parry, a consultant child & adolescent psychiatrist, and senior lecturer at Flinders University in Australia, presented a survey on, "Australian and New Zealand's Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists' Views on Bipolar Disorder Prevalence and on Rates of Pediatric Bipolar Disorder in the USA."
Dr Parry and his colleagues conducted a survey of child and adolescent psychiatrists in Australia and New Zealand. Of the 199 psychiatrists who responded to the survey, 90.5% thought pediatric bipolar disorder was overdiagnosed in the US.
In an October 1, 2009 article titled, "Medicating Our Children," Dr Parry reports that since "the mid-1990s in the USA, some researchers have claimed that Paediatric Bipolar Disorder (PBD) frequently starts prior to puberty."
One of PBD's main proponents, Harvard University's Professor Joseph Biederman, stating onset "is squarely in the preschooler age group," he notes.
Parry explains that "PBD has been created by moving the diagnostic goalposts away from traditional concepts of bipolar disorder."
"In children," he says, "episodes were redefined to last hours instead of days or weeks and, instead of manic elation, severe anger in children sufficed as mania."
"Unlike diagnoses like ADHD or depression, or simply accepting a child has serious emotional and behavioural problems in reaction to various stressors, PBD implies a lifelong severe mental illness requiring of strong psychiatric medication," Parry warns.
"In the USA," he says, "the public is furthermore exposed to direct pharmaceutical advertising that can feed the natural desire parents of distressed and aggressive children have for a quick solution by suggesting a simple medication fix."
"The medicating of America's children has become intensely controversial, highlighted by the tragic case of Rebecca Riley, a four-year-old Boston girl diagnosed at 28 months old with ADHD and PBD," he points out.
On April 7, 2009, the author of the book, "Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness," Christopher Lane, featured an interview on his Psychology Today blog, "Side Effects," with journalist, Philip Dawdy, the creator of the popular website, Furious Seasons, and discussed the rising number of children being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
"As for bipolar disorder in kids (meaning pre-teens and younger), it's simply not an issue in the rest of the world," Dawdy told Lane. "The bipolar child is a purely American phenomenon."
"The pharma companies and the Harvard crew worked hand-in-hand to bring America a generation of ADHD kids and bipolar children, and their profound influence can be seen in the millions of children and teens who now carry lifetime diagnoses and take gobs of psychotropic drugs each day, often to their detriment," he advised.
Lane asked for Dawdy's opinion on a recent report in the St Petersburg Times that found 23 infants less than one-year-old had been prescribed antipsychotics in Florida in 2007, as well as the drug overdose death of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley in Massachusetts. "How is it possible for psychiatrists to continue prescribing to infants in such numbers without more oversight?" Lane asked.
"What's gone on with antipsychotics prescribed to infants and toddlers is simply inexplicable to me," Dawdy said. "The drugs are known to cause huge problems in adults, so why the heck would a doctor give them to little kids, especially infants? It boggles my small mind."
"I'm no fan of bans or restrictions," he told Lane, "but this does strike me as a situation where there needs to be a serious rethinking of what we are doing—and maybe there should be a ban on the use of these drugs in kids under, say, 6 years of age."
An October 2007 report by the University of South Florida found the most common diagnosis for antipsychotic use with children in Florida’s Medicaid program, between July and December 2005, was ADHD. Roughly 54%, or 1,372 cases, involved prescriptions for children five and under and the total number of antipsychotic users in this young age group was 2,549, with all disorders combined, according to the report.
Increased Prescribing to Poor Children
Federally funded research published online in December, 2009, revealed that children covered by Medicaid were prescribed antipsychotics at a rate four time higher than children with private insurance. The data showed that more than 4% of children in Medicaid fee-for-service programs received antipsychotics, compared to less than 1% of privately insured youth. The study found Medicaid kids were more likely to receive antipsychotics for unapproved uses such as ADHD and conduct disorders than privately insured children.
The researchers examined records for children in seven states for the years 2001 and 2004, chosen as representative of the US Medicaid population. But more recent data through 2007 indicates that the disparity has remained, said Stephen Crystal, a Rutgers professor who led the study, according to the December 11, 2009, New York Times.
Antipsychotics were the top selling class of drugs in both 2008 and 2009. With sales of $14.6 billion in 2009, they brought in more than the $13.6 billion earned by both heart burn and cholesterol medications. Antidepressants ranked fourth with sales of $9.9 billion, according to data by IMS Health. In 2008, the drug makers took in $11.3 billion from antiseizure drugs and $4.8 billion from ADHD drugs.
In a new book titled, "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America," Robert Whitaker reports that the number of children on government disability rolls due to severe mental illness has increased more than 35-fold since 1987.
The book explores the question of whether the epidemic rise in people disabled by mental illness, among all age groups in the US over the past 20 years, could have been fueled by a drug-based paradigm of care.
It also explores what is happening to children over the long-term who are placed on psychiatric drugs. "Once again, science tells a very clear story, and, as you might imagine, it is one that — when you think of the millions of children so affected — makes you want to weep," Whitaker stated in a March 26, 2010, notice for the book's release on the Beyond Meds Website.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
America unmasked:
The images that reveal the Ku Klux Klan is alive and kicking in 2009
The USA has a new president but an old problem - and nothing typifies it like today’s Ku Klux Klan. The photographer Anthony Karen gained unprecedented access to the ‘Invisible Empire’
Klan members gather at a cross 'lighting' in Scottsboro, Alabama
Words by Leonard Doyle
When he talks about the Klan members he has encountered he tends not to dwell on the fate of their victims. Karen’s feat is that he takes us to places few photojournalists have been before, into the belly of the beast. The scenes he presents portray a kinder, gentler Klan. The mute photographs present an organisation that is far less threatening than the hate group of our popular imagination. Consciously or otherwise, his photographs hold our imagination in their grip while doing double duty as propaganda for the extremist right, much as Leni Riefenstahl’s work did for the Nazis.
Today the Klan is a mere shadow of what it used to be and there are at least 34 differently named Klan groups. “They are a fairly low-rent bunch of people, many of whom use their local organisations as a way of raising money for themselves,” says Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
Photographs of the Klan folk in their hooded regalia aren’t all that rare. The archives of America’s newspapers contain plenty of front-page photographs of lynchings throughout the past century. Three years ago, James Cameron, the last survivor of an attempted lynching died, thankfully of natural causes.
The older generation of Black Americans grew up hearing about Klan lynchings whispered over the dinner table but never mentioned outside the home. At the Klan’s height, around the turn of the 20th century, some 30 to 40 lynchings a year were being recorded. It is believed that there were in fact many more unrecorded deaths, especially in the cotton-growing south where the deaths of black field-hands were often not recorded.
Karen’s photographs show an entirely different side of the far right. He presents a 58-year-old, fifth-generation seamstress he calls “Ms Ruth” and he has photographed her running up an outfit for the “Exalted Cyclops” or head of a local KKK chapter. She gets paid about $140 for her trouble. Karen tells us that she uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.
Karen’s images of the Klan and its supporters regularly appear on the recruiting websites of the far right. Out of context, the images of hooded Klansmen and their families tell us little of the real story – the inexorable rise in the number of extremist organisations in America.
The number of hate-crime victims in the US is also rising and as America’s middle and working class gets thrown out of work, the hate groups behind the crimes are flourishing. As people lose their homes to foreclosure and, without the benefit of a safety net, find themselves slipping into poverty, there is already a search for scapegoats underway. Immigrants from central and South America have become particular targets as the grim economic times take hold.
Anyone who doubts the capacity of the modern KKK for violence need look no further than the recent case of 43-year-old Cynthia Lynch of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She had never been out of her home state before she travelled to Louisiana to be initiated into the Klan. She was met off the bus by two members of a group that calls itself the Sons of Dixie and taken to a campsite in the woods 60 miles north of New Orleans.
There, Lynch’s head was shaven and after 24 hours of Klan boot camp, including chanting and running with torches, she had had enough and asked to be taken to town. After an argument, the group’s “Grand Lordship”, Chuck Foster, is alleged to have shot her to death. He was charged with second-degree murder and is awaiting trial. Just as shocking is that the event happened in Bogalusa, a backwoods Louisiana town that was once known as the Klan capital of the US.
In the 1960s the Klan operated with impunity in Bogalusa and once held a public meeting to decide which black church to burn down next. Local Klan members were suspected of ambushing two black policemen in 1965, killing one and wounding the other. No one was ever tried for the crimes.
Despite all its notoriety the Klan has been a spent force for decades with nothing like the clout it once wielded. At its peak the KKK boasted four million members and controlled the governor’s mansions and legislatures of several states. Since the 1930s the KKK has been in a state of disorganisation and today it probably has 6,000 members. But the economic crisis is swelling their ranks and already, a month after the inauguration of the first black president, the tidal wave of interracial harmony that greeted Obama’s election is starting to recede.
“Things are certain to get worse,” says Potok. “The ingredients are all there: a dire economy that is certain to get worse; high levels of immigration; the white majority that is soon to turn into a minority and a black man in the White House.”
More than 400 hate-related incidents, from cross-burnings to effigies of President Obama hanging from nooses have been reported, according to law-enforcement authorities and Potok’s organisation, which files lawsuits against hate groups aimed at making them bankrupt.
Late last year, two suspected skinheads who had links to a violent Klan chapter in Kentucky were charged with plotting to kill 88 black students. They were then going to assassinate President Obama by blasting him from a speeding car while wearing white tuxedos and top hats. They were never going to succeed, given the huge security net around Obama, but the fact that they had planned such an outlandish attack may be a harbinger of things to come.
“There is a tremendous backlash to Obama’s election,” says Richard Barrett, the leader of the Nationalist Movement, another white supremacist group. “Many people look at the flag of the Republic of New Africa that was hoisted over the White House as an act of war.
The USA has a new president but an old problem - and nothing typifies it like today’s Ku Klux Klan. The photographer Anthony Karen gained unprecedented access to the ‘Invisible Empire’
Klan members gather at a cross 'lighting' in Scottsboro, AlabamaWords by Leonard Doyle
When he talks about the Klan members he has encountered he tends not to dwell on the fate of their victims. Karen’s feat is that he takes us to places few photojournalists have been before, into the belly of the beast. The scenes he presents portray a kinder, gentler Klan. The mute photographs present an organisation that is far less threatening than the hate group of our popular imagination. Consciously or otherwise, his photographs hold our imagination in their grip while doing double duty as propaganda for the extremist right, much as Leni Riefenstahl’s work did for the Nazis.
Today the Klan is a mere shadow of what it used to be and there are at least 34 differently named Klan groups. “They are a fairly low-rent bunch of people, many of whom use their local organisations as a way of raising money for themselves,” says Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
Photographs of the Klan folk in their hooded regalia aren’t all that rare. The archives of America’s newspapers contain plenty of front-page photographs of lynchings throughout the past century. Three years ago, James Cameron, the last survivor of an attempted lynching died, thankfully of natural causes.
The older generation of Black Americans grew up hearing about Klan lynchings whispered over the dinner table but never mentioned outside the home. At the Klan’s height, around the turn of the 20th century, some 30 to 40 lynchings a year were being recorded. It is believed that there were in fact many more unrecorded deaths, especially in the cotton-growing south where the deaths of black field-hands were often not recorded.
Karen’s photographs show an entirely different side of the far right. He presents a 58-year-old, fifth-generation seamstress he calls “Ms Ruth” and he has photographed her running up an outfit for the “Exalted Cyclops” or head of a local KKK chapter. She gets paid about $140 for her trouble. Karen tells us that she uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.
Karen’s images of the Klan and its supporters regularly appear on the recruiting websites of the far right. Out of context, the images of hooded Klansmen and their families tell us little of the real story – the inexorable rise in the number of extremist organisations in America.
The number of hate-crime victims in the US is also rising and as America’s middle and working class gets thrown out of work, the hate groups behind the crimes are flourishing. As people lose their homes to foreclosure and, without the benefit of a safety net, find themselves slipping into poverty, there is already a search for scapegoats underway. Immigrants from central and South America have become particular targets as the grim economic times take hold.
Anyone who doubts the capacity of the modern KKK for violence need look no further than the recent case of 43-year-old Cynthia Lynch of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She had never been out of her home state before she travelled to Louisiana to be initiated into the Klan. She was met off the bus by two members of a group that calls itself the Sons of Dixie and taken to a campsite in the woods 60 miles north of New Orleans.
There, Lynch’s head was shaven and after 24 hours of Klan boot camp, including chanting and running with torches, she had had enough and asked to be taken to town. After an argument, the group’s “Grand Lordship”, Chuck Foster, is alleged to have shot her to death. He was charged with second-degree murder and is awaiting trial. Just as shocking is that the event happened in Bogalusa, a backwoods Louisiana town that was once known as the Klan capital of the US.
In the 1960s the Klan operated with impunity in Bogalusa and once held a public meeting to decide which black church to burn down next. Local Klan members were suspected of ambushing two black policemen in 1965, killing one and wounding the other. No one was ever tried for the crimes.
Despite all its notoriety the Klan has been a spent force for decades with nothing like the clout it once wielded. At its peak the KKK boasted four million members and controlled the governor’s mansions and legislatures of several states. Since the 1930s the KKK has been in a state of disorganisation and today it probably has 6,000 members. But the economic crisis is swelling their ranks and already, a month after the inauguration of the first black president, the tidal wave of interracial harmony that greeted Obama’s election is starting to recede.
“Things are certain to get worse,” says Potok. “The ingredients are all there: a dire economy that is certain to get worse; high levels of immigration; the white majority that is soon to turn into a minority and a black man in the White House.”
More than 400 hate-related incidents, from cross-burnings to effigies of President Obama hanging from nooses have been reported, according to law-enforcement authorities and Potok’s organisation, which files lawsuits against hate groups aimed at making them bankrupt.
Late last year, two suspected skinheads who had links to a violent Klan chapter in Kentucky were charged with plotting to kill 88 black students. They were then going to assassinate President Obama by blasting him from a speeding car while wearing white tuxedos and top hats. They were never going to succeed, given the huge security net around Obama, but the fact that they had planned such an outlandish attack may be a harbinger of things to come.
“There is a tremendous backlash to Obama’s election,” says Richard Barrett, the leader of the Nationalist Movement, another white supremacist group. “Many people look at the flag of the Republic of New Africa that was hoisted over the White House as an act of war.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
ALBA
Agrees To Consolidate Sovereignty And Advance Toward Socialism
CARACAS, April 19.— Member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), agreed today in Venezuela to consolidate their integration and sovereignty in the interest of constructing the road to socialism, PL reported.
ALBA agrees to consolidate sovereignty and advance toward socialism At the final event of the 9th ALBA Summit, in Caracas’ Teresa Carreño Theater, the heads of state and government of Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and Venezuela, ratified these objectives in a document titled "Bicentennial Manifesto of Caracas: Consolidating the New Independence."
Via its text, the leaders state that attaining planned goals lies in achieving full justice and liberating themselves from foreign interventionism and submission to imperial mandates.
They also confirm their decision to continue promoting the defense of human rights, the environment and the construction of an independent, developed, and socialist economic base. The document also reflects the will to construct the ALBA nations as a space of equality, social well-being, and the overcoming of poverty.
In addition, the manifesto convenes the next ALBA-TC Summit with indigenous authorities and those of African descent for June 3-4 in Imbabura, Ecuador. They also highlighted their decision to create the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and offered support to Venezuela as host country of a summit to bring that community to fruition in 2011.
Previously, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez inaugurated the 9th Extraordinary ALBA Summit with words of welcome for his colleagues from Bolivia, Evo Morales; Cuba, Raúl Castro; Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega; Ecuador, Rafael Correa, and Prime Ministers Ralph Gonsalves, St. Vincent & the Grenadines; Roosevelt Skerrit, Dominica; and Baldwin Spencer, Antigua & Barbuda.
Reflecting upon the significance of ALBA, founded in 2004, he assured that "it is the alternative" for achieving real independence.
"Thus, we have to care for it [ALBA], protect it, and advance in our plans and projects. There is a danger in waiting; we cannot wait," the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution stated.
Along these lines, he emphasized the need for presidents and heads of government, as well as the peoples of ALBA, to care for and defend the regional integration organization from the constant threats that it is receiving from the empire and governments subordinate to the United States.
Likewise, he signaled that it is important to continue firmly demanding an end to the blockade of Cuba and the release of the five Cuban heroes imprisoned by the empire.
For his part, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, in his speech at this momentous event, exhorted everybody present to win true sovereignty for Latin America.
"Two hundred years ago, our liberators gave us political independence. The nations of this the continent now have to win ourselves economic, cultural, social, scientific, and technological independence," the president affirmed in his address.
Bolivian President Evo Morales argued that the best banner of struggle against irresponsible capitalism and irrational industrialism is to defend Mother Earth, which the indigenous peoples call Pachamama.
Along these lines he emphasized the importance of the 1st Global Conference of the Peoples on Climate Change, which begins April 20 in Cochabamba, Bolivia. To date, 22,000 people have registered to attend the conference.
Speaking at the meeting, which concluded in the early hours of the morning, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega stated that, while the ALBA initiative for cooperation and integration is advancing, the empire is conspiring and provoking in an attempt to liquidate it.
He emphasized that the new model seeks to give real power to the people and convert them into productive individuals in order to achieve development and leave poverty behind.
He indicated that this is the struggle of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean today, while 200 years ago it was the battlefield for the independence of the nations.
Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of St. Vincent, urged member nations of the Bolivarian alliance to fight against colonialism and imperialism in whatever form they might take, and expressed his confidence that the people of his country and the region understand that ALBA is the way to leave behind underdevelopment, "…it is a cause that cannot be achieved with people who doubt."
The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Baldwin Spencer, affirmed to the forum that the alliance is the real future of Latin America and the Caribbean.
"I would like to call on those who are still in doubt to wake up to the reality. We should form part of this magnificent and noble movement," he stated.
Spencer commented that despite pressure and hostile campaigns, he maintains his decision to continue as part of that integration mechanism.
Addressing the official and invited delegations, Roosevelt Skerrit, prime minister of Dominica, called on the U.S. government to end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba maintained since 1962.
"That blockade is unjust and incorrect and should end," the prime minister affirmed. For Skerrit, if Barack Obama wishes to go down in history as the finest U.S. president, he should end that unilateral measure.
Reflections Of Fidel
Sisterhood between the Bolivarian Republic and Cuba
Havana. April 19, 2010
Havana. April 19, 2010
I had the privilege of talking for three hours last Thursday 15th with Hugo Chávez, president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, who had the gentility to once again visit our country, this time arriving from Nicaragua.
Few times in my life, perhaps never, have I met a person who has been capable of leading a genuine and profound Revolution for more than 10 years; without a single day of rest, in a territory of less than one million square kilometers, in this region of the world colonized by the Iberian peninsula which, for 300 years, ruled over a surface 20 times greater, of immense riches, on which it imposed its beliefs, language and culture. One could not write the history of our species on this planet today and overlook what took place in this hemisphere.
For his part, Bolívar did not fight only for Venezuela. Then, the waters and land were purer; the species varied and abundant; the energy contained in its gas and oil unknown. Two hundred years ago, on initiating the independence struggle in Venezuela, he did not undertake it solely for the independence of that country, he did it for all the peoples of the still-colonized continent.
Bolívar dreamed of creating the greatest republic to have existed, whose capital would be the Isthmus of Panama.
In his insuperable grandeur, the liberator, with veritable revolutionary genius, was capable of presaging that the United States – originally confined to the territory of the 13 English colonies – seemed destined to sow the misery of the Americas in the name of liberty.
One factor that contributed to Latin America’s fight for its independence was the invasion of Spain by Napoleon, whose unbridled ambitions contributed to create the opportune conditions for the beginning of the independence struggles of our continent. The history of humanity is sinuous and full of contradictions; in its turn, it is becoming constantly more complex and difficult.
Our country speaks with the moral authority of a little nation that has resisted more than half a century of the brutal repression foreseen by Bolívar on the part of that empire, the most powerful to have ever existed. The immense hypocrisy of its politics and its scorn for other nations has led it into very grave and dangerous situations. Among other consequences are the daily evidences of cowardice and cynicism, converted into quotidian practices of international policy, given that the overwhelming majority of honest persons on Earth have no possibility at all of making their opinions known, or of receiving reliable information.
The policy of principles and honesty with which the Cuban Revolution has always presented correct decisions and errors – and, particularly, certain standards of conduct never once violated in more than 50 years, such as never torturing any citizen – has no exception whatsoever. In the same way, it has never yielded to coercion and media terrorism. These are historic facts that have been more than demonstrated. This is a subject that could be widely discussed; we note it now simply to explain the reasons for our friendship with and admiration for Bolivarian President Hugo Chávez, a subject on which I could considerably extend myself. On this occasion, suffice it to quote some elements in order to explain why I affirmed that it constitutes a privilege to converse for hours with him.
He had not yet been born when the assault on the Moncada Garrison took place on July 26, 1953. He was less than five years old at the triumph of the Revolution on January 1, 1959. I met him in 1994, 35 years later, when he had passed his 40th birthday. Since then I have been able to observe his revolutionary development over close to 16 years. Gifted with exceptional talent and an insatiable reader, I can testify to his capacity for developing and deepening revolutionary ideas. As is the case with all human beings, chance and circumstances played a decisive role in the advance of his ideas. He has a notable capacity for remembering any concept and repeating it with incredible precision a long time afterward. He is a veritable maestro in the development and divulgation of revolutionary ideas. He possesses a domination of them and the art of transmitting them with astounding eloquence. He is totally honest and sensitive in relations to people and extremely generous by nature. He does not need praise but, on the other hand, is accustomed to lavishing it. When I am not in agreement with some of his points of view or any decision of his, I simply transmit that with sincerity, at the appropriate moment and with due respect for our friendship. On doing so, above all, I take into account that he is currently the person of greatest concern to the empire, given his capacity to influence the masses and because of the immense natural resources of a country that has been plundered without mercy, and a person at whom it is striking with all rigor in an attempt to reduce his authority. Both the empire and the mercenaries in its service, intoxicated by lies and consumerism, are once again running the risk of underestimating him and his heroic people, but I do not harbor the slightest doubt that they will once again receive an unforgettable lesson. More than half a century of struggle indicates that to me with all clarity.
Chávez carries dialectics within himself. Never, in any period, has any government done so much for its people in such a brief space of time. It especially pleases me to transmit to his people warm congratulations for the 200th anniversary of the beginning of the struggle for the independence of Venezuela and Latin America. Chance had it that the 19th of April also commemorates the victory of the Revolution against imperialism in Girón [Bay of Pigs], exactly 49 years ago. We wish to share that victory with the homeland of Bolívar.
It gives me equal pleasure to greet all the brothers and sisters of ALBA.
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 18, 2010
7:24 p.m.
Translated by Granma International
US Military Base
Failed Amerika
(Click to Enlarge)# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 4/20/2010 03:50:00 PM
But we (Amerikans) have more weapons than any one else in the world. And that is what counts. Democracy and life expectancy! Bah
Monday, April 19, 2010
Tehran Summit
The Azadi Monument (Freedom Monument) is a prominent landmark of modern Tehran. The tower houses a museum celebrating Iran's cultural contributions to the world.
Tehran Summit
Urges Nuclear Free World
Al-Manar April 16, 2010
As Tehran prepares to hold an international denuclearization conference, an Iranian official said the confab aims to promote nuclear disarmament across the world. The two-day conference titled “Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None” will open on Saturday this week.
Officials from more than 60 countries as well as delegates from various international and non-governmental entities will take part in the conference. Iranian authorities say the conference has been welcomed beyond their expectations.
The meeting aims to convey the message that the world and the Middle East in particular must be free from nuclear weapon. “We are making a platform where everybody could express his view. We would continue to send this very strong message from the capital of Iran, Tehran, the center of the Middle East, that nuclear weapons do not have a place at all in this very sensitive part of the world,” Mohammad Mehdi Akhoundzadeh, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, told Press TV ahead of the nuclear confab.
Akhoundzadeh, who is the secretary general of the summit, said that the conference did not mean to overshadow the nuclear summit held earlier in the US. “This is a process, this is not a project. Some may think that this is to overshadow what’s going on in Washington but we don’t look at it that way,” he reiterated. He said a large number of foreign dignitaries will attend the conference.
“The turnout seems wonderful beyond our expectation. Three Arab foreign ministers and many other foreign ministers from different regions of the world will take part in this conference,” he said. “There would be a very strong presentation of NGOs (non-governmental organizations),” he added.
The meeting comes amid Western efforts to push through a fourth round of UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear energy program.
The US and its allies accuse Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program but Iran rejects the accusations, saying its nuclear program is only for peaceful purposes.
“We were the victim of chemical weapons. We don’t want the Middle East, any body, any government, any country to have nuclear weapons. We feel this is against the humanity,” he said.
The US, which possesses one of the largest nuclear weapons arsenals in the world, is the only country which has used the nuclear bomb in warfare. The mushroom clouds from the US nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still haunt people and governments around the world.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Iran's Complaint
Letter To The UN
Over US Threats Of Nuclear Attack
No: 135 13 April 2010
Excellency,
On 6 April 2010 , the United States government published its Nuclear Posture Review [NPR] which outlines the U.S. nuclear strategy and policy, and among others, contains groundless allegations against the peaceful nuclear program of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Following the release of NPR, some high-ranking officials of the United States including the U.S. President and Secretaries of State and Defense, on the basis of wholly wrong assumption, have made public and implicit statements, threatening to use nuclear weapons against the Islamic Republic of Iran.
For instance, Secretary of Defense of the United States, in a news briefing held on 6 April 2010 at the Pentagon, asserted that “the NPR has a very strong message for Iran …, because whether it’s in declaratory policy or in other elements of the NPR, we essentially carve out states like Iran …. And basically all options are on the table when it comes to countries in that category”.
He added “so, if there is a message for Iran here, it is that… all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.”
In view of these developments, I would like to draw your kind attention to the following points:
1- Such inflammatory statements which are tantamount to nuclear blackmail against a non-nuclear-weapon State signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) constitute a serious violation of the United States obligations and commitment, under international law, particularly Article 2 (4) of the Charter of the United Nations and also the provisions of the Security Council resolution 984 (1995), to refrain from the threat or use of force against any State.
2- It is evident that these statements are not only declaration of intention but also part of official document which articulate the United States policy on first use of nuclear weapons, at its discretion, against a non-nuclear-weapon State Party to the NPT, and, therefore, pose a real threat to international peace and security and undermine the credibility of the NPT.
Such remarks by the U.S officials display once again the reliance of the U.S government on militarized approach to various issues, to which the threats of use of nuclear weapons are not a solution at all.
3- The Islamic Republic of Iran, as a victim of weapons of mass destruction in the recent history, is firmly committed to pursuing the realization of a world free from weapons of mass destruction, not only in words, but also by full implementation of three major legal instruments banning weapons of mass destruction, namely NPT, Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC).
In addition, the Islamic Republic of Iran has categorically and consistently rejected the development, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons on religious and constitutional grounds.
Iran's nuclear activities are, and always have been, for peaceful purposes.
4- After 40 years since the entry into force of the NPT, and while the U.S. officials are apparently advocating the nuclear non-proliferation, let’s not forget that the United States as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon against the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a result of which 200,000 people perished, continues to illegitimately designate a non-nuclear weapon State as target of its nuclear weapons and contemplates military plans accordingly.
In view of the above-mentioned points, members of the United Nations should not condone or tolerate such nuclear blackmail in 21st century, and should take resolute action to ensure the total elimination of all nuclear weapons as the only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons.
In this regard, the United Nations and its relevant organs have a fundamental responsibility to strongly oppose the threat of use of nuclear weapons and to reject it.
It would be highly appreciated if this letter could be circulated as a document of the Security Council and that of the General Assembly, under agenda item 9, 82, 92, 93, 96 and 107.
Please accept, Excellency, the assurances of my highest consideration.
Mohammad Khazaee
Ambassador
Permanent Representative
H.E. Mr. Takasu,
President of the Security Council
United Nations, New York
CC:
H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-Moon
Secretary General
United Nations, New York
H.E. Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki
President of the General Assembly
United Nations, New York
Postcard From Gaza
By Flora Nicoletta
April 17, 2010
"The hell of Gaza is the paradise of Israel", a Gazan citizen.
The problem in Gaza is not the lack of food or the humanitarian crisis. The major problem in Gaza is how to keep his sanity.
You come across betrayed people who are completely depressed and betrayed people who actively search for a spark of hope. You come across indigenous crocks who enjoy swimming in the despair of their own people and international crocks who arrive when the fire has already burnt everything.
You have a nation divided in four. One part lives in exile; the second one is called Israeli Arabs; the third is trying to remain in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem; the fourth survives in Gaza. It is a nation without a state but with two functioning governments, with real ministers and real cabinet meetings: one government democratically elected sitting in Gaza, the other one kept in intensive care in Ramallah by the international community.
Raed is an independent and studied six years abroad. Now he is in charge of English courses for young people who want to pursue their education abroad: "How are you today? For us it's ok. We are here and we will remain here. And my son and my grandson will remain. Here, we are in our land. Were you here during the war?
"Have you heard what the Israeli want to do in the West Bank? They want to expel all the holders of Gaza Identity Cards. Maybe they will also send here Salam Fayyad [the Prime Minister of the Ramallah government] and Abu Mazen [the Palestinian President]. Abu Mazen could be a good president for Switzerland!"
Last February Abu Amjad closed his large well-known supermarket in a commercial street of Gaza City and opened a hypermarket. To finish it quickly the laborers were working even on Friday, their day off.
Abu Amjad, an engineer by profession who speaks good English, has added three new departments in his hypermarket: one for all kinds of fresh meat, one for all kinds of cheese and the third one for fresh fruit and vegetables. The hypermarket is full of all sorts of goods and the prices are moderate. A lot of money has been invested in this new enterprise. When you hear the news you need stomach to do it and Abu Amjad is not the only one. In Gaza, many others put plenty of money in new projects, as usual.
Abu Amjad: "They can destroyed Gaza, but they cannot destroyed the people. We're hear to stay. We go ahead with our life whatever the circumstances. We'll not be defeated, we'll not surrender. If you were in my shoes, what will you tell to the world? You're living with us, you're facing the same problems we face. What would you say to the world? We'll not die, we'll live. The people will continue to face all the adversities in order to remain alive.
"Wherever they are the humans are used to face difficulties, in Italy, in Chine, in America, in Africa, it's normal. We're not different. There is nothing else to say, it's like this. This is my message to the world. Thank you."
In January, the association Sharikna Esh-Shahabi took children and teens to a wall just across the Legislative Council which has been already painted thousands times in the past. That day the children and the teens painted in English and Arabic on the wall: "Gaza will not die", "Gaza will be free", "2010", "Gaza will be better tomorrow".
When I was living after taking some notes, a boy called me and asked me in English: "Ms, will you write Gaza will never die?" His name was Omar, 13-year old. Yes, I will write Gaza will never die... but it is already written on the wall...
The National Center for Studies and Documentation held its third conference on the refugees and the right of return on Wednesday 31 March and Thursday 1st April, in Gaza City, in the Commodore Hotel. The Center has been founded and is headed by Abdallah El-Hourani, born 67 years ago in the village of Masmiyeh, in the 1948 territories.
We listened to Palestinian experts in international law. We heard people speaking about Yazur, El-Qastina, El-Breikh, Isdud, El-Faluja, El-Majdal, Semsem, Hamama, Yafa. These are the names of some villages and towns erased by Zionist gangs on the creation of the Jewish State in 1948.
It is an open injury. The refugees in Gaza number more than one million out of a population of 1.5 million. These names are written on the faces of the people, in every human cell, in every drop of blood, in every grain of sand of the Gaza Strip and beyond. They are carved in the Palestinian memory.
However, three youth commented: "We live in the Beach refugee camp. There is no work, no dollar, no life in Gaza, no future. We want to go to Norway. So, how the return?"
A man on his seventies, a refugee from Haifa, was telling me: "The return is only a dream. All these talking are empty words and moreover we have lost Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for ever. Israel doesn't want peace. Israel has the power in its hands and the might, everything is on the side of Israel. So, why have they to be concerned for the suffering of the Palestinians? Why have they to give back our land? Who can oblige Israel to do it?... a piece of paper can force Israel to accept peace? All the international community supports Israel and the Arab regimes too. If I were in the shoes of Israel I would do the same.
"At the end perhaps we will get Gaza and a piece of desert where to create our state. I'll show you on the map where the Palestinian government will be... Everything is lost!"
Raed, the professor of English language: "We will not cease to hammer the conscience of the world till justice will prevail. I saw the Berlin Wall and it fell twenty years ago. And the Soviet Union collapsed, and the British empire collapsed, and the Roman empire collapsed, and the Apartheid regime collapsed, and the Ottoman empire collapsed... and France left Algeria after 130 years of occupation.
"Nobody could believe before that all those monstrosities would disappear one day like castles of sand."
Nahed, one of the conference's organizers and a refugee from Isdud: "We live under Israeli occupation and international embargo. We've plenty of food, we've everything despite the blockade of Gaza and you can see the people going out for a walk and for shopping. But the youth need hope, life. For that they want to leave Gaza. Gaza is besieged... here it's closed and here it's closed and there it's closed... They finish the university and they don't find a job. They want to marry and they don't have money.
"Before, our people used to go to work in Israel. Now the border is sealed. Therefore, the youth have no future here. They think that they have a future in Norway, in Sweden, in Denmark... I understand them. The youth of Gaza cannot move, they are encaged. If Rafah crossing was open... if we could go ad return back... However, when you're in search of a better life, it doesn't mean you forget the land of your ancestors.
"We want peace with the Israelis. We can share the same land. We can have only one state and live all together. I think it's the best solution. How many people have been killed since 1948? And have we peace? It's enough!"
Saleh A. Raheem, 30, a graphic designer, and his wife Lana Hijazi, 23, who starts making documentaries, don't consider at all to leave Gaza. They have been married for four months now and live in a lovely flat in Er-Rimal district in Gaza City. They are among those who try to speed the coming of a spark of hope.
On the night, from their windows, one can enjoy the astonishing beauty of the martyred city of Gaza and Saleh often looks at lights on the horizon. Once, there, stood Herbia, his village of origin, now in Israel, over the border, not far from the apartheid wall. And Herbia is so close that we could go there on foot passing by the beach.
Saleh speaks like an expert on power cuts: "The occupier doesn't provide enough energy fuel for Gaza Power Plant, so we suffer from electricity shortages. Nevertheless, now we have become accustomed to the electricity cuts. I organize my own life according to the schedule. Today, the Gazan Electricity Company will cut the power in our district from 8:00 to 15:00. We'll have electricity from 15:00 to 22:00. At 22:00 the electricity will be cut for 5 minutes or one hour, we don't know. It depends of something... we don't know what. Then, we will have the electricity till the day after at 15:00. After that the power will be cut from 15:00 to 22:00. And then the power will be restore till 8:00 the following morning.
"The critical time is between 14:00 and 15:00 because we don't know exactly when the electricity will be cut. Additionally, we suffer also from unscheduled power cuts. When I'll have the money I'll buy a generator."
Another plague of Gaza is the lack of water and its bad quality. So, recently, Lana and Saleh took their cameras and microphones, went out and made a documentary called "Besieged waters", after Lana was selected in the course of a competition by the producer, the NGO LifeSource.
In 1942, at the age of 20, Khamis Abu Shaaban opened the first bookshop of Gaza and named it after Hashem, the great grandfather of prophet Mohammad who died in Gaza and was buried here. For that Gaza is called Gazat Hashem, meaning Gaza of Hashem.
Khamis Abu Shaaban is now 88. Every day he can be find in El-Hashemiya Bookshop in Gaza City from 8:00 to 14:00. An old fashioned gentleman, he is always impeccably dressed: suit and tie.
In addition to books, Khamis used to sell papers and magazines from Egypt, Jordan and the Arab world. Since 1946, he is the exclusive agent in Gaza for the Egyptian magazines and newspapers. Due to the blockade of Gaza, since four years he doesn't received anything at all. He refuses to sell the Arab magazines which reach Gaza through tunnels since more than two months now - including the latest edition of Newsweek in Arabic - because he prefers the official way.
Last August, when resumed the new academic year and the pupils of Gaza were without copybooks because they were not allowed into Gaza by the occupier, Khamis Abu Shaaban took from his store old copybooks and put them on the shelves of his stationery department. Good paper and strong cover, they are around 55 years old and are the remains of his former printing house.
For a good number of years now, twice a week, in El-Hashemiya Bookshop, every Sunday and Thursday, at 11:00, a dozen of people gather. Most of them wear the suit and the tie. They discuss, reflect, meditate about books, politics, the current situation, the past and the future.
Among the participants are some old communists, a surgeon, a physician, an erudite, a major general, a prosecutor... All of them are retirees. All of them are a piece of Palestinian history. Most of them are over 70.
Khamis Abu Shaaban affirms that he is optimistic and believes peace will prevail in his country and in the entire region. However, when I ask him how peace could be achieved, he broadly opens his arms and replies: "Mah!?"
PS - A friend of mine remarked that postcards of Gaza don't exist. He is right, there are no anymore postcards of Gaza. Nevertheless, after searching, I found a good number of old postcards, but not on sale. Khamis Abu Shaaban keeps them in an album as souvenirs. They were printed and coloured towards the year 1955 in Italy for El-Hashemiya Bookshop.
- Flora Nicoletta is an independent French journalist who lives in Gaza. She is currently working on her fourth book on the Palestinian question.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Calling Out A Bully
- Iran, at nuclear conference, hits out at "bullies"
(Reuters) - Iran said China and Russia were on hand for its own disarmament conference on Saturday, held in response to a summit in Washington to which it was not invited and intended to hit back at nuclear-armed "bullies."
Iran said 60 countries were represented, including "seven or eight" foreign ministers and the deputy foreign ministers of China and Russia -- the two major powers the West is pushing to accept new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
U.S. President Barack Obama spoke to the leaders of both countries at his Washington summit on Monday and Tuesday where Iran's nuclear program was not on the official agenda but dominated talks on the sidelines.
With new sanctions looking ever more likely, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used his address to the conference to hit back at the "bullies" who were trying to prevent Iran gaining the nuclear knowhow it says is for purely peaceful purposes.
"Unfortunately, the American government has both used nuclear weapons and has also officially threatened to use nuclear weapons," Ahmadinejad told delegates gathered at the conference center of the state broadcaster IRIB.
"When those who possess nuclear weapons and use those weapons have the unequal veto right in the highest body responsible for international security, does this not mean encouraging others to proliferate nuclear weapons in order to provide their national security?" he asked.
A U.S. sanctions draft proposes new curbs on Iranian banking, a full arms embargo, tougher measures against Iranian shipping, moves against members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and firms they control and a ban on new investments in Iran's energy sector.
While Washington hopes the U.N. Security Council will approve the sanctions in the coming weeks, Ahmadinejad has said he will not beg to avoid them and that they did not pose a huge risk to the economy of the world's fifth largest oil exporter.
"BULLYING"
"The Security Council has openly turned into a tool for the implementation of the policies of a few bullying governments," Ahmadinejad told the conference.
He called for changes to its structure and to that of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which had become "a political lever" to use against non-nuclear countries. The IAEA said in February Iran might be working on a nuclear weapon.
Ahmadinejad said a new U.N. body should oversee global disarmament and that states that possess or threaten to use nuclear weapons should be suspended from the IAEA.
While Iran remains defiant in the face of new sanctions -- saying its nuclear program is "irreversible" -- foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast it said it remained open to a deal with the West.
Mehmanparast restated that Iran was prepared to swap its low-level enriched uranium for higher-grade fuel enriched abroad -- a move which would help address fears about Iran's enrichment activities -- but that this must happen on Iranian soil.
"We want to exchange 3.5 percent enriched uranium, 1 tonne, for 100 kg (220 lb) of 20 percent enriched nuclear fuel inside Iran under the supervision of the IAEA and we are ready for interaction," Mehmanparast told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.
Iran would continue cooperation with the IAEA even if a new round of sanctions were imposed, its envoy to the Vienna-based body said.
"We continued our cooperation with the IAEA in the past despite three imposed (U.N.) resolutions. This is our clear policy, even in that case (of new sanctions) we will continue our cooperation," Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Reuters.
Monday, April 12, 2010
AFRICOM
AFRICOM Backs Bloodshed in Central Africa
by Keith Harmon Snow
uruknet.info اوروكنت.إنفو
April 10, 2010
The eastern Congo remains awash in bloodshed due to western mining companies and their proxy armies, the military regimes of Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), and Joseph Kabila (DRC), all hidden behind reams of western newsprint blaming Congolese victims for their own suffering. Across the continent a new rebellion in western Congo has reportedly engaged Belgian paratroopers and UN "peacekeepers" in alliance with the DRC government. With massive casualties and more than 200,000 civilians forced to flee western Congo the United Nations and western media have covered up the new rebellion. Meanwhile, AFRICOM under the Obama administration has major base constructions and secret deployments across Central Africa, with NATO, Dyncorp and Special Operations Command shipping Ugandan grunts to the U.S. wars in Somalia, Afghanistan, Darfur and Iraq.
With the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) engulfed in bloodshed and terrorism due to the secretive occupation and expansion by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has received support from Belgium and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) to crush a growing rebellion sparked by resistance forces in far Western Congo. But the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) has downplayed the new rebellion and hidden massive military and civilian casualties.
Are Belgian Paratroopers Fighting in Western Congo?
A rising alliance calling themselves "The Resistance Patriots of Dongo" (Patriotes-Résistants de Dongo) spread in western Congo over the past six months after Congolese people learned that Congolese resistance forces tired of the corrupt regime of Joseph Kabila were fighting against Rwandan troops in the little frontier town of Dongo.
Sources in Congo’s capital Kinshasa reported that an emergency "crisis" meeting was convened in Brussels on Nov. 28, 2009, after a distress call was sent by Congo-Kinshasa President Hypolitté Kanambe, known to the Western world by his alias, Joseph Kabila Kabange, and the Belgian military attaché in Kinshasa was instructed to deploy a detachment of elite Belgian Armed Forces (BAF) paratroopers to Congo.1
Sources in DRC claimed that Belgian troops joined the Kabila COALITION forces, backed by AFRICOM and allied with Rwanda, and engaged the RESISTANCE forces in Equateur province in January.
Interests competing with President Joseph Kabila’s Congo (including U.S. and Israeli minerals cartels, weapons dealers and money-laundering operations) support the new western Congo RESISTANCE forces. These interests operate through regional power brokers, e.g., in Gabon, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa.
In mid-November President Joseph Kabila secretly airlifted a battalion of Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) across Congo to crush the rebellion. Comprised of former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels who overthrew the government of Juvenal Habyarimana in Rwanda (1990-1994), the RDF joined Kabila’s COALITION, which includes MONUC troops from the international "peacekeeping" mission and Tutsi Rwandan soldiers infiltrated by Rwanda, with the Kabila government’s support, into Congo’s national army, the FARDC. RDF forces, moved to Congo from Rwanda exclusively for the operation, were uniformed as Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC).2
Thus western Congo is awash in bloodshed involving COALITION forces backed by AFRICOM, Belgium and Israel Amongst the biggest Kabila supporters are the U.S.-Israeli Dan Gertler, Moshe Schnitzer and Benny Steinmetz families, also holders to Congo’s most lucrative (copper/cobalt) mines.
MONUC Hides Equateur Conflict
The Tutsi forces in the FARDC include infiltrated Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF, formerly Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) and "ex-"CNDP forces from the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), the extremist terrorist militia that sprouted out of the Kivu Provinces but is heavily backed by Rwanda and infiltrated with thousands of extremist Tutsis.
The secret infiltration and official integration of Rwandan forces into Congo was a strategic maneuver championed by Rwandan general James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame, both wanted for war crimes by the Spanish and French courts. Rwanda’s Kagame is the primary cause of the massive destabilization of Eastern Congo.
The leaders of the rebellion in western Equateur Province have reportedly forged an alliance with General Dunia, a Mai Mai leader operating against the joint operations of the Kabila COALITION in South Kivu, eastern Congo, and site of Canadian BANRO Gold Corporation’s massive illegal gold concessions. Mai-Mai forces in Congo are highly nationalist Congolese. In late 2009, Mai-Mai leaders issued a communiqué and declaration of war against Joseph Kabila and his foreign and corporate allies.
South Kivu human rights groups have documented BANRO’s links to local terrorism, yet not one mainstream western media source has reported or even named the pivotal western mining interests—including BANRO, Moto Gold (Walter Kansteiner), Mwana Africa, Heritage Oil & Gas—behind the war and plunder in blood-drenched eastern Congo.
Many Congolese people have long since known that the president of their country has supported a secret extremist "Tutsi" alliance that seeks to dominate Central Africa. His real name is Hypolitté Kanambe, formerly a junior Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) officer plucked from the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) forces.
It is widely supported that Joseph Kabila reported directly to RPF/A commanders James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame in the Pentagon-backed AFDL "rebellion" that overthrew President Joseph Mobutu in Zaire (Congo); there are also claims that Kabila was a soldier in the RPF/A during the multiple genocides orchestrated by Kagame’s extremist Tutsi RPF/A in Rwanda (1990-1994).
The term "extremist Tutsi" applies only to the elite secretive organization, formerly the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A), which exists in parallel with the parliamentary government of Rwanda.3,4,5,6 RDF are not exclusively Tutsi, but are controlled by the extremist Tutsi network maintained by Paul Kagame, General James Kabarebe and others of the 40 top war criminals indicted by the Spanish court on Feb. 6, 2008.
After seizing power in July of 1994, the extremist Tutsi network continued to perpetrate atrocities, including massacres, assassinations, tortures and disappearances, and the network moved into Congo-Zaire in 1996. The modus operandi of the Kagame terrorist network is to perpetrate crimes and blame them on victim populations (Hutus, FDLR, Mai Mai, Congolese civilians, even Tutsi dissidents). The western media plays along.
A major source of ongoing conflict in the DRC’s Kivu provinces, Rwandan Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, was rewarded in January 2009 for playing along with the Kabila COALITION charade of "arresting" Rwandan war criminal Gen. Laurent Nkunda, another perpetrator of war crimes who received Washington’s blessings for several years. One of few points to their credit, the U.N. Panel of Experts, in their report of November 2009, exposed the appointment of Gen. Bosco Ntaganda as CNDP-FARDC commander, which Kagame and Kabila officially denied.
The International Criminal Court indicted General Bosco Ntaganda for war crimes committed in DRC in May 2008. The ICC is a political instrument used to selectively target certain individuals and militias, while ignoring more substantial state sanctioned actors like Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Yoweri Museveni, Maurice Templesman, or former U.S. National Security Council member Walter Kansteiner, all deeply behind the war and plunder in DRC.
Gen. Ntaganda commanded CNDP-FARDC units responsible for massive war crimes under the joint "Kimia" operations launched with MONUC backing in eastern Congo in January 2009. Ntaganda’s role is to work from the inside to destabilize eastern Congo in exchange for Kabila and Kagame protecting him from the ICC.
The current death toll in the eastern provinces of Congo alone stands at some 1,000 people per day, with at least ten million dead in Congo since the U.S. invasion of 1996, with millions of refugees in the Great Lakes member states. Rwandan allied forces in DRC are perpetrating genocide at present in North Kivu, and the western media and "humanitarian" agencies have remained silent. More than 15,000 IDPs were registered between December 2009 and January 2010, with thousands more IDPs reported hiding in North Kivu forests.
Violence in eastern Congo is universally and falsely blamed on the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), but in fact violence is primarily due to Rwandan allied forces. Additionally, more than 168,000 people have been uprooted due to recent fighting in Western Congo.7
Congo-Brazzaville has harbored the ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) since the overthrow of President Mobutu in 1997, and it harbors Rwandans that fled the AFDL genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire (1996-1997).8 There may be some 300 ex-MLC (Movement for the Liberation of Congo) rebels and more than 10,000 ex-FAZ involved in the western rebellion.
Equateur Province is the site of major untapped petroleum reserves. Belgian, French, Portuguese, German and U.S. families and corporations control vast tracts under attack by industrial logging. There are also Western-owned plantations with modern day slavery involving tens of thousands of Congolese people subject to terrorism by state paramilitary services.9
Resistance Patriots of Dongo
In March 2009 the Western press reported a "tribal dispute" and "ethnic clash over fishing rights" in the little Western Congo outback town of Dongo. The dispute reportedly began between two different ethnic groups. However, the "Resistance Patriots of Dongo" claim that government agents manipulated the parties of the dispute and escalated armed hostilities.
In October 2009 President Kabila and top military adviser John Numbi dispatched FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Benjamin Alongaboni to Dongo to negotiate peace with resistance forces. Gen. Alongaboni, a Congolese son hailing from Equateur Province and the first FARDC officer on the scene, secured a negotiated peace with Dongo area combatants.
Soon after, however, President Kabila sent RDF forces—in FARDC uniforms—who enraged Congolese in the region and provoked hostilities by killing some local people and undermining peace negotiations. The Resistance Patriots of Dongo retaliated and Congolese FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Alongaboni defected.
Meanwhile, the "Dongo Crisis" blossomed into a full-blown Congolese rebellion against international occupation forces and the powerful Kabila-Kagame clique. Hundreds of Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC)—of ethnic Congolese origin—reportedly deserted and joined rebellion ranks with Congolese civilians and various military elements of past rebellions.
Bound for the Dongo rebellion in mid-November, Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) crossed Lake Kivu from Gisenyi to Goma, DRC, and were then flown from Goma to Kamina Air Base in Katanga, a military transport hub used for the Belgo-American-U.N. mercenary occupations during the Katanga secession (1960-63) and "Congo Crises" (1964–67). The RDF battalion was next flown to Bandundu Province.
The RDF troops were reportedly next moved onto the 42-acre campus of the U.S. Embassy-affiliated American School in Kinshasa (TASOK), near the notorious Camp Tshatshi military base, and then flown to Gemena airport in Equateur. The Colonel Tshatshi Military Camp in Kinshasa is the FARDC military command headquarters. The TASOK campus was used for RDF troops because Rwandans would not be welcome amongst Congolese-FARDC at Camp Tshatshi.
There were at least three round trips in some legs of the RDF flight plan reportedly using both MONUC and Hewa Bora Airlines, an airline 70 percent owned by Belgian arms trafficker Philippe de Moerloose. In the "leaked" November 2009 U.N. Panel of Experts Report on Illegal Exploitation in the Congo, Philippe De Moerloose and Hewa Bora Airlines were named for weapons shipments from Sudan to Congo in violation of the International Arms Embargo on the DRC.10 De Moerloose supplies Kabila with presidential jets and other war toys.
Attempting to discredit the High Court in Spain for its issuing of international war crimes indictments against 40 top Rwandan military officials, the U.N. Panel of Experts Report also falsely accused Spanish non-government organizations affiliated with the judicial war crimes investigations of backing "terrorist" groups in eastern Congo.
The Resistance Patriots of Dongo have inflicted high casualties on the Kabila Coalition forces dispatched to Equateur. MONUC issued one tiny press report on Nov. 26, after resistance forces shot up a MONUC helicopter that flew to Dongo to resupply the Coalition ground troops. Some 2000 of the coalition troops were reported killed in February and March.
A short Western media propaganda blurb titled "Armed group claims firing at UN chopper in DRC," Agence France-Presse attempted to discredit the rebellion and cover for MONUC’s involvement in open military aggression against Congolese people.
The AFP described the conflict as purely tribal and framed it as ruthless savage Africans killing with machetes. The MONUC chopper apparently was attacked on Nov. 26.11
Dongo War Not Connected to Eastern Congo?
"The fighting is not related to the simmering conflict in the mineral-rich eastern borderlands," Reuters wrote, "where the army – backed by thousands of peacekeepers – are attempting to stamp out local, Rwandan, and Ugandan rebels."12
On Dec. 3, 2009, Belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique and RTLM reported that Belgium’s Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere and Defense Minister Pieter De Crem had responded to the communiqué of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo, circulated on the Internet on Dec. 1, which warned Belgium and Kinshasa that the resistance knew of the secret plan to dispatch paratroopers to Kisangani. The two Belgian ministries issued a joint communiqué denying the.13
According to Kinshasa sources, the MONUC-uniformed Belgians would be flown from Kisangani, Orientale Province, to Equateur Province’s northwestern frontier city of Gbadolite — the stronghold of former President Mobutu and rebel warlord Jean Pierre Bemba — and then to Gemena airport near Dongo.14
Soon after the Resistance Patriots of Dongo forces occupied the frontier city of Libenge, President Kabila dispatched 600 elite FARDC commandos trained by 60 Belgian Armed Forces instructors at Kamina Air base.
Sources in Kinshasa on Dec. 5 reported: "massive violent fighting in Libenge and Gemena areas," involving 1,000 Congolese National Police (PNC) and 100 Ghanaian MONUC troops and two MONUC helicopter gunships.15
The MONUC "peacekeeping" enterprise in Congo is a $1 billion a year operation involving contracts with Lockheed Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE).
On December 14, 2009, the Spanish Press Agency SAPA and Agence France-Presse reported that DRC government troops fighting against 'tribal forces’ had taken back the town of Dongo, with the tribal forces being "led by the animist priest Udjani."16 The article maintained the ongoing silence about high casualties.
The international news media was completely silent after government forces that had reentered Dongo by December 14 suffered a crushing defeat when resistance forces sprang a trap: scores of Kabila Coalition troops (allegedly including 'white’ mercenaries) were massacred.
On December 16, 2009, the MONUC spokesman in Kinshasa DRC announced that MONUC troops were deployed in Dongo in Equateur province "to sustain the joint PNC/FARDC operations aimed at re-establishing order [sic] and state authority…"17
MONUC transferred some 500 regular MONUC Ghanaian, Tunisian and Egyptian "peacekeepers" to Equateur province from the eastern Congo’s conflict areas in Orientale and the Kivus, along with Armored Personnel Carriers, weapons, and transport and combat helicopters. MONUC also deployed Guatemalan Special Forces to the Equateur region.
On December 22, New York’s Bloomberg News reported with a news brief deepening the racist mythology portraying this as African savagery and superstition.
"The Enyele leader is a mystic named Udjani," wrote Michael J. Kavanagh, reporting for Bloomberg from Kinshasa (DRC) and Impfondo (Republic of Congo), referring to the Enyele tribe, "who claims to have a magical sword that can poison people and pass its powers to the curved machetes wielded by many of his followers, witnesses said."18
Sources working for MONUC in Kisangani confirm that there are Belgian troops in Kisangani, with "one or two" Hercules C-130 Belgian military aircraft.
Resistance forces and Kabila’s Coalition forces engaged in major battles since January with many top military officers of the Kabila Coalition killed. Sources claim that Kabila Coalition forces have used incendiary bombs causing huge civilian casualties. A key intelligence source in Kinshasa insists that Belgian paratroopers were on the ground in Equateur and, unprepared for the organized resistance they encountered, were forced to retreat after some (unknown) number were wounded and killed. MONUC troops have also been engaged in the fighting, in continued violation of the U.N. "peacekeeping" mandate.
Election Slogans and Empty Promises (Sound Familiar?)
In the beginning, many Congolese supported President Kanambe, alias Kabila, ignoring his origins, hoping that he would share power, that he would develop the Congo, build roads and schools and, especially, that he would forestall and evict Ugandan and Rwandan agents, provocateurs, mining cartels and war criminals from the 1996-2001 war years. They were the usual empty promises made by the usual empty politicians.
The plan has all along been to colonize Congo through Rwanda. This involves eliminating as many Congolese people as possible to control their land, balkanizing the Congo and creating a "Republic of the Volcanoes" (Republique des Volcans) as Clinton-Bush official Herman Cohen has repeatedly called for since the U.S.-backed invasion of 1996.
For years now several high visibility Western intelligence organizations, in particular the groups ENOUGH, STAND, Genocide Intervention Network, and the RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO—created and funded by the International Crisis Group and Center for American Progress—have lobbied college students and Western governments to action. Legislation backed by these intelligence fronts includes the "LRA Disarmament Act" (Lord’s Resistance Army), the so-called 'Blood Minerals’ legislation, and the "Violence Against Women Act" (Resolution 1888). The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is blamed for all terrorism in the northern Uganda region, which is awash in oil, thus shielding the organized war crimes of Ugandan President Museveni and his western allies, just as the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are blamed to shield the Kagame terror networks.
William Jefferson Clinton’s former national security insider John Prendergast is the leading cheerleader for these groups, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s help, and with John Podesta, Tom Daschle and Madeleine Albright, behind the scenes. John Prendergast was the expert of choice for CBS 60 Minutes’ "Blood Minerals" broadcast, nationally televised in the United States on Nov. 29, 2009, which was an advertisement for ENOUGH, the International Rescue Committee and so-called "humanitarian" organizations. These lobby and flak entities are working to displace and neutralize all true international grassroots efforts to help the Congolese people take control of their own resources and future, and they cover for hidden Western interests; they also advance military solutions over diplomatic or other peaceful solutions.
The Western media perpetually broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the Western "news"-consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime. These include diamonds, gold, columbium-tantalite, cobalt, copper, petroleum, germanium, tin, tungsten, palm oil, coffee and chocolate (sold in Whole Foods groceries stores). But the value of Congo’s greatest natural "resource" exceeds the value of all the above resources combined: the biggest western moneymaker in Congo is humanitarian aid, charity and international relief—Save the Children, CARE, UNICEF, UNHCR—a.k.a., and the misery industry.
In mid-March actorvist Ben Affleck launched yet the latest western "humanitarian" enterprise in eastern Congo. Affleck’s 'humanitarianism’ operates behind the western disinformation campaign that charges Congolese men with using 'rape as a weapon of war’—an agenda also pushed by Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues fame)—but fails to address the true perpetrators of crimes, including the many mining, private military, intelligence and other military interests involved in bloodshed and plunder. The 'rape as a weapon of war’ framework facilitates western ignorance of the true perpetrators of war, including western agents, weapons brokers, mercenary companies, proxy forces, NATO and AFRICOM, and U.S. brokered military hardware (AK-47s, rockets, armored personnel carriers, tanks, grenades, surface-to-air missiles). Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of "rape as a weapon of war" in July 2009 covered up her negotiations with Joseph Kabila regarding the Clinton aligned diamond interests in DRC.
Affleck’s new Congo initiative is funded by Howard Buffet, whose powerful holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has diverse business interests involved in the Great Lakes. Berkshire Hathaway has an 18.2% stake in the Washington Post and the Buffet’s agribusinesses in Africa are entrenching Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) crops. The Buffets are tight with Bill and Melinda Gates, all close business partners with the Clinton’s in Rwanda and Uganda. In September 2008, Bill Gates, Howard Buffet, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni met at the United Nations headquarters to launch their GMO partnership "Purchase for Progress" with the UN’s World Food Program. Affleck also has his own private business interests facilitated by the Kagame regime in Kigali, and like Gates and Buffet he comes and goes from Kigali on a private jet. Washington Post reportage on Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Sudan is a complete whitewash of western interests.
Rwanda has become the Pentagon’s main base and center of military operations in Africa, and this partnership involves Israel.
On January 28, 2009, sources in Congo reported that Joseph Kabila narrowly survived another assassination attempt, the third this year, with his bodyguard taking the bullet. Meanwhile, violent fighting continued in Equateur province into March, with Kabila coalition troops allegedly arresting and torturing civilians and accusing them of being rebels, including boys as young as 10, and widely committing summary executions. This is a massive violation of international law; AFRICOM and MONUC officials know it is happening; United Nations officials in New York know it is happening;19 and the western press is silent.
In Mid-March, at an exclusive United States Institute for Peace meeting in Washington, DC, AFRICOM spokesman Mark Swayne dismissed any AFRICOM involvement in these covert operations by responding that such reports are "irrelevant." The USIP has funded pro-Kagame disinformation campaigns since the early 1990’s, shielding U.S. involvement in Central African war crimes and genocide. AFRICOM information campaigns exclusively project an image of U.S. troops being only involved in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.
Curiously, at the same USIP meeting, Mark Swayne reportedly "apologized" for AFRICOM’s use of Ugandans in building the new AFRICOM base under construction in Kisangani, Congo. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni—through his wife and brother Salim Saleh’s organized crime networks and the Ugandan military—are hated for more than a decade of plunder and terror in Congo. The Pentagon’s own web site identifies the elite U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as 'training’ Congolese troops in Kisangani, DRC, and Swayne did not reveal that the Ugandans are mercenaries likely affiliated to the western mercenary-linked oil companies (Heritage Oil & Gas, Hardman Resources, H Oil) operating in the Lake Albert basin on the DRC-Uganda border.
AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have also been training and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the U.S.-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans in Darfur.
In December 2009, a group of Congolese chiefs sent an open letter to U.S. President Barrack Obama proclaiming a "categorical refusal of your AFRICOM Project in the Congo."
AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have been 'training’ and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the US-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans reported to be in Darfur. An unknown number of Rwandan soldiers are also in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are allegations that "peacekeeping" sorties sent to Darfur, Sudan, may actually serve as cover for military personnel and hardware actually bound from Rwanda to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Sudan is exploding as you read this, and the huge Rwandan deployments might be behind new violence. These are Rwandan and Ugandan troops responsible for the most egregious war crimes in all the Great Lakes countries.
On April 4, 2010, rebellion insurgents crossed the Congo river and attacked the provincial capital of Mbandaka. Two MONUC troops were killed, and many more wounded after insurgents attacked the governor’s residence and took the Mbandaka airport. By April 9 the government FARDC forces and MONUC had regained the airport leaving three MONUC troops dead. The story finally broke onto the pages of the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream press, but all continue to hide deeper interests and distort the realities. The heavily populated city of Mbandaka was described as a "ghost town" and reporting ignored civilian casualties.
uruknet.info اوروكنت.إنفو
April 10, 2010
The eastern Congo remains awash in bloodshed due to western mining companies and their proxy armies, the military regimes of Paul Kagame (Rwanda), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda), and Joseph Kabila (DRC), all hidden behind reams of western newsprint blaming Congolese victims for their own suffering. Across the continent a new rebellion in western Congo has reportedly engaged Belgian paratroopers and UN "peacekeepers" in alliance with the DRC government. With massive casualties and more than 200,000 civilians forced to flee western Congo the United Nations and western media have covered up the new rebellion. Meanwhile, AFRICOM under the Obama administration has major base constructions and secret deployments across Central Africa, with NATO, Dyncorp and Special Operations Command shipping Ugandan grunts to the U.S. wars in Somalia, Afghanistan, Darfur and Iraq.
With the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) engulfed in bloodshed and terrorism due to the secretive occupation and expansion by the Rwandan regime of Paul Kagame, Congo’s President Joseph Kabila has received support from Belgium and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) to crush a growing rebellion sparked by resistance forces in far Western Congo. But the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) has downplayed the new rebellion and hidden massive military and civilian casualties.
Are Belgian Paratroopers Fighting in Western Congo?
A rising alliance calling themselves "The Resistance Patriots of Dongo" (Patriotes-Résistants de Dongo) spread in western Congo over the past six months after Congolese people learned that Congolese resistance forces tired of the corrupt regime of Joseph Kabila were fighting against Rwandan troops in the little frontier town of Dongo.
Sources in Congo’s capital Kinshasa reported that an emergency "crisis" meeting was convened in Brussels on Nov. 28, 2009, after a distress call was sent by Congo-Kinshasa President Hypolitté Kanambe, known to the Western world by his alias, Joseph Kabila Kabange, and the Belgian military attaché in Kinshasa was instructed to deploy a detachment of elite Belgian Armed Forces (BAF) paratroopers to Congo.1
Sources in DRC claimed that Belgian troops joined the Kabila COALITION forces, backed by AFRICOM and allied with Rwanda, and engaged the RESISTANCE forces in Equateur province in January.
Interests competing with President Joseph Kabila’s Congo (including U.S. and Israeli minerals cartels, weapons dealers and money-laundering operations) support the new western Congo RESISTANCE forces. These interests operate through regional power brokers, e.g., in Gabon, Angola, Congo-Brazzaville, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa.
In mid-November President Joseph Kabila secretly airlifted a battalion of Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) across Congo to crush the rebellion. Comprised of former Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) rebels who overthrew the government of Juvenal Habyarimana in Rwanda (1990-1994), the RDF joined Kabila’s COALITION, which includes MONUC troops from the international "peacekeeping" mission and Tutsi Rwandan soldiers infiltrated by Rwanda, with the Kabila government’s support, into Congo’s national army, the FARDC. RDF forces, moved to Congo from Rwanda exclusively for the operation, were uniformed as Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC).2
Thus western Congo is awash in bloodshed involving COALITION forces backed by AFRICOM, Belgium and Israel Amongst the biggest Kabila supporters are the U.S.-Israeli Dan Gertler, Moshe Schnitzer and Benny Steinmetz families, also holders to Congo’s most lucrative (copper/cobalt) mines.
MONUC Hides Equateur Conflict
The Tutsi forces in the FARDC include infiltrated Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF, formerly Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) and "ex-"CNDP forces from the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), the extremist terrorist militia that sprouted out of the Kivu Provinces but is heavily backed by Rwanda and infiltrated with thousands of extremist Tutsis.
The secret infiltration and official integration of Rwandan forces into Congo was a strategic maneuver championed by Rwandan general James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame, both wanted for war crimes by the Spanish and French courts. Rwanda’s Kagame is the primary cause of the massive destabilization of Eastern Congo.
The leaders of the rebellion in western Equateur Province have reportedly forged an alliance with General Dunia, a Mai Mai leader operating against the joint operations of the Kabila COALITION in South Kivu, eastern Congo, and site of Canadian BANRO Gold Corporation’s massive illegal gold concessions. Mai-Mai forces in Congo are highly nationalist Congolese. In late 2009, Mai-Mai leaders issued a communiqué and declaration of war against Joseph Kabila and his foreign and corporate allies.
South Kivu human rights groups have documented BANRO’s links to local terrorism, yet not one mainstream western media source has reported or even named the pivotal western mining interests—including BANRO, Moto Gold (Walter Kansteiner), Mwana Africa, Heritage Oil & Gas—behind the war and plunder in blood-drenched eastern Congo.
Many Congolese people have long since known that the president of their country has supported a secret extremist "Tutsi" alliance that seeks to dominate Central Africa. His real name is Hypolitté Kanambe, formerly a junior Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) officer plucked from the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL) forces.
It is widely supported that Joseph Kabila reported directly to RPF/A commanders James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame in the Pentagon-backed AFDL "rebellion" that overthrew President Joseph Mobutu in Zaire (Congo); there are also claims that Kabila was a soldier in the RPF/A during the multiple genocides orchestrated by Kagame’s extremist Tutsi RPF/A in Rwanda (1990-1994).
The term "extremist Tutsi" applies only to the elite secretive organization, formerly the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A), which exists in parallel with the parliamentary government of Rwanda.3,4,5,6 RDF are not exclusively Tutsi, but are controlled by the extremist Tutsi network maintained by Paul Kagame, General James Kabarebe and others of the 40 top war criminals indicted by the Spanish court on Feb. 6, 2008.
After seizing power in July of 1994, the extremist Tutsi network continued to perpetrate atrocities, including massacres, assassinations, tortures and disappearances, and the network moved into Congo-Zaire in 1996. The modus operandi of the Kagame terrorist network is to perpetrate crimes and blame them on victim populations (Hutus, FDLR, Mai Mai, Congolese civilians, even Tutsi dissidents). The western media plays along.
A major source of ongoing conflict in the DRC’s Kivu provinces, Rwandan Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, was rewarded in January 2009 for playing along with the Kabila COALITION charade of "arresting" Rwandan war criminal Gen. Laurent Nkunda, another perpetrator of war crimes who received Washington’s blessings for several years. One of few points to their credit, the U.N. Panel of Experts, in their report of November 2009, exposed the appointment of Gen. Bosco Ntaganda as CNDP-FARDC commander, which Kagame and Kabila officially denied.
The International Criminal Court indicted General Bosco Ntaganda for war crimes committed in DRC in May 2008. The ICC is a political instrument used to selectively target certain individuals and militias, while ignoring more substantial state sanctioned actors like Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, Yoweri Museveni, Maurice Templesman, or former U.S. National Security Council member Walter Kansteiner, all deeply behind the war and plunder in DRC.
Gen. Ntaganda commanded CNDP-FARDC units responsible for massive war crimes under the joint "Kimia" operations launched with MONUC backing in eastern Congo in January 2009. Ntaganda’s role is to work from the inside to destabilize eastern Congo in exchange for Kabila and Kagame protecting him from the ICC.
The current death toll in the eastern provinces of Congo alone stands at some 1,000 people per day, with at least ten million dead in Congo since the U.S. invasion of 1996, with millions of refugees in the Great Lakes member states. Rwandan allied forces in DRC are perpetrating genocide at present in North Kivu, and the western media and "humanitarian" agencies have remained silent. More than 15,000 IDPs were registered between December 2009 and January 2010, with thousands more IDPs reported hiding in North Kivu forests.
Violence in eastern Congo is universally and falsely blamed on the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), but in fact violence is primarily due to Rwandan allied forces. Additionally, more than 168,000 people have been uprooted due to recent fighting in Western Congo.7
Congo-Brazzaville has harbored the ex-Forces Armées Zaïroises (ex-FAZ) since the overthrow of President Mobutu in 1997, and it harbors Rwandans that fled the AFDL genocide against Hutu refugees in Congo-Zaire (1996-1997).8 There may be some 300 ex-MLC (Movement for the Liberation of Congo) rebels and more than 10,000 ex-FAZ involved in the western rebellion.
Equateur Province is the site of major untapped petroleum reserves. Belgian, French, Portuguese, German and U.S. families and corporations control vast tracts under attack by industrial logging. There are also Western-owned plantations with modern day slavery involving tens of thousands of Congolese people subject to terrorism by state paramilitary services.9
Resistance Patriots of Dongo
In March 2009 the Western press reported a "tribal dispute" and "ethnic clash over fishing rights" in the little Western Congo outback town of Dongo. The dispute reportedly began between two different ethnic groups. However, the "Resistance Patriots of Dongo" claim that government agents manipulated the parties of the dispute and escalated armed hostilities.
In October 2009 President Kabila and top military adviser John Numbi dispatched FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Benjamin Alongaboni to Dongo to negotiate peace with resistance forces. Gen. Alongaboni, a Congolese son hailing from Equateur Province and the first FARDC officer on the scene, secured a negotiated peace with Dongo area combatants.
Soon after, however, President Kabila sent RDF forces—in FARDC uniforms—who enraged Congolese in the region and provoked hostilities by killing some local people and undermining peace negotiations. The Resistance Patriots of Dongo retaliated and Congolese FARDC troops under the command of Gen. Alongaboni defected.
Meanwhile, the "Dongo Crisis" blossomed into a full-blown Congolese rebellion against international occupation forces and the powerful Kabila-Kagame clique. Hundreds of Congolese Armed Forces (FARDC)—of ethnic Congolese origin—reportedly deserted and joined rebellion ranks with Congolese civilians and various military elements of past rebellions.
Bound for the Dongo rebellion in mid-November, Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) crossed Lake Kivu from Gisenyi to Goma, DRC, and were then flown from Goma to Kamina Air Base in Katanga, a military transport hub used for the Belgo-American-U.N. mercenary occupations during the Katanga secession (1960-63) and "Congo Crises" (1964–67). The RDF battalion was next flown to Bandundu Province.
The RDF troops were reportedly next moved onto the 42-acre campus of the U.S. Embassy-affiliated American School in Kinshasa (TASOK), near the notorious Camp Tshatshi military base, and then flown to Gemena airport in Equateur. The Colonel Tshatshi Military Camp in Kinshasa is the FARDC military command headquarters. The TASOK campus was used for RDF troops because Rwandans would not be welcome amongst Congolese-FARDC at Camp Tshatshi.
There were at least three round trips in some legs of the RDF flight plan reportedly using both MONUC and Hewa Bora Airlines, an airline 70 percent owned by Belgian arms trafficker Philippe de Moerloose. In the "leaked" November 2009 U.N. Panel of Experts Report on Illegal Exploitation in the Congo, Philippe De Moerloose and Hewa Bora Airlines were named for weapons shipments from Sudan to Congo in violation of the International Arms Embargo on the DRC.10 De Moerloose supplies Kabila with presidential jets and other war toys.
Attempting to discredit the High Court in Spain for its issuing of international war crimes indictments against 40 top Rwandan military officials, the U.N. Panel of Experts Report also falsely accused Spanish non-government organizations affiliated with the judicial war crimes investigations of backing "terrorist" groups in eastern Congo.
The Resistance Patriots of Dongo have inflicted high casualties on the Kabila Coalition forces dispatched to Equateur. MONUC issued one tiny press report on Nov. 26, after resistance forces shot up a MONUC helicopter that flew to Dongo to resupply the Coalition ground troops. Some 2000 of the coalition troops were reported killed in February and March.
A short Western media propaganda blurb titled "Armed group claims firing at UN chopper in DRC," Agence France-Presse attempted to discredit the rebellion and cover for MONUC’s involvement in open military aggression against Congolese people.
The AFP described the conflict as purely tribal and framed it as ruthless savage Africans killing with machetes. The MONUC chopper apparently was attacked on Nov. 26.11
Dongo War Not Connected to Eastern Congo?
"The fighting is not related to the simmering conflict in the mineral-rich eastern borderlands," Reuters wrote, "where the army – backed by thousands of peacekeepers – are attempting to stamp out local, Rwandan, and Ugandan rebels."12
On Dec. 3, 2009, Belgian newspapers La Libre Belgique and RTLM reported that Belgium’s Foreign Minister Steven Vanackere and Defense Minister Pieter De Crem had responded to the communiqué of the Resistance Patriots of Dongo, circulated on the Internet on Dec. 1, which warned Belgium and Kinshasa that the resistance knew of the secret plan to dispatch paratroopers to Kisangani. The two Belgian ministries issued a joint communiqué denying the.13
According to Kinshasa sources, the MONUC-uniformed Belgians would be flown from Kisangani, Orientale Province, to Equateur Province’s northwestern frontier city of Gbadolite — the stronghold of former President Mobutu and rebel warlord Jean Pierre Bemba — and then to Gemena airport near Dongo.14
Soon after the Resistance Patriots of Dongo forces occupied the frontier city of Libenge, President Kabila dispatched 600 elite FARDC commandos trained by 60 Belgian Armed Forces instructors at Kamina Air base.
Sources in Kinshasa on Dec. 5 reported: "massive violent fighting in Libenge and Gemena areas," involving 1,000 Congolese National Police (PNC) and 100 Ghanaian MONUC troops and two MONUC helicopter gunships.15
The MONUC "peacekeeping" enterprise in Congo is a $1 billion a year operation involving contracts with Lockheed Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers (PAE).
On December 14, 2009, the Spanish Press Agency SAPA and Agence France-Presse reported that DRC government troops fighting against 'tribal forces’ had taken back the town of Dongo, with the tribal forces being "led by the animist priest Udjani."16 The article maintained the ongoing silence about high casualties.
The international news media was completely silent after government forces that had reentered Dongo by December 14 suffered a crushing defeat when resistance forces sprang a trap: scores of Kabila Coalition troops (allegedly including 'white’ mercenaries) were massacred.
On December 16, 2009, the MONUC spokesman in Kinshasa DRC announced that MONUC troops were deployed in Dongo in Equateur province "to sustain the joint PNC/FARDC operations aimed at re-establishing order [sic] and state authority…"17
MONUC transferred some 500 regular MONUC Ghanaian, Tunisian and Egyptian "peacekeepers" to Equateur province from the eastern Congo’s conflict areas in Orientale and the Kivus, along with Armored Personnel Carriers, weapons, and transport and combat helicopters. MONUC also deployed Guatemalan Special Forces to the Equateur region.
On December 22, New York’s Bloomberg News reported with a news brief deepening the racist mythology portraying this as African savagery and superstition.
"The Enyele leader is a mystic named Udjani," wrote Michael J. Kavanagh, reporting for Bloomberg from Kinshasa (DRC) and Impfondo (Republic of Congo), referring to the Enyele tribe, "who claims to have a magical sword that can poison people and pass its powers to the curved machetes wielded by many of his followers, witnesses said."18
Sources working for MONUC in Kisangani confirm that there are Belgian troops in Kisangani, with "one or two" Hercules C-130 Belgian military aircraft.
Resistance forces and Kabila’s Coalition forces engaged in major battles since January with many top military officers of the Kabila Coalition killed. Sources claim that Kabila Coalition forces have used incendiary bombs causing huge civilian casualties. A key intelligence source in Kinshasa insists that Belgian paratroopers were on the ground in Equateur and, unprepared for the organized resistance they encountered, were forced to retreat after some (unknown) number were wounded and killed. MONUC troops have also been engaged in the fighting, in continued violation of the U.N. "peacekeeping" mandate.
Election Slogans and Empty Promises (Sound Familiar?)
In the beginning, many Congolese supported President Kanambe, alias Kabila, ignoring his origins, hoping that he would share power, that he would develop the Congo, build roads and schools and, especially, that he would forestall and evict Ugandan and Rwandan agents, provocateurs, mining cartels and war criminals from the 1996-2001 war years. They were the usual empty promises made by the usual empty politicians.
The plan has all along been to colonize Congo through Rwanda. This involves eliminating as many Congolese people as possible to control their land, balkanizing the Congo and creating a "Republic of the Volcanoes" (Republique des Volcans) as Clinton-Bush official Herman Cohen has repeatedly called for since the U.S.-backed invasion of 1996.
For years now several high visibility Western intelligence organizations, in particular the groups ENOUGH, STAND, Genocide Intervention Network, and the RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO—created and funded by the International Crisis Group and Center for American Progress—have lobbied college students and Western governments to action. Legislation backed by these intelligence fronts includes the "LRA Disarmament Act" (Lord’s Resistance Army), the so-called 'Blood Minerals’ legislation, and the "Violence Against Women Act" (Resolution 1888). The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is blamed for all terrorism in the northern Uganda region, which is awash in oil, thus shielding the organized war crimes of Ugandan President Museveni and his western allies, just as the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) are blamed to shield the Kagame terror networks.
William Jefferson Clinton’s former national security insider John Prendergast is the leading cheerleader for these groups, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s help, and with John Podesta, Tom Daschle and Madeleine Albright, behind the scenes. John Prendergast was the expert of choice for CBS 60 Minutes’ "Blood Minerals" broadcast, nationally televised in the United States on Nov. 29, 2009, which was an advertisement for ENOUGH, the International Rescue Committee and so-called "humanitarian" organizations. These lobby and flak entities are working to displace and neutralize all true international grassroots efforts to help the Congolese people take control of their own resources and future, and they cover for hidden Western interests; they also advance military solutions over diplomatic or other peaceful solutions.
The Western media perpetually broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the Western "news"-consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime. These include diamonds, gold, columbium-tantalite, cobalt, copper, petroleum, germanium, tin, tungsten, palm oil, coffee and chocolate (sold in Whole Foods groceries stores). But the value of Congo’s greatest natural "resource" exceeds the value of all the above resources combined: the biggest western moneymaker in Congo is humanitarian aid, charity and international relief—Save the Children, CARE, UNICEF, UNHCR—a.k.a., and the misery industry.
In mid-March actorvist Ben Affleck launched yet the latest western "humanitarian" enterprise in eastern Congo. Affleck’s 'humanitarianism’ operates behind the western disinformation campaign that charges Congolese men with using 'rape as a weapon of war’—an agenda also pushed by Eve Ensler (of Vagina Monologues fame)—but fails to address the true perpetrators of crimes, including the many mining, private military, intelligence and other military interests involved in bloodshed and plunder. The 'rape as a weapon of war’ framework facilitates western ignorance of the true perpetrators of war, including western agents, weapons brokers, mercenary companies, proxy forces, NATO and AFRICOM, and U.S. brokered military hardware (AK-47s, rockets, armored personnel carriers, tanks, grenades, surface-to-air missiles). Hillary Clinton’s denunciation of "rape as a weapon of war" in July 2009 covered up her negotiations with Joseph Kabila regarding the Clinton aligned diamond interests in DRC.
Affleck’s new Congo initiative is funded by Howard Buffet, whose powerful holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, has diverse business interests involved in the Great Lakes. Berkshire Hathaway has an 18.2% stake in the Washington Post and the Buffet’s agribusinesses in Africa are entrenching Monsanto’s genetically modified (GMO) crops. The Buffets are tight with Bill and Melinda Gates, all close business partners with the Clinton’s in Rwanda and Uganda. In September 2008, Bill Gates, Howard Buffet, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni met at the United Nations headquarters to launch their GMO partnership "Purchase for Progress" with the UN’s World Food Program. Affleck also has his own private business interests facilitated by the Kagame regime in Kigali, and like Gates and Buffet he comes and goes from Kigali on a private jet. Washington Post reportage on Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Sudan is a complete whitewash of western interests.
Rwanda has become the Pentagon’s main base and center of military operations in Africa, and this partnership involves Israel.
On January 28, 2009, sources in Congo reported that Joseph Kabila narrowly survived another assassination attempt, the third this year, with his bodyguard taking the bullet. Meanwhile, violent fighting continued in Equateur province into March, with Kabila coalition troops allegedly arresting and torturing civilians and accusing them of being rebels, including boys as young as 10, and widely committing summary executions. This is a massive violation of international law; AFRICOM and MONUC officials know it is happening; United Nations officials in New York know it is happening;19 and the western press is silent.
In Mid-March, at an exclusive United States Institute for Peace meeting in Washington, DC, AFRICOM spokesman Mark Swayne dismissed any AFRICOM involvement in these covert operations by responding that such reports are "irrelevant." The USIP has funded pro-Kagame disinformation campaigns since the early 1990’s, shielding U.S. involvement in Central African war crimes and genocide. AFRICOM information campaigns exclusively project an image of U.S. troops being only involved in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations.
Curiously, at the same USIP meeting, Mark Swayne reportedly "apologized" for AFRICOM’s use of Ugandans in building the new AFRICOM base under construction in Kisangani, Congo. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni—through his wife and brother Salim Saleh’s organized crime networks and the Ugandan military—are hated for more than a decade of plunder and terror in Congo. The Pentagon’s own web site identifies the elite U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as 'training’ Congolese troops in Kisangani, DRC, and Swayne did not reveal that the Ugandans are mercenaries likely affiliated to the western mercenary-linked oil companies (Heritage Oil & Gas, Hardman Resources, H Oil) operating in the Lake Albert basin on the DRC-Uganda border.
AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have also been training and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the U.S.-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans in Darfur.
In December 2009, a group of Congolese chiefs sent an open letter to U.S. President Barrack Obama proclaiming a "categorical refusal of your AFRICOM Project in the Congo."
AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin) have been 'training’ and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the US-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur). There are some 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans reported to be in Darfur. An unknown number of Rwandan soldiers are also in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are allegations that "peacekeeping" sorties sent to Darfur, Sudan, may actually serve as cover for military personnel and hardware actually bound from Rwanda to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, Sudan is exploding as you read this, and the huge Rwandan deployments might be behind new violence. These are Rwandan and Ugandan troops responsible for the most egregious war crimes in all the Great Lakes countries.
On April 4, 2010, rebellion insurgents crossed the Congo river and attacked the provincial capital of Mbandaka. Two MONUC troops were killed, and many more wounded after insurgents attacked the governor’s residence and took the Mbandaka airport. By April 9 the government FARDC forces and MONUC had regained the airport leaving three MONUC troops dead. The story finally broke onto the pages of the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and other mainstream press, but all continue to hide deeper interests and distort the realities. The heavily populated city of Mbandaka was described as a "ghost town" and reporting ignored civilian casualties.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Terrorist Kissinger
Kissinger Effectively Gave Go-Ahead for Terrorist Attack on US Soil in 1976
Jurriaan Maessen
April 11, 2010
According to declassified documents released by the National Security Archive today, former secretary of state and longtime Bilderberger Henry Kissinger rescinded instructions that would have prevented one of the worst terrorist attacks on US soil before September 11, 2001, from occurring.
On September 21, 1976 a car-bomb exploded in downtown Washington D.C., killing a former minister of the Chilean Allende government and his assistant- and signifying a major terrorist attack the likes of which had not been experienced on US soil before. The perpetrators were quickly identified as agents of the Pinochet regime, out to assassinate the figureheads of rival regimes all over the world. As it turns out, the string of attacks known as the Condor Murders , was part of a longtime covert operation by several South American intelligence agencies, consisting of international assassinations of dissidents and other enemies of fascist dictators.
Although initially instructions were sent to US ambassadors in South America to warn military leaders of “a series of international murders” likely to occur, word came down from the State Department only five days before the incident in Washington, stating that the secretary (Kissinger) “has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter.” In other words, Kissinger overruled the first instruction- namely to order the ambassadors to warn the South American heads of state of likely attacks on their persons, replacing it with the instruction to effectively keep silent about them- and by extension- allowing the attack in Washington to move forward unhindered.
The Public Record (TPR) online publication mentions that “the instructions effectively ended efforts by senior State Department officials to deliver a diplomatic demarche , approved by Kissinger only three weeks earlier, to express “our deep concern” over “plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad.” Aimed at the heads of state of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, the demarche was never delivered.”, states TPR.
According to Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and accountability this latest revelation is “the missing piece of the historical puzzle on Kissinger's role in the action, and inaction, of the U.S. government after learning of Condor assassination plots.”
Indeed. Only two years after the assassination of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C., a cable was sent from Robert White (the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay) to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, detailing a conversation White had with the chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces. During the interchange, the General had told White that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Operation Condor “(kept) in touch with one another through a U.S. Communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which cover(ed) all of Latin America.”
Professor of political science at Long Island University and chief expert on Operation Condor, J. Patrice McSherry, sums up U.S. involvement in the series of assassinations as follows: “U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor.” That indeed seems to be the case. Not only does the Anglo-American establishment sponsor terrorist attacks abroad, it apparently does not shy away from allowing them to proceed within the U.S.
Although it has been widely suspected that Operation Condor (as the killing-spree had been dubbed) was supervised by U.S. intelligence services, this latest declassified instruction issued by Kissinger provides definitive proof.
Ironically, it was on September 11, 2001, that Chilean human rights lawyers filed a criminal case against both Kissinger and Pinochet for their involvement in Operation Condor. The very same day the worst terrorist attacks in the history of the United States occurred- in likewise suspicious circumstances (to put it mildly), likewise accommodated by the US intelligence community, and likewise pointing to an international conspiracy of geopolitical strategists, aiming to subdue sovereign nations before absorbing them into an international syndicate of robber-barons, commonly known as the New World Order.
April 11, 2010
According to declassified documents released by the National Security Archive today, former secretary of state and longtime Bilderberger Henry Kissinger rescinded instructions that would have prevented one of the worst terrorist attacks on US soil before September 11, 2001, from occurring.
On September 21, 1976 a car-bomb exploded in downtown Washington D.C., killing a former minister of the Chilean Allende government and his assistant- and signifying a major terrorist attack the likes of which had not been experienced on US soil before. The perpetrators were quickly identified as agents of the Pinochet regime, out to assassinate the figureheads of rival regimes all over the world. As it turns out, the string of attacks known as the Condor Murders , was part of a longtime covert operation by several South American intelligence agencies, consisting of international assassinations of dissidents and other enemies of fascist dictators.
Although initially instructions were sent to US ambassadors in South America to warn military leaders of “a series of international murders” likely to occur, word came down from the State Department only five days before the incident in Washington, stating that the secretary (Kissinger) “has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter.” In other words, Kissinger overruled the first instruction- namely to order the ambassadors to warn the South American heads of state of likely attacks on their persons, replacing it with the instruction to effectively keep silent about them- and by extension- allowing the attack in Washington to move forward unhindered.
The Public Record (TPR) online publication mentions that “the instructions effectively ended efforts by senior State Department officials to deliver a diplomatic demarche , approved by Kissinger only three weeks earlier, to express “our deep concern” over “plans for the assassination of subversives, politicians, and prominent figures both within the national borders of certain Southern Cone countries and abroad.” Aimed at the heads of state of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, the demarche was never delivered.”, states TPR.
According to Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and accountability this latest revelation is “the missing piece of the historical puzzle on Kissinger's role in the action, and inaction, of the U.S. government after learning of Condor assassination plots.”
Indeed. Only two years after the assassination of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C., a cable was sent from Robert White (the U.S. ambassador to Paraguay) to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, detailing a conversation White had with the chief of staff of Paraguay's armed forces. During the interchange, the General had told White that the South American intelligence chiefs involved in Operation Condor “(kept) in touch with one another through a U.S. Communications installation in the Panama Canal Zone which cover(ed) all of Latin America.”
Professor of political science at Long Island University and chief expert on Operation Condor, J. Patrice McSherry, sums up U.S. involvement in the series of assassinations as follows: “U.S. military and intelligence officials supported and collaborated with Condor as a secret partner or sponsor.” That indeed seems to be the case. Not only does the Anglo-American establishment sponsor terrorist attacks abroad, it apparently does not shy away from allowing them to proceed within the U.S.
Although it has been widely suspected that Operation Condor (as the killing-spree had been dubbed) was supervised by U.S. intelligence services, this latest declassified instruction issued by Kissinger provides definitive proof.
Ironically, it was on September 11, 2001, that Chilean human rights lawyers filed a criminal case against both Kissinger and Pinochet for their involvement in Operation Condor. The very same day the worst terrorist attacks in the history of the United States occurred- in likewise suspicious circumstances (to put it mildly), likewise accommodated by the US intelligence community, and likewise pointing to an international conspiracy of geopolitical strategists, aiming to subdue sovereign nations before absorbing them into an international syndicate of robber-barons, commonly known as the New World Order.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Slaughtering Children
How Many Americans Does It Take
to Slaughter a Third World Child?
by Jay Janson
April 9, 2010
April 9, 2010
uruknet.infoاوروكنت.إنفو
Disturbing eye-rebounding videos and on-the-scene, cringing to watch or read, graphic reports of civilians dying at the hands of U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan — resurfacing again on network and radio newscasts, in some newspapers and of course, as always, on the Internet.
As in the past, they bring a certain amount of world reaction in concern and condemnation with the more intense pain and outrage reserved for the children’s lives taken. The president of Afghanistan, elected under US military occupation, after years complaining and protesting uselessly, warns of his own possible defection over the "indiscriminate killing by foreign armed forces" among other issues.
How many Americans have been involved in the collateral slaying of children in America’s wars and bombings within defenseless populations of the so called underdeveloped world since the end of World War Two?
How much effort, by how many Americans, has gone into producing each child’s violent death during undeclared wars in Third World nations? Some innocent child made poor and disadvantaged for its country’s history of brutal colonial occupation and plunder by industrial powers that continue to exploit through neocolonialist financial oppression, killed by foreign invaders of American nationality.
The question might equally be asked regarding each dead Korean child or each Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodian child, of each child who was killed in its own various Latin American or African country, and since 9/11, each Pakistani, Afghani, Iraqi, Somali, Sudanese, Yemeni, and Lebanese child, all so precious and lovely while they were alive during the time allotted to them by destiny and the military necessities of Americans.
Below are seven multiple answers to the question – how many Americans does it take to collaterally slaughter1 a child during an undeclared American war on some of each child’s countrymen?
1. Today, it can be said to take only one American sitting in a facility somewhere in the U.S. Mid-West or a pilot or gunner in a plane or helicopter looking at an electronic screen map of coordinates pressing the release button that fires a missile. Takes only one American finger to press a button on an American weapon of mass destruction to end a child’s life. During earlier wars, and even now, the finger might be on the trigger of a machine gun or bomb-sight.
2. It takes two Americans – one on the ground to call in the coordinates for a strike, the other in the air, or half a world away, to fix the cross hairs on the area where the child was – or is — before pressing the release button. Or in earlier wars, one to give the order and another to fire the shot to take down a child while aiming at one of his countrymen.
3. It takes hundreds of collaborating American servicemen and officers involved in a military presence or maneuver at some particular place and time that sets the stage for the calling in of a missile strike — in earlier times, to set the stage for the opening of a bombardment in which a child shall perish. Few will ever see the actually pitiful remains of each child that is no more. Often there is nothing but body parts only its family can recognize.
4. It takes hundreds of thousands of Americans overseas and at home engaged in the manufacture, transport and maintenance of weapons, some realizing their part in making the killing of children possible, but others shutting this out of mind, grateful for the money earned. Without these horrific high-tech devices, each child’s death would not be made possible or a reality by the military.
5. It takes a minimum of tens of millions of Americans openly supporting the killing in which each child’s slaughter is a part, convincing or intimidating hundreds of other millions to accept each child’s death as necessary to the preservation of American safety or to the maintenance of their own prerogatives, privileges and level of consumption. Without their cooperation, the war on each child’s countrymen would not be feasible.
6. It take generations of Americans frightened into silently accepting the dispatching of each child by command of mentally disadvantaged political leaders and the all-wars-promoting conglomerates of the information media cartel under the ownership of, and controlled by, the criminally insane power elite of the Financial-Military-Industrial-Complex . If the war on each child’s countrymen were, or had been, unacceptable to enough Americans, it could not have been waged and no dear child would have been destroyed over all these decades nor in this past week.
7. It has taken, and continues to take, a rather limited number of Americans in the entertainment and information industry working hard over half a century as network anchors, commentators, station managers, talk-show hosts, editors and reporters to bring about the activity of Americans described in each of the foregoing six answers to the query – how many Americans does it take to collaterally slaughter a child in a third world country? (Collaterally, of course, for what American is his or her right mind would go overseas for the sole purpose or intention of killing a child?).
Maybe consider turning off Network TV, Radio, and stop reading corporate owned newspapers and magazines, or better yet notice, and get angry about, their promotion of all past and every single possible future war in some way or another.
It is a rare occasion when a child’s death is begrudgingly reported on our privately licensed public air wave frequencies, for our American monopolized "free’ press and electronic media has prime criminal responsibility for each wonderful child’s brutal passing, and their employees are in some discomfort increasingly aware of their murderous roles.
1. "Slaughter," as in "manslaughter," defined as "the unlawful killing of a person, without malice or premeditation, there being no specific word for 'woman or child slaughter’
Disturbing eye-rebounding videos and on-the-scene, cringing to watch or read, graphic reports of civilians dying at the hands of U.S. military in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan — resurfacing again on network and radio newscasts, in some newspapers and of course, as always, on the Internet.
As in the past, they bring a certain amount of world reaction in concern and condemnation with the more intense pain and outrage reserved for the children’s lives taken. The president of Afghanistan, elected under US military occupation, after years complaining and protesting uselessly, warns of his own possible defection over the "indiscriminate killing by foreign armed forces" among other issues.
How many Americans have been involved in the collateral slaying of children in America’s wars and bombings within defenseless populations of the so called underdeveloped world since the end of World War Two?
How much effort, by how many Americans, has gone into producing each child’s violent death during undeclared wars in Third World nations? Some innocent child made poor and disadvantaged for its country’s history of brutal colonial occupation and plunder by industrial powers that continue to exploit through neocolonialist financial oppression, killed by foreign invaders of American nationality.
The question might equally be asked regarding each dead Korean child or each Laotian, Vietnamese, Cambodian child, of each child who was killed in its own various Latin American or African country, and since 9/11, each Pakistani, Afghani, Iraqi, Somali, Sudanese, Yemeni, and Lebanese child, all so precious and lovely while they were alive during the time allotted to them by destiny and the military necessities of Americans.
Below are seven multiple answers to the question – how many Americans does it take to collaterally slaughter1 a child during an undeclared American war on some of each child’s countrymen?
1. Today, it can be said to take only one American sitting in a facility somewhere in the U.S. Mid-West or a pilot or gunner in a plane or helicopter looking at an electronic screen map of coordinates pressing the release button that fires a missile. Takes only one American finger to press a button on an American weapon of mass destruction to end a child’s life. During earlier wars, and even now, the finger might be on the trigger of a machine gun or bomb-sight.
2. It takes two Americans – one on the ground to call in the coordinates for a strike, the other in the air, or half a world away, to fix the cross hairs on the area where the child was – or is — before pressing the release button. Or in earlier wars, one to give the order and another to fire the shot to take down a child while aiming at one of his countrymen.
3. It takes hundreds of collaborating American servicemen and officers involved in a military presence or maneuver at some particular place and time that sets the stage for the calling in of a missile strike — in earlier times, to set the stage for the opening of a bombardment in which a child shall perish. Few will ever see the actually pitiful remains of each child that is no more. Often there is nothing but body parts only its family can recognize.
4. It takes hundreds of thousands of Americans overseas and at home engaged in the manufacture, transport and maintenance of weapons, some realizing their part in making the killing of children possible, but others shutting this out of mind, grateful for the money earned. Without these horrific high-tech devices, each child’s death would not be made possible or a reality by the military.
5. It takes a minimum of tens of millions of Americans openly supporting the killing in which each child’s slaughter is a part, convincing or intimidating hundreds of other millions to accept each child’s death as necessary to the preservation of American safety or to the maintenance of their own prerogatives, privileges and level of consumption. Without their cooperation, the war on each child’s countrymen would not be feasible.
6. It take generations of Americans frightened into silently accepting the dispatching of each child by command of mentally disadvantaged political leaders and the all-wars-promoting conglomerates of the information media cartel under the ownership of, and controlled by, the criminally insane power elite of the Financial-Military-Industrial-Complex . If the war on each child’s countrymen were, or had been, unacceptable to enough Americans, it could not have been waged and no dear child would have been destroyed over all these decades nor in this past week.
7. It has taken, and continues to take, a rather limited number of Americans in the entertainment and information industry working hard over half a century as network anchors, commentators, station managers, talk-show hosts, editors and reporters to bring about the activity of Americans described in each of the foregoing six answers to the query – how many Americans does it take to collaterally slaughter a child in a third world country? (Collaterally, of course, for what American is his or her right mind would go overseas for the sole purpose or intention of killing a child?).
Maybe consider turning off Network TV, Radio, and stop reading corporate owned newspapers and magazines, or better yet notice, and get angry about, their promotion of all past and every single possible future war in some way or another.
It is a rare occasion when a child’s death is begrudgingly reported on our privately licensed public air wave frequencies, for our American monopolized "free’ press and electronic media has prime criminal responsibility for each wonderful child’s brutal passing, and their employees are in some discomfort increasingly aware of their murderous roles.
1. "Slaughter," as in "manslaughter," defined as "the unlawful killing of a person, without malice or premeditation, there being no specific word for 'woman or child slaughter’
