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Author Topic: War & profit in the Congo
Fidel
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posted 23 April 2008 06:43 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Corporations Reaping Millions as Congo Suffers Deadliest Conflict Since World War II

quote:
A new mortality report from the International Rescue Committee says that as many as 5.4 million people have died from war-related causes in the Congo since 1998. A staggering 45,000 people continue to die each month, both from the conflict and the related humanitarian crisis. Amidst the deadliest conflict since World War II, hundreds of international corporations have reaped enormous profits from extracting and processing Congolese minerals . . .

MAURICE CARNEY:Well, there are a number of companies. From 2001 to 2003, the United Nations did a report on the illegal exploitation of the natural resources of the Congo. There are a number of American companies. We have Cabot Corporation, for example, out of Boston, Massachusetts, that was named in that report. . .
We have a number of Canadian companies. Almost every Canadian prime minister since Pierre Trudeau has been involved in the mining company in the Congo. We’re talking about Joe Clark, Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, all of them profiting from the natural resources of the Congo while the Congolese people suffer.


[ 23 April 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 01 May 2008 08:21 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Five million Congolese have died in the last decade or so in order to make billionaires even richer. If there were such a thing as international law, this holocaust in the Democratic Republic of Congo should have already resulted in the public hanging of hundreds of the world's richest men - and rightfully so. If the Nuremberg laws that sent ten Nazis to the gallows for crimes against humanity and peace were applied to the Congo, we could quite easily find the names of the defendants in the columns of the world's financial press - the richest men on the face of the earth. These men conspired to murder millions so that there would be constant war in Central Africa - but no law to inhibit theft on the grandest industrial scale imaginable.

The so-called government of Congo is just now getting around to beginning a review of which companies are mining what and where in the country. Since the many invasions of Congo began a decade ago, corporations like De Beers, BHP Billiton, Anglogold, and the American giant Freeport-McMoRan have caused five million people to die so that they could use the chaos as a cover to smuggle billions of dollars in precious metals out of the country. These mining companies all have their own private armies to defend their stolen goods, or join with the armies of U.S. allied countries such as Rwanda and Uganda to establish free-fire and steal-whatever-you-can-carry-away zones. It is accurate to say that the holocaust in the Congo is a collective crime by all of the Euro-American mineral extraction industries and the governments that serve them. True justice for the Congo would require the imprisonment or execution of many tens of thousands - most of them white men....

Congo is proof that those nations that claim to be the civilized powers of the world are in fact the opposite; they are the guardians and bankrollers of hell. While these men live, let no one dare speak of morality as anything other than a wishful hypothetical. Certainly, it does not exist anywhere in Congo.


Glen Ford

[ 01 May 2008: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 01 May 2008 01:10 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Good article, M. Spector. IMF and World Bank policies are failing the people of the D.R.C. where 90 percent of the people live on a dollar a day or less.

Rainforests of the Congo are an important regulator of global climate, and yet WB and IMF policies dictate that they must allow MNC logging companies to clearcut large swaths of some of the most pristine forested lands in the world. Landowners are mostly illiterate and don't understand the value of their land, and are taken advantage of by western mining and logging companies extracting as high as 600% clear and way profits from the Congo.

IMF policies basically amount to: Keep them poor, ignorant, and in a constant state of Amero-Euro-funded terror while maurauding capitalists make off with the booty. Or iow's, "Take as much as we can and give nothing back" - colonialists'/pirate's creedo/predatory capitalist's creed are all one and the very same.

[ 01 May 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 28 August 2008 02:52 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
By UN estimates, there have been 300,000 killed in Darfur since 2003, while in the Congo The International Rescue Committee estimates there have been 5.4 million killed since 1998. In the latter conflict Canadian mining companies, diplomacy and military all played a role.

Yet in what mainstream media did you see the following reported?

With the end of the Cold War and weakening of Russian influence, Washington decided it would no longer allow the French to dominate large parts of Africa. Rwanda was viewed as an important staging ground for control over central Africa’s big prize: the Congo’s mineral resources.

Ottawa, with many French-speaking individuals at its disposal, played its part in bringing the formerly Francophone-dominated Rwanda into the U.S. orbit. The Canadian government helped Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) take power in 1994 after they invaded Rwanda from neighbouring Uganda in 1990 (Kagame, who was head of intelligence for the Ugandan ruling party, was trained by the U.S. military at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas).

Taking direction from Washington, Canadian General [now Senator] Romeo Dallaire commanded the UN military force for Rwanda. According to numerous accounts, including his civilian commander on the UN mission, Jacques-Roger Boohbooh, Dallaire aided the RPF. In his book, Le Patron de Dallaire Parle, Boohbooh claims that Dallaire probably provided the RPF with military intelligence and turned a blind eye to their weapons coming in from Uganda.

Dallaire, Boohbooh concludes, "abandoned his role as head of the military to play a political role: he violated the neutrality principle of MINUAR [UN mission to Rwanda] by becoming an objective ally of one of the parties in the conflict."

In his own book, Shake Hands with the Devil, Dallaire writes, "It had been amazing to see Kagame with his guard down for a couple of hours, to glimpse the passion that drove this extraordinary man." This was published six years after Kagame unleashed a horror in the Congo.

Dallaire was not supporting the RPF on some personal whim. During the worst of the Rwandan conflict, Canadian military aircraft continued to fly into Rwanda from neighboring Uganda, the country that sponsored the RPF. Were they bringing weapons?

The book Tested Mettle notes: "A sizable contingent of JTF II [Canadian special forces] had been deployed into Africa. To provide additional ‘security’ for the UN mission in Rwanda, MacLean and his team had set up an ‘advanced operational base’ in Uganda. From there they would launch long-range, covert intelligence patrols deep into Rwandan territory."

After the Canadian-backed RPF took power they helped launch a rebel attack led by Joseph Kabila into Zaire, now the Congo. In early 1997, a few months after launching his invasion from neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda, "Kabila sent a representative to Toronto to speak to mining companies about ‘investment opportunities.’ According to Dale Grant, editor of "Defence Policy Review," this trip "may have raised as much as $50 million to support Kabila’s march on the capital of Kinshasa."

A number of Canadian companies signed deals with Kabila before he took power. First Quantum Minerals, with former Prime Minister Joe Clark as its Special Advisor on Africa Affairs, signed three contracts worth nearly $1 billion. With Brian Mulroney and George Bush on its board, Barrick signed a gold concession in northeast Congo with Kabila’s forces. Heritage Oil also made an agreement with Kabila over a concession in the east of the country that Kabila’s army didn’t yet control.

The Canadian military gave substantial support to Kabila’s incursion into the Congo. Ottawa organized a short-lived UN force into eastern Zaire that was opposed by that country and welcomed by Uganda, Rwanda and Kabila’s rebels. Much to the dismay of the government of Zaire, General Maurice Baril, the Canadian multinational force commander, met Laurent Desire Kabila in eastern Zaire during the guerrilla war.

The book Nous étions invincibles provides a harrowing account of a JTF II operation to bring Baril to meet Kabila. Their convoy came under attack and was only bailed out when U.S. Apache and Blackhawk helicopters attacked the Congolese. Some thirty Congolese were killed by a combination of helicopter and JTF2 fire.

After successfully taking control of the Congo in mid-1997 Kabila demanded his Rwandese allies leave the country. This prompted a full-scale invasion by Rwanda, which unleashed an eight-nation war. To this day, Canada provides assistance and diplomatic support to the RPF despite the millions killed in the Congo and a terrible domestic human rights record. RPF proxies continue to fight in the Congo.

Canadian companies also continue to feed the fighting, largely based upon securing the Congo’s immense natural resources. There are more than a dozen Canadian mining companies active in the Congo today. In 2004 Anvil Mining was accused of providing logistics to troops that massacred between 70 and 100.

Ten Canadian companies were implicated in a UN report titled "Report on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and other Forms of Wealth in the Congo," published in 2002. Ottawa responded to the report by defending the Canadian companies cited for complicity in Congolese human rights violations.

Let’s hold Canada to the same standards that we set for China.


Yves Engler

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 28 August 2008 05:03 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Our governments and military have been willing accomplices to mass murder. "Uncle Sam's nephew" sounds accurate enough to me.

quote:
How about Canadian business, missionary and diplomatic support for Japan’s brutal invasion of China in the 1930s? What about the weapons and $60 million Ottawa sent to aid Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang fighting Mao’s forces after World War II?

I didn't know that. I thought it was all Britain, Japan, and the U.S. trying to hack off pieces of China for their imperial selves at the time.

[ 28 August 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged

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