CENTRAL
AFRICA:
HIDDEN
AGENDAS & THE WESTERN PRESS
by
keith harmon snow
WriterÕs note: This article appeared on January 4,
2001, in The Voice News of Winstead, CT (www.thevoicenews.com). It was one of two on Central Africa
authored by keith harmon snow that was selected by Project Censored in 2002 as one of the top 25 most underreported
(censored) news stories of 2001-2002; over 900 stories were nominated. It has
been updated herein only slightly.
War in Congo alone has claimed over three million lives
since 1998 alone.
This war calls to mind the
innocent men, women and children fleeing Congo into Uganda whom I met there in
2000. In particular I recall one refugee, David, who explained to me how
soldiers tortured him, beat his children and raped his wife. The day I spoke
with David his six year-old daughter was dying. The next morning she was dead.
With his family David had fled his home near Bunia, Congo, and for three weeks they ate roots and plants and bugs as they walked through mud and forest and mountains from Congo to Uganda. They had only the clothing on their backs. No money, no food, no security. The ordeal of DavidÕs family defies understanding by people in the United States whom have not witnessed or experienced the suffering. The additional outrage is that people in the United States benefit from the exploitation of this poor familyÕs land, that people in the US know nothing about it, and that most people seem incapable of caring. The lack of awareness, the mythology of utter hopelessness, and the incapacity to relate to the profound suffering in Africa is a direct result Ð and a primary intention -- of the mass media.
PHOTO KEITH
HARMON SNOW: Directors of the New York Times are also directors of Bristol
Myers Squibb, a leading manufacturer and peddler of breast implants for women.
And thatÕs not all thatÕs going on here É. Calvin Klein is owned by Unilever,
one of the worldÕs largest and most secretive corporations, and they operate
widely, and with significant but unreported economic, political and military
connections in Africa.
In contradistinction however,
even as I wrote this article Ð in August of 2001 -- there was then emerging in
the major western media a fresh propaganda front on Congo. That meant that
something in the western political economy of warfare had shifted in such a way
as to make it expedient to advertise aspects of the brutal war in Congo. And
the key word here is ÒaspectsÓ. September 11th changed that however,
and Congo again slipped into media whiteout where it has remained, for the most
part, since.
Human Rights Watch published
a major report on systematic rape by RPF (Rwandan) and UPDF (Ugandan) soldiers
in eastern Congo, but that report of May 2002 was almost totally ignored. Not
only does the media ignore the issues of war in Africa, but leftists and
peaceniks as well. Suffering in Congo, in fact, and in Africa more generally,
is virtually invisible.
The big beneficiaries of war
in Central Africa have not been named. The western media will never name them,
because directors of western media corporations would have to name themselves.
Propaganda is often true. It
is selective information used selectively and expeditiously to serve a certain
purpose. On Africa, the mediaÕs aim is to sow racism, apathy, indifference,
inaction and Ð most critical -- a sense of hopelessness in the public mind.
This is the coup of the western media. It has succeeded.
While we should perhaps
applaud the New York Times and Boston Globe and other major media
for finally reporting something on the inhuman conflict in Congo Ð which is also driving the
extinction of the great apes, the deforestation of the vast Congo Basin, and
hence global climate mayhem Ð we must also recognize that the imperatives of
corporate profit have insured that four years of western military and economic
exploitation of Congo have taken place completely off the radar screen of the
American public.
War in Congo has claimed over
three million lives since 1998 alone. Innocent civilians have been brutalized,
massacred, raped, and tortured by all parties to the conflict. It began with
the U.S.-sponsored invasion of Rwanda in 1994, and followed with two subsequent
U.S.-sponsored invasions of Congo (1996, 1998). These are not the simple Òcivil
warsÓ declared by the western press. Even the Rwanda ÒgenocideÓ (1994) has to
some extent been manufactured in the American mind to serve the mythology of
tribalism. Meanwhile American green berets and military advisors and Pentagon
officials have participated from blackboard to battlefield.
Sierra Leone, Angola, Sudan,
Rwanda and Congo/Zaire are wars where factions are armed with U.S. made weapons
(M16Õs, SAMÕs, tanks); where U.S. covert forces undertake brutal secret
missions and psychological operations Ð accountable to no one -- behind the
headlines. They are wars where the Central Intelligence Agency is deeply and
maliciously entrenched in subverting democracy and orchestrating chaos that is
expediently advertised Ð as such -- by our dubious media. At the roots however,
these are wars like any other war.
Essential to the superalloys
and weaponry of the global economy of war are CongoÕs cobalt, uranium and
columbium tantalite (coltan). Cobalt is elemental to nuclear reactors and
nuclear weapons, tank armor, industrial furnaces, aerospace, and for 50 years
the CIA has insured the free flow of cobalt out of Congo. The human devastation
in poverty, disease, torture and massacres is uncountable. Adjectives do not
describe the suffering. Similarly, coltan is essential for cellphones and
childrenÕs playstations and companies like Sony and Nokia have been cashing in
on this windfall Ð paid in human blood. While the bloody digressions of
Japanese Zaibatsu have to some
limited extent been exposed by the New York Times -- likely scrambling
for corporate leverage and market position -- the greater involvement of
powerful Americo-European interests remains obscured.
For example, Royal
Dutch/Shell has allied with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the post-1994 victors
both overtly and covertly supported by U.S. military operations and equipment.
According to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen (Genocide and Covert
Operations in Africa, 1993-1999; Mellen Press), since 1994 RwandaÕs RPF
government, headed by Paul Kagame (who was trained at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas)
has systematically eliminated upwards of 600,000 people Ð these a proportion of
the International Rescue Committee count of over three million dead since 1998.
RPF forces and their Congolese allies have reportedly conscripted prisoners of
war for slave labor in mining camps.
When Bill Clinton stated that
the U.S. took no action on Rwanda in 1994 because we did not know what was
going on at the time, he could not have told a bigger lie. Indeed, the nasty
executive underhandedness of Bush and Clinton interests in Africa are
meticulously documented in Wayne MadsenÕs book.
North American and European
multinational corporations are pulling the strings to ensure their cheap and
unfettered access to oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds, rubber and timber. In
Lake Albert and in the heart of CongoÕs forests multinationals are sinking
wells for petroleum and natural gas. Shell, Exxon, Chevron, Mobil, Agip,
Total-Fina are a few of the petroleum giants controlling the oil fields off the
Atlantic coast.
Texaco is entrenched in the
Angola and Congo conflicts. Texaco director Charles H. Price is a director of
the New York Times Company.
Ditto for CitizenÕs Energy
International, a firm controlled by the family of Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and by
N.Y.-based Lehman Brothers Holdings. Lehman BrotherÕs director John F. Akers is
a director of the New York Times Company. (Lehman Brothers Holdings was based
in the World Trade Center in September, 2001.)
Phelps Dodge Corporation has
mined Zimbabwe for years and through Zimbabwe is entrenched in the profitable
bloodletting in Congo. Long-time Phelps Dodge executive George B. Munroe is a
New York Times Company director.
The First Boston (bank)
interests of George L. Shinn Ð a New York Times Company director Ð certainly
influenced selective and slanted New York Times coverage of Zaire/Congo
(1996, 1998) relief operations in which First Boston had a huge financial
stake.
Taking primary responsibility
for planning and implementation of U.S. Special Operations paramilitary forces
(read: terrorists) who perpetrated massacres of innocent Congolese civilians
throughout 1964 and 1965 was Cyrus Vance, who was then working with Robert
McNamara and Dean Rusk, with complete knowledge of President Lyndon Johnson, to
implement a covert operation.[1] Vance later became Secretary of State
under the Jimmy Carter administration. Perhaps itÕs no surprise to learn Ð
since U.S. covert forces have continued to operate in Central Africa wars of
late Ð that Cyrus Vance was one of the directors of the New York Times Company
in the 1990s.
Former US President and
CIA director George Bush is an advisory board member for Barrick Gold
Corporation Ð which is raping the U.S., Tanzania, Mali, Niger, Canada, Peru and
Ð no surprise -- Congo. Barrick Gold has been operating in the region around
Bunia, Congo, the area from which refugees I spoke with had fled. People explained
that Barrick gold mining operations near Bunia are secured by Ugandan
government troops. The Uganda military also controls gold mines near Bunia, as
does an Israeli general paid in gold mining concessions for his military
expertise during the first invasion of Zaire/Congo (1996).
Counted among Barrick
directors are Brian Mulroney, former Prime Minister of Canada. Another is
Edward Neys, former U.S. Ambassador to Canada and chairman of Burson-Marsteller
-- one of the worldÕs largest and most secretive public relations firms.
Burson-Marsteller is a
billion-dollar company that covers for organized crime. They are in the
business of Òperception managementÓ Ð the latter day term for propaganda. They
covered for the Nigerian oil barons and Shell Oil during the Biafran War. They
covered for Babcock & Wilcox and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as
the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor melted down and irradiated the American
landscape. They massaged the public and managed their perceptions as the Exxon
Valdez supertanker greased the Alaskan wilderness with black crude.
Burson-Marsteller covered for Union Carbide after the gas massacre in Bhopal
(1984).
Burson-Marsteller has run
public relations campaigns to shield extensive, state-orchestrated terror by
the ÒgovernmentsÓ of Argentina, Indonesia, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and
Singapore.
That is a short list.
PHOTO COURTESY OF NEW VISION
NEWSPAPER KAMPALA UGANDA: The United States is the leading arms supplier to
Africa. Sophisticated weapons are only infrequently, and expeditiously,
revealed in the Africa reportage of the New York Times. (WouldnÕt want
anyone to get the idea that Africa is anything but uncivilized tribals slaughtering each other with spears and machetes.)
Other Barrick Gold directors
include J. Trevor Eyton, a member of the Canadian Senate; former U.S. Senator
Howard Baker; and the industrious lawyer Vernon E. Jordan, who worked for his
good friend then U.S. President Bill Clinton.
Indeed, diamonds are Bill
ClintonÕs best friend: Throughout his tenure in the White House Clinton
personally profited -- at profound human loss of life -- from Congo connections
tried and true. For years influential with the brutal Zairean dictator Mobutu
Sese-Seko, CIA operative Lawrence Devlin used his Congo network to access
diamonds and cobalt for Clintonite diamond kingpins Michael McMurrough, Jean
Raymond-Bouelle, Maurice and Leon Templesman, and their companies: America
Mineral Fields International (AMFI) Ð headquartered in Hope Arkansas in 1995 Ð
and Lazare Kaplan International. Unremarkably, AMFIÕs mining partners in Africa
include Barrick Gold Corporation. (faithful democrats screaming about the
ÒspoilerÓ vote please take note and consider whom the real spoilers are).
Private military companies
and shady intelligence outfits further corporate and private interests. Air
Scan International (Florida-based) operates in Sudan and Angola. Others include
Executive Outcomes, the Gurkha Security Group, and Military Professional
Resources Incorporated (MPRI). MPRI -- run out of Washington D.C. by some 32
retired U.S. generals, like General Ed Soyster -- reportedly advised on the
battlefields during the two U.S. sponsored invasions (1996, 1998) of
Zaire/Congo. MPRI is also training the Nigerian military, which continues to
perpetrate atrocities on innocent civilians living in the oil-producing
communities of the Niger River Delta.
(continue below)
PHOTO: KEITH
HARMON SNOW: New York Times reportage on Africa is laced with subliminal
seduction.
It is critical that the
issues of war and resource capture and media deception on Africa be
appreciated, that action be taken immediately to call to account the
responsible agents and governments -- whose unconsciousness has brought, and
continues to bring, unfathomable suffering, despair and death to an entire
continent and hundreds of millions of people. War in Central Africa Ð Congo and
Rwanda -- has claimed at least three to five million lives since 1994. Most of
these were innocent men, women and children.
keith harmon snow is a
journalist and photographer. In 2000 he spent seven months investigating the
conflicts in Angola, Congo, Rwanda and Sudan. In 2001 he presented on a special
congressional panel convened by U.S. Congressional Representative Cynthia
McKinney to explore the role of US covert forces and private interests in Central
Africa. He regularly lectures at colleges and universities on neocolonialism,
private profit, and genocide in Africa, and the political economy of the
western media.